Renegade Comics: Arclight

Chapter 1

"Ok, that'll be three fifty." A girl says to her customer, a smile on her face.

"Oh thank you, dearie." An old woman takes her goods and heads for the door. The girl behind the counter smiles, parting her auburn hair behind her ear, as she habitually does.

"Another satisfied customer." She congratulates herself.

"Keep it up and you might just have an actual job."

"But you pay me."

"Under the table."

"Which means no income tax."

A man, old and gray gives only a grunt to his female employee.

"Touché."

"I'm 19, sir. I'm no child."

"You're still immature enough for me to call you a child whether you see it or not." He gruffly retorts.

She playfully pouts. "Uncle Rick, You're no fun."

"I'm not your uncle, Violet. Now go stock the shelves. I'm too old to do it, dammit."

"Ehh." She grunts walking around the counter. The pair start perusing the stock on each side of the store. Violet takes interest in cleaning supplies, and the man... finds interest in the alcoholic beverages.

"How's school?" He cuts off the silence, taking a beer from the fridge full of stock and opening it.

"Good. I've actually got a job as a certified nurse." She says with a smile. The man belches before responding.

"Great. And how long until they fire you with the only reason being to make themselves feel more powerful than they really are?"

"Funny, but I've got this."

"Right. You read any of these comics?"

"We live with these guys. What's the point?" She asks the man, her eyes not moving from her taking of inventory. He belches again, this time while starting his sentence."

"Fair enough. So how are your two little shits?"

"Well Bobby's with Mom and Dad at work today and-"

"And the 'wizard'?" He put air quotes around the word.

"Ha-ha, Uncle Rick."

"I'm not your uncle."

"At least he found his passion, and he's really good too."

"Magic is merely a different kind of science that we never had the balls to research. All the scientists are all too busy getting off on trying to be another Hank Pym."

"Wouldn't it be Tony Stark?"

"Stark built fancy robots. Pym found a way to actually increase and decrease the size of things. And I'm certain he's a better scientist than Stark." He belches the last "Stark."

"Ehh."

"All three of you do that way too much to the point where I catch myself doing it."

The door bursts open. A boy stops inside, panting as a dog would.

"Well now you can tell him that yourself. Salem why are you-"

"Vi!" The boy struggles to get out as he hobbles over to the girl. He opens his arms for a hug, and his eyes open wide. As the girl accepts it, he let's his legs go limp.

"Salem, what's wrong? Are you ok? C'mon you gotta stand up." She puts him back on his feet.

"There," he heaved "There was a," He struggles to merely speak, still gasping for air.

"Did you just run all the way from home? What's going on?" Salem clutched onto her arms.

"Violet." He finally acquires enough air to communicate. "You gotta come with me now."

"I'm in the middle of work,-"

"LOOK OUTSIDE, DAMMIT!" Salem kicks open the door showing her the reason for his plight. He snaps his fingers and the radio miraculously turns on to public broadcasting.

"What the hell's going on, kid?"

Rick walks over to the boy pulling Violet out of the store to see the commotion for herself. The man finally reaches the doorway as the children sprint for the research facility of Henry Pym, with a gaping hole on the front of the building. Blue smoke rises from the building as civilians rush to get as far away from the building as they can.

"Mother of god..."