#16 - Perspectives

By Gary Dreslinski

My hands should be cut. I should be bleeding. All the glass. But they’re fine. It’s not just that they’re protected by the mystic chain mail wrapped up around the fingers. Or that they’re under gloves. The gloves aren’t even ripped.

They should be ripped.

Not that I’m complaining, but it’s something I need to look into… when someone isn’t trying to kill me.

A few minutes ago, I saw Asp ( member of the Serpent Society, one of the leaders in the French Underground, snappy dresser, the woman who kidnapped Sersi and made me her surrogate in obtaining meetings with several scientists) kill Quark (crazy Kree Warrior who wanted to kill me, who for some reason was trying to kill Sersi instead, and saying that he was some sort of Faerie. I don’t care about his orientation personally, but I think trying to kill someone because of it is out of line.)

Now though, everything was right with the world. Quark was trying to kill me again.

Except of course the Kree seemed to be dead, and his body and high powered alien attack armor were being possessed by Lugh, King of the Faerie.

Oh, and I didn’t know where Sersi was. Asp was supposed to keep her safe while I did what she told me to do, but apparently during the attack her people moved Sersi to someplace a little safer than the battlefield Asp’s offices had become.

Oh, and speaking of Asp… the one who killed the Kree. The one who started the fight. The one who kidnapped the two of us in the first place, and set these chain of events in motion. The one who flashed me a smile, and gave me a shrug of her well toned shoulders as she waved goodbye.

Quark/Lugh was attacking me, and the closest thing I had to an ally decided that she had something better to do.

She did look pretty good walking away. But it wasn’t much of a help against someone who just tried to fry me with something that felt like a small sun. If it weren’t for the Shield of Night absorbing the blast, I have a feeling I would have been testing just how good this "Avalon healing factor" actually is.

Bennet du Paris’s eyes narrowed as he looked over t he map. Blue areas were independent. Red areas were under the sphere of influence of Victor Von Doom. The European Union had announced a new super team to help deal with emerging threats: the Commonwealth. They put a nice face on it, but most people knew that they were just another puppet of Latveria. The infamous Dr. Doom had formed his own private superhero team.

Which meant that there was reason to have one.

Du Paris stared at the map, looking for clues. There was some sort of time/space distortion in Germany. As soon as he was able to get word to the Black Knight through channels, that was where he was going to send Dane. There was power there, untapped and mysterious. The problem was going to be if the Commonwealth were sent there first. Germany was much closer to Latveria than England. The German government had already made several major concessions following the massive "No War with Doom" protests that had rocked their metropolitan areas following the creation of the Black Mass Barrier, and emergence of Von Doom as one of the major new superpowers.

As Exodus, du Paris knew what he would have done. If someone told him that he was not allowed to fight, that human would have been the first one in the grave. If the next one was as stupid, then there would be more room for people who agreed with his stance.

As the head of Sycorp though, he had to be more cautious. The company had quite a few international ties on the continent. He was using them as much as he could without raising anyone’s warning signs. Business offices now doubled as information centers, and often food and black market centers as well. He made sure people got what they needed, when their governments could no longer do so.

That made him a hero… or an opportunist. In the new world, there really wasn’t much of a difference.

His hand closed over the locket. It was hers.

Sersi

Mother

It is all that he has of her. All that he will ever have of her.

Apocryphus closed his hand into a fist. He could crush it in his hand. He could change it, use his power as an Eternal to change the very make-up of the elements within the locket. It could be dust in seconds, out of his life forever.

He’d wanted to do it so many times. But there is sat on the dresser.

And everyday he went back to the look at it.

As part of Kang’s Anachronauts, he had been able to meet her once. It hadn’t gone well.

Not that he had thought it would. He always knew that when he met his mother there was going to be a fight. He wasn’t disappointed.* (* See Avengers Annual #21 - GD)

The Anachronauts were supposed to protect the flow of time on behalf of the Lord Kang himself. But Kang was dead. Something had attacked him. Something from inside the Forbidden Zone.

Kang was dead, and the Anachronauts were at loose ends in Chronopolis. Perhaps Kang would show back up, from the past or alternate future to lead them again. Perhaps he wouldn’t. No one was really sure, and theories were plentiful about what they should do next.

Aprocryphus didn’t have to wonder. He knew what he was going to do. He was going to find his mother, and his father. He was going to make sure things worked out differently this time. He was going to make sure things worked out… or kill them both trying.

"Dane?"

Those were the first words she said. She asked for him. No, for me! She asked for him.

I ignored it. She was confused.

I pressed my mouth to hers, kissing her tenderly. God, how I’ve missed the taste of her lips.

There’s really nothing like it.

I’ve spent far too long doing the wrong thing for the wrong reasons. I see that now. All I ever wanted was for her to come back, all I ever wanted was for her to love me.

And so I went to reality after reality driving her insane and killing her.

Is it any wonder I’ve always had trouble getting dates?

I’ve seen the light though. I know what to do.

I kissed her, and pushed it forward, out of me.

The energy that she had invested in me, in that other world so long ago, I let it back into her, into this Sersi. Her eyes registered shock. For a moment it looked like she knew who I was, like she wanted to kill me.

But then they calmed themselves, reflecting back only love. Reflecting back only the Gann Josin.

The Shield of Night took the brunt of the punch. But it still knocked me back a couple of feet. If one of those punches were to connect with my head, I don’t want to think about what would be left of me.

Still, I’ve been through worse. What I need to do is think out the problem.

Faerie Lord. Kree Battle Armor.

I pull up the shield again, one to block another fist coming at me, and two to keep him from seeing what I’m doing.

He keep pounding this time, nearly on top of me.

Good.

Magic against magic, science against science wasn’t going to work.

Both of his aspects were at least the equal of mine, if not better.

Something else was required. Good old fashion stupidity.

That was something I had in spades.

I pushed the shield up against the weight of his attack, making him take a step back, and my finger flicked against the button on the energy sword. It hummed to life as I let my grip on the shield go, energy blade in one hand and the Sword of Light in the other.

I balanced on my heels, and sprang at him. Looking back, I’m really not sure why he didn’t just kill me right there. But I guess that’s just the sort of good old fashion stupidity that no one’s really prepared to defend against. I just kept coming at him, a blade in each hand, slashing at him, slashing into the air, at whatever happened to be in front of me at the time. It wasn’t like the blood lust of the Crusades, but it was a bastard cousin. It was a "I’ve really had enough of this crap" frenzy, which is in a lot of ways more dangerous.

The Sword of Light hacked a tear in the battle armor, and the energy sword did the rest, peeling it back from the animated Kree corpse. He was much smaller than I thought he would be without the armor, not at all the warrior image of his people. Perhaps that’s why he was trying so hard. Maybe he just had to push extra hard just to be noticed… maybe… maybe I shouldn’t spend too much time thinking about it.

Lugh stared back at me through the deadman’s eyes, with a mix of anger and astonishment. He wanted to kill me, I could tell, but the armor was no longer useful to anyone. In his own form, I would have probably been dead, right then and there. But in someone’s else’s body, I was gambling that he wouldn’t be able to pull it off.

I put the Sword of Light to his throat, the tip barely a half inch away from penetration. "Do you really want this to continue?"

He didn’t respond in words. But the actions spoke for themselves. The hatred disappeared from the eyes, along with the last spark of life. Lugh had decided it wasn’t worth continuing the fight… for now at least.

I moved my finger across the energy sword’s control panel. There was a satisfying "snap" when the blade crackled itself to nothing once more. It wasn’t the best sword in the world, but it had served me well in the past. If nothing else, it was a good back-up. I slipped it back into the loop, but held the Sword of Light in the ready position. There was no telling what was going to happen next. Maybe he was gone, maybe he wasn’t… it didn’t hurt to stand at ready for a few moments just to be on the safe side.

I wasn’t expecting the laser sight lines to start appearing all over the room though. It looked like it had been painted red by some crazed pointilist. "Hold it right there!" one of them called, before a female voice called out my name.

"Dane?" Asp I didn’t even bother to look. She had come back. With reinforcements. Or maybe she had come back to kill us both. I guess I was about to find out.

"Tell these idiots to stand down before I get angry with them," I told her in a loud enough voice that I was sure that her men heard as well, "And I have a feeling that they wouldn’t like me when I’m angry…"

I didn’t hear her give the order, but the red laser lines disappeared as quickly as they had appeared.

"Is he?" she asked. I nodded. I didn’t really know what she was asking, but unless it was "Is he about to kill us all?" the chances that the answer was "yes" were in my favor. Besides, I’ve always had a problem telling women "No".

"Are you feeling alright?" she asked. There seemed to be actual concern in her voice. About what, I had no idea.

"Of course…" I answered, flashing her my best smile. If only Sersi were here to see it… she loved when I smiled at her from across the room…

DANE

Asp… no, that wasn’t her… the voice was coming from somewhere else…

DANE

The Lady…

YOU NEED TO

The world started getting hazy… Asp started fading from view, she started to reach out, then stopped herself before she actually touched me… the pain in my head… the pain in my chest… a piece of wood…

I felt my head hit the floor…

and then I felt nothing…

Because you demanded it, well, ok, not so much demanded as said "hey man..."

A Show of Force Part 3

The signs were all there, if you had wit to read them. If you dared to go to the places where the words could be seen. There was very little that he did not dare. It had been much the same the first time around… when he was thrust through time for his trouble. It was much the same the second time around, when his body was thrown in a trash can and set on fire.

This time though was going to be different. Anthony Ludgate, the man that mortals called Dr. Druid, had read the signs. Gaea herself had brought him back to serve in a land that had returned to the old ways. The ways that only one who walked the path of the Old Gods could ever truly understand.

This time would be different… there was no other way to put it. Europe was under the Black Mass Barrier. Magick had returned to the land, and to the people. There were some who embraced it. Others who feared it.

Things were in upheaval, and he had a pain in his gut that told him that it was just going to get worse, and sooner than anyone thought.

He was needed.

He was… different.

For Gaea had not simply returned him to his original state, she had done so through the Barrier. It was inside him, pieces of it, he could feel them, swirling eddies of power, pockets of mysteries. He was part of it. It was part of him. The dark spells that had formed it came to his tongue. He could do it again. He knew it. He could make it stronger.

Or he could get rid of it.

He didn’t know how. But he could do it. The longer the power of the Barrier was inside of him, the more he would be able to understand about it.

And the more likely he was to kill himself in the process.

Gaea had, in a twist of delightful whimsy, tied his silver cord, his life force, to it. When there was no more Black Mass Barrier, there was no Anthony Ludgate.

"Delightful," he clicked his tongue against the back of his teeth. His survival depended on it’s survival. Which meant that, like it or not, it had to stay.

He felt out the ley lines around him, searching for one that went in the right direction. There were people he was going to have to talk to. The Avengers were a world away, but there were other members of that team around, he could feel them moving. The Black Knight. Sersi. All he had to do was get to them, and stop them from doing what they were doubtlessly trying to do. They were heroes after all. That was the sort of thing they did. He had gone beyond that light and dark nonsense though. He was Green, allied with the earth. A Earth where pollution was dissolved before it left the factory smokestacks. A world where the beasts of old ran free over lush grasslands that had grown overnight covering once intrusive roads. A world where you could breathe. A world where you were free to live. That was what he represented. It was who he served. If he had to get rid of two people, ten people, a million people, to do it, then the price was well worth it.

Druid felt for them, finding them in France. He poured himself into the ley line, dissolving his corporal form in favor of one of pure spirit and followed it. The sooner he dispensed with the reunion, and his former teammates, the sooner he could prepare for what was to come.

Martin Burns stared at the protestors with a certain amount of curiosity. "Doom Yes! USA Go!" was the one he saw most often. He’d known for quite some time that the Germans were all Nazis at heart, but he hadn’t expected them to come right out and show their true colors. Especially after what had happened the last two times they had tried to do it. America had come to the world’s rescue, and this was how they were repaid by it. By protests telling them to go home.

"If we’d stayed home…" Burns muttered to himself, "We certainly wouldn’t be having this problem now would we…" He wanted to shout it to them, as he used the power that was his birthrate as the reincarnation of Hercules to smash them to bits. Or perhaps the power he had been given from Jupiter… or Horus… what would they think if they saw a true American Marvel in action against them? Would they hold up their signs defiantly, or run like the little brown suit wearing pansies he knew them to be?

"Time to go Marvel" some said, close to his ear. How had they gotten so close without his hearing? He turned to look, but the soldier didn’t seem to be wearing any sort of stealth projecting gear. Unless of course it was invisible, which would of course be the ideal way to make it.

"How bad is it?" he asked. The soldier shook his head.

No one was talking about the storm in Serbia. If it was anything like the ones before, it would rage for awhile, destroying large tracts of land around it for miles, leveling buildings, killing people, and moving on. One minute it would be like being on the arm of a hurricane, whipped one way than another. The next, it was like moving into it’s eye. Only the calm was left, and not much else.

Now it was in Serbia, and the US military was sending out a tech team to investigate it. If they were able to figure out exactly what it was, if they were able to figure out how to stop it… maybe the protestors would go home. Better yet, maybe they would turn on Doom.

He didn’t much like the idea of going into the storm, but then that was what heroes were supposed to do, wasn’t it? He wasn’t all that certain, but Martin thought that he had read it someplace. Perhaps when he got back he’d check the manual just to be sure…

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