"I said put your hands up!" the Bodega Bandit points his arm, hidden in a jacket pocket, towards the owner of the store. "I'm not kidding, man! I'll shoot you if I have to!"

"Will you, though, Bandit?" I say, leaning on the side of the door frame. I was on my way to band practice with the girls before coming across the Bandit's latest misdeed. A quick change into my costume in the alley way, and here I am. "Because I'm almost certain all you have in your pocket is your hand pointed into a gun-shape."

I've run into the Bandit three or four times in the last month, in increasingly embarrassing situations for the would-be stickup artist. The first few times I've crossed his path, I was the definition of annoyed. Here I am, desperately trying to keep this city from tearing itself apart with a gang war, and this guy is constantly sticking up Dunkin Donuts and Big Belly Burger.

But I'll be honest, the more I've seen him, the sadder I've gotten for him. I don't know if I'm going soft or what, but I pity the guy.

He turns to me, his arm trembling, "You! How do you always show up where no one wants you!?"

"Ouch, Bandit," I shake my head at him. "Hurtful. Super hurtful."

"This time you're out numbered though!" he smiles a big, goofy smile he probably thinks is threatening. "Bandito! Get her!"

My spider sense goes off, and I turn to find a portly English Bulldog scamper around the corner of two aisles, a domino mask that matches the Bandit's tied to his face. As he turns, his paws come out from under him, and he slides helplessly to my feet. On his back, he looks around, before locking eyes with me. Instead of a snarl, his tongue falls out of his mouth, and he looks from me to his belly, longing for some pets.

"Oh my god he's adorable!" I squeal and bend down, scratching the chubby fellow as he squirms with joy. "Who's a good pupper!? You're a good pupper. Are you an accessorie to a crime? Yes you are."

The Bandit, clearly defeated, slinks down to the floor, "Aw come on, Bandito. You're supposed to be my partner in crime."

I give the bordering-on-pathetic, Hamburglar-dressed "criminal" a once over as I continue to pet the dog, "Bandit, why are you doing thing, huh? You're clearly a smart guy. Well, smart enough to know you can't beat me, which is apparently saying something in the New York criminal world. I've got real, dangerous guys to take care of out there. You know this life isn't for you."

"Yea, well," he sniffles slightly, "I just wanna show my old man who's boss. Say's I'm a wimp. That I'm not tough enough."

"Listen, man," I pat the dog one last time on the head before standing and doing the same to his master, "this is not the way to do that. You want to teach him you're tough? Go take a few Krav Maga lessons or something. This is just going to get you thrown in a psych ward, or some clerk who's been robbed too many time will end up shooting you."

"Y-yea," he stammers. "I'm clearly not gonna be a great criminal like him."

"No, buddy, no you're-Wait, what do you mean like him?"

Before he can answer, however, the ground rumbles below me. I look around as backs of chips and cookies fall off the shelves around me. Bandito hops up clumsily and scampers under his owner's legs, whimpering at the sudden tremor.

"Okay, you don't have any super powers I don't know about, do you?" I look over my shoulder, seeing people running down the street in a panic. Their screams, muffled by the windows and doors that separate us, are evidence enough of something bad going down on the streets of New York.

"No," he responds, his eyes going wide. "No powers here."

"Get out of here," I say to the Bandit, his dog, and the clerk.

Moving out of the store, I find myself in mass hysteria. Everyone is running, pushing, and climbing over those that fall down. Cars honk their horns, trying to get moving in the gridlock. A few have already crashed on the sidewalk, their drivers abandoning them and taking to foot. Next to me, I see a mother carrying her toddler trip over the curb. I manage to catch her and make sure she can escape unharmed.

"Spider-Woman!" one of the fleeing citizens yells. "Watch out! She's coming!"

"Who the hell is 'she'!?" I yell back far too late. The man has turned the corner, and as he does, the booming tremors continue to get closer and closer.

Turning back towards the direction they are running from, I see a shadow emerge from around the corner, and the tremors gain both strenght and consistency. Suddenly a hand full of searching fingers comes around the corner almost ten stories up, followed by a large, booted foot crashing down on the pavement, crushing cars and splintering concrete. Before long, the entire form of the figure stands before me.

"Well, you don't see that every day," is all that comes out of my mouth as I stare up at the giant, yellow-clad redhead standing in front of me.



"Oh crap."

My spider sense explodes as the giantess picks up a pickup truck and tosses it at me like a freaking football. It spirals, making a terrible whistle as it speeds towards me. I web myself up to the nearest vertical surface, and run up it until I'm about eye-height with the woman. Kicking off the building into a swing, I attempt to close the gap, but her reach is too long. I barely go into a controlled dive in time to dodge the swipe of a massive mitt.

When I hit the ground, I roll and spring off the ground, bringing myself directly over her two feet. As I soar over them, I lay down a line of webbing, hoping to keep her in one place. It doesn't, of course. She merely pivots on her heels, snapping the line like a thread.

"Do you think that's going to stop me, Spider?" the giant booms at me from above. "You may be quick, but now you're going to see what a spider really feels like!"

She tries to stomp me like a bug. I yank myself out of the way with a web, and go to swing off. I don't know how I'm going to stop her, but I need to draw her away from buildings where she's going to do more damage. Central Park it is.

Hopefully I can get some help, or an idea, by the time I get there.

"You'll have to excuse me," says the man with graying red hair and moustache as he paces behind his desk. "I don't really like talking to the press. The GCPD's already made an official statement, and normally I'd leave it at that. But in your case, I made an exception."

Captain James Gordon, a man about the age my own dad would have been, has an air of seemingly perpetual concern and exasperation, a man who knows the rules and believes in them but is always surprised when someone breaks them. His brow is furrowed so deeply I could almost swear they were sculpted in place. There seems to be an "I'm getting too old for this" or a "Jesus, I need a smoke" hanging off the tip of his tongue at all times.

In the far corner of the office, a bookish young woman in a wheelchair--Gordon's daughter, I was told-- types away at her computer, seemingly too engrossed in her own work to give us any mind.

"And why's that?" I ask, taking the bait. "Why make the exception for me?"

"Because of who you work for," Gordon answers. "The Daily Planet. I don't get a whole lot of time to sit down and read the papers anymore, and when I do, admittedly, it's usually the Gazette. But your paper's got quite the reputation these days. Whenever people think of the Planet, they think of people in capes and tights doing crazy, impossible things. You've become the unofficial voice of Superman and everyone like him."

"To be fair, plenty of other news outlets cover metahuman activities," I say.

"True," Gordon admits, "but none of them catch the public's attention the same way. Everyone knows that J. Jonah Jameson and G. Gordon Godfrey are cheap sensationalism, scare tactics to rile up an audience. But the Planet plays it straight, or at least they pretend to. Sure, you talk about the damage these super-people cause, but you also point out the people they save, almost keeping score. And that, in a way, might actually be worse."

"How so?" I say, trying not to be offended. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the red-headed girl at the corner desk scrunch her nose, apparently annoyed by her father's stance as well.

"Let's say Superman gets into a brawl in the middle of Metropolis," Gordon continues. "Smashes another killer robot, saves the day. That's all well and good, and people start wanting to be more like him. A couple of weeks later, we've got the Bat-Man snapping limbs and shooting mobsters with their own guns. A few people start to raise concerns, but nobody dies so everyone turns a blind eye to it. Not long after that, the Punisher guns down a dozen people in New York. At this point, people start justifying it, saying that it's okay because his victims were all gangsters and drug dealers. As long as the perpetrator is seen by the public as the 'good guy' and the people he's thrashing are painted as 'bad guys,' all of his actions are seen as justified. No matter how many people get hurt, no matter how much damage is done, no matter how crazy the world becomes."

"And you think the Daily Planet is to blame for this perception?"

Gordon sits and ponders for a moment, choosing his words carefully.

"Not completely," he says. "Not even mostly, I'd say. But people trust the Planet in a way that they don't trust your competitors. Your words carry a lot of weight. And I think it'd go a long way if you'd tell people what's going on here."

Trying to read his expression, I get the impression that he's a man reaching the end of his rope, feeling himself lose more and more control of the situation he's in.

"Well, what would you want us to tell people that we're not already?" I ask.

"Well, for starters," he begins, "I don't think I've seen anyone talking about the long-term side-effects that being around all this insanity has on the population. People are starting to turn, well....cowardly. Superstitious. Some of the boys are starting to call it 'cape shock.' Take a suspect who came in about half an hour before you did. He walks in, wearing all sorts of crazy contraptions and calling himself 'the Electrocutioner,' and demands to turn himself in. Says he tried to mug a random passerby on the street, but the passerby happened to be Superman in disguise. Hmph."

"Pretty crazy," I clear my throat, and find myself looking away. I notice the red-headed girl at the computer has suddenly stopped typing. I glance over at her, but she continues to stare intently at the screen.

"Point is, the city's falling apart," Gordon says, "And there's only so much we can do on our own to turn it around. I'm not going to stop until I see the Batman behind bars, but, if I'm honest.....I'm not so convinced I can be the one who puts him there. The only way these super-people aren't going to tear apart the world they're trying to save is if they start holding each other accountable."

I have to admit, that's a big reason why I'm here. The story aside, I've been letting the more....extreme elements of the vigilante community get out of hand. Maybe it's because I've been too preoccupied with disasters and monsters and cyber-terrorists. Or maybe it's because I really have had a blind spot when it comes to people claiming to act in the name of the greater good. Either way, he's right. If things are going to change, I have to--

*KNOCK KNOCK*

The door to Gordon's office opens, and a dark-haired woman steps in.

"Sorry to interrupt, Captain," she says. "but we've got some trouble brewing on the South Side. Apparently about a half-dozen drivers decided to start their own little demolition derby."

Gordon sighs, and stands up from his desk.

"Looks like we're gonna have to cut it short, Mister Kent," he says, moving to the coat rack and donning his jacket.

"Actually, I'd better get going as well," I say, standing and offering a quick handshake. "Thanks for your time."

He quickly shakes my hand and shows me out the door, before starting to shout out orders to his team. Meanwhile, I start looking for somewhere I can change. I'd rather not advertise to the Batman that I'm in the city and drive him into hiding, but I can't exactly leave innocent people in danger, either.

As I duck into a stairwell and start undoing the buttons on my shirt, my phone rings. I've got it set to silent, only ringing for emergency calls. I frown. The officer mentioned the disturbance is going on around the south side of the city. Grant Park is on the south end as well. If Lois is in trouble again....

Checking the phone, I see it's not Lois. In fact, it's Jimmy.

"Jimmy?" I answer. "What's--"

"Clark! Holy crap! Jimmy shouts on the other end of the line. "Are you back at the apartment?!"

"No, I'm in Gotham City today, remember?"

"Oh, thank God," he says, before I hear a loud, angry buzzing noise over the air. "There is some major stuff going on in Hob's Bay, man. Half of our block just got blasted to bits!"

"What?!?!"

"It's like a friggin' war-zone here!" he shouts over the sounds of an explosion.

"What's going on?!" I say in a panic. "Who's behind it?"

"I can't--....---at --em," he says, the signal cutting in and out as the angry electrical buzzing gets louder. "But I ---- 's Liv--"

The signal cuts off completely, and I stare disbelieving at the disconnected phone for a moment. I can't be in two places at one time.

"Damn it!" I curse to myself before opening up the shirt. People might die if I don't stop whatever's going on over on the South Side of Gotham. But people will die if I don't stop the attack on Metropolis. Hopefully the GCPD can take care of the crazed motorists before it gets out of hand.

In the meantime.....



....I've gotta run back home.

Hang on, Jimmy. I'm on my way.

Gotham City, Dini Plaza
The Bowery
1:00 AM

"S-Stay away! Stay the hell back or I'll cut the bitch! Believe me, I'll do it!"



It’s not that I don’t believe him. I just don’t happen to have enough faith in the combat capabilities of a trembling seventeen-year-old holding a switchblade to a woman’s face in order to hesitate in my attack. The kid is right to be scared out of his mind, given I already knocked his associates unconscious, but the all-consuming need he has to put distance between us through an empty threat makes him vulnerable in ways that he cannot even begin to comprehend. The woman’s safety is barely in question as I can already tell that her captor is green. Hasn't brought himself to kill, much less wound, to survive living in Gotham.

So in the best way that I know how, I try and let him off with warning.

"I'm going to put this delicately…"

Immediately throwing the cloak infront of me to cause him to flinch, I seize the given opening and grab the hand carrying the knife. The kid loses all interest in his captive, who looks at me with the same gaze of horror and quickly flees into the shadows while clutching her purse. He struggles as I lift him off of the ground by his own arm, kicking and panicking as I lean in. The expression on my face making my displeasure more than clear enough to turn his complexion pale.

“If you or your friends so much as think about pulling a stunt like this in the future? Consider me the reason to remind yourself not to.”

Just as the kid starts to think that he’s in the clear, I reach up with my other hand and easily rip the switchblade from his grasp. Reeling back to go in for a stabbing motion, I wait until he cries out and shields his face before thrusting the knife forward. To his surprise, he looks back up to find it embedded in the brick of the wall he’s pinned against. Inches from his face.

_{"Holy fucking shit!"}

"Indeed."

With a hard precision kick to the face, I send the back of his skull colliding into the wall. His eyes roll to the back of his head as he hits the ground, out cold and hopefully having learned a serious lesson: Never try and pull a knife on someone in the dead of night in Gotham. It only ever ends one way.

Letting out a quiet sigh, I survey the alleyway behind me, freshly littered with unconscious bodies. I should almost feel relieved, all things considered, to have dealt with such a considerably low threat as this. Ever since the Five Families began clenching their remaining operations closer to the chest following their lieutenants ending up in GCPD lockup, subsequently forcing them to rethink their distribution strategies, Alfred and I have been putting in a more considerable effort in trying to uncover their next move. Which has dealt the unexpected consequence of driving my attention away from the smaller crimes.

Of course, there are other things threatening Gotham than just the mob, lately. Firing a grapple line up to a nearby rooftop, I ascend into the shadows and leap, spreading my cape outwards so that I can easily vault over the scaffolding without error and land into a running sprint. The entire purpose of dividing up my routine patrol tonight was to allow the time to strengthen Ace’s signal as it began a citywide search for the known components linked to two metahuman fugitives. Poison Ivy and Mr. Freeze.

So far, I’ve been coming up with nothing of note. An earlier sweep of The Narrows, where I fought an Ivy-controlled Jessica Jones, produced no apparent remaining trace of the pheromone extract that I suspect Ivy used to initiate the manipulation of Jones’ will in the first place. Meaning that the extract was likely concocted to dissolve with time, rendering it untraceable if not immediately noticed. And in the case of Freeze, there appears to be no discernable temperature drop in any area of the city that seems out of place. Grocery freezers, meat packing plants, produce lockers. But nothing big enough to hide a seven foot suit of technologically advanced cryogenic armor, nevermind it’s occupant.

Grappling up to a gargoyle overlooking the skyline of the financial district, I land into a perch and stare outwards, hoping for any lead to pop up in the ongoing scan of the city. I’ve already began to hate this feeling. Knowing that these types of individuals with special abilities are out there. Hoping that I can even devise some method of capturing them. Doubting myself in the face of the unknown. None of it feels right, chasing these larger-than-life extrapolations of the common criminal.

When I created The Batman, I did so under the impression that no one would even think of going to the very same and particularly extreme lengths of theatricality that I would. The knowledge of having this advantage against my enemies instilled me with a certain amount of confidence. An unshakable determination to hound the thugs that had oppressed Gotham for decades back to whatever hole they originally crawled out of.

This is something entirely different. And I’m not sure how to handle any of it, beyond pressing forward and hoping for the best. Likely an approach that’s going to get me killed, but I don’t have any other options left. It isn’t as though I could have trained to anticipate an evolutionary phenomena, or however one would classify the metahuman uprising.

With a frustrated grunt, I raise my gauntlet and press the button to open up the secure channel linked to my cowl’s earpiece. Maybe Alfred’s had better luck than I have in tracking down these perversions of science. I only know how to work so many angles on my own.

"Tell me you've found something."

"Nothing of interest on the surveillance feed, Bruce. Just the usual string of petty thefts and drunken brawls that one has grown so very accustomed to in regards to the Gotham nightlife."

Dammit.

"Keep looking. Ace hasn’t given me anything to work with, and I'm running out of ideas. Ivy and Freeze have evidently found a way to cover their tracks."

"Will do, lad. And in the meantime?"

Standing atop the gargoyle, my cape billows out behind me as I prepare to make the leap.

"Word on the street is that Maroni's got a small group of officers working the docks later tonight. Some kind of security detail on a shipment off the books. Until I can pick up a trace on the other two, I'll be staking that out. Could be something."

As I go to move for the dive, something unexpectedly drops onto my shoulder. At first, I think it’s just a passing flock of birds. But as I reach over to that shoulder and feel for it, I realize that whatever’s hit me is much denser. Thicker, almost of the same texture as…

I pause, examining the substance in my palm.

What the hell?

"Clay?"

“Heh. Guess I tipped my hand a little too early, huh?”

Alarmed by the completely unexpected voice that originates from the very building that I’ve been perched against for the last minute, I immediately spin with knuckles raised in a defensive stance. But the sight that greets me is enough to completely turn that instinct on it’s head.

I… have no idea what I’m looking at.

But whatever it is, it’s growing. Fast.

“When they busted me outta lock-up, they told me the only stipulation was that I had to go and kill a super. Seeing as how you’re the big man causing a scene around here, lately…”



“I’m guessing that means you.”

---

---

Doctor Niles Caulder took a deep, slow breath. He locked his gaze with the unblinking eyes of Reyes's mask, refusing to so much as glance at the weapon pressed against his temple. "It would be much easier to explain if you took that gun out of my face, boy." He spoke evenly, his eyes stalwart and steely, utterly unafraid of the alien being standing over him.

"What? What?!" Jaime felt his blood run hot. 'Disgust' could not adequately explain the churning in his stomach at the sight of the doctor's expression. How could he sit there, a weapon shoved against his head, and not so much as blink? "You think I won't?!" Reyes snarled, the parasite's grip growing tighter around his wrist as he shoved Caulder's head with the muzzle of the cannon. "After everything you've done, you still think- you still think I won't?" He shot a finger back behind him, pointing toward the corpse of Caulder's surgeon. "It wouldn't...it wouldn't be the first time."

Caulder crossed his hands over his lap, his neck craning as he looked up toward Jaime. The sympathy in the old man's eyes was almost enough to drive Reyes over the edge. "You were protecting yourself, were you not? You had no other choice. That does not make you an executioner, boy. It isn't like you."

"You don't know a damn thing about me." Reyes countered.

"Really?" Caulder raised a brow. "I don't? I was in your mind, boy. I know more about yourself than you do. For instance, I know you struggle in school because it bores you. You think your teachers are old and out of touch. I know your friends drag you to the same diner after school everyday. You insist you don't mind, but they know how much you hate the food there; yet you always choose to go with them regardless." Niles couldn't see the boy's face through that lifeless mask, but he could tell he was faltering. His firing arm was unsteady and lowering with each word, and Jaime's breathing had tightened. Caulder was getting to him. "I know your mother makes you do the dishes every night. And I know your father's struggling to make ends meet. And there's a young woman that sits in front of you on the bus- Traci, I believe, that you've been terribly infatuated with-"

"That's enough." Jaime snapped, though the conviction in his voice had faltered. "Why're you telling me all this?"

Caulder sighed, his hand moving up to rest on Reyes's wrist. "Because I know that as much as you hate me, boy, you could never live with yourself if you took my life. Everything that's happened- it's already eating you up inside, isn't it?" Slowly, tentatively, Niles started to guide Jaime's hand away. He didn't force it, allowing Reyes to absorb what he was hearing at his own pace. "I can only imagine what it's been like for you..." His eyes held on Jaime's own, though there were brief, difficult to discern shifts toward something else in the room.

Sleep had not come easily to Reyes since the incident. He'd only managed to pass out from sheer exhaustion once, while he was pulled over on the side of the road in a car he'd stolen from a stranger. Even then, the nightmares had forced him back into reality but a handful of hours later. Jaime felt weak and exhausted, his muscles burning and his mind drinking up the confusion and fear like a thirsty traveler in a desert oasis. The whole while, the only company that he had during his travels was a detached, aggressive voice in his head. After all of that- after all of the trials and tribulations- he had finally come face to face with the man responsible for it. Jaime had been so captivated by the concept of vengeance that he had never slowed down long enough to consider if he even had the will to pull the trigger.

"You said it was an accident." Jaime's arm fell to his side, limp and powerless. The organic weapon shifted back into a normal hand as Reyes took several steps from Caulder's side, returning to the operating table to take a seat on it's bloodied and cold surface. He'd hear the telepath out before he decided what to do. Maybe it would offer him some new perspective on what had happened; maybe it would give Reyes the excuse to go through with the dark fantasy that had consumed him since the moment he saw Caulder's face. "What happened?"

Caulder sighed, his shoulders falling. As much as he'd want to say that he wasn't afraid to die, Niles had never felt his heart race as quickly as it had when Jaime put a gun to his head. Was he afraid? Excited? It was hard to say; the adrenaline certainly didn't help determining how he felt in the moment. But he had swallowed down those feelings to talk Reyes off the edge. It looked like it had worked- for now. "I only wanted to talk to it." He began, his mouth slightly agape as he search for the words. It wasn't a pleasant memory by any means. "LaSalle and I had been working to find and exploit ancient technology since our college days. When we found the artifact in the Smithsonian, we didn't even stop to consider the implications of attempted contact. It matched the energy signature of the first...The Veteris to your Iuvenis-"

"The first?" Jaime interrupted. "There's another one?" That was alarming to hear. After everything that had happened, he wouldn't wish Khaji Da on his worst enemy; on top of that, for all of the power it held, he could only imagine what would happen if it fell into the wrong hands. He wasn't even sure if it was safe in his own.

"Indeed. My colleagues and I spent years tracking it. It seemed to nest primarily in Metropolis, but rumors led us all the way up to Gotham City on one occasion. We chased it as long as we could, documenting it's every move and studying it. When we finally developed the technology, we began to scan the rest of the country for signs of others. We didn't know what to expect, but...This was so much better than anything we could have dreamed of." The corners of Niles's thin lips ran upward slightly. There was a genuine twinkle in the old man's eyes as he explained it.

That smile quickly melted away as he proceeded with the rest of his tale. "You must understand, then, why I was so incredibly eager when we found an inactive Scarab. This creature represented everything I had been chasing since my youth. It was the proof that my research hadn't been for nothing- that I wasn't some..some wacko conspiracy theorist. And after the disaster with the obelisk...I was so eager to make up for my mistake that I ended up creating one far worse than I could have ever imagined." Caulder sighed, a hand moving up to rub the tiredness from his eyes. When he looked up, he cast his gaze over Reyes's shoulder, as if he were looking for something.

"I reached out to Khaji Da telepathically using the language we had deciphered from the obelisk before it was destroyed. I foolishly believed I understood their connection. But the moment I did, it awoke and...well. It struck out. I'm still unsure why, if I'm being honest with you Mr. Reyes." Once more, the doctor's gaze flickered passed Jaime, looking to something beyond their current conversation.

Reyes felt his heart drop into his stomach. "Bullshit!" He pushed himself off of the operating table, taking several steps toward the doctor. Khaji Da had been convinced that foul play was involved. Caulder had outright kidnapped him in an attempt to steal away the suit; why should Jaime believe him now? What incentive did he have to think Niles wasn't just lying to save himself from Jaime's wrath?

"You wanted the Scarab for yourself, and you'd do anything to take it.Including killing those people!" He was done sitting back and listening to Caulder lie to him. He could see the weasel was squirming, desperately trying to find an out that kept him from getting what he deserved. Jaime brought forth his talon, the razor held close to his chest as he approached the doctor. It was time to end this.

"I wouldn't recommend that, Mr. Reyes-" Caulder's warning was cut short when Jaime brought the blade swinging through the air, it's tip passing less than an inch away from his scrawny throat. He jerked backwards in his wheelchair, throwing himself back in a desperate bid to escape a gory death. He wheeled himself as far back as he could until he felt himself smack up against the far wall. "This isn't you, boy. It's- It's the Scarab. Don't let it- WARP!"

But Jaime wasn't listening to reason. Whether or not the anger was his own, he didn't quite care. It burned so hot that he felt nothing but the need to throw himself at his enemy and tear him apart. He had all but dreamt of ending this man- of ending the nightmares- and he had finally had enough of Caulder's attempts to weasel out of what was coming to him. Reyes drew his blade from within, lunging for the man's throat with every intent to-

There was a sound akin to a blister popping through an old microphone. Before the Scarab could plunge his talon into Caulder's heart, a hand had taken him by the arm and thrown his weapon off course. It impaled through the wall, cutting apart tile and drywall in a spray of ceramic and dust. Reyes spun around to see who had appeared to stop him, only to be greeted by a fist to the face.

He barely felt it, all things considered; but Reyes was disorientated enough to stumbled backward, tearing his weapon from the wall. "Who the hell-" Before he could finish, another flurry of blows was sent his way, though this time it appeared his opponent was wielding some sort of piping as a makeshift baton. A metallic clang sounded as each blow connected with the chitin, the living material reverberating loudly with every hit. Jaime was more annoyed than in pain as he lashed out, attempting to slice through whoever was assaulting him.

"-llǝɥ ǝɥʇ oɥʍ" A man draped in darkness stood in front of Reyes, the piece of lead piping in his fist sliced in twain by Jaime's wildly swinging blade. His cloak of stars danced with his every agile movement, ducking and weaving passed Reyes's unsure attempts to skewer him.

Jaime hadn't a clue where this guy had come from or what his deal was, but he was only getting angrier by the second. "I'm not done with you yet." He snarled, taking a quick step forward as he attempted to bat away this new enemy.

"Warp, please escort Mr. Reyes off the premises-"

"No!" Jaime roared, wheeling back around on a dime. He was too close. He'd finally found all the pieces of the puzzle. Finally found himself face to face with Caulder. It was too close for him to simply lose it all now. "You- you were stalling- you played me!" Jaime wanted to leap at Caulder again, but he found a pair of strong arms wrapped about his chest, pinning his arms to his side. "Damn it, no!" He pushed back against Warp's grip, attempting to break his hold so that he could finish what Caulder had started.

"We're far from done, boy. Do not worry about that. But until I find a way to get that monster off of you..." He looked over toward his partner, nodding slightly. "...We will have to part ways."

Jaime threw his shoulders back, snapping Warp's hold like a twig. He threw an arm upward, metal shifting and squirming around it as an organic weapon began to take shape. The shinning barrel of a plasma cannon whirred to life, even as Warp scrambled to put his hands back on Jaime so that he could teleport the boy away before he could cause harm to Doctor Caulder.



The last thing Reyes heard was the thunderous sound of his weapon discharging as he was thrown into a hemorrhage in reality. He began to fall, his vision turning into a sky of swimming, crimson blood. Voices echoed all around him. The sound of carefree laughter mingled with the screams of the tortured and the damned, thundering over the quieter talks of lovers at a park and the hovering whispers of betrayers in a dark alley. A single, low hum undercut the entire cacophony; a beat of two short, one long, two short, two long repeated over and over like the rhythmic sounding of drums.





And he fell.





"...I- I wanna go home."

Darkness consumed the bleeding sky, devouring it's bright redness and replacing it with a space that was blacker than black. No light touched it. No eyes could perceive what lay within or beyond it. It was like an inky void, quickly chewing it's way through this twisted reality that Jaime found himself falling through.

End.

Every few swings or so, I take a look over my shoulder and watch as the lumbering giant smashes the streets and buildings of New York in her wake. I know I watch too many movies, because I almost think this is cool. Sure, she can literally squash me like I'm my namesake, and she's doing untold millions in property damage, but I'm fighting a kaiju person! Who wouldn't be slightly enthused by the notion.

I need help, don't I?

"Hello?" I answer my phone after a few rings, diving down at the top of my swing to dodge a tossed mailbox that's send my way. I web it to the side of the building it collides with to ensure it doesn't fall on anyone below.

"Holy crap you've got an 'Amazing Colossal Man' on your hands, babe!" Peter's enthused voice comes through the other end. "How strong is she?"

"Way too strong for me to take down on my own, if I'm being honest. But I gotta try."

"You should totally 'Empire Strikes Back' her."

That is...not a bad plan if I'm being completely honest. The problem is getting in close enough to web her legs up. She may not be the fastest in the world at this height, but she's quick enough. And one well-timed swat will have me plastered on the side of a skyscraper like it's a windshield. That would be most uncool.

Unfortunately, my idea of drawing her to Central Park seems unlikely. We're too far away, and she's just tearing way too much of the city up. The longer this goes on, the likelier it is that people are going to die.

With a twist in midair, I change direction and charge the giant criminal. The move catches her off guard, and I'm able to land on her right shoulder, "Hi! I'm your inner morals! You should give up your ways of crime and give yourself up!"

"Get off of me!" she growls in rage and attempts to swat me off. Instead I clamber down her back, and she tries in vain to reach me.

"God, I'm gonna be honest," I yell to her from safety, "my enemies tell me I'm annoying a lot...but this is definitely the first time when I totally agree with them."

Instead of keeping to grab me, she merely backs up towards the nearest building and tries to scratch me off like a bear on a tree. I drop off, and have to move quickly to get out of the way of her stomping boots. I dive under one of them as she's about to bring it down on me, blocking out the sun. She drives her hands down on the street where I land. She merely finds some concrete...as well as a web grenade. It explodes on impact, keeping her stuck to the street for now.

"You have got to be kidding me!" she looks up, her giant face filled with rage. "This won't hold me for long."

She's right of course, the webbing is already separating from the street. Once it does, it won't be long before she'll be able to get her hands apart as well.

"What's your deal, anyway?" I ask her, firing some more webbing onto her hands. "I've never met you before so you can't be after me!"

"All I have to do is kill one of your kind," she growls in response, her focus on getting herself freed. "That's the deal."

So she's working for someone else. That certainly thickens the plot to a scary degree. The last thing I need is some big bad sending giant women all day and night.

"That is not a good-Crap!"

The web cocoon around her hands explodes outward, showering me in the strands. It catches even my spider sense off guard, and I'm unable to get out of the way when the giant snags me. She begins to squeeze me, and I feel like a tube of toothpaste with the cap kept on. Her face looms before me like the man in the moon got uncomfortably close. Luckily, I manage to slip my hand through one of her fingers and fire a shot of webbing into her eye.

She recoils, falling into the building and dropping me. The apartment complex shutters under the weight, but holds.

Suddenly, as she regains her footing, the sky above the two of us explodes, and a shattered hole appears out of thin air. It wavers and pulsates with some kind of weird energy I've never seen before.

"Oh come on, what now?" I mutter to myself.

Almost as if to answer me, Wonder Woman blasts out of the opening and drives her knee into the shoulder of the giant, knocking her away from the building. The other superhero lands next to me, and I geek out a little bit, "Oh man I am so on the girl-power teamup streak."

Wonder Woman looks at me suspiciously, "Sorry. Hey, can you take care of her for a sec? I'm pretty sure that building is gonna collapse and I'm gonna go save anyone inside it."

I fire a webline and yank myself towards the upper floors of the apartment complex, "Kaythanksbyenicetomeetyou!"

As a Mach cone ripples the air in front of me, I see the pillar of smoke billowing up into the sky before I even see the skyline of Metropolis. A few seconds later, I’m diving down below rooftop level, heading towards the devastation in the middle of Hob’s Bay. I hear sirens from within the thick walls of smoke, and more on their way. I hear crackles and pops of electricity, like power cables on the ground. And I hear screams.

Hob’s Bay is a mostly residential district, particularly for lower-income families. It’s better off than Southside, known to the locals as the “Suicide Slum,” but it’s hardly the most high-end part of the city. Normally, in the event of an attack, the usual targets would be a few blocks east in New Troy, home to the major tech firms and the financial district. Whoever’s doing this likely isn’t interested in money or hardware, then. Chances are they just wanted to get my attention.

I’ll have to remind them to be careful what they wish for.

Peering through the thick blanket of smoke, I see people calling out for help. An older man is lying on the pavement, pinned under a fallen street light. A couple is trapped inside an overturned car, calling out for someone to let them out. An apartment building is engulfed in flames, and on one of the top floors, a family of four huddles in the corner, choking on smoke.

There are hundreds of other people ducked behind cover, out of harm’s way for the moment. There are a few others lying in the street, hanging out of broken windows, or in the seats of their cars, who aren’t moving at all. I’m too late to save them, but I can at the very least bring their killer or killers to justice.

First things first, the family in the burning apartment building. I fly up to the floor they’re on, and focus my vision to see into the building. The upper floors have suffered major damage, and could collapse on themselves at any minute. The fire hasn’t spread to the family’s apartment itself, but smoke has filled the place and rubble has blocked the door. I’ll have to bring them down to ground level myself.

I find a spot in the wall that’s far from the structural supports, and burst through into their living room.

“Is ever--” is all I’m able to get out before the sudden rush of fresh oxygen from the outside causes a backdraft, filling the apartment with a wave of flames. As the fire rushes towards the family, I speed towards them, holding my cape out to my sides to create as wide of a shield as I can.

The fire washes over me, and I grit my teeth. The family screams, but looking down to them I can see they’re relatively safe as my cape--and my own body-- take the heat for them. Still, that was reckless, Clark. There’s got to be a safer way to do this.

Most of the flash-fire burns itself out in a few short seconds, but even so, the smoke is thicker than ever, the heat unbearable. I need to get them out of here now, before it gets worse.

“Sorry about that,” I say, throwing my cape around to fan away as much of the smoke as I can.

"सुपरमैन! भगवान का शुक्र है!" the father exclaims. “आपको हमें बाहर ले जाना चाहिए! कृपया, बच्चों को पहले बाहर निकालो!”

My Hindi isn’t very good, but I’m able to pick out the words “children first.” I nod, and pick up the two children, a boy and a girl both elementary school age, and with a couple of long strides, leap from the window. I’m still not exactly the most gentle in the air, so our descent is more or less a freefall before I hit the brakes for the past few yards. The kids scream and cry, but at least they’re safe. I set them down on a stoop across the street, reassure them the best I can with what little I can speak of their language.

“तुम यहाँ इंतज़ार करो, मुझे माँ मिलती है,” I say, roughly meaning ‘you wait here, I get mother.’ I’m sure I sound like a caveman to them, but it’s the best I can do at the moment. Taking a few steps away from them so they don’t get caught in my gravitational wake, I hurl myself back upwards into the apartment, and appear again a few seconds later with their mother, then go back again for their father.

As I touch down with their father around my arm, the apartment building’s roof and upper floors begin to topple in on themselves, crushing their home beneath several tons of rubble. The kids begin to cry again, while their mother tries to comfort them.

“धन्यवाद, सुपरमैन, बहुत बहुत धन्यवाद!” the father thanks me. “हम वहां फंस गए थे, उस भयानक महिला ने हमें बिजली के साथ हमला किया!”

Again, my Hindi’s not great, but I’m able to pick out a few words. “Trapped,” “horrible woman,” and “lightning.” I get a sinking feeling in my gut with the last one, as I start to think of who might be behind this.

“सुरक्षित जाओ,” I say, which I’m pretty sure is just ‘go safe.’ Still, despite sounding like I’m doing a bad impression of Frankenstein’s monster, the father nods, and starts to herd his family towards a staircase down the street leading to an underground subway station.

With that out of the way, next priority is the old man trapped under the street light. Getting him free from underneath is simple enough, as I’m able to lift the pole with one hand and set it aside. Moving him, though, is another story-- his leg has been smashed to pulp.

“Aaagh, aww God!” he cries out when I try to move him. “I can’t--I can’t move!”

“Okay,” I say, trying not to crowd him, “I’m gonna find a way to get you to a doctor, all right?”

Still clutching at his leg in agony, the man nods. Not far from here, I hear the sound of ambulance sirens, so that’s encouraging. With paramedics in the area, I hopefully won’t have to fly him all the way to the hospital. Still, I can’t carry him in his current state.

Looking around, I see a construction site, and a dump truck parked at the curb. Perfect.

I don’t fly so much as make a long jump to the site, cracking the pavement beneath my feet when I land. Heading to the back of the dump truck, I grab hold of the tailgate, my fingers sinking into the steel like clay, and with one good heave and a loud screech of twisting metal, I pull it off the hinges.

Carrying the tailgate back to the old man, I set it down next to him. “I’m going to get you to someone who can help,” I tell him, “but to do that, I need to move you onto this, like a stretcher. It’s probably going to hurt a bit, but it’s better than leaving you here.”

“Right,” the man says, “I gotcha.”

With a grunt of strain and gritted teeth, he slides himself onto the makeshift stretcher. I grab one end of it.

“Hold on tight,” I tell him. He nods, and grabs the edge of the tailgate. I raise the end of it up just enough that I can get under it, then lift it onto my back, and take to the air as delicately as I can.

Normally, I’m able to just force my way through the air without much trouble, but moving slowly actually requires a lot more energy. I think it’s a matter of how much I have to focus on my body and whatever-- or in this case, whoever-- I’m carrying, and the greater amount of concentration I have to exert, the greater the strain it has on me. If lifting a huge object while airborne feels like keeping all of my muscles flexed at once, this is like having to do that while also building a house of cards.

By the time I’m able to find the ambulance and set him down so the paramedics can treat him, I’ve got a splitting headache.

“Thanks,” the man says with some relief, “you’re a lifesaver. I didn’t think I had chance. That blue-haired woman just came outta nowhere.”

I frown, as he confirms my suspicions. If it really is her, more than this neighborhood might be in danger.

I head back to the street to find the couple in the overturned car. This one should be easy, just turn the car upright and--

KRA-KOOOOOOM!!!!!!



“NO!” I shout as the car explodes, arcs of cerulean lightning dancing in the smoke and fire.

“Therrrre you are,” says a voice from inside the plumes of fire. “I was startin’ to worry you wouldn’t show. But now I got my chance to get back at you fer puttin’ me away.”

Emerging from the inferno is a woman, with gray skin and electric blue hair standing up in spikes. She has a playful grin on her face, but her eyes burn with a searing hatred. Electrical sparks crackle and pop from her hands.

A few months ago, Leslie Willis was an activist and local media personality, riding the same sort of “Beware the Superman” narrative that people like G. Gordon Godfrey like to spin. She held a rally in Centennial Park, which quickly turned into a riot. I tried to intervene when someone in the crowd pulled a gun and opened fire, hitting an electrical generator next to Willis and causing it to explode. It should have killed her on the spot, but the combination of my getting in the way at the last split-second to take most of the voltage and her own latent meta-gene awakening transformed her into a being made of electrical plasma.

Blaming me for what happened, she declared Leslie Willis to be dead-- killed by Superman-- and in her place was her new identity…..



“Livewire,” I scowl, balling up my fists and getting ready for a fight.

“Nice to see you too, Superman,” she sneers, forming balls of plasma around her hands. “Now how’s about you an’ me have ourselves a dance?”

---

---

Music

---

---

"-Does it burn?"

Had Iris not been blessed with superspeed she would have seen what was coming, she ran to the side as a blast of heat came straight out of 'Heatwaves' hand. The name had never been more apt, because that was what she felt as the blast of fire went passed her. Part of her missed her old cowl that kept her hair in check, now she was substantially more worried about her hair catching fire than she had any right to be. This didn’t make sense, Heatwave was one of the first ‘supervillains’ that she had faced. A mad man and an arsonist, Mick Rory had a reputation for violence and burning things.

He didn’t however have a reputation for having a furnace strapped to his chest and the ability to throw fire out of his hands. She paced around him. Iris ran at Rory, he was relatively easy to incapacitate in the past. He wasn’t super strong, nor durable. At least he never used to be. If she got a good hit in early enough she could put him down and end this fight before it even really started. She ran directly at him, twisting her torso to sidestep a blast of flame that was directed straight towards her. Ducking under a subsequent blast she aimed her punch directly for his head.

Iris felt the searing heat as her first mate contact with his head, Heatwaves body twisted as he took the brunt of the blow but rather than being knocked down as she had hoped once he stood up straight again he pushed both his arms down towards the ground. Iris was blasted off her feet in an explosion of heat. She ducked and rolled as she collided with the ground again twisting to face Heatwave. “What happened to you? Where did you get these powers?”

Rory laughed as he pushed his hands down, pushing fire that swirled around him. “Some silver-headed freak sent me here, told me he’d give me power to burn things up to test what you’ve got.” He sent out a burst of flame towards her, she spun her arms in a twisting motion to deflect it as it came towards her. The blast spiralled throughout the street, that was thankfully already empty. Coulson and his S.H.I.E.L.D agents seemed to have taken the necessary priorities to clear the street to prevent any casualties. “I’m more than happy to oblige.”

The admission though, being tested, a silver headed freak. This was the Surfers doing, somehow. He was supposed to be secure in some S.H.I.E.L.D top secret facility. Apparently it wasn’t as secure as everyone thought he was, or at the very least he was capable of sending super powered maniacs out from prison. She’d need to look into that later. She spun her arms as he charged her, the air vortex knocking him back. As he became angrier the heat emanating from him seemed to increase. There was a definite connection, she didn’t know what it was but she could take advantage of that. Of that much she was sure.

Iris had to figure out a way to get close enough to him and knock him out, or find a way to cool him off. “Listen, this isn’t you. This is the power that the Surfer gave you messing with your head, why don’t we just take a nice little wal-”

A blast of fire cut her off as she had to duck to avoid having her face burnt off. That wouldn’t have been an ideal way to resolve the situation after all. She obviously wasn’t going to be able to talk him down, not that he had been a reasonable person to talk to the last time they had fought one another. The added maniacal laughing didn’t fill her hope that this could be resolved peacefully, this was going to be a lot tougher than last time. The last time she faced him she literally ran at him, punched him and took the fancy flamethrower he was sporting.

She was really starting to hate the Silver Surfer.

”The Ranchero of Miracle Mesa” - Glitter And Gold: Part One

---

---

”When all the cows are sleeping, and the sun had gone to bed, up jumped the scarecrow and this is what he said.” Ebenezer Laughton rocked himself on his cot. He sang the rhyme he always did before bed, like he had for the last thirty years. Mother had taught him that one. His cellmate snoozed beneath him. He’d have gotten used to it by now.

”I’m a dingly dangly scarecrow, with a flippy floppy hat.” Ebenezer though he didn’t really deserve to be here. The glass and cinder walls. Handcuffs so tight they cut off your circulation. He’d killed a few people, sure. That didn’t make him like the rest here. The man from across time. The man who shot fire from his gun. The babbling man in yellow who drove you insane in a look. He was just Ebenezer. Not his fault he was so good at getting out of the other places. Not his fault that it felt so good to do it all over and wind up trying to get out again.

”I can shake my hands like this, and shake my feet like that.” Ebenezer curled up in his bed, pulling the paper thin sheet to his chin. They’d had a new guest here a while, a silver man. Apparently he was tough. Ebenezer didn’t think anyone here was tough. They all acted like it. Puffed out their chests and showed off their fancy powers. Said “don’t mess with me”. “I’ll fuck you up.”. It was like anywhere else. People so afraid of what would happen next that they didn’t show it. That they were just scared little kids who wanted to hide in their cells and cry the days away. The fear that escape would never come. It was delicious. They were little caricatures of how they were on the outside. But in here, it was all real. Their fear was raw, their emotions exposed. Amazing to watch. To twist, to poke, to prod, to stab into…

”When the dogs were in the kennels, and the doves were in the loft, up jumped the scarecrow and whispered very soft.” There was a rumble in the lower level. It was subtle, from where he was. A shift in that prison air. The scent of smoke just kissing his nostrils, and the sound of distant screams. How fortuitous. Earlier than he’d expected. He swung his legs off the side of his bunk.

”I’m a dingly dangly scarecrow.” He dropped to the floor. The concrete felt cold on his toes. His cellmate grumbled in his sleep and turned away, to face the wall. He heard the steps of their floor guard stop. He was listening for the chaos.

”I can shake my hands like this...” He moved his hands down to his cellmate, closing around his neck and squeezing. His cellmate shuddered and hacked out a cough. Ebenezer squeezed harder. His cellmate’s hands went spastic. He sputtered. Ebenezer squeezed.

”And shake my feet like that.” His cellmate’s protests had grown less fervent by the time the alarm started to whine. It was a low yowl throughout the prison. Heavy footsteps from the guard. He could barely hear them over the alarm.

”When all the hens were roosting, and the moon behind the cloud...” Ebenezer removed his hands. He felt his cellmates sweat between his fingers. Warm. Sticky. He dragged his feet across the ground to the stark glass wall that seperated his cell from the rest. He pounded on the glass. A passing guard, running towards the sound of destruction, paused for a moment to consider him.

”UP JUMPED THE SCARECROW AND SHOUTED VERY LOUD!” Ebenezer screamed. The guard couldn’t see him. All the man could see was Ebenezer’s panicked motions to his cellmate’s unmoving form. The guard furrowed his brow. Sweat was already pouring down his head. His eyes flicked to the readout aside the cell, assessing what he might be unleashing. He swallowed. He keyed the release.

The guard’s flesh came off in meaty chunks as Ebenezer ripped and tore. The guard couldn’t draw his gun fast enough to matter, at this range. No, now it was just Ebenezer and his rhyme left. Drenching his hands in the red. Ebenezer could almost smell the guard’s fear on the air; that lovely mix of adrenaline and cortisol.

”I’m a dingly dangly scarecrow, with a flippy floppy hat...”

---

The city was on fire, but Roman J. Solomano didn’t seem to mind. He watched from his skyscraper like Nero as the Spider-Woman fought the giantess. She looked like she was trying to lead gianto-bitch away from the buildings, towards Central Park for their showdown. All the merrier for Solomano; meant he didn’t have to roll out rocket wielding goons to protect his goddamn property.

His last finger had gone without much fuss. There was little fanfare. Just the pain. Crippling pain. The wound still throbbed, even though it had been cauterized days ago. Whoever this sonofabitch was, he was harder to kill than your average dumbshit cowboy. He’d wasted damn near a hundred warm bodies only for the bastard to come out on top. A hundred people. You don’t just get manpower like that in this city. And now that he’d exhausted his “pretend-to-give-idiots-superpowers” card, he couldn’t pull a stunt like that again.

At least the people he’d really given superpowers were making up for the loss. Profits had jumped up more than 300 percent, thanks in no small part to the Spider and Punisher wiping out swathes of the competition. And now, word was that the Punisher was out of town, on some insane tear across the heartland. No skin off Solomano’s back. And on top, it looked like the giant was set to squash the Spider, unless one of her freaky super-pals showed up, like that fire guy from a few days ago.

It disgusted him to look at his hand. What was once his symbol of power, the mark of his lineage, was now an abomination. The three remaining fingers looked like they belonged to an alien. He’d taken to wrapping in in a bandage and tucking it deep in his coat. Even that idiot Big Caesar looked at him different for it. They all tried to hide it, but he saw their looks. The glances and the giggles… At least those stopped after he capped the last few to do it. Now there was solemnity and quiet. Peace and fucking quiet.

One of the remaining fingers on his hand itched. It started the day after his ring finger went. He still hadn’t selected a new hunter. A new finger as his sniggering goons had taken to calling the poor souls. If he focused he could feel it building. Little bits of sinew being snapped around his finger, preparing for a premature separation. But he had nothing to throw at the damn cowboy, anymore. His top hitman and a veritable legion of thugs had failed. What was left?

Either way, the police and New York’s local yokel ‘hero’ would be wrapped up with that for at least a few days. The Silver Surfer had initiated the largest security breach in Raft History -- probably world history, if Solomano was honest. Super Criminals would run rampant in the streets, making matters all the worse for the Spider, and on top, there were now countless powered ex-cons on the hunt for… Gainful employment. Maybe there was something to throw at ‘Vigilante’ after all.

---

It was sad to see Frank go. Greg supposed it’d be sad with anyone, but there was a certain kinda companionship with the man. Bonds forged in fire, n’ that. Castle was a man of solid stuff, soldier n’ Greg was, he figured, on account of him not going plum mad once he saw The Spirit. That particular… Ailment was more n’ a little hard to explain. But Frank took it easy and honest, as he seemed to most things.

By his recollection, the ‘Solomano’ character the Hunter’d told them about was some big wig crime guy in New York. But supposedly, he wasn’t near enough powerful to feild anything like this attack, ‘specially on a target so far away. Far as the criminal world went, Solomano wasn’t even knee high to a grasshopper. Frank said that when the time came, he’d be there, but… Well, there was still Warpath to tend to. Greg couldn’t rightly leave these people to stew in their petrified forms to chase down some high falutin bandito.

N’ then, he still had to pick up the pieces here. They’d done things here. Were those men? They seemed to be, on some level. But would they have all been fine if he’d let the Spirit whammy them all? Or were they dying already? The question in his head felt like the one he’d grappled with in his early days in Hell, fighting through legions of once-human spirits. “Am I murderer?”

He had his sins piled high enough. Dealing with the Devil was up there far as most pastors were concerned. But to kill innocent boys tricked by a man in a suit? Maybe Mephisto really was in him, after all. But much as he hated to admit it, that couldn’t much matter right now. No matter who or what he was, Warpath needed him. They didn’t have nobody else.

All that was left to do at this point was to sit back in his chair, rifle in hand, and tick the days away until whatever hand the universe threw him next…

---

William Mowse’s cell was a small thing, devoid of any color or any forms of entertainment whatsoever. Not a pencil or scrap of paper, all he had was his bed frame and his thoughts. He’d tried scraping his ideas into the floor with the bedposts first. Then they superglued tennis balls to the bottoms. He felt like a geriatric waiting for age to claim him while he drove himself insane.

It was always the same chain of thoughts. Escape methods, plans, possible allies. Realization that it was impossible. Dreams of gadgets, and the knowledge that they were impossible, too. Tears. Then starting it all again.

It was a wonder he’d gotten here in the first place. The Raft! It was New York’s very own Guantanamo Bay. And the rest of the faculty had always thought that Mr. Mowse would never amount to anything, a deadbeat teacher on his third position in as many years. The former titan, the man that stood astride Norman Osborn, Lex Luthor, Tony Stark! A genius! By all accounts! It was a shame that people’s perspectives were so limited. His technology was the future, but paper after paper he was refuted, and farther and farther he fell down the totem pole. People refused to believe in his findings. Objects so ordinary and so blase to typical tests, that review boards across the country refused to believe their properties.

They were simple things. A rag doll. A pipe. A pocket watch. A silver dollar, and a key. Yet the power they contained was extraordinary! All he needed was a special device, or maybe one of these new metahumans to harness their power. But no. That door was closed to him. If only he’d waited. But trying to convince people of “magik” before the advent of metahumans? Foolish. All that was left to do was to show them. Try to collect the artifacts. And that was what landed him here. How reluctant SHIELD was to let a mortal man tamper in the world of magic.

So here he was. A meek highschool teacher among murderers, malcontents, and silver gods from other worlds. There might’ve been a certain irony to that, some statement about overly harsh Government oversight and a ruthless prison system designed to attack the disadvantaged. But Mowse had been through those thoughts. Over, and over, and over again. He needed something new, some information to mull over, anything to keep back the tide of insanity, wearing away at the exercises he tried to push his mind through.

Before his senses registered the blare of the prison alarms, he felt a cool presence in his mind. It was at the same time ice cold and warmly comforting. It wrapped all around him and enveloped him… It was like the cosmos itself had compressed and seen fit to flow through his veins. It promised him power. The power to show them that they were wrong. To take it back from Osborn, from Luthor... To forge the fiery new reputation. The Black Star would no longer be a crime lord… He’d be a God. All in exchange for challenging one little Vigilante...

---

---

Warpath, Texas

Jaime Reyes woke with a start when he found himself thrust through a wound in reality and falling through the sky. "Ah, hell- not this again!" Visions of white, puffy clouds and a sea of blue sky rushed across his vision as he spun and tumbled through the air uncontrollably. Jaime flailed his arms and legs in a desperate bid to find some sort of object to grab hold to and anchor himself to; a useless gesture, given the fact that he was somewhere in the lower atmosphere.

He had no idea how he'd gotten here. Some...monster had appeared and thrown him into a portal to hell or something- where the air screamed and the sky bled, and nothing made even a shred of sense. Reyes wasn't given even a second to celebrate escaping it now that he was sent plunging toward the earth at record speeds for the second time that week.

'Dios mío, when does it end?'

There wasn't time to lament the never ending chaos. He had to find a way to control his descent. Reyes stopped flailing, instead choosing to thrust all of his arms and legs out like he was about to make a snow angel. After a few moments of observation, he could tell that he was falling backward. 'Gotta spin around.' He realized. Awkwardly he plunged half of his body downward, letting the wind catch him and do the rest of the turn for him. Reyes felt slightly sick as he twisted through the air, contorting his body like he'd seen people do in sky diving videos.

Was now a bad time to admit he hated heights?

"KHAJI!" Jaime shouted over the sound of rushing air. "You wouldn't happen to remember how to fly now, would you?!"

'I do not.'

"Helpful as always!" Reyes fired back. 'Come on, Jaime. Think. You've got a whole alien arsenal to work with. Gotta be something you can do to keep from going splat.'

'I do not understand your panic. We already survived a fall from a similar height; there is no need to worry.' Khaji Da's voice was as dry and disinterested as ever, as if the idea of slamming into the earth at reentry speeds was going to be a pleasant experience to walk away from.

"Wait! Do we still have that engine you had me steal from that jet?!" Reyes's panic subsided slightly, a tingle of hope washing through the tips of his fingers.

'We do. I must remind you, however, that I am unable to assist you in piloting-'

"Yeah, yeah-" Jaime waved it off. He didn't need this useless extraterrestrial's help anyway. "Just deploy 'em! I have an idea!" The Scarab, for it's credit, didn't hesitate, the plates of chitin on Reyes's back parting to allow the weaving tendrils of living metal to form an identical pair of jet engines. He could feel the power humming through them radiate down his spine; it was an odd sensation, but it gave him an equally odd sense of confidence as he continued to plummet toward the earth. There wasn't a whole lot of time for him to doubt himself in the moment.

Slowly he forced his arms down from his side, pushing against the immense pressure of the air blasting up against his spread limbs to point his hands downward. "Right. Here we go." He breathed. With a thought he transformed the material around his fists into a pair of plasma cannons. Each pulsated and twitched like living flesh, seeming to beat with the pace of Jaime's own elevated heart rate as he turned them toward the ground. He had broken through the clouds by now, and he hadn't made any significant progress toward slowing his descent.

"Alright. Alright. Okay." Jaime could see the sand and dirt below. There didn't look to be any bodies of water or trees to aim for- on the bright side, there looked like there was a settlement of some kind not far from his current trajectory.

'What is your plan, Jaime Reyes?' The alien asked, it's curiosity piqued in the worst possible moment.

"Stick around and you'll find out!" The next step in his master plan involved swinging both of his legs down. It was easy enough to accomplish, though keeping his body pointed in a straight line was unsurprisingly difficult given the turbulent forces bashing at him from every angle. "Do I have control of the engines?!" He yelled to the voice inside of his head.

'You do. Simply think it and they will activate, as all our adaptations do.'

Reaching inside of his own mind, Jaime felt for this control that Khaji Da spoke of. Sure enough, it was there; it was like searching for feeling in a hand he'd slept on all night. It was odd, the say to least, to discover what amounted to a fifth and sixth limb attached to his lower back. "I've got it." He confirmed with a slight nod. Now all that was left to do was to concentrate. To focus on his guns and the jets on his back.

He pulled the trigger on all four at the same time. A series of clicks sounded in his ear as each ignited in quick succession, the energy stored within flaring to life. There was enough, longer drone that came with them climbing up toward maximum power. He'd never fired them off with everything they had before- he figured it would be quite the show.

The duel beams of light exploded out from his hands in tandem with the first pulse of his back-mounted rockets, flashing across the sky with such brilliance that one might mistake it for the heavens opening up to reveal the pearly gates. It painted the air a deep, bright blue that bounced across the clouds like the flashes of lightning.

It certainly didn't feel like heaven when all the force of his fall was abruptly thrown back against Jaime's extended hands. There was an immediate jolt backward, his momentum all but halted as the atmosphere collided with his upper body. He let out a harsh series of grunts and curses at the force exerted on his wrists in particular. "JESUS!" He howled.

Reyes nearly panicked again when he felt himself begin to ascend back up into the sky. "Nononono- shit- fuck!" He cut the power output down to a quarter, but even then he could still feel himself starting to head up with increasing rapidity. Jaime repeatedly cut down on the power flowing to the quad-sources of thrust until he felt his momentum halt again. Eventually he was able to work himself into a hover.

He was hovering. In the air. Hundreds of feet above the ground.

Jaime was actually flying.

"YES! YES! Hahahaha- yeah!" He roared out a laugh in victory, all the tension in his body melting away to be replaced by sheer exuberance. Everything that had led up to this- the pain, the exhaustion, the rage and the grief- it was forgotten in that one, quiet moment as Reyes looked out onto the horizon. He could see for miles in every direction. Sure, there wasn't much to see out here- wherever out here was- but it was still the best feeling he had experienced in...well. Maybe ever, the more he thought about it.

Each of his arms shook and trembled as Jaime fought to keep himself stable. Both of the cannons seemed intent on sending him flying off course the moment he dropped his guard, so he was forced to pay them both a good deal of mind even as he simply hovered there for a few, precious minutes.

"Right. Well. Time to land." As much as he would like to stay in the sky forever and forget the problems of the world below, Reyes had a great deal of things he needed to do. Like find out where he was, and what had happened to Brenda and Paco- if they were even in Caulder's dungeon at all, and not just mental projections meant to keep him off balance. Jaime only hoped they were back safe and sound in Washington, probably worried sick about him. 'God, Brenda's gonna punch me in the mouth the next time she sees me.' He thought with a smile. It was probably the first time he'd looked forward to being punched in the teeth.

"Um..." He glanced around, blinking. "How am I going to get down?"

Baxter Building, New York

A week had passed since Reed Richards had shown Victor von Doom the progress he and Harrison Wells had made made on the timecraft. Now as he had promised, it was completed. All the sleepless nights spent toiling away on the craft had come to an end. The once-smouldering heap of metal was sat at the centre of Reed’s laboratory, now fully restored to its former greatness, for all the world to see. At least, for SHIELD deputy director Maria Hill to see. She too was now wandering around Reed’s lab in hologram form inspecting the super scientist’s handiwork.

“I have to say, Reed, I’m impressed. I had Koul and the rest of the eggheads at the Triskelion look over the schematics you sent over and they tell me that what you’ve managed to do here is unprecedented. There’s no way that craft of yours should ever have got off the ground again.”

Reed smiled deferentially and gestured across the room. “None of it would have been possible without the help of Harrison Wells.”

“Then it sounds like you owe Mr Wells a great debt,” Hill said with a begrudging grin.

She had tried on several occasions to recruit Wells to SHIELD’s cause but the STAR Labs founder wanted no part of it. The last thing he wanted was to spend the best years of his life cooped up in the Triskelion's basement working on things that were destined to never see the light of day. Koul might have been satisfied by that, but he certainly never would be. It gave Wells some satisfaction that though Koul had been admitted to Franklin Storm’s prestigious Baxter Building, he had created something of his own – and proved himself every bit Reed’s equal.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Wells said through a knowing smile. “It’s been a pleasure to finally work up close and personal with the great Reed Richards. I finally got to see what all the fuss was about.”

Hill finished her inspection of the timecraft and then stood in front of Reed with her hands on her hips. “When do you propose to return home?”

For the first time in a long time, Reed Richards found himself incapable of answering.

“I can’t answer that question on my own. I’ll need to sound out the others. What we’re stepping back into, it’s a lot. I’ve been so busy trying to figure out how to fix the craft that I’ve not even considered putting together a plan for once we’ve landed.”

It was not as Maria Hill would have done it, of course. In Reed’s position, she would have planned for every eventuality – tried to compensate for every variable and control every actor involved – but this wasn’t a military operation, far from it, and travelling through space and time could not be treated as such. The fate of their world’s Reed, Sue, Johnny, and Ben spoke to that fact. All that mattered to Hill was that there was no repeat of what had happened – or worse.

“There can be no risk to our world, Reed.”

“I agree,” Reed nodded. “If the others are also minded to return home, we do the launch from a neutral location – somewhere there’ll be no chance of any loss of life should things go wrong.’

Wells leant forward from beside Reed. “They won’t go wrong,”

“With all due respect, Harrison, that’s what we thought last time,” Hill said through gritted teeth.

It was a stark – and unnecessary – reminder of the risks. Everyday that Reed had spent in the Baxter Building was another day spent walking in his counterpart’s shoes. That he innately knew his way around the other Reed’s laboratory was unnerving to say the least – and it was only the tip of the iceberg. They had burned, and so too might Reed and his family, if he and Wells had made even the slightest of miscalculations. It terrified him. But the fate of his entire world rested on their return.

A sudden knocking on the lab door caught Reed off-guard and he smiled politely at Hill. “That will be them.”

“Alright, Richards. Call me once you’re done – I want to know where we stand on this issue before close of play this evening. Hill out.”

The hologram disappeared. Reed felt his palms dampen with moisture. It had been a long time since he had been as nervous as he was now – not even preparing the craft while under siege from Darkseid had caused him such dread. There had been no time to think then.

“I’ll leave you to it,” Wells murmured as he began to gather together his things.

“You’re as much a part of this as the rest of us,” Reed said as he placed a supportive hand on his lab partner’s shoulder. “You should stay.”

The doors to Reed’s laboratory opened and through them stepped Sue, Johnny and Ben. Guy Gardner was several paces behind them. Reed noticed at once the necklace slung around Sue’s neck and the faint yellowing beneath Guy’s eye. It only dawned on him then how long it had been since he had seen the four of them. He’d been so concerned with repairing the craft that he’d barely left the lab other than to sleep – and from the dejected look on Ben’s face, that fact hadn’t been lost on his colleagues either.

“So are you going to tell us what’s going on, Stretch?”

“All in good time, Ben,” Reed said with a weary smile as he pointed towards some chairs huddled at the centre of the room. “Please take a seat.”

Ben leant in to Johnny and whispered to him as they sauntered to their seats. “Did ya hear that? ‘All in good time’ the man says, like it’s not been a week since we last saw him.”

Once they were sat down, Reed and Wells took their places in front of them. They both looked run-down, having barely slept or eaten since arriving at the Baxter Building, but did their best to hide it. The thick stubble that had begun to force its way through the pores around Reed’s chin seemed to have aged him even more than the tiredness had. His voice however, as calm and authoritative as ever, showed no sign of tiredness.

“I’m sorry that i have been absent over the past week or so. Well, more absent than usual. Harrison and I have spent every waking minute working towards the goal that the four of us set upon arriving in this world – returning home. And I’m proud to say that, after a great deal of work, we have achieved it. The timecraft that Doom and I built to get us here has been repaired. At least, repaired enough to get us home.”

There was no rapt applause, no cheering, only a silence that was pregnant with anxiousness. It was not quite what Reed had expected. As he looked at Sue, Johnny and Ben’s stunned faces, he wondered for a moment whether they ever truly believed he could return the four of them home, or perhaps, whether they were ready to.

“You’re saying that we can go home?” Johnny murmured in a voice that was so quiet it was barely audible. “Back to our world?”

Reed offered his brother-in-law to be a nod. “That’s correct.”

Johnny shot up from his seat, clapping his hands together excitedly, as the prospect of home flooded over him. Suddenly, however, his excitement was pierced by some thought that Reed couldn’t parse from his expression, and as if giving in to his conflict, Johnny slunk back into his seat.

Beside Johnny, Sue made no effort to conceal the conflict writ over her face. “Home when?”

“We can leave whenever we like. SHIELD have asked that we stage our departure somewhere … well, somewhere that’s not Manhattan, which I think is fairly reasonable on their part, but otherwise there’s no reason we couldn’t depart tomorrow if we wanted to.”

Sue shook her head.

“That’s not what I mean. You built that thing in the first place to send us back in time, Reed, and somehow we ended up here. Now you’re saying we can get home. Great. But home when? Home now? What if there isn’t a home now? What if there’s not an Earth to return to?”

It was, in not so many words, the same question that Victor von Doom had put to them on his visit last week. He had warned Reed of the risks of charging blindly into their old world without knowing what would be waiting for them. In the days that had passed since, the comment had stuck with Wells – and it had had been he, not Reed, that had found the workaround that they needed.

“It’s a good question. In fact, part of the difficulty in repairing the craft was working out how the four of you managed to travel across dimensions when you were, in fact, trying to travel through time. It wasn’t until Reed explained that your Victor von Doom was a magic user that it made sense to me. You see, unbeknownst to your fiance, as alien a concept as Reed not knowing something may be to you all, Doom imbued the craft with … well, let’s call it “chaos magic” for lack of a better ter-.”

Unimpressed by Harrison’s waffling, Ben cupped his hands around his mouth and heckled him gently. “Magic-schmagick, answer the damn question, Wells.”

“I was about to,” Wells responded spikily. “Although they might seem it on the face of it, magic and science aren’t too dissimilar, Ms Storm. It took me a few days to work out how Doom’s enchantment had affected the craft’s navigation system, but I managed it – and better yet, by manipulating the residual energy left behind from Doom’s enchantment, I managed to reroute it. With some deal of precision, I might add.”

The scale of Harrison’s achievement was lost on his audience. For a scientist completely unversed in high-level magic to be able to harness chaos energy as Wells had done, even if it had only been a fraction of it, was unheard of. Once it had become clear that Sue was not satisfied by his partner’s answer, Reed took the floor.

“It’s not exact but we should return home about a year before Darkseid’s arrival. That should to give us enough time to bring Superman and Luthor together and convince them of the danger of what’s coming. A year ought to be more than enough time to prepare. If it’s not, then I’m afraid that’s our lot. We’ve only got one chance at this.”

Ben and Johnny exchanged a hopeful look. Even Sue, who had been so quick to question her fiance and Wells, seemed to have her worries put to rest by that last response. They began to speak amongst one another, the first green shoots of excitement about saving their world starting to sprout through, when a pink hand shot up from within the crowd. Guy Gardner waved it around until Reed invited him to speak.

“And what about us?”

A bemused smile crossed Reed’s face as he considered the comment. “I’m sorry, Guy, I don’t quite understand what you mean.”

“All I’ve heard from the four of you is how bad things are going to get once this Galactus character shows up and how you’re the only people that can stop him. I mean, excuse me if I’m talking out of turn here, but I feel like it would be … what’s the word, remiss of me not to ask. What happens to us when Galactus comes calling and you’re not around?”

“Galactus is our problem,” Harrison Wells said as he sensed the mood turning once more. “We’ll face him on our own just as their world did.”

Unsatisfied by Harrison’s bluster, Guy shook his head and doubled down on his concerns. “Oh yeah, and what if we lose?”

“All the data I logged on Galactus, his consumption patterns, the Surfer – everything there is to know about Galactus – I have put at Nick Fury’s disposal. It’s more than we had when we faced Galactus down. Having seen your Superman at work firsthand, I’m more than confident that you’ll be able to repel Galactus.”

Perhaps Reed was confident of that fact, but Gardner was not – nor was he convinced by the feeble smile that Richards offered him by way of reassurance. For the first time since he had met the scientist, Guy had reason to suspect that Reed wasn’t sure at all. In fact, it almost seemed like he was bluffing – and it was a bluff that the SHIELD agent was determined to call.

“Are you willing to risk seven billion lives on that?”

Ben let out a sigh that seemed to signify that it pained him to ever have to agree with Guy Gardner in public. “I hate to say it, Stretch, but Carrot Top’s got a point. The four of us didn’t high-tail it out of our own world just to stand by and watch while another one gets destroyed.”

Sue nodded in agreement.

“If this craft of yours works as well as Wells says it ought to, surely we can leave whenever we want to? I want to go home just as much as anyone, but another month or two won’t change that much for us – but it could mean all the difference for this world. Maybe we should stay.”

Harrison Wells shook his head. He had been biting his tongue up to this point, uncharacteristically conscious of seeming rude given the context in which their conversation was taking place, but the crassness of Gardner’s question – and the fact it had affected Ben and Sue so strongly – had tipped him over the edge.

“No, this is not happening. Gardner does not speak for our entire planet. Your world needs you. It needs you more than ours does. From the looks of it, you people are barely holding it together here – and there’s no guaranteeing that even with your help we’ll be able to turn Galactus away. What happens if you stay and we still lose? Then your whole world is doomed. I won’t stand by and watch you trade your whole world away because of sentiment. You must return home.”

This time Wells found that his contribution hit home. The assembly fell into silence. Outside of Gardner, who was sat stubbornly at the back with crossed arms, each of them looked more conflicted than the next.

“Well, I’ll be damned if this ain’t a Sophie’s Choice if ever I heard one,” Ben muttered under his breath.

“What do you think, Johnny?” Reed enquired of the youngest man in the room. “You’ve been awfully quiet over there.”

Johnny shrugged his shoulders guiltily.

“I don’t know what I think anymore. I mean, this time last week I’d have been all for cutting and running the second that ship was fixed – hell, I even told you and Wells as much when you got back from Central City after the whole Surfer thing. But now that it’s time to decide… I’m not sure what we should d-”

A loud explosion cut Johnny’s thought short. The impact shook the Baxter Building. The group sprung to their feet, prepared as ever for action, but found their footing rocked against by another explosion in the distance. This one was nearest than the first and the impact sent the Baxter Building’s electronics into a tailspin. First the appliances shorted out, then the lights began to flicker, before the six of themselves found themselves stood in total darkness.

“Well, that’s not sound good.”

Johnny’s hand burst into flames and the laboratory lit up long enough for Guy to pull out his SHIELD-issued tablet from his pocket.

“What’s going on?”

Guy skipped through various CCTV streams being beamed into his handset from across America. There had been a breakout at the Raft, that much he could deduce from the grainy footage, but the scale of the breakout took a few moments to become clear. There had been in attacks all across the country – and the explosion they had felt was only a hop, skip, and jump away from them. Its point of origin a Godzilla-sized woman stomping through New York.

“You ever see that old black and white movie ‘The Attack of the 50ft Woman’? Turns out it's a little truer to life than the studio execs let on.”

Suddenly the Baxter Building’s lights began flickering. Guy turned to face Reed, hoping the scientist would be on the brink of barking out orders to his teammates, but in his place noticed an unfamiliar sight. There was something hovering where Reed had once been stood.

As the lights flickered on, Guy made out the features of a seated man with a large bulbous head. There were thick, pulsing veins across his forehead, almost as if his skull was struggling to contain his brain, and the man's eyes were matched in yellowness only by his jagged teeth.


~Oh, trust me when I say that Giganta ought to be the least of your concerns. Allow me to introduce myself – my name is Hector Hammond.~

“You’re going to pay, Livewire,” I say, bobbing and weaving between arcs of electricity flung wildly into the air, “for all the people you’ve hurt today. The people you’ve killed.”

“Wouldn’t a been near as many if you hadn’t taken yer sweet time gettin’ here,” she sneers. “You’re the one always goin’ on about protectin’ the innocent an’ all that. An’ when real trouble shows, you’re late to the party. Far as I’m concerned, their deaths are on you.”

Livewire points her index finger straight at my chest, pointing her thumb up to make a finger-gun gesture and lets loose.

“Bang.”

In the fractions within fractions of a second, I can see the bolt of lightning arcing towards me, the air ionizing in front of me like a second bolt reaching out to it, completing the circuit. I try to juke to one side, but I might as well be moving through cement while trying to dodge a fighter jet-- just because I can see it coming, doesn’t mean I’m fast enough to get out of the way.



The explosion sends me tumbling head-over-heels, and my upper body curls up tightly before violently arching back as my muscles spasm. For a moment, there’s a sharp, stabbing pain in my chest as my heart actually skips a beat.

Before I can regain my bearings, she’s behind me, forcing me to the ground with another blast.

“Y’know, I was really worried I’d never get another chance at this,” she says, the air buzzing angrily as she hovers over me. “Ta pay you back fer turnin’ me into a freak like you. They put me in an insulated cell in the Raft, huge walls a’ rubber an’ concrete an’ a release ta flood the whole thing with water ta short me out if I started actin’ up. I was startin’ to give up hope, Supes. I thought I’d never get out.”

I lunge towards her, but by the time I’m even halfway towards her, she’s long gone. Another bolt of lighting sends me careening into the side of an old brownstone building.

“Then, hey presto, I find out I got friends in high places,” she gloats. “A bald naked silver guy pops into my cell, says he’ll let me go if I go kill me a cape. Didn’t have a doubt in my mind which cape that was gonna be.”

Silver……

Damn it, the Surfer’s broken free. If he’s enlisting other super-powered criminals to do his dirty work, there’s no telling how bad this might get.

I lunge at Livewire again, and again she’s too fast for me. To be honest, I’m never going to be able to catch her.

Which is why rather than try to grab her, I’m trying to move her into position. She now stands between me and a large steel dumpster. It’ll do.

“Ah-ah-ahhh, Supes,” she scolds mockingly, “ I can move at the speed a’ light, an’ you can’t. I thought ya learned that the first time we foug--*oof!*”



“I did.”

I might not be able to move at the speed of light, but my Heat Vision lasers sure as hell can. They pass through Livewire’s plasma form, but create a path right into the conductive metal dumpster, forcing her into the circuit and slamming her into the dumpster at full speed.

The dumpster explodes, sending smoke and shrapnel everywhere. Even before the smoke clears, I see arcs of cerulean light dancing wildly around her.

“That was a real cute trick, Supes,” she snarls. “How ‘bout I try a new trick out on you?”

Her body dissolves into an amorphous cloud of electrical plasma, and races towards me. I start to fly upwards, but she’s too fast. Every muscle in my body feels like it’s being pricked by a million pins and needles as the plasma wraps and constricts around me. Gritting my teeth, I continue to fly up, to give me some more room to maneuver, and to stay clear of civilians.

“See, I know this might hurt like hell,” I hear Livewire’s voice in my ear, her plasmatic form taking just enough shape to form a mouth, “but as long as I’m attackin’ you from the outside, it’s not gonna do all that much. But maybe, if I go at you from the inside……”

The angry buzzing fills my ears, and suddenly everything is white light and excruciating pain.



Livewire, she’s not just electrocuting my body…...she’s in my head. Not affecting my mind, but literally inside my head, attacking my brain.

Can’t-- see---

--control-- arms--

--legs---

--breathing--

“GAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!”

“That’s what I wanted ta hear,” her voice booms in my eardrums as they fill with blood. “Don’t get too worried now, Supes. It’s all gonna be over soon.”

My chest-- feels like spears running through me.

She’s not just-- not just trying to fry my brain. She’s--

--trying to stop my heart.

Can’t--- can’t break free. Can’t take much more.

Going to kill me. Have to….have to stop it.

Down. DOWN.

I fly downward, every ounce of willpower I have guiding my body straight down.

Straight down into the river. Short her out.

“No, no, nonononononAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA--”

There’s one last burst of shocking agony throughout my body, then it clears.

The water around me is boiling, but it gets colder the further I sink.

Colder…..

…..darker…...



…..then it all goes black.

Captain Rogers had been in Team 7's training room, rehabbing his injuries, when the first tremors hit. Dropping the weight with a pained grunt, Steve grabbed a towel and headed topside. Upon emerging on the Triskelion's ground floor, he found a scene that could only be described as controlled chaos. SHIELD agents marched this way and that, barking orders to secure unstable equipment and to check the status of the containment cells. Every few minutes, another major shockwave hit, causing the structure to tremble. Luckily, it had been designed to withstand far worse. Captain Rogers moved with purpose, hardly paying mind to the agents brushing past him, as he searched for the man in charge.

Despite the commotion, it didn't take long to find Director Fury. Indeed, the Colonel was surrounded by many such agents who, like Rogers, were looking for answers. To Fury's credit, he was cool and collected. He considered each question in turn, answering rapidly and with conviction. In a situation normally absent of control, Nick Fury was a bastion of it. Meeting Rogers' eyes, the Director completed his delegations and urged all the agents back to their stations at once. They say that attitude reflects leadership, and this was never more apparent than watching SHIELD handle a crisis under Fury.

When Fury was finally within earshot, Rogers asked the obvious question. "Are we dealing with a naturally occurring quake?"

Fury shot Rogers a look, a look which gave its answer in the casual dismissal of the question. A look which said, "If you have to ask, you already know." The Director turned his gaze ahead, saying, "Five distinct signatures, spread through the district. Reports of hostiles on the ground. A smaller force than you faced in Qurac, but large enough to overwhelm the metropolitan police, particularly with all the chaos from the quakes. The National Guard's been called, but D.C.'ll be a crater before they can get it under control."

"What about us?"

"I've already dispatched Prince to secure the President. Wilson's running reconnaissance, helping us organize strikes against whatever they're using to cause this. This tech's way beyond anything the Quracis should've had in development," Fury scowled.

Rogers furrowed his brow. "Where do you need me?"

The Director shook his head. "Can't do it. You're not even medically cleared, much less having your mind right. It'd be suicide to send you out tonight."

Rogers stepped in front of the Director, putting a hand on his chest. "You said it yourself, Nick: I deserve the chance to set things right. You want to stop me? Then you're gonna have to call Diana back and have her restrain me, because nothing less is going to keep me sidelined."

"Don't think I wouldn't," Fury threatened hollowly. Sighing, he relented. On top of everything else tonight, he couldn't afford to deal with the headache that would be trying to keep Rogers out of the field. Besides, if ever there were an "all hands on deck" situation, this was it. "You want to prove you've still got it? Strongest signal's coming from the National Mall. Good bet you'll find al-Rahman there."

Rogers softened his stance. "Thank you, Nick."

"Thank me by taking down the sonuvabitch," the Colonel sneered. Nodding, Captain Rogers took off to collect his gear until Fury called out after him. "And Steve?" Once Rogers turned, Fury looked at him with a dark and determined expression. In a low tone, he said, "Bring him in alive. He and I are due for a long chat."



When the earthquakes began, the Mall erupted in a panic. The assembled tourists, like a startled herd, scattered to the wind. Very few saw or even took note of the peculiarly-dressed man standing beneath the Washington Monument wielding some kind of energy weapon. It wasn't until later -- when the gunshots began -- that they came to the horrifying realization that tonight was not a natural disaster, but instead the act of a violent and hostile force. In light of this new information, those who could not escape the area had been forced to take shelter inside the Lincoln Memorial. There, held at gunpoint by these terrorists, they waited and prayed for salvation.

Abdul al-Rahman stood at the top of the steps, looking out over the chaos he had created. It was poetic. Thanks to the Americans, he had watched his country burn; now, they would watch theirs. This night would only be the beginning. Washington was the shot across the bow, the statement of the Liberators' intent. They would not rest until all who had wronged Qurac had been brought to swift justice. They would reclaim what had been stolen. And they would rebuild, better and stronger than ever before. Never again would Qurac be ignored or stepped upon. Behind the Colonel's leadership, they would become a superpower.

Though, not if Steve Rogers had anything to say about it.

The Colonel noticed the glint of metal at the last possible moment. Were it not for the superhuman reflexes afforded to him by his new abilities, he would not have been able to leap out of the path of the approaching shield in time. It whistled underneath him, deflecting off of a crumbling column and returning to its owner, who was now charging up the steps. Captain America entered the fray with a haymaker that the Colonel effortlessly redirected. As the original Super-Soldier skidded past, Colonel al-Rahman drove his heel into the small of Rogers' back, sending him sprawling across the marble staircase. Spinning on the ball of his foot, the Colonel looked down at his adversary and said, "I commend your resiliency. Most men would think better than to challenge me again after so convincing a defeat."

Rogers scrambled to his feet, although his opponent made no move to attack him yet. "I think you'll find I'm not like 'most' men," he answered through gritted teeth. He lifted his shield and assumed a defensive stance. Even such an innocuous gesture sent waves of searing pain through his injured shoulder. Each time he flexed it, the pain was renewed. He knew that it would hurt like hell the first time it got hit. It didn't matter. All that mattered was stopping this madness.

For his part, the Colonel showed no signs of being threatened at all. Though he held his weapon, his posture was relaxed, almost indifferent. He knew that even at his healthiest, Rogers wouldn't be able to close the distance between them without the Colonel having a chance to react. He had nothing to fear from the American. "What do you think of our machines?" al-Rahman asked. "Vibranium-powered resonance generators. Nothing authentic, of course. You and your people saw to that. But synthetic vibranium provides more than enough power for our purposes."

"And what purposes are those?" Captain America circled slowly, stepping down until he was level with al-Rahman. They stood at the width of the staircase from each other.

The Colonel laughed joylessly. "Isn't it clear?" He stared daggers at Rogers. "Settling old debts."

Cap sneered. "By killing innocents?" He lunged, but the Colonel was waiting for it. The Quraci caught Captain America's wrist and pulled so hard that he nearly dislocated Cap's good shoulder. Stumbling forward, Cap caught a headbutt right on the nose. He could tell by the immediate burst of pain and the warm, wet sensation down his face that the nose was broken. The Colonel pushed him away dismissively.

"No one here is innocent," al-Rahman reasoned. "At best, they are indifferent to a regime that enacts countless horrors upon the world. At worst? They celebrate it." He loomed over Captain America, seemingly growing larger the angrier he became. "All they've known is power. And they believe that because they hold this power, the world is theirs to do with as they please." He raised his weapon, pointing it at Cap's chest. "I am here on behalf of the world to show them that we have power, too."

Another shockwave went out. Both combatants were knocked off-kilter by it, but the Colonel redirected his momentum into an attack before Captain America could find his center. The blunt tip of the Colonel's staff came crashing down on Cap's hastily raised shield; immediately, he felt as though he could pass out on the spot. Stars surrounded his vision as the Colonel seized the opening and planted a standing kick into Rogers' center of mass. He fell backwards, nearly losing his shield altogether. The blood from his nose was running down into his beard. The Colonel stepped over his rival's body.

Like so many times before, Captain America was down but not out. From his back, he delivered a hard kick to the inside of the Colonel's knee. As it buckled, Cap leapt up and wrapped an arm around al-Rahman's neck. The two went tumbling down the Memorial staircase, landing hard on the walkway below. The Colonel lost his weapon. Both hurried to recover before the other. As the Colonel bent down to retrieve his staff, he caught a knee to the rib cage from Captain America. Cap followed up the hit by driving both elbows into the Colonel's back. His bad arm was throbbing, but he threw everything he had into the hit. The Colonel hit the floor at Cap's feet.

With the toe of his boot, Captain America rolled the Colonel onto his back. As he did so, however, the Quraci reached for his weapon and jabbed it into the American's calf. Cap let out an inhuman howl before being grabbed by the belt and thrown headlong into the Reflecting Pool. He crashed through the knee-high water, disturbing the Pool's placid surface. By the time Cap got his bearings and turned around, he found that the Colonel had already charged in after him. A sharp jab sent Rogers splashing back towards the deeper water at the center of the pool. He felt hands around his throat as al-Rahman struggled to hold him under.

Cap brought up his shield arm and bashed his adversary in the side. It moved him little, but it at least softened the Colonel's grip enough to give Rogers a fighting chance. He repeated the motion, each time losing a little steam yet each time weakening the Quraci's resolve. Finally, with the last swing that Cap could muster, he managed to knock the Colonel to the side and free himself. Surfacing immediately, Captain America gulped down air and struggled to his feet. He saw the Colonel, also rising, and charged. With a tackle that would've made a linebacker proud, Captain America drove his opponent deeper into the Pool. There, the waist-high water would negate the Colonel's quickness at least.

Overheard, a helicopter circled, its lone spotlight dancing to keep the two combatants in view. As the Colonel pushed Captain America away, he looked up at it, remarking, "No more hiding, Captain. The world will know that the stories about you are true. And your country will answer for them."

"As we should. But it's you who'll be answering for tonight," Rogers retorted as he swung in again. He knew he could not afford a protracted fight. Given enough time, the Colonel's superior stamina would win out, particularly given the injuries Rogers sustained in their last encounter. If he was going to win this fight, Captain America would have to rely on one thing: blunt force trauma. He would need to hit harder than perhaps he ever had; and he would have to do it while barely being able to lift his arm.

The Colonel sensed it, too. Finding himself at a disadvantage, slow and sluggish as he was in the water, he went defensive. He sought to absorb or altogether avoid as much punishment as Captain Rogers was trying to dish out. Cap noticed him favoring his ribs, so that's where he focused his attention. His shield strikes were getting weaker, but placed correctly, they could still have devastating effect. The Colonel moved to catch the shield, so Captain America slipped out of it and delivered a splashing roundhouse kick. The Colonel and the shield took a plunge.

That's when Captain America heard the clicks. Looking up, he saw that the Liberators had surrounded the Reflecting Pool. Each of them had a rifle trained on the now-defenseless Captain Rogers. His earpiece buzzed with a welcome voice. "Hey, Cap. Now would be a good time to duck."

Doing as he was told, Captain America dropped towards the water. As he did, he caught sight of the Falcon making a low approach angle. Like an A-10 Warthog on a strafing run, Falcon carved his way down the line, blasting the Liberators and whizzing by. Whoever was still standing afterwards was now far more concerned with the airborne intruder. As they opened fire, Cap looked down to see the Colonel charging him.

The two traded blows, but it was clear that the Colonel had found a second wind. For each punch Captain America landed, Colonel al-Rahman got in two. Rogers' throbbing left arm was becoming a liability, leaving him open on that side. The Colonel pressed the advantage, delivering right hook after right hook. Cap's jaw rattled almost in tune with the rhythmic shockwaves coming from the resonance generators. He needed his shield, but it was somewhere three feet deep behind the Colonel. An attempt to swap positions was met with a violent shove from al-Rahman as he continued his assault.

"Heads up!" Falcon called out. He swooshed past, dropping the Colonel's forgotten weapon from above.

Captain America managed to gain some separation from his opponent and catch the falling staff. It hummed in his hands. Slashing forward, he missed al-Rahman by inches. A follow-up strike got the Colonel across the thigh. The surface of the Reflecting Pool hissed as the heated tip of the weapon passed through the water. The third attack al-Rahman anticipated, and he caught the center of the staff between Cap's hands. The two struggled for control until finally, Cap pulled away with a twist. As he did so, he heard the Colonel cry out in agony. The Reflecting Pool splashed as everything from al-Rahman's left elbow down broke the surface. The Colonel stumbled back, holding the stump that was once his arm.

Cap brought the weapon to bear, holding its tip beneath the Colonel's chin. "Yield." The Colonel made a desperate swipe at the staff, so Captain Rogers rewarded his foolishness by cracking him in the face with the handle. Blood streamed from his nose now, too. Rogers repeated himself, "Yield."

"Kill me," al-Rahman spat. "What's one more dead Arab boy to you?"

Rogers powered down the weapon. "There's been enough death." He reached back and smashed the handle against the side of al-Rahman's skull. The Colonel fell unconscious as the shockwaves subsided.

SPARTAX //

"I really wanna see you
I really wanna be with you
I really wanna show you Lord
But it takes so long, my Lord"

Peter Quill walked towards the palace gates and stared at it for a moment. His father, the King of Spartax, was in that palace working to protect his kingdom. Based on what he gathered for the galactic extranet, he had been ruling Spartax from years since his father's death in the hands of the Ariguans. J'son conquered their homeworld, R'lalmis, and forced the population to abandon their culture. Those that refused to change were dead. Quill hesitated to enter the palace grounds for a moment and breathed heavily. He was about to meet his father for the first time in forever. The man that forced his mother to raise a child by herself. The man that wasn't there when she got cancer and died. There was a feeling of angry towards him for leaving her behind and never bothered visiting.

He breathed again and walked passed the gate with Rocket and Groot behind to watch for any potential threats. Surprisingly, there wasn't any guards to stop them from entering the palace. Once inside the palace, they heard noises down in the hallway behind a white double door. When Quill approached it, he turned towards Rocket and Groot.

“Can you guys stay here while I talk to him?" Quill asked.

Rocket nodded and said, "Do whatever you need. We will be out here if any goes south."

Quill opened the doors and entered the throne room to find two people in it. One of them was a woman wearing white armor with gold (in order to make it look neat) holding a spear. And the other was his father sitting on the throne listening to her talk. Suddenly, she felt a strange presence in the throne and quickly turned around while grabbing hold of the spear. She pointed the spear at Quill and tried to speak, but King J'son rose from his throne and placed his hand on her shoulder.

"Settle down. He will do no harm to us." he said.

"How do you know that this stranger will not do you harm, your majesty?" she sounded confused while still looking at Quill for any sudden movements.

"Because he's my son."

He approached Quill and looked at him for a moment. He couldn't believe that he was looking at the child of his former lover, Meredith Quill. But, he wondered if the Darkstars found him. "Do you have it?" he asked, referring to the photo.

"Yes." Quill answered as he pulled out the photo and handed it to his father.

J'son smiled as soon as he grabbed the photo. It was the only thing that he had that reminded him of Meredith and Earth. He carefully placed it in his pocket and looked at his son. "I know that you have a lot of questions. Fortunately, I will be able to answer them." he said as he walked back to the throne and sat down. Meanwhile, the woman watched her king sitting back down and walked to stand by his side. The spear was placed nearby in case of any threat to the king's life. Quill still couldn't believe that he just met his father in person. He wanted to hug him, but thought it would be too awkward. Plus, the woman might of killed him if he tried to.

Now, he wanted answers.

"Where were you?" Quill asked.

"I wanted to stay. I really di-"

"Answer the question, please." Quill sharply demanded which caused the woman to give him a dirty look.

"Here." J'son answered. "I was requested back here after your grandfather, Eson, died while fighting in a war against Ariguans. I had to take my father's place as King of Spartax and achieve vengeance against the Ariguan military."

"Then, why didn't you take us with you?" Quill asked.

"Because everyone would of disapproved it since you both were outsiders of Spartax. I really wanted to bring you along, but they already had planned out my future, even before I was born." J'son said with a tone of sadness. "I am sorry."

"I don't understand why you didn't fight harder! You are basically a king with absolute power. You could of easily told them to shut up and gave us the red carpet treatment." Quill angrily stated. "But, you didn't because you were a coward!"

And with that sentence, the woman had enough and pointed her spear at Quill again. "You will NOT disrespect His Majesty at all!" she screamed ready to strike for disrespecting the king.

J'son put his hand up and said to the woman, "Stop this now, Victoria."

"But he disrespected you, your-" she tried to speak but was silenced with one strong word for J'son.

"Enough."

She looked at Quill with disgust, withdrew her spear, and returned to her original spot. J'son breathed and got up from his throne as he was going to try to calm the situation down. Then out of nowhere, his right throne arm began to flash. He sighed and went to check it out. It wasn't a good time, but he couldn't refuse to not go. He turned to Quill and said, "I have something important to do. Please stay for dinner and we will continue this conversation. In the meantime, Victoria will keep you company."

"Alright, your majesty." Victoria said while keeping her true thoughts to herself in fear of upsetting the king more. Quill was annoyed that he had to wait for his father to come back, but he was going to have deal with it. He waited until the woman said something, but it was quiet. So, he breathed and looked at her.

"So, what kind of music do you like?"

Lavender soap and jasmine.

Marc woke with her head on his chest, her scent filling his nostrils as the late morning sun shone through the windows making him squint.

“Mmm-mmm.” she mumbled, rolling over to change positions. She opened her eyes and looked at him, a smile growing across her face. She kissed his chest and then rolled back.

Marc rolled out of bed and she flopped onto the bare bed.

“Come back to bed.” Marlene asked him.

He grunted and reached for clothes. He threw on a shirt, underpants and a pair of pants and grabbed his shoes and socks to finish dressing in another room in this house.

Marlene pouted and rolled back into the blankets. He’d got what he wanted. And then he got the sleep he wanted and now he was going. There was no stopping him.

Marc finished tying his shoes just as the cook’s path crossed with his own.

“Good morning, sir. What can I get you this fine morning?”

“Breakfast?”

Nedda chuckled. “Mr Spector, I’m a private cook and housekeeper who lives on site. If I suggested there was ever not a time for anything, I wouldn’t keep this job. Eggs overeasy on country white toast, bacon, mushrooms, British breakfast sausage and beans sound good to you?”

“Good. And no--”

“And no tomato. Yes, sir.”

Nedda left without further comment and Marc got out of his chair. He crossed the floor and looked at the artwork. Quickly becoming bored, he walked out and left for the gymnasium.

Jean Paul intercepted him in the hall on the way.

“Coucou! Ca va, my friend?”

Marc stepped around him and continued on his way, making DuChamp stop in mid-stride and look at his friend out of curiosity. Spector opened a door off the hallway and walked through.

Nedda returned. “Your food should only—oh! Good morning, Mr Duchamp. Have you seen where Mr Spector went?”

“He went down there.” He pointed to the door.

“Ah. He must want his breakfast in the gymnasium. That’s fine. I’ll get a tray prepared.”

Jean Paul furrowed his brow, scrutinizing the development.

“So he asked for food, and then just disappeared without telling you he was going.”

“That’s fine Mr Duchamp.”

“It’s rude. He’s been like this for—“

“It’s fine, Mr Duchamp. I imagine Mr Spector has just been under the weather of late, and has been feeling a little off colour. Perhaps his blood sugar has dropped low. Is there anything I can get you, Mr DuChamp?”

Jean Paul looked on at the older woman’s manner in contemplation.

“No, thank you, Nedda. I’ll be fine until lunch.”

The housekeeper turned on her heels and returned swiftly to the kitchen.

“Prend la tête… You know more than you’re letting on too…” The Frenchman muttered under his breath.

Marc pounded the heavy bag rhythmically. He began wailing on the bag with increasing ferocity. He put a small tear on the left side of the heavy bag and he adjusted his workout accordingly, digging in deep lead hooks into the tear until the bag burst open and spilt its contents onto the floor. He stopped and panted as he watched the grain pour out.

“Your breakfast, sir.” Nedda announced, leaving a tray on a chair by the door.

“And I believe Mr Samuels said he will need to see you once you’ve eaten.”

Spector grunted, as he watched the grains fall.



“Gentlemen, gentlemen… If I can call you that, despite all evidence to the contrary. There’s still time.”

The Profile stood before the Committee trying to get them all back on the same page.

“How did your damn plan work out, Profile?” Carruthers sneered. “We’re no closer to regaining control of either asset.”

“The plan is working fine. Already Spector has sought out the werewolf. Another night still remains and if it weren’t for the chosen terrain for their first conflict we would have been in a position to retrieve both. We know more than we knew yesterday. Spector took the bait once and he will again. We pool all field resources for tonight and we make sure that we at least regain control of the Werewolf.”

“So did you review the footage of the fight between the two personally, Profile?” Ms Conway asked, leering knowingly.

“Fuck off, Conway.” The Profile responded, shuffling papers as he prepared to leave. No witty retort, perspiration clear to all. He was over this job, and everybody could see the cracks starting to form.



Flint walked through the parking lot for Magnus Labs and across the plaza to get to the Chicago Police Department Tech Labs. Will Magnus gave his own time to operate as a CSI Tech in major crimes in the Illinois area, as a result when he opened his own private laboratories after leaving the Chicago Branch of STAR Labs under Dr T. O. Morrow he chose a site within close proximity to the CPD Tech Labs. With the high publicity nature of the events from the previous night, the city wanted to be able to say they had their best on the job. So a late night call was sent to Dr Will Magnus, and with the offer of a potential werewolf and costumed vigilante that Chicago might call it’s very own Magnus had jumped at the opportunity, even if it meant a very early start to his day.

Flint still had a few hours before his shift started and was curious to get the lowdown on the findings for his previous night’s work, even without receiving any official caseload from that night. He walked in the main entrance and passed the front reception desk without a word. He took the lift to the third and showed his badge to the woman working the smaller reception desk.

“Is Doc Magnus in?”

“Yes. But I think he’s about to leave. He had an earl--”

“Yes. I know, he had an early start. I worked the case last night. Detective Sargent Flint. I just want to discuss his findings before he goes home for the… early afternoon.”

The receptionist hit a button for the door’s magnetic lock and Flint walked in, offering a final wave.

Flint walked down aisles of computer bays and cubicles before knocking on an office door at the end. The laboratory work was done on another floor in sterile conditions. Most of these computer terminals were for maintaining DNA and fingerprint databases whilst the offices acted as hubs for daily communication for the bigger techs.

Will Magnus looked weary, but still the empty pipe hung between gritted teeth out of the corner of his mouth.

“I’m gonna have to buy you one of those pipes that blow bubbles.”

“You’d be too late. Morrow bought me one of those one year for Kris Kringle.”

“How’d you know it was Dr Morrow? Aren’t those things supposed to be anonymous?”

“I may not be a detective, Flint. But the kind of people who work in laboratories… Let’s just say yours and Dr Morrow’s sense of humour kind of stand out.”

Flint exhaled sharply out of his nostrils, before getting right to the point. “So, what’d you find out about last night?”

“Well, gee Flint. What do you want to know?”

“Whatever you’ve got.”

“Alright. First, about your possible werewolf theory. I’d say it scans.”

“How so?”

“I tested the bloodwork twice. Once as soon as I got into the lab and again at 10 this morning. Blood was collected from the same splatter source. Tested positive first for lupine blood at 4:10 am. Tested positive for human blood at 10:07.”

Flint’s eyebrows raised collectively.

“Only problem is, he’s a ghost.”

“What?” Flint’s Chicagoan accent went into overdrive in surprise. “The werewolf’s a ghost??”

“Of sorts. Blood came up as a Jack Russell, formerly known as Jacob Russoff. We had DNA from an incident years back in ‘09 where he was speeding home. Police said he was very agitated and he took tickets at the time, but he surrendered himself to police for fingerprinting, DNA and provided an updated address the following morning. They updated the report to say he must have been running late at the time, and that he was generally very compliant.”

“Jesus… how did this never come up?”

“Simple. This was well before any talk of mutants and metahumans. DNA testing was purely about obtaining identifying markers for identification purposes in the future. Basic DNA identifaction just picks out those markers and makes an identification. Recognizing a person as having some kind of secret metahuman powers was never the intention in the first place.”

“And you said he’s a ghost.”

“Ah, yes. He’s listed as having died in an automobile accident two years ago. His death certificate has been filed. The coroners also confirm date of death as October 2016.”

“So… what? Is this some kind of zombie thing? He died and came back a werewolf?”

“I’m not an expert on previously-believed-to-be-mythical creatures, Flint. Give me science and I’ll give you answers.”

Another sharp exhalation, before changing tack.

“Alright, what can you tell me about the man dressed in white?”

“Probably not a professional welder, but he likely has some kind of basic engineering background.”

“Based on what?”

“The joins in his homemade hang glider. Made of lightweight aluminum framing and ultralight white canvas. The canvas is probably the more expensive and tougher component to come up with. He clearly made it himself so he’d be less prone to identification. You go out and buy a bunch of straight white hang gliders… somebody’s going to notice.”

Flint considered this for a second. “How much do you think it cost?”

“The glider? Hell if I know. My guess would be several thousand.”

“So he’s probably either wealthy or pulling down 6 figures a year and obsessive?”

Doc Magnus thought for a moment.

“Well… obviously, this isn’t a scientific estimate but…”

Flint waited.

“...I’d say at least high five-figures. If he’s out there again with another glider tonight though I think we could safely rule out the 5s. I mean, a hobbyist could knock something like this up. If he had an engineering background and some knowledge of aerodynamics.”

“Hmm. Did you get anymore on that silver crescent thing?”

“Not yet. Getting clearance for further testing on it at Magnus Labs.”

This made sense. Will Magnus’ specialty was in metalwork. It came as little surprise that the metal expert would want to use his own private laboratories for a full battery of testing on the treated silver that interested him the night before.

“What are you doing anyway, Flint? You sound like you’re getting ready to catch this guy.”

“Haven’t heard anything from the top brass yet either way. Just getting the inside skinny from you in case they’re telling me it’s going to come to that.”

“So you haven’t heard yet?”

Flint sighed. “What have they done?”

Magnus tapped away at his keyboard. “There was a press conference this morning. Right from the top. Superintendent Robran declared that ‘the Chicago PD welcome the assistance of concerned private citizens who are seeking to end the scourge of crime in this city in the interest of improving community policing relations.’”

Doctor Magnus turned the screen and a video of the morning’s press conference played.

“Jesus… this is some nutcase in a white cape, and they’re rolling out the red carpet for Superhero Neighbourhood Watch…”

Magnus grunted through his pipe between gritted teeth. “Nn-hnn.”

“Thanks, Magnus.”

Flint walked out, shaking his head all the way.



Jack Russell walked the streets in agony. Even now, in his regular human state, the wounds refused to clot from the silver and his shirt was patchy from his own blood seeping through.

He’d been in two minds as to whether he should even leave the factory at all. With only one night left where he was vulnerable, why would you even risk it to go outside in the first place?

But the truth was, Jack knew just how little influence he had over the wolf within, and the fact of the matter was that the wolf was influenced more by outside stimuli than in any way by Jack’s own wants or desires. If the wolf came to the fore in a warm, safe, familiar location the first thing it would look to do is hunt anyway.

So Jack would push on and hope. Hope that when the next transformation took place the wolf would push further in that direction. And away from this city and all the troubles it had brought him of late.

The wooden door burst into splinters as my boot collided with it. I rolled through the doorway, coming to a halt in a kneel and firing off my Glocks at the three crooks before me. Their bodies spasmed violently with each round that hit them. A few shots went off behind me; I twisted around and fired off some of my own, before throwing myself behind a counter for cover. Bullets embedded themselves into the wood, my cover being torn to shreds with every passing second.

Just another Tuesday afternoon I suppose.

I jumped up onto the counter, rolling off of it and gunning down the thugs as I did so. Most of them were dead before they hit the floor; those that weren't were cut down with another shot. I heard footsteps coming from another room behind me. Leaping into the air, I twisted around as the door opened and fired as I fell to the ground. The crooks inside were mowed down in seconds.

I laid there on the floor for a minute longer. After I was sure no one was left, I picked myself up and reloaded my Glocks. Holstering them, I pulled out my M12 trench gun, keeping it at the ready as I did a sweep of the building. I was nearly finished in a few minutes, and pressed myself up against the wall of the last door. Taking in a deep breath, I shot the handle off and kicked the door open, aiming my shotgun around the room.

There was one last guy left, cowering the corner and raising his hands. "D-don't shoot, holmes! I ain't armed!" He wasn't dressed like the rest of them. He was naked save for an apron to cover his modesty and latex gloves slicked with sweat on his hands. Looks like I had found the cook.

"I'm gonna ask you some questions. Give me some answers I like, and I might let you off easy." He nodded his head eagerly. "This operation. Is this it, or is it bigger?"

"It's..." He hesitated for a moment before continuing. "This is it. Nothing else."

"Compadre, you got a pissed off vigilante aiming a scattergun at your head. You don't wanna lie to me." To emphasize, I got a bit closer, pressing the barrel against his forehead.

He whimpered slightly. "It's... I-it's bigger. We're run by a guy in LA. We've been expanding, this is the furthest out we are."

"This guy. He got a name?"

"R-Raul. Raul Garcia."

"Thanks for the info. Now. I'm gonna be heading to LA to deal with this and then I'll be heading back around. When I do, I'll run through here. I want you to get an honest job by the time I'm back. If you haven't?" I leveled the shotgun at his knee. "Bang. You got that?"

He gulped. "Si."

I propped the gun against my shoulder. "Good. Now get your clothes on and get out of here." He nodded, throwing off the apron and gathering up a pile of clothes, before running out the door. I cast a glance at the bench which was set up with a top of the line chemistry set. These weren't just unfortunates looking to make enough money to put food on the table. No, these guys were well financed.

I took a few grenades from my vest and stuck it onto the bench, before heading back into the kitchen and looking at the gas powered stove. I pulled it out into the open, grabbing the gas line and yanking it out the back. Gas began to flood into the room. I went outside, pulled a cigarette out of my pack and lit it with my lighter as I headed back to my van. After a few drags, I tossed it into an open window, waiting for what was to come...

*KRA-KA-BOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!*

The drug den was engulfed in a ball of flames. I hopped into my van, started it up, and began to drive away.

Next stop? The City of Angels.