The Taylor Foundation. Founded years ago by Daryl Taylor and inherited by his son, Dwayne. During his teenage years, Dwayne utilized the assets of the Taylor Foundation to avenge the deaths of his parents. With help from his legal guardians, Andrew Chord and Tai, Dwayne donned a suit of armor and became Night Thrasher. He founded and led the New Warriors for some time, discovering the truth of his parents deaths — as well as the role Chord and Tai both played in it.

Much has changed since those days. Today, Dwayne heads up the Taylor Foundation. Tai is dead, and Chord assists him as an advisor. Dwayne has since retired from his superhero days. A group of teenagers dressing up in spandex to change the world — the entire idea almost seems ludicrous to him now.

Dwayne Taylor has other methods to change the world — through the use of his corporation. These were thoughts he pondered while reviewing several contracts. Since he turned his attention to his company, Taylor has become a force to be reckoned with, not far under industry leaders such as Stark-Fujikawa and the X-Corporation.

Unfortunately for the former Night Thrasher, it has also made him a walking target.

Even though his superhero days were behind him, Dwayne’s skills remained as sharp as ever. He could almost feel something behind him and he turned his chair slightly. This allowed him a side glance from the corner of his eye to spot the large figure who crashed through the window behind him. Dwayne leapt from his seat moments before the intruder unleashed a large fireball at him. He fell to his back and looked up.

“Nice digs,” said the intruder. He was composed entirely of flames, and he wore a mechanical harness of some sort, as well as devices beneath his feet. Devices, Taylor assumed, which allowed him to hover in the air. “You know who I am?”

“Firebrand,” said Dwayne, matter-of-factly. “Or the latest incarnation, anyway.”

“Ooooh, nice,” said Firebrand. “I’m impressed that a corporate bigwig like you can remember someone like me.”

“What do you want?” asked Dwayne.

“I think that’s obvious,” replied Firebrand. “I’m going to tear this entire place down.”

FIREFIGHT

Part I: Call to Arms

By Dino Pollard

“So, just what is this place anyway?”

The question comes from the sixteen-year-old heroine known as Spider-Woman. She hung upside-down, behind the man who called himself Patriot, suspended from the ceiling by the use of her psionic webs. Patriot focused on the computer console before him, which was covered with a tarp. He pulled the tarp free and dust flew everywhere.

“The Crash Pad,” he said. “This was the place the old Warriors used as their base of operations.”

“Ah,” said Spider-Woman. “Do we have their permission to be here?”

“We don’t need it,” said Patriot. “This place has been abandoned for some time, ever since the Warriors disbanded.”

“You sure seem to know a lot about these guys,” said Spider-Woman. “Were you one of them?”

“No,” replied Patriot. “But trust me, I have experience.”

“But why the New Warriors?” asked Spider-Woman. “I mean, I’m all about the teaming up to fight evil and all that fun stuff, but if you don’t have any connections with the Warriors, why are you taking their name and their place of business?”

“Because…” he began. He looked over the computer before him and searched around for a power source. Once he found it, he activated it and the computer hummed to life. “I can.”

“That doesn’t seem like a good reason,” said Spider-Woman.

“It’ll have to do,” said Patriot. “I told you I would require a bit of faith on your part for this arrangement to work.”

“I don’t like being in the dark, Patriot.”

“Neither do I,” he said. “But sometimes, we have to be. In order to accomplish the greater good. Do you think the Avengers know who Captain America really is?”

“First off, you’re not Captain America,” said Spider-Woman. “Second, Cap doesn’t even have a secret identity. He’s… y’know, Captain-freaking-America.”

“You don’t like to view your heroes as human, do you?” asked Patriot.

“What are you talking about?” asked Spider-Woman.

“You idolize them, put them on pedestals so they can do no wrong,” replied Patriot. “You refuse to recognize their faults. Make no mistake, Spider-Woman—behind the masks, they’re all human. They all have their shortcomings.”

“Whatever, Dr. Phil,” she said. “Look, do you really need me here for this? Because I don’t think I’m in the mood to sit around and watch while you play Minesweeper.”

“I’m checking the systems, seeing if there are any passwords I need to get past,” said Patriot. “Make yourself useful and remove the other tarps.”

Spider-Woman dropped from her position, flipped right-side-up, and landed gracefully on the ground. She glanced around the Crash Pad and noticed the other tarps, which covered various objects. She sighed and moved towards them.

Elsewhere in the Crash Pad was where the other three members of the latest incarnation of the New Warriors could be found. Of these three, only one of them has served as a hero in the past, albeit briefly and now part-time. The mutant known as Ricochet. The other two include Joystick, a reformed criminal. And Machine Teen, who is new to the game altogether.

“I hate this…” muttered Joystick. An energy baton formed within the palm of her hand, courtesy of her gauntlet. She hurled it forward. Ricochet leapt over it.

“Gotta do better than that, babe,” he said. “And hate what?”

“Patriot blackmailing me like he has,” she replied. Three energy batons form in each hand and she hurled all three of them towards Ricochet. He flipped over each one effortlessly, as if he were able to sense where they would each strike before they hit.

“I was done with all this,” she said. “Done with the costumes, done with the craziness. I just wanted to relax and have a normal life.”

“‘Normal’ isn’t in the cards for people like us, sweets,” said Ricochet. “We’d get bored stiff.”

“That’s what you think,” said Joystick.

“Nope, that’s what I know,” said Ricochet. He leaped forward and his feet touched the ground for just a moment before he leapt again. He skillfully twisted in the air like a master acrobat and came to a crouched landing behind Joystrick. From his seat, Machine Teen watched all this transpire, observing his new teammates.

“How do you know?” he asked.

“Because I tried retirement,” replied Ricochet. “After spending time leaping from rooftop to rooftop, having to walk around on the ground, take the bus, deal with all that traffic and the hustle and bustle of city life… it’s confining. You don’t have the same freedom you have up there.”

“I never had much freedom, I was always on the run from something or someone,” said Joystick.

“That’s what I mean,” said Ricochet. “It’s that rush of not knowing what’s gonna happen next. An’ nothing beats the feeling you get when you’ve beaten a bad guy unconscious, or when you’ve saved someone’s life.”

“I always thought heroes were supposed to be completely selfless,” said Machine Teen.

“That’s why I became a crook,” said Joystick.

“Selfless? Heh, I wouldn’t go that far,” said Ricochet. “That rush? C’mon man, that’s worth any amount of supervillains you have to duke it out with. And I went toe to toe with Mephisto, so I should know.”

“Bullshit,” said Joystick. “A Spider-Man knock-off like you wouldn’t last five minutes against Mephisto.”

“Hey, I lasted ten,” said Ricochet. He stopped and thought on the words he just said. “…at least I think it was ten minutes. I dunno, kinda hard to keep track of time in Hell.”

“Who’s Mephisto?” asked Machine Teen.

“Whatever,” said Joystick, paying no attention to Machine Teen’s question. “I’m just hanging around long enough to get Patriot off my back. Once he’s agreed to leave me be, I’m out of here.”

“No sense of responsibility, huh?” asked Ricochet.

“I want to get my degree and put all this behind me,” replied Joystick. “Is that too much to ask?”

“So why’d you get involved in the first place?” asked Ricochet.

“I was young and stupid,” replied Joystick. “Only interested in money and action and I didn’t care what I had to do to get them.”

Ricochet’s brow raised slightly at this comment and he smiled beneath his mask.

“Y’know, that could be taken so many different ways.”

“Oh piss off,” said Joystick.

“I admit, I got my suspicions, too,” said Ricochet. “I don’t completely trust Patriot. But so far, he seems like he’s got it more together than Prodigy did.”

“Who’s Prodigy?” asked Machine Teen.

Patriot sat at the computer console, patching in to various television networks as well as picking up police scanners. He was amazed at how sophisticated the technology was, even though it hadn’t been used in quite some time. An alert came up, and he looked over it. He turned his attention to Spider-Woman.

“Get the others,” he said.

Taylor Foundation

Dwayne Taylor leapt away as Firebrand unleashed a wave of flames in his direction. He rolled on the ground and brought himself to a stop in a crouched position. He narrowed his eyes at Firebrand, and he silently wished he could gain access to his office. He kept his Night Thrasher armor on hand, just in case he would ever need it. If anything else, Dwayne Taylor is a man who likes to be prepared.

Unfortunately for him, he wasn’t prepared enough. He heard the fire alarms go off, and he thought that at least this meant the others in the building can get out in an orderly fashion.

“I don’t wanna kill anyone,” said Firebrand. “I’m not a killer, Taylor. I’m trying to free these people from the shackles of corporate America.”

“Why the Taylor Foundation?” asked Dwayne. “Ever since I took over the company, I’ve dedicated my efforts to helping mankind, not hurting it.”

“I’m sure the guys at ENRON said the same thing,” replied Firebrand. “I’m not interested in wasting time, bud.”

“Then you probably should’ve pick someone else to terrorize.”

Firebrand turned to see a young man dressed in white and blue spandex, complete with yellow goggles over his eyes. He hovered outside the shattered window with his arms folded over his chest, and he lips had curled into a small smirk. Firebrand moved towards the window.

“And just who do you think you are, kid?”

“The name’s Gravity,” he said. “Now, what do you say we leave the nice businessman alone and take this outside?”

“Alright buddy,” said Firebrand. He activated his hover devices attached to his feet and rocketed himself towards Gravity. “Let’s play!”

Gravity flew back as Firebrand came towards him, and he dodged one of the villain’s flaming fists. He focused his mutant abilities on Firebrand and gritted his teeth in strain. Firebrand felt his body being pulled down to the ground. He tried to increase the power on his hover pads, but it was useless and he found himself falling to the ground below. Gravity relaxed and flew down towards the smoking crater Firebrand lay in the center of. He hovered above the villain and smiled.

“That’s it?” he asked. “Man, I expected supervillains on the east coast to pack more of a punch. How the hell did a guy like you ever stand up to the Avengers?”

“By learning how to play possum.”

Firebrand’s eyes suddenly snapped open, and he fired off a blast of flames at Gravity. The young hero barely had the time to dodge it, almost singing himself. Firebrand straightened himself up and stretched his arms out. He looked down at the crater, then back at Gravity.

“Neat trick, kid,” said Firebrand. “My back’s gonna be achin’ all week because of that.”

“How’d you survive that?” asked Gravity.

“What can I tell you, rookie?” replied Firebrand. “I’m magic.”

A golden disc with an ‘R’ engraved on it flew towards Firebrand and struck him in the back of his harness. He turned to see five other young heroes running towards him—Patriot, Ricochet, Spider-Woman, Joystick, and Machine Teen—the New Warriors.

“Magic, huh?” asked Ricochet. “Think you can pull a rabbit out of your ass? I’ve always wanted to see that.”

NEXT ISSUE: The New Warriors in their first battle against the fury of Firebrand! Plus: Speedball and Rage join the fray!

AUTHOR’S NOTES

Ah, the first issue of the latest title to Marvel Omega’s HEROES branch — New Warriors! Back when Marvel Comics was running their whole EPIC project, I wrote up a proposal for New Warriors and sent it in. Sadly, it was rejected. But, I still kept that proposal in the back of my head, and I had considered bringing it to Marvel Revolution and later, My Marvel. I never got around to it, though. Life went on, as it tends to do, and here we are, two years later. Due to differences in continuity and availability of characters, there have been some obvious changes from my original concept. The team I had originally planned to use was Speedball, Ricochet, Jubilee, Rage, Bolt, and Dagger. Only three of the six characters I planned on using are appearing here. I decided Dagger was better left out (which works, because I’ll be writing her in West Coast Avengers alongside Mike Rasbury). Bolt was tied up in Uncanny X-Men and as for Jubilee… c’mon, does anyone seriously think Krupienski will ever give her up?

I decided to go with a different team, as you can see from this issue and the two-issue “From The Ground Up” story-arc in Amazing Fantasy #1-2. Spider-Woman III because I was inspired to use her and Ricochet after reading Russ Anderson and Mike Exner III’s amazing New Warriors title at M2K. Patriot because I’ve got some interesting things in mind for him. Joystick because I missed writing her from my days as co-writer of Marvel Knights at New Marvel (a little-known past credit of mine, and a series that no longer appears on the site). And Gravity and Machine Teen because… well, I saw the solicitations from their comics in Marvel’s previews, and thought it’d be interesting. I actually had a whole wealth of characters under consideration for this book, including Tara (of New Invaders), X-23, Thor-Girl, and pretty much the entire cast of Young Avengers, so I had some difficulty narrowing it down just to eight members. There are some other characters I had considered, but I’ll keep my lips tight on that for now because they’ll be appearing later on down the line.

Now, with that stuff out of the way, some notes on where this book fits in in regards to Marvel continuity. Basically, in Marvel Omega, Jay Faerber’s New Warriors run never happened. This isn’t because Faerber’s run was good or bad (because frankly, I haven’t read it, so I can’t make that call), but it’s because of one character—Bolt. Since he’s been a mainstay of Uncanny X-Men for some time, and since he was never part of the Warriors in MO continuity, it’s easier to just forget about New Warriors volume two altogether.

So far I’m having a lot of fun with this book, and I’ve got a bunch of ideas in mind. Expect some faces familiar to the Warriors to pop up, as well as some unknown ones. It promises to be one interesting ride.

-Dino Pollard
May 10, 2005