Hello friends,
As always I write almost exclusively AU's and this will be the most AU AU I've written yet.
When i was a kid, I loved superheroes. My mom would record episodes of Spider-Man TAS and Batman TAS on VHS tapes, some of which I stlll have today, complete with 90's commercials and all. I loved cartoons and comic books, movies and games, anything that let me act or live out being a true hero.
My fanboyishness was so great my friends and I wrote our own webcomic in high school, which is thankful no longer in existence, I think. If you can find copies of The Adventures of Dr. Sparkle, let me know, I need to destroy them. ASAP.
My love of superheroes was even a partial inspriation for me joining the Navy's Hospital Corps, I wanted to save people and be a beacon of hope to the world. That didn't go nearly as planned.
But I thought what if I could rework a non-superhero show into one? I thought that could be an interesting idea and The Owl House, I felt, was perfectly suited for my needs.
So yeah, things may sound the same, but theres a lot of new and exciting elements, or I hope they will be anyway. I hope you all enjoy my nerdy ramblings about comics.
Lilith Clawthorne took the curb as she sped towards the disturbance. No, disturbance is the wrong word for it. A disturbance was a drunk beating on his wife, she had dealt with many of those in her career. No, this was a disaster. Purity Tower was on fire.
Purity Tower was the tallest building in the entirety of Three Isles City. It was a beacon of hope to the populace, a promise of a brighter tomorrow. It was home to the megacorporation Covenant Industries. Thousands upon thousands of people worked there. And now explosions were going off throughout the building and patrolmen had said that lightning was firing off from the upper most floors. Like some kind of divine wrath was emanating from the pinnacle of the tower. But all first responders reported that the building and the ground around it was shaking severely. It seemed like the whole skyscraper was coming down.
Lilith hopped off the street, grateful that the late night meant fewer people were on the steet and continued her rush towards the tower. She had a sick feeling in her stomach, a sinking feeling that she knew who was behind such an attack as this one.
Belos.
The masked madman who had been terrorizing the city with promises of overturning the status quo, of establishing his own empire right here in the heart of America. No one knew his motivations, no one even knew who he was, only that he wore a mask, was highly intelligent, and craved power more than anything else.
Belos collected the disturbed and demented like other people collect stamps. It seemed like he had a whole army at his disposal.
Lilith's dispatch came alive, "Contact! Contact! Fire coming from the third, no, fourth flower of Purity Tower!" There was background noise of pops and whistles, which she recognized as bullets firing and flying past the dispatching officer. It sounded like a combat zone, like the ones Lilith had served in during the Iran Conflict five years prior.
He stomach dropped again. She was in command. She would be the one in charge of her soldiers. Lilith gunned it as she fishtailed around a corner speeding towards Purity Tower on the straight away.
She heard bullets ping off the body of her car, and her windshield nearly shattered as one imbedded itself in her passenger seat.
Damn, they really are good shots.
Lilith was never sure where Belos got the talent he did. But many of his number were not amateurs. They seemed like some kind of trained mercenary army rather than a street gang.
Lilith threw on the parking break and flung the car sidways, drifting and skidding to a halt mere feet from a officer crouched behind his patrol vehilcle. He had his service weapon drawn and was waiting on an opening to return fire.
Lilith opened her car door, and essentially rolled out, crouching, as she made her way around and hurried next to the officer.
"Report," she demanded.
"Ma'am. Multiple engagements from the third, fourth, and I think fifth flour. Heavy fire, full auto. They blew out the windows, have us pinned down. We can't get any closer without taking casualites. Sgt. Hallow tried to make it in with a squad but.." He pointed out and Lilith peaked over the cab to see a collection of bodies in the street.
Damn…
Lilith thought carefully. It would take a miracle, or for them to run out of ammo for the TIPD to make it into the damn lobby, let alone make it up to the top floor.
"LOOK!" Someone shouted and Lilith glanced up to see a blur fly above and past them then directly into one of the open windows. The insurgent that had manned it screamed as something collided with him hard. Then there were screams. Screams of surprise at first, then screams of pain, then finally those of abject terror. One by one the windows that the bullets had rained from grew ever silent. Eventually Lilith peaked over, then finally stood.
"What the goddamn was that, LT?" a patrolman asked of Lilith.
"Backup I think."
There was another rush, a whoosh as something flew down from the upper windows and landed heavily on the patrol car in front of Lilith. Her breath caught in her throat as the crouched figure stood, seeiming larger then life. It was black and white, with a cloak or some kind of cape wrapped around it, it had a… some kind of gas mask on, Lilith could see a rebreather built in to the cowl. It had large red goggles cover its eyes. Despite appearing so large the figure was obviously female. Lilith swalled the lump in her throat.
"Lieutenant Clawthorne. Report." The figure spoke in a stern, deep, obviously modified voice. Lilith wondered how it did that.
She collected herself.
"Owl Lady. I thought you were a myth."
"Before tonight's over you'll wish I was. Now report. What's going on in the tower, the feed is jumbled with contradictions."
The Owl Lady could get on the scanner? Great. Just what they needed, some psycho interjecting themselves.
"Terrorists on the top floor, but this is a police mat-"
"It's Belos isn't it?"
Lilith buried the annoyance at being cut off.
"Possibly. But we don't need a vigilan-"
The Owl Lady turned and fired some kind of grappling hook up into one of the windows and was pulled up into it, disappearing into the darkness.
Great. First a crazed terrorist, then a violent psycho who liked to play hero. Lilith steeled herself. He turned toward her men.
"Ok, we can't wait for SWAT," she said turning to a young patrolman, no more then a kid, "You get on the horn, tell them we are going in. We are taking this building floor by floor."
She turned to the rest of the ten or so men, "Follow behind me, we take the stairs. It's 42 stories to the top floor. With any luck we can make it there with minimal conflict."
Lilith turned and motioned for the cops to follow her as they made their way towards the lobby doors.
Fifteen minutes and two gunfights later Lilith and her remaining men were in the stairwell somewhere between the fifteenth and twentieth floor. A bullet had grazed her left thigh and her left bicep, but nothing worse than she had caught in Iran. Lilith pushed past the pain and climbed, slowly but steadily, gun continuously trained on the stair case just coming up. Her arms burned as she kept the gun up, it weighed heavy in her arms.
Suddenly the building shook. Dust rained from the ceiling. Cracks and booms could be heard. Lilith got another sinking feeling, the same kind that had saved her and her men many times in steets of Tehran.
"Back down!" Lilith shouted, turning.
"Back down! Get out!"
The men did not need to be told twice as they rushed to climb back down the fifteen or so floors they had ascended.
The shaking grew worse. And worse. Eventually it felt as thought the whole building was vibrating none stop. It made Lilith's legs feel like they were going numb.
Around floor four or five, a thunderous boom was heard from overhead and shaking unlike anything else was felt.
Then the ceiling gave in an buried Lilith and her men alive in rubble.
Lilith came to in a hospital room. She was drowsy, discombobulated. She recognized the drab green walls of the Three Isles City General emergency room; she had been here enough times. She realized how blurry things seemed; she opened her mouth to speak but only a choked rasp escaped. God, it felt like her throat was made of sandpaper. She swallowed a dry throat and tried again, managing a hoarse whisper.
"Hello…" She wasn't sure who would here it, if anyone. She slowly rolled her head on the billow and caught the blurry outline of remote near her left hand. She tried to grab it. It felt like her had was made of concrete, she could barely move it. After a few excruciating minutes of fumbling clumsy fingers she could bare feel she clicked a button. If it was the right one was another question entirely.
A nurse rushed in moments later.
"Lt. Clawthorne! You're awake!" He rushed over to check her vitals. "We anticipated you would be unconscious for a while longer. You were under that rubble for days."
Lilith processed this as best she could. Days? She had been under that tower for days? She rolled her head again, lolling into to the other side, she could vaguely make out a tv.
"Purity Tower Collapse, Day 4," it read. And again, Lilith drifted into a dreamless unconsciousness.
Meanwhile, across town, in the less luxurious Isles Eat Medical Center, a woman with red hair lay on a stretcher. She was wearing nothing but a hospital down, covered in a thin blanket. She had been found naked in the remains of what was a chemical laboratory of Purity Tower.
The night had been late, no one was certain what she had been doing there.
But the explosion and subsequent destruction of the upper floors, and the following collapse rendered these questions tertiary. Her survival was all that concerned her doctors. And she had a time of it. Lacerations, contusions, and a left leg so utterly mangled it had to be amputated.
The confirmed casualites directly from the collapse of Purity Tower were minimal. A few dozen, including the insurgents, a few cops, and late night staff. Two of those harmed had been the CEO of Covenant, Phillip Wittebane, and his CFO and brother Caleb. Phillip was largely unharmed but for some nasty lacerations to his face and a broken nose. Caleb had not made it however.
No one knew where Belos had gone. Or what had become of the legendary Owl Lady. But neither would ever be seen again.
Soon Dr. Edalyn Clawthorne of Covenant Industries would wake on her gurney, and she would realize it would be difficult to fight crime and corruption as the Owl Lady with only one leg.