Warheads #5

The Warheads have been split up: the ladies are hostage to a big, fat witch and the men are transformed into her slaves. A battle ensues with X-Force but gets interrupted when the witch begins having babies, breaking her concentration and hold on the men.

Note: The "Domino" depicted in this issue is Copycat in disguise.

Synopsis

A witch named Aeish has captured the Warheads. The men, it seems, have gone feral. The women are chained to the wall. Aeish appears to have a conversation with herself but in fact is talking to three heads growing out of her neck. These are her daughters and they are wondering when they will be born. It's soon, and she tells them that they will leave this place once they are born because the magic is unstable. She then approaches Stacy and comments that the women seem to have some special gifts. She probes Stacy's mind and sees an event in the past in which Stacy had been involved in a seance. Her father had stormed into the room to stop the devilry and began striking her mother. Stacy used a latent power to hurl a board at her father, killing him. Back in the present, Stacy hates the memory and threatens Aeish's life for having made her relive it. Laughing it off, Aeish departs with the men. Misha thinks Stacy may have weakened the witch somehow. She at least scared her. Leona remarks that Misha's prophecy for wearing a hat has paid off - she's used a pin to pick her lock. She frees the other two and the trio looks for weaponry.

In London, Mr. Grant gets a disturbing call from Rathcoole. He needs to kill Che for a botched mission. When Rathcoole signs out Mr. Grant is confronted by his golem. The spirit informs Grant that Che will not be killed but transferred to Colonel Liger's troop. Mr. Grant hates this idea and refuses to go against orders. The golem insists that things will happen his way and Grant doesn't need to fear, as soon he will be changed.

X-Force was not taken captive but forced to stay and fight some jumbo cats. The men are blood-lusted and fighting with wonton abandon. Feral also feels an odd change; her eyes start burning. She projects some kind of energy burst from her eyes and guts a couple giant cats with the blasts. Despite the chaos, Cable knows he still needs to keep an eye on Cannonball (who may still be fragile from being gutted by Sauron and coming back to life). It's then that Aeish returns and sets the Warhead men on X-Force. The fighting is intense, spurred on by the blood-lusting magics of the place. Cannonball even goes out of character and flies a man up only to drop him on a rock. Cable and Liger fight and things begin to look grim until Aeish's concentration is broken by one of her daughters being born from her neck. The spell over the men breaks. With their minds back, the men are able to focus on Aeish's cat menace. Liger's gun comes back on-line and he is able to blast the cats to smithereens. Cable leads his team back home where Feral waxes poetic about the team finally getting a taste of what it's like to be her.

Back in Aeish's throne room, the female Warheads rifle through some magic information when the spell over the men wears off. The slaves present attack the women and Stacy subconsciously uses her magics to reduce the slaves to dust. Aeish soon arrives and has the Warhead men back under her spell. She orders them to attack. Misha, on the other hand, has found a counterspell and frees the men again. Misha prophecies that once the third daughter is born to Aeish then the four of them will be invincible. Stacy must use her powers to kill them all now. Hating herself for doing it, Stacy shreds the daughters. Aeish tries to escape and Leona grabs Aeish's magic wand before she can fully disappear. The group decides it's high time they headed back home. Misha prophecies again, this time that Stacy's latent powers will stay with her.

Elsewhere, a mysterious man has the nerve to approach Death's Head. He has a special job: he wants a gun. Liger's gun.