[Flashback]

Eight hours ago, quietly sweltering at a table littered with empty beer bottles in a dusty fleapit of a tavern in El Paso, Victor Creed had never even heard of Delvadia. Then his contact had arrived and had presented him with his assignment. Now, here he was: a fingernail clipping of a totalitarian Republic located southwest of Venezuela on the border of Columbia that consisted of eighty-five per cent jungle and the rest opium fields, mercenary encampments and abject poverty, all governed by a mediocre despot named Alejandro Deco Cortez and his personal entourage of sleaze. To be honest, he’d preferred the fleapit.

Creed didn’t care about the politics of dictatorships or drug fiefdoms or any of the rest of it, of course. But he did care about being riddled with bullets by a pack of soldiers armed with Russian Kalash SMGs who had ambushed him on a dirt road outside Delvadia’s capital city San Palo. Creed always cared about bullets, because bullets really hurt. Even a mutant like him. He was supposed to be carrying out the secret assassination of one of Cortez’s advisors whose ineptitude a few days previously had resulted in a shipment into Miami being intercepted by the Feds and the DEA. However, nothing was ever really a secret in these days of sophisticated satellite surveillance, and Creed’s position had likely been broadcast the moment he’d stepped off a private plane on a secluded airstrip five miles west of here.

The mercs came ambling out of the trees on either side of the road, clad in camouflage olive and tan, lighting cigarettes and muttering and laughing among themselves in a smattering of Spanish, Portuguese and English, depending on their own nationalities. Very few members of Delvadia’s security force heralded from the Republic itself but rather from Argentina, Cuba, a number of the Central American provinces and also from the United States. Flotsam, washed up in a private war no one really cared about and which was never reported by international news agencies no matter how many atrocities were committed or how many mass graves were uncovered. One of these scumrats came to stand before Creed’s bloodied carcass where it lay in the middle of the road, cigarette dangling from his lower lip, his eyes hidden behind a pair of sunglasses.

“Look at this!” he barked, in English, than hawked and spat into the nest of rugged golden dreadlocks that covered his victim’s head and face. “Dirty dog. They tell us to expect trouble, we get a stinking, dirty dog? Sonsofbitches, they - ”

The soldier grunted as he suddenly careered ten metres to the right, leaving twin trails of blood and smoke hanging in the air in his wake. Then – shak! – someone else lost an arm, in a flurry of fur and claws. Weapons were levelled, and there were cries of alarm. In three seconds there were six dead. Six. From ten. Someone fired, but succeeded only in mowing down one of his comrades. Talons tore open a throat, then a crotch. Blood filled the air like fog. It was a hot day, the sun high overhead. The road steamed. Bodies fell, guns clattered. Nine dead.

The one who was left alive was the first man, the one with the mouth. Creed stood over him, casting him in shadow, his enormous bulk cast black in silhouette against the sun, all dreadlocks and muscles and snarl. Blood was still oozing from his various wounds but they had mostly healed already, his regenerating flesh ejecting dozens of bullets with a series of wet pops. A large hand reached out and came to rest on the mercenary’s stomach.

“Word of advice for the next world,” Victor Creed growled. “Don’t ever – ever – call me dog.”

The soldier screamed then, briefly, as his enemy tore out his beating heart through his gut then stuffed it into his mouth and all the way back down his throat until it was lodged back where it had begun. By which point, mercifully, he was dead…

[Flashback ends]

The passageway was uneven, floor and walls carved from solid rock, but at least it was wide, and the ceiling – a lattice of wooden boards and beams – was high, meaning that Creed didn’t have to stoop. He was obviously underground, he didn’t need enhanced senses to tell him that much; his surroundings were reminiscent of a mineshaft, minus the cart-rail tracks, and lit by flaming torches bracketed into the stone at regular intervals along the walls. The light flickered in the faintest of breezes. Up ahead, at a junction in the tunnel, shadows moved…

…and, of course, there came the sound of a woman’s voice, raised in playful song.

Creed grimaced and paused. Suddenly he was wondering if he could trust his own senses. Everything looked genuine enough, but his twitching nose didn’t lie; not enough dust, not enough rot, not enough rat dirt… this wasn’t authentic. Hell, it wasn’t even Earth. This labyrinth – for there were a hell of a lot more passageways than just this one, as Creed had discovered – had been manufactured to give a sense of age, when in reality they had existed for no more than a handful of Earth days, maybe less. Even for a man who prided himself on his sense of adventure, this was an unsettling situation – all the more so when he heard a sound behind him, causing him to whirl and face a floating silver-black orb that had rounded a corner behind him, long tentacles trailing in its wake.

Identity confirmed, the drone bleeped, its internal sensors whirring. Designation: Sabretooth. Probability of overall victory: 8.4 per cent.

Victor Creed, the mutant known as Sabretooth, narrowed his yellow eyes and furled his lips, revealing a wide jaw clustered with jagged fangs. “Hunh,” he grunted, his voice echoing about the walls. “They good odds or bad, shiny?”

The drone didn’t answer, swivelling away. Sabretooth whipped out his right arm, which culminated in a massive claw that closed about the orb’s tendrils. He yanked the squealing drone towards him, growling deep in his chest. “You need to learn some manners,” he hissed, hooking the talons of his other hand into a line of tiny apertures about the orb’s casing. Without further ado he then proceeded to wrench the drone apart, separating it into two half-spheres and causing it to emit a brief, electronic wail. It then exploded in a shower of metal fragments, causing Sabretooth to curse and stagger backwards, blood streaming from hundreds of cuts to his hands and face.

The blood didn’t flow for long. Within seconds, the mutant’s wounds began to heal, his swarthy flesh knitting back together, scarring, and then smoothing over, all in one fluid progression. Eventually, the only sign that there had even been any damage was the way that his scruff of beard was left bare in places, as if he had attempted to shave himself whilst drunk. The regeneration process complete, Sabretooth sniffed and flexed the muscles in his shoulders. Then, more deliberately, he sniffed again.

He grinned, his eyes sparking and a drool of saliva budding in the curl of his lip.

Ah, the scent of woman upon the air. It could all be a trap of course, but he’d come too far to worry about that now. Besides, with his healing factor there was very little that could actually cause him lasting damage. Unfortunately the same couldn’t be said for anyone who unwittingly crossed his path.

Still grinning, he began stalking towards the source of the singing up ahead once more. It was time for him to make a new acquaintance…

[Flashback]

“Ah… Miss Caffrey, isn’t it? My name is Mycroft Watson, attorney to your late father’s estate. Please, come into my office, and take a seat. I - ”

“Mycroft Watson?” said young Alice Caffrey, with a dazzling smile. “Oh, how wonderful! You are aware, sir, that Mycroft Holmes was the elder brother of the famous detective Sherlock Holmes, yes? And that Doctor John Watson was personal assistant to said detective? Thus, a juxtaposition of the two! What a delightful coincidence!”

Mycroft Watson, a portly man with half-moon spectacles and receding hair in his late forties, looked on with a long-suffering expression. “Or perhaps, madam,” he said, in a rigid English accent, “The legacy of one’s father being an admirer of the works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle?”

“Perhaps so!” Alice nodded eagerly, and giggled, thoroughly oblivious to the fact that the attorney failed to share her enthusiasm. “Arthur was such a fortunate fellow to have befriended gentlemen of the stature of Holmes and Watson, don’t you think? They would have known why a raven is like a writing desk, I’m sure, had they been asked. I shall remember to inquire about that very matter when next I visit Baker Street!”

Watson’s brow furrowed. “Madam? You… are aware that Conan Doyle’s efforts were works of fiction, yes?”

Alice blinked, her eyes a wide, summery blue. Then, she laughed – a light tinkle of such heartfelt merriment that Watson couldn’t help but smile, awkwardly, in turn. “Oh, you silly,” Alice sighed. “A man of humour, sir, can never fail to brighten one’s day. But perhaps, if you would forgive my rudeness, we could progress to the matter of my father’s affairs…?”

The attorney cleared his throat, his expression still a touch bewildered. He guided his client into his office, then fiddled with his tie and smoothed his hair as she took a seat before his slab of an antique oak desk. It struck him, as she made herself comfortable, that Alice Caffrey was perhaps the most ravishing woman he had ever set eyes on; willowy of stature, with shoulder-length hair the colour of golden corn threaded with the faintest touch of copper, alluring eyes, and with a comprehensively arresting curve to her breasts and hips. And then there were legs – astoundingly long and tapered to exquisite ankles, displayed in all their loveliness by a flared, navy blue skirt that had scarcely crept past mid-thigh when she had been standing, let along sitting. When she crossed those legs, her tanned skin flashing in the early morning sunlight filtering through the office window, Watson actually swooned as if he were about to faint.

Of course, such feelings were highly unscrupulous. Alice was merely nineteen years of age, but despite the daring nature of the skirt she was no Lolita; rather, she conducted herself with such innocence, and her manner of speech was so refined – akin to that found in the novels of Austen or Bronte, even – that Watson was utterly ashamed to experience arousal in her presence. He tapped at his spectacles then busied himself with the papers on his desk, head bowed, desperately attempting to ignore the fact that his client had just crossed her legs once more, causing his heart to skip like a drunken toad.

“My father was an enthusiast of Carroll,” Alice said, still smiling. “Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland.”

“Ah,” Watson nodded, absently. “Hence the name.”

“Yes. She's such a spirited child.”

Watson glanced up. “She?”

“Alice. I was introduced to her one day, at the tea party. Why, just like the dormouse said, we could almost have been sisters!”

The attorney pursed his lips, then slowly sat down behind his desk and steepled his fingers. “Miss Caffrey,” he said, gently, “I don’t believe I’ve told how sorry I am, regarding your father. It must have… affected you greatly, such a tragic accident…”

Alice Caffrey blinked, then inclined her head in coquettish fashion. “Accident?”

“Yes, with the chainsaw. A terrible thing, simply terrible. I - ”

Watson faltered as his client giggled.

“Oh, silly,” Alice said, sweetly. “It wasn’t an accident. It was me.”

Watson paled. “Madam?”

Alice sighed. “It was the Queen of Hearts who told me how,” she said, with that dreamy smile. “Although, I have to say, for all her superciliousness she was a little unforthcoming about quite how difficult it is to remove a person’s head…”

The attorney sat perfectly still, eyes wide behind his glasses.

Alice saw his expression, then gasped and clapped her hands together, smiling hurriedly. “Fooled you!” she cooed. Then, she leaned forward and whispered, “Speak roughly to your little girl, and spank her when she sneezes. She only does it to annoy, because she knows it teases!”

Mycroft Watson still said nothing. Alice winked and blew him a kiss, trailing an absent finger along the upperside of her thigh and kicking her foot, her shoe dangling from her bare toes.

“Ready when you are, Mister Watson,” she said. “Tally ho!”

[Flashback ends]

In five years, Alice Caffrey had buried three husbands and a Dalmatian named Cadpig. Cadpig hadn’t been her fault; a relentlessly curious young pup, he had one day taken to investigating the interior mysteries of a garden shed filled with receptacles containing all manner of poisons, with predictable but nonetheless dreadful consequence. The husbands, however, were another matter. The methodology had been creative in each instance – an axe, a sheet of glass and a pair of garden shears – but the result, decapitation, had remained consistent. And she always got away with her crimes. The Scotland Yard constabulary suspected her of foul play, of course – how could they not? – but they couldn’t prove anything. Blessed with a searing intellect that leant itself perfectly to the lateral thinking required for creative murder, she had always been adept at covering her tracks. When all was said and done, however, it was a terrible shame about poor Cadpig.

In those past five years, Alice had also visited no less than sixteen different therapists. Regrettably, their collective diagnosis was unswervingly in favour of some manner of hospitalisation to address her… issues. The very thought of it made Alice rather cross as she stood there in the torch-lit tunnel, hands on hips, tapping her foot. Imagine! Delusional, they said. Paranoid, disassociative megalomania. Poppycock! She was merely a tad eccentric, that was all.

Hence the fact that she liked to dress in quite particularly, in her blue tweed and bunny ears. Not that she’d been clothed this way back in Doctor Kafka’s office, when she had vanished; this Grandmaster chap, whoever he might be, had thoughtfully ensured that she was to be comfortable during the adventure that was about to unfold, even going so far as to equip her with her favourite umbrella. And it would be an adventure! Alice couldn’t help but smile at the thought, her ire draining away. Here she was, millions and billions and trillions of miles away from home, as if – finally – she has stepped through the looking glass…

Identity confirmed, a mechanical voice chirped. Designation: The White Rabbit. Probability of overall victory: 0.1 per cent.

Alice Caffrey, The White Rabbit, turned to see a drone hovering by her shoulder. She raised an eyebrow. “Well then!” she said, crisply. “What manner of creature are you, sir? Or should it be madam? Do you have a gender? Or even an agenda?”

The drone bleeped, then hesitated. It twitched its tentacles, to which The White Rabbit raised her other eyebrow. “A boy, evidently,” she murmured. “Tally ho.”

At that point, the sound of another approach made her turn away from the drone to stare back along the passageway that she had been exploring. A large figure had emerged directly ahead, his dreadlocks and shaggy frame etched with torchlight. His yellow eyes glinted, as did his fangs.

Sabretooth stared at The White Rabbit, his gaze roaming up and down her long, bare legs from her ankle boots to her tiny skirt, then up past the bodice, which cradled her ample bosom quite delightfully, to her painted face, blonde hair, and… furry ears. When he was done, he pursed his lips and scowled in confusion. “Okay,” he grunted. “Not that I’m complaining, sweetheart, but… what’s a nice Playboy bunny like you doing in a place like this?”

“What a splendid mane, sir!” The White Rabbit remarked, with a charming smile. “Are you, mayhap, related to the Tiger-Lily?”

“The… what?”

“The Tiger-Lily! In the Garden of Live Flowers!” The White Rabbit sighed. “Ah, yes… she didn’t like the daisies, you know. When one speaks, they all begin together, and it’s enough to make one wither to hear the way they go on!”

Sabretooth blinked. The White Rabbit jutted out her hip and then twirled her umbrella. “Perhaps, my fellow friend in fur, you are not a tiger at all,” she stated. “Perhaps you are a lion. A cowardly lion. Hmm? Well, have at it, sir! Is this the point where we fray?”

“Where we… what?”

“Fray! Play! Jaunt and joust! Are you a man or are you a mouse?”

Sabretooth blinked again. “Lady,” he said, “I’ll be damned if I don’t know whether to kiss you or kill you.”

The White Rabbit grinned, evidently enjoying herself. “I assure you, sir, you shall do neither!”

Sabretooth slowly smiled in turn. “And I assure you,” he breathed, “I’m about to do both.”

He took a step forward then, muscles cording beneath his cloak of furs, fangs bared and claws unfurled…

…and, at the same time, a black hole inexplicably shimmered into life in the stone wall beside The White Rabbit, and a man dressed in an ill-fitting suit and with the barest semblance of features comprised of black speckles upon alabaster skin leaned out into the passageway.

“Excuse me, miss,” said the man, rather tetchily, growing a mouth from a cluster of black spots, “But I couldn’t help overhearing. Are you quite finished annoying the seven-foot, three hundred pound homicidal maniac? Because, if so, now would be a good time to depart, don’t you think?”

The White Rabbit stared, jaw agape. “You’re English,” she said, after a moment’s pause.

“Yes,” said the man, who did indeed have an English accent.

“Your skin is covered with spots. Moving spots.”

“Yes,” said the man again, the black holes upon the surface of his face indeed pulsing and swirling independently of one another, in a highly improbable manner.

The White Rabbit grinned. “And you wish to ferry me through a hole in the wall,” she whispered, breathless with excitement. “A rabbit hole.”

The faceless man scowled in a way that only a man without a face possibly could; and, whatever he had that passed for eyes, he rolled them. “Yes,” he said, with a sigh. “If that’s what it takes, then, yes, it’s a bloody rabbit hole. Now, are you coming?”

The man held out a hand. The White Rabbit let out a shrill squeal of delight and took it. The man pulled, tugging her bodily into the black aperture… and the hole then vanished behind them, as if it had never been.

Sabretooth stood and stared. He stared at the floor, where the blonde in the tease-skirt and the bunny ears had just been standing. He stared at the wall, which was once again fashioned of solid stone. He pursed his lips. He breathed deeply.

“Okay, now seriously,” he said, calmly. “What the fuck?”

[Flashback]

Sometimes there is something about a man – body language, perhaps, or pheromones, or something altogether more unquantifiable – that sets him apart. But not in a good way.

Jonathon Cohn was one such man, for he was one of life’s victims. He was slight and timid, with drooping brown eyes that flickered nervously and a protruding nose with a rather noticeable hook, but otherwise he was not especially ugly or objectionable; it was simply that he bore the aura of a loser, and nothing he had ever done had been able to shift that impression. He was also cursed with the most abysmal luck, often rendering his mundane existence most intolerable. Whenever he was called upon to fill out an official form, the paperwork would instantly be mislaid the moment it passed from his hands – or, with remarkable persistence, people would insist on misrepresenting his last name as Ohnn. He would regularly suffer from flat tyres, burst pipes and dogs defecating his lawn, even though there were no dogs in his immediate neighbourhood. And his bank account, and salary details, and mortgage checks, and insurance bonds, and alimony payments to his ex-wife, and a hundred other everyday essentials, would all routinely experience the most bizarre complications that had never afflicted anyone else in the history of such things, all to the extent that he was threatened with fines and court appearances on a monthly basis even though he never actually did anything illegal.

Well, that is, nothing illegal apart from being a scientist in the employ of Wilson Fisk, New York’s Kingpin of Crime. And even that status wasn’t likely to last for much longer, unless –

The machine that Jonathon was currently operating suddenly shuddered and emitted a fearful whine. Which, obviously, wasn’t supposed to happen. His eyes narrowed curiously as he studied a data read-out, excitement stirring in his gut. The project he had been working on these past few days was perhaps his last chance to impress The Kingpin after a series of failures. A week ago, Fisk’s Manhattan tower had been involved – not for the first time – in an altercation between a group of the city’s many and varied super-powered individuals. One of these personages was a mysterious figure who went by the name of Cloak – a man who, apparently, could utilize an other-dimensional power to disappear and reappear at will. An advanced surveillance device had captured a snapshot of Cloak’s energy signature and Jonathon had been striving to replicate that exact frequency ever since. Tonight it seemed that he had succeeded…

…but at what cost? The duplicator was overheating… microcircuitry vaporised… radiation was leaking and coalescing before his eyes…

Jonathon blanched. Fisk wasn’t going to be happy if his entire laboratory division went into meltdown. Perhaps if he were to –

Blink.

And, suddenly, there it was. Just hovering in mid-air, shimmering, hissing: a black hole, just pure darkness, some two metres in diameter. Jonathon gasped. Was this it? Was this aperture some kind of portal to another dimension – is that how Cloak’s powers worked?

The outer edge of the hole was quivering, already losing stability. The energy was fading. Jonathon’s heart froze. If the aperture closed, would he be able to create another? Or was this a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity? The darkness seemed so haunting, so absolute… but he had no choice. Tentatively he reached out – and then, steeling himself, he stepped forward. Into the black.

His foot disappeared. His hand disappeared. And, in that instant, his nerve broke. He attempted to pull back, but it was too late.

He vanished into the hole…

…and then the hole shrivelled and winked out of existence in his wake.

[Flashback ends]

Years after his first excursion Jonathon was now accustomed to the strangeness of the dimension he called Between, and comforted by the knowledge that he could return to the physical plane at any time through any number of the black apertures that existed in the shimmering white that surrounded him. However, to anyone experiencing this place for the first time it was likely quite terrifying. He turned towards his companion, ready to reassure her…

…only to blink in surprise as she came floating past him wearing an almighty grin, flapping her arms like a bird, her tweed skirt ruffled to expose a startlingly pert rear. If his white face had been capable of blushing, it would. The White Rabbit seemed rather flushed herself, even through the veneer of her face paint, as she glanced back over her shoulder, eyes heady-lidded as if in the throes of passion.

“Oh,” she said, breathlessly. “Oh, it’s like I’ve always dreamed…”

Staring at the ever-so-close outline of a rump in white lacy knickers, The Spot would have agreed if only he could have regained the use of his tongue. With a measure of reluctance he guided his new acquaintance to another aperture and they both slithered through with a soft hiss…

…whereupon they reappeared in a far more familiar environment, stepping out of a black hole onto terra firma.

Veritably trembling with excitement, The White Rabbit beamed and clapped her hands in delight. “Bravo!” she cried. “Oh, I say! That was extraordinary! Can we do it again? Please? We could go find the Tiger-Lily and bring him along for the ride!”

The man with the shifting black-and-white skin stared at her in disbelief. “Uh… that would be a no. You really are insane, aren’t you?”

“That’s a rather rude observation. And you, sir, are rather… spotty.”

“We already established that.”

“Well, it bears repeating.”

The man sighed. The two of them were standing in another underground passageway with a wooden ceiling high overhead – not the same tunnel where they had encountered Sabretooth moments previously, but otherwise identical. Before either of them could speak, one of The Grandmaster’s drones drifted towards them, torchlight reflecting off its silver casing.

Identity confirmed, it bleeped. Designation: The Spot. Probability of overall victory: 0.5 per cent.

The White Rabbit arched her eyebrows and smiled triumphantly. “See!” she crowed. “Spot! Spotty spit-spotty spot.”

“Yes, yes, alright. I have been thinking about calling myself something different, but - ”

“How about The Blotch?”

“No.”

“Polkadot?”

“No.”

“The Black Hole?”

“No! Listen, we…” Jonathon Cohn, otherwise known as The Spot, paused. “Actually,” he said, “That’s not bad.”

“I want a cut of the royalties.”

The Spot snorted. “Now you sound like my ex-wife.”

“Ooh. Do I look like her?”

The Spot glanced his companion up and down, unavoidably paying special attention to her legs. “No,” he said, eventually, “Not really. If my ex-wide had looked like you, I wouldn’t have divorced her no matter how much of a money-grabbing harlot she was.”

The White Rabbit grinned, and batted her eyelashes. “My dear Spot,” she crooned, “Are you flirting with me?”

“Not… intentionally. I just… ah, look, could we continue this some other time? Right now I think we should concentrate on trying to stay alive, don’t you?”

“Oh, foo.”

“Foo?”

“Foo. You’ve already rescued me! The danger’s passed! We’ve more than enough time for canoodling. Did you know, that word was derived from when the first settlers in the United States used to set out on their canoes at night so they could cuddle on the river beneath the stars?”

The Spot was dumbstruck. “Actually,” he said, “I’m pretty sure you just made that up, didn’t you?”

The White Rabbit giggled and skipped, and did a little dance. The Spot raised his eyes to the ceiling. And then, a clawed fist came smashing through the wall between them with a resounding crunch!, showering them both with stone and dust. The White Rabbit shrieked, and The Spot did likewise. They both turned to see the hand vanish back through the hole it had created, to be replaced a leering face full of gnashing teeth.

“Peekaboo,” Sabretooth growled. “You can pull your little disappearing tricks all day, acne boy, but I’ve got your scent: both of you. I’ll track you wherever you go…”

The Spot cursed, then flourished his hands in the direction of the opposite wall. One of the pulsing black holes on his right palm travelled along his fingertips with a distinct hiss, growing as it moved, then shot forth… and landed upon the wall with a slap. It shimmered for a split second, then expelled a rush of strange smelling air as it manifested as a physical portal into the swirling void of white and black that was Between.

Sabretooth roared and began tearing at the stone barricade between him and his prey, flaying solid rock as if it were paper – or flesh. The Spot gulped, then turned to The White Rabbit, who was staring at the hole in the wall in utter fascination. “It’s safe,” he said, quickly. “Honestly. I wouldn’t lead you anywhere dangerous. This other world we pass through, it’s - ”

“I don’t care,” The White Rabbit breathed. Seemingly oblivious to Sabretooth’s attempts to get to her, she turned and smiled at her companion, so sweet, her blue eyes twinkling. “I don’t care,” she repeated. “I… think it’s wonderful. Thank you.”

The Spot blinked. “Ah. Well, in that case… ladies first,” he said, politely. “But hurry up, would you?”

The White Rabbit twirled her umbrella. “Indeed!” she cried. “Tally ho!”

The walls and floor of the underground tunnel were slick with blood, glistening dark in the torchlight – so much blood that no normal human being could have lost such an amount and still live. But neither of these two protagonists was human; and, although both bore vicious wounds from the battle that had been raging between them for a significant time, neither appeared close to giving ground. Amazingly, not more than twenty metres from where Sabretooth was giving chase to The Spot and The White Rabbit, the two mutates known as Armadillo and Stegron faced each other in mortal combat.

“Ssstegron is the rightful ruler of Earth!” the dinosaur man screeched, lashing out with his spiked tail and slamming his enemy across the chest, sending him sprawling. “Ssstegron will kill all humansss! Ssstegron will - ”

“Stegron will shut the hell up when I tear out his bastard throat!” Armadillo bellowed, eyes wild as he thundered forward, his face and chest stained crimson. His scales were splintered, the flesh beneath lacerated; he had never been injured in this way before, far worse than the broken bones and severely bruised hide he had endured after his fall from the Empire State Building. That had hurt. A lot. This was worse. Once upon a time such hardship might have left him snivelling on the floor in self-pity, curled into a proverbial ball like his namesake, just waiting for the final blow to fall – but there was something about Stegron, something unquantifiable, like a rusty blade slicing into his very soul, that drew the beast to the surface.

Armadillo knew that he could very well be bleeding to death, or that one slash of his enemy’s six-inch claws could finally eviscerate him, but his rage was overwhelming. He was fighting to survive; more so, for the first time in his life, he was fighting to kill.

Damn his immortal soul to hell, but The Grandmaster had got his wish.

Armadillo’s massive paws closed about Stegron’s throat as he lunged in, snarling in pain as his enemy’s tail clubbed him across the back of the head but maintaining his grip all the same. Stegron’s eyes shot wide, and his jaw began snapping back and forth like a steel trap.

“Die!” Armadillo screamed. “Die!”

Stegron’s fangs closed about one of his attacker’s wrists and bit down hard, piercing scales and flesh beneath, and more blood misted the air…

…at the exact moment that a black hole suddenly materialised in the cavern wall directly alongside the two of them, shimmering momentarily before disgorging a man with a face of rippling white-and-black skin and a blonde woman in bunny ears into the midst of the melee.

The White Rabbit stumbled, then looked up – into a pair of glowing red eyes and blood-soaked teeth. “Goodness!” she exclaimed. “Spot, dearest? When you said you were going to lead us to safety… was this what you had in mind?”

[Flashback]

There is a world within a world, a world that should not exist… and yet it does, and once seen it can never be forgotten.

Hidden away at the heart of Antarctica, the largest desert wasteland on modern Earth, there is a sequestered plateau surrounded by a ring of volcanoes known as The Savage Land. This realm, an impossible region of tropical splendour, was artificially created some two hundred million years ago by an alien race whose intention was to fashion a game reserve where the flora and fauna of the age could flourish and remain untouched by the process of evolution that would gradually consume the outer world. In the centuries to come, mankind would inevitably discover the cracks in the barriers around this hidden territory, but The Savage Land would persist quite remarkably in its prehistoric state. Of course, there would always be those who sought to manipulate the wonders of nature to their own ends…

Once, scientist Doctor Vincent Stegron had been human, working with fellow herpetologist Doctor Curtis Connors in a research study of DNA harvested from prehistoric reptiles – dinosaurs – that had been considered extinct until the discovery of hordes of living specimens in The Savage Land. Now, there was precious little man left. Injecting himself with an experimental serum derived from that collected DNA, Stegron had dramatically altered his genetic structure, mutating into a hulking, reptilian beast exhibiting the distinctive characteristics of the particular genus of dinosaur known as the stegosaurus. His skin had developed a thick covering of mottled orange-green scales, as resistant as steel plate, and his back had erupted in a crest of jagged spines, stretching from his head – now elongated and misshapen, with a wide jaw crammed with teeth – down to his coccyx and newly-grown tail, which spanned some two metres in length. And, perhaps most importantly, Stegron was now a cold-blooded killer with no capacity for love or compassion; swift and strong and incomparably deadly, his one, overriding desire was to see his dinosaur brethren return to their rightful place as rulers of the world – and this, of course, would require the Earth to witness another extinction. The extinction of mankind.

In a jungle clearing deep in the belly of the Savage Land, Stegron stood proud, scales glinting in the white sun, as he cupped his hands to his deformed snout and emitted a shrill, alien scream. The sound was a call, a summons, and it carried far and wide through the tropical forests…

…and it was answered, by hordes of gigantic reptiles, emerging from the swathes of green with a deafening rumble, the ground trembling as if stricken by an earthquake beneath their immense size and weight. Tyrannosaurus Rex, triceratops, plateosaurus, allosaurus, velociraptor – so many different species, some carnivores and some herbivores, but all swaying in unison, hypnotised by the undulating screech of the creature who would be their master.

“Come, my long-tailed brothersss, come!” the dinosaur man roared, his words laced with a sibilant hiss. “Ssstegron waitsss… to lead you to your ultimate dessstiny!”

And then, as his kin began to snarl and gnash their approval, his jaw twisted in an inhuman smile…

[Flashback ends]

Jonathon Cohn didn’t know what to do. He wasn’t cut out for this supervillain malarkey, never had been, but here he was anyway, drowning in the chaos of some secret war that he wouldn’t have chosen to be a part of in a million years. Now he had snarling orange beasts on either side of him, and a third who would be attempting to claw his way through yet another stone wall any second – and why? All because he was a sucker for a pretty girl. When he had overheard The White Rabbit being terrorised by that Sabretooth character he had instinctively attempted to play the dashing knight and whisk her to safety, but he’d just made things worse. Now they were both going to die. Unless…

“Spot!” The White Rabbit cried. “Help me! Do something… spotty!”

The Spot saw that his companion was cowering before Stegron, who was leaning in with a frightful leer… but rather than rush in to offer her aid, he instead thrust out a hand and sloughed another of his dimensional portals from his skin towards the opposite wall. The hole slapped into place, quivered, and then exhaled a hiss as it breached the fabric of reality. The White Rabbit’s eyes glistened with despair as she stared across at him.

“You… you’re leaving without me…?” she whimpered. “But - ”

“The ssstink of human flesh offendsss me, woman!” Stegron snarled, wrapping his claws about her slender throat. “Ssstegron will - ”

“Not while I’m still alive!” Armadillo roared, launching himself forward with all his remaining strength. He slammed into Stegron’s gut, headfirst, sending him sprawling…

…towards a crack in the tunnel wall through which a rampaging Sabretooth was just beginning to emerge. At the last moment Stegron lashed out with his tail, and The White Rabbit screamed as the spikes speared towards her face, but Armadillo thrust out a paw and swatted it away before it could impale her. He then gathered the woman to his chest, protecting her with his own body, and scuttled forward, away from where Stegron and Sabretooth were suddenly facing one another, attempting to recover their bearings – and then flailing instinctively at what they perceived to be the most immediate threat, giving the other three occupants of the tunnel a chance to scuttle clear.

“He left me!” The White Rabbit wailed.

“No!” The Spot cried. “Listen, you’ve got it wrong. I wasn’t trying to… I mean, I was making us an escape route, so we could both - ”

“You were going to leave me!” The White Rabbit declared angrily, wriggling from Armadillo’s grasp as The Spot darted forward. “I saw you!”

“No, honestly, I - ”

An umbrella slapped him hard across the face, and made him yelp.

“Out, damned Spot! Out, I say!”

“What?”

“I thought you were my friend!” The White Rabbit snapped, a single tear glittering on her white cheek. “I… I don’t have any friends. I’ve always been alone! But I thought you…”

“But… but…”

Words failing him, The Spot looked on mutely, thoroughly miserable. Even though he had only known this woman for just a few, brief minutes, her words pierced his heart as surely as Sabretooth’s claws might have done. He wearily opened his mouth to speak again, but Armadillo stilled him with a raised paw. “Look,” the armoured giant grumbled, a little awkwardly, “Whoever you two are, can we deal with the emotional fallout later? I think we need to put as much ground between us and the scuffle brothers over there as possible, yes?”

The Spot glanced back along the tunnel, where Sabretooth and Stegron were tearing into each other with claw and fang, decorating the walls about them with yet more blood. When he turned back, he saw that The White Rabbit was clinging on to Armadillo’s hip and softly nuzzling her head against his misshapen rib cage. “My hero,” she sighed.

Armadillo blinked, then gazed at The Spot, his expression stricken. The Spot just shook his head, slowly. “Don’t even say it,” he muttered. “Trust me. This whole situation reeks of my kind of luck.”

He flung out a weary hand then, and another of his black portals detached from his skin and slapped against the wall, shimmered, and actualised with a hearty pop!

“I hope you don’t think I’m going anywhere else with you,” The White Rabbit said, primly.

“Fine,” said The Spot. “Whatever. Have a nice life.”

He stepped forward towards the portal. Behind him, Armadillo curled a stumpy arm around The White Rabbit’s waist. “Will you go if I go too?” he asked, gently.

She pursed her lips. “It depends,” she said. “Will there be tea and cake?”

Armadillo blinked. “Will there… what?”

The Spot glanced back over his shoulder, just before he vanished. “Welcome to my world,” he said, tartly. “First stop, madwoman central. Any time you’re both ready… no rush…”

Brought together through circumstance, and sharing a fluster of aggrieved glances, this oddest of gatherings passed through the hole into Between, and the aperture shrank and vanished behind them. Back along the passageway, Stegron and Sabretooth were far too involved in their own skirmish to even notice their passing.

The two protagonists were evenly matched; Stegron was stronger and faster, but his adversary’s healing factor made him more durable. For every lash of his tail or rending sweep of his claws, Sabretooth simply kept coming back, at one point slamming a punch into Stegron’s snout that loosened a whole shower of teeth and left the dinosaur man spitting blood. Both driven with rage, they wrestled one another against the walls and to the floor, until – with a particularly savage lunge – Stegron was finally able to clamp his jaws about his foe’s neck and rip out his throat, whereupon he then flung the shaggy man’s remains to the ground and stood over him triumphantly.

“Victory belongsss to Ssstegron!” the spine-backed beast hissed. “I will devour your carcassss!”

He moved in for the kill then, repeatedly whipping his spiked tail down upon Sabretooth’s head and shoulders, ripping away clumps of flesh and hair and blood. However, the more damage the feral mutant incurred, the more resilient his healing factor became. Despite the incredible pain he must have been experiencing, Sabretooth refused to buckle beneath the onslaught; indeed, even as his throat repaired itself, he began chuckling deep in his chest.

“I will tear you asssunder, animal-man!” Stegron howled, almost desperately, gouging with his claws and snapping forward with his teeth in between strikes of his tail. “I will feassst one your flesh! Gnaw on your bonesss! I will - ”

“Christ, sometimes I really miss Logan, you know?” Sabretooth snarled, suddenly thrusting up with both fists and grabbing the swell of Stegron’s abdomen between his hooked talons. “At least he’s quiet in a fight…”

Stegron screamed as a resurgent Sabretooth slammed him bodily against the wall, the mutant’s clawed fists still digging into his enemy’s stomach. “What are you doing?” the dinosaur man hissed. “What - ”

“Shut up!”

Sabretooth twisted his captive in a half-circle, so that Stegron was now facing the wall, snout crushed into the stone, with his attacker pushing up against him from behind to lock him in position, tail trapped between his legs. Sabretooth then cursed, shaking his head in irritation as blood dribbled down into his eyes from his various scalp wounds. However, with relentless monotony, his torn flesh continued to knit together and scar, healing with impossible swiftness as his accelerated regeneration factor went about its business, ultimately leaving only a series of bald patches to show those wounds had even existed.

All the while, Stegron thrashed and bucked, claws scrabbling at the stone as he attempted to free himself. But his efforts, against Armadillo as well as his current foe, had taken their toll. The battle had turned. And now, the final outcome was inevitable.

Sabretooth growled deep in his throat. “You know the best thing about dinosaurs, buddy?” he murmured. “They’re extinct.”

With that, he wrenched at Stegron’s stomach with both hands, claws hooked down into the crevasses between his enemy’s scales… and Stegron’s gut shredded like paper, spilling a wet slick of blood and intestines down his hips and thighs. Stegron shrieked, red eyes bloating with pain and fear, then felt hands move up to his jaw and grab tight.

“Reckon I saw King Kong do this to one of your cousins, once,” Sabretooth said, with a grin. He then grunted as he yanked down on his victim’s lower palette whilst thrusting upwards with his other hand, splintering Stegron’s jaw hinge and shattering the middle third of his skull in one movement. Stegron spasmed, then collapsed sideways as Sabretooth stepped away, wiping his blood-drenched hands on the front of his jerkin. The dinosaur man was dead before he hit the ground, shards of jawbone having been driven up into his brain.

Sabretooth glanced around in the vain hope that the woman with the bunny ears was still in the general vicinity, but he wasn’t surprised to find the passageway empty – save for one of the silver drones, which came drifting along at the moment, tentacles twitching nervously.

Fatality confirmed, it stated. Deceased: Stegron. Survival confirmed. Designation: Sabretooth. New probability of overall victory: 8.7 per cent.

Sabretooth flexed his muscular shoulders, then sniffed the air. There were four distinctive scents, other than his own and that of the deceased Stegron; three individuals – the bunny girl and her teleporter friend, and the orange hulk who had been fighting Stegron when he had arrived – and also the energy signature of those weird spot-holes that acted as conduits between points of reality. It was this last scent that unnerved Sabretooth, for the residue that clung to his hair and skin even though he himself hadn’t passed through the dimension of Between was undeniably… organic.

Sabretooth grunted. He trusted his instincts, and in this case they were screaming at him to pay heed; as much as he’d taken a liking to the bimbo in the chase-me-skirt, his senses were telling him to put as much distance between himself and her spotty friend as possible. But, no matter. There were plenty of other potential victims out there, just waiting.

Sabretooth stamped down on the remains of Stegron’s head in anger, crushing his enemy’s skull and the remaining mush of his brain beneath his heel. Then, thoroughly fed up, he wandered off down the tunnel, hoping that his senses would lead him back to the surface world and another opportunity to work out his aggression…

The wide clearing, with its central rock pool, was a welcome respite from the dense forest, which had quickly become rather oppressive. Fred Myers, the man otherwise known as Boomerang, crouched at the water’s edge and washed away the bloody evidence of his recent battle with The Rhino and The Scorpion that had ended in their deaths. Away to one side, a narrow waterfall cascaded from a rocky overhang some ten metres or so above, the sound of it gently soothing. Boomerang was glad of something to break the silence. What he didn’t suspect was that the rush of the water hid the noise of a furtive approach from the shadow of the trees behind him.

A thin man with a crooked gait shuffled carefully through the undergrowth at the edge of the clearing, his face twisted with a gruesome smile beneath the brim of a black hat. He was dressed all in black, a funeral suit of Victorian design, with an ivory shirt with a high, stiff collar. His hair fell dark and unkempt about his frail shoulders. His breathing was a rasp, his eyes a sickly yellow. The man appeared ill, and, in many senses, this was true – but it told nowhere near the whole story.

Boomerang sipped tentatively at the water from the pool, half wondering if it could be poisoned. Ironic, really, considering that the scrawny hands reaching out for him were so very full of their own kind of venom…

Krik.

Boomerang heard the crack of a branch underfoot in spite of the rushing waterfall, and whirled instantly, instinctively snatching one of his signature missiles from his belt and hurling it in one fluid movement. He saw the shape dodging back into the cover of the trees a moment before the boomerang exploded, filling the air with a flash of white and then a shower of wooden splinters.

Boomerang grimaced and triggered his boot jets, rising high above the pool. Eyes narrowed, he searched the perimeter of the clearing but could determine nothing. He could feel an unseen gaze upon him, however – one that, inexplicably, made him shiver with revulsion. His enemy was still alive.

“Screw you, mate,” the villain breathed. “Whoever – or whatever – the hell you are, you’re someone else’s problem.”

He wheeled in mid-air and sped away, leaving a trail of acrid smoke from his jets.

Down in the shadow of the forest, a hideous face contorted with momentary anger – but it was ire that quickly passed. Patience was required. There would be more opportunities to indulge himself, that was certain. The man named Styx breathed deeply and smiled.

Oh, yes. Plenty more opportunities…

The voices wouldn’t stop. The voices. Wouldn’t. Stop.

The man in the orange and green armour beat his fists against his helmet as he huddled in a cove of crystal, assailed by unseen phantoms. His skull felt as if it were cracking like an eggshell. His brain was bleeding. His eyes were burning. And there was nothing to stop the screaming and the laughter.

Milos Masaryk wanted to die, here, on an alien world thousands of light years from anywhere he might call home even if such a place existed. He cared nothing for intergalactic contests of prowess, nor for the promise of power or wish fulfilment. All he had wanted, for so very long, was for the pain to end.

From somewhere – somewhere close – there came the sound of boots crunching on alien ground, and conversation. Male voices, different to those that stung him from the inside out. These voices were real. The armoured man raised his head, lips furrowed, jaw locked in an almost inhuman hiss.

Suddenly he was consumed with rage.

“Everything must die,” he breathed, fingers hooked into claws. “Everything… must… die!”

And, in the centre of the forehead of his helmet, a protuberance not unlike a blunt horn began to glow and crackle with power…

The Grandmaster smiled to himself as another window through which he could observe the events on the battlefield moon now flickered into black. One more death to add to a steadily growing list. So many more still to come.

It was as if he could almost feel the shadows begin to cluster as the Dark Lady herself watched from afar…

To Be Continued...

Significant Issues

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

Jonathon Cohn first travelled to another dimension in Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man # 98

Stegron attempted to establish mastery over the Savage Land in Marvel Team-Up # 19