Cyberlad
Qia
Half Pint
Festive
mickilennial
AndyC
Sep
Roman
Rockette
Lord WraithA warehouse full of the damned.
Emaciated men and women stripped of their clothes, as newborns do not enter this world with more than their first skin. The Neonates manufactured and packaged the Bliss for the Juvenile street dealers, and did it for no recompense beyond the Bliss they could consume, the paltry food rations to keep them as lean as their god, and the accommodation of the Den.
It was certainly rare amongst drug operations for the allowance of the workers to get high off the supply - but profit was not the primary motivation. They sold cheap to new local customers, as could often becomre customary, but not for the simple purpose of profit motivation behind getting them hooked. At least not for the money. And they were always hiring. And always growing.
This warehouse was but one of three dozen in this city itself. The year before they had two dozen, not all in the same locations. New York was, after all, a city of heroes, and any time anyone came close they would close up and move. They had the resources behind them to do that easily enough. Who could be more adaptable than they? Whilst one day they would bask in the sun, it would not be beneath them to flatten themselves out and hide in the rocks and crags until their season would come. After all, they followed a perfect one.
The Yearling called the Neonates to order. Kept them focused on the task at hand. Bliss for the Kali-Yuga! Bliss for Kobra! Bliss for the Lord Naga, his generosity that allowed the bliss to overflow unto them!
Lanceheads were scattered here and thereabouts. Unlike the Neonates they were of course fully clothed. Their task called for it. As they had been tasked with protection and maintaining order, for in order for the day of Kali Yuga to come - Freedom in its Holy Ultimate Chaos - there must be moments of order to bring that day to pass. The Lord Naga understood this even if it were a fact too complicated for most OTHER Neonates, Juveniles and even some slower, more jaded Yearlings to understand... The bigger picture. But YOU understand, yes? The same greater wisdom that allows you your Bliss. The same greater wisdom that protects and houses you. The means to the greater end that our All Knowing Lord Naga will one day bring to pass, for the betterment of all who have the wisdom to follow the serpentine path.
But as the Lanceheads were assembled for the daily briefing, they failed to notice the SkyCycle that passed silently overhead. Nor the purple masked figure overlooking the warehouse from the clear plastic sheeting of the skylight which kept the working environment warm and well-lit for the naked Neonates...
"Well, there's something you don't see everyday..." Hawkeye muttered at the strange naked assembly, and their foreman in his scaly leather jacket.
SEASON ONE Sensation & Wonder
Hawkeye had stumbled on the place by luck. He was going to shake down some junkie street dealer for the location of his supplier, but reconsidered and tailed him after realising he was probably going to be no more forthcoming than the last half dozen he'd questioned. Following him from a distance he stumbled upon the handoff point. Observing a few handoffs he was able to tail a bagman to a second handoff point... a long story short, the countless tails eventually brought him to this warehouse.
It had been long and tedious, basically policework, and not at all why he'd got into the capes and cowls business which regularly saw him firing a weapon from the paleolithic era at gods and monsters.
He reached into his quiver for a fletching. Explosive arrows were out, he didn't know the chemical makeup of the drug in question and if it were flammable... well, he wasn't looking to roast a warehouse full of poor, starving, desperate drugden workers. It also wouldn't get him any answers. That ruled out flare-arrows, rocket arrows and, for that matter, acid arrows as well as well. Such was his poor grasp of chemistry and the composition of Bliss they were working with.
He drew back and released. A Putty arrow, hit one of the largest drug tables, expanding on impact and ruining the product. Two more putty arrows took care of the rest.
Naked neonates scattered, many headed for the door. A single bola arrow wrapped up the frontrunner, and he fell blocking the door.
Then the stacatto of semi-automatic rifle fire burst to life. Predictable, as always. He pulled back from the lifted plastic of the skylight after letting loose a smoke bomb arrow. Time for Position B. There's a word for a sharpshooter who only plans to stay static from a singular primary firing position - A corpse.
Clint ran across the roof to his secondary position; a lifted sheet of corrugated iron which provided a new vista over the warehouse beneath him. Men and women coughing, some lay prone. Perhaps passing out from too much excitement - which would seem unusual, if not for how starved they appeared to be. He counted six armed guards, with various weapons. With no knowledge of their level of training he decided to target them in accordance of their weapon's threat level. Two men with AR-15s were dropped in rapid succession with stun arrows. A woman with an uzi responded by firing at his initial position by the skylight. They didn't seem to realize he'd relocated yet. He downed her with another stun arrow.
One of the naked drug cooks picked up an AR-15 and started desperately spraying the roof with no clear target in mind. Clint cursed himself for leaving it in play, pulling back to avoid any stray lucky shots, before drawing an electro-arrow and firing it into the barrel of the gun. The drug cook spasmed briefly from the shock before dropping the weapon. He fired another into the trigger-guard of the other fallen AR-15 to prevent it from happening again.
"He's over there!" Calls came from below.
Clint didn't hang around to wait and see their response. Position C. He'd removed three heavily armed guards from the field, and a wild card he'd sloppily allowed into play. Three more remained if he played this right.
As he took position he now saw a fourth threat. The foreman had retreated to an office somewhere and returned with a sidearm. Clint watched how he handled it, the nerves, and recognised the awkward desperation of a man who was required to have a weapon for his position, but no real training or mind for how to use it. Hawkeye mentally prioritised him last, the guards were clearly the bigger threat as they had some level of organised training with the arms they carried.
A soldier would have set a tunnel focus on mission goals. Eliminate the three guards, disarm and interrogate the foreman in the leather jacket.
Hawkeye was nobody's soldier. And nobody would ever question his creativity, nor his skills.
The SkyCycle tore through the roof, with a purple archer firing a bevy of arrows crouching from atop its seat, with a wide grin displaying the enjoyment he gained from such a bombastic move. A sonic arrow disoriented two guards on his left, one heavy-set and a smaller one armed with a Glock. Another stun arrow took down a guard to his right. Another putty arrow eliminated his weapon from the field. He flipped over the seat and let fly a bola arrow towards the two guards. The heavy balls from the bola crashed through the jaw of the first and ricocheted into the second, knocking out the first and incapacitating the second.
Not what they were designed for... but hey, creativity is what keeps this hero stuff interesting.
Small calibre gunfire rang out. The foreman ducked back behind the cover of a supporting beam. Clint turned and smirked, drawing a fletching with a very specific arrow, eyeballing some geometric calculations and letting it loose.
"Drop the bow! I've got a gun, archer! You're outmatched!" The foreman called out, the shakiness of his voice proof that he did not even believe it himself.
He got the shock of his life when he heard a compound bow clatter to the floor, and stepped out with his sidearm drawn...
...to receive the second shock of his life. The boomerang arrow smacking the handgun out of his hands and across the floor.
Clint's smirk never left his face. He stepped forward and scooped his bow back up, approaching the man in his shimmering scaly leather jacket.
"No! Get back!" The foreman called out, backpedalling away from the Justice Leaguer. "You can't! Don't!"
"Relax. Ol' Hawkeye only has a few questions for you..."
And those were the words that doomed the man.
As Clint approached he watched in horror as the foreman's mouth started to froth and foam. Clint ran towards him, with the first signs of genuine fear in his eyes. The fear for another's well-being.
"Aww Hell, poison?! This isn't bad enough to go and poison yourself..."
He ran up and shoved his fingers down the man's mouth to try and get him to vomit... but with his final efforts the man bit his fingers to keep his secrets. His loyalties.
Desperately, Clint grabbed him from behind and attempted some haphazard form of the Heimlich manouever, only to be stopped by a handgun emptying its clip into the foreman, rendering the drug boss limp in his arms.
"No!" Clint looked up and saw the handgun in the hands of a young woman; naked, starved and wired from the drug du jour. She kept dry-firing at the foreman, and Clint raised a hand to the girl to try and calm her.
"It's Ok! Everything's going to be OK. I'm sure he put you through... all manner of Hell. Stripped you naked. Did-- God knows what to you. It's going to be alright. He can't hurt you anymore."
The young girl gave only a quizzical look to Hawkeye, wide-eyed and still on another plain of existence. And in an instant she dropped the gun, and turned and ran.
Not to the exit. Clint would have understood that. He would have been prepared, a simple net arrow would have wrapped things up nicely. But in a direction he didn't fully comprehend until too late. Towards one of the fallen guards...
But he was too late. The young girl had thrown herself onto the electro-arrow. Sparks flew, and whilst it would act more as a non-lethal taser shock to a person of average to high-level physique... the starved drug-workers of this facility were in nowhere near that kind of shape. She lay and twitched until there was no life left in her form, and the muscles spasmed still even afterwards.
Clint ran his hand over his masked head in despair.
"Lord Naga," The herald messenger called out into the darkness of their leader's quarters. "It seems we have lost one of our many warehouses in the New York region. A Justice Leaguer--"
"In New York?" Kobra queried, from whereabouts unseen. "Ahhh... the Archer." He answered his own question.
"Yes, my Lord Naga! Hawkeye stumbled upon it's whereabouts and brutally--"
"The Yearling?"
"Perished, my Lord. By his own hand as is your will. As is the way. Hawkeye was left helpless trying to steal our secrets from a corpse. Your methods are most wise."
"And the Lancssseheadssss. They sssshould not talk. Have bail provided by the regular channelssss."
"Yes, my Lord Naga. But what of the Archer?"
Kobra pondered this for a moment.
"He issss not the Batman. Nor doessss he know anything. To move againsssst him for the moment would be to give him a tail to follow back to itssss head. For now we do nothing. Let him be the fool who launchessss an arrow and givessss ussss a fletching to follow back to his possssition. Sssshould he act sssso brazenly we sssshall move not with but one sssstrike, but with the full forcssse of the Ssssosssiety." He said, referring to the Serpent Society, the group's most elite strike force.
"A ssssmall error on hissss part, sssshall see him looking for an esssscape from a pit of ssssnakes."
He hesitated, basking in his sychophantic Herald's revelry for his Holy words of divine wisdom.
"...where none sssshall be pressssent, and all hope losssst."
Emaciated men and women stripped of their clothes, as newborns do not enter this world with more than their first skin. The Neonates manufactured and packaged the Bliss for the Juvenile street dealers, and did it for no recompense beyond the Bliss they could consume, the paltry food rations to keep them as lean as their god, and the accommodation of the Den.
It was certainly rare amongst drug operations for the allowance of the workers to get high off the supply - but profit was not the primary motivation. They sold cheap to new local customers, as could often becomre customary, but not for the simple purpose of profit motivation behind getting them hooked. At least not for the money. And they were always hiring. And always growing.
This warehouse was but one of three dozen in this city itself. The year before they had two dozen, not all in the same locations. New York was, after all, a city of heroes, and any time anyone came close they would close up and move. They had the resources behind them to do that easily enough. Who could be more adaptable than they? Whilst one day they would bask in the sun, it would not be beneath them to flatten themselves out and hide in the rocks and crags until their season would come. After all, they followed a perfect one.
The Yearling called the Neonates to order. Kept them focused on the task at hand. Bliss for the Kali-Yuga! Bliss for Kobra! Bliss for the Lord Naga, his generosity that allowed the bliss to overflow unto them!
Lanceheads were scattered here and thereabouts. Unlike the Neonates they were of course fully clothed. Their task called for it. As they had been tasked with protection and maintaining order, for in order for the day of Kali Yuga to come - Freedom in its Holy Ultimate Chaos - there must be moments of order to bring that day to pass. The Lord Naga understood this even if it were a fact too complicated for most OTHER Neonates, Juveniles and even some slower, more jaded Yearlings to understand... The bigger picture. But YOU understand, yes? The same greater wisdom that allows you your Bliss. The same greater wisdom that protects and houses you. The means to the greater end that our All Knowing Lord Naga will one day bring to pass, for the betterment of all who have the wisdom to follow the serpentine path.
But as the Lanceheads were assembled for the daily briefing, they failed to notice the SkyCycle that passed silently overhead. Nor the purple masked figure overlooking the warehouse from the clear plastic sheeting of the skylight which kept the working environment warm and well-lit for the naked Neonates...
"Well, there's something you don't see everyday..." Hawkeye muttered at the strange naked assembly, and their foreman in his scaly leather jacket.
H A W K E Y E
H A W K E Y E
H A W K E Y E
SEASON ONE Sensation & Wonder
HAWKEYE #3.1 An Archer And a Pit of Snakes
Hawkeye had stumbled on the place by luck. He was going to shake down some junkie street dealer for the location of his supplier, but reconsidered and tailed him after realising he was probably going to be no more forthcoming than the last half dozen he'd questioned. Following him from a distance he stumbled upon the handoff point. Observing a few handoffs he was able to tail a bagman to a second handoff point... a long story short, the countless tails eventually brought him to this warehouse.
It had been long and tedious, basically policework, and not at all why he'd got into the capes and cowls business which regularly saw him firing a weapon from the paleolithic era at gods and monsters.
He reached into his quiver for a fletching. Explosive arrows were out, he didn't know the chemical makeup of the drug in question and if it were flammable... well, he wasn't looking to roast a warehouse full of poor, starving, desperate drugden workers. It also wouldn't get him any answers. That ruled out flare-arrows, rocket arrows and, for that matter, acid arrows as well as well. Such was his poor grasp of chemistry and the composition of Bliss they were working with.
He drew back and released. A Putty arrow, hit one of the largest drug tables, expanding on impact and ruining the product. Two more putty arrows took care of the rest.
Naked neonates scattered, many headed for the door. A single bola arrow wrapped up the frontrunner, and he fell blocking the door.
Then the stacatto of semi-automatic rifle fire burst to life. Predictable, as always. He pulled back from the lifted plastic of the skylight after letting loose a smoke bomb arrow. Time for Position B. There's a word for a sharpshooter who only plans to stay static from a singular primary firing position - A corpse.
Clint ran across the roof to his secondary position; a lifted sheet of corrugated iron which provided a new vista over the warehouse beneath him. Men and women coughing, some lay prone. Perhaps passing out from too much excitement - which would seem unusual, if not for how starved they appeared to be. He counted six armed guards, with various weapons. With no knowledge of their level of training he decided to target them in accordance of their weapon's threat level. Two men with AR-15s were dropped in rapid succession with stun arrows. A woman with an uzi responded by firing at his initial position by the skylight. They didn't seem to realize he'd relocated yet. He downed her with another stun arrow.
One of the naked drug cooks picked up an AR-15 and started desperately spraying the roof with no clear target in mind. Clint cursed himself for leaving it in play, pulling back to avoid any stray lucky shots, before drawing an electro-arrow and firing it into the barrel of the gun. The drug cook spasmed briefly from the shock before dropping the weapon. He fired another into the trigger-guard of the other fallen AR-15 to prevent it from happening again.
"He's over there!" Calls came from below.
Clint didn't hang around to wait and see their response. Position C. He'd removed three heavily armed guards from the field, and a wild card he'd sloppily allowed into play. Three more remained if he played this right.
As he took position he now saw a fourth threat. The foreman had retreated to an office somewhere and returned with a sidearm. Clint watched how he handled it, the nerves, and recognised the awkward desperation of a man who was required to have a weapon for his position, but no real training or mind for how to use it. Hawkeye mentally prioritised him last, the guards were clearly the bigger threat as they had some level of organised training with the arms they carried.
A soldier would have set a tunnel focus on mission goals. Eliminate the three guards, disarm and interrogate the foreman in the leather jacket.
Hawkeye was nobody's soldier. And nobody would ever question his creativity, nor his skills.
The SkyCycle tore through the roof, with a purple archer firing a bevy of arrows crouching from atop its seat, with a wide grin displaying the enjoyment he gained from such a bombastic move. A sonic arrow disoriented two guards on his left, one heavy-set and a smaller one armed with a Glock. Another stun arrow took down a guard to his right. Another putty arrow eliminated his weapon from the field. He flipped over the seat and let fly a bola arrow towards the two guards. The heavy balls from the bola crashed through the jaw of the first and ricocheted into the second, knocking out the first and incapacitating the second.
Not what they were designed for... but hey, creativity is what keeps this hero stuff interesting.
Small calibre gunfire rang out. The foreman ducked back behind the cover of a supporting beam. Clint turned and smirked, drawing a fletching with a very specific arrow, eyeballing some geometric calculations and letting it loose.
"Drop the bow! I've got a gun, archer! You're outmatched!" The foreman called out, the shakiness of his voice proof that he did not even believe it himself.
He got the shock of his life when he heard a compound bow clatter to the floor, and stepped out with his sidearm drawn...
...to receive the second shock of his life. The boomerang arrow smacking the handgun out of his hands and across the floor.
Clint's smirk never left his face. He stepped forward and scooped his bow back up, approaching the man in his shimmering scaly leather jacket.
"No! Get back!" The foreman called out, backpedalling away from the Justice Leaguer. "You can't! Don't!"
"Relax. Ol' Hawkeye only has a few questions for you..."
And those were the words that doomed the man.
As Clint approached he watched in horror as the foreman's mouth started to froth and foam. Clint ran towards him, with the first signs of genuine fear in his eyes. The fear for another's well-being.
"Aww Hell, poison?! This isn't bad enough to go and poison yourself..."
He ran up and shoved his fingers down the man's mouth to try and get him to vomit... but with his final efforts the man bit his fingers to keep his secrets. His loyalties.
Desperately, Clint grabbed him from behind and attempted some haphazard form of the Heimlich manouever, only to be stopped by a handgun emptying its clip into the foreman, rendering the drug boss limp in his arms.
"No!" Clint looked up and saw the handgun in the hands of a young woman; naked, starved and wired from the drug du jour. She kept dry-firing at the foreman, and Clint raised a hand to the girl to try and calm her.
"It's Ok! Everything's going to be OK. I'm sure he put you through... all manner of Hell. Stripped you naked. Did-- God knows what to you. It's going to be alright. He can't hurt you anymore."
The young girl gave only a quizzical look to Hawkeye, wide-eyed and still on another plain of existence. And in an instant she dropped the gun, and turned and ran.
Not to the exit. Clint would have understood that. He would have been prepared, a simple net arrow would have wrapped things up nicely. But in a direction he didn't fully comprehend until too late. Towards one of the fallen guards...
"WAIT! NO!"
But he was too late. The young girl had thrown herself onto the electro-arrow. Sparks flew, and whilst it would act more as a non-lethal taser shock to a person of average to high-level physique... the starved drug-workers of this facility were in nowhere near that kind of shape. She lay and twitched until there was no life left in her form, and the muscles spasmed still even afterwards.
Clint ran his hand over his masked head in despair.
"Lord Naga," The herald messenger called out into the darkness of their leader's quarters. "It seems we have lost one of our many warehouses in the New York region. A Justice Leaguer--"
"In New York?" Kobra queried, from whereabouts unseen. "Ahhh... the Archer." He answered his own question.
"Yes, my Lord Naga! Hawkeye stumbled upon it's whereabouts and brutally--"
"The Yearling?"
"Perished, my Lord. By his own hand as is your will. As is the way. Hawkeye was left helpless trying to steal our secrets from a corpse. Your methods are most wise."
"And the Lancssseheadssss. They sssshould not talk. Have bail provided by the regular channelssss."
"Yes, my Lord Naga. But what of the Archer?"
Kobra pondered this for a moment.
"He issss not the Batman. Nor doessss he know anything. To move againsssst him for the moment would be to give him a tail to follow back to itssss head. For now we do nothing. Let him be the fool who launchessss an arrow and givessss ussss a fletching to follow back to his possssition. Sssshould he act sssso brazenly we sssshall move not with but one sssstrike, but with the full forcssse of the Ssssosssiety." He said, referring to the Serpent Society, the group's most elite strike force.
"A ssssmall error on hissss part, sssshall see him looking for an esssscape from a pit of ssssnakes."
He hesitated, basking in his sychophantic Herald's revelry for his Holy words of divine wisdom.
"...where none sssshall be pressssent, and all hope losssst."
