Previously: Spider-Man and Cloak & Dagger encountered Blackwing and Blacklash. During the battle, Cloak teleported a missile into the East River. The explosion damaged a hidden holding container near the UN. Later, Captain America and his crew recruited She-Hulk to oppose the Sinister Syndicate guarding the returned body of Baron von Strucker. During the battle, She-Hulk and Rhino battle in the Queens-Midtown Tunnel in the East River. Two events occur. First, an Oscorp tanker exposes She-Hulk to unknown chemicals. Second, the combat wrecks mysterious machinery hidden in the tunnel. This machinery keeps pre-FF monster Taboo in stasis. The UN kept Taboo this way. Freed, Taboo goes on a rampage, and the Fantastic Four opposes him. Also during this battle, Falcon rediscovers Cap. Simon Savage, and She-Hulk rediscovers Lorrie Melton. Both have fallen on hard times. Falcon gets Savage employment at Stark with Ant-Man, Scott Lang. Heroes get Melton help with psychiatrist Peter Spaulding.
Chapter 1: Mayhem's Bugle
Ominously, as winter arrives, Det. Brigid O'Rielly settles at the diningroom table of psychiatrist Peter Spaulding and his wife Jill with their guests patient Lorrie Melton and superheroic friend Machine Man. With Atlantis Attacks mercifully ended, addict Melton has wandered back to her last doctor, Spaulding. He had sent her to Dr. Tyrone—secretly villain Tyrannus—from whom Daredevil and Dr. Strange liberated her (see Daredevil Annual #9). Tyrannus had made her a Serpent-Person, and she now has much to analyze with Spaulding. Even before Atlantis Attacks, the woman had much angst to overcome.
For the last few weeks, Det. O'Rielly has likewise sought Dr. Spaulding's help. She assures him that he does much to re-construct her well-being after her recent nightmare times: death, re-awakening as insane Mayhem, dying again, and re-awakening again—but only as again Mayhem. Of course, she mentions nothing of Null the Living Darkness currently possessing her body nor of Null's detaining her soul.
With cold sunlight shimmering in, the five sit at a midday meal. O'Rielly sits beside Melton. The veteran police officer assures the careworn woman, "You can conquer your circumstances. You just need to rediscover your inner strength. You just need to seek the right people. Let me guide you. Dr. Spaulding has led you well so far. But, perhaps, a new psychologist would help you further—one used to exceptional circumstances even more than Peter is. Police sources tell me that the famous Doc Samson has moved to New York. I just know that, if you take your inner demon to Samson, after all he's done for Hulk and others, he can help you find your place again amongst the many forces at play in Manhattan."
Secretly, Mayhem knows that any Serpent-Person, even a suppressed one, is a doorway for Set as O'Rielly is one for Null. Secretly, Null's many eyes spy foreboding events at play around Samson. If Null impossibly fails to conquer humanity, Set will fiendishly avenge him. Melton need only re-summon Set within her. Embracing good O'Rielly, Melton weeps upon her shoulder. Seemingly controlling tears, the policewoman pats the victim's back and suggests that Melton get fresh air with Jill, at whom O'Rielly glances. Surreptitiously caught in Null's mesmerizing gaze, Jill agrees. Machine Man astutely notices the glance. But, he only comments that Det. O'Rielly is so good with people.
The remaining three sit sipping after-lunch coffee. Machine Man takes O'Rielly's hand, "Detective, you are indeed very good with people. But, with a computer brain, I am a rather good people watcher and assessor myself. And, thus, I have some questions about a persuasive gaze and elevated diction and uncommon knowledge that you seem to have. This superheroic sleuth wonders. Since your mysterious resuscitation, how have you been? How is your Mayhem persona? Well, do you have anything to tell me?"
"Yes, Brigid, how are you doing?" Dr. Spaulding takes her other hand, "I do not distrust as Machine Man unfortunately seems to. But, you should discuss any personality change. Do you have something to share?"
Sans warning, Mayhem's talons shoot into metal and fleshy forearms, "Thanks, Doc, I do. And, thanks for the hand. It forestalled Machine Man's plan to shock me with his high voltage touch if I proved dangerous. I guess you two are shocked now."
Stuck, Spaulding screams. The armored knight rises to subdue the hag as her loden vapor manifests. Mayhem pukes forth a jet Null tentacle and wraps Machine Man. He falls back into his chair, and the tentacle detaches holding him bound. Mayhem injects black smoking ichor down her claws into the two beings. They jerk about to free themselves but are soon captured and still.
Null telepathically speaks with many damned voices, "Let Null's death and nothingness flow throughout you. You are not conduits as Mayhem but are still slaves at the end of my tether. My netherblood flows through your bodies and controls you wills. You two will bring the Living Darkness onto the whole world.
Machine Man, my tin toy, you will petition the United Nations to recognize your personhood. The assembly is anxious for pleasantry and a better reputation as Taboo news [see Strange Tales #75] yet oozes forth. I inject seeds of humanity's destruction within you. You will carry-out a rampage humiliating the trusting UN. In turn, faith in the UN will wane further. After your acts, you will disappear out of shame until perhaps the future [see Machine Man LS]. I fear artificial me and want you removed for my world conquest. Iron and steel resist sorcery. Only briefly may I magically control your metal being.
Spaulding, foolish man, you will husband this plot. You will contact Jericho Drumm, Brother Voodoo, Haiti's UN representative, for a sponsor. You will gather Avengers and Doc Samson to testify on Machine Man's behalf. The rampage will denigrate them too.
You will make sure the weakling Lorrie Melton meets her supposed savior Samson. You will both forget that this conversation occurred."
Mayhem snaps her talons back into her hands, and all seems normal. Except that Machine Man's computer memory seems to lack part of the recent conversation. Except that Spaulding's arm suddenly savagely hurts upon a stained tablecloth. Coffeenerves and coffeestains he guesses.
After visiting Spauldings,Mayhem glides from Queens to Manhattan. She has further nihilistic seeds to sow and Mark Ewing's vigilant psyche in which to sow them. Conspiracy buff Mark Ewing (see Conspiracy LS), Daily Bugle, shakes Det. O'Rielly's hand. Over months, she has provided the great story of the UN's Taboo cover-up. Police reports on the machinery that She-Hulk and Rhino exposed. Cloak's exclusive interview about the missile in the East River (more Cloak and Dagger interviews promised). Patrolman Dan's report, which Gen. Ross confiscated. Travelogue writer Lewis Conrad's interview about his discovery of Taboo, the creature's subsequent rampages, and the UN's subsequent suppression of Conrad's attempted publications. Tips leading to attempted interviews with Silver Sable, Sandman, She-Hulk, Stingray, Ant-Man, the Fantastic Four, and Sersi. All of whom—to protect others—refuse to talk. Tips leading to federal documents that the U.S. Army insist remain classified.
As Acts of Vengeance begins, O'Rielly and Ewing are nearly ready to publish. This afternoon, the woman sits again at Ewing's Bugle desk. Nearby, photographer Peter Parker eyes her uneasily. She eyes him back ominously. The disguised Spider-Man has two reasons for disquiet. One, the story that he overhears is not one needing telling. The Fantastic Four and many other heroes could get hurt. Two, his Spider Sense flares whenever Mayhem is present. On one hand, the clawed vigilante has always been dangerous, so she might send bad vibes as any dark avenger would. On the other hand, she could be perniciously altered by her resuscitation. Spidey monitors her.
And, she, Null within, likewise spies upon him. From an extra-dimensional vantage, Null knows that Peter Parker is Spider-Man. After the final interview, Mayhem will kill the pesky Web-Slinger. He is his namesake: a pest minor yet determined and potentially deadly. Along with Peter Parker, she will kill Alan Racine, the visiting French reporter who is secretly mercenary and crimefighter Peregrine. Peregrine infiltrated the Daily Bugle staff after Silver Sable, common employer, asked him after the UN Security Council, employer, asked her.
The fateful day arrives. Alan Racine types at his desk near Glory Grant. Next desk over, Brigid O'Rielly answers Ewing's final questions. Ewing rises to get copy to Robbie Robertson. Suddenly, O'Rielly glares at Racine, "So, M. Racine, have you heard my tale? Does it intrigue you?"
Cocky, he meets her glaring gaze, "Oui, detective, you lay bare the great mystery of the great beast Taboo. You ferret-out missing papers and people. You illuminate shady events. You make the authorities look bad. Surely, sleuth, you are a little Dupin."
O'Rielly's nails extend subtly, "Dupin, Poe's detective. Do you know what else Poe wrote about, Peregrine?"
"So, you know," Peregrine smirks smugly, "You know, I am an educated, well-read, well-taught, scholarly man. I know literature thoroughly. But, please, moi chere, share what you think that you know that I do not know."
O'Rielly's scarlet hair rises and elongates turning slightly green. Racine announces over his shoulder, "Glory, you will want to clear the newsroom. We seem to have an aspiring femme fatale visiting."
Her complexion turned ashen, O'Rielly continues, "Poe wrote of many things: French inspectors unable to see harmful things in plain sight, noble living dead women. . . ." Mayhem levitates. The falcon's eyes narrow. Grant, Robertson, Ewing, Charlie Snow, Jacob Conover, and Betty Brant-Leeds scurry for the exit. Intrepid Ben Urich, Peter Parker, Lance Bannon, and Joy Mercado are elsewhere.
Mayhem continues with many voices, " . . . tortured psyches led by inner demons directing them to macabre violence, dirty and foolish birds quothing nevermore over forgotten lore. I only regret that Peter Parker is away at the moment. But, I know that he will swing-in soon—too late to save you." Black vapor, not Mayhem's typical green gas, blows from her nose and snarling mouth.
"Apparently, M. Parker is more than he appears. Apparently, you are more than Silver Sable's intelligence indicates. Very sneaky," states Racine.
"Figured that out, Closeau?" Mayhem's Stygian vapor is an ebony umbra around her.
"Aw shitsticks, bad news," Kate Cushing pronounces. She and J.J. Jameson have just emerged from their meeting in her office. The city editor and publisher are rattled to find the abandoned newsroom. They are aghast to see the floating specter threatening guest Racine.
"Worry not, madam and chief, I am a master French savate fighter," the disguised Peregrine flies in for a kick. With a dull thud, he bounces innocuously off Dark Mayhem.
Tumbling back over his desk, he seizes a pen and hurls it into Mayhem's dark eye, "Viva la France!"
Tarry protoplasmic matter dripping, Mayhem draws the intruder from her gory socket, "The rooster is France's national symbol, n'est-ce pas?"
"Oui, proudly so," declares Peregrine a bit disconcerted.
Shockingly, the orb regrows itself, "That's you, chicken hawk, all crowing. Null has many eyes, and they are deadly." Eldritch eyebeams blast Racine across the room. Two more stun Cushing and Jameson. "You two will join nothingness this day."
Mayhem glides to Racine who leaps high to deliver a vicious crosskick. The unharmed demoniac seizes his leg, twirls him, and viciously slams him on a desktop. Following through, she hurls him headfirst toward a wall, but his acrobatics turn him bootsfirst preventing critical harm. Her subsequent eyeblast slams him off the wall anyway, "I shall gut you and hang your body like a capon, impotent hero."
Suddenly, Captain Universe crashes through the wall between the newsroom and the outside. "No, you won't, Null," the spangled here releases a spectacular lightburst before the Living Darkness, "You're the one going into the light—or perhaps away from it." Captain Universe uppercuts Mayhem across the room.
Blinded as Mayhem, Racine feels his way back to his desk. A locked briefcase opens, and he changes into Peregrine before likewise blinded Cushing and Jameson.
Blinded Jameson reacts to Captain Universe's crash entry as he usually does Spider-Man, "Damn you! You masked menace! You'll wreck the place!"
"Fear not, ornery good citizen, I shall remedy all," Captain Universe wisecracks while his matter manipulation mends the broken wall of entry, "You're still starry-eyed by my entrance, triple J, but I just fixed your new door."
Recently, Spider-Man has gained Captain Universe's abilities. One ability is heightened environmental awareness even beyond Spider-Man's usual sense. Through this awareness, Peter Parker got bad vibes all the way at Empire State University when O'Rielly changed just now. Captain Universe even identified the true danger: Null hidden within Mayhem. As cosmic Spider-Man, he flew to the rescue. But, familiar with Jameson's habitual Spidey-trashing, he transformed his costume so that Captain Universe gets the inevitable bad press. Captain Universe is a new target for Jameson and a transitory identity who might soon leave Manhattan. Spider-Man must continually live in New York.
Shrieking, Mayhem rises and expands her Null form. From Mayhem's visage, swirling Cimmerian tentacles swell throughout the room. "Back to the depths, jellyfish of Satan,"
Captain Universe's kinetic bolt hammers Mayhem-Null through an exit door and over the main stairwell's railing.
Slinking from sight, her pitch appendages unexpectedly capture Jameson and Cushing still stumbling about half-blind. Mayhem drags them into her seventeen-story drop. Cushing screams plummeting to concrete two hundred feet below. Flailing, Jameson howls, "Let me go! Let me go!"
Promptly, Captain Universe and Peregrine are both there. Captain Universe touches Jameson's tentacle to disintegrate it, "Let you go? But, J.J.J., business isn't that bad."
However, Universe's matter conversion ability has no effect. Concrete swiftly approaches. With unearthly strength, he wrestles Null's limb slightly loose and ascents the publisher toward safety. As an afterthought, a plasma bolt frees Cushing as Peregrine desperately struggles to save her.
Saved Jameson barks, "Get that maniac!"
"Do you mean the one downstairs or here?" disguised Spidey needles as he sets Jameson on stairs, "Holy!" Captain Universe's telescopic vision witnesses Mayhem's impact.
He thought her levitation power would spare her. But, instead, her body fractures, cracks, splits, splats upon the cement. More shockingly, it gruesomely re-constructs itself. The spread black ichor pool re-gathers skull and bone chunks, meat fragments, guts, organs, brains. And, it slurps them back into place. Hair, skin, and teeth stick in bloody skidmarks upon the floor. Sudden Promethean hellfire re-animates the abominable form. And, Null's bride rises. The smoldering, semi-mummified undead thing shambles still broken into the basement pressroom.
Above, Captain Universe informs Peregrine, "Null is not nil. We need to save any pressroom staff in the basement. And, that demon must pay for disturbing departed O'Rielly so. After it!"
"France's champion has no fear of this villain, this wounded bete. I lead the Universe," Peregrine streaks ahead.
"I'll lead," the more powerful hero blurs past.
In the pressroom, Null unloads on the arriving Captain Universe. Eldritch eyebeams and bolts barrage him, skidding him across the floor. Titanic tentacles twist outward, impale presses, hook catwalks, grab belts, and—with calamitous creaking and crunching—yank centutons of steel upon dazed Captain Universe. Mayhem is O'Rielly no longer. Leaden mist pulls away her hair and clothes. Grossly animated, she is bald, nude, skeletal, scarred, wasted, hideous. Her eyesockets loft drifting Null-lava as she hovers above the ground. Hellfire glow emanates from beneath her schismed flesh. Peregrine arrives. Soaring over pressroom girders, he divebombs her. But, Null's snaking arms instantly wrap the raptor.
Peregrine spreadeagled before the demon, Null pronounces, "Let us do augury. Your future holds death and nothingness." Mayhem's very first swipe eviscerates the hero and dumps his insides onto her. "Shut up!" she severs the lower jaw of the shrilling cavalier. Seeing Captain Universe's burialmound stirring, she extends her talons long—and slices Peregrine in twain.
"You witch!" freed Captain Universe's plasma bolt blast through Mayhem.
But, still, she moves. Still, ebony vapor flows from her. Still, Null holds his fleshy ghoulish puppet erect. Despite a gaping chest hole, she gurgles and snarls from her depths, "Fuck you, Cosmic Boy, Star-Spangled Kid!"
"You've got the wrong Universe," the retorts.
"Your Uncle Ben sucks cocks in Hell, Spider-Man," damned voices ejaculate before eyeblasting Captain Universe again.
In a resplendent flash, the hero streaks into Mayhem tackling her to the floor. Pinning her deadly talons, Captain Universe states, "Enhanced cognizance tells me that a demon cannot possess an uninhabitable body. Thus, let the Living Darkness's eyes see the Uni-Power light."
The cosmic guardian catalyzes a conversion throughout Mayhem's rotting flesh. Carbon and water breakdown into purest light and are a stellate flare amidst the sea of black, foul smoke, oblivion, nothingness, despair that is Null's body. Momentarily, Null's form envelops Captain Universe and the hero is surrounded by fallen S'raphhim, endless groaning faces and clawing hands. Defiantly, the hero raises a fist aglow with a threatened plasma onslaught. But, inexplicably, Null withdraws his foul ether back into his home dimension.
From a mid-air portal, he speaks, "Null has other appendages, trifling bug. I shall soon strike you again. Darkness flows eternally and resides in many."
"Which is why humanity always has heroes taking responsibility," cosmic Spider-Man shoots a torrent of webbing as never before seen. It carpets the great demon. It clogs the dimensional doorway. Abruptly, the portal seals.
Alone, Captain Universe touches the metal heap and preternaturally re-assembles the presses. Somberly, he grafts Peregrine together and repairs the warrior's garb. Tragically, he cannot return Peregrine's life. Kissing the Frenchman's cheek, Captain Universe departs.
Later, Spider-Man assembles O'Rielly's friends Cloak, Dagger, Rusty Nales, and Fr. Bowen at Holy Ghost Church. They take the news as well as can be expected. Spider-Man claims that Det. Brigid O'Rielly is now completely at peace. After Spider-Man leaves, Fr. Bowen prays with the mourners. He assures them that Brigid is now perfectly serene. However, privately, Fr. Bowen is troubled. His limited knowledge of demonology tells him that a collective such as Null may still hold O'Rielly's soul hostage despite her physical destruction. This Mayhem could continue.
After Cloak and Dagger, Captain Universe visits Mark Ewing back at the Bugle that night. Alone with Ewing, he tells the investigative reporter that Mayhem, a demon, obviously lied and manipulated. She provided a story meant to hurt good people, superheroes and the UN. Ewing replies that creditable reports have also arisen during the investigation and that proper journalism is impartially executed. Captain Universe states that a few plasma bolts could destroy Ewing's computer, notes, and printouts and censor his report.
"But, I happen to be secretly a champion of the free press," Captain Universe imparts, "Just remember, Ewing, freedom and knowledge are powerful. And, with great power comes great responsibility." The hero phases through a wall and flies away.
Hours later, Robbie Robertson enters the newsroom and requests the expose. Scowling, Ewing grudgingly explains that the best journalism neither uses specious evidence nor burns sources. He states that he must continue gathering information on government cover-ups concerning superheroes and monsters. One day, the big truth will be published.
Elsewhere, in France, Peregrine's closed casket descends the soaring hero into the earth. Peregrine, Alan Racine, will be missed throughout the superheroic and writing communities. Crimefighters and literati encircle his grave: Silver Sable and the Outlaws, Excalibut, Spider-Man, Captain America, Blitzkrieg, St. John Allerdyce (Pyro), Lewis Conrad, Martin Gold (Legion of Night), and Dollar Bill. His death in pitched battle shows his courage to the end, and many in the press plan to write tributes.