PAYBACK

Part I: Arcade Games

By Shawn Gauthier

In the penthouse of one of the most luxurious casinos in Las Vegas, two mutants are living life to the fullest.

One of the mutants, Roberto ‘Bobby’ DaCosta, is enjoying his return to the upper-class society while the other, Tabitha Smith, is getting her first taste of the good life. Together, they are huddled at one end of an immense heart-shaped hot tub, sipping expensive champagne.

“I never understood how hard it must have been for you, Bobby, to give up this lifestyle when you joined the New Mutants!” giggled Tabitha, as she scooped up a handful of bubbles in the tub and playfully blew them at Bobby.

“It was hard at first, or don’t you remember the attitude I had when I first joined the school? But it grew easier for me as time passed. For the first part of my life, everything came easily for me, usually on a silver platter. But when my mutant powers surfaced, my life changed. For the first time, I learned what it meant to work hard for something.”

To Tabitha’s dismay, Bobby was growing more and more serious as he reflected back upon his life. “I guess I never appreciated the things I had in those days…”

“And do you appreciate it now?” asked Tabitha as she leaned over to kiss him on the cheek. She knew that by doing so, Bobby’s mind would return from thinking about the past to being with her in the present.

“Definitely, now that I have you guys to share it with!” answered Bobby, kissing her back.

“You ‘guys’?! Earth to Bobby, come in Bobby! I’m the only one here!” teased Tabitha. “Remember that the ‘guys’ are out taking care of your company’s first order of business, while I recouperate from my wounds and you take care of the business end of things here. You remember don’t you? That little mission we sent them on called ‘Project Payback?'”

“Enough, Tabitha, I get your point!” begged Bobby between chuckles.

“Besides, don’t you think having Ulysses here with us in the hot tub would spoil the mood?” continued Tabitha.

“Okay! Okay! I stand corrected. I am definitely enjoying being here now that I have YOU to share it with!” Correcting himself, Bobby clanked their glasses together, making his last statement a kind of toast. After they had each emptied their glasses, Tabitha continued on.

“I can’t imagine how you could not have appreciated this stuff. While growing up in a trailer park, I used to dream of living like this. If I’d have known that kicking Indigo’s butt would have made us rich, I would’ve done it years ago.” Tabitha commented in her matter-of-fact tone of voice as she refilled both champagne glasses.

“Technically, we aren’t rich. All of this stuff and our money belongs to the Damocles Foundation.” informed Bobby, as once again he was threatening to spoil the mood Tabitha was enjoying.

“A Foundation that you now run, or have you forgotten that after we chased off Indigo, destroyed the Foundation’s headquarters, and exposed their secret agenda, you were given the company?” questioned Tabitha as she clinked their glasses together in an effort to get Bobby to drink some more so that he would stop being so serious.

“DaCosta International, my father’s company, named me the chairperson of the Damocles Foundation after they took over the company. So technically we don’t own the Foundation, we only run it. That is until such time as I prove myself fit to inherit my father’s company.” answered Bobby, before taking another sip of champagne.

“Technically this! Technically that! Okay Mister Chairperson, if we aren’t rich, what do you call all of this?” asked Tabitha, referring to their present surroundings.

Bobby took a moment to ponder how best to describe their situation to Tabitha before replying. “Perks! What you see around you are the perks of being a Chairperson!”

“Perks, huh? I guess I can accept that!” giggled Tabitha, who was obviously starting to feel the effects of the champagne. “Well Mister Chairperson, after we finish enjoying our perks, what do you plan on doing with the Foundation?”

The question struck a nerve with Bobby. He had been asking himself that same question all day. “I don’t know, Tab, and that’s the problem… I just don’t know…”

Standing outside of one of the smaller casinos on the outskirts of Las Vegas are two other members of the new X-Force team, Rictor and Shatterstar.

“How much longer do we have to just stand around here?” asked Shatterstar, obviously not sure what to do with himself.

In one hand, he holds a duffle bag containing his trademarked swords, while the other hand picked at his ear.

“As long as it takes! How many times are you going to ask me that?” snapped Rictor towards his friend. It was obvious that his patience was also nearing its’ end, a probable result from the constant ringing in his ears.

The ringing was a result of the small radio device hidden within his ear. The device was identical to two other such devices which were all tuned to the same radio frequency. As a result, the device gave out some feedback whenever it was close to one of its’ twins.

“Why do we even need this person anyway?” asked Shatterstar again, pressing his luck.

“Because our contact, who we’re ‘patiently’ waiting for, knows the location of our next target. Once he tells us where we can find Arcade, we can start paying that little creep back for blowing up our former headquarters, with us still in it!” answered Rictor, as he noticed a sanitation truck heading in their direction further down the street.

Once the truck was close enough to them, it jumped the curb and veered towards our heroes.

“Well, it looks like Arcade has found us first!” observed Rictor, but before he could even react, Shatterstar threw himself into the air while removing his swords from his duffle bag.

Flying feet first towards the windshield of the truck, he intended on smashing the windshield and entering the cab to challenge the driver. As he grew nearer, however, he realized his mistake when he noticed that no one was behind the wheel of the truck.

The moment his feet hit the windshield, a large electric current shoots through his body, leaving him unconscious.

Seeing his unconscious teammate fall into the trucks path snapped Rictor into action. Instinctively, he fires a high-energy shockwave at the truck in order to halt its’ progress and keep it from running over his friend. Unexpectedly, the shockwave bounces harmlessly off the front end of the truck and turns back to its’ sender.

Unable to move in time, Rictor learns what it feels like to be on the receiving end of his mutant powers. He too falls to the ground, unconscious.

With screeching tires, the truck comes to a halt inches before Shatterstar’s body. Then, the mechanical arms of the sanitation truck swing forward and scoop Shatterstar up off the ground before dropping him in the back of the truck. It then does the same to Rictor’s unconscious form before resuming its’ original path down the road.

Meanwhile, in a hidden control room several miles away, the grisly scene of Rictor and Shatterstar’s defeat is played over and over again on at least a dozen different monitors within the room.

“Perfect! Perfect! It’s a masterpiece!” the homicidal Arcade screams through a devilish grin and fits of hysterical laughter. “And I owe it all to you, my new-found friend! They reacted just like you said they would. How is that you know them so well?”

“X-Force has been a thorn in my side for years now. I have encountered them numerous times, and each time while they celebrated their hollow victories, I returned to my lair to study what I had learned. But now their time has come to die. Which is why I hired your services, Arcade.”

The voice came from a large shadowy figure seated behind Arcade.

“If you know so much about them and their weaknesses, then why hire me? Why not kill them yourself?” asked Arcade, growing suspect of his new client.

“Consider this a test. There are many mutants, like X-Force, that are associated with the ‘X’. They too have had the audacity to challenge me, so they too must die. If you prove effectiveness in eliminating X-Force, then I shall one day again call upon your services to deal with these other mutants of the ‘X’.” the shadowy figure answered.

“Ahhhh… I know who you’re referring to! They’ve all sprouted from a group of self-righteous mutant heroes calling themselves the X-Men!” Arcade pauses as the wheels inside his devious mind begin to spin. “Tell me, friend, do you have the same amount of information about the X-Men as you do X-Force?”

The hulking figure behind him does not answer, instead it silently nods affirmatively to Arcade’s question.

“Yes! Yes! Yes, I do believe that we are going to be good friends, you and I! I might even have to give you a special discount I only offer to my best of friends! Hire me to kill five ‘X’ mutants, and get the fifth one for free!”

With this, Arcade breaks into a new fit of hysterical laugher as his voice echoes off the walls of the control room.

Slowly and painfully, Rictor awakens to find himself lying on the floor of a brightly colored room. The bright colors and crazy over-sized objects in the room indicate that he is in Arcade’s newest incarnation of Murderworld. Standing up to get a better view of his surroundings, Rictor realizes that he is standing in the middle of a large pinball machine.

He remembers hearing about one of the X-Men’s first encounters with Arcade having to do with a large pinball machine. Arcade must have rebuilt it with this occasion in mind.

“Okay I’m up, you nutjob!” yelled Rictor at his surroundings, knowing that its’ creator was watching. “Let’s get this show on the road!”

Suddenly, numerous individuals wearing Shatterstar’s face entered the room. In no time, Rictor was surrounded by a small army of Shatterstars ready to do battle.

“An army of robots based on my friend?! Is that the best you can do? You think that just because they look like my friend I’ll hold back? Well your wrong, bud!”

Finished with his snappy remarks, Rictor charges towards a small cluster of Shatterstars, firing his shockwaves in every direction at the robots. Just like the original, the robots move at lightning speed and with an acrobats skill to escape his attack. Only a few are destroyed by his attack.

“Rictor’s ready to rumble!”

As soon as the battle cry leaves his lips, Rictor is happy that the real Shatterstar isn’t around to hear it.

Only moments prior, Rictor’s friend Shatterstar had awoken in a different part of Murderworld to find himself in a similar situation. Surrounded by a group of robots built to look like Rictor, Shatterstar was doing his best to avoid their shockwave attacks.

So far, he had managed to cut down the number of his opponents by half, but he was still grossly outnumbered. Wanting to bring the battle to an end, Shatterstar tosses aside his swords. Using himself as bait, he jumps and maneuvers around the room until the robots are lined up right where he wanted them.

Then, using his special link with his swords, he wills the blades to attack their mutual enemy. The two swords fly through the air like miniature metal missiles, tearing holes in the chest plates of a majority of the robots. With very little effort, Shatterstar demolishes the rest.

Finally, with the battle over, he bends down to reclaim his swords. It is then that he notices one last Rictor Robot fleeing the room. Quickly, the robot moves down the corridor and vanishes out of sight. Still feeling the lust of battle, Shatterstar gives chase.

“Now this is art!” Arcade rants form the nearby observation room. “On one side we have Rictor, who uses his powers without question or fear of consequence, as he tears up my Shatterstar drones. Then, on the other hand, we have Shatterstar, who, once engaged in battle, won’t stop until all his enemies are defeated!”

On one of the monitors, Arcade and the shadowy figure watch as the Rictor Robot that Shatterstar is chasing quickly ducks into a secret compartment built into the corridor’s walls. Not noticing any of this, Shatterstar runs by the compartment towards the room where Rictor is just finishing up the last wave of Shatterstar Robots.

“Yes! The stage is set!”

Leaning back in his chair, Arcade dons a pair of 3-D movie glasses as he takes a handful of popcorn from a nearby bowl.

“Let the games begin!”

As Rictor raises his hands to finish off what he thinks is the last of the Shatterstar Robots, his ear begins to ring, and he drops his hands to his side.

“‘Star? Is that really you buddy?”

“Yes!” answers Shatterstar once again digging at his ear. “I hate this buzzing device in my ear!”

“It was that device that saved your life, buddy! I was fighting hordes of Shatterstar Robots right before you arrived. It was the ringing in my ears that told me you were the real thing.” explained Rictor. “I guess it was a good thing that Bobby insisted that we wear these things on this mission after all!”

“Yes, I had a similar experience. It is obvious that Arcade intended for us to kill each other. It’s a good thing for you that we have these devices, even though they’re very irritating, otherwise I might have accidently killed you!” Shatterstar delivers this last part with a small smirk on his face.

“Killed me? No way, buddy! It would’ve definitely been you who would’ve been killed!” It was Rictor’s turn to smile back at his friend.

“I think this is a debate best settled at a latter time. Right now we should start searching for Arcade.” says Shatterstar, the smirk fading from his face as he returned to business.

“Agreed! I say we head that way…” says Rictor, pointing to a passageway located in the opposite wall. “Remember that the closer we get to the third device, the louder the feedback from our devices will get. And for the record, I’m glad I didn’t kill you!”

“How did they know?” whined Arcade. “How did they know not to kill each other?! My robots look like them, down to the smallest detail!”

“It appears that you are not as effective at dealing with X-Force as I had hoped.” said the shadowy figure from behind him.

“Don’t worry, my friend, they still have the rest of Murderworld to get through before they can escape! The rest of my drones will take care of them!”

Though his words sounded confident, Arcade’s demeanor was laden with doubt.

“It appears that they are not even trying to escape.” the shadowy figure states, pointing at the monitor where Rictor and Shatterstar are making their way through numerous robots as they descend deeper and deeper into Arcade’s complex.

“They’re heading straight for us! How?! How do they know where we are?!” asks Arcade again, now even more visibly shaken.

Just outside the control room, both Rictor and Shatterstar are taking their frustrations out on the few remaining robots – they’ve each killed over a hundred robots. The blaring noise in their ears is driving them crazy, so they know that the third device must be close.

“I think they must be right behind this wall.” screams Shatterstar so loudly that his friend can hear him over the buzzing in his ears.

Rictor takes aim at the wall and fires a shockwave at it. Unlike most of the other walls in the complex, this one does not crumble. Instead it merely cracks.

‘A good sign,’ he thinks, ‘there’s gotta be something on the other side of this wall worth protecting.’

Encouraged, Rictor continues to blast at the wall.

“They’re breaking through!” Arcade screams as he turns towards the mysterious man behind him. To his surprise, the man seems calm. Not wanting to be out done, Arcade regains his composure.

“No problem… I always have an escape route in place for occasions such as these!”

With a push of a button a hole opens in the floor. “Follow me through here… it leads to an access tunnel where a getaway plane awaits. Let’s get out while the getting’s good, and put this whole fiasco behind us…”

“Yes, let us end this. This ringing in my ears is beginning to aggravate me.”

With that, the mystery man stepped from the shadows, revealing himself to be Ulysses.

“Buzzing in your ears? What’re you talking about?”

It was obvious that Arcade was growing wise to their plan. Slowly, he eased his way towards the escape tunnel, but Ulysses was too fast for him to get away. In one swift move, Ulysses had him by his neck, picking the little man up off the ground. If anybody else had been in the control room, they would have thought the sight of these two combatants to be quite comical, with Ulysses holding Arcade at arms length like a bully in a schoolyard fight.

“Who are you?!” gasped Arcade. “Who are you really?”

“You can call me Ulysses. I’m the new guy…”

Just then, Rictor and Shatterstar burst through the wall.

Back at Bobby and Tabitha’s casino penthouse, the mood has soured.

“I can’t take this anymore! I just can’t take this anymore!” screams Bobby, throwing his hands up into the air.

“What? What can’t you stand?” asked Tabitha, who was quickly growing annoyed at her lover.

“I’ve spent the entire night pondering what to do with the Foundation, now that I control it, and I’ve come up with nothing!”

“Why are you killing yourself over this? Why do we have to do anything? Why can’t we just enjoy it?” Tabitha was growing increasingly frustrated.

“Because it’s what I always wanted to do! I knew someday I’d have to stop being a superhero and find a new way in which I could help achieve Xavier’s dream. This Foundation is my chance!”

“Well, that’s your problem, not mine!” snaps Tabitha as she stands up and starts heading for the door.

Bobby grabs her arm, forcing her to turn towards him and away from the door. “I’m sorry, honey, I’m just so frustrated! I’m no closer to a solution now than I was this morning! I should’ve just gone with Rictor and the guys to tackle Arcade. It seems that I’m only good at putting on tights and fighting bad guys.”

“Why? Because you’re a mutant?! Is that all you think mutants can do in this world? Why can’t we have at least some semblance of a normal life? Aren’t we entitled to live our lives how we choose like everybody else? Maybe if more mutants had normal jobs instead of just fighting other mutants, we wouldn’t be thought of as something other than human! Maybe more mutants need to work alongside the rest of the population to show them that we aren’t any different from them! We’re all human, Bobby, aren’t we?”

Tabitha was now extremely irrate. She hated being forced to play the teacher; it was a role she was uncomfortable with.

“That’s it!” Bobby exclaims. “Tab, you’re a genius!”

“Well, I know that! What I don’t know is why it took you so long to realize it!”

“You just helped me to decide what I’m going to do with the Foundation! The Foundation is now going to be a foundation where mutants will use their abilities to help all of mankind! Think about it for a moment – we’ll start a job search service that will help mutants find average, everyday jobs where their mutant abilities can be used. Also, mutant superheroes and supervillain teams always seem to have the latest and most advanced technology at hand… we can use that technology to help people too! We’ll become a solution for the problems facing the world today! We’ll become heroes of a different sort!”

Bobby was becoming more and more excited as he went on.

“And, at the same time, we’ll be giving mutants another option other than to fight supervillains!”

The two were now hugging in the center of the room. Then, with a kiss, the Foundation was born.

NEXT ISSUE: Payback Part 2! The boys go after yet another enemy of X-Force! Bobby leads the Damocles Foundation in a new direction! Plus: find out what’s happening with the ex-X-Force members, led by Domino!