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Part Two

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Wakefield, Bronx; New York City

His shield's straps felt a little loose and probably needed adjustment when he got back to the mansion, but all in all everything seemed fine. Patriot glanced across the gleaming azure discus of Wiccan's transportation spell and assessed his team's integrity. Hawkeye, equipped with her bow, battle staves, sword and a full quiver, peered her sights over windy cityscape; the rolling flights of tenements, abandoned warehouses and empty shops. Above them (by a few feet) flew Vision and Hulking, who surveyed a greater panorama from that height.

Patriot called up to them. "Do you see anything suspicious?"

"Negative." Proclaimed The Vision.

Hulkling shook his head 'no'.

Damn it, Patriot seethed. He didn't really want to follow Sean's directions to the letter (not with that nagging voice in his head warning him that something was really strange about all of this) but they had to do this fast before any more people were hurt by whatever creature was on the loose out here.

What could it be?

Clearly it wasn't some wild dog or anything; animal control could've handled that. Even if it was, why would it focus its attacks on people drugged up on that cocaine/MGH cocktail? How long had it been around?

"What do you think we've got?" Hawkeye asked. "You think the Punisher got lost in the Andes at some point?"

A joke like that was her way of trying to cheer him up. Patriot shrugged a smile, more out of deference than amusement, and glanced over the spell's edge again. Speed streamlined through the streets below them as little more than blur of green and silver, dodging the odd car or truck down the asphalt. Since he hadn't reported anything suspicious to him Patriot could only assume he was following their lead.

The supersoldier sighed. "I don't know what this is, Hawkeye, and I can't shake this feeling I've got that something's not right."

"Such as?"

"I dunno. It's just a feeling."

Then Patriot watched Hawkeye pull that quiet, beautiful little smile of hers. "Well then un-feel it. We need our leader with a clear head, especially when we're a girl down."

Maybe that was what was bothering him -- not having Stature around. Things had been so dicey since the War; since her defection to Tony's side and her signing up for the Initiative. Now she was with Hank Pym's Avengers and unable to flit between the two teams as easily as Vision could.

Patriot shut his eyes and perched his gloved hands upon his hips. He heaved a meditative sigh. "She's always had our back when it counts, but..."

"Guys..." The magical blue glint flickered out of Wiccan's eyes. "We're here."

Right.

As soon as Wiccan brought their feet to the sidewalk (where Speed was already waiting for them) Patriot flagged down Hulking and Vision.

They stood before the dilapidated building Sean gave them the directions to. It was a crumbling old storage house barely clung together by its mortar. Each and every window was smashed into, fragments of the dirty glass still littering the sidewalk. Its shaky doors were barred by rain-rotted planks of wood. Its every wall had been tagged with spray paint. This place being abandoned for years made it a ripe homestead for pushers and users alike. Patriot caught himself sneering at the thought.

Hulkling drew back his beefy green fist. "How about we knock?"

"Wait a second," Patriot said. "Sean said there was a dealer hideout here. If we just bust in they might run away before I can question them."

"Sounds like your kind of job, Vision." Said Hawkeye.

"Affirmative." He expressed, before de-solidifying every atom in his body until he was but a ghost of himself. Vision phased through the rotting oak barriers sealing up the drug hovel and returned moments later to re-solidify.

"How does it look?"

"Minimal photon signatures -- too dark to see. I detected no life signs and only a few residual traces of Mutant Growth Hormone. What lies beyond the lobby would require further analysis."

Hawkeye shrugged. "All clear then?"

"Indeed."

Patriot smirked. "Okay, Hulkling. Now you can knock."

A single hulked-out punch transformed the two doors and all the wooden planks obstructing them into splinters. A cloud of dust gusted across the darkened lobby, dragging the debris with it, as a pillar of late afternoon light filtered in through the doorway.

The Young Avengers entered.

The lobby, besieged by darkness, was almost empty. What remained of an old reception desk was overturned and split into two halves of itself. Elongated cracks traced themselves across the walls like wrinkles. Cobwebs infested almost every inch of the ceiling and its withered support beams. A cloak of thick brown dust covered everything.

Patriot took the lead. His boots shuffled through scattered piles of drug paraphernalia; needles and syringes, burnt spoons, abandoned doobies and torn shreds of cigarette paper. There was a blanket and a couple of old sleeping bags rolled up in the corner but nothing much else. Nothing really worth taking note of, anyway.

That was when Patriot noticed something odd about that old broken reception desk.

He brought himself over to it, kneeled, and ran his fingertips across three long and savagely cut trenches running through the desktop's grain. Judging by what he felt they were an inch deep and half as much wide.

Speed zoomed over to Patriot's side. "What've we got here?"

"I'm not sure. Wiccan, could you get us a little more light?"

"No problem." The young mage branched his arms, extending his staff, and surrounded himself in magical blue energies as he began to chant, "Iwanttogiveusmorelight, Iwanttogiveusmorelight, Iwanttogiveusmorelight..."

In literal seconds tiny balls of illumination, each one no bigger than a tennis ball, peppered the rafters and ceiling. Their combined light bathed the entire storehouse and all its rooms in a bright blue luminescence that was as efficient as any light bulb. Within this light Patriot saw in its entirely what his fingertips once felt. Those welts?

They were claw marks.

And they were even bigger in sight than they were to the touch.

"Whoa..." Speed ran his fingers along the indentations. "What kind of animal has claws this big?"

"!"

It came from beneath them.

Hawkeye drew back. "I'm guessing -- that kind."

"Uh... maybe we should call Stature first..."

"There's no time," Patriot said firmly. He shirked the shield from his back, slipped his right arm into its thick leather straps, and stood. "If we don't stop this thing here it'll attack more people. Lets just do this thing and be done with it. Vision, take point."

The synthetic spectre answered "affirmative" and wafted ahead of them in partial flight. From what intelligence his internal scanners provided (as they all knew) he had a better idea of the storehouse's layout than any of them. The Young Avengers followed The Vision's lead across the dusty lobby to an open side door, rusting at its hinges, at the room's rear. Beyond that lay a flight of stairs (as dirty and rundown as any other section of the building) that they climbed down.

At the end of the stairs was a basement door.

The lower they reached the louder those monstrous roars became, angry and furious, echoing up the stone steps; sending tiny but palpable chills down their otherwise resolute spines. By the time they reached the basement door, Vision and Patriot were side by side. The door before them was barred, much like the door upstairs (before Hulkling smashed it into kindling) and with the combined weight of their shoulders they shoved it open.

They found a horrific sight behind it.

Bones.

Puddles of them. Strewn across the floor, each fragment licked down to a snow white hue, the marrow sucked from them, leaving them hollow. Vertebrae and mandibles; fibulas and femurs; sternums and scapulas. The sheets of dust draping the floor were carved up into a grimy patchwork of footprints unknown to anything any of these courageous children had heretofore seen. And then, across the large and barren stone expanse of the storehouse's basement, stood their "prey".

A monstrous, silver-skinned hybrid animal; neither wolf, nor lizard, nor dog, nor lion, but some bestial mixture of them. With its gigantic tail thrashing behind it, and its prehensile claws gnashing at the ground beneath it, the creature opened its bloody jaws and expelled an ear-splitting shriek so loud and tumultuous that its vibrations rippled through the sea of bones it nested in.

Speed stepped back. "What the hell is that...?"

"I have located a file in my encephalic cache. Scanning..." Vision began. "This creature, I presume restructured from a former mutant compound - Cessily Kincaid aka 'Mercury' and Maximus Jenson aka 'Mammomax' - has been dubbed Predator X."

"And what are we supposed to do?!"

"We take it down!" Patriot raised his shield. "...Avengers Assemble!"

**********

The (New) Invisible Mansion

"Well. What do we do now?"

Egghead made swift work of the mess. Under Amity's orders he brushed the glass shards, dust, broken beer bottles and melted drops of steel into a pile. He brushed that into a corner. All the while Amity lay back with a bag of frozen lima beans pressed around her neck. It didn't soothe her much but it was better than nothing.

Danny, vaguely teetering between the realms of conscious and unconscious, had a knot the size of a golf ball swelling out of his sweaty forehead. Coat peeled off his jacket and taped up the bloody gash along his arm while he slept. She just barely suppressed the instinct to commemorate their trouncing with a mural (as all her artistic instincts dictated) out of concern for her team-mates. Danny was wounded and Sylvie was gone -- and Chris was just barely coping.

With Danny's arm sealed tight Coat turned from him to Chris, who gaped dumbstruck through one of their broken windows. With his arm pressed up against the wall and his head softly banging it, over and over and over again, everyone saw how hard he was taking it.

She wondered how her beloved Green Goblin might handle this. Who would he kill or harass to get what he wanted? What example could they follow? But the will wouldn't find her. Coat of Arms reclined into one of their chairs (all of which Egghead put back in place) and exhaled miserably.

"So what do we do?"

Amity sneered. "Stop asking. I just wanna kill that damned oriental."

"Sylvie's been kidnapped, we have to do something."

There was a shuffle of fabric to their left. Coat and Amity turned to Chris, who pushed himself off the wall. They watched him scrub the wet out of his eyes as he went on to proclaim; "I know what we have to do."

"Yes?"

"We need the Young Avengers."

Amity sneered. "Oh, you've got to be kidding me! Them again? Haven't you been rejected enough, Chris? We can do this on our own."

"Can we?" Questioned Coat. "We lost Sylvie and we have no idea where she is. Without her, we can't teleport and the invisible mansion won't be so invisible by morning."

"And it's just a coincidence that you get to see the speed-freak again?"

A blush.

Then Chris angrily slapped his hand against what was left of their coffee table, drawing everyone's attention to him, even Danny, who stirred again at Coat's side. "I'm the leader, right? I make the call. Their magic guy, Wiccan. If we ask him, maybe he could find Sylvie for us. We don't need anything else from them, just a lead."

Danny, sharing Amity's contemptuous sneer, snorted at that. "You'd have us crawl back to those arrogant little schmucks with our tails between our legs? You'd have us begging for their help after what they did to us?"

"Well what happens if that Lady Bullseye woman comes back for us, huh?" Chris jabbed. "If we couldn't handle her with Sylvie what makes you think we could do it without her?"

Silence.

That was a question Danny didn't have any answer to. So the young punisher frowned and returned his throbbing skull to the pillow fluffed beneath him. Chris knew from experience that Danny's silence meant his consent. Coat of Arms seemed to be with him too. That just left...

"Amity. How about it?"

She skulked at the question. But after a few moments of silence and frozen bean bag adjustments, Amity offered Chris her reply. "I don't like it, but if we don't have Sylvie then we lose our place, so I'll do it. Just this once."

"Okay," Chris breathed a sigh of relief. "Okay."

**********

Wakefield, Bronx; New York City

For all it's bulk, it showed no lack of agility.

The Young Avengers stood in awe when the creature known as Predator X leapt from its nesting area and crashed into the far wall. On its four legs it bounded along the circular wall, stringing a trail of massive claw prints in its wake, until its sweeping charge took it towards them. With a pluck of her terse bowstring Hawkeye sank an arrow into its hide. She and the others saw its arrowhead sink and coalesce into its silvery skin.

"It can absorb metals?"

Patriot glowered as its shadowed enlarged around them. "Avengers! Scatter!"

The Young Avengers all; Patriot, Hawkeye, Wiccan, Hulkling, Speed and Vision, all scattered in six different directions, just seconds before Predator X's enormous mass smashed into the ground where they once stood. It heaved its claws from the craters they created beneath themselves, and upon them, it galloped menacingly toward Speed.

The first lunge was like the hurl of a javelin, blood red claws as a sharp as a meat hook thrusting forth to snatch their breakneck prey. But if there was anyone among them faster than this monster, it was Speed. The predator pelted out a violent array of claw swipes and slashes but the silver-haired avenger danced effortlessly around each of them, so effortlessly it was as though he was anticipating the trajectory of swipes before they were even thrown. They were like two stuttering blurs, one reacting to the other's violently swift movements, but never connecting. Not even The Vision's superior optic capabilities could keep pace with them.

In the midst of all this Speed gave the beast an assortment of blurry smiles.

"You..." Dodge. "...can't..." Duck. "...touch..." Dart. "...me...!"

But he didn't notice the predator's spinal tail.

It encircled their duel of reflexes and crept towards his back. When Predator X leaned forward, Speed stepped back, and his ankle stumbled over it. He gasped. Speed toppled over into a puddle of bones. The hollow fragments had a morbid "crunch" as Predator X's titanic silver bulk loomed over him.

Speed shivered. "Oh boy..."

In the few seconds between the Predator's claws and Speed's evisceration -- Patriot dove shield-first into the monster's skull. Metal smacked metal with an impact like a thunderclap, stunning Predator X, if only briefly. It scuttled back to gather its senses.

"Get up, Speed!" Yelled Patriot. He unclipped three star-spangled shuriken to buy the speedster the necessary seconds. Patriot hurled them at Predator X's skull but like Hawkeye's arrowheads, the throwing stars merely melted into its thick metallic flesh.

It rose up from its inertia only to judder again when Hulkling landed atop its spiny back. His wings retracted into his shoulder blades while the shapeshifter grappled Predator X's muscular neck. It bucked and snarled and gnashed and roared, but Hulkling held his nerve, just until the predator reached back, took him by the shoulders, and hurled him away with one massive swing.

Wiccan blanched. "Teddy!"

But Hulkling's wings re-grew before he collided with the wall. Predator X boomed out a victorious roar but it did not follow up against Hulkling -- it charged at Wiccan. It galloped across the dusty basement on all fours as a magical blue aura returned to the mage's body.

"Iwanttoslowitdown," He chanted. "Iwanttoslowitdown, Iwanttoslowitdown, Iwanttoslowitdown, Iwanttoslowitdown..."

As the Young Avengers scrambled to Wiccan's side under Patriot's orders, Predator X's outrageous assault slowed by the millisecond into a geriatric's trawl. Mystical forces summoned by Wiccan's call channelled themselves into a nigh-invisible stream of energy that pinned Predator X into a sluggish crawl forward. No matter how hard it tried it could not move more than a step each second.

Sweat beads trickled down Wiccan's brow throughout the raw intensity of his concentration, but Hulkling was there by his side to will him to keep it up, to persevere, to buy them time.

Speed exhaled. "Is it just me or are we getting nowhere with this thing?"

Hawkeye nocked another arrow. "Maybe if I shoot its eye-"

They silenced themselves when The Vision fired off an energy blast that struck the predator square across the basement. It happened so suddenly the beast was thrown from its feet, quashing Wiccan's spell. It tumbled back into another mound of broken bones.

The Vision closed his palm. "It would appear that this creature is vulnerable to energy-based assaults."

"Any ideas on how we could use that?" Asked Hulkling.

"Wiccan and Vision are the only ones with that kind of power," Said Hawkeye. "It's up to you two."

"Affirmative."

Wiccan nodded. "I'll do my best."

Then Patriot stepped up. "All right then. Wiccan? Vision? On my signal, you guys blast the thing with every drop of juice you've got. Hawkeye, Speed, Hulking and I will buy you the time."

Speed grinned at the new course of action. "Sounds like a plan, man!"

"Okay! Lets go!"

Led by Patriot; Speed, Hulkling and Hawkeye threw themselves at Predator X, who burst up out of the bone pile Vision shot it into. The metallic tissue blown from its jawbones slowly reconstructed itself.

Hulkling was the first to strike by pounding its wound with all the raw force his knuckles could summon. The creature snarled in agony. When the shapeshifter vaulted out of the way Patriot lunged forward with an outstretched shield. It met the predator's wounded with the same echoing slap as before -- but this time the monster's reaction was instantaneous. It curled its claws into fists that rained blow after blow against Patriot's shield.

"Guys...!" He called out.

An arrow thunked the creature's jaw wound.

Predator X tossed his head back with a scream; a momentary window for Patriot to roll out of harm's way while the monstrous being picked the barbed missile out of its face. Its pain was too great for it to notice Speed running around and around and around it in a perfectly circular pattern. With each complete cycle he picked up a new level of speed until he had transformed himself into a ring of green and silver encircling the dazed monster. The sheer velocity of Speed's manoeuvre sent up a spinning column of wind -- one strong enough to carry Predator X up into the air.

It rolled around in the dusty tornado unable to thrash loose.

Until it opened its mouth.

The predator spat out a gelatinous wad of corrosive saliva that splattered over the slight gap between Hawkeye and the circle of motion imprisoning the monster within the tornado's whipping tongues. The sizzling splatter threw Speed off his momentum. He was literally tossed into the air by his own speed, and Predator X found a new target.

Hawkeye.

Patriot couldn't get there in time. Speed was barely conscious. They hadn't yet slowed it down enough to give Wiccan and Vision the time they needed to strike. The Predator vaulted into a pounce across the air and opened its massive ivory jaws. No one could get there in time...

"Kate! Look out!"

...except Hulkling.

Hawkeye, Patriot, Speed, Vision, and most of all Wiccan, gazed on in collective horror as Hulkling through himself between the archer and the beast, and the beast sunk its jagged teeth through his abdomen.

The shapeshifter's screams were bloodcurdling.

"No... Teddy!" Wiccan dropped his staff in shock. "TEDDY!"

Predator X ripped out chunks of pink and green tissue gobbled them up whole while an unconscious Hulkling fell into the dust. His eyes were wide open but he wasn't moving. Pulped meat slumped out of what was left of his ribcage.

Hawkeye, spattered in his blood, reached for him. "...T-Teddy...? Teddy...?"

He groaned.

His unearthly physiology was already beginning to compensate for the injuries that would have killed any human earthling. Complicated threads of half-Skrull DNA rewove themselves into full vitality. Slowly but surely Hulkling's wounds healed themselves.

But Wiccan was too far away to see it.

All could see was the love of his life, Teddy Altman, lying inert in a pool of his own blood; while meaty pieces of him sunk into the stomach of Predator X. His commitment ring felt warm around his finger.

It even had a glow.

Vision, who turned to the sorcerer with concern, said something. Wiccan saw his lips move but failed to register any of the words. It didn't matter. There was only the heart in his chest, pounding like drumbeats, filled with a distant but visceral ache. And anger.

So much anger.

All eyes turned to him as a crack of thunder, as deafening and turbulent as anything Thor might summon, sent rumbles through the basement's very foundations. Cracks formed throughout its circular walls and dust poured from them like rivers. Tiny streaks of lightning danced across floor and snaked up to Wiccan's fists as the pupils rolled out of his eyes, transforming them into blank white sheets of malevolent intent. The ground quivered beneath his feet. His powers rumbled the room to so great an extent that no one except The Vision noticed the arrival of H.A.M.M.E.R. agents through the basement door.

"Iwanttokillit..." An entranced Wiccan muttered. "Iwanttokillit, Iwanttokillit, Iwanttokillit, Iwanttokillit..."

Lightning surged out from his fingertips. Twisting tongues of electrical force stormed across the divide and battered Predator X. Savage bolts climbed down its jaws even as it roared in pain. Hunks of metal skin were blown off his body even as wounded flesh tore itself open internally. The predator was swallowed completely by Wiccan's lightning. Nothing could be seen of it beyond the intense blue light. Nothing was heard beyond this vicious crackle -- until that power exploded.

And Predator X was blown into thousands of tiny silver-coloured wall smudges.

The shockwave threw everyone, Young Avengers and H.A.M.M.E.R. agents, onto their backs. Clouds of dust and streaks of lightning obscured their sights. The only perceptible phenomenon was the crystalline blue orb throbbing in the centre of the chaos. Wiccan's raw, unfiltered power.

"B-Billy!" Patriot coughed through the dust clouds. "Billy, stop! It's over!"

But he did not hear it.

Wiccan could not hear it because it wasn't really him anymore. Rather, it was the sheer mystical potency that lived beneath his conscious restraint, now fully unleashed.

In the midst of all this thunder and light and lightning, Hulkling stirred, finally with enough strength to open his eyes. He coughed. "W-what is...?"

Hawkeye brought him into her arms. She thumbed the tears out of her eyes. "It's okay," she said. "You're okay..."

Then her archer's eye caught a sliver of motion shooting toward the orb. As the other Young Avengers gathered around her they all witnessed the power sphere collapse. Light shattered like glass into tiny fragmented sparkles that lingered where they fell. It was beautiful, in its own way. Wiccan collapsed there, first to his knees then to his stomach. A dart-shaped syringe protruded from his neck.

Hulkling coughed. "B-Billy...!"

H.A.M.M.E.R. agents, each of them armed with assault-level laser carbines, surrounded them. One of the agents smirked. "Calm down. It's just a tranquiliser round. Now. Time to start talking, kids..."

**********

Afterthoughts

* Does anybody, anywhere, like the Young Masters? Seems like a lot of YA fans hate their guts, which I suppose is, in its own way, understandable. Melter's a milquetoast leader who accidentally killed his own parents and an old lady, Coat of Arms is a lil' bit crazy, Enchantress put the moves on Billy, Executioner blackmailed Kate and killed his own Mom, and Big Zero and Egghead are both racists. But as nasty as they all are, I think they make great villains for the Young Avengers. Every good superhero needs a great supervillain, and I think the Young Masters fulfil that role pretty well.

* If I didn't say so before, this fanfic takes place just before Siege.