In an empty, abandoned part of the city, a teenaged girl held her hands up, and the earth shook. Using her powers, she raised some of the ground up, swiveled it in the air, and then clenched her fist, turning the earth into sand before her eyes.
She grinned and turned to a man she was standing with. "Well? How was that?"
Moon Knight (AKA: Marc Spector) nodded, which rippled his silver cloak. "Not bad, Petra. You've come far as my apprentice."
"So does this mean I can finally become my own hero?" Petra (AKA: Charlotte Stone) asked her mentor excitedly. She'd been training so long to be deemed worthy.
"Not even close," Moon Knight replied stoically.
Petra stomped her foot, which inadvertently caused a small rupture of the earth. "Sorry," she began. "But I've been training so hard! Please. I've got to be at least somewhere close to being a hero."
"You've still got much to learn about what it takes to be a hero," Moon Knight explained. "Much. Trust me, the road to becoming a hero is not an easy one."
As Moon Knight began to walk away, Petra rolled her eyes. "Do you always have to be so damn mysterious," she grumbled.
Somewhere else, not too far away, Cloud 9 (AKA: Abigail "Abby" Boylen) was shooting through the mid-afternoon sky. Standing on a plate of condensed air and propelling herself along, she sighed. "I'm going to miss home…" she muttered.
Not having the freedom she desired to express her mutant abilities, Cloud 9 ran away from home. Unsure where she was going to go, or how she was going to take care of herself, she let all of her worries fall behind her as she flew through the skies.
"At least the view's pretty swell," Cloud 9 said to herself as she stopped to gaze at the setting sun.
Gravity (AKA: Greg Willis) was the first out of the door when the closing bell rang. "Another day gone, just hundreds of more mediocre ones to follow," he sighed.
Gravity hated school – not only did he hate the ignorant people and the pointless classes but just the general ideal of school. School was designed to fit people into cliques, ostracizing those that didn't fit in, and Gravity had always felt that he didn't fit in anywhere. Or, to be more specific, that he hadn't found a place where he could fit in.
He knew he was special – he was a mutant. He had powers that he could use to do great good for the world, but he was wasting them. This stress, combined with the peer pressure he was beginning to feel from best friend Ritchie Gilmore about starting to drink, were enough to make Gravity depressed. "There's gotta be something more from me out there," he muttered, looking up to the skies as he started the long walk home.
Little did he know that he wouldn't be finishing that walk.
As Moon Knight and Petra walked away from the abandoned part of the city, Petra sent off a vibration towards an abandoned building in a last-ditch attempt to impress her mentor, who shook his head at her attempt.
Little did they know that the building wasn't completely abandoned. Inside, a vagrant slept, suddenly awoken by the vibrations, and the building began to collapse. "No, no, no!" the vagrant exclaimed. "No! Stop it! Calm the vibrations!"
"Stop them!" Petra and Moon Knight stopped in their tracks upon hearing the exclamation.
"What was that?" Petra asked, surprised. The entire area was supposed to be empty and was slated for demolition to become a park as part of a new green plan of the city.
"Trouble," Moon Knight replied simply. He prepared to run towards the building and rescue whoever was inside when suddenly a giant green monstrosity leapt through the brick walls and landed a few feet away from the mentor and apprentice.
Petra looked between Moon Knight and the beast. "Um, what's that?"
"A threat," Moon Knight replied. He pulled out his staff seemingly from nowhere and charged the green beast, which roared and attempted to punch Moon Knight. He quickly swerved out of the way and barraged the beast with his staff, but the beast quickly turned and grabbed Moon Knight, slamming him into the ground multiple times.
"Leave him alone!" Petra exclaimed, lifting up a large chunk of earth and hurling it at the assailant. The chunk hurled into the monster who relinquished its grip on Moon Knight and went flying back several feet.
Petra ran over to her mentor. "Moon Knight!" she exclaimed. "Are you okay?"
Moon Knight groaned. "Urgh… not at all. Call for help. You can't handle this thing alone." And with those words he passed out.
"HULK SMASH!" the green beast, the Hulk apparently, jumped back but cautiously remained a few feet away from Petra. "Hulk angry at little girl!"
"Yeah, well I'm not too pleased with Hulk," Petra fired back. She turned to her unconscious mentor on the ground. "Sorry, Moons," she muttered, "You don't think I'm ready, but trust me, I am."
Petra raised her arms and her eyes glowed, and the earth suddenly began quaking, disorienting the Hulk. "Hulk don't like puny girl!" Hulk exclaimed, trying to charge at Petra but finding steadily moving difficult. "HULK WILL SMASH!" he shouted loudly.
Having the upper hand, Petra grinned. "I can do this," she murmured to herself as she summoned up multiple chunks of earth and repetitively hurling them at the Hulk. As they pelted him, the Hulk yelled in anger and frustration; catching one in his oversized hand, he hurled it back at Petra with such force that she was knocked into the air and hurled back quite a distance, thankfully landing in a sand pile.
Hulk, with a stupid grin on his face, jumped and landed in the large pile with her. "What puny girl going to do now?" Hulk asked. "No more rocks for puny girl to throw!"
Petra stood up and shook sand out of her clothes. Think, Petra, think, she thought to herself. She quickly looked at where she was standing and an idea formed in her head. Her eyes glowing once more, she lifted up the sand with her powers. Clenching her fist, the sand hardened into multiple chunks of sturdy earth.
"I think I'll do this," Petra replied, plastering Hulk with the tiny earth balls. Unimpressed, he reached forward, grasped her before she was even aware, and threw her up into the air. As she came down, he punched her, and she went soaring through the skies.
As she was soaring, totally catching her by surprise, she knocked into another person midair and the two went crashing to the ground. The girl Petra had knocked into got up, dusting herself off. "I mean, what does a girl have to do to get some damn privacy?" Cloud 9 asked.
She then noticed the gigantic Hulk charging towards them. Helping the cut-up Petra to her feet, Cloud 9 grinned. "Well, you've made a nice friend, I see… and I think I'll be going…"
"Wait!" Petra exclaimed. She quickly rose up a thick wall of earth that the Hulk ran into it, causing a momentary reprieve for the girls. She grasped onto Cloud 9's arm. "Please. I need help. My mentor is somewhere out there, and I wanted to prove to him that I could do this by myself… but I can't." The two were suddenly aware of the Hulk rapidly pounding on the thick wall.
Cloud 9 considered it. "Listen, girl who crashed into me, I'd love to stay and help but that thing certainly doesn't look friendly. So," she added, shaking off Petra's grip on her arm, "I think I'll go."
As Cloud 9 flew off, Hulk finally broke through the wall to face down a weakened, bruised Petra. "Puny girl, Hulk will smash you!"
Petra cracked her knuckles. "Hey, bring it, Hulk. I've got a few more tricks up my sleeve," she added, gesturing to the sleeve tattered by her beating. "Or what's left of my sleeve."
"It's clobberin' time," the Hulk said with his stupid grin and he charged up to her but was suddenly stopped by a particularly strong burst of wind; the wind grew in strength and velocity until it pushed Hulk back several hundred feet.
Petra turned around to see her savior: Cloud 9, who shrugged. "Maybe it's time I stopped running."
Gravity was walking along his normal route when he saw a crowd gathered around an electronics store. "What's going on?" he asked one of the people watching.
"It's some kind of mutant fight, they're saying," the guy replied. "There's the Hulk, they're calling him. And two young girls, but they're getting whooped pretty bad."
Gravity watched the situation unfold on the screen – the two girls were making some decent hits, but the Hulk wasn't slowing down.
"Where is this?" Gravity asked the man.
"The abandoned district, they're saying," the man replied.
I know what I have to do, Gravity thought to himself, looking over in that direction.
"We're kind of getting our asses handed to us," Cloud 9 called over to Petra. Petra was loading levitating chunks of earth and Cloud 9 was blowing them into Hulk with strong force, but he was refusing to back down.
"HULK SMASH!" he exclaimed.
As he started to approach the two girls, something heavy dropped down in front of him. "Hi," came the voice of the person who punched the Hulk and knocked him back several feet.
"Who is that strong hunka hunka burnin' love?" Cloud 9 asked flirtatiously, making Petra laugh.
"Whoever he is, he's probably saving our lives," she replied.
Gravity calmly walked up to Hulk. "Hi, Mister Hulk."
"HULK SMASH!" Hulk exclaimed again. He attempted to lift Gravity into the air to smash him, but found that Gravity was too heavy. "WHAT?" Hulk yelled loudly. "WHY CAN HULK NOT LIFT!"
"I can alter my weight at will," Gravity explained. "So I'm just making myself so heavy that you won't be able to lift me. It might be hard for you to process this information, but…"
Before Gravity could finish, Hulk slugged him across the face. "Heavy man no move, but heavy man still hurt," Hulk snickered, battering Gravity's face a few more times, opening up some wounds.
"Well, now you've made me angry, and you won't like me when I'm angry!" Gravity exclaimed. Turning to the girls, he shot a thumbs up. "I'm ready whenever you are!"
Gravity leapt into the air lightly and then slammed densely behind Hulk, pinning his arms behind his back. Cloud 9 and Petra nodded and sent chunk after chunk after chunk at the Hulk, and eventually, the barrage wore him down.
"Hulk tired," he whimpered, and collapsed to the ground. The three teenaged heroes gathered around the slumped brute.
"Well, that was… something," Petra offered.
"Something? That was freaking awesome!" Cloud 9 exclaimed. She playfully punched Gravity's shoulder. "Man, you just popped up out of nowhere and saved us! That was ridiculous, dude. Kudos."
"You girls did most of the work," Gravity replied humbly. "I'm no hero."
Above them, they heard a loud sound like millions of helicopters all going off at once. "What's that?" Cloud 9 asked in confusion.
"That'd be S.H.I.E.L.D.," offered a voice. The three teenagers turned towards the sound to see Moon Knight standing, supporting himself with his staff.
"Moon Knight!" Petra exclaimed, running over to her mentor. "You're okay!"
"And I see you called for help just as I told you to," Moon Knight replied. "Good. Being able to follow orders is a necessary requirement of becoming a hero."
Petra blushed. "Well, um…"
"Yep!" Cloud 9 interjected. "She called us and we came. Right, um… guy?"
Gravity nodded. "Yeah, we came to help!"
"So, who're you with?" Moon Knight asked as ropes began to drop from the sky. "Avengers? X-Men? Defenders?"
Cloud 9 and Gravity exchanged glances. "Independents," they both offered at the same time.
"S.H.I.E.L.D.!" Hulk exclaimed suddenly. "HULK NO LIKE!" Before anyone could react, he had already picked himself up and jumped off into the distance.
An African-American man with an eye patch stepped towards them shaking his head. "Damn. We were so close to him that time." He stuck his hand out and Moon Knight shook it. "We meet again, Knight. Is this the apprentice you've been telling me about?"
Moon Knight nodded and prodded Petra. "That's her. These three took on the Hulk all by themselves. They worked pretty well together from the little I saw."
"Do they now?" Nick Fury asked his acquaintance. "Let's have a chat."
A few minutes later, Nick Fury and Moon Knight were staring over at the three teenaged mutants. They'd given their accounts to S.H.I.E.L.D. agents and were talking amongst themselves; Cloud 9 said something that made Gravity and Petra laugh.
"They did work pretty well together," Fury pointed out.
Moon Knight nodded. "And they covered for her. They've already bonded. I can imagine it'd be difficult to separate them." They stood in silence for a few moments. "The other two don't have anywhere else to go, and Petra's been waiting for an opportunity like this. If you allow it, I'll watch over them."
Fury considered this for a few minutes. "Teenagers! Come over here," he bellowed. When they arrived, he started talking again. "Listen. You three worked well together as a team. And the world knows that we need more able-bodied heroes on our side, especially young ones. Now Moon Knight has agreed to watch over you should you all accept what we offer – the three of you forming your own team."
"Deal," Petra said without consideration. "I've been waiting so long for a chance to prove myself."
"I'm in, too," Gravity added. He'd finally found somewhere he felt he fit in with.
Cloud 9 thought about it for a few moments. "Well, I've got nothing better to do, so… ah, why not. I'm in."
"And since Cloud 9 appears to have the most experience using her powers," Moon Knight said, "We've decided to appoint her as the team's first leader."
"Yeah, buddy!" Cloud 9 exclaimed. Petra had been initially expecting this honor but respected Moon Knight's reasoning; she'd only been using her powers for the past three years or so.
"You'll figure out all of the other big details in the days to come," Fury finished. "Now, if there's any other questions…"
"What's our name?" Gravity asked. "I mean, if we're going to be a superhero team… what's our name going to be?"
Nick Fury grinned. "Teenagers, welcome to New Initiative."
And that's the pilot chapter, Issue #1! This story has much more tales to tell in the other 25 issues to come. Chapters coming up will include new additions to the team and the inclusion of some well-known Marvel characters.
The main thing I'm trying to do with this story is include more of the obscure Marvel characters. Before I started digging around, I had no idea who Petra, Gravity, or Cloud 9 were. And there are many more obscure and popular characters to be featured!
I intend to tackle some important Marvel storylines with also thrusting some of my own into them. I hope you liked this chapter – there's much more to come. Please read and review!