Cloak & Dagger #19 (V3)

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The issue begins with Cloak & Dagger appearing in the floating New York City apartment; where they see the shadow woman (Avandalia) with Dagger’s step father, while Brigid is once again Mayhem, hovering over Rebecca “Rusty” Nales. It’s revealed that the host in the room is the being D’spayre. He commands Avandalia to control Cloak who ensnares Dagger against his will. D’spayre explains that he’s had control of Avandalia for a long time, and has been tampering with Cloak for even longer. He also explains that he manipulated Brigid and unleashed the Mayhem persona inside of her once again.

Avandalia tells D’spayre that they must do what needs to be done quickly, because D’spayre has never been this weak, due to his defeat at the hands of the Phoenix. (See Excalibur #36 for more details). D’spayre teleports Cloak & Dagger to a drug warehouse where he explains he’s created a new drug that combines heroine and crack entitled “Darklight” – but people on the streets have shortened to “D-Lite.” Cloak and Dagger leap into action to take the drug makers down; but even as they do so, D’spayre laughs at their attempts. D’spayre shows them young teenagers already hooked on D-Lite; and even Dagger’s light daggers don’t cure them. D’spayre explains that her light daggers actually make things worse for D-Lite addicts. Cloak lunges at D’spayre but falls into blackness, where he and Tandy both relive the moment that led to them running away from home, up to the point they were injected and given their powers; and they see now that D’spayre was apparently there all along. D’spayre reveals had he not gotten involved in their lives; Tandy would have been Cloak and Tyrone would have been Dagger. It was something with the drugs that had allowed their mutant powers to get swapped. D’spayre explains that their lives would have been too good, too perfect, and he couldn’t have that – so he got involved, implying he was responsible for what had happened to them.

In the apartment, Rebecca and Tandy’s step father have been injected with “D-Lite” and suffering from withdraw. Mayhem grows furious and attacks Avandalia, and turns her to dust. Rebecca and Phillip (Tandy’s step father) fight over the bag of “D-Lite” and Mayhem, joyously watching, grows tired and abandons them.

In the realm with D’spayre, Cloak and Dagger fight them (with their opposite powers) and manage to annoy him enough that they teleport back to Earth (where they each have their respective powers again). They show up in time to see Phillip throw the D-Lite drugs out the window, much to Rebecca’s dismay. That’s when D’spayre notices that Avandalia has been destroyed. He destroys the floating apartment, but Cloak pulls Dagger, Phillip and Rusty into his robes as he hits the ground. Code: Blue (a police squad specializing in battling super powered villains) shows up and opens fire on D’spayre.

Rebecca throws herself back into Cloak’s shadows, without Dagger to keep her safe, while Dagger’s father, Phillip dies of the D-Lite overdose. Rebecca emerges after a moment from Cloak’s shadow, explaining that she has faced her worse fear in the cloak – and can now safely say she’s broken free of the addiction. Cloak pulls D’spayre into his cloak and releases his Tyrone’s true shadowed self upon D’spayre – and the mysterious being seems to shatter and explode.

Cloak and Dagger, along with Code: Blue, begin doing crack downs on warehouses manufacturing “D-Lite” a few days after D’spayre’s defeat. Cloak and Dagger realize that they represent the chance that everyone needs to make the choices to turn their lives around.

Unbeknownst to them, the woman, Anna who had nearly been sacrificed by Thule, watched Cloak as he left with Dagger, and thinks to herself that she had no way of explaining to Tyrone that her name was Anna – and she was his twin sister!

Note: The entire portion that D’spayre was there all along, influenced their injection of drugs, was the reason their mutant powers swapped, etc., was all later revealed to be a lie (a retcon) as it turns out that Cloak & Dagger are not actually mutants, and that the powers they got were derived from the drugs injected into their system and not some form of awakened “mutant” power. It’s explained away that D’spayre was just trying to make them suffer by the lies he was telling them, of showing how their life could have been had they not had their powers swapped by the drug injection.