Marvel 2000 Presents
Force Works 34
"This Land of Confusion."
Part 2
United in Brotherly Love Church, Metro City
Adam Sol grunted as he dropped another crate on the floor, "So where do you want this?"
"What is it?" asked Rahne Sinclair.
"Donated school supplies," Adam replied.
Rahne looked around the small basement, filled to the brim with boxes. As one of the few regular (well, semi-regular) volunteers, her church trusted her with various odd jobs that needed done but didn't have the ability to pay anyone for. Usually that meant helping out with daycare for parishioners, something Rahne would have been willing to pay them for. But sometimes, they asked for things considerably less rewarding. For instance, like organizing the basement.
But Rahne took it in stride, and like a good volunteer, volunteered someone else to assist her, and Adam agreed if only because he couldn't think of much better to do.
"Put it in the corner, so I can get easy access…"
"Rahne?"
Rahne turned her head towards the top of the stairs where her father, Reverend Days stood, hands at his sides.
"Yes?" Rahne growled.
"The others are going out to lunch, I was wondering if you'd like to join us?"
"We're fine, Reverend."
"…alright. We'll be back soon."
Adam shook his head as Reverend Craig sulked away.
"So, how long are you going to keep doing that to him?" asked Adam, "you're not exactly being fair."
"I'm surprised ye care," Rahne replied curtly, "what with yuir issues with your da'."
Adam shrugged, "I swore to kill my father if I ever got the chance. But you said that you would forgive him and take him back, remember? But it seems like all you're doing is trying to make him suffer."
"He should, after all he's done…"
"Maybe. But you said you were taking him back because you said forgave him," Adam placed a reassuring hand on Rahne's shoulder, "but all it seems like to me is that you're paying him back for how he treated you. I'm not Christian, but that doesn't sound like real forgiveness to me."
"I…I know, it's just that…"
"Hey, don't defend yourself to me. I don't give a Skrull's backside about him, just you. But whatever you do, you should at least be honest about it with yourself."
"It's just that…"
Rahne's next words were drowned out by an explosion that rocked the entire basement. They looked at one another, then outside.
"Oh, Thank God."
"Oh Dear God…" Arsenal muttered as he flew over one of the blocks engulfed in a riot. He felt his mouth run dry when he saw over two dozen people brawling in the middle of the street. Some of the participants had obvious mutations, others just glowed with powers while some looked as human as anyone else.
As if that weren't bad enough, the streets themselves looked like they'd been carpet bombed. Cars were in reduced to smoldering burning wrecks, and smoldering potholes pocketed the streets. Metro City blocks resembled those in Iraq.
"This is going to be such a bad news week," Mirage sighed, "I'm so glad Namorita is the one who has to handle it now."
"What do we do?"
"We handle this block and the one after that and the one after that," Mirage replied, "hopefully Stone will get his act together before we get overwhelmed. I'll open with brimstone."
Arsenal swooped down and landed in the middle of the street. It was a testament to the chaos going on all around them that virtually no one noticed their arrival after dropping down from the sky.
Mirage fixed that quickly enough. She concentrated, and began to project the illusion of fire all around. Fire rolled off her body and into the streets, washing over everyone like a cool breeze.
The first reaction, of course, was panic. People stopped their looting and brawling the second they saw the flames and began screaming in reflexive anticipation of pain that never came. After several long, agony free seconds, they turned their eyes to the source. When Mirage was confident that she had everyone's attention, she ended the illusion, notched a psychic arrow and made sure her body language said 'pissed off with a hair trigger'.
"That was just a taste of what I'll unleash if everyone here doesn't go home right now," Mirage warned, "I don't want to hurt anyone, but that doesn't mean I'm going to let you act like maniacs. Anyone who leaves now gets a free pass."
Mirage stood there anxiously as the crowd seemed to mull over their choice. A few wiser souls chose to walk away. Mirage held out hope that they were heading home instead of easier pickings, but turned her attention to the over two dozen who still remained. If they were intimidated by the two heroes, they hid it well.
"We ain't dogs," growled one young man, his hands and hair glowing green, "so don't think we'll scurry off if you threat us with a rolled up newspaper. If you knew how these bastards have ripped us off…"
"Hey!" snapped another mutant, with orange skin and talons for hands, "you saltin' dirtdags started it!"
"With maturity like that, I can't simply imagine how it came to this," Mirage sighed, "let me be clear, children. Like your mothers before you, I don't care who started this fight, I'm ending it here. Being the victim of a crime doesn't give you the right to commit one yourself. I don't want to hurt anyone, but I'll warn you right now, we can take anyone here."
"I'd like to see you tr…" the orange skinned mutant could barely finish his sentence before Mirage dropped him with a single arrow.
"I'll do a lot more than try," Mirage warned, "last chance, everyone. Go home, or be treated just like a rioting human."
Mirage watched in his appointment as a dozen people surged forward, outraged that anyone would stand between them and their moral outrage.
Without a single boast, Arsenal unsheathed his claws and slashed the first mutant foolish enough to charge him across the chest, and swatted another one away with his steel wings.
"Arsenal! Minimum force!" snapped Mirage, "we want to knock them out, not put them in the hospital!"
"I don't know," Arsenal swatted another mutant aside, "maybe if they had some time to think about their actions while in traction, they might not make the same mistake twice."
"I wasn't asking!" Mirage snapped as she slammed her elbow into a young offender. With barely a glance, she released another three arrows and sent three more rioters sprawling.
"Attention! This is the Metro City Police Department!"
Mirage and Arsenal, along with the rioter, looked down the street and saw a half dozen armored vehicles rumbling down the block. Police Commissioner Stone stood at the forefront, megaphone in hand and flanked by a dozen men in heavy, custom fit body armor. All it took was a glance by Mirage to know that those meant weren't
"By the authority granted to me by the governor of the state, I am ordering you to disperse now. Anyone who remains on the street is in violation of curfew!"
"Screw you, flatscan!" Erik Marton stormed forward unafraid.
Without a word of warning, one of the men behind Stone aimed a shotgun and blasted the boy in the chest. He flew backwards, as if he'd just been kicked in the chest. Erik felt a warm, slimy substance on his chest that he was convinced was blood before he passed into a fearful unconsciousness.
Mirage watched in surprise as the men Stone brought along wasted no time in bringing the crowd under control. With shotguns filled with special gel bullets (likely filled with sedatives absorbed through the skin), taser batons and about a half dozen other weapons advanced weapons, the crowd of powered mutants were turned into an orderly line of plexi-cuffed suspects laying on the street inside of two minutes.
Stone casually strolled over to Mirage and Arsenal as his men wrestled the last of the rioters (on this block) to the ground.
"You got here pretty damn quick," Mirage observed, "who are your friends? The way they move, they can't be Swat."
"No, they're special forces on loan from a nearby army base," Stone explained, "I knew we'd have a mutant riot one of these days. So I made a deal with an army buddy. He loans me some Navy Seals or whatever they have on hand, and they get some on the job training dealing with superhumans and I get arresting officers who don't wet themselves when a suspect belches flame."
"That seems a little excessive," said Arsenal.
"Not hardly," Stone spat, "mutants are a cop's worse nightmare. They could be armed and you wouldn't know it until you had a sucking chest wound! At least most superhumans wear spandex. So I got a standing order from the mayor to treat anyone who isn't surrendering as hostile and allowed to use as much force as I see fit."
"There a point to this, or are you just bragging?" Mirage asked.
"Yeah, there is," Stone replied, "the point is I want you two working with me. Hopefully that way we can keep the injuries, and lawsuits that sure as hell to follow, to a minimum."
"You're such a sweet talker," Mirage sighed, "but what can I say? I'm a cheap date. Lets go."
Metro City Ballston Mall
Nova the Human Rocket sighed as he saw people pouring out of businesses with merchandise tucked under one arm. The hypocrisy of riots started in moral outrage leading into opportunistic looting never failed to annoy him. What exactly was the social statement of stealing an Xbox?
"Alright Vibraxis, do your thing."
The entire mall shook for a good thirty seconds and when Vibraxis finally stopped, Nova was certain he had everyone's attention. He hovered above the main entrance, arms crossed.
"Oh look, it's the spandex fascists!" snarled one man, with blue scales.
"You think just because you fly above us, you got the right to judge us?"
"Actually, I wasn't intending to stop anyone," Nova said.
"What?" Vibraxis snapped at Nova. The Human Rocket waved him off. He flew into the center of the crowd, and made sure that his helmets speakers were fully on.
"You want to leave here with your loot, all you have to do is tell me why your suffering entitles you to rob from people in the exact same situation as yourselves."
One gentleman, dressed in a casual shirt and slacks looked at Nova, slack jawed, "Excuse me?"
"A good fifty five percent of small business owners are mutants," Nova explained, "so chances are you're not only robbing someone who can least afford it, you're robbing your own people. So congrats, everyone here has taken one small step from victim, and one giant leap to oppressor."
"You have no idea what you're talking about!" snapped a literally fish faced teenager.
"Then explain it," Nova said, "and you walk out of here with their stuff. Easy trade. You're right, I don't know the exact reason why these riots started. And I know you're looking for an easy target to take out your anger and frustrations. But people? Those rich cat fats you always hear about? They're smart enough not to be within arm's length. All you're doing is hurting people just like yourselves, people who are just trying to get buy. So why do they deserve this?"
"Hell with this," Tommy Agee muttered, DVD player tucked under one arm. He only made it three steps before a fist slammed into him at Mach-1.
"That's not part of the deal," Sabre taunted.
"Well, anyone?"
The mob of people took a moment to truly look at the havoc they had caused, and without a word they set down their ill gotten loot and walked away dejected.
"You didn't resort to violence," Vibraxis observed, "and here I thought of you as a simpleton."
"Talk to them like they're human and they might act like it," Nova shrugged, "I just hope the rest of the evening goes like this."
"Stupid little Saltin'!"
Jacob Millar never thought walking down the wrong street could be fatal. With his ability to become invisible at will, he thought he could make it through the riots and back home to his two younger brothers.
But he had the misfortune of running across four delinquents, one who happened to be a telepath, and the other could blast solar energy. He pointed, the other shot and before Jacob knew it, four pairs of shoes were smashing into his body. He felt his rips snap, and a terrible gash across his head.
Jacob didn't cry as he felt himself drifting away. He knew there wasn't anything he could do about it, and he trusted that his family would look after his brothers. Dying, he realized, was pretty easy. He just couldn't figure out why the Angel that was going to take him to Heaven looked like a werewolf…
"Get back or I'll gut the lot of ye!" Wolfsbane snarled. As a member of Force Works, she was virtually impossible not to recognize, and the four took a step back out of both fear and respect. X-Treme was a step behind her, and with only a trench coat and backwards baseball cap, was a little less recognizable.
"They nearly killed him!" Wolfsbane could hear how labored Jacobs lungs were, how his heart strained to push blood through his veins and with her keen sense of smell and taste knew exactly how much blood he'd lost.
"Take care of the kid," X-Treme said, "I'll handle these four."
"Be careful," Wolfsbane picked Jacob up as gently as she could, and raced towards where she heard the ambulances.
"And just who are you supposed to be?" demanded one of the young men.
"I'm called X-Treme," Adam replied calmly, "and if you don't want to learn why, I would suggest you surrender peacefully."
"Hah!" the biggest of the young men, eight foot tall with purple skin, laughed and just pointed at Adam, "oh, 'X-Treme'? Man, I'm glad we met. I've been wanting to tell you how lame ass that name is! You think you a sports drink? Name like that, you just tryin' too hard."
"Fair enough," X-Treme shrugged, "but you should know something. First, I didn't take that name. It was given to me by the people I was working with at the time. Second…"
X-Treme blurred into action. He slammed his fist into the giant's face, boxed his ears and then chopped his throat. The young mutant who once thought of himself as unstoppable, clutched his throat and toppled like a great oak onto the street.
His three friends barely saw Adam move, and watched in awe as the man they thought was the toughest mutant on the block fold like a cheap suit.
"…you boys really don't want to see me try hard," Adam popped his neck, "so…who's up for a walk to the police station?"
Later The Workplace
Cheap Chinese food was scattered across the table, and all of Force Works save Tarene and Charcoal were present, still in costume and most exhausted.
"Washington, New York and now Metro City," Danielle sighed, "not how I wanted to start our little break."
"I think we can get ahead of this," Namorita replied. She plucked a piece of General Chao's chicken off of Nova's plate, "the riots were small, police response was excellent and there were no fatalities. Compared to other ethnic riots, this was a slap fight."
"That's small comfort to all the small businesses that were hurt," Technocrat observed.
"Taki's got a point," Nova said, "how's about me and a few others help with the clean-up tomorrow? Might help take some of the edge off."
"That's an excellent idea, sweetheart," replied Namorita, "national news isn't much for positive stories. We'll get good PR and scare off anti-mutant pundits."
"Wasn't quite what I meant," Nova said under his breath.
"Man, see a movie, play some God of War and the world goes to hell," Tarene and Charlie Burlingame, Charcoal, strolled into the room, "you guys save us any?"
"Over there," Danielle pointed to three untouched bags of Chinese food. She remembered what it was like, growing up with a teenage body expected to perform super-heroics "so, we can beat this. But do we know what started the riot in the first place?"
Blink shrugged, "I talked to a few local friends I know. They said it started as a gang fight between, and I quote 'between Saltins and Frankins'."
"Saltins, frankitwhat?" asked Arsenal eloquently.
"Frankin is from Frankenstein, for mutants with obvious mutations," Namorita explained, "Saltins is from saltines, for mutants that appear to be perfectly human. Saltine is meant to imply blandness."
"Man, I was still getting used to flat-scans," Nova said dryly, "so uglies versus the norms is what it boils down to. Do we have anything more than that? Hate to sound paranoid…"
"But Force Works is built upon paranoia…" Technocrat observed.
"But are we sure this was just two gangs going at it that got out of hand, and not some villain pulling something? Hatemonger or some other wackjob?"
"Good question," Bruce Hoffman, their 'security consultant', dropped a manila folder on the table, "according to police interviews, this started out as a gang brawl between the normals and the freaks."
Danielle gave Hoffman a pointed look, and then picked up a photo that was at the front of the file, "Do I want to know how you came by these files so quickly?"
"Probably not."
Dani sighed. She held the photo up for her team to see, "Anyone recognize this guy?"
"Yeah, he's a jerk!" Tarene replied.
"Really?"
"Yeah, me and Charlie saw him at the mall," Tarene explained, while Charcoal examined an interesting spot on his plate, "he said some really mean things to my friend Angelica. I told him to leave, and didn't see him after that. You didn't see him after you went to get Julius, did you?"
"Nooo…" Charlie swallowed hard. He knew his poker face sucked.
"We'll talk about this later," Dani said dryly.
"Dead man walkin'!" Sabre quipped. Everyone but Tarene, who didn't exactly get the joke, rolled their eyes and just sighed.
Later
"First, let me say I just want to know what happened," Mirage began, "this isn't an interrogation."
"Then why are we in the interrogation room?" Charlie asked, "small room, one table, one light bulb, two way mirror, this is totally an interrogation!"
"It's the only place to do this without someone eavesdropping," Nova said, "and doing it in your room would have just been lame. So spill kid, what happened?"
Charlie slumped in his chair, "Okay, I roughed the guy up a little, I admit. I followed him into a service way, and then transformed and smacked him around a bit. He didn't even see me!"
"You transform into a giant, smoldering black version of Ben Grimm," Dani commented, "how could he not see you?"
"I can stretch my arms, remember?" Charlie replied, "I just roughed him up a little, I know it! Just batted him back and forth between my hands like a foosball, that's all!"
"And why'd you do it?" Nova asked, "beating up on jerks is fun, but we don't get to do that just because we wear funny clothes."
Charlie shrugged, "He made Angelica cry, and I mean really cry. What was I supposed to do?"
Nova rubbed his chin thoughtfully, "I see no flaws in his logic. I think we're good here."
"Spirits," Danielle rubbed her forehead, "look, as much as I hate defending bigots, just because we dress up in spandex does not give us the right to assault people for pissing us off. I know you think you were being clever, but you endangered the entire team with your antics and stop giving him a thumbs up behind my back!"
Nova was quick to duck his hands behind his back.
"Is a terrorist fist bump okay?"
"Watch yourself," Dani warned as she loomed over Charcoal, "you ignited a powder keg today. Someone could have been killed, and it will be months before some people get back on their feet. Is that funny?"
"Okay, I screwed up! I'm sorry!"
Dani placed her hand on Charcoal's shoulder, "That's what I wanted to hear."
"So…what do I do now?" Charlie asked, "I'm not off the team, am I?"
"You're our responsibility," Nova said matter of factly, "even if we took you off the team, we wouldn't kick you out, don't worry."
"You're going to be part of the clean-up crew that's going to try to fix this mess," Dani ordered, "say anything that indicates you started what happened today and I will skin you. Understand?"
Charlie nodded.
"Good. Now go finish your homework so I can at least tell myself I'm a half decent guardian."
After Charlie left, Dani slumped down in his chair.
"I swear, sometimes it feels like I'm running a madhouse."
A Federally Run Institution for the Mentally Ill
Three superhumans and their leader stood in an office they had no right to be in, Champaign flutes in their hands, watching the sunset.
"I have brought you here to inform you that our plans are nearing fruition," said their leader.
"Damn," Bob Elliot. He was by far the oldest of the four, pushing sixty, "I was just starting to enjoy having a roof over my head. Such as it is…"
"This is just like my old home, except no pictures of Paul. He was nice…can I drink now?" asked their newest member, "I'm real thirsty and…"
"Its fine Max, enjoy the ginger-ale."
"You were saying, John?" offered the only female member.
"No, no, never mind," John smile was good natured, "I had a monologue ready, but it's just slipped my mind. Enjoy the day, my friends, for soon we will so this country its true face!"
A pause.
"Short and sweet," she commented, "I like it. And don't worry, before this is all over, you'll have ample practice acting like a super-villain."
Next arc: Asylum Sanity begins! An all new Psionex goes head to head with Force Works as they plan to punish America for their suffering!