Ultimate Young Justice #1- Boys Night Out Pt. 1

[The Wonderful Wachter]

Ultimate Young Justice #1
Boys Night Out! Part One
By M.R.Proteau & The Wonderful Wachter

Gotham City, December 31, 2011, 10:57 PM

“Alone again on New Year’s Eve,” Marvin muttered to himself as he pulled his coat tighter, his scarf wrapped tight around his neck to ward off the December chill as he wandered the streets of Gotham. “Jerk wouldn’t even let me into the club even though my ID was perfect,” he grumbled in an undertone when his foot collided with an empty bottle littering the sidewalk.

The sudden pulsing he felt on the ring finger of his right hand snapped Marvin out of his self-pitying sulk. In the flash of blue that seemed to fill his brain, he saw several buildings in Gotham exploding just as the ball dropped at midnight in Gotham and a figure in a grotesque mask, red cloak and hat laughing as they burned.

“How?” Marvin screamed at the ring on his finger. A snuggling couple approaching him on the street veered widely to avoid him. When he turned to glare at them, he caught glimpse of a red cloaked figure sneaking into the door of an abandoned church across the street.

“Hey!” he yelled in the direction of the fleeing figure, causing the young lovebirds to pick up their pace to put some distance between themselves and this lunatic on New Year’s Eve. “Stop you….” Marvin screamed louder as he took rapid steps towards the churchyard, not noticing the speeding car swerving down the road when he stepped out onto the street.

A burst of brilliant blue lit up the block as Marvin’s ring activated and engulfed him in a bubble of colored light, lifting him out of the way of the drunk driver. He tumbled in the air, out of control for a second before taking a deep breath to concentrate on steadying himself. Simultaneously, he urged the ring into creating a giant hand that reached out across the distance to pick up the car before it could hit the couple. For good measure, he had the hand rip out the engine before dropping the car unceremoniously to the street. That should stop him from getting back on the road any time soon.

Unfortunately for him, the figure in red noticed the commotion, and fled fully into the abandoned church.

By the time he took a handle on the situation with the drunk driver, a crowd had started to form, among them the couple that had shunned him seconds ago. Even on New Year’s Eve, Gotham’s denizens would come crawling out at all hours to marvel at the city’s latest sensation: The Blur. He quickly reassured himself that he had formed his costume before he glanced over at the churchyard, The figure was gone. Vanished into the ethers.

“Damn it.”

With a look at the crowd, he used the ring to create a distraction of azure fireworks two blocks down the street and slipped away relatively unnoticed at the high speed blur that had become part of his handle, circling around to come upon the churchyard from the opposite direction, undetected. Like a kid learning to cross the road, he glanced around as a precaution. No one. Good. He opened the door as quietly as he could.

The door slid closed without a sound, helped along by his ring. It made the ensuing silence all the more profound when it was interrupted by a three soft beeps. Instinctively, the Blue Lantern threw up a protective bubble an instant before an explosion rocked his world. Booby trapped. Of course it was. It was standard villain protocol to do to abandoned buildings used as hideouts.

Stupid of him to forget it, and he paid for it.

The force of the blast sent him flying down the hallway only for his movement to activate a motion detector connected to a second set of explosions. Followed by a third, fourth, and a fifth. Every bit of the entrance was synced up with sensors to go off with more headache inducing detonations as he pinballed down the corridor inside his bubble until finally he crashed through a large set of double doors into an even larger open hall of the rundown church. He rolled to a stop on the floor, his safe haven of a sphere cracking open to drop him on dusty wooden paneling.

Quite the picture of hero he made, Marvin thought. A guy in a blue scarf sprawled on a dirty floor really gives you confidence.

Looking down at him from a balcony above was a figure in a red robe with a wide-brimmed hat and a golden stylized Guy Fawkes mask.

“Fool, you won’t stop Anarchy!” the masked figure shouted pompously and pressed something on the small tablet in his hand.

Marvin tried to shake his head to clear it, his ears still ringing from the explosions, when the abandoned church exploded once more, this time into a cacophony of light and sound. Colored strobe lights sent bright beams reflecting off mirrored panels all around the room and harsh discordant electronic music blared from several speakers hidden throughout the church. It was too much for him. He barely had enough brain power to wonder if he had walked into a rave for costumed freaks let alone to defend himself. Stumbling and disoriented, he lost sight of the robed figure, unable to focus among the swirling lights.

Too late, he noticed Anarchy, if that was his name, swinging down towards him on a zip line of sorts from the balcony to deliver a double kick into Marv’s midsection..

Marv flew backwards and collapsed in a heap. Anarchy tumbled to his feet and pulled out a pair of tonfas from his robe in a single flowing gesture. He moved to strike Marv before the blue boy could recover, yet something stopped him. Something had impacted his chest, piercing through the cloth and biting into his flesh a bit, startling him. He backpedaled a step in surprise. His eyes widened in shock behind his mask as he looked down to see a pair of metal bats protruding from his chest with a wire linking the two.

“What th-?” was all he managed to mutter before the figure on the balcony in red and black leather and Kevlar with a yellow cape and black mask pressed a button of his own, activating the current between the two batarangs.

Anarchy twitched and writhed as the taser rigged batarangs sent a current through his body. Within seconds, his legs gave out on him like a puppet with its strings cut. His head hit the floor with a dull thud, unconscious

The new arrival took a jump step up onto the rail of the balcony and somersaulted off of it into a perfect three point landing and into a crouch near Anarchy. He reached out and grabbed the tablet from the prone figure there, pulling a flash drive from his utility belt, and had hacked into the tablet within forty-five seconds. Immediately, he brought up the command codes to cut the music and swirling lights.

Marvin stared open mouthed at the figure before him, fanboying despite assuming his ears were bleeding. “You…you’re…”

With the rave-like conditions ended, Robin reached up to tap his mask. The glare resistant dark lenses slide back into their casings, now that they were no longer needed. With a similar, casual gesture, he pulled the sound suppressors from his ears.

He looked over at the Blur.

“I’m sorry did you say something?” Robin asked quizzically, cocking his head and examining the youth in front of him.

“You’re-him-he’s-real-you’re-the-Robin…” the Blur said in a jumbled rush.

“And you’re the one the Gazette calls the Blur, right?”

“Uh…yeah…” Marv answered nervously.

“Then you can make stuff with the blue light, right?” Robin asked.

“How did you…”

“Earmuffs man,” Robin smirks.

“What?” Marvin’s confusion was evident even without his need to vocalize it..

“You should have made earmuffs to cut the sound and had your goggles screen out the light,” Robin stated as if he was explaining the most obvious thing in the world.

Marvin stood there staring at him, open mouthed as he realized two things. One-that solution was so simple, and two-he’s talking to THE-FREAKIN’ ROBIN!!!

“Holy crap, you’re really real….” was all Marvin finally managed to say.

“I am.”

“I can’t believe it, I mean there were rumors but no one has ever really had proof…”

“Not everyone wants to wind up on the front page of the Gazette, no matter how blurry the photo is…” the other teen retorted with a fair amount of snark in his voice as he bent down to examine the fallen Anarchy.

The search of the prone figure of Anarchy brought with it a single surprise. Robin felt not flesh and bone beneath the robes but something far harder. Metal… Mostly in the limbs, as if they were extensions. This was high level exoskeleton technology that wasn’t usually found in Gotham. No wonder his batarangs worked so spectacularly. Ever one to be of help, the Blur joined him, stepping closer and pulling off the golden Guy Fawkes mask. He gasped in disbelief at the sight of a boy, not a man, beneath the mask.

There was no time to take in this second surprise. Barely had Robin snapped “Don’t” when the telltale beeping of the bombs sounded all around them.

They looked at each for that brief moment of frozen time before hell rained down upon them.

“Booby…” Marv said in askance.

“…trap!” Robin finished in annoyance as he grabbed Marv and threw him on top of Anarchy, trying to cover both with is Kevlar suit and reinforced cape..

A second series of explosions ripped through the dilapidated building. Flames engulfed several of the support beams as they collapsed along with the rotted roof within seconds. The giant, dull chime of a bell rang over the blast, its thunderous clangor signaling it had been thrown free and had come crashing down.

Amidst the flames, smoke, and collapsing timbers, a signature blue sphere rose up through the chaos, the three inside relatively safe.

Robin was already sending word to the authorities to scramble fire crews to their location by the time Marvin carried them safely into the air above the church when something on the screen of the tablet caught his eye. He glanced down at it, his eyes narrowing beneath his domino mask. No… no, no, no…

“Ut oh!”.

“Ut oh? Ut oh? I don’t like ut oh. What’s ut oh?” Marvin asked, speeding through his words nervously.

“More bombs…”

“Where?”

“I don’t know…the tablet was damaged and I can’t recover anything else without a much better rig than I have with me. It would take time, which we don’t have… Looks like he has twelve bombs set to go off around the city at midnight, I just don’t know the locations…” Robin growled in fair approximation of an angry animal. “It’d take too long to go back to…” he stopped, catching himself.

But the Blur wasn’t listening. As if in a deep trance, his body froze in meditation. Something about him… Something radiated out from him, calming Robin’s nerves, and while it didn’t wipe his fears clean, it gave him the strength to face them. The ring upon the Blur’s finger glowed magnificently blue. Empathy, questioned Robin without a voice.

“I might know…” the Blur spoke quietly, unmoving, startling Robin who arched a brow at the unexpected change in the other teen’s voice. It wasn’t the sound of a fanboy anymore. It was confident. A confidence that had taken Robin months to achieve when he first put on the tights.

“How…?” Robin wondered aloud.

“Just before I first saw this guy, the ring gave me a flash, a vision… I saw several buildings all around Gotham exploding at midnight and an image of him…” the Blur explained nodding at the unconscious Anarchy laid out at the bottom of the bubble. “I think it lets me see people’s hopes... Not sure. Still adjusting to all it can do.”

“Which buildings?” Robin demanded impatiently.

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out…don’t rush me …” the Blur replied as he lowered them down onto a nearby rooftop.

“Take your time Blue, we got all night,” Robin muttered sarcastically.

“I’m trying to visualize the city but…”

“Here, maybe this will help…” Robin brought out a small minicomputer and punched a couple of keys. An instant later, a small three dimensional map of Gotham is projected between the two teens.

“Why do you have my sis—!” the Blue Blur began… “Well, that works.”

Robin simply smiled.

Marv focused on his ring, summoning up the image he had seen earlier of the buildings exploding, and projects it onto Robin’s three dimensional map. Robin nodded, not letting the Blur see he was impressed, and noted the locations on his computerized model.

As he finished, a rumble sounded off in the distance. One they could hear coming all the way from the bay. An explosion by the looks of it. Even here, from their vantage point atop a roof, they could see a geyser of water shooting nearly forty feet into the air, if Robin had to guess.

“What the hell was that?” Marvin asked.

“Don’t know but something’s happening,” Robin answered as best he could before he pulled a pair of cuffs from his belt and clasped them on Anarchy. “We need to get to these and disarm them quickly. Here, these are the closest two,” he ordered, pointing to two locations on the map. “I’ll get the one at Kane Towers, you get the one at the GBS broadcast arrays. Take this, keep in touch and we’ll figure out what to do from there…” Robin added as he handed the Blur a comm-link. Without waiting, he reached into his belt once more, grabbed a grapnel gun and fired it off to swing away. It was something he had learned from his mentor- Never give them time to refuse orders and you generally could get them followed without protest.

“What about him?” the Blur called after Robin, indicating Anarchy.

“Already taken care of, cops on the way…” Robin’s voice trailed off as he swung into the Gotham night.

Marvin watched him go only for a few seconds then he clenched his fists. Azure light exploded out from him and he zoomed off towards the GBS building, flying faster than he ever had before.

***

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Gotham City, December 31, 2011, 11:21 PM

Robin swung through the night, his mind racing as it reviewed everything he knew about disarming explosives… especially disarming explosives with Anarchy’s artistic flare to them. The cool, winter air of Gotham rushed by him; doing nothing to calm his racing heart now that he was out of the proximity of the Blur’s ring.

”Robin…Robin…come in?” the Blur’s voice squawked through the comm-link.

Robin tapped the link to activate it.

“Robin here, whatcha got Blur?”

”I’ve found the bomb. What should I do?”

“Ok, first…relax, then find the seal on the casing’s right side and pry it open…”

”What if it goes off?” The novice hero’s nervousness came through the link without faltering.

“Just relax and do exactly what I say and it won’t…” Robin said into the link before adding a “I hope…” under his breath.

”Ahhhhhh!” the Blur screamed through the comm.

“What?” shouted Robin in response.

”Sorry, it just popped open fast, scared me…”

“Oh, okay,” Robin said as felt his eyes rolls and a cold sweat bead at his neck that had nothing to do with his continued swing to his own target. “So tell me what you see…”

“Right, there’s ummm…three wires running from the timer to the bomb and something that looks like a receiver of sorts…”

“Okay, so it looks like he’s got a backup in place to detonate via radio signal if the timers fail. No problem, just have to cut the wire to the detonator in the bomb…”

”Easy for you to say, Boy Wonder….”

“Just do what I say and we’ll be good, got it?” Robin snapped as he fired another line to a nearby building and he leaped off the rooftop he had been sprinting across. He did not like being called the Boy Wonder… Especially from a guy in a tacky blue scarf that was probably younger than he was.

”Got it I guess…”

“Good now…”

”Hey, uh, Robin, there’s a problem…”

“What?”

”The timer just started going crazy. It’s ticking off faster than the Flash…”

“Damn, Blue it’s gonna…”

”B-O-O-M!!!” the roar of an explosion resounded through the comm-link.

“Blue?.....Blue???” Robin shouted frantically. His zipline pulled him atop the nearest roof and all he could do was wait. Wait those few precious seconds to find out if he had got a man killed...

***

And you will have to wait until next issue to find out the Blur’s fate, so come back next issue for the conclusion of Boy’s Night Out in Ultimate Young Justice #3

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