Intro: Steven Chen, exchange student, bonds with a special biosuit created in a secret government lab to become Palisade.
Caz sat in his new room, the triple on 7, studying for finals on a cold December day. He and Rick "The Adept" Pennington had finally convinced Aaron "Dragonfly" Majesky to move into the room with them to secure access to the secret shaft into their underground headquarters, despite the fact that this put Aaron's "secret" identity even more at risk.
In fact, it wasn't much of a secret at all anymore. While Aaron never publicly admitted it, it was obvious to anyone who paid attention that he was Dragonfly. People treated him as if he were Dragonfly, and this was both good and bad. He and Emily "White Diamond" Fine had had trouble going out together without risking the exposure of her identity as well. And Emily's mom, not knowing that Emily herself was one of the heroes, had grown decidedly cold to Aaron's presence around her daughter, for fear that her little girl might get hurt as collateral damage.
So it was that when they finally got time together, Aaron had taken it right away; with Emily's mom out of town, Aaron had moved in for the week. Caz and Rick hadn't seen much of him the past few days. Tim, on the other hand, was there quite a bit lately, hanging around and doing anything but studying.
As Rick, sitting across the room from Caz in a big comfy chair, took a sip of some hot tea, a knock came to the door. Caz rolled his eyes and got up to answer it. They'd had a virtual plague of autograph hounds, fan-boys, and even the occasional tough guy wanting to test his machismo coming to their door at all hours since they moved in together. This time, Caz saw through the peep-hole in the door a lone Asian young man, very slender, with darker toned skin, glasses, and spiked hair that seemed to defy any means to move it. Caz looked at Rick and said "5 bucks says fan-boy". He opened the door.
The young man walked in right past Caz and stood near the window, watching the snow for a moment. "You might want to close the door," he said with a thick Cantonese accent. "Probably don't want everyone to hear what I'm going to say." Rick stood slowly, and Cazmonster bristled. This smelled of a challenge, but this one's attitude was all wrong.
"Okay, you seem to know who we are, which isn't surprising. Your name is?" Rick asked pointedly.
"You can call me Steven. Steven Chen. Or..." the young man suddenly changed, a thick, leather-like substance appearing all around him, spikes issuing from various points. "You can call me Palisade!"
Caz changed form to Cazmonster in an instant, prepared to fight, but Palisade held up a spiked glove. "I'm not here to fight," said a voice that was not Chen's, not even accented.
"Then what?" Cazmonster asked menacingly.
"I'm here to join you!" Chen answered.
Meanwhile, across town, Emily awoke in Aaron's arms. She smiled and snuggled up against him. "We should get breakfast," Aaron told her, sitting up and looking for his T-shirt. Aaron's muscular form silhouetted against the gray morning light streaming into Emily's window. She stood and crossed the room in her evening gown, opening the curtains to look at the white, snowy sky.
"Looks like another gloomy day," she said quietly.
"Well, let's make the most of it then. Let's grab a train, head to Chicago. No one there even knows Dragonfly, let alone what he might look like without a mask. We can go whereever we want; we can go dancing tonight, or bowling, or shopping."
"I don't know. What if my mom calls..." Emily was concerned. She was definitely NOT supposed to have Aaron in the house, let alone staying the night. And she certainly shouldn't be getting on a train with him. This whole relationship was getting a lot more complicated really quickly.
Aaron nodded. He didn't really like the idea of deceiving Emily's mom about their relationship either, but he was unwilling to just give it up.
"Okay," he conceded. "Let's at least go get that breakfast, somewhere away from campus. Then we can go our separate ways for a few hours, and get together for a movie later at the cineplex on the North side. there won't be many students there to recognize me."
Emily came over and hugged Aaron, and smiled up at him. Then the two finished getting dressed and left. After a peaceful breakfast, Aaron headed back toward Langley Hall, while Emily returned home to call her mom and clean up around the house. By the time Aaron got back to his new room, he found the closet wall ripped out, and a strange, alien-looking form covered in spikes looking down the shaft to the headquarters.
Aaron hurled himself across the room, body-checking the creature into Rick's desk. "What the hell???" the creature exclaimed. Drawing itself to it's feet, the intruder found Aaron already standing, sword drawn, in front of it. Aaron felt a hand on his back, and glanced over his shoulder to find Rick, having just ported into the room.
"Aaron, relax! This is Palisade. He's working with us now."
Aaron stepped back, eying the creature suspiciously. "He's who and he's WHAT?" Aaron asked Rick incredulously.
"We, had, we had a discussion, he's got some assets we could use, and he's certainly powerful enough," Rick said. "Caz, Tim and I decided to give him provisional membership in our little group, provided you and Emily agree."
Aaron lowered his blade, still suspicious but realizing there was no immediate danger. "Okay, Rick, what the heck is going on with the closet?"
"Cazmonster and Palisade pulled it off so we could get a better idea of how to modify the shaft. Palisade's offered to help us build up our HQ. Evidently his dad's a rich industrialist or some such."
Aaron nodded. He didn't like this, it seemed all too convenient. Still, the group had formed when people who didn't know each other too well had come together to help people, and they'd gotten a lot done. Aaron had to agree that some financing could improve their abilities a lot. A good computer system and lighting in the headquarters, maybe a work area or two.
The alien looking Palisade switched back to plain Steven Chen. "Hey, Aaron, I'm Steven."
Aaron took his hand and nodded back. "Welcome to the team, I guess. We've really got to come up with a name. Maybe we can work on that once we get this headquarters thing built up.
With that, the five young men set about working on their underground headquarters with an eye toward improvements. Steven arranged for some of his father's personal specialists to come into the building over winter break discretely and make the improvements. With Cazmonster and Palisade doing the heavy lifting, they should be able to complete the project over a couple weeks, and be ready to enter the next phase of their team the following semester.
Later that night, unknown to the rest of the team, Emily was meeting in secret with another future team-mate, the final of the original group that would give the team it's name. As the sun set over the snow-covered aquatic center in Stevenson Park, Emily waited for Angela, a friend of hers from Stevenson High. Angela had been on the track team with her, but recently, she'd just quit. She quit showing up at school. Worried for her friend, Emily had looked into it, and found that Angela had gotten mixed up with some bad people. Much worse people, in fact, than Emily had suspected. Angela had been turned into a vampire. Those people had left town after a brief run-in with Emily (a girl that wields the power of sunlight is a dangerous enemy for a vampire to have). But they left behind the legacy of a devastated life.
Emily felt the chill before she actually saw Angela approach. Turning from side to side, she looked to the front again to find Angela standing there. Angela was a beautiful young woman with pale skin and wavy brown hair to her shoulder, the torment behind her eyes distracted from her beauty. She was under constant inner assault from dark urges better left unmentioned.
Emily hugged her friend. The girl's skin had no warmth, but was the same temperature as the winter winds that crossed the closed aquatic center; Angela felt like a thing unliving.
They talked for some time, these two young women, about how Angela's life had been changed, stolen from her. In the end, Emily offered the one thing she could to help; her friendship. But there was another hope, which Emily hid behind her dark, beautiful eyes. When the time was right, she'd introduce her to the group. Vampires, Emily had learned, had certain powers and talents that could be of use to a team of young super-heroes. And in exchange, Angela would have a tie to something positive, something good to help fight the urges of darkness.
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