AVENGERS NEVER

Part I

By Logan Polk and Dino Pollard

An incessant beeping noise pulls me out of my dream of getting a massage with a happy ending from Britney Spears and Paris Hilton. My eyes open up and I’m lying on my bed, sheets kicked all over the place. I reach out and turn off the alarm. I grab my watch off the nightstand and look at it.

Nine o’clock.

Damn, that means it’s time to get up.

I drop the watch back on the nightstand and pull myself into a sitting position on my bed. I rub my eyes and look around the small bedroom. I notice the Xbox video game system on the ground by my TV, and I tell myself that it’s probably not a good idea to play video games until four in the morning.

I sit there for about five minutes or so, almost falling into a trance, but then I shake myself out of it and stand up. I walk into the small kitchen area of my apartment and start a pot of coffee. While that’s being taken care of, I walk into the bathroom and turn on the shower.

The hot water from the shower helps to wake me up a little more. I honestly can’t remember the last time I’ve been this tired, but something tells me there’s something else here that doesn’t make sense. Something seems… I dunno, off I guess. I dismiss it as I finish up my shower and turn off the water. I dry myself off quickly with a towel and wrap it around my waist. I look into the mirror that’s become fogged up thanks to the steam from the shower.

I wipe my hand over the mirror to get rid of the fog, but it’s not my face I see. Instead, I’m looking at a man with white hair, a dark blue complexion, and what look like stars all over his face. I just stare at that face, not sure what to make of it. I blink, and then I’m looking at the face of Rick Jones – my own face.

And I think, Rick, you really need to lay off the four a.m. pizza and video games.

My morning commute basically consists of me walking to work. My apartment’s not all that far off from my business. Living in New York is also kind of nice. My only real complaint is that nothing exciting ever happens in this city. In fact, it’s pretty dull most of the time. But I keep thinking that it’s not supposed to be that way.

As I walk down the street, I walk past a memorial. It’s a bronze statue of five soldiers standing together. But I blink, and they’re not soldiers anymore. In fact, it’s something else entirely. They seriously look like something out of a comic book. When I blink again, it’s back to the soldiers.

Wow… this is shaping up to be an interesting day…

I continue on my walk to a small comic book store. I unlock the door, step inside, and switch on the lights. I flip the sign on the door from CLOSED to OPEN and step behind the counter. Today’s a Monday, and Mondays are usually pretty slow. Especially at this time of day. No new books to go on the shelves or anything.

To pass the time, I turn my attention to stacks of comics on the ground and an empty long box. I’ve been working on some reorganization, so I might as well finish that up. I grab a small stack and begin sorting them alphabetically. While I’m looking through it, I find a Captain Liberty comic.

Wow… talk about a blast from the past. I haven’t read one of these since I was in high school. I sit back in my chair and begin to read the comic book. Captain Liberty’s been a favorite of mine since I was a kid, it was probably the first thing I ever read actually.

But I think that this might be just a gag issue or something, because instead of reading about Captain Liberty, I’m reading about someone called Captain America. I’m more than a bit confused, but I can’t turn away, and now I’m reading about the adventures of Captain America and his sidekick Bucky in World War II.

As I’m reading the comic, my eyes begin to grow heavy…

All of a sudden, I’m in… well, I don’t know where I am, actually. It looks like I’m in a void or something.

“Rick.”

I turn around and look at the source of the voice. It’s the same guy I saw in the mirror this morning. And he’s wearing a costume of some sort. Red and blue, with a yellow star or something in the center of his chest and some sort of gold bracelets on his wrists.

“—ime—roken—nee—venge—s—”

“What?” I ask.

I can’t make out a single word he’s saying.

“Yo—ave to—elease me—ega Ba—”

He starts to fade away, and then I hear a noise.

The sound of a ringing bell wakes me up. I look up and there’s a customer walking in.

“You have the new Bug-Man in yet?” he asks.

“Wednesday,” I reply. “New comics come on Wednesdays.”

“Thanks,” he says. He turns and walks out of the store. Great, there’s one less sale for today. Maybe I should have tried to convince him to take a look at other stuff. Way to run a business, Rick.

God, I’m out of it today. I walk into the bathroom in the back room and turn on the faucet. I splash some cold water on my face to try and wake me up. I grab a towel and pat my face dry, and I look in the mirror.

“Oh for the love of God, not you again…”

Yup, it’s the same star-speckled face I’ve been seeing all day today. He’s mouthing something, but I can’t make it out. No sounds are coming out, and I can’t read lips. He shakes his head and lifts his arms up. He points at me and then bangs his wrists together.

“What are you doing?” I ask.

He shakes his head and bangs his wrists together again, this time harder. He points at me again, then bangs his wrists.

“You want me to bang my wrists together?” I ask.

He continues to bang his wrists together and nods.

“Hoooookay…”

I lift my arms up slowly and touch my wrists together.

Nothing happens.

“Was that it?” I ask.

He smacks his forehead and then bangs his wrists together harder.

“Okay… I get it… do it harder…”

Yes, I realize how incredibly bad that sounds, but shut up. I bang my wrists together harder and there’s this flash of light. Suddenly, the world around me changes and I’m somewhere else entirely. All of a sudden, my mind is overloaded. Memories begin to flood over me, coming back to me. Memories of a life I didn’t even know I had lived. I’m now discovering that I was actually right when I felt that something was off today. It’s because all the memories I had of that life are completely false.

“Well, sure took you long enough.”

I’m looking at an image of the same guy from before, except now I know who he is. Genis-Vell. Or, Captain Marvel.

“What the hell’s going on?” I ask.

“Something’s been done to the timestream, Rick. Someone has gone back and broken time.”

“What else is new…” I mutter. “And whoever did that totally mucked up reality?”

“Yup.”

“So who is it?”

“Who do you think would be capable of screwing with time like this?” asks Genis.

“Kang,” I reply. “Either him or Immortus. So what have they done?”

“The Avengers don’t exist, Rick. Loki never came, so they never had a need to band together.”

“Wait… if there aren’t any Avengers, then how come nothing else has happened?” I ask. “How come Kang hasn’t already conquered time?”

“He’s probably toying with us. Look, the bottom line is we have to set things right. We’ve gotta track down the founding Avengers.”

Chronopolis

It is here, in this time spanning stronghold, that Kang the Conqueror rules supreme. He’s initiated latest scheme, not so much one of conquest, but more of curiosity.

In all of Kang’s encounters with the group of heroes called the Avengers, he has known them to be extremely resilient. He wonders, how resilient the are, to the sands of time being changed on them? From a monitor in the central citadel of Chronopolis, he watches as Rick Jones slams his wrists together, activating the Nega Bands and trading places with Captain Marvel.

“Jones is far more worthy than I had originally thought, and I hadn’t counted on the involvement of Genis,” says Kang. “This proves to be most interesting.”

The Present; Broken Time

Rick Jones stands over a hospital bed, staring down at a comatose patient hooked up to life support machines.

“Great work, Rick,” comes the voice of Genis in his mind. “Trying to recruit a coma patient.”

“Hey, gimme a break, it was the only thing I could think of,” says Rick. “In this reality, Bruce still pushed me out of the range of the gamma bomb. Except the gamma bomb didn’t turn him into the Hulk – it left him in a comatose state.”

“So how are we gonna get him to help us?”

“I’ve got an idea,” says Rick. He smacks Bruce Banner across the face.

“Rick… you do realize that you’re not only beating on a weak science nerd, but you’re beating on a weak science nerd in a coma, right?”

“I’m trying to get him angry,” says Rick. “Maybe we can trigger his transformation into the Hulk.”

“You’re crazy, you know that, right?”

Rick begins to adjust the positions on the bed, so that Banner is now sitting straight up. Rick pulls the IVs out and jams them back into Banner’s skin, hoping to get some sort of reaction out of him.

“This is completely ridiculous,” says Genis. “This broken timeline has driven you insane. Rick, you’re stabbing a coma patient with an IV needle.”

“Oh shut up already,” says Rick. “I don’t hear you coming up with a better solution.”

“Well, I suppose you could always switch his IV bag with his urine bag.”

“Hey… maybe that will piss him off enough…”

“Oh no… Rick, I was being sarcastic.”

“No, it’s okay, this’ll work,” says Rick. Before he can begin making the exchange, Banner’s hand grabs his wrist.

“Let… go…” Banner weakly whispers, his eyes still closed, almost as if he were talking in his sleep. Rick pulls away from Banner and pulls the IV needle out. He stabs Bruce in the side with it, and Bruce Banner’s eyes go wide and seem to grow large. They turn bright green, and Banner’s skin tone begins to change to green as well.

“Umm… I think it worked…” says Rick.

“Rick, for God’s sake, change back!”

Rick slams his wrists together and in a flash of light, Captain Marvel is left standing in his place. He watches as Banner’s body begins to convulse, growing larger in size and proportions. The bed starts to buckle under the added weight, and Banner rolls off it, falling on the ground. People outside the room rush in to investigate the sounds, and they see a large, green behemoth standing in the room.

“So… the Hulk, right?” asks Captain Marvel. The Hulk’s response is a punch that sends Genis crashing through the wall of the hospital. Genis stops himself and hovers in the air and watches the Hulk leap from the hole and land on the ground below. Captain Marvel flies down, driving his body full-speed into the Hulk.

“Sorry, but we can’t have any of that ‘Hulk smash’ stuff you’re so fond of,” says Captain Marvel. “Like it or not, we’ve got a job to do, green genes.”

“HULK SMASH!” is the Hulk’s response as he charges towards Captain Marvel. Marvel ducks the blow and slams his palms against the Hulk’s chest to force him back. Captain Marvel suddenly feels a warning from his Cosmic Awareness, sensing an impending time shift. He grabs hold of the Hulk and slams his Nega Bands together, transporting the two of them to the Microverse.