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Pound the Table | An X-Men Self-Insert

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Shadowhisker said:
uh

what're the odds someone tries to use this to smear noa/st john/what have you
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P=1.

It's an ill advised course of action, but especially outside a criminal court, one that can work pretty well as a character assassination.

Carcer said:
sound like a big problem ?,what happen if the kid is mistreatd or it's a missing/kidnaped child case ?
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Poke your rivals across the state border.

They're rivals, not enemies. Just need to poke them so their pride demands they show the others how you do that sort of thing right, rather than burying it.
 
Hmmmm.

*steeples fingers, looks thoughtful*

Curious, how that television crew bugged the fuck out so fast. Or that they were even there to begin with. Not that I'm familiar with court rooms in general - I can count on one hand how many times I've had the dubious pleasure of being before a judge - but it seems to me that, given the effort made to avoid any and all form of media attention to the point where a courtroom bait-and-switch was pulled, it was odd to me that a two-person camera crew was even present to begin with for such a short and deliberately downplayed session, but what do I know? Not a lawyer, just a nursing student-turned-social worker.

As for that kill shot? Too soon to really deliberate, but there's a few suspects for it. Bullseye, obviously. A member of the Hand is another possibility. Taskmaster is a third possibility, with fourth being a little-known Hydra asset called Bowman.

There's a few others, but they're unlikely. Mostly due to at this time, they'd likely be on the other side of the planet or not on Earth-616 at all.
 
Geas said:
Curious, how that television crew bugged the fuck out so fast. Or that they were even there to begin with. Not that I'm familiar with court rooms in general - I can count on one hand how many times I've had the dubious pleasure of being before a judge - but it seems to me that, given the effort made to avoid any and all form of media attention to the point where a courtroom bait-and-switch was pulled, it was odd to me that a two-person camera crew was even present to begin with for such a short and deliberately downplayed session, but what do I know? Not a lawyer, just a nursing student-turned-social worker.
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I'm pretty sure they were there by invitation of the judge, who was Making. A. Point. but also didn't want to put the kid through a media circus. And similarly, were probably under unofficial orders by the judge (on authority of "or else I won't ever look kindly on you schmucks showing up in my courtroom ever again") to be unobtrusive and not make a spectacle of themselves
 
October Daye said:
I know I said the next chapter would be a double whammy next week but nope, I am evil evil EVIL, and I am only nice enough to not make y'all stew in a cliffhanger for two weeks! At no point did I say anything about not letting you stew for ONE!

Ah, ah, ah!
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October Daye said:
Oh, my God.

He looked exactly like St. John.

His red hair was an identical shade. He had a similar skin tone, if a bit paler, likely due to working a desk job. I was eye level with his sternum, which meant he was about the same height as St. John, too. The only difference was his eye color, green instead of blue, and that was subtle.
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"ADA Tim Finnigan," the man said, extending a hand in my direction. I took his hand, still a bit numb. "You must be Noa Schaefer."

"I, y-yes, that's me," I said. "I'm sorry, it's just—"

"I look exactly like your guy?" ADA Finnigan chuckled, then sighed. "Yeah, I caught that too. Getting the feeling the DA picked me for exactly that reason."
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I was guessing John was the intended target, but since Finnigan was so conveniently sent makes me think some shenanigans is in play. shot in the dark guess is that Finnigan is working with Shield and there is a non zero chance he isn't dead.

Also Poor Noa, she was just getting over the trauma from all the other crap in her life, now she has to deal with this as well.
 
Zealous Specter said:


I was guessing John was the intended target, but since Finnigan was so conveniently sent makes me think some shenanigans is in play. shot in the dark guess is that Finnigan is working with Shield and there is a non zero chance he isn't dead.

Also Poor Noa, she was just getting over the trauma from all the other crap in her life, now she has to deal with this as well.
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I had considered that Finnigan could have been Raven before the arrow to the head, but couldn't quite figure out the angle given how much it would fuck up the legal side of things having an imposter end the case without a fight. Then, after the assassination I figured Raven probably wouldn't be killed off as a mere distraction*. A Shield LMD makes sense though.

*Did power creep ever get Raven to the point she could survive an arrow through her head? I vaguely recall that several other characters who had malleable bodies eventually got to that point. Iceman and Morph off the top of my head.
 
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Guys, there's a chance the poor schmuck isn't dead yet. If your really lucky, you can get hit entirely in important but not vital sections of the brain.

That being said, here's my conspiracy theory for the pile. An assassin was hired by the friends of humanity, but they are actually working with Magneto. Raven was prepared to survive a headshot, with treatment to fix any resulting brain damage, to provoke moral outrage. If he's caught, he can just claim he was sabotaging the plots of the friends of humanity to minimize casualties.
 
October Daye said:
Now, full disclosure? I'd never been to Family Court before. When I was at LL&L, I was very explicit when I told Sam Lieberman that I would not be doing any work in Family Court, and that if he gave me a case in family court anyway? Well, I'd had a lot of PTO banked. I only really used it three times a year, and even then only a couple days at a time.
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So at last! We have discovered your true weakness!

Family Law!
 
Honestly I was surprised that was something that would come up.
I thought law firms were generally pretty specialised so you wouldn't be going to family court unless LL&L was a typically smaller firm that did it a lot.
 
October Daye said:
Oh, my God.

He looked exactly like St. John.

His red hair was an identical shade. He had a similar skin tone, if a bit paler, likely due to working a desk job. I was eye level with his sternum, which meant he was about the same height as St. John, too. The only difference was his eye color, green instead of blue, and that was subtle.

Hell, aside from the fact that this man's suit was clearly of a finer make, and he had a solid blue tie instead of the blue-and-white striped one I'd picked out for St. John, they were even dressed the same.
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king208 said:
Though I'm still not understanding why an ADA would have been picked because he looked like the defendent. I'm missing some essential logical connection here.
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I am 99% likely to be off, but this? The moment I read the eye color bit, I thought it was a Gundam reference. Casval Deikun escaped to live with a friend named Char Aznabal. The only distinction between them was Casval had blue eyes and Char was red-brown-something. Casval then arranged for his friend to be on a passenger ship he knew was going to be bombed, so he could steal his identity and start his revenge on the Zabi family.

So I'm in the "fake St. John's death" camp.
 
Always Late said:
Casval Deikun escaped to live with a friend named Char Aznable. The only distinction between them was Casval had blue eyes and Char was red-brown-something. Casval then arranged for his friend to be on a passenger ship he knew was going to be bombed, so he could steal his identity and start his revenge on the Zabi family.
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Ah, yes the Origin story of Char "I Have Never Betrayed Anyone In My Entire Life!" Aznable and his reputation of lying and backstabbing people along the way.
 
I feel like forcing a New Yorker to hide in Jersey is a violation of the 8th amendment. Wasn't there anywhere more civilized to hide?
 
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Nervos Belli said:
I feel like forcing a New Yorker to hide in Jersey is a violation of the 8th amendment. Wasn't there anywhere more civilized to hide?
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New Jersey is a liminal state. Anything could be hidden there. Just have to wait for any pursuers to lose interest or accidentally wander out of state. And besides, everything's legal in Jersey - as long as you don't get caught.

And good work on the chapter, October. Lure us in with the promise of closure, distract us with heartwarming relationship shenanigans, pretend the "twist" is the court change...then drop us off the cliff. Do you gain power from the frustrated rage of your readers? In that case, let me say : YOU BIG MEANY HEAD.
 
Cobalt-60 said:
New Jersey is a liminal state. Anything could be hidden there. Just have to wait for any pursuers to lose interest or accidentally wander out of state. And besides, everything's legal in Jersey - as long as you don't get caught.
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That might explain everything regarding the plot of Megas XLR and how Coop always seem to get away from what he did in New Jersey.

I mean he somehow procured NUKES for his giant robot.
 
CeBrudras said:
This feels like a situation involving precognition or something similar. Sending a decoy target, rather than just stopping the assassination, is really weird, but would make sense if the person arranging this only knew that sending this particular guy was helpful and not why.
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He was a decoy for the press, not an assassin. unfortunately for him, being a decoy for one meant being a decoy for the other.
 
The sequence of events here seems pretty clear. This ADA gets picked as a departmental in-joke, because he looks very much like St. John. Someone is tipped off to the case being resolved in the family court, and sends an assassin to kill St. John. The assassin sees Noa through the window, talking to "her client", and takes the shot with a hunting arrow.

The remaining questions are who took the shot, who hired them, and why?

It's possible that the killer was hired by the families of the "victims", of course, but that seems very extreme and would be incredibly stupid of them. If they were hired by some criminal or politician who'd lost out because of Young's downfall, then it seems far more likely they'd target Noa, who has been in public view the entire time, than the kid she was defending. So this seems more like a general anti-mutant terror attack, a statement that mutants will not be allowed to "escape justice" and walk free... though in that case, again, why not also target Noa?

The arrow is obviously significant, because it's a very odd and distinctive weapon to kill someone with, much less through a window. There are plenty of bow-using assassins in Marvel - Hawkeye hasn't shown up yet, so it's not likely to be Taskmaster or any of the knock-offs he trained, but there's still Trickshot (Hawkeye's mentor), Bullseye, Weapon Master, Crossbow, and so on.

The only X-Men related assassin I can think of that uses archery to kill someone, though... is Destiny. She doesn't work for money, just to alter the future, but her precognition is visual in nature. And she is kind of an idiot. Unlikely, but putting it out there.
 
Man imagine getting sent to close a shitshow of a case purely because your coworkers thought it was funny they'd found your doppleganger, then getting assassinated with an arrow accidently.

Fuck me its going to be awkward as hell for whoever thought it was funny in the first place.
 
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Just a small update. I want to get the next chapter out this weekend, but my head probably won't be in it.

Got bad news from the vet. My pup isn't long for this world without surgery, and there's a 50/50 she dies on the OR table. She'd need clearance from consults with 2 specialists first, and one of them is very much going to be the decider of "weeks" versus "months".

I'm still gonna try. But I make no promises.
 
October Daye said:
Just a small update. I want to get the next chapter out this weekend, but my head probably won't be in it.

Got bad news from the vet. My pup isn't long for this world without surgery, and there's a 50/50 she dies on the OR table. She'd need clearance from consults with 2 specialists first, and one of them is very much going to be the decider of "weeks" versus "months".

I'm still gonna try. But I make no promises.
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While we're all eagerly anticipating the next update because your writing is fantastic, please don't force yourself. Our best wishes (and prayers, for what it's worth) are with you and the pup, we'll be here when you're ready to be.
 
Well, after reading the alll thing in a week, i have some questions but I guess the main one is, why keep uncle Ben alive ? I guess that this is an AU and some changes are necessary for your OC but for some reason I found that one as an odd change.
 
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