A Tale of the Marvel Universe
by DarkMark
Part 5
Johnny Storm sat and shot short flares from a forefinger through a series of fire-rings, stacked one atop the other, several inches above his hand.
"Johnny, don't do that," complained Sue Richards. "I don't want to have to replace the wallpaper."
"It's fireproofed, sis," said Johnny, idly.
"So? What about the window?"
"Quartz. You know that. I'd have to be up a magnitude to melt it."
Sue Richards stood before him in her blue uniform, hands on hips. "I swear, sometimes I just feel like taking a force-field and wrapping it around your head."
"Be cool, sis. Just be cool." Johnny was not looking at her while he said it.
"Reed wants us on tap for the weekly meeting," Sue reminded him. "I just wish I could present a brother who seemed to give a rap about anything these days."
Johnny's finger pointed down to the floor and slowly flamed out. The rings fell towards the rug but were ash before they reached the thick pile carpeting. A second after they touched the surface, a wall hatch opened and a robot equipped with a vacuum cleaner attachment emerged, sucked up the dust, and retracted back inside the wall.
"So what am I supposed to give a damn about?" asked Johnny. "Who's shown up for a fight this month?"
Sue sighed and sat in a formica chair beside him, next to an abstract painting by Jackson Pollock. "I'm concerned about you, Johnny. I think you're throwing your life away."
"Hey, it's my life to throw away, Sue. At the rate we make enemies around here, I might throw it away any day now."
"We all might," Sue said. "But we haven't yet. What about in between times, Johnny? What are you going to do with yourself?"
"I haven't decided. Being a full-time superhero is too much fun." He said it while staring out the window at the evening sky over Manhattan, without the wisp of a smile on his face.
Sue Richards rested one hand on his shoulder. "You're not talking to me, brother."
"What do you want me to tell you, sis?"
"Tell me what's bothering you."
"Nothing." He shrugged. "I'm the Human Torch, idol of all the millions that aren't the millions idolizing Ben. I make thousands of dollars a month just doin' what I do. Bein' part of the Fantastic Four. Why should anything bother me?"
She said nothing.
He looked at her, irritated. "Well?"
"Well, what?"
"You want me to say something, Sue. You always want me to say something."
"I'd be content if you just started acting like a 25-year-old instead of a 15-year-old brat."
"And I'd be content if you'd keep your freakin' nose out of my business!"
"Oh? So when have we ceased being family, Johnny Storm?"
"Since never! We've always been family, Sue. Maybe too much of a family."
"Is there such a thing as 'too much' family, Johnny?"
"There is when a nosey sister starts pestering me about my life."
"Well?"
"You want me to say 'Well, what?' again? All right. Well, what?"
"Well, I want you to tell me what the problem is before we start the meeting tonight."
Johnny looked at his left foot, lifted it, thought about how easy it would be to make it and its mate shoot out flames and propel him around the room on a jet of fire. All it took was a small mental effort. The "Flame on!" cry was just for kicks. And because the first Human Torch said it in the comic books.
"It's about Crystal, isn't it?" said Sue, resting her chin on her hand, which rested on the back of her chair.
Johnny looked at her. "Part of it. That's part, I s'pose."
"So? Talk." Sue waited, patiently.
He sighed. "Sometimes it was easier, maybe, when she was still behind that Negative Zone barrier in the Refuge. I loved her, I knew she loved me, sis, and we both waited till the day she'd get out and tried our darndest, each of us, to get her out. We knew we'd have somethin' goin' then. And then..."
Sue Richards scratched her head, idly. "Then...it wasn't what you wanted?"
"Oh, yeah, it was, but...it wasn't," said Johnny, hands clamped together and dangling between his knees. "Heck, I thought we'd be married first thing. But it didn't work like that. I was in college and she wanted to get to know me better, even if we were in love, and we dated and we waited and...ah, Sue, you know it all. You know it all."
"I know, John," she said, softly. "But it's you telling it."
"And that blasted Black Bolt, yanking her back to the Great Refuge every time somebody sneezes on an Alpha Primitive. So she's back there, and she can't come here because of the effects air pollution has on her lungs, like it doesn't have some effect on everybody's, and..."
"Johnny," said Sue.
He looked at her. "What?"
"There's always the other way. You know the old story about Mohammed and the mountain. Why haven't you gone to her?"
His jaw flapped open. Several seconds later, Johnny said, "Well, I...I mean, it's her decision. There's...I've got stuff to do here, Sue. I'm one of the Fantastic Four!"
Sue nodded. "So am I. But she spelled me when I had Franklin. The FF still functioned, Johnny."
"Oh, now, come on, Sue. You're not telling me to leave the team and go to the Great Refuge."
"I'm not telling you to do anything, John. Just giving you an alternative."
"I can't! I'm needed here."
"Well, then?" She looked as tractable as the Sphinx.
"Come on, Sue, we don't need to get back to the 'Well?' 'Well, what?' stuff."
"Sounds to me like you've made a decision. If you can't live with her and the Fantastic Four at the same time, you'll live without her."
Johnny Storm looked thunderstruck. "No. I--no, sis, you've got it all wrong. You do!"
"Do I?"
"I've got to...I've gotta find some way to get us both together. So that I can have her, and be with the group. The Fantastic Four means something. We're the first heroes of the new age, sis. And the FF can't do without the Human Torch."
"Sounds to me like the Human Torch can't do without the FF, either."
He didn't look at her.
"The FF's the biggest part of your life, isn't it, Johnny?"
He rubbed his hands across his face. "I didn't finish college, because of the FF and trying to find Crystal. I can't get together with her, on account of that pollution thing, and the Inhumans rebuilding the Refuge after that Skrull / Kree War, and...on account of the FF."
Sue Richards kneaded her brother's tense shoulders. "Don't put all the blame on the FF, Johnny. It was you who made those decisions. You chose not to--"
"All right!" Johnny whipped around, causing her to lose her grip. "What do you want me to say? I'm a college dropout. There. I'm not doing what Dad would have wanted me to. I'm not ever going to rack up as many degrees as...as Reed. Reed even gets married, to you. What about me? Why can't I find somebody?"
"You have found somebody, Johnny. But she's a very special somebody, and she may not ever really be able to be part of human society."
"That shouldn't matter!"
Sue waited.
Johnny shook his head. "I'm sorry, Sue. I'm sorry as heck. I know it's unreasonable, I'm unreasonable. It's just...I fight a villain with the group, once a month on the average. In between I go down and mess with my cars, or go to shows, or try to find something to do. Call up Wyatt, maybe, but he's still in school. And, y'know..."
He paused a long time.
"I tried to hook up with some of my old buddies from Glenville High," Johnny confessed. "Some of us went out once, for old time's sake. But they're booked up now. Either in school, or working, or married. We couldn't hang out anymore. One or two of 'em went with me to a ball game or club or something once or twice, but then...that was it. I'm not part of a gang anymore."
"Not in the civilian world, you mean."
"Yeah." Johnny looked up at her. "I liked the civilian world."
Sue said, quietly, "You've grown up, John."
"I...I guess..." Johnny Storm swallowed. "I guess I have. A little. Maybe."
"Isn't it time you saw yourself as an individual, and not just as part of the team?"
"Reed will kill you for this," he said. "You're suggesting I drop out of the Fantastic Four."
"I'm suggesting you take responsibility for your life, and do what you think is best," she answered. "If you want to go back to school, do it. The world's got lots of super-heroes, Johnny. But you've only got one you."
"You'll need," he said. He paused, then tried to say it again. "You'll need--"
But he couldn't get any farther.
Sue went on. "If you want Crystal, go to her. Black Bolt would welcome you into the Refuge, even as torn-up as it is. Or you can go to college and see her when you can. She'll understand, believe me, and abscence does make the heart grow fonder. You both learned that when Maximus put up the barrier."
"Yeah," said Johnny, quietly. "But you know somethin', Sue? When we got to be together again, once the barrier went down, at first, it was all aces. But then, it kinda got..." His voice trailed off. Then, he said: "It wasn't what it was supposed to be."
"Are you still in love with her, Johnny?"
"Yes," he said. "Oh, yes."
"But the reality of love wasn't like that fantasy of love you had, when she was behind the barrier. Was it?"
"If you say so," he said, with a touch of surliness.
"How much longer do you think I'm going to play Dear Abby? Can't you even admit your feelings to yourself?"
"All right, all right, all right! No, it wasn't. Not for her, or for me. But I...but we still worked out okay together. Even when she joined the team for awhile. Sue, I...I..."
He fumbled for words, and she waited.
Finally, he said, "Putting things off. We've both been putting things off."
"Like life," said Sue, resting her face in one hand.
"Uh huh," said Johnny.
"Maybe like love, too."
"Oh, definitely," he said.
"John. Crystal's been doing the same thing. Every time Black Bolt yanks her chain, she's back in the Refuge with the others. He really doesn't approve of her being outside the family unit. That's how they are. They're probably afraid, because they once lost Medusa and they don't want to lose Crys, too."
"There's that little matter of her pollution allergy, too."
"Oh, Reed could find a way around that, in time. Maybe the Inhumans could, too. But neither one of you has shown the willingness to do something people in love frequently have to do, Johnny. Neither one of you seems to want to leave your family."
"Holy crud," said Johnny. "I know that, but...I know it like clear as rain. But I've never said it before, Sue. Not out loud."
"Well, now you have. So what are you going to do about it?"
Johnny Storm stood up, his back to the quartz window on one of the uppermost stories of the Baxter Building. "I'm gonna call up ESU in the morning, and see if they'll take me back for the fall semester."
"They should," Sue said, rising to her five-foot-eight height. "Your grades weren't that bad."
"Then I'll call up the Great Refuge on the comm link. And I'm gonna talk to Crystal. Just talk. Let her know what I'm gonna do, and where we're at."
"What are you going to tell Reed and Ben, brother?"
He hesitated. Then he said, "I guess I'll have to tell 'em all about it."
"Sounds like you're making some good decisions," she said.
Johnny shook his head. "When I think of what's come down in the last year alone...I mean, the water-guy, Galactus and the Surfer, Gabriel, Diablo, Doc Doom, the Over-Mind, the Stranger...it's hard to see how you could tackle a lineup like that without the Human Torch."
"We'll manage," said Sue. "The world didn't end when the All-Winners Squad went out of business. And there are a lot more heroes now then there were then. Reed, Ben, and I should remain active. You know what else, brother?"
"What, sis?"
She smiled and mussed his hair. "I don't think the Human Torch will stay out of action for long. Even if you have to go on solo cases like you did for awhile, or even if you spend most of your time in Attilan after you graduate...I think we'll still be seeing you from time to time."
"You know it." Johnny smiled and took his sister's long-fingered hand in his own, glancing down at the dark blue gloves of the regulation Fantastic Four uniform.
"It's almost time for the meeting," Sue reminded him.
"Let's go give 'em the biggest news of the night."
The two boarded the elevator, one adapted and modified from the super-express job Doc Savage had used decades ago in the Empire State Building. Seconds later, they were on the floor where the FF had their meeting room. Johnny was more nerved than a green poker player in a room full of cardsharps. He felt a gentle punch in the shoulder. "You'll do fine," she said.
He looked back and saw nothing behind him. "C'mon, sis, quit playing games. Turn visible."
"I'm over here," came a voice from in front of him. He whipped his head around and saw Sue, visible again, sliding back the front panel of her belt buckle. A light of a precise intensity shone forth in a tight beam from a projector within and struck a photoelectric cell near the metal door before them. The door slid back along a servo track and admitted the two of them to the sanctum sanctorum of the Fantastic Four.
The round, white crystal-surfaced meeting table was large enough for slightly more than four people, but only four permanent seats were placed there, and two were occupied. One of those occupants wore the blue FF uniform with the encircled 4 on his chest. His face was that of an intelligent man in his early fifties, fairly handsome, but still worn by the stresses of a hundred battles. Said battles had begun during his OSS career in World War II and resumed when he and his three partners had been exposed to cosmic rays during a space shot. His brown hair had shown gray at the temples so long that Johnny couldn't really remember the time when it looked any different. As he sat, his arm telescoped outward, farther and farther, so quickly the expansion could hardly be tracked by the unaided eye, until his finger pressed a button on a control panel a good eight feet from where he was sitting. The wall to his left receded in halves into the sides of the room and exposed a viewscreen behind it. It, like everything else in the room, had been designed by the rubber-armed genius who activated it: Reed Richards.
To his left sat a being who looked like nothing remotely human. An outsider who had been invited into the room by one of the others, seeing the figure within, would possibly turn on his heel and run as fast as possible in the opposite direction. But the man within did not resemble his cosmically-altered exterior. Once, Ben Grimm had been a ruggedly handsome and very, very tough fighter pilot who had seen action in the Pacific during the Big One. Later, at Reed Richards's behest, he had jockeyed a Pocket Rocket beyond the reach of Earth's gravity, right into the Van Allen Belt where a cosmic radiation storm had aborted their flight. Less than an hour later, the World War II vet's body had expanded, distorted, ripped through his flight suit as though it were made of cotton cloth, gained great bulk, weight, and strength, and festooned itself with an outer carapace of orange scales.
Man into monster. Ben Grimm into what Sue Storm had called "Some kind of a--thing!"
As the Thing, Ben Grimm had come to accept his monstrous, powerful new nature. But he had never loved it.
"Well, whaddya know?" grunted Ben, around a cigar in his mouth. "Matchstick's decided to grace us with his presence. On time, for once."
"Ben, put a sock in it," said Johnny, in a tone of mild irritation.
"We aims ta please, Torchy boy," said the Thing. He lifted both fists. "You want it with the left or with the right? Or maybe both. I ain't fussy."
"Johnny, Ben, for once stop clowning around," said Reed. "This won't take long, hopefully, and then we can review business and get out of here. But I wanted to show you something."
"Johnny, don't you have something to say?" prompted Sue.
"Uh, yeah," said the Torch. "Reed, I, um, wanted to say--"
"Save it till later in the meetin', squirt," said the Thing. "Me, I'm expectin' Ralph Edwards to show up any minute with a book labelled THIS IS YOUR LIFE, BEN GRIMM."
"Yeah, only it's just one page long," said Johnny. "In large print, too."
"You want a large print on your face, Torchy?"
"Ben," Sue reprimanded him.
"Both of you, quiet down and look here." Reed clicked a control plunger and the viewscreen lit up with a view of a prison. It was familiar to everyone in the room.
"Ryker's Island," said Johnny. "So?"
"One of the few prisons in state equipped to handle the most powerful super-villains this side of Galactus," confirmed Reed. "Now, this picture, taken at 800 hours today."
He clicked again and another slide showed. This time, it was from a different angle, and showed a large part of the west wall of the structure broken down, with concrete fragments all about and a good number of armed guards on the scene.
"A breakout," Sue noted.
"Exactly," said Reed. "The west wall of the compound, which houses some of the more dangerous inmates. The Sandman. The Wizard. The Trapster. The Melter. Klaw. Radioactive Man. The Cobra. Mr. Hyde. Plus a number of others. I don't know if you've heard about it or not, but Warden Williams called me to let me know...apparently someone set off an explosive device just outside the wall. Nobody's quite sure how, or what the nature of the bomb was. I'll head out there tomorrow to check things out."
"It's been on the news," said Ben. "You know, the news, Torchy? It's what they have every hour on the hour on the radio, in between Creedence, Chicago, and the commercials."
The Torch said, "Haven't been watching the TV much today, or listening to the radio. So why haven't we been on top of this thing already?"
"I haven't had time," said Reed. "Ben and I were in the midst of recalibrating the entry apparatus for the Negative Zone portal with more safeguards. After the Annihilus incident, we can't afford not to."
"Oh." Johnny recalled how Annihilus, the malevolent insectoid monarch of the NegZone, had menaced Reed about a year back in the aftermath of the Nega-Man clash, and how he had briefly gotten out when Captain Marvel broke in and used the Zone portal to enable himself and Rick Jones to coexist in the normal world. Now the Kree Captain was merged once again with Rick, and it'd probably take a lot more than the Zone door to get him free.
"Three of the known escapees are from the Frightful Four," Reed continued. "Whatever the case, we can expect to tangle with them as soon as the Wizard actuates a new scheme. So--be on guard. They've trapped us before. This time, I'd like to be the trapper."
The Thing ground one fist in his massive right paw. "Now yer talkin', Stretcho. It's time we saw some action around here, and I feel like stuffin' the Sandman headfirst into a kid's pail."
Sue Richards crossed her arms. "I believe Johnny has something to say, Reed. Don't you, Johnny?"
Reed's and Ben's eyes went to Johnny, who gulped. Then he clenched his fists at his sides and went ahead. "Uh, I guess I've made a decision, Reed. About college, that is."
Richards's left eyebrow went up. "And your decision is, Johnny?"
"I'm going to...I'm going back to school. In the fall." Johnny closed his eyes for an instant, then reopened them.
The Thing was already up from the table. His face looked as grim as possible. "What's this? You're walkin' out on the Fantastic Four?"
"Ben," warned Reed, stretching out a hand towards his shoulder.
The orange-skinned behemoth brushed the hand away without concern. "You're turnin' your back on your buddies, when we might get a call from Doc Doom or the Mad freakin' Thinker any day of the week?" He walked closer to the Torch.
Sue Richards tensely wondered if she shouldn't put an invisible force shield between Ben and Johnny.
The Thing, a foot or two away from Johnny Storm, snapped, "You're gonna leave all of us, and all of this, just so you can finish out yer four years in boola-boola land?"
Johnny Storm said, "That's right, Ben. It's something I think I have to do."
"In that case, Torchy-boy..." Ben Grimm grabbed Johnny in a friendly but powerful hug. "...Congratulations! Yer doin' the thing you oughta done in the first place! Getcher degree, and we'll keep things rollin' in the meantime. And this time, don't come back except in summer, an' on spring break!"
"Oof," grunted Johnny. He smiled at his old friend. "Ben, you sonofasomethin', you almost had me goin' there. Now wouldja please quit squeezin' me like I was your last tube of Colgate?"
"Oh, perish forbid." The Thing opened his arms, and dropped Johnny on his kiester.
"Umph!"
Reed grinned, and stretched his hand out to help Johnny up. Then he elongated his entire body over, resumed normal shape, and pumped his partner's hand, firmly. "Congratulations, Johnny. I'll go along with Ben on this: I think you're making the right choice. Even the Human Torch needs a degree to get along in the modern world."
"I--thank you, Reed. That really does mean something, comin' from you. I mean it."
"Can we count on your participation with the group until the beginning of the semester?" Reed Richards searched his brother-in-law's eyes with all the intelligence, emotional and analytical, he could manage.
Johnny smiled, warmly. "Does the Hulk have a green suntan?" He grabbed Reed in a hug of comradeship, and Reed responded with the same.
"Well, if nobody's got anything else, I suggest we call it a night," said Sue. "After all, some of us have got to get up early in the morning."
"If Franklin lets us sleep that late," said Reed, resignedly. Their son had just had his third birthday, notable mainly for his spitting up milk and cake on Reed's shirt. "All right, I call this meeting adjourned. And, Johnny?"
"Yeah, Reed?"
"When you need some tutoring, call on me."
"Sure 'nuff." Johnny Storm considered something, then simply said, "Thanks again, Reed. Really."
"Nothin' for me?" Ben feigned a look of pain. "After all I've meant ta ya these years, as idol, role-model, and mother superior? Some people just got no gratitude, that's all there is to it."
"Yeah, Ben," said Johnny. "And Alicia let me know just who that person was. But--no kiddin'--it's gonna be hard not seein' your ugly face every day. Just have to tack a photo on a dartboard, I guess."
"You sure you ain't been hangin' around Yancy Street lately?"
The 25-year-old shook his partner's huge hand. "We ain't sayin' goodbye yet, Ben. But I got things to do tonight."
"If ya can arrange it early enough, lemme know and me and Alicia can double-date like we usedta."
"Nope, not those things. Not even if we could double-date in the Great Refuge. No, I wanna do my thing. Stay loose, big buddy."
"You too, Torchy-boy. You, too."
Sue Richards watched her brother open the door with his belt light, after which he walked down the hall and turned the corner. She knew where he was going. Johnny had to cut loose from the group every so often, and she knew just how he'd do it.
A bit wearily, she smiled.
At the nearest window, the Torch pressed a code sequence on a nearby activator box and watched it swing open. The opening was big enough for him to fit through. Wordlessly, he climbed out, stood a second on the sill, and wondered how many cabbies and late-night strollers below could see a man standing on the 34th floor of the Baxter Building.
Then he launched himself outward, falling like a plummet.
His arms were outstretched, his body held like a diver's. He watched the ground come up at him for a full ten stories before he shouted two words.
"FLAME ON!"
The rush of heat and power enveloped his body from feet to forehead in a fraction of a second. It invigorated him every time he did it. The sight of his own arms, red with living flame, a corona of crackling yellow fire about him, leaving a trail behind him like a comet...the feel of his weight being borne upward by the blasts of flame from his feet...the sensation of power and fury that suffused him... How could all those people below him, in their honking cars and slow-moving buses and worn-down feet, bear to live without this feeling?
He hurtled upwards, over the skyscrapers of Manhattan.
He could never give up being the Human Torch.
-M-
A day later, Reed Richards, in lab coat and civilian garb, was escorted by the warden of Ryker's Island to the area in which the breakout had taken place. "There's somebody already before you," the warden said, keying in the combination that opened the door to the last checkpoint.
"Who?" said Reed.
"He's from SHIELD," said the warden as the door swung open.
Reed stepped forward into the cell block that had held some of New York's most dangerous super-criminals, and which now was a ruin. Concrete blocks lay scattered on the floor, as if from a powerful explosion. Steel reinforcement beams had been bent or wrenched asunder, exposed from the edges of the shattered walls. Surprisingly, not many of the cells themselves had been damaged, besides the doors being torn off (and probably not, Reed guessed, by an explosion). He reached in the kit he had brought with him and was about to clamp a detector-visor to his eyes when he saw someone on the second tier of cells. The other party saw him, as well.
The man was dressed in a regular Ivy League suit, but sported a bow tie and a short crew cut. The creases of his trousers looked sharp enough to cut a finger on, and his shoes, even though puddles of water lay nearby, were immaculately shined. He also wore glasses.
"Dr. Reed Richards," said the man. "An honor, sir."
Reed stretched his neck up to better observe his predecessor, leaving the rest of his body on the floor below. "You seem to have the advantage of me, friend. And you are?"
"Jasper Sitwell, agent of SHIELD, here by direct order of Colonel Nick Fury." Sitwell snapped off a salute automatically when he pronounced Fury's name. Inwardly, Reed sighed. "Ryker's Island is the first of the breakout sites under consideration."
"Breakout sites?" Reed gave him a curious look. "There have been others?"
Sitwell nodded. "Probably part of a coordinated effort," he assured the scientist.
"Well," said Reed, "perhaps we can coordinate a few efforts ourselves."
"Once again," smiled Sitwell, portentiously, "an honor, sir."
The honor is all yours, thought Reed.
-M-
Baron Mordo conjured the image of an alrune in his tripod, noted its beauty and enticingness, then dismissed it with a gesture. It vanished with a puff of Faltinian flame.
He sat back in what passed for a throne in his Transylvanian castle, not thirty miles distant from the one inhabited by the world's most famous vampire. For a time, he had looked over his shoulder upon entering his home, knowing that if anyone could find a way of breaching the antivampiric charms he had cast upon it, Dracula could. But Dracula was three years dead now, slain by the spear of a Scotsman in his own dying act. Mordo did not plan to disturb his rest.
Dr. Strange was enough to deal with, now.
But now, he had Defenders.
Mordo cursed, softly. Strange had been his enemy from the day the bedraggled ex-doctor stumbled over the threshold of the Ancient One's Tibetan lair. The fool had sought the power of healing from the aged wizard, and been rebuffed, but stayed, and discovered Mordo invoking Dormammu's might to strike at the old man. The Ancient One had survived, but Strange had been prevented from revealing Mordo's action by a simple spell. That was when Strange had learned that magic was more than a fantasy.
If Mordo had only killed him then. But the Ancient One would surely have blocked him.
In order to resist Mordo, to save the Ancient One from further attacks, and to find a reason for living after losing his ability to be a surgeon, Strange had taken up the study of magic at his new mentor's feet. He learned quickly. Too quickly. By the time he returned to America, clad in a new garment the Ancient One had given him, along with the first amulet he bore, Strange was a competitor. Before long, he became a hated nemesis.
Mordo had fought him time and again, tried to destroy him and the Ancient One time and again. Even with Dormammu himself backing him, it always failed. The lightsider's skill and his damnable luck had brought him victory.
This, against Baron Mordo.
This, against a man whose skills in magic would have made Dr. John Dee, Cagliostro, and Crowley blanch in fear.
For a time, Strange had forsaken his calling, and Mordo had posed as him with a concealing spell good enough to even fool the servant, Wong. But he had been found out, and Strange defeated him yet again, taking back his burden as Master of the Mystic Arts.
Now, as Mordo had learned, Strange had allies. Powerful ones. The Hulk, the Sub-Mariner, the Silver Surfer. Though they wielded no magic--however much the Surfer's skills might border on it--they could tip the balance in Strange's favor, were he to attack alone.
So, how could he gain allies of his own? A team to counter that of these so-called Defenders?
Mordo mused. He loathed working with others. Even his partnership with Dormammu had come to naught. And yet, a team of underlings working for him...it had its appeal. To command, to forge a plan, to lead a chosen squad to conquer Strange's minions while he conquered Strange himself...
...well, it was worth considering.
Who offered access to the ones he needed? The ones from whom he could pick and choose a team?
He regretted what he must do. But he would insist on his independence, negotiate terms favorable to himself, and then, when asked to pay his consideration, would renege. One did not send errand boys to collect due bills from Baron Mordo. They simply wrote off the cost--if they were wise.
He had been approached, and had refused. Now, it was time to change one's sorcerous mind.
The telephone, that instrument of cold science, was distasteful to him. But it had its uses. He stepped to the one he owned, perched atop a thousand-year-old grimoire bound in flesh, and dialed a long-distance number. Within a short time, he heard a voice on the other end.
"Password," demanded the voice.
"Fire," said Baron Mordo.
To be continued...