Author: admin

Posted on

Breec Book 3, Part 49

Rox threw a stone as far into the sky as she could. “You have any idea what you’re doing?” Mai asked.

“Nope,” she said with a shrug. “Which is half the fun.”

The guard outside the facility heard the clattering of pebbles from overhead, grunted and looked up. A hailstorm of stones bounded off the rock face onto him- one with the force of a softball, sending him crumpling to the ground.

“You’re lucky you didn’t kill him,” Mai said. “Not that I’d have lost any sleep over it.”

Rox checked his pulse. “Strong and steady. Lucky he was wearing a helmet.” She ejected the magazine from his rifle and hurled it into the darkness. Then she clipped his radio to her belt.

“Whatever we find in here,” Mai said, “we keep going until we find the kid. That’s non-negotiable.”

“Fine,” Rox said. Mai opened the door, and flattened against the wall to the right. Anita was behind her by a fraction of a second, flattening to the left. Rox stood, flat-footed. Inside was a reception area. “This was not what I expected.”

“Don’t,” Anita said, pointing a gun at a receptionist who was holding the receiver of her desk phone to her ear. “Everything’s fine,” she mouthed.

“I have to go,” the woman said, hanging up the phone.

Rox held up her hand, and approached the reception desk. “We have an appointment.”

“No,” the woman said. “You don’t.”

“Ah,” Anita said, circling around the desk. She pulled a pistol out from a holster beneath the desk.

“So it’s that kind of ‘reception,’ then,” Rox said. “Cool. Then I don’t have to sugar coat this. My friends are former deep cover black operatives whose service broke the parts of the human mind that prevent them from tearing appendages off their fellow human beings. We’re looking for a young boy, brought through here, because they’re concerned what happened to them might happen to him, and I don’t have to tell you that the thought does not make my friends terribly happy- or sociable.”

“I think you’ve made a mistake,” the woman said. “We’re… well, from your accent you’re from the States, yes? We’re comparable to your NSA. This site is servers and data analysts. We don’t have a child kidnapping department onsite. Or offsite, for that matter.”

“I’d suggest you not lie to us. My Asian friend can hear your heartbeat quicken, smell the slight change in pheromones signaling fear; I even imagine she could alter her eyes to perceive the electrical impulses in your brain to tell when you’re engaging the parts of the brain that lie. She’s also really good at mutilating people, and paranoid. My other friend can see the drafts of reality. On a good day, that means she could probably get the information out of you without having to hurt you at all. But she’s having a hell of a bad day; I think in this case she might just use her ability to figure out how to hurt you the worst, for the same reason a sad, scared little kid will rip the wings off a fly.

“Now, our intel suggests you are indeed a government run operation. Which likely means there’s a binder with pictures of my friends, and a description of a handful of the awful things they’ve done in the name of country- but you’ll also know that list only includes the official record, and none of the off the books shit no one would dare commit to paper. If it was written by people with your best interests at heart, it would tell you to shoot them on sight, and failing that, yourself. Bottom line, we’re not leaving without the kid. Personally, I’d like to maim as few people along the way as possible, but-“

It happened too fast. Anita fired a round into a security camera overhead, as the receptionist went for a button on the desk. Mai and Anita bolted for the interior door, which was covered an instant later by a heavy blast door, locking Rox in the lobby. “Sonofabitchsonofabitchsonofabitch,” she muttered. “I don’t think it’s an accident they both ended up on the other side of the blast door. Can you get it open?”

The blast doors slid back up, and Rox walked silently towards them. A guard strode through. “Everything okay? Or you drop your bagel on the lockdown button again?” he asked.

“Watch,” the receptionist began, before her throat seized in a fit of coughing.

“You okay?” the guard asked, stepping towards her. Rox slammed her elbow into his throat, took his keycard and slid back through the blast door as it descended.

Alarms were blaring inside, and civilians were prepping for evacuation. “Shit,” Rox muttered. “Needle in a burning haystack.”

Posted on

Pitchgiving 2020 Part 2: Green Arrow and the Outsiders

Green Arrow & the Outsiders (Green Arrow fronted team, gathering together a lot of legacy characters like Kyle Rayner, otherwise a generally more street-level team); Black Canary will end up in this orbit, eventually, though maybe she splits her time with the Birds of Prey. Nightwing. We can add more, depending on exactly how big we want the fireworks at the end of this movie to be, but we might be better off adding them in the sequels, instead: Tempest. Donna Troy. Wally West. Plastic Man. Kyle Rayner. Black Lightning.

Opening montage, Oliver Queen partying hard as a wealthy d-bag as he narrates, with a Bruce Wayne cameo, spilling drinks on Oliver. “I grew up with more money than I knew what to do with. Literally. I burned through money so fast even Bruce Wayne once told me to slow up; he was four martinis deep- so he was one to talk. The only thing I ever earned for myself was this.” Cut to a young Ollie, hitting a target with a bow. Cut again, he’s at the Olympics as a young man, drawing back. “My parents paid to have me taught self-defense; if they’d been as interested in self-preservation they’d have gone into rehab- instead of into the Pacific Ocean.” Quicker cuts, as Oliver spars in a martial arts outfit, and we see his parents’ car go over a cliff, tumbling towards the Ocean. “I slid seamlessly into their lives,” we see him in a suit attending meetings, drinking too much at social gatherings, generally being a feckless socialite.

“Then my life changed.” He gets mugged by a teen, obviously living on the street. She’s going to be his Speedy, eventually. He reacts on instinct, bloodying her and getting the knife away, knocking her into the light enough to realize, “She was a kid, so desperate for a meal that she attacked someone bigger, stronger, better connected. I gave her my wallet. I gave her my keys. She offered to give me a ride home.”

Back at his apartment. “I won’t sleep with you,” she says, anxious.

“I think you misunderstand me.”

“I have HIV.”

“God,” he whispers, and moves to comfort her. Narrating again: “I got her the help she needed. Meds. A place of her own. And a job.” We cut to his work, where she’s interning (paid). But he can’t focus- he’s daydreaming. (insert statistics on homelessness, poverty, etc.). “I left Queen Industries shortly thereafter. I couldn’t keep trying to amass more wealth, when I knew how many people were struggling just to put food on their tables, or afford the meds they need to survive. I plowed most of my fortune into charity, only to find that a lot of charities are run like a business- by which I mean corrupt. Half the ‘charities’ the wealthy ran were just glorified slush funds to buy politicians to advance their interests, the worst run by a real estate developer with mob connections named Mandragora.” I haven’t figured out the mechanism, but Mandragora’s ‘charity’ stands in the way of some work Queen wants to do, or maybe steals money from one of his charities, something that puts them on a collision course. 

This version of Mandragora is going to riff on Trump, while also giving us a logical reason to loop in both Huntress and Black Canary (accompanying an out of her depth Huntress); Question has discovered that he was the power behind the hit on her family- or maybe he was their inside man who set her family up to take the fall, whatever fits. Ollie confronts Mandragora, assuming he can talk sense to him, man to man. Instead Mandragora kicks the crap out of him, and throws him out on the street, where he’s found by Black Canary and Huntress. “You should see the other guy,” he says, as they help him to his feet.

“From the look of you, I’d say the other guy was 97 flights of stairs,” Canary says.

“No such luck, I’m afraid. Would you ladies be so kind as to help me to my” he sighs, “right, I didn’t drive here.”

“How about we help you to a seat, and you can wait for a car, there?” Canary asks, gesturing to a diner down the street.

They eat, and talk, with Canary subtly interrogating him (and Huntress not-so-subtly interrogating him because she is adorably socially awkward). Ollie is entranced by Canary, and I think I want to set up a pattern of him asking her to go out with him, and her rebuffing him, because at a glance he’s a soft, entitled oligarch. “You should get a bite to eat with me, sometime.”

“Isn’t that what we’re doing?” Huntress asks.

Suddenly Dick Grayson slides into the booth beside him, and flashes a wide grin. He’s friendly, breezy, effortless. “Don’t worry about introductions. We all have a stake in dealing with Mandragora.”

Canary responds: “I don’t know what you’re”

The camera pans around the table on Ollie, Huntress and finally Canary. “He defrauded your charity. Betrayed your family, which lead to their execution, and I don’t know if you know this yet, but he sold the information that got your mother, the first Black Canary, killed.”

Canary gets up, fast, angry, ready to belt him. He stands, too, his body language saying nonconfrontational, but subtly preparing to handle a fight as he puts up his hands. “Just the messenger. Please, sit.” They do. “Mandragora is not what he seems. If he were just some two-bit hood, even one with some degree of superhuman ability, then any one of us could take him. Except Ollie.”

“Hey,” Olliver protests, before realizing that the protest hurts his bruised face.

“I would have given you the benefit of the doubt, but you can’t even protest without pain. But the reason Mandragora’s been successful is two-fold. One, he’s been using low-level supercriminals as enforcers. That’s not that uncommon, but where he’s innovated, is he doesn’t leave any evidence behind. No witnesses, nothing. You three are, sadly, just some of his latest victims. I’d like to make sure you’re some of his last.”

“Then you just have to get me close enough to take a shot,” Huntress says, her hand tightening around her crossbow.

Nightwing puts up a finger. “No killing.”

“Why not?” Canary asks.

“On the one hand, it’s a slippery slope, where vigilantes justify to themselves increasingly extreme methods of execution, until inevitably they become as bad as the villains they sought to counter.”

“And on the other,” Ollie interrupts, “he knows where all the money’s gone. He’s been preying on charities for decades. We can get that money back, and to the people who really need it.”

Nightwing points a thumb towards him in agreement. “He also knows where the bodies are. I don’t think I have to tell anyone at this table what that kind of closure is worth.”

They arrive at Nightwing’s lair, where he introduces the other member of the team. “Some of us have personal reasons to be in this fight, Black Lightning’s neighborhood was decimated by the gentrification Mangragora pushed with bribes,” he squeezes Black Lightning’s shoulder. “I trust all of you with my life. And that’s what this is. Mandragora doesn’t take prisoners. He doesn’t leave witnesses. We win, or they never find the beautiful corpses we leave behind. If anyone has any reservations, now’s the time to sort them out.”

Nightwing heads for the door. “Where are you going?” Huntress asks, grabbing his arm.

“I want to give people some time to think, without me pressuring them. I want to swing by Mandragora’s safe house one last time, make sure he hasn’t made any last-minute changes to his security. I’ll be right back. Don’t worry.” He exits. She waits a moment, before slipping off after him.

We follow Nightwing, swinging across the rooftops. The city is his trapeze. Subtly, Huntress is following from below, maybe on her bike. NIghtwing lands gracefully on a rooftop opposite Mandragora’s place, and checks it out through binoculars. He hears noise behind him, and Huntress steps out of the shadow. “You followed me. You shouldn’t have.” She doesn’t speak, doesn’t make eye contact, but continues towards him. “Look, I know I have magnetic charisma, but I haven’t showered in about 36 hours, and could really use the personal space.” Huntress’ face is wrong, shifting subtly as she closes in on him. “You aren’t Helena,” he says, as she turns to a puddle of clay crashing against him like a wave. The real Huntress, watching from a neighboring rooftop, flees.

She’s winded by the time she gets back to the safehouse. “They caught Nightwing. If we have any hope of saving him, we have to go. Now.”

“I don’t think the plan was just to rush them,” Black Lightning complains.

“Yeah, all due respect to Night Wing, was it, but I didn’t sign up for a suicide mission,” Canary says.

The merry band is disbanding, until Oliver says, “Wait. We’re all Outsiders, which isn’t a position that comes naturally to me. But I gave up most of my wealth, most of my access, and a lot of my privilege. People like Mandragora corrupt the system, so that change and reform aren’t just difficult- they’re impossible. If we want to fix things- and we’re here because we’ve all seen what happens with a system this broken and corrupt- we have to do it from the outside. This is our chance to fix something broken- maybe even some of the things broken inside of us. I’m going to help Nightwing. I don’t think I can do it alone, but I’m going.”

“Yeah,” Huntress says. “Us medieval weapon users have to stick together.”

“You’re my ride,” Canary says, annoyed. “She’s my ride,” she repeats, to Black Lightning, sighing heavily. “Guess I’m coming with.”

“Hell,” Black Lightning says, “compared to the rest of you I’m Superman. Can’t exactly chicken out, now.”

The Outsiders take on a handful of second string henchers, and Clayface. Oliver sneaks away and finds Nightwing in Mandragora’s room, a little beaten up, but on his feet.  We’ll be cutting back and forth between both fights for the climax, with Canary’s cry and BL’s L enough to make Clayface run away. Ollie gets his bow knocked away at the start of the fight.

“I half expected to find you here chained up in a Leia bikini,” Oliver says.

“Expected, or hoped?” Nightwing asks.

“I knew I should have left you here to die.”

The pair of them, already beaten pretty badly, take on Mandragora together, eventually overcoming him in a brutal, Old Boy-esque battle of attrition, with Ollie finally getting his bow back. This is when Mandragora starts monologuing. Obviously, Mandragora had a hand in killing the Queens, too, after defrauding their charity. This comes out at a pivotal moment, as Mandragora, looking to extract a small victory, goads Ollie. Who shoots him off screen. And again. And again.

“Jesus!” Nightwing yells.

“He’ll live,” Ollie says. We show enough to see that he’s been sticking arrows in limbs, but nothing vital yet. “If we get him to a doctor fast enough. Might walk with a limp. And those injuries are going to hurt. All but guaranteed to lead to arthritis.”

“Ollie.”

“Shut up, boy scout. He’s hurt a lot of people. Justice means he doesn’t walk away from that without hurting himself.”

“I wasn’t going to lecture you, just… we should hurry, so he doesn’t bleed out.”

“Right.” Ollie spins, firing another arrow. This one slices through the string on Huntress’ crossbow.

“Oh, come on, man,” she says. “You have any idea how hard it is to restring a crossbow?” She drops the bow, running towards Mandragora while producing a knife. Olliver intercepts her. “He took everything from me,” she rages, trying to break free.

“No,” he says, rolling her onto her back. “He didn’t. He can’t. Because you still get to decide who you’re going to be- whether or not you let him turn you into someone monstrous.”

“Yeah, well, I decide to stab him in his heart,” she says, standing with the knife. He rolls her onto her back again.

“Not today. Today is about more than your vengeance.” She stands up again, shoulder checking him, and throws the knife into the his boot, sticking him to the floor, before leaving angrily.

“Miss the toes?” Nightwing asks.

“Mostly? My sock is wet, so not a clean miss.”

“That was a brave, if stupid thing,” Canary says. “Ask me again.”

“You want to get dinner sometime?”

“Maybe,” she says, and slinks out.

“I hate to interrupt,” Nightwing says. “But you do realize we have to carry him out of here, right?”

“We can barely stand,” he protests.

“Don’t tell me. I wasn’t the guy who chose to shoot him in the legs.”

“I have more arrows. We could put one in each eye. Then we wouldn’t have to carry him anywhere.”

“Huntress would be so angry with you. Remember, lift with your legs.” They get him up, and Mandragora removes the arrow from his arm and tries to stab Nightwing with it. He drops Mandragora on Oliver while he wrestles for control off the arrow, eventually plunging it into Mandragora’s last uninjured limb, which goes limp.

“Little help?” Oliver asks from beneath Mandragora.

“Jeez… I think I’m going to have to wait for the paramedics.”

Credits. Mid-credits scene: A beaten Oliver is taking off his costume in his secret Arrow Lair. His intern walks in. Played a bit comedically, it seems like she’s now interested in sleeping with him- but what she’s actually interested in, which we find out when she gets hold of his bow and bullseyes his target, is learning from him.

 More credits, and then a post-credits scene: Wally West and Donna Troy are talking with Nightwing.

“So like the Titans?” Donna asks. For the uninitiated, this is Wonder Woman’s one-time sidekick.

“But we’re not teenagers,” Wally says, devouring his food and whipping through to the buffet for seconds.

“We’re not calling ourselves Titans, either. I think the kids are doing something with the name.”

Wally burns through another plate, and gets thirds.

“Ah. That’s cute,” Donna says. Then she turns to Wally. “We all know you just keep getting more so you can blow that poor girl’s skirt up.”

“Hey, I burn calories same as you- I just do it several hundred times faster. If a Flash doesn’t carbo-load pretty much constantly we waste away. It isn’t pretty.”

“I’m pretty sure she was just teasing you,” Nightwing says.

“You know, for one of the fastest men alive, Wally, you really are slow,” she teases.

“But there is one thing you should know. There’s this guy. Who seems to think he’s in charge. Dresses like Robin Hood. Uses a bow. It’s adorable.”

“And you want us to humor him?” Donna surmises.

“He is fronting the money for the team. Well, most of it.”

“What is it with you and soothing the ego of underachieving billionaires?” she asks.

“Wait. What rich dude do you humor? Does Dick know somebody famous?”

She sighs. “You really are slow, Wally.”

Posted on

Breed Book 3, Part 48

“We’re sure this is safe?” Izel asked, watching CCTV footage on her phone.

“The technopaths have got it locked down. Demi left the one camera alive, so we could see if- crap.”

Agents in riot gear started to pour out of the front of their office building. “It’s okay,” Izel said. “We knew it was a long shot we could dissuade them entirely- if only because their fragile egos wouldn’t be able to take loses so completely without at least a whimper. We’ve got plans in place for this… though…” agents continued to stream out of the building, “I don’t know if we accounted for quite so many of them. Damn. That’s a lot more brownshirts than I was expecting.”

“Yeah,” Tucker said solemnly. “There always seem to be too many of the worst kinds of people.”

“I don’t know,” Izel said. “It’s kind of clarifying. These aren’t just cogs in a racist machine. These are the hardcore- the ones who it isn’t enough they got to legally prosecute some dodgy cases against immigrants. They’re breaking the law, because their bigotry is that controlling. I mean, no Nazis marching through the streets is preferable. But if there have to be Nazis, I’d prefer them in the street. At least then we can march against them.”

Posted on

Breed Book 3, Part 47

“So…” Rox said, leaving the word to dangle.

“We’re going in,” Mai said.

“What she said,” Anita said, emerging from behind a bush.

“Why am I not surprised you were eavesdropping?” Rox asked.

“Something about the hyperaggressive, hypercompetent nearly unkillable death machine still having half a girl-boner for my early demise feels like it warrants a little TLC.”

“She does have a point.”

“Yeah. But never driven deep enough to pierce anything vital. Yet.”

“Fine,” Rox said. “But we do this my way, or not at all.”

“Because you could stop us?” Mai asked, bemused.

“Actually,” Anita said with a smile, “all she really has to do is stamp her foot and our own rotten luck will stop us.”

“Besides,” Rox soothed, “my way makes more sense. I get that the two of you are my elders- and I mean that in the you have my respect for all you’ve done and lived through meaning of the word. But I also know what this place put the both of you through. Given half a chance, one or both of you would blow the whole damn place up- maybe without even checking to make sure there aren’t others like the boy we’re here to find inside.”

“Shit,” Anita said. “I hadn’t even considered that.”

“I had,” Mai said coldly, and the both of them stared at her. “What? That’s why I decided against blowing the place up- unless or until we could make sure there aren’t going to be any unexpected casualties.”

“Point being,” Rox reasserted herself, “you two are compromised in a way I am not. So it makes sense for all of us to get on the same page now, and let me Jiminy Cricket you both through this. Sound fair?”

“Sure,” Anita said. “You do kind of look like Ukulele Ike in this lighting.”

“That’s probably preferable to you saying I look like a cricket.”

“Actually…”

“Mai?”

“No promises,” she said crisply. “You take point. I’ll try and keep things under wraps. But frankly… if we walk into an abattoir… I’m not sure how cool I can keep.” “Okay. Most important ground rule is this: we don’t kill anybody we don’t have to. Until we know exactly what’s going on here, we use minimum force necessary to do the job- and not an ounce more. If either of you can’t live with that, you might as well stay out here.”

Posted on

Breed Book 3, Part 46

Tucker didn’t spend much time in the computer labs. Mostly, that was because there were several computers in the apartment he shared with his brother and Drake. Also the technopaths were a cliquish bunch- though to be fair, so were the telepaths.

He could feel the way their minds were linked up across their devices; it was in a lot of ways analogous to telepathy, but also similar to any computer network. He could see thousands of operations being performed every second, though he couldn’t follow what was going on.

“You’re lucky I recognized you,” Ryan said without turning his wheelchair to face Tucker as he entered the room. “Otherwise I might have hit you with one of our countermeasures. I’m not sure what they’d do to a brain; they’re more designed to attack an electronic infiltrator. But a human mind also isn’t so different from a computer that I’d want to invite a viral process into one- other than scientific curiosity.”

“Aside from your trigger finger getting itchy, how are things going?” Tucker asked.

“We’ve got our hooks in the phone grid. We’re waiting until the last possible second to take it down; the fewer people have to be impacted the better, and it’ll make it harder for them to work around the issues. We’ve also taken over every radio transmitter in a mile radius around their offices, the apartment building, and their likely route. We can fill the airwaves with so much radio traffic they won’t be able to hear themselves monolog.

“We’ve tanked their internet. The plan had been to take it down completely; probably tie up an agent roaming the hell that is broadband customer service phone trees. But we came up with something more clever this morning: we crashed them down to dial-up speeds. Since they’re still technically getting internet, it’s a different problem- one with a hundred different issues to chase down. All the while their emails and intel load like it’s 1999. Doing the same thing to their cell phones was trickier, but we took over the cell towers nearby and route all of their traffic- phone and data- through us.

“Demi fried everything plugged in at their offices, too, so they’d already been thrown back into the dark ages- but we’re keeping them from making any progress.”

“And you think it’ll hold?”

He grinned. “I’ll put it this way. The NSA poked some feelers in this morning, probing for infiltration. We’ve sent them on a goose chase that will send them on a time-release quest around the globe. First it’ll look like a Chinese infiltration, then the Russians spoofing the Chinese, then the Israelis spoofing the Russians spoofing the Chinese as revenge for backing Iran… anyway, it ping-pongs over the next five weeks before tracing back to an NSA terminal using Edward Snowden’s somehow resurrected credentials. The only conclusions available at that point are that it was an inside job of terrifying proportions, or that they got so thoroughly outclassed that letting the public know they’re basically a failed security agency is their only other option besides covering it up. Which is irrelevant, because all of the relevant intel will by that point have been erased.

“And because we had more volunteers than we needed, I’ve got a B-team running counter-int. They do background checks on Feds, but there are limits to the amount of time, effort, or invasiveness the government is willing to do, all of which pales in comparison to what Google and Facebook know about each and every one of us, to say nothing about international hackers or other online ne’er-do-wells. Current figures look like we can probably clear a third of these agents out just shining a light on their actual nefarity- a little tax-cheating here, a kiddie porn collection there. One of these freaks writes immigrant snuff fantasies; maybe that’s not enough to get him canned, but they sure as hell can’t leave him in the field once that comes to light. And becomes a trending topic on social media.”

“This is all terrifying,” Tucker said.

“It is. It’s also the same basic toolset used by social media companies and the NSA. We’re just better at it. And we’re using it to defeat bigots- so we’re doing it for a good cause, and not for capitalism. Besides, ICE weaponized social media first. They called down this thunder- it’s a little late for them to get squeamish about getting electrocuted.”

Posted on

Breed Book 3, Part 45

“I have good news and bad news. Preferences?” Rox asked.

“Bad first,” Mai said.

“We’re waiting for intel.”

“The good, then,” Anita said.

“We haven’t been told to fly a kite yet.”

Anita smiled, despite herself. Mai grunted, and walked away. “What?” Rox asked. “That was a little funny.”

“Don’t take it personally,” Anita said. “Being here… it holds a special place for us. Like whatever the opposite of the heart is- where the hate lives, and the fear. Her sense of humor’s always been stunted, but here… it’s extra unforgiving.”

“Still, maybe I should,” Rox walked off in pursuit of her.

“She’s wrong,” Mai said, emerging from behind a tree. “I’m not afraid. Or angry. I’m focused. If they brought that boy here… it isn’t for anything good. I can’t undo what Garrity- what was done, to me, to Anita, or the rest of us. But we can save this boy. We will.” She balled her fist and smashed it into the tree she’d been hidden behind. The bones of her hand were mangled, shards of broken bone torn through the skin as blood flowed freely through the open wounds.

“Can’t you, um, heal?” Rox asked, trying not to look directly at the carnage.

“Right now? I don’t want to. I need the distraction… it’s the only thing keeping me from kicking that door in and murdering everyone who might harm that kid.”

“Sure we couldn’t get you a whisky sour or something instead?”

“Would only make me sleepy,” she replied.

“We’ll get him out. I promise.”

“You can’t. He might already be dead- or at least wish that he were. Don’t promise me things you can’t deliver.”

Rox’s phone went off. “Speaker, please,” Laren said, and she obliged her. “We’ve hit a snag. The guy I knew in Canadian Defense retired to become a Mountie- I shit you not. And while he still owes me, he doesn’t have the reach he used to. All I’ve been able to verify so far is it’s definitely a government installation, but also definitely the kind of government op that pretends not to be government until hauled before whatever the Canadian equivalent of a Senate subcommittee is.”

“So what do you think we should do?” “You’re the lucky lady. It’s up to you. But it’s rolling dice either way. Could be they stole the kid to test their skyscraper-sized Breed hunting robots. Or, since it’s Canada, maybe they just brought him in to give him some free health care and an education in politeness. And, shoot. Looks like ICE’s air cover is actually plinking away at us. I mean, the jackass is using a pistol out the door- so he’s about as likely to hit anything as I am to shoot off the back of Lincoln’s skull from here, but still, I should probably fire back some suppression before they get brave even to come closer, or smart enough to use something with an effective range that covers more than a quarter of the distance. Adios.” The call disconnected.

Posted on

Pitchgiving 2020, Part 1: Teen Titans

Okay, I had a lot of fun last year doing the 12 Days of Pitchmas, pitching 12 films set within the Marvel Cinematic Universe. So this year I’m doing Pitchgiving for movies set in the DC Extended Universe. My plan at the moment is to do one pitch a week for twelve weeks, posted on Friday. Depending on how this goes, I might also do a Pitchmas, too, but given that that’s 3 months from now I’m not making any promises.

The rules are basically:

No sequels to already established movies/teams

No stories I’m already aware of (it’s possible I’ve missed reporting of a thing, but I’m the one holding me accountable for this)- I may pitch a movie that’s only been titled but that I know nothing about (as I did with Blade last year).

Hopefully you have as much fun with this as I do.

Teen Titans

I’m assuming we’d go with an arc featuring Deathstroke as their big-bad, setting up Terra to get recruited in the first one, then betray the team in the second, for a third-part finale. I’d shoot for a combo of the Johns era team, and the classic team (Robin, Beast Boy, Raven, Starfire and Cyborg); for this one probably add in Superboy and Wonder Girl, reserve Impulse and Aquagirl for the sequel, maybe pull in Speedy and Ms. Martian for the third. I think Batman convinces Robin to attend/run a ‘camp’ for young heroes on the West Coast, one part Heroing 101, one part getting them out of their mentors’ hair while they deal with something big and dangerous. Robin is, at first, a controlling, entitled dick, assuming he’s the only one who knows what he’s doing (to be fair, he is the most experienced- though if we keep JL Cyborg that might be a point of contention- which could be fun). His co-leader is Wonder Girl, who runs the women’s side of things. Yeah, this basically starts as a summer camp thing.

“This is dumb,” Robin says, throwing his tights into a suitcase.

“It’s an opportunity,” Batman says. “To build your own community.”

“A redundant web of superhumans independent of yours, in case the Justice League is ever incapacitated.”

Batman smiles, ever so slightly. “It isn’t just that. The work we do is… unique. There aren’t a lot of people who can understand it- or us. Being understood for who and what we are can make the difficult choices we have to make worthwhile.”

“It’s summer camp.”

“It’s a team building exercise.”

“Two problems with that: we aren’t a team, and I’m not a team player.”

“You’re already an excellent partner; being on a team is just being a good partner to multiple people at once.”

“You’d never have made Dick join a team,” he pouts.

“The Titans were Dick’s team. They helped him become a man- it helped him become his own man.”

“So you’re trying to get rid of me.”

“I didn’t want to get rid of Dick.” Batman sighs. “One of the hardest things about being a father is letting your children go. It was hard, with Dick; we fought, a lot, and there’s still a strain there. I hope I’ve learned from it. But you’re always welcome here, and you’re always welcome as a partner. I want you to have the freedom to be the man you choose- whoever that ends up being.”

I think we do similar scenes, at least with the big 3, setting up that Wonder Girl (Cass) is uncertain about taking on a leadership role, since she’s pretty green. Diana reminds her that she trained with the Amazons, so she knows how to support people, build them up, and strengthen them as a group.

Superboy is worried about getting pushed around by Robin as he and Superman fly to San Francisco. “Tim’s, the current one, is the third Robin. Dick was the first.”

“No, I said a.”

“Language.”

“Jerk, then. Why is everyone in Batman’s entourage a jerk? Is that their organizing principal? An overdeveloped jerk gene?”

“Our ‘family’ are lucky, Connor. We were blessed with extraordinary abilities, and the responsibility to use them to help people. Batman’s people… come from tragedy. They’re trying to put the world right, so what happened to them doesn’t happen to anyone else. Sometimes that makes them tightly wound. But they are good people.”

“Is that why you let Batman push you around?”

“There isn’t anyone I couldn’t push around. But you know what takes more strength? Not letting what you can do overtake what you should do. The world is better off when I work with Batman, so I do.”

“He’s still a jerk. I am not ready to deal with all these jerks.”

Cass and Robin meet first. They share an intellectual connection- both type As who are organized and competent and used to carrying others on their shoulders. Connor bumbles in and he’s a bull in their China shop, but he also sparks Cass’s curiosity. I don’t want a full-blown love triangle, but Robin getting miffed at Connor for being the easy heart-throb of the team can spark the larger conflict between them, that Tim doesn’t see him as serious, and Connor sees him as overly serious.

We meet the rest of the campers: Starfire, Raven, Terra and Beast Boy. Starfire is an aloof but passionate weirdo warrior princess from beyond the stars. Raven is a haunted, sardonic witch who likes people more than she’s figured out how to articulate. Terra is a bubbly, girl next door with a smile that melts hearts. Beast Boy is the youngest, or at least the youngest at heart, he’s everybody’s goobery little brother who can’t stop making animal/fart jokes. The dynamics are roughly that Raven is jealous of the easy charisma/fitting in of Cass, and Starfire is both the biggest outcast and the least aware of that fact. Terra’s a bit of a tomboy, and she and Beast Boy get along swimmingly. I think Cyborg is there as support personnel, utilizing his tech to cook their meals. He’s also quasi there to keep an eye on them, too, though his instructions were to let them make their own mistakes. We also meet the camp site, a series of small cabins, and a central meeting hall where they dine. There’s also a lake for them to swim at.

I’d probably play most of the story as a coming of age/campground flick, but as things progress, the place goes from spooky to downright malevolent, with an escalating series of ‘accidents’ that nearly hurt them. Robin narrowly prevents Beast Boy from dying in a freak accident as a support beam collapses, nearly hitting him. The beam doesn’t look tampered with- but the odds that the beam fell when it did, that naturally occurring damage eroded it in just the way it did are infinitesimal. He tells Beast Boy that if they’re under siege, the skill, talent and caution of their attacker rivals Batman’s, which of course makes them immediately assume it’s a test. Robin calls Bruce, who is in the middle of a fight with criminals but doesn’t stop talking (or punching) while denying involvement.

So Tim and Cass set up a trap, maybe revolving around them doing a dance. That gives us a chance to pair our characters off, at least in the short term. Cass asks Connor. Starfire asks Tim. Terra asks Beast Boy. And the set up works, and they end up ensnaring Deathstroke in their trap. He monologs, and the Titans get cocky- only for Rose to shoot Deathstroke loose, and provide covering fire. Connor stands in the path of the gunfire, amused. Tim gets hit. At first Connor is flip, while Starfire rushes to his side. “He’s a bat person. They play 9th degree chess and have armor built into their Underoos.” When he doesn’t hear more, his voice trembles when he glances back, “Right?” Tim’s bleeding.

Connor wants to fly him to a hospital, but Tim says he’ll bleed out if they don’t stabilize him first. Tim barks orders, essentially overseeing his own emergency surgery. Cass uses her lasso to tourniquet the leg. He has Connor use x-ray vision to tell him about the shape of the bullet, which pancaked and continues to slice at his femoral artery. He has Raven clamp down on the artery so he doesn’t pass out, then Beast Boy shrinks down and becomes a small creature to block the artery. Wonder Girl goes in after the bullet with her fingers, and manages to pluck it out. “I need a ride to the hospital.” Superboy steps forward. “Not you.” Wonder Girl picks him up. “We aren’t all bulletproof,” Tim says through bloodied teeth as he strips away his mask. Wonder Girl flies off with Tim.

We cut back to the dark dining hall, where Superboy is standing alone. Cyborg enters.

“I screwed up,” Cyborg admits.

“Really? Cause I’m pretty sure I’m the one who let Robin get shot.”

“Batman asked me to come here. Keep an eye on you kids.”

“Us kids?”

“It was on me to keep you safe.”

“I assume you don’t have kids,” Connor says. “Even normal kids get hurt. Put them in tights and tell them to charge a super villain with a gun and- you weren’t here to keep us safe. You were here to make sure we didn’t get each other killed. And I nearly did.”

“Kind of sounds like we both screwed up,” Cyborg says.

“Yeah,” Connor says. “So what are we going to do to make it right?”

The answer is, they track down Deathstroke, using Cyborg’s sensors and Connors senses. They find the cabin at the lake he was staging his attacks out of, and then track him to a base on the edge of the city. Cyborg wants to charge in, to get some payback. “No,” Connor says. “I screwed up last time by not thinking. We need a plan. And we should get backup.”

Back at the hospital, Robin waits until the nurse is done checking his vitals, then hobbles out of his room. The rest of the Titans are in the waiting room, dressed in their civilian clothes; Terra is missing, but don’t draw attention to it. “You shouldn’t be walking,” Starfire says, moving to support him.

“You don’t honestly think that’s the first time I’ve been shot, do you?”

“I kind of want to shoot him right now,” Connor says, before realizing it’s probably too soon. Pan around the room, everyone else looking horrified. “Uh,” Connor’s flailing.

Stop at Tim, and we linger a moment before he bursts out laughing, and slaps Connor on the back. “I’m actually starting to like you. Now lets get out of here before the cops show up.”

We cut to Deathstroke’s base. Cyborg is there, monitoring, until he’s hit from behind by a chunk of rock. Terra enters. She’s shaken up. Whatever the plan was, watching Robin get shot really messed her up. I think I would tweak the Deathstroke/Terra relationship. She’s desperate for a familial connection. She wants a family, and to feel loved. She gets the former from Deathstroke and Rose, but he’s also essentially grooming her at the same time. To my mind, it’s not because he wants her, personally, but because he knows that he needs his hooks in her deep for the betrayal that is to come. I’m sure even this idea is controversial- even for a villain, and I wouldn’t be surprised if DC balked at getting anywhere close to that topic (I mean, I’m not the one who made Deathstroke a statutory rapist- this is, if anything else, a slight modernization of the concept). But the key takeaway is Rose and Deathstroke love-bomb her to make her feel appreciated and cared for, with just enough withholding to keep her seeking approval.

The Titans arrive, with Cyborg rubbing his head. Terra flees, so as not to ruin her cover, getting out just in time. This fight goes differently, with Deathstroke having set traps specific to the Titans all over his base. The traps whittle down the Titans, until it’s just Robin fighting Deathstroke- which might have been a good fight, if he weren’t recently gunshot. Robin’s losing, trying to buy time and keep Deathstroke talking. Deathstroke claims they’re a job- nothing more. Robin’s horrified that the job might be from Batman, and trying to pull that information out of Deathstroke while losing… he doesn’t get confirmation. But he does buy enough time for his team to rally, and take Deathstroke down. At the last minute Rose arrives with a helicopter, dropping a ladder for Deathstroke.

“Flip a coin for who gets to rip it out of the sky?” Superboy asks Cass. The chopper fires a volley of missiles across the bay at San Francisco.

“Shoot them down,” Robin barks, and anyone capable of firing (Cyborg, Starfire, Raven) shoot down as many as they can. It’s not enough. “Flyers!” he yells. Everyone takes flight, with Starfire looping back and picking up Robin. She drops him on a missile that he disables and flips off of, and she catches him after destroying a missile herself. The rest take out missiles, too.

They meet atop a giant T shaped tower. “Deathstroke?” Robin asks. Cyborg scans, Superboy too.

“Must be some high end tech if we can’t find it.”

“Yeah,” Robin says, his eyes narrowing.

Cut to an underground base. Deathstroke is having a video call with Lex Luthor. “And he thinks it was Batman?”

Deathstroke is a little worse for wear, maybe in a sling. “The seed was there without my having to plant it. All I did was give it space to grow.”

Back to the rooftop, Terra lands behind them. “Where were you?” Robin asks, coldly, even for him.

“Sorry,” she says. “Seeing you get shot, I needed to clear my head. I went for a run. Then I saw the fighting,” she drops the remains of a missile, smashed between a pair of rocks, “so I came to help.”

“I’m just glad you’re okay,” Beast Boy says, nuzzling her. “Yeah,” Robin says, as we zoom in on his face, clearly suspicious, “me, too.”

Posted on

Breed Book 3, Part 44

Drake knocked on Demi’s door, which was ajar enough it creaked open. She was bent over gathering clothes, wearing a matching pair of lacy underthings. “If you wanted a peek, all you had to do was ask, perv,” she teased, standing up slowly, deliberately posing at him.

“And what if I can only get off if I don’t get invited in?” he asked, trying his best to focus his attention out the window.

“That’s extra. Unless it’s a vampire fetish thing- then it’s extra and you pay the dry cleaning costs. You have no idea how hard it is to get fake blood stains out of everything.” She threaded her legs through a pair of jeans, then pulled on a purple top.

“I feel like there’s an interesting story in that.”

“I don’t bite and tell. Well, unless you ask really nicely. And call me mistress.”

“Um, it’s nippy,” he warned awkwardly. “You might want a jacket.”

“And if I’d prefer it if you keep me warm?” she whispered in his ear.

“Iago asked the same,” he deadpanned.  

“Maybe those jeans are just very flattering.”

“Maybe,” he said. “Take my hand.” She reached for him, and for a moment she held it, and they looked at each other, before he transported her to the ICE facility. “Your hands are warm,” he said.

“Yours were cold,” she said, as he pulled away.

“Yeah. I should have brought gloves. Iago took a lot longer than I expected.”

“Dicking around?”

“No more than usual. But actually freezing an engine block takes more doing that I would have guessed.”

“We’ll try and make up some of the lost time, then,” she said, and walked straight to where a power line entered into the building. Electricity arced from either palm into the line, and she closed her eyes. “Your typical electropath could maybe fry a third of the electronics in the place before they tripped the circuit breaker. This, though… it’s feeling your way through their entire system, sort of mapping it, right? I can bridge their breaker, and burn out anything plugged in.”

“Won’t that look… wrong?”

“I thought about that. When we’re done, I’ll hit the line with lightning, send it arcing across the concrete; it’ll leave a telltale scorch mark. From there any appraiser would call it an act of God.”

“And how long until-” all at once the building was filled with lights and sparks, before going dark.

“Not long,” she said, pivoting towards him. “Your hand?” she put hers out and he took it. Then she pointed, without looking, back at the powerline. Lightning crashed into the line, leaving a seared streak along the wall and concrete. “Now take me back to my place so I can get out of these clothes.”

“You are an incorrigible tease.”

“I didn’t say you weren’t invited.”

“No, but you know my day’s spoken for.”

She leaned into him as they teleported. “We’ll just have to find a day where you aren’t spoken for, then,” she said, then gave him a shove, and he stumbled out of her bedroom. She stripped off her shirt and threw it at the door, knocking it closed.

Posted on

Breed Book 3, Part 43

“You know, it’s been a slow week until tonight,” Laren said. Rox could hear commotion in the background.

“Am I interrupting?” Rox asked.

“I can multitask,” Laren said. “Your friends busted Cris out of detention, and now I’m laying down a false trail to distract Paul Gleeson.”

“The guy from Maniac Cop 3?”

“I honestly can’t decide whether to be proud or scandalized by you knowing that.”

“We’ve spent a lot of time on the road. We watch a lot of late night cable in seedy motels.”

“Anyway, while your friends are heading in one direction we’re off in another- getting seen enough to pull focus. If we do get pulled over, I might have to go, abruptly.”

“Sounds like you might not be in a position to help us, then.”

“Why? I’m not driving. I can still make phone calls. While texting. I have multiple burners for just that reason.”

“Well, we found where the boy ended up. And it’s where we didn’t want to find him.”

“In West Virginia?”

“In a certain clandestine military base.”

“That’s what I meant; it’s the West Virginia of Canada.”

“That… was not clear at all.”

“Neither is the continued existence of a West Virginia.”

“It broke away from Virginia proper because it didn’t want to join the Confederacy.”

“Then why is it the racist Virginia now?”

“Uh….”

“It was rhetorical. What can you tell me, by way of intel?” Laren asked.

“I thought I was calling you for intel.”

“Knowing as much as I can helps me ask the right questions, as opposed to trying to read the lint in my own belly button.”

“Definitely governmental, with guards posted. They seem to want to stay off grid- hewing to the idea that flying under the radar is a better defense than building an ostentatious fortress.” “Great. So we’re not just going to find the answers Googling. Look, I’ll make a few phone calls, and call you back. Unless I end up in Gitmo. In which case it could be a little while before I can access a phone.”

Posted on

Breed Book 3, Part 42

“It’s too early,” Iago groaned, covering his head with his comforter. “Wake me when the sun’s come out.”

“Can’t,” Drake said. “Cause there’s a schedule and I’m on the hook for a long day and that day only gets longer the more you bitch and moan and stall. Now put on pants or I’m teleporting you into a women’s studies class in your tighty whities.”

“Not cool.”

“That’s on you; you’re the one in charge of bringing the cool.”

“That was embarrassing. I’m embarrassed for you.”

“Yeah,” Drake said pushing a pair of jeans into Iago’s chest, “be embarrassed walking.”

Iago dropped to a cold concrete parking lot as the wind bit into the skin of his exposed legs. “Damnit,” he muttered, jamming his legs into his pants. “What if they see us?”

“That’s the point of getting up at 4 AM to do this.”

“And their cameras?” he asked, pointing at closed circuit camera mounted to the corner of the building.

“Ryan recorded yesterday’s feed, and will loop those over today. Now the sooner you do your thing, the sooner you can get into a hot bath, or back in bed.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Iago crawled under the nearest ICE vehicle. “How much do you know about engines?”

“They make the wheels on the bus go round and round?”

“I’m not sure how plausibly deniable this is going to be if we just freeze the entire block solid.”

“I think the point is just for it to be deniable enough that they can’t make the case that we fired the first shot.”

“Okay.” He put his hands to either side of the engine, dropping the temperature precipitously. Frost began to form on the metal pieces, then on the plastic pieces. He pushed harder, forcing moisture from his own fingertips that gathered as ice on the exposed components. When he was done the engine was a solid block. “Took a lot of out me,” he said. “D’you bring-”

Drake handed him a sports drink. “And I’ve got a stack of them in the fridge, if you go through that one.”

“I will,” he said. “Takes more moisture to freeze an engine than I would have guessed.” He stopped. “Won’t they know this wasn’t natural?”

“Freeze the ground and their windows. Who are they going to believe? Meteorologists? Or their own eyes.”