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Absolute Comics - Season Two: The Monster Within

Marvelous... uh, I have no idea what day it is.

So just shut up and take this Billy post.

Absolute Comics - Season Two: The Monster Within

W A S H I N G T O N , D. C.

---

^{April 4th, 1952}

This is Douglas Edwards reporting.

Senator Joseph McCarthy today called to order a hearing of the House Un-American Activities Committee in order to question alleged un-American activities of one William Batson. Batson, appearing as a young child, a decorated veteran of the War in Europe, more popularly known as Captain Marvel.

Batson had earlier been subpoened to appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee, and was held in contempt by Congress for failing to appear. Batson had been in Alaska with other members of the Justice Society, where they had engaged in combat with an object described by witnesses as a mechanical giant.

A federal judge is expected to rule later on the contempt charges stemming from the earlier absence.

Wait, there’s some commotion outside the capital. There’s something in the sky. Is it..? It’s too large to be a bird. It’s not a plane, it’s... Ladies and gentlemen at home, you won’t believe what I have to tell you, but Captain Marvel has appeared in the air over Washington. Flying under some unknown means. I have never seen anything like it.

He has just landed on the steps of the capital. We’re going to move inside as well, where we’ll continue with the hearing of the House Un-American Activities Committee, led by Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin.

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[ soundtrack ]

The sound of the gavel echoed through the chamber.

The small boy seemed dwarfed by the chair that he was situated in, poised on the edge with his feet dangling an inch off the floor. Before him, a U-shaped panel of Congressmen sat on high, in judgment. The surly figure at the center of which, gavel in hand, seemed every inch judge and juror. “Mister Batson, is it true that you were commanded to appear before this committee on March 9th?”

Hands folded atop the table, Billy leaned forward as best he was able in order to speak into the microphone as he’d been instructed. “It is, sir,” the boy supplied simply.

“And is it true that you did not appear before this committee at that time?”

“It is, sir.”

“And is it true that you were in Alaska with the Justice Society at the day and time when you were to appear here before this committee?”

“It is, sir.”

The senator at the center of the panel paused there. He flipped through an assortment of pages, as though checking some of his notes. “And, one more question about Alaska,” the man stated, raising his head to look sharply down on the boy. “Is it true that you met with Soviet agents while in Alaska?”

“Sir...” Billy stated, tongue tied and twisted as, in his mind, he played back the question to make certain he hadn’t just mis-heard that. “Gosh jeepers, no.”

“This is the United States Congress, young man. Not the sandlot,” the senator barked harshly.

Billy visibly winced. “Sorry, sir,” the boy uttered meekly, before taking a breath and stating, “It is not true, sir.”

“Not true, eh?” Senator McCarthy echoed back, shuffling the papers in front of him for a moment. When he had laid them back down again, he asked, “So you were just protecting the good people of America, is that it, son?”

Billy’s eyes moved from one end of the panel of Congressmen to the other. Then, looking back at Joseph McCarthy, offered, “Sir, I believe my record speaks for itself there.”

“Let’s review that record… Mister Batson,” Senator McCarthy snapped, before holding up a copy of the Fawcett Herald. Pointing at the newspaper in hand, the man barked, “You have an opinion about the Internal Security Act that was proposed by my colleague and friend, Senator McCarren, do you not?”

Billy gave a nod as he replied simply, “I do, sir.”

“Enlighten this panel, Mister Batson.”

“I agree with the opinion stated by President Truman, sir,” Billy answered in a matter-of-fact tone. Without missing a beat, the boy posed a question of his own. “Is that... un-American, sir?”

“This committee will be the judge of that, son,” McCarthy fired back. “Let’s continue on. In addition to not supporting the internal security of these United States, you do support a foreign agent, do you not?”

Billy just blinked. Then a second time. Finally, the boy asked, “Come again, sir?”

“Allow me to be more specific. How would you characterize your relationship with the foreign agent known as Wonder Woman?”

Billy’s head went back in an obvious look of disbelief. When he recovered, a moment later, the boy leaned into the microphone to say, “I’d say that I consider Woman Woman to be a friend. Someone that I have a great deal of respect for.”

“And you’re not concerned in the least about the anti-American sentiments expressed by this friend of yours?” the senator tossed back in retort, before continuing on before Billy could so much as open his mouth. “Of course, you’re not. Because you have a great deal of respect for this un-American, foreign agent. Isn’t that right, Mister Batson?”

Perhaps it was a trick of the light, but for a moment it seemed as though the gauntlets around the boy’s forearms were glowing as his eyes seemed to take on an unearthly light of their own. “Gee, sir. I don’t think I know what America you’re referring to, sir,” Billy managed, in an oddly cool tone for the lad. Continuing on, the boy added, “You’re from Wisconsin. Can’t say I know much ‘bout Wisconsin, sir. I’m from Ohio. Where we believe, among other things, in the freedom of speech.”

There was a murmur of laughter through the House of Representatives.

Banging the gavel against the table, Senator McCarthy silenced the room. “Order, there will be order.”

Still holding the gavel, the senator leveled the hammer like a weapon down toward the child as he snapped, “I’ll tell you what I believe, Mister Batson. You, child, are a communist, a traitor to these United States of America, and very likely a criminal. A delinquent in the very least.”

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F A W C E T T C I T Y
Present Day

There were tears slipping from out the corners of his eyes as he woke.

He was staring up at a ceiling. The room felt alien to him, because it was familiar in a way that he couldn’t immediately place. So much time away. Disorientation and disassociation gnawed away at his awareness as the truth of where he was began to seep in.

This looked like Earth.

He tried to sit up, but pain lanced through his body and caused him to settled back atop the bed.

“Take it easy, son.”

It was a human voice.

Not an alien intonation deciphered by the universal communicator that he wore. Not the inhuman vocalizations of the Kymellians or the alien language of the Majesdane, but an actual human voice. Billy turned his head and saw an old man seated by his bedside. Wisened featured that were weathered upon a well-lined face framed by thinning, white hair. The man closed the book that had been in his lap, slowly rising to his feet and then shuffling toward where the boy lay.

Even as his mind cried out that he was home, Billy found himself afraid to believe it. Reaching a hand out, the child seemed desperate to reach out and touch this stranger who wasn’t as strange as the people, the places, the worlds that had become the new normal for Billy in all the decades that he’d been away.

The man simply held the boy’s hand, smiling down at him.

In a halting, stammering tone, Billy softly asked, “Is this... Earth?”

Squeezing the child’s hand, the man gave a nod. “Welcome home, Captain.”

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The old man’s name was Fred.

He was retired, but occupied himself by staying active with volunteering for the Red Cross and the USO. He’d brought Billy some donation of clothes, though Billy had required Fred’s help in changing out of the hospital gown that he was wearing. Bruises marked the child’s body from his battle with Terrax, as well as the struggle with the neutron star.

To be honest, Billy couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt pain like this.

From out the window of the hospital room, the child looked down at a small gathering of people and news vans piled in the hospital lawn. The signs that they were holding contained things like WELCOME BACK, CAPTAIN!

“What happened?” Billy asked, turning away from the window.

When Fred gave the boy a quizzical look, the boy explained, “When I left with Aelfrye, people hated me like they hated Jane Fonda.”

Fred tapped his book against his leg, musing silently to himself for a moment. Finally, he said, “People in my generation were upset that you weren’t fighting in Vietnam. And people in the younger generation were upset that you weren’t doing anything to stop our soldiers from fighting in Vietnam.” Pausing there, Fred set the book aside before folding his hands in his lap as he continued. “That’s a long time, now. The world changed. Presidents came and went. We apologized for the Japanese internment. Tried to fix the soldiers from Vietnam that we’d broken. And realized we’d made heroes into villains, and a few villains into heroes.”

Billy just turned back toward the window, staring down at the thin crowd with a somber mix of emotions. Then, he turned back. Something about what Fred had said seemed familiar somehow.

“Hey, Mister Fred? Where were you during the Second World War?”

The old man just smiled, then both heads turned toward the door to the hospital room as a knock sounded. “Ask me again sometime,” Fred offered, rising from out of the chair as two men in military style uniforms stepped inside. “In the meantime, I think that these gentlemen are interested in speaking with you,” Fred noted, picking up his book and then shuffling his way toward the door as he made his exit.

The elder of the two military looking individuals took a step forward. Billy didn’t recognize the blue service coat with silver piping, but he did recognize the stars atop the epaulets. “Captain Batson, welcome back to the United States,” the major general offered, before adding. “I’m General Sanders. My aide-de-camp, Lieutenant Muldowney.”

Even as the second, younger man gave a nod, the general continued on. “We’d like to talk with you about where you’ve been these last forty years.”

It as friendlier than his last encounter with agents of the United States government, but Billy couldn’t help but feel like he was back in that chair on the floor of the House Congressional hearing. Looking at Sanders, then Muldowney, Billy looked back at the general as he quietly stated, “I doubt you’d believe it, sir.”

“We’re confident that you weren’t on Earth.” Muldowney stated, chiming in. “Based on your trajectory during re-entry, we believe that you were somewhere beyond the asteroid belt.”

Sanders held his hands out, as though silently asking Billy to just hold on a moment. “If you have information on what threats exist beyond our solar system, I’m interested in them. No matter how... out-of-this-world they might seem,” the man stated.

Absolute Comics - Season Two: The Monster Within

Who is this Supergirl writer posting in the IC?

Are you new, sir? Welcome to Absolute.

Absolute Comics - Season Two: The Monster Within

@Lord Wraith

I'm auditing a course this week and the amount of reading that I'm doing is far more than I anticipated. I'll need to put Billy and Toyboy on hiatus until the weekend.

Absolute Comics - Season Two: The Monster Within

When I eventually do post tho, its going to be soooo looooong

@Ceta de Cloyes

I like big posts and I cannot lie.
You other brothers can't deny
When a reply pops in with some itty bitty space
And a block of text in your face
You get sprung, want to scroll up tough
'Cause you notice that post was stuffed
Deep in the plot you're seeding
I'm hooked and I can't stop reading

Absolute Comics - Season Two: The Monster Within

Y'all better stay tuned for 🅱️lade's 🅱️aller 🅱️aturdays.

@Simple Unicycle

Not Wesley Snipes Appreciation Wednesday?

Absolute Comics - Season Two: The Monster Within

What if I did Wonder Wednesday?

@Star Lord

Toy Wonder Wednesday as a matter of fact.

And a short post to celebrate it, since @Retired doesn't know what day it is.

Absolute Comics - Season Two: The Monster Within

S. T. A. R. L A B S

---

^{Gotham City | Present Day}

They called it cold storage.

It looked like a morgue.

Felt like a morgue. Standing off to one side, Dick felt an involuntary shudder course through his body. An odd ache biting into the back of his shoulder as he tried to shrug off the chill that permeated the austere, stainless steel interior.

Security here was tighter than at the morgue. Doctor Charles worked a cipher lock on the cabinet door, before finally plugging in a biometric key. Dick could hear an audible click, followed by a series of mechanical sounds, before the cabinet door popped open.

A long, metal slab came sliding out of the open cabinet. Atop which was the body of Pinocchio. If Dick didn’t know better, he’d have easily mistaken the Toyman’s craftsmanship for a real human corpse. The level of detail that had gone into creating this puppet without strings demonstrated a sincere devotion to the creation of the doll. Dark hair framing pale skin, a bluish tone giving the boy an alabaster quality that only seemed to reinforce the idea that it was just an porcelain doll.

Sarah re-appeared, wheeling a computer cart over beside the table on which the simulacrum lay. Digging through a pile of cables, she fished out the end of a coaxial connector and then unfolded what looked like a schematic. “I’ll be honest,” she uttered, laying the schematic out atop the doll’s body as she tried to orient to the layout. “We weren’t sure that we still had any of the right hardware. We’re still not,” the woman remarked.

Pulling away the blueprint paper, the woman felt along the boy’s abdomen. “No one’s touched this thing in more than ten years.” Prying open the naval, she wrestled a moment with marrying the coaxial cable to the port concealed there. Then she picked up a second cable and search for a second port a the base of the cranium, concealed by the hair. When she had finished, she flipped open a laptop and then set to work. “Let’s hope that I can remember my MS DOS...” Sarah commented, opening a window and then starting to type away. “The operating system may not even pair with modern computers.”

Dick didn’t respond. He had doubts of his own to contend with. Capturing Toyboy had been a sixteen year endeavor for both Officer Grayson and Nightwing. It hadn’t ended well, for any of them.

After another minute, Sarah sat back from the laptop “All right, the BIOS is loading now,” the woman noted, turning her head up to look over at the former boy wonder as she explained, “The diagnostic tools will take a few minutes to cache.”

If Dick heard her, he didn’t do anything to indicate it. After another moment of silence, Sarah remarked aloud, “So, what’s this things deal, anyway? I don’t think you ever told me.”

“I don’t think you ever asked,” Dick uttered softly.

So, he was listening. “I think I was afraid to,” Sarah admitted candidly, turning her eyes down to the boy on the table. “I couldn’t put it into storage fast enough,” the woman added, as her gaze trailed over to where monitors on the wall were measuring the radioactivity levels. Even in storage, the power cells were still remarkably hot.

“Horton cells...” the woman breathed. It was difficult to say whether she was impressed or terrified.

The answer was probably both.

“Schott had to be a right bastard to play God with something as powerful as that,” Sarah stated finally.

“Yeah,” Dick said. Finally, he reached a hand out to touch the doll on the shoulder. The body was ice cold.

“I think he’d agree.”

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Hinkely Creek
June 8, 1996

This was supposed to be great.

This was supposed to be everything that he was created for. There were children. There were toys. They could all just play and have fun.

It was a surprise for Anton’s tenth’s birthday. Toyboy had gathered up the boy and his friends from the school that he attended. They could laugh and run around and play all the Toyman’s games.

“Children who do not follow rules must be punished!”

The Toyman was angry. No matter what Toyboy did, no matter how hard that he tried, the children didn’t want to play the Toyman’s games.

Anton didn’t want to play the games. He’d encouraged the other children to try and escape from this place, from this utopia that had been made for them. For him.

The Toyman was angry sometimes. Sometimes a lot lately. He’d been angry at Anton’s mother, that was the first time that Toyboy had seen the Toyman angry like this. The Toyman had made it so that Anton’s mother would never be able to make him angry again.

When that happened, the Toyman had given Toyboy a new directive: To keep Anton safe.

“I gave you everything that you could ever want.”

Turning his head up, Toyboy could see where the Toyman had Anton backed into a corner. The man was holding up a knife. The light gleaming off the blade betrayed the slick, sticky red mess that covered the knife, the handle, and the Toyman’s arm.

In his arms, the Toyboy was cradling the body of a child. Blood smearing across the doll’s hands and clothes, as the automaton struggled to process what was happening. They had been been playing just a short while ago.

To play. To laugh. To be the greatest toy ever made. Those were all of the reasons that the Toyman had given him for why he had been created.

Today was supposed to be what he was created for, what he was created to do. Instead, the doll’s dead eyes looked out over a playground of broken dreams.

“What? You’re afraid? Of me?” the Toyman’s voice uttered hoarsely. Reaching out, the man grabbed his son by the arm, roughly pulling him close. “This was for you,” the man barked, his tone softening as he seemed deflated for a moment, “This was all for you...”

Grabbing Anton by his head, the Toyman forced the child to look out over the bloodied bodies of his classmates. From the edge of the boy’s vision, the man could be seen raising the knife, as he darkly declared, “And this is all your fault...”

Something sailed between them.

Ripped from his grasp, the knife went tumbling through the air. As Anton sank to his knees in shock, the Toyman reeled back in confusion.

Confusion that slowly coalesced as the moving blur came into focus. A momentary realization seeped into an otherwise diseased mind. “Toyboy..?” the man uttered.

A child-sized fist buried itself into the Creator’s solar plexus. As the man lurched forward, reflect doubling him over, the doll executed a windmill kick that caught the Toyman on the underside the chin. The result launching the man up into the air, before he came crashing down a few feet away.

He struggled to move for a moment, then the fight gave out. As he collapsed onto the ground, Winslow Schott looked over at the Pinocchio of his own making and ask, “Why?”

Crouching down, the simulacrum drew his arms around the trembling, weeping form of Anton Schott. The doll’s eyes seemed alight with hell’s fire as he glared defiantly over at the man who had created him, and declared, “Toyboy keep Anton safe.”

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S.T.A.R. Labs
Present Day

The body of the doll was shaking atop the metal slab, like a child in the throes of a grand seizure.

Lurching forward, Dick placed his hands on the doll’s shoulders, pinning it down. The violent convulsions racking the automaton proved a struggle, as Dick found himself nearly tossed on his ass by the force of the body’s spasms.

Turning his head, the former circus act threw a look over toward where Sarah was working the laptop. “Can you shut it down?”

The shake of the woman’s head was the only answer he needed. “His Horton cells are fully energized,” Sarah remarked, her head down as she continued plugging away at the machine. “The reaction is self-sustaining.”

Great. Another Grayson good idea. Pull a thermonuclear-powered teddy bear from out of cold storage and fire up the reactor. What could go wrong? Except maybe turning it into a teddy bomb…

The convulsions were starting to intensify. Dick realized that he could feel heat coming off the body. Steam was starting to rise off the doll’s form. “Readings are approaching critical,” Sarah warned, her voice sharp and her fingers paused. She seemed at a loss for what to do next, as she glanced at Dick with a harried expression and said, “I think he’s about to expl…”

The doll lurched, snapped up into a fetal position and turning on its side. Dick had to scramble to re-position himself so that the simulacrum didn’t spill out onto the floor.

Then it retched. A milky-white liquid splashing onto the floor as the doll threw up. And then began coughing and sputtering.

After which, the spasms and convulsions stopped.

“Not what I was expecting,” Dick deadpanned simply. What had he been expecting? What exactly did one expect when they pulled a lifelike automaton out of the closet and fired it up for the first time in more than a decade?

As Dick helped the doll to sit up, he heard Sarah comment, “His power output appears to be regulating itself.”

Looking back over at the woman, Dick gave a tilt of his head to indicate the wet mess on the floor as he asked, “How did he..?”

“Best guess? Negative pressure on a coolant tank valve,” Sarah answered, with a shrug. “Beyond that, no one provided us with a manual. We were hired for storage only.”

Dick couldn’t argue with that. Instead, turning back toward the lifelike boy, the man helped to steady the android into a seated position on the edge of the metal table top. “Hey, Toyboy,” Dick offered. “It’s been awhile.”

It was uncanny. Like a close encounter with the third kind. An involuntary shiver ran down Dick’s spine as the doll cocked it’s head toward him. Though human-like, the way in which the eyes looked out at Dick were clearly inhuman. The pupils dilating and contracting in abnormal fashion, as the lens and camera focused on Dick. Toyboy was meticulously recording his features, looking up at his head and then panning down to his chin, before returning back up to his eyes.

Moving from his spot by the table, Dick retrieved a Target shopping back. An assortment of boy’s clothing was folded up inside, with the tags still on them. Breaking open a pack of underwear, Dick pulled out a pair and then helped guide the doll down from the table. “Let’s get these on you,” he remarked, holding them out for Toyboy to step into.

Returning to the bag, Dick next produced a pair of mesh shorts. While he wrestled with pulling the tags off, the automaton was exploring the wires and cables that were feeding into it’s body. A coaxial cable ran into his naval. A second was married to the base of his skull. An electrical and an optical line were going into two different points on his left forearm.

Holding out the shorts, Dick uttered, “And these...”

Toyboy’s hand rested on Dick’s shoulder, as the doll stepped into the shorts. As Dick hiked them up to the automaton’s waist, the simulacrum finally spoke. “Voice pattern analysis indicates, with eighty-seven-point-six-four percent probability, that you’re Nightwing.”

Ignoring the observation, Dick instead looked over at Sarah as he wiggled one of the cables running from her computer into Toyboy’s body. “Are we good to disconnect now?”

Doctor Charles just shrugged in reply. “At this point, I’m just monitoring. Toyboy’s functioning completely autonomously.”

“Well, then, let’s get you unplugged,” Dick remarked, turning back to the doll. Reaching his hands around to the back of the child-like being’s head, he worked to disengage the connector there. Pulling the coaxial cable from the base of the boy’s skull, Dick let the cable fall free. From his position, crouched down at the doll’s eye level, the man looked at the android and asked, “You need help with the others?”

Bringing both hands to his naval, the automaton unfastened the umbilical cable. “Your physical appearance has been altered since our previous interaction,” the doll noted, even as it used its right hand to pull the remaining cabling from the ports on its left arm.

Reaching into the bag, Dick drew out a t-shirt and then a hooded sweatshirt. “That’s right,” he murmured, as he worked to pry the tags off. “Arms up,” Dick said. As the doll raised its arms up over its head, Dick pulled the t-shirt and then the sweatshirt over the automaton’s head.

With that done, Toyboy now both out of the freezer and dressed, said, “I just go by Commissioner Grayson now.” Reaching over, Dick deposited the discarded tags and other trash back into the Target bag. Then, turning back toward Toyboy, offered, “If you feel up for a drive, I can get you caught up in the car.”

Absolute Comics - Season Two: The Monster Within

Titanic Tuesday.

Am I doing this correctly, @Bounce?

@Retired

Aside from the fact that it's Wednesday, I'd recommend Beast Boy's Totally Tubular, So Terrific You'll Testify, Also Starring Some Other People, Titans Tuesday.

Absolute Comics - Season Two: The Monster Within

Marvelous Monday to you.

Blessings and high favor.