Sir Lurksalot

Justice League Unlimited vol. 2

Metropolis:

---

^{January 20th, 2019 – 12:10 pm | Justice League Headquarters - Metro Tower}

She beat the crap out of his coworkers. Tried to kill his friend's daughter. Made a mess of his beloved kitchen and rec room and most damning of all...

Ruined Lunch.

Yeah, Duncan was feeling pretty damned good after having punched the ancient Kryptonian straight in her genetically perfect freakin' face; standing there, fist still smouldering slightly from the force of atmospheric friction from all the Newtonian Laws he'd both broken and vindicated in that one instant.

"Two hours..." The Champion growled ruefully under his breath, shaking the smoke off his hand and looking more than a little irate "...Two hours I spent making that goddamn pie."

This was immediately followed by a slow deliberate breath in and an exhale of much the same fashion; A coping mechanism that had developed in him in the years since he was just a boy who had a fateful meeting with a big goddamn truck- Realizing early on that losing his temper would be a very bad thing with what he had become.

'Let it go, MacAodhan.' The short hero internalized, as he marched back inside to grab his coat, laying amongst what was left of his beloved mahogany table, before throwing it on and charging out the gaping hole he'd left in the wall 'Let it go.'

---

On her knees and crying like a child who lost everything, Solara sat. And in front of her lied Kitsune, unconscious, but clearly alive. The heroic girl had done more than her part, occupying the Kryptonian long enough for others to get outside.
Solara’s shouts of emotional pain quiet all of a sudden. Her tears of ache did not exactly stop, yet lessened. She lowered her hands, wiped her bloody nose and looked down on the girl, who had bested her on a whole new level. Grudge replaced some of the sorrow on the smooth face.

Then a white blur flew past and suddenly Supergirl was holding the sleeping League member. Gently she put her down on the road. Concrete tickled the back of Supergirl’s hands and she almost lowered her guard and became Lara again. It felt good being out in the sun and let it warm her skin once again. It’s generous energy giving her the strength to protect the people she loved so dearly. If only she could share such moments with Solara, and not use its power to defend against her.

Then shouts of fear drew both Kryptonians to look at the Hello Kitty building. Not exactly loud sounds, but neither of them needed such to hear.
“… some kind of sick enhanced individual! A scary mess of a madwoman!” a man said into a phone. Fear cluttered his breathing as Solara eyeballed him.

“You… You don’t even know who I am? You’ve forgotten m-me? After everything I…”
A devilish fury fought with the still present grief and sobbing, and she launched forward. Was then stopped with enough force to crack open the street, had Supergirl not been careful. She swung Solara around and separated the woman's contact with the ground, as she spun her backwards in a controlled throw. A short one, and not exactly meant to hurt, as much as merely put more distance between the civilians and the one threatening them. “Don’t want to fight you,” Supergirl muttered.
Wherever she looked this was the place with most people in it and the spot to stay and defend.
“Get out, everybody!” Supergirl yelled loud enough for even the top floors to notice her. She planted her feet in the pavement, with the sound of steps fleeing the building behind her.
Jimmy approached from the Tower and Supergirl almost allowed herself to smile.

Sometimes being a hero isn’t about punching or moving heavy stuff, sometimes it’s about not moving … not for anything.

---

Traversing big cities was always a pain in the ass for the Champion- Yeah, sure, hypothetically he could just jump to wherever he needed to be, but realistically, well...

He wasn't Supergirl or Shazam. He had momentum to worry about. So, in lieu of crashing through buildings, cars and people like a deranged pinball, the only real option he had was what he was up to right now- Jumping from building to building and cursing vehemently every time he landed just a bit too heavily and broke some brickwork with his foot.

"Aw, fer..." Said vertically-unimpressive Canuck grumbled as his toe ate through the concrete lip at the edge of one of many unfortunate rooftops that would be ruined by the superhuman and his awkward locomotion that day.

Being the strongest man alive kinda sucked sometimes, when every waking moment was a constant, frustrating exercise in restraint.

Pushing that thought from his mind and finally arriving at the place where the Kryptonian had apparently landed (judging by the hot pink dome of light he'd seen earlier), Duncan came to a landing, making a small crater in the paved road and a small line of sheared cement as he came skidding to a stop.

What he found was... not what he expected, to say the least;

Kitsune loudly snoring on the ground.

Solara sobbing uncontrollably.

His teammates gathered around not entirely sure what to do here- not that he'd blame them- It'd been one of those days.

Of course, all of that inaction came to an abrupt halt, as was the norm, when Solara found the strength in all of her grief to stand up and keep swinging. For which she was abruptly thrown on her ass by Supergirl.

'Stupid, stubborn piece of... The Lion ground out internally, as he let out a clearly annoyed breath and his fists clenched... but then unclenched as he took another look.

The aged Kryptonian was not just some insane alien bent on the world's destruction.

She was just... grieving. And lashing out.

A person.

Between the tears running down the weathered Kryptonian's face, the screaming and all the Kryptonian crests before him, on both of the physics-defying women in his vision and painted on the garrish Hello Kitty statues above, something began to click in the back of his head; Something he'd heard a while back-

"...To reach out to those in need and inspire others to do the same. That is life's greatest necessity and its most precious gift."

A long sigh escaped the Champion as he stuffed his hands into his pockets.

"...Goddammit, Clark."

Calmly walking behind the still-prone, shaking Kryptonian and casting a quick glance Supergirl's way, he finally spoke out loud.

"That's enough, Solara. It's over."

"It's... never over... Mutant..." Said woman rasped as she slowly got to her feet, battered, bloodied but still not giving up as she immediately jumped at him with a clumsy, punch-drunk haymaker "NOT FOR ME!"

There was a loud, sonic crash as the blow connected, and had the Canuck not planted his foot firmly in the ground, he would've clearly gone for a good flight eastward through the city.

As it was, he just... stood there, completely unmoving, hands still in his pockets and face unchanged as his eyes bore holes into the Kryptonian's own, even with her fist still planted upon his brow.

For a moment, Solara just stood there in wide-eyed pause, clearly unsettled by that... before a thunderous shriek of raging defiance escaped her again and she began swinging wildly at his mug once more. To which the Champion responded by... still not moving, or really reacting in any percievable way as consecustive blows of thunderous intensity continued to slam into his face.

Maybe it was the cloud cover from being on the East Coast in the middle of January. Maybe it was something else. But the raging Kryptonian's strikes grew steadily weaker and weaker the more she swung until finally she could swing no more, clutching the front of Champion's open jacket in a death-grip as she stood on shaking legs and sucked in as much oxygen as she could.

"So, Kara Zor-El..." Duncan asked, pausing to wipe a trickle of blood now flowing freely from his nose, even in her weakened state, Solara was still a Kryptonian, after all "Did all this bring your planet back yet?"

His response was an inarticulate shriek as Solara reeled back and slammed her fist directly into his gut, with all the rage and intent she could muster but almost none of the strength she had before.

"Shut. Up. Mutant." The Ancient Kryptonian strained to hiss, still holding onto the shorter man's jacket "You know nothing. of my World!"

An indignant growl escaped him at that.

"I know that whether you like it or not, you are fuly half of all that remains of your people. And as you were so goddamn fond of pointing out the only one who remembers them at their greatest." The Lion of Nova Scotia continued without missing a beat, a sliver of curiously calm anger making it's way into his voice "Why don't you take a look around? Use those superior eyes of yours and see how that great, glorious people of yours are going to be remembered."

That gave the alien pause, as her eyes took on a familiar glow and darted around her, X-ray vision revealing what normal eyes would not; people running for their lives, huddled up in rooms together taking shelter, hearts beating swiftly... afraid. So very afraid.

The anger on her face twisted and melted slightly as some unreadable expression wrenched it's way onto it.

The shaking returned.

"That's right... look at it." Duncan continued, unrelenting in his psychological offensive "All the history, all the progress and greatness of the Golden Age of Krypton, and all that will be remembered of it on this world and any other they encounter in the years to come... will be one raging, rampaging monster."

An icy chill ran up the Kryptonian's spine at those words and she tried to jump away from the man as if bitten, only for his hand to snap out of pocket and hold her right where she was, yanking her forward, even, so he could stare directly into her trembling, panicked face.

"Is that what you want?"

His response was a wheeze... then a sniffle... followed by a high-pitched, nasal sound as Solara did everything in her power to ignore the grief that had bubbled just under the surface after Kitsune's efforts.

"N-No... I... I..."

At that, Duncan's other hand made it's way unto her shoulder, and his tone softened.

"Then let us help you."

That did it, as the dam on Solara's grief finally broke and her legs gave out beneath her, only spared from smacking into the cold cement below her as Champion held her upright in something resembling a hug as she openly wailed into his uniform. Breathing a small sigh of relief and shooting Supergirl a grin and a "We good" thumbs-up, even with his nose bloodied and a small shiner forming around his left eye, where half his domino-mask had been sheared off under Solara's punching, The Lion of Nova Scotia then quickly fished his ear-piece out of his pocket and flicked it on.

"Q, it's Champ. Ya still in the Monitor Room?"

The faceless hero gave a curt reply between hisses of pain, "Yeah Champ, still in the Monitor Room... Sorry I couldn't help out with some bots to keep Solara busy, but I guess it all turned out for the best that I didn't."

"Eh, don't sweat it. It's just been one of those days." Champ mused, grunting slightly as Solara clung to him just a bit harder and began sobbing even louder "But while you're there, would you mind firing a wide-band transmission into space? Towards Saturn, if ya can swing it."

Shifting slightly again, he elaborated.

"The Tameranean Defence Force has a comms buoy orbiting around Titan. Just let Commander Koriand'r of the Third Fleet know that her 'Brother-Duncan' needs a favour."

"... Tameranean Defense Force?" Shaking his head with a laugh, Question sighed. "Damn Duncan, you have friends in the weirdest places." The faceless hero sent the message out following Champion's instructions.

With a small snort and chuckle of his own, Duncan agreed;

"Man, you have no idea..."

Heroes Reborn - A DCAU Roleplay (Always open!)

December 25th, 0232 Hours
Mount Olympus

Ted’s brow furrowed slightly at his cousin’s rather… theatrically blatant threat, glancing back toward Karen with no small amount of concern in his eyes, even as he maintained a stiff upper-lip through it all.

This seemed like a terrible idea, and he was clearly thinking that as his eyes flicked back towards their foe, sitting so smug and chewing the absolute hell out of the scenery on her stolen throne, before finally they knit shut and a weary sigh escaped him.

’Aw, fuck me- Sam’s gonna ream me out for this one...’

”Ya heard the crazy, genocidal lady, Kiddo.” He finally managed to say as he lifted his hands out of his pockets, his skin beginning to peel back once again- though not only on his hands as before, but his face as well. ”...Off ya go.”

Karen looked up at Ted, looking rather shocked that he thought she would be capable of doing such a thing by herself.

But then, the woman on the throne had apparently left them with little alternative in that regard. If either of them attempted to help her, she would surely attack all three of them right then and there.

And given that she felt confident about taking the two of them on, Karen didn’t feel like her contribution would make much of a difference.

Sensing her discomfort, Ted took a moment to give her a small, reassuring grin. Even while the skin on his face was starting to peel off, revealing increasingly hot, ember-like flesh.

”Kid, you just fought your way to the top of Olympus. Even with our help, that’s a first in history.” He snorted away her worries dismissively. ”Don’t worry, you’ll think of something clever- You always do.”

”...Okay,” she frowned up at Ted. ”I’ll um…try and be quick.”

A small chuckle escaped the diminutive Titan at that.

”Take yer time...” He called after her with something resembling confidence. ”...I made it through President King and ‘Nam. This should be a cakewalk.”

Karen had already started heading for the golden doors to her left, only to freeze in place at Ted’s words. She glanced back over her shoulder at the Titan in confusion.

There had been a sense of familiarity about him since he had first arrived, but she hadn’t been able to place her finger on it. Now...it seemed so obvious. That old man back in the alley, when she had first been given the mantle of Wizard...it was him!

...He really wasn’t in any danger back then. Shazam, you rotten liar. Heh.

Sprinting towards the doors again at full speed, Karen slammed her hands against them, forcing them apart. Soon, the teen was through them and out of sight as she dashed down the long hallway behind them.

“Well, then,” Eris finally spoke again, rising to her feet. “Who would like to be the first to obtain their shiny golden ticket straight to Tartarus?”

Still smiling slightly after Karen, Ted’s eyes flicked back to his brother as Eris spoke, finding him looking right back with his arms crossed and a quietly smug look on his face, despite the situation they were in.

”You sure that’s not your kid, Ted?” The older Titan asked one last time, as his massive musculature began to slowly harden and glow, smiling ruefully the whole while.

”Like ya said, Laz...” The younger brother responded with a small chuckle, as his eyes began to pulse a violent, fiery red and the ground began to shake malevolently ”...They’re all my kids.”

And then, to the unimaginable screaming of the very air around them burning and the thunderous, earth-shaking force of two Titanic hearts beating like the drums of war the pair vanished in a massive inferno, obscuring them from view and causing the marble columns of the throneroom to buckle and crack under the combined thermal and percussive force of what was happening.

When it subsided, there was a glowing crater. And in it, stood the Sons of Iapetus, in their true flesh-

Enduring Atlas, Bearer of the Heavens and the personification of overwhelming strength and Prometheus, the Bringer of Fire and former Champion of Mankind.

“Gasp!” Eris clasped her cheeks in mock amazement, before smirking. “I see you two still haven’t lost your penchant for theatrics.”

”Said the girl with the black lipstick and the movie one-liners.” Prometheus retorted mockingly, indicating towards his cousin with his burning hammer. ”Now are we gonna do this or what?”

Eris stepped forward down the golden stairs that preceded her throne. Once she had reached their base, she folded her arms and lifted gently into the air above them. Staring down at the Titans, her black lips parted into a grin.

“Come then, let’s find out if your pathetic existence as a human has dulled that flame of yours!”

Without warning, her dark wings swept forward to encapsulate her slender form. This lasted for only a brief moment, however, for they soon parted with stone-shattering kinetic force. Black feathers rained down at the two deities, and those that struck the golden floor erupted in brief-yet-blinding flashes of light.

While the size of the blasts were not terribly impressive, the concentration of power in each of them was more than enough to harm even the likes of them.

”Kids these days…” Atlas grunted as he dug his foot into the golden floor and ripped a massive chunk of it, large enough to shield both he and his brother, upward and then forward towards his cousin and the massive volley of death headed their way with a thunderous kick from his other foot ”...And what’s the deal with the golden freakin’ everything, anyhow? Isn’t that a bit too much, even for people like us?”

”Zeus’ idea.” Prometheus replied dryly, with a slight click of his tongue as he raised his free hand toward the still-moving ribbon of solid gold and firing what appeared to be the teensiest little spark of a fireball into it, which violently burst outward in an immense explosion of tactically compressed fire-magic, (hopefully) engulfing the rest of the doom-feathers in it’s wake as well giving the wave of moving metal a superheated second kick of momentum ”I wanted to go with marble, seemed a bit less… opulent. But ya know who’s always right...”

Eris calmly raised her arm at the approach of molten metal, backhanding it away as if swatting an annoying fly.

Stretching out her hands towards them following this, her grin grew darker as she spoke; “Rot.”

Pouring from her palms was what could only be described as raw, untempered pestilence and decay, a black miasma that swept over the throne room and threatened to engulf the two deities in a deadly fog.

“You’re both boring me,” Eris said, lulling her head to the side. “At least make our first reunion in millennia interesting!”

”Oh, ya hear that? We’re boring her.” The Firebringer noted with a hint of amusement as he casually hefted his hammer to his shoulder and raised his free hand once again.

”Oh, we can’t have that, can we?” The Heaven-Bearer added with mock thoughtfulness as he rubbed his hands together in a deliberately mocking fashion.

”So… Akkad Maneuver?”

”Akkad Maneuver.”

With that decided, Prometheus clenched his fist shut for a brief second, before snapping it open again as it glowed white hot and unleashed a yet another, even more dense ball of compressed fire straight into the encroaching cloud of agonizing death and the face of the Goddess standing in the middle of it as Atlas reeled his massive arms back and brought them together in a thunderous sonic clap that dwarfed all others he’d done that day by a wide margin and, more importantly, forced a colossal amount of oxygen into the already hyper-dense, explosive ball of fire.

The effect was immediate, as a miniature sun abruptly came into being where Eris stood with an impossibly loud-

BANG!

Which, hopefully, caught her attention at least long enough for her to lose her grip on her magic murder-fog... if it didn’t already dissipate in the leviathan explosion.

The gas Eris had spawned had been instantly burned away by the miniature sun, and no more appeared afterwards. For a time, it was difficult to see what exactly had become of the Goddess of discord, the light of the newly born star obscuring her comparatively miniscule form. Then, the sun began to flash and oscillate violently…

Like water being sucks into a drain, the star began to dim. Soon, it was shrinking, and shrinking fast at that. It was at that point that they were finally able to see the form of Eris again, her mouth pressed against the dying star. After another few moments, what was once a golden orb of stellar power was reduced to a mere white spark, which was quickly consumed as well.

Wiping her mouth with her arm, Eris smiled down at them. “Well, guess I’ll be laying off the Vitamin D supplements until next month. Anything else?”

For a moment after Eris had just swallowed what was essentially a small thermonuclear explosion aimed directly at her face, there was a pregnant pause. Broken only by the slumping of the Firebringer’s shoulders and a small sigh.

”...Yeah, that just figures, dunnit?” He finally said with a weary shake of his head and a slightly annoyed glint to his smoldering eyes.

”Well, c’mon, we both knew it wasn’t gonna be that easy.” Atlas added with a shrug as he popped his knuckles ”So... ’Deep End’ it is, then?”

”Eeeyup.”

With that agreed, Prometheus abruptly snapped his fingers and disappeared in a burst of flame, just as Atlas dug his heel into the golden floor and rocketed forward, his immense strength propelling him with such speed that he seemed to simply vanish in a loud blast as he made the sound-barrier his bitch. Fist cocked low to deliver the mother of all gut-punches as his brother came back into being behind and a little to the side of the Goddess of Discord, already swinging his burning hammer directly at the back of her neck with all of his Titanic might, one thing became perfectly clear-

The Sons of Iapetus weren’t fucking around anymore.

“Uh oh!” Eris gasped when Prometheus vanished, her eyes settling instead on Atlas as he rocketed towards her with likely enough force to shatter the Earth into dust. His brother, too, had now descending on her from the opposite side. It seemed like they were getting serious.

She supposed it was time to return the favor.

Twisting in midair so that they were now closing in on either side of her, she raised a single hand for each of them, closing her eyes as Prometheus’ hammer and Atlas’ fist were respectively stopped dead by her outstretched palms. “Uh oh.”

Gripping both Atlas’ fist and Prometheus’ hammer, she sharply jerked the latter forward and issued him a kick to the stomach with a force that would even make Zeus pale in horror. She then released her hold on the hammer and brought her now free hand up beneath Atlas’ chin in an equally devastating uppercut. “Uh oh…”

A wet sound, as well as a small spatter of blood that resembled molten steel escaped the Firebringer’s mouth as he hurtled backward under the ludicrous force of Eris’s kick, only able to stop his rearward momentum by digging his hammer into the shining floor of the throne room.

’Well... that kinda sucked…’ He groaned internally as he finally slid to a stop, struggling to rise back up and take a knee, even as the combination of his divine nature and the old Curse of Zeus began knitting his thoroughly damaged insides back together. ’Probably should try to avoid any more of those…’

Casting an appraising glance back towards his… deceptively dainty cousin, he somehow found the strength to produce a sound that was honestly trying to be a chuckle, but came out more of a gargle as he spat more glowing onto the floor.

”Well, you’ve clearly been eating your wheaties.” He finally managed with his usual, dry humour as he steadied himself on his hammer ”Ya been hitting the gym recently or what?”

Eris stared down at him with a slight smile.

“If by ‘the gym’, you mean Tartarus, then yes,” she replied. “In fact, I managed to hit it so hard that I dislodged a spark of the Godwave from it.”

Lowering her hand, she rubbed her stomach. “Now it’s in here, granting me power beyond anything you could ever imagine.”

A moment of silence followed that statement, as Prometheus just stared at his cousin in incredulous silence, clearly trying to wrap his head around that one.

”You… ate a piece of the Godwave?” he finally asked, with a tone that strongly suggested that that was perhaps one of the most ludicrous things he’d ever heard in his immortal life. ”...Are you stupid?”

Eris tilted her head in confusion at his remark.

“And whatever is the problem with that? I’ve effectively become a primordial!” She spread her arms, grinning broadly. “The equal of the oldest beings in the universe. I fail to see any error in obtaining such a magnificent power.”

Leaning slightly more on his hammer and cocking his brow, Prometheus didn’t relent.

”You’ve spent millennia living in a massive massive golden palace atop of a massive magic mountain surrounded by the most egotistical and prideful beings that ever existed. And not one of them ever tried it.” The Firebringer explained, almost as though he found himself in the awkward position of having to explain that water is wet. ”Furthermore, in order to actually get it, you had to go to a place where both Cronus, ego personified, and my other brother, the literal God of Arrogance have been left stewing in their ravenous hatred for the rest of the universe since before you were born... and not one of them tried it either.”

Tilting his head slightly, he concluded;

”...You didn’t think there might be a reason for that?”

Eris paused at this, cupping her chin in thought.

A few moments passed between them, the goddess ultimately smiling and offering Prometheus a nonchalant shrug of her shoulders. “I imagine they had their reasons… but then, their goals were completely different from my own.”

“I’m not interested in ruling Gaia,” she said, drifting towards the ground. “I’m not even truly interested in ruling Olympus -- it’s just the most effective means to meet my ends. After I defeat you, I’ll allow Cronus to purge Gaia of humanity, so that he can build his new ‘Golden Age’...”

Her lips twisted into a malicious grin as her feet touched the golden floor. “Naturally, he’ll then seek to betray me… he cannot accept any ruler but himself, after all. Even if he somehow doesn’t, I’ll force him to. I’ll unleash devastation on his pathetic little paradise in a war that will last an Age.”

“An Age of Discord.”

Resting her face against her hand, she released a delighted sigh. “It’s all I’ve ever dreamed of, you know? And once I’ve extracted every ounce of suffering that I possibly can from Gaia, I’ll move on to some other world, and start the whole thing over again!”

Prometheus maintained an oddly stoic silence throughout the God of Discord’s monologue, letting her talk unimpeded as the Curse of Zeus finished repairing the damage done by her colossal kick to his gut, the grip on his weapon tightening steadily with every insane, genocidal word that came out of her perfect little mouth.

”...You are a real piece of work, y’know that, Squirt?” He finally stated, voice even, calm and for the first time, lacking any trace of his customary wit. ”I’m gonna go have a talk with your parents, why don’t you take a seat.”

And it was with those words that Atlas, invulnerable, unimpeded by the crack to his chin earlier and quietly waiting for his chance to do so while the Goddess of Discord prattled on, abruptly ripped Zeus’ throne out of the floor and whipped it at Eris’ head in one motion.

The throne slammed into her skull, the metallic chair bending against her form. Reaching up, she pried the now U-shaped seat of the God-King from her body, a brow arched. “Now, I find it hard to believe that you expected that to work. What are you up to?”

”Wait for it…” Prometheus simply stated as the force of gravity slid open a pair of hidden compartments on the arms of the throne, where Zeus, being a creature of absolute dogmatic habit, kept his goodies.

Like his emergency stash of hardened lightning, the likes of which he had used prolifically throughout the Titanomachy, which came tumbling down toward the floor made of highly conductive metal.

Time seemed to slow at that moment.

Atlas leapt off the floor.

Prometheus vanished in another burst of flame.

And each and every one of those crystalised warheads of pure electricity shattered as they hit the floor, engulfing the room in a blinding flash of light and coating every golden inch of it with enough energy to power the Eastern half of North America for a good century or two.

Gold had been replaced with white hot electrical energy, enough to begin melting the ancient throne room that had stood for so many thousands of years and had overseen the entirety of human civilization. Far from mere gold, it had been enchanted by Zeus himself to be nearly indestructible. It did, however, still have limits.

After what seemed like a solid minute of divine electrical discharge, the blinding light dimmed enough for them to once again see Eris. Her feet had sank into the now liquid gold, which came up to her ankles. Her conductive golden armor had likewise melted, and her hair was now smouldering slightly.

”So...” The Firebringer inquired as he burst back into existence above the smoked Goddess, unable to hide his shit-eating grin. "...Still bored?"

Her eyebrow twighted ever so slightly as she ripped the ruined armor of Zeus from her body and threw it aside. “That...hurt, just a little.”

Her eyes shot up to where Prometheus had reappeared. Her eyes had become abyssal pits of hate, her lips twisting into a sneer. She began to slowly raise her hand towards him.

“But this is going to hurt a lot.”

Heroes Reborn - A DCAU Roleplay (Always open!)

December 25th, 0122 Hours
Mount Olympus

The waves of Myrmidons hadn’t ceased once they had cleared the stairs. More had soon arrived, floods of the mindless creatures all raining arcane-fueled firepower down at them. Even after clearing those, they had barely been given a moment’s rest. Cyclopes had soon arrived, carrying with them the same magitech as the ant-men.

These were no mindless brutes, however, and used their superior strength to wield a much larger, much more powerful arsenal of weaponry.

“Man is a blight!” one roared, unleashed a small storm of arcane missiles that detonated on impact in an orchid ball of fire, the force behind the explosion dwarfing any conventional human weaponry by a great deal.

“Gaia must be purged!” Another declared, firing what Karen could only describe as a magitech autocannon from above his hip.

She was on the defensive, once again unsure how to fight these clearly sapient creatures with her unfamiliar powers. She had been clipped a couple of times, and it had hurt...she wasn’t nearly as invulnerable as was normal for her.

’Well, that’s not good.’ Ted deadpanned internally at the sight of the new and improved welcoming committee and their new toys. ’Couldn’t just come at us, screaming, with clubs and axes like the good ol’ days, could ya?’

Yes, even in his own mind, Ted somehow found a way to make light of their current predicament... but that didn’t mean they weren’t in trouble.

...Well, not him and Laz, mind you. They were Titans, not exactly the easiest things in the universe to kill, never mind make stay dead... Karen, however, was a still very much a squishy little mortal underneath all that magic armour and was slightly more prone to becoming hamburger meat under concentrated fire.

Which was kind of a bad thing, considering that pretty well all of them had just decided to level their shiny toys at her.

The sight brought him pause for a moment, before a low growl escaped his throat and the flesh on his arms returned to their glowing ember state he’d shown on the stairs earlier.

”Charon’s Jokes, this was a lot easier back when I just fried the bad guys and went home...” He grumbled under his breath before launching himself between the girl wearing his gear and the One-eyed Monsters and their big guns. Calling out to her in his usual casually grumpy tone ”Okay, Kid. Listen up.”

Rushing forward and ducking under a barrage of missiles, the scarred old man bore right down on his first victim, getting right into melee range and reeling his fist back… before just anti-climatically tapping the magic weapon with his knuckles and skidding between the giant’s legs before he could swing at him.

”They’re holding big metal guns and you control fire and heat.”

It took a few long, comical seconds of confused silence for the Cyclops to register what just happened and why. Before it began screaming in pain and juggling it’s red-hot weapon around like some sort of cartoon character, before throwing it off in a panic and in the process smacking his brother in the face with the damned thing, who also began to scream.

”They’re also awkward, clumsy and prone to doing dumb shit when they panic. Think you can work with that?”

Karen honestly felt rather dumb for not thinking of it at first. She was used to being a lot more quick-witted than this while fighting...was it because she didn’t have the Intellect of Mnemosyne right now?

”R-right! Thanks,” she called back, now having a moment breath thanks to the Cyclopes being distracted by his attack.

Taking a page from the one who had given her this power, she leveled her palms at the sizable weaponry carried by their opponents. Blue flames burst from her hands to engulf them, and sure enough the Cyclopes carrying them began howling in pain and throwing them aside. Not that they would’ve been of any use: her mystical flames had partially melted them almost on contact.

The three of them had by this point ascended through multiple levels of the great golden city, powering their way through endless scores of every sort of mythological creature: cyclops, centaurs, harpies, minotaurs, even a kraken that guarded the lake that sat just below the palace of Zeus.

Karen was, in all honesty, beginning to feel exhausted, beads of sweat trailing down to her brows. Her stamina had certainly been enhanced by the armor Ted had given her, but it wasn’t limitless. While she wouldn’t be giving up, there was little doubt in her mind that her usefulness as a fighter would soon reach its end.

The battle to breach the palace and then the throne room was a whole new level of brutal. Tight corridors, close quarters combat, and the most elite warriors they had yet to face. Most terrifyingly, Gorgons now joined the ranks of the creatures they now faced, a fact that had nearly resulted in her death via petrification.

”Nngh…” Karen averted her gaze from the snake women before, an action that was immediately exploited by a towering minotaur. Slamming its oversized axe into his torso, it bit into her armor and knocked the breath from her lungs. Flying back into the golden wall of the staircase they were fighting on, her impact left a heavy indention as she fell back to the ground.

”Shit.” Ted hissed, wincing slightly as Karen slammed into the wall behind him- That didn’t look fun ”...Laz?”

”I got this.” The older Titan snarled, eying the reflections of the Gorgons on the polished gold of the wall and bringing has hands back and then forward in another of his signature sonic claps, made all the more effective by the tight spaces of the stairwell. ”Go check on yer kid.”

If the apron-clad Titan was expecting the same brand of grumpy retort for that statement he’d been receiving from his brother since they arrived here, he never got it; as Ted wordless closed the distance to Karen’s still stunned frame, gripping her shoulder and easing her into a sitting position.

”How ya holding up, Kiddo?” The scarred deity asked, a note of concern in his voice… before he looked away for a moment to deliver a thundering jab straight to the dangly bits of a Minotaur who’d been sneaking it’s way up the stairs behind them, axe at the ready with all of his Titanic strength, sending it half wheezing, half screaming and fully airborne back the way it came ”Still with us?”

Karen was dazed, her head ringing after the impact with the wall. Still, she was just able to make out the sound of Ted’s voice, giving him an ambiguous groan. Forcing her eyes open, she slowly staggered to her feet - though not without using the old man for support. They couldn’t be far from the throne room now. The big guy’s thunderclap had also cleared the stairs before them for the most part, too.

Placing a hand to the wall as they ascended the remaining steps, it took only a few minutes of climbing before they finally stood before a pair of large double doors. Before any of them could even think of knocking them down, they began to smoothly slide open.

Before them now was the resplendent throne room of the King of Olympus, every bit as opulent and brilliant as the city it ruled over. But it was no King that sat upon its throne.

“My, my,” the dark haired woman on the throne exclaimed, her black wings fluttering. She wore a golden diadem and a suit of flawlessly crafted armor of the same color. “If it isn’t the Firebringer and the Skybearer, and the little Wizard as well. I must confess, I never considered that not one, but two of the Titans would decide to stand against their brethren for the sake of the Gods who so abused them. Just what, exactly, are you thinking?”

That gave Ted pause, a sharp sound escaping the scarred man’s lips with the force and disdain of the ugliest curse imaginable;

”Eris.”

Of all the deities and divine lunatics who could’ve been sitting on that throne causing all this madness, it just had to be her.

Giving the room a quick once-over for any sign of her husband and clenching and unclenching his fist once in thought, the now-identified ‘Firebringer’ stepped forward, sparing his brother a quick glance as he did so.

”What I’m thinking? Frankly, I’m not entirely sure whether I should be surprised or disappointed.” He began, his voice calm, even as he studied the Goddess of Discord on her stolen throne. ”You honestly thought I’d just sit on my hands while you wipe out the entire human race? C’mon Eri, you know who I am. And you know better than that…”

Sticking his hands in the pockets of his flannel jacket, the Titan spared one more glance around the room.

”So… where’s the pretty boy?”

“Doing something even he should be incapable of failing at,” Eris replied, resting her face on her knuckles. “He’s guarding the very much incapacitated forms of the old Pantheon. They’re just over there, through the doors.”

She lazily gestured to her left, at the large chamber in the distance, the golden doors shut tightly.

“Your little friend there,” she glanced to Karen, “is welcome to try and free them...not that she would stand a chance against my husband as she is, pathetic though he may be.”

Her black lips then curled slightly into a smile. “As for you two, however...you’re both going to stay right here with me. We have a lot of catching up to do...”

Heroes Reborn - A DCAU Roleplay (Always open!)

December 25th, 0049 Hours
Mount Olympus

”IT’S A STRAAAAANGE TIME INDEED WHEN MY ESTRANGED LEEEETLE BROTHER CALLS ME, THE CREAM OF THE TITANIC CROP, TO OLYMPUS!”

A strained, almost pained sound escaped Ted’s throat as he withered slightly his rhinestone-clad brother’s flamboyant… hamming.

”Laz…”

”...AND THEN HE SHOWS UP WITH A LITTLE GIRL WEARING HIS COLOURS, LIKE THEY’RE ON SOME KINDA BASEBALL TEAM.” The giant a of a man continued unabated, much to the dismay of any eardrum present ”IT RAISES SOME… QUESTIONS...”

”Laz.” The shorter man began again, a hint irritation starting to snake his way into his voice, but stopped when he was cut off again by more of his brother’s… loud… flexing...

”MAKES THE CREAM OF THE CROP ASK WHAT YOU’VE BEEN UP TO THESE PAST FE-”

”Laz, wrestling’s fake. Macho Man’s dead and you do a terrible impression of him.” The more modestly-dressed Titan finally snapped, slapping the back of his hand against the palm of his other as he did so ”Now can you cut the shit? We kinda got a world to save here.”

For a moment, the apparently older Titan just stood there in silence and pouted. Before finally snapping his fingers and disappearing in a flash of light (and no small amount of grumbling) and being replaced by a… slightly overweight version of the same man in slacks, a white dress-shirt and a Walmart apron.

”Grampa’s balls; Thousands of years later and you’re still a hardass.”

”Don’t bring Grampa’s Balls into it. That’s a can o’ worms I’d rather not open in front of the kid.”

Karen had watched all of this in complete silence, her face doing its level best to remain neutral throughout the entire altercation between the two brothers. This…wasn’t exactly how she had expected a pair of ancient Gods to behave. If she wasn’t currently wearing physical proof of one’s power, she would even question if they were the real deal.

Pretending she had heard nothing of testicles, she turned her attention to the world they had just entered. They were standing on a vast, circular platform that was at the base of a equally monumental set of stairs leading to what could only be described as a city of pure, radiant gold.

She had never felt so tiny and insignificant before...and perhaps that was the entire point.

”So...whoever is behind this is in that city? I guess we have a lot stairs to climb,” she noted, remembering that she couldn’t fly like this.

Turning to Karen and following her eyes up the vast staircase towards the familiar, golden city there was a moment of pause in Ted’s mind as he actually caught sight of Olympus for the first time in… well, a long time. As familiar as it seemed, something was clearly off; The gentle, comforting and warm winds he remembered about this place were curiously absent and what used to be a vast blanket of the cosmos covering the night’s sky had seemingly been… removed.

There also used to be a vast, shining lake here. Floating in the ether and surrounding this platform, a work of Poseidon’s whimsy. He remembered taking a young Athena down here to fish sometimes…

And carrying her back up those stairs on his back when she inevitably fell asleep after prying him endlessly for old war stories her dad never told her instead of actually trying to catch a fish.

The ancient abruptly crushed that train of thought before it could pick up momentum. He didn’t have time to reminisce.

”It’s probably for the best we don’t rush anyway.” Ted stated coldly, stepping towards the stairs with a bit more drive than he’d shown previously ”Whoever’s up there, you can bet they know we’re here now and’ve got a few surprises in store for us.”

Casting a glance over his shoulder towards the armoured blond, he did manage a small grin, despite his current state of mind.

”Ya ready, Kiddo?”

Karen nodded once in response, and drew a deep breath. She had done a great many things this past year, but assaulting the realm of the Gods surely topped any of them by a large margin. As she gazed up at the almost endless set of stairs before them, she could already see the golden steps in the distance becoming darker, a legion of...something approaching them.

Placing one foot forward, she started on her journey to ascend to the throne of Olympus and topple whomever was sitting upon it. Step after step they drew closer to the onslaught approaching them, her hands flexing gently at her side.

These were unfamiliar to her, flames instead of lightning. She wasn’t as strong, wasn’t as durable, wasn’t as fast… and she couldn’t fly. Still, she felt confident that she could probably handle the oncoming tide of--were those ants? Right then, ants. She could deal with them, since she had her two newest allies fighting beside her now. In any case, she didn’t really have a choice: if she failed here, then it would spell the end of the world.

This was her life now.

”Uh-oh,” Karen gasped, noting the flash or orchid up ahead. Instinctively leaping into the air, she narrowly avoided countless streams of raw arcane energy that scorched the otherwise sweet-smelling air around her.

Whatever these creatures were, they weren’t swinging around swords and axes.

”Your kid’s got good instincts” The older Titan mused, absolutely casual even in the face of the vast horde of Myrmidons before them and the immense volley of arcane firepower screaming through the air towards where they stood.

”Not my kid, Laz.” Ted replied calmly as he removed a cigar from his jacket pocket and lit it off a small flame that spouted from his thumb. Eliciting an indignant snort from his brother.

”Riiiiiight…” He replied with all the sarcasm his massive frame could muster as he raised his hands before him ”Let’s be honest here, Brother, they’re all your kids.”

And without another word, the elder Titan slammed his hands together with colossal force, creating a thunderous shockwave that shot forward toward the rain of arcane death and ignited the whole volley in a massive explosion before it could reach it’s intended target. The younger taking this opportunity to take a long drag of his cigar before responding the Ant-Men’s little welcoming gift by exhaling a massive column of flame that raced forward, seemingly screaming with the sound it made as it set the very air around it alight and quickly bore down upon Myrmidons without even an iota of mercy or pity.

In retrospect, the Myrmidons probably weren’t expecting to be fighting anything other than people in tights and capes today. And they’d be paying for that oversight with interest.

Karen winced, watching him burn the Myrmidons to ash without a second thought. It made her quite hesitant to use her new powers, for one thing. While she had managed to gain a fairly solid grasp on how much power to put behind her magic, she had never thought to employ fire against any of her foes.

How did one hold back with fire, exactly?

Still, they seemed to be handling things pretty well as it was, and so she merely busied herself with avoiding the return fire from any surviving ant-men. Hopefully, they would make it to the throne room in relatively short order, so they could stop all of this bloodshed.

”KAREN!” Ted snapped, his eyes locked onto the girl and reading the wealth of expressions that played across her face, even as he backhanded a trio of Antmen off the staircase and hurtling into the abyss below (on fire, of course) ”They’re automatons! Meat-robots! You don’t have to hold back!”

Karen landed on the stairs after dodging the latest round of fire from the creatures, her eyes darting to the titan in surprise. ”Oh, r-really?”

She...supposed that made some sense, given that they were ants and all, but she hadn’t wanted to assume anything based on appearances alone. Still, that made things much easier. She could probably stand to experiment with her new powers before things really became difficult.

Extending her hands outwards to the seemingly endless waves, she drew upon the impossibly rich laylines flowing through Olympus, before expelling that power through her hands in the form of searing, blue flames. While not as overwhelmingly powerful as Ted’s had been, they nevertheless managed to consume their fair share of ant-men.

”Holy sauceballs,” Karen muttered in amazement, glancing down at her hands.

Even though she was used to having even more power than this, it still felt really...well, different. She wasn’t Lady Arcana right now. She was just Karen Hernandez, and this was far more power than her very human body had ever felt coursing through it.

”’Atta girl!” Ted shouted as Karen scythed away a good number of their foes with her own blue flames, something akin to pride making it’s way across his features in the form of a grin, before he turned and erased another advancing column of their insectoid attackers with a quick wave of his arm and another gout of flame.

”Right, definitely not your kid.” Laz managed to muse just loud enough for his brother to hear as he shot past him to take advantage of the window he’d opened the Myrmidon lines to charge into the thick of them, sliding on his knees (lubricated along the way with goopy bits of Ant-men) and making another colossal clap upward, sending another platoon skyward.

”Shut up, Laz.” Came the fire-god’s expected reply just before he shot his hand upward and ignited the now airborne Bug-Gunners in another massive fireball. To which he was met with more snickering from his bearded brother.

”When was the last time we got together like this, anyhow?” Laz finally inquired, deciding to give his brother a rest from all the teasing as he grabbed two of his attackers by the throat and spinning like a top, sending their fellows flying off the staircase, some of them in a semi-liquid state.

”I wanna say… Egypt? With those ‘Sea Peoples’ or whatever they were called?” Ted replied unsuredly, hopping over the gap his brother had made in a single bound and firing another column of flame forward as he landed.

”Oh, yeah! the Atlantean death-cult with the doomsday weapon!” Laz laughed a little as he charged passed his brother, arms outstretched at his sides and knocking scores of them down like messy bowling pins ”Grampa’s Balls, that was a while ago.”

”What’d I tell ya about Grampa’s balls?”

”Ha!”

Shaking his head a bit at that, and almost, in some people’s eyes, looking like he might be enjoying having his brother around in spite of all his grumbling, Ted took a minute to stop and assess the situation. There was… a lot of these things. And if their Terrific Trio kept the leisurely pace they were going through this horde, Karen’d be dead of starvation and her bones turned to dust by the time they got to the top.

Honestly, he’d been holding quite a bit through this whole picnic, if only because he didn’t want to give any more clues about his identity to whoever was sitting up in Olympus right now… buuuuut, the time for subtlety had passed them somewhere around the time this encounter took long enough for the topics of Atlantean Death-Cults and Grampa’s Balls to come up again.

Letting out a sharp exhale, the scarred Titan stepped forward, in front of Karen and his brother as he rolled up his sleeves.

”Hey, Kid. Wanna see something cool?” He asked with a glance back towards the Usually-Wizard, the olive skin on his arms breaking and flaking away, revealing blackened flesh broken by cracks and veins of glowing orange.

Karen blinked at him in surprise for a moment, but quickly offered him a beaming grin. ”Always!”

Clicking his tongue in approval at her enthusiasm, Ted brought his now ember-like arms together… before suddenly snapping them apart as they suddenly burst into white, wreathing flame.

If the heat of his fire had made the air around it scream as it burned before, now it was absolutely shrieking.

Without any further preamble, snappy one-liners or cutting remarks, the paradoxically short Titan shot his arms forward, unleashing a column of flame that dwarfed all others before it… and didn’t stop, snaking it’s way up the vast golden staircase before them and revealing just how many more Ant-men had been waiting for them, hidden by the lack of light from the empty night sky, even as it quickly consumed them as it made it’s way all the way to the top where it abruptly slammed into some distant structure in the Home of the Gods.

To put it very simply, the way was now clear.

But if there’d been any doubt by those inside about who was knocking at the door, well, it had been thoroughly evaporated now.

Calmly blowing the residual steam off his ember-like arms, before his “normal” tanned flesh grew back over them, Ted cast a glance back towards his teammates.

”So… shall we?”

If he was hoping for an astonished reaction on Karen’s part, then he would get it. For what seemed like an entire minute, she simply stared at the now sterilized pathway ahead of them in blank amazement. Finally, she was able to find her voice.

”...That was brilliant!” She exclaimed, staring up at Ted with an open grin. ”I’ll bet you can handle whoever is behind this all on your own at this rate!”

”C’mon Kid, don’t make an old man blush.” Ted snorted as he started forward again ”’Sides, whatever’s up there, it dethroned an entire Pantheon. This is not going to be fun. ”

Justice League Unlimited vol. 2

When people took a gander at the outside of the Metro Tower, home of the Justice League, in all of it's strikingly monolithic, shiningly futuristic architecture typical of Metropolis, most assumed it was... kinda boring inside. And to their credit, they were mostly right; designed to be practical, with fortified white and grey walls interrupted only by the occasional window, heavy steel door, a glowing monitor screen or in some cases, a potted plant placed by some absolute madman who clearly didn't get the memo about the mandatory monotony, the place, though absolutely bristling with the most advanced technology and some of the mightiest beings on the face of the planet could be mind-numbingly dull at times.

One of the few exceptions to this rule, was the Rec. Room. Where one could actually get a glimpse at what a bunch of heroes living under the same roof actually looked like, away from the media and left to their own devices.

For one thing, the hard, reinforced tiles of the tower floors were covered up by a plush black carpet and the walls actually had some paint on them- a healthy deep blue parted by a sci-fi-ish, thick horizontal black stripe running through the middle and decorated by hung pictures and posters of leaguers and memories both recent and distant, from the Founding Five and the JSA to a candid picture of that time Question and Scarab got hammered playing pool down in Mexico. A long shelf beneath the arranged pictures of the League's founders held a few momentos, more personal or amusing than actual victory trophies, including but not limited to Superman's old signed Babe Ruth baseball card, Jay Garrick's winged helmet and a small, hand-made stuffed Batman Bruce was handed two decades ago by a cheeky little girl in Bucharest.

From the door, a huge, semi-circular and otherworldly comfortable couch and a massive flat-screen took up most of the right half of the room, with the walk there occupied by billiard, foosball, table-hockey and air hockey tables and a jukebox, pinball machine, Donkey Kong arcade machine and a dartboard with a picture Booster's most recent ex taped to the centre (that he'd apparently missed with every dart) snugged up against the walls. To the left, there sat a large, round mahogany table and chairs, all littered with small carvings and grafitti from Leaguers past and present, and the kitchen, semi-seperated by wall broken by a doorless entryway and a bar-counter and currently containing The Champion, humming along to the tunes spilling forth from the jukebox while cooking up some grub for the League's usual weekend lunch.

In...

Justice League Unlimited Vol.II

Episode I: The Return of Solara

"C'mon Champy. It isn't nice to keep a girl waiting. When will the food be ready?" Duncan chuckled a bit at his girlfriend's hungry whining, though he still didn't turn away from the deep-fryers. "Can't I sneak away a few now? You know what happens when you don't feed an alligator. It comes biting at the first thing it sees."

Hearing her hop the counter and feeling her chin hovering just over his shoulder, The Lion of Nova Scotia took the opportunity to reach back and gently run his hand through her hair and pull her in for a quick for a quick little peck on the forehead before he set himself back to his task.

"Settle down, Jess, We're almost done." He explained as he reached forward and turned the fryers off, before raising and shaking out the racks and scooping a healthy helping of home-cut fries into a line of baskets lined with newspaper, repeating the process with the beer-battered fish immediately afterward and wedging a slice of lemon and a wee cup of tartar sauce securely into the corner of each basket where they could be used if needed "Good things come to those who wait, after all."

Truth be told, fish and chips wasn't exactly the fanciest meal on the planet. Certainly not something you'd think about serving to the Goddamn Justice League. But hell, it was easy- Especially when your dad is a Fisherman who routinely unloads a ridiculous amount of fresh fish on you every time his boat comes back to port and you have a cousin who farms potatoes.

It also gave him time to cook up some of his mother's recipe Oreo Cream Pie, which now sat cooling on the stove top, despite how often he'd had to smack J'onn with a ladle to keep it there.

"Alright ladies and gents, grubs up!" Duncan finally announced, placing the baskets down on the counter for the others to take, keeping one for himself and taking the pie with him to the table where he could keep an eye on it and ensure it was safe from the greedy green mitts of the Martian Manhunter "Just give it a bit ta cool down, it's still hot."

Reaching to the center of the table and opening up the hidden hatch concealing the mini-fridge built into it's centre column, the Champion fished himself out a bottle of coke and finally sat down in his usual spot, identified by where he'd left his coat hanging before he'd started cooking, calmly popping off the cap of his glass bottle of sugar, bad things and good feelings with his thumb as he did so.

"Let's eat."

Justice League Unlimited vol. 2

The Lion of Nova Scotia Returns

Name: Duncan Reid MacAodhan
Alias: The Champion (AKA: The Hero of Halifax, The Lion of Nova Scotia and, due to an incident involving a certain psychopathic time-traveler and a lack of pants, The Canuck Cutie)
Age: 24
Personality: Clever, Frank, Hard-nosed, Genre-Savvy, Big-hearted (even if he's hilariously ignorant of it)
Archetype: Metahuman
Powers:
Immense Physical Prowess- Duncan is, for lack of a better way of putting it, really goddamn strong... and fast... and pretty tough to boot, if the fact that he went toe-to-toe with freaking Metallo (who, in case we've all forgotten, is a super-powered murder-bot powered by magic space rocks strong enough to make Superman bleed) and was actually able to come out on top despite being absolutely rag-dolled across the ground and through several buildings by an opponent who actually knew what he was doing is any indication.

All that being said, it should be noted that though his metahuman genes put him well into the range of Kryptonian physical ability, Duncan... was a chainsmoking, borderline alcoholic who has never worked out or trained a single day in his entire goddamn life before he started doing the hero thing and as a result, was about as out of shape and weak as he could possibly be. After his time playing hero in Halifax and working with the league, however, he has become far more powerful. Raising questions as to what the limit to his abilities may be.

Weaknesses:
While Duncan possesses Kryptonian levels of physical ability, he is still very much human; He can't fly, he still needs to breathe, possesses no form of crazy eye-lasers or freezing breath and can't survive solely off sunlight. In fact, for simplicity's sake, here's a list of the kinds of things that can hurt and/or kill him just like any other guy.
-Drowning.
-Poison Gas.
-Regular poison.
-Electrocution.
-Starvation.
-Asphyxiation.
-Dehydration.
-Bleeding out.
-Bleeding internally.
-Food poisoning.
-Heart-failure.
-Liver-failure.
-Kidney-failure.
-Cancer.
-Hypothermia.
-Being thrown into the sun.
-Being thrown into space in general.
-Tamaranean Cooking.

Appearance:


To read what Duncan is physically capable of, you might picture some sort of hulking mountain of a man with bulging muscles and a jawline chiseled from granite... to actually meet the man however, you'd be disappointed and maybe a little confused- MacAodhan is not a large man. In fact, compared to most in the League he is downright tiny, standing at only 5'6" on a good day and lacking the bulging, musclebound physique of proper superheroes in favour of a lean, though dense physique closer to that of an Olympic swimmer if anything, though his broad shoulders and calloused hands make a fairly decent indicator of his blue-collar background, to which he also owes the habit of shaving his brown hair into a buzzcut, to deal with the heat in his workplace.

Though in the beginning of his sordid, surreal superhero career he had nothing more than a denim jacket, a ballcap and a rag tied over his face to hide his identity, he has since acquired an actual costume of his own; a sort of coming-of-age gift from the League, who knew the young man wasn't entirely keen on the whole concept of tights, capes and outer-underpants. With this in mind, they found a healthy balance; boots and a short-sleeved suit made of a heavy-duty version of the material Superman used for his own attire to stand up to the fact that, lacking flight, Duncan does a lot more skidding and smashing into things than the Big Blue Boyscout did, colored black and gold and bearing the Lion-Rampant of Scotland and Nova Scotia on his chest in red. Topping this off, in lieu of a cape, the Champion instead wears a brown jacket made of the same material (just, y'know... less spandexy) for much the same reason, with a patch of the arms of his home province sewn onto the back. He also wears a pair of black gloves, an eye-mask and, occasionally, a ballcap of some pub or sports team.

The end result? Though The Lion no longer looks like just some random guy in a Canadian Tuxedo who punches murderous aliens, robots and alien robots in the face on the daily, he is still instantly recognizable as the Hero of Halifax, all grown up but still tethered to his more modest origins.

Character Evolution: A buddy-cop routine with another hero would be nice. But aside from that, I'd be happy to just go with the flow.

Hilarious misadventures, however, are still mandatory.

Altered History: In this timeline, Superman never showed up in Halifax to help Duncan with Metallo... or, indeed, any of the deluge of villains that followed soon after until he finally managed to get himself caught up in World-Threatening levels of shit. He's also known Wildcat since he was a boy as "Uncle Ted", one of his Grampa's old wartime buddies from the States, though he had no idea about his alter-ego until he started teaching him how not to suck at this whole hero thing and help him out in Halifax. The end result? he's far less the hapless Rookie he was in volume one.

Recommended Background Leaguer: Cyborg

A Not-So-Brief Bio

Despite what one might might assume when encountering literally anyone even remotely associated with superpowers and tights, Duncan's tale is... rather mundane. Born in Halifax, Nova Scotia with a Fisherman for a father and a mother who ran a local diner, the boy in question up grew extraordinarily normally; playing videogames, staying at his grandparents' when his mom was busy at the shop and his dad was out at sea and helping his granddad out in the garage fixing cars and the occasional boat.

And then one day when he was fifteen, he got hit by a truck.

After about a good ten seconds of screaming and another thirty spent wondering why he wasn't dead, he extricated himself from the big-rig's engine-block that had wrapped around both him and the streetlight he'd been leaning against only to find that not only was he not dead, he was perfectly intact. All things considered, that's some pretty heavy shit to lay on a fifteen year old. So it's not all that surprising that when the (very) drunk trucker half staggered, half fell out of his truck at the sight of him, and sirens began echoing in the distance, the kid ran the hell out of there. A few days of trial, error and a lot of Wikipedia later, and the boy had a pretty good idea what all that was about: He was a Metahuman, a one-in-a-million carrier of a superhuman gene that may or may not activate under extreme stress (Like, for instance, getting hit by a truck while waiting for the bus). Frankly, it sounded a lot like a bunch of pseudo-science crap you'd find in an old comic book, but lacking any other explanation for his sudden... talents... it was one he'd have to accept.

Now, usually, when someone finds out they've got crazy superpowers, things usually go in one of two predictable ways; one, they become a spandex-clad boy-scout that dedicates every moment of every day to having the brightest smile, rescuing cats from trees and giving lectures about the dangers of "The Reefer" and sex before marriage or two; going full ham, burning orphanages, kicking puppies and generally being real goddamn edgy just for the sake of it. Duncan to his credit, chose the rarely considered, often forgotten third option-

"Yeah... No. Fuck that."

And so, despite the call to adventure literally screaming directly into his ears, Duncan carried on his life as normal; Growing up as normally as he possibly could- getting average grades, shoveling his grandparents' driveway in the wintertime, trying and failing several times at that whole romance thing and working through his apprenticeship as a diesel mechanic at the local shipyard after highschool.

Unfortunately for him, as the old trope goes, 'The Call Knows Where you Live'.

And one day while Duncan was just wrapping up his night-shift shortly after his twenty-first birthday, Metallo came bursting out of one of the shipping containers in the yard, raiding a docked cargo ship for... something and then going on a rampage with speed and ferocity never shown on the news before. Despite having reservations about the whole 'Hero' thing, the one guy in town with the ability to intervene couldn't exactly sit idly by while a super-powered terminator powered by glowing space-rocks butchered his coworkers and leveled his town. So, throwing on a respirator to hide his face, the young man nutted up and went after the deranged cyborg... or, more accurately, spent the next hour on the receiving of a brutal beatdown at the hands of someone that was at least as strong, as fast and much, much more experienced than he was at the time that was also incapable of feeling pain or fatigue, all to buy time for people to get away and call for someone who actually knew what the hell they were doing.

But that help never came.

And although being beaten within an inch of his life in the most literal sense imaginable... the Rookie Hero endured. Rising to his feet over and over again in the face of blows that could sunder mountains until, finally he managed to somehow knock Metallo down hard enough that he didn't get back up.

He'd actually managed to save the day.

Unfortunately... he actually managed to save the day. And as anyone from Fawcett, Gotham or Metropolis could tell you, the minute a local hero does that, things rapidly go sideways in the worst possible way as every lowlife with a superpower takes it as a queue to come out of the woodwork; Within two weeks, a major drug cartel decided to use the disarray caused by the Metallo incident to try and force it's way into the largest Canadian port on the Atlantic, bringing with them the drug-fueled villain Snowflame and his new partner in crime Crackrock (equally named for her guitar-powered sonic attacks as well as... well... all the crack) to keep Halifax's mysterious new hero busy through their operations.

A month after the denim-clad hero without a name and the Halifax Regional Police discreetly (and awkwardly at first) worked together to shut that whole enterprise down, Duncan, still sore from his narrow victory at the hands of Metallo and the gongshow of dealing with the Cartel and their enforcers was more than a little unhappy when he found out his girlfriend at the time (the existence of which was an extreme rarity in itself; the boy'd never really learned how to do romance, what with knowing that a meaningful hug from him would kill most women) was actually Blackfire, a notorious space pirate from the planet Tamaran hiding out under the radar on a pre-spacetravel world... Particularly when her sister showed up to haul her back to their homeplanet to face trial and she quickly decided her only way out was to burn her and the entire goddamn city to the ground, starting with Duncan's apartment.

That was a rough time, even with the extraterrestrial help, but somehow the two managed to bring down the living, interstellar monument to Duncan's romantic failures before she could quite get around to blowing up the rest of the city. The two aliens vanishing in a burst of light soon after as the younger sister slapped something like handcuffs on her elder, hit a few buttons on her gauntlet activating a teleporter of some kind and enthusiastically waved to him with an uncannily bright grin before she went.

By this point, having dealt with a murderous robot, two cocaine-fueled superfreaks employed by a massive drug cartel his casually genocidal, apparently alien ex-girlfriend and having lost his place of work, his apartment and even his FREAKING CAR in the span of just over a month, Duncan was particularly unimpressed with all the unusual turns his life had taken and looked absolutely ragged staring numbly at what remained of his home on the still-abandoned street.

As he turned to leave, however, he came face to face with his "Uncle" Ted. An old wartime buddy of his Grandfather's from the States he'd known since he was a boy, who took one good look at him and calmly stated-

“Kid, you are not going to your Grandma's house looking like that; you'll give the poor woman a heartattack.”

Wincing at how easily he was recognized, Duncan barely started to ask how the man he hadn't seen since he wrote his driver's exam knew who he was while he was still wearing a mask but was abruptly told to shut up and follow.

Being led to a condo downtown, the boy was sat down in the kitchen, handed a beer and told just about everything.

Ted knew about Duncan's talents because Duncan's Granddad knew. How did his Granddad know? Because he was his Granddad, of course he did and after watching his lil' hooligan get his face kicked in by Metallo on the CBC, the first thing he did was call up his old buddy Ted and ask him to look out for him. And why would he do that?

Because Ted was Wildcat.

To his credit, Duncan was just too damn tired at this point to even be surprised about this revelation, which at this point was pretty much par for the course with how his month had been going. Though he did idly start to wonder if the normal life he thought he'd lost when Metallo showed up had ever even existed in the first place, as he finished his beer and went to sleep on Ted's couch.

Under the guidance of Freaking Wildcat from that point on, the increasingly less rookie hero's life was... well, still pretty damned crazy, but at least it had some semblance of order to it and was a lot less of him just hammering his head against a metaphorical brick wall. Throughout the rest of the year Duncan and Ted went on to, amongst other things, fight off Adonis and his bouncing mechanical pecs, defend a small group of Atlantean refugees looking to escape one of Black Manta's lieutenants and their merry band of murderous fish-men and even teamed up with Robotman to deal with Atomic Skull, who broke out of confinement on a Russian sub en route to Cuba and rammed the damned thing onto the shore. Through all of this he earned an almost folk-hero-like reputation in his country as stubborn and unyielding in a fight, but clearly not in it for the fame with how he acted and dodged the media like the plague and how frank, yet approachable he was with both the people he helped and the Police he often found himself working with.

Still not taking on an actual heroic alias or costume, he came to be seen by his city as... just some guy trying to help out... one of them. Not some paragon placed on a golden, unreachable pedestal above others but a man firmly grounded in his roots; approachable, reliable and most all human. And through all the names they began to call him, from "Hero of Halifax" to "Lion of Nova Scotia", one in particular began to gain traction-

"Champion."

A name he more than earned when, to put the cherry on his whole crazy year, Jack-Tar arrived advertising to anyone who'd listen about his delusions of reuniting the British Empire by force under his enlightened rule. He also brought with him his own immense psychic power, the "Red Coats", his band of murderous metahumans he recruited from across Britain's former territories in Oceania, India, Africa and the Caribbean as well as, and this is important, the ship he stole from Duncan's ex hovering in orbit with all of it's guns pointed down.

Suffice to say, this was not a man who was used to hearing the word "No". So when Duncan refused to join him (with a now famous "No thanks, I'm good."), things got pretty hectic pretty quickly and he, Wildcat and the whole damned city probably would've been wiped off the face of the Earth had not the unusual friendships in strange places "The Champion" had made over the past year not come to fruition. With the Atlantean soldier-turned-refugee "Ultramariner" jumping into the fray, a Tamaranean frigate commanded by his ex's sister jumping into orbit and, eventually, even Robotman arriving with freaking Superman at his back and a cheeky "Kept 'cha waitin', didn't I?" on his robotic voice. Together, the six managed to stop the lunatic Brit before he could quite get around to completely leveling the city and half the province with it, after that well...

The Tamaraneans headed home, but not before their Captain teleported down to the surface to give everyone involved what Superman would later tell him was the traditional greeting on her homeworld; an uncomfortably affectionate bone-shattering hug (which Cliff found absolutely hilarious).

The uncertain ("Uncertain" here meaning "The fuck do you do with a race of sea-dwellers whose King tried to wipe out humanity that one time?") status of the small Atlantean refugee community settled across the bay in neighbouring Dartmouth was greatly improved by Ultramariner's actions that day, and he settled down there in earnest and eventually became that city's local hero.

And Duncan? For his part, after a year of balls-to-the-wall crime, alien and robot fighting insanity, he finally came to terms with the idea that, yeah, he was probably a goddamn superhero now. Moving off of Ted's couch when he went back to Gotham, finding a cozy new place to live in a decommissioned lighthouse just outside of town and taking up the name everyone was calling him anyway to fight crime in a snazzy new outfit the League gave him after the whole Jack-Tar Affair.

A year after that and a few months, The Champion was brought into the League- Apparently at the posthumous request of Cliff himself.

And the rest is history.

...Weird, surreal and oftentimes downright crazy history.

Notes:

Sample Post:

"And if that little Leafer doesn't like it, he can go right back to Quebec or whereever the hell he came from!"

This proclamation was met by a chorus of cheers and clapping... as well as a long sigh.

This was the last thing Duncan wanted to hear five minutes out of the teleporter.

"Godfrey again?" the Champion groaned, walking into the monitor room with two big paper bags of food from his mum's diner in each hand before setting them down on the desk between his two coworkers. "Ya guys don't get tired of listening to this crap?"

"Call it a guilty pleasure." Atom replied dryly, his elbow propped up on the desk, cheek resting in his hand and his face locked somewhere between bored, bemused and bewildered "Should've been here when he was ripping into me. He get's a lot of mileage out of my ability to shrink."

"Indeed. His thoughts on 'Little Green Men' are as... amusing... as they are woefully inaccurate." J'onn added with a dismissive wave of his hand, all the while just barely hiding just how hungrily he was staring down at the goodies the bluenoser had brought with him back from home.

With a click of his tongue to show his disapproval, but no further comment, Duncan fished through the bags and began handing out the fruits of his mother's business; Two jumbo donairs, one with feta and no onions for Atom, one with extra sauce and diced jalapenos for himself and an order of fish and chips for the Martian Manhunter as well as a slice of his mother's Oreo-cream pie with those rainbow sprinkles she knew the off-worlder liked. Lastly he placed down a six-pack of glass-bottled coke to share between them, before sitting down himself and unwrapping his food, glancing up at he screen as he did so.

Monitor Duty was... well, it wasn't exciting, but it had it's merits; For one, it was nice to just kick back and not get punched in the face by a robot, alien or weird lion-person while at work for a change and there was something weirdly pleasant about having the tower pretty much to yourself while everyone else was either away on missions or at home and off-duty. Technically, it was supposed to be only two people per rotation, but J'onn had the day off and apparently didn't have anything better to do anyway so decided to join in on the fun. Like he did every time Duncan was on Monitor Duty and he had the day off.

For reasons that had nothing to do with free pie.

No siree.

Duncan mulled that last one over while chewing on a mouthful of donair; If he didn't know any better, he'd almost swear Kord scheduled his rotation so his mom's diner was always open when he was on duty...

"So, anything happen while I was out?" The Lion of Nova Scotia managed to get out through a mouthful of food.

"Well, remember your old buddy Adonis? Well, he- You mind?-" Atom started, but stopped as he held out his bottle of coke towards Duncan, who politely reached over and popped the cap off with his thumb "-Showed up in New York and tried to cop a feel on Barda."

Champion immediately choked on his food, his body unable to contain the primordial need to laugh that mental-image elicited even through the coughing, wheezing and J'onn slapping him on the back until he popped open another coke and washed it down.

"...Please... tell me you got that on video." He finally managed over one last cough.

To this, Ray just grinned and punched a few keys on his console, bringing up a new window over Godfrey's spray-tanned and screaming face on the third monitor.

"If I zoom in and slow it down, you can actually see the exact moment he realized he made a terrible mistake."

True to his word, the three were treated to the silent, almost sublimely slow footage of the mecha-clad creep's lecherous grin steadily melting into wide-eyed and open-mouthed horror as a clenched fist beautifully made it's way into the viewscreen and crumpled his big metal pseudo-chin like paper before hitting his real jaw and eliciting an explosion of teeth.

Immediately, the monitor room exploded in a fit of raucous laughter, with Champion doubled-over in his chair actively trying not to slap his knee and break anything with the concussive force that'd bring, Atom holding his cold coke against his head as he strained under the pressure of trying not to spew the mouthful of the stuff he had out his nose... even as he rewound the footage and played it again, even more slowly this time so Champ could see where Adonis had actually started to cry a little when he realized what was going to happen to him. Hell, even J'onn managed to snort a little through a mouthful of beer-battered fish.

"Who loves you, Baby?" Atom asked, slapping a hand down on Champ's shoulder as he replayed the footage again, this time zoomed out to catch the expressions of Barda and the rest of team.

Yeah... Monitor Duty wasn't exciting.

But it had it's merits.

Justice League Unlimited vol. 2

The Lion of Nova Scotia Returns

Name: Duncan Reid MacAodhan
Alias: The Champion (AKA: The Hero of Halifax, The Lion of Nova Scotia and, due to an incident involving a certain psychopathic time-traveler and a lack of pants, The Canuck Cutie)
Age: 24
Personality: Clever, Frank, Hard-nosed, Genre-Savvy, Big-hearted (even if he's hilariously ignorant of it)
Archetype: Metahuman
Powers:
Immense Physical Prowess- Duncan is, for lack of a better way of putting it, really goddamn strong... and fast... and pretty tough to boot, if the fact that he went toe-to-toe with freaking Metallo (who, in case we've all forgotten, is a super-powered murder-bot powered by magic space rocks strong enough to make Superman bleed) and was actually able to come out on top despite being absolutely rag-dolled across the ground and through several buildings by an opponent who actually knew what he was doing is any indication.

All that being said, it should be noted that though his metahuman genes put him well into the range of Kryptonian physical ability, Duncan... was a chainsmoking, borderline alcoholic who has never worked out or trained a single day in his entire goddamn life before he started doing the hero thing and as a result, was about as out of shape and weak as he could possibly be. After his time playing hero in Halifax and working with the league, however, he has become far more powerful. Raising questions as to what the limit to his abilities may be.

Weaknesses:
While Duncan possesses Kryptonian levels of physical ability, he is still very much human; He can't fly, he still needs to breathe, possesses no form of crazy eye-lasers or freezing breath and can't survive solely off sunlight. In fact, for simplicity's sake, here's a list of the kinds of things that can hurt and/or kill him just like any other guy.
-Drowning.
-Poison Gas.
-Regular poison.
-Electrocution.
-Starvation.
-Asphyxiation.
-Dehydration.
-Bleeding out.
-Bleeding internally.
-Food poisoning.
-Heart-failure.
-Liver-failure.
-Kidney-failure.
-Cancer.
-Hypothermia.
-Being thrown into the sun.
-Being thrown into space in general.
-Tamaranean Cooking.

Appearance:


To read what Duncan is physically capable of, you might picture some sort of hulking mountain of a man with bulging muscles and a jawline chiseled from granite... to actually meet the man however, you'd be disappointed and maybe a little confused- MacAodhan is not a large man. In fact, compared to most in the League he is downright tiny, standing at only 5'6" on a good day and lacking the bulging, musclebound physique of proper superheroes in favour of a lean, though dense physique closer to that of an Olympic swimmer if anything, though his broad shoulders and calloused hands make a fairly decent indicator of his blue-collar background, to which he also owes the habit of shaving his brown hair into a buzzcut, to deal with the heat in his workplace.

Though in the beginning of his sordid, surreal superhero career he had nothing more than a denim jacket, a ballcap and a rag tied over his face to hide his identity, he has since acquired an actual costume of his own; a sort of coming-of-age gift from the League, who knew the young man wasn't entirely keen on the whole concept of tights, capes and outer-underpants. With this in mind, they found a healthy balance; boots and a short-sleeved suit made of a heavy-duty version of the material Superman used for his own attire to stand up to the fact that, lacking flight, Duncan does a lot more skidding and smashing into things than the Big Blue Boyscout did, colored black and gold and bearing the Lion-Rampant of Scotland and Nova Scotia on his chest in red. Topping this off, in lieu of a cape, the Champion instead wears a brown jacket made of the same material (just, y'know... less spandexy) for much the same reason, with a patch of the arms of his home province sewn onto the back. He also wears a pair of black gloves, an eye-mask and, occasionally, a ballcap of some pub or sports team.

The end result? Though The Lion no longer looks like just some random guy in a Canadian Tuxedo who punches murderous aliens, robots and alien robots in the face on the daily, he is still instantly recognizable as the Hero of Halifax, all grown up but still tethered to his more modest origins.

Character Evolution: A buddy-cop routine with another hero would be nice. But aside from that, I'd be happy to just go with the flow.

Hilarious misadventures, however, are still mandatory.

Altered History: In this timeline, Superman never showed up in Halifax to help Duncan with Metallo... or, indeed, any of the deluge of villains that followed soon after until he finally managed to get himself caught up in World-Threatening levels of shit. He's also known Wildcat since he was a boy as "Uncle Ted", one of his Grampa's old wartime buddies from the States, though he had no idea about his alter-ego until he started teaching him how not to suck at this whole hero thing and help him out in Halifax. The end result? he's far less the hapless Rookie he was in volume one.

Recommended Background Leaguer: Cyborg

A Not-So-Brief Bio

Despite what one might might assume when encountering literally anyone even remotely associated with superpowers and tights, Duncan's tale is... rather mundane. Born in Halifax, Nova Scotia with a Fisherman for a father and a mother who ran a local diner, the boy in question up grew extraordinarily normally; playing videogames, staying at his grandparents' when his mom was busy at the shop and his dad was out at sea and helping his granddad out in the garage fixing cars and the occasional boat.

And then one day when he was fifteen, he got hit by a truck.

After about a good ten seconds of screaming and another thirty spent wondering why he wasn't dead, he extricated himself from the big-rig's engine-block that had wrapped around both him and the streetlight he'd been leaning against only to find that not only was he not dead, he was perfectly intact. All things considered, that's some pretty heavy shit to lay on a fifteen year old. So it's not all that surprising that when the (very) drunk trucker half staggered, half fell out of his truck at the sight of him, and sirens began echoing in the distance, the kid ran the hell out of there. A few days of trial, error and a lot of Wikipedia later, and the boy had a pretty good idea what all that was about: He was a Metahuman, a one-in-a-million carrier of a superhuman gene that may or may not activate under extreme stress (Like, for instance, getting hit by a truck while waiting for the bus). Frankly, it sounded a lot like a bunch of pseudo-science crap you'd find in an old comic book, but lacking any other explanation for his sudden... talents... it was one he'd have to accept.

Now, usually, when someone finds out they've got crazy superpowers, things usually go in one of two predictable ways; one, they become a spandex-clad boy-scout that dedicates every moment of every day to having the brightest smile, rescuing cats from trees and giving lectures about the dangers of "The Reefer" and sex before marriage or two; going full ham, burning orphanages, kicking puppies and generally being real goddamn edgy just for the sake of it. Duncan to his credit, chose the rarely considered, often forgotten third option-

"Yeah... No. Fuck that."

And so, despite the call to adventure literally screaming directly into his ears, Duncan carried on his life as normal; Growing up as normally as he possibly could- getting average grades, shoveling his grandparents' driveway in the wintertime, trying and failing several times at that whole romance thing and working through his apprenticeship as a diesel mechanic at the local shipyard after highschool.

Unfortunately for him, as the old trope goes, 'The Call Knows Where you Live'.

And one day while Duncan was just wrapping up his night-shift shortly after his twenty-first birthday, Metallo came bursting out of one of the shipping containers in the yard, raiding a docked cargo ship for... something and then going on a rampage with speed and ferocity never shown on the news before. Despite having reservations about the whole 'Hero' thing, the one guy in town with the ability to intervene couldn't exactly sit idly by while a super-powered terminator powered by glowing space-rocks butchered his coworkers and leveled his town. So, throwing on a respirator to hide his face, the young man nutted up and went after the deranged cyborg... or, more accurately, spent the next hour on the receiving of a brutal beatdown at the hands of someone that was at least as strong, as fast and much, much more experienced than he was at the time that was also incapable of feeling pain or fatigue, all to buy time for people to get away and call for someone who actually knew what the hell they were doing.

But that help never came.

And although being beaten within an inch of his life in the most literal sense imaginable... the Rookie Hero endured. Rising to his feet over and over again in the face of blows that could sunder mountains until, finally he managed to somehow knock Metallo down hard enough that he didn't get back up.

He'd actually managed to save the day.

Unfortunately... he actually managed to save the day. And as anyone from Fawcett, Gotham or Metropolis could tell you, the minute a local hero does that, things rapidly go sideways in the worst possible way as every lowlife with a superpower takes it as a queue to come out of the woodwork; Within two weeks, a major drug cartel decided to use the disarray caused by the Metallo incident to try and force it's way into the largest Canadian port on the Atlantic, bringing with them the drug-fueled villain Snowflame and his new partner in crime Crackrock (equally named for her guitar-powered sonic attacks as well as... well... all the crack) to keep Halifax's mysterious new hero busy through their operations.

A month after the denim-clad hero without a name and the Halifax Regional Police discreetly (and awkwardly at first) worked together to shut that whole enterprise down, Duncan, still sore from his narrow victory at the hands of Metallo and the gongshow of dealing with the Cartel and their enforcers was more than a little unhappy when he found out his girlfriend at the time (the existence of which was an extreme rarity in itself; the boy'd never really learned how to do romance, what with knowing that a meaningful hug from him would kill most women) was actually Blackfire, a notorious space pirate from the planet Tamaran hiding out under the radar on a pre-spacetravel world... Particularly when her sister showed up to haul her back to their homeplanet to face trial and she quickly decided her only way out was to burn her and the entire goddamn city to the ground, starting with Duncan's apartment.

That was a rough time, even with the extraterrestrial help, but somehow the two managed to bring down the living, interstellar monument to Duncan's romantic failures before she could quite get around to blowing up the rest of the city. The two aliens vanishing in a burst of light soon after as the younger sister slapped something like handcuffs on her elder, hit a few buttons on her gauntlet activating a teleporter of some kind and enthusiastically waved to him with an uncannily bright grin before she went.

By this point, having dealt with a murderous robot, two cocaine-fueled superfreaks employed by a massive drug cartel his casually genocidal, apparently alien ex-girlfriend and having lost his place of work, his apartment and even his FREAKING CAR in the span of just over a month, Duncan was particularly unimpressed with all the unusual turns his life had taken and looked absolutely ragged staring numbly at what remained of his home on the still-abandoned street.

As he turned to leave, however, he came face to face with his "Uncle" Ted. An old wartime buddy of his Grandfather's from the States he'd known since he was a boy, who took one good look at him and calmly stated-

“Kid, you are not going to your Grandma's house looking like that; you'll give the poor woman a heartattack.”

Wincing at how easily he was recognized, Duncan barely started to ask how the man he hadn't seen since he wrote his driver's exam knew who he was while he was still wearing a mask but was abruptly told to shut up and follow.

Being led to a condo downtown, the boy was sat down in the kitchen, handed a beer and told just about everything.

Ted knew about Duncan's talents because Duncan's Granddad knew. How did his Granddad know? Because he was his Granddad, of course he did and after watching his lil' hooligan get his face kicked in by Metallo on the CBC, the first thing he did was call up his old buddy Ted and ask him to look out for him. And why would he do that?

Because Ted was Wildcat.

To his credit, Duncan was just too damn tired at this point to even be surprised about this revelation, which at this point was pretty much par for the course with how his month had been going. Though he did idly start to wonder if the normal life he thought he'd lost when Metallo showed up had ever even existed in the first place, as he finished his beer and went to sleep on Ted's couch.

Under the guidance of Freaking Wildcat from that point on, the increasingly less rookie hero's life was... well, still pretty damned crazy, but at least it had some semblance of order to it and was a lot less of him just hammering his head against a metaphorical brick wall. Throughout the rest of the year Duncan and Ted went on to, amongst other things, fight off Adonis and his bouncing mechanical pecs, defend a small group of Atlantean refugees looking to escape one of Black Manta's lieutenants and their merry band of murderous fish-men and even teamed up with Robotman to deal with Atomic Skull, who broke out of confinement on a Russian sub en route to Cuba and rammed the damned thing onto the shore. Through all of this he earned an almost folk-hero-like reputation in his country as stubborn and unyielding in a fight, but clearly not in it for the fame with how he acted and dodged the media like the plague and how frank, yet approachable he was with both the people he helped and the Police he often found himself working with.

Still not taking on an actual heroic alias or costume, he came to be seen by his city as... just some guy trying to help out... one of them. Not some paragon placed on a golden, unreachable pedestal above others but a man firmly grounded in his roots; approachable, reliable and most all human. And through all the names they began to call him, from "Hero of Halifax" to "Lion of Nova Scotia", one in particular began to gain traction-

"Champion."

A name he more than earned when, to put the cherry on his whole crazy year, Jack-Tar arrived advertising to anyone who'd listen about his delusions of reuniting the British Empire by force under his enlightened rule. He also brought with him his own immense psychic power, the "Red Coats", his band of murderous metahumans he recruited from across Britain's former territories in Oceania, India, Africa and the Caribbean as well as, and this is important, the ship he stole from Duncan's ex hovering in orbit with all of it's guns pointed down.

Suffice to say, this was not a man who was used to hearing the word "No". So when Duncan refused to join him (with a now famous "No thanks, I'm good."), things got pretty hectic pretty quickly and he, Wildcat and the whole damned city probably would've been wiped off the face of the Earth had not the unusual friendships in strange places "The Champion" had made over the past year not come to fruition. With the Atlantean soldier-turned-refugee "Ultramariner" jumping into the fray, a Tamaranean frigate commanded by his ex's sister jumping into orbit and, eventually, even Robotman arriving with freaking Superman at his back and a cheeky "Kept 'cha waitin', didn't I?" on his robotic voice. Together, the six managed to stop the lunatic Brit before he could quite get around to completely leveling the city and half the province with it, after that well...

The Tamaraneans headed home, but not before their Captain teleported down to the surface to give everyone involved what Superman would later tell him was the traditional greeting on her homeworld; an uncomfortably affectionate bone-shattering hug (which Cliff found absolutely hilarious).

The uncertain ("Uncertain" here meaning "The fuck do you do with a race of sea-dwellers whose King tried to wipe out humanity that one time?") status of the small Atlantean refugee community settled across the bay in neighbouring Dartmouth was greatly improved by Ultramariner's actions that day, and he settled down there in earnest and eventually became that city's local hero.

And Duncan? For his part, after a year of balls-to-the-wall crime, alien and robot fighting insanity, he finally came to terms with the idea that, yeah, he was probably a goddamn superhero now. Moving off of Ted's couch when he went back to Gotham, finding a cozy new place to live in a decommissioned lighthouse just outside of town and taking up the name everyone was calling him anyway to fight crime in a snazzy new outfit the League gave him after the whole Jack-Tar Affair.

A year after that and a few months, The Champion was brought into the League- Apparently at the posthumous request of Cliff himself. And the rest is history.

...Weird, surreal and oftentimes downright crazy history.

Notes:

Sample Post:

"And if that little Leafer doesn't like it, he can go right back to Quebec or whereever the hell he came from!"

This proclamation was met by a chorus of cheers and clapping... as well as a long sigh.

This was the last thing Duncan wanted to hear five minutes out of the teleporter.

"Godfrey again?" the Champion groaned, walking into the monitor room with two big paper bags of food from his mum's diner in each hand before setting them down on the desk between his two coworkers. "Ya guys don't get tired of listening to this crap?"

"Call it a guilty pleasure." Atom replied dryly, his elbow propped up on the desk, cheek resting in his hand and his face locked somewhere between bored, bemused and bewildered "Should've been here when he was ripping into me. He get's a lot of mileage out of my ability to shrink."

"Indeed. His thoughts on 'Little Green Men' are as... amusing... as they are woefully inaccurate." J'onn added with a dismissive wave of his hand, all the while just barely hiding just how hungrily he was staring down at the goodies the bluenoser had brought with him back from home.

With a click of his tongue to show his disapproval, but no further comment, Duncan fished through the bags and began handing out the fruits of his mother's business; Two jumbo donairs, one with feta and no onions for Atom, one with extra sauce and diced jalapenos for himself and an order of fish and chips for the Martian Manhunter as well as a slice of his mother's Oreo-cream pie with those rainbow sprinkles she knew the off-worlder liked. Lastly he placed down a six-pack of glass-bottled coke to share between them, before sitting down himself and unwrapping his food, glancing up at he screen as he did so.

Monitor Duty was... well, it wasn't exciting, but it had it's merits; For one, it was nice to just kick back and not get punched in the face by a robot, alien or weird lion-person while at work for a change and there was something weirdly pleasant about having the tower pretty much to yourself while everyone else was either away on missions or at home and off-duty. Technically, it was supposed to be only two people per rotation, but J'onn had the day off and apparently didn't have anything better to do anyway so decided to join in on the fun. Like he did every time Duncan was on Monitor Duty and he had the day off.

For reasons that had nothing to do with free pie.

No siree.

Duncan mulled that last one over while chewing on a mouthful of donair; If he didn't know any better, he'd almost swear Kord scheduled his rotation so his mom's diner was always open when he was on duty...

"So, anything happen while I was out?" The Lion of Nova Scotia managed to get out through a mouthful of food.

"Well, remember your old buddy Adonis? Well, he- You mind?-" Atom started, but stopped as he held out his bottle of coke towards Duncan, who politely reached over and popped the cap off with his thumb "-Showed up in New York and tried to cop a feel on Barda."

Champion immediately choked on his food, his body unable to contain the primordial need to laugh that mental-image elicited even through the coughing, wheezing and J'onn slapping him on the back until he popped open another coke and washed it down.

"...Please... tell me you got that on video." He finally managed over one last cough.

To this, Ray just grinned and punched a few keys on his console, bringing up a new window over Godfrey's spray-tanned and screaming face on the third monitor.

"If I zoom in and slow it down, you can actually see the exact moment he realized he made a terrible mistake."

True to his word, the three were treated to the silent, almost sublimely slow footage of the mecha-clad creep's lecherous grin steadily melting into wide-eyed and open-mouthed horror as a clenched fist beautifully made it's way into the viewscreen and crumpled his big metal pseudo-chin like paper before hitting his real jaw and eliciting an explosion of teeth.

Immediately, the monitor room exploded in a fit of raucous laughter, with Champion doubled-over in his chair actively trying not to slap his knee and break anything with the concussive force that'd bring, Atom holding his cold coke against his head as he strained under the pressure of trying not to spew the mouthful of the stuff he had out his nose... even as he rewound the footage and played it again, even more slowly this time so Champ could see where Adonis had actually started to cry a little when he realized what was going to happen to him. Hell, even J'onn managed to snort a little through a mouthful of beer-battered fish.

"Who loves you, Baby?" Atom asked, slapping a hand down on Champ's shoulder as he replayed the footage again, this time zoomed out to catch the expressions of Barda and the rest of team.

Yeah... Monitor Duty wasn't exciting.

But it had it's merits.

Heroes Reborn - A DCAU Roleplay (Always open!)

Juuuust a little something to brighten yer day.

Happy New Year, guys.

Just some nonsense...

MEANWHILE, AT CASTLE KASIMIR...

“Alright,” Zoey rubbed her hands against her face, obviously agitated and on edge. It didn’t help that red was splashed across her cheeks, and spread out over the living room were various teaching aids - including diagrams. “I know you haven’t had… much classroom time. And you’re getting at that age, where…”

She gestured helplessly to Malcolm.

“... Where you start to get changes in your body. And feelings.”

There was a moment of silence at that, as the boy just stared up at Zoey with wide, glowing eyes.

”Oh God, are we actually doing this?” Malcolm stated wearily more than asked ”Zoey, I have a front-row seat to the insides of everyone I see, whether I want to or not. We really don’t need to do this...”

“Yes we do!” The older woman snapped immediately, almost bristling in indignation. “Look, I don’t like it either, but even seeing … all that, isn’t a substitute for everything you need to know. There’s safe sex, and the changes your body is going to go through, not to mention the hormones. Dear god, the hormones.” Zoey gave a full body shudder, but quickly busied herself with putting a diagram onto the wall, the silhouette of a man.

“Now, to start off, you’re either going to get incredibly hairy all over, or only be able to grow a pencil stache. Except, er … down … beneath the belt. It’s pretty much guaranteed… plus the armpits… maybe the chest… Don’t cut your nipples shaving, Malcolm.”

Mal, for his part, just continued to stare up at Zoey with a wide-eyed, but blank expression. Very clearly mildly disturbed by Zoey’s adamance about having this talk.

”Zoey. We don’t have to do this. I can literally figure this out by-”

“What’s the safest contraception, Malcolm?”

”Putting that weird rubber thing over your dong so ya don’t spray those weird tadpole things up the tube-y bit with the egg in it?” Malcolm answered quickly, just trying to get this over with as soon as possible. ”...Or maybe, y’know, pulling out?”

Zoey’s eyebrow twitched.

“...Pulling out is one of the least effective contraceptions! For one, there’s literally no protection against STDs! Hold on, I have diagrams for STDs too - it’s a slideshow, actually.”

As Zoey began pulling out yet another series of pictures to place on her wall, she continued talking. “Second of all, you can’t even name them! That’s important! Are you going to walk into a store asking for rubber bits for your bits? … They’re condoms, by the way. Very safe. Can sometimes break though. Best for your future partner to be on the birth control pill as well if they’re female. If they’re male the pill obviously isn’t needed - nothing wrong with having a male partner, Malcolm. Or both, if you’re into that, and they’re into that. Or two females, or two males… really as long as there’s consent anything is fine. Everything is fine. With consent.”

Malcolm just pinched the bridge of his nose at that, eyes tightly wound shut as he accepted that he wasn’t escaping this conversation.

”...So why do so many people wear gags then?” He finally started after a solid minute of silence ”And what’s the deal with all the leather, and the whips and I’m pretty sure I saw a midget on a tricycle at some point, and-”

“I am painting every single house in this city with lead-based paint by tomorrow.”

Heroes Reborn - A DCAU Roleplay (Always open!)

October 28th, 11:03PM
Gotham City, New Jersey

It had been surprisingly quiet couple of nights, once the whole Mudo issue was handled. With the graveyards having fancy new concrete slabs to keep the restless dead resting, the hospitals already having decided on burning bodies and ground bones, the street cops had returned to their patrols of Gotham. Surprisingly, some even did it with renewed vigor as if the city wasn’t a cesspool of corruption.

Of course, actions had repercussions. Zoey was only surprised at how long they took.

Despite his efforts at claiming a small bit of the efforts that were put forth, Mayor Murphy’s ratings had taken a bit of a hit. It was no surprise after the danger that the city was put in over greed - greed so intense that even a career politician like him was overshadowed by it. To be fair, that cargo Zoey sank was pretty nice. Not that he’d know it was her, but to have his rating plummet on top of losing it? Let’s just say that the billionaire was looking over her shoulder.

Part of that may have been why she found herself driving this night. Usually Grim would already be on patrol, but aware of exactly what might be lurking? Well, Zoey may have been a little irrational wanting to make sure they didn’t come to her home, where both servants as well as her son slept. Besides, it was nice to just go out for a drive once in awhile, no thoughts of vigilantism on her mind. Quiet.

Turns out her bid was right. Driving along the highway in her snakeskin viper the road was almost deserted at the late hour, only the occasional car passing by. That’s what made the sudden appearance of two dark cars, light dimmed behind her all the more attention-grabbing. As soon as her steel-blue gaze caught sight of them in her rearview mirror Zoey’s slender fingers gripped the steering wheel all the tighter. She was tempted to just gun it and leave them in the dust, but another car of similar design getting on the on-ramp ahead of her and immediately positioning in front of her let her know they had accounted for that. Interesting. Not run of the mill thugs.

Of course, she wasn’t a run of the mill rich girl either.

As soon as the car in front of her braked, no doubt to get her to either do so as well or lose control, Zoey did gun it. The front of her viper, armored beyond what was expected for a mere civilian car, rammed into the back of the dark compact in front of her. It swerved from the sudden force, almost into the concrete barrier to their left but quickly adjusted. Of course when Zoey herself went to put more gas on one of the rear cars bumped into her tail, spinning the car.

For someone as into cars as her, Zoey had no problem adjusting into the pit. It helped that the Grimmobile was far harder to control with all the modifications to it. The third car, however, made the corrections moot as he rammed into the side of the snakeskin viper, slamming her car into the railing opposite the highway.

That probably scratched her paint. Asshole.

Flipping the car into reverse the powerful engine yanked itself away from the wall, and Zoey spun the wheel to get herself forward once more. The rubber of her tires squealed against the pavement as she took off, though didn’t quite gun it. The billionaire would rather not leave some hitmen to come after her another day.

Gunshots rang out, the redhead’s eyes taking in the marks on her back windshield. The bulletproof glass held up, as did the reinforced tires to keep them from popping. The three other cars had righted themselves however and were once more speeding after her. Flicking her gaze forward Zoey took note of the fact there were the red lights of more cars further up ahead. If she kept going straight she’d end up putting civilians in danger.

Ugh, vigilante ethics. Why couldn’t she just mount a flamethrower on all her cars, anyway? Stupid laws.

Putting on an abrupt burst of speed the snakeskin viper took a swerving right, entering the on-ramp to go across the approaching bridge. Connecting to Bludhaven. Great. With a roll of her eyes Zoey kept the speed on, just enough to stay ahead of the trio of cars without losing them. Bullets rang off the metal and glass of her car but she wasn’t too bothered.

The chase ran the length of the bridge, right into Bludhaven’s gates. What a wretched hive of scum and villainy, not that it was saying much considering that Zoey just came from Gotham. However, the good part of this was that there weren’t many cars being driven in Bludhaven, especially this late at night. Gangbangers more than likely, not to mention sky high crime rates meant cars left alone were more likely to be taken apart or jacked than driven. It was easy to lead her pursuers on a merry chase, right to a more abandoned part of town. Less people to be hurt.

Abruptly slamming on the brakes and spinning the wheel the viper turned in a burning circle, and with the trio of cars right on her tail -

CRASH.

Yep, there we go. She was probably going to have a seat belt shaped bruise in the morning, but it meant little. The other car’s windshield was cracked, and the man hanging out the window shooting had been thrown. Safety first, kids.

Another slam against the back of her car made Zoey aware that it was now pinned between the two. Faster reaction times than she expected. A thoughtful hum vibrated through the car as Zoey glanced into her rear view once more. One of the cars had pinned her, the other pulling up alongside. Two men in the latter emerged, the driver going to circle to her own side. Both holding guns - and the two men behind her doing similar.

Zoey shrugged, and reached in her glove department. She had fought worse odds.

Her assailants, for their part, were downright impetuous; the Old Caernarvon Docklands in Bludhaven had been without power for decades, so there wasn’t a single light on the damned street, save for what reflected off the Avalon River from uptown. That was good, these kinds of things were a lot better done in the dark, especially when the locals knew better than to poke their heads into your business.

Hell, the boss-man might even crack ‘em a bonus for dumping her corpse in this shithole... After they had some fun of course- Had to pay her back for giving them such a hard time.

...That train of thought abruptly derailed as something whipped through the air and slammed into the jaw of the assassin approaching Zoey’s door with a loud, metallic PING!, spraying blood and teeth all over her window as he staggered to the side.

“What the fu-?!” One of the two at the rear began to exclaim but was abruptly cut off as something loud and clearly very angry plowed into the back of his knees, crunching them against the pavement and sending him tumbling face-first into the back-bumper of the car in front of him before it roughly snatched the knife from his belt and used it to stab the man next to him in the back of the leg, then the arm, then at least half a dozen times in the balls before turning back to him and planting the damned thing right underneath his collar-bone on the right and then grabbing his head and slamming it right back into the bumper of the car again.

The goon to Zoey’s right quickly spun around, gun at the ready to deal with... whatever the hell was going on right now, but the damned thing rolled out of the way of his shots and ran up the other side of his original target’s car, barreling down on the man still picking himself back up after being hit in the face with an airborne piece of pipe.

How did he know it was a pipe? Because the figure rushing towards him abruptly picked it back up again and showed it to him. Up close. Straight to the bridge of the nose. And then again to the other side of the jaw for good measure.

He didn’t get back up this time.

For a moment, Zoey could only take in the carnage that surrounded her car in mild surprise. The motions were quick, the screams blood curdling, the actions violent, but none of it directed to her surprisingly. Actually, she was pretty sure that was one person doing this. A small person, agile and ruthless.

Interesting.

The figure was outside her driver’s side window, and with little fear Zoey unlocked her door to open. Sliding out of the seat the redhead stood, a glint of steel in her hand. When the thug on the other side of the car whirled around to them on hearing the crack of his companion’s bone breaking, the billionaire merely glanced behind her.

With the reflexes and precision honed over years of vigilante work, one of the throwing knives she retrieved from her glove compartment went sailing, catching the man by the hand holding the gun. It dropped, firing off a round that pinged against her poor car’s paint job once more. The second flick of her wrist had another lodging into his throat, blood spurting out in great gushes - also across her window. Her staff wasn’t going to be happy cleaning this mess up.

Turning her gaze forward once more Zoey went to take in her ‘savior’, a thoughtful hum once more bubbling in her throat as she lowered her hand, two throwing knives left, to her side passively.

”Fancy footwork.”

Kasimir’s ‘savior’, for his part, had simply stood there, hunched over and having pulled down the dirty rag that covered his face to suck in as much air into his tiny lungs as he possibly could… until she plunked a knife into the other guy’s throat with all the effort it took the average person to breathe. That gave him pause; freezing him there, eyes opening wide beneath his goggles (revealing a dim orange light beneath) as he suddenly realized he’d made a sliiiiight error in judgement here.

Just because he could see the woman in the car earlier didn’t mean he was actually paying enough attention to her to pick up the all the knives she had stuffed up her sleeve.

...That she still had stuffed up her sleeve.

’Weeeeell, shit…’

Gulping slightly and dancing his fingers across his lead pipe, the small figure, which began to look suspiciously more and more like a child the more he stood there, took a pensive step back and spoke-

“Yeah, well… it’s… a lot easier when they’re not paying attention…” The raggedly-clad figured finally responded, now sounding suspiciously like a child too, before pausing a second time and pointing towards the woman’s sleeve “...You just... carry those around with you?”

Perfectly sculpted red eyebrows drew together, a pensive expression coming over the redhead the longer she looked at this small figure. His goggles glowed, something her own did - tech? No, it was something … else.

Then he spoke, and Zoey’s eyes widened the slightest bit. What she had initially been ready to pass off as a short person who had come to her rescue, the billionaire quickly realized her error. Between his size, his voice, his mannerisms made it very obvious. This was a child.

… A child who just murdered at least two people, possibly three if the wet gurgle of the man at his feet was any indication.

Forcing a slight smile to her lips, Zoey merely nodded to his question. She didn’t have to look at her sleeve to know it was still pulled down to her wrist, should be concealing her weapons. With all the magic - her eyebrow twitched - in the world today, could he see them? Did he merely presume there were more after her previous actions?

”You were still quite good.” A flick of her wrist had one of the blades ready, held between two fingers. She tossed it up and caught it by the bladed portion, holding it towards her young savior to show him - handle first, to not be threatening. ”As for these, only when I’m being chased by hitmen.” A slight quirk of her lips, a bit more of a smile at her joke. Zoey wasn’t … the best around children. Too jaded. Yet this one seemed just as blood soaked as her, and not just from these men.

”So what does my savior go by?”

Hesitantly, and with no small amount of care, the boy gently plucked the offered knife from the woman’s fingers as she spoke, looking it over and deftly spinning it between his fingers a few times with the skill his enhanced dexterity allowed him, though when she asked his name, he stopped. Casting a weary glance down to the man at his feet and watching as his heart slowly wound down to a stop.

”...Malcolm.” The boy stated after a moment’s hesitation, once he was sure they were the only ones around to hear, and handed the redhead back her knife, handle-out ”Though, uhh… people around here have started calling me ‘Watchdog’ for some reason… probably because of the whole ‘glowy eye’ thing and all.”

He let a little chuckle out at that, and scratched the back of his head, slightly more at ease.

”...Speakin’ of, the hell are you doin’ in Blud, anyway?” The boy inquired with a tilt of his head ”You and your... friends... are pretty clearly not from around here.”

So it was his eyes that glowed. Which reasonably meant he was possibly seeing under her sleeve. Zoey mentally catalogued that as she took her knife back, replacing it under the sleeve of her button up shirt. That of course led to wondering what else he could do, if it was a metagene or living here that had him able to take on the others.

Brave, either way.

”Gotham.” Zoey offered in way of explanation for where she was from, before continuing on smoothly. ”Ran into some trouble on the highway. I thought this place would be abandoned of any bystanders, but … well, I suppose you aren’t really a bystander, are you, Malcolm? Watchdog.” Another smile, polite.

”My name is Zoey Kasimir.” A pause this time, thoughtful silence as the billionaire attempted to find the correct phrasing for her next question. ”I hate to pry, but I must ask … your parents…?” She trailed off, not wanting to presume. It was Bludhaven, after all.

Malcolm’s lip, visibly bruised and cut slightly from a fight earlier in the night, slowly turned downward in a frown at the redhead’s question, tongue running across the teeth in his closed mouth as he tried to piece together an eloquent way to explain that rather... touchy subject.

Breathing in, clearing his throat and slowly removing his goggles (only seemed fair, she wasn’t wearing a mask, after all), he cast his glowing eyes slightly off to the side as he answered.

”Well, my mother tossed me into a dumpster pretty much as soon as she had me, so she never really mattered.” He began, a particularly bitter note to his voice, before pausing and visibly shrinking slightly ”As for my Old Man? Well, he mattered… but he’s gone now.”

For a brief second, the lad cast his eyes downward. There was a slight sniffle, a slight shake of his head and finally an affirmative grunt as he visibly forced something he very clearly didn’t want to feel or think about from bubbling to the surface.

...He wasn’t particularly good at it, mind you, as his eyes teared up slightly, but he held some semblance of his composure together, keeping it at just that instead of bawling his eyes out like a kid his age probably should.

”Sorry about that; Ya didn’t get chased all the way from Gotham just to hear my sob-story.” Malcolm finally apologized after a minute, awkwardly wiping his eyes and coughing into his fist to find his voice ”...First time I’ve actually talked to someone in... a while, so I’m a little shitty at it.”

‘A while’ here meaning ‘Since February’, of course. But Zoey didn’t need to know that.

It was honestly more information than she was expecting, too. At first the billionaire was examining his eyes, taking in his state of dress. It didn’t surprise her that he was an orphan, just like David before she had taken him in. With how rocky the climate towards those with metagenes, not to mention the rise in vigilantism, his glowing eyes probably did little to help him either.

Then there was the sniffle. Zoey’s posture straightened up as soon as she heard it, staring down at him with soft eyes. The redhead would be the first to admit she was awfully protective, of those she loved mostly, but children as well. It was the reason she had taken David in, when he just wouldn’t quit trying to help the people of Gotham.

Now here was a boy with no future, no options, alone.

”It’s alright,” The billionaire finally said, voice surprisingly gentle considering the death they were surrounded by. It wasn’t hard to determine that he had no one, not a foster family or anything, if he hadn’t talked to people in awhile. That wasn’t hard to figure out. ”You haven’t slept in awhile, have you?” Zoey reached up, tapping just underneath her own eye.

”Makeup.” She added on, as explanation for how it was so easy to tell. Her own eyes had the marks of sleepless nights, of hours spent denying the basic human function. However her steel-blue gaze lingered on his own glowing orange one, contemplating. She couldn’t seriously be considering this, could she? It took so much effort to convince herself to even let David in, but then again maybe her son’s presence on her life is what made this decision so much easier.

Maybe it was the blood and bruises on Malcolm. Maybe it was how small he was. Either way, she needed to know more first.

”What’s your metagene, Malcolm?” The billionaire finally asked, gesturing to his eyes.

”My what?” Malcolm inquired with a raised brow, clearly puzzled by this new word, but catching on when Zoey pointed towards his eyes ”Oh, well, I uhh… I can see… pretty much everything.”

The boy paused for minute as he racked his brain for a better way of phrasing that, biting his lip in thought before continuing.

”I can see through walls, I can see heat… I can even see sound and the power running from both your phones’ batteries.” He added with a small shrug and a scratch of his head ”Hell, I can even read you some of the license plates from your side of the bridge- I literally saw you coming from miles away.”

That was … concerning. Amazing, but concerning. Zoey couldn’t help but hum thoughtfully, her eyebrows furrowing. If he accepted her offer he would know who she was immediately, able to see through walls as he could. The giant lab beneath the castle wasn’t exactly something to be glanced over.

It didn’t matter. She couldn’t just leave him when she had the ability to help - plus from the roughed up way he looked, it seemed his sight only helped him somewhat. He could use training, if he was going to do this - as much as Zoey was reluctant to encourage another person to take up this line of work.

”And when you saw it you stepped in, because you could,” The billionaire finally said thoughtfully, taking a step closer. She kneeled down, examining his face - his eyes. He could use with some cleaning up too, it was a wonder he didn’t have an infection from how filthy he was with what was no doubt a myriad of nicks. ”I’d like to return the help you gave me, if you’ll let me. My son was like you once, alone on the streets and just wanting to help others.”

The small one’s head tilted to the side slightly at that.

”Ok… what exactly did you have in mind, Miss Kasimir?”

A grin lit up Zoey’s face at not being outright denied, and she abruptly withdrew one of her phones - the one with a wolf’s head icon stamped into the metal case. Her thumb flicked across the screen.

”There’s no one around except you and me, right Malcolm?” She questioned, glancing to the boy.

”Nope. Just you, me and a colony a dockrats that’re probably gonna be eating these dead guys later.” Malcolm responded with a raised brow and after a quick glance around.

”Great. So, to your earlier question - a place to sleep, clean up, maybe some training from the crazy lady with knives.” Zoey stood once more, leaving Malcolm to retrieve her two throwing knives from the rapidly cooling body of the man on the other side of her viper before returning to stand before Malcolm. ”I don’t really enjoy the thought of someone as young as you running around the streets doing what you’re doing, I’d in fact prefer you didn’t, but I admit that some people can’t help the call. My son’s the same way. So am I.” The billionaire glanced back towards Gotham, eyes to the sky.

”It’s the least I could do.” The smog above Bludhaven parted, the distance between it and Gotham traversed in an instant with the powerful magitech engine installed in the Grim Jet. Another jab of Zoey’s thumb against her phone and the aircraft lowered, hovering before settling on an adequately empty space nearby. The black metal hull was half hidden in the darkness of the area, but the slightest gleam of light caught off the silver engraving of the wolf’s head on the edge. ”... One vigilante to another.”

For his part, Malcolm just stood there, mouth agape and eyes frozen in a comical expression as the massive, flying hunk of metal set itself down on the roadway not far from them. Eyes glued to the silver wolf’s-head insignia engraved on the side, his brain slowly connecting the dots and realizing just who he’d really been talking to this entire time.

”...Holy. Fucking. Shit.” He finally managed, his head turning slowly back towards Zoey ”You’re kidding, right?”

Of all the ways he’d thought his day was going to pan out; riding with freaking Grim in a big goddamn jet honestly hadn’t occurred to him.

”Language.”

Heroes Reborn - A DCAU Roleplay (Always open!)

Some homeless kid

Watchdog

=========

Superhero Name: Watchdog
Civilian Name: Malcolm Talhaiarn
Origin city/Planet: Bludhaven, New York
Hometown: Bludhaven, New York
Sex: Male
Race: Metahuman
Height: 5'2"
Weight: 110 lbs.
Age: 11
Birth Date: Found in a dumpster as a newborn on February 1, 2009, so that's what he goes by.
--------
Costumed Appearance: Lacking much in the way of resources or indeed, any notion that he's actually anything close to a bonafide Superhero, Malcolm makes do with what little he has; garbing himself in an old, worn-out denim jacket that seems much too big for his tiny frame, an old white wifebeater, a ratty pair of jeans and some sneakers that've seen better days. Covering his face he has... a simple black rag and a pair of old welding goggles to cover his glowing orange eyes (though they don't do much to obscure their light when he opens them) and a ratty old Bludhaven Brawlers ballcap over a what would be a mop of unruly brown hair if he didn't shave it down to a buzz as often as he can, both to keep lice at bay and to not have something that could be easily grabbed onto attached to his head.

Finishing off his raggedy outfit is pair of equally raggedy black batting gloves, worn from use and full of holes, especially over the the index and middle knuckles of each hand revealing flesh that's almost always cut or scabbed-over from being a the punches he throws on a nightly basis.

All in all, not exactly the flashiest of costumes, but there is a subtle, unintentional genius to it in that when his eyes are closed, he is virtually indistinguishable from any other of the myriad homeless youth in Bludhaven, and is very likely to be ignored by any passers-by.

Civilian Appearance: To be perfectly honest... Malcolm doesn't really get out much, and the 'costume' listed above makes up pretty well all of the clothing he owns. So when he does go out to do normal homeless boy things, it's usually in the exact same outfit with his eyes closed beneath his goggles to hide their glow and the rag dangling around his neck. Those few that actually know him well enough to see him without all the headgear and his jacket, however, would see him for what he truly is; a pale, scrawny caucasian kid who looks more than a little hungry usually sporting some kind of cut or bruise and a crescent-shaped scar around his left eye which he owes to a broken beer bottle he took to the face and many more across his body, some of which are still healing.

His most defining feature, however, is clearly his eyes; in that, where there once was a steelish grey, there is now a fiery, glowing orange, visible even through the goggles he wears... which really puts a dampener on that whole 'Living a normal life in civilized society' thing, even for a homeless kid.

Icon:

Costumed Personality: Watchdog (as urban superstition has named Malcolm) is, by reputation, relentless, unyielding, fighting with the ferocity of a wild animal yet still having the uncanny precision to hit you exactly where it will hurt most. Preferring ambush and pragmatism to theatrics and any notion of a fair fight, Watchdog has a singular talent for adaptation and improvisation, leveraging anything and everything he can to his advantage while denying the same to his enemies and making up for his modest size with quick thinking and sheer determination.

All that said, Malcolm has no interest in fame or fortune, and high-tails it whenever he sees the press on their way. This has led to extraordinarily embellished tales of the lad in the local rumour mill, cobbled together by the people he's fought, those he's saved and anyone else who may have happened to spot him in the past year; Depending on who you ask, the 'Watchdog of Bludhaven' is either a bloodthirsty alien monster, some escaped government experiment living in the sewers or a vengeful spirit sent up from the depths of Hell itself to punish the wicked.

All of these guesses are, of course, completely insane.

...But, to be frank, "Starving homeless kid who sneaks up on crooks and beats them bloody with a lead pipe" is a pretty crazy statement in itself anyway, so who is anyone to judge?

Civilian Personality: Malcolm is, for lack of a better way of putting it, a walking, talking stereotype of the Bludhaven lower-class; brutally frank, indomitably stubborn, clever in the worst possible way and possessing a potent mixture of pluck and grit with a healthy dash of crazy. That said, the lad has a big heart... ironically, you'd have to in order to survive a Bludhaven slum, where everyone who isn't a gun-toting psychopath is all in it together, and has no small reserve of compassion and kindness, and would give you the shirt off his back if the ratty rag would get you through on more night... even if his words wouldn't exactly match his actions.

...Or at least, that's how he used to be.

Nowadays Malcolm is just... tired... and angry. Hardly sleeping as even when he closes his eyes, he can see all the violence and murder happening in the streets of Bludhaven through his eyelids and even when he does, his sleep is plagued by nightmares. Between all that and the fact that he's basically constantly on the verge of starving to death, the only things keeping the lad on his feet these days are rage and sheer force of will.

Super abilities:

Skills

Lockpicking: To the surprise of... pretty much no one if you think about it, picking a lock becomes a lot easier when you can actually see inside the damned thing.

Parkour: Growing up in an urban slum, Malcolm has always had a knack for maneuvering around the city in some unconventional ways, more often for fun than anything. But now, with his new vision, reflexes and body-coordination, he damn near flies across rooftops and down alleyways, maneuvering through the urban jungle with astonishing ease... provided he manages to get a good meal in first, of course.

Doing so burns a lot of calories, and he hasn't exactly got much to spare in the first place.

Combatives Training: Malcolm's adoptive father, being a former Marine raising a kid in a slum in one of the most dangerous cities in the whole United States, had the forethought to pass on his old tricks to his son. It sure ain't pretty but it is undoubtedly effective, especially when combined with Malcolm's unique abilities, and provides a solid base for the lad to adapt, tweak and add onto by his own experiences.

Budding Mechanical Acumen: Being able to see inside or through anything that isn't made of lead has it's benefits, one of them being being able to directly observe the guts of a machine to see how it works. At the present, the only thing Malcolm really gets out of these observations are insights into sabotage and the occasional bit of MacGuyvering... but the lad learns quick, and with the right tools and someone to guide him, he could make for one hell of a mechanic or engineer.

Polyglot: The slums of Bludhaven are a surprisingly diverse place, and Malcolm has grown up around a lot of people from a lot of places who speak a lot of languages. As a result, although the boy is only literate in English, he is conversational in Ukrainian, Italian, Spanish and Cantonese.

Powers

Omnivision: By far Malcolm's most drastically superhuman ability, the boy is able to perceive almost the entire Electromagnetic Spectrum, being able to see infrared, ultraviolet, electrical currents and even straight through solid objects. And that's not even mentioning how he also possesses telescopic vision up to five miles, see in absolute darkness and can even comprehend soundwaves. There are some caveats to this, however; Firstly, he can't see through lead. Secondly, there is no off-switch, and his brain is processing all this information at the same time, the end result painting a picture of a nightmarish world wreathed in flame that Malcolm can never escape, even when he closes his eyes. Which, considering the events of the past year prove two things.

One, that there is a God.

And two, he's kind of a dick.

Enhanced Brain/Nervous Function: Malcolm's brain, as a side-effect from being able to function under the strain of everything listed above, has effectively been kicked into high gear, processing information at nearly ten times the rate of a normal human being. Though this does not inherently make him smarter than the average Joe, it does mean he can learn and retain information at several times the rate of a normal human being, with the added bonus of an eidetic memory; meaning that with time, and the proper instruction, he could prove to be one of the greatest minds of his generation.

Another, slightly more immediately advantageous side-effect of Malcolm's now overclocked brain is that, like his mental faculties, his reaction time and reflexes have been accelerated to ten times that of a normal human being. This, combined with his vision, makes the small, starving boy a legitimate force to be reckoned with as he can read an opponent's nerve impulses, body language and muscle contractions to get an idea of what they're doing and react to it before they're actually finished doing it. Additionally, this new, more efficient nervous system has granted the boy unparalleled bodily-coordination, allowing him to perform feats of dexterity and precision with ease that would be beyond even Olympic athletes and skilled craftsmen... which is quite handy when your life pretty much revolves around jumping off buildings and hitting bad guys with a lead pipe.

Gadgets:
-A few bobby-pins for lockpicking.
-His dad's old Zippo.

Weapons:
-A foot-and-a-half long piece of lead pipe.

Civilian Occupation: None

Biography---------

Character History/Origin: Bludhaven, a city with many names; The Devil's Tongue, The Big Dirty, The Bloody Haven, The Blud, Gotham's Toilet, etc... it was here on a frigid February evening that John "Mad Jack" Talhaiarn, former United States Marine and current owner of the clothes on his back and not much else, happened upon a screaming newborn baby in a dumpster behind a biker bar and across the road from a Denny's.

Thinking quickly, the man lifted the screaming infant out of the trash and pulled him into the warm confines of his parka as he began trudging his way through the heavy winter's snow towards the shanty town he called home. Talhaiarn had no idea what hell he was doing, but after a lifetime of mistakes that had led him down dark paths, disgraced and astray from his beloved Corps, he vowed to himself and any God who may've been listening, he was at least gonna get this one thing right-

Saving this fucking kid.

It took a bit of doing, and a little help from his neighbours to scrounge up and MacGuyver everything necessary to care for a newborn, but somehow he pulled it off.

After a week or so, the kid stopped screaming so much and started giggling whenever he caught wind of the old Marine near his makeshift crib. A few days after that, he started calling him "Malcolm" after his old man.

And some time after that, John Talhaiarn, a man who was both a living legend and a disgraced outcast of the United States Marine Corps... began to actually enjoy life again.

If there was anywhere to start this story, this would be it.

Mad Jack's boy grew up in their little Shanty Town, comfortably nestled in a wide alleyway, stubborn, tough and clever. With a tongue and wit sharp as any bayonet his Dad'd ever held in his former life but a heart as big and as bright as the goddamned sun. Never having much, but never really needing anything his little community couldn't provide anyway, Malcolm spent most of his days scouring the slums for anything he, his dad and his neighbours could use to make their lives easier, getting into all sorts of trouble with the other slum kids and sitting around with his dad, raptly listening to (heavily censored) war stories from his days in the corps.

It wasn't an easy life, by any means- But he was happy, so he never really gave a shit.

Though, if you've ever read a comic book, you probably have a good idea where this is going...

In the opening weeks of 2020, the five-year-long turf war between an alliance of the local Chinese Tongs, Russian Mafia and Irish gangs against the invading Aquila crime family of Gotham was reaching it's end, with the Aquilas emerging as the clear victors. In order to hunt down their rapidly scattering enemies and to send a very clear message about who was in charge now, Don Michael Aquila hired a 'specialist' from his hometown to get the job done-

Firefly. A psychopath with a flamethrower.

The night of January 31st was a relatively standard one for Malcolm; his "Aunt" Lin was cooking dinner over a drum fire, the Mikhailovich brothers were arguing in a heated, Slavic sort of way about... something stupid, from what Malcolm could gather as their confrontation shifted back and forth between Russian when they didn't want the kids to understand what they were saying and Ukrainian when they were too mad to give a shit, and Malcolm was sitting with a bunch of kids around his dad, who played Johnny Cash on a (mostly) intact guitar he and Malcolm had found the year before and the Shanty Town's local mutt, affectionately named 'Fleabag', was sprawled belly-up on Malcolm's lap being smelly and aggressively affectionate.

All-in-all, pretty normal... until something caught Fleabag's attention and she started barking up a storm. That being a charred... thing that vaguely resembled a person and stank of burnt meat that shambled it's way into their alleyway, gargling and hissing only one thing on what was left of it's vocal chords as a massive figure stepped out from shadows behind it and leveled a malevolent-looking device in the direction of everyone present;

"Help... me..."

All Malcolm can recall of what happened next was the sight, sounds and smell of everyone he'd ever loved or cared about being roasted alive to the chorus of screams and the demented laughter of the owner of a single eye encircled by scarred and burned flesh which shone with insidious ecstasy at the scene before it. And after that, nothing.

The next thing Malcolm remembers is crawling out from underneath the charred remains of his father, his dog and all the other kids.

It was his birthday.

At first, he could do nothing but sit there, shaking and trembling in silence as his mind struggled to comprehend what he was looking at, before realization slowly set in.

Then the crying started. Followed by the screaming.

And as the screaming gradually changed in pitch from horror and denial to pure outrage, something in the boy broke. The fire that consumed his family and friends slowly ebbed it's way back into his vision and consumed the whole world as he comprehended it, revealing to him nothing but violence and horror no matter where he looked, regardless of whether he wanted to see it or not.

Seemingly trapped in an eternally burning hellscape of violence and horror that he could not escape, even when he closed his eyes and in a fragile mental state, he could've easily bent or broken down. Instead, he got mad.

He got real mad.

Unable to sleep while seeing what he could, the lad eventually lashed out, more out of spite than any sense of justice, throwing himself into the fray against the criminal life within his slum with the frenzied anger of a mad dog... and then never stopped.

And so it was, that the myth of the Watchdog of Bludhaven was born.

Optional information
----------
Nemesis: Firefly
Allies:
Team:
(These are probably blank, unless you're the Batman analogue)