As the street punks discharge their firearms, Captain Manhattan avoids it with ease, releases a force field, and swings towards a villain in casual clothing that is similar to what he wears when he is not in costume.

“You’ll laugh out of the other side of your head, clown, when you tangle with… Icer!” screams the icy-clad figure.

Ignoring Icer for a second, Captain Manhattan captures the street punks in a force bubble. After the punks are all tied up so to speak, Icer condenses the moisture around him and fires a snow blast which Cap avoids via jumping to a nearby rooftop. Cappie shoots two force bubble lines that travels past his icy opponent.

Facetiously, Icer laughs, “Missed me, dope!”

“You, for sure! But I did manage to snap that hunk of ice over your head!” Captain Manhattan phones the police, as Icer is buried in snow. Captain Manhattan uses a force field below his feet to soar in the air towards NSC HQ. For far too long, Derek Shiningstar has been a thorn in his side. He has been staying in a stinking hotel and this smelly room is twenty bucks. Now, he knows who is at the root of all this evil and he is coming to get you, Derek Shiningstar.

Five years ago this very night…

The planet Earth is sure going to hell! The population of each of their cities are spreading and reaching epidemic proportions. Crime is getting downright ridiculous. And disease and the death rate are increasing to the millions. There seemed to be no hope for survival. Then, a few individuals seemed to gain more than human abilities. These “parahumans” were mankind’s last hope. Most of these people turned to evil, while the rest went into hiding. Earth was doomed!

In Ryker’s Island Prison, Lieutenant Larson watches the television monitor in his office. This imprisonment center now houses the few parahumans—the evil ones—that were captured and arrested.

The clock clicks to the third hour past noon.

He realizes that it is snack time. Putting on his hat, Larson walks out of his office. He passes three other prisoners before he gets to the person he has to serve first. The first one is a black man. His abilities allow him to blend in like a chameleon. He was arrested for robbing a bank. The second is white, who can fire energy bolts out of his fingertips. He was caught raping a younger woman. The third one is an Asian. He can turn invisible at will. He was almost impossible to catch, but after he mugged someone, the police used an infrared scanner to capture him.

The prisoner that he wants to see is called David Claremont. It is unknown what his special abilities are but he was caught attacking an elderly Asian man. It is believed Claremont is a master of karate.

Larson looks into the cell. “Hey, karate kid,” he says to him, smiling. “Ready for your daily snack?|”

There is no answer.

Larson palmed a button next to the cell and the bars swung open. “Hey, did you hear me, punk?! I said, are you ready for your snack!!”

Still, no answer.

Larson drew a gun and pointed it at Claremont, who was just lying on the bed. “That’s it. You’ve had it.”

Larson fired and the prisoner reeled back, as the bullets pierced the skin of his chest.

“Y’think yer tough, now, don’t you?!” He approaches the unconscious Claremont. ‘Say yer prayers, dude!” Larson draws his gun, just then, in a flash of light, the prisoner disappears.

A split second later, David Claremont appeared in Derek Shiningstar’s office on the other side of town in upstate New York. Derek sat behind his desk, with his feet propped up on the desk top. He was musing, looking through his files. There was another small man in the office. His name was Sonny Dwarf. He was plagued by dwarfism and had super human strength, agility, and speed. He wore a white suit which looked kind of funny on him since he was so short.

At David’s entrance, Derek dropped his feet from the desktop to the ground and Sonny Dwarf grumbled underneath his breath. He had yellow hair and a yellow beard. He was choking on his Cuban cigar. He loved these Havanas but he also knew that smoking was dangerous to his health. He didn’t care; he just didn’t think that he could be stricken with lung cancer.

Sonny had a cane with a diamond tip on it, which he used to smack people with. When he noticed that David was a little confused, Sonny approached him and whacked him with the cane.

“What are you doing here?’ Sonny asked, his voice tinged with anger and sarcasm.

“I was summoned by Derek. He wants to create an army.” David was very nonchalant about the whole thing, as if he didn’t have a care in the world. Sonny believed he didn’t.

“Yes, I want to cerate an army. And I know just the ones I will recruit.” Derek Shiningstar walked over to David Claremont and led him to his desk. “We will revitalize the Hex Squad, though most of them are in a federal pen at National Security Council headquarters. Icer, Magnum, and Mammoth will be my recruits.”

“Then, why do you need me—“

Sonny whacked him with his cane.

“Ow. Why did you do that?’ David asked, annoyed. He felt the pain, but he reacted by turning invisible and then turning visible again. “You got a problem, Sonny?”

“Sonny Dwarf has no problems. My only problem is you.”

“Up yours, Dwarf!”

“Enough bickering, children,” Derek’s soothing voice said. “Now are you going to fight for me or not? I need you two to get along and recruit the others. Icer is in jail, recently captured by Captain Manhattan. Magnum and Mammoth are also in jail. Get them. Get them now. Now, go.”

“Do I really have to be partners with this dwarf,” David said. “Sorry, Sonny Dwarf.”

“I don’t like you either, David. But I guess beggars can’t be choosers.”

“Will you just go, people, and shut up.”

Sonny Dwarf and David Claremont exited the office, closing the door behind them, leaving a proud Derek Shiningstar. He was proud of this moment and of his plan. Very proud, indeed.

In a grassy plain in front of the New York state headquarters of the National Security Council, Sonny Dwarf stood with Magnum, Icer (who had just been released from jail), and Mammoth.

“What do we do now, Sonny Dwarf?’ Magnum asked, his machine gun arm raised for the time when he could fire it at Judge Justice’s heart.

“Now, we fight, for a little while. Now, we break Michael Proudhawk out of jail. Now we destroy the NSC team.” Sonny Dwarf pointed his diamond tipped cane at the jail ahead of them.

“Then, let’s go.”

Icer freezes the electrified fence, making it brittle enough, then flicking his finger to crack it. He crawls underneath the opening of the hole in the fence and races inside.

Magnum fires his protoplasmic bullets at the jail, breaking the jail’s front entrance wide open. Mammoth flexes his muscles, lifts Sonny Dwarf, hurling him inside the jail.

When they reached Proudhawk’s and Dreamscape’s cell, Mammoth held onto the bars and bent them. “Now, you area free man, Proudhawk.”

“At last,” Michael said. “At least.”

Suddenly, the guards came running along the hallway, with guns blazing and firing. Icer shot a bolt of ice power at them, making them brittle like he did the fence.

At the end of the hallway, DP7 came running and Dave Landers lifted Mammoth in the air and slammed him against the far wall. “You hurt the Kickers once before, now I hurt you,” Dave said, punching Mammoth’s lights out.

Sonny Dwarf whacked Dave in the leg with his cane. David, annoyed, grabbed the cane and snapped it in two like twig. He started to strangle him with his beefy hands.

“Not gonna let you kill me yet,” Sonny Dwarf struggled to say.

“Kill you, no. But put you in jail.”

Magnum fired his machine gun arm at David but it was deflected by Captain Manhattan’s force bubbles.

“Thought you were jail, Icer,” Cap turned to his icy foe. “What I did once I can do again.”

David Claremont appeared in the jail, ready to attack them.

Like a thing possessed, David Landers punched all of the Hex Squad’s lights out, luring them into their jail cells. There was a force inhibitor field within the cells that robbed them of their powers.

It was finished. It was over. Now, the only thing that mattered was to get Derek Shiningstar behind these bars, too.

Excerpted from the New York Times
Derek Shiningstar Arrested
Manhattan, Feb. 22

It has been learned by a reliable source that the National Security Council has accepted the previously dead mercenary, Mark Hazard, into its ranks. After the large battle at the NSC federal pen, Mark Hazzard hunted for Derek Shiningstar, arresting him. Hazzard had a nervous breakdown during the fight because he couldn’t face the pure evil and hatred in Derek’s eyes. Mark trained himself to fight Derek but every time was defeated.

Mark Hazard is thinking of leaving the NSC team.

All of the Hex Squad have been imprisoned, along with Shiningstar.

This one reporter hopes that the NSC team can get back on their feet.

Author’s Notes: The title of this story, ‘The End’, came from that movie from the late seventies called ‘The End’. There are definite parallels between that movie and this story. Sonny Dwarf is based on the terminally-ill Sonny. I got the character of Lieutenant Larson from Larson in the Swinging Cheerleaders from 1974. The Cheerleader movies from the early 1970s were the inspiration for Debbie Does Dallas.
I would like to see New Universe last for more than 32 issues, the same number of issues that the original New Universe comics lasted in the 1980s and 1990s. Please, look for my new limited series coming soon.