Back to Gatefold
Issue #7 by Hunter Lambright
May 2012 |
“CHANGING SHAPE - Part Two: He Loves You”
Billy’s face contorted into a caricature of itself, made of equal parts concern, fear, and confusion. Tears streamed down Teddy’s face as he held his own sickly green hands away from his body as if they had an infection that he was afraid to spread across the rest of his skin. The ridged chin told Billy that it was an effort made in vain. Somehow, something had caused Teddy to transform—or was it revert?—into a Skrull. The light cast from the hallway barely lit Teddy’s form, but it was enough.
“What’s happening to me?” Teddy asked, his hands contorting in front of his face, growing scales, then spikes, then shifting into a silk-gloved woman’s hand, and back into the green again. “I can’t stop it!”
“Try to stay calm,” Billy said, mentally smacking himself for the useless advice. “Um, okay, tell me what happened and maybe we can reverse it.”
Teddy shuddered. “We were eating dinner. Then there was this—this voice in my head saying something like maybe…it felt like a call to arms. It felt like…like this guy was rallying an army.” Teddy turned his face away from Billy, choking down a bout of tears.
Billy took a step into the room, his hand outstretched in an awkward compromise between “comforting” and “unwilling to touch.” He cringed. “Sorry, Teddy. I’m sorry, but we’re going to find a way to make this okay.”
Teddy sniffled. “Sorry—sorry. There’s more. He said something like these people were—what’s the word? Sleeper agents. Like they had been here the whole time. And then he ended it with three words that triggered this whole thing.” He gestured at his green skin emphatically. “He said, ‘He loves you.’”
“Who loves you?”
“I don’t know. ‘He,’ I guess.” Teddy turned from the mirror to face Billy for the first time. “Billy, am I—am I a Skrull?”
“I don’t know. A stutterer, sure, but a Skrull? I can get the Avengers to…” Billy swallowed the words, forgetting that he was wearing jeans and a t-shirt. His Young Avengers costume was sopping wet with wine from his fight with the Squid and sitting in Walgreens bag dripping into red stains on the floor.
“The Avengers? How can we get them to help?”
Billy closed his eyes and swallowed hard. This was not what he had planned at all. He let the blue energy he commanded flow out through his eyes and around his limbs, carrying him a few inches off the ground. “Because I’m Wiccan, Teddy, and I swear to God that I’m going to make this turn out okay. Do you trust me?”
Teddy nodded, awestruck. “Avengers?”
Billy shook his head. “Young Avengers. Close enough. Are you ready?” Teddy nodded again. “Then take my hand.” Teddy’s green palm clasped around his, and Billy struggled to ignore the weakness that fluttered through his rib cage, instead beginning to chant his spell. “IwanttobeattheHideout… IwanttobeattheHideout… IwanttobeattheHideout…”
And in a flash of turquoise, they were gone.
# # # # #
They emerged from the folds of society that they had been placed in flawlessly. Mothers, fathers, children, grandparents. Businessmen, priests, teachers, doctors. When the Skrull Empire had been blown to near-destruction, Khn’nr had implanted them all in Earth society, waiting for the moment when he felt that their time had come—a time when Earth’s heroes had all but forgotten about the terrifying might of the Skrull Empire. He had done so with new technology, with new science, and with new philosophy.
“He loves you,” whispered Khn’nr, shedding the guise of the human Phil Lawson and taking on a more pertinent guise.
Blond hair sprouted from the top of his head, ending only when the dark, stretchy fabric of his mask hit his forehead. A star emblem was emblazoned across the chest of his red and blue costume.
He would claim Manhattan as a haven for the Skrull Empire, and he would do so with Earth’s greatest hero—and the Skrulls’ greatest enemy—as his guise.
Khn’nr rose to the sky as the Kree Mar-Vell and prepared to meet his foes.
# # # # #
The night sky was obscured by the lights of the city as Bryon looked down over the sea of concrete. “It’s different,” he said, pulling the Young Avenger cowl tight over his face. “I’m never going to get used to this.”
“Then don’t,” said the shadow, his constant companion ever since the mysterious figure had granted him his powers in the 1940s. “Complacency breeds carelessness, something a hero can’t afford.”
“I know,” Bryon said, shrugging it off. He turned to face the shadow, watching as it flickered in the weak, yellow light that splayed across the rooftop. “What are you training me for anyway? You hung around sixty years to see this through. I don’t even know who you are.”
“You were bound to have some questions, but it is sufficient to say that the world will need a hero one day, and I fully intend for you to be there when that happens,” the shadow said. “Beyond that, saying more will jeopardize the future.”
“Future? I’m in the future,” Bryon spat. “Everyone I ever cared about is either dead, decaying, or decrepit! You picked me in World War II for a fight after the millennium changed over? Or do you even know what you were supposed to do in the first place?”
There was a long silence. The shadow flickered, its limbs flowing into a shrug that turned sharp. “Bryon, I—look out!”
The explanation was cut short as a fireball blasted through the air where Bryon’s head had been a few seconds earlier. The Young Avenger had ducked and pulled his cape over his head, shielding him from the worst of the heat. “What was that?” he shouted.
The shadow’s response was drowned out by the roar of another fireball as the creature came into focus. It towered in the streets, standing so that its torso was at eye-level from the rooftop. It had grown from its human form upon its reawakening, shifting from flesh to its thick, green skin and activating the synthetic Pym particles that had lain dormant for years. The Skrull’s name was Criti Noll, and he had been intended to take the place of Giant-Man before his death. Now, all he wanted was to carve out the home that his lord had intended for them.
“Die, Avenger!” shouted the Skrull into its mouthpiece, wielding fire in one palm and armoring up its other arm at the same time. Metal plates shifted over its muscles reminiscent of the X-Man Colossus. This was the arm Criti Noll brought to bear on the rooftop.
Concrete rippled under the Young Avenger’s feet as it gave way, the structure underneath collapsing. Bryon ignored the screams he could hear from the street. He had to take the Skrull down first. The casualties would keep piling up the longer he left the giant-sized alien standing.
“What’s going on?” Bryon asked.
The shadow flitted up higher on the edge of a building for a better vantage point. “This is not the only one. It appears to be a Skrull attack on New York City.”
“Any heroes around?”
“None.”
“Get the Young Avengers ready, everyone who isn’t here now!” Bryon grunted, dodging the incoming metal fist. The rooftop buckled again.
“What about you?”
“I’m fine!” Bryon yelled. “If I can’t handle this, then I’m not ready for your stupid end-of-the-world crap, am I?”
“Point taken.” The shadow disappeared. If anything, Bryon would have sworn that it had sounded miffed.
Staring up at the behemoth, Bryon bit his lip. Okay, now he was alone…so how was he going to get out of this one?
# # # # #
The Hideout
A flash of blue light announced Teddy and Billy’s arrival in the Hideout.
Michael flinched and nearly fell out of his chair at the sudden teleportation. “Jeez!” he yelled. “Scared me. You need to like call ahead or something.”
“You sound like me talking to my mom when I watch porn,” Billy blurted, his face flushing red with embarrassment. “Er, sorry. I mean. Yeah. Bad things are happening. Where are the Avengers?”
“Responding to a call for help halfway across the world. A sailor from the United States got caught up in a freak typhoon that might have something to do with a super-villain. What’s going on?” Michael asked, wheeling his way back to the communicator screen. His eyes caught Teddy as he stepped into the light. “Oh. Oooooh. Crap.”
“Yeah, crap,” Teddy agreed. “I don’t know why I look like this. I think I might be a Skrull?”
Michael whistled. “I’m utterly impressed with the amount of doubt you were able to personally muster against the evidence.”
Billy shot him a look. “Dude. Not helping.”
“What? That’s like you coming in here with you Desperate Housewives box-set and suggesting that you might be gay,” Michael wisecracked.
“Seriously!” Billy said. His face was now several shades redder. “We have an issue here.”
“Right. Avengers.” Michael pulled up the screen, only to find that it was flashing full of red alert symbols. “Oh, damn. We don’t have time for the Avengers. Look!”
On the screen, security cameras were routed into the Hideout’s computer. Several picked up the giant Skrull fighting the Young Avenger. Others showed a group of Skrulls in superhero costumes attacking Central Park. More were scattered throughout the city. “Whatever’s happening? It’s happening all over.”
“We have to get out there. We have to help those people,” Billy said. “Where do they need us most?”
“You can’t be serious,” Teddy stepped in. “I can’t go out there! I don’t even know what I am!”
Billy cracked his neck. “Yeah? None of us do. Not really. And this is where we find out. Not about Skrulls and humans. This is the kind of stuff you figure out what you’re really made of. You in?”
Teddy opened his mouth, but Billy didn’t let him answer. Instead, he grabbed his shoulder and, frantically whispering a spell, the two disappeared in the same flash of blue light they arrived in.
Michael sighed. So this was what it was going to be like, huh? Sitting back in the Hideout, waiting for things to happen. He saw that Scott, Cassie, Eli, and Kate were on the Central Park scene. He wouldn’t even be needed to run the mission. This was the future for him. If he were some kind of brilliant hacker that could help out, sure, things wouldn’t be so bad, but this? This kinda sucked.
I WANT TO HELP YOU.
The words flashed on the computer screen in a new dialogue box. Michael quickly typed back.
Who are you?
A FRIEND.
If you’re a friend, you’d tell me who you are.
THAT’S NOT IMPORTANT. DO YOU WANT MY HELP?
The city’s under attack. I don’t have time for this.
YES YOU DO. THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT THIS IS ABOUT.
How can you help me then?
JUST SAY YES.
That’s it? No asking me for a favor later or something?
NO STRINGS ATTACHED.
Michael considered this for a moment, then began to type back.
Okay, I’ll bite. Help me.
HELP HAS ARRIVED.
Turning around, Michael saw that a giant crate had appeared. The dialogue box had completely cleared itself off the screen. The hair rose on the back of Michael’s neck. He wasn’t entirely sure what had happened, so he did exactly what anyone else would have done in his situation.
Wheeling over, he began to open the crate.
Blending in with the darkness of the Hideout, the shadow watched.
# # # # #
Billy and Teddy emerged on another rooftop, only to have it shift under their feet as the building began to collapse under the weight of a giant, metal fist. “Ah, crap!” Billy yelled. “Iwantthisbuildingevacuated… Iwantthisbuildingevacuated… Iwantthisbuildingevacuated…”
The building concrete under another pound of the metal fist. Billy screamed, unable to think of the words of another spell, only to find that he wasn’t dead yet. Strong arms gripped his armpits, holding him aloft with an unsteady beating that sounded like…wings?
“I have no idea what I’m doing, I swear!” Teddy yelled from above.
Billy eyed the twisted mess of concrete, metal, and glass below him. “Whatever you’re it is, keep doing it!”
He looked up and saw the Skrull attempting to swat something on his face. It darted from shoulder to jawbone and back down to the other shoulder. The Skrull missed the first time, unintentionally swatting itself in the cheek with a fiery open palm. It wasn’t until his eyes caught the red lining of the cape that Billy put it together. “It’s Bryon!”
Sure enough, the Young Avenger was putting his minor acrobatic skills to the test. Still, twice the stamina of a normal man didn’t mean he didn’t get winded as quickly in a doubly-trying situation, and each attempt to hit him off was getting closer and closer.
“We have to help him,” Teddy said, grunting as he shifted his flight path toward the Skrull. “Do something magic!”
“Like what? Want him to…to…er, let’s try… Iwanthimtoonlyhaveonepoweratatime… Iwanthimtoonlyhaveonepoweratatime… Iwanthimtoonlyhaveonepoweratatime…”
“It’s working!” Teddy yelled. As Billy spoke, the Skrull began to shrink. Its fiery arm extinguished itself, but the armor shifted to cover his entire form.
Before the Skrull shrunk too far, Bryon kicked off its chest, back-flipping into a crouch on the street. “That’s more like it,” he said.
The Skrull shook off its confusion and responded by clapping its metal hands with super-strength. The noise and sound wave together knocked Bryon off his feet.
Teddy dropped in for his first landing less than gracefully, dropping Billy a foot too high off the ground and crashing in a roll of reptilian wings. Billy was the first to his feet, just in time to see the Skrull advancing on Bryon ready to pound on him with its metal hands.
“He loves you,” the Skrull whispered.
“I never liked the Beatles,” Billy said, bringing his staff to bear on the Skrull. He had cast a spell, “wanting” it from his room. Now he used it to channel the lightning he “wanted” to fry the Skrull. Its eyes opening wide, the Skrull’s form conducted the electricity, taking it to the ground. Another minute of fitful spell-casting and searching for the right words, Billy stood over a Skrull bound in shackles made from the animated concrete of parts of the fallen building.
“Nice work,” Teddy said, walking in and rubbing his head where a fresh goose egg was growing on his temple. “She loves you.”
“What?”
“That’s the Beatles lyric. She loves you.”
“Hunh. That’s what I get for always making song lyrics about me.”
A pained groan came from a few feet away. “How many?” Bryon asked, picking himself up.
“What?”
Bryon gestured at the building. “How many were still inside when it went down?”
“None,” Billy said. “We got here in time for me to magick them away somewhere. I don’t know where, but they weren’t here.”
“As long as they aren’t in orbit, I’m not complaining,” Bryon replied. He gestured to the Skrull. “Now what?”
“We take him in?” Billy shrugged. “I don’t know. He broke some laws, right? Building breaking is against the law. WWTAD?”
Teddy and Bryon stared at him blankly.
“What Would The Avengers Do? Come on. Work with me here.”
# # # # #
Khn’nr stood before his queen. “They are ready, my love,” he said. “The island is ready for your taking.”
“We must stop them,” his queen said.
“I do not understand.”
“The Earth is populated with heroes. We must put them in a situation where we will have the island of Manhattan before they understand what has happened. With your sleeper activated, they are already prepared.”
“But my Queen…”
“No. What is happening now is…regrettable, but not beyond fixing. Here’s what we will do…”
# # # # #
“I instantly regret every mean thing I’ve ever said to you.”
Kate Bishop gritted her teeth as she unleashed three arrows at once. Each found its mark in the extremities of one of the Skrull attackers. “I can’t believe you’re choosing now to apologize!”
Eli dove behind her to avoid an acid blast from one of the Skrulls, chucking a handful of throwing stars as he did. “I was hoping you wouldn’t remember it with other things to concentrate on!”
“If you’re going to banter, do it with the bad guys! Banter throws people off!” Ant-Man suggested, riding by on an ant as he commanded the colonies of Central Park to attack and bite several of the nearby Skrulls, throwing their aim wildly off.
Stature flicked a pair of Skrulls, sending them crashing into trees. “I’m going to wake up with the worst welts,” she said, fending off two more Skrulls that had already made their way to her thigh.
“Increasing your size means increasing how much of a target you are,” Scott said. “Be careful to search out for any long-range attackers. It’s easy for them to damage your eye when that eye is a few feet across instead of an inch.”
“Noted, Dad,” Cassie muttered, continuing to fight at the same size.
Kate shot another Skrull in the arm so that he fell from Cassie’s calf, then diverted her attention to a pair of incoming flyers. “These guys are sending in reinforcements!”
“HALT!”
Eli’s jaw dropped. “Is that…Captain Marvel?”
The hero Mar-Vell dropped to the ground in Central Park flanked by a Skrull dressed in what could only have been royal garb. She flaunted her sexuality, smoothing her skin out and accenting the curves to make her gender readily apparent.
“People of New York City! I beg you to stop fighting! These Skrulls have attacked because they feared the retaliation of the people of Earth! The Empire is in pieces. They merely seek a home here.”
Scott landed his ant on Kate’s shoulder. “I thought Mar-Vell was dead. This is…a new development.
Mar-Vell continued. “Queen Veranke makes this request knowing that the Skrulls have long had conflict with the heroes of New York. She asks you to stand down until we can sort out the potential this new relationship might have.”
Veranke stepped forward and held her arms out for the few gathering people. “Understand that we know there will be bumps in the road, but it is our hope that America, with its history of openness to accepting the oppressed and needy, will become a home for our race.”
Eli winced. “She laid it on a little thick, didn’t she?”
Scott dismissed the comment. “I’m going to go talk to Mar-Vell, see what’s going on. I’m the only other Avenger around on this one.”
He used his helmet to command the ant to fly toward Mar-Vell, only to find the ant had overridden his commands on a basic survival instinct. He heard the hissing energy of Mar-Vell’s force field as he grabbed Veranke under the arms and lifted off, leaving Scott behind, hovering outside where the force field had been.
“Something’s not right here,” he reported back to the three Young Avengers in the park and returning to full size. “With everyone else gone, that means it’s going to be up to us to figure out what that is.”
Eli frowned. “Something’s fishy. If I hadn’t seen the power bands in action, I’d bet that Mar-Vell is a Skrull.”
“What if they’ve found a way to replicate that?” Kate asked. “From what I’m getting out of people, they saw Skrulls with other familiar, distinctive super-powers. This lady said she saw one wall-crawling like Spider-Man. Maybe that’s not all they can replicate.”
Scott shook his head. “I don’t know anything yet, but I’m going to try to find out. If Reed Richards is in town, he has the best shot at helping me figure this out. Unfortunately, their wounded disappeared with their queen. It’d be nice to have a Skrull to figure out what they did here.”
Cassie piped in. “One guy was saying that his friend turned into a Skrull. He’d only known the guy for a year or something, but suddenly the guy Skrulled out.”
“Then we might have an ongoing sleeper problem,” Scott said. “These are all good questions. Whatever you do here, don’t fight the Skrulls. I don’t want to break whatever peace this Mar-Vell, whether he’s the real one or not, seems to have brokered.”
“What do we do now?” Cassie asked. “Do we call the Avengers in?”
“They’re occupied, and I don’t know how much longer that’s going to be the case,” Scott said. “I’ll make some calls, but for all intents and purposes? We’re the Avengers here.”
# # # # #
“Michael? Anyone? Hello?”
The words buzzed in on the communications system in the Hideout, but Michael was no longer at the screen. His wheelchair lay discarded on its side.
Michael felt the pulleys around his wrists, teaching himself how to use them to move his feet even while he moved his arms. The multitasking took every ounce of concentration he had. He pulled and the right ankle lifted off the ground, promptly stopping in midair. For a brief moment, he stood still before the entire carapace fell over, leaving Michael cursing as the wooden table splintered under his weight.
“Query: Activate automatic mobilization systems?” A voice came at him from somewhere behind his right ear, something not quite human.
Michael growled. “Why didn’t you tell me earlier?”
“As a computer system, I am trained to respond to specific signals. It was not obvious you were struggling until now,” the voice responded in its speakerbox tone. “Activate?”
“Yes, yes activate,” Michael said. He gritted his teeth together as his legs picked themselves up and he found himself upright again with no particular effort. “How do I control this?”
“Think and it will happen,” the voice responded. Michael exhaled. Think. That’s all it wanted him to do, and he was good at thinking. He did way too much of it for his own good. “It is my observation that you are trying too hard. Simply think.”
“What the hell do you think I’m doing?”
“Trying.” The computer voice seemed frustrated. “Before your injury, did you tell your feet to walk? Or did you just walk?”
The tip of Michael’s tongue stuck between his teeth in concentration. He squinted as he tried to remember what it was like to walk without sitting in that wheelchair, begging his toes to wiggle. He had tried to walk so often since the accident that simply thinking about walking was a thing of the past. Trying was all he remembered how to do. If things took effort, they took cognition just as much as they did physical movement. He shouted in exasperation, feeling his own damp breath bounce off the metal in front of him and cloud his vision.
“Good job.”
The fog cleared and Michael saw that he had walked the suit straight into one of the mirrors that lined the back wall of the Hideout. He hadn’t even felt the glass crunch and form spider-web cracks against his carapace. He had done it. He had walked without forcing himself to, and he had only thought about not thinking about it, while doing it without knowing it. If anything, he was more impressed than confused. “Whoa.”
“Operation query: How do you wish for me to refer to you?”
“Everyone else gets a cool codename, right?” Michael surveyed himself in the cracked mirror. Sleek, shiny gray armor covered his body. He gazed at the improvements through two horizontal slits in the facemask of the armor, hearing the emergency alarm signaling that everyone he cared about was in extreme danger as he did. “Everyone else gets a cool codename, right?”
“Call me the Iron Manacle.”
TO BE CONTINUED...
“What’s happening to me?” Teddy asked, his hands contorting in front of his face, growing scales, then spikes, then shifting into a silk-gloved woman’s hand, and back into the green again. “I can’t stop it!”
“Try to stay calm,” Billy said, mentally smacking himself for the useless advice. “Um, okay, tell me what happened and maybe we can reverse it.”
Teddy shuddered. “We were eating dinner. Then there was this—this voice in my head saying something like maybe…it felt like a call to arms. It felt like…like this guy was rallying an army.” Teddy turned his face away from Billy, choking down a bout of tears.
Billy took a step into the room, his hand outstretched in an awkward compromise between “comforting” and “unwilling to touch.” He cringed. “Sorry, Teddy. I’m sorry, but we’re going to find a way to make this okay.”
Teddy sniffled. “Sorry—sorry. There’s more. He said something like these people were—what’s the word? Sleeper agents. Like they had been here the whole time. And then he ended it with three words that triggered this whole thing.” He gestured at his green skin emphatically. “He said, ‘He loves you.’”
“Who loves you?”
“I don’t know. ‘He,’ I guess.” Teddy turned from the mirror to face Billy for the first time. “Billy, am I—am I a Skrull?”
“I don’t know. A stutterer, sure, but a Skrull? I can get the Avengers to…” Billy swallowed the words, forgetting that he was wearing jeans and a t-shirt. His Young Avengers costume was sopping wet with wine from his fight with the Squid and sitting in Walgreens bag dripping into red stains on the floor.
“The Avengers? How can we get them to help?”
Billy closed his eyes and swallowed hard. This was not what he had planned at all. He let the blue energy he commanded flow out through his eyes and around his limbs, carrying him a few inches off the ground. “Because I’m Wiccan, Teddy, and I swear to God that I’m going to make this turn out okay. Do you trust me?”
Teddy nodded, awestruck. “Avengers?”
Billy shook his head. “Young Avengers. Close enough. Are you ready?” Teddy nodded again. “Then take my hand.” Teddy’s green palm clasped around his, and Billy struggled to ignore the weakness that fluttered through his rib cage, instead beginning to chant his spell. “IwanttobeattheHideout… IwanttobeattheHideout… IwanttobeattheHideout…”
And in a flash of turquoise, they were gone.
# # # # #
They emerged from the folds of society that they had been placed in flawlessly. Mothers, fathers, children, grandparents. Businessmen, priests, teachers, doctors. When the Skrull Empire had been blown to near-destruction, Khn’nr had implanted them all in Earth society, waiting for the moment when he felt that their time had come—a time when Earth’s heroes had all but forgotten about the terrifying might of the Skrull Empire. He had done so with new technology, with new science, and with new philosophy.
“He loves you,” whispered Khn’nr, shedding the guise of the human Phil Lawson and taking on a more pertinent guise.
Blond hair sprouted from the top of his head, ending only when the dark, stretchy fabric of his mask hit his forehead. A star emblem was emblazoned across the chest of his red and blue costume.
He would claim Manhattan as a haven for the Skrull Empire, and he would do so with Earth’s greatest hero—and the Skrulls’ greatest enemy—as his guise.
Khn’nr rose to the sky as the Kree Mar-Vell and prepared to meet his foes.
# # # # #
The night sky was obscured by the lights of the city as Bryon looked down over the sea of concrete. “It’s different,” he said, pulling the Young Avenger cowl tight over his face. “I’m never going to get used to this.”
“Then don’t,” said the shadow, his constant companion ever since the mysterious figure had granted him his powers in the 1940s. “Complacency breeds carelessness, something a hero can’t afford.”
“I know,” Bryon said, shrugging it off. He turned to face the shadow, watching as it flickered in the weak, yellow light that splayed across the rooftop. “What are you training me for anyway? You hung around sixty years to see this through. I don’t even know who you are.”
“You were bound to have some questions, but it is sufficient to say that the world will need a hero one day, and I fully intend for you to be there when that happens,” the shadow said. “Beyond that, saying more will jeopardize the future.”
“Future? I’m in the future,” Bryon spat. “Everyone I ever cared about is either dead, decaying, or decrepit! You picked me in World War II for a fight after the millennium changed over? Or do you even know what you were supposed to do in the first place?”
There was a long silence. The shadow flickered, its limbs flowing into a shrug that turned sharp. “Bryon, I—look out!”
The explanation was cut short as a fireball blasted through the air where Bryon’s head had been a few seconds earlier. The Young Avenger had ducked and pulled his cape over his head, shielding him from the worst of the heat. “What was that?” he shouted.
The shadow’s response was drowned out by the roar of another fireball as the creature came into focus. It towered in the streets, standing so that its torso was at eye-level from the rooftop. It had grown from its human form upon its reawakening, shifting from flesh to its thick, green skin and activating the synthetic Pym particles that had lain dormant for years. The Skrull’s name was Criti Noll, and he had been intended to take the place of Giant-Man before his death. Now, all he wanted was to carve out the home that his lord had intended for them.
“Die, Avenger!” shouted the Skrull into its mouthpiece, wielding fire in one palm and armoring up its other arm at the same time. Metal plates shifted over its muscles reminiscent of the X-Man Colossus. This was the arm Criti Noll brought to bear on the rooftop.
Concrete rippled under the Young Avenger’s feet as it gave way, the structure underneath collapsing. Bryon ignored the screams he could hear from the street. He had to take the Skrull down first. The casualties would keep piling up the longer he left the giant-sized alien standing.
“What’s going on?” Bryon asked.
The shadow flitted up higher on the edge of a building for a better vantage point. “This is not the only one. It appears to be a Skrull attack on New York City.”
“Any heroes around?”
“None.”
“Get the Young Avengers ready, everyone who isn’t here now!” Bryon grunted, dodging the incoming metal fist. The rooftop buckled again.
“What about you?”
“I’m fine!” Bryon yelled. “If I can’t handle this, then I’m not ready for your stupid end-of-the-world crap, am I?”
“Point taken.” The shadow disappeared. If anything, Bryon would have sworn that it had sounded miffed.
Staring up at the behemoth, Bryon bit his lip. Okay, now he was alone…so how was he going to get out of this one?
# # # # #
The Hideout
A flash of blue light announced Teddy and Billy’s arrival in the Hideout.
Michael flinched and nearly fell out of his chair at the sudden teleportation. “Jeez!” he yelled. “Scared me. You need to like call ahead or something.”
“You sound like me talking to my mom when I watch porn,” Billy blurted, his face flushing red with embarrassment. “Er, sorry. I mean. Yeah. Bad things are happening. Where are the Avengers?”
“Responding to a call for help halfway across the world. A sailor from the United States got caught up in a freak typhoon that might have something to do with a super-villain. What’s going on?” Michael asked, wheeling his way back to the communicator screen. His eyes caught Teddy as he stepped into the light. “Oh. Oooooh. Crap.”
“Yeah, crap,” Teddy agreed. “I don’t know why I look like this. I think I might be a Skrull?”
Michael whistled. “I’m utterly impressed with the amount of doubt you were able to personally muster against the evidence.”
Billy shot him a look. “Dude. Not helping.”
“What? That’s like you coming in here with you Desperate Housewives box-set and suggesting that you might be gay,” Michael wisecracked.
“Seriously!” Billy said. His face was now several shades redder. “We have an issue here.”
“Right. Avengers.” Michael pulled up the screen, only to find that it was flashing full of red alert symbols. “Oh, damn. We don’t have time for the Avengers. Look!”
On the screen, security cameras were routed into the Hideout’s computer. Several picked up the giant Skrull fighting the Young Avenger. Others showed a group of Skrulls in superhero costumes attacking Central Park. More were scattered throughout the city. “Whatever’s happening? It’s happening all over.”
“We have to get out there. We have to help those people,” Billy said. “Where do they need us most?”
“You can’t be serious,” Teddy stepped in. “I can’t go out there! I don’t even know what I am!”
Billy cracked his neck. “Yeah? None of us do. Not really. And this is where we find out. Not about Skrulls and humans. This is the kind of stuff you figure out what you’re really made of. You in?”
Teddy opened his mouth, but Billy didn’t let him answer. Instead, he grabbed his shoulder and, frantically whispering a spell, the two disappeared in the same flash of blue light they arrived in.
Michael sighed. So this was what it was going to be like, huh? Sitting back in the Hideout, waiting for things to happen. He saw that Scott, Cassie, Eli, and Kate were on the Central Park scene. He wouldn’t even be needed to run the mission. This was the future for him. If he were some kind of brilliant hacker that could help out, sure, things wouldn’t be so bad, but this? This kinda sucked.
I WANT TO HELP YOU.
The words flashed on the computer screen in a new dialogue box. Michael quickly typed back.
Who are you?
A FRIEND.
If you’re a friend, you’d tell me who you are.
THAT’S NOT IMPORTANT. DO YOU WANT MY HELP?
The city’s under attack. I don’t have time for this.
YES YOU DO. THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT THIS IS ABOUT.
How can you help me then?
JUST SAY YES.
That’s it? No asking me for a favor later or something?
NO STRINGS ATTACHED.
Michael considered this for a moment, then began to type back.
Okay, I’ll bite. Help me.
HELP HAS ARRIVED.
Turning around, Michael saw that a giant crate had appeared. The dialogue box had completely cleared itself off the screen. The hair rose on the back of Michael’s neck. He wasn’t entirely sure what had happened, so he did exactly what anyone else would have done in his situation.
Wheeling over, he began to open the crate.
Blending in with the darkness of the Hideout, the shadow watched.
# # # # #
Billy and Teddy emerged on another rooftop, only to have it shift under their feet as the building began to collapse under the weight of a giant, metal fist. “Ah, crap!” Billy yelled. “Iwantthisbuildingevacuated… Iwantthisbuildingevacuated… Iwantthisbuildingevacuated…”
The building concrete under another pound of the metal fist. Billy screamed, unable to think of the words of another spell, only to find that he wasn’t dead yet. Strong arms gripped his armpits, holding him aloft with an unsteady beating that sounded like…wings?
“I have no idea what I’m doing, I swear!” Teddy yelled from above.
Billy eyed the twisted mess of concrete, metal, and glass below him. “Whatever you’re it is, keep doing it!”
He looked up and saw the Skrull attempting to swat something on his face. It darted from shoulder to jawbone and back down to the other shoulder. The Skrull missed the first time, unintentionally swatting itself in the cheek with a fiery open palm. It wasn’t until his eyes caught the red lining of the cape that Billy put it together. “It’s Bryon!”
Sure enough, the Young Avenger was putting his minor acrobatic skills to the test. Still, twice the stamina of a normal man didn’t mean he didn’t get winded as quickly in a doubly-trying situation, and each attempt to hit him off was getting closer and closer.
“We have to help him,” Teddy said, grunting as he shifted his flight path toward the Skrull. “Do something magic!”
“Like what? Want him to…to…er, let’s try… Iwanthimtoonlyhaveonepoweratatime… Iwanthimtoonlyhaveonepoweratatime… Iwanthimtoonlyhaveonepoweratatime…”
“It’s working!” Teddy yelled. As Billy spoke, the Skrull began to shrink. Its fiery arm extinguished itself, but the armor shifted to cover his entire form.
Before the Skrull shrunk too far, Bryon kicked off its chest, back-flipping into a crouch on the street. “That’s more like it,” he said.
The Skrull shook off its confusion and responded by clapping its metal hands with super-strength. The noise and sound wave together knocked Bryon off his feet.
Teddy dropped in for his first landing less than gracefully, dropping Billy a foot too high off the ground and crashing in a roll of reptilian wings. Billy was the first to his feet, just in time to see the Skrull advancing on Bryon ready to pound on him with its metal hands.
“He loves you,” the Skrull whispered.
“I never liked the Beatles,” Billy said, bringing his staff to bear on the Skrull. He had cast a spell, “wanting” it from his room. Now he used it to channel the lightning he “wanted” to fry the Skrull. Its eyes opening wide, the Skrull’s form conducted the electricity, taking it to the ground. Another minute of fitful spell-casting and searching for the right words, Billy stood over a Skrull bound in shackles made from the animated concrete of parts of the fallen building.
“Nice work,” Teddy said, walking in and rubbing his head where a fresh goose egg was growing on his temple. “She loves you.”
“What?”
“That’s the Beatles lyric. She loves you.”
“Hunh. That’s what I get for always making song lyrics about me.”
A pained groan came from a few feet away. “How many?” Bryon asked, picking himself up.
“What?”
Bryon gestured at the building. “How many were still inside when it went down?”
“None,” Billy said. “We got here in time for me to magick them away somewhere. I don’t know where, but they weren’t here.”
“As long as they aren’t in orbit, I’m not complaining,” Bryon replied. He gestured to the Skrull. “Now what?”
“We take him in?” Billy shrugged. “I don’t know. He broke some laws, right? Building breaking is against the law. WWTAD?”
Teddy and Bryon stared at him blankly.
“What Would The Avengers Do? Come on. Work with me here.”
# # # # #
Khn’nr stood before his queen. “They are ready, my love,” he said. “The island is ready for your taking.”
“We must stop them,” his queen said.
“I do not understand.”
“The Earth is populated with heroes. We must put them in a situation where we will have the island of Manhattan before they understand what has happened. With your sleeper activated, they are already prepared.”
“But my Queen…”
“No. What is happening now is…regrettable, but not beyond fixing. Here’s what we will do…”
# # # # #
“I instantly regret every mean thing I’ve ever said to you.”
Kate Bishop gritted her teeth as she unleashed three arrows at once. Each found its mark in the extremities of one of the Skrull attackers. “I can’t believe you’re choosing now to apologize!”
Eli dove behind her to avoid an acid blast from one of the Skrulls, chucking a handful of throwing stars as he did. “I was hoping you wouldn’t remember it with other things to concentrate on!”
“If you’re going to banter, do it with the bad guys! Banter throws people off!” Ant-Man suggested, riding by on an ant as he commanded the colonies of Central Park to attack and bite several of the nearby Skrulls, throwing their aim wildly off.
Stature flicked a pair of Skrulls, sending them crashing into trees. “I’m going to wake up with the worst welts,” she said, fending off two more Skrulls that had already made their way to her thigh.
“Increasing your size means increasing how much of a target you are,” Scott said. “Be careful to search out for any long-range attackers. It’s easy for them to damage your eye when that eye is a few feet across instead of an inch.”
“Noted, Dad,” Cassie muttered, continuing to fight at the same size.
Kate shot another Skrull in the arm so that he fell from Cassie’s calf, then diverted her attention to a pair of incoming flyers. “These guys are sending in reinforcements!”
“HALT!”
Eli’s jaw dropped. “Is that…Captain Marvel?”
The hero Mar-Vell dropped to the ground in Central Park flanked by a Skrull dressed in what could only have been royal garb. She flaunted her sexuality, smoothing her skin out and accenting the curves to make her gender readily apparent.
“People of New York City! I beg you to stop fighting! These Skrulls have attacked because they feared the retaliation of the people of Earth! The Empire is in pieces. They merely seek a home here.”
Scott landed his ant on Kate’s shoulder. “I thought Mar-Vell was dead. This is…a new development.
Mar-Vell continued. “Queen Veranke makes this request knowing that the Skrulls have long had conflict with the heroes of New York. She asks you to stand down until we can sort out the potential this new relationship might have.”
Veranke stepped forward and held her arms out for the few gathering people. “Understand that we know there will be bumps in the road, but it is our hope that America, with its history of openness to accepting the oppressed and needy, will become a home for our race.”
Eli winced. “She laid it on a little thick, didn’t she?”
Scott dismissed the comment. “I’m going to go talk to Mar-Vell, see what’s going on. I’m the only other Avenger around on this one.”
He used his helmet to command the ant to fly toward Mar-Vell, only to find the ant had overridden his commands on a basic survival instinct. He heard the hissing energy of Mar-Vell’s force field as he grabbed Veranke under the arms and lifted off, leaving Scott behind, hovering outside where the force field had been.
“Something’s not right here,” he reported back to the three Young Avengers in the park and returning to full size. “With everyone else gone, that means it’s going to be up to us to figure out what that is.”
Eli frowned. “Something’s fishy. If I hadn’t seen the power bands in action, I’d bet that Mar-Vell is a Skrull.”
“What if they’ve found a way to replicate that?” Kate asked. “From what I’m getting out of people, they saw Skrulls with other familiar, distinctive super-powers. This lady said she saw one wall-crawling like Spider-Man. Maybe that’s not all they can replicate.”
Scott shook his head. “I don’t know anything yet, but I’m going to try to find out. If Reed Richards is in town, he has the best shot at helping me figure this out. Unfortunately, their wounded disappeared with their queen. It’d be nice to have a Skrull to figure out what they did here.”
Cassie piped in. “One guy was saying that his friend turned into a Skrull. He’d only known the guy for a year or something, but suddenly the guy Skrulled out.”
“Then we might have an ongoing sleeper problem,” Scott said. “These are all good questions. Whatever you do here, don’t fight the Skrulls. I don’t want to break whatever peace this Mar-Vell, whether he’s the real one or not, seems to have brokered.”
“What do we do now?” Cassie asked. “Do we call the Avengers in?”
“They’re occupied, and I don’t know how much longer that’s going to be the case,” Scott said. “I’ll make some calls, but for all intents and purposes? We’re the Avengers here.”
# # # # #
“Michael? Anyone? Hello?”
The words buzzed in on the communications system in the Hideout, but Michael was no longer at the screen. His wheelchair lay discarded on its side.
Michael felt the pulleys around his wrists, teaching himself how to use them to move his feet even while he moved his arms. The multitasking took every ounce of concentration he had. He pulled and the right ankle lifted off the ground, promptly stopping in midair. For a brief moment, he stood still before the entire carapace fell over, leaving Michael cursing as the wooden table splintered under his weight.
“Query: Activate automatic mobilization systems?” A voice came at him from somewhere behind his right ear, something not quite human.
Michael growled. “Why didn’t you tell me earlier?”
“As a computer system, I am trained to respond to specific signals. It was not obvious you were struggling until now,” the voice responded in its speakerbox tone. “Activate?”
“Yes, yes activate,” Michael said. He gritted his teeth together as his legs picked themselves up and he found himself upright again with no particular effort. “How do I control this?”
“Think and it will happen,” the voice responded. Michael exhaled. Think. That’s all it wanted him to do, and he was good at thinking. He did way too much of it for his own good. “It is my observation that you are trying too hard. Simply think.”
“What the hell do you think I’m doing?”
“Trying.” The computer voice seemed frustrated. “Before your injury, did you tell your feet to walk? Or did you just walk?”
The tip of Michael’s tongue stuck between his teeth in concentration. He squinted as he tried to remember what it was like to walk without sitting in that wheelchair, begging his toes to wiggle. He had tried to walk so often since the accident that simply thinking about walking was a thing of the past. Trying was all he remembered how to do. If things took effort, they took cognition just as much as they did physical movement. He shouted in exasperation, feeling his own damp breath bounce off the metal in front of him and cloud his vision.
“Good job.”
The fog cleared and Michael saw that he had walked the suit straight into one of the mirrors that lined the back wall of the Hideout. He hadn’t even felt the glass crunch and form spider-web cracks against his carapace. He had done it. He had walked without forcing himself to, and he had only thought about not thinking about it, while doing it without knowing it. If anything, he was more impressed than confused. “Whoa.”
“Operation query: How do you wish for me to refer to you?”
“Everyone else gets a cool codename, right?” Michael surveyed himself in the cracked mirror. Sleek, shiny gray armor covered his body. He gazed at the improvements through two horizontal slits in the facemask of the armor, hearing the emergency alarm signaling that everyone he cared about was in extreme danger as he did. “Everyone else gets a cool codename, right?”
“Call me the Iron Manacle.”
TO BE CONTINUED...