"Wolf's Clothing"

"This is Annmarie Montague reporting for WWL-TV News 4, New Orleans. I am standing in the business district where, as you can see, the dust is still settling from a veritable rampage that swept through the streets not long ago. Most disturbing is the reported identities of the individuals who may have been responsible for the destruction. We spoke to several eyewitnesses here at the scene, and here's what they had to say ..."

"I do declare, it was simply horrible, the worst thing to ever happen in the thirty years I've worked at this very branch of Southern Trust Savings. I looked up from my drawer and simply could have died from fright. I had ducked beneath the counter almost before I was even aware, but the sight I saw inches away from my very own face ... ohhh ... that hideous skull ... those unnatural purple flames ... no proper gentleman would ever go about looking such a fright, and now we know he is certainly no gentleman ..."

"Usually I run security in the branch from a separate office, but I knew something funny was going on when the display screens went all wobbly. I hear that too strong a magnet'll do that. I ran out the door to my office with my gun out, when an elbow in a leather jacket caught me square in the nose. Tried to take a shot back but my gun went to pieces in my hand ..."

"I don't have any idea what he was after in the vault. I was ... well, that is, I ... I was looking around the bank floor, at that point, trying to make sure that all of Southern Trust Savings' valued employees and customers were safe. But I could feel the heat coming off the vault doors as they were being burned away, and you can see for yourself the molten mess that's been left behind ... although I would like to assure our shareholders that repairing the damage will be our first priority ..."

"Yeah, I was ridin' past the bank on my streetbike ... it's a Kawasaki R-267, one of the best models out there today, and not the kind of bike you learn on, you know what I'm sayin'? You need to pick up some skills before you can even sit on a 267 without breakin' your neck. Where was I? Oh yeah, ridin' past the bank. I slowed down some when I saw folks runnin' out the front door, and I had to hit the brakes hard when something came crashing through the window. That was when I decided I'd better get out of there, and I turned my bike around. But before I could even open the throttle a little, someone grabbed me from behind and just tossed me right off the bike! I landed on my head and skidded on the asphalt ... if I hadn't been wearin' a helmet I'd prob'ly be dead. I sat up and saw some guy on my bike, peeling out at about a hundred miles an hour at least. I ain't never seen nobody ride like that, but I heard of someone who could, from a friend a mine who saw that fight on the Interstate last year ..."

"Given the descriptions in these eyewitness accounts, it appears that the vigilante team known as Bad Blood has crossed the line, and our city, once protected by the costumed adventurers, is now targeted by them. So far, Doug Koelemay, newly-appointed Chief Investigator of Metahuman Disturbances for the New Orleans Police Department, has been unavailable for comment. We will of course bring you more live, up-to-the-minute coverage on this late-breaking story as developments continue. Back to you, Bryan ..."

"So I'm thinking if you're gonna hang with the masked men, you better give yourself a codename," More informed Delaina Teague, just before crunching loudly into an apple.

"Why?" Delaina asked, cocking her head to the side and defiantly eyeing More, Ember and Valence each in turn. The four of them sat on the couches of the Riverboat's informal lounge area. "It's not like I have a costume," she added, gesturing at her jeans and tanktop.

"You mean other than the school uniform?" Ember smirked. School had been over for weeks now, and Delaina hadn't worn her navy cardigan and plaid pleated skirt since.

"The costume's not that big a deal," More put in. "You're pretty much invisible when we're in action anyway. But if we're trying to talk to you in public, you don't want us to use your real name, do you? Too risky." He bit into the apple again for emphasis.

"But ...," Delaina began to protest again.

"Look, it's just the way we do things, sweetie," Ember insisted, earning an even darker look from the young girl.

"And if you don't give yourself a codename, sooner or later one of us'll come up with one for you," Valence added.

"And that can't be good," Delaina acknowledged with a sigh. "Well, I reserve the right to make the final decision, but do you boys have any suggestions?"

"Whatever sounds right to you," Valence said. "How 'bout something like 'Ghost Girl'?"

"Isn't there already a Ghost Girl?" Ember countered.

"No ... maybe you're thinking about Phantom Lady," Valence suggested.

"Dude, I'm always thinking about Phantom Lady," Ember grinned, cupping his hands suggestively in front of his chest.

"Ugh, is he always such a pig?" Delaina asked.

"You get used to it," More assured her, around a partially chewed chunk of apple.

"You're the one who wanted into the boys' clubhouse, sweetie," Ember said.

"Stop calling me 'sweetie'," Delaina glowered, "or I'll club you right in your ..."

"Anyway," Valence asserted himself. "What about Psiwalker?"

Delaina wrinkled her nose. "That's not even really what I do."

"Spookster?" More suggested.

"Voodoo Mama?" Ember suggested.

"Apparition?" Valence suggested.

"Sojourn," Delaina said, with an air of finality. Her three new teammates regarded her with a mixture of confusion and curiosity, and reluctantly she added, "You know, I'm the one who can travel freely through the spirit plane ... travel ... sojourn ..."

"It'll do," Ember shrugged. "Won't exactly have the bad guys shaking in their booties, but hey ..."

"Oh, and 'Ember' is the most bad-ass fear-instilling thing you could come up with?" Delaina prodded.

Before Ember could respond, Karnival and Hangfire entered the Riverboat's lounge, having spent most of the morning at the communications console. "Hey, guys, any luck tracking down Pierce?" More asked.

"Negatory, buddy," Hangfire said. "And something else needs our attention anyway."

"Clotty giving attitude again?" Delaina ventured a guess.

"He does seem a little more belligerent every day," Hangfire admitted, looking meaningfully at Ember.

"What?" Ember demanded. He rolled his eyes. "I didn't program the interface. I told you, various friends of mine did ..."

"Are you sure they're all true friends?" Valence asked.

"Absolutely," Ember confirmed. "Totally trustworthy. I mean, nothing's perfect, all friends fight sometimes ... right? Come to think of it, I hadn't talked to Lee in a while when I got him to help me out, ever since that incident in Winnipeg ..."

"Did any of you do something lately you'd like to tell us about like, oh, I don't know, robbing a bank?" Karnival suddenly exploded, cutting Ember off. The rest of Bad Blood looked around at each other in disbelief. Karnival shook his head. "I didn't think so. But I may be in the minority outside of this room."

"Someone says we robbed a bank?" More asked.

"A whole lot of witnesses at Southern Trust Savings, yeah," Hangfire said.

"So ... what do we do?" Delaina asked.

No one spoke, until Karnival realized everyone in the room was staring at him. The teeth of his demonic skull were clenched together as he said, "We go into the city under the radar, and see if we can figure out who's setting us up. Then we find them and explain why we take exception to such treatment. Agreed?"

Ember stood up quickly and clapped his hands together. "I'm in," he announced, leading the way to the door. More, Hangfire and Delaina followed him, while Valence stayed behind, gently restraining Karnival as well with a hand on his friend's shoulder.

"Ed?" Valence asked. "Are you all right?"

The horrible dead-man's grin on Karnival's face did not shift at all as he growled in reply, "Pierce has been missing almost a month, everything we've tried to contact him or locate him has failed, everybody's looking to me to be the default leader in his absence, hell if I know why, and now we're all prime suspects in a major crime. Can't say I'm really all right with having to deal with any of those things, let alone all at once."

Karnival started to walk out of the room, and added quietly, "But what choice do I have?"

The downtown business district was bustling, as usual. The vehicular traffic on Gravier Street was slowed somewhat moving past the black and white police cruisers parked, with red and blue domelights flashing, outside the Southern Trust Savings. Most pedestrians simply crossed to the opposite sidewalk to avoid the area roped off by black and yellow police tape, but some clustered nearby to gawk at the proceedings. Up on the corner where Gravier intersected Baronne Street, a walking tour had stopped to observe as their guide pointed out the mixtures of Spanish and French designs in the architecture around them.

"Do you think whoever's framing us is still around here somewhere?" one member of the tour group, an elderly gentleman wearing a panama hat, asked in a hushed voice.

"Possibly," answered a teenaged boy with long blond hair tied back in a bandana.

"This dress makes me look fat. How come I have to be a girl?" a rotund woman standing beside them asked in a deep groan.

"For balance," the tour guide answered. "Now let's head down to Carondelet. Keep your eyes open, see if you can spot anything that might clue us in to what really happened here."

Under the cloak of Karnival's illusory tour group, Bad Blood began walking south down Gravier. The uniformed police paid them no attention, and the recently maligned heroes were able to watch the crime scene activity anonymously. Two uniformed officers stood in front of the bank's front window, the edges of which held only jagged fragments of glass. The cops' only purpose seemed to be keeping overly curious pedestrians from violating the perimeter of police tape at the crime scene. Before long, two men exited Southern Savings Trust. The lead figure was dressed in slacks and cowboy boots, as well as a short-sleeved linen shirt with a NOPD badge hanging from the breast pocket. He had salt and pepper hair and a matching mustache, and his eyes were hidden behind mirrored sunglasses. In his wake followed a pale man just reaching middle age, with fine blond hair and thick glasses, wearing a three-piece suit. "Mister Gerolde, you will reopen this bank when I tell you that you may," the older man was barking in a deep drawl, "and I will tell you that you may when my investigation is complete."

"Koelemay," Valence's voice growled from beneath the illusion of the blond teenaged boy.

"Know him?" Ember asked.

"We've run into him a couple times*," Valence replied.
(* Koelemay first made our heroes' lives unnecessarily difficult in Bad Blood #5 - DWG)

"Well, at least now we've confirmed the police aren't exactly looking to exonerate us," Hangfire pointed out.

"Didn't we kinda already figure that?" Sojourn replied. She was disguised by the illusion of a white sorority girl in greek-lettered sweatshirt, the counterpart to the sorority boy in dirty-white ballcap cloaking Hangfire.

"We might have hoped the police would have found some real clues here," Karnival answered. "Now we can assume they're just looking for a way to trace Bad Blood to their hideout."

"And did you come here to make the path back to your base of operations even easier to follow?" a voice outside the group asked. Karnival willed the illusory tour group to stay in place, facing down the street, as the members of Bad Blood beneath the surface of the image turned toward the alleyway beside them. There, just a few feet away from the sidewalk, stood yet another plainclothes police officer, older than the uniformed cops, younger than Koelemay.

"We came here to beat an apology out of whoever's making us look bad," More informed the officer, while his obese housewife camouflage continued to look the other way. "What about you? Who the hell are you anyway?" "Detective Dejohnette," the officer answered. "And I'm here because I believe Bad Blood didn't have anything to do with this. But y'all talk amongst yourselves a little too loud for your own good, if you follow me."

"Thanks for the tip. And here I thought the whole NOPD was out to get us," Valence put in.

"Most of them don't give a damn either way," Dejohnette replied. "I hear the Bludhaven PD is pretty bad, but New Orleans is right down there in the sewer with it. Cops get their payoffs to look the other way, most times. Koelemay's the only one with an axe to grind."

"And why's that?" Ember asked.

"Don't rightly know," Dejohnette admitted. "What I did know was that y'all would probably end up coming to the quote scene of the crime unquote, and that could not end well. So I came here to keep my eyes and ears open for you."

"You think this is a set-up?" Hangfire inquired.

"Right," Dejohnette agreed. "The things stolen from the bank vault were random, meaningless. This was just about making a public scene, getting the police's attention, and flushing y'all out."

"Well, then, who are we to disappoint," Karnival said with bitter weariness. "Chances are the perp is hiding out nearby waiting and watching for us. If we don't show our faces, then whoever's responsible might start taking more potshots at innocent bystanders. I'm dropping the illusion." As he said it, the figures in the tour group faded to nothingness, revealing the costumed heroes and a young girl in jeans and a tank top.

"Now what?" Ember pressed, looking up and down the street for signs of a reaction.

"Now maybe y'all better let me try to make sure y'don't get killed," Dejohnette insisted, stepping out of the alley and around the tight knot of heroes. Koelemay had been leaning against the door of one of the police cruisers across the street, radioing in to headquarters, but now he noticed the costumed vigilantes standing only a few dozen yards away. Koelemay dropped the cb unit and began screaming at the uniformed officers to do their jobs and make the arrests. Dejohnette crossed the street towards Koelemay with his hands raised in supplication, while the cops in blue drew their weapons and slowly approached Bad Blood. More of the foot traffic on Gravier Street came to a halt as the scene began to unfold.

A keening roar erupted from the southwest, as a Kawasaki R-267 streetbike cornered around a building at Union Street and Carondelet, shot slantwise up Carondelet Street through heavy traffic, and then exploded up Gravier. Seated on the motorcycle was a figure dressed in a black jumpsuit and a gray leather bomber jacket. The figure's head was a bare human skull, not as demonic as Karnival's visage yet still unsettling. The skull was crowned with a halo of fiery purple energy, the signature of unnaturally accelerated radioactive decay.

"This is where all hell breaks loose, isn't it?" Valence asked no one in particular.

The uniformed police, still on their approach toward Bad Blood, stopped in their tracks and instinctively aimed their weapons at the approaching figure. The frightful rider brought the motorcycle to a skidding halt and surveyed the scene imperiously. "When will Dr. Electron learn that soldiers' bullets are no match for the awesome might of the Atomic Skull?" the fleshless face demanded, sweeping one hand toward the police. Two purple bolts of energy leapt from his fingertips, and each disintegrated a gun as it came in contact with it.

"The Atomic Skull," Karnival said in recognition, as if he should have known all along. "This guy's gone toe-to-toe with Superman."

"Joy," Hangfire sighed.

"We need some crowd control, before this place turns into a panic riot," Karnival continued.

"I'm on it," Sojourn assured her new teammates, fading ghostlike from sight.

"Now everybody be careful," Karnival admonished, as the rest of Bad Blood began to advance on the Atomic Skull.

"So, Dr. Electron still believes that more super-powered lackeys will rid him of the Atomic Skull?" the man-monster straddling the Kawasaki soliloquized. "When will the vile doctor realize that his first experiment shall always be his greatest, and most unstoppable?!?" With that the Atomic Skull gunned the motorcycle back to life and charged towards Bad Blood, throwing blasts of radioactive decay in a spray before his path.

The members of Bad Blood scattered as the purple bolts sliced through the air. Ember and Valence took to the air, while Karnival and More dove to the right and Hangfire rolled to the left, toward Koelemay and Dejohnette. Hangfire came up on one knee and extended his personal forcefield, deflecting the energy bolts back at the Atomic Skull. The purple beams had no effect on their originator.

A blast struck a black wrought-iron streetlamp and sent it toppling toward the sidewalk. More caught the plummeting metal and tried to swing it at the Atomic Skull, but the motorcycle had already carried him nearly to the end of the street and out of More's reach.

Sojourn was fully immersed in the spirit plane, and she began to sing. It was an old song her grandfather had sung to her at bedtime when she was a little girl. The music reached the souls of the passers-by on the street, and filled them with calm. Some of the pedestrians even sat down on the curb, which as far as Delaina Teague was concerned was probably for the best. It wasn't exactly spirit magic, but it got the job done and quelled the panic the battle between the Atomic Skull and Bad Blood might otherwise have caused.

At the corner of Baronne and Gravier, the Atomic Skull pulled a hairpin 180 and revved the streetbike's engine. An instant later he was rocketing down the street again, this time aiming directly for one of the police cruisers parked in front of the bank. The Skull popped his front wheel off the ground and rode up the back end of the cruiser, launching his motorcycle into the air and once again out of reach of More's streetlamp bludgeon.

"Damn he's fast," More grumbled.

"He's a lunatic, too," Karnival pointed out. "No telling what he'll do, or to whom, if we don't take him down fast."

"No prob, K," Valence assured his teammate. Reaching out magnetically, Valence grabbed the motorcycle and stopped it in mid-air, turning it upside down and dumping the Atomic Skull to the street. Forward momentum carried the Atomic Skull in a skid along the asphalt to the edge of Carondelet Street. "That oughtta slow him down a bit," Valence said with satisfied pride.

The Atomic Skull leapt to his feet. "Nothing can stay my hand, you fools!" he bellowed. "The evils of Dr. Electron shall not go unpunished, nor shall you if you continue to delay me! Too much is at stake!" Even as the Atomic Skull spoke, bells began to clang, signifying the approach of the St. Charles Streetcar. "I shall take this railcar to the laboratory of Dr. Electron! Farewell!" the Skull announced, grabbing onto the side rail of the passing streetcar and vaulting himself onto its roof as it sped down Carondelet Street.

"Ummm ... after him?" More suggested.

"Split up," Karnival corrected. "Valence, Ember, you guys can catch him in the air. The streetcar goes down to Canal Street and then comes back up St. Charles Ave. We'll cut across to St. Charles and meet you there."

Ember and Valence flew after the streetcar as Karnival, More and Hangfire began sprinting down Gravier. "Anybody know who this Dr. Electron is, by the way?" More asked.

"A fictional character," Karnival responded. "There was an old movie serial about a Nazi scientist named Dr. Electron and his creation, the Atomic Skull, who became a hero and turned against Electron. Our Skull is delusional and thinks he's living in that movie. That's why he's so dangerous."

"But, hey, it really is a pretty good movie, even still," Hangfire added.

Karnival continued, "But I'm not sure what he's doing in New Orleans. Last I heard he was in STAR Labs in Metropolis."

"He's here because we're here," Hangfire stated matter-of-factly. "He set us up."

"But if he's living in some black and white movie, he doesn't even know who we are," More pointed out. "Maybe Pierce'll figure this all out when he gets back."

"Oh, we can only hope," Karnival agreed.

Ember reached the streetcar just before its rails broached Canal Street, and alighted behind the Atomic Skull. His body blazing with unchecked heat, Ember grabbed the Atomic Skull by one wrist. "Free ride's over, slick," Ember informed him, channeling as much thermal energy into his hand as he could.

The Atomic Skull turned on Ember, but did not flinch from the heat of his grip. "Unhand me, lackey!" he cried indignantly as the streetcar cornered onto Canal. With surprising strength, the Atomic Skull tore his wrist out of Ember's fiery grasp, then backhanded Ember with such force that the hero hurtled through the air off the back of the streetcar like a rag doll fired from a cannon.

Valence could tell that Ember was dazed from the blow and unable to fly under his own power. Ember was heading at high speed into the traffic on one of downtown's major thoroughfares; specifically, his trajectory was carrying him towards a tanker truck. "Oh, Sweet Weeping Je-,"was all Valence could manage before Ember's glowing form punctured the silvery cylindrical tank. Reacting on instinct, Valence threw a magnetic web around the truck, hoping to contain whatever explosion resulted from Ember's high-velocity entry into the tank. Valence winced as the truck screeched to a halt and a car following too closely behind it rear-ended it, but he maintained his concentration to contain a potential tornado of steel shrapnel.

The explosion never came. A few seconds later, however, Ember emerged in a cloud of steam and flew into the air to rejoin his teammate.

"You all right, man?" Valence asked.

"Yeah, fine," Ember acknowledged. "The water would've broken my fall if I hadn't had to punch through metal to get to it."

"Water...?" Valence asked, looking more closely at the dark puddle spreading beneath the damaged tanker truck.

"What?" Ember responded. "They can't all be filled with experimental rocket fuel, can they? Now where's Gruesome Glowstick?"

Valence shook his head and pointed down Canal, where the streetcar was about corner on its rails once again to head south on St. Charles Ave. "Guess Karnival was right to have us split up."

"He has his moments," Ember agreed. "After you," he gestured.

Valence and Ember flew after the streetcar again, as it trundled down St. Charles toward Common Street, with the Atomic Skull poised in a stealthy crouch atop it. Hangfire, Karnival and More, coming from Gravier Street, ran up St. Charles. "I'm going to try distracting him," Karnival informed his cohorts. "If it works, More, you bring him down."

More nodded as Karnival concentrated on the air in front of the Atomic Skull, trying to recall the old serial images. A woman appeared on the front of the streetcar's roof, a woman with long black hair, wearing a tight sweater and slacks, her arms out to the Atomic Skull.

"Z-Zelda?" the Atomic Skull asked tentatively, rising from his crouch to walk toward the illusion.

More took his cue, leaping into the air and easily clearing the streetcar. Bad Blood's resident strongman wrapped his arms around the Atomic Skull's waist and tackled him, carrying both of them off the streetcar. They landed with concrete-shattering thunder on the far side of St. Charles, and the streetcar continued on its way, its riders hanging out of the side of the car to catch a glimpse of the action.

"Pernicious thugs!" the Atomic Skull wailed as he struggled under More's weight. More kept his massive hands clamped around the Skull's shoulders, his knees on either side of the Skull's body. But the Atomic Skull's hands flailed wildly, firing off wild indigo bolts of radioactive decay. One blast took a chunk of masonry out of a building across the street. Another slashed through a parked car and caused an explosion in the fuel tank. Fortunately Valence and Ember arrived in flight to contain or vaporize most of the sharp fragments. The engine block sailed through a liquor store window.

"Guy's not going down," Hangfire observed.

"Tell me something I don't know," Karnival retorted.

More had the Skull pinned to the ground in front of a three-story building; its bottom level a music store, the top two floors converted apartments. A figure dropped lithely from the building's roof and landed a few feet from More and the Atomic Skull. The figure popped open a case under its arm, and withdrew what looked like a coal-black bucket. With no hesitation, the figure stepped around More and positioned the open end of the object - a helmet - over the Atomic Skull's head and thrust it down to his shoulders, completely enclosing the glowing, fleshless cranium.

Within a few seconds the blasts of radiation had ceased, and More could feel the strength leaving the muscles he restrained on the ground. More looked up to thank the newcomer for his assistance, and stopped with words in his throat. Hangfire and Karnival crossed the street, with Sojourn reappearing behind them, as Valence and Ember flew to the spot as well. All of the members of Bad Blood stared at the familiar figure in the modified crimson and white Checkmate armor.

"Oh, good," Valence panted, trying to sound happy. "Pierce is back."

MESSAGES WRITTEN IN BLOOD ...

Send e-mail correspondence to badblood51@hotmail.com

Not this issue, sad to say. Maybe more mail next time, kids. Feel free to write in as far as what you thought of this month's guest-villain, but go easy - I swear I was trying to be faithful to the character's earlier appearances. Yes, Virginia, there really is an Atomic Skull. Will I ever explain how he came to terrorize our Gulf Coast Good Guys? Again, maybe next time. Hey, speaking of next time ...

NEXT ISSUE: Is Pierce back for good? Can his teammates welcome him back with open arms? Who's really trying to set Bad Blood up? The answers begin to take shape in our very next issue! Be here!