LINE IN THE SAND

Part IV

By Clayton Tooley

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

“AAAAAAAAAARRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!”

It was the scream that cut through the fog in her head and brought Julia Carpenter, the heroine known as Arachne, back to her senses in time to avoid the mutant dive-bombing toward her sprawled form. She realized as she flipped backwards and away from the sharp talons driving toward her breasts, and not in a good way, that this mutant, the flying one she’d blindsided assisting Firebird a few moments ago, had clipped her with his crazy yellow eyebeams just after the big explosion and had knocked her for a loop. She sprang away as hard as she could to get a few seconds of free space from her foe to look for the source of the scream, which was still ripping through the air and that was when she saw the U.S.Agent dying.

He was on his knees with his hand locked around a metallic pole as another Resistants member, one she thought was known as Paralyzer clasped the bar above Jack and was pumping electricity through him. As she raised her hand to intervene, she wondered about the metallic hands that Paralyzer was sporting, as the last report S.H.I.E.L.D. had filed shown him with flapper-like hands and a much lower output. As she arced through the air, making certain to she didn’t touch the ground, she formed a stretched psi-web between herself and Paralyzer, feeling the tingle as his energy raced up the delicate mental energy she created, and she jerked with all her augmented might, twisting at the waist and praying her enhanced sense of location hadn’t been affected by being battered about.

Her aim turned out to be true and Paralyzer slammed into the flying mutant as he arced back off of the ground toward Arachne and the impact was like a horsefly driving into a bug zapper, and the flying mutant screamed in agony as the duo fell to the ground in a sizzling heap. The metal pole that had connected Paralyzer to Jack bounced away into the distance as Julia landed on the ground next to the shuddering and slobbering Agent, whose eyes were bulging out of his head. “Jack!” she screamed, ripping the mask back from his face and tilting his head back to keep his airway open. “Goddamnit Jack, stay with me!”

Two Years Ago…

He opened his eyes and the world was black and silent. For a moment he panicked and his throat closed and tears leaked from the corners of his eyes and he tried to move but found himself stuck, trapped to the surface of the table he felt himself lying on. As he convulsed and thrashed he swore he could feel the needles digging into his abdomen and skull and he tried to scream again, but couldn’t around the blockage in his throat and he didn’t know what was…

“Lemar! Calm down, NOW!” The voice was powerful and strong and appeared before his eyes as a color…

Silver.

“You are all right, Lemar. Just lie still and listen to me.” Silver Sable’s voice calmed as his heart rate slowed and he began to recover his senses. “You’re in the infirmary but you’re going to make it.” His sensory input changed and he could feel the sheet laying atop him, not needles but the rough fabric irritating his skin. His head, he realized was wrapped in gauze, as was his eyes from the pressure of the thick, soft pads atop his eye sockets, taped to his temples. “You were caught in the explosion of the A.I.M. laboratory and were doused with an unknown chemical. It reacted to your previous enhancements. We’re not sure what it’s done to you, but your vitals signs are stable.”

“Umphfnap.”

“Don’t try to talk, you’ve been intebated,” Sable added, placing a hand on his shoulder. “We were afraid you’d inhaled it, but it appears that the effects were external only. Your…your skin…” If it was possible for someone as hard-nosed as Silver Sable to choke-up, she did, but to a person who didn’t know her it would seem as if she were simply searching for the proper word. “Your skin has dissolved, Lemar, and we don’t know if it’s going to grow back. If the Power Broker hadn’t enhanced you you’d be dead. As it is, we don’t know what is going to happen in the next few hours…”

The Present…

“Motherfucker!” Lemar Hoskins screamed as he clamped his left hand down onto the flaming wrist of Crucible that had just punched him in the chest and grabbed him around the throat with flames pouring over his body and across his skin. He’d instinctively closed his eyes and held his breath when Crucible had burst from the fire and attacked him, but speaking had caused him to breath in and he felt the blistering heat ripple across his tongue and down his throat and he could feel blisters raising as he clamped his lips shut and crushed Crucible’s wrist into dust.

Battlestar’s right hand shot up with an open-handed blow to Crucible’s sternum that was followed by a loud *SNAP* as the chest bone broke into three pieces. Crucible was flung back from the flaming Battlestar and into the sand a dozen or so yards away. The internal damage that blow should have caused him was muted by the enhancement to his mutant abilities caused by the fire he’d fallen into, but the pain in his chest obliterated much of the euphoria that he experienced from the influx of power. Crucible rolled over and held one hand to his chest as he looked back toward his foe, who had regained his feet and was ripping off his costume and showing unblemished skin covered with nothing more dangerous than sweat.

Rubbing a hand across his uninjured skin, skin as steel-hard and impervious as the skin of another well known hero-for-hire, Luke Cage, Battlestar advanced on Crucible and smiled despite the raging pain in his throat. “What can I say, black don’t crack.” His foot lashed out brutally and Crucible’s flaming aura extinguished along with his consciousness.

It was good luck and terrible luck all at once that kept Dennis ‘Demolition Man’ Dunphy’s head attached to his body. He hadn’t realized how hypnotic the little girl’s eyes had been until he was been hit, but her glowing eyes had sucked him in until he couldn’t even recognize the undeniable sound of the mutant behemoth known as Banjo as he came to the protection of his family. If two of the trio of S.H.I.E.L.D. Agents with him had not stood between him and Banjo it was likely that he would have been knocked unconscious or worse.

As it was he was sent sprawling from a jarring blow to the side of his head that sent fireworks off behind his eyes. He reached a brown-gloved hand to wipe his face and it came away covered in blood. His mind cleared as if he’d flushed it with saline and he was on his feet immediately watching as the sole remaining living S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent, Quinn, fired his gun recklessly as he backpedaled as quickly as he could from the lumbering mutant who kept screaming, “Leave Banjo alone!” as he swiped at the Quinn’s energy beams in annoyance. Standard procedure for field agents called for stun-level settings; as he charged Banjo D-Man wasn’t certain full power would have dropped the monster…or that even his great strength could.

His blood and anger boiling at the senseless and cheap deaths he had just witnessed, D-Man launched himself at Banjo with everything he had by way of the hardest punch he had ever thrown. There was a part of him, the pacifist part that usually reigned in his strength in the early stages of a fight that was appalled at his willingness to go all out and with viciousness. But given this was the first fight he’d been in since he quit the Unlimited Wrestling Federation where his opponent was twice as large as he was, he felt reasonably sure this was far from a killing blow.

His fist hit Banjo just to the left of his misshapen mouth and despite the size difference the force of his blow halted Bajno’s forward progress and resulted in a loud roar of pain and surprise. As he dropped low and rolled away from Banjo’s uncertain return swipe, D-Man noticed a deep bruise along the right side of Banjo’s mouth and he wondered who had managed to land such a blow on Banjo even as he planted his arms and kicked up with both feet, catching Banjo squarely on the underside of his jaw and blasting his head back powerfully.

Following up on his stunned opponent, D-Man rolled forward, laced both his hands together and swung for the fences, angling his blow to catch Banjo as his head rocked back forward. He couldn’t have timed the shot any better, his double-handed blow actually lifting Banjo from the ground and spun him around to the left and down onto the ground face-first without any attempt on Banjo’s part to halt his fall, rocking the ground as his massive weight settled into peaceful slumber. D-Man sagged to his knees, his arms nothing but spaghetti holding ten busted knuckles on hands already swelling from the punishment they had just suffered.

“Damn You!” a harsh and evil voice said and D-Man screamed as a pain as hot and sharp as anything he had ever felt through his head. He pitched forward, burying his head beneath his hands and tried desperately to catch his breath against such suffocating pain and anguish. He couldn’t see it but he knew that Banjo’s sister stood over him with her evil eyes blazing, her mind tearing into his and her hate choking the life out of him. “You only thought you lost your mind before, you maggot! I’m going to send you so far away you won’t be able to find your way back ever! You’ll…”

BZZZPTT

The pain let up so quickly and blissfully that for a long moment Dennis wasn’t able to recognize that he was, in fact, still alive and still himself. Confusion overcame his relief and, even though he dreaded what he would see, he pushed himself back to his knees and saw Agent Quinn standing over the body of the little evil girl, her all but melted head smoldering from the damage inflicted by Quinn’s blaster set on high. He was shaking as he covered the remaining members of the family with his weapon, his horror fighting on his face with his determination to live, and D-Man could tell the family realized he would kill them all if they pushed them any longer.

With sadness and hate in their eyes, they put their hands up. As he helped secure the non-hostiles before anyone did something stupid, Dennis’s head shot up in response to an explosion on the far side of the camp. Seeing a small cloud that looked, dreadfully enough, like a small mushroom cloud in the distance over the body of the dead girl, he knew there would be no happy endings here today.

Firebird arced down out of the sky inside a blazing nimbus of her power surrounding her body and protecting her from the ravages of the heat and radiation that was dispersing at a surprising rapid rate. The blast had been powerful, causing a depression in the ground of several feet in an outward crater that was almost perfectly circular. There were no tents in this area, having been blown aside along with the sand that hadn’t been turned to near-glass hardness at the immediate center of the crater.

Laying directing in the middle of the crater was the body of a young girl in a pink dress who was quite dead, her head having been ravaged by a single gunshot to the head from a S.H.I.E.L.D. energy weapon, an even more tragic sight than all of the destruction in the vicinity. Firebird realized that the three clumps of mater scattered in a semi-circle around the girl’s body was the remains of S.H.I.E.L.D. issue body armor and equipment, but only the barest hint of bones remained of the men who had borne them.

“Oh my god,” Bonita said as she settled down in the destruction. She did what she could, extending her flaming aura and pulling in all the remaining heat and radiation and neutralizing it or dispersing it into the upper atmosphere. She could sense from what her powers and her eyes told her that the girl had been a mutant with abilities similar to a small-scale tactical nuclear device. Given the small area of the blast and the fact that she’d been shot, her potency had likely been curtailed. Bonita shuddered to think what would have happened if the poor misguided girl had gotten up to full steam.

A coughing noise caught her eye and she turned, looking toward the lip of the crater where she saw a figure rolling down from the top and coming to a stop at the bottom of the curve. Firebird raced over to the body and realized it was Starfox and gasped at his condition. His skin was blotchy and pale with several large patches of pure white or black scattered about, some open and pouring various viscous fluids. Bonita knew Eros was an alien from Titan but that was about the extent of her knowledge outside of the fact that he was very strong and very tough, which obviously explained his survival. But the radiation appeared to have hurt him extensively and she tried her best to draw that poison from his tissues and disperse it. As she worked, his breathing settled down and some color returned to his skin as his natural healing ability gained strength.

Sagging back, Bonita rested, her own system exhausted by all the strenuous uses of her powers. She felt exhausted but not ill for all of the radiation she had been exposed to over the last few moments. She sent up a prayer of thanks and a prayer for Starfox’s health, and also for the souls of the four who died here, whatever their ultimate fates. As she prayed, she failed to take note of Starfox’s eyes opening and locking on her until she felt his hand close around her wrist.

“Ho—how many died?” he asked, his voice raspy and his eyes sunken.

“Four,” she said sadly.

Starfox closed his eyes and sat up, his torn and soiled costume crinkling from where the radiation had made it brittle and he wiped his hands over his face, grimacing at the sensitivity of his skin. “Has this madness ended?” he asked, his voice thick with emotion and fury.

“I don’t…” Firebird said as a distant howl of unbridled anguish suddenly cut through the darkening night sky.

It was then that Meteorite woke up.

It didn’t seem to take him long to wake up, but that was not the truth of the matter. His mind actually woke up several seconds before consciousness actually returned and in that time his mind stretched out and took in the lay of the land. Seeing nearly all of his men down and that bumbling SHIELD Agent closing in on his command bunker roused the waking mind of Meteorite and his rage was significant.

Having been left on the ground by the USAgent’s attack then thrown asunder by the explosion of little Circe, his eyes snapped open looking at the ground with sand digging into his nose and mouth. Disregarding his injuries, his body rose from the ground driven by the power of his mind alone and he settled onto his feet solidly, his body spinning around and seeing the bane of his existence kneeling on the ground roughly 100 feet away. Without moving more than his eyes he sent his power ripping through the air and barely…just barely…restrained himself from simply tearing the head off of the man. Instead, he grasped him by his ribs and pulled him to his feet.

“AAAAAAAAAARRRRRRGGGGHHHHHH!” USAgent said as he felt his body, which had just been coming back to life from Paralyzer’s attack, exploded into pain as he flew into the air and hovered with his chest being brutally pulled upward.

“JACK!” Arachne shouted before turning and launching herself toward Meteorite, psi-webbing forming as she flew forward, stretching out in the largest and widest pattern she could make quickly, hoping to distract the telekinetic any way she could. She slammed to a halt less than 50 feet from him but her webbing, diffuse as it was, actually managed to penetrate about 25 feet closer before it too began to slow to a stop. Grasping the origin strands as tightly as she could, Arachne twisted with all of the agility and strength her spider-enhanced body possessed and pulled back suddenly as hard as she could, pushing herself back from Meteorite’s hold and using that brace as a pivot to flex her back down well past her waist and to tug on her psi-webbing with enough force to shatter stone.

The unexpected effort spread over such an area worked, catching Meteorite by surprise and causing his grip on her and Jack to fail. Arachne ended up in an unexpected handstand tangled in her own webs and was unprepared for the telekinetic slap she received from Meteorite fueled by his snarl of rage at her interference. She went skittering across the sand in a controlled roll, her enhanced sense of her body’s position allowing her incredible flexibility to keep her knees, elbows and head from roughly hitting the ground and she stopped a few dozen yards away in a crouching position.

Her head snapped up to see USAgent on his feet charging at the slightly sagging Meteorite with his shield activated and screaming with his own rage. Meteorite’s hand shot up and his open palm focused a wall of mental energy separating himself from the Agent’s charge, but the impact of Jack’s shield on the invisible wall was evidenced by a corresponding flinch by Meteorite from the super-strong impact. Arachne didn’t waste any time leaping as high as she could and coming down with another wave of psi-webbing spreading out from her heel kick attack. She felt herself slam into a similar wall of telekinetic force as what Jack was pounding away on and her left foot was stuck fast by the mental energy. Her only remaining recourse was to repeatedly slam her right foot into the wall next to her left and pull as hard as she could with her webbing, making Meteorite work for every second he held her.

It was a stalemate that Meteorite’s growing rage was quickly overcoming. Mutant neurons and synapses in his brain hummed with power and energy and he began to crush down upon the USAgent, whom he held fast by his shield, pressing against his paltry strength until that fantasized about moment when his legs snapped and his spine ruptured. He also began spreading his grip on the spider up her leg and soon would encompass her in a cocoon of his own and choke the life out of her miserable body.

Battlestar had left Crucible securely bound with his SHIELD agents as quickly as he could and ran to check on his best friend, who was not answering his communicator calls. He slid to a stop rounding a corner of tents when he heard some pained yells and caught sight of what was happening to Jack and Julia just as Julia was completing her first attack and Johnny was making his charge. Meteorite had never been this powerful or focused before, but he looked weak as well and Lemar noticed the sweat pouring off of his brow as he exerted himself to trap his friends.

Activating his communicator, Lemar made a quick one word call for “Help!” and sprinted towards his best friend with his shield raised over his head.

Major Bludd was lying on his back at the bottom of the hidden ramp in the sand he’d found almost by accident and wondered what in the hell had hit him. He’d left Tigra fighting the incredible shrinking man and made his way to a very suspicious-looking clearing just past the last tents and that was when he noticed that all the smoke and sand blowing around the Resistant’s camp seemed to disappear in this area. He made his way forward and found the invisibility screen and passed through quickly, gun leveled in preparation for any attack.

None came and he quickly identified using his wrist scanner that a rectangular sheet of metal was hidden beneath the sand in five meters in front of him. He scanned for electronic signals and located a sensor that an intensive scan revealed was a heat sensor, one with a likely activation range of several thousand degrees, give or take. He checked the crystal covering the sensor and determined if directed energy would destroy it or be absorbed and took a chance, dialing up the dispersal pattern of his energy rifle and boosting the output levels to what he felt was an acceptable range and fired at the sensor.

He’d forgotten to take into consideration where he was standing when he fired and the speed at which the activation would occur. The world fell out from beneath him and he tumbled down the slanted ramp with a wave of sand and landed in a heap at the bottom, looking back up at the patch of blue sky above him. After his breath settled down and no one was firing at him, he rolled to his feet and scanned the dark antechamber quickly, not identifying anything threatening. He was just beginning to move toward the large door at the far end of the chamber when a sound at the top of the ramp drew his attention…and aim.

“Don’t…shoot…” a weak voice said as two figures came into view. A white man in a yellow-and-black Resistants uniform was supporting a much older black man with a bloody bandage over his eyes, but both looked as if they could pitch over at any second.

“Moonhunter?” Bludd asked, not lowering his weapon as the pair began descending the ramp carefully. “Where the hell have you been?”

“I got the…shit kicked out of me…Agent…” Moonhunter began, gasping for breath through a face massed with bruises and abrasions.

“Major Bludd,” he provided as he lowered his rifle and reached out and took the other arm of the man Moonhunter was supporting, who looked just as physically abused.

“Major, then,” Moonhunter said, sighing gratefully as Isaiah’s weight was taken off of him. “This is a friend…he can help…healing power…for the kids.”

“How did you know about that?” Bludd asked. “Were you a part of that?”

“No, never!” Moonhunter said in an angry voice. “I could never hurt…Jack and Cathy.” His voice filled up with emotion when he said their names. “Meteorite told me what he’d done as he and the others beat on me. We have to help them now!”

“I agree,” Bludd said as they came within a few feet of the large door and easily settled Isaiah to the ground. The old man seemed to be semi-conscious but not quite lucid. “What’d they do to your friend here, Moonhunter?”

“I don’t know,” he answered as he pulled off his metallic helmet and threw it across the room. “Call me Zack. I found him being beaten just before they captured me. They were punishing him for hiding my human nature for these last few months. This is all my fault.”

“Table that, soldier,” Bludd said, running scans on the door in front of him. “We’ll get him help as soon as we get all our people.” He focused on his scanner and punched a few buttons before the readings made sense. “Meteorite is a telekinetic, right?” Zack nodded and Bludd grunted. “This door has four equidistant pressure pads around its edges that must be depressed at the same time to open the door.” Bludd stood back and took a look at the door. “We’ll need some more help; the spacing is too large for just the two of us. Tigra or Spider-Woman may be fast enough to hit more than…”

Bludd hadn’t finished his sentence when a rumbling within the door began as four loud metallic pops occurred simultaneously and the door began to swing inward slowly. Bludd’s instincts had him dropping to one knee with his rifle up and ready before his mind put together what had happened. A second later Moonhunter appeared next to him and dropped to the ground immediately, wracked with a hitching spasm from the use of his artificially implemented powers. Using his super-speed, Moonhunter had managed to hit all four pressure plates within a split second of each other, triggering the door opening sequence.

Bludd started to reach for him to see if he could be of assistance when movement beyond the door drew his attention. Running out at him was a mutant with four extra arms, each holding a sharp or blunt weapon that he gyrated around in what he must have thought was a terrifying display of intimidation.

Bludd blew his head off with one shot.

As he stood over the man’s body, Bludd felt a pang of remorse over his action, though later when he found out this man had been named Broadband* and had been the one to distribute the Internet video of the torture of Free Spirit and Jack Flagg**, he’d wish he’d needed two shots to kill him.

[* See Amazing Fantasy #15 – MC ** See USAgent #4 – MC]

Moving past his actions, Bludd checked on Moonhunter who had calmed down into unconsciousness by this point, but his pulse was steady. Bludd got to his feet and moved toward the door when a quiet voice from behind him stopped him.

“Major…take me with you.” Bludd turned and saw Isaiah pushing to his feet awkwardly and falling forward onto his knees. Bludd rushed to his side and grabbed his upper arm, supporting him. “I can feel those kids from here, Major. You must take them to me now!”

Bludd didn’t argue and slung the man’s arm over his shoulder and lifted him almost completely off of the floor and carried him through the threshold of the hidden doorway into the impressive compound beyond. Set up in a pie-shaped layout with different wedges of equipment, be it communications, medical or holding cells, the command center of the Resistants movement was a model of modern efficiency. Bludd would take more time in the next few days to investigate the room in more detail, but for now he made a beeline for the singled barred door with two forms laying on the floor beyond with a rough blanket thrown over them.

Bludd pulled his energy pistol and blasted the lock to pieces and kicked the door open and drug Isaiah into the room. Isaiah pulled free of him and dropped to his knees, jerking aside the blanket and gasped even though his empty eyes could not appreciate the horror laid bare to Major Bludd.

On the cold floor lay the naked forms of Jack Flagg and Free Spirit, broken and bloody. The torture they had seen on the Internet video had not done justice to the damage done to their bodies. Broken bones and skin, missing teeth and hair, swelling from internal injuries and blackened fingers and toes from lack of circulation. Their breathing was ragged and shallow and neither moved when Isaiah’s hands were laid on their stomachs…but they moaned with such quiet agony that it sent a chill down Bludd’s back.

“Oh no…oh no no no,” Isaiah said with a tortured voice. “Those animals! Who could do such things to children? It’s no wonder the world hates and hunts our kind if this is how we treat others.”

“Men did this, Isaiah,” Bludd said, his sympathy for the man’s pain strong. “The fact that they were mutants makes no difference.”

“It matters to me, Major,” Isaiah said. “The damage is too severe and I am too old and too tired. In my youth I may have been able to save them, but now…maybe one, maybe not…”

“We have medical supplies on our ship, stasis fields we can put them in until we can get to the helicarrier or a local hospital.”

“No, once they are moved they’re dead. I can barely believe they aren’t dead now,” Isaiah said. “I don’t know what to do…”

“Cathy,” Jack Flagg suddenly said and both Bludd and Isaiah looked down and were shocked to see his eyes open, and the one that hadn’t burst looked at Isaiah with tears pouring from it down his dirty face. “Save Cathy. Take my…anything. Please…she has to…live…”

“Son, I…” Isaiah said, beginning to shake his head. He stopped as Jack’s hand closed around his wrist and forcefully pushed Isaiah’s hand off of his chest.

“Fight…you…” Jack said through clenched teeth. “Let me…go…”

Bludd knelt next to the young hero and put his hand on his shoulder. “Ok, son, don’t fight.” He looked up at Isaiah and pushed him toward Free Spirit, who had not regained consciousness. “Do it, before we loose them both.”

Isaiah stared at him for a moment and then turned and placed one hand on Cathy’s forehead and one on her upper stomach and bowed his head.

John Walker felt his muscles bulging even as he bit right through the end of his tongue and grunted, redoubling his fading efforts to find something left in his swelled muscles to throw against Meteorite to stop the inevitable. Julia, from what he could see, was down to pounding on the shield with her hands, arching her back and attempting to find enough room to expand her lungs to breath. He was down on one knee pushing up against his photonic shield and felt his back near the breaking point. He began to scream…

The relief that blossomed over his body was so sudden and unexpected it was just shy of the best sexual experience of his life. His body slumped forward and he barely managed to get his hands out in front of himself before his head hit the ground. Air flooded his lungs and his head cleared of the worst of the ringing as he heard a familiar voice screaming, “Turn around, motherfucker! Let me see your pearly whites before I ram ‘em down your goddamned throat!”

He raised his head to see Lemar pressing forward against Meteorite from what had been his back side, his triangular shield held in both hands and swinging like a windmill. Just as strong as USAgent, Battlestar had not suffered an earlier electrocution and was fresh, his arms moving even as his legs slowed down, the strength of his limbs and the unexpectedness of his attack preventing the wavering Meteorite from stopping all his motions at once…at least initially.

Jack was on his feet before he knew it and racing toward Meteorite with his hands outstretched. He got to within 10 feet when he slammed into a curved ball, almost like a sphere of telekinetic force was surrounding Meteorite as he responded to this second attack. It was soon joined by a third as Arachne threw her shoulder against the sphere as well, rocking Meteorite to the side and shrinking the sphere by a foot in diameter.

“Just DIE!” Meteorite screamed, his hands clamped onto the sides of his head as he screamed. The sphere pushed against them but it only slowed them for a second before they set their feet and pressed again, Jack and Lemar swishing their shields as fast as they could with one hand while keeping a constant rain of punches pouring down with the other. Julia was everywhere at once, leaping and darting on all sides and top of the sphere launching a devastating mixture of kicks, punches and web attacks. She even spontaneously created psi-webbing inside Meteorite’s sphere on his body, but his own mental powers disrupted her attempts to bind him, though the annoyance was certainly costing him greatly and preventing more deadly attacks on their bodies.

Even with the combined pressure of their attacks, he realized they weren’t getting through and all of them had taken a beating and would soon tire completely. If Meteorite was as crazy as he looked, who knew how long he could keep this up and if he outlasted them, they were dead. USAgent could only hope that the last shreds of Meteorite’s mind broke before their bodies did.

It became a moot point, however, a few seconds later when Starfox arrived covered in blood and ash.

“MONSTER!” the alien Avenger screamed as he swooped in from above and slammed down atop Meteorite’s bubble with both feet and fists, his own incredible strength magnified by his anger and Meteorite was driven to his knees by the impact, though his protective ball didn’t shatter and managed to rebound Starfox’s force partially and dislodge him. It was only a temporarily reprieve as Starfox caught himself in mid air and flung himself back against the sphere. His costume was in tatters and only his eyes remained free of the mire coating his form as he raged, driving super-strong blows into the telekinetic force. “She was a child and they were innocents!” he spat.

“None…of…you…are…innocents!” Meteorite roared, drawing his power back into himself and lashing out with three shafts of energy to propel Battlestar, USAgent and Arachne away from him while he took one step forward and brought both hands down before him. Correspondingly, twin hands of force plowed down onto Starfox and drove him into the ground. “You hunt us and you chase us down, beat us and imprison us! You are not innocent!”

“You’re a terrorist and a murderer!” USAgent said, diving in from the side, passing under the wave of force that Meteorite shot out from his right hand to block him, spinning on his left hand and kicked out, driving his heel into Meteorite’s knee and snapping it. “You killed our pilot the first time we met!” he shouted as he rolled away, barely escaping another blast of power. From his side, Arachne spun in and kicked up, planting a foot in Meteorite’s chest and covering his face in webbing before leaping away before she could get hit again. Starfox jerked himself free from the ground but was unable to dodge a blind attack by Meteorite, but he was able to distract him at the most pivotal moment of the fight.

“His name was Wally O’Neill!” Battlestar screamed, naming the dead pilot as he charged, swinging his shield…only he didn’t meet the expected resistance of Meteorite’s mental energy and was unable to stop his forward momentum before he impacted Meteorite shield first. The pointed end of his triangular shield was not razor sharp, but it was pointed enough that when driven by his full strength it could rend steel. Flesh and bone never stood a chance as his shield drove down into Meteorite’s back from just below the neck and deep into his chest, snapping his rib cage in half, shattered his spine and popping his heart like a grape.

With a muffled thump…the nightmare was over.

Slumping next to the body, Lemar Haskins looked at his shield sticking out of the dead body and dropped his shoulders. He sighed and looked up as his friends gathered around him. Starfox looked like he was satisfied and turned away, walking toward a just landing Firebird, whose eyes were locked on the dead body with deep sadness. Julia was propping Jack up, who looked extremely unsteady, but he rested one hand on his friend’s shoulder in support for what he was going through, having been there himself. Lemar took solace in the knowledge that his actions kept another death from piling on his best friend’s shoulders.

Retrieving his shield, he took up Jack’s other arm and helped Julia carry him toward the waiting SHIELD transport.

Tigra stuck her head down into the open pit in the desert and took a quick upside down peek around and saw the open doorway in the far wall with the unconscious Resistants member laying outside and she flipped forward, landing in a crouch and leaping forward and landing next to the body. She took in the face of the sleeping man, or what she could see of it as it was covered in blood, and realized this was Zachery Moonhunter, the undercover agent S.H.I.E.L.D. and Captain America had infiltrated the Resistants with nine months ago*.

[* See Amazing Fantasy #15 – MC]

He looked like hell but he was breathing so she cautiously moved past him into the room beyond. Her feline senses took in the complexity around her but her nose zeroed in on something awful that immediately got her attention.

Death.

She walked slowly to where Major Bludd knelt holding a sobbing woman whose naked body was barely covered by the expandable emergency blanket carried by S.H.I.E.L.D. agents. Lying next to them were two forms covered by a rough, dirty blanket only visible from their legs, one set bare. Tigra didn’t know who the clothed legs belonged to but she knew instantly that Jack Flag was dead and her throat choked up in horror. She knelt next to Bludd and the miraculously restored Free Spirit and hung her head, sharing in the misery of their victory.