Issue #5 by John Cheese
January 2018
January 2018
The sand on the top of the mesa sung as a small dust devil whirled round the summit, the whistling wind accompanied by a far darker voice chanting in an unknown language. As the devil continued to whirl flames sprung up from the eye of the storm, the chanting stoking it into the shape of a burning viper, the fire serpent struck at the storm and caused the sand to collapse. Taking a deep breath, the figure dressed in what appeared to be a grey funeral shroud sat down and held her hands out, the burning snake leaving the camp fire in the centre of the mesa and returning to the one who summoned it.
“You would kill in Vegas,” Flintlock commented as she poked her head out of the tent erected just past the confines of where the dust devil had been. “You ever been before?”
“Once, to banish the Lord of Greed,” Sarah replied. “Get Zawadi. I have completed the anti-surveillance spell and I am familiar enough with the text she provided to begin.” She gestured into the glyph the wind had carved into the mountain top.
“Yeah, okay, but as soon as she brings out her talking stick, starts singing, or introduces puppets into the equation, I’m out of here,” Flintlock replied as she darted back inside the tent before re-emerging, followed by Zawadi, the former Dora Milaje, dressed in hiking shorts and a grey tank-top, a knife in her hand.
“That was some storm you summoned; are you sure you’re up to it?” Zawadi asked as a pair of large rattlesnakes slithered out of the brush and laid their heads on Sarah’s lap.
“I’m sure,” Sarah reassured her as she stroked the snakes on the head, their tongues flicking out at her touch. “But be reminded that revealing a secret is not always a good thing.”
“I understand this,” Zawadi answered as she sat down opposite Sarah, before motioning Stone and Jennifer to sit down, the later looking almost horrified at what was about to occur. Following her teammate’s lead, Flintlock joined them and for a moment they weren’t mercenaries, but rather five women staring into a fire in an almost primal way.
“So, how does this start?” Stone asked.
“I start,” Zawadi stated grimly. “We all have a past that shapes us. We know this but we don’t acknowledge it, we simply judge each other. Well, I have some labels for us.
“Cold,” she stated as she pointed at Flintlock.
“Insular,” she added as she gestured towards Stone.
“Terrifying.” Her finger moved towards Sarah.
“Ashamed.” She finished as she locked eyes with Jennifer, the young woman bowing her head. “Thief,” she added after a pause.
“Broken,” Jennifer replied, the fire rearing up to form five serpents of flame, each one rearing up to look a woman in the eye.
“Broken is most apt. In the Dora Milaje if one of our sisterhood was hurt then we would make sure such injuries, be they mental or physical, don’t affect our judgment of her. That is what I purpose doing here.”
“And what if we don’t want to share?” Stone asked.
“Then you remain broken,” Zawadi replied, as she placed her hand into the flames, much to the gasps of the others. “I promised you answers about my history in Wakanda. Let me present that to you. Let me give you something of mine so you may lose something of yours.” The flames crawled up Zawadi and incinerated her into ash. “I owe you that much.”
# # # # #
Wakanda, 1968
“I was born in Wakanda, a nation where women were never expected to be inferior to men.” Zawadi announced as a young woman dressed in an amber chiffon leapt over a barricade and landed on the other side, the giant leopard snarling and hissing at being caught by surprise.
With a shout of victory, the woman lashed out with her knife, her prey backing up, hissing and snarling across the concentric rings of the arena until it reached the centre. “While I say I was in the Dora Milaje, the truth to say is that I was an initiate into the order. What you see here is the climax of my training,” she continued as the central ring of the arena glowed and the leopard vanished, its body evaporating into cyan light.
“Sister, you have done well,” a powerful voice announced as a trio of women walked into the arena, each one dressed in a red chiffon and holding a poleaxe. “You managed to contain the essence of the Panther God gifted to each of our order.”
“I live to serve and protect the Black Panther and Wakanda,” the young woman stated as she kneeled before her elders. “As a Dora Milaje I will lay my--”
“You are not to become a Dora Milaje,” one of the women interrupted. “While it is true that you possess many of the qualities that are required, the Black Panther himself has been consulted, as is custom, and both he and I have decided that you are not to become one of his brides. It is a shame. You have the makings of a leader, but not a leader of Wakanda.”
“What have I done wrong? I will do anything to right it,” the young woman stated.
“There is no changing this,” the elder Dora Milaje replied as they turned to leave. “You know what rites are required to be undertaken by those who fail to join our order. I expect them to be carried out.”
“I carried them out. At the time I thought what I lacked was a tangible trait,” Zawadi explained as her younger self walked into the forest, her palms bleeding. “I learned later that it was my blood that failed me. Eons past, Numidian mercenaries tried to invade Wakanda, they failed and those that survived were given clemency. My blood is not that of a panther, but rather a caracal from the desert. Blood that will never be allowed in places of power.”
Her younger self came to a stop in a glade, removed the panther tooth bandit round her neck and smothered it in her blood before pitching it into the undergrowth. “It was what I found when I reclaimed that tooth that led me to become known as a Thief of Wakanda. That title doesn’t mean I simply stole. It is given to an outsider who steals part of Wakanda’s soul, its very culture,” she announced as she picked up the pendent, part of the vegetation coming up with it.
“Oh, by the Panther what have I done!” the young Zawadi swore as the plant sap from the heart shaped leaves ran down her hands. Desperately wiping the sap off, she tore off back toward the city, her speed increasing with every step until she came skidding out into the plaza and straight into a legion of men dressed in white wolf like uniforms, the Hatut Zeraze, and standing among them was a young man dressed in black.
“You have stolen from me,” the Black Panther hissed.
“I swear it was an accident,” Zawadi pleaded as the Hatut Zeraze muscled her to the ground with some difficulty. “It was an accident, T’Chaka, I swear.”
“Sir, it would be unwise to allow this infraction to go unpunished,” the leader of the Hatut Zeraze stated as two Dora Milaje emerged from behind the massed troops of the secret police, their poleaxes ready to defend their king. “But I believe execution should not be used here.”
“I agree,” T’Chaka replied with a sigh. “Dahia; Thief of Wakanda, your name is no longer your own, your home is no longer your home. You know the punishment should you return to Wakanda’s lands.” He was presented a scorpion brand by one of the Hatut Zeraze, the tip glowing purple before pressing it against Zawadi’s skin.
“Now run,” he ordered as the Hatut Zeraze threw Zawadi to the floor, the young woman standing stunned for a second before obeying her final order.
“I fled. I have been ashamed of what I did even though memory states it was an accident. I heard later through sources inside Wakanda that the Hatut Zeraze killed my parents a year after my banishment as well as others with related genealogy,” Zawadi explained as the fleeing woman was consumed by fire and the image faded to reveal her sitting round the fire on the Colorado Mesa.
“All because of me, I sparked a genocide in a peaceful country, and that accident put you in danger last night.”
“It wasn’t your fault!” Stone snapped as she reached out to her, only for the fire to reach out and grab her hand. “I guess…I guess it’s me next.”
She sighed as the fire once again consumed them.
# # # # #
New York City, 2010
“I am an illegal alien; an actual alien who just happens to look like a human,” Stone stated as she sat in a dark chamber with blue lights on the wall. With a hiss, the first light went red, followed by all the others in a wave like motion. “My people were refugees. What you see is our extinction, but at the time I called it murder.”
“You monster!” Stone snapped, as she reached the end of the energy chain that kept her tethered to the wall. “You murdered my people, you selfish fuck. They call you the smartest man in the world, but when it came to it, you couldn’t come up with a better idea then kill ten thousand people!”
“I’m sorry, Ms. Neith Sinue, but the life of everyone on Earth was at stake,” the man dressed in a blue jumpsuit announced, his brown hair streaked with white. “Your ship was the only thing with the right energy signature to reverse Annihilus’s mechanisations due to its long exposure to the Negative Zone.”
“It doesn’t make up for the lives you took. I bet you won’t even lose sleep over them!” Stone hissed as a pair of agents dressed in jumpsuits with S.W.O.R.D emblazoned on the side dragged her away. “I will kill you for this, you monster!”
“I didn’t kill him. When I was released with what was left of my belongings I didn’t have the heart to try.” Stone sighed. “By then I understood that Earth has a saying, ‘the needs of the many outweigh those of the few.’ Where I came from the sympathy was different. We lived by the saying ‘All lives are equal, all lives are precious.’” She announced as her younger self gazed at the suit of armour that she wore in battle, a notebook and pen in her hand.
“You and I can save lives. The technology in you will change the world.” Stone sighed as she placed the paper down and slipped something off of the thorax of her armour. “Starting with you, cardiac settler, you are going to cure heart disease.”
“Heart disease is still a thing, of course, but I took my invention to Hammer Multinational. They didn’t see medical tech; they saw a weapon,” Stone added, as she watched in horror as a man on the other side of the glass exploded in a shower of blood, a modified cardiac settler mounted on a gun chassis at the other end of the room.
“That’s when I learned that humanity is full of monsters; well-seeming ones like Richards, and greedy ones like Hammer, humanity didn’t deserve the rescue I wanted to give it,” she continued as a younger Stone fled the building, Hammer Security forces shooting at her. “So, I would give it only what I thought it deserved, the things it couldn’t corrupt. Even though I saw so much good in humanity, I became selfish. I became an island.”
“I was alone for three thousand years in the Negative Zone,” Stone stated as she sat at the edge of the fire. “You would think that I had been alone enough.”
“You got screwed. You didn’t deserve it. Nobody ever does,” Flintlock stated coldly. “It’s what humanity does. We screw over the best of us. I should know; I screwed a lot of it myself,” she stated as she looked down at the fire before placing her hand reluctantly in the flames.
# # # # #
New York, 2016
“Your place or mine? God, I’m sick of those words, even if it reliably paid the bills.” Flintlock announced as she slammed the well-built man onto the bed and kissed him passionately. “I took as many hearts as I did names back with the Wanderers. Being a seductress for hire I slept with men, with women, even a robot. Pay me and I’ll let you be as perverted as you like.”
“So, Mr. Nero, when does your partner get back? Maybe we can play with her, too,” Flintlock purred, as the man tried to push her off of him, only for her to bite seductively into his neck.
“Get off!” Nero yelled.
“Oh, I am. You’re a nice little beefcake, aren’t you?” Flintlock chirped as she stroked his face, the sound of a door opening behind them.
“Mike?” a woman’s voice called.
“Oops…busted,” Flintlock stated as a red-haired woman dressed in a green dress looked down at them in horror and disgust. “Hi, Zombie Master. Back from bonking the dead?”
“Get off of him!” Zombie Master bellowed as Flintlock’s body was slammed against the wall by an unseen force. “You’ll sleep with her, but you won’t sleep with me; won’t even kiss me.” The woman cried as Flintlock got to her feet. “Am I that horrible that you can’t love me?”
“She attacked me, she’s working for the Wanderer, Sarah!” Mike stated as she reached for a shirt.
“The Wanderer was some kind of wizard big bad, he’s not around anymore, but if he was I’d be taking my place in line to kick him in the balls for what he did.” Flintlock announced, as Zombie Master, her face in tears turned and ran out of the room. Swearing Nero followed her, leaving Flintlock alone in the room. “And here comes the good wizard ready to give me what I deserved.” She commented, as a chubby figure dressed in a blue jacket, jeans and a red cape walked in, his bead and hair scraggy as if he had been in a fight for his life.
“Who are you handsome?” Flintlock asked.
“My name is unimportant, what is important is what you did to my friends.” The man stated in a cold, almost sinister voice. “And you will never do it again.” He added as he held up a glowing pink crystal. Almost immediately a thick scarlet vapour rose off of Flintlock and was sucked into the gemstone, the cloud swirling around inside desperate to find a way to escape.
“What did you do to me!!” Flintlock snapped, fear replacing the seductive tones of her voice.
“You will see.” The wizard, because surely that’s who the man was, replied as he walked away.
“What he did was take what I thought of as love away from me.” Flintlock stated sadly. “I could see love, comprehend it, but never again feel it. Not for my lovers, my friends not even for my family. I got what I deserved for every terrible thing I did. If I could find that girl, that horrified girl I would apologise to her, I was never given a name.”
“You deserved what you got.” Sarah replied coldly. “I had to live knowing that the man I loved had been violated by you. You’re a skank, you’ll always be one.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologise to me.” Sarah hissed. “Apologise to the Sarah Hannigan I threw away trying to save the world from the monster you served.”
# # # # #
“The Wanderer isn’t around anymore because I killed him.” Sarah stated as her younger self sat surrounded by candles completely naked save for the massive snake skin wrapped round her. “But to do that I had to give up everything.”
“Damballah, Judge of the Dead, my family has been in silent service to you for a century.” Sarah called as the smoke from the candles coalesced to form a serpentine shape. “Come to me, instruct me on the path I must take.”
“Sarah Heinman, you summoned me with no offering!” An angry voice, one that came from nowhere boomed.
“It’s Hannigan, I am not my grandfather, nor my mother or sister.” Sarah stated. “I summon you for help saving the world not destroying it.”
“Saving, damning, one action leads to another.” Damballah stated as the smoke coalesced into a giant green serpent. “You look to defeat the Wanderer, but what are you willing to give up to do it? Your Beauty?”
“Yes!” Sarah replied
“Your Life?”
“Yes!!”
“Your Love?”
“YES!!” Sarah yelled. “If this saves him, then I will give it all up!”
“You throw away something precious.” Damballah sighed mournfully as he coiled around Sarah, his head towering over her. “One day you will understand that.” He added as he unhinged his jaw and swallowed Sarah whole.
“I did sacrifice it all.” Sarah sighed as she removed her shroud to reveal a skull like face with two glowing yellow eyes in the socket. Her hair was long since gone and as she breathed a forked tongue could briefly be seen. Rolling up her sleeves she revealed skin that looked as if it had been mummified, if mummified skin had veins in it that crawled as if snakes were sliding through her body. “I finally look like those I controlled, the Zombie Master a simple Zombie. The trade was worth it, but I regret taking it. That said Damballah is a stern but fair patron, and with his help I have righted many wrongs in this world.”
“And that leaves just one person left.” Flintlock sighed as Jennifer looked at the fire, tears in her eyes, her thumb tapping her fingers in sequence on each hand, her stress eating away at her.
“No, you don’t have to reveal it if you don’t have to Scorpion, I understand it, I have seen it before.” Zawadi reassured her as Jennifer shook her head.
“No, I have to tell, I can’t show it but I can tell you.” Jennifer sobbed as she looked down at the ground. “I’m Autistic.” For a moment there was stunned silence.
“You don’t look autistic.” Flintlock stated, only for Jennifer to look up at her, anger in her eyes.
“What do autistic people look like?” Jennifer hissed. “It’s a spectrum disorder, nobody has it the same! My mum overdosed when I was five, apparently, I was too much to handle. I ended up living with my gran, the original Silver Scorpion, she didn’t understand what was wrong with me, nobody did back then, so when I was me she beat me! The scars are still there!” She added as she removed her top and turned around to reveal seven stinging welts on her back. “I deserved it, every time I do something wrong I open them up again!”
“This is wrong.” Stone whispered. “We didn’t lose ourselves we just revealed that we’re a bunch of broken dolls waiting to be shattered.”
“I don’t see it that way.” Zawadi stated. “I see Dora Milaje, Amazons, Valkyries, women who are strong despite what has been done to them. Yes, we are broken, but we picked ourselves up and rebuilt ourselves the best we could. And now we understand each other, personally if I had to pick a file to go into battle knowing what I know now I would choose you all with no hesitation.”
“That’s nice to say.” Flintlock snorted as she handed Jennifer back her top. “Bull but nice.”
“She’s right, you apologised, you knew it would get you nothing but you did it anyway.” Sarah stated as she dismissed the snakes resting on her lap, their tails rattling as they retreated into the bush.
“Jennifer, you have been brave revealing what you did, Stone you still help people despite everything that was done to you, Zawadi your actions are not responsible for the actions of others. You said you had labels for us, that’s what started the spell, to end it we need to repeat the process and agree on them with no deception.”
“You’re right.” Zawadi replied softly. “I’m a Leader.”
“I’m repentant.” Flintlock whispered.
“I’m ready to be generous again.” Stone added.
“I accept my sacrifice with pride.” Sarah continued
“I want to be free to be me.” Jennifer finished.
“You can be, I’m sorry.” Flintlock replied, her words causing the fire to go out, plunging the mesa into darkness.
“It’s done.” Zawadi sighed before smiling.
“No, it’s not, someone has lied to us.” Sarah announced. “We tracked ‘Cuda, Laserworks and Ghost Maker by the demonic energy they gave off, the same energy the demon that interfered with our tracking spell produced.”
“I remember.” Stone stated. “What of it?”
“I’ve felt it before, but at the time I didn’t know where it came from. Now I do.” Sarah told her as the Mesa shimmered and the sand picked up again until it blinded the Agents of Argent. “The one behind the demon, behind everything that’s happened.” Sarah’s voice boomed as the sand dropped to reveal the gymnasium they had first assembled in earlier that week.
“Is me.” A voice echoed from the corner of the room as Ana stepped out of the darkness, pistols drawn and loaded, ready to fire.
“You would kill in Vegas,” Flintlock commented as she poked her head out of the tent erected just past the confines of where the dust devil had been. “You ever been before?”
“Once, to banish the Lord of Greed,” Sarah replied. “Get Zawadi. I have completed the anti-surveillance spell and I am familiar enough with the text she provided to begin.” She gestured into the glyph the wind had carved into the mountain top.
“Yeah, okay, but as soon as she brings out her talking stick, starts singing, or introduces puppets into the equation, I’m out of here,” Flintlock replied as she darted back inside the tent before re-emerging, followed by Zawadi, the former Dora Milaje, dressed in hiking shorts and a grey tank-top, a knife in her hand.
“That was some storm you summoned; are you sure you’re up to it?” Zawadi asked as a pair of large rattlesnakes slithered out of the brush and laid their heads on Sarah’s lap.
“I’m sure,” Sarah reassured her as she stroked the snakes on the head, their tongues flicking out at her touch. “But be reminded that revealing a secret is not always a good thing.”
“I understand this,” Zawadi answered as she sat down opposite Sarah, before motioning Stone and Jennifer to sit down, the later looking almost horrified at what was about to occur. Following her teammate’s lead, Flintlock joined them and for a moment they weren’t mercenaries, but rather five women staring into a fire in an almost primal way.
“So, how does this start?” Stone asked.
“I start,” Zawadi stated grimly. “We all have a past that shapes us. We know this but we don’t acknowledge it, we simply judge each other. Well, I have some labels for us.
“Cold,” she stated as she pointed at Flintlock.
“Insular,” she added as she gestured towards Stone.
“Terrifying.” Her finger moved towards Sarah.
“Ashamed.” She finished as she locked eyes with Jennifer, the young woman bowing her head. “Thief,” she added after a pause.
“Broken,” Jennifer replied, the fire rearing up to form five serpents of flame, each one rearing up to look a woman in the eye.
“Broken is most apt. In the Dora Milaje if one of our sisterhood was hurt then we would make sure such injuries, be they mental or physical, don’t affect our judgment of her. That is what I purpose doing here.”
“And what if we don’t want to share?” Stone asked.
“Then you remain broken,” Zawadi replied, as she placed her hand into the flames, much to the gasps of the others. “I promised you answers about my history in Wakanda. Let me present that to you. Let me give you something of mine so you may lose something of yours.” The flames crawled up Zawadi and incinerated her into ash. “I owe you that much.”
# # # # #
Wakanda, 1968
“I was born in Wakanda, a nation where women were never expected to be inferior to men.” Zawadi announced as a young woman dressed in an amber chiffon leapt over a barricade and landed on the other side, the giant leopard snarling and hissing at being caught by surprise.
With a shout of victory, the woman lashed out with her knife, her prey backing up, hissing and snarling across the concentric rings of the arena until it reached the centre. “While I say I was in the Dora Milaje, the truth to say is that I was an initiate into the order. What you see here is the climax of my training,” she continued as the central ring of the arena glowed and the leopard vanished, its body evaporating into cyan light.
“Sister, you have done well,” a powerful voice announced as a trio of women walked into the arena, each one dressed in a red chiffon and holding a poleaxe. “You managed to contain the essence of the Panther God gifted to each of our order.”
“I live to serve and protect the Black Panther and Wakanda,” the young woman stated as she kneeled before her elders. “As a Dora Milaje I will lay my--”
“You are not to become a Dora Milaje,” one of the women interrupted. “While it is true that you possess many of the qualities that are required, the Black Panther himself has been consulted, as is custom, and both he and I have decided that you are not to become one of his brides. It is a shame. You have the makings of a leader, but not a leader of Wakanda.”
“What have I done wrong? I will do anything to right it,” the young woman stated.
“There is no changing this,” the elder Dora Milaje replied as they turned to leave. “You know what rites are required to be undertaken by those who fail to join our order. I expect them to be carried out.”
“I carried them out. At the time I thought what I lacked was a tangible trait,” Zawadi explained as her younger self walked into the forest, her palms bleeding. “I learned later that it was my blood that failed me. Eons past, Numidian mercenaries tried to invade Wakanda, they failed and those that survived were given clemency. My blood is not that of a panther, but rather a caracal from the desert. Blood that will never be allowed in places of power.”
Her younger self came to a stop in a glade, removed the panther tooth bandit round her neck and smothered it in her blood before pitching it into the undergrowth. “It was what I found when I reclaimed that tooth that led me to become known as a Thief of Wakanda. That title doesn’t mean I simply stole. It is given to an outsider who steals part of Wakanda’s soul, its very culture,” she announced as she picked up the pendent, part of the vegetation coming up with it.
“Oh, by the Panther what have I done!” the young Zawadi swore as the plant sap from the heart shaped leaves ran down her hands. Desperately wiping the sap off, she tore off back toward the city, her speed increasing with every step until she came skidding out into the plaza and straight into a legion of men dressed in white wolf like uniforms, the Hatut Zeraze, and standing among them was a young man dressed in black.
“You have stolen from me,” the Black Panther hissed.
“I swear it was an accident,” Zawadi pleaded as the Hatut Zeraze muscled her to the ground with some difficulty. “It was an accident, T’Chaka, I swear.”
“Sir, it would be unwise to allow this infraction to go unpunished,” the leader of the Hatut Zeraze stated as two Dora Milaje emerged from behind the massed troops of the secret police, their poleaxes ready to defend their king. “But I believe execution should not be used here.”
“I agree,” T’Chaka replied with a sigh. “Dahia; Thief of Wakanda, your name is no longer your own, your home is no longer your home. You know the punishment should you return to Wakanda’s lands.” He was presented a scorpion brand by one of the Hatut Zeraze, the tip glowing purple before pressing it against Zawadi’s skin.
“Now run,” he ordered as the Hatut Zeraze threw Zawadi to the floor, the young woman standing stunned for a second before obeying her final order.
“I fled. I have been ashamed of what I did even though memory states it was an accident. I heard later through sources inside Wakanda that the Hatut Zeraze killed my parents a year after my banishment as well as others with related genealogy,” Zawadi explained as the fleeing woman was consumed by fire and the image faded to reveal her sitting round the fire on the Colorado Mesa.
“All because of me, I sparked a genocide in a peaceful country, and that accident put you in danger last night.”
“It wasn’t your fault!” Stone snapped as she reached out to her, only for the fire to reach out and grab her hand. “I guess…I guess it’s me next.”
She sighed as the fire once again consumed them.
# # # # #
New York City, 2010
“I am an illegal alien; an actual alien who just happens to look like a human,” Stone stated as she sat in a dark chamber with blue lights on the wall. With a hiss, the first light went red, followed by all the others in a wave like motion. “My people were refugees. What you see is our extinction, but at the time I called it murder.”
“You monster!” Stone snapped, as she reached the end of the energy chain that kept her tethered to the wall. “You murdered my people, you selfish fuck. They call you the smartest man in the world, but when it came to it, you couldn’t come up with a better idea then kill ten thousand people!”
“I’m sorry, Ms. Neith Sinue, but the life of everyone on Earth was at stake,” the man dressed in a blue jumpsuit announced, his brown hair streaked with white. “Your ship was the only thing with the right energy signature to reverse Annihilus’s mechanisations due to its long exposure to the Negative Zone.”
“It doesn’t make up for the lives you took. I bet you won’t even lose sleep over them!” Stone hissed as a pair of agents dressed in jumpsuits with S.W.O.R.D emblazoned on the side dragged her away. “I will kill you for this, you monster!”
“I didn’t kill him. When I was released with what was left of my belongings I didn’t have the heart to try.” Stone sighed. “By then I understood that Earth has a saying, ‘the needs of the many outweigh those of the few.’ Where I came from the sympathy was different. We lived by the saying ‘All lives are equal, all lives are precious.’” She announced as her younger self gazed at the suit of armour that she wore in battle, a notebook and pen in her hand.
“You and I can save lives. The technology in you will change the world.” Stone sighed as she placed the paper down and slipped something off of the thorax of her armour. “Starting with you, cardiac settler, you are going to cure heart disease.”
“Heart disease is still a thing, of course, but I took my invention to Hammer Multinational. They didn’t see medical tech; they saw a weapon,” Stone added, as she watched in horror as a man on the other side of the glass exploded in a shower of blood, a modified cardiac settler mounted on a gun chassis at the other end of the room.
“That’s when I learned that humanity is full of monsters; well-seeming ones like Richards, and greedy ones like Hammer, humanity didn’t deserve the rescue I wanted to give it,” she continued as a younger Stone fled the building, Hammer Security forces shooting at her. “So, I would give it only what I thought it deserved, the things it couldn’t corrupt. Even though I saw so much good in humanity, I became selfish. I became an island.”
“I was alone for three thousand years in the Negative Zone,” Stone stated as she sat at the edge of the fire. “You would think that I had been alone enough.”
“You got screwed. You didn’t deserve it. Nobody ever does,” Flintlock stated coldly. “It’s what humanity does. We screw over the best of us. I should know; I screwed a lot of it myself,” she stated as she looked down at the fire before placing her hand reluctantly in the flames.
# # # # #
New York, 2016
“Your place or mine? God, I’m sick of those words, even if it reliably paid the bills.” Flintlock announced as she slammed the well-built man onto the bed and kissed him passionately. “I took as many hearts as I did names back with the Wanderers. Being a seductress for hire I slept with men, with women, even a robot. Pay me and I’ll let you be as perverted as you like.”
“So, Mr. Nero, when does your partner get back? Maybe we can play with her, too,” Flintlock purred, as the man tried to push her off of him, only for her to bite seductively into his neck.
“Get off!” Nero yelled.
“Oh, I am. You’re a nice little beefcake, aren’t you?” Flintlock chirped as she stroked his face, the sound of a door opening behind them.
“Mike?” a woman’s voice called.
“Oops…busted,” Flintlock stated as a red-haired woman dressed in a green dress looked down at them in horror and disgust. “Hi, Zombie Master. Back from bonking the dead?”
“Get off of him!” Zombie Master bellowed as Flintlock’s body was slammed against the wall by an unseen force. “You’ll sleep with her, but you won’t sleep with me; won’t even kiss me.” The woman cried as Flintlock got to her feet. “Am I that horrible that you can’t love me?”
“She attacked me, she’s working for the Wanderer, Sarah!” Mike stated as she reached for a shirt.
“The Wanderer was some kind of wizard big bad, he’s not around anymore, but if he was I’d be taking my place in line to kick him in the balls for what he did.” Flintlock announced, as Zombie Master, her face in tears turned and ran out of the room. Swearing Nero followed her, leaving Flintlock alone in the room. “And here comes the good wizard ready to give me what I deserved.” She commented, as a chubby figure dressed in a blue jacket, jeans and a red cape walked in, his bead and hair scraggy as if he had been in a fight for his life.
“Who are you handsome?” Flintlock asked.
“My name is unimportant, what is important is what you did to my friends.” The man stated in a cold, almost sinister voice. “And you will never do it again.” He added as he held up a glowing pink crystal. Almost immediately a thick scarlet vapour rose off of Flintlock and was sucked into the gemstone, the cloud swirling around inside desperate to find a way to escape.
“What did you do to me!!” Flintlock snapped, fear replacing the seductive tones of her voice.
“You will see.” The wizard, because surely that’s who the man was, replied as he walked away.
“What he did was take what I thought of as love away from me.” Flintlock stated sadly. “I could see love, comprehend it, but never again feel it. Not for my lovers, my friends not even for my family. I got what I deserved for every terrible thing I did. If I could find that girl, that horrified girl I would apologise to her, I was never given a name.”
“You deserved what you got.” Sarah replied coldly. “I had to live knowing that the man I loved had been violated by you. You’re a skank, you’ll always be one.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologise to me.” Sarah hissed. “Apologise to the Sarah Hannigan I threw away trying to save the world from the monster you served.”
# # # # #
“The Wanderer isn’t around anymore because I killed him.” Sarah stated as her younger self sat surrounded by candles completely naked save for the massive snake skin wrapped round her. “But to do that I had to give up everything.”
“Damballah, Judge of the Dead, my family has been in silent service to you for a century.” Sarah called as the smoke from the candles coalesced to form a serpentine shape. “Come to me, instruct me on the path I must take.”
“Sarah Heinman, you summoned me with no offering!” An angry voice, one that came from nowhere boomed.
“It’s Hannigan, I am not my grandfather, nor my mother or sister.” Sarah stated. “I summon you for help saving the world not destroying it.”
“Saving, damning, one action leads to another.” Damballah stated as the smoke coalesced into a giant green serpent. “You look to defeat the Wanderer, but what are you willing to give up to do it? Your Beauty?”
“Yes!” Sarah replied
“Your Life?”
“Yes!!”
“Your Love?”
“YES!!” Sarah yelled. “If this saves him, then I will give it all up!”
“You throw away something precious.” Damballah sighed mournfully as he coiled around Sarah, his head towering over her. “One day you will understand that.” He added as he unhinged his jaw and swallowed Sarah whole.
“I did sacrifice it all.” Sarah sighed as she removed her shroud to reveal a skull like face with two glowing yellow eyes in the socket. Her hair was long since gone and as she breathed a forked tongue could briefly be seen. Rolling up her sleeves she revealed skin that looked as if it had been mummified, if mummified skin had veins in it that crawled as if snakes were sliding through her body. “I finally look like those I controlled, the Zombie Master a simple Zombie. The trade was worth it, but I regret taking it. That said Damballah is a stern but fair patron, and with his help I have righted many wrongs in this world.”
“And that leaves just one person left.” Flintlock sighed as Jennifer looked at the fire, tears in her eyes, her thumb tapping her fingers in sequence on each hand, her stress eating away at her.
“No, you don’t have to reveal it if you don’t have to Scorpion, I understand it, I have seen it before.” Zawadi reassured her as Jennifer shook her head.
“No, I have to tell, I can’t show it but I can tell you.” Jennifer sobbed as she looked down at the ground. “I’m Autistic.” For a moment there was stunned silence.
“You don’t look autistic.” Flintlock stated, only for Jennifer to look up at her, anger in her eyes.
“What do autistic people look like?” Jennifer hissed. “It’s a spectrum disorder, nobody has it the same! My mum overdosed when I was five, apparently, I was too much to handle. I ended up living with my gran, the original Silver Scorpion, she didn’t understand what was wrong with me, nobody did back then, so when I was me she beat me! The scars are still there!” She added as she removed her top and turned around to reveal seven stinging welts on her back. “I deserved it, every time I do something wrong I open them up again!”
“This is wrong.” Stone whispered. “We didn’t lose ourselves we just revealed that we’re a bunch of broken dolls waiting to be shattered.”
“I don’t see it that way.” Zawadi stated. “I see Dora Milaje, Amazons, Valkyries, women who are strong despite what has been done to them. Yes, we are broken, but we picked ourselves up and rebuilt ourselves the best we could. And now we understand each other, personally if I had to pick a file to go into battle knowing what I know now I would choose you all with no hesitation.”
“That’s nice to say.” Flintlock snorted as she handed Jennifer back her top. “Bull but nice.”
“She’s right, you apologised, you knew it would get you nothing but you did it anyway.” Sarah stated as she dismissed the snakes resting on her lap, their tails rattling as they retreated into the bush.
“Jennifer, you have been brave revealing what you did, Stone you still help people despite everything that was done to you, Zawadi your actions are not responsible for the actions of others. You said you had labels for us, that’s what started the spell, to end it we need to repeat the process and agree on them with no deception.”
“You’re right.” Zawadi replied softly. “I’m a Leader.”
“I’m repentant.” Flintlock whispered.
“I’m ready to be generous again.” Stone added.
“I accept my sacrifice with pride.” Sarah continued
“I want to be free to be me.” Jennifer finished.
“You can be, I’m sorry.” Flintlock replied, her words causing the fire to go out, plunging the mesa into darkness.
“It’s done.” Zawadi sighed before smiling.
“No, it’s not, someone has lied to us.” Sarah announced. “We tracked ‘Cuda, Laserworks and Ghost Maker by the demonic energy they gave off, the same energy the demon that interfered with our tracking spell produced.”
“I remember.” Stone stated. “What of it?”
“I’ve felt it before, but at the time I didn’t know where it came from. Now I do.” Sarah told her as the Mesa shimmered and the sand picked up again until it blinded the Agents of Argent. “The one behind the demon, behind everything that’s happened.” Sarah’s voice boomed as the sand dropped to reveal the gymnasium they had first assembled in earlier that week.
“Is me.” A voice echoed from the corner of the room as Ana stepped out of the darkness, pistols drawn and loaded, ready to fire.