by Libbylawrence
Ronnie Raymond hid a yawn as Martin Stein gave him a tour of the Hudson University Physics Department. Martin’s eyes gleamed with enthusiasm, and his voice gained a warmth and passion as he shared his love for science and his memories of the start of an academic career.
“Ronald, this was my first classroom,” said Martin. “I taught several labs here and had some promising pupils, too. For a time, I think under my guidance this humble department actually rivaled Ivy Town.”
Ronnie nodded. “Ray Palmer had quite a setup. Maybe we could visit there one of these days.”
Professor Stein smiled. “That would be nice. Perhaps now you would like to meet some of my old colleagues.”
“Sure,” Ronnie said. “That would be fine.” But he thought to himself, I like learning more about the Prof’s past, and since our bonding I have gained a decent understanding of physics, but this is boring me to death. I wish Typhoon or Slipknot would show up — even Bug and Byte, for goodness’ sakes!
***
October 19–
Dear Diary:
This has been the worst night of my life. I’ve been humiliated and wish I were dead. Why did I ever emerge from my lonely, studious routine? Why did I try to become something I’m not? I thought, if I helped the girls of the sorority, they would be nice to me. They used me. They let me help them, then cast me aside. It was all a joke to them.
Then again, why should a science major like myself be surprised to experience survival of the fittest? The others belong to the dominant species, while I am the outsider. Naturally, they see me as nothing more than fodder for their amusement. I deserve their scorn.
They led me to think Devin would meet me at the campus bookstore. They deliberately dressed me in provocative clothes and heavy make-up and then left me to wait for an hour in the cold while they knew he had never considered dating me. I’m even feeling sick. I suppose I’ve caught a chill. It’s not important. How could my world get any colder?
***
Ronnie Raymind never got to meet the Hudson University physics staff, since he and Martin Stein spotted a scene of violence from one of the lab windows. Killer Frost was in the middle of the campus quad, and a blonde woman was being crushed by ever-growing ice clusters that closed in around her from all sides, while Frost laughed that same inhuman laugh.
“Sharon, your popularity cannot save you now!” she hissed. “Tell me, dear, are your memories of your time as Hudson’s homecoming queen enough to warm you? Can beauty and success thaw the numbing chill of hate?”
“We’re needed,” Ronnie cried. “It’s Killer Frost!”
In a flash, he and Martin merged to form the hero called Firestorm, the Nuclear Man, who quickly passed through the wall as an insubstantial wraith. “Turning intangible does save on our insurance bills,” quipped the part of the hero that was Ronnie. “Imagine paying for every wall we smashed through in hot pursuit!”
Professor Stein’s voice echoed in his head as he commented on all they experienced. “I think hot pursuit was a particularly ironic choice of words, considering our foe!”
Firestorm nodded as they flew closer. Waving his hand, he converted the crushing ice to feathers, then created a huge fan out of thin air. They blew the mounds of feathers into Killer Frost, who shrieked as she vanished beneath the cascade.
“I knew she was chicken!” joked Ronnie.
Stein groaned. “I know this is your way to deal with the stress of a meta-human life, but I must caution you not to underestimate her,” he said. “Dr. Louise Lincoln may not have the sheer brilliance of the late Crystal Frost, but she is equally mad.”
It was Firestorm’s turn to gasp, as ice formed across his body, and he crashed to the ground. He fought to burn free of the formation as it continued to grow across his body. Prof! he thought. She created the ice sheath from afar, just by thinking. Didn’t know she could do that!
“Obviously, her powers have evolved,” muttered Stein.
Firestorm tried to alter his own density, but the numbing chill seemed to penetrate even his bizarre body, slowing his reactions and stunting his efforts to concentrate.
Killer Frost strolled over to where he lay and placed one high-heeled boot on his neck. “Firestorm, how glad I am to see you here,” she said. “You embody so much that I loathe. Masculinity in all its grosser manifestations. Male ego. Thoughtless, unfeeling braggadocio.”
A whirling sphere slammed into Killer Frost’s face as Nightwing appeared and said, “Sorry to interrupt, but there’s a Zamboni with your name on it over there!”
Killer Frost scowled and said, “You again? Perhaps I should eliminate you now and savor the dismemberment of my old foe in leisure.”
Nightwing bent over Firestorm’s prone form and slipped him a small device. As he flipped it on, a portable laser sliced through the ice, which had stopped forming when Frost’s attention wavered.
He bought me time to use our own nuclear blasts to melt free, Ronnie realized. If she had not dropped her concentration because of his blow, we’d be ice cream by now!
Firestorm generated a pulse of his own energy, and he emerged from the crushing sheath of ice. “Thanks, Nightwing,” he said. “I guess I haven’t seen you since that run-in with the second Composite Superman!” (*)
[(*) Editor’s note: See Justice League of America: World’s Fiercest.]
Nightwing grinned. “We can reminisce later,” he said. “Now, let’s get that leggy Popsicle out of the way!”
Killer Frost smiled at them with malice and lethal intent. Moving effortlessly into the air as nearly solid drifts of cold air lofted up skyward, she strolled toward them with no sign of human fear or any weakness.
“How it pleases me to return here to where I first felt the shame of being rejected by males,” she laughed. “How delightful it will be when I leave all who scorned me as lifeless corpses.”
Firestorm heard Stein’s voice in his head as the Professor said, “She must be after all of those former students from her undergraduate days who mistreated her. I seem to recall some connection between Louise Lincoln and Sharon Dinning.”
As Killer Frost spotted the fallen Sharon being carried to safety, she created a massive glacier of ice across the nearby trees with a mere gesture of her hand. The glacier then shattered, falling directly toward the fleeing people, while the villainess’ laughter echoed like the crisp snap of crushed leaves in fall.
Firing a line across the distance, Nightwing swung in to carry the threesome out of the path of the falling trees. Though he managed to get them out of the way, he took a hard fall himself, having again placed others before his own safety.
As Firestorm flew upward, he said, “So, Frosty, are you still in love with me?”
Killer Frost sneered in disgust and sent him reeling, blasting him with intense cold downward into the pond below. Instantly, she solidified the waters around his body until they formed a solid prison. As she lowered herself, she said, “I am sick with shame about how I was forced to love you when those red skies swept across the world. (*) Let me redeem myself with your broken body!”
[(*) Editor’s note: See “The Summoning,” Crisis on Infinite Earths #1 (April, 1985).]
Ronnie frowned as she drew closer. He knew his incredible body energy had been too much for the original Killer Frost to absorb, and that villainess had died in her attempt to do so. However, Crystal Frost had been damaged by the method used to imprison her during her last time in captivity, while this new Frost had no such limitations. Her kiss might be too much for us! he realized. Got to fight the sudden rush the cold has given me and concentrate!
Firestorm waited as she drew nearer, and as her pouty lips drew closer to his mouth, she shrieked and fell back. “You craven male dolt!” she sputtered, retreating from his proximity.
Figured changing the air immediately around me to pure freon would repel her, mused Firestorm. She can’t stand such intense cold.
“Well done, lad!” echoed Stein.
As the villainess vanished in a swirling storm of ice, Nightwing returned and said, “Firestorm, I think the girl she attacked will recover. Her name is Sharon Denning. She was homecoming queen years ago. And the first girl Frost attacked was runner-up.”
Firestorm nodded. “Was a Louise Lincoln on the court, too? That’s Frosty’s real name.”
Nightwing nodded. “She came in third. Are you thinking this is all some delayed revenge against those who beat her in a college contest years before?”
“She was a student here,” said Firestorm. “I’d say she’s crazy enough to hunt down those kids who beat her long before, now that she has the power to do it.”
“But Ronald,” Professor Stein objected, “Louise had no hatred for men. That was Crystal’s obsession. Louise was both pretty and popular, from what I recall.”
“Hold it,” said Firestorm aloud. “We may be barking up the wrong tree. We need to tell you more about this model of Killer Frost.”
Nightwing listened attentively to his ally’s explanation, and when it was complete, he said, “That changes everything. But I have a plan.”
Firestorm smiled. “You and Batman always seem to say that!”
Nightwing returned the smile. “Must be something in Gotham City’s water.”
***
Later, a graying, scholarly man crossed the campus, admiring the festive decorations. The big game had been played, and Hudson U had been victorious. The night’s gala included an assembly of many former homecoming courts. Predicting that Killer Frost would show up, he knew that they would be ready for her.
Noticing with a gasp of his breath, which had begun to visibly puff before his eyes, that the temperature had dropped instantly, he looked up through thick-rimmed glasses. There, as expected, was Killer Frost lowering herself from above on ice to confront him with eyes gleaming with hatred.
“Martin! You didn’t think I would forget or forgive you, did you, now?” she hissed. “You took my love and cast it aside like a child would with a toy he’d grown tired of. Well, Crystal Frost is no one’s plaything!”
She moved closer as if to embrace him, but to her shock, the bookish man twisted aside and flipped acrobatically over her shoulders, then kicked her from behind and rolled out of her sight. She frowned in realization. “You aren’t Stein!” she cried. “You’re the other costumed man from before!”
Hurrying forward, Killer Frost saw the fake Martin Stein mocking her across the quad. In a huff, she lifted herself on icy winds and swooped down toward him as he disappeared in the woods near the edge of campus.
But as she followed, she soon gasped as the dark glade opened to reveal a massive tank. Whirling around, she saw the air behind her turn to a smoking vapor. In shock, she began to stiffen as the cascading liquid nitrogen enveloped her struggling form.
Firestorm swooped down and greeted Nightwing, who ripped off the Stein mask he had been wearing. “You were right,” said the Nuclear Man. “She was acting out a vendetta against Crystal Frost’s college enemies, not her own. Denning and Reynolds may have beaten Louise Lincoln on the homecoming court, but they also mistreated Crystal. Willis had apparently rejected her, too. If we had stuck to our original idea that she was after the women on the homecoming court, we would have lost precious time.”
“I figured she was after the first Killer Frost’s enemies from their school days,” said Nightwing, “because, as you noted, she was obviously expressing the original’s hatred of all men, too. This made it painfully clear. She dropped this before I led her into the forest where we’d prepared the liquid nitrogen tank.” Nightwing held out a small worn book.
Firestorm nodded as he quickly examined it. “Crystal’s diary, eh? Louise must have found it, and had been madly acting out revenge upon all that ever hurt her old friend. She must either think she is Crystal, or she still feels so guilty for the fact that she was popular while Crystal was scorned, that she seeks to earn some weird forgiveness from her late friend.”
Professor Stein’s words echoed in Ron’s mind. “I heard her call the disguised Nightwing her lover. She does now think she is Crystal herself, who deluded herself into thinking I loved her. Poor madwoman. Her madness has infected yet another victim.”
“You know,” Firestorm told the other hero, “with your brains and moves, you should be in the JLA.”
Nightwing shook his head. “Thanks, but I’m fine where I am. You know how the JLA is a group of heroes who assembles because the world needs them? Well, the New Titans assemble because we’re friends with individual needs. We’re more like family.”
“So are we,” Firestorm muttered.
Stein’s voice echoed with warmth in Ron’s mind. “That is one of the nicest things you’ve ever said, Ronnie.”
***
Later, Dick Grayson approached Frank McDonald of the New Carthage Police Department and extended his hand. “Sir, long time no see,” he said.
Frank grunted. “Grayson. I wondered where you’d vanished when you dropped out so suddenly. Lori often wondered, too. You never wrote. It hurt her.”
Dick nodded solemnly. “I know. I was wrong. I wanted to see her and try to clear the air. I’ve been fixing the relationships in my life that I’ve let crumble.”
Frank shook his head. “It’s no use, kid. Lori’s been missing for a long time. I’ve tried everything as a cop and on my own. She just disappeared months ago. Frankly, I blamed you. I figured you’d hurt the kid so much she couldn’t stand to be around your old haunts.”
With a look of determination, Dick said, “Tell me more. I want to help.”