[Flashback]
C’mon, Gargan, move your skinny green tail…
Things had turned bad, of course. Where MacDonald ‘Mac’ Gargan, otherwise known as The Scorpion was concerned, things usually did.
Justin Hammer, elderly industrialist and infamous financier of super-criminals, had recently bankrolled major improvements in the design of The Scorpion’s costume, particularly his ten-foot, steel coil tail. In exchange, Gargan was to have kidnapped an armed forces General named Chester Musgrave, whom Hammer then intended to hand over to a shadowy European cartel in trade for certain political favours. It was a great plan, right up until the point that The Scorpion – never the most stable of individuals – had flipped out and decided to double-cross his employer. The end result was that Hammer had dispatched two of his more reliable costumed operatives, Blacklash and The Rhino, to collect Musgrave and to teach The Scorpion a lesson. Then, somewhere along the line, one of New York’s most well known heroes – the amazing Spider-Man – had got involved, and now all four antagonists were embroiled in a free-for-all on the grounds of sprawling construction site on the outskirts of the city, like a bunch of kids squabbling over candy.
So, yeah. Sometimes things turned really bad.
The Rhino was a thug, pure and simple; he was about as intellectual as a half-brick, and looked like one too, with his muscle-bound bulk sheathed in an all-but-invulnerable hide the hue of granite topped with a horned helmet successfully designed to invoke the beast that was his namesake. He was powerful, he was brutal, and he lacked the imagination to do anything apart from carry out orders, all of which made him a perfect lapdog. Fortunately for The Scorpion, there was one thing The Rhino couldn’t do – climb walls.
His lithe body clad in a slick costume of polished, emerald green, and with his tail trailing behind him, The Scorpion scuttled up the side of a building using the special claws and adhesive suction pads that were built into his gauntlets and boots. Far below, The Rhino was snarling and stomping in the dirt, thrashing his head from side to side. The Scorpion grinned.
“Hah!” he yelled, gesturing provocatively with his tail. “Let’s see you touch me up here, Quasimodo!”
The rather unfortunate looking Rhino – as ugly as a dog’s rear end, even without his hide – simply stared for a moment or two, then sniffed. “Okay,” he growled. And then, he dipped his head so that his horn was directed towards the building where The Scorpion was perched… and he charged.
He wasn’t necessarily quick – in fact, his bulk caused him to move quite ponderously in most instances – but, when The Rhino propelled himself forward as he did now, the sheer force of his momentum took control. Up above, The Scorpion blanched. And then, with an almighty crunch of splintering brick and wood and the screech of bending steel, The Rhino impacted with the fascia of the building… and tore straight through without faltering, ripping the wall away from its foundations and scattering chunks of masonry and metal girders in all directions. The building collapsed around him with a deafening roar, showering him with debris that rebounded off his reinforced shoulders and back without him so much as flinching. Up above, The Scorpion screamed and plummeted, whipping his tail left and right in an attempt to grab hold of something to arrest his fall… but there was nothing.
He hit the ground with a sickening crunch. Moments later, he was buried beneath a huge slab of concrete. His tail, snaking out from the wreckage, twitched once, twice – then fell limp.
The Rhino flicked his horn and sneered. “Consider yerself touched, loudmouth…”
[Flashback ends]
C’mon, Gargan, move your skinny green tail…
There’s bad luck, and then there’s bad luck. And then, there’s Gargan’s luck. Here he was, on an alien world a bazillion light years from Earth, and who was the first person he ran into? Who? Christ. It might have been funny if it wasn’t so damned tragic…
Identity confirmed. Designation: The Scorpion. Probability of overall victory: 2.2 per cent.
The Scorpion cursed beneath his breath as he waved away the tentacled drone that was buzzing about his head like a well-fed gnat, then dived clear of a tree trunk the size of a Buick that came rocketing towards him. He winced as he heard the crash and splinter of wood that could just as easily have been the sound of his breaking bones. Then he rolled clear of another missile, instinctively utilising his coiled tail as a protective shield. He felt the ground beneath him heave and tremble in response to the tread of the behemoth who was earnestly hurling sections of the landscape at him, and his heart rose in his throat.
“Hey! Hey!” The Scorpion ducked as a boulder whistled past his head. “For the love of… look, can’t we just, y’know, talk this over? Dammit, if anyone should hold a grudge it’s me, after that whole Musgrave thing where you left me in traction for three freakin’ months…”
Identity confirmed, bleeped the persistent drone. Designation: The Rhino. Probability of overall victory: 4.2 per cent.
The man mountain known as The Rhino cracked his enormous knuckles as he glanced up at the orb, gave it a grin and a wink, and then swivelled back in The Scorpion’s direction. “Ain’t got no grudge, slinky,” he snarled, ducking his head. “I’m just happy to be outta The Raft. Now I got fresh air to breathe, an’ the beauty of nature to enjoy…”
“That’s the same nature you’re tearing into shreds and throwing at me, right?”
“Uh-huh. An’ the best part about takin’ a walk in the woods is ya get to stomp on all the insects.”
The Scorpion grimaced. “Terrific,” he muttered. “Bug insults. Now I know what Spider-Man’s had to put up with all these years. And scorpions aren’t insects any more than spiders, you doofus. We’re - ”
“Ah, shaddap.”
The Rhino roared, and charged. For a brief instant The Scorpion experienced a flicker of hope that the trees all around them were so densely clustered that his enemy would be unable to navigate a path between them. However, he should have known better; after all, what was the point of going around obstacles when one could simply barge through them? The Scorpion yelped as his foe crashed through a series of six-foot-thick trunks as if they were cocktail sticks, using his tail to swat away as many of the wooden shards that were raining down on him as possible whilst protecting his head with his arms from the rest. Then, just as The Rhino was almost on top of him, he darted to one side with surprising speed. For once, his luck seemed to rise above awful; The Rhino was unable to alter his direction quickly enough to follow him and, sprinting towards the two-lane freeway of devastation his enemy had left in his wake, The Scorpion allowed himself to believe that he had been presented with an avenue of escape.
That was when a strange, curved missile came sweeping out of nowhere and struck the ground at his feet, exploding on impact with all the force of a hand grenade. The Scorpion grunted and flew backwards through the air on the blast wave, limbs flailing. He crashed into a tree trunk and rebounded, collapsing. By all rights, the detonation should have killed him instantly – however, he had instinctively shielded himself with his tail once more and as a result was now merely concussed. When he looked up, desperately attempting to focus his whirling vision, he saw a face grinning down at him from above.
“Hey there, pal,” said the smirking man, with a distinctive Australian accent. “You’re tougher than you look. I - ”
At that moment there was a snarl from nearby, and the hulking shape of The Rhino loomed into view. “Boomerang!” the horned beast roared… and then broke into a lopsided laugh.
The man named Boomerang glanced over his shoulder and raised an upturned thumb in greeting. “Well, hell. Long time no see, mate. And how’s me favourite pug-ugly Russkie been keeping himself…?
[Flashback]
She was the most beautiful woman Fred Myers had ever seen. There was something of the Marilyn Monroe about her, with her shoulder-cropped, platinum blonde hair and her refined features, and her diminutive but perfectly proportioned body. And, man, it was perfect, sheathed in a skin-tight, polished silver battlesuit that enhanced the jaw-slapping curves of her hips and breasts and thighs with a lick of reflected light. Everything about her, from the seductive set of her eyes and lips, to the provocative way she stood, just radiated self-confidence and money and sexuality, three things Fred had never been able to resist.
In fact, it was highly possible that he was smitten with the woman known as Silver Sable. A shame, then, that he and his companions for the evening had been hired to assassinate her…
The Rhino was charging. It was what he did. In this instance, he was presented with dual targets – the delectable Sable, and her current ally, the ever-sensational Spider-Man – but the chance of the horned lug being able to get within thirty feet of either of them, let alone kill them, was painfully remote. Circling high overhead, propelled by his jet boots, Boomerang rolled his eyes in despair as both Spider-Man and Sable scrambled for safety well before The Rhino rammed headlong into the building where they had been hiding, cackling like the lunatic simpleton that he was. The location for that evening’s entertainment was Coney Island amusement park; Boomerang’s remit – alongside The Rhino and three other costumed villains, Speed Demon, Hydro-Man and The Beetle, collectively known as The Sinister Syndicate – was to slay Sable on behalf of an employer who wanted her head on a platter. So far, The Syndicate had been woefully inadequate in their attempts to fulfil their task, not least because of The Rhino’s persistent habit of indulging his demolition fetish and wreaking havoc for all concerned. Sometimes, Boomerang couldn’t help but wonder at the company he kept.
Cursing the bumbling nuisance of a Russian nutbag he had been saddled with, Boomerang gunned his boot jets and swept down towards his quarry, weapons at hand. At that moment, he saw Sable glance up at him and his heart skipped like that of a lovesick teenager. Those lips, those eyes, those legs – swear to God, if he wasn’t being paid an absolute fortune for this gig…
“I knew that a professional as skilled as you could easily survive an attack by a lumbering oaf like The Rhino,” he told Sable grandly, before blowing her a kiss from above. “Too bad you’re now facing a true craftsman in the art of assassination!”
He hurled one of his explosive missiles, as Sable stared up at him with delicious defiance…
[Flashback ends]
“Hey, Fred – you remember that night at Coney Island with that hot Greek chick…?”
Boomerang cast The Rhino a withering look. “Her name was Silver Sable, and she’s from Symkaria. It’s Elektra who’s from Greece.”
“Oh. Yeah.” The Rhino scratched his horn with one huge, stubby finger. “I get confused sometimes. That was a great party, though, right?”
“Not really, mate. We got our arses kicked by her and Spider-Man.”
“We did?”
“Yeah. Not for the first time, for either of us. But at least we haven’t had our cards punched as much as this guy…” Boomerang stared down at The Scorpion, who was still crumpled in a heap at the base of the tree where he had landed. “What’s up, sting-butt?” he asked. “Run out of fight already?”
The Scorpion’s mouth curled into a sneer. “Just catching my breath, koala boy…”
Boomerang suddenly felt movement around his ankles, and glanced down – but it was too late. The Scorpion’s tail had already coiled about his legs and now yanked him violently to the side, slamming him bodily into the trunk of another tree. Gargan then sprang to his feet before The Rhino could even move, whipping his tail in a wide arc and landing a thunderous blow across his hulking adversary’s jaw, sending him staggering backwards. He then struck again, and again, the forest echoing with the sound of steel against bulletproof hide… and then with the far subtler schwhikk of a blade being released.
The Rhino’s eyes shot wide as he saw The Scorpion’s tail lashing towards him once more, this time with a six-inch, hooked sting extending from the tip. He flicked his head and deflected the blade with his horn, then made a grab for his foe, who skipped lithely out of range. Behind the two enemies, Boomerang rose groggily to his feet, just in time to witness the sting now whipping out towards him. He threw himself sideways, wincing as he heard the sound of the hook biting into wood a hair’s breadth from his shoulder. When he glanced back he saw curls of black smoke emanating from the scorched hole in the tree trunk left by The Scorpion’s attack.
“Acid,” the emerald-garbed villain hissed, his eyes narrowed to slits in the visor of his mask. “The nasty kind. Mixed with all kind of poisons. All together, it’ll melt you from the inside out when I sting you.”
The tail slashed out once more, and although Boomerang managed to avoid the acid-tipped blade he was still clubbed about the midriff and thrown ten metres through the air, into the body of another tree. Doubled over in pain, but somehow regaining his footing, he snatched a weapon from his belt clip and hurled it all in one fluid movement. The Scorpion swatted the spinning boomerang aside with his tail, causing it to explode harmlessly overhead, then barked with laughter.
“You, Kangaroo Sue… you were mocking me?” he snapped. “You’re nothing. You’re the failure. I may be outclassed in this freakoid game we’ve all been roped into, but I’ll sure as hell last longer than you!”
The Rhino was growling and gearing up to charge once more, but this time, instead of running away, The Scorpion – his courage bolstered by sheer fury – stood his ground. “And you, horn toad – it’s time you said hello to your old friend the ugly stick!”
The tail shot out once more, but not towards The Rhino, for The Scorpion knew he wouldn’t be able to penetrate his hide, even with acid; instead, he slashed at the sundered trunk of a massive redwood that The Rhino had dislodged earlier but which, although unstable, had remained upright – until now. The tail slammed home, and the tree quaked, shuddered… and then began to topple. The Scorpion scuttled clear, as did Boomerang, but The Rhino simply stood there, his misshapen features fogged with bewilderment.
“Hah!” he bellowed. “You missed!”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah!”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah!” The Rhino roared, shaking his horn. Then, he stopped, blinked uncertainly. “Didn’t you?”
A split second later the redwood crashed down on the villain’s back, its upper branches entangling with those of a half dozen other, smaller trees and causing them to splinter and fall at the same time. The Rhino wailed, briefly, then vanished beneath numerous tons of timber. Cackling, The Scorpion whirled – and found himself facing Boomerang, who was brandishing four more missiles, two in either hand.
“Guess you’re tougher than you look, pal,” The Scorpion spat. “I thought all Aussies were wussies?”
“Nah,” Boomerang grimaced. “That’s the bloody English.” Then – with incredible swiftness but also a surprising element of grace – he hurled each of his four projectiles, all at the same time. The Scorpion whipped out his tail and disposed of the first one, a razor-edged specimen, with a sharp crack! then immediately went for the second. This one, however, had been purposefully aimed high above his head but on such a trajectory that it would strike him on the return sweep, causing him a moment’s hesitation as he attempted to twist his body in preparation. The third projectile then erupted in a piercingly shrill whine, ultrasonic, resulting in The Scorpion clapping his hands to his ears and shrieking in turn.
The fourth boomerang was aimed directly at his head… until the tail snapped out and blocked it. The projectile exploded, but not with concussive force – instead, it unleashed a shower of sparkling, hissing liquid that covered the tail and splattered The Scorpion’s face and chest. For a moment, there was only smoke and the unmistakable stench of sulphur…
…and then, as the searing pain abruptly set in, so The Scorpion screamed.
“Think you’re the only guy who knows about acid?” Boomerang said, softly. “Put it this way, pal – the face-full you just took? I’m thinking if you and Rhino were to head out on a double date, you’d be the one who’d have to settle for the trog, know what I mean?”
The Scorpion fell to the ground, thrashing and moaning and clawing at his eyes. Black smoke was trickling from between his fingers. His tail was flailing limply. Boomerang unclipped one last missile from his belt, then crouched down and, pulling The Scorpion’s hands aside, inserted one end into his quivering mouth.
“Then again, mate,” he said, with a smile, “You’re not going to get the chance, are you? Because the old Grandmaster, his instructions were real specific, yeah? See, you’re no threat to anyone any more, being blind now and all. But it’s not enough to put you down temporarily. It’s got to be permanent.” He stood, then stepped away. “Guess it’s not your lucky day, mate. Count down from five... four… three… two…”
Through the mist of his anguish, The Scorpion realised what was happened and weakly began to tug at the projectile stuffed into his gaping maw. But it was too late. When the boomerang detonated it took three quarters of his head with it, like lighting a firecracker inside a coconut, coating the surrounding area with a sheen of blood and skin and skull.
Boomerang pursed his lips and nodded appreciatively, then turned as he heard a grunting and a shuffling behind him. The pile of fallen trees was shifting as The Rhino struggled to pull himself free. Already he had shouldered away most of his burden, and now there was just the large redwood itself to dislodge. It would be a matter of seconds, no more. Boomerang glanced down at his feet, and saw something lying there in the grass. He breathed deeply.
“Yo, Boomer!” The Rhino growled, as his old companion came to stand over him. “Give us a hand, will ya? Just use one of yer explodin’ whatsits to break up the wood, an’ I’ll - ”
Boomerang crouched down, with a familiar object in his hands. It wasn’t one of his own weapons, however – it was the end of The Scorpion’s tail, complete with still-extended sting-hook. The Rhino frowned in confusion, his eyes, nose and mouth the only area of his entire body that wasn’t covered in that impenetrable hide.
“Whatchya doin’, Boom?” he snarled.
“Only what I have to, mate,” Boomerang replied, with a chipper smile. “See, you’re one of the toughest cobbers in this whole hullabaloo, I reckon. And that means, if I’m going to win – which I really want to do – then, sooner or later, I’m going to have to take care of you. So, may as well be sooner, yeah?”
And with that, Boomerang stabbed the spike on the end of The Scorpion’s tail into The Rhino’s unprotected face, right between the eyes, with all his strength. The Rhino screamed and bucked, dislodging the weight of the tree on his back – but too late. The acid was burning away his exposed flesh, whilst the concoction of poisons was already working deeper, invading his bloodstream like a black cancer. Melting him from the inside out, just as The Scorpion had promised.
At least, mercifully, it was quick.
Boomerang stood away from the perishing hulk of his former ally, and wiped his hands on his thighs with disgust. He was covered in The Scorpion’s blood and brains and now Rhino’s dying spit, and that just didn’t bear thinking about. He needed to wash, and he could still hear the distant slosh of running water. He sighed. And, at that moment, a tentacled drone swooped down from overhead, bleeping excitedly.
Fatalities confirmed. Deceased: The Scorpion. Deceased: The Rhino. Survival confirmed. Designation: Boomerang. New probability of overall victory: 3.8 per cent.
Fred Myers arched an eyebrow beneath his mask.
“Still bloody low odds, mate,” he murmured, disgruntled. “Reckon I’m going to have to be a little more pro-active in thinning the field…”
Further south from where Boomerang had just emerged victorious from his skirmish there was a lake. Roughly circular and a half-kilometre wide, rimmed by the same dense forestland that swaddled this quadrant of the battlefield, it glittered like a rink of silver glass with the reflected light of The Grandmaster’s craft above. At the centre of the lake there was a small island, covered with a sparse brush of trees and reeds. On the island shore there sat a man in a pastel blue suit and white shirt. He was a dashingly handsome fellow, broad-shouldered and rugged of jaw, with a slick of black hair and a fine moustache, and mischievous blue eyes. Regrettably he was also French, but then a man cannot have everything.
Paul Pierre Duval stared out across the shimmering water with a most miserable expression. His left hand, sheathed in a blue silk glove, was trailing lazy circles in the sand where he sat. His right hand was cradled in his lap. It bore no glove, but neither was this hand one of normal, human flesh; rather, it displayed the hue and consistency of granite, bluish-gray striated with thin, black contours about the palm in an approximation of traditional crease-lines. When Duval flexed his fingers the black lines danced and the stoneflesh rippled and cracked, then instantaneously reconstituted on a cellular level in a fashion that would have perplexed any member of the same scientific profession to which he himself had once belonged.
Almost a decade ago, Duval had been working in a research laboratory in Paris, developing an elemental compound that blended together the molecular properties of mercury and microcrystalline silicon carbon. Arrogantly casual in his manner and prone to nips of Cognac throughout his business it was inevitable that he would one day be careless in his handling of his experimental chemical, resulting in terrible burns all over his right arm – and worse. The chemical affected his entire genetic structure, infecting him like a virus; it was concentrated on his right hand, which was transformed to an approximation of organic stone, but also readjusted his cellular composition so that his whole body could attain this transmuted elemental state without incurring permanent damage. And, again just like a virus, a simple touch of his fingers could induce alchemical metamorphosis in other matter.
In short, Duval had become a plague carrier, the effects of his disease akin to that of the legendary Gorgons – petrification. The incident had, understandably, left him a little… unhinged.
In the distance, as he sat there in his stupor, Duval heard a series of ominous rumblings interspersed with crashes of light and fire that were entirely distinct from the thunder and lightning broiling overhead. The surface of the lake intermittently rippled in response to outlying shockwaves, and, on more than one occasion, there was the sudden burst of an almighty explosion on the horizon. Duval shook his head, glumly.
“My peers wage war amongst themselves, whilst I sit here, alone and forgotten,” he sighed, his deep voice edged with a rust of Gallic accent. “A most disagreeable state of affairs…”
Airs… airs…
Duval blinked, then turned his head, an elegant eyebrow raised in question. Was that an echo he heard? But… where from? Apart from himself, and a few trees, the island was deserted. And yet…
“Hello?” he asked.
Allo… allo…
Duval’s eyes narrowed. And then he paled in shock, as a shape began to materialize directly before him. The shape was undoubtedly human – or humanoid, at least – but virtually featureless and undefined about the edges, as insubstantial as smoke: a veritable spectre. It glowed red, with irregular flashes of black. Duval breathed deeply, then rose to his feet and slowly reached out with his right hand…
…only for a tentacled drone to swoop low across the surface of the lake at that moment, bleeping and clicking. Identity confirmed, it chirped. Designation: The Grey Gargoyle. Probability of overall victory: 3.5 per cent.
The Gargoyle yelped and snatched back his hand, thoroughly unnerved. He glowered at the drone, his moustache twitching. “Shoo!” he snapped. “Away!”
The drone bleated, then swivelled in the direction of the red ghost that was still hovering a few feet away. The silver orb twitched its tentacles, as if in agitation, then revolved a full three hundred and sixty degrees.
Anomaly, it squawked. Identity unconfirmed. Unable to analyse. Anomaly.
Aly… aly…
The drone reared back, and emitted a shrill whine. Anomaly, it repeated, a little half-heartedly, then turned and sped away, back up towards The Grandmaster’s vessel.
“Well, well,” The Grey Gargoyle breathed. “Do I detect a fly in our would-be-God’s soup?”
Oup… oup… oup…
At that moment, another noise attracted his attention. He turned, back towards the lake – to see a disturbance in the glassy surface, in the form of concentric ripples spreading from a central point some twenty metres out from the shore. There were rising bubbles at this focus, signifying that there was something beneath the water; indeed, The Gargoyle fancied he could see a shadowed form flitting back and forth below.
Grimacing, he raised his right hand and pressed his fingers lightly to his cheek. Immediately, a dark stain appeared beneath his touch, that aforementioned plague quickly spreading across his skin…
[Flashback]
Marcy Pearson, now Public Relations Executive for Stark Enterprises, had started her career in San Diego as a reporter. Unfortunately, her investigative skills had been blunted over the years. Thus, when she slipped away from the throng at an exclusive party at the estate of renowned sculptor Paul St. Pierre and broke into his private studio, she was so preoccupied with the fact that the workshop didn’t appear to have been used for years that she didn’t realise that St. Pierre had discreetly followed her… and had now trapped her in the studio, positioning himself between her and the door that was her only means of escape.
Not that his name was St. Pierre, of course. That was just a pseudonym. Paul Pierre Duval was rather fond of pseudonyms…
“Dear lady,” Duval breathed, causing Marcy to gasp and turn as she realised that she had been cornered. “I’m usually flattered when beautiful women show an interest in me… but not in this instance.”
“Look, mister – I know all about you,” Marcy blustered. “And I’ve called the police!”
Duval smiled, thinly. He was famous – or rather, infamous – for his particular artistic fetish, of creating sculptures of young women depicted in states of horror and pain, their faces stretched taut in silent screams. Marcy undoubtedly believed him to be some kind of serial killer, perhaps torturing his models to elicit their expressions of terror so that he might sketch from them, then dispose of their remains once he was done. It was a fanciful notion, but not accurate. The truth was a far worse proposition.
“I think it unlikely that you contacted the authorities before illegally breaking and entering on my property,” Duval murmured, his French accent sharply pronounced. “And it’s quite obvious you do not ‘know all about me’ as you suggest. Although, perhaps, I could enlighten you…”
Duval was smartly dressed in a dark dinner suit and white silk gloves. Now, as Marcy watched wide-eyed, he removed the right glove to reveal a hand that was not the colour of flesh but rather that of stone – which was, of course, impossible. Marcy screamed and cowered back against the wall. Before her, Duval pressed his hands together, and – with a stench of sulphur and a hiss of obscure, magical energy – his entire body began to stiffen and twitch and change, taking on the appearance of solid rock from head to toe.
“Behold my true talent,” Duval hissed. “The mythical Medusa could turn men to stone with but a single glance… but, for I, it is a touch of my hand that allows me to perform that same miracle!”
Marcy’s scream died on her lips as the monster reached towards her, and in that moment she realised the true horror of the scenario. Duval’s sculptures weren’t representations of women gripped by terror – they actually were those women, transformed into rock by this man’s hand. And now, she was next, the latest, living masterpiece of a killer with, quite literally, a heart of stone…
[Flashback ends]
Tiger Shark was hungry.
Tiger Shark was scared.
Tiger Shark didn’t understand.
Although he had finally succumbed once more to second stage mutation, stealing away much of what remained of Todd Arliss and leaving behind an inhuman monster, Tiger Shark still retained a keen intelligence within his deformed skull. After all, sharks as a species were possessed of a highly developed brain; it was just that, in this form, conscious deliberation was utterly subjugated by survival instinct. However, considering that sharks had endured in the world’s oceans, in one form or another, since prehistoric times – close to four hundred millions years – such instinct was not to be underestimated.
The mutated Tiger Shark didn’t comprehend the complexities of The Grandmaster’s game. He only knew that one moment he had been imprisoned in a special cell of the maximum-security penitentiary known as The Raft, his human failings in the ascendancy, but that now he was free, spiritually as well as physically, and thus ready to kill.
His flesh now a mottled, rubbery greyish-black punctured by newly-grown spines and fins, his eyes black as obsidian, and his claws and teeth elongated to dagger-points, the beast was truly a awesome sight to behold when he erupted from beneath the surface of the lake like a rapier blade and launched himself towards the nearby island where he had scented fresh prey. The soft flesh and muscle of the human form would be shredded into scarlet ribbons beneath those claws in but the wink of an eye.
Fortunate, then, that the prey in question – The Grey Gargoyle – had succeeded in transforming his entire body to living stone without a moment to spare…
[Flashback]
The man in the orange-and-violet rubber wetsuit screamed and threshed in the cold, slate-grey swell of the Atlantic, a thousand miles from the nearest land; his eyes burned a livid red in the slits of his mask and his gloved hands hooked into talons as if he were in the grip of death. Alongside him out here in the vast emptiness of the ocean there was another fellow, of athletic frame and with muscles toned to perfection, bronze-skinned and naked save for a pair of green trunks. This other possessed a handsome face beneath a thatch of black hair, although there was a peculiar sharpness to his features – to the slant of his eyes, almost Oriental, to his lips and jaw – and a distinctly otherworldly peak to his ears. He moved like a fish through the water, his body sleek and elegant, but also radiating a certain majesty.
This was Namor, King of the ancient city of Atlantis that had sunk beneath the waves in this general geographic vicinity some twenty thousand years before and which had thereafter come to be repopulated by the strange, amphibious race known as homo mermanus some eight millennia past. The man Namor opposed, who was now tearing desperately at his own face whilst his body writhed and spasmed, had once been a human named Todd Arliss. An Olympic champion swimmer, Arliss had suffered extensive nerve damage in a tragic accident that had curtailed his career. Desperate, Arliss had sought medical attention from a discredited Doctor and marine biologist named Lemuel Dorcas; Dorcas had then proceeded to cure Arliss of his spinal injuries, but only by drastically reconfiguring his patient’s DNA by imprinting upon it a cocktail of other genetic codes, including that of Galeocurdo cuvier, otherwise known as the tiger shark. Thus Arliss had been reborn in a fearsome new identity.
In the time that followed, a sequence of events had seen Tiger Shark and Namor – whose own DNA had been harvested by Dorcas for his experiments, including those performed on Arliss – become bitter enemies. It was a measure of the Atlantean King’s oft-unheralded sense of compassion, therefore, that he now sought to aid his most terrible foe in his hour of need.
“Arliss!” Namor roared, his voice eerily dissonant, born as it was from a physicality evolved for underwater existence. “Speak to me! What’s happening to you?”
Tiger Shark pawed at his throat, gurgling… and then, before Namor’s eyes, his entire upper torso suddenly began to swell, ripping through the rubber casing of his suit. His muscles were cording, becoming more powerful with each passing second, and his flesh was darkening from bronze to a rubbery grey; the skin about his shoulders was perforating with tiny spines; and, worst of all, the back of his skull was splitting and developing a tall, crested gray fin whilst his brown hair began to moult in clumps. His eyes began to swell and bleed and lose their colour, his gums began to rupture as his teeth lengthened to jagged points, and his hands, his hands…
It was all too much.
Namor’s heart seized as he observed the transformation in horror. He remained stunned until the metamorphosis finally slowed and then ceased, leaving behind a nightmarish caricature of the human being who had gone before. This new Tiger Shark was more creature than man, with a face dominated by black eyes and hideous fangs, his skin dark and blistered, his powerful arms and back ridged with fins, and his fingers replaced by ten-inch talons.
“Arliss…?” Namor breathed. “By all that is sacred… you’re mutating. After all these years, Dorcas’ accursed experiments must have destabilised - ”
“Not Arliss,” the fiend rasped, struggling to form words with its new mouth. “Only shark. Only… Tiger Shark!”
And with that, the beast lunged forward, teeth glinting – and he and Namor vanished beneath the waves in a flurry of fists and blood…
[Flashback ends]
Identity confirmed, the drone bleeped, sweeping down alongside Tiger Shark as he surged towards the shore. Designation: Tiger Shark. Probability of overall victory: 3.9 per cent.
The mutate snarled and snapped out a claw without hesitation, his strike astonishingly swift… and the drone sailed backwards through the air with a mechanical shriek, shedding severed tentacles and sparks of blue energy. A few metres ahead, The Grey Gargoyle’s colourless eyes blinked in shock. “Ah, zut,” he muttered. “Perhaps being alone wasn’t as disagreeable as it first appeared…”
The stone man tensed, arms instinctively half-raised to protect himself, but Tiger Shark’s speed and momentum was impossible to defend against. He slashed out with both sets of talons then gnashed with his teeth in a frenzied attack, shredding The Gargoyle’s suit and hammering him backwards into the sand. The Gargoyle winced as he was flattened but retained enough composure and leverage to thrust a fist up into his adversary’s gut, then another to the jaw. Tiger Shark yowled and skipped away, black blood spurting from his lips.
The Grey Gargoyle pushed himself to his feet, casting aside the tatters of his clothes. “This was a new suit!” he snapped, with Gallic indignation. “From Savile Row! You… you overgrown sea monkey!”
He then glanced down and saw that the beach underfoot was littered with shards of bluish-gray stone – and that his chest and stomach were decorated with deep grooves, inflicted by his enemy’s claws. A normal human would have been disembowelled, almost to the extent of being fully ripped in two. In contrast, The Gargoyle had rarely known such damage in his stone form – The Hulk had once broken his arm, purposefully, during one of his more sadistic phases, but then The Hulk was a bastard, and an exception to most rules. Otherwise he had stood firm against the strongest blows, even those of Thor, God of Storms, and his enchanted Uru warhammer. For Tiger Shark to have caused him injury, even such innocuous scratches…
The Gargoyle grimaced as he turned to face another attack from his foe, experiencing a flicker of dread.
“Wait!” he cried. “I’m sorry! Truly! I can be hasty… it’s the Parisian blood. Please, we don’t have to fight. Perhaps an alliance…”
Tiger Shark’s black eyes flashed, and his fin preened, like the hackles on a wolf’s back. “No alliance,” he hissed. “Tiger Shark kills alone!”
The beast hurled himself forward, claws slashing, whilst The Gargoyle ducked forward, his deadly right hand outstretched in a desperate attempt to grasp his attacker…
…but, in the moment before they clashed, a haunting echo drifted upon the air.
Alone… alone…
The ghostly red form that The Gargoyle had observed earlier now stepped forward – and, as the two protagonists scuffled before it, it suddenly began to stiffen, to darken… to solidify. And when the metamorphosis was complete, a pair of blood-red eyes looked on above a chilling, black, knife-slit of a smile…
[Flashback]
The man’s name was T’Challa, son of T’Chaka, who had once been the wisest chieftain in the entire African nation of Wakanda. T’Chaka’s skills in hunting, diplomacy and leadership had been second-to-one; he had also been the greatest father a boy could have wished for. Ten years ago he had been viciously slain by an outsider named Ulysses Klaw. In the passage of time that followed, T’Challa had taken his father’s place as the figurehead of a nation, and he adopted the traditional Wakandan warrior King’s mantle of The Black Panther. Today, however, he was reduced once more to a grieving child as he found himself facing the gloating murderer who had torn his life apart all those years ago.
Klaw was a Dutch scientist who had turned treasure hunter and mercenary in his quest to obtain the rare mineral known as vibranium, a metal that had fallen to Earth – to Wakanda – inside a meteor, and which was highly prized for its inherent capability to absorb vibrations. Klaw would have happily committed genocide to get his filthy paws on the vibranium ore. T’Challa had stood against him, defeated him; he should have slaughtered him. As it was, he had simply robbed his enemy of his right hand.
Klaw, to give him due credit, was actually a genius in his field – the manipulation of sonics. He had fashioned a device, a Sonic Transducer, with which it was theoretically possible to transform sound waves into solid mass, but he needed vibranium to complete his project. He had also utilised a hand-held weapon, a sonic blaster that could virtually disintegrate a human body’s molecular structure with intense vibrations. It was with this weapon that Klaw had killed T’Chaka, and which T’Challa had then used on Klaw in turn, destroying his hand and driving him back into the jungle on the day that Klaw had led a mercenary force in an attack upon Wakanda.
Ten years ago, all past in an instant. Now, Klaw had returned, with a miniature version of his Transducer, through which he could channel devastating vibrations, protruding from the stump of his right forearm. The villain had expected to face T’Challa – he had not expected the sheer rage of The Black Panther. And thus, Klaw was once again defeated, seemingly buried alive by falling rocks in the mountain cave where he housed an enormous device that utilised his sonic conversion technology.
That was where it should have ended, a madman and his insidious schemes lost beneath the rubble. But there was energy enough in the conversion machine for one last burst – and life enough in Ulysses Klaw for one last gambit. Driven by the desire for revenge, Klaw dragged his shattered body inside the device and operated the trigger sequence, bombarding himself with radiation and ultra-frequency sonic waves…
[Flashback ends]
“And so,” breathed the crimson man, his shrill voice humming like electricity being passed through coils of copper wire. “Here we have a clash of titans, each eager to claim their ultimate reward. But only one may truly stoop to conquer… and that one shall be - ”
Identity confirmed. Designation: Klaw. Probability of overall victory: 6.4 per cent.
The man glanced up, still smiling. Then he raised the metal weapon, fashioned like an upturned chalice, that extended from his wrist where his right hand had once existed, and pointed it towards the damaged drone that was currently circling above his head, missing many of its tentacles. “Why, yes!” he cackled. “Klaw – master of sound! And, as the time seems ripe for a demonstration…”
To Klaw, the air surrounding the drone was alive with concentric ripples – vibrations, spreading out at incredible speed from the source. Each and every nuance of noise emitted from the drone – its speech, the whirr of its internal mechanisms, even the sound of its movement that would be imperceptible to the human ear – created such vibrations. And to Klaw, it was effortless to employ his Sonic Transducer to convert those vibrations into solid mass, and to psionically shape and direct that mass at his whim. He did this now, creating a cylinder of solid energy – mostly translucent but delineated with a red tinge – to surround the drone, which began to twitch in alarm. Grinning cruelly, Klaw then caused the cylinder to condense, instantly crushing the drone to a fine, silver powder where once then had been metal and wires and a maze of intricate micro-circuitry. Even to Klaw, once a brilliant and dedicated scientific engineer, such technology was no longer of interest and served only to quench his thirst for destruction.
This was the monster he had become.
Along the shoreline from where Klaw stood, The Grey Gargoyle finally wrestled himself free of the thrashing Tiger Shark, who was becoming increasingly frustrated at being unable to reduce his enemy to bloodied chum. The beach was littered with stone fragments, but The Gargoyle wasn’t allowing himself to panic, knowing that he could survive this manner of attack for hours without due concern – for Tiger Shark, however, the conflict was about to reach a devastating conclusion.
Finally able to take the offensive, The Gargoyle closed the fingers of his right hand about his adversary’s ankle… and, almost immediately, Tiger Shark stiffened, and shrieked. He looked down in shock, and saw that the lower half of his left leg was quickly petrifying, his flesh and muscle and blood and bone all being turned to stone beneath The Gargoyle’s touch. He lashed out, a powerful blow that sent his enemy flying backwards into the lake, but it was too late. The paralysing infection slowed but did not stop, continuing to creep up over his knee, along his thigh…
Tiger Shark screamed and fell as, dragging his dead leg, he attempted to move back towards the water where The Grey Gargoyle had just sunk without trace. He then looked up, black eyes wide, as a shadow fell over him.
“What a deliciously dangerous right hand that man has,” Klaw murmured, staring down. “I can relate. Trust me, he’s about to discover what dangerous truly is. But you, poor creature… well, I can’t see that much can be done. Save for… amputation?”
Klaw raised his Transducer, and directed it at Tiger Shark’s leg. “Be brave,” he breathed, smiling in wicked delight. “This might… sting a little. Aheh…”
The Grey Gargoyle was in a quandary. There was no danger of him drowning in the lake, for in his granite form he had no need to breathe; even his internal organs – lungs, heart, liver – were transmuted into living, magical stone whenever he induced his transformation. Unfortunately, the drawback of this was that he was far too heavy to swim and therefore now found himself sinking into the depths. He could return to human form at will, of course, but then he would need oxygen – and there would be no way to reach the surface in time, even if his lungs were full, which they were not.
There was really no choice at all. He would just have to wait until he had sunk to the bottom of the lake and then, as ludicrous as it sounded, attempt to walk out – unless, that was, Tiger Shark hadn’t been fully stoned, in which case it was only a matter of time before he came looking to continue their fight.
The Gargoyle scowled. All in all, he thought to himself, his experience of The Grandmaster’s game thus far was that it was a bit of a bugger.
Tiger Shark screamed. And with good reason. Klaw had used his sonic weapon to create an axe-blade from manipulated soundwaves and was now chopping away merrily at his victim’s upper thigh. The sandy beach was soaked with oily black blood as Tiger Shark thrashed his arms and arched his back – but, other than his spasms of agony, he wasn’t going anywhere. As well as his leg having been turned to solid stone, Klaw was pinning the rest of his body to the ground beneath a hefty slab of sound.
It took Klaw seven blows of the axe to remove Tiger Shark’s leg completely, by which time the poor creature had slipped into a mewling, twitching semi-consciousness. Klaw kicked at the severed limb, which was now entirely granite, his expression curious.
“There are such strange and wondrous sights to behold,” he crooned, staring out towards the lake. “Beings of living sound, beings of living stone… I wonder, my absent friend, could we be brothers in spirit?”
The surface of the water had calmed somewhat since The Grey Gargoyle had disappeared there, a gentle tide of undulating silver ripples the only mark of his passing. Klaw grimaced. “I had hoped you’d make a swift return,” he hissed, “But it appears I must come a-searching. How very tiresome…”
Klaw stalked forwards then, to the edge of the water, but was then halted by a movement behind him. He turned to see Tiger Shark lunging for him, face a mask of pain and fury, spraying blood from his jagged stump in his wake. The creature slashed up with his claws, ripping Klaw asunder from the chest to the groin and causing him to stagger backwards. The air was filled with a shower of red…
…but it was not blood or flesh, but sound. Living sound. Klaw’s eyes shot wide as he inspected the gaping wound in his upper torso, then barked with laughter. He weaved his Transducer across himself, and immediately he began to reconstitute. There was discomfort but nothing more; certainly, this was not the fatal strike that Tiger Shark had intended.
“The First Law of Thermodynamics, the Law of Conservation of Energy, states that energy can only be converted from one form to another but neither created nor destroyed,” Klaw said, reaching down with his left hand to stroke at Tiger Shark’s fin. “My pet, you cannot kill me. A fundamental flaw in The Grandmaster’s scheme, it must be said; if he wishes for a true contest, a battle to the death, then surely it is folly to include a man who cannot die…”
Tiger Shark was growing weak through blood loss, his breath rasping and his eyes slowly losing their light. For him, death was close; deep inside, past the animal rage, his intellect spurred and he recognised that. But he held one final wish. He had been born once on land, and then again in the water – of the two, water was his home. That was where he wanted to breathe his last.
With the last ounce of his strength, he lunged for the lake, slashing out blindly once more at Klaw as he passed. This time, by pure stroke of fate, his talons connected with Klaw’s sonic weapon, at the precise juncture of wrist and arm where steel had once been knitted together with flesh but where it was now melded with sound. Unbeknownst to Tiger Shark, it was Klaw’s one weak spot. Thus, as Tiger Shark slumped forward into the water, his final rasp whispering between his clustered teeth, so Klaw shrieked and staggered backwards, a gout of scarlet sound erupting from the wrist-band of his Transducer…
…and then fell, flailing, into the lake, disappearing beneath the surface.
What happened next was extraordinary, and instantaneous. Basic physics shows that sound travels through water up to five times more quickly than it does through air; thus, for Klaw, whose being was fabricated entirely from sound, total immersion in this manner was the equivalent of depositing a normal human being in a localised environment wherein gravity or air pressure was five times stronger. For Klaw, solid sound became liquid sound; he swelled, in all directions at once and at incredible speed, an experience that his approximation of a brain could not compute. It was as if an oil slick were spreading outwards from the point of impact, but red rather than black, beneath the surface rather than upon it, and all in the manner of time-lapse photography. Inside five seconds, no more, Klaw had dissipated to the extent that his physical substance had stained close to a quarter of the lake like scarlet ink.
This dissolution was not fatal, of course. As Klaw himself had stated, he was energy, and energy could not be destroyed, only changed; it would have taken a while, but, eventually, he could have reconstituted himself. Unfortunately for him, he wouldn’t have the chance. In this strange, liquefied state, he was not only spreading outwards but down – towards the bed of the lake, where The Grey Gargoyle had recently come to rest and was now morosely trudging through the gloomy depths in what he hoped was the direction of the closest shore. Due to the lack of ambient light, The Gargoyle could detect no colour or form to the sudden mass that was sweeping towards him, save for one thing – in the midst of it there was a foreign object, a metal funnel fashioned in a style not dissimilar to a chalice, glowing with a hum of power. Klaw’s Transducer, the only portion of his body not created from sound.
The Gargoyle reached for the weapon instinctively, with his right hand – the hand through which he could transmute matter to rock. His fingers closed about the Transducer, and in doing so passed through the drift of substance that had once been Klaw… to startling effect. Whilst The Gargoyle’s touch could not alter the physical properties of water any more than it could air, due to the molecules in these elements being less densely compacted than in solids, Klaw’s living sound – even in its current state – was different. It could be petrified. In fact, the process even happened far more quickly than normal.
Dissipated over an immense area, Klaw solidified into stone, as sure a ‘death’ as could be for one such as himself. And, because his substance had by now engulfed The Grey Gargoyle, so The Grey Gargoyle also found himself smothered in stone, as surely as if he had been plunged into a vat of quick-drying cement, or if the entire lake had been frozen. For a few minutes, he didn’t understand what had happened; however, even though the exact details of Klaw’s demise remained a mystery to him, he soon reached the unavoidable conclusion that he was trapped, with no way out. Buried alive. If he could have moved his lips to curse, he would.
Ever since the chemical accident that had transformed his physiology, Paul Pierre Duval had been obsessed with the notion of immortality. In his stone form he did not need to breathe, or eat, or sleep, and – because he couldn’t decay – he didn’t seem to age. Did that mean he could live forever? Once, that prospect had held a certain appeal, but it was an appeal that diminished considering his current predicament. And, regrettably, that left just one alternative.
He could will himself to return to human form…
…even though the consequences of that would be tragically inevitable.
A mechanical drone hovered above the surface of the petrified lake, which no longer shone like glass in the light of The Grandmaster’s vessel but rather gleamed darkly like fossilized mineral.
Fatality confirmed, the drone chirped. Deceased: Tiger Shark.
A pause. Then:
Fatality confirmed. Deceased: Klaw.
Another pause, longer this time. The drone hummed, tentacles flickering, analysing the data with its myriad sensors. Then…
Fatality confirmed. Deceased: The Grey Gargoyle.
In the distance, the skies above the battlefield of Se’dai flickered with irregular bursts of light and fire, and the sounds of conflict. Many were dead, with these three now joining the growing list of causalities, but two-thirds of the original players of this macabre game survived still. The war continued.
The drone bleeped, then turned and drifted away.
En Dwi Gast, The Grandmaster, allowed himself a low chuckle as three more floating portals – his windows onto the battlefield below, through which he was observing every last second of what transpired – flickered to black, indicating three more departures from his game… three more deaths.
Klaw was the second anomaly to have interfered with proceedings, his corporeal mass having been transformed from an approximation of humanoid form into pure soundwaves at the moment of his abduction from Earth, creating an unanticipated fluctuation. The Grandmaster knew that he had been careless. It had perhaps been a misjudgement on his part to even consider including this particular specimen in his game, such was Klaw’s inherent power; had the creature been more intent on conquest than acts of petty sadism he would surely have laid waste to all before him. However, that was the beauty of these humans – and those who had once been human but who were now something more. This was why the game was such a delight.
Humans were unpredictable. Illogical. So often, those with the most formidable might would taste defeat against those they considered lesser than themselves, and those who appeared ordinary could triumph against seemingly insurmountable odds. After all, The Grandmaster mused, had he – an Elder of the Universe, a being of immeasurable force – not seen his own machinations spoiled time and again by human interference, specifically by those who were deemed to be heroes?
He smiled again, then settled back in his throne with a sigh of contentment. Of course, there would be no chance of that on this occasion. No meddling. No heroes. Just these who called themselves villains, an intoxicating remedy to the ills of his eternal boredom.
Two anomalies thus far had been two more than expected, or required. There would, The Grandmaster swore, not be a third.
It never occurred to him that he could be mistaken in this…
…or that the unforeseen events to come might cast all those involved in proceedings, himself included, in a shadow of terror.
To Be Continued...
Significant Issues
Important events referred to in this issue occured in the following Marvel titles:
The Scorpion and The Rhino clashed in Amazing Spider-Man # 319
The Rhino and Boomerang worked together in Amazing Spider-Man # 280
The Grey Gargoyle terrorised Marcy Pearson in Iron Man # 235
