Julio Richter sometimes lies awake at night and tries to figure out how he got to where he is. How he went from being a normal human to a mutant super hero. Especially as he was sitting in a chamber that isn't even on his own world, taking a break from a war which wasn't suppose to be his to fight, and thinking of how life could have been had he never been taken by The Right*.
(*Way back in X-Factor 17 - Aaron.)
"Are you ready Rictor?" Longshot asked the young mutant.
"I guess," Rictor replied. Longshot nodded to Spiral, who began a ceremonial-like dance. Rictor closed his eyes and sighed.
"Remember Ric," Neurotap said to him with an urgent tone in her voice, "Spiral is going to pull you back here in exactly 24 hours, whether you're ready or not."
"I know," Rictor said, as he began to fade out, "I know..."
Rictor's voice trailed off into the early morning as a gigantic explosion was seen through a window on the opposite side of the room. Neurotap, Longshot, and Spiral all raced over to get a better look. Longshot frowned and his eye glowed menacingly. Neurotap looked down at the ground with a somber look on her face.
"Come on Ric," she said, "We need you to pull through on this one."
San Francisco. 11:23 PM. Freeware Street. A nice neighborhood. Security alarms were set to protect the families within the large modern homes. Security alarms which can keep out your average thief or thug, but Phantazia isn't your average thief. Her powers allow her to pass into any house she wants completely unnoticed.
"Tonight's my lucky night," she thought to herself, "Neighborhood watch meeting. Too bad all of the watch is at the meeting." Phantazia entered a large brick house on a corner by converting her body into EM energy and passing through a window. She reformed her body and began to walk through the dark hallways of the house. She saw things by their EM fields instead of by conventional site. This allowed her also to peer into the hidden safes of the house and steal precious jewels as well as cash and credit cards. Once her bag was satisfactorily full, she decided it was time to depart. She once again became energy and flew through a window, then reformed herself in midair and began the long trip home.
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"Not so fast, Phantazia!" James Proudstar's voice cut through the air, just as Roberto DaCosta's dark fire cut into the back of Phantazia. Phantazia momentarily lost her ability to fly, but soon regained control of herself, converted to EM energy, then landed on the ground and retook her form.
"Ah, Warpath," Phantazia said, "How good to see you again. I love the new color scheme of your costume." Proudstar was wearing a costume identical to his original, only all the blue was replaced with black, his gold armbands were replaced with red ones, and his mask was gone although his headband remained.
"Thanks," James said, standing in a heroic pose with his hands on his hips and his chest out, "But I go by Thunderbird now that I'm leading X-Force."
"I'm so happy for you," Phantazia said with a smirk. Phantazia shrieked as she lunged forward at James unleashing EM energy, which disrupted his central nervous system, leaving him lying on the cold pavement of the street. Phantazia took to the air again, flying faster than before.
"3, 2, 1," Meltdown's voice commanded her plasma time bomb, making it explode in Phantazia's face. Phantazia didn't regain consciousness this time and her body made a hard thump on the soft grass of a lawn.
Sunspot came to a landing besides Meltdown on the street, a safe distance from Phantazia.
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"New costumes all around I see," Phantazia said as she picked herself up from the ground. Sunspot wore red wristbands and armbands that looked like the same material as Cannonball's chest straps. He also had red bands around his legs, one above the knee and one below the knee on each leg. He wore a red belt with a black X at the buckle, and a red headband with another black X in the middle. The rest of Sunspot's body was pitch black with a slight white glow around it.
Meltdown actually had on a version of Siryn's costume that she had made her own. The yellow boots and vest were now red, and everything that was purple was now black. The cape was gone, and on her hands she had red fingerless gloves. She also had on black sunglasses/goggles that were resting on her head in the darkness of night.
"Boom Boom," Phantazia said, "How mature you look with that short hair."
"It's Meltdown now," Tab said as she flung a powerful plasma blast towards Phantazia. The blast stopped a few feet in front of Phantazia, and simply fell to the ground and exploded. The blast went right through Phantazia. Phantazia smirked again.
"Nice try girl," she said, as she extended her hands towards Bobby and Tab, disrupting their bio-fields. Tab and Bobby cried out in agony, as their bio-fields were ripped apart, causing their own energies to lash out at them. Bobby powered down, revealing that underneath the dark energy he was wearing a costume identical to the one given to him by Charles Xavier when he joined the New Mutants, only the yellow areas were red.
"How does that feel?" Phantazia asked behind an evil grin.
"Why don't you find out for yourself?" Jesse Aaronson shouted as he unleashed his own powers on Phantazia, disrupting her EM field like any machine. "Wow," Bedlam thought to himself, "I can't believe that worked. 6 months ago, I couldn't even use my powers unless I was touching whatever I was targeting."
Bedlam's costume was primarily black, with the only red on his boots, knees, elbows, and belt. His sleeves ended right above his wrists, and were his sleeves ended his black fingerless gloves started. He had red X's on the back of his gloves, black X's on his knees, a small red X on the left side of his chest, and a large red X on his back.
Phantazia lashed out at Bedlam with all her might, but Bedlam managed to put up a psio-electric field around his body to cancel out Phantazia's disruption powers. Thunderbird took this the chance to knock Phantazia out while she was distracted. Phantazia flew through the air to the shadowy corner of the impromptu battlefield. Phantazia looked up to see a feral woman growling at her.
"Feral?" she asked with a hint of fear in her voice.
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"Wolfsbane," Rahne Sinclair said as she attacked the older mutant with her claws. Phantazia took to the air in time to avoid the girl's attack. Wolfsbane made a graceful landing, claws first, where Phantazia was Flying.
Wolfsbane was in a transitional, half human half wolf state. She was wearing red shorts that went from way above her knees to her waist and a red top that covered her chest and had short sleeves. On her shoulders were red shoulder pad like circles with black X's on them.
"What is it with you X-Force people and changing your names?" Phantazia wondered out loud, "Can't you just pick one name and stick with it?"
"Feral an' I are not the same person," the young mutant girl replied, "I'll give you a lasting impression that will help you in future encounters."
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Phantazia turned her attention back to the rest of X-Force in the street and charged up another blast, but then her expression went blank, and she froze in place. Xi'an "Shan" Coy Manh, Karma, revealed her presence.
"Nothing like a little telepathic hijacking to stop a super villain in their tracks," Shan said as she forced Phantazia to power down and land. Karma's costume was a red and black costume that went from chest to toe.
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"And that is the end of that," Karma said walking over to the rest of her friends. "Now what do we do with heeeeeeeeeeeer!!!!!!!!" Karma's question was cut off by her own scream as Phantazia disrupted the telepathic connection between the young Vietnamese girl and herself resulting in a large, and unfortunately for Shan, painful psionic backlash.
"Well," Phantazia said as she picked up her bag of stolen items, "It's been really fun but I must be going now."
"No!" Rahne said as she lunged for the bag, taking it from Phantazia.
"We have an edge on you," Sunspot said, "We're not afraid of the law." Just then Bedlam used his powers to set off an alarm.
"I suggest you leave," Thunderbird said with a stern look.
Phantazia grimaced as she took to the air one final time, concluding the battle as her words echoed into the night, "You'll be seeing me again, X-Force. Mark my words!"
"Well, that was fun," Tab said as she dusted off her knees.
"Yeah," Jesse told her, "But we'd better get going. We're not exactly that cozy with the law, remember."
"Yeah," Berto said, "But she didn't know that."
"Enough talk guys," Jimmy said, "Shan?"
Karma nodded as she uses her telepathic abilities to mask their presence, as the young adults of X-Force heard sirens off in the distance.
Rictor looked down at his watch. It was hard to make out what time it was, but from the dim light cast by the nearby lamppost Rictor could make out that it was nearly quarter after midnight. Rictor sighed and leaned against the door to X-Force's warehouse head quarters.
"Great," Julio said, "With my luck they probably moved again while I've been gone."
"Rictor?" Julio looked up when he heard the familiar voice. "Julio! It is you!" Rictor saw Rahne Sinclair run towards him with her arms extended. She gave him a big hug that knocked him back.
"Um...hey Rahne," Julio said, "Where's Sam?"
"He's with the X-Men again," Rahne told Rictor with a smile.
"Oh," Julio said, "So who's leading X-Force now?"
"I am," Jimmy said.
"You, Proudstar?" Rictor said in shock, "I never thought I'd see the day."
"Well you're seeing it," Thunderbird said, "So what are you doing here?"
"I need X-Force's help," he replied, "Maybe we should talk about this inside?"
"It all started about a month ago," Julio told X-Force from the comfort of the living room of their warehouse, "Longshot contacted Triple X* via Spiral to come help with some struggle in Mojoworld."
(*The small mutant group consisting of Shatterstar, Rictor, and Neurotap - Aaron.)
Karma winced at the mentioning of Spiral, the witch who was responsible for twisting her brother and sister. Rictor didn't notice.
"It seems that supporters of original Mojo were staging protests over the new Mojo," Rictor went on, "Longshot needed us to help in their efforts to keep the new government of Mojoworld stable. Well, we've been doing that, but now, the protests have exploded into an all out war, and it's a war we're not winning. We need your help to win the war and put down the rebellion."
"So you want us to help you win a war in another dimension?" Jesse asked.
"Yeah," Rictor said, "Pretty much."
"How long do we have to decide?" Thunderbird asked.
"Spiral is teleporting me and anyone in a twelve foot radius of me back to Mojoworld at 6 a.m., so you guys have about 5 hours to decide and sleep."
"Terrific," Thunderbird said.
"I don't see what there is to think about," Tab said to everyone, "Ric and 'Star are our teammates. They're our friends! We have to help them."
"You're willing to just go jumping dimensions to fight some war that you're not even involved in?" Jesse asked.
"Yes, Jesse," Meltdown said, "It's called bravery. It's called friendship. It's called human decency. Think about someone else other then yourself for a change, Jesse."
"Oh," Jesse turned back to Tab, "Decency, three syllables, that's really good Tabitha. First counting back from ten and now this? What's the lesson for next week? Shapes? Colors? Or maybe something more advanced like adding?"
"Adding?" Tabitha snapped back at Jesse, "That's an excellent idea. Let's see. One face plus one plasma sphere equals too much fun to pass up."
"Stop it, Tab," Roberto said to keep his girlfriend from splattering his teammate's face across the wall.
"Yeah, come on guys," Rahne interjected, "This isn't the time to fight amongst ourselves. Julio came a long way to get our help."
"Isn't this what X-Force is all about?" Shan asked, "Isn't this what being a superhero in general is all about? It's about doing what's right, no matter what harm might be done to you."
Jimmy put an end to his thought. "Shan's right, but I'm not going to ask any of you to do this if you don't want to," Jimmy announced to everyone while he was looking at Jesse, "so if anyone doesn't want to go, say so now."
Everyone remained silent. "So it's final. Get some rest, we leave bright and early tomorrow morning."
"So why are you in X-Force now, Rahne?" Julio asked Rahne early the next morning. Everyone was getting something to eat and making last minute plans before they left in 20 minutes.
"No real reason in particular," Rahne said, "I guess I was getting bored just hanging around at Muir with Moira all day. It really just happened when I came to visit Dani and decided to stay."
"Where is Dani?" Julio asked.
Rahne paused for a second. "Um...Dani's not with X-Force anymore."
"Why?" Rictor asked.
"That's a question you'd have to ask Bobby," Wolfsbane said, "So, what have you been up to, besides this whole war?"
"Well," Rictor began, "Triple X pretty much took care of the Richter gun smuggling ring, but Star, Tap, and I have still been working together, doing small things here and there. We're no X-Men or X-Force or anything, but we're just trying to help, you know? Make a difference."
"Yeah," Wolfsbane said, "I do know." Rictor smiled at Rahne.
"You know," he said, "Sometimes I forget how pretty your eyes are when you're not in wolf mode." Julio put his hand over Rahne's. Rahne looked down at it then back at Julio.
"It's good to have you back, Julio," she told him.
Karma stood outside Bobby's door and knocked.
"Come in," Bobby called from within his room. Karma turned the knob and walks in to see Bobby lying on his bed and Tab putting his clothes into his drawers. Shan sighed.
"Tab," she asked, "How is it you can put away Bobby's clothes, but yours are strewn across the floor?"
Tab shrugged, "I dunno."
"Oh well," Shan said, "You guys ready? We're leaving in 5 minutes."
"Yeah," Bobby said as he sat up in bed. "Where's everybody else?"
"Jesse is waiting in the living room, Jimmy's getting the warehouse ready for us to leave, and Rahne is talking to Julio."
"Oh," Tab's eyes lit up, "Are old feelings coming back to the surface?" No one got a chance to answer because at that moment Jimmy knocked at the open door.
"Time to go," he said. Everyone piled down the steps and into the living room, where the other three were waiting.
"T-minus 20 seconds and counting," Julio said as everyone gathered around him.
"I can't believe I'm about to leave my dimension," Jesse said.
"You'll get used to it," Shan reassured her teammate.
"3, 2, 1," Julio finished his countdown as the room filled with light and then became completely silent.
To be continued
Author's Note: So, what did you think? Please send any comments to me.