Author's Note: This is my first Young Avengers fanfiction but it's one I've wanted to do for a good while now. If you haven't already then I recommend you read Young Avengers: Dark Reign before you read this, otherwise some of the characters involved (Coat of Arms, Melter, Big Zero, Executioner, etc) will be unknown to you. The first chapter is Eli-centric (basically to set up the plot) then after chapter two the focus of the story will shift to Billy and Teddy. I encourage anyone who reads this story to give me their feedback, good or bad. Okay then! Here we go.

Young Avengers: Disassembled

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Part One

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McKesson Mini Golf Course; Upper East Side, New York City

"The secret is timing, not aim. I can help you with that."

Maybe Billy's stance was a little wonky in the knees there. Kate wondered if the problem was more form than anything else, but when Teddy's reliably stronger hands slipped down the length of Billy's arms and adjusted his grip, you couldn't help but think maybe he wanted it that way.

They were always a tender couple, but ever since Teddy first put that runic silver commitment ring on Billy's finger, they barely spent a second outside of each other's arms.

Teddy carefully peered over Billy's shoulder. They exchanged an adorable smile, so brief and slight you might mistake it as secretive, and threw their arms back together, Teddy' muscular warmth melting into Billy's own, before powering the putt through on one smooth swing. Their eyes followed the golf ball's trail up the steep three-yard mound, watched it circle in the air and fall toward the gaping jaw of a plastic hippo before sinking itself into the hole.

"Swish." Teddy grinned.

And he was rewarded with a quick kiss for his help.

"Thanks." Billy said. His hand slipped surreptitiously into Teddy's, where their fingers tenderly intermeshed into a warm whole, and with it, he led his beautiful boyfriend over to where Kate and Eli stood, waiting for their turn.

Eli, with his club suspended across his shoulders, quirked an eyebrow. "You guys do realize this is a competition, right? Competition? As in 'lets kick each other's butts'?"

Kate shrugged. "I don't mind kicking your butt."

"Ha, ha."

"Oh 'Ha, ha', he deadpanned," quipped the archer, moving into position. Her technique needed no adjustments. She handled the club as fluidly as she would her battle staves, which was why when Kate went on to pause (mid-swing) it seemed a little peculiar. But she had an archer's eye, one of acuity and zeroed focus, perceptive enough to catch that slipstream burst of silvery motion whooshing past her and settling swiftly by the bench, as if he'd never left.

Tommy exhaled, four small shakes in hand. "You all owe me six bucks."

Eli took his own, then handed the other two to Billy and Teddy. "Thanks. It's hot as hell out here today."

Tommy shielded his eyes from the sun's crisp golden glare, just a few hours short of setting, with a cupped hand. "You know one of those X-Kids, what's her name, Pixie? She blogged about the Young Avengers last week. You know what she said? She said we're dorks. And what do we do to prove her wrong? Play mini-freaking-golf. Excelsior, kids, just excelsior."

Teddy masked a sigh. "You know, you didn't have to come, Tommy."

"And screw up my nomination for the best fifth-wheel-of-a-double-date award? Not on your life."

"It's not a double date." Kate corrected. This time her stroke didn't fail her. It sunk the ball so swiftly it ruled out anyone teasing comeback out of her lead. She walked back to the bench as Eli, eyes rolled, advanced to the tee (or more specifically the little indented circle acting as one).

"Riiiiiiiiight," he sighed. "Not a double date. Just a couple and a couple of friends. And their friend."

Billy waxed in thought a moment as he leaned into the protective arm Teddy had curled around his shoulders. "I think maybe we should've invited Cassie, but-"

"But with her graduating to "real" Avenger status it'd feel like begging her back to the kiddie table?" Tommy proposed sardonically. "Yeah. But who could blame her? Who wouldn't wanna rub shoulders with Hank 'pimp hand' Pym?"

Kate took her shades off. "Okay, somebody's in a bad mood today. Do you miss her that much?"

They all watched Tommy bristle at the word "her". Kate didn't even need to bring up her name. Everyone knew who she meant, just like everyone had noticed how down in the dumps Tommy had been since that whole run in at the Invisible Mansion. They didn't want to press the speedster on it, thinking he only needed time to get over her, but the weeks were crunching on and Tommy still hadn't shaken the melancholy.

He swept a hand through his silvery bangs. He looked away. "I don't really want to talk about this."

Billy shrugged. "With a quick locator spell I could-"

"I said I don't want to talk about this. Lets just play, okay?"

"...Okay."

No one wanted to press him. In the end, however, they didn't need an excuse to change the subject it came when Eli, swinging back then forth in a stroke of sleek iron, clipped the plastic hippo's skull. Kate suppressed a victorious smirk watching the ball cycle through the air into a synthetic yellow hand.

"Jonas?" Eli retracted his golf club. "What are you doing here?"

He had materialized into the course so effortlessly no one noticed him leaning up against the lamp post marking off the gravel path toward the next hole. The Vision returned the errant ball to Eli's palm.

"Hello, Eli. Kate, Tommy, Billy, Teddy. I apologize for interrupting your day, but I thought it best to speak with you in person."

"Is something wrong?" Teddy asked.

"Perhaps. Or it might be nothing, depending on your deliberation."

"Jonas, could you be a dash less cryptic and a splash more descriptive?" Asked Kate.

The Vision nodded. "Very well, Kate. Less than a few moments ago I detained a something as they attempted to sneak into the mansion. I thought you might like to know."

Someone breaking into the ruins? It wasn't the first time, nor was it at all unsurprising; after all it was the Avengers Mansion. There was a reason its rubble hadn't been swept away by some simpering city edict, but who else except themselves had any use for it now?

Kate turned to Eli. "Bad guy?"

"I don't know," he returned to The Vision. "Do you know who it is, Jonas?"

"Unfortunately not. There is no record of this person in my encephalic cache. From what I can surmise this person appears to be an ordinary member of the public."

Tommy tipped his head back with a protracted, irate groan. "Well you know what you've got, right? It's a looter. I'll bet he was probably stealing one of Mockingbird's old panties so he could sell 'um on EBay. Call the cops, let them deal with the guy."

"I would not consider that the most salient course of action, Tommy."

"And why not?"

"Because this person asked for Eli."

All eyes turned to the Bradley boy.

"Me? He wants to talk to me?"

Tommy blinked. "...You're friends with a panty-snatcher?"

Eli frowned. "Don't be stupid. What does this guy want with me? Did he say who he was?"

The Vision shook his head 'no'.

Kate approached him, more seriously this time. "Maybe we better deal with this, Eli. I can save schooling you guys for another Saturday."

**********

The (New) Invisible Mansion, ???

Her steps were slow, deliberate and surreptitious. So soft they were that the gravel had no click for her heels as she traversed the western wall of their hideout. As smoothly as things had progressed thus far, tracking down the last remaining bank transactions between her target and his dearly departed, she did not overstep the mark here. It was more than following orders. Her innate senses, sharpened to a wakizashi's tip, taught her that with patience always came the deserved kill. She would not overstep the mark.

She had learned the silent arts of assassination far too well.

With the last few seconds left until the next stage she tested the cable's integrity with a single tug. The lengthened black zip-line was terse with its effortless support of her weight, confirming the superiority of her supplied equipment. Secure in this knowledge she traced a few more footsteps down along the wall, each one as slight as a butterfly's wing beat, to take her down to his tightly shut window.

Thick iron bars secured it from within. She couldn't help but smirk at that, for why would someone secure a home that magic rendered invisible? Without the special infra-paranormal goggles she currently wore even she might have overlooked the mansion. It lieu of that the security struck her as somewhat odd, yet she recalled the boy's file and thought better of her amusement.

What else might one expect from a committer of matricide if not paranoia?

Vibrations tickled the small bones of her ear. She bristled, still rather unused to many of the West's technologies, and attached her communicator to the cybernetic pod lodged within her ear. "Moshi Moshi."

(What? What does that mean?)

Goddamn Americans, she quipped in thought. "It is me. What is it?"

(Are you in position?)

"Indeed. Is my payment in order?"

(I told you, he arranged everything except my hiring you. Don't worry though, I've seen the numbers. You'll be paid through a Swiss account, I just can't tell you when.)

That struck her as idiotic but she did not forget who and what she was talking too. The mental picture she suddenly had of her "employer" drew her smirk. She no longer chided herself for privately dubbing him "Sun Wukong".

"I trust you to keep your end of the bargain." She said.

(Thanks. He'll have your money, I promise. He's got everything under control; he even managed to get Mister Hyde in on this, this late in the game. And the good doctor was kind enough to get that monster ready for that other gang of super brats.)

She shuddered in unwanted remembrance of that creature he'd revealed to her beneath the lab all those weeks ago. Although she feared very little, that creature in all its gnashing teeth, bulk, and ferocious temperament sent a palpable chill down her spine.

She almost forgot he was speaking to her in memory of the beast. (Can you see him? Can you see the little rat bastard?)

With the cable holding steady off the roof's edge, she swung herself across to the boy's window and stole a quick glance. He was seated, surrounded on three sides by computer screens filled with data on mid-tier crime bosses and their many lowlife acolytes. His walls were adorned not with wallpaper or paint but rather wall-mounted maps of the city's vivid subway system and the territories presided over by the criminal underworld's most powerful forces. To these he stuck newspaper clippings about various criminal gangs (even defunct ones): everyone from the Yakuza and The Pride to the Triads and The Maggia. He even constructed makeshift "wanted" posters from the faces of their biggest names; Geoffrey Wilder, Count Nefaria, and to her great surprise, even the Kingpin.

"He would challenge the Kingpin?" She whispered. "What a fool this boy is!"

(Is he there?)

She told him 'yes'. The boy certainly was there. He sat somewhat angrily in the cushioned seat of a swivel chair with his gloved hands to his computer's black lettered keys. His skull mask dangled impotently from his door handle. She saw it twist suddenly when the boy with the Spider-Man shirt walked in.

The file she read in preparation for this mission identified him as Christopher, aka, Melter. The two boys exchanged words she could not hear from outside,

so she pulled a node from her ear pod and placed it against the window's cold glass. The sleek cord conjoining the two was no thicker than a few molecules but it allowed her to hear their conversation with so great a clarity it was as if she were there in the room with them, not cuddled to the wall outside.

(What's going on there?) Asked her employer.

She watched the two boys leave the room together. "They are making for their common room. This might be the best chance to catch them all off guard at once."

(Okay. Move into position. Just remember not to kill the boy -- I'm saving that pleasure for myself.)

"Roger. Shutting off all communications."

She smirked, knowing the time was right to strike, and ascended the cable back to the rooftop. No one heard her footsteps, least of all Chris, whom had been so thoroughly shattered by the events at the old Invisible Mansion that he wondered if he might be imagining just how much of a mess they'd made of it, their shot, their chance at...

God. "Redemption" has such a backhanded ring to it...

"Hey," Danny eyed him over. "What the hell are you looking so beaten up about? I'm the one whose been getting death threats all week."

Chris paled at that. Amity was right to remind him a couple of days ago that drug cartels and crime bosses are always going to look for payback, it was just dumb logic, but that didn't stop him worrying about his team-mate, even if Patriot's warnings of "choice" wouldn't stop echoing in his skull.

Chris sighed. "We'll handle this, Danny, I promise. Did you find out anything else?"

"No. There's no goddamn leads and the encryption around my H.A.M.M.E.R. file was too dense to hack. I just barely got past their firewalls and security daemons. Who ever put the hit out on me is keeping their identity close to their chest."

"We'll handle this. Together."

Danny smirked. "You keep saying that like its your own ass on the line."

"That isn't what I think, it's just..." he pushed the lounge doors open. "All we have is each other now..."

Chris caught himself saying it the same moment he and Danny walked into a room full of the only people left into the world who could possibly understand him. Their only recourse -- each other.

Coat of Arms, dressed in her paint-stained overalls and gloves, sat quietly in her favourite armchair, throwing a pensive glance at their window. Amity reclined luxuriously into the sofa with a mint issue of Storm Saxon and a lit cigarette drooping loosely from the corner of her mouth. Egghead's gigantic fingers kneaded the knots out of her shoulders as he regaled her with lofty tales of Kristallnacht and the Herero subjugation he downloaded into his databanks, all for her.

The table their room centred on was sparsely furnished by half-eaten boxes of pizza, lighters, Budweisers, cigarette butts and cookie crumbs.

The second Chris walked in Sylvie was at his side, wrapping him up tight her arms, giving him an early reminder of that sweet soft flesh he pressed himself into every night. Chris wasn't sure what he'd done to deserve a girl like Sylvie, but he thanked every god in Asgard for giving her to him. When they kissed he always felt like he could taste the magic on her lips.

"I hath miss-ith thee in all thy noble melancholy," She bit her lip. "Art thou angry-ith at me?"

He took her by her downy shoulders. "No! Of course not, Sylvie. It's not your fault I'm so... it just isn't about you. That's why I wanted us all to talk."

"Prithee, do!" She exclaimed, leading him to a chair. "Thy flaxen angel's heart hurts to see her gallant goodly warrior so sad-eth."

Danny flopped into an armchair of his own, threw his boots up on the table, and popped open a beer. "I think that's your cue to inspire us, Braveheart."

Jerk.

But there was a reason Chris gathered them all together like this, pulling Coat away from her art and all. "Look, we've just been dancing around all this since that whole thing with the Young Avengers-"

"We ARE the Young Avengers," Danny snapped. "And for all I know that Bishop girl is the one whose been sending me all these Ed Gein love letters."

Coat of Arms sighed. "Hawkeye wouldn't do that. Tommy wouldn't be friends with her if she were like that."

"Yeah man," Chris interjected. "Patriot said that's not how they do things. It's how we do things, and... I'm just wondering if we might want to change that."

Amity sneered. "Oh, come on, Chris! You want us to turn soft and wimp out like those losers? The same losers that tried to break us all up?"

"Patriot said-"

"So... what? That black butthole says "jump" and you ask "how high"? Is that how it is? We've done more to clean up crime in this city these past couple weeks than they've done in like, forever. When are you gonna man-up and get your hands dirty?"

"Amity! Hush-ith thy barbed tongue!" Yelled Sylvie.

The teenaged supremacist shot a greying plume of smoke through her nostrils. "Sorry, Sylvie, I know he's your boyfriend and all but he's gotta strap on some balls and be a leader."

"I concur!" Said Egghead, cheerfully. "Was it not Nietzsche who warned us of gazing into the Void? Do we gaze and let evil's black tendrils sink into our souls? Oh, wait a minute. I speak of our counterparts... for 'we' are the Void. System error! System error! System error moment! Or perhaps the Void is heroism itself? Huh. Jew humour. I guess it wasn't a system error after all. Oh well. AH, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA!"

Coat frowned. "You're not helping, Egghead."

Amity waved him off. "Sorry. I think I overstressed his pleasure circuits last night. He won't shut up."

"Can we-ith not get-ith back-ith to the real problem at hand... ith?" Asked Sylvie.

Chris nodded. "Right. What do we all think? I guess Amity and Egghead, you guys aren't for it, but what about the rest of us? 'Cause right now we look less like the "Young Avengers" more like... the Young Masters of Evil or something. We have dreams, don't we?"

Coat of Arms perked a little, out of the quiet stupor she'd been wallowing in since Sylvie's teleportation spell whisked her away from both Tommy AND Norman Osborn. "Dreams?"

"Yeah. Dreams. Isn't that why we do this? You know... us as heroes?"

Danny sneered. "I am a hero. I wipe the scum off the streets, even the ones closest to home. I don't need anyone's validation."

"Coat?"

She shrugged. "I'm sorry, Chris. I couldn't even define what the word 'hero' means anymore. Nor 'dreams'. If they're more than platitudes then no one is showing it."

"What about you Amity?"

She swilled from the neck of a cold beer. "What about me what?"

"Come on," Chris chided. "You don't do this for no reason. You have a dream too, right?

"Dreams? Well, aside from that one where I bitch slap Nelson Mandela, you wouldn't wanna know 'um."

Silence.

"What?" Shrugged the tattooed youth. "I hate it when people wreck a good thing."

Chris reclined into his chair fully spent. "This is hopeless."

"We do what we do to get the job done," said Danny, sternly. "We're the good guys, man. And if a few drug-pushing scumbags catch a bullet between the eyes every now and again then that's just the price they pay. Every omelette requires a few cracked eggs, right?"

"Hey!" Protested Egghead.

"Heh, heh, heh, heh. Sorry, Robot."

Chris leaned up again, falling to notice the subtle horned shadow that crept its way down the wall behind him. "Are you guys telling me that... this is what you want us to be?"

"Beloved," Sylvie slipped two soft fingertips beneath Christopher's stubble-ridden chin and drew his eyes to hers. They were limpid pools of aquamarine seduction, churned for the beckoning. "Perhaps-ith if we art honest, then-"

Then...

An array of razor-sharp shuriken shattered the side window and circled across the lounge's breadth. It was so sudden not one of them could react to them in time. Danny was first hit, a blade slicing through the sleeve of his shirt and spitting his blood across the coffee table. Egghead could only move in time enough to shield Amity from them. They rained into his back like a torrent, each shuriken thrown with such a velocity so as to make him jerk.

"I am your Aegis!" He shouted.

Coat ducked desperately before one took off her head, and saw it shave chunks off her armchair before sinking with an ominous thud into her wall-mounted Green Goblin triptych.

Chris only saw a flash of Sylvie's blond as he rolled to the floor, ducking the rain of shuriken, and threw up his arms the second he could think. Across the room each shuriken shivered into a gelatinous goo, literally melting at his command, until the deadly weapons were little more than hot wet clumps of silver falling from the ceiling.

A second window was smashed before he had a chance to ask if "everyone was alright". A silhouetted figure somersaulted through it with twinned sai twirling in her hands. She leapt aggressively at Danny's flank, as if zeroed on him, just as he tucked a hand beneath his jacket, reaching hard for gunmetal. The seconds split into spattered flashes; the woman sweeping her elbow across Danny's face, a scream, the clap of a headbutt, thin steel hooked beneath the barrel at his trigger squeeze.

Coat's gloves clapped over her ears as a gunshot tore through the opposing lounge wall. Danny's pistol span into the air the very instant the attacker's heel struck a blow to his skull. He slumped unconscious to the ground, blood dribbling around his lips, while the heel reared up to crush his cranium...

...until a gigantic white fist roared monstrously across the room. The shadowed assassin vaulted over football-sized knuckles that barrelled into the far wall. Shockwaves rippled through the building, throwing Coat and Chris off their feet again, as clouds of dust spat debris about their heads. Yet the assassin merely danced up Amity's giant arm in a series of artistic somersaults until a flex of her hips hurled her knee into the girl's screen-sized left eye.

"OW!"

Amity in all her bulky mass toppled backward, splitting the coffee table in two while a powerful pair thighs encircled her tree trunk throat. Their grip was a vice, tight as the noose, choking her into a dizzy haze. With a single eye open (and the other one bruised) she saw the assassin toss aside both her sai and unsheathe a katana from her scabbard-strapped back with a foreboding metallic slurp.

At Amity's current size it looked like a toothpick -- but even a toothpick could pluck out someone's eye.

The Assassin grinned. "My race has an eye shape you like to mock, according to your file. How shall I shape your eyes?"

While a breathless Amity squinted in horror she drew back her katana to strike, only to feel the weapon melt in her hand seconds before she made good. It was like ice cream softening into soup by the hot sun, running down her arm in syrupy rivulets.

The Assassin threw a sneer over her shoulder.

"Let Amity go!" Chris yelled. "Let her go or I swear I'll turn you into mulch!"

She sniggered while Amity's fantastically-sized eyes rolled into the back of her oversized skull. "You do not have the courage."

He didn't need it. Saying it gave Egghead just enough time to pounce. In the brusque next moment separating success from failure, the assassin bounced over Egghead's lunge and landed across the room behind one of the molten shuriken-stained armchairs.

Amity gasped in heavy, thankful breaths.

They were split into two halves now; Chris, Coat of Arms, an unconscious Danny, Egghead and Amity; across their freshly mangled lounge was the assassin herself. They knew next to nothing of her -- save for the familiarity of the crosshair-shaped print upon her skull.

"W-who are you?" Asked Coat.

She took up one of her discarded sai. "You children may call me... Lady Bullseye."

Chris's corrosive powers yearned at his fingertips for release. "What do you want from us?!"

"This was only a message. And the message... has been received." She stamped her authority upon the suggestion by flicking two small orbs between her free hand's fingers and . Chris and Coat both shielded their eyes when Lady Bullseye hurled them to the floor and a sheet of obtuse grey smoke puffed up from their broken shards.

It veiled Lady Bullseye inside itself. Then, when the smoke cloud was gone, she was gone.

But she was not the only one...

"Sylvie?" Chris coughed on the smoke residue as he urgently siphoned through all the overturned furniture. "Sylvie? Sylvie! Sylvie, where are you?! Sylvie!"

Amity, restored to normal size with thick red welts around her throat, was helped to her feet by Egghead. "She isn't here?"

"No, no, no..." Chris rifled through the debris and lunged himself through the corridor. He went from room to room, overturning everything he could lift and melting anything he couldn't, until his search throughout the mansion took him back to where he started; the battered lounge.

Dazed, Chris sunk to his knees, eyes bugged out as if startled to his very core, his essence...

"I can't find her," was his haunted whisper. "So help me... I can't find her..."

**********

Skies of Fifth Avenue; Manhattan, New York City

In the back of his mind Eli couldn't shake a nagging voice with warnings that something was off. For a brief moment he reconsidered suiting up for this (as Vision had suggested on the way here) but he thought better of it. Whoever this guy was, he didn't need to know that he was Patriot "of the Young Avengers", assuming he didn't already. Such pre-emptive adjustments did little to put him at ease though.

"Hey."

It was Kate.

Eli found her at his side with a reassuring smile, but when he couldn't find the will to return it, he distracted himself with the H.A.M.M.E.R helicarrier, hovering ever lower since the recent "Asgardian terrorism" at Soldier's Field (but anyone who knew anything about Norman Osborn saw right through that cock-and-bull story) while they were ferried across New York City's sunset-laden skies by Billy's flight spell. It was a disk-shaped cluster of translucent magical energies, supplied by the magician's constant chant;

"Iwanttotakeustotheruins, Iwanttotakeustotheruins, Iwanttotakeustotheruins..."

Teddy was constantly at Billy's side, "hulked" out, shielding his boyfriend from the wind currents with a single wing, allowing him his concentration. The Vision glided peacefully beside them.

They were at the ruins within a fraction of the hour. As soon as the altitude was low enough, Eli and Kate leapt off the spell and landed together atop the uncut common grounds besieging the old mansion. Tommy was already there waiting for him.

"What took you guys so long?" He asked.

Vision led them across the courtyard. "This way. I have the intruder in the medical assistance room."

Somewhere in the Avenger's history Eli imagined Tony Stark being anal enough to create a titanium-laced wall around a secret underground infirmary, hard to break into and equally hard to escape from; which was probably why it doubled as a holding cell. There was something morbid about that.

The Vision took them through a side hatch that branched into a flight of stone steps. It was partially lit by overhanging light bulbs that ran on sparse samples of energy from the weakening back-up generators that survived the mansion's obliteration. The infirmary door waited for them at the bottom.

"We are here." Said the Vision.

Teddy regressed into his human form. "Are you sure we shouldn't be dressed for the occasion?"

"If this guy doesn't know I'm Patriot then I don't wanna give him any clues," Eli said. "Lets just get this over with."

Vision nudged the door open. And there he was. Sitting across the room, all its beds and medical equipment broken or overturned, his hands perched upon his head. He heaved in frustrated, ashy breaths until he saw the guy heading his welcoming committee. Eli wasn't as happy for the reunion though.

"Sean?"

It was him. The Bradley boy hadn't seen him in months but he knew it was him. Despite the five o'clock shadow and the haggard glint that his eyes barely masked, it was Sean. He had the same crooked smile and fingerless gloves as before.

"Eli!" He exclaimed, rushing up to him. "You don't know how much I-"

Teddy wearily shoved him back. "I think you'd better keep your distance."

"Who is this guy?" Kate asked.

The team leader winced. To think that after all this time it still bugged him. No matter how many times the others said that they were over it he always succumbed to the shame. Eli glanced away, unable to look at her as he said, "This... is one of the guy's... who used to get me MGH. Mutant Growth Hormone..."

Tommy smirked. "This guy's your drug dealer?"

And then Eli gave him "the look" and...

"Okay... shutting up now."

Sean grinned. "Yeah, I used to hook our boy up. Then there was M-Day and all the stuff's dried up, except for dudes in the know. Who's got you now? I know it ain't no Bronx heads."

"I've got my grandpa's blood now," Eli punched the stone seal encrusting the wall's titanium innards -- just to prove the point. "Au naturel. Now give me one good reason why I shouldn't toss your sorry behind out of this mansion."

Then Sean's grin failed him. "...People are dying..."

"You just figured that out?"

"I ain't talking 'bout any goddamn drugs, Elijah. At least I don't think I am. There's this new stuff out there, cocaine mixed with MGH. They call it 'speedbang'. Makes you Magneto for a minute... at least in your head."

Eli sneered. "Then stop dealing."

"I'm not dealing anymore!" He yelled. "This ain't about the drugs! Every head on my block whose tried this crap is dead! And they ain't dead 'cause of the speedbang, they're dead because... something... ate them."

Billy blinked. "Ate them?"

"Yeah. Ate them. Like any a y'all would snack on your Mama's bacon."

"I'm Jewish, thanks."

He turned to Eli. "Come on, man. You gotta help us deal with this. I know we ain't boys or nothing, but... you're Patriot, right? Ain't this your job? Whacking tail? Just think of it as, like, a break between Galactus and Ultron."

"First of all," Tommy began. "If these nerds ever rocked with Galactus, they'd be too busy having a collective fangasm to fight back. Second of all, if there's something out there making lunch meat out of druggies then why don't you just call the cops?"

Sean grimaced at the notion. "Yeah, right. Seventeen heads dead and not one of them white. What cops you think gone help us? And unfortunately I ain't got Luke Cage on speed dial so I gotta ask you. Come on, Eli. You and your crew was whoopin' all kinds of ass when the Skrulls was here. Can't you handle this?"

"How do I know I can trust you?"

Thus The Vision interjected. "His brainwaves, heart rate, lung patterns and pheromone displacement suggests he speaks the truth, Eli. I don't think it wise to overlook this."

He wanted to think that that chapter of his life was a closed book, the shame of not being able to live up to his grandpa's legacy and turning to drugs to make it happen...

Kate was at his side again. Even beyond the security of her shades, Eli saw her concern for him. She was the most perceptive one among them. All it took was a touch, her fingertips' light graze across his trembling fist, and he was okay.

"All right," he said it more for Kate than Sean. "I'll help you."

**********