Back to Gatefold
Issue #41 by Daniel Ingram
|
“SUMMER OF TERROR – PART THREE”
Location Secret
Feared around the globe as the terrorist leader of the Apocalypse Dawn, the man known only as Alastaire, was a man that, as he climbed the ranks within the Dawn, forgot how to deal with people he didn’t care for. Those that annoyed him were either killed in open combat, sent on suicide missions or in the rare instances of them being invaluable to the cause, simply reassigned elsewhere.
But the Dawn had fallen on hard times, and more increasingly, Alastaire found himself forced to deal with pretentious mutants who thought they were the entirety of the Apocalypse’s cause, the perfect representation that should be worshipped rather than do something useful, like culling the weak. So try as he may, he couldn’t remove the slight sneer from his face as he entered the room of one of their more recent recruits. The entire room was Spartan, lacking anything that didn’t serve a basic utility with only a cot in the corner and several katana blades that hung on the wall without any hint of ceremony.
The room’s only other occupant, Gorgon, sat in the middle, meditating. He hadn’t even bothered to look up as Alastaire entered.
“You bring bad news. I can feel it in your smile,” Gorgon said as he breathed out.
“I’m only here to tell you that you need to leave immediately,” Alastaire stated, “apparently, Force Works has taken it upon themselves to liberate the kidnapped children you planned to take, alongside United States Special Forces team. The situation is in the midst of spiraling out of control as we speak. If you want to…rescue the kidnapped mutants, it’s now or never.”
“Then it is now,” Gorgon stood up, “alert my personal guard. We will leave immediately.”
“Your friends,” Alastaire spat with pure contempt, “are already assembled. Training room X. Do try to bring a few back alive.”
“Survival of the fittest,” Gorgon snorted.
“‘Even the mightiest of us can be crushed underneath a wave of the week’,” Alastaire repeated from recent memory, “I simply hate to see Dawn members lose their lives needlessly. Stupidity is not a sign of strength.”
“Your death seems to have changed you,” Gorgon observed, “you are not the man the stories spoke of.”
“I died serving our cause and have been reborn to continue that belief,” Alastaire growled, “you died in a pathetic flatscan ceremony that was little more than a cry for attention after a lifetime of shame. A miracle revived us both, but my steel has been tested and found worthy. You, for all the popularity you enjoy, haven’t. But now you have a chance to truly test yourself.”
“Show us your worth. Or don’t return.”
# # # # #
Richard Rider, known in the hero community as Nova the Human Rocket, could remember being in some odd and hairy situations. He’d been attacked by robotic impersonators of Captain America, Hulk and Spider-Man, fought intergalactic pirates and even died, for a brief time.
So while facing down the North Korean army with his friends and alongside snake themed group of mercenaries wasn’t the oddest situation he’d ever found himself in, it was still in the top ten.
“Surrender, Force Works!” snapped Panzer, one of two super-powered mercenaries employed by North Korea, “even if you get past this battalion, there’s no way you could fight your way out of the country!”
“He’s got a point,” Sabre observed, “at least for you glaciers. I can be out of the country in five minutes.”
“Sabre,” Nova muttered, “not. Helping.”
“I don’t know, I think delusions of escape can only help morale,” Sidewinder, leader of the Serpent Society, said, “they’ll at least try to take some of you alive, to embarrass the United States if nothing else. They’ll kill us.”
“Don’t being stupid,” Black Brigade, North Korea’s second super-powered mercenary, spat. He was a large hunchback of solid armor. Though it was hardly cutting edge, he was still powerful enough to fight Iron Man on an level field, “they are young and stupid. Never will they surrender.”
“Everyone, get ready,” Mirage whispered. The young mutant tapped a button on the side of her mask.
“You’re damn right I won’t surrender!” Mirage shouted, the sound of her voice now carrying across the entire base, “did you idiots think we came here alone? We’re not surrounded, you are!”
Suddenly, as if on cue, a half dozen Blackhawk helicopters appeared in the air, spotlights casting downward, lighting up the night sky. Armed to the teeth with missiles, Gatling guns and soldiers hanging out the side armed with automatic weapons, there wasn’t a soldier present who turned their attention from Force Works to this new threat.
“…where’s the wind?” Panzer wondered aloud, before his eyes went wide.
“Hit! Them!” Mirage snapped.
Both Vibraxis and Rattler lashed out with sonic energy, Arsenal unleashed his optic blasts, Tarene let fly lightning from her war mallet, as Nova released quick volleys of energy from his hands and Asp flung her venom bolts through the air.
In short order, the soldiers surrounding the two teams were thrown into disarray. Those not thrown back by the waves of sheer power of almost every kind, were blinded by the cloud of dust kicked up by the onslaught.
“Get in close!” Mirage ordered, “quick and hard, don’t give them a chance to rally! Sabre, you’re on swing!”
“What she said!” Sidewinder snapped.
Black Racer and Sabre shot forward like jet engines, and brought down soldier after solder with punches that felt like being hit with a sledge hammer. The two speedsters tore a straight line through the men, and skidded to a halt some twenty feet outside the camp.
“God, I want to keep running,” Black Racer confessed.
“I know, me too!” Sabre smiled. The super fast mutant was about to charge back into battle, when Black Racer grabbed her shoulder.
“What!?”
“That!” Black Racer pointed towards the horizon, and Sabre saw a fleet of vehicles crashing towards them. Troop carriers, tanks and hum-vees in a solid wave of steel, topped off by ancient helicopters that looked like they belonged more on the set of M*A*S*H than real life. Their combined light was like a twisted, terrible dawn of morning.
“Reinforcements,” Sabre muttered.
“Ya think?” Black Racer spat, “what do we do?”
“Fight!” Sabre snapped, “what do you think?”
“We get the hell out!” The Serpent answered, “with our powers, we could escape!”
“Right,” Sabre rolled her eyes, “only way we get outta here is with a teleporter!”
“And ours can’t!”
“Yeah well, we have a back-up plan,” said Sabre, “we got a helicarrier that’ll airlift our ass out of here.”
# # # # #
Nova and Arsenal barreled through a mob of soldiers, like ten pins, while Rattler and Vibraxis pushed back wave after wave with their sonic powers. Not to be outdone, Anaconda, Puff Adder and Tarene blitzed every soldier they saw. The few soldiers that didn’t have the common sense to run were swatted through the air like scuttle-cocks.
Inside of five minutes, the only soldiers in sight were either running or unconscious.
“That’s all?” Puff Adder cracked his knuckles, “I didn’t even work up a sweat!”
“Just wait,” Mirage replied, “North Korea has one of the biggest army in the world. We haven’t even scratched the surface.”
“And we’re missing two key players,” Nova said, “look around. Panzer and Black Brigade took off. Think they high tailed it?”
“We’re not that lucky,” Mirage replied, “we need to regroup. We still have a team of Special forces out there, a few dozen terrified mutant kids, and…!”
“Mirage, look out!” X-Treme shouted.
The mutant leader turned her head to see Death Adder leaping towards her, but by then it was too late. The snake tackled her, and the ground she’d been standing on exploded, struck by a bolt of energy from seemingly nowhere.
“Did you see that?!”
The heads of snake and hero alike snapped around as they frantically sought to find the source. Another bolt from the blue lanced out and struck Nova, slamming him through one of the barracks.
“Damn it, someone find where that shot came from!” Mirage snapped.
# # # # #
Two stories beneath them.
Panzer rubbed his hand impatiently as he watched Black Brigade communicate their situation to the country’s high command.
“Our ‘glorious leader’,” Panzer could almost feel the sarcasm, “says we are to do everything to ensure the retrieval of the mutants.”
“Does he understand that could cost him the arsenal he’s been building here?” asked Panzer.
Black Brigade gave him a knowing look.
“…right,” Panzer said, “do you at least ask if we could pay the Serpent Society to just leave? They’re mercenaries!”
Black Brigade said nothing.
“Of course,” Panzer growled, “that’d be too easy.”
“This is hand we are dealt,” Black Brigade growled, “every minute we whine like child, our enemies grow bolder and the chaos greater!”
“I cannot disagree,” Panzer said, “suddenly, I am to understand the American saying ‘To save the village, we must burn the village’!”
# # # # #
Topside
“There!”
Arsenal saw only open air where Wolfsbane pointed, but took a leap of faith and shot forward. He slammed into something invisible, and reached out with one hand, fingers sinking into steel. He smashed his other hand into the steel, and began tearing his way inside. A moment later, Puff Adder jumped in after him, and the sound of metal tearing and wires snapping could be heard.
The gathered heroes and villains watched as a legless Sentinel shimmered into sight, and then fell like a pile of junk. Arsenal and Puff Adder, covered in motor oil, tore an exit out of the back as if the three inch steel were simply wrapping paper.
“A cloaking device, seven year old sentinel and some of the Wizard’s anti-gravity technology so we wouldn’t see its footprints,” Sidewinder remarked, “little more than high tech bail and wire…”
“And it had us crapping our pants like rookies,” said Mirage as she leaned over to examine the pile of high tech purple scrap metal, “Sabre, sit rep?”
“We’re completely surrounded,” Sabre replied, “the troops aren’t moving in, but that won’t last forever.”
“They want to keep us pinned in,” Mirage explained, “if they have a trump card, they’ll play it soon. So we need options to get out of here. You snakes have an extraction plan we might be able to use?”
“Teleporting out was how we planned on getting away, actually. We thought using our aircraft would be…ah, too expensive,” said Black Mamba.
“It looked good on paper,” Sidewinder muttered, “everyone thinks jet fuel just grows on trees…”
“We have a back-up plan,” X-Treme stated, “hellicarrier with plenty of room. With any luck, Technocrat is scrambling it now. We’d know for certain, if you’d stop jamming our comm.”
“Oh!” Sidewinder reached into his belt and pulled out a small box with a giant red button, and pressed it once, “sorry, AIM builds things so effective that you forget they’re even there.”
“Finally,” Mirage sighed. She pressed a finger to her ear and activated her suit’s radio, “Technocrat, Mirage. Blink’s been shut down, we need the helicarrier if we’re getting out of here.”
Static.
“Technocrat? Namorita? Can you read me?”
A bead of sweat dripped down Mirage’s face, and she was moments away from screaming into her radio in frustration when the ground began to rumble, and a monstrous scream of rage tore through the night air. Force Works, Able Squad, the Serpent Society all felt as if they’d been splashed in the face with ice water.
Whether they’d heard it in person, or from the TV, no one could possibly forget the war-cry of the Incredible Hulk.
# # # # #
Hangar
“Rear doors are secured, sir. A pound of C4, with two trip wires acting as dead man switches,” Corporal Henderson reported.
“Then we’ve secured all entrances,” Lt. Commander Hardcastle nodded to his man, “grab yourself a lookout post and dig in. Weapons free, but give me a heads up before you shoot.”
The Corporal nodded and took his position, while Hardcastle felt a knot form in his stomach. He’d been in bad situations before, so deep in shit he couldn’t see the other side, but this felt different. This was the first time his people were in deep, and relying on someone else for back-up.
Hardcastle wasn’t like most in his profession, dismissed superheroes as ‘spandex perverts’. His team had trained alongside Force Works for weeks, prepping for this mission, learning one another’s strengths.
But some things were impossible to plan for.
“Sir, we have a new contact, can’t ID. Orders?”
Hardcastle felt a surge of fear shoot down his spine, and glanced towards the small office where his men had herded the mutant kids. It was more to keep them together than to really protect them. If a fire fight broke out, the thin metal walls would spare them for only a few seconds.
“Put it down. If it’s a hero, he’ll be back to life in six months,” Hardcastle ordered.
Hardcastle watched as Corporal Barnes pulled the trigger twice. With the battle raging nearby, the shots somehow seemed quiet.
“Recover the body,” Hardcastle ordered, though he wasn’t certain why. His gut was speaking, but it was always a vague SOB. But the Special Forces Commander was beginning to decrypt it when his men returned, seemingly empty handed.
“I thought there was someone out there?”
“There was,” Barnes replied, as he pulled his leg back and seemingly kicked empty air. Despite all his years of experience, Hardcastle’s eyes felt like they were about to pop out of their sockets when what could only be described as a werewolf body builder began to appear out of thin air.
“…he’s not related to the wolf on your side?” one of Hardcastle’s men asked, in a manner that indicated he didn’t want to know the answer.
“Nope,” Barnes replied calmly, “according to intel, she’s an only child and animal mutations are common. I’m more worried about why we have an invisible werewolf lurking around. He doesn’t belong to the Koreans, he ain’t a snake, so why is he here?”
“Shit,” Hardcastle muttered, “there’s no way this guy is here alone. This whole thing just got a lot more complicated.”
Barnes paled, “Sir, we’re already juggling over a dozen mutant kids, Force Works, the Serpent Society and almost the entire North Korean army. Sir, you cannot tell me that things have gotten even worse.”
“’’Fraid so, son,” Hardcastle slapped Barnes on the shoulder, “but hey, at least everyone’s plan has gone to shit now. The Koreans, the snakes, us, we’re all in the same boat now.”
“Yeah, the Titanic.”
# # # # #
“…crat…Nita…hear me?”
“This is unexpected,” Taki looked at his screens, covered in electric snow. He removed several wires from his tech-pack and plugged them into the multi-million dollar consul. Instantly, a half dozen specialized programs downloaded into the supercomputer, and all at once the screens went dark.
Namorita felt her heart stop.
“What the hell did you do?!” Namorita snapped, her fists trembling.
“Look outside,” Technocrat pointed to the window without bothering to look away from the scenes. Namorita glanced outside the window, and was baffled by what she saw.
It was in the middle of the night, but the lights in buildings were going on and off like they were police lights, trucks and tanks were stopping and starting in the tarmac and the base alarm was blaring in the distance.
“The phalanx North Korea enslaved in a clever little bastard,” Technocrat explained, almost serenely, “I developed programs against A.Is taking over hardware, but it will take a moment before the program settles into the base’s computers.”
“How much longer until we get them back?” Namorita demanded, as she struggled to restrain the desire to turn Technocrat into hi-tech paste. What others might see as self control, Namorita knew to be arrogance. Technocrat was so desperate for others to acknowledge his genius, that the danger his teammates were in was often an afterthought, “at least we could hear them before!”
“And…,” Technocrat snapped his fingers, and instantly everything returned to its prior state, “…we now control the horizontal and the vertical. Now, what about that Helicarrier?”
“There’s been an issue,” Namorita thumbed towards a man in the corner. Technocrat was only able to recognize that the man was a five star general, and had one shoulder covered in medals, “this brass hole is keeping it grounded. He won’t even let the flight crew do a pre-flight check!”
“I’m sorry, general, I didn’t get your name,” Technocrat said.
“No, you didn’t,” the General replied, “because I’m not here. But I am in charge, the pre-agreed authorization code being baker-bravo-eight six foxfrot.”
Namorita and Technocrat exchanged a quick glance. The authorization code was correct, though neither of them had ever met this General before in all the time spent planning and executing this mission. That they suddenly had to deal with someone completely unknown made the already tenuous situation that much worse. It was like trying to replace the steering wheel of a car as it spun out on ice.
“Our back-up plan was very clear,” Namorita fought to control her family’s famous temper, “if we can’t use Blink to teleport our people out, we were to use the spare mini helicarrier that was due to be retired and refurbished for just that purpose!”
“When we agreed upon that plan,” the General replied, “it was assumed that your team would have control over the landing zone. From what I understand, we have the Serpent Society and the North Korean army on site causing havoc!”
“All the more reason we need to get out people out ASAP!” Namorita hissed, “the longer they are in North Korea, the worse this situation gets!”
“And if they never get out, this shit storm will never end!” snapped The General, “the helicarrier may be old and refitted, but it’s still dangerous in the wrong hands! The anti-gravity unit alone could be converted into a bomb with barely any effort at all!”
“And you think leaving our people behind enemy lines would be any better?” Namorita retorted, “the only way this mess gets any better is if we get our people back!”
“Then make them understand that they need to secure the area before we even attempt to airlift their asses out,” The General with a voice of steel, “our mission has passed the point of no return. We need to contain the bleeding and yes if that means leaving both our teams behind enemy lines, then that’s what I’m prepared to do.”
“Typical military SOP,” Namorita growled, “worry more about damage control than the damn mission itself!”
“Sometimes little girl, they’re one and the same,” The General replied calmly, “now stop jawing at me, and get it done!”
Namorita clenched her fists, but said nothing. While she wanted nothing more than to turn the General into a fine red paste, unlike her more famous cousin, Namorita knew when her temper would only make a bad situation worse.
“Technocrat, get back on communications,” Namorita never removed her eyes from the General, “make sure our people can talk to us and one another. Start using whatever contingencies you have for that phalanx and see what you can do about disabling their defense network. While you’re doing that, I’m going review the intelligence we have and see if we can’t give our team a way out.”
“Sounds like an excellent strategy,” The General said evenly, “while you’re doing that, I’ll make sure we’re ready to receive guests in whatever condition they may return to us in.”
Technocrat flew to his consul seat and began running a dozen programs at once. The alien phalanx was instinctively hyper intelligent, but Technocrat was prepared with a dozen back up plans and knowledge of the countless communications satellites in orbit. There was no way it could stop him from reaching his teammates.
“Techocrat to Mirage, we have a problem.”
# # # # #
Mirage leapt through the air seconds before a wave of green energy tore through where she’d just been standing, and tore a deep scar through the earth. Mirage landed with her hands out-stretched, bow in one hand, tumbled expertly and came up to her feet, bow now armed with her psychic arrow.
“Yeah, so do we!” Mirage snapped as she let three of her arrows fly.
The arrows struck her foe to no effect whatsoever, though to her credit, Mirage wasn’t much surprised.
“Cy-Hulk hate arrows!” cried the beast. The monster had the Hulk’s green complexion and size, but Dani was pretty sure that the Hulk didn’t have a cybernetic right eye, several exposed cables where there should be muscle on his legs and arms, and an advanced metal cannon in place of his left hand.
The cyborg gamma monster was about to smash the ground with his massive fists when Nova slammed into him from behind, knocking him off balance. The creature stumbled, and Blink leapt onto its shoulders and raked her javelins, drawing green blood.
“What the bloody ‘ell is that thing?!” Wolfsbane asked as she watched in horror. She’d fought the real Hulk once with X-Factor, and it still haunted her to this day.
“My God, someone actually bought it?” Sidewinder was dumbstruck, as he watched the battle unfold. Blink had fallen back, while Black Mamba wrapped it’s head in pure darkforce.
“You know what that thing is?” Mirage turned to Sidewinder, “care to fill us in?”
“It’s one of only three stable Hulk clones ever created,” Sidewinder explained, “I saw it at an AIM expo, and the asking price, well…lets just say it was well beyond my means. It’s a scorched earth weapon, the cybernetics control it, and prevent it from degenerating, that’s about all I remember from the demonstration.”
“Then that’s what we need to target,” Mirage turned to her teammates, “Puff Adder, Anaconda, grab it’s arms! Blink, X-Treme, get ready to move. Tarene, get some height!”
“This is freakin’ suicide,” Puff Adder deadpanned through gritted teeth, as he grabbed one arm, and his lover Anaconda grabbed the second.
“Least we’re going down strong!” Anaconda smirked. Her arms were coiled around the Cy-Hulk’s hand-cannon, and like her name sake they began constricting with terrible force, but the villainess didn’t feel as if she was making a single dent.
The cloned weapon was seconds away from throwing the two serpents off, when Blink and X-Treme teleported in behind him. X-Treme had his double bladed sword in one hand, and short axe in the other, while Blink had her modified javelins in each hand, which could cut through matter as easily as they cut space.
The two took a leg each, and began hacking in apart. In the span of several seconds, they’d sliced through an inch of muscle and several important nerves. The monster roared in pain, and unable to properly process the sensation, blacked out.
Anaconda and Puff Adder body slammed the creature face first into the ground, and quickly back-pedaled. Though the two Serpents didn’t know Force Works entire game book, it wasn’t hard to predict what was going to happen next.
The hair on the back of their neck stood up, the air crackled with electricity and a boom of thunder could be heard racing towards them like a runaway freight train.
The young Goddess Tarene was high in the air, spinning her war mallet, absorbing the power in the air into her weapon. Within seconds she’d drawn enough mystic power into her hammer, and arced downwards, aimed directly at the gamma powered robot.
Tarene came down like the lightning she commanded, and was only seconds away from slamming into the green cyborg when Sidewinder appeared beside her, and the two vanished in a burst of white light.
Tarene crashed into the ground some fifty feet away, and the earth rumbled as she created a ten foot deep crater, hitting the ground like a missile.
Tarene stood up and rubbed her head as the world around her spun, “How did I miss?”
Sidewinder reappeared next to Mirage on his hands and knees, struggling to breath while his heart imitated a jackhammer. Such precision teleporting wasn’t nearly as easy as it looked, and Sidewinder was no young man.
“What the hell was that?” Mirage leveled an arrow at Sidewinder’s head, while the Serpent Society found itself uncertain of what to do. While Sidewinder was their leader, trust in their profession was a hard thing to come by, and they were just as curious as to why their boss might have risked their lives.
“What part of ‘scorched earth’ didn’t you understand?” Sidewinder hissed, “if we destroy that thing, it will explode! It was a design feature! We have to find a way to disable it!”
“Oh, of course,” Mirage sighed, “and we just had to leave our genius at home…”
“Cy-Hulk smashed!” bellowed the beast as it smashed the ground with both hands, throwing hero and villain alike from their feet, “C-Hulk hate! Cy-Hulk will kill you all!”
“Cy-Hulk needs to shut up,” Arsenal swooped in close, and blasted the robot in the mouth with every iota of power he could spare. The energy traveled down the monster’s throat and into his lungs, superheating the air inside and scorching the tissue within. With barely a mind, the Cy-Hulk came to a dead stop as its brain struggled to deal with the pain now overwhelming its system.
The creature staggered, and stumbled back a step. It didn’t even register the loud –blink!-, or the fact that the mutant teleporter had dropped Vibraxis on his back.
“Feel my might vibrations!” the Wakandian Warrior roared as he gripped the beast’s head, and channeled enough seismic energy to crumble a mountain into the cyborg’s skull, shaking its enslaved brain like a baby’s rattle.
The machine Hulk fell to its knees, face blank as its systems struggled to access the damage, but no one expected it to last long.
“That’ll give us a few seconds,” Arsenal said, “we need to get in touch with Technocrat. He might have an idea.”
“Agreed. Arsenal, Nova, keep an eye on that thing,” Mirage ordered.
“And the rest of us?” Rattler asked.
“Hey, I’m your leader!” Sidewinder snapped.
“Then give some orders already!” Asp snapped.
“Just…keep watch,” said Sidewinder.
Mirage pressed her earbud and was instantly connected to Technocrat.
And the information she received was like a punch to the stomach.
“Well, what’d he say?” asked Sabre, who failed to notice that Mirage hadn’t asked Technocrat for advice on how to deal with the Cy-Hulk.
“Wolfsbane, Vibraxis, Blink, Sabre, I want you to go give our Special Forces team some back up,” Mirage ordered, “Blink is in charge. The rest of us are going to lure the Hulk towards the North Koreans. That’ll either force them to shut it down, or decimate the evil army that wants to kill us.”
“What about us?” Black Mamba asked, on behalf of the Serpent Society.
“I’ll take the big guys, the rest follow them,” Mirage stated, “getting those kids out needs to be our first priority.”
“I’ll take anything that gets me away from that monster,” Coachwhip said
As the Serpent Society began to move, Death Adder and Bushmaster remained still, eyes focused on the recovering Cy-Hulk. The beast had regained awareness, but seemed to pause to gather its strength.
“Guys?” Black Mamba and Asp exchanged a quick glance. They’d already lost one friend too many.
Death Adder said nothing, but with soft ears he pointed the women towards the rest of the team.
“We are warriors,” Bushmaster said, “we will be fine.”
“We’re facing a cybernetic Hulk with a nuclear cannon for a hand,” Nova said flatly, “if we even approach ‘fine’ when this is over, it will be a miracle.”
“Agreed.”
Force Works and the Serpent Society watched in awe as Gorgon seemed to appear out of thin air, and ham-strung the Cy-Hulk with a single slash. The beast only stumbled, but as he did Gotrgon flipped head over heels, and came down with his sword landing perfectly on top of the monster’s skull, and sank like it was made of clay. With a mighty tug, Gorgon pulled the sword straight outwards, splitting the skull and jaw bone like they were paper.
Gorgon blurred into motion again, and caught the metal Hulk as it fell forward with one hand. The Japanese mutant locked eyes with it, almost immediately its green skin began to turn stone grey.
Gorgon finally released the Cy-Hulk, allowing it to crumble into loose rumble around his feet.
The battle, if it could be called that, spanned perhaps forty seconds.
“I am here for one reason only and I do not care how many of you I have to kill to accomplish it” Gorgon, his back turned to the collection of heroes and mercenaries, swept his sword towards the ground, cleaning it of the green blood that had stained it, “do not think you’ll pose any greater challenge to me than the toy robot did.”
X-Treme assumed a fighting stance, tightening his grip on his double bladed sword, Death Adder flexed his poison laced fingers, Nova cracked his knuckles as his entire body began to smolder with energy, Anaconda muttered ‘finally’ under her breath while Mirage pulled her bow taut with Gorgon in her cross hairs.
“Prove it.”
TO BE CONTINUED...
NEXT ISSUE: Force Works is still a long way from home, and now the Apocalypse Dawn have made a bad situation worse! And even if the combined might of Force Works and the Serpent Society can overcome them, they still have to deal with Black Brigade, Panzer and the North Korean army!
Feared around the globe as the terrorist leader of the Apocalypse Dawn, the man known only as Alastaire, was a man that, as he climbed the ranks within the Dawn, forgot how to deal with people he didn’t care for. Those that annoyed him were either killed in open combat, sent on suicide missions or in the rare instances of them being invaluable to the cause, simply reassigned elsewhere.
But the Dawn had fallen on hard times, and more increasingly, Alastaire found himself forced to deal with pretentious mutants who thought they were the entirety of the Apocalypse’s cause, the perfect representation that should be worshipped rather than do something useful, like culling the weak. So try as he may, he couldn’t remove the slight sneer from his face as he entered the room of one of their more recent recruits. The entire room was Spartan, lacking anything that didn’t serve a basic utility with only a cot in the corner and several katana blades that hung on the wall without any hint of ceremony.
The room’s only other occupant, Gorgon, sat in the middle, meditating. He hadn’t even bothered to look up as Alastaire entered.
“You bring bad news. I can feel it in your smile,” Gorgon said as he breathed out.
“I’m only here to tell you that you need to leave immediately,” Alastaire stated, “apparently, Force Works has taken it upon themselves to liberate the kidnapped children you planned to take, alongside United States Special Forces team. The situation is in the midst of spiraling out of control as we speak. If you want to…rescue the kidnapped mutants, it’s now or never.”
“Then it is now,” Gorgon stood up, “alert my personal guard. We will leave immediately.”
“Your friends,” Alastaire spat with pure contempt, “are already assembled. Training room X. Do try to bring a few back alive.”
“Survival of the fittest,” Gorgon snorted.
“‘Even the mightiest of us can be crushed underneath a wave of the week’,” Alastaire repeated from recent memory, “I simply hate to see Dawn members lose their lives needlessly. Stupidity is not a sign of strength.”
“Your death seems to have changed you,” Gorgon observed, “you are not the man the stories spoke of.”
“I died serving our cause and have been reborn to continue that belief,” Alastaire growled, “you died in a pathetic flatscan ceremony that was little more than a cry for attention after a lifetime of shame. A miracle revived us both, but my steel has been tested and found worthy. You, for all the popularity you enjoy, haven’t. But now you have a chance to truly test yourself.”
“Show us your worth. Or don’t return.”
# # # # #
Richard Rider, known in the hero community as Nova the Human Rocket, could remember being in some odd and hairy situations. He’d been attacked by robotic impersonators of Captain America, Hulk and Spider-Man, fought intergalactic pirates and even died, for a brief time.
So while facing down the North Korean army with his friends and alongside snake themed group of mercenaries wasn’t the oddest situation he’d ever found himself in, it was still in the top ten.
“Surrender, Force Works!” snapped Panzer, one of two super-powered mercenaries employed by North Korea, “even if you get past this battalion, there’s no way you could fight your way out of the country!”
“He’s got a point,” Sabre observed, “at least for you glaciers. I can be out of the country in five minutes.”
“Sabre,” Nova muttered, “not. Helping.”
“I don’t know, I think delusions of escape can only help morale,” Sidewinder, leader of the Serpent Society, said, “they’ll at least try to take some of you alive, to embarrass the United States if nothing else. They’ll kill us.”
“Don’t being stupid,” Black Brigade, North Korea’s second super-powered mercenary, spat. He was a large hunchback of solid armor. Though it was hardly cutting edge, he was still powerful enough to fight Iron Man on an level field, “they are young and stupid. Never will they surrender.”
“Everyone, get ready,” Mirage whispered. The young mutant tapped a button on the side of her mask.
“You’re damn right I won’t surrender!” Mirage shouted, the sound of her voice now carrying across the entire base, “did you idiots think we came here alone? We’re not surrounded, you are!”
Suddenly, as if on cue, a half dozen Blackhawk helicopters appeared in the air, spotlights casting downward, lighting up the night sky. Armed to the teeth with missiles, Gatling guns and soldiers hanging out the side armed with automatic weapons, there wasn’t a soldier present who turned their attention from Force Works to this new threat.
“…where’s the wind?” Panzer wondered aloud, before his eyes went wide.
“Hit! Them!” Mirage snapped.
Both Vibraxis and Rattler lashed out with sonic energy, Arsenal unleashed his optic blasts, Tarene let fly lightning from her war mallet, as Nova released quick volleys of energy from his hands and Asp flung her venom bolts through the air.
In short order, the soldiers surrounding the two teams were thrown into disarray. Those not thrown back by the waves of sheer power of almost every kind, were blinded by the cloud of dust kicked up by the onslaught.
“Get in close!” Mirage ordered, “quick and hard, don’t give them a chance to rally! Sabre, you’re on swing!”
“What she said!” Sidewinder snapped.
Black Racer and Sabre shot forward like jet engines, and brought down soldier after solder with punches that felt like being hit with a sledge hammer. The two speedsters tore a straight line through the men, and skidded to a halt some twenty feet outside the camp.
“God, I want to keep running,” Black Racer confessed.
“I know, me too!” Sabre smiled. The super fast mutant was about to charge back into battle, when Black Racer grabbed her shoulder.
“What!?”
“That!” Black Racer pointed towards the horizon, and Sabre saw a fleet of vehicles crashing towards them. Troop carriers, tanks and hum-vees in a solid wave of steel, topped off by ancient helicopters that looked like they belonged more on the set of M*A*S*H than real life. Their combined light was like a twisted, terrible dawn of morning.
“Reinforcements,” Sabre muttered.
“Ya think?” Black Racer spat, “what do we do?”
“Fight!” Sabre snapped, “what do you think?”
“We get the hell out!” The Serpent answered, “with our powers, we could escape!”
“Right,” Sabre rolled her eyes, “only way we get outta here is with a teleporter!”
“And ours can’t!”
“Yeah well, we have a back-up plan,” said Sabre, “we got a helicarrier that’ll airlift our ass out of here.”
# # # # #
Nova and Arsenal barreled through a mob of soldiers, like ten pins, while Rattler and Vibraxis pushed back wave after wave with their sonic powers. Not to be outdone, Anaconda, Puff Adder and Tarene blitzed every soldier they saw. The few soldiers that didn’t have the common sense to run were swatted through the air like scuttle-cocks.
Inside of five minutes, the only soldiers in sight were either running or unconscious.
“That’s all?” Puff Adder cracked his knuckles, “I didn’t even work up a sweat!”
“Just wait,” Mirage replied, “North Korea has one of the biggest army in the world. We haven’t even scratched the surface.”
“And we’re missing two key players,” Nova said, “look around. Panzer and Black Brigade took off. Think they high tailed it?”
“We’re not that lucky,” Mirage replied, “we need to regroup. We still have a team of Special forces out there, a few dozen terrified mutant kids, and…!”
“Mirage, look out!” X-Treme shouted.
The mutant leader turned her head to see Death Adder leaping towards her, but by then it was too late. The snake tackled her, and the ground she’d been standing on exploded, struck by a bolt of energy from seemingly nowhere.
“Did you see that?!”
The heads of snake and hero alike snapped around as they frantically sought to find the source. Another bolt from the blue lanced out and struck Nova, slamming him through one of the barracks.
“Damn it, someone find where that shot came from!” Mirage snapped.
# # # # #
Two stories beneath them.
Panzer rubbed his hand impatiently as he watched Black Brigade communicate their situation to the country’s high command.
“Our ‘glorious leader’,” Panzer could almost feel the sarcasm, “says we are to do everything to ensure the retrieval of the mutants.”
“Does he understand that could cost him the arsenal he’s been building here?” asked Panzer.
Black Brigade gave him a knowing look.
“…right,” Panzer said, “do you at least ask if we could pay the Serpent Society to just leave? They’re mercenaries!”
Black Brigade said nothing.
“Of course,” Panzer growled, “that’d be too easy.”
“This is hand we are dealt,” Black Brigade growled, “every minute we whine like child, our enemies grow bolder and the chaos greater!”
“I cannot disagree,” Panzer said, “suddenly, I am to understand the American saying ‘To save the village, we must burn the village’!”
# # # # #
Topside
“There!”
Arsenal saw only open air where Wolfsbane pointed, but took a leap of faith and shot forward. He slammed into something invisible, and reached out with one hand, fingers sinking into steel. He smashed his other hand into the steel, and began tearing his way inside. A moment later, Puff Adder jumped in after him, and the sound of metal tearing and wires snapping could be heard.
The gathered heroes and villains watched as a legless Sentinel shimmered into sight, and then fell like a pile of junk. Arsenal and Puff Adder, covered in motor oil, tore an exit out of the back as if the three inch steel were simply wrapping paper.
“A cloaking device, seven year old sentinel and some of the Wizard’s anti-gravity technology so we wouldn’t see its footprints,” Sidewinder remarked, “little more than high tech bail and wire…”
“And it had us crapping our pants like rookies,” said Mirage as she leaned over to examine the pile of high tech purple scrap metal, “Sabre, sit rep?”
“We’re completely surrounded,” Sabre replied, “the troops aren’t moving in, but that won’t last forever.”
“They want to keep us pinned in,” Mirage explained, “if they have a trump card, they’ll play it soon. So we need options to get out of here. You snakes have an extraction plan we might be able to use?”
“Teleporting out was how we planned on getting away, actually. We thought using our aircraft would be…ah, too expensive,” said Black Mamba.
“It looked good on paper,” Sidewinder muttered, “everyone thinks jet fuel just grows on trees…”
“We have a back-up plan,” X-Treme stated, “hellicarrier with plenty of room. With any luck, Technocrat is scrambling it now. We’d know for certain, if you’d stop jamming our comm.”
“Oh!” Sidewinder reached into his belt and pulled out a small box with a giant red button, and pressed it once, “sorry, AIM builds things so effective that you forget they’re even there.”
“Finally,” Mirage sighed. She pressed a finger to her ear and activated her suit’s radio, “Technocrat, Mirage. Blink’s been shut down, we need the helicarrier if we’re getting out of here.”
Static.
“Technocrat? Namorita? Can you read me?”
A bead of sweat dripped down Mirage’s face, and she was moments away from screaming into her radio in frustration when the ground began to rumble, and a monstrous scream of rage tore through the night air. Force Works, Able Squad, the Serpent Society all felt as if they’d been splashed in the face with ice water.
Whether they’d heard it in person, or from the TV, no one could possibly forget the war-cry of the Incredible Hulk.
# # # # #
Hangar
“Rear doors are secured, sir. A pound of C4, with two trip wires acting as dead man switches,” Corporal Henderson reported.
“Then we’ve secured all entrances,” Lt. Commander Hardcastle nodded to his man, “grab yourself a lookout post and dig in. Weapons free, but give me a heads up before you shoot.”
The Corporal nodded and took his position, while Hardcastle felt a knot form in his stomach. He’d been in bad situations before, so deep in shit he couldn’t see the other side, but this felt different. This was the first time his people were in deep, and relying on someone else for back-up.
Hardcastle wasn’t like most in his profession, dismissed superheroes as ‘spandex perverts’. His team had trained alongside Force Works for weeks, prepping for this mission, learning one another’s strengths.
But some things were impossible to plan for.
“Sir, we have a new contact, can’t ID. Orders?”
Hardcastle felt a surge of fear shoot down his spine, and glanced towards the small office where his men had herded the mutant kids. It was more to keep them together than to really protect them. If a fire fight broke out, the thin metal walls would spare them for only a few seconds.
“Put it down. If it’s a hero, he’ll be back to life in six months,” Hardcastle ordered.
Hardcastle watched as Corporal Barnes pulled the trigger twice. With the battle raging nearby, the shots somehow seemed quiet.
“Recover the body,” Hardcastle ordered, though he wasn’t certain why. His gut was speaking, but it was always a vague SOB. But the Special Forces Commander was beginning to decrypt it when his men returned, seemingly empty handed.
“I thought there was someone out there?”
“There was,” Barnes replied, as he pulled his leg back and seemingly kicked empty air. Despite all his years of experience, Hardcastle’s eyes felt like they were about to pop out of their sockets when what could only be described as a werewolf body builder began to appear out of thin air.
“…he’s not related to the wolf on your side?” one of Hardcastle’s men asked, in a manner that indicated he didn’t want to know the answer.
“Nope,” Barnes replied calmly, “according to intel, she’s an only child and animal mutations are common. I’m more worried about why we have an invisible werewolf lurking around. He doesn’t belong to the Koreans, he ain’t a snake, so why is he here?”
“Shit,” Hardcastle muttered, “there’s no way this guy is here alone. This whole thing just got a lot more complicated.”
Barnes paled, “Sir, we’re already juggling over a dozen mutant kids, Force Works, the Serpent Society and almost the entire North Korean army. Sir, you cannot tell me that things have gotten even worse.”
“’’Fraid so, son,” Hardcastle slapped Barnes on the shoulder, “but hey, at least everyone’s plan has gone to shit now. The Koreans, the snakes, us, we’re all in the same boat now.”
“Yeah, the Titanic.”
# # # # #
“…crat…Nita…hear me?”
“This is unexpected,” Taki looked at his screens, covered in electric snow. He removed several wires from his tech-pack and plugged them into the multi-million dollar consul. Instantly, a half dozen specialized programs downloaded into the supercomputer, and all at once the screens went dark.
Namorita felt her heart stop.
“What the hell did you do?!” Namorita snapped, her fists trembling.
“Look outside,” Technocrat pointed to the window without bothering to look away from the scenes. Namorita glanced outside the window, and was baffled by what she saw.
It was in the middle of the night, but the lights in buildings were going on and off like they were police lights, trucks and tanks were stopping and starting in the tarmac and the base alarm was blaring in the distance.
“The phalanx North Korea enslaved in a clever little bastard,” Technocrat explained, almost serenely, “I developed programs against A.Is taking over hardware, but it will take a moment before the program settles into the base’s computers.”
“How much longer until we get them back?” Namorita demanded, as she struggled to restrain the desire to turn Technocrat into hi-tech paste. What others might see as self control, Namorita knew to be arrogance. Technocrat was so desperate for others to acknowledge his genius, that the danger his teammates were in was often an afterthought, “at least we could hear them before!”
“And…,” Technocrat snapped his fingers, and instantly everything returned to its prior state, “…we now control the horizontal and the vertical. Now, what about that Helicarrier?”
“There’s been an issue,” Namorita thumbed towards a man in the corner. Technocrat was only able to recognize that the man was a five star general, and had one shoulder covered in medals, “this brass hole is keeping it grounded. He won’t even let the flight crew do a pre-flight check!”
“I’m sorry, general, I didn’t get your name,” Technocrat said.
“No, you didn’t,” the General replied, “because I’m not here. But I am in charge, the pre-agreed authorization code being baker-bravo-eight six foxfrot.”
Namorita and Technocrat exchanged a quick glance. The authorization code was correct, though neither of them had ever met this General before in all the time spent planning and executing this mission. That they suddenly had to deal with someone completely unknown made the already tenuous situation that much worse. It was like trying to replace the steering wheel of a car as it spun out on ice.
“Our back-up plan was very clear,” Namorita fought to control her family’s famous temper, “if we can’t use Blink to teleport our people out, we were to use the spare mini helicarrier that was due to be retired and refurbished for just that purpose!”
“When we agreed upon that plan,” the General replied, “it was assumed that your team would have control over the landing zone. From what I understand, we have the Serpent Society and the North Korean army on site causing havoc!”
“All the more reason we need to get out people out ASAP!” Namorita hissed, “the longer they are in North Korea, the worse this situation gets!”
“And if they never get out, this shit storm will never end!” snapped The General, “the helicarrier may be old and refitted, but it’s still dangerous in the wrong hands! The anti-gravity unit alone could be converted into a bomb with barely any effort at all!”
“And you think leaving our people behind enemy lines would be any better?” Namorita retorted, “the only way this mess gets any better is if we get our people back!”
“Then make them understand that they need to secure the area before we even attempt to airlift their asses out,” The General with a voice of steel, “our mission has passed the point of no return. We need to contain the bleeding and yes if that means leaving both our teams behind enemy lines, then that’s what I’m prepared to do.”
“Typical military SOP,” Namorita growled, “worry more about damage control than the damn mission itself!”
“Sometimes little girl, they’re one and the same,” The General replied calmly, “now stop jawing at me, and get it done!”
Namorita clenched her fists, but said nothing. While she wanted nothing more than to turn the General into a fine red paste, unlike her more famous cousin, Namorita knew when her temper would only make a bad situation worse.
“Technocrat, get back on communications,” Namorita never removed her eyes from the General, “make sure our people can talk to us and one another. Start using whatever contingencies you have for that phalanx and see what you can do about disabling their defense network. While you’re doing that, I’m going review the intelligence we have and see if we can’t give our team a way out.”
“Sounds like an excellent strategy,” The General said evenly, “while you’re doing that, I’ll make sure we’re ready to receive guests in whatever condition they may return to us in.”
Technocrat flew to his consul seat and began running a dozen programs at once. The alien phalanx was instinctively hyper intelligent, but Technocrat was prepared with a dozen back up plans and knowledge of the countless communications satellites in orbit. There was no way it could stop him from reaching his teammates.
“Techocrat to Mirage, we have a problem.”
# # # # #
Mirage leapt through the air seconds before a wave of green energy tore through where she’d just been standing, and tore a deep scar through the earth. Mirage landed with her hands out-stretched, bow in one hand, tumbled expertly and came up to her feet, bow now armed with her psychic arrow.
“Yeah, so do we!” Mirage snapped as she let three of her arrows fly.
The arrows struck her foe to no effect whatsoever, though to her credit, Mirage wasn’t much surprised.
“Cy-Hulk hate arrows!” cried the beast. The monster had the Hulk’s green complexion and size, but Dani was pretty sure that the Hulk didn’t have a cybernetic right eye, several exposed cables where there should be muscle on his legs and arms, and an advanced metal cannon in place of his left hand.
The cyborg gamma monster was about to smash the ground with his massive fists when Nova slammed into him from behind, knocking him off balance. The creature stumbled, and Blink leapt onto its shoulders and raked her javelins, drawing green blood.
“What the bloody ‘ell is that thing?!” Wolfsbane asked as she watched in horror. She’d fought the real Hulk once with X-Factor, and it still haunted her to this day.
“My God, someone actually bought it?” Sidewinder was dumbstruck, as he watched the battle unfold. Blink had fallen back, while Black Mamba wrapped it’s head in pure darkforce.
“You know what that thing is?” Mirage turned to Sidewinder, “care to fill us in?”
“It’s one of only three stable Hulk clones ever created,” Sidewinder explained, “I saw it at an AIM expo, and the asking price, well…lets just say it was well beyond my means. It’s a scorched earth weapon, the cybernetics control it, and prevent it from degenerating, that’s about all I remember from the demonstration.”
“Then that’s what we need to target,” Mirage turned to her teammates, “Puff Adder, Anaconda, grab it’s arms! Blink, X-Treme, get ready to move. Tarene, get some height!”
“This is freakin’ suicide,” Puff Adder deadpanned through gritted teeth, as he grabbed one arm, and his lover Anaconda grabbed the second.
“Least we’re going down strong!” Anaconda smirked. Her arms were coiled around the Cy-Hulk’s hand-cannon, and like her name sake they began constricting with terrible force, but the villainess didn’t feel as if she was making a single dent.
The cloned weapon was seconds away from throwing the two serpents off, when Blink and X-Treme teleported in behind him. X-Treme had his double bladed sword in one hand, and short axe in the other, while Blink had her modified javelins in each hand, which could cut through matter as easily as they cut space.
The two took a leg each, and began hacking in apart. In the span of several seconds, they’d sliced through an inch of muscle and several important nerves. The monster roared in pain, and unable to properly process the sensation, blacked out.
Anaconda and Puff Adder body slammed the creature face first into the ground, and quickly back-pedaled. Though the two Serpents didn’t know Force Works entire game book, it wasn’t hard to predict what was going to happen next.
The hair on the back of their neck stood up, the air crackled with electricity and a boom of thunder could be heard racing towards them like a runaway freight train.
The young Goddess Tarene was high in the air, spinning her war mallet, absorbing the power in the air into her weapon. Within seconds she’d drawn enough mystic power into her hammer, and arced downwards, aimed directly at the gamma powered robot.
Tarene came down like the lightning she commanded, and was only seconds away from slamming into the green cyborg when Sidewinder appeared beside her, and the two vanished in a burst of white light.
Tarene crashed into the ground some fifty feet away, and the earth rumbled as she created a ten foot deep crater, hitting the ground like a missile.
Tarene stood up and rubbed her head as the world around her spun, “How did I miss?”
Sidewinder reappeared next to Mirage on his hands and knees, struggling to breath while his heart imitated a jackhammer. Such precision teleporting wasn’t nearly as easy as it looked, and Sidewinder was no young man.
“What the hell was that?” Mirage leveled an arrow at Sidewinder’s head, while the Serpent Society found itself uncertain of what to do. While Sidewinder was their leader, trust in their profession was a hard thing to come by, and they were just as curious as to why their boss might have risked their lives.
“What part of ‘scorched earth’ didn’t you understand?” Sidewinder hissed, “if we destroy that thing, it will explode! It was a design feature! We have to find a way to disable it!”
“Oh, of course,” Mirage sighed, “and we just had to leave our genius at home…”
“Cy-Hulk smashed!” bellowed the beast as it smashed the ground with both hands, throwing hero and villain alike from their feet, “C-Hulk hate! Cy-Hulk will kill you all!”
“Cy-Hulk needs to shut up,” Arsenal swooped in close, and blasted the robot in the mouth with every iota of power he could spare. The energy traveled down the monster’s throat and into his lungs, superheating the air inside and scorching the tissue within. With barely a mind, the Cy-Hulk came to a dead stop as its brain struggled to deal with the pain now overwhelming its system.
The creature staggered, and stumbled back a step. It didn’t even register the loud –blink!-, or the fact that the mutant teleporter had dropped Vibraxis on his back.
“Feel my might vibrations!” the Wakandian Warrior roared as he gripped the beast’s head, and channeled enough seismic energy to crumble a mountain into the cyborg’s skull, shaking its enslaved brain like a baby’s rattle.
The machine Hulk fell to its knees, face blank as its systems struggled to access the damage, but no one expected it to last long.
“That’ll give us a few seconds,” Arsenal said, “we need to get in touch with Technocrat. He might have an idea.”
“Agreed. Arsenal, Nova, keep an eye on that thing,” Mirage ordered.
“And the rest of us?” Rattler asked.
“Hey, I’m your leader!” Sidewinder snapped.
“Then give some orders already!” Asp snapped.
“Just…keep watch,” said Sidewinder.
Mirage pressed her earbud and was instantly connected to Technocrat.
And the information she received was like a punch to the stomach.
“Well, what’d he say?” asked Sabre, who failed to notice that Mirage hadn’t asked Technocrat for advice on how to deal with the Cy-Hulk.
“Wolfsbane, Vibraxis, Blink, Sabre, I want you to go give our Special Forces team some back up,” Mirage ordered, “Blink is in charge. The rest of us are going to lure the Hulk towards the North Koreans. That’ll either force them to shut it down, or decimate the evil army that wants to kill us.”
“What about us?” Black Mamba asked, on behalf of the Serpent Society.
“I’ll take the big guys, the rest follow them,” Mirage stated, “getting those kids out needs to be our first priority.”
“I’ll take anything that gets me away from that monster,” Coachwhip said
As the Serpent Society began to move, Death Adder and Bushmaster remained still, eyes focused on the recovering Cy-Hulk. The beast had regained awareness, but seemed to pause to gather its strength.
“Guys?” Black Mamba and Asp exchanged a quick glance. They’d already lost one friend too many.
Death Adder said nothing, but with soft ears he pointed the women towards the rest of the team.
“We are warriors,” Bushmaster said, “we will be fine.”
“We’re facing a cybernetic Hulk with a nuclear cannon for a hand,” Nova said flatly, “if we even approach ‘fine’ when this is over, it will be a miracle.”
“Agreed.”
Force Works and the Serpent Society watched in awe as Gorgon seemed to appear out of thin air, and ham-strung the Cy-Hulk with a single slash. The beast only stumbled, but as he did Gotrgon flipped head over heels, and came down with his sword landing perfectly on top of the monster’s skull, and sank like it was made of clay. With a mighty tug, Gorgon pulled the sword straight outwards, splitting the skull and jaw bone like they were paper.
Gorgon blurred into motion again, and caught the metal Hulk as it fell forward with one hand. The Japanese mutant locked eyes with it, almost immediately its green skin began to turn stone grey.
Gorgon finally released the Cy-Hulk, allowing it to crumble into loose rumble around his feet.
The battle, if it could be called that, spanned perhaps forty seconds.
“I am here for one reason only and I do not care how many of you I have to kill to accomplish it” Gorgon, his back turned to the collection of heroes and mercenaries, swept his sword towards the ground, cleaning it of the green blood that had stained it, “do not think you’ll pose any greater challenge to me than the toy robot did.”
X-Treme assumed a fighting stance, tightening his grip on his double bladed sword, Death Adder flexed his poison laced fingers, Nova cracked his knuckles as his entire body began to smolder with energy, Anaconda muttered ‘finally’ under her breath while Mirage pulled her bow taut with Gorgon in her cross hairs.
“Prove it.”
TO BE CONTINUED...
NEXT ISSUE: Force Works is still a long way from home, and now the Apocalypse Dawn have made a bad situation worse! And even if the combined might of Force Works and the Serpent Society can overcome them, they still have to deal with Black Brigade, Panzer and the North Korean army!