Hidden 5 yrs ago 5 yrs ago Post by Hound55
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Hound55 Create-A-Hero RPG GM, Blue Bringer of BWAHAHA!

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M A D I S O N S Q U A R E G A R D E N

Present Day | Manhattan, New York

“What did you do?!” Ted heard through the Comm-link. He was back at the tower after it had started making some curious new noises.

“I DIDN’T DO ANYTHING! What makes you think this was me!?”

“Vhat did you do!”

“Look! It-- It wasn’t me! It got an outside ping! It was sent a new command from…” Ted brought up the Command List from System diagnostics, triangulating, triangulating… “Four Freedoms Plaza, Madison and 42nd! Wait-- Four Freedoms Plaza..?”

“Well, shut it off!”

“I can’t! Just like I made this tower the master signal for the drones, they’ve locked me out and made their signal the master and locked me out for this self-destruct function!”

“Well, why didn’t you take command of that function here too?!”

“Because I didn’t know that function even existed!”

“Really? A self-destruct setting? You didn’t know a self destruct setting existed? Because that’s pretty much Super Villainy 101.”

“Ja. Ja, zat’s pretty much Super Villainy 101, Beetle.”

“Alright! Don’t gang up on me! I’m learning on the run here!”

Ted sighed, flop-sweat dripping.

“Vell, can you disarm it manually?”

“I could, but I’m just as likely to blow us all to Hell in the process. Probably more likely, if this thing has any kind of hidden tricks or booby traps. Which-- I mean, you said Super Villainy 101...”

“Get away from there, then, if you can’t do anything about it!”

The two acrobatic superheroes back-flipped away from their rejoined combat with deranged, infected civilians. Spider-Man, web-lined back up to the rafters, sweeping through to scoop up the Blue Beetle once more on the wa through. Nightcrawler teased the mob, teleporting back a few metres at a time whilst the pair swung away, before one final ebony puff of smoke saw him teleport with the pair up to the rafters.

Ted saw the dark blue metahuman land on a handrail, on the catwalk they were on, but that was where everything turned bad. An energy blast hit Nightcrawler in the back and sent him dropping onto the catwalk. Ted and Spider-Man hurried over to his side, as smoke and an acrid smell rose off of his back.

“You get one chance to walk away.” Stryfe’s voice was loud and clear, the exaggerated baritone drowning out the din of the frenzied crowd. “I suggest you take it.”




“Take him.” Ted turned and said to Spider-Man. “Pick him up, and swing him to hospital. It’d take me too long.”

“What? And leave you to the Tin Man’s angry brother?”

“With him down there’s only the two of us left who know that there’s a little girl circling the city in an experimental, all-but-invisible aircraft. Besides, I can tell by your voice. You’re a kid. It’s bad enough I let you tag along this far.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’ll figure something out. I always do.” He tried to offer a confident grin to the Spider-Man, but the closest he could get was an expression that looked strained, pained, and frankly somewhat constipated.

Spider-Man gently scooped up Nightcrawler, and swung away, through a gate on the opposite side from Stryfe.

Ted gingerly got up, and dusted off his suit.

“So what’s it going to be? Are you getting out, are you coming down here or am I blasting you up there?”

Ted stretched out his leg on the hand-rail, before swapping sides and stretching out his other leg, stalling. “Hang on, hang on... I’m coming down.”

He walked to one end of the catwalk, then turned around and walked back the other way.

“Just a minute. I’m looking for a ladder.” He kept walking across.

“Look, just… just use the web-line.”

“Oh sure! You’d like that wouldn’t you! Fall and break my neck before I can come down there and hand you your ass!”

Ted walked back to the middle. “It doesn’t look like there’s a ladder.”

“Just use the web-line!”

“No! I’ve-- look, I’ve got my own little grappling hook in here.” He said fumbling around his belt. “Aha! There! Told you. Just let me get down there and, let’s see…” He clipped the hook on the handrail, and gingerly stepped over pulling to test it would take the weight.

“Oh you’re kidding me…” Stryfe said, watching the Blue Beetle slowly winch his way down from the ridiculously high rafters.

“This is as fast as it goes! But I’m coming! Here I come! You’re gonna get yours, buddy! Just you wait! I’m--” The Beetle stopped in mid-air, twisting around on the line.

“Oh, wait! That’s the winch, it does this sometimes. It’s a safety precaution for when the line gets too twisted, give me a second I’ll twist back and-- Ah! There it is! You’ll rue the day you messed with the Blue Beetle! Your uppance is about to come, sir!”

The Beetle continued to slow winch down, before stopping three metres before the ground.

“Hup! It’s done it again. No wait, the light’s flashing. That’s not the safety mechanism, I’m out of line. Huh… Maybe I SHOULD go back up there and come down the webline…”

With a blast from his gauntlet, Stryfe severed the grapple line and Ted fell the last three metres landing flat on his back on the hardwood floor.

“Ah! God.Damn. That one hurt. Right on my coccyx. Right on the bone. Ah. Time out! Ah, Damn it...” He rolled on the court for a few seconds, before whining at the villain. “My grappling hook’s stuck up there now? Well that’s just great! How am I supposed to get that down?”

“No. More. Stalling.” Stryfe echoed.

Ted gingerly got to his feet. His mind continued to race. Here he was, a regular guy, with a bad arm and broken ribs from his fight at the Expo. What did he have left in his bag of tricks? Bring the Bug into it? That magnetic plate would sure come in handy with tin-man here. But he meant it before when he spoke to Spider-Man. He wouldn’t risk that little girl’s life. He had ‘Plan B’, but when he thought up that it was more with the little drone bugs in mind, not some monstrous guy in another suit. Even if it did work he’d have to get in too close to try and make it happen. And that was a big ‘if’.

So here he stood. A grown man, battered, broken and bruised, and armed with what was ostensibly a modified hairdryer. Right after it looked like he was actually going to get a girlfriend. He used to joke about exactly this sort of situation. The world never letting that come to pass. Sorry Tora, date night’s been put on… ice. Huh. That one liner actually works. Heh. Ha Ha...

“Bwa Ha Ha! BWA HA HA! BWA HA HA HA HA HA HA!” Ted started laughing to himself at his own joke.

“Pitiful. And thus without a flicker another meta-flame is extinguished.” Stryfe raised his gauntlet towards the blue fool.

“Human.” Beetle corrected. “And don’t take yourself so damn seriously.”

The man in the suit was taken aback, by his comments. He almost seemed to stumble backwards at Ted’s revelation. Checking he heard correctly, before quickly trying to re-gather himself.

“Wh--what?”

“I said, don’t take yourself so damn seriously. Now are we doing this, or what?” Ted quickly drew his B.B hairdryer. Stryfe re-raised his gauntlet...

...just in time for Wonder Woman to sweep in from the side and punch the metal meta-villain into the stands.

“Ohthankgodforthat… Ohsweetbabyjesusonajetski… OhhhIthoughtIwasgonnadiethere…” Ted uttered, looking up to the sky and patting his body down all over, checking for blast scorch marks.

“Hurry! Get out! I’ll take care of this… Stry--!” Wonder Woman yelled, just before a gauntlet blast sent her hurtling out an exit. With Stryfe ominously in pursuit.

Ted quickly ran up the stairs and out a different exit, not needing to be told twice.

Four Freedoms Plaza. That’s where he had to go. Fortunately, he knew the layout since he’d been there once before, a much younger man. When he first met Reed Richards.
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Hidden 5 yrs ago 5 yrs ago Post by Mao Mao
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Mao Mao Sheriff of Pure Hearts (They/Them)

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New York City, New York
Present Day

Issue #4.05
𝗪𝗢𝗡𝗗𝗘𝗥 𝗪𝗢𝗠𝗔𝗡

Placed on the intersection of Broad and Wall Street, Stryfe's hired help surrounded the second tower. There were six of them in total, each armed with automatic weapons and a clear view of the skies. Wonder Woman knew that facing them head-on was suicide. So, she came with an effective plan. While the hero was getting ready, one of the men noticed that the screen to the tower randomly started flashing. He ran towards it and tried to find out its problem. But, it kicked him out of the main program and only displayed a message:

𝚈𝚘𝚒𝚗𝚔!
𝙶𝚘𝚝 𝚢𝚘𝚞𝚛 𝚜𝚠𝚊𝚛𝚖! 𝙱𝚆𝙰 𝙷𝙰 𝙷𝙰!

𝚃𝚊𝚔𝚎 𝚘𝚞𝚝 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚘𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚛 𝚝𝚘𝚠𝚎𝚛𝚜 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚌𝚘𝚖𝚎 𝚘𝚗 𝚍𝚘𝚠𝚗!
𝚃𝚑𝚎 𝙱𝚕𝚞𝚎 𝙱𝚎𝚎𝚝𝚕𝚎, 𝚂𝚙𝚒𝚍𝚎𝚛-𝙼𝚊𝚗, 𝙽𝚒𝚐𝚑𝚝𝚌𝚛𝚊𝚠𝚕𝚎𝚛 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝙼𝚊𝚛𝚟 𝙰𝚕𝚋𝚎𝚛𝚝 𝙻𝚒𝚟𝚎 𝚏𝚛𝚘𝚖 𝙼𝚊𝚍𝚒𝚜𝚘𝚗 𝚂𝚚𝚞𝚊𝚛𝚎 𝙶𝚊𝚛𝚍𝚎𝚗!
𝚈𝙴𝚂𝚂𝚂𝚂𝚂𝚂𝚂𝚂𝚂𝚂𝚂𝚂𝚂𝚂!

"Oh shit, we have been hacked!" The guy shouted for the others to hear while he was trying to regain control. After a moment of typing and clicking, he was able to remove the message and resume operations. He turned towards one of the masked men and asked, "Should we call it in?"

"No, headquarters would have noticed at the same time you did. Those freaks will be dealt with soon enough."

Another man walked over towards the two of them and asked about what the message said. The first dude responded, "The mutants are trying to gather up as much manpower at the Madison. It will be useless anyway because-"

Then suddenly, the screen changed to an internal timer and started counting down. Naturally, the guards were beginning to question the purpose behind the timer. Things got serious when one of the dudes realized that it was a bomb. There was a moment of silence before one of them tried to dismiss the claim. A young man took off his mask, concerned with the idea that he was going to die. "H-he can't be crazy enough to kill himself and us... right?"

"Weren't you there for one of his speeches?"

Another moment of pure quietness passed before the man dropped his mask and weapon to the street. He looked around to get an idea of where he was and declared, "Fuck getting paid. I want to live another day."

The others looked at each other and did the same thing, running away from the site. Wonder Woman was quite surprised that those thugs were smart enough to leave than stay. She approached the tower and processed to punch it repeatedly. It took at least thirty seconds before it broke into pieces. Of course, the infected citizens fell to the ground while the robotic bugs started charging at her. Yet, she noticed that another group of heroes was planning on meeting at the Square Garden. Stryfe wasn't going to avoid this opportunity to remove part of the threat.

Without hesitation, Wonder Woman took off and started flying towards The Garden. It only took her about forty seconds to enter inside, but she noticed that Stryfe was inside a suit. He was saying something, but she didn't care and rushed towards him. Before anyone could react, Wonder Woman delivered a single punch that sent him flying towards the stands. There were a lot of broken seats, but it gave her enough time to analyze the situation. She noticed the hero was standing, but there were powerless to defeat Stryfe.

Wonder Woman turned towards the heroes and pointed at one of the injured. "Hurry! Get out! I'll take care of this... Stry-!"

Before she could finish her sentence, Stryfe reappeared and fired a blast from his gauntlet that hit her. Wonder Woman didn't have enough time to recover since he grabbed her head with one hand and punched her chest with the other. He threw her up in the air and sent her flying outside. Once outside, he caught up to Wonder Woman and punched hard enough towards the Empire State Building. She didn't have enough time to regain control and crashed into the famous skyscraper. Thankfully, there wasn't anyone inside at the time. Wonder Woman struggled to get up and saw Stryfe carefully landing nearby.

"Wonder Woman, I was wondering how long until you appeared." Stryfe looked down at the hero with pure disgust. "You're drawn to conflict, I've studied your history. You can't resist a fight."

"Tell me how to stop this!" Wonder Woman shouted at him.

"No, I don't think I will," Stryfe replied. "You hold no power over me, Wonder Woman. Your kind has no authority in this world, and I'm here to show you that. To show you just how little you matter to the people you save every day. When I'm finished, the world will learn to fear you," Stryfe looked towards Wonder Woman, the face beneath the large helmet weary but smug. "And they will destroy that which they fear."

Wonder Woman stood up and got into her fighting stance. "Bring it."

And with that, the fight began between the hero and villain inside the skyscraper. Wonder Woman delivered the first punch before being thrown outside, leaving behind a decent size hole in the process. Stryfe fired another blast from his gauntlet, but she dodged it and punched him down a few floors. He responded with an uppercut that sent her flying up a couple of levels also. It lasted for four minutes with both sides tired and exhausted, but Stryfe had the advantage as the building started losing balance.

The fighting resulted in substantial damage to the Empire State Building, leaving behind massive holes on the higher levels. Now, it was about to collapse. Wonder Woman immediately tried to stop it from happening, but Stryfe grabbed and dragged her outside. He brought her high enough to witness the iconic skyscraper collapsing thanks to her god-like strength.

"Look up your works and despair, Wonder Woman. Do you see those buildings down there?"

Wonder Woman tried to free herself, but Stryfe took the struggling as an answer.

"Hundreds of people sought refuge within those walls when the attack began. They thought that they were safe until you came along. Now, all of them will die by your carelessness."

The upper half of the Empire State Building began breaking apart and eventually falling downward. Both of them saw some of the debris hitting the other buildings before smoke covered the entire area. Wonder Woman cried out and tried to free herself again. Stryfe turned towards the skyscraper, and the realization was hitting him. Even if the heroes managed to destroy every tower, it was already too late. The destruction of the Empire State Building was worse than his original backup plan. He had won.

Stryfe pointed at the partially collapse Empire State Building and yelled at Wonder Woman, "This is what happens when people like you aren't kept in line! Your kind brings nothing but death and destruction!"

"I didn't kill them! You did!" Wonder Woman elbowed him and managed to free herself.

Stryfe laughed before replying.

"You could have taken this fight out of the city, you could have worked with the other heroes and subdued me where I stood. Instead, you allowed your pride to get the better of you, you had to face me one on one. And now look what you've done. This destruction is your fault." Stryfe paused, pushing himself up to his feet.

"After today, there will be no doubt left in the minds of the masses. Our world's first superhero is nothing but a mass-murderer left unchecked for far too long!"

Before he could finish, Wonder Woman punched his helmet so hard that it left behind an impression and sent him flying. She reached for his lasso and flew towards him at lighting speed before catching him. He tried to prevent her from taking off his helmet, but Wonder Woman grabbed his hand and crushed it. She processed to tie the lasso around his neck and started pulling on it as it glowed. Stryfe tried to get it off of him, but it was impossible.

"Where is your base of operation?" Wonder Woman asked emotionless.

"I-I will not tell you!" Stryfe resisted the lasso's heat.

"Where. Is. It." Wonder Woman angrily demanded while grabbing the right side of his face and began squeezing. She planned on ripping it off if he refused to compel. Thankfully, that was enough reason for him to answer truthfully.

"Four Freedoms Plaza!" Stryfe cried out the answer and began to feel relieved. But, he then noticed how Wonder Woman was looking for the building before getting ready to strike. That was when he knew that he was going to die. There wasn't any need to challenge or dare her. She was already angry enough to kill him without having a second thought. Wonder Woman wasn't in the mood to hear his pleas for mercy or give his reason for killing thousands. She stared at him, and coldly replied:

"Thank you."

Wonder Woman sent Stryfe falling towards the plaza with her powerful punch. She didn't know how to react about being tricked again. Should she cry loud enough for the heavens to hear? Should she take all of angry out on Stryfe and pummel him to death? Or should she just run away and hide from the world again? The smoke was still covering the entire area, but she knew that finding survivors was low. But she could avenge them. Wonder Woman already made her decision and raced down towards the plaza to confront Stryfe for the last time.


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Hidden 5 yrs ago 5 yrs ago Post by Hillan
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Hillan I'm a writer - Lying's what we do.

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Location: Central City
Post #1.11: Crisis 1.01 - Nothing Good.

Interaction(s): The People Of Star City
Previously: Born To Run


Thawne was standing in his makeshift lab, what had once been Eddie's Kitchen was now Eobard's... Well... Kitchen. Had he been a meth-cook, at least. It looked perhaps a little more jank than the supergenius would have liked, but he was making do. People would start wondering if he was spending millions of dollars on lab equipment - and he had no way of stealing the equipment, either, so his only choice was to build his own. In the 21st century, people wouldn't exactly take lightly to the guy who built a nuclear fusion reactor in his living room but in the 30th?

Yeah, no. Still illegal. Not that laws had ever stopped Thawne. He wasn't building a bomb, not blowing up the sun or propelling a drone into the core of the planet to blow it up if the people of Earth didn't comply with his wishes. That was all childish pursuits that if he had ever tried them, he had now realized the futility of them. His goals were simple, pragmatic. He needed an energy source that could run his experiments. Build the materials that he would need.

As the timer let out a loud 'PLING!' he knew his creation was done. A thing so genius nobody in the next 10 thousand years would ever manage it. He opened the reinforced glass that was blocking any of the particles from the oven from getting out into the air - as if they did during the heating process, thousands would die and then next 20 blocks would be turned into a no-go zone for the next century. But now, once the heating was done, it was perfectly harmless to open. His round protecting glasses reflected the shimmer from inside.

He held his creation in his one hand, with a pair of tongs.

"It's a quarter million calories packed into a protein bar. It's the greatest dietary marvel in the entire universe, I've refined the recipe a million times. But I still cannot figure out why it only tastes of cinnamon, and perhaps that is one of my few failures as a scientist." The Genius spoke to Gideon, whom he was projecting from his wrist-mounted computer screen that he had placed on the table behind him, he was making some small upgrades to the gadget. He placed the protein bars, six in total in small wrappers that he then placed into a compartment of his suit where he would be able to get to them even in a battle situation. He was never having another incident like that with the rogues where his body would give out from lack of calories.

That had already gotten messy enough. The cops had blamed the murder of Digger Harkins on his partner, Mirror Master who was still M.I.A. The Flash was credited with stopping the vehicle and retrieving the stolen goods. All of which was without any tampering from Thawne. Honestly, if killing people had always been this easy, Thawne wouldn't be in the predicament he was now. The rubber gloves and white lab coat would be removed after he turned off the reactor, the particles inside stopped moving as the lights went out.

"It's quite the spectacle, yes, Professor Thawne." The A.I chirped in, sounding as preoccupied as a computer with no emotions could. She was literally programmed to never be preoccupied, yet one could assume that not even Gideon was without her paradoxes. She was after all programmed by Barry Allen, and one would assume that's just shoddy craftsmanship.

"Something on your mind, Gideon?" Thawne asked, revealing a yellow T-shirt and black jeans from underneath the coat that he folded extremely neatly in the blink of an eye.

"My subroutines are scanning an event taking place in Star City and New York, Professor Eobard. It's not a timeline constant. It's... Fluctuating. And I do not get any clear readings on it. It's an event that's both solid in time and not."

"Time travel?" Thawne asked, chewing half the protein bar and feeling his hunger subside almost immediately.

"Likelihood of Time travel is less than 1%. It's more likely that this event is caused by sustained damage to the timeline." Gideon responded, showing the clips of the broadcast that had gone out. The towers and view of the attack taking place. The civilian hordes attacking each other and Thawne looked puzzled for a minute.

"You're saying all of this is because of me?" He almost had a hint of shock in his voice.

"It is at least 80% likely that this is related to your entrance into this timeline, yes, Professor." Gideon proclaimed and Thawne shook his head.
"That leaves only one course of action. I guess the Flash is going to have to make his debut to the rest of the world. Which location is the highest priority? Star or New York?"

"New York is under control. Star has a Sorcerers Apprentice and the Greenest Arrow of all time." Gideon added, showing files corresponding to the points she was making on the wall. Thawne's eyes blurring, surging with energy as he took in all of the information in but a moment. Star was the first target.

A hurricane of yellow lightning surged in the apartment as Thawne rebuilt his suit, placing Gideon's wrist-mounted computer and the compartment for the energy bars into the suit, as well as a slight tune-up to the lenses he wore in the mask, they were not accustomed to the far higher CO2 levels in this time, something that was dirtying his lenses when running. Of course, the CO2 had other ramifications, but none that were too concerning to Thawne.

The Crimson Comet sped off to city of the Emerald Archer.


Location: Star City


One word came to mind as the speedster arrived in Star City, perhaps five minutes away from his kitchen. He surveyed the scene and that one word came back to him. Chaos. People were attacking each other on sight. His lenses immediately could detect the radio waves emitting from each person who was rampaging, it wasn't their fault. It was all from the mind control tech that was controlling them. Four infected saw him as he stood still, and charged at him immediately, perhaps they just didn't like the red color. And who could blame them?

They leaped like savage animals, scratching and clawing, Thawne quickly dismantling all of them. Two shattered collarbones on one guy, he shattered the ribs of the girl, dislocated the shoulders and hips of the third. The fourth tried to claw Thawne, and an uppercut from the speedster left him with a fat enough concussion that he would probably stutter for the rest of his life.

But they would live.

Those terrible art installations? Less likely to survive the evening.
Thawne identified the first one, the one in Avalon Park and dashed towards it, blurring past any possible opposition. With his speed he quickly tore up the southern wall of the obelisk, revealing it's components. A beam of light emitted from the suit as he analyzed the parts of the obelisk, identifying it's structural weak points.

Once he had identified it, he realized that they were rigged to blow - all 4 of them, at the same time, and they would take the city with them, or at least most of it. Thawne was never a stranger to genocide. But this was senseless - not to mention that he was forced to prevent it after all. He disarmed the explosives in this tower, as well as the rest of the electronics, weakening the signal that was emitted to the drones, at least in theory.

A flash of lightning headed down the tower as the two back bearing beams were torn in half, the obelisk began falling as The Flash got a thought.

He dashed back up the tower, sprinting in a circle in the front of the Obelisk, etching something into the collapsing tower. As he ran down the tower, the freshly burned insignia, just like the one he wore on his chest would be seen on every camera broadcasting the event. From now on and for all of history, people would know that The Flash had been here.

Off to the next Obelisk, and the news was out to the infected as now what had before was a handful of ghouls, was now hundreds. Perhaps a thousand. Followed by a swarm of drones who were after him. They didn't take kindly to The Flash taking down one of their hives. Not appreciated at all.

He would plow through the masses as quickly as he could, trying to minimize the damage dealt while taking out people - they were after all still just people. Once this crisis was solved, they would all go back to normal lives and while Thawne had no love for the people of his world, he realized it wouldn't exactly be suitable to turn everyone wheelchair-bound or into a vegetable. Even if it might be fun.

He was cornered, hundred infected in front of him and perhaps a thousand drones hovering around him, waiting to pounce.

The drones charged, Thawne danced in between the people, using them as cover and when he could, he aimed precise strikes at the drones, disintegrating them before they would get too close. He would turn the feral people into human shields for the bots to attach themselves too, And when the people were down - more to come, for sure. The bots would be dwindling in numbers.

A few minutes later, a sea of knocked out bodies would be seen, as well as a scarlet-clad hero panting.
"Gideon. Measure my vitals."

"Your heart-rate is 56,000 beats per minute. You're close to cardiac arrest. If you do not catch your breath, you will collapse."

"Heart-Attack at 56 thousand? I've gotten weak in my old age." Thawne said with a smirk as his eyes flashed with yellow lightning - not noticing the still functioning remnants of one of the bugs that crawled up his neck, planting itself firmly in the base of his head as it infected him with its programming - the yellow flash in his eyes turned red as his proud smile turned sinister. The red lightning spread across his body and his smirk turned into a sadistic grin, his posture changing to something far more fiendish.

Nothing good could come of this.

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Hidden 5 yrs ago 5 yrs ago Post by IceHeart
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IceHeart

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Location: New York City, United States - Present
Issue #1.09: Of course there's a Bomb / Crisis Event



Soon the area was completely clear of people allowing Kara to walk unimpeded toward the Obelisk. "Well that was easy, but I have a feeling it won't be quite that easy."

As if on cue, a cloud of bots swarmed out of the tower to rush at Supergirl. "Yep, I just knew it." Kara crossed her arms in front of her face and braced for impact, but then the cloud of bots simply changed direction and started to fly away. The new orders had come in to converge on Madison Square and now there was nothing left to defend the Obelisk.

"Ummm well that was anti-climatic, not gonna complain about missing a bug shower though." Kara looked at the Obelisk suspiciously. "Just smashing it up might be a bad idea; I bet there is some booby trap or something. The bad guys love their traps after all according to all the comic books and TV shows I've seen as a kid."

Kara concentrated all her attention on the Obelisk for anything suspicious. The first thing she noticed was a low, hum, not something a normal person would be able to hear, that had started coming from the device. Kara found a panel on the Obelisk and yanked it open with ease but what stared back was a countdown number which could only mean one thing.

"This puppy is going to blow sky high in twenty-eight minutes! There is always going to be a bomb in these situations isn’t there.” Kara noticed another small monitor had the Blue Beetle’s message on it, explaining what just happened.

“That explains the bugs, but then that means all the other towers are unprotected, which means there is no point in keeping them around…so all of them are going to blow up then except Madison Square. Guess this is a job for Supergirl…”

Kara glared at the countdown and tried to think of the best way to disarm the bomb. Cutting off the power supply would be the safest way but she wasn’t exactly sure where that was and she was on a time table. Trying to disarm it manually could make it blow up prematurely and she wasn’t sure how. Well over thinking it was not going to make those timers any slower.

“When in doubt, slam it out! Probably not how the saying is suppose to go but if I’m going to make it in time sometimes the brute force way is the only way!” Supergirl positioned herself over the Obelisk, clasped her hands together over her head to make a battering ram, and rocketed herself straight down on the tower. The speed and force of the blow were designed to be quick enough that if there was something to trigger the explosion it wouldn’t have time to go off.

There was a lot of crunching but thankfully no explosions and as quick as she smashed through, Kara was out again.

“Good, thankfully I can destroy them before they explode, now how many are left.” Kara thought about asking Kelex but she doubted he could pinpoint them for her in time, thankfully there was a certain sound she had just stopped hearing, a sort of humming sound that came from the Obelisk. Trying to remember the exact sound, she started searching throughout the city for it.

So many sounds, the clinking of a dime hitting the sidewalk, a dog barking as it ran away from danger, the various hums from electrical wires, the fluttering of a bird’s wings, so many sounds. Kara’s eyebrows scrunched together in concentration as she tried to match the frequency she had heard from the Obelisk. It was hard to sift through all the excess but the lives of potentially thousands or even tens of thousands depending on her.

This was a power that was still hard to really use effectively, super hearing. A mind naturally blocked out most noises from being noticed while concentrating on her ears forced her mind to acknowledge the existence of all those sounds. The first moments were always deafening and all the things she heard but knew she couldn’t do anything about were quite taxing mentally. Then the range got narrower as she focused on what she wanted to hear and the cacophony of sounds started to settle down.

A good minute passed, than two, Supergirl started to sweat and she unconsciously wiped her forehead. “Come on, it’s just the proverbial needle in a haystack, shouldn’t be that hard, if I had a magnet.” Of course all she had was her own recollection of the sound she had noticed and no other tool to help her. She starting concentrating in different directions to pinpoint the remaining towers like a radar.

“Found it!” Kara shouted as she locked on that particular sound. “Thank goodness, I better hustle though, not sure how much longer I have!” Kara homed in on the sound, careful not to fly through any buildings on the way. Her eyes darted all around to locate the shape that should not be present in a city landscape.

Finally she found it, right by the John F. Kennedy International Airport. “You’d think people would have been suspect when they first saw it, but guess they’re too used terrible modern artwork.” Kara joked before smashing the tower to smithereens while making sure no harm came to the airport.

Just in case, Kara quickly started searching for other towers, another one started to tickle her ear. “Ugh, I knew there would be more of them. Only a few minutes left, got to hurry!” The city was still in an uproar and the bomb timers were ticking down to a finale the city really didn't want, the day wasn’t saved quite yet.
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Hidden 5 yrs ago 5 yrs ago Post by Natty
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Natty

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Staring down the Metahuman Supremacy Front with a gaze that would’ve rivaled Medusa herself, Illyana felt her heart crumble as she spotted the large group gathered towards the side of the room away from the costumed villains before her. Her eyes darted around the faces of the hostages, taking in each and every one of them. Her eyes fixated on that of a young boy. He must’ve only been around five or six. His tear-stained face was frozen in a state of disbelief from her sudden appearance, the gag in his mouth probably the only thing keeping him from screaming in both excitement and terror. The gunmen gathered around them had raised their rifles towards her. That was something at least. At least the prisoners now had a sliver of hope that they wouldn’t be shot.

The fear they were emoting pained her, yet she kept held her glare. She had to remain strong.

How could she be so stupid though?

Her mind raced.

How was she meant to take down both the mutant terrorists and their armed goons?

She moved her gaze to the terrorists. There were three of them here. The obviously named Forearm, the guy she’d already knocked down who she could only assume was Kamikaze, and the red vixen herself Burnout; her eyes tearing into Illyana’s own with an intent to kill. The information the guard had reluctantly told her at the mercy of the Flames of the Faltine seemed to have rung true, minus the inclusion of the innocents here. Now it was time for the real challenge.

As if by some miracle, Burnout of all people gave her a fighting chance.

“Hold your fire boys,” She warned, flashing her eyes towards the goons. “She’s mine.”
.
Illyana had barely a second to prepare herself before the Metahuman Supremacy Front were upon her. The largest of their group heaved his body towards her, leaping into the air with a mighty bound, all four of his muscular arms above his head in preparation for his strike. Yet despite the imminent threat of his strength breaking her in half, Magik held strong. Channeling the shield spell she’d performed earlier around the tip of her staff, she swung it forwards violently. The force sent Forearms flying as if a baseball being hit by a bat. As she watched the brute crash into a series of bookcases, a blur of red caught her attention in the corner of her eye.

As she turned towards the oncoming speedster, she found herself too late to dodge the sharp edge of the crimson blade scraping across his side. Pain seared through her body as she rolled backward, narrowly avoiding two more lunges that would’ve definitely found their target if she hadn’t moved.

“You some kind of Witch, Blondie?” Burnout jeered, lunging her gauntlet’s claws towards Magik’s throat.

The metal clanged loudly against the Soul Staff.

Illyana stayed silent.

She pivoted backward raising it once more to defend herself from the numerous slashes that followed. Burnout moved quickly, yet as Magik grew to learn, she was clumsy. Unsure of her powers. She may have known how to fight, but not with this newfound speed. All she had to do was wait for her to slip up. Which was easier said than done when combatting someone with super speed.

She moved backward, only to find herself attacked from a new angle as Burnout rushed around to her side in a flash. Illyana groaned as she went to parry, the continuous smiling on Burnout’s face doing nothing but angering her more. But as she moved, her foot slipped against the rubble beneath her feet. Tumbling backward, Illyana found herself falling from the balcony down onto the shelves below.

Free Falling for half a second, she snapped to attention, focussing into her staff which lifted her back upwards into the center of the room with a whoosh of air. Illyana watched as the joy dropped from Burnout’s face, forming a scowl. She wasn’t out of the woods yet, however.

A sharp hiss filled the air, as Kamikaze found his footing below. His body radiated with fiery energy as he took to the air, rocketing towards the sorceress like a torpedo.

He was moving with so much momentum that he couldn’t even stop at the sight of a stepping disc appearing in front of his target. Hitting the mutant energy, he vanished, only to materialize a second later. He’d only been moved a few feet, but it made all the difference. Appearing directly behind the blonde mutant, he shot up towards the balcony, finding a new target; Forearm, who’d been preparing to engage their attacker himself. The explosion rocked them both, shooting fireworks of red energy around the room as they were flung into unconsciousness.

“Oh, you absolute bitch.”

Illyana nearly began to gloat before the shout from Burnout took her attention away. The speedster had leaped through the air, and in a manner of seconds, she was on her. The blade sank into her side, clawing through both her clothes and then her skin. Illyana yelped loudly as she dropped to the floor. The metal of the blade had reached her ribs. She could do nothing more than cough and splutter, blood spilling from her wound and mouth.

How could she had been so stupid?

Her vision faded for a second. When it regained, the blade was gone, and the woman in red paced above her. Her body ached. Her side feeling as if she’d been torn apart. Burnout let out a laugh. Moving closer, she leaned down towards the broken witch. Using the bloody tip of her blade, she scraped it along Illyana’s chin, bringing it up to face her. Her ruby lipstick mirrored the blood that poured from her wounds. Her eyes were alive with the madness of a psychopath.

“Aw, so you really thought you could just burst in here and save the day?” Burnout jeered, a false sense of childlike innocence in her voice.

Illyana tried to tear her face away, her eyes falling on the boy from before. He was trembling. All hope was gone. He held to his mother’s hand as if his life depended on.

Burnout caught her gaze. Her voice shifted as she continued, growing colder.

“Get real, blondie. Like you ever had a chance.” She rose to her feet and turned towards the guards. Raising her arm, she pointed to the child’s mother, before calling out to the nearest guard. “Randall, now.”

The scream that escaped Illyana did nothing to muffle the ring of gunfire that echoed around the room.

Her voice slowly faded, breaking down into a series of broken sobs and croaks. Her eyes fell to the wood of the floor, broken. She didn’t care for the pain that flooded her body. It was already over.

“Do you want to know the best part?” Despite being nothing more than a whisper, Burnout’s voice cut through Illyana’s cries, silencing her. The villain was leaning over her once more, speaking quietly into her ear. “The whole world is going to blame those dirty mutants for this. And we’re going to get away scot-free.”

Her laughter radiated. It made Illyana furious.

Back in Limbo, Belasco cared not for the magics of mankind. He used his own instead. A home-brew blend of black magic; filled with hate. Filled with all manners of hate and anger. Filled with pain. He channels the edge of eternity. Perverting it. Giving it permission to spread like a virus.

That hate. That energy of pain. That was the force that erupted from Magik’s cold body as she lay there on the ground. It erupted in a fury of blackened smoke, with the spirits of those that had perished in the carnage today radiating through it. The force lifted her to her feet, returning the blood and guts that had spilled out back to its rightful place as her wound sealed.

As the darkness cleared, Magik found all weapons in the room pointed at her. The guards moved slowly, their eyes wide and scared. Burnout was no exception. The smile was gone now. Instead, she gasped in disbelief.

Magik looked down at her Soul Staff. The staff was a tangible extension of her soul. Its form was what came most naturally to her. Back when she had first called it into being, all she needed was a tool. A way of focussing her abilities. But not anymore.

Now she needed a weapon.

The sword that formed in her hand was black and elegant just like its former counterpart. A blade of energy ran like fire from the hilt, glowing a deep blue as it radiated with power.

Ignoring the shouts and threats from the guards she took a step forward.

You had a chance. Now it’s time for you to feel your souls bleed.
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Hidden 5 yrs ago 4 yrs ago Post by Hound55
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Hound55 Create-A-Hero RPG GM, Blue Bringer of BWAHAHA!

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Run…

“Run, Ted! Run! You’re gonna miss the bus!” Carter yelled from the school bus!

Ted’s legs pumped like pistons, he slapped on the door. The driver sighed and hit the brakes, pausing to make a point before he opened the doors.

“Thanks, Mister Ditko. Sorry, I’ll be early next time!” Kord said, climbing the steps with big strides.

The driver gave a tilt of his head, gesturing to the seats.

Ted waded through the aisle past rows of younger children in seats before slumping down into one at the back of the bus from the g-forces caused by Ditko’s lead-foot.

“Man, I thought we were both gonna miss out there! You know you’re my only ticket in, dude!”

Ted had aced a privately set science test competition called 'The Children of Tomorrow' provided to all schools along the Eastern seaboard. The top 25 students would be permitted to bring a friend for an all expenses paid trip to the Baxter Building at Four Freedoms Plaza in New York City.

When the Principal discovered that Ted had won and intended to take Carter Johns, “All-expenses paid” became a “hitching a school-bus already on a set excursion to the Amtrak station, train ride there, train-ride back, fully chaperoned at all times, I’ve got my EYE on you two, don’t you DARE make us look bad” trip.

# “In New Yoooooork! Con-crete jungle where dreams are made of, There’s nothin you can’t dooo!” #


“Stop that. You’re setting a bad example for the fifth graders.” Scolded their supervising teacher.

Ted turned to Carter and whispered. “In school bus. Me-tal death trap where dreams are a no show… where singing’s a no-no…”

The pair broke out with laughter.




The Blue Beetle sprinted up 7th avenue. Past West 36th… 37th… He turned over his right shoulder and saw Wonder Woman and the metal-clad menace fighting far above the city. Ferocious marauding citizens infected by drones were in pursuit, and even if they hadn't been he had no time to stand around and watch. Spotting another pack ahead of him, he started to run to the left side of the street and then made a hard cut, veering back to the right. He slid over a parked car and turned down West 38th never breaking stride, with this new pack merging with those already giving chase.

His legs burned, his cheeks puffed as he turned a deep scarlet. He was nearly halfway there, but he certainly was not out of the woods yet.




The pair stood in the lobby meeting one of the benefactors who had paid for their trip. The chaperoning teachers had long since been ushered away. They would be notified at the conclusion of the day’s activities, so they could once again return children home.

Reed Richards.

He looked maybe in his late 30s. Slender. Spoke crisply. There was never any hesitation prior to using large or awkward words. Which suggested to Ted both a lack of pretension and condescension, although many would suggest the presence of those words was evidence enough of the former. Ted wasn’t sure what to make of the man, he’d certainly never met anyone like him.

A large tank of a man who was built like an NFL linebacker said something in his ear. Richards smiled and clapped him on the shoulder.

“Welcome, Children of Tomorrow! I’m just being notified that necessary preparations are complete and they are now ready for us upstairs. If you’ll line up by the express elevators, we’ll all proceed to the laboratories in four groups.”




Ted looked over his right - aghast with what he was seeing - but never slowed for a second.

Wonder Woman and Stryfe had plowed into the Empire State Building with a force strong enough that the foundation girders themselves had begun to rend themselves asunder. There was a monstrous echoed creak of steel and cracking concrete, as if a colossal metal beast had yawned. The Blue Beetle urged his legs onwards, his chest ached.

The sun was eclipsed as he crossed Broadway. For a second Ted thought the building had bent back on itself and might have defied physics by collapsing on him, but then he realized the sun had disappeared for another horrifying reason.

The sky just behind him had turned black from the swarm.

Ted screamed.

He fell to the street.

He slammed the button on his glove.

The darkness engulfed him. Swallowing him whole.




Ted and Carter stepped out of the express elevator into the bright light of the laboratory. Ted stood agape. Carter looked nonplussed.

“Maaan, I’m getting the sense that we skipped out of school for a school of a different kind.” Ted’s friend whined.

“Whoa, is this…?”

“Gamma converter, for the internal super-thermal conductive high-fission engines. There’s four, surrounding a vacuum-diffusion cooling core.”

“You’re going to space? What about the redundancies?”

Reed was slightly taken aback. “Redundancies?”

“Well, yeah. This will be all well and good for space travel. But what if it overheats prior to breaking orbit. Surely you have redundancies? I mean if you try and use that cooling system prior to escaping the atmosphere-- sure, maybe you get up to high altitude where the air is thin, but you’re still going to be sucking in oxygen. Oxygen and nuclear fission… I mean what nutcases are going to be crazy enough to be flying this thing—?”

The large man walked past again, hearing little Ted get worked up. He looked to calm him.

“Hey, Hey! I’m going to be one of those nutcases. It’s OK, kid. Reed here thinks of everything.”

“Oh YOU’RE going to be flying that thing?”

“Hey, Ted… Calm down.” Carter pulled on his friend’s arm.

“Well, yeah. Me and the Doc’s wife, her kid brother and his ball 'n chain to be…”

Ted pulled his sleeve free, and shoved a finger in the large man’s face.

“Well, hopefully one of you makes it back to tell the world what it’s like to get up to 2,150 Kelvin… because if those engines overheat before you breach the upper atmosphere, what you’ve got here is an expensive Three Mile Island in a can!”

A college aged kid walked over, seeing the commotion. “Hey kids, who likes robots? You want to see the robot we lent out to NBC when they made H.E.R.B.I.E’s Kids Hour?”

Ted Kord and Carter Johns were diverted away, much to the former’s chagrin. Reed looked at the engine component and rubbed his chin, deep in thought.




Ted very gingerly got to his feet after convulsing on the bitumen for a few seconds. The whole swarm had rushed past. ‘Dead’ drone bugs fell to his feet as he swept them off his Blue Beetle suit. He hurt like hell and still felt twitchy.

“Note to self: I have to put more insulation in this suit if I’m ever going to run a current that strong through the metal-mesh ever again...”

He cracked his neck and back and started jogging onwards until he felt limber enough to return to his full sprint, quickly turning up 6th Avenue. He took the opportunity to glance back over his left shoulder to check on the progress of Wonder Woman’s fight with Stryfe. He could no longer hear the creaking groan of steel and glass.

They were gone.

Wonder Woman.

Stryfe.

The top of the Empire State Building.

“Oh… Oh no.” As he began to realize what had happened. What WAS happening.

He’d rushed past the corner of West 39th, and broke into full sprint. He knew he didn’t have long. He heard the terrifying crash which confirmed his worst fears. He saw the dust rise. He saw the dust race towards him down 6th.

The distance between the Blue Beetle and the 40th Street junction shrank.

The distance between the dust cloud and the blue hero shrank even faster.

He jumped and slid across the front of a parked car as he looked to cut the corner for the sanctuary of 40th Street. He felt the car lift from the rushing air beneath him. He pushed off and dived, rolling behind the protection of a building as the dust cloud billowed past, rattling store fronts and triggering car alarms as it enveloped everything in a brown haze.

He panted, sucked up air as fast as he could, looking across the street at Bryant Park.

He got back to his feet and lumbered on, cutting through the park.




Ted and Carter were sat at a desk in the laboratory. Ted looked around. All the twenty-five winning students and their friends were seated in pairs in a five by five setup. Carter wasn’t wrong. Looked like a classroom of a different name. With Reed supplanting himself at the head of the class in a teaching role, speaking to them all.

“Ted, this-- this is not really for me, dude…”

“Shhh… At least let’s hear them out.”

A fresh-faced blonde woman walked around the tables, distributing equipment. She looked young, perhaps a post-grad college age, but couldn’t be much older. She piqued Carter’s interest briefly when they interacted, but he quickly returned to distraction once she had gone.

“Teeeeeeeed…” He whined and put his head on the table.

“Thank you, Susan.” Richards said from the front of the class once she was done.

“Today, my Children of Tomorrow, we’ll be experimenting with some applied chemistry to actually solve some problems that are often relevant in--” Ted tuned him out.

“You’re right. Class by another name. What do you want to do?”

“Wanna get tossed out? We might even have time for gaming by the time we get home.”

“Catalyzed decomposition of Hydrogen peroxide?” Asked Ted.

“Is that--?”

“Yup.” Ted smiled.

“That thing you just said, then.” Carter pointed, with a smile crossing his face.

“We just need a place to sit and watch.” Ted said.

“I’ll get on that. You get on the science.”

The two friends winked and set to work at their own tasks.




The Blue Beetle ran onwards, he was only a few blocks away from Four Freedoms Plaza now. He’d been there years earlier. When it was owned by Reed Richards and his wife Susan Storm. Before the Storm/Richards Scientific Society took over the estate in their stead.

Before the accident which saw them never return.

Ted was intimately familiar with the layout of the building. Reed Richards had planned on significantly upgrading the in-house security measures, but Ben Grimm had been busier with his other training roles in preparation for the exploratory mission, just as Reed himself was kept too busy with the logistical requirements and research required for such a mission.

As it was, they had indeed taken their experimental new craft of Reed Richards' own design. It combined super-thermal conductive nuclear fission engines and a design-based vacuum diffusion-cooled core. In order to maintain optimal temperature, the ship could vent using the vacuum of space itself to rapidly cool the core intermittently. It was a revolutionary new idea, but Ted’s prediction had been eerily close to the mark.

As the ship neared a cloud of rich cosmic radiation, the automated regulatory cooling function activated. Pockets of oxygenated nitrous had been captured within the cloud and were practically injected into the core by diffusion.

It was at this point the remaining life expectancies of everyone aboard the craft dropped to a period that could best be measured in seconds. Thinking quickly, Reed Richards jettisoned their holdings - a Negative Aperture the craft had been carrying for safe off-world experimentation - in the hope that the craft could get clear. The idea being that once beyond the cloud they could again cool the core through diffusion in open space, and safely re-gather their instrumentation once the danger had passed.

However they were too late. Scientists believing the oxygen sent the core’s temperature spiking to meltdown, as the diffusion cooling system also drew in cosmic radiation. What effect the cosmic radiation would have had interacting with the gamma converter, or if there was even time for the entire situation even came to that are questions that few have even acknowledged beyond the broadest speculation. Containment was certainly breached, and the five explorers would likely have either perished from the rapid rising heat, or some flammable internal materials in the heavily oxygenated environment seeing the structural integrity of the craft itself compromised with de-pressurization and exposure to the extreme cold from the vacuum of space becoming another possible cause of death.

Gruesomely ironic, given the means of their ship's propulsion.

Potentially meaning the five involved may experience drastic rising heat for a fraction of a second before suddenly finding themselves unprotected in open space in extreme cold, floating in the cloud of curious cosmic radiation that brought about their demise.

At least those remain the best working theories…

It was considered the worst space related disaster since the Space Shuttle Challenger Mission - with many believing they were already tempting fate by giving the ship that name after the initial mission of Challengers which had seen such questionable luck - Barely managing to defy death themselves, back in their 1957 mission. It also did a lot to end the magic of manned space travel of that era. With drones, robots, rovers and robots doing the bulk of the work in the funded missions in the years beyond.

But Ted had hoped to change that.

He staggered out of the greenery onto West 42nd Street near the New York Public Library, and kept running. Only a few blocks to go.




Ted had snuck his materials over to his station, and Carter had found the perfect place for the pair to watch it all unfold.

Ted poured out hydrogen peroxide with oil and detergent, he then mixed some rich green dye to potassium iodide and kept them separate. He took a string of caps that Carter Johns had brought from home tucked away in his boot and carefully arranged his selection of apparatus.

He elevated the test-tube containing more than enough potassium iodide using a ring-stand, over the large volumetric flask containing the hydrogen peroxide solution.

He repeated this several times until he had a row of several tall containers taking up space all over his desk.

Finally, he took a long length of string and cut it into several sections. Placing one end of each piece of string in the test tube and dangling the other ends in the opening of each the volumetric flasks. He set his fuse for the caps Carter had brought and the pair walked quickly away from the table, making sure not to run and raise suspicion.

But not quite doing a good enough job.

The large man from before looked over and saw Ted’s work as the pair rushed away, and wrongly assumed they were going to fetch Doctors Richards or Storm.

“That’s that smart mouthed kid who was giving Reed grief before. Hey, Johnny! Come get a load of what this whizz kid’s been doin’." He stood over the desk and looked down at all the flasks.

The one who had suggested they all check out the robot started to walk over, but then recognized something on the table. Not the experiment itself, but the string of caps they had run around the desktop. He opened his mouth to callout to the larger man, then thought better of his warning, closed his mouth and smiled.

“Now what in the name of Aunt Petunia do you s’pose these kids were doin’ over here?” Ben Grimm exclaimed, deep in thought.

He watched little green dribbles of potassium iodide slowly siphon out of the test tube and roll down the strings towards the flasks, and tilted his head in contemplation.

Then the caps went off.

BANG! BA-BANG! BA-BA-BA-BA-BANG! BANG! BANG!


Ben Grimm staggered back from the desk and then his focus sharpened, looking for the culprits.

...just as the first drips of potassium iodide hit the hydrogen peroxide. The chain reaction worked swiftly, as the catalyst hit the highly concentrated hydrogen peroxide.

Green silly string-like foam shot up the necks of the long flasks and covered the big man.

“Johnny! Reed! Suzie! Help! The little monsters slimed me! Ahh! It’s hot! What’ve they done?!?”

Reed rushed over to check on his friend. He furrowed his brow.

“Oh. I see. It’s the rapid decomposition of hydrogen peroxide.” Reed mused, quickly evaluating the situation.

“It’s hot! What’ve they done to me?!?”

“It’s exothermic, Ben.” Reed said, carefully stepping back.

“What does that mean? Am I going to be OK? Why are you backing up? Where are those brats?!” Ben fired rapid questions.

“You’re going to be fine. It just means that the reaction releases energy through heat. That is to say, the foam will be quite warm. I’m backing up because I don’t want green dye all over my clothes…”

“And as for the culprits…” Johnny said, pointing to a vent.

“Cheese it, Ted!” Carter stopped laughing long enough to give the signal to bolt.

The pair quickly crawled on hands and knees through the vent, bypassing an adjoining room, they came out near the elevator bay. Carter hit the button and Ted pried the elevator doors open. The elevator was only one floor down.

“You’re kidding me? You’ve seen Die Hard too much…”

“Are you going? Cos I am.” Ted said, holding the doors open.

Carter sighed. “To the end of the line, Ted.” He dropped into the darkness down the shaft and landed with a thud on the lift below. Ted stepped through and dropped just as the four hit the elevator bay.

The elevator went up a single floor and dinged, Ben Grimm stepped inside, flicking the switch to stop the lift. He climbed up the handrail and opened the ceiling panel...

“Ah-Ha!” He exclaimed, poking his head through. “Huh… I coulda sworn they’d have been up here.”

Ted and Carter clung to the counter-weight as it raced down to the express elevator floor, as the lift it was connected to went to the top floor of the building.

“Yeah, this is incredibly dangerous.” Carter uttered.

“So’s letting that big guy catch us after what we just did.” Ted replied.

“So what’s the plan now?”

“We wait until another lift pulls up right by us. We drop on that one. We ride it to the express elevator stop. Drop through the ceiling panel, then go down to the lobby and out.”

“You make it all sound so simple… I know you’re just making this up as you go along.”

Ted shrugged whilst clinging to the counter-weight.

A few minutes later, the pair of friends dropped through a ceiling panel, and stepped out of the lift.

...right in the path of one very unimpressed Dr Susan Storm.

“Aww Hell… I didn’t see you there...”




The Blue Beetle ran across Madison Avenue and found himself in the lobby of the Four Freedoms Plaza. He crossed the floor to the elevator bay and pried a set of doors open. He looked up.

The elevators were locked off on one of the top floors of the building.

Ted stepped back from the shaft and considered what this could mean.




“What’s your name?” Reed Richards asked.

“Carter Johns.”

“That means nothing to me.” Reed rebuffed bluntly, turning and pointing at his partner in crime. “You! What’s your name?”

“Ted Kord. He’s here with--”

“Ah. There it is. Engineering leaning. Your test suggested a favour towards practical science application over the theoretical. One of the few high scores to do so, in fact. It made me wonder if we tilted the test too strongly towards the theoretically minded-- Hey! I’m still talking!”

Ted’s attention wavered. He looked beyond the scientist at the things that were happening behind him, as the other three tried to make sure they got all of the foam off of the large one. Ted stifled a laugh.

“Yes. You are. You’re still talking. And you haven’t said anything since we got here.”

Carter Johns looked on at his friend in shocked amusement, disbelief at his friend’s boldness. Sensing how impressed his friend was spurred Ted on further.

“I win some science competition that my school makes me take, and the ‘prize’ is I get to be stuck on the Amtrak with my teacher for a day, for what? An extra chemistry lesson? To see a robot and the deathtrap you plan on trying to go to space in? No. If that’s what this is, I don’t want it and I don’t need it. I’ve been to museums at home. My Dad’s taken me to the Kennedy Space Center before. All of this…? This isn’t a prize to me. I’m being punished for doing something successfully. You’ve set broken incentives, if I were back home we'd be playing video games by now.”

Carter stifled laughter at the audacity of Ted telling off the renowned scientist.

Reed looked at Carter, considering him and his part in the fact this adolescent was speaking to him in this way, and then smiled knowingly.

“Johnny, could you come and take Carter here to the gallery? Show him the simulation center. Maybe fire up some games. I’m going to speak with Ted alone for a few minutes.”

The college aged young man led Carter away. Ted threw him a reassuring confident grin.

“Why did you do that to Ben and to the lab?”

“I just told you, I don’t--”

“I heard what you said in front of your friend. And I saw you keep glancing at him for his approval. And I saw how his impression of you affected what you were saying. Ted, you care far too much what other people think about you.”

Ted closed his mouth.

“Do you want to know what I think? Because a lot of people do, generally. I think you’re used to being the smartest one in the room. I think you’re used to dealing with teachers who you’re quite possibly smarter than. Which I empathize with, it’s not an easy situation to deal with either as student or teacher. And I think-- well, you told me yourself, that you’re used to taking every test with the mentality of what success in it can do for YOU. Not every test in your life is going to work that way. Finally, I don’t think you respect what you have. Which is probably the greatest failure in your education so far.”

Ted opened his mouth again and nothing came out.

“The testing process is for gathering information. Data. Nothing more, nothing less. Incentives, generally, can tamper with results. No. You’re not getting any kind of scholarship here. Or cash prize. Or ‘Storm-Richards internship’ that would pave the way to a fast-track career in science that would allow you to slack off. It was to identify bright young talents, and to provide a place for free thought and open experimentation without the same shackled structure of the school system.” Reed dug his hand into his pocket and pulled out a fistful of carefully made pins.

“These pins are electromagnetically coded. They operate the magnetic security readers on the doors and elevators throughout the building. Including to the fully stocked, unmonitored laboratory for the Children of Tomorrow.”

Ted was staggered, he couldn’t move and was speechless - generally a new experience for him -, Reed Richards walked on.

“I’ve gathered my data. For a while I was curious, your test results were interesting and you even had my attention for a while with your comments regarding our spacecraft. But now, upon further evidence I see that you’re just a loudmouth seeking attention. Striking at anyone you see as being viewed as an authority figure in order to garner further approval from your friend.”

“So thank you, Ted Kord.” Reed Richards lobbed him a pin. “Congratulations on joining the LAST class of the Children of Tomorrow. Thanks to you, I think I’m quite sure I’ve received all the information I need from future generations. If you’ll please wait here in the elevator bay, we’ll have your friend sent out.”

Ted couldn’t remember feeling more alone than at that very moment. And Ted’s memory was impeccable.




Ted jogged down the steps from the second floor, back to the first. He’d have to work fast now, he'd used his old pin - usually kept as just a bitter reminder - to force the call on the elevator down to the floor above. He quickly pried open the elevator doors, holding them open with his foot. He fumbled inside his belt pulling out a second grapple line.

He heard a “Ding!” as the elevator finally hit the floor above. He reached up and attached the grapple line to the undercarriage of the lift. He heard feet shuffle back inside the lift. The Blue Beetle couldn’t see, but it seemed a fair bet by his assumption that they were armed, checking on who had managed to call the lift down to the second floor in the first place.

Yes, he knew the Four Freedoms Plaza. And he knew that nobody who worked in this place would willingly have had anything to do with any of this madness.

The lift carried the Blue Beetle onwards and upwards. Hopefully to answers and a resolution to all of this.
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Hidden 5 yrs ago Post by Lord Wraith
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Lord Wraith Actually Three Otters in a Trenchcoat

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Location: Star City
Crisis! Part 3

Interaction(s): @Natty with Magik
Previously: Crisis! 2


The city had gone to hell.

Infected civilians ran through the street, ripping apart anything and everyone they could get their hands on. At first, Connor had assumed it was the work of a chemical attack, perhaps something in the water, or maybe an airborne contagion. It had been Overwatch who had determined the true cause of the attack.

The swarm dark clouds shown in the terrorist’s footage was actually comprised of numerous insect-sized robots. Based on Connor’s first-hand experience, he’d say they were around the size of a grasshopper. Most of the arrows in his arsenal had proven fruitless, the drones overrode any sense of pain or fear their host felt. But the drones were vulnerable to electricity and the hosts still needed to breathe which left at least two viable options in his quiver.

Fending for himself on the ground, Connor had left Overwatch’s to do what she did best. She was quickly isolating the true source of the drones’ signal. Obviously, each drone received its orders from the obelisk in the closest vicinity, but as Overwatch had explained it, the obelisks were routers, simply beaming the source signal further and dispersing it over the city.

It had to originate from somewhere.

“I’ve got it.” Connor’s headset crackled to life as Overwatch’s bubbly voice echoed excitedly in his ears. Nocking another arrow, Connor fired it towards the ground. Knockout gas dispersed into the near-rabid crowd upon impact. Watching the zombies fall, Connor felt a certain degree of satisfaction before continuing to run along the rooftops that made up Star City’s downtown.

“Where am I heading?” He replied, tapping the side of his mask.

“Star City Public Library!” Came Overwatch’s reply.

“Consider me already there!” Taking a deep breath, Connor slung his bow onto his back before doubling down on his speed. His lungs were already aching, but at least now he’d be distracted from it by the burning sensation in his thighs. Flying through the air, he rolled upon landing, righting himself in time to gain enough momentum to jump again. Drawing his bow, Connor took a quick breath before loosing another arrow.

The sound of the grapple line going taunt was music to his ears as he soared through the night sky. With each passing moment, the Star City Library came closer and closer until the sound of exploding glass echoed around his head. His arms were crossed in front of his torso, shielding the majority of his body as he landed.

Raising the bow again, Connor had no time to assess his surroundings as his eyes darted from the hostages to the people behind the attack, to the blonde woman with a sword in the middle of the room. He couldn’t help but think that Overwatch would have had a snappy comment for a moment such as this, but he wasn’t one to make them.

A woman had stepped forward to challenge the blonde with the sword. Without thinking, Connor raised his bow, nocking an arrow and quickly drawing it back.

“Y’know, you people really crashing the mode tonight.” He muttered, steadying his aim. “On behalf of all the innocent down there,” He nodded towards the broken window, towards the frenzied crowds on the streets below while pulling the bowstring as taunt as it would go.

You have failed this city. He growled through gritted teeth, loosing the shaft as it soared towards its intended target. A gasp escaped the clawed woman’s mouth, the arrow piercing her shoulder causing her to stagger away from the woman with a sword. Subsequently loosing several more arrows, Connor targeted those with guns first before turning back towards the swordswoman and calling towards her.

“I can only assume we’re on the same side, them trying to kill you and all.” He offered a quick smile before pinning another gunman to the wall.

The look of anger on the swordswoman’s face rescinded at the sudden appearance of the archer, with her raising an eyebrow in confusion until he began to rain down arrows upon the gunmen.

“They veren’t too pleased about me breaking through veir window.” Quipping seemed uncomfortable to her, her voice struggling to hold together as she spoke. “I’m just here to make vem pay for vhat vey’ve done.”

Conner could only watch as she charged past him in a fury, leaping up into the air above the remaining gunmen, ignoring their gunfire completely. The blue flames of her blade flared wildly as she brought it down on them. The fire seemed to erupt as it made contact, exploding into a mixture of blues and whites which engulfed them. They let out cries of pain as the woman landed gracefully on her feet before them.

With a snap of her fingers, the flames crept back into the bulk of her blade, the guards dropping to the floor in unconsciousness. She paused above one of them for several seconds, her eyes carving a hole in the back of his head.

In the meantime, Connor had been holding back the woman in red. He kept his bow on her, an arrow notched. She angrily had snapped the shaft lodged in her shoulder before charging towards Connor. Releasing arrow after arrow, he attempted to slow her down but she had wisened to his game. Raising her claws, the woman managed to deflect each and every blow away from her body.

Leaping into the air, she moved her claws forward, preparing to run the emerald archer through but Connor saw his opportunity. Rolling to the side, Connor drew another shaft from his quiver, notching it and loosing the arrow. The shaft piercing the woman’s knee, dropping her to the ground and ripping a cry of agony from her throat.

Gripping his bow between both hands, Connor spun around. A resounding ‘CRACK’ echoed through the room upon contact between the weapon and the woman’s skull. Falling forward, her body flopped to the ground nearly lifeless save for the shallow movement of her chest.

“Can’t say they were much a fan of my own entrance,” Connor replied finally making his way back over to the mysterious swordswoman. “I’m C- Green Arrow by the way.”

“Magik.” Her response was short and sharp. Obviously she wasn’t one for chatting. “I thought this city didn’t have a Green Arrow vanymore?”

“That’s the world on the street,” Connor replied with a smile beneath his hood. “But rumours of my disappearance have been greatly exaggerated.” He added before gesturing towards the laptop in the center of the room. “Electronics and I aren’t the best of friends but if I had to guess, I’d say that’s the source of all our problems.” Connor pointed his bow towards the numerous cables that had all been routed into a single bridge and then into the laptop.

“Afterall, all rivers lead to the ocean.” He added before turning back towards Magik.

“Do you vhink you can turn that thing off??”

“I can’t,” Connor muttered, “But if you give me long enough with the laptop, I’ve got someone who can.” The sound of an alarm cut any further conversation short as Connor turned towards Magik, his eyes wide but her demeanour remained calm and collected as ever.

Magik asked inquisitively, raising an eyebrow towards him.

“I take it that’s not a good sign?”
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Hidden 5 yrs ago Post by HenryJonesJr
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HenryJonesJr

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THE GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY

IN
RAMBLE ON




The chips clattered across the table sitting in the middle of the Hasselhoff's common area as Hawk raised her bet. The Guardians of the Galaxy, as they had decided to call themselves, sat around the table, and everyone looked at their cards again. Well, everyone save for Groot, who had already went bust and was now stacking the chips in the center of the table, a visor hanging cockeyed on his head. The tree-being was a spectacularly bad "poker", as Quill had called it, player, but he was a surprisingly adept dealer. Quill claimed that a good dealer was invaluable to the game of poker, but Quill had also been lying the entire time they had been playing. Of course, he also claimed that was an integral part of the game, so Thor had little idea what to believe.

"Well, gentlemen?" Hawk had a confident, wry smile painted across her face. "We gonna dance or do I get to take everything you own? It's the least I deserve after deciding not to kill you."

Thor had to admit that in the short time they had been together, he had taken a liking to Hawk. She had yet to tell them her real name, nor had she really opened up at all, but Thor knew what hid behind her eyes. It was the same thing that she probably saw behind his. A pain of failure, and that made sense. Thanagarians were a noble, warrior race, and very rarely were they out on their own, let alone as a bounty hunter. She had been exiled. It was obvious. He hadn't broached the subject with her, nor would he until the time was right. But it made total sense why she was so standoffish.

"Oh would you stop holding that over our heads?" Quill protested. "Every time there's one slice of pie left. 'Remember when I didn't kill you?' Every time someone else wants to sit co-pilot. 'Remember when I didn't kill you?' Honestly, sometimes I wish you just had. That way I wouldn't have to hear me tell about you hadn't."

Quill had fallen hard for Hawk. Another obvious fact Thor knew that none of the others had realized. Maybe the fact that mortal's lives were so short that they fell in love so quickly. But Quill had certainly fallen for the beautiful warrior. Thor thought that was a good decision. She was very beautiful, and very deadly. She reminded him of his own Sif. Still, Quill was hilarious ill equipped to woo such a strong prize. Thor would have to help him if he stood any chance.

Peter took another look at his cards before tossing them into the center of the table, "Fold."

"You have no balls," Rocket snorted and pushed his chips into the center of the table. "Whatever those things are I saw in the shower must be decoys or something."

"I told you to stop looking in my stall!" Quill growled.

"Hey, it's not my fault I'm like three feet tall. You're at eye level! Blame the damned universe for making me like this," Rocket laughed to himself.

"Trust me, creation didn't make you the way you are," Peter shot back.

Rocket merely snarled at Quill. He was sensitive about his origins, probably because he had no idea what those origins were. It was what kept him from really connecting with any of the others on the ship. Save for Groot of course. The two were like family, and Thor had to respect that. The tree was a gentle giant, at least until one of them were threatened.

They had been traveling together for weeks, and the one place where they always worked well together was in battle. They were quickly making a name for themselves in the outer reaches of the universe. Embarrassing Mongul in front of the entire galaxy's black market certainly helped. Thor's escapades had made sure to impress that the crowned prince of Asgard had survived and was fighting for the downtrodden of the universe. While it was nothing more than a cover story to draw their adversary out of the shadows, Thor had to admit that he was enjoying it. He forgot how fun mortals could be, and helping them made him feel alive after the loss of Asgard.

It's something he probably should have been doing all this time. That much he knew now. But at the very least, now maybe he could make up for lost time.

"What about you, your highness?" Hawk arched her eyebrows at him.

Thor smiled lightly at her, and looked at his cards again. Two of the Kings of Cards, with two more of them sitting on the table. Thor pushed the remainder of his chips into the center of the table, "The Mighty Thor calls."

"ha!" Rocket exploded in sarcastic laughter. "You may be some bigshot where you're from, but around here I'm top dog. Ain't no question about that."

"Sure, you think that, little guy," Hawk responded. "But Thor isn't just a bigshot where he's from. He's one of the damn rulers of the universe. Did whatever he wanted for thousands of years. Didn't care who he stepped on, either. At least until someone, or mysterious hunter, stepped back. Maybe it was karma catching up to them for using the universe as their playground?"

The words hung in the air. He could see Quill in his peripheral vision, and his eyes were like saucers. Thor himself wasn't angry. Hell, he thought that she was probably right. Whoever had started Ragnarok prematurely had done so to hurt the gods, probably due to some slight. But Thor knew that they were going to have to work together if they stood any chance of winning this fight. Outbursts like this weren't going to help any of them.

"You are probably correct," Thor nodded at her. "At least that is my running thought on the matter. Whoever killed my world, and whoever is attempting to have us killed, is doing so because we Asgardians failed to help when we should have. Which is why we're not just going on a wild goose chase to find them. We're helping people as we go. At least I can have that penance."

"Fair enough," she shrugged and flipped over her cards. The others did the same, and cursed when they saw Thor's hand.

"I believe the game goes to me," he smiled and scooped up the chips. "No dishes duty for me for the next standard month."

Before the rest of them could react, the holographic projector in the middle of the table sprang to life. Heimdall's face appeared, "Odinson, was just passing by a quadrant near you to pick up a group of refugees, and our ship intercepted a distress call. Thought you'd want to know."

"Well, Guardians," Thor looked at his companions. "Looks like we have a job to do."
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Hidden 5 yrs ago Post by webboysurf
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webboysurf Live, Laugh, Love

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En Route to New York City - Present Day
Issue 1.02.3: Sabotage

Interaction(s): Arsenal and Captain America
Previously: Issue 1.02.2: Fight for Your Right


Within minutes, the UN Headquarters had been converted into a makeshift fortress. Two more quinjets had arrived with more troops and supplies before they proceeded to sweep through the city. Steve waited in the new command tent, looking over the makeshift terminals that the SHIELD techs had established. After another minute or so, the good news finally came as one of the techs raised his hand. "It looks like I've got... something, sir. Encrypted signals coming from Four Freedoms Plaza. High concentration of patrolling individuals, and others seem to be huddled up on one of the top floors... risk assessment suggests a hostage situation."

Captain Steven Rogers nodded his head, walking over to half step out of the tent to whistle out and point to Tony and Roy. The two quickly approached, and gathered around a holographic display of Four Freedoms Plaza. Cap pointed towards various red blips throughout the complex, as well as a strong concentration of green dots in the 3D map. "We may have found where the signals are coming from. At the very least, we have a potential hostage situation. If the hostiles are connected with the MSF, we can expect them to be well-armed and willing to pull the trigger on those hostages at the first sign of trouble."

Roy and Tony both nodded along, and Steve turned his gaze towards the former. "It's going to be you and me, Harper. We're going to do a drop on a quinjet fly-by. Suit up, we're going wheels up in 60."

Tony raises his eyebrows, his gaze quickly flicking between Cap and the newbie. "Captain, I should be raiding the Plaza with you." His voice was stoic as always, but the twitching of Tony's eyebrow revealed a simmering anger underneath.

Steve didn't even bothering to look at Tony as he began walking out of the tent, calling out over his shoulder. "I need you helping with search and rescue. End of discussion."




About 2 minutes later, Cap and Arsenal were standing at the back of a quinjet, the loading ramp lowered. Cap was looking at a small screen built into the inner wrist-guard of his new suit as he counted down. "Three... two... one... go!" The two men let go of the straps from the ceiling and took a running jump, plummeting down towards the roof of Four Freedoms Plaza. Roy had his bow in his left hand, and quickly pulled out an arrow and fired it towards the roof. It impacted only about two seconds before the two came hurdling towards the same spot, but had managed to eject a bed of foam. On impact, the two individuals felt their bodies almost entirely immobilized. Almost entirely. Steve had managed to keep his arms up in the air and out of the foam, pressing a single button on his wrist-guard. The foam suddenly began to dissipate as the initial arrow began to spread a solvent, and the two men were able to free themselves from what was left of the foam with relative ease.

Roy wiped off his uniform and reached into his breast pocket, pulling out a set of red-tinted sunglasses as he tapped the side of it. The edge of the lenses began lighting up as a HUD interface appeared in Roy's vision. While it calibrated, Roy cracked his knuckles and turned his gaze towards Captain America. "What's the plan, Cap?"

Steve walked towards the rooftop maintenance hatch, reloading his sidearm. "Simple enough. We clear floor by floor, secure the hostages, then push to the console. You hack their mainframe, and I will watch your back."

Roy stopped dead in his tracks, his head tilting slightly. "Hold on... one, I'm an engineer and don't have the experience to hack tech of this level. And two... did you seriously just say 'hack the mainframe?' I get you're like 80, but Jesus."

Steve sighed. "Son... Back in my day we punched nazis and flew airplanes with propellers on the front. I assumed you knew how to hack into their... system."

Roy rolled his eyes as he approached the hatch, cracking his knuckles. "Well, I don't. What now?"

Steve sighed, grabbing the handle for the hatch and hoisting it open with a single pull strong enough to break the padlock and deadbolt on the inside. He gave a nod towards the open hatch. "Our first priority are those hostages. We'll figure the rest out afterwards." Without another word on the matter, the veteran jumped feet-first into the hatch.
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Hidden 5 yrs ago Post by Retired
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Retired "Hayao Miyazaki"

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Manhattan, New York City | Present Day

Chapter One | Part Eight

Garfield shoveled several pastries into his mouth at once, already reaching out for more before he even swallowed the first set. Powdered sugar made a mess of his newly borrowed shirt as he continually wiped his fingers across the material.

"Slow down," Kitty's eyes were sympathetic but she rested a hand atop Garfield's as he reached for yet another treat. "You've already had a dozen, any more and you're going to puke."

The boy just nodded reluctantly. He knew she was right but it had been so long since he had had a steady supply of food that once he started it was difficult to stop. Garfield's stomach had been denied in the past and now it was as if it was trying to make up for the lost time. Setting down the pastry he had just grabbed, Garfield leaned back in his chair and took a sip of his soft drink.

After their initial meeting in Koriand'r and Eli's abandoned warehouse where a loose plan had been devised, the group had made a quick detour to Elijah's home. With his family away for the day, the older teen had offered Garfield his shower to wash up in and a fresh change of clothes. Even with the t-shirt, jeans, and light, long-sleeved hoodie being several years old, they were all somewhat large on the younger boy and hung loosely. Nevertheless, Garfield had appreciated the gesture. He couldn't remember the last time he had worn something other than his former torn outfit.

From there, the four had tracked down the Meta Solutions lab. Not entirely a difficult task given its public listing. Kitty, Koriand'r, and Garfield had set up at a nearby outdoor cafe just a block away while Elijah went alone to scout out the building from a distance. The early evening rush from passersby helped to avoid most attention, aside from several double-takes Koriand'r received. Even still, Garfield had drawn his hood close and kept the brim of a baseball cap low to hide his skin.

Sitting between Garfield and Kitty, Koriand'r squirmed in her seat.

"This is most delicious!" She exclaimed delightedly. Taking another sip from the clear plastic cup held to her lips, she asked: "what was it you said this liquid was named?"

"Uh, boba. Bubble tea." Kitty answered distractedly. She craned her head around for the fifth time in less than two minutes. "Anyone else think he's taking too long?"

Garfield quickly snuck another pastry from the plate and crammed it into his mouth while she wasn't looking. It had been about twenty, maybe thirty, minutes since Elijah had gone off. Like Kitty, he was growing anxious with every passing minute, though for entirely different reasons. He barely knew Eli, but Garfield had gotten the distinct impression from their brief time together that the guy was pretty no-nonsense. If it was taking this long he was sure it was necessary. On the other hand, patience was not Garfield's strong suit.

"Should I go retrieve him?" Asked Koriand'r.

"No!" Kitty hastily responded, waving her arms back and forth in front of her. "No, definitely not. Last thing we need is someone spotting miss supermodel gladiator woman straight out of some Amazonian myth flying around. We're trying to be covert here. Subtle. Stealthy. And you are decidedly not subtle."

Leaning forward conspiratorially, Kitty lowered her voice. "Besides, don't want to give anyone any reason to suspect that you're a you-know-what. Best to keep a low profile, okay?"

"Oh. I understand. My apologies."

Garfield thought he saw the alien girl's smile falter slightly as she dropped her eyes down, embarrassed. Before he could offer any words of support, though, he noticed something over Kitty's shoulder.

"Hey, he's back!" Pointing ahead, Garfield indicated the familiar figure walking down the sidewalk towards their table.

Both girls turned to check as Elijah strode up. In one hand he held his phone, in the other a pair of cheap, mini-binoculars. As he approached the table, he casually tossed the binoculars onto the table and shook his head.

"Those were pretty much crap," he told them. "Could barely see anything out of 'em."

"But were you able to see enough?" Kitty prodded.

"Yeah," he held up his phone. "Just ended up using the zoom with this. Not the best of quality but I've got some pictures and videos."

Grabbing the last remaining chair, he sat down. Glancing around to make sure no one was bothering to listen, he laid out the details of his surveillance.

Meta Solutions was fairly small. From what Eli had observed there hadn't been many employees going in or out of the building and only a few cars were parked outside. Not entirely odd given they were an independent organization but the videos and photographs taken provided more context. While grainy, the images displayed nearly a dozen external cameras.

More telling, though, were the two armed individuals Eli had recorded patrolling the outside grounds. Not dressed in security uniforms, the two men, both fairly large, were on alternating and opposite paths around the surrounding sidewalk. They looped around casually in typical civilian dress, circling the building in a way that allowed one to cross in front of the entrance every thirty seconds or so. Likely not noticeable to anyone going by without a second thought, but for Elijah who had perched across the street in an alley for so long, he had quickly noticed the recurring figures. On the tenth loop, he had caught the silver flash of a gun holstered beneath a jacket.

"Now, who wants to tell me why a place doing cancer research has that much security?" Eli asked as he finished the debrief.

"And more importantly, why they're trying to hide their security like that. Why not just get legitimate guards stationed out front if they were on the up-and-up?" Added Kitty.

"Exactly. I think we can be fairly sure your theory has some actual standing here. So," Eli glanced towards Garfield. "I think we can move onto the next part of the plan. You're up, kid."

Garfield shot up straight and pumped his fist. "Yes, Garfield Logan to the rescue!"

"Sit down," Kitty chided him. "Again, the keyword here is 'inconspicuous,' people. Let's not make a scene."

"Right, sorry." He looked sheepish as he sat back down. "Just, you know, excited to help."

"Well, we still have to wait for it to get a little darker, first. Maybe an hour? Probably should order something else so we don't get kicked out for loitering." Kitty got up to flag down a staff member.

"An hour? Come on, no one's going to see me even if it's not dark. I can go right now and be back in ten minutes."

Elijah eyed the younger boy, a slight frown etched across his face. "Are you sure you're up for this, kid? It's not exactly a game. You have no idea how dangerous it might be inside. If you're not able to take this seriously..."

Garfield winced. He'd probably been called 'kid' a dozen times since he met these people a couple of hours earlier and it was already getting old.

"Yeah. I know it's not a game." He said tensely, staring back with what he hoped was a stern expression. "I've got this. You did your part, let me do mine."

Eli held up his hands, relenting. "Okay, alright. Not trying to take anything away from you, I just want this to go as smoothly as possible. If we don't deviate from the plan hopefully no one gets hurt. Or worse."

Sighing, Garfield shoved one final pastry past his lips. "Fine," he mumbled through the baked bread. "We'll stick to your plan. One hour."

* * *



Situated between a floral boutique and a twenty-four-hour pharmacy was the narrow alleyway Elijah had been using to spy on Meta Solutions. Across the street, set on a wide lot, was the laboratory. The perimeter of the lot was blocked off with metal fencing and a gate. Several of the security cameras previously pointed out could be seen aimed at the gate and only point of entry into the lot. Like clockwork, the two men from Eli's video circled the outside of the fence.

Lot of security you got there, Garfield thought to himself as he peeked from the shadows of the alley. But not enough to keep me out.

The boy began shedding his clothing and setting them in a neat pile in one corner where he hoped they wouldn't be spotted. When shifting his form, nothing he wore nor carried would transform with him, something that had caused more than a handful of awkward issues the past year. At least this time he could prepare in advance.

Shivering against the cool evening air, Garfield closed his eyes and began to focus. He had only taken this form once before and it had been a strange experience. The transformation itself, while always quick, tended to feel different depending on the animal he shifted to. Bones, muscle, tissue, even his organs all realigned rapidly and it could sometimes be disorienting. The sudden change in perspective when transforming into a creature of a significantly different size certainly didn't help with that.

His face simultaneously shrunk and widened. Eyes expanded, shifting to the sides of his head and two antennae sprouted between them. Extra limbs sporting fine hair erupted from his torso, which itself was constricting and segmenting from the rest of his body. Finally, Garfield felt the world rush past him as his body rapidly decreased in mass.

Where roughly two seconds previously a green-skinned, nude boy had stood, there was now nothing. Nothing aside from an inconspicuous, common housefly.

Gross, gross, gross. Garfield thought as a wave of strange and unique sensations threatened to overwhelm him.

Something he had learned during his first foray as a fly was that their tastebuds were located at the tips of their legs. He had also learned that New York streets did not have an enjoyable flavor.

Fluttering his new pair of wings, Garfield rose several inches into the air. Inches that now felt like a dozen feet to him in this form. He teetered slightly as he gave himself a moment to readjust. He could now see just about everything, or, at least, everything within about ten feet. But while his vision was short in range it was wide in scope. Being bombarded with thousands of tiny images, vague in color, all merged into one unfocused view was difficult for his human mind to work around. Still, as disorienting as it may be, the form had its uses.

It took Garfield a couple of minutes to fly towards the lot, orienting himself by memory more than sight, but eventually, he landed on the front door to Meta Solutions. Locating a crevice wide enough to accommodate his size was fairly simple and he slipped inside the building.

This had always been the easier part of the plan, Garfield knew. Gaining access for someone like him was never going to be difficult. It was the next portion that would pose a problem. None of the group had any idea where to search once inside and so Garfield was now mainly left to stumble around in the hopes of finding some clue or link to the abducted children. Kitty had thought it unlikely the kids would be in the lab itself, instead suggesting to search Zabo's office for anything that could tie him or Meta Solutions to the kidnappings. If he could find the office, that was.

After another ten minutes, Garfield had finished what he believed to be a complete sweep of the first floor. Which, as far as he could tell, was the only floor. He had found half-a-dozen personnel plugging away data at various desks just past the lobby, and multiple branching hallways leading to rooms with a scant handful of others present and doing who-knows-what with various lab equipment. He had even located both the cleaning supply closet and the bathroom, courtesy of his foul scent-detecting antennae. Yet no sign of a stairwell or elevator leading to another level. Which, he supposed, made sense as the lab appeared to be a single-story construct, but everything just seemed so limited to him, so shallow, like there had to be more to it all.

Determined, though, and knowing the others were relying on him, Garfield continued his search. After all, he realized, it was likely he had missed something with his fly-vision.

Upon nearing the conclusion of his fourth lap around the building, each more frustrating than the one before, Garfield was readying himself to give up. His wings kept tiring out every so often and each time he was forced to land on a surface it tasted of disinfectant. The prolonged time in this form was also taking its toll on him and he could feel himself grow queasier each passing minute due to the unfortunate inability to close his eyes and take a break from the compounded vision.

Alright, this is dumb. There's nothing here and I think I'm going to throw up. As a fly. Ew. Garfield reoriented himself and began making his way back towards the entrance. We'll have to try something else.

Just as he was closing in on the door, it swung open. A tall figure strode through, and although Garfield couldn't make out many detailed features he was able to discern that it was a man dressed in a long, white outfit. A lab coat. Deciding to take one last chance, Garfield followed the man from up high.

The man walked with a purpose and barely cast a glance at any of the others present. They, in turn, kept their heads buried down and avoided eye contact. Except for one, a rotund woman at a desk who looked up long enough from her computer monitor to utter a single sentence.

"They called again for you, doctor, regarding the latest shipment."

The man stopped momentarily and seemed to consider this. "Was there an issue I should be concerned about?"

"I'm not sure, doctor. She only said she wished to speak with you immediately."

"She called directly, then?" The doctor seemed taken aback by this news. "Yes, that is a concern. Thank you."

With that, the man continued his stride, albeit slightly faster now. Garfield followed along, trying to remain unseen and unheard as best he could. Walking down one hallway, then branching down another, the man entered a room that Garfield had explored several times already. About ten feet by ten feet, it wasn't much to look at. It had a small sofa, a water cooler, and two vending machines. A break room it seemed.

Garfield watched inquisitively as the man ignored all of these accommodations and approached the rear wall. Brushing his fingertips against the tiled surface, he leaned forward and spoke with a clear, over annunciated tone.

"Zabo."

A tiny light somewhere between two tiles blinked and a dull auditory ding answered the man. Then, there was a hydraulic gasp as, to the left of the man, a portion of the wall unsealed and rose up to reveal metallic doors. A second later, they too parted and revealed a small elevator.

Dude! Of course there's a secret elevator. Duh.

Garfield zipped forward and joined the man, Calvin Zabo he assumed, in the lift, landing on the back wall.

Okay, you've gotta be hiding something down here, he told himself, feeling his excitement rising once more. Secret elevator leading to secret underground lab where secret evil experiments are being run? Got you now.

He couldn't tell exactly how many levels the elevator traveled but the trip was fairly short. Garfield also hadn't spotted any sort of controls or buttons, so he figured it must only have a single stop. Either way, as the doors slid open once more, he was hit with an immediate din of activity not present on the above floor. Down here he could hear multiple instances of chatter, heavy footsteps, mechanical and digital whirls and beeps, and much more.

Doctor Zabo was already out of the elevator before the doors had fully opened. As Garfield trailed behind at a safe distance, he noticed easily triple the amount of personnel here than above. And he could tell from the surrounding cacophony that there were even more elsewhere. This, he realized, was the true Meta Solutions laboratories.

It took less than a minute and several turns down alternate hallways before Zabo arrived at his apparent destination. The nameplate just to the right of the closed-door suggested this was the doctor's office that Kitty had thought may hold vital information.

Jackpot. Garfield thought.

Producing a keycard and sliding it through an electronic lock, Zabo stepped through and swung the door closed behind him almost immediately. Garfield, dashing forward, could feel the wind ruffle his wings as the door nearly clipped him. For a second he was concerned his target might have heard his telltale buzzing as he had been forced to come within inches of Zabo, but the man seemed intent on his thoughts and goals.

On one wall hung various awards and accolades the doctor had received over his lifetime. Several news articles were framed beside these and often depicted photographs of Zabo shaking hands with others in his field. Garfield couldn't see a single picture that included the man smiling. Nor could he spot any other personal photographs of the doctor's family.

Set in front of this wall was a large oak desk. The surface of which was mostly sparse aside from the twin monitor desktop and phone. It was the latter of these Zabo reached for.

Garfield landed and hung on the ceiling directly above the desk, momentarily cringing as he tasted the unclean surface. He tried and failed to make out the entire number dialed, but judging from the first three digits he didn't believe it was a New York area code.

After a few moments of silence, Zabo finally spoke into the receiver. "Transfer me to the director. Yes, I am aware. Yes."

It was another two minutes before he continued, evidently having been put on hold.

"Director, I understand you called for me earlier. It is unusual, to say the least, to hear from you personally. What is it that I may help you with?"

Garfield could see the man's eyes narrow and hear his jaw clench as he forced some civility into his tone.

"Yes. I personally oversaw the development of the latest batch and if that charlatan is claiming there are any defects in the supply then he is a fool.

"Yes, well, the man claims to be in touch with higher powers so I am not entirely inclined to believe every word spewed from his mouth. He has no background in any scientific field and has no place to—"

Even without being able to hear the other end of the conversation, Garfield could tell from the way Zabo stiffened and bristled like an angry cat that things were not going entirely in the doctor's favor.

"I understand. Yes, of course. I will ensure the latest batch of the growth hormone to be pure. Yes, Director Kane." He said in barely controlled contempt. "In fact, my men have brought me several new test subjects in the last week. All young and viable, I assure you."

Garfield's attention snapped to those words. Young test subjects? It has to be...

Zabo continued, "I could increase the production schedule, of course, but I wouldn't recommend—" Gritting his teeth tightly, he listened for a second before slowly acquiescing to the director's apparent demands.

"Of course. A shipment for the West coast can be prepared for next week. Yes, Director, I'll prepare the harvest immediately. I am sure you will be most satisfied with our new prototype product. Yes. Tonight. Yes. Goodbye."

Zabo slammed the phone receiver into its cradle with unbridled fury. "Insufferable woman!"

The doctor stayed hunched over his desk, his breath heavy and exasperated. He gripped the edge of the desk tightly until his fingers began to go white, and Garfield was sure something was about to be thrown across the room. But after another minute Zabo seemed to calm himself, at least outwardly, and reached for the phone once more.

This time he hit only two buttons. "Klaus, the schedule has been moved up. We will be performing a harvest tonight. Prepare the children."

Hanging the phone up more calmly, Zabo swept his hair back from his face and readjusted his clothing. Once he seemed satisfied with his appearance and composure, he strode back out of his office.

Crap, crap, crap! Garfield cursed to himself as he buzzed along behind the doctor. That's definitely the proof we wanted and it sounds like those kids are here, but how the Hell do I tell the others before these creeps do whatever it is they're going to do to them?

As Zabo rounded a corner, Garfield could see the elevator that he had come down on. For a moment he hesitated, debating on whether or not he should continue following Zabo to where the kids were located, maybe do something to free them himself, or head back up to the surface and get the others. Then, a sudden realization hit Garfield like a flyswatter.

Oh... shit. The elevator is voice-activated. I can't get back up.

If ever a fly could look both horrified and confused, it was at that moment.

Garfield quickly did an about-turn and once more darted toward the doctor's departing form.

Okay. This is fine. This is fine. I'll think of something.

This is fine...
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Hidden 5 yrs ago 5 yrs ago Post by Bounce
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[ Prev ] FEAT OF CLAY, Part III” [ Next ]
B L Ü D H A V E N

Downtown
It was Chambers’ marked police cruiser, but Dick was behind the wheel. The lights and sirens cleared a path through traffic, as the former Boy Wonder turned the Chevy Impala into something more akin to a performance vehicle.

A fact that his passenger didn’t entirely appreciate. “I only get car sick when you drive,” Cissy complained, her knuckles white as she held onto the dash and the auspiciously named oh shit bar.

For his part, the lines on Dick’s gave lightened as he gave a devil may care grin. The police cruiser squealed to an abrupt halt, just inches shy of rear ending another police car as Dick threw the car into park and stepped out into the freshly marked crime scene.

Through the crowd gathered on the street, Dick could already make out the fact that the doorframe had been completely ripped away from the storefront. In fact, the entire door to the jewelry store was presently lodged in the Ford F-150 that had nearly been cleaved in two by it.

“Well, that happened,” Dick uttered glibly, exiting out of the car and standing there for a moment, in awe of a feat that he’d have normally associated with the likes of Bane.

Maybe they weren’t dealing with a metahuman. Just someone coked up on venom.

In honesty, Dick wasn’t really certain that was a better prospect.

Something bumped into him. Taken off-step, Dick glanced down in time to see a young girl with dark hair in a red cardigan sweater, yellow blouse, black mini-skirt and a black choker around her neck. He reached out a hand to grab hold of her shoulder, steadying her as the legs seemed ready to give out from under her.

She was a runner. He could see it in her eyes. In the gaunt expression. Her eyes constantly scanning for signs of something, or someone.

Once she’d gotten her feet back under her, two quick steps backward broke the contact between her and Dick. “Sorry,” she mumbled, looking everywhere except at Dick, as she turned and vanished through the crowd.

In sort order, Dick was just standing there, somewhere between confused and amused as he watched the girl practically vanish right in front of his eyes. “Well, that happened,” he repeated, with a hint of a smile.

“Commissioner!”

The man whirled around. His gaze fixed on Chambers for just a fleeting moment, finding the woman pointing off into the crowd, as she said, “Look!”

Steel blue eyes cut along the path of Cissy’s finger. Which is where he found him. Face of Boris Karloff. With a pair of seemingly blank, piercing eyes.

Pain lanced up through Dick’s bad knee, even as he started forward. POLICE!he shouted hoarsely, even as he bolted toward where the large figure dominated over the crowd.

Boris Karloff’s twin from another mother bolted just then as well. For such a large man, he moved with the speed of a NFL defensive lineman. And in the same fashion just bowled over the people on the street. It gave Dick and Cissy a lot to dodge around as they tried to scramble up the sidewalk in pursuit.

And that was before he chucked a dumpster their way.

No, not a trash can. A dumpster. A large dumpster.

Dick saw a flash of green and his Boy Wonder instincts were still sharp enough that he was able to turn and tackle Chamber off to the side, as the dumpster went crashing through where they’d both been just a moment before.

He found that he was winded as he lay on the ground. He started to push himself up, but his knee had locked up on him again, slowing him down. Cissy Chambers, more than twenty years his junior, was already on her feet and back in pursuit. By the time one of his patrolmen had come over to help Dick up to his feet, Dick had lost sight of both Cissy and the Karloff-lookalike.

Giving a low growl of disappointment in himself, Dick and the patrolman set off on foot. Reaching down to the radio clipped to his belt, the man spoke into the microphone affixed to the lapel of his coat. “Chambers, talk to me.”

“I’ve got visual. He’s turned down the Post Street alley. I think he’s headed for the Fourteenth Street tunnel.”

Dick’s shoes skidded to a halt. His head was on a swivel, until he’d identified the alleyway that would serve as a cut-through. “We’ll be waiting on the other side,” the man remarked, breaking into a sprint as he barreled through the streets of Bludhaven.

There was a fence dividing the alley.

Even just twenty years ago, Dick could have vaulted that without so much as a second thought. Now it was a considerable effort, slowing him down as he pulled himself up and then struggled to swing his leg over and drop down.

He felt like he’d just run a marathon. And no amount of Aleve was going to numb the pain that was radiating through his knee. But, be that as it may, Dick and the patrolman arrived at the end of the 14th Street tunnel.

He’d have liked a longer rest in which to catch his breath, but the sound of footsteps forced the haggard police commissioner to steel himself for the approach of their burglary suspect.

Instead, it was Cissy Chambers who came sprinting into view. And was obviously as shocked to see Dick as he was to see her. “What? You didn’t stop him?”

“Stop him? He never came through here,” Dick countered breathlessly.

Pulling her flashlight from off her utility belt, Cissy turned and shone the light back down the tunnel. It was all solid concrete construction. To include the pavestones with narrow strips for drainage. “But, that’s impossible...” the woman uttered aloud.
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Hidden 5 yrs ago Post by Byrd Man
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December 22nd, 1946
Kavanaugh's Pub
8:13 AM

The cop bar was decorated with Christmas crap. Bartenders wore goofy Santa hats. Red and green tinsel strung up around the bar. A drunk patrol cop wore a red Rudolph nose and puked beer on the floor. Christmas music played on the jukebox In a corner booth, Jim Corrigan crushed bennies with the butt of his service revolver and used the barrel to line up the powder. One, two, three neat little lines on the table.

Jim got the shit from a drug dealer who peddled out of some fruit nightclub. He walked through a group of sad, middle aged queers gyrating under blacklights to the Andrews Sister. He found the dealer in a bathroom stall geezing up with Big H. Jim kicked the needle away and shoved him against the stall door. He gave the drooling shitbird the spiel: Your bennies or your life, which is it gonna be?

He snorted the lines quick-like. The shit hit his system. His eyes pinned, his pulse raced. The bennies mingled with whiskey and beer and sent him off into the stratosphere. He left earth behind and slouched in the booth. The pills were to help him forget the dead girl's face. A day since he found that body and it spooked him fierce. He saw her dead body every time he closed his eyes. It made no sense. He was twelve years a cop, he'd seen scores of DB's.

THIS was different. SHE was HIS victim. Number eight with a bullet. SHE was still just a she. Officially Jane Doe #29 at the city morgue. Canvassing around the area of the crime scene revealed no eyewitnesses. Nobody in the neighborhood recognized her. They deadpanned Jim when he showed photos. Nobody gave a fuck. Another dead girl? So the hell what? As long as it ain't me, now keep moving, cop. He was out of his zone on this one. He was a Narco dick, this was a Homicide. Max Eckhardt didn't care. He co-opted him to work canvass around the scene. He told Jim, you found the body so you're involved now. The entire PD wanted it solved bad, Whiskey Max wanted it solved even worse. He salivated for a silver LT bar. He coveted rank almost as much as he coveted hooch.

Jim jumped from the booth. He ran out the bar and to his car. The bennies did not kill his thoughts on Jane Doe #29. He hauled ass down side streets. He sweat through his clothing. The bennies made his thoughts race. They raced around in a circle and came back to Jane Doe #29. He hauled Code 3 down the parkway. He tried to outrace his thoughts. He failed.

The radio in his car squawked. Dispatch asking to patch a call through.

"Corrigan."

"It's Max Eckhardt. The PD brass is holding a meeting in an hour to discuss these Snapshot Killer murders. I want you there."

Jim said, "I'm Narcotics, Sarge. I discovered the body, but what--."

"I have my reasons. Let's leave it at that. Be there in an hour."

*****​


O'Neil Heights
8:13 AM

Slam rolled ghettoside towards a rendezvous. Winos and junkies were up and at it even this early in the AM. They spat at Slam's car as he passed. They flipped him off and waggled their dicks at Slam as he passed. Slam ignored it and kept on driving. The natives acted like natives, Slam acted like a good white man and ignored native behavior.

The Finger Housing Project loomed ahead. The Finger: a New Deal funded slum. They were six twelve story firetraps filled with felonious activities. A mini Sodom and Gomorrah rolled up into a half dozen rickety buildings. Pushers pushed product outside the entrances, dealers dealt drugs from stairwells on every floor. If you were ghettoside, this was THE place to be. It was très slum chic.

Slam got hard looks from the boys outside the Finger's A building. They smelled cop from a mile away. They saw the shape of his .45 underneath his jacket and got scarce. He rode a rickety elevator up to the top floor. He lit a cigarette on the ride up. A big brouhaha at Gotham Central loomed in an hour. Boyle gave him the details. The gist: This spree killer shit is from hunger. Close the goddamn case by new year's or else. All of Homicide and some additional muscle would be there.

Elevator doors slid open. Slam walked down a shadowy corridor. Concrete walls, graffiti on the walls and apartment doors. 12F near the end of hallway. Slam rapped hard and fast. That cop knock.

The door yanked open. Two black men pulled Slam inside. A small living room and two more armed men. A goon plucked the cigarette from Slam's hand and stubbed it out. Slam took in the digs. Fading paint on the walls, crappy furniture. A radio set worth about a thousand bucks, an actual television set. Those were rare as a motherfucker. On a couch: Dope peddler Jefferson Skeevers. He was dressed in all purple, his hair in a slicked back conk. Jeff works for Carlo Giacomo. He runs drug crews and dealers all through the city. His shit was mob-approved and GCPD blessed. His shit was the best around. If you got it in Gotham and it got you fucked up, then you got it from Skeevers. Skeevers Coke and Dope: Accept no substitute.

Skeevers held out a mirror with lines of coke and said, "Mr. Bradley. Thank you for coming, want a bump?"

"It's Detective Bradley. Tell me what you want, and why you called me instead of Grogan."

One of Skeevers' bodyguards popped a switchblade and scratched his neck with it. He got hard stares from the rest while Skeevers snorted lines. He came up from the mirror, rubbing his nose and snorting.

"I say gotdamn..."

Slam cracked his knuckles. "Today, Skeevers. I got somewhere else I need to be."

Skeevers rubbed his nose and nodded. "Alright, alright. A cop is fucking with my business. This motherfucker is shaking down dealers and taking their shit. He took pills from one of my guys last night and he is becoming a righteous pain in my ass. His name is Corrigan."

Shakedown Jim. Who the fuck else? He saw Corrigan earlier at the latest Snapshot Killer snuff scene. He thought Corrigan looked fucked up. Now he knew whose supply he was getting high on.

Skeevers blew snot from his nose and said, "I call you up because I know you will take care of the matter without getting out of hand. Your boy, Two-Gun Jack, the same can't be said about him. Ofay motherfucker is playing fast and loose lately. I asked him to just scare a crew of independents operating out of the west side and he killed half of them! The word is he owes somebody out there a lot of fucking money. I think that peckerwood is chafing under the pressure."

Slam deadpanned him. "I'm on it. Is that all?"

"Yeah, amscray."

The goons tittered. Skeevers grinned. Slam took it and walked out. He hit the elevator and back down to his car. He blew through O'Neil Heights and beelined towards Gotham Central.

Skeevers' reading hit true. Slam noticed something off about Grogan the last few times they talked. He talked too much about philosophical bullshit. The nature of man, the nature of murder, greed, darkness. Way out there. he talked up Max Eckhardt just as much. He hated Whiskey Max. He wanted him crushed post fucking haste. It unnerved Slam. Killing a fellow cop could not be rushed. Two-Gun Jack's impatience rankled. It made him worry he was getting sloppy.

There was no room for sloppiness in what they did. These animals they dealt with could smell weakness. One misstep destroyed perceptions of strength. One mistake would create chaos. Slam needed time to think and confirm what Skeevers said for sure. But right now it appeared Grogan's blood was in the water, and the sharks were circling.

*****​


Gotham Central
9:15 AM

Max sipped coffee laced with booze. Too much profile on him to outright chug from the bottle so he opted for the subtle route. At his desk, the particulars of the Snapshot Killer case strung up on a corkboard to his right. Eight young women all murdered on the city's west side. They all had the basic appearance. White, dark-haired and thin. All of them were late night habituates of the west side bar/drug scene. Hookers, cocktail waitresses, barflies, and bartenders all. Outside of the looks and jobs, no common links. The killer patrolled until he found a potential victim that fit the description. Premeditated, the victims chosen by chance. Max looked at the photos of the eight girls. The killer took pix of them in their last moments. Some of them cried, some of them fought, some of them accepted it. He zeroed in on victim number eight. She did a bit of all three.

Shakedown Jim found her. No ID found on her body to identify her with. A Jane Doe for now. Fields and a bunch of uniforms were on the streets canvassing in the area around where the body was found. All the previous canvasses turned up jack and shit. Nobody wanted to talk to cops about the dead girls. Max polished the rest of the Irish coffee and stood. He walked and worked out leg cramps. The phone on his desk rang. Charlie calling from a payphone. They hadn't turned up anything in the immediate area around the crime scene so they were expanding the search. He put the phone back in the cradle and saw a scribbled message beside the phone. His lawyer. The custody fight over Mary stalled. He paid the lawyer to stall it out until after the first of the year so he could have a chance to solve this case. Daddy Max, LT Eckhardt the crimebuster, would look golden compared to abandoning Alice Eckhardt.

The Homicide conference room packed. All of Homicide, save Fields, crowded in the room and mingled. Twenty detectives along with GCPD high brass and other detectives Max recognized. There's Corrigan, there's Bradley looking at Corrigan. There's Two-Gun Jack Grogan and his goon squad near the corner. Grogan talked with Inspector Merkel. Lieutenant Boyle pulled drags off a cigar. He looked like he was circling the drain. Super-thin and sunken eyes. Yellowed skin. Less cop and more holocaust victim. Commissioner Akins polished off a paper cup of coffee and walked to the head of the conference table. Murmurs stalled as he held his hand up.

Akins said, "Settle down now. For the eighth time in the last few months, some sick fuck killed a woman on the west side. The same monster taunts our police department with pictures of his victims. The press are calling him the Snapshot Killer. I don't care what the hell they call him, I want him caught. I've let you run the thread out on this one, but now the heat is on. The FBI has informed me that they're bootjacking the case after New Year's. I am here to tell you it won't come to that. It won't come to that because we are solving this goddamn case before the first of the year."

Merkel stepped up and said, "Homicide will continue to investigate the case normally. To help supplement their investigation, Captain Grogan's squad will comb through sex offender records and interview any potential offenders who could be culpable for the crime. Those that do not have alibis for the dates of the murders will be brought in for interrogation."

Max felt his stomach go cold. Couched in bureaucratic speak was the truth written in bright neon. FRAME JOB. GCPD's specialty. Grogan and his thugs would find a pervert or depraved mind that would fit the bill. They would then beat a confession out the man and pin the murders on him. They would have him declared mentally incompetent to stand trial. The case would be solved, but the killer would not be caught.

A desk sergeant elbowed his way to Max. He passed him a note.

CALL FIELDS ASAP. EXPANDED CANVASS TURNED UP POTENTIAL LEAD.
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Hidden 5 yrs ago Post by Lord Wraith
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Lord Wraith Actually Three Otters in a Trenchcoat

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Location: Star City
Crisis! Part 4

Interaction(s): @Natty with Magik
Previously: Crisis! 3


“I assume you got all that?” Connor asked into his comms while moving towards the laptop. Pulling out a small USB drive, he plugged it directly into the already crowded laptop. The hardware install icon popped up in the bottom right corner before suddenly the screen flickered, Overwatch’s image appearing in the center of the screen momentarily before disappearing.

“Of course,” Came Overwatch’s response, the mouse moving across the screen only to disappear behind a black pop up filled with code. “And I am in!”

The pop up disappeared only to be replaced by more code. Overwatch was clearly diving deep into the programming behind the terrorist’s attack, which hopefully meant she could disable whatever those things were out in the city.

“This is… so weird!” Her voice caught Connor off guard, snapping him out of his train of thought.

“What is?” He asked.

“The code, it’s like, uh, how do I explain this.” Overwatch began, “You know, like in a foreign film, eh, you probably don’t.” Connor could hear her stifle a giggle at the thought, “Anyways, it’s like the code was written in another language and then roughly translated based on patterns and markers like how you’d translate from one language into another.”

“So it’s what, Russian? Middle-Eastern?” Something obviously not from around here.” Connor suggested imagining Overwatch shaking her head at him.

“Definitely not from around here, honestly I couldn’t begin to tell you what language it was originally but lucky for us, the English translation is crude but efficient.” A confirmation suddenly flashed on the laptop’s screen, the mouse clicking on ‘Confirm.’ Connor’s eyes went wide at the sight of the timer turning to zero only for a follow-up message to flash that the detonation sequence had been cancelled.

“That’s one crisis averted.” Came a confident brag accompanied by a flurry of keystrokes.

“Can you do anything about the drones?” Connor asked, trying to hide his impatience while keeping his hands ready on his bow.

“Working on it, grasshopper.” Came Overwatch’s response. “I think I can shut the obelisks down, but only for Star City. Doesn’t look like this console has enough a high enough place on the hierarchy to send orders back to New York.”

“So everything you’re doing could be undone in an instant?” Connor replied, obviously panicked.

“I’ve got a real low tech solution to that.” Overwatch retorted, a smile evident in her voice. “Second I’m done here, you kill that laptop. Kill the power, rip out the battery, smash it if you have to. That laptop is the only connection from New York to Star City and the only terminal they can route their orders through.”

“So if we remove it…”

“They’re done like dinner,” Overwatch interjected, finishing Connor’s sentence. “Look at that, already finishing each other’s sandwiches.”

While the reference was lost on Connor, the implication wasn’t. He was glad that Magik was otherwise occupied and couldn’t see his cheeks slowly turning a bright shade of red beneath his hood.

“Now!” Overwatch suddenly snapped while the laptop screen turned black. Realizing that meant she had killed the system, Connor picked the laptop up from the makeshift workstation and dropped it to the ground. The battery exploded out of the bottom, skittering across the floor of the library while Connor’s heel separated the motherboard from the thin walls of plastic surrounding it.

“Yeah, that should do it.” Unable to stop himself, Connor felt a smile creep across his face at the sound of Overwatch’s amusement towards his brutal murder of the laptop.

“So, the obelisks?” He asked, already assuming the answer.

“Nothing more than the modern art pieces they were allegedly in the first place,” Overwatch stated smugly, “Anything else exciting planned for tonight?”

“Gotta help Magik tie up some loose ends!” Connor replied, waiting for Overwatch’s response.

“No I get it,” Connor couldn’t help but notice the dejected tone in her voice. Suddenly she perked up, speaking again.

“Go be the hero Star City deserves.”
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Hidden 5 yrs ago Post by Hillan
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Hillan I'm a writer - Lying's what we do.

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Location: Star City
Post #1.12: Crisis 1.02 - Infection

Interaction(s): The People Of Star City
Previously: Nothing Good


Being affected by the swarm was... An experience. Your senses were all cranked up to eleven, your emotions ran wild, yet not at all. As if your brain had been unplugged and you were simply operating on feral instinct - the only true feeling you had left was anger. Pure, raw, unadulterated and unabridged. A feeling that was incomparable. Overwhelming, to say the least. A Hurricane of anger, fear and confusion. Where all you can think of is your directive - destruction. Tearing everything, and everyone you see limb from limb.

Thawne was twitching as the virus infected his mind. His body flickering at super speed, lightning surging around him from the speedforce, the color changing from his new yellow to the red he was shrouded in for so many years. His eyes shot open with red light and the world stopped. For the first time since he got here, since he killed Barry Allen, he felt angry. Truly angry. Perhaps more like himself than he had before his final showdown with Allen. He wasn't driven by principles, or ego now. It wasn't about being better, smarter or faster.

It was pure, it was simple. He couldn't think, not coherently. All he could feel was the rage, at everything. Gideon was trying to make contact with him, sending out electric pulses through the suit. Trying to reach him with her voice projected into his ear. Nothing worked, he wasn't responding. Not anymore. She had done the calculations. 3 million people lived in Star City. If Thawne's objective was the same as the other infected, he would reduce that number to zero by the end of the day.

Thawne began moving. Faster than before, he blasted through the city, without a word. Without a thought, he didn't turn on the first person he saw, but he wasn't controlling his speed, tearing up the concrete pavement as he ran. Shattering windows, knocking over people and smaller objects. Making Cars bounce as if they had been hit with something heavy as he ran past. Somehow, Thawne had a sense of direction, in spite of being infected. The Obelisk. The drone pointed him to it directly, even though it was sending signals to go in the opposite direction, the will of the ancient time traveler would shine through. With a primal, almost feral anger, Thawne let out a shout as he approached the Obelisk, crashing into it, at the base, running all the way up it to the top, striking it, clawing it and scratching it, tearing up the entirerty of that well, the debris falling everywhere. When he reached the top he used it as ramp to leap towards the nearby skyscraper, his feet touching the glass window of the scraper long enough to use it as a springboard, frothing from the mouth and screaming something incoherent, the feral Thawne pushed off, shattering the glass across the entire side of the building as he did so, lightning engulfing him.

With his one hit, the hit the Obelisk in it's center of mass, forcing the tower to crash down into a mess of debris. As he came to the ground, he cleared enough distance almost instantly. Trying to head for the biggest swarm of people he could find, when he was suddenly stopped. His suit was sending out electrical chocks directly into his brain, freezing him temporarily, he was fighting Gideon's assault.

Perhaps it was Mr.Allen's programming that shone through, but backup routines were launched and Gideon started running the self-destruct protocol built into the suit. Her calculations weren't certain that it would kill Thawne with the current level of speedforce in his system, but it could slow him down long enough that the heroes of this time could defeat him, while lowering the casualties.

But as the symbol on the suit began overheating, about to electrocute the man inside of it as he was fully taken over by the swarm that had infected his mind. He began moving. His hand traveled to the back of his head, his face still twisted into a demented smile, his body surging with energy. His hand was quivering when he touched the bug on the back of his head, flicking it with his index and middle finger, disintegrating it. His body immediately recovered, forcing him onto one knee on the asphalt.

"Cancel the selfdestruct protocol, Gideon." Thawne told the AI, calmly.

"You're okay, Professor?" She insisted, if she could be worried, there would be a sense of worry in her voice.

"I am." Thawne responded swiftly, standing back up and surveying the scene around him. The infected had not appreciated him taking down the second spire, and they would be mobilizing to defend the others better than this one.

"That's.. Lucky, Professor." Gideon confirmed and Thawne shook his head.

"I make my own luck, Gideon." He spoke softly, a new horde making their way to him, and he calmly grabbed the other half of the energy bar.

"It's not wise to try and control me by forcing me to feel the same feelings that turned me into who I am. All it managed to do was piss me off." He finished the bar and turned his gaze towards the next Obelisk, pulling up the map on the holographic display on his arm, confirming his destination.

The 100 or so infected would come sprinting at him in the same ghoulish way as the others. Thawne would step off the ground in a blast of lightning, the sonic boom knocking them to the ground.

The next Obelisk fell before the Horde noticed Thawne, only knowing what had happened as the lightning bolt-insignia like the one he wore on his chest, was etched into the collapsing tower as it fell. He was making a point. Barry wouldn't have hogged the glory in this way, but Thawne figured that if his goal in this timeline was to establish the legacy of the Flash - he didn't have the time to beat around the bush. As big of a splash as possible was required.

He would prove he was the superior Flash. Nay, The Flawless Flash. And the way he would do that would be to not just take down the Swarm, but also free the people of Star City.

"Gideon, use the signals recorded from the suit from t he drone that was infecting me and locate all of the drones in the entire city."

"Done. Putting them on the holographic map now." As soon as the dots began appearing, the Speedster rushed through the city, destroying each and every single drone. The en-devour took a few minutes but the swarms were mostly focused in big areas, he was doing his best to leave the host unhurt, unlike the first people who had attacked him.

The Technicians monitoring the swarm could see their map of the operational drones go dark in big sections, like a wave, being unable to make heads or tails of what was going on over in Star City, while the battle in New York was still raging. As Thawne had freed the people of Star, he stopped. His body quivering, surging with energy, like an overcharged battery. He felt dizzy.

"Gideon, where's the remaining towers?"

"You have destroyed the droids, why destroy the towers?"

"They will still detonate if I do not disarm them." Thawne said swiftly. Upon hearing a soft buzzing in his ear, until Gideon popped open the map again.

"It would seem someone called has already done that. It would seem that the people of this century aren't so helpless without your guiding hand after all."

"Was that sarcasm, Gideon?" Thawne asked, an eyebrow raised and his voice stern.

"I am not programmed for Sarcasm." The artificial intelligence responded, coyly.

As people were coming back to their senses the people saw the Scarlet-clad hero in the middle of the small park where he had stopped, and they got closer, connecting the lightning bolt on his chest to the one that had appeared on the Obelisks shortly before they were destroyed.

"Wow, it's that.. Flasher guy!" One 30-something guy said and pointed, cheering. His clothes dirtied.

"It's The Flash, dipshit!" A younger man shouted back, his face covered in blood from the fights he had been in earlier, his ear was bleeding.

"He saved us!"

Thawne looked around him and had a confused grin on his face. Still feeling the fatigue, energy looking like lightning sparking off him.

"Do I smile and wave?"

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Hidden 5 yrs ago Post by Lord Wraith
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♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ SEASON ONE: GODS AMONG MEN ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Location: Four Freedoms Plaza - New York City, United States of America
Season One #1.05: Devastation and Reform

Interaction(s): @Webboysurf as Arsenal and Captain America, @Hound55 as the Blue Beetle, & @Star Lord as Wonder Woman
The suit had been badly damaged during the fight with Wonder Woman. The majority of its power reserves had been sapped. Stryfe had no knowledge of the engineering that went into it, but even he could guess it had not been designed for prolonged combat with Wonder Woman. It was a showpiece, a prop, at best, it was a prototype. Still, Stryfe was able to sustain flight as he limped back towards the Four Freedoms Plaza.

Forcing the suit to fly a little higher, the leader of the Metahuman Supremacy Front re-entered the building. Firing the suit’s thrusters in short bursts, Stryfe maneuvered the suit the best he could, still coming to a rough landing.

Griffin was the first to greet him, helping his father stand while the technicians began to examine the suit and attempt to repair the failing power systems.

“Status report!” Stryfe called towards the techs.

“Star City is completely offline.” A technician replied while others began to remove the heavy armour from Reverend Stryker’s body.

“No,” Stryfe ordered, raising a hand to wave them away. “The battle is not over, we have to make our last stand here.”

“Dad,” Griffin started, but Stryker silenced his son. It wouldn’t do him any good now to hear the pleas of the boy he knew was going to be left fatherless.

“You need to go home,” Stryker ordered, “Someone will need to take care of your mother.” He added before turning to address the rest of his followers.

“In fact, anyone here who is the sole caretaker of their household, you must leave. Our mission, while burdened with glorious purpose, should not leave those who cannot fend for themselves defenceless.” Stryfe bellowed, “There is no shame in this, you have fulfilled your role, and I can not ask any more of you.”

“To those of you who stay,” He continued, “You will be facing death, but know in that, there is salvation. You die for the greater good, you die so that others can live, free of the children of the atom” As the group cheered, Stryfe nodded in satisfaction.

Activating the stolen technology, Stryker created a portal for those who needed to depart. Sharing one last look with Griffin, Stryker turned his back, unable to watch his son leave.

“They’re gone, Sir.” One of the technicians informed him, prompting Stryfe to immediately shut down the machine. Raising an armoured fist, he quickly brought it down on the console, erasing any chance of his pursuers being able to follow his boy.

“Come now,” Stryfe motioned towards the doors and windows, “Prepare the room for breaching.” He ordered, “We may die here today as martyrs, but we’re sure as hell not going out without a fight.”



The building was eerily quiet. Roy had his sidearm drawn, while Cap had his shield out. There was no movement, no signs of anyone nearby… just silence. They couldn’t access the top few floors from the stairwell, seeing as Reed was apparently far too paranoid and secure for his own good. The two men made little sound as they searched the floor briskly. Of course, no signs of the hostages nor the MSF. Steve turned his gaze towards Roy and his quiver of arrows. "Please tell me you have-”

A low hum from across the open room made them both silent, and the two men raised their respective weapons as they approached the elevator. Whatever was on the other side… it couldn’t be good. Roy tapped on his tinted glasses a couple times, and the visuals changed until he got exactly what he wanted: A 3D thermal view through the elevator shaft. The archer watched as the elevator came into view from below, filled with armed soldiers. Roy raised his left hand as he observed the soldiers rise more and more. He was so focused on watching where the soldiers were going that he almost missed another thermal signature… below the elevator. The scarlet archer tilted his head slightly at this, before looking to Steve. “I… open the door.”

Steve gave a nod, holstering the shield on his back while forcing his fingers in between the sliding metal doors into the elevator shaft. With one quick motion, Steve was able to easily slide them open and hold them in place while Roy crouched down and looked up, sidearm pointed up towards the blue figure dangling from beneath the elevator, not saying a single word as he waited for the hostiles to exit the elevator.

The Blue Beetle looked down to where bright light burst into the elevator shaft, he glanced nervously up towards where armed soldiers were disembarking, watching a sliver of light flicker with shade matching their footfalls. He looked back down towards Roy and offered a feeble wave.



Ted stood in the elevator bay with a red garbed guy and Captain America, re-coiling his line while getting the low-down from the pair.

"So… I take it you got my message…"

Steve shook his head. “I’m afraid not, son. We picked up some weird signals here and ran a quick scan. Found hostages and hostiles. Speaking of…” Captain America lifted his wrist to his mouth as he walked away, a furrowed brow forming above his eyes.

Roy turned his gaze back towards Ted, shrugging his shoulders. The archer raised an eyebrow at the new guy. “I hope you’re a hacker, Pajama Sam. Or we’re sincerely screwed.”

"Really? You guys just found this place on your own..? Well-- well now I just feel like a dick." He scratched at the back of his cowl. "Blue Beetle." Ted held out a glove to shake hands, and then awkwardly removed it once he saw that the man in red had his arms crossed, sizing him up, and how that wasn't going to change anytime soon. "I'm the reason why these things are only tearing the Hell out of Midtown instead of spreading to the outer boroughs, so… I guess..? Maybe, probably, sorta..?" He glanced down and checked his belt to make sure his USB was still there. "Let's just go with 'yes.'"

Steve returned, giving a slight nod to both men. “Alright, intel shows that the MSF has barricaded themselves in with the equipment and the hostages. So we are only going to have one chance at this, and no live ammo. Arsenal, you’re breaching from outside. Blue, you’re with me.”

"No live ammo..? Sure. Not a problem."

Steve gave a nod as Roy pulled out his bow and nocked an arrow-like it was second nature. With the arrow loaded, the archer pulled a small metal box from his utility belt and flicked open the top, revealing a line of microrope and attaching the exposed end to the modified arrowhead. He used one hand to toss it towards Cap, who caught it and hooked it onto his belt while Roy fired the arrow up into the elevator a few floors above. Cap gave a curt nod to Harper as the archer made his way across the room towards the windows, before turning his gaze towards his new ally. “Alright, the goal is to incapacitate the hostiles before they can start opening fire. Arsenal is going to give them a party favour, and then we burst into the room. Keep behind me, and make a break for whatever is controlling the towers as soon as you have the chance. We’ve got your back. Any questions?”

"Ah no. No, that's-- that's pretty straightforward really."

The Blue Beetle unholstered his makeshift B.B. gun and looked at it. He still had no idea if the thing would even work.

He steadied himself and got ready to go.

“Wait for my signal.” Steve stepped out into the stairwell, and the microrope caught his weight and allowed him to hang over the impending pit. With a tap on the metal box on his utility belt, and the rope began coiling itself to allow Cap to begin automatically hoisting up towards the elevator up above. When he reached the elevator, Steve pulled out a nondescript canister. He lifted the canister up towards the bottom of the elevator and sprayed a foam circle. Almost immediately, Cap holstered the canister and then removed his shield from his back, placing it between himself and the foam ring. Within seconds, the foam began burning bright as the modified thermite foam began cutting through the elevator’s floor until the crude circle Cap had drawn fell out from the bottom of the elevator and dropped the long distance towards the lower floors. “Alright, all clear.”

Steve suddenly felt a light tapping on his right shoulder. He looked down and saw the Blue Beetle had thrown a grapple line up at him. "Little help..?" He whispered.

Steve dropped the rope back down, reached down and hoisted up the blue hero with one arm. "Thanks. I'm-- a little banged up at the moment."

Cap helped the Beetle into the elevator, before using a single arm to hoist himself into the elevator. Captain America readjusted the grip on his shield.

Roy, on the other hand, was a bit busy. He was busy pulling a small laser from his utility belt and cutting through the glass. It took only a few seconds for the pane of glass to fall out towards the street below. A modified grappling arrow later, and Roy found himself outside of the building and walking parallel to the structure. Roy loaded up a small gun that looked similar to a flare gun and lifted it up towards the window of the floor just above. A tap of his HUD, and Roy was able to see the thermal readings of the individuals up above. He took a deep breath and began counting down. “Ten, nine, eight…”

“Three, two, one…”

“Kick it!”

Roy fired the gun, and a canister shot through the window shattering it. It bounced off the ceiling and hit one of the hostiles square in the jaw to knock him out cold instantly. It took a second for anyone to realize what was going on. And by the time they had, this party favour activated. The canister opened up and launched smaller flashbang grenades, which created a massive blast of light and sound to disorient everyone on one side of the room.

And with that, Cap and Roy breached simultaneously. Cap forced open the elevator doors and immediately rushed forward, shield up to begin bashing MSF forces out of the way. Roy, in the meantime, lifted up his ICER rifle and detached his line as he began firing at the MSF forces… until his eyes settled on one particularly well-armoured individual. Roy swore in his mind profusely as he quickly finished unloading the ICER round while shouting out towards Stryfe. “I think you ordered an ass-kicking off Prime Now. I need you to sign for it, you fuck.”

Cap shook his head as he delivered a swift punch into a dazed MSF operative’s jaw, knocking him out rather quickly as he muttered under his breath, “Kids these days.”

“Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness,” Stryfe lifted his gauntlet towards the archer to fire a blast that just barely missed. “For theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

The Blue Beetle ran across the room, his legs pumping like pistons. Worn pistons deteriorated from use and corrosion, but pistons nonetheless. Ted raised his B.B. gun and fired off a single blast of blinding bright light, disorientating the soldiers on one side of the room. He spotted the control room, veered to change course and slid through the door, turning and slamming it behind him for what little protection it could provide.

The room had screens everywhere. A console with flickering lights and buttons… and a laptop jacked into an auxiliary port to the console. They'd brought their own equipment. Further confirmation that this was outsiders just looking for a powerful established system to jack into. Ted raced over and turned the laptop on, hearing crashes and groans from behind the door, which told the story that the conflict still raged on outside.

The hostages took the chaotic moment as an opportunity to run away from the conflict and barricade themselves into a separate room, apart from the evil armoured man. Meanwhile, Roy was still busy dodging blasts from Stryfe’s gauntlet, ducking and weaving between the furniture, equipment and crates. His luck ran out when he tried to zig, and Stryfe chose to aim his gauntlet to zag. Arsenal went flying backwards, slamming his back into the far wall behind him as Stryfe turned his attention towards the Blue Beetle. Stryfe began sauntering over towards the Beetle until a particular vibranium shield slammed against a support pillar in front of him before colliding straight into the hostile’s chest. Cap rounded that out by rushing up behind Stryfe and slamming his palm into the back of Stryfe’s head to bring him down to the ground. The sheer force of the impact created cracks in the floor beneath Stryfe.

“Welcome to the USA, pal.”

The victory was short-lived, as another firing of Stryfe’s gauntlets into the ground was enough to send both men shooting up towards the ceiling. Cap’s back slammed into the tiled ceiling before the two both fell back through the cracked floor and into the open floor below.

"Come ooooooooon! Load! … LOAD!" Ted scowled at the slow-booting laptop, standing over it with frustration. "There!" Ted started working away, he pulled his hack tools out, jacked in and set to work on the password security.

Cap and Stryfe were both bruised and beaten rather spectacularly, and were a little slow in getting up. Stryfe spat out a glob of blood and mucus as he stared his foe right in the eye.

“You can not stop what is already done, Captain.”

Steve forced himself back up on to his feet, closing both of his fists and holding them up as he got back into his fighting stance. He gave a small smile with his cracked and bloody lips. “I could do this all-”

Before he could even finish that statement, Stryfe fired his gauntlet square towards Cap’s chest and knocked him backwards. The World War II vet flew through the window behind him, managing to just barely catch the ledge before he began a rather long and rapid descent to the pavement below. He struggled to hold on with his fingertips as Stryfe sauntered over.

“I would say it has been an honour, Captain, but I don’t lie.”

As he lowered his gauntlet, a voice called out from behind Stryfe. “You forgot to sign, asshole.” Stryfe was barely able to look back before the explosive arrow impacted against his back and rocketed him forward and out the window to take a tumble towards the ground. Roy walked over and held out his hand towards Steve, who was able to pull himself up enough to get hoisted back onto a solid floor. The two were very clearly out of breath and sprawled themselves on the ground for a moment to enjoy the breather.

The Blue Beetle sighed with relief as he bypassed the password screen, finally free to get to the inner workings of their system. First things first, beat the bomb. Ted started to search through past processes looking for something like a countdown or self-destruct sequences. The glow of the screen lit his smile as he found what he was looking for.

Cap and Roy groaned their way back on to their feet, only to hear a noise from outside. Stryfe had just rocketed up into view, his gauntlets pointed towards the two “heroes.”

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.”

Roy gave a quick look to Cap and sighed. With speed and finesse that had earned him his old sidekick nickname, Arsenal nocked back an arrow while quickly hooking up a microrope from his gauntlet onto the arrowhead. Cap, on the other hand, lifted up his forearm just in time for his trusty shield to come flying in and lock in place. Stryfe fired both gauntlets in their direction, and the force was intense. Roy only had time to wrap his fist as tightly around the microrope line as he could before he was sent flying across the room and back into the wall next to the elevators. Cap, on the other hand, dug his feet into the proverbial dirt as he slid back a couple feet while his shield absorbed most of the energy. Stryfe went flying back into the building as the arrowhead had impaled itself through his armour and leg and hooked itself in, pulling the villain as he was connected to the scarlet archer temporarily via microrope. As Stryfe went to pass Cap, the latter was able to regain his footing just in time for a well-placed shield bash to the face.

“It’s over, Stryfe. Surrender now peacefully. This is your last chance.” Cap unholsted the sidearm from his belt and lifted it towards Stryfe’s head. The hero turned his gaze away from Stryfe for a second to give a side glance towards Roy, who was lying unconscious and severely wounded. When Cap turned his gaze back towards his target, a raised fist was waiting for him.

“I don’t negotiate with the unclean.” Yet another gauntlet blast was triggered just before Cap pulled the trigger. The shockwave sent the bullet flying backwards and into Steve Rogers’ shoulder as the hero went flying back into a support pillar, placing a sizable dent in it. Cap fell back on to his side at the foot of the pillar. His body was weak, and he spat out a bit of the blood that was pooling in his mouth. All Cap could bring himself to do for a moment was to just breath as he watched his adversary rise to his feet and lift his gauntlet up in the air towards him again.

“It’s a shame it had to be you, Captain, I was really hoping it would be-”

Stryfe paused when he heard the wall behind him breaking and turned to see Wonder Woman with her iconic sword. It was covered by fresh blood along with her armour, which still had some dust from their last encounter. She stared at him without saying a single word in anger and disgust. Stryfe aimed his gauntlet and fired, but she quickly moved out of the way. In an instant, Wonder Woman grabbed and crushed his hand with ease. Stryfe cried out in pain, staggering backwards before approaching Wonder Woman.

“I tell you..” He started, continuing to move towards Wonder Woman. “Do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also.”

Wonder Woman heard his words but felt nothing at all. She pulled out her lasso, shoved Stryfe to the ground, and tied it around his neck. Stryfe tried to escape by punching her with his left hand. But it only caused her to crush it. He didn’t scream or plead, but instead remained silent, accepting of his fate.



The Blue Beetle continued to work away as sweat dripped down his face. This time he was pretty sure it wasn't just flop sweat from the heightened anxiety of the situation. It was hot as blazes with all of the machinery. Clearly, the room wasn't designed for the door to be closed normally. He wiped it away with the back of his glove and kept working. So far he had ended the threat of the bombs, stopping the countdown with only a few minutes remaining, and now he was working on a way to shut the towers down entirely and end this whole horrific endeavour.

He brought up a list of established networks and began checking them.

{View OMFS#1A}

One of the monitors cut to static.

"Ah, ok. That one's down. Getting the hang of this, not long now..."

{View OMFS#1B}

"Okay, Madison Square Garden. Do that one last… Let's see if I can't hurry this along a little..."

{View OMFS#1*}

Suddenly all of the monitors cut to feeds, left to right with numerous screens set to static. "We'd done better than I thought."

{End_Session OMFS#1C}

The third screen, featuring a tower in Bedford-Stuyvesant cut out. Ted could barely contain himself. He checked his comm-link and his 'partner' in the Bug.

"How're we going up there? One should have just cut out in Bed-Stuy?"

"It did. I was about to tell you! The little light went off!"

"That was me! Ted shared in her excitement. "I did that! Hang on, I think I've got this figured out now! I'm gonna shut this all down, and then I'll come to get you!"

{End_Session OMFS#1C}
{End_Session OMFS#1D}
{End_Session OMFS#1E}

"They're all going off now!"

The Blue Beetle couldn't keep the smile from his face if he wanted to.



Wonder Woman didn’t pay any attention to anything except Stryfe. She looked at him emotionless and asked, “How do we undo your mess?”

“You cannot undo that which is already done.”

Then, she asked another question. “Did you make both the towers and robots?”

“The Lord works in mysterious ways, first he giveth…”

Another one but she made sure to pull on the lasso harder. “Then, who did?”

“...Then he taketh away.”

Wonder Woman paused to reflect the answers. What was he saying? It didn’t make any sense. Regardless, she asked her final question. “What was the point of attacking both New York City and Star City?”

Cap slowly rose to his feet, holding his side as he leaned against the support pillar that he had collided with. His gaze rested on Diana’s blade. The blood was not a good sign… especially after the talk, they had not that long ago. But that wasn’t important right now. He lifted a finger to his ear.

“Captain Rogers to Forward Base Alpha. Four Freedoms has been secured. We’re going to need EMS ASAP.” With business taken care of, Cap turned his gaze towards Diana, and nodded towards her weapon. “What have you done?”

“My job.” Wonder Woman answered coldly towards her old friend. She grabbed Stryfe and threw him into the nearest elevator. He was thrown hard enough to leave behind a dent on its metal wall. Then, she walked towards him and grabbed onto the rope to keep him from running away. “Come on, let’s get back to ground level. We can talk if you want.”

Cap shook his head. “We’ll talk later. Right now, it’s best we take care of Stryfe.” Steve took a moment to bend down next to Roy, giving him a few light slaps to the face to wake the archer up. “Check on Blue upstairs and wait for SHIELD support to arrive.” With that set of orders given, Captain America entered the elevator with Stryfe after calling his shield back to his wrist.

On the floor above, the Blue Beetle looked on his handiwork and grinned. Bombs? Check. Towers of screaming nanodrone death? Check. He had noticed a costumed kid not moving on the monitor for 1J, looked to be across from Staten Island. Ted had got back in touch with Spider-Man over his comm-link and sent him to help the kid. He assumed most of the fight was over, as it had been a long time since he had heard any signs of a scuffle outside.

He slowly edged open the door to the control room and found himself alone, surrounded by a bunch of unconscious MFS soldiers scattered around with no sign of the hostages.

"I'll get this, shall I?" He uttered, pulling a bunch of zip-ties out of his belt and restraining each of the thugs.

Wonder Woman waited for Rogers to enter the elevator before pressing the button that took them to the lobby. Nobody talked once the elevator started going down. Both of the heroes looked slightly disappointed but for different reasons. A small television in the elevator was tuned a news channel. It showed footage of the Empire State Building collapsing while the reporters took a moment to update the viewers. The update was followed by eyewitness accounts of the incident. An older man, covered in dust, told a reporter that he saw Wonder Woman and someone inside a suit leaving the area after it collapsed.

Stryfe stared at Captain America and waited for some sort of reaction. Steve’s face was stoic, and he just stared ahead. His grip on Stryfe’s arm tightened, while his other hand rested on the grip of his sidearm. After what must have been the most agonizing minute the heroes had ever endured, the elevator doors opened to the lobby of the Four Freedoms Plaza.



Back upstairs, the Blue Beetle finished restraining the last one and double-checked his handiwork, counting the tied-up goons. He peered down the hole and called out. "Hello?"

He sighed and started reeling out his grapple line. Attaching the hook to a solid-looking chunk of foundation in the broken floor, he swung himself down the hole. The rope pulled taut, before proving that broken foundation is seldom as solid-looking as it appears. Leaving him flat on his back on the floor, looking up at the gaping hole in the ceiling.

"Dammit…" He grunted with a murmur. He couldn't even pretend to be surprised by it all anymore at this point. He gingerly got to his feet once more.

He staggered over to the elevator bay and hit the 'Down' button for the lobby. Roy Harper stepped out of the elevator on the floor above. He looked left and right, seeing Ted’s handiwork and shrugging before he moved to go calm down the hostages in the side room all while waiting for SHIELD officials to arrive.



Outside the building, the press had already begun to gather. They crowded the series of double doors that lined the exterior of the plaza, cameras flashing from every side of the windows. Looking up towards his two captors, a smile spread across Stryfe’s face.

“Ready to feel the world’s judgement, false idols?”

Wonder Woman avoided Stryfe’s comment and started walking away from the building. Soon enough, police and SHIELD agents began arriving at the scene. Yet, the paramedics and firefighters were already treating the victims. She stopped near the fountain and waited for the officers to take him away. While she was retrieving her lasso, several members of the press began surrounding both of them and asked their questions.

“Several witnesses said you were at the Empire State Building around the tim-”

“Is it true that you left the city after th-”

“Did you cause the Empire State Building to coll-”

"Please move out of the way.” Wonder Woman ordered the journalists. ”I will answer all of your questions after I’m done here.”

“Wonder Woman could have forced the fight to occur wherever she pleased.” Stryfe suddenly called from Captain America’s side. His comment prompted the reporters to turn towards him, microphones extended towards his mouth to ensure they caught every word.

“Instead, she chose to fight me not only within New York but at the Empire State Building.” Stryfe added working the reporters into a frenzy.

“Don’t believe in his lies! He’s trying to turn everyone against us! That was why he attacked New York City and Star City! To make sure that this nation hates mutants!” Wonder Woman interrupted Stryfe before he could finish.

“Then why didn’t you bother to check for survivors, hero?” Stryfe sneered. “So quick to point the finger at me, but I guarantee your death toll is just as high as my own. You may claim to fight for these people, but you do so without any regard for their lives.”

“You were planning on blowing up the entire city! You had to be stopped. Besides, you were the one that caused the Empire State Building to fall. Not me!” Wonder Woman responded to the question and looked around at the growing crowd. “I would have checked for survivors! But, this murderer was planning on killing millions! He had to be stopped!”

“Wonder Woman had me dead to rights, but she let me go. Why? Wonder Woman was part of the Metahuman Supremacy Front." Stryfe smiled. “All this was a show, it was her plan in the first place.”

The crowd gasped in horror at the grand reveal, but Wonder Woman knew the truth. She stood in front of Stryfe to get their attention. “I was never part of his group! I would have never joined in the first place!”

A ding could be heard in the Four Freedoms Plaza lobby, and the Blue Beetle emerged, seeing a media scrum start to form outside around the two heroes of old and the villain of the day. He trotted after them.

One of the press raised his voice and said, “I mean… with your recent actions at the Capitol and Transia… This might be crazy to ask, but were you apart of his group?”

“No!” Wonder Woman cried out. “You’re falling for his lies!”

“Colonel Trevor would be so ashamed of you. I doubt he could even look you in the eyes after the atrocities you’ve committed today.” Stryfe interjected.

“Don’t you fucking dare say his name, you bastard!” Wonder Woman turned to look Stryfe after Trevor was brought up. She shoved him towards the fountain as the crowd gasped. Stryfe began turning towards Wonder Woman, a broad grin on his face. He was about to get exactly what he wanted, and everyone would see these abominations the same way he did. Stryfe closed his eyes and began to lift his arms wide open. But as Diana took a step forward, she felt an elbow shoved straight in her sternum. Captain Steven Rogers, in one smooth motion and no expression on his face, unholstered his sidearm and pointed it directly between Stryfe’s eyes.
~ BANG ~

With one shot, the armoured villain fell backwards with his arms outstretched on either side as his deathless gaze looked towards the sky. Captain Rogers holstered his sidearm and turned away from the media. Steve gave a brief look towards Diana, sighing slightly before turning around and raising a hand.

“Clear the Plaza. Go home, spend time with your loved ones.”

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Hidden 5 yrs ago 5 yrs ago Post by Bounce
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B L Ü D H A V E N

Meadowdale Mall

Bruce Wayne had never been Batman. Batman had just sometimes masqueraded as some millionaire playboy persona that went by the name of Bruce Wayne. But that’s all it was. All it had ever been, a persona. A nom de guerre. An act.

Everything the public thought they knew about Bruce Wayne had been carefully scripted and staged. Every appearance, every seemingly random encounter with a paparazzi, every social occasion orchestrated, manipulated, and controlled in order to strategically message whatever misinformation was desired to prop up the desired perception of Batman’s alter ego. It was something Dick had been confronted with early on, when he’d thought that he’d been adopted by Bruce Wayne and quickly found himself more alone within Wayne Manor than he had been without.

The masquerade had been one of the things that Dick had hoped to leave behind him when he had walked out of the Batcave for the last time. He had come to Bludhaven as Dick Grayson. Made a career for himself as Dick Grayson. Made a life for himself as Dick Grayson. One thing he had never done was to have let the identity of Nightwing define who he was or what he thought of himself. It had just been another job. A temporary side hussle to do what had to be done.

Now, Dick found himself pulling the pages from out of Bruce’s playbook. Carefully orchestrating how he would now go about introducing a child into his public life, and starting to lay the work for manipulating public perception of the persona that Toyboy would have to step into.

“Dick?”

He was in the children’s section of the local Old Navy. Bludhaven was a relatively small city, making the Meadowdale Mall a central location where you were apt to see someone you knew. Glancing up from where he had been admiring a boy’s graphic tee, Dick found Cissy Chambers looking surprised to see him there.

“Picking up stuff for another charity?”

If he had a guess, that was a reference to a few weeks earlier, when he’d run into one of the Bludhaven cops while out shopping for kid’s clothing. He’d popped inside of the local Target store in order to get the clothes that he’d had on hand when they’d pulled Toyboy from out of the cold storage at S.T.A.R. Labs. Inevitably, he’d been asked what he was there at the Target for and he’d replied that he’d been picking up some items for donation to one of the Wayne Foundation charities.

At the time, it had been a convenient sort of sleight of hand. He was on the board at the Wayne Foundation, so it was the kind of lie that didn’t bear repeating. It just made sense.

Now, he’d have to do a little bit more work with the messaging.

“Of a kind,” Dick answered cryptically, hanging the tee over his arm as he turned toward the lieutenant. After a brief pause, he added, “I’ve decided to foster a kid.”

The reaction was visceral. Cissy’s head went back. Blinking as though uncertain of what she’d just heard. If he’d been asked, he’d have bet that she’d have congratulated him. Instead, the woman bluntly asked, “Aren’t you a little old for that?”

Tact, thy name is Cissy Chambers. Dick tried to smile, rather than wince, and came off doing an odd mix of the two gestures. “I’m almost at mandatory retirement,” he admitted, with a nod of his head. “But I think I have a few years left in me even after that. Might as well go out devoting my energy to something worthwhile.”

He found the woman just staring him down. It got to be uncomfortable for a moment, before she merely said, “I forget, you were a foster kid.”

Not an inaccurate remark. Again, not a very tactful one either. Dick gave another nod, which seemed to satisfy her. “Do I get to meet him?” Cissy offered, at last seeming to warm to the idea of Dick having a foster kid around.

Well, that was the hard part. Laying the foundation. If the notion itself didn’t fly, then the masquerade was never going to work. But, she seemed to have bought it. Which meant now it was just a matter of maintaining that belief. “I’m still waiting for approval to bring him home,” Dick lied smoothly. “As soon as I do, you’ll be the first one over for dinner.”

With that, the man traded a few trivial pleasantries, extracting himself from the conversation as he headed toward the cash register to pay for the items that he’d picked up so that they could start an actual wardrobe for Toyboy.

The die was cast. Now the rumor mill could start.

+ - + - + - + - + - + - + - + - + - + - + - + - + - + - + - + - + - + - + - + - + - +


“It’ll be a day or so more.”

Dick had ventured down to Gotham after leaving the mall. It wasn’t on the way, but that hardly mattered. He was disappointed when Sarah Charles met him to explain that he wouldn’t be seeing the robot today.

“I thought you said that he was on-line again?” the man remarked, allowing his confusion to show through. That had been the reason for the visit, actually. Not that he was opposed to stopping by to peek in on Toyboy’s inanimate body in various states of disassembly, but he’d hoped to get some kind of gauge or assessment of Toyboy’s modified operating system and programming.

“We had a bit of a... freak out,” Sarah replied. Her choice of words immediately prompting a skeptical look on the part of Dick.

Toyboy’s composure was one of the things that tended to betray the reality that he wasn’t human. The idea of the robot having a freak out went against everything that Dick knew about the automaton.

“The initial boot didn’t go as smoothly as we expected,” Sarah explained, which did nothing to alleviate Dick’s concern that some assessment would be needed before he sent Toyboy out again. All of which was just reinforced when the woman said, “We’re still smoothing out a few glitches. And then the internet connectivity proved something of a... compatibility issue.”

Dick’s head tilted slightly as he inclined an ear toward the scientist. It seemed odd to put a slight emphasis on the end of that sentence. “Compatibility issue?”

“The internet,” Sarah supplied in answer, prompting another confused look from Dick, “It seems that it was a little overwhelming for him,” the woman added, supplying some context for Dick as she continued, “We’re uploading a software patch that will allow Toyboy to have autonomy over when he’s up on bluetooth or wi-fi. But, we need a little more time to get him comfortable with exploring those capabilities.”

“Well, they do say that the internet is a scary place,” Dick deadpanned glibly.
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Hidden 5 yrs ago 5 yrs ago Post by Byrd Man
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Byrd Man El Hombre Pájaro

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December 22nd, 1946
Gotham Central
9:30 AM


Corrigan hit the head. He parked in front of a urinal and unzipped. The door swung open halfway through his piss. Someone loomed close. Jim turned. Slam Bradley towered over him. Bradley smiled. His big hands closed around Jim's shoulders. He shoved Jim into the urinal. Water and pissed splash. He struggled. Bradley's hands felt like vise grips. A knee in his lower back kept him pushed hard against porcelain.

Bradley got in close and whispered, "If you're going to keep stealing and shaking down dealers, make sure they're not Jefferson Skeevers' guys. Skeevers is an asshole, but he has enough sense not to threaten a cop. That's why I am personally delivering this message. This constitutes your first and only warning, Corrigan."

Bradley shoved him hard one more time. He banged his head against the tile wall. Slam backed away. Jim pushed away from the urinal and pressed against the wall. Bradley was already at the door. He looked back at Jim and winked. He disappeared out the door. Jim came out after him, water spritzed and reeking of piss. Whiskey Max rounded the corner. He fish-eyed Jim and took in his disheveled clothing.

"Tidy your appearance, Detective, and come with me. We may have a lead on these killings."

*****


9:46 AM

Slam found Grogan in the Sex Crimes office. Three of his goons snarfed doughnuts and rifled through sex offender files. They were looking for a prime candidate for the Snapshot Killer frame job. Grogan had his feet hiked on the squad boss's desk. His pants leg rode up, a snub-nosed .38 peeked out from an ostrich skin boot.

Two-Gun Jack spat tobacco juice in a chaw cup. "Samuel, come to help with the perp hunt?"

Slam said, "Can we talk?"

They went out to the parking garage. Slam wore a coat against the cold. Grogan went in just short sleeves. His twin holsters sagged. He slid the gunbelt up higher on his waist.

Grogan said, "I'm all ears, son."

"I saw Jeff Skeevers this morning. We had a conversation that pertained to you. It was quite troubling."

"Finish your thought, boy. I hate being led around by the snout."

"He said you're in deep to some people"

Grogan's hands twitched. "Fuck Skeevers. A coon with grand visions and a big mouth, nothing more."

"Give me details, Cap. What's going on and how can I help?"

Grogan spat juice on the pavement and took off his stetson. He ran his fingers through thinning hair and said, "I made a few bad investments. Let's leave it at that. You want to help, help me close this case as soon as possible and we'll do what we can to mend fences before it's too late."

*****


10:00 AM

Max drove through traffic. It was holidays heavy. People doing last minute Christmas shopping. He thought of Mary. He hadn't gotten her anything for Christmas yet. This Snapshot Killer business got in the way. He'd find time tonight to go shopping and get... he didn't know what she wanted.

Corrigan rode shotgun. He still looked spooked. Something happened to him. He remained mum on it and gazed out the window smoking cigarettes. Traffic hit a lull. They stalled out amidst traffic jams. Corrigan tossed his smoke out the window.

"Why me?"

Max said, "What do you mean?"

"Why bring me into all of this? I found the body, yeah, but I'm a Narco dick."

Max squared his glasses and said, "You're also very compromised. Your reputation proceeds you, Corrigan. You are a well-known narcotics abuser who routinely shakes down drug dealers. Even with that baggage, your past casework implies that you are a competent investigator. Your drug use gives me a wedge I can use against you if you do not cooperate. While others tolerate your misdeeds, I will not hesitate to report you to Internal Affairs and have you thrown out of the department."

Corrigan snarled. "You're a fucking prick, you know that?"

"So I've been told many times. If you can clean up, I think you can be quite the comer in this police department."

Max hit the lights on his unmarked. Traffic parted quicksville. He hit the gas and sped through stalled traffic as fast as possible.

Corrigan said, "That's mighty high praise coming from Whiskey Max."

"Think nothing of it, Shakedown Jim."

--

Western Gotham
11:03 AM


It was a dive bar if there ever was one. Cramped space, tiny bar, rickety chairs, moth-eaten upholstery on booths. Jim sat on a barstool and watched Eckhardt and Charlie Fields hit paydirt. An honest to god witness turned up during canvassing. The wit was tall and imposing as hell. He sent prickles down Corrigan's chest. He reminded him of Bradley's threat, whispered softly but full of malice. There was no impotence behind his words.

Eckhardt said, "You work here as a bouncer, Mr. Norman?"

Norman nodded. "Yeah, been here for a few years now. Call me Jake."

Fields said, "Jake, tell Sergeant Eckhardt what you told me."

Norman nodded again. "Okay. I was outside the bar here last night. It was dead, everyone spooked by the killings, and I stepped out to have a smoke. I saw a woman walking towards the bar. I noticed her because she was the only one on the street."

Eckhardt cleared his throat. "What time was this?"

"About two in the morning."

Jim did the math. He found the dead girl's body around three thirty. Medical Examiner's report put her time of death between one and three. It seemed to check out.

Fields pulled a photo out. Crime scene pix of the dead girl's face straight on and at side angles. "This her?"

Norman squinted. "Can't really tell. It was dark out and she didn't get close enough to see her face real good because about halfway down the block this car pulls up. A white looking Chrysler all beat up to shit. It idled there and talked to her for a minute and she got in. The car passed by the bar. It had a cracked windshield and dried mud all down the side. I saw a white man with dark hair driving the car."

Jim saw a look pass between Eckhardt and Fields. Excitement. A lead. Months without a goddamn trace, and now they had a lead on this son of a bitch.
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Hidden 5 yrs ago 5 yrs ago Post by Natty
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Natty

Member Seen 11 mos ago


It had been hours now, since the events at the library. Illyana and the so-called Green Arrow had made quick work of releasing the hostages taken by the Metahuman Supremacy Front, immediately turning over their captors to a team of S.H.I.E.L.D. Agents that had stormed the building once the towers had gone down. She’d avoided their questions, of course, taking into the night before they ended up throwing her into custardy too. The Government and their rules were something Illyana did not care for. Instead, she spent her evening moving about the city, laying a hand wherever she could.

The bulk of the work may have been done, largely it would seem by a masked speedster from Central City, but there was still plenty to do; Disrupting the riots that had arisen during the chaos; putting out fires that had started throughout the city; reuniting families with their loved ones.

As the sun began to rise over Star City, Illyana found herself sat atop the marbled roof of the Grell Museum, the site of her first impact on this city, in an attempt to catch her breath. Her work had taken her through the night. Normally she’d be exhausted and liable to collapse, but she needed to keep going. She had to, otherwise, she’d crack.

She attempted to take her mind off of things; moving her eyes down onto the plaza below. Government officials worked tirelessly around the remains of the Obelisk. Groups of workmen moved the large metallic chunks into the backs of vans marked by the Bulldog that was the group’s insignia. All signs of her previous combat with the gunmen had been cleared too. You could almost not even tell that this had been the site of a massive catastrophe. That hundreds of people had died in this city tonight. Magik knew though, and the thoughts made her cold.

The sound of crackling energy pulled her from her brooding. Turned her head, she watched as an oh-so-familiar flare of orange light revealing the presence of her teacher.

Stephen looked just as he had done when Illyana had last seen him the day prior, except that now heavy bags hung from beneath his eyes. Creeping her fingers to her own face, she wondered whether she looked as tired as he did at this moment. She certainly felt it.

Strange’s eyes moved around him, taking in his surroundings. He managed a short smiling as he noticed where they were.

I remember once saying that I'd bring you here one day.” His voice seemed almost solemn as he held his gaze over the museum’s roof for a few seconds.

Silence fell between the two, as Illyana’s eyes moved to the floor below.

You did good work. You saved lives.” His voice seemed jovial. Almost proud.

Not every life though.” Her words cut back sharply.

He shook his head quickly, stopping her.

No, no, no. Those deaths are not your fault.” He sounded awfully confident for someone that hadn’t even been there. “You did everything within your power to stop the Metahuman Liber-

Rising to her feet, she interrupted.

Not them.” She stated, her eyes still at her feet.

Strange grew quiet, trying to wrap his head around what she was talking about. Before he could ask anything, Illyana continued.

Yesterday morning. Before all this started, I went and saw your old friend. The Canterbury Cricket.” The words pained her as they came, but she had to tell him. He deserved to know. “I wanted to meet him. To recruit him. And… And we were attacked.

Her voice grew coarse.

And he was killed.” It took her some time, but the words finally came.

Stephen stood still before her. His eyes burrowed into her; his mouth slightly agape as he tried to take in everything she had said. In the silence that hung between them, Illyana swore she could hear the cogs churning slowly in his brain. That she could hear the disappointment in his breathing.

After what felt like an eternity he spoke.

I thought I sensed something.” He ran his hand through the hairs of his goatee, unsure of what to say. “It’s a shame. He was a good man.

He looked like he wanted to say more, but the news seemed to have overwhelmed him.

Illyana couldn’t handle the silence, so she broke it.

I’m going to avenge him.” She spoke with determination. "I’m going to make them pay.

Her words seemed to shake Strange to his senses.

Avenge him?” He exclaimed, his voice filled with confusion. “By the Ageless Vishanti, what are you on about?

She couldn’t stop herself. She had to tell him now. Tell him everything.

I’m going back, Stephen. I’m going back to Limbo and I’m going to put an end to Belasco once and for all.

It wasn’t an empty threat. It was a promise. A dark pact she’d just now made with herself in the morning light.

But a single raised finger from Strange stopped her in her tracks.

Nope. I don’t believe this…” He shook his head disappointingly, his hand moving from his goatee to push back the curls of his hair in annoyance. “Just when I thought you’d started to understand. Understand that revenge isn’t the way.

His voice had grown angry. A tone Illyana had rarely heard during her time with him. A tone that scared her.

I was going to give you this.” He said, moving his hand into the confines of his blue robes.

From it, he pulled a striking piece of red fabric, which flowed elegantly as it moved as if a kite flowing through the perfect summer breeze. Tall and extravagant, it mirrored the exact same cloak that the Sorcerer Supreme was currently wearing himself. Illyana’s eye’s widened as she took in the fine piece of clothing, her mind full of questions.

I made it myself.” Stephen began, running his hand along with the fabric. “It may not be as spectacular as my own, but there are protective enchantments woven all through the fabric.

However, I can see now that I was wrong about you being ready.

With a flick of his wrist, the red of the cloak vanished. Illyana held still, her words stuck at the back of her throat.

Strange couldn’t meet her eye and instead turned his attention to creating a portal home. Creating a circular motion with his index fingers, an amber light cut a hole through the air, revealing what looked like a doorway to a warmly lit entry hall. He took a single step before pausing and turning back towards his ward.

I’m sorry Illyana.

With that he disappeared through the doorway, leaving Illyana alone once more.
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Hidden 5 yrs ago 5 yrs ago Post by Hound55
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Hound55 Create-A-Hero RPG GM, Blue Bringer of BWAHAHA!

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Booster Gold Appears Courtesy of @HenryJonesJr!


M A N H A T T A N , N E W Y O R K

Less Than A Week Later | I Really Don’t Know How Much More Plainly I Can Put It… Manhattan, New York

Tora Olafsdotter and Beatriz da Costa strolled down 9th Avenue on a brand new day. This part of the city was slowly being repaired from the more cosmetic damages sustained from the recent disaster. It had avoided the worst of it. Nonetheless, glaziers’, hardware and paint stores’ business was booming.

“All I’m asking is that you give him a chance!” Tora exclaimed.

Bea looked nonplussed. “You keep saying that. I’m just saying, he’s not terribly impressive.”

“Back on this again…” Tora soured.

Bystanders watched the pair pass, Bea was dressed in a crop top and tight green pants that accentuated her striking green hair. Tora was dressed in a royal blue blouse, that played to the bright New York day. The pair looked fine, but it was Bea who caught the eye of most male passers by.

“Tell me I’m wrong.” She said.

“It’s not all about how he looks. There’s more to him than that.”

“I’d certainly hope so. Otherwise your entire argument is a doughy, short, geeky nerdboy with a horrible Baaawwwston accent.”

“I think he’s cute…”

“You would…”

“He’s trying…”

“And that’s the best thing you can say about him! He’s a trier. A lot of people try. It doesn’t mean anything good is going to come out of it.”

Tora looked hurt. “Bea, please…” She looked up at her larger Brazilian friends with big sad eyes.

“Oh don’t look at me like-- damn. Alright. We’ll give him a chance. Just… stop whining about him. It’s beneath you. HE’S beneath you.”

“Thank you!” She exclaimed, surprised that Bea had given in to her demands. “You won’t regret this!”

“I almost certainly will…” Bea replied. “...but I’m not used to you actually digging your heels in to get what you want. It’s thrown me all off balance.”

Tora bounced over and hugged Bea.

“Alright, alright… I just don’t get why it has to be THIS nerdboy. Give me another week and I think I could have brought Tony Stark to his knees…” Bea flashed her eyes provocatively.

“Eww…”

“You keep saying that, but THERE’S a man…” She licked her lips. “He’s clearly been around the block a few times, and I’m sure he could show you a thing or two you haven’t seen before. Maybe even me.”

“But he’s so disgusting!” Tora winced.

“Pfft. Don’t be such a prude. I trust you won’t begrudge me from going there. We don’t have that job anymore, so it’s no longer unprofessional.” She licked her lips again and sent an onlooking male bystander walking the other way stumbling over some trash cans in the process.

“You wouldn’t!”

“I would shake his world to its very core.” She said, raising her eyebrows to her Scandinavian friend. “And what do you care, so long as it isn’t your doughy Baaawwwston nerdboy?”

“Well, I guess I don’t… I wonder what it was Ted had in mind exactly?”




M E T R O P O L I T A N C O R R E C T I O N A L C E N T E R

- | Manhattan, New York

Abner Jenkins snatched the cell phone from his cellmate.

“So $20 in commissary?”

$20 in commissary. Jenkins confirmed.

Two large inmates stood at the front of the cell as lookouts whilst Abner Jenkins made his call. He dialled a number from memory and waited for the dial tone to end with the person on the other end picking up the call.

“So… How does this change things?”

You won’t be getting my help. Abner spoke in hushed tones down the line. ...but I didn’t snitch you out either.

“So you want just cold off the board? That’s what you’re telling me?” The voice asked.

It seems fair. All things considered.

He heard a sigh breathed heavily down the line, which stole his breath as he heard it.

“That’s not really for you to determine though, is it?”

Jenkins pulled the phone away in horror. What had he just set in motion?

“...I’ll tell you what. If you don’t respond, everyone on the outside is off limits. Your wife, distant family, everybody.”

Respond to what?

“When it happens, you’ll know.” clik.

The phone had gone dead. To what? TO WHAT??

“Hey, Jenkins… Keep it the fuck down! I’ve got a business to run here.” Hissed his cellmate between the two large men.

Abner Jenkins stumbled out of the cell in a daze. Something was going to happen, but what? When? He had a visit from his wife soon, was that it? Should he not go? Was something going to happen to her that he had to ignore?

No. It was unthinkable. Plus, he’d been told that if he didn’t respond to whatever it was his wife and family wouldn’t come to harm. Surely that implied that it wasn’t about Mimi. Right? Didn’t it?

Nevertheless it would be a difficult wait, dwelling on all of the worst things that might possibly come to fruition.

“Jenkins! Visitor!”

Or maybe not...




H O M E W O O D S U I T E S B Y H I L T O N N Y / M I D T O W N

- | Midtown Manhattan, New York

Ted put his shoes on and checked his tie and suit in the mirror. He left money for room service and a note for Rosita on the table in his hotel room, and stepped out into the hallway. The Star Trek intercom sound signalled a message on his phone, he pulled his phone out and checked it as he stepped into the elevator.

It was from Janet Van Dyne.

“Need to talk. Are you free?”


Ted stepped out of the elevator once he hit the lobby, waved to Julia who was back to working the check-in desk, and dialled Janet.

“You’re free to talk?”

“I’m walking in public, so I might not say a whole lot. But I can hear you fine. What did you need to tell me?”

Ted heard a deep sigh down the phone line.

“We have more news on the whole Scott Lang thing.” “Be careful how you tell him, Jan!” He could hear Hank yelling in the background. “I’m telling him now. And yes, he knows you didn’t mean anything by it. It’s Ted. He’s your friend.”

Now it was Ted’s turn to sigh. “What is it?”

“Well, when Hank heard about what you had been doing at nights in Boston - and we’re both really proud of you by the way, we saw what you did in the city… that was really something. You really met Wonder Woman?--”

“Jan…” Ted pushed, getting frustrated.

“Well, that’s part of this whole thing. We’d been talking about how proud we were-- I’d been talking about how proud I was of what you were doing back when you first started. Making a difference… Well, Hank kind of-- you know Hank.”

“Janet, what happened?” Ted begged her to get to the point, pinching the bridge of his nose and wincing as he walked.

“Well, as you know Hank had been off his meds at the time, and I guess he was also kind of jealous about the attention--” “I wasn’t jealous!” He heard Hank holler in the background. “Well, what was it then if you weren’t jealous?” “Well, you were proud of what he was doing and were impressed by it, so I guess I figured that if you found that impressive--” “This sounds like jealousy.” “I wasn’t jealous! I just thought you’d like this too! I think! I wasn’t taking my--” “Oh hush. It’s not important anyway. Long story short, Scott Lang didn’t only steal the… Pym Particles. He also took a prototypical Particle Projector that Hank had developed.”

“Particle Projector? Like with Bigass Bacon?”

“Exactly. Except this one wasn’t just a stationary machine like with bigass bacon.”

Here we go…

“I’m not going to be happy with any of this, am I Jan?”

“Probably not. Ted, it was a suit.”

“ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!”
Pedestrians walked on by. This was New York City. A man screaming in the street was far too mundane to warrant much more. "Pipe down, jackass." Uttered one bystander.

“What’s he doing? What did he say?” Hank walked over and asked Jan.

“He’s just screaming at the moment. I’m not getting any actual words yet.” Hank nodded, accepting it as fact and walked back to his workbench.

“So there’s a person out there who can shrink or grow at will. At the proportions of Bigass Bacon?” Ted thought back to the massive size of the plate of bacon on that day.

“Well, good news, no...” “Did you tell him about the conservation of energy limitations!” “I’m telling him now!” “Hank said--! Sorry… Hank said the conservation of energy principle should prevent Scott or anyone from growing too big, too fast without preparation, because the human metabolism wouldn’t be able to keep pace operating on that kind of scale. The bigger problem, ironically, should be if he shrinks.”

“Why is that the bigger issue?”

“Well, using the suit he should be able to shrink to sizes that might make him all but impossible to find, and he can also control his own mass. Technically he could potentially make himself an inch tall, and still at his regular mass, making him almost impossible to move since you’d be trying to get purchase on a one inch object at that weight. Shrinky Scott sounds like he’d be a lot trickier to deal with, than if he grew.”

“Except if he grew he could step on me.”

“Well, yes. But not for long. And he’d be tiring himself out trying.”

“I think you have a far different idea of what counts as good news than I do, or you’re struggling with your tone of voice. You’re way too upbeat talking about a criminal trying to step on me.”

“Well, there’s no point getting morbid about this kind of thing. I mean Hank feels terrible.” “Sorry, Ted!” “He just said that he’s sorry, did you hear that? Negative thoughts aren’t going to help fix this though, are they? Anyway, since this is partly our fault--”

“Partly?!?”

“Partly. You mixed Hank up with all your-- Beetle related hijinks!”

Janet could only hear a muffled yell as Ted had covered the phone mic on his end to cry out in frustration.

“--as I was saying, since this is partly our fault, Hank’s coming up with something now that should let me give you a hand in bringing Scott in. So you won’t be all alone out there. Isn’t that something good? So, silver linings…”

Ted mimed biting the phone in extreme frustration.

“Oh, that reminds me! You didn’t eat any of the Bigass Bacon did you?”

“No, why?”

“Well, I didn’t think so, due to the colossal organ failure that’s been turning up with Hank’s tests.” “Did he?” “I’m asking him! He said no!” “Oh good! I wouldn’t have thought so, what with the colossal organ failure and everything!” “Hank, please, I’m still on the phone.” “Sorry!” “You see, Hank’s had time to understand how exactly this works in greater detail. As he said, these ‘Pym particles’ they’re sub-atomic particles that are capable of transporting mass. But the thing is, what Hank is doing when he uses one of these particle projectors…”

Ted stopped and leaned against a building in anticipation of the worst possible news, given how this conversation had gone.

“The ‘Pym Particles’ are omnipresent. They’re subatomic particles which exist in all things already. What he’s actually doing is activating those particles which already exist so that they transport vast quantities of mass.”

Ted was still waiting for the punchline. “And?”

“Well, that’s just it. The process with the projector ensures a balanced activation of these ‘Pym particles’ across the whole. But there’s still effects when other things interact with activated Pym Particles. Especially through ingestion and absorption, but also through semi-permeable films, liquids, gases… Bacon grease is a really insidious thing, Ted. You weren’t handling it after the experiment were you?”

Ted thought back. “No.”

“Good. I didn’t think so. Again, because of--”

“The colossal organ failure. Yes, I caught that.”

“Exactly. A swollen stomach… small intestine bursting out of your abdomen… Oesophagus that could expand and crush your own lungs… Bacon grease affected skin sloughing loosely off of your body... Still, no harm, no foul. Just glad you’re alright.”

“So-- so much for feeding the world then, huh?”

“Well, not necessarily. Hank just needs to find a way to restore the activated ‘Pym Particles’ to their natural state, once he’s used them to grow the initial food.”

“So, deactivate them?”

“Well, no. That probably wouldn’t be good either. I mean, these ‘Pym Particles’ are MEANT to be able to transport mass and matter. That’s what they do in nature. Sure not to the exponential degree that we have been using them, but Hank says it likely relieves pressure on a minute scale. So deactivating them completely probably wouldn’t be ideal either.”

“Just-- please don’t destroy the universe. It has all of my stuff in it and I just got it how I like it.” Ted facepalmed.

“Ha!” Jan laughed. “Always the jokester, Ted. Anyway, we’ll see you when you’re here next and we’ll go fix this Scott Lang problem...”




M A N H A T T A N , N E W Y O R K

Earlier, Mid-Crisis | Come on now… Manhattan, New York

"Booster!" a panicked, electronic-sounding voice echoed through her ears as she began to regain consciousness. "Booster we have arrived!"

Her eyes opened tentatively, revealing the panic that had set into the city around her. She could see people running erratically, looking behind them as they did so. They were escaping something, that much was to be sure. But what? And, more importantly, where the hell was she? More, more importantly, who the hell was she? She had absolutely no recollection of who she was, where she was, or why she was here. That was worrying.

Suddenly, the world in front of her blinked out. The chaotic, yet living, city was replaced with one that was dead. Its buildings crumbled around her. Fire raged across the horizon revealing an apocalyptic hellscape. She turned frantically, searching for any sign of life. Had she just been transported to another world? Was she blinking from one existence to another?

Instead of the panicked citizenry of the last world, the only sign of life she saw here were the bodies that littered the city street. Some were in pieces, others lay under rubble, and some seemed to have been vaporized, leaving nothing but the outline of a person on the street from where something had merely wiped them from existence.

"Booster!"

The call of the voice cleared the vision from her eyes, and she was back in the midst of the earlier chaotic scene. In front of her hovered a shining, golden object. It looked like an egg sitting on a golden pedestal, with a blue, unblinking, electronic eye staring back at her, "Ma'am, we've reached our destination, but it seems we've come at, uh, quite an inopportune time. Shall we assist with the situation?"

She stood up, taking stock of how she felt. Outside of being disoriented, she felt fine. Whatever had happened to her hadn't affected her physically, just mentally. Taking stock of her surroundings, she looked past the fleeing people to see what they were running from. A pack of feral-looking people tore after the innocent ones, ready to tear them limb-from-limb.

"Sure...uhh," she looked at the robot.

"Skeets, ma'am," the robot sounded surprised.

"Skeets? Seriously?" her nose scrunched up. "Whatever. How do we help?"

"Do you not remember?" the blue eye fired a beam towards her, which scanned up and down. "Hm. It seems like our temporal travels have affected your memory. Tap the star on your necklace twice."

Looking down, she saw a blue, metal star handing from a gold chain around her neck. She took two of her fingers and tapped it twice. The star seemed to grow and melt across her body nearly instantly, covering her in a gleaming metal skin of blue and gold. She felt the cool metal climb up her neck and form a visor across her eyes. A heads up display began displaying the vitals of the feral humans approaching, showing that they were being controlled by some unknown force.

"We need to cut those hostiles off from the innocent people," she motioned down the street.

"Very well," Skeets bobbed up and down. "Shall I link up and refresh you on your suits capabilities?"

"Sure thing," she shrugged.

The egg swung around behind her, and she felt the metal on her back reconfigure as a port for the device. It hooked up, and instantly she shot up into the air a few feet and hovered there.

"Holy shit I can fly!?" she exclaimed with pure joy.

"You can do much more than that, Booster Gold," Skeets responded as the two of them shot off to intercept the pack of humans.

The pair landed between the pack of aggressors and the innocents. As they did, Booster's hands shot up, and suddenly a force field appeared around the raving group of people. She concentrated and the wall turned into a bubble, encasing them inside. To the AI, she asked, "Okay, any idea where we can put these guys where they're out of the
way?"

"Satellite imagery shows a construction site with a deep foundation pit two blocks to the east," Skeets replied swiftly.

"Perfect," she said and began lifting the bubble off the ground, flying with it. She could see the people inside who were scratching and clawing desperately at the force field's barrier. She could see the pure lunacy in their eyes. They wanted to rip her apart. A woman closest to the edge of the bubble was slamming her head against the barrier in a vain attempt to escape.

Approaching the crater in the street which easily fell a good twenty feet below the sidewalk, Booster placed the raving people inside.

"Skeets, any idea what's wrong with them?" she asked her companion.

"Scanning," the AI responded dutifully. After a moment, it continued, "There seems to be some inorganic matter attached to the brain stem of each affected individual. Readings show this is the reason for the heightened aggression."

"Can we get them out?" was the obvious next question.

"Not with our current arsenal of tools," Skeets answered swiftly. "Unless you would like to remove their heads with an energy blast."

"What!? No!" she yelled back at the AI. "We need to have a serious discussion about excessive force."

Booster surveyed the area. Whatever this was, it was something much bigger than her. At least she figured it was. But she could help. As she stood there thinking about the situation, something the robot had said to her turned a light bulb on.

"Skeets, you said we had 'temporal' travels?" she turned to the robot on her back. "Are we time travelers? Can we use your databanks to find out how to help here?"

"Of course ma'am!" the robot responded excitedly. "Processing..."

ZZZZZTTTTTT

Interference ran through Booster's HUD and ear piece before coming under control.

"Skeets? What the hell was that?" she asked in a panic.

"Sorry, ma'am," the robot was apologetic. "I must be affected as well from our trip, but I have regulated. According to my records, the Roxxon Oil Building is about to be overrun! We can make it there in mere moments!"

"Oil company? Seriously?" she scrunched her nose again.

"Ma'am, thanks to the genius of Tony Stark, Reed Richards, and Ray Palmer, global warming will be solved in a few short years," Skeets explained. "Meanwhile, we can possibly get a reward for helping. We do need to eat and pay for shelter here, remember."

It was a good point. As far as she knew, the trip she took to come here was one way. She certainly didn't remember a way back, and the droid didn't seem to be hinting at the possibility either. She'd need to find a steady income. Plus, who wouldn't want to be famous? She could bleed the oil men off for everything they had and save the world. A real win-win, right? Especially if it gave her time to remember who she truly was.

"Okay, Skeets," she smiled. "Let's get paid."




A H I G H – R I S E O F F I C E

- | Location Undiscoled New York

Fine Italian leather strides. Cufflinks gleaming. Ash drops from 6 feet in the air. The classic 50s cut Brooks Brothers suit returned to the high-rise building, stuffed full of Farley Fleeter.

It's out of the equation. You got what you wanted. So let’s talk contract.

The seat turned revealing the man in green. A unique haircut, the grizzled face of a man who’s gone to war in so many corporate board meetings, he could end most internal disagreements with a raised eyebrow, let alone a grimace or scowl.



“Do I have the B.E.E.T.L.E in my possession?”

It’s off the board. The market’s cleared.

“Do I. Have. The B.E.E.T.L.E. In my. Possession? That was the job. Steal the B.E.E.T.L.E armour. Return it to me. Do not try to change the terms of our deal to hide your failings... Frank.”

Fleeter lit a fresh cigarette off the first, and levelled his eyes at the man in green seated opposite.

This is better. It’s off the board, out of the market. Nobody’s looking for stolen property or you, because there is no stolen property. You’ve got a clear path. You’re welcome.

Osborn looked at the smarmy ad man who was so brazenly trying to move the goalposts. He wouldn’t raise his voice. He wouldn’t stand. He wouldn’t do him the courtesy of treating him as enough of a nuisance for either to be necessary.

“I suppose you haven’t failed yet. But this certainly wouldn’t qualify as a success. You have been effective in your own form, even if you didn’t do the job. So what would you have me do in this regard?” Osborn posed the rhetorical question.

“You’ve had people’s livelihoods in your hands before, Fleeter. I mean, like myself, you’ve run your own business. So what would you do if you had a bunch of people who show early signs of promise, without actually achieving their tasks?”

Osborn turned his back to the well dressed advertising agent, rotating in his seat to overlook the city below.

“Probation. The B.E.E.T.L.E suit was seized as evidence. We’ll draw up the short term contract for Farley Fleeter Advertising Agency. I think you might find the contract’s final date might align itself with the conclusion of Abner Jenkins’ trial. I will have what I am owed, Fleeter. Or I will be the object of your unending horror. I will destroy your life, and your co-workers lives, and desecrate the ashes. I have dedicated myself to finding ways to make the lives of people who fail me remarkably uncomfortable in the past, you will understand just what that entails. Fleeter, you find me what I was promised or you will find me every bit the grotesque which disgruntled employees have claimed me to be and then some.”

Sensing the terms would get no more favourable, Farley Fleeter turned and left the office. A smile grew across his face as he felt the weight of the Blue Beetle’s B.B. gun close in his pocket. A stay of execution and he hadn’t needed to give his secret chit away, this called for a drink.




T H E R O X X O N B U I L D I N G

Days After the Crisis | Manhattan, New York

Dario Agger, CEO of Roxxon Energy, strolled out to the podium in front of the skyscraper with his company's name on it in Manhattan. The crisis had past days ago, and the world was starting to come back to normal. But he couldn't be happier. His blinding, bleached teeth reflected the sun just as well as his silver, slicked-back hair. He had always been an oil man, and the business was good. Especially now that he was about to announce something special for the company.

"Well, I'm glad you all could come," he started his remarks. "A few days ago, we experienced something that was terrible beyond words. An attack on every innocent person in this city. The devastation and depravity of those that perpetrated this attack knew no bounds. But luckily, there were others here to protect us. Now, I know there are some out there in the media saying superheroes can't do us any good. That they're a menace. Bull hockey, I say! I saw so many of them trying to help us, and no more than this great woman!"

He motioned to the big screens that flanked the podium, and a highlight reel of Booster Gold's defense of the Roxxon Building played. People oohed and aahed, and rightfully so. She was impressive, as impressive as any superhero was. And now she was gonna be his ace in the hole, a new revenue stream from merchandising and endorsements. He couldn't believe his luck.

"That right there!" he continued. "That there is Booster Gold! The new superhero of Roxxon Energy!"

With that, Booster swooped over the crowd, giving them all a thrill. She pulled up over them and waved, posing for pictures as she did. If the oil man was fully sold on the arrangement, the hero still had reservations. She could use this situation to her benefit, sure. But there was still something gnawing at the back of her mind that there was something really wrong with the entire situation she had found herself in.

Not that she let that affect her smile. There was expectations when you were the face of a company.




H O M E W O O D S U I T E S B Y H I L T O N N Y / M I D T O W N

Less Than A Week Later | Midtown, New York

Ted’s sullen face blinked to life on the Conference Room 1 screen at K.O.R.D. East division courtesy of KORDEX. Although all things being equal he’d rather be somewhere else. He had a proxy sitting in for him at a land auction, the next step in his plans for life in his “other” suit, and nothing that would be discussed here in this meeting would be particularly pleasing.

Four faces showed on Ted’s screen. Whilst he and Jeremiah sat next to each other on laptops in one of the Hotel’s meeting rooms.

“Angela, is there anyway I could get you to scooch in next to Melody or Randall? You’re an indispensable part of these meetings as far as I’m concerned.”

“Yes, Mister Kord.” She said, as she picked her things up and slid over next to Melody Case, the East Division’s President, forcing her to slide down closer to Randall Truman, before she stopped and chose instead to angle the camera towards the pair of them, leaving the Chief Marketing Officer with his own camera just to himself.

“Alright, at this point I’m pretty sure everyone here has made themselves familiar with the news pertaining to Abner Jenkins.”

“Who would have known that the craggly old fart had it in him to be a supervillain, huh?” Randall Truman spoke up coarsely.

“Allegedly.” Ted spoke firmly, with a scowl in his eyes that came through towards everyone, but was clearly intended for Truman. “And our legal department are in the process of discerning just how spurious those allegations are, Mister Truman. So we will do him the courtesy of not assuming all accusations are indiscretions. Innocent until proven guilty. The country does him that honour, and I think in light of his service and our friendship over these years, the least we could do is match that expectation.”

Ted sighed and eased off as he updated the board on the facts. “I’ve spoken with Legal and at this point the focus is mainly on looking to get him bail.”

“Bail? Tony Stark had his employee Iron Man do this kind of thing all the time, what’s the issue?” Melody asked.

Ted sighed. “The issue is that in the span of a week we can expect the Legal landscape has changed dramatically on how this kind of thing is seen. Obviously no new legislation has had the opportunity to be formed yet, but if you think that a judge isn’t going to be prejudiced by what happened down here then you’re living with your head in the sand.”

“Can’t say he’s not a flight risk either...” Added Randall Truman.

“Mmm. Yes. Very helpful.” Ted muttered sarcastically at his Chief Marketing Officer’s complete lack of tact.

“The reason we’re having this meeting,” said Jeremiah Duncan into his laptop, restoring a sense of order to the meeting, “is to keep the full Board appraised on the situation and also to deal with the matter of the Chief Financial Officer position.”

“Yes. Thank you, Jeremiah. Abner was good enough to file his resignation as a result of this incident, for the benefit of this company he’s worked so hard for all of these years, and as a result we’ll be discussing the now vacant Chief Financial Officer position.”

Ted eyed the monitors like a hawk waiting to see which one of the Director’s would first try and make their move. Curt Calhoun rocked forward to say something and Ted immediately cut him off before he could get a word out. “But it will be a very short discussion…”

“...I will be looking to fill this position from outside. Given the very public way in which this occurred I will be looking to preserve internal stability and not shuffle the deckchairs having multiple Senior Executives come to grips with new roles at the same time in the wake of this. I’ll be looking to interview candidates in the next week. I’m sure a few of you may be very disappointed to hear that this opportunity is being handled in this manner, but I assure you I have not made this decision lightly, and I’m making it with the best interests of this company in mind.”

Melody spoke next, with a probing question, “Wouldn’t our shareholders be more concerned about our stability if they see us respond to such a situation by hiring such a prestigious position from without rather than within?”

“Quite possibly.” Ted replied. “But under the current circumstances I’m more concerned with actual stability than perceived stability. I don’t see it as preferable for a new CFO to have to learn their role on the fly, with no proper hand-over - again, we can’t be sure that Abner will be able to get bail at this point - whilst simultaneously having a Division Director who’s responsible for on site management for a third of the company also coming to terms with their new role. I’m also familiar with everybody’s resumes here. Nobody here has ever held a Chief Financial Officer position in the past with the exception of Jeremiah and I couldn’t ask him to take that kind of hit. I won’t. Jeremiah’s going to be busy enough as it is in the coming days, and his experience will be invaluable in smoothing this public relations nightmare in the first place.”

Ted paused to wait for a response or rebuttal from anyone in attendance, but none was forthcoming. “Well, if there’s nothing else… Angela, could you see that the food goes to…”

“The engineers? Yes, sir.”

“You know what, they had at it just last week. I think given the circumstances…”

“Finance and accounts?”

“Got it in one, Angela.” Or two... On the bounce. Whatever.

Carapax and Calhoun’s monitors flicked off. As did Jeremiah’s. Ted could see Randall Truman walk past the two ladies and presumably out of the conference room.

“Ted, how are you feeling? I heard you took quite a beating.” Melody asked.

Kord was shocked by the question. What did she know? How?

“Hmm..?” He quickly tried to gather, pretending he hadn’t heard the initial question.

“Murray said Abner knocked you through a wall in the crossfire at the Expo.”

“Oh, I’m still a little sore, but I’ll be OK. Paramedics said I broke a rib and sprained my wrist landing awkwardly, but I can’t complain. Not with everything that happened out here over the last week.”

“Oh Mr Kord, that’s terrible!” Angela chimed in with sympathy. Ted saw Melody’s concern drain away rapidly having now heard it wasn’t anything more serious. “Well, I’m glad you’re well. That’s all.” Melody said, somewhat more icily, as she organized her assorted folders into a neat stack and left, clutching them tightly to her chest.

“Have you heard from your father recently as well, Mr Kord?” Angela asked.

“Yes, just before I left to come to New York, in fact. We still keep in touch pretty often.” Ted said, looking down to his pocket as his phone vibrated. As the contact name scrolled across his phone he could make out the caller as “--ord”

“Just a second. Sorry. I have to take this real quick.” He held out a finger to the laptop camera as he answered his phone.

“Yes?”

“The auction just finished.”

“And?”

“And you’re now a New York land owner, kid.”

“Excellent. How much?”

“7 and a half under your top price.”

“Oof.” Ted said, he went a little high, because he wanted to make sure he got it, but it was more than he’d expected. “Alright though, I guess. I’ll talk to you later.”

He finished replying to Angela. “In fact, he’s probably the first person I’ll go and see when I land." He said with a smile as he clicked disconnect on the call he had taken with the contact name “Maxwell Lord”.

"You know how it is. Make sure Dad knows his boy’s safe.”
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W E L L I N G T O N, N E V A D A


Corporal Jeramiah “Wash” Trujillo rode shotgun as the truck belonging to the Sheriff's Department sped on through the desert night. Sergeant Bridget Reid sat in the driver’s seat next to him watching the open stretch of highway ahead of them with a stony silence. It had been close to four years since Trujillo had moved south from Tacoma, but even still the sheer emptiness of the Mojave, especially at night, still managed to surprise him. Sometimes you would go hours before headlights would appear on the horizon, only for the vehicle to pass on by just as quickly as it appeared. When he pointed this out to other members on the force, they predictably teased him about it. They gave him warnings that the quiet was only there to lull you into a false sense of security until the ghosts or aliens snatched you up. Trujillo was the resident city boy after all, despite his insistence that Tacoma was small compared to the likes of Seattle and Spokane and even more to Gotham or Metropolis. The corporal’s protests fell on deaf ears though, it didn’t matter if you were an overworked port officer, you were still a member of the coastal elite.

Maybe that is why Trujillo enjoyed running with Reid so much, she didn’t say shit. Trujillo’s own journey through the department’s well-greased rumor mill delivered the same old story – Reid was the lead on a case revolving around some sicko who hitchhiked on the railroad to get around and had a penchant to chopping up schoolgirls and fucking their corpses. After that it was a lot of staring off into the distance and morbid conversations from Reid. Whatever jovial seed that had once nestled itself within the sergeant’s bosom had long since shriveled up and died. A psychiatric evaluation after the fact suggested that Reid talked to somebody, but she apparently walked out of her first appointment with the shrink. The higher ups in the Department let her stay on though, driven by their throbbing hard-ons for picturesque efficiency, they only cared in as much as it kept the proverbial trains running on time and luckily for them Reid only got more efficient after the incident not less.

Reid spit a chewed and saliva ridden ball of gum into her thermos before she wiped at her mouth with a sleeve and spoke, “Why’d you come out to the desert Wash?”

“Guess I just wanted a change of pace.” Trujillo lied, caught off guard by his partner’s sudden interest.

Trujillo knew if he had the chance, he’d be back in Tacoma quicker than a shit after a bad case of food poisoning. The emphasis though was on the word chance and the problem was he never would have one, not as long as the Russians were still running amok in the port. Everyone knew that the russkaya mafiya used the port to smuggle drugs, people, and weapons from the Russian East to the American West and vice-versa. Trujillo just had the shit luck of being on shift the night when Ivan and friends were dealing with a business partner of theirs. They were considerate enough to not shoot him right then and there when he stumbled upon the scene. Instead they provided him with an ultimatum, which was made all the more persuasive by the Glock barrel that they lovingly placed into his mouth. They were never to see Trujillo again or next time they wouldn’t be so kind with their offering.

“This your idea of a fun time then? Riding out into the desert to catch some kids getting their rocks off by setting fires?” Reid mused referring to their current assignment.

It was a “granny call” – some old senior having seen something scary in the night and now the department had to go look at it. Mister Willoughby who lived on the edge of town saw smoke in the distance and frantically dialed in. The pair after an unlucky drawing of straws was sent out to investigate to see if the fire department needed to be called up. As it was easier to send two grunts from the Sheriff’s department out there than potentially sending out a fully supplied fire truck that couldn’t get back to town as quickly if a fire broke out.

“What makes you say they are kids?” Trujillo questioned.

Reid shrugged. “It’s 3:00 AM on a Tuesday Wash, everyone else has lives to attend to.”

They turned off the highway; the truck’s frame rumbling as tires rode across unpaved dirt. As the road vanished behind them, so too did the last signs of civilization. Ahead of them was only rocks, scrubland, and the occasional prickly bushel of a low-lying cactus that merged the border between the two. On the horizon ahead of them, Trujillo could see a dark plume of smoke faintly illuminated by the tendrils of a creeping orange glow that hung on the horizon, the smoke growing fainter as it drifted away from the glow and into a tar tinted night sky. Trujillo whistled at the sight before he spoke.

“Fuck, maybe old man Willoughby isn’t going senile after all.”

Reid didn’t offer any comment.

As the truck rounded a final hill, Trujillo’s eyes widened. Below them in the remnants of a dried-up riverbed was a scene of carnage.

The hulking shells of two black SUVs sat in the riverbed, one of them sprawled out on its side and the other flipped completely on its back, flames licking upwards from the wreckage. Pieces of the two vehicles lay scattered across the scene reminding Trujillo of old pictures of bomb craters from school textbooks. Intermingled with the scattered shrapnel were dark shapes that were vaguely humanoid in appearance all inert. As the truck crept closer, Trujillo reached a hand down towards the pistol at his waist.

Reid pulled the key out of the ignition. The headlights blinked out of existence leaving only the fire from the crashed truck to illuminate the scene. Trujillo looked towards his partner and they shared a glance of silent acknowledgment before they opened the doors. Trujillo drew his flashlight from his belt and his pistol from its holster as he surveyed the scene. As he stood watched out of the corner of his eyes, he could see Reid pull out the shotgun from the mount on the truck’s rearview mirror. The two stood in silence as they swept the area for any signs of movement, but there was only the flicker of the flames. Nodding to one another, the sergeant and the corporal moved down the slight incline into the riverbed their safeties turned off.

As they got close to the nearest body Trujillo knelt to get a better look. The poor sap was dressed in heavy black body armor from head to toe. His helmet’s visor had been punctured through in two places with great force, slowly congealing blood dripped from the jagged holes left behind. Trujillo deduced that he was a PMC of some kind judging from his gear alone. A set of heavy bandoliers were attached to his armor containing several clips of extra ammo. The firearm though wasn’t anywhere near the body. Looking down at the body, Trujillo realized that he was crawling towards something, one arm reaching out towards a bush a few feet away.

He traced the reaching trajectory of the dead man’s arm and found a gun. It was a TSB17-9 submachine gun. The barrel had been sliced clean off from the gun landing a few feet away. Kicking the gun over with his foot, he noticed a pair of black padded fingers that still gripped the trigger, severed from the hand that was holding it. The corporal recoiled in shock as he fought against the bile that was forcing its way up his throat. Taking a slow breath, he slowly stepped away from the mangled weapon and appendages.

Trujillo made his way towards Reid who was currently examining the SUV turned on its side. As he crossed the riverbed, he watched the horizon and listened. There was still nothing, but the crackle of the fire from the other vehicle. The flames were spreading out now. The fire licked at the edge of the surrounding shrubs and a few of the corpses.

Trujillo turned his attention back to Reid and the unconsumed SUV. The vehicle’s tinted windshield had a hole in the center like something vaguely humanoid had burst through it. There was a woman in the driver seat dressed in a similar get up to the other corpse he had examined. He noted that the only difference was that this one didn’t have a helmet on, instead a black beret. His eyes though were fixated slightly below the head at the woman’s neck which had been shredded open. He stood there and thought about that for a minute, thought about what could do something like that.

Reid came back around towards the front having examined the vehicle’s cabin. Her face was pale, but her voice remained steady.

“Three more bodies in the back. All the upholstery is torn to shit as well.”

“What the hell is all this Reid?” Trujillo asked shaking his head.

“I have no idea Wash… This isn’t normal, not one bit.”

“Do we at least know who they are?”

“People with a lot of money that’s who. Not even the cartels pack this much heat.”

“There are more bodies beyond the burning wreck. Maybe they might give us a clue.”

Trujillo turned away from the SUV and trudged further up the riverbed. As he marched along, he shined his flashlight across the ground. There was a lot of blood, discharged bullet shells, and footprints. Judging from the amount of clutter, he began to get a picture of the events that transpired. Whatever survivors there where from the two wrecks moved in pursuit of something and whatever the something was it was fighting back. And judging from the corpses that lined the trail he was following that something was winning.

He passed four more bodies and stopped at the fifth that was furthest out. Still dressed in the same body armor, the man had managed to brace himself up against a rock. Resting in his lap was a shotgun pointed away from the wreckage. The shotgun had a short barrel and it was fitted with a pistol stock and a twenty round drum magazine. A blood-stained tactical knife lay not far from him having been tossed to the ground. There was a singular large puncture wound in his left leg just above the Popliteal artery and there was about a dozen more similar wounds each in pairs of two across the armor. It seemed that this man had managed to hold out longer than his other compatriots, trying to prop up his shotgun with his dying breaths. Trujillo didn’t know if such dedication was admirable or tragic.

He squatted down next to the dead man and followed the direction of his gaze. Leading out of the riverbed was more footprints and more blood. The footprints were different from the heavy imprints left by the soldiers’ combat boots. They were lighter, smaller, and belonged to somebody that was wearing no shoes at all. They must have belonged to the last man standing whomever they were. The footprints were erratic and staggered in a limping gait and there was a lot of blood. They couldn’t have made it all that far.

Trujillo scrambled up the short incline that lead out of the riverbed. He paused at the apex and looked back. Reid was checking over the other bodies as the smoke continued to belch into the sky. He paused and listened again as he watched the country. There was nothing: no sound, no movement. Not even the buzz of flies coming to nest on the corpses. He wasn’t sure if the place was cursed or sacred. Either way, he felt like an intruder.

The ground ahead of him was disturbed having fallen downward in a miniature rockslide. The footprints stopped at the edge, but the blood continued. He could see a pair of handprints where somebody caught themselves after a tumble. The trail continued like that. The heavy imprint of a body dragging itself across the ground like some large snake. The movement had aggregated whatever wounds they had received as there was more blood now. Dark heavy streaks tinted brown as it mixed with the desert dust.

Can’t be far now. Nobody can survive losing that much blood. Trujillo thought to himself.

The trail brought him to the foot of another small hill. There at its base was a small dark shape. The beam of his flashlight uncovered another body. He watched the body for a long time. His gun was trained on the corpse watching for any movement. Satisfied he crept on forward to get a better look.

The girl was curled up in such a way that she reminded Trujillo of a sleeping dog. A trail of blood smeared with dust went halfway up the hill before stopping. She had pale skin and long black hair, and both were matted with blood. Her black t-shirt was riddled with stab wounds and bullet holes and her black jeans were in a similar state. Yet Trujillo couldn’t make out any visible injuries.

He took another breath and holstered his weapon. He could feel his hands shake as he reached out to place a pair of fingers on the girl’s neck.

badumpbadumpbadumpbadump

The pulse was slow and strong. The girl was still alive.

Trujillo gripped the trigger on the radio receiver clipped to his shoulder and spoke.

“Reid, you are gonna want to come and see this.”
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