I do not own Suicide Squad or any of the characters.
Recruited
It was quiet today. He had visitors. It was rare that there were visitors. He almost never had visitors, but every once in a while, a new guy would think he was tough, and would stop by for a bout. But that wasn't the case today. Today, it seemed, was determined to be different.
As the door opened, sea-green eyes rose from the floor to meet dark ones. Eyes that adorned a face even more emotionless and cold than he had heard. She was heavier than he'd have guessed, too. She had a decent amount of padding. Enough to probably be able to take a good punch without too much trouble, as long as she didn't overreact.
His handsome, tanned face split into an alluring, easy smile as he brushed his sandy blonde hair back. It was short and messy, and a few pieces fell back to the front, but it was well-trained, so most of it stayed back, though one lock stuck forward stubbornly.
"What an honor," his smooth voice slid across his lips like honey. "Amanda Waller."
"How is it that the most well-behaved person in the prison is the most homicidal?" Waller asked.
"I'm not homicidal," he said smoothly. "I just...don't know when to stop."
"I wouldn't get too close to him, ma'am," the prison's head corrections officer, the closest thing they had to a warden, Hunter Griggs, warned.
"Hunter, is that you?" he asked genially. "I hope you're not still mad about the broken nose, thing."
"Yeah, that, the eight men you beat to death, and the ten more you put in the hospital!" Griggs snapped. "We had to change out half the staff because of you!"
"But your prison's never been safer," he beamed proudly. "Just look at all those top-notch men you got in their place."
"Not homicidal, huh?" Waller asked.
He shrugged. "Like I said. I don't know when to stop."
Waller narrowed her eyes. "I'm inclined to let you...get some fresh air, Echo. But it comes with rules."
"Anything!" Echo smiled. "Name it."
"I want to see what you can do," Waller said. "But you're not allowed to hospitalize anyone, and when I ring the bell, you stop."
"Deal," Echo nodded.
"This is a shit idea," Griggs warned.
"Real quick, do broken noses and concussions count as hospitalized?" Echo asked.
Waller stared at him. "No broken bones, and minor concussions only. You enjoy a challenge, right? Win with those restrictions."
"What!?" Griggs yelped.
"Deal," Echo smiled, extending his hand.
The special forces soldier at Waller's side bristled, but when Waller shook his hand, his manner was purely courteous, and Waller pulled her hand back entirely unharmed.
"You got a ring?" Echo asked.
"Follow me," Waller said.
Echo smiled, standing, clasping his hands behind his back, and followed her with an almost serene smile, seemingly oblivious to the twenty loaded weapons trained on his back. After a few minutes, they reached the yard, the only open space in the entire prison, at least the only one not currently containing a fireproof prison, and Waller selected three large, powerfully built guards to fight him. Echo smiled serenely, waiting for them to start, and all three stepped forward. They cracked their knuckles menacingly, they rolled and shook their muscular arms, shook out any tension, and then they charged. The first struck with a jab, the second a haymaker with the jab as a feint, and the third followed it up with a haymaker from the other side. Echo caught the first punch by the wrist at the limit of its reach, rolling the guard's arm inward and easily pulling him into the second guard's path, stopping both. He ducked under the third's punch and greeted his solar plexus with a palm strike, dropping the guard to the ground, wheezing and gasping. He turned sharply, chopping the first guard in the side of the neck, the guard's entire body locking up and crashing down like a fallen tree before the second guard lunged, throwing a nearly impressive string of punches. Nearly, however, being because each punch was blocked before Echo drilled three lightning-fast punches into his diaphragm then slapped him across the face, watching the lights leave the guard's eyes as he lost consciousness before he hit the ground.
The rest of the guards instantly tensed, but Echo merely clasped his hands behind his back again, smiling politely at Waller. "Next?"
"Well, I hear you're an expert marksman," Waller offered.
Echo chuckled lightly. "Well, unfortunately, I must disappoint you on that. From what I hear, I'm only second-best at that. I mean, really. An assassin and sniper who never misses? How am I supposed to compete with our resident living legend?"
Waller narrowed her eyes, then tossed two objects at Echo's feet. A knife, and a grenade without a pin. As the grenade's spoon flew away, Echo snatched up the grenade and knife, jamming the knife into the seam between the grenade's body and its trigger, then grunted as he levered the trigger out. The trigger and blasting cap assembly sailed into the air before detonating like a firecracker and Echo offered the body of the grenade with its blasting agent still inside to Waller. She accepted it, humming thoughtfully.
"Your false humility hides your intelligence," Waller noted. "You're hyper-realistic about yourself and your abilities. Bloodsport doesn't train anyone, much less second-best."
Echo merely shrugged, his eyes glinting maliciously. "How is DuBois these days?"
"Still at large," Waller said. "For now. Head back to your cell. And thank you for the demonstration. I'll have them bring you something to exercise with while you're in your cell, so that we won't have to hire on more staff again."
"Much appreciated," Echo smiled, walking back to his cell, once again ignoring the weapons directed at his back.
And then, the door was closed and he sat against the wall of his cell, smiling lightly to himself. Something was up. It wasn't every day that someone wanted a demonstration. Maybe things were looking up.
Echo smiled, turning away from the pads that had been delivered for him to practice strikes against as the door opened, dozens of rifles instantly aiming through the door. "No need for all that. Time to exercise again?"
"Time for you to take a nap," Griggs' voice said. "Hit him."
A pair of stun guns went off, dropping him to the ground before he was quickly shackled at the wrists, ankles, and elbows. A pair of large guards lifted him, carrying him to a wheelchair where he was instantly tased again and strapped in. He hummed pleasantly to himself as he was rolled through the base to a set of tables where several military medics and doctors were prepping injectors. Ahead of him, the resident sniper, Deadshot, was getting something injected into his neck. He tried to get one of the people around him to speak to him, but they ignored him completely. Echo smiled, tilting his head out of the way for the man with the injector, bracing himself for the pain, as according to the computer screen to his right, they were getting something injected into their spine halfway up their necks. As the man moved to inject it, Echo looked to the attractive female that was verifying the location of the implant.
"Not even dinner first?" Echo joked, jerking as the implant punched into his spine, but otherwise remaining silent. "How about a dinner after, beautiful?"
"No," the woman said flatly, holding the ultrasound want to his neck. "Location verified."
"Not knowing when to stop applies to more than when I fight, you know," he offered, smirking as the woman rolled her eyes. "Suit yourself."
He was wheeled away, and a few minutes later, he was on a helicopter, his wheelchair strapped to the floor. A few hours of flying later, and he and several of the other prisoners were at a forward operating base and triage station set up outside of Midway City.
"Oh, I love Midway City," Echo smiled, looking around. "Hey Harley!"
"Echo!" Harley smiled. "How you doin'!?"
"I could use a stretch," Echo shrugged, the soldiers around him tensing. "Not that kind of stretch. I have a cramp from sitting in this chair. And unless one of you has the balls to give me an ass massage, I need to stretch it out."
He glanced down the line. Aside from him and Harley Quinn, there was also Floyd Lawton known as Deadshot, the man who never missed and could keyhole a full magazine in an automatic rifle, Waylon Jones who'd mutated into a human-crocodile hybrid and became known as the man-eating Killer Croc, a pyromancer named Chato Santana who earned the name El Diablo for his abilities while living as a gangster, Digger Harkness who went by Captain Boomerang and was a notorious bank robber who fought with razor-sharp boomerangs, and Christopher Wiess who went by the name Slipknot, was another petty thief like Captain Boomerang, and who had done nothing particularly of note and was only on the team in case they needed someone capable of climbing something absurdly difficult, as was his specialty.
"Interesting crew," Echo noted. "Must be a hell of a mission."
"Hey, can you really take down fifty cops in unarmed combat?" Deadshot asked.
Echo laughed. "I'm never unarmed."
"Oh, right, cause, like, the body is a weapon, right?" Harley asked.
"That too," Echo shrugged. "I mostly meant that they haven't taken the hammer out of my pants yet."
"Damn, man!" Deadshot said. "Hell no! Not now, not ever. I don't ever want to hear about your junk again!"
"Jealous?" Harley grinned.
"Unlock 'em," the same special forces officer that had been with Waller ordered.
Echo smiled as the restraints were removed and stood, beginning to stretch out his muscles and his cramp while Harley messed with the military around them by joking that the voices in her head were ordering her to kill everyone.
"Should we really let Echo up?" one of the soldiers asked. "I get the others, but Echo is..."
"It's fine," the special forces officer said. "Somehow, he's the one most likely to cooperate."
Echo smiled, finishing his stretches. "About that." He looked around. "You might need a few more people."
"You're gonna wanna listen to what I have to say first," the special forces officer warned. "That wasn't your average injection."
"What'd you put in my neck?" Deadshot asked.
"A tracking device," Echo guessed. "Please tell me it'll send Batman. I love fighting Batman!"
"Batman whoops your ass every time," Deadshot countered.
"I know!" Echo grinned. "It's so refreshing having a real challenge!"
"Listen up!" the special forces officer said. "In your necks, the injection you got, it's a nanite explosive. It's the sie of a rice grain but it's powerful as a hand grenade."
"Ooo," Echo grinned. "Creative!"
"You disobey me, you die," the officer continued. "You try to escape, you die. You otherwise irritate or vex me, and guess what? You die."
"I'm known to be quite vexing," Harley siad, raising her hand. "I'm just forewarning you."
"Lady, shut up!" the officer snapped. "This is the deal. You're going somewhere very bad, to do something that'll get you killed. But until that happens," he raised his arms out to the sides, smiling a strained, irritated smile, "you're my problem."
"Bet," Echo grinned.
"So was that like a...a pep talk?" Deadshot asked.
"Yeah, that was a pep talk," the officer said, then pointed to several large cases and a trash bag off to the side. "There's your shit. Grab what you need for a fight. We're wheels up in ten."
"Our shit?" Echo asked, immediately walking to the box marked with his name and opening it. "Oh, it's like christmas!"
He pulled out his usual suit and hugged it to his chest, then immediately stripped off his prison jumpsuit, the muscle shirt under it, the prison sandals, and the underwear. Harley wolf-whistled instantly, and he threw her an exaggerated wink before pulling on the suit's skin-tight synthetic pants and long-sleeved shirt before pulling the suit itself on. The suit was a single, complete piece of form-fitting, white-and-grey armor with two small blue lights on the outside of each calf, three along the belt across the suit's waist, and two inch-long lights along the outsides of the suit's gauntlets. The suit was mostly white with grey on the outside of his legs from his knee to mid-thigh, in a design reminiscent of abs on his abdomen and lines on the sides, then in a pair of plates on either side of the more sturdy armor of the upper torso, as well as a horizontally stretched hexagon over the center of his chest. Once the suit was on, he pulled out a rounded strip of metal and stuck it to the magnets on the back of his neck, the metal extending up over his head and down the front forming a helmet with the inside lined with screens displaying images from the four glowing red camera lenses on the front of the mask. Two were about where his eyes should be, then a smaller one down and outward just slightly from the first two, and the helmet, which was otherwise entirely white, had a one-inch horizontal bar light level with his eyebrows. There were other cameras around the mask, so that the view on the screens was the same as what he'd see without the mask on, but it was sturdy enough to withstand an explosion, the cameras were all virtually indestructible, and he liked the aesthetic. Plus, the mask had a filtration unit that could withstand Chernobyl's reactor's contamination for twenty four hours before needing the filters swapped out.
As a last touch, he pulled the suit's hood up, then looked around, seeing that he was the first dressed and getting the pleasure of watching Harley change into fishnet stockings, a pair of shiny, red-and-blue short-shorts, and her favorite white shirt with red shoulders and red stripes on the sleeves and the words "Daddy's Lil Monster" on the chest. And she changed just as shamelessly as him, meaning that she first got entirely naked and winked at him when she caught him watching, not that it stopped him. However, once the shirt was on, she acted surprised that everyone else was staring, too.
"What?" she asked, everyone realizing they'd been staring and continuing whatever they'd been doing. She looked over at Deadshot as she applied her makeup, who was in his usual red jumpsuit but was staring at his white mask. "Won't fit anymore? Too much junk in the trunk?"
"Nah," Deadshot said. "Every time I put this on, somebody dies."
"And?" Harley asked.
"I like puttin' it on," Deadshot added.
"Good," Harley smiled, lifting a huge mallet out of her crate. "Something tells me a whole lot of people are about to die."
"Yeah, it's us," Chato said, having kept most of the prisoner outfit but added a football jacket. "We're being led to our deaths."
"Speak for yourself, mate," Captain Boomerang said, gesturing at Chato's skull facial tattoo. "Hey, what's that crap on your face? Does it wash off?"
"Have you never seen face tattoos?" Echo asked, his voice electronically distorted by the mask.
"Hey, if you like a girl, can you light her cigarette with your pinky?" Harley asked. "Cause that would be real classy."
"Hey, y'all might wanna leave Homeboy alone," Deadshot said. "He could torch this whole joint. Ain't that right, ese?"
"You got nothing to worry about from me," Chato said. "I'm cool, homie."
"Good," Echo said. "You're the only one here I can't take in a straight-up fight. Except maybe Deadshot."
"Behold the voice of God," the special forces officer said, holding out a tablet displaying the coat of arms of one of the many branches of the US Government or its armed forces.
The tablet switched to a live feed of Waller.
"For those of you who don't know me officially, my name is Amanda Waller," Waller introduced herself. "There's an active terrorist event in Midway City. I want you to enter the city, rescue HVT One and get them to safety."
"I'm sorry," Deadshot spoke up, raising a hand. "For those of us who don't speak 'good guy', what is HVT One?"
"High Value Target," Echo supplied. "The military and its government love Alphabet Soup."
"It's the only person that matters in the city," Waller said. "The one person you can't kill."
"Got it," Echo said. "Who's up for a warmup?"
"Stand down, Staff Sergeant Peterson!" Waller snapped.
Echo froze.
"That's right," Waller said. "I know all about you, despite your best efforts. Your entire network of false identities have been erased. Staff Sergeant Jacob Peterson is alive and well, again. Welcome back to the US Armed Forces."
Echo sighed heavily. "It took a lot of hard work burying that name."
"That's too bad," Waller said dismissively. "Complete the mission, you get time off your prison sentences, fail the mission, you die. Anything happens to Colonel Flag, I'll kill every single one of you."
"That you?" Echo asked, the special forces officer nodding.
"Remember, I'm watching," Waller warned. "I see everything."
Waller hung up and Flag lowered the tablet.
"There's your pep talk," Flag said.
"Compared to your shit, she killed it," Deadshot said. "So that's it? What, we're some kinda...suicide squad?"
"I'll notify your next of kin," Flag said, walking past Deadshot and taking care to ram his shoulder into Captain Boomerang's. "Alpha, Bravo Team, mount up!"
"Your name's Jacob?" Harley asked. "You never told me that!"
"Even Joker can't track me down if he doesn't know my name," Echo said, following Flag onto the chinook they were riding in, and just before it took off, the last apparent member of their team walked onto it.
A woman in a black half jacket, a white tube top, black pants and boots, a white half-mask with a red dot on its forehead and a gash down the left side with a scar extending across her cheek along the same path, and a pair of blades, a wakizashi through her belt and a katana in her hand.
"You're late," Flag greeted her.
"I was busy," she responded in Japanese.
"Hello Katana," Echo greeted her in Japanese. "Long time no fight."
Katana instantly grabbed the hilt of the katana in her hand, only for Flag to catch her hand.
"Easy cowgirl, ain't that kind of mission, have a seat," Flag said, then looked to them. "This is Katana. She's got my back. She could cut all of you in half with one sword stroke, just like mowing the lawn. I would advise not getting killed by her. Her sword traps the souls of its victims."
"Harley Quinn, nice to meet ya!" Harley greeted her, extending her hand. "Love your perfume. What is that, the Stench of Death?"
"Harley," Echo said warningly. "Katana has a...decidedly short temper."
"What, you know her?" Harley asked. "You're gonna make me jealous."
"We ran into each other once or twice," Echo said. "I was at a fight club where one of her targets were and...well...she's probably the only person I'd hesitate to fight besides El Diablo."
"Seriously?" Harley asked. "How long so you think I'd last against you?"
"I'd say we could string it out for a good three, maybe four hours," Echo mused, smirking.
"Aw, you sweet talker," Harley grinned. "You're gonna make me blush."
"You think she could fight you for four hours?" Captain Boomerang snorted. "Guess you're not all that after all."
"While I wouldn't recommend that you try fighting Harley, because you'd lose," Echo said, "We weren't talking about fighting."
"We weren't?" Harley asked.
Echo sighed, shaking his head. "Hey Flag, you got an in-flight movie or tunes or something?"
"What'd I say about irritating me?" Flag asked.
"That you're thin-skinned and need to take the stick out of your ass?" Echo asked.
"Do you want to die?" Deadshot asked.
"No, I want to fight," Echo said. "I'm addicted to violence. It's why I keep fighting Batman for shits and giggles."
Just then, Killer Croc vomited on the floor, everyone but Echo recoiling.
"Party foul!" Harley complained. "Not cool!"
Echo chuckled, leaning back, folding his hands behind his head, and waiting for the fun to start.
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