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In a world of ordinary men, I am Wonder Woman.
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Post by Diana Prince on May 7, 2021 15:00:36 GMT -5
Intended Samples
[/font][/s] Jervis Tetch/Mad HatterJohnathan Crane/ScarecrowSlade Wilson/DeathstrokeVictor Fries/Mister Freeze[/ul] [div align="center"][div style="background-color:#092237;border:1px solid #000;width:620px;padding:10px;"][div style="width:600px;background-image:url(http:storage.proboards.com/3661117/images/cbUQVriUQIrfOyElrVgB.jpg);border:1px solid #000;padding:10px;height:350px;"][div style="width:590px;background-color:#0b2943;border:1px solid #000;height:350px;"][div style="float:left;border-right:1px solid #000;"][img style="max-width:100%;" src="https://img.nickpic.host/pPwoze.png"][/div][div style="padding:10px;height:320px;overflow:auto;text-align:justify;font-size:9.5pt;"]WIP[/div][/div][/div][/div][/div] [/blockquote][/blockquote]
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203Likes
210Posts
In a world of ordinary men, I am Wonder Woman.
Di
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Post by Diana Prince on May 7, 2021 19:55:29 GMT -5
Jack Ryder/Creeper
His life had become an Olympic-level juggling act in more ways than he could count. Not only in the clear, tangible sense, either. Jack and Creeper got along very well. Theirs was a partnership - maybe even a friendship. But still, every day was a matter of keeping both plates spinning.
Then there was weighing the scales between his professional and vigilante lives. Not the way you'd think, either. Take that night, for instance. Jack popped the collar of his jacket to help hide his features and keep the clammy fog draping Gotham City from sinking into his bones.
The trails of information and conjecture that he'd followed had lead him to that particular clump of streets butted up against the harbor. Any ordinary reporter or tv sensationalist wouldn't have been able to make it that far, because they didn't have the... partners that Jack Ryder did.
Let me out and I'll make short work of this.
Jack forced his way through a narrow gap of broken planks in an aged wooden fence. He didn't formulate a coherent retort to his alternate identity. They both knew why he was hesitant to do just that. Sure, they could bust the place if it turned out to be one of the hubs for alien weaponry trickling into Gotham over the past few months.
But what would that do, in the long run? This was a situation where Jack Ryder's name and influence might get more lasting results than the Creeper's fists. Which meant that he couldn't risk the yellow-skinned vigilante being seen. Too often over the past few years clever minds had tried to draw a connection between Ryder and the Creeper. If the dots were ever truly connected, both of them would become so much less effective.
Minutes passed; careful footsteps; the good use of a lock-picking lesson he'd taken on air on his show more than half a year ago. And there he was, peeling a lid off of a container in a dilapidated one-story building at the edge of a storage parking lot. So you were-? Jack pressed his lips firmly together, looking at the objects in foam molds. "Right," he murmured aloud. "These look Thanagarian."
The sound of a shotgun cocking made him tense. "Turn around, so I know who was f***ing stupid enough to break in here before I blow you to f***ing pieces." Jack sighed inwardly. Creeper nearly purred in delight. He chuckled gently to himself. "What's so funny?" The shadowed gunman demanded. Jack's chuckling picked up momentum.
The irritation on the gunman's face turned to confusion as Jack broke into more open laughter. The coat he wore shifted, forming to the dense and lithe musculature of a yellow-skinned back; the collar erupted into a mane of coarse, crimson hair. His trigger finger might've been tempted to act, then, but the now inhuman sound of laughter was digging talons into his skull.
The gunman dropped his weapon to clap both hands over his ears and the Creeper turned to glare with a toothy grin over his shoulder. "Inside joke, I'm afraid," he cackled... and then pounced.
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203Likes
210Posts
In a world of ordinary men, I am Wonder Woman.
Di
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Post by Diana Prince on May 10, 2021 19:14:30 GMT -5
Jervis Tetch/Mad Hatter
"I hope the bonds are not too tight. The mice were told to keep you comfortable, but a good mouse is hard to come by. More often than not they amount to be rats, if you can believe." Those mice, in fact, stood sentry just then along the walls of the room. Their eyes were alert and fierce in some ways, glazed and remote in others. Paradoxically so.
From the single, occupied chair of the little round table at Jervis's back, the sound of straining and laboring came. A passing train set the whole room to quaking. Dust filtered down from the cracked ceiling and pictures already askew that lined the walls teetered even further still. Jervis hummed an absent tune while he took the pot of steaming water off of the burner.
"Do you take your tea with cream?" The Mad Hatter asked, though the tone hardly made it a question. He turned, shepherding the pot to a cozy in the middle of the table, and looked genially at his company. "Oh, where are my manners? You seem quite distressed. Your pardon, I beg, let me see to the rest."
Jervis beckoned to one of the mice, who moved in and stiffly began removing the gag that'd been fastened over the man's mouth. Meanwhile, the Hatter poured tea for two, and doctored each cup with sugar and cream. The gasping crescendoed, then faded once the gag was taken away. The man, in a white coat crumpled from a heavy-handed abduction, stared up at Jervis warily.
"Why am I here, Jervis?" He said, and to his merit, his voice was almost even. Though the Hatter didn't seem to note the warble of fear that underscored it. "My dear doctor, at the Asylum you were one of my only friends. I thought you'd be thrilled to see I'm on the mend." He pouted and placed the second cup in front of the doctor, whose chest rose and fell unevenly. "But you aren't, Jervis... When was the last time you took your medication?"
The Mad Hatter's look flashed from warmth to a dangerous edge for a moment, there and gone in time with the flicker of the lamp hanging over the table. "I'm sure you think that now, Doctor Hastings. You have no reason to believe otherwise! But I've so cordially invited you here to explain that I am quite sorted-" he screened his mouth with one gloved hand and whispered, "-beneath the brim."
Hastings seemed to be regaining his composure now that they were in a conversation. He swallowed audibly. "And how might that be?" Jervis brightened at that, clearly heartened that the his guest was willing to add to their discourse. "Yes, yes, yes, you see, you see- the answer was simple as could be. In fact, I'll say, and you'll agree, it was ever right in front of me!"
Doctor Hastings took a shuddering breath. "Please, Jervis. You lapse into rhyme when you're at your least stable. I can help you, if you just-" Jervis growled and placed his cup and saucer harshly on the table, just below the point of shattering. Hastings clamped his lips shut. "Fine, if rhymes distract you from the news, I'll oblige you and forego them. Because you're missing the point."
Jervis paced in the open area between his side of the table and a row of windows obscured by moth-eaten drapes. "You're my friend, as I said, so you should be overjoyed to know that I've found them." The Mad Hatter whirled triumphantly, his fingers twitching with excitement. Doctor Hastings stared inscrutably back. "All these years, I've been searching, and never come upon the right one. They always left, or were never proper to begin with.
"Then I realized, that the only true one was the same that has been there since the beginning. Who has never left. Don't you see, dear chap? I've found-" Jervis snatched the curtains and threw them aside, revealing the rain-streaked Gotham City night and, above the skyline, a winged symbol painted on the clouds by a beacon, "-my Alice!" Doctor Hastings's chest was heaving more and more intensely, like he was seeing the room for rationalizing or talking himself into a more favorable position was fading fast.
"Please, Jervis. I've always had your best interests at heart. Let me help you." The Mad Hatter turned, looking spiteful and mournful in equal measure over his shoulder at the doctor. "I had hoped," he said in a soft voice, "you would congratulate me. That you would be happy, to see me happy. But I dare say a long history of betrayal armed me for this possibility."
Doctor Hastings started straining again, pleading or calling for help, the Hatter was deaf to it all. Instead, he turned back to face the window and caress the pane over where the Bat-symbol was. "I took the liberty of making you a very special favor. Consider it a milliner's gift for your kindness." The mice crowded in, holding him still while one lowered a bill into place on his brow. "I do hope you're not averse to a fedora."
And Doctor Hastings went stiff... and still...
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203Likes
210Posts
In a world of ordinary men, I am Wonder Woman.
Di
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Post by Diana Prince on May 11, 2021 11:12:24 GMT -5
Johnathan Crane/Scarecrow
Stormy nights were not hard to come by in Gotham City. Even so, he was content that one had picked that night to hit. Added to the ambiance. Complimented his schedule. The driving rain rolled down the treated and mismatched panels of his garb; it ran along the straw of his wide-brimmed hat and splashed in a halo onto his shoulders.
Beady eyes behind circular lenses of a gas mask stared from the shadow under that same brim, and watched the figure across the street slide through a gap in a wrought iron gate. Good. The subject had played along. That would save him the trouble of having to go searching. So much easier when they walked willingly into his hands.
Crane grabbed a pipe running vertically beside his perch and slid to the ground below, landing in a heap of tattered rags and tufts of dead grasses. He stood slowly, the bloated silhouette of his outfit obscuring the wiry, bony figure underneath and making him appear oppressively large.
He looked through the window on the first floor of the building opposite him. Were things going to plan, he should- Aah, yes. Crane saw through the panes the man from before cast a wide-eyed look out at him. He'd been caught, but that was the point. Beneath the mask he wore, Johnathan's lips - as thin as the rest of him - curled upward in satisfaction.
Slowly, he lumbered forward. Movement flashed and spasmed on the other side of the window, but there would be no escape. The only option would be that window itself, and with Scarecrow looming in its frame, his captive wouldn't dare. And so Crane took his time, savoring the mounting suspense and doom each measured step would sow in the marrow of his subject.
Finally, Crane arrived. Fingers tipped in syringes, fastened to tubing that disappeared in the amorphous folds of his rags curled over the sill and pushed the window open. The subject was, predictably, in the furthest corner, scrabbling at a locked door and nearly asphyxiating from hyperventilation. One foot hoisted over the ledge. Then another. The subject was too busy gasping to scream. A pity.
Johnathan made it halfway across the room, then stopped. He stared through his mask down at the quivering man. "Do you know who I am?" he asked. To his own ears, Crane's voice was as thin and reedy as ever. He couldn't begin to imagine what form of chthonic baritone the intoxicated subject's mind was spinning into being. "Answer me!"
He flinched, and a pool of liquid grew on the ground around him, matching the rainwater that Crane had trailed into the empty room. The subject nodded as best he could. "Then why did you do it? Why would you steal from the Scarecrow? To turn a profit for fencing the notes you pilfered?" The man couldn't formulate a response, though it hardly mattered. This wasn't a court. Crane was there to carry out a verdict that had been decided the moment the subject's grimy fingers curled around his documents.
He stepped closer and closer still. Until he was looming over the man, and then he slowly squatted down. "You will have to serve a sentence before the end, I'm afraid. Are you prepared?" And Scarecrow reached out with one of those needle-barbed fingers and pricked his prey's sweat-drenched flesh.
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203Likes
210Posts
In a world of ordinary men, I am Wonder Woman.
Di
|
Post by Diana Prince on May 12, 2021 13:03:38 GMT -5
Slade Wilson/Deathstroke
To the average bounty hunter, it would've seemed too easy. Chester Randolph must've gotten word that his name had made a very unfortunate list in reach of the world's most lethal professionals, because he'd holed himself in his penthouse for going on three days. Slade had watched him arrive, in fact. Stared at the surveillance feed while Randolph boarded his private elevator and hid away.
Whatever small fortune the mogul had doled out for the penthouse's more private security circuit was well-spent. Deathstroke couldn't hack it. Not remotely. Not without toeing the line of being made. But that was fine. He was a patient man. So, he waited. Choosing irregular and unpredictable perches around that skyscraper in Opal City to observe his latest contract as hours bled into days.
There were opportunities, and many, for him to act. But he didn't. Instead, Slade impassively watched as Randolph's paranoia closed in around him. The man hadn't slept a wink, kept turning to an assortment of premiere drugs to fight the edge of anxiety, and had been pacing for five hours straight, toying with a beaded necklace around his throat.
Yeah, this all seemed too easy. Slade knew that, and was made wary by it. But even after all that time, he couldn't pick apart why that was. Time was money, but being unprepared didn't pay at all. Finally, with a steely resignation, Deathstroke decided that he'd have to act, first, to see just what Randolph had up his sweaty sleeve.
He chose his spot. Pulled the rifle off of his back and assembled a few added attachments. Finally, Slade opened one of the compartments on his belt and pulled out a single bullet that waited there. His single eye glared at its casing, riddled with circuits, through the white lens of his helm. Deathstroke only had one of these pretties, and even though he knew he had to use it, it didn't make things easier.
The window panes on Randolph's penthouse were impregnable, though. Some pilfered chemical makeup from one alien race or another. Slade exhaled through his nose, lined up the shot, waited for Randolph to walk right into his waiting crosshairs, and pulled the trigger. The pop was muffled by the silencer Deathstroke had slapped over the rifle. The round loosed like a flash of lightning, and even Slade's senses couldn't see, but he knew that right before contacting the windows, it skipped ahead through space, teleporting to the other side.
Randolph dropped. Deathstroke watched him carefully through the scope. He wasn't moving, but the beaded necklace he kept fidgeting with was starting to glow. "Oh for-" Slade's grumbling was cut off as he hurled himself sideways. Multicolored flame spouted out of the rooftop where he'd been laying a second before. Deathstroke flipped forward, avoiding another tongue of fire and landed in a low crouch.
So, that was Randolph's play. He'd hired a damn mystic to watch his six. "I am impressed," a voice said from nowhere. Slade stayed poised, senses screaming. "The enchantment on my charge's talisman was just barely enough to spare him." Deathstroke refused to let frustration bud in his veins. This was unfortunate, but not unexpected. He'd known things would probably go sideways when he finally made his move.
"I'll give you one chance," Slade's gravely baritone murmured, warbled through the modulator on his cowl. "Stay out of this." The voice chuckled, and the robed figure who it belonged to stepped into view from nothingness. "Is that mercy I detect?" Deathstroke stared back, easing into a more lax position now that the threat had shown themselves. "Professional courtesy. Killing you won't pay."
The drawn hood of the figure shook in the negative. "I am afraid I cannot. My contract with your quarry is quite binding." Slade didn't shift or breathe. "Pity," he said. With a flash of light and a harsh, metallic note, Deathstroke had unsheathed his sword and driven it behind him without looking. A gasp. The cloaked figure ahead of him vanished from sight and reappeared, skewered on the end of his blade.
"Nice trick, but you reek of incense." Slade twisted the pommel of the sword. The mystic gave a final shudder and collapsed, sliding off of it. Deathstroke wiped the blade clean on the cloak of the lifeless bodyguard and returned it to its sheath.
Randolph was waiting.
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