[Flashback]

“So, this is what it is to be strong! All my life I’ve dreamed of this…”

Mary MacPherran stepped out of the cylindrical pod-chamber where, moments before, she had been bombarded with an experimental fusion of cosmic radiation and energies harnessed from a raging tempest. Prior to her exposure to this unimaginable power she had been nothing – no, less than nothing, a frail and diminutive weakling who seemed to exist only for the cruel amusement of others. But now, now…

Mary stood tall – six-and-a-half feet – and proud, her bare arms and legs rippling with new muscle, her curvaceous body hardly covered now by the skimpy, cotton shift that had hung so drably on her previously unfeminine frame. But Mary cared nothing for modesty, not any more. In fact, almost as much as she relished her nascent strength so she exalted in a sense of attractiveness, of womanhood, that she had never experienced before. Suddenly, she was beautiful. Suddenly, she was desirable.

Suddenly, she was everything she had ever wanted to be.

“Where are the new clothes I designed?” Mary whispered, hardly able to draw breath in her excitement. “I can’t wait to try them on…”

The man standing before her – and a man he was, even though his terrifying appearance in his gleaming, silver armour shrouded in emerald sackcloth suggested something other – held out his hands in greeting. He held a wreath of distinctive apparel for Mary’s inspection: studded belt and boots and leather bodice, all of a magenta so rich it was almost an oily black.

“Right here, Miss MacPherran,” spoke the armoured fellow, his voice deep and charismatic, but rendered eerily inhuman by his horrific, ornate faceplate.

The man’s name was Doctor Victor von Doom, sovereign of the Balkan kingdom of Latveria, and one of the most reviled politicians and despots the Earth had ever known. But this ground he now trod, and the storm-wracked skies above, and these technologies he had utilised in the transformation of Mary MacPherran… none of these were of Earth. This was an alien world, and Doom was embroiled in a strange and secret war against foes old and new. To this end, Mary MacPherran had been augmented into the woman she now was.

Titania. Like a Titan…

[Flashback ends]

Her nightmares were filled with fiends, a desecration of flesh. They were ashen-hued and pocked with boils and blisters and the spidering, crimson stain of infection… and still worse, their skin was punctured with wires and bolts, and spikes of steel hammered through muscle and bone. These creatures were abominations, physical form corrupted with metal plague. They were cyborgs, mutations, parasites...

They were Stark.

Mercifully, the dreams faded as Mary was rescued from her torment by the light. Back on Earth she had been one of numerous super-powered individuals who had strived valiantly against an alien invasion, even fighting alongside those heroes she herself had once battled. The Stark had intended to eradicate all human life – to Uncreate – and in these days of war there had been no distinction between those who would otherwise consider themselves enemies. Unfortunately, during the final battle – a battle which humanity had ultimately won – Mary had been felled by a devastating attack. She should have died; the reality wasn’t far from that. The diagnosis was that she had suffered extensive and irreversible cessation of brain activity. It was just the machines that were keeping her alive. Morbidly ironic, considering that it was machines that had all but slain her.

Then the light came. When Mary opened her eyes, there was a brightness to flush away the dark and the nightmares retreated in the face of God; and there could be no doubt that this being seated before her in his throne was God. Mary was a lapsed Catholic but she remembered enough of the teachings of her childhood. She had spent so long doubting the veracity of His existence and His love, anguished as she had been throughout her miserable life, but here, finally, was proof. His presence fell soft upon her like rain, and she could not help but smile as she bathed in His light.

And then, God had spoken.

But he had uttered words of death and hate and war, and all the while he had smiled. And Mary screamed, her mind and soul fracturing in that instant as she understood, dreadfully, that it was not God who had resurrected her, who had saved her from the monsters, but instead it was a Devil, he who called himself The Grandmaster, who sought only blood and carnage from those who danced upon His strings… and she was screaming still when she vanished from His presence and materialised instead within the nightmare once more. Only this nightmare was no longer a concoction of a severely damaged brain – The Grandmaster had healed her terrible injuries with nary a thought – but rather it was horrifyingly real.

Mary MacPherran had always suffered from various mental illnesses, not least delusional paranoia. In her adopted identity of Titania she had known defeat against the hero Spider-Man and had thereafter come to fixate upon him, visualising him as the manifestation of her fears; she had also become obsessed with the Avenger named She-Hulk, a woman who rivalled her in raw, physical strength and whom Titania considered, simultaneously, her twin and antithesis. Now, when she materialised in the quadrant of the Se’dai battlefield that was moulded from crystal and metal – a landscape of alien beauty bastardised with twisted steel and wire cables that spat with electrical discharge and reeked of oil and rust – she could only assume that she had been dispatched to her own personal Hell.

Her immediate location was enclosed, an area no more than twenty metres across, walled with crystal pillars interlaced with sheets of sculpted chrome. The crystal throbbed with a gentle light. The metal radiated warmth. There was a pulse beneath her boots, sending a tremble along her legs. A living cocoon. A womb.

And there was something else.

Identity confirmed. Designation: Titania. Probability of overall victory: 5.2 per cent.

A tentacled drone, nothing like The Stark in truth, but – crucially – machine more than human. Its presence, drifting past overhead and buzzing about this crystal chamber like a fly in a bottle, tipped Titania over the edge.

She reacted to hardship as she had always done; briefly there were tears, but these soon gave way to rage and fury that burned bright in her eyes behind the slits of her magenta-black mask, and corded like lead in her muscles. Bellowing incoherently, she launched herself at her alien prison, slamming iron-studded fists into the walls – through the walls – and shredding three-inch-thick metal like tissue. Beyond the chrome there was a web of cables; she wrenched mindlessly at these, ignoring the crackle of energy that arced along her arms, a pulse that likely would have killed a normal woman in a heartbeat. Her progress was relentless. Everything was her enemy. Everything.

With a threatening creak, the walls crumbled and part of the roof caved in. Undaunted, Titania swatted away dislodged debris with broad sweeps of her arms; she also kicked holes in the crystal floor with her studded, thigh-length boots and tore asunder five-metre chunks of solid mineral with just the tips of her fingers. She was a hurricane, a wrecking ball. And all the while she screamed at God, or The Devil, or whoever it was who had consigned her here…

…until, over the din of her own frenzy, she heard a distinct moaning: a woman’s voice, wordless, undulating as if in pain. Or… pleasure?

Titania paused, finally. She had all but burrowed her way to the surface from whatever underground bunker she had been consigned to and was now standing directly in a shaft of light filtering down from The Grandmaster’s craft high overhead. However, she was still surrounded by a muddle of crystal blocks and gleaming conduits, all so haphazard it was impossible that they could serve any practical function. Snarling, she gripped at a bank of pipes before her, wrenching it effortlessly from its moorings and hurling it up through the splintered ceiling, causing more silver light to gush in. Immediately the moaning became louder, for its source was revealed. Titania scowled.

In an alcove beyond the pipes she had just removed, another female was now uncovered. She was reclining in a groove between two shafts of metal, her body seemingly moulded into the gap so perfect was the fit, and she was all but naked, her alabaster skin a stark contrast to the grimy silver, chrome and copper of her surroundings. The woman’s hair was long and black as jet, the blackest hair Mary had ever seen; her eyes were pink, punctured by tiny, black pupils; her lips were bone white, slightly parted in a breathless gasp. Her body was beautiful, as if carved from marble by a De Milo or a Michelangelo, her breasts high and scarcely covered by strips of gauzy, black cloth in unbearably erotic fashion, and her legs long and shaped with just the right balance between muscle and yielding curve. There was more cloth at the juncture of her thighs, provocative rather than preserving her modesty; above this, the woman’s hands rested, her fingers splayed above the rise of her hips, her nails black and tapered to shining points as she scratched lazily at her own flesh.

The woman’s ghostly skin was quivering, her bosom rising and falling with sharp, agitated breaths. Her eyes were heavy-lidded. As Titania watched, the woman slowly traced the bud of her lower lip with a small, pink tongue. She was, without question, in the grasp of some near-mindless ecstasy. It was… disturbing.

“Such hate,” the woman whispered, suddenly, her miniature pupils fixing upon the other who now stood over her. “It runs through me like molten lava, searing me from the inside out… but leaving me strong. Potent. Rampant.”

The albino raised a delicate hand in greeting, and Titania saw a pulse beneath her flesh, the swell of black blood in her veins.

“Nekra would feed upon you, my sweet,” the woman breathed, smiling to reveal a cluster of sharpened teeth. “For with your hate I will prove unstoppable…”

[Flashback]

Nekra Sinclair, ten years old, dug down into the roots of a scrub and curled into a ball, arms wrapped tightly about her bare legs and head between her knees, her long, black hair falling down about her face like a curtain. She then held her breath and waited for the nearby footsteps she had heard to pass. Unfortunately, they seemed to be drawing closer. Nekra stifled a sob.

The girl’s flesh was chalk white, lacking melanin in a fashion that was typically representative of suffering from oculocutaneous albinism, although she was not a true albino; her hair was lush with pigment, and her condition was not inherited in the standard, genetic sense. Rather, Nekra’s mother – a cleaning woman at an atomic research facility in Los Alamos – had accidentally been exposed to a massive dose of experimental radiation whilst her daughter was in utero, and Nekra’s dearth of skin colouring had been the result.

Now, as she hid, the girl was drenched with perspiration, both from the searing, mid-day New Mexico sun, and also from fear. Her pallid complexion clearly displayed the fresh bruising around her eyes and shoulders, her arms, and her legs. The plain, cotton shift she was wearing was torn in a number of places. In the distance she could hear the yells of those who sought her, and the steady thwack and crunch of sticks beating the dry brush, searching her out. The footsteps were much nearer.

Nekra closed her eyes and silently prayed, as her poppa had taught her. Her family were poor – her mama had died not long after giving birth, from a variety of malignant tumours that had rotted her body from the inside out, and her poppa worked three jobs just to put food on the table – and the girl was uneducated. She knew her Bible, however, and she knew that God only visited suffering upon her because she was Wrong. She tried to be good, but obviously it wasn’t enough. The beating she’d received earlier that afternoon was punishment. She had hoped that God would be satisfied at that and would leave her alone. But God was greedy.

The footsteps crunched to a halt a few inches away from her hiding place. Nekra could hear heavy breathing. The air was full of heat and dust, and the stench of her own sweat and tears. Her eyes were stinging. She prayed harder.

It didn’t work.

“She’s here!” came the sudden scream of the boy with the woodpecker-red hair from the end of Nekra’s street. He stabbed at her through the scrub with his stick, gouging her in the ribs. “Everyone! She’s here! I found her! She’s here!”

Nekra jumped to her feet, but it was too late. They were already running towards her from all directions, all the neighbourhood kids, with their sticks and tin cans and old boots. They were shrieking and jeering, consumed by a collective, animal rage. They saw her for what she was – Wrong in God’s eyes, a freak, a dirty, stinking freak – and they had to teach her a lesson.

A hurled shoe slapped her across the back of the head, and she stumbled. Then, they were upon her, hammering her with their fists and feet, stamping her down into the dirt. Nekra screamed, and wept…

…and above all, as the fevered pack of ten- to twelve-year-olds proceeded to bludgeon her for the best part of an hour before running away, laughing, Nekra experienced one specific emotion that would stay with her for the rest of her life, burning into her soul just as the radiation had burned her poor, dead mama. Above all, Nekra hated.

[Flashback ends]

Identity confirmed, came the bleep of the drone from close by. Designation: Nekra. Probability of overall victory: 3.4 per cent.

Titania reached out for the white hand extended towards her…

…but, rather than accepting any offer of comradeship, she instead curled her fingers about Nekra’s wrist, her face darkening with a sneer of fury. With the barest effort she plucked the other woman from her resting place and hoisted her into the air above her head, her other hand drawn back into a studded fist.

“Honey, I don’t know how many of you freaks I’m going to have to rip in half to get out of here,” the redhead snarled, “But you look like a good place to start.”

And with that she slammed an almighty punch up into Nekra’s midriff, sending her shooting upwards like a rocket into an overhanging conduit, causing the voyeuristic drone to scoot for cover. There was a shocking crunch of rupturing metal and a shower of sparks, and what remained of the strangely glowing walls all about her flickered and dimmed momentarily, as if some circuit had been disrupted. When Nekra fell back to earth, limbs flailing, Titania was waiting with a double-fisted blow that clubbed her adversary in mid-air, propelling her away at incredible speed at a horizontal parallel to the floor. The albino woman impacted against a wall with a deafening ring and splinter of crystal, her momentum forcing her through the barrier and beyond, leaving a trail of debris in her wake.

Titania grunted, green eyes narrowed behind her mask. She made to stalk forward, intent only on locating the other woman’s body so that she could finish what she had started… but then she faltered as she heard a sudden movement to her right. A heavy tread, crystal shards crunching underfoot, and a dark shadow falling across her. A thought occurred to her so sharply that it caused her to gasp. Her recent memories were so dominated by images of the Stark, and then of The Grandmaster, she had almost forgotten the man who had become so significant in her life these past years – her husband, Crusher Creel, otherwise known as The Absorbing Man. Wherever she was, she was in the company of villains; that meant Crusher also had to be here, surely?

As the footsteps drew closer Titania whirled, a smile troubling her lips for the first time in so very long. “Sugar?” she said. “Is that…?”

Titania’s words faded. Standing some twenty feet away there was a hulking, disfigured monstrosity of a man, his misshapen body swaddled in a dark green cloak. The stranger was staring at her, head cocked and grinning, revealing a cluster of tombstone teeth. “I’ll be your sugar,” the man growled, one eye larger than the other and crusted with some horrific infection, and his skin raw with weeping sores. “If you’ll be my hot coffee rush.”

Titania’s fists clenched once more, and an animalistic snarl erupted from her throat.

“Hyde,” she hissed.

The man named Mister Hyde tipped an imaginary hat, still grinning. “At your service, my lady,” he breathed. “Now, what say you come give your old friend a big, wet kiss…?”

[Flashback]

“I compounded the elements, watched them boil and smoke together in the glass, and when the ebullition had subsided, with a strong glow of courage, drank off the potion. The most racking pangs succeeded: a grinding in the bones, deadly nausea, and a horror of the spirit that cannot be exceeded at the hour of birth or death. Then these agonies began swiftly to subside, and I came to myself as if out of a great sickness. There was something strange in my sensations, something indescribably new and, from its very novelty, incredibly sweet. I felt younger, lighter, happier in body; within I was conscious of a heady recklessness, a current of disordered sensual images running like a millrace in my fancy, a solution of the bonds of obligation, an unknown but not an innocent freedom of the soul. I knew myself, at the first breath of this new life, to be more wicked, tenfold more wicked, sold a slave to my original evil; and the thought, in that moment, braced and delighted me like wine…”

Doctor Calvin Zabo glanced up from the book that was open in his lap and smiled, leaning back in his rocking chair. “You see?” he asked, softly. “The potion Henry Jekyll concocted did not steal from him; rather, it bestowed a gift, perhaps the most treasured of all. The gift of freedom.”

The parlour was lit by the flickering glow of an oil lamp, casting dancing shadows upon the walls, which were lined with bookcases. When Zabo rose from his chair, his thin frame seemed especially gaunt in the half-glow, and a lick of flame coloured in his silver hair. Across from him, two individuals glanced about uneasily, seemingly at odds with such opulent surroundings. Carl ‘Crusher’ Creel glowered at the shelves lined with leather-bound first editions as if they caused affront, whilst Mary MacPherran simply stared at Zabo, her green eyes sharp with suspicion.

“Yeah,” Creel grunted, eventually. “Whatever, buddy. Just shift it, will ya? We got a van waitin’ outside, an’ Zemo’ll have our butt-cracks as plate-warmers if we’re late…”

He took one last look at the bookcases, then shook his bald head in dismay. “Waste’a good firewood,” he muttered, then turned and exited the parlour. When Mary made a move to follow, Zabo stayed her with a gesture. When she glanced back at him she saw that he was smiling, ghoulish in the lamplight, and the sight made her shiver.

“Tell me, Miss MacPherran,” Zabo breathed, “Were you bullied as a child? Ostracised? Ignored?”

Mary froze, her eyes flaring wide. Zabo nodded, thoughtfully.

“Yes, I imagine you were,” he continued, airily. “The outcast, looking on in envy and despair from the periphery of everything that mattered… but then, given the opportunity to become something other, something more, you grasped it with nary a twinge of trepidation. Now, suddenly, you are strong. Meaningful. No one can ignore you any more, can they? And here you stand on the verge of greatness, ready to join the self-proclaimed Masters of Evil. You see, Miss MacPherran, we are alike, you and I. We clutched at the chance of freedom, just like Jekyll…”

Mary scowled. “I’m not interested in anything you have to say,” she snarled. “Either as some skinny geriatric or as Hyde. Crusher and I, we just want to crack some Avengers’ skulls, and if that means working with you, then - ”

“Unfortunate. And ironic.”

“What is?”

Zabo flicked a glance towards the door through which Creel had just passed. “Your lover,” he murmured. “A muscle-bound brute of a man – your secret, childhood desires made flesh, perhaps, of a barrel-chested protector and soul-mate. The barbarian. The quarterback. The celebrated Absorbing Man, a fellow who can mystically transmute his physical form – tissue, brain, capillaries, nervous system, everything – into an organic approximation of almost any foreign substance, from water or earth to steel or glass, or anything in-between. A powerful man, potentially more powerful than any other being who stalks this world, save perhaps The Hulk, or Thor. And yet, the irony is in the way I see him look upon these books, for he can only assume the elemental properties of the actual, not the essence.

“He observes books as physical matter, as paper and leather and gold leaf; he is blind to the content, or words and thoughts and knowledge. Any man or woman can absorb information, Miss MacPherran, and through it they can manifest wisdom. A man such as Creel, who opts to rely solely on brawn, denies himself true power therefore, and can only ever be a lesser being in the presence of one such as I – or you.”

Zabo stepped forward, one hand outstretched, and he cupped Mary’s chin gently in his palm. “You are, indeed, truly beautiful,” he whispered. “Your eyes and flesh radiate a keening for more than you have. I could give that to you…”

Mary breathed deeply, then slowly raised her hand and closed her fingers about Zabo’s frail wrist – tightly, enough to make the old man wince and buckle. “I think I prefer you as Hyde,” she hissed, to which Zabo’s smile became a malevolent grin.

“Oh, I’m sure you would,” he crooned. “And perhaps, one day, we shall put that theory to the test…”

[Flashback ends]

Identity confirmed. Designation: Mister Hyde. Probability of overall victory: 4.1 per cent.

The man in the green cloak dismissed the intruding drone with a wave of his fist, then turned back towards the woman standing across from him. “It’s been a long time, Miss MacPherran,” he growled. “Or should I call you Mrs. Creel, now? I heard you finally married your Neanderthal mate – tell me, will he find himself hauled before the courts on charges of bigamy, considering he was already wed to one ball and chain…? Aheh.”

The woman in the studded magenta-and-black costume snarled as she hefted a hunk of steel the size of a billiard table in her arms, ready to hurl it at the hulking man who had emerged before her. “You can call me Titania,” she declared. “That’s the only name that matters these days.”

“The bard would have been so proud,” Hyde mused, a gruesome smile twitching upon his lips. “Does that make Creel your Oberon? ‘What visions have I seen! Methought I was enamour’d of an ass…’”

Titania scowled. It was disconcerting to hear words of such eloquence – the words of the educated Zabo – emerging from the deformed lips of this monster, spoken in a guttural bellow of a voice. Hyde was a changeling in more than the physical sense; at times, in this form, he could be so consumed by rage or lust that his intellect would unravel and a monosyllabic animal would arise, whilst on other occasions Zabo’s genius would be foremost. This was evidently one such occasion. As far as Titania was concerned, she was more than happy with that, for beating Hyde’s true self to a bloody pulp would be all the more gratifying. Except…

Suddenly, she shivered. She felt a crawling – not on her skin, but under it. A creeping. A sense of… fear? She quivered, then dropped the metal slab she was shouldering. She gasped. Yes, it was fear. Pure, unadulterated dread. Across from her, Hyde’s smiled widened.

“Ah,” he murmured. “You’re beginning to feel it, aren’t you?”

“What…?” Titania could barely speak for her jaw was trembling. “You…”

“The man we have to thank for my new, improved personage was named Alan Fagan, a wastrel of a fellow who usurped the criminal identity of Mister Fear after the death of the original, his uncle. A brother in spirit, you might say. Fear utilized a crude yet effective concoction of chemicals – hallucinogens, psychotropic compounds, pheromones – to induce panic and terror in his victims. I recently had opportunity to augment my own serum with my contemporary’s achievement, instigating a subtle change in my fluid physiology. Now, whether you like it or not, you will fear me, my dear. Your blood will turn to ice in my presence, your heart to stone, your brain to consommé. In short…”

Hyde grinned, and paused. And then…

…he hopped forward, throwing his hands in the air, shrieking like a mad beast. “Boo!” he screamed, flapping his cloak like a bat’s wings. “Aheh! Ahahah! Boo! Boo!”

It was ridiculous, inane, a childish thing… but Titania’s helpless reaction was one of abject fright, as if she were a child, faced with a legion of ogres slathering for her blood and flesh. She stumbled backwards, hands thrown in front of her face, an undulating wail bursting from her throat. Laughing uncontrollably, Hyde ambled forward, wriggling fingers like fattened worms.

“They’re coming to get you, Barbara… ahahah!”

Titania’s vision swam with strange colours and images, the nightmares returning in force. Spider-Man, She-Hulk… and, of course, The Stark. She flailed recklessly, but connected with nothing, her studded fists passing harmlessly through the apparitions that surrounded her. In contrast, Hyde’s blows were deadly accurate.

He slammed a punch into her gut, then another into her face, and another. Each time, he grunted and spat. And then, each time, he laughed. Titania reeled ineffectually, Hyde’s attack having driven her backwards into a corner. She stumbled forward, straight into another hefty slab of wart-pocked knuckles, snapping her head sideways on her neck. She choked on her pain, a stab of hot agony spiking through her head. Just like… just like…

Just like what The Stark had done to her. Titania’s eyes flew wide and her lips furrowed, baring her teeth like a rabid dog.

Hyde pulled back his fist…

…and Titania kicked out with all her strength, the heel of her boot crunching into Hyde’s throat and lifting him bodily from his feet, propelling him backwards through the air. Choking and scarlet-flushed, hands scrabbling at his neck, Hyde thudded into a pillar of crystal, shattering it into a thousand glittering fragments. He stumbled, but didn’t fall. Before him, Titania was also moving unsteadily but refusing to topple. For a moment they faced each other like a pair of prizefighters, both snarling, both in the grip of rage. Then, Titania bent and plucked from the floor the same slab of metal she had been cradling earlier.

“The thing about fear, Hyde,” she hissed, “Is that it’s something I’ve lived with all my life. Something I’ve fought against. And I guess I’ve built up a level of immunity.”

Hyde roared as his enemy launched her missile towards him without another word. Lacking in speed due to his size, there was no way he could dodge – and, a split second later, the slab of metal slammed into him at incredible force, ramming him backwards through a wall of pipes with an ear-splitting crash. This was the third such shuddering impact the general landscape had received in a short space of time, and, inevitably, something had to give way: the remainder of the ceiling. Titania looked up as she heard the sound of shearing, splintering steel, and she gasped as she observed the overhang of crystal and conduits above her head literally disintegrate in a sudden storm of dust and shards and rivets. She attempted to dive for cover, but it was too late… and then the world collapsed in upon her with a devastating crunch.

For a minute or two, everything went black. Buried beneath a ton of wreckage, Titania grimaced as she became aware that she was jammed beneath two twisted pipes, and that white pain was emanating in waves from her left shoulder. She could barely move, at first, but she could crane her head enough to see that a crystalline spear had impaled her through the upper arm, drenching her costume in blood. She cursed, then closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Then, she began arching her back, putting all the strain into her right arm. The debris above her shifted slightly, settled, then finally dislodged with a scything creak – but, in response, the weight upon her suddenly seemed to increase. Titania whimpered, then bit her lip and cursed once more. Her damaged shoulder screamed, and she could feel a digging in her stomach as another jagged shard, this one of steel, attempted to slice into her gut… but she persisted, her brain suddenly swimming with visions, of Stark, of Hyde, of Creel, of all that time spent languishing in a hospital bed.

She had been… in a coma? How long? How long?

So weak. So useless. So pathetic.

“Not again,” she whispered, her forehead and throat slick with sweat as she strained. “Never. Again!”

She redoubled her efforts, pressure erupting in her chest – and, a second later, the burden upon her shifted once more, this time sliding away to one side to grant her delicious relief. Hissing and spluttering, tasting rust on her tongue, she struggled to her feet, shrugging away one last gigantic section of piping that was leaning against her with little effort, even though it weighed as much as a bus. She shook her head, ridding her flame-red hair of steel splinters, then raised a hand towards the two-foot length of crystal that was protruding from her arm…

…only for another hand, this one gnarled and twice the size of hers, to reach out and close about the top of the spear before she could get there.

Titania looked up into a pair of mismatched eyes.

“That looks nasty,” said Mister Hyde, softly, his deformed face leaning in close. “Let me help.”

Hyde wrenched savagely at the crystal sliver, twisting it at a right angle and jamming it further into Titania’s body, causing her to jack-knife, shrieking, her head thrown back and her eyes wide in agony. She tried to pull herself away, but Hyde then brought his other fist down into her face with twice as much savage force as previously, almost snapping her neck and the upper half of her spine in one strike. As it was, Titania felt her entire body shudder as the blow drove her down into the mesh of steel underfoot, sending another shower of splinters flying in all directions. Hyde then hit her again, hard enough to shatter a normal woman’s skull, and roared with laugher as Titania screamed once more, her body convulsing.

“Where’s your barbarian lover now, Mary?” Hyde bellowed, raising both his fists to administer another savage attack. “Can he absorb pain? Blood? How about what’s left of your brain? Or - ”

“She needs no man to aid her,” a voice whispered at Hyde’s ear. “Not when she has me.”

Hyde turned in surprise to see a beautiful face smiling at him, all dark, mesmeric eyes set into a chalk-white face, framed by a cloak of raven-black hair. Nekra reached out and grasped Hyde’s shoulders in her delicate hands, then pursed her lips, as if for a kiss. “There’s so much hate in you,” she murmured. “It’s almost… overwhelming.” And then, with barely a hint of effort, she lifted Hyde off his feet.

“What in damnation?” Hyde cried. “Achromatic whore! I’ll - ”

“What you’ll do,” Nekra hissed, “Is die.” Then, she spun in an arc and hurled her captive with every last ounce of her augmented strength, sending him crashing through no less than four banks of pipes, rupturing each with an explosion of blue sparks. Snarling, she snatched up a length of iron and stalked the trail of devastation the man’s flight had incurred. Behind her, Titania moaned and stirred, her green eyes flickering open just in time to see Nekra’s retreating form. She grunted, then clutched at the crystal lance in her shoulder. She gripped it, held her breath, then began to pull…

Nekra heard Titania’s scream, but ignored it. Hyde was struggling to his feet before her, his face a mask of rage and blood.

“You hurt me!” the man-monster roared. “Me! I’ll grind your bones, you - ”

Nekra swung the iron bar in her hands and struck a savage blow to Hyde’s jaw that rang out like a bell. Hyde shrieked. His head then snapped back as Nekra swung again, this time with enough force to shatter one of his eye-sockets and loosen a snow-flurry of teeth. All the while she grinned and writhed her hips, almost lost in the pleasure that her victim’s hate was inspiring. Hyde snatched out and grabbed her about the throat, but she instantly brought the pipe down upon his elbow, shattering it, causing him to howl. The man-monster fell to his knees, shuddering.

“The sense of you is intoxicating,” Nekra mused. “Your aura… designed to elicit fear, yes? Unfortunate for you that fear begets hate.”

At that moment, Titania drew alongside Nekra, her left arm hanging uselessly by her side but the shard that had impaled her now removed. In her right hand she too brandished a length of steel, this one snapped to a sharp point at one end, like a stake.

“Kill you both!” Hyde screamed, scrabbling to regain his footing, his bestial manner now fully in the ascendancy. “Kill you! Kill – akgh!”

“Not so ready with the fancy words now, Zabo?” Titania breathed, watching as Nekra began to bludgeon the kneeling man once more. She raised her own makeshift weapon above her head, her eyes carved to slits. “Remember that husband of mine, you maggot? The one you were sneering about? Well, wherever he is, I’m sure he’d want me to pass on his best wishes.”

And with that she brought the metal stake down, stabbing the point into the top of Hyde’s head with all her might. Three inches of steel penetrated the man’s skull with a wet shuk! His eyes popped wide, and his jaw fell slack.

“Ak,” he spat, beginning to spasm. “Ak. Ahek.”

Smiling, Nekra hefted her own pipe like a hammer, then slammed it down on the other end of the stake, driving it further into Hyde’s skull. His head split like a melon, spraying both woman with blood and causing him to buck into spasm, his limbs flopping and flailing. Then, suddenly stiffening, he fell backwards, blood gouting from his mouth. Nekra gazed down upon him, moaning in the back of her throat. Titania glanced at the other woman, her body tensed, ready for another battle – but there seemed to be no immediate threat.

“You’re stronger than you look,” she said, cautiously. Nekra smiled at her, her dark eyes alight with power.

“I thrive on hate,” she whispered. “As I said earlier… by your side, I am invincible.”

“You angling for some kind of alliance? Because - ”

“We work well together, yes?”

Titania grimaced, then looked back to the blood-soaked body of Hyde. She breathed deeply.

“I’m injured,” she muttered. “You could probably end my life as easily as we did his.”

“Why would I want to?”

Titania gazed up at The Grandmaster’s vessel high overhead. “Only one of us can win this blasted prize that’s been offered, remember,” she said. “Even if we survive whatever comes next, eventually one of us will have to die – one way or another.”

“Is it so wrong to desire companionship until that time…?”

Titania met the other woman’s gaze, her eyes narrowed. “I’m never at my best on my own,” she admitted, eventually. “I don’t trust you, but…”

Nekra arched an eyebrow and, for a second time in their acquaintance, she held out her hand. This time, Titania accepted it without aggression.

“Delighted to meet you, my new friend,” Nekra breathed. “And let any who would challenge us from hereon be forewarned – I believe we shall make a formidable partnership…”

He called this place Between. There was no true structure to speak of in this world – no up, no down, no depth, no distance, save for whatever qualities he imprinted on the landscape for the sake of sanity. There was only white; sometimes the white of dense morning fog in those hours after dawn, drifting silently, rendering everything indistinct, sometimes the blinding white of sun-glare on ice. And, among the white, there was the black. Black circles. Black holes. Entrances. Exits. They were suspended in the mist, some frozen, some slowly revolving, some shimmering, some winking in and out like black moons passing behind clouds. Some large, some small. All of them within reach yet simultaneously as unattainable as the stars. Polkadots. Between was a Shangri La of… polkadots.

A man could go mad here. Perhaps, thought Jonathon Cohn, this explained the giant with the blue skin and the snow-white hair dressed in golden and ivory robes who couldn’t possibly exist and who had just whisked him thousands of light years across the universe. He grimaced, drumming his fingers together nervously. “Pick a spot, any spot,” he muttered. “Eenie, meenie, mynie, moe…”

Johnny was one of those poor fellows who, no matter the time of day, always appeared as if he had just rolled out of bed and was in need of serious caffeine infusion; his crop of ash-brown hair was naturally dishevelled, his eyes bleary, his expression vague, and his awkward body looked in good need of a stretch and a scratch. Now, as he glanced around wearily at the miasma that enveloped him, he resembled a furry mammal awoken a month too early from its hibernation.

Sighing, he reached out for one of the hundreds of black holes jostling for his attention. His hand penetrated the dark circle with a gentle hiss, followed by his arm, all the way up to his shoulder – and then the rest of him. In a heartbeat, Johnny vanished from the realm of Between….

…and reappeared in a wide, underground tunnel, lit by flickering torches bracketed to walls carved from solid stone. Emerging from a singular black hole suspended in mid-air, Johnny Cohn was now somewhat altered in appearance; he was still dressed in a casual tan suit and crumpled white shirt but now his face and hands were chalk-white and marked with dozens of small, black spots that roamed freely over his skin like living ink blots. Two of these spots settled in the vicinity of a pair of eyes and blinked, whilst another cluster came together to form a mouth set in a definite scowl.

Johnny didn’t bother to scrutinise his surroundings. He didn’t need to. In the past half an hour, ever since first materialising here, he had hopped between this dimension and that of Between twenty times or more, on each occasion exiting Between via a new portal but always returning to this general area. There was obviously a world of difference betwixt these underground passages and his cell back in The Raft, but there was no freedom to be had; he had simply swapped one prison for another.

Jonathon Cohn slumped against the wall and shook his head in despair.

And it was at that moment that he heard a distant voice…

Alice Caffrey was delighted, of course, to find herself underground. So delighted that she just had to sing, and dance, twirling her blue umbrella like a baton as she skipped.

“Forward, backward, inward, outward, come and join the chase! Nothing could be drier than a jolly caucus race!”

She spun on the pointed toes of her white ankle boots, edged with snowy fur, then threw her arms wide, her cerulean blue eyes twinkle-bright and her smile captivating. “Ah,” she breathed, “Down, down, down… I wonder if I shall fall right through the earth! How funny it’ll seem to come out among the people that walk with their heads downwards! The Antipathies, I think…”

Alice was dressed rather splendidly, in a dapper smoking jacket of blue tweed, and waistcoat and flared mini-skirt of the same, over a lacy white bodice with a pearl clasp. An elegant red cravat knotted about her throat and a pair of dainty white kid gloves completed her ensemble. The hem of her skirt fell no more than to quarter-thigh about her long, slender, dancer’s legs and scarcely preserved her modesty; in fact, it allowed a rather saucy glimpse of white lace knickers and a pert rear at regular intervals. Her hair, velveteen blonde with the faintest dash of auburn, fell in a shower of kinks and ringlets about her shoulder, swept back from her forehead by a black clasp and – an incongruous accessory – pinned in place by a pair of svelte-fur bunny ears. Her face, dominated by those innocent blue eyes and that dreamy smile, was cast white with face paint, almost like a street mime. A categorically sexy street mime.

Alice Caffrey was, without question, decidedly strange, but all the more enchanting for it. She was also utterly unperturbed by her current situation – after all, if there was one thing she had always craved it was a life of excitement.

Pirouetting once more, then scampering forward to a four-way junction at the end of the passage, Alice tucked her umbrella beneath one arm and delved in the pocket of her waistcoat. She removed a small, golden pocket watch on a chain and studied it, arching one perfectly manicured eyebrow. “Half past suppertime!” she declared. “I knew I was feeling peckish… but where, oh where, might I find the nearest tearoom? And I’ll not be patronising a conglomerate, no sir! No, no, frappuccino! I shall be seeking an independent venture! Preferably one with cake.”

She frowned then, and scratched at her ears. Her bunny ears, rather than the real ones.

“But which way ought I go from here?” she sighed, glancing one way and then another. “It would depend a good deal on where I want to get to…”

Alice Caffrey, otherwise known as The White Rabbit, paused in her quandary. It was only when she heard footsteps approaching from the tunnel branch to her left that she smiled with renewed confidence.

“Aha!” she crowed. “A mate! A chum! A pal! A friend! I hear them just around the bend! And perhaps they’ll even be inclined, with similarity of mind, to walk awhile, and talk and smile, and share a pot of Camomile…?”

The scent was becoming stronger, more urgent. Overwhelming. Sabretooth was actually salivating as he stalked along the torch-lit tunnel, a low rumbling in his belly. It wasn’t that he was hungry, exactly, it was just that his blood was up. He wanted to hunt. He wanted to kill. For all his intellect and wisdom, accumulated over the hundred-plus years of his life, he had also been a slave to his animalistic desires.

Up ahead he could hear singing, emanating most likely from the woman to whom the exquisite perfume belonged. He could almost feel the warmth of her already, could almost taste her skin. He grinned.

He was going to enjoy this…

“Did you ever see a night so long…”

The interior of the workshop reverberated with the screams of two men now. One of them was gripped in continuous spasm as a sparking saw-blade slowly made progress through the bone of his wrist, whilst the other was held still by clamps as thin metal pipes were fed into his arms through a series of pre-drilled holes. Blood was spraying everywhere, soaking the helmet and overalls of the woman who was attending to the pair of them, four of her six hands busying themselves with various parts of their anatomy. A cluster of automated suction hoses were siphoning up as much of the spillage as possible, whilst another pump was cleansing and treating the blood before returning it via a funnel whence it came.

“When time goes crawlin’ by…?”

Spiral lit a fresh cigarette with her two free hands then stepped back momentarily so that she could push up her visor and take a drag. She regarded her victims curiously, her golden eyes bright. Both of them had screamed so hard their tongues were raw and their gums were bleeding. She would need to fix that.

“The moon just went behind a cloud…”

The two men – like the third, who was currently being processed – had already died once, of course. But the human body was such an incredible machine. Medical practitioners back on Earth were still a good two or three centuries away from developing anything close to the resurrection technology that was available to Spiral, a traveller through time and relative dimensions in space, but when they eventually reached that stage of evolution mankind would suddenly be able to perpetuate their expected lifespan to the power of ten, utilising these same techniques. Of course, in the future there would also be access to high-performance pain-inhibitors. Spiral, and her current subjects, didn’t have that luxury.

“And I’m so lonesome I could cry…”

Spiral sighed, stubbed out the nub of her cigarette beneath her heel, then replaced her visor. The men were still screaming. Soon, the third would be ready to accompany them in their unholy chorus. It was tiring work.

But it would all be worth it in the end.

It took a while, but eventually Hyde expired. By this point the two women responsible for his death had long since departed the scene. The only witness to the brute’s final breath was a tentacled drone, waiting patiently to chronicle the moment.

Fatality confirmed, it bleeped. Deceased: Mister Hyde.

As the observation portal slowly faded to black before his eyes, The Grandmaster nodded silently to himself then immediately turned his attention to other events unfolding on the battlefield below. The death of a man – a terrible man, responsible for so much pain and suffering in his own life, but still a human being despite it all – passed without further note or comment. This was what En Dwi Gast had constructed: an execution chamber, five kilometres across. A cemetery for lost souls, with none to mourn or to dig their graves.

The corpses of those men and women to have left the game thus far lay where they had fallen, for the most part. Forgotten.

The air was filled with the stench of blood and smoke and war.

And there was still no end in sight…

To Be Continued...

Significant Issues

Important events referred to in this issue occured in the following Marvel titles:

Doctor Doom harnessed otherworldly energies to create Titania in Secret Wars # 3

Titania was rendered comatose by the alien Stark in Avengers 2000's Stark Invasion

Hyde appropriated Mister Fear's chemical formula in Avengers 2000's Squadron Supreme # 15