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MARVEL FANFARE presents
The Management
(MARVEL FANFARE
#143)
Tom Lynch
August Year Five
* * *
What has gone before: Guy MacLeod, the Rangers’
financial backer, was revealed as the Advisor. Mesmero had a hand
in recruitment. There’s a fight brewing at
MacLeod’s…
Sharon Ventura sat in the communication centre of Rangers Compound and sighed. After the revelation that she’d been mentally coerced into joining the team*, she wanted nothing so much as to be out with the rest of the team attacking MacLeod, but she couldn’t. Mesmero might be with him, and he probably still had hooks sunk into her. That would make someone with her strength and experience a liability in the upcoming fight.
Desert Fire sent a blast of flame toward MacLeod, who sat in his armchair and smiled slightly.
The flame seemed to hit an invisible barrier about a foot away from the sharply-dressed black man and splashed. Nothing struck MacLeod.
His smile didn’t waver.
“Gentlemen,” he said. “How can I be of service?”
“By giving up,” Bodyweight said.
“Or just keeling over and dying,” Gersen snapped. That his flame power wasn’t having any effect didn’t do anything for his nerves. This was creepy…
The Advisor had taken on War Machine and Iron Man in the past, and was still around. While Gersen reckoned he was better than a lot of the so-called ‘heroes’ around, he wasn’t stupid enough to claim his mutant power put him on a level with the men in those suits.
But the Advisor was still here, and now he wasn’t affected by flame. Force field, maybe? Gersen wasn’t sure - there’d been some stuff in the Advisor file about fire, but he hadn’t really been paying attention.
Another mistake to rectify.
The Advisor shrugged. “You know who I am, then,” he said. “I assume Mesmero told you?”
“No,” Owen said. “Miracle Man came clean.”
For the first time, a look of surprise crossed the Advisor’s face. “That wasn’t supposed to happen,” he said.
“Was this?” Eclipse asked. Black tendrils of Darkforce burst out of the floor, snaking around him and binding his arms to his sides.
“Not a force field, then,” Owen - Bodyweight - commented, stepping forward. “Anyone else want the coup de grace?”
“Go ahead,” Gersen said.
Owen drew his hand back, ready to knock the Advisor
unconscious, when a shot rang out through the room.
A young woman entered the outskirts of Rangers Compound. Sharon frowned as her image appeared on one of the security monitors, but before she could challenge the new arrival the vidphone began to beep.
Well, that had to be dealt with first, didn’t it?
So she hit the button to answer call and shrugged inwardly when the display screen didn’t show anything. The caller at the other end didn’t have vid capability, then. Which was surprising only if it was someone you’d expect to be calling a superteam… and the Rangers had somehow managed to end up with a listed number at the moment. The vidphone rang at intervals all the time.
“Rangers Compound, how can I help you?” she recited, keeping as polite as she could. There was still the chance that it was one of the ‘official’ callers who hadn’t been able to get at a vidphone.
She only heard the first syllable of the reply. After that,
her mind was blank.
A star-shaped imprint appeared in the middle of the Advisor’s forehead, and the assembled Rangers turned around. Their airborne backup, Shooting Star and Cascade, had arrived. Shooting Star held a smoking pistol levelled at the Advisor’s head.
“Ladies first,” she said, smiling slightly. “Stun pellet.”
The Advisor snorted in derision, and the team turned back to regard him. He was staring at them, rage written in every line of his face, a cold, vengeful rage.
“Didn’t work,” Gersen said, bluntly.
“Not a problem,” Owen commented, raising his fist once more. He swung…
…and it passed through the Advisor.
He snorted again, and stepped backward. Through Eclipse’s Darkforce bonds, through the chair he’d been sitting in…
And then he phased back into reality.
“I thought this was going too well,” Eclipse muttered.
“Too well?” Gersen looked at him in surprise. “The complete failure of my flame blast to touch him didn’t strike you as a setback?”
“Not seeing as we wanted to capture him, no,” Eclipse returned.
“Yeah, I forgot,” Gersen snapped. “You’re the boy scout these days. Even if you did try to kill me.”
Enough of this, Red Wolf thought. He stepped forward, joining Owen as the front guard.
The Advisor smiled and stepped across to his writing desk. “Goodbye,” he said. He pulled open a drawer, did something inside that resulted in a regular beeping, and then sprinted through the wall to escape the building.
Red Wolf and Bodyweight went to see what he’d done, while Cascade - being at the back - rode her supply of water out of the front door after him. Shooting Star followed, hot on her heels, and leapt into the air as Drew - the Texas Twister - conjured up one of his whirlwinds to give her transportation. All this done, they made off after the fleeing supervillain, who was by now driving away.
So the Miracle Man observed. And he smiled, fleetingly,
and…
The woman who’d entered the compound jumped back in surprise when a tall, brunette woman in one of the Rangers’ leather jumpsuits rode past on a motorcycle without even reacting to her. She didn’t recognise the woman from the team press conference, but she supposed that didn’t necessarily mean anything, so after a few moments’ idle curiosity she went back to trying to find a doorbell.
Rangers Compound now lay undefended.
The man who had most recently gone by the name Guy MacLeod nearly panicked when he saw the flotilla of police cars pull up at the next corner, lights flashing. Behind him, the heroines rolled up on their own, unusual means of transport…
And, behind them, police helicopters, staying carefully out of Twister’s way. He was, it seemed, boxed in.
But, if he concentrated, the police went faded out of
sight. So; one of Miracle Man’s illusions, then. Playing
with his mind - but his mental shielding was good. He kept
driving.
“Damn,” Stephen Dacord muttered, “that
should have worked…”
“Um,” Owen said, “I think now might be a good time to be somewhere very far away…”
“What?” Gersen asked.
Red Wolf was more economical with his words. “Bomb,” he said simply, and ran for the window.
He crashed through it, taking the brunt of the shattering glass on his covered back. Bodyweight fell after him, picking up speed. He wasn’t convinced the blast was going to stop with just the Advisor’s house… there’d been something in the files about him gaining in power from death and destruction, and the panic of innocents…
So he kept going, and as he fell onward he threw Miracle Man to the ground.
Gersen followed the two heroes out of the window at speed,
while Eclipse stepped into the deepest patch of shadow… and
through to elsewhere…
One by one, each house in the street exploded. The
shockwaves of each blast disrupted the whirlwind in which
Shooting Star rode, and left her falling despite her special
boots. Cascade, racing along level with her, saw what was
happening and dived to catch her. The Advisor escaped scot free.
“Damn!” Drew snapped. “Right… Well, that didn’t work. Let’s get back to the compound and see if we can get a lead on Mesmero.”
“If you insist, boss,” Gersen said, looking regretfully in the direction in which the Advisor had escaped.
“I don’t see what else we can do,” Drew said.
The team loaded back into the cars they were forced to use for transport.
“We’ve got to see what we can do about air transport,” Owen’s voice came over the comm system. “Maybe the Avengers can spare us a Quinjet?”
“Quinjets cost. Maintenance and fuel, even assuming Mr Stark would just donate one to us - which I’d doubt. I’m not sure we can even afford the compound now,” Drew replied. “Our funds just blew up an Austin street. Somehow I doubt the city’ll want to contribute anything.”
After that, the rest of the return journey was silent.
“Sharon, we’re back. Open the garage door please.”
No response. Drew frowned. “She’s definitely not answering. What’s going on?”
“I’ll go look,” Eclipse offered.
“All right, but watch out for the anti-teleport security jammers,” Drew cautioned.
“Of course…”
Lazarus Jones stepped out of the Darkforce into the compound interior and strode across to the security console. He ran a quick internal scan for Sharon’s comm-unit, and didn’t find it. A lifesigns scan came up with nothing but him, too. So he scanned the outside of the compound.
“Guys?” he asked.
“Go ahead,” Drew’s voice filtered through his commset.
“I don’t think Sharon’s here anymore. But
there’s someone around on the outside, over by the generator
housing.”
“Right,” Drew said. “Anyone want to handle this?”
“I will,” Gersen said, immediately. He’d suddenly remembered the incipient arrival of Susie…
“Then I’d better go with you,” Owen said. “We don’t want them torched before we find out whether that’s a good idea or not, do we?”
Gersen just looked at him.
“OK,” Drew said. “We’ll get the vehicles parked. Yell if you need our help, but it’s probably just another tourist. Send ‘em packing politely, boys…”
They nodded, and set off for the generator housing.
Meanwhile, Lazarus Jones punched the door release button…
The investigative human gasped when a man fell into her line of sight, halting his downward momentum a few inches off the ground. To all intents and purposes, Owen Stevens stood in the air in front of her.
“Can I ask what you’re doing here, miss?”
“I’m looking for Ja- uh, Desert Fire?”
“Sounds like I’d better take this, Bodyweight,” Gersen said, stepping into the light behind her.
She turned, and her face lit up like a Christmas tree. “Jack!” she cried, running toward him.
“You see what I meant about this secret identity stuff?” Gersen asked her, eyes narrowing.
“Oh! Oh, I’m sorry - it was just… seeing you again - I forgot…”
“It’s OK,” he relented. “This time, anyway. Bodyweight knows who I am. But like I said, this is something you’re going to have to watch…”
“I take it you know her, then?” Owen asked, smiling slightly. “Hell’s teeth, that’s going to make three couples in the compound… Miracle Man and Eclipse will think we’re trying to make them jealous…”
“Yeah, well, if you’ve forgotten there’s two women who need rescuing out there. That should make up the numbers.”
Bodyweight laughed. “Romance hardly comes by the numbers, lad. Come on, though, let’s be getting in… if you think we can trust the young lady?”
Gersen looked back at Susie May. “Yeah,” he said.
“Just don’t tell her your real name, yeah?”
“I’ll stay,” Gersen volunteered, unexpectedly. “Keep Susie company and make sure she doesn’t blow the base up by accident.”
“Right,” Drew said. “If you’re sure… I really don’t like leaving the compound undefended. Not when there’s at least one supervillain who knows all the security codes…”
“I’m not sure how much use I’ll be against someone who can turn back flame,” Gersen cautioned, “but somehow I don’t see the Advisor as the hands-on kind, not if he can avoid it.”
“No,” Miracle Man agreed. “Though right at the moment I’m more interested in whether Mesmero’ll get his hands dirty…”
“Yeah,” Cascade interjected. “Let’s face it, we can’t find Spider-Woman or Sharon because he’s got his hooks into them. I know what that’s like*…”
“…and while they probably couldn’t take the whole team, they could certainly make life difficult for us,” Drew concluded. “And if he took Sharon, he’ll know we’re coming. However, we do have one advantage.”
He nodded toward the visiting hero. “Red Wolf’s got strength to bring to bear against Sharon, and any long-term plans Mesmero’s made won’t take him into account. How’s the trace coming, Eclipse?”
“Almost got him,” the hero responded. “At least, I think so. I figure he’s probably the guy MacLeod - I mean, the Advisor - called when Shooting Star told him Spider-Woman had quit. And I’ve got a fair bit of phone correspondence between then and when Sharon arrived with this one number. I should have an address in a couple of minutes. One slight problem - it’s in Dallas. I don’t even know how far away we are from Dallas, so…”
“Doesn’t matter,” Stephen interrupted.
“Our state, our team members, our problem.”
The cars roared out of the compound again. Desert Fire and
Susan May watched them go.
Once again, we’ve got Jason Trenner, this time on last issue’s revelations…
The Advisor? Wow.. Though I wonder what the team is thinking trying to charge into a head-to-head fight with him(those never work). Interesting to see Red Wolf as a member of the team. Now on to the questions
1) Without their moneyman, how will the team get by?
2)What will they gather in(a bar maybe)?
3)Is Moonknight going to join this team?
4)How violently will this team shatter?
5)Is there any chance a fourth Goliath(and them joining this team)?
6)Is there any chance of Rictor joining this bunch?
7)Is Spiderwoman going to rejoin the team?
8)Will any of the year one Team America characters show up in this?
9)Will Austin Texas ever recover from the insanity that the Rangers will attract?
Red Wolf was one of the originals, of course, and when Mark offered to let me play with him, I couldn’t resist… (Mark originally had the dib, even before I started this series). One of these days I may bug Russ into letting me cameo Firebird, though not for a while, and eventually I’ll probably drag the Phantom Rider back into the team’s sphere of consciousness too. And now, as you say, on to the questions…
1) You won’t believe it… You really won’t.
2) Again, wait and see. They do still have the compound, they just can’t afford it…
3) I shouldn’t think so. I also write Cloak & Dagger, and that’s the title I’d prefer any crossover with Spector be on…
4) They’re… a violent team, I’ll say that much.
5) Nope. But check out Steven Crosby’s excellent A-Next on MV2 for another Giant-Man… early indications are it’s good.
6) Rictor… Not really, no. I don’t want this to turn into a mutant team.
7) Spider-Woman’s fate and how it relates to the Rangers will be revealed next issue and the issue following.
8) I don’t think so, no. Again, it’s just that I’m uneasy with leaving that big a gap, though most of them would fit quite nicely.
9) Heh… that, sir, is a damn good question, and one the Mayor’s also asking me. I haven’t the heart to tell him to just wait and see, but you guys can…
Comments to kal.jerico@lineone.net
NEXT TIME
The team take on Mesmero, Spider-Woman and Sharon Ventura. Who’ll be left standing, and will the two women return to the team they never chose to join? For that matter, what’s Red Wolf going to do? And Jack Gersen catches up on developments with Susie…