Disclaimer
Streetbeat is a registered trademark of Net Ghost Productions. All trademarked characters, locations, themes, and ideas are used here as official canon fiction of the Streetbeat universe. All other characters are courtesy of DC Comics and Cartoon Network Inc. Use or reproduction of any original characters herein is strictly prohibited by law.
Sorry for the delay, folks. One of my unfortunately characteristic burnout periods. Back to the show!
Bri curled into a ball and tried to think of somewhere other than where she was. Her mind struggled to transport her far from the cold cement floor pressing into her cheek. Try as they might to leave, her thoughts were pounded back into her body by the mob surrounding her that kicked ever part of her it could reach.
Filthy soles pummeled her from all sides. She shuddered, biting back her whimper at each kick. The first time, she had whimpered. This was her do-over. She couldn't go through it a third time. She wasn't sure she would even get the chance. So she gritted her teeth until her jaw clicked. Her scream buzzed silently behind her tongue.
Freak. Bitch. Monster. The slurs rained down on her as heavily as the kicking. The mob screamed at her, berated her, beat every inch of her, wanted to break her. She just had to hold on. Just a little longer. Just a little longer. Hold on. Don't cry. Hold on.
Finally the kicking ceased. The dark room silenced, and the mob around her backed away. Through her tears, she saw a man approach her, parting the retreating mob. He wore a tattered denim jacket with a number sprayed crudely across its front. Bri tried to get up, but nothing in her body worked anymore. It just hurt. So she lay on her back and wheezed while the man loomed over her.
An eternity crawled by until at last, a yellowing smile split his charcoal skin. He pulled a rag out of his pocket and tossed it into her lap. "Wipe your face, freak," he said. "Eights don't cry."
The warehouse shook with thunderous cheering. Those indistinct faces that had been the mob around her moments ago now crowded around her again. She flinched as their hands descended upon her. They hauled her roughly to her feet and bounced her around with congratulatory slaps and punches.
Bri tried to return their smiles. She might have succeeded. Wet numbness pooled in her face, making it impossible to tell. She settled for wiping her eyes with the rag, which she tossed away before her brain could register how much of her blood had soaked into the cloth.
The lights snapped on overhead, illuminating the abandoned warehouse that the Jump City Eighty-Eights had claimed as their own. Stolen car parts littered half of the floor. An old, flipped Honda served as a wobbly perch to the bangers that hadn't been able to crowd around for Bri's initiation. The rest of the bangers dispersed to the pool tables, or to the cracked big-screen TV with the car couches set up at the far end.
Someone handed Bri a cup of something cold and wet. She gulped half of it, and then nearly vomited. Beer. Her face screwed as she downed the entire cup. She had no tolerance, and she hadn't eaten in days, so the alcohol hit her almost as soon as she lowered the cup from her swollen lips. She coughed and tried to smile again.
The man in the jacket grabbed her by the arm and dragged her out of the congratulating circle. Bri stumbled to follow him into a small room separated from the rest of the warehouse by a wall of broken panes. It had once been some kind of office, and still had a desk rusting on three legs. The man ushered Bri inside and pressed her down into the folding chair in front of the desk.
"How you feelin', kid?" the man asked as he sat in the office chair behind the desk. It squeaked under his brawny weight, and was composed of more duct tape than upholstery. "Initiation can get rough. Guys usually go hard on freaks like you. Figure you can take it, y'know?"
Bri's whole face felt like a purple and brown balloon. She couldn't even open her left eye anymore. "'M Fine," she grunted.
He smiled. "Good. 'Cause as of now, you're an Eight. We got your back. We got what you need. You take care of us, and we take care of you." He drew from his jacket a small, white package, and tossed it onto the desk.
A snack cake. A stupid- pre-wrapped snack cake, the kind her grandpa used to hate her eating. It bounced once before Bri snatched it and tore into it with her teeth. She squeezed the cake out of its wrapper, mashing it into her mouth. It disappeared down her throat before she had a chance to taste it.
The man laughed and tossed her another snack cake. "Yeah. We got your back. And you got ours. Eight for life. Ain't that right, freak?"
Bri choked halfway through the second cake. She looked up at his smile, and felt a little like a cat trapped in a dog kennel. "I guess…" she drawled.
"No guessin'. I seen what you ca n do. You may be a freak. But you're 'our' freak now. And we got just the thing for you."
The wrapped crinkled in her grasp. Her stomach, awakened by the processed sugar, churned violently. "Wh-What do you want me to do?" she whispered.
The man laughed. "Girl, don't sound so scared about it. You're gonna be fine. In fact, we got others like you. Couple o' Eights I picked myself that I been lookin' to use for just the right job. And now that we got you, we just gotta wait for the right time. You savvy?" She shook her head, and he laughed again. "You will."
"O-Okay," she stammered.
He laughed again as she finished the cake. "I like you, girl. We gotta get you inked. You need a name, too. How about…" He drew the syllable out, pondering, frowning at her as though she were a brain teaser to puzzle out. Then he snapped his fingers. "Rush. You like it?"
"My name is Bri—"
"Not anymore, Rush," he said. "My Eights, my rules. And the only rule is," he said, hooking his thumbs back at his chest, "Krieg rules."
Streetbeat
Looking for a Fight
By Cyberwraith9
Sixty years ago, it had been built as a towering cathedral, the grandest one like it on the West Coast. The early days of Jump City had been good to the cathedral, and in turn, it gave back to the community. Faith and unity prospered.
The recession didn't hit the cathedral directly. Instead, the poverty and despair collected around it. The city rezoned the land around it again and again, until the area became a bedlam of low-income hovels and failed businesses. The cathedral still stood, but as a beacon in an area where no one wanted it. Its congregation shrank until, at last, the beacon was closed down.
As poverty worsened in Jump City, the land became worthless. Demolishing the cathedral would have cost more than was worth to build fresh on the property. So it was left to rot, abandoned. Its white pillars yellowed. Its stained windows shattered. In time, it became just another fixture of urban decay.
Now it shone again. Its broken windows were fixed and bulletproof. Its doors were thick, coded, and booby-trapped. No longer a cathedral, it remained a Sanctuary.
Jason Hawke leaned against one of those armored windows, looking out across the dilapidated grounds of his home and at the city abutting it. With all the work that had gone into refurbishing the building, he wondered if they should next fix the rest of the property. Only a few stubborn scrubs of grass clung to the dirt, and those were a sickly shade of yellow. Stumps of broken statuary remained in a few spots. All in all, there wasn't much to look at.
Then again, he wasn't much to look at either. Dirty blond hair sat on his scalp and face, neither of which he bothered to keep neat. An old denim jacket hung from his broad shoulders. Its sleeves were ripped, its seams, torn, and a graffiti "S" had been painted on its back. A fraying leather strap crossed his chest to hold an old sheath on his back, where he kept a rusting, chipped broadsword that looked as out of place as the rest of him.
"Hey, Jace." Queenie asked, ascending the steps to the upper deck of Sanctuary.
He looked back from the window. Even before Queenie finished climbing the stairs, she was tall enough to force Jason to tilt his head back to meet her inquisitive gaze. She towered over him, though he was by no means small. Her old, faded Gotham Knights sweatshirt stretched around rippling musculature that would shame a bodybuilder.
She looked even taller than usual, thanks to the second head that poked above her dreadlocks. He wore an oversized baseball cap and a patchwork coat that all but hid the rest of him. The boy waved enthusiastically, and cried, "Hi, Jason!"
"Hey, Patches. Hey, Limpi," Jason said with a smirk.
Queenie's smile soured. "I hate it when you call me that." She leaned over him, glancing out the window. Patches squealed and grabbed her dreads to keep steady. "Wha'cha doin'?" she asked Jason.
He glanced back out. "Thinking," he said. Then, with a touch of embarrassment, he added, "About landscaping."
She found her smile again in a laugh. "Ha! We could get y' a straw hat an' one of those li'l shovels. You could plant tulips around Strip's new defense stuff."
Shrugging, Jason leaned back against the wall.
The interior of Sanctuary had changed remarkably, starting with the upper level upon which they stood. Rows of empty bunk beds lined the upper level in a ring that circled the entire cathedral. They had never filled all of the beds since building the new space, something for which Jason supposed he should be grateful. Below them, separate areas were set up for their kitchen, workshop, command center, and a commons area in which to relax.
"I have to do something," he said. "This place is finally shipshape, and we've been moving kids in and out pretty quick. Don't even have any right now."
"Nu-uh!" Patches cried from his Queenie seat. "I'm here!"
The little boy fell silent at Jason's stern glare. "Yeah, and you shouldn't be. You were supposed to go with Child Services this morning with the rest. That was the deal, Patches. You got your extra week."
Patches dug his fingers into Queenie's dreads, making her wince. "No! I wanna stay here! I'm gonna be a Streetbeat!" he squalled.
"Maybe in ten years. Besides, I don't even know if we need all the ones we've got already," Jason retorted before he could stop himself.
Queenie frowned down at Jason, losing all humor from her expression. She hefted Patches off her shoulder and set him on the deck. "G'on, squirt. Go get Blink to play a video game with you, or someth'n'." With a swat on his butt, Queenie sent him running down the stairs. Once Patches had left earshot, she leaned in close to Jason, and said, "Spill, sucker. What's up?"
A tiny, annoyed sigh ghosted out of Jason's nose. "Nothing. Everything's fine. Everyone is safe and fed, which is better than fine. The only thing not fine is me, because for some stupid reason, all that ain't good enough for me. So I'm an idiot."
She leaned next to him on the wall. "Nothin' new, at least," she said playfully."
"I just feel like we could be doing more, y'know? We got all that charity from a bunch of rich old guys who don't even really know us. We're helping ore and more kids, gettin' 'em off the street before…well, before." He rubbed his face. "But we could do a lot more with the kind of cash we have now," he said.
"Like what?" she asked. From someone else, the question might have sounded sarcastic. Queenie, however, was genuinely curious.
The secured front doors buzzed as their heavy metal lock ratcheted aside. Magnum slid into Sanctuary, only remembering to close the door behind him as an afterthought. He wore crisp clothes that bore designer labels large enough to be read across the room. A wave of spiked, dark hair framed his burnished golden smirk.
He caught sight of Patches running down the stairs and scooped the little boy off the last step. "Hey! What did I tell you about running on the stairs?" he growled playfully at the boy.
"It's super-fun to jump from the high steps?" giggled Patches.
"Alright!" Magnum tossed Patches, who landed on his hands and feet in a delighted crouch to hop away. Unladen, Magnum sauntered into Sanctuary and spread his hands. "God damn, but this is beautiful. See this? This is what sixty dollars applied directly to your scalp by babealicious stylists looks like," he crowed, and pointed to his hair.
Bright light flashed by his elbow. It faded an instant later to reveal Blink. The berry blue boy stood on his tiptoes as he examined Magnum's extravagant haircut. Then he said, "You paid that much money to have somebody mess up your head? I would have done it for ten bucks."
Scoffing, Magnum ran his hands alongside his head. "Please. This isn't 'messed,' it's 'tussled.' Go on, touch it. Touch the awesomeness."
"Yeah, I'll pass," said Blink, cringing at the crisp, gelled crow's nest. He vanished into another bright flash of light, reappearing across the sprawling room in the commons area.
Magnum stomped his foot, and shouted, "Hey! I just spent an ass-load of money on this 'do, so you show it some respect! Somebody better damn well touch my head and tell me how sweet it is!"
A pale finger stretched out and touched the back of Magnum's head. Magnum shivered as a miniscule lightning bolt tickled his scalp. The gel caking his hair crackled like popping corn. His hair exploded into a frizzy mess. He whirled away from the finger and clutched his head.
Juice grinned and pulled his hand back. He rubbed his powder-white fingertip on his chest, which was black and glossy with the material of the containment suit that wrapped him from head to foot. The copper lightning bolt veins running through the suit glimmered in the fluorescent light as he laughed. "Hail the hair," he said.
"Real funny, Juice," Magnum snarled. Grumbling, he pulled an enormous tube of gel from his jacket and squeezed half of it out onto his scalp, and then set about massaging the frizz into a more acceptable mess.
Jason smirked from above at his friends' antics. "We've got a good thing goin' here, Limpi. Why rock the boat, right?"
Queenie wasn't fooled in the slightest. "Bull. This is 'bout all that super hero stuff again, isn't it? Ever since Robin put that idea in your skull, you can't let it go."
Jason, who had faced down rampaging killer robots, who had slain aberrant sewer mutant monsters, who had chased nearly every gang out of Jump Central, blushed at being read so easily. "It's not a bad idea," he muttered, turning away.
"It's a terrible idea," Queenie retorted. "Look, I don't mind pitchin' in when the world's about to end, like those Slade-bots last year. And when X-face and his bunch came knockin', I was right there with you. But we don't go lookin' for a fight. Last I checked, that's a good thing. Or did you forget?"
Jason closed his eyes. "I won't forget, Queenie. Not ever," he said in a small voice.
Queenie's scowl softened. She sighed, and nudged him with her elbow. "Still," she drawled, playing her own devil's advocate, "I guess we could think 'bout doin' a li'l more. If there's real trouble, I mean. The town's been through a lot in th' last year. Everybody's still hurtin'. Givin' everybody somebody t' look up to might be a good idea."
Cracking a single eye and a tiny smile, Jason asked, "You wanna start a war on purse snatchers? They've been asking for it."
She punched him on the arm. Even playful, Queenie's fist left deep purple marks. "Aim higher," she told her cringing friend.
Their shared smile fell between them as a tremor rattled the floorboards. They felt and heard the rumble, and grabbed the wall for support. An amateur orchestra of dogs and car alarms played outside. The lights overhead snapped out at the rumble's fading. Columns of dusty light poured into the old cathedral.
"Hey!" Blink cried from the commons area. "My show!"
Jason stomped down the stairs. His voice dropped an octave and rose into a shout. "Everyone under cover now! Patches, find a table! Stripwire--!"
The lights snapped on again. In the sudden illumination, all eyes fell to the ring of tables near the door that served as the nerve center of Sanctuary. A young, goggled teen sat behind a row of computers at one table. His silver arm ended in a writhing bundle of tendrils whose ends danced across three consecutive keyboards. Behind him, a gas generator rumbled, pumping power into the building and noxious fumes out a pipe drilled through the wall.
"Backup power is up. We have fourteen hours of generator power remaining, minus the approximate length of this sentence," Stripwire said with preternatural calm. His goggles tilted up at Jason's approach. Queenie was right behind him. "Power is out for at least the entire block. I am investigating the situation," he said.
Jason circled the tables to stand behind Stripwire. The three cobbled monitors strobed with window after window of information. Just trying to watch one of the monitors made Jason dizzy, so he stared meaningfully over their tops. "Earthquake?" he asked.
Tilting his head, Stripwire mused, "Possible, but unlikely. I detected only one tremor that lasted point seven eight seconds. Such a tremor would not be able to disable power for any sizeable area. It is likelier that the tremor was a byproduct of… One moment."
Stripwire's head tilted to the other side. The tentacles retracted into his arm, sliding into plating that reconstructed into a humanoid hand. He focused his efforts on a single computer and its keyboard. Its screen resolved into the interior of a news studio, where two distraught news anchors sat behind their desks with an emergency graphic displayed between them.
"—in a situation arising at the North Shore Power Plant. Unconfirmed reports are coming in that the Titans' altercation with who we believe are the self-ascribed 'Teen Tyrants' culminated—"
Blink flashed behind Jason, momentarily blinding everyone else. "The Tyrants?" he asked.
"Those jokers?" Magnum groused, rubbing his eyes. "Good. I hope the Titans tear them nice, wide, wet new ones."
A wave and a hiss from Jason brought quick quiet back to the room.
"—continuing through the northern suburbs and back toward the city. We understand that the Police's SCU is deploying to intercept the Tyrants en route. However, city officials are advising that all citizens remain indoors until the situation—"
Jason exchanged looks with Queenie. The tension in his jaw conversed with her scowl. But in the end, she nodded, and held her breath to keep her sigh from escaping. Jason turned back to the streaming news broadcast, his eyes narrowing upon the city map painted in threat zones of red, orange, yellow, and blue.
"Strip, shut it down. Get ready to lock up. Everybody else, gear up. We roll in three."
Half a dozen stares met his announcement. Queenie's was inscrutable. The rest were confused. Ever loquacious, Magnum found the words first to sum up the question hanging between them. "Um, why? This doesn't even remotely matter to us."
Stooping by the command center tables, Jason began rummaging through a stack of plastic bins they kept organized in the cramped space. Explosive discs, communicators, and a bevy of Stripwire's cleverer works left the bins to be pocketed in Jason's jacket. The communicators he laid on the table, keeping one for himself. "We're gonna get ahead of the police and stop the Tyrants from making it back to town," he said.
Juice raised his hand. "No, Mag's right. It hurts to say that—physically, right here," he said with a grimace, and tapped his stomach. "But this ain't our fight. The Titans—"
"I don't know about you guys," Jason said sharply, "But I'm sick of waiting around for the Titans to fix all our problems. These Tyrant clowns have already burned through Jump Central once, back before they even had a name. You know they'd try it again if they had a chance."
He knew no such thing, but it sounded inspiring. To punctuate, he slid the bunch of communicators across the table. No one reached for them.
It was clear that none of his friends were spoiling for a fight. Given what they had been through in the last year, he couldn't exactly blame them. But he knew they were all meant for something far greater than scratching out a meager existence here. They could really make a difference for Jump Central. For Jump City! And if it took giving them a push to achieve that greatness, then he would push them as far as he could.
"Come on, guys," he said. "Let's show everybody how it's done."
Uncertainty ran thick in their shared glances. Even Stripwire remained motionless in his seat. But then Queenie stepped forward and picked up one of the communicators. Her stern expression spoke wordless volumes to Jason, but her voice remained firmly in his camp. "C'mon, y'all. You heard 'im."
One by one, the Streetbeat took their communicators. Stripwire took his first, and then pulled a large bin from under his computer table. The bin rattled with more weaponized discs, as well as revolver ammunition that made Magnum grin and grab.
"I suppose this will provide an opportunity to field test more equipment," Stripwire said.
Blink took his communicator last, and said nothing. But his uneasy expression did not escape Queenie's notice.
"I had one special piece of equipment in mind, Strip," said Jason. "Think it'll get us there?"
Stripwire lifted one eyebrow. For the young cyborg, this amounted to a guffaw.
Rush sat draped over the sill of a broken window in a derelict apartment building. Her boneless boredom made her settle like sediment as she stared across the street at Sanctuary's closed doors. Keeping watch on the enemy's headquarters had seemed more exciting two days ago.
Not that she was completely ungrateful for the boredom. The swelling on her face had mostly subsided, leaving her with an unresponsive mask of a thousand shades of purple for a face. Her chest and stomach hurt less. She still ran with a limp, but nobody could see it. One of her teeth wiggled in her gums. She kept her tongue away from it, hoping that it would settle back in on its own. She wasn't sure if teeth worked that way or not.
A pizza box sat on the floor next to her. Rush took a cold slice from inside, the last of her food. The slice disappeared in a flash, muffling the pained gurgles coming from under her T-shirt. Krieg refused to give her anything more until her reconnaissance bore results. New Eights, he had told her, don't eat for free. Freaks especially had to pull their weight.
She toed the box and swallowed the last bite, stifling her sigh. The gurgle in her stomach tempted her to call Krieg with a sighting, regardless of what she saw, just for a chance for more food. But the throbbing on her arm convinced her otherwise.
Rolling up her sleeve, she stared at the prickly, crooked pair of eights tattooed on her arm. The skin still stung when she touched the dark, inked area. This time she couldn't stifle her sigh. She didn't even try. Her vision grew blurry, and she tugged her sleeve back down.
Creaking noise made her wipe her eyes and look back out the window. Her heart raced when she saw Sanctuary's grand doors swing open, and all six of the Streetbeat walked out. The one with the shiny arm and goggles closed the door behind them and pressed a sequence onto a keypad next to the door. They looked to be leaving for at least a little while. All of them.
Rush fumbled for her phone. She dropped it in mid-dial, and snatched it back up just as it started to ring. By the time she got it to her ear, she heard Krieg's gruff voice demand, "What?"
"I-I-I see them," stammered Rush. "They're coming out. All of them, just like you said."
"'Bout time," he grunted. "Stay with 'em. Don't care where they go, you keep on 'em. I'm comin' with the rest to head 'em off. Start texting. I don't want any of Hawke's freaks hearin' you comin'."
Krieg hung up without another word. Stuffing her phone into her pocket, Rush stood, keeping clear of the window. Then she vanished from the room, leaving only a trail of dust rolling in her wake.
Jason led them across the mottled grounds to the small, dilapidated shed erected at the edge of the fence. His mind buzzed with battle strategy, and his body tingled with adrenal anticipation. Every detail he could recall about facing Red X and his fearsome bunch the last time leapt to the forefront of his thoughts. He couldn't be sure if this "Ravager" character was the same person, but he was happy to give Ravager the beating he owed Red X in either case.
"Let's move, guys," he said, unable to keep the excitement out of his voice.
Juice rolled his shimmering eyes. "We're right behind you," he pointed out.
As they rounded the shed to its crooked door, Stripwire jogged to catch up to them. "Please wait," he called.
"Why?" Magnum scoffed, and tugged the door back onto its sliding track. "You think we're gonna ruin the surprise? We've all seen it."
"It is not the 'surprise' you tend to ruin, Magnum," Stripwire said matter-of-factly.
Magnum sneered and yanked back on the door. It took his whole weight to force the door to slide. From behind the rotting wooden curtain appeared Stripwire's latest project. Half its grille was missing. Its windshield was cracked and pitted. What little paint that remained brought to mind the color of a fine meal long after one was done eating it. But it had four wheels and, they presumed, an engine under its dented hood.
It also had a little boy sitting in its driver's seat, waving enthusiastically at them from behind the steering wheel. "Hi, guys! Let's go!" Patches squealed.
"Holy hell," Juice muttered, staring at Patches as he approached the old station wagon. "Do we have two teleporters now?"
Queenie opened the car and pulled the giggling boy out. "He's not a teleporter. He's a six-year-old."
"And he's not coming with us. Not a chance," Jason told the little boy dangling in Queenie's grasp.
Patches' smile twisted into a pout. He pounded on Queenie's hands at his ribs, and whined, "But I wanna help! I wanna!"
Jason caught Patches' kicking feet. His stern look quelled the boy's fussing. "You wanna help, little man? You get back inside, and you guard Sanctuary. Plenty of bad stuff can happen with nobody watching the house. Think you can handle it?"
Incredulity twisted Patches' face into a scowl. "Guard the house? How dumb do you think I am?"
"Not dumb enough to pass on the only opportunity I'm gonna give you. Or do you think I won't tell Blink to poof you inside and duct tape you to a bunk?" Jason asked.
Patches looked up at Queenie as she set him down. Her bemused nod made him smile again, albeit dejectedly. He gave Jason a salute and said, "I'll do it! Sanct'ary is gonna be a hunnerd percent safe, Jason!"
Jason smiled back. "Good. Now scoot, pipsqueak. We've got butt to kick. And Strip, disable the lock. Give him a minute to get inside."
The rest of the Streetbeat edged into the shed as Patches ran back toward the cathedral. There wasn't much room left around the car. But that didn't keep Stripwire from looking down at the door as he reached for its handle. He read aloud the lettering that had been spray-scrawled across the side of the car. "Fraggin' Wagon?" Glancing up, he leveled his goggles at Magnum. "I take it Patches is not the only party to sneak into my hangar."
Magnum grinned and shrugged. "It fits, don't it?" He opened the back door, slamming it hard against the shed wall. Then he grabbed Blink by the shoulder and shoved him in, shouting, "Not-Bitch!"
Jason slid into the passenger seat. Then an unyielding wall of Queenie pushed him into the middle of the bench, where he was squashed against Stripwire in the driver's seat. Queenie shrugged helplessly at his dirty look, but there was a petty impishness dancing in her eyes.
Shaking his head, Jason surveyed the interior of the Wagon. The inside looked almost as impressive as the outside. It worried him. "Strip," he asked, "Can this thing even—"
His head flew back as the Wagon jumped out of the shed. Dirt sprayed from the tires in the Wagon's mad dash across the grounds. The Streetbeat inside bounced around, slamming their heads together as Stripwire guided the Wagon through a gap in the fence and over the curb.
The engine didn't make more than a whisper, even as Stripwire flattened the accelerator. "Please buckle up," he instructed the others.
"Never mind," Jason groaned, rubbing his head. "And ow…"
"I don't hear an engine," Juice said nervously while he watched the outside world whiz by at a decidedly unsafe speed. "Is this thing electric? It doesn't feel electric."
"It is, in a manner of speaking," Stripwire answered.
Blink grabbed the front seat and hauled himself forward. He tried to read the dials Stripwire had installed in the dash. None of them made sense to him. "What kind of 'manner?' Wait. Is this thing nuclear?"
Stripwire did not answer immediately. "The vehicle is powered by a small, controlled fusion reaction," he admitted.
Extensive video game knowledge made Blink's eyes bug. "Fusion? Fusion explodes!"
Jason's hand grabbed Blink by the face and shoved him back into his seat. "Shut up and belt up. No one's exploding." He waited several seconds before leaning over to Stripwire, and muttered, "No one's exploding, right?"
"It is unlikely," Stripwire muttered back.
Thoroughly unassuaged, Juice turned back to his window to watch the neighborhood flash past. His hand flexed open and closed, crackling with blue static. As he watched, the world outside began to blur and darken, as if a filter had been placed across the window. A buzzing noise arose from outside as the darkness intensified. "Um, guys? What's going on outside?" he asked.
Magnum frowned at the blurry darkness outside his window. "I dunno. Eclipse?"
The windshield afforded Stripwire a better vantage point. He saw late afternoon sunshine overhead, and the darkness forming a ring around the Wagon. Whatever it was, it had no trouble pacing them at fifty miles an hour, and it made seeing past the hood more difficult with each passing second. "The effect is not solar. It is, however, beginning to hinder—"
The Wagon rocked violently, tossing the Streetbeat in their seats.
Magnum cracked his forehead on the window. He shook the stars from his eyes in time to see something important bounce away from their car, disappearing behind the dark blur. "Uh, Strip? Wheel."
"Pardon?" Stripwire asked as he fought the steering wheel for control.
"Wheel! Wheel!" Magnum shouted.
The Wagon bucked again. Jason's vision was swallowed by color as his head slammed into the roof. Fierce shaking consumed the car. Metal shrieked against the pavement. The world spun and screamed, forcing Jason's hand over his ears.
When the noise and vertigo finally stopped, Jason opened his eyes. The Wagon was mercifully intact, at least from what he could see. Their car sat in the middle of an empty road at the edge of Jump Central, where the buildings were short and dilapidated, but still habitable. It was hard to tell, because his head and neck were throbbing, but it looked like they were sitting lower than they had been before the crash.
"Everybody, sound off if you're not dead," Jason groaned. Four separate voices groaned back at him while he struggled with his seat belt. The mechanism was jammed, so he pulled a knife and cut the belt entirely. "Stripwire, what the hell was that? …Stripwire?"
Stripwire sat stiffly straight in his seat. A large bruise purpled on his forehead, which was trickling blood onto the rim of his safety goggles. "The Check Engine light is active," he said, nodding to the tiny diode glowing in his dash. "I will need to exit the vehicle…to ascertain…"
Jason rested a hand on his shoulder. Stripwire didn't have the strength to resist as he was eased back against the bench seat. "Stay put." Looking across the rest of the interior, he said, "Anybody else?"
Rubbing his forehead, Magnum said, "I have emotional trauma, but I'm willing to suck it up for the moment."
"Big of you. Everybody out, now. Eyes and ears up."
They piled out of the car, leaving Stripwire behind the wheel. Jason ascertained the problem as soon as he slid out behind Queenie. The wheels on the Wagon had been removed. Not shot off. Not torn off. There were four empty sockets, devoid of their lugs.
"There's your problem," said Magnum.
A flash of movement caught Jason's eye. He whirled around, his hand already crossed to his shoulder and at the hilt of his sword. Across the street, half-hidden on the steps of an apartment building, was a young girl. She looked to have just crossed into her teens, and wore clothes that had clearly seen better days. Her long, dark hair was pulled back in a braid. A thin sheen of sweat glistened on her dusky skin, and her shoulders rose and fell as though she had just run a mile.
She was the only soul besides them on the lonely street. Lowering his hand, Jason approached her. "Hey, you," he said. "Did you see…?"
Her eyes went wide as he approached. She stood up and stumbled back, tripping on the steps. When she fell, a tire iron clattered out of her jacket, along with a handful of lug nuts that rang when they struck the concrete.
Jason frowned in confusion at the iron. His frown blossomed into a full scowl when he connected it to the fear he saw in her eyes. "Who are you?" he demanded. "How did you—?"
The girl disappeared. Jason didn't realize what happened to her until he saw the tail end of a blur flash past him—a blur identical to the one he had seen through their windshield moments before. The vortex chasing after her nearly knocked him off his feet.
"Shit! Speedster!" Magnum yelled. His rusty revolvers had already cleared the holsters in his jacket. Their chambers spun as he tried to track the blur. Soundless bullets shot from their barrels. He sprayed his guns empty in a sweep across the street that made his fellow Streetbeat duck and cry, but did little else. The blur—the girl—vanished without a trace.
Rising up from her crouch behind the Wagon, Queenie searched the street for any other sign of attack. The empty neighborhood felt haunted now, with the possibility of attack lying in each long shadow she saw. She hadn't recognized the girl from the brief glimpse of her she'd gotten. "Who was that?" she asked.
"Shh!" Blink hissed. His eyes darted wildly about. "Don't you hear that?"
As they stilled, the others did hear: a soft, ghostly giggling rose up in the silence. Try though they might, none of the Streetbeat could find its source. The giggling grew louder, closer, but from nowhere.
"What the hell is that?" demanded Blink. "What's going on?"
Jason looked down, trying to concentrate. Then he jumped back. Youthful, Asian features were growing out of the ground, smiling impishly, with twinkling eyes that stared back up at him. As he stumbled back, the face in the ground descended, melting back into the pavement.
He kept backing away and drew his sword. The old blade left its sheath with a song of steel on leather and came down before him in a two-handed grip. He leveled his attention to the ground, taking careful notice of the street in front of him.
A pale hand reached out of the ground and grasped Jason's ankle. He didn't feel it in time to keep himself upright, and toppled to the ground, grunting in pain. His sword dropped at his side with a clatter. Even as he reached to collect it, the sprouting hand snatched the blade by its handle and pulled it underground.
Jason swore and clawed at the solid, unperturbed ground. He pounded his fist into the street. The eyes of his Streetbeat fell to him as he stood and turned. Cupping his hands to his mouth, he bellowed, "That's enough! Whoever's out there, get on out here and let's get this over with! I'm through playing!"
"You're the boss," an echoing voice shouted back.
Fire burst from the ground, encircling the Wagon and the Streetbeat with a wall of towering flames. Flinching together, the Streetbeat backed from the wall and toward their wheel-deprived car, helpless in the intense heat of their sudden prison.
Digging through his coat, Jason had just found a freeze disc among the arsenal he had taken from Sanctuary. He drew his arm back to hurl it when the flames abruptly snuffed themselves. A smoldering ring of melted pavement remained behind, making the air shimmer with heat. Through the thick air, Jason saw new figures approaching them from down the street, arrived in the fires' confusion. His face twisted with disgust as he recognized some of the figures' faces.
"'S'up, Hawke?" Krieg asked. He strode ahead of the rest, wearing his denim jacket over bare, sculpted muscle. His eyes glimmered with bemused hate as he drew near to the beleaguered Streetbeat.
Grinding tension creaked in Jason's jaw. His fists whitened and trembled, drawn tight at his sides. He would have charged Krieg then and there, but the odds weren't good. A lanky teen stood next to Krieg, dressed in an Eighty-Eight jacket. That itself wouldn't have been enough to stop Jason, but the teen's hands and eyes both glowed with red heat. When the teen saw Jason's notice, he smiled, and summoned a ball of flame into his hand. He spun the flame on his fingertip and waggled his eyebrows.
"Hey, it's Krieg," Magnum said. He waved his revolver jovially, and called, "Hi, Krieg!"
"Hey, Mag. How's it goin'?" Krieg asked.
"Pretty good, now that I have a target," Magnum said.
His gun spat a silent bullet straight at Krieg's head. It would have killed Krieg, if the teen behind him hadn't already stepped in front of the shot. She was slender to the point of sickly, and wore a baggy tank top and enormous jeans that were knotted around her waist with cord. She was smiling when Magnum shot her.
The bullet bounced off of her forehead. It didn't make a sound. It didn't move her an inch. The girl didn't even blink. Magnum's shot ricocheted high and dove into the side of a building, where it spat out a wad of brick for its trouble.
The girl winked at Magnum, who looked to his gun in puzzlement. "That's never happened before…" he mused embarrassedly.
The grossly enormous man at Krieg's other side laughed. His clothes strained to contain the mountainous flab that padded every inch of his body. He towered over the rest of Krieg's gang, and even topped Queenie by several inches with his buzzed, sweaty scalp. His porcine features twisted into a sneer as he snorted, "Get used to it. You little girl scouts are done."
Wind rushed past the Streetbeat, blowing aside the smoldering heat. The blur-girl appeared at Krieg's side, panting, wiping her brow. A single, dark look from Krieg made her straighten and take her place behind him.
Krieg reaffirmed his empty smile when he looked back to the Streetbeat. He held out his hand to the empty air. As if summoned, the face in the street that had stolen Jason's sword reappeared at Krieg's feet. It rose out of the ground, trailing behind it the body of a tiny girl in a yellow sun dress. She carried Jason's broadsword, which she placed in Krieg's expectant hand.
Swinging the sword to his shoulder, Krieg said, "So, let's see. I got better freaks. I got your blade. And I got you cornered." His lips twisted with menace. "So who's in charge now, Hawke?"
To Be Continued