Happy Harbor
June 4, 15:56.
"Don't forget the inhaler. Remember, two puffs every hour."
"Okay dad. Can you show me the arm now? Please?"
The installation of Roy's quick change mount had gone smoothly. He was no longer in the hospital gown and up on his feet, his movements much more spry than the rest of us. Considering he was about to get the weapon of mass destruction he now called an arm, his behavior wasn't surprising.
GA had provided the location for the installation, one of the many buildings Queen Industries owned. It had been converted into a surgery suite that we'd just vacated and also a testing site, the latter compartment hidden behind League level security.
As such, the only people currently present in this place were myself, the team, Will, GA and the man of hour.
Speaking of Roy, his normally detached and laid back demeanor was in the process of cracking as I grabbed a large case from Mike and brought it over to a table where he, GA and Will stood. The rest of the team gathered around as the case banged against the metal table.
Eager to see the results of my handiwork and our collaboration, I didn't bother with words and simply unlocked the case and lifted the lid, revealing a sleek black arm with thin gap lines, red accents, and a human looking hand.
"Go on," I said, spinning the case around, and pushing it forward.
Barely able to hold back his smile, Roy looked between me and the arm a few times before steeling himself and grabbing it. Not just him, but everyone else held their breath when he turned it over a few times and looked at me.
"Just bring it near the mount. Your HUD should activate and ask if you want to connect. This will happen only this time. In the future you only need to will it and you can wear and remove the arm."
Without giving me a response, he brought the topmost section of the arm close to where his stump used to be, and it jumped the rest of the distance, socketing itself to the mount with a series of clicks and thin panels that locked it in place.
A line of red light rushed through the gaps in the arm and the fingers twitched. There were more twitches after that and a soft crack echoed in the quiet room as Roy clenched his fist.
He spun his head to look at me, and his expression made me raise a hand and cut off what he was about to say.
"No need. Your reaction is plenty enough. Now try lifting it."
Still with his fist clenched, he did as I said and the incredulity on his face when he succeeded told me he couldn't understand why it was so easy. And even though he still felt that way, he continued to test the arm with differing movements and ranges of motion even without input from me.
I let him enjoy himself for a while before I was forced to step in. Wally in his excitement had thrown a high five and Roy, being in a similar if not more heightened state, threw his hand forward in return.
I grabbed both their wrists inches before their hands met and lowered their arms.
"Maybe wait until we've tested the arm's abilities before you decide your hand and wrist don't matter to you."
"Heh," the speedster chuckled and stepped back, squeezing and rubbing his wrist. Robin laughed at him and earned an elbow to the ribs.
"What exactly did you put in there?" Oliver asked, placing a hand on Roy's shoulder. "Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful, but for a simple high five to be dangerous…"
"You'll see Mr. Queen," I replied and focused on Roy, tossing a solid block of steel toward him. He caught it with his new hand and looked at me for answers.
"Crush it."
"What? That's a solid block of metal."
"I know. It's a good way to test grip strength," I said to Oliver. "Now do it Roy."
Nodding, he clenched his human looking fingers around the block, his tiny bit of doubt apparent. It vanished into thin smoke when the rectangular block gave way to his palm and fingers, becoming a thinner, warped version of what it used to be.
"Huh," he opened his palm, giving us all a clear glimpse of what he'd achieved.
"This wasn't part of the things we discussed," he said while looking at me.
"Yeah. But it should have been. Same for the you know—human hand at the end there. I was thinking of big time weapons when you came over, so I overlooked the simple things. The skin is bulletproof and can mimic handprints."
"Neat. What's next?"
"You see the HUD in your vision?"
"Yes?"
"The nanites Dr. Spence injected two days ago bonded to your optic nerves, that's how you're able to see it. They contain computers that link with your arm and psi tech that lets you control it with your mind. The HUD shows you the state of the arm, such as damaged areas, amount of ammo left, targeting reticles, that sort of stuff."
"Mm… yeah, I can see what you're saying. Power is currently at 100 percent."
"That should let you use the arm for decades before it needs to be recharged… that is, if you don't use any of the fancy stuff."
"How long with the fancy stuff?"
"A month, tops, with constant usage," I said, earning a nod. Still, I don't think he really understood what I meant. "By constant usage, I mean keeping all the weapons running for a month straight. No breaks."
His jaw dropped and I enjoyed the way it stroked my crafting ego, no matter how small it was.
"You know, with all the stuff we've seen, especially when we helped you build the Zephyr, I thought I finally understood your limits. Then you go and pull something like this."
'My limits? Even I don't understand them.'
"Thank you Wally, for that commentary."
"Anytime boss."
I resisted the urge to roll my eyes and nodded at Roy. "Try the taser."
Arcs of blue electricity arose out of hand and began to dance all over it in tiny arcs, filling the room with crackles and the budding scent of ozone.
After giving him a few minutes to acclimate to the module, I told him to direct more power to it. When he asked me how, I pointed at my own head and he recalled what I said.
More and more tests were conducted after that, each one more horrifying than the last… for Green Arrow. Though I think the inbuilt forcefield that was the deciding factor in making him not deem the acceptance of my offer as a mistake.
.
.
.
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Blüdhaven
June 9, 22:56
Since I'd chosen it as the city where Rath International's main office would be located, Bludhaven couldn't stay the same rancid haven for criminals and whatever shit washed up from Gotham to its docks was.
Sometime ago I'd called it worse than Gotham, though at that time, there wasn't much backbone behind that statement. Not anymore. I could say it with my full chest and even hand over tons of proof to support my claim.
Bludhaven was worse than Gotham.
Even now, another piece of evidence presented itself when I climbed out of the apartment I'd rented onto the fire escape, totally hidden by the stealth tech incorporated into my Mk. 2 suit.
My feet didn't even make a sound on the metal grates, but that wasn't my current concern.
One floor below me at ground level, a man had accosted a woman and was now in desperate struggle with her, her purse being worth his current actions. Thankfully, he didn't have any weapons on him.
Grabbing the railing, I tossed myself over the escape and landed behind him, disabling the sound canceling and camo tech. He spun around in alarm and I threw my head forward, striking him in the bridge of the nose.
His head jerked backward and he staggered a bit before his body turned into a falling door. Ignoring the screams and panicked yelps of the woman, I gave her props for running immediately the guy turned and grabbed said perp by the shirt.
Gently lowering him onto the filthy ground, I tossed him near a dumpster and cloaked myself again. With a strong leap and a web line aimed at the lip of the building in front of me, I soared into the air.
Guided by Spider Sense and the enhanced optics in my mask, I shot another web line at an even taller building and yanked myself forward again, repeating that motion over and over until I was slinging my way through the city.
Once I was far enough from the general area where my apartment building was located, I decloaked and let myself be seen, just as I'd been doing for the past five days.
Bludhaven wasn't just where my company's main office was going to be located, it was where I'd decided to live, and resulting from that was the decision to make it my own stomping ground, like Batman with Gotham, Superman with Metropolis, and Green Arrow with Star City.
The team, namely Wally and Robin, had dropped a sentence or two that they never saw me go on patrol like they did with their mentors. Answering that however, was easy: Captain Atom had no fixed home ground. He appeared where he was needed if he wasn't coordinating things from the Watchtower.
And since I was too old to be a sidekick, our relationship had entered this weird space where the only thing he'd taught me was how to fly a plane. Not that I was complaining. It was actually much more than I expected from him.
Him being my mentor was a way to keep an eye on me, but he had made the best of it. I would be forever grateful for that.
Back on the topic of Bludhaven and making it my home, there were some undesired elements in it and I'd made it a personal mission to remove them from the city entirely.
These parasites had such a stranglehold on the city that it was hard to find the elderly on the streets at any time of the day and an abandoned building that didn't have squatters in it.
It was even worse at the bus and train stations that provided transport in and out of the city. At every single one of them there were groups of men gathered about, waiting to accost young kids—mostly girls—and making "offers" to them that made my blood boil.
The amount of horror stories Mike and I uncovered these past few days was enough to turn a sane person's stomach. If I wasn't determined to wash this city clean of the filth before, the girl I saved from such a group yesterday certainly did it.
Arriving from Gotham in the dead of night, the bus stopped and spilled out passengers, and one of them, a girl in her teens, barely 18, found herself surrounded by three men leering at her and promising her ticket money to the inner city if she did certain jobs for them.
Anyone with two brain cells could tell the men weren't really asking and that their job offers were a one time ticket to at best an early death, and at the worst, a lifetime of scars both physical and mental.
Some of the passengers and people nearby saw this clearly, and only two men took a step forward to help.
That's when I decided to step in, webbing the hand of one of the creeps to his waist when he tried to reach for a gun. Phones came out and I triggered an EMP in my suit, disabling all of them.
I then proceeded to give the creeps a beating they'd never forget, taking whatever money they had and giving it to the girl along with a number for her to call for a job. I made her board the bus back to wherever she came from after that.
Interventions like this, patrolling, bug planting, location mapping, and evidence gathering is what I'd been doing for the past five days and nights when I had the time. Because with the camo, I could work during the day as well.
Even without my little experience on the force, I knew that beating up random thugs would never solve the main problem of a city ruled by an utterly corrupt chief of police.
No. For that, I need irrefutable evidence of not just wrongdoing, but of the existence of the intricate web of relations between the corrupt cops and the three main crime families and other small-time gangs in the city.
Standing atop one of the tallest buildings I could find, my suit protected me from the frigid cold of the night as I examined the holo map hovering above my wrist.
On the map, there were multiple red dots, most moving but a significant amount stationary.
Each one represented either a corrupt cop, a gangbanger, a stash house belonging to either of them or someone with their finger in the rotten piece of this city's pie, a money laundering front, a dead drop, or a site where the bodies—both literal and figurative—were buried.
It was a massive and nasty web I wouldn't have been able to piece together on my own, at least not in such a short amount of time without Mike and the few good cops I'd made contact with.
A thought from me and the red dots on the map vanished, replaced by just five dots that were evenly spaced out. I didn't let that sorry sight put me down and instead focused on the positives.
If you were wondering how this city had sunk so low that it now touched tips with hell, and with no one on the outside noticing, I was here to tell you that wasn't the case.
The FBI, DEA, and DOJ had had their eyes on this place for a long time, years in fact. They'd tried to find different ways and means to nail Delmore Redhorn, his lieutenants, and the crime families he hosted and they'd failed every single time.
And not for no reason either. Bludhaven's chief of police had a brain that matched his gigantic tree-like stature.
A habitual user of venom and like Bane, able to retain his faculties on and off the super steroid, Redhorn, with the help of the district attorney, lawyers, and an army of tech and finance guys, had created an intricate maze of paperwork and false trails that were well maintained to this day.
They were so messy yet effective in covering all of his dirty tracks that even Mike was having difficulty pinning down key pieces of data and information. My friend however assured me that he'd have something for me before the month ended. That much he guaranteed.
Speaking of Mike, his call was coming through. I swiped away the map and answered it.
"What's up? Any new targets? I feel like hitting something."
"Then you'll appreciate this. One of the phones we're tapping just made a call. Something about a bulletproof bitch tearing up the guys and the place."
I tilted my head. Interesting.
"Where is this?"
"One of the chop shops being run by the Mihns on Red Line South."
I checked my web shooters. "I'll head there now. Anything else?"
"There's one more thing, but it can wait until you return."
The urge to force it out of him was tempting, but I decided to trust in his judgement. No need to stop now. Besides, I really wanted to meet this bulletproof bitch stirring up the shit that was already bubbling because of me.
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