UNFINISHED BUSINESS

Part II: En Prise

By Desmond Reddick

Montreal, Quebec

Canada is known to be a pretty socially liberal country, and Montreal, with its fashion-minded glitterati and French laissez-faire attitude, probably its most liberal city. Known worldwide for being a party town with an inordinate amount of gorgeous people, those were only a few of the reasons Kara frequented its Le Quartier du Musee de Montrealshopping district. The city’s visible gay community and hefty support of counter-culture movements make it so a purple girl can walk around virtually unnoticed.

Plus, the boys are cute.

Kara Killgrave braved the cool air with a loose skirt cut a few inches above the knees and a short-sleeved T-shirt with a biker-style leather jacket on top. Her comically big black sunglasses and knee-high black leather boots rounded out her carefully crafted fashionista look. The skirt attracted the attention of the play-it-cool cigarette smoking hipster men as it not only showed off her long, well-toned legs but the eggplant colored skin that covered them.

She loved it.

For a split second, she heard the sound of something small sailing through the air. Before she could even wonder what it was, a searing pain tore through her left thigh, knocking her to the ground. Looking down, she saw a glowing yellow stick sticking through her leg. Then, it disappeared; the pain did not.

“No!” she screamed looking up to see eleven costumed operatives she had never seen before descending upon her.

“Oh yes, beautiful,” Scorpio said aiming his Zodiac Key.

“STOOOOOOPPPPPP!!!” Kara screamed.

Her persuasive powers took hold of the masked mercenary, but it was still too late to stop him pulling the trigger.

Department H

“We’ve got too much unfinished business to rest on our laurels,” Mac Hudson said in the war room of Alpha Flight’s headquarters.

“Zodiac’s first, right?” Diamond Lil asked looking at Madison Jeffries while she spoke.

“Yes,” Mac continued, “our intel says they never left Canada, and it would certainly be nice to put them out of business.”

“I call into question Madison’s involvement,” Dr. Walter Langkowski said. He spoke without looking up from his folded hands. No one wanted to say what he said, but everyone was thinking it.

“Doctor Simon has cleared Madison for operations, and that should be good enough for all of you!” Diamond Lil snapped to Walt and the others who nodded in agreement to his admission.

“Simon said he was over his Gemini personality, Lil,” Puck interrupted. “She didn’t say that he was ready to face Zodiac. There’s a difference.”

“I’m willing to let Madison make his own decision on this one, Alphans,” Mac said standing up to assert dominance.

Madison nodded his appreciation to Mac while trying not to smile in victory at his detractors.

“What’s important right now is finding them. They could be anywhere so we’ll need to –“

Madison listened to Hudson speak until his head became clouded. Nausea bit at his belly and his eyes shuddered. He closed his eyes to blot out the feeling and correct his vision when he heard her scream echoing in his head.

“Nah!” Madison bellowed as his right hand barely caught the table to stop himself from falling out of his chair.

“Baby, are you okay?” Lil grabbed him around the chest in a half-hug.

“Montreal,” he said panting. “They’re in Montreal. And they’ve got Kara.”

Tsuu T’ina Nation 145, Alberta

“Look familiar, Chuck?” Heather Hudson – clad in her green, white and gold Vindicator costume – said to the massive Betan.

“Been a long time since I’ve been here, Heather. I was a little kid,” Chuck Moss, the Betan known as Earthmover said.

“Aw, you’re still a kid. Alright, team: pay attention. Shaman sent us here to investigate the possibility of a mystical disturbance. Thanks to his new position, he’s far too busy trying to get a handle on things to investigate, himself.”

“Where do we start?” Radius asked, stepping forward.

“I don’t know. I’m going to my sister’s birthday party. Ask Earthmover; he’s team leader.”

“What?” Radius was shocked. Since being moved down from active Alpha Flight duty, he was the clear choice for leader of Beta Flight. He already was not a fan of being leashed to Vindicator, and now Earthmover was in charge?

“He’s from here; he knows the mystical. What he says goes. My communicator’s on. Contact me if you need anything, but it better be important,” she winked to close her sentence as she flew off to the northeast.

“So, your call boss,” Murmur said to Earthmover as the others chuckled.

Everyone but Radius, that is.

Thunder Bay

It was the middle of the afternoon but already, the darkening sky brought nightfall.

Gamma Flight sat in the living room by the crackling fire.

“Gah! I quit!” Ghost Girl shouted.

“What? What did I D-O?” Ouija asked.

“It’s the last time I play checkers with a pre-cog!”

Ghost Girl stood and stormed out of the room.

“I duh-duh-didn’t use my puh-powers,” Ouija stuttered. “I buh-barely know huh-how to use them.”

Flex shook his head in disdain while Laura and Goblyn regarded Ouija from across the room.

Leaving the front door before even putting on the coat she pulled from the foyer closet, Ghost Girl breathed steam into the azure night. She quickly slipped her thermal jacket on and walked out onto the hardened snow in the yard.

“Absolutely nothing to do in this shithole,” she muttered to no one in particular when something caught her eye.

She turned in the direction of the forested area behind the ranch and saw it again: a short, small burst of white light.

A camera flash? she thought. No, too bright for that. The ground crunching beneath her feet, Ghost Girl walked briskly toward the trees where she saw the light.

Haysboro, Alberta

“I’m so glad you could make it, Heather! What with all the changes in Toronto and everything,” Becky Mcneil said exuberantly while cradling her sister’s hand on the couch.

“It took a little wrangling, but I wasn’t planning on missing my little sister’s thirtieth!”

“So when am I going to see that little niece of mine again?”

“I had to come out on business to make the party, but I’ll bring her out again soon. Or I can fly you out so that you can see Mac, too.”

“Who’s this Mac you speak of?”

The two laughed and kibitzed on the couch, the only girls in a family brimming with men. Their parents, brothers, sisters-in-law, nieces and nephews milled about the house enjoying one of the few times in a year the whole family could come together.

The doorbell rang.

Heather’s mother, always the world’s greatest hostess, pushed her way through the bustle of people to answer it.

For a moment the party continued normally. Over the buzz of the family get-together, no one heard the McNeil matriarch gasp when she opened the door. But they did see her body thrown down the hallway landing in a heap against the couch Heather and her sister sat on.

“Mom!” Becky shrieked as the members of the family not shocked into inaction rushed to her.

“Shit!” Heather launched herself off of the couch in a sprint to the front door.

Standing on the stoop was a man Heather recognized as Brass Bishop. Behind him were several white and black featureless men and four armoured men, two white, two black. Standing directly outside the front door and to Heather’s left and right, were two men she had never met but knew very well.

Heather made it a point, as a team leader of Alpha Flight, to know the files of every superhuman operative in the Icebox, Canada’s super-prison. Hammer and Sickle, Russian mercenaries with high-tech super-weapons indicated by their names, stood leering at her.

“Been a long time, Heather,” Brass Bishop said. “I’ve waited a long time and spent a lot of money to find you not even wearing your jammies.”

“Jerry? Jerry Jaxon?”

Heather recognized the voice of her old boss from Am-Can regardless of how ridiculous his get-up was.

“I’m tickled you remember. I’m so pleased that I’ll give you thirty seconds before this house and everyone in it is laid waste to.”

Heather turned, sprinted into the house and shouted: “Get out the back door and down the street away from the house, now!”

Her oldest brother asked her a question she wasn’t waiting around to answer. Taking the stairs three at a time, she ran into her childhood bedroom. Her duffel bag sat on the undisturbed bed.

Rifling through it, she found her comm. earpiece and put it in her ear. She tapped it and began putting on her costume.

“This is Vindicator! Alpha Alert, request for backup immediately. Beta, anybody! Help!”

She slipped on the last of her gauntlets and tapped into the geothermal energy to levitate her out the window of the house and above her attackers.

“Chess Set,” Brass Bishop began, “get her!”

Montreal

“I’m on it!” Puck bounded down through the rafters of the warehouse, hit the floor and cart wheeled across the room crashing hard into Cancer’s hard-shelled back before anyone noticed he was there.

He stood and scrambled back several feet, picked up the unconscious Persuasion and ran into the darkness with her.

“Get him!” Scorpio pointed and his Zodiac burst into action, following Puck into the dark recesses of the warehouse.

KRRRRRRRRNNNNNNCH!

The smooth pavement shuddered and buckled beneath their feet. Floodlights snapped on, blinding Zodiac and slowing their frontal assault.

When their eyes adjusted, they could see a massive red and grey robot, an orange-furred monster almost as large as the robot, a redheaded beauty in yellow and green, and a man hovering above the ground wrapped in crackling energy and a Canadian flag.

“Scorpio,” Guardian said. “I think that you and your friends, and me and my friends have some differences to work through.”

“Alpha Flight,” he continued, “take them!”

Ghost Girl, in her phased form, stepped through the large trees barring her way. It allowed her to try and look past the shadows without worrying about walking into something. It also kept her from freezing her ass off.

She walked deep into the woods without seeing the flash of white light again. It was beginning to look as though she’d imagined the whole thing. A flutter, followed by a loud beat of wings burst in the air beside her.

A white owl.

“For Christ’s sake, Lili!” she scolded herself. “There’s nothing here.”

She turned on her heels and came face to face with a ghostly white apparition of a man. He was large, barrel-chested and had a thick beard and moustache. He would have looked like a stereotypical lumberjack if not for the whole incandescent thing.

“Ho there, young one!”

The voice burst from him as if he were playing Falstaff on stage, but Ghost Girl stood only inches from him. It terrified her to her core.

“Fear not, child. I am no enemy of yours,” he spoke in a quieter, yet still booming voice. “But there is surely something here. Tell your friends that the Keeper of the Northern Lights protects this land.”

Downtown East Side, Vancouver

In the damp basement of the Vancouver Buddhist Church, flickering candles line the walls providing the only light in the long empty room.

She walked down the centre of the room breathing slowly through her nostrils. Making her way to the desk against the far wall, two white-garbed ninjas appeared in front of her, attacking immediately. She dropped her lithe body to the floor to dodge simultaneous punches and leapt back up at them swinging her magical sword at them.

Before the thinnest of blades could touch the first body, the men disappeared. The sword continued on, cutting the white gi in half without disturbing their descent to the floor.

She felt the twinge in her cape before the foot connected with her back. It was hard and direct. Had the ninjas aim not been obscured by the flowing cape, it would have likely paralyzed her.

Turning around with her sword swinging first as her body was pushed forward, she was able to graze one of the ninjas across his chest. The two men behind her, now naked, rushed her.

Nemesis thrust her sword forward at the ninja to her left, stabbing him through the belly but missing vital organs. She let go of the sword once it pushed its way through the ninja’s body and in one quick move, undid her cape, pivoted and spun as she wrapped it around the other ninja’s head and jerked hard. He was unconscious before he could bring his hands up to his neck.

Panting and wincing in pain, Nemesis removed her sword from the ninja’s belly and returned it to her hip scabbard. Behind her, she could hear one man clapping.

“Impressive,” he said. He was tall. The tallest Japanese man she’d ever met. His long hair flowed behind him as he walked to her. He wore stylish black sunglasses and an Italian suit that accented his impressive frame.

“I have to ask,” he continued, “why did you allow them to live?”

“I presumed,” Nemesis replied, “that you would have further use for them.”

The man stepped past her, looking down at the unconscious, naked ninja. He delivered a swift kick to his ribs and the ninja groaned.

“Okiru!” The man shouted at the ninja.

Nemesis didn’t know whether it was a name, command or threat, but the ninja climbed to his feet quicker than a man in his condition should have been able to.

The ninjas stood beside each other, naked but without shame. They looked at their leader with regret. The man removed his sunglasses quickly and green energy crackled out of his eyes.

The ninjas flinched and then turned immediately to stone. Reaching forward with two outstretched palms, the man pushed both of the former men over. They cracked into tiny pieces on the concrete floor behind them.

Nemesis cringed as the man turned around. He put his sunglasses on before speaking to her.

“My name is Gorgon,” he said in perfect accent-less English, “and the first thing you should know is to never presume what it is I desire.”

Nemesis nodded and swallowed hard.

“Come,” he continued. “Let us talk.”

NEXT ISSUE: Alpha Flight versus Zodiac. Beta Flight versus the Chess Set. Gamma Flight gets an ominous warning. And just what the hell is Nemesis doing?