Adventures of Superguy

July 22, 2010 - Isla Santa Prisca

Caribbean Sea

20:05:01

“Uh… Stop, you’re under arrest?”

The roar of automatic gunfire was the only answer Superboy received. Panicking, he threw his arms up and felt dozens of stinging impacts all over his body. After a moment, the fusillade stops and he looks down at himself in wonder, and the flattened and shattered copper jacketed lead all around him. Glancing back up at his attackers, he grins savagely.

Hell yeah, invulnerability rocks!

With that grin on his face, he charges into the midst of them. Sicarios in a mix of street clothes, hiking apparel and military surplus fatigues, wearing tactical vests and harnesses, wielding assault rifles of various makes. They’re spread across a line of trees, taking cover from whoever is shooting at them from the other end of the path they were on. He plows into the first of them, shoulder checking her into another while the sicarios wheel around to focus on the threat in their midst. 

But he barely notices the goons and their guns, as he is invulnerable to their weapons. His eyes are on the black and white masked hulk at the back.

…Of course she’s a girl. They’re all girls. He notes as he charges through the treeline at the man, or woman in this case, who broke the Bat. 

Bane is enormous; she’s a head taller than him and would look down on Wonder Woman. She’s built like a body builder, every inch of her is covered in muscle and every inch of muscle is covered in scars and vasculature. He can even see the track marks up her arm, but she wears no injector harness. She’s dressed a bit like her luchador inspiration, a black singlet that strains to contain her truly impressive bust, tucked into dark blue combat pants and black boots. Over that is a tactical vest and plate carrier, with innumerable pockets and pouches. It provides reinforcement to support her torpedo-like assets. She is wearing that all too familiar mask, but this is a real luchador mask, with hand stitched leather panels, a black wrap with the winged white section over her eyes and mouth, matte red lenses over her eyes. This version has a panel over her nose and leaves her mouth exposed.

She is gritting her teeth as she swings a light machine gun his way one handed, a belt of cartridges dangling from it. There’s an Uzi in her other that she sprays in the direction of the incoming fire, but then she opens up with the machine gun on him. It's a deafening barrage that just goes on, a buzzsaw of burning red tracers that hits him and bounces off, still burning tracers flying in all directions like she’s hosing him down with glowing red water. The machine gun rounds hit harder and keep up the damage, but he still shrugs them off and charges her.

He leans into the mind palace’s readied moves and throws a haymaker that connects with the steel plate in her chest rig and knocks her back, dropping the guns into the mud. He follows it up and grabs for the rig to catch hold of her. But it proves a frustratingly familiar decision as she grabs his arm and does some kind of twist and suddenly he’s flying over her hip and face down in the mud. Superboy growls, far too familiar with being on the receiving end of these grapples against Aqualass.

Bane pulls his arm up into a shoulder lock, grinding his face into the mud, when he realizes she has no injector rig on. He grits his teeth and gropes with his bound hand and grabs her by the chest rig. Bane makes a note of surprise as that little grip lets him flick her bodily off of him and into a tree, where she impacts with a grunt. Superboy scrambles up to his feet and squares up… only to see his grab has caused a wardrobe malfunction.

Bane rises to her feet and snarls, pausing as she studies him.

I mean, it's hanging out right there! How can she not notice? Goddamn, they’re as big as my head…

She circles him as the roar of gunfire echoes around him, but he can hear the team arriving swiftly. Kid Quick first of all, who hits the opposing force, silencing guns swiftly. The first he hears of Robin is when she drops out of a tree and dispatches two sicarios at once with what sound like bonebreaking impacts. Ms. Martian seems to just be hurling one goon into another telekinetically, which is efficient if not very sporting.

Bane begins stalking forward like a panther on the prowl, when Superboy simply can’t take the secondhand embarrassment anymore.

“Uh, your… uh, asset is hanging out there…” He says, trying desperately not to look at her incredibly firm tit as he gestures vaguely at the ‘problem’. 

Bane draws up in confusion, then looks down at her liberated chest and the popped strap of her chest rig that has spilled her enormous asset into the cool night air. It is a warm tan color, with a tight brown nipple, and is so perky he’d think they were implants if he was sure that no version of Bane would give a damn about cosmetic surgery. Her mouth twists in a bemused way, and after a beat she dutifully rehooks her rig up and tucks her mammary back under her clothes.

“Vaya, qué niño tan educado eres. Gracias.” She says in a rumbling and bassy Spanish.

“De nad-” He begins but is interrupted by her soccer kick to his gonads. The impact lifts Superboy off his feet and he clutches at his groin in dread anticipation.

But strangely the sickening pain doesn’t come. Looking at Bane she hops back, gritting her teeth in surprise and pain, favoring the other foot.

Sonovabitch, she just tried to kick me in the balls! She did kick me in the balls! Ha, but I've got titanium ones.

Appreciating the opportunity to put himself over a legendary villain like Bane, his savage grin returns and he winds up a half strength punch. Just a spring forward on his feet instantly carries him across the distance and he buries his fist into her solar plexus, and he feels the hardened steel plate in her chest rig bend around his fist like wet cardboard as he knocks all the wind out of Bane, breath and spittle flying from her mouth as she gets wrapped around his fist. Training has paid dividends, teaching him how to hold back his indomitable strength against human foes, something Robin was very insistent on.

A thrill of triumph shoots through him as a truly legendary Batman villain crumples to her knees at his feet, gasping for breath, and falls over onto her side.

“Sorry, but you’re not really in my weight class.” He says as she sprawls in the mud, gasping for breath. By the lack of gunfire, it seems the battle is over, so he brushes off some of the mud that’s coating half his body and grabs Bane by one boot and drags her towards the others.

********

“What happened to covert!?” Robin shouts as she ties a trio of sicarios to a tree. “Why didn’t you three follow my lead? Vanish into the jungle, take them by surprise! This is supposed to just be a scouting mission.” She stomps angrily over to the next pile of groaning goons and begins binding them as well.

“Oh, is that what you were doing? Way to fill us in.” Kid Quick snapped back as she zipped across the now quiet battlefield, policing fallen weapons and stripping them to component parts in an instant. She disposed of them by flinging parts in random directions into the benighted jungle. “We’re not mind readers, you know.” She added, sarcastically.

“Ahem.” Ms. Martian made a polite cough as she telekinetically wove jungle vines into a binding that was part plant matter and part crochet.

“Present company excluded, Ms. M.” Kid said with a quick salute.

“Hey, look what I found.” Superboy said casually as he dragged the captive Bane back to the others. She groaned and tried to get up on her hands and knees.

“Ugh, I’m running out of rope, here.” Robin complained.

“Ah, well! Maybe I have a solution for that.” He said confidently, and leaped up to a now familiar tree to retrieve his bag (and psychic genomorph). Gizmo relayed in images he had watched the fight below with interest, spectating and eating most of the licorice snacks the whole time.

Glad you enjoyed it, lil bro. Just gotta get something under ya there…

The bag was lined with his (mostly clean) t-shirts, but the coiled lump beneath proved a solution to their incarceration predicament.

“Can’t believe you brought that stupid rope the whole way here.” Kid groaned as he held it up triumphantly and helped restrain Bane along with some of her men. Women, actually.

“Not so stupid now, is it?” Superboy answered, smugly, as the thick black climbing rope quickly restrained even the hulking Bane. Robin, he noted, had a sailor or Boy Scout’s skill with knots. 

The rope had been a contentious inclusion as well when he asked the team what to pack for a ‘covert mission’. Their collective answers had been nothing, since with his powers he didn’t really need anything beyond his communication gear. But wanting the backpack to carry Gizmo covertly, and not trusting the genomorph’s perception filter as much with Ms. Martian around, he had searched for useful ‘stuff’ to put in it. Since his ideas about covert operations came from movies and comic books, the team had to dissuade him from bringing balaclavas, berets, a tent, portable water filtration system, machete or big bowie knife with a saw back, in that order. He and Walli’s return trip to the mall for luggage included a stop at Amazonia for literally every piece of high end camping gear he thought he might ever need. Rope, he had decided on his own, would be a good cushion for Gizmo and was infinitely useful on adventures.

Filling the rest of the space with t-shirts for padding and snacks to entice his lil bro to stay inside, quietly, had been an inspired decision, he thought.

Then he heard a furtive step squelch in the mud, and focused on it. Hurried breathing and a pounding heart beat accompanied it, and he cursed.

“We missed one!” He shouted as he gathered himself to leap in the direction of their runner, only to hear a surprised grunt and the crackle of an electric eel and a thump of a body hitting the ground. He waved off the others as Aqualass appeared from the foliage, carrying a figure in a red and black hooded robe over her shoulder.

“Did you have a nice swim?” Superboy asked sunnily, but she only grunted in acknowledgement.

Kaldura’s all business on a mission, of course…

The prisoners were secured to various tree trunks with rope and vines, along with Bane herself. Santa Prisca’s most wanted only glared through the matte red lenses of her luchador mask. Now that they could examine them at leisure, it was obvious the assembled goons were of two different factions. 

The first were Bane’s sicarios; hardened gangsters and trigger pullers by the looks of them, covered in tattoos and scars. No doubt local Santa Priscans who worked for her cartel, making and smuggling Venom out of the narco-state. 

On the other hand, their opposition were of an entirely different sort. They were in uniform, of a kind. Long sleeved black shirts and pants, with a sleeveless, hooded red robe worn over that, and a kind of fanged black half mask on their faces. It certainly gave a sinister but organized vibe.

They look kinda culty to me. Must be the robes. Can’t imagine why else you’d wear robes and long sleeves in a tropical jungle otherwise.

“So who are these guys?” He asked, jerking a thumb to the cultists.

“I recognize those uniforms. They belong to the Cult of the Kobra. With a K.” She added, helpfully. 

I kind of remember those guys; snake cultists, duh. Ritual sacrifice. Kinda fake, kinda real? There’s a new existential fear; gods are real in this universe. Some of them are snakes who want to eat the world or something. My job is to stop them now. This is both awesome, and nuts.

“Right, snake cult bad guys. I remember them from… my universe. They’re not big on Santa Prisca, I’m guessing? Batwoman didn’t mention it in the briefing.” Superboy offered.

“I am certain Batwoman would have mentioned it if she knew a dangerous extremist was running Santa Prisca’s Venom operation.” Aqualass replied, her arms folded in thought as the team took stock.

“Agreed. And since there’s clearly no love lost between the cultists and those goons, I’m betting Kobra came in and tossed them out. That’s why normal supply lines have been cut off.” Robin declared as she paced, detecting as she went. She sounded inordinately pleased with herself.

Kid Quick almost looked disappointed with the revelation.

“So Kobra wanted super cultists. Mystery solved. Let’s radio Bats and we’ll be home in time-”

“But the cultists aren’t on Venom.” Superboy interrupted her, pointing at the rather scrawny cultist in sweat-dampened robes that Aqualass had nabbed.

“Then what do they want it for?” Robin asked, her chin in her hand. “We can’t leave. Not until we know why.” She declared, putting a fist into her other hand.

The team glanced around at each other with uncertainty at this declaration of intent.

“Batwoman’s orders were to observe and report. We’ve already kind of messed that up…” Ms. Martian said, rubbing her elbow as she did.

“The Kobra Cult will miss this patrol sooner rather than later. They may think it was the sicarios, but they will investigate. As soon as they find them, they will know we are here.” Aqualass warned.

Superboy stroked his chin in thought. 

Robin’s right, Aqualass is right. We don’t know enough, yet. But we are close to being rumbled, if we aren’t already. We need more intel and we don’t have much time to get it. Batwoman is going to be mad anyway that we got stuck in, so we better come back with something.

A groan reached his ears from the prisoners, and he realized who had woken up finally. An idea began to form in his head.

“I’ve got a thought.” Superboy spoke up, and the team turned to him.

“What is it?” Aqualass asked.

“The enemy of my enemy is my friend, right? So let’s ask Kobra’s enemy.” He suggested, pointing to Bane, as she leaned against the tree she was tied to. He couldn’t see her eyes behind the lenses of her mask, but he could feel the heat of her glare. Her heartbeat was like a bull’s, and he could hear it quicken as she saw her captor’s attention was on her.

“What makes you think ‘Body Built By Venom’ knows anything?” Kid asked dismissively.

Puzzled, Superboy looked around at the team, and then it dawned on him.

“You don’t know who she is, do you?” He asked, and now all of them, including Bane, paid much closer attention to him. He could hear the ropes strain as she tensed.

“El luchador over there? No, should we?” Robin asked, curious.

Superboy grinned, and rubbed his hands. Finally, a chance to wax historical about one of his favorite Batman villains! With her (or at least his doppelganger) in attendance.

“May I introduce you to Santa Prisca’s most notorious native… daughter, and the ‘finest’ product of its draconian penal system. The only survivor of the initial trials that created Venom, and now its chief producer and exporter. The criminal mastermind known only as ‘Bane’, as she apparently has no other name.” He waved theatrically at their bound prisoner, and he saw her strain at her bonds again in anger, but he also detected a curiosity in the tilt of her head. He grinned at his own cleverness.

Damn, finally get to use my knowledge for good! Or at least something useful instead of trivia night.

“How do you know all this?” Robin asked incredulously.

“She’s… infamous, back home. A real piece of work, as my dad would say. Judging by the fact that you of all people don’t know who she is, I’m guessing she hasn’t made as big a splash here.” Connor explained, and he felt the familiar gravity of Gizmo’s telepathic filter descend. Now would not be the time for Ms. Martian to catch a stray thought.

“A most useful piece of knowledge to have.” Aqualass said and offered him a nod of respect.

“Let me read her mind.” Ms. Martian said as she stepped closer and Bane tensed again.

The Martian’s eyes glowed green for a moment as she focused her telepathy, but she shook her in frustration after a moment. At no point did Bane look away from Superboy, her gaze fixed.

“She just keeps mentally reciting futbol scores, en Espagnol. This could take a while.’ She warned them sheepishly.

“My mind is a fortress, chica. You will not slip in so easily. Bane is not so weak.” 

The bassy rumble of her voice remained, even as she slipped into accented English.

Her eyes were locked on Superboy, so he got closer and crouched to bring himself to eye level with her.

“You seem pretty weak to me.” He taunted. She growled in her throat at the challenge. “Kobra rolled in and took the Venom factory from you.” He chuckled as he continued. “Then we show up and beat you, too.” 

Each word only incensed the villainess more, and inwardly Connor grinned at that. 

She’s a higher level intellect, maybe equal to Batman. But she was born in a prison, and prison rules are writ in her soul. She’s taken two losses already, another and she’ll lose what respect she has left around here. Challenge her strength and she’ll rise to the bait.

“You know nothing!” She snarled. “I do not know how you know so much about me, chico, but the one thing Bane is not is weak!” She screamed with a bestial glare. He heard the ropes creak dangerously with her struggle. 

“Then why don’t you help us deal with your snake infestation?” Superboy suggested. 

Bane sat in her bonds and thought for a long moment. Meeting her gaze, he felt the stark will in her, and then she nodded.

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