Zero Hour

A lone figure stood in the daylight atop a tall building in the middle of The City.

"Hello City," the figure announced "I am the Tick. I'm new here and we haven't been properly introduced yet but…" A dog began barking incessantly below. "Pardon me a moment" he said and he jumped the 23 floors (22 if you don't count the 13th) to the street below.

The dog was standing on a sidewalk and barking toward a park. The Tick, dressed from head to toe in blue with two antennae on his head, landed and crouched down and addressed the animal. "Tell me citizen, what evil are you calling out? What villainy do you espy? I have answered your summons and shall vanquish that which besmirches our City."

Casting his gaze toward the park, he saw an older man walking a dog on a leash. "Behold! Obviously that man is part of some slave trading ring and has bound a citizen in restraints; with metal spikes around the neck too. Hold on, I'll free you!" he called as he bounded past the 'Dog Park' sign and tackled the man.

An hour later the Tick returned to his rooftop lookout. "Sorry about the interruption, City. Note to self: the short shaggy creatures are domesticated pets in the care of citizens. This was explained to me in detail by the citizens in dark blue uniforms who, while frail, have some connection to crime fighting. But I digress; I am the Tick and..." His antennae picked up a child crying two blocks away. "Sorry, be right back" he said as he flung himself to the sound.

In a playground a young girl was standing beside a pond crying. "Citizen in distress, how may I be of aid?" he asked. She pointed at a ball floating in the water. "Some marine fiend is making off with your property? I'll just...what is that on your hand?!" The girl's melting ice cream cone was slowly covering her other hand. "That insidious blob is eating your hand!" He slapped the ice cream out of her hand and it sailed across the walkway to land on a police officer.

Another hour later the Tick was back on the rooftop. "Additional note to self: I have been informed that extremely short citizens are called 'children' and are already in the care of older, taller citizens. And they ingest disgusting things that are still considered food as part of their nourishment rituals. My new acquaintances at the police department inform me this, although unsanitary, isn't a crime. Anyway, my name is the Tick and I'll be..." Gunfire erupted and in a moment he was off again. He saw two men run out of a bank and jump into a vehicle that sped away while police officers fired weapons ineffectively at them. He jumped in front of the car in time to stop it dead in its tracks as it ran into him. Airbags deployed and two cameras flew off the sides of the vehicle. Off in the distance someone yelled "Cut!"

"Supplemental note to self," he said later on the roof "crime scenes are sometimes recreated and recorded for something called 'movies'; obviously to be used later for training purposes for fighting crime. Well City, I am the Tick and..." he paused, waiting for an interruption. There was none.

"...and we'll be seeing a lot of each other now. Your streets are infested with crime and the stench carries all the way up here" he said as he leaned against a full garbage can. "The scales of justice show that evil has been putting on some weight and growing corpulent on the free reign it enjoys; this force of good is going to put it on a diet."

The Tick looked around as the lights stretched away in the darkness. It was a big city. "This will take more than just a day" he thought to himself. "I'm going to need some help. A partner. A sidekick. A scapegoat; no, that wasn't right. Let's stick with partner. Someone who knows the city; someone who knows where to find crime. Someone that isn't going to get me in trouble with those citizens in blue again. Someone to help me catch those miscreants as numerous as dock rats on a wharf. Perhaps there is a like-minded citizen there now, monitoring evil on the waterfront. If not, I'll just have to thwart evil there myself until I can find someone to bake in the glow of the oven of justice with me!"

And he was off.

The End

A/N: I hope the latest TV series is good, having watched the pilot; I never saw the cartoon series but I did watch the Warburton show and read some of the graphic collections. Reminds me a little bit of what a live-action Freakazoid would be like.