THE BIG BANG JUMP

By Thomas Deja

“Yo, L-Dog, lemme ask you something.”

Across from Cyrus Turnipseed, a.k.a. UfraTeez, Danny Rand chuckled. “What does that make me?” he asked.

UfraTeez raised an eyebrow and sucked his teeth. “That makes you the white boy.”

“Hey, that white boy is seriously Jet Li, son,” said the thin, pock-marked man to UfraTeez’ left. His name was Jerome Leroy Jenkins, but under the street name of King Pharaoh, he provided the beats for the New Heliopolis Collective. He reached out his fist to the forest-and-gold garbed warrior. “You get much respect from me, boss.”

Danny returned King Pharaoh’s fist bump. To Danny’s right, the bulky, rough-hewed form of Luke Cage smiled and asked, “What you wanna know?”

“Back in the day,” UfraTeez began. The young man’s Fendi-framed sunglasses made it unclear what he was thinking in posing the question. “Why’d you wear that bootleg yellow polyester shirt? That was embarrassing, son!”

The comment caused the members of The Collective to whoop and high-five each other. Luke didn’t react to the show of solidarity, choosing instead to look over at his long-time partner with a knowing glance.

When the raucousness died down, Luke said, “You remember that yellow shirt, right?”

“O’ course I do,” UfraTeez shot back, grinning widely. “There are nights that thing chases me around threatenin’ to make me wear it, son.”

“Well, I want people to remember it,” the man who at one time went by the name Power Man said, his voice level. He leaned forward, hands folded. “What else you know about me?”

The young rapper leaned back thoughtfully. “Well, you’re mad strong…and you got skin like armor—”

Cage gave the rapper a tight, closed mouthed smile. “And chances are you don’t got that skin…so if someone is shooting up the joint, it’s better he shoot me than you, right?”

King Pharaoh nodded. “I hear that.”

“So it would stand to reason,” Cage continued, “that I should wear something so bright that they’d automatically aim at me first.”

“Like a yellow polyester shirt,” Danny Rand added, his eyes unreadable.

“Yeah, like a yellow polyester shirt.” Luke leaned back. “I can’t count how many people didn’t have to take a bullet ’cause of that bootleg shirt. And the best part is, those things were so nasty I bought ’em twenty a dozen.”

“Okay, cool, cool,” the young musician admitted. “But why you stop wearing those things, they so great?”

Luke looked to his best friend. The tight smile widened. “Damn things were made of polyester. They itched.”

The two members of the New Heliopolis Collective looked at the two co-partners in Heroes For Hire for a long moment, uncertain of what to make of the admission.

Luke Cage shrugged. “Don’t care if you got steel like iron or not. No man likes to wear an itchy shirt.”

The laughter that emanated from the limo could be heard on the street.

“Never taken those two on before,” the man with the long, greasy grey hair said into the cell phone. He lowered a pair of binoculars.

The voice on the other end sounded as if it was rubbed raw with steel wool. “If you think there will be difficulty in getting past them—”

“I didn’t say that. I killed Captain—”

“Yes, we know. You have a habit of not letting us forget.”

“If I took down that alien pansy,” the man said as he dropped the binoculars to the rooftop. They were an expensive pair, the kind one would pick up at The Sharper Image, complete with laser calibration. The man didn’t pay them any notice as one lens cracked against the concrete roof, the whole housing bouncing once before resting against the cornice. “The white boy who thinks he’s a chink and the old buck’ll be cake.”

“We do not care if you take out the heroes—although if you killed Cage, we would be happy. We’ve had run-ins with him in the past.”

“That’ll cost extra.”

“We’re not commissioning you to destroy the heroes. Just make sure the musicians die…messily and publicly.”

The man shucked off the wrinkled, stained raincoat that smelled of cigarettes. Underneath it, the man wore a black and purple bodysuit with golden bands around his wrists and a symbol that looked like a ruby amulet in his chest. He rubbed his stubble-ridden cheek and contemplated the stretch limousine approaching. He laughed, an ugly, mechanical bark. “Pal, you wouldn’t have hired me if you didn’t want messy. Start drafting your letter to the Times claiming responsibility; it’ll be over quick.”

With narrowed eyes, the man known as Nitro waited until the limo was at a certain point along Broadway. He tossed away the cell phone into the same general area as the binoculars; considering his specialty, holding onto high tech toys was pointless. The phone was of the cheap prepaid variety, and the money he was being paid for this hit would more than compensate him for the expense.

Timing was important given his specialty. If he jumped too soon, he wouldn’t disable the vehicle. If he jumped too late, it would have enough distance that it could conceivably escape.

Luckily, Nitro the Hero Killer knew a thing or two about timing.

At the right moment, he jumped.

“So how long a set are you doing?”

“Just four songs, L-Dog. We don’t wanna be greedy,” King Pharaoh mentioned.

“Cleaned up for radio play,” UfraTeez added. “And we gonna do a number with Death Cab For Cutie during their set.”

“You and Death Cab For Cutie?” Danny Rand asked.

“Hey, just like Public Enemy and Anthrax, my brother,” UfraTeez replied with a half smile. “And if it helps raise money for Dafur, I’d duet with Paul motherfuckin’ Anka.”

“Gotta do what you gotta,” Luke offered.

“True that.”

Danny Rand’s gaze flickered to the roof. “Did you hear that?”

The others in the limousine were suddenly aware of a strange double-tone noise—half whine, half rush of air. The burly King Pharaoh lowered his window and looked out. “Shit, some metal dude is falling straight for us.”

Luke kicked open his door. “Everyone out. Now.”

Below him, as his body barreled toward the ground, the sound of his building energies screaming in his ear, Nitro saw the black man and the kung-fu wannabe ushering the targets and their posse out of the limo. If he was higher up, he reasoned in the hyper-fast way his mind worked when he was on the clock, he could try and angle his descent to land right on those two thugs.

But now, in mid-build, Nitro couldn’t move his body quick enough if he could try. The altered DNA of his body was shrieking in his blood, demanding release.

And at this moment, it was time to let it be released.

The man smiled. This was going to be messy.

“Is that..”

“Sweet Christmas…not this chucklehead.”

Iron Fist pushed the two members of the New Heliopolis Collective as far back to the street as he could. out of the corner of his eye, the martial artist could see the ripple of recognition going through the crowd at seeing the rappers, then the heroes, then Nitro. It would take too long for some of them to realize how brightly the self-described ‘Hero-Killer’ was glowing.

“Take cover! NOW!” Iron Fist called out in his best stentorian tones. “Protect yourselves.”

And the whine had reached a decibel level where it actively pressed in on the Champion of K’un-L’un’s ear. If anyone looked closely they would notice the way the glass panes in the building around them were vibrating in response to the sonic noise.

Both heroes and rappers were smart enough to turn away from the falling form of Nitro just as everything went white. The whining became a thunderous Braka-DOOM that prompted a shower of glass shards as buildings and cars lost their windows. A dozen vehicles up and down the street started an electronic symphony of howls and beeps and wails as their alarms were activated.

Slowly, carefully, the two partners approached the spot where the limo had been—there was a mass of scrap metal and burning rubber smoldering quietly in that spot now. Both men circled the area, fist clenched as something that was half smoke, half light was slowly rushing into a space on top of the broken mass that was vaguely man-like in form. As the form gained color and mass, the figure laughed harshly.

“Awwww, shoot,” Luke muttered under his breath. “Had to be Nitro.”

“Damn right it’s Nitro,” the long-haired man said, pointing directly at Cage. “Now step aside and let me do my job, lest I add another hero to the list of supers I killed.”

Under his cowl, Danny Rand rolled his eyes. He kept revolving around the exploding villain, their orbits getting smaller and smaller. “Less than a minute, Luke.”

“Yeah. Daredevil told me this guy was single-minded, but…damn.”

For a second, hesitation flickered on the man’s body. He whipped his head from Luke to Danny. “You..you’re laughing at me.”

“We all laugh at you, Cherry Bomb,” Cage answered. He reached down to retrieve a twisted piece of metal that could conceivably had been the limo’s side door.

“No one laughs at me,” Nitro growled as the whine pierced the air again. Danny dodged to the left just as the villain exploded in a flash of heat and light. Cage gritted his teeth, feeling his steel-like skin blacken and peel under the force of the assault.

As the vapors that Nitro became started to coalesce, the two heroes closed in. Luke swung the metal like a baseball bat, while Danny threw a high kick. Both connected just as Nitro fully coalesced into solidity. A surprised exhalation rent the air as Cage’s improvised weapon hit him square in the stomach at the same time that Danny’s foot knocked the exploding man in the head. nitro doubled over, face twisted in pain. Cage tossed the metal aside and brought his knee up hard into the man’s head, knocking him on the ground.

Danny Rand closed in again, twirling and bringing his foot down hard on Nitro’s sternum. Anger flashed in the white-haired man’s eyes. Before either men could react, the whine rose again and the man who boasted of being a Hero killer exploded, launching Danny down the street. Luke closed distance, ready to pound the man as he solidified, but the mists began to shift and move around the powerfully built man. Luke swiveled his head just in time to be punched in the jaw by Nitro hard enough to snap his head back.

“I got a bit of that super-strength too, boy,” the wild-haired man crowed and followed with another punch to the rib cage. Luke looped his arm around the villains neck and brought him down into a headlock.

“But not enough,” Luke shot back. With the man’s head firmly secured, Luke punched him straight in the face. Nitro stumbled backwards, clutching his face. A howl of pain went up from deep in the long-haired man’s throat before the whine pierced the air again. Luke twisted back and away, diving for the nearest cover as the air around Nitro became an expanding ball of heat and light.

Danny Rand had picked himself up from where he landed. He wiped a trickle of blood from his lip with the back of his hand. The mist coalesced into Nitro, fists and teeth clenched.

“I can do this all day!” he called out. “Just give me that thug-life minstrel show you’re protecting!”

In an alcove, King Pharaoh called out, “What the hell we do to you, pinhead?”

Nitro grinned. “Nothing,” he said before dropping the ground, dodging one of Luke’s roundhouses. The long-haired mercenary kicked out and knocked his opponent to the ground. “But The Right says you gotta go, you gotta go.”

Ufrateez looked puzzled and turned to his partner. “The President? Bush wants to kill us?”

Cage got to his knees as Nitro stood in front of him. His jacket and jeans were tattered and singed. The smell of smoke and burning metal filled both men’s ear. Water was seeping up from below, the results of a cracked pipe below them. Out of the corner of his eye, Luke saw Danny closing in, his right hand slowly achieving a certain tell-tale orange-red glow.

“The Right are a bunch of lunatic conservatives,” Danny murmured, his fist unfurling into an open palm, the glow becoming a smoldering corona of heat. “Cage had a run in with them before.”

“I don’t give a shit about their politics,” Nitro crowed, kicking Luke in the ribs. The hero rolled with the impact, ending up on his side. Luke pushed himself into a crouching position. “All I care about is their check clearing.”

“Ahhh, go wash yourself, stink bomb,” Luke growled as his partner continued his approach in a wide arc.

Nitro’s face grew hard as he stepped forward and launched another kick. This time Cage was ready. raising one massive arm to deflect the blow. “Truth is, I’m glad you didn’t turn tale, boy. I been itching to add to my list of heroes killed.”

Cage followed through on his defensive move by bringing a solid fist hard into Nitro’s crotch. The villain screamed in a barely human expression of pain, his hands going instinctively to his genitals. Cage stood up and let fly with an uppercut that snapped his opponent back into a standing position.

“Heros killed? Way the Avengers tell it, you didn’t do nothing.”

Nitro scowled and threw a punch. Luke stepped within the man’s reach and laid a punch across his jaw that sent Nitro stumbling backwards.

“You were just lucky you were holding some nerve agent,” Luke continued. “And everyone else you fought you went down like a bitch for.”

Nitro charged. “I’LL KILL YO—”

Luke Cage was ready, driving one steel-hard fist right into the man’s face. There was a loud crunch of cartilage snapping, and a gush of blood. Nitro stumbled backwards a few steps more.

“And for the record, bitch—I’m the brawler.”

Nitro’s eyes flashed with hate. The high pitched whine began to grow in intensity. Luke back pedaled, looking over the villain’s shoulder at his partner and best friend.

Just as the whine grew to its climax and Nitro started once more to explode outward, Danny Rand, his right hand glowing like a blast furnace in the middle of the night, called out, “And I’m the artist!”

—and plunged his glowing hand deep into the heart of the explosion.

The outpouring of light and heat was the most intense it had been. Water erupted from busted hydrants and mains, tarmac cracked and broke, light poles fell over from having their bases torn out by the force of the blast. Cars overturned and smacked into storefronts, scattering displays and coating the surface with black soot.

And the tell-tale inrush of mist that had followed the explosions up to this moment was gone.

For a long, long minute, the street was silent. There was a roaring in both heroes’ ears, and someone both men knew their might be some ill-effects for an hour or more. Danny looked to Luke, his eyes asking a question he did not wish to vocalize. The hero who once called himself Power Man coughed and waved his hand around to dispel the smoke and grit in the air. He nodded to his partner once…and that was all they needed.

Slowly, carefully, the two musicians of the New Heliopolis Collective emerged from their hiding place. “Shit! You capped that mofo’s ass,” Ufrateez exclaimed, a bit too loudly due to the effects of the last explosion.

“No,” Danny Rand replied. His hand has lost its mouldering field. “I merely disrupted his chi. He’ll reassemble….eventually….somewhere.”

“You hard, son,” King Pharaoh muttered, his eyes focused on the blackened and broken spot where Nitro once was. “You so hard.”
“Why you think I keep him around?” Luke told his client. He pressed one hand against his head and moved his jaw, hoping to relieve the pressure on his ear. “Let’s get you guys to the show, aight?”

“So it failed.”

“Not Necessarily. Yes, the musicians survive to spew their liberal nonsense, encouraging civil disobedience….but the incident itself….there’s promise there.”

“It will help encourage an air of….paranoia amongst the normals. Especially with the ambiguous resolution of the threat.”

“Exactly. My only regret is that we’ve lost Nitro. His powers made him particularly suited for putting a scare into the populace.”

“But only for a while. You heard Iron Fist. He’ll re-assemble.”

“True. Let’s make sure we’re there to meet him when he does…pull himself together, shall we? At the very least, we can direct him at Fist once our allies activate Cage.”

“Sounds like a good idea.”

“Are any of my ideas anything but?”