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Issue #3 by Hunter Lambright
Dec 2008 |
Billy Kaplan was not having a good day.
He had woken up to an empty apartment with half the day gone, only to be ambushed by gunmen who seemed intent on killing him. He had whispered that he didn’t want to die, and suddenly been overtaken by a chant. The world went turquoise, then black, and when he woke up, it was red and blue. Two paramedics looked down at him with worried stares.
The teen was lying on the floor of what used to be the kitchen, his pajama bottoms frayed from shrapnel. A shard of mirror several inches long still jutted from his abdomen, from when the wall had exploded inward at the gunmen’s entrance. His torso was pockmarked with similar wounds. Billy wasn’t sure he wanted to get better. Something had happened. He knew that. Something had changed his life, and he knew it wasn’t going to be the same ever again.
A soft voice said, “Remove the glass.” It came out as less of an order and more of a knowledgeable suggestion. Billy’s eyes rolled around for the source of the voice to see a tan, dark-haired woman dressed in varying shades of red.
He opened his mouth to speak, but no words would come out. She put a hand to her lips, and spoke again. “Do not worry, Billy Kaplan. I am Espirita. Soon, you will feel no more pain. Soon, it will get better.”
And somehow, deep down, Billy knew he believed her.
He had woken up to an empty apartment with half the day gone, only to be ambushed by gunmen who seemed intent on killing him. He had whispered that he didn’t want to die, and suddenly been overtaken by a chant. The world went turquoise, then black, and when he woke up, it was red and blue. Two paramedics looked down at him with worried stares.
The teen was lying on the floor of what used to be the kitchen, his pajama bottoms frayed from shrapnel. A shard of mirror several inches long still jutted from his abdomen, from when the wall had exploded inward at the gunmen’s entrance. His torso was pockmarked with similar wounds. Billy wasn’t sure he wanted to get better. Something had happened. He knew that. Something had changed his life, and he knew it wasn’t going to be the same ever again.
A soft voice said, “Remove the glass.” It came out as less of an order and more of a knowledgeable suggestion. Billy’s eyes rolled around for the source of the voice to see a tan, dark-haired woman dressed in varying shades of red.
He opened his mouth to speak, but no words would come out. She put a hand to her lips, and spoke again. “Do not worry, Billy Kaplan. I am Espirita. Soon, you will feel no more pain. Soon, it will get better.”
And somehow, deep down, Billy knew he believed her.
"LEGACY LOST - Part Three: Mile Markers"
Queens
Steve Rogers whipped in and out of traffic on his motorcycle, intent on finding the white moving van that had nearly gunned down one of his friends and the man’s family. He wore the stylized red, white, and blue uniform of Captain America, his shield strapped firmly to his back. Steve was convinced that the people he was tracking had something to do with at least one murder and several other attempts in the past few days, but what disturbed him most was the fact that they had posed as terrorists to hide the true reason behind their actions.
He was angry that they had gotten this far already, and he was even more angry that he hadn’t been able to do anything to stop it. If Eli Bradley hadn’t been bulletproof, he would have been killed by the barrage of bullets the soldiers had put into the house. What puzzled Steve the most was why they hadn’t brought armor-piercing rounds if they had known that Eli was a Legacy, and that he had powers. It was all a confusing mess, and Steve was almost certain he wouldn’t comprehend it until he was able to see the full picture.
All of this raced through Steve’s mind as he continued dodging in and out of the slow-moving lanes of traffic that led into the heart of the city. He knew he would find the soldiers here somewhere unless their path had changed. It made the most sense, though, that they would try to get away in the catacombs of the inner city.
Somewhere up ahead, he heard screeching brakes and the obnoxious buzzing of disgruntled drivers laying on their horns. Steve gunned the engine, whipping around a semitrailer and hugging the midline between the two lanes. He poured on the speed, able to see the cars that were moving erratically in front of him to make way for the delivery truck’s unannounced movements. That delivery truck held the soldiers who had masqueraded as religious dissidents in their attempt to execute the Bradley family. Steve zeroed in on its bumper. That was his target.
The trick, Steve knew, was to catch the delivery van without making as much of a mess of the roadway as it was, even while he was traveling through the mess the van was creating. It was a tricky situation, but Steve had plenty of practice with his motorcycle and wielded the machine with an almost unrivaled expertise. He tucked down against the handlebars, taking away the wind resistance. The bike shot forward like a weight had been dropped from its back.
Steve sidled up next to the delivery van, sliding his shield from his back to his arm at the same time to avoid the gunfire he was expecting. There was none. Steve reached with his right arm up to the driver’s side door and yanked it open, just in time to see the driver disappear in a flash of purple.
The effect was immediate. The driverless delivery van began to careen out of control without a pair of sturdy hands on the wheel. Steve killed the engine on his motorcycle and kicked off it, swinging into the cabin of the van. He grabbed the wheel and overcorrected, sending the van from the right edge of the rode over to the left. The cars had stopped trying to deal with the moving van by now, thankfully, as Steve yanked the wheel again, sending it back to the right. This wasn’t going to work, he realized. He was going to wreck, one way or another.
Then, out of the corner of his eye, Steve caught sight of something so absurd he wondered if he was imagining it. There, coming up from behind the van kicking off the road with the sound of miniature thunderclaps, was Eli Bradley on a skateboard. His clothes were still torn from the bullets that had ripped them apart. The teenager quickly passed the van as Steve’s booted foot slammed the brakes.
The skateboard was kicked away as Eli planted his feet, holding his arms out in the face of the oncoming tons of screaming metal and rubber. Steve realized what the kid was about to try, and put his shield out in front of him in preparation. The van slammed into Eli and skidded to a halt, even as Steve’s velocity shoved him out a shield-sized hole in the front windshield. In spite of himself, Steve couldn’t help but land on his feet with the acrobatic prowess of a cat.
“Good work, son,” Steve said as the smoke cleared. There stood Eli, his arms sunk into the engine up to the elbow. His tennis shoes had worn through to the soles of his feet from skidding down the road. Steve helped Eli pry his arms from the mass of twisted metal inside. “Let’s get to a safe distance in case the van blows.”
“I’m with you,” Eli said. They ran further down the roadway, pausing only for Eli to snag his mangled skateboard from the pavement.
When they were finally far enough away from the stopped van, Steve leaned back against the median. “So, super-strength?” Steve asked, allowing himself a deep breath for the first time since he’d been talking to Isaiah.
“No,” Eli said, shaking his head while grinning nonetheless. “Well, some, if you know what I mean, but not the Hulk. Mostly it’s invulnerability, you know? I think friction was more what stopped it than my arms.” He patted the exposed soles of his feet as proof.
“How’d you catch up so quickly?” Steve asked, pointing at the skateboard. The wood and metal had seen better days, and three of the four wheels looked as if they were about to fall off.
“You were driving in New York traffic,” Eli said. “Super-stamina, I guess. I hadn’t tried it before because I figured that this would happen to my skateboard.”
Steve finally lowered the bombshell. “Why did you come after me, Eli, when I told you to get your grandparents to Avengers Mansion?” Eli still wore that boyish grin, and it suddenly became painfully clear what was going on. Eli was in shock. Getting shot at for the first time had a good chance of doing that to a guy. When Eli didn’t answer, that confirmed it for Steve. He wanted to get the boy to Avengers Mansion as soon as possible.
“Let’s go back and get my bike,” Cap said, indicating the fallen motorcycle in the middle of the traffic jam that was already being redirected by New York’s Finest, responding with a quickness that was almost unheard of. He offered Eli an apologetic look. “Sorry, but I have a call to make.”
Pulling out his communicator, Steve put a call into Carol back at the mansion. “Carol? Things may be worse than we suspected. Yeah, I’m on my way. Brief whoever’s there. We’re going to have to move on this one before someone gets killed.”
# # # # #
Avengers Mansion
“Will do, Steve. I’ll keep you posted,” Carol said, then shut her communicator. She turned to the assembled Avengers in the conference room, trying to stand as confidently as she could before her fellow heroes. “That was Captain America. He was just attacked at the residence of another possible Legacy, although he’s almost certain that the Legacy was the target and he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. The problem is, we might not be there next time. We keep getting lucky, and we can’t count on that to last.”
Karnak’s face remained as stoic as ever. The Inhuman’s extended cranium was mutated so that analyzing every bit of information in a situation was child’s play. He stood with his arms folded, waiting for Carol to continue.
Quicksilver, on the other hand, was the exact opposite. His eyes darted all over the room from underneath his pointed silver hair. Pietro Maximoff was a victim of the inherent attention deficit disorder that came with being able to move hundreds of times faster than the rest of the world. Carol couldn’t help but notice that his eyes most often fell on Karnak. The two had history, and Carol hoped that they would continue to set it aside for the good of the team and its mission.
Karnak and Quicksilver were joined by Nicole Ridely, the young, hot-tempered woman who had taken on the name Binary after Carol herself had given it up. She harnessed extraordinary amounts of power with limits that Carol didn’t think they had even begun to reach in their exploration of her abilities. She was an asset, even if they didn’t get along—at all.
The last man in the room was no member of the team. Scott Lang stood with one hand on his hip and the other holding his large, silver Ant-Man helmet. His face was molded into a mask of absolute determination. Carol knew why. His daughter had been kidnapped, and he would do anything to get her back.
Carol started in on the briefing. “If you haven’t figured it out by now, we have a situation on our hands. Not a the-world-is-gonna-blow-up situation, but just as serious. From what we’ve managed to piece together, someone went and pieced together a file featuring children that would have similar powers to take our places in the event of our deaths. Every Avenger supposedly has a Legacy, and someone is targeting them to prevent the emergence of a new generation of Avengers.”
She passed out copies of the newspaper headlines that she and Steve had been going through before he’d gone to talk to Isaiah Bradley. “We think they started by taking out T’Challa’s Legacy in Wakanda. She was shot to death and left to die in the desert. They couldn’t figure out where the soldiers who did it came from. Then Cassie Lang was kidnapped by a masked man, possibly a super-villain. Then we have two more shooting victims, both of whom managed to escape with their lives. Michael Corson was attacked in Florida, and Billy Kaplan was hit here in New York, both by gunmen again. And, to top it off, Cap just met with more gunmen attacking Eli Bradley.”
“Something doesn’t fit,” said Quicksilver, cutting in. “You say Scott’s daughter was kidnapped? Where were the guns? She’s the outlier. We either start with finding her or eliminate it as a completely coincidental occurrence.”
Karnak shook his head softly. “There is a second possibility. We might be looking at two different groups with the same goal or at the very least a similar goal. This could be a weakness to exploit in the future.”
“We’re looking at all the possibilities,” Carol said ambiguously. The last thing she wanted to do was be seen picking one side or the other in their disagreement. “The thing is, we don’t have the files on these kids. We can either follow up on previous hits, or we can try to head them off, predict their next move.”
“How do we do that?” Ant-Man asked angrily. “We need to be looking for the ones who are already gone, not making guesses at which kid in America has Wonder Man’s powers!”
“I know you’re worried about Cassie, Scott, but we have a better lead at finding the people who took Cassie by going to a place they’re likely to be than chasing ghost trails. Besides, taking guesses on the Legacies might not be as hard as you think in some cases.”
Carol pulled a copy of an archery magazine from the stack of papers on the conference table. On the front cover was an athletic teenage girl. Her black hair was tied back into a ponytail to keep it out of the way of her bow and arrows, which were stored in a quiver slung over her shoulder. The headline read, “Is This the Next Hawkeye?”
“This is Kate Bishop,” said Carol. “Her father is rich, her mother is deceased, and she lives in Chicago.”
“Then how—” Scott began.
Carol held up a hand. “But—there’s an archery competition in New York this weekend, and I checked it out already. Kate Bishop is going to be there. They timed this, somehow. I don’t know if it was an accident or if it was engineered this way, but she’s here just like Cassie, Billy, and Eli were. If we’re going to find these guys, we’re going to find them there, attacking ‘The Next Hawkeye.’”
Scott put his helmet over his head. “Then what are we waiting for? Let’s go, already.” It was odd to see the normally rational man so rash.
“Wait,” said Binary. “We’re a few members short. Where are Espirita and Stingray?”
“Espirita was the first to respond, so I sent her out as soon as we got the call about the attack on the Kaplan boy. She’s with him right now in case there’s a follow up,” Carol answered, leading the way toward the door. “Stingray took a Quinjet to Florida. He knew of the boy before he was shot. The speed he was flying, I’d guess he’ll be arriving there any minute now, hopefully before Michael meets more of the same people who shot him down on the beach…”
# # # # #
“Excuse me, sir? I’m afraid you can’t access this point without a pass—sir!” shouted a doctor, chasing the man in the black armor.
The man turned around to face the doctor, pointing the semi-automatic gun at the doctor’s face, which paled considerably in the face of the weaponry. “This a good enough pass for you, sir?”
The doctor said nothing, turning tail and running. U.S. Abrams would have shot the man in other circumstances, but he couldn’t risk sending the entire hospital into a frenzy over the sound of the bullet. It was bad enough that he had to walk through the hospital like this and that the doctor he’d just encountered had more than likely called for security the second he was out of Abrams’ sight. He didn’t want to risk causing too much chaos on the other floors before he was ready to use it to escape, which was why letting the doctor go had been a necessary evil.
Michael Corson’s room was on the sixth floor of the hospital. Abrams poked his head into room 624, where he spotted the wiry teenager snoring away, likely doped up on three different kinds of painkillers. He was amazed that the boy had survived the rounds he’d shot into him himself on the beach, but he also knew that, as the one who failed to kill him the first time, it was his duty to complete the job. He leveled the gun at Michael’s prone form.
Just as his finger prepared to pull the trigger, Abrams’ body was sent into electrified spasms. The gun went flying across the floor and his arms locked up against his will, waving uncontrollably. Then, with the smell of burning meat, he collapsed unconscious to the ground. Behind him stood Stingray in his red and white costume, his electrified glove still crackling with energy.
Stingray gasped as, in a flash of purple light, the body disappeared, teleported away for its failure. “They’re like government ninjas,” Stingray muttered angrily. “How’d they get them out of the IRS?”
He froze as Michael stirred in his bed, his rest disturbed by the noise, the light, or both. Stingray froze, expecting the boy to be confused and call for help. That wasn’t the case. In a barely discernible voice, Michael whimpered like a kicked puppy, tucking at the sheet while trying unsuccessfully to sit up.
“Why can’t I feel my legs?” he asked weakly, and for the first time Stingray noticed the shining silver wheelchair slid up against the hospital bed. He looked at the boy helplessly, and for once could think of nothing to say.
# # # # #
“So, what’s this Bishop girl’s deal?” asked the Young Avenger, looking down at the shadow on the ground. It kept pace with his steps, and Bryon was hopeful that no one would notice that he was the only person in existence walking around with two shadows.
“Deal?” returned the shadow. “Are you inquiring as to the nature of her abilities?”
Bryon rolled his eyes. “Excuse me. What are her powers?” He stopped walking, and the shadow flitted backward to maintain the illusion. “On second thought, Cassie, what are your powers?”
Cassie shook her head. “What powers?”
“You have to have powers,” Bryon said. “There’s no reason you would be in the file if you didn’t.”
“Go ahead, tell him. I already know, and I won’t hesitate to fill him in myself,” the shadow said, and Bryon had a feeling that it wasn’t bluffing.
With the look of a child who had been caught stealing out of the cookie jar, Cassie said, “Ever since the last time I was kidnapped, I started stealing Pym particles from my dad. He never noticed because I took just a little at a time, but after awhile I figured out how I could use them to change size.”
“So are you a Giant Girl or are you a Shrinking Girl?” Bryon asked.
“Kinda both,” Cassie said, shrugging. Bryon got the feeling that the change was something she wasn’t quite comfortable with her newfound powers. It looked like she had fallen victim to the old curse of “be careful what you wish for.”
“How far are we from the archery competition?” Bryon asked, directing this question toward the shadow.
“It’s very close,” the shadow replied. “But, Br--”
Bryon was knocked to the ground as an arm dead-legged him in the back of the knees. The attacker was gone before Bryon registered that he was no longer standing, and was back, delivering a punch in the side of the head before Bryon even thought about reacting. Two more blows in this fashion sent Bryon face-first into the pavement, and Quicksilver finally felt that he had accomplished enough to come to a screeching halt in front of them.
“The kidnapper is in my custody,” Quicksilver said in his stilted, unnaturally rapid way of speaking. “And you were worried he would be a threat,” he scoffed.
“Kidnapper?” Bryon asked, wiping blood from his nose as he tried to rise to a more dignified position. “I can expl—”
“Right, not guilty,” Quicksilver said, rolling his eyes. “Cassie, your father has been worried about you. Has this young man hurt you?”
“No, he was just trying to save me!” Cassie protested.
“Ah, Stockholm Syndrome, and in such a short time period, too,” Quicksilver noted. “Don’t worry. We can deal with that as soon as your father gets here. I’d like to know what the motive was this time. Surely it wasn’t another of Doom’s ideas.” In the blink of an eye, Quicksilver was back on Bryon, stepping on the Young Avenger’s back to stop him from getting to his feet. “Oh, no you don’t. You’re staying right there for now.”
“Stop hurting him!” Cassie shouted, suddenly filling much more space than she had before. She grew to tower over Quicksilver by at least eight feet. “He didn’t do anything wrong!”
“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me,” Quicksilver muttered, darting out of the way of Cassie’s swiping hand.
Cassie was knocked backward against a parked car as her feet gave out from underneath her. Karnak stood up and dusted his hands off from striking Cassie in the Achilles tendon. He had found the weak point.
In the midst of this, Bryon finally managed to find his way to his feet. He threw a wild punch and Karnak but missed as Karnak caught sight of the blow hurtling toward him in the car’s side-view mirror. Bryon looked up as the sky brightened artificially. Binary was descending on the scene. Bryon could barely hear her as she said, “I can end this, Carol. Just give the word.”
“Enough!”
The sky darkened even under the light that radiated from around Binary as the shadow expanded over the area, causing his presence to be undeniably noticeable. The fighting ceased on the ground. All eyes were on the shadow that hovered over them.
“We are all here on the same mission!” shouted the shadow. “There are others in danger, yet we insist on having a misunderstanding. Acknowledge that the truth of the matter is that we all want to ensure there is no more bloodshed, despite the difference in our methods. We are wasting time. Kate Bishop is in danger.”
“Avengers, stand down!” shouted Carol, descending on the scene in her Warbird attire. The shadow slowly began to withdraw from the area to its normal size.
“We’re going to work with these people?” Scott Lang shouted, resuming his normal size as well. “They kidnapped my daughter!”
“Dad, they didn’t mean to kidnap me—ugh, that didn’t make sense, but it’s true!” Cassie shouted, climbing off the hood of the car.
“Cass!” he shouted, running over and wrapping his daughter in an iron embrace. “Are you okay? What happened to your clothes?” His eyes went wide. “You didn’t…? You can change size?”
“It’s a long story,” Cassie replied. “One that we don’t have time for.”
“Let’s get moving,” Bryon said. “I’m the Young Avenger. You won’t recognize me, but I can explain that--after we do what we came here to do. You have to trust me on this.”
“We’re coming, too,” Carol said. “That’s a given.”
“Just don’t slow us down,” Bryon shot back. Quicksilver didn’t bother trying to restrain his laugh.
“Doesn’t matter,” said Binary. She floated several stories up still, her eyes focused a few blocks in the distance, where red and blue lights flashed against the buildings and cars. “If that’s where I think it is, we may be too late after all.”
“Pietro,” Carol said. He nodded, and then he was gone, running off to see what the commotion was, and if it was anything they could help with. They began running after him, and he met them with bad news.
“She’s been kidnapped. The building was stormed by a squad of men carrying artillery, but they never fired off a shot. The eyewitnesses claim that they were here for Bishop and Bishop alone.” He shook his head. “She disappeared in a flash of light with the gunmen. Whoever was after her beat us to the chase.” He said this with the most venom. Being beaten in anything disgusted Pietro.
“Then until we find anything more out, it looks like we have time for a chat,” Carol said, eyeing Bryon. “Avengers, let’s regroup at the mansion. I have a feeling we’re going to be getting a few more pieces to the puzzle.”
# # # # #
“…and that’s why the Superhuman Deployment Division is targeting these teenagers. It is my firm belief that the only reason they are being eliminated is because a copy of the file with their names is outside their possession,” Bryon explained to the assembled Avengers, whose ranks now held Captain America and Espirita among them. With them had come two more teenage boys that Bryon recognized as Billy Kaplan and Eli Bradley from the files.
“So if we had this file, we might be able to reach these kids before this agency does,” Carol said. “That’s if the S.D.D. officially exists at all. I doubt they could get something like this authorized no matter how high the threat to national security was thought to be.”
“Where is the file, Bryon?” asked Steve. Of all of the assembled heroes, only he stood. “If we could have it, we could be one step ahead of these people.”
“What about their teleporter?” asked Pietro. “We don’t know how quickly they could dispatch their people if they see a mass movement toward recruiting these kids.”
“Excuse me if I interrupt,” said a man who had not been present just a moment before. Every chair in the room scooted outward as everyone stood up to meet the newcomer. He manifested on the top of the conference table. Though his eyes appeared much older, his body was that of a man in his early twenties. His hair was slightly long and he wore dark, nondescript clothing. “Don’t react too badly,” said the man, smiling. “I’m just a hologram, anyway.”
Karnak tested the theory, swiping a hand through the man’s lower leg. “It’s true. He is not here in body, only in our eyes.”
“Glad we got that over with,” said the man. He was much too happy to be infiltrating Avengers Mansion like this, and to be delivering the news he was delivering. “Now that we’re all on the same page, you probably want me to tell you my name. They call me the Lieutenant, which should be good enough for your secret files.”
His demeanor darkened. “Right. Well, it looks like we’ve got ourselves a conflict of interest, Avengers. You want to save all the so-called ‘Young Avengers,’ and I think it would be a good idea to kill them all. It stops things from getting messier later. So let’s make a deal, shall we? You guys stop recruiting all of these super-powered kids, and I stop killing all of these super-powered kids. But wait! Act now, and I’ll sweeten the deal by—”
There was a shuffling sound as someone from outside the projection was shoved into it. The Lieutenant grabbed her by her long, black hair. Her face was scrunched in pain, but everyone present recognized her. “—by not killing Kate Bishop. Whaddaya say? Deal—or no deal?
There was a popping noise as the apparition disappeared, leaving the Avengers and their company alone in the conference room once more.
“Cap, what do we do?” Carol asked, breaking the silence that had blanketed the room.
Cap breathed out slowly, putting his hands down on the table. “We need to discuss this. As adults.” He nodded first to Bryon and the other teenagers, then to the door. “Can you kids wait outside for a few minutes? We need to figure out what needs to happen here.”
The kids slowly stood up and moved tentatively to the door. Bryon was the last one. When he reached the door, he turned around. “Captain America, I just wanted to say that you’ve been my idol for my entire life, and that you are a good part of why I put on this costume to protect the home front while you were overseas. I know you’ll make the right decision.”
Cap absorbed this for a moment. “If I’m only part of the reason you’re a hero, son, what was the other part, if you don’t mind me asking?”
Bryon shrugged. “What American boy doesn’t want to be Bucky?” Then he turned around and followed the others out. He could feel Cap’s eyes on his back even after the door swung shut.
When Bryon was in the hall, he saw Eli, Billy, and Cassie standing there waiting for him. They introduced themselves formally, and then Bryon allowed himself to collapse against the wall. The shadow was nowhere to be seen. Bryon suspected it was in the conference room still, eavesdropping on the conversation that was going on. Would the Avengers decide that Kate’s life was worth the lives of almost forty more individuals?
“So, what are we going to do now?” asked Billy. His face and arms were pockmarked with scabs and cuts, and Bryon made out what he thought was a gauze pad taped against the boy’s stomach.
Eli raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean, what are we going to do? I guess we just wait until Captain America tells us what the Avengers have decided.”
“And what do we do if they decide that letting this Lieutenant guy kill Kate is worth it to save the other kids?” Cassie shot back. Bryon had a feeling that the sight of the other girl in trouble had roused more of a fire in Cassie’s belly than any of the rest of them.
“Cassie’s right,” Billy said. “We have to do something. I can’t just sit here and not do anything, not after finding out I have the power to help.”
“And what power is that?” Eli asked.
“I cast spells,” Billy replied, although embarrassment immediately registered on his face. “Well, kinda.”
“So we have an invincible black guy, the growing ant-girl, a 1940s superhero, and a guy who casts spells—kinda,” Eli said. “You really think we’re ready for a guy who is ready to shoot holes in us?”
“Yes, we are,” Bryon said, speaking for the first time since he left the conference room. “Don’t you see? This is exactly what the Lieutenant has been shooting at you for. He’s afraid of you doing exactly what Billy and Cassie want to do. Are you in, or are you out?”
“I’m in,” Cassie said, walking over to Bryon. Billy stepped over immediately afterward. Bryon looked up at Eli questioningly.
Eli sighed. “I’ll come, but this is for Kate, okay?”
“Good,” Bryon said. “Billy, do you think you could fly us out of here? Or teleport? I know you’re new at this, but we need to get out of here.”
“I can try,” Billy said. He closed his eyes tight and began to mumble underneath his breath. “I want to be out of here… Iwannabeouttahere… Iwannabeouttahere…” he began to chant slowly, and turquoise light began to fill the room.
“Oh, no!” Cassie whispered to Bryon, looking up at him. “Should we leave a note telling them you didn’t kidnap us?”
“Let them think what they want,” Bryon said with a sly grin. “For all we know, that’s what it’s going to take to get them to follow us. Besides, where’s the fun if none of the adults get angry?”
As Bryon finished speaking, Billy went silent. The light blue light expanded, filling the room to the point that it made the kids blind. Then it disappeared, and the room was suddenly very cold and empty.
The door to the conference room slammed open. Carol poked her head out. “Are they—?”
Steve nodded. “They’re gone.”
Carol began to massage her temples. “This is why I don’t have a sidekick, Steve,” she said. “Here’s hoping we don’t have to save them again.”
Steve shook his head. “Here’s hoping we find them in time to save them.”
# # # # #
Next Issue: The newly-christened Young Avengers are prepared to take the fight to the Lieutenant! But just who is Lieutenant Narfi, and what is his connection to the past, going all the way back to the beginning of the Avengers? Will the kids save Kate, or will their actions cost the archer her life? Check it out in part four of “Legacy Lost!”
Steve Rogers whipped in and out of traffic on his motorcycle, intent on finding the white moving van that had nearly gunned down one of his friends and the man’s family. He wore the stylized red, white, and blue uniform of Captain America, his shield strapped firmly to his back. Steve was convinced that the people he was tracking had something to do with at least one murder and several other attempts in the past few days, but what disturbed him most was the fact that they had posed as terrorists to hide the true reason behind their actions.
He was angry that they had gotten this far already, and he was even more angry that he hadn’t been able to do anything to stop it. If Eli Bradley hadn’t been bulletproof, he would have been killed by the barrage of bullets the soldiers had put into the house. What puzzled Steve the most was why they hadn’t brought armor-piercing rounds if they had known that Eli was a Legacy, and that he had powers. It was all a confusing mess, and Steve was almost certain he wouldn’t comprehend it until he was able to see the full picture.
All of this raced through Steve’s mind as he continued dodging in and out of the slow-moving lanes of traffic that led into the heart of the city. He knew he would find the soldiers here somewhere unless their path had changed. It made the most sense, though, that they would try to get away in the catacombs of the inner city.
Somewhere up ahead, he heard screeching brakes and the obnoxious buzzing of disgruntled drivers laying on their horns. Steve gunned the engine, whipping around a semitrailer and hugging the midline between the two lanes. He poured on the speed, able to see the cars that were moving erratically in front of him to make way for the delivery truck’s unannounced movements. That delivery truck held the soldiers who had masqueraded as religious dissidents in their attempt to execute the Bradley family. Steve zeroed in on its bumper. That was his target.
The trick, Steve knew, was to catch the delivery van without making as much of a mess of the roadway as it was, even while he was traveling through the mess the van was creating. It was a tricky situation, but Steve had plenty of practice with his motorcycle and wielded the machine with an almost unrivaled expertise. He tucked down against the handlebars, taking away the wind resistance. The bike shot forward like a weight had been dropped from its back.
Steve sidled up next to the delivery van, sliding his shield from his back to his arm at the same time to avoid the gunfire he was expecting. There was none. Steve reached with his right arm up to the driver’s side door and yanked it open, just in time to see the driver disappear in a flash of purple.
The effect was immediate. The driverless delivery van began to careen out of control without a pair of sturdy hands on the wheel. Steve killed the engine on his motorcycle and kicked off it, swinging into the cabin of the van. He grabbed the wheel and overcorrected, sending the van from the right edge of the rode over to the left. The cars had stopped trying to deal with the moving van by now, thankfully, as Steve yanked the wheel again, sending it back to the right. This wasn’t going to work, he realized. He was going to wreck, one way or another.
Then, out of the corner of his eye, Steve caught sight of something so absurd he wondered if he was imagining it. There, coming up from behind the van kicking off the road with the sound of miniature thunderclaps, was Eli Bradley on a skateboard. His clothes were still torn from the bullets that had ripped them apart. The teenager quickly passed the van as Steve’s booted foot slammed the brakes.
The skateboard was kicked away as Eli planted his feet, holding his arms out in the face of the oncoming tons of screaming metal and rubber. Steve realized what the kid was about to try, and put his shield out in front of him in preparation. The van slammed into Eli and skidded to a halt, even as Steve’s velocity shoved him out a shield-sized hole in the front windshield. In spite of himself, Steve couldn’t help but land on his feet with the acrobatic prowess of a cat.
“Good work, son,” Steve said as the smoke cleared. There stood Eli, his arms sunk into the engine up to the elbow. His tennis shoes had worn through to the soles of his feet from skidding down the road. Steve helped Eli pry his arms from the mass of twisted metal inside. “Let’s get to a safe distance in case the van blows.”
“I’m with you,” Eli said. They ran further down the roadway, pausing only for Eli to snag his mangled skateboard from the pavement.
When they were finally far enough away from the stopped van, Steve leaned back against the median. “So, super-strength?” Steve asked, allowing himself a deep breath for the first time since he’d been talking to Isaiah.
“No,” Eli said, shaking his head while grinning nonetheless. “Well, some, if you know what I mean, but not the Hulk. Mostly it’s invulnerability, you know? I think friction was more what stopped it than my arms.” He patted the exposed soles of his feet as proof.
“How’d you catch up so quickly?” Steve asked, pointing at the skateboard. The wood and metal had seen better days, and three of the four wheels looked as if they were about to fall off.
“You were driving in New York traffic,” Eli said. “Super-stamina, I guess. I hadn’t tried it before because I figured that this would happen to my skateboard.”
Steve finally lowered the bombshell. “Why did you come after me, Eli, when I told you to get your grandparents to Avengers Mansion?” Eli still wore that boyish grin, and it suddenly became painfully clear what was going on. Eli was in shock. Getting shot at for the first time had a good chance of doing that to a guy. When Eli didn’t answer, that confirmed it for Steve. He wanted to get the boy to Avengers Mansion as soon as possible.
“Let’s go back and get my bike,” Cap said, indicating the fallen motorcycle in the middle of the traffic jam that was already being redirected by New York’s Finest, responding with a quickness that was almost unheard of. He offered Eli an apologetic look. “Sorry, but I have a call to make.”
Pulling out his communicator, Steve put a call into Carol back at the mansion. “Carol? Things may be worse than we suspected. Yeah, I’m on my way. Brief whoever’s there. We’re going to have to move on this one before someone gets killed.”
# # # # #
Avengers Mansion
“Will do, Steve. I’ll keep you posted,” Carol said, then shut her communicator. She turned to the assembled Avengers in the conference room, trying to stand as confidently as she could before her fellow heroes. “That was Captain America. He was just attacked at the residence of another possible Legacy, although he’s almost certain that the Legacy was the target and he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. The problem is, we might not be there next time. We keep getting lucky, and we can’t count on that to last.”
Karnak’s face remained as stoic as ever. The Inhuman’s extended cranium was mutated so that analyzing every bit of information in a situation was child’s play. He stood with his arms folded, waiting for Carol to continue.
Quicksilver, on the other hand, was the exact opposite. His eyes darted all over the room from underneath his pointed silver hair. Pietro Maximoff was a victim of the inherent attention deficit disorder that came with being able to move hundreds of times faster than the rest of the world. Carol couldn’t help but notice that his eyes most often fell on Karnak. The two had history, and Carol hoped that they would continue to set it aside for the good of the team and its mission.
Karnak and Quicksilver were joined by Nicole Ridely, the young, hot-tempered woman who had taken on the name Binary after Carol herself had given it up. She harnessed extraordinary amounts of power with limits that Carol didn’t think they had even begun to reach in their exploration of her abilities. She was an asset, even if they didn’t get along—at all.
The last man in the room was no member of the team. Scott Lang stood with one hand on his hip and the other holding his large, silver Ant-Man helmet. His face was molded into a mask of absolute determination. Carol knew why. His daughter had been kidnapped, and he would do anything to get her back.
Carol started in on the briefing. “If you haven’t figured it out by now, we have a situation on our hands. Not a the-world-is-gonna-blow-up situation, but just as serious. From what we’ve managed to piece together, someone went and pieced together a file featuring children that would have similar powers to take our places in the event of our deaths. Every Avenger supposedly has a Legacy, and someone is targeting them to prevent the emergence of a new generation of Avengers.”
She passed out copies of the newspaper headlines that she and Steve had been going through before he’d gone to talk to Isaiah Bradley. “We think they started by taking out T’Challa’s Legacy in Wakanda. She was shot to death and left to die in the desert. They couldn’t figure out where the soldiers who did it came from. Then Cassie Lang was kidnapped by a masked man, possibly a super-villain. Then we have two more shooting victims, both of whom managed to escape with their lives. Michael Corson was attacked in Florida, and Billy Kaplan was hit here in New York, both by gunmen again. And, to top it off, Cap just met with more gunmen attacking Eli Bradley.”
“Something doesn’t fit,” said Quicksilver, cutting in. “You say Scott’s daughter was kidnapped? Where were the guns? She’s the outlier. We either start with finding her or eliminate it as a completely coincidental occurrence.”
Karnak shook his head softly. “There is a second possibility. We might be looking at two different groups with the same goal or at the very least a similar goal. This could be a weakness to exploit in the future.”
“We’re looking at all the possibilities,” Carol said ambiguously. The last thing she wanted to do was be seen picking one side or the other in their disagreement. “The thing is, we don’t have the files on these kids. We can either follow up on previous hits, or we can try to head them off, predict their next move.”
“How do we do that?” Ant-Man asked angrily. “We need to be looking for the ones who are already gone, not making guesses at which kid in America has Wonder Man’s powers!”
“I know you’re worried about Cassie, Scott, but we have a better lead at finding the people who took Cassie by going to a place they’re likely to be than chasing ghost trails. Besides, taking guesses on the Legacies might not be as hard as you think in some cases.”
Carol pulled a copy of an archery magazine from the stack of papers on the conference table. On the front cover was an athletic teenage girl. Her black hair was tied back into a ponytail to keep it out of the way of her bow and arrows, which were stored in a quiver slung over her shoulder. The headline read, “Is This the Next Hawkeye?”
“This is Kate Bishop,” said Carol. “Her father is rich, her mother is deceased, and she lives in Chicago.”
“Then how—” Scott began.
Carol held up a hand. “But—there’s an archery competition in New York this weekend, and I checked it out already. Kate Bishop is going to be there. They timed this, somehow. I don’t know if it was an accident or if it was engineered this way, but she’s here just like Cassie, Billy, and Eli were. If we’re going to find these guys, we’re going to find them there, attacking ‘The Next Hawkeye.’”
Scott put his helmet over his head. “Then what are we waiting for? Let’s go, already.” It was odd to see the normally rational man so rash.
“Wait,” said Binary. “We’re a few members short. Where are Espirita and Stingray?”
“Espirita was the first to respond, so I sent her out as soon as we got the call about the attack on the Kaplan boy. She’s with him right now in case there’s a follow up,” Carol answered, leading the way toward the door. “Stingray took a Quinjet to Florida. He knew of the boy before he was shot. The speed he was flying, I’d guess he’ll be arriving there any minute now, hopefully before Michael meets more of the same people who shot him down on the beach…”
# # # # #
“Excuse me, sir? I’m afraid you can’t access this point without a pass—sir!” shouted a doctor, chasing the man in the black armor.
The man turned around to face the doctor, pointing the semi-automatic gun at the doctor’s face, which paled considerably in the face of the weaponry. “This a good enough pass for you, sir?”
The doctor said nothing, turning tail and running. U.S. Abrams would have shot the man in other circumstances, but he couldn’t risk sending the entire hospital into a frenzy over the sound of the bullet. It was bad enough that he had to walk through the hospital like this and that the doctor he’d just encountered had more than likely called for security the second he was out of Abrams’ sight. He didn’t want to risk causing too much chaos on the other floors before he was ready to use it to escape, which was why letting the doctor go had been a necessary evil.
Michael Corson’s room was on the sixth floor of the hospital. Abrams poked his head into room 624, where he spotted the wiry teenager snoring away, likely doped up on three different kinds of painkillers. He was amazed that the boy had survived the rounds he’d shot into him himself on the beach, but he also knew that, as the one who failed to kill him the first time, it was his duty to complete the job. He leveled the gun at Michael’s prone form.
Just as his finger prepared to pull the trigger, Abrams’ body was sent into electrified spasms. The gun went flying across the floor and his arms locked up against his will, waving uncontrollably. Then, with the smell of burning meat, he collapsed unconscious to the ground. Behind him stood Stingray in his red and white costume, his electrified glove still crackling with energy.
Stingray gasped as, in a flash of purple light, the body disappeared, teleported away for its failure. “They’re like government ninjas,” Stingray muttered angrily. “How’d they get them out of the IRS?”
He froze as Michael stirred in his bed, his rest disturbed by the noise, the light, or both. Stingray froze, expecting the boy to be confused and call for help. That wasn’t the case. In a barely discernible voice, Michael whimpered like a kicked puppy, tucking at the sheet while trying unsuccessfully to sit up.
“Why can’t I feel my legs?” he asked weakly, and for the first time Stingray noticed the shining silver wheelchair slid up against the hospital bed. He looked at the boy helplessly, and for once could think of nothing to say.
# # # # #
“So, what’s this Bishop girl’s deal?” asked the Young Avenger, looking down at the shadow on the ground. It kept pace with his steps, and Bryon was hopeful that no one would notice that he was the only person in existence walking around with two shadows.
“Deal?” returned the shadow. “Are you inquiring as to the nature of her abilities?”
Bryon rolled his eyes. “Excuse me. What are her powers?” He stopped walking, and the shadow flitted backward to maintain the illusion. “On second thought, Cassie, what are your powers?”
Cassie shook her head. “What powers?”
“You have to have powers,” Bryon said. “There’s no reason you would be in the file if you didn’t.”
“Go ahead, tell him. I already know, and I won’t hesitate to fill him in myself,” the shadow said, and Bryon had a feeling that it wasn’t bluffing.
With the look of a child who had been caught stealing out of the cookie jar, Cassie said, “Ever since the last time I was kidnapped, I started stealing Pym particles from my dad. He never noticed because I took just a little at a time, but after awhile I figured out how I could use them to change size.”
“So are you a Giant Girl or are you a Shrinking Girl?” Bryon asked.
“Kinda both,” Cassie said, shrugging. Bryon got the feeling that the change was something she wasn’t quite comfortable with her newfound powers. It looked like she had fallen victim to the old curse of “be careful what you wish for.”
“How far are we from the archery competition?” Bryon asked, directing this question toward the shadow.
“It’s very close,” the shadow replied. “But, Br--”
Bryon was knocked to the ground as an arm dead-legged him in the back of the knees. The attacker was gone before Bryon registered that he was no longer standing, and was back, delivering a punch in the side of the head before Bryon even thought about reacting. Two more blows in this fashion sent Bryon face-first into the pavement, and Quicksilver finally felt that he had accomplished enough to come to a screeching halt in front of them.
“The kidnapper is in my custody,” Quicksilver said in his stilted, unnaturally rapid way of speaking. “And you were worried he would be a threat,” he scoffed.
“Kidnapper?” Bryon asked, wiping blood from his nose as he tried to rise to a more dignified position. “I can expl—”
“Right, not guilty,” Quicksilver said, rolling his eyes. “Cassie, your father has been worried about you. Has this young man hurt you?”
“No, he was just trying to save me!” Cassie protested.
“Ah, Stockholm Syndrome, and in such a short time period, too,” Quicksilver noted. “Don’t worry. We can deal with that as soon as your father gets here. I’d like to know what the motive was this time. Surely it wasn’t another of Doom’s ideas.” In the blink of an eye, Quicksilver was back on Bryon, stepping on the Young Avenger’s back to stop him from getting to his feet. “Oh, no you don’t. You’re staying right there for now.”
“Stop hurting him!” Cassie shouted, suddenly filling much more space than she had before. She grew to tower over Quicksilver by at least eight feet. “He didn’t do anything wrong!”
“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me,” Quicksilver muttered, darting out of the way of Cassie’s swiping hand.
Cassie was knocked backward against a parked car as her feet gave out from underneath her. Karnak stood up and dusted his hands off from striking Cassie in the Achilles tendon. He had found the weak point.
In the midst of this, Bryon finally managed to find his way to his feet. He threw a wild punch and Karnak but missed as Karnak caught sight of the blow hurtling toward him in the car’s side-view mirror. Bryon looked up as the sky brightened artificially. Binary was descending on the scene. Bryon could barely hear her as she said, “I can end this, Carol. Just give the word.”
“Enough!”
The sky darkened even under the light that radiated from around Binary as the shadow expanded over the area, causing his presence to be undeniably noticeable. The fighting ceased on the ground. All eyes were on the shadow that hovered over them.
“We are all here on the same mission!” shouted the shadow. “There are others in danger, yet we insist on having a misunderstanding. Acknowledge that the truth of the matter is that we all want to ensure there is no more bloodshed, despite the difference in our methods. We are wasting time. Kate Bishop is in danger.”
“Avengers, stand down!” shouted Carol, descending on the scene in her Warbird attire. The shadow slowly began to withdraw from the area to its normal size.
“We’re going to work with these people?” Scott Lang shouted, resuming his normal size as well. “They kidnapped my daughter!”
“Dad, they didn’t mean to kidnap me—ugh, that didn’t make sense, but it’s true!” Cassie shouted, climbing off the hood of the car.
“Cass!” he shouted, running over and wrapping his daughter in an iron embrace. “Are you okay? What happened to your clothes?” His eyes went wide. “You didn’t…? You can change size?”
“It’s a long story,” Cassie replied. “One that we don’t have time for.”
“Let’s get moving,” Bryon said. “I’m the Young Avenger. You won’t recognize me, but I can explain that--after we do what we came here to do. You have to trust me on this.”
“We’re coming, too,” Carol said. “That’s a given.”
“Just don’t slow us down,” Bryon shot back. Quicksilver didn’t bother trying to restrain his laugh.
“Doesn’t matter,” said Binary. She floated several stories up still, her eyes focused a few blocks in the distance, where red and blue lights flashed against the buildings and cars. “If that’s where I think it is, we may be too late after all.”
“Pietro,” Carol said. He nodded, and then he was gone, running off to see what the commotion was, and if it was anything they could help with. They began running after him, and he met them with bad news.
“She’s been kidnapped. The building was stormed by a squad of men carrying artillery, but they never fired off a shot. The eyewitnesses claim that they were here for Bishop and Bishop alone.” He shook his head. “She disappeared in a flash of light with the gunmen. Whoever was after her beat us to the chase.” He said this with the most venom. Being beaten in anything disgusted Pietro.
“Then until we find anything more out, it looks like we have time for a chat,” Carol said, eyeing Bryon. “Avengers, let’s regroup at the mansion. I have a feeling we’re going to be getting a few more pieces to the puzzle.”
# # # # #
“…and that’s why the Superhuman Deployment Division is targeting these teenagers. It is my firm belief that the only reason they are being eliminated is because a copy of the file with their names is outside their possession,” Bryon explained to the assembled Avengers, whose ranks now held Captain America and Espirita among them. With them had come two more teenage boys that Bryon recognized as Billy Kaplan and Eli Bradley from the files.
“So if we had this file, we might be able to reach these kids before this agency does,” Carol said. “That’s if the S.D.D. officially exists at all. I doubt they could get something like this authorized no matter how high the threat to national security was thought to be.”
“Where is the file, Bryon?” asked Steve. Of all of the assembled heroes, only he stood. “If we could have it, we could be one step ahead of these people.”
“What about their teleporter?” asked Pietro. “We don’t know how quickly they could dispatch their people if they see a mass movement toward recruiting these kids.”
“Excuse me if I interrupt,” said a man who had not been present just a moment before. Every chair in the room scooted outward as everyone stood up to meet the newcomer. He manifested on the top of the conference table. Though his eyes appeared much older, his body was that of a man in his early twenties. His hair was slightly long and he wore dark, nondescript clothing. “Don’t react too badly,” said the man, smiling. “I’m just a hologram, anyway.”
Karnak tested the theory, swiping a hand through the man’s lower leg. “It’s true. He is not here in body, only in our eyes.”
“Glad we got that over with,” said the man. He was much too happy to be infiltrating Avengers Mansion like this, and to be delivering the news he was delivering. “Now that we’re all on the same page, you probably want me to tell you my name. They call me the Lieutenant, which should be good enough for your secret files.”
His demeanor darkened. “Right. Well, it looks like we’ve got ourselves a conflict of interest, Avengers. You want to save all the so-called ‘Young Avengers,’ and I think it would be a good idea to kill them all. It stops things from getting messier later. So let’s make a deal, shall we? You guys stop recruiting all of these super-powered kids, and I stop killing all of these super-powered kids. But wait! Act now, and I’ll sweeten the deal by—”
There was a shuffling sound as someone from outside the projection was shoved into it. The Lieutenant grabbed her by her long, black hair. Her face was scrunched in pain, but everyone present recognized her. “—by not killing Kate Bishop. Whaddaya say? Deal—or no deal?
There was a popping noise as the apparition disappeared, leaving the Avengers and their company alone in the conference room once more.
“Cap, what do we do?” Carol asked, breaking the silence that had blanketed the room.
Cap breathed out slowly, putting his hands down on the table. “We need to discuss this. As adults.” He nodded first to Bryon and the other teenagers, then to the door. “Can you kids wait outside for a few minutes? We need to figure out what needs to happen here.”
The kids slowly stood up and moved tentatively to the door. Bryon was the last one. When he reached the door, he turned around. “Captain America, I just wanted to say that you’ve been my idol for my entire life, and that you are a good part of why I put on this costume to protect the home front while you were overseas. I know you’ll make the right decision.”
Cap absorbed this for a moment. “If I’m only part of the reason you’re a hero, son, what was the other part, if you don’t mind me asking?”
Bryon shrugged. “What American boy doesn’t want to be Bucky?” Then he turned around and followed the others out. He could feel Cap’s eyes on his back even after the door swung shut.
When Bryon was in the hall, he saw Eli, Billy, and Cassie standing there waiting for him. They introduced themselves formally, and then Bryon allowed himself to collapse against the wall. The shadow was nowhere to be seen. Bryon suspected it was in the conference room still, eavesdropping on the conversation that was going on. Would the Avengers decide that Kate’s life was worth the lives of almost forty more individuals?
“So, what are we going to do now?” asked Billy. His face and arms were pockmarked with scabs and cuts, and Bryon made out what he thought was a gauze pad taped against the boy’s stomach.
Eli raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean, what are we going to do? I guess we just wait until Captain America tells us what the Avengers have decided.”
“And what do we do if they decide that letting this Lieutenant guy kill Kate is worth it to save the other kids?” Cassie shot back. Bryon had a feeling that the sight of the other girl in trouble had roused more of a fire in Cassie’s belly than any of the rest of them.
“Cassie’s right,” Billy said. “We have to do something. I can’t just sit here and not do anything, not after finding out I have the power to help.”
“And what power is that?” Eli asked.
“I cast spells,” Billy replied, although embarrassment immediately registered on his face. “Well, kinda.”
“So we have an invincible black guy, the growing ant-girl, a 1940s superhero, and a guy who casts spells—kinda,” Eli said. “You really think we’re ready for a guy who is ready to shoot holes in us?”
“Yes, we are,” Bryon said, speaking for the first time since he left the conference room. “Don’t you see? This is exactly what the Lieutenant has been shooting at you for. He’s afraid of you doing exactly what Billy and Cassie want to do. Are you in, or are you out?”
“I’m in,” Cassie said, walking over to Bryon. Billy stepped over immediately afterward. Bryon looked up at Eli questioningly.
Eli sighed. “I’ll come, but this is for Kate, okay?”
“Good,” Bryon said. “Billy, do you think you could fly us out of here? Or teleport? I know you’re new at this, but we need to get out of here.”
“I can try,” Billy said. He closed his eyes tight and began to mumble underneath his breath. “I want to be out of here… Iwannabeouttahere… Iwannabeouttahere…” he began to chant slowly, and turquoise light began to fill the room.
“Oh, no!” Cassie whispered to Bryon, looking up at him. “Should we leave a note telling them you didn’t kidnap us?”
“Let them think what they want,” Bryon said with a sly grin. “For all we know, that’s what it’s going to take to get them to follow us. Besides, where’s the fun if none of the adults get angry?”
As Bryon finished speaking, Billy went silent. The light blue light expanded, filling the room to the point that it made the kids blind. Then it disappeared, and the room was suddenly very cold and empty.
The door to the conference room slammed open. Carol poked her head out. “Are they—?”
Steve nodded. “They’re gone.”
Carol began to massage her temples. “This is why I don’t have a sidekick, Steve,” she said. “Here’s hoping we don’t have to save them again.”
Steve shook his head. “Here’s hoping we find them in time to save them.”
# # # # #
Next Issue: The newly-christened Young Avengers are prepared to take the fight to the Lieutenant! But just who is Lieutenant Narfi, and what is his connection to the past, going all the way back to the beginning of the Avengers? Will the kids save Kate, or will their actions cost the archer her life? Check it out in part four of “Legacy Lost!”