Marvel's Secret Wars: Underground Avengers
Cindy Moon hated all the looks she got as she walked through the streets of Manhattan, back towards her tiny apartment right between the 616 and 1610 areas. There were heroes on every corner of Battleworld, why was she any different? Was her costume torn in a bad place?
She checked her whole costume as she walked: the red mask that covered her nose and mouth, the white headband that held her long black hair up away from her eyes, the black bodysuit with a red webbing design across it, the white S in the center of her chest, and the white designs on her hands and feet that mimicked fingerless gloves and sneakers. But no, everything about her costume was perfectly normal. So why was everyone staring at her?
She made a split-second decision and shot a web up to the building, and pulled herself up to the roof. Once she was out of sight, the people stopped staring at her. But why had they been in the first place?
Cindy sighed. She held up her hands, and her suit, made of a symbiote, naturally, reverted back into her civilian clothes: a red headscarf, a plain white t-shirt, dark blue jeans, and an unzipped leather jacket. She ran across the roof to the alleyway and jumped down quietly, then walked out into the street.
Nobody was watching her creepily now. What had they been looking at? Super heroes were commonplace here in Manhattan. All the other zones as well, but none more than Manhattan, except maybe Westchester. Was there something in her hair?
Cindy combed her fingers through her hair looking for a leaf or a clump of dirt, and she was still looking when she got to her apartment. When she found it locked and remembered that she'd left the key inside, she jumped outside and climbed around the outside of the building to her window. She used the symbiote's super strength to open it, then she jumped inside and scooped up her keys, absorbing them into the symbiote. She'd never tried anything like this before, and she decided it was worth a shot.
She yanked open her mini fridge and pulled out a Cup O Noodles, from her friend Albert's store down the road. She stuck it in the microwave and set it for a minute, then she turned around and nearly died of a heart attack.
A brown-haired man was standing there wearing a white collared shirt and faded blue jeans, with a black trench coat topping it all. Cindy was thankful he wasn't wearing any sunglasses or hats that hid his face, the cliche would have been too much for her to bear.
Cindy opened her mouth to scream, but the man's eyes widened and he rushed forward, clamping his hand over her mouth.
"Don't scream," he said. "They could literally be everywhere, and we'd never notice."
Cindy looked at him, confused, but she slowly nodded. The man removed his hand from her mouth.
"We need your help, Cindy," he said. "My name is Scott Lang, and I'm putting together a group of fighters to stop a citywide crisis. Your help is necessary to our success."
"What is it?" Cindy asked.
"I can't say here, they could be in the walls," he said. "Heck, they could be the walls. We need to go somewhere they can't, and I already have a place."
Cindy willed her symbiote to cover her with her costume, and this time it gave her a nice little braid instead of a headband. Scott walked over to the window and opened it up, then held out his hand.
"A combination of our powers will get us there undetected," he told her. "My body naturally generates Pym Particles. I can shrink us, and you can swing us to where we need to go."
Cindy knew what a Pym Particle was, she'd done her college thesis on them. She took his hand, and everything around her elongated.
A second later, they were each about half an inch tall. Scott gripped her hand and nodded, and she shot a web towards her windowsill and pulled them up, then they swung out into the city.
Scott kept giving Cindy directions on where to go, and Cindy just barely managed to keep up. Even though both her and her webs were smaller, she still swung at the same speed, meaning that she had to react fast in order to keep up the pace.
Finally, Scott told Cindy to drop down into a sewer, which she did. The two tiny people landed on the edge of the hole and jumped in, landing in a river of disgusting water that began washing them both downstream.
Cindy splashed and sputtered, but Scott treaded water calmly. Cindy shot a web at him and nailed him in the back, then shot another at the ceiling. Cindy began to reel Scott in against the current as she spun a quick web-net to sit on and avoid falling back into the river of putridness.
"What are you doing?" Scott demanded.
"Excuse me," Cindy said. "If you hadn't noticed, there's a river of crap from all over Manhattan flowing beneath us going who-knows-where. Do you want to drown in Manhattan's poop?"
Scott glared at her. "I know what I'm doing, Silk. I know where this goes, I've been down here before with your future teammates."
"My what?"
"I'm bringing you down to my lab to recruit you. I've already got four people down there! I've been through this several times already. I know what I'm doing!"
"You're telling me that you have a secret lab that you have to swim through a river of poop to get to?"
"Yes!"
Cindy blinked. She looked at Scott weirdly for a minute, then shrugged and tackled Scott off her web, and they both began to float downstream.
After almost five minutes of floating, the river went through a grate and fell towards the floor of a huge, brightly lit cavern. As the two of them went through the grate, Scott grabbed Cindy's hand and the two of them grew back to their normal sizes, and they hit the ground with their normal sized feet.
"Have you ever been down here in Monster Metropolis?" Scott asked her. "Don't worry, this is a secret area. Nobody except you, me, or the rest of the team know it's here."
"And where is the rest of this supposed team?" Cindy asked.
"They're in my laboratory area, around the corner."
Scott led Cindy towards a hole in the wall that led to a passageway. He turned immediately to the right and opened a door in the wall.
Inside was a gigantic room with white walls and tiles on the floor. It had counters and tables everywhere and all of them were filled with beakers and test tubes, like a stereotypical laboratory would be. The ceiling had very high-end lights attached to them that lit up the room, making the walls almost seem to glow. Cindy wondered where Scott got the electricity for all his equipment.
There were four people already in the room. Cindy knew one of them, she'd met her before. Ms. Marvel, aka Khamala Khan. Cindy had met another version of her from another domain, who was a teenager, but this Khamala was in her lower twenties, with an entirely different costume. This one was a dark blue bodysuit with red high-heeled boots that couldn't have been very practical for crime-fighting, but Khamala was not a very practical person. She also had her mask on over her eyes, a yellow lightning bolt across her chest, and a red cape attached to her shoulders. She also had long brown hair that hung loosely around her shoulders.
Cindy also knew Reptil, aka Humberto Lopez, even though she'd never met him. He'd been in the news more than any other superhero she could think of, even Steve Rogers. His suit was very simple: a pair of blue jeans and a dark blue shirt with streaks of tealish green on the arms and sides. He had a simple black haircut and a Tony Stark-style beard.
Cindy did not know the other man, but he introduced himself as Pietro Maximoff, aka Quicksilver. His suit was a skin-tight grey material with two white lightning bolts running over his shoulders and connecting with his belt. He also wore a pair of grey Nike shoes, and his white hair was combed backwards over his head.
Cindy turned towards the last person there, then stepped backwards. She knew this guy, all right.
"Taskmaster," she said.
The skeleton-faced mercenary grinned at her, or maybe that was just his mask. He was exactly as she remembered, with the white cape and hood, weird looking boots, and dark bodysuit with the sword and shield labelled with a golden T.
The two of them had met before. Taskmaster had once been paid to determine her secret identity and attack her family. She'd outed as Silk a year later, and her family had been killed by the Goblin Nation about a year before that, so Taskmaster had devised a way to remove her symbiote from her and had attacked a powerless Cindy with deadly force.
Silk's symbiote shifted across her skin and began to reach towards Taskmaster without her even telling it to. It remembered him too, as the guy who'd nearly drowned it with sound then stuck it in a small container and threw it in the river.
"Hey!" Scott yelled. "Silk, get your symbiote under control!"
Khamala's hand grew to almost ten times its size, and she stuck her hand between the two of them. Silk's symbiote was blocked by Khamala, and it reluctantly retreated back onto Cindy.
"He attacked me," she told them. "In broad daylight. While I still had a secret identity. Secret identities are one of the most sacred laws of the Manhattan domain. And he tortured my symbiote."
"Yeah, sorry about dat, kid," he said. Silk had always been annoyed by his weird way of talking. "It was just about da money. Nothing personal."
"It is now," Silk growled. She jumped over Ms. Marvel's hand and kicked Taskmaster in the face, and he slammed his shield into her chest. Both of them fell backwards into a table full of beakers.
Reptil stepped in between them and transformed into a stegosaurus. "No fighting in the lab!" he insisted. His dinosaur voice was disturbingly human-like. It wasn't even any deeper.
"Everyone stop, right now!" Scott yelled. He grew bigger until the hairs that stuck up off his head were touching the ceiling. "I organized this team, and you will all listen to me!"
Everyone stood up and looked over at Scott.
"Thank you," he said. "Silk, I hired Taskmaster for this job, just as I hired all of you. The only difference is that he insisted on money."
"I could use some money…" Khamala muttered.
"I chose you all to fight a threat, possibly from beyond this world. You all know of the symbiotes, Silk especially. They exist in very nearly every dominion."
"We all know what the symbiotes are," Taskmaster spoke up. "What about them?"
"I'm sure you all are also aware of Valeria Von Doom's Foundation, and how their agents have been out and about on classified missions?"
Everyone nodded.
"They've been collecting anomalies. Objects that defy the creation date. One such artifact is a symbiote that seems to have the ability to multiply, and it is believed to have killed an agent of the Foundation and gotten out. This symbiote has the ability to mimic any material and could be anywhere or anything."
"What about God Doom?" Quicksilver raised his hand. "He's omnipotent. Why doesn't he take care of this?"
"Doom is omnipotent, not omniscient. The symbiotes have been laying low. As long as they stay out of his field of vision, they can roam as much as they want."
"And how do you know about them?"
"From Silk," he said. "Even though her symbiote has no connection to these invading symbiotes, they still share similar DNA and biological structure. From observing Silk, I catalogued everything about the symbiotes I could, then I found the body of the agent of the Foundation that it killed and I detected bits of the symbiote left over. It was the data I collected from Silk that determined that these were in fact symbiotes."
Silk blinked. Reptil breathed out, and Ms. Marvel's arm extended until her hand was lying on the ground. Taskmaster dropped his sword, and Quicksilver flickered over to the other side of the room.
"And… you want us to take the symbiotes down?" Silk asked.
"These symbiotes threaten God Doom's reign. Yes, I recruited you all to take down the symbiotes from the source: the central symbiote, the one who originally defied Doom's creation date."
"And you know where it is?" Khamala asked as her arm shrunk back to normal length.
"Yes," Scott said. "Or at least, I know the general area. They seem to be congregating in the Deadlands, just south of the Shield."
Everyone breathed in and stepped back. Nobody went beyond the Shield unless Doom banished them. It was a death sentence. If the Annihilation Wave of Annihilus's robotic forces didn't get you, then either the Ultron hoards or the zombie legion would.
"You want us to go into the Deadlands?" Ms. Marvel demanded. "Are you insane?! I wouldn't even do that for God Doom! I went down there once to save my fiancee, Bruno, and I was scarred for life! I was zombified!"
Everyone gave her a weird look.
"You were zombified?" Reptil asked. "How did you become un-zombied?"
"The Terrigen Mists made the effect temporary on me, but can you imagine it? Transforming into a cannibalistic monster? I was eating a corpse when it wore off! I'm still in therapy!"
"Remind me not to kiss you," Quicksilver told her.
She punched him with an enlarged fist, and he flew backwards. Scott reached down and caught him.
"This about more than just your fiancee this time, Khamala," Scott said. "This is about the entirety of Battleworld, and about God Doom."
Khamala stood there for a moment, then she scowled. "Fine, I'll go," she growled. "I reserve the right to come back here at any point."
Scott nodded. "That works. Now to get there, I'd like to utilize your speed, Pietro. I'll shrink us all down, and you can carry us as you run over to the Shield. We'll regroup there."
Quicksilver nodded. Scott shrunk down to normal size and held out his hands, and everyone except Quicksilver joined hands with Scott. The world stretched around them, and a moment later they were no taller than a thumbtack.
Quicksilver scooped them all up and stuck them in a pocket that didn't seem to have been there a moment ago. A moment of shaking later, he took them out of his pocket and placed them down on a pavement surface, and Scott grew them back to their normal sizes.
Behind them was basically just a field with a city in the distance, but the real view was ahead of them. While it may not have been considered 'beautiful', it was still amazing.
From where they stood, the grown was a solid shade of brown. There were dead trees everywhere and human figures shambling around. In the distance, a tall structure was visible that seemed to be shifting and changing shape.
"The symbiote stronghold," Reptil said. Scott nodded.
"How are we going to get over there?" Quicksilver asked. "I may be fast, but there are too many zombies to just barrel through."
Ms. Marvel held up her hand and watched it grow slightly larger. "Who says we can't just barrel through?" she asked.
Scott stepped a few feet away and grew to almost twenty feet. "I say let's do this," he said.
Everyone looked at each other for a few moments, then they jumped.
"Geronimo!" Silk yelled.
All the zombies looked over at them as they landed on the ground. Silk caught sight of a zombie in a rhino suit, one wearing a Spider-Man outfit, one carrying a Captain America shield, and one with a red skull for a head. There were others, but they all blurred together.
"Lunch is served, gents," the zombie Spider-Man said in a raspy voice. "There's Pym Particles for dessert!"
The zombies all began to close in, with Spider-Man at the front. Scott swung a giant fist at him, but he jumped over it with ease and shot a web at his face. He tried to turn away from it, but the zombie Rhino grabbed the edge of his trench coat as it swung around and began dragging him through the field while he desperately tried to keep Spider-Man from biting him.
Reptil transformed into a full-size T-Rex and swung his tail at Captain America and Red Skull. Captain America blocked it with his shield, but Red Skull got the full force right in the chest, and Silk was disgusted to hear his spine crack as he slammed against the base of the Shield wall. Captain America threw his shield at Reptil and he tried to catch it, but he forgot that he had tiny T-Rex arms, and the shield slammed him in the face.
A zombie version of MODOK hovered towards Ms. Marvel, flanked by three HYDRA zombies. Ms. Marvel's hands grew to almost twenty times their normal size and she swung a fist at the HYDRA zombies, but two jumped away. The third was thrown backwards and splattered against the Shield wall. The other zombies began to close in on her, dodging punches from her oversized hands.
Quicksilver and Taskmaster were teamed up to fight a zombified Hulk. It screamed about being starved by the God Doom as it swung its fists in a helicopter way. Quicksilver was using his superspeed to jump over the fists and Taskmaster had his arms around its throat and was smashing its head with his shield.
Silk was facing off against a zombie version of Quicksilver's sister Scarlet Witch, who was much less powerful than Silk remembered but was still difficult. She wielded a red energy that gave off this weird feeling if you looked at it, like it shouldn't be there. Scarlet Witch swung her energy at Silk, and she got a full blast right across the chin and flew backwards into a hoard of AIM zombies. They all began to claw at her, but her symbiote shot out spikes and impaled them all and threw them out of her way.
None of the heroes were doing very well with their respective zombies. Silk knew there was only one way to get past the hoard, but it left them at risk from the other zombies. On a split-second decision, she decided to risk it.
Silk shot two webs over the eyes of the HYDRA agents that Ms. Marvel was fighting, then yanked on the webs and used the momentum to kick MODOK in his gigantic face. All three of the zombies were now down for the count, so Silk motioned towards Rhino and Ms. Marvel nodded, then Silk jumped at zombie Spider-Man, knocking him away from biting Scott's neck.
Ms. Marvel grew to almost three times Scott's size and grabbed Rhino away from Scott's coat, then she threw him off towards the horizon and away from the symbiote stronghold. She then turned towards the zombie Hulk, and Scott grabbed at the Red Skull and Captain America and smashed them together.
Silk and Spider-Man slashed at each other's faces, with Silk's symbiote growing claws and Spider-Man's fingers reduced almost to the bones. Spider-Man slashed at Silk's face, leaving three claw marks over her right eye. The symbiote elongated and covered it up, but she could still feel the pain. The symbiote created a red mask with eyeholes over her entire face, which Spider-Man promptly slashed at.
Silk clawed at his left shoulder and pulled the entire arm loose. Spider-Man kicked her in the stomach and threw her backwards, knocking the wind out of her. He stood up slowly and held up his lost arm, then tossed it aside and lunged at Silk.
...and was squashed by Scott's gigantic boot.
"Are you alright?" Scott asked. "We took care of the Hulk. Quicksilver ran around him at superspeed and created a vacuum that the Hulk's zombified body couldn't stand. He did the same to Scarlet Witch"
Silk stood up slowly and nodded. "Y… yeah, I'm good. Just had… had the wind knocked out. I'll be okay. Eventually."
Scott turned towards the symbiote stronghold. "It's a ways off, and I wouldn't be surprised if there were more zombies between here and there. We need a way to get there safely and quickly."
Reptil ran over to them. "Scott, I have an idea. You say that your body produces Pym Particles naturally, right?"
Scott nodded. "That happens after anyone uses them enough. Why do you ask?"
"Is there any way for you to project the particles at something? Like, could you make a zombie go subatomic just by pointing at it?"
"No, I'd have to be touching them to do it, but if you know of anything…"
Reptil stood there for a minute. "What about Quicksilver?" he asked. "If he can run fast enough, he can create a vortex that will drain the Pym Particles from your body and in front of you, making a safe route for us to run through."
"Brilliant!" Silk said. Then she coughed.
"Can Quicksilver run fast enough?" Scott had a thoughtful look on his face. "It would work in theory, but Quicksilver would have to run almost as fast as the speed of light. Quicksilver, can you do it?"
Quicksilver had been standing a little ways off, listening to everything the three of them were saying. "I might be able to, but just in case I'm not fast enough, I'd like you to go first."
Scott gave him a look. "Someone with super strength will have to hold me back from getting sucked in. Khamala, can you do that?"
Ms. Marvel nodded. "You can count on me."
So Ms. Marvel grew to Scott's size and grabbed him around the waist, then Quicksilver walked in front of Scott and began to run in circles as fast as he possibly could. A faint stream of purple seemed to appear from Scott's body and Quicksilver's vortex sent the purple stream off in a pathway towards the symbiote stronghold. The few zombies that could be seen between them and the stronghold shrunk out of sight.
Scott automatically shrunk down to normal size, and Ms. Marvel was right behind him. "That drained me out," he told them. "I can only shrink now, at least for a little while."
On that note, the group began their trek towards the symbiote stronghold, which was amazingly uneventful. Silk kept expecting a zombie that had somehow dodged the Pym Particles to jump out at them from behind a dead tree, but they still remained unattacked when they reached the stronghold.
It was very much like a medieval castle, only the walls were black and shifting around. This was definitely the place they were looking for.
Silk took a step forward towards the castle gate and held out her hand. Her symbiote could hear all the other symbiotes in the castle talking to each other. They were the Klyntar, once the protectors of the cosmos, but the cosmos had died. While the symbiote part of her wanted to join with them, the human side of her heard this and accused them of heresy against God Doom and his date of creation, and she pulled her hand away.
"HERETICS!" she screamed.
Everyone looked at her weird. "What is it, Silk?" Taskmaster asked her.
"They talk of a time before God Doom's creation date, of planets beyond God Doom's control! They are heretics! Kill them with fire!"
"Silk," Scott said. "Even if we had come here to kill them, we wouldn't have any fire to kill them with. They are dangerous, but they are still alive. They are living creatures, and heroes do not kill."
"Then why did we come here?" Silk demanded.
"To contain them," he told her. "They are symbiotes, after all, and symbiotes are easily contained."
Scott reached into his trench coat pocket and pulled out a large glass jar-like device. "This is a device specifically for containing symbiotes. The glass is laced with adamantium and the opening has a sonic cage. The only problem with it is that the cage only works on anything within a few yards, and the castle is far too big. I recruited you heroes specifically because your powers are the most flashy and attractive. Reptil turns into giant dinosaurs, Ms. Marvel can grow, Quicksilver can run at several machs, Taskmaster can imitate anyone here, and you, Silk, are one of them."
"You want us to get their attention?" Reptil asked.
"Yes, I want them all to attack me so I can use the containment device when they're all around me, and you guys will help attract their attention."
They all looked at each other for a moment, then nodded. Ms. Marvel grew larger and waved her arms. Reptil changed into a pteranodon and flew around screeching. Taskmaster began clanging his sword against his shield. Quicksilver began to run in circles, and Silk shot webs up into the air.
The castle stirred, but otherwise didn't react.
"Only one option now," Silk said. She looked at Scott.
He stood there for a minute, but then his eyes widened. "No!" he said. "Absolutely not, Cindy! There's no way I will allow that!"
"It's the only way to get their attention," she said.
"You know nothing about these things!" Scott said. "You don't know what joining with their group mind will do to you!"
Silk shook her head, then turned towards the castle and held out her hand. The symbiote moved over to her hand and left behind her civilian clothes and her new scar over her right eye, then extended out towards the castle wall and connected.
Silk didn't feel anything, but the whole castle erupted. Her symbiote was yanked from her hand and pulled into the mass of blackness. The symbiote collective disassembled the castle and moved towards the group, shrinking into a single symbiote and lunging towards Scott.
Scott held out the symbiote trap and pressed a button. A loud, piercing screech echoed throughout the area, and the symbiote was sucked into the trap and the lid closed.
Everyone took their hands away from their ears and looked at the trap. "We did it," Ms. Marvel said. "We trapped the symbiote."
"What do we do with it now?" Reptil asked.
Suddenly, Reptil tensed and breathed in, and three metal claws sprouted from his chest. He looked at them for a moment, then fell over, blood spreading across the ground.
Ms. Marvel and Silk ran over to his body, and Ms. Marvel put a finger to his neck to look for a pulse. Her hand fell from his neck and she looked down.
"He's dead," she told everyone.
Silk looked down at his body. She barely knew him, but she knew a lot about him. He was one of the most popular super heroes in Manhattan, and now his body was on the ground in front of her.
Silk suddenly jumped and scooted backwards from his body, looking at what had stabbed him, but she saw only shadows. Ms. Marvel jumped backwards too, and the whole group watched as Reptil's body was dragged into the shadows. They listened in horror as a chewing noise echoed towards them.
And ten zombies stepped out of the shadows.
They were led by a zombie Wolverine, who was flanked by zombie Cyclops and Daredevil. There was a giant zombie Thing, with a Captain Britain, an Angel, a Winter Soldier, an Iron Man, and two zombie Hulks.
"Oh, -," Scott said.
Wolverine grinned, as much as his decomposed face would allow him to. "It's been awhile since we've gotten this much of a feast," he growled. "There will be dancing in the halls tonight, methinks."
"Cindy, get out of here," Quicksilver said. "Without your symbiote, you have no powers, and you wouldn't last five minutes against these guys."
"No!" she yelled. "I'm not leaving you guys!"
Cyclops laughed. "More for us!" he said gleefully. He reached up to his visor to activate it, and a red blast of light hit Ms. Marvel in the chest and knocked her backwards.
"Cindy, run!" Quicksilver yelled at her, louder this time. "You're not fit to fight these things without your symbiote! Get out of here!"
Scott, Ms. Marvel, Taskmaster, and Quicksilver charged into battle against the zombies as Cindy stood back, watching her friends fight the undead, and she watched as the undead began to gain the upper hand. She knew that with her symbiote could win the battle against these creatures in a moment, but she didn't have her symbiote anymore. It had been absorbed into…
...into the collective symbiote, which Scott had left behind with all his other stuff. It was in the bag just to her left.
Could she do it? Could she survive joining with a heretic symbiote? It may be the only way to save them from the zombies. She had to do it.
Cindy reached into the bag and pulled out the cannister of symbiote out. She held it in her hand for a moment, then she wound up her arm and smashed the cannister on the ground, and the symbiote spilled out onto the ground and onto her leg.
The symbiote gave her a slick costume that was almost completely black, with a red spider stretching across her chest and a black mask covering her mouth and nose that resembled a bandanna. The symbiote briefly offered to cover her scar, but she declined, telling it that it showed experience.
When the symbiote first touched her, it bonded with her memories as all symbiotes did. Even though this had happened to her on many occasions before this, the flood of memories was still overloading. It showed her images of a cosmos filled with aliens and other beings, a world not ruled over by God Doom, but merely with him as an emperor of a country. She saw another version of her, where her powers didn't come from her symbiote, but instead from a radioactive spider that bit her on the ankle. She saw a better world, a world that, despite being devoid of Doom's rule, was better than the one they had now.
Silk took a moment to take all this in. Memories didn't lie, everything that she'd just seen was true. God Doom had lied to them, but why?
She didn't have time to worry about that now. She could feel that this symbiote was much more powerful that her last one. She could even feel her old symbiote somewhere in the mix, and with that in mind she jumped in to join the fight.
Her body went into autopilot as she kicked and punched and shot webs at the zombies. In a matter of seconds, the zombies had been reduced to smears on the ground.
Everyone looked at her in astonishment, and she looked down at her hands. Her powers were now jacked up to incredible levels, and she was armed with the knowledge that God Doom was a liar. And, she had a symbiote with which she could transfer the memories to others.
"You took the symbiote?" Scott asked. "Are you crazy? You don't know what that thing could do to you!"
"Scott, it's alright," Silk told him. "You can scan me when we get back to verify it. In the meantime, I need to show you something."
She held up her arm and the symbiote extended from it, reaching out towards everyone. "Touch the symbiote," she told everyone. "It will explain everything in a moment."
Everyone did as they were told. Scott hesitated for a moment, but did as well. After a moment of blinking, Quicksilver was the first to speak up.
"We're all from alternate dimensions?" he asked. "And Doom has somehow carved pieces off? Why would he lie to us?"
"I don't know," Silk said. "The symbiote remembers some sort of collapse."
"Now that this team is assembled, I think our talents are best where they'll be used the most," Taskmaster said. "Has anyone else heard of the Prophet?"
"The what?"
"The Prophet is the figurehead of a rebellion against God Doom. Do you guys think dat he's right? Dat we should join him?"
"That seems like the most useful way to use our powers," Silk said. "If we're a team, we should have a name."
"I think the Avengers is the traditional one," Quicksilver said. "I say we do it for Reptil."
"Avengers it is," Scott said. "Underground Avengers."
"Right," Silk said. "Let's just get out of the Deadlands first."