The Crusaders -Volume 1

Los Angeles…

"Really?" Lizzy asked with a raised brow and an amused grin as she leaned over the kitchen counter with the tablet in her hand. "That's what you spent three days trying to come up with?"

"What's wrong with it?" Kon defensively inquired with a confused frown. "It's a cool name."

"In what world is 'Starblaze' considered a good codename? Like, for an actual superhero?"

"Are you kidding me? Come on! I mean… 'Starblaze.' It sounds better every time you say it."

"Maybe to a 12-year-old."

"Seriously? Come on!" Kon turned on his stool at the bench to face where Andrew was sitting in the living room. "Andrew, help me out here!" In that same space, Suzy and Gunk were seated beside each other on the couch, the three choosing to pass the free time they had watching afternoon television. Andrew turned in the sofa and shrugged with an apologetic smile.

"Sorry, buddy." His disappointing words came gently, but Kon still pointed his finger in annoyance.

"Oh no, you don't get to slip out that easy! Explain to me why I should go with anything else."

"Okay…well, the rest of us all have codenames that are indicative of our powers or skills. Your powers revolve around being a living energy conduit, which has pretty much nothing to do with fire."

"He's right." Lizzy added. "Suzy's a healer, we went with 'Red Cross.' Thomas has all that bat magic going on, so we chose 'Nocturne.' I'm a master of technology, 'Techsmith.' Andrew is a psychic Kung Fu fighter, 'Mind Master.' Gunk is… well, he's Gunk anyway, but you get what I'm saying."

"Um..." Kon scrambled to justify himself. As always, he deferred to his childhood idol. "...did Citizen Justice's powers revolve around justice or citizenship? No. But he's still seen as the greatest superhero of all time."

"I always preferred the Talon myself." Lizzy admitted.

"I like the 'Star' part." Andrew threw out an encouraging word, as always. "It implies the alien origins as well as the energy powers."

"Hey, what about 'Starbolt'?" Lizzy proposed. Andrew smiled and nodded in agreement, while Kon lowered his head in seeming defeat.

"God dammit." His words showed his deflation, something Lizzy was slightly concerned by.

"You okay?" Andrew chuckled as he heard Kon's psychic ticks.

"He's upset he didn't think of that first." Andrew answered on his roommate's behalf. "He quite likes it."

"Aw!" Lizzy quickly finished typing Kon's confirmed codename into her tablet, before sending the email containing the team's final name and the complete list of its member's heroic identities to the team's handler, Agent Alderman. As the message was projected into cyberspace, she lowered the tablet and leant toward Kon. "Hey, Kon? If it helps, as far as team names go, 'the Crusaders' is a pretty good one." Kon raised his head, and the two mutually smiled as they made eye contact.

"Thanks." He responded with raised spirits. "I'm sorry for pouting, I just…it means a lot to me. Being here and doing this, living my dream. I don't want anything to go wrong."

"Actually, you should be hoping for the opposite." Andrew said. "There's not much point to us being brought together if everything stays all peaceful and perfect." Andrew didn't need to see Kon or Lizzy's faces to know he made them happy. A mere moment after this was said, the door to the hallway on the right opened. Thomas' footsteps were heavy on the hardwood floor as he walked into the kitchen and, after pulling down his hood and taking off his goggles and mask, grabbed a blood vial from the storage box in the fridge, downing it in an instant. He'd been practicing hard in the training room, and it showed: even for a vampire, his skin looked drained. Despite how hard he clearly fought against the training room's holographically-generated simulations, his costume was no worse for wear. His mask was black with red armour plating over the mouth, and out of necessity, it covered his whole face save the eyes, which was where his red-lensed sun-reflective goggles came in. The rest of his suit followed the same colour scheme, made up of black-fingered armoured red gloves and armoured red boots that ran to his elbows and knees, black biceps and thighs, and more red armour that took up his torso and shoulders. Strapped to his back were two sheathes that carried his dual short swords, and from the neck of the crimson plating emerged his lowered black hood. After finishing his blood vial, he quickly turned his attention to what Gunk and Suzy were watching: an afternoon talk show, on which the as-of-yet-publically-unnamed Crusaders were the topic.

"Volume?" He requested of Lizzy, who complied by turning the TV audio up with her mind. By the time she stopped, the words of the speakers were audible to everyone. As was the standard, the host was speaking with two fellow personalities concerning the issue of the new super team.

"Well, I have to say, it's strange to see the two of you agree on something." The host commented jovially towards his co-hosts.

"Yes, well, it's not so complex an issue that it breeds disagreement." The first co-host spoke eloquently. "The situation is quite clear. The Department of Superheroic Affairs is doing what we all predicted 10 years ago and have completely turned around on the idea of superheroes operating in the present."

"Which is fine, in theory." The second co-host interjected with noticeably less smoothness. "But they've assembled this new team of superheroes, and made a big show of how they're going to change the world like the generation before them, and invested in all this money and marketing…for what? For the sake of it? Was it just the inevitable flip-flopping of the United Multiplanetary Government? The same late-in-the-game changing of mind that led to Brutika joining the UMG 15 years after the Planetary War? Why do we need these superheroes?"

"Change the channel, Gunk." Kon asked, his tone more indicative of a superior giving an order than a friend making a request. No one could quite tell if this was his leadership role accidentally leaking into his regular speech due to not having entered the field to use it, or if he really meant to sound like that.

"No, keep it on." Thomas contested. "All your talk of understanding the world through TV…about time you actually did something of the like." Gunk was unsure whether to obey his leader or his roommate. The choice was made for him when Lizzy technopathically switched the channel, an act that prompted a sigh from Thomas. "You all just want to stay in your little bubbles, don't you? Blocking out the truth."

"Which is?" Kon asked with immediate exasperation and regret.

"That this team is little more than a publicity stunt; a desperate act by an establishment dwindling in relevance to keep the public's eye trained on them." Kon immediately took the defensive.

"We're saving lives. We're repelling the next wave of supervillains."

"Where exactly is this 'next wave of supervillains' they keep going on about? Aside from some random punks with fancy guns, we're a little scarce on actual big bads to smack around. Is this what months of planning and training has boiled down to? Catching small-timers?"

"We can prevent those small-time thugs from becoming bigger threats. The DSA has been tracking down the one believed to be their commonly-employed weapons dealer for months now, and when they succeed, we'll be the ones to bring him in. And is it just me, or do you kind of sound like you WANT the lives of innocent people put at risk so you have something to do?"

"Maybe the real supervillain is among us." Lizzy joked, prompting a grin from Kon and Andrew. Thomas didn't let it deter him.

"And can't anyone else smell the desperation that went into this group's formation?" He carried on with mercy. "I mean really. Our team includes a living weapon who doesn't like fighting and thinks like a child, an engineer who seems more occupied trying to beat the record for most amount of words ever spoken in a single sentence than much else, a teenager whose power is almost entirely useless in a full-on fight, and a Citizen Justice fanboy so blinded by the ridiculous fantasies of a boy playing in his backyard to see the facts raising the middle finger to his face." His words came like gut punches to all who heard them, including Andrew, who noted his absence from Thomas' list. Kon angrily stood up and stepped forward, barely restraining the urge to punch his teammate in the jaw. The full team of six had only been brought together two weeks ago, and while that was plenty of time for everyone to get to know each other, it was also just the right amount of time for everyone to start getting sick of being stuck in the same space and having next to nothing to do. Lizzy tinkered with technology in her lab, Suzy went to school, Thomas practiced pointlessly in the training room, Kon sat around exercising his leadership as the self-appointed title-giver, Andrew cooked for everyone and Gunk watched TV. Anything would do, if it meant keeping up a pretence of 'being busy.' Though Kon had grown tired of Thomas' cynical contemptuousness delivered as deadpan as possible, his hands didn't leave his side. Lizzy's response was significantly less restrained, as she quickly made her way to where Thomas stood and angrily shoved him.

"Shut your damn mouth, asshole." She said, her aggravation dancing on her tongue.

"Such a well-articulated response." Thomas snarked. As she raised her hand to strike him once more, Gunk suddenly stood up and stretched his hand over, grabbing her wrist and pulling her to the side, Kon catching her as he released his gelatinous grip from her arm mid-pull. Suzy had retreated into lowering her head in depressed defeat; Thomas' words hit her hardest. Andrew immediately moved over to comfort her, patting her shoulders with one hand, which Thomas observed.

"Wait, don't say anything…I'll put twenty Unics on the table right that you'll say some of that monk crap about positivity." Andrew paused, before standing up and turning to Thomas. While the others reacted emotionally, he retained a collected composure as he spoke.

"Regardless of why we were brought together, the important thing is that we're here." He began. "The fact that we seem so disparate from each other on so many levels doesn't have to be a bad thing. Having grown up in a huge adopted family, I know the value of having a wide range of perspectives and opinions. And don't be so certain that there's nothing for us to do as a group: any moment, there could be an assignment sent our way that could irrevocably change us as a team."

"Speak of the devil." The familiar voice of Agent Alderman came from the opening door at the left hall, the Crusaders all turning on its sound. His suit and slicked-back blonde hair were impeccable as ever, his judging eyes kept from the Crusaders' sight by his sunglasses. "Finish up your scuffle ASAP. Briefing's in the locker room."

"Briefing?" Suzy softly inquired, her head raised once more with a curious look. Alderman almost didn't hear her.

"That's right. You have your first mission."