hulkling_altman (hulkling_altman) wrote in newalliance, @ 2013-05-18 23:33:00 |
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Entry tags: | [event] mhmra, hulkling |
Who: Teddy ‘Hulkling’ Altman (Open to Tommy)
Where: Van Kull Maximum Security Facility just outside Metropolis.
When: May 17 and on.
What: Teddy had been arrested, and is now in jail. But something is terribly wrong with this facility...
Rating: R for cursing, violence, and mad scientists doing bad things.
NPC’s: Icicle Jr., two cold scientists, guards, inmates, etc.
Jail life, Teddy decided, was not difficult... except for the other inmates.
Teddy had come to at what he was told would be his new home, and was swiftly shoved into ‘processing’. Truthfully, he was in a bit of shock, numb and not saying much as it was explained to him he was now incarcerated for violation of the MHMRA and for meddling in an arrest. His one protest to this was not tolerated in the least, the collar shocking him nearly unconscious again. Life only spiraled downward from that point.
The first day had not been exactly endearing... The entire process was dehumanizing. He had been told to disrobe, and when he hesitated, the collar gave him a tiny jolt. Teddy even had to take out his earrings. Then they had sent him through a steaming sanitizer which made him sneeze violently a few times. By the time he was allowed out the other side he was glad for the orange jumpsuit he was given: standard issue prison clothing with the number C-11 on the back. Then unhappiness was had again when they made him sit down and place his arm in a machine that poked around at his veins for a blood sample.
Orientation had been a brief, hurried affair for him and the other waiting prisoners. However, that was understandable, because the rules were simple:
1: The warden and guards were their new gods. If they said jump, they would or else.
2: The schedule would be followed, or they would get a much simpler one in a separate holding cell and whatever punishment was deemed appropriate.
3: Misconduct of any sort would not be tolerated.
4: Questions would not be tolerated.
5: They were the scum of society. They would not be tolerated.
Teddy looked around hopefully for Tommy, but the speedster was nowhere to be seen. He was about to ask after the other inmates they had arrived with, but someone else had raised their hand.
“When can we call our family?”
The inmate dropped with a short cry of pain as his collar jolted him. The warden leaned forward over the rail, glaring down at them all. “No. Questions.”
It was unfair. Teddy looked sympathetically at the other teen as someone else helped him up. Then they were shuffled away to see the facility and given a brief overview of what their days would look like. Finally they were filed into the cafeteria to eat, and Teddy learned that there was another set of rules. And the ones who enforced them were older, meaner prisoners with seniority, people who were not put in jail because they were just mutants, but because they were criminals.
Teddy looked at a table with several of the muscled head honchos eyeing the new group coldly, his stomach clenching. He recognized some of these criminals. Some his team had taken off the streets. How could they just throw teens in with hardened criminals like this? Shouldn’t some of these be separated into juvie? He was 18; some of these he wasn’t sure were legal adults yet.
One glared at him, and Teddy quickly averted his gaze. Well, if he was lucky, no one would recognize him, seeing as he was without his earrings and nowhere near the big green brute that had helped take them down.
“Toll pay!” Teddy looked startled at the hand grabbing a roll off his tray, brows shooting up, then at the older teen that promptly took a bite out of it. He was standing with a group of five other older teens that had approached the table of newcomers (who had mostly flocked together).
Icicle... Teddy recognized the junior villain only from news clips. He and his dad had a blast during the frost giant invasion, if he remembered correctly. He looked weird with the collar and not being covered in sharp ice. It was also very weird to sit there while the teenaged villain talked confidently, when in normal circumstances they would likely be fighting.
“So, you’re all the fresh meat! Now listen up, because you’re playing on an entirely different school yard here, and there are more rules than what the guards rattle off. First off, see that table over there? You don’t speak to any of those guys. You don’t talk to them, breathe near them, and you clear a path when they come through, got it? Trust me! This rule will save you a lot of pain and death. Second, next in charge is yours truly and the lovely assembly you see before you. We are your protectors and will be providing you instruction and sanity in this mad, mad world. So if we say sit, you will do just that. If we say the posse needs extra food, you will do so as the fee for the services we willingly and happily provide.” One of the group reached over and grabbed a kid’s dessert, a meager cherry crumble. The kid looked unhappy, but Teddy didn’t suspect many of them had much appetite to worry about it just now. “Thirdly: any of you punks-” (Teddy found that rich, that they were being called the punks) “-toe out of line, you’ll wish it was the guards who got to you first. There is a hierarchy here, a cherry-picking order. Right now you all are the lows of the low. Show us you have some mettle and can follow orders, you might climb the ladder of the pecking order a bit. Otherwise...”
Teddy looked to one of the group popping his knuckles, watching them and hoping they would dare. The new group didn’t, though Teddy noticed at least two giving the group unimpressed and annoyed looks.
“So, toodles, kids!” The group then grabbed what food they wanted and wandered back to their own table. Teddy only sighed.
But the worst thing was at night, when the full reality of his situation struck him. There were no pleasant sounds in jail, really. It was all yells, harsh voices, clanging bars, echoing steps on the hard floor, and the harsh note of the bell. Then it was lights out and there was silence except for hushed whispers echoing of people talking whenever the guards weren’t strolling by, and at one point someone yelled for a new inmate to stop their crying. Teddy had a cellmate in the bunk over his head, but like him, the kid was sullen, uncertain, and quiet, though obviously more angry at his circumstance.
The thoughts and worries kept him awake. Teddy couldn’t stop thinking about Billy, wondering if he would ever see him again. Or any of his teammates. He had no idea how long he was expected to be in here. He couldn’t help but think how something was terribly broken, how the system wasn’t supposed to work this way. Where had they taken Tommy? What was he supposed to do?
One day at a time. His mother had told him that often enough. Least none of his parents were alive to see this. Teddy curled up on his side, listening to the sounds of a guard rapping bars and telling a prisoner to shut their eyes or they’d shut them for good.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“Hulkling, is it?”
“One of the speedster’s teammates. Why are you keeping him up top with the less potential candidates?”
“Observation, like a few others. The speedster has been in this sort of situation. We’re more curious how this boy will do in such circumstances.”
“You want to see if he’ll curl up and break like some of the others.”
“That is the idea. Resilience comes in many forms. Plus sometimes the, eh, ‘heroic’ show their true colors under these conditions best. We’re curious what tint he truly is. Besides, his DNA is still being analyzed.”
“Understandable. Have you discovered the strange anomalies circling his files?”
“No, but I went ahead and placed him under an alias here and made it seem as though he went elsewhere. C-11 is off grid for our testing, essentially. Really, one could hardly ask for a better candidate. No surviving family, no strong ties to anyone or any organization, and just turned eighteen.”
“Excellent. Let me know how this progresses and when we get his DNA testing back.”
~~~~~~~~~
Knowing what was expected of him didn’t make anything easier. The next few days established a familiar routine. For the most part, Teddy had stayed out of trouble. He stayed quiet and let Icicle’s posse shove him aside when they wanted. It wasn’t until three days later when one of the other teens protest the abuse and they shoved the kid against a wall and started bloodying him that it changed.
Instinct found Teddy between the kid and the group, glaring. “Leave off.”
“Oh-ho!” Ice folded his thin arms. “We have a knight in shining armor. Izzat your princess, blondie?”
“Fuck you!” the kid spat toward him, pushing himself up to his feet once more, hand to his bloodied nose and mouth.
“See, now that’s the attitude that is going to make life difficult for you.”
“You keep shoving people around,” Teddy said in a low voice. “What do you expect them to do?”
Icicle Jr. only grinned at him. The other inmates sitting around were watching, but obviously not willing to make a move to involve themselves. The older criminals just seemed curious. Teddy looked up at the railing above the rec room, looking at the two guards watching idly on. Why weren’t they moving to stop Icicle and his gang at all?
Icicle noticed. “See, you’re new here. You’ll soon learn how it works.” Then Icicle clocked him.
It startled Teddy a little. With the collar on, his body felt slow... unresponsive in a way. He knew it suppressed powers, so the fact that the hit stung more than a hit normally did was to be expected. He ran his tongue in his mouth, tasted only a little bit of blood where his cheek had banged against his teeth, then straightened and narrowed his eyes at Icicle. Teddy was still taller, and he outmassed the kid. Yet, he wasn’t willing to hit him back. He had no desire to feel the jolt of the collars, and he had a feeling that’s exactly what such a reaction would spurn. But that really stubborn, angry part that burned in his gut refused to budge. “That it?”
The fist met him again, and he turned his face aside to protect his nose. The shapeshifter teen snort some at the numbness that crept over the edge of his lip.
“Don’t you know who I am?” Icicle berated, his fist landing again.
Teddy sniffed up a small trickle of blood. “A junior. Now back off. I know girls who hit harder than you.” And that wasn’t untrue. Some of the inmates watching on laughed.
The whole posse was ready to beat him to a pulp. He could tell, and realized he was going to have to act defensively. But then the buzzer rang. The guards looked down from the rail. “Wrap it up, popsicle kid! We’re on a schedule.”
Icicle glared at him, then nod and the posse trailed away, muttering hateful threats. The kid behind Teddy wiped at his nose again, his arm streaked red from it. “Man, we’re in trouble.”
“...Yeah.”
~~~~~~
“How is C-11 doing?”
“Demure and passive--in other words, horribly boring with the personality of a paper bag. That is, until this afternoon.”
The screen replayed, reflecting off the spectacles. “Good... Has his genetic test results returned yet?”
“Uh, well, the lab’s saying they’re having problems with it.”
“Tell them to stop making excuses. Meanwhile, keep up the pressure. Once C-11 starts to show signs of buckling, bring him down.”
“That might take a while.”
“Then add more pressure.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
His nose was broken. Definitely broken. Teddy wasn’t sure his nose had ever been broken before, but now he understood why most people said it was one of the most painful things initially to break. He blinked past his stinging eyes as the numbness settled in, getting to his feet and putting his guard up.
The guards watched on idly as the group descended on him. Teddy had been putting up with a great deal of things, including all of his food being taken by Icicle and his posse, and when one of the other inmates had tried to hand him some of their food, they had dragged the unfortunate boy off the bench and broke his ribs with a few vicious kicks before Teddy had made it over the table and in the midst of the fray.
It was strange, fighting with the collar. The hardest part for Teddy to get used to was that he had to stop holding himself back. He was so used to punching gently, and here he couldn’t. Yet, part of being able to hit as hard as he wanted was terribly liberating as well. The teen was learning that he could still take a hit as well as he served, and other kids were joining the fray and shoving Icicle and his gang back off the fallen kid and Teddy.
Finally the guards gave a lazy call for things to halt, and when the fighting didn’t, shocked them all. The entire group dropped and was slow to get to their feet, shoving away from each other. Icicle and his group on one side, Teddy and the other mutants to the other, all nursing bumps and bruises. The adults on the side simply seemed to be taking bets.
~~~~~~
“Seems your guinea pigs are faring better than you thought. Not only are they keeping firm, but the little mutants are watching each other’s backs from our pocketed honchos.”
“Icicle isn’t doing his job very well, then.”
“Time to get the more hardened ones involved?”
“I think so, yes.”
~~~~~~~
They had not registered. They were already freaks and outcasts, and their unwillingness to be listed as such had earned these older teens a place in this joint. Trying to be on their own worked little. So they started to band together, quickly learning who would be a turncoat and go whispering to Icicle and others, and quickly learning who would keep tight with the group.
For Teddy, things were becoming easier again. He found a boy that reminded him of Kate somehow, having a knack for telling people what should be done. A few of the smarter ones (and there were quite a few clever mutants among them) quickly established their own sort of pecking order and means of signaling and communicating with the others. They figured out how to stay the safest, learned where the most troubling places were, learned who was being targeted and discouraged it swiftly be banding around that person. They were starting to become much less a ragtag group of unfortunate young men and were starting to gain more confidence in their surroundings, even talk and have fun.
For whatever reason, this was unforgivable.
“What do you suppose that’s all about?” a bald young man who apparently could harden his skin into spiny ridges without the collar asked. He was looking at one of the older inmates who was helping to patrol with the guards. “Honorable Detainess” they called them.
“Don’t know,” Teddy said, eating his tough meatloaf warily. “But I don’t like it.”
He was right not to. The other prisoners were being given “good behavior” privileges, and it wasn’t because they were kind at all. The bullying against the group only increased, the ‘new freaks’ having to keep constant vigilance, and even so, some of them buckled from the stress. Two had to be taken to ICU for injuries and were never seen again. Another was beaten savagely by the guards for yelling obscenities at them for allowing the madness and also disappeared.
Teddy was proving to be one of most durable of them all, being ever protective, even against the guards new, ill-found helpers. For it, he was shanked.
It came as a surprise. He had been in the laundry room, trying to get the clothes in and out quickly, when one of the others tried to call a warning to him before being grabbed and a hand held over his mouth. The blond teen turned, just as two of the Honorable Detainees grabbed him by the arms and a third stepped in close before he could even think of kicking him.
“Ah!” Sharp pain made him cry out, looking with shock at the criminal as he pulled back.
“Sleep tight, Hulkling,” the criminal said with a grin as the other two released his arms.
Teddy took a few labored breaths, looked down, hand hovering around the shank. It looked like a narrow piece of tile. He took another deep breath, slightly puzzled. It hurt, hurt terribly, but where it was at... He should be dropped. He knew enough about anatomy to know what was fatal.
Instead, he looked at them, feeling anger starting to burn alongside the pain. “Did you want your shank back?”
Now they were the ones taken by surprise as he kicked the shanker directly in the groin. Normally Teddy didn’t stoop so low in a fight, but, by damn, they had stabbed him. And he was furious at them for it. There was no justice in this place! None! It was a madhouse with mad rules, meant to make them all go mad.
He wasn’t quite sure what all happened in the fight. His collar suddenly shocked him, and shocked him, and kept shocking him, till he was curling up on the floor in pain and blackness.
~~~~~~~~~~
”The test results are back.”
“And?”
“... There is no X-gene.”
“None?”
“None. In fact, nothing that’s even human.”
“Hm. I suppose that explains C-11’s survival.”
“... Bring him downstairs?”
“Yes. Oh, and see to it that our felon pets understand they are not supposed to kill our subjects. They are, after all, a precious commodity.”
“Heh. Of course, sir.”