Post by Godot on Dec 30, 2009 0:34:35 GMT -5
LONNIE MACHIN
anarky
Streets on fire
Caged in with razor wire
Shot down
Living in the DMZ
And won't you think I'm pretty[/size]
name;;Lonnie Machin
nickname;;Anarky— From the word “Anarchy,” from the Greek “Anarchos,” meaning “Without ruler.” He’s an anarchist.
Moneyspider – A name he uses while online. “Money,” as in what he’s stealing, and “spider,” small insects that are typically hard to track. Also rhymes with “hider,” as he doesn’t view what he’s doing as “stealing,” but more like “hiding.”
age;; Sixteen
date of birth;; October 11th
gender;; Male
occupation;; Grey hat hacker / Political Activist / Villain (Or Hero, depending on who you ask.)
sexualorienation;;Heterosexual—Presumed. Lonnie really has never had any sort of romantic relationship.
When I'm standing top the bright lit city[/size]
hair;; Like his father’s before him, Lonnie’s hair is red, more of a copperish color than true red. This color changes slightly, as all hair does, depending on how much sun he gets; it appears nearly blonde if he’s outside often, and almost brown when the reverse is true. It is also wavy, though it appears straight when cut short. Typically, he wears it long, but recently cut it short in part for convenience, as he was tired of trying to tame it with a brush, and in part to give the rest of his hair to a charity.
eyes;; Green-blue; more blue than green. One of the few things he inherited from his mother, besides a slightly thinner than average bone structure.
height;; 5'8"
weight;; 150 lbs (68kg)
build;; Lonnie has the build of a sixteen year old boy that undergoes regular, rigorous exercise. He is in no way, shape or form super powered, but it quite strong for his age and size, and able to hold himself in a fight against larger and stronger enemies.
piercings;; None.
tattoos;; None.
style;; Lonnie doesn’t have any particular “style” he adheres to, instead wearing whatever clothes fit him comfortably. Typically, he wears a plain colored tank-top beneath a plaid button-up shirt, either blue or red. He also wears a pair of jeans, held up by a belt, tucked into a pair of combat boots. Beneath the jeans he usually wears a pair of leggings, unless it’s too warm, in which case he doesn’t.
He wears this mostly for convenience as well. He keeps the leggings and undershirt on under his Anarky costume, so if he ever needed to make a quick change, he’d still have something on, and not be left completely naked.
And I'll take your hand and pick you up[/size]
favorites;;at least five
hates;;
- Batman; Not hate. Just… I don’t agree with him. He fights that results of crime, not the causes. He takes on single cases, and fails to see the bigger picture. And he nearly killed me when I was twelve. Call me biased.
strengths;;
- Abnormally intelligent; Or I was, until I fused both hemispheres of my brain. Now, I’m a genius. I’m enlightened.
- Computers; I’m a skilled hacker, and have used it several times to my advantage. Not only that, but I’ve got some background in programming as well, using
- Engineering; I built a biofeedback learning device that allowed me to control my own brain. I’ve built a boom tube, not to mention a hundred other useful gadgets.
weaknesses;;
- Martial arts; This is sort of a strength and a weakness at the same time. Using the Biofeedback Learning Enhancer I've built, I've accelerated my understanding of martial arts, and instead of limiting myself to one style, embraced as many as I could. While this makes my fighting style unique and unexpected, I’m pretty much outmatched by anyone who is a master of one particular style.
quirks/habits;;
- Explains things to, practices speeches to, and uses his dog Yap as a sounding board for new idea.
- Cracks his fingers.
goals/dreams;;
- To make his parents proud; They’re ashamed of me, and sad I’m dead. Or, well, sad because they think I’m dead. But someday, they’ll be proud.
- To bring down the system; cliché but aptly put. The current power structure is a mess. It needs to go. Let me hasten it’s departure.
- To get people to see the world how he sees it; I tried forcing them to accept my views, but that… ended badly.
-
overall personality;;at least two thick paragraphs
And keep you there so you can see[/size]
father;;Mike Machin {Accountant; Forty seven years old. Believes Lonnie to be dead.}
mother;; Judy Machin {Housewife; Forty five years old.}
siblings;; None; Lonnie was an only child.
relatives;; Lonnie has no relatives of interest.
pets;; Yap; mutt of unknown breeds, unknown age. Yap helped Lonnie out of the river after the airship explosion, and the boy quickly grew attached to him. He’s a medium sized dog, nearly all white, save for a brown ring around his left eye. He’s uncommonly intelligent, and wears a black collar with a red “Anarchy” sign as a tag. Got his name from the sound he makes when barking.
hometown;; Gotham City
currentlyliving;; Washington D.C, to distance self from the city. Recently has been spending more and more time in Gotham, though.
history;;
Lonnie was a mostly typical little boy, save for two key traits: he was abnormally intelligent, by far the better of all of his peers, and because of it, or because of other factors; he had few friends growing up. This didn’t bother him much; he filled the void with books, spending much of his time in libraries, and reading.
Dear Mom and Dad,
I’ve realized for a long time that the dangerous life I lead means that one night, I might not come home…
However intelligent he was, he was a bit naïve of the outside world, and completely apolitical, apparently not interested by those sorts of things. In order to show him some of reality, and hopefully to foster a friendship for the boy, his father got him a penpal from a foreign country to write.
It looks like tonight must have been that night.
Lonnie took to the writing letters deal well. He soon became fast friends with his penpal, whose name was simply Xuasus, taking the time to tell him all about America, and to learn all about his friend’s country. The two traded letters for nearly a year.
I know I’ve caused you a lot of pain and suffering over the past couple of years, and I’m sorry for that. You thought you were bringing me up to be the all-american boy, playing ball on weekends, studying hard to be a doctor or lawyer.
One day, Xuasus’ letters stopped coming, and all of Lonnie’s letters came back to him. Worried for his friend, he began researching his friend’s country. He learned what a bad state that country is in, torn up by a civil war that had normal people, like Xuasus, trapped in the crossfire. He began to research war, and to buy books on politics, discovering he held radical sympathies, even at age twelve. However, studied of war, and worries for his friend, made him have nightmares at night, and for nearly three months he got no sleep.
Instead, you got a criminal. My memory is tainted, my good intentions derided.
He started spending more time as school as well. Unknown to his parents, he began making things in the school lab; bombs, stun guns, weapons and gadgets of the sort. With a plan in mind, he began to sleep again, though his dreams were far from happy.
And probably, I’m dead.
Strange crimes began to happen in and around Gotham. A rockstar, looked up to by a lot of kids, buys and sells cocaine, and one day is found beaten unconscious in a back alley with a circle-A spray painted above him. In a far better known and televised crime, a man, the head of a company whose byproducts pollutes Gotham River, nearly dided after being poisoned with the same pollutant that he dumped. The poisoning was recorded and broadcast by a criminal named Anarky, a man in a red costume, his face covered by a golden mask, who made this ultimatum to everyone watching the television: if you’re like him, he’ll find you and punish you.
How to start to explain how I feel? The world is like an alien planet to me, the brittle laughter and hollow fun of a theme park overlaying the nightmares of war and discrimination and brutality.
At that point, Batman began to investigate Anarky, and quickly figured out he’s committing crimes by what people complain about in the paper as a sort of MO. Reading the paper about the building of a bank on land used by the homeless as a cardboard city, he figures out where Anarky will be next and heads him off. The two meet and fight briefly, Batman clearly overpowering him. The Bat grabbed his head in a head lock, and was alarmed to find than the head came off—it was a false head and shoulders. Before he could do anything else, a gang of homeless people attacked him, intent on helping the villain, and Anarky fled.
The people society respects-- the great and the good—are, in most part, the small and the evil to me.
Batman got away from the homeless and followed Anarky to an office. Running into the office, he found a man, Mike Machin, alone inside. Mike confessed to being Anarky, but Batman ignored him and opened a closet. Twelve year old Lonnie, still in his Anarky costume, stumbled out, apologized and told his father not to cop the blame, and fell unconscious. He was taken to a hospital, and after he recovered, sent to juvenile hall.
It’s as if I see with laser eyes, burning away the surface illusion that hide the fact that we’re zombies—puppets controlled by somebody else.
Anarky spent nearly three years in juvie, but was not about to let that time go to waste. Instead, he improved his computer skills and became a grey hat hacker, stealing millions of dollars from large companies, and then using that money to set up bank accounts for poor farmers in other countries.
Again I’m sorry, because I know you’re upset. You’re good people—nearly everyone is good people—and that’s what the elite take advantage of.
After figuring out how to make holograms, he programmed a few of himself, and used them to sneak out at night. He committed more crimes during that time in costume; during an election, for example, a politician bought every billboard in Gotham. Anarky rigged the signs, though, so when they went up, they had the picture of the politician’s face with the words “Power corrupts! Don’t vote!” written beneath them.
They twist and warp your perceptions till black is white and white is black. Power corrupts, and it always will.
He also set up an online book store, Anarchos, that sold radical literature. The funds he made from that company went to another front, the Anarchist Foundation, who donated the money to radical causes, eco-warriors, gun protestors, and other like minded people. He put the rest of the money away in a Swiss bank account, for later use.
But society is changing. The information revolution allows every man to see that the great and the good are not better than him. The old power structure and their fascist ways cannot compete with the anarchy of tomorrow’s technology.
Eventually, Lonnie was released from juvie on probation, and went home to his parents. There, he designed and built the biofeedback learning enhancer, and after using it for hours every day, fused both hemispheres of his brain and became enlightened. (Or so he believed)
The time of the common man is coming. No longer will we have to march to battle as fodder for bankers and arms makers. No longer will we live in a fog of deceit stoked up by politicians’ lies.
After one of his contacts called him, he lied to his parents, telling them he was going out to play ball after his mother asked him why he couldn’t just be normal. Instead, he investigated what was going on with a group of gun runners he had been following. However, he was overpowered by the group he was trying to stop, and tied to an airship, which was flown out over Gotham and blown up. He was presumed dead.
The future is freedom… and all I wanted to do was to hasten its birth.
He wasn’t. Instead, he fell into the river, and shed his costume so that people would think him dead. While climbing out of the water, a little dog started yapping and ran over to him, grabbing his shirt with its teeth and helping him out. Touched by the unconscious creature’s unknown to itself kindness, he took the puppy in, naming him “Yap.”
I think it began with Xuasus. I was eleven when he became my penpal… Every month I wrote to tell him about the wonders of America.
Now free of his former life as Lonnie, and assumed dead by everyone who knew him and his connections to Anarky, he set up base in the basement of a building he was building, using funds he had stashed away in his Swiss bank account. At fifteen years old, he had over 100 million dollars in the bank.
Every month he wrote back with tales of horrors and soldiers and the brutal repression that made up his life.
With more free time on his hands, but not desiring to blow his cover with the rest of the world yet, Lonnie managed to program a computer AI with its own personality, and implement it into his suit, connecting it to the super computer he usually used. He uses it for a variety of purposes, from hacking into things to disabling security systems to researching people of interest he see’s while out and about.
After a year, his letters suddenly stopped. Mine were returned “Not Known.”
He also managed to construct a Boom tube, something thought impossible for humans to do. He used it not only to teleport from place to place, but to travel between “Gods’” worlds.
Another year passed before I found out why. Xuasus wrote once more, a single sheet scribbled in some seedy back alley.
An atheist by choice, Lonnie believes science is simply magic explained, and used technology to do magical feats, and to explain such feats. However, the so called “gods” and demons he met, he wasn’t interesting in explaining things to; he wanted something explained to him. The nature of evil. Real evil; he wanted to know what made them do what they do, why they felt compelled the do it.
His father had been arrested, and not heard from since. His mother took ill. His sister died of malnutrition. At the age of eleven, Xuasus was fending for himself on the streets.
But he couldn’t get a real answer out of any of them. He found that the evil demons were mostly mad, and the gods, greedy and power hungry. But nothing truly evil. Despondent, he still seeks an answer to his question, but is no longer bothering with questioning so-called gods for it.
Remember I asked you to help me find him, Dad? You said it was another country. The rules were different there. We could do nothing.
While he was in hiding, he watched the situation in the world worsen, spurred on by a large and well-known but mostly pointless war and a terrible economic downturn. Unable to do anything with any lasting effects, Lonnie began to grew desperate, and using the same technology he used with the Boom tube, began to design a machine that would, for lack of a better word, brainwash the masses.
But I couldn’t just forget a friend like that.
He knew that the road to hell was paved with good intentions, but he wanted to show the world that the road to heaven was paved with honesty. Besides, most people were brainwashed, for worse, from birth—was it really so bad if he did the same, but for good?
I started to haunt the library. I found out Xuasus’ country was a dictatorship at war with Marxist guerillas, with ordinary people caught in the crossfire.
Apparently, it was. When he was about to set the machine into motion, he was stopped by Batman. However, he prepared for such a situation by setting up a group of holograms that tricked the Bat, making him unable to tell which one was the real Anarky. Meanwhile, he managed to overpower him and put him in a pair of handcuffs that tightened when he tried to break out of them, leaving Anarky free to use the machine.
I found out the guns came from Europe, and Russia… and here. A few men made big profits, while half a world away, poor people suffered.
Anarky turned the machine on… and was horrified by what happened. It worked; too well. People took out their years of pent up aggression on anyone who held any shred of power. Meanwhile, in the anarchist society, people no longer felt compelled to work, and thus no one produced any food. They all became parasites—hungry parasites with no food. So, hungry and desperate, the masses of Gotham turned to cannibalism to solve their food problem.
I read about war and the history of war, and the psychology of war, and the horrors of war. You never knew it, but that’s when I went through those months of nightmares. Remember?
It was worse than anything he could have imagined, and he begged for it to stop. And miraculously, it did—the machine had actually malfunctioned, and targeted him instead, showing him what the world would be like in case he tried to do what he was going to do.
Anyway, I soon realized something—Almost all wars were caused by only one man, or one small group of men.
Overjoyed, the boy hugged Batman, ecstatic about what he discovered, and that it was just all a nightmare. The hero, slightly confused, tried to arrest Anarky again, but Lonnie escaped, claiming that he still had work to do.
And every time the elites ordered “Fight!” it was the ordinary man who became cannon fodder—And ordinary families followed him into oblivion.
In hiding once more, he decided he needed to get out of Gotham, and set up a secret base outside the city, in Washington D.C: the heart of corruption, as he so fondly referred to it. There, he studied the country’s politics in more depth, temporarily becoming blind to the situation in Gotham.
I learned that the state is more important than the individual. I learned that politics is soaked in blood. But I couldn’t accept that it had to be that way.
But he couldn’t stay ignorant for long. He learned of the mass breakouts, and temporarily went back to see what was going on. After nearly being killed by a gang of psychotic criminals, he decided to watch from the sidelines, beginning to notice certain key figures falling from grace, dying, or going silent.
Remember how crazy I was about books, Dad? I used to make you take me to the bookshop every Saturday. Flying saucers, cults, conspiracy theory, religion, the occult… I drank it up, tried in vain to make sense of it all.
At first, he condoned it. Most of those early people that were “Taken care of” were politicians and police officers he knew were corrupt in one way or another. He even contributed to the blackmailing and threats, sending anonymous tips and hints to the real criminals that were taking everything down.
Then I discovered Scudder Klyce’s “Universe”… and the jigsaw finally fell into place. Scudder Klyce worked out the secret of humanity. Vox popul, vox del. The voice of the people is the voice of God.
He thought the revolution may be possible. He thought it may be happening.
The elites are parasites, vampires sucking on the life-blood of man, turning everything food and decent into foul corruption!
He was wrong.
That’s when Anarky was born. I couldn’t help Xuasus—but I could give the people of Gotham a voice, no matter how small, against the force that oppresses them.
He should have known that in the absence of power, someone always tries to take the space. And that someone was a well known criminal, instead of a criminal who pretended to be a politician. Horrified, Anarky watched Gotham fall to pieces, and it’s only hope, The Bat, unable to help it.
If I’m dead, please don’t think ill of me. I only wanted to bring a little sanity into an insane world. For a little while, I was something that no one else had ever been… the voice of the people.
Now, he’s trying to figure out a way to return Gotham to its former state, any state, anything that would be better than what it is in now. He’s performed some minor vigilante work, protecting people when he could, and falling back on his ever reliable, and growing, network of homeless people for assistance.
One day—And it won’t be long—The tyrants will die away, scorned and mocked by their former victims. One day you’ll see that I was right; maybe then you’ll feel proud to say “My son did that.”
After all, Gotham’s mess is partially his fault. And he will figure out a way to set it right. Somehow.
All my love,
Anarky
(alias Lonnie Machin.)
As long as you're alive and care[/size]
name;; Godot
age;; Eighteen. (Though I lie. A lot.)
experience;; 8+ years.
activity;; Depends. I can’t promise I’ll be active, but I’ll certainly try.
whyyoujoined;; To avoid a guilt trip.
phrase;; Lonnie warns you that Pluto is out for revenge.
example;;
ooc; Read at own risk. Language and violence, ahoy!
For most people, the biting winds and freezing rain brought by this unusually severe October was the best excuse in the world for them to go home, curl up under a blanket or snuggle next to someone and enjoy hot chocolate or tea or even coffee this late at night. Perhaps they could lay down in front of their fires or heaters, do anything they could to beat out the ever invasive cold that signified and early winter. The cold caused shelters to open their doors for the night for the less fortunate, shops to close early so that employees could get home before they froze to death, even cars to pull off the usually busy roads and into hotels or inns for the night as their drivers sought a warm place to sleep. For other people, the cold was a blessing, allowing them freedom to go out at night safe from the prying eyes of the law as they went about their illicit business, buying and selling whatever they could manage. It didn't take a trained nose to smell the alcohol in the streets, the marijuana in the air as people lit up and enjoyed themselves, nor a trained eye to miss the freezing prostitutes on the corners selling pleasures of a more carnal kind. Yet all of this went undetected, because The Law was just as cold as everyone else.
Jekyll wasn't the law. He was free to go out whenever the hell he wanted to.
And so he stormed down the empty sidewalks, dark brown eyes narrowed against the cold, hands shoved deep within the pockets of his black suede jacket, his very posture that of a man pissed off beyond measure, clearly attempting to give Mother Nature a run for her money as to who was the most furious this night. While she had Global Warming and Pollution to sulk about, he had something of a more trivial, yet just as annoying matter: The Media.
How dare they! Since when did those motherfuckers get the balls to do something as obscene as call The Golden Team's mental soundness into question? Oh, right. Ever since those bastard MDS, or whatever the fuck they were calling themselves, military douchebags moved in, every news source, be it television or newspaper were doing their damndest to brownnose the government agency. And that dirty brownnosing mostly took the form of dragging The Golden Team's name through the mud for whatever small offense they could find, even going so far as to make up a few that the blind citizens immediately accepted as fact. But this crossed a line somewhere, a line that was causing Jekyll to see red. The lovely people of the newspaper had published an article calling "The Invincible Man's" mental reasoning into question, citing the fact that he allowed loose cannons and other regular misfits the protection of the team as proof enough that he must be a little batty. What the hell? Since when did trying to help those lost people, try to keep them out of Sickness' ever growing hands and pockets constitute being insane? And perhaps he was just being paranoid, but loose cannon? Jekyll knew he was less than the media's favorite after so rudely shoving them all off whenever they tried to get comments from the Team, but that was utterly ridiculous. Even more ridiculous was Jack's insistence that this did not, in fact, give him the grounds to go beat the shit out of the next news reporter he found. Hey, it was better than his original plan of hurting all of them, alright?
Jekyll stopped on the sidewalk, clenching his jaw and squeezing his eyes shut. Damn it, he knew he was being irrational, but what else was he supposed to do? He was tired of all this shit. He was tired of being treated like a psychopath by the same people he spent all of his time and resources protecting, just because some shiny new government agency with their trained men and their oh-so-fancy equipment had decided to settle down in their city. Hadn't they been doing a splendid job protecting everyone before they came? And now, look what they got. Insults and slander as the media painted them as monsters, insane, criminals even. Well, to hell with them, then. The next time a crazy gunman takes a news reporter hostage, Jekyll might just be the one yelling for him to pull the trigger.
No. That wasn't him. He knew he couldn't let himself stand by while something like that happened, even if news reporters were quickly falling in his eyes. He could, however, entertain his fantasies. He could also run. Running. The sounded like the best thing in the world right about now.
His clenched jaw slowly relaxing, his lips quirking into a vicious grin, Jekyll suddenly took off, nearly knocking over a homeless man that had been shuffling by him in his mad dash. Almost instantly the anger and pent up aggression he felt began to fade away as he slowly let his mind relax, his speed increasing as he gave into the wild freedom he so enjoyed. Almost at once his senses began to sharpen by instinct, his vision becoming clear enough to pick out the individual pieces of trash as he whizzed pass them, his ears picking up the coughs of smokers choking on their drugs, of the quiet curses directed at him by the man he had very nearly run over, his nose able to pick out the scents of dirty and decay and human bodies. He let himself fall completely into his freedom, and was rewarded with the sense of everything around him, the feeling of his feet slapping the ground, daring anything to stop him.
With his mind on autopilot like this, it didn't surprise him at all that his legs would suddenly change course, reacting by trained instinct to the sound of a muffled cry somewhere deeper into the city. He pulled himself from his self-induced bliss to determine where he was and where the sound had originated from, knowing the city like the back of his hand, the results of the long hours he spent studying maps, committing street signs and buildings to memories so that he could never really be lost. Ah, yes, he knew this area well, and knew well the types of people that took up residence here as well. As The Golden teams official unofficial recruiter, Jekyll had gone to great lengths to become acquainted with the city, not just its layout but its people. No, he didn't go out to greet them, simply set up a thick web of informants all throughout the city, mostly made up of homeless bums willing to talk for whatever money he could afford them, or petty criminals he let off if they would tell him what he needed whenever he came calling. And this web of informants paid off. He knew what gang called what territory home, who sold what and where, who the major players in the little gang wars were, and how strong or well built each gang was.
And this gang who's territory the sound originated from? One of the better founded gangs, having been in the city long enough to establish themselves as a definite prescience, yet smart enough not to draw too much attention to their selves lest they incur the wrath of surrounding gangs or worse, the police. Why the team hadn't gone through and removed these punks was a mystery to Jekyll, but for tonight he was willing to let it remain so if their being here gave him an excuse to beat the shit out of someone. Goodbye, repressed anger. hello, misplaced aggression.
Skidding to an unsteady halt in an alleyway, Jekyll coughed into his sleeves as his lungs screamed in pain against the cold air they had been rapidly taking in as he ran, silently cursing the cold with every stifled cough. Looking back and forth, Jekyll waited for his breathing to even out, his ears perked for any sound that may clue him closer to the sounds of that first agonized noise... There! And there! His ears were sensitive enough to pick up the sounds of bone striking something solid, of fists striking flesh. Obviously, someone was getting beaten up, or worse. Well, it seemed as if someone else was about to join them. Grinning every bit like the beast he was, Jekyll quickly searched for the fastest way over to the next alley from where the sounds came, his answer coming in the form of a fire escape. Ah. Attack from above, was it? So be it.
Suddenly lunging forward, he heaved himself on top of a dumpster, using the elevated height from there to easily leap and grab the second rung of the fire escape ladder. Quickly, he hauled himself up onto the fire escape, easily beginning to bound up the steps as he hurried on, not wanting to allow whoever was doing the beating a chance to escape. Reaching the top of the fire escape, he jumped again, this time grabbing onto the lip of the roof and swinging his weight over, landing crouched on top of the building's roof. He waited, silently, to see if any sound had given him away, if anyone noticed his presence, but it appeared they hadn't, if the sounds of the beating continuing were any indication. Nodding to no one in particular, Jekyll sprinted across the roof, slapping his hands down on the ledge on the other side as he peered into the darkness below.
For anyone else, the darkness might have been an issue. For him, not so much. He was easily able to pick out the four figures of men gathered around a fifth prone figure, one he could determine was female and bound and gagged yet was unable to identify her any further thanks to the presence of four other men around her. Before he could stop himself, he snarled quietly, clearly sickened by the cowards. Four strong men against one tied and gagged woman? Pathetic. Clearly, this was going to be easier than he thought.
Unwilling to give the men another moment of beating on the woman, and afraid that if he stayed any longer his surprise advantage would be lost, Jekyll did what seemed bright at the time; he leapt off the roof. Gravity soon dictated his fall, and so decreed that he should his the ground on all fours, his knees and shoulders rattling against the impact. But all was well, for he had conveniently landed on top of one of the men, effectively slamming him into the ground and knocking all the air out of him, as well as successfully either cracking or breaking several ribs. Fancy, that.
"What the fuck?" He was dimly aware of someone shouting, of all attention being drawn to him. With a bark of laughter, Jekyll lunged forward toward the closest man, grabbing him around the neck and transferring his momentum to the man, bringing his head in contact against the closest wall with a satisfying Slam! Throwing him toward his first downed buddy, he whipped around just in time to be hit in the stomach by a bat of some sort one of the men had been carrying.
"Damn, that hurt," Jekyll wheezed, doubling over and grabbing the bat before ripping it out of the man's hands. "Damn, this is going to hurt worse," He warned before slamming the end of the bat into the man's chest. Seven times.
Needless to say, something broke. And it wasn't the bat.
Turning the weapon around, Jekyll raised it and struck the man upside the head, knocking him to the ground, possibly for good. Dead or not, he didn't really care. Criminals were criminals, and their life or death meant little to him.
That brought the body count to three. Where was the last one...? Jekyll held the bat in front of him like one would a sword, scanning back and forth for any sign of the last man, the other three members lying on the ground in varying states of unconsciousness. He couldn't see him, and the groans of one of the men precluded any chance of him hearing him if he was running away. No matter, then. Resting the bat over one shoulder, he went to check on the woman on the ground, trying to ignore the fact she wasn't very dressed. "Lady...?"
Wait. Speaking of a lady, didn't he know this one?
For most people, the biting winds and freezing rain brought by this unusually severe October was the best excuse in the world for them to go home, curl up under a blanket or snuggle next to someone and enjoy hot chocolate or tea or even coffee this late at night. Perhaps they could lay down in front of their fires or heaters, do anything they could to beat out the ever invasive cold that signified and early winter. The cold caused shelters to open their doors for the night for the less fortunate, shops to close early so that employees could get home before they froze to death, even cars to pull off the usually busy roads and into hotels or inns for the night as their drivers sought a warm place to sleep. For other people, the cold was a blessing, allowing them freedom to go out at night safe from the prying eyes of the law as they went about their illicit business, buying and selling whatever they could manage. It didn't take a trained nose to smell the alcohol in the streets, the marijuana in the air as people lit up and enjoyed themselves, nor a trained eye to miss the freezing prostitutes on the corners selling pleasures of a more carnal kind. Yet all of this went undetected, because The Law was just as cold as everyone else.
Jekyll wasn't the law. He was free to go out whenever the hell he wanted to.
And so he stormed down the empty sidewalks, dark brown eyes narrowed against the cold, hands shoved deep within the pockets of his black suede jacket, his very posture that of a man pissed off beyond measure, clearly attempting to give Mother Nature a run for her money as to who was the most furious this night. While she had Global Warming and Pollution to sulk about, he had something of a more trivial, yet just as annoying matter: The Media.
How dare they! Since when did those motherfuckers get the balls to do something as obscene as call The Golden Team's mental soundness into question? Oh, right. Ever since those bastard MDS, or whatever the fuck they were calling themselves, military douchebags moved in, every news source, be it television or newspaper were doing their damndest to brownnose the government agency. And that dirty brownnosing mostly took the form of dragging The Golden Team's name through the mud for whatever small offense they could find, even going so far as to make up a few that the blind citizens immediately accepted as fact. But this crossed a line somewhere, a line that was causing Jekyll to see red. The lovely people of the newspaper had published an article calling "The Invincible Man's" mental reasoning into question, citing the fact that he allowed loose cannons and other regular misfits the protection of the team as proof enough that he must be a little batty. What the hell? Since when did trying to help those lost people, try to keep them out of Sickness' ever growing hands and pockets constitute being insane? And perhaps he was just being paranoid, but loose cannon? Jekyll knew he was less than the media's favorite after so rudely shoving them all off whenever they tried to get comments from the Team, but that was utterly ridiculous. Even more ridiculous was Jack's insistence that this did not, in fact, give him the grounds to go beat the shit out of the next news reporter he found. Hey, it was better than his original plan of hurting all of them, alright?
Jekyll stopped on the sidewalk, clenching his jaw and squeezing his eyes shut. Damn it, he knew he was being irrational, but what else was he supposed to do? He was tired of all this shit. He was tired of being treated like a psychopath by the same people he spent all of his time and resources protecting, just because some shiny new government agency with their trained men and their oh-so-fancy equipment had decided to settle down in their city. Hadn't they been doing a splendid job protecting everyone before they came? And now, look what they got. Insults and slander as the media painted them as monsters, insane, criminals even. Well, to hell with them, then. The next time a crazy gunman takes a news reporter hostage, Jekyll might just be the one yelling for him to pull the trigger.
No. That wasn't him. He knew he couldn't let himself stand by while something like that happened, even if news reporters were quickly falling in his eyes. He could, however, entertain his fantasies. He could also run. Running. The sounded like the best thing in the world right about now.
His clenched jaw slowly relaxing, his lips quirking into a vicious grin, Jekyll suddenly took off, nearly knocking over a homeless man that had been shuffling by him in his mad dash. Almost instantly the anger and pent up aggression he felt began to fade away as he slowly let his mind relax, his speed increasing as he gave into the wild freedom he so enjoyed. Almost at once his senses began to sharpen by instinct, his vision becoming clear enough to pick out the individual pieces of trash as he whizzed pass them, his ears picking up the coughs of smokers choking on their drugs, of the quiet curses directed at him by the man he had very nearly run over, his nose able to pick out the scents of dirty and decay and human bodies. He let himself fall completely into his freedom, and was rewarded with the sense of everything around him, the feeling of his feet slapping the ground, daring anything to stop him.
With his mind on autopilot like this, it didn't surprise him at all that his legs would suddenly change course, reacting by trained instinct to the sound of a muffled cry somewhere deeper into the city. He pulled himself from his self-induced bliss to determine where he was and where the sound had originated from, knowing the city like the back of his hand, the results of the long hours he spent studying maps, committing street signs and buildings to memories so that he could never really be lost. Ah, yes, he knew this area well, and knew well the types of people that took up residence here as well. As The Golden teams official unofficial recruiter, Jekyll had gone to great lengths to become acquainted with the city, not just its layout but its people. No, he didn't go out to greet them, simply set up a thick web of informants all throughout the city, mostly made up of homeless bums willing to talk for whatever money he could afford them, or petty criminals he let off if they would tell him what he needed whenever he came calling. And this web of informants paid off. He knew what gang called what territory home, who sold what and where, who the major players in the little gang wars were, and how strong or well built each gang was.
And this gang who's territory the sound originated from? One of the better founded gangs, having been in the city long enough to establish themselves as a definite prescience, yet smart enough not to draw too much attention to their selves lest they incur the wrath of surrounding gangs or worse, the police. Why the team hadn't gone through and removed these punks was a mystery to Jekyll, but for tonight he was willing to let it remain so if their being here gave him an excuse to beat the shit out of someone. Goodbye, repressed anger. hello, misplaced aggression.
Skidding to an unsteady halt in an alleyway, Jekyll coughed into his sleeves as his lungs screamed in pain against the cold air they had been rapidly taking in as he ran, silently cursing the cold with every stifled cough. Looking back and forth, Jekyll waited for his breathing to even out, his ears perked for any sound that may clue him closer to the sounds of that first agonized noise... There! And there! His ears were sensitive enough to pick up the sounds of bone striking something solid, of fists striking flesh. Obviously, someone was getting beaten up, or worse. Well, it seemed as if someone else was about to join them. Grinning every bit like the beast he was, Jekyll quickly searched for the fastest way over to the next alley from where the sounds came, his answer coming in the form of a fire escape. Ah. Attack from above, was it? So be it.
Suddenly lunging forward, he heaved himself on top of a dumpster, using the elevated height from there to easily leap and grab the second rung of the fire escape ladder. Quickly, he hauled himself up onto the fire escape, easily beginning to bound up the steps as he hurried on, not wanting to allow whoever was doing the beating a chance to escape. Reaching the top of the fire escape, he jumped again, this time grabbing onto the lip of the roof and swinging his weight over, landing crouched on top of the building's roof. He waited, silently, to see if any sound had given him away, if anyone noticed his presence, but it appeared they hadn't, if the sounds of the beating continuing were any indication. Nodding to no one in particular, Jekyll sprinted across the roof, slapping his hands down on the ledge on the other side as he peered into the darkness below.
For anyone else, the darkness might have been an issue. For him, not so much. He was easily able to pick out the four figures of men gathered around a fifth prone figure, one he could determine was female and bound and gagged yet was unable to identify her any further thanks to the presence of four other men around her. Before he could stop himself, he snarled quietly, clearly sickened by the cowards. Four strong men against one tied and gagged woman? Pathetic. Clearly, this was going to be easier than he thought.
Unwilling to give the men another moment of beating on the woman, and afraid that if he stayed any longer his surprise advantage would be lost, Jekyll did what seemed bright at the time; he leapt off the roof. Gravity soon dictated his fall, and so decreed that he should his the ground on all fours, his knees and shoulders rattling against the impact. But all was well, for he had conveniently landed on top of one of the men, effectively slamming him into the ground and knocking all the air out of him, as well as successfully either cracking or breaking several ribs. Fancy, that.
"What the fuck?" He was dimly aware of someone shouting, of all attention being drawn to him. With a bark of laughter, Jekyll lunged forward toward the closest man, grabbing him around the neck and transferring his momentum to the man, bringing his head in contact against the closest wall with a satisfying Slam! Throwing him toward his first downed buddy, he whipped around just in time to be hit in the stomach by a bat of some sort one of the men had been carrying.
"Damn, that hurt," Jekyll wheezed, doubling over and grabbing the bat before ripping it out of the man's hands. "Damn, this is going to hurt worse," He warned before slamming the end of the bat into the man's chest. Seven times.
Needless to say, something broke. And it wasn't the bat.
Turning the weapon around, Jekyll raised it and struck the man upside the head, knocking him to the ground, possibly for good. Dead or not, he didn't really care. Criminals were criminals, and their life or death meant little to him.
That brought the body count to three. Where was the last one...? Jekyll held the bat in front of him like one would a sword, scanning back and forth for any sign of the last man, the other three members lying on the ground in varying states of unconsciousness. He couldn't see him, and the groans of one of the men precluded any chance of him hearing him if he was running away. No matter, then. Resting the bat over one shoulder, he went to check on the woman on the ground, trying to ignore the fact she wasn't very dressed. "Lady...?"
Wait. Speaking of a lady, didn't he know this one?
*Quoted text from Lonnie’s farewell letter, Batman: Shadow of the Bat #41-42, 1995.
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