The Briggs Building- Sunday
Believe it or not, a group of teenage superheres didn't take too well to hearing that they were being forcibly depowered, and had started the fighting with some of Jeremy's lab assistants-turned-superpowered villains. That had ended in part of the lab caving in, trapping Lightspeed, Reptil, White Tiger, Finesse and X-23 down underneath the rubble. There were rescue efforts underway, but Maddie wasn't a part of them.
Because when Jeremy had asked her if she was with him, Brandon had said they were. And she'd gone along with it, even if she wasn't totally sure where she stood.
So now she was waiting in one of Jeremy's super fancy lounge rooms with Striker and Enchantress, trying not to feel too weird about hanging out with a villain who'd tried to kill her friends while Maddie watched helplessly. Then she got to feel even weirder when Jeremy came back from sending Ken and Jenny to their room to do... whatever it was that they were gonna do now that they could, which was only one of the reasons it was weird.
But wanting to hit Jeremy didn't mean she couldn't talk to him when she had concerns. "The others-"
"Still nothing from Big Zero," Jeremy reported. "It could take a while to dig 'em out. Listen, I hate to seem cold, but we need to stick to the timetable. Jocasta is secured in my China office, but I wouldn't put it past her to find a way out, to warn the Avengers."
"Jeremy!" Enchantress greeted him, bouncing up from her spot on the sofa. "Did you know Striker has an agent? He said he'd get me a meeting! And he just taped a Morning-O's commercial! You know, with that kicky jingle? 'Morning-O's are the oh-iest, oh-iest..."
"That's great, Sylvie," Jeremy said, sounding nice and disinterested.
"Hey, man, when do I get my powers back?" Striker asked. "'Cause if we're gonna be taking on the Avengers, I need to be able to throw down."
"Easy there, cowboy. Like I said, you'll get the antidote when you've earned it. Learn to delay gratification, dude."
"Um," Maddie said, feeling a little sick at even having to ask this. "Do I have to get my powers back, too?" As terrible as it was watching her friends fight and not being able to jump in like she normally would- ...maybe- the thought of having to wait to lose her body again...
"Hey, no," Jeremy said quickly. "Of course not. The antidote to Clean Slate is permanent. Once your body has the immunity, it's always there. Your powers would've made you incorporeal in a few years. I'd never ask you to go back to that. I'm doing this to make this world better for people like you, Maddie. For everyone. Work on your statements," he said, heading back towards the door. "I want them taped and ready for release in two hours. Remember, be sincere. Joe Six-pack has to believe you're just like him. You guys are doing great."
He wasn't even gone from the room before Enchantress was practicing her statement for the press in the reflection of the window. "Hello. My name's Sylvie Lushton. I'm from Broxton, Oklahoma. It used to be a beautiful all-American little town... until the superheroes came..."
Striker looked at Maddie and dropped his voice. "So, Maddie, uh. You're on board with this whole 'no more superheroes' thing?"
No? Not really? The worst part was that Jeremy really did have a point. "Well... I mean..." Maddie said, failing at a direct answer. "Look what's happening to the world. It just keeps getting worse. All those people who died in the war with the Serpent..."
"Yeah," Striker nodded. And after a pause, he added, "Of course, the Serpent was Asgardian. Clean Slate wouldn't have worked on him or his army of monsters and Nazi robots."
"Yeah. You're right," she conceded. "But Thor would have still be around to fight them. Iron Man, Hawkeye... a few others." She could't name too many names, though. It wouldn't be enough to take on a major threat.
"Sure. And Jeremy says he's going to give powers back to heroes who prove they can use them responsibly."
"Right. Of course."
They fell into silence, and neither one of them were looking at each other anymore.
Striker awkwardly reached up to scratch the back of his neck. "Okay, so I'm gonna go run some lines."
"Me, too," Maddie agreed, and made a hasty escape to another corner of the room where she didn't have to talk and could focus on being a good little minion.
She looked up once or twice to see Striker talking to Enchantress, but she was specifically trying not to pay attention. At least, not until Enchantress cried out, clutching her head.
"-You already have electricity in your brain. I can just tweak it a little," Striker was saying, visible electricity dancing off his fingers. Which... Did he have his powers back? When did that happen? Right now? "Affect your vestibular system. Make you seem dizzy and sick. I really am sorry, Sylvie."
Striker turned to Maddie right as Enchantress was busy being sick all over the floor. "I'm gonna find the others," he said, holding out the vial he'd gotten from somewhere. "Take that Jeremy twerp down. You want in?"
Maddie held up her hand, taking a couple steps back from him. "Brandon, I- No. No, I don't want my powers back."
"Well, that's good to hear, at least," came another voice, right before Striker screamed and Maddie heard the crackle of more electricity before he hit the carpet.
"There's a fight coming," Jeremy said, watching casually as smoke began rising from Striker's skin. Maddie had no idea what he was doing, but he could mess with elements and called himself the Alchemist so it wasn't anything fun. "I needed to know whose side everyone's on. Fast. And those who aren't with the program out of the way. You really disappointed me, man. I thought you- out of all of them- really saw the big picture. You wanted your powers back? Fine. You got 'em. But at a cost. I'm gonna show you what it's like for normal people who get caught up in your fights. Let's jack up the salt content of your sweat. Hell of a conductor, salt."
Jeremy was so focused on making Striker scream that he wasn't watching Maddie. And Enchantress was still so sick she wasn't going to be much help to him. So Maddie reached down to grab the vial that Striker had dropped and made a break for the hall, stopping only when she got to Ken and Jenny's room please don't be naked, please don't be naked-
"They're killing him!" Maddie cried, opening the door, naked or not.
"Could you knock?" Jenny said, breaking away from Ken, totally clothed, thank god.
Ken, being the way better person, went with, "Huh? Killing who?"
"Striker!" Maddie said. "He stole the cure for Clean Slate, to give everyone their powers back and fight Jeremy. Except it was a trap. Jeremy's murdering him! I got it," she went on, holding up the vial. "There's enough left for a couple of us. I'm going to take it. Save him. But I can't do it alone."
As much as she didn't want her powers back, apparently she'd take them in a second if it'd help her save her best friend.
"You're not serious. We just got to be normal again after all this time!" Jenny yelled.
"I know!" Maddie yelled back. "I don't want to do it, either! But you didn't hear him screaming! There was smoke coming off his face. A smell like... like bacon..."
"I'm not going back," Jenny snapped. "Not to that!"
"Jenny..." Maddie took a breath, tried to calm down. "I know Jeremy. The look in his eyes... He's going to kill them all. Finesse, 'Berto, whoever stands up to him. He's going to kill them."
There was a pause, and Ken reached to take the vial from Maddie's hand. "I'll do it."
"No!" Jenny shouted, trying to grab his arm to wrest the vial away. She was a tiny teenage girl and Ken wasn't actually that much smaller in normal form than he was in his overmuscled steel form, so she was never going to do much there. "Don't. Don't you dare."
"Jenny," Ken said calmly. "They're my friends. And as much as you love to rank on 'em, they're your friends too."
For the second time today, Maddie was seeing Jenny cry, something she'd once thought totally impossible. "We didn't have enough time," she said, reaching up to touch Ken's face. "It wasn't enough."
"It was for me," Ken told her. "I got to kiss you. I got to feel your skin against mine. If I have to, I can go the rest of my life on that memory. I can live with it. I can't live with letting those guys die."
"I love you," Jenny murmured.
"I love you, too," he said, and kissed her for a moment before pulling away, and emptying half the vial into his mouth. Then he handed it out for Maddie-
"No. Let me," Jenny said, snatching the vial from his hand.
"What?"
"Jenny, you can't," Maddie told her. "You were miserable. I said I'd-"
"Shut up. Both of you," Jenny said, sounding much more like herself. "I'm the most powerful. Veil, you're useless. Last time Briggs just turned you into water. "
"Okay, but-"
"I'm not letting my friends die, either," Jenny said, and loked to Ken. "Or the guy I love."
"Don't do this for me," he insisted. "I definitely couldn't live with that."
"And I couldn't live without you," she said with a tiny smile, and finished off the vial. "So how long until my powers- Oh. Already, huh?" Sure enough, her hands were already beginning to glow green. "I wanted to kiss you one last time. Looks like I don't even get that."
Ken looked sad about that, too, but he did't look too happy to look back at his dark-skinned, non-red hands, either. "Veil, what's up? I drank the cure, too, but I'm still normal."
Maddie meanwhile was taking a few steps back towards the window. "I don't know, Ken. But uh, Hazmat's glowing pretty bright. Maybe we should, you know, get some distance?" Someone really did not want to catch cancer from her friend here.
"Good idea. You guys find my containment suit. I'll pay Jeremy a visit," Jenny said, heading for the door. He's got some things to answer for."
It didn't take long for Ken and Maddie to find the suit and get back to the room she'd left Striker in, with Maddie announcing, "Jen, we found your containment suit, but- Oh. Oh, Brandon."
Jeremy and Enchantress were gone, but Striker was still smoking a little, and he had open wounds, jagged lines radiating from the center of his face outwards like a sun. He just held up a hand, not looking directly at them. "Stop. I'm okay. I can fight. What do you need, Maddie?"
He was going to get all the hugs later if they didn't all die horribly. "H-Hazmat's suit is locked up," Maddie told him. "The panel's electronic. If you can short it-"
"Lead the way."
They were rushed enough trying to get to the area where she'd found the suit, but Striker took no time at all to get it out. Still, by the time they'd gotten close enough to the room again, there was a sickly green glow visible halfway down the hallway. "Oh, no, we took too long..." Maddie said.
"You don't know that," Striker said, passing her up to the door. "Come on!"
When they got to the doorway, their both had to shield their eyes, but the paint was peeling from the walls, the decorations were melting, and they might want to be concerned about the chair that was having some minor issues with flames... and Ken's skin was gone again. He seemed okay with it.
"My suit. Toss it over," Jenny said.
Ken added, "we've got some spoiled rich ass to kick."
Finding the others wasn't really that difficult, as Jenny annouced once they'd found the room where the previously-buried good guys had just taken out Jeremy's people. "That was easy. Just follow the sound of mayhem."
"What happened?" Striker asked, looking at Reptil, who was a triceratops now. "You were cured-"
Lightspeed's reaction when she saw him hadn't been much different than Maddie's. "Oh my- Brandon!"
"Occupational hazard. Gory details later," he said, shaking it off. "Come on. We've got to stop Jeremy before he takes away every hero Earth's got."
"Wait," said Finesse. "First we must restore Laura's powers. She will not survive much longer."
"I'm... fine," insisted X-23, who was having to be held up by Finesse and still looked like she was losing a fight with gravity. Apparently adamantium claws were fine and all, but she'd still have to deal with the damage that came with not having a healing factor anymore.
"We'll split up," said Reptil.
"Bad idea," Striker said. "The antidote's under heavy security. It'll take all of us to reach it."
"But Jeremy's releasing Clean Slate now!" Jenny reminded them.
"Then I guess we have a choice to make."
And that choice was to start with the antidote, and to locate and then bust open a vault using Mettle's superstrength... and a triceratops.
"Striker, if you hit that panel with an electromagnetic pulse, it should disable all remaining security measures," Lightspeed ordered, pointing to the panel.
"Looks like we hit the mother lode," Jenny noted, looking around at the room as Striker blew the panel, opening the doors inside the vault so that they could get to the antidote.
"For us, sure," Lightspeed said, grabbing a vial and handing one to Maddie, "but I see a problem."
"Yes. There is not nearly enough of the cure here to counteract a worldwide spread of Clean Slate," Finesse agreed.
Maddie took over for Finesse, kneeling with x-23 to force feed her the antidote. "Jeremy obviously planned on doing a lot less repowering than depowering."
"Thenq even if we can make more, most of the world's heroes will be powerless for who knows how long," Reptil said. "What if there's an alien invasion, or some kind of cosmis crisis? The whole planet'll be pretty much defenseless."
X-23 sat up on her own, opening her eyes again for the first time in a while. "Then we'll just have to make sure that does not happen," she said, and there was the snikt.
*****
It'd been pretty basic logic, trying to figure out just how something like Clean Slate could be deployed worldwide, which probably meant launching something from the roof. So while the others headed up there to tangle with Jeremy and Enchantress, Maddie went to the control room, since she more or less knew how all that stuff worked over the last couple months of working with Jeremy.
Which meant she was looking right at the screen when she saw the missiles deployed.
About a minute later she heard a voice from the headset she was wearing. "Lightspeed to Veil. I'm trying to catch up. Are you tracking the missiles?"
"Yes... Julie, they're starting to seperate. If even one gets through... Just how fast are you?"
"Fast enough," Lightspeed answered. "I hope. Look, I can handle it. If I know where the missiles are. I need you for that."
"I'm with you," Maddie assured her.
"Then we have a chance. Let's make it count."
Maddie didn't know how long they were at it, her looking at the radar and directing she who could fly from target to the next, but finally Maddie had to warn, "They're nearing the edge of the atmostphere. You'll never reach them all!"
"I have to try," Lightspeed said. "Now where's the next one?"
But looking at where the missiles were... "Oh, man, we can't do this alone," Maddie said. "We- wait. Maybe we don't have to."
She really should have let poor Julie know what she was doing, but instead she switched off that frequency to make another call to the China office. "It's Madeline Berry," she said when she was patched through to the lab. "I need you to unlock Vault Theta."
"I can't do that without orders from Mr. Briggs himself," the technician told her.
Maddie had a screen to see what was going on on the roof, but this was the first time she'd been able to look at it, and she sent the image over to their screens. "Mr. Briggs is under attack!" she said, trying to sound forceful. "What's in the vault is the only thing that can help him!"
"I- I don't know if we should-"
"Dammit, I don't have time to explain! Look in the vault for yourself. There must be cameras in there."
Maddie could hear some vague 'activating the camera' sounds, and the tech said, "I don't understand. How is this going to help Mr. Briggs? It's just a robot."
Maddie ended the transmission when the screaming started, and a few moments later Jocasta pulled open the metal doors to the room Maddie was in. "Madeline, thank you," she said. "Jeremy had me trapped in a cell shielded against all electronic transmissions."
"Until they turned on the cameras," Maddie nodded. "That's what I was going for."
Jocasta stepped beside her at the control board. "Clearly we were wrong about Jeremy. What has he done now?"
"He launched the Clean Slate missiles. Lightspeed's trying, but she can't get them all."
"She is a brave and resourceful young woman," said Jocasta, reaching for the controls. "But she is only human."
With that, Maddie patched herself back over to Lightspeed. "Julie?"
"Dammit, Veil, I've been calling you for two minutes!" Lightspeed complained. "I need to know where the missiles are now!"
"Oh, right about where I steered you," she said, watching as all the missiles seemed to line up right next to Lightspeed. "Take 'em out."
Jocasta looked to Maddie, and if she could smile, she'd probably be doing it right now. "It's all in how you talk to them."
Maddie and Jocasta headed up to the roof just in time for Julie (and her rainbows) landed in front of them, beaming. "I got 'em all!" she said happily. "Jocasta, you're amazing!"
"No, you are," she replied. "All of you."
"Take a victory lap later," Mettle said. "We've gotta stop Briggs. Where is the little- Oh."
They all seemed to spot him at once, laying on the ground in a pool of blood seeping from deep cuts in his arm and thigh, along with slashes in his stomach. Maddie brought her hands up to her mouth, hoping he was actually dead and wishing she wasn't that terrible a person.
Finesse was standing over him with a piece of his torn shirt in her hand, so it was she who got Mettle's "Is he...?"
"He lost too much blood," Finesse said evenly, because that was how she did everything. "He's dead."
Maddie had no idea what had happened to X-23, but she was clearly having a terrible day. Her skin had peeled off in places and was regenerating as she walked over to them, holding her stomach. "I... I did this?" she asked Finesse.
Finesse was quiet for a moment, and told her, "He would have killed us all. There was no acceptable alterative."
"I killed a guy in the war with the Serpent," Mettle said. "Bothered me a lot. This? Not even a little."
*****
The thing about being a superhero that people didn't usually talk about was when you had to deal with the aftermath. Hours after the authorities had been called, they were waiting in the lobby of the Briggs Building, waiting for Jocasta to finish explaining things to the police and for the coroner to take Jeremy's body away.
Maddie was focusing her attention on Brandon, who was getting the jagged cuts on his face looked at by a medic. They really did look bad, and for someone like Brandon, who was an actor, and concerned with himself to the point of character flaw, it could be devastating.
"Remember when Reptil got those burns fighting Electro?" Maddie said hopefully. "They used that University of Pittsburgh treatment on him-"
"Yeah, sure, maybe that'll work," Brandon said with a sigh. "What a disaster. We come here so you, Mettle and Hazmat can get your lives back, and all you get is a taste before it's all snatched away. Worse than nothing."
Maddie shrugged, looking over to where Ken and Jenny were sitting together. "Well... not for all of us. I never took the cure. I'm still normal," she said. "I feel so bad... Poor Ken and Jenny..."
"Hey, don't do that," he said, standing. And despite his current situation, he suddenly looked to be in a better mood. "This is great. Maddie, you're my friend. Even if there's nothing they can do for my face- even with all the crap that happened today... if you got a future, a chace to get old, fall in love, be happy... It was totally worth it."
Maddie was pretty sure she could have cried just hearing that. Instead, he was getting a hug. She'd mentally promised him those anyway. "And you're my friend, Brandon Sharpe. The best friend I've ever had."
[Warning for character death. NFB, NFI, OOC okay. Taken from Avengers Academy #35, 36 and 37.]
Because when Jeremy had asked her if she was with him, Brandon had said they were. And she'd gone along with it, even if she wasn't totally sure where she stood.
So now she was waiting in one of Jeremy's super fancy lounge rooms with Striker and Enchantress, trying not to feel too weird about hanging out with a villain who'd tried to kill her friends while Maddie watched helplessly. Then she got to feel even weirder when Jeremy came back from sending Ken and Jenny to their room to do... whatever it was that they were gonna do now that they could, which was only one of the reasons it was weird.
But wanting to hit Jeremy didn't mean she couldn't talk to him when she had concerns. "The others-"
"Still nothing from Big Zero," Jeremy reported. "It could take a while to dig 'em out. Listen, I hate to seem cold, but we need to stick to the timetable. Jocasta is secured in my China office, but I wouldn't put it past her to find a way out, to warn the Avengers."
"Jeremy!" Enchantress greeted him, bouncing up from her spot on the sofa. "Did you know Striker has an agent? He said he'd get me a meeting! And he just taped a Morning-O's commercial! You know, with that kicky jingle? 'Morning-O's are the oh-iest, oh-iest..."
"That's great, Sylvie," Jeremy said, sounding nice and disinterested.
"Hey, man, when do I get my powers back?" Striker asked. "'Cause if we're gonna be taking on the Avengers, I need to be able to throw down."
"Easy there, cowboy. Like I said, you'll get the antidote when you've earned it. Learn to delay gratification, dude."
"Um," Maddie said, feeling a little sick at even having to ask this. "Do I have to get my powers back, too?" As terrible as it was watching her friends fight and not being able to jump in like she normally would- ...maybe- the thought of having to wait to lose her body again...
"Hey, no," Jeremy said quickly. "Of course not. The antidote to Clean Slate is permanent. Once your body has the immunity, it's always there. Your powers would've made you incorporeal in a few years. I'd never ask you to go back to that. I'm doing this to make this world better for people like you, Maddie. For everyone. Work on your statements," he said, heading back towards the door. "I want them taped and ready for release in two hours. Remember, be sincere. Joe Six-pack has to believe you're just like him. You guys are doing great."
He wasn't even gone from the room before Enchantress was practicing her statement for the press in the reflection of the window. "Hello. My name's Sylvie Lushton. I'm from Broxton, Oklahoma. It used to be a beautiful all-American little town... until the superheroes came..."
Striker looked at Maddie and dropped his voice. "So, Maddie, uh. You're on board with this whole 'no more superheroes' thing?"
No? Not really? The worst part was that Jeremy really did have a point. "Well... I mean..." Maddie said, failing at a direct answer. "Look what's happening to the world. It just keeps getting worse. All those people who died in the war with the Serpent..."
"Yeah," Striker nodded. And after a pause, he added, "Of course, the Serpent was Asgardian. Clean Slate wouldn't have worked on him or his army of monsters and Nazi robots."
"Yeah. You're right," she conceded. "But Thor would have still be around to fight them. Iron Man, Hawkeye... a few others." She could't name too many names, though. It wouldn't be enough to take on a major threat.
"Sure. And Jeremy says he's going to give powers back to heroes who prove they can use them responsibly."
"Right. Of course."
They fell into silence, and neither one of them were looking at each other anymore.
Striker awkwardly reached up to scratch the back of his neck. "Okay, so I'm gonna go run some lines."
"Me, too," Maddie agreed, and made a hasty escape to another corner of the room where she didn't have to talk and could focus on being a good little minion.
She looked up once or twice to see Striker talking to Enchantress, but she was specifically trying not to pay attention. At least, not until Enchantress cried out, clutching her head.
"-You already have electricity in your brain. I can just tweak it a little," Striker was saying, visible electricity dancing off his fingers. Which... Did he have his powers back? When did that happen? Right now? "Affect your vestibular system. Make you seem dizzy and sick. I really am sorry, Sylvie."
Striker turned to Maddie right as Enchantress was busy being sick all over the floor. "I'm gonna find the others," he said, holding out the vial he'd gotten from somewhere. "Take that Jeremy twerp down. You want in?"
Maddie held up her hand, taking a couple steps back from him. "Brandon, I- No. No, I don't want my powers back."
"Well, that's good to hear, at least," came another voice, right before Striker screamed and Maddie heard the crackle of more electricity before he hit the carpet.
"There's a fight coming," Jeremy said, watching casually as smoke began rising from Striker's skin. Maddie had no idea what he was doing, but he could mess with elements and called himself the Alchemist so it wasn't anything fun. "I needed to know whose side everyone's on. Fast. And those who aren't with the program out of the way. You really disappointed me, man. I thought you- out of all of them- really saw the big picture. You wanted your powers back? Fine. You got 'em. But at a cost. I'm gonna show you what it's like for normal people who get caught up in your fights. Let's jack up the salt content of your sweat. Hell of a conductor, salt."
Jeremy was so focused on making Striker scream that he wasn't watching Maddie. And Enchantress was still so sick she wasn't going to be much help to him. So Maddie reached down to grab the vial that Striker had dropped and made a break for the hall, stopping only when she got to Ken and Jenny's room please don't be naked, please don't be naked-
"They're killing him!" Maddie cried, opening the door, naked or not.
"Could you knock?" Jenny said, breaking away from Ken, totally clothed, thank god.
Ken, being the way better person, went with, "Huh? Killing who?"
"Striker!" Maddie said. "He stole the cure for Clean Slate, to give everyone their powers back and fight Jeremy. Except it was a trap. Jeremy's murdering him! I got it," she went on, holding up the vial. "There's enough left for a couple of us. I'm going to take it. Save him. But I can't do it alone."
As much as she didn't want her powers back, apparently she'd take them in a second if it'd help her save her best friend.
"You're not serious. We just got to be normal again after all this time!" Jenny yelled.
"I know!" Maddie yelled back. "I don't want to do it, either! But you didn't hear him screaming! There was smoke coming off his face. A smell like... like bacon..."
"I'm not going back," Jenny snapped. "Not to that!"
"Jenny..." Maddie took a breath, tried to calm down. "I know Jeremy. The look in his eyes... He's going to kill them all. Finesse, 'Berto, whoever stands up to him. He's going to kill them."
There was a pause, and Ken reached to take the vial from Maddie's hand. "I'll do it."
"No!" Jenny shouted, trying to grab his arm to wrest the vial away. She was a tiny teenage girl and Ken wasn't actually that much smaller in normal form than he was in his overmuscled steel form, so she was never going to do much there. "Don't. Don't you dare."
"Jenny," Ken said calmly. "They're my friends. And as much as you love to rank on 'em, they're your friends too."
For the second time today, Maddie was seeing Jenny cry, something she'd once thought totally impossible. "We didn't have enough time," she said, reaching up to touch Ken's face. "It wasn't enough."
"It was for me," Ken told her. "I got to kiss you. I got to feel your skin against mine. If I have to, I can go the rest of my life on that memory. I can live with it. I can't live with letting those guys die."
"I love you," Jenny murmured.
"I love you, too," he said, and kissed her for a moment before pulling away, and emptying half the vial into his mouth. Then he handed it out for Maddie-
"No. Let me," Jenny said, snatching the vial from his hand.
"What?"
"Jenny, you can't," Maddie told her. "You were miserable. I said I'd-"
"Shut up. Both of you," Jenny said, sounding much more like herself. "I'm the most powerful. Veil, you're useless. Last time Briggs just turned you into water. "
"Okay, but-"
"I'm not letting my friends die, either," Jenny said, and loked to Ken. "Or the guy I love."
"Don't do this for me," he insisted. "I definitely couldn't live with that."
"And I couldn't live without you," she said with a tiny smile, and finished off the vial. "So how long until my powers- Oh. Already, huh?" Sure enough, her hands were already beginning to glow green. "I wanted to kiss you one last time. Looks like I don't even get that."
Ken looked sad about that, too, but he did't look too happy to look back at his dark-skinned, non-red hands, either. "Veil, what's up? I drank the cure, too, but I'm still normal."
Maddie meanwhile was taking a few steps back towards the window. "I don't know, Ken. But uh, Hazmat's glowing pretty bright. Maybe we should, you know, get some distance?" Someone really did not want to catch cancer from her friend here.
"Good idea. You guys find my containment suit. I'll pay Jeremy a visit," Jenny said, heading for the door. He's got some things to answer for."
It didn't take long for Ken and Maddie to find the suit and get back to the room she'd left Striker in, with Maddie announcing, "Jen, we found your containment suit, but- Oh. Oh, Brandon."
Jeremy and Enchantress were gone, but Striker was still smoking a little, and he had open wounds, jagged lines radiating from the center of his face outwards like a sun. He just held up a hand, not looking directly at them. "Stop. I'm okay. I can fight. What do you need, Maddie?"
He was going to get all the hugs later if they didn't all die horribly. "H-Hazmat's suit is locked up," Maddie told him. "The panel's electronic. If you can short it-"
"Lead the way."
They were rushed enough trying to get to the area where she'd found the suit, but Striker took no time at all to get it out. Still, by the time they'd gotten close enough to the room again, there was a sickly green glow visible halfway down the hallway. "Oh, no, we took too long..." Maddie said.
"You don't know that," Striker said, passing her up to the door. "Come on!"
When they got to the doorway, their both had to shield their eyes, but the paint was peeling from the walls, the decorations were melting, and they might want to be concerned about the chair that was having some minor issues with flames... and Ken's skin was gone again. He seemed okay with it.
"My suit. Toss it over," Jenny said.
Ken added, "we've got some spoiled rich ass to kick."
Finding the others wasn't really that difficult, as Jenny annouced once they'd found the room where the previously-buried good guys had just taken out Jeremy's people. "That was easy. Just follow the sound of mayhem."
"What happened?" Striker asked, looking at Reptil, who was a triceratops now. "You were cured-"
Lightspeed's reaction when she saw him hadn't been much different than Maddie's. "Oh my- Brandon!"
"Occupational hazard. Gory details later," he said, shaking it off. "Come on. We've got to stop Jeremy before he takes away every hero Earth's got."
"Wait," said Finesse. "First we must restore Laura's powers. She will not survive much longer."
"I'm... fine," insisted X-23, who was having to be held up by Finesse and still looked like she was losing a fight with gravity. Apparently adamantium claws were fine and all, but she'd still have to deal with the damage that came with not having a healing factor anymore.
"We'll split up," said Reptil.
"Bad idea," Striker said. "The antidote's under heavy security. It'll take all of us to reach it."
"But Jeremy's releasing Clean Slate now!" Jenny reminded them.
"Then I guess we have a choice to make."
And that choice was to start with the antidote, and to locate and then bust open a vault using Mettle's superstrength... and a triceratops.
"Striker, if you hit that panel with an electromagnetic pulse, it should disable all remaining security measures," Lightspeed ordered, pointing to the panel.
"Looks like we hit the mother lode," Jenny noted, looking around at the room as Striker blew the panel, opening the doors inside the vault so that they could get to the antidote.
"For us, sure," Lightspeed said, grabbing a vial and handing one to Maddie, "but I see a problem."
"Yes. There is not nearly enough of the cure here to counteract a worldwide spread of Clean Slate," Finesse agreed.
Maddie took over for Finesse, kneeling with x-23 to force feed her the antidote. "Jeremy obviously planned on doing a lot less repowering than depowering."
"Thenq even if we can make more, most of the world's heroes will be powerless for who knows how long," Reptil said. "What if there's an alien invasion, or some kind of cosmis crisis? The whole planet'll be pretty much defenseless."
X-23 sat up on her own, opening her eyes again for the first time in a while. "Then we'll just have to make sure that does not happen," she said, and there was the snikt.
*****
It'd been pretty basic logic, trying to figure out just how something like Clean Slate could be deployed worldwide, which probably meant launching something from the roof. So while the others headed up there to tangle with Jeremy and Enchantress, Maddie went to the control room, since she more or less knew how all that stuff worked over the last couple months of working with Jeremy.
Which meant she was looking right at the screen when she saw the missiles deployed.
About a minute later she heard a voice from the headset she was wearing. "Lightspeed to Veil. I'm trying to catch up. Are you tracking the missiles?"
"Yes... Julie, they're starting to seperate. If even one gets through... Just how fast are you?"
"Fast enough," Lightspeed answered. "I hope. Look, I can handle it. If I know where the missiles are. I need you for that."
"I'm with you," Maddie assured her.
"Then we have a chance. Let's make it count."
Maddie didn't know how long they were at it, her looking at the radar and directing she who could fly from target to the next, but finally Maddie had to warn, "They're nearing the edge of the atmostphere. You'll never reach them all!"
"I have to try," Lightspeed said. "Now where's the next one?"
But looking at where the missiles were... "Oh, man, we can't do this alone," Maddie said. "We- wait. Maybe we don't have to."
She really should have let poor Julie know what she was doing, but instead she switched off that frequency to make another call to the China office. "It's Madeline Berry," she said when she was patched through to the lab. "I need you to unlock Vault Theta."
"I can't do that without orders from Mr. Briggs himself," the technician told her.
Maddie had a screen to see what was going on on the roof, but this was the first time she'd been able to look at it, and she sent the image over to their screens. "Mr. Briggs is under attack!" she said, trying to sound forceful. "What's in the vault is the only thing that can help him!"
"I- I don't know if we should-"
"Dammit, I don't have time to explain! Look in the vault for yourself. There must be cameras in there."
Maddie could hear some vague 'activating the camera' sounds, and the tech said, "I don't understand. How is this going to help Mr. Briggs? It's just a robot."
Maddie ended the transmission when the screaming started, and a few moments later Jocasta pulled open the metal doors to the room Maddie was in. "Madeline, thank you," she said. "Jeremy had me trapped in a cell shielded against all electronic transmissions."
"Until they turned on the cameras," Maddie nodded. "That's what I was going for."
Jocasta stepped beside her at the control board. "Clearly we were wrong about Jeremy. What has he done now?"
"He launched the Clean Slate missiles. Lightspeed's trying, but she can't get them all."
"She is a brave and resourceful young woman," said Jocasta, reaching for the controls. "But she is only human."
With that, Maddie patched herself back over to Lightspeed. "Julie?"
"Dammit, Veil, I've been calling you for two minutes!" Lightspeed complained. "I need to know where the missiles are now!"
"Oh, right about where I steered you," she said, watching as all the missiles seemed to line up right next to Lightspeed. "Take 'em out."
Jocasta looked to Maddie, and if she could smile, she'd probably be doing it right now. "It's all in how you talk to them."
Maddie and Jocasta headed up to the roof just in time for Julie (and her rainbows) landed in front of them, beaming. "I got 'em all!" she said happily. "Jocasta, you're amazing!"
"No, you are," she replied. "All of you."
"Take a victory lap later," Mettle said. "We've gotta stop Briggs. Where is the little- Oh."
They all seemed to spot him at once, laying on the ground in a pool of blood seeping from deep cuts in his arm and thigh, along with slashes in his stomach. Maddie brought her hands up to her mouth, hoping he was actually dead and wishing she wasn't that terrible a person.
Finesse was standing over him with a piece of his torn shirt in her hand, so it was she who got Mettle's "Is he...?"
"He lost too much blood," Finesse said evenly, because that was how she did everything. "He's dead."
Maddie had no idea what had happened to X-23, but she was clearly having a terrible day. Her skin had peeled off in places and was regenerating as she walked over to them, holding her stomach. "I... I did this?" she asked Finesse.
Finesse was quiet for a moment, and told her, "He would have killed us all. There was no acceptable alterative."
"I killed a guy in the war with the Serpent," Mettle said. "Bothered me a lot. This? Not even a little."
*****
The thing about being a superhero that people didn't usually talk about was when you had to deal with the aftermath. Hours after the authorities had been called, they were waiting in the lobby of the Briggs Building, waiting for Jocasta to finish explaining things to the police and for the coroner to take Jeremy's body away.
Maddie was focusing her attention on Brandon, who was getting the jagged cuts on his face looked at by a medic. They really did look bad, and for someone like Brandon, who was an actor, and concerned with himself to the point of character flaw, it could be devastating.
"Remember when Reptil got those burns fighting Electro?" Maddie said hopefully. "They used that University of Pittsburgh treatment on him-"
"Yeah, sure, maybe that'll work," Brandon said with a sigh. "What a disaster. We come here so you, Mettle and Hazmat can get your lives back, and all you get is a taste before it's all snatched away. Worse than nothing."
Maddie shrugged, looking over to where Ken and Jenny were sitting together. "Well... not for all of us. I never took the cure. I'm still normal," she said. "I feel so bad... Poor Ken and Jenny..."
"Hey, don't do that," he said, standing. And despite his current situation, he suddenly looked to be in a better mood. "This is great. Maddie, you're my friend. Even if there's nothing they can do for my face- even with all the crap that happened today... if you got a future, a chace to get old, fall in love, be happy... It was totally worth it."
Maddie was pretty sure she could have cried just hearing that. Instead, he was getting a hug. She'd mentally promised him those anyway. "And you're my friend, Brandon Sharpe. The best friend I've ever had."
[Warning for character death. NFB, NFI, OOC okay. Taken from Avengers Academy #35, 36 and 37.]