.|. COHERENT COMICS PRESENTS ----X----------------------------------------------------------------------- '|` =====, ======== ====. ===. ======= ======= // // // )) //|| // // ===== // //===< // || //=== //=== // // // \\ //==|| // // `===== o // o // // o // || o // o ======= o Superhuman Tactical Resources and Affiliated-Field Experts original concept by Dave Van Domelen development by Marc Singer and Terrone Carpenter Issue #10, "Tempers Flare" Part II of THE BONFIRE by Marc Singer Copyright 1999; a Legacy House production ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- [Cover shows the STRAFE agents crouched behind an upturned table while drugs spill onto the floor and men in biohazard suits fire on them. The agents look as angry at each other as they do at their enemies. Flames shoot from the edges of the cover, partially burning the picture.] ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dr. Jacky made three mistakes when he sent the New York Macoute and the Boys of Pain to steal the Snow Leopards' new drug lab. The first mistake was sending both of his paragangs. On paper it looked like a solid move, a pincer maneuver from both ends of Manhattan to send the Snow Leopards reeling. But the Boys of Pain were a relatively new acquisition, and native-born Harlemites to boot; they were far out of their element in Lower Manhattan and they didn't trust their West Indian allies. The second mistake was sending them on the night of a major Jaz shipment. The Snow Leopards lab was busy weighing it, bagging it, and cutting it with meth to make nasty "crystal Jaz" speedballs. The Boys and the Macoute got antsy and raided the lab...an abandoned East Village grocery store...while the cutting was still in progress, not knowing or not caring that an accident could unleash a cloud of phosphene gas powerful enough to wipe out a whole city block. The third mistake was doing it in STRAFE's neighborhood. Crouched atop a tenement across the street, the STRAFE agents cursed as Dr. Jacky's enforcers stormed the grocery store. They'd hoped to let the paragangs fight it out and pick off the survivors, but a pitched battle during the drug processing threatened everyone. The agents sealed their black jumpsuits, fastened their gas masks...a stray lungful of crystal Jaz could mean lymphoma, if not outright death...and ran into the grocery store. The dark aisles were already lit with muzzle flashes and electrical bursts. Dan Tracey noticed the Snow Leopard pharmacologists had enough sense to seal their chemicals and let the lycanthrope bodyguards bear the brunt of Dr. Jacky's attack. STRAFE sided with them, for a moment; Dan, Jay Teller, and Agent Mulholland fired on the Boys of Pain and the Macoute. The two gangs, not knowing a third party was behind them, each assumed the other was double-crossing them. Then Jen Kleinvogel dive-bombed the gangs, grabbing a Macoute and dropping him on the Boys and vice versa; after that the Harlemites and West Indians were at each other's throats. But with STRAFE's hand tipped, the paragangs retaliated. The Snow Leopards, in particular, were eager to kill these enigmas who had declared the East Village a paragang-free zone. Dan ordered Tony Drake to get them a defensive position. Tony ran down the baked goods aisle and overturned two bagging tables, kicking up a cloud of bluish-white dust. The other agents hopped over the powder-covered tables, firing back at the paragangers from behind them. Jen still bombed any large clusters, but didn't have much mobility below aisle level. Only one STRAFE agent was completely free to maneuver. "Smith," Dan shouted, "do something!" Lana Smith floated among the paragangers. They'd already learned they couldn't touch her. She made a couple of feints at the Macoute "Guede," but the immaculately dressed hitmen ignored her intangible hands and continued to charge the tables. Two sleek Snow Leopard lycanthropes crawled across the tops of the shelves, above STRAFE's crossfire. One of them pounced on Tony, while the other lunged for Dan. Dan rolled out of the way and kicked his feet upwards, catching the panther in the jaw and stunning it. Mulholland whirled around and shot both of the creatures through their heads. Teller pincushioned the Guede with his tranq-darts. They collapsed at first, but then rose and kept charging, their shambling bodies controlled from afar by Dr. Jacky's technoloa. "Dammit, Smith," Dan screamed, "*do* something!" She stood in front of the Guede, waving her arms like a kid playing a ghost in the school play. They marched through her. "I think I've got something," Jen said over their headsets. "There's some kind of control unit on the back of the neck." She flew overhead and dropped a defunct Guede behind the barricade so they could see. Teller snapped into action. "Mulholland, new guns." The agent tossed him two regular automatic pistols. "Jen, get me something solid for a ricochet." Seconds later...seconds in which the Guede scrambled further forward...a metal shelf from the butcher's section dropped across the other end of the aisle. Teller fired, not at the hitmen, but the metal table. As rapid as his shots were, he fired each one carefully, ricocheting them off the metal and into the backs of the Guede's necks. The control units sparked and shattered. The Guede collapsed with muscle spasms; a split-second later, the badly-dented table fell to the floor. By then, the other paragangers were fleeing the grocery store. STRAFE wasn't in the mood to chase them. They slumped against the empty shelves, brushing off the Jaz-dust and catching their breath. "Nice save," Dan said, standing and brushing off his thighs. "Teller, Tony, Jen, Mulholland...find the conscious gangers and get some intel on Burnout before the police arrive." The four agents scattered while he glared at Lana. "*You* need to start pulling your weight on this team." She blinked repeatedly. "Dan, I try, but..." "In case you haven't figured it out, the honeymoon is over. The paragangs know you're not Burnout because you *never do anything*. They won't shoot themselves just to get away from you anymore. So make yourself useful in combat. You were useful enough on the other side." "Dan, that was Mr. Strings doing those things." Her blinking shifted gears, into an eplileptic fury of fluttering eyelashes. "I couldn't possibly...you don't want me to go back to that, do you?" Even Tony Drake, pretending not to overhear, had to perk up at that prospect. "No, I don't want you to start murdering people." He stepped closer to Lana, whispering so Tony couldn't overhear. "No more shoving bombs in *anyone's* stomachs. But you need to come up with some tactical applications of your powers. What if you'd phased the control units off the Guede? Or phased the weapons out of the Boys of Pain's hands?" "I couldn't think...I'm sorry..." "You always say you're sorry," Dan snapped, "and you never do anything about it." * * * * News of the massive battle the night before, and of the police arrests at the wrecked grocery store, spread throughout the neighborhood. By midmorning, people were coming out of their apartments for the first time in days. Jen could see the crowds from the window of the loft STRAFE had commandeered...one might say stolen. She threw on an overcoat and a thick grey scarf, eager to walk among normal people again. Tony noticed and asked if he could go along with her. Jen answered yes without thinking. As they skipped down the stairs, she wondered if she'd made a mistake. Back in Rome, Tony had obviously been carrying some kind of a torch for her, and she didn't want him to make any sort of play for her in the middle of all the chaos. But Tony seemed oddly withdrawn, and when they hit the street he didn't even look at her. He didn't look at the crowds of strolling, hopeful people either, he just shoved through them and stared straight ahead. "Hey Drake," Jen said, hustling after him, "what's eating you? I thought you wanted to go for a walk." "I had to get away for a minute," Tony said. He dropped back and spoke in a harsh whisper. "I don't trust Smith. That fight last night..." He shuddered. "Better to have her too frightened than too violent," Jen suggested. "Unless it's all an act. Unless she's reeling us in. What if Tyra Dumont still controls her? Or what if Tyra Dumont *never* controlled her, and this is all an elaborate set-up?" "MetaPsych said she was clean." "That girl from MetaPsych was younger than we are." Tony scowled and swung his head down, unable to look at Jen. "What if Smith is fooling us all? What if she's manipulating us into stopping the paragangs that she wants stopped?" Jen pulled her hand out of her deep coat pocket. "Then the bracelets should tell us, right?" The Tesla Branch bands were designed to detect psionic control and alert the other team members. "I don't mean mind control, Jen." Tony exhaled a long cloud of fog. "That girl has other ways of manipulating us." Jen's brow furrowed with concern. "This isn't just about her attacking you, is it?" They turned down East Sixth Street, past the Ukranian church where they'd stopped a mob of wilding paragangers a few nights before. "Teller's just about out of darts," Tony said. "He's been collecting guns from the paragangers. Won't be long before he starts using them on people, not tables. Mulholland...Mulholland's been off the deep end since Keating died. Even Grind was breaking backs the other night. *And telling Smith to fight like Burnout*." He shook his head. "I figure you and I are next...and then what?" Tony got ahead of her again, elbowed his way through the crowds of Ukranian families and rogue-punks looking for canned food. Jen, impressed by his unexpected show of concern, ran after him again. "Tony," she said, "I know it's rough, but look around you. We're finally doing some *good*. These people aren't afraid to come out in the daylight anymore." They found Astor Place, which their Tour.Guide chips informed them hosted a street market. The busy intersection spun around a visual madness; one traffic island held a curling cast-iron subway entrance from the nineteenth century while another had a black cubic sculpture from the twentieth. The crowds walked past them without blinking. Jen and Tony followed the crowds to the street market. The street vendors, finally able to work again, offered a surplus of wares: stolen food, scavenged appliances, black-market goods and vials of crack. Dan Tracey went on patrol that night, as he did every night. He changed his routes for security reasons, but he'd memorized all the buildings in the East Village and knew which ones could be scaled or leaped onto, which had to be scouted from the ground, which might attract Jaz-heads or returning paragangers. He could cut the East Village into little pieces and reassemble it in his mind, forming new patrol routes every night. This night's route took him over the roofs of the old Yiddish theatres on Second Avenue, then down a drainpipe and east along St. Mark's Place, through the addicts and homeless at Tompkins Square Park, and deep into the tenements of Alphabet City. Agent Mulholland accompanied him, at Dan's request. The agent pumped his legs as fast as they would go, scampered up a fire escape, made a tremendous racket as opposed to Dan's silent ascension, and finally caught up to Dan on the tenement roof. Panting and sweating, the agent waited silently until Dan spoke one word: "Mulholland." Dan had his back turned to him. He was looking out over the city, at the cluster of skyscrapers that sprang up from midtown and the taller, newer ones that rose to the south. Much closer by, a gigantic billboard blared Chrysler's new ad campaign: a grimy, shirtless adonis turned his back on a field full of back-breaking work and walked toward a gleaming luxury sedan. The loudspeakers and the holographic banner both screamed INDULGE YOURSELF. Mulholland walked up beside Dan. "What?" "Your name. Everyone else in our support crew was given the name of an architect: Mies van der Rohe, Philip Johnson..." "Olmstead." He'd decided that should have been Keating's name, had he been given a proper one. Or had he lived. "The man who designed Central Park," said Dan. "But you named yourself Mulholland. Why?" "Mulholland was the developer who..." "Brought water to Los Angeles," Dan snapped. He sounded uncharacteristically tired. "But why the change?" "It just came to mind," Mulholland said. "That night on Ellis. I suddenly saw that Keating was Olmstead, and I..." He waved his hands out over the ledge, trying to grab something intangible. "This is the modern city, Tracey. A dehumanizing grid that grinds people up and spits out dollars. A billboard selling luxury cars to a slum...and damned if someone here probably isn't saving up for one." He sighed. "Los Angeles is the postmodern city. No grid, no plan, a tangle of freeways and helicopters." "The entire infrastructure collapsed in the Big One." "A necessary sacrifice. The new city, the post-postmodern, the post- Godmarket, the Paranormal City...it can only arise from the ashes of the old. The big quake bumped off Los Angeles. C.J. Brown is simply clearing the ground for New York." "You mean Tyra Dumont. Burnout." Mulholland fell silent and slumped heavily against the ledge. "I know Keating was your partner," Dan said, "and I know C.J. was your friend. But your temper's been getting out of control lately." Mulholland shrugged. "If that's what we need to take down the paragangs..." "Take down? We've been getting *confused* with the paragangs." Dan almost laughed. "I scouted around the grocery store last night, after the fight. Those officers were there, Chavez and Whitman...?" The other agent snorted with recognition. "Are they the only two cops in the East Village?" "Maybe the only two who care. They've made it their personal mission to investigate all of our battles. They think we're a paragang...a local one they're particularly eager to root out." "Ingrates. At least it's good cover." "It's got to stop." "That's not what you told Smith." He hopped up and into Dan's face. "Am I right? You need her to be our own Burnout. So which is it, Tracey? The super-villains or the men in white hats? We can't be both." Mulholland dropped down onto the fire escape and descended back into the city. Somewhere in the alley below, a cat hissed and scampered away. Dan sat on the roof and stared up at the Chrysler billboard. He sighed. "We can't be either." Teller and Lana sat in the loft. Lana curled up inside her bedroll, looking once again like a lost girl. Teller sat backwards on a vinyl- covered chair, staring at her. He wasn't holding any weapons, but no less than five loaded guns lay within arm's reach on the table, on the floor, tucked into the back of his pants. Most of them were taken from paragangers. "Jason?" Lana said. "Most people call me Teller." "Can I?" He paused. "Doesn't make any difference to me." "Teller...do you trust me?" He stared at her. "I'm armed," he said. She nodded, and closed her eyes. * * * * The tomcat finished his report and nuzzled against Bathory's furry chest. She cradled him there and scratched the back of his neck, eliciting a purr. Cockatrice, clad in white fur, strolled into the office. She regarded the tomcat with a weary stare as she tossed her white leather gloves and whip on the office desk. "Out," she hissed. The cat sprang from Bathory's grip, shifting into a small boy as he ran out the door. "Really, Bathory. I don't know why you keep that grubby little stray around." "He's quite adept at gathering information." Bathory rose from her chair and stepped around the desk, stretching her lithe arms and legs with a dancer's grace. "The Combine killers...they call themselves STRAFE, in all capital letters like a good little government agency...are starting to crack." "Then let's move in personally and kill them." "And expose ourselves to all the other paragangs watching the East Village?" Bathory clicked her tongue. "No, we need to borrow a page from this new Burnout. Let our enemies do our dirty work for us." Cockatrice twisted her ice-blue lips into a frown. "This is going to cost us *more* people, isn't it?" "Oh yes. But it'll be worth it. Guess what I've told our pets...." * * * * Embeth Alloun dangled over Washington Square Park. She had joined Cockatrice's Cyanide Blues back when they were a Soho thrillgang...she wasn't ready for the alliance with the Snow Leopards or a paragang war. She definitely wasn't ready to be hanging upside-down from the top of Washington Arch, with the park spinning over her head and nothing to stop her fall except one thin hand clenched around her ankle. "Okay," she screamed, "okay! I'll fez up! Bathory said we're supposed to choke at the Park, leave the East Village alone!" The man grunted. He didn't sound like he believed her. "True pipe, I swear! The East Village belongs to some new gang she's trucing with, somebody called Strafe!" The man grunted again. She knew he was going to drop her, knew he was going to let her die. The ground swung above her and she wished she'd never gotten her powers. Then the arch slammed into the side of her head. When she came to, she was lying on top of the arch and the Warden was long gone. * * * * The room was dark, save for the silver moonlight that spilled in through its one window. The window was a huge semicircle, taking up the lower part of one entire wall...an architectural quirk of the offices at the top of what had once been called the Chrysler Building. It was the World Building now, and the headquarters of Rex Umbrae, the man who would be king of New York. Soon, Umbrae reflected, the city wouldn't be worth ruling. He stabbed his cigar into an ashtray and took another look at the latest map. Most of the warring paragangs originated in Lower Manhattan, but they were pushing uptown. The East Village was a war zone right now, but as soon as anyone took it they could move straight into midtown and Umbrae's own neighborhood. The other angle of approach, the West Side, was Bathory's territory and while she was quiet for now, she'd just love an excuse...within days, paragangers could be at Umbrae's doorstep. Assuming the whole city didn't collapse first. The sound of a door opening caught Umbrae's attention. He put down the map and moved his muscular bulk out of his chair and around the mahogany desk. Across the room, a woman stepped into the long rays of moonlight: he saw her legs first, then her torso, then her cruel face. She hummed softly, then said, "Greetings, Mr. Umbrae. I'm..." "The new Burnout. Also, I suspect, the presence who possessed my aide Andrew...Tyra Dumont, I presume?" She smiled modestly. "Very nice." "I wish I could say the same for you. Andrew needed the most thorough psychiatric screenings afterwards. It cost time." Umbrae's cufflinks glinted silver as he flexed his arms, readying himself for combat. Burnout smiled savagely. "Surely you aren't looking for a fight? You'd never last." "I wouldn't need to. You'll recall I have the whole building wired to blow." He brandished a small detonator. "So tell me, Burnout, what exactly makes you think you're welcome here?" "Ultimately I want the same thing you do, Mr. Umbrae." Her voice turned soft and sweet. "Peace. An end to the fighting. A treaty among the paragangs." Umbrae didn't believe a word of it, but he hadn't gotten this far without learning to humor those who fancied themselves more dangerous than he. "And how would you propose to do that?" he asked. She walked past him, circling around his desk. She saw the map and thrust her finger onto it, pinning it to the table at the spot that marked the East Village. "By giving them a common enemy." * * * * Teller closed the door softly and stepped into the dusty backstage area of the Joseph Papp Public Theatre. The curtain had closed indefinitely when the paragang war heated up, making it an ideal spot for STRAFE. Teller slipped his black commando hood back on and stepped into the dressing room. "The coast is clear, guys." The other STRAFE agents, all masked, stood around a bruised, dreadlocked teenager tied to a chair. He was a Macoute runner; they were grilling him for intelligence. "You hear that, punk?" Mulholland asked, "nobody's around. Tell us what you know about Burnout." "Screw you, Babylon." The kid was still cocky behind his black eye. "The New York Macoute gon' tell you *nothing*, seen?" "These cinderblocks are *thick*." Mulholland slid a knife from its boot sheath. "We could go at this all night and nobody would hear a thing." Jen Kleinvogel shifted uncomfortably. Dan glided closer to Mulholland, within reach of his knife hand. But the kid wasn't impressed. In fact, he let out a throaty, booming laugh that echoed off the walls. "You t'ink that make me betray Doctor Jacky? The Guede is scarier than you, mahn. Saturday, he scarier than *them*. You can only kill me in *this* life...the wise an' wicked Doctor, he got connections in the *next*." "We're not asking you to betray Dr. Jacky," Dan said. "Just Burnout. The woman who's been torching paragangers, remember? What do you owe her?" "Nothin'. But she's one of us, seen, and you's John Law." "Want to bet?" The growl, comically unsuited to the tiny soprano voice, came from Lana Smith. She leaned, without having to lean much, down into the kid's face. "You heard of the Conclave of Super-Villains?" Her eyes flickered to Dan's. "Well, I'm Burnout." The kid laughed at her. "*You*? Burnout be the sister who rains Jah's fire. You a little Babylon girl." "You son of a...!" Lana grabbed Mulholland's knife and stuck it in him. *In* him, ghosted, so it didn't touch anything yet floated in his heart. "Can a little girl do this? Can she puree you?" Her voice grew deep and nasty. Tony Drake subtly checked the bracelet on his wrist. It wasn't beeping...assuming it worked. "Can she make you part of the wall?" Lana ghosted the kid out of his ropes and dragged him into the cinderblock along with her. They heard the kid's muffled screams through the wall. Lana came out holding a length of wire. "Can she hook you up to the electrical system and light you like a neon sign? Can she? Am I a little girl?" "No...no..." "Then who am I? Say it!" "You're Burnout..." She ran the wire through his brain. "*Say it*!" "*You're Burnout*!" Everyone checked their bracelets. "Then you tell me everything you know about this impostor," Lana snarled, with glee, "or I peel you from the inside out." The boy broke down into tears. He told them everything he knew...which wasn't much. He knew the C.J. Brown Burnout was circulating among the paragangs, handing out key information about other gangs. Unlike her eariler hands-on approach, she never struck at the gangs herself, but was happy to facilitate the war. The runner described more, how Burnout persuaded Dr. Jacky to send a strike force into the East Village. This would be a war party sent to crush the "Strafe" paragang. The other STRAFErs listened uneasily as Lana pried the details out of the terrified boy. By the time she finished, he was a sobbing mess. Lana Smith turned her back on him and strolled proudly and aggressively out of the dressing room. On the way, she paused next to Dan Tracey and raised her chin defiantly. "Happy?" she said angrily. He didn't answer. * * * * The next night, five STRAFE agents waited inside a deserted Italian restaurant on East Houston Street. In a few minutes, according to the terrified runner, the New York Macoute hit team would come tearing up the Sara Roosevelt Parkway and into the East Village. Dan ran through the attack plan one last time and asked the group if they had any questions. "Only the basic one," Jen said. "If we know the Macoute are looking for a fight, why do we have to bring it to them?" "Because if they don't find us," Dan said, "they might do some damage to the neighborhood to flush us out, and we can't have that." The other four stared at him, unconvinced. "We're doing it to protect innocents," Dan added. "Of course," said Mulholland, leaning back against a fading picture of Rome. "Not to protect our turf like any other paragang." Dan sighed and pressed his wire headphone into his ear. "What about you, Teller? Any questions?" Teller's voice crackled down from the rooftop. "No." Dan waited. "No snappy patter, either?" "Not today." Dan sank into a cheap plastic chair, waiting for some sign of conversation. Lana Smith lurked silently in a corner, while Mulholland kept staring at Dan. Every few minutes Jen and Tony would trade furtive whispers, but they didn't invite anyone else to join in. Dan would have welcomed Teller's usual banter, even his worst wiseass mood, but the marksman had hardly spoken at all for days. Dan had thought the team was behind him about chasing Burnout and rescuing C.J. And he'd thought they were finally doing the right thing by standing their ground and defending the East Village. But somehow they'd gotten pulled away from their mission, sucked into the world of the paragangs and no closer to C.J. for it. Dan considered that for all his supposed physical and mental perfection, he was turning out to be a rotten leader. The roaring of several engines interrupted his bitter reflections. Teller laconically said, "They're here," and the team forgot its lethargy, snapping into quick and efficient action. Two cars and a van...presumably all stolen...raced up Sara Roosevelt Parkway. A rifle cracked three times, and the left front tire of each vehicle exploded. The van and one of the cars smashed to a halt, but the lead car's driver was more skilled and kept gunning for the East Village. Teller squeezed off a fourth shot, destroying the other front tire and sending the car careening into a fire hydrant. Dazed paragangers spilled out of the vehicles; then Teller hit their gas tanks. The van and cars exploded into flames. The flames lit the paragangers, highlighting their bulky, metallic cyberware. "Those aren't Macoute!" Dan said. "Could be...Cyber-Nostra?" "We've been set up," Tony growled. Even after Burnout's killing spree and the paragang war, the Cyber-Nostra were still one of the best-equipped and most powerful gangs. That didn't really change anything; as soon as the cyborgs crossed Houston...Dan was quite explicit about waiting until they crossed...they got hit. Tony charged the paragangers, laughing as their bullets bounced off his skin. They still stung, but he didn't care anymore. He plunged into the cyborgs, cracking his taser baton onto their skulls. Jen Kleinvogel rocketed out of the restaurant, directing her anti-gravity field laterally and slamming into the cyborgs like a cannonball. Brutally accurate gunfire rained down from Teller's sniper's nest; he was using normal bullets now, placing them between armor plates and into servomotor joints. The cyborgs' limbs exploded with sprays of blood and sparks. Lana Smith ghosted up into the middle of the fray. The cyborgs ignored her until she ghosted the weapons out of their hands, or turned faceplates intangible so Tony could punch through them. Then Lana grabbed individual cyborgs and ghosted them through the pavement, dropping them into a wet sewer main where their heavy cybernetics would be a distinct liability. The cyborgs learned to cut her a wide berth again. Dan hung back, merely coordinating the ambush until the gunfire stopped. "Good move, Tony. Teller, there's one behind him...nice shot." The cyborgs were folding hard, so Dan actually paid attention when Lana's voice cut in on the team channel. "Grind," she said, "I think you'd...you'd better look at these Cyber- Nostra. The backs of their necks." The color drained from Dan's face and he dashed out into the melee, sidestepping stray bullets. He knew what Lana was going to say even before she explained it. Dan dove to the ground, grabbed a fallen cyborg, and flipped it over: a blinking Dr. Jacky technoloa control unit was wired into its brainstem. But it was worse than that. Dan saw the cyborg's young face, its oxidizing metal plates, its primitive and cheaply-soldered circuitry.... "These aren't Cyber-Nostra!" he shouted. "They're Rust Brothers!" Tony decked the last of them. "They're a posergang," he said, sounding highly offended. "Why would Jacky send *them* to take us out?" "They couldn't," Dan said. "We'd just be..." The realization hit him like a kick to the gut. "...beating up kids..." The floodlights hit them from all directions. Police cars that had crept up unnoticed during the turf battle rolled onto Houston with sirens blazing. A voice screamed, "Okay, Strafe, drop your weapons *now*!" Dan recognized two of the cops aiming assault rifles at them: Chavez and Whitman, who always showed up right after STRAFE left a fight. They were running a little early tonight. On the rooftop, Jason Teller considered his options. There was no way he'd shoot police, but the team couldn't get arrested. The government would deny ever knowing them. Biting his lip, Teller raised his rifle and trained the sight on a floodlight... Teller's vision blurred before he could squeeze the trigger. Something kicked the rifle out of his hands and knocked his body into the low brick ledge. Teller shook his head, and his vision cleared *after* the impact with the ledge...he could see someone else on the rooftop. Teller reached for his pistol, but the other man was faster. A sword flashed, and holster and gun were cut away from Teller's body. Teller was left with a deep gash across his right hand. He looked up at the trenchcoated, masked attacker. "Say goodnight," said the Warden. TO BE CONTINUED... ============================================================================ Next issue: The cops and Warden are after STRAFE, the paragangs are uniting, and Cockatrice gets *really* angry in the penultimate issue of "The Bonfire." ============================================================================ Notes: Lana Smith created by Dave Van Domelen/Tony Pi. Cockatrice and Tyra Dumont created by Tony Pi. Bathory, Dr. Jacky, Rex Umbrae, Embeth Alloun and Warden created by Matt Rossi. STRAFE #10 written by and Copyright 1999 Marc Singer. A Legacy House production.