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Victor dubs himself a "superhero," but most people don't see him as one. For one, he's likes to murder people. Specifically, he likes to murder large groups of ethnic and religious minorities.

What superpower would be effective at mass murder, while helping him prevent being shot at by police?

I considered fire, but someone could just shoot him.

This is set in modern Florida.
He should either have one superpower, or a few very closely related superpowers.

Edit:
The mass murders in the plot happen during the day. Amusement parks, regular parks, skating rinks, mosques, etc.

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  • $\begingroup$ How about a superpower that stops cellular respiration.. you will kill everyone. $\endgroup$ – NuWin Sep 15 '16 at 18:30
  • $\begingroup$ He's immune to the bubonic plague, and has the power to control fleas. $\endgroup$ – user23110 Sep 15 '16 at 20:27
  • $\begingroup$ His superpower is he can make people die without touching them. $\endgroup$ – Devsman Sep 15 '16 at 20:35
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    $\begingroup$ Is it important that everyone knows he's doing it? Also must this mass-murder power be specific since he wants to target specific people? $\endgroup$ – Erik Sep 15 '16 at 21:20
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    $\begingroup$ Ah, Florida Man,we meet at last. $\endgroup$ – MikeTheLiar Sep 15 '16 at 21:32

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First off, yikes! Not sure what your plan is for Victor, but here's hoping he's a villain who gets what's coming to him.

Powers for Showing Off and Getting Out Alive

So if Victor is a mass murderer and doesn't mind getting into a shootout, he'll need an overwhelmingly strong power to pull off killing people in public without getting immediately gunned down. Fire and other elements like electricity could work if he can turn his body into the element itself or use the element as armor. You can't shoot fire! Also could consider laser beams, magnetism, explosions, basically a good number of the X-Men have powers with massive destructive abilities. Telekinesis would stop bullets in mid-shot or use objects to block projectiles. Hell, regular old super strength could do the trick if amped up enough.

The Silent But Deadly Kind

I actually recommend a stealthier power instead of something flashier, only because it makes it way harder to catch Victor and could turn your story into an interesting mystery. Time manipulation is an obvious choice for this, but also consider chemical/air manipulation. Victor could remove all of the Oxygen around a crowd and none would be the wiser.

I'd add more here but I already feel a little dirty for coming up with ways to kill people so quickly.

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  • $\begingroup$ A good answer, or maybe a bad one, I really don't know... $\endgroup$ – user18912 Sep 16 '16 at 2:45
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Disintegration!

For murders, just disintegrate a part of a person's spinal cord.. quick, painless and bloodless

For avoiding bullets, set up a disintegration barrier and you're safe as houses

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How about something like this. Wolverine's job isn't always easy to do. A description of the power is "...radiates a series of toxins and acid - like poisons...and everything in a radius around you...basically all you do now is kill organic tissue. Vaporize it."

I'm sure you can see ways to modify this to fit your character and circumstances best.

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  • $\begingroup$ That was a very cool bit of comic! I think it fits quite well to what the question is asking. Maybe the character has a healing factor of his own to avoid being a victim of his own power - would make killing him pretty tough then. $\endgroup$ – Shaun K Sep 15 '16 at 23:25
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Teleportation would do nicely. Teleport from one victim to the next, killing each as you go, and then teleport out of there before the police can nab you. Doesn't matter if it's day or night.

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    $\begingroup$ Depending on how teleportation actually works, this could be incredibly effective. Consider teleporting from one city location to another. Visually, we see that as teleporting into an "empty" space. But in reality, that "empty" space is full of air, which has mass, that would need to be displaced somehow without harm to the teleporter. If it's established that teleporting displaces mass, then you can ramp up to some truly terrifying uses of teleportation. You could teleport inside of things (or people) and displace that mass for some truly gruesome effects. $\endgroup$ – Ellesedil Sep 15 '16 at 21:44
  • $\begingroup$ Great thought, @Ellesedil ! I was just thinking you'd teleport next to the victim and stab them or inject them with poison or something much more mundane. $\endgroup$ – BrettFromLA Sep 15 '16 at 22:18
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LASERS

In many religious creeds, the ability to control light, particularly for destructive purposes, is considered divine. Somebody that can focus beams of light as an innate ability might very well believe that they are messengers of some god, and embark on a "holy" mission.

Being able to focus or disperse light in any way imaginable is critical to this power being used in the manner you describe. A bright flash will blind unprotected police officers trying to shoot Victor. Sufficient power should enable our "hero" to bore through most vehicles and cover. Given a great deal of power, but wide dispersal, you might allow a sort of light shield, that melts bullets, etc. a few feet from Victor's body.

If you add flying, the correlation with angels becomes very strong, and reinforces the "crusading" nature of our hero.

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    $\begingroup$ Laser beams are good, but how about sharks with frickin' laser beams attached to their heads? $\endgroup$ – BrettFromLA Sep 15 '16 at 22:21
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The Meat Puppet

I feel like ol' Victor likes to be seen as the good guy, and what better power to make that a reality than Power Word Hypnosis? By walking up to someone and uttering a single Word of Power in their ear, they become your pawn, and begin to commit the most atrocious acts of mass murder, on their own former friends/family/colleagues/what-have-you, all while glorifying Vic's name or creed at the top of their lungs.

Damage control efforts will have to be directed at containing the raging psychopath (or psychopaths!) immediately. Nobody will worry about the guy just trying to get away from the scene. Victor can later claim credit for "converting" the guy, or more sneakily, denounce the ethnic/religious group to which the victim(s) belong. Should you use the second alternative, collateral damage actually begins to work in Victor's favour, and he may amass a group of dedicated followers.

I feel like I just summed up world politics. Eww.

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Suggestion

Florida Man doesn't kill people, he just suggests that other people do it. It's not his fault that lots of people think that his suggestions sound really good and tend to follow through with them. Even the police force thinks his suggestions sound pretty good, after all, if a few fewer minorities were on the streets there'd be less crime.

The people who listen to his suggestions aren't all persuaded, of course. He doesn't implant thoughts into people's heads, he just amplifies what's already there. That way, there's no smoking gun. There's no victim that breaks away and goes to get help. Without special technology or a dedicated study looking at the effects he has on his victims, nobody would even know that he's got a superpower. When asked, his victim won't have any story about suddenly developing homicidal urges out of nowhere. Rather, they've always thought that those minorities were what was holding America back. One day, they were just chatting with a guy at the amusement park. A nice guy, really, who pointed out to them, "We all know what the problem is. Why doesn't someone just go out and do something about it?" And you know what, he was right.

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Metal

The ability to control metal would be quite effective with the amount of metal there is in the world (cell phones, cars, parks, wheels, etc). This would also allow him to stop bullets if he was shot at. See Magneto from X-men for further reference of possibilities.

Other Powers

Gravity- Increase gravity to crush your targets. Increase or decrease around the superhero to stop bullets from reaching him.

Force- Force choke, lightning, push, pull, etc. See the game Forced Unleased if you want specific ideas of what you could do.

Air- Steal the air from people's lungs, cut people, or push people (off of, into, or in front of things).

Side note depending on how he manifests his powers he could have any number of super powers and no one would know who was doing it and then couldn't shoot him.

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  • $\begingroup$ Definitely considering gravity. This fits really well with the protagonist who fights him, considering that she affects her own personal gravity $\endgroup$ – One Normal Night Sep 16 '16 at 15:22
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This question made me think of all the damage that Superman could do by himself if he wanted cough Man of Steel cough, so I tried to strip his list of powers down to the ones that by themselves would make him an unstoppable murderer.

These 3 seemed like the bare minimum:

1) Invulnerability. He can go about doing whatever he wants if bullets, knives, whatever can't pierce his skin and/or do damage.

2) Super strength. If captors (police, military, other super heroes) somehow subdue him, this would allow him to break out of any prison/containment.

3) Not needing to eat or breathe. Note that this is apparently a feature of Silver Age Superman, and not recent incarnations. Either way, if he doesn't require air/food/water, then he can be kept in prison indefinitely, and he can break out at his own convenience to resume his murder spree.

Being essentially unable to die, able to withstand any attempts to stop him, and being capable of breaking out of any imprisonment, it seems that you could get away with unlimited murder until you die of old age. With powers that can be used defensively like this, he is free to murder in any way he pleases (guns, knives, bombs, strangling, drowning, you name it) and can't be stopped.

Alternatively, if you wanted to stick to just 1 ability instead of 3, you could give him something on par with Deadpool's healing factor and accomplish much the same thing, although avoiding capture/imprisonment would be harder with just healing and not super strength.

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My answer to every super power need: suggestion as per Kilgrave or better known as purple man. He can control anyone with his suggestion power. He could ask half of the people to surround him and rest to kill each other. Also as soon as police is in sight, he could ask them to go back. He might even build a suicide bomber squad.

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Temperature.

If Victor has local control of the temperature, he can freeze (or boil, for that matter) the capillaries inside the brains of his victims. It may require some concentration to do that it many places at once, though (as you want to keep it localized, to avoid a juge energy drain. I assume using powers consumes Victor's energy.)

And no one would have a clue it's him. Just a lot of aneurysms... it's very hot in Florida, this time of the year.

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