The night sky was buzzing with the noise of laser fire and subsonic engines. The rejoined Warriors, having only reunited moments ago, were knee-deep in aggressive mechanical drones that were swarming around them like dozens and dozens of bees. The one commanding them, a madman made all the worse by his condition, Impulse of the former Psionex group, eagerly awaited one of the Warriors to come closer to him.
Nova, the Human Rocket, headed straight for Impulse where he stood waiting atop a water tower. He didn't make it very far before the drones closed in on him, seven of them with seven sets of scorching lasers. The red beams cut into him and although his strength and resilience kept him mostly from permanent harm, it still hurt.
"Wait for back-up!" Kymeara called after him. She was too busy fighting off the swarms of drones herself but she had intended to lead the charge alongside Nova. Her blue skin had been charred in several places where the drones had hit their mark.
A third member of the New Warriors had leapt into the air, although he was without the power of flight. Night Thrasher, seeing the danger that Silhouette was in on the roof across from him, had blindly thrown himself off the ledge. There was no chance that he would make it under his own power, which sent a shock rippling down the spine of Silhouette.
"Dwayne!" she cried from where she lay on the roof, pinned to it by the drones surrounding her. In her current darkforce form she would take minimal damage, but like Nova, it still hurt. She watched in horror as Night Thrasher started to plummet.
The armored Night Thrasher tucked his arms and legs into his body, making his dive to the street below all the faster. His momentum quickly built up and he did nothing to stop his decent as he saw the cement of the sidewalk grow larger and larger in his field of vision. Second after second passed before he finally acted, mere yards from the flat surface.
Pressing a button on his gauntlet, a pair of wings slid out of the side of his backpack. He lifted his head up and slanted his body to help the wings catch the air current, and was instantly rocketed back up into the sky, soon reaching the tops of the surrounding buildings. He hadn't yet incorporated a propulsion system into his armor otherwise he wouldn't have needed to nearly face-plant the sidewalk in order to gain enough momentum to reach the other side of the street. So far all he could do was glide, but even as he ascended back into the night to help Silhouette, he was all ready forming blueprints in his head for an upgrade to his armor.
Meanwhile, Speedball was busy back on the roof Night Thrasher had thrown himself from. The drones had swarmed him as well, along with Firestar. The thin kinetic shield Speedball had erected around them helped to keep the laser fire at bay, but so far they weren't contributing to a solution to the group's problem.
Waves of heat washed off of the scared Firestar, but she had yet to act in aid of her fellow Warriors. Her gold and red costume had been slashed in places along her midsection as the robots’ laser fire seared against her flesh, pegging her for the most vulnerable target. She backed up on the rooftop and in an unconscious defense was exhuming intense heat.
“Angelica!” Speedball called to her from only a few feet away. “My kinetic sphere is trapping the heat in here with us! You’ve got to take control of yourself or we’ll be roasted alive!”
Firestar blinked and for the first time since the fight had begun, she reacted. The glaze that had formed over her eyes melted away and a look of harsh resolve fit into its place. Plumes of smoke erupted from her hands as jets of fire lashed out into the night, striking against the closest robotic drone. The outer casing of the drone, as thick as it was, was no match for the righteous fire that lanced against it. The silver exterior of the drone began to melt away and sparks shot out of the now open casing as the circuitry inside fell victim to the flames.
Firestar turned her attention to three other nearby drones and gave them the same treatment. They exploded as she turned up the heat and let loose. Speedball let down his defenses and allowed her to go full force against their enemy, stepping out of the way of the burning flames. He thought to himself that he was glad that she was on the same side as he was, given that the recent stress of losing Justice mysteriously was obviously affecting her.
When she was done, red bits of fire still burned in her eyes, startling Robbie when she turned to look at him. “Are you okay?”
“You bet,” Speedball replied. “Glad you were able to join the fight.”
“Sorry. I guess I’ve been a bit distracted.”
“It’s okay, Angel. But let’s help the others before we get distracted.”
Across the street on the adjacent roof, Night Thrasher stood amongst the destroyed drones that had been unleashing their weapons on Silhouette. The last one dropped to the roof a smoldering mess of broken parts, rolling a few feet before a final puff of smoke marked it as being totally out of operation. The armored Warrior returned his battle staves to their places on his forearms and he reached out to help his female partner up.
“Thanks for the assist,” Silhouette said as she returned to her human form and balanced herself on her crutches. “Although did you have to be so dramatic with the flying death leap?”
Through his red helmet, Night Thrasher winked. “What’s a night battling evil arch-enemies without a little drama? Are you good to go?”
She nodded. “I’ll live. My darkforce form allowed me to stay alive but it hurt like hell. I’ll worry about it later. We need to help Nova before—”
The terrifying shriek of the Human Rocket flying by over their heads stopped their conversation. Typically Nova was at home in the air, cutting through the clouds like butter and making the winds bow to his powers. But once overcome by the Psionex member and the dozens of aerial drones, it was only a matter of time before he was flanked and blasted away from the fight. Even his strength and resilience could take only so much.
Nova slammed into a water tower atop the building behind Night Thrasher and Silhouette. Steam rose out of the crumpled hole he had punched into the thin sheet metal as his superheated body touched the water. Burn marks laced his armored body and even his helmet was dented.
Silhouette slipped through the shadows and transported underneath the water tower, swinging out into the open on her crutches as she looked up at Nova. “Are you okay?” she called up to the Human Rocket.
“I’ve been better.” Nova lifted himself out of the water tower and flicked some of the dripping liquid off of his arms. “Impulse has gone nuts! He was always a loose cannon but I’ve never known him to be so reckless.”
“He is a super-villain,” the young woman replied. She looked over her shoulder at Kymeara as she traded blows with the former Psionex soldier. “Looks like his enhanced reflexes are still up to speed.”
“Better even.” Nova floated down to Silhouette’s level but remained aloft. “He’s faster than I remember, and definitely stronger. Either Psionex has reformed with benefactors that are messing with their genes again, or he was holding back a few years ago.”
A ping-ponging yellow orb as large as a person bounced through the aerial drones, cutting a path of destruction amongst the chaos. Speedball, surrounded safely by a thick kinetic shield, would normally be happy about smashing a ton of robots. Instead he looked serious, deadly serious.
Kymeara was bleeding and Robbie could make out her sluggish movements even from as far away as he was. He angled himself to bounce off another aerial drone, which would pit him in the right direction to head her way. His kinetic shell slammed into the drone, cracking open its metal casing, and returned the kinetic force back at him to provide the locomotion for his transit. He kept Impulse in the center of his field of vision.
The Psionex member lashed at Kymeara with the silver blades on his forearms, cutting into her blue skin easily. Impulse’s “gifts” gave him much greater reaction time during hand-to-hand combat, and given his training, he knew how to use that as a weapon. Despite the Atlantean’s superior strength, Impulse knew how to bob and weave around her attacks. He could slip under her punch and twist her elbow before she could react, using modified judo to shift both their weights around however he wanted. Eventually she would wear down, whereas Impulse would only feel slightly winded.
“This is how we’re going to do it,” Impulse said as he swung under a kick from Kymeara. “We’re going to take you brats over to save ourselves. We’re going to use your bodies to live long, fruitful lives, and you won’t be able to do a damn thing about it. You’re already too late to do anything about your pretty boy Justice!”
“You’re going to what?” the Atlantean demanded to know.
But instead of answering her, Impulse grabbed her leg out of the air and used his momentum to slam her face first into the top of the water tower he was standing on. The speed at which he moved her added to the force of the hit, nearly knocking her out cold.
“Bum bum baa!” screamed Speedball. “Charge!”
With his legs tucked up under his arms, and sealed safely behind his energy cocoon, Speedball crashed into Impulse and knocked him off the water tower. The villain landed on the roof below, where Night Thrasher was waiting patiently.
“Where’s Justice?” Night Thrasher inquired. He slapped his open palm with the butt of his escrima stick for added effect. “I heard you mention him. Where is he?”
“I could knock that damn stick out of your hand before you moved one inch,” Impulse replied as he spit out blood onto the roof.
“Who said anything about me hitting you?”
Impulse heard a slight whoosh behind him and turned to see a flame ignite in the palm of a fiery redhead. Firestar gazed at Impulse with a look of pure hatred on her face. “Are you faster than combustion?” she asked. “Now…where…is…Justice.”
For a moment Impulse looked like he might fight back, like the rage that was boiling up inside him would consume him and guide his actions. But instead of standing up he slumped over, defeated. His own fire, the fire in his eyes, slowly died down as a tear formed.
Nova landed next to Night Thrasher with Silhouette hanging off his arm. Firestar kept the flame in her palm lit as she too descended and in the background Robbie tended to Kymeara.
“It’s time to start talking,” Night Thrasher said.
Impulse sighed, taking in the sweet oxygen. He pulled his mask off, revealing a scarred face that bore more than just the signs of battle. His one cheek had turned completely green and his ear had boils all over it. Half of the hair on his head had fallen out, replaced by scabs. The sadness in his eyes grew until they all thought he might break down right there.
“What do you want to know?” he asked meekly.
“Everything.”
=====
“We shouldn’t have let Impulse go,” the Mathemanic said a bit meekly. He leaned against the railing of the catwalk near the ceiling of their warehouse. He hated being tucked away like this, and he hated being ordered around without just reason. He was also beginning to hate Pretty Persuasions.
He ran his finger through his hair and was only mildly surprised to find that a clump of it had pulled out of his scalp. He had watched the others go through the same cellular degeneration. It was going to be an ugly process.
His one reassurance was that his other partner, the cute one that now hosted her own talk show, had convinced him that everything was going to be okay. She tapped her foot anxiously on the cement floor with her hands on her hips, looking up at him with her head cocked to one side.
“I didn’t see you man up to stop him,” Pretty Persuasions, aka Sharon O’Shea, aka Heidi P. Franklin, said. She had changed her look, along with her hair color, several times over the years. Whatever it took to keep being the center of attention whenever she walked into a room. “Impulse looks almost dead. You saw him. And his powers are out of control. We’re better off without him anyway.”
“Psionex wasn’t meant to-”
“In case you hadn’t noticed,” she interrupted, “Psionex is DEAD. We’re finished, Tommy. Unless you can figure out how the hell we’re supposed to transfer our-”
KRA-BOOOOOM!
The powerful form of Nova crashed through the ceiling like it was made of tinfoil. Debris was scattered everywhere, pushed in and distributed by the awesome strength that had been granted to him years ago. He had been trained extensively in the use of his powers, but at times he would rather let loose than practice control.
Mathemanic was thrown to the side and knocked off of the catwalk. He had gone up there to get away from Heidi’s persistent pacing, and now he was wishing that he had opted for a place with a little lower altitude.
“Oh, no you don’t,” Kymeara said as she swiftly flew through the fresh hole Nova had made. She swung in quickly and grabbed Mathemaniac by the collar, hoisting him up into the air and saving him from a nearly fatal fall. “You’re not getting off that easily.”
Firestar lowered through the opening next with an aura of flame surrounding her. Speedball almost happily bounced in after her, using his kinetic shield to land easily on the floor. One faced the left while the other faced the right, each easily falling into their old Warrior habits. Securing the room was always their first priority, regardless of the fact that in the center of the warehouse lay the man they were looking for.
“Shit,” Heidi muttered as she turned to flee.
“Going somewhere?”
The business end of Silhouette’s battle stave smacked across Heidi’s face. She sprawled out on the floor, fixing her crippled assailant with a deadly glare. There was menace in her eyes, enough to kill off an entire room of enemies. But her concentration was broken when Night Thrasher stepped in between them. Even though his red helmet, which looked remarkably like something a skateboarder would wear, cut off most of his face, his eyes still penetrated her. She pulled her glare back, realizing that the fight was over before it had even begun.
“How did you-” she began to say.
“Impulse told us,” Night Thrasher explained. He slipped his own staves back into their holsters on his hips and crossed his arms over his chest, apparently content that the struggle was over. “He’s dying.”
The Mathemaniac cleared his throat and said, “We all are. The other members of Psionex are all ready dead.”
“Holy crap!” Nova exclaimed. “I was on her talk show the other day! Seriosuly? That was you?”
Firestar finally broke rank and ran to where Justice was lying unconscious near the center of the room. Tears began to form in the corners of her eyes as she gently placed a gloved hand against his cheek. He lay there unmoving, but he was still breathing. She looked at the monitors hooked up to him, showing his vital statistics, and saw that he was in a coma of some kind.
“What did you do to him?” she demanded through a choked sob.
“I was prepping him for surgery,” Tommy, the Mathemaniac said meekly. “The plan…the plan was to trade out his brain for one of ours. Once we had his body we were going to capture the rest of you and make the switch.”
“Eww, that is just gross,” Speedball said in the background.
“We had no choice! We were as good as dead if we didn’t do it.”
“There’s always a choice,” Nova said as he removed his golden helmet and ran his fingers through his sweaty hair. “I learned that the hard way, but it’s true. You should have just come to us. We would have helped you.”
“We’ve helped you before,” Kymeara quickly added. “Why wouldn’t we now? Why resort to kidnapping?”
“We were forced into it.” Pretty Persuasions was back on her feet now, dabbing at her own face to keep the tears from welling up.
“Oh, that is such crap!”
Everyone looked a Speedball, the last member of their group that they had expected to lash out in such a way. “Forced into stalking, kidnapping, terrorizing, and massive property damage?” he continued. “C’mon! That’s insane. You’re a pack of villains just like always and you’ll never change. Now that death is creeping up on you, you all just want to get ahead. You don’t want to pay the piper.”
“Robbie!” Silhouette shouted. “Ease off, man!”
“We can’t make excuses for every lunatic that we come across, Sil!”
“What do you mean you where forced?” Night Thrasher asked calmly, ignoring the squabble.
“Genetech officials screwed with our cellular structure. They gave us just a few more weeks to live. But because of the difference in all our powers, we began deteriorating at different rates. Impulse will probably be the next to go. They said that the Warriors were the only genetic matches that could accept our brains.”
“So when I was on your show,” Nova said, “what were you trying to do?”
“Overpower you mentally. I thought if I humiliated you a little in the public that your mental barriers would go down and Tommy would be able to subdue you like he did Justice.”
“He did this?” Firestar said between sobs. “He’s the one that did this to Justice?”
A ball of fire formed in her hand and soared across the warehouse. Orange light traced along the floor as it soared, but instead of splashing across Tommy’s face it was slapped down by Nova’s proud chest. “Easy, Angelica. That’s not how the Warriors do things.”
Firestar crumpled down next to Justice, her arms wrapped over him. The others looked between each other for a sign of what to do next. Unfortunately, whatever spirits watched over them denied them an easy answer.
=====
Night Thrasher flicked a switch, and light blinded the gathered heroes. Nova, Speedball, Silhouette, and Kymeara all blinked until the spots were gone from their eyes.
“I can’t believe you kept all this stuff,” Speedball said.
“Where do you throw away multi-million dollar equipment?” Dwayne responded.
In the basement of his company’s headquarters, Night Thrasher ushered the heroes in to look over their old training equipment, vehicles, computer terminals, and storage cabinets. He had been unable to let them go once the team disbanded. The sentimental value was too great.
“Wow, I’ve been looking for this!” Robbie said as he dove into an open canister of random items.
“This is great, Dwayne,” Kymeara said as she gazed over long-forgotten trophies. “But why bring us here?”
“With Mathemaniac, Pretty Persuasions, and Impulse getting proper medical care,” Night Thrasher said, “we don’t have to worry about being preyed upon. But that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t give some serious thought about getting the Warriors back together.”
“Dwayne…” Silhouette said.
“Think about it. Justice was picked off easily. Impulse would have flattened us if he had been in his right mind. Like it not, people, we’re still targets. We need each other, probably not much differently than how Psionex needed each other.”
“What do you think, Richard?” Kymeara asked.
Nova sighed. “Justice is being looked after. Firestar called me before we came down here. She said he’s stuck in his coma and they don’t know how long he’ll be unconscious. The doctors are baffled. In a world where Reed Richards, Tony Stark, and some of the other greatest minds aren’t around anymore, it’s up to us alone to find a way to snap him out of it. For Angelica’s sake.”
“So what you’re saying is…”
“That’s right, Sil. I’m saying that the Warriors are back together, with a purpose.”
“Hey, guys!” Speedball called from beneath a pile of junk. “I found my old Warriors t-shirt! Not like us, like the 80s movie. You know? ‘Come out and plaaaay!’ That one!”
Night Thrasher smirked beneath his helmet. He had hoped that the team would come around. He just wished it had been under better circumstances. Without the Warriors he had felt a little lost, especially within his big company.
The Warriors, new or old, were a family. One he could count on from now on.
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AUTHOR’S NOTES
The team is finally back together with a purpose! They go looking for answers about Justice’s coma, but along the way The Adversary has a little trouble to stir up!