1976
High up above his head, Kronos heard a loud whistle going up into the sky like an old mortar shell about to explode. There was an explosion, an explosion of bright white and gold glitter, shimmering sparks that lit up the sky and then piece by piece, slowly died out and left the sky black again. Not for long, because right behind it was another sky rocket that went a hundred feet into the air and burst.
"I hate this holiday," he said, momentarily to no one in particular because there wasn't anyone around. He'd been listening to bottle rockets and artillery shells and 10 million firecrackers explode around him for the last 24 hours, and if he had to put up with it for much longer, he was going to strangle somebody.
The experience of talking to himself didn't last for long though, a moment later he felt a quickening and in the next blast's light, could make out Roberta coming through the bushes in a stars and stripe tie shirt and jean shorts, with a bottle of whiskey in one hand and a six-pack of coke in the other.
"You always say that," she told him.
"Because I do," he replied.
"You hate every holiday," Roberta said.
"I know it," he told her, sounding proud of it.
"How can you hate the 4th of July?" Roberta asked him, "It's the one night of the whole year that nobody can complain about you making too much noise."
Somewhere in the distance another firework went off, this one didn't go into the sky and erupt in a fountain of colors though, this one only made a deafening roaring BOOM and caused the ground to vibrate under their feet.
"Thank God it's only one day a year," Kronos remarked, "But even that's too much."
"What's wrong with the 4th of July?" Roberta asked, "There's good food, a lot of booze, great fireworks…"
"It's a stupid ceremony," he told her, "Millions of idiots running around lighting things on fire, to celebrate what? Declaring independence from another country? That hasn't even been the cause for this chaos for almost 200 years."
Teasingly, Roberta asked him, "Aren't you a little young to sound like such an old man?"
"Ha-ha," he dryly said in return.
Roberta tiptoed over the rocks and debris on the uneven ground beneath them and leaned over for a kiss and said to her husband, "Come on, Kronos, I want to find a good spot and watch the fireworks."
"What good spot? Anywhere you look, there they are," he retorted.
All the same, he followed Roberta as she led him down a dirt hill and down toward the river, they both came to an immediate stop at the dock
"Might as well enjoy it," Roberta said as she sat down, "It's all going to be over in a couple more hours."
"Oh joy," Kronos dryly and cynically replied, "Today we celebrate the 200th anniversary of a bunch of morons whose people went on to commit a mass genocide against the original inhabitants of this country."
"I should think you'd enjoy that aspect of it," Roberta told him.
He ignored her comment and said only, "So where do the rockets come in?"
"You ought to be old enough to remember fireworks," she said.
"I remember they didn't use to be so loud," Kronos answered, "Or bright. I also remember they didn't use to be available around here."
"And that's supposed to be a good thing?" his wife asked.
"Where I'm concerned, yes."
She giggled and asked him, "How'd you manage to become such a grouchy old man?"
"I've had 5,000 years of practice," Kronos answered, "It gets easier after a while."
"Bah," she replied.
The night sky rumbled with multiple fireworks that went up in a row and each within half a second of the other, exploded itself and lit up the sky like the sun was exploding.
"I don't care what you say," Roberta told him as she cracked open a coke, "This has always been about my favorite time of the whole year. Always seemed to be the most exciting time to be alive."
"You don't get out much, do you?" Kronos asked.
She half scowled at him and said, "I don't even want to know what you'd consider the best time to be alive to be."
"That's an easy one," he told her, "3,000 years ago…"
"Here we go!" Roberta threw her hands in the air and moved to get away from him.
"Back in the Bronze Age," Kronos said as he pushed up on his knees and crawled after her up the dock, "The freedom! The power!"
"I've heard all that part of it before," Roberta said as she stood up, "But you've still never gotten around to telling me about those three knuckleheads you rode with."
"One of these days," he told her as he also got up, "I won't have to tell you anything, you'll get to see it all firsthand."
"You really think they're all still alive?" Roberta asked.
"I have no reason not to," Kronos answered, "They're too evil to kill."
"So where the hell have they been these last 100 years?" she asked him as she sat down on the dock again.
"They're around," Kronos told her as he sat down across from her, sounding very sure of himself.
"But how can you be sure?" she asked, "If they are still around, wouldn't at least one of them have come crawling out of the woodwork by now?"
The sky erupted again and for a brief second, Kronos thought he'd actually gone deaf. But the moment passed, and when he could hear again he said to her, "They're still alive, you don't go 5,000 years and suddenly lose your head to some 300 year old beginner."
"How comforting," Roberta dryly remarked, "Are there many Immortals your ages left?"
"There weren't many to begin with," he told her, "That's part of what made us so unique. Four Immortals come together at the same time in the same place 3000 years ago in the middle of the Bronze Age…it was unheard of."
"Immortals in general were unheard of, weren't they?" she asked him.
"To mortals," he said, as though the word left a venomous taste in his mouth.
"5,000 years pass and you never change," Robert observed, "You don't give me much hope for a future as an Immortal. You know that, don't you?"
"That's your problem," he told her.
Another boom in the sky, another shower of blinding white and gold sparks, and Roberta could almost hear the gears turning in Kronos' head anticipating how long tonight was going to be. She rolled over on her knees and crawled over towards him and said in a husky voice, "I bet I can think of something to make you forget the fireworks."
"Somehow I doubt that," he replied.
"Oh, I bet I can," she told him as she sprawled out on the dock alongside him and reached a hand up and across to rest on his abdomen.
"Your feeble tricks aren't going to work on me," Kronos told her.
"You underestimate me," Roberta smiled up at him, "I have all new feeble tricks."
And with that, she pushed her own weight against him and in one swift movement, forced him back several inches and right off the dock and into the river. She perched herself at the very edge of the dock and waited as the surface water bubbled, and a few seconds later Kronos shot up looking like a drowned rat.
"You!" was all he managed to get out around some waterlogged gurgling.
"Yes, me," Roberta said as she sat up on her knees and undid her stars and stripe tie-shirt, "In the flesh." With a cheeky grin, she dropped her shirt on the dock and dove into the water. Kronos went under the surface and tried to catch her, but she eluded him. Before he had a chance to come back up for air, she popped up behind where he was and called out, "No, no, over here!" then ducked under again. Kronos popped up and looked around and didn't see her, but decided to follow the ripples in the water, but once he was under again, Roberta came back up and called from another direction, "Now over here!", and again, and the third time she came up behind him and hollered out, "Here I am! Come and get me!"
He lunged at her and almost caught her, but she slipped away at the last second. Somehow Roberta managed to stay just out of his reach at every point for nearly 20 minutes. He finally caught her and jerked her arms behind her back so she couldn't get away and had her doubled over in the water.
"Alright, you…" he started to say ominously.
Roberta was struggling to both laugh and breathe, but managed to get out, "I told you I'd make you forget about the fireworks, didn't I?"
When Kronos heard that, he let go over her so fast her arms around snapped. She turned around and felt along her neck, laughing, but it didn't last long, because somewhere out there, they could suddenly feel two more quickenings.
"You expecting anyone?" Roberta asked as they got back on the dock.
"Not in this lifetime," he replied.
Roberta got her shirt back on and just finished tying it when they saw two men come down the hill towards the dock. In the dark it was impossible to make out much about what they looked like, and even more impossible to try and guess who they were.
"Who are you?" one of the men asked them.
Roberta was dumbstruck for a couple of seconds and couldn't think of anything to say. But she finally collected herself and said defiantly, "I'm Captain America," she pointed to Kronos, "And this is John the Baptist." She looked to the two men who were only fully visible when another artillery shell exploded up in the sky, and she asked them, "And who the hell are you?"
The first man who seemed to be the brains of this duo, pulled out a sword and, ignoring Roberta's question, said mockingly, "Bring me the head of John the Baptist."
"Oh great," Roberta said dryly, "A comedian."
That was all she managed to get out because the second man had ambushed her and they both went back in the water. She managed to slip out of his grip and grab hold of the dock and started to pull herself back on it. A few yards out she saw Kronos fighting with the first Immortal. All things considered about Immortals who were thousands of years old, she still decided she'd better go over and assist. Of course first she had to tend to joy-boy out in the water who she was sure would be popping up like a damn bath duck anytime now. She didn't have her sword with her and in fact, hadn't anticipated a challenge with anybody tonight so hadn't seen fit to bring any weapon with her. No matter, she decided as she grabbed one of the coke bottles out of the six-pack, when in doubt, improvise.
Just as the second Immortal bobbed up in the water, Roberta smashed the bottle against his head and sent him back under for a couple seconds, but he came back up again in a vengeance and lunged at her. Roberta met him halfway by dropping back into the water, she grabbed him by his collar and used the broken neck of the bottle to get in close and cut his throat. Oh they struggled and they fought in the water for several minutes, Roberta wound up re-cutting his throat 2-3 more times before managing to shove him under the water and keep him there long enough for the water to fill his lungs and for him to drown. That would have to do for now, she picked up a couple of nice pocket-sized rocks from the ground just off from the dock, shoved them down his pockets, gave him a final shove and let him sink, and she got back to the dock to see how the fight was going. Except once she got there she saw the fight was already over, one body lay dead on the ground, and the other was all but levitating off the ground as the quickening started.
"Kronos!" Roberta yelled as she threw herself down on the dock and waited for what was about to happen, to pass. In the 21 years they'd been married she'd seen, and experienced, her fair share of quickenings, and where she was concerned they never got any easier, not to take, nor to witness. She watched as Kronos' whole body was engulfed in a blinding light and all hell seemed to break loose as random electric jolts shot out in all directions and caused several in-the-air explosions that looked like a hundred shells blasting at once. A very strong wind has also built up and loose debris went flying through the air like it was a tornado. Roberta stayed low to the ground so she didn't get hit with anything, but still didn't move towards him until the lightshow died down. And when it was finally all over, when the wind stopped blowing and the sparks stopped flying and the light disappeared, the elder Immortal's body fell against the ground, abrupt and hard.
Roberta got to her feet and ran over to the collapsed body, and dropped down at his side.
"Kronos, are you alright?"
He grumbled something that sounded like his brain was still frying from the quickening and he hadn't quite yet recovered his ability to form words. A few seconds passed, and he opened his eyes and looked up at her.
"Well Kronos, do you still hate the 4th of July?" she asked.
"What's that got to do with anything?" he wanted to know.
"Because only on a night like tonight," Roberta told him, "You could do that out in the open and ain't anybody gonna question the lightshow and the explosions. You finally found one day in the year when you can blend in doing that."
Kronos grumbled something else that definitely didn't sound amused, and he let his head rest against the hard ground again and closed his eyes.
"Kronos," she said as she pressed her fingertips hard against his chest.
"What?" he growled.
"That other Immortal that was with him," Roberta explained, "I left him in the river, I let him drown."
"How suiting for a rodent," he remarked.
"Didn't you tell me that all drowned Immortals resurface?" Roberta asked.
"Eventually," Kronos still sounded a bit out of it and not at all concerned.
"Can you get up?" she asked him.
"Yes, why?" he sounded annoyed.
"Two reasons," she said, "First of all, when that thing," she pointed towards the water, "Comes up, he ain't gonna be able to find us if we're not here. And secondly, if we ain't here, then nobody can tie us to that body over there. Come on," she grabbed him by the arm and started to pull him up, "Let's get out of here before the wrong drunk idiots find their way out here."
Kronos looked up at her in the sudden light of a dozen rockets exploding simultaneously at different places in the sky and told her, "That's the first good idea you've had all night." He stood up and said as she gathered the rest of the bottles off the dock and followed after him, "All I want to do is go home and forget this day ever happened."
"That's certainly pestilent of you," Roberta noted.
Kronos stopped suddenly and Roberta almost walked into his back, he turned to her and looked at her oddly for a moment, before chuckling sinisterly, and started back the way they'd come.
"What's so funny?" Roberta wanted to know as she followed him up the path.