INCEPTION

By James McKenna

As the old heroes neared the Atlas Tower, they disembarked from their conveyance. With a mighty jump, the Blue Diamond engaged several Kree in mid-air, before succumbing to gravity. He managed to grapple and hang onto his foes, bringing them down with him. He impacted hard, taking out several other soldiers on the ground. He remained unfazed in his diamond form and stood tall, ready for the next attack.

Likewise, the Thin Man hit the ground, curled into an elastic ball, bouncing unharmed and righting himself, eerily unbending and refolding his form to that of human. Red Raven flew down and stayed hovering a few inches above the ground.

All available Kree forces converged, coming out of the tower to attack the newly arrived Legionnaires.

“Thin Man, go! Diamond and I can hold them off, the controls and machinery—all that matter anyways—are somewhere in the first five floors. That’s where they should be if these aliens truly aim to crash the island,” Red Raven shouts as he brings his fist to bear into a Kree face. With a nod, the elastic Dickson disappeared, teleporting himself through subspace to the first floor.

Like a serpentine ghost, Bruce Dickson made his way through the tower, contorting his body like a sideshow freak through subspace. One minute here, the next there, unpredictable, chaotic with fire in his eyes and a taste for blood. Thin Man’s rage came to bear on these troops, space born, blue skinned fanatics. He saw in them everything he hated, the vainglorious Reich he’d once battled, the murderers and rapists of his kind.

Twisting out of the shadows, he smothered one soldier, his arms reaching out to engulf two more, thinning his limbs to razors as crimson pools collected on the ground; his enemies gasping through open throats sending off last prayers.

Outside

Red Raven feared the worst when the dreadful sound came. Like a rocket engine, like a million hungry locusts. Had the Kree brought one last terrible weapon to bear? Raven cringed and pointed the energy pistol he’d liberated from a fallen Kree to the sky, where the noise came from.

To his delight, he saw his daughter, Dania, harsh and sweet. He saw a man unknown to him, and one last, the armored behemoth, different than last he had seen it, but the symbol emblazoned proudly on the chest remained the same: the Iron Cross. Seeing his old enemy perplexed Raven, he vaguely recalled a reformed Helmut Grueller joining the V-Battalion, but was wondering why the V-Battalion had a presence on his island, especially one so powerful.

Worries turned to a gleeful acceptance upon seeing how easily Cross dispatched the enemy. Soon with their combined might, the Kree lay broken and dazed on the ground, most of them alive, but severely incapacitated.

After calling the Bloodravens and any other fighters left to him, Raven hurried to the Atlas Tower to help his friend and save his people. Blue Diamond, Iron Cross, Dania and the Challenger, along with the Bloodravens and the Avian Army patrolled the city, helping the citizenry as they could and rounding up the felled Kree.

Atlas Tower

Raven covered his mouth, shocked but not appalled at the sanguine swath that lay before him. The halls lay littered with exanimate soldiers, the floors incarnadine. Dickson had done this, he noted. Tiny, razor-edged cuts covered many soldiers, others lay with their bodies broken at awkward angles, as though a great snake had coiled itself around them and bent their bodies into unnatural positions.

He found that he could not condemn his friend as their struggle had been, for the briefest of moments, war. Yet even in the forties, stopping fifth columnists and insurgents, or during some of their rare overseas expeditions, it had never come to this. It had gotten bloody a few times, but this was carnage.

Raven continued through the halls, most similarly littered with his former enemy, it slowed though, bodies strewn few and far between as he went on. Finally he came to the main control room, Thin Man standing before it, his back to Raven, the green costume with yellow highlights was badly stained due to his insensate goring.

“It’s…I’m sorry, Red. This—there’s this rage inside me sometimes. For so long now….”

Raven feared his friend, and feared for him; a perplexing duality of emotion he knew not how to confront.

“Thin Man…Bruce, it’s okay. Desperate times, right. Right?”

“No. This has happened before. After the war. Olalla was gone. I had been so full of zeal. I had loved life; then she was gone, all of them were gone. Agent Axis, that bastard. The war was over, but former Nazis ran rampant across Europe and beyond even. For every one of those butchers who stood, hat in hand at Nurmeburg, there were probably a dozen I’d—well, you can see.”

“You loved her.”

“Yes….As an educated man, a genius, a scholar, I pride myself on my intellect but when it comes to her, I…I can’t articulate it. To this day. How I felt. And those feelings…when she was taken from me. I am not a good man, Raven and I haven’t been for a very long time.”

“Might you be one again?”

“I-I doubt it. The devil’s path is a seductive one. Perhaps I haven’t the strength I pretend to possess. Please, don’t tell the others. You’re a king; you have your people, your beautiful daughter. Imagine it all gone. Can you understand? Someone takes it all away from you. Could you turn the other cheek? Jesus be damned, I couldn’t. Or I wouldn’t. Please, don’t tell the others. I know I’m wrong, my friend. The rage boils over inside me and seeps over the side sometimes. They couldn’t understand. Imagine it all gone. Can you understand?”

Thin Man swallowed hard and closed his eyes. Was he truly repentant, sorry for what he had done? Or was the cruel truth hard to face at times? Dickson had lost some of the coherence, but Raven understood his friend. Friendship, Raven had much to think on regarding that; friendship was urging him to turn a blind eye to this massacre. They had been, after a fashion, soldiers; but could even that forgive such brutality? Time would tell.

“I won’t tell them, Bruce. You have my word on that. But there is one thing I would ask you to do for me. Blue Diamond’s lost in this world now, my daughter knows nothing beyond the boundaries of our Aerie, and you Bruce, you need something, maybe just a couple friends. Remember how it was, the Legion. It was tough at times, but it gave us family. Some of us outsiders and orphans, it gave us a place to unload the hurt and help each other. Start it back up. Any help, you’ve got it from me, I’ll set you up with funds through the Avian embassy in New York. Look around for some others, we’ve got two guys from the V-Battalion, this Challenger guy I kind of recognize. I don’t know about the Iron Cross, I heard awhile ago Helmut died, if it’s a new guy in the armor; maybe help him get away from all the spooks in the Battalion. Okay?”

“Yes….Thank you. Yes.”

The two old friends left the battle scene behind, the day saved, with their souls, perhaps, a little bit damned in the process. They were just soldiers, Raven tells himself, but he finds those thoughts untenable; dismissive of life, curt, brusque, but conversely Raven cannot fathom suffering the losses that Thin Man has weathered. His feelings so splintered, the King is vexed in this matter.

For now, he vows to keep his friend’s secret, but the royal mind races, his heart pulled in opposing directions.

Later that Night

An impromptu festival had sprouted up, the Avians rejoicing in their defeat of the evil blue skinned menace. Why they had come and what their aims were, exactly, went largely unknown. Thin Man and Blue Diamond vowed to find out upon going back to the surface world.

And the King Spoke: “What we saw here in our time of dire need, I hope will not go down in history as a singular occurrence. In a time of crisis, these brave men stood up to fight for us. In peril they risked all and more to help us, these heroes: The Liberty Legion. Forever stand the Legion!” As his fist rose in the air, a great cry roared forth, so many hoarse ululations, as akin to those of the Romans in their ancient coliseums full of happy citizens. The show complete, the day won, they cheered.

Hours Later, Time’s Tower

The heroes, the new Liberty Legion were now safely back on the surface, conveyed swiftly by a craft and chauffer supplied by Red Raven. They now sat around the meeting table, a present from Namor back during the war; ornately crafted by the finest Atlantean silversmiths, with ivory inlays creating intricate patterns. The team now sat around this to introduce themselves.

Thin Man pulled his mask down, revealing a handsome face, around thirty in appearance, although much older in actuality. Deep brown eyes with lighter freckles within the irises, the peculiarity was his hair however, thick and full like a young man’s but the coloring was an older man’s dashing silver. “I’m Thin Man. Bruce Dickson, multiple PhDs, last Kalahian…after a fashion.”

Blue Diamond pulled his mask off as well, revealing his walnut brown hair, trimmed and combed neatly as it was in the 30s and 40s. Fierce blue eyes burned with passion and loss, but also with hope and friendship. His features were strong, as though hewn out of rock, but subdued, showing no emotion. A beautiful canvas not fully realized. “Taking cue from Bruce…I’m Blue Diamond, or Elton Morrow. Used to be an archaeologist, anthropologist, historian…stuff in the vein. I was space born the past couple years. Back now I guess.”

Next was harsh Dania, the warrior raven. Blonde hair and blue eyes, like a picturesque angel, only this angelic host carried a war spear. Features like a model, striking and beautiful but something else, something hard, even when she smiled—which was not often, a look of terse suspicion remained around her eyes. “Dania Raven. Princess of Sky Isle,” short, sweet and to the point.

The Challenger removed his mask as well, the mask itself was not anything special, black cloth with some green trappings and peculiarly, an upside down red star on the face. Beneath the mask he had eyes like arctic ice and jet black hair. “I’m the Challenger…Bill Warring under the mask, sometimes. Just a regular guy, got caught up in some occult Nazi stuff and hopped through time, showed up here a few months back and the V-Battalion grabbed me up. Like I said, no real superpowers here, but…this sounds terribly conceited and arrogant…I’m still one of the most dangerous men on the planet,” he finished, his glance cast downward to the table, a sheepish, boyish grin on his face, hair mused from being stuck under his mask. He appeared in his early-mid 20s, at an age where now, most people were just finishing college, he was an accomplished crime fighter and perhaps one of the greatest combatants to ever have graced the earth.

Last came the manufactured behemoth and proudly emblazoned on the chest was that which gave the fighter his name: the Iron Cross. But the Cross was not a he; massive gauntlets rose and grasped at the helmet with its spikes jutting menacingly up as though in imitations of a plumed Roman battle helmet. The Iron Cross was a beautiful young Roma woman.

“My name is Valentina Heron. Helmut Grueler saved my mother when she was a young child from the Nazis. Even before he joined with Roger Aubrey and the Battalion, my dear Helmut had the heart of a hero. He was just confused. But he saved my mother and became a father to her. I loved papa Helmut very much and after he died…he saved the world, he saved me and everyone else. I couldn’t let the Iron Cross fade into history, so I took up the mantle.” She had long straight hair tied back tight but enough escaped to frame her dark face with deep, penetrating green eyes showing from behind. Light reddish natural highlights streaked through the dark mane and her smile lit up the room.

The Challenger chuckled—for as he was her teammate on the V-Battalion, he knew Valentina quite well. But the other Legionnaires had most likely been expecting a gruff soldier under the helmet.

“Welcome aboard, Miss,” Diamond said, laughing a bit. Valentina was used to it, the first time people saw her unmask. “Ironic, huh, Bruce? The Iron Nazi we fought—forgive me Valentina, yes he said he was only a German patriot, but when we clashed he was just another Nazi to us—has been succeeded by a gypsy girl.”

The lights turned red as several monitors buzzed to life and alarms rang.

“—some sort of monster seems to be rampaging through the streets of downtown Manhattan. With the Fantastic Four and the Avengers missing after recent events, many New Yorkers wonder who will now champion them. The camera has a picture of it now…I believe, yes, its name is Zzzax. The monster has clashed with the Hulk several times and–” the feed went dead as an electrical burst erupted across the screen. Zzzax had attacked and incinerated the reporter and camera crew.

Without a word, the newly assembled team ran as one. The front of Time’s Tower was in actuality, a great door, it lowered, providing the team a platform many stories up in the air from which to strike. Iron Cross took off, thrusters bearing her into the air. Dania grabbed the Challenger’s hands and bore him with her while Thin Man wrapped his arms and legs around Blue Diamond’s shoulders and stretched his body into a makeshift parachute.

So they descended to engage the electrical fiend.