Author's Note: This chapter is actually one of my more recent ideas for this series, but I knew once I had it all figured out in my head, I wouldn't be able to just leave it waiting for later on. It's a return to a world we've seen in the Infinity Crisis multiverse before, focusing on some new players who will no doubt leave their mark as time goes on. So enjoy!
Earth-199596
Cork, Ireland
It was the dead of night in Cork and the sky reflected it greatly. The sky above the Rebel City was dark and lifeless and there was a chill in the air that could alone be enough to strike fear into the hearts of some men. The streets were sparse that night, almost giving the impression that the city had been abandoned, left to become a ghost town. This, of course, wasn't the case at all though. Having actually stepped on this Earth once before for a meeting with its leading master of the arcane, one Fatima Taj, Strange had been able to sense its similarities with his own Earth, and knew that the cities they shared were largely the same, so he knew that this version of Cork was one of the most populated places in Ireland, much like like the version in his world. No, the city hadn't met some dark fate, but was instead just in the midst of one of those unfriendly nights that few would find to be welcoming or romantic. Yet despite that, some were still trying to make the most of it.
"Mmm…Yes…" a woman panted. "Oh…mmm…!"
She was pressed up to the front of a small storefront by another woman who was kissing her hard on her neck. The couple were just a few feet to the left of the front entrance. Above the door was a fairly lackluster rectangular sign which read "Ravenous Wines - Open All Night" in a thick font. The dim light leaking out from the shop's display window showed a small bag with a couple glass bottles of cheap wine in it resting by their feet.
"See? I told you that I'd find a way to make getting the wine fun for you." the second woman pulled away and smiled.
"You certainly did," the first woman blushed, biting her lip in arousal. "Would you…like to come back to my place after we drop this off at your aunt's or…?"
"That depends; Do-"
"No. You should stay here. I'd love to see what you do next." a man unexpectedly spoke up.
The two looked over to see a man slightly younger than them both standing by the door, having just walked up. The still dim light leaking out from the display window was just enough to reveal the lecherous look on his face.
"I guess it isn't so cold tonight after all." he wiggled his right eyebrow exaggeratedly.
The two women both produced a sound of disgust and then promptly walked away with their wine in hand. The younger man's face scrunched up in frustration.
"Fine! Be like that!" he scoffed.
There was no response. The two kept walking and didn't bother looking back. It was too dark for the younger man to make out which direction they had gone. Not that it mattered; He didn't have time to stalk them anyway. He produced a small fat envelope from his inner coat pocket.
"I came out this late just because of you," he grumbled at the envelope. "This had better be worth it."
Before he could open the door to step inside, something unusual began to occur. A mist began to appear around his general vicinity, spiraling all about. Something about it made him pause. It only took him a moment for him to realize what it was about it that made it special; While mostly white, it had a very fair tint of light blue.
"No! It's her!" he gasped. "Oh fe-!"
An arm hidden by the mist had struck him down to the ground. He wasn't sure from which direction it had come from, but that didn't matter to him. Even though he hadn't even been hit very hard, he had become stricken with fear. He looked up to see a womanly silhouette.
"Go now." a voice from within the mist commanded. It was the breathy voice that had a slightly echoey distortion to it. "Three…Two…"
"Run!" he squealed, as if he was calling out to himself.
He scrambled onto his feet in a panic, letting the envelope he had been holding drop to the ground. He then ran off into the night, praying that he would indeed be seen again. He wouldn't have to wait to be heard again, as his frightened shriek was so loud that it could even be faintly heard even by someone back inside Ravenous Wines.
"Did you hear that?" a very pasty man asked.
The pasty man was sitting on a chair by the door to the back room of the building, while the other person he had just addressed was a somewhat porky man with a thick, dark red beard. He was slumped up against a stack of three crates of wine by an empty shelf. Their clothes indicated that they were employees at the wine store.
"Quiet," the bearded guy hushed his co-worker. "You'll bother the boss. Nobody wants that…"
The pasty employee simply sighed and looked at the door next to him. Behind the door was the surprisingly spacious back room. It was actually more well lit than on the sales floor, but there were some heavy shadows in some areas. More crates of various wines sat in seemingly random places. A cluttered work desk was pushed up against a wall. The paint was chipping away and there was inexplicably a large dark orange stain on the ceiling. None of this mattered to either of the two striking men standing in the heart of the room.
"It appears we are at an agreement." one spoke.
This man was dressed in sleek, but shineless black armor that covered him head to toe. The forearm and foreleg sections had faux feather lining, also black. He wore a long, lightly tattered black cloak that was lined with more of the same faux feathers. His entire head was encased in a black helmet that was sharp and angular, stylized to subtly evoke the profile of a bird.
"It seems so." the other nodded, his accent sounding hard to place.
He was an identifiably white European man clad in a dark gray open dress suit. He appeared to be middle aged, had a shaved head, a hooked nose and large, arching eyebrows. What stuck out the most about him was his tattoos, which were vibrant green zigzagging patterns that covered his face and stretched around his head and down his exposed neck. Even his hands had the same tattoos and stretched up his wrists, suggesting he had the pattern all over his body, exposed or not.
"I expect you to honor your word, Skorpion." the cloaked, armored man said.
"Of course, Shadow Feather," the Skorpion assured him with a cartoonish bow. "Or do you prefer 'Cleite Scáth'?"
"As fond as I am of my native tongue, Shadow Feather should be easier for you to pronounce." Shadow Feather answered.
"Was that at my expense just now? I'll have you know that I've been committing crimes here in Ireland for years now." the Skorpion smirked, wagging his finger playfully.
"I am well aware of your history, Skorpion," Shadow Feather responded dryly. "A man doesn't become one of the most notorious underground arms dealers in Europe without breaking any laws."
"Or ruffling some feathers, am I right?" the Skorpion snickered. He rubbed his hands together. "So the money is already in my overseas account?"
"Actually, you'll be getting half of it in cash right here. One of my men should be arriving soon," Shadow Feather stated. He raised his right index finger up, as if he was lecturing someone. "I have kept my organization in the shadows for years, but the time has come for us to be something greater than thieves for hire. The Murder shall evolve to beco-"
The door to the back room flew open, catching the attention of both the Skorpion and Shadow Feather. The blue tinted white mist could be seen swirling about the wine store, with the two employees huddled together on the floor. A person stepped out of the mist, appearing in the doorway.
"Hello there." she spoke in the same echoey, breathy voice as she had outside.
"Blue Banshee!" the Skorpion exclaimed, recognizing her. His voice sounded different when he shouted, like his real accent was beginning to peek out. "You tracked me down?!"
Blue Banshee was a woman wearing an ocean blue pleather catsuit that did little to obscure her robust, broad shouldered build despite having protective padding sewn into key areas. Her hands and feet were covered by blue gloves and boots with white piping that blended into the catsuit. Her face was hidden by what vaguely resembled a motorcycle helmet. The helmet was a stark white and had a thin, semi transparent visor. A large, bulky white belt with a B-shaped buckle was affixed around her waist and hips. Upon closer inspection, one could see that the helmet, the gloves, the boots, and the belt actually had tiny, almost unnoticeable slots that appeared to be the dispensing the mist into the air.
"That should be obvious," she said, her right hand forming into a fist. "This wouldn't be the first time."
"Ah yes, Blue Banshee. There are some who call you Ireland's 'haunting heroine'," Shadow Feather stepped in front of the Skorpion, his left arm held outward to his side. "I've been wondering when the day we would meet would come. Given your history with the Skorpion, I knew this was a possibility."
"What?" the Skorpion blinked. "I never mentioned her to y-"
Blue Banshee sprang forward, flying right past Shadow Feather's head. She kicked the Skorpion in the head, causing him to tumble forward towards Shadow Feather's back. While Blue Banshee gracefully landed on the floor, Shadow Feather swiftly spun around and caught the Skorpion so he wouldn't get knocked over by him. Blue Banshee looked over her shoulder at them.
"Not bad," Shadow Feather said before glancing down at her rear. "No, not bad at all."
"Feck off." Blue Banshee hissed.
The Skorpion pulled away from Shadow Feather and produced a dagger from within his suit jacket. He charged forward and aggressively swiped at Blue Banshee, but she managed to dodge and grab him by his right wrist. She twisted it, causing him to wince and drop the dagger to the floor.
"Let go of me!" the Skorpion shouted.
He threw his head back, hitting Blue Banshee in hers. He then threw himself forward with enough force to make Blue Banshee let him loose, causing him to crash into a stack of four crates. Shadow Feather tried to get the drop on Blue Banshee while he assumed she couldn't see him, but she spun around with a sweeping kick. He leapt backward, avoiding the attack, before holding up his arms.
"I can see that you're a skilled fighter, wean. I don't want you as an enemy," Shadow Feather complimented her. "Perhaps we could work out an arrangement? We could help one another."
The masked woman stared forward at him. A moment of cold silence would follow before she would respond.
"Naw. I'm not that gullible." Blue Banshee rejected his offer. She swooped forward at Shadow Feather. "Time to clip your wings!"
She pinned him to the floor. He looked up at her. For whatever reason, Shadow Feather wasn't attempting to fight back.
"Oh, I'm feeling all lured. It's been a while since a gal did this to me." he shook his head.
Blue Banshee ignored his comments and struck down at his helmet with great force. The Skorpion then only just managed to get back on his feet. He looked disheveled, and his suit was stained in several spots by wine that had leaked out from the now damaged crates. He ran up to try to attack Blue Banshee, only to stop and gasp at what he saw. Blue Banshee's punches had caused Shadow Feather's helmet to fracture and break apart, revealing a very unexpected sight; No one was inside the suit at all. Instead of a real man, it was a robotic face with camera lenses for eyes and a small speaker for a mouth. Blue Banshee ripped off more of Shadow Feather's costume, revealing an all but skeletal animatronic body that looked like it was jacked to the suit by a tangle of multicolored wires.
"Huh?! You didn't tell me you were an android!" the Skorpion complained. His voice slipped into a thick Bulgarian accent, very likely his natural one that he normally hid.
"That's because he's not," Blue Banshee said. "Shadow Feather knew there was a chance I would track you here, so he decided to do his business with you through a robot."
"I'm afraid you're only half right," Shadow Feather spoke through his robot self. "You see, I had no choice but to do it this way; I'm not even in Cork right now. I'm not even anywhere in the Isles, let alone Ireland…"
Blue Banshee suddenly tore the robot's head off, threw it aside, and then stood up, turning towards the Skorpion. He was eyeing the open door to the store, trying to decide if he should make a run for it. Blue Banshee promptly filled the room with more of her mist, obscuring everything to him.
"I didn't come here to listen to him gloat," her voice echoed through the mist. "I came here to finally stop you, Veselin Krastev."
"You…you learned my birth name…" the Skorpion's eyes widened, indicating that he hadn't been called that name in a very long time.
"You did an impressive job at hiding your past away. Your date of birth, the place you grew up, the name of your first victim? It was all a mystery for so long…" she kept going on. "…But that's over, and I know what you are now; Some rich eejit from Stara Zagora who poisoned his parents for the thrill of it and decided he liked being a 'bad boy'."
The Skorpion tried to run, only to slam into the work desk and fall over. He looked up to see Blue Banshee's silhouette above him.
"…Wh…wh…Who are you? Wha…What are you?" he stammered.
Blue Banshee stepped out from the mist and began to reach for her helmet as she spoke.
"I was walking my date home one night. When I opened the door for them, we saw you standing over their father's dead body."
"I don't…wait…I remember that night…" he said as it came back to him. "Does that mea-"
The Skorpion fell silent as Blue Banshee, who then removed her helmet. There she stood, her face revealed. Even with the mist still swirling around them, he could see her for what she was; A girl who was in late teens, with a round face with pretty features. Her skin was healthy and rosy. Her gray-blue eyes were large and penetrating. She wore her medium brown hair in a choppy pixie cut, with two thin, dyed blue streaks. The so-called 'haunting heroine' whom men cowered in the presence of was, in truth, a girl who looked like she could've been a beautiful fluttering fairy from the illustrations in an old storybook.
"My name is Gemma O'Donnell," she announced. "And now…"
O'Donnell produced the envelope from earlier outside from somewhere on her body, perhaps a hidden pocket. She tore both it and the stack of paper money within it in half and dropped it onto the Skorpion. He didn't even try to move.
"…It's time for you to pay for your sins."
An Undisclosed Location
Shadow Feather sat alone on a reclining office chair. He was alone, fully costumed
and still in his mask inside a spacious living room with black marble walls and large windows that showed a rocky, uninviting beach and a threatening, raging ocean. A large television screen was situated above a glass guarded fireplace. He held what looked curiously similar to a handheld video game controller in his hands, his actual hands and not those of a mechanical facsimile of himself. The screen was clearly glitching out, showing pixelated blurs of color before the signal from the robotic Shadow Feather ultimately cut out.
"Ó teacht ar!" he exclaimed in frustration.
Shadow Feather dropped the controller onto the wood paneled floor. He stood up and paced around the room murmuring inaudibly to himself before picking up the television's standard remote and pressing a button. The screen changed to show a children's show starring puppets and a cheery looking Korean American actor dressed up as an American Navy admiral.
"Dancing Dartfish, Admiral Pillow! I really thought we had finally found Cushion Island that time! I'm starting to think I should give up!" a dejected, vibrant purple puppet child exclaimed.
"Don't talk like that, Zumwalt," Admiral Pillow said kindly, getting down on one knee. "We may not have found Cushion Island today, but we did save Dolly Dolphin's big show from that gang of music hating kite surfers!"
A large breasted, lime green dolphin puppet with voluminous blond hair then appeared next to them.
"Howdy there, fellas!" Dolly Dolphin greeted them. "Just thought I'd come here to get away from those crabs who kept trying to pinch me!"
Shadow Feather switched the channel to a rather dull, by the numbers news broadcast. He slumped back down in the chair.
"People really show that to their wee children? That was even weirder than the British version…" he said to himself.
A knock could then be heard at the door.
"You may enter!" Shadow Feather called out.
The door was opened by a man who then walked into the room. He was a brown haired, fair eyed Caucasian man with a medium length beard, and looked to be in his mid-to-late thirties. He was dressed in a flannel shirt over a workwear shirt, jeans, and beige hiking boots.
"Uh…Hey there, boss. I hope I'm not interrupting." he said nervously. He had a drawl to his voice that suggested that he was from some part of Texas.
"Hello, Mr. DeWitt. No, you're not interrupting." Shadow Feather addressed the man, staying in the chair. "Feel free to come in."
"Uh…okay. Um…You can call me Emmett, boss. If you like, I mean." Emmett forced a smile as he shuffled closer.
"I can tell by the look on your face that something is wrong," Shadow Feather observed. "…What happened."
"I…oh all right. It's what I came to tell you anyway," Emmett sighed. "We got a call from Auckland. It was Johnson. He says…well…Johnson says that he never got the Skysurfer Strike Force's blueprints. Someone must've stopped the handoff."
Shadow Feather stood up from his chair and walked up to Emmett. He softly placed a hand on his subordinate's shoulder.
"I suspected there would be trouble with that job. Don't worry your pretty Texan head, Emmett. I planned for this possibility. In fact, I was hoping for it." Shadow Feather assured him.
He turned away from Emmett and started to walk back to his chair.
"Call Johnson back and tell him that I will be leading a new mission to steal the Skysurfers' secrets for him." Shadow Feather ordered.
"Pardon me, boss, but they must've beefed up their security since last time." Emmett brought up. "Plus, if you go in, they might find out about the Murder."
"Oh, Emmett, that's exactly what I want," Shadow Feather responded. "As for their increased security, I doubt it'll be a problem if they're still using DNA recognition in their base. They have little reason to suspect that it was a sample of my DNA that allowed my agents to break in last time."
He clicked the remote and the television screen changed to show a photo of Maddie Hollister and her son Jack, aka Skysurfer One of the adventurous group known as the Skysurfer Strike Force. It was a slightly older photo, with both of them looking about four years younger than they currently were. Shadow Feather then removed his helmet, much to the surprise of Emmett, who fell silent. Under the mask, Shadow Feather was a gray haired Irishman who bore a striking resemblance to Maddie and, to a lesser degree, Jack as well.
"I think it's high time for my nephew to meet his dear mum's less than beloved twin brother."
Outside, a mighty wave crashed on the jagged rocks that spotted the shore. The sounds of the raging sea echoed throughout the chilly, salty night air.
Hoo boy! So there you have it; A new superhero and a new villain for Earth-199596! Allow me to explain some things in...
Some Notes:
- Gemma O'Donnell/Blue Banshee is loosely based on the Banshee, a public domain superhero originally from comics published by Fox Feature Syndicate/Fox Comics. The original character was a grown man named Jim O'Donnell, but Gemma's backstory is still based on the one given to him. The main difference is that instead of avenging a murdered father-in-law like Jim, Gemma was simply dating the offspring of the Skorpion's first victim in Ireland.
- The Banshee had no powers in the comics and was simply a skilled brawler. While Gemma has no innate superhuman abilities, her Blue Banshee suit does have her special mist dispensers/generators, which help her appear more ghostly, confuse her opponents in battle, and help her make getaways (As she's a vigilante, y'see). This feature is inspired by the Banshee's costume, which had the character in a flowing headscarf and waist wrapping.
- Shadow Feather and The Murder are indeed the ones responsible for stealing some of the blueprints to the Skysurfer technology back in Revelations, Resolutions: An Infinity Crisis New Year's Eve Story. I figured that leaving that detail open to build upon later would work out for the best.
- The Skorpion is based on the Scorpion, the Banshee's only recurring foe in the original Fox comics. I changed the spelling of his name so he wouldn't be mixed up with other characters called Scorpion, such as the Spider-Man villain. In those, he had no real name or backstory, so I came up with some of that for this story, making him Bulgarian born and giving him a name other than his arachnid-inspired moniker. He also straight up had green skin, pointy ears and sharp protrusions on his head. Giving him weird green tattoos was a remnant of that.
- The Murder member Emmett DeWitt is the Earth-199596 version of the character of the same name from 10 Cloverfield Lane. I know it seems quite random, but it just dawned on me that, what with the wild nature of the Multiverse and all, I could include an alternate version of almost any character I could think of. So why Emmett from 10 Cloverfield Lane? "I just watched it recently" is why.
- The show that played on Shadow Feather's TV was "Admiral Pillow and the Search for Cushion Island", a edutainment puppet show mentioned in His Hazelnut Heart. I figured it'd be fun to depict the show proper in the next thing I wrote after concluding that story (Save for the epilogues that I'll be posting soon - I just wanted to get this out first). So yeah, it exists on both Earth-199596 and Earth-83 and probably others too. The character of Zumwalt in the children's show is an in-universe reference to Elmo Russell Zulmwalt, Jr. and the character of Dolly Dolphin is an in-universe parody of Dolly Parton.
Again, I hope you enjoyed it. Feel free to let me know what you think about this chapter. As for next time, I have something very twisted planned. You're not gonna want to miss it. Stay awesome, everybody!