"I am fed up, and I am not going to take it anymore!"   said the famous radio personality.  Curtis Simpson heard this and took it to heart.  After a tour of duty in Vietnam, the then 28 year old Simpson was tired of his Bronx comunity's crime problem.  Dressing in a black ski mask, and black leather biking gear, he took a baseball bat and cleared out a gang club house.  Using the fighting techniques he mastered in South East Asia, Simpon was suprised how easy it was to take out the gang.   
    While laying low, word on the street was that someone was finally looking out for the neighborhood.  People didn't know who it was, but they were glad someone was finally on their side.  Confiding in his war buddy,  Peter Tomasi, who was confined to a wheelchair after 'Nam,  the two planned out a stratedgy to clean up the 'hood.
    It was Tomasi who came up with  the idea of a costume.  "Like Batman from the comics, it gives you a mystique, an aura of the supernatural."
     Taking the costume, but not taking a name, Simpson continued cleaning the streets at night, while during the day he worked as an automechanic with Tomasi.
     It was the newspapers that finally pinned a label on Curtis,   The Urban Legend was born.
     Yes its true that over the years a dozen or so people took up the name and the costume of the Urban Legend, but for the most part,  the 20 or so years that the Legend has been active it was Curtis sporting the mask.   Now the owner of the Riverside Dojo,  Curtis Simpson is training the next generation of urban vigilantes.   Tomasi, sadly, passed one night by his own hand.   While he helped his friend clean the streets of drugs, he was never able to clean himself.


  The vigilantes that Simpson trained is impressive.   The first to get Curtis out of retirement was The Pulp.

   The Pulp is a serious bad ass who dressess, you guessed it,  in a mock off of the Shadow.  He also weilds two colts, something that  Simpson strictly forbide.   The Pulp is very dangerous and cruel, leaving his victims with shots to the kneecaps, or powdered elbows.
    Next it is rumored that he trained Brooklyn's own Apollo the Archer.  Apollo has been active in taking down organised crime. 
    It is said that San Francisco's Moonlighter has also studied under the Urban Legend.
   New York's Raven is pretty much the only active vigilante that has not been trained by Simpson.   Though there is talk that the two do talk.   
     Now Simpson has taken on three new apprentices;  Black Jack,  The Scrapper, and John Q Public.     The three have teamed up to bring down the Frog.    The Frog was arrested on illegal weapon's charges, but the drug trafficking charges were dropped.  It seems his high powered legal advisor, Virginia Dentata, is a real maneater.

Black Jack heard about some crazy kidnapper who lived in the subways.  He decided to go after him.    After a few days of searching, Black Jack stepped in a bear trap.   Black Jack was then beaten uncounsious by  the Suspect and was rescued by CHESS agent Johny Peril.
   Going back and being more careful,  Black Jack managed to apprehend George Travers and find some missing children.

"TO ALL CONCERNED CITIZENS"

That was the message that caught their eyes.   Curtis Simpson, the Urban Legend, gathered all his students.   

" This message on Craigslist is a code.  It was posted by my finest student,  Black Mariah. She is asking for help.  She will be here soon to explain.    I don't know what she wants, but I know its going to be big...

This leads to Snakeheads and Skeletons

John Q. Public, Black Jack, and the Brawler chased a child molester into Van Cortland Park.  Black Jack throws a truncheon at the guy, and knocked him on his ass.  The sicko rolls down a hill in the rain and falls to a stop.  Public then grabs him by the hair and pummels him unmerciful.    The Brawler then notices a garbage bag in some underbrush with a small black child’s hand sticking out of it.   Black Jack stops Public from beating the now unconscious pedophile to death and draws his attention to the bag.

   They open it up and find two arms, two legs and curiously, two eyes, and nothing else.   Public, a trained EMT says that the limbs were cut with precision, and all the blood was carefully drained.   Disgusted by this, they call in CHESS.

  Agent Miller and Agent Vasquez arrive on the scene.  They arrest the nearly comatose pedophile and then close off the area.  The three vigilantes are urged to leave as the local police are now showing up, and it would make it awkward to see them working with CHESS.

  The three spend the next two days wondering about what had happened to that poor boy.   They talk to their mentor, Curtis Simpson aka the Urban Legend.  He says it sounds like a case he worked on in the 70’s.  He says its similar to muti  killing.

   He says that in South Africa there is a type of quasi-religious beliefs called Muti.   Muti means “tree of life”  and it is used for healing.     Sangomas, or muti healers, use animal blood and parts as a means to attempt to heal the sick.  In rare instances, bad muti healers kill children to use their blood or parts to make healing potions.    The only difference between this case and the one he worked on, was the surgical skill of the murderer.   That, and the eyes.   Why did they toss the eyes?

   Using this information, they research who has the skill to do this, and who may be influenced by South African Muti rituals.    They find a doctor Ngumba, a semi-retired spinal surgeon.   They stake out his clinic and finally the Brawler checks in as a patient with back pain.   He takes an instant liking to the doctor, noting his forearm crutches, and lets himself be examined.   He schedules a follow up and leaves.
Black Jack calls Agent Millar who tells him that while the murdered boy has perfect finger prints, there is no documentation on him.  And his DNA says he would come from the South African region of Lethoso.   The blood remaining also shows no inoculations.    This, Curtis Simpson says, bolsters his theory of Muti Killing.   He says the last time  poor African children were murdered, kids with no paperwork, kids who would not be missed, were the victims.
  Public stakes out the clinic and finally goes in and searches Ngumba’s office.  He is shoved by the janitor who then runs.  Public knocks the janitor out and he flees the clinic.

Brawler follows up to see the results of his X rays, and Ngumba says he sees nothing wrong and recommends acupuncture.   He then apologizes  for the state of the clinic as the janitor has stopped showing up for work.  This peaks Brawler’s interest and he presses for more information.    He finds out that the Janitor was an ex con, and Ngumba gave him a break.

   Public  breaks into the clinic that night, and reads the employee files on the janitor.  He gets his address,  confirms that he went to prison for drug possession, and  off they go.

  They  go to the address listed and find his live in girlfriend, complete with track marks.  They offer her money and she tells them that he might have taken off as he owes a lot of people money.    She says that maybe Gucci knows where he is, and they go to find Gucci.

    Gucci is the neighborhood drug pusher.   Public grabbed him by the hair and put a comb in his face.   He said that  Lopez ( the janitor)  was working for someone in Yonkers and that was all he knew.  He was flashing a lot of money around and driving upstate and back a lot.    They let him go and went back to Lopez’s apartment.  They picked the lock and found the girl gone.  They searched found empty canisters of stolen pain meds and a cell phone.  They got a number in Tarrytown and had CHESS give them a name and an address.

It was a number for Terrence and Matilda Scott.  He was a spiritualist healer who pushes a book called Angels Among Us and she is a surgeon.    The three jumped in the Brawler’s car and off they went.

They noticed they were being followed and pulled into a gas station.    Out of the following car came a big black man with a semi-automatic and a small Chinese girl with a sword.    The girl moved like lighting and slashed Public, knocking him out.     The  Brawler took a couple of hits but shrugged it off.   The duo called themselves Big Trouble and Little China.      They  fought like real pros and left the three heroes  lying in pools of their own blood.   By the time the police arrived the Brawler had bled to death.

You know....I thought it was a true story at the beginning... then I realize.....

I think there is a story summery missing.  Jimmy did I forget to post a story or two about the Vigilantes?

Bumping this for tomorrow and Yes John Q Public scares the shit out of me.......

The next logical step was to stake out the warehouse.  It was in Red Hook, Brooklyn.   The area was still mostly dark, but the warehouse had power.  We saw electricians working, setting up temporary power and lights.   The place was fenced in and guarded.  They had a huge, with a capital UGE guy roaming the place.  He had a face not even a mother could love.  I heard some of the guys call him, the Farmer, and another call him Amish Joe.   And if Public wasn’t scary enough, I heard him whisper to himself, “He’s mine…”

We went to the guard and pretended to be some underworld skells.   Curtis drilled into us the importance of acting and gave us some pointers.    Lo and behold, it worked.  The guy took pity on two out of work thugs and directed us to Uncle Sal’s Pizza.

When we got there, the place was full.  I never saw such a wretched hive of scum and villainy outside of Mois Isley.    We waited four hours when we were helped to a nice slice of pepperoni pizza and a napkin with an address.    Public got a mushroom slice with a different address.
So did what Curtis told us never to do, we split up.
Turns out I was given a contact who would give me murder jobs.   My blood boiled, but I kept it cool and thought, this was a dead end, but I would investigate in the future. 

Public, was offered a job as a safe cracker.  Only, he wasn’t a safe cracker.  He was a head cracker.  When he failed to open the safe that he had to show his skills on, he bashed in some goons heads.  He was sent back to Uncle Sal’s for some pepperoni.

We decided to come back at night.  We thanked the guard with some booze and he invited us in to play cards.  We walked past Amish Joe.   I nearly wet myself when Public turned to him and smiled.  I am not sure which of the two frightened me more.
All in all it was a fun card game.  Between hands, and trips to the bathroom, we made mental maps of the night.   That and the fact that me and Public cleaned up, made up for the dead end this afternoon.

Since the auction was Sunday, and this was Friday, O dark thirty, we came back Friday night slash Saturday morning.   I tried to fuck up at cards, but these guys were full retard.  We won again.

When the game broke up, we came back in costume.  He avoided the Farmer, and checked out the place.   Turns out it was wired to the gills with C4 bombs in the rafters.   We cleaned out all the bombs we could find.   Public was against the idea, but I managed to change his mind by saying we don’t know what is for sale, and it could be a chemical or biological weapon that would be compromised if it blew up.   
It was then that Amish Joe came in.  I was dark, but still, I think Public got an erection.

Some quick thinking on Public’s part.  Man the guy is a strategic genius.  He cut the temporary wires to the generator and the place went dark.    We had our night vision goggles on, and the only light was the flash of tasers against Joe’s elephant hide.   He put up a fight, but we took him out.

We were then chastised by Doctor Penance.   He was a Florida guy, one of Black Mariah’s he helped on the Snakehead Case.   He was into to self-flagellation and immolation.  He set the C4 charges.

He yelled at us and said we set back months of work.   He stormed out.

We tied up Amish Joe and tried to question him.   He was useless.  He said that the auction would be moved now, and we would never find out where it was, and what was for sale.  Public punched him out and called me a fool.

I couldn’t help but think, maybe the creepy bastard was right.

We skulked back to the car and when I turned the ignition, the fucking car blew up.   Damn you Doctor Penance. 

THE ONI wrote on May 25^th, 2014 at 8:23pm:


Here is the "missing" adventure. I put it in the Party Like its 1999 thread, as it was part of that major story line.   


So consider this a reprint issue of  Black and Public.




Black Jack talked John Q Public into attending the party at the Dojo.  Public didn’t want to admit it, but it was nice to celebrate the New Year with others.  Just as he was about to forget that nagging feeling of impending danger, the craziness started.

Right at midnight, all the TVs started broadcasting nonsense.   Then there were blackouts.  People started to panic. Radios, computers, you name it, anything electronic was corrupted.    Then they heard it…
A DC10 was coming in for a landing.  The pilot heroically was able to get it to land in Cortland Park.  The crash killed everyone onboard and the destruction to the surrounding area was devastating.    Public and Black Jack spend hours helping save lives.  It was during this that they met up with Devil Cry and new vigilante, the Greyhound.
For three days, the four worked tirelessly helping where they were needed.  They pulled people from wreckage, they did first aid, and they stopped looters.    They realized they were on their own.  Most cars were no longer working.   At least that annoying drone stopped coming from all speakers after a few hours.

The few older radios that were uncorrupted said that Marshal Strong and a crew of heroes stopped a villain called the Blue Blood from taking over all the worlds’ electronic systems.  He was an insane zealot who created what he called “the new electronic god.”  Strong managed to quarantine the virus and the Blue Blood, who was a CHESS agent called the Octopus, was killed resisting arrest.   The Government is working around the clock to restore the damage

Greyhound knew the truth.  The government and the corporations did this so everyone would have to buy new electronics.  It was about money.  It’s always about money.  That and the illuminati!
Gangs started to move in.   The four had to take out some of the Skeleton Crew from taking over the streets near the Dojo.   During this, they were asked by an emissary of the Prince (a child prodigy who has a cult like following) to help stop another group of the Crew from pillaging a Duane Reade.
  They got to the pharmacy and saw a hostage situation.  Public and the Greyhound went around back and found the Prince already picking the lock.   They went in and made short work of the gang bangers.    Public and Greyhound stopped to attend to the wounds of the store manager.  The Prince took out a few more and then talked one of the Gangsters into overdosing on pills.

Devil Cry and Black Jack were about to move in on the Skeleton Crewmembers out front of the store when the gangbangers where shot by hidden snipers.   The Prince had his agents watching.  Why did they wait for the four heroes to show up?  Black Jack didn’t like this.  It’s smelled of a test or something. 
In side Devil Cry and Black Jack took out a few more thugs, and the Prince, Public and Greyhound met them in the middle of the store.  Out of the sniper’s fire, Black Jack opened fire on the Prince, surprising everyone, especially himself.

  He was sure he hit him a few times.  The prince cartwheeled passed him. Blackjack dropped his guns and blocked the flurry of kicks and punches with his escrima sticks.   The Prince stopped in the street, covered by his hidden snipers and said that they had made a tragic error.  Black Jack fired again, and the Prince was gone.

The rest of January, the four awaited retaliation from the Prince, but all that they saw of him was a Purple Rain record left in Black Jack’s apartment, and one of Public’s masks was stabbed.      They figured he was busy with his schemes to take out the burdens on humanity. 
Slowly power was restored.  It took a massive police and National Guard presence to restore order.     History will call this “Black January” and it officially killed the good feelings inspired by the White Event.

Bumping this for Oni

During a discussion on whether or not to open a coffee shop,  Colbanus Quain, and Jon Deacon, aka John Q Public and Black Jack, were informed via a newly purchased TV, that a hideous giant monster was attacking mid town Manhattan.

They donned their costumes and rode on Deacon's motorcycle.

It took a bit longer than normal, what with them having to fight the congestion created from everyone fleeing, they stopped a few blocks away when they saw the gelatinous winged, be tentacle amoeba like thing battling the Mighty Seven.

The sky was flashing from Doc Thunder and Jolt's lighting blasts.   American Eagle was soaring over head taking out gallon's of cytoplasm with every hit of his Star Mace. 

A thought occurred to Black Jack, what could two normal guys do to help such powerful superheroes?

The answer came in the form of a man landing, crumpled at their feet. 


The Magnet looked worse for wear. He was bleeding and showed signs of being in shock.   Pubic and Black Jack immediately checked him and then performed CPR.   Amazingly the hardy hero sprung up, called over a sewer cap with his magnetic powers, which he used to fly on like a  flying saucer,said thank you to the duo, and then grabbed their motorcycle with another application of his magnetic powers and hurled it into the attacking alien.

John Q Public and Black Jack just stood and stared.

Turning  to see what he could do,  Black Jack noticed a figure climbing the Chrysler Building.  The figure was in a brown WW1 Trench coat and hat.  This bared investigating.

Running over the enterence of the building, they could see that the figure didn't have arms, but metallic tendrils with finger like claws.   Ok this is officially odd!

They went into the building and pressed the highest floor on the elevator.  While waiting Public recalled that the Silver Eagles on the building had real Mithryl Eyes.  This was probably what the figure was going for.   Deacon knew that Mithryl was a "sacred metal" and used to make dangerous weapons, such as silver bullets, or the silver swords of legend.   

What ever was going on,  it was worth checking out.


Public remained calm and hummed  The Girl From Ipanema while in the elevator.  This frightened Black Jack more than a Giant Winged Amoeba that was currently attacking Manhattan.

When they came out, they were one floor up from the Silver Eagles.  They could see the figure, who lost his hat from the wind, was a Copper Cylinder, with a clear band of plastic Steel at the seems.  Its "face was two triangles; one red, one green, and its mouth was a round old fashioned radio speaker. From the plastic seems a human brain could be seen secured by wires and nourished by fluids.  Its body was a symmetric cylinder which was the hub of six metallic cylinders.   It spoke in staticy mono tone.

"Don not hinder the progress of the Megatherion.  I require the mythril for the ritual of summoning the Moonchild, and ushering the next great age of Man."

Megatherion?  Could they be fighting the encased, still living brain of Aleister Crowley?

John Q Public jumped and slide across the Silver Eagles and smashed into the body of the Megatherion.  It reacted by grabbing Q around the neck with it's tentacle.


Black Jack emptied a clip into the hub of the thing and it didn't seem to mind.   Q tried to pull the arm and toss it over, but it just exended its arm and the attack was unsuccessful.   

Black Jack employed both of his escrima sticks and put a full on dent into the head cylinder.  The thing pleaded not to damage its great intellect and promised them that it worked for the betterment of all man kind.  And that all who perished by the Gelatinous  Distraction would be immortalized in the New Way.

Public heard enough of this insanity and pulled back,  tightening the tentacle taught. He then put his pistol under the arm and fired.  This severed the arm from the body flinging the thing backwards, off the building and to destruction below.

BUT  rockets fired from the hub and the thing  flew off and then flashed in a green thrum while over the water.

American Eagle flew over and said he saw the fight with his Eagle Eyes.   He told them good job, which pleased Public more than he thought it would, man that American Eagle is one swell guy! 

He offered them compensation for their destroyed motorcycle and aid if they needed it. 

The Duo exchanged information with the Mighty Seven who then thanked them and gave them their card in case they needed to contact them in the future.