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#15
July 2006 |
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Night
Thrasher |
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Turbo |
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Bolt |
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Spider-Woman |
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Ricochet |
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Hornet |
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Ultra Girl |
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Crux |
MARVEL 2000 PRESENTS...
"GIRLS'
NIGHT OUT"
by
Steve Crosby
Turbo hung up her cell phone and
stuck it into the pouch concealed on her costume. “That was Hindsight.
Apparently ‘Thrash was involved in a little incident on his way to
“By then it will be too late,” declared Spider-Woman. With her and Turbo in the New Warriors’ Crash Pad were Ultra Girl and Crux. At the moment those four young women were the New Warriors. Their headquarters was trashed and they’ve fought amongst themselves twice that day already. “I could feel the pain Bolt was in. If we don’t get to him soon he could die.”
“No offense, Spider-Woman, but we’ve been looking for Bolt ever since he disappeared. The only difference now,” Turbo swept a hand out. “Is that we lost a lot of our resources with which to search.” She then shot a look at both Ultra Girl and Crux. One of the fights had been between the two of them, and the Crash Pad’s current condition had been the result.
At the comment, Ultra Girl rolled her eyes. “‘With which to search.’ Who talks like that, really?”
Before either Turbo or Crux could respond, Spider-Woman spoke up. “This isn’t the time for any of that. One of us is in trouble and we need to help him. By whatever means we can. The vision I had wasn’t all pain and darkness.” Unconsciously, Spider-Woman was rubbing her arms. “Wherever I was…wherever Bolt is, it’s cold and it’s wet and it’s…there was shaking. Everywhere, shaking.”
“That narrows it down some,” retorted Ultra Girl. “We’re only on an island.”
“That’s assuming Bolt is even in the city,” Crux added. “We don’t know what kind of range your…visions have.”
“Somehow, I think I’d have known if
he was farther away than
“One of our teammates is in mortal danger, she’s on the phone,” remarked Ultra Girl to the others. Crux just glared at her. Turbo wasn’t paying any attention. She was on her feet, lost in thought while slowly pacing.
“Okay, thanks Jessica,” Spider-Woman said into the phone. “How much do I owe you? Oh, come on, it’s your job. All right. ‘Bye.” She put away the phone and looked up at the others. “After the vision, I called a friend of mine, a private investigator. Asked her what she could find.” To Turbo, she asked, “Is that okay?”
Turbo nodded, still in thought. Spider-Woman continued.
“I told her everything I could remember, asked her to find anyplace that might fit. That was her giving me a place.”
Ultra Girl threw her head back and sighed deeply. “All that time you spent explaining, you could have just-”
“Hydrobase.”
Spider-Woman and Crux stared at Turbo, aghast. Ultra Girl gestured at her. “Like that, thank you.”
“How…?”
“My suit was listening in on your signal,” Turbo revealed. “Yell at me for invasion of privacy later. Smart lady, that detective. I was all set to go check the Daily Bugle archives for strange power fluxes too.” Everybody was still speechless. “Bolt was also in the vision, remember? Trapped, in pain, and with the power to generate electricity, somebody must be tapping him as an energy source.”
“So what are we waiting for?” Crux asked. “Let’s go get him out.”
Something wet and slimy dripped from an overhand fell close to Ultra Girl’s foot. She gave a little shriek, backed off and rested her hand against the pipe wall. A quick glance at the slime on the wall, and Ultra Girl snatched her hand back.
“Ew! This place is gross. Why can’t any of our villains have class?”
“You should have seen this place back
when the Avengers used it as their headquarters,” Turbo remarked. The
two women walked in the massive pipes that had connected Hydrobase to
A fork in the pipeline appeared. Turbo indicated the pipe that slanted up. “That’s where we want to go. You’ll have to carry me. Pushing around air in this cramped space would draw attention, and climbing would take too long.”
“You trust me not to drop you?” Ultra Girl asked.
“You might be a bitch, Ultra Girl, but you’re also a hero. You wouldn’t drop me. Especially since you might need me to save your life later.”
“I probably will.” Ultra Girl hooked her arms under Turbo’s shoulders and lifted into the air. “Pairing up with me is almost as bad an idea as pairing Crux with Spider-Woman.”
“They get along fine.”
“Maybe a little too fine.” The pitch in Ultra Girl’s voice went up about two octaves on that last word.
“Aren’t you from
“
“Well, I don’t think they’re…”
“Crux definitely is, and with Spider-Woman she’s definitely interested. If she makes a move now, two things could happen. A fight or a make-out session, we’ll be on our own.”
The pipe soon leveled off, and Ultra Girl set Turbo down. The armored New Warrior shook her head. “That is probably your biggest problem. You don’t have faith in your teammates.”
While two of the New Warriors were
taking the sneaky approach into the Hydrobase ruins, Spider Woman and
Crux were to go in loud and fancy. Both were able to fly, and with
Crux’s flame powers it was a sight to behold. The two young woman soared
over the
“It’s funny you volunteered for this,” Spider-Woman yelled at Crux to carry over the rush of wind. “Your ice powers would have been of use underwater. Turbo, on the other hand, doesn’t seem that suited to close quarters fighting.”
“I hate sewers,” Crux yelled back.
“If you were ever under
“Does a summer fling in
Rather than answer, Crux releases gouts of fire and cold from her hands. They struck the debris together, the cold first creating a coating of ice that the fire evaporated as soon as it hit. Thick plumes of steam rose into the air while the metal and plastic underneath melted against the extreme heat.
“It’s chilled,” yelled Crux. “Get on in there!”
Spider-Woman did. She dropped through the steam, guided by extre-sensory abilities she didn’t entirely understand. By instinct she slowed and put her hands up against cooled metal. Even through her costume she could feel it, the intense cold that had come on after extreme heat after deep chill. That material had gone beyond weak and brittle, and Spider-Woman tore through a reinforced hull like it was tissue paper. On the other side of darkness.
A light sting on Spider-Woman’s back was the most pain she felt when six long appendages erupted out of her back. Suddenly she could feel everything they touched, as sensitive as fingertips, and could manipulate them as finely as her own two hands. The spindly appendages felt their way along the dark space, guiding Spider-Woman to a faint separation in the metal. Illumination behind her alerted Spider-Woman to Crux.
“Is that our way in?” the flaming ice princess asked.
“Most likely,” answered Spider-Woman. “Let me get into position, then as soon as I open it feel free to burn a path if we needed.”
Two of Spider-Woman’s appendages reached up higher at the wall, dug into the wall and braced her. With the other four appendages, Spider-Woman wedged into the separation and forced open a massive door that would have led into a hanger.
In front of Spider-Woman’s face over a dozen high-powered firearms were primed and ready to fire. She gave the armored soldiers a wry smile. “Hi! Is this the Delta Chi Omega pledge drive?” Behind Spider-Woman, it suddenly got very hot.
Pushing her appendages off the wall, Spider-Woman flipped back and over the gout of flame Crux unleashed. As fires consumed them, the armored soldiers opened fire. After generating the fire, Crux had formed a wall of ice that held against the barrage of energy shots. Overhead, Spider-Woman more utilized her flight rather than agility to twist around the bursts.
“Crux, there are people in those suits! Don’t fry them alive!”
The bi-powered mutant raised an icy eyebrow. “Oh I think they’re safe. If anything, those suits are just about at their limits.”
Flames ceased. Pure cold emanated out from the wall of ice. The soldiers were engulfed in extreme cold following their exposure to extreme heat. Spider-Woman could see the results, saw the faint cracks in armor with her sharp eyes.
“Nice set-up,” she remarked to Crux. Spinnerets of psionic webbing erupted from her hands. “Now I’ll knock them down!”
The webs of energy swept over the soldiers and their brittle armor, breaking off whole chunks of armor and knocking the men unconscious to the ground. Perched on top of the ice wall, Spider-Woman glanced down at Crux, tipped her head to her, the back-flipped off the wall and through the open doorway.
Light footsteps walked over the unconscious henchmen, all of whom happened to be naked under the armor. “Eww,” Spider-Woman commented. Quickly she averted her eyes from the floor.
“Yeah, that’s gotta chaff,” added Crux as she followed Spider-Woman. “Heh, and you know they’re gonna blame the cold.”
Spider-Woman wasn’t looking down, but the remark made her laugh as she was about to turn the corner. “Oh, it’s not just the cold. I knew this guy heavy into drugs, it made him look-”
Waves of force swept over Spider-Woman, sent her hurtling in the other direction. Crux actually saw the molecules in the air vibrating against the energy used. Rapidly she moved for the corner, raised her arms and attempted to generate cold.
Cold is the absence of heat, the lack of activity in molecules and thus no friction. Those waves of energy kept the air moving, negated Crux’s ability no matter how hard she tried. Forget shattering an ice wall. Crux wasn’t even able to make it cold enough to generate ice. The vibrations rolled over her, threw her back farther than Spider-Woman to land hard well past the other woman.
Spider-Woman struggled to her knees, looked up at the force that had attacked them. At the sight of a large black man with a short mohawk, dressed in a white a gold jumpsuit with an open chest, she had to contain her laughter.
“Who…? Oh my god, what are you…? Urk!”
Large white gloved hand gripped Spider-Woman by the neck. Just contact with the man sent vibrations throughout her body, sparking a violent convulsion. She was lifted off her feet, shaking uncontrollably, her face inches from the man that had overpowered her.
“Yes, little girl, I am Moses Magnum,
Arms Dealer to the World and Master of the Magnum Force! Once again, an
intrusive little arachnid has come to disrupt the testing of my weapons,
but this time I have the power to fight back! With its power source
ready at last, nothing is going to stand in the way of my new Seismic
Amplifier! Once the whole of
Still weak and shaky, Spider-Woman kicked Moses Magnum ineffectively in the groin. “You talk too much.”
Laughing, Moses Magnum hurled the young super-heroine against the wall. Over their heads, lights were starting to flicker. “I can afford to, against such an insignificant threat. This time, none have the power to stop...Moses Magnum!”
“What do you see?”
“Shh.”
“Come on, let me see. I have the vision powers.”
“Since when?”
“Okay, I don’t, but I want to see what’s going on.”
“Fine, if it’ll shut you up.”
Turbo moved from the vent, allowing Ultra Girl to scoot forward and into the large room outside. “What are we looking at?”
The self-proclaimed interim leader of the New Warriors rolled her eyes. “Those guys in white lab coats are scientists. The guys in armor, carrying guns and standing around doing nothing, they’re guards.”
“Oh. What are they doing?”
“I just told you,” whispered Turbo loudly. “They’re standing around doing nothing.”
“Not them. The scientists.”
“I was trying to figure that out when you interrupted me. Now if you’ll just shh-”
“It looks like they’re standing around doing nothing. The scientists,” Ultra Girl added quickly.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought at first. But see how they’re standing around that big machine taking notes? Whatever is going on here, it has to do with that.”
“Then what are we waiting for?” Ultra Girl asked without waiting for an answer. Her strong hands pressed against the vent, pushed it out. She flew out, vent in her hands, threw it into a guards mid-section as she slammed feet-first into another guard.
“Oh dammit!” With no other choice, Turbo threw herself into the fray. Riding on currents of hard air, she blasted mini-whirlwinds at two other guards. Panicked, the guards attempted to scatter, but Turbo corralled them with a wide sweeping of strong breezes. “Nuh-uh, you folks aren’t going anywhere until you tell me exactly what it is you’re working on.”
“Oh my god.”
Turbo looked in Ultra Girl’s direction. The super-strong heroine had finished tossing the remaining guards around, and was facing the large battery-like machine the scientists had been studying. A small window allowed one to see into the machine, and Ultra Girl could very clearly see the pained, unconscious face of Bolt. And now that she was looking in that direction, so could Turbo. Angry, she turned back to face the scientists.
“Why is he in there!” she yelled. Winds swept more fiercely around the panicking scientists. “What have you been doing to him!”
“The power we needed, it was too much to risk drawing on the city’s electrical grid. Even he couldn’t fill the demands of the-”
“Be quiet,” another scientist hissed. “He’ll kill us for exposing his plans!”
“Us! He’s the one that won’t shut up about it every ten minutes!”
“Be quiet!” Ultra Girl roared. She’d closed on the machine. “Whatever you’re doing, it stops now. I’m getting Bolt out of this thing!” she said to Turbo.
“No, wait!” One of the scientists tried to rush forward, but Turbo had them all well in place. “We’re drawing power on him right now! Any attempt to disrupt the machine as it’s active will-”
It was too late. Ultra Girl gripped
her hands on the machine, dug her fingers in, and tried to forcibly
remove a section.
With Turbo distracted, her cage of moving air dissipated, and the scientists quickly fled out through an open door into the corridor.
Shaken but still consciously, Ultra Girl rose to her feet and looked at what’d done. “Oh wow, I probably should have thought that through.”
The disruption in his base’s power didn’t go unnoticed by Moses Magnum. Turning from the unconscious Crux and semi-conscious Spider-Woman, he started back towards the main control room.
“Ah, of course you wouldn’t have come alone to face my might. Others have infiltrated by base and overpowered the rest of my inept guards. But no matter. The power of my Magnum Force will also bring them to heel!”
In the corridor, Moses Magnum saw his scientists fleeing. At the side of their employer, the scientists froze in their tracks. One tried to offer words of explanation, but these would fall on deaf ears.
“Cowards!” Moses Magnum roared. His hand was raised, and waves of seismic power emanated forth. “You’ve served your purpose, and you’re failure to safeguard my power has proved you have no other use. Therefore your lives are forfeit!”
The steel ground buckled beneath the scientists’ feet even as powerful vibrations ripped through their bodies. Moses Magnum had also not slowed in his approach. Effortlessly he physically knocked aside the weak men with their fragile bodies. Nothing but pulp was left in his wake as Moses Magnum crossed the threshold into the nerve center of his base.
“Who dares attempt to thwart the plans of I, Moses Magnum!”
“Ultra Girl, grab one of those cables!” Turbo yelled, apparently not hearing the villain’s proclamation. “They said something about still needing more power. It’s how we found them.”
“Yeah, if they don’t have enough juice, maybe the machine will-Ahh!”
Ultra Girl also hadn’t noticed Moses Magnum, in spite of his rather loud entrance. His backhand took her by surprise, knocking the young heroine across the room.
“Fools, you ignore Moses Magnum at your peril!”
Turbo whipped her head around at hearing this second proclamation. At seeing the villain, she allowed herself a small smile. “Oh, so you’re the one responsible for all this?”
“Yes, and despite your efforts the Seismic Amplifier will enable me to destroy this city! Once that has occurred-”
Suddenly, the words were ripped from Moses Magnum’s throat, along with all his air.
“Yeah, I’ve figured out the plan,”
said Turbo in a cold voice. “You tried the same thing in
Moses Magnum sank to his knees, gasping for breath. Desperate, he raised his hand, focused the Magnum force on the turbine around Turbo’s right wrist.
“Aah!” Turbo screamed when the machine at her wrist shattered. She fell to the ground in great pain, her arm covered with blood. Triumphant, Moses Magnum rose back to his feet and approached the young woman that had almost beaten him.
“A valiant effort, girl, but my power is absolute! Now, once I draw on the power of my Seismic Amplifier-”
“Do you ever, like, shut up!” yelled Ultra Girl as she slammed her body into the white-jumpsuit-clad villain. “And that get-up is so back it blows right past good and back to bad again!” She managed to stagger him with a powerful blow. “And hey, you just got punch in the face by a girl!”
“Gnat! I will crush you!” Moses Magnum tried to make good on his promise, threw a seismic-enhanced punch towards Ultra Girl. However, the athletic young woman who can also fly easily evading the blow and landed another of her own.
“Uhh.” Groggy, close to shock, Turbo raised her head, saw that Ultra Girl was locked in combat with Moses Magnum. “Guess…his power works…pretty well. Unh, gotta do something,” said Turbo to herself. A short distance away she could see one of the massive cables connected to the still sparking machine. Slowly and with great effort, Turbo raised her sole arm with a turbine and concentrated. A strong burst of air struck the cable pushed it stretched to its limit, but Turbo didn’t stop.
Finally, Moses Magnum smashed a fist into Ultra Girl’s mid-section. She doubled-up in pain, struggled to remain on her feet as Moses Magnum laughed.
“I’ve fought the X-Men themselves to a standstill. Did you really think that a team of little girls would ever stand a chance against me!”
“Okay, maybe if we’d known it was you we’d have called back-up.” Threads of psionic webbing wrapped around Moses Magnum, temporarily holding him tight. “But what the hey, as long as we’re here we may as well give it a shot.”
Electricity bit through Moses Magnum’s body, the paralying Venom Sting that Spider-Woman considered her ace in the hole. As the villain stood frozen, the female arachne-powered human flew down the corridor to take the fight up close.
“Come on, Ultra Girl! Double team!”
“Oh, totally!” agreed Ultra Girl. At the same time, both super-strong New Warriors slammed their fists Moses Magnum’s head. The defenseless villain was sent hurtling, directly into the path of Turbo’s air blast. This pushed Moses Magnum into the cable, which had started to wear under the assault and several exposed wires had started to spark.
“Aaarrgghhh!” Screamed Moses Magnum in agony as hundreds of thousands of volts of electricity coarsed through his body.
“It better get that before he dies,” groaned Spider-Woman. Psionic webs sprang from her hands to wrap around the thick cable. She pulled hard, disconnecting the cable from the wall. Not only did Moses Magnum stop cooking and fell to the ground unconscious, but the large machine in the center of the room stopped sparking.
“Bolt’s in there,” Ultra Girl said to Spider-Woman. She flew to the section she had tried to remove earlier, and this time did it safely.
As this happened, Spider-Woman flew back in the direction she had come from. Turbo suddenly wondered what had happened to Crux. But then Bolt was clearly visible inside the machine, hooked up to numerous wires.
“Wait!” Turbo warned to Ultra Girl, who had been about to yank Bolt free. “We have no idea how connected he is to the machine. Just pulling him out could kill him!”
“Then give me a hand here,” complained Ultra Girl as she turned to Turbo exasperated. “Use that suit’s sensors to…oh my god.”
“What?”
“Turbo…Mickey, your hand.”
“What about my-” Turbo looked down, finally noticed what had happened when Moses Magnum had destroyed one of her turbines. Her arm ended in a bloody stump at the wrist. For several seconds, Turbo was frozen, breathing heavily and in shock at the sight of where her hand had once been.
Unsure of what to do, Ultra Girl slowly approached Turbo, her arms extended out. “Hey, Turbo? It…it’s okay, girl. We…Night Thrasher can maybe help…I-I don’t know. God, I, I’m sorry. But this, it’s not over yet. We need you Turbo, please.”
Eyes blinked. Breathing slowed. It seemed to take forever, but Turbo was pulling herself together. She looked up from the injury at Ultra Girl. “Okay, I’m going to take a look at the wires Bolt is connected to. If…if I can with any certainty, I’ll tell how we can best get him out.”
“Okay. Hey, maybe we better…” Ultra Girl looked down, saw a white lab coat. She bent down, started to remove a strip of cloth.
“That’s not necessary,” Turbo said. “Looks like it was cauterized by the explosion. Come on. We need to get Bolt out fast.”
By the time Spider-Woman had returned, the unconscious Crux in her arms, Turbo and Ultra Girl had managed to get Bolt out of the machine.
“How is he?” Spider-Woman asked.
“He’s breathing, and his heart is beating,” said Turbo. “Beyond that, I don’t have any idea. “What we need to do is get him to a hospital.”
“You too,” Ultra Girl said to Turbo.
That was when Spider-Woman noticed the missing hand. “Oh, oh Mickey, I’m so sorry.”
“Forget it,” she said with a forced strength. “The only we can do about it now is stop any infection. How’s Crux?” she asked, noticing the unconscious teammate in Spider-Woman’s arms.
“Alive, I think. But that blast she got hit with could have caused some internal damage.” Spider-Woman glanced down. “More than half of us need a hospital. Some heroes we make.”
“Eh, we did okay,” remarked Ultra Girl. “We’re still alive, and we did beat the bad guy.” Her gaze then fell on the unconscious Moses Magnum. “Speaking of which, what are we doing with him?”
“All we can do is leave him,” Turbo answered.
“What? But-”
“You two are carrying wounded, and I’m not equipped for passengers.” Nobody laughed at the attempt at humor. “The best we can do is call the authorities. Hopefully the Avengers or somebody can get here before he and his men wake up.”
“Well, okay.” Spider-Woman didn’t like it, but Turbo was right. There wasn’t anything else they could do at the moment.
“We destroyed his equipment,” Ultra Girl added. “The worst he can do is get away.”
“Yeah,” agreed Turbo. “That’s all we can tell ourselves. Let’s go.”
With their wounded, the three remaining New Warriors left the base, down the corridors Spider-Woman and Crux had arrived from. In the main chamber, amongst the unconscious bodies and wrecked machinery, something came to life. Turbo’s radio communicator had been hooked into her suit at the right wrist, near the turbine that Moses Magnum had destroyed. Miraculously, it still functioned.
“Turbo, can you read me?” The voice of Night Thrasher asked from the other side of the country. “I’ve run into a situation. You need to get here as soon as you can. Hello?”
To Be Continued!
Next Issue: As most of the New Warriors recover from grievous wounds, Night Thrasher manages to track down the Slingers! Will he accept the decision of Ricochet and Hornet to remain with their original team? Maybe he would, but Night Thrasher has a bad feeling about Dusk.