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Post By IW Wed Apr 13, 2005 at 12:24:01 pm EDT |
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Avengers: Underground #9 | |
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| Previously: After stumbling across a plot to eliminate all superheroes, Quicksilver (Pietro Maximoff), Crystal, the Black Knight (Dane Whitman) and the Vision faked their deaths to continue investigating with the help of the King of Wakanda, the Black Panther. Their most recent activities have gained them some insight into the forces they oppose, and have put them into contact with the Dwarf, servant of the sinister book of lies, the Darkhold. This story is part of a collection of fan-fiction stories assembled by Ozbot at Avengers Anew. Previous chapters can be found at on the Avengers: Underground Archive Page. The principal characters in this story at the property of Marvel Comics, and this isn’t a challenge to their legal rights. The original characters and ideas are mine. Avengers: Underground #9 “Momma! Poppa!” The smallest princess of the Inhumans broke away from her nanny and pelted across the landing field to greet the newly-arrived Wakandan quinjet. To her delight the hatch broke open and Luna’s mother Crystal hurried out of the vehicle to hug her. “Baby!” the elemental called out, closing her arms around the little girl. “Oh, I’ve missed you!” The other occupants of the quinjet disembarked more soberly. Black Knight Dane Whitman had his Ebony Blade drawn and pointed at the Dwarf who served the Darkhold. The Vision still carried the captured page from the book of sins, maintaining his threat to destroy the parchment if the Dwarf violated their tenuous truce. Quicksilver, the mutant speedster, was notably slow in disembarking. He only left the craft and walked to greet his newly-arrived daughter with noticeable reluctance. “Luna. Hello.” The little red-headed child completely missed the complicated clues her father gave off about his uncertainties and doubts and hurled herself at him with a furious energy. “Daddy!” Crystal watched Luna embrace her husband with an unreadable expression. Slowly Quicksilver allowed his arms to close around Luna and return the embrace. “My, this is better than daytime television,” observed the Darkhold Dwarf. “Keep your comments to yourself,” Dane Whitman told him. He gestured with his sword for the Darkhold’s servitor to keep moving. “I don’t think my Ebony Blade likes you.” The entire jungle landing strip where the quinjet had landed shuddered for a moment then began to sink down on hydraulic columns. The African skyline was left behind as vehicle, occupants, and landing site together descended into the ground. “Well, this place is just full of surprises,” the Dwarf noted as he descended into the technological jungle beneath Central Wakanda. The roof closed over them, blocking out the natural light. Down in the caverns the only illumination came from the neon strips and halogen spotlights that lit the shining twisted cathedral of cold technology assembled by the ruler of all the Wakandas. The platform clicked into place halfway down the void, where a railed gangplank led off through black metal portals to the inner chambers beyond. Pietro looked up and saw the old woman who had brought Luna to meet him. So familiar was she that he didn’t even notice any more that she had leathery brown skin, short horns, and the face of a cow. As Bova Ayrshire now cared for Princess Luna, so the evolved bovine had once nannied Wanda and Pietro Maximoff through their first months. “Thank you for bringing her,” he said to Bova, still holding Luna to him. “Well of course I brought her, the poor child,” the kindly old product of the High Evolutionary’s experiments answered. Her voice sounded like one of those benevolent agony aunts from 50’s radio. “The poor girl was so distraught when she saw those absurd news stories about her mother and father being killed. If Lady Crystal hadn’t thought to contact me…” “We’ve very grateful to you, Bova” Crystal admitted. “I hope you’ve not been neglecting your own health to look after this unruly child?” “Momma, I was really good!” Luna protested. Quicksilver’s face darkened again, and the chink of affection he’d shown in his weakness was gone. Bova still walked with a stick because of the stroke she’d had when she’d been tortured for information about Wanda by Magneto; another score for the mutant speedster to settle. “I’m fine, my dear,” Bova assured them, sharing her comfort between Crystal and Pietro. Then she noticed the Dwarf watching her. “You!” “You know him?” Dane Whitman frowned. “This Dwarf?” “I’ve seen him before,” the cow-woman answered. “Back when I was caring for my poor Mordred, after the Darkhold had ruined his mind. This one was always watching. He’s evil. He’s the devil.” The Dwarf in the black Armani preened. “You do me too much honour,” he demurred. “I but serve a higher power.” “He claims to be an agent of the Darkhold,” the Vision reported. “He further claims to have knowledge about the coalition who attempted the murders of Quicksilver and the Black Knight, and who may be plotting other and greater atrocities. We have brought him here to negotiate.” “I think the Panther’s waiting for us,” Crystal observed, peering down the silver corridor into the conference chamber beyond. “Bova, will you care for Luna a little longer?” “Of course my lady. But she can run along for now. She knows how to get back to where she was playing with the palace children.” On receiving permission Luna gave her mother a last impetuous cuddle then pelted off towards a service stair. “And no more attaching vibranium to the frogs in the Pool of Reflection!” Bova called after her. “That’s an interesting experiment,” Dane Whitman considered. “Did it…” “The Panther?” Crystal prompted. She led the Black Knight, Quicksilver, and their captive into the conference chamber. Vision would have followed, but the cow-woman kept him back. “A moment please,” she asked the synthezoid. “I need to talk with you.” “This may not be an appropriate occasion, Bova Ayrshire,” the Vision replied in his most artificial tones. His words echoed round the huge cavern like a voice from the tomb. “Appropriate or not we’ll talk, master Vision,” the cow-woman insisted. “I do not use that nomenclature now. I no longer associate myself with…” “Oh rubbish! Now talk to me about Wanda!” The Vision paused for a beat as his computerised brain completely failed to suggest a response. “Wanda?” “Wanda. My beautiful girl. Your wife.” “Wanda and I no longer consider ourselves to be legally or emotionally linked, even before she…” “Well that’s rubbish too,” Bova scolded him. “I was there when William and Thomas were born, and I’ve never seen two people so much in love as you and she, or happier at through thought of a future together with those wonderful children.” “We were very foolish back then,” the Vision replied bitterly. “You were blessed,” Bova told him. “And if that blessing was cruelly torn from you it was no less torn from Wanda.” The Vision’s plastic red face somehow managed to look uncomfortable. “This is not a topic of conversation I wish, or intend, to pursue, Madame Bova.” “I don’t care what you wish, Vision. But I’m telling you… you do right by my poor Wanda. You’re her husband, for better or worse. You vowed it. You can pretend all you want that circumstances have changed it, or you, or that you’re something different now, but you said it.” She prodded the android in his chest. “You do right by her.” “Wanda reduced me to a mindless puppet and used me to destroy my closest allies. She murdered me.” “Then she needs help more than ever in her life,” Bova insisted. How did her stabbing finger hurt through concrete-hard synthetic skin? “You’re her husband, the love of her life, the father of her children, and there’s nobody else, even dear Pietro, who can rescue her now. So be a man!” Sersi was angry, which happened occasionally, and frightened, which was much rarer. And she was hurt, which usually didn’t happen at all, since she was one of the Eternal sub-race created by the Celestial Space Giants millennia since with complete control over her molecular structure; usually. Then again, she reflected as she plunged into the crowds of Amsterdam’s Achterburgwal, the heart of its red light district, she wasn’t usually being hunted to death by her own people. Phastos and Kingo Sunen had almost caught up with her on the east coast of England, and the wounds they’d inflicted before she escaped them were psychic as well as physical, and would take longer to heal. A drunken tourist, mistaking Sersi for one of the many prostitutes who wore similar outfits along the teeming thoroughfare, made an unwary grab at her. She hurled him through a plate glass window. They were close again, her Eternal kin. The mistress of matter could sense them, co-ordinated by Thena but spurred by some genetic imperative to obedience programmed into the first generation that had been altered by the Celestians themselves. Strangely, the idea that Ikaris and Makkari didn’t know what they were doing as they tried to kill Sersi didn’t comfort her. Sersi sensed rather than saw Sprite flying overhead. She quickly ducked into one of the many coffee-houses along the street, taking cover in it’s cannabis-fumed fug. She spotted a payphone on the wall and quickly created coins that would operate it. Then she hesitated. Who was there she could ring? There was a conspiracy. Something old and potent, that reached back into her own past and to the very roots of her race’s creation. Already it had taken her family from her. It had killed her gann josin, the lover she had once bonded with psionically, Dane Whitman. Now it sought to end her too. Who to call? The Avengers she’d known and trusted were almost all gone now, dead in a series of tragedies while she’d been partying across the globe. Those who held the mantle now were unknown to her; any of them or all of them could be part of the plot. Sam Holden? Why should she get her old friend killed? Who else could she trust? There was only one man, and calling him was as great an act of faith as any she’d ever made. Her fingers dialled the number. “Hello. You’ve reached Captain America’s Hotline. In urgent need call your local emergency services, or otherwise leave your message after the tone.” “Steve? It’s Sersi. I need help Steve. There’s something very wrong. My own people are trying to kill me. I’m hurt and…” And then she heard the faint clicking on the line, the tiniest relay sound of a message being intercepted. “Fool!” she accused herself as she slammed the receiver down. She turned to look for a quick way out of the coffee-house. “Excuse me, madam,” a man called to her in poor Dutch, “Is this yours?” He handed her a small iron figurine, no more than three inches in height. Distracted and hurt, Sersi was too slow to recognise that the image was of herself. She’d already grasped it before she spotted the grotesque face of the man beside her, a peeled raw visage under transparent plastic. And then the metal in her hands released its psionic charge into her and the fear experience began. Sersi crumpled over and her head bounced on the floor. “Some people just can’t take their coffee,” Wexford the Dissected Man noted to the guests in the coffee-house. He hoisted her over his shoulder, paid his bill, and carried her away. The Black Panther sat on an ebony throne and waited for his allies to assemble in council. Nobody was present in this secure heart of technological Wakanda other than the four heroes he had recruited after the world thought them slain and the dark demon they had brought to bargain with. “You’ve come quite far,” the Dwarf admitted as he stood before the gathering. “I’m almost impressed.” “Just tell us what we need to know,” Dane Whitman challenged him. “We’re not interested in your opinions.” “And if I help you in your understandings, what then?” the servant of the Darkhold challenged. “What’s in it for me?” “You get to live,” Quicksilver told him. “And your Darkhold page doesn’t end up as ashes.” “You haven’t the power to kill me,” the Dwarf shrugged. “And while it would be inconvenient for the Vision there to incinerate the scroll he holds it would hardly remove it forever, only until it incarnated anew elsewhere.” “Yet you came,” Crystal pointed out. “You let us bring you here.” “I was curious,” the Dwarf admitted. “He means he wished to know how far into the mystery we have probed,” the Panther explained, his fingertips cradled together as he watched the Dwarf. “He knows we have overcome two prime servitors of the coalition ranged against us, Gregoriy Russov the Bonewalker and Astrid Mordo. He knows that the Black Knight has finally overcome his line’s hidden enemy the Lady Viviane, one of the inner circle who oppose us. Now he wants to know who, and how, and why we have achieved this much.” “And as I say, I’m impressed.” “What the rest of you do not yet know,” the Panther continued, “is that the enemies who have previously culled Earth’s extraordinary beings at various times in history, and who conspire now to do it again, call themselves the Zodiac.” “Those clowns?” snorted Quicksilver. “The true manipulators behind them,” the Dwarf answered. “The servants of the Zodiac Key?” the Vision suggested. “No. These people – or entities – appear to have used the Key and the various lesser incarnations of the Zodiac cartel to promote their rather longer and more ambitious agendas.” “Didn’t the last Zodiac steal whole cities into other dimensions?” the Black Knight remembered. The Dwarf snorted derisively. “But the true Zodiac are big-time.” “And the elder being Chthon is one of them?” Crystal surmised. “Isn’t he?” The Dwarf shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t get all the memos.” “Chthon’s main motivation is getting free from the place he was bound at the dawn of history,” Quicksilver noted. “So this Zodiac is dedicated to freeing him?” “Each of the cartel has their own motives and objectives,” the Panther warned. “Somehow each of their personal agendas is promoted by their collective actions.” “Which are about wiping out the heroes on Earth,” Dane Whitman summarised. “In part,” said T’Challa. “Apparently that is in preparation for some coming event they anticipate will allow them to meet their collective aspirations.” “These are the people responsible for what happened to the Scarlet Witch?” the Vision asked, his voice perfectly modulated. “Who are they?” The Black Panther shook his head. “We know only that the Lady of the Lake and Chthon are amongst their number. Mordo also mentioned someone called the Void Scholar who may…” “The Void Scholar?” the Dwarf interrupted, and for the first time he wasn’t smiling. “You’ve heard of the Void Scholar?” “Who is he?” Crystal demanded. “He’s the reason you are all going to die,” the Dwarf explained to her. “I came to find how far you had penetrated the Zodiac’s preparations. I was content to gather my information that you still endured in life and then depart. It is for others to act as executioners; perhaps Wexford, who kills heroes as a hobby. But if you have heard the name of the Void Scholar, you really are too close to be allowed to live.” “Watch out!” called the Black Knight as the Dwarf burst from his diminutive shell to become a writhing black mass of squirming tentacles. He leaped forward and his Ebony Blade sliced the first of the appendages to surge forward. The Vision crushed a pair of tentacles with his hands then loosed his solar beam into the heart of the black mass. Quicksilver blurred Crystal aside while the elemental summoned a great gout of flame to sear the Dwarf’s bulk. The Dwarf twisted sideways in dimensions, laughing, and suddenly he was unharmed, his mass doubled. “What did I tell you?” he boasted. “You can’t harm me. But feel free to keep struggling.” The Black Panther touched a stud on his throne. The dimensional dampeners laced in the conference chamber walls hummed to life, cutting the Dwarf from some of the dark dimensions where he drew his power. The opaque force-field acting as a floor shimmered away revealing the real floor a quarter-inch below. The place where the Dwarf stood was etched with strange chalk designs prepared by Joshua Drumm, T’Challa’s consultant on occult matters. They’d been specially researched for the occasion. T’Challa checked that his Kimoyo Card had properly logged the vibrational frequencies of the Dwarf’s form then programmed the counter-wave into a vibra-knife. “Here,” he called, hurling it over to Quicksilver. The mutant speedster caught the blade, then sped forward at the speed of thought before the Dwarf could discern what he was doing. The vibra-knife plunged into the black core of the tentacled monstrosity, and the Dwarf went down with a frustrated howl. It was a battered short humanoid who toppled to the ground amidst the mystic markings. “Don’t these guys get that we’ve been doing this stuff for a while now?” the Black Knight wondered with a grin. “I don’t mind them underestimating us for a while longer,” Crystal replied. They realised they were beaming at each other and hastily turned away. The Black Panther rose from his throne. “I’ll ask Brother Voodoo to bind this one with the others,” he noted. “Then we can get back to planning the downfall of the Zodiac.” Continued… Footnotes for the Genealogical Guru: Luna is the only child of Quicksilver and Crystal. In her birth the unusual genetics of her Inhuman mother and mutant father were cancelled out, apparently leaving her baseline human. An argument between Quicksilver and Crystal at his thwarted intention to expose Luna to the Inhumans gene-altering Terragen Mists led to the first estrangement between the couple, and was one of the “causes” of Crystal’s eventual adultery that separated them. Luna is a couple of years or so younger than Franklin Richards, however old he is. Bova Ayrshire was the twelfth successful “New-Man” creation of the Victorian geneticist Herbert Wyndham, the High Evolutionary. Transformed from a normal cow to a rational biped, Bova became midwife and nurse to the new race the Evolutionary created in his scientific fortress on Wundagore mountain. It was Bova who acted as midwife to Magda, Magneto’s wife, when she fled from her mutant husband, and it was Bova who nursed Wanda and Pietro until they were old enough to be adopted by the Maximoff gypsies. Bova also nursemaided the mind-wiped Arthurian mage Mordred the Mystic for a time. She was assaulted by Magneto in the Vision and the Scarlet Witch Limited Series vol 2 #4. More on Bova at The Appendix to the Handbook of the Marvel Universe - Bova. Phastos, Kingo Sunen, Ikaris, Thena, and Sprite are all Eternals, described at Sersi’s Loft, or for those who prefer lists and statistics, at http://members.fortunecity.com/jsc2593/cna/eternals.html. Dr Samuel Holden is a human friend and possibly former romance interest of Sersi’s from the original Kirby Eternals series. Jericho Drumm, Brother Voodoo is a former psychiatrist-turned-magic worker who has assisted the Black Panther before in dealing with supernatural problems. There’s a profile of Jericho Drumm at Comics Central – Brother Voodoo Apparently he’s getting his own TV show soon. |
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