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MARVEL FANFARE presents
Chill Factor
(MARVEL FANFARE
#139)
Tom Lynch
August Year Five
* * *
“You haven’t paid me,” Mesmero demanded furiously. “I just checked with the bank; they haven’t even received an uncleared payment. It was supposed to be clear into my account by now. I got Spider-Woman for you, didn’t I?”
Guy MacLeod smiled beatifically out of the screen at his erstwhile ally. “I never intended to pay you, Mesmero,” he commented. “I’m spending enough simply getting this team on it’s feet. Sorry, but there it is.”
The greenskinned mutant exerted all his mental influence down the vid-phone at MacLeod, who took it and absorbed it implacably into his mental shielding. “Sorry, Mesmero,” he said. “But that’s life. And I hope you realise blowing the whistle on all this leaves you as implicated as myself, don’t you?”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” Mesmero said.
“I’ve got enough ways to bring this plan of yours
down…”
“What was all that about?” Drew snapped as the door clicked shut. The Rangers had just finished their first press conference, and the team had degenerated into near mudslinging; while no-one had quite gone so far as to openly insult another member of the team, snorts of disbelief and mutters had been prevalent - and had been conveyed to the press by the microphones. The Rangers didn’t seem like a team in any way. “I’ve been appointed leader, but I’m only holding onto that until I feel satisfied one of you is ready to take over. I don’t need this hassle. Now will one of you tell me what the hell you thought you were doing?”
“Well,” Jack Gersen answered, taking his time about his words and pausing theatrically to make sure everyone was listening, “I can’t speak for everyone, but I’m a little leery about Twilight here, because the last time I saw him he was trying to kill me and ended up putting a policeman in a wheelchair*. And as for him-“ with a gesture toward Miracle Man, “how the hell do we end up with a common criminal on our team?”
“He was what?”
“He was trying to kill me,” the man known to the world as Desert Fire repeated. “How difficult is this to absorb?”
“But - you both agreed to come on this team!”
“Well, I sure as hell didn’t get told he was on it!” Gersen snapped.
“About all the lineup I was told of were the two originals, Spider-Woman and Miracle Man,” Twilight said softly.
“Why were you trying to kill him?” Drew asked, still trying to assimilate the information he’d been given.
“He set fire to my dealer,” Twilight returned. “Burned him to a crisp; killed him painfully. I’d spent ages trying to get a good supplier set up.”
“Your dealer?” Spider-Woman stepped forward, arms folded and a puzzled expression on her face. “What do you mean, your dealer?”
“I was told you knew, told you were OK with it,” Lazarus returned.
The man known to the world as Miracle Man nodded. “That goes for me, too. I knew about it, figured everyone else did.”
Drew shook his head. This was getting too much. “OK, OK, hold everything. You have a dealer. Why?”
“I need drugs to get my powers to kick in properly. If my body chemistry’s off balance, then my powers actually work properly. But… It takes a bigger imbalance every time. Right now, I’m using heroin.”
“At least that didn’t reach the press,” Victoria commented, mildly.
“Yet,” Gersen replied. “Anyway, that’s not the main problem. I figure he’s probably not going to try to kill me while we’re on the same team. The problem is him,” he said, pointing at Miracle Man. “What the hell is a common criminal doing on this team?”
“Didn’t you end up in jail, too?” Jen asked.
“Yeah,” Gersen replied, murder in his eyes. “For cutting up criminals. It’s a risk you take. But this guy fought the FF! It’s a whole different league.”
“I’m really starting to get the impression we should have had this conversation before the press conference,” Drew said.
Victoria sat down beside him and slid her arm around him. “Don’t worry about it, hon. We didn’t have time, you know that. It isn’t your fault.”
“Not any of ours,” Miracle Man commented. “I doubt even Mr MacLeod understood how thoroughly tempers were likely to fray, and he was the one who actually knew about the entire group.”
“Yeah?” Gersen snapped. “Why do I have problems with you saying that?”
“I couldn’t say,” the ex-villain replied. “But-“
“Well, it could be that I can’t actually trust anything you say. I can’t even trust what you look like!”
“Ah.” Miracle Man’s face grew sombre. “I knew this would be a problem-“
“It’s not.” Bodyweight spoke for the first
time since the press conference had ended. His arm around
Cascade, he fixed Miracle Man with a sincere gaze and continued.
“I’m willing to trust you unless you do something to
make me reconsider. You’re here; that’s a start, and
this is only a problem if we make it one.”
The vid-phone in Julia’s quarters blipped. She sighed, set her book down and wandered across to answer it. Touching the answer button, she saw her daughter’s face, and smiled happily. “Rachel! Hi! Umm… How’s your new room?”
She hadn’t been allowed to bring her daughter onto the compound, but Mr MacLeod had found her a good place in town; one for Consuela and Rachel to settle into. It was the best compromise she’d been able to come up with. But she still wasn’t certain how her daughter would settle in.
To her relief, Rachel burst into a wide smile. “It’s great, Mom. It’s got everything I want. Look… there’s someone here to speak to you…”
Her daughter moved aside and was replaced on screen by Mesmero.
Julia went blank.
It was raining in Austin. That, Blizzard figured, was going to be useful, though it hardly mattered. It just meant the ice would spread that precious second quicker…
Anyway, he’d been hired for property damage, so property damage he’d do. He stepped off the roof and slid down an ice ramp that formed as he needed it. Behind him, the ice began to expand over the building, weighing the ornate façade down…
The ramp dropped a support to the ground just in time; the weight of the ice finally brought some of the building’s top floor down just as Blizzard’s ramp switched it’s supports. Had he mistimed it, he would have been heading for the floor at speed despite his ramp, at least until he could bolster it. But he’d got his timing down now…
He began to extend the support sideways, until a six-foot-thick wall of ice crossed the street. As the sound of the first car’s impact drifted up to him, he smiled. And he waited, spreading his icy trail over the town…
It didn’t take long. The first TV helicopter whirred above him inside of fifteen minutes, and Blizzard rose on his ramp to meet it. Beneath his suit’s mask, he smiled. This was one whirlybird that was going down-
Waittasecond.
It was an SCN craft. That network only covered supers. What the hell was it doing showing up this fast in Austin?
He shrugged mentally. Looked like MacLeod had been right; it might well come down to a fight. There had to be supers in the area. Still, he’d give it his best shot…
That was what he was being paid for.
Klaxons rang out.
“Bloody hell,” Bodyweight commented. “Our first alert, already?”
“That’s right,” Victoria replied, checking the news feed. “Someone’s attacking Austin… It’s Blizzard. Blizzard has struck right by our base. I think that’s a challenge, don’t you?”
“Got that one right…” Gersen said acidly.
The Rangers began to move out.
The chopper exploded satisfyingly as it hit the ground, rotors frozen up. Blizzard smiled briefly and descended once more. All this meant he was definitely going to face the music soon enough. But that wasn’t going to be too much of a problem…
He caught a glimpse of something out of the corner of his eye. The rain was heavy now, but it seemed to be getting heavier in one area about six feet wide near him… and falling slower there, too. A vague shape appeared to be forming in the rain…
It bundled up tighter and shot toward him, knocking him off his ramp. Hastily, he began freezing the air molecules below him as he fell; by the time he hit the ground, he’d got a pretty good ice-shield-cum-sled to ride out the impact.
Until a jet of flame melted it out from under him.
What the hell?
The question flashed through Blizzard’s mind at roughly the same time he flung his hands out and crashed into the ground. Next thing he heard a sharp crack as something slammed into one of the mechanical bits of his suit. Looking round at it, he saw that whatever it was had ricocheted off, leaving a vague star-shaped mark.
Not a good time to be here, he thought. Flinging out an arm, he mustered a thick ice shield in the direction from which the flame had come, figuring to use it for a couple of seconds protection. Then the ramp was being generated again and he took to the skies, figuring that this way he’d have a chance of seeing what was coming for him.
Darkness enveloped him and he panicked. The ramp halted… and a fist struck him on the back of the head. Turning, he kicked out in panic and rolled backward, away from the unseen assailant.
Rolled off the ice ramp.
Falling, his vision seemed to return and he could see the cloud of blackness at the top of his ramp… and then it disappeared, just winked into nothingness. He froze, panicking seriously now.
And he was still falling.
White, ethereal threads caught him and jerked him upward. Looking upward, he saw Spider-Woman haul him onto a rooftop.
He blasted out in panic, managing to surround her in a casing of ice as he jumped clear. Diving off the rooftop on yet another hastily-constructed ramp, he heard her trap shatter as she flexed her muscles, and gulped. She could come after him now, just sliding down the ice to catch up. Hastily he constructed a row of ice spikes behind him; she’d probably avoid them, he knew, but it might give him those precious few extra seconds…
Which was what he needed. Get these heroes off his back. A diversion. Any diversion. What could he do?
Hastily he flung out one arm. A thin tendril of ice shot toward the ground. Once it struck it began to expand outward, leaving a thin sheen of ice on the road. This continued to spread, reaching out along other roads, down turnings…
The traffic began to go crazy.
“Oh, great…” Bodyweight muttered… “I’ll get started on keeping the cars safe, as far as I can,” he yelled down the communicator.
“Probably wise,” Cascade returned. “I’d help, but I don’t think my power’s all that suitable.”
“No, but my webs might,” Spider-Woman cut in.
She leaped down off the building on which she stood and
moved toward the cars.
Miracle Man, meanwhile, was still trying to work out what he could do. Eventually, he decided.
Blizzard’s ramp stopped moving forward as Captain America’s famous shield seemed to flash ahead of him. He shied back involuntarily and then yelled as the Hulk appeared to leap into his field of view, staring straight at him. This was not good… A jet of flame took out the ramp behind him and he began to fall. As he did, the illusions vanished and he realised what they’d been. It didn’t help much. He still didn’t know what he was up against…
The remnant of the ramp he was standing on worked as ablative armour for the initial falling impact. He stepped off the shattered blocks of ice and paused for a second to re-evaluate his situation…
…before a small tornado blasted down the street and snatched him up, flinging him clear forty or fifty feet further down the street and leaving him dazed.
Twilight emerged from the shadows above him and tore his
mask off, laying him out with a final punch.
In the aftermath, they totalled up the damage. Between Blizzard, Drew’s tornado, and Desert Fire’s flames, three city blocks were in varying stages of disrepair. The best part of one of them was uninhabitable, levelled by the tornado and by ice before the Rangers had arrived.
Guy MacLeod watched the news reports and laughed.
First up this time around is a letter from Jason Trenner… Jason, interesting suggestion for the lettercol name, but it won’t be appropriate for long…
Interesting first issue. This team reminds me a bit of the Thunderbolts. Speaking of the Thunderbolts, could you have Mach-1, Songbird or Atlas join the team(mostly to keep an eye on it since they're now Shield agents)?
Now on to the questions...
1) How big of a fight is going to break out when Desert Fire finds out who Eclipse is?
2) Is there any chance of the Rangers fighting the Masters of Evil?
3)Is there any chance of Luke Cage joining(or being hired to) this team?
4)Will Jack Flagg join this team?
5) Is Guy MacLeod some super villian in disguise? Like Baron Zemo?
6) Is there any chance of a new Citizen V joining this team?
7) Will any other former Force Works members show up?
8) Can you please have Deadpool join the team? This team needs a deranged joke making assassin...
9) Will this team battle Godzilla? That might be interesting..
10) Is there any chance of the Rangers fighting a Sinister Six(made up of B grade villians hired to fight them)?
Thanks for writing in, and keep on reading…
Thunderbolts is an interesting comparison… the nearest I team I can think of to what I’m trying to do is the Marvel Knights non-team out in the real world. I have to say, I sincerely doubt Abe, Melissa or Erik will be showing up, though I love all three of them… Perhaps if I’d set it earlier. But this is Year 5, so I wouldn’t like to do it.
As for the questions:
1) You saw how much of a fight they’re going to have… at least while the rest of the team’s around. Give them a few issues (so that the first week or so’s cleared) and see what happens…
2) There’s always a chance. But not for a while yet. I want this team to step out from under the shadow of the Avengers for a while… after all, it’s where they were born.
3) See the Marvel Knights comment above. 8) But no, there isn’t a niche for him really… and if he belongs anywhere, it’s the Power Man & Iron Fist title currently vacant on Knights. (Or in a Marvel Knights-style title… I never liked him more than the “Who said I came alone, Shades?” panel in #11)
4) Nope. Flagg doesn’t mesh; and granted, the team doesn’t mesh either, but he doesn’t mesh in the wrong way.
5) How much can I say without spoilerage? Well, MacLeod ain’t his real name, but it sure ain’t Zemo either…
6) Not really. For a while I’m going to be concentrating on defining the Rangers as their own team.
7) That’s tricky. Shan Kelley has them dibbed. I’d like to bring people like Slade back, even if only briefly, but… not for a while, certainly.
8) Heh. Again, it’s a character I like… Most of your suggestions have been. But ‘Pool works best on his own, for my money.
9) Godzilla? Again, not for a while. I’ll have to reread Barry’s Black Panther and see if I can do anything with the seeds he planted there before I answer that one.
10) The Sinister Six it won’t be. Sooner or later, the Rangers will get a team nemesis, like the Masters of Evil are to the Avengers… But not for a while yet. I’ve got too much other stuff to fiddle about with first.
Tom Lynch, kal.jerico@lineone.net
NEXT ISSUE
Next Issue: The
Rangers continue to feud. The Friends of Humanity get in on the
act. And Desert Fire receives a personal call…