Calibur in, "Fortuity's Fortunes Founded" by Michael Norwitz and Sabrina Hawthorne
[DOWNTOWN FAWCETT CITY. CAP'N SAXONIA watching the streets, on patrol. Suddenly, a flash of light. KENG THE CONQUEROR appears: a muscular man in a green and purple, futuristic uniform. His features, behind their blue mask, would be bold and handsome were it not for an unmistakable tint of madness.]
CAP'N: [aside] It is the conqueror!
[SHE activates a radio in her helm and speaks into it.]
*BZKZT* Caliburians! Look to a foreigner on meeting streets fifty-ninth and fifth. 'Tis Keng, the future's tyrant once I exchanged. His knavish wits are potent.
KENG: Well, if it is not the esteemed Captain Saxonia.
CAP'N: Keng! I know not your method of translation, but thou hast no good.
KENG: You are a fool, Captain ... what are the words you use? Too dear a half-penny.
SPIDER GIRL speaks into a radio, from off stage.
*BZKZT* SPIDER GIRL: Need you some assistance, good Captain?
*BZKZT* CAP'N: [into the radio] I'faith, I do if you would give it.
KENG: Ah, yes, summon your savage friends.
CAP'N: We of Calibur shall foil thy plans in spite of not knowing their shape.
KENG: You know nothing of my plans!
CAP'N: We do not now, but sooth the morrow we shall.
[ASSEMBLY AND MEETING AREA, level four, the Manor's work area. It is dominated by a large recessed auditorium, with enough seating spaces to accommodate several Caliburians. Suspended over the auditorium is a massive Edgewise-Knox projector, used to project files and film loops for all to see. IRON FIST leafs through all two of his fan letters. PETER PARKER enters, takes a seat near the back. Also present are SPIDER GIRL, DOCTOR STRANGE, and the HULK.]
DOCTOR STRANGE: Good morrow, Peter.
[CAP'N SAXONIA, from off stage, into a radio.]
*BZKZT* CAP'N: Caliburians! Look to a foreigner on meeting streets fifty-ninth and fifth. 'Tis Keng, the future's tyrant once I exchanged. His knavish wits are potent.
SPIDER GIRL: [sighs] 'Twas most like a day tranquil. [speaking into a radio] *BZKZT* Need you some assistance, good Captain?
PETER: Away, Calibur.
*BZKZT* CAP'N: I'faith, I do if you would give it.
HULK: [rising] We had best head off.
[All exit. Back to DOWNTOWN FAWCETT CITY, with KENG and CAP'N SAXONIA. SPIDER GIRL, DOCTOR STRANGE, the HULK, IRON FIST, and PETER PARKER enter.]
KENG: More fools.
PETER: More fools? Where?
KENG: You think you are so clever, but time's chronicles mention you in the smallest part, Parker.
PETER: If I doth be unknown, highness, how dost thou know of me? Furthermore, I know thee not!
DOCTOR STRANGE: Captain, shall you introduce us?
CAP'N: Again, I exchanged him prior this present parley. This is Keng the Conqueror, a dictator from a future time.
SPIDER GIRL: What is his present motive?
HULK: What has he done, or shall he do?
IRON FIST: And what he fain shall try? [He strikes a fighting pose.]
CAP'N: He must be here to conquer our time as he did the other.
PETER: By the mass, another would-be conqueror!
DOCTOR STRANGE: Time cannot be conquered. It had us on the hip since the first alarum, and when the last trumpet sounds, their meaning will be double.
[KENG ignores this and holds up a small mysterious device. SPIDER GIRL reaches into her belt, removing a small metallic canister and loading it into her wrist web-spinner. KENG throws the device at the Caliburians. A blinding flash of light. Everyone blinks, holds up hands, etc. Spider-Girl drops the canister, her other hand snapping to her cowl.]
DOCTOR STRANGE: I know not his doing, but…
CAP'N: Fellow Caliburians, regard our locale is transformed … and among us, spectators strange.
[On the streets men and couples are driving by in Model T's. Some of the men have the tops down and are wearing driving caps. One or two horse-driven carriages trot by along the sides of the rode. The men are wearing starched suits, narrow jackets, and some with bow ties. Most of the men are wearing bowler hats but you see a few with caps or flat-topped straw hats. Many of the women are wearing dresses with high, laced collars and large, round-brimmed hats, some with flowers. On the sides of buildings you see posters: "To Hell with the Kaiser" and "Remember the Lusitania". Behind a wooden stall on the side of street are four Boy Scouts selling Liberty Bonds, under a banner reading "Every Scout to Save a Soldier". Occasionally on the side streets one can see a workman unloading a truck, wearing baggy overalls and a cap. A troop of men walk by wearing uniforms with boots buttoned along the sides of the leg up to the knee, and what look like mountie caps on their heads. A young woman smoking a cigarette, her hair bobbed, pushes past the Caliburians. She glances at their costumes and looks down, faintly embarrassed, but there is a twinkle in her eye. In a restaurant storefront is a sign advertising "liberty steak" and "liberty cabbage". There is a man with a rickety metal cart with a stovepipe, selling roasted nuts. A newsboy is selling papers, shouting hoarsely, "Revolution in Russia!"]
IRON FIST: Alas! This surely is the twentieth century's seventeenth year.
DOCTOR STRANGE: Glorious. He has sent Phoebus' cart backwards.
SPIDER GIRL: Time is certainly his plaything.
HULK: While ye blether, we'll have to wait to defeat him for seventy-and-twenty years.
[PETER PARKER takes one of the newspapers.]
[The paper presents a hurried account of the after-effects of the Bolshevik Revolution, as if written by someone without all the facts at hand. In the bottom corner is a small photo of a man wearing glasses, the story reads "Dr. Keng to present news on miracle weapon, defeat of Central powers immanent." There is also an ad for the new H.G. Wells novel, "Mr. Britling Sees It Through." On the back page is a feature on Heroes of the Skies, with a tale of Lt. Col. James Fletcher, known as the American Eagle, and his battle against the notorious war criminal Ivan Shark. The date on the front page is November 20th, 1917.]
PETER: Look to this.
IRON FIST: 1917 … in a sense.
CAP'N: Mark! This paper tells a tale with ill portents. Surely this Doctor Keng is the one we seek!
SPIDER GIRL: We cannot be taken from our home. 'Tis the tearing of one-half a pair of bulwarks; it cannot be done!
[IRON FIST swipes a callused hand across the road and rubs his fingers together, then sniffs them.]
IRON FIST: Fresh horse's waste. 'Tis a facet too little for this to be a false diamond.
[People are staring at the Caliburians as they pass by, making comments like "circus acrobats".]
CAP'N: Our dress dislikes this time; haply we might change it.
DOCTOR STRANGE: Most likely, that's truth. But wherefore should Keng send us to a place he already may conquer the world?
SPIDER GIRL: Perhaps he sent us purposefully to remove us from his proceedings in our home.
HULK: Mayhap it is his want for us to interfere.
CAP'N: He wants things altered somehow ... Would that I knew this miraculous weapon.
HULK: Well, if he brought us, he sure has motive to bring us back in happy circumstances.
[DOCTOR STRANGE bends over to look at the mysterious device.]
DOCTOR STRANGE: The object's presence persists.
HULK: Thou must not touch it. It could be head of fighting Spartans.
[PETER PARKER begins to examine the device, taking care not to touch it.]
CAP'N: Good doctor, know not you of traveling in time?
DOCTOR: 'Twas my magic, not a science, and I have it no longer.
CAP'N: Parker? Banner? You are our greatest men of science… Perhaps you can find its working?
HULK: I shall attempt it. Between us two men, there should be at least the half of answer.
[PETER PARKER continues to examine the device, taking a magnifying glass and large needle out of his case.]
HULK: It appears simple, nearly too much so. There be merely a dial, the time's setting, and a confirming button.
CAP'N: Simple or not, can it send us home?
PETER: Always shave with Occam's razor first.
[PETER PARKER taps the device with the needle. It fails to explode.]
HULK: It gives seeming to be able to.
SPIDER GIRL: Shall we make trial now? Do know if Keng would to kill us, we'd have already left the quick.
[PETER PARKER picks up the device and carefully sets the dial to the correct era and date.]
CAP'N: This is the only path leading home.
IRON FIST: It cannot harm us.
SPIDER GIRL: Would it tolerate were I to bring this paper?
CAP'N: I see not trouble from that, Spider-Girl.
[PETER PARKER presses the activation button. A blinding flash of light. Calibur looks around; they are in an UNINHABITED WASTELAND. To be precise, it appears to be the ruins of Fawcett City]
HULK: Avast, teammates… but the look of this place does give me pause. This is not our home.
CAP'N: 'Tis all clear! I understand now! We were meant to be there to save that time!
DOCTOR STRANGE: I sense of something evil in the air, the hint of death.
CAP'N: Parker, we must return. The past must hold the problem we find here.
PETER: Surely 'tis the weapon that paper told?
CAP'N: Keng, he made that weapon, yes?
[PETER PARKER examines the dial to ascertain the setting is correct. Then:]
PETER: Not with so great a speed. We could, perhaps, arrive before this arrival and not have left at all—but this disagrees itself — a paradox.
DOCTOR STRANGE: Could we have stopped it in all the worlds?
SPIDER GIRL: Mayhap we could unfold the happenings here. Could our paper ha'changed to a thing touching this circumstance?
HULK: That Keng may be a forefather of our Keng.
[HE goes apart from the others to search for clues.]
IRON FIST: But this present wasteland – could it be for our absence of here, our presence in his time?
DOCTOR STRANGE: We must to arrive as soon as we were gone, or things may turn more sour still.
CAP'N: Should we go further – the need's to go a little further, the week before, or year?
PETER: [shaking his head] That plan has a most galling vice. All our time-changing takes us farther from restoring our home's own grace; 'tis saying that striking glass the second time makes it new built.
CAP'N: Returning soon as gone is to half the damage, Parker.
[THE HULK returns, in fact with a clue: A newspaper.]
HULK: I have it. A paper dated 1918! 'Tis of a weapon which presiding Wilson would to use on the Central Powers withal surrender.
SPIDER GIRL: Surely it is Keng's.
DOCTOR STRANGE: Nothing I see here is from a date beyond that year. Nothing has the seeming of happening after Keng vanished us.
CAP'N: Surely we should return to when we disembarked and extort discourse from Keng.
DOCTOR STRANGE: My approvals go to that idea.
HULK: Wherefore should Keng send us where we could gain assists 'gainst his plan?
IRON FIST: I know not, but Banner speaks truth.
DOCTOR STRANGE: Mayhap our presence in the past was truth in his mind!
HULK: We must ask him.
CAP'N: Ante to that, we look to compassing of more civil dress.
SPIDER GIRL: But soft! Where doth Keng truly be? In 1917?
IRON FIST: At the least, his machine was.
HULK: Returning to the future or past? I lose myself.
CAP'N: Let us go to the past, where we were, a mere moment after we left...before anything accountant may have changed. Doctor, may you guide us compassing of their civil dress?
DOCTOR STRANGE: If 'tis within any of the worlds of the immateria, I can manifest it!
[THE HULK becomes DAVID BANNER again.]
HULK: 'Tis much improved. Now, those who look to us look to only that they list.
[DOCTOR STRANGE raises her arms in a dramatic, mystical manner. Shifting, we see her as VICTORIA BENTLEY now; likewise, SPIDER GIRL and IRON FIST are BETTY BRANT and DAVID RAND.]
CAP'N: This traveling time has too much of the possible. What can I with this fixed helmet?
[SHE finds a purse and takes off the helmet, putting it inside. Her face is now that of ANDREA THOMAS.]
ANDREA: We now must go. Will you, Parker?
PETER: Very well.
[Peter Parker sets the dials and activates the device. Another flash of light.]
TO BE CONTINUED …