New York City

“Yes, Jeryn, move the assets into holding. I don’t care about your expert advice, just do it. No, you can’t change my codename for the branding. Why? Because that’s the name K’un L’un gave me, that’s why!”

“Danny.”

“Hold on a sec, Luke. No, Jeryn, that’s Luke Cage, my partner. You remember him, right? No! Not that kind of partner. Business partner. The other business. Like it matters? No! We’re just walking around. No big deal. Can we get this over with?”

“Danny?”

“I already told you to move them. Yes. No. Yes. Yes. Gah, no. That would be stupid. What does Xao have to do with this anyway?”

“Danny!”

Danny Rand cupped his hand over the phone receiver. “Yeah, Luke? I’m on the phone here.”

Luke Cage grunted. The black man was built like the fusion of two professional football players into one big, mean, bulletproof-skinned machine. He stood at a hot dog stand in front of a shuddering vendor. “I’m orderin’. You want relish or not?”

“No relish, extra onion,” Danny said, cradling the cell phone between his cheek and shoulder. He returned to his phone call, arguing with the man on the other end. Danny had just recently returned to a consulting position at his father’s company, RandCorp, after years of barely making due with the revenue from his and Luke’s Heroes for Hire operation. It was taking up a little more of Danny’s time than he’d originally thought it would, but it also helped keep them operating in this day and age.

Luke grunted again. “You heard the man. No relish, extra onion. Then another one with the works,” he said. The Arabic hot dog man was a quarter Luke’s size and eyed him fearfully. “What? I’m not gonna bite, dawg.”

“Ha!” Danny exclaimed. “Oh, sorry, Jeryn. Luke just said ‘dawg,’ like he’s Randy Jackson or something.”

Luke rolled his eyes. “And make it quick so he can put it in his mouth instead’a talkin’ when he shouldn’t.” The vendor’s hands moved quicker. Luke grinned. He paid for the hot dogs and then started walking back to Danny.

Instead, he found himself chest-to-face with a shorter, weasel-like man in a suit. He looked up at Luke. “Cheese braids. Nantucket. Formula One. Cornucopia.”

“Get the hell out my way, crazy,” Luke muttered, starting to walk past the man.

The man pushed himself in front of Luke even as the Hero for Hire tried to get away. “Tomato soup. Cotton gin. Chimpanzee.”

“I said outta my way, nutcase,” Luke said, trying to push past the man without hurting him.

The weasel-man looked Luke in the eyes and whispered, with a hint of triumph, “Sweet Christmas.”

“Hey, that’s my—” Luke started, but he never finished the sentence. Instead, he dropped the hot dogs to the sidewalk and snapped to attention. “Activation: Luke Cage. Objective: Destroy all heroes.”

Danny looked up and saw the hot dogs on the ground. “Dude, what’s the deal? Yours tastes bad, you have to throw mine down, too?”

Luke spun around to face Danny. “Iron Fist located. First objective: Destroy the Iron Fist.”

“Uh, Jeryn? Call you back,” Danny said, as Luke Cage jumped into action, arms outstretched…

GUNPOWDER BURNS

By Hunter Lambright

“What’ve you got for us, Hollowpoint?”

“Not seeing much, Lolita,” said a dark-skinned man from atop a rooftop. “You sure this intel wasn’t bogus? I’d hate to think we wasted time on this when we could be deactivating Dreadnoughts in a subterranean Hydra base.”

“Relax, Hollowpoint. Our intel hasn’t been bad yet,” Gothic Lolita replied over the connection held by all the mechas in their line. “What is it you’ve got even if it’s not much, my mecha?”

Hollowpoint Ninja focused in his zoom-camera eyeballs. “Cage is buying hot dogs. Scary sleeper agent stuff, that.”

“Maybe they’re the code!” Stem Cell chimed in. “He eats the hot dog and—BOOM!—instant crazy psycho killer sleeper agent replaces ghetto superhero.”

There was a moment of silence between all the interlinked mechas, followed by a brief period of laughter from all but Stem Cell. “What?” she asked. “I thought it sounded good.”

Hollowpoint Ninja froze. “Hold on, there’s some guy talking to him. Cage looks put off. This might be what we’ve been waiting for.” There was a momentary pause. “Huh. He dropped the hot dogs.”

“What?” Stem Cell asked excitedly. “Does this mean I might have been right?”

“Nah, it was the short guy, I’m telling you,” Hollowpoint Ninja said, staring down at the quickly-heating action down on the street. “Ah, damn. He’s attacking Iron Fist. Intel was right. I’m going in.”

“May the maker be with you,” Gothic Lolita said quietly as Hollowpoint Ninja leapt into action, unstrapping his guns as he went.

“Luke—stop!” Danny shouted, dodging Luke’s bowling ball-sized fists. “Come on, man! Who’s mind-controlling you this time?”

Luke was unresponsive as he launched another punch that Danny barely dodged, even with his martial arts training. His eyes were blank and his pupils were strangely dilated. “Luke, are you drugged? Snap out of it, man!” Danny said, dodging a series of grabs and punches. Luke’s misses sent concrete flying through the air in chunks capable of denting a man’s head in.

“Fine!” Danny shouted. “I’ll put you down and then figure out what’s wrong with you!” He leapt up and tucked his legs to his chest, somersaulting over Cage and landing behind his back. Then he swept around with chi-powered kick that was meant to take his legs out from underneath him, or at least unbalance him. Instead, Danny’s leg shuddered like a tuning fork that had been hit against solid rock. His leg might as well have been a tuning fork, for all the damage it did.

“Damn it!” Danny yelled, biting his lower lip to stop from crying out in pain. He offered up a quick prayer in hope that he hadn’t fractured anything in his ankle, and barely dodged the hot dog stand that Luke threw in his face. “Jeez, whoever’s in your head has a nasty streak, man.”

Danny rolled sideways as the crumpled stand came his way again from the end of Luke’s extended arms. He flipped backwards at the third swipe, cursing as he landed on his ankle. The sun was blocked out as Luke’s shadow embraced Danny like the grasping arms of death. Luke brought his fists up to hammer them down into Danny’s rib cage. “Luke…” Danny whispered, struggling fruitlessly to move backwards on his twisted ankle.

A barrage of bullets caused Luke to stagger backwards. Danny buried his face into his forearm as the spent bullets flattened against Luke’s rock-hard skin and flew off into the crowd. “Move out of the way!” Hollowpoint Ninja shouted, leaping across the roofs of the parked cars. “Get out of here!”

“What are you talking about? I have to stop him!” Danny protested. “He’s going to hurt somebody!”

“Really?” Hollowpoint asked. “Because it looks to me the only one your friend wants to hurt right now is you, Iron Fist.”

Danny looked at Hollowpoint, dumbfounded. “How do you—look out!”

Luke brought a mail drop-box around his head, swinging it like a discus. The drop-box spun through the air with the speed of a shuriken and the destructive force of a cannonball. Hollowpoint Ninja, without missing a beat, spun around, brought his guns to bear on the oncoming missile, and let loose with his guns. The bullets ripped into the metal, cleaving the drop-box in half and spreading shredded mail like confetti.

Hollowpoint Ninja shielded his face from the shrapnel that flew from the shredded drop-box. “You don’t understand what’s going on at all, do you? If we leave, he stops trying to kill us and endangering civilians. It’s as simple as that, Iron Fist.”

“If you’re lying…” Danny said, but he trailed off. Luke was building up speed heading in their direction. “Fine, let’s try it,” he said hurriedly.

“Okay, then,” Hollowpoint said. “Give me a sec, would you?” He rushed Luke’s incoming form and planted his hands on his shoulders, catapulting himself over Luke. He extended his legs into the small of Luke’s back, send him crashing to the ground. Then he ran back to where Danny stood, nursing his injured ankle and sweating bullets. “Now we have time to go.”

Hollowpoint Ninja wrapped one of his arms around Danny’s waist, despite the latter’s protests, and jumped onto the roof of a parked car. Hollowpoint then bounded into an alley, making his way up the wall by bouncing from side to side in the alley up until they reached the rooftop. When they reached the top, Hollowpoint Ninja was not out of breath.

“Jeez…are you even human?” Danny asked.

“No, I’m a mecha. They call me Hollowpoint Ninja. I don’t have the same functions as you do. That’s because I was built to last, while humans have an expiration date,” said Hollowpoint in a matter-of-fact tone. “On the bright side, it saved your bacon.”

“Yeah, I suppose there’s that,” Danny said reluctantly. He looked over the edge of the rooftop. “What just happened?”

Luke stood in the middle of the street, the only person left in the vicinity. He looked around in confusion. “Danny? Where’d you go?” he called out.

“We have to go help him,” Danny said, preparing to crawl over the edge.

Hollowpoint Ninja grabbed his shoulder and pulled him back roughly. “No.”

“No?” Danny asked. “He’s my best friend. I have to help him.”

“No,” Hollowpoint Ninja repeated. “He’s been activated. He’s a sleeper agent, and he was just activated.

Danny struggled against Hollowpoint’s grip. “That doesn’t mean we can’t help him.”

A new voice, effeminate and almost bubbly, said, “This isn’t going to make sense, but, like, yeah. You can’t help him. Not yet.” Danny turned to see a bright-eyed girl who didn’t look like she could possibly have been out of her teens.

“What do you mean?” Danny asked. His forehead was lined with anguish.

“I mean, it looks to me like his affliction is activated whenever he comes in contact with a known superhero, y’know?” said the girl. “I’m Social Butterfly, by the way, Mr. Rand. I’m a big fan.” She looked at Hollowpoint Ninja and noted with a pained look a spot on his back where his outer casing had been shattered by shrapnel. “Do you want me to get Cornfed on that?”

“If we have time,” Hollowpoint said sullenly. “Debrief him before he runs into another hero in civvies.”

“Fine, meanie,” said Social Butterfly. “Come on out, guys.”

From behind the ventilation shafts and fans came three other individuals. One, the only male, was a husky, blond farm boy, complete with overalls and a piece of straw in his mouth. The next was a pale girl dressed up in fishnets and black lipstick. Two ponytails jutted out from the sides of her head. The third, also a girl, couldn’t have been more than eight or nine years old. She wore her hair plaited and large, wire-rimmed glasses. “Meet Cornfed, Gothic Lolita, and Stem Cell,” said Social Butterfly. “I think, like you can figure out who is who.”

“Who are you kids?” Danny asked. “And what do you know about Luke?”

“We’re the Livewires, and we’ve already told you, we aren’t kids,” said Hollowpoint Ninja. “We’re hyper-advanced machines. Mechas.” He looked at Cornfed. “What are you waiting for? Wanna patch me up?”

Danny nodded. “Okay, so that’s not the weirdest thing I’ve ever heard. I can buy that, especially after what I saw you do, Hollowpoint. But who created you? Why do you exist?”

“We don’t know,” said Gothic Lolita quickly. “We only know our function.”

“And what’s that?” Danny shot back.

Cornfed’s hands stopped their movements in the repairs of Hollowpoint’s back. “Our primary function is to stop sleeper cells, secret societies, shadow organizations. We were created so that society would never be afflicted by the shadow it can’t see.”

Lolita snorted. “That was deep.”

“But true,” Cornfed responded. “We only know what we’re supposed to do, nothing more.”

“You should’ve seen the A.I.G. cell we took down last week!” Stem Cell said excitedly. “It’s too bad M.O.D.O.G. got away, but at least he won’t be planning anything any time soon.”

Danny shook his head in disbelief. “M.O.D.O.G.?”

Cornfed snorted. “Mental Organism Designed Only for Genocide.”

“Quit changing the subject, everyone,” Hollowpoint Ninja said. “We know what we’re supposed to do here. We take out Control’s pet toy and start moving up the chain based on what information he gives up.”

“You’re not ‘taking out’ Luke Cage,” Danny said, gritting his teeth. “I doubt you even could.”

“Unfortunately, it’s not your say,” said Gothic Lolita. She cracked her knuckles.

“Please,” Hollowpoint said. “We’re trying to work together here, not start more fights, Lolita. Can we work together on this or are we going to get everyone on a different side?”

“We have two different agendas,” Lolita said, turning her back and crossing her arms.

Danny shook his head, standing up. Hollowpoint raised an eyebrow. “I thought you hurt your ankle.”

“I’ve been using my chi to heal it slowly while you guys have been arguing,” Danny said. “That’s not the point. We need a plan before Luke runs into someone out of costume, or worse, in costume. God knows he doesn’t need any more time in jail under false charges, y’know, again.”

“How can we do that without putting him down?” Lolita said, her hands on her hips. “You have any mental powers I don’t know about? We either kill him or deprogram him.”

“How can we deprogram him? Can’t we sequester him until we can figure out how to get this notion or whatever it is out of his head?” Danny asked.

“I’m not completely sure it matters unless we can get him sequestered without a single superhero, powered or not, confronting him in the process,” Hollowpoint said. “Plus, the chances of someone who could cure him being a normal person are so slim. Can we even risk it?”

“We need to put ‘im down. Hard,” said Cornfed. “That in itself is gonna be hard enough.”

“Stem Cell, do you, like, have anything brewing that we could use against him?” Social Butterfly asked. “Without, like, taking out half of New York in the process? No mini-nuke, please.”

Stem Cell looked disappointed. “I have some flash-bangs. Do you think those might help?”

“We’ll see,” Lolita said. “Hollowpoint was handling him on his own. The five of us can do this, grenades or no grenades.”

“Wait—just wait,” Danny said. “We have a problem here, and I don’t think you understand what’s going on here. You’re talking about killing Luke Cage, one of the best superheroes there ever was! What are you even talking about? How are you even talking about it?” He shrugged. “I hate to sound like a whiny little girl here, but—”

“Well, you are,” interjected Lolita.

“But,” Danny continued, gritting his teeth, “we have other tools at our disposal.”

“Like what?” Hollowpoint asked. “If you’ve got any ideas, I’m all ears. I’d love to hear them.”

Danny pointed at his ankle. “Chi,” he said. “Would you consider the stuff that’s been done to Luke’s mind to be damage of some kind?”

“It’s possible…but why?” Hollowpoint asked.

Danny shrugged. “It’s worth a shot, isn’t it? If I can heal this brainwashing or whatever you want to call it…if I can get rid of it, isn’t it worth it? Even if we have to cause a little more destruction in case it doesn’t work? No one has to die if it does work.”

“Anyone have any problems with letting Iron Fist try this thing out?” Hollowpoint asked. Danny looked in their eyes, glazed over, even in their machine state. Were they talking on their own personal server? Danny hazarded a guess that they were. “All right, with no objections, we’ll try that first,” Hollowpoint said. “And if that doesn’t work, well, then we’ll have to do like Cornfed said—we’ll have to put him down hard.”

“Dammit, can anyone tell me what’s going on?” Luke asked. All he knew was that one minute he was being confronted by that weird guy saying all the mixed up words and the next he was standing in the middle of a warzone with his shirt shredded and no one around.

A wrinkled man on the street corner handed him a copy of the Old Testament and said, “The shelter is just down the street, young man.”

“Thanks,” Luke said, but he kept walking. “Dammit, Danny. Where the hell’d you go?”

There were more people now, as the street that he had left behind had finally quieted down. They walked past him in droves, heading toward wherever they were heading before they heard the commotion a block over. “Hey, does anyone know what happened?”

“The aliens replaced the heads of state, sonny. That’s what happened! We’re all under Controooool…” cackled a twisted-nosed crone as she staggered on down the block away from him.

“Are you okay, sir?” asked a young woman with short, dark hair. “You look lost.”

Luke’s pupils dilated at the sound of her voice. “Identified: Sara Ehret known as Jackpot. Objective: Terminate Jackpot.”

“Oh, no,” Sara said, backing away from him. “You’ve, uh, got the wrong Sara.”

She flipped out of the way just before Luke’s fist carved out a slice of the sidewalk where she had been standing a split-second before. “Crap. I knew I shouldn’t have worn heels,” she muttered. “Way to go, Sara. How are you going to get yourself out of this one?”

“Oh crap,” Stem Cell muttered. “My Me-Spheres just alerted me that Luke Cage has found a superhuman two blocks away. He’s in the process of trying to kill her. If we’re going to move, we have to move now.”

“Who is it?” Danny asked, tying back his yellow mask over his head. “Can they handle themselves?”

“The database recognizes her as Jackpot, but she normally has a bright red wig on, for some reason. Yuck,” Stem Cell muttered, sticking out her tongue.

“Then let’s get our butts in gear, people,” Hollowpoint said. He snapped the safety off his oversized Liefeld-make gun.

Danny whistled. “Where do you get something like that?”

Hollowpoint laughed. “It’s custom made from the 1990s. It’s gone out of style a little bit since then.”

“Ready, then?” Danny asked. He had stripped out of his business suit and left those clothes on the building, revealing the tight, green and yellow uniform underneath. “Let’s move, people!”

Jackpot dodged another set of fists slamming down into the street. This time a water pipe was shattered in the process, sending a fountain of water straight into Luke’s eyes. He growled barbarically, wiping at his eyes with extreme vigor.

“C’mon, c’mon,” Jackpot said, using the temporary distraction to run over to her purse. “Please tell me that nothing’s happened to it. Please, please, please.” She reached into her purse and pulled out a belt, raising it in triumph. The buckle had three rollers in it. She wrapped it around her waist and hit a button that was set into the side, just over where the belt strap attached to the buckle. The rollers began to spin through a cycle of cherries, stars, and sevens.

Before the spinner stopped, Jackpot looked up to see an entire axle flying at her, with both the wheels attached. She ducked and, before she could wonder how Luke had gotten the axle out of the car, found herself face to face with him. He grabbed her neck. “Objective…completion…in progress,” he huffed.

Jackpot’s spinner stopped, rolling up three sevens. “Guess what, Tiger?” she asked, for she could no longer feel the pressure Luke tried to exert on her neck. “I just hit the jackpot.”

The belt, on its lucky roll, had granted her invulnerability. For how long, she didn’t know. She just hoped it would be long enough.

Outlined by a yellow energy trail, a lightning-fast fist crashed into the side of Luke’s head. “You aren’t hurting anyone today, Luke. This isn’t you,” Danny said, following the punch up with a kick. “We’re going to fix you, man.”

He knocked Luke backwards, but still the man stayed on his feet. “Hollowpoint, take him!”

Hollowpoint Ninja whipped the barrel of his gun forward, spraying its bullets all at Luke’s chest, but Luke only grunted, brushing off the last fraying tatters of his shirt without moving. He grabbed the car whose axle he had already forcibly removed and tore off its bumped. Hollowpoint went flying backwards as the bumper wrapped itself around him.

“Cover your eyes and ears!” Stem Cell shouted, catapulting over the destroyed hulk of another car. She held a flash-bang grenade in each hand. As the two grenades arced through the air, Danny grabbed Jackpot and tackled her to the ground. He brought her hands up over her ears and covered his own just before he felt the flash outside his eyelids.

Even with those precautions, his ears rang after he opened his eyes. “Get him now, Lolita!” he heard Social Butterfly yell.

Gothic Lolita drew a fist back as Luke grasped around blindly. Then, with a look on her face that spelled out pure glee, she knocked him flat on his back with a single punch. “Pileup, boys!” she shouted. Hollowpoint and Cornfed rushed out from the sides and each grasped one of his legs, pinning it to the tarmac. Jackpot realized what was going on and grabbed one of his flailing arms while Lolita grabbed the other.

Danny put a hand on either side of Luke’s head and shut out everything around him. He concentrated on his chi and the energy that surrounded him. Then, as he felt the energy building up, he sent it into Luke, sending it to the faults in Luke’s mind. There was a blackness there caused by something unnatural. It resisted his chi, and Danny sent it again, struggling to maintain his calm. His chi took the shape of a scalpel and, with a mental jabbing motion, he felt the blackness shatter.

“It’s done,” he said. “He should be clean. Let him up.”

The Livewires and Jackpot stood up from Luke’s prone form. Danny slapped Luke lightly on the cheek. “Wake up, man.”

Luke groaned. “The hell happened?”

“You tried to beat the hell out of me. Then you tried to beat the hell out of a girl,” Danny said. “We’re lucky these, uh, kids decided to help you out.”

Luke grunted as he got to his feet. “Thanks. You have any idea who did this to me?”

The Livewires all stood there, looking at each other. Finally, Hollowpoint Ninja stepped forward. “They’re called Control. They’re the Big Bad. They’re number one on our list. We know next to nothing about them.”

“Yeah, well I’m gonna find them, and I’m going to show them what happens when Christmas comes early,” Luke muttered, grinding his fist into his palm.

Danny stifled a laugh. “That couldn’t have been lamer if you tried.”

“You think this is funny business? You think that having your mind messed with is some kind of thing to laugh about?” Luke asked.

“No,” Danny said quickly. “I think it’s funny that, even after I healed any problems in your head, you still have to use the word ‘Christmas’ all the time. It looks like your incurable.”

“So what do we do now?” Luke asked, staring at all the destruction.

Danny shrugged. “The good news is, ‘Luke Cage Goes Crazy’ is going to be bumped back a page or two by ‘Jackpot’s Secret Identity – Revealed!’” he said lightheartedly.

“Not funny,” Jackpot muttered, sitting sullenly against the back of a damaged car.

“It wasn’t meant to be,” Danny said. “It’s true.”

“Still not funny,” Jackpot muttered.

“We’re heading out,” Hollowpoint Ninja interjected. “Social Butterfly intercepted a transmission about a rogue Hydra cell manufacturing robotic toys fused with Ultron programming. We’ll call you if we get more information on Control. You’ll be the first to know.”

The mechas then rose as a unit into the air and disappeared over the closest building. Luke whistled. “What do you make of this? Sleeper agents? Killing heroes?”

“I don’t know,” Danny said. “Day in the life?”

“True that,” Luke said, laughing. “What do we do now?”

“I’m gonna call Jeryn back and make sure I have a job,” Danny said. “Once we, you know, get my clothes back and all.”

“I’m gonna try to find a shirt,” Luke said. “Meet ya in twenty?”

“Sure,” Danny said. He then darted for the alleyway and used the same method to get to the rooftop that he had seen Hollowpoint Ninja use earlier. Luke began walking down the street.

“Wait, what about me?” Jackpot asked, still sitting on the hood of the car.

Luke turned back at her. “Hey. You wanna go get a hot dog?”