Back to Gatefold
Issue #2 by Alan Strauss
August 2012 |
Three months ago…
Today was Tuesday. Tuesday was bathing day. All the necessary equipment stood ready at hand. A sponge, a bar of antibacterial soap, shampoo, and two buckets.
The second bucket was in case she needed to throw up.
Leeann Tuttle had always despised the sick. That had perhaps made nursing a bizarre choice of professions but she hadn’t seen it that way. The job was her chance to do good. By being placed in a position of authority over the sick, the ugly, the old, the pathetically weak that depended on, no demanded, others’ forbearance and assistance just to survive, she could do what needed to be done.
For why did such things exist? They provided nothing of worth. They made messes and stunk and turned everything uglier just by being there. And they must know it. Their lives had to be terrible. She had been an angel of mercy relieving them and the world of their suffering.
Her superiors had not seen it that way though. Two dismissals in fewer than five years and a final employer threatening litigation if she so much as stepped foot in a hospital or place of care again. Even AIM had set certain stipulations before hiring her onto their team. For one, she was not to renew her old practices except under direct supervision. Otherwise there would be repercussions and these would not involve mere lawsuits.
According to Dr. Sparrow, her tongue would be cut out and her legs removed before being crated and shipped to one of AIM’s remote bio-labs for use as a living test dummy. That was probably a lie, Leeann told herself. They probably didn’t really do such things.
It was a pretty persuasive deterrent though.
So today was bath day and nothing more. Leeann set down her buckets and examined the freak currently under her care. It was hideous. Like something out of a nightmare. It’s body was as wide as it was tall only it wasn’t even a body really. It was all head. Just literally a head and nothing else save these spindly little legs and arms clamped into the manacles that locked it in place.
According to Dr. Sparrow -- when she was nice enough to talk to her like a person instead of a lackey, which wasn’t often -- this thing had once been someone important. The director of AIM. Only it had been too erratic and prone to failure and they had decided to put it on ice, not for the first time. Also looking at it made you sick to your stomach and Leeann knew in her heart that was the real reason they’d gotten rid of it. Like any sane person would.
“Time for your shot, big ugly,” she announced to no one in particular, reaching into the pocket of her smock for a syringe. It was kept under constant sedation. Leeann had never seen it awake. That was fine by her.
“Holy Christ. You gotta be kidding me.”
Leeann glanced up to see a man in yellow scrubs enter with a toolbox in his hands. He had two white pips on his collar which she knew marked him as one of the technicians. She normally didn’t like them as they all thought they were too smart for what they were, which was not much. This one had an interesting face though and nails that were pleasingly clean for a change. That was important to her.
The tech walked over to the restraint chair and peered into the creature’s face. He pulled one of the eyelids up but the eye underneath was unresponsive. “This is some freaky shit right here. AIM must be crazy keeping something looks like that around. Ought to burn it.”
Leeann sort of smiled when he looked at her. She had not made many acquaintances since she arrived here but he seemed friendly. In a way. “He stinks.”
“What?”
“He smells bad. I hate him.”
The tech studied her a minute and nodded. “Yeah, I bet he does. I bet he does too.” He poked the creature’s forehead with his finger and then, as if overcome by a fit of mischievousness, clapped both palms against the creature’s nose, closing shut its nostrils.
Leeann gaped. “You can’t do that! Dr. Sparrow says we’re not to hurt him…”
He kept it up, just a couple seconds longer, and her heart was racing like a jackrabbit as the thing started to quiver in its restraints and turn blue. Then the hands were removed. The tech grinned and stepped up closer to Leeann. His breath was warm against her face. She really did think she liked him. Sort of. He was more interesting than the last tech that was for sure.
“You’re way too good looking to be stuck tending this freak.”
“I know.”
He reached a hand under her skirt and Leeann let him, dropping the unused syringe she was holding in the sink. His body felt good against her own and the brush of his lips against the nape of her neck was surprisingly pleasant. Even though she normally didn’t like those sort of things. It felt disgustingly inappropriate to make love right here in the holding cell during her shift. That was interesting too.
The tech was in the process of unfastening the top clasp of her uniform when he suddenly sneered. “What are you doing? You pulling away from me?”
“I’m not…”
But he was right. Their bodies were no longer touching. She hadn’t pulled back though. He had pulled up. His body had begun to float gently towards the ceiling. It took him a moment to figure out what was happening. Fear shot through his face and then something else. Something terrible.
Fortunately she didn’t have to study it for very long.
The tech didn’t get the opportunity to so much as scream before his body began to fold inwards. His legs cracked at the knee joints and bent until the toes were touching his chest. His shoulders collapsed in on themselves. A series of tiny cracking noises could be heard echoing through the room before his head broke apart, splashing the floor with gore. After awhile she covered her eyes and huddled up against the sink, praying it would stop. The mutilation continued for quite some time however.
When Leeann finally opened them again she discovered that it’s eyes were now open too. It was staring patiently in her direction.
“You. Come here.”
She shook her head but it persisted.
“Come here. Now. If you wish to avoid the same fate as the other one.”
On shaky legs she slowly complied.
“Remove these clasps from my arms. Good. Very good.”
A shiver passed through her body as the loathsome thing began to flex its hands and legs, returning the circulation to them. It seemed impossible that they actually worked but work they did. Soon the thing was hovering in the center of the room and its mouth twisted into a smile as it surveyed its surroundings.
“They thought to contain me here? The fools. They shall regret that. Yes. They shall. Horribly.”
His pale spidery fingers grasped her by the wrist and she nearly shrieked as he pulled her closer.
“You will assist me. You will be the first. For MODOK has much work to do.”
Today was Tuesday. Tuesday was bathing day. All the necessary equipment stood ready at hand. A sponge, a bar of antibacterial soap, shampoo, and two buckets.
The second bucket was in case she needed to throw up.
Leeann Tuttle had always despised the sick. That had perhaps made nursing a bizarre choice of professions but she hadn’t seen it that way. The job was her chance to do good. By being placed in a position of authority over the sick, the ugly, the old, the pathetically weak that depended on, no demanded, others’ forbearance and assistance just to survive, she could do what needed to be done.
For why did such things exist? They provided nothing of worth. They made messes and stunk and turned everything uglier just by being there. And they must know it. Their lives had to be terrible. She had been an angel of mercy relieving them and the world of their suffering.
Her superiors had not seen it that way though. Two dismissals in fewer than five years and a final employer threatening litigation if she so much as stepped foot in a hospital or place of care again. Even AIM had set certain stipulations before hiring her onto their team. For one, she was not to renew her old practices except under direct supervision. Otherwise there would be repercussions and these would not involve mere lawsuits.
According to Dr. Sparrow, her tongue would be cut out and her legs removed before being crated and shipped to one of AIM’s remote bio-labs for use as a living test dummy. That was probably a lie, Leeann told herself. They probably didn’t really do such things.
It was a pretty persuasive deterrent though.
So today was bath day and nothing more. Leeann set down her buckets and examined the freak currently under her care. It was hideous. Like something out of a nightmare. It’s body was as wide as it was tall only it wasn’t even a body really. It was all head. Just literally a head and nothing else save these spindly little legs and arms clamped into the manacles that locked it in place.
According to Dr. Sparrow -- when she was nice enough to talk to her like a person instead of a lackey, which wasn’t often -- this thing had once been someone important. The director of AIM. Only it had been too erratic and prone to failure and they had decided to put it on ice, not for the first time. Also looking at it made you sick to your stomach and Leeann knew in her heart that was the real reason they’d gotten rid of it. Like any sane person would.
“Time for your shot, big ugly,” she announced to no one in particular, reaching into the pocket of her smock for a syringe. It was kept under constant sedation. Leeann had never seen it awake. That was fine by her.
“Holy Christ. You gotta be kidding me.”
Leeann glanced up to see a man in yellow scrubs enter with a toolbox in his hands. He had two white pips on his collar which she knew marked him as one of the technicians. She normally didn’t like them as they all thought they were too smart for what they were, which was not much. This one had an interesting face though and nails that were pleasingly clean for a change. That was important to her.
The tech walked over to the restraint chair and peered into the creature’s face. He pulled one of the eyelids up but the eye underneath was unresponsive. “This is some freaky shit right here. AIM must be crazy keeping something looks like that around. Ought to burn it.”
Leeann sort of smiled when he looked at her. She had not made many acquaintances since she arrived here but he seemed friendly. In a way. “He stinks.”
“What?”
“He smells bad. I hate him.”
The tech studied her a minute and nodded. “Yeah, I bet he does. I bet he does too.” He poked the creature’s forehead with his finger and then, as if overcome by a fit of mischievousness, clapped both palms against the creature’s nose, closing shut its nostrils.
Leeann gaped. “You can’t do that! Dr. Sparrow says we’re not to hurt him…”
He kept it up, just a couple seconds longer, and her heart was racing like a jackrabbit as the thing started to quiver in its restraints and turn blue. Then the hands were removed. The tech grinned and stepped up closer to Leeann. His breath was warm against her face. She really did think she liked him. Sort of. He was more interesting than the last tech that was for sure.
“You’re way too good looking to be stuck tending this freak.”
“I know.”
He reached a hand under her skirt and Leeann let him, dropping the unused syringe she was holding in the sink. His body felt good against her own and the brush of his lips against the nape of her neck was surprisingly pleasant. Even though she normally didn’t like those sort of things. It felt disgustingly inappropriate to make love right here in the holding cell during her shift. That was interesting too.
The tech was in the process of unfastening the top clasp of her uniform when he suddenly sneered. “What are you doing? You pulling away from me?”
“I’m not…”
But he was right. Their bodies were no longer touching. She hadn’t pulled back though. He had pulled up. His body had begun to float gently towards the ceiling. It took him a moment to figure out what was happening. Fear shot through his face and then something else. Something terrible.
Fortunately she didn’t have to study it for very long.
The tech didn’t get the opportunity to so much as scream before his body began to fold inwards. His legs cracked at the knee joints and bent until the toes were touching his chest. His shoulders collapsed in on themselves. A series of tiny cracking noises could be heard echoing through the room before his head broke apart, splashing the floor with gore. After awhile she covered her eyes and huddled up against the sink, praying it would stop. The mutilation continued for quite some time however.
When Leeann finally opened them again she discovered that it’s eyes were now open too. It was staring patiently in her direction.
“You. Come here.”
She shook her head but it persisted.
“Come here. Now. If you wish to avoid the same fate as the other one.”
On shaky legs she slowly complied.
“Remove these clasps from my arms. Good. Very good.”
A shiver passed through her body as the loathsome thing began to flex its hands and legs, returning the circulation to them. It seemed impossible that they actually worked but work they did. Soon the thing was hovering in the center of the room and its mouth twisted into a smile as it surveyed its surroundings.
“They thought to contain me here? The fools. They shall regret that. Yes. They shall. Horribly.”
His pale spidery fingers grasped her by the wrist and she nearly shrieked as he pulled her closer.
“You will assist me. You will be the first. For MODOK has much work to do.”
“MUTINY OVER THE BOUNTY”
Now…
It would have to be raining.
Bethany-Parker Taggart stood perched on the corner of the warehouse’s rooftop, shielding her eyes from the storm as she gazed at the docks below. The wind was whipping her perpetually unkempt hair into a halo around her head. She looked…
Well, she looked exactly like the same annoying prat who’d buffaloed Moondragon and her both into joining a half-backed missing persons investigation just a few hours ago. At least in Tigra’s opinion. She was still admittedly a little sour on how that had gone down.
“This is hardcore superhero stuff right here, isn’t it?” Bethany declared, smiling happily to herself, despite the abysmal weather. “I feel all Daredevil-y. I wish there was a gargoyle or something to kneel on, you know?”
Had she ever been that enthusiastic? Tigra couldn’t remember. Right now all she felt was cold and vaguely ridiculous. The rain was making her fur mat up and later when it dried she was going to look an absolute fright. And probably catch pneumonia.
“Tell us again why we’re here, Bethany…”
The girl coolly obliged, not that it really made all that much sense even then. Bethany had spent the previous night cross-referencing all the files she’d nabbed from her father’s work computer with those she’d gathered from several other missing scientists and inventers during the preceding months. A single name had popped up repeatedly in their ledgers, that being a small private shipping firm known as the Sphyraena Company. That was here. What they were looking for exactly, Tigra hadn’t the foggiest. Containers full of brainiacs packed together like sardines maybe.
“Your father runs Atlas Enterprises, right? So what’s so fishy about him having transactions with a shipping company?”
Bethany rolled her eyes as if the question was stupid on its face. As if Tigra wasn’t the former Avenger and her the inexperienced rich girl playing vigilante.
“Because for one, Atlas’s commercial products all ship directly from the factories that produce them and they only ever use APL lines. Also, my father never handled those sorts of things. He founded the corporation, yes, and even invented much of their original product line but he did not handle day-to-day business operations. AE kept him around mostly to meet with high profile clients and shoot ad campaigns. There’s no reason he’d be meeting directly with a fourth rate operation like Sphyraena. Plus how do you explain its connection with the other missing scientists, hmmm?”
Tigra couldn’t of course which irritated her all the more. She’d never handled that sort of thing while on the Avengers. The planning and researching was always left to others. Not that she couldn’t have done it, she supposed, it’s just no one ever asked. Tigra had been the rookie then, struggling to control her ever tetchy powers, and also find a way to mesh with her world famous teammates, which in itself had resulted in several embarrassing decisions, particularly relationship-wise.
No wonder she had a reputation as a crap Avenger, Tigra reflected, hugging her arms miserably against her wet body as she winced into the wind. Sometimes it felt like she never did anything right. So why stand here and play skeptic and pretend like she was any kind of expert on anything?
“Okay. Whatever. I guess I can’t explain it. I’m still not sure where to start though…”
Bethany motioned towards one of the wharfs where a freighter currently rested at dock. “Is something moving over there?”
Here at least was something she did well. Tigra’s eyes, like the rest of her physique, were part feline in their genetic makeup. They could adjust better to low light situations and see further than any human observer could in similar conditions. And her new employer was right. There was movement. Several men in dark rain slickers were moving up and down the gangplanks, loading crates onboard.
“Seems awfully late at night for that sort of work…”
“Yeah, we should probably check it out when they’re gone. Find out what it is they’re loading. Then maybe ransack the manager’s office and go over his records, or…” Bethany paused, wiping the rain from her eyes with the back of her glove. “Hey, do you see Moondragon anywhere?”
Tigra stopped studying the dock workers and glanced over her shoulder. She’d been right behind her, scowling as per usual, refusing to partake in the conversation. And now…
“Oh, sneezes…”
# # # # #
While others talked, Moondragon acted. Such was her way. She had long ago come to the realization that the words and plans of others were seldom worth the time it took to hear them. Her own conclusions were not only quicker to form but inevitably superior.
Certainly that was true given the caliber of her current teammates.
So it was that Moondragon found herself crouched among the steel cargo containers cluttering the dock. She had felt the workers presence long before the others noticed them. They were anxious, an emotion that was the among the first a fledgling telepath learned to detect. Whatever they were loading at this late hour did not sit easy with them. That was enough to convince her to investigate.
Unfortunately, Moondragon could do little more than watch as the last of them finished. She did not want to risk a confrontation needlessly. She had already made that mistake at the Atlas building. And attempting to forcibly glean information from their minds would almost certainly have alerted them to her presence.
That limitation of course was owing to the worthless body she found herself trapped in. Actions that would have been second nature to her normally were now complicated, especially those involving her telepathy. For the brain too is a kind of muscle and like all muscles must be honed by practice to perform its best. Since her host had not been a telepath, her faculties were not nearly as developed as those in Moondragon’s own body. In time perhaps they would improve but for now she was forced to accept them for what they were.
And it was driving her more than a little crazy.
It was also driving her to find one Randal Taggart in hopes of discovering how she’d arrived at this state. Bethany believed her father had been kidnapped. Moondragon was less certain. His face continued to flit in and out of her patchy memories and the emotion she felt upon conjuring it was always outrage. If he was at fault for what happened to her then how could he be a victim? Whoever had done this to her must be immensely clever or immensely powerful. At her full strength even the Eternals themselves respected her abilities.
Moondragon had not shared this with her partners though. She knew too little and they were not ones to confide in anyways. Her true hope was that wherever she found this Randal, she might also find herself. Even the finest telepath in the universe -- her in other words -- could not survive as mere psionic projection or psychic residue. That she lived meant her mind must still be connected to her body, to her brain, even if she couldn’t currently access it. That meant there was still a chance to return to normal. At least if she could find it.
But first she had to make sense of things. And that meant acting decisively.
The last of the men had descended the gangplanks and were disappearing back into the warehouses. Moving swiftly, Moondragon boarded the empty freighter and was surprised upon closer inspection to find it such a rusted dilapidated wreck, well past its prime. It seemed doubtful such a ship could ever safely set sail let alone be part of a company’s transport fleet.
The cargo hold was pitch black and, as she descended, the bilge water pooled on the floors rose up to her ankles. Moondragon could barely see her hands in front of her face but fortunately the Taggart girl had been thoughtful enough to supply them all with handheld flashlights. Clicking hers on, Moondragon began to search for the crates. Finding them did not take long.
For they were the only things in the ship’s hold. And they had not been secured or even strapped down, just hastily stacked one up against the other. Most peculiar. Sizing up the nearest, Moondragon ran her hand along the grain of the wood and realized she had no way to open it.
“This might help.”
She turned to find Bethany twirling a crowbar in her hand. Behind her Tigra was glaring distastefully at the floor, fighting to keep her tail above the waterline. So they had followed her.
“Next time you should probably wait for us, huh?”
Moondragon said nothing, quickly using the tool to pry open one of the cases. As the nails bent backwards, packing straw spilled out on the hold’s damp floor. She probed its depths with her foot, felt nothing, and frowned. Bethany began to search through it carefully by hand.
“This one’s empty. Maybe we should try another?”
Moondragon shook her head. “They’re all empty. You’ve walked us into a trap, girl.”
“A trap? What are you talking about?”
Tigra at least had the wits to take her warning seriously. Releasing her soaked and dripping tail, she flicked on her flashlight and directed it back towards the hold’s entrance. “I think maybe we should get out of here actually…”
Why Moondragon hadn’t sensed them, she didn’t know, too distracted by her thoughts perhaps, or maybe it was just this body’s inability to maintain telepathic awareness without direct concentration. Either way, once again she’d made a rash and foolish mistake. Twice in as many days. And this time she’d dragged others in with her. What happened next wasn‘t especially surprising.
“One chance,” boomed a voice from above deck. “You’ve got one chance and one chance only so listen well. Surrender now and present yourselves to me as prisoners and you will not be harmed on my word of honor.”
Bethany glanced from her to Tigra and back again with a look stuck somewhere between shocked disbelief and budding excitement. Moondragon ignored her.
“Refuse and we shall be forced to flood that hold with several thousand volts of electricity. Your choice but for all our sakes I hope you make the less messy one, for it is a bugger to clean afterwards, believe me. You’ve got until the count of ten.”
They each glanced from their submerged feet to their thoroughly drenched bodies and clothing. Their position did not look particularly strong, all in all. On the other hand, Moondragon considered, there was a better than fair chance the man was bluffing about the electricity. Perhaps if she…
Tigra, barefoot, every inch of her fur covered form soaked to the skin, caught her arm and growled.
“Don’t you even…!”
# # # # #
How could she have miscalculated?
Bethany Parker-Taggart ran the situation over again and again in her mind and couldn’t seem to discover any flaws. Compare her father’s records to the records of the other missing men, isolate any overlaps, investigate, something else, something else, find her father. Admittedly she didn’t watch a lot of CSI but the methodology seemed sound. In fact this all sorta proved she had been on to something.
Still, as the trio trooped their way out of the hold to find themselves surrounded by several dozen men all armed to the teeth, Bethany had to concede that something had gone wrong.
“Hands up where we can see them!”
They all complied, albeit reluctantly, raising their arms over their heads like rousted bank robbers in a black and white crime caper. Bethany felt a pang of disappointment with her partners. She had thought they might do something exciting, like leap into battle, instead of just give up. Sure the odds were against them by a factor of twenty to one. Still…something of a letdown.
At least their captors were interesting though -- a knot of rough-looking men dressed in a motley assortment of mismatched rags. T-shirts and galoshes. Doo-rags and pea coats. Lean muscular arms and bare chests covered in tattoos of mermaids and anchors juxtaposed with heads sporting aviator shades and baseball caps. Some men were brandishing harpoons and cutlasses, like a still shot taken from a Pirates of the Caribbean rehearsal, while others were cradling AK-47s and Mac-10s.
Best of all though was the ship. It floated not next to but above them and looked for all the world like an eighteenth century Spanish galleon, right down the gunwales and a lovingly crafted masthead in the shape of a buxom whore. Or maybe that was Queen Isabella. Bethany had never much cared for history. Science and engineering on the other hand…
Just how were they getting it to float, she wanted to know. Some kind of anti-gravity device? And that shimmering silvery material hanging from the main mast and catching the moonlight through the down pouring rain. Were those actual working solar sails? Bethany had a thousand questions.
It probably wasn’t the best time to ask though.
“Heavens above, what manner of captives have you brought me?” A man stepped out from the throng and doffed the tri-corner hat from his head, bowing low. He was dressed in a loosely fitted black ruffled shirt, thigh-high leather boots rolled down to the knees, and a wide belt with a large gold buckle. “A fairer faced assembly I have surely never seen. Captain Barracuda at your service.”
Moondragon scowled at the flashy introduction and approached him boldly. There was a not a hint of fear in her voice.
“Explain yourself. What reason do you have for threatening us?”
His eyes roamed over Moondragon’s face and his mouth lit up with a smile, suggesting he approved of what he saw there. Taking her hand in his own, Barracuda brushed it with his lips. “My good lady, I appreciate your bravery and your high pique both! I am sorry if we gave you a fright with that jibe about the electricity. We scarcely ever do such vicious things in truth. Oh, perhaps that once, along the Ivory Coast…ah, but those men were mere brutes! Not creatures of beauty like yourself.”
She jerked her hand back. “Then we are free to go, I take it.”
“Would that I might allow it, but, sadly, no, for a pirate’s life is hard and full of unsavory choices. I was paid to capture you and so capture you I have.”
Bethany could scarcely believe that. Someone had paid these men to apprehend her? Why? For the incident in the Atlas Enterprises lobby? For the suit she’d stolen from their labs? Neither made sense. This was not how Atlas handled their problems, particularly not ones involving her, their founder’s daughter. And how had anyone known they were coming here? She hadn’t even known it herself until last night.
“Who paid you?”
“Alas, a pirate’s life is also a private one…”
It was Bethany who’d asked the question but the man’s eyes never left Moondragon as he answered.
“Fine. What’s to be done with us then cur?”
If the slur bothered Barracuda, he did not show it. The captain merely grinned. “Nothing too arduous I’m sure. Clegg, tell us where exactly it is your whispery friends wanted these pretty packages delivered.”
A solid wall of a man stepped up, his dark coppery skin rippling with cords of muscles. He positively dwarfed the captain, looking half his age and twice as fit. A thin slit of mouth under a hooked nose formed the permanent sneer that was his brutish face. Bethany knew at once he meant them no good.
“There will be a ship waiting off the coast of Rio de Janeiro. We’re to hand them over to the crew in exchange for payment.”
Barracuda hooked his thumb on the loop of his belt. “And then?”
Clegg shrugged and glanced down at his feet with hard black eyes. “Then they’re to be taken to the Savage Lands aboard the Warwolf along with any others they’ve procured...”
Upon mention of the ship’s name, the captain had whirled on his fist mate and fixed him with a baleful look. “What? You did not tell me this! You are too secretive by far with these special contacts of yours.” While the women watched, curious at this unrehearsed exchange, he stroked his dark beard, brow furrowing into deep lines. “No, indeed, I like it not. Do you think me unfamiliar with what manner of creatures captain the Warwolf?”
“Didn’t think it much mattered.”
“And what business of it is yours to think, Clegg?” he snapped. “Tell your contacts I have changed my mind. They may keep their money. I had hoped to pass through the Caribes for nostalgia’s sake this next trip and so we shall find a secluded port there to drop them off instead.”
At the insult Clegg’s face had twitched with barely constrained anger. At the last it grew livid. “I already made the deal, captain, and it’s for good pay! These are not people you break contract with!”
Barracuda smirked. “A pirate breaks whatever he pleases. We are the scum of the earth, yes, but this ship still runs according to my rules, and I will not soil myself or my crew with such low business.”
Bethany was not certain what had just happened but it seemed to have gone in their favor. The funny old man in pirate regalia appeared to have no interest in delivering them up. This ought to be grounds for celebration in her opinion but a glance in the direction of Moondragon and Tigra informed her that neither were feeling half so relieved.
Perhaps they already suspected what was coming next.
“Afraid you might see it that way. You see, captain, some of us have ambitions beyond dressing in blousy shirts and playing Blackbeard all our lives.”
Barracuda‘s hand dropped to the hilt of his sword. “And that would be you Clegg with the outsized ambitions, I take it?”
“That it would. And the others, well, they’re here to make money and thems what pays best gets their services. That’d also be me starting now.” The first mate folded his arms across his broad bare chest as the other men closed ranks behind him. What few remained on Barracuda’s side of the ship were sparse indeed and mostly all older men like himself. “If you like you may retire to your cabin while we broker the deal.”
“This is mutiny! No greater treachery be known.”
His protest was met with a gap toothed grin.
“Oh, we may yet surprise you on that score, old man.” Clegg tore the gun from the waistband of his pants and fired it into the air, motioning to the others. “Take them!”
# # # # #
If there was one thing Tigra never regretted about being part cat it was the reflexes. The shedding could be a pain, the tail a source of constant difficulty, and her keen sense of smell a genuine torment, but the reflexes? No downside. She couldn’t even remember the last time she’d lost her balance or dropped something by accident. Neither could she recall the last time anyone had outmaneuvered her.
As Tigra dodged through the holes in the pirates’ ranks, men scrambled in her wake. Their firm muscled arms -- thrice the circumference of her own -- lunged outwards as she slunk breezily between them, seizing handfuls of air while her claws raked ragged lines across their foreheads, the blood seeping down to obscure their vision. They tripped, they stumbled, they fell in heaps, injuring themselves with their own pointy weapons. One attacker was bent over double, retching from a swift kick to the abdomen, and Tigra propelled herself off his back and onto a nearby cargo container.
A moment’s respite. She needed to catch her breath and see how the others were fairing. Not well by the looks of it.
Bethany was fiddling with the controls of her Pym suit. She jabbed at the button on her palm and a sharp snap was heard, followed by a hissing sound, as a spray of liquid spurted from a newly sprung leak in her gloves. The chemical splattered across an approaching thug and he screeched in horror, hands instantly bloating into freakish mitts. A stroke of luck but one that went unnoticed by Bethany. She continued to struggle, stubbornly trying to make her broken suit work, until another attacker left her sprawling on the deck from a swift backhand.
Elsewhere, the gallant Captain Barracuda was waging a running battle with his own first mate. He was surprisingly fast for a normal human, leaping and jabbing at the larger man with his needle-like sword, but the few nicks he landed seemed to do him little good. Clegg was using one of the harpoons to deflect the worst of them, waiting patiently until his opponent grew tired.
Finally the captain dropped to one knee, winded, as Clegg rammed the blunt end of his weapon into his gut. What happened next, Tigra couldn’t stick around to find out. She was once again on the move. Several of the better armed pirates had started firing off rounds in her direction. She leapt from her spot atop the container and unto the observation walkway, bullets pinging off the metal stairwells.
Below her Moondragon appeared to be making better progress. She was taking on a succession of men twice her size, leaving them howling from well-placed pressure point blows, all while inching ever closer to the ship’s railing. Maybe she was going to do it, Tigra thought hopefully, maybe at least one of them was going to escape and go for h--
A lucky cast of a hemp fishing net and Moondragon went down in a tangle. The pirates wasted no time in taking advantage, cudgels singing as they thrashed their incapacitated opponent. Tigra sized up the nearest brute and prepared to leap back into the fray herself, when she suddenly took notice of her own precarious position.
Twenty, maybe thirty men, stood on the deck below, circling her perch. They were armed with everything from assault rifles to matchlock pistols to submachine guns. Even a cat couldn’t outrace that many bullets.
“Don’t kill her, curse it all!” Clegg had joined their numbers, bellowing orders. “My client wants them alive!”
So she wasn’t going to be shot to pieces after all. Perhaps it was stalemate then. No way they were going to catch her by hand, that was for sure. Tigra could keep this up all night. Maybe she could reason with them, she reflected. Her true superpower after all being her persuasive personality and…
“Fetch me the tranquilizer guns!”
Sigh.
# # # # #
Meanwhile…
Tammy Dixon awoke in the jungle. She wasn’t supposed to be there.
The last thing she remembered was going to bed with sore feet. She’d spent the whole day on them in uncomfortable heels, attending first a work-related sexual harassment seminar and then an equally mandatory after-party. Too much to drink, too little to eat, and Troy Bunson from management making passes at her all night long with his garlic-scented breath. So much for the seminar.
Rubbing her wrists -- they had white outlines around them as if they’d been recently bound -- Tammy sat up and looked around. She was in a small clearing on the bank of a narrow burbling stream. Bright morning sunlight poured down through the leafy canopy above, highlighting several exotic flower bushes, with vibrant bulbs that looked like hibiscus but were not.
She had never been here before. It looked like nothing she’d ever seen back in Kansas except maybe on TV or in a National Geographic magazine. How she found herself here now, still dressed in the same gym shorts and oversized T-shirt she’d fallen asleep in, was a mystery. More than a mystery, it was terrifying.
And she was not alone.
“Where on earth…?”
A heavyset man in blue jockey shorts and dirty sweat socks stood gaping ten feet away with an expression of total confusion. The sight was familiar to Tammy. Not just because she was feeling the same emotion but literally familiar. Tammy felt like she knew him but couldn’t place how.
Wakey wakey big mistakey!
The voice exploded into her eardrums and Tammy fell backwards on her rear. Groping at her ears, she discovered something lodged in them, small ear-buds, seemingly clamped into place through her earlobes. The other man was going through the same puzzled reaction, although whether he heard the same voice she couldn’t know.
Great news, True Believers! You Tammy Dixon of Monroe, Kansas are a contestant on this evening’s live webcast of the Mojo Games!
She winced at the volume, her eyes darting rapidly around the clearing. “Hello? Who’s talking?”
Only your host, a five time inter-dimensional tyrant and trash art connoisseur recognized by outstanding perverts and voyeurs the multiverse over. But enough about me! Let’s hear a little about our contestants. Tammy here is a wife and mother of three who works in life insurance. Lets just hope she had the foresight to take out a policy or two on herself!
The man across from her was yelling in a fury, slapping at the sides of his head, but Tammy couldn’t hear him over the shrill voice screaming in her own ears. Recognition dawned suddenly. Herb Fremont. He had been head quarterback at their old high school. She hadn’t seen him in several years and he’d put on a tremendous amount of weight and lost most of his hair. As to why they should be here together she had no idea.
Tammy is brought to us tonight by a generous contribution from elephant666, a longtime fan of the show, who like his namesake apparently never forgets. He asks me to read, ahem, this little personal message: Remember me, Tammy? Early English Literature? Two seats back? You had me write your term paper and then never called me again?
She shook her head in disbelief. This had to be a nightmare. What was he even talking about? Elephant what?
Tch. Some people can really hold a grudge! But then it’s vengeance makes the world go round. Or at least our number of subscribers go up…
“I have no idea what you’re talking about!”
But our client does! Now pay close attention. Here are the rules… You have fifteen minutes in which not to die. Pretty simple, eh?
Not to die? What did he mean by that?
All moves are legal, no holds bar. Rules are subject to change at any time. Void where prohibited. The game starts…now!
The voice went silent at last and fear settled in its place. She read the very same emotion on Herb’s bewildered face. They had been kidnapped. They had been brought here by some one or thing and now…something was supposed to happen. To them. And clearly it wasn’t good.
Tammy staggered to her feet. “We have to run,” she said to Herb and he nodded instinctively. Maybe if they worked together they could figure this out, find a way to make it through whatever this madness was all about. The two of them left the clearing with her in the lead, racing blindly into the brush, the leaves crunching under her bare feet as limbs whipped sharply across her face and shoulders.
Two minutes passed. Five minutes. By eight they were both winded and sweating profusely. Herb stopped to catch his breath and Tammy paused alongside him. They shouldn’t split up, she knew, they had to try to help each other survive.
“Oh god, oh god, oh god,” he moaned, clutching his sides. “What do we do?”
They both froze as noise erupted from the jungle behind them. Something was moving towards them at a rapid pace. Herb stood up, his face a mask of terror as he met her eyes.
Then he shoved her. Hard.
Tammy went toppling backwards over a rotted log and fell hard on her left elbow. A sharp pain immediately shot up her arm as something gave way upon impact, and she screamed. Without so much as a glance backwards, Herb started running again, leaving her behind to face whatever was coming alone.
He only made about twelve steps more before there came a whistling through the trees.
Herb halted mid-stride and slowly spun in place. Something long and wooden was protruding through his back and out his stomach. The whistling sound repeated itself. A second spear pinned him directly to a tree. His body continued to squirm and kick a moment longer before going limp.
From the bushes emerged a monstrous figure almost twice as tall as a normal man. In his tree trunk-sized arms he was carrying two more spears while a second pair protruding from just under his ribcage proceeded to wipe their hands casually on the seat of his soiled breeches.
Tammy was now almost delirious with fright. The monster was still focused on Herb though. He had yet to look her away. She scrambled back from the log, hoping to find someplace to hide, turning instead to discover another horror leering down at her from a nearby tree branch.
This one was pale green in color with large luminous purple eyes. It was holding a wicked looking shard of metal in one of its webbed hands as it watched her feebly try to stand. Something burbled in the back of its throat. A laugh perhaps or maybe just the way it breathed.
“Please,” Tammy whispered. “Please, don’t hurt me…”
It rotated the knife and cocked its head curiously.
Lastly it smiled.
# # # # #
NEXT ISSUE: MODOK on the rampage!!! Blood sport in the air!! What terrible fate awaits our captured heroines in the Savage Lands?!? The Mojo Games begin next month!
It would have to be raining.
Bethany-Parker Taggart stood perched on the corner of the warehouse’s rooftop, shielding her eyes from the storm as she gazed at the docks below. The wind was whipping her perpetually unkempt hair into a halo around her head. She looked…
Well, she looked exactly like the same annoying prat who’d buffaloed Moondragon and her both into joining a half-backed missing persons investigation just a few hours ago. At least in Tigra’s opinion. She was still admittedly a little sour on how that had gone down.
“This is hardcore superhero stuff right here, isn’t it?” Bethany declared, smiling happily to herself, despite the abysmal weather. “I feel all Daredevil-y. I wish there was a gargoyle or something to kneel on, you know?”
Had she ever been that enthusiastic? Tigra couldn’t remember. Right now all she felt was cold and vaguely ridiculous. The rain was making her fur mat up and later when it dried she was going to look an absolute fright. And probably catch pneumonia.
“Tell us again why we’re here, Bethany…”
The girl coolly obliged, not that it really made all that much sense even then. Bethany had spent the previous night cross-referencing all the files she’d nabbed from her father’s work computer with those she’d gathered from several other missing scientists and inventers during the preceding months. A single name had popped up repeatedly in their ledgers, that being a small private shipping firm known as the Sphyraena Company. That was here. What they were looking for exactly, Tigra hadn’t the foggiest. Containers full of brainiacs packed together like sardines maybe.
“Your father runs Atlas Enterprises, right? So what’s so fishy about him having transactions with a shipping company?”
Bethany rolled her eyes as if the question was stupid on its face. As if Tigra wasn’t the former Avenger and her the inexperienced rich girl playing vigilante.
“Because for one, Atlas’s commercial products all ship directly from the factories that produce them and they only ever use APL lines. Also, my father never handled those sorts of things. He founded the corporation, yes, and even invented much of their original product line but he did not handle day-to-day business operations. AE kept him around mostly to meet with high profile clients and shoot ad campaigns. There’s no reason he’d be meeting directly with a fourth rate operation like Sphyraena. Plus how do you explain its connection with the other missing scientists, hmmm?”
Tigra couldn’t of course which irritated her all the more. She’d never handled that sort of thing while on the Avengers. The planning and researching was always left to others. Not that she couldn’t have done it, she supposed, it’s just no one ever asked. Tigra had been the rookie then, struggling to control her ever tetchy powers, and also find a way to mesh with her world famous teammates, which in itself had resulted in several embarrassing decisions, particularly relationship-wise.
No wonder she had a reputation as a crap Avenger, Tigra reflected, hugging her arms miserably against her wet body as she winced into the wind. Sometimes it felt like she never did anything right. So why stand here and play skeptic and pretend like she was any kind of expert on anything?
“Okay. Whatever. I guess I can’t explain it. I’m still not sure where to start though…”
Bethany motioned towards one of the wharfs where a freighter currently rested at dock. “Is something moving over there?”
Here at least was something she did well. Tigra’s eyes, like the rest of her physique, were part feline in their genetic makeup. They could adjust better to low light situations and see further than any human observer could in similar conditions. And her new employer was right. There was movement. Several men in dark rain slickers were moving up and down the gangplanks, loading crates onboard.
“Seems awfully late at night for that sort of work…”
“Yeah, we should probably check it out when they’re gone. Find out what it is they’re loading. Then maybe ransack the manager’s office and go over his records, or…” Bethany paused, wiping the rain from her eyes with the back of her glove. “Hey, do you see Moondragon anywhere?”
Tigra stopped studying the dock workers and glanced over her shoulder. She’d been right behind her, scowling as per usual, refusing to partake in the conversation. And now…
“Oh, sneezes…”
# # # # #
While others talked, Moondragon acted. Such was her way. She had long ago come to the realization that the words and plans of others were seldom worth the time it took to hear them. Her own conclusions were not only quicker to form but inevitably superior.
Certainly that was true given the caliber of her current teammates.
So it was that Moondragon found herself crouched among the steel cargo containers cluttering the dock. She had felt the workers presence long before the others noticed them. They were anxious, an emotion that was the among the first a fledgling telepath learned to detect. Whatever they were loading at this late hour did not sit easy with them. That was enough to convince her to investigate.
Unfortunately, Moondragon could do little more than watch as the last of them finished. She did not want to risk a confrontation needlessly. She had already made that mistake at the Atlas building. And attempting to forcibly glean information from their minds would almost certainly have alerted them to her presence.
That limitation of course was owing to the worthless body she found herself trapped in. Actions that would have been second nature to her normally were now complicated, especially those involving her telepathy. For the brain too is a kind of muscle and like all muscles must be honed by practice to perform its best. Since her host had not been a telepath, her faculties were not nearly as developed as those in Moondragon’s own body. In time perhaps they would improve but for now she was forced to accept them for what they were.
And it was driving her more than a little crazy.
It was also driving her to find one Randal Taggart in hopes of discovering how she’d arrived at this state. Bethany believed her father had been kidnapped. Moondragon was less certain. His face continued to flit in and out of her patchy memories and the emotion she felt upon conjuring it was always outrage. If he was at fault for what happened to her then how could he be a victim? Whoever had done this to her must be immensely clever or immensely powerful. At her full strength even the Eternals themselves respected her abilities.
Moondragon had not shared this with her partners though. She knew too little and they were not ones to confide in anyways. Her true hope was that wherever she found this Randal, she might also find herself. Even the finest telepath in the universe -- her in other words -- could not survive as mere psionic projection or psychic residue. That she lived meant her mind must still be connected to her body, to her brain, even if she couldn’t currently access it. That meant there was still a chance to return to normal. At least if she could find it.
But first she had to make sense of things. And that meant acting decisively.
The last of the men had descended the gangplanks and were disappearing back into the warehouses. Moving swiftly, Moondragon boarded the empty freighter and was surprised upon closer inspection to find it such a rusted dilapidated wreck, well past its prime. It seemed doubtful such a ship could ever safely set sail let alone be part of a company’s transport fleet.
The cargo hold was pitch black and, as she descended, the bilge water pooled on the floors rose up to her ankles. Moondragon could barely see her hands in front of her face but fortunately the Taggart girl had been thoughtful enough to supply them all with handheld flashlights. Clicking hers on, Moondragon began to search for the crates. Finding them did not take long.
For they were the only things in the ship’s hold. And they had not been secured or even strapped down, just hastily stacked one up against the other. Most peculiar. Sizing up the nearest, Moondragon ran her hand along the grain of the wood and realized she had no way to open it.
“This might help.”
She turned to find Bethany twirling a crowbar in her hand. Behind her Tigra was glaring distastefully at the floor, fighting to keep her tail above the waterline. So they had followed her.
“Next time you should probably wait for us, huh?”
Moondragon said nothing, quickly using the tool to pry open one of the cases. As the nails bent backwards, packing straw spilled out on the hold’s damp floor. She probed its depths with her foot, felt nothing, and frowned. Bethany began to search through it carefully by hand.
“This one’s empty. Maybe we should try another?”
Moondragon shook her head. “They’re all empty. You’ve walked us into a trap, girl.”
“A trap? What are you talking about?”
Tigra at least had the wits to take her warning seriously. Releasing her soaked and dripping tail, she flicked on her flashlight and directed it back towards the hold’s entrance. “I think maybe we should get out of here actually…”
Why Moondragon hadn’t sensed them, she didn’t know, too distracted by her thoughts perhaps, or maybe it was just this body’s inability to maintain telepathic awareness without direct concentration. Either way, once again she’d made a rash and foolish mistake. Twice in as many days. And this time she’d dragged others in with her. What happened next wasn‘t especially surprising.
“One chance,” boomed a voice from above deck. “You’ve got one chance and one chance only so listen well. Surrender now and present yourselves to me as prisoners and you will not be harmed on my word of honor.”
Bethany glanced from her to Tigra and back again with a look stuck somewhere between shocked disbelief and budding excitement. Moondragon ignored her.
“Refuse and we shall be forced to flood that hold with several thousand volts of electricity. Your choice but for all our sakes I hope you make the less messy one, for it is a bugger to clean afterwards, believe me. You’ve got until the count of ten.”
They each glanced from their submerged feet to their thoroughly drenched bodies and clothing. Their position did not look particularly strong, all in all. On the other hand, Moondragon considered, there was a better than fair chance the man was bluffing about the electricity. Perhaps if she…
Tigra, barefoot, every inch of her fur covered form soaked to the skin, caught her arm and growled.
“Don’t you even…!”
# # # # #
How could she have miscalculated?
Bethany Parker-Taggart ran the situation over again and again in her mind and couldn’t seem to discover any flaws. Compare her father’s records to the records of the other missing men, isolate any overlaps, investigate, something else, something else, find her father. Admittedly she didn’t watch a lot of CSI but the methodology seemed sound. In fact this all sorta proved she had been on to something.
Still, as the trio trooped their way out of the hold to find themselves surrounded by several dozen men all armed to the teeth, Bethany had to concede that something had gone wrong.
“Hands up where we can see them!”
They all complied, albeit reluctantly, raising their arms over their heads like rousted bank robbers in a black and white crime caper. Bethany felt a pang of disappointment with her partners. She had thought they might do something exciting, like leap into battle, instead of just give up. Sure the odds were against them by a factor of twenty to one. Still…something of a letdown.
At least their captors were interesting though -- a knot of rough-looking men dressed in a motley assortment of mismatched rags. T-shirts and galoshes. Doo-rags and pea coats. Lean muscular arms and bare chests covered in tattoos of mermaids and anchors juxtaposed with heads sporting aviator shades and baseball caps. Some men were brandishing harpoons and cutlasses, like a still shot taken from a Pirates of the Caribbean rehearsal, while others were cradling AK-47s and Mac-10s.
Best of all though was the ship. It floated not next to but above them and looked for all the world like an eighteenth century Spanish galleon, right down the gunwales and a lovingly crafted masthead in the shape of a buxom whore. Or maybe that was Queen Isabella. Bethany had never much cared for history. Science and engineering on the other hand…
Just how were they getting it to float, she wanted to know. Some kind of anti-gravity device? And that shimmering silvery material hanging from the main mast and catching the moonlight through the down pouring rain. Were those actual working solar sails? Bethany had a thousand questions.
It probably wasn’t the best time to ask though.
“Heavens above, what manner of captives have you brought me?” A man stepped out from the throng and doffed the tri-corner hat from his head, bowing low. He was dressed in a loosely fitted black ruffled shirt, thigh-high leather boots rolled down to the knees, and a wide belt with a large gold buckle. “A fairer faced assembly I have surely never seen. Captain Barracuda at your service.”
Moondragon scowled at the flashy introduction and approached him boldly. There was a not a hint of fear in her voice.
“Explain yourself. What reason do you have for threatening us?”
His eyes roamed over Moondragon’s face and his mouth lit up with a smile, suggesting he approved of what he saw there. Taking her hand in his own, Barracuda brushed it with his lips. “My good lady, I appreciate your bravery and your high pique both! I am sorry if we gave you a fright with that jibe about the electricity. We scarcely ever do such vicious things in truth. Oh, perhaps that once, along the Ivory Coast…ah, but those men were mere brutes! Not creatures of beauty like yourself.”
She jerked her hand back. “Then we are free to go, I take it.”
“Would that I might allow it, but, sadly, no, for a pirate’s life is hard and full of unsavory choices. I was paid to capture you and so capture you I have.”
Bethany could scarcely believe that. Someone had paid these men to apprehend her? Why? For the incident in the Atlas Enterprises lobby? For the suit she’d stolen from their labs? Neither made sense. This was not how Atlas handled their problems, particularly not ones involving her, their founder’s daughter. And how had anyone known they were coming here? She hadn’t even known it herself until last night.
“Who paid you?”
“Alas, a pirate’s life is also a private one…”
It was Bethany who’d asked the question but the man’s eyes never left Moondragon as he answered.
“Fine. What’s to be done with us then cur?”
If the slur bothered Barracuda, he did not show it. The captain merely grinned. “Nothing too arduous I’m sure. Clegg, tell us where exactly it is your whispery friends wanted these pretty packages delivered.”
A solid wall of a man stepped up, his dark coppery skin rippling with cords of muscles. He positively dwarfed the captain, looking half his age and twice as fit. A thin slit of mouth under a hooked nose formed the permanent sneer that was his brutish face. Bethany knew at once he meant them no good.
“There will be a ship waiting off the coast of Rio de Janeiro. We’re to hand them over to the crew in exchange for payment.”
Barracuda hooked his thumb on the loop of his belt. “And then?”
Clegg shrugged and glanced down at his feet with hard black eyes. “Then they’re to be taken to the Savage Lands aboard the Warwolf along with any others they’ve procured...”
Upon mention of the ship’s name, the captain had whirled on his fist mate and fixed him with a baleful look. “What? You did not tell me this! You are too secretive by far with these special contacts of yours.” While the women watched, curious at this unrehearsed exchange, he stroked his dark beard, brow furrowing into deep lines. “No, indeed, I like it not. Do you think me unfamiliar with what manner of creatures captain the Warwolf?”
“Didn’t think it much mattered.”
“And what business of it is yours to think, Clegg?” he snapped. “Tell your contacts I have changed my mind. They may keep their money. I had hoped to pass through the Caribes for nostalgia’s sake this next trip and so we shall find a secluded port there to drop them off instead.”
At the insult Clegg’s face had twitched with barely constrained anger. At the last it grew livid. “I already made the deal, captain, and it’s for good pay! These are not people you break contract with!”
Barracuda smirked. “A pirate breaks whatever he pleases. We are the scum of the earth, yes, but this ship still runs according to my rules, and I will not soil myself or my crew with such low business.”
Bethany was not certain what had just happened but it seemed to have gone in their favor. The funny old man in pirate regalia appeared to have no interest in delivering them up. This ought to be grounds for celebration in her opinion but a glance in the direction of Moondragon and Tigra informed her that neither were feeling half so relieved.
Perhaps they already suspected what was coming next.
“Afraid you might see it that way. You see, captain, some of us have ambitions beyond dressing in blousy shirts and playing Blackbeard all our lives.”
Barracuda‘s hand dropped to the hilt of his sword. “And that would be you Clegg with the outsized ambitions, I take it?”
“That it would. And the others, well, they’re here to make money and thems what pays best gets their services. That’d also be me starting now.” The first mate folded his arms across his broad bare chest as the other men closed ranks behind him. What few remained on Barracuda’s side of the ship were sparse indeed and mostly all older men like himself. “If you like you may retire to your cabin while we broker the deal.”
“This is mutiny! No greater treachery be known.”
His protest was met with a gap toothed grin.
“Oh, we may yet surprise you on that score, old man.” Clegg tore the gun from the waistband of his pants and fired it into the air, motioning to the others. “Take them!”
# # # # #
If there was one thing Tigra never regretted about being part cat it was the reflexes. The shedding could be a pain, the tail a source of constant difficulty, and her keen sense of smell a genuine torment, but the reflexes? No downside. She couldn’t even remember the last time she’d lost her balance or dropped something by accident. Neither could she recall the last time anyone had outmaneuvered her.
As Tigra dodged through the holes in the pirates’ ranks, men scrambled in her wake. Their firm muscled arms -- thrice the circumference of her own -- lunged outwards as she slunk breezily between them, seizing handfuls of air while her claws raked ragged lines across their foreheads, the blood seeping down to obscure their vision. They tripped, they stumbled, they fell in heaps, injuring themselves with their own pointy weapons. One attacker was bent over double, retching from a swift kick to the abdomen, and Tigra propelled herself off his back and onto a nearby cargo container.
A moment’s respite. She needed to catch her breath and see how the others were fairing. Not well by the looks of it.
Bethany was fiddling with the controls of her Pym suit. She jabbed at the button on her palm and a sharp snap was heard, followed by a hissing sound, as a spray of liquid spurted from a newly sprung leak in her gloves. The chemical splattered across an approaching thug and he screeched in horror, hands instantly bloating into freakish mitts. A stroke of luck but one that went unnoticed by Bethany. She continued to struggle, stubbornly trying to make her broken suit work, until another attacker left her sprawling on the deck from a swift backhand.
Elsewhere, the gallant Captain Barracuda was waging a running battle with his own first mate. He was surprisingly fast for a normal human, leaping and jabbing at the larger man with his needle-like sword, but the few nicks he landed seemed to do him little good. Clegg was using one of the harpoons to deflect the worst of them, waiting patiently until his opponent grew tired.
Finally the captain dropped to one knee, winded, as Clegg rammed the blunt end of his weapon into his gut. What happened next, Tigra couldn’t stick around to find out. She was once again on the move. Several of the better armed pirates had started firing off rounds in her direction. She leapt from her spot atop the container and unto the observation walkway, bullets pinging off the metal stairwells.
Below her Moondragon appeared to be making better progress. She was taking on a succession of men twice her size, leaving them howling from well-placed pressure point blows, all while inching ever closer to the ship’s railing. Maybe she was going to do it, Tigra thought hopefully, maybe at least one of them was going to escape and go for h--
A lucky cast of a hemp fishing net and Moondragon went down in a tangle. The pirates wasted no time in taking advantage, cudgels singing as they thrashed their incapacitated opponent. Tigra sized up the nearest brute and prepared to leap back into the fray herself, when she suddenly took notice of her own precarious position.
Twenty, maybe thirty men, stood on the deck below, circling her perch. They were armed with everything from assault rifles to matchlock pistols to submachine guns. Even a cat couldn’t outrace that many bullets.
“Don’t kill her, curse it all!” Clegg had joined their numbers, bellowing orders. “My client wants them alive!”
So she wasn’t going to be shot to pieces after all. Perhaps it was stalemate then. No way they were going to catch her by hand, that was for sure. Tigra could keep this up all night. Maybe she could reason with them, she reflected. Her true superpower after all being her persuasive personality and…
“Fetch me the tranquilizer guns!”
Sigh.
# # # # #
Meanwhile…
Tammy Dixon awoke in the jungle. She wasn’t supposed to be there.
The last thing she remembered was going to bed with sore feet. She’d spent the whole day on them in uncomfortable heels, attending first a work-related sexual harassment seminar and then an equally mandatory after-party. Too much to drink, too little to eat, and Troy Bunson from management making passes at her all night long with his garlic-scented breath. So much for the seminar.
Rubbing her wrists -- they had white outlines around them as if they’d been recently bound -- Tammy sat up and looked around. She was in a small clearing on the bank of a narrow burbling stream. Bright morning sunlight poured down through the leafy canopy above, highlighting several exotic flower bushes, with vibrant bulbs that looked like hibiscus but were not.
She had never been here before. It looked like nothing she’d ever seen back in Kansas except maybe on TV or in a National Geographic magazine. How she found herself here now, still dressed in the same gym shorts and oversized T-shirt she’d fallen asleep in, was a mystery. More than a mystery, it was terrifying.
And she was not alone.
“Where on earth…?”
A heavyset man in blue jockey shorts and dirty sweat socks stood gaping ten feet away with an expression of total confusion. The sight was familiar to Tammy. Not just because she was feeling the same emotion but literally familiar. Tammy felt like she knew him but couldn’t place how.
Wakey wakey big mistakey!
The voice exploded into her eardrums and Tammy fell backwards on her rear. Groping at her ears, she discovered something lodged in them, small ear-buds, seemingly clamped into place through her earlobes. The other man was going through the same puzzled reaction, although whether he heard the same voice she couldn’t know.
Great news, True Believers! You Tammy Dixon of Monroe, Kansas are a contestant on this evening’s live webcast of the Mojo Games!
She winced at the volume, her eyes darting rapidly around the clearing. “Hello? Who’s talking?”
Only your host, a five time inter-dimensional tyrant and trash art connoisseur recognized by outstanding perverts and voyeurs the multiverse over. But enough about me! Let’s hear a little about our contestants. Tammy here is a wife and mother of three who works in life insurance. Lets just hope she had the foresight to take out a policy or two on herself!
The man across from her was yelling in a fury, slapping at the sides of his head, but Tammy couldn’t hear him over the shrill voice screaming in her own ears. Recognition dawned suddenly. Herb Fremont. He had been head quarterback at their old high school. She hadn’t seen him in several years and he’d put on a tremendous amount of weight and lost most of his hair. As to why they should be here together she had no idea.
Tammy is brought to us tonight by a generous contribution from elephant666, a longtime fan of the show, who like his namesake apparently never forgets. He asks me to read, ahem, this little personal message: Remember me, Tammy? Early English Literature? Two seats back? You had me write your term paper and then never called me again?
She shook her head in disbelief. This had to be a nightmare. What was he even talking about? Elephant what?
Tch. Some people can really hold a grudge! But then it’s vengeance makes the world go round. Or at least our number of subscribers go up…
“I have no idea what you’re talking about!”
But our client does! Now pay close attention. Here are the rules… You have fifteen minutes in which not to die. Pretty simple, eh?
Not to die? What did he mean by that?
All moves are legal, no holds bar. Rules are subject to change at any time. Void where prohibited. The game starts…now!
The voice went silent at last and fear settled in its place. She read the very same emotion on Herb’s bewildered face. They had been kidnapped. They had been brought here by some one or thing and now…something was supposed to happen. To them. And clearly it wasn’t good.
Tammy staggered to her feet. “We have to run,” she said to Herb and he nodded instinctively. Maybe if they worked together they could figure this out, find a way to make it through whatever this madness was all about. The two of them left the clearing with her in the lead, racing blindly into the brush, the leaves crunching under her bare feet as limbs whipped sharply across her face and shoulders.
Two minutes passed. Five minutes. By eight they were both winded and sweating profusely. Herb stopped to catch his breath and Tammy paused alongside him. They shouldn’t split up, she knew, they had to try to help each other survive.
“Oh god, oh god, oh god,” he moaned, clutching his sides. “What do we do?”
They both froze as noise erupted from the jungle behind them. Something was moving towards them at a rapid pace. Herb stood up, his face a mask of terror as he met her eyes.
Then he shoved her. Hard.
Tammy went toppling backwards over a rotted log and fell hard on her left elbow. A sharp pain immediately shot up her arm as something gave way upon impact, and she screamed. Without so much as a glance backwards, Herb started running again, leaving her behind to face whatever was coming alone.
He only made about twelve steps more before there came a whistling through the trees.
Herb halted mid-stride and slowly spun in place. Something long and wooden was protruding through his back and out his stomach. The whistling sound repeated itself. A second spear pinned him directly to a tree. His body continued to squirm and kick a moment longer before going limp.
From the bushes emerged a monstrous figure almost twice as tall as a normal man. In his tree trunk-sized arms he was carrying two more spears while a second pair protruding from just under his ribcage proceeded to wipe their hands casually on the seat of his soiled breeches.
Tammy was now almost delirious with fright. The monster was still focused on Herb though. He had yet to look her away. She scrambled back from the log, hoping to find someplace to hide, turning instead to discover another horror leering down at her from a nearby tree branch.
This one was pale green in color with large luminous purple eyes. It was holding a wicked looking shard of metal in one of its webbed hands as it watched her feebly try to stand. Something burbled in the back of its throat. A laugh perhaps or maybe just the way it breathed.
“Please,” Tammy whispered. “Please, don’t hurt me…”
It rotated the knife and cocked its head curiously.
Lastly it smiled.
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NEXT ISSUE: MODOK on the rampage!!! Blood sport in the air!! What terrible fate awaits our captured heroines in the Savage Lands?!? The Mojo Games begin next month!