Project ROWDY 2-8A

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS

APRIL 1, 2020

“-oming to you… l-llive from Whiteside… mentary School in… ago, where a-” The anchor’s voice was barely audible, strained and hoarse as the man fought to stay professional even as the sound of screaming, crying and dying came in over the mic from even a good distance away.  “…an unimaginable tragedy is unfolding. Reports coming in… still chaotic, but sources confirm that a student…”

His feed cut, another perspective from the skies replacing him. If the shaky camera wasn’t obvious enough to any viewers watching at home, the sound of beating rotors made it rather clear that this was helicopter footage. 

The school from above was a wound carved into the earth, barely anything left standing of it as the central building was just collapsed brick; broken hydrants turning the ash into black mud. The playground was no better, bright primary colors of the slides and swings splattered all over with a dark red that was far too thick and far too visceral to be simple paint. The bodies of children, small and still, were scattered across the front lawn, a good many of them in pieces.

In the center of the devastation, the blond, muscular hero Mighty Man, his white and gold costume torn and bloodied, was on his knees sobbing like a child. 

Standing over him was a small boy, no older than ten, with messy brown hair and a pair of glasses that were coke-bottle thick. He looked like he should be in a library, not a warzone, as he just stood there watching the hero cry.

A white chyron spread across the bottom of the screen, the local Chicago News chopper zooming in to get a closer look of the two remaining superhumans as their battle came to an end: JOSEPH FINKLEBERG: MUTANT MONSTER.

He knew what they were going to be calling him, what they probably already were. Joey might have been a little kid, but he wasn’t stupid. The news chopper beating loud above his head was already putting all this over the news.

All the heroes from the Freak Force and the Special Operations Squad; everyone in Chicago who thought they could stand up to him, they’d already been beaten and knocked aside. The only one… the only one who’d even put up a good fight was this jerk right here.

Mighty Man… A grin spread over the boy’s face as he raised his hand, clenched tight into a fist, about to bring it down on the beaten hero. “I’m the strongest kid in the w-!”

Only for a red-gloved hand to catch it.

The little boy blinked, smile shifting to a scowl, only for that to vanish and his face to pale as he stared up into a large muscular chest; a red O staring back at him.

“Playtime is over.”

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

JULY 3, 2023

Strongarm Supermax was one of the world’s biggest prisons, a whole block on the outskirts of Chicago taken up for it to even exist. 

The ultra-maximum security was a different kind of prison and it was clear to anybody who looked at its massive walls, super-reinforced ferrocrete layered with feet of steel and then even more of the super-tough concrete composite. It had to be built tough, of course, because of all the supervillains around, it held some of the meanest, the wickedest, and of course the worst of them all; Joey Finkleberg.

The deepest, darkest hole in Strongarm Supermax was where they kept him; a room with no windows, no furniture, no nothing. Just reinforced, sound-dampened mega-reinforced walls and several humming containment fields projecting from each of those walls and the ceiling.

A scrawny kid sat in the middle of the room, at the very dead-center of all the fields, limbs locked in massive floor-and-ceiling mounted restraints that he’d been growing into for the last four years.

Footsteps came down the hall, Joey blinking up behind his coke-bottle glasses as someone stood right outside his door. 

“Who the heck are you?”

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

July 4, 2023

Their vacation didn’t even last a full two weeks.

No, it was a whole ten days before the GDA called them back to base, a direct order from the director himself.

The sun over D.C. had been a lie this morning, all that bright-sky bullshit promising a normal July day, tourists clogging the monuments like always. It only took a couple hours for that to change up entirely, that same sky filled with smoke and fire and armored robots raining down attacks on the nation’s capital. The satellite feeds told the rest of the story, the world bleeding in real-time across dozens of screens.

Brick kept his arms clasped behind his back as his eyes flicked from screen-to-screen, tracking the chaos as carefully as he could while Cecil stood rigid in front of the main display, his back to them. 

London, Tokyo, Berlin, Moscow; major capitals all under coordinated assault, supervillains and super-robots hitting each barely-rebuilt city with precision that meant someone smart was calling the shots. This was planned too well, Brick frowned. Not as well as the invasion, but…

Still too massive in scale for something set up last minute.

They stood in the heart of the GDA, Invincible and Atom Eve right there next to them, everyone locked on the screens.

"The Vicious Circle is using a multi-pronged countermeasure system." Cecil's voice was so hard it might as well have been chipped out of the bedrock, the director’s more-relaxed Southern drawl almost nowhere to be heard. "Biological agents targeting heroes with normal and altered genetics, magic dampeners taking out the mystics, and wide-spectrum tech scramblers shutting down anyone with gear."

Brick's gaze darted screen to screen, watching Robot collapse inside his suit, Rex's teenage clone body suddenly trapped in an orange metal coffin. Another monitor showed a magic-using hero from Florida in a skimpy suit clutching her head as green-glowing runes fizzled out to nothing around her.

Coordinated. Multi-faceted. Smart. Tech, magic, and genetically enhanced humans all accounted for. His brain ran the logic, stripped it down. So who's left?

"But it’s just not working on you three." Cecil finally turned, his eyes landing right on Brick before sliding over to his brothers. "Your... unique biology. The… Chemical X, the demonic..." The old man almost shrugged. "...infusion you mentioned. For whatever reason, it's not registering on their systems. You're largely immune."

His head turned toward Mark, Invincible standing next to Butch in a new suit that traded most of the blue for black. "And your Viltrumite blood seems to be enough to punch through the multi-layered interference, though you'll likely feel some drag."

Mark gave Cecil a weak thumbs-up, Brick unable to ignore how the Viltrumite was looking just a little paler than usual, sweat already beading at his hairline. "Feels like a little bit of the sniffles, but nothing much."

That’s good, at least. They could count on Mark not to be fully compromised.. That left—

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa…” Boomer piped up, hands out in front of him as he made the universal sign to hold up, “Vicious Circle?" Blue eyes darted over to a screen showing some guy in a metal mask addressing the world, shoving a camera out of the way. "What's that?"

"An infamous Chicago-based supercrime cartel." Cecil's eyes stayed locked on the screen, not even blinking. "Been the ruling syndicate in Chicago since the early nineties. Currently run by a madman named CyberFace."

“Hrk!” Brick blinked, one eyebrow going high as Butch seemed to hold back a laugh, actually surprised at his brother’s re- “HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!”

There we go. It came out sharp, ugly, and all the more raucuous for Butch’s attempt at even attempting to hold it back; the laugh rattling loud all the way from the very back of his brother’s throat. "CyberFace? Fucking C-CyberFace?!" His voice cracked high before dropping back down to Butch’s usual rrasp. "Seriously?”

Cecil just stared back, but Butch was far from done.  “What, was Metal-Mouth taken? Iron-Teeth too obvious? Data-Nose? Jeeeez, sounds like a bargain-bin Decepticon.” Butch finally slowed down, actually wiping a tear from the side of his eye as he grinned wide. “I'm gonna punch his stupid metal mouth off."

Metal-Mouth would've been better, honestly. Brick's jaw tightened, keeping the thought internal, eyes still tracking the monitors.

"I didn't pick the name." Cecil's voice carried that flicker of annoyance bleeding through, barely visible in the tightness around his eyes. "His real name's Sebastian Khan, but he only goes by CyberFace. You'll see why."

The screen shifted, showed him; massive, hulking, flesh and purple metal protruding from muscle, his face framed by five metallic plates that looked welded straight into skull. CyberFace loomed over a news anchor whose terror bled through the camera lens, synthetic roar coming from that thing's throat.

"People of Earth! Your protectors are neutered! Your governments are helpless!" The voice sounded like gravel processed through a computer. "Surrender now to the rule of the Vicious Circle, and your deaths will be swift. Resist..." His metal jaw clicked loud, the sound audible even through the feed. "...and they will be interesting."

'Interesting.' Good line. Brick had to give him that much. Better than most bullshit threats. Let’s the imagination do the work..

Cecil's expression went grim, mouth pressed flat. "Seems that with the invasion last month and without Omni-Man around, the world's prime for the takeover and... well, he's not exactly wrong." 

The old man grunted. "Either way, the White House is under heavy assault by an army of robots. SuperPatriot and his family are the only ones holding the line. Immortal and Bulletproof are almost finished defending Baltimore, but they're minutes out." The director of the GDA turned to look all of them in the eye one after the other. "You're the tip of the spear."

Of course we are.

Cecil looked at Eve, standing beside Mark, hands already glowing with that faint pink light. "Eve, I need a full-body shield. The bio-agents are airborne."

She nodded, face going determined, mouth tight. "I'm on it. But I can't fight effectively and maintain a perfect seal."

"You won't have to." Brick answered it for her. “That’s what backup is for. You keep range and throw your pink-thingies.”

She blinked back at him. “Pink thingi-”

Brick didn’t give her another second as he looked back at Cecil. “Got it, Cecil.”

“Good. And boys?” Cecil's scarred mouth almost twitched, not quite a smile, just the ghost of one. "Try to leave one national icon standing. Just one. For me."

Sure, sure. Brick's eyes rolled, catching Butch's loud sigh next to him.

“I have high hopes.” Cecil nodded once. "Now, go."