This model wasn’t exactly built for quick reflexes, so it barely even had the chance to dodge before it was hit square in the chest, stumbling back and sparking violently from the white-hot wound. Instead of trying to waste time engaging, however, it stubbornly continued on to the fallen elastic bot, which was desperately unwrapping one of its arms from around the stolen tech and trying to pull and caterpillar crawl itself towards its comrade. Meanwhile, the choppers continued to close in.
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Celsius freezes the free elastic arm, shattering it.
The bot charges her once more, trying to get her to stop, albeit this time with two new weak points to exploit.
Celsius shoots a rather large icicle at the bot’s exposed inner mechanisms.
Snapshot aims her laser again, but holds off. The robot is moving too fast, and she doesn’t want to hit the other hero.
The machine tries to block, but it’s too late - the icicle hits its target, and the robot seizes up mid-charge. It thrashes violently for a moment, before an internal explosion blows out its chest and it collapses to the ground, its eyes going dark. The elastic bot is desperately caterpillaring away still, but it’s not going anywhere. Right on time, the SCU choppers land, the squads fanning out to surround and detain both subjects, another left behind to deal with the frozen ghost bot.
“Thanks for the help there, mask.” One of the officers nodsj, “We’ve got it from here.”
Celsius nods.
“No problem, man.”
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Seeing the problem handled, Snapshot ducks away, finding a spot away from prying eyes to remove her sunglasses.
Lauren approaches the scene, pulling out her camera to take some pictures. She knew it wouldn’t make up for missing the rally, but at least it was something.
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“More of the opposite.” Gideon grinned. “I was curious to see if the Man of Steel could actually hurt me, or if I truly am invincible.”
“Maybe something like… Power Girl? I dunno. If I ever get the chance to meet her, I’ll offer some suggestions.”
“That’s a good one actually…”
The SCU officers get to work assessing the condition of the robots (and disabling the last one) before recovering the stolen equipment and carrying the oversized paperweights back to the choppers for processing.
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“Get one of those industrialized machines you guys have! Aren’t they pretty strong? Well I guess money is an issue… Maybe jump off a building? We could get a trampoline.”
Celsius skates away.
Gideon laughed. “If I jump off a building, someone is liable to come rescue me!”
An unknown shadow slowly crawled through the sewer.
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A few weeks pass, and all of the prospective criminals stand trial. Iosif, unsurprisingly, is cleared of all charges, and has since been put under the watchful eye of a metahuman-oriented youth centre funded by the Justice Society Infinity, to help him adjust to society and potentially work through his baggage. Whether this endeavor will work out remains to be seen. Hayden, and the renegade hero known as Mosh Pit, however, are sent to Stryker’s Island Penitentiary for reckless endangerment and attempted murder, respectively.
Much like the holding cell, their powers are dampened by an energy field, and they’re under the watchful eye of specially trained guards and support drones around the clock. All they can really do is wait out their sentences. Hayden has a few weeks, while Mosh Pit has years behind… Force fields, ahead of him. Cruelly, the two somehow ended up as cellmates, and the long-haired hero is just as frosty as ever, mostly lying on his top bunk and pretending Hayden doesn’t exist.
Yeah, they’d probably be in different sectors of the prison, I know, just go with me here 
The StandFasters, meanwhile, have been understandably up in arms about a known hero’s attempt to assassinate the very candidate they’re backing, and a protest has been organized on this very day at the Superman Memorial Statue in Centennial Park. A positive mob of people has gathered at the site, with a now-famous face stood at the helm: Samantha Kelly, the chief organizer of the movement.
Brandishing a megaphone to be heard over the din of the crowd, Kelly gives this impassioned speech before the gleeful masses and the onlooking news stations: “How much more are they going to take from us? They destroy our cities, tear our families apart, and now they hope to eliminate our best hope for change? Well, we can’t back down now! This movement is only just getting started, and we will not bow down to cowards who attack innocent members of the public in a mask. We have an opportunity to end this reign of terror, and this attack has only made our voices stronger! Their days are numbered!”
Media outlets, online blogs, and pundits across the country seemed to have something to say, controversial podcast host Jack Ryder chief among them:
“Now, recently the park memorial in Metropolis dedicated to Superman has been in the news. That’s right - our favourite soccer mom militia is back. For those of you who haven’t been keeping up: #StandFast is an outrage group created by bored suburban housewives who decided they wanna bring back the vigilante laws of the 1950s. That sure seems to be something self-styled “Ecolibertarian” Lex Luthor is a big fan of. In fact, one of the major reasons #StandFast has been in the news so much lately is because of Luthor’s newfound obsession with the masks. Now why would a clean, green businessman with a more than healthy interest in metahuman experiments have an issue with people trying to use their skills for the greater good? Because Luthor is not for the greater good. He’s for his own good. He just wants to make America a subsidiary of LexCorp. And let me tell you something - I am not giving up my Second Amendment rights so some cue ball can have fun playing with his chemistry set!”
Things have only gotten worse in Southside. Snakebite is everywhere, and many individuals have used their newfound strength for ill-gotten gains, picking fights they originally couldn’t hope to win, and stealing for their next fix. Worse, with their product dominating the market so heavily, copycats have begun to emerge, and the Snakebite gang are determined to stamp out these rivals by force. Open brawls and shootouts in the streets are now a daily occurrence. The only people who dare set foot in the district now are the mad, the desperate, and the unfortunate.
And following the incident at the sky train, a team of researchers at STAR has been working tirelessly to examine the three robots that were retrieved (the fourth mysteriously disappeared, along with the individual who engaged it) by the authorities. Their base designs are rather similar, though specialised for their various abilities in their own ways, and are marked with some kind of serial code as well as an appropriate name. The units that were recovered were “Slinky”, “Titanium”, and “Ghost”.
Slinky was still operational, albeit missing three of its limbs and some of its torso, and gave the most insight into how the machines worked in practise. Titanium, of course, had had its mainframe completely toasted, but aside from the two flesh wounds that Snapshot had inflicted, it was nearly entirely intact. There were some fears that Ghost would be able to break containment, but after they thawed the unit out, the team discovered that this was most definitely not going to be a problem. Being frozen solid had addled its systems, and while it was still technically operational, it was only in the basest sense. This was both a relief and a disappointment, as of course it did also mean that it would be next to impossible to study the method by which it went intangible.
Despite fervent media speculation to the contrary, the designs of the three do not appear to match that of any of the notorious roboticist supervillains such as Professor Ivo or T.O. Morrow - this seems to be a new threat. What’s more, while they have their own semi-autonomous systems, each unit is also outfitted with a receiver for outside control, though the signal was cut off long before they got to the lab. Where they came from, or what the stolen equipment was going to be used for, remains unknown.
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Iosif huddled up for a moment.
His arrival had been swift, and the social - and less-than-social - introductions had been quick and mostly ignored on his part. If he attempted to go around with a full charge now, it’d be insanely suspicious. Luckily he still had his uniform from when he escaped Russia as well as his coat, but he overheard some comments about making him wear shoes in the future.
Ever since he had arrived someone had been watching him. It had barely been two days and every wall, every door seemed to have a listening ear or seeing gaze. The quiet weeks under the local authorities’ supervision had been unrealistically calm compared to the suspicion he had at every waking moment.
This corner, this moment, was the only time in two days he felt unmonitored, and he couldn’t push his luck. Sliding back up the wall, Iosif slipped his hands into his pockets and slowly shuffled about, hoping he could have all the outlets memorized before the week was up.
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After Hayden had tried to make some conversation with mosh pit unsuccessfully; Hayden tried to talk with a guard. He tried for a throw away comment about how bored he was: “I in the state of er… I am boring, um, experiencing being bored. What happens when, rather what do you do when you’re boring um… experience that?
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Adelaide stood along with the crowd, happily following the mass to the park as they assembled. Technically a jobless loser, she didn’t really have anything to do. Every day was a free day except when she was hungry.
She simply cheered along with the masses, mindlessly watching the speech. She blabbered aloud to herself. “Woah they must really suck. Just be a cool guy and not wear a mask. You don’t need that to destroy cities… Why do they even need to bother innocent people anyway?”
Pausing to realize, she froze and paused to think. Huh wait. They’re talking about people like me… I couldn’t destroy the city… Probably. Maybe I could tear a family apart though. I’ll have to give them that. Just put in the effort and maybe you too could destroy a city. Stop whining about it.
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“Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt,” someone says from a few cells over. His voice is dark and low, but smooth. There’s something odd to it; the accent is hard to place. “They say one of your presidents said that. It is an adage I agree with.” The statement is neutral, matter-of-fact.
Katelyn cheers with the crowd, scribbling some things on her notepad.
“It’s not like other masks helped protect Luthor,” Lauren mutters, snapping a picture. She just manages to capture it before Kate jabs a vicious elbow into her side, accompanying it with a glare.
“Now’s not the time, Lauren,” Kate whispers back.
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Hayden wasn’t quite sure what this person was trying to say, so he asked: “You are trying to say something, er… what are you trying to, that is?”
“Hey, you okay man?” A boy about his age asked from somewhere behind him.
The guards say nothing. They had a job to do, which didn’t include making idle chit-chat with the inmates.
“And that’s why we’re standing here today, at the feet of the symbol of that establishment. It is true that Superman gave his life for this city, God rest his soul, but at what cost? In the aftermath of that battle, Metropolis was in ruins: millions in collateral damage, casualties in the thousands and deaths in the hundreds! When he first put that costume on nearly a century ago, do you think he ever could’ve imagined the Pandora’s box that he’d opened? But there is still hope, we can bring justice to this broken world! Hold them accountable! Reduce their influence and power, and give it back to the people where it belongs!” The crowd is being whipped into a frenzy now, as though they were about ready to tear out the statue by its foundations.
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