Order of The Freeing Fist

The Order of The Freeing Fist operates as a small doomsday sect fronted by a married pair of martial artists, Knuckle Buster and Force Fist. Little is known about how the group came together or whether anyone beyond the couple ever belonged. Echoing the logic of Doc Seismic, its followers hold that culling a huge share of humanity would let a battered environment recover.

The two run a spiritual goods shop beside a beach purely as camouflage for their real aim, releasing a toxin called Chemical X across the surrounding city. Rigged inside the store's storage room, the device is built to seep poisonous gas that dissolves the skin of anyone nearby and kills almost instantly. While serving the Global Defense Agency, Cecil Stedman draws the assignment to head a unit sent to shut the cult down before civilians die.

Once the cultists realize Cecil has infiltrated them, they trigger the plan and perish in the very fumes they unleash. Cecil seals the compartment, but the leaking chemical still scars him with permanent disfigurement. Months on, the couple receives the same synthetic skin grafts Cecil got and is quietly rehabilitated and enlisted by Radcliffe. When the Lizard League storms the Pentagon, the pair rescues Cecil and a badly hurt Radcliffe from Komodo Dragon, only for Cecil to gun them down, ending the last known members of the sect.

The founding duo, Knuckle Buster and Force Fist, stand as the sole confirmed faces of the order. The writers frame them as a wicked send-up of Marvel's Iron Fist, mirroring the hero's costume style and skilled hand-to-hand fighting while running a mystically themed storefront. The comics stage Cecil's ordeal differently, having Brit intervene and later showing Cecil simply imprisoned rather than punished by the government.