DCMU Justice League of America: "Equal and Opposite"
Gotham City — Five Nights Ago
It was the symbol of Gotham's failure. Blackgate Penitentiary. The monolithic island prison came into view and Steve Rogers exhaled, steeling himself. He considered the massive, sad structure, noting how placid it appeared from a distance. Not unlike the beaches he'd stormed more than half a century ago.
Immediately to his left Bruce Wayne piloted the Batboat with frigid ease. The orphaned son of Gotham. Its ebony-suited knight. The Batman.
"Thought for a second you'd gotten us lost," Steve commented.
No reply. It was to be expected.
Glancing overhead, Steve maintained visual contact with their aerial escort. A flying force that could rival any produced by a modern military. Kara Zor-L, the first of three. A Kryptonian demigod known as Power Girl. The team's nuclear option. She floated through the night as she always did, dominant, yet restrained.
Next in the formation was Ororo Munroe. A mutant matriarch, codenamed Storm. She served as the team's principal training instructor and its mutant ambassador. The heavy winds upon which she glided were hers to command.
Third was Victor Stone, who possessed the all too appropriate handle Cyborg. A technological wonder, and the team's intelligence wellspring. He was propelled skyward by the faculties of his own cybernetic body.
"Are we there yet?" Jennifer Walters whined from the backseat.
Steve could practically feel the woman's anxiousness, her zest for violence. As if it radiated from her olive-green skin. As if it might cause her to burst through the boat's canopy and fully embrace her nickname: She-Hulk. Jennifer was the team's legal representative, but on the battlefield she was so much more.
"We're close," Steve told her before activating the comm-link at the neck of his suit. "Cyborg, this is Leader. Request sitrep."
"Cyborg to Leader," the young man responded, "Blackgate's issued another distress call. Guards inside have been overwhelmed. Prisoners have raided the armory. They appear to be doped up on MGH."
"Mutant Growth Hormone," Batman growled.
"How'd the prisoners get a hold of it?" She-Hulk pondered.
"Blackgate isn't exactly corruption-free," he explained.
"Situation's developing, sir." Power Girl chimed over the comm as the team approached the penitentiary. Using her enhanced hearing sense she sifted through blaring alarms, cracking gunfire and agitated voices at the prison's perimeter.
"What've you got, Kara?" Steve inquired.
"A contingent of prisoners are storming the Eastern pier. They're overtaking a transport there. Trying to make an escape."
"Let me at em', puh-lease let me at em'!" An exhilarated voice rang out over the comm. It belonged to the team's speedster, Barry Allen. The Flash.
Steve regarded Flash on the Batboat's starboard side. The red-suited speed demon maintained pace and course with their vehicle by zipping atop the water's surface.
"Negative, Flash," was Steve's answer. "We've got to be calculating."
"Right now I'm calculating how many seconds it'll take me to clear that entire prison on my own," Flash challenged. "It's not very many."
"There's a saying, kid," Batman scorned. "Fools rush in."
For a pair of seconds Steve contemplated. He played dozens of battle plans out in his head. The team was still very young. He couldn't assign them anything too complex.
He breathed in.
"This is Leader to all suits," he began, "don't make me repeat these orders. Cyborg, I want you making low sweeps over the Eastern pier. Draw what enemy fire you can. Storm, watch his back and keep your eyes peeled for an ambush."
"Yes, sir," they both stated.
"Power Girl," Steve continued, "think you can keep that transport from fleeing the scene?"
"With ease and with pleasure."
"Batman will navigate us to the Southern pier. As we dock, Flash, I want you disarming and dispatching as many hostiles as possible."
"Does Batman count as a hostile? He can be pretty rude."
Steve ignored him. "Once we dock, you're our wrecking ball, She-Hulk. Clear us a path to the main structure."
"Uh-huh," she replied.
"Assuming we don't screw this up, I want everyone to regroup at the South entrance. Try to stay off the comm unless you need assistance. Any questions?"
"Here's one," Batman uttered into Steve's ear. "Do you really think the team's prepared for this?"
"We don't need to be prepared for every event," Steve stated softly, "we just need to be willing to take action."
"Oh! I think I hear shooting!" Flash exclaimed.
Steve prayed silently. For the safety of his comrades. For each and every guard inside Blackgate. For each of the prisoners, too. Then he made peace with the fact that he, one of seven daring heroes, was about to dash into chaos.
"Let justice be served," he declared over the comm, signaling each member of the team to proceed.
Encased in threatening metallic plating, Cyborg dove like a fighter jet upon Blackgate's Eastern pier. Storm swept down after him, orchestrating the winds and plunging majestically like a kite, her ivory hair whipping wildly.
The distant silhouettes of prisoners began to form. They were the size of army figurines, their orange jumpsuits flashing, making them like beacons, stampeding through the dimness.
The prisoners grew larger, nearer. Spotting Cyborg, they stood firm upon the dock and raised their Armalite rifles.
Cyborg lifted his forearm, emitting a circular force shield from the top of his wrist. As rifle fire crackled through the air, each of the well-aimed projectiles glanced harmlessly off of the energized buffer.
With a swaying of her arms Storm called forth fearsome gusts of rain and air, swatting the orange hostiles from the deck and casting them into chilling Gotham waters.
A second later, Power Girl descended like a supersonic bomb upon the ash gray naval transport. She decelerated rapidly, then hovered just shy of the ship's flank.
With gloved fingers she dug into the side of its thick hull, securing a sound grip. She then elevated herself, higher and higher, hauling the giant craft along with her. 1,500 tons. She hoisted it as if it were a bag of groceries.
Steve monitored her exhibition of strength from the Batboat. "She's a Kryptonian alright."
"Big deal," She-Hulk huffed, "I could lift that thing, too. I think."
Power Girl carted the naval transport vertically until she reached the roof of the immense prison structure. As gingerly as one could, she set the ship down onto the roof's surface. The frame of Blackgate prison shuddered under its mass, then held steady.
Touching down nearby, Power Girl spotted over a dozen armed prisoners flooding out of the transport's cargo doors. They peppered her with gunfire, the rifle rounds impacting meekly against her pristine white uniform, her impossibly dense alien musculature. She felt nothing.
One by one, their weapons clicked empty.
"This is usually the part where bad guys start running," she remarked.
Then she noticed their enhanced stature and muscularity. The icy malice in their eyes. She keyed in on their accelerated heart rates. The were reaping the benefits of MGH. The drug made them more aggressive, more brazen.
They charged her with rifles raised like axes. With superhuman speed and rage. It wasn't enough.
She dashed in between them with superior quickness, like a jolting electric current. She tapped each of the men with a jab to the midsection. A reserved, exacting strike that impacted against the liver and caused the nervous system to swell with pain, the body to collapse.
The prisoners dropped like dominoes. Some passed out. Others curled up and groaned.
On an adjacent side of the island, the Batboat screamed towards the Southern pier. Rifle rounds clanged against its armored carapace, delivered by a clique of enemies waiting at the pier's edge.
"Shield your ears, everyone," Batman advised.
He flipped a switch, activating the boat's mounted LRAD. The blaring forward sound emitter filled the night with a numbingly shrill and perpetual tone. It infected the prisoners with panic and agony.
Flash took the opportunity to lance forth, causing a shock wave as he ignited his explosive rate of speed. His movements were so swift as to no longer be visible, save for patches of red static, which swept through the already disoriented foes.
After the passing of a few seconds, the prisoners found themselves dangling in a column from one of Blackgate's gargantuan watchtowers. Bound at the ankles and suspended by their own jumpsuits.
Moments later the Batboat was docked. Steve, the icon of heroism known as Captain America, sprinted for the penitentiary walls. Utterly focused. His body chemistry roused by adrenaline and the corporal rewards of the super soldier serum. Batman trailed behind him, followed by She-Hulk.
A glaring blue spotlight swung to greet them, projected from one of the elevated guard towers. The three heroes found themselves outlined in an annular glow.
"Get to cover!" Steve commanded.
They scattered as bursts of automatic fire cascaded down from the tower. Pulse cannon blasts, raking across the terrain around them. Steve huddled beneath the might of his vibranium shield, its material shunting the impact of several high-velocity shocks.
He shuffled and dove, finding cover behind rocks at the island's edge. Batman, via athletic prowess and highly trained reflexes, had done the same a split second prior.
A cannon barrage smashed into She-Hulk's robust physique just before she found the rock sanctuary. She showed no signs of discomfort.
"That tower's been overtaken by bad guys," Steve announced as bolts rained down on their position.
"Are you Captain America or Captain Obvious?" She-Hulk retorted. "I'll handle it. I owe them one."
With thick legs she vaulted skyward, an immense leap, which stopped short of the tower but generated enough momentum for a second, far more explosive upsurge. The tower's spotlight and cannon bursts veered wildly, attempting in vain to catch her in midair.
"Now, while they're distracted! Move!" Steve hollered.
He leaped from cover, as did Batman, and the two raced for the South entrance of the prison structure. The wail of grating metal and She-Hulk's impish laughter sounded overhead. Steve suppressed a grin.
A pair of massive titanium doors at the South entrance slid open unexpectedly as the two heroes neared them.
"Get out of sight!" Steve cried.
It was too late. A monstrous, reptilian being of freakish stature emerged from between the doors, spotting them. The figure snarled and snorted with enmity. Craggy malachite hide tearing through his orange jumpsuit.
"Killer Croc." Batman acknowledged.
"Bat." The human-reptile grunted, with a voice that could easily have belonged to a gravel-eating lion.
Batman frowned. Croc had grown considerably. Husky, immense, with a boiling mania in his eyes. The Gotham felon must've been consuming MGH like it was Halloween candy. As if he hadn't been dangerous before.
"He wants me," Batman claimed, waving Steve off.
Steve knew better. In truth Batman was signaling him, making him aware that Croc would soon be distracted long enough for Steve to flank the monster and engage.
Killer Croc sprang with ferocity just as Batman loosed a weapon from his belt. It was a compact stun gun. Batman aimed at the sprinting Croc. He selected a higher-voltage setting, intended for super-powered threats, and fired.
The stun gun sent metallic barbs into the beast's upper torso, followed by a tremendous voltaic current. Croc groaned, his muscles stiffening momentarily, but continued his stride, his fibers rekindled and ballooning along with his rage.
Croc was deceptively fast, and closed distance like a darting cheetah. But to Batman the villain's offense had always been too telegraphed. His strikes too wide, wound-up, his limbs too ungainly. Drugs or no, he would remain hindered by lack of technique.
With a massive, scaled arm Croc swiped, his claws thirsting for Batman's throat. Batman rolled under the attack with gymnastic grace, pivoting to take up position behind his enemy. In a sharp motion he drove a kick up into the beast's groin. No effect.
Steve emerged, plummeting from a high leap, and drove his shield into Croc's neck with a heavy downward strike. Croc grumbled, wobbling slightly, but to Steve's surprise was otherwise unfazed.
Steve winced as Croc gripped him by his suit and then tossed him violently, twenty yards or more, into a concrete wall. His spine smacked against the barrier, denting it, the collision jostling his vertebrae and lighting him up with pain. He dropped.
Batman took the opportunity to withdraw, create distance. He cast a string of smoke pellets onto the surface around him. The pellets detonated in small pops, veiling the battlefield in thick sheets of black vapor.
The mere act of moving bit at Steve's nerves. He set down on one knee and reached for his comm-link. "This is leader to all suits. Have engaged Killer Croc at the South entrance. Need backup—"
Then the vaulting Croc was upon him, hissing from overhead. He crashed down with a stony extended arm, serrated knuckles jutting forth like the end of a battering ram. Steve intercepted the strike, just barely, with his stalwart shield.
A second merciless strike sprang at him, this time a clawed slash. It raked bits of ore from his shield, digging scars into its starred insignia.
Batman materialized from the smoke, leaping onto Croc's back and clipping a cylindrical grenade to the collar of his jumpsuit. The monster instinctively tensed, then grasped for his assailant to no avail. Batman had already detached from him.
Killer Croc clawed at his collar, but in a single second the grenade burst, spreading dense billows of white-orange smoke, shrouding the beast's head in a torrential hood.
The chemical compound was, as intended, savagely potent. It scalded Croc's equilibrium, setting his eyes, throat, nasal cavity and lungs on fire with coarse irritation. He howled, then choked, stumbling and swinging wildly.
Abruptly, an all too familiar voice clamored, rapidly drawing near.
"Cavalry's arrived! Left my trumpet at home, though."
Flash surged into range in streaks of red, circling Croc again and again with stunning haste. The lightning-swift revolutions produced a swelling of air, which lifted and ravaged the fiend in an abrasive cyclone, sending him upward, 50 yards high.
In no time a second streak lanced into the storm. A white streak, the nimble Power Girl, who closed in on Croc and delivered a rocketing straight punch. Her strike thudded with the force of a tank-busting warhead, impacting just behind her foe's ear.
Croc blacked out immediately, his brain jounced into unconsciousness. His hulking form plummeted at a fastball's speed and crashed, cracking the earth. He lay still, defeated, within a small crater.
"That might have been a bit much," Flash commented.
"Let's get him restrained, then regroup with the others," Steve said.
"I just want to point out, for the record," Flash insisted, "that I got here quicker than Power Girl."
Minutes later, all seven heroes took up formation by the South entrance's titanium doors.
"I'm accessing Blackgate's security grid," Cyborg declared, his neural nexus scanning, doctoring and interlinking at breakneck speeds. "It's largely been shut down. Rebooting now."
In seconds he had each of the prison's security cameras playing in his mind.
"What do you see?" Storm inquired.
"It's not pretty. The inmates are running the asylum, for lack of a better phrase."
Cyborg fixated on one video feed in particular, it displayed traffic coming in and out of the prison's mess hall. "They're steering all guards into the mess hall on the first floor. Beating and humiliating them."
Then he spotted something else. "They're bringing in drums of gasoline. I'll give you three guesses as to what those are for."
"We'd better act fast, Captain." She-Hulk urged.
Steve deliberated. "Okay. These are your orders."
—
Scores of guards were made to line up against a wall inside of Blackgate's sizable mess hall. They were cuffed at the ankles and wrists, crestfallen, cut and badly bruised.
The hall's entrance spilled out into the primary cell block array, where orange-clad prisoners funneled in and out, carting in more guards as well as drums of gasoline.
A squad of prisoners held position near the center of the hall, training their rifles on the cuffed guards.
In an instant the area went pitch black. Visibility perished, leaving only the uttered profanities of a few agitated prisoners.
It was a power outage, brought about by Cyborg's technopathic orchestrations.
One of the prisoners barked, "Get someone down to the electrical room—"
And then, for a split second, the lights flickered back to life. It was more than enough time for Flash, who'd just entered the building by phasing through its walls. Vibrating his core at such an accelerated rate that his molecules had become intangible.
In that brief moment of illumination he buzzed through the squad of prisoners, stripping away their rifles, ejecting each of the weapon's magazines and chambered rounds.
"Go!" Flash shouted into his comm link.
Twin booms erupted on either side of the room, the first produced by Power Girl as she briskly smashed a hole through the ceiling and dropped into the hall, Storm and Steve appearing just behind her. The three stood between the restrained guards and the now weaponless prisoners.
The second rumble was elicited by She-Hulk, who crushed chunks out of a wall at the prisoners' flank. She stepped through, joined by Batman and Cyborg.
The hall lit up again fully, revealing to the prisoners the bleakness of their situation. They didn't care. Hollering, they dashed headlong at the heroes without ever considering the option to flee.
Immediately a detachment of additional prisoners, well-armed, rushed from the cell block array to join them.
"Barrier!" Steve shouted.
Power Girl nodded, parting her lips and venting out icy exhalations, astonishingly cold, which began the formation of a wall of ice, positioned between the vulnerable guards and the rest of the violence.
Storm aided her, eyes gleaming with incandescent white, conjuring up sheets of crystal and snow to bolster the fortification.
Gunfire flooded the hall, more angered prisoners charging into range as the ones already present engaged the heroes in a fierce melee.
"Crowd control!" Steve urged, his heart rate soaring in the midst of whizzing projectiles, flailing limbs and hurling foes. "Any time now!"
"My favorite," She-Hulk cheered, extending her arms to either side. She fiercely slammed them inwards, her palms smacking together to produce a sonic boom, a punishing thunderclap, directed at a cluster of foes.
The shock wave uprooted each of them and lobbed them every which way, many traveling for several yards before inevitably meeting something solid.
Cyborg trained his sights on another grouping of prisoners. The mechanical components of his outstretched arm shifted and reformed, converting into a bizarre weapon with two conductive pincers.
The pincers sparked, loosing electrified jolts, lashing strands of blue chaotic flux. They stung the mass of enemies, freezing their muscles and biting them with sharp vibrations. They keeled over.
The prisoners' numbers were thinning considerably. As the skirmish poured out from the hall and into the cell block array, the heroes were greeted by a crew of armored mech suits. High-tech enforcement units designed to suppress riots. The machines were now being piloted by the prisoners themselves.
Showing no restraint, the bulky mech units loosed repulsor beam volleys upon the heroes.
Steve's vibranium safeguard withstood the energized punishment, as did Cyborg's force shield. Power Girl and Flash whizzed and juked to avoid the red beams, and She-Hulk weathered the assault by forming a high guard with thick forearms.
Batman and Storm, however, were each caught by one or two of the concussive blasts. The hammering shocks stunned and propelled them, and as gravity pulled them back to the floor their momentum caused them to tumble and skid.
"Cyborg, can you shut those things down?" Steve requested.
"I'm working on it, just need—"
Before he could finish, a towering masculine figure, clutching a shotgun, plunged down from the catwalk overhead. As he landed, the man brought his weapon down violently, clubbing Cyborg at the aft of his skull.
Cyborg toppled, his vision tripling, equilibrium askew.
The man stood over him, dominant, revealing himself to the others. Physically dense, like a statue, with ghostly pale complexion and a ghoulish countenance. The inmate called Lonnie Thompson Lincoln, but more notably referred to as Tombstone.
He raised his weapon and blasted, joined by the mech squad and their hefty arsenal.
"Flash, get Victor! Fall back, team!" Steve ordered.
The group complied, including Batman and Storm, who were still moderately injured. The seven retreated to the mess hall, hounded by a hailstorm of pellets, repulsor beams, flame jets and sonic screeches.
In spite of the onslaught, Steve managed to seal the titanium door leading to the hall. Granting them a few fleeting seconds of breathing room.
"How is he?" Steve asked, motioning to the stunned Cyborg.
"Woozy," Flash replied.
"Two options," shouted Tombstone from the other side of the door, "come out, or get smoked out!"
"He sounds like a nice guy," She-Hulk remarked.
Flash glimpsed the drums of gasoline positioned in a corner of the hall. "I wanna try something," he proclaimed.
Beyond the door, Tombstone took up position with the mech units, readying their weapons, preparing to blast the door down and submerge the hall with flame.
"If it wasn't already clear," Tombstone pronounced, grinning, "Blackgate now belongs to us!"
Then the door burst open, and Flash blitzed outward, in dashing streams of red, covering distance and planting objects, sprinting at a lightning pace, a swiftness that could not be perceived by the human senses.
Before anyone had recognized, Flash was already well beyond Tombstone's blockade, positioned behind the ghoul and each of the mech suits.
"Sure it does, pal," Flash chuckled.
Tombstone swerved around, realizing at once that he and every one of the mechs were now encircled by drums of gasoline.
Power Girl peeked out of the doorway, her eyes glaring an intense red. She swept the area with searing optic beams, her heat vision, igniting the drums in a cataclysmic chain reaction.
The cell block erupted in a percussive sequence of booms, shocking and pronounced. The space converted suddenly into a concrete canal of tremendous heat and terrible concussive force.
The deafening booms reached their coda, leaving behind vibrant, concentrated waves of flame.
It would take Power Girl and Storm several seconds to dissipate the sweltering orange inferno, infusing the space with sheets of ice and gusts of arctic relief.
When the vast blaze subsided, the mech suits lie motionless, strewn about, their armored hulls chewed up and scorched. The pilots within them appeared to be notably thrashed, but breathing.
Tombstone stretched out on the floor, within an inch of his life, charred and paralyzed. The steep amounts of MGH in his system likely the only reason he'd survived.
The seven team members, allied as the Justice League of America, grouped up amidst the wreckage. They inspected the surroundings, then hovered over their singed foe.
"If it wasn't already clear," scowled Batman, "Blackgate now belongs to us."