Disclaimer: I do not own any of the Young Avengers or other Marvel characters.
Chapter One
Some things can never die. Some things will never belong. And some things, no matter the circumstances, inevitably be both. Like a star that burns cold or an ocean of flames, some things can never be. On this eve they are.
Billy Kaplan woke up screaming. His white tee shirt and pale blue boxers bound to him by his armor of sweat. His blankets a skewed as he shot upright. His breath evacuated his lungs with the last wretched note. Where was I, the young mage thought as he acclimated to his surroundings. This was his room, the forest green walls and super hero posters that adorned them made that clear. And he had been asleep, he remembered sending Teddy a good night text before plummeting into sleeps endless chasms. But what he had experienced was not a dream.
He had traveled, projected, someplace against his will. Where he was the sky had frozen over and birds had been captured in time and space. The sun was a blue blur beyond the glass dome the sky had become. The grass he stood in was alive and consisted of a billion tiny vipers that hungrily nipped at his feet. And the ground beneath them steadily vibrated as the Earth wailed her last dying breath.
Billy tightened his eyes close and tried to will these images away. What could he call what had just saw? An apocalypse? Total devastation? Global warming? Good CGI? It was clear whatever he saw, where ever he had been, it was beyond his ever more apparent lack of magic. If this had been magic at all.
He stood from his bed and crossed to his far window to look out the window. Good ole planet Earth, he thought looking out at the familiar terrain. The neighborhood appeared to be still asleep. No crazy Dali illustrated dreams for the rest of them, he thought in bitter humor towards the night. The idea that the experience was his alone made the young mage all the more uneasy. He couldn't help but feel out of his depth and self conscious about his lack of answers. Dr. Strange would know, he mused. He was the sorcerer supreme or was it Brother Voodoo now. A somberness covered him as he remembered that there was no more this world. It was a shame that most people did not know about him before and would not know of him now and what he gave so they all could live.
So who was the sorcerer supreme? Strange again or perhaps one of the former candidates. Perhaps even Billy. He shuddered against the thought of bearing that mantle. Becoming sorcerer supreme would be a bull's eye painted of the "X" on his back from being a superhero and maybe a mutant. Brother Voodoo had shown that this, by no means, ensured a long life. And the idea that he would have to encounter things that were more disturbing than where had just traveled from set something unease in his stomach.
His train of thought was gently broken as he saw dawn break over the New York City horizon. The first rays of the morning lit a match against the night sky, lovingly warming it into mauve. It was not until Billy turned to his bed to dare to venture back to sleep did he freeze with a feeling he could not quite register.
His alarm clock read in crimson "3:00am". The May sunrise was not for at least another two hours. What ever he saw in New York was not the sun but bright enough to change the night sky. Fear. Fear was the feeling he could not quite register. Fear that a piece of his nightmare world had come to his familiar Earth. Fear that this was going to be another problem that he had no answers to. And fear that whatever this was would take him back to that perverted place.
But being an Avenger, even a young one, meant that your fear means nothing. That when something comes to your world, your city, you shut and suit up and get to the front lines. As he willed his costume to form from thin air Billy Kaplan looked out the window at the center of his newly found fears. The false sun held so many possibilities that Billy could not face, not yet. But Wiccan had neither the time nor the luxury to be afraid, so he teleported and sent an astral S.O.S to all the Young Avengers. Wiccan called upon his comrades to help him face Billy's fears.