New Slingers

The original Slingers were four teenagers granted powers, for the most part, by a being called Mephisto. For the true adventures of the Slingers, or any other actual marvel Character please purchase the works and your local comic retailer. The Characters Black Light and Peacekeeper are my property. The rest was created by marvel comics.

Chapter One; Attendance sheets

It had been almost a month since she'd seen Johnny. A month since the suit had been returned to her. It was amazing really. It could be worn under her clothing, sleeves rolled up, and no one was the wiser.

She could feel the difference in how her body operated when she wore the costume. It was truly eerie. She knew her heart wasn't beating. She knew her body was cold to the touch (something she remedied by using hand warmers and not touching people much). She even knew she was slightly pale. She knew that in actuality, the suit made her dead. Yet she was living still. It was confusing, and how all of that tied into her teleportation power was even more confusing still. It did do one thing that was straight forward though; cut down her trip to work.

As she settled in to her office a hand landed on her back. She turned to see the smiling face of someone who was quickly becoming one of her favorite people; Dr. Sheridan, the head of the psychology department, her boss, and one of her teachers. He almost had to be her favorite person; she was around him so much. "Can I help you Dr. Sheridan?"

"Yes," he said. "I've been wanting to discuss something with you, and I think now might be a good time, can you come with me?"

"Sure thing," she said, taking a glance at her day planner on her desk. She didn't have any appointments that day.

He walked with a warm smile on his face as he led her from the main student union across the campus to the construction site. I was a building that had been annihilated during the latest attack on the campus last semester. The facility had pretty much been abandoned all summer long, and it wasn't scheduled to be completed for another year yet. No one knew what was keeping the construction held up. She was a bit creeped out by how silent he was. She'd never seen him quiet for this long.

"Here we are," he said. "We should have some privacy here."

She swallowed and took a step back as he turned around. "Dr. Sheridan, what are we doing here?"

"What I wanted to talk to you about," he explained. "It required that we be fairly alone. I figured you'd rather not have someone over hear that you're a super-hero."

She stopped dead. Johnny's identity, as well as those of the rest of his west-coast team, was out in the public. But she and Eddie had never revealed that they were heroes. "How… how did you know that?" she asked, taking another step backwards.

"I have powers too," he explained. He sat on a large cable spool and leaned against a plaster wall. "I used to call myself the Heart Break Kid when I was a teenager. You see I can sense other people's heartache and am kind of drawn to it… Its complicated to explain. The long story short, I feed off of negative emotions, part of the reason I work at a college. I leave behind feelings of closure and relief. But, I also assimilate the memories I absorb. You have a lot of heartache in you Cassie, rejection, failures, death. That is a lot for a young woman to handle, especially one with so much potential."

She was still unnerved by all of this.

"So I've slowly been leaching them away, trying to help you."

"Why me?" she asked again.

"You have potential," he said. "I've seen so many people grow into grand heroes. People who had far less potential than you. Tony Stark for example. I was near him at a conference once. Helped him quit drinking." He smiled, obviously proud of that. "He had great potential as a businessman, great potential as an inventor, zero potential as a hero."

"But he's one of the most well known heroes around," she argued.

"Just because you don't have the potential, doesn't mean you can't do something amazing. I remember meeting a young man, had spectacular potential. And now, he's Spider-Man. He worked at it, and looks what he made of himself."

"What does any of this have to do with me?" she asked.

"To be honest," he answered. "Nothing. You have a lot of potential for being a hero, but you've never really tried to use it. I'm not here to foster your potential, I want you to foster other's."

"Wait… you want what?"

He smiled again, an eerie, kind, omniscient smile. "I want you to… teach a class. Your subject is 'Super-hero 101'."

"You must not know much about my 'hero' career," she said. "I failed that course myself. I only lasted a year. I died on my first mission."

"Great," he answered. "Then you know all the things NOT to do." He smiled. "I want them to figure out the things TO do on their own. You'd be there to let them know when they're making mistakes."

"Wait, who is 'Them'?"

"There are three candidates right now," he told her. "They all have excellent potential. One of them has already started on his journey. All you have to do is provide a little knowledge and experience."

She shook her head. "I have none though!"

She smiled and stood. "You have more than you think. Plus I know how well you research meta-humans both heroes and villains, who better to teach them how to be a super-hero than a groupie?" She was silent, and he took that opportunity. "Listen, they'll be meeting in the classroom down the hall from here at seven o'clock tonight. Just meet them. If you're lucky, they'll drop out from the get-go."

She sighed as he walked out.

He poked his head back in to say, "Oh, one last thing, they're meeting here in costume. I left them anonymous notes."

That night se was sitting on a desk that was, for some inexplicable reason, still in the half finished class room where they were all to meet.

The first one came in at six forty-five. He was dressed in white and blue with yellow goggles and a yellow symbol on his chest. She took a hard look at it, it looked like some kind of stylized "X". Was he a mutant?

"Gravity," he introduced himself. "Do I need to sign some roster or something?"

"Um… no, probably not a good idea. Your ID's a secret right?"

"Yeah… I'd rather not give it out…" he paused. "I had someone use me last semester and I'm not looking for an encore."

"Understandable," she said. "I know the feeling."

Just then the second person walked in. This one was an Asian girl with pale skin and dyed black hair. It was well groomed with most of it in a bun in the back. She wore a black leather biker jacket zipped up in the front. The sleeves were rolled up to the Elbows and the same was said for her black jean pants. A white T-shirt could be seen at her collar. She wore a thin black strip mask. "Hey, this is the place right?" she asked.

Dusk nodded. "I'm Dusk," she answered.

"Note said you'd bee teaching. I'm Black Light." She looked at the guy. "Mutant?" she asked.

"No," he said, with a touch of irritation, but lots of irony in his voice. "Why does everyone assume that?"

"Just a guess," Black Light said with attitude. "But it might have something to do with the big "X" on your chest."

"It's not an X," he pouted. "Its four arrows pointing toward the center of a circle."

"Looks like an X," Black Light argued.

Gravity laughed and sat down on a Desk.

Black Light looked around the room a little. She also wore black fingerless gloves.

The last to arrive was wearing a helmet. He was wearing mostly blue with stripes of Red and blue. "I'm Peacekeeper," he introduced himself. The helmet looked like it was hi-tech. The front was a reflective glass piece they couldn't see through. His boots also looked high tech, and he had a shoulder holster on with a gun-like weapon in it. The gloves looked to have extra pockets as did his belt. What surprised them was his sheer size. He was at least seven feet, maybe almost eight. He was thickly built with lots of muscle.

Dusk teleported back to her room for an instant for the list that had been left there. The only way the kids could tell she'd left was the "Bloonk" sound she made as she left and returned. "Well," she said. "That seems to be all of you. Are we ready to start."

There was a collection of "yeah, whatever"s as they agreed, begrudgingly, to start. They seemed about as happy to be there as she was. This would definitely be interesting.