Absolute Division

For some time now, Oliver Queen, fugitive from the law, has been fighting a one-man guerrilla war against CADMUS, the government agency that brainwashed him into assassinating several political targets over the years. Now, he’s targeting Salvation Hospital, a prison used by CADMUS to hold metahuman criminals.

Oliver infiltrated the hospital and disabled the security systems, causing a massive riot to crop up in the dead of night. As the guards were focused on handling the inmates, Oliver entered the main office of the warden to get sensitive information. That’s when he finds out that CADMUS is in league with a cult-like entity called Algol, and they are seeking to free their dark gods. This reminded the time that Oliver himself was manipulated by a cult leader named Brother Blood, and this got him mad. Then, one of the guards, Jake Johnson, attacked Oliver from behind and they both fell from the observation window. They fought, and Oliver burnt away some of Jake’s skin with an explosive arrow, revealing Jake to have a cyborg endoskeleton that provides his superhuman strength and stamina. Jake gave up fighting against Oliver midway through, and tried to warn him about where they will strike to release their dark gods, and how, but was remotely shut down. Then the L-Division of CADMUS’ SHADE division, consisting of Clay, Pooch, Aisha, and Roque, attacked Oliver and brought him down. K-Division showed up to mop up the mess of the riot and they brought Oliver into custody.

In the bowels of the Donovan Memorial Building in Washington, DC, main headquarters of CADMUS, Oliver was subjected to the trigger stimuli that was supposed to to activate his sleeper agent programming, but nothing happened. Oliver figured that whatever mental tampering Brother Blood did to him in the past must have undid CADMUS’ work on his brain. Paul Westfield, Director of CADMUS, ordered Oliver to, once again, undergo the Checkmate Procedure. Oliver was wheeled into the operating room on a stretcher, but the room was so tight that the doctors and guards couldn’t defend against an ambush. Roy Harper, a young victim of the Procedure, had long ago shrugged off the programming and now aims to help Oliver bring down CADMUS. He freed

Oliver and they went toe-to-toe with K-Division and L-Division in the main lobby.

In the midst of the chaos, Westfield and co-director Amanda Waller escaped. Guardian, leader of K-Division, and Huntress cornered Roy and disabled his cybernetic arm, but then Huntress stabbed Guardian in the neck with a syringe. It was revealed that K-Division had been injected with nano-explosives to be controlled by CADMUS under threat of death, but Huntress found a few vials of nanobots that disabled the bombs. Under Westfield’s remote command, Smasher and Red Tornado were forced to attack the four. They freed Smasher but Red Tornado was going to be a different matter altogether. That’s when Father Time, an agent of CADMUS, dove from the rafters and landed on top of Red Tornado, dislodging some of her battle armor with a remote hacking unit. With her neck exposed, Huntress shot a hollowed bolt full of nano-tech from her crossbow at Red, freeing her.

In the end, with K-Division free and CADMUS’ main HQ in shambles, Oliver agreed to help them and Father Time, real name: Sonia Sato, find the other Divisions and free them.

As for Jake Johnson, a CADMUS scientist named William McIntyre recovered him from their morgue, rebooted him, and wiped a lot of memories from his half-cybernetic brain. He said that they have a lot of work to do…

Notes:

* K-Division is (unintentionally) based on the Avengers from Marvel Comics.

** James Harper, the Guardian, is a mix of (of course) Captain America, with some police officer mixed in.

** Maxine Hunkle, aka Red Tornado, is based on Iron Man.

*** She is the granddaughter of the original Red Tornado, Abigail Hunkle, who was one of the original Metal Men back in the 60s.

*** Her faceplate is based on the original RT’s forehead-arrow design, and those spine-like arms on her back are supposed to represent the cape.

** Smasher, based on Atom-Smasher, is obviously the Hulk.

*** The mask for Smasher was lifted from the CW-verse version of the character.

*** I forget who made the Hulk microhero I took this from.

** Helena Bertinelli, the Huntress, is based on Black Widow, but with more goth-punk sensibilities.

* Jake Johnson is an amalgamation of WWII soldier Jackie Johnson and JAKE the GI Robot.

* Father Time is an Asian woman here as a reference to one of the forms he took in the original comics.

** Making her Sonia Sato, the Judomaster, here is based on me needing more well-known characters in this universe (same with the line-up of K-Division).

* L-Division is based on the modern version of The Losers.

* The Donovan Memorial Building is named for the late Dabney Donovan, a founder of CADMUS back in the 70s.

* What McIntyre wants with Johnson will be explained in a later storyline...