The Brat Pack (Throughout the 1980s)
Inception – This League set itself apart from many of its predecessors for several reasons. First, unlike other Leagues throughout history, it served no government, nor did it have a powerful patron that sponsored it. In fact, due to the anarchist leanings of its leader, and her history with dealing with less than helpful powerful institutions, the League was in many ways explicitly anti-authoritarian, much preferring to deal with crises their own way without outside inference that they deemed untrustworthy. This tendency towards rebelliousness would become more prominent as the League would go on and clash with forces aligned with the conservative governments of the 1980s.
Second, while the League was primarily fixed in the 1980s, it did not go through the decade linearly. Instead, due to the League's access to a time machine (and lack of government restricts on how they could use it, unlike the 1988 American League led by Dr. Emmett Brown), the group frequently went from one year in the decade to another during their adventures. As a result, trying to determine how long the League lasted chronologically is something of a pointless exercise, which this chronicle will not entertain.
Finally, the very reason for the team's existence was extraordinary even by League standards. Brought together by Dorothy McShane, or Ace, as she preferred to be called, it was formed as a consequence of a cosmic-level conflict known only as the Time War. Ace saw that the intergalactic conflict was putting the Earth in jeopardy through temporal ripple effects, a sort of cosmic fallout that was primarily affecting her 'home' decade of the 1980s. These ripples distorted humanity's collective timeline, creating dangerous branching points in time that if not dealt with would create countless nightmarish and dystopian futures for the entire human race.
Ace begged the Time Lords, all-powerful alien stewards of time, to shield her home from these aftershocks, but her pleas were ignored as unimportant to the larger war. With the Time Lords unwilling to help, and her mentor 'The Professor' long-missing, she was forced to seek allies of her own. Thus, the Brat Pack was formed, a group of mostly young adults whom Ace met mostly at random, trying to fix a problem that no else seemed willing to confront or believe in.
Members
Dorothy 'Ace' McShane - Time's Vigilante, the Seventh's Ward, Friendleader, and Ace, are just some of the monikers and names that this brash young time traveler had been known to use over the years. Originally a just teenage girl from London, England, Ace had become the companion of the alien time traveler known as the Doctor. She spent years traveling with him throughout time and space but eventually grew disillusioned with the man after his constant lies and manipulations led to the death of someone she cared for. Afterwards, she traveled alone across the universe until her wandering led her to the Time Lord homeworld of Gallifrey, where she became the first human to enroll in their legendary time academy. Joining the Gallifreyan temporal policing service known as the Celestial Intelligence Agency after graduating, Ace tried to adhere to the rules and regulations of the CIA but found them just as stifling and controlling as her old mentor. This tension eventually came to ahead when the Time Lords refusal to listen to her fears about the Earth's safety forced her to abandon the agency. Stealing a TARDIS, a highly advanced, and spatially impossible, time machine beyond even what human chrononauts such as Dr. Emmett Brown or Jacob von Hogflume could even imagine, Ace returned to the Earth and formed the Brat Pack. Even after all her experiences and adventures through time, Ace was still at heart a rebellious and opinionated young woman, whose tough, streetwise exterior, and love for making explosives, hid a depth of compassion for the downtrodden.
Leroy Green – A martial artist from New York City, Leroy had achieved the final level of martial arts mastery after confronting and defeating the once infamous Kung-Fu master and gang leader Sho'Nuff, the Shogun of Harlem. This allowed him to tap into 'The Glow,' a physically empowering mystical chi energy not too dissimilar to the supernatural abilities used by other famous martial artists, such as Danny Rand and Shang-Chi. Leroy himself was a kind and thoughtful young man with a sincere respect for Chinese culture and a personal admiration of Bruce Lee, who he considered his role model. Leroy joined the Brat Pack after Ace helped him permanently disband the Gramercy Riffs, which had been taken over by his old nemesis Sho'Nuff, who had planned on using the gang, and its many criminal allies, in a plot to first take his revenge against Leroy and then move on to take over the entire city as the Duke of New York.
Alex Rogan - One of last of the once great Starfighters, this ace GunStar pilot, had once just been an average teenager living a mostly dead-end existence. That was until his high score in a video game got him noticed by the Star League, a united federation of planets dedicated to mutual defense from intergalactic threats, who had used the game as a secret scouting tool. While at first hesitant about getting involved in an intergalactic war that he knew little about, Alex took to being a Starfighter naturally, saving the Star League from the invading Ko-Dan Armada and even deciding to stay in space and rebuild the Starfighters. Alex first met Ace when she was still traveling with the Doctor, the two having helped save the entire Star League from a plot concocted by the despot Ming the Merciless. Thus, when she asked Alex to join her own budding League he was torn between his duties to the Star League and his desire to protect his former home. Ultimately, Alex chose to aid Ace in her mission, believing correctly that it wouldn't be long until the worlds of the Star League were affected by the consequences of the Time War and began to suffer their own fractured timelines.
Charlene 'Charlie' McGee - While all the members of the Brat Pack had at one time or another faced challenges that left them with traumas they'd prefer to forget, Charlie's past before joining the League likely exceeds them all (with the possible exception of Ash) when it came to tragedy and injustice. The child of two former university students who had gained meta-human abilities after unknowingly volunteering in a secret government experiment, Charlie had inherited both of her parent's powers and much more, being capable of mind control, telepathy, telekinesis, precognition, and most strikingly pyrokinesis. Unfortunately, despite the best efforts of her parents to live a normal life, her abilities caught the attention of 'The Shop,' the very government organization that had given her parents their powers in the first place. Determined to use Charlie for military purposes, the Shop's agents tracked her family down, murdering her mother and capturing her and her father. Charlie eventually managed to escape the Shop's facility, but not without her father sacrificing himself to ensure her escape. Afterwards, Charlie tried to expose the Shop's and the government's wrongdoings but found that major publications were either unwilling to believe her or were too afraid of backlash to run her story. Defeated, alone, and believing she was only one willing to stop the Shop, Charlie for a time went on her own private crusade against them, tracking down their remaining facilities and destroying them one after another. It was ultimately an encounter with Ace in 1984, where she talked Charlie out of destroying the once Shop affiliated Hawkins Institute, that Charlie realized that she'd be able to do more good as part of a team than alone. While the youngest member of the Brat Pack, Charlie was without a doubt the most powerful, her constantly growing psychic powers making her nigh-invincible. In terms of personality, Charlie was more intelligent, determined and serious-minded, than most girls her age. She also notably always made sure to reign in her emotions due to her powers tendency to react to particularly strong ones, such as anger or stress.
Ashley 'Ash' Williams - This young man's recruitment in the Brat Pack was actually a mistake on Ace's part. Thinking that recruiting a person with experience with fighting the supernatural would be vital for her League given the varied threats she believed it would encounter, she tried to use her TARDIS to pluck Ash right after he had defeated the demonic Deadites, but before he was sent to the Dark Ages through a supernatural time portal. Unfortunately, her calculations were off, and she ended up grabbing an Ash from an 'older' timeline. This Ash was not the capable demonslayer that Ace had hoped to recruit, but instead a terrified and traumatized young man who had been forced to kill his possessed friends and survive a night of horrors. Knowing that sending him back to his own timeline would likely mean his erasure from existence due to the 'true' overtaking the older one, Ace decided to allow Ash to stay with the Brat Pack and live in her TARDIS until she found a way to merge him with his parallel self. Ash was more than grateful for her hospitality, and really only wanted a place to recover them his trauma. While he did eventually earn his place among the extraordinary members of the Brat Pack, Ash was more or less tagged along during their early adventures, desperately trying to help however he could but still tormented by what he's seen and done.
Johnny Five - A robot created for military purposes that had become self-aware after being struck by lightning, Johnny 5 was, in the philosophical sense anyway, alive. Created by NOVA Labs, a prominent military tech company that in the 80s managed to rival both the veteran Stark Industries and fellow newcomer Cyberdyne Systems for a time due to its profitable contract with the US military, Johnny had escaped from their research lab shortly after becoming self-aware. Meeting friendly humans who not only accepted him as a sentient being, but even helped him fight off NOVA Labs when they wanted to capture and reprogram him, the A.I. had been laying low at a one of his new friends secluded cabin for some time when Ace showed up at his door with an offer to join her League, stating that she needed someone with advanced technical know-how and that he'd get to experience the world like never before. Unbeknownst to Johnny at the time Ace had ulterior motives for recruiting him, which this chronicle will explain in detail later on. Johnny was decidedly the most carefree and jovial member of the Brat Pack, his comedic nature and childlike wonder at anything new making him the group's collective sidekick.
Team Dynamics - True Companions. Despite their disparate origins, experiences, and talents, the Brat Pack worked well together throughout the entirety of its existence and is likely one of the most cohesive Leagues ever formed. Much of this camaraderie can be chalked up to the fact that unlike many of the Leagues that came before them or after, Brat Pack were friends first and colleagues in a League second. In fact, when not on strange adventures they would socialize amongst each other like normal teenagers and young adults, using Ace's TARDIS as not only their mobile headquarters, but also as a shared home where they'd engage in a variety of activities like partying, having movie nights, and even playing early tabletop RPGs together. This laidback atmosphere was directly encouraged by Ace, who despite technically be the leader of the League refused the title and preferred that major decisions be made together as a group.
Adventures
- Going to Tromaville, New Jersey, and teaming up with town's local superhero, the misshapen but benign Toxic Avenger, to wipe out a horde of man-eating mutants. Originally from the radioactive sewers of the New York, these mutants had migrated to Tromaville in a plot to recoup their numbers by sabotaging the town's nuclear plant and causing a meltdown that would have mutated the entire community's already mutation-prone residents. It would have been the first chain in a series of events that would have led to World War Three, but thanks to Johnny and the Toxic Avenger delivering an explosive designed by Ace to the mutant's heavily contaminated underground den, such a nightmarish future was avoided. (1984)
- Clashing a Battle of the Bands held on Halloween night in the formerly puritanical small town of Bomont. The town's youth had invited several relative unknowns, like the Taekwondo practicing members of Dragon Sound and the stoner duo of the Wyld Stallyns, to their high school to perform, only for them, and the musicians, to become possessed by the demonic spirits of the heavy metal rock star, Sammi Curr, and his literal bride from Hell, Mary Lou. After an attempt at physically attacking, and then blowing up, the two spirits failed due to their incorporeal nature, the Brat Pack regrouped and used the TARDIS to quickly travel to New York City and get the aid of a quartet of parapsychologists. Even with these scientists help though the fight was hard fought and only ended with the Brat Pack being victorious when Ash, triggered by the all too familiar carnage occurring around him, had a psychotic break and paved a bloody path through the possessed teens and musicians allowing the scientists reach the spirits and contain them, thus putting an end to the mass possession with a relatively minimal loss of life. Notably, it was this early adventure where the Brat Pack got their name, having been called such sarcastically by the leader of the parapsychologists. Ace and the rest of the group took the insult in stride and appropriated it for lack of a better name. (1989)
- While the Brat Pack rarely used the TARDIS to time travel outside the 1980s, due to Ace's fear of either accidentally messing up the past or being trapped in a false possible future, they did make a few noteworthy exceptions and traveled into the very dystopian timelines they wanted to prevent from even existing. Travelling to the ruins of Neo-Tokyo in 2019, they helped a young woman by the name of Kei escape from her country's fascist government which feared the psychic powers she was developing. This act of kindness ultimately backfired though when Kei powers overwhelmed her just like it did all the other psychics of her timeline. In another possible 2019, they tried to discover a way to extend the lifespans of a genetic slave caste but found that even with advanced Gallifreyan and Star League medical science there was nothing to be done. In a timeline where a bureaucratic and totalitarian state ruled the world, they tried to create a resistance and liberate its oppressed people. Similarly, this too didn't work out as the Brat Pack had hoped as even after they helped bring down one corrupt state another one simply took its place and was just as incompetent as its predecessor. Surprisingly, their most successful mission in the future was an excursion to a post-apocalyptic wasteland in Australia. There they meet a small tribe of semi-feral children who had taken up residence in the ruins of Sydney. While the children were at first apprehensive about receiving the Brat Pack's help they eventually accepted them and let the group educate them about the 'Old World' and how to make their small community thrive.
- Using Leroy's knowledge of the world of martial arts and Chinese culture, the Brat Pack foiled the nefarious plans of Lo Pan, a twice-dead sorcerer from ancient China. Seeking to regain a physical form, Lo Pan sought to possess the body of a great warrior and thus sponsored an underground martial arts tournament in San Francisco's Chinatown, wherein the final victor would end being his host. Knowing the only way to make Lo Pan reveal himself in the open, and thus leave him susceptible to "borrowed" spirit-trapping tech, was by participating in the tournament, Leroy entered it himself. While he was successful in defeating former US captain Frank Dux and the wannabe American ninja Joe Armstrong, Leroy unexpectedly lost to Daniel LaRusso's signature crane kick. Realizing that the young martial artist was doomed without his help, Leroy tried to convince Daniel that Lo Pan's prize was nothing of sort, but found that he was unwilling to listen until his former mentor, Keisuke Miyagi, was convinced himself of Leroy's claims. Together the trio of martial artists, along with the rest of the Brat Pack and the other contestants of the tournament were able to banish Lo Pan's legions of demonic servants, led by the archdemon Sardo Numspa, and permanently seal away the sorcerer's evil spirit once and for all. (1986)
- When a telepathic cry for help alerted Charlie to the existence of another psychic out in the world, she asked the rest of the Brat Pack to help her find them. They of course agreed and using Alex's cloaked GunStar they flew across the US, eventually pinpointing the psychic call in a small, secluded town in Maine. They quickly discover though that they weren't the only ones who had heard the call. Another group had arrived before them. Tethered by a growing psychic connection, these two groups quickly found one another in the town's local library. There the Brat Pack was introduced to a young girl by the name of Jane Hopper and her party of friends. While Charlie and Jane were overjoyed to meet someone with similar powers, they both quickly realized that neither of them had sent the cry for help. Sensing the psychic transmission was somewhere under the town, Charlie convinced everyone that there was probably a hidden Shop facility down in the town's sewers, though Jane felt more wary about going down there for reasons she could not yet explain. It turned out that Charlie was wrong. There was no secret Shop facility and no psychic child in need of help either in those sewers. The telepathic cry that Charlie and Jane had felt was a deception orchestrated by a shapeshifting creature that Ace would later surmise to have originally come from 'Todash Space,' a nightmarish realm of infinite nothingness that exists between universes and is inhabited by abominations so monstrous and powerful that even the Time Lords feared to tread there. The creature sought to consume a 'shining' child so it could more quickly regenerate from the wounds it recently suffered in a battle with a group of children that managed to harm it. Fortunately, the monster did not anticipate for its intended victims to bring friends. Thus, when it tried its typical predatory tactics it found itself unable to succinctly terrify its resilient quarry. The creature was desperate though and might have succeed in devouring Charlie, who was temporarily mesmerized when the creature took the form of her deceased father, if not for arrival of Carrie White, who was in the area and had sensed the psychic cry but knew it to be a trap due to her experience with dealing with the supernatural forces that stalked Maine. Since she was momentarily delayed dealing with zombies in the nearby town of Ludlow she could only send a psychic transmission of own, warning the other psychics of the danger, a warning that only Jane picked up. Together the three psychics were able to concentrate their powers and immolate the shapeshifter, seemingly destroying it for good. Afterwards, all parties involved in vanquishing the monster had a celebration of sorts for the victory. Alex took a few of Jane's friends on a ride on the GunStar, while Ace offered them the chance to play a game of D&D using an edition from the future. Charlie, Jane, and Carrie discussed the differing tactics they used to control their powers and how they their powers might be all connected to experiments done by the Shop. And Carrie told Ace of the existence another League of youths led by her former League of Extraordinary Investigators teammate, Velma Dinkley. Ultimately, all three parties departed, but not before promising to keep contact with one another and swearing come to the other's defense whenever they were in need. (1989)
- Freeing kidnapped Colorado teenagers from Project: Red Dawn, a virtual reality scenario meant to brainwash American youths into accepting Red Scare paranoia. Created by the Reagan administration as a necessary evil, the simulation used the sensory transfer technology of Project: Brainstorm, an early form of benign virtual reality technology that was re-purposed for military use, and the appropriated mind control techniques of G.I. Joe nemesis, Dr. Brian Binder, to force its teenage victims to live out a horrific, if highly improbable, scenario, where the US is invaded by an alliance of Soviet and Cuban paratroopers and they, must take up arms to defend themselves as child guerrilla soldiers. The Brat Pack's destruction of Project: Red Dawn's central indoctrination facility in Calumet, Colorado, and leaking of the facility's activities to a young Edison Carter, is what ultimately started their less than cordially, and often violent, relationship with the Reagan government, and other right-wing Western governments in the 80s. (1984)
- Avoiding several attempts at capture, or outright execution, at the hand's various conservative government agencies and operatives, who either wanted to stop their "terrorist" actions or sought to seize or study the powerful technologies and individuals (Leroy, Charlie, and Johnny especially) the League possessed. The than absurdly well-funded, and most effective mixed task force of the US at the time, the G.I. Joe Team was frequently sent to apprehend the Brat Pack. Led by their field commander Conrad S. Hauser a small squad of Joes almost succeed in capturing them outside Hawkins, Indiana, when they were just leaving the town in the GunStar after visiting friends there. Shooting down the GunStar using a VAMP Mark II and leaving the Brat Pack stranded and barely alive in a remote country pumpkin patch, the Joes would have likely succeeded in their mission if not for Charlie momentarily using the full extent of her powers and freezing the minds of the Joes just long enough for the League to escape. The effort almost killed her though and the League was forced to seek the help of Carrie White to treat her psychic exertion. While this was the closest the Joe Team ever came to capturing the group, there were several other violent encounters. The most notable likely being Alex's dogfight with G.I. Joe ace pilot, Brad J. Armbruster, where he got to avenge the loss of the GunStar 01 and Leroy's near-fatal single combat with the Joe Team's mysterious ninja operative, Snake Eyes. The Brat Pack also ran afoul of the UK's two major alien-hunting agencies, the mostly benign U.N.I.T and the morally compromised and xenophobic Torchwood Institute, the latter of the pair frequently attempted to capture Ace's TARDIS for study, and Ace herself due to her connection to the Doctor and half-Time Lord nature. Lastly, the 1988 American League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was once ordered by Reagan to neutralize the Brat Pack, but given that the youths had secretly saved the American League from being trapped in the cyber-realm of Tron, they deliberately failed to catch them. Eventually, the frustrated president decided the whole pursuit was a waste of taxpayer money and not worth effort for catching "Just a bunch of anarchistic punks," and stopped sending teams after them. (1981-1989)
- Encountering and allying with the Mystery League, a group of young paranormal investigators, to track down what both teams believed to be a group of vampires exsanguinating people all across the state of New Mexico. It is said that the teams at first got along quite well, with Charlie bonding with the Mystery League's own psychic, Tina Shepard, and informing her of the existence of others like them, Ash talking with Nancy Thompson about his traumas and how best to treat them, and Ace getting advice on leadership from Velma Dinkley. Regrettably, this comradery momentarily ceased when the two teams found the vampires and captured them. It turned out that the bloodthirsty vampires they were looking for were both children. For the Mystery League this wasn't the time they had encountered child-monsters and though they explained to the Brat Pack that they would take no joy from it that they had to destroy the creatures. The Brat Pack were unconvinced, to say the least, and called out the other League for having a werewolf on their team and yet obviously not considering him dangerous and worthy of destruction. Ace, in particular, argued that the children might be cured using Time Lord technology created during a Gallifreyan conflict with 'Great Vampires,' though even she admitted it was a long shot. Dinkley was sympathetic to Ace's convictions but informed her that a cure for the children was impossible now given that they had already killed so many already and as consequence were damned. Ace understandably considered this explanation to be nonsense, and warned the Mystery League of what would happen if they tried to kill the children. While accounts vary on who made the first move (this chronicle estimates that Edgar Frog of the Mystery League was the most likely culprit given his extreme hatred of vampires) the two Leagues clashed, both with the intent of simply disabling on the other. The two League were equally matched with Charlie and Tina both straining themselves using their psychic powers to fight one another, Leroy and Scott Howard dueled each other with Scott using his lycanthropic abilities to match the power of Leroy's 'Glow," while Alex and Edgar got into an old-fashioned brawl. Ultimately, the question of which League would come up on top would be a moot point as the two vampire children used the fight as an opportunity to attack a distracted Dinkley. Ironically enough it was Ace that saved the aging investigator, using one of Edgar's dropped stakes to quickly impale both vampires. With that, both Leagues stopped their fighting. While still alarmed by what just happened, Ace did concede to Dinkley she was right about the children. Afterwards, both Leagues made their apologies and promised to maintain contact with each other in case another threat warranting both two teams cropped up, though their relationship was never as warm as it was when they first meet. (1986)
- When Johnny suddenly disappeared from his cabin residence, his teammates were able to locate him using a tracking device that Ace had secretly put into the robot without his knowledge, stating that she knew that Johnny was always fated to be one day taken by one of the many robotic and computing corporations of the era, and used as the fundamental basis for a genocidal A.I.'s neural matrix. Knowing that the creation of such an A.I. would led to another dystopian future for humanity but not knowing which corporation would ultimately be responsible, Ace secretly installed Johnny with the tracker knowing that it would lead her to the lab where the A.I. would be conceived. While Charlie, Leroy, and Alex were less than thrilled by this deception they nevertheless still used the tracker to find their friend in the robotics labs of Cyberdyne System's branch office in Detroit. Their plan to rescue him didn't go as they had planned though and what followed after the Brat Pack was in the lab was anarchy. As it turned out Johnny was not the only robot captured by Cyberdyne Systems. An android named V.I.C.I was also stolen by Cyberdyne from her creator, Ted Lawson, a lesser known robotics engineer working for Cyberdyne System's industry rival United Robotronics and a protégé of the deceased genius android maker Dr. Goldfoot. Ted Lawson was so desperate to find V.I.C.I, who had come to see as a daughter, that he sought the aid of the infamous hyper-violent cyborg vigilante Robo-Cop and begged the man-machine to find her. Regrettably, for the Brat Pack, he succeeded at the just the same time as they did. Using his datalink to clandestine FBI, CIA, and G.I. Joe watchlists, he identified the Brat Pack as terrorists and opened fired on the group. If not for Charlie's telekinetic powers and Leroy's legendary bullet-catching skills, Ace, Alex, and Ash would have died almost instantaneously in a hail of gunfire. Fortunately, for the Brat Pack, they were saved from this battle by another one suddenly getting in the way. Corporate espionage had tipped off both Omni Consumer Products and NOVA Labs to Cyberdyne having managed to capture to not one, but two sentient robots, one which was the latter's former asset. Both corporations had sent agents to infiltrate Cyberdyne's Detroit office and take the robots for themselves. With these agents suddenly engaging with each other and Robo-Cop and the Brat Pack, it became clear to both would-be rescuers that this new element demanded a temporary alliance until both squads of corporate operatives were dealt with. After eliminating the agents, destroying the lab, and escaping from Cyberdyne with Johnny and V.I.C.I, Robo-Cop thanked the reunited Brat Pack for assisting him in his mission but pressed that if they returned to Detroit "There will be trouble", a threat that the youths took seriously. Johnny for his part was, perhaps unsurprisingly, largely unaffected by the revelation of Ace's secret motives for getting him to join the League, stating that he understood her reasons. That said, he was noted to have reiterated a phrase he had picked up during the League's adventures, "Friends don't lie" something that Ace dedicated herself to standing by after the mission. (1987)
- Given the more laidback nature of the Brat Pack, the group routinely traveled for recreational purposes, using the TARDIS or the GunStar to go to unusual places and meet interesting individuals and groups. For instance, they went to sunny Beach City, Delmarva, to visit the beautiful Crystal Temple there and try to catch a glimpse of the strange aliens that inhabited it. Similarly, they braved the stinking sewers of New York City to try and find a quartet reptilian mutants that were apparently behind the defeat of infamous ninja crime lord Shredder, but found nothing but rotten pizza slices and mutated homeless people for their efforts. The Brat Pack tended to be more successful in their explorations whenever they joined forces with other extraordinary groups. Together with Buckaroo Banzai's Hong Kong Cavaliers, a band that the Brat Pack became familiar after helping them take down the supervillains of the World Crime League, they managed to temporarily open a gateway to the Upside Down and for a time to explore the strange parallel dimension. Fortunately, it did not take long for both groups to regret the experiment and cease further explorations. In joint cases with Velma Dinkley's Mystery League they were able to not only rediscover the Nebraskan town of Gatlin, and rescue the brainwashed children that were trapped there, and also give Ash a small amount of emotional closure by returning to the haunted cabin in Michigan backcountry where his last group of friends were possessed and help him bury their mutilated bodies. They also retrieved the infamous Necronomicon for safekeeping while there. Lastly, the League frequently traveled to seemingly mundane towns like Hawkins, Indiana, and Derry, Maine, along with more fantastic worlds such as Eternia, Third Earth, and Fantasia in the Land of Fiction, to visit the many friends and allies they had made during their various adventures through time and space. (1980-1989)
- Possibly the single most important adventure the Brat Pack was ever involved with was saving the entire Earth, and who knows how many other planets, from the world-eater Unicron. As the Time War between the Time Lords and Daleks began to escalate, both factions started to recruit other alien species to serve as proxies and fodder for their conflict. One of these auxiliaries ended up being Unicron, the monstrous Cybertronian god of entropy, who was forcefully made a giant Dalek-slave unit by the Daleks creator and master Davros. Using the god-machine as a living weapon of planetary destruction, Davros planned on testing Unicron's destructive capabilities by destroying the homeworld of his archenemies favorite species before using it to exterminate the Time Lords of Gallifrey. Finding out about Earth's pending extermination through her former colleagues in the CIA, Ace tried to contact the Doctor, but as always, she was unable to reach him. Realizing that the Time Lords wouldn't bother to help save the Earth either, Ace and the Brat Pack put out a rallying cry across known space and beyond asking for allies to come to the Earth's defense. They called in old debts and sought the help of old friends, traveling to Eternia, Third Earth, Arus, Etheria, Mongo, Cybertron and many other worlds in the short time they had. All in all, the Brat Pack gathered one of the largest, and most diverse, fleets of spacecraft ever brought together in one place. While listing absolutely all the individuals, groups and planetary governments that heeded the Brat Pack's call for help would be impossible for this chronicle, it will still list the most remarkable ones that made their appearance; The Star League government, of course, was more than willing to help defend the homeworld of their greatest pilot and was the first of the Brat Pack's stellar allies to lend support in the form it's still small force of Starfighters. Along with the Starfighters, the last remaining space-worthy ship of the once great Thunderean ThunderFleet, the Starship Eternia, the Silverhawks attack craft Miraj, John Blackstar's experimental proton-powered spaceship, a sentient Trimaxion drone ship, the legendary transforming space mecha of Arus, the repaired Autobot flagship 'The Ark,' and the fleets of the Asogians, Black Lectroids, Melmacians, and even the incorporeal 'Starmen' were all present to come to the Earth's defense. The Brat's Pack's plan was for Alex to led the alliance and have it serve as a distraction for the enslaved Unicron and the fleet of Dalek escort ships that surrounded him while the rest of the Brat Pack used the TARDIS to teleport into the heart of god-machine, their goal being to find and destroy the shield generators that made Unicron almost invincible. With them gone Alex and the alliance would be able to destroy the Dalek command node that enslaved the planet-eater to Davros's will. Avoiding roving Daleks, the Brat Pack reached the shield generator's chamber only to be taken unawares by Davros and his Dalek guards. Davros knew about the Brat Pack's presence in Unicron from the very beginning but allowed them to believe they had outwitted him so he could relish seeing their hopes of success turned into the ultimate failure as he prepared Unicron to destroy their fleet and then the Earth. Fortunately, for the Brat Pack, the alliance, and all of humanity, Ash was able to save the day by reciting a memorized passage from the Necronomicon, having secretly been studying the tome in an attempt to finally conquer his fear of it. Miraculously, the gambit worked with many of the Daleks being immediately possessed by demonic spirits. With Davros and his minions panicking and fighting their possessed counterparts, the Brat Pack used the opening to destroy the shield generators with one of Ace's Nitro-bombs and escape on the TARDIS. With the shields went down, Alex and the fleet were finally able to attack the exposed Dalek command node, though it took Alex making a nigh-impossible shot to destroy it. When Unicron once more in control of his body he began to use his internal and external defenses to destroy the genocidal aliens that thought they could control him. Once he destroyed the Dalek escort ships, Unicron, to everyone's collective relief, did not continue towards the Earth but instead made for a new destination: Skaro. (1989)
Dissolution – Shortly after dealing with Davros and Unicron, Ace came to the realization that while humanity's proper future was finally secured, with the dystopic divergent timelines largely no longer springing up, the Time War was only getting more intense and destructive for other parts of the universe. Believing the Time Lords couldn't be trusted to do their duty and protect the entire universe, but also unwilling to continue to endanger the lives of her friends in a war that she didn't know she, or anyone else for that matter, could really win, Ace tearfully decided to disband the League and fight the war by herself as Time Vigilante's.
Final Fates
As already mentioned, Ace went on to fight the Time War alone. Some say she once again traveled with the Doctor at some point in the conflict, but this chronicle has no hard evidence about what she did during the War, whether she did meet the Doctor again, or even if she's still alive.
Leroy returned to New York City, and after marrying his long-time girlfriend Laura opened up his own dojo for poor local families unable to afford typical dojo fees. Leroy quickly became a prominent community leader and was a significant influence in lowering local gang activity. He still lives in New York City to this day and has become something of an unmasked local hero in the same vein as Luke Cage.
Alex went back to service the Star League and used his reputation as the Hero of the Battle of Sol to become a respected ambassador to the various different species that wished to join the rising Star League. As the Daleks and Time Lords rampaged across the universe, Alex and his Starfighters became an almost universal symbol of hope and resistance for the hundreds of alien species caught in the middle. Like Leroy, Alex eventually married his girlfriend Maggie Gordon. The two would go down in the annals of Star League history as two of the best pilots the Starfighters ever produced.
Charlie wasn't on her own for long after the Brat Pack disbanded. Making her way to Maine, she ended up being officially adopted by Carrie White and given a new identity. Together the two explored the full capabilities of their psychic powers and many years later were able to finally expose the criminal activities of the Shop to the American public.
True to her word Ace found a way to merge Ash with his 'true' self before leaving to fight in the Time War. How she managed to do this is something of a mystery, but it is said that after failing to get help from various fellow time travelers on Earth and almost losing hope for a solution, a mysterious woman who only went Ms. Thirteen arrived and offered Ace her expert assistance. Unfortunately, the merger seemed to have erased much of Ash's memories of being part of the Brat Pack, as when the Mystery League meet him during a mission against a legion of demons in a haunted house, he had only fragmentary memories of having met them once before and recalled almost nothing about the Brat Pack. For better or worse Ash never was able to fully remove himself from what happened in that cabin years ago and if reports are true he still encounters and fights Deadites to this very day.
Johnny 5 conversely has had a much more fortunate existence after the Brat Pack was no more, succeeding in proving his right to life as a sentient being in open court, a legal victory that would have several unexpected repercussions for other robots and androids, and for companies like Cyberdene and Nova Labs, for years to come. Johnny went on to become a major advocate for A.I. rights and a successful comedian.
Though they never did see Ace again, the remaining members of the Brat Pack (with the exception of Ash) did keep in contact with each as best they could and remained close friends even years after the disbandment of their League. If reports can be believed they even make the yearly effort of all meeting together and reminiscing about their adventures in the 80s.
Author's Notes – First off I want to give credit to mrmachination's The League of Radical Dudes at Deviantart. His 80s LOEG was a big inspiration for mine. More people should really check out his/her work.
Had a lot more fun with writing this League than the last one, though I think I might have overindulged in some places. Oh well. Live and learn.
The next League is also going to be reviewer's choice again. I was planning on finally doing the Blaxploitation League for February and Black History Month, but I suddenly got a couple interesting ideas for a Die Zwielichthelden write-up.
Tell me what you think about the Brat Pack and which League I should do next in the reviews. And as always I hope you joined reading about this radical, tubular and totally, like, bodacious League.