Previously in Runaways

Alex Wilder, Chase Stein, Nico Minoru, Karolina Dean, Molly Hayes, and Gertrude Yorkes thought they were six ordinary children, with twelve ordinary parents. The night of the annual charity dinner, however, that all changed. For the first time, the kids decided to eavesdrop on the meeting, discovering that their parents were actually members of the Pride, a mysterious criminal organization. The Pride then murdered an innocent girl as part of a pseudo-satanic ritual. That was the final straw.

That night, the six kids ran away.

Earlier that night, an unknown individual under the guise of the Buyer purchased a poisonous beast called Nice Boy from the aptly-named Little Shoppe of Horrors, run byMatti and Primo Falcone. In the middle of the night, the Buyer used Nice Boy to kill Victor Stein in his own home after he discovered something interesting about the whereabouts of the Pride’s children. The Buyer’s identity is still unknown.

The kids decided to raid their own homes in order to discover the secrets their parents had kept from them all along. Alex, Nico, Karolina, and Chase went out in Chase’s van to discover their secrets while Gert and Molly remained at the Hostel, their new base. While Alex and his group were out, Gert and Molly were forced to fend off the vampireTopher, who had occupied the Hostel until the kids took it. Meanwhile, Alex’s group discovered W.A.T.E.R., an A.I. computer headset, containing database information on the Pride’s activities, and the Abstract, a coded book that they suspected might contain the Pride’s secrets.

While preparing to find Chase’s secrets, they were caught by Dale Yorkes, who inadvertently pulled off Karolina’s medical bracelet, revealing her to be the solar-poweredMajesdanian alien that always was. At the same time, in his parents’ workshop, Chase was confronted by Frank and Leslie Dean, who told him about his father and coerced him to come back to their side. Alex, Nico, and Karolina later escaped, but Chase chose to remain behind.

In order to get revenge for his father’s death, Chase was given the Fistigons, fire gauntlets created by his parents’ collective mechanical genius. He used these to torch the Little Shoppe of Horrors, killing Matti and Primo’s mother in the process. Alex, Nico, and Karolina once again left Molly and Gert alone in order to try to save the Falcone family, but only Primo remained when the structure collapsed. In the process, Nico discovered that, while raiding her own home, she had bonded with the Staff of One, a magical stick with unknown properties. The fates of Matti and Arturo Falcone are currently unknown.

However, after a week of recovering from their fiery encounter, these Runaways have decided that it’s time to take the fight back to their parents…

CLUB BUSTING

Part I: Fallen, The Mighty

By Hunter Lambright

The Juice Box
Residence of the Pusher Man

Chase Stein had just stepped into his worst nightmare—and greatest dream—all at the same time.

The room was large, but it made up the entire structure. No doors led off anywhere. There was no entrance or exit. Anyone who got there had to be teleported, just as Chase had been. When he told Geoff Wilder that he’d been experiencing withdrawal, Geoff held out a raincoat. “Step inside,” he ordered. Chase had felt rather stupid, but he poked his head into the raincoat. He’d emerged in this place.

Chase stepped all the way through, taking in the sights. It was a junkie’s paradise, but a depressed man’s nightmare. The walls were lined with bag after bag of every kind of powder known to man, rolls of weed, tobacco, hallucinogens, and marijuana, and sack after sack of manufactured substance. In contrast, the walls were painted a garish yellow, lashing out to slap the unprepared across the eyes. The carpet was a lush, neon green, and the only piece of furniture in the room, a desk, was purple.

At the desk sat a man as strange as his decorating tastes. He was short and bald, though that fact was obscured by his wide-brimmed, fuzzy blue hat. He had on a pair of square glasses that went out of style in the eighties and sported a goatee beneath his pursed lips. His clothing was equally extravagant. The man seemed to be wearing what looked like a fluffy red bathrobe, but the yellow, puffed-out scarf was the kicker. Chase didn’t know whether to laugh or turn around and leave.

He did neither because of the woman standing behind the strange man. She was tall and slender, the sitting man’s complete opposite. Her hair was reddish-pink and cut boyishly short. The woman had a switchblade in her hand and continually flipped it open and shut, open and shut.

After Chase had had a moment to take things in, the Pusher Man took a drag on his joint and exhaled, smiling. “Ah, a new customer,” he said, pausing at odd times for his own brand of drama. “I am the Pusher Man, and this here behind me is Bo. You are?”

“The name’s Chase.” To them, he might look like the usual drug-addicted dumb jock, but he had a few tricks up his sleeve in the case that they might try to pull a fast one on him.

“And what might Chase be wanting today?” asked the Pusher Man, gesturing across the wall with one of his humongous, golden gauntlets. They were not unlike his own Fistigons, Chase noted.

“Sixteen tags of crack,” Chase said. “Put it on Wilder’s tab.”

The Pusher Man’s demeanor suddenly changed. “You’re with the Pride?” he asked, sitting up straighter in his chair.

Chase tried not to smirk. “Yeah, I’m the Steins’ son. My parents made those gauntlets you got on your fists.”

“Want me to check him, P.M.?” asked Bo, cracking her knuckles and flicking the switchblade back open. “If he’s lying, there’s no point in wasting good stuff on a kid trying to sneak a free joint.”

The Pusher Man squinted for a moment in concentration before holding up his right hand to ward Bo off. “No, I remember hearing something about this. Some shady cat offed your pops, am I right? My sincerest condolences.”

Chase nodded. “Yeah, some creep killed my dad. If you’ve got any info about that one, you know where to call.”

Bo produced a bag from behind her back. “Here’s the crack, P.M.”

Taking the plastic baggie from her, the Pusher Man inspected it before standing up and digging in a tub within his deepest desk drawer. He then withdrew a jar of thick, black, oozing liquid and put it on the desk.

“Master Stein, take your crack and this, too, on the house. Consider it my funeral respects and a toast to a long, fertile business partnership,” he said, pushing the jar and bag toward Chase.

“What is it?” asked Chase, pointing at the liquid. “Tar in a jar?”

“No,” said the Pusher Man, taking his glasses off and setting them on the table. “It’s Cape, the next big thing on the streets. One gram gives you super-powers for twenty-four hours. That jar holds enough to keep you flying on high for a month or two.”

“What kind of powers?” Chase asked nervously. It wasn’t often he wouldn’t try a new drug, but something about the Pusher Man made him uneasy.

The Pusher Man gave Chase a crooked grin. “Ah, but that would be telling. Besides, you always seemed to be one for those cloak-and-dagger types of mysteries…”

With that, Chase felt something swoosh above him. Bo swung the connecting raincoat-teleporter over his head, sending him back to Wilder’s office.

“How did it go?” asked Geoff, eyeing Chase’s gifts.

Chase furrowed his brow. “It could go either way,” he muttered. “It all depends, though…have you got a light?”

Geoff pulled a lighter from his jacket pocket and handed it to Chase. The lit flame glowed against Wilder’s polished, bald head.

“Well?” asked Wilder, trying to hide his impatience.

Chase took a deep drag on his joint. “Yeah, man. It went good. Real good…”

The Hostel
Residence of the Runaways

Within the molding, half-collapsed walls of the sunken mansion resided six children—none older than seventeen—hiding from their parents. Though much of the mansion had fallen into disarray during the landslide, it was just such a size that the kids still had plenty of room to sit, rock, and hope that their parents wouldn’t find them.

You’d think that was the worst of their troubles, right?

“WHO USED THE LAST PIECE OF TOILET PAPER?!” screeched Gertrude Yorkes, her dry voice cracking through the water-damaged bathroom door.

There was complete and utter silence throughout the Hostel. “Either own up or toss me the sports section!” she shouted.

Again, no one made a sound or movement to help.

Alex Wilder sat at an oddly-shaped desk with a crease down its center. His dark skin blended in with the lack of light in the Hostel. Nico Minoru walked into the room and sat down next to him, her pale skin a stark contrast to his. “What do you think we should do?” she asked, raising an eyebrow at Alex.

Alex sat for a second, staring over a piece of paper that had multiple drawings, notes, and various squiggles on it. Then he turned to Nico, saying, “Eh, just leave her there.” They grinned, hearing more curses from Gert in the bathroom.

“So, what are you working on?” Nico asked casually. She tried not to act too interested, but the truth of the matter was that without Alex, she and the others would either be dead or, worse, back with their parents.

Alex’s pencil stopped moving. “I’m compiling some info from W.A.T.E.R. about two of our parents’ operations—drugs and clubs. I think we can deal a big blow if we try to take two of their hubs out of the picture.”

“Sounds…uh, exciting,” Nico said, trying not to choke on the words. This was the side of Alex she didn’t like—the tactician. When he got into his details and schematics, he seemed too cold to Nico, too hard to reach.

Alex paused from his scribbles and looked at Nico. “Look, I know this stuff bores you. So I guess I’ll ask what you came here for…”

Nico bit her lip. “I’m not sure anymore…”

“And I swear, as soon as my ass is clean, I am going to kill every single one of you!” Gert continued screaming, her shouts reverberating throughout the halls of the Hostel.

“Gert, you’re upsetting Molly,” said Karolina Dean, leaning up against the bathroom door. “Besides, I brought you the sports section, like you asked.” She slid the newspaper under the door.

There was a moment of silence, then Gert opened the door, bringing with her a rough smell. “That’s a little better. Sorry for being—and (*ahem*) smelling—vulgar.”

“Don’t worry, it happens to the best of us,” Karolina assured her, fiddling with a strand of her long, blonde hair. “So, how are you doing?”

Gert raised a single eyebrow skeptically. “Just peachy. Any specific reason you asked?”

“Well…yeah, basically,” said Karolina, a little taken aback at Gert’s rudeness. “It’s just, we haven’t seen a whole lot of you. You’ve kept yourself holed up in your room a lot and don’t listen when we ask you to come out.”

Gert smoothed her ruffled clothes and paused, her lips pursed into a pudgy frown. “I’ve needed a lot of time to think, K. I mean, we all always knew our parents were evil, but we didn’t know that they were evil. And I always thought I had the world figured out. So yeah, whenever I’m hiding in my room, I’m trying to figure out just where our lives went so wrong…”

Karolina watched as Gert wandered off down the hall after that last sentence. “Maybe everything went wrong when they started killing innocent girls…” she muttered, before stomping off to find Alex and Nico.

WHACK! WHACK! Kk-CHUNK!

WHACK! WHACK! Kk-CHUNK!

WHACK! WHACK! Kk—

“Ow! Jeez! Damn thumb!” shouted Primo Falcone, instantly sticking his injured digit into his mouth. The pain in his thumb was doubled from its previous burn injury that he’d incurred while escaping from his burning home. Discarded on the floor beside him was a rusty hammer that Nico had found on her way back from one of their “five-finger discount” shopping sprees.

A singsong voice jolted Primo out of his pain-induced stupor. “You know, you aren’t supposed to do it like that…” said the voice of Molly Hayes, the youngest Runaway. At twelve, she could get away with the so-called “cuteness card,” amplified by the hat she wore shaped like a cat and her surprisingly acute mind.

Primo swore before pushing his bangs away from his eyes with his good hand. “At least when I did it, I didn’t bend the nail in half from one hit, eh, little Miss Bruiser?”

“But I kept my pinkies out of the way,” Molly scoffed. “And I prefer to be called ‘Princess Powerful,’ thank you very much. Besides, it’s a whole lot better than that lame-o nickname that you chose. What was it? Falconey?”

Primo glared. It was hard to get mad at Molly, but she was starting to push it. “First off, it’s Falcone, and secondly, it’s not a codename. It’s my last name. I’m just lucky it, y’know, fits…” Primo’s mutation manifested in the form of a green falcon that appeared to be tattooed on his back. As he began to experiment with his powers, he found that he could will the bird to appear and do his bidding, but he still felt little control over his powers.

“Yawn! C’mon, Falconey, fix my bed! My Doop doll can’t sleep in a broken bed, and neither can I!” Molly said, a gigantic, idiotic grin spreading across her face.

They’d be so screwed without me… Primo thought to himself. Before he’d arrived at the Hostel, the place had been a mess. Much of the furniture and the like had been broken in the landslide, and Primo was the only one of them with any carpentry experience. It was a trick of the trade, especially since he and his twin Matti grew up supporting themselves and their parents…

Thinking of Matti brought a new twist of pain to Primo’s mind. The last memory Primo had of his brother was that of Matti shunning him for not being willing to run back into a burning building for the money that had probably already burnt up in the fire.

“Tell you what, Molly,” said Primo, jostled back to reality as a floorboard groaned, “Why don’t you go see if Alex has anything left for you to have a snack, okay? That way, by the time you get back, it’ll be like I got a lot done in no time at all. What do you say?”

Molly looked delighted at the idea. “Okay. But make sure you get a lot done, or Doop won’t be happy at all…”

“Well we wouldn’t want that, would we?” Primo asked. As soon as Molly left, he breathed a sigh of relief. Now he could get some work done.

Out in the hall, Molly was confronted by Karolina. “Is everything all right?” Karolina asked.

“If you mean Primo, then yeah. He’s gonna fix my bed, K! Isn’t he great?” Molly squealed. “Now excuse me, because I’m going to go see if Alex has any Froot Loops left, ‘kay?”

As Molly left, Karolina peeked into the room through the crack in the door at Primo. He hunched over the splintered wood, trying earnestly to earn his keep at the Hostel. As she watched, Karolina couldn’t help but take a closer look at the boy. A black beanie was pulled over his hair, and his jeans were more than a bit ragged. He only wore a “beater” undershirt over his torso, and it clung to his lean body, revealing his toned chest and abdomen. Primo was certainly attractive in a rugged manner, if not by Karolina’s standards.

Karolina sighed. Primo had proven himself in the short time he’d been there. She only had to tell Alex that he could be trusted, and it would be on to phase one of his big plan of attack against their parents…

The La Brea Tar Pits
Lair of the Pride

“What’s taking Geoff so long, Catherine?” asked Stacey Yorkes, a brunette woman in her early forties who had just stepped over the hill, but pretended not to notice. She addressed Geoff’s wife, who sat primly in her seat, shoulders square against its back. They sat around a large conference table, surrounded by portraits of their families.

“Geoff never was one to be rushed, Stacey,” she said, her lips showing her obvious disapproval. “He never had to worry about having a time machine zip him back in case he didn’t get here in time…”

Stacey sniffed, prepared with a comeback, but was stifled as the tall doors of the round room opened at that moment. “Relax, ladies,” said Geoff with a devilish smile. “I come bearing gifts…” With that, he deposited a heavy sheaf of papers on the table, causing some of the Pride’s jaws to drop in shock.

“What’s all this?” asked Frank Dean. He had the appearance of an actor, and rightfully so, as his day job was acting on the hit television series General Hospital. Frank’s grey hair was slicked back and his neck was arced slightly forward, as if it had bowed from some pressure at an earlier time in his life.

Geoff spread out all papers around the large table. “These are the applications we received. It turns out that a lot of people want to work for the Pride—”

“Or else they’re desperate for some kind of job…” Tina Minoru remarked, rattling her blood-red fingernails atop the table. “We need to be certain that these villains will get the job done right. Our children took more than our secrets. Nico has the Staff of One, too.”

Geoff sat down and looked Tina directly in the eyes. “I understand. We’re doing our best, I assure you. Now, can we all go through these and start figuring out who we need to hire?”

“Actually,” Frank interjected, “we already handpicked a few of our bounty hunters by hand, without this application system. My wife and I have found a Skrull that knows our daughter’s scent. He adds a bit of brawn to a team that might not be able to stand against Karolina’s solar powers. I’m sure you’ll find Xavin acceptable.”

Geoff raised an eyebrow. “And have any of the rest of you decided upon who you might wish to sponsor for the team?” He gritted his teeth. Only on rare occasions did the Pride ever decide anything without him.

Tina looked up. “Robert and I have found a man who is immune to the effects of the Staff of One. His name is, regrettably, Master Pandemonium, but he adds to the mix exactly what we need.”

Stacey looked to her husband Dale. He nodded. “And Geoff, we’ve also got a way to track them. We paid a pretty penny many years in the future so that we could genetically engineer a deinonychus. It is linked telepathically to Gert and would likely be able to find her with little trouble. It could sniff her and the rest of our runaways out, if you like.”

“Good, good,” Geoff said. “This saves us a lot in the way of bargaining with those idiots and the thousands of dollars they request just so they can patch up their spandex…And I’d like to be the one to tell you that we’ve found a man to lead the group.”

“Who’s that?” asked Janet Stein, speaking up for the first time. Her hair was unkempt and her face was creased from an absurd amount of tears.

“It’s funny you would be the one to ask,” said Geoff, “because the one who’s going to lead the group that finds our children is none other than your son. Chase is going to help us find his little playmates because he’s the only chance we have at convincing them that we’re right.”

“But are we doing the right thing?” Robert Minoru muttered under his breath.

Geoff’s demeanor changed. “I’m sorry, Robert. I didn’t quite catch that.”

Robert stood up. “I said, are we doing the right thing? Sure, those giant, six-fingered creatures might have told us to do this, but does that make it right? I mean, it was bad enough when we killed the prostitute of the week once a year so the Gibborim could feed, and I understood when you had my wife and I go out armed with silver bullets to rid the Pride of a werewolf threat, but come on! We’ve dropped to our lowest of lows, Geoff!”

“I don’t think I understand what you’re getting at,” Geoff said calmly. His teeth were gritted now and sweat glistened on his bald head, contrasting starkly with his ebony skin.

“You know exactly what I’m getting at, Wilder!” Robert burst out, slamming his fists on the table. “When we called those kids at the Shoppe of Horrors for information, I gave them the Pride’s protection. I told them they would be safe with us. You know what happened next? You sent Chase there with freaking fire gloves and he torches the place! You have no place breaking my promises, Geoff!”

“That promise wasn’t yours to make, Minoru,” Geoff said, trying to keep his voice calm.

“The hell it wasn’t!” Robert shouted. “You sent a teen out there to murder other kids who sold the thing that killed his dad! These weren’t the kids that killed Victor, these were the sellers! Does that mean every time someone gets shot in L.A., the cops arrest the gun salesman? Come on, man!”

“No,” Geoff said. “They embark on a vendetta to find the real killer until they’re satisfied. And even then, they’re not. I gave Chase a chance to let out his anger, and now he’s not going to be a damned vigilante. We have enough of those around here…

“End of discussion.”

Outside the Calientísima
Los Angeles

Karolina, Primo, and Molly all stood on the street corner outside the hot-looking strip club, Alex’s words ringing in their ears.

“‘Calientísima’ means ‘very, very hot’ in Spanish. That’s exactly what it’s like inside. There are going to be exotic dancers, lap dances, girls giving guys…well, Molly…just keep out of it. You’ll be taking the destruction on from outside the building anyway. We don’t want you to grow up too fast…”

Karolina looked to Primo and Molly. Alex had named her the field leader for her group. “Ready guys?” she asked, fingering the snap on her bracelet. The others nodded, and Karolina released the clasp, catching the bracelet in her palm. Instantly, an “aurora effect” poured from her skin, powered by solar energy that had built up during the day.

“You’re going inside, Karolina. I know you can find the owners of this place and let them know that they need to try to find a different job, because Los Angeles is about to become a hellhole to work in. If you do that, we can prove to our parents that we’re a threat. This place covers about thirty percent of their revenue when it comes to things involving sex. So this would be a good time to let our ‘rents know we mean business.”

Primo closed his eyes, willing his falcon to emerge. The tattoo on his back twitched and moved, slowly growing to envelop Primo’s body in a green, falcon-shaped aura. The falcon screeched in preparation. It wanted meat.

“Now you, Primo, are gonna be going for mass damage. I’ve seen the falcon. I know how flippin’ scary that thing can be. You rip open the roof in a couple of places, tell it to scream really loud, and make people basically say that there’s no way in hell it’s worth the money or the gratification to go to a place like that…especially if there are things like a freakin’ glowing green falcon that want to attack…”

The last of the group, Molly, clenched a tiny, powerful fist. Her eyes glowed pink as she tapped into her mutant ability. She was super-strong and super-durable, but only for a short time. The power required recharging, so the mission had been identified as a definitive “hit and run.”

“Mols, I want you to screw around with the outer walls. Punch ‘em, twist ‘em, make pretty pictures with the pieces. I don’t really care. I just want people to start running out of the place through every available hole just for the amazing amount of press coverage something like that would get. Can you imagine a place emptying out from all sides, not just the side with a door? People would think the Hulk was in town!”

Karolina looked at the others and nodded. “Let’s do it,” she whispered. Seconds later, courtesy of the Runaways, all hell broke loose…

Corner of 17th and Commerce
Los Angeles

“Everyone knows the plan, right? We ambush the guy, and jump in the portal. Pretty simple. Once we get to the place, we take down the dealer and trash the drugs. There are millions of dollars’ worth of drugs in this place, and I know it’s a blow our parents can’t afford,” Alex said, talking to Nico and Gert in an alleyway. “I have W.A.T.E.R. to protect me with its electric blasts, Nico has the Staff of One, and Gert has that…well…gun.” He referred to the revolver Gert held gingerly.

“I don’t like it,” Gert muttered, “but I’d be crazy to go up against a total druggie with nothing but my bare fists. Especially my bare fists…”

Alex looked over at Nico, who looked away. “I’m glad we figured out that your body absorbs the Staff of One,” he said, trying to say something to fill the gap. “I’m just sorry you have to bleed to get it back out.”

Nico shrugged him off. “We’ll worry about it when the time comes. Let’s just get this over with.” She bit her lip until she tasted iron. “WHEN BLOOD IS SHED, LET THE STAFF OF ONE EMERGE!” From Nico’s chest sprouted a long, wooden rod with a golden cap that sported a vertical ring.

“Talk about heartburn,” Gert said, shaking her head. This was her first time witnessing the emergence of the Staff of One.

Alex peeked around the corner of the alley. Wordlessly, he turned to the girls and signaled for them to go.

The dealer was a shady-looking fellow wearing a dark blue trench coat and an Orioles baseball cap. Alex whacked him over the head from behind with a brick and he crumpled like a sack of potatoes.

Nico stood over him as they rolled him onto his back. “LOOSEN UP,” she said darkly, and the trench coat snapped open, revealing a swirling portal.

“Off we go?” asked Alex. Receiving a look of confirmation from each of the girls, Alex dove into the portal, and onto the other side…

The La Brea Tar Pits

Geoff shuffled the applications back into one large stack. “I guess that settles it, then. We’re adding Slyde to the team for his speed and this new Hobgoblin guy because of the advantage he presents due to the nature of his gas-based attacks. Any more questions?”

No one said anything. “Good,” said Geoff, setting the stack down. He prepared to get up.

The papers blew back in Geoff’s face as there was a sudden, purple flash in the middle of the table, coupled with a gaseous red mixture. When the gas cleared, there stood a large, humanoid figure on the center of the table. He was broad-chested and tall. The man seemed to be made of two colors—dark green and a sickly yellow. The green outlined most of his features, including his lips and veins. The man’s red, glowing eyes seemed to pierce each member of the Pride as he looked at each and every one of them.

“Apocalypse?” asked Catherine fearfully, describing the mutant that he so closely resembled.

“Apocalypse is a fool,” said the man in a rasping voice. “I am here for the dawn of tomorrow, not the end of the world. I have seen the future, and I believe that your work with the Gibborim is the only chance for tomorrow’s dawn.”

“Why are you here, then?” asked Geoff, standing up.

The man stared at Geoff menacingly. “I am here because I recently heard that you are now short one member. There cannot be a Pride of eleven. I have come to fill you out and to prepare you for the new dawn. My name is Cyanide, and I am here to rid the world of its poison so that tomorrow may be pure…”

To Be Continued…