[IC] Maximum Comics – Insurrection \ CLOSED

[HenryJonesJr]

Joey “Squeaks” Ramirez had been selling drugs in Brooklyn for a long time. He was good at it. There wasn’t much he was good at, but he knew he was damn good at pushing product. It kept him fed, it kept him in a comfortable house, and it kept the girls coming to his place happy. That’s all Joey really wanted in life. It was simple, but it was exciting. He had no love for the law. He liked breaking the rules. It was what he did.

Unfortunately for Joey, being good meant people knew who you were. It meant that if someone asked who pushed product for the Kingpin in the area, his name would be one of the first to come up in conversation. Which meant Squeaks was also a target.

On that night he had already been visited by several of his normal customers before ducking into an alleyway to toke up a bit himself. He strolled confidently into the shadows, and pulled a lighter from his pocket. As he put the joint in his mouth and sparked the lighter, a fist emerge through the small amount of light and struck him in the throat. Ramirez tried to scream, but the strike had stripepd his ability to do so. He tried to stumble away, but was pulled back into the darkness by his hood.

“Where is Old Hob!” his attacker snarled.

“I-I dunno man!” the drug dealer stammered in fear as he regained his ability to speak. Before he could yell, his attacker placed what he thought was a knife on his neck, keeping him from calling out. “I dunno. Please don’t hurt me.”

“I won’t hurt you if you stop lying to me,” the attacker growled. “You know where Hob is. He provides you with your product. Where is he?”

“Hehe,” a laugh came from the darkness. “Raph is doing his Batman voice.”

“Mikey, how could Raph even begin to guess what Batman sounds like?” a third voice asked.

"I mean it's probably not too hard to guess," the other retorted. "Grrr! I'm Batman!"

“Would you two shut up!” a fourth chastised the two newer voices.

“H-how many of you guys are there?” Squeaks asked.

“Ugh,” the fourth voice sighed. “Show him, Raph.”

Squeaks was spun around. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he found himself staring at four, giant, mutated Turtles. They must have been mutants, just like Hob. But they were outfitted with what looked like ninja weapons.

“Oh shit,” he muttered. “Listen, guys. He’ll kill me if he finds out I told you.”

“He won’t find out,” the turtle who seemed to be the leader responded. “We’ll make sure of that.”

“Plus, dude,” the one called “Mikey” added, “you really don’t have much of a choice. Let’s be real, right?”

“You are in a predicament,” the last one, clad in purple agreed.

“Fine, fine man,” Squeaks relented. “You know the old Oscorp warehouse? The one they don’t use no more in Brooklyn? Hob’s hid up there. Got his drugs, his weapons, his boys. All of it.”

“Thanks, kid,” Raph said as he knocked him out. “Guess we know where we’re going.”

“April,” Leonardo said into the comm, “did you get that?”

“Yea, Leo,” their ally responded. “I’m getting to work with Donnie’s program.”

“Good. Casey, you’re extraction,” the leader continued.

“What!? No! I want to fight!” the vigilante protested.

Leo knew how he felt. The Purple Dragons were like a surrogate family for Casey. They had always been there for him as he grew up in a rocky home, and seeing them decimated as they were tonight, he wanted revenge. But Leo knew what kind of trouble those strong emotions could do on a battlefield, not to mention the guns that Hob had.

“Casey, with that firepower I’m not taking the chance of getting you killed,” Leo insisted. “Be ready with the van. We’ll need a quick exit.”

“Yea, whatever,” Casey grumbled back.

Leonardo honestly hated that he had to keep Casey away while they went to save his cousin. But Leo wasn’t about to get his friend killed. Being the leader meant people weren’t always going to like your decision. Leo had gotten enough practice with that dealing with Raph all these years. Casey would get over it in time, and hopefully he would understand the decision in the end.

But Leo honestly couldn’t worry about that now. He and his brothers were about to enter a hornet’s nest, and the stingers in this one would be deadly.

[Trexasle]

“Da Fuck is goin on?” His vernacular had changed since he ran out of the house, from the proper talking that he was told to do around his dad, to the Ebonics heavy accent he had now. Virgil’s eyes locked to his hand, Purple cracks of light seemed to be bouncing out of his hand, in shock he attempted to shake it off, whist still walking down the street. It proved to be ineffective, people staring at the dreadheaded kid as if he was having some sort of seizure. Of Course Virgil noticed this and proceeded to try and run off, he certainly wasn’t looking for attention like this, He proceeded to run into a nearby alleyway. Still trying to fight the electricity that proceeded to spread across his entire body now, It was almost like fighting an invisible enemy As if it was just as equally ineffective to try it in secret as it was out in the open. He found himself bumping into a trashcan, the lid of the can stayed floating in the air, the same purplish electric aura surround it as it did the covers from earlier.

He stared and looked at his hand, then focused back on the trashcan? ‘Can I?’ His hand moved up toward the air, the trashcan lid following suit. Magnetism, was that what this was? He continued to slowly trail his hand in the air, the lid following the trail. His eyes lit up in wonder at the sight, He then looked at the other hand and lookd closely at the trash compactor nearby? Could he possibly lift that as well? He decided to give it a shot, the purple electrical aura surrounded the trashcan, He hand lifting in the air, It seemed to slowly lift off the ground, but he struggled to keep it up there, his arm felt like it could give out at any moment . he quickly dropped it, instantly finding out what his limits were. With a lost breath he sat himself down on the trash lid, which was still up in the air…It took him a second for him to realize this, However when he did, his blood begin to stir, a smile stretched across his face.

Later…

New York perception of a huge city, mostly comes from tourist. While Staten Island was not a major tourist attraction it still Home to many landmarks, Specifically The St George Theater and the FDR Boardwalk, Where kids seemed to be playing around. They all seemed to be having fun, playing with a ball on the pier, whist their parents haphazardly watched and took pictures of them, so in short it were having a semi good time. So was Virgil, who was now zooming across the boardwalk at nearly light speed. The Trash Lid he sat on earlier now being used as a sort of levitation device. One could hear his screams of enjoyment from the rush of flight. He narrowly avoided hitting the kids as he flew past them, leaving them all standing there in awe in what they had just witnessed, While Virgil himself flew back into the skies.

“This is the best Idea I ever came up with!” He yelled. He looked down at the people below him, the rush of the height getting to him. Everything seemed so small down there, almost like he was Superman looking down at the people below…It was…partially relaxing, but scary how many people seemed to be in this city. He completely lost himself In the sight below that he didn’t look at the sight in front. You see, When you don’t watch the road you tend to forget that you’re flying back into the city, in this case, Virgil’s face was now on a crash collision with a nearby window, which due to his lack of attention he crashed into, glass shattering instantly and him flying into the room of what was a white male, said male now backed up to a nearby wall, wondering why his bully from school, the guy who he had patched up yesterday after being threatened by him, managed to crash through his window.

“VIRGIL!?”

[AndyC]

Metropolis.

It's referred to by many as the "City of Tomorrow," but very few people really grasp the full meaning of that. It's very easy to look at the burgeoning future-tech companies like LexCorp, STAR Labs, SteelWorks, and dozens of smaller companies in the Hypersector district, and see dazzling displays of exotic technology, flying cars, mechanized armor suits, experimental propulsion systems, and all manner of other gizmos that will become commonplace for humanity over the coming decades. What few people appreciate are the immense leaps that have already happened.

First and foremost, Metropolis is far and away the most automated city anywhere in the world. Self-driving cabs, trucks, buses, and trains have revolutionized the transportation industry, allowing for more efficient and reliable ways to get around the city and all but eliminating the infamous urban gridlock. Teams of LexCorp construction robots working 24/7 shifts can build (and, given the action that frequently happens in this city rebuild) in days what would take months for human crews to accomplish. Robotic surgeons perform procedures with a level of precision and accuracy that would be impossible for a human doctor....at least not without expensive cybernetic augmentations. Mass-produced all-purpose 'bots can serve as anything from mail clerks to bartenders, and outrageously expensive human-analogue androids often serve as personal assistants, receptionists, bodyguards, and even sex partners for very rich and powerful of the city's elite.

Automation doesn't stop with physical machines, though-- 'bot intelligence programs have quickly taken hold in the white collar sector as well. Paralegal 'bots can search through massive amounts of legal data and find in seconds, medical 'bot intelligences can diagnose and treat illnesses with fantastic accuracy, counselor programs can guide people into successful and happy lives tailored to their own specific needs--a major necessity, considering how many people had found themselves out of work when their old jobs were automated.

Even at the very top, it's not uncommon to see CEOs and city politicians at the very least have some form of 'bot intelligence in an advisory role. In fact, there are at least fourteen different start-up companies in the last year whose businesses have soared after replacing their executives with high-functioning AI. And LexCorp, of course, has only one actual human being in its administrative staff-- every project head and team leader beneath Luthor himself is an AI he specifically programmed for the task.

It's easy to take a passing glance at Metropolis and assume that it's making massive leaps into the future because of people like, well, myself and Kara being there. Honestly, though, it's the other way around-- I came to Metropolis because if I wanted the nature of being 'Superman' to have any meaning on the world's future, there was really no better place to be.

That's not to say the proliferation of all this new technology and its impact on city living is all ideal; for starters, there's the very real and unavoidable fact that the man who designs and sells an overwhelming majority of the increasingly necessary hardware to keep the City of Tomorrow running is a megalomaniac psychopath who has tried to kill me--as well as several billion of his fellow humans-- on several occasions. There's the issue of countless people in multiple fields who are finding themselves unemployed as their jobs become irrelevant, replaced by 'bots or AI, and who are now starting to crowd areas like Hob's Bay. For every well-adjusted person who's been able to adapt and thrive in the 'post-metahuman' climate, there's another who's come down with a crippling case of 'future shock' and has to be talked down from stepping in front of a train or shooting up their former workplace. And the increasing gray areas of what constitutes 'humanity' as robots and AI grow increasingly sophisticated and lifelike, as cybernetic augmentations can alter a person far beyond their normal capabilities, and as people from other planets like myself, Kara, J'onn, the young heroine Starfire, and others migrate to Earth. Which is another reason I chose to set up shop in the Big Apricot-- 'Tomorrow' isn't always easy or pleasant, but we all should face the challenges of Tomorrow together.

There is, of course, one other very significant reason I came to Metropolis: The Daily Planet. Sometimes referred to as 'the last true free press in America,' the Planet is every bit an institution in Metropolis as watching the Monarchs on Opening Day or midnight screenings of the Giant Turtle-Man films in New Bohemia. While the printed word is dying out, the Planet was the first of the major papers to transition to online journalism, and is still far more reputable and respected than sensationalist papers like the Daily Bugle in New York, or any number of biased bloggers promoting their personal agenda. Despite attempted takeovers by Morgan Edge's massive Galaxy multimedia conglomerate (a subsidiary of LexCorp), Perry White and the rest of us in the bullpen have managed to keep the Planet free of influence from government censorship or corporate interest, thanks to support from a dedicated readership which counts for about one in every five citizens in Metropolis.....as well as renting out most of the old office space in the building to small businesses. We may not have worldwide reach or limitless funding, but we've got enough integrity, respect, and outright talent to keep the paper profitable, if just barely.

"Kent! My office, now!"

I look up with a start from my desk, halfway through the re-write of my piece on the Metropolis Museum of Art's exhibition on 'D-5 Myx,' a new post-postmodern form of expressionism inspired by my annoying tormentor from the Fifth Dimension. Perry's just spent the last half hour sparring with Lois over her article connecting the US Army's experimental "Ghost Soldier" project with banned Phantom Zone technology outlawed by the UN in the aftermath of General Zod's war, so he's probably about to blow off some steam by taking me to the woodshed over something I did.

Sheepishly adjusting my glasses, I get up and make the long Walk of Shame across the newsroom. From the sports desk, Steve Lombard chuckles.

"Dead man walking, folks, we've got a dead man walking!"

"Oh, leave him alone," Cat Grant chides him. "Kent's already got enough to worry about, being bumped back to Human Interest, he hasn't even noticed to do anything about that awful cow-lick in his hair!"

Self-consciously, I try to slick my hair back into shape-- it tends to blow around and get messy any time I go over Mach 5, so it's probably been like that for most of the morning.

"Clark, buddy," Jimmy pats me on the shoulder as he catches up with me, "word around the rumor mill is that you've just popped your proverbial cherry. Lunch is on me to celebrate."

"Ermm, thanks, but....I mean, what's that--"

Perry doesn't raise his voice, but even if I didn't have super-senses, I could feel the man's impatient glare.

"Coming, Mister White!" I say, hurrying the rest of the way to the office before closing the door behind me. "You, erm, you wanted to speak to me?"

Perry doesn't speak, but closes his eyes and gives a condescending nod. "Have a seat, Kent."

I sit down, slouching a bit in my chair so that even seated, Perry towers above me.

"I wanted to take a moment to congratulate you, Clark," he starts. "You've finally managed a milestone in your career here. Normally it takes maybe a month or so for a Planet journalist to make it, but you've managed, what, nine years here? That's a record in and of itself, but you've finally gotten on the board. So again, congratulations, Clark. On your first lawsuit."

"Wait, my...my first what?"

"That piece you filed two months ago about the Excalibur accident."

"........ah."

The Excalibur was an experimental spacecraft built by the Thunder Corporation, an aerospace company founded by former Future Foundation employees. The spacecraft itself boasted experimental propulsion technology that could theoretically warp it across the solar system instantaneously, and had an AI interface nearly identical to that of the Army's "Metal Zero" suit before that program was mercifully canceled.

The official story was that the Excalibur was meant purely as an exploratory vessel for NASA. My own findings, however, showed that most of the hardware aboard the craft was meant for military use, and it was incredibly likely that it was in fact a prototype for SHIELD's staunchly anti-extraterrestrial SWORD division. All this, tragically, was made moot when the Excalibur and her crew pilot Hank Henshaw lost in a hurried test flight.

"I, erm.....I realize that it may have been too soon after the tragedy to report that story," I begin, "but the public deserved to know that the military is still fueling anti-ET paranoia, and that it cost a man his life!"

"You don't think I know that, Kent?!" Perry roars, then takes a deep breath. "I grew up in Hob's Bay in the 70s, when the race riots were still at their worst. This was back before mutants and ETs and robots were the feared minority of the time: all you had to do to be feared and mistrusted was have darker skin than your neighbors. So I took that to heart, and I took it personally. Any time I saw someone from my neighborhood being pushed around or kicked while they were down, whether it was from the landlord or the cops or a shop owner who gave you dirty looks, I'd come down on them like the Wrath of God. I'd rake up any piece of dirt I could on people I thought were oppressors and fear-mongers, and I'd expose them to the world all for anyone who picked up a copy of the Planet to see. And do you know what happened?"

".....what?"

"I got my ass fired, Kent," he says flatly. "I stopped checking my sources. I discarded facts in favor of a narrative. I made the story about drawing conclusions, writing what I was feeling, and not about what I could actually prove. I ruined the reputations of people who didn't deserve it, and because I cried wolf on the wrong people, bad people got away with doing bad things because people wouldn't believe my stories anymore. It cost me my reputation, my respect, and for a while, my job. It took years for George Taylor to give me another chance to prove myself and work my way up the chain. Which brings me to why you're working Human Interest now, and why the Thunder Corporation is slapping us with a suit...."

He pulls up last month's edition with the Excalibur story on it.

"This piece is the kind of fearless, fiery exposé I hadn't seen from you in ages," he says, "the kind of stuff you wrote when you were a freelancer, and why I wanted to hire you on. But it's full of 'seems like,' and 'sounds like,' and 'you can probably guess.' To be honest, I believe the story.....but it's not about what you believe or what you feel, Kent. It's about what you can prove. I can't imagine Big Blue out there is too happy that Uncle Sam is still working on 'anti-alien' hardware...."

He's right-- no matter how many times myself, Kara, J'onn, and others act on mankind's behalf, we're always the subject of suspicion, like we're always just about to sound the horn and call in an invading fleet of bug-eyed monsters. I happen to take that sort of thing personally.

".....but there's something he said way back when Lois first interviewed him that I think you ought to keep in mind. 'I'm here to fight for Truth and Justice,' he said. Justice is great, it's essential......but keep in mind, Kent. 'Truth' has to come before 'Justice,' not after. Understood?"

".....yes, sir. I, erm....I just wanted to--"

**BOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!**

The sound of an explosion punches my eardrums, though it's barely a dull thump to everyone else. Sure enough, though, the pillar of black smoke rising from between the gleaming towers of the Hypersector draws everyone else's attention.

"Great Caesar's Ghost...." Perry mutters to himself as he looks out his window. "Kent, if you wanna redeem yourself, grab Olsen before Lane does and get to--.........Kent?"

Before Perry can even glance in my direction, I'm already gone, changing in an elevator shaft before speeding up to the roof of the building and out into the open air, speeding towards the source of the explosion.

Schott Robotics, a small but extremely profitable LexCorp offshoot, focused primarily on high-end personal assistant androids. Its clientele includes some of the wealthiest and most influential people in the world, paying millions for Schott's models, which far outclass even the leading models in terms of human-like qualities. Far from the utility of menial labor robots, Schott androids are often seen as 'toys' for the super-rich.

And its main office is in the middle of being bombed.

Clark Kent can worry about the quality of his articles later. Right now, there are still people in danger......



.....and that makes it a job for Superman.

[Dblade26]

” Are you still up for this Danny? That stab wound looked pretty bad.”

Colleen’s remark only served to bring up the twinge in my abdomen and remind me of the fact that we were about to take on a potential horde of mystically and chemically enhanced child assassins along with gods-knew-what else and on top of that my qi still hadn’t healed my injury from earlier tonight. That said if I had to face down this sort of situation, Colleen Wing is definitely one of the people I’d pick to watch my back. She was one of the first friends I made outside of K’un-Lun, plus her brilliant archaeologist of a father having theorized about the Heavenly City years ago and her own detective skills are the only reason I’m not dead or in prison now. Seeing her perched on the rooftop next to me with a daisho on her hips and a tekkan in-hand, I almost feel like we aren’t about to walk into our deaths.

“He’ll be fine Colleen, I patched him up myself… even if he did bleed all over my new couch.”

The addition of Misty Knight did even more to make death feel less likely, even if ordinarily her presence would drive me to distraction. She was a good shot with the gun at her hip even if it was loaded with low-velocity taser bullets, an even better fighter who could go more than a few rounds with me, and if it came down to it having a super-strong cyborg arm built by Tony Stark probably didn’t hurt either. Especially considering the first time we met, she used it to knock me out cold. I fell for her then in more sense than one, even if sometimes I think I’m one second away from earning another robotic sucker punch. Still, with the two of them by my side I feel like I could take down a hundred super-powered killers. That’s a good thing, because we might just have to.

The previous knife-wielding teenager’s faintly glowing blue-eyes and unusual abilities were unmistakably the symptoms of an Asura Dust user. The powdered drug not only artificially fuels a person’s inner qi to unnatural levels but heightens their ability to sense the flows of qi around them, to the point that even someone without the years of disciplined training it had taken me to open my senses could read the intent of hardened warriors. I knew that sometimes Lei-Kung used it in small doses to awaken the senses of initiates and healers sometimes used it to boost the body’s natural healing abilities, and even I’d heard delinquents occasionally used it as a quick and dirty path to power.

But the appearance of Asura Dust in New York unnerved me more than I was willing to admit, even to Colleen and Misty. It was a highly regulated substance in K’un-Lun, and as far as I knew, it should have been completely impossible for it to wind up in earthly hands. Worse yet, I’d always been cautioned that Asura Dust left its users open to manipulation and prolonged exposure to the oversensitivity it caused could drive strong minds to madness...

…and someone was deliberately giving it to kids for their own dark rituals.

Once I’d explained the situation it hadn’t taken long to get Colleen and Misty onboard, and with the feeling of so many people all gathered in one place giving off the telltale tainted qi of Asura Dust, it wasn’t hard to track the source to an abandoned storage warehouse, formerly owned by Rand-Meachum Inc, of all things. So here we were, on a rooftop overlooking a dilapidated building full of drugged-up, brainwashed kung-fu teenagers probably looking to kill us.

“Provided we don’t die tonight and it really makes you feel better, I’ll buy you a new couch and-“

“You wouldn’t have to if that macho bullshit between you and Jean’s boyfriend hadn’t wrecked my last apartment! Did you know that girl still won’t talk to-“

“Oh! So it’s suddenly my fault that I thought he was there to abduct you when-“

“MISTY! DANNY! Can we PLEASE focus on how we’re going to infiltrate the abandoned warehouse full of homicidal teenage cultists?!”

It takes a moment for me to school my embarrassment and to force the blush away from underneath my mask at Colleen’s rebuke, but then with newfound clarity of mind I focus everything I feel, everything I am, all that makes me Daniel Rand-Kai into my right fist. Then, I reach still deeper inside myself to grasp at a place both intimate and unknowable, to draw upon the Heart of the Dragon and the burning Qi of Shou-Lao. As I point at the warehouse below, I don’t even need to look to know that my hand is burning like a thing of molten iron.

“Personally, I thought we’d just…knock.”

---

BOOM

Ordinarily I’d take a certain amount of satisfaction in the way a portion of the wall simply disintegrates under my punch, but already there’s a pack of softly glowing blue eyes staring at the three of us from the darkness within and the gleam of drawn knives in the night signal that the battle’s begun. I lash straight out with a barely-pulled elephant kick at the first to attack me though he can’t be older than fourteen, but he slips around my strike like wind through a forest and it takes all my speed to evade his counter-cut. Out of the corners of my vision, I can just make out Colleen having equal trouble disabling her near-clairvoyant assailants though an occasional bang-zap-thump indicates Misty is having no problem utilizing the stun-bullets to good effect, at least in the cases where they manage to hit.

Their technique is rough and formless but that hardly matters when they outnumber us more than tenfold, possess speed and strength no untrained kids should have and know our moves as soon as we make them. I find myself having to draw on reserves of qi to just out speed their battle-precognition, but I know that just like Misty’s taser bullets, it won’t last. Colleen’s working on a level of skill and grace I’ve rarely observed in anyone, the blunted false-sword a whirling blur keeping the brainwashed hordes at bay and occasionally even striking a successful disabling blow. But we were fighting to defend and disable and they were fighting to kill. It was inevitable that we were going to get cut.

Then it gets worse.

As soon as blood starts to flow still more children and teens with the same knives and glowing blue eyes pour against us, and all of them begin chanting in unison, first at a whisper but building into a howling scream:

"Blood for the Master! Blood for the Master!"

Now I’m, certain we’ll be overwhelmed. I draw on the fiery Qi of Shou-Lao, knowing if I have to I can extend the Iron Fist to blow them all away…

…but I can’t bear to strike. Not at innocents caught up in someone else’s sick scheme, so many of them the same age as my students at the Thunder Dojo. But how can we beat them when their enhanced sensitivity lets them read us so effortlessly…

Then it hits me. Immediately I pour all that I think, all that I feel, all that I am into my fist as I did before, but this time rather than channel the Qi of Shou-Lao into punch of force I release it in a broad, gentle wave that washes across the warehouse. With it I send every feeling and memory of calm, safety, love, gentleness that I’ve ever experienced.

For just an instant, I feel my heart and mind linked with dozens of others through the flow of qi. Then one by one, their eyes clear of the glow, and they each begin to slump into what seems like a soft sleep.

Like this, it becomes painfully clear that these kids are runaways or maybe homeless, a few of them probably no older than twelve or thirteen, almost all of them grimy and starvation-thin, and just as I wonder what kind of monster would possibly do this an answer literally steps out from the shadows.

“That was quite an impressive display, Fist. My Master was unsure of your survival, but I see you were able to negotiate things without a single life lost. Well done!”

Before I can say a thing Misty empties the rest of her ammunition at the figure, but the blinding flash of an energy blade vaporizes the stun-bullets in mid-flight with only a look of annoyance from the man, and just like that, I recognize him. A fanatic I hadn’t crossed paths since last year…

“Scimitar! I thought you a man of honor, not some putrid drug-peddler and slaver of children!”

“Bah! Honor comes from serving one’s cause and master, and the two of us were younger still when we were trained to serve our causes.

“If that’s the kind of master you serve then I’ll destroy you both!”

My fist burns with rage and all three of us move to attack him, but the flash of his blades is blinding and when my eyes clear again, he’s gone.

<<you motherless pile of dogshit!>> Even without the Iron Fist, my punch cracks the wall, but the only response I get is echoing laughter and then: << “Master Khan shall rise, Young Dragon!”>>

I’m shaking, numbed by rage and a vague sense of dread at a name used to haunt my childhood, but then Misty is there steadying me and somewhere far off Colleen is saying

“Don’t worry Danny. We won. These kids are safe, and we stopped whatever they’re planning.”

So why does every instinct I have tell me this is just beginning?

[HenryJonesJr]

Old Oscorp Warehouse
Brooklyn

"April, we're in position," Leo said as the Turtles overlooked the warehouse from across the street. Leo counted five of Hob's men on the roof. He turned to Donatello, "I guess we're going to find out if your program works Donnie.'

Donatello rubbed his neck while he fiddled around with the smartphone he had fashioned into his technology hub, "Yea, well, just remember, it may or may not cause the entire power grid to, well, explode. Hacking into it is probably the craziest thing I've ever done."

"Oh, great," Raph said, "that's the beginning to a wild Saturday night."

"Sorry you don't understand what a feat that is, Raphael," Donnie sighed.

"Yea, bro," Mikey popped in. "It's like the hardest, most boring video game I've ever seen."

"Can we focus, please?" April said over the comms.

"Right, sorry," Donnie apologize as he continued, "just configuring the GPS with the program. April, it should say it's ready."

"Yup. It says we're ready to go," she confirmed. "Should I initiate?"

"Go for it," Leonardo gave the order.

"And maybe have the fire department ready," Donnie added sheepishly.

April didn't responded from the lair while she initiated the program. Donnie had been working on it for months since they had emerged for the first time. Master Splinter had always told them "strike hard and fade into the night", but when they saw how bright the city was at all times, Leo realized they needed a contingency plan for times like this. If there was no night, they'd make their own. The program, codenamed Lightswitch by the brothers, was meant to make a portion of the city dark for as long as the Turtles needed it.

Suddenly, a wave of darkness wiped over the neighborhood they were currently in. The four brothers turned sheepishly to the rest of the city before breathing a sigh of relief as they saw the rest of the metropolis still had power.

As the men on the warehouse roof began to yell in panic, Leonardo said to his brothers, "Strike hard."

"And fade into the night," they responded in unison.

**********

As darkness closed around Old Hob, he knew the Turtles had come. Still, even he didn't expect them to knock out part of the power gird to get to him. He said to Angel over his shoulder, "Your reptile friends care enough about you for all this? Or maybe they're just that scared of me."

Angel spit blood at Hob's feet from the chair she was tied to, "Their gonna kick your ass, Hob. You still don't get it do you?"

"I get that I have the most powerful man in the city funding me and my men," the mutated alley cat smiled from underneath a hood. "I understand they don't have a chance against the fire-"

Gunfire from the floor below interrupted Hob who went right for his radio, "What happened!?"

"Dunno boss!" one of his men responded in a panic. "Some windows shattered, but no Turtles. Must have been a -mhmf!"

The man's voice is muffled as Hob can hear him struggle against a choke hold. The turtles were there, and it's clear his men weren't ready for them.

**********

They came through the sewers, but not before leaving Donnie outside to set a series of small charges on the warehouse windows. Leo knew Hob expected them to work top down. It's what they had done in most of their strikes since coming out of the sewers, so he wanted to switch it up to keep their enemies off balance.

Once the windows blew and the turtles heard the men above panic, they pushed through the grates that ran along the middle of the warehouse for drainage. Donnie had set the charges perfectly, and each group was distracted by a broken window with no intruder. The brothers moved as shadows towards the first ring of armed men that guarded the main floor. Around them Leo could see couches, beds, and crates of what he assumed were weapons. Hob's men were not only based here, it seemed like it was more of an army barracks. Kingpin clearly was preparing for a war.

When they reached their first targets, they threw them into specialized choke holds that Splinter had taught them. It incapacitated the target quickly and quietly, leaving them out from anywhere from twenty minutes to an hour. Once they were dropped, they moved to the next group, and then the next. Unfortunately, that one had already gotten on the radio to Hob, but Leo had to take him out anyway.

But that also tipped off Hob to what was going on.

"They didn't come through the windows you idiots!" his voice erupted over the radios. "They're behind you!"

In a flash Leonardo and his brothers drew their weapons. Their eyesight was still better attuned to the darkness than the thugs in Hob's gang, but those thugs still had highpowered rifles. If they managed to line up a shot it'd be the end of the turtles. Luckily they had taken out most of the men on this level, but more would come of course.

Leo sliced through a rifle that swung towards him. He could feel his brothers moving in unison with him. Out of the corner of his eye, he spied Donatello joining the fray through one of the windows. Their enemies, realizing that they'd just as soon shoot one of their number, they threw down their weapons and switched to hand-t0-hand combat.

That was a big mistake.

The four brothers, now free to go on the offensive, dropped into the training that they had spent their entire life perfecting. Donatello kicked off an opponent who stumbled back into Mikey. Mike threw his opponent over his head and into three other men, pancaking them. Leo saw an enemy approaching Raphael from behind and he called out, "Raph! Shellwich!"

Without waiting for the conformation from his brother, Leo vaulted himself backwards towards him. Raph readied himself, and the two crunched their enemy between their shells. Two other men rushed Leo with knives. He caught each with the guards on his swords, disarmed his opponents, and then delivered a roundhouse kick across both their jaws.

As the men dropped, Leo realized they had taken care of the first level, "Okay, we need to move quick and find Angel and get out of-"

He was cut off as a flaming arrows flew through the broken windows.

"Uhhhh...are those ours?" Mikey's eyes opened wide.

"Yes, Mike," Raph readied his weapons. "don't you remember setting up automatic firebows?"

"Raph and Mikey," Leo commanded. "Go find Angel. Donnie and I will deal with..."

From the windows poured in cloaked and armed ninjas. The Turtles' arch enemies had found them again, though Leo had no idea how.

"The Foot Clan."