Quantum & Woody
Two former friends, reunited by tragedy, linked for life.
Eric Henderson and Woodrow Van Chelton never thought that they would end up like this. Each seeking his father’s mysterious killer Eric and Woody were inextricably linked by two wristbands of incredible power. Deciding to use these powers for good, they became the world’s worst superhero team – Quantum & Woody. Watch out world, they are on patrol, and might be coming to help you. |
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KlangEric and Woody were best friends, almost brothers. They were inseparable. Whether it was running from old lady McArthur’s dog – which they drugged with a Valium–, spying on Amy Fishbein’s window – where Eric saw Amy’s mom naked –, or trick or treating on Halloween – given apples instead of candy, Woody peed on his neighbor’s car while Eric beat up some bullies –, Eric and Woody spent most of their early lives together. Then one day Woody just left, with no word, no note, no nothing, and when Eric asked why a classmate implied that it was probably because he was black.
After fifteen years of separation, Eric and Woody met again at their father’s funeral, where Detective Joe Tamara, also known as Joe Tomorrow, inferred that they were behind their fathers’ deaths. Since he knew that he could not count on the cops, Eric decided to take things into his own hands. Finding a pair of metal bands among his fathers’ possessions, Eric put them on, but later Woody made him give him one. Thinking that David Warrant, their fathers’ assistant, was behind their deaths, Eric and Woody followed him to their father’s lab. While snooping around the place, Eric, fed up with Woody’s inability to take things seriously, pushed him inside an iso–chamber. Locking the door behind him, Eric lashed out at Woody and let out all the frustrations he felt with him. As they fought, their fathers’ electromagnetic containment field came on and they saw Warrant standing outside next to the control console. As the electromagnet slowly transformed them into energy, Eric and Woody clanged their bands, causing a massive explosion that destroyed the lab and seemingly killed Warrant. Detective Tomorrow later found the two of them unconscious in a ditch outside the building.
Another StoryA few days later, Eric and Woody awoke to discover that they were reverting back into energy. Clanging their bands together reverted the process, and eventually they learned that the control bands had banded with their molecular structure, and that if they did not link them once every 24 hours their energy matrixes would break down. Like it or not, they were stuck together for life, not only physically but also economically, as Woody’s father had named Eric executor of his state, meaning that he controlled his inheritance. Angered, Woody stormed off. A few weeks later, Woody decided that he and Eric should do something more with their powers than get together once a day to argue and clang their bands together. He suggested that they become investigators, but, not one to go half way, Eric wanted more. Garbed in costume–made uniforms, Eric renamed himself Quantum, after the energy pool they draw from, while Woody… remained Woody.
On their first case, the murder of Ed Palmer’s wife – who the cops were convinced Ed Palmer killed –, Quantum & Woody scaled a Manhattan high rise to get a jump on Frank Marshal, an arms dealer who left a message on Palmer’s machine 20 minutes before the murder. First, however, they had to get past Woody’s costume riding up on him, two vicious kids armed with high–tech water guns, a crowd yelling at them to jump, and a plate of bulletproof glass.
Yet Another StoryContinuing their murder investigation, Quantum & Woody broke into Marshall’s apartment, where Quantum found what he maintained was a dye that Woody insisted was cool–aide. After confronting Marshall, who insisted that he dialed the wrong number, Quantum & Woody followed the dye to Malaysia, where Woody bought a goat he threatened to kill so a group of monks would tell him where the dye came from. Told that it came from a textile mill that belonged to Terrence Magnum, a global financier with a private army supplied by Frank Marshal, Quantum & Woody traveled to Switzerland. As they climbed a mountain on their way to Magnum’s secret hideout, a helicopter shot at them. Quickly dispatching their attackers, Quantum & Woody broke into Magnum’s hideout, where they found a blade with hieroglyphs that led them to Egypt. Realizing that Quantum read the wrong glyphs, Woody read the right one on the blade’s hilt, which said “ Made in Taiwan”. Finding Magnum, Quantum confronted him over Ed Palmer’s wife murder, but Magnum had no idea who she was. As it turned out, Marshal had dialed the wrong number, and Palmer killed his wife after all.
After Quantum & Woody discovered that Magnum had part of a circuit board, a piece of a decryption device that could read US military codes, hidden at the bottom of a bottle of Pepsi, they surrendered him to US embassy officials.
NoogieDuring a hostage situation in a mall, Woody shot the victim with blank bullets filled with paint and then flirted with her much to Quantum’s chagrin. In the days that followed, Eric grew increasingly frustrated with Woody’s immaturity, and realizing that he was stuck with Woody for life he questioned his place in the world as a superhero. Sharing his concerns with Joe, Quantum left him with the question of what it would take for Joe to take him seriously as a hero. That night, Quantum stopped Willie Maye, a homeless man, from stealing a TV. During an exchange of words, Willie kept calling Quantum the N–Word as he explained that he bought the TV. Arriving on the scene, Woody, who knew Willie Maye from when he lived on the streets, translated Willie’s street slang for Quantum and learned that he bought the TV from a friend in need of cash. Angered by Willie’s use of the N–Word, Quantum confronted Woody over his need for space, when then Woody accidentally knocked his band against a pipe and released an energy blast that seemed to blow Eric up.
YikesPosing as a cabbie, Woody stole three security guards ID badges that he and Amy Fishbein used to infiltrate a diplomatic reception at the World Trade Center that turned into a hostage crisis when “Othello”, a terrorist posing as an ambassador, ordered his cadre to subdue the guests. Sneaking into the ventilation shaft during the commotion, Eric removed the disguise he wore to enter the reception and changed into his uniform. Jumping down from the ceiling, Quantum came to blows with Othello, when just then Woody threw a litter of goat milk on his face that woke him up from his dream.
Woody explained that the concussion blast knocked Eric off the ceiling onto the alley, where he found him laying on the ground. After that he met a homeless kid who went by the name of “Bat” Man who got him the milk he used to wake Eric. While Eric discovered that his band released a destructive energy blast that destroyed “Bat” Man’s cart and all his possessions with it, Joe left with Woody to find a crack mom who snatched her sick baby from the hospital. Staring at his cape hanging from a fire escape, Eric stayed behind upset with how different his real life was from his dream life. Calling Eric Quantum, “Bat” Man told him that, like him, all he could do was do the best he could with the hand that life dealt him. Encouraged by “Bat” Man’s use of his codename, Woody left to help Joe and Woody.
Following the woman’s trail to a movie theater, Quantum convinced her to give him her baby. Bursting into the theater calling Eric by his code–name, Woody found him giving administering CPR to the baby, whom he then placed in an infant warmer. Enthused by Woody’s use of his code–name, Eric went back home.
Tick, Tick, TickWaking up at five am, Eric left to run through the park, then two hours later he and Woody clanged their bands to recharge their energy matrices. The next morning, Woody was nowhere to be found, which made Eric increasingly upset. Six hours later, “Bat” Man –now called Taylor 88 due to copyright problems – came to Eric’s office to ask for a job to make up for the stuff he destroyed. Upset when Eric offered him a check in lieu of work, Taylor wanted to know where Woody was to ask him what he thought about the situation. When Eric said that Woody just took off, Taylor asked him if he had considered that he may be in trouble. Giving Taylor’s concern some credence, Eric took him inside the secret workshop where he changed into Quantum.
Coming up empty after searching Woody’s office and loft, Quantum asked Joe for access to the police records of the explosion that destroyed his father’s lab because he believed that, like he and Woody, David Warrant had survived and planned to kill them to steal their father’s company. After reviewing the records and learning that the blast did not generate enough heat to vaporize a human being, Eric came to the conclusion that Warrant was alive and had his best friend.
An hour before his matrix destabilized, Eric went to visit Eloise, Warrant’s mother, and asked her to let him see David’s possessions. To Eric’s surprise, Eloise did not know that David was dead and believed that Eric was the brother of David’s girlfriend, Holly Williams. While Eric properly introduced himself to Holly, Eloise knocked him out with a pan. Waking up with only minutes to go before he dissipated, Eric broke free of the restrains Eloise and Holly tied him with and searched Warrant’s possessions for a way to save his life. Finding a pair of control bands, Eric clanged one with his and unexpectedly reassimilated David Warrant back into flesh from his energy state.
TockDemanding to know where Woody was, Eric shot Warrant and the blast pushed him out of the house through a wall. Just then, Eloise pummeled Eric with a ladle while Holly ran toward David, who asked her to get him the control bands because he was dying. Though Warrant tried to explain that he did not know what he was talking about, Eric kept shooting him, when then Holly gave Warrant his bands and he used them to create an energized sonic boom that destroyed most of the house and knocked Eric, Eloise, and Holly off their feet. While Warrant flew away with his injured mother in his arms, Holly punched Eric out with a right cross.
Awakening with his hands tied to his back in a tub filled with water that prevented him from triggering his band without boiling himself, Eric told Holly how Warrant caused the accident that changed him and Woody, who he believed Warrant had kidnapped. Convinced that David would not harm a fly, Holly told Eric that she believed that he, Woody, and David, who most likely did not walk out of the lab, were part of an isolated system, and that in all likelihood he brought David back to life when he clang their bands together. Just then Taylor arrived and Eric, who by then had freed himself, left with him to search for Warrant.
While Quantum & Taylor were on their way to search for Eloise at a hospital, Warrant pushed their car off the road. Standing over Quantum while he came out of the wreck, Warrant reiterated that he did not do anything to Woody, then he said that the last thing he remembered was trying to save them from the ISO chamber. Doubtful, Quantum aimed his band at Warrant, who told him that in his quest to find villains where there was none he missed out the obvious and gave him a cell phone he used to call their loft, where Woody picked up.
Returning to the loft, Eric chastised Woody for missing their link up. Retorting that it did not matter since they were alive, Woody told Eric that when he could not find him he went to work at his part–time security job at a toy store and that he had been trying to call him for hours on the comm link in his costume, which Eric said he did not have on. Repeating Holly’s theory as his own, Eric said that when he recharged his energy it recharged Woody’s as well. When Eric asked Woody why he had a job, Woody angrily said that it was because his trust fund administrator, Eric, was a penny–pinching allowance Nazi. After yelling at each other for a while, Woody asked Eric if he was really worried about him, but Eric told him not to be ridiculous.
KYAGIn need of money of his own, Woody licensed Quantum & Woody for a cartoon version of their exploits alongside their goat Vincent, Mark Waid in a Woodchuck suit, and two lesbians. At the end of his rope, Eric warned Woody that the next time he did anything that would affect him negatively he would be done with him. Sometime afterwards, a group of terrorists took over 50 motorists hostage in the Queens Midtown tunnel with a car bomb. While Quantum disposed of the terrorists Woody was stuck in the loft looking for his boots, which Vincent chewed raw. Upset, Quantum told Woody not to bother showing up.
Ignoring Quantum’s admonition, Woody made his way to the tunnel. Arriving after Quantum disposed of the terrorists and sent the hostages out, Woody inadvertently found himself at the end of the cops’ guns, which scared the hostages back into the tunnel. While Quantum forced the last terrorist to tell him how to deactivate the bomb, Woody aimed his gun at the hostages. Focusing on Tempest Sheridan, an attractive woman in the crowd, Woody was certain that she was a plant placed by the terrorists due to the bulge of a gun strapped to her ankle. However, Tempest turned out to be FBI, while the plant was really an old lady with a Magnum.
After Quantum destroyed the woman’s weapon with a blast from his band, another terrorist picked up an automatic weapon and pinned everyone to the ground. When the terrorist had to reload, Woody shot him with his paint gun and distracted him long enough so that he could punch him. While Woody helped the hostages escape, Quantum snuck into the van, where he came across Warrant, whom he had an appointment with to study the phenomena of what their bands could do. Before Quantum could cut the bomb’s wire using his cheat book, Woody went back and drove the van to the river to dispose of the bomb. During the ride there, Woody, in his own particular way, expressed how important it was that Eric appreciated him as a friend, so soon as they reached the port, he used his band to push Eric and Warrant out of the van, which then exploded.
SplatWhen Woody and Eric were kids, Woody pretended to be a blind boy scout to sneak into the girl’s locker room, until Eric blew his cover by throwing a baseball at him. Ever the schemer, Woody told the girls that he “heard” the ball coming toward him. Outside the locker room, Eric wondered how Woody managed to get away with his schemes, to which Amy assured him that Woody was evil and that God would punish him.
During a mission set before the terrorist attack, Quantum & Woody jumped out of an airplane to escape from Terence Magnum’s thugs. While plummeting to the ground, Quantum realized that Woody did not have a parachute and tried to give him his, but Woody refused, which led to a struggle that ended with them letting go of the parachute, which opened up and floated away. Combining the force beam and energy beam from their wristbands, Quantum & Woody managed to slow down their descent and land safely in the street.
CapesWith Warrant’s help, Quantum took Woody to Galloway and Galloway, where he hoped that the scientists at Zeus: Control could help him. Though Warrant had no problem going through the doors, Quantum lacked the proper security clearance to go pass Dr. Helvin, who insisted that he stay outside or else he would not help him. Not one to take orders, Quantum decided to look out for Woody his way. After disabling the security cameras, Quantum made his way through the ventilation docks, unaware that the Troublemakers were watching him.
Amazed by Quantum’s cape, Parker Matthews, Zach Helvin, and Jane Ngo followed him to a secluded ledge overlooking Zeus: Control, unaware that Quantum was stalking them too. Below them, Christine Helvin used her biomorphic field to excel Woody’s energy matrix to push him off into an energy state that Dr. Helvin theorized would reset itself. Unfortunately, that was when the kids discovered Quantum hiding behind them, which upset Jane, who lost control of her Chaos field and caused the ledge to give way. Plummeting down, the kids fell on top of Christine while Quantum fell on top of Woody, whose energy matrix did reset itself as planned, except that, for an unknown reason, his consciousness was in Quantum’s body and vice versa.
SwitchSometime after their unexpected switch, Woody and Quantum responded to an alarm at a bank and came across Tempest, who stole their car to chase down the robber’s van. While Tempest ran through the robber’s van with the car, Woody and Quantum dispatched three of the robbers on motorcycles with their wristbands. Hearing the police sirens in the distance, Woody and Quantum left before the cops arrived, leaving Tempest, who quickly grasped their situation, to deal with the subdued robbers.
In the days that followed, Eric and Woody’s disparate personalities made coming to terms with their situation difficult. From Eric cutting Woody’s hair and Woody sewing dreadlocks to Eric’s scalp in retaliation, Woody getting up at 5 am due to Eric’s physical conditioning, to uncomfortable trips to the bathroom together, Eric and Woody adjusted to their circumstances as best they could, a feat not easily accomplished.
One night while the boys staked out 8–Ball, a take–down artist whose crew knocked over a jewelry store, Eric took him down unaware that 8–Ball was one of the biggest gangsters in town. Captured by 8–Ball’s men, Woody and Quantum found themselves chained to a wall in a billiard hall where while Eric did his best to intimidate 8–Ball into letting them go, Woody did his best to mock Eric. While staring at the barrel of 8–Ball’s gun, Eric, fed up with Woody’s attitude, dared him to save them, which he did by uttering a phrase in gang terminology that scared the bejesus out of 8–Ball and his crew, who ran away in dread.
Where The Streets Have No NameUnder the drizzle of a light snowfall, Woody – still stuck in Eric’s body – visited a street corner where he held a candlelight vigil for Tammy, a young prostitute he met when he lived in the streets. Shortly after his mother died, Woody moved in with Tammy, who time and time again he promised he would get off the streets with his father’s money. In the end, however, this was not to be as Kenny, Tammy’s pimp, killed her.
Meanwhile, Eric – still stuck in Woody’s body – reached an impasse in his search for a cure to his and Woody’s condition. While Dr. Helvin suggested that he reach out to the military for help, Eric felt anxious for Woody, who the longer he remained in Eric’s body, the higher the risk was that he would succumb to his heart ailment, a condition Eric developed while at the Point that he kept hidden from Woody.
Though Taylor 88 and Willie Mae consoled him, Woody refused to let go of his hatred for Kenny, when then, Vincent appeared out of nowhere holding one of the Eternal Warrior’s fold maps in his mouth. Using the map, Woody took Kenny from his jail cell to kill him. Feeling betrayed, Kenny confessed that he took the blame for Tammy’s murder for someone else from Washington who he believed sent Woody to kill him. Refusing to believe Kenny’s words, Woody suffered a heart attack and collapsed on the floor.
RoarIn 1994, Eric traveled to Africa to learn the way of the Black Lion from Master Antanku, a trickster mystic who got Eric to discard all of his possessions in exchange of a trinket he claimed would protect him on his quest. Once Eric left, Antanku went over what he discarded and found a note that Woody had left in his father’s office two years earlier that Eric stumbled on and kept. Dialing the number on the note, Antanku called Woody in New York and suggested that he let go of his anger, which only enraged him and caused him to throw his phone out the window and hit a passerby. Meanwhile, Eric came upon the black lion, a powerful beast that rubbed itself against Eric like a cat, which impressed Antanku, who let Eric stay.
Two years later, Antanku delivered a notice to Eric that said that his father had died. Though Antanku warned him that the secret of the black lion would be lost to him forever if he left, Eric walked away promising to return, when just then, the black lion leapt out at him and bit him in the neck. Nudged by a flight attendant, Eric awoke from his dream in a plane headed back to America, where at that same moment, Woody received a notice that told him that his father was dead too
In 1997, Eric – still in Woody’s body – helped Woody – still in Eric’s body – escape from the hospital where the cops took him after they found him collapsed on the prison’s basement. After assuring Joe Tomorrow that they would find Kenny, Quantum violently chastised Woody for his lack of judgment in dealing with Kenny, yet he emphasized the fact that as his partner he had to back him up even when he was wrong. The next day, Joe found Kenny dead on a rooftop, where Woody tried to convince Eric that he believed Kenny’s claim that someone else was behind Tammy’s murder. In the end, Joe took Woody and Eric in for questioning because Kenny had Woody’s gun when he died.
Enough AlreadyOne night at Affirm Research, Eric – still in Woody’s body – fired Taylor from his job as his receptionist so he could hire Amy Fishbein in his place. Meanwhile downstairs, Woody – still in Eric’s body – tried to warn Amy of Eric’s plan, but since he was still in Eric’s body she thought that he was crazy. Upstairs in Eric’s office, Amy planted a passionate kiss on Woody’s lips which took Eric aback. While Eric tried to make Amy understand that he was not Woody, she spoke to him as if he were Woody, the boy that took her virginity. Though Eric took Amy to his lab (through Woody’s door as his holographic display failed to recognize his voice) and showed her everything, she still refused to believe him and left in a huff. On her way out, she tripped over Vincent and hit her head with a television. Just then, Woody came into the office with Taylor, who took Amy’s pulse and said that she was dead… then he asked for his job back.
As it happened, Amy did not die, she just passed out from the bump to the head. Later that night, Eric and Woody visited Holly, Warrant’s girlfriend, looking for Warrant to help them with their situation. Though Holly did not know where David was, she assured the duo that in time their energy matrices would re–set themselves through a buffer in their wristbands. What neither of them knew was that Warrant was on the moon passing the time watching television.
The next day, Eric and Woody went through their routine of exercising , sleeping late, having breakfast while listening to inhumanly loud music, and clanging their wristbands, which unbeknownst to them reset their energy matrices and put their consciousness back. When Eric tried to open his car, the door did not open because he had reinitialized its security lockout for Woody’s hand. Frustrated, Eric drew the attention of the cops, who arrested him after Taylor refused to vouch for him when he found out that he was not Woody.
That night, while Woody visited Eric in Jail, back at Affirm Research Taylor put on a costume Eric had made for Amy, when then Terence Magnum and his thugs arrived. Thinking that Taylor was Woody, Magnum decided to use him to send a message to Eric. When Woody returned to the office, he found Taylor hanging from a noose on the ceiling, but before he could register what was happening, an armored thug shot him in the chest with an energy beam that knocked him off his feet. Standing over Woody, the thug dropped a note on him with the word “War”. Meanwhile at the police station, Magnum paid Eric’s bail and gave him a duffle bag with his costume inside it, which he claimed he was going to need for the war had begun.
Magnum ForceRound One: WarOn a helicopter over Magnum’s Moroccan compound, Woody, who blamed himself for Taylor’s death, prepared himself for a fight with Magnum’s forces, when just then a missile shot their transport. Armed with two machine guns, Woody leapt out of the chopper as it burned with Quantum right behind him. After cushioning his fall with his wristband, Woody shot Magnum’s soldiers intent on killing the lot of them, unaware that Quantum had replaced his ammo with rubber bullets.
After a relatively–easy skirmish with Magnum’s men, whom Woody figured were not going to kill them so Magnum could use footage of the battle to showcase his product, Quantum & Woody made their way inside the compound, where a seemingly innocent guard with a can of Pepsi locked them inside a room with three armored men that they quickly defeated. While backtracking their steps to find a new way around, Woody seemed to have come to his senses and no longer seemed interested in killing Magnum, when then they came across War Locke, Magnum’s super–empowered enforcer, and he lost his cool, which promoted Quantum to push him out the door while he dealt with War Locke.
Making his way back, Woody found the guard, then, while he pulled the mask covering his face, he revealed that he knew he was Magnum in disguise because of the can of Pepsi. Enraged and feeling guilty, Woody beat Magnum within an inch of his life to punish him for turning him into Taylor’s killer. Just then, Woody found himself surrounded by an electric glow that drained him of his energy. As Woody collapsed on the floor, War Locke entered the room dragging Quantum behind him. Grabbing Woody by the collar, War Locke dragged him alongside Quantum toward the exit while he left Magnum stayed behind seemingly lifeless.
Round Two: PeaceIn a secret complex, War Locke has trouble sleeping due to Woody’s relentless crowning of Jesus Is On The Main Line from inside a crystal tube War Locke sealed him. Although War Locke threatened to kill him and Quantum, who was in a crystal tube of his own, Woody scoffed at his threats because if he was going to kill them he would have by now. Woody offered to stop singing if War Locke joined him in a chorus of the song, but War Locke retreated into his bedroom swearing that he would kill them both for this.
Suddenly, Vincent appeared out of thin air on top of Quantum’s tube followed by Citadel and Tempest, who were in search of a kid that Vincent stashed somewhere. When Tempest asked the guys where they bought Vincent, thinking that was where he took the kid, Citadel teleported away. After freeing Woody from the tube, Tempest leapt off it with Vincent and they followed Citadel to Malaysia.
Convinced that War Locke would kill them, Quantum wanted to escape, but Woody, certain that War Locke was holding them captive for Magnum and would not hurt them, wanted to kill him so they could go home. As a battle began, the boys learned that War Locke possessed powers similar to theirs when he shot Woody and momentarily reverted him to energy. On the run, Quantum & Woody found themselves in a deadly training room surrounded by floating spheres armed with lasers that restricted their movement. When War Locke showed himself the guys shot him with their wristbands and he melted into a pool of goo. Although Woody was sure that they had defeated him, War Locke reassembled himself and came after them.
After escaping from a room filled with flammable material, Quantum & Woody made their way to a large metal door that they believed led to the outside. While Woody kept War Locke at bay with his force beams, Quantum opened the door and discovered a giant rock face behind it. As an enraged War Locke lunged against them, Quantum & Woody clanged their wristbands and the energy release tore War Locke asunder, which resulted in a discharge that ignited the flammable material and caused the installation to explode.
The Goat HAEDUS – The TrollWhile repairing a monitor bank at Affirm Research, a maintenance worker received a call telling him to go to an Inquest complex and repair a malfunctioning router. Just then, he came across Vincent, who, empowered by the Eternal Warriors’ fold map he ate, teleported him across town to the Inquest facility. As it happened, a man working for the intergalactic arms dealer Citadel had sabotaged the router to allow Citadel entry into the facility so he could retrieve a child code–named X19, the carrier of one of the deadliest viruses on Earth. Before Citadel could enter X19’s room, however, Vincent bonded with the child and teleported him away.
When FBI Agent Tempest Sheridan arrived on the scene to investigate X19’s disappearance on behalf of the CDC, two unidentified armed men in bio–hazard suits attacked her and destroyed her own suit. Just then, Vincent returned and the men followed him into a vortex. After donning Amy Fishbein’s uniform, which she found in a duffle bag from Affirm Research, Tempest left to investigate what linked Vincent to the kid.
After Joe and Holly told her how Vincent’s powers worked, Tempest, following Holly’s advise, returned to Affirm Research thinking that Vincent would go home. Instead she found Citadel, who revealed that the men who shot at her worked for the government, who wanted to kill X19.
Using the transporter in his uniform to track Vincent, Citadel took Tempest across the globe until he lost his trail. Tracing the comm signals in Quantum & Woody’s to a secret complex, Tempest and Citadel found Vincent standing atop a glass container holding Quantum captive. When Tempest asked the guys where they bought Vincent, thinking that was where he took the kid, Citadel teleported away. After freeing Woody from the tube, Tempest leapt off it with Vincent and they followed Citadel to Malaysia.
Grabbing hold of Vincent’s cape, Tempest followed him across the space–time continuum through different dimensions in a futile search for X19 that culminated back at Affirm Research. Tempest was ready to give up, when then Vincent took her to a meadow atop a mountain where she found X19 surrounded by dead cattle, two sheepherders, and the bodies of the men that shot at her earlier.
While Citadel pushed Tempest to choose between letting the government take the boy or letting him take him, Vincent approached X19 and the energy in his body reacted to the virus, which pushed him off the cliff into a river. Leaping after him, Tempest grabbed hold of Vincent, who teleported back to Affirm Research, where Citadel revealed that the X19 virus mutated Vincent’s genetic structure, and when Vincent reinfected X19 with the mutated strain, it rendered the X19 virus inert and cured the boy. Showing that he was not a bad guy after all, Citadel handed Tempest a card with the address to the house of the daughter she gave away.
Round Three: FearHaving survived the explosion, Quantum & Woody awoke inside a metal tube over pool of acidic toxic waste left over by the explosion, which shorted out their wristbands. Holding a chain coupled to the tube, War Locke, who as a result of the explosion was crazier than before, reverted between his liquid and solid states while watching a recording of Terence Magnum stuck in a loop repeatedly saying “kill them”.
As the tube fell into the acid, Woody panicked while Quantum mumbled incoherently while he futility tried to get them out. Just then, War Locke vanished for good and the recording skipped back to reveal that Magnum’s order was not to kill them. Realizing that Quantum was praying, Woody tried to shoot the tube’s lid with his gun, but he dropped the magazine in the acid. Lighting his Zippo to look for it, Woody ignited the acid’s fumes and that caused the tube to shoot up out through the roof.
Crashing on a snowy mountain slope, the tube broke open and tossed out Quantum & Woody, who slid down a cliff. Holding on to a rock protruding out of the ground, Eric pulled Woody to safety, when just then a trio of helicopters swooped down and fired at them. Running in separate directions, Eric and Woody went their own way. Cornered in a cave by a group of Magnum’s soldiers, Woody was done for, until War Locke returned and killed all them, as Magnum ordered, and then vanished again. Boarding a sled, Woody sped down the mountain and found a wrecked sled that he discovered belonged to Eric, who was running away.
In a rage, Eric and Woody lashed out at each other. While Eric accused Woody of almost getting them killed due to his guilt over Tammy’s dead, his obsession with his dead, and his arrested development, Woody confessed that the reason he suggested that become heroes was to save Eric, his best friend, who could not score with Amy Fishbein, and whose parents had screwed up. Upset with one another, Quantum & Woody removed the deactivated control bands from their wrists and went their separate ways.
The Final Round: HateThree days later, Magnum, bound to a hovering chair after Woody’s blows nearly crippled him, found the control bands on the snow and ordered two of his soldiers to kill any living being they found on the mountain.
Surrounded by wolves, Eric, though exhausted and off his meds, took out his frustrations over his dismissal from the military, Woody, Amy’s rejections, and Woody (again) on the lot of them, when then he came across War Locke. Honor–bound to kill Eric to please his master, War Locke refused to believe Eric’s claims that their conflict ended before it began when Woody almost killed Magnum, a debate that became moot when Magnum’s soldiers attacked both of them. Working together, Eric and War Locke defeated the goons, but then turned on each other. Unexpectedly, Woody returned and knocked War Locke out with one punch.
Returning to Affirm Research with War Locke in tow, Woody told Eric that Vincent found him an hour after they parted ways and teleported him back home, where he called Tempest and Holly to help him find him. Using Intel Holly and Tempest provided, the guys followed Magnum to Paris. There they found that he had created an exact duplicate of their parents’ lab complete with the Iso–chamber, where they saw their control bands on top of a tray. Wondering why their parents created two control bands which sole purpose seemed to be to retain a genetic snap shot of their biological patterns, Woody entered the chamber to grab the bands. Sensing a trap, Quantum shut the door behind Woody to take him out of the game for being a loose cannon.
As the Iso–chamber filled with gas, Magnum showed himself. While shooting Quantum with energy guns in his chair, Magnum revealed that their parents’ control bands were not a force field as they believed, but a God Machine, the next evolution of mankind. After blowing the chamber’s glass with plasteek, Woody escaped the gas, but then Magnum activated a machine intended to replace Quantum & Woody’s patterns within the control bands with his own while his clients watched through a video feed. As it happened, however, Quantum had fallen within reach of the panel that regulated the power flow that was erasing their energy patterns and disrupted its function, which disintegrated Magnum.
And So…As Woody mockingly helped Quantum to his feet, a group of Les Tactiques Speciales officers broke in through the ceiling and windows. Escaping after a brief skirmish, the boys made their way to the sewers, were the cops ultimately detained them. Meanwhile on the moon, David Warrant met Lysander, a member of the dwindling forever family, who following the poisoning of the bloom was dying. Though uncertain of Warrant’s alignment, Lysander took him to Lunawatch, the family’s safe haven on the moon.
Back in Paris, the police locked up Eric and Woody in jail while they figured out their real identities. At ease, Woody was certain that Vincent would come get them, unaware that he was off on an island at the time. That night, after Woody tortured Eric for hours with his vain attempt to call Warrant to help them escape, Nicole Astin Gray, Eric’s mother, arrived in the prison and surprised the boys.
HeroesAfter bailing Eric out of prison, Nicole took Eric to dinner and revealed that the reason she left his father was because he accused her of being an unfit mother after she and Eric were in a car accident with Lucy and Woody that almost killed him. After dinner, Nicole took Eric to Climaxx, her management investment group before his flight for New York left. Back in NYC, Woody disposed of his outfit and went home to have dinner with Holly, Vincent, and Tempest, who was getting used to wearing the uniform Eric made for Amy.
Back in Paris, Nicole introduced Eric to Toyo Harada as her associate. After Harada walked away, Eric, upset by Nicole’s failure to introduce him as her son, confronted his mother, but she ignored his concerns. Back in NYC, Woody helped Tempest break into a bar used by an extreme anti–government faction, but when it came time to raid the facility, Tempest’s fellow agents kept Woody outside because he was not one of them, a fact that made him wonder exactly what he was now.
Back in Paris, Quantum confronted Harada, who told him of a coming storm that would engulf the planet that only the quantum power he had recently surrendered could stop. Getting into his limo, Toyo’s final words to Quantum hinted that Warrant may be the one to save the world. Meanwhile on the moon, Warrant offered to help Lysander find a cure for the forever family’s ailment.
HeroesThat night, Quantum broke into the police precinct looking for the wristbands, which Inspector Levar offered to return in exchange for his help dealing with a bomb in an office tower planted by a group of right wing extremists. Leaping into the tower from a police chopper, Quantum dealt with the extremists and deactivated the bomb in the time that it took the same chopper to land in the streets. After delivering the prisoners and the bomb to Levar, Quantum left amid cheers from the crowd calling his name, which greatly elevated his spirit.
After seeing Quantum’s heroics on TV, Woody’s feelings of jealousy made him feel out of sorts to the point that he found himself acting like a hero on instinct. Looking for direction, Woody became aware of a comic called Dark Kitty that was a reflection of his and Eric’s lives and decided to sue its publisher, Marble Comix.
In Dallas, Quantum dropped by Harada’s state, where Toyo explained that now that he and Woody no longer possessed their quantum–based powers, Warrant had become the sole recipient of the energy, which meant that to save the world David Warrant had to die.
RebirthOn the moon, Warrant told Lysander how he would use his power to help the Eternals’ immune systems to develop antibodies to Harada’s virus, while in Dallas Harada forced Quantum to choose between taking full command of the quantum power for himself or placing the fate of the world in Warrant’s hands. Meanwhile in NYC, Woody arrived at the offices of Marble Comix where he met Ruben Diaz, the editor of Dark Kitty.
While Warrant saturated Lunawatch’s atmosphere to begin the process, back on Earth Harada hooked Quantum to a replica of the Iso–chamber designed to channel the energy into him. At the same time as Warrant released the energy that would cure the Eternals, Harada activated the machine and funneled the energy into Quantum, taking all of it away from its then–current holder, Warrant. Back at Marble Comix, Woody and Ruben bonded over a couple of rank sodas.
Stirred by the rampant energy, Vincent led Woody, Ruben, and Ruben’s secretary outside, where a storm was brewing. There they come across Sidne, the female half of the Man of the Atom, who, aware of what Harada was doing, told them that Vincent would led them to Quantum. Arriving at the Dallas installation, Woody, Ruben, and Sidne were too late to stop Quantum from absorbing all of the energy into himself and becoming the living embodiment of the quantum field. With the power no longer his, Warrant and Lysander were unable to control the rampant energies they had set free and the moon exploded.
EclipseEclipse Book 3: The Mirror Has Four FacesAfter Quantum and Woody failed to stop Doctor Eclipse, Quantum visited Commissioner Tomorrow, who chastised Eric for choosing a child as his partner in light of what happened to Taylor. Meanwhile, Doctor Eclipse returned to his castle, where his loud guitar playing exasperated his wife Amy, who picked up a gun and shot him. Standing up, Doctor Eclipse – the man formerly known as Woody Van Chelton – urged Amy to continue searching for a mysterious device that would help him stop Eric from destroying the world.
Back in NYC, Quantum conferred with Tempest and Holly, who found a way to destroy the device Doctor Eclipse was looking for. Though he risked killing Eclipse, Quantum told Holly to destroy the device and then ordered the Armorines to rush the castle. Transporting there with Woody and Vincent, Quantum inadvertently fell within Doctor Eclipse’s grasp.
After fifteen years of separation, Eric and Woody met again at their father’s funeral, where Detective Joe Tamara, also known as Joe Tomorrow, inferred that they were behind their fathers’ deaths. Since he knew that he could not count on the cops, Eric decided to take things into his own hands. Finding a pair of metal bands among his fathers’ possessions, Eric put them on, but later Woody made him give him one. Thinking that David Warrant, their fathers’ assistant, was behind their deaths, Eric and Woody followed him to their father’s lab. While snooping around the place, Eric, fed up with Woody’s inability to take things seriously, pushed him inside an iso–chamber. Locking the door behind him, Eric lashed out at Woody and let out all the frustrations he felt with him. As they fought, their fathers’ electromagnetic containment field came on and they saw Warrant standing outside next to the control console. As the electromagnet slowly transformed them into energy, Eric and Woody clanged their bands, causing a massive explosion that destroyed the lab and seemingly killed Warrant. Detective Tomorrow later found the two of them unconscious in a ditch outside the building.
Another StoryA few days later, Eric and Woody awoke to discover that they were reverting back into energy. Clanging their bands together reverted the process, and eventually they learned that the control bands had banded with their molecular structure, and that if they did not link them once every 24 hours their energy matrixes would break down. Like it or not, they were stuck together for life, not only physically but also economically, as Woody’s father had named Eric executor of his state, meaning that he controlled his inheritance. Angered, Woody stormed off. A few weeks later, Woody decided that he and Eric should do something more with their powers than get together once a day to argue and clang their bands together. He suggested that they become investigators, but, not one to go half way, Eric wanted more. Garbed in costume–made uniforms, Eric renamed himself Quantum, after the energy pool they draw from, while Woody… remained Woody.
On their first case, the murder of Ed Palmer’s wife – who the cops were convinced Ed Palmer killed –, Quantum & Woody scaled a Manhattan high rise to get a jump on Frank Marshal, an arms dealer who left a message on Palmer’s machine 20 minutes before the murder. First, however, they had to get past Woody’s costume riding up on him, two vicious kids armed with high–tech water guns, a crowd yelling at them to jump, and a plate of bulletproof glass.
Yet Another StoryContinuing their murder investigation, Quantum & Woody broke into Marshall’s apartment, where Quantum found what he maintained was a dye that Woody insisted was cool–aide. After confronting Marshall, who insisted that he dialed the wrong number, Quantum & Woody followed the dye to Malaysia, where Woody bought a goat he threatened to kill so a group of monks would tell him where the dye came from. Told that it came from a textile mill that belonged to Terrence Magnum, a global financier with a private army supplied by Frank Marshal, Quantum & Woody traveled to Switzerland. As they climbed a mountain on their way to Magnum’s secret hideout, a helicopter shot at them. Quickly dispatching their attackers, Quantum & Woody broke into Magnum’s hideout, where they found a blade with hieroglyphs that led them to Egypt. Realizing that Quantum read the wrong glyphs, Woody read the right one on the blade’s hilt, which said “ Made in Taiwan”. Finding Magnum, Quantum confronted him over Ed Palmer’s wife murder, but Magnum had no idea who she was. As it turned out, Marshal had dialed the wrong number, and Palmer killed his wife after all.
After Quantum & Woody discovered that Magnum had part of a circuit board, a piece of a decryption device that could read US military codes, hidden at the bottom of a bottle of Pepsi, they surrendered him to US embassy officials.
NoogieDuring a hostage situation in a mall, Woody shot the victim with blank bullets filled with paint and then flirted with her much to Quantum’s chagrin. In the days that followed, Eric grew increasingly frustrated with Woody’s immaturity, and realizing that he was stuck with Woody for life he questioned his place in the world as a superhero. Sharing his concerns with Joe, Quantum left him with the question of what it would take for Joe to take him seriously as a hero. That night, Quantum stopped Willie Maye, a homeless man, from stealing a TV. During an exchange of words, Willie kept calling Quantum the N–Word as he explained that he bought the TV. Arriving on the scene, Woody, who knew Willie Maye from when he lived on the streets, translated Willie’s street slang for Quantum and learned that he bought the TV from a friend in need of cash. Angered by Willie’s use of the N–Word, Quantum confronted Woody over his need for space, when then Woody accidentally knocked his band against a pipe and released an energy blast that seemed to blow Eric up.
YikesPosing as a cabbie, Woody stole three security guards ID badges that he and Amy Fishbein used to infiltrate a diplomatic reception at the World Trade Center that turned into a hostage crisis when “Othello”, a terrorist posing as an ambassador, ordered his cadre to subdue the guests. Sneaking into the ventilation shaft during the commotion, Eric removed the disguise he wore to enter the reception and changed into his uniform. Jumping down from the ceiling, Quantum came to blows with Othello, when just then Woody threw a litter of goat milk on his face that woke him up from his dream.
Woody explained that the concussion blast knocked Eric off the ceiling onto the alley, where he found him laying on the ground. After that he met a homeless kid who went by the name of “Bat” Man who got him the milk he used to wake Eric. While Eric discovered that his band released a destructive energy blast that destroyed “Bat” Man’s cart and all his possessions with it, Joe left with Woody to find a crack mom who snatched her sick baby from the hospital. Staring at his cape hanging from a fire escape, Eric stayed behind upset with how different his real life was from his dream life. Calling Eric Quantum, “Bat” Man told him that, like him, all he could do was do the best he could with the hand that life dealt him. Encouraged by “Bat” Man’s use of his codename, Woody left to help Joe and Woody.
Following the woman’s trail to a movie theater, Quantum convinced her to give him her baby. Bursting into the theater calling Eric by his code–name, Woody found him giving administering CPR to the baby, whom he then placed in an infant warmer. Enthused by Woody’s use of his code–name, Eric went back home.
Tick, Tick, TickWaking up at five am, Eric left to run through the park, then two hours later he and Woody clanged their bands to recharge their energy matrices. The next morning, Woody was nowhere to be found, which made Eric increasingly upset. Six hours later, “Bat” Man –now called Taylor 88 due to copyright problems – came to Eric’s office to ask for a job to make up for the stuff he destroyed. Upset when Eric offered him a check in lieu of work, Taylor wanted to know where Woody was to ask him what he thought about the situation. When Eric said that Woody just took off, Taylor asked him if he had considered that he may be in trouble. Giving Taylor’s concern some credence, Eric took him inside the secret workshop where he changed into Quantum.
Coming up empty after searching Woody’s office and loft, Quantum asked Joe for access to the police records of the explosion that destroyed his father’s lab because he believed that, like he and Woody, David Warrant had survived and planned to kill them to steal their father’s company. After reviewing the records and learning that the blast did not generate enough heat to vaporize a human being, Eric came to the conclusion that Warrant was alive and had his best friend.
An hour before his matrix destabilized, Eric went to visit Eloise, Warrant’s mother, and asked her to let him see David’s possessions. To Eric’s surprise, Eloise did not know that David was dead and believed that Eric was the brother of David’s girlfriend, Holly Williams. While Eric properly introduced himself to Holly, Eloise knocked him out with a pan. Waking up with only minutes to go before he dissipated, Eric broke free of the restrains Eloise and Holly tied him with and searched Warrant’s possessions for a way to save his life. Finding a pair of control bands, Eric clanged one with his and unexpectedly reassimilated David Warrant back into flesh from his energy state.
TockDemanding to know where Woody was, Eric shot Warrant and the blast pushed him out of the house through a wall. Just then, Eloise pummeled Eric with a ladle while Holly ran toward David, who asked her to get him the control bands because he was dying. Though Warrant tried to explain that he did not know what he was talking about, Eric kept shooting him, when then Holly gave Warrant his bands and he used them to create an energized sonic boom that destroyed most of the house and knocked Eric, Eloise, and Holly off their feet. While Warrant flew away with his injured mother in his arms, Holly punched Eric out with a right cross.
Awakening with his hands tied to his back in a tub filled with water that prevented him from triggering his band without boiling himself, Eric told Holly how Warrant caused the accident that changed him and Woody, who he believed Warrant had kidnapped. Convinced that David would not harm a fly, Holly told Eric that she believed that he, Woody, and David, who most likely did not walk out of the lab, were part of an isolated system, and that in all likelihood he brought David back to life when he clang their bands together. Just then Taylor arrived and Eric, who by then had freed himself, left with him to search for Warrant.
While Quantum & Taylor were on their way to search for Eloise at a hospital, Warrant pushed their car off the road. Standing over Quantum while he came out of the wreck, Warrant reiterated that he did not do anything to Woody, then he said that the last thing he remembered was trying to save them from the ISO chamber. Doubtful, Quantum aimed his band at Warrant, who told him that in his quest to find villains where there was none he missed out the obvious and gave him a cell phone he used to call their loft, where Woody picked up.
Returning to the loft, Eric chastised Woody for missing their link up. Retorting that it did not matter since they were alive, Woody told Eric that when he could not find him he went to work at his part–time security job at a toy store and that he had been trying to call him for hours on the comm link in his costume, which Eric said he did not have on. Repeating Holly’s theory as his own, Eric said that when he recharged his energy it recharged Woody’s as well. When Eric asked Woody why he had a job, Woody angrily said that it was because his trust fund administrator, Eric, was a penny–pinching allowance Nazi. After yelling at each other for a while, Woody asked Eric if he was really worried about him, but Eric told him not to be ridiculous.
KYAGIn need of money of his own, Woody licensed Quantum & Woody for a cartoon version of their exploits alongside their goat Vincent, Mark Waid in a Woodchuck suit, and two lesbians. At the end of his rope, Eric warned Woody that the next time he did anything that would affect him negatively he would be done with him. Sometime afterwards, a group of terrorists took over 50 motorists hostage in the Queens Midtown tunnel with a car bomb. While Quantum disposed of the terrorists Woody was stuck in the loft looking for his boots, which Vincent chewed raw. Upset, Quantum told Woody not to bother showing up.
Ignoring Quantum’s admonition, Woody made his way to the tunnel. Arriving after Quantum disposed of the terrorists and sent the hostages out, Woody inadvertently found himself at the end of the cops’ guns, which scared the hostages back into the tunnel. While Quantum forced the last terrorist to tell him how to deactivate the bomb, Woody aimed his gun at the hostages. Focusing on Tempest Sheridan, an attractive woman in the crowd, Woody was certain that she was a plant placed by the terrorists due to the bulge of a gun strapped to her ankle. However, Tempest turned out to be FBI, while the plant was really an old lady with a Magnum.
After Quantum destroyed the woman’s weapon with a blast from his band, another terrorist picked up an automatic weapon and pinned everyone to the ground. When the terrorist had to reload, Woody shot him with his paint gun and distracted him long enough so that he could punch him. While Woody helped the hostages escape, Quantum snuck into the van, where he came across Warrant, whom he had an appointment with to study the phenomena of what their bands could do. Before Quantum could cut the bomb’s wire using his cheat book, Woody went back and drove the van to the river to dispose of the bomb. During the ride there, Woody, in his own particular way, expressed how important it was that Eric appreciated him as a friend, so soon as they reached the port, he used his band to push Eric and Warrant out of the van, which then exploded.
SplatWhen Woody and Eric were kids, Woody pretended to be a blind boy scout to sneak into the girl’s locker room, until Eric blew his cover by throwing a baseball at him. Ever the schemer, Woody told the girls that he “heard” the ball coming toward him. Outside the locker room, Eric wondered how Woody managed to get away with his schemes, to which Amy assured him that Woody was evil and that God would punish him.
During a mission set before the terrorist attack, Quantum & Woody jumped out of an airplane to escape from Terence Magnum’s thugs. While plummeting to the ground, Quantum realized that Woody did not have a parachute and tried to give him his, but Woody refused, which led to a struggle that ended with them letting go of the parachute, which opened up and floated away. Combining the force beam and energy beam from their wristbands, Quantum & Woody managed to slow down their descent and land safely in the street.
CapesWith Warrant’s help, Quantum took Woody to Galloway and Galloway, where he hoped that the scientists at Zeus: Control could help him. Though Warrant had no problem going through the doors, Quantum lacked the proper security clearance to go pass Dr. Helvin, who insisted that he stay outside or else he would not help him. Not one to take orders, Quantum decided to look out for Woody his way. After disabling the security cameras, Quantum made his way through the ventilation docks, unaware that the Troublemakers were watching him.
Amazed by Quantum’s cape, Parker Matthews, Zach Helvin, and Jane Ngo followed him to a secluded ledge overlooking Zeus: Control, unaware that Quantum was stalking them too. Below them, Christine Helvin used her biomorphic field to excel Woody’s energy matrix to push him off into an energy state that Dr. Helvin theorized would reset itself. Unfortunately, that was when the kids discovered Quantum hiding behind them, which upset Jane, who lost control of her Chaos field and caused the ledge to give way. Plummeting down, the kids fell on top of Christine while Quantum fell on top of Woody, whose energy matrix did reset itself as planned, except that, for an unknown reason, his consciousness was in Quantum’s body and vice versa.
SwitchSometime after their unexpected switch, Woody and Quantum responded to an alarm at a bank and came across Tempest, who stole their car to chase down the robber’s van. While Tempest ran through the robber’s van with the car, Woody and Quantum dispatched three of the robbers on motorcycles with their wristbands. Hearing the police sirens in the distance, Woody and Quantum left before the cops arrived, leaving Tempest, who quickly grasped their situation, to deal with the subdued robbers.
In the days that followed, Eric and Woody’s disparate personalities made coming to terms with their situation difficult. From Eric cutting Woody’s hair and Woody sewing dreadlocks to Eric’s scalp in retaliation, Woody getting up at 5 am due to Eric’s physical conditioning, to uncomfortable trips to the bathroom together, Eric and Woody adjusted to their circumstances as best they could, a feat not easily accomplished.
One night while the boys staked out 8–Ball, a take–down artist whose crew knocked over a jewelry store, Eric took him down unaware that 8–Ball was one of the biggest gangsters in town. Captured by 8–Ball’s men, Woody and Quantum found themselves chained to a wall in a billiard hall where while Eric did his best to intimidate 8–Ball into letting them go, Woody did his best to mock Eric. While staring at the barrel of 8–Ball’s gun, Eric, fed up with Woody’s attitude, dared him to save them, which he did by uttering a phrase in gang terminology that scared the bejesus out of 8–Ball and his crew, who ran away in dread.
Where The Streets Have No NameUnder the drizzle of a light snowfall, Woody – still stuck in Eric’s body – visited a street corner where he held a candlelight vigil for Tammy, a young prostitute he met when he lived in the streets. Shortly after his mother died, Woody moved in with Tammy, who time and time again he promised he would get off the streets with his father’s money. In the end, however, this was not to be as Kenny, Tammy’s pimp, killed her.
Meanwhile, Eric – still stuck in Woody’s body – reached an impasse in his search for a cure to his and Woody’s condition. While Dr. Helvin suggested that he reach out to the military for help, Eric felt anxious for Woody, who the longer he remained in Eric’s body, the higher the risk was that he would succumb to his heart ailment, a condition Eric developed while at the Point that he kept hidden from Woody.
Though Taylor 88 and Willie Mae consoled him, Woody refused to let go of his hatred for Kenny, when then, Vincent appeared out of nowhere holding one of the Eternal Warrior’s fold maps in his mouth. Using the map, Woody took Kenny from his jail cell to kill him. Feeling betrayed, Kenny confessed that he took the blame for Tammy’s murder for someone else from Washington who he believed sent Woody to kill him. Refusing to believe Kenny’s words, Woody suffered a heart attack and collapsed on the floor.
RoarIn 1994, Eric traveled to Africa to learn the way of the Black Lion from Master Antanku, a trickster mystic who got Eric to discard all of his possessions in exchange of a trinket he claimed would protect him on his quest. Once Eric left, Antanku went over what he discarded and found a note that Woody had left in his father’s office two years earlier that Eric stumbled on and kept. Dialing the number on the note, Antanku called Woody in New York and suggested that he let go of his anger, which only enraged him and caused him to throw his phone out the window and hit a passerby. Meanwhile, Eric came upon the black lion, a powerful beast that rubbed itself against Eric like a cat, which impressed Antanku, who let Eric stay.
Two years later, Antanku delivered a notice to Eric that said that his father had died. Though Antanku warned him that the secret of the black lion would be lost to him forever if he left, Eric walked away promising to return, when just then, the black lion leapt out at him and bit him in the neck. Nudged by a flight attendant, Eric awoke from his dream in a plane headed back to America, where at that same moment, Woody received a notice that told him that his father was dead too
In 1997, Eric – still in Woody’s body – helped Woody – still in Eric’s body – escape from the hospital where the cops took him after they found him collapsed on the prison’s basement. After assuring Joe Tomorrow that they would find Kenny, Quantum violently chastised Woody for his lack of judgment in dealing with Kenny, yet he emphasized the fact that as his partner he had to back him up even when he was wrong. The next day, Joe found Kenny dead on a rooftop, where Woody tried to convince Eric that he believed Kenny’s claim that someone else was behind Tammy’s murder. In the end, Joe took Woody and Eric in for questioning because Kenny had Woody’s gun when he died.
Enough AlreadyOne night at Affirm Research, Eric – still in Woody’s body – fired Taylor from his job as his receptionist so he could hire Amy Fishbein in his place. Meanwhile downstairs, Woody – still in Eric’s body – tried to warn Amy of Eric’s plan, but since he was still in Eric’s body she thought that he was crazy. Upstairs in Eric’s office, Amy planted a passionate kiss on Woody’s lips which took Eric aback. While Eric tried to make Amy understand that he was not Woody, she spoke to him as if he were Woody, the boy that took her virginity. Though Eric took Amy to his lab (through Woody’s door as his holographic display failed to recognize his voice) and showed her everything, she still refused to believe him and left in a huff. On her way out, she tripped over Vincent and hit her head with a television. Just then, Woody came into the office with Taylor, who took Amy’s pulse and said that she was dead… then he asked for his job back.
As it happened, Amy did not die, she just passed out from the bump to the head. Later that night, Eric and Woody visited Holly, Warrant’s girlfriend, looking for Warrant to help them with their situation. Though Holly did not know where David was, she assured the duo that in time their energy matrices would re–set themselves through a buffer in their wristbands. What neither of them knew was that Warrant was on the moon passing the time watching television.
The next day, Eric and Woody went through their routine of exercising , sleeping late, having breakfast while listening to inhumanly loud music, and clanging their wristbands, which unbeknownst to them reset their energy matrices and put their consciousness back. When Eric tried to open his car, the door did not open because he had reinitialized its security lockout for Woody’s hand. Frustrated, Eric drew the attention of the cops, who arrested him after Taylor refused to vouch for him when he found out that he was not Woody.
That night, while Woody visited Eric in Jail, back at Affirm Research Taylor put on a costume Eric had made for Amy, when then Terence Magnum and his thugs arrived. Thinking that Taylor was Woody, Magnum decided to use him to send a message to Eric. When Woody returned to the office, he found Taylor hanging from a noose on the ceiling, but before he could register what was happening, an armored thug shot him in the chest with an energy beam that knocked him off his feet. Standing over Woody, the thug dropped a note on him with the word “War”. Meanwhile at the police station, Magnum paid Eric’s bail and gave him a duffle bag with his costume inside it, which he claimed he was going to need for the war had begun.
Magnum ForceRound One: WarOn a helicopter over Magnum’s Moroccan compound, Woody, who blamed himself for Taylor’s death, prepared himself for a fight with Magnum’s forces, when just then a missile shot their transport. Armed with two machine guns, Woody leapt out of the chopper as it burned with Quantum right behind him. After cushioning his fall with his wristband, Woody shot Magnum’s soldiers intent on killing the lot of them, unaware that Quantum had replaced his ammo with rubber bullets.
After a relatively–easy skirmish with Magnum’s men, whom Woody figured were not going to kill them so Magnum could use footage of the battle to showcase his product, Quantum & Woody made their way inside the compound, where a seemingly innocent guard with a can of Pepsi locked them inside a room with three armored men that they quickly defeated. While backtracking their steps to find a new way around, Woody seemed to have come to his senses and no longer seemed interested in killing Magnum, when then they came across War Locke, Magnum’s super–empowered enforcer, and he lost his cool, which promoted Quantum to push him out the door while he dealt with War Locke.
Making his way back, Woody found the guard, then, while he pulled the mask covering his face, he revealed that he knew he was Magnum in disguise because of the can of Pepsi. Enraged and feeling guilty, Woody beat Magnum within an inch of his life to punish him for turning him into Taylor’s killer. Just then, Woody found himself surrounded by an electric glow that drained him of his energy. As Woody collapsed on the floor, War Locke entered the room dragging Quantum behind him. Grabbing Woody by the collar, War Locke dragged him alongside Quantum toward the exit while he left Magnum stayed behind seemingly lifeless.
Round Two: PeaceIn a secret complex, War Locke has trouble sleeping due to Woody’s relentless crowning of Jesus Is On The Main Line from inside a crystal tube War Locke sealed him. Although War Locke threatened to kill him and Quantum, who was in a crystal tube of his own, Woody scoffed at his threats because if he was going to kill them he would have by now. Woody offered to stop singing if War Locke joined him in a chorus of the song, but War Locke retreated into his bedroom swearing that he would kill them both for this.
Suddenly, Vincent appeared out of thin air on top of Quantum’s tube followed by Citadel and Tempest, who were in search of a kid that Vincent stashed somewhere. When Tempest asked the guys where they bought Vincent, thinking that was where he took the kid, Citadel teleported away. After freeing Woody from the tube, Tempest leapt off it with Vincent and they followed Citadel to Malaysia.
Convinced that War Locke would kill them, Quantum wanted to escape, but Woody, certain that War Locke was holding them captive for Magnum and would not hurt them, wanted to kill him so they could go home. As a battle began, the boys learned that War Locke possessed powers similar to theirs when he shot Woody and momentarily reverted him to energy. On the run, Quantum & Woody found themselves in a deadly training room surrounded by floating spheres armed with lasers that restricted their movement. When War Locke showed himself the guys shot him with their wristbands and he melted into a pool of goo. Although Woody was sure that they had defeated him, War Locke reassembled himself and came after them.
After escaping from a room filled with flammable material, Quantum & Woody made their way to a large metal door that they believed led to the outside. While Woody kept War Locke at bay with his force beams, Quantum opened the door and discovered a giant rock face behind it. As an enraged War Locke lunged against them, Quantum & Woody clanged their wristbands and the energy release tore War Locke asunder, which resulted in a discharge that ignited the flammable material and caused the installation to explode.
The Goat HAEDUS – The TrollWhile repairing a monitor bank at Affirm Research, a maintenance worker received a call telling him to go to an Inquest complex and repair a malfunctioning router. Just then, he came across Vincent, who, empowered by the Eternal Warriors’ fold map he ate, teleported him across town to the Inquest facility. As it happened, a man working for the intergalactic arms dealer Citadel had sabotaged the router to allow Citadel entry into the facility so he could retrieve a child code–named X19, the carrier of one of the deadliest viruses on Earth. Before Citadel could enter X19’s room, however, Vincent bonded with the child and teleported him away.
When FBI Agent Tempest Sheridan arrived on the scene to investigate X19’s disappearance on behalf of the CDC, two unidentified armed men in bio–hazard suits attacked her and destroyed her own suit. Just then, Vincent returned and the men followed him into a vortex. After donning Amy Fishbein’s uniform, which she found in a duffle bag from Affirm Research, Tempest left to investigate what linked Vincent to the kid.
After Joe and Holly told her how Vincent’s powers worked, Tempest, following Holly’s advise, returned to Affirm Research thinking that Vincent would go home. Instead she found Citadel, who revealed that the men who shot at her worked for the government, who wanted to kill X19.
Using the transporter in his uniform to track Vincent, Citadel took Tempest across the globe until he lost his trail. Tracing the comm signals in Quantum & Woody’s to a secret complex, Tempest and Citadel found Vincent standing atop a glass container holding Quantum captive. When Tempest asked the guys where they bought Vincent, thinking that was where he took the kid, Citadel teleported away. After freeing Woody from the tube, Tempest leapt off it with Vincent and they followed Citadel to Malaysia.
Grabbing hold of Vincent’s cape, Tempest followed him across the space–time continuum through different dimensions in a futile search for X19 that culminated back at Affirm Research. Tempest was ready to give up, when then Vincent took her to a meadow atop a mountain where she found X19 surrounded by dead cattle, two sheepherders, and the bodies of the men that shot at her earlier.
While Citadel pushed Tempest to choose between letting the government take the boy or letting him take him, Vincent approached X19 and the energy in his body reacted to the virus, which pushed him off the cliff into a river. Leaping after him, Tempest grabbed hold of Vincent, who teleported back to Affirm Research, where Citadel revealed that the X19 virus mutated Vincent’s genetic structure, and when Vincent reinfected X19 with the mutated strain, it rendered the X19 virus inert and cured the boy. Showing that he was not a bad guy after all, Citadel handed Tempest a card with the address to the house of the daughter she gave away.
Round Three: FearHaving survived the explosion, Quantum & Woody awoke inside a metal tube over pool of acidic toxic waste left over by the explosion, which shorted out their wristbands. Holding a chain coupled to the tube, War Locke, who as a result of the explosion was crazier than before, reverted between his liquid and solid states while watching a recording of Terence Magnum stuck in a loop repeatedly saying “kill them”.
As the tube fell into the acid, Woody panicked while Quantum mumbled incoherently while he futility tried to get them out. Just then, War Locke vanished for good and the recording skipped back to reveal that Magnum’s order was not to kill them. Realizing that Quantum was praying, Woody tried to shoot the tube’s lid with his gun, but he dropped the magazine in the acid. Lighting his Zippo to look for it, Woody ignited the acid’s fumes and that caused the tube to shoot up out through the roof.
Crashing on a snowy mountain slope, the tube broke open and tossed out Quantum & Woody, who slid down a cliff. Holding on to a rock protruding out of the ground, Eric pulled Woody to safety, when just then a trio of helicopters swooped down and fired at them. Running in separate directions, Eric and Woody went their own way. Cornered in a cave by a group of Magnum’s soldiers, Woody was done for, until War Locke returned and killed all them, as Magnum ordered, and then vanished again. Boarding a sled, Woody sped down the mountain and found a wrecked sled that he discovered belonged to Eric, who was running away.
In a rage, Eric and Woody lashed out at each other. While Eric accused Woody of almost getting them killed due to his guilt over Tammy’s dead, his obsession with his dead, and his arrested development, Woody confessed that the reason he suggested that become heroes was to save Eric, his best friend, who could not score with Amy Fishbein, and whose parents had screwed up. Upset with one another, Quantum & Woody removed the deactivated control bands from their wrists and went their separate ways.
The Final Round: HateThree days later, Magnum, bound to a hovering chair after Woody’s blows nearly crippled him, found the control bands on the snow and ordered two of his soldiers to kill any living being they found on the mountain.
Surrounded by wolves, Eric, though exhausted and off his meds, took out his frustrations over his dismissal from the military, Woody, Amy’s rejections, and Woody (again) on the lot of them, when then he came across War Locke. Honor–bound to kill Eric to please his master, War Locke refused to believe Eric’s claims that their conflict ended before it began when Woody almost killed Magnum, a debate that became moot when Magnum’s soldiers attacked both of them. Working together, Eric and War Locke defeated the goons, but then turned on each other. Unexpectedly, Woody returned and knocked War Locke out with one punch.
Returning to Affirm Research with War Locke in tow, Woody told Eric that Vincent found him an hour after they parted ways and teleported him back home, where he called Tempest and Holly to help him find him. Using Intel Holly and Tempest provided, the guys followed Magnum to Paris. There they found that he had created an exact duplicate of their parents’ lab complete with the Iso–chamber, where they saw their control bands on top of a tray. Wondering why their parents created two control bands which sole purpose seemed to be to retain a genetic snap shot of their biological patterns, Woody entered the chamber to grab the bands. Sensing a trap, Quantum shut the door behind Woody to take him out of the game for being a loose cannon.
As the Iso–chamber filled with gas, Magnum showed himself. While shooting Quantum with energy guns in his chair, Magnum revealed that their parents’ control bands were not a force field as they believed, but a God Machine, the next evolution of mankind. After blowing the chamber’s glass with plasteek, Woody escaped the gas, but then Magnum activated a machine intended to replace Quantum & Woody’s patterns within the control bands with his own while his clients watched through a video feed. As it happened, however, Quantum had fallen within reach of the panel that regulated the power flow that was erasing their energy patterns and disrupted its function, which disintegrated Magnum.
And So…As Woody mockingly helped Quantum to his feet, a group of Les Tactiques Speciales officers broke in through the ceiling and windows. Escaping after a brief skirmish, the boys made their way to the sewers, were the cops ultimately detained them. Meanwhile on the moon, David Warrant met Lysander, a member of the dwindling forever family, who following the poisoning of the bloom was dying. Though uncertain of Warrant’s alignment, Lysander took him to Lunawatch, the family’s safe haven on the moon.
Back in Paris, the police locked up Eric and Woody in jail while they figured out their real identities. At ease, Woody was certain that Vincent would come get them, unaware that he was off on an island at the time. That night, after Woody tortured Eric for hours with his vain attempt to call Warrant to help them escape, Nicole Astin Gray, Eric’s mother, arrived in the prison and surprised the boys.
HeroesAfter bailing Eric out of prison, Nicole took Eric to dinner and revealed that the reason she left his father was because he accused her of being an unfit mother after she and Eric were in a car accident with Lucy and Woody that almost killed him. After dinner, Nicole took Eric to Climaxx, her management investment group before his flight for New York left. Back in NYC, Woody disposed of his outfit and went home to have dinner with Holly, Vincent, and Tempest, who was getting used to wearing the uniform Eric made for Amy.
Back in Paris, Nicole introduced Eric to Toyo Harada as her associate. After Harada walked away, Eric, upset by Nicole’s failure to introduce him as her son, confronted his mother, but she ignored his concerns. Back in NYC, Woody helped Tempest break into a bar used by an extreme anti–government faction, but when it came time to raid the facility, Tempest’s fellow agents kept Woody outside because he was not one of them, a fact that made him wonder exactly what he was now.
Back in Paris, Quantum confronted Harada, who told him of a coming storm that would engulf the planet that only the quantum power he had recently surrendered could stop. Getting into his limo, Toyo’s final words to Quantum hinted that Warrant may be the one to save the world. Meanwhile on the moon, Warrant offered to help Lysander find a cure for the forever family’s ailment.
HeroesThat night, Quantum broke into the police precinct looking for the wristbands, which Inspector Levar offered to return in exchange for his help dealing with a bomb in an office tower planted by a group of right wing extremists. Leaping into the tower from a police chopper, Quantum dealt with the extremists and deactivated the bomb in the time that it took the same chopper to land in the streets. After delivering the prisoners and the bomb to Levar, Quantum left amid cheers from the crowd calling his name, which greatly elevated his spirit.
After seeing Quantum’s heroics on TV, Woody’s feelings of jealousy made him feel out of sorts to the point that he found himself acting like a hero on instinct. Looking for direction, Woody became aware of a comic called Dark Kitty that was a reflection of his and Eric’s lives and decided to sue its publisher, Marble Comix.
In Dallas, Quantum dropped by Harada’s state, where Toyo explained that now that he and Woody no longer possessed their quantum–based powers, Warrant had become the sole recipient of the energy, which meant that to save the world David Warrant had to die.
RebirthOn the moon, Warrant told Lysander how he would use his power to help the Eternals’ immune systems to develop antibodies to Harada’s virus, while in Dallas Harada forced Quantum to choose between taking full command of the quantum power for himself or placing the fate of the world in Warrant’s hands. Meanwhile in NYC, Woody arrived at the offices of Marble Comix where he met Ruben Diaz, the editor of Dark Kitty.
While Warrant saturated Lunawatch’s atmosphere to begin the process, back on Earth Harada hooked Quantum to a replica of the Iso–chamber designed to channel the energy into him. At the same time as Warrant released the energy that would cure the Eternals, Harada activated the machine and funneled the energy into Quantum, taking all of it away from its then–current holder, Warrant. Back at Marble Comix, Woody and Ruben bonded over a couple of rank sodas.
Stirred by the rampant energy, Vincent led Woody, Ruben, and Ruben’s secretary outside, where a storm was brewing. There they come across Sidne, the female half of the Man of the Atom, who, aware of what Harada was doing, told them that Vincent would led them to Quantum. Arriving at the Dallas installation, Woody, Ruben, and Sidne were too late to stop Quantum from absorbing all of the energy into himself and becoming the living embodiment of the quantum field. With the power no longer his, Warrant and Lysander were unable to control the rampant energies they had set free and the moon exploded.
EclipseEclipse Book 3: The Mirror Has Four FacesAfter Quantum and Woody failed to stop Doctor Eclipse, Quantum visited Commissioner Tomorrow, who chastised Eric for choosing a child as his partner in light of what happened to Taylor. Meanwhile, Doctor Eclipse returned to his castle, where his loud guitar playing exasperated his wife Amy, who picked up a gun and shot him. Standing up, Doctor Eclipse – the man formerly known as Woody Van Chelton – urged Amy to continue searching for a mysterious device that would help him stop Eric from destroying the world.
Back in NYC, Quantum conferred with Tempest and Holly, who found a way to destroy the device Doctor Eclipse was looking for. Though he risked killing Eclipse, Quantum told Holly to destroy the device and then ordered the Armorines to rush the castle. Transporting there with Woody and Vincent, Quantum inadvertently fell within Doctor Eclipse’s grasp.