New Warriors

The team profile is broken into multiple parts. The sequence goes :

1. New Warriors part #1 – Year One. (start there !).
2. New Warriors part #2 – Growing up years.
3. New Warriors part #3 – The fading years.

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Organization

Full Name:
The New Warriors.

Purpose:
Night Thrasher first created the New warriors to help him in his personal crusade against street crime. He gave them a purpose: “to fight the kind of crime heroes like the Avengers never touch”. Together, they faced traumatic experiences, building strong bonds.
Now, they still try to do the right things, but they mostly stand for each other.
During this period, Kymaera stayed out of the picture and her political activism was muffled. Under Justice’s leadership, his sense of righteousness guided them.

Modus Operandi:
They know each other’s secret identity. They now consider it an important sign of trust between them. New Warriors activities still take a lot of their time, and some of the members are also doing solo super-heroing. They live at their parents’ or their own place. They hang out together on a regular basis, usually at the Crash Pad.
After Hindsight brought the communicators in, they were more easily alerted in case of a crisis. It gave them more time to go along with their own separate lives, rushing in when the call came.

Extent of operations:
All around the world. The addition of Powerpax and Turbo increased their range of self transportation. They went along well with Sprocket, who could easily smuggle them in. Then, Friday, Power Pack’s sentient ship, even provided them with space travel.
They no longer dealt with petty crime. They confronted large scale super-powered crime: murder, international destabilization, genocide. They saved the world and the whole reality.

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Bases of Operations:
New Warriors Crash Pad near the Brooklyn Bridge.

Major Funding:
The Taylor Foundation and Oracle, Inc..

Known Enemies:
The Upstarts, Spidercide, the Sphinx, Volx, Undertow.

Known Allies:
X-Force, Spider-Man, Garthan Saal, Psionex, Iron Man, the Avengers, Cardinal and Air Force.

Membership

Number of active members:
Six :

• Kymaera (Namorita Prentiss).
• Nova (Richard Rider).
• Firestar (Angelica Jones).
• Justice (Vance Astrovik).
• Speedball (Robbie Baldwin).
• Turbo (Michiko Musashi).

Number of reserve members:
Eight :

• Darkhawk (Chris Powell).
• Dagger (Tandy Bowen).
• Powerhouse aka Powerpax (Alex Power).
• Scarlet Spider (Benjamin Reilly).
• Bandit (Donyell Taylor).
• Silhouette (Silhouette Chord).
• Night Thrasher (Dwayne Taylor).
• Rage (Elvin Haliday).

Organizational structure:
After Night Thrasher’s departure, Justice took leadership. He led them on the field and took a few executive decisions. It wasn’t much as these decisions were mostly guided by common sense or team mates’ requests.

Original Roster:

• Night Thrasher.
• Nova.
• Justice.
• Firestar.
• Kymaera.
• Speedball.
• Silhouette.
• Rage.

Membership requirements:
Being co-opted by another member (Dagger, Powerhouse), being caught in the action and impressing the team (Scarlet Spider), harassing weaker team members (Timeslip). There is not much stricture except being approved by the rest of the team.
Members didn’t keep their identity secret among themselves. Scarlet Spider did, but was asked to leave the team.

Support personnel:

• Hindsight Lad: analyst and procurement specialist.
• Friday: sapient  starship.

Equipment:
Well equipped and stocked headquarters with computers, living quarters, training ground and workshop. Unstable Molecules™. Communication badges.

History

Child’s Play

Vance Astrovik was paroled. Outside the Vault prison, the New Warriors were waiting for him, particularly Firestar.

It was in the midst of Graydon Creed’s presidential campaign. Graydon Creed was the non-mutant son of Victor Creed, aka Sabertooth and Mystique. He was using the anti-mutants hysteria to increase his popularity.

Friends of Humanity members had also come to protest Vance’s release. Incensed by their hatred of mutants, Astrovik barely contained himself in front of the media.

He then tried to mend bridges with his mother. She rejected him, not getting over the killing of her husband. The Friends of Humanity besieged her home, holding her responsible for spawning a monster. Vance stopped them from torching the place.

Astrovik changed his call-sign to Justice, to show this hateful world what that word really meant. He had grown sick of being hated for whom he was, despite all the good he had done.

Facing The Upstarts

The Upstarts were a group of wannabes, playing a sick game orchestrated by the Gamemaster. They killed mutant power players to score points. The Gamemaster then declared any former Hellions or New Mutants fair game.

This resulted in attacks against :

• Magma (Amara Aquilla) and Empath (Manuel de la Rocha): still living in Nova Roma’s jungles. The Strucker twins attacked and captured Magma. Danielle Moonstar, now a member of the Mutant Liberation Front, interfered. She prevented the capture of Empath.
• Cannonball (Samuel Guthrie): field leader of X-Force, who was visiting his family in Kentucky. Siena Blaze captured him, along with his girlfriend Boomer (Tabitha Smith). Paige Guthrie, Sam’s sister, revealed her mutant power of transformation.
• Firestar: to satisfy his own twisted way of playing The Game, Shinobi Shaw enrolled the disgusted Vance Astrovik. He wanted to persuade him to turn his own girlfriend in.

But Vance’s acceptance turned out to be a scam, engineered by Night Thrasher and Justice to infiltrate the Upstarts. As their high-risk gambit, Vance did deliver Firestar to Shaw.

United, they fell

Former New Mutants Karma (Xi’an Coy Manh) and Moonstar teamed with X-Force and the New Warriors against the Upstarts. After an epic battle, the heroes were defeated.

However, Paige Guthrie talked the Gamemaster out of killing everyone. She promised to give something more later. What she did was never explained.

Psionex, once more

Before the Supernova episode, Nova, Firestar and Speedball defeated Asylum. Asylum had been wandering on her own, away from Psionex. Only her mask was left after the battle, and they somehow left it in Central Park.

A young boy from a poor neighborhood found it. He brought it home as his treasure. His sister took it from him. Then Joachim, her abusive gang member of a boyfriend, beat it out of her. He used it to scare his fellow gang members, seize leadership and expand territory.

Soon, the mask, with Asylum’s Darkforce  influence, opened a channel to the Darkforce Dimension . This allowed Darkling (Henrique Gallante) to come back from the Darkforce Dimension. Darkling took possession of Joachim’s body and got on his mind to cleanse the city.

Accessing Asylum’s memory, Gallante convinced Psionex to help with his crusade. They started killing petty criminals. As they were starting an all out gang war, the city dispatched Code: Blue, New York’s super-threats specialized squad, after them. Soon, The New Warriors showed up and tried to stop Darkling.

As Psionex was shifting the public opinion, the mayor gave orders to Code: Blue to hold back, and use non lethal force. When the dust settled, Gallante had snared the mayor. He said the mayor only cared about his political career, so he threw him from the ledge of a building. Turbo caught him in time.

Darkling teleported Psionex away, promising to carry on with the cleansing of the city.

Nadua’s Dam

A tribal spokesman then alerted the Taylor Foundation about an ecological and economic crisis in the fictional African country of Nudua. Night Thrasher dragged the New Warriors against Stark Enterprise, the successor company of the initiator of a Dam project, Stane International. They clashed with Iron Man (Tony Stark), who easily kicked their butt.

Furthering his investigations, Night Thrasher uncovered a hidden agenda. Unknown to most, the dam had flooded a rich crude oil deposit, compromising a very profitable agreement with Roxxon. Dwayne allied with Iron Man. Together, they exposed Roxxon’s involvement to the Naduan parliament, just in time for them to take a informed vote.

Bandit

A mysterious man was taking down all the opponents Night Thrasher faced solo: Tantrum, Midnight’s Fire… Then he kidnapped Silhouette.

He was Bandit, Dwayne’s half-brother. Being denied any legacy from their common father made him angry. He was now claiming everything from Dwayne: his pride of defeating enemies, his shame of being defeated, his love for his girlfriend, his life.

In a shocking demonstration of the Stockholm Syndrome, Silhouette actually fell in love with Bandit. She ended her on-again, off-again relationship with Dwayne.

Time and time again – the Sphinxes are back

• Night Thrasher was reviewing potential candidates to expand the New Warriors to two teams: Power Pack, Cloak & Dagger, Darkhawk and the female Turbo.
• Carlton LaFroyge was forcing (by threatening to reval Speedball’s secret ID) his help on the team. He insisted on being called Hindsight Lad.
• Rage was getting involved in a relationship with a young single mother. She didn’t realise that Elvin was just 14.
• The rest of the crew were having a good time: Angelica with Vance, Richard with Nita, Robbie hoping to score with Mickey… Silhouette with Bandit (though this relationship was kept secret, particularly from Dwayne).

The male Sphinx reappeared. He tricked his female counterpart, twice, and stole her part of the Ka Power. More powerful than ever, he wanted to neutralize and take revenge on his former/future opponents. He dispatched them through time and space.

Then, he altered reality to make Ancient Egypt prosper all the way to the present, as the center of all civilization.

Time and time again – through time and space

Dispatched through time and space, the Warriors landed in places and era tied to their identity.

• Night Thrasher in the Old South. Dwayne was captured while preventing the lynching of a runaway slave. His skills and armor allowed Taylor not be lynched, and he dispersed his aggressors. He wanted to cleanse the country of all the White masters enforcing the slavery. The runaway talked him out of it. They headed for Boston, setting the first stones of the Underground Railroad .
• Silhouette during Tai’s childhood. Ms. Chord was taken prisoner at the Temple of Dragon’s Breadth. She was prepared as a sacrificial lamb to the Well of all Things. Silhouette took Tai, then aged 5, before her coup against her fellow cult members. She threw her into the Well.
• Kymaera before Atlantis. Namorita was welcomed into a tribe of ancient Atlanteans. She helped them build better defenses against a barbaric warring tribe. She found out her peaceful farmers were more than willing to slaughter their opponents. She took both leaders apart, and showed them the path to what will become an enlightened Atlantean kingdom.

• Nova in the future. Richard found himself on a future Earth devastated by a mysterious Death Storm. Nova learned from his future self how to tap into the very primal energies of the Nova Force. He managed to power the Terra Shi Ar stargate and to come back to his proper time by himself.
• Rage during the days of the transatlantic slave trade. Elvin interfered with a slavery deal in Africa. But the Dutch and British traders showed him that, in this specific case, the slaves had been sold away by their fellow villagers rather than captured in a raid. The situation was more complex than the 14-year old had expected.
• Firestar during Salem’s witches hunts. In this area, with her powers, Angelica was mistaken for a witch, and put to burn at the stake. She escaped easily. A true witch guided her to the safety of her isolated home. Shocked by the ways of the witch, Angelica refused to play her brutal Darwinist games.
• Justice during his father’s youth. Vance discovered that his grand-father had abused his father out of homophobia. Despite Vance’s desperate attempt to break the cycle of frustration and violence, Arnold still chose to fake heterosexuality to fit in the mold and ease his father’s anger.
• Speedball in the Kinetic Dimension. While trapped there, through deep reflexion, Speedball discovered that, in this place, he was the whole dimension. He found a way to go back with outside help from the New Warriors.

Time and time again – New Warriors’ backup on his way

In New-York, LaFroyge was negotiating hard with Chord and Sprocket. He wanted to call for Night Thrasher’s potential recruits to go after the missing New Warriors. He got his way when Bandit showed up and offered to lead the rookies in the field.

And so they assembled Turbo, Darkhawk (Chris Powell), Alex Power who stole his siblings’ power to become Powerpax, and Dagger without Cloak who refused to join. To everyone’s surprise, the depowered Lady Sphinx offered the way to defeat the male Sphinx and rescue the New Warriors.

Spaceship Friday and Alex Power.

LaFroyge indeed had some potential at scientific analysis. Thus, he managed to locate the Sphinx. Then, thanks to Powerpax’ combined elemental powers, they traveled to the modern Ancient Egypt as the Sphinx reshaped it. The Sphinx let them confront him. The confrontation itself was easily in his favor, until Nova managed to reach through to this reality.

Nova fought the Sphinx, soon supported by Bandit who felt otherwise useless. Meryet Karim led the rest of the rescue team to use the Sphinx’s machinery to locate and bring back the lost New Warriors. First Speedball, then the six others.

The combined power of all the New Warriors, old and new, brought the Sphinx to a stalemate. Veritas the Sayge showed up. He enlightened the Sphinx as to the way to his salvation: the unconditional love of Meryet Karim, stronger than time.

In a brilliant display of reality altering power, both Sphinxes joined to become one bright worldwide harmony… and restore our reality as it should be.

Crossroad

Their success against the Sphinx made public, the New Warriors were suddenly getting much positive media and public attention. Speedball was enjoying it. The others were not so thrilled.

Silhouette decided to leave the team. She did so with her new boyfriend Bandit, which really annoyed Night Thrasher.

Night Thrasher decided to send back the new recruits. This was okay for Darkhawk, Dagger and Alex Power. Turbo expressed her wish to carry on training and take part in the New Warriors’ activities. Night Thrasher acknowledged the value of Hindsight Lad’s analysis, and kept him solely as support personnel.

Night Thrasher faced an incident involving the Hulk, the Pantheon and Code: Blue. These were ready to fight over a court decision. Night Thrasher defused the situation using a half a million dollars cheque. He set himself on a new path to bring justice: hostile takeovers of criminal concerns.

This displeased the other New Warriors. Once more, Night Thrasher ignored his teammates’ opinion, and left the team. Rage, in Dwayne’s custody since his grandmother’s death, reluctantly left with him. Justice assumed leadership.

Nova dragged the rest of the team into his quest to prevent the Death Storm.

Undertow – humanitarian relief in Rwanda

Cardinal (Donald Clenendon) and Air Force were hired to kidnap the Taylor Foundation’s board of directors. Sprocket had been piloting the Foundation’s jet they hijacked.

Dwayne Taylor neutralized them without exposing himself as Night Thrasher. He gave Cardinal a convincing speech about right and wrong. The next time we saw Air Force, they were performing a humanitarian mission, in Rwanda, during the Tutsi genocide and the ensuing civil war (1994) .

On TV, the New Warriors witnessed an attack of the Rwandan refugees camps. Air Force was defending the settlements. Ashamed that mere mercenaries were doing more than them so-called heroes, they convinced Sprocket to fly them to Rwanda with relief supplies. She was easily convinced as she seemed to know Cardinal intimately.

Upon landing they discovered that two Air Force’s members had been KIA, one was MIA and Cardinal was severely wounded. His armor was badly damaged.

Undertow – soldiers of misfortune

The attackers were genetically enhanced troopers called the Soldiers of Misfortune. They battled in pairs, using evocative names like Hit and Run, Right and Wrong… They had an efficient officer, General Obsidian. Obsidian led them from a mobile underwater headquarter.

The troopers were somehow brainwashed to obey this terrorist organization called Undertow. Its leader was a huge, naked and clawed fellow called Admiral Protocol.

After the first attack, they were repelled by the Air Force. But they came back to finish exterminating the refugees. This time, the New Warriors interfered. Undertow was well prepared and easily defeated the New Warriors. All but Nova were kidnapped for conditioning.

Undertow – New Warriors’ reserve, assemble!

Nova got the video footage from the TV personnels covering the refugees’ camp. He reluctantly called for Hindsight Lad’s analysis, and for the reserve members’ backup. Hindsight Lad did a good job at locating Undertow’s submarine headquarters. Turbo and Powerpax responded to the backup’s call. They flew to Rwanda by their own means.

Along with these two unknowns, Nova and Cardinal invaded the submarine. They freed Firestar, Justice and Speedball. To Nova’s dismay, Kymaera had already been brainwashed and fought the New Warriors. To Cardinal’s dismay, so was Sparrow.

Protocol proved to be a formidable opponent. He ordered a tactical retreat, using teleporting technology. He also took away his two new soldiers.

With Undertow out of the picture, the international help resumed. Though it was a Pyrrhic victory, the New Warriors had made a difference for the Rwandan refugees. They spent five more days searching the lake for Kymaera. Then they gave up and got back to America.

Undertow – Namor’s wrath

Nova made it clear he hadn’t accepted Night Thrasher’s being away while they tried to rescue his lover. The team agreed to fire Dwayne. Rage had to follow him.

Vance called Oracle, Inc. to warn Namor of his cousin’s kidnapping. Namor came to get explanations and wasn’t pleased by what he heard. Nova lost his temper and clashed with Namor. Thanks to their team work, the New Warriors showed Namor they were up to the task, but Undertow had been stronger.

Namor reluctantly admitted he was wrong to doubt the young heroes.

Peace enforcers at the UN

Captain America (Steve Rogers) had contacted Justice, showing how he appreciated what he had become. Cap also implied that Justice would be able to join the Avengers. Rogers now trusted the New Warriors enough to assign them as the high profile security of a United Nations’ peace conference. Justice, Firestar and Speedball answered the call.

The conference took place in New York. It was between Middle-Eastern leaders, mainly Yitzhak Rabin  and Hafez el-Assad . Both had also brought their own super-powered security: Sabra for Israel and Batal for Syria. The conference was tense. Factions within all sides were opposed to any peace between Israel and its neighbors.

It turned out that Sabra had been electronically brainwashed to kill Rabin. The New Warriors fought her, and barely defeated her, thanks to Justice remembering his Shul lessons. However, Mr. Rabin would be assassinated mere months later.

Firestar threw a jealousy tantrum at Justice. She thought he was attracted toward Sabra – a gorgeous, experienced, Jewish woman. That last part hurt him, given the orthodox Jewish tradition against interfaith unions.

Nova demoted, powerless… again

Garthan Saal then returned and once more stole Richard’s powers. This time, it was under Adora’s orders. Nova had failed to respond to Xandar’s call to arms against Kraa, because he was busy preventing the Death Storm from ravaging Earth. Adora demoted him of his Prime Centurion rank (and powers). Saal inherited Nova’s position as Protector of Earth.

A Xandarian military ship brought Richard and Saal back to Earth. Among the crew of two was Volx, the queen of the shape-shifting Dire Wraiths. She crashed the ship near San Fransisco and disappeared to take revenge on the Human Race. Garthan Saal went after her.

Marooned in San Francisco, Richard Rider asked Laura Dunham for financial help. Desperate over having lost his powers again, he attempted Night Thrasher’s trick by jumping. Warned by Laura, Turbo raced to California and barely saved him. Meanwhile, Sprocket smuggled the rest of the team to San Fransisco.

The New Warriors helped Saal defeat Volx’s plan to eradicate the human race, but the alien queen escaped. Turbo’s suit demonstrated particular abilities against Dire Wraiths, and saved the day.

Hindsight as a procurement specialist

Carlton LaFroyge had provided the team with new high-tech equipment: new Unstable Molecules™ outfits and communication badges. He dodged the question of their origin. The truth was that he had hacked the Avengers’ procurement software to divert some orders.

Though he had left the team, Dwayne Taylor had given them ownership of the Crash Pad, along with a one million dollars grant. Justice supervised the contractors hired to repair the Crash Pad after Namor’s devastation.

Maximum Clonage

Genetech asked the New Warriors to investigate the theft of bio-hazard material by Spidercide. The Jackal used it to poison the small city of Springville.

Only one person survived, some kind of mutant with adaptation abilities whom the Jackal named Helix. The New Warriors ended taking charge of him, a bit roughly at first. Then, he willingly stayed with the team. He even helped them defending the Crash Pad. But Helix soon left.

Scarlet Spider, lonely after the Clone Saga, joined the New Warriors for a time. However, Justice was nervous. He felt that Ben Reilly, former Peter Parker with quite more experience in the super-hero’s trade, was taking over the New Warriors’ leadership. On top of that, Ben refused to trust the New Warriors enough to remove his mask, and Firestar was kind of looking up to him.

With half concealed hostility, Vance had a chat with Ben. It ended with Scarlet Spider officially leaving the team.

Timeslip

A young woman named Rina Patel had experienced visions of the New Warriors facing certain death, particularly Speedball.

She first harassed Robbie, and then Carlton, to let her speak with them. She demonstrated impressive, though not always controlled, powers related to time: super-speed and precognition.

Later, she saved the reality from Advent’s attempt to change history.

Firestar’s health

Alerted by her friend Jupiter, Angela worried that her constant exposure to her own microwaves could make her sterile. Thus, she visited a fertility doctor. During her visit, a group of super-powered eugenicist villains, led by Genecide, attacked the hospital. Firestar had to blow her cover to save the doctor. Night Thrasher, leading Rage and Psionex, saved the hospital.

During the fight, Genecide’s powers let her detect Angelica’s growing cancer.

This threat to her plans for raising a family with Vance devastated Angelica. She opened to Vance and built up the pressure to move things further between them. but he panicked.

Later, maybe becoming confident by the exercise of leadership, he accepted when she proposed to him.

Kymaera’s rescue attempts

Richard (not Nova anymore) had kept the pressure on LaFroyge to track Kymaera’s whereabouts. She was still Undertow’s hostage and had become an unwilling Soldier of Misfortune. When they discovered her possible involvement in an attack on Cali Cartel assets in the Caribbean, Richard pressed the New Warriors to attempt her rescue.

Alex Power, now calling himself Powerhouse, provided transportation thank to his smartship friend Friday.

Kymaera, though unwilling and aware of what she was doing, fought the New Warriors. She nevertheless saved Richard from the destruction of the Cartel’s underground base.

Some times later, the Mad Thinker orchestrated a successful rescue. With his backing, Night Thrasher led Rage to free Namorita from Undertow’s influence.

End of an era – Turbo’s suit origins

Turbo’s suit was originally known as Torpedo. It ended with Mike Jeffries’s family, and was stored in their attic. Mike had found it and lent it to Michiko Musashi so she could disguise for a Halloween party.

When she donned the helmet, she reactivated the armor’s systems. This gave her location to Dire Wraiths. The aliens attacked the party to reclaim the armor. Michiko defeated them. Seeing the suit’s abilities, Mike and Michiko agreed to a shared ownership.

Whereas Mike was passionate about super-heroes, Michiko only wanted to use the armor for leisure. But as she was better with it. Thus, she got dragged into the New Warriors without really wanting it.

Then Volx came back. She shape-shifted as Dan Jones, descendant of Brock Jones, the Torpedo armor’s last user. This allowed her to get to Mike Jeffries. She killed him and impersonated him to get to the New Warriors and the Turbo armor. With the armor on, her power allowed her to hijack Friday, and flee.

She planned to use a device to depower all Earth’s super-heroes. From there, she could exterminate the Human race unhindered.

With the help of Garthan Saal, and the reunion with Kymaera, Night Thrasher and Rage, the New Warriors defeated her.

End of an era – starting over

During the battle, Saal had to destroy Friday so he could stop Volx. Powerhouse was distraught that Justice approved of the sacrifice of his friend Friday. As a result, he left the New Warriors.

Timeslip, too close to the explosion of the neutralizing device, permanently lost her powers.

In memory of Mike, Michiko stayed Turbo and offered Hindsight to share the suit with her.

Dying during the battle, Garthan Saal had given back his Nova powers to Richard.

Namorita was reunited with her friends and her lover.

Night Thrasher and Rage were back, ready for a fresh start with The New Warriors.

By Nicolas Lemaçon.

Source of Character: New Warriors vol 1 #43-75, New Warriors Annual #4 (1994), Night Thrasher #2-21, Nova vol 2 #1-18.

Helper(s): Sébastien Andrivet.

Writeup completed on the 19^th of August, 2017.