Mr_Mud

PART IV: FOR THOSE WHO FEAR TOMORROW
Five Days Ago
Uppercut’s safehouse
High Park, Kings Row
“Seems like I don’t have to kill you,” the monster spat into Michael’s ear “You’re already dead.”

The door split in two as the foot of a Freakshow tank hit it with full force; splinters flew across the room. A lightning flash revealed the silhouettes of three men in the doorway: the tank, a Freakshow initiate holding a 12-gauge shotgun and Bile.

“I don’t see him, boss,” the Freak said, bewildered, as he took one step into the desolate room; a floorboard screamed under the immense weight of his cybernetic enhancements. “You sure this is the right place?”

Uppercut tried not to breathe. He was too weak to stand, let alone fight. His arms had routed all power to his cloaking device as soon as he’d heard the crash at the door; all he could do was hope that they didn’t hear him. The monster trickled back into his skull through his ears, laughing as it nestled back into the safety of his brain. Suddenly, it felt as if needles were being forced through his scalp; he stifled his own scream.

“Hm.” Bile stepped into the room, his voice muffled by the gas mask covering his mouth.

Silence. A rising pain was filling Uppercut’s chest as he willed himself not to breathe, to gasp for air. The tiniest sound and he was dust.

“I got something for you, Michael,” Bile spoke, reaching into a pouch attached to his belt. From it, he pulled a vial of yellow liquid that glistened like the sun. In Michael’s mind, it sang to him.

He lurched forwards, grabbing for it, his pathetic form dropping from the mattress to the damp floorboards. A splinter lodged itself into his face. Bile jerked his hand away, pulling Michael’s salvation further from his grasp.

“There you are,” he snorted. “Turn off the cloak, man, it’s useless now.”

Michael feebly reached across to the manual controls for his arms, switching off the device. Suddenly he was revealed to the Freaks: a sweating, worthless mess, veins lining his face like cracks across glass, a deadened look in his eye.

“Jesus…” Bile whispered, for a second shocked.

A beat passed; nothing but the rain.

“So, you just killing my boys now?” Back to business, that was more like it.

Without waiting for a response, Bile flicked open a panel on his cybernetic arm and inserted the vial of Excelsior. He pressed a tiny switch; there was an audible sound as the contents of the vial were emptied into his veins. As Bile’s eyes dilated, Michael closed his. To watch someone else have what he needed so badly was unbearable; the monster laughed.

“I just,” Uppercut’s voice was weak, shaking; he sounded like a frightened child. “I need a hit… Please, I need a hit…” He was begging, and he hated himself.

“When Dreck wanted to cut you into tiny little pieces and feed you to the dogs, who was there? Who’s been supplying you with Ex ever since you figured yourself too good for us? Who stopped Mr. D from breaking your ******* neck, man? Who? Us. Me!” Bile was standing over him now, the sound of his strained breathing filtering through his mask.

“… I’m sorry… The kid, I didn’t mean to kill – I just need one, just one…” Michael pleaded. History repeated itself; a child and a stepfather all over again.

“You’re pathetic,” Bile spat. “A maggot. I should have cut you off a long time ago.”

Michael closed his eyes; it was over. He filtered out all but the sound of the rain; even the monster’s manic laughter was reduced to a dull hum.

“Finish the job Dreck started,” Bile barked at his minions, and walked back out into the storm.

The initiate cocked his shotgun; the tank took a step forward. This was it. He braced himself.

“What the hell is that?!” the initiate screamed. Uppercut opened his eyes only to have to close them immediately; the room had filled with a brilliant blue light. The sound of matter crashing together; nothing.

Was this death?

PART III: WOLVES AT THE DOOR
Five Days Ago
Uppercut’s safehouse
High Park, Kings Row
Sixty-one hours, twenty-six minutes since the last hit, and he was convinced that he might be losing his mind. As he lay in an ice-cold sweat on a filth-ridden mattress, his mask leered back at him in the darkness from the floor. He was shaking uncontrollably.

The monster had slithered out of his brain through the corners of his eyes and was standing in front of him in the dark, dank tenement. Rain battered the boards that covered his windows, thunder rolled in the sky above. A cockroach scuttled across the rotten floorboards. The monster was holding a belt in his hand.

“You killed your mother, you know,” it said, pacing the floor. “She needed you, and where were you? Pumping your veins full of that sewage.”

It wasn’t real.

“I ought to beat you good, you worthless little ****,” it said, stopping dead on a floorboard that creaked like nails on a chalkboard. “She’d never let me teach you a lesson. But she ain’t here now, is she boy?”

It wasn’t real.

“Maggot!” it hissed, taking a step towards him, hate in its drunken eyes. He recoiled in terror and closed his eyes so tightly it hurt. His eyeballs throbbed.

In the darkness of his mind, vials of yellow liquid danced in a grotesque ballet. They sang out to him, taunting him. It was over. Bile would never forgive him for that kid. The kid… he was too young for his blood to wash into the gutter.

The monster had fallen silent. All Michael could hear was the howling of the wind; the never ending crashing of the rain; the horrible shrieking of the tenement. He opened his eyes and they immediately grew wide in fear; the monster still stood over him. It had changed shape now, battered old boxing gloves hanging from its withered hands, a bloodied towel wrapped around its neck.

“You were a great fighter, kid,” it said, shaking its head with disappointment that was impossible to bare. “Heavyweight Champion of the World. Didn’t that sound good enough? You didn’t need that stuff, Mike. You were great. Could have been the greatest.”

“It isn’t real,” he said to no one, his words lost to the dark.

“I tried to tell you, kid, I tried. You…” the monster stared at the floor. Michael knew what was coming next; it was a thought that entered his mind every single day, a thought that ate at him like a disease:

“…You could have been somebody.”

"...You could have been somebody."

It wasn’t real; thunder roared in the heavens.

“You just had to **** it all up!” it screamed, bearing over him.

“SHUT UP!” Michael screamed, wrenching himself into an upright position.

His cry echoed around the empty room, bouncing off cracked walls and a damp ceiling that looked only weeks from falling through. For a few brief seconds, he was alone.

“Did you think you’d get away with it?” a voice asked from over his shoulder. He turned to see the monster had shifted; Mr. Mud was leaning against a blackened wall in one corner of the room. “You think a little nobody like you was ever going to take what’s mine? We’ll destroy you, man. You're nothing.”

It couldn’t be real. Nobody knew about this place, nobody…

A metallic clang rang out as a cybernetic fist slammed against the door.

Nobody knew, nobody but…

“Break the door down,” a muffled voice said from outside.

Nobody but Bile.

PART II: ON THE RUN IN THE ROW
One Week Ago
High Park, Kings Row
As Uppercut raced through the ice cold rain, he had only two things on his mind. The first, as always, was an all-consuming desire for Excelsior. His legs threatened to buckle beneath him and leave him drowning in rivers of filthy rainwater; the monster in his mind pressed against his temples, screaming. White noise filled all but a small corner of his mind, a corner on which a reassurance had been crudely scrawled in brain matter and blood: ‘CHARON IS DEAD’.

They had buried him a week ago, and if there was ever a good time to be on the run in Kings Row, this was it.

He knew even through the agonising wail of his withdrawal that fearing Charon was irrational. Not only because he was six feet under: even before his fortunate demise, Charon was a human being. Uppercut had fought him on several occasions and knew for a fact the rumours that he was a demon, a ghost or some kind of monster were entirely untrue. He was flesh and blood, albeit one with an impervium stick and a steadfast determination to put men like himself behind bars. But with the sirens chasing him through the wind, the last thing Michael needed was to run into a bloodthirsty dead man.

He rounded a corner into a decrepit back alley that split High Park in half. He had a safehouse in an old tenement nearby, all he had to do was reach it and wait – sweat – this out. Thoughts of Charon had disappeared; behind his half-dead eyes, all thoughts had turned back to glowing yellow liquid in tiny glass vials, and how he was going to survive without them. How could he apologise to Bile for this? He had killed one of his best men, and that kid, that kid could only have been-

And then he hit the floor with a grotesque splash, flood water and sewage soaking his costume through.

His arms whirred into action, the anti-gravity repulsors imbedded in his palms throwing him back onto his feet by instinct more than choice; an orange glow surrounded his hands as he looked into the shadows and realised he’d tripped over something human.

“… Have you seen her?” a feeble voice spoke out into the darkness.

There was a moment of silence; a flash of lightning. Uppercut recoiled an inch as he saw the vagrant’s face in a brief second of brilliant light; a scar ran from his forehead through his right eye, running all the way down to the side of his mouth. His hair was matted and soaked wet with rain, his stubble appeared to be filled with blood.

A deafening thunderclap rang through the alley.

“I thought she’d be here, I… she was here. She was right here…” the vagrant muttered into the darkness. He rose to his feet and came towards Michael; under the stress of withdrawal, Uppercut was rooted to the spot, watching this surreal scene unfold like a disquieting nightmare.

“WHERE IS SHE?” As the vagrant screamed through the storm, Michael’s senses came back to him. Was this guy high? It was worth a shot.

“Listen, buddy. I got no idea where your broad is,” his leg was shaking again; the monster had moved to the pit of his stomach, swimming in bile. “But whatever you’re on… I got cash. What’ve you got?” His voice was shaking.

The vagrant surged forward, grabbing Uppercut by the throat.

"What have you done to her...?” he hissed in almost a whisper. Even through his mask Michael could smell the alcohol on his breath. This guy didn’t have what he needed. The monster moved into his throat, bringing an empty stomach’s acid into his chest. His eyes began to mist.

Uppercut wrenched the vagrant’s arm away from his throat and raised his fist. No one threatened him. No one. Just as he felt rage tingling at the back of his eyeballs, a noise broke through the storm; a siren.

A squad car pulled up at the end of the alley. In a flash, Uppercut threw the vagrant back down into the floodwater. As he ran into the shadows, Michael heard the vagrant whisper into the wind:

“… Have you seen her?”

Without further ado...


It was four in the morning in Kings Row; it was raining. The summer heat had subsided to a violent storm; wind ripped ferociously through the streets and the populace had retreated indoors. Those left outside were wasters, vagrants and lowlifes. Michael O’Brien, alias Uppercut, was one of them. He was standing in the shadows of an abandoned textile plant in the freezing rain, his formidable form lashed by the howling wind; not for the first time in his life, it was cold and he was sweating profusely.

Michael’s leg twitched uncontrollably beneath a battered trenchcoat. It had been sixteen hours, forty-seven minutes since the last hit. His head was pounding like some monster trapped in there was trying to escape through his eye sockets. Forty-eight minutes. Every second felt like an eternity. He was late. How could he be this late?

A voice spoke into the wind from the communicator strapped to Michael’s belt.

“Uppercut, you receiving?”

It was the unmistakable bark of Mr. Mud, co-leader of the Rogues Gallery: a coalition of supervillains Michael was mildly acquainted with. Things had hardly been amicable since a failed attempt by Uppercut and some others to usurp control of the group. The battle had been lost, bridges had been rebuilt, uneasy alliances re-established. That didn’t mean he was going to respond. He had more important things to do.

But Mr. Mud didn’t give up that easily.

“Yo, O’Brien. Wake up. We got a situation in St. Martial, we need muscle,” Mud spoke again; he was met with silence. A few more agonisingly painful seconds passed before a final reprimand: “Alright man, you better be busy, because if I find you lying with a needle in your arm in some back alley, I’m packing your ****, you got me? Over and out.”

Thunder roared in the distance as a car pulled around the corner. Michael stepped out from the shadows. This was it; surely this had to be it. The passenger side door opened, and out stepped a member of the Freakshow. This was it. His heart started to pound, his leg steadied, the monster in his brain briefly retreated.

“Mikey!” shouted the Freak, his mohawk losing its constitution under the pressure of wind and rain.

“You're late and pleasantries can wait. You got it?” Michael shouted through the cacophony of the storm.

“Ah, man” the Freak screamed back, his words almost lost to the conditions. “Bile’s really sorry, man, but we’re like, all out!”

The shake in his leg suddenly returned; the monster attempted to squeeze past his brain and out through his ears; his heart-rate increased.

“Are you kidding me?" Michael screamed through the rain. “He sent you out here to cut me off?” An orange glow began to surround Michael’s fists as his cybernetic arms relocated all power to offensive systems; a mechanical whirring was barely audible above a thunderclap as he threw his trenchcoat to the rain.

“Calm down, man! We can get you some in like, a couple of days, or-” the Freak began, as he quickly backtracked towards his car; a young looking Freakshow member who couldn’t have been more than sixteen was sitting behind the wheel, his eyes wide with fear as an orange glow began to surround Uppercut’s form. The negotiator didn’t even finish his sentence, diving into the passenger seat and slamming the door behind him.

“Calm down?” Michael was aware that the veins in his neck were pulsing; the monster migrating. “Don’t ever-” he picked up the car before the younger Freak’s foot could even reach the accelerator.

“-TELL ME TO CALM DOWN!” He was crushing the car in his mechanical hands. The Freaks were screaming. In the moments that followed, Michael O’Brien lost control.

By the time the rage had descended and his senses had returned, all that was left of the car was a cube of scrap metal. He could make out a bloodied human lung drowning in rain water on the sidewalk fifteen feet from where he stood. A pool of blood was washing into the gutter from beneath the metal cube. Lights had switched on in the surrounding tenements; sirens.

He ran.

I didn't say it made anything you said false, I was merely making you aware of how that entire situation ended in lulz.

Haha, 'her'?

Do you not remember the Ms. Liberty facade? Turned out to be a dude using pictures of a Canadian model to solicit male attention.

Back to your regularly scheduled thread...

Edits and watchlists and... Pretty much anything that involves changes to the wiki post-crash all seem broken. I even had to log in three times, haha.

Still, nice to have the wiki back up and I'm sure these issues will get worked out.

Fair play. I didn't set out to reinvent the wheel, was always planned to be a fun, quick, suitably villainous arc with a decent (in my mind) story. My custom mobs are mostly for flavour - family goons get boring when you're given a system that allows you to create your own custom mobsters from factions other than the family.

Thanks for the review and glad you enjoyed it.