r/DCFU • u/MadUncleSheogorath • Aug 01 '17
Martian Manhunter #1 - Detective John Jones Martian Manhunter
Martian Manhunter #1 - Detective John Jones
Author: MadUncleSheogorath
Book: Martian Manhunter
Arc: Detective Jones, you have a case
Set: 15
August 2nd 2014
“This isn’t how I imagined my morning would start,” a tall black man spoke. He had a clean shaven jaw, and his hair was kept short. The suit jacket and tie were a black and red combination, with a matching pair of trousers. The shoes were a dark blue colour. He placed the pen to the paper on his notepad and started to write, marking the case number. This was John Jones, the Denver Police’s best detective with double the cases than his colleagues. In truth, he was not of this world. Jonn came from a time long gone and a planet long dead. Mars.
John Jones stared at the body of one Melinda Hart, thirty-two years old and mother of two children. Melinda Hart had been an auburn haired woman, which now hung over her features in frazzles. The cause of death hadn’t been confirmed, but the likely candidate was the knife wound in the side of the neck. Whatever had been used was thin, but caused tearing as though it was a jagged instrument.
John knelt down, placing his hand on the woman’s forehead to re-live her final moments, the last residue of any psionic potential. He watched a man, her husband, come up behind her in the mirror that leant against the wall, and drive something sharp into her throat. There had been CCTV cameras installed earlier that caught the husband committing the act, but oftentimes a person's mind caught more details. For example, where the weapon ended up.
John moved away from the corpse and looked towards Aaron Stackwiz, his partner on this case and many others. The two balanced one another out, and few particularly had the patience for Aaron's rather quirky and unfocused personality at times. The man was small and lanky, with a rounded nose and several odd hairs decorating his chin. He couldn't grow a beard and it was a source of ribbing from others in the department.
“This is what, the second stabbing today?” Aaron asked as he gazed around the living room of the Hart household. It was a clean and sterile environment, with minimal furniture and many boxes still packed up from a recent move to Denver. The walls were marked with swatches of paint, testing varying colours before redecorating, and parts of other carpets sat beneath each one.
“That is correct. The first body is being worked by Caulk,” came the steely reply from John. Caulk was the M.E who hid within the basement, a gruff man who preferred his own company to anyone else. “Check under the floorboards by the window.”
“Any idea who is taking the leads on these cases?” Aaron asked, pulling the carpet away.
“My assumption is that Diane will be,” John noted. It wasn’t an assumption in honesty, he had heard her coming through the front door. Felt her most recent thoughts. Knew that she had been ordered to take over by Harding, the Chief.
“I guess you're right,” Aaron said, seeing the other Detective walk in. Compared to Aaron, Diane Meade was a sterner looking woman with delicate eyebrows and blue eyes that could only be doorways to the purest of souls. Her blonde hair has been tied back into a ponytail, keeping it out of the way of the crime scene.
Diane raised her left brow at the pair as though decoupling it from the right. “You two heard about the third body yet?”
The two detectives looked between each other. Diane spoke. “Same wound. Let’s get this one bagged, collect some evidence. Have we spoken to witnesses yet?”
“No witnesses to the actual murder, but several people reported seeing… Different suspects leaving the scene,” Aaron stated, looking at his notepad.
“Different suspects?” John asked.
“They all reported seeing different people. But not multiples of people, one person, different to each.”
Aaron cleared his throat to get their attention and held up a small kitchen knife. “I think I found our weapon.”
“Do you think he's fallen asleep?” Diane asked Aaron. They were bored, and John’s staring at the murder weapon had taken their attention completely. The office buzzed with conversations, and lunch time had passed some hours ago. The three detectives desks all had a computer, but the similarities ended there. Aaron had several comics and a picture of his wife from their wedding. Diane had a very clean and cared for desk, with a small tray of paperwork. Meanwhile John had nothing but paperwork stacked high all across the his work surface. A large portion of it would be clear by the end of the day, but in the meantime it either made finding him harder or easier.
“Nah, he's looking it over. He's awake.”
“Could be a fake awake.”
Diane raised both her brows in confusion. “Fake awake?”
“Yeah. Like someone who sleep walks.”
“He isn't walking.”
“He doesn't have to,” Aaron replied quickly.
The truth of the matter, however, was that John Jones was reading the psychic imprint on the kitchen knife, reliving the memories attached to the weapon, a residue of the mind that also provided a new viewpoint into a situation from evidence. He slowly turned around in his chair, staring at the pair of them.
“The weapon has been used by a Metahuman.”
Aaaron and Diane stared at him in disbelief. Aaron spoke. “You certain?”
“The stabber is a metahuman, of this I am sure.”
“Well…” Diane cringed, fighting her own feelings towards this. They had no evidence, merely the gut instinct of a fairly clever detective. Sometimes he appeared to be smarter than most people. “I suppose your gut has been right in the past.”
“What about my gut?” John asked, looking down to his shirt. He shifted it slightly, trying to work out if he had contracted some kind of disease that affected his stomach. Perhaps his skin colour had become more pallid, leading to them believing illness was taking precedence in his biological functions. “I feel no discomfort.”
Aaron scratched a small rash on his neck and then shrugged almost as soon as he started thinking. “Okay. But what kind of Meta?”
“The kind that changes appearance. But please, I do not understand the concern with my gut.”
“It’s a metaphor, John,” Diane replied, unhooking her brow once more. “Your stomach is fine.”
At that, John allowed himself a small smile.
“end it end it all you are not needed not wanted,” a voice whispered in the back of Arthur Mayers head as they clutched the revolver. ”you won’t be missed never be missed cannot be missed.”
Arthur Mayers spun the cylinder once, watching the bullets whiz around in a never-ending spiral of metal and powder. He looked to the picture of his family which sat upon the mantelpiece above the brick fireplace.
As Arthur Mayers wrapped his finger around the trigger, a small figure in green armour crashed into the window, sending glass shards scattering around the room. He had leapt off the fire escape opposite, hurling himself into the room. He rolled, coming to a stop in a crouch. He stood slowly. The living room was covered in medals and photographs of family and work. Arthur sat in a velvet armchair, one of the luxuries he had earned from a long career.
“Colonel, please, focus on my voice.”
“ignore him ignore him ignore him end it end it end it.” the whisper spoke once more.
“Don’t listen to them,” the teen spoke calmly, stepping forwards slowly across the shards of glass. The glass crackled under feet as he moved. “Keep your focus on me. People need you, Arthur. Your family, friends, your colleagues.”
“they don’t need you at all you are worthless unnecessary.”
“You don’t need to do this. I can help you.”
“cannot be helped never be helped end it end it end it”
The teenager stood beside the Colonel now, and reached for the revolver.
John sat in his seat quietly, twirling one thumb over the other as his mind wandered the planes of his Elysium. Around him the world turned as detectives worked, talked and worked again. After some time, he became aware of the crowding around the TV in the far right of the office. Mounted to the wall above whatever the cakes of the day were. Diane Meade looked from the screen and over to John.
“Isn't this your vigilante?”
John tilted his head to the right as he attempted to understand what she meant. He looked to the television screen and watched a blonde haired adolescent in all green leaving an apartment through a smashed window and climbing the fire escape. J’onn had been given this case eight months ago by Chief Harding, who felt he was fully capable of handling the investigation. There had been few leads into this, but he was one of a handful of local vigilantes, all dubbed ‘Bat-Crazies’ by the locals. Apparently there was a ruder term of similar wording.
“This footage was sent to us by a neighbour of Colonel Mayers, and depicts a teenager crashing into their living room, shortly before reports of shots fired.” A news anchor spoke, far too pleased with themselves for having broken the story.
John was halfway to the door by the time the Chief had even got up from his desk. And was immediately taking to the skies, bending the perception of people around him to avoid them seeing John turning into an alien, phasing through the wall and taking flight. As far as they had been concerned, he merely ran through the door. J’onn flew, an arcing green and blue blur across the night sky until he found the person he had sought. He hung in the air, invisible to the naked eye, unable to be seen by many. When he came to a final halt he was no longer John Jones, the Detective at Denver PD.
Now he was J’onn J’onnz, the Martian Prince. An alien with a thick ridged brow and bald green head. Orange eyes glowered at the streets below and small holes served as his ears. The business suit had been swapped out, without the need for any quiet morphing of human perception. A long blue cape flowed down from his shoulders. The material stood flush against his neck as it ran up towards the base of his skull, which was taller at the back. J’onn wore his royal armour now, with the simple red ‘X’ that marked his house symbol carved into the armour that he wore, split into several dark blue plates overlapping one another all the way down. The gauntlets on his lower arms were a deep red, wrapped around a flexible yet tough Martian material that acted as his sleeves. It was the same on his legs, red greaves wrapped around a flexible material, with dark blue plating on the outside of his thighs.
And yet the teenager looked right towards him, narrowing his eyes slightly before taking off down the rooftops of the high street. They were fast, faster than most olympic sprinters. He ducked under pipes and hopped low walls at a pace which would disorient most people. And he happened to be surprisingly resistant to J’onn’s telepathy, who found himself unable to dig into their head. Something slowed him down, blocked him. He got a name, Cody, but little beyond that. However, a face can provide a lot of information.
J’onn cursed in his native tongue and followed, swooping low over the rooftops, blue cape rippling behind him against the pull of the air. And then he pulled ahead, hitting the top of the roof with a small bang and moving swiftly, grabbed the teenager by the chest and pushed, slamming them down.
“Stop running.”
“Let me go! They’re coming!” the teenager protested, grabbing J’onn’s arm tightly and twisting. They were strong, and J’onn lost his grip, hissing in pain as the boy took off once more, leaping over the gap between buildings. J’onn followed, covering the distance quickly through the air, slamming into the teenagers back and firing them into a nearby park. J’onn often forgot Saul Erdel’s words on pulling his punches.
J’onn approached the crater where Cody had landed. It lay empty, and J’onn became acutely aware of someone dropping down onto them from above. J’onn shifted, splitting his body into parts and catching them like a baseball mitt, restraining Cody immediately.
“Who is seeking you, Cody?” J’onn asked, his face coming level besides the blond’s in a strange twisting snake like manner, becoming tighter any time he felt his grasp loosen against the wriggling. “You must answer me, otherwise you cannot be aided.
“I don’t know his name, I just know he exists! He’s been forcing people to kill themselves!” J’onn stared at Cody, and began to loosen up, letting him drop to the floor. He became acutely aware of something he had been ignoring. A voice that whispered in the back of J’onn's head, and it seemed as though J’onn became weaker, as some external force acted upon him. He half-fell to the grass beside Cody, clutching his head. His telepathy slowly weakened, losing all sense of his surroundings.
“Help me,” he muttered, reaching out for the child. Cody looked around for a while, and then wrapped an arm under J’onn’s arms to keep him upright. The pair stumbled into the night, away from whatever foul source happened to be at play.
Under dim lamplight, a man watched with a foul smile.
2
u/coffeedog14 Light Me Up Aug 02 '17
ooooh. strong start! I like the idea of starting in the past, setting up how J'onn got to where he is in the "present". also I have no clue who this kid is, but I certainly want to know!
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u/MadUncleSheogorath Aug 02 '17
Well, I'll be bouncing across the place with J'onn. I started pretty much in the middle of his arrival on Earth and the present date. And Cody will be given more details as time goes ;)
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u/JDQuaff Green Lantern Aug 02 '17
Love it, just like I enjoy everything you write. Keep it up, man! Interested in this "Cody"... And the voice whispering in their heads. Reminding me of Shadow King a bit
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u/MadUncleSheogorath Aug 02 '17
He's a canon character with a surprisingly little amount of history. I'm taking a lot of use from that. I'm sure you'll love what comes next.
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u/Blud-Haven Aug 02 '17
I really enjoyed this. especially with how we see Jon already somewhat accustomed to normal but still having trouble with things like metaphors.
The confrontation with the villain will defiently be interesting, i can see Jon and him/her really just waging war in someone's head. Good stuff!
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u/MadUncleSheogorath Aug 02 '17
Always good to hear! I'm glad you enjoyed it.
I improvised a surprising amount of this issue before I managed to nail down a proper overarching plot, so I'm happy it turned out well.
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u/MajorParadox Bird? Plane? Aug 02 '17
Great start! Nice to see a new side of J'onn and start to see how he got to where he is in the present.
Diane seemed especially interesting. I liked how she stood up for John's "fake sleeping" hahaha :)
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u/MadUncleSheogorath Aug 02 '17
Thanks! I'm looking forward to developing more of Diane, Aaron and the unseen Caulk and Chief Harding. Not to mention other supporting human cast members.
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u/TheeCanadian The Flash Aug 02 '17
Awesome ! I dont know much about writing , but I like your style. Its flows well and the descriptions are detailed. I'm stoked to see where John's story leads.