It was with a growing concern that Baron Helmut Zemo watched the security monitors going off one by one. Whoever had infiltrated his building was well-skilled, there had only been one brief glimpse of someone in black. He was certain it wasn’t Scourge - Techno was able to mask himself from electronic detection. This therefore confirmed Mathemanic’s assertion that others had come to attack him.
“Who precisely is it that comes for me?” asked Zemo in his guise as Justin Hammer. The holographic disguise was moot, these five men clearly knew the truth, but Zemo would concede nothing.
“Individuals who were not convinced by your apparent death,” Mathemanic answered. “Naturally, they suspect your hand in Hammer’s activities, though perhaps not the full truth. It is a long list, and I cannot predict who would actually act on it.”
“Why now?”
“You kicked out Blizzard. They were just waiting for somebody to leave and be recruited.” Mentallo turned to Mathemanic with a smirk. “Yes, that just happened.”
“Read my mind again you will die of old age still reciting pi.”
“Enough explanations.” Goldbug drew out his gold gun. “We’ve outlined our proposal, ‘Hammer.’ Do you accept or not?”
One dark monitor suddenly came to life. The image was the medical area, apparently with nothing amiss, Boomerang still lying in a coma. Except Zemo knew about Overrider’s visits, and saw the adjacent cameras were still active. So Overrider was dead, lying there in medical, his killer Scourge manipulating the image.
“I really have no choice in the matter, so I accept. In exchange for safety from any apparent threat I may pose, you gentlemen simply have to defend me from this attack. And assure me that you’re no threat yourselves, of course.”
“All figured out,” Mesmero said.
Mysterio chuckled. “It’s only a matter of avoiding the enemy as they fight amongst themselves. When enough are dead, we’ll strike.”
“They’ll be dead at Scourge’s hand.” Zemo nodded at Quantum. “Waking him up is the best chance we have.”
“Not a chance,” said Mentallo. “With him active you can welsh and kill us. No, he’s not waking up until we’ll far out the door. And don’t worry about my old pal Fixer, Mathemanic built in a back-door.”
In response to the silence, Mentallo turned to look at the very still Mathemanic. “You did build a back-door, right?”
“Hmm? Oh.” Mathemanic broke from his reverie and answered. “Yes, of course. But I’m most worried about Scarecrow.”
“Who precisely is it that comes for me?” asked Zemo in his guise as Justin Hammer. The holographic disguise was moot, these five men clearly knew the truth, but Zemo would concede nothing.
“Individuals who were not convinced by your apparent death,” Mathemanic answered. “Naturally, they suspect your hand in Hammer’s activities, though perhaps not the full truth. It is a long list, and I cannot predict who would actually act on it.”
“Why now?”
“You kicked out Blizzard. They were just waiting for somebody to leave and be recruited.” Mentallo turned to Mathemanic with a smirk. “Yes, that just happened.”
“Read my mind again you will die of old age still reciting pi.”
“Enough explanations.” Goldbug drew out his gold gun. “We’ve outlined our proposal, ‘Hammer.’ Do you accept or not?”
One dark monitor suddenly came to life. The image was the medical area, apparently with nothing amiss, Boomerang still lying in a coma. Except Zemo knew about Overrider’s visits, and saw the adjacent cameras were still active. So Overrider was dead, lying there in medical, his killer Scourge manipulating the image.
“I really have no choice in the matter, so I accept. In exchange for safety from any apparent threat I may pose, you gentlemen simply have to defend me from this attack. And assure me that you’re no threat yourselves, of course.”
“All figured out,” Mesmero said.
Mysterio chuckled. “It’s only a matter of avoiding the enemy as they fight amongst themselves. When enough are dead, we’ll strike.”
“They’ll be dead at Scourge’s hand.” Zemo nodded at Quantum. “Waking him up is the best chance we have.”
“Not a chance,” said Mentallo. “With him active you can welsh and kill us. No, he’s not waking up until we’ll far out the door. And don’t worry about my old pal Fixer, Mathemanic built in a back-door.”
In response to the silence, Mentallo turned to look at the very still Mathemanic. “You did build a back-door, right?”
“Hmm? Oh.” Mathemanic broke from his reverie and answered. “Yes, of course. But I’m most worried about Scarecrow.”
Back to GatefoldIssue #32 by Chris Munn (plot) & Steve Crosby (script)
To Few Men’s Ruin |
Adrenaline was a hell of a drug. It shocked Boomerang into action, jumping from his bed. He felt a sharp pain near his groin and was terrified he’d been shot. But instead of blood he saw urine pooling on the floor. Boomerang had inadvertently wrenched free his catheter. The feeling of humiliation this brought on was preferable, however, to getting shot in the head by Scourge.
Lying on the ground was Overrider’s headless corpse. Scourge had shot him first thing, and was now firing at Boomerang. An IV bag exploded, showering Boomerang with saline solution and who knew what else. Seizing on the idea, Boomerang grabbed the freed end of his catheter and turned his arm to snap it like a whip. That bag miraculously got in the path of Scourge’s next bullet and a haze of yellow liquid shimmered between the two men.
The Scourge of the Underworld unloaded his machine gun through the spray of urine. Mattresses and pillows exploded, releasing a flurry of stuffing in Boomerang’s wake as he ran for his life. He made for the one lifeline available in the medical area, a tray of instruments, some very sharp.
This objective was apparent to Scourge. Without a word he fired ahead, blasting the base upon which the tray stood. Medical instruments went flying through the air. Boomerang snatched out a hand and grabbed a scalpel with very little effort.
“Really, mate,” said Boomerang. He turned and threw the scalpel in one motion while grabbing a pair of serrated scissors with the other hand. “My whole business is catching whatever’s thrown my way.”
The scalpel’s tip thunked into the center of Scourge’s forehead. Undeterred by this fatal wound, he continued to fire at Boomerang. One bullet grazed the surprised criminal in the side, catching on a rib. Too pumped with adrenaline to feel pain and guided by instinct, Boomerang let the scissors fly. They curved in the air and at the perfect moment struck the Scourge’s gun hand, catching in the trigger to prevent it being pulled.
It took Scourge all of two seconds to remove the obstruction. By that point Boomerang had reached the opposite doors and thrown them open. In the doorway was a sight that stopped him so suddenly Boomerang fell flat on his bare ass.
He appeared to be a man of ragged cloth, some life-size stuffed doll that had gone through too many abusive owners. Around his neck and waist were lengths of rope tied far too tight, making him appear slightly bobble-ish. There were wisps of straws peeking through the fabric at his wrists and ankles, and wherever else too much had been stuffed in. The burlap sack over his head was cut to reveal eyes and a mouth, but none could be seen. There was only a deep black that seemed to reflect the depths of Hell itself.
The moment Boomerang saw those black depths, the memories of Mister White rushed back into him. The cold that numbed to his very soul was back and Boomerang froze in fear. He never even noticed the rusted pitchfork in Scarecrow’s hand.
In contrast, Scarecrow’s presence didn’t register at all with Scourge. The target was the target, and the instant Boomerang was the ground he fired. It was at the same time Scarecrow plunged the pitchfork into the man’s lower mid-section. There was a no response of pain, but a musculature reaction that caused Boomerang’s head to jerk violently upward. The bullet missed by millimeters and dug into the floor.
When Scarecrow pulled the pitchfork out, instead of blood a viscous black fluid pooled around Boomerang’s wounds. It wasn’t leaking out so much as it appeared to be seeping in, drawn to fill a void that Scarecrow had excised. That instinct done, Scarecrow turned its head to acknowledge Scourge.
Other faces stood out most in Scourge’s thought processes, names of the primary targets. None belonged to Scarecrow, but deep inside the memory banks he existed, and there Scourge lusted for blood. Luckily, those that had recently armed Scourge had given him a weapon that could be of use. From behind his back Scourge pulled a smoking shotgun. Flames licked out from the open barrel, fed by whatever remained of a soul inside Scourge’s shell.
Before hellfire could be unleashed, the ceiling fell in. The large robot TESS-One came crashing down, energy blasting out of its various armaments.
# # # # # # # # # #
The door leading into the stairwell was kicked off its hinges. Citizen V entered first, followed closely by Black Archer. They raced up the stairs, Black Archer watching above and Citizen V below for an ambush. They reached a landing that should have had a door, but the wall was blank and solid.
“Hammer’s penthouse is on the other side,” said Citizen V. “You can bet the wall will be reinforced.”
“That’s what explosive arrowheads are for,” Black Archer said with a grin. From one of his belt pouches he produced one. “I’ll need to use more than a few, and drilled in for maximum effectiveness. You can bet this will take some t-”
From below, the end of a whip struck fast and wrapped around Black Archer’s throat with lightning speed. He barely had time to toss the arrowhead to Citizen V before getting pulled over the railing. He fell several floors, smashing against the stair rails and losing his bow while passing a landing upon which stood Tailhook, a woman dressed in fetish gear. In Tailhook’s hand was a whip, and her arm braced in anticipation. If Black Archer hadn’t grabbed hold of the railing just beneath, the whip would have gone taut and his neck would have snapped.
Standing behind Tailhook was a man in street clothes, the only things unusual about being the domino mask that failed to hide his Asian features and the set of steel teeth in his mouth. Stepping forward, he saw that Black Archer was pulling himself up, and Cybertooth’s jaw unhinged so that his mouth was open half-a-foot.
“I’ll see if I can’t finish him off,” said Cybertooth. He hopped onto the railing and jumped down, diving at Black Archer teeth first.
“Typical, after I’ve done the hard work.” Tailhook raised her loaded crossbow. She called up. “Are you coming down to play?”
“No.” Citizen V leapt down into the stairwell. His cape of red, white and blue billowed above him. “I’m coming to kill!”
“Me first.” The crossbow fired.
Crouched with his feet on the railing, Black Archer brought his arm up against Cybertooth. As was common with archers, his arm had a guard to protect against the bow string, and it held against the powerful teeth that closed around it. His footing lost however, Black Archer fell ont the landing with Cybertooth on top of him.
“Gd, I thought you’d be bigger, with all that you must eat.”
Cybertooth could only snarl around Black Archer’s arm. Then he screamed when Black Archer jabbed him with a taser arrowhead. The sudden shock only caused his jaw to clamp down tighter, and Black Arrow could feel the metal teeth dig through his arm guard.
“Nnn, don’t make me break out the magnets.”
Thankfully, Cybertooth’s jaw soon went as limp as the rest of him. Black Archer shook him off and rose to his feet. He approached the edge looking down, hoping that his bow hadn’t fallen the entire way. If he’d been a few seconds faster poking his head of the railing, it would have collided with the falling Tailhook.
“Whoa!” Noticing that Tailhook still held her whip, Black Archer quickly grabbed at the other end still around his neck. There was no he could uncoil it in time, so instead he yanked hard with both hands. Briefly the line went taut, the limp again as Black Archer heard an ugly thud several flights down.
With a flourish of his cape and a bow in his hands, Citizen V landed next to Black Archer. “A pity, I think she’s still alive.” He handed the bow over. “Here. It didn’t fall quite so far as you. Remedy the matter.”
“And deprive future sexual predators of her charm, nope.” Black Arrow accepted the bow and notched a grappling arrow. “That wasted enough time. We’re after Hammer, not his flunkies.”
# # # # # # # # # #
Songbird and Atlas were marching together for Moonstone’s quarters when it suddenly got very cold. At an intersection they saw the cause, a wall of ice that blocked the hallway.
“It looks like Blizzard’s back,” said Atlas. “Maybe he decided to confront Moonstone too, and created a little privacy.”
“Then he wouldn’t have blocked the way to the medical area.” The wall was on their left at the intersection. A right turn would have found them at Moonstone’s door. Songbird opened her mouth and screamed. The harness around her neck and shoulders converted the sound into a battering ram of solid force. Against this the ice shattered, leading Songbird and Atlas to a second wall of ice.
“Maybe he tried boxing her in,” Atlas offered. “Forgetting that Moonstone would have just gone intangible and walked through.” But he didn’t really believe that, and neither did Songbird.
“Whatever he’s doing here, Blizzard couldn’t have snuck in without raising alarms. We need to find a security station.”
Minutes later, Songbird and Atlas started to run as they heard scream, the large man falling behind. Bursting through the door into the floor’s security station, Songbird was the first to be confronted by five dead bodies and a sixth man pressed against the wall by a woman. They woman wasn’t touching him, content to let her personal force-field crush life. Unuscione continued to do this even as she turned her head to see them.
“Finally, a challenge.”
The force-field that surrounded Unuscione was an opaque extension of herself and subject to her every whim. With a thought, the large claw that pressed a security guard against the wall became a single spike that skewered him to it. Toward Songbird she raised an arm, the force-field splitting into two monstrous sets of teeth that charged.
Again Songbird screamed, the sonic force of her harness every bit as malleable as Unuscione’s force-field. Large spheres came into form, jawbreakers that smashed against teeth. Also created was a large spiked mace aimed for Unuscione’s head. It bashed against the force-field, Unuscione paying it no heed.
“There are better ways for you and me to settle this.” Completely surrounded at all times by her force-field, Unuscione’s feet never touched the floor. She catapulted off the ground, hurling herself bodily at Songbird. She kept screaming, tried to block the charge with her own force-field. By digging tendrils into the walls to anchor herself, Unuscione kept coming, forcing Songbird back through the door. In seconds her force-field smashed against Songbird, hurling her to the ground.
“That’s what I think of your flatscan technology!” Unuscione focused her pressure against Songbird’s harness, crushing it around the woman’s throat.
Were that Songbird’s only weapon, she may have died then and there. She screamed again, releasing an unfocused sonic blast amplified with bionic vocal cords. Unuscione staggered, her force field offering little protection against sound itself. As a result, her crushing of Songbird was slowed by precious seconds. More importantly, Songbird’s wail covered the approach of her teammate.
A massive fist smashed into the force-field over Unuscione’s head. It was thin and close to Unuscione’s skin, most of her energy directed at attacking Songbird. There only had to be a little give and Unuscione felt the tremendous force against her skull. She fell to the side, immediately feeling the effects of the blow and desperately attempting to redirect her power at Atlas. The ionic-powered giant was angry however, and closed mammoth fingers over the bulk of her force-field in a contemptuous gesture. Even as Unuscione winced at the way he balled up her power like it was paper, Atlas smashed his fist toward her head again. Again she felt most of the force, Unuscione’s brain bouncing around inside her skull. Two was enough for her to fall unconscious.
Atlas released the force-field. It remained active but passive, draping over Unuscione as a protective cocoon. Unconcerned, he approached Songbird. “That was stupid, running so far ahead of me.”
“It gave you a chance to take her unawares,” Songbird said. While none of her bones were broken, the same couldn’t be said for the harness. Its casing was broken in several places, its inner workings sparking. Songbird’s hands went to the now useless equipment. “Without this I’ve been reduced back to Screaming Mimi.”
“Great,” Atlas said. “I’ll have to keep carrying you until Overrider can fix that.”
# # # # # # # # # #
The heavy condensation and low temperatures in the hallway created patches of ice on the walls and floor. Speed Demon skidded on one patch, and for one long tenth-of-a-second he struggled to find his footing. Finally the criminal righted himself, and glared at the cause. Blizzard was standing at the closed doors into the medical unit, not doing a thing.
“What are you waiting for? Thanks to you we know that a few of them are inside, just waiting to be picked off.”
“That’s what I’m doing here.” Blizzard turned his head to glare to Speed Demon, and the tone of his words was ice. “Boomerang is my friend. He’s in no position to interfere. I’m not going to let anyone hurt him.”
Speed Demon clenched his fists and smiled. “You think you can take me, is that it?”
“I’ve always wondered how fast I can freeze blood.”
Remarkably, before Speed Demon could act, the doors burst open. What appeared to Speed Demon like an anime film sequence spilled into the hallways, two robots battling each other. One was the large TESS-One robot, the other unrecognizable although part of its design seemed to be a trenchcoat and fedora. It was blasting at the TESS-One with a sawed-off shotgun, spewing bursts of fire that didn’t appear to have any effect on the robot’s adamantium coating.
Blizzard leapt out of the way a split-second before the robots crashed to the spot where he had been standing. TESS-One had the robotic Scourge by the neck and was lifting it bodily off the floor. Scourge fired its shotgun point-black but to no avail. Uncharacteristic for a machine, TESS-One snarled and threw Scourge against the wall with a force that had anger behind it.
“You shot my head off!” yelled the man trapped inside of TESS-One. “And in that instant I touched your programmed, felt what was there. I knew what, who, you are, and knew that I could do the same.”
“That’s you, isn’t it, Overrider?” wondered a shaken Blizzard aloud.
If the former teammate heard, it gave no response, nor was Blizzard waiting for one. Instead he rushed through the broken doors to see what had become of Boomerang. Before he could take more than a few steps however, Blizzard found Speed Demon standing in front of him.
“The fight’s behind you, B. Our job’s to take them out. So do your job, or I’ll take you out.”
Having realized the futility of its weapon against a fellow robot, Scourge dropped the hellfire shotgun. Immediately, new weapons formed out of its hands, twin pistols that fired multiple rounds at the advancing TESS-One/Overrider.
“This skin’s a lot tougher than flesh. Try all you want, you can’t kill me.”
“You are not targeted,” said the Scourge. Though its pistols fired explosive rounds, they were indeed harmless against TESS-One. Those that struck the floor, however, succeeded in blowing up a small portion of it.
The loss of its footing only slowed down the large adamantium robot briefly, until Overrider activated his boot-jets. “Is that the best you’ve got?” He asked while reaching a large hand for Scourge’s head.
The machine’s response was simply a dispassionate, “Yes.”
Blizzard was keeping Speed Demon at a distance with sub-zero temperatures, but the speedster was running circles around him so fast it was getting hard to breathe. Suddenly the entire building began to shake and the villain stumbled. Blizzard pounced on the opportunity, encasing Speed Demon’s legs in ice.
“That should keep you still for a minute while I-”
The rumbling increased, causing Blizzard to nearly lose his balance. Underneath the doorway and wall, the floor collapsed. As a consequence, the load-bearing wall and ceiling it supported also collapsed. Blizzard suddenly found himself with Speed Demon at the end of a chasm that virtually cut the building in half for seven floors. Now at the bottom of that chasm, buried beneath the rubble of five floors, was Overrider in the TESS-One body. And standing against the wall across from Blizzard and Speed Demon, unfeelingly considering them, as the Scourge.
Blizzard acted quickly, raising his hands as Scourge raised its guns. Ice was faster than bullets, coating the pistols entirely and rapidly spreading across the robot. Blizzard didn’t stop there, however, building on his block of ice to expand in ever direction. The rumbling hadn’t stopped, but it was beginning to slow. In seconds the block of ice and healed the gaping wound in Hammer’s building.
Feeling exhausted, Blizzard lowered his arms and turned around. Lying on the floor next to a bed was a headless body that he assumed to have been Overrider. Boomerang’s bed was empty, but Blizzard saw a shape lying down at the far end of the room. He started towards it.
“Hey, you can’t just leave me!” Speed Demon called out.
“I know you’re already melting the ice,” Blizzard said. By the time he was free though, Blizzard will have escaped with his friend. Once Boomerang was safe, he would return for Blacklash, who hopefully wouldn’t try to kill him. Songbird could rot in hell. That at least had been the plan. If Boomerang was already dead though…
The shape shifted, and with hope Blizzard quickened his pace. He saw that it was Boomerang, and knelt to his side. There didn’t appear to be blood, but an awful scent filled Blizzard’s nostrils, and when he touched Boomerang the skin felt cold even to him.
“Blizzard, is that you?” asked Boomerang as he was being turned over.
“Yeah buddy.” Blizzard saw that his friend was holding something in his hand, a boomerang. “Gave as good as you got, huh? Well, I’m here to get you gone before the shit really hits the fan.”
Boomerang opened his eyes, and Blizzard was startled by the black pools staring up at him. “Afraid we’re past that point.”
Then he shoved his Boomerang, as black as his eyes and soul, into Blizzard’s chest.
Blizzard stumbled back, overwhelmed by the pain and in near shock by the betrayal. He opened his mouth to speak, but his throat was already filling with blood. Except when he raised a hand to his mouth and took it away, Blizzard saw that the liquid on his fingers was a deep black. He fell to the ground, back to Boomerang. Through a haze he witnessed the fate he’d left Speed Demon too.
Standing in the melting pool of ice, gripping the handle of the pitchfork impaled through Speed Demon’s chest, was Scarecrow.
# # # # # # # # # #
“We have to run!”
Gladiator hadn’t been sure what was going on. One moment he’d been training, beating the life out of three security guards. The next thing he knew his wife was screaming at him, fear in her voice. That had really gotten Gladiator’s attention. His wife hadn’t been afraid of anything since she’d died.
“Hurry!” She was running alongside Gladiator, urging him on. They were on one of the top floors, and when he ran for the elevator and stairs she wailed at him. “No! They’re too slow! Out the window! You can jump to the next building!”
“Please! Tell me what’s wrong?”
As if in answer, the entire building started to shake. Gladiator fell crashing to the floor. A good thing too, because several feet ahead the floor simply disappeared. His wife was screaming incoherently now, trying to pull him to his feet.
“Yeah, I get it. We’re under attack again.” Gladiator was back on his feet. Forward wasn’t an option, so he turned around. In the direction he was running now, the windows faced the street. He’d have to be careful, hit the plate glass hard enough to break but not so hard that he’d be leaping into a twenty-story drop. Then Gladiator could scale the side of the building until reaching safety.
Gladiator was nearly there, just passing the elevator when a different sort of rumble caught his attention. This was smaller, focused on the elevator, and out of the corner of his eye Gladiator saw the doors being forced open. With a sad sigh, he made himself stop.
“What are you doing?” His wife screamed. She was glancing down, her eyes wide with fear. “We have to go!”
“Sorry. If it’s a teammate, I can’t abandon them. And if it’s an enemy…” Gladiator activated the mechanisms in his gauntlets, causing the steel blades on his wrists to rotate at high speed. “I don’t run from a fight.”
By this time, the elevator doors had ripped apart and a powerfully built woman leaped into the hallway. She was as large as Gladiator, maybe larger, and at the sight of him she smiled. “Oh, I was hoping I’d run into you. Big bad crazy man, wishes we were back in the Roman times of rape and pillage.”
Gladiator recalled the face. The woman went by the name of Man-Killer, and from the voice sounded to be German. At his side, Gladiator’s wife was still screaming for him to run, but he couldn’t hear it anymore. Sounds of battle filled his head, the glory of the Roman campaign against Germania. With a roar, he rushed at Man-Killer.
Giving a roar of her own, Man-Killer leaped to meet Gladiator. Their collision was brutal, Man-Killer dealing a glancing blow against Gladiator’s helmet while his fist slammed into her mid-section. As strong as Gladiator was, he was still human. Man-Killer’s blow staggered him while his did more damage to his hand. But as he staggered back Gladiator swung wildly, the spinning blade of his arm smashing up against Man-Killer’s chest.
“Aarrgh!” Fabric and skin were shredded. Man-Killer was forced back a step, and Gladiator saw that it wasn’t skin at all but some kind of plastic. Beneath it was some kind of exo-skeleton attached to Man-Killer’s true, much weaker frame.
In spite of the ringing in his ears, Gladiator pressed forward. He swung at Man-Killer’s head, the forearm and blade strike the side of her neck. Almost immediately there was the grating sound of metal-on-metal as his blade found the exo-skeleton. Man-Killer roared with anger and used the close reach to put her hands on Gladiator, lifting him bodily in the air. He kicked wildly at her side, the attached tungsten blades slicing into her flesh. That was when Man-Killer threw him.
Gladiator smashed against a wall first, with tremendous force that broke something in his right shoulder. Then he hit the floor hard, and bounced half-a-dozen times. Inside the dented helmet, his head was spinning, and Gladiator could barely see. He struggled to his feet and searched for something that wasn’t a white haze. When at last he found the angry shape that had to be Man-Killer, she was just about on top of him.
The kick she delivered to Gladiator’s chest broke the armor and at least cracked the bones underneath. Suddenly it was harder to breathe than it was to see. Desperately, he tried to swing his arm again, but Man-Killer caught it at the wrist with one hand. Her other hand smashed down against the spinning blade, snapping it in two and nearly doing the same with Gladiator’s arm. He screamed, and she smiled.
“Big bad man, but still just a man.” She raised the arm again, prepared to smash it against Gladiator’s head.
“Oh, sweetie,” his wife whispered. “You should have run. So close.”
That gave Gladiator an idea. Leaning slightly forward, with his free hand he grabbed Man-Killer at the one place he could. “I’m a man with leverage.”
Then he threw himself backwards, driving his legs up as he did so. Man-Killer pitched forward, over Gladiator’s head. Propelled by the force of his legs, she kept going the short distance of the hallway to collide with the plate-glass. But not hard enough to create more than a few small cracks.
Fighting past the pain, Gladiator rolls to his feet and raises his uninjured arm. Man-Killer is also rising to her feet, back against the glass. A mechanism is triggered, freeing Gladiator’s blade and spinning it at Man-Killer. Into her face it slashes, gouging into her eyes before deflecting off her dense pseudo-skin. It was Man-Killer’s turn to scream, her hands pressed against the ruin of her face.
At full speed Gladiator runs forward, smashing her against the glass with all the strength he has. More cracks form, and Gladiator can feel it buckling but still the glass holds. With blood running down her face and screams escaping her mouth, Man-Killer blindly smashes her fists against Gladiator’s back. Unable to breathe and feeling his legs go numb, Gladiator grits his teeth and slams his unbroken arm against the fracturing glass until it finally gives. Man-Killer and Gladiator go tumbling out of the building, locked in an embrace of combat.
It was with a combination of regret and satisfaction that Gladiator’s wife approached the edge of the window and looked down. Just below was Gladiator, hanging from a ledge by his broken arm. His battered helmet was twisted oddly, so that his right eye was staring up at her through the left eyehole.
“Please…”
“Oh honey, I wish I could.” She leaned forward. “This is one of those damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t moments, however. I do nothing, you fall, and my feasting is at an end. I save you, your despair ends, spoiling my meal. Better now if I just cut my losses.”
She straightened, and her form began to shift. Before the image of Gladiator’s wife was gone, however, a burst of fire exploded out of her chest. She staggers, looking down at Gladiator one last time before the face is replaced with that of a bone white skull surrounded by black. The creature, the demon, that Gladiator had believed was his dead wife fell out of the window. It tumbled past Gladiator as he screamed with anguish, slowly dissipating until it was nothing that reached the ground. Gladiator’s wail went on for much longer.
Replacing the demon at the window was Scourge, with a skull-face that resembled it somewhat. Scourge looked down at Gladiator, holding a smoking shotgun in a considering manner. At last, Scourge turned, choosing to leave Gladiator to his fate.
# # # # # # # # # #
When the attack came, Taproot was down in the basement, as close to the earth as he could get. It relaxed him, being able to hear the buds of life lurking just underneath. They understood him far more than his teammates, and certainly more than that so-called doctor.
“What he offers, it is a good thing,” Taproot said, half to the life and half to himself. “Once President, he can make it so much better for you all. More room to grow. Clear skies so you can feel the sun. An end to the poisons killing so many of you. None of which he intends to do of course.”
Taproot’s approximation of eyes shifted upward. “He doesn’t know it, but those lies he tells are the truth. Nor will he be the ones doing them, once the time is right.”
Among Taproot’s many powers was the ability to create and manipulate simulacra, complete duplicates of human beings that just happened to be made of plant. Soon, Zemo would be as dead as he claimed, and Taproot would be controlling the President of the United States. First order of business would be more conflict, whittle humanity down to a manageable number.
“Other animals are acceptable, needed even. But these humans are too destructive. Without them, we’ll be so much better off.”
A rumble could suddenly be felt, the whole building shaking. Taproot was one with the earth, and so knew that it wasn’t the cause. The source of the rumbling was coming from above. Taproot looked up again, saw that the ceiling was breaking apart. Some feet in front of him the basement caved in, the robotic TESS-One falling through with a great deal of rubble on top of him.
It was with minimal effort that TESS-One freed itself from the debris and rose to its feet. It noticed Taproot and, surprisingly, spoke. “What are you doing down here? We’re under attack again. Join me upstairs and help out!”
Without waiting for Taproot to give any response, TESS-One flew up through the hole from which it had fallen. It was as Taproot was rising to his feet that he noticed the air growing colder, and saw the massive block of ice forming.
“No,” whispered Taproot. “They seek to destroy us with fire and ice, undo all that I hope to achieved.” Taproot raised his arms and a new rumbling occurred, this time from beneath.
Peeking out through cracks in the concrete, a small plant had appeared at Taproot’s feet. It was growing in height and girth rapidly, approaching the ceiling in seconds.
“They wish me to help.” Taproot laughed. “I will help…them all to compost!”
# # # # # # # # # #
Next Issue: Beetle joins the fight, as Atlas and Songbird react to discovering a traitor! Citizen V battles Baron Zemo as the Black Archer’s identity is revealed! Round Two between Scourge and Overrider, with Taproot added to the mix. Plus, what exactly is Scarecrow doing?
Lying on the ground was Overrider’s headless corpse. Scourge had shot him first thing, and was now firing at Boomerang. An IV bag exploded, showering Boomerang with saline solution and who knew what else. Seizing on the idea, Boomerang grabbed the freed end of his catheter and turned his arm to snap it like a whip. That bag miraculously got in the path of Scourge’s next bullet and a haze of yellow liquid shimmered between the two men.
The Scourge of the Underworld unloaded his machine gun through the spray of urine. Mattresses and pillows exploded, releasing a flurry of stuffing in Boomerang’s wake as he ran for his life. He made for the one lifeline available in the medical area, a tray of instruments, some very sharp.
This objective was apparent to Scourge. Without a word he fired ahead, blasting the base upon which the tray stood. Medical instruments went flying through the air. Boomerang snatched out a hand and grabbed a scalpel with very little effort.
“Really, mate,” said Boomerang. He turned and threw the scalpel in one motion while grabbing a pair of serrated scissors with the other hand. “My whole business is catching whatever’s thrown my way.”
The scalpel’s tip thunked into the center of Scourge’s forehead. Undeterred by this fatal wound, he continued to fire at Boomerang. One bullet grazed the surprised criminal in the side, catching on a rib. Too pumped with adrenaline to feel pain and guided by instinct, Boomerang let the scissors fly. They curved in the air and at the perfect moment struck the Scourge’s gun hand, catching in the trigger to prevent it being pulled.
It took Scourge all of two seconds to remove the obstruction. By that point Boomerang had reached the opposite doors and thrown them open. In the doorway was a sight that stopped him so suddenly Boomerang fell flat on his bare ass.
He appeared to be a man of ragged cloth, some life-size stuffed doll that had gone through too many abusive owners. Around his neck and waist were lengths of rope tied far too tight, making him appear slightly bobble-ish. There were wisps of straws peeking through the fabric at his wrists and ankles, and wherever else too much had been stuffed in. The burlap sack over his head was cut to reveal eyes and a mouth, but none could be seen. There was only a deep black that seemed to reflect the depths of Hell itself.
The moment Boomerang saw those black depths, the memories of Mister White rushed back into him. The cold that numbed to his very soul was back and Boomerang froze in fear. He never even noticed the rusted pitchfork in Scarecrow’s hand.
In contrast, Scarecrow’s presence didn’t register at all with Scourge. The target was the target, and the instant Boomerang was the ground he fired. It was at the same time Scarecrow plunged the pitchfork into the man’s lower mid-section. There was a no response of pain, but a musculature reaction that caused Boomerang’s head to jerk violently upward. The bullet missed by millimeters and dug into the floor.
When Scarecrow pulled the pitchfork out, instead of blood a viscous black fluid pooled around Boomerang’s wounds. It wasn’t leaking out so much as it appeared to be seeping in, drawn to fill a void that Scarecrow had excised. That instinct done, Scarecrow turned its head to acknowledge Scourge.
Other faces stood out most in Scourge’s thought processes, names of the primary targets. None belonged to Scarecrow, but deep inside the memory banks he existed, and there Scourge lusted for blood. Luckily, those that had recently armed Scourge had given him a weapon that could be of use. From behind his back Scourge pulled a smoking shotgun. Flames licked out from the open barrel, fed by whatever remained of a soul inside Scourge’s shell.
Before hellfire could be unleashed, the ceiling fell in. The large robot TESS-One came crashing down, energy blasting out of its various armaments.
# # # # # # # # # #
The door leading into the stairwell was kicked off its hinges. Citizen V entered first, followed closely by Black Archer. They raced up the stairs, Black Archer watching above and Citizen V below for an ambush. They reached a landing that should have had a door, but the wall was blank and solid.
“Hammer’s penthouse is on the other side,” said Citizen V. “You can bet the wall will be reinforced.”
“That’s what explosive arrowheads are for,” Black Archer said with a grin. From one of his belt pouches he produced one. “I’ll need to use more than a few, and drilled in for maximum effectiveness. You can bet this will take some t-”
From below, the end of a whip struck fast and wrapped around Black Archer’s throat with lightning speed. He barely had time to toss the arrowhead to Citizen V before getting pulled over the railing. He fell several floors, smashing against the stair rails and losing his bow while passing a landing upon which stood Tailhook, a woman dressed in fetish gear. In Tailhook’s hand was a whip, and her arm braced in anticipation. If Black Archer hadn’t grabbed hold of the railing just beneath, the whip would have gone taut and his neck would have snapped.
Standing behind Tailhook was a man in street clothes, the only things unusual about being the domino mask that failed to hide his Asian features and the set of steel teeth in his mouth. Stepping forward, he saw that Black Archer was pulling himself up, and Cybertooth’s jaw unhinged so that his mouth was open half-a-foot.
“I’ll see if I can’t finish him off,” said Cybertooth. He hopped onto the railing and jumped down, diving at Black Archer teeth first.
“Typical, after I’ve done the hard work.” Tailhook raised her loaded crossbow. She called up. “Are you coming down to play?”
“No.” Citizen V leapt down into the stairwell. His cape of red, white and blue billowed above him. “I’m coming to kill!”
“Me first.” The crossbow fired.
Crouched with his feet on the railing, Black Archer brought his arm up against Cybertooth. As was common with archers, his arm had a guard to protect against the bow string, and it held against the powerful teeth that closed around it. His footing lost however, Black Archer fell ont the landing with Cybertooth on top of him.
“Gd, I thought you’d be bigger, with all that you must eat.”
Cybertooth could only snarl around Black Archer’s arm. Then he screamed when Black Archer jabbed him with a taser arrowhead. The sudden shock only caused his jaw to clamp down tighter, and Black Arrow could feel the metal teeth dig through his arm guard.
“Nnn, don’t make me break out the magnets.”
Thankfully, Cybertooth’s jaw soon went as limp as the rest of him. Black Archer shook him off and rose to his feet. He approached the edge looking down, hoping that his bow hadn’t fallen the entire way. If he’d been a few seconds faster poking his head of the railing, it would have collided with the falling Tailhook.
“Whoa!” Noticing that Tailhook still held her whip, Black Archer quickly grabbed at the other end still around his neck. There was no he could uncoil it in time, so instead he yanked hard with both hands. Briefly the line went taut, the limp again as Black Archer heard an ugly thud several flights down.
With a flourish of his cape and a bow in his hands, Citizen V landed next to Black Archer. “A pity, I think she’s still alive.” He handed the bow over. “Here. It didn’t fall quite so far as you. Remedy the matter.”
“And deprive future sexual predators of her charm, nope.” Black Arrow accepted the bow and notched a grappling arrow. “That wasted enough time. We’re after Hammer, not his flunkies.”
# # # # # # # # # #
Songbird and Atlas were marching together for Moonstone’s quarters when it suddenly got very cold. At an intersection they saw the cause, a wall of ice that blocked the hallway.
“It looks like Blizzard’s back,” said Atlas. “Maybe he decided to confront Moonstone too, and created a little privacy.”
“Then he wouldn’t have blocked the way to the medical area.” The wall was on their left at the intersection. A right turn would have found them at Moonstone’s door. Songbird opened her mouth and screamed. The harness around her neck and shoulders converted the sound into a battering ram of solid force. Against this the ice shattered, leading Songbird and Atlas to a second wall of ice.
“Maybe he tried boxing her in,” Atlas offered. “Forgetting that Moonstone would have just gone intangible and walked through.” But he didn’t really believe that, and neither did Songbird.
“Whatever he’s doing here, Blizzard couldn’t have snuck in without raising alarms. We need to find a security station.”
Minutes later, Songbird and Atlas started to run as they heard scream, the large man falling behind. Bursting through the door into the floor’s security station, Songbird was the first to be confronted by five dead bodies and a sixth man pressed against the wall by a woman. They woman wasn’t touching him, content to let her personal force-field crush life. Unuscione continued to do this even as she turned her head to see them.
“Finally, a challenge.”
The force-field that surrounded Unuscione was an opaque extension of herself and subject to her every whim. With a thought, the large claw that pressed a security guard against the wall became a single spike that skewered him to it. Toward Songbird she raised an arm, the force-field splitting into two monstrous sets of teeth that charged.
Again Songbird screamed, the sonic force of her harness every bit as malleable as Unuscione’s force-field. Large spheres came into form, jawbreakers that smashed against teeth. Also created was a large spiked mace aimed for Unuscione’s head. It bashed against the force-field, Unuscione paying it no heed.
“There are better ways for you and me to settle this.” Completely surrounded at all times by her force-field, Unuscione’s feet never touched the floor. She catapulted off the ground, hurling herself bodily at Songbird. She kept screaming, tried to block the charge with her own force-field. By digging tendrils into the walls to anchor herself, Unuscione kept coming, forcing Songbird back through the door. In seconds her force-field smashed against Songbird, hurling her to the ground.
“That’s what I think of your flatscan technology!” Unuscione focused her pressure against Songbird’s harness, crushing it around the woman’s throat.
Were that Songbird’s only weapon, she may have died then and there. She screamed again, releasing an unfocused sonic blast amplified with bionic vocal cords. Unuscione staggered, her force field offering little protection against sound itself. As a result, her crushing of Songbird was slowed by precious seconds. More importantly, Songbird’s wail covered the approach of her teammate.
A massive fist smashed into the force-field over Unuscione’s head. It was thin and close to Unuscione’s skin, most of her energy directed at attacking Songbird. There only had to be a little give and Unuscione felt the tremendous force against her skull. She fell to the side, immediately feeling the effects of the blow and desperately attempting to redirect her power at Atlas. The ionic-powered giant was angry however, and closed mammoth fingers over the bulk of her force-field in a contemptuous gesture. Even as Unuscione winced at the way he balled up her power like it was paper, Atlas smashed his fist toward her head again. Again she felt most of the force, Unuscione’s brain bouncing around inside her skull. Two was enough for her to fall unconscious.
Atlas released the force-field. It remained active but passive, draping over Unuscione as a protective cocoon. Unconcerned, he approached Songbird. “That was stupid, running so far ahead of me.”
“It gave you a chance to take her unawares,” Songbird said. While none of her bones were broken, the same couldn’t be said for the harness. Its casing was broken in several places, its inner workings sparking. Songbird’s hands went to the now useless equipment. “Without this I’ve been reduced back to Screaming Mimi.”
“Great,” Atlas said. “I’ll have to keep carrying you until Overrider can fix that.”
# # # # # # # # # #
The heavy condensation and low temperatures in the hallway created patches of ice on the walls and floor. Speed Demon skidded on one patch, and for one long tenth-of-a-second he struggled to find his footing. Finally the criminal righted himself, and glared at the cause. Blizzard was standing at the closed doors into the medical unit, not doing a thing.
“What are you waiting for? Thanks to you we know that a few of them are inside, just waiting to be picked off.”
“That’s what I’m doing here.” Blizzard turned his head to glare to Speed Demon, and the tone of his words was ice. “Boomerang is my friend. He’s in no position to interfere. I’m not going to let anyone hurt him.”
Speed Demon clenched his fists and smiled. “You think you can take me, is that it?”
“I’ve always wondered how fast I can freeze blood.”
Remarkably, before Speed Demon could act, the doors burst open. What appeared to Speed Demon like an anime film sequence spilled into the hallways, two robots battling each other. One was the large TESS-One robot, the other unrecognizable although part of its design seemed to be a trenchcoat and fedora. It was blasting at the TESS-One with a sawed-off shotgun, spewing bursts of fire that didn’t appear to have any effect on the robot’s adamantium coating.
Blizzard leapt out of the way a split-second before the robots crashed to the spot where he had been standing. TESS-One had the robotic Scourge by the neck and was lifting it bodily off the floor. Scourge fired its shotgun point-black but to no avail. Uncharacteristic for a machine, TESS-One snarled and threw Scourge against the wall with a force that had anger behind it.
“You shot my head off!” yelled the man trapped inside of TESS-One. “And in that instant I touched your programmed, felt what was there. I knew what, who, you are, and knew that I could do the same.”
“That’s you, isn’t it, Overrider?” wondered a shaken Blizzard aloud.
If the former teammate heard, it gave no response, nor was Blizzard waiting for one. Instead he rushed through the broken doors to see what had become of Boomerang. Before he could take more than a few steps however, Blizzard found Speed Demon standing in front of him.
“The fight’s behind you, B. Our job’s to take them out. So do your job, or I’ll take you out.”
Having realized the futility of its weapon against a fellow robot, Scourge dropped the hellfire shotgun. Immediately, new weapons formed out of its hands, twin pistols that fired multiple rounds at the advancing TESS-One/Overrider.
“This skin’s a lot tougher than flesh. Try all you want, you can’t kill me.”
“You are not targeted,” said the Scourge. Though its pistols fired explosive rounds, they were indeed harmless against TESS-One. Those that struck the floor, however, succeeded in blowing up a small portion of it.
The loss of its footing only slowed down the large adamantium robot briefly, until Overrider activated his boot-jets. “Is that the best you’ve got?” He asked while reaching a large hand for Scourge’s head.
The machine’s response was simply a dispassionate, “Yes.”
Blizzard was keeping Speed Demon at a distance with sub-zero temperatures, but the speedster was running circles around him so fast it was getting hard to breathe. Suddenly the entire building began to shake and the villain stumbled. Blizzard pounced on the opportunity, encasing Speed Demon’s legs in ice.
“That should keep you still for a minute while I-”
The rumbling increased, causing Blizzard to nearly lose his balance. Underneath the doorway and wall, the floor collapsed. As a consequence, the load-bearing wall and ceiling it supported also collapsed. Blizzard suddenly found himself with Speed Demon at the end of a chasm that virtually cut the building in half for seven floors. Now at the bottom of that chasm, buried beneath the rubble of five floors, was Overrider in the TESS-One body. And standing against the wall across from Blizzard and Speed Demon, unfeelingly considering them, as the Scourge.
Blizzard acted quickly, raising his hands as Scourge raised its guns. Ice was faster than bullets, coating the pistols entirely and rapidly spreading across the robot. Blizzard didn’t stop there, however, building on his block of ice to expand in ever direction. The rumbling hadn’t stopped, but it was beginning to slow. In seconds the block of ice and healed the gaping wound in Hammer’s building.
Feeling exhausted, Blizzard lowered his arms and turned around. Lying on the floor next to a bed was a headless body that he assumed to have been Overrider. Boomerang’s bed was empty, but Blizzard saw a shape lying down at the far end of the room. He started towards it.
“Hey, you can’t just leave me!” Speed Demon called out.
“I know you’re already melting the ice,” Blizzard said. By the time he was free though, Blizzard will have escaped with his friend. Once Boomerang was safe, he would return for Blacklash, who hopefully wouldn’t try to kill him. Songbird could rot in hell. That at least had been the plan. If Boomerang was already dead though…
The shape shifted, and with hope Blizzard quickened his pace. He saw that it was Boomerang, and knelt to his side. There didn’t appear to be blood, but an awful scent filled Blizzard’s nostrils, and when he touched Boomerang the skin felt cold even to him.
“Blizzard, is that you?” asked Boomerang as he was being turned over.
“Yeah buddy.” Blizzard saw that his friend was holding something in his hand, a boomerang. “Gave as good as you got, huh? Well, I’m here to get you gone before the shit really hits the fan.”
Boomerang opened his eyes, and Blizzard was startled by the black pools staring up at him. “Afraid we’re past that point.”
Then he shoved his Boomerang, as black as his eyes and soul, into Blizzard’s chest.
Blizzard stumbled back, overwhelmed by the pain and in near shock by the betrayal. He opened his mouth to speak, but his throat was already filling with blood. Except when he raised a hand to his mouth and took it away, Blizzard saw that the liquid on his fingers was a deep black. He fell to the ground, back to Boomerang. Through a haze he witnessed the fate he’d left Speed Demon too.
Standing in the melting pool of ice, gripping the handle of the pitchfork impaled through Speed Demon’s chest, was Scarecrow.
# # # # # # # # # #
“We have to run!”
Gladiator hadn’t been sure what was going on. One moment he’d been training, beating the life out of three security guards. The next thing he knew his wife was screaming at him, fear in her voice. That had really gotten Gladiator’s attention. His wife hadn’t been afraid of anything since she’d died.
“Hurry!” She was running alongside Gladiator, urging him on. They were on one of the top floors, and when he ran for the elevator and stairs she wailed at him. “No! They’re too slow! Out the window! You can jump to the next building!”
“Please! Tell me what’s wrong?”
As if in answer, the entire building started to shake. Gladiator fell crashing to the floor. A good thing too, because several feet ahead the floor simply disappeared. His wife was screaming incoherently now, trying to pull him to his feet.
“Yeah, I get it. We’re under attack again.” Gladiator was back on his feet. Forward wasn’t an option, so he turned around. In the direction he was running now, the windows faced the street. He’d have to be careful, hit the plate glass hard enough to break but not so hard that he’d be leaping into a twenty-story drop. Then Gladiator could scale the side of the building until reaching safety.
Gladiator was nearly there, just passing the elevator when a different sort of rumble caught his attention. This was smaller, focused on the elevator, and out of the corner of his eye Gladiator saw the doors being forced open. With a sad sigh, he made himself stop.
“What are you doing?” His wife screamed. She was glancing down, her eyes wide with fear. “We have to go!”
“Sorry. If it’s a teammate, I can’t abandon them. And if it’s an enemy…” Gladiator activated the mechanisms in his gauntlets, causing the steel blades on his wrists to rotate at high speed. “I don’t run from a fight.”
By this time, the elevator doors had ripped apart and a powerfully built woman leaped into the hallway. She was as large as Gladiator, maybe larger, and at the sight of him she smiled. “Oh, I was hoping I’d run into you. Big bad crazy man, wishes we were back in the Roman times of rape and pillage.”
Gladiator recalled the face. The woman went by the name of Man-Killer, and from the voice sounded to be German. At his side, Gladiator’s wife was still screaming for him to run, but he couldn’t hear it anymore. Sounds of battle filled his head, the glory of the Roman campaign against Germania. With a roar, he rushed at Man-Killer.
Giving a roar of her own, Man-Killer leaped to meet Gladiator. Their collision was brutal, Man-Killer dealing a glancing blow against Gladiator’s helmet while his fist slammed into her mid-section. As strong as Gladiator was, he was still human. Man-Killer’s blow staggered him while his did more damage to his hand. But as he staggered back Gladiator swung wildly, the spinning blade of his arm smashing up against Man-Killer’s chest.
“Aarrgh!” Fabric and skin were shredded. Man-Killer was forced back a step, and Gladiator saw that it wasn’t skin at all but some kind of plastic. Beneath it was some kind of exo-skeleton attached to Man-Killer’s true, much weaker frame.
In spite of the ringing in his ears, Gladiator pressed forward. He swung at Man-Killer’s head, the forearm and blade strike the side of her neck. Almost immediately there was the grating sound of metal-on-metal as his blade found the exo-skeleton. Man-Killer roared with anger and used the close reach to put her hands on Gladiator, lifting him bodily in the air. He kicked wildly at her side, the attached tungsten blades slicing into her flesh. That was when Man-Killer threw him.
Gladiator smashed against a wall first, with tremendous force that broke something in his right shoulder. Then he hit the floor hard, and bounced half-a-dozen times. Inside the dented helmet, his head was spinning, and Gladiator could barely see. He struggled to his feet and searched for something that wasn’t a white haze. When at last he found the angry shape that had to be Man-Killer, she was just about on top of him.
The kick she delivered to Gladiator’s chest broke the armor and at least cracked the bones underneath. Suddenly it was harder to breathe than it was to see. Desperately, he tried to swing his arm again, but Man-Killer caught it at the wrist with one hand. Her other hand smashed down against the spinning blade, snapping it in two and nearly doing the same with Gladiator’s arm. He screamed, and she smiled.
“Big bad man, but still just a man.” She raised the arm again, prepared to smash it against Gladiator’s head.
“Oh, sweetie,” his wife whispered. “You should have run. So close.”
That gave Gladiator an idea. Leaning slightly forward, with his free hand he grabbed Man-Killer at the one place he could. “I’m a man with leverage.”
Then he threw himself backwards, driving his legs up as he did so. Man-Killer pitched forward, over Gladiator’s head. Propelled by the force of his legs, she kept going the short distance of the hallway to collide with the plate-glass. But not hard enough to create more than a few small cracks.
Fighting past the pain, Gladiator rolls to his feet and raises his uninjured arm. Man-Killer is also rising to her feet, back against the glass. A mechanism is triggered, freeing Gladiator’s blade and spinning it at Man-Killer. Into her face it slashes, gouging into her eyes before deflecting off her dense pseudo-skin. It was Man-Killer’s turn to scream, her hands pressed against the ruin of her face.
At full speed Gladiator runs forward, smashing her against the glass with all the strength he has. More cracks form, and Gladiator can feel it buckling but still the glass holds. With blood running down her face and screams escaping her mouth, Man-Killer blindly smashes her fists against Gladiator’s back. Unable to breathe and feeling his legs go numb, Gladiator grits his teeth and slams his unbroken arm against the fracturing glass until it finally gives. Man-Killer and Gladiator go tumbling out of the building, locked in an embrace of combat.
It was with a combination of regret and satisfaction that Gladiator’s wife approached the edge of the window and looked down. Just below was Gladiator, hanging from a ledge by his broken arm. His battered helmet was twisted oddly, so that his right eye was staring up at her through the left eyehole.
“Please…”
“Oh honey, I wish I could.” She leaned forward. “This is one of those damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t moments, however. I do nothing, you fall, and my feasting is at an end. I save you, your despair ends, spoiling my meal. Better now if I just cut my losses.”
She straightened, and her form began to shift. Before the image of Gladiator’s wife was gone, however, a burst of fire exploded out of her chest. She staggers, looking down at Gladiator one last time before the face is replaced with that of a bone white skull surrounded by black. The creature, the demon, that Gladiator had believed was his dead wife fell out of the window. It tumbled past Gladiator as he screamed with anguish, slowly dissipating until it was nothing that reached the ground. Gladiator’s wail went on for much longer.
Replacing the demon at the window was Scourge, with a skull-face that resembled it somewhat. Scourge looked down at Gladiator, holding a smoking shotgun in a considering manner. At last, Scourge turned, choosing to leave Gladiator to his fate.
# # # # # # # # # #
When the attack came, Taproot was down in the basement, as close to the earth as he could get. It relaxed him, being able to hear the buds of life lurking just underneath. They understood him far more than his teammates, and certainly more than that so-called doctor.
“What he offers, it is a good thing,” Taproot said, half to the life and half to himself. “Once President, he can make it so much better for you all. More room to grow. Clear skies so you can feel the sun. An end to the poisons killing so many of you. None of which he intends to do of course.”
Taproot’s approximation of eyes shifted upward. “He doesn’t know it, but those lies he tells are the truth. Nor will he be the ones doing them, once the time is right.”
Among Taproot’s many powers was the ability to create and manipulate simulacra, complete duplicates of human beings that just happened to be made of plant. Soon, Zemo would be as dead as he claimed, and Taproot would be controlling the President of the United States. First order of business would be more conflict, whittle humanity down to a manageable number.
“Other animals are acceptable, needed even. But these humans are too destructive. Without them, we’ll be so much better off.”
A rumble could suddenly be felt, the whole building shaking. Taproot was one with the earth, and so knew that it wasn’t the cause. The source of the rumbling was coming from above. Taproot looked up again, saw that the ceiling was breaking apart. Some feet in front of him the basement caved in, the robotic TESS-One falling through with a great deal of rubble on top of him.
It was with minimal effort that TESS-One freed itself from the debris and rose to its feet. It noticed Taproot and, surprisingly, spoke. “What are you doing down here? We’re under attack again. Join me upstairs and help out!”
Without waiting for Taproot to give any response, TESS-One flew up through the hole from which it had fallen. It was as Taproot was rising to his feet that he noticed the air growing colder, and saw the massive block of ice forming.
“No,” whispered Taproot. “They seek to destroy us with fire and ice, undo all that I hope to achieved.” Taproot raised his arms and a new rumbling occurred, this time from beneath.
Peeking out through cracks in the concrete, a small plant had appeared at Taproot’s feet. It was growing in height and girth rapidly, approaching the ceiling in seconds.
“They wish me to help.” Taproot laughed. “I will help…them all to compost!”
# # # # # # # # # #
Next Issue: Beetle joins the fight, as Atlas and Songbird react to discovering a traitor! Citizen V battles Baron Zemo as the Black Archer’s identity is revealed! Round Two between Scourge and Overrider, with Taproot added to the mix. Plus, what exactly is Scarecrow doing?