Previously in HERALDS…

Seeking to unravel a vision that warns of a threat to all existence, Clea visits her old teacher Doctor Strange in Greenwich Village, New York. Strange claims that he can help Clea mystically pinpoint the location of the mysterious dimension known as The White… but both are unaware that a terrible danger lurks in wait.

Meanwhile, across the city, Clea’s new companions – Spitfire, Black Panther and The Wasp – are attempting to enjoy a relaxing drink at the Cat Lick Club. Unfortunately for them, a kooky quartet of 60s styled doo-wop divas have chosen to target Janet Van Dyne for some supposed past affront… and now a markedly inebriated Wasp finds herself facing the uncanny wrath of Honey Bee and the Hornettes!

Also, in the depths of the Atlantic Ocean, Namor of Atlantis offers a helping hand in Namora’s search for her estranged daughter Namorita, a journey that will take them to California’s South Coast…

THE WHITE

Part II: And Have You Wings Rolled Up From Sight, And Songs To Slake Desire?

By Meriades Rai

The Cat Lick Club, Manhattan

Shuri of Wakanda surveyed the scene before her with a measured gaze, then leaned across the table where she and her two companions were seated and treated Janet Van Dyne to an infuriating, knowing smile.

“You have enemies,” she said, with undisguised delight. “You have arch-enemies. Your very own. Thor’s got Loki. T’Challa has Klaw. Spider-Man, he’s got the Green Goblin, and Doctor Squid, and dozens of others. And you? You, dear Janet, have Honey Bee and the Hornettes, the utterly bizarre offspring of flying insects and the Puppini Sisters. Can I just say: Oh. My. God.”

Janet looked mortified, mouth agape and an unruly lock of auburn hair dancing between her eyes as she waved an empty cocktail glass in the direction of the four identically-dressed women who were presently advancing across the bar room, apparently intent on mayhem.

“This… but… what…”

Shuri laughed. It was genuine, and unexpected – Jan had never heard the Panther laugh before, let alone with such girlish glee – and it was also ridiculously infectious. Janet stifled a nigh-hysterical giggle of her own, aware even in her drunken state that this probably wasn’t a time for general merriment. To her right, Jacqueline Falsworth – her fiery ladyship, Spitfire – demonstrated less self-control, snorting into her drink and then sliding slowly off her chair and to the floor as she collapsed into silent, shoulder-shrugging mirth. She was even more bladdered than Jan. It had been a long evening, and one of many, many cocktails and much gin.

Approaching the heroes’ table, the woman who called herself Honey Bee placed her hands on her slinky hips and observed all this tomfoolery with disdain.

“Oh, sugar, sugar,” she breathed, her voice smoldering with sultry southern accent and barely contained dismay. “You think we’re funny? You think we’re some sweet-assednovelty act? Guess we’d better get this party started and show you what we’re all about when we shake our collective sting, hey…?”

Shuri looked on, all wide, innocent eyes and smirk. Jacqui hauled herself back onto her seat, gesturing at nothing in particular and claiming that she didn’t need anyone’s help to do so, even though none was being offered. Only Janet sobered slightly – well, in a sense – and regarded Honey with what she hoped was a conciliatory expression.

“Okay, now listen, girls,” she declared, taking great care with her words. “I think there’s been some misunderstanding. We don’t want trouble, and we don’t want to end our evening in some terrible, clichéd superhero brawl—”

“Yes we do,” Shuri said.

“Hush, you. Now,” Jan sighed, “Miss Bee, or Miss Honey, whatever you prefer, if you and your friends want to join us for a drink, we’d love to—”

“You realize those outfits make you look fat, right?” Shuri said, pointing to the Hornettes in their shimmering gold-and-black dresses. “Horizontal stripes? Awful look, especially with those hips. Looks to me like someone should have laid off the honeycomb, know what I’m saying?”

Janet was appalled. “Oh, goodness. Fat jokes? You’re seriously going that low? What next, Shuri? Damn, bitch, he ain’t yo’ man…?”

“Whatever works,” the Panther said, sweetly. Jan scowled.

“Okay, that’s it! You want to provoke a scrap? You’re so bored, so alienated, that your idea of a fun evening is some senseless catfight—”

“Beefight.”

“—that’s so far beneath anything the real Black Panther would have believed acceptable—”

“Oh, here we are. Finally, we get to it. The real Black Panther, not some fake, not some snitty newcomer—”

“No, that’s not what I mean, that’s not fair—”

“—some newcomer who’s only taken on the mantle in the first place because you left T’Challa with crippling injuries—”

“—oh, you utter cow—”

As Jan and Shrui butted foreheads and descended into a furious whirl of spit and screeches, Jacqueline glanced up at Honey Bee, who was looking thoroughly nonplussed, and smiled apologetically.

“You’ll have to excuse us,” she said. “Normally we’re a shining example of our gender, committed to the ideal of overcoming lazy stereotype and demonstrating resourcefulness, intelligence and charm when faced with adversity.”

She looked across at her companions, who were now close to rolling on the floor beneath the table, pulling each others’ hair and clothes and swapping colorful, politically incorrect epithets. She winced. “Tonight, though? Not so smooth.”

Honey Bee eyed her enemies with disgust, then turned to her cohorts and clicked her fingers. “Girls? Close harmonies. Let’s finish what these pathetic losers have started, by putting them in their rightful place…”

On cue, the three Hornettes – stunning, sleek and sexy in their shimmering black and gold dresses, with chic beehive hair-dos and ruby lipstick pouts – commenced a tight, low-to-high shoo-wop do-wop vocal harmony, accompanied by a delicious arch of the back and jackknife shift of the hips to a sultry inner rhythm. Their crooning voices rippled and sang, clear as glass and yet smoky and silky as a fine malt whisky, and the very air about them seemed to thicken and tingle with electric charge.

Jacqui felt the hair on the back of her neck crackle and stand erect, and she leaned back in her seat, wide-eyed. Honey Bee cast her a luxurious smile – and then added her own voice to the mix, an undulating weave of such throaty, violent loveliness that it spoke of sex and sorrow and liquor, and made all those who listened to it quite unsure of where they were…

…and which then picked up its victims as surely as a localized cyclone and flung them bodily across the bar room, through curtains of splintering wood and glass and through the raised screams of other patrons.

Still crooning her devilish melody, Honey Bee snapped her hips and cocked an eyebrow, her lips pursed as if to deliver the mother of all kisses. “Janet Van Dyne, and all those who’d call you an acquaintance,” she breathed. “We’re about to sing you to death…!”

Los Angeles, California

The common media perception of your everyday drug-dealers – the emaciated street sleazes and the steroid-pumped gangsta wannabes – didn’t tell anywhere near the whole story, but that was lazy journalism for you. Chris Powell knew better. Since his own bleak experience and brief addiction to the specialist drug MGH – Mutant Growth Hormone* – his eyes had been fully opened to the fact that, in the old cliché, you couldn’t judge a book by its cover. These past few months he’d encountered balding old men in smart suits, Home & Living housewives in cookie aprons, librarians, engineering graduates, teenage nerds, jocks and valley girls by the truckload, fishmongers… hell, you name it, chances were that you could scratch away the veneer and once in a hundred there’d be a dealer beneath the surface. They were everywhere. Like lice.

Money made the world go round. Everyone loved money. Everyone needed money. And drugs… drugs were money. It was as simple and eternal as that.

* see Marvel Omega’s Champions #6

Today it was the turn of a pair of seemingly ordinary soccer moms, not even coiffured and buffed enough to be considered MILFs; a couple of pleasant yet dowdy ladies who’d struggle to be remembered in their own neighborhoods, if not for one important detail: they were a reliable, independent source for meth, coke, hash, LSD, prescription drugs, you name it. Chris had no idea where the women were connected to the regular gangs in the general supply chain, as they assuredly were on some level – probably a friend of a friend who took a cut from their take but otherwise let them be – but he also didn’t much care. He wasn’t a cop or an attorney, he’d just developed a taste for taking out the trash wherever he found it.

Both women had attended a meet on the waterfront pier that afternoon, nonchalantly collecting a delivery of new merchandise from some middle-aged money type on a personal yacht moored in the harbor. Chris had allowed the transaction to take place, then dealt with the owner of the yacht first and moved on to the women as they’d returned to their SUV further along the pier. The sheer facileness of it, the way it was all conducted so brazenly in the public eye (if the public eye had cared enough to notice), made Chris’ blood boil… and that was probably why he’d been careless.

One of the cottage industry soccer moms was high, and also highly-strung. She had a gun at hand. If it wasn’t for the fact that Chris Powell was the hero named Darkhawk, and was able to manifest a jet and chrome suit of extraterrestrial amour about his body at will, he would have dead a split second after the woman had opened fire on him…

“You’re a jerk, you know that?” Namorita Prentiss declared angrily, as she stood over her boyfriend’s prone body. “You could have been killed. You could have got someoneelse killed, some innocent bystander. You could have taken the pair of them out without them even realizing you were there, but noooo. You have to go in head-on, without even conjuring the amour first, just to try and put the fear of god into them, right? And this is what you get.”

Darkhawk stared up at the gorgeous blonde Atlantean girl who was glaring down at him in turn. Considering that she possessed a killer bod – honestly, an absolutely killer bod – that was sheathed in a glamorous green and turquoise one-piece swimsuit, this actually wasn’t the worst viewpoint in the world. Unfortunately it was hardly the time for romance.

“Are you finished?” Chris asked. Namorita pouted.

“No. You’re a jerk.”

“You already said that.”

“Well, it bears repeating.” Namorita arched an already angular eyebrow towards her boyfriend’s chest-plate, which was conspicuously dented with a couple of impact craters from the bullets he’d taken a minute or so previously. “Armor regeneration acting up again?” she asked, with a hint of a satisfied smirk.

“No.”

“Liar.”

Chris scowled behind his Darkhawk helmet. In the months since an altercation with a villain named Lady Octopus – the same skirmish that had seen Chris assaulted with an injection of MGH * – his suit’s customary restorative capabilities had been seriously compromised. Usually his girlfriend was rather more sympathetic than this.

* Marvel Omega’s Champions #1-3

“Hopefully it hurts almost as much as it looks,” Namorita said, without sentiment. “It’ll teach you a lesson. And considering that you’re incapacitated, I guess that means stopping that SUV with your escaping soccer moms is up to me, right…?”

“Actually, I’ve already taken care of that for you.”

It was another male voice that spoke, before Chris could respond. Namorita glanced up to see a familiar figure approaching, dragging two unconscious, middle-aged women behind him. In the distance, smoke was rising from what remained of the dealers’ sundered SUV – but in that instant Namorita only had eyes for the man who had foiled the moms’ escape.

Dark and handsome of face, breathtakingly broad across the shoulder and chest and well-muscled, erect with a pride that tipped way, way over into arrogance, this was Namor, Prince of Atlantis, and cousin to Namorita’s dead mother. Namorita blinked once or twice, then broke into a broad grin and flung herself forward, arms outstretched.

She loved Chris – for all her sharpness of tongue, an Atlantean trait, this was a truth that could never be denied – but Namor was family. Her only family left in this world, above the surface of the ocean or below it. She was delighted to see him, and Namor’s tender response to her embrace was proof that he reciprocated, as for Namor tenderness was an uncommon quality indeed. So why, then, did he gently remove himself from her arms and seek to capture her gaze so intently, and with such solemn gravitas…?

“Nita,” Namor said, softly. “I’ve sought you out, here in this… stinking, polluted hell, for a reason.”

“What, you don’t like LA?”

“No mischief, child. There’s… there’s someone who wants to meet you. Someone… special.”

If gentleness was atypical for Namor, this hesitancy was even more so. Namorita looked on in bewilderment.

“Who?” she asked with a half-smile, thoroughly unnerved by Namor’s demeanor. “Please, what’s going on? Who…?”

But that was when she felt it. A presence behind her, one that caused her entire body to react with such a sudden tide of sensation that it was utterly overwhelming, causing her to swoon.

Namorita’s existence was complicated, for she wasn’t a product of normal birth – in either human or Atlantean terms – but of scientific experimentation involving genetic manipulation and semi-cloning from her mother’s DNA. It was this connection that shook Namorita now to her very core, because when she turned to gaze upon her mother’s face – the beautiful, heartbreakingly familiar face of Namora, Avenging Daughter of Atlantis, the face of a woman believed dead for the past sixty years – there was no denying that this was real, that this was no dream or imaginary façade, no villainous plot with alien imitation or robotic subterfuge crafted in her mother’s likeness.

This was her.

Namora held out her hand, her aquamarine eyes glinting with tears.

“Namorita,” she breathed. “My daughter. My blessed, beautiful daughter.”

Namorita’s jaw dropped slowly open.

And then, with a scream of rage and fear and confusion, she turned and fled, leaping from the edge of the pier and executing a graceful arc before disappearing beneath the murky surface of the Pacific waters with scarcely a ripple to mark her passing.

Namora stood, trembling, one hand still outstretched. Her eyes were dark, windows to her tormented soul. Across from her, Namor sighed. And, still lying nearby on the ground, forgotten amidst this sudden and inexplicable drama, Chris Powell pursed his lips behind the faceplate of his Darkhawk armor and maintained a diplomatic silence.

All in all, today was not going well…

The Cat Lick Club, Manhattan

“Sonic vibration,” Shuri spat, as if the very words were poisonous to her. “I can’t bloody believe this. My entire culture is rooted in the scientific study of sound. Wakanda is built on a mountain of Vibranium. My cousin’s greatest adversary is an egocentric Dutch madman who uses soundwaves as artillery – on an entirely different and more brutal level than this, but it’s the same principle. If there’s one thing I should be prepared for it’s being assaulted by sound!”

Janet looked up from where she was sprawled across Shuri’s lap, beneath an overturned table. “And this is bad, because…?”

“Because I’m not wearing my costume!” Shuri raged, as if the other woman were a complete idiot. “Black Panther suit! Micro-laced Vibranium weave! That costume is virtuallyimmune to full-frontal sonic attack. But instead I’m wearing a blouse and blasted drainpipe jeans because you two insisted we have a night off from being superheroes and went to a bar dressed in our civvies…!”

“Oh, now don’t you start blaming me,” Jan snapped, waving a finger. “I didn’t say you couldn’t wear your costume under your clothes…”

“I’m not She-Hulk, or Emma sodding Frost. I don’t strut around in a peephole leotard or fetish-cut knickers and bra and say it’s my avant-garde design superhero outfit because I’m all empowered. You think I can wear all-over leather and Vibranium under this? I can barely get away with a thong.”

“Please don’t tell me you two are arguing again…”

Jacqueline raised her head and groaned, her blonde hair falling down over her face. She was also under the table, or at least most of her was; her skirt was hiked up about her thighs and her bare legs were sticking out from beneath an upside-down chair like some seedy strip act gone wrong. It was all very undignified.

The main bar of the Cat Lick Club was now an absolute disaster zone, strewn with splintered wood and shattered glass, and wailing patrons cowering behind any piece of furniture that was still someway whole enough to offer protection. Honey Bee and her three Hornettes stood at the heart of the room, still crooning and dancing in harmony, as if performing for an appreciative crowd. In truth their singing was actually pretty damn good, the kind that made you want to drink and swing and drink some more, if not for the fact that the particular vocal frequencies they were employing – coupled with some preternatural ability, mutant or otherwise – was generating an undulating sonic field that repelled anything in their immediate vicinity. There was a measure of control about the vibrational bubble they were creating, but the one saving grace for Janet and her two companions was that Honey seemed unable to manipulate these soundwaves with any greater efficiency, in the way a more accomplished villain like Klaw would have been able to.

“This is a stalemate,” Shuri seethed. “They’re trying to crush us against the floor and walls, but they’re not quite powerful enough to do more than pin us down. Trouble is, wecan’t get close to them to stop them.”

Jan turned to Jacqui. “Can’t you move faster than sound?”

“Well… yes, but—”

“But that doesn’t make a difference,” Shuri interrupted. “We’re not talking fluid dynamics, we’re talking about breaking through the solid field of a pressure wave. Spitfire can move as fast as she likes, she can’t phase through the wave itself.”

Janet quietened, feeling out of her depth. She was the daughter of a scientist, and she’d been married to Henry Pym, a brilliant biochemist, for a number of years, so she recognized something of what Shuri was saying; she just didn’t understand it. However…

“Would heat affect the vibration frequency they’re using?” Jan persisted. “Excessive heat? If you could disrupt the pressure field, even for a second, I could maybe slip through at Wasp-size. Right?”

Shuri scowled, opening her mouth to speak again – but then stopped. She pursed her lips instead.

“The meanest girl in school can’t think of anything disparaging,” Jacqui declared, “so that’s good enough for me. Tally ho!”

Scrambling to her feet in a flash, the speedster hurled herself against the oscillation wave being projected outward from the center of the room. She was repelled of course, and any normal person would have been driven back against the nearest wall by the relentless swell of concussive sound, but Jacqueline was far from normal; endowed with lightning-fast reaction and reflexes, she recovered instantly and then threw herself forward again… and again… and again… all at such speed that her movements were barely a blur before the naked eye. The unremitting force against her, combined with this supersonic series of ricochets, was rather painful – but no one had ever said that being a hero was easy, right? Besides, Jacqui was English. She had courage and determination, and a perverse stoicism when confronted with bodily harm. Either that, she consoled herself,or a very thick skull…

The intense friction created by swiftly and repeatedly hurling a physical object – herself – against a wave of vibration quickly spurred a concentrated rise in temperature that inevitably ignited into a swirling wheel of flame, blazing bright about the edges of the room. This sudden conflagration likely terrified those other patrons still unfortunate enough to be pinned down throughout the bar; it certainly unsettled the Hornettes, who momentarily lost their composure for the first time upon witnessing the spontaneous blaze and who staggered backwards, their close harmonies faltering. In turn, their uncanny soundwave projections lost a measure of intensity…

…and this inspired Janet to take advantage of the opportunity Jacqui had won for her. The pressure wave was still too powerful for Shuri to breach, but shrinking to Wasp size and propelling herself forward at high speed, Jan rode the tidal ebb of the vibration flow on trembling, gossamer wings. She got a trifle singed in the process, passing through Jacqui’s wildfire with a breathless squeal, and at one point she believed Honey Bee was going to remain infuriatingly out of reach – but then she did it, she navigated the contours of the sound pulse and swept inside, and with a cry of triumph she unleashed a double-fisted barrage of her bioelectrical Wasp’s sting, striking each of the three Hornettes in succession and sending them sprawling.

Alone, without her back up singers, Honey Bee’s voice couldn’t strike the right pitch.

The pressure wave dissipated instantly. Jacqui staggered forward, still a rage of fiery lightning for a moment or two before regaining control despite her exhaustion; behind her, Shuri leapt into the fray with a flurry of punches, skittling unconscious Hornettes in all directions before they could recover their wits. That just left Honey Bee for Janet, and although the villain whirled towards her foe with a grimace of defiance she didn’t stand a chance. Reverting to full size, Jan balled a fist and smashed a fine right jab into Honey’s face before the singer could emit another deadly note.

“Put a sock in it!” she barked. Beside her, Jacqueline raised an eyebrow.

“You know, you totally stole that line from Saturday morning cartoons…”

“Yes, well. It was an awesome line.”

Jan stalked forward, hands on hips, as a dazed Honey Bee stared up at her where she lay, defeated.

“You!” Janet scolded. “Who are you? And why were you so intent on picking a fight with me…?”

Honey groaned, reaching up cradle her bruised nose. “I knew you didn’t remember me,” she sniffled. “Five years ago? You were the bigshot Avenger and up-and-coming fashion designer, looking for models for your inaugural ad campaign. I auditioned, but you snubbed me. Not even a backwards glance. Sweetness, your designs were not all that; you were only a name in the fashion world because you were a superhero. But that gig could have made me.”

Janet looked exasperated. “That’s it?” she snapped. “That’s your big, bad motivation? That I didn’t take you on for a job? Goodness. You know, you’re dead right. I wasn’t a very good designer, and I would have been laughed out of every studio in New York if it wasn’t for my Avengers status. But I was young, and impressionable. I cottoned on pretty damn quick, I swallowed my pride, and I grew up. I’ve never stopped trying to do the right thing. But you? One setback, and you let that color your attitude? Honey, you’ve got other talents. These ladies in your bad girl pack? You can all of you sing. Whatever mutant powers you’ve got pooled here, it doesn’t mean—”

“Damn, girl. I’m no mutant.”

“Then how’d you get these powers?” Shuri asked. Honey Bee scowled.

“I made a deal,” she muttered, still eyeing Janet sourly. “That fool woman in the gold mask. Everything she told me was right; how one day soon our paths would cross again, and I’d get my chance at revenge on you. How me and my girls could use the power of the ring to set you straight. Just a shame it didn’t work out like that, huh?”

Jacqui stepped forward to join her companions, frowning. “Wait, what? Did I miss something?”

“Me too,” Jan concurred. “What masked woman? And what ring?”

Honey Bee raised her right hand and flourished it to display a slim gold circlet on her slender ring finger. “Check it,” she sighed. “These powers? The whole sing-you-to-death shtick? All comes from the ring. These woman, the Mistress of the Ten Rings she called herself… she just ups and appears in my apartment one morning, and reels off my life story. Tells me she knows how much I’ve always hated you, and that she’s got the mean bone for you too – both you and your new friends you’re kicking heels with these days. She said—”

But in that instant there was a sudden spark of magic from Honey’s hand, one that caused her to shriek in pain… and, in the next heartbeat, the ring disappeared from her finger with a crackle of light and smoke, taking a goodly portion of her finger with it as it vanished. Honey Bee screamed and fell backwards, clutching her injured hand to her chest.

Janet, Shuri and Jacqueline all stepped back in shock, their eyes wide. For a second, nobody spoke.

Then, Shuri snarled.

“Magic,” she said, quietly. “And ‘Mistress of the Ten Rings’…? Something tells me we need to go collect Clea and start to find out what the hell’s going on here…”

Doctor Strange’s Sanctum Sanctorum, Greenwich Village

Across town, Clea was standing by an open window, naked save for the soft red, gold and blue silks of her lover’s cloak. She was watching the night, the haze of streetlamps in a gentle rain, and enjoying the feel of a cool breeze in her silver hair and on her alabaster skin. Behind her, sprawled on the chaisse longue where they’d recently made love, Stephen Strange was tucked beneath a blanket, snoring like a small dog and muttering incoherent nothings about Cyttorak and Raggadorr whilst making vague hand gestures in his sleep. Sometimes these gestures would loose tiny fireworks of magic. It was no wonder that Strange sometimes woke up with his hair inexplicably singed, or a duck on his pillow.

Clea smiled at the man fondly, her body tingling at the fresh memory of him. It had been too long. Far too long. Her mother Umar had been spawned into existence as an entity of pure energy, alien to the notion of physical flesh; when she’d discovered the pleasures of such a concept she’d eventually become intoxicated. Something of that nature persisted in Clea, even though she was shy and decent and as far away from the sexually voracious witch her mother was inclined to manifest as from time to time.

Clea enjoyed men. She enjoyed Stephen.

Fortunately she was in no hurry to leave and return to her friends, who were likely still visiting bars elsewhere in the city if they weren’t already thoroughly insensible with alcohol by now. Smiling a trifle wickedly (another trait she’d inherited from her mother), Clea reached up and unclasped Strange’s cloak at her throat, letting it fall away from her body. She strolled forward from the window, languid and excited in equal measure, one hand extended towards her snoring partner so that she could pull away his blanket…

…and then there was a shimmer, and a folding, and a ripping, and reality became a hole, eating itself, turning itself inside out.

Everything black turned White.

Clea screamed.

But when Stephen Strange awoke, startled, and looked around in dismay…

…she was already gone.

NEXT: What’s happened to Clea? What is the mystery of The White? How will Namorita come to terms with her mother’s return from the dead? And where the hell is Skadi?! Don’t miss HERALDS # 8!