The Authority: Stormfront #1

[Spider-Man Beyond]

The Authority: Stormfront #1
Spirit of the Twentieth Century

Written by Tony Peterson (Starfall)
Edited by Daniel Dyer (Spider-Man Beyond)

The doors of the expensive Hotel Leon slid open with a satisfying swish and a twinkling sound like a bell. Two women walked into the lobby, one after the other. The first was all business, dressed in a navy pinstripe suit with her sandy hair swept back into a tight, professional bun.

Though she, too, was dressed in a dress suit and skirt, the second women would never be mistaken for a businesswoman. Every curve and outline of her body was hugged by that cream colored suit in a way that would seem almost impossible for the heavy material. Her hair—a deep chocolate-brown—was cut into a cute, perky A-line style. Her eyes were also a deep brown, though the left was covered by the fall of her hair.

At first glance it would seem a coincidence that the women were close together. But those that knew Rose Tattoo would have seen right past her off-white suit and straight into the murderous gleam in her eye.

As they turned the corner, toward the elevators, they were hidden from the lobby by the curve of the wall. The doors slid closed as a vacationing old couple went up to their room.

“Christine!” Rose called out in a light voice.

Turning on her heel, Christine set eyes on this woman she had once known, but would never recognize now.

“Yes?” she asked in a bewildered way.

Grinning maliciously, Rose reached out and wrapped her hand against the bare skin of Christine’s wrist.

“Just checking.”

Christine didn’t have a prayer in the world. The personified Spirit of Murder had her in her grasp, and Christine had been dead the second Rose was on her trail. There was a tingling all over both women’s skin, and the lights flickered in the hallway. Her surprised expression didn’t even have time to turn to one of fear.

Christine Trelane was dead before she hit the ground.

~*~

[Spider-Man Beyond]

New York

New York City is a city constantly in motion. Busy people crowd the sidewalks, getting on with their busy lives. Taxicabs creep along the traffic-clogged streets, the people inside of them impatient and agitated. Subways charge beneath the ground, the thunderous rumble of their passing shaking the very earth. Machinery, circuitry, wires, the very veins and lifeblood of a city never stilling, always in motion. And the people that make up the bones of the city never quiet, as if they are in a contest to create the most noise, and the most impact in the world.

It was this very commotion that masked the thievery and murder happening perpetually on the streets. It was this very commotion that would provide the solution.

A young girl should have known better than to run through a heavy gang area, it only excites them. But she’d been talking on her cell and had forgotten herself. They had wanted her body, but she’d fought them. Miraculously she’d gotten away. For a few seconds.

Now they wanted her blood.

She screamed herself hoarse as they came after her with knives, and clubs, and bottles, and anything else they could get their hands on. But she could not get away. Leering, cursing, they raised their weapons to strike her, and she braced herself for a killing blow…

…that never came.

Instead, she heard a cry of pain and felt the warmth of blood upon her face. She looked up and saw a demon with her in the alley.

He looked like man but there was no human who could move as he did. His body twisting and turning like city streets one second, and then solid as a steel girder the next. She gasped as he disappeared, just sank into the wall, only to reappear form the bottom of the fire escape to land on the thug beneath. He ripped the thug’s head off with his bare hands.

Screaming again, she lurched to her feet and ran as fast as she could toward home. Even when she had gone, her savior stayed behind. He didn’t stop until the last thug was dead, until no one could spread the story of the red-eyed demon that stalked the streets.

Except the girl, of course.

~*~

[Spider-Man Beyond]

Respond, please respond!” Jackson King furiously typed away at his alien technology enhanced computer system in the bedroom of his suite of the hotel. Every single operative of Stormwatch possible to contact had been contacted. None had responded. Most couldn’t, they were dead.

Suddenly the screen lit up with a single, short message.

Jenny Sparks: Confirmed.

:Hello?:

Even tiny as it was by the electronic interference, the unmistakable British drawl of Jenny Sparks sounded through the speakers.

Jackson almost wept with relief.

“Jenny, oh God, Jenny. I need your help.”

:I don’t do this anymore, Jackson. Stormwatch is dead.:

“I know,” Jackson responded quietly, “they’ve all been murdered.”

There was no response.

“Jenny?”

:I’m tracing your location. Be there soon--:

“But not soon enough,” said a voice behind Jackson as his computer went dead.

The large African-American man was already on his feet, the gun always in his pocket swept out of it and into his hand. He never even had a chance to get a shot off. Rose was just suddenly there, her hand slipping up his sleeves to get to the skin beneath.

As the otherworldly tingle of Rose Tattoo’s power spread through his body, and the overhead lights went crazy, the last thought Jackson King had was… I hope Jenny fries this bitch.

And then he was gone.

Stepping around his large body, Rose reached to her ear to touch the ear bud hidden there by her hair.

“It’s done, lover. The Weathermen are dead.” She spared herself a grim smile of triumph at the thought. “There was one snag, though. King managed to contact Jenny Sparks.”

She didn’t add anything cliche like: if she discovers what we’re doing it could be a disaster. Where Sparks was concerned, such statements went without saying.

“We will deal with her when the time comes,” responded the sibilant voice on the other end. “Now get back here; I want you again.”

Smiling that smile of a woman who knows her own sexual worth, Rose said, “Door.”

A shimmering blue rectangle appeared in the air before her. When the Spirit of Murder had passed through, the door disappeared.

~*~

[Spider-Man Beyond]

Oxford University

If there was a place in the world known for its ingenuity and inventiveness, it was Europe. From the philosophies of the Greeks, to the war games of the Romans. There was the scientific breakthroughs of the Germans, and the Renaissance of arts in Italy.

Living there, being amidst the countries that had spawned the greatest minds in history was indescribable. It really was a charge for her mental energies.

Years ago she would never have imagined that she would be teaching advanced science classes at Oxford. The idea would never have occurred to her. She had been a scientific designer for her entire career, and then her mentor had died and she’d taken up the slack. Being in the midst of battle, the chaos and terror of fighting against crime had been the most terrifying thing she could imagine.

And she loved it.

Now she was a professor. In charge of educating young people, contributing to the world’s intuitive growth. There was no blood, no viscera, no death, or crime fighting.

And she loved that, too.

All in all, she couldn’t complain. She still got to use her genius, after all, she just didn’t have to get on the front lines anymore.

But just because she didn’t have to, didn’t stop her from doing so.

The police scanner in her office would crackle to life every now and then, and sometimes she just couldn’t resist. Her technology was a part of her, and there was nothing better than giving in to her darker urges every now and then.

As if conjured by her thoughts, the scanner crackled to life. A robbery in progress, one of the big time banks. The perps had already gotten into their car and driven away.

Though the youths in her class were in college now, they were just as eager as kids to file out of the classroom as she dismissed them. When they were gone she locked up and hurried to drop her junk in the car. Then she stole around the building and activated her powers. She was in the air before the last bell rang.

She had to get there before the police, of course. No longer having the backing of the government’s authority and funding meant the police were less inclined to follow her methods.

Her tech easily located the speeding car. Heading south, away from the bank, as fast the automobile could take them.

It wasn’t nearly fast enough.

She was upon them before they knew what was happening. The top of the cab was the first to go. As she ripped it off, money went flying past her. Once they stopped crapping themselves, they started to fire at her. It did them no good, she’d survived more than these thugs could imagine.

Reaching into the car, she began to toss the criminals out randomly. They would undoubted be suffering several injuries when the police caught up with them. Some of them would probably be serious. The driver was in the worst shape though as she just picked the car up and gave it a small toss.

Sometimes the criminals just needed to loose a limb or two to get the message.

~*~

[Spider-Man Beyond]

It was several hours later before Jenny got a chance to inspect Jackson King’s hotel room. Christine’s body on the first floor had attracted attention rather quickly. By the time Jenny arrived at the Hotel Leon, policemen were everywhere. They dusted, vacuumed, and carted bodies away. Finally they were gone, with only one guard on the door of Jackson’s room.

This was hardly a problem for Jenny Sparks.

Inside the cordoned off room, every electronic thing in the room began to buzz with activity. Lights came on and off, the radio randomly shuffled through channels, the hair dryer in the bathroom switched between high and low.

Sparks began shooting from the electrical outlets—literally. As the energy gathered from the outlets, the outline of a woman soon became visible. Jenny Sparks was soon fully formed. Her blond hair had come undone from her trademark ponytail. She didn’t know why, her white union jack T-shirt and black jeans were unchanged. Jenny had to close her ice blue eyes for a moment as the room spun around her.

Taking a deep breath, Jenny supported herself on the wall as the world realigned. Every time she did this it took more out of her. Every time she exercised her powers, she found it was harder and harder to control. It wasn’t all that surprising, really, that her powers were frazzled; she should be seven years dead. But here she was, still kicking.

Feeling she had recovered, Jenny stepped away from the wall and walked into the bedroom. Strangely, seeing that stark white outline of her former friend affected her more than if the body had still been there. She had seen death in her line of work, but seeing all that Jackson had been reduced to a chalk outline struck something inside her.

“Oh, Jackson,” she sighed, allowing herself one moment to mourn for her friend. The moment soon passed, however. She had work to do.

Despite herself, she winced when she sensed the circuitry of the computer system. Everything inside was fried. The coroner couldn’t find out what had killed Jackson, but Jenny had a sinking suspicion she knew.

“I’m gonna fry that bitch.”

It just didn’t make sense. Stormwatch had been disbanded for years, why would Rose start killing its operatives now? Normally, she was just Bendix’s lap dog. But Bendix had died when his alien implants had stopped working. The last time she had seen either of them, Rose had been kneeling over Bendix’s body as their old carrier went up in flames. To be honest, she’s always assumed Rose had died along with Bendix. Of course the world couldn’t be that lucky.

Jenny had no idea what was going on, and she hated that.

Stepping forward, Jenny placed her hands on the fried computer. Her electric powers raced through the system, finding any information that had survived the aftershock of Rose’s power. Everything she found was downloaded into her brain and she’d look more thoroughly into it all later. Right now all she was concerned about was any operatives that had survived. The list she came up with didn’t surprise her once she’d thought about it.

She stepped away from the computer and glanced down one last time at the outline of her friend. If it was the last thing she did, Rose would pay for his death.

Bracing herself, Jenny sent her power back into the outlets and disappeared from the room.

~*~

[Spider-Man Beyond]

Holland

At first, he’d thought the visions were trips, side affects of the drug cocktail he pumped into his system daily. So he tried to get off the drugs for a while, had gone through the agonizing symptoms of withdrawal to escape the terrifying images. He hadn’t been able to go cold turkey straight off, so he’d turned to alcohol instead.

But then they started coming when he was sleeping, when he was sober, when he was cold. Huge colorful heads telling him his time was coming. Telling him he was chosen.

And still, he wasn’t convinced. How many potheads did he know that had jumped off buildings because they thought they were Jesus? This was just some weird after effect of the drugs, maybe from the withdrawal.

So he tried a new tactic, and got deeper in the drugs than ever. He used things he hadn’t tried before, some that he’d never even heard of, to get completely, mind numbingly out of it.

For a while that had worked. But then the dreams got worse.

Now whenever he closed his eyes he pictured terrible red skies, wires and electrodes stuck into every point imaginable on his body, glass all around him, and some otherworldly force besides all that keeping him in place. A woman with dragon tattoos up both arms.

New drugs had been in order after that, drugs that were to shock his system instead of depress it, drugs that would keep him awake. Drugs that would, maybe, keep him sane because he was loosing it, no doubt about that. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could take the strange things that were happening to him.

And so he gritted his teeth, flexed his arm, and pumped his escape deep into his veins.

~*~

[Spider-Man Beyond]

Jenny reappeared in the dive of a cabin she’d rented in northern Canada. She’d needed to be away from everything, and this God forsaken one bedroom hut had suited her needs. Of course, she’d thought she was dying when she’d bought the damn thing. But it was best not to think about that or she’d start brooding again. There was no feeling worse than being ready to die, and spend the day doing your favorite things. And then comes midnight, and nothing. No death, no reincarnation, no completing the cycle of the Century Baby bullshit.

Fumbling for a cigarette, Jenny lit it up with her powers and took a long drag. It was time to figure out what the hell was going on.

She laid her hands on her own computer and uploaded the information she’d gotten from Jackson’s. The screen hummed to life with all the info. She had collected information about everything Stormwatch had on them. To her amusement, there was even a file on herself. But she clicked to the next files, the ones about the other operatives.

Some of the living members had simply disappeared. No traces of them were ever found after the disbanding of Stormwatch. Some had died of natural causes. Some had gone into other service groups for their various countries. Most, though, had been killed by Rose Tattoo.

There was only one option; she’d have to warn them somehow. If she could find them, she could keep them alive. All of them would still have the radiotelepathy implants in their brains. Her powers could restart them and rewire them so Rose couldn’t hack in. Staying connected and aware of the situation was the only way to stay alive.

For just a second she wondered why she was doing this. Didn’t she want to die? Why not just stay here on the edge of nowhere and wait for Rose? Because Jenny Sparks was not a quitter, that’s why. The Century Cycle was, or had been, absolute. No previous Jenny had ever lived past her designated time. There was nothing she could do about the turn of the century, and she was cool with that, but she would be damned if she would let that tattooed bitch take her out.

Realizing that made her feel better. Maybe she needed to get back in the action. And then when Rose’s bizarre vendetta was stopped they’d work on figuring out why Jenny was still alive.

Hold on, there, Jenny, she thought. I have to find them first.

First, she had her eyes on a man who’d have more reason than most to hate Rose Tattoo. The only problem was, she’d have to expend a fair amount of her power, and she just wasn’t sure if she was up to it.

She took a deep breath and expanded her power beyond the simple computer in front of her. The familiar rush of power flowed over her, around her, through her, became her. In a sparkle of electricity, Jenny Sparks disappeared…

…and reappeared in a grimy alley in New York City with the bodies of several thugs all about her.

For a moment she thought she would be sick; reforming from nothing, with no electrical appliances or outlets or anything took a hell of a lot out of her. Then she heard a voice behind her.

“Jenny? What on Earth…? what the hell are you doing here?”

Straightening, Jenny turned around to face Jack Hawksmoor. He hadn’t changed much. He was still the big man she remembered wearing no shoes. His eyes still held the red within the center instead of the normal black pupil. She knew if she could see his feet they would be ribbed with the alien technology that gave him his powers. Though she had never seen it first hand, she also knew that if she looked at his maimed and twisted genitals she would see the last remaining evidence of the reason he’d needed that technology.

“Hello, Jack, been a long time. Too bloody long.”

Jack’s face was impassive.

“I won’t say it’s good to see you. Showing up outta the blue like this… what do you want, Jenny?”

Smiling, Jenny couldn’t resist sticking her finger out toward him and replying, “I want you.”

Continued...

[Spider-Man Beyond]

The Authority: Secret Files #1

As recovered by Jenny Sparks from the computer of Jackson King.
The Origin of Jenny Sparks.

New Years have always held a special place in the mindset of a populace. They stand for growth, change, and new beginnings. The old is passing away and leaving the new in its wake. This belief was the birthplace of the Century Babies.

At the beginning of each new era in time, Earth’s natural defenses have birthed guardians of that age. Some are to protect and defend, others to watch and listen, all of them to keep the Earth in balance. Some keep the balance merely by existing.

Such a one is Jenny. She is not A Century Baby she is THE Century Baby: the first and most powerful among them. Long before they started being born every calendar century, it was Jenny who came first. She came bearing the powers that most suited the age she was born in, the thing most in the minds of the people. Jenny reflects the spirit and life of the century she represents. As people’s minds more and more often gave acceptance to one calendar over another, she was born on January first of the new century and died on December thirty-first of the last year in that century. The following day, the next century’s January first, she would be born again, reincarnated for the new age.

Other Century Babies may or may not follow such a cycle, but Jenny always does. The cycle is absolute and has never been broken.

In our time, the Spirit of the Twentieth Century is known as Jenny Sparks. It is not surprising in the era of renovation and industry that she would be born with electric powers.

Whether directly or indirectly Jenny has had a hand in most major events of the last century. She had met such minds as Einstein, even Adolf Hitler. She is a veteran officer in the British air force.

In the early 1990's with the discovery of the affects of a comet passing decades before, Stormwatch was formed so the world could keep track of these affects. Some people had their DNA genetically altered by the passing. Though they had no powers themselves, when they reproduced and passed on their DNA to their offspring, their children did. These children were called seedlings and it was Stormwatch’s job to find them. They would train those they could, and deal with the others that posed a threat to world security.

Jenny Sparks was Britain’s contribution to the team. She was not a seedling, but the things she had seen and done gave the team valuable information it might not otherwise have possessed. She had been alive during the passing of the comet and seen it first hand. Using her memories of the event they were able to track its passing and compute an algorithm to track the people who had been affected. Soon she was even elected as leader of the field team.

For several years, the team completed its function. They were hailed as heroes working towards the betterment of all mankind. But soon a darker motive behind the team was exposed. Henry Bendix, the then Weatherman—leader of Stormwatch as a whole—was revealed as a villain behind the destruction of many lives.

Henry Bendix had designed implants that could be used to counter affect the lives of those that had suffered at the hands of rogue seedlings. Many people benefitted from these implants, many of them on the Stormwatch team itself. But Bendix had only designed the blueprints, not the technology itself.

An alien species that called itself only the Weavers were responsible for most of Bendix’s works. Bendix himself had alien technology inside him, a staple of the Weatherman’s job. But when the Weavers had left Bendix behind, his implants had gradually failed. Many of the situations Stormwatch had thought they were fighting against were in reality engineered by Bendix.

Through several nefarious schemes he planned on jumpstarting his implants and taking over the world. Jenny Sparks was instrumental in his downfall. It was she who discovered his plot and revealed fellow teammate Rose Tattoo as an ally of Bendix. In a climactic battle aboard the Carrier that had been Stormwatch’s headquarters, Jenny killed Bendix by short-circuiting the last remaining implants in his body. His technology had been tied into the Carrier and backlash from his death caused the ship to explode.

When evidence of this fiasco hit the public light, the UN disbanded Stormwatch saying that they had not put enough effort into maintaining the team. The services the team had provided were valuable, though, so the UN promised to redesign things and come up with a new plan.

After the disbanding of Stormwatch, Jenny retired to her homeland to await the stroke of midnight on December 31st, 1999. Strangely, recent reports place in her in the Canadian wilderness.