Morden Man

Maximum Comics: Dawn of Justice | REBRANDING - PLEASE STAY TUNED

We're just so in sync! haha

@HenryJonesJr

Maximum Comics: Dawn of Justice | REBRANDING - PLEASE STAY TUNED

So @Morden Man, you accidentally played into my larger Hellboy story by using Stirk...I applaud you for that.

@HenryJonesJr

And to think I was going to use someone lame like Electrocutioner or Multiplex until I decided I wanted to make "Steve Rogers" a cannibal.

The Pickett County War: A Rural Noir RP

“Fuck this.”

Dante muttered from near the window as he seemingly grew more irritable by the second. Roland had been watching him. He was struggling with the heat. That much was clear to see even with the balaclava on. There was more than that though. He seemed unstable. Roland tugged at the rope that bound his wrists a little and winced in pain as it tore at his skin. When he looked up he saw Dante with his Glock in his hand. It was pointing in Roland’s direction.

His friend, the tall one, outstretched his hand towards him. “What the fuck are you doing, Dante?”

A wry smile appeared on Dante’s face. “What we should have done two hours ago.”

In that moment Roland saw his life flash before his eyes. He saw every mistake, ever misdeed, and every sin he’d ever committed. He tasted the kisses of every girl he’d ever been with and lamented that he’d never lay with another woman again. His life, his work, had all amounted to nothing. He was going to die out here in the Bog without a soul in the world that gave a damn about him. He was certain of that. He saw Dante’s finger pull back on the trigger some.

“No,” the tall man shouted. “No!”

There was a flash of light and a loud bang. Roland felt himself being thrown backwards but not the pain. No, there was no pain, it was over faster than he thought it would be, all he’d felt was his already bloodied skull crashing down against the floor of the shack. In his periphery he spotted Dante fall to the floor dead and saw the tall man stood beside him with a smoking gun in his hand. It took Roland several seconds to figure out what had happened. Even staring into Dante’s vacant eyes and the blood that pooled beneath his head what had really happened sunk in. It was only until he looked down and noticed there was no bullet wound in him that it dawned on him. He was still alive.

The tall man walked over to him and Roland felt his huge hands pulling his chair upright. After a few seconds Spencer managed to summon up some words. “Why did you do that?”

“I don’t know,” the tall man shrugged as he glanced down at Dante’s lifeless body. “I guess I wanted to see what it felt like to do the right thing for once in my life.”

That voice. It sounded like Antwan’s voice. Suddenly the pieces clicked into place and Roland’s eyes widened. The voice, Dante, the “Marcus” they’d spoken about, and their wanting to speak about Antwan. The tall man was Antwan’s uncle. He’d heard the boy waxing lyrical about his uncle and his exploits for years.

“I know who you are,” Roland muttered. “You’re Chew Lewis.”

Lewis pulled the balaclava free from his face. His brow was mopped with sweat, as were his lips, but despite his shorn hair and hulking stature he bore a facial resemblance to Michelle. Chew threw the balaclava down to the ground and wiped his face clean of sweat before staring in Roland’s direction.

“That’s right,” Chew nodded. “But seeing as I just gunned down the only friend I had left in this world for you, I’d appreciate it if you kept my name out of your mouth once you got out of here. The last thing I need is Billy Brown breathing down my neck.”

Roland laughed derisively at that. “What? You actually think you’re getting out of here?”

“Think?” Chew said with a determined scowl. “I know I am.”

His face was stony serious. There was something in his eyes that made it hard for Roland to disbelieve him despite the unlikelihood of what he was saying. If half of the things Antwan had said about him were true then the crazy son of a bitch might actually be able to do it. Roland shied back into his seat a little as Chew approached him. He walked behind him and unbound the rope that had kept him strapped to his seat.

Spencer’s hands cried with relief as he rubbed at them. “You hear those dogs? They’re coming for you, Chew, as much as I’m thankful for your little show of chivalry, I have a feeling it’s not going to do you much good.”

Chew walked over to the window and scanned the horizon. Roland couldn’t see the view from where he was sitting but whatever was awaiting him out there certainly didn’t seem pretty. He took a glance down at Dante’s body laid amongst the cracked vials on the floor and let out a heavy sigh. It was clear having taken his friend’s life rested heavily on his conscience. He shook his head a little as if to steel himself for what he was about to do.

“We’ll see about that.”

Lewis pulled out his gun and used it to smash through what remained of the rotting window frame. He placed a single leg through it and was about to climb through and out to the Bog when a thought popped into Roland’s mind. Marcus. As much as Roland’s interests in Antwan were financial, he’d grown to appreciate him for more than that, and in the wake of Jayson being shot his affinity for him had grown even more. Chew was the only man on Earth now that knew what really happened to Antwan’s daddy and he wasn’t about to let him walk out of there without finding out.

He stood up from his seat slowly and called out to him. “You really leave Marcus Dixon behind to die like that? Like he said?”

Without a second’s hesitation Chew nodded. “Yeah.”

His face grew wistful, weary even, and he stared down at Dante’s body once more. In the distance the sound of the approaching dogs grew louder and louder by the second. They were coming. He knew that. The sound of incoming voices broke him out of his wistfulness and he looked up at Roland and matched his gaze.

“But he’d have done the same to me in a heartbeat,” Chew said with a warm, nostalgic smile. “I guess that’s why we were best friends.”

With that he slipped through the window and Roland was alone.

Maximum Comics: Dawn of Justice | REBRANDING - PLEASE STAY TUNED

Washington D.C.
March 27th, 2005
08:41am

Adorning the walls of Maria Hill's office were pictures of her in army fatigues in far flung corners of the world. In each she was surrounded by smiling friends, often with arms interlocked, or sat in a beach chair somewhere with a beer can in her hand. Bucky could count on one hand the times he'd seen her smile since they had met. The pictures were a humbling reminder of the double lives most SHIELD agents led. Hill looked like a completely different person in those pictures and it was likely she was one when not prowling the halls of the Triskelion. The absence of family pictures was notable but Bucky put that down to times having changed more than anything else. A seated Hill stared at a tablet on the desk in front of her whilst Bucky watched on.

"Thanks to your little performance last night I’ve been up all night trying to track and remotely delete any footage of your little run in with Cornelius Stirk. I apologise in advance if I come across as seeming a little irritable but I assure you that Director Fury was doubly so when he found out. You’re lucky it’s me you’re talking to or not him."

"Cornelius Stirk? That was that thing’s name?"

Maria nodded curtly and slid her hand along her tablet. A run sheet of Stirk's popped up on the screen. "He’s a small-time criminal out of Gotham with telepathic powers of some sort. We’re not sure what brought him to Washington but we certainly could have dealt with him without announcing to the world that Captain America was back."

Bucky shrugged his shoulders nonchalantly. "They were going to find out sooner or later."

Maria Hill let out a sigh and pinched the bridge of her nose. She made no attempt to hide her exasperation. The bags beneath her eyes were heavy with tiredness and Bucky's indifference seemed to grate on her. There were more factors at play here than Barnes had accounted for and his desire to play the hero last night had cost her far more than a night's sleep. There had been a plan in place for Captain America's eventual reveal that had been thrown into disarray by what had happened in Washington last night.

"Of course, but HYDRA and the Red Skull didn’t announce their return by pounding on some anonymous SHIELD agent in the middle of the street, James. They made sure they had an audience. We had hoped for something slightly more worthy of the return of Captain America than grainy footage of you beating on Cornelius Stirk being beamed round the world."

"I was just trying to do the right thing," Bucky muttered as Stirk's illusion of Steve Rogers flashed through his mind for the umpteenth time. Every time he'd closed his eyes since leaving the restaurant he'd seen it. "You didn’t see what he’d done to those people. If you had you’d understand."

"This is bigger than you, James, this is bigger than all of us. It might sound crass to say it but it's bigger than a handful of people in a restaurant too. We could have had a SHIELD unit there within five minutes if you’d told us rather than steaming in half-cocked. We need you to be smarter than that. We had you put that uniform on to give the world hope, not to deal with street level threats like Stirk."

"I did what was right," Bucky said sternly. "I won’t apologise for that."

Hill placed her head in her hands and sighed again. "Fine. Well, we managed to have most of the footage taken down but given the nature of the internet we’re always going to be one step behind. Facebook and the like are the least of our problems. We can lean on them."

"What’s the issue then?"

With a stroke of her finger Maria Hill brought up an audio file on her tablet. "Listen to this."

"Maria, it's Lois Lane from the Daily Planet. I thought given our history I ought to call you as a courtesy. The Planet have received some footage from the incident in Washington last night. We know Captain America is back, Maria, and no matter how many times SHIELD tries to shut this thing down, we're going to follow it up until someone eventually rolls over and cops to it. You know as well as I do that it's only a matter of time. You have my number if you decide to get out ahead of this one."

Bucky stared at Maria expressionlessly. "What are you telling me? That you can lean on these… websites but not on a single reporter?"

The beginnings of a smile appeared on Maria Hill's face.

"Lois Lane is not just some reporter, Barnes, she’s a Pulitzer-prize winning journalist with international reach. We can dismiss the videos as a hoax, some social media ploy, but Lane is not so easily dismissed. She’s a terrier. Once she has something in her sights she doesn’t let it go. Think Ben Ulrich in a pencil skirt."

"None of this means anything to me," Barnes said with a bemused look. "What are you saying? What’s our play here?"

What had been the beginnings of a smile spread into a broad, bashful one and Bucky couldn't help but smile back at Maria. Suddenly it dawned on him how unusual it was to see her smile and he reasoned that there must have been a reason for it. His own smile began to fade as he realised that Agent Hill had something planned for him that he wasn't going to like. When her bashful smile finally broke and she opened her mouth to speak his fears were confirmed.

"You’re going to sit down with Lois Lane tonight for a televised interview that will be seen the world over."

Maximum Comics: Dawn of Justice | REBRANDING - PLEASE STAY TUNED

I've gotten employed temporarily, so my posting will probably revolve around Monday through Wednesday for the greater part of the month. That means any posts I will do including updates will revolve around those days. Sorry for the short notice y'all but I have overdue posts to write tonight.

@Gowi

Congratulations on finding employment.

Maximum Comics: Dawn of Justice | REBRANDING - PLEASE STAY TUNED

@Agent Orange Have you had your fill of FIFA yet? I need some more Greg Saunders in my life.

Maximum Comics: Dawn of Justice | REBRANDING - PLEASE STAY TUNED

Sinestro touched down in front of Blastaar’s monolithic stronghold with the four missing Green Lanterns capsuled in a bubble construct. He muttered inaudibly under his breath as his gaze fell on Amanita’s lifeless body. Of all the Green Lanterns, Sinestro felt Amanita’s passing most of all. Before the ring had sought him out Sinestro had been a decorated anthropologist. Amanita had belonged to a species older than the Guardians themselves. With his passing a millennia of history went with him. The things Amanita had seen and the experiences he’d had were all evaporated into the ether as if they’d never happened. The doors to Blastaar’s stronghold drew open as Sinestro approached them and a group of Blastaar’s armed guards met Sinestro. From the look on their faces and the way they gripped their weapons tightly they were not pleased to see him.

Sinestro was led to Blastaar’s chamber and the hulking Baluurian smiled broadly at him as he entered with the missing Green Lanterns in tow. Blastaar’s men had offered to take them to the medical bay upon Sinestro’s arrival but he wanted Blastaar’s word first. The Baluurian seemed many things: domineering, spiteful, and intimidating to say the least. Yet he seemed a man of his word. That counted for something. Sinestro wasn’t going to part with the missing Lantern until he’d had Blastaar’s assurances. Until he’d heard the words leave his mouth.

As Sinestro came into sight, visibly worse for wear, Blastaar smiled at him wrly. “You have returned.”

“I have,” Sinesto said with a cordial smile. “Your information was correct, Commander, those vermin on Arthoros were responsible for the abduction of the Lanterns. Thank you.”

Blastaar looked at the Green Lanterns in Sinestro’s bubble. His eyes fell on their withered forms of the living Lanterns and the lifeless Amanita. “Yet still you ask more of me.”

“Only to grant us safe haven for a time,” Sinestro nodded. “The Lantern I was with earlier went in search of a missing power ring. I ask that we be allowed to remain here until she returns with it.”

Blastaar laughed. It was as bone chilling as it had been the first time Sinestro had heard it. The Baluurian’s body shook for several seconds until finally he composed himself again. “What has become of the great Green Lantern Corps when it sends a woman to do its dirty work and the men stay at home?”

Sinestro was not a man without prejudices. He abhorred weakness. The servants he’d passed on his way to Blastaar’s chambers had made him sick to his stomach, as had the cowardly insectoids that lived in fear beneath the earth on Arthoros, but Carol’s gender wasn’t even a consideration in his mind. It was not the reproductive organs one possessed that made a person weak, nor their species, but their willingness to overcome fear. In that respect Sinestro considered himself Danvers’ better but in that alone. Her being a woman had not occurred to him.

His practiced politeness slid away for a moment and he sneered at the Baluurian. “Green Lantern Danvers is more than capable.”

The door to Blastaar’s chamber opened and through it stepped one of the shaggy creatures that answered to him. It slunk towards him and placed its hand on his shoulder, leaning in towards him and whispering into his ear, before leaving the chambers as quickly as he’d entered them. Blastaar’s spiteful smile all but disappeared as whatever news his subject had imparted began to register in his mind.

“I would not be so certain.”

Sinestro’s eyes narrowed a little. “What does that mean?”

With the flick of a button on a dashboard a projection appeared between Blastaar and Sinestro. It took some time for Sinestro to make out what was happening but finally he discerned in the chaos a horde of insectoids. The very same insectoids he’d encountered on Arthoros.

“It means that the vermin you speak of have followed you here from Arthoros, Lantern, and they have brought their leader with them. Lantern Danvers is dead. You have brought war to Baluur.”

Sinestro spotted their leader amongst the masses of insectoids. He was thin and metallic, green and purple to look at, but most peculiarly was the green energy that appeared to be seeping out of him. It almost looked like the energy that Sinestro and Carol wielded. Slowly it clicked into place and Sinestro realised that the ring Carol had gone back for was now in the creature’s possession. He knew not how it was wielding it or what had happened to Carol but he intended to find out. He would have his revenge.

Sinestro clenched his his fist and looked towards Blastaar determinedly. “If it is war, let it be war then.”

“We are not prepared.”

“You do not need preparation,” Sinestro said with a wrathful smile. “You have Sinestro on your side.”

With that he blew a hole through the wall of Blastaar’s chambers using his power ring and left Blastaar, the Lanterns, and Blastaar’s servants behind. On the horizon he could see Baluur’s red sky turning black as the wave of insectoids swarmed towards Blastaar’s stronghold. Amidst the blackness he spotted one shining green light. It shone like an emerald star amidst the night’s sky. He shot out into the air and flew towards it. He would meet the wave head on, he would extinguish the star, and he would turn Baluur’s sky red once more.

For Amanita.

The Pickett County War: A Rural Noir RP

In the distance the sound of dogs barking caught Dante’s attention. At first he had thought that the heat of The Bog had started to get to him. Beneath his balaclava he could feel the sweat pouring down his neck and along his chest. He had sweated so much that his white button-down shirt was nearly translucent and his slick body was visible through it. Dante grew visibly uncomfortable and agitated with each passing second and the sound of barking in the distance seemed to him a sure a sign of their impending capture. He looked at Chew still sat calmly on the mattress in the corner of the room seemingly unperturbed by their situation. Dante looked at him for a few seconds, ignoring Roland in his periphery vision, and gestured outside of the tiny little shack they had hoped up in.

“Can you hear that?”

“Of course I can hear it,” Chew nodded gravely. “Dogs.”

Dante paced around the room a little. “They’re close, getting closer by the second.”

“Relax,” Chew muttered as he stared down at the gun in his hands. “They’re not coming for us.”

“How can you be so sure? Someone could have talked.”

Chew glared at him. “Someone? No one talked. Fucking relax.”

It was clear from Chew’s tone that he resented the implication that his sister might have put the both of them in. Chew had never seen what Michelle had become whilst he was behind bars, the kind of things she’d been doing, but Dante and the rest of Norman had. She might have turned things round now but Michelle Lewis had once borrowed, stolen, and tricked for her high back then and Dante had always found it difficult to trust someone like that. They were always the first to break.

“Easy enough for you to say,” Dante mumbled under his breath and gestured towards Roland. “He doesn’t know your fucking name.”

Whatever happened here, Chew was straight. He could walk out of here and spend the rest of his life un-fucking troubled by what had happened here. Dante had plunged his hands into the filth for him, stepped up to the mark when Chew had asked him to, and he still didn’t seem to be capable of showing an ounce of gratitude. Dante scratched at the sweat on his neck a little and stared at his old friend for a moment. He thought about his life before Chew had got out. He had his own place, made a decent living, and most importantly hadn’t crossed Billy fucking Brown. This shit with Chew had put all of that at risk. From the way Chew was sat, seeming unconcerned about what was happening, it was like he didn’t even realise that.

As if from nowhere Dante voiced his concerns. He looked towards his old friend and mumbled at him. “You’ve been nothing but fucking trouble since you got out.”

Chew shook his head a little. “You’re bugging out, man.”

With every word Dante spoke another grievance came to mind. He thought back to that night at Club 65 where Chew had thrown him against the car for having the temerity to tell the fucking truth for once. Chew had always pushed him around, Marcus and he had treated Dante like little more than an errand boy, and having found himself stuck in The Bog, having kidnapped Roland fucking Spencer of all people, Dante finally recognised that. Chew hadn’t asked him to do this with him because he liked him or because he trusted him. It was because he had nobody else. Dante was his errand boy all over again.

“Too slow on the fucking draw back in Georgia but quick enough to suggest we fucking leave Marcus behind,” Dante said angrily. Tears had begun to well in his eyes as he spoke and he was waving his gun around. “He was our best friend, man. And you made me leave him to bleed out there like some pig to save your own skin. How do I know you won’t do that again when the time comes?”

Chew stood up from the mattress slowly and glanced towards Roland Spencer as if imploring him to stay silent. He raised a concerned hand in Dante’s direction. “Breathe, Dante.”

“Don’t fucking tell me to breathe,” Dante seethed. “He’s dead because of you.”

“I know that,” Chew nodded guiltily. “I know that better than anyone.”

There. That was all Dante had wanted, all he’d ever wanted, to be treated with a little respect, and hearing those words leave Chew’s mouth calmed him a little. He rubbed at his forehead over the balaclava and then looked at Chew earnestly.

“How do I know you’re not going to leave me like that, man?”

A few seconds passed and Chew let a sigh thick with regret leave his lips. He placed one of his large hands on Dante’s shoulder and smiled at him reassuringly. “That’s not going to happen.”

Dante nodded slightly as he felt the last of his rage pass. He saw a thin smile creep over the lips of Roland Spencer and tugged at his trigger pull a little as he looked at him. Chew shook his head and Dante sighed. He walked over to the tiny window of the filthy little shack they’d made their home, vials cracking underfoot as he went, and stared out at the endless Bog. There was barking in the distance. Dante just hoped that it wasn’t coming for them.

Maximum Comics: Dawn of Justice | REBRANDING - PLEASE STAY TUNED

Awesome first Black Panther post. @miette I'm expecting the rest of them to be this good now. No pressure or anything.

Maximum Comics: Dawn of Justice | REBRANDING - PLEASE STAY TUNED

Sometimes you need to put the team on your back.