The cavern was broad and long, roughly rectangular like a grand hall, although the walls were constructed not from sheer planes but rather from clusters of crystal stalagmites that erupted from the cave floor, like the claws of some great beast imprisoned below ground. There was no ceiling overhead, although many of the crystal columns scaled heights of one hundred feet or more to form the equivalent of a canopy, the tallest peaks lost in the eerie haze of The Grandmaster’s starcraft. It all served to create the impression of a forest clearing, with the surrounding pillars reminiscent of giant sequoias. It should have been beautiful. However, when one is being hunted, all sense of splendour can easily be overlooked.
The oppressive silence of the cavern was disturbed by a sudden hiss, followed closely by a flicker of darkness in the vicinity of the westernmost wall of columns. A circle of jet black materialised in thin air, suspended some three feet above the ground. In an instant, the circle grew and then opened out with a rush of air, becoming a hole – a hole in the fabric of reality. And through the hole stepped an arresting sight: a bare, shapely leg, tapered to a white ankle boot with a sharp heel and rimmed with fur, quickly followed by its pair.
“Oh… my,” The White Rabbit breathed, her blue eyes bright with delight. “It’s a completely different world…”
Emerging from the warp hole in his companion’s wake, The Spot glanced about at his environs with a nervous expression. “I don’t know about that,” he murmured. “I mean, usually I can’t travel more than twenty or thirty feet from one exit junction in the Earthly plane to another. I’d guess we’re not far from where we started. As impossible as it sounds, I think the labyrinth we were just travelling through exists on the other side of these columns.”
The White Rabbit beamed, then twirled the umbrella she carried and launched into song. “‘What matters it how far we go?’ his scaly friend replied. ‘There is another shore, you know, upon the other side! The further off from England, the nearer is to France – then turn not pale, beloved snail, and come and join the dance!’”
The Spot blinked. “Just so you know,” he said, evenly, “I’m going to go ahead and ignore everything you say, okay? The only thing that matters is that we’re still in the battlefield.”
“I can believe it,” grumbled the third and final member of the party, who was finding it a tight squeeze to force his massive bulk through the interdimensional aperture. “Wherever this planet is, it seems like a patchwork of Hollywood film sets. Back before I met you two, the first place I found myself was on a rooftop, then I fell through to the underground tunnels, and… and… ach! Dammit, Spot, can’t you make these magic portals of yours any bigger?”
The Spot turned and raised an eyebrow at Armadillo, whose huge arms were currently extended at irregular angles as he attempted to shuffle the rest of his armoured shell through the gap. “Oh, I’m sorry,” The Spot said, innocently. “I keep forgetting how bloated you are.”
Armadillo snarled. “I’ll remind you how bloated I am, you little - ”
“You two! Stop bickering and come look at this!”
The White Rabbit’s command brooked no argument – nothing quashed disobedience like the haughty tone of a cultured Englishwoman, after all, especially one wearing bunny ears – and Armadillo and The Spot meekly scampered to her side without another word. She was kneeling and running the palms in her kid gloves over the ground, her expression curious. The surface beneath her touch was smooth, a polished fusion of stone and crystal, although striated with strange twists of dark silver.
“It’s metal,” The White Rabbit remarked. “Wire. Feel it – it’s warm. And there’s a pulse.”
The Spot grimaced. “I don’t like it.”
Armadillo nodded in agreement. The White Rabbit glanced up at them in exasperation.
“Well, I didn’t say I did, did I?” she snapped. “But it is interesting. And one must always endeavour to believe three impossible things before breakfast. Where’s your sense of adventure?”
“I think I left mine back in the tunnel where Sabretooth and the dinosaur guy were slicing lumps off each other,” The Spot informed her. “Speaking of which, don’t you think we should keep moving?”
The White Rabbit flicked back a lock of her blonde hair and sighed. “Well, running away with your spotty tail between your legs does seem to be your speciality…”
“Are we still talking about this? I can’t believe we’re still talking about this. I told you, I wasn’t… oh, forget it.” The Spot glanced up at Armadillo, was towering over him, smirking. “And what are you grinning at? Don’t you have to go hunt down some bugs or something? What do Armadillos eat, anyway?”
“Small, speckled men with an over-exaggerated sense of self-importance.”
The Spot paled. Which, considering how monochrome he was to begin with, was saying something.
“You don’t find many of those around, these days,” The White Rabbit said, helpfully. “You must be hungry.”
“Very.”
“Okay, okay, okay.” The Spot pouted and flicked out a hand, releasing one of his skin warps from his palm. The black circle popped into a hole with a hiss, suspended in mid-air. “Maybe our little entourage needs a break from one another, hmm?” he suggested. “Maybe I’ll just let you find your own way forward from hereon, how does that sound?”
The White Rabbit looked unimpressed. “It sounds a little hypersensitive,” she declared, tartly.
“I’m highly strung and prone to react delicately to negative criticism,” The Spot replied, his voice shrill. “My therapist, Doctor Kafka, she says I should - ”
“Kafka? Doctor Ashley Kafka?”
The Spot blinked as The White Rabbit suddenly leaned towards him, wide-eyed. “Yes,” he said. “Why, do you know her?”
“Of course I know her! She - ”
“Oh, please, enough! Do you have any idea how much I hate English accents? Especially two of them engaged in petty squabbling…”
The voice was female and rang throughout the cavern, echoing starkly off the crystal boundaries. When Armadillo, The Spot and The White Rabbit all turned, they saw that it belonged to a tall woman with long, raven-black hair and alabaster skin, whose curvaceous body was barely clad in strips and sashes of gauzy black silk. The woman was idling some thirty metres away, back arched against a pillar and one leg crooked provocatively, the point of her bare foot trailing lazy circles on the ground.
“You, young lady, should be markedly abashed!” The White Rabbit chided, waggling a finger. “Go and put some more clothes on this instant. Such flagrant display of bare flesh is indecent - and the sign of a slipshod upbringing!”
Armadillo and The Spot both couldn’t help but look down at their companion’s legs, fully exposed by her tiny, flared skirt from pert rump to fluffy boots, then glanced at one another. “That’s completely different,” The White Rabbit sniffed, before they could say anything. “I’m alluring. She’s just common.”
The Spot blinked. “Oh. Well, just so long as we’ve established that. Carry on.”
Across the cavern, the woman with the white skin scowled and affected a more aggressive stance. It was then that those opposite her realised that the stranger wasn’t alone; on the other side of the hall, emerging from between two pillars, there was another female, taller still than her fellow and decidedly more muscular, with shoulders the size and shape of anvils and powerful thighs. This other woman had auburn-red hair and wore a bodysuit cut high at the hips, plus sheathe gloves and boots, all magenta and black and studded with iron knots. An alarmed Armadillo recognised her instantly, having spent some time in her company whilst incarcerated at The Vault a couple of years before.
“Oh, good grief,” he mewled. “Something tells me we may have been better off taking our chances with Sabretooth…”
The white-skinned woman flashed a dagger smile. “My name is Nekra,” she hissed. “My companion is known as Titania. Alone, either of us could kill you all with ease; together, our superiority is almost… embarrassing.”
The Spot glanced up at Armadillo. “And you think I have an over-exaggerated sense of self-importance? And is it my imagination, or does it seem that I’ve been brought here for the sole purpose of being an object of ridicule for suggestively-dressed women?”
“Well, I hear there’s a thriving market for that kind of thing,” Armadillo pointed out. “And here you are, getting it for free. Complain, complain, complain…”
Across the cavern Titania stepped forward, her eyes narrowed in the slits of her mask. “Enough talking!” she snarled. “The sooner we finish this, the sooner we can move on to the real meat. And, as my friend here said… I can punch your ticket all on my own.”
Titania snatched out and grabbed one of the crystal columns at the base of its trunk, grunting as she heaved – and then the pillar splintered, breaking away in her arms. She slammed the body of the column against another, filling the air with a shower of razor-edged fragments and leaving her clutching a fifteen-foot hunk of crystal, scored through with wire and steel. She smiled, cruelly, as she shouldered the weight of the slab… and then, without further preamble, hurled it in the direction of her adversaries.
Armadillo tensed, ready to throw himself in front of his companions as a protective shield, but The Spot’s reactions were quicker. He flailed with both arms, releasing two black portals into the air, one of them massive and directly in the path of Titania’s missile – which vanished into the warp with a hiss of expelled air. Almost instantaneously, the chunk of crystal then emerged from the second black hole. The Spot had positioned this exit warp at random, but it actually proved fortunately effective; it sailed onwards, without a fraction of momentum lost, in the opposite direction – directly towards Nekra, who screamed and swept her arms up in front of her face. A split second later, the subsequent impact propelled the albino woman backwards through another pillar, which shattered with a deafening crunch.
Everyone stared on in absolute shock, not least Titania.
“I thought you couldn’t make your holes any bigger?” Armadillo breathed in awe. “Such a liar.”
The White Rabbit smiled prettily, batting her eyelashes as she leaned down to whisper in The Spot’s ear. “I changed my mind,” she murmured, sultrily. “I think I do like you after all.”
Armadillo suddenly stepped forward, his armoured hide crackling as he stretched his scaly muscles. “You know,” he declared, with uncustomary conviction, “In the short time we’ve been here I’ve realised something: If you head into battle thinking you’re going to get trashed, then that’s what’ll happen. But why should we be afraid? I once survived a fall from The Empire State Building. I’m practically invulnerable. You, Spot – I don’t understand your powers, but they’re obviously effective. And you, Miss Rabbit, well… well, you… uh…”
Armadillo faltered. The Spot pursed his lips and glanced at the woman beside him. “Actually,” he said, evenly, “I was wondering this myself. What do you, you know… do?”
The White Rabbit preened, her ears flicking to attention. “My dear Spot,” she simpered. “I orchestrate.”
“You what?”
“I guide. I manoeuvre. I possess an unparalleled intellect, finely tuned to the nefarious practices of the master criminal. I can outwit any opponent. And, last but not least…” she smiled, then jutted out her hip and smacked herself saucily on the tush, “…I look fabulous whilst doing it.”
The Spot blinked. The White Rabbit wiggled. Armadillo buried his face in his paws.
“Okay,” he sighed. “Unwarranted confidence quashed, foolish moment of bravado over. Let’s just run.”
Across the cavern, Titania roared and began snatching up smaller shards of crystal from the columns that had already been shattered, then commenced to hurling them, one after another, like glittering spears. The Spot flourished his hands desperately, flinging portals in all directions, but he was only able to avert the trajectory of five or six of his enemy’s projectiles – twice as many breached his defences, such was the speed and ferocity of Titania’s attack. Fortunately, Armadillo’s plan was more effective on this occasion. He lumbered forward, head tucked down behind his shoulder scales, shielding his companions from the missiles raining down upon them. Even through many of the crystal shards were splintered to jagged points, not a one of them could penetrate his hide, although the force of impact made him grunt repeatedly. Only one of the projectiles sped past his defence, and this one he swatted from the air with a swift claw, deflecting it harmlessly wide.
Titania shrieked in frustration, then charged forward, the studs lining her costume sparkling like diamonds. The Spot flung one of his warps towards her, but even as it affixed itself in thin air, Titania altered her path, steering well clear of the hole that suddenly hissed into existence before her. The Spot tried again, with a larger portal, but again Titania dodged clear. Eyes narrowed, The White Rabbit leaned in close and whispered something in The Spot’s ear, causing his eyes to shoot wide. He thrust out his hand, dispatching another warp…
…but this one, again huge, was directed not in front of Titania but beneath her. Surprised, the villain attempted to jump, but she was unbalanced and instead she skidded – and, a split-second later, she vanished, falling down into the chasm that had abruptly manifested underfoot. She appeared back towards the rear of the cavern, close to where she had originally been standing, tumbling down from another of The Spot’s warps that he had deposited earlier whilst trying to deflect the crystal missiles. Titania landed on the ground face first, with a resounding crack! But there was no chance of her staying down. Immediately, she was back on her feet, bellowing like a wild animal – and it was perhaps therefore appropriate that it was Armadillo who advanced to meet her, claws splayed and eyes narrowed.
“You remember me?” the armoured beast snarled. “Back in The Vault, there was a breakout. I tried to come along with you and Mister Hyde, but you beat me back. You said I’d slow you down. You called me a freak, and left me behind. Now I’m going to teach you how mistakes can come back to haunt you.”
Titania stared up at the behemoth who towered over her… and her lips curled into a smile. “Is that right?” she hissed. “Well, I guess it’s only fair to warn you that I never did care for school that much…”
Armadillo didn’t even see the sucker punch coming. It slammed into his gut like a sack of sledgehammers, lifting him off his feet – and then another fist swept up into the same spot, sending him rocketing sideways into a column of crystal and steel that shattered so comprehensively that it filled the air not with splinters but with diamond dust. Armadillo yowled and crashed down upon his back, spinning around in circles. He thrust out a paw and stabbed his claws into the ground to arrest his plight, then rolled over onto his front – but Titania was already there, kicking out and lamping him beneath the chin with the heel of her boot so that his head snapped back. She stamped down again, and again, against his chest and midriff, then grabbed him by one leg and plucked him bodily off the ground. Armadillo weighed six hundred pounds, but Titania’s incredible strength enabled her to lift him with one hand without so much as straining.
“Feel free to start teaching me that lesson of yours any time now, freak boy,” she growled. Then she tossed her victim in the air like a volleyball… and punted him with a ferocious double-fisted punch then saw him propelled forward like a rocket, straight through the trunks of another cluster of crystal pillars and beyond, through solid bedrock, causing the ground to shudder and crack in all directions. Chunks of crystal and steel rained down from above, some slabs three metres across or even larger, but Titania brushed them off without flinching. Across the cavern, The Spot was busying himself with casting a warp overhead to protect himself and The White Rabbit, but he saw what had happened to Armadillo and it made him tremble.
“We have to go!” he snapped. “When I create the next portal, you need to - ”
“I won’t be going anywhere, sir,” The White Rabbit retorted, brushing her companion’s hand away with her umbrella when he reached for her. “There’s unfinished business here.”
The Spot sighed in exasperation. “Listen. Armadillo, he - ”
“I’m not staying for him.”
“Then what…?”
The White Rabbit flicked back her hair and cast The Spot what was, at first, one of her now familiar imperious glances… but which then melted, quite unexpectedly, into something entirely different. Her blue eyes were solemn, and the smile that flickered on her lips was delicate and sad. In that moment, to The Spot, she was all the more beautiful for being so heartbreakingly vulnerable, and it stunned him to his very core.
“With all respect,” The White Rabbit said, softly, “And with fripperies aside, I have no delusions of emerging ultimately victorious from this bizarre conflict. A fiendish intellect, a penchant for mischief and a gorgeous pair of arched calves can carry a girl only so far, my dear Spot. Sooner or later, I shall be slain. But, if my death is to be inevitable, I would rather it not come to pass after hour upon hour of being hunted through the equivalent of a farmer’s field, with slavering dogs upon my bushy tail, and with me finally collapsing, quivering with exhaustion. I would prefer facing my enemy at the final blow, preferably countering their declaration of conquest with a deliciously acidic rejoinder upon my lovely lips. Do you understand?”
The Spot gazed on in silence for a moment, the depth of his affection utterly apparent in his eyes. “Even though I haven’t known you for very long,” he said, eventually, “One thing is very clear to me. You are, without question… as mad as a hatter.”
The White Rabbit gasped, then beamed. “Oh, Spot,” she sighed. “That’s the most wonderful thing anyone has ever said to me. And now there’s something I want to tell you.”
She leaned forward then, cupping The Spot’s chin in her gentle palm, and pressed her mouth to his ear, whispering information that was for him and him alone. Then, she turned his face towards her own and their lips met…
…just as the distinctive shape of a woman’s body loomed large behind the two of them. But not Titania. It was Nekra, returned to the fray – and fighting mad. She bent to the ground and her fists closed tight about a spear of crystal. She then flipped the lance and, with a brutal snarl, thrust forward… and the jagged end penetrated deep into The Spot’s back, accompanied by a triumphant cry. The Spot reared, arms flailing, his eyes wide and jaw slack. The White Rabbit screamed.
“No! No!”
“Yes,” Nekra hissed, grinning wickedly as she watched The Spot stumble away, the spear still imbedded in his back. “I swear, if there’s one thing more ridiculous about the English than your accents, it’s the absurd way you can surrender to your romantic inclinations in the middle of a conflict. You thought me to be defeated from a single blow? I am the personification of hate! And there is so much hate on this godforsaken world where we find ourselves, it is akin to something alive, its touch upon my skin like that of a rampant lover…”
The White Rabbit retreated slowly as Nekra advanced, her hands trembling. There was something distressingly vampiric about the woman, with her marble white skin and eyes as black as her hair; even her canines were distended to sharp points, like fangs. She was unconscionably beautiful, but also terrifying. The White Rabbit cowered before her, suddenly reduced to resembling her namesake caught in headlamps, exactly the opposite to how she had so recently wished to face death.
“Can you believe what a bastard this Grandmaster must be?” the voice of Titania murmured. “To scoop up a bunch of super-powered murderers, and then dump some poor flake in Playboy fancy dress like this in the middle of it all?”
The White Rabbit glanced up to see the woman in the studded boots approaching, her expression grim, another lance of crystal like the one that had been used on The Spot resting against one shoulder. She quivered. “I… I’ve survived this long,” the Rabbit said, standing then, her head raised proudly. “There’s always something to be said for intellect over brute force.”
“Is that right?” Titania snarled. “Well, listen to little miss fluffybutt. Tell me, bright eyes – are you so intelligent you can survive this?”
Titania levelled the crystal spear she was carrying, then drove it forward, straight into The White Rabbit’s heart…
…or, rather, into the black hole that had just appeared a few millimetres in front of her heart, having been hurled there with exquisite precision by The Spot, who had silently risen from the ground and crept around behind Nekra and Titania whilst they had been preoccupied. No less than four feet of crystal sank deep into The Spot’s warp, disappearing into another dimensional frequency and thus leaving The White Rabbit thoroughly unharmed – hence the broad smile currently playing about her lips.
Titania gazed on, uncomprehending. Then, her eyes shot wide as the end of her weapon reappeared from another warp hole – one that The Spot had just deftly positioned directly in front of Nekra. The sharpened tip of the crystal lance spiked Nekra’s chest between the swell of her breasts, with all the force that Titania had intended for The White Rabbit. Her physicality bolstered by hate, the albino woman was typically impervious to harm – but not altogether invulnerable. Not when someone as strong as Titania was administering the blow. Nekra screamed as the crystal burst through her chest with an almighty shuk!… then emerged from between her shoulder blades, misting the air with blood!
“A stake through the heart, madam,” The White Rabbit remarked, primly. “A fitting end for a veritable vampire, as Stoker would attest.”
Titania dropped her end of the crystal spear, which passed in macabre fashion through the two separate portals as Nekra staggered backwards. Aghast, she whirled towards The Spot, who himself was still seemingly impaled on the end of a jagged shaft. But, noticeably, not dead. “How?” she hissed. “We saw you… we…”
The Spot half-turned, shrugging out of his ruined jacket and shirt, and flourished his hands towards the point where the lance had entered his back – through one of his warps. “Even when the holes are covering my body, they retain intra-dimensional properties,” The Spot explained, nonchalantly. “Anything that attempts to touch one of them simply passes straight through into the realm of Between, just like magic, without causing me the slightest harm. But I can’t take credit for coming up with such an ingenious defence. That moment of brilliance – on-the-spot thinking, you might say – has to be attributed to my lovely assistant here. She whispered in my ear that she’d seen your friend creeping up behind me, and advised me how I should handle the situation. Although perhaps advised is the wrong word. Orchestrated would be better, don’t you think?”
The Spot cast The White Rabbit a tender smile. “As she said,” he murmured, “There’s always something to be said for intellect over brute force.”
Titania screamed and threw herself forward then, insane with rage. She hammered into The Spot with her fists, but he was able to shift the warps upon his now-naked upper torso with tremendous speed, so that each of her blows passed harmlessly through a portal, sometimes past the elbow, without resulting in anything more than an odd sensation. “Ooh,” he whistled. “That tickles!”
“You runt!” Titania shrieked. “You waste of skin! You’re mocking me? Me?”
“And what are you going to do about it? You can’t lay a hand on me! You - ”
“Look out!”
The Spot heard The White Rabbit’s cry, and it jolted him from his moment of arrogance. Armadillo’s earlier comment about his ego had been remarkably prescient; as his therapist Doctor Kafka had discussed with him on many occasions, he was afflicted with a manic depressive disorder that saw his veer from periods of worthlessness and intense self-deprecation to something like a superiority complex that was far beyond healthy self-confidence. Upon first gaining his amazing powers, The Spot had believed himself to be the equal of Spider-Man, who had smartly disabused him of that notion. Now he had momentarily believed himself to be a match for two powerhouses like Nekra and Titania – and that conceit, bordering on recklessness, was to cost him.
Nekra was not dead. She was close, but not quite there. She still had enough life in her – enough hate – for one final, terrible act.
The rear end of the crystal stake protruding from her chest was splintered to a point every bit as sharp as the tip that had impaled her. She lunged forward now with her dying breath, arms outstretched… but not for The Spot. Instead, the object of her attack was The White Rabbit, who herself was a victim of complacency. She attempted to sidestep, and if it had just been Nekra that she needed to avoid then she would have succeeded. Unfortunately, the spear through Nekra’s body extended outwards by four feet – and the end stabbed cleanly through The White Rabbit’s upper torso as the two women came inexorably together with a wet burst of flesh.
A pair of beautiful blue eyes shot wide. A pair of soft, red lips parted with a breathless gasp. A white bodice suddenly soaked scarlet with blood as the White Rabbit pulled herself clear… but then the two women collapsed together, puppets with severed strings.
“No!” The Spot screamed. “Not her! Not her!” He started forward, but then a powerful hand closed about his throat.
“People laughed at me all the time before I got strong,” Titania whispered, leaning in close. “You did well for a second or two there – you could have earned my respect. But you shouldn’t have mocked me, freak boy. Because of that, I’m going to make you watch your girlfriend bleed to death before I kill you. Then I’m going to stick your head in her wound so you suffocate inside her.”
Nekra and The White Rabbit were lying on the ground in a quickly spreading pool of blood. Nekra was already dead, but the Englishwoman named Alice Caffrey was clinging on, a series of tiny sobs escaping from the back of her throat. Titania plucked The Spot off his feet and held his face down close to her, close enough that he could hear the slow pulse of blood pumping from her chest.
“Not got anything to say about brute force now?” Titania snarled. “How about if I make you - ”
“Get your filthy hands off them!”
Titania suddenly flew backwards, choking, as a pair of claws wrapped about her head and neck. She twisted, flailing out with studded fists, but there was no leverage to her blows and they bounced harmlessly of her adversary’s armoured hide. She found herself staring up into Armadillo’s dark eyes, and she sneered.
“Come back for more, dog?” she roared. “You think your claws can penetrate my skin? They can’t. You can’t hurt me. I’m more invulnerable then you’ll ever be. I - ”
“Ah, just shut the fuck up.”
Armadillo flexed his shoulders, and curved his back. He tucked his arms into his chest, flattening Titania in the process, then drew up his knees and tail. Finally, he ducked his head. Titania was squealing, struggling to break free, but she was held too tightly. Armadillo curled, and curled… until, finally, he had rolled into a ball. Inside, Titania’s cries were muffled, almost too faint to hear. There was a soft thump, and Armadillo winced.
“Yeah,” he grunted, through gritted teeth, flinching in time with another whump. “Yeah, you just… uhn… you just keep trying to… ugh… punch and kick your way out of there. It’s not gonna… unf… not gonna happen any time soon. And you know… uhn… unf… you know what? I don’t have to… uuuugh… have to wound you, or… hunf… break your bones. It doesn’t matter… uhn… how… huhn… impenetrable… ugh… you are. You have to… uhn… breathe just like anyone else, right? And that… uhn… that’s kinda difficult… hunf… when you’re trapped in an airtight ball.”
The hits kept coming, although they gradually began to fade in strength and frequency. Armadillo felt something rupture deep inside, and closed his eyes against the pain. He thought of Bonita, the wife who had betrayed him so long ago now, and he thought of the insane Doctor Malus, who had transformed him into the creature he now was. If, somehow, he had won The Grandmaster’s contest – impossible, of course, before breakfast or otherwise, but if – would he have set everything back to the way it used to be? Would he have returned to his human state, and forced Bonita to love him? It wouldn’t have been ethical, of course. It wouldn’t have been right. But then, he wasn’t a hero, was he? He was a villain. That was the reason why he was here.
That was the reason he was capable of suffocating another human being to death, regardless of who that person was, without a twinge of guilt, or remorse.
Eventually, the movement inside ceased. Armadillo was wracked with pain, and when he glanced down he saw his own blood seeping out from the cracks between his scales. Stegron had damaged him earlier, and Titania seemed to have finished the job. He wanted desperately to uncurl, but he suspected that his victim may have been faking, so he waited. Whilst he waited, he continued to think of Bonita – not of the woman she had turned out to be, but of the woman he had fallen in love with and married. He liked to believe that, somehow, they were two separate people, that the one who had betrayed him had been an impostor, but that the real Maria was still out there, somewhere, just waiting for him to come and find her. Stranger things had happened. Impossible things. Three impossible things before breakfast. Three…
Thr…
And then, with merciful swiftness, the darkness closed in.
The minutes passed. Then, there was movement from up above, and one of The Grandmaster’s drones drifted down from the glittering crystal canopy, sensors whirring.
Fatalities confirmed, it bleeped. Deceased: Nekra. Deceased: The White Rabbit. Deceased: Titania.
Somewhere in the depths of Armadillo’s subconscious those words must have registered, for he slowly unfurled, his thick arms and legs falling back to expose a mesh of blood and scale and bone within. He didn’t open his eyes. He didn’t need to. He knew that there wasn’t the barest spark of life left in Titania’s body, just he knew that his own injures were irreparable. He also knew that the drone was hovering close, like a carrion crow, just waiting. It was simply a matter of time now.
“I’m sorry.”
Armadillo heard the voice and his eyes flickered. A figure was standing over him, a blur of black and white. “Spot?”
“I’m sorry,” the figure murmured, suddenly very frail. “I couldn’t save us all. I should have been able to save us all.”
Armadillo could feel his own heart failing, his blood seeping away.
“Maybe I still can.”
Armadillo turned his head, grimacing. “What…?”
“That’s what it’s all about, right? All this? Whatever I want. If I win this… I can ask for whatever I want. I can bring you back. I can bring her back.”
There was a hissing sound, like a rush of air into a vacuum. A warp hole.
“We’ll see each other again soon,” came the voice of The Spot, strangely calm now. “I promise you that.”
Armadillo shuddered, his breath suddenly like fire in his chest, his heart in spasm. He opened his mouth to speak… but no words came. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway. There was no one left to hear him. The Spot was already gone.
And, a few seconds later, it was done.
Fatality confirmed, the drone bleeped once more. Deceased: Armadillo. Survival confirmed. Designation: The Spot. New probability of overall victory: 4.5 per cent.
And then the drone swivelled and drifted away.
As he lay there in the near dark, Blacklash listened to the screams of pain and fear that filtered through to him. He knew whom they belonged to. It was just that he wasn’t in a position to do anything about it.
Just like Blizzard – his friend, Donnie Gill – Blacklash had survived the collapse of the upper storeys of the tower in the ruined quadrant of the Se’dai battlefield only to now find himself buried beneath a heap of masonry. He should have been dead, but ultimately he wasn’t even harmed more than few superficial scratches; regrettably, that wasn’t as fortunate as it sounded. Even though he had been spared the agonies of being crushed he remained trapped, boxed in on all sides by debris and therefore plunged into almost total darkness. The air was thin, and clogged with stone dust. He was reduced to crawling about on his hands and knees, and whenever he moved, even just to try and touch the walls of his prison, he was greeted with an ominous creaking and a shower of fragmented brick. The blocks of the collapsed tower were more than likely resting upon one another all around in haphazard fashion. One shove and it could all come crashing down.
Which, of course, was an option. Blacklash was no fool. He knew that death by either suffocation or starvation was inevitable in these circumstances, and both would be damn unpleasant. If his situation was futile, then better surely to take matters into his own hands…? Except that he was Catholic. Not a good one, nowhere near, but certain doctrines were drilled into his heart. To commit suicide, without absolution for his sins, was unthinkable.
“So, what now, Mark?” he muttered, listening to the panicked clamour of his own pulse. “There has to be a way. There’s always a way…”
More screams drifted down from somewhere overhead. Blacklash closed his eyes behind his mask, driven mad by the sound. They weren’t simply the cries of someone trapped like he was, he knew; they were the product of the steady infliction of pain, and in this environment that could only mean one thing. One of his contemporaries was delighting in the torture of a victim… and that victim was Donnie.
Forlorn, Blacklash shifted his weight from one leg to another in an attempt to gain a position of greater comfort as he dwelt on his predicament. However, even this slightest of movements was treacherous; loose scrabble dislodged as he leaned forward on his hands, and an entire section of ground beneath him shifted. There was a shuddering groan from above, and a shiver of an avalanche in the gloom somewhere off to the side. He gasped, and held his breath. And then, something dropped from overhead and bounced sharply off the back of his skull.
Blacklash swore and tensed, fully expecting the end to come at that moment. But there was no more subsidence. Eventually, he breathed again… and then, moving his hand, his fingers brushed over the object that had just hit him. It wasn’t stone, but it was familiar. His eyes shot wide behind his mask as his fingers slowly closed about the weighty hilt of an article that might, just might, have gifted him salvation: the handle of his whip.
Blacklash glanced up in the dark, strange thoughts playing through his mind. As Catholics went, he wasn’t your typical devotee. He was, after all, an assassin-for-hire who had committed murder for financial reward on many occasions, and it was highly likely that, suicide or not, he was heading straight to Hell upon the hour of his death. But then, God moved in mysterious ways – such as providing him with a means to avoid his fate at this exact juncture. This was, he mused, obviously not his time. And perhaps saving Donnie Gill was the reason for that.
Blacklash flicked a switch beneath his thumb and the whip suddenly hummed with an electrical pulse, illuminating the interior of his prison with a soft glow of neon blue. He could no longer hear screams from overhead, and that concerned him. His eyes glinted with purpose behind his mask as he scanned the intricacies of his environment – until, suddenly, he found what he was searching for.
“Hold on, kid,” he murmured. “I’m coming for you.”
And with that, Blacklash lay horizontal beneath an overhang of masonry, pulled back his arm, and then brought the steel cord of his weapon round in a wide arc, aiming at a specific point between two interlocking blocks…
“Men must endure, their going hence even as their coming hither… aheh.”
The Jester reached out and caressed the remains of Donnie’s face with his fingertips, his head cocked and his expression almost tender. The boy wasn’t dead, not yet. But he wasn’t going to be winning any beauty contests, that was for sure. He traced the crooked tract of his victim’s splintered jaw, peeling away the last strips of flesh from his teeth and lacerated gums, then began smoothing back his hair from his wide, staring eyes.
“Yorick would be proud, my pet,” The Jester remarked. “No special effects needed for you, hm? You’re beautiful all on your lonesome…”
Donnie made a sound; wordless, of course, for even if his mouth could still work the trauma of his injuries had caused his mind to overload. There was so very little left of him now, both physically and mentally. But he was still alive. Somehow. The Jester smiled, and held up another of the special toys he kept in his satchel – a wooden mallet with a six-inch spike extending from one nub of the head-block. He pressed the spike into the centre of Donnie’s forehead.
“Now, you hold still, you hear?” The Jester breathed. “Johnny just wants to sign his name.”
He pulled back the mallet, his face twisted in a rictus grin…
Ker-ack!
The sound of Blacklash using his whip against the wall of his prison directly below was deafening; the ground ruptured with an almighty crack! and the stone suddenly fell away beneath The Jester’s feet. He shrieked and scrabbled for safety, but what remained of the upper tower was already toppling upon its base, and within moments the air was clogged with dust and shrapnel for the second time since The Grandmaster’s game had begun…
…and, in an instant, both The Jester and Donnie Gill vanished from sight.
Lady Deathstrike extended one of the swords she had appropriated from the corpse of her fellow villain, Coldheart, so that the glowing blue tip hovered a half-inch from The Trapster’s chest, just above his heart. Behind the dark, reflective faceplate of his welder’s mask, Pete Petruski’s mouth flickered nervously. His gun, which he had been forced to discard, lay at his feet.
“Give the compound to me,” Deathstrike commanded, her eyes sharp. “And don’t bother trying to spin any lies about not having it. Once upon a time you were a joke. Now you’re a professional. Given our current predicament you’d have been inclined to hold onto this particular prize until grim death.”
“A rather cruel choice of words, considering you’ll kill me anyway whether I hand it over or not.”
“At least this way it will be quick.”
The Trapster’s shoulders sagged. His right hand moved to the flap of his tan tunic, only for Deathstrike to snarl and brandish her weapon with menace, causing him to freeze in mid-action.
“It’s clipped to a chest belt,” he said, carefully.
“Along with a number of your irritating little traps, no doubt,” his adversary seethed. “You’d be advised not to take me for a fool, Mister Petruski.”
Lady Deathstrike reached forward with her free hand then, unfurling her fingers – macabre, ten-inch spikes of razor-sharp metal. She exercised each of those blades like a surgeon would a scalpel, slicing through her captive’s tunic and splaying it wide. Beneath it, strapped about a dark green vest of some manner of body armour, there were two criss-crossing coils of belt adorned with small cylinders, mostly silver – and one that was black. The apparatus bestowed upon the wearer the appearance of some high-tech suicide bomber. Deathstrike’s breath caught in her throat. She had been right to be wary.
“It’s the black one,” The Trapster told her, a note of rancour in his voice. “Take it. If you dare.”
Deathstrike hesitated. She could have easily killed her enemy outright, of course, and if it had been anyone else she likely would have done so. But she was well aware of The Trapster’s reputation. He was every bit as dangerous alive or dead, considering how he had doubtlessly rigged his own body with all manner of trigger mechanisms. If the compound contained within this black cylinder were anything less than what it was then she wouldn’t even have risked it. However, there was every chance that this mysterious substance could actually prove the difference between survival and death in The Grandmaster’s game.
Deathstrike grimaced. She had no choice. Still threatening The Trapster with her sword she reached for the black cylinder…
…only for, at that very moment, the ground to suddenly heave and crack underfoot and for the world to shake, and for the surrounding ruins to be engulfed in a deafening roar of sundered stone. Deathstrike and The Trapster both lost their balance as, in their immediate vicinity, the tower that was serving as the private battleground of other villains ruptured and collapsed beneath the assault of Blacklash’s cybernetic whip.
Deathstrike was unstable on her feet for no more than a second or two. She whirled as she steadied herself, whipping out her blade to deliver a killing blow, but The Trapster was the beneficiary of certain good fortune in that an entire section of discoloured flagstones had sunk a metre into the ground beneath him, carrying him under his adversary’s strike. He ducked and rolled as he saw razor fingers lash down at him; his tunic was shredded along his back, but he was otherwise unharmed. His hand flew to his chest and he snapped loose a silver cylinder, which he then hurled in Deathstrike’s direction. The cylinder detonated with a flash, and a spherical pulse of blue feedback. The pulse slammed into Deathstrike and caused her to arch in spasm as it disrupted the mechanics of her cyborg body, simultaneously driving her backwards into a wall with a resounding crunch. At this point, the cryogenic energy in both her swords – the one she was clenching in her fist and the other that was strapped to her back – expired with a whine.
For a moment, Deathstrike was prone. If the continuing havoc wreaked by the collapsing tower hadn’t been affecting The Trapster so badly then his enemy may never have moved again, but he just couldn’t bridge the distance between them to deliver any kind of killing blow. Then, just as Deathstrike began to rise to her feet, a billowing cloud of dust and debris surged forth to envelop them from behind…
…and, in an instant, both protagonists vanished from sight.
Wheeling helplessly in mid-air some thirty feet above the landscape of ruined stone below, Boomerang grunted as he attempted to regain some measure of balance without scalding himself on his own jetstream pumping from the nozzles in the soles of his boots. Given a few seconds he could have resolved his difficulties, but time was a luxury he couldn’t afford – not with a cackling Jack O’Lantern closing in on him, borne aloft on her Disc Glider, a pumpkin grenade clenched in her gloved fist. Unable to launch an attack with the boomerangs clipped about his claret-and-blue battlesuit, the villain knew he only had one option.
Twisting at the waist, he thrust his feet up towards his adversary. The sudden flare of jet ignition caused Jack to veer away with a curse. She panicked as she threw the grenade, which then sailed harmlessly over the head of its intended target; unfortunately for Boomerang, this same manoeuvre resulted in him sacrificing what little control he still had over his momentum, and a moment later he slammed shoulder-first into a ridge of masonry jutting up from below. He shrieked, arms flailing…
…and then, without warning – and much to the chagrin of Jack O’Lantern, whose victory had been so close at hand – the duelling villains were both engulfed in a cloud of dust surging up like a tsunami from ground level, the result of the tower collapsing in the immediate vicinity.
Unbeknownst to Blacklash, that single lash of his whip had served to change the course of more than one conflict.
But which of those villains caught at ground zero – if any – would emerge from the chaos…?
To Be Continued...
Significant Issues
Important events referred to in this issue occured in the following Marvel titles:
Armadillo encountered Titania in Captain America # 340
