The Turning Point

Dear Diary,

The past few days have been the hardest I've had since my parents died.

The year I spent in the foster home was unpleasant, but it was nothing like this. As much as I hated the place, I knew I was never in danger there. Even as messed up as I was, I knew I could handle anything that happened there. It was like a shelter from the real world. I knew that as long as I was there, I didn't have to face the nightmare that put me there.

These past few days, I've had to face the nightmare again.

I met the New Champions while I was still in the home. They were good to me, and Jeopardy told me to contact them when I turned 18 and got my life straightened out. So I did. I cleaned up my act, and by the time I turned 18, I'd done a lot of growing up. I got in touch with them again, and they seemed happy to see me. (Especially Terminal Velocity. The boy's a shameless flirt, but he's got a good heart.) They invited me to join, even gave me a radio and a costume. So I've spent the last few months as a superhero, fighting crime and busting VIPER a couple of times.

But I never had to face Genocide until now.

Things started out pretty normal. I got a call from Jeopardy saying they needed my help. I showed up in the warehouse district, and they asked me to run recon for them. I noticed a 'suspicious vehicle'. (I always wondered what that phrase meant on TV. Now I know.) T.V. went to deal with them. Then Jeopardy radioed me and asked me to see how much dry ice I could get hold of. She didn't say what for, but there was something really scary in her voice. She hasn't told me what was going on, and I haven't dared ask yet. I feel a special connection with her, but there's something about here that still scares me a little.

From there we rendezvoused with Blindside and Deadboy. Deadboy is friends with this rock band that's also publicly known as mutants. Someone had found out about a plot to attack the band at their concert the next evening. We started investigating, and the trail led to Genocide. They had stolen a blimp, and from the sound of it, equipped it with a cloaking device. We told Defender II about it, and he passed it on to the local authorities. But we knew they wouldn't be able to do anything about it.

So took up places at the stadium for the concert. Deadboy was on stage with the band. He fit right in with all that gothic stuff he usually wears. (I worry about him a little sometimes.) Blindside was in the crowd, and Jeopardy was outside the stadium in the parking lot. T.V. was running around all over the place like he normally does. Since I'm really the only flier in the group, I was on top of the skyboxes on the west side.

We were about half an hour into the concert when everything happened all at once. We got a reading on the blimp. T.V. ran up to where I was, and we took off. Meanwhile, a series of foam grenades went off and sealed all the stadium exits. And a truck crashed in the parking lot, and some sort of robot climbed out of the wreckage. So T.V. and I were going after the blimp, Jeopardy started fighting the robot, Blindside tried to clear the exits, and Deadboy was trying to keep the crowd from knowing that anything was even wrong.

At this point, I really only know what I was involved in. We managed to find the blimp, but not before I got hit with some kind of energy ray. I don't know what it was, but it made it a lot harder for me to fly. Still, I got us onto the blimp, but not before they started spraying napalm. We weren't quite over the stadium, so none of it fell onto the crowd. T.V. knocked one of the agents out of the blimp, then started working on closing the valves from the fuel tanks. I fought the other agent for a minute, but he jumped out and activated his jetpack. I don't know how I forgot they had those. It was those damn jetpacks that helped me identify Genocide as the people who killed my parents.

Anyway, as T.V. got the valves closed, the two agents started shooting at the storage tanks. If they punctured those tanks, they'd explode and rain napalm down on the city. So I shot at one of the agents and knocked him unconscious. As he started to fall, I realized he'd never survive a fall from that height, even with his armor. Before I could go after him, though, the other one got off a lucky shot and blew the tanks. T.V. got out just before the explosion, and I went after him. I caught him and got him safely to the ground. The agent who blew up the tanks got away. I never found out what happened to the other one.

Those agents meant to kill everyone in that stadium, just because the band on stage was made up of mutants. Thousands of people, most of them normal people, would have died if we hadn't been there. If that's not pure evil, then I don't know what is.

I've spent most of the last two years beating myself up over my parents' deaths. That stops today. It's time to start beating up the people who were really responsible.

I've told myself that if I hadn't snuck out that night, my parents wouldn't have been out looking for me and Genocide would never have found them. But I was only a couple of blocks from home when it happened. Those agents were in my own neighborhood. I don't know who they were looking for, but they would have found my family that night one way or another if that's why they were there. The only thing that would have been different is that I would have died with them. But Genocide didn't kill me that night, and that was their mistake.

I'm going to spend the rest of my life making them pay for that mistake.

(From the diary of Morningstar)