Posted by The Hooded Hood presents the first appearance of a new poster, based upon a plot by de Brown Streak himself. on August 12, 2000 at 03:22:59:
“Ladies and gentlemen, I
give you… the new Lair Legion!” Laurie Leyton stepped back from the
microphone and preened. “I dunno why Cheryl got to uptight about these
press conferences,” she whispered to G-Eyed. “This is all going
pretty smooth.” “We welcome our brother Goldeneyed to this Black Pride rally,”
the organiser told the cheering audience. “It’s good to see a
brother in such a prominent position, and it does wonders for our
message.” “We ask a person’s worth,” Finny told the cameras,
“not the accident of their condition.” “What Mr Foom meant to say,” a harassed and much chastened
Lisette told the chat show host, “was that the LL, while upholding
equality of opportunity and celebrating diversity also has to operate as a
fighting team to defend all the peoples of the world, and cannot take race,
creed, or colour into account.” “It’s bad,” Natalia Romanza warned the LL. “Nobody
wants to force the team’s hand, but public support’s pretty much at
an all time low. Everybody from Pierson’s Porter to Rape Ape has taken
this opportunity to smear the Legion. There’s talk of withdrawing
governmental support and starting up a new, PC team, the Global Superfriends.
You’ve got to do something?” “What kind of powers do you have?” Exile
wondered. “Okay, Flapjack, I give up,” de Brown Streak told the Lair
Mansion’s hunchbacked manservant. “Show me how to use the damn
telephone to get an outside line.” “You have done well,” the Enthrallress admitted, looking at the
sorcerously enchained heroes kneeling before her. “Very well indeed. My
Ausgardian potion was sufficient to render even Donar unconscious, but now they
are awake and can greet their doom.” “You may impregnate me,” Sorceress told de Brown Streak,
“but I shall be thinking of Jay!” With a speed which boggled the eye de Brown Streak whizzed around the trolls,
hammering each of them with a thousand blows per second. Cumulatively, that
hurt. The room was filled with rubble. “I wonder who that strange, lonely speedster really was?” Troia
wondered, after it was all over. “And if we’ll ever see him
again?” And far away, the Brown Streak kept on running.
“I’ll keep this brief,” Fin Fang Foom
announced. “You know the new line-up, we’ve outlined our major
policies and operating procedures, but if there are any more questions
I’ll take them now.”
There was brown blur across the Lair Mansion
lawn and suddenly a young man in skin-tight brown lycra was stood in front of
the dragon. “Yeah, I got a question,” he challenged. “How come
there are no black people in that Lair Legion of
yours?”
“We’ve got lots of ethnic groups as
Legionnaires,” Hatman protested. “CSFB!’s half Native
American, and Yo and Ziles are aliens, and Banjoooo’s a sea monkey, and
Troia’s sort of Greeky-Amazon and Donar’s
Ausgardian…”
“And where are the black men and
woman?” the speedster in sepia demanded.
“You don’t know
anything about us,” Finny growled, becoming a bit flustered. He was
starting to learn what Jarvis and Lisa and Visionary had found out to their
cost. Fighting villains was a lot easier than a full press conference. “I
mean, G-Eyed there wears an all over body costume. For all you know he could be
black.”
“If you’d just let me explain…”
G-Eyed stammered feebly before the microphone was shoved under his nose.
“Finny didn’t say I was black, just that I
might…”
“People, I give you, Goldeneyed, the great black
hope!”
Goldeneyed held the mike as if it was a serpent. “I,
uh… I’ve got something to tell you all,” he gulped.
Just
then there was a disturbance at the edge of the crowd. A good hundred picketers
were interrupting the rally. “You Legionnaires think you’re so
PC!” a woman shouted through a megaphone, “but you’ve just got
rid of the only gender-changer in your team, and now it’s all straight
hetros. What do you say to that, Goldenrod?”
“You’re saying
that being gay is a condition, an accident?” the press hounded
him.
“No, no, what I’m trying to explain
is…”
“You don’t know what side of the bed the LL
sleeps on!” Nats blurted. “You can’t judge us like
that!”
“Nats! Nats! Are you coming out of the closet?” the
reporters shouted.
Nats eyes opened wide in panic. “Me? Hell, no,
I’m as straight as a Texas highway, honest. I just
meant...”
“So who is it that’s gay in the LL, then?”
they demanded. “Exile? Trickshot? Troia? Ziles?”
“Hmmm,
please let it be Troia and Ziles,” smiled CSFB!
“No, I
didn’t say that!” Nats gabbled.
“Donar?”
At that
point a lightning strike blacked out the Eastern seaboard.
“Wait a moment,” the
President of the Moral Majority interrupted with a glare. “Is the leader
of the so-called premiere superteam on the planet saying that he backs immoral
behaviour and indecent lewdness?”
Finny took a deep breath and
explained his views about the Bad Thing.
There was a brown blur and the sepia
speedster stood before them. “You’re looking for a black guy to fill
the quota? No way, man! Aw, alright dammit, you talked me into it. Sign me
up.”
“Well, the scareder I get, the faster I can run,” the
new hero explained. “I guess I’m a mutate or
something.”
“Can you do cool stuff like vibrate through walls and
manipulating the Speed Force?” CSFB! demanded.
“I dunno, I never
tried.”
“Art thou a doughty fighter, of character good and
valiant thews?” Donar demanded.
“Er, what did he
say?”
“You’re fast,” Trickshot admitted, “but
can you outrun an arrow, huh?”
“Take your best shot,
bow-boy,” the newcomer retorted.
“That’ll do,” Finny
warned them. “Any more questions?”
“What do you do with
your time off?” Ziles asked him.
“Give me your phone number and
I’ll show you,” he offered with a winning
smile.
“What’s your name?” Sorceress asked.
“De
Brown Streak,” de Brown Streak answered. “But you can call me
Brown.”
“You have to push 9 and then
duck under a table in case the phone explodes, master” Flapjack
explained.
“Oh, OK. And listen, sorry about the
concussion.”
“What concussion?” the hunchback
puzzled.
“This one!” the sepia speedster answered, and rendered
Flapjack unconscious.
He lifted the phone and dialled a number. “Yeah,
it’s me,” he said. “I slipped the potion in their dinner like
you said. They’re all slumped over the table with their faces in their
puddings. You can come collect them all. We got them!”
“You traitor,” Nats
shouted. “We’ll get you for this.”
“Better start
running now,” Trickshot promised, “because I’m gonna be coming
after you.”
“Be silent, chattels!” Adora the Enthrallress
warned them. “I’m going to have to slay you all now, which I admit
is a huge waste of eligible manflesh, but on the other hand Hoki’s got me
a part in X-Men II playing the White Queen if only I off you folks, so nothing
personal but I’m going to have to have my troll henchmen kill you at this
point.”
“You… you never said anything about killing
them,” de Brown Streak worried.
“I never said anything about not
killing them, either. Besides, I’ve paid you everything I promised. Nice
stamina you have by the way.”
“Well, I…I want a
bonus,” he told her. “For speedy delivery.”
The
Enthrallress stretched her perfect body and ran her hands through her flaxen
tresses. “I’m afraid I don’t have time, Brownie,” she
told him.
“Well, give me one of them, then,” de Brown Streak
suggested. “Just one. You can kill the rest.”
“Which one do
you want for your pleasure, then?” the Enthrallress asked, interested in
the answer.
“If you lay one finger on any of our women, I
swear…” Hatty shouted, but the Enthrallress gestured and his throat
closed up.
De Brown Streak looked down at the shackled Troia, Ziles, and
Sorceress. “That one,” he selected.
“That’s a kind
offer, Whitney,” de Brown Streak told her, “but really I think we
should be planning on freeing the Legion, don’t
you?”
“Huh?” Sorceress puzzled as he slipped the magical
shackles off her.
“I need you to break the spell the Enthrallress has
put me under, so I can act against her.”
Now Whitney Darkness
understood. “Ah!” she realised. “Let me see. Hmmm. Come
here.” She analysed the spell for a few moments more, then drew de Brown
Streak forward and gave him a passionate kiss. “There,” she said.
“That ought to do it.”
“Hey, in these lycra tights you know
it has,” de Brown Streak grinned. “Listen, I’m going to go
fight some trolls now. Can you break your friends’ mystical
chains?”
“I imagine so,” the Sorceress agreed, “And
then I want a little word with that so-called Enthrallress.”
The Sorceress gestured at the Lair
Legion and their chains shattered. Then Whitney turned to the Enthrallress and
their mystic combat began.
“So who’s side is this brown bozo on,
then?” Exile wanted to know.
“Never mind that,” Finny said,
“Let’s take down Adora.”
“No, no, no!” Hoki
chided form the doorway. “That’s not how it’s supposed to be
at all. Let me just reactivate that potion in you. There. Ten little
Legionnaires all slumped on the floor. That’s more like it.”
De
Brown Streak rendered the Enthrallress unconscious and raced towards the
Ausgardian Goddess of Malice. He bounced painfully off a mystic
barrier.
“Oh please,” Hoki sneered. “This isn’t
amateur hour.”
“I’ll find a way of stopping you,” de
Brown Streak vowed.
“Unlikely,” counted Hoki, gesturing and
rendering the sepia speedster immobile. “See? I win. Ten little
Legionnaires and an interfering nobody all in one go.”
Something
shadowy and dextrous fell onto the Ausgardian villain’s shoulders.
“You shouldn’t believe everything you read in the papers,” the
Dark Knight told Hoki as he rendered her unconscious. “This lineup has
eleven in it, but one of us is camera-shy.”
De Brown Streak found he
could move again. “You’re another Legionnaire?” he spluttered.
“Why didn’t they tell me? I was worrying how to save them while I
was under the spell… I was feeling really guilty… And all along,
they didn’t trust me to tell me there was another member…” He
scowled with anger, punched a wall, glared at the sleeping Legion, and said,
“I gotta go.”
He was gone before the Dark Knight could react,
which is pretty fast.
“I don’t know,” Sorceress answered, lowering
her voice so that Hatman wouldn’t overhear, “but he sure can
kiss.”
And here are Brown’s own notes on his character: Real Name: Joshua John Clement
Age: 22
Occupation: Medical student (like me, only good at it)
Hobbies: Running, reading, dreaming about unattainable women
Origin: Whatever you think best. He’s probably a mutant.
Powers: The scarder he gets the faster he runs. If he’s really scared
he leaves a brown streak. He can do things like the Flash with vibrations.
Character: He’s pretty confident, usually polite except to people he
doesn’t like, a bit pushy when he’s passionate about something, he
doesn’t like bullies.
Costume: It’s brown. It might have a number 1 on the back.
There’s probably a belt with a water-bottle with straw in it, maybe a
walkman. A brown domino mask. He’s not that big, built like a runner
rather than a fighter, wiry and long-limbed, clean shaven.
Relationships: Whatever you think, but he thinks all the LL women are hot. He
thinks Whitney is incredibly classy, and she’s far too good for Hatty (and
him, but that’s not going to stop him trying). He’s probably going
to fight a lot with Trickshot and DK, because Trickshot’s a bigmouth and
DK will seem like a fascist to him. Nats (the real person) says he should be a
bit like Triathlon from the Avengers, which is OK, but I see a lot of Wally West
and Kyle Rayner in there too.
Enemies: Remind me to think of some. This is an incredibly sucky character
description, isn’t it?
Be sure to tell everybody that it was the people in the chat room, like
Whitney and Troia and Nats and Finny that encouraged me to actually get
involved, and that they’re all top people.
Name: De Brown Streak