ISSUE # 4

"LocoForce - Part Two"

by Dale Glaser

Enigma exited his own warp on the heels of Pierce, and they rejoined their Bad Blood teammates on a lower deck of the Riverboat. Karnival and Valence stood to the side as Hangfire crouched over More, who lay sprawled across the wooden floor.

"None of these wounds look too bad," Hangfire reported to the room breathlessly. "Not pretty, but no permanent damage, I think."

More's upper lip and chin were stained with dark, sticky blood. A goose-egg sized lump was swelling up from the right side of his jaw. Abrasions criss-crossed his broad shoulders, and a fair amount of road tar had been ground into his skin in patches. His skin still showed some gray undertones, although a healthy color was steadily returning. Suddenly More sat upright, a deep, watery cough rattling forth from his lungs. As the coughing subsided, More rested his forearms across his knees and with great effort opened his eyes.

"That really sucked," More announced flatly. "If I see that guy again ..."

"WHEN you see that guy again," Karnival corrected him. "And when's that going to be, Pierce? What's your big plan now?"

Pierce turned to face Karnival straight-on. The impassive Checkmate helmet was a stark contrast to the hellish skull face that shifted along with Karnival's roiling emotions. Pierce allowed the silence to draw out for a few moments before answering, "Ed, you've got to trust me. There was no option but to leave; staying around would have gotten us all killed. We'll go back soon enough, but between now and then you need to pack up your attitude if you want a chance in hell of seeing your wife again."

The sharp angles of Karnival's skull seemed to soften slightly at Pierce's words. Almost imperceptibly, Karnival nodded his assent.

Pierce continued, "We're going to have to call in an outside consultant for this one. Luckily I know someone who should fit the bill. He's not in the immediate vicinity, though. Dirk, are you up for warping us all from here to San Francisco?"

Enigma nodded. "Just give me a minute, two at the most, and I should be able to handle that."

"Fine. Mean time, might as well make the most of the time and think about what we need to do different when we come back to New Orleans to take 'LocoForce' down."

"LocoForce?" Valence asked.

"What Headhunter called his little band of hooligans. Works for me. Now, we know part of what we're up against. We figure out how to deal with that before we run down the unknowns."

In an older neighborhood in San Francisco, on a street just far enough from the main thoroughfares to be unknown to the majority of the city's residents, was the front entrance to a nightclub known as Madame Xanadu's. The club was open all day, and hosted its share of barflys sun-up to sundown and beyond. Madame Xanadu's catered to a clientele for whom excessive consumption of alcohol was the least of their worries, and very often the only solace, certainly the only constant, in their otherwise extremely irregular lives.

Enigma's signature red disc spun open before the front entrance to Madame Xanadu's and one by one the members of Bad Blood stepped out onto the San Francisco street. As the shimmering aperture closed behind them, Valence commented, "I gotta tell you, Pierce, I feel kind of weird strolling into a bar in costume in the middle of the day."

"No one will bat an eye. Guaranteed," Pierce responded simply. He pushed open the door to the establishment and led the way inside.

The dimness of the club's interior caused the team to take a moment to let their vision readjust. When it did they could see a room full of small round tables surrounded by simple wooden chairs, with a long oak bar running along the back wall. A bartender leaned casually against the bar, while a few patrons sat at the bar or at various tables. Every patron sat alone and seemed extremely isolated from the others, even unaware of them. An older gentleman sitting at the table nearest the entrance glanced at Bad Blood, allowed his one eye that was not ruined by cataracts to sweep over the team, then dropped his gaze back to his liver-spotted hands resting on the table. The hands twitched and sprouted brown fur and long black claws, then twitched again and were simple flesh and fingernails once more. None of the other patrons had turned to watch Bad Blood enter, choosing instead to continue to gaze into their cocktail glasses or maintain unbreakable thousand-yard stares at nothing at all.

Pierce had not hesitated at the threshold of the bar, but crossed the floor to a young man sitting at a table in the corner. His teammates followed him, quietly falling into a semi-circle behind Pierce. An unspoken thought seemed to be shared by all: very bad things lay just below the surface of what they could see.

The young man's arms were folded on the table and his head rested on them, with a nearly-drained double-shot glass nearby. Pierce laid a gloved hand on the man's leather jacket. "Wagner." Pierce said it as a quiet yet forceful command. "Wagner, come on. Look at me. Need your help." The man seated at the table was unresponsive, and Pierce tightened his grip on his shoulder and pulled the man up against the seat back. "Wagner, don't play with me. It's too early in the day for you to be this gone."

The man called Wagner's head lolled weakly to the side, but his eyes slowly opened. "Pierce," he said bemusedly. "Whaddayawant?"

"You with it enough to answer some questions for me?" Pierce inquired.

Wagner rolled his head around and his neck popped loudly three times. "Uh huh. Not drunk. Tired. Long night last night. Years and years long." Now Wagner's eyes were fully open and focused. He took in the figures standing behind Pierce and said, "Who're your friends?"

"Vic Wagner, this is More, Valence, Karnival, Hangfire, and you know Enigma. Everyone, Vic Wagner, who's now about to tell us everything he knows about big, black, life-draining mirrors."

Wagner raised an eyebrow to show that Pierce had his attention. "What kind of mirrors?"

Pierce explained, "There's a group of superhuman terrorists who've set up a black mirror in the middle of New Orleans. It's about eight feet tall. It's cloaked the city in pitch darkness and turned the populace into gray-skinned vegetables. It almost did the same to us but we were able to get out and get here."

"So," Wagner said inscrutably.

"So what is it?" Pierce asked, his patience wearing thin and showing.

"Did you get up close to it?" Wagner asked.

"Affirmative," Pierce said.

"And did you notice anything on the frame of the mirror that looked like ..." Wagner cast his eyes around searchingly, leaned back on two legs of his chair to snag a cocktail napkin off a nearby table, then patted distractedly at his jacket until he produced a pen. He scratched some designs on the napkin, symbols resembling something between pure decoration and an alphabetic language. He pushed the napkin toward Pierce. "Like that?"

Pierce studied the ciphers for a moment and said again, "Affirmative. Just like that."

Wagner took the napkin back and tore it into tiny pieces with nervous urgency. "Well then it seems that New Orleans has fallen victim to the Magna of Illusion. Damn shame." Wagner crossed his arms on the table and started to lower his head again.

Pierce caught Wagner by the chin. "I don't need to know the thing's name, I don't have time to do any research myself. I need to know what it's about and how to stop it."

Wagner sat up straight, removing his face from Pierce's grip. He sighed heavily, finished the booze in his glass, and said, "Nobody really knows, Pierce. No fooling. I mean I could tell you all the apocryphal tales about Dr. John Dee in Elizabethan England and how he thought he could communicate with angels through the Magna, while his detractors thought it was the Devil's voice he heard, but that's just the most popular little bedtime story associated with the mirror. Nobody knows where it came from originally, just that it tends to show up every now and then and cause trouble."

"I've never heard of an entire city having the life drained from it as is happening in New Orleans right now," Enigma interjected. "But you say this Magna of Illusion has appeared before?"

Wagner nodded. "Nobody knows exactly what it is, but nobody doubts that it is an instrument of significant power. Any sorcerer looking to boost his own power base would be interested in controlling the Magna. The rest of us, who know better than to go looking for any more magick influence in our lives, would stay as far away from it as possible." Wagner seemed to drift away as he spoke the last sentence, his eyes losing focus. A second later he snapped his attention back to Pierce. "Everyone who's taken possession has tried to use it in a different way, and it seems pretty versatile. This is just one more experiment in the Magna's long existence. And I sure don't know how to stop it."

"B.S.," Pierce snapped. "You're a natural, Vic. Always have been. You might not want to admit it, but you COULD figure out a way to stop it, and I AM going to get it out of you. An entire city full of people depends on it."

A long silence followed as Wagner stared disconsolately at the melting ice cube in his empty glass. Finally he admitted, "Maybe. But it's not something I could hand off to you, anyway. You don't have the skills to pull it off yourself."

"I know," Pierce agreed.

"Well then ..." Suddenly Wagner snapped his head up to look directly at Pierce. "Oh no. No way. Forget it."

"Wagner ..."

"I'm not a hero, dammit, Pierce. Never have been. No plans to start any time soon. Life's too short as it is," Wagner insisted vehemently, shaking his head.

"Vic," Karnival said, stepping around Pierce to be seen. "Please. I am flat out begging you. My wife is in the city and everything I am depends on saving her from what's happening down there. I swear to God we will cover you with everything we've got, I personally will take bullets for you, if you let us bring you back to New Orleans and you do what you can to undo the mirror's effects. You don't have to be a hero. Just don't leave us hanging."

Wagner looked back and forth between Karnival and Pierce. With his heaviest sigh yet he pushed his chair back from the table and slowly rose. "This is it. I am finally losing my mind. Let's get going before I have a sanity relapse," Wagner implored.

"Fair enough," Pierce assented. "Everyone good to go with plan for clearing the bad guys away from the mirror?"

Valence, More, Enigma, Hangfire and Karnival nodded in confirmation.

"Then let's go," Pierce ordered, turning to walk out of Madame Xanadu's. They filed past the bar. An overweight man nursing a large tumbler of vodka looked at them disinterestedly as they passed. From his lap, a constrictor-sized snake with deep orange ram's horns on its head slithered up to his shoulders, and watched the members of Bad Blood and Vic Wagner with considerably more attention, then slithered back down to the overweight man's lap. The heroes and the reluctant sorcerer left the club. A flash of red light bled under the door moments later, which none of the patrons reacted to, and Bad Blood was gone.

"How much longer do we 'ave to wait, eh?" Silencer asked Headhunter impatiently.

Headhunter was staring into the unknowable depths of the Magna of Illusion, with the rest of LocoForce gathered around him, and did not turn from the sheer black surface to answer Silencer. "You know the answer to that. Our employer wants us to guarantee the Magna finishes its purpose here, and that means everyone in the city dead. We'll know that has happened when the Magna turns its full attention on us, and the wards our employer provided for us no longer counteract its power. I haven't felt anything draining me yet, so our job isn't done. And we don't leave until the job is done."

"I don't like waiting for ze mirror to turn on us," Silencer grumbled. "What more is zere for us to do, we already drove off ze heroes."

"Not quite," a voice behind the villains caused them all to turn. Walking towards them was More.

Minotaur spread his arms wide and wiggled his fingers in anticipation. More continued walking until he was inches away from the LocoForce strongman. Minotaur shook his head with mock-pity and said, "Hope you weren't counting on me going easy on you just 'cause you're stupid." He pulled his right arm back and it shot out again like a piston. Minotaur's knuckles passed right through More's head, and Minotaur stumbled a step as the momentum of the missed blow carried him off-balance.

At that moment the top of a streetlamp connected with Minotaur's head, sending the villain flying fifty feet through the air. The rest of LocoForce looked up into the black air to see More plummeting from above, finishing the follow-through of swinging the streetlamp like a baseball bat with every ounce of his strength. Enigma had warped More, armed with the streetlamp, into midair above Minotaur, giving him an opportunity to blindside the villain. Now, with a blood-curdling bellow of "RRRAAAAAHHHHHRRRRRR!!!" More completed his free-fall and impacted with the ground, shaking everyone slightly off-balance with the shockwaves that rocked the asphalt.

Everyone except Karnival, who allowed the illusion of More in which he had cloaked himself to drop. Karnival was already bolting toward Loki as More hit the street, and reached his adversary a second later to deliver a double-axehandle blow to Loki's gut. Loki doubled over in pain as the wind was knocked from his lungs, which put his head within range of Karnival's knee. The knee came up hard and Loki was flipped onto his back, unconscious.

Enigma and Hangfire ran into the confusion with Valence flying in overhead. Genocide raised his energy weapon at them and Enigma sucked the armored villain into a warp, then opened another red portal which was three-quarters underground. Upon ejection Genocide found himself encased in the street and earth beneath, with only his head and shoulders visible. Silencer brought his wrist guns to bear on the heroes as well, but two quick shots from Hangfire shattered the villain's weapons, as well as the bones beneath them. Silencer dropped to his knees. Bayonet was airborne and flying straight at Valence, brandishing his arm-blades. Valence poured all of his magnetic energy into a protective forcefield, and Bayonet found his slashes bouncing off the solid energy, while Valence was able to land a pair of uppercuts across Bayonet's jaw in rapid succession.

More rose to one knee, slowly and in obvious pain, and was caught in a boulder-sized mass of solid ice with only his head protruding. Headhunter came around the ice mass and squatted to be level with More's head. "I don't particularly appreciate your teammate ripping off my motif," Headhunter admitted, nodding towards Genocide, "but I suppose I'll deal with him later. Right now I'm going to pick on you because Minotaur happens to be a very good friend, and I don't let people take cheap shots at my friends. That's MY job." Headhunter stood and cocked his arm back dramatically, giving Pierce enough time to hook his own elbow through Headhunter's and flip the mercenary onto his back in the street.

Wagner slipped around the far side of the block of ice holding More and approached the Magna of Illusion. A sheen of cold sweat covered Wagner's face, but he steadied himself and pulled a thick permanent marker from his coat pocket. He reached up as high as he could on the mirror and with quick, stabbing strokes inscribed a sigil on its surface. When the sigil was finished he placed one fist against the mirror within the symbol, closed his eyes and began reciting an occult language.

Pierce threw a haymaker at Headhunter, who ducked under it and came up with his hand shooting for Pierce's throat. Headhunter found it and encased Pierce's neck in a tight, heavy block of ice. Pierce backflipped, catching a nerve cluster in Headhunter's armpit with the toe of his boot. Headhunter grunted in pain and clutched the arm close to his side as Pierce landed on his feet and aimed his gauntlet blaster to shatter his ice collar. As he did that he could see Wagner lower his arm from the surface of the Magna and wobble on his feet somewhat. But he could also feel that his life force was no longer being drained and knew that Wagner had been successful.

Headhunter realized something had caught Pierce's attention, and turned to see for the first time that Wagner had reached the mirror and marked its surface. Headhunter raised his arms to fire an ice blast at Wagner, but Pierce was on the move and tackled him to the street.

"Wagner, get out of here! Get to Enigma and he'll get you someplace safe!" Pierce commanded loudly.

Wagner shook his head weakly. "Can't ... yet. Not ... finished. One spell stops ... the Magna ... another one ... reverses what it's already done." Wagner grabbed his marker again and began to draw a second sigil below the first.

The force of a massive explosion buffeted all the combatants as Genocide's weapon blew apart the area of earth he had been imprisoned in. Genocide grimly raised the rifle level with Wagner's back and fired.

"NO!" Karnival yelled as he dove to intercept the searing blast. Fortunately, Hangfire dove as well, mentally extending his redirectional forcefield as far as he could. The blast from Genocide's rifle clipped Hangfire's field, and its path was deflected off into the darkness.

"Thanks guys," Wagner laughed. "Almost done here." Again Wagner placed a hand within the sigil's borders and chanted.

Overhead, Bayonet continued to hammer away at Valence's magnetic defenses. Valence gathered all of the magnetic energy directly between himself and Bayonet and shoved as forcefully as he could. Bayonet flew backwards several yards before breaking free of the magnetic wave. The blade-wielding villain then extended his arms and flew arrow-like toward Valence at top speed, shooting ebony blasts ahead. Valence endured the onslaught of the black energy as Bayonet approached, and at the last moment rolled out of his oncoming path and latched onto his wings with a beam of magnetism. Valence guided Bayonet's flight in a huge loop and then slingshot the villain straight at the block of ice encasing more. Bayonet was unable to stop himself and collided with the ice, stunning himself. Valence snatched up Bayonet by the wings and slammed him relentlessly into the ice block over and over again, until it cracked, freeing More and leaving Bayonet painfully dazed.

The only villain still standing was Genocide. With one knee planted in the small of Headhunter's back, Pierce detached a device form his belt and hurled it through the air at the armored villain. The device attached itself to the breastplate of Genocide's armor, and a moment later exploded in a fireball. When the flames subsided Genocide was still standing, but his weapon had transformed into a new construct which wrapped itself around Genocide's shoulders and chest, and Genocide's entire body was glowing. He raised both hands threateningly toward Pierce.

"Save it, Genocide!" Headhunter hollered. "This deal's already gone bad, so Silencer gets his wish! Go Code Epsilon!" With those words Headhunter faded from sight, followed quickly by the rest of his cohorts.

Wagner finished his incantation and slumped to the ground. The members of Bad Blood turned their eyes to the Magna, which began to fill with yellow light that quickly turned to dazzling white. Each hero felt a wave of warmth expand past them, and experienced the rush of their strength and vitality returning. The white light subsided and the city streets looked as they should under the normal subdued sunlight of a Louisiana evening. People in nearby cars appeared to be regaining their healthy skin tones as well.

"Gonna be a few minutes before everyone wakes up," Wagner explained with labored breath. "Don't want to rush these things. Plus that gives me time to do this." Wagner drew a third symbol beneath the first two on the mirror's surface, this one a duplicate of the first. "One more 'stop' sigil, just to be safe. Sucker's locked now. You guys just need to figure out what you want to do with it."

Hangfire helped Wagner to his feet. "Too bad our concrete holding pen is already finished," the old vet mused.

"Well the base isn't completely finished," Valence pointed out as he alighted on the street. "We still need, like, a coffee table ..."

"You're not serious," Enigma said, horrified.

"Hey, why not?" Karnival asked. "Vic said the thing is locked. Why not take it back to the Riverboat, prop it up on some legs, throw a large doily over it or something ... man, do I sound domestic. Speaking of which, I've got to get home. You guys let me know what you decide. And Vic, thank you. We can ever do you a favor, you got it." Karnival set off down the street.

Pierce extended his hand to Wagner. "My thanks as well," the former Checkmate knight said solemnly. Wagner took Pierce's hand and shook it. "We were lucky to have you on our side here," Pierce continued. "And if you want to think about doing something with your life other than killing brain cells at Xanadu's ..."

Wagner shook his head. "Sorry, Pierce. No thanks. You guys got to my soft side this time, but I told you - I'm no hero. Besides, believe me, the longer you hang around me, the less lucky I am to have around. I'll just head on back to San Fran. You know where to find me."

Pierce nodded, and turned to Enigma, who was already opening a warp portal back to California. Wagner waved and stepped through.

As the portal closed, More said, "I'm ready to go home, take about twenty Tylenol, get under five or six blankets, and sleep for a week. So no more debating." More grabbed the Magna of Illusion and hoisted it overhead. "Enigma, warp us all back to the Riverboat. We'll put the Magna there for the moment and figure out what to do with it after my head stops hurting."

No one argued.

MESSAGES WRITTEN IN BLOOD ...

This issue we have a letter from one Andrew Lee of Sterling, Virginia. Andrew has obviously been profoundly affected by the ongoing adventures of Bad Blood, as can be seen in his eloquent letter which I feel captures the heart and soul, the triumph and tragedy, the sha-la-la and hey-hey-hey that is Bad Blood. I am deeply appreciative of the time Andrew took to put his thoughts down in all of their revelatory glory, and send them to me so that I know people are really getting something out of these Bad Blood tales. The letter truly speaks better for itself than I could ever hope to encapsulate, so here now is Andrew's fan letter for Bad Blood #3, "LocoForce - Part One":

Righteous.

Thank you, Andrew. You've truly said it all. Anyone else who wants to profess the virtues (or shortcomings) of Bad Blood as expansively as Andrew is invited to write to badblood51@hotmail.com.

NEXT ISSUE: It's good old fashioned criminal insanity as Bad Blood matches wits with none other than ... the Joker! Has Batman's greatest enemy given up on Gotham for good? Is it only a little vacation to the sunny swamplands that the Clown Prince of Crime is seeking? Or is something even more insidious going on? You won't know until the end ... and it's going to be one crazy ride getting there!