Cold and wet, those are some of the things he felt as he seemed to hover between consciousness and dreamland. A soft beep one of his companions as he tried, and failed to open his eyes.  He seemed to lay motionless, or in some odd fashion float, muffled voices speaking in whispers in the background as he tried and failed to move. It was as if all the energy was drained away leaving a muddled shell. Thinking took everything he had and his thoughts seemed to stall before truly forming. Unaware of where he was, what time it was, or even the series of events that let him there, he continued to drift.

He couldn’t tell how long it had been when he awakened again, but he finally managed to open his eyes. From what he could tell he was in a pod of some kind. A sort of purple fluid seemed to surround him while in front he could see two men wearing white coats, scientists of some type perhaps. They seemed to animately talk about something while he tried to focus on anything in the room.

Computers and machinery littered the room, some carefully placed as if they followed a predetermined room plan, and some seemingly added with no sense of pattern or plan.

A research hospital…? Why am I here... Am I sick?

While he was busy inspecting the room, one of them seemed to notice he was conscious. Wildly gesturing to his coworker, they both started to study him with growing intensity, their previous conversation forgotten as they took notes.

He stared a moment before he tried to speak. His first attempt was little more than a whisper, the strange fluid doing nothing to impede him even as he felt it in his throat. Another attempt and it was more like a grunt which was enough to get attention from one of the men. Finally, he managed it. Every word coming out slowly, with barely any strength behind it, but he managed well enough.

“Where am I?”

A pause, and then another. Both the men stopped everything completely and stared on like they had seen a dog grow wings. The one on the left seemed to snap out of it first and hurried to a console in front of the pod he was currently in. Raising a mic the man seemed to ask the one next to him multiple questions, after getting a  seemingly satisfactory answer from the man next to him he started to speak.

“ Where did you learn to speak..?” the man asked. “ Who taught you to speak English?”

“ Learned in school..? Is this a hospital? Was I-” He coughed, his throat burning as he forced himself to continue. “Was I in an accident…?” He continued.

The man seemed to consider his words and took a couple more notes before he spoke again.

“No, this is no hospital, we found you submerged in the middle of a lake. Do you remember where you came from..?”

He couldn’t really understand where they were coming from. Why question him speaking, was he not in America? But if that was the case, where was he?

Maybe it was the situation he found himself in, maybe it was the overall state of his body, for one reason or another he found himself trying, and failing to fight the growing panic in the bottom of his gut. His mind seemed to run through worse and worse scenarios by the second, even with another part of himself telling him that it would do no good.

As this was happening the two in front of him picked up on his growing distress. One of the men quickly noted a few things on a clipboard before he pressed something on the console built into the pod. A small needle pricked the person within, and it was a few moments later they had passed out again for the second time.

The Two of them had finally arrived at the location and had been watching the movements of the men below for about 10 minutes now. They did not deviate much from their posts, and they remained focused on the road. Whatever they were expecting, he thought it had to be arriving soon.

“I’m just saying, if I rode into his city with my deep bellowing voice demanding things from him, I’m sure he’d take exception to it. You know his city his plays type of thing.”

“Ollie.”

“Like c’mon, he couldn’t just give a ninja tip and vanish right afterward?”

“Ollie…”

“You're right, he definitely could… Maybe he likes bossing us around more than he pretends not to.”

“Oliver! Truck!”

The two looked down and the compound in front of them, unmarked cars, uniforms, and no unique weaponry to speak of. Whoever these people were, they knew enough to keep anything that could give them away out of sight.

“You know, more than anything I wish he could be wrong. Give me a chance to rub it in his face for a bit. That would be great…”

Quickly notching an arrow, he waited for the truck to directly pass over them. Letting it fly it embedded itself in the roof before be notched another. Another quick release and he pulled out a simple speaker and waited. When the truck stopped and the checkpoint he turned on the speaker and held it between the two of them.

“Subjects vessel retrieved. No other things identified from the landing site worth gathering,” One of the men from the truck said.

“Copy, get it to bay thirteen, and standby.”

Signaling to his partner, he took out a small detonator and watched the truck’s movement. When it was right between the checkpoint and the compounds garage he detonated it.

A low pulse radiated from the second arrow rendering the men directly surrounding it unconscious and then incapacitating the men a couple of feet away. Looking over the compound one final time he counted all fifteen men down, and only a single arrow used.

“Not the most exciting shot, but a nice trick at least.” His companion smirked at him before she lept down to the ground.

“Glad to please as always.” He followed after her, double-checking for cameras and sensors, but found none.

“Either they are strapped for cash or they didn’t expect the need for surveillance. Weird spot to ignore if you already have this many bodies to use,” he remarked.

Coming up to the truck he found his lovely lady had already done the honors of smashing the lock. In it were pieces of white scrap metal and other gadgets, but the one thing that got his attention was the strange white orb lying in the center, it was open revealing panels and charts surrounding what appeared to be a simple leather chair.

“What do you think?” she asked. “It doesn’t have any markings I immediately recognize, and the writing on these panels is completely foreign. Most likely alien, but not from any of our known suspects right?”

“If alien is where this is going, tall dark, and gruesome asked the wrong team.” He looked on into the compound and sighed. “Ten bucks on who this belongs to…”

Token

Hey hey hey! Hopefully, this is the start of a beautiful relationship! I always like these type of stories, but besides like two they never really get as weighty as I would like and become more like the greatest hits about the characters without plot. Here's hoping I manage to follow a better path!

I always write out stories and they stay as drafts that I never publish anywhere. This is to give me practice building out stories with goals in mind and to follow through, actually get it all down before I move to something else.  I'm going to do my best to be open to advice so feel free to leave it in the comments.

PS: If I get your favorite character wrong in some way please don't crucify me too badly. I like superheroes, but for plenty of these people, my knowledge is going to be based on all the animated tv shows/movies I've watched and less comic book knowledge(With some googling here and there). If that bugs you, I completely understand. Feel free to sell me on comics nudge me if a character seems to drift too far from a seasonal characterization of themselves.