LINE IN THE SAND

Part III

By Clayton Tooley

Author’s Note: Be sure to check out Amazing Fantasy #14 for a prequel adventure of the Resistants!

“OOUUUSSS!”

That was the sound the explosion of air made as it burst out of the mouth of the mutant known as Quill when he was hit by the USAgent like a freight train hitting a hobo. As he flew through the air in the split second before he slipped into unconsciousness he replayed the event over in his mind.

He had been ordered to launch the first strike against their enemy, who had once been known as Captain America and who had captured Quill before. He’d settled onto the balls of his feet and leaned forward, loosing more than a hundred quills from his body as hard as he could, sending them whistling through the air on a wide disbursement, hoping he’d hit the rapidly moving man holding the round shield several times on the arms and legs, if nothing else.

That was when two strange things happened.

The first was that the shield, which had been a round circle a couple of feet in diameter colored red and black, suddenly seemed to…grow. It elongated, morphing into a six-foot tall rectangular shield still three feet wide, but retaining the color scheme of the round shields red and black circles. It reminded him, strangely enough, of an old-style gladiator type shield.

The second strange thing was that in a flash of swiftly moving white energy all of his quills were jerked to the side and the passage between himself and the sprinting hero was suddenly, unbelievably, clear. It was while he was trying to release a second volley when the shield hit him, and that was when his mind suddenly, mercifully, went dark.

He’d changed his shield’s form to protect himself from the deadly volley of the quills, planning to plow straight through the storm without slowing. The USAgent was pretty confident he could get through without getting stuck, but so long as he protected his head his chain-mail and Kevlar costume should withstand any hits. He was just as surprised as Quill when the projectiles were suddenly wrapped up and jerked away, but it only took him a split second to realize they’d been grabbed in a psi-web by Arachne, who was arcing through the air above him pulling a bulging white web holding every single projectile in its incandescently sticky mental energy.

It was a smile of pure superiority that cracked across his face as he backhanded the porcupine aside with his shield, feeling a deep seated sense of satisfaction at hearing the explosion of air as the mutant flew away and into one of the still-standing tents ringing the fighting area. Quill’s body plowed into the thick material and caught hard, his burr-like body snagging horribly in the thick, rough material and he flipped around the sturdy central pole, binding himself up to the point where he was hanging upside down and with no leverage, so that even if he woke up for the next several hours he would be unable to free himself on his own.

The Agent didn’t break stride to admire his handiwork any longer, realizing that this was the most dangerous part of the attack. While Firebird and Arachne dealt with the remaining Resistants in this front force, he zeroed in on the form standing at the back. Meteorite. The only completely dangerous man in the whole camp.

Taking one more step forward, Jack cocked his arm and hurled his shield forward as hard as he was capable, using all of his enhanced muscles to make it the most deadly throw of his life. The photonic/holographic shield, which he’d mentally reconfigured back to its normal shape instinctively, spun through the air laser precise and would have impacted into and probably through Meteorite’s chest had he not reached out with his mind to stop it telekinetically.

Meteorite had misunderstood the force of the throw and just barely was able to divert the shield enough to dodge it, and even then he had to put his entire focus on shifting the angle upwards at an angle to the right and while diving to the left himself. The air that blew over him from the passage of the deadly missile was astounding. He’d just begun to realize he hadn’t remembered the strength of the man attacking him when he turned back to his attacker and saw nothing but a red blur approaching his face.

With a purely reflex push, he managed to put a barrier up between himself and the fist of the USAgent, which froze less than six inches from the face of Meteorite as if it hit a solid wall, and in a way it had, as the mentally constructed wall echoed and caused Meteorite’s head to snap back, absorbing the impact of the blow. While he was disoriented, the second fist, the one he hadn’t seen coming, hit him in the stomach.

The impact not only knocked the air and breakfast out of Meteorite, it lifted him from his feet instantly and as the Agent followed through with the punch, he was propelled backwards like a ragdoll, his arms and legs senseless and his head pressed forward with his chin dug into his chest, completely helpless. His body impacted hard on his tailbone, snapping his coccyx and dislocating his right hip as he bounced the first time. His costume, made of unstable molecules, saved him from injuries to his limbs on the second impact, though the force of the impact as he landed on his side drove his elbow into his ribs and he could feel a snap inside, probably at least one rib or two, but the elbow didn’t appear to break. His head also impacted the ground hard, jarring his brain and loosening his helmet, which spun free and bounced into the distance.

Laying there and trying to gasp, his diaphragm completely deflated and his lungs screaming for air, Meteorite looked up with tearing eyes to see the cocksucker who’d haunted his dreams for more than a year step over him and hold one hand out. As Meteorite got his first breath back, he saw with amazement that the shield he’d just avoided, the one that should have been spinning through the camp behind them and be far, far away by now, suddenly appeared, firmly attached to the USAgent’s forearm. The Agent, for his part, only tightened his grip and smiled, saying something probably dickish that Meteorite couldn’t hear over the ringing in his ears, and suddenly the fist holding the shield lashed out, cracking across Meteorite’s face, snapping him around and rolling him in the dirt of the desert, pain exploding all through Meteorite’s body, teeth flying into the dirt, but his superior mutant mind refused to let him fall unconscious.

He opened blood caked eyes and saw the shield descending again…

Paralyzer had been halfway to the secret bunker, dragging the senseless Cyclone traitor behind him, when the shield went down, bowling him over and into a nearby tent, which fortunately didn’t collapse on him, but he was disoriented for a moment. He thrust himself back to his feet, his mutant ability of bioelectricity generation rebounding from the impact of the energy wave and he visibly crackled with energy, his metallic hands sizzling and popping when he slammed them together and leapt from the tent in fury. He looked back toward the front of the camp and saw that beyond the barrier lay Banjo, the big retard having obviously failed to do something as simple as kill the Captain America poser, who was even now charging toward the inept Quill and the rest of Meteorite’s gang.

“Meteorite’s outgunned,” Paralyzer said, watching the bouncing woman defang Quill just as the USAgent hit him, and Paralyzer was already sprinting at an amazingly quick rate across the camp, the unconscious Cyclone completely forgotten about as he lay beneath a nearby tent, blood streaming from his ears, nose and mouth.

Bludd huffed and puffed as he finally managed to catch up to the bounding were-woman Tigra, sliding to a stop next to her at the junction of three dirt thoroughfares through the camp and looked at the scene before him in amazement. “Uh…what’s up?” he asked.

“I’m trying to figure out how screwed we are,” Tigra said, her own breath even despite the obvious results of her efforts. Scattered around the open area before them were more than 25 men, some lying on the ground nursing injuries and some standing and smiling, and it took Bludd a moment to realize something disturbing…they were all the same guy!

“Oh, shit, a multiple man,” he said, raising his energy rifle and pointing it at the group trying to circle around them. One of the guys leapt at him and Bludd fired, hitting the man dead center in the chest and knocking him back. At the point of impact, however, the body seemed to blink out of sight for a moment and two bodies reappeared and slammed into the ground, but then three men got up, smiling and rubbing their chests. “Stun doesn’t stop them!”

Tigra didn’t answer, already having realized that stuns, punches, kicks and scratches hadn’t hurt them either. She was staring intently at the three men that were now huddled together after Budd’s blast, and suddenly it hit her. “Shoot someone standing in the back,” she said.

Having nothing else to go on, Bludd raised his rifle and fired. Before the blast could hit its mark, one of the three men he’d just shot jumped in between the blast, taking the hit and splitting again. “Damn!” Bludd said, watching the taller guys in the back duck for cover. He turned and saw a very self-satisfied smile on Tigra’s face. “Why’re you smiling?”

“Because this guy’s no problem,” she said as she took one step forward and launched herself over the newest of the men and into a group of taller guys in the back and began furiously punching and kicking them with her above-average strength, knocking them down left and right. It was then that Bludd realized they weren’t getting up…and a few seconds later they disappeared with a little flash of light.

Then he figured it out and smiled himself. He raised his rifle and aimed directly at the last man to replicate, one who was a good foot shorter than the tallest man Tigra had just knocked out, and Bludd fired. The impact bowled the man over and he went down…without duplicating and without getting up, then disappearing a few seconds later. Having that confirmation, Bludd switched his weapon to automatic, dropped to one knee and opened fire, cutting a swath of energy to the left, away from Tigra and through the crowd rapidly approaching him.

He managed to drop an additional ten men before the crowd got to him and drove him to the ground. He let the wave roll over him, curling his knees in toward his chest to protect his grip on his rifle, and at the halfway point of the roll he kicked out with his back braced against the ground and used the momentum of the half-dozen men atop him to propel them forward together and off of him across the clearing. Bludd ended up back in his kneeling crouch and firing back the way he’d came, catching the next approaching group of men by surprise and dropping several of them.

Tigra arrived them, plowing into the still-standing guys and sending several of them into the abyss. She flipped over a back and landed in a crouch in front of Bludd, quickly readjusting the left strap of her top that had fallen off her shoulder, robbing Bludd of the very appealing view. “Notice how he’s getting smaller?” she asked, her green eyes flashing.

“Yeah,” Bludd said, realizing they only had a free moment to speak as there were still at least 15 guys on their feet, including the main guy who stood about six feet tall and towered over the remaining duplicates by a good 18 inches. “He can duplicate himself from any impact, but the duplicates can’t replicate and every new guy is an inch or two shorter than the last.”

“And just as easy to knock out as a normal guy,” Tigra said, sneering at one of the duplicates approaching from Bludd’s blind side. “You keep going; I’ll finish things up here. See if you can find the kids.”

“You sure?” Bludd asked, firing a quick burst of shots over her shoulder, keeping the line of guys approaching honest. “You’re still outnumbered.”

“You say the sweetest things,” Tigra said as she leapt over his head and into the guys behind him, clearing the lane to his right for him to dash down backwards, strafing the ground before the other group of duplicates until he had a head start and he turned and took off.

Tigra ricocheted off a guy and landed in the middle of the path Bludd was running down and smiled. “Come to mama.”

“You can’t stop us all,” the incredibly shrinking man said, slamming his foot into the ground and creating a duplicate next to him, and on and on until the group stood 25 strong again, the shortest barely topping out over two feet tall.

“I don’t need to stop you all,” Tigra said, moving in a flash of golden fur into the crowd, striking out with four specific shots and clearing the crowd without getting hit herself, and turning to watch the four largest men fall and disappear. “I just need to keep chipping away at you until before long you’ll be making mice-sized copies.” She smiled, flashing her razor-sharp teeth and flicking her tongue over her lips. “And I’m starving!”

When the shield went down, Eros of Titan, the Avenger known as Starfox, had been hovering above his S.H.I.E.L.D. squad and watching with a bored eye as they worked, wondering how much longer this would take. It wasn’t that he minded assisting his former teammates in this endeavor, especially after watching that horrible torture video, but he wished they could get on with it already.

He regretted those thoughts just seconds after the shield fell and revealed the terrain before them to be a barren section of the Resistants camp, one bereft of tents or any sort of lodging, except for a screen set up that formed a half-circle that Starfox realized must have been designed to almost completely seal up against the dome shield when it was activated. Inside of the improvised metallic lean to was a solid metal cot with a solitary figure sitting cross-legged in the middle, her back pressed against the back of the half-hut.

The trio of S.H.I.E.L.D. Agents moved forward in a semi-circular distribution and took up covering pattern, but their confusion at the sight of the little girl in the strange gray dress was obvious. Confused himself, Eros flew in slowly and lowered himself onto the ground between the agents and the girl and held his hands out wide, putting on his widest smile and turning on his mysterious charm. “Hello, child. We come in peace.”

The girl, who had been staring at them with her eyes wide, smiled at him then, her eyes partially glazing over as she fell into the effective range of Starfox’s persuasion powers and she hopped up off of the cot and took a few steps towards him before she tripped, her legs obviously asleep. Starfox felt his cool exterior crack a little as it became clear to him that the little girl had been in that hut, no that…prison, for a long time. She looked up at him with tears in her eyes as a grimace crossed her face.

“Child, what is wrong?” Starfox said, dropping to a knee before her and cupping her chin. Her skin was blisteringly hot. “You’re burning up!” he cried.

“Here, sir, let me give her some water…” one of the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents said, stepping forward and reaching for his canteen. His hand had just touched the water bottle when the scanner on his forearm began beeping rapidly and wailing a high-pitched siren. “Wha–?” he said, pausing.

One of the other men took a look at his own scanner and his mouth went dry. “Radiation levels are spiking!”

“What is it?!” Starfox said, tearing his eyes from the openly sobbing girl in front of him to look back at the men, just as the third S.H.I.E.L.D. agent raised his rifle and fired on the little girl. His aim was true, the energy blast tearing into her forehead just above the bridge of her nose, but it was too late, the reaction having already reached the point of no return and, just as Starfox had made an angry jump toward the man he believed had killed a helpless child, she exploded.

Arachne had just finished dumping the bundle of quills to the side and had turned back to watch Jack pummel Meteorite when an amazingly loud explosion blossomed in the distance and the shockwave rolled over them a few seconds later. Her senses attuned to changes in pressure like that, Arachne leaped just as the pressure wave reached her and rode it with her body like the mast of a ship, landing easily atop a still-standing tent and attempting to see what had happened. Like the rest of her physiology, her eyesight had increased and sharpened after she’d received her spider powers but the dust cloud was too thick for her to make out what had happened.

But it was obviously some of their team was in trouble and they needed to get help there quickly. She and Jack weren’t fast enough, but Firebird could be there in seconds. Looking skyward, Arachne was surprised to see Firebird involved in an intense air-to-air battle against a mutant with wings growing along the undersides of his arms down his sides to his hips, forming a natural wingspan of flesh attaching his wrists to his waist. He looked ferocious, with long white hair flying around his head and with hands tipped with talons on each finger, and yellow energy beams flying from his eyes as he tried to shoot-down the rapidly moving Firebird.

Firebird was dodging his blasts with an aerial agility that was very impressive, and she was returning fire with her own blasts of heat energy, but she was obviously trying to stun her foe as opposed to injure and having limited results due to the apparent toughness of her foe. It was a draw for the time being, but Julia could tell that Bonita didn’t have the needed ferocity to match this Resistants member, and she decided to change the stakes.

Timing her leap for the next pass made by the two combatants, Arachne launched herself into the air as high and fast as she could, snagging the foot of the winged mutant firmly in her right hand and twisting hard, pulling down with all her strength. She succeeded in unexpectedly altering the mutant’s flight downward and twisted herself around until her feet were planted on his back. Releasing her grasp on his ankle, she clamped her hands down onto his head and called up a wad of psi-webbing, blinding the surprised flier as she pushed off hard, flipping back and away from his out-of-control descent, watching as he plowed into the ground next to Quill’s tent, bouncing head over heels painfully but not fatally thanks to the angle of descent she had pushed him into.

Firebird swooped down and grabbed Arachne’s forearm, slowing her descent toward the ground. “That was impressive,” Firebird remarked, smiling.

“Thanks,” Arachne said, waving off the comment. “I’ll check on the bat-freak and watch Jack’s back. You go find out what that explosion was all about.”

“You got it,” Firebird said, launching back into the air and speeding off. Arachne was turning to follow through on her words and check on how the Agent was doing when her vision suddenly went yellow and an impact of incredible force plowed into her, lifting her off of her feet and flung her back through the air like a leaf in the wind.

Dennis Dunphy wasn’t sure what he and his S.H.I.E.L.D. group, which included Agent Quinn, the man responsible for the shield being brought down, would find when they entered the camp, but a mini shanty town wasn’t it. Just inches within where the arc of the shield had been was a cluster of regular-sized huts around one very large one in the center, with the outer huts leaving enough space around the large one for an open circular space that was cluttered with various outdoor furniture and oversized toys. There were also two campfires on opposite ends of the circle with various animals, mostly reptiles and coyotes, sizzling and popping to a mouth-watering aroma.

Seated equidistant between the fires was a family at a picnic table, an older couple and two smaller children, a boy and a girl. They looked entirely out of place in the desert; from their clothing, hairstyle and dental acuity they were complete caricatures of a backwoods Kentucky hillbilly family. The adults were eating heartily and did not look in the direction of the newcomers, but the little boy did, his left eye overly wide and it took D-Man a moment to realize that the boy was disfigured. In addition to his eye, his left arm stopped just above his elbow, and his legs looked to be severely bowed. From what he could see of the parents they didn’t appear to be disfigured, but they were certainly disinterested.

“Hey, Jedd, you get lost on the way to Bev-er-ly?” one of the S.H.I.E.L.D. Agents said, snorting. One of his teammates shot him a nasty look, silencing him.

“Sir,” Dennis said, talking a step closer and raising his hands in an open gesture of peace. “We mean you no harm, so please don’t make any sudden moves. We’re here on behalf of the United States…”

“Son,” the man said, dropping the bone from something shaped like an iguana and wiping his hands on his overalls, “I don’t cotton to yer government nor y’all imposin’ on our dinner. But I am still a God fearin’ man despite alla my reasons not to be,” he said, nodding slightly toward the boy, “so I’mna be social and tell y’all to leave right now before yeh get hurt.”

“Are you threatening us, hilljack?” the same mouthy Agent asked incredulously.

The old plump woman began laughing at that, nearly chocking on her mouthful of something dripping sauce, and even the little boy smiled a completely toothless grin. The old man, however, didn’t laugh but still seemed amused. “At my age I’m lucky if I c’n beat off, much less hurt you, boy. We,” he said, gesturing around the table, “ain’t yer problem.”

“Then who is?” asked Agent Quinn, reaching for his scanner quickly.

“My brother,” the little girl said, finally speaking and drawing attention to herself. She wore a pink dress with a white bow in her blonde hair and turned to look at them with her eyes closed. Until she opened them, D-Man thought she was perfectly normal. Once she opened them, however, he realized how dead wrong he was. Her blood red irises crackled as her lids opened and she smiled a cruel smile. “I called to him and he’s come back. Say hello to Banjo!”

Then the world turned as red as her eyes…

Lemar Hoskins, the hero known as Battlestar, was glad he’d prepared his shield just as the barrier went down because he doubted even the fireproof unstable molecules of his costume would have protected him from the focused blast of superhot flame that impacted his shield seconds after the barrier had fallen. Dropping to one knee, Lemar shrank his profile to prevent his legs from being seared and ducked his head, waiting out the blast. “Get to cover while he’s focused on me!” he ordered to the S.H.I.E.L.D. Agents behind him.

As if on cue, the pressure on his shield shifted away and Battlestar snuck a glance over his shield, marveling again at its Vibranium properties absorbing not only the impact but the heat of the attack as well, leaving his shield cool as a cucumber in his hands. He saw the Resistant member known as Crucible standing there, firing blasts of fire from both hands toward the S.H.I.E.L.D. Agents, who were doing their best to evade his blasts and return their own fire. Their efforts were keeping Crucible occupied and he didn’t see Battlestar’s shield flying toward him until it hit him in the gut on one smooth curved edge, the force of which lifted him from his feet and backwards hard.

Lemar’s satisfied smile disappeared instantly when Crucible plowed into the center of a huge bonfire in the center of an area of tents, the flames swallowing him up instantly and literally erupting into the air. “Aw, shit!” he shouted and took off at a dead run toward the fire, hoping the Resistant’s uniform was tough enough to stand a few seconds in a fire, especially given his flame-related mutation. Without a thought to his own safety, Battlestar plunged his hand into the fire and grabbed what he thought was Crucible’s leg and pulled. It turned out to be his right arm instead and it was engulfed in a layer of flame that singed his hand even through his glove. The flame was covering Crucible’s entire body, except for his helmet, and Battlestar wasn’t certain how he was going to put the man out without killing him.

It quickly became clear it didn’t matter as Crucible’s eyes opened from behind his mask, letting out twin bursts of fire that shattered the helmet and narrowly missed taking Lemar’s head off as well. His eyes blazing yellow fire, Crucible smiled and breath as hot as the sun stroked across Battlestar’s exposed chin. “It’s dying time, hero!”

The punch that hit Battlestar in his chest burned clean through his costume and across his chest.

At the last possible second, USAgent changed the shape of his shield by creating a half-circle in the metal that tapered the outer edges into points that he plowed into the ground around Meteorite’s neck, pinning the mutant to the ground by the throat. He stopped just short of completely cutting off the mutant’s air but put enough pressure on to keep him focused on breathing instead of blasting out with his telekinesis, at least when he regained full consciousness. His direct and hard attack had caught Meteorite by surprise and he felt fortunate for that; the few examples of his power that Meteorite had shown had convinced Jack that the man’s powers had gotten stronger and more focused since their fight in Washington.

“Stay down and you won’t get hurt any more,” he hissed at his fallen foe as he began to push up to his feet. The electricity hit him broadside across his back as he rose and knocked him ass over elbows into the sand and set his fillings to humming and his brain pounding. Flashing lights danced over his eyes as he jerked over onto all fours and looked back over Meteorite’s body at the figure racing towards him, metallic hands held out and sizzling like oil on a stove, was Paralyzer with a murderous look on the parts of his face that were exposed.

He just managed to call his shield back to himself and reform it when Paralyzer slammed into him and the reaction of his hands on the photonic/holographic shield was combustive, blowing them both away from each other hard in a shower of sparks. Jack reached up after a moment of dizziness and grasped the metal support of the nearest tent to pull himself to his feet. He was halfway up when a metallic click drew his eyes upward. Standing over him, still crackling with energy, was Paralyzer, who was holding the metal pole a foot above Jack’s hand. “Fry, bitch!”

The current of electricity superheated the metal pole and seemed to lock USAgent’s hand around its surface as thousands of volts…no, HUNDREDS of thousands of volts of electricity raced down its length and across the chest and limbs of John Walker, who could do nothing but scream.