I can hear them. My people are screaming.

I can feel something inside me that I haven’t felt for months now. Rage. Why have they come to us? For months—months!—the surface world has left us alone down here. I am safe with my family, and they are safe with me. I thought that was understood.

I was wrong.

I realized something, the last time I brought my family to the above-world, the one that hates and fears us as much as we have learned to hate and fear them. For every time I took my family above, they came back injured and untrusting. For every time an Avenger or an X-Man or—worst of all—someone Fantastic punched or laser-blasted or repulsor-rayed my family, they came back with more ill will. And, while I had reason to hate the above-world for everything it had done to me in my time up there, I could not bring more of that on my family.

Subterranea is being invaded, and all I can think is that the above-world has interfered one too many times. They can hurt me all they like. They will not hurt my family.

It is the one good thing I have done in this world, protecting my people.

I will destroy the thing that’s making them scream.

The Mole Man in…

BLIND LOYALTY

By Hunter Lambright

The Moloids have come to me whispering in their language of a monstrous machine. They say that it tears through the tunnels with destructive force, flattening a path under it as its treads dig into the walls. It moves forward unrepentantly and crushes all those who stand in its way, literally. They tell me of those of our number that have found themselves unable to move in time, peaceful creatures stomped by a being without care. It is a tank, they say, a monster of a tank with digging drills and mechanical arms, plunging forward into the earth, using our tunnels as the path of least resistance. They say that they have seen it during their raids on the surface before.

They say the Hijacker has come for the minerals of the earth, and that he is killing my people on the way down.

This incursion is unforgiveable.

They tell me that the Hijacker thinks his tank is impenetrable, that no matter how many of them try to stop it, it can’t be done. They underestimate the power of our strength in numbers. It cannot move what it cannot push out of the way.

I trigger the first booby trap, for the Hijacker is not the first one to try to gain access to Subterranea through my tunnels. A line of gunpowder is triggered, pulling a seven-ton chunk of earth down in front of the Hijacker’s tank. I can see nothing, but I can feel what is happening. The tank stalls for a moment, unsure of what to do with its recently-impeded path. Then, it turns its drills to the rock, making quick work of the stone. It becomes dust in less time than it takes a surface worlder to brush his teeth.

The Moloids report to me that the tank is impenetrable from all sides. Those that have tried to get inside have found that it is sealed at every crevice. Nothing gives. The man inside has sealed himself in so that he resides within an enormous suit of armor. But even then, that’s not accurate, for armor has weak points. The Moloids say that the Hijacker’s tank has none.

Thankfully, the Moloids are not the only members of my family.

The creature I call Grork is large on its own right, but this is not why I called him to the front line. He presses his claws around the front treads of the Hijacker’s tank, stopping it in its path. And then it breathes. I can feel the heat of the flames from my vantage point far down the tunnel. The Moloids recoil, backing away from the fire as the tunnel absorbs the heat. I imagine that the Hijacker has insulated his tank, but I doubt that he has prepared for the likes of Grork.

I found him when I was exploring Subterranea under the Hawaiian Islands. He was camped out under a volcano, and, while he approached me with hostility at first, he quickly became a stalwart member of my family. I take care of him and he takes care of me. It is our cardinal rule.

Grork’s heat is beginning to make me sweat from afar. I know it can’t be long now, and the speaker system on the Hijacker’s tank finally screeches, “STOP!”

I call Grork off. The Hijacker presses some lever inside his tank, I imagine, for I hear the vacuum seal release as the tank comes open. The Hijacker comes out, and immediately he is swarmed by Moloids. They carry him to me in a fashion I imagine is something like Gulliver’s Travels, flailing as he is carried off by a smaller people.

“What did you think you were doing, assaulting my people in your quest for riches?” I demand, mistaking his groin for his kneecap as I thrust forward with my cane. It delivers the same result, as I hear the Hijacker moan in pain.

The Hijacker coughs. “I didn’t know! If I’d known, I wouldn’t have come down here, I swear!”

I laugh, and my laughter inspires a cacophony of Moloid laughs. The sound is a symphony to my ears, and I can feel the Hijacker squirm uncomfortably. “You surface worlders are all the same. You stomp down the people below you to get what little they already have! All my people and I want is to be left alone. We fight for our right to live a normal life. What do you fight for?”

The Hijacker squirms. “D-diamonds,” he stutters.

“Diamonds?!” I laugh again. “Let me tell you something! When I was on the surface, I had everything but family! I was smart and a well-off scientist, but when I went home, I went home alone. Since finding Subterranea, I have lost everything… but gained even more.”

“I don’t understand,” the Hijacker says, whimpering.

“You wouldn’t,” I tell him. “You wouldn’t, because you are me before the world called me a villain and took my surface life.” I direct my words toward my people now. “Take him to the surface, but leave the tank here. He can have his pathetic surface life.”

I feel them take him away from my presence, starting the slow march up toward the surface. I expect that they’ll drop him off somewhere remote, somewhere that he will have to get lost before finding civilization again, so that the surface does not find the route that we took to get him on the surface once more. I shake my head. Diamonds? He wanted our diamonds? He could have had our diamonds had he not run over one of my people.

“Take your diamonds,” I mutter, kicking at the dirt as I think to myself about how different things are now than they were a decade ago.

“We are richer than most down here.”

Author’s Note

So this is short. This is really short. But I think the point I was going for with this issue was to get into the head of one of the most often used throwaway characters of the Marvel Universe, not to tell a big, long story that needs much development. Need a big monster fight because nothing else of consequence happens in your issue? Mole Man! That’s how he keeps getting used, and it’s a disservice to a unique character.

Yeah, no thank you. So why hasn’t he shown up at Marvel Omega before now? That’s what I wanted to look at. I imagine he’s an isolationist. Leave me alone, I’ll leave you alone, that kind of thing.

Does this stop him from attacking the surface world in the future? Of course not. But now we know.

Hunter Lambright, 11/29/11