The monster managed to capture us and now has most of the Secret Avengers trussed up but is holding me by my neck. I wish Etana were here. But she's still not back from space and is apparently overdue. Logan's not worried. He reckons she'll be fine.

"Now, I'm going to snap your neck and then feed your corpse to the monster that hides in shadows!"

Then a low, clear voice rings out from the shadows.

"But you don't really believe in me, do you? You think the monster in the shadows is just a fairy tale! An irrational fear from the beginning of time! But you're wrong! Throughout history, your people have feared the shadows and that which dwells in it! You fear me!"

"Who's there?!"

"The Shadow Monster… Now drop him."

The hand around my neck tightens.

"I'll give him to you! Feed off him! Don't hurt me! Don't hurt m-"

His hand loosens and I fall to the floor as he sways back and forth, an arrow sticking right through his heart. I turn to Hawkeye, but he's still chained up and then the beast topples forwards and I see a polished black arrow flecked with inky black feathers, feathers I know very well indeed as more than once I've touched the wings they come from. But… That's impossible… You can't draw a bow with only one…

And then Etana steps out of the shadows, another arrow nocked in her bow, her right hand pulling the string right back.

"I. Don't. Eat. People."

Then she looks up, her eyes dark with anger.

"And you can try not to die while you're at it!"

"Tan… Your…arm…it's…"

She sighs.

"Yes, Gladiator drugged me and put a prosthetic on and I quite like it because it's far more advanced than anything else, isn't magnetic, isn't going to be disrupted by EMPs and actually is linked up to my nervous system. It's just like having my arm back."

She unhooks the arrow, tugs the other out of the monster's back, sticks them both in her quiver and then slashes a knife over the ropes.

"You're a foolish, idiotic, imbecilic man and I don't even know why I agreed to marry you if you keep getting into scrapes like this."

She goes around cutting the others down and Hawkeye grins and mouths 'burn…' Whatever that means. I'm still staring at Etana's arm. She obviously can feel it so turns around.

"Basically, he used a drug the Shi'ar designed to bring down Logan, kept me drugged for long enough for them to bioengineer a new arm using DNA samples then attached it in surgery."

"Soo-"

"It's basically a clone limb with a few added extras."

"Like?"

She shrugs.

"Extra strength. Pain resistance. Accelerated healing. Swifter reflexes. He offered to grow me an entirely new body, but I declined."

She flexes the fingers experimentally.

"I crushed a rock on the way back…"

Great. That's just what I need. Etana with the power to crush rock with one hand… We're all doomed…