Uncategorized – Page 5

December 19, 2020October 23, 2021

Pitchgiving Part 4: Red Hood & The Outlaws

Start on a black screen, as John Henry Irons narrates. “I remember the day I met the Man of Steel.” A big hunk of wall is lifted off of him, by Superman. John rolls out, before Clark is hit from the side by Zod, dragging him back into the fight. “Most of Metropolis was evacuating. I couldn’t run. I’d been running my whole life.” He stops at his company, Iron Works, a relatively humble start up. “Now, it was time to stand my ground.” We see his Steel armor (it’s missing the cape and S symbol). Next we see the armor outside, stomping loudly across the pavement. We see his POV, as he scans. We also hear his phone, and a note that it’s dialing on his HUD. As the phone goes to voicemail, he finds three people under the rubble, with weak but persistent life signs. He uses a big old steel hammer to first crack a chunk of concrete, then prop something up so they can crawl out.

We reverse, to young Natasha Irons POV, and her narration. “I remember the day I met the Man of Steel,” she says, as she crawls out, and they both, in unison, “and how that day changed my life.

Cut to however many years later (I’m not being lazy- I don’t know when this would be filmed, so it could be 5, it could be 15), with text to that effect. An older Natasha is running excitedly through Iron Works, still modest, but also growing. “Uncle John?” she calls. “Uncle John.” She stops, seeing that the cradle where the Steel armor sits is empty. “Oh.”

John’s phone rings inside the suit. “I’m working,” he says. We watch his POV as he gets shot by a ‘gang member’- actually a merc hired by Luthor. He back hands them, and they crumple.

“Like hunched over your drawing table, doing what you pay yourself to do? Or hot-rodding in our irreplaceable six-million dollar prototype.”

“The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing. Besides, Bruce Wayne takes it personally when you don’t spend the whole grant in a fiscal year.”

“Yeah, well you’d undo a lot of good if you trashed our one and only exoskeleton; the entire economy of this neighborhood is built around our little startup.”

“I know. I built it.”

“Tell me at least you’re being careful.”

“Careful as I can be. What’d you need?” We see the plans in her hands, for adaptive armor plating. She tells him it can keep until he gets back, she doesn’t want to distract him. But he’s already distracted. His suit’s scanners find something. At first it says that it’s ‘unknown tech.’ He changes the scan parameters, and zooms, and this time it comes up with: “Origin: Iron Works, patent #TAOS-500-1993-06” “The hell?” he asks. He flies to the gang member, and snatches the gun from him, staring at the part while gripping his arm forcefully. “Where did you get this?”

“Uncle John? You okay?”

“Our tech,” he says. “They stole our tech. And put it into guns. I got to go, Tasha.”

Steel bursts through a wall, and destroys a high tech gun facility, smashing all their equipment and tech. It doesn’t need to take long. He flies back to the office, and is in the process of removing the suit when more gang members, similarly armed, break in. He’s still wearing part of it, but his chest is exposed, maybe his face. They set fire to the building, and shoot him several times as he fires back. They leave one man behind to make sure he doesn’t get out. He’s hit from behind by Steel’s hammer, wielded by Natasha. She gets John out to the street, and an ambulance, as the building and the rest of the armor burn.

Cut to Luthor, giving a press conference. Luthor for Mayor signs flank him, as well as balloons. “I’ve known John since he worked in our labs at LexCorp. A brighter mind I haven’t met, a brighter human flame I doubt could be. It’s a tragedy that his life has flickered out.” He’s interrupted by an aide. “I’m informed Irons has made a miraculous recovery. But still, I say, the price we nearly paid, the cost of his brilliance and his light, would have been too much. We can’t afford to pay it, and if we continue to allow this city’s lack of leadership, we will, again and again. So I’m asking, humbly, for your vote, this November. We don’t need super men to make Metropolis great again- we just need to work together.”

Cut to John’s hospital room, where Natasha is waiting for him to wake up. Jaime Reyes enters, and sits next to her. “So… this is weird,” Jaime says.

“You got that right. Absolute wrong time to hit on me.”

“Okay… so now it’s weird for two reasons. I work for Kord Industries. Some of our tech has been stolen, and somehow found its way into the hands of Metropolis gangs. I know the same thing has happened to you. And Queen Industries. Wayne Tech. LexCorp. And you know that Amazon flight that got shot down? We’re pretty sure that was to get their hands on Amazonian tech, too.”

“So what’s your point?”

“Well, we’d like to help. Exchange information. Try and figure out what’s going on.”

“And what are you going to do about it?”

“Me?” he chuckles, and we hear his Scarab suit assemble as her eyes go wide. “I’m a super hero.”

“Wait. I recognize you. You were a superhero. That UN team. You lasted about as long as Crystal Pepsi.”

“It’s not that team, and-” she starts to push him.

“And I want to be alone, with my uncle.”

“That could have gone better,” Red Hood says in the hallway- though we don’t see him yet.

“Yeah. I still don’t know why you had me talk to her.”

“Because I didn’t need her to join. Not yet. I just needed the seed planted. We’ll harvest it, in time.”

Natasha arrives at Iron Works. The building is a burnt-out husk. She pops her trunk, where the armor that John was still wearing is. She takes it inside, and finds the charred, shot up remains of the rest. And goes to work. She works the forge, crafting something new, something different. Her armor is sleeker, and, as the plans suggested, adaptive, lots of little moving parts; think similar to the Bay Transformer designs, only the plates shift to provide more strength or protection as the situation dictates.

Natasha, wearing her new armor, leaves Iron Works as the sun sets. On the roof as she flies off, we see Artemis, and Red Hood (again mostly in shadow or off screen). “I don’t understand your conviction that we need her,” Artemis says. Her costume design is clearly Amazonian, but I’d probably try to find some midpoint, where her fashion is eye-catching, but just this side of fashion forward enough that she could walk through town without people assume she’s going to a ren fair. She carries a shield and spear slung on her back.

“We’re a capable group,” he soothes. “But she’s a builder. Whoever’s behind this… they’re doing more than just bashing tech together. If we have to engineer our way out of this, we’ll need her. Unless you think you can design sophisticated cutting edge counter-measures requiring doctoral-level understanding of a half dozen scientific and engineering disciplines.” She shoves him, and we think for a moment that this is going to devolve into a brawl. She pounces on him, straddling him and kissing him; it borders on violent, and that’s part of why we cut quickly away.

We cut to Natasha, flying through the streets of Metropolis. She bursts through the door of another impromptu weapons assembly facility. She encounters resistance, but starts wading through it. One of the attackers circles around her, and is aiming a gun at her back. We zoom close to the trigger as he starts to pull it, and the gun goes off. She’s replaced in his sights by a big red S. Superman crushes his gun, before knocking him into the wall. Natasha spins around, surprised. Clark smiles. “Hope I can be of assistance.”

“You,” she says angrily, taking a step towards him.

“Me?” he asks.

She punctuates each sentence with a shove. “Where were you? When he was attacked. He called out to you. And you didn’t come.”

“I was across town. Parasite was trying to melt down the reactor at Star Labs. I couldn’t be in both places… I hoped John would be all right until I was done. I’m sorry, Natasha,” he squeezes her shoulder. “Your uncle’s a good man. I know he’ll be proud of you when he wakes up.”

“If,” she says bitterly. He smiles knowingly.

“I meant what I said, Natasha. If you want my help, I’m happy to. Especially thugs like these, who aren’t cautious about who might get caught in the crossfire-”

“Just don’t get in my way.” Montage, as they wreck up the place together, Superman mostly a blur. They finish, and Superman tenses. “Cat up a tree?”

“An abusive husband has taken his wife hostage- and is threatening to drop her off the top of the LexCorp Tower.”

“Go,” she says, and we pan out, showing her standing in the destruction, utterly alone.

Natasha drops her keys on her counter. She’s still wearing the suit, sans the helmet, which she sets down loudly on the counter beside her keys. The lights come on, turned on by Red Hood, sitting at the table in her nook. I’m assuming he’s wearing a domino mask resembling the one he wore as a Robin. He holds up his hands, with a little smile. “The hell are you doing here?” she asks.

“Largely what you just got done doing. And if I’m not mistaken, what you anticipate doing again in fifteen minutes, when the counterstrike occurs.” She tenses. “This is a honey pot, right? You’re goading them into attacking you, like they did your uncle- only they won’t catch you with your armor half off.”

“Okay. So how’d you know where to find me?”

“Iron Works was that workshop. With it destroyed, there weren’t a lot of places for you to take your gear. Your uncle has a storage unit outside town, but I checked, and there’s nothing there but some surplus décor and clothes- from when he downsized to an apartment.”

“My aunt’s things. She died, cancer; doctors think it probably had to do with the destruction in Metropolis- inhaling too much debris.”

“Ah,” he says. After a moment, he forces himself to say, “My condolences.”

“You don’t sound too… condoling.”

“My father was a great many things; empathetic is not one of them.”

“Sucks for you. Now tell me why you broke, entered, and I should treat you differently from the hood you are.”

“When bad people steal dangerous tech, we take it back.”

“We?” I’m not sure the most fun way to do it would be, but we introduce the rest of the team; maybe they’re surrounding her in the shadows, and turn on more lights to show that.

“Most of us have been disavowed, fired, excommunicated. I’m dead.”

“You don’t look it.”

“Joker beat me nearly to death with a crowbar, before he changed his mind. What he said was, ‘Why kill the Boy Wonder once, when you can do it again and again and again?’ He’d kill me, and each time his sadistic doctor girlfriend would revive me. I died a dozen times before I got away. Found out later he killed another kid and blew up the corpse, to make Batman stop looking for me.”

“And what do I call you? Old Robin?”

“Technically I was the middle Robin, and Red Hood suits me just fine. And this is Arsenal, late of Queen Industries, and former protégé of the Green Arrow. If it fires a projectile, he can kill you with it.”

“Except a sling shot,” Arsenal says. “Man’s got to draw the line somewhere.”

“The lady in all the leather is Artemis. For all intents and purposes Wonder Woman’s bitchier sister. The other Amazons weren’t big enough zealots for her; they kicked her out of Paradise. But she’s still enough of a team player that she fights from the outside to keep their island, its people, and their tech, safe and secure. Oh, and don’t assume anyone else can call her bitchy. Even I’ll pay for it- eventually. And our speedster is Jesse Quick. Technically the Flash family have never patented anything, but there’s been some… exotic additions to the weapons. Utilizing the same Speed Force that lets her move at the speed of light.”

Jesse is a motormouth: “It is quite possibly literally the dumbest thing you could think to do with superspeed… but there’s also zero chance that he stops there. And Flash and Kid Flash were both busy with a thing, so they asked if I could assist. I think I was also driving them a little nuts in the house…”

“And you’ve met Jaime, on loan from Kord Industries. He’s still more connected with the public face, so he’s more liaising on this. He’s also the nicest of us, which is why I sent him in as our official condoler.”

Natasha stares at them a moment, before asking, “Wait, that guy with the bow literally wears a red hood but you’re Red Hood. How does that make sense?” she asks.

“I got to the name before he did.”

“And Arsenal’s cooler,” Arsenal says, though he doesn’t sound terribly certain.

“Really? Cause it kind of sounds like you just smashed ‘arse’ and ‘anal’ together,” Artemis says.

“Before this he was ‘Speedy,’” Red Hood says.

“Cause he can also move super fast?” Natasha asks.

“Nope. That’s Jesse.”

“Your names make no damn sense.” She pauses a beat. “How the hell did I end up on the island of misfit toys?”

“If it quacks like a duck…” Jesse offers with a shrug.

“Everyone quiet,” Jason (Red Hood) says, becoming serious. “A car just pulled up. Lights off.”

The room goes dark. Natasha puts her helmet back on, and we watch from her POV as she switches to night vision. The Outlaws take apart the fire team. They’re more vicious, generally, than you’d expect of a hero team (with Jesse, Jaime and Natasha on the less violent side- but it’s a spectrum). Jason captures two of them, including their leader, and interrogates them, running a prisoner’s dilemma, using little bits of information gleaned from largely uncooperative prisoners to imply their cooperation until one cracks completely.

Montage: they bust up several more places where guns are being assembled. Intercut, more footage of campaign stops and TV spots of Luthor claiming to be the only man who can make Metropolis safe again. Cut to another interrogation. The exhausted, bloodied attacker breaks, and admits, “It was Luthor. All of it. He built the guns. He bought the exotic hardware that goes into them.”

“Mr. Law and Order?” Arsenal asks.

“Mr. Always Just Barely Legally On this side of Law and Order,” Natasha corrects him. “He’s been skirting the law since he was in short pants. Figures this is all just one more scheme to get more power.”

“So there it is,” Red Hood says. “We bust into LexCorp, catch them red-handed with the tech, the invoices, the hardware, tie it all to a corrupt mayoral candidate, and it’s Miller Time.”

This sequence may get a little Ocean’s 11-like, but they bust in, make noise, wipe the stolen tech from LexCorp’s servers (after making sure all the plans print to every printer in the L-shaped building, first) and then bust out in time for the cops to find the guns. There’s a hiccup, when in the same facility laboratory space, they’re working on a killer robot or similar; Amazo might be a good choice. Amazo absorbs arsenal’s skills, and takes his bow, before shooting Artemis through the leg with an arrow. The Outlaws manage to by time locking themselves in a smaller side lab, and devise a plan: everyone is going to work together to buy Natasha time while she builds something that can take Amazo down- with the caveat that it has to be quick- before he can absorb its plans and turn them against them. They agree to leave Jesse with Natasha, both to help her, and because if Amazo is able to absorb her speed, he’ll be unstoppable.

Big fight, as Amazon one by one absorbs the mostly human talents of the Outlaws; Blue Beetle’s scarab proves to be a problem for him, and the magic that makes it go crashes his systems and forces him to have to reboot. Natasha builds them a two-step gun, first firing an electromagnetic pulse that should cripple most of his systems, then uses electromagnetism to fire her hammer through his chest. She designs it so Jesse can fire it, because she’s fast enough to get a bead on Amazo before he can try to absorb her powers or the gun’s tech. The combo disables the robot, and the Outlaws flee, narrowly avoiding the cops. Lex pivots, throwing one of his mid-level tech guys under the bus, probably Ivo but there are a lot of possibilities.

The emotional climax is they offer Natasha a chance to stay joined. She’s about to answer, when she gets a call from the hospital: her uncle John woke up. She has to go.

Clark Kent is there, reminiscing with John. He excuses himself quickly when he sees her. John tells her, “You, uh, just missed Superman. He told me what you did. For me. For Metropolis. He said he couldn’t be more proud of you. I told him I was. I want”

“Your suit back?” she asks, a little crushed at the prospect of giving it up.

He smiles, nodding at footage of her in the suit on the muted television. “I don’t think it fits me anymore.” We cut to his storage unit, where Natasha is helping him, using a cane temporarily. We hear his audio from the hospital room still, overlayed: “Besides, what kind of engineer would I be if I only had one prototype to tinker with?” He touches his palm to a picture frame, and the frame scans his hand, and suddenly the unit transforms, revealing an underground lab, and yes, an even fancier Steel prototype.

Natasha, walking on air, puts her keys back on her counter. Her apartment is still a little worse for wear from the fight inside it. “You never answered us,” Red Hood says, sitting in her nook again.

“Us?” she asks, turning and smiling. The rest of the Outlaws filter in. “I’m in.”

Roll credits. Mid-credits Sequel Set Up:

“What is it, dick?” Arsenal asks Jason.

“Ironic time to call me that, because I’m trying to be sensitive, here.”

“You?”

“I know. Something about a woman who kicks my ass as much during foreplay as sparring has softened me.”

“I think that’s called a bruise.”

“Regardless. I know you’ve had a… history with painkillers.”

“I was a junkie. No reason to sugar coat it.”

“I was told that was how you make the medicine go down, but you’re the expert. There’s a new synthetic on the streets of Gotham. It’s… nasty stuff. Batman… had a run in with it. Not only does it give you one hell of a rush, but it’s a supersteroid- the kind of leap you don’t make without dipping your hand into something cosmic, magic or our kind of high tech. Street name for it is Venom. It’s being run exclusively by a Santa Priscan gang called the Snake Kings; the mercs Santa Prisca brought in to fight the revolutionaries got a better offer from the rebels, and together took the country; they run gangs and an international drug trade from there. Makes Colombia look like a DEA front. You need to sit this one out, I can find myself another shooter.”

Arsenal bullseyes a picture in the center of a target; it might not be obvious, but it’s his own. “Nah, boss. Couldn’t live with myself if I passed up a chance to stomp some pushers.”

December 18, 2020June 19, 2021

Breed Book 3, Part 56

Tucker’s phone rang, and he answered it. “So I have bad news,” Ryan said.

“Let me have it.”

“Agent Louie commandeered the bus. Put a gun to our driver, Miri’s, head, and is forcing her to drive him to campus. Apparently he did not notice the high end cameras we installed. On the plus side, we’ve captured the audio from a half-dozen of their phones, and we’re already uploading it to every news outlet in the hemisphere. The bad is that they’re about only a couple minutes out, and they plan to set off a riot. They say they have an ‘anonymous’ tip of an illegal in one of the dorms, so they’re going to go in and arrest anyone and everyone they ‘suspect’ of being here illegally. The other half of them are going to the records room, to burn every printed record, and destroy anything digital, too. It’s probably not enough to do what they want it to, but if we let them terrorize us here-”

“Then no Breed is going to feel safe anywhere.” Tucker hung up his phone. “Drake?” Tucker asked him.

“Yeah?” he thought back.

“You catch all that?”

“Of course.”

“How long would it take to transport all of us to campus?”

“I think I have a better idea. Where’s Iago?” Tucker reached out telepathically, and shared an image. “Follow me. I’ll need to know where the bus is, next.” Drake disappeared, and an instant later he was in their living room, where Iago was watching the news.

“They just played the audio,” Iago said. “What do you need me to do?”

Drake grabbed him, and they both teleported to the bottom of the hill leading to the school. “We need ice,” Drake said. “As much ice as you can put on that road.”

“Then you need to coordinate with Tucker so some student doesn’t try driving down the hill. Might even want a magnetokinetic, if he can find one.”

“Karl,” Tucker said in his mind. “He’s here, yellow dog shirt.”

Drake was gone in an instant, back with Tucker. “Karl!” they barked in unison, and a tall, wiry kid who couldn’t have been more than 17 stumbled out of the crowd. “You’re with me,” Drake said, and took his wrist, and they were gone.

Iago had already iced over several feet of the road. “Not sure why you started us on the corner,” Iago said. “That seems extra precarious.”

“That was the idea.”

“What’s the plan?” Karl asked.

“You’re playing catcher. Any cars hit this ice, I need you to set them as gently as you can in the ditch.”

“It really doesn’t work that way,” Karl said nervously.

“However it works, make it work,” Drake said. “We’re out of time and we’re out of options.”

“We’re stopping traffic at the top of the hill,” Drake heard Tucker in his head again. “And I warned the driver. She can heal herself- just don’t let anyone die. Oh, and she’s going to be there in about thirty seconds.”

“All right, we’re out of time,” Drake said out loud. “We need to make space. When the bus hits that ice it’s not going to be pretty.” Drake waved them towards the line of trees a few feet from the sidewalk.

“You know, I’ve always secretly wanted to do this,” Iago said. “I’m glad I finally get the chance- and that we’re doing it to such a deserving group of assholes.”

“Well don’t celebrate just yet. If we accidentally kill one of them, we’re going to enter an even bigger world of crap.”

“Crap?” Iago asked, frowning.

“Paradoxically, I swear less when I’m tense. Shit.”

The bus came roaring up the hill, and when it hit the ice careened towards the sidewalk opposite them. It jumped the curb like it wasn’t there, narrowly avoiding an apartment building and heading for an overgrown blackberry bush. “Uh,” Karl said, realizing that there was nothing behind the bush but a steep incline towards the grocery store a quarter mile down. He reached out his hand as the bus tilted from its wheels, its momentum keeping it sliding even as it fell, trailing a shower of sparks. “Uh,” Karl said, as he started to slide along with the bus.

“Anchor him,” Drake said, grabbing onto Karl’s arm to try and slow him. Iago froze his feet to the ground, and kept going until he was encased in a layer of ice several inches thick up to his neck. “Not, uh, entirely what I meant, but it worked.” The bus tried to roll one last time, which might have been enough to crest the hill, but Karl pulled his fingers back towards himself, and the bus settled back harmlessly into the parking lot.

“Uh, can you get me out?” Karl asked, his teeth chattering.

“Think so,” Drake said. “And you both need to get gone.” He grabbed Iago’s shoulder and the back of Karl’s head, and transported them both into their living room just up the hill. “Get him some hot chocolate or something,” he said, and disappeared.

Drake arrived just in time to see the bus doors open up. The driver, her face slicked with blood, climbed out. Iago teleported back to the apartment, stumbled into Karl who was in the process of stripping out of his shirt, and grabbed a roll of paper towels before returning. He handed the roll to the driver, who wiped her face. A single small cut was all that remained, and closed up an instant later. “That sucked,” she said. “Though it beat the alternative. Not sure they’re down for the count, though. We might not want to stick around.” “No, probably not,” Drake said. “But my roommate’s making hot cocoa.” Drake took her hand, and they both disappeared.

December 17, 2020June 19, 2021

Breed Book 3, Part 55

“Fessuns,” Garrity said, wrapping his belt around his wrist and tightening it with his teeth to control the bleeding. “Always figured it would be one of you that finally punched my ticket. Though I’d have loved to be wrong.”

“Shut up,” Anita said, holding her head, “I don’t care.”

“Are you okay?” he asked. “Aside from the obvious instability that would lead you to break in here and maim me.”

She pointed her blade into his stomach, enough that he could feel the edge through his shirt but not quite enough to break the skin. “I’m trying to decide whether to stab you to death.”

“I’d much prefer a gun, if you’re asking for input.”

“I wasn’t. And if I were, I’d probably be looking for what you want the least.” She closed her eyes, clearly struggling. “I wasn’t prepared, to see you again. Even seeing your picture- it put me back there. I practically ran through your facility; I couldn’t begin to tell you if I killed anyone on the way. No- I did, but I couldn’t tell you if that happened in this draft or another one. But I can’t remember the last time I had a clearer purpose; I wanted you dead so badly it was primal, animal.”

“Then why am I slowly bleeding out, or is that the answer? Because this,” he grimaced as he raised his partially severed limb, “hurts, certainly, but we both know you could do so much worse. If you wanted. But that’s always been your problem, Fessuns- you didn’t. Even when you were trying for a Section 8, not that we can folks just for being crazy up here- we’re too civilized for that. But your heart’s never been in it, not even when your life was on the line. So if you’re trying to make me piss in my pampers you should have let Mai do the dirty work. She at least knows when to let her inmates run her asylum.”

“You’re trying to goad me,” Anita said. “Which is frustrating primarily because it exposes how easily manipulated you believe me to be. If I hadn’t already taken your hand- I told you not to go for that gun- I’d have to cut something else off to prove the point. But to answer the question at the heart of your manipulation, you’re alive because I am both seeing too many alternate realities and not enough depth. Killing you will either cause a genocide or prevent one- and as much as I deeply want you dead, that’s a hell of a margin for error.”

“Ah, so it isn’t poser Hannibal Lecter Anita, it’s indecisive Anita. Probably my least favorite, if I can be candid.”

“Maybe- and I’m just spitballing here because it feels like an erupting Mount Saint Helens is crowning through my forehead as we speak- but perhaps rather than set your dial to maximal dick, you could try telling me why I shouldn’t risk a genocide to murder you- because even with genocide as a possible unintended consequence it is delicious watching that blade slide in and out of your flesh. Almost pornographic, flipping between the drafts, where tiny variations in timing make the stabbing a few seconds sooner or later, it looks like it’s sliding in and out of you repeatedly.”

“I’m not going to beg,” he said proudly. “We did what we thought we had to. For all we knew the Russian experiments on weaponizing Breed were going to bear fruit, and people like you were the next nuclear bomb. I wished that weren’t true; every day I asked whatever god was listening to take that burden away from us. He wasn’t listening; I imagine you’re familiar enough with that. But we all of us did what duty and country demanded. Except some of us stuck it out. Worked the program- reformed from within. Not that I was always the reforming type; took me a while to understand the error of my ways. But this ain’t the facility you knew; here we deal with troubled kids, and trying to get them on a path to a normal life. I’m not so much in charge of the place as entombed here; I know where the bodies are buried, and have the right kind of background and clearances to keep a lid on what happened.”

“I don’t believe you…”

“Why would you? I was the program, as far as you and the other agents were concerned. I was your tormentor. But things change. People, too. Who was it, you thought let you slip the chain in Argentina? Did you think we couldn’t track you down? Or your friend out there, when she went missing in Afghanistan. You think we couldn’t have tracked either of you to the ends of the Earth? Hell, you think we didn’t? But with the both of you getting loose so close together, and the body counts you left in your wake- it helped me convince everybody else we’d been playing with old dynamite, gave me the leverage I needed to shutter the program.” He exhaled, and kicked out his foot, before piercing her with his eyes.

“I don’t blame you, understand? I’ve seen more war than any man ought to; done things that even I, at my most detached, was horrified by. I don’t think you get to live a life as bloody as mine, and die intact of old age.”

“Nothing to worry about there,” Anita said, anger still roiling in her voice, “since you’re no longer intact.”

He held up his stub. “I’m flipping you off, you just can’t tell.” “I might be the only one who could,” she said. “It wasn’t a clean slice in all of the drafts; in some of them the hand’s still hanging on by a tendon or two.”

December 16, 2020June 19, 2021

Breed Book 3, Part 54

The ICE agents were barely moving, and were more and more resembling snowmen. They were caked in frozen rain, with a light dusting of fresh snow sticking to the top of that and icicles hanging off of several of them. “You almost start to feel a little bad for them,” Tucker said, grinning. “I mean, we’re entering Valley Forge levels of pitiful, here.”

“I don’t,” Izel said coldly. “But maybe that’s because I can taste the racism. It’s like blood on the back of my teeth.”

“Sounds like you may need to floss more,” Drake said from behind them, startling Izel.

“The combination of fear and hatred coming off them… you see that toxic mix in rabid dogs, but it’s horrifying in a person- let alone a person who wants to abuse his power to hurt you.”

“How are we doing?” Drake asked.

“They’re about ready to break,” Tucker said. “And I don’t just mean the fact that some of them are so frozen that if they tripped and fell they’d shatter like a crystal vase.”

“He’s right. I think they’d have given up before now if they could figure out how to. So we’re going to give them an out.”

Tucker keyed a radio. “Bring in the heavies.” Drake heard the bus’s breaks from a few blocks over, then saw as it rounded the corner. It was filled with students he recognized from the campus.

“Our heaviest hitters,” Izel said. “The ones who could stand up to the punishment if it became a brawl.”

“Also the ones with the most bulletproof paperwork,” Tucker added. “It would sort of defeat the point if we accidentally got somebody deported.”

The bus continued past them, and turned around in the cul-de-sac surrounded by the apartment complex the ICE agents were marching for. It stopped at an angle across the street, and students began to empty out of the bus. They formed a line, covering the road, the sidewalks, and any reasonable path towards the apartments. “That’s our cue,” Tucker said. “You want to-” Drake touched both of their arms, and they teleported to the front of the group.

“You look awful, Officer… Louie?” Tucker said, and peered at him a moment.

“It’s not spelled that way in China; it’s by no means the worst Romanization I’ve seen. Also, you’re in our way.”

“Really?” Tucker asked. “Because it kind of looks like air is in your way at this point. I’ve seen spinsters with walkers finishing a 10k with more spring in their steps.” This time the agent peered at Tucker. “My two queer great aunties; even into their 70s they were a couple of fitness buffs. But my point: about the only thing you could march successfully for right now would be a hot cocoa. As it happens, we at the school heard about your misfortunes, and raided our cafeteria to bring you some at your office. You weren’t there, but we heard through the grapevine you were headed this way. So we commandeered you a bus.” The students who had been standing in front of the bus’s door parted.

“I’m afraid we can’t throw in the towel just yet,” Louie said, stiffening. “I’ve heard reports that apartment complex is full of Breed that are illegally in this country.”

“Really?” Tucker asked. He pulled up his phone. “Because the school is very thorough about vetting our students’s paperwork, including student visas, and fully 84% of the residents of that complex are students at our school. I’ve just emailed you copies of all of their documentation, by the way.”

“How?” he asked. “Cell towers have been dark since this morning.”

“I’ve got four bars,” Tucker said, showing him the phone. Louie checked his phone, and saw a massive email waiting in his inbox. “Maybe your office is in a dead spot. Or maybe whatever happened has been fixed.”

“Maybe,” he said. He dialed through. “Hello, this is Agent Louie with ICE. I need to report an illegal gathering.” Izel opened her bag, and produced several sheets of paper, which Tucker handed to Louie. “It’s a protest?” Louie asked. “They paid the fee and have all the proper permits.” He hung up. “I don’t believe in coincidence,” he seethed.

“And if you could use your red hot rage to thaw out some of your comrades, maybe you’d be in a position to do something about it. Though I’d humbly suggest that isn’t the case.” Tucker raised his hand over his head and snapped his fingers. A student standing at each wheel lifted the bus over their heads, until it was suspended eight feet in the air. “I thought a lot about what I’d say, threats we could make. Like we could Roanoke you, disappear even the memory that there ever was an ICE office in Bellingham, wipe the memory of anyone who ever came looking and delete any record any of you ever existed. Then we’d have to track down your families, and wipe all their memories. It’s exhausting just thinking about it. And I think it’s already dawning on you the mistake you’ve made coming here today.” Tucker snapped again, and the bus was set gently back down.

“The bus holds forty eight; it took four to lift a school bus. Agent Louie, you jumped into the lions’ den here,” Tucker continued. “You thought you could handle what you were calling down- felt you could get away with violating the rights of some immigrant students without anyone ever being the wiser. You were wrong. We can let bygones be bygones. You don’t have to risk your life, and theirs,” Tucker led his eyes to his fellow agents, “over an error. But this isn’t happening like you wanted. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not so long as any of us are above ground to resist you. So friendly advice- and I promise it’s the last that you’ll hear from me- get on the bus. Go back to your office. You really don’t want to hear us roar.” Louie popped the button strap holding his sidearm in a shoulder holster. Tucker held up his hand for them to wait.

One of the ICE agents broke lines, and started towards the bus. As he put one foot on the first step, he turned back towards Louie. “Sorry,” he said with a shrug.

“You made him do that. Puppeted him.”

“Nope,” Tucker said. “I gave the agents you corralled into this a chance to do the right thing.” Two more crossed the line, and a third, and two more. “Sometimes that’s all it takes.” Louie flexed his hand over his pistol, before letting it fall empty to his side.

“You better not be lying about that hot chocolate,” he said, “or I’m coming back.”

“I’m not,” Tucker said. “It’s even still hot.” Louie got on, last, and the doors closed behind him.

“I don’t like this,” Izel said, as the bus pulled away. “They shouldn’t get to just walk away like this.”

“They’re not. The technopaths are going to ruin as many of their lives as possible. Just showing up for something like this means they can’t be trusted with the job they have. The few we can’t find dirt on we’ll watch. Maybe we’ll have to catfish them, maybe we just have to wait until they hit financial skids, and can use that to get their clearance yanked. But the men who marched here today aren’t getting off scot free, Izel. I’m just disappointed sling-shotting them into the sun, which would have been more satisfying, is probably wrong somehow.” “I’m disappointed about that, too, now,” Izel said, smiled and waved as the bus rolled away.

December 15, 2020June 19, 2021

Breed Book 3, Part 53

“I take it Anita won,” Rox said, raising an eyebrow at Mai.

“If by ‘won’ you mean shot me repeatedly through the spine, then yes,” Mai said, leaned against a file cabinet to try to stay upright.

“I thought you could heal.”

“I am,” Mai said. “Minute ago I couldn’t wiggle my toes. 90 seconds ago I couldn’t breathe. Two minutes ago I was bleeding out. You have any idea how difficult it is regrowing nerve tissue while you’re going into shock and trying to pass out from blood loss?” Rox helped her stand, and leaned her against a nearby desk.

“So why’d she shoot you?”

“Well, if she’d stuck around I might have assumed it was to stop me from doing something I’d regret. Since she locked herself on the other side of that door, other thoughts spring to mind.”

“She’s going to kill Garrity.”

“That may be the best case scenario,” Mai said, and Rox frowned. “When we both used to work here, she developed a… habit. Started carving up targets like a Christmas goose- but one that definitely slept with your sister and diddled your favorite pet. We all thought she was losing her mind, which apparently was not as big a liability as you’d assume given the fucked up nature of what we were being tasked with. I thought it was only a matter of time before one of us was going to have to put her down, frankly, until a mission in Kabul. We were separated from the rest of our team, and our first evac got shot down. So we were hunkered for days while they figured out alternate arrangements. I don’t know if it was sleep deprivation, lack of food and water, or if she just needed to talk… but she broke down and told me. She was trying to get discharged. She thought if she was awful enough, scary enough, that they’d have to bounce her from the program. I… wasn’t terribly supportive of her decision.”

“You fought.”

“Probably would have been to the death, but she was sharper then, in a fight; she could counter almost any move you made, in real time. And you could read the betrayal on her face… she wanted me to understand, and support her, and instead- I tried to kill her. She kept me alive while we waited for evac. Alive, but only just. At the time it felt like the opposite of mercy; but in retrospect I think maybe she was trying to be kind.”

“So how did you still blame her after all of that?”

“Because my memory is a pile of moldering Swiss cheese. Some days I barely remember me. And because, on some level, I think I felt betrayed. Because she could have looped me into her plan, and together we might have been able to do something about it. But instead she was willing to abandon me- really the rest of us, to this hell. I’m not saying it’s rational, but I promise you, this… program didn’t leave you the faculties to be rational. The intentionally undermined our rationality, so we’d substitute their judgment for our own.”

Rox tried the locked door, and then leaned against the wall beside it with a sigh. As she did, she heard a jingling in her jacket pocket. She removed the keys. “Really?” Mai asked.

“Really,” Rox said, and the first key she tried opened the door. Inside was an office, decorated with full military pomp. The wall behind the desk was covered in blood spray, and laying on the floor was a severed hand.

“I remember him being taller,” Mai said. “I’ll tell you he won’t last long with that kind of blood loss.”

Rox found a panel similar to the blast doors in the lobby in the rear of the room. “This is going to take a little more doing.”

“Hey, without your luck, we’d have been separated from them by two doors. We just to work the problem.” A gunshot rang out from inside the panic room. “And hope she doesn’t kill him before we can get in there.”

Rox stopped, and gave her a questioning look. “But does it really matter? Even if he spent the last decade planting trees, building a habitat for humanity and club-proofing baby seals… I don’t think he could make up for everything he’d done. So… who cares if she shoots him? I know I’m supposed to, but even I really don’t.”

“I’m not worried about him,” Mai said. “I’m telling you he drove both of us nearly past the breaking point. I would throw a parade if that son of a bitch died. But I’m worried about Anita- about what facing down this evil alone might do to her. You’ve seen what living with that past has done to her. I’m not sure she can survive revisiting it.”

December 11, 2020June 19, 2021

Breed Book 3, Part 52

“Don’t react,” Kara said flatly. Most of the bush they were standing behind wasn’t actually there. It was a fabrication she embroidered with telepathy to make them more difficult to spot from the road.

“Hi,” Drake said, appearing behind them.

“Did a dude just appear behind us, or am I stressed out enough I’m hallucinating?” Simon asked.

“He’s real. His name’s Drake. Drake, Simon- Simon, Drake. He teleports, and he’s our ride out of here if we draw too much attention.”

“Uh, she’s right about that,” Drake said nervously. “And I’m going to assume that this is an extenuating enough circumstance that I shouldn’t be irked by you rifling through my head.”

Kara cracked her knuckles, smiling wickedly, “Rifling, you say…”

“Not a challenge,” he said.

“I was kidding. And I knew you’d feel that way, and agreed. Normally it’s very uncool to tell someone what’s in somebody else’s head.”

“I thought telepaths didn’t read thoughts as a matter of politeness,” Drake said.

“For those who can control it, that’s true. But there’s no such thing as a typical telepath. We’re all different, some wildly so. For me, not hearing thoughts is, well, like trying not to hear my roommate with her vibrator. I mean, I try to tune it out, but I can’t not hear. Believe me I’ve tried. I put in industrial grade hearing protection, under noise cancelling headphones. With death metal on. I don’t even like death metal. Still, any moment that isn’t filled with percussion and screamed German profanity I can hear her…”

“The way you describe it I think I hear it.”

“Yeah, uh…” she blushed, “I was oversharing. Some telepaths do that, too. It’s subtle, with me; you might not even know it, even now, but I was likely broadcasting elements of the experience directly into your mind.”

“You’re sure you’re not just a vivid storyteller?” Drake asked.

“She isn’t,” Simon said, and she punched him in the meat of his upper arm. “Ow. I mean, that isn’t it. We tried it, once. Put me in her noise-cancelling headpones. I couldn’t hear a word she was saying- but I could still see what she was describing. She hit me, then, too.”

“You were being a perv,” she protested.

“You told the pervy story. Biology was why I reacted the way I did.”

“No more details, or I’m going to hit you, too,” Drake said.

“It can be mildly embarrassing for me,” Kara redirected. “Some of us, though, especially telepaths on the spectrum- some of them can’t filter it out. They have to learn other coping techniques, like meditating. It is not easy meditating while talking to someone.”

“I had no idea.”

“Some telepaths don’t like to talk about it. Some don’t feel it’s their place to. Personally, I don’t like the idea of contributing to a stigma. We’ve all had issues with our abilities.” Drake was about to deny, but stopped himself. “You want to tell him, or should I?”

Drake rolled his eyes. “I went through a phase, in high school. I’d seen just enough movies to be titillated about the girl’s locker room, but wasn’t yet mature enough to realize it was just a room filled with stinky girls pressed too close together- and pretty much not in a hot way.”

“That’s accurate,” Kara said.

“Anyway, if I wasn’t careful, and let the fantasy become too active in my brain… I’d accidentally teleport there. I nearly got expelled, because it kept happening. The only reason I didn’t was the administration couldn’t figure out how I did it- and just as crucially, couldn’t prove that I wasn’t being shoved in by bullies.”

“Yeah,” Simon said. “Gave myself frostbite one of the places you least want frostbite.” Kara laughed.

“I’m not sure it’s funny,” Drake said seriously.

“It gets funnier,” she said, continuing.

“Dad was on a business trip. So I had to tell my mom to take me to the emergency room. Where my aunt worked as a nurse, and was inexplicably working a weekend shift. And my grandmother met her for lunch. They were surprisingly mean about it.”

“To be fair,” Kara said, stifling still more laughter, “they waited to be mean until they were sure you hadn’t done any permanent damage. At which point they became truly savage- like the Geneva Conventions against torture were violated- and I’m not sure I’m exaggerating for comedic effect.”

“She is not. It was a weird way to learn that the matriarchs in my family were Olympic-level practitioners of cool, cruel, dry wit.”

“You seem more zen about this than… I can understand,” Drake said.

“Thankfully, I got my dad’s disaffected nature. I was laughing with them by the end of it. But it was a trial by fire.”

“Speaking of,” Kara said, nodding in the direction of the sound of boots.

“You did that on purpose,” Drake said. “Distracting us.”

“Didn’t take a psychic to see we were all a little too tense; and it didn’t take telepathy to know a little humor would puncture that tension. But you’re up, Si.”

He sighed deeply, and as he exhaled, Drake could feel the air get colder. “Jeez,” he said, shivering. Drake noticed patches of frost in the street spider-webbing, growing wider and denser as they swallowed up moisture from the air.

“And they just want snow?” Simon asked, closing his eyes as he concentrated.

“Snow to start. The next corner is going to hit them with freezing rain.”

“So I’m trying to drop their temperatures- at least of their clothes- get them as close to freezing as possible to supercool the rain as it hits. That’s kind of evil. I love it.” He exhaled again, and this time Drake couldn’t stop shivering, even under his ski coat.

“I can feel the temperature drop when he does that,” he said.

“Not as much as they can,” Simon said, as the first of the ICE agents crested the hill. There were a few dozen of them, marching brokenly as the cold made it harder for them to move. “Believe it or not, you’re just feeling the ripples of cold I’m directing at them- they’re getting it full-on. One of the agents exhaled, and his breath crystalized in the air, and fell to the road, where it shattered.

“Shit,” Kara said. Drake saw it an instant after her. One of the agents was staring right at them, whispering to the agent next to him. “We need to get out of here. There’s a few seconds before they all notice us.”

“On it,” Drake said, putting a hand to each of their shoulders. An instant later and they were inside the student center back at the campus.

“Wow, that warm air,” Kara said, unzipping her jacket.

“They rotating you back in?” Drake asked.

“Not if they can help it. Since the name of the game is deniability, the idea was to never have them see the same person twice. You know, until you decided you should be on the front line their entire trek.”

“Yeah,” he said, squinting. “Maybe not the best time to call an audible.”

“No, I think you were right. Given the choice, I’d rather have to divide some of my attention masking you than worry about trying to get you to us in a hurry. One panicked, confused thought and the whole damn thing could fall apart. Plus, us telepaths are pretty good about reinforcing each other, even over a distance.” She smiled, pushing an image into his mind. It was a block and a half from where they’d been, looking through the eyes of another telepath. “You should go, before they’re in ‘view’ of the march. It’s always easier to hide someone who’s already there, than to try and intercept someone who just pops up out of thin air. And thanks for the help. We felt safer having you with us.”

“I did?” Simon asked.

“He has some trouble admitting it- even to himself; toxic masculinity’s a real bitch- but he did.” “Anytime,” Drake said, and disappeared.

December 11, 2020June 21, 2022

Pitchgiving 2020 Part 3: Justice League International

I would probably go with something akin to the “Formerly Known” series for this, give it a comedic slant. Though first, to get us to an international feel, I’m probably going to have to make some changes so it isn’t so overwhelmingly white and America-centric. As an example Ted Kord would still be around, but we’d also bring in Jaime Reyes as his in the field protégé from Latin America due to his heart condition (think Pym from the Ant Man movies, only in his fifties and pudgy). We’d eventually bring in the heroic version of Dr. Light, from Japan. We’d bring in the new Atom, Ryan Choi, after Ray decides to stick to teaching. Ice would still be alive (and not evil- though we could use that storyline in a sequel if the mood strikes). I think we’d bring in Vixen, too. We also have Booster Gold, Captain Atom, Mary Marvel, Fire (from Brazil), and finally the Dibnys. I’d tweak Sue Dibny in particular to have been Ralph’s research partner in his experiments, gaining powers alongside him as the Elongated Woman, and being of Australian/Pacific Islander descent- I’d also endorse race-bending Ralph, too, for that matter (though I’d probably save her having powers for the climax or an end credits scene). That gets us our international team.

I seem to recall DC threatened several times to make a Booster Gold movie. That would either serve as a prequel, if that went well; this would be a reboot if it went poorly, or, probably more likely, would supplant it entirely (I refuse to believe anyone was serious about a Booster Gold movie- which does sound like some kind of medicated powder). But Booster is our viewpoint character. He drives the plot, which is essentially that he comes from the future, knows of a calamity that requires this team to exist to deal with it, and so once again assembles them. Some of them he leverages personal affection. Some of them he leverages knowledge of their not proud moments. Some he bribes with future knowledge/fortune. We should play all of it light and breezy, because ultimately he’s one of the good guys and we want this team to work together and succeed- though it is ripe for a late reveal that someone isn’t as on board as they’ve pretended and there’s a nugget of personal drama to be mined.

Prologue

We start in, zoomed, on a futuristic-looking chair with the Superman symbol engraved on it as the Superman theme music swells. The table is round, surrounded by more chairs, half occupied. We fade the music out, and fade quarreling in as we pan across Booster Gold, in a similar seat. Probably, because these characters are largely unfamiliar, we put either placards in front of them or white text overlaid at the bottom of the screen.

“Superman was a soft maybe,” Booster says, looking a little embarrassed.

Fire, seated next to him, raises an eyebrow skeptically.

We pan past an empty seat with Wonder Woman’s symbol on it, as Booster continues. “Ambassador Wonder Woman is in the building.” He adds, quieter, “She just isn’t answering my calls.”

Pan across Blue Beetle, in his classic Ted Kord incarnation/suit. Subtly, Jaime Reyes in his armored scarab suit stands behind him, looking kind of ominous. “Batman was never coming, though,” Ted says, as we pan over an empty chair with the bat symbol on it.

“No,” Booster admits. “But I thought the symbol would look cool on a chair.” During this exchange, we pan across the remaining members of the team: Captain Atom, Ice, Elongated Man (with a civilian-clothed Sue standing beside him).

“Oh, it does,” he agrees.

Elongated Man asks, “Did we ever hear back from that Big Red Cheese?” stretching into frame as we linger on Captain Marvel’s lightning bolt engraved on an empty chair and pointing to it.

The idea is simple. They were an attempt to build out an international, UN sanctioned Justice League. They ran a few missions globally, but, much like the ICC, never got American backing. Eventually, the US used its Security Council veto to neuter the team in its entirety, leading to it being disbanded. They’re viewed in the superhuman community as has-beens, but they only ever wanted to do good by their world. Might be fun to do a VH1 Behind the Music type intro for the team, pulling back to reveal once the characters are established that Booster is asleep in front of the TV. He’s visited by Old Booster. OB throws him around a little, explaining that the disaster he came back to prevent is still going to happen, and he can’t rest on his keister playing gigolo to the Desperate Housewives. “Gigoloing is harder work than it looks,” he retorts. OB tells him it isn’t funny. That if he doesn’t get his act together, everyone he’s ever cared about is going to die, and that includes his team.

We cut to Blue Beetle’s workshop. Ted Kord is wearing a blue jump suit reminiscent of his costume, working on his beetle ship (the Bug) while talking. “I promised myself after we disbanded that I was done wearing shape-wear, BG.”

“You know I hate when you call me that.”

“But I can tell by the way you use your walk-”

“Don’t start.”

“You’re a woman’s man, no time for talk.”

“I’m asking nicely.” He stops, and they stare at each other a moment, before in unison breaking into the shrill chorus, “Staying aliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiive.” “I hate you.”

“You love me.”

“But I need you.”

“You need me? Our friendship always had a tinge of codependence about it, but need-“

“I need Blue Beetle. The… catastrophe I came back to stop, it’s still coming.”

“You sure? I thought we prevented it just by forming the JLI in the first place- a deterrent.”

“So did I. Until… another me came back. Apparently we need to roll up our ‘Mission Accomplished’ banner and get back to work.”

“You said you need Blue Beetle. You don’t need me- at least not in the field. But you remember Scarab?”

“Your sidekick?”

“I think we both preferred assistant. He was in all of the press material anyway, so we weren’t a wall of white saviors. He’s been helping me refine my tech. And he doesn’t even have a heart condition.”

CUT To a Brazilian market. Booster is struggling under the weight of a comical amount of bags and boxes. Fire and Ice are leaving him largely in their dust as he tries his sales pitch. Finally, the tilting tower of commercial decadence topples, and a demure Ice says she can’t torture him any more. They were in from the moment he called. Fire pouts; she had a whole gauntlet of a day planned for him. But she perks up when Ice reminds her they get to be superheroes again.

Now Booster’s in a classroom. “I was always a background player. I may have designed the shrinking tech- hell, I got it through the first few years of field testing, and so far no cancers- but at heart, I’m an educator. I don’t like punching. Which isn’t to say I agree with an anti-violent premise- some problems, like fascism, have to be countered through violent resistance. But I can do the most good, and have the largest impact by far, from behind a lectern. Besides, spandex are a young man’s sport- and not just because I don’t have the glutes to fill them out anymore. Ryan? You can stop eavesdropping- because he’s really here to ask you the question.” Ryan Choi, the new Atom, grows out of a petri dish.

“I wasn’t eavesdropping. I was testing the modifications to the equipment. It wasn’t my fault you happened to be having a conversation nearby. And yes. You’ve got yourself an Atom.”

“Another 28 octillion of those and you’ve got yourself a team,” Ray says. Pause a beat, and both Atoms burst out laughing, as Booster stares in dumbfounded silence.

Booster grimaces, and we cut away to the sky midline as he says, “That’s one Atom down, one big, shiny, self-important Atom to go.” A US fighter jet flies by, an instant later pursued by a chromatic silver man with an atom on his chest. He catches up to the jet, knocks on the cockpit, and waves goodbye. The pilot inside calls over the radio that he’s confirmed killed, that Captain Atom is 3-0, and thank God he’s on their side. Over the radio comes the message that there’s an unknown flying object in their theater of operations, and requests they scout it. We cut to Captain Atom, answering through a headset, that he’s on it. He bursts ahead, leaving several fighter jets in his wake. He blows past Booster, flying in the opposite direction, then calls over the radio that it’s a known unknown, and they can stand down- that he’ll handle it.

They land together, Booster’s flight a lot more tentative and awkward, compared to the Captain’s. Captain Atom is overly straight-laced, still very much ingrained in the military culture and mode of conduct. He tells Booster he could have been shot down, that it’s restricted air space. Booster tells him they’re getting the band back together. Captain Atom explains that he’s not a free agent- he’s still a commissioned officer, and can’t go anywhere without dispensation from the military brass- which he isn’t going to get without someone more connected than Booster Gold asking. Booster doesn’t take that answer well- Captain Atom’s by far their strongest member, and the team is in serious trouble without him. Captain Atom tells him that he’s heard about someone else- someone who might be able to close that gap, says that he’s in Fawcett City, but he doesn’t know his identity.

The Elongated Man is doing a bit. He’s narrating himself as a hard-boiled, Chandleresque Detective in a seedy looking office late at night. Then Sue walks in, done up in something slinky, playing the femme fatale. Booster walks in, and EM continues narrating, with Booster becoming increasingly confused, until, “Clearly I’ve interrupted kinky date night- or at least bored and goofing around night. But we need you.”

“You mean him,” Sue says, crossing her arms.

“Everybody knows you’re the brains of this operation, Sue,” Booster tells her. “Without you, Ralph is brainless.”

“Hey,” he protests.

”I’m not sure that reply pleads your case all that well, dear,” Sue says.

Booster asks if they’re into anything heavy. Ralph starts to narrate a very noir sounding story, which Sue undercuts, admitting there’s a couple infidelity gigs, and a stolen bike, one with sentimental value- nothing they can’t give to someone else in a pinch. He says he needs their help tracking down a superhuman in Fawcett City. She asks if it’s a one-time gig, or if there’s a place on the team for them- he says there couldn’t be a team without her. And he adds that if he didn’t invite Ralph, then he’d be the team Butt Monkey- better if they split that role. “Because your butt can only stand so much monkeying?” Ralph asks. They refuse to acknowledge.

We cut to the sidewalk outside the Marvel household. The Dibnys explain how they tracked him down, first getting the neighborhood after Marvel did an appearance with Superman at a local school. From there it was just canvassing enough neighbors to find out that Marvels flying in and out of the residence is a largely open secret. Booster knocks on the door. Billy answers, and Booster tells him that they need Marvel for a new Justice League team; he tells Booster he is Captain Marvel. Booster is skeptical “I was led to believe he was taller. Wider. More formidable. Otnay an ipsqueakpay.”

“Wow,” Billy says. “You’re a jackass.” Sue agrees. “And I can tell you, as someone who’s at least met Captain Marvel, he’d have absolutely no interest in… whatever it is you’re doing.”

“But we’re talking fate of the world kind of stakes.”

“Nope.” Billy closes the door.

“Who was that?” Mary asks him.

“Someone looking to exploit Captain Marvel.”

“Exploit? It sounded like they needed help.”

“Yeah. Them. The Justice League. The Suicide Squad. The, what was it, Justice Society? I’ve lost track of all the people who’ve tried to recruit one or all of us. And we’re kids. I can barely pass algebra. Oh, crap. I have algebra homework.” He runs up the stairs. Mary glances furtively at the door.

Booster and the Dibny’s are still standing on the porch. Sue asks what the plan is, and Booser claims to be formulating a plan very slowly, making it obvious even to non-detectives that he’s stalling. Ralph says he should have brought a book of crosswords. Maybe some needploint. Sue teases him that he sounds like someone’s great aunt. There’s the sound of distant thunder, and the door opens, revealing Mary Marvel. “So, you said you needed some help.”

Mary and Booster are flying. “I’ve never been to Africa,” she says.

“It’s more modern than you’d think from movies and TV. I mean, the whole world is one stone tool’s throw away from cave people compared to my time, but it’s not like the continent is permanently stuck in the 16^th century. Western media has some serious colonialist issues to unpack.”

“I see what you mean,” Mary says as they descend on Ghana’s capital city of Accra. “This could be anywhere.”

“Accra’s a modern city, with 5 million people. Though there’s one in particular we’re looking for-there.” Booster points them towards the port, where there’s an explosion. “The Dibny’s were able to find out about a drug shipment coming through the port- the kind of shipment likely to attract her attention.” We cut over to Vixen. A rhino of light overlays her before she charges a car shielding gunmen firing at her, and knocks it over. She tramples on the men then, knocking the fight right out of them. One of them manages to crawl to the gun she knocked away from him, and rolls to aim it at her. Booster’s forcefield deflects the shot, and Mary punches him, knocking him out. Vixen thanks him for the assist, and calls him, “Buster.” It is what she will always call him. He says they need her- and just as importantly, wants the team to continue to reflect the vision of a world united against all threats.

“What kind of threats are we talking?” she asks, obviously interested.

If we can borrow Luther, he’s on an expedition into the heart of the Congo. They unearth a black diamond, which Luther is very careful not to touch without some heavy duty sci fi gloves. One of the workers, however, is not, and reaches out to it, perhaps called to it. Luther tries to stop her, but when she makes contact with it she’s transformed- and just as quickly, transported. I think ‘Eclipso’ is two characters, the worker who touched the black diamond, but also a more comic-booky looking version (an elf by way of the 80s He Man cartoon) she speaks to him in her mirror, which can magically show her things. She uses this to discuss finding a champion to test her power; she says she needs someone strong, but with a soul filled with rage and a desire for vengeance vulnerable to her manipulation. The mirror first shows Superman and Wonder Woman. “Plenty of power, but neither of them are angry enough- we’d have to work to build up their frustrations. And who has the time?” The mirror flicks instead to Batman. “Ooh. Never seen a soul crying for so much vengeance, but what’s this? He’s human. Call me when he finds a Green Lantern ring.” The mirror flicks past several metahumans (just use some b-roll from the various franchises), before settling on Captain Atom. “Hmm. Now this I can work with.”

We cut to the barracks at Captain Atom’s base. He’s talking with a fellow captain, an attractive young woman who is clearly interested. He slams his locker shut. “Everything okay?” she asks.

“I’m just frustrated. Booster showing up… I wanted to go with him. There’s good I could be doing, instead of playing tag with obsolete fighter jets.” She balks at that description. “Hey, I came up as a fighter pilot. I wish it weren’t true. But manned planes were already on their way out, even before the next real threats became Superman class aliens and metahumans. I jumped at the chance to serve on that UN team, even if half the reason they let me join up was to report back on it. And I wish I could have joined back up again- so some good could come out of this.” He’s gesturing at his silver containment suit.

She strokes his chest. “Doesn’t seem all bad to me. You’re fast. Strong. Can fly without a plane. You have abs I could grate cheese on, and I’m not sure you have to do sit ups to maintain them. Half of your brothers and sisters in the Air Force would kill to switch places with you- and the other half would kill to make time with you.”

“I’m not even sure if I could, since the accident,” he says, pushing her away. “No offense. You’re- well, obviously you’re gorgeous, and smart, and you’ve even been really sweet to me. But I’m upset- I’m just not in the mood to even try, right-” his eyes narrow as he stares. “Can you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

He traces a high-pitched hum into a half-open locker. There’s an earie purple glow emanating from inside. “Strange energy,” he mutters, almost to himself, reaching towards it. We see his face, as his eyes go wide, and his face is half-covered by a purple-hued circle. Cut to the sky above the military base, as a large explosion blows a hole in the facility. Subtly, Captain Atom flies through the hole and away.

Montage, of the various phones of the JLI members going off. The last we see is Mary’s, and it’s picked up by Rosa Vasquez, who says, “You know the house rules. No calls after 9 PM. I’m taking this.”

“If this is a drill, I will burn you alive,” Fire says sleepily into her phone. We pan to see she isn’t alone- Ice is with her.

“Sorry, ladies,” Booster says. “Something’s happened to Captain Atom.” We flash back, with ten minutes ago on the bottom of the screen. Amanda Waller walks into Booster’s place, tells him the President asked her to have the Suicide Squad take CA out. She owes them one from their JLI days, so she’s bought them a couple hours to sort it out before she has to sanction a kill order. Ray Palmer informs them from a screen that at the current rate of destruction, CA will destroy 70% of the city in the next two hours- to say nothing about the potential for destruction if his nuclear containment suit is breached.

They attack him at first willy nilly, with all of them fairly easily beaten back by the superior Captain Atom. The two remote elder heroes, Palmer and Kord, suggest combining their assault, having Elongated Man tie Captain Atom up while the rest keep him occupied on the ground. That works, to a point, getting CA reeling. But it isn’t quite enough. He’s still standing. Booster makes an impassioned plea for him to help them, to fight against the control, as the timer on his watch goes off. That if he doesn’t, Wallers thugs will find a way to kill him. They hear distant thunder, and Mary comes crashing out of the sky, landing on CA. She’s a force of nature, and her presence, and the fact that she’s able to single-handedly knock him on his back foot, rallies them to her side. Working together, they’re able to subdue him. Waller shows, calling it in, with her authorization, stating that Task Force X is recalled, that the situation is in hand. If Margot Robbie’s available, she tells a disappointed Harley Quinn, wielding the world’s largest, most ludicrous sniper rifle, to stand down (we can really use whichever squad member makes sense). Booster uses his forcefield to pick up the black diamond and put it in a briefcase, which Waller takes. He objects, and Harley aims the gun at him. Waller tells him either she can still owe him one, or they can be even and she’ll take it anyway. He shrugs, and lets her leave with it.

JLI have a party, celebrating living to fight another day. They’re running low on chips, and Booster volunteers to get more from the back room. He’s confronted there by OB. “Yeah, yeah, yuck it up, moron.”

“You know I’m you, right? You’re calling yourself a moron.”

“I was a moron. I got over it. I’m still not so certain you will. And yeah, you survived your first test. But that wasn’t the fight for all the marbles, kid. That was just the warm-up act. And I wouldn’t get too cozied up to the idea that Eclipso’s gone for good. You ain’t seen the last of her, not by a long shot.”

Credits. Cut to black. Close on a candle as it’s lit. “Burning the midnight oil again, Dr. Hoshi?” We pull back, to see Dr. Arthur Lumen entering their lab with two coffees, one with a red X on it. “Is that why they call you Dr. Light?” He’s speaking to Kimiyo Hoshi, who goes back to examining a flattened cloth.

She sighs patiently. “You never get tired of that joke, do you, Arthur?” He seems to be in good spirits, and gives her the red X coffee, but says the one thing he is tired of is waiting. They’ve been on the verge of a scientific breakthrough that could revolutionize communications technology, with implications for space travel, flight, maybe even combat. “If it works,” she says.

“You’re brilliant,” he says, staring at her a little too greedily in the candlelight. “Of course it will work.” She absent-mindedly sets her coffee on the edge of a console, and it teeters before spilling out on the floor. Arthur is noticeably let down by that, but tries to tell her it’s okay. “Ready to run another test?” She bites her lip. She’s been up all night tweaking the photovoltaics. She puts on one of the gloves, and stands on the opposite side of a large room. He fires a big industrial laser at her- which she catches. She’s joyful. He stares at her greedily, his eyes hungrier and hungrier as we zoom in, before cutting back to credits.

Inside baseball, because it’s an important clarification: I would not white-wash Arthur’s history as a rapist. But I also don’t intend to let him succeed on film. In the sequel, I’d probably have him fail in the big spectacular fight against the JLI, in part as the real Doctor Light (Hoshi) intervenes, then he runs away, intending to assault Sue as he did in the comics… only to be blindsided by her having the stretchy abilities I discussed earlier. I’d probably even soft-sell the nature of the assault; even if this series got an R rating there would be younger people who saw it regardless, but especially since I’d expect a PG-13 I’d probably want it subtle how he planned to take that revenge. Also, DC, why the hell are two of your most prominent Teen Titans villains rapists? That’s kind of messed up.

December 10, 2020June 19, 2021

Breed Book 3, Part 51

Rox grabbed a white coat off a hook beside the door into the lobby. She heard the jangling of keys, and felt inside the pocket. There were moments, often lost amid the chaos, where it was good to be her.

Then she saw something, a picture, one she’d seen before. In the lobby. Behind the receptionist. She stared at his old face, his military buzzcut; his nameplate at the bottom of the frame seemed almost incidental: Garrity. That’s when it fell into place. He was in charge of their program, the one that had mutilated and traumatized Anita and Mai for years. One of them must have seen the picture, maybe both of them, and in that moment, decided to make a run for it. And now they were loose in this base, the three of them, rushing to reach Garrity or that poor kid first.

She closed her eyes and stared walking. She’d tried this once before, trying to let her ability guide her. She ended up bumping into several walls, ending up with a fat lip and a cut through her eyebrow. There was a car accident on her usual route; a car hit the coffee stand she stopped at for a mocha every morning. She could never tell if that was her ability saving her, or if it was her ability reaching out and killing so it looked like it had.

Right now she didn’t have a lot of choice, so she started walking.

With her eyes shut, she had plenty of space to focus on screwing up. They may not have been the most powerful Breed, but they were, between them, two of the most destructive.

She tried playing the moment over again in her mind. Had it been Mai who started the run for the door? Or was it Anita shooting out the camera? Or maybe they’d both been playing her from the beginning, using her luck and her connections to get them inside, where they had always planned to ditch her.

No. She rejected that. Whatever her faults, Rox’d spent too much time with Anita to think she would manipulate her like that. She must have chased Mai, using her ability to flip through drafts on the fly to try and figure out where the little murder machine was headed- and just as crucially, if there was any way to stop her if she managed to catch her.

She was walking for too long. Up inclines, and down winding, twisting turning descents. She never encountered a patrol, or so much as bumped into a wall. She was beginning to wonder if she’d somehow wandered into the gym and found the world’s smoothest treadmill when she realized she could hear breathing, and had the sensation of someone being close. There was someone there, low to the ground, but definitely absorbing ambient noise in a distinctly human shape. “Well?” a voice she recognized asked. “You going to open your eyes and help me?” she asked.

It was Mai.

December 9, 2020June 19, 2021

Breed Book 3, Part 50

“I don’t get why I’m here,” Drake said, shivering against the cold.

“In case one of ours gets spotted,” Izel said. “The meteoropaths have to be pretty close, along the route the ICE gestapo are takin, to keep the weather pattern relatively contained; if we froze the whole city we’d cause a lot of accidents- especially with that kind of a freak storm- no pun intended. But that means a certain degree of vulnerability. We’ve got them linked up with telepaths, who can push the agents away with some mental suggestions, but probably not if a whole group of them at once decide to pay attention.”

Drake frowned. “’Mind control’ is a misnomer,” Tucker explained. “Most of the time, in most senses of the word, we don’t really do that. It’s more about… influence, and misdirection. You get enough telepaths together, and you can force your will on someone. But the mind isn’t really designed for that sort of… flexibility. You push someone too hard and they’ll break. Maybe they just experience it as trauma- it is essentially a mental assault. But that’s kind of the best-case scenario. You can break entire thought processes, brain structures- you can lobotomize someone for all intents and purposes without trying if you aren’t cautious. So mostly we stick to a gentle push. Suggestion. Not dissimilar to hypnosis, really. Convincing someone that what you want from them is what they wanted to do in the first place.”

“Which isn’t to say telepathy isn’t one of the more scary powerful abilities out there,” Izel said. “I can link your memories such that your knees stop working every time you hear the word ‘purple.’ I can convince your neurons to link up in new ways- either to make you a lot dumber or a lot smarter.”

“But it’s a lot like programming, or maybe hacking,” Tucker interjected. “There are a lot of ways that the human brain takes shortcuts. Most of our minds and our memories are about linkages, connections. It’s functionally a whole different language. But once you learn to speak it, there’s a lot you can do with it.”

“But not always quickly,” Izel added.

“Look, over there!” Tucker pointed over Drake’s shoulder, and he turned to look. “See, trying to convince you to do that telepathically would require me to connect with some portion of you that would want to see something over there, then convince your mind that that something might be over there, and feed that suspicion until it was worth the effort to look.”

“I think I got it. Having telepaths run interference is like having a deflector shield- it’ll maybe save you from a little indirect attention, but not from a hail of gunfire.”

“Exactly.”

“I really hope there isn’t a hail of gunfire,” he said.

“Us, too. But you’re here, in part, to make sure that can’t become a possibility- or at least remove our people from the line of fire if it becomes one.”

“So I’m their exfiltration option. K.” He disappeared, and reappeared an instant later, sliding on a heavier coat. “Much better. I swear, I’m going to spend a week in a warm bath. And meteoropaths?”

“Nothing to do with meteors; well, a little, I guess,” Tucker said with a shrug. “It technically means they control things high in the atmosphere. Though I don’t know of anyone who controls both- it’s just a quirk of the language.”

“You two are central command, right?”

“Sure,” Tucker said.

“I should be at the front. Wherever they’re most likely to get spotted.”

“That will make them a lot easier to spot,” Izel said.

“Right. But if I’m there, then I can pull everybody ought quickly as possible. If I’m here… then we’ve got a whole other pair of brains involved in the decision tree, when seconds- even microseconds- may be the difference. Point me to the tip of the spear.” Tucker closed his eyes, and shared an image from the mind of the telepath nearest the approaching ICE line. “Got it,” he said, and was gone.

December 8, 2020

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.”