"The New Class - Part Three"
For a moment the soft winter breeze stirred his mind and he thought he was still in New York City. But then the scent of a long familiar mist ascended his nostrils and his eyes snapped open. There was no mistaking it; he was in the mountain terrain that he had played in as a child.
The ceylon ironwood's soft fragrance was what alerted him. It was a tropical tree that could grow at high altitudes, with yellow-centered, white flowers and petals that would fall like raindrops. He had climbed their branches so many times and when he grew old enough even began using them in his exercises. The Thunderer himself would instruct him on proper methods of balance despite the heights, encouraging him to test his limits and leap from branch to branch.
But ironwood didn't grow in the city, not naturally, and the sweet smell would be lost among the hot dog carts and the engine emissions. It was a scent that Danny Rand had missed since leaving K'un Lun.
He tried to stand, but found that he was strapped and bound, tied to the roots of one of the very ironwoods. It was cold, cold enough to make him shiver, but he wasn't in danger of frost bite. The snow wouldn’t start covering the mountain for another hundred feet or so, but their nipping winds would crawl over the mountainside.
“I remember the first time I climbed one of these trees,” someone said. Danny tried to turn, but the bonds were too tight. He recognized the voice, strangely enough, as his own. “Lei Kung tied my daily food allowance to one of the branches in the tallest ironwood. He told me that if I wanted to eat that I needed to retrieve it for myself.”
Dragon Fist stepped out from behind the tree that Danny was tied to, looking like a mirror image of Danny, only more deadly. “It wasn’t until I reached the basket,” Dragon Fist continued, “that I realized it was just another of his cruel tricks. The basket was empty. That day I learned to depend only on myself and not the reassurance of another. I would have to collect my own food if I was to survive K’un Lun.”
“You’ve led a dark and twisted version of my life,” Danny Rand, the living weapon known as the Iron Fist, replied. “You’re from another world. A backwards world.”
“Something like that,” Dragon Fist said as he stood before Iron Fist.
“So, you’re going to what, kill me and take my place?”
“That’s what I agreed to do.* But as I’m sure like so many others in my place right now on your world, I have my own agenda. Hence why I brought you here.”
* [Check out the C.O.D.E. Confidential event to learn more!]
“To K’un Lun.” The fog had begun to lift from Danny’s vision and he was beginning to make out more familiar landmarks. There was no doubt in his mind that his doppleganger had somehow transported him to the legendary mystic city. “To what end? Why bring me back to the city that raised me to be their immortal champion? Some kind of challenge? A test for yourself to prove that you’re the greatest fighter?”
Dragon Fist chuckled. “You think I brought you here for sport? No, but that is amusing. To test my mettle against you would be intriguing, but I’ve killed so many martial artists already. How like you to think I would propel you through some kind of dark tournament. Were you a challenger in my Dangerous Dojo…perhaps.”
“Dangerous Dojo?”
“My own private kingdom,” Dragon Fist explained. “You’ll see it for yourself in due time. I’ve brought you here for quite a different reason, Iron Fist. You’re going to help me kill Lei Kung.”
“The Thunderer?” Iron Fist blurted out. “Never. What makes you think I would ever do something like that, especially here, in my sacred home?”
Dragon Fist leaned down, bringing his masked face within inches of Iron Fist. “And what makes you think this is your K’un Lun?”
# # # # #
New York City
Brooklyn
“Are we sure this is the right thing to do?” Gunhawk asked.
The modern cowboy, complete with sunglasses and six-shooters, triple checked that his guns were loaded. Since acquiring the weapons from his uncles, the famous Gunhawks of legend, and becoming the all-new, all-different hero under the care of Luke Cage and Danny Rand, he seldom let the guns out of his sight. They had become a part of him, part of his chapter in a decades-long legacy.
Standing in a back alley alongside a Sentinel-fueled teenage girl, waiting for a signal from his new mentor, he was starting to have second thoughts about this hero thing. He had been assured that they were going to make a real difference in the world and help the little people that couldn’t help themselves. Taking down a supposed mob boss, who as far as Gunhawk knew hadn’t actually done anything yet, didn’t seem like it was in their job description.
“Of course we’re sure,” Karima Shapandar, the walking weapon known as Omega Sentinel, replied. “This is Luke Cage we’re talking about here. If he says we need to take this creep out, then we take this creep out.”
“Shouldn’t we wait for Victor, or Greg, or Kevin?” Gunhawk asked, referring to Power Man, Gravity, and Thunderstrike, respectively. Together they formed the inaugural class of the Avengers’ NEXT program to train new heroes.
“Is it because I’m a girl?”
Gunhawk did a double take. “Wait, what?”
“A girl. I’m a girl. Are you trying to pull some kind of macho cowboy crap? Like, you need the others because I’m a defenseless little girl who can’t pull her own?”
He slipped his revolvers into their holsters and raised his palms up defensively. “Now, hold on a second, I didn’t say—”
“This is so typical,” Karima said. “Carol warned me about you and your boy’s club. You do know that I helped Brother Nature avert a major crisis, right? And she was all like, ‘Don’t let them make you feel inferior just because you’re a woman.’ And then she shot Karnak this look, like she was about to rip his head off. Unbelievable.”
“Carol…” Gunhawk was more than a little flabbergasted as he tried to keep up with her. “Carol Danvers. You mean Warbird? When did you talk to Warbird? I haven’t met any of the Avengers yet!”
Before she could respond, a thick crunch! reverberated down the alley. Then another, and another. It was coming from around the front of the building, like something was punching its way in. Inside the supposedly abandoned warehouse they were waiting behind, chaos suddenly exploded from within. They glanced at each other briefly, silently tabling their squabbling. Gunhawk flicked out his twin revolvers and cocked the hammers back with his thumbs, while Omega Sentinel similarly activated her own weapons.
Her body had been merged with Sentinel technology, making her a formidable one-woman army. Both of her forearms slid apart along the radials, and barrels appeared, brimming with red energy. “That’s the signal!” she shouted, and then blasted the sealed door to pieces.
Activating her heel jets, Omega Sentinel rocketed into the warehouse, going high. Gunhawk tucked and rolled through the now open doorway, coming in low to the ground. He spotted a stack of crates nearby and headed for cover, unsure of what he would find inside. He heard lasers, or repulsors, or whatever Omega Sentinel was dishing out firing overhead. That meant she was laying down cover fire for him as agreed.
He peaked out from behind the crates and saw Luke Cage completely ransacking the place. He had punched in the reinforced front door just like he had said he would, and now he was using one of the dislodged steel doors like a flyswatter, knocking around bad guys left and right. They were charging him, completely unaware that Gunhawk and Omega Sentinel had come in the rear entrance to pick them off one by one. Cage’s distraction had worked.
Omega Sentinel had picked a position thirty feet off the ground, hovering just above some of the girders that criss-crossed halfway toward the ceiling. Red beams of energy ripped through the air, splashing against the backs of confused gangsters that were caught between her and a rambunctious Cage.
With the majority of Jigsaw’s gang that had been holed up in the warehouse focused on Cage, and being picked off by Karima, that left Gunhawk free to scout around a bit. He cautiously moved from behind the stack to a set of metal stairs that led to an elevated office. The door was locked, but a quick bash of the knob with his revolver’s handle solved that problem. He slipped inside with ease.
A few maps of the city were tacked up on the wall behind an old desk that had most likely been left behind by the previous owner. Trash was scattered around the corners of the small office. If Jigsaw had meant for this place to be his new mob headquarters, like Cage had said the federal database had told him, then Jigsaw must have literally just moved in.
Gunhawk stepped over to the map of Brooklyn to take a closer look. “Areas all marked off. What could that mean?”
The door was kicked back open and a new voice said, “Rival territories. Soon to be my territories.”
Gunhawk’s first instinct was to whirl around and let some lead fly. But thanks to Cage and Iron Fist’s training, he knew better than that now. Taking quick action could save lives, but when you were cornered it was often better to get a grip on the situation first. Instead, he merely shifted his weight on his hips and glanced over his shoulder; an unthreatening stance that still gave him a clear view of who was speaking, while also casually angling his right hand over one of his holsters.
His peripheral vision showed him a well-dressed man that looked like he could have stepped right out of a magazine, if not for the fact that his face had once been slashed to pieces and sewn back together. The newly minted mob boss, Jigsaw, had shown himself.
“Ha!” Jigsaw squawked. “Where did they dig you up? Let me guess your name – Midnight Cowboy?”
“The name’s Gunhawk, friend. And I aim to please.”
“Oh, that’s rich. Very rich.” Jigsaw leveled a machine pistol at the teenager. “You and your friends down there are going to cost me a lot of dough wrecking this place. I just took over this crew. I came up here to get my rocket launcher to deal with them, but I think a hostage will do even better.”
“Hostage?” Gunhawk pivoted just a fraction of a degree toward Jigsaw. “You got the wrong man for that job, mister. I ain’t nobody’s hostage.”
Jigsaw took a step closer, raising the machine pistol to eye level. “You got some kind of death wish, kid?” He eyed the gun belt. “Oh, I get it. You’re some kind of quick draw artist, right? Well, let me tell you something. This piece will pump out three hundred rounds per minute. That’s a full five rounds the instant I squeeze the trigger, and at this range there is no way you’re faster than that.”
“Like I said,” Gunhawk replied. “I aim to please.”
There was a beat held between them. A silent moment when neither knew what the other would do. Then thunder. It only took a fraction of a second, the span of a lightning strike. Gunhawk ripped one of his revolvers out of its holster and allowed his natural talent to guide his aim, not even bothering to raise the gun higher than necessary to extract it from the holster.
Jigsaw yelled as a bullet tore into his kneecap, shattering the small bone. The machine pistol went off, firing a few dozen rounds into the ceiling to no effect. He collapsed halfway, managing to point his weapon at Gunhawk again, but another clap of thunder roared and the weapon was shoved out of his grip.
Gunhawk had been training for this very moment, the moment when his life depended on his hands being faster than the other man’s. In the movies he would have spun his guns around on his index fingers and said something corny, maybe even winked at the bad guy now writhing in pain. Instead he kept his gun trained on the man, ready to act if necessary.
He didn’t have to wait long. The man himself, Luke Cage, their de facto leader and trainer, stomped up the metal stairs and burst into the small office. He had a grin on his face as soon as he saw Jigsaw cradling his wrist and bleeding from his knee.
Cage looked up at Gunhawk. “Nice work, Tex,” he said. “You didn’t even need to put one between his eyes.”
Gunhawk blinked and then holstered his gun. “I would never do something like that.”
Cage smirked. “Right, right.” He turned his attention back to the gangster. “Christmas, Jigsaw! I thought you would put up more of a fight than this.”
“Bite me,” Jigsaw said, and then he spat on Cage.
For a brief second, anger flashed on Cage’s face. Gunhawk thought that the devil himself has slipped inside his mentor, but then as quick as it ad came, it was gone, replaced by a Luke Cage smile. He knew that Cage had a sordid past, filled with prison and being on the wrong side of the law. The man deserved a little anger; like his trainers had taught him, what really mattered was how you handled that anger.
“Go help the others clean up downstairs,” Cage said. “I’ll take out the trash.”
Gunhawk hesitated a moment, but he had already put his trust in this man, so he did as he was told. He stepped over the small pool of blood in front of Jigsaw and exited.
No sooner had he left than Cage turned back to Jigsaw and said, “Now. Tell me everything.”
“Lawyer,” Jigsaw replied.
Cage cracked his knuckles. “Ain’t no lawyers here, son. I want to know what your plans for this crew were, who your suppliers are for whatever it was you were going to peddle, who your buyers are, who your rivals were, and anything else you think might have been important.”
“Ha! That’s rich coming from you, Cage. What is this, some kind of new NYPD internship? I don’t see no badge on your or your kiddies down there. You got no authority here! When I do get my lawyer, and I will, dirtbag, you and your friends are going to have the biggest lawsuit in history brought down on you. I mean, you come in here, bust up my boys, who are law-abiding citizens, by the way, and why? You got no warrant, no jurisdiction, no nothing.”
Cage leaned down and picked Jigsaw up with one hand like he was just picking up some refuse someone had dropped on the floor by mistake. “Let’s get one thing straight,” Cage said as he wrapped his free hand around Jigsaw’s wrist. “You’re not going to see a lawyer. Now. Or ever.”
He squeezed, placing just a miniscule amount of his strength into the effort, and as a result the bones in Jigsaw’s wrist shattered. To his credit, likely from his hard years on the street and working his way through the syndicates, Jigsaw only winced without uttering a cry of pain.
“Not going to squeal?” Cage asked. “That’s good. It will cut down on the questions from the other later on. So…let’s try this again, shall we? Because I didn’t come here to bust up your crew. I came here to take it over.”
# # # # #
The Quadrangle
Avengers NEXT Program Training Facility
Power Man stepped into the lounge that rested between the training room and the kitchenette, confused and concerned. After dropping off Skeleton Ki at the local precinct,* he had hustled back to the Quad hoping to find Danny Rand, the Iron Fist, waiting and ready with an explanation for why he had abandoned him mid-mission.
* [Last ish]
Instead, he stumbled onto a morose Gravity, Thunderstrike, and Omega Sentinel staring at an obviously upset Gunhawk. All four of the fledgling heroes turned to face Power Man as he entered the room, and Victor felt like he was interrupting something serious. The room held an air of discomfort, like when someone walks in on a brewing argument.
“I thought I heard someone come back here,” Power Man said as he stepped between Gunhawk and the others. They had distanced themselves from him by a few feet. Usually the friends were sitting and gossiping when in the lounge. “Look, obviously I’m interrupting, and I’d love to hear about whatever this is, but I’m looking for Danny.”
“Haven’t seen him,” Thunderstrike said as he ran his hands over his mallet almost absentmindedly. The weapon was like an extension on himself, and he was rarely without it.
“Wasn’t he with you?” Gravity asked. “Luke sent me and Kevin upstate to help Stingray lift a Kree vessel out of a river. He thinks it crash-landed there 50 years ago! Pretty cool, right? That means that the Kree probably came to Earth way before anyone else things they did. I wonder if—”
“Greg,” Karima cut in. “You’re rambling again.” She turned back to Power Man. “We haven’t seen him. Look, Victor…what’s your take on Luke over the last couple of days?”
“What? I don’t know. I mean, he’s been a little distant, I guess. Why?”
“Because,” Gunhawk responded, “I think something’s up with him.”
“Like what?” Power Man asked, his arms crossing over his chest. He glanced back at the others. “What’s going on?”
“Gunny here thinks that Luke has a brain bug or something,” Gravity said.
“Not a brain bug,” Gunhawk shot back. “I think maybe someone is messing with his head. He’s acting…volatile.”
“Like I said. Brain bug. Like in that starship movie.”
“You’re saying that a man who can create a diamond by smashing two lumps of coal together with his bare hands is acting volatile,” Thunderstrike responded. “You know that sounds a little crazy, right?”
“What Kevin means,” Omega Sentinel chimed in with a glare at Thunderstrike, “is that the man’s job is being nothing but volatile. I mean, did you see him tear into Jigsaw’s gangsters?”
“Gangsters?” Power Man asked.
“They got to trash real life gangsters while we were lifting alien cruisers,” Gravity said. “Did I sound jealous there? I’m actually not. Kree!”
“Yeah, I know that his job means he gets hands on,” Gunhawk said. “But he’s just been acting off the last few days. To your point, his job also means he comes into contact with all sorts of weird stuff. In a world where starships from another planet are dredged up, and teen superheroes are called in to rattle some local thugs, is it really that odd that Luke might have been compromised? Hell, you all read the same files I did. There are any number of folks that could have messed with his head. The Purple Man. Ringmaster. Mesmero. So, y’all tell me…can you look me in the eye and tell me that within the last week that you haven’t done a double-take at our noble leader at least once?”
The quintet stared at each other in silence for a moment, unsure of what exactly to do next. The teenagers were still novices, barely out of the training room. Power Man had just done is first solo take down that morning. This was uncharted territory, and they had to admit that there was more doubt in their minds than certainty.
However, Gunhawk’s words cut them, deeper than they might even admit. All of them were thinking the same thing: even if there was a shred of a possibility that Luke Cage was being controlled, manipulated, or taken advantage of by a villain that they had to consider it as a possibility.
“So, what do we do?” Gravity finally asked.
“We confront him,” Thunderstrike said, standing his massive frame up all the straighter. “Why not just go right to him and work this out? Is he’s compromised, he’ll show his hand. If he’s not, then we brush it off.”
“And we just take his word for it then?” Karima asked. “C’mon. No, we need an expert. Like, a good guy telepath. Like Jean Grey.”
“Do you know Jean Grey?” Gravity asked.
“I…met her once. At a party at the X Mansion.”
Gravity rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I’m sure she’s waiting by the phone. Maybe if we all just think really hard in her general direction she’ll pick up the vibe.”
“No, she’s right,” Gunhawk said. “We need help here. We aren’t qualified for this. We need to get the Avengers in on this. Just to be sure.”
“Sounds good, guys,” Power Man said, growing frustrated. “Look, whatever is going on with Luke, I doubt that we need the friggin’ Avengers. They’re the guys you call in when Terminus shows up, not who you call because your teacher is in a bad mood lately. I’m his son, I’ll figure it out, okay? Now, can we please get back to my thing?”
“Sure,” Gravity said. “What was your thing again?”
“Danny! Where the hell is Danny? We went to take down this thief and he sends me in to get the guy, and when I come out, successfully I might add, he was gone. And I can’t find him anywhere.”
“Did you check his locator?” Karima asked. Power Man stared blankly at Omega Sentinel. She sighed and said, “Right. Of course not. I’m so glad that you’re paying attention during class, Vic.”
Omega Sentinel turned to a console on the wall and began tapping in commands. The big screen TV mounted over the fire place switched from a muted football game to the main access screen for the Quad’s systems. She flipped through several other screens before landing on an option labeled “Locations.”
“After Danny went missing last year and Luke ended up trudging through the Everglades to find him*,” Karima said as she pulled up more options on the screen, “They decided that they should each have interdimensional beacons surgically added under their skin. That way the next time they were separated Luke wouldn’t have to ruin his boots, or whatever.”
* [Check the first Power Man & Iron Fist arc!]
“They’re nice boots,” Gravity said.
Danny’s Iron Fist tattoo flashed on the screen. It then shrunk down and was placed on a map of the city, but after a sweep it wasn’t situated anywhere specific. Instead it just hovered over several areas, as if it couldn’t make up its mind on where to land.
“Increasing the range,” Karima said.
The city map collapsed into one covering the entire state of New York. Then the Eastern seaboard. Then the United States. Then the entire Earth. The dragon icon just hovered, skittering back and forth across the globe, never landing anywhere specific.
“Um…okay. Now I’m not sure what to do.”
“You said this was interdimensional, right?” Power Man asked. “Probably because Danny was abducted by John Aman and in some alternate realm for a bit. Plus, that Everglades place was the Nexus of All-Realities, so I’m sure they accounted for those kinds of situations again.” The group stared at him. “What? Maybe I do pay attention in class…sometimes…”
“Okay, so…got it!” Karima said as she fiddled with the settings. The icon faded and the globe shifted to a series of parallel planes, one of which was highlighted red. “Other planes of existence? And he’s in that one.”
“Which one?” Gravity asked.
“The red one, stupid,” Karima shot back.
“Duh. I meant, which dimension is that? It just has a number. How are we supposed to know where he actually is, how he got there, and how we get there?”
Karima tapped through a few more options, but shook her head. “I have no idea. Maybe we need to call Tony Stark or Reed Richards or someone.” She set the locator back to its default setting, which was a schematic of the Quadrangle itself. “We’re getting in over our heads.”
“Wait,” Gunhawk said. “Look.”
They glanced back up at the screen and saw a broken chain symbol, indicating Luke Cage’s presence, on the map of their headquarters. It flashed in one of the sublevels of the facility, and area that none of them had entered before, as it had been deemed off limits. It was mostly computer servers and other utilities anyway.
“It’s Luke,” Thunderstrike said. “He’s downstairs doing something. Probably maintenance.”
“But Luke ain’t here,” Gunhawk said with a slight drawl. “Remember? He wrapped up Jigsaw and went with the police to file a statement. It wasn’t that long ago. He couldn’t be back yet.”
“So, if Luke is at One Police Plaza,” Victor said, pointing up at the screen, “then who the hell is that?”
The five heroes traded looks before rushing out of the lounge in a flurry of arms and legs. Their youthful vigor propelled them down the corridor and into the elevator, with Gravity elbowing Thunderstrike unnecessarily. “You need to deflate your muscles,” Greg muttered as the doors slid shut and they descended to the correct floor.
When the doors opened again, they stepped into a dimly lit room that was several degrees colder than the rest of the upper floors. They saw their own breath puffing out as they walked deeper into the sublevel.
“Servers function more efficiently at lower temperatures,” Omega Sentinel explained. “Now where would…oh, my god!”
Around a corner they saw a terrible tableau: Luke Cage strapped to a chair, beaten, bloodied, and barely alive. Power Man, Gravity, and Omega Sentinel raced to his side, while Gunhawk and Thunderstrike each brandished their respective weapons to take up defensive positions. Luke was wheezing and barely seemed aware of their arrival.
“Luke!” Power Man exclaimed. “Can you hear me? What happened? Who did this?”
“He’s barely conscious,” Karima said as she started to unstrap him. “What the hell is he bound with? I can’t get these loose! They look like some kind of titanium belts.”
“Here, let me,” Gravity said. He placed a hand over one of the buckles and concentrated, creating a tiny gravity well where the straps connected. An enormous amount of pressure pulsed at the connection, finally snapping the straps free of one another. “Wow! That actually kind of hurt.”
Power Man lifted Luke out of the chair carefully and the original hired hero slumped onto him. “A little help here?” Victor demanded, and both Gravity and Omega Sentinel each took an arm to help support him.
Luke moaned and his eyes fluttered open. He seemed barely alive, but his lips started moving. Victor leaned in close to try and hear what he was saying.
“What’d he say?” Thunderstrike asked.
Power Man’s eyes went wide. “He said ‘imposter.’”
Gunhawk cocked back the hammers of his twin revolvers. “Still think calling the Avengers is a bad idea?” he said.
TO BE CONTINUED!
The ceylon ironwood's soft fragrance was what alerted him. It was a tropical tree that could grow at high altitudes, with yellow-centered, white flowers and petals that would fall like raindrops. He had climbed their branches so many times and when he grew old enough even began using them in his exercises. The Thunderer himself would instruct him on proper methods of balance despite the heights, encouraging him to test his limits and leap from branch to branch.
But ironwood didn't grow in the city, not naturally, and the sweet smell would be lost among the hot dog carts and the engine emissions. It was a scent that Danny Rand had missed since leaving K'un Lun.
He tried to stand, but found that he was strapped and bound, tied to the roots of one of the very ironwoods. It was cold, cold enough to make him shiver, but he wasn't in danger of frost bite. The snow wouldn’t start covering the mountain for another hundred feet or so, but their nipping winds would crawl over the mountainside.
“I remember the first time I climbed one of these trees,” someone said. Danny tried to turn, but the bonds were too tight. He recognized the voice, strangely enough, as his own. “Lei Kung tied my daily food allowance to one of the branches in the tallest ironwood. He told me that if I wanted to eat that I needed to retrieve it for myself.”
Dragon Fist stepped out from behind the tree that Danny was tied to, looking like a mirror image of Danny, only more deadly. “It wasn’t until I reached the basket,” Dragon Fist continued, “that I realized it was just another of his cruel tricks. The basket was empty. That day I learned to depend only on myself and not the reassurance of another. I would have to collect my own food if I was to survive K’un Lun.”
“You’ve led a dark and twisted version of my life,” Danny Rand, the living weapon known as the Iron Fist, replied. “You’re from another world. A backwards world.”
“Something like that,” Dragon Fist said as he stood before Iron Fist.
“So, you’re going to what, kill me and take my place?”
“That’s what I agreed to do.* But as I’m sure like so many others in my place right now on your world, I have my own agenda. Hence why I brought you here.”
* [Check out the C.O.D.E. Confidential event to learn more!]
“To K’un Lun.” The fog had begun to lift from Danny’s vision and he was beginning to make out more familiar landmarks. There was no doubt in his mind that his doppleganger had somehow transported him to the legendary mystic city. “To what end? Why bring me back to the city that raised me to be their immortal champion? Some kind of challenge? A test for yourself to prove that you’re the greatest fighter?”
Dragon Fist chuckled. “You think I brought you here for sport? No, but that is amusing. To test my mettle against you would be intriguing, but I’ve killed so many martial artists already. How like you to think I would propel you through some kind of dark tournament. Were you a challenger in my Dangerous Dojo…perhaps.”
“Dangerous Dojo?”
“My own private kingdom,” Dragon Fist explained. “You’ll see it for yourself in due time. I’ve brought you here for quite a different reason, Iron Fist. You’re going to help me kill Lei Kung.”
“The Thunderer?” Iron Fist blurted out. “Never. What makes you think I would ever do something like that, especially here, in my sacred home?”
Dragon Fist leaned down, bringing his masked face within inches of Iron Fist. “And what makes you think this is your K’un Lun?”
# # # # #
New York City
Brooklyn
“Are we sure this is the right thing to do?” Gunhawk asked.
The modern cowboy, complete with sunglasses and six-shooters, triple checked that his guns were loaded. Since acquiring the weapons from his uncles, the famous Gunhawks of legend, and becoming the all-new, all-different hero under the care of Luke Cage and Danny Rand, he seldom let the guns out of his sight. They had become a part of him, part of his chapter in a decades-long legacy.
Standing in a back alley alongside a Sentinel-fueled teenage girl, waiting for a signal from his new mentor, he was starting to have second thoughts about this hero thing. He had been assured that they were going to make a real difference in the world and help the little people that couldn’t help themselves. Taking down a supposed mob boss, who as far as Gunhawk knew hadn’t actually done anything yet, didn’t seem like it was in their job description.
“Of course we’re sure,” Karima Shapandar, the walking weapon known as Omega Sentinel, replied. “This is Luke Cage we’re talking about here. If he says we need to take this creep out, then we take this creep out.”
“Shouldn’t we wait for Victor, or Greg, or Kevin?” Gunhawk asked, referring to Power Man, Gravity, and Thunderstrike, respectively. Together they formed the inaugural class of the Avengers’ NEXT program to train new heroes.
“Is it because I’m a girl?”
Gunhawk did a double take. “Wait, what?”
“A girl. I’m a girl. Are you trying to pull some kind of macho cowboy crap? Like, you need the others because I’m a defenseless little girl who can’t pull her own?”
He slipped his revolvers into their holsters and raised his palms up defensively. “Now, hold on a second, I didn’t say—”
“This is so typical,” Karima said. “Carol warned me about you and your boy’s club. You do know that I helped Brother Nature avert a major crisis, right? And she was all like, ‘Don’t let them make you feel inferior just because you’re a woman.’ And then she shot Karnak this look, like she was about to rip his head off. Unbelievable.”
“Carol…” Gunhawk was more than a little flabbergasted as he tried to keep up with her. “Carol Danvers. You mean Warbird? When did you talk to Warbird? I haven’t met any of the Avengers yet!”
Before she could respond, a thick crunch! reverberated down the alley. Then another, and another. It was coming from around the front of the building, like something was punching its way in. Inside the supposedly abandoned warehouse they were waiting behind, chaos suddenly exploded from within. They glanced at each other briefly, silently tabling their squabbling. Gunhawk flicked out his twin revolvers and cocked the hammers back with his thumbs, while Omega Sentinel similarly activated her own weapons.
Her body had been merged with Sentinel technology, making her a formidable one-woman army. Both of her forearms slid apart along the radials, and barrels appeared, brimming with red energy. “That’s the signal!” she shouted, and then blasted the sealed door to pieces.
Activating her heel jets, Omega Sentinel rocketed into the warehouse, going high. Gunhawk tucked and rolled through the now open doorway, coming in low to the ground. He spotted a stack of crates nearby and headed for cover, unsure of what he would find inside. He heard lasers, or repulsors, or whatever Omega Sentinel was dishing out firing overhead. That meant she was laying down cover fire for him as agreed.
He peaked out from behind the crates and saw Luke Cage completely ransacking the place. He had punched in the reinforced front door just like he had said he would, and now he was using one of the dislodged steel doors like a flyswatter, knocking around bad guys left and right. They were charging him, completely unaware that Gunhawk and Omega Sentinel had come in the rear entrance to pick them off one by one. Cage’s distraction had worked.
Omega Sentinel had picked a position thirty feet off the ground, hovering just above some of the girders that criss-crossed halfway toward the ceiling. Red beams of energy ripped through the air, splashing against the backs of confused gangsters that were caught between her and a rambunctious Cage.
With the majority of Jigsaw’s gang that had been holed up in the warehouse focused on Cage, and being picked off by Karima, that left Gunhawk free to scout around a bit. He cautiously moved from behind the stack to a set of metal stairs that led to an elevated office. The door was locked, but a quick bash of the knob with his revolver’s handle solved that problem. He slipped inside with ease.
A few maps of the city were tacked up on the wall behind an old desk that had most likely been left behind by the previous owner. Trash was scattered around the corners of the small office. If Jigsaw had meant for this place to be his new mob headquarters, like Cage had said the federal database had told him, then Jigsaw must have literally just moved in.
Gunhawk stepped over to the map of Brooklyn to take a closer look. “Areas all marked off. What could that mean?”
The door was kicked back open and a new voice said, “Rival territories. Soon to be my territories.”
Gunhawk’s first instinct was to whirl around and let some lead fly. But thanks to Cage and Iron Fist’s training, he knew better than that now. Taking quick action could save lives, but when you were cornered it was often better to get a grip on the situation first. Instead, he merely shifted his weight on his hips and glanced over his shoulder; an unthreatening stance that still gave him a clear view of who was speaking, while also casually angling his right hand over one of his holsters.
His peripheral vision showed him a well-dressed man that looked like he could have stepped right out of a magazine, if not for the fact that his face had once been slashed to pieces and sewn back together. The newly minted mob boss, Jigsaw, had shown himself.
“Ha!” Jigsaw squawked. “Where did they dig you up? Let me guess your name – Midnight Cowboy?”
“The name’s Gunhawk, friend. And I aim to please.”
“Oh, that’s rich. Very rich.” Jigsaw leveled a machine pistol at the teenager. “You and your friends down there are going to cost me a lot of dough wrecking this place. I just took over this crew. I came up here to get my rocket launcher to deal with them, but I think a hostage will do even better.”
“Hostage?” Gunhawk pivoted just a fraction of a degree toward Jigsaw. “You got the wrong man for that job, mister. I ain’t nobody’s hostage.”
Jigsaw took a step closer, raising the machine pistol to eye level. “You got some kind of death wish, kid?” He eyed the gun belt. “Oh, I get it. You’re some kind of quick draw artist, right? Well, let me tell you something. This piece will pump out three hundred rounds per minute. That’s a full five rounds the instant I squeeze the trigger, and at this range there is no way you’re faster than that.”
“Like I said,” Gunhawk replied. “I aim to please.”
There was a beat held between them. A silent moment when neither knew what the other would do. Then thunder. It only took a fraction of a second, the span of a lightning strike. Gunhawk ripped one of his revolvers out of its holster and allowed his natural talent to guide his aim, not even bothering to raise the gun higher than necessary to extract it from the holster.
Jigsaw yelled as a bullet tore into his kneecap, shattering the small bone. The machine pistol went off, firing a few dozen rounds into the ceiling to no effect. He collapsed halfway, managing to point his weapon at Gunhawk again, but another clap of thunder roared and the weapon was shoved out of his grip.
Gunhawk had been training for this very moment, the moment when his life depended on his hands being faster than the other man’s. In the movies he would have spun his guns around on his index fingers and said something corny, maybe even winked at the bad guy now writhing in pain. Instead he kept his gun trained on the man, ready to act if necessary.
He didn’t have to wait long. The man himself, Luke Cage, their de facto leader and trainer, stomped up the metal stairs and burst into the small office. He had a grin on his face as soon as he saw Jigsaw cradling his wrist and bleeding from his knee.
Cage looked up at Gunhawk. “Nice work, Tex,” he said. “You didn’t even need to put one between his eyes.”
Gunhawk blinked and then holstered his gun. “I would never do something like that.”
Cage smirked. “Right, right.” He turned his attention back to the gangster. “Christmas, Jigsaw! I thought you would put up more of a fight than this.”
“Bite me,” Jigsaw said, and then he spat on Cage.
For a brief second, anger flashed on Cage’s face. Gunhawk thought that the devil himself has slipped inside his mentor, but then as quick as it ad came, it was gone, replaced by a Luke Cage smile. He knew that Cage had a sordid past, filled with prison and being on the wrong side of the law. The man deserved a little anger; like his trainers had taught him, what really mattered was how you handled that anger.
“Go help the others clean up downstairs,” Cage said. “I’ll take out the trash.”
Gunhawk hesitated a moment, but he had already put his trust in this man, so he did as he was told. He stepped over the small pool of blood in front of Jigsaw and exited.
No sooner had he left than Cage turned back to Jigsaw and said, “Now. Tell me everything.”
“Lawyer,” Jigsaw replied.
Cage cracked his knuckles. “Ain’t no lawyers here, son. I want to know what your plans for this crew were, who your suppliers are for whatever it was you were going to peddle, who your buyers are, who your rivals were, and anything else you think might have been important.”
“Ha! That’s rich coming from you, Cage. What is this, some kind of new NYPD internship? I don’t see no badge on your or your kiddies down there. You got no authority here! When I do get my lawyer, and I will, dirtbag, you and your friends are going to have the biggest lawsuit in history brought down on you. I mean, you come in here, bust up my boys, who are law-abiding citizens, by the way, and why? You got no warrant, no jurisdiction, no nothing.”
Cage leaned down and picked Jigsaw up with one hand like he was just picking up some refuse someone had dropped on the floor by mistake. “Let’s get one thing straight,” Cage said as he wrapped his free hand around Jigsaw’s wrist. “You’re not going to see a lawyer. Now. Or ever.”
He squeezed, placing just a miniscule amount of his strength into the effort, and as a result the bones in Jigsaw’s wrist shattered. To his credit, likely from his hard years on the street and working his way through the syndicates, Jigsaw only winced without uttering a cry of pain.
“Not going to squeal?” Cage asked. “That’s good. It will cut down on the questions from the other later on. So…let’s try this again, shall we? Because I didn’t come here to bust up your crew. I came here to take it over.”
# # # # #
The Quadrangle
Avengers NEXT Program Training Facility
Power Man stepped into the lounge that rested between the training room and the kitchenette, confused and concerned. After dropping off Skeleton Ki at the local precinct,* he had hustled back to the Quad hoping to find Danny Rand, the Iron Fist, waiting and ready with an explanation for why he had abandoned him mid-mission.
* [Last ish]
Instead, he stumbled onto a morose Gravity, Thunderstrike, and Omega Sentinel staring at an obviously upset Gunhawk. All four of the fledgling heroes turned to face Power Man as he entered the room, and Victor felt like he was interrupting something serious. The room held an air of discomfort, like when someone walks in on a brewing argument.
“I thought I heard someone come back here,” Power Man said as he stepped between Gunhawk and the others. They had distanced themselves from him by a few feet. Usually the friends were sitting and gossiping when in the lounge. “Look, obviously I’m interrupting, and I’d love to hear about whatever this is, but I’m looking for Danny.”
“Haven’t seen him,” Thunderstrike said as he ran his hands over his mallet almost absentmindedly. The weapon was like an extension on himself, and he was rarely without it.
“Wasn’t he with you?” Gravity asked. “Luke sent me and Kevin upstate to help Stingray lift a Kree vessel out of a river. He thinks it crash-landed there 50 years ago! Pretty cool, right? That means that the Kree probably came to Earth way before anyone else things they did. I wonder if—”
“Greg,” Karima cut in. “You’re rambling again.” She turned back to Power Man. “We haven’t seen him. Look, Victor…what’s your take on Luke over the last couple of days?”
“What? I don’t know. I mean, he’s been a little distant, I guess. Why?”
“Because,” Gunhawk responded, “I think something’s up with him.”
“Like what?” Power Man asked, his arms crossing over his chest. He glanced back at the others. “What’s going on?”
“Gunny here thinks that Luke has a brain bug or something,” Gravity said.
“Not a brain bug,” Gunhawk shot back. “I think maybe someone is messing with his head. He’s acting…volatile.”
“Like I said. Brain bug. Like in that starship movie.”
“You’re saying that a man who can create a diamond by smashing two lumps of coal together with his bare hands is acting volatile,” Thunderstrike responded. “You know that sounds a little crazy, right?”
“What Kevin means,” Omega Sentinel chimed in with a glare at Thunderstrike, “is that the man’s job is being nothing but volatile. I mean, did you see him tear into Jigsaw’s gangsters?”
“Gangsters?” Power Man asked.
“They got to trash real life gangsters while we were lifting alien cruisers,” Gravity said. “Did I sound jealous there? I’m actually not. Kree!”
“Yeah, I know that his job means he gets hands on,” Gunhawk said. “But he’s just been acting off the last few days. To your point, his job also means he comes into contact with all sorts of weird stuff. In a world where starships from another planet are dredged up, and teen superheroes are called in to rattle some local thugs, is it really that odd that Luke might have been compromised? Hell, you all read the same files I did. There are any number of folks that could have messed with his head. The Purple Man. Ringmaster. Mesmero. So, y’all tell me…can you look me in the eye and tell me that within the last week that you haven’t done a double-take at our noble leader at least once?”
The quintet stared at each other in silence for a moment, unsure of what exactly to do next. The teenagers were still novices, barely out of the training room. Power Man had just done is first solo take down that morning. This was uncharted territory, and they had to admit that there was more doubt in their minds than certainty.
However, Gunhawk’s words cut them, deeper than they might even admit. All of them were thinking the same thing: even if there was a shred of a possibility that Luke Cage was being controlled, manipulated, or taken advantage of by a villain that they had to consider it as a possibility.
“So, what do we do?” Gravity finally asked.
“We confront him,” Thunderstrike said, standing his massive frame up all the straighter. “Why not just go right to him and work this out? Is he’s compromised, he’ll show his hand. If he’s not, then we brush it off.”
“And we just take his word for it then?” Karima asked. “C’mon. No, we need an expert. Like, a good guy telepath. Like Jean Grey.”
“Do you know Jean Grey?” Gravity asked.
“I…met her once. At a party at the X Mansion.”
Gravity rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I’m sure she’s waiting by the phone. Maybe if we all just think really hard in her general direction she’ll pick up the vibe.”
“No, she’s right,” Gunhawk said. “We need help here. We aren’t qualified for this. We need to get the Avengers in on this. Just to be sure.”
“Sounds good, guys,” Power Man said, growing frustrated. “Look, whatever is going on with Luke, I doubt that we need the friggin’ Avengers. They’re the guys you call in when Terminus shows up, not who you call because your teacher is in a bad mood lately. I’m his son, I’ll figure it out, okay? Now, can we please get back to my thing?”
“Sure,” Gravity said. “What was your thing again?”
“Danny! Where the hell is Danny? We went to take down this thief and he sends me in to get the guy, and when I come out, successfully I might add, he was gone. And I can’t find him anywhere.”
“Did you check his locator?” Karima asked. Power Man stared blankly at Omega Sentinel. She sighed and said, “Right. Of course not. I’m so glad that you’re paying attention during class, Vic.”
Omega Sentinel turned to a console on the wall and began tapping in commands. The big screen TV mounted over the fire place switched from a muted football game to the main access screen for the Quad’s systems. She flipped through several other screens before landing on an option labeled “Locations.”
“After Danny went missing last year and Luke ended up trudging through the Everglades to find him*,” Karima said as she pulled up more options on the screen, “They decided that they should each have interdimensional beacons surgically added under their skin. That way the next time they were separated Luke wouldn’t have to ruin his boots, or whatever.”
* [Check the first Power Man & Iron Fist arc!]
“They’re nice boots,” Gravity said.
Danny’s Iron Fist tattoo flashed on the screen. It then shrunk down and was placed on a map of the city, but after a sweep it wasn’t situated anywhere specific. Instead it just hovered over several areas, as if it couldn’t make up its mind on where to land.
“Increasing the range,” Karima said.
The city map collapsed into one covering the entire state of New York. Then the Eastern seaboard. Then the United States. Then the entire Earth. The dragon icon just hovered, skittering back and forth across the globe, never landing anywhere specific.
“Um…okay. Now I’m not sure what to do.”
“You said this was interdimensional, right?” Power Man asked. “Probably because Danny was abducted by John Aman and in some alternate realm for a bit. Plus, that Everglades place was the Nexus of All-Realities, so I’m sure they accounted for those kinds of situations again.” The group stared at him. “What? Maybe I do pay attention in class…sometimes…”
“Okay, so…got it!” Karima said as she fiddled with the settings. The icon faded and the globe shifted to a series of parallel planes, one of which was highlighted red. “Other planes of existence? And he’s in that one.”
“Which one?” Gravity asked.
“The red one, stupid,” Karima shot back.
“Duh. I meant, which dimension is that? It just has a number. How are we supposed to know where he actually is, how he got there, and how we get there?”
Karima tapped through a few more options, but shook her head. “I have no idea. Maybe we need to call Tony Stark or Reed Richards or someone.” She set the locator back to its default setting, which was a schematic of the Quadrangle itself. “We’re getting in over our heads.”
“Wait,” Gunhawk said. “Look.”
They glanced back up at the screen and saw a broken chain symbol, indicating Luke Cage’s presence, on the map of their headquarters. It flashed in one of the sublevels of the facility, and area that none of them had entered before, as it had been deemed off limits. It was mostly computer servers and other utilities anyway.
“It’s Luke,” Thunderstrike said. “He’s downstairs doing something. Probably maintenance.”
“But Luke ain’t here,” Gunhawk said with a slight drawl. “Remember? He wrapped up Jigsaw and went with the police to file a statement. It wasn’t that long ago. He couldn’t be back yet.”
“So, if Luke is at One Police Plaza,” Victor said, pointing up at the screen, “then who the hell is that?”
The five heroes traded looks before rushing out of the lounge in a flurry of arms and legs. Their youthful vigor propelled them down the corridor and into the elevator, with Gravity elbowing Thunderstrike unnecessarily. “You need to deflate your muscles,” Greg muttered as the doors slid shut and they descended to the correct floor.
When the doors opened again, they stepped into a dimly lit room that was several degrees colder than the rest of the upper floors. They saw their own breath puffing out as they walked deeper into the sublevel.
“Servers function more efficiently at lower temperatures,” Omega Sentinel explained. “Now where would…oh, my god!”
Around a corner they saw a terrible tableau: Luke Cage strapped to a chair, beaten, bloodied, and barely alive. Power Man, Gravity, and Omega Sentinel raced to his side, while Gunhawk and Thunderstrike each brandished their respective weapons to take up defensive positions. Luke was wheezing and barely seemed aware of their arrival.
“Luke!” Power Man exclaimed. “Can you hear me? What happened? Who did this?”
“He’s barely conscious,” Karima said as she started to unstrap him. “What the hell is he bound with? I can’t get these loose! They look like some kind of titanium belts.”
“Here, let me,” Gravity said. He placed a hand over one of the buckles and concentrated, creating a tiny gravity well where the straps connected. An enormous amount of pressure pulsed at the connection, finally snapping the straps free of one another. “Wow! That actually kind of hurt.”
Power Man lifted Luke out of the chair carefully and the original hired hero slumped onto him. “A little help here?” Victor demanded, and both Gravity and Omega Sentinel each took an arm to help support him.
Luke moaned and his eyes fluttered open. He seemed barely alive, but his lips started moving. Victor leaned in close to try and hear what he was saying.
“What’d he say?” Thunderstrike asked.
Power Man’s eyes went wide. “He said ‘imposter.’”
Gunhawk cocked back the hammers of his twin revolvers. “Still think calling the Avengers is a bad idea?” he said.
TO BE CONTINUED!