URICH
DISCLAIMER: If I owned any of these characters, would I REALLY be posting my stories on a Fan Fiction website? For those of you who are sarcasm- deficient, no I sadly don't own the rights to the character of Ben Urich et al, that privilege belongs to Marvel Comics and Joe Quesada. Ben Urich was created by Frank Miller.
FIRST ARC: THE MAN WITHOUT FEAR
Chapter One: The Story of the Century
Ben Urich's alarm went off, as usual, at seven thirty. He clambered from his bed and dressed quietly, so as not to wake his wife, Doris. He slipped from the room and headed across the living room into the kitchen, opening the larder. He stared at a rather belated stock of food: a near-empty box of shredded wheat, a half full packet of bacon, a single egg in a box… Ben sighed.
I'll have to do without again, he told himself, and sighed again, walking to the front door. On the mat lay three letters. Ben picked them up and glanced at all three- he sighed again instinctively, noticing that all three were bills.
Urich slipped the bills into his inside jacket pocket- there was no need to worry Doris just yet, besides, surely a good story would crop up soon…
Ben opened the door and hurried out.
It was a brisk half hour walk to the Daily Bugle offices, which would have been bad enough if Urich wasn't in desperate need of a toilet, and his smoker's lungs didn't help either. Ben was coughing for half the journey, and clutching his crotch in a desperate attempt not to wet himself for the other half.
When he finally reached the Bugle, Urich charged into the toilets, shoving the Pulse magazine writer Kat Farrell aside rudely in the rush. Ben emerged soon afterwards, taking a long drag from a cigarette- the last he had. Urich glanced at his watch- a quarter past eight. He sighed… he'd have to go and get another pack during his lunch-break.
Ben slipped into his cubicle and sat at his desk. He opened up Word on his computer and just stared at the screen, thinking. Whatever happened to the old days? Once he was the Bugle's hot young reporter, now he was a middle aged, chain smoking has-been, whose greatest achievement in over a year was a page thirteen article on the disappearance of some C- list Hollywood special effects wannabe- Quentin Beck.
One o'clock, and the lunch- break, didn't come soon enough for Urich. He'd tried in vain to write an article on Stark Enterprise's takeover of RandCorp, but he only wrote five lines before scrapping the whole thing.
Urich strode from the building as his watch bleeped one and hurried across the street, into a small shop, snatching two cigarette packets and a can of Stella artois from the shelves. Urich paid, though with pangs of guilt- Doris would kill him if she knew he was wasting the little cash he earned like this.
But as Urich emerged from the shop, he saw something unbelievable. An old, overweight man was running… panting… fear bright in his eyes… and he was being pursued by a man. A man in a red bodysuit and mask. And this man's story would soon change Ben Urich's life irrevocably…