Justice Avengers: A Black Day in Hub City

Hub City woke much like it did every day. Full of utter misery. There wasn't a sky in the cloud overhead, but some people still looked up at it, in hope of some kind of response from on high. These people stood at their balconies, clothes unwashed, eyes red, nostrils marked with the remnants of drugs, thinking of a way out of this city. The city itself was a pool of shadow and decay, with destitute, crag ridden blocks of grimy concrete. Marked by smashed windows and washing lines. Further in, however, the decor seemed to mildly improve. Black towers stood tall and gleaming, towering over the surrounding landscape. All the better for the men in business suits to sip their red wine and look down on the rest of the mange-ridden vox populi.

It was in this area of town where something in particular was moving. A black car, polished to perfection, wound its way down the lonely roads, on its way to the financial district. Inside the car, there was a man. A fairly important man. Maybe not important to the city as a whole, but very important to certain people in the city. A man who was known for his unorthodox business practices. A man who was better known for his opinion on the metahuman populace. The sort of man who kept one hand under the table, and another hand on the gun in his jacket pocket. The sort of man who made a lot of rivals, a lot of enemies.

In fact, just the other day, one of these enemies had put a price on his head, with a respectable number of zeroes to it. An open invitation to the lowlives of the city, to see who could prove their efficiency, their ruthlessness, their value to the criminal underbelly. Here was a target tied to a chair, suspended above cold waters. Dunk the doofus, win a prize, and start yourself a reputation.

Someone was bound to give it a go.

Val Armorr watched as the black car drove down the mostly empty streets of Hub City. Even though the costume the man was wearing couldn't be considered even the least bit stealthy, the man easily blended in with his environment, disappearing before anyone could get a good look at him. He ran and jumped from rooftop to rooftop, not producing a single sound as he performed complicated moves, easily following the car.

He was there for a simple reason: someone had put a bounty on this man's head, and this meant that every crook and lowlife of Hub City would try to get their hands on him... which also meant that it was the perfect chance for the criminals of Hub City to learn about its newest defender. He would strike fear upon the criminals' hearts... he would bring justice to this city destroyed by corruption and crime.

And that was his purpose, his mission... as the Karate Kid.

edited 5th Feb '14 4:41:54 PM by TheBigBean

It wasn't every day that The Main Man got a call to capture a non-metahuman on Earth, most of the time he was sent to go kill whatever major galactic hero had been sent there to defend it that week. Hell, not that long ago he was sent to go retrieve a princess for those Gordanian chumps but she managed to negotiate a deal with him that meant he could get his reward while letting her walk away. That was a pretty sweet deal in hindsight seeing as he got himself a fancy new ship to operate out of. Not much had happened to Lobo since then, other than taking out some pretty-boy claiming to be the Main Man. He didn't put up much of a fight.

Now Lobo was in Hub City, looking for some rich dude with his hands in most of the city's crime. I've been to millions of cities all over the Galaxy, but this joint is one of the nastiest fraggin' places I've been in Lobo thought to himself Now, let's go snatch this bastich and collect that reward.

edited 2nd Mar '14 2:00:53 PM by Eachiunn

Slade Wilson looked at himself in the mirror, taking a sigh before splashing some water from the sink of his face. Another night inside an old abandoned garage in inner Hub City. He had slept... if you could call it that... for three-four hours, having spent the entire last day training the only member of his group. The only member of the Titans.

He created the Titans with a purpose: to destroy the industry that leeched off the idea of a hero by creating 'superheroes' and 'supervillains', all so they could get more views or sell things based on these superheroes. Horrendous men and women who didn't care if they were ruining lives, as long as they were caught by the press punching some sad teenager who was robbing a liquor store to get money for his family. Slade went after those sad teenagers, offering them a place for them to train, to get vengeance on the society that had turned their back on them.

And then he watched them all get murdered by one man.

Slade wanted to kill him. The moment he trapped him, his first thought was to slash the man open or to draw his death out over days, so he could watch him suffer. But while he mulled over these thoughts, he saw something in the man. Another man, someone called Bucky. Someone who was lost... and filled to the brim with potential. Potential he could use, a person who could help him in his fight. Sure, a part of him, a small part of him, simply earned for a person to teach, the same small part of him that made him stay awake every night, dreaming about his boy Joseph, and his unborn girl Rose.

He saw something in Bucky, and he wasn't going to let that something go.

Slade walked from his office-bedroom in the garage to Bucky's room, what had once been the garage's storage room. Putting on his mask, he stepped in quietly, walking around the bedroll that was Bucky's bed. He had been under his tutelage for seven months, and the reason why he was sleeping in was because yesterday's training had been particularly taxing- if learning how to escape from being buried alive by actually being buried alive can be called that. He gave Bucky a few more minutes, before he leaned over him, rhythmically tapping his finger on his cheek for two minutes, before placing his hand under his hand and pulling his head up. "Rise and shine. Your dinner's ready, you need to eat."

Pete Lomax grinned to himself - which was quite odd considering he was inside of a dumpster. The dumpster sat inside a dingy alley that was next to a main road. A road that a certain limousine was now travelling. Pete readied his bow and smiled. He could see the hood of the car slowly pass into view. A few more seconds and Pete would have a reputation that none of those pansy costumed creeps could ever have. Two more seconds...

The front windshield passed into view and Lomax popped his head out of the dumpster, drew aim with his bow and arrow and let one fly towards the limo's front tire. He then quickly drew another arrow and was prepared to shoot his bounty next.

He'd show everybody.

"Alright, come on. No need to make this difficult. You really shouldn't be surprised since you live here."

Domino held up her pistol as she cocked it, signalling the man behind the counter to hurry up. This morning's mark was a little pawn shop sandwiched between an apartment complex and a bagel shop. It wasn't the ritziest place she's robbed, but judging from some of the things behind the counter, he saw some business. The cashier was busy grumbling and giving her the stink eye as he shoveled what cash the store had into a plastic bag.

The black and white woman rolled her eyes and his glare and snatched the bag from him as he handed it over, keeping her gun trained on him. "Thanks doll. I'll just get out of your hair now." She said mockingly as she backed up to the door. Once she made it to the doorway she shoved her gun into its holster and turned, breaking for the street. With a running leap, she landed on the seat of her bike. With a grin she started the ignition and tore her way down the road, cutting off some sedan.

Domino was sure that she wasn't in any danger of the cops coming after her at this point, probably too busy being paid off by someone to care about some small store. Now she had some spending money for her stay. With a smirk she drifted over and into the oncoming lanes. Horns blared and tires screeched as cars swerved to avoid her. Domino just smirked as time almost seemed to slow down for a bit as her heart raced. A gentle lean to the side every now and then made sure that she avoided death, but a voice in the back of her head told her to go faster and faster.

She had to stop herself from doing so though and swerved back over into the right lane. Cars pulled off towards their own destinations and slowly the roads became less and less crowded. At this point, it was just Domino and some polished black car on the road. Domino pulled over into the other lane and sped up to pass the black car, Bones' engine revving as she pulled past them.

Winter Soldier had a lot to say about his life these days.

Well, no, that wasn't true. He didn't have a lot to say about most things. He didn't have a lot to say, period. Only having a couple year's worth of experience at life in the body of a young man lended itself towards that. It was a lot easier to stay quiet and let someone else handle the talking, remain in the shadows where he was comfortable.

On some level, he was aware of the tapping on his face while he slept, but as usual, he did his best to ignore it. Not that he thought ignoring it would do any good, really. He knew it wouldn't. But it was practice in and of itself...maintaining the illusion of unconsciousness even to outward stimuli. Playing possum was a valuable skill, more so than a lot of people would expect. The more one could tolerate without flinching, the better.

One thing he'd learned though, was when Slade stopped pestering and actually told him to move, it was time to move. He opened his eyes as soon as his head was lifted, meeting the other's eyes, then nodding, stretching out and moving to sit up, reaching up with his hand to sort of pull the tangles out of his hair.

"Ow, ow, ow." That was the thing about having a mechanical arm. Sometimes there were difficulties in maintaining the proper degree of strength, or keeping the joints from pinching at inopportune times. He lowered it and brushed the pulled hair out of the joints on his fingers, making a face as he stood. "Thank you for the extra time today," he said, glancing up to Slade, before turning to follow him out of the room and out into the main area of their base. "What will we be doing today?"

The chauffeur of the black car glanced through the tinted side mirror at Domino. "There's a biker trying to overtake us, sir," he said to the man in the back. "Doing so very aggressively, might I add."

The man in the back spread himself across the seats, and swirled the small glass in his hand. "Just ignore it, Johnson." He took a shot of his drink. "Damned hooligans. Think they own the god damned stre-"

There was a bang, and the man was jostled about. The arrow burst through one of the tires, and the car swerved about in the road. "Hold on, Mister Patrickson!" cried the chauffeur. The black car arched along the street, coming up onto the curb side and crashing into a newspaper box.

edited 6th Feb '14 4:46:18 PM by LizardOfAus

Lomax grinned even wider - if it was possible. His plan was going perfectly. He leaped out of the dumpster, slackening his grip on his arrow a bit to get out but then quickly drew back the bowstring again, walking cautiously towards the car.

"Alright - time to get out of the car now." Pete said calmly as he advanced.

Silvermane had heard about the bounty on Patrickson's head. Not that he was really interested in it. Not like he ever needed money. Still, he thought, looking out from the one decent penthouse in this entire shithole of a city, whoever was going to try and pick up the tab could have been the one that tried to off him, too. With that in mind, he made his way to the penthouse elevator and took it down to the street. Silvermane didn't much care for walking out in public, mostly because there was some faulty wiring in the shoulders or the spine that made him do a ridiculous goddamn strut.◊ Not good for not attracting attention. That, and with the new strength of his robot body, the urge to strangle every asshole who nudged him or handed him a pamphlet about how God loves us or some horseshit was even harder to suppress than it had been before he had Superhuman strength.

As he cruised above the roads of Hub City, Lobo checked to see if he could pick up any signals in the area in the hopes that he'd have an easier time locating his target. After searching for a good five minutes, Lobo eventually found a radio station playing Motörhead and decided to stick to that and start blaring it out of the Spacehog's speaker system and screaming the lyrics as he he flew through the city. Eventually Lobo spotted what looked like a female Czarnian on a motorcycle chasing after some shiny car. Pulling up beside her. Lobo attempted conversation "Now, I'm pretty fraggin' sure I killed all of the people on Czarnia. How in th' the hell'd you get away?"

edited 6th Feb '14 9:52:29 PM by Eachiunn

Domino hadn't even been paying the black car much mind when it suddenly started to spin out. She swerved to the side and hit on the breaks as the car careened across the road and onto the sidewalk. She screeched to a halt and twisted her bike to the side, coming to a complete stop. "The hell?!" She exclaimed, looking to the accident. That was when a large man with skin like hers on a bike pulled up next to her and started talking to her about something. "Czar-what? What are you talking about?" She asked, obviously confused.

"Well, from a distance you kinda looked like a Czarnian 'cos of that pale complexion of yours and that mark on your eye. Czarnia was the planet I was born on and the home of the first of many species I've committed genocide upon. Seeing as you aren't a Czarnian, I suppose I'll let you live for now." Now noticing that the recently crashed car contained his target and that some punk was advancing upon it with a bow, Lobo decided to step in. "Hey you, with the bow! There's a lot of money on the bastich in the back's head and I plan to bring him back in one piece to the guy who sent me to this dump. You can try to stop me, but I wouldn't recommend it."

edited 6th Feb '14 6:14:19 PM by Eachiunn

"Chill out man. I'm in it for the same bounty. We can split the profits and everyone wins." Lomax said hurriedly, trying to defuse the situation, knowing that someone who looked as Lobo did could probably tear him apart if he got in the way. He might have a grudge against costumed heroes and villains but he was smart enough to know when he was outmatched.

Something flew through the skies towars the man with the bow, landing on his head before jumping off it, doing a flip in the air, and landing on the ground with expert grace. The Karate Kid turning around, glaring at the man with the bow as he adopted a fighting stance. "It's not too late for you to give up this life of crime." He said calmly, ignoring the two weirdos not far away from them. "But if you reject the path of justice that I am offering you... I will have no other choice but to teach you about the error of your ways." He clenched his fists, awaiting for the man's answer.

He wanted to give these lowlifes, these people robbing for food or to help their families a chance to give up and get out of a life of crime. It was a win-win. Either he saved someone... or he got to beat someone up.

Watching the scene around the crashed car, a short, bald old man sat on a bench, absentmindedly throwing seeds from a bag to nearby pigeons. He did not seem perturbed by the situation, rather he had the air of one witnessing some mildly interesting street theater.

Doctor Sivana had heard of the man in the car, but wasn't particularly interested in the reward to be gained from killing him. His vacation was going badly enough as it was. While Hub City had a refreshing lack of self-righteous idiots running around in tights, he had only been there for three days and already six people had attempted to mug him. Him, of all people. The lack of regard was disheartening, to say the least. The youth of today had no regard for the past...

edited 6th Feb '14 7:34:55 PM by Vox

This was the weirdest goddamn shit Silvermane had seen since leaving New York. A mime on a motorcycle, a mime on a flying motorcycle, some Jackie Chan lookalike and...was that moron really using a BOW AND ARROW? In the 21st Century?

"Goddamn it," Silvermane muttered to himself as he watched the spectacle of bullshit, "I left New York to get away from all this."

Lomax looked at both Karate Kid and Lobo. The Kid was clearly one of those damned costumed vigilante and Lobo was clearly another bounty hunter. If he played his cards right, he might be able to take out both of them and get away with his prize.

"Listen, we share the same enemy. At least for now." Lomax told Lobo, referring to Karate Kid. "Help me take out this guy and then we'll discuss business afterwards." Lomax said, switching aim from the limo to Karate Kid.

"What a nice town, by god what a nice view" Said Bugg to himself as he sat at his console in the dingy basement below his small flat. The console being the machine his helmet was connected to, the one that managed his spy cameras, the ones he placed and the ones he hacked. Currently zoomed in the debacle on the streets and a couple dozen cameras on several housewives of Hub City. The mark on Patrickson interested him. Well, enough for him to deploy a trio of assassin gun drones, hidden on the surrounding area just in case he could get the kill. He needed the rep and money his funds from the Network days were running dry, and if either his drones or suit got damaged, we would be left with nothing. Yet for now he'd just wait, inch along the drones to vantage points, and, as always, watch.

"A hero..." A woman watched from the roof as she followed the limousine, jumping from roof to roof. She didn't care about the ruffians in this town. No one messed with her in this town, because she was a powerful mutant able to bend the earth to her will. But she was looking for something and had a feeling that following this limousine would help her find it. She knew that after teams of superheroes appeared in New York and Jump City, a team of Justice Avengers would appear here. But for now it seems like there is just the one hero... The rest looked like typical assassins and riff-raff, so she just watched and waited, seeing what will happen to the hero.

edited 7th Feb '14 9:54:32 PM by GameGuruGG

Patrickson had currently curled himself up into a ball in the back seat. "Jones!" He cried, "What the hell is going on out there?!"

The chauffeur checked his rear view mirror. "I think I see the attacker, sir, and I see someone else with him. They appear to be having a standoff with a superhero."

"A superhero?! Don't be an idiot, Jones. 's probably some other doped up mutie trash squabbling over territory. We let them fight it out 'til there's nobody left."

Elsewhere in the city, in a quieter part of town, a lightly rusted police car was parked in front of a liquor store. Two men leaned against it, one a young man with ginger hair, another with a bit of a beer belly to him, both wearing unbuttoned and untucked police uniforms.

"So there I was," said the older man, "Sittin' on the bed in nothing but my best, waiting for this dumb bitch to finish 'prepping up', right?"

"'mother woman taking years t' get ready."

"Sure, yeah. But anyway, after about thirteen minutes, I'm about ready to give up on this thing, when I hears a creak on the landing. I wait a little longer, the door swings open... She's leaning on the door frame, one stocking on, corset hanging open, blood streaming out her nose and eyes in two directions!"

The two burst out laughing. "She didn't!" cried the younger one.

"She fucking did! She'd gone to get a good snort before she got started, then found my little pouch of special brew and thought 'Hey, that'll do it!'"

The two continued to laugh for about another twenty seconds. The younger man slowly regained his composure. "So...s...so then what?"

"Well, she takes a couple of steps, 'fore tumbling face first into the carpet. She's lying there, strung out of her tiny mind, and I'm thinking to myself I didn't want fifteen dollars gone to waste."

In a penthouse somewhere in Hub City, a teenage boy watched the ongoing events on a huge TV screen, fed images from security systems he'd hacked into all around town.

He munched on pop corn with his feet on the coffee table, as if he were watching a movie and not a life-or-death struggle.

His mind, however, was far more active than it appeared. He knew bout the bounty, and he knew it would attract metahumans. It was the perfect way to size up what the possible opposition on the area would be.

He was surprised to see the Lobo alien still on Earth. He was very powerful, better plan some way of taking him down.

Domino was no surprise, however, his underworld sources had already told him she was in town. He was not too worried over her, except that her powers were not exactly clear on the records he had accessed.

The bowman was new, though. Better watch him closely.

A shape spun out of the darkness to plant itself in the asphalt a scant distance from the police car. It flared to life, a burning, brilliant profile of a medieval sword inexplicably dancing with flame without smoke or fuel. Its infernal blessing unfurled to either side as a ring of chest-high fire spread from the focal point of the sword to encompass and surround the police car and the policemen, just close enough for the heat to batter at their backs in lapping waves.

A shadow bounded off of the roof of the liquor store. A dull thump from the roof of the police car signaled the arrival of a dark but unmistakably human shape, spastically illuminated by the flickering light. It stood to full height as a passing ember highlighted the opaque pools of the man’s sunglasses and his scimitar smirk.

“This city came to harm long before Harm came to this city.” The shape droned with the throbbing edge of a hive of wasps. “Whatever happens next, the its need to remember that.”

Lobo considered the guy with the bow's words carefully, he was right about having a potential enemy in the ninja lookin' bastich. But then again, he didn't have any reason to trust the dude with the bow either. Gesturing to Karate Kid Lobo said "I don't have any reason to fight this bastich yet, so you can do what you want with him." Then his mark decided he was gonna be a smartass "Patrickson, shut your fragging mouth! I can take yer head back if you want, the guy who hired me didn't say if he wanted you alive or not."

Suddenly, a woman sat down on the park bench where Doctor Sivana was contemplating, placing her leather briefcase on her lap. She was clad in a fashionable low cut dress, and had near-white blond hair and massive gold earrings. One could say she was attractive.

At least until they got close enough. Though she looked clean enough, the woman reeked of rotting pork and the usual odor one would get from never showering. Nonetheless, she carried on like everything was normal.

"The man in that car a moment ago? Someone put a hit on him. Now every short-sighted moron from here to Keystone is gunning for him, tryin' to get their fifteen minutes I bet. It'll die down soon."