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Post By IW Sat Apr 30, 2005 at 07:49:53 am EDT |
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Avengers: Underground #10 – Whatever Happened to Golden Girl? | |
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| Previously: Sersi, free-spirited member of the ancient Eternal clan, investigated the apparent death of her former lover Dane (Black Knight) Whitman, only to discover her own people now sought her death. Desperate for help, she called Captain America’s hotline, but the call was intercepted and she was instead captured by the bizarre and unpleasant Dissected Man, Wexford. 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 ideas and characters are mine. And a couple of disclaimers: This episode is one I’m still not sure I should really post, for two very different reasons: This chapter features a male character torturing a female one. I debated whether to let the plot go this way, because it’s a distasteful event, but then I decided that really anybody torturing anybody is distasteful, whatever the genders, and perhaps it would have been more sexist to omit the scene than to include it. Still, you’ve been forewarned. This chapter also dredges deep into the dark roots of Marvel history, back to events that were shown in comics before Marvel Comics even called itself by that name. I’ve tried to explain every reference as much as is necessary in the story, and I’ve included far more comprehensive footnotes and links for those who are unsatisfied with the brief descriptions in the narrative. I hope the subject matter doesn’t scare off casual readers; I’ve gone to some pains to try and avoid that. Avengers: Underground #10 – Whatever Happened to Golden Girl? “How many times have you rescued me now?” the pretty blonde asked as Captain America untied the ropes that bound her to her chair. “Including this time, Miss Ross? I think this is seventeen.” “Who’d have thought that being morale officer for Camp Lehigh would be so dangerous?” She smiled at the sentinel of liberty who’d just saved her from Nazi bundists yet again. “Who indeed? But if you insist on stowing away in stolen trucks of military ordinance…” “Hey, Cap,” called Bucky. “You think we can get after those fleeing Ratzis before they get all the way back to Germany?” “Excuse me, Miss Ross. My young partner is eager to go bust some bundists.” “Till next time, Captain America.” Wexford the Dissected Man carefully withdrew the needle from Sersi’s eyeball and tasted it on his plastic-covered tongue. The memories were acidically clear, dredged as they were from behind a psychic barrier his victim hadn’t even realised was there. “You were quite busy in the Second World War, weren’t you?” he told the helplessly bound Eternal, running his transparent-skinned hand over her sweating flesh. “Betsy Ross, Mary Morgan, Peggy Carter… how many heroes’ girlfriends did you impersonate, you insatiable minx?” Sersi struggled as the other pins in her flesh probed deeper into her mind, dredging it of all its stored shames and horrors. “Where were the actual women while you were keeping watch on their boyfriends for the secret government?” Wexford wondered. “Ah, yes, of course. The Void Spectre.” Sersi could remember now how she’d been introduced to war work by her fellow Eternal Makkari, who was himself masquerading under various identities to battle the Nazis. It had seemed like a noble cause, aiding a fledgling generation of heroes to face a terrible threat. And the Deviants were already covertly assisting the Axis powers against the Atlanteans… “Coming back, is it?” Wexford tormented his captive. He pressed the needle he was fondling through the plastic sheath that surrounded his half-unpacked interior, piercing his nipple to transfer the psionic coding he needed into the metal tine. Then he slid it under Sersi’s fingernail with almost tender care. “Things were going so well until you met Paul Destine.” The Eternal struggled again, but the psionic locks on her powers were inhibiting even her ability to move more than amused her captor. And she remembered Destine… “They’re not coming back,” the Director of Special War Measures told the enclave of men who were gathered in the dark smoky office. “We had the Fin check the area where Zemo’s bomb exploded. There are some fierce rip-tides round there, but he found some… human debris. Barnes, we think.” “That’s… very unfortunate,” Howard Stark admitted. “The loss of Captain America and Bucky will be a tremendous blow to public morale, to the whole war effort.” “Which is why they won’t be lost,” Destine replied, stubbing his cigarette out in the metal ashtray built into the table. “This country needs a Captain America for now. If we can’t have Rogers then we’ll find someone else. Miss Ross, who do you suggest?” All eyes turned to the only woman in the room, the woman who thought she was Betsy Ross. “William Naislund,” she replied without hesitation. “The Spirit of 76. He may not have Steve’s super-soldier serum, but he looks and sounds the part. And if you can’t convince him then go to Jeffrey Mace, The Patriot.” “Convincing any of these heroes of anything isn’t a problem,” smirked Paul Destine. “You should know that, Miss Ross, considering the work you undertake on behalf of this committee.” “I was tasked with keeping track of these mystery men for you,” Ross said defensively. “Naislund might work, but Mace isn’t even a soldier,” the Director objected. “He’s a journalist. A dilettante.” “He could do it,” Betsy Ross insisted. “And you’ve been keeping close tabs on him as the lovely Mary Morgan,” Jeremiah Wexford leered. “Naislund of Mace, either would need training in how Cap fights and moves and thinks.” “That can be corrected,” Paul Destine assured them. “By the time I’ve finished with him, Naislund will even think of himself as Steven Rogers. And should he fall we’ll find another Rogers. And another.” “You can do that?” Howard Stark asked a little nervously. Now he knew he had to step up his Total Elimination of Super-Soldiers project, if only to defend against men as powerful and ruthless as Destine. “Oh yes,” the man who wore the so-called Helmet of Power that was secretly the Serpent Crown assured him. “Look at how obedient Miss Ross is to our orders.” “Happy times, eh?” Wexford asked Sersi as he withdrew the psychic needle and tasted it again. “Destine working through you, amplifying your abilities to manipulate Rogers, then Naislund, then Mace, and their pretty little sidekicks. Telepathic manipulation that convinced your pawns they were all Rogers and Barnes, never asking the important questions. Even today nobody wonders why SHIELD Agent Peggy Carter is so spry for an octogenarian, or how she could have a sister as young as Sharon Carter. Or how dear Sharon came back from the dead, and so changed. Or why she suddenly went from being a SHIELD outcast to its acting head when Fury was thought lost.” “I didn’t mean to do any of that,” Sersi wanted to scream. “I’d forgotten who I was back then. Destiny played with my mind as he played with theirs, as he played with Namor’s.” But she could only manage an incoherent shriek. “A tall beautiful brunette. In a hurry. Over at the telephone,” Dane Whitman insisted, holding the coffee-shop owner up against the wall with a thinly disguised rage. “She made a call from here around three hours ago.” “I didn’t see anything,” the shop-keeper promised. Nobody saw anything here in the Achterburgwal, Amsterdam’s red light district. “We intercepted an interrupted call from the lady we seek,” Victor Shade explained dispassionately. “Our instrumentation suggests that we were not the only people tapping the number that she called.” “And later we’ll be reviewing why the Black Panther has a wiretap on Captain America’s hotline,” Pietro Maximoff breathed to his wife Crystal. “Can we really trust T’Challa?” “As you say, later,” the Inhuman princess murmured back. “For now I have to jog some memories. Stand back.” “You don’t have to intervene,” Quicksilver suggested. “Yes I do,” Crystal replied. “Dane’s losing his temper, and next he’ll be reaching for his cursed Ebony Blade. He doesn’t think clearly when Sersi’s threatened. So it’s showtime.” The elemental raised her hands and t hurricane wind slammed shut the coffee house door then hurled every patron from their tables. The ground shook, bringing plaster down on their heads. And as Crystal stepped forward everybody present began to choke as the very air in their lungs began to be pulled from their bodies. “As we were asking…” said the Princess of the Inhumans. “The .45 slug caused a penetrating injury to the chest with unusual intraluminal passage of the bullet,” the doctor explained to the shaken Captain America. “The dame is severe, and I can’t predict the long term consequences. I’m afraid your young partner won’t be up and around for a long time.” The hero in the red white and blue garb tried not to react to the rebuke in the doctor’s gaze. Why had Captain America ever allowed a young boy like Fred Davies to follow him onto the battlefield in the guise of Bucky anyway? Every time they fought criminals they tempted the odds. It had only been a matter of time before their luck ran out. Except that Davis has been doing this longer than you, Cap thought to himself. He was Bucky to your predecessor. He was there when Naislund was beaten to death. He was there when the President asked you to take the role. “How is he?” asked Betsy Ross, hurrying in, her raincoat dripping from the downpour outside. “Not good,” Jeff Mace admitted, leaving the technical description of the gunshots to the medical experts who buzzed round the fallen Davies. Except he wasn’t Davis, was he? As if waking from a dream, Mace remembered that this fallen boy was Bucky Barnes, the one-and-only partner to Steve Rogers, the one-and-only Captain America. Him. Betsy Ross smiled at him sympathetically. “It’s not you fault, Cap,” she promised him. Oh no, raged the woman internally. All you did was fight for good. It wasn’t your fault that you dared investigate the disappearance and death of some of your old superhero allies. That was why Wexford had your partner taken down. That’s why Destine has sent me. “I’m going to bring those hoods to justice,” promised Captain America, “if it’s the last thing I do, Mary.” “Betsy,” the FBI agent corrected him. “I’m Betsy today. But it doesn’t make any difference.” After all, a superhero needed a girlfriend, and what’s in a name? “Anyway, I think since you’re needing a partner for now I’d better rustle up a costume and join you avenging Bucky. You can call me Golden Girl.” “Don’t try to resist my fear experiences,” Wexford the Dissected Man advised his struggling captive. “Keep squirming if you like, though. You squirm most attractively. I’ve always liked that about you, Sersi. I’ve lost count of the times in the olden days that I begged Destine to let me borrow you for an afternoon.” He reached for another of the long pins threaded through his flesh. “Still, you’re proving worth the wait. We haven’t even dredged back as far as your younger days with Odysseus and Telemachus.” The sweat-drenched Eternal focussed a killing glare at her captor, but the energy beams she now recalled projecting as Golden Girl when she fought alongside her Captain America were denied her by the psychic locks of the needles in her temples. “You should be thanking me,” Wexford told her. “You wanted to know what Makkari was hinting at about your war service. You were wondering why your fellow Eternals sought to kill you. I’m just helping you remember. Fear tends to break down even the deepest mental barriers, and frankly Destiny was always a bit of a botcher. The Sub-Mariner snapped out of his amnesia too.” He traced a loving plastic-gloved hand over Sersi’s stomach so he could slide another tine into the Eternal’s navel. “Let’s go for one more before we try a different set of horrors,” he suggested. “I’ve cleared my schedule for a couple of weeks. There’s no need to rush in breaking you, my pet.” The needle sliced in. One minute Golden Girl had been staring at her identical counterpart. The next the world had faded away and she was standing in icy mists. And then she was in some vast hall whose dimensions twisted away beyond her comprehension. “Ah there you are, Sersi D’Aea,” a cultured voice called to her. A tall bearded man in an academic gown was crouching over a book-filled table. “Take a moment to recover and remember whom you really are. I’ll just finish this log entry and then we’ll converse.” Sersi. At the name all of Destine’s deceptions folded like cardboard facades. Sersi recalled everything, from that first meeting with Makarri in the Pentagon, where Paul Destine had been waiting for her, through years of service to the shadowy council who oversaw the rise and fall of the American superhero. “I was used,” Sersi scowled, instinctively shifting the golden costume she was dressed in to her preferred green unitard then gazing around the bizarre hall. Betsy Ross and Mary Morgan stared back at her like frozen statues. They and dozens of others were lined around the perimeter of the antechamber, unmoving. Stored. “The real people I impersonated,” Sersi recognised. “This is where they’ve been when I wasn’t being them. But they must have come back. I wasn’t always Betsy or Mary or Louise or Jean. So how…?” “I arranged for them to be replaced from time to time,” the Void Scholar explained with a self-indulgent little snort. There were other figures standing in stasis around the room. Sersi hadn’t known them when she saw them at the time, but now, struggling in fear-induced recall she recognised Monica Rambeau, Photon, and SHIELD agent Sharon Carter, and Janet van Dyne, the Wasp. And more, she recognised the Void Scholar too… “I brought you here to thank you in person for your aid over the last few difficult years,” the Void Scholar explained. “I apologise for the necessity of having Destine manipulate your memories. One must use whatever tools one has. If it’s any comfort, Destine is removed from the picture for a while, and when he awakens decades hence he’s not going to have a happy life.” “Destine works for you?” Sersi accused. She had to power to bring this hall down around this smug academic. “Destine works for a consortium of which I am a prominent participant,” the Void Scholar answered precisely. “Technically he belongs to my colleague the Shadow King, but he’s on loan to an elder being ally of another of our circle. But really that’s not relevant to our business here today, except that Destine has been prodded into suspended animation again now that the 1940s phase of our work is complete. You are one of the last loose ends to tie up from our endeavours there, Sersi, and then we can get on with mitigating the tedious distraction of the First Line in the 50s and 60s.” Back at the meeting Sersi had no idea who the First Line were, or that the association of heroes would be almost carved out of the collective memories of humankind by the Void Scholar’s actions. But she knew when she’d had enough. “You think you can get away with manipulating an Eternal?” she demanded, rising up into the air, cosmic power crackling around her. “Of course,” the Scholar replied, unalarmed. “After all, I’ve done it before, when that tedious genetic over-ride the Celestials built into your very consciousness kicks in and you start working as drones of the Space Gods preparing for the coming of their Fourth Host.” Sersi had no more patience for cryptic hints. She seethed forward but found herself locked in time, unable to move. “If you think carefully you might even recall my biggest Eternal achievement,” the Void Scholar suggested. “You might remember the morning when the Eternals and Deviants woke up and found they were now in a world filled with superheroes and mythical gods – and always had been. The day I brought the Eternals and the Celestials who made them onto Earth 616 – and nobody even noticed!” And Sersi suddenly knew it was true. For thousands of years the Eternals and Deviants had conducted their secret wars against a backdrop of dumb humanity. And now all of that was interposed on a chaos of Inhumans and Asgardians and Atlanteans and mutants. Two different timelines crashed into one, sitting uncomfortably next to each other. “Well, it’s been interesting to finally meet you,” the Void Scholar told Sersi. “Of course I’m going to have to blank out our conversation from your mind. In fact you’ll forget all about your wartime experiences entirely, I think. But I did want to thank you for your efforts before I send Miss Ross and Miss Morgan and the others to get on with their lives.” Sersi knew the name now of the man who had politely thanked then dismissed her in his endless Halls of Limbo. The Void Scholar was known to her now as Immortus. “Well, we have a breakthough,” Wexford congratulated the screaming Eternal. “I was beginning to wonder if you even had tear ducts. Usually my subjects are whimpering and pleading long before this, and here I have to resort to the big reveal of the truth about the Eternals to even get a wet cheek.” Sersi tried to cope with the revelations she’d experienced, focussing past the pain and the terror. She tried to use her Eternal gifts to summon help, to escape, to do anything to stop being a victim of this sadistic beast. She decided that if she was going to die, she would find a way to take Wexford with her. Wexford unfolded a new cloth roll of needles across her belly and carefully selected one. “Now I think you’ll find this fear experience especially interesting,” he promised. Then the cheap motel door splintered across the room and the Black Knight was the first over the threshold, calling Sersi’s name. “Oh, how wonderful,” breathed Wexford the Dissected Man as he turned to face his attackers. And he meant it. Continued… Footnotes for the Golden Age Geek: A Confusion of Caps and Buckys: In 1941 Steve Rogers underwent Dr Esrkine’s super-solder treatment, arguably the only recipient for whom it was 100% successful. He became Captain America, and was partnered by orphaned camp mascot Buchanan “Bucky” Barnes. Rogers and Barnes were based at Camp Lehigh, where the new morale officer (and secret FBI agent) was Betsy Ross. Betsy was involved in many of their adventures. Cap’s other romance interest (as shown in flashback after Cap’s return in the modern age) was Agent Thirteen, a French Resistance fighter. She didn’t know his true identity nor him hers. Other flashbacks show Steve Rogers saying goodbye to Peggy Carter, a girl he loved in the states. Then in a Stan Lee foobah Carter is established as Agent Thirteen, contradicting stories only a few episodes earlier. In 1945, weeks before the end of the war, Cap and Bucky stopped a plot by Baron von Zemo and the Red Skull to launch a devastating missile attack on the US. In this battle Bucky was killed and Cap was spilled into the arctic seas where he was frozen in ice until the modern heroic age. The US government convinced William Naislund, The Spirit of ‘76, to adopt the mantle of Captain America. He selected Fred Davis, a New York Yankees batboy, to play the part of his Bucky. These were the Cap and Bucky who were part of the All-Winners Squad. Naislund was killed in 1946 in combat with an “evil android”. The role of Captain America was assigned to journalist Jeffrey Mace, the Patriot. Mace was assisted in many adventures by his romance interest, Mary Morgan. Davies continued to act as Bucky. In 1949, Davis was seriously injured by gunfire, ending his crimefighting career. However, he later became a founding member of the Penance Council behind the secretive V-Battalion. Cap thereafter teamed up with Golden Girl, who had the ability to project light from her hands. This wasn’t the same Golden Girl of Asian origin with similar powers from the pages of the Invaders, but was rather the costumed identity of Betsy Ross. Her sudden acquisition of powers wasn’t explained as far as I know. Mace retired with Golden Girl in 1950, and they later married. Nothing more was heard of poor Mary Morgan. The next Captain America was an unknown schoolteacher who had somehow discovered the original Cap was Steve Rogers and had changed his name by deed poll and his face by plastic surgery to resemble his idol. He recruited young Jack Monroe, later Nomad, to become his Bucky, and the two of them underwent ersatz super-soldier treatment to help in their fight against 50’s communism. However, this treatment eventually affected their minds and the pair were placed in suspended animation by the government, effectively ending the Cap lineage until Steve Rogers’ return. Of course, all of this is modern gloss. The original run of Captain America Comics went on until the late 40s, with a 50’s revival. Cap was always referred to as Steve Rogers, and Bucky as Bucky. There was nothing there to indicate any changes of identity. The death of Bucky and the freezing of Cap in 1945 was a modern invention of Stan Lee’s for Avengers #4, and while it created a compelling drama for Cap’s backstory it required other writers to go to great lengths to explain how Cap had been active through to the 50’s. The implication that Betsy Ross was more than she appeared, that even Golden Girl was more than she appeared, and that she and Paul Destine were responsible for various people believing themselves to be the real Steve Rogers, are only mine, first advanced in an Avengers Message Board article, Golden Girl in the Avengers. Makkari’s Wartime Service included masquerading as super-fast superheroes under the identities of Mercury and Hurricane. Howard Stark, millionaire industrialist father of Antony Stark (Iron Man), was the designer of an early robot intended to be a line of defence against rogue super-heroes. TESS-1 (Total Elimination of All Super-Soldiers) and various other of Howard’s failsafes and safeguards have returned to trouble heroes in the modern heroic age. Paul Destine (Destiny) was a circus mentalist – Mentallo - whose minor hypnotic and telepathic gifts were massively amplified by the disguised Serpent Crown. Amongst Destine’s nastier accomplishments are the destruction of Atlantis, the murder of Namor’s mother and grandfather, and leaving the Sub-Mariner wandering as an amnesiac bum from the late 1940s to the dawn of the modern heroic age. Destine apparently died from a fall after Namor thwarted his plot to become elected as President of the USA. This chapter posits that Destiny was working for Zodiac member Amahl Farouk, the Shadow King who has plagued Professor Xavier and the X-Men many times. He is “loaned” to Set, the elder god behind the Serpent Crown that amped up Destine’s powers; Set is an occasional ally of fellow elder being Chthon, whose membership of the Zodiac inner circle has also been intimated. Sharon Carter, contemporary SHIELD Agent Thirteen, was the great romance interest of Cap’s early years in the modern day. This was complicated by her being the younger sister of Cap’s surviving wartime love Peggy Carter (back in the 60’s this age gap was just about credible, since then it’s become an embarrassment to gloss over). Sharon died pointlessly off-panel while incapacitated by Dr Faustus’ mind-control gases, and Cap only ever got to see a video of her burning. Twenty years later (publishing time) or a couple of years later (Marvel time) Sharon returned, having been sent into deep cover then abandoned by SHIELD who had faked her death so Cap wouldn’t follow her. New Sharon had a bad-girl attitude, having “done whatever she had to to survive those years in the prison camp.” Within a few months of her unexpected return she had replaced Nick Fury as head honcho of SHIELD! Fury’s back now, but Sharon is still around too, still a tuff-chick bad girl, and still a bit of a continuity embarrassment. The Women of Marvel Comics – Sharon Carter The woman Sersi recognises in the Void Scholar’s halls are Betsy Ross, Captain America’s love interest, Mary Morgan, the Patriot’s Love interest, Louise Mason, the Blonde Phantom, Jean (unnamed), the monstrous Gary Gaunt’s girlfriend (from Mystic Comics #9, 1942). The First Line were a group of superheroes who adventured in the period between the Second World War and the modern age of Marvels, but whose exploits are seldom recalled. Avengers: Undercover insists that this is due not to the First Line being a very late and major continuity change by comics creators John Byrne and Roger Stern that al other writers have ignored but rather that the world has been diverted from remembering these heroes unless specifically prompted to do so by the manipulations of the Void Scholar. The Void Scholar has been better known as Immortus, the Master of Limbo, a long-time Avengers foe and ultimate incarnation of Kang the Conqueror. Immortus commands the body-duplicating Space Phantoms who can send their victims to Limbo for as long as they adopt their shape. More on the Void Scholar another time. Credit: I’m indebted to Jess Nevins and the comprehensive golden age material he’s assembled at http://www.geocities.com/ratmmjess/ Most of the various character links in these footnotes all lead to parts of that site. |
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