Back to GatefoldIssue #10 by A. Crute
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"New York Giants - Part One"
Yellowjacket sprinted across the roof of the building in pursuit of his target. He leapt as he reached the end and soared across the distance between buildings like it was nothing. The heavily panting figure in front of him gave a growl and fired a blast of red crackling energy towards him.
The yellow and black clad superhero dodged it with lighting speed with a simple kick of his leg, which sent him fling horizontally. He didn’t, however, stick the landing, as the momentum of his push sent him flying through one of the ledges which surrounded the edge of the building.
“This is not going exactly as I planned,” he said with a shake of his head as he hung off the edge of the building. He tightened his grip on the edge of the roof top, the concrete crushing between his fingers leaving finger grooves in the side of the concrete. He pushed his body up with the force of his arms and shot about 30 feet in the air. This new found super-strength was most certainly an interesting experience. He launched forward again with a solid push off, the roof surface behind him crumpled and ruptured as he moved.
“Come on, Hank, you can do this!” he supported himself verbally as he bounded across the roof tops. He re-angled his body in mid air to allow for easier movement and further travel. He commando rolled as he came down and managed to come up running. A twinge in his back, which was sadly becoming middle aged far too quickly for his liking, let him know he would pay for all of this in the morning; though not as much as the monster he was tracking.
He spotted the dark-clad figure with a flowing cape ahead of him; he was definitely slowing down, unable to keep up the running pace as easily as Yellowjacket. The hero was closing in fast.
The figure jumped forward and managed to get himself caught on the edge of a roof. Air escaped his lungs sharply as the solid building material drove all of the air out of him.
Hank cleared the roof between them in one single leap and landed on the roof ahead of the criminal. He walked over to the figure and hauled him up by his cape.
The creature roared at him. Its purple jaws opened like the creature in the movie Predator, and its four-golden eyes took in the figure before him and widened in horror. Its clawed hands swung for Pym but merely smashed against the side of his face causing his own hand to break. It let out a whimper of pain.
“I’m making a citizen’s arrest,” he informed the thing in his hands. He was trying his best to be professional and keep his anger and rage toward this monster in. This figure he had caught was a prolific serial killer…he had travelled up and down the coast with no less than 40 kills to it’s name, the latest being a family: a father, mother and two young kids over on the East side of the city.
There was a nationwide man hunt going on throughout the country so Hank had decided to get involved. He had managed to track down the killer through the simplest of detective work using the tried and tested methods of just asking questions...and then running a collection of hacked official documents into a H.O.L.M.E.S. criminal profiling system he had perfected the AI on.
Then it had just been a process of hanging around the city through the night until he heard or saw something. One rooftop chase later he descended the eight story building with a little hop, which had carried him (which a screaming prisoner) down to the city streets.
Hank walked across the street to an open police alarm and pressed the large silver button. The warning sirens sounded and it only took two minutes before three response vehicles turned up, hovering around the corner at top speed. This was just long enough for Hank to snap his new Yellowjacket helmet shut. It was a basic similar design to Ant-Man but yellow and black and covered his entire face to hide his features. The eyes had built-in lenses which scanned all visible frequencies and gave a HUD.
The officers landed their vehicle and began to speak to him. Their four golden eyes took him in while their purple split jaws clicked together as they spoke. “Citizen, you are attired strangely;” they informed him.
The figure in his hand began to ‘chitter’ wildly. It took a second for his translation matrix to catch up to him. “It’s a monster, doesn’t look normal...help me!...untranslatable...I did it, I confess”.
“Indeed. This is the Bsalat killer you’re looking for;” said Hank with a nod as he released him to the police’s waiting hands. “I need no thanks, I’m just happy to be of help.”
He crouched for a second before kicking off; his powerful legs carrying him skyward to the same roof top he had just leapt from. He began to run and he only slowed down when he had put quite a distance between him and the cops.
He came to a screeching halt. He had done some good work tonight. He nodded to himself as the green sun began to rise on the horizon; it had only been 3 hours since it had set.
He had been spending some time recently in the micro-verse. He was amazed by the variety of cultures and species in each sector of the unexplored universe and the sheer number of people he could help. What he found even more intriguing was the variety of basic physical laws which were shown.
Hank, as both Ant-Man and Yellowjacket on Earth, retained his strength when he shrunk down to ant size, which meant through a proper balancing of his powers could either lay a man out with a single blow or indeed punch through concrete (thought not very far it has to be said) because of the pressure being focused on the tiny pin-prick of a fist. While as Goliath and Giant-Man he was able to channel extra-dimensional mass into his own body to increase his strength considerably.
What was interesting was the physics on the worlds he travelled to (and he was yet to come up with a working theory why) in reality in relation to his normal size he was minuscule but retained relative strength – i.e. he was as strong against the aliens of his new height as he would have been against a normal sized alien on Earth.
However, on some worlds, like this one, he maintained some of his strength (on one uninhabited world he actually seemed to retain all of his strength and accidentally ended up destroying a continent with a single foot fall). This gave him immense powers that he wasn’t used to. He was having fun exploring them; though he would more than happily fall back onto his older tested methods in order to catch the criminals if needs be. He was beginning to understand how the likes of Hulk, Thor and Hercules felt striding through a world. It was truly god-like.
Yellowjacket was fast becoming a successful superhero on many of the worlds he visited. In some he was exalted and almost worshipped (though he did try and avoid them; he didn’t want to get into Eternal territory) and on others he was a mysterious figure...especially on the ones like this world where he did not look at all like the locals.
He activated a phase inducer and began to grow. Soon he would become too large to inhabit the world, and he expanded rapidly and soon vanished from the sight of any locals.
He worried that in spending so much time on these worlds he was just running from his own; running to a place where he could feel more accomplished and less in others shadows. He knew others thought it too and he must admit there might have been some truth in it, but deep down it was really simple…he was a hero so he saved people even when they weren’t necessarily people.
On Earth he came onto a scene to deal with big science mysteries and problems, such as when the entire high school class spontaneously combusted one after another last week and he had to step in to solve the problem. He ran to the assistance of the Avengers when a super-villain tried to rule the world or whatever. The planet Earth –heck even the city of New York – had hundreds of superheroes to help the police, stop bomb threats and whatever else came up, but most of these planets seemed to have no one and where no one was present he would step into the role.
He soon found himself standing in his apartment. He tapped his phase inducer and grinned to himself. He was still honestly surprised it worked as well as it did. He always expected to find himself reappearing in the Sahara or on top of a tower block in inner city London.
“Have you been off gallivanting around being Mongo’s greatest hero again? Pulling a John Carter?” Jan asked as she threw her arms around him and kissed his lips.
“It was Xaraxthazus this time,” he grinned, it was not an easy planet to pronounce in a human tongue. “Lovely little place, the inhabitants look like Dire Wraiths but they have some great new TV Shows this season. I’m wondering how well they’d translate because there isn’t a network which wouldn’t snap them up.”
They both laughed a little. “Are you sure everything is okay?” Jan asked for the 60th time in the past month. “You’ve been throwing yourself into ‘work’ like I’ve never seen before.”
“Yes, everything is fine,” he nodded. “I’ve just needed a little distraction,” he admitted. “My patents are taking care of business for me; my latest research needs time to mature...plus it’s pretty much in a hypothesising stage; research cycle and all that stuff. So I’m doing my other hobby.”
Jan nodded; she wasn’t totally believing what he was saying but overall he was doing pretty well. He seemed focused, happy and wasn’t neglecting any particular part of his life. She worried it was going to be touch and go for a little while after the Red Ghost thing but they’d had a talk and Hank had gotten everything off of his chest; since then he had gotten proactive.
Even as they embraced she saw him flick a quick glance over her shoulder. “Go and check, though you know you would have picked up the signal,” she said as she tapped the information processor on his wrist.
“It’ll take two seconds, I promise.” He moved over the his computer and hit a few keys. A map of the world appeared followed by a big red flashing zero.
Hank had, with the help of Tony Stark, launched a series of micro satellites into orbit with the sole purpose of scanning for the particular bio-signature of Red Ghost, Beasts of Berlin, the virus and other simple things like extreme magnetic disturbance should the oranutan get up to any tricks. In any of those events, Hank would be the first to know, though there had been no sightings (and no magnetic disturbances which were not accounted for). The ethics board Hank had set up to discuss this project was the hardest part of the whole thing. “Okay, all done. Sorry, sorry.”
“Anyway,” Jan said, rolling her eyes, “I’m sure I can give you a little more of a distraction, if you’re interested.” She kissed him.”
“I would be very interested,” Hank smiled.
The large television screen on the other side of the room suddenly sparked to life and Reed Richard’s face appeared. Iron Man could be seen moving around behind him. “Hank, we could use a little help, we’ve got something which is most certainly going to be of interest to you. It’s a...”
“…and ‘Hi, Reed’” Jan added with a small wave, hoping the leader of the Fantastic Four would acknowledge her existence. He was, without a doubt, the smartest man on the planet but he was always so bloody rude.
“Is this anything that can wait, Reed? We were in the middle of something?” Hank said as he turned his attention back to Jan.
Reed paused for a second. “Well, I suppose it could...uh, I don’t think it’s anything life threatening, I just thought better safe than sorry.” He shook his head. “A corpse of a giant is floating in the harbour and we’re just trying to figure out what’s going on.”
“A giant?” asked Hank as he turned his head toward the screen. “Are there any distinguishing features...other than being a giant, obviously,” he quickly added.
“I will forever be a widow to science,” Jan sighed. “Go on, go and play scientist with the boys.”
“Jan,” Hank paused for a second. “I…uh…I can stay. I don’t have to go.”
“No, it’s fine;” she waved her hand. “You don’t watch organized sports, which I’m sure most women would happily make a trade for me happily. You need some male bonding time too.”
“Thank you. I’ll buy you something very nice for this.” He gave her a quick peck and was off.
“Something very nice and very expensive!” she called after him before slumping down on the sofa. She smiled at Reed and there was a moment of silence.
“It would be rude of me to just sign off, wouldn’t it?” he asked, almost unsure of himself.
“Mildly,” she shrugged.
“Sue has warned me about being accidentally rude to people when I’m in ‘science mode’...especially her friends,” he nodded. There was another pause before he opened his mouth to speak.
“Reed,” Jan interrupted. “It’s okay if you want to go and do science.”
“Thank you, Jan...I owe you something nice and pretty too.” He shot a quick smile which she returned before the connection went dead.
# # # # #
New York Harbour
The entire dock was a media circus. Camera crews, reporters and half of the city seemed to have turned out with their camera phones recording the giant in the water.
It was 70% submerged like any good iceberg. Only portions of his skin (including the face) were visible above the water. Numerous boats drifted around his massive form while several figures walked around on his chest.
Rover soared over the crowds and hovered above the body. Hank dropped from the vehicle and drifted down to the chest. He met Reed Richards, Anton Stark (the hard light hologram patterned on the brain patterns of the original and currently comatose Tony Stark) and Scott Lang with a shake of the hand each, before he saw his ‘niece’ behind Scott. “Hi, Cassie,” he said before throwing a quizzical look at Scott. She waved back.
“She was with me this weekend, but Tony asked me to come when you were originally unavailable. She begged me to visit and he said it was safe.” Scott shrugged.
Cassie and he had come to an arrangement about the whole superhero thing and she was hanging up her tights for quite a while but she was still interested in the whole world involved.
“So what do you think of the whole thing?” he asked his niece.
“It’s honestly a little dull,” she shrugged. “I’ve been just hanging around for an hour on his chest.”
“She wandered too close to the genitals before, so now she has to stay put,” Scott informed with a nod.
“So he’s a he,” Hank looked from Scott to Cassie and then back to Scott. “Well, you know..” he raised his eyebrows.
Scott nodded. “He’s circumcised, too,” said Iron Man. “I’ve never met a man so easy to embarrass with simple Biology as you.” He laughed as he noticed Yellowjacket’s expression. “Though I suppose you wouldn’t want to ruin all men for her by comparison.”
Scott coughed loudly. He was not aware that the being in the suit was not his good friend Tony. Iron Man turned to meet a withering ‘father’ stare that he hadn’t seen since he was a teenager and met the fathers of girls he was dating. “Right, on with the show...what do you think, Hank?”
Pym turned and surveyed the site “Well, it’s a giant,” he said with a nod. “Have you taken any readings?”
“Well, he’s definitely dead,” nodded Anton in a sarcastic tone. “I checked his heart for bio-electricity and I held a shiny thing up to his nose, no steam. He’s a red head and, as Cassie can tell you, collars match cuffs.”
Reed coughed gently while Scott gave ‘Tony’ another look and took over speaking “He’s approximately 250 feet and weighs about 190 metric tonnes, we’ve taken cell samples. Spectrometer readings show unusual build up of elements which I need to examine further and I’ve got a tissue sample being analyzed as I speak. I’ve taken DNA too to see if we can match him. I’ve yet to pick up Pym particles, so...”
“Well, he’s not human,” Hank said with a shake of his head. “You can rule that right off. I’ve tested this…the highest a human can grow safely is 154.3 feet. I went to 167 once but passed out and shrank down on instinct. The strain is far too much, and 250 is far, far beyond human capability.”
“Okay…so alien? Inter-dimensional?” Scott asked.
“I’m scanning now,” Iron Man said as he looked up and down the length of the giant. “He is vibrating at a slightly different frequency but it’s not one I recognize...and it’s not such a big difference as you would expect from inter-dimensional travel.”
“We can scan bone density and mass distribution,” informed Hank “that’ll probably tell us how alien he is. An X-Ray would be great too.”
Hank moved down the giant’s chest and crouched, running his fingers over the body. He moved quickly around running his hand across the man’s skin.
“Do you two need to be alone?” Anton asked.
“No, it’s fine...any ideas on these scars?” Hank ran his fingers across the puckered flesh, which seemed to have healed a little. The body was covered in these scars which were about a foot in diameter and all at varying angles. They covered every single visible inch of the giant.
“I haven’t really thought about it,” admitted Reed as he scratched his chin. “I was more focused on the giant itself. I really should have focused on everything.” He nodded.
“Okay,” Hank nodded. “Reed can you report to me as soon as you get findings and organize a satellite X-Ray.”
“I’ll have it sent along your wavelength automatically,” he nodded.
“Iron Man, I want you working on ideas about how he got here…CCTV, satellite images and energy readings should give us some ideas,” he said.
“Scott, I need you to shrink down to ant size and go over this guy with a fine tooth comb. I can’t help thinking there’s something we’re missing.”
“Okay,” Anton said, “but one question...who exactly put you in charge?”
Hank paused for a second. “I assumed that when a giant turns up dead it is so clearly my territory...and then you and Reed both called me, so clearly you were at a loss but didn’t want to admit it. I’m a fresh set of eyes and assumed you’d both put me in charge.”
“Sounds logical,” said Iron Man. Anton had better things to be doing with his time anyway; Stark’s company needed some major restructuring, in his humble opinion.
“Excuse me, Dr Pym,” came a voice from near the stomach. Yellowjacket turned to see the man walking up toward him was in chest high waders and a shirt. He had jet black hair and a square jaw and was of Asian descent. He flashed his badge. “I’m detective Amon. I’ve been tasked on this case.”
“A pleasure to meet you,” said Yellowjacket as he shook the detectives hand. “Isn’t this a little out of NYPD’s jurisdiction?”
“A body turns up in the harbour, we get called,” he nodded. “This one is a little bigger than usual but a dead body is a dead body. You got any idea on ETD?”
Hank shook his head. “Body temp readings will be totally unhelpful in these waters,” he said. “We also don’t know if it’s human, so it would be impossible to comment on without taking huge guesses.”
“I know this is above my pay grade but keep me in the loop with whatever you find?”he half-asked and half-told.
“Will do,” nodded Yellowjacket.
“Cassie, whilst your Dad is working, do you want to come back to the lab while I look over a few tissue samples and Reed’s readings?”
“I suppose I could,” she shrugged. “I tend to just sit around and do nothing while you fiddle with computers and vials.” Hank feared (much the same as Scott) that he had sadly lost Cassie to the world of being a teenager where nothing was exciting anymore.
“How are your science grades coming along?” he asked. It was his subtle way of reminding her that he was supposed to be tutoring her.
“Cs,” she nodded with a little shrug again. She was definitely a teenager trying to show no interest in her grades. “I’ve got an extra credit thing for the science fair.”
“What are you doing for it?”
“Volcano?”
“How about a report on a possible alien giant? Or I can set you up to build and program and AI pet of some kind. I think a fish could totally be within your grasp.”
Cassie nodded and the two headed toward Rover. Hank stopped for a second to get a few cell samples.
# # # # #
An hour later...
Hank was typing away manically at a computer and looking at the readings on the screen. Cassie, however, grunted aggressively as she looked at the computer representation of her finished fish program. It swam in a circle and then seemed to explode outwards into a jellyfish. This was something she thought would be pretty spectacular in a science fair but seeing as the robot would just explode or collapse rather than transform she didn’t think she would do s well.
Jan sat on a work bench watching the two of them work. She would never admit it but she enjoyed watching Hank work when he was really concentrating.
“There are...” he paused and ‘hmmm’d for a second “...they’re not Pym particles but it’s of a very similar composition. I’m recognizing some other biological chemicals in here too. It’s familiar but different from anything I’ve ever seen.”
“Interesting,” said Jan with a nod. Hank was just talking to himself but she felt she should be involved in some way.
“My fish died again!” yelled Cassie as she thumped the keyboard. The fish turned into an eel as she changed some coding by accident.
“The particles are most like my Micro-Verse version but they’re lacking any synthetic markings. It’s almost like they’re biological in nature, evolved and self replicating. It’s most unusual. The DNA results didn’t give us much to go on...most certainly not human, triple helix and all.” Hank was talking half to himself and half to the others just to keep them involved. “But where the heck is he from?”
Hank sat back for a second before a chime came in from a computer across the room. He moved quickly to the machine and read the stats on the screen. He flicked through the files and then stopped “This is not good, oh God this is not good at all!”
“What isn’t?” Jan asked. She eased herself from the desk.
Hank ignored her completely and moved to speak on one of the vid screens in the room. It however sparked into life all by itself. Reed Richards appeared on screen, split with T’Challa, aka the Black Panther. Since this was a priority call it answered itself. “Hank, we’ve got more of the bodies.”
Eight pictures appeared on screen with captions: Wakanda, the Rocky Mountains, Hong Kong, London, Alaska, Brazilian Rainforest, Carpi Italy, Western Territories Australia. In each of the shots was a giant body, nude and covered in similar scars, was shown. They varied in shape and size, as if they were eight ordinary humans, and all of them had shocks of orange hair. “These are just the ones we’ve found, there might be more.”
“I suspect the worst,” admitted the Black Panther (though he always suspected the worst). “This is some plot.”
Hank interrupted before they could say anything else. “I want Avengers...and whoever else you can get…at each of those bodies ASAP. They should be provided with cryokinetic technology, if possible.”
He began to type away at his wrist mounted device and motioned to the vid screen transferring it across. Cassie and Jan had moved behind him to get a look at what was going on.
“This is the data from the satellite scanning we’ve been doing X-Ray and Thermal imaging with.” Hank narrowed his eyes at the screen. “As you can see, there are things inside the bodies. They seem to be of an insectoid design and, if my guess is right, they can emit their own Pym Particles. They have shrunk themselves down before burrowing into these giants. There are trillions of the insects in each and every body.”
Reed and T’Challa looked over the data on the screen.
“Gentlemen this is an invasion.”
The yellow and black clad superhero dodged it with lighting speed with a simple kick of his leg, which sent him fling horizontally. He didn’t, however, stick the landing, as the momentum of his push sent him flying through one of the ledges which surrounded the edge of the building.
“This is not going exactly as I planned,” he said with a shake of his head as he hung off the edge of the building. He tightened his grip on the edge of the roof top, the concrete crushing between his fingers leaving finger grooves in the side of the concrete. He pushed his body up with the force of his arms and shot about 30 feet in the air. This new found super-strength was most certainly an interesting experience. He launched forward again with a solid push off, the roof surface behind him crumpled and ruptured as he moved.
“Come on, Hank, you can do this!” he supported himself verbally as he bounded across the roof tops. He re-angled his body in mid air to allow for easier movement and further travel. He commando rolled as he came down and managed to come up running. A twinge in his back, which was sadly becoming middle aged far too quickly for his liking, let him know he would pay for all of this in the morning; though not as much as the monster he was tracking.
He spotted the dark-clad figure with a flowing cape ahead of him; he was definitely slowing down, unable to keep up the running pace as easily as Yellowjacket. The hero was closing in fast.
The figure jumped forward and managed to get himself caught on the edge of a roof. Air escaped his lungs sharply as the solid building material drove all of the air out of him.
Hank cleared the roof between them in one single leap and landed on the roof ahead of the criminal. He walked over to the figure and hauled him up by his cape.
The creature roared at him. Its purple jaws opened like the creature in the movie Predator, and its four-golden eyes took in the figure before him and widened in horror. Its clawed hands swung for Pym but merely smashed against the side of his face causing his own hand to break. It let out a whimper of pain.
“I’m making a citizen’s arrest,” he informed the thing in his hands. He was trying his best to be professional and keep his anger and rage toward this monster in. This figure he had caught was a prolific serial killer…he had travelled up and down the coast with no less than 40 kills to it’s name, the latest being a family: a father, mother and two young kids over on the East side of the city.
There was a nationwide man hunt going on throughout the country so Hank had decided to get involved. He had managed to track down the killer through the simplest of detective work using the tried and tested methods of just asking questions...and then running a collection of hacked official documents into a H.O.L.M.E.S. criminal profiling system he had perfected the AI on.
Then it had just been a process of hanging around the city through the night until he heard or saw something. One rooftop chase later he descended the eight story building with a little hop, which had carried him (which a screaming prisoner) down to the city streets.
Hank walked across the street to an open police alarm and pressed the large silver button. The warning sirens sounded and it only took two minutes before three response vehicles turned up, hovering around the corner at top speed. This was just long enough for Hank to snap his new Yellowjacket helmet shut. It was a basic similar design to Ant-Man but yellow and black and covered his entire face to hide his features. The eyes had built-in lenses which scanned all visible frequencies and gave a HUD.
The officers landed their vehicle and began to speak to him. Their four golden eyes took him in while their purple split jaws clicked together as they spoke. “Citizen, you are attired strangely;” they informed him.
The figure in his hand began to ‘chitter’ wildly. It took a second for his translation matrix to catch up to him. “It’s a monster, doesn’t look normal...help me!...untranslatable...I did it, I confess”.
“Indeed. This is the Bsalat killer you’re looking for;” said Hank with a nod as he released him to the police’s waiting hands. “I need no thanks, I’m just happy to be of help.”
He crouched for a second before kicking off; his powerful legs carrying him skyward to the same roof top he had just leapt from. He began to run and he only slowed down when he had put quite a distance between him and the cops.
He came to a screeching halt. He had done some good work tonight. He nodded to himself as the green sun began to rise on the horizon; it had only been 3 hours since it had set.
He had been spending some time recently in the micro-verse. He was amazed by the variety of cultures and species in each sector of the unexplored universe and the sheer number of people he could help. What he found even more intriguing was the variety of basic physical laws which were shown.
Hank, as both Ant-Man and Yellowjacket on Earth, retained his strength when he shrunk down to ant size, which meant through a proper balancing of his powers could either lay a man out with a single blow or indeed punch through concrete (thought not very far it has to be said) because of the pressure being focused on the tiny pin-prick of a fist. While as Goliath and Giant-Man he was able to channel extra-dimensional mass into his own body to increase his strength considerably.
What was interesting was the physics on the worlds he travelled to (and he was yet to come up with a working theory why) in reality in relation to his normal size he was minuscule but retained relative strength – i.e. he was as strong against the aliens of his new height as he would have been against a normal sized alien on Earth.
However, on some worlds, like this one, he maintained some of his strength (on one uninhabited world he actually seemed to retain all of his strength and accidentally ended up destroying a continent with a single foot fall). This gave him immense powers that he wasn’t used to. He was having fun exploring them; though he would more than happily fall back onto his older tested methods in order to catch the criminals if needs be. He was beginning to understand how the likes of Hulk, Thor and Hercules felt striding through a world. It was truly god-like.
Yellowjacket was fast becoming a successful superhero on many of the worlds he visited. In some he was exalted and almost worshipped (though he did try and avoid them; he didn’t want to get into Eternal territory) and on others he was a mysterious figure...especially on the ones like this world where he did not look at all like the locals.
He activated a phase inducer and began to grow. Soon he would become too large to inhabit the world, and he expanded rapidly and soon vanished from the sight of any locals.
He worried that in spending so much time on these worlds he was just running from his own; running to a place where he could feel more accomplished and less in others shadows. He knew others thought it too and he must admit there might have been some truth in it, but deep down it was really simple…he was a hero so he saved people even when they weren’t necessarily people.
On Earth he came onto a scene to deal with big science mysteries and problems, such as when the entire high school class spontaneously combusted one after another last week and he had to step in to solve the problem. He ran to the assistance of the Avengers when a super-villain tried to rule the world or whatever. The planet Earth –heck even the city of New York – had hundreds of superheroes to help the police, stop bomb threats and whatever else came up, but most of these planets seemed to have no one and where no one was present he would step into the role.
He soon found himself standing in his apartment. He tapped his phase inducer and grinned to himself. He was still honestly surprised it worked as well as it did. He always expected to find himself reappearing in the Sahara or on top of a tower block in inner city London.
“Have you been off gallivanting around being Mongo’s greatest hero again? Pulling a John Carter?” Jan asked as she threw her arms around him and kissed his lips.
“It was Xaraxthazus this time,” he grinned, it was not an easy planet to pronounce in a human tongue. “Lovely little place, the inhabitants look like Dire Wraiths but they have some great new TV Shows this season. I’m wondering how well they’d translate because there isn’t a network which wouldn’t snap them up.”
They both laughed a little. “Are you sure everything is okay?” Jan asked for the 60th time in the past month. “You’ve been throwing yourself into ‘work’ like I’ve never seen before.”
“Yes, everything is fine,” he nodded. “I’ve just needed a little distraction,” he admitted. “My patents are taking care of business for me; my latest research needs time to mature...plus it’s pretty much in a hypothesising stage; research cycle and all that stuff. So I’m doing my other hobby.”
Jan nodded; she wasn’t totally believing what he was saying but overall he was doing pretty well. He seemed focused, happy and wasn’t neglecting any particular part of his life. She worried it was going to be touch and go for a little while after the Red Ghost thing but they’d had a talk and Hank had gotten everything off of his chest; since then he had gotten proactive.
Even as they embraced she saw him flick a quick glance over her shoulder. “Go and check, though you know you would have picked up the signal,” she said as she tapped the information processor on his wrist.
“It’ll take two seconds, I promise.” He moved over the his computer and hit a few keys. A map of the world appeared followed by a big red flashing zero.
Hank had, with the help of Tony Stark, launched a series of micro satellites into orbit with the sole purpose of scanning for the particular bio-signature of Red Ghost, Beasts of Berlin, the virus and other simple things like extreme magnetic disturbance should the oranutan get up to any tricks. In any of those events, Hank would be the first to know, though there had been no sightings (and no magnetic disturbances which were not accounted for). The ethics board Hank had set up to discuss this project was the hardest part of the whole thing. “Okay, all done. Sorry, sorry.”
“Anyway,” Jan said, rolling her eyes, “I’m sure I can give you a little more of a distraction, if you’re interested.” She kissed him.”
“I would be very interested,” Hank smiled.
The large television screen on the other side of the room suddenly sparked to life and Reed Richard’s face appeared. Iron Man could be seen moving around behind him. “Hank, we could use a little help, we’ve got something which is most certainly going to be of interest to you. It’s a...”
“…and ‘Hi, Reed’” Jan added with a small wave, hoping the leader of the Fantastic Four would acknowledge her existence. He was, without a doubt, the smartest man on the planet but he was always so bloody rude.
“Is this anything that can wait, Reed? We were in the middle of something?” Hank said as he turned his attention back to Jan.
Reed paused for a second. “Well, I suppose it could...uh, I don’t think it’s anything life threatening, I just thought better safe than sorry.” He shook his head. “A corpse of a giant is floating in the harbour and we’re just trying to figure out what’s going on.”
“A giant?” asked Hank as he turned his head toward the screen. “Are there any distinguishing features...other than being a giant, obviously,” he quickly added.
“I will forever be a widow to science,” Jan sighed. “Go on, go and play scientist with the boys.”
“Jan,” Hank paused for a second. “I…uh…I can stay. I don’t have to go.”
“No, it’s fine;” she waved her hand. “You don’t watch organized sports, which I’m sure most women would happily make a trade for me happily. You need some male bonding time too.”
“Thank you. I’ll buy you something very nice for this.” He gave her a quick peck and was off.
“Something very nice and very expensive!” she called after him before slumping down on the sofa. She smiled at Reed and there was a moment of silence.
“It would be rude of me to just sign off, wouldn’t it?” he asked, almost unsure of himself.
“Mildly,” she shrugged.
“Sue has warned me about being accidentally rude to people when I’m in ‘science mode’...especially her friends,” he nodded. There was another pause before he opened his mouth to speak.
“Reed,” Jan interrupted. “It’s okay if you want to go and do science.”
“Thank you, Jan...I owe you something nice and pretty too.” He shot a quick smile which she returned before the connection went dead.
# # # # #
New York Harbour
The entire dock was a media circus. Camera crews, reporters and half of the city seemed to have turned out with their camera phones recording the giant in the water.
It was 70% submerged like any good iceberg. Only portions of his skin (including the face) were visible above the water. Numerous boats drifted around his massive form while several figures walked around on his chest.
Rover soared over the crowds and hovered above the body. Hank dropped from the vehicle and drifted down to the chest. He met Reed Richards, Anton Stark (the hard light hologram patterned on the brain patterns of the original and currently comatose Tony Stark) and Scott Lang with a shake of the hand each, before he saw his ‘niece’ behind Scott. “Hi, Cassie,” he said before throwing a quizzical look at Scott. She waved back.
“She was with me this weekend, but Tony asked me to come when you were originally unavailable. She begged me to visit and he said it was safe.” Scott shrugged.
Cassie and he had come to an arrangement about the whole superhero thing and she was hanging up her tights for quite a while but she was still interested in the whole world involved.
“So what do you think of the whole thing?” he asked his niece.
“It’s honestly a little dull,” she shrugged. “I’ve been just hanging around for an hour on his chest.”
“She wandered too close to the genitals before, so now she has to stay put,” Scott informed with a nod.
“So he’s a he,” Hank looked from Scott to Cassie and then back to Scott. “Well, you know..” he raised his eyebrows.
Scott nodded. “He’s circumcised, too,” said Iron Man. “I’ve never met a man so easy to embarrass with simple Biology as you.” He laughed as he noticed Yellowjacket’s expression. “Though I suppose you wouldn’t want to ruin all men for her by comparison.”
Scott coughed loudly. He was not aware that the being in the suit was not his good friend Tony. Iron Man turned to meet a withering ‘father’ stare that he hadn’t seen since he was a teenager and met the fathers of girls he was dating. “Right, on with the show...what do you think, Hank?”
Pym turned and surveyed the site “Well, it’s a giant,” he said with a nod. “Have you taken any readings?”
“Well, he’s definitely dead,” nodded Anton in a sarcastic tone. “I checked his heart for bio-electricity and I held a shiny thing up to his nose, no steam. He’s a red head and, as Cassie can tell you, collars match cuffs.”
Reed coughed gently while Scott gave ‘Tony’ another look and took over speaking “He’s approximately 250 feet and weighs about 190 metric tonnes, we’ve taken cell samples. Spectrometer readings show unusual build up of elements which I need to examine further and I’ve got a tissue sample being analyzed as I speak. I’ve taken DNA too to see if we can match him. I’ve yet to pick up Pym particles, so...”
“Well, he’s not human,” Hank said with a shake of his head. “You can rule that right off. I’ve tested this…the highest a human can grow safely is 154.3 feet. I went to 167 once but passed out and shrank down on instinct. The strain is far too much, and 250 is far, far beyond human capability.”
“Okay…so alien? Inter-dimensional?” Scott asked.
“I’m scanning now,” Iron Man said as he looked up and down the length of the giant. “He is vibrating at a slightly different frequency but it’s not one I recognize...and it’s not such a big difference as you would expect from inter-dimensional travel.”
“We can scan bone density and mass distribution,” informed Hank “that’ll probably tell us how alien he is. An X-Ray would be great too.”
Hank moved down the giant’s chest and crouched, running his fingers over the body. He moved quickly around running his hand across the man’s skin.
“Do you two need to be alone?” Anton asked.
“No, it’s fine...any ideas on these scars?” Hank ran his fingers across the puckered flesh, which seemed to have healed a little. The body was covered in these scars which were about a foot in diameter and all at varying angles. They covered every single visible inch of the giant.
“I haven’t really thought about it,” admitted Reed as he scratched his chin. “I was more focused on the giant itself. I really should have focused on everything.” He nodded.
“Okay,” Hank nodded. “Reed can you report to me as soon as you get findings and organize a satellite X-Ray.”
“I’ll have it sent along your wavelength automatically,” he nodded.
“Iron Man, I want you working on ideas about how he got here…CCTV, satellite images and energy readings should give us some ideas,” he said.
“Scott, I need you to shrink down to ant size and go over this guy with a fine tooth comb. I can’t help thinking there’s something we’re missing.”
“Okay,” Anton said, “but one question...who exactly put you in charge?”
Hank paused for a second. “I assumed that when a giant turns up dead it is so clearly my territory...and then you and Reed both called me, so clearly you were at a loss but didn’t want to admit it. I’m a fresh set of eyes and assumed you’d both put me in charge.”
“Sounds logical,” said Iron Man. Anton had better things to be doing with his time anyway; Stark’s company needed some major restructuring, in his humble opinion.
“Excuse me, Dr Pym,” came a voice from near the stomach. Yellowjacket turned to see the man walking up toward him was in chest high waders and a shirt. He had jet black hair and a square jaw and was of Asian descent. He flashed his badge. “I’m detective Amon. I’ve been tasked on this case.”
“A pleasure to meet you,” said Yellowjacket as he shook the detectives hand. “Isn’t this a little out of NYPD’s jurisdiction?”
“A body turns up in the harbour, we get called,” he nodded. “This one is a little bigger than usual but a dead body is a dead body. You got any idea on ETD?”
Hank shook his head. “Body temp readings will be totally unhelpful in these waters,” he said. “We also don’t know if it’s human, so it would be impossible to comment on without taking huge guesses.”
“I know this is above my pay grade but keep me in the loop with whatever you find?”he half-asked and half-told.
“Will do,” nodded Yellowjacket.
“Cassie, whilst your Dad is working, do you want to come back to the lab while I look over a few tissue samples and Reed’s readings?”
“I suppose I could,” she shrugged. “I tend to just sit around and do nothing while you fiddle with computers and vials.” Hank feared (much the same as Scott) that he had sadly lost Cassie to the world of being a teenager where nothing was exciting anymore.
“How are your science grades coming along?” he asked. It was his subtle way of reminding her that he was supposed to be tutoring her.
“Cs,” she nodded with a little shrug again. She was definitely a teenager trying to show no interest in her grades. “I’ve got an extra credit thing for the science fair.”
“What are you doing for it?”
“Volcano?”
“How about a report on a possible alien giant? Or I can set you up to build and program and AI pet of some kind. I think a fish could totally be within your grasp.”
Cassie nodded and the two headed toward Rover. Hank stopped for a second to get a few cell samples.
# # # # #
An hour later...
Hank was typing away manically at a computer and looking at the readings on the screen. Cassie, however, grunted aggressively as she looked at the computer representation of her finished fish program. It swam in a circle and then seemed to explode outwards into a jellyfish. This was something she thought would be pretty spectacular in a science fair but seeing as the robot would just explode or collapse rather than transform she didn’t think she would do s well.
Jan sat on a work bench watching the two of them work. She would never admit it but she enjoyed watching Hank work when he was really concentrating.
“There are...” he paused and ‘hmmm’d for a second “...they’re not Pym particles but it’s of a very similar composition. I’m recognizing some other biological chemicals in here too. It’s familiar but different from anything I’ve ever seen.”
“Interesting,” said Jan with a nod. Hank was just talking to himself but she felt she should be involved in some way.
“My fish died again!” yelled Cassie as she thumped the keyboard. The fish turned into an eel as she changed some coding by accident.
“The particles are most like my Micro-Verse version but they’re lacking any synthetic markings. It’s almost like they’re biological in nature, evolved and self replicating. It’s most unusual. The DNA results didn’t give us much to go on...most certainly not human, triple helix and all.” Hank was talking half to himself and half to the others just to keep them involved. “But where the heck is he from?”
Hank sat back for a second before a chime came in from a computer across the room. He moved quickly to the machine and read the stats on the screen. He flicked through the files and then stopped “This is not good, oh God this is not good at all!”
“What isn’t?” Jan asked. She eased herself from the desk.
Hank ignored her completely and moved to speak on one of the vid screens in the room. It however sparked into life all by itself. Reed Richards appeared on screen, split with T’Challa, aka the Black Panther. Since this was a priority call it answered itself. “Hank, we’ve got more of the bodies.”
Eight pictures appeared on screen with captions: Wakanda, the Rocky Mountains, Hong Kong, London, Alaska, Brazilian Rainforest, Carpi Italy, Western Territories Australia. In each of the shots was a giant body, nude and covered in similar scars, was shown. They varied in shape and size, as if they were eight ordinary humans, and all of them had shocks of orange hair. “These are just the ones we’ve found, there might be more.”
“I suspect the worst,” admitted the Black Panther (though he always suspected the worst). “This is some plot.”
Hank interrupted before they could say anything else. “I want Avengers...and whoever else you can get…at each of those bodies ASAP. They should be provided with cryokinetic technology, if possible.”
He began to type away at his wrist mounted device and motioned to the vid screen transferring it across. Cassie and Jan had moved behind him to get a look at what was going on.
“This is the data from the satellite scanning we’ve been doing X-Ray and Thermal imaging with.” Hank narrowed his eyes at the screen. “As you can see, there are things inside the bodies. They seem to be of an insectoid design and, if my guess is right, they can emit their own Pym Particles. They have shrunk themselves down before burrowing into these giants. There are trillions of the insects in each and every body.”
Reed and T’Challa looked over the data on the screen.
“Gentlemen this is an invasion.”