Rush

Three Days Ago

Nighthawk (Kyle Richmond), against his better judgement, has agreed to meet with his former team, the Squadron Sinister.[1] He is welcomed by Hyperion, Doctor Spectrum (Alice Nugent) and Speed Demon (James Saunders). They take them to their leader, the cosmic entity known as the Grandmaster (En Dwi Gast). Gast is glad to see Nighthawk as his addition to the group will assist them in stopping Baron (Helmut) Zemo and his Thunderbolts from attaining ultimate power.[2] Nighthawk admits that he has only come because he sees the Grandmaster as the lesser of two evils, which is enough for the Elder of the Universe, as everything is on the brink of being lost.

Now

Speed Demon is dispatched Tokyo, Japan to confront members of a religious sect that protect the so-called Wellspring of Power. Little does he know that he is being observed by his former teammate, Joystick (Janice Yanizeski) is watching him. Watching him pummel the ninjas reminds Janice of when she was younger and was forced to watch her father get beat up over his gambling debts. When it looks like they are not going to win against Saudners, the ninjas sever their connection to the Wellspring in order to prevent him from learning its location. With his mission a failure, James decides that there is no point to linger and takes off. That’s when Joystick makes her presence known to the ninjas and uses violence to force them to tell her everything they know about the Wellspring of Power.

With her mission complete, Joystick enters a portal that takes her back to Baron Zemo’s Folding Castle, headquarters for the Thunderbolts. She is greeted by her teammates the Radioactive Man (Chen Lu) and the Fixer (Norbert Ebersol) and she brags about how much of a rush the fight she just had was. Not unlike the rush her father used to feel when he won at gambling. She is told that Songbird (Melissa Gold) is on a mission in Russia, while Baron (Helmut) Zemo and Mach-IV (Abner Jenkins) are in a meeting.

At that moment, Zemo and Jenkins are using a tesseract portal to speak with Henry Gyrich of the Commission on Superhuman Activities and Dallas Riordan of the Department of Homeland Security. Their mission is concluding as the Thunderbolts are incredibly busy. Gyrich is still uneasy about the power that Zemo wields via his two Moon Stones.[3] Helmut assures him that with the current goings on within the superhero community they have more pressing matters to worry about.[4] As Joystick enters the room, Mach-IV gives his impressions of the impending Super Human Registration Act and how it might fracture the superhero community. Zemo isn’t concerned and sees it as an opportunity to further their plans. Joystick tells Zemo how her mission went, but this doesn’t really tells them how much the Squadron Sinister knows about the Wellspring. Suspecting that this might mean a suicide mission, Janice is more than happy to get involved.

With the energy readings that Fixer was able to collect from Joystick, they are able to pinpoint the Squadron Sinisters location since they draw power from the Wellspring. At that moment, the group is meeting at their headquarters. They are also scanning the globe for energies tied to the Wellspring. They are surprised that such a powerful source of energy has been kept secret all this time. Doctor Spectrum figures that the Grandmaster tapped into these energies when he gave them their powers. She figures that her Power Prism can analyze its power source so they can track it.[5] They need to secure smaller power sources in the hopes they can pinpoint the larger well and recruit an army to fight Zemo and his Thunderbolts. The team then splits up, entering four separate portals to other locations across the globe. Joystick has observed all of this and relays this back to Fixer back at base. He then opens a portal to send her to Istanbul, Turkey to go after one of the Squadron Sinister. Little does she know that the Grandmaster is watching her from the shadows as she goes.

The Squadron member that is there is Speed Demon, and he quickly finds the church the priests live in here. When he runs inside he discovers that Joystick has beat him there and already beat the priests into submission. She already forced them to sever their connection to the Wellspring of Power so she could scan for its location. This leads to a battle between the two over that data. As they fight, Janice boasts that every good plan needs a good escape plan as well. These words came from her father, which were told to Janice when she was very young. She thinks back to how one day she came across her father’s money stash when they were playing ball. He told her that everyone needs a stash like this just in case. When Janice asked if her mother know about her father’s stash, he told the young girl that she probably has her own. Her father’s advice to her was to always have an ace in the hole.

Joystick was waiting for her fight with Speed Demon to reveal that she has gotten just as fast as he has. This comes as a surprise to James who is not prepared for such a move. This allows Janice to breaks both of his legs with a blow from one of her batons. With Speed Demon down, Janice then recites the magic words that she overheard the priests saying, causing James’ powers to return to the Wellspring so she can get more telemetry on its location. With that, she turns to leave back to the Folding Castle. Before she goes, Speed Demon asks her if she thinks she can trust Zemo with the Wellspring of power. With a sinister smile on her face, Janice tells him that she intends to take it for herself.

Later, when Baron Zemo checks in on Janice, she is in the middle of training. He commends her on a job well done as her mission will help greatly in the battle ahead. He tells her that the prelude to the Guardian Protocols will be akin to a chess match.[6] When Zemo makes mention of a chess move called the Zwischenzug, Janice plays dumb saying she doesn’t understand such things. This reminds her of the last time she played dumb back when she was a young woman. At the time, Janice was ordered to throw a basketball game in order to settle her father’s gambling debts. Instead, she placed a bet on herself to in the game and succeeded in doing so. When the mobsters came to punish her for disobeying their orders, she then told them about her father’s secret money stash — swearing to them that it had everything he owed and more. She remembers how her mother called from the hospital and told her that some men came to beat her father and took something from the back yard. Janice assured her mother that everything will work out just fine. What Janice Yanizeski learned that day was that in order to win, one has to hide the truth deep down inside, hiding it even from yourself. Burry it deep down, crushing ones own spirit, to win. Because that’s because the toughest challenger one will ever have to face is yourself.

As Janice is remembering this harsh lesson, Zemo leaves and she is visited by the Grandmaster. En Dwi Gast knows that Janice is plotting to betray the Baron tells her that time is soon coming where she will have to reveal what side she is working for, assuring her that she will triumph over all.

Recurring Characters

Thunderbolts (Baron Zemo, Songbird, Moonstone, Atlas, Mach-IV, Fixer, Radioactive Man, Joystick, Blizzard, Swordsman, Smuggler), Grandmaster, Squadron Sinister (Hyperion, Nighthawk, Doctor Spectrum, Speed Demon), Dallas Riordan, Henry Gyrich

Continuity Notes

1. Here, the Squadron Sinister states they prefer to call themselves Supreme Power. This is a nod to the Supreme Power series, a reimagined version of the Squadron Supreme that was being written by J. Michael Straczynski at the time of publication.

2. Nighthawk and the Grandmaster speak to each other with a great deal of familiarity. This is because En Dwi Gast was responsible for empowering Kyle and the original Squadron Sinister. See Avengers #69-71.

3. Baron Zemo stole these Moon Stones from Moonstone in Avengers/Thunderbolts #1-6.

4. Zemo is candidly referring to the implementation of the Super Human Registration Act, a government law forcing heroes to register with the government. This has created a schism in the community. See Civil War #1-7.

5. Doctor Spectrum theorizes that her Power Prism came from the same source as the original. The original Doctor Spectrum (Kinji Obatu) received his own Power Prism from the Grandmaster in the aforementioned Avengers #69. This Prism exchanged hands over the years until it was destroyed in Avengers Annual #8. The Prism that Alice Nugent has been using first turned up in New Thunderbolts #12 in the possession of a woman named Martha Gomes. It later bonded itself to Alice in New Thunderbolts #15.

6. The Guardian Protocols are an alien pact that would bring destruction on any world that threatened the existence of the universe. See Thunderbolts #106 for all the details.

Topical References

• When watching Speed Demon fighting guardians of the Wellspring, she compares their fighting skills to Woo-Peng Yuen movies. Yuen is a martial arts choreographer for film and television. At the time this comic was published he Woo-Peng had just won an Oscar 5 years prior for his work on the martial arts film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon released in the year 2000. This should be considered a topical reference as a more contemporary reference can be used in his place.

• Here, Fixer refers to the city in Turkey as Constantinople. Which is not the proper name of the city. This isn’t so much a topical reference as it is incorrect. The city in question has been referred to as Istanbul since 1453.