The Unexceptional Ant-Man!
Origin Story Part II
And this, my dear friends, is where our main character makes his entrance.
Joe Weaver awoke to the sounds of cars honking and the rush of people outside. He pushed his window curtain to the side and squinted his eyes. The sunlight almost blinded him at first but his sight adjusted. He saw the city that never slept already on the verge of a new day; its citizens already dressed and ready to get on with their day.
He got out of his bed and immediately heard something clatter and roll across the floor. He looked down at his feet and saw an empty beer bottle rolling aimlessly. He picked it up and saw that there was still small drop of the liquid at the bottom. He drank it.
To say that Weaver had no purpose in life would be wrong. The correct answer was that he couldn't find a purpose to his life. Ever since that day his life had been an incomprehensible slur of beer, television, sleep and thoughts of what to do with his life. In truth, Joe Weaver had absolutely no idea what to do with it.
He stepped into the shower and turned it on. It came out ice cold and he jumped backwards. He had forgotten that it usually took good 5 minutes for the warm water to come. Side effects of being hungover.
After spending a good 30 minutes in the shower, Joe turned it off and grabbed a towel to cover himself in. The digital clock on his drawer read 9:42 A.M. Almost time for work. Weaver examined himself on a wall mirror as he dried himself. He was unnaturally skinny and unnaturally short for his age (he was 31 and his height stood in at 5'5). His hair was brown and was always plastered down on his head, never standing out. Joe also had a beard that looked quite rough which gave him the look of an angry short man.
Not that he would have denied that's how he really was of course.
He opened his closet, which was almost depressingly empty of clothes, and pulled out his blue dock worker uniform. It was dirty and smelled in some places (he had never bothered to fix the smell and rarely washed the uniform). After getting dressed he excited his apartment and locked it tightly.
"Leaving so quickly, Joe?" asked an elderly woman's voice. Joe turned around and saw his elderly neighbor, Mrs. Ada. She and her husband had lived at these apartments since their founding in the late 1970s. Joe had never met her husband, he had died 5 years before he had moved in. Joe thought nice things of Mrs. Ada. They repeatedly visited each other's apartments and had pleasant talks over the state of their lives and the state of the country (politics, economy, superheroes, etc.)
Lately though the visits had stopped. Mrs. Ada was a very sharp woman and she noticed that Joe had changed ever since that had happened.
Joe attempted to smile but it came off as an unsure frown.
"Yes Mrs. Ada, you know, duty calls." He pointed to the dock logo on his chest. Mrs. Ada nodded at the logo but she tightened her nose, the odor coming from it was quite repulsive.
"I don't suppose you might come around later? I have a nice casserole I'm going to make," smiled Mrs. Ada.
"Well…" Joe thought about what he would be doing later that afternoon but then he realized that the schedule for each of his days was empty.
"Alright, a casserole sounds like a nice change of food," said Joe. It certainly was a change; the only thing that he had been eating for a few weeks was fast food and beer.
"Splendid! I look forward to your visit," she said.
"Have a nice day Mrs. Ada," he turned and started to walk down the stairs to the front door.
"You too, oh and Joe, one last thing?" Joe stopped on the last step and looked up at her. She was entering her apartment as she spoke.
"Do try to smile more, it helps." She closed the door to her apartment. Joe watched the number on it, 3, (he lived in apartment 4).
"I'll try," he said in barely more than a whisper. He opened the door and went out. Mrs. Ada watched him leave from her window.
"God help that man."
Joe lived in some cheap 2 story apartments in Hell's Kitchen named the York Crossing Apartments. It was obviously a dangerous place to live in, what with the crime activity and the rumors of a masked red skinned man who ran around the place at night, but it was simply the only place he could afford to live in. As he walked outside he received the usual looks that the people who lived in that neighborhood gave each other, looks of caution.
He thought about his conversation with Mrs. Ada, 'do try to smile more' she had said. When Joe had first moved into the apartments a few years back, Mrs. Ada had been the first, and only, neighbor to introduce herself to Joe. They shared the story of their lives over a blueberry pie she had baked. Mrs. Ada used to work in New Jersey as a cashier for a sandwich shop. She then met her future husband while working there and after getting married they moved to New York for better jobs and a new lifestyle.
Joe had never gotten the pleasure of knowing Mr. Ada though. He was killed in a mugging 5 years before Joe moved into the apartments. The killer had never been found and Mrs. Ada didn't often talk about the event. But when she did talk about her husband her eyes light up and her words were filled with energy. Joe often wished he could exact justice on the killer and ease Mrs. Ada's pain. But of course though he couldn't, he wasn't a superhero…
It took him at least an hour to arrive at the docks (he traveled by subway). Something was a bit off today; there were some news van at the area filming and some police officers forming a barricade. Joe walked up to them.
"Excuse me I work here, what happened?"
A gruff looking police officer responded, "There was a shootout here last night, SHIELD is taking care of things."
"SHIELD?" Joe's face went a bit slack. Everyone knew about SHIELD of course but he didn't think he'd ever be associated with them or meet them. Now that the officer mentioned it he did see a few people garbed in white and blue patrolling the docks with large nets, as though they were searching for something.
"Your fellow employees are gathered by that crane over there." Said the officer. Joe looked and saw the workers standing in a large group by a crane. He jogged over there. He catched a few words of their conversations.
"Yes I said SHIELD!"
"A shootout?"
"Yeah some kind of drug deal or something,"
"You think we should demand for extra pay for working conditions?"
Joe wanted to ask his workers for more information about the incident but he didn't due to fear. He didn't know a single co-worker there who liked him so he just decided to stand quietly. Eventually they saw their boss, Paul, walking towards them. He looked furious, but that wasn't unusual since it looked like he wanted to yell at someone half of the time. The employees all turned to Paul expectanctly. He stood fuming and crossed his arms.
"As I'm sure you're aware, there was some sort of shootout here yesterday night," his eye twitched as he talked. Paul was your stereotypical angry boss who loved to rant at anything and anyone (and it just so happened that Joe was his number 1 victim.)
"These…agents… tell me that they've got it all covered," his face reddened, "But they're planning on closing the docks for a whole week just so they can investigate!"
He spat out the words and now looked like a tomato. The workers had seen Paul like this more than once.
"Do you know how much money we'll lose!? Close down the docks my a**! And just who the h*** was on night duty last night?!" he shouted at them, "If they had been doing their job correctly then they would have seen this nonsense and they could have called the police! Do you know how much money in damages happened because of yesterday?! I swear I fill find the slacker who didn't do his job and fire the b****!"
Joe's face paled. He was in fact the guy who was supposed to have been on night duty yesterday but the call of beer from home had made him leave early.
If Paul found out that it was him… he would be fired. Joe couldn't afford to lose his job. If he lost the job then he'd lose his income, then he'd lose his apartment… then he'd have to go to the streets.
"Now I can't afford to not do anything for the whole week so we're pretending that SHIELD isn't even here. It's back to work people! Gordon and Matt, I want you guys to keep unloading crates but don't let SHIELD notice."
Paul barked orders at everyone and they grudgingly went to do what he said. The workers were like Joe, just doing what they could to earn a living.
"And Weaver!" Joe looked at Paul.
"Something's plugging up one of the sewer drains, go fix it." he ordered.
Of course he'd give Joe that job. Whenever a sewer drain got clogged Joe was always sent to go fix it. No one else had ever been sent to go fix it as far as he knew. And whenever he did fix it his clothes got extremely pungent and dirty.
'Well I don't wash them anyways…' thought Joe. He walked off towards the drain.
Perhaps if he did his job quickly then Paul would show gratitude to him. Maybe if he found out about how Joe was the one on night duty then he'd give him a second chance. He doubted it though, he was always leaving work early.
He arrived at the sewer drain. Less water than usual was exiting it. The drain smelled foul and there was garbage floating around everywhere. Joe walked into the drain on a small sidewalk. He could see the metal bars where the water came from just a few feet ahead.
There was something clogging the bars, some sort of black box covering the drain. Joe figured that it was a heavy box since it was half sunk and not moving with the current of the water. Well time to get messy he thought.
He bent over and tried to pull the box out of the water but he couldn't. It was heavy.
"What is this?" he thought aloud. He tried to pull it up again but he barely moved it, the box was wet and it kept slipping.
"Okay then… on 3." He said. He grabbed hold of the box and counted to 3 mentally,
1…2…3. With all of his might he pulled the box up. He heard some of his back joints snap like when someone cracked their knuckles. He got up and stared at the strange black box.
A skull and tentacle logo at the top of it stared back.