Issue 1: March of Mephisto

Jennifer walked passed Dirk to the exam room. She didn’t say her word, she didn’t even mention that she doesn’t need to be patched up.

“Fine patch me up, but I’m not as helpless as I was as a child.”

Jenifer looked stubborn at Dirk. She didn’t want to show weakness and admit how much the bullet wound hurts. She got angrier every minute she spent with them, all those lies they tried to tell her hurt even more than the bullet hole or the beating of her childhood.

Dirk chuckled, trying desperately to lighten the mood of the room. "Look out, world," he murmured. "'Helpless' isn't how I would ever have described you." He tried smiling at her, but she looked away.

"So...how long have you been...back?" he asked.

Her answer shocked him.

"Dunno, about ten years."

The tray of medical supplies he was holding clattered to the ground. She jumped, which hurt like she had slapped him. Because now he thought he understood.

"Scott, can you go fill this bucket full of hot water?" he asked, not looking away from her. Scott, sensing grumpily that the "grown-ups needed to talk," nevertheless crossed to the other side of the room to the sink and turned the water on. Hopefully with the faucet running he wouldn't hear much of this.

"Jennifer, you mean--could you not find us?"

"Ha!" her barked laughter spoke volumes, and cut like a knife.

"Jenny, you--"

"Look, I'll probably regenerate on my own before you get to it."

"Regeneration. That's how you came back, of course! It must have messed with your head, made it difficult to remember. Gosh, Jenny, I'm so sorry. Just trust me, please. Come back with us. Your dad has missed you so much. He won't ever say it, maybe, but he was devastated. As was I. And then...we were all we had." This wasn't working. She eyed him warily.

Confession time. "Jenny, I want you to know I wished you back. Every day. I wished for you to come back, I prayed, I tried, but I...I wished too hard one day, and made a complete huge mess of things, and--I don't know if anything I did worked or not, but I'm sorry if it was my fault. I'm even sorry if it wasn't my fault, because we weren't there for you. We had given up when we shouldn't have. I'm so sorry. I'm just glad you're back now, and I'll do anything I possibly can to make it right."

“You were his favorite the son he always wanted and never had, I didn’t want to find you. I was glad to be free of you.”

Jennifer took some of the bandages to wipe the blood of her stomach. It would take at least two hours to heal; she didn’t even need to worry about the bullet. She patched herself up to keep the blood from running down her side.

“I don’t think I’m back because I can regenerate. But I don’t know why I came back. I don’t need you to be there for me, I can take care of me perfectly on my own. I don’t care that you wished me back, I’m not back. Just keep thinking of me as if I’m dead. As soon I'm out of here I’m gone. I’m not your punching bag again.”

Jennifer was angry, she started to have trouble to control her fire, and every now and then a flame was rising from her body. When she wasn’t careful she would set more than she already had set on fire.

"But you know what, it doesn't matter anymore. Let's get out of here and then everyone goes its seperate way again."

"Jenny!" Dirk gripped her arm gently but firmly. Her eyes flashed, and so did her arm, and he quickly withdrew his hand, burnt. "Son of a gun!" he swore, looking at her, confused and wounded. "Jenny, please, you can't leave! I would never make you my 'punching bag,' how could you say such a thing? I'd sooner die, you know that."

He lowered his voice as Scott returned, tentatively, with the bucket of water.

"Me and Mark already lost you once, and it would have broken us if we hadn't had each other. Please, Jenny, don't make us lose you again."

Jennifer was angry, but Dirk confused her and she didn’t want to hurt Scott, it wasn’t the poor boy’s fault that his father is a dick.

Why did it matter that she had died. Could it be that they had missed her, but why?

She looked away not liking that she had to remember.

“But I was you punching bag, no one ever care for me not even my own parents.”

The air around her started to cool down. She was confused. “Why do you now care if I go or stay? No one ever wanted me.”

"Why do you keep saying that, Jenny?" Dirk insisted. "I have never willingly or intentionally hurt you, and I never would." He shook his head. They weren't getting anywhere with this. "You must be confused. However you came back must have scrambled your brains. But don't worry, we'll get it worked out."

He took the bucket from Scott, thanking him, and began to clean the blood from her and him.

"Jennifer, no one was ever wanted more than you." He chuckled to himself. "Maybe you're remembering my parents, getting mixed up. Anyway, it doesn't matter. I said we'd get it worked out, and I promise that's what we'll do. I just ask that you give us a chance. We care for you, like..." Dirk's eyes wandered to Scott as an example, but he wasn't about to go making comparisons. "Let's just say you were the first person I ever cared about."

Jennifer looked at Dirk.

...must be confused. … scrambled my brains… your parents… you promise… a chance… I was the first person you cared about?

She didn’t know why but she nodded. She pushed her hair out of her face and watching him clean the blood off her stomach. “You know that you don’t need to do this? I won’t even keep a scare from it and the bullet will get pushed out as well.”

Dirk raised his eyebrows. "That's pretty neat." Then he sobered, and met her eyes. "But I want to do it."

After the stare became awkward, Dirk chuckled and looked away. "Plus, I told your dad I'd look after you. And he'd kill me if I didn't."

“I don’t think Mark cares if I bleed to death but if you want to do it I guess I can’t stop you.”

As soon she was cleaned and patched up she hopped down from the table she was sitting on.

“Let’s go back to the doc, what was his name again? And Mark. Maybe they need some help with the prisoner. I bet I can get some information out of him.” Jennifer grinned and let on each of her hands a fire ball appear. She didn’t wait for Dirk to say anything, and walked through the door.

“Do you need any help?” She asked Richard and Mark, still holding the two fire balls in her hands.

After watching Jenny and Dirk head off with a intense look of concern, Mark turned back to the mercenary.

“That was my daughter who’s wounded there. And you’re carrying one of the few projectile weapons inserted of your friends glorified flashlights. Which means it’s likely you’re the one who put that hole in her.” With a sudden explosive movement Mark picked up the mercenary up by the collar of his armour and practically leapt towards the wall, smashing him into it. “This puts you in a VERY bad position. So please, don’t do the smart thing so that I can pound you into several small chunks without Mr Goody-goody back there stopping me.”

The bluff, or at least, partial bluff, worked, and with a gulp, the mercenary began to talk. He speech was slow, a result of being crushed against a wall.

“We were hired by one of you freaks. Old black guy. He called himself Renegade.”

“Renegade? He’s still around?” Although Mark meant in the general sense, the mercenary took it as still in the area.

“Yes, he’s, he’s somewhere on the third floor.”

“And why? Why did he want you to attack a hospital of all places?” But now the mercenary remained silent. A few moments later Dirk and Jenny returned, Jenny looking ready to continue the interrogation.

“If you want to get some more out of him go ahead. I know who hired them and where in the hospital he is, but not why. Oh, and I think this is the asshole who shot you. Care to return the favour?”

Jennifer stepped closer, and handing the mercenary he fire balls. First he managed not to scream but when the fire burnt the flesh of his hands he started screaming. He wouldn't feel anything with his hands ever again, he could be happy if he doesn’t lose them.

“Did your mother not teach you it is not nice to hurt a girl? Do you wanna tell me now why you are here?”

The fire disappeared and Jennifer looked for a second at Mark, he looked still angry. No matter what she just had promised Dirk, she wanted to get away from them as far as possible.

Dirk's mouth flapped from shock, disbelief, and sheer horror. He let go of Scott's hand for the first time since this whole thing began and strode forward. This wasn't his mad face. This was his disappointed face. According to his kids, anyway, this was infinitely worse.

He grabbed Jennifer's arm and pulled her back. "What the blazes do you think you're doing?"

Her arm ignited with a wry, evil smile he hardly recognized. But instead of letting go, Dirk encased his hand in a red force field to protect it. "I won't stand by and let you torture this man. He will have the right to a fair trial and will get what's coming to him."

"Oh, like Mr. Cyborg Soup over there?" she jabbed.

Dirk frowned. "I wish you had tried to stop me, then, like I'm doing for you." He peered closely at her. "There was a time when you would have stopped me, Jennifer. What happened?"

That seemed to get her thinking. Or she was planning to roast him alive.

"But I don't blame you," he said, and, without letting go, turned his glare on Mark. But in spite of himself, Dirk couldn't scold Mark. He had too much respect for the man, even after that.

So he turned instead to the mercenary, who flinched and curled in on himself. With a last warning glance at Jennifer, he finally let her go and knelt by the Brotherhood thug. The man sobbed as he drew near.

"Easy, mister, I'm not gonna hurt you. I've dealt with enough of your kind before to know that doesn't usually work. Let me see your hands." They looked bad. Dirk sent up a silent prayer--not for the first time--that his wife was here. She could heal anything.

"Good news is, you're already in a hospital," he told him. "Bad news is, you're in a hospital that you and your thugs have just wrecked, but I'll see if we can get a real doctor in here. Now tell me what was so flipping important that you'd wreck a hospital. What's your boss after this time?"

"I...I don't know!" The man was openly weeping and wasn't likely to be keeping anything from Dirk. "I swear I don't know, something about inhibitor chips, please don't hurt me!"

It was even more of a disappointment when Dirk heard the noise of people coming through what was left of the front doors. Through the smoke he spotted fire department, police, SWAT, everything. It looked like the entire city was here. But a little late.

Or, too early. They hadn't caught this Renegade character yet.

"Everyone, we've got company. I'll handle this. Meet me by the stairs, now, go! Scott, stay here."

Dirk raised his hands at the advancing flashlights and faces. "I'm NYPD!" he shouted at them, and once they were close enough, he reached for his badge and showed them. "This man is injured, he's the only survivor I've found so far."

"Rogers?"

Dirk looked up, and a smile of relief washed over his face. "Murray! Thank goodness." The two cops embraced. "Hi, Mr. Mike!" Scott chirped, rushing forward to hug the man's leg.

Suddenly Dirk grew serious. "Murray, I need you to watch the kid for me, huh? There's something I gotta do." He grabbed his fellow officer by the shoulders. "Please, Murray, take Scott out to the squad car and just stay put. I'll be back as soon as I can."

Murray was a good friend, and if he didn't know about Dirk's...special abilities, he probably had guessed. And Murray knew to take Dirk seriously when he sounded like that, so he took Scott's hand and nodded.

Dirk smiled widely. "Thanks, Mike. You be good now, son, hear me?" Dirk asked, ruffling Scott's hair and, without waiting for a reply, ran off toward the stairs.

Jennifer didn’t like at all when Dirk sent them all away, mainly because she might trust Dirk a little bit but she didn’t’ trust Mark or Richard. She was giggling, the scrubs she had put on earlier where by now mostly burnt. She was glad that she was wearing her fire resistant suit, it was new and she liked it a lot.

“So are you going to get Renegade now?”

She simple couldn’t think of her and Mark as a team. Seeing Dirk with his son let him being the trustworthy one at the moment. Not that she had forgiven him for everything he did to her in the past.

Over by the elevator, Mark was looking over the placard showing the department lists.

“Well, well. Seems the third floor is full of private faculties and labs. Anyone care to guess were PHMA does its Inhibitor implanting.” Mark jabbed the elevator button but nothing happed. He slammed it again before remembering, and heading towards the stairs.

“At least it’s only three flights. Come on.” As they climbed, he filled them in on what he knew.

“I’ve heard of Renegade, if it’s still the same guy and not some similar looking impersonator. He’s telekinetic and a sharpshooter, the two may be related. But this attack isn’t his style. Renegade’s cocky and a show-off. Taking hostages in a hospital, this is something completely new. I guess people can change a lot in ten years.” They reached the third floor, only to be met by a sealed armoured door.

It might be a dangerous situation Jennifer was in, with at least two people she hated, but it was her definition of fun. She didn’t see that danger was something you should be avoided, something Jennifer never had learned. She pushed Mark rather rough out of her way and didn’t even care that she might burn him.

“I don’t think people ever change.” She shot an evil glare at Mark.

“I can try and melt the seal of the door.”

Taking up the rear, Dirk arrived last on the scene. "No pressure, but the authorities will probably be here quickly, and all this might look rather incriminating," he said, but was ignored, as Jennifer hurled a huge fireball at the stupidly large and solid-looking doors. For a hospital, the security level was inordinate, and that didn't smell right to Dirk.

He ducked back, feeling the wave of heat ricochet back at them, but the doors didn't budge. Jennifer grunted her displeasure and went to launch another one, but Dirk called out, "Wait! Jenny, let's work together on this."

Though she looked like she'd rather be doing anything else, she glanced coolly over her shoulder at him and at least gave him the benefit of the doubt.

"What if you were to heat it up, and I built a force field to keep the heat in? Super-heating just might work, though it could get dangerous, so everyone else should stand back."

Jenny frowned, but eventually nodded. "Whatever," she said.

Dirk found himself looking to Mark for approval. "Unless...you think we should be more subtle about this?"

Jenny looked for a moment at Mark but she decided she didn’t care what he thought. “Come on hurry up Dirk. Mark isn’t in the position of telling me what to do. So build up your force field.”

Great heat was radiate from her until her hands looked like they were burning. “And danger is my middle name.”

Jennifer started to concentrate heat not fire on the door while Dirk built a force field around it. “I hope your field can hold the door when all seals are melted I think it will fall otherwise.” Jennifer looked at Dirk a little bit worried, she remembered too well all the times he caught her in his force fields.

Dirk tried not to be hurt by Jenny's constantly aggressive comments. Instead he focused on what had happened to the poor girl to make her like this--what possible tortures she could have gone through to think of him and Mark this way...

And how it was his fault.

"Hey, watch it!" she snapped, as his force field flickered. "Are you sure you can handle this?"

"Yes. Yes, I'm sure. I'm sorry, I was just...distracted." He reinforced the wall, trying to think of nothing. "I think the doors are coming down," he informed the others. "Someone want to reload for me?"

Mark stepped up gingerly behind him, took the handgun from its holster, rummaged around in Dirk's pockets until he found the extra magazine, and reloaded his weapon.

"Push it forward, if you can, Dirk," Mark suggested. "We may have company waiting on the other side, let's send 'em a greeting."

"You got it," Dirk said, the weight against his energy field increasing as more and more hinges weakened from the heat. "Okay, it's almost there!" he said to Jennifer. "On my mark, I need a blast from you, okay? We want to send the door forward, and I'm pretty sure it's too heavy for me on my own."

Jennifer nodded, but didn't look at him.

"Okay, here we--now!"

The wall of red served more to protect them on this side of the blast than to help propel the door forward, as the fireball exploded the huge door forward until in a rush of flames and smoke, it hit the floor with an earth-shattering

KABOOM!

Just one more security lock, and the safe would open. Perfect. Renegade stepped back, knowing that he had done enough. Now it was just up to…

“I’m actually impressed,” spoke a deep voice from behind him. “I thought I’d managed to hide my pawn from you. You’re sharper than I gave you credit for.” Renegade turned to face the smartly dressed bearded figure behind him.

“I’m impressed that you actually came here in person,” he replied.

“Oh, let’s not play games about that. I know killing you would be a waste of time, and you know you can’t harm me, so surely we can have a pleasant talk?”

“A pleasant talk? Even when our goals are poles apart?”

“Come, come. The pawns on the board may fight, but the players don’t have to.”

“What did you have in mind for her? Have her anger build up seeing the two people she hated most being celebrated, then unleash her at the crucial moment of the endgame?”

“That was part of my plan, yes, but no matter. I’m sure I can find other uses for her. And it seems that she and her new friends are about to arrive. I would greet them if I were you.” With a polite nod the old man nodded and walked into the corridor. Renegade didn’t even bother following him, he would have already disappeared.

The sound of the door being blown open shook the lab, not to mention the impact of the door itself. Stepping slowly to the door of the laboratory, Renegade raised his hands. It was a risk, they might still be fired up after the last fight. To say nothing about the anti-climax of the whole affair. It hurt his sense of showmanship, but it had to be done.

“I surrender.”

“Yeah of course and I am harmless. Who the hell are you? And you should know that I am not a very patient type.”

Jennifer started to be seriously annoyed of the whole situation. She wanted to leave Mark and Dirk and never see again, which didn’t work the last time but maybe third time is a charm. Her hands were still burning and she kept with a lot of effort the fire only at her hands. For the moment she didn’t want anyone to know how much control she had over her fire.

“It makes no sense first you create this lock down and then you surrender, what weird bad guy are you?”

“He’s not weird, maybe he’s just being sensible seeing four of us burst through the damn door. And don’t use labels like ‘bad guy’ please Jenny. That’s almost as bad as Dirk. The world isn’t good guys and bad guys. You rarely get either of them.”

Damn it, he was almost reaching monolog territory there. Mark shrugged slightly, lowering his gun slightly, but still keeping it pointed at Renegade. He was being to worry a little about Jennifer. Sure, her control of her abilities had grown impressively, but she seemed worryingly distant, not to mention aggressive. Still, after ten years away, who knows what had happened to her. But she was back now, maybe life would actually be worth something again.

“You wanted to know why I called the lockdown?” Renegade spoke up. “Simple, I needed into this lab and have time to perch it before the authorities arrived. This is the main surgery where they perform Inhibitor implantation, and I thought I could find some cause of the malfunctions here.”

“What malfunctions?” asked Dirk. From the sound of his voice it seemed to Mark as if this could mean something to him.

“The recent failures of the Inhibitor system.”

“How do you know they’re malfunctions and not just natural resistance?” asked Mark.

“They’ve proven it’s effective in 96% of cases. Ninety-nine point lots of nines if you take physical changes out of the equation and count partial dampening as successes. So how do you explain sudden mass failures of the system, occurring just in the past few months? And that the supers who are experiencing these failures ALL go on to commit violent crimes, or worse.”

"Mass failures? Just what do you mean by that?" Dirk began, although the more he thought about it, perhaps this wasn't a line of thought he wanted to continue. Had Scott's chip only recently gone wrong? Or, a worse thought in a different way, had his son been lying to him for two years? Or, even worse yet--

Was this what happened to Joan?

Dirk shook his head. No, he had learned his lesson about listening to supervillain speeches, had been on the wrong end of that before. Bad guys always lied and trusting them wasn't safe.

Just as the man was about to speak, however, Dirk interrupted him. "Never mind, who knows if we can trust you, anyway?" he said, his weapon still raised. "The issue here is your thugs murdered a lot of innocent people, and one of them was almost my son." He stepped forward with a menace he couldn't quite control, and his powers activated at the thought. It was less of a struggle than he made it appear, but presently he flicked the red suit off.

"And you'll tell it to the judge." He lowered his weapon and turned to his companions. "Let's tie him up and leave him for the cops to deal with." Everyone was staring at him. "What? We're not going to kill him! And I need to go check on Scott."

“I am locked in this friggen hospital because you wanted to test this friggen inhibitor chips? Are you fucking kidding me? Can’t I just roast him and get the hell out of here? I don’t care what a judge will do to him!”

To make her anger some space she through to large fire balls right next to Renegade into the wall.

“You can’t tell me what to do, not anyone can and especially not you two. But yes go and run, put everyone above me, I mean people that need you.”

Renegade didn’t even flinch at the fireballs, and fixed Jennifer with a glare that was half anger, half disappointment.

“Are you so selfish girl, that you care more about a minor inconvenience to yourself than about the oppression of all others of your kind?”

Jennifer looked stunned, almost as if someone had thrown a bucket of water on her. Renegade then turned to face Dirk’s back.

“I’d didn’t want anyone to be killed, I told the Brotherhood they were not to kill anyone. You might not trust me, but you have to believe what I’m saying. If you leave me to the authorities do you really think they’ll listen to me? This will be suppressed and never heard about again until it’s too late. Either too late for supers, or too late for the world. Think about it, think about what someone with the ability to control the Inhibitor system would mean.”

It didn't take long for "someone with the ability to control the Inhibitor system" to bring up one thought in Dirk's mind:

Joan.

He was still concerned for Scott, granted: but Scott was, as far as he knew, behaving normally, and his inhibitor chip was off or never worked (though that itself was a burning question). But no, rather, if there was a reason, an answer to why his wife of then seven years had one day decided to rob a bank and fly away, leaving her children alone in the car outside, if there was a rational explanation for her behaving like one possessed, well, he would go to almost any length to get that information and get her back. But he wasn't sixteen anymore. And the bad guys didn't work like that.

He kept himself from leaping to the naive conclusion that He knows what happened to my wife! though just barely.

"I am thinking about it," Dirk replied, his coolness belying the concern that shook him beneath the surface. "And I dread to think if that someone in control of the Inhibitor system was a thug-hiring maniac who liked holding up hospitals."

The worry was nagging at him incessantly now, like a whining noise that was steadily climbing to a pitch that would drive him mad. He had to know. He pulled his cell phone from his back pocket (it was a wonder the thing wasn't fried right now) and dialed a number.

"Hey, Murph? Yeah, yeah, we're just wrapping things up in here, I think. Hey, is...is Scott doing all right?"