Instinct and reflexes weren’t everything. Mark Scarlotti, alias Blacklash, was an athletic man, always making great efforts to keep in shape – after all, one couldn’t hope to stand toe-to-metal-toe against the likes of Iron Man otherwise – but his potential survival in his current circumstances wasn’t solely dependent on physical prowess. He had also resorted to praying for a hefty slice of luck, an attribute that – unlike his old friend Donnie Gill – he hadn’t always enjoyed. And if there was ever a time for praying, being trapped in a tiny crawlspace between two wedges of rock high up inside the collapsed body of a derelict tower was most definitely it.

However, wasn’t dramatic irony often just the way of things? On this day, transported thousand of light years across the universe to take part in a battle to the death, poor Donnie’s run of good fortune had finally run out… but it seemed like Blacklash was destined to claim the difference for his own.

The man in the black mask had just one chance of survival, but he was determined to make it count. Detecting a structural weakness in his stone prison he flailed desperately with the cybernetic coil of his bullwhip… and, beneath the resounding ker-crack! of impact, the tower trembled with an almighty groan of subsiding rock. The entire upper body of the edifice then tilted, loosing a cascade of rubble, before sliding at a sheer, forty-five diagonal and flipping horizontally into thin air. The process of this disintegration meant that Blacklash was not immediately crushed by the debris overhead, as it was falling away from him rather than directly down upon him, but even so he only had a split-second window of opportunity. Taking a deep breath he kicked off and slithered on his belly towards the large hole in the wall he had just created. He shot out into open space, twisted, then lashed out with the steel cord once more, desperate to latch on to something – anything – that would arrest the plummeting descent that would inevitably follow. This was where his luck shone through a second time. The searching cord wrapped around the stone strut of another nearby ruin, locking tight, and yanked Blacklash sideways as he fell, pulling him distant from the tower’s destruction.

When the crumbling battlements hit the ground below it was with such a massive impact that it caused a localised quake – one that, unbeknownst to Blacklash, would actually have a remarkable effect on the private skirmishes of a number of his contemporaries in the immediate vicinity. For the moment, however, the only thing the swashbuckling villain cared about was his own neck. He swung in a wide arc on the end of his extended lash, shoulder muscles screaming, then felt the soles of his boots skitter across a firm platform – the roof of the neighbouring ruin, trembling but otherwise holding steady. He planted his feet down flat, eyes wide behind his mask. He couldn’t believe that he was still alive, but it was true – and, not only that, he was still relatively unharmed save for a few scratches. Tarzan, eat your damn heart out.

Blacklash couldn’t help but puff out his cheeks and smile. He had been standing close to an explosive device in the bizarre shape of a jack-in-the-box when it had detonated, but it hadn’t killed him; he had also survived the collapse of a building, not once but twice. Obviously, someone was watching out for him. He cast his eyes heavenwards, but the only sight that greeted him was the glowing underbelly of The Grandmaster’s vessel. His smile fell. For some people, the confirmation of extraterrestrial life of such unimaginable power would shake their spiritual faith to the core. Strange that, for him, it was simply reawakening long-forsaken convictions in a different manner of celestial entity. But now wasn’t the time for dwelling on such concerns.

Somewhere below, in the clouds of dust and shattered stone, lay Donnie Gill. Was he still breathing… or had Blacklash’s own act of self-preservation condemned his old friend to death?

The Jester coughed, then gagged. He clawed at his eyes and throat. Dust. Blood. An aching in his right leg that suggested he’d twisted his knee. But otherwise… he was still alive?

He pushed himself up into a sitting position and gazed around. Visibility was poor, but he could determine that his surroundings were little more than great heaves of jagged rubble, the vestiges of a tower now utterly razed to the ground. A shower of smaller stones were continuing to fall, filling the dusty air with a steady clatter. And, a little way off to one side…

Slowly, taking care with his leg, The Jester moved off across the scrabble towards the body that was lying there on a flat hunk of stone, aptly resembling a corpse stretched out on a mortuary slab. It was Donnie Gill. And – impossibly – he was moaning. The Jester was dumbfounded.

“My, my, young man,” he murmured, shaking his head in disbelief so that the bells on his tri-cornered hat jangled. “Crazy am I? We’ll see whether I’m crazy or not! Look! It’s moving! It’s alive! It’s alive, it’s alive, it’s moving, it’s alive, it’s alive, it’s alive, it’s alive, it’s alive! Oh, in the name of God! Now I know what it’s like to be God! Aheh!”

Alive. Remarkable. But, just like with Doctor Frankenstein’s monster from the old Universal horror film, there would be no happy ending here. The Jester had tarried too long in feeding his sadistic predilection, he knew; it was time to end this and seek shelter elsewhere. He reached out for Donnie’s throat and -

“Get the hell away from my friend, you psychotic son of a whore.”

The Jester whirled at the sound of the voice, and saw a figure emerge from the swirling clouds of filthy grey like a wraith freshly arisen from the grave. The black bodysuit and violet cloak were tattered, the mask askew, but the man named Blacklash still cut an imposing figure, especially considered the glowing bullwhip clenched in his gloved fist. A scrawny wretch of a fellow in comparison, in his ill-fitting green and yellow harlequin garb, The Jester could not help but shrink back, clasping his hands together in limp fright.

“By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes,” he hissed. “Open locks, whoever knocks!”

Blacklash stalked forward, whip coil trailing by his side, humming with an electric burr as if in anticipation. He stared down at what remained of Donnie Gill – the ruptured jaw, the blood-soaked face, the broken limbs – and he veritably quaked with shock. “Oh, Jesus Christ,” he whispered. “Oh, kid. Dammit, what have I done to you...?”

“What did you do?” The Jester snapped. “O, treacherous villain! You seek acclaim for my endeavours?”

Blacklash looked up slowly, his eyes dark in the slits of his mask. “You did this?” he snarled, suddenly remembering Donnie’s screams, the shrieks of a tortured man, and in that moment understanding the truth of the matter.

The Jester’s gaze narrowed and a cruel smile curled at the corners of his mouth. “What’s gone and what’s past help should be past grief,” he crowed… then delved swiftly into his satchel, withdrawing an object in the palm of his hand. It was round and silver. Another child’s toy: a yo-yo. But, just like the jack-in-the-box and the mallet from earlier, it was modified in deadly fashion.

The sight of the horrors perpetrated upon Donnie’s body numbed Blacklash’s reflexes. When The Jester looped his index finger through the thread of the yo-yo and then whipped it towards his enemy with a flick of the wrist, the other man barely had time to move, let alone draw clear. The body of the yo-yo snapped forth on its length of wire – and then, with a sharp prang of steel, it erupted in a ring of razor spikes, projecting about its circumference like the rays of an ornate sun. The spikes slashed viciously across Blacklash’s face, shredding his flesh and almost blinding him. As it was, his eyes were suddenly awash with blood and he staggered back, howling.

“A true friend stabs you in the front!” The Jester cackled, dancing in delight. “And a pessimist is one who, with a choice between two evils, chooses both!”

He executed a deft pirouette and launched the yo-yo once again, this time scoring a deep wound across his enemy’s chest. And then a third time, slashing his right arm from shoulder to elbow. And then –

“Enough!”

Blacklash sidestepped The Jester’s final attack and roared as he cracked his whip with all his strength. The steel fibre cord had been designed with an armoured foe such as Iron Man in mind, but on the rare occasions it had been brought to bear upon an unprotected victim the results were shockingly lethal; it was no different in this instance. A single strike tore The Jester’s flesh from his bones from sternum to hip, although there was little blood spilled – the electrical charge channelled through the cord was strong enough to cauterise the wound at the point of impact. Even so, it was all more than enough to send the wretch hurtling backwards through the air, his body wracked with spasms. He hit a ridge of stone and crumpled, arms and legs splayed, a number of his internal organs fatally punctured, his expression frozen into a rictus of shock.

“He was a kid!” Blacklash cried. “A kid! He was trying to go straight, trying to leave all this… this idiocy behind. He never did you any harm. But you – you did this to him!”

The Jester’s head lolled, his tongue loose in his mouth. “Isn’t that… what we were brought here for?” he slurred. “Aheh.”

“And you just accept that? Why?”

The Jester’s face crumpled into a lopsided grin. “Funny,” he rasped. “That’s exactly what your little friend asked. Why? Why? You could never understand. All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players. This is our stage… and the God in the sky o’erhead is our audience. I perform for him. Don’t you see? He did all this for me. This… this was my destiny.”

Blacklash scowled. “Then your destiny was to die, you lunatic bastard,” he breathed.

He pulled back his arm, the coil of his whip fizzing eagerly… but The Jester merely continued to smile, the bells on the corners of his hat jingling faintly.

“I may climb perhaps to no great heights… but I will climb alone,” he whispered, a trickle of blood emerging from the corner of his lips. “Cyrano de Bergerac. My greatest performance… regardless of what the critics said.”

And then, softly, he laughed. And Blacklash brought down his whip with every last ounce of his wrath, a bellow of wordless grief erupting from his throat, the electrified lash splitting The Jester’s head like a cantaloupe and decorating the surrounding rocks with his diseased brain. His tri-cornered hat fell away in three pieces, each with a jangling chime. The Jester’s body bucked with a final convulsion then fell still. Blacklash stared down at his victim, bile rising in his throat. Then he turned his back with a shudder and walked slowly over to where Donnie still lay.

“Dammit, kid,” Blacklash hissed, tears running down his cheeks from beneath the rim of his facemask as he knelt at his friend’s side and gently took his head in his hands. Donnie’s face was barely recognisable after The Jester’s vile ministrations; his body was peculiarly limp, like a sack of spanners, so many of his bones having been shattered during the collapse of the tower. It seemed incomprehensible that he was still alive – and yet, somehow, he lingered on. Unable to communicate, to understand… just able to feel pain. The fact that he had survived this far was thus unspeakably cruel.

Could there truly be a righteous God who would allow this?

“I killed him for you,” Blacklash murmured, shaking his head uselessly. “But it doesn’t bring you back, does it? Only one thing… one person… can do that.”

Blacklash looked up then, towards The Grandmaster’s craft, circling eternally above the misery being played out below. For the winner of my game of life there shall be a prize Riches beyond your wildest dreams… untold power… the resurrection of dead loved ones… the destruction of your enemies. Those were the Elder’s words. Was this entire affair pre-destined? Had he foreseen this exact scenario, that not each and every one of his pawns would be so consumed by avarice and hatred and madness that they would slaughter one another indiscriminately for their own advancement but rather would choose to ask for another’s life? Was it possible that even those whose hearts were purportedly black and without mercy could feel compassion and kinship? Was that as much a part of the game as the screams and the bloodshed?

“You can put things back the way they were,” he said, coldly. “You can put things right – if that’s what I demand. But, to claim my boon… first, I have to be victorious. Right?”

There was no answer forthcoming from The Grandmaster – not directly. However, it was at that exact moment that a drone drifted down from above, light gleaming about its casing like a halo, its sensors whirring.

Fatality confirmed, it bleeped. Deceased: The Jester.

The drone hesitated then, waiting. Waiting for…?

Blacklash stared up at the tentacled orb, then glanced back down at Donnie, whose broken body was still wracked with tiny, shuddering breaths. Blacklash closed his eyes tight behind his mask, and exhaled. “Yeah. Okay. I understand.” He opened his eyes once more, and looked affectionately upon the young man who had once reminded him so much of his own brother. “It’s time, kid,” he murmured. “Time for the pain to stop.”

A gloved hand reached down, and fingers closed about Donnie’s throat. Then, they tightened, albeit with great tenderness. Just enough. Mark Scarlotti’s grip remained unwavering for a minute, no more… until the drone spoke again, its voice grating in the silence.

Fatality confirmed. Deceased: Blizzard. Survival confirmed. Designation: Blacklash. New probability of overall victory: 8.3 per cent.

Blacklash bowed his head and released his hand from his friend’s neck. For a second or two he made no further move. Then, slowly, he stood. His whip hummed. His eyes were dark beyond his mask. His mouth was set with grim determination.

“Hold tight, Donnie,” Blacklash breathed. “I’m on a lucky roll today, and I’m going to make damn sure that doesn’t end anytime soon. You bet your life on me, kid. You bet your life on me.”

Breathing heavily, The Trapster slumped against a stone wall and allowed himself a moment of respite. Using the cloud of dust kicked up by the collapsing tower as cover, he had managed to put some distance between himself and Lady Deathstrike. It would have been splendid if he’d been able to neutralize her then and there, but it was far better to engage her in conflict on his own terms. He was filthy, bedraggled and beginning to tire, but at least he was alive. That was what counted.

Placing his gun to one side he slipped his gloved hand into his tunic and tapped at the black cylinder clipped to the loop about his chest. He smiled. He had been a split second away from relinquishing the mysterious compound, and with it any chance of emerging victorious from this insane affair. However, with the cylinder still in his possession he retained a crucial advantage – an advantage it would be beneficial to now build upon.

The tremble underfoot had subsided and the dust was finally clearing. The Trapster glanced around, eyes narrowed behind the faceplate of his mask, and he saw that he had come to a halt on the perimeter of a square courtyard edged with cloistered pillars, in the shadow of what remained of the tower, its trunk abruptly curtailed some ten metres overhead. The villain had no way of knowing that this was the very location where Deathstrike had slain The Enforcers earlier, or that it was little more than fifty metres from where Blacklash had just confronted The Jester. All he could see was that it was the perfect site for what he had been intending before Deathstrike had accosted him – a sanctuary he could modify for his own purposes.

His smile broadened. Lady Deathstrike would come for him once more, sooner or later. And there would inevitably be others. But they couldn’t possibly envisage how dangerous an adversary lay in wait for them.

Buoyed by a surge of adrenaline, The Trapster set to work…

[Flashback]

It was a trap. She should have expected it – she’d long suspected Roger Falcone of being a dirty cop, along with half the precinct, all of them abandoning their duty and instead happy to pocket that fat bastard Wilson Fisk’s money in exchange for allowing him to run drugs and guns throughout the city as he pleased. Tonight’s raid of a pharmaceuticals warehouse on the Brooklyn docks should have been one step closer to cracking Fisk’s drug ring and exposing Falcone. Instead she’d been stupid. Careless.

And, for detective Brigid O’Rielly, that mistake was going to cost her everything.

The warehouse was more than just a secret storage area for millions of dollars of illegal narcotics, it was also a testing facility for experimental chemicals. A number of these tests were conducted on animals, in airtight chambers fashioned from reinforced glass – reinforced to the extent that it was bulletproof. Therefore, even though O’Rielly and two fellow officers were armed, it made no difference to their current predicament. Thanks to the machinations of Falcone, at the flick of a switch they were suddenly trapped inside one of those chambers, with a strange, green gas being slowly pumped into their enclosed environment from vents overhead. Just like rats in a cage, although the true vermin was on the outside of the glass, looking in, grinning all over his treacherous face.

“Curse you, Falcone!” O’Rielly cried, hammering uselessly against the glass that separated her from the man who meant to kill her. “You took an oath to uphold the law, not break it! I did too… but if I could get out of here, I wouldn’t wait for any judge or jury to condemn you. I’d cut you down cold. The mayhem I’d cause would purify the whole department of your kind…”

She was choking now, sinking to her knees, the green gas seeping into her lungs, through her pores. That the chemical was toxic there was no doubt; she didn’t want to give in, to stop fighting against it, but there was no choice. There was nothing left for her now but death. Nothing…

Nothing…

[Flashback ends]

The majority of the participants in The Grandmaster’s secret war could be placed securely in one or other of two camps. There were those who were all too happy to engage in conflict, either due to their instinctively aggressive nature, some sadistic craving to inflict pain, or, simply, an uncontrollable bloodlust; and there were those who didn’t share their contemporaries’ penchant for violence, and whose first impulse was to seek shelter from the hostilities that were erupting all around them. For Brigid O’Rielly, however, the choice was not that clear-cut. She was aggressive, but she was also smart… and scared. Five years ago, almost to the day, she had died. The woman that she had been – bright, sassy, a little vulnerable, a lot lonely – had perished in a glass cage, asphyxiated by poison gas.

The fact that supernatural intervention had meant that she had been reborn soon after didn’t change her outlook on life…

Identity confirmed, a mechanical voice bleeped. Designation: Mayhem. Probability of overall victory: 3.6 per cent.

A pair of pearl-white eyes rimmed with green glanced up to see a drone hovering overhead, its tentacles flickering. Dark green lips hardened to a thin smile.

Five years ago, as Brigid O’Rielly had suffocated, her dying words had proclaimed vengeance against those who had murdered her. Oh, the mayhem she would cause if she were free… so prophetic. Because, when she had returned to life, she had done more than cause mayhem. She had become the very personification of the word. Her poisoned body had been discovered mere moments after her heart and brain and lungs had ceased to work, not by fellow officers or paramedics but by a pair of extraordinary individuals known as Cloak and Dagger, mutant vigilantes with powers steeped in darkness and light respectively. Dagger had cradled O’Rielly’s corpse in her arms and attempted to revive her by filling her with her otherworldly energies, an incandescent pulse of light, but it was too late. Cloak and Dagger had then departed, in pursuit of Roger Falcone, believing they had a cold-blooded murder to avenge – which was true enough. What they hadn’t realised was that Dagger’s light had reacted spectacularly with the experimental chemical gas that had still been present in abundance in O’Rielly’s body… and then when those white eyes flickered open a few minutes later, it had signalled the birth of Mayhem.

Falcone was slain that very night, at Mayhem’s hand. In the years since then she had killed many more, far too many to count, all of them sinners in her eyes – drug-dealers, murderers, rapists, child molesters, and of course, crooked cops. She had probably taken more lives than many of these others deposited on the battlefield of Se’dai put together, and yet she didn’t consider herself to belong in such company. She was no supervillain. And perhaps that was at the root of her unwillingness to engage in the conflict.

She held no compunction with regard to shedding the blood of criminals like these men and women around her, but nor was she willing to be reduced to a pawn on the board of a galactic gamesman. She didn’t exult in violence for violence’s sake; she administered punishment and retribution. To contribute to this bizarre sport would not be righteous, and would make her no better than those she might slaughter.

“I decline your master’s invitation,” she rasped in the direction of the drone, with a coarse scratch of a voice like rusted nails being scored along slate. When she spoke, trails of greenish-white gas curled from the corners of her mouth like swamp mist, reeking of sulphur and char. Her eyes burned, white hot. The drone swivelled and drifted away without a word. Mayhem grimaced.

A short while ago, the Abbey ruins that populated the northern quadrant of the battle arena had been shaken by the collapse of the central tower, dousing the region in clouds of dust and showering it with fragments of stone. Mayhem had been hunkered down beneath an archway at the time, pondering her options. She had half wondered if the tower’s destruction would initiate some chain reaction that would see the foundations of all the surroundings ruins begin to subside in turn, but so far everything had held firm. However, it had driven home the need for her to make a decision. Piece by piece this entire battlefield would be razed to the ground, she knew, as her fellow players tore the landscape asunder in the pursuit of victory. She could only hide for so long. Sooner or later, she would either have to fight… or die. She had already perished once. She wasn’t sure how she felt about experiencing that again, but she had her suspicions, and that terrified her more than anything.

Because perhaps, in some way, she might even be looking forward to it.

Eyes narrowed behind her spiky fringe of green hair, Mayhem stepped out from the shadows of the archway and held her arms aloft. The swaddle of glowing fog that constantly surrounded her, emanating from her pallid flesh, rose up in a tide, hoisting her aloft. She had never understood how she could control the mist, nor how it could elevate her, but she knew one thing – it was deadly, every bit as virulent as the toxic gas that had killed her, and with a slash of her claws she could contaminate the bloodstream of any adversary who tried to oppose her. Ultimately, she had nothing to fear from anyone; it was they who should flee from her.

This was the thought uppermost present in Mayhem’s mind when she soared upwards on a wave of green vapour…

…straight into what could only be described as a web that had been woven from nigh-invisible strands of a strange, viscous substance, spanning the breadth of the section of ruins where she had been sequestered. Her gas could filter through the web without difficulty, but her body was caught fast. Trapped. She struggled, but that just made it worse. Whatever the web was made of, it was stickier than glue.

Below, a figure emerged from the shadows. It was a man in a dishevelled, tan boiler suit, his face obscured by a welder’s mask, and a weapon akin to a modified rifle cradled in the crook of one arm. In his other hand he was holding a small, silver cylinder – which he then hurled, without a word of warning. Mayhem braced herself, believing the cylinder to be some kind of grenade and expecting an explosion… but the reality was different. The cylinder detonated, as anticipated, but it wasn’t a traditional explosive device. Instead it contained copious spools of wire, no more than a millimetre thick but incredibly strong, and laced with microscopic nodes that operated in accordance with an internal electromagnetic pulse. The pulse wasn’t particularly intense, but it didn’t need to be – it just required enough snap to cause the length of wire to be attracted to itself at regular intervals, its mass contracting sharply within moments of being released from its container. The result was that the wire tightened into a gigantic knot, as if hands were pulling on either end with tremendous force, snaring any physical object in the immediate vicinity in a perfect, silver cocoon.

The object in question in this instance was Mayhem – and the design of the trap was flawless, for the man in the welder’s mask had made it his life’s work to conceive such beautiful equipment.

The Trapster smiled to himself behind his faceplate as his wire-wrapped victim fell from the sky and landed with a crunch on the ground a few feet away. “And another one bites the dust,” he breathed. “Not the woman I was hoping for, but still, can’t complain. Just a shame I never got to find out this one’s name…”

Ouch. Boomerang grimaced. That could have been him – and, two seconds later, it would have been.

“Sometimes, mate, you lead a bloody charmed life,” the villain murmured to himself as, propelled by his jet-boots, he veered away from the area of the ruins where The Trapster had just ambushed his victim, some glowing green woman he’d never seen before and would now likely never see again. Preoccupied with steering clear of Jack O’ Lantern – whom he hadn’t spotted since the dust cloud had died away, but whom he knew was lurking somewhere nearby – Boomerang had been on the verge of passing through this precise region of airspace, unaware that The Trapster had been lurking below like a spider. It was only luck that Mayhem had broken for cover when she did; bad luck for her, good luck for Boomerang. Surviving against so many enemies – The Scorpion, The Rhino, that anonymous freak at the rock pool, Jack, now The Trapster – suggested that, at present, the man in the claret and blue really did seem to be living a blessed existence.

Boomerang smirked to himself as he wheeled through the sky, detaching a pair of his signature weapons from his belt clip. It was, of course, not the best of fortune for The Trapster. The Australian villain circling above him was now aware of the thinly spun web-blanket of chemical adhesive below, and knew exactly how to deal with it. Both of the boomerangs at hand were of the explosive variety; his plan was that the first would be caught in The Trapster’s web, just as the green woman had been, but that the subsequent timed detonation would blow enough of a hole in that net to allow him to thread the second missile through – directly at The Trapster’s head.

He couldn’t help but feel a little guilty. He knew his enemy, and in recent months good old Pete Petruski had proved himself to be a fair and highly capable employer as head of the covert operation known as The Alliance, farming more profitable work Boomerang’s way than Justin Hammer had ever done. But this was a different situation altogether; there was no Alliance here, no pacts or favours. It was dog eat dog. He knew Pete would understand.

Boomerang pulled back his arm, taking aim…

…only to see a strange object coming sailing towards him, out of the corner of his eye. It was small and round and copper coloured, and carved in a highly distinctive shape. A pumpkin? Oh, crap.

Boomerang’s eyes shot wide. The pumpkin bounced off his forehead, its tiny, jagged grin filling his vision for a split-second – and then it exploded, removing a good portion of his face in the process. The villain screamed, and began to spiral out of control.

A cackling Jack O’Lantern gave her victim a nonchalant little wave as he fell, trailing blood and smoke from his eyes. “That’s the trouble with boot jets,” she crowed. “They leave a trail that’s so easy to follow! Whereas anti-gravity nodes? A miracle of engineering. And also completely silent, allowing you to sneak up on your prey unnoticed…”

Oblivious to the presence of The Trapster below, Jack eased down on the left edge of her Disc Glider and went skimming off sideways, giggling softly. For all her earlier misgivings about being out of her depth in this macabre contest, her confidence was growing – and, suddenly, she was beginning to enjoy herself.

The Trapster heard the explosion overhead, followed by a shriek of pain, and when he looked up in surprise he saw Jack O’Lantern wheeling away in triumph whilst Boomerang’s smoking body crested like a wounded bird. However, there was no chance of the villain plummeting all the way to earth. In the blink of an eye his fall was arrested by the adhesive web that The Trapster had spun overhead, whereupon he began to writhe in agony, becoming more and more entangled. The man in the welder’s mask cursed, then glanced quickly at where the body of Mayhem lay, encased in her wire cocoon. The air above her was thick with green mist, slowly drifting and curling even though there was little breeze to speak of. It almost seemed to be pulsing. Breathing. The Trapster’s eyes narrowed sharply behind his faceplate.

“Discretion, Pete, discretion,” he murmured. “Always the better part of valour.”

And with that, he hefted his gun against his shoulder and sprinted for the cover of the ruins.

Boomerang was saved from certain death by The Trapster’s web, but perhaps that was no mercy. His face felt like it was on fire, so much pain that it was incredible he hadn’t passed out. His weapons had fallen uselessly from his hands, without him having thumbed the miniature trigger switch on either of them that would have set them to detonate on impact, but there was no chance of him finding them again; and, even if he could, how could he have taken aim? The pumpkin bomb had seared his eyes in their sockets, rendering him utterly blind.

Mewling like a wounded cub, Boomerang flailed in The Trapster’s net, but that just made it worse. He was sheathed in hundreds of sticky strands that were affixed to his costume and face and which were rapidly congealing into a solid shell the more he struggled and twisted. He had the sensation that he was hanging upside down, dangling from the overhang of an arch on a collection of viscous threads like a drunken puppet. It was, he couldn’t help but think, even worse than having been caught by Spider-Man….

Boomerang groaned as the realisation sank in that, at the crucial juncture, his luck had deserted him. He had botched his chance. Killing The Scorpion and The Rhino had been for nothing; this wasn’t going to be the opportunity to make a reputation for himself that he had wished for. He was now, as he had always been, a failure.

“There’s still a way.”

The voice made him flinch in his sightlessness, coming so close to his ear. It was soft, female, but so very strange; his hearing had likely been damaged by the explosion, granted, but it was something more than that. Boomerang felt a light touch upon the ruined skin of his face, soothing and burning at the same time. He opened his mouth to scream once more…

…and that’s when the green gas seeped inside, clogging, choking, searching.

“There’s still a way,” the disembodied voice sighed once more. “Oh, and the mayhem we’ll cause will purify this world of their kind…”

Candlelight gleamed on the disc of spinning, silver steel, transforming it into a circle of fire. It slammed into the wooden pew with a dull shnak!, serrated teeth biting deep. It was the fourth disc to be imbedded in the wood in such a way, each of them perfectly aligned in parallel rank. Leonard Lester, alias Bullseye, cocked his head and sighed.

“Seriously, my lovely,” he said, deftly balancing another shuriken on his fingertip. “This is just boring now. You can’t hide forever. And why would you want to? We had the beginnings of something special, didn’t we? And don’t tell me it wasn’t as good for you as it was for me. Ever since you felt my hands dance across your skin you haven’t been able to think of anything else, right? Tell me I’m not right…”

The interior of the church flickered with shadows. Bullseye’s taunts echoed about the walls. The stone floor was awash with the darkened blood of three corpses. The air was ripe with death. Of Black Mamba there was neither sound nor sign of movement. Minutes had now passed since her dramatic entrance, and her subsequent dive for cover as Bullseye had launched into a languid attack. He was becoming understandably frustrated.

“Come on,” he snapped, suddenly losing his patience. “Going commando on me – and, trust me, I mean that in its original sense, else I wouldn’t be complaining – is obviously a better tactic then standing out in the open and letting me puncture you like a pin cushion. I understand this. But, seriously. Unless you try something, where’s the fun? What do you want me to do, start a fire? Smoke you out?”

The man’s expression twitched behind his mask then, and his eyes gleamed. “You know, actually, that’s not such a bad idea,” he murmured. “Burning down a church. Thinking about it, is there anything more me than that...?”

“Well, I don’t know,” a female voice purred, from an entirely different direction than Bullseye had expected. “Let’s find out about you, shall we?”

Bullseye whirled, dropping to one knee, releasing his shuriken in the blink of a heartbeat. He was a master of his art; he had instinctively gauged Mamba’s height and likely stance, and had cross-referenced that with her approximate distance to judge by her voice. By all rights his throwing star should have landed squarely in her throat, and the sight of it – if anyone were around to witness it – would have been so spectacular it would have seemed like magic rather then exquisitely refined technique. However, the shuriken simply sailed through thin air where Bullseye had anticipated his target would be positioned, vanishing instead into a cloud of darkness that swirled slowly in her place. This blackness was absolute: thick and pulsing, untouched by the light of the hundreds of candles the lined the walls. Darkforce.

Bullseye scowled. It occurred to him in that moment that, in all honesty, he didn’t have the faintest idea who or what he was dealing with. He was a contract killer and meticulous in his research on those he had been assigned to execute but otherwise he paid scant attention to those who shared his villainous persuasion. His arrogant reliance on his own abilities – and the fact that a portion of his skeletal structure was reinforced with Adamantium grafts – had seen him develop a mother of all God complexes. He truly believed that he was invulnerable.

At the heart of her protective shroud, Black Mamba smiled.

It was time to show this sick, sadistic little man just how vulnerable he could be…

Lady Deathstrike was not happy.

Everywhere she looked there were signs of carnage – shattered stone, scorched earth, all streaked with blood – but, ultimately, so little of the conflict that had raged on the battlefield moon had involved her. She had disposed of five men with no more than a barely raised murmur of her heart, and thereafter she had expected the opposition to come thick and fast. She had been disappointed. Whether her prospective adversaries were avoiding her or whether they were simply concerned with their own quarrels, the end result was the same. Thus far – with the exception of her brief encounter with The Trapster, who was now proving irritatingly elusive to track down – Deathstrike had been untested.

But, of course, those circumstances couldn’t last forever.

The long-overdue sign of impending menace occurred at the very heart of The Grandmaster’s tableau, where the innermost corners of each quadrant melded in a surreal swirl of stone and crystal and vegetation. The energy pulse that The Trapster had used against her had not only caused Deathstrike’s cybernetic implants to spasm but had also reduced the parts of her that were still flesh and blood to a leaden state. Her senses fogged, she had no idea that she was actually moving further away from where Pete Petruski had ensconced himself, and thus ventured forth from the northern ruins with false purpose and an almost drunken gait. She was still brandishing the swords that had once belonged to the woman named Coldheart even though that same pulse had rendered their cryogenic energies void, leaving her with a simple pair of blades. All in all, she wasn’t at her best. Unfortunate, then, that the inevitable attack upon her person should occur now…

In the near distance to the south, the forest quadrant, the indications of carnage were perhaps even more apparent than elsewhere. Trees were splintered and uprooted, the ground churned with deep grooves, and there were even small, sporadic fires that threatened to catch in the undergrowth. Deathstrike was wondering if she should continue in this direction or to choose another when, without warning, a dark shape rose at the edge of the ruins, features momentarily obscured in the shadows cast by an overhang of masonry.

The swordswoman was instantly alert, every muscle tensed. She flexed her fingers, long and silver and dagger-sharp, about the hilts of her weapons. Her eyes narrowed to dark slits, her luxuriant black hair ruffling gently in the breeze. She exuded power and deadly intent. But then, so did her enemy.

The man stepped out onto the dirt track upon which Deathstrike travelled, and instantly he was cast in eerie light from The Grandmaster’s vessel that continued to brood overhead. The figure was tall and broad, his body ridged with muscle; he was also ugly as sin, with a bruised face beneath a crop of brown hair hacked away at the temples. But these human traits were the least of what this man was – or, to be more precise, what he had become. Where a significant area of his scalp had been removed there was visible an intricate trellis of wires about steel plates. This unholy meld of metal and flesh was replicated about his neck and across his chest, exposed where his over-shirt had been slashed. One of the man’s hands was also metal, clenched into a gleaming fist. His body and clothes were matted with congealed blood and glinting twists of solder.

Lady Deathstrike’s breath caught in her throat as she looked on in disbelief. Her shock wasn’t so much at the sight of a man’s body enhanced with cybernetic augmentation, for this process was all too familiar to her. Rather her amazement stemmed from recognition of the individual. And it was compounded when this first fellow was joined by two others – one, a small, scrawny wretch in a tattered pinstripe suit and crumpled hat, with a weasel face, and the other taller and thinner, in cowboy boots and an equally dishevelled Stetson. These two men, just like their hulking companion, were marked by steel and wire grafted into areas of their flesh. They also possessed bizarre appendages; the man in the suit had lost both hands, replaced by flat, ten-inch triangular blades, whilst the fellow in the Stetson had lengths of thin, flexible steel cable extending from the back of either wrist, both cables culminating in knotted loops.

Ox, Fancy Dan and Montana, once otherwise known as The Enforcers… but now something else. Something so much more. Lady Deathstrike gazed at each man in turn, her eyes a window upon a mind working with furious intelligence.

“I killed you,” she said, evenly. “All of you. And yet, here you are again with a lick of spit and polish. I’m thinking that contravenes the rules of the game, no?”

None of the men spoke. In fact, none of them responded at all, certainly not with any of the swagger or sarcasm that they may have displayed in their original human incarnations. Instead they simply looked on, their expressions blank, their new eyes of wire and chrome as vacant as polished glass, no more alive than clockwork automations. But the technology that had transformed these humans was far more sophisticated than clockwork, as Deathstrike knew implicitly.

When the female voice sounded at her shoulder, soft and sultry, she didn’t flinch, nor make a move to turn. She also wasn’t in the least surprised.

“There were five,” the voice whispered, “But you left two of them beyond the reach of even my expert care. Still… I shouldn’t be greedy. Three will be more than enough to dispose of you – my greatest creation.”

Deathstrike smiled coldly. “Even thousands of light years across the universe, there’s always the inevitability of running into old friends, isn’t there?” she said. “Hello, Spiral.”

She turned then, slowly, and found herself staring into a pair of exquisite golden eyes shaped with a distinct elliptical contour, framed by a tumble of glossy silver hair. The stranger nodded in greeting, reaching up and cupping Deathstrike’s face in the palm of one hand, her thumb stroking gently at her cheek.

“Hello, soul sister,” she breathed. “Still beautiful, just as I left you. You were always my proudest accomplishment, Yuriko.”

She hesitated, then leaned in impulsively and nudged the other woman’s lips with her own, the barest kiss, lingering. A second hand rested lightly on Deathstrike’s hip… and then a third, and a fourth, reached up, fingers curling into her hair. And then, there came the unmistakable hiss of steel against leather, the withdrawal of a pair of swords from their scabbards. Deathstrike grazed her fellow’s lower lip with her teeth, biting down sensuously.

“Such a thin line between love and hate,” she murmured. “Remember?”

“Remember?” Spiral hissed. “I can’t forget. The connection between us, so that these past few years I’ve felt you tickling and wriggling in the dark corners of my brain… I fear it’s driven me quite mad, my love. Quite, quite mad.”

“As if you weren’t already,” Deathstrike snarled. “I always wondered if it would come to this. To the death, then?”

The woman named Spiral simply looked on, those golden eyes glinting mere inches away from those of her enemy. “Oh,” she replied, “Absolutely. But you’ll excuse me if I allow my new pets to break you first, yes…?”

Lady Deathstrike smiled, icily.

“I’m sure The Grandmaster would be delighted,” she said. “After all, however entertaining the preliminaries might be… there’s nothing quite like a marquee event, now is there?”

Anomaly.

Anomaly.

Anomaly.

A –

“Be silent!” The Grandmaster raged. “Hold your stations! Hold your stations!”

But the drones swarming above the Elder’s head paid their master no heed, continuing to whirl in panic, sensors shrieking and tentacles flailing. Encroaching from the perimeter of the grand hall, tendrils of living shadow invaded their territory with insidious glee, like cats creeping among a flock of caged birds, delighting in the helplessness of their prey. The Grandmaster spun towards the darkness, wringing his hands in despair. All around him the magical portals that allowed him to view the events occurring upon Se’dai were flickering to black as each drone’s individual broadcast was disrupted.

The war was reaching its climax, and En Dwi Gast was missing it. This was, of course, the least of his concerns; but, even so, it still rankled…

“Go back!” he screamed at the darkness, as much through his own alarm as with anger. “Go back where you came from! You don’t belong here!”

But the shadows merely seethed and cackled and continued to disseminate, filling as much as a tenth of the entire chamber now and propagating at a violent rate, like a black weed oozing from cracks in the very fabric of reality. Which, in essence, was exactly what it was.

Hungry! the formless black beast continued to bellow, although less beseeching now, more triumphant. I will feed. I will grow!

The Grandmaster floundered, all sense of superiority he may have previously entertained now well and truly quashed. He knew what he was facing and it terrified him. He also understood the implications of the entity’s presence here, at this time, and there was no refuting the evidence: this was his fault. His fellow Elders had always considered him a nuisance, and with good reason. If any of their number was liable to unleash such a threat into the universe it was him.

All told, the others were going to be absolutely furious. Unfortunately there was no alternative now.

The Grandmaster sighed. It was time to summon his brethren…

To Be Continued...

Significant Issues

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

Brigid O'Rielly died and became Mayhem in Cloak And Dagger (Vol. 2) # 5