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Issue #8 by Hunter Lambright
Feb 2016 |
“STOPGAP”
[This issue takes place before the events of Avengers #64]
This is the story of the day the Young Avengers were the last line of defense between a fraction of an empire and all of life on Earth itself.
This is the story of the day the Young Avengers became heroes.
The sky was peppered with green men, flying under the power of wings of their own creation. Each Skrull on this mission had been given the powers and identity of a dead earthling, but the programming phase had been cut short. Many had only the powers and memories of those whose lives they were meant to take.
They were meant to infiltrate and live peacefully, called to war only if threatened. Instead, Veranke saw the power that her army wielded and decided that they would bring war to earth instead of waiting for earth to provoke war.
“He loves you,” she said, and they rose to battle.
They heeded the call of their queen, raining blasts of fire, ice, and lightning on the people of New York City. They preyed on fear and disarray, the tools of expert invaders. The more the people scattered, the more likely the victory. Ants may be easier to stomp in a group, but the Skrulls found that the people of Earth were even easier to wipe out when they turned their backs and ran.
This is not the story of cowardice and self-preservation. This is the story of those who stayed and fought.
The Young Avengers fought back with shields and arrows, with magic, insects, and pummeling fists. They fought back in a coordinated effort to defend their people. Their strategy was simple. If they made themselves the most devastating target, they could stop the Skrull army from taking the cheap shots at fleeing New Yorkers.
Ant-Man kept the Young Avengers in formation. Scott Lang fought with the fury of a man at his daughter’s side. The swarms of ants at his command flanked the enemy as Patriot led a full frontal assault.
“Aim for the queen!” he shouted. Scott knew colonies well, and the Skrulls, though independent thinkers, behaved as any other hive. His hope was that the the Skrulls relied entirely on their queen. Any second-in-command would defer to her, and two second-in-commands would confuse them further if the queen were taken out.
The queen, a Skrull woman with the red-and-black suit of a former Spider-Woman, dodged attacks with grace, gliding on air. Green electricity crackled at her neurotoxin-laced fingertips.
Ant-Man focused on a swarm of drones and brought them in behind the queen, but her electrical field zapped them before they could so much as pester her.
Scott wondered if that she saw the people of Earth the way she saw his ants—as mere annoyances to be dealt with.
This is the story of a handful against an army, and a woman without superpowers against an army with many.
Kate Bishop nocked arrow after arrow. Her aim was true, and the Skrulls’ eyesight was poor. A handful of Skrulls caught on to her aim and began producing additional decoy eyeballs to offset her aim, but Kate held her breath and waited for the Skrull to blink. The eyes that blinked a split-second ahead of the rest found an arrowhead embedded in their pupils.
Every few shots, she ran to the fallen forms of Skrulls and pried her arrows from their eye sockets. It was morbid work, but it kept her in the fight. She ignored her internal moral directives against killing. When this became war, everything else went out the window. Ruthlessness was a new look for her, but she wore it well.
Kate dodged and weaved, bending again to pluck at another arrow when a sharp projectile slammed into her back, sending her careening to the ground. The ground where she stood a split-second before was scorched, and in the ashes stood a young man in a suit of metal.
Originally a hulking suit, the metal had reformed as it connected with Michael’s mind in the Hideout, shedding its tank-like appearance and molding itself into a sleek, hyperdense silver suit with glowing turquoise eyes.
The Iron Manacle offered Kate an outstretched iron gauntlet. “What, you don’t recognize the haircut?”
“Michael?” She took his hand, and Michael hauled Kate to her feet.
“I’m back,” he said. “I’m really, really back.”
The moment shattered as two Skrulls dropped to ground-level next to them. The Skrull closest to Kate wore the molded, purple helmet of Power Princess and the multicolor outfit of Doctor Spectrum. Her eyes glowed with Hyperion’s eye-blasts. The Skrull on Michael’s side leapt with frog legs and wore a web-patterned tunic. Four coils of silk webbing curled out of its back and ended in sharp, clicking pincers.
For Michael, this was story of the day that he earned his stripes as a Young Avenger. He stepped toward his Skrull, held up his left forearm, and willed the metal to rise into sharp arrowheads. With a flick of his wrist, the flechettes shot toward the Spider-Skrull. The same motion on the other arm forced the Skrull on Kate’s side to defend itself, giving her a moment to pluck and arrow from her quiver, draw, and shoot.
Michael’s world inverted. The Spider-Skrull’s silk appendages grasped at three of his limbs and brought him to the ground. He willed the repulsors at his left leg to come to life, ripping him from the Skrull’s grasp. He cried out as he skidded backwards across the dirt. When he came to a halt, he lifted his right arm and pulled a trigger with his left. A small rocket looped out of his wrist and toward the Skrull. On contact with its eye, a small, meaty explosion signaled the Skrull’s death.
Kate plucked her arrows from the corpse of the dead Squadron Supreme Skrull. Wordlessly, the two rejoined the larger fight.
# # # # #
Cassie Lang had always been a girl stuck between two worlds. On one side of the divide, a father on a constant path to redemption, never quite all the way there in his own eyes, but redeemed a hundred times over in hers. He was her hero in every sense of the word, to the point that she became a heroine in her own right just to be like him. In some ways, she was just like Ant-Man, but larger than life.
On the other side of the divide was her mother, trying in the way that mothers do sometimes to give her everything she thought a little girl wanted by hoping that Cassie would emulate her dreams. Hours of dance recitals from her formative years bubbled to the surface, hoping that she would make her mother proud even though she secretly turned on the news at night to watch superhero fight footage and tied a cape around her neck as she danced, making whooshing noises as the explosions rattled the cameras on-screen.
This was the day that both Cassies formed one, as Stature found herself in a battle where identity was everything that was on the line. Skrulls fired blast after blast at her, but every dodge, dip, and duck was performed with grace, changing size to avoid attacks that would have crippled her larger self and emerging from her diminutive state to pack even more force behind each punch.
Scott flitted around Cassie’s shoulders, allowing him this one second to watch her in awe. For years, he’d been convinced he’d failed Cassie as a father. Every one of Peggy’s disdainful stares, crystal clear in his memory, was shattered at the sight of Stature in true, superheroic form.
This is the story of a father’s pride at seeing his daughter in the element she was born for. This is the story of a daughter finding her center and her place in a world that was suddenly much, much larger—even for a girl who could change size.
# # # # #
This is the story of a young warlock and a boy who had just discovered that he was a monster.
Wiccan willed a series of turquoise energy bolts at a wall of Skrulls, ripped straight from a magical sub-dimension. The magic flashed through the Skrulls’ reptilian skin. Wounds erupted with viscous, green fluid. If nothing else, magic seemed to be the Skrulls’ major weakness. If they found a way to block magic, he was out of luck.
The Skrulls surged toward him, and Billy whispered a steady chant of “iwanttofly…iwanttofly…” until his cape billowed around him and he rose into the sky.
Desire-based powers had one fatal flaw in Billy’s mind. He spent so much time in combat wishing up solutions to his problems, but there were some problems that were impossible to will away. His eyes drifted toward a hesitant, green-skinned figure below.
Teddy flexed his arms and felt their mass increase in response. His shapeshifting abilities hadn’t even been active for an hour yet, but he they felt natural to him, like a piece of him had been missing all along. A Skrull hurtled toward him with Cannonball’s blast field pattern, but Teddy socked it in the jaw to redirect its flight path upward. His hand compressed with the blow to absorb the bulk of it.
The sky lit up in a brilliant explosion of light and energy followed by the sound of chunks of meat raining from the sky.
“Sorry!” Billy called down. “I didn’t know that would happen!” His eyes opened wide. Then he drew a finger pistol and fired another shot of energy behind Teddy. Another Skrull fell to pieces just feet from Teddy.
“Thanks!” Teddy said. He whipped around in a circle, growing a long, spiked tail in the process. It cleared a ten foot radius of Skrulls. Teddy grew a pair of thick, dragon-like wings to cover Billy’s descent.
Billy touched down on the ground. “I’ve got this side. You have my back?”
“Definitely,” Teddy said, and in that moment he knew it was true. A day ago, the biggest thing he had to worry about was his burgeoning feelings for Billy. Today, he hadn’t even begun to process this total breakdown of his humanity, but he had a feeling Billy would be there for whatever came next.
“Good,” Billy said, allowing himself a small smile before the two flew into the fray once more.
# # # # #
This is the story of two soldiers, one out of time and one whose war started yesterday.
Seriously, a gun? When I gave you your powers, this wasn’t what I had in mind.
“This isn’t the war you trained me for, shadow,” the Young Avenger protested. Bryon pivoted and pulled the trigger, opening up a hole in the skull of a Skrull that had gotten a little too close.
And this has demonstrated that we’ve drifted even further from our goal of freeing your fellow heroes from the Freezer, the shadow admonished. I have one blinded on your six.
Bryon spun again, spotted the Skrull with the shadow’s darkness over its eyes, and fired. “Got him. Look, the gun is drastic, but also not the point. We survive this, my number one priority is the Freezer. We’ll find Narfi. I can’t do any of that if I don’t live through the afternoon.”
I know it, but I don’t like the way this has gone. You’ve strayed, Bryon, the shadow said.
“Let’s talk about other things,” Bryon said. He kicked backwards off a Skrull’s kneecap and into a second fist-first. “Did you have anything to do with Michael’s new duds?”
The Iron Manacle? the shadow asked. No. I’m apparently not the only mysterious benefactor this team has.
“That’s another thing,” Bryon said. Another gunshot sounded, another Skrull toppled. “Before this all ends, I plan on finding out who you are.”
I’ll add it to the list I have in our conversation about your priorities, the shadow shot back.
“Duck and cover!” Patriot’s arm wrapped around the Young Avenger’s torso and took him to the ground, holding his shield up over both of them. A blazing flash of light bounced off the metal, leaving sizzling scorch marks in the paint. A Skrull bearing the insignia of Dagger and swirling robes of Cloak raised its arms for a second volley, aiming lower this time.
“They’re moving their brains around their bodies,” the Young Avenger noted. “My headshots aren’t killing the ones I thought were dead.”
“God knows the last thing we needed were corpses that keep getting up,” Patriot retorted. “Even if it’s brain’s compressed, wanna bet it can’t function without its head?”
“Only one way to find out!”
The Young Avenger rolled out from under the cover of Patriot’s shield. The Skrull’s light-bolt went wide, and Bryon noted the shadow obscuring its vision. “All you, Eli!”
Patriot was already up and moving, leaping into a flying kick that landed square on the hilt of the Skrull’s “Dagger” insignia. It landed on its back and Patriot brought the sharp edge of his shield down on its neck with a sickening crunch. Gray-green blood shot from the wound.
Enough! Next one! insisted the shadow.
The two soldiers saw a symbiote-clad Skrull aiming at its next target, nodded to each other, and flew into action once more.
# # # # #
This is the story of impossible odds in the face of war.
This is the story of the young men and women who held the line until the tide of battle could be turned.
And when it turned, it turned in the blink of an eye. Wiccan watched as two Skrulls disappeared in a blur of motion, collapsing to the ground with the sound of a thousand punches.
“Don’t just stare, keep fighting!” shouted a fast, impatient voice. Quicksilver dashed by again, and Wiccan fired up his blue lightning.
“We’ve got this here!” he shouted, but the blur was already gone.
Kate aimed an arrow at the sky, but the Skrull she was aiming at disappeared in a thick blast of energy. Mixed in with the airborne forms was a woman with a head of fiery hair, throwing around massive amounts of energy.
“The Avengers are here!” she shouted, and she could almost swear she saw Binary crack a smile.
The roar of a Quinjet engine sounded overhead and multiple forms leapt out, each aimed for a different airborne Skrull. They grappled in midair, and in each instance the Skrull hit the ground first.
“Not our best planning,” admitted Stingray, stepping off a fallen Skrull.
“We can turn this around,” said Captain America. He and the other two Avengers formed up around Scott Lang. “Karnak! What do you see?”
“Everything is centered around the one in red and yellow,” he said, pointing at Veranke. “Take her down and this all ends.”
Captain America nodded. “If that’s what it takes, then that’s what we do.”
# # # # #
This is the day the Skrull revolution was born and died in a single, fatal onslaught.
High above the horde of fading warriors, above the park grass turning to sludge as Skrull blood mixed with dirt, hovered Veranke. A full-on front assault had failed. The Skrull gods, Kly’bn and Sl’gur’t—they had told her to take this path, had they not? For years, the Skrulls had relied on shapeshifting and subterfuge. They had destabilized governments and turned comrades against each other.
Every night she prayed, she had been overwhelmed with an undeniable feeling that it hadn’t been enough. So the Skrull scientists had taken the lead and found a way to even the odds.
Superpowers for everyone. It was a marvelous plan if she said so herself. They would take on Earth’s heroes with facsimiles of their greatest powers and defeat them with sheer numbers. It was what the gods wanted, wasn’t it?
Time slowed for Veranke. She saw three more of her soldiers fall in battle. A lightning strike slowed the newcomer in the iron armor, but he fought on after gaining his bearings. Another Skrull fell in the meantime.
She spent so long looking at the overall picture that she almost missed the twin slices of metal arcing toward her—one round shape coming from the left and an almost diamond-shaped projectile from the right. The first caught her in the diaphragm and the second ripped through the skin of her chest. She focused on shapeshifting the injury away, only to hear a whistling noise that told her she was much too late.
Her ears registered the wet thud of the metal arrowhead piercing her eyeball a moment after the impact rocked Veranke backward. Wet, thick Skrull blood oozed onto her cheek. Her borrowed hovering powers shorted out, and she went limp. The ground rushed up to meet her.
Why had the gods forsaken her mission? She represented only the Skrulls that were willing to change, but change they had. The technology was available. Was this not what the gods wanted?
Her lips parted, and she croaked, “He loves y—”
# # # # #
Veranke’s body hit the ground with the same sound and sensation of a wet sponge. Wiccan shielded himself with his cape, then whipped around with a fresh lightning blast, but his target was gone.
“They’re retreating!” shouted Bryon.
None too soon, whispered the shadow.
Skrull after Skrull disappeared into the sky. The clouds rippled as a Skrull ship’s cloaking device readjusted. And then, as quickly as they had appeared, the Skrulls vanished.
“Is it over?” Kate asked. She eyed the end of her arrow sticking out of Veranke’s eye socket. “Did we win?”
“I see no reason to believe the Skrulls will return,” said Karnak.
The Avengers and Young Avengers regrouped. Scott Lang pressed a comforting hand on Cassie’s shoulder, and she buried her head in his chest, allowing herself the tears that couldn’t fall during battle. Wiccan and Hulkling stood close. Billy stood in front of Teddy, between him and the rest of the Avengers. Bryon had taken off his mask.
Captain America retrieved his shield and offered the angular shield to Eli. “You Young Avengers were the only thing that stood in the way of a Skrull invasion. You did well today, son.”
Eli looked at the destruction around him. Bodies littered the landscape—bodies that he could only hope belonged only to Skrulls.
“You sure about that? It sure as hell doesn’t feel like it.”
# # # # #
“So this is it?”
A pile of blood-soaked uniforms lay in the center of the meeting table. The Iron Manacle armor was disassembled in the corner. Bryon stood in the doorway. He knew what was coming next.
“I’m not sure when I’ll be back, guys,” Cassie said. “Call me if you need me, but…I just need some time to think.”
Bryon felt for her. She’d been forced to kill to defend herself much too young.
Billy tossed his last glove onto the table. “Uh…I think I’m out for a while too. Teddy has some things to figure out, and I think, y’know, he could use some help.”
Teddy nudged him in the shoulder.
“And so could I, really,” Billy added sheepishly.
“Can we just, like, agree to come back and talk in a month? Do your solo thing, call if you need help, but otherwise, maybe, take some times to figure everything out?” Kate asked. She hated being the one to ask.
Eli put a hand on her forearm. “I think that’s a good idea.”
People began to file out of the room until only Michael and Bryon were left. They were the only two who had nowhere else to go.
Michael looked up at Bryon. “So…now what?”
# # # # #
This is the day the Young Avengers disbanded.
# # # # #
Author’s Note
Years late, dollars short.
In a finale that ends up doing a lot of telling and less showing, this was my wrap-up of an arc that I felt lost itself somewhere around the beginning, but that held enough developments that I felt it would be wrong to scrap it completely. If the gap between YA #6 and YA #7 followed by the gap between YA #7 and YA #8 is any indication, I lost my voice on this book by telling a side story.
With an ending like that, I’ll have you know that I have a 4-issue story left in me. I hope you’ll stick around to see where it goes.
Thanks!
-Hunter Lambright
This is the story of the day the Young Avengers were the last line of defense between a fraction of an empire and all of life on Earth itself.
This is the story of the day the Young Avengers became heroes.
The sky was peppered with green men, flying under the power of wings of their own creation. Each Skrull on this mission had been given the powers and identity of a dead earthling, but the programming phase had been cut short. Many had only the powers and memories of those whose lives they were meant to take.
They were meant to infiltrate and live peacefully, called to war only if threatened. Instead, Veranke saw the power that her army wielded and decided that they would bring war to earth instead of waiting for earth to provoke war.
“He loves you,” she said, and they rose to battle.
They heeded the call of their queen, raining blasts of fire, ice, and lightning on the people of New York City. They preyed on fear and disarray, the tools of expert invaders. The more the people scattered, the more likely the victory. Ants may be easier to stomp in a group, but the Skrulls found that the people of Earth were even easier to wipe out when they turned their backs and ran.
This is not the story of cowardice and self-preservation. This is the story of those who stayed and fought.
The Young Avengers fought back with shields and arrows, with magic, insects, and pummeling fists. They fought back in a coordinated effort to defend their people. Their strategy was simple. If they made themselves the most devastating target, they could stop the Skrull army from taking the cheap shots at fleeing New Yorkers.
Ant-Man kept the Young Avengers in formation. Scott Lang fought with the fury of a man at his daughter’s side. The swarms of ants at his command flanked the enemy as Patriot led a full frontal assault.
“Aim for the queen!” he shouted. Scott knew colonies well, and the Skrulls, though independent thinkers, behaved as any other hive. His hope was that the the Skrulls relied entirely on their queen. Any second-in-command would defer to her, and two second-in-commands would confuse them further if the queen were taken out.
The queen, a Skrull woman with the red-and-black suit of a former Spider-Woman, dodged attacks with grace, gliding on air. Green electricity crackled at her neurotoxin-laced fingertips.
Ant-Man focused on a swarm of drones and brought them in behind the queen, but her electrical field zapped them before they could so much as pester her.
Scott wondered if that she saw the people of Earth the way she saw his ants—as mere annoyances to be dealt with.
This is the story of a handful against an army, and a woman without superpowers against an army with many.
Kate Bishop nocked arrow after arrow. Her aim was true, and the Skrulls’ eyesight was poor. A handful of Skrulls caught on to her aim and began producing additional decoy eyeballs to offset her aim, but Kate held her breath and waited for the Skrull to blink. The eyes that blinked a split-second ahead of the rest found an arrowhead embedded in their pupils.
Every few shots, she ran to the fallen forms of Skrulls and pried her arrows from their eye sockets. It was morbid work, but it kept her in the fight. She ignored her internal moral directives against killing. When this became war, everything else went out the window. Ruthlessness was a new look for her, but she wore it well.
Kate dodged and weaved, bending again to pluck at another arrow when a sharp projectile slammed into her back, sending her careening to the ground. The ground where she stood a split-second before was scorched, and in the ashes stood a young man in a suit of metal.
Originally a hulking suit, the metal had reformed as it connected with Michael’s mind in the Hideout, shedding its tank-like appearance and molding itself into a sleek, hyperdense silver suit with glowing turquoise eyes.
The Iron Manacle offered Kate an outstretched iron gauntlet. “What, you don’t recognize the haircut?”
“Michael?” She took his hand, and Michael hauled Kate to her feet.
“I’m back,” he said. “I’m really, really back.”
The moment shattered as two Skrulls dropped to ground-level next to them. The Skrull closest to Kate wore the molded, purple helmet of Power Princess and the multicolor outfit of Doctor Spectrum. Her eyes glowed with Hyperion’s eye-blasts. The Skrull on Michael’s side leapt with frog legs and wore a web-patterned tunic. Four coils of silk webbing curled out of its back and ended in sharp, clicking pincers.
For Michael, this was story of the day that he earned his stripes as a Young Avenger. He stepped toward his Skrull, held up his left forearm, and willed the metal to rise into sharp arrowheads. With a flick of his wrist, the flechettes shot toward the Spider-Skrull. The same motion on the other arm forced the Skrull on Kate’s side to defend itself, giving her a moment to pluck and arrow from her quiver, draw, and shoot.
Michael’s world inverted. The Spider-Skrull’s silk appendages grasped at three of his limbs and brought him to the ground. He willed the repulsors at his left leg to come to life, ripping him from the Skrull’s grasp. He cried out as he skidded backwards across the dirt. When he came to a halt, he lifted his right arm and pulled a trigger with his left. A small rocket looped out of his wrist and toward the Skrull. On contact with its eye, a small, meaty explosion signaled the Skrull’s death.
Kate plucked her arrows from the corpse of the dead Squadron Supreme Skrull. Wordlessly, the two rejoined the larger fight.
# # # # #
Cassie Lang had always been a girl stuck between two worlds. On one side of the divide, a father on a constant path to redemption, never quite all the way there in his own eyes, but redeemed a hundred times over in hers. He was her hero in every sense of the word, to the point that she became a heroine in her own right just to be like him. In some ways, she was just like Ant-Man, but larger than life.
On the other side of the divide was her mother, trying in the way that mothers do sometimes to give her everything she thought a little girl wanted by hoping that Cassie would emulate her dreams. Hours of dance recitals from her formative years bubbled to the surface, hoping that she would make her mother proud even though she secretly turned on the news at night to watch superhero fight footage and tied a cape around her neck as she danced, making whooshing noises as the explosions rattled the cameras on-screen.
This was the day that both Cassies formed one, as Stature found herself in a battle where identity was everything that was on the line. Skrulls fired blast after blast at her, but every dodge, dip, and duck was performed with grace, changing size to avoid attacks that would have crippled her larger self and emerging from her diminutive state to pack even more force behind each punch.
Scott flitted around Cassie’s shoulders, allowing him this one second to watch her in awe. For years, he’d been convinced he’d failed Cassie as a father. Every one of Peggy’s disdainful stares, crystal clear in his memory, was shattered at the sight of Stature in true, superheroic form.
This is the story of a father’s pride at seeing his daughter in the element she was born for. This is the story of a daughter finding her center and her place in a world that was suddenly much, much larger—even for a girl who could change size.
# # # # #
This is the story of a young warlock and a boy who had just discovered that he was a monster.
Wiccan willed a series of turquoise energy bolts at a wall of Skrulls, ripped straight from a magical sub-dimension. The magic flashed through the Skrulls’ reptilian skin. Wounds erupted with viscous, green fluid. If nothing else, magic seemed to be the Skrulls’ major weakness. If they found a way to block magic, he was out of luck.
The Skrulls surged toward him, and Billy whispered a steady chant of “iwanttofly…iwanttofly…” until his cape billowed around him and he rose into the sky.
Desire-based powers had one fatal flaw in Billy’s mind. He spent so much time in combat wishing up solutions to his problems, but there were some problems that were impossible to will away. His eyes drifted toward a hesitant, green-skinned figure below.
Teddy flexed his arms and felt their mass increase in response. His shapeshifting abilities hadn’t even been active for an hour yet, but he they felt natural to him, like a piece of him had been missing all along. A Skrull hurtled toward him with Cannonball’s blast field pattern, but Teddy socked it in the jaw to redirect its flight path upward. His hand compressed with the blow to absorb the bulk of it.
The sky lit up in a brilliant explosion of light and energy followed by the sound of chunks of meat raining from the sky.
“Sorry!” Billy called down. “I didn’t know that would happen!” His eyes opened wide. Then he drew a finger pistol and fired another shot of energy behind Teddy. Another Skrull fell to pieces just feet from Teddy.
“Thanks!” Teddy said. He whipped around in a circle, growing a long, spiked tail in the process. It cleared a ten foot radius of Skrulls. Teddy grew a pair of thick, dragon-like wings to cover Billy’s descent.
Billy touched down on the ground. “I’ve got this side. You have my back?”
“Definitely,” Teddy said, and in that moment he knew it was true. A day ago, the biggest thing he had to worry about was his burgeoning feelings for Billy. Today, he hadn’t even begun to process this total breakdown of his humanity, but he had a feeling Billy would be there for whatever came next.
“Good,” Billy said, allowing himself a small smile before the two flew into the fray once more.
# # # # #
This is the story of two soldiers, one out of time and one whose war started yesterday.
Seriously, a gun? When I gave you your powers, this wasn’t what I had in mind.
“This isn’t the war you trained me for, shadow,” the Young Avenger protested. Bryon pivoted and pulled the trigger, opening up a hole in the skull of a Skrull that had gotten a little too close.
And this has demonstrated that we’ve drifted even further from our goal of freeing your fellow heroes from the Freezer, the shadow admonished. I have one blinded on your six.
Bryon spun again, spotted the Skrull with the shadow’s darkness over its eyes, and fired. “Got him. Look, the gun is drastic, but also not the point. We survive this, my number one priority is the Freezer. We’ll find Narfi. I can’t do any of that if I don’t live through the afternoon.”
I know it, but I don’t like the way this has gone. You’ve strayed, Bryon, the shadow said.
“Let’s talk about other things,” Bryon said. He kicked backwards off a Skrull’s kneecap and into a second fist-first. “Did you have anything to do with Michael’s new duds?”
The Iron Manacle? the shadow asked. No. I’m apparently not the only mysterious benefactor this team has.
“That’s another thing,” Bryon said. Another gunshot sounded, another Skrull toppled. “Before this all ends, I plan on finding out who you are.”
I’ll add it to the list I have in our conversation about your priorities, the shadow shot back.
“Duck and cover!” Patriot’s arm wrapped around the Young Avenger’s torso and took him to the ground, holding his shield up over both of them. A blazing flash of light bounced off the metal, leaving sizzling scorch marks in the paint. A Skrull bearing the insignia of Dagger and swirling robes of Cloak raised its arms for a second volley, aiming lower this time.
“They’re moving their brains around their bodies,” the Young Avenger noted. “My headshots aren’t killing the ones I thought were dead.”
“God knows the last thing we needed were corpses that keep getting up,” Patriot retorted. “Even if it’s brain’s compressed, wanna bet it can’t function without its head?”
“Only one way to find out!”
The Young Avenger rolled out from under the cover of Patriot’s shield. The Skrull’s light-bolt went wide, and Bryon noted the shadow obscuring its vision. “All you, Eli!”
Patriot was already up and moving, leaping into a flying kick that landed square on the hilt of the Skrull’s “Dagger” insignia. It landed on its back and Patriot brought the sharp edge of his shield down on its neck with a sickening crunch. Gray-green blood shot from the wound.
Enough! Next one! insisted the shadow.
The two soldiers saw a symbiote-clad Skrull aiming at its next target, nodded to each other, and flew into action once more.
# # # # #
This is the story of impossible odds in the face of war.
This is the story of the young men and women who held the line until the tide of battle could be turned.
And when it turned, it turned in the blink of an eye. Wiccan watched as two Skrulls disappeared in a blur of motion, collapsing to the ground with the sound of a thousand punches.
“Don’t just stare, keep fighting!” shouted a fast, impatient voice. Quicksilver dashed by again, and Wiccan fired up his blue lightning.
“We’ve got this here!” he shouted, but the blur was already gone.
Kate aimed an arrow at the sky, but the Skrull she was aiming at disappeared in a thick blast of energy. Mixed in with the airborne forms was a woman with a head of fiery hair, throwing around massive amounts of energy.
“The Avengers are here!” she shouted, and she could almost swear she saw Binary crack a smile.
The roar of a Quinjet engine sounded overhead and multiple forms leapt out, each aimed for a different airborne Skrull. They grappled in midair, and in each instance the Skrull hit the ground first.
“Not our best planning,” admitted Stingray, stepping off a fallen Skrull.
“We can turn this around,” said Captain America. He and the other two Avengers formed up around Scott Lang. “Karnak! What do you see?”
“Everything is centered around the one in red and yellow,” he said, pointing at Veranke. “Take her down and this all ends.”
Captain America nodded. “If that’s what it takes, then that’s what we do.”
# # # # #
This is the day the Skrull revolution was born and died in a single, fatal onslaught.
High above the horde of fading warriors, above the park grass turning to sludge as Skrull blood mixed with dirt, hovered Veranke. A full-on front assault had failed. The Skrull gods, Kly’bn and Sl’gur’t—they had told her to take this path, had they not? For years, the Skrulls had relied on shapeshifting and subterfuge. They had destabilized governments and turned comrades against each other.
Every night she prayed, she had been overwhelmed with an undeniable feeling that it hadn’t been enough. So the Skrull scientists had taken the lead and found a way to even the odds.
Superpowers for everyone. It was a marvelous plan if she said so herself. They would take on Earth’s heroes with facsimiles of their greatest powers and defeat them with sheer numbers. It was what the gods wanted, wasn’t it?
Time slowed for Veranke. She saw three more of her soldiers fall in battle. A lightning strike slowed the newcomer in the iron armor, but he fought on after gaining his bearings. Another Skrull fell in the meantime.
She spent so long looking at the overall picture that she almost missed the twin slices of metal arcing toward her—one round shape coming from the left and an almost diamond-shaped projectile from the right. The first caught her in the diaphragm and the second ripped through the skin of her chest. She focused on shapeshifting the injury away, only to hear a whistling noise that told her she was much too late.
Her ears registered the wet thud of the metal arrowhead piercing her eyeball a moment after the impact rocked Veranke backward. Wet, thick Skrull blood oozed onto her cheek. Her borrowed hovering powers shorted out, and she went limp. The ground rushed up to meet her.
Why had the gods forsaken her mission? She represented only the Skrulls that were willing to change, but change they had. The technology was available. Was this not what the gods wanted?
Her lips parted, and she croaked, “He loves y—”
# # # # #
Veranke’s body hit the ground with the same sound and sensation of a wet sponge. Wiccan shielded himself with his cape, then whipped around with a fresh lightning blast, but his target was gone.
“They’re retreating!” shouted Bryon.
None too soon, whispered the shadow.
Skrull after Skrull disappeared into the sky. The clouds rippled as a Skrull ship’s cloaking device readjusted. And then, as quickly as they had appeared, the Skrulls vanished.
“Is it over?” Kate asked. She eyed the end of her arrow sticking out of Veranke’s eye socket. “Did we win?”
“I see no reason to believe the Skrulls will return,” said Karnak.
The Avengers and Young Avengers regrouped. Scott Lang pressed a comforting hand on Cassie’s shoulder, and she buried her head in his chest, allowing herself the tears that couldn’t fall during battle. Wiccan and Hulkling stood close. Billy stood in front of Teddy, between him and the rest of the Avengers. Bryon had taken off his mask.
Captain America retrieved his shield and offered the angular shield to Eli. “You Young Avengers were the only thing that stood in the way of a Skrull invasion. You did well today, son.”
Eli looked at the destruction around him. Bodies littered the landscape—bodies that he could only hope belonged only to Skrulls.
“You sure about that? It sure as hell doesn’t feel like it.”
# # # # #
“So this is it?”
A pile of blood-soaked uniforms lay in the center of the meeting table. The Iron Manacle armor was disassembled in the corner. Bryon stood in the doorway. He knew what was coming next.
“I’m not sure when I’ll be back, guys,” Cassie said. “Call me if you need me, but…I just need some time to think.”
Bryon felt for her. She’d been forced to kill to defend herself much too young.
Billy tossed his last glove onto the table. “Uh…I think I’m out for a while too. Teddy has some things to figure out, and I think, y’know, he could use some help.”
Teddy nudged him in the shoulder.
“And so could I, really,” Billy added sheepishly.
“Can we just, like, agree to come back and talk in a month? Do your solo thing, call if you need help, but otherwise, maybe, take some times to figure everything out?” Kate asked. She hated being the one to ask.
Eli put a hand on her forearm. “I think that’s a good idea.”
People began to file out of the room until only Michael and Bryon were left. They were the only two who had nowhere else to go.
Michael looked up at Bryon. “So…now what?”
# # # # #
This is the day the Young Avengers disbanded.
# # # # #
Author’s Note
Years late, dollars short.
In a finale that ends up doing a lot of telling and less showing, this was my wrap-up of an arc that I felt lost itself somewhere around the beginning, but that held enough developments that I felt it would be wrong to scrap it completely. If the gap between YA #6 and YA #7 followed by the gap between YA #7 and YA #8 is any indication, I lost my voice on this book by telling a side story.
With an ending like that, I’ll have you know that I have a 4-issue story left in me. I hope you’ll stick around to see where it goes.
Thanks!
-Hunter Lambright