FIRE!
Part 15
by DarkMark
Nick Fury looked out of the porthole in the side of the Heli-Carrier at the island of Manhattan.
That big ship of concrete had changed so much in the many years he'd been alive, but not so much he couldn't recognize it. Yeah, New York City was his home, all right.
"Thinkin' what a long, strange trip it's been, Nick?" said a voice behind him.
Fury knew the voice. He didn't even turn around. "Where'd you get that from, Gabe? That Million Megaton Explosion crap?"
Gabriel Jones smiled. "Nah. Grateful Dead. They're a band. Musician's gotta keep up with the times at least a little ways, Nick."
"Times ain't worth keeping up with, Gabe," grunted Fury, puffing on his cigar. "Not these times, anyway."
Moving a little closer, Gabe said, "Maybe you're forgettin' a little about what times used to be like, Nick. I haven't."
"Neither have I," said Fury, turning casually and taking the cigar out of his mouth. "In case you think I forgot how the Howlers used to haveta get inta fights to make sure you got inta pubs...I ain't."
Gabriel Jones nodded, somberly. The Howling Commandoes had been one of the first integrated units in the entire Army. Eleanor Roosevelt, it was said, had lobbied her husband to have the thing done. But Gabe had not only been a world-class trumpet player. He was a first-class soldier as well, definitely Howler material, and the squad wouldn't have been complete without him.
"Also how we had to go with that private to see his folks in the internment camp," said Nick, tipping his cigar ash into one of the trays that seemed to be positioned every twenty feet around the Heli-Carrier. "Or the time we had to teach some manners to the guy that called Izzy a kike. Yeah. I remember that, Jones."
"So do I," said Gabe, quietly.
"But I remember the other way it used to be, too," Fury continued. "How it felt to see the flag passin' by in a parade. How the folks back home treated ya when you went back for a visit. What it was like, knowin' you were fightin' on the right side. When it was all right to like America. Yeah, Jones. I remember it all."
Gabe smiled lightly. And Nick thought Captain America was the only one who wasted his time in nostalgia.
"Y'really wanna hear me tell it again, Jones? You musta heard it enough times to take it to Jebru and back already."
"You forgot, Nick. We fought all the way to Jebru and back, already."
"Yeah," said Fury. "Yeah." And he looked out of the porthole of the Heli-Carrier at the setting sun reddening the clouds not far away. The man who looked at them seemed to be in his late 30's or early 40's.
He had been born during World War I.
All things considered, Nick supposed that he had been conceived during one of his father Jack's furloughs home from the front. He had been born in 1917. His brother and sister, Jake and Dawn, had come along in the same package the next year. But that was a few months after Jack Fury, a flying ace of World War I, had died in combat.
Jack's wife Brigitte had gone to work in a laundry and the family had moved, not without protest, to Hell's Kitchen. It was about as good as they could get, and the getting was none too good. But at least when the Depression hit a few years later, they were prepared. They were tough. They had to be, for the times and the neighborhood.
The neighborhood was perilously close to the domain of the Yancy Street Gang.
Nick Fury learned about fighting the hard way, joining a mob of toughies and proving he was worthy to battle beside them, against the Yancy Streeters. Sometimes he was joined by a tall, tough orphan kid who was being raised by his aunt, and both of them took part in what they called the "Friday night social meeting" with the Yancy bunch.
Years later, the other kid got out of Hell's Kitchen on a football scholarship, went to Empire State University, and soon became a flying ace in the Pacific. His plane, which sent many a Zero to Davy Jones's Locker, was known by the motto painted on its fuselage: the Grimm Reaper.
Very often, Nick had to fight to defend Jake. His younger, more sickly brother had a nasty temper, a big mouth, and few muscles to back them up. One time, when Nick had to beat three rowdies to save the kid, Jake had sneered that he could have taken them all if Nick hadn't shown up.
To that, Nick finally lost control and answered with a roundhouse right that blackened Jake's eye.
Dawn was caught between the two of them, always doing well at school (as did Jake, who was probably smarter than Nick in book-learning). Mrs. Fury did well to hold the tribe together, but she was tasked by it.
Eventually, Nick found himself in a flying circus of sorts with a guy named Red Hargrove, and became an expert parachuter. One thing led to another, until an encounter with a carny strongman named Dum Dum Dugan and several others during the Pearl Harbor incident swept them all into the Army, as a special attack squad known as the Howling Commandoes.
Nick Fury became their first and only sergeant.
The others were a mixed lot, from all over the country: Izzy Cohen, the Jewish mechanic from the Bronx; Dum Dum Dugan; Dino Manelli, the movie heartthrob who could speak German well enough to pass as one of the enemy; Rebel Ralston, the Southerner who brought with his combat ability and poker-playing skills the "WAH-HOOO!" yell that had become their trademark; Junior Juniper, fresh out of college and still looking like he was in high school; and, of course, Gabe Jones himself, a trumpeter from Harlem who seized the chance to make the Howlers one of the Army's first integrated units. To their credit, none of the other Howlers seemed to give a damn about Gabe's color. If anybody else did, seven men taught them to regret it.
Red Hargrove died in the adventure that brought them together. Not long after the squad's formation, Junior Juniper died. He was soon replaced, if a man ever can be "replaced", by Percival "Pinky" Pinkerton, a Britisher with a penchant for umbrellas and a knack for using them (and a Browning rifle) in a most effective fashion. Much later, the Howlers even gained a recruit from the enemy. He was Ernest Koenig, a German who had come to hate Hitler, and fought with the Commandoes to free his homeland, and his sister, from the Nazis. Eventually he was successful in both.
Before that time, Fury met with Baron Strucker, his opposite number from the Nazis. The American sergeant was duped into a fight with the German while drugged, allowing the Krauts a propaganda victory for awhile. Fury was stripped of his rank. But, in a second fight with Strucker, the Baron's scheme was exposed, and Fury beat his foe to a bloody pulp. The Howlers got pictures of the scene to confirm Fury's victory, and the Nazis' propaganda was turned against them. Fury was reinstated as the Howlers' sergeant.
Neither Fury nor Strucker ever forgot that encounter. Soon, the Baron would form his own Blitzkrieg Squad, specifically designed to counter the Howling Commandoes. The two teams faced and fought many times before one claimed victory. Strucker fell from grace with Hitler and was forced into hiding, turning to renegade Japanese to form the budding organization known as HYDRA. But Fury wouldn't learn of that for decades to come.
The Howlers spearheaded the D-Day invasion with a secret mission of their own, and aided the charge into Hitler's heartland. They fought all the way, up to Berlin, up to the point in which the first Human Torch burned Hitler to death. They were about to be sent to the Pacific Theater when somebody let them know that a bomb had been dropped someplace in Japan. One bomb later, peace terms were negotiated and accepted.
That was it for the war, but not for the Howlers.
Most of them stayed in the army. The one or two who didn't came back within a couple of years. By the outbreak of the Korean War, all of them were around to be reformed as the Howlers, save Eric Koenig, who had gone back to help rebuild the free half of his homeland. Fury was promoted to lieutenant early in the war for bravery. The Howlers fought on till the cessation of hostilities (or at least open ones).
Then they came back home, and got out of the army.
Rebel became a senator. Percy managed a Playboy Club in London. Dino got his own variety show on TV, along with some hit records and movies. Gabe went back to playing jazz, and Dum Dum tried a number of ventures, including a trucking company, none of which worked out. Eric became an airline pilot for Lufthansa.
And Nick Fury, looking around for something to do, was approached by Wild Bill Donovan for work in the Central Intelligence Agency.
It turned out to be the kind of gig Fury could get behind...helping out Uncle Sam by working undercover against the Communists. On occasion, he also went up against international crime. At one such occasion, he was dosed with something called the Eternity Formula, which severely retarded his aging process. It turned out that, of all the Howlers, only Dum Dum Dugan and Gabe Jones were of his blood type. So, in gratitude for their comradeship, he made them a gift of a blood transfusion, and their longevity was also extended. Not as greatly as Nick's, but they might live to over 100 years if they didn't get killed first.
In 1963, Fury was thrown into conjunction with the Fantastic Four. Two of them he'd already met...Reed Richards, as an OSS guy who'd helped the Howlers once during the war; Ben Grimm, as a fellow street warrior in the 30's and as a war hero in the Pacific during the Big One. The other two, Sue and Johnny Storm, were new to him. They all went up against a villain called the Hate-Monger in South America. When the Hate-Monger got shot by his own troops, they unmasked him. Fury could have died on the spot.
The Hate-Monger had the face of Adolf Hitler.
Was it really him? Was it just a double? Was it some fanatic who'd had plastic surgery? There was no telling. But the Hate-Monger was definitely dead. That seemed to end things.
Except that, in recent times, the Hate-Monger had come back again, and again, and again...
And, only weeks after that, Fury had lost the sight in his right eye. He'd had a wartime injury which threatened to rob him of sight in that eye for years. His kid brother Jake just decided to hasten the process along, by shooting him in it.
From that day on, Fury wore an eye-patch. It was a long time before he ever saw Jake again, with his good eye.
Two years passed, while Fury adjusted to life with his new impairment and continued to work for the Agency. Then he was told to go to a certain place in Manhattan which, of all things, was hidden by the facade of a fully-operational barber shop. It turned out to be a place that looked more like Mission Control at Houston. He was thrust half-naked into a matrix that looked like a bathtub full of foam rubber. From that, the techs quickly created a brace of robots that looked just like him, named Life Model Decoys, or LMD's for short. Each of these was turned loose on the street. He saw each one of them destroyed by hidden assassins.
From there, he was taken by a car with flight capacities to the very heli-carrier he stood in today, for the first time. He met a host of higher-ups from all over the free world, including Tony Stark, the millionaire industrialist who had designed the thing they were flying in and most of the weaponry the people in it used. They told him they were an American-based organization called SHIELD, which stood for Supreme Headquarters, International Espionage and Law-enforcement Division.
They also told him that their previous director had gotten killed by an enemy organization called HYDRA, and that they had chosen him to be their new leader.
Fury had protested that he wasn't suited for the job. Even though they'd made him a colonel, he said he was still a three-striper at heart. If he tried to take on a job like this, he'd "fall flat on his ugly pan." He looked down, in embarrassment and shame.
That's when he saw a wire leading to the seat he'd been sitting in.
Operating on instinct more than anything else, Nick Fury had ripped up the chair from its base, ran with it to a porthole, smashed the porthole, and threw the chair out. It exploded. Taking charge of the guards on duty as if they were Dum Dum and the group, Fury barked orders, gave directions, took charge, and set them on a hunt for the saboteur. As it turned out, he found the guilty party himself, and took him down.
After he got back to the command deck of the Heli-Carrier, he saw Tony Stark and company waiting for him, their expressions resolute and satisfied. Nick finally realized what he'd just done. "So it's us or HYDRA, right?" Stark allowed that such was the case.
SHIELD had a new director.
Fury's war with HYDRA had begun.
Practically his first action was to bring Dum Dum Dugan and Gabe Jones on board, which duties they accepted after a little cajoling. It turned out they were almost as well-suited to SHIELD duty as they had been for the Howling Commandoes. That helped, as he needed men whose caliber he already knew.
HYDRA was a juggernaut of a secret organization whose origins extended all the way back to World War II. Their operatives wore bulky green robes and hood-masks, with big yellow H's emblazoned on the robes. Their weaponry was at least as formidable as SHIELD's, and the secret warfare they waged against each other was almost as deadly as the battles Fury had experienced twenty years ago in Europe and the Pacific.
In the first round of that war, HYDRA came within a hair of world conquest. They succeeded in launching a Betatron Bomb into orbit around the Earth, one which would blanket the world in killing radiation whether it was attacked or HYDRA chose to detonate it themselves. Only days afterward, they also succeeded in kidnapping Nick Fury himself.
But Fury managed to break out of his imprisonment, even as Tony Stark went into space in an experimental "Dyna-Soar" craft to successfully disarm the bomb. SHIELD tracked Fury to the HYDRA headquarters where he was being held, and broke the back of HYDRA in a furious battle which took the life of the Imperial Hydra himself.
SHIELD thought that was the end of it. But Fury wasn't so sure.
There were other enemies to be faced in the days which came after: Mentallo, the Fixer, the Druid, a coterie of red-costumed plotters called the Secret Empire, and, finally, a group of high-tech enemies who dressed in yellow uniforms and hatbox-style helmets. Their first code name was THEM, and they used androids, among other things, to bedevil Fury and SHIELD.
Then they found out that THEM was operating behind the facade of an industrial giant known as Advanced Idea Mechanics, or AIM, as they were more popularly known. When the imposture was exposed, the group simply went by the name AIM from then on. After another battle like unto the one against HYDRA, SHIELD destroyed AIM. Or so it seemed.
In short order, Fury and his allies discovered that AIM and the Secret Empire were only branches of the original HYDRA organization, and that HYDRA was far from destroyed. A smaller branch of the group, but one which apparently controlled the larger one that Fury had faced, was still extant. The new HYDRA surfaced in the affair of the Overkill Horn, in which Fury had to stop yet another death-weapon in HYDRA's hands. He encountered the Supreme Hydra while the latter was in disguise, and had no idea who he really was.
A few months afterward, Fury found out, when he was again kidnaped and taken to HYDRA Island, the enemy's seagoing, plastic-encased headquarters. The bad guys were threatening the world again, this time with germ warfare. A Death Spore Bomb had been secreted in the SHIELD helicarrier, and unless the world ceded its rulership to HYDRA, the men in the green robes promised to set it off.
Their leader was Baron Strucker.
Fury was strapped into a deathtrap again, but managed to escape, fight off the men of HYDRA Island single-handedly, and saw Strucker destroyed. Then he made away from the island with Laura Brown, the daughter of the original Imperial Hydra, in tow. Behind him he left the Death Spore Bomb, which he himself had brought there from the Heli-Carrier. It annihilated the men of HYDRA.
There were other deadly challenges after that, including the Yellow Claw (who actually proved to be a robot duplicate of the Oriental menace), Centurius, Supremus, even the Hate-Monger. Remnant versions of AIM and HYDRA also turned up again. But none of them shook Fury as much as the man called Scorpio.
Scorpio was a costumed master of disguise who established several different identities for himself, none of which were bound to be true. He was also brilliant, deadly, tough as nails, armed with a power-key that looked like a metallic Zodiac symbol, and, for some reason, insistent upon seeing Nick Fury dead.
Fury faced him twice. The second time, the head of SHIELD barely escaped a deathtrap set by Scorpio, and then chased him down a hallway, managing to tear a mask from his face in the process.
The sight paralyzed Fury more than the one he saw beneath the Hate-Monger's mask.
He looked into the eyes of his younger brother, Jake Fury.
Some SHIELD guards came streaming down the hallway right then, shouting out a warning to Fury. Scorpio shoved him away and smashed through a window, plummeting into the waters off a dock below. A hail of steel-jacketed bullets chased him, and the SHIELD men kept pumping until their ammo ran out.
Jake couldn't have survived that. No way.
But they never found a body.
For better than a week, Fury kept a lonely vigil at nights on that dock, waiting for something of Jake Fury to turn up. It never did. They had found the power-key Scorpio used, however. Fury wanted to know more of what his brother had been into, in the years of his absence. After all, there were more signs in the Zodiac than just Scorpio.
So he took up the key, masqueraded as Scorpio himself, and soon learned that his brother had been only one-twelfth of an organization known, aptly enough, as Zodiac. Each of the members bore the name of a Zodiacal sign...Aries, the leader, and Aquarius, Virgo, Gemini, Cancer, Sagittarius, Taurus, Libra, Leo, Capricorn, and Pisces. Fury had to team up with the Avengers to take them down. He revealed and abandoned his pose as Scorpio in that case.
He never learned what happened to Jake Fury.
Along the way, Fury found a woman to love, the first one who could take the place of Pamela Hawley, a British nurse he'd lost in World War II. The woman's name was Val de Fontaine, and she was a minor countess with a European lineage. She was also the most beautiful woman Fury had ever seen. And she was a SHIELD agent.
Val had soon responded to Fury's roughhewn charm, and the two had begun keeping company. That was eventually what led to trouble with Captain America.
Both Val and Cap's girl, Sharon Carter, also a SHIELD agent, were members of a unit called the Female Furies. When Val saw Cap, she was drawn to him, and admitted her attraction to Sharon. It wasn't hard for Fury to see it, either.
He and Cap had worked together, on and off, since the shield-slinger and Bucky had helped the Howlers crush Operation Einfall during the war. Later, they had taken down some operatives of the Yellow Claw during the 1965 Blackout. They had collaborated together quite often since then, with Cap going on frequent assignments for Fury. But the Val thing drove a wedge between them. Even though the Contessa had finally chosen Nick again, the matter still rankled.
That was where it stood. But if Nick needed a good man in a costume, he grudgingly knew where to find him.
And now what? Hell was breaking loose all over, and the superheroes were trying to cope with it. In New York, Chicago, and Dallas, and probably some other places before long. This was coordinated action. Planned. Couldn't be anything else. But who had planned it?
Doom? The Yellow Claw? Or Magneto, who'd already shown his hand?
So far, it wasn't SHIELD business. Not unless it involved HYDRA, AIM, or something more threatening to security than a bunch of costumed cretins bashing each other's brains out. But SHIELD could still try and figure out what was going on, and get the info to the ones who needed it.
But what about Senator Dirksen? He wanted to cut funding to SHIELD, now that HYDRA hadn't shown itself to be much more than a backstop for the Red Skull in the last go-round, and AIM had become, apparently, a supply house for the highest bidder. But, hell, they'd thought HYDRA was dead before, and it always came back worse. "Cut off a limb, and two shall take its place." They really weren't kidding about that one.
So what would happen the next time the guys in the hoods threatened the world with a bomb or a bug or something else, and SHIELD didn't have the power to stop them?
He didn't think he should have to tell Dirksen about the Maginot Line and how good it was against the Nazis. But maybe somebody would have to.
There was always something.
"Nick."
It was Dum Dum's voice, coming over a viewscreen. They had the things all over the place, for immediate communication. The old walrus sounded tense, to Nick's ears. Gabe had picked up on it, too.
Fury looked up. "What's up, Dugan?"
The mustached man in the derby held up a newspaper to the camera. "This, first off."
Seeing it, Nick opened his mouth almost wide enough to drop his cigar.
It was an underground newspaper that hoped to be the East Village Other when it grew up, or Rolling Stone even further down the line. But the thing that shocked the hell out of both Fury and Gabe was the photo of a seemingly innocuous barbershop on the front page, and a banner headline above it, reading:
SHIELD'S SECRET HIDEOUT EXPOSED.
"My God," said Fury. "Oh, my God."
Dum Dum had more to say. "There's a demonstration on in front o' the shop. We sent some guards out. So far, ain't nobody hurt. But, Nick..."
Fury was checking the piece in his shoulder holster. "I'm on my way," he said.
Both he and Gabe Jones were soon sprinting to the exit bay.
-M-
The barber shop was under siege.
It had been cover for SHIELD's underground headquarters for years, and few had known of it, except some guys in government, a few super-heroes who had to, and AIM, who found out about it, and HYDRA, who knew about it for a long time. To the general public, it was as secret as the place where the president was supposed to go in case of a nuclear attack.
That is, before today.
Slim, Harry, and Georgia, who were the agents who functioned as barbers and manicurist, respectively, had been hustled into the below-ground part of the complex once the headline hit the fan. The SHIELD installation took up more than a whole block of space underground, and was several stories deep. It had taken a miracle just to get the thing built, but the government had managed it.
Now, a host of SHIELD men in uniforms were standing abreast in front of and behind the shop, some of them even on top of it, and many of them trying to surround the block, in concert with some of New York's Finest. The latter were keeping a seemingly ad hoc crowd of hairies with signs and anger pent behind a row of sawhorses and police tape for the moment. There had been enough protests during the war years for the cops to get used to the scenario.
But SHIELD wasn't.
Clay Quatermain looked out at the small sea of people and wet his lips. Countess Valentina Allegro de Fontaine looked at him, briefly. Quatermain was usually a braggart, loudmouthed, capable as anything and reliable, but hard to endure. This time, he wasn't mouthing off.
She didn't blame him. SHIELD was never designed to take on civilians.
And the specter of Kent State was not far from their minds, now.
Jimmy Woo, an FBI agent whom Fury had recruited for SHIELD during the Yellow Claw affair, surveyed the protestors as grimly as any of the others. "Fury on his way, Val?"
She nodded. "Don't know how long it'll take, but probably not too long. Remember, no lethal force."
"Affirmative. Just hope they don't try to use it on us."
"Amen," said Quatermain. That was all he could manage. All of them were armed with stun-weapons and other things, most of them non-lethal. But there was no guarantee that those besieging SHIELD would play by the same rules.
Val's coterie of Female Furies were on the scene, standing fast with the men. Nobody knew what in Heaven's name they'd have to do with the people and equipment down below. There wasn't enough space to store everything on the Heli-Carrier. But how could they leave anything or anybody down there, when their cover had been blown?
A bearded guy in shades, a vest, and no shirt was sitting on a taller guy's shoulders. He raised a megaphone to his lips.
"We've got some words for the people of SHIELD," he said, in an amplified voice.
The squad of agents stood alert, ready, and tense.
The man with the megaphone continued. "You've been great at putting down HYDRA, and AIM, and all those guys in the funny zoot-suits that said they wanted to take over the world. But what about the guys who already run the world? Why haven't you put them down, SHIELD? What about the fascist dictator greedheads in the military-industrial complex? What about the Moloch-like generals who send a hundred men and more to die every day in Viet Nam? What about the scum who design and manufacture our atomic bombs, that put the whole world in danger? What about THEM, SHIELD?"
The protestors, on cue, voiced a roar of approval. Clay Quatermain flinched. "Steady, Clay," warned Val.
"How much good were you when John Kennedy died? Were you on the job then, SHIELD? How about when Medgar Evers died? Or when Bobby Kennedy bought it? Or Martin Luther King? Or maybe even Fred Hampton?"
"You lousy son...!" started Quatermain, and tried to rush forward. Val grabbed for his wrist and Jimmy Woo blocked him. Breathing hard, Clay allowed himself to be restrained.
The rabble rouser noted the action, and smiled with pleasure before raising the 'phone to his lips again. The guy holding him up gave him a thumb's-up before pumping up one fisted arm in a power salute. The speaker took up his tirade again.
"SHIELD is nothing more than a super-CIA. It's out here to prop up the corrupt power structure, with a fouled root underground and a garbage scow above, trying to cast its shadow over the People. You've hidden away like cowards, but now we have exposed you to the light. We want the supreme SHIELD jackal here to face us. We want Nick Fury. WE WANT FURY! WE WANT FURY!"
And an answering chant came from the hairy horde, in response: "WE WANT FURY! WEEE WANT FURYYY!"
The chanting went on and on, gathering in intensity. "WE WANT FURY...WE WANT FURY...WE WANT FURY..."
Dum Dum Dugan joined the other three elite agents, looking out at the crowd. "Buncha Nazis. They oughta have a bunch of swastika flags with eagles on top of 'em, 'stead'a signs."
"Easy, Dum Dum," said Jimmy. "These punks are on the opposite end of the Nazis, politically. But sometimes...the methods tend to look the same."
"You're wrong," said Clay Quatermain, surprising them all. "Lots of 'em are just scared kids, and maybe they've got reason to be scared. Not of us, but of the world. A lot of 'em don't know what they've given their strength to. They may learn about it all too late."
"Whatever the case," said Val, "we don't use killing force. This isn't going to be a repeat of Chicago."
Dum Dum pointed at the crowd. "Tell them that."
A bottle flew in, hit Dum Dum on his derby-covered forehead, and knocked him sprawling. Another agent moved to pick him up, quickly. The others looked after him. He was hurt, but not injured. He was also seething.
"Damn," he said, softly and with feeling. "Damn."
Other missiles were being thrown by certain members of the crowd, now: bottles, bricks, sticks, even plastic bags filled with human excrement. The cops were embattled, trying to push back. The SHIELD agents moved forward to back them up. The crowd began to surge forward. It was very nearly a stalemate, but nobody could tell how long that would last.
Fear walked that street, and favored both sides.
Then somebody on the outskirts of the crowd heard a powerful car horn honking, and what looked like a silvery Porsche firming into view where it had not been before.
What no one except certain members of SHIELD knew was that Nick Fury's car had been customized by Sidney E. Levine, aka the Gaff, to be able to become almost absolutely transparent at the touch of a control device. Fury also had access to a body suit that would turn absolutely black, reflecting no light, for short periods of time. He was an invisible man in an invisible car, until he chose to make himself seen.
Now, he did so. He twisted a dial on his belt, threw back his hood, and got out of his car, weapon in hand but pointed to the ground. He stood on the outskirts of the mob, and the word quickly passed among the latter about his presence. Fury waited for the crowd to settle down, to see what he was going to do next. So far, it was working.
When enough of them were facing him, he said, "I hear you were lookin' for me. Wanna talk?"
A guy in a headband said, "We don't wanna talk, Fury." Others echoed with, "No. No, we don't wanna talk. Hell, no!"
Fury raised his arms. "So okay. Now you know where we hang out. Who told you that? I'd like to know."
"The paper told us!"
"Yeah, the underground!" "Yeah! Yeah, the paper!"
"All right, all right, you guys," Fury said, in a louder voice, the kind that had carried over dozens of battlefields. "But didja ever stop 'n' think about where they got their information? Not too many people knew about our setup. Not many of 'em would talk to the press. Sure not to that rag that blew our cover. Think about it. The only ones that could've let them know where our ground HQ was situated was HYDRA, and AIM. Either one o' those sound like they got your best interests at heart?"
Silence for a second. Then the guy with the megaphone raised it to his lips again. "It doesn't matter who told them. It just matters what is! We know your spiderweb lair now, Fury, and we're going to take it down!"
"Oh, yeah?" said Fury, pointing his gloved forefinger. "Oh, YEAH? I wouldn't give ya even odds of gettin' twenty feet inside our front door! We've got defenses that can withstand anything short of a nuclear strike, and we're workin' on coverin' that. Or at least we were, before today. You think you're gonna get in with a beer bottle? Use your heads. You got a beef, tell me about it. I can talk. You want to fight, fight with me. I been fightin' since I knew how to make two fists. But don't take it out on these cops, or my men. They ain't out here to hurt you. An' we ain't no political tools, either. The only mandate we got is to stop the guys who want to conquer the world, and that means conquerin' you, too. We're in business to protect you. All of you."
The murmuring died down a bit. It seemed that Fury's words were registering with the crowd, to some extent. The police and the men and women of SHIELD still stood ready. But, if the tension was still high, at least nobody was making a move. For the moment.
"If you've got a legit gripe, I'm willin' to sit down with anybody you choose, 'n' talk about it," said Fury. "But this ain't gonna get you nowhere. SHIELD isn't here to fight with civilians. We keep our hands outta politics, except what we gotta do to get funding. Lots of you are here today on account of what me and your fathers did about thirty years ago against a guy named Hitler. We fought to give ya the right to protest. But we didn't fight to give you the right to hurt people. Am I right on that?"
A girl in the midst of the crowd said, "Y'know, the pig's got a point."
"A pig is a pig, Casey," snapped a guy beside her. "Don't forget it."
"Let's just call the party over," Fury went on. "You made yer statement. You got on the news. You exposed a place that's been fightin' for your freedom for better'n ten years now. We'll have to find a new hidey-hole. So the score's on your side, now. You can go home, now. You showed up the old men. And you sure showed up me."
Some of the crew on the edges of the crowd started to disperse. The others were considering what to do. The megaphone man was wondering how to phrase a retort. Val, Jimmy, Clay, and Dum Dum were still alert, but daring to breathe a little easier.
Maybe the whole thing would blow off like a storm cloud that skirted a town. Maybe they'd all go home and see the news clips about it, and shake their heads over how close it had all been. Maybe...
Then somebody leaned a long-barreled weapon over a surprised protestor's shoulder and, before anybody else could react, sent a ruby-red ray in the general direction of the SHIELD agents.
It struck Clay Quatermain in the chest. He felt, for a second, a sensation of terrific heat. He smelled something sizzling.
Before he could realize that it was his suit, and his flesh, he fell to the sidewalk in front of the barber shop.
A silence for a nanosecond.
Then a roar.
Val screaming, "Clay! CLAY!"
Jimmy Woo going for his stun gun, trying to hold back Dum Dum Dugan and failing. The Female Furies and the regular agents massing, going into defense mode, then attack. The protestors boiling forward in an angry and fearsome wave, in the sort of action in which you no longer have time to question, just hang on and hope you come out the other side. The cops with their helmets, plastic shields, tear gas, and billy clubs, knowing a second Chicago was on their necks and knowing there was nothing to be done about it.
And the man with the laser ray sending another bolt of death towards all before him, before a black-suited man with an eyepatch reached him, grabbed the hot barrel of the gun with one hand, and smashed a right as hard as Gibraltar into the gunner's face. The man went down.
Fury grabbed the gun by its handle. It was an AIM weapon. He'd seen its like before.
Now, there was only the enemy around him.
And the enemy were Americans.
-M-
The new X-Men came running to the mental summons of Professor Xavier. Alex remembered Scott telling him how it used to be in the old days, like a klaxon horn sounding through your brain. He realized now that Scott was not exaggerating.
This time it was Havok, Polaris, Mimic, Banshee, and Sunfire who answered the call, all running, all in costume. They'd learned to dress in a hurry, and they didn't dare face Xavier with a boot off or a mask out of place. The old man might be trying to be more human, but he wasn't that human yet.
They stood before him in the briefing room, and he faced them in his wheelchair, not blinking or smiling.
"Magneto has reemerged," said Xavier, verbally, in clipped tones. "I knew this day would come, whether soon or late. It has come today. Worse, he has allied with him my stepbrother, the Juggernaut, whose physical power dwarfs his own. His other cohorts include Unus, whose force-field protects him from offensive blows, Mastermind, who can project mental illusions, and the Blob, who is virtually an immovable object. Together, they are a more powerful team than even my original X-Men ever faced.
"But they threaten humanity, in Dallas. They have specifically demanded that the X-Men meet them in battle. Undoubtedly they want the original team. But their mantle has fallen...to us."
Lorna Dane drew in a deep breath and let it out. She'd been afraid before, God knew...when she was taken prisoner by Mesmero and the robot Magneto, when she went on her first adventures with the team. But none of them had ever faced an enemy as powerful as Magneto, or the Juggernaut.
She just hoped she wasn't showing too much fear.
Xavier said, "This battle, if we choose to engage in it, will be our team's baptism of fire. And perhaps, of blood. I will not take it upon myself to order you to fight Magneto and his Brotherhood. I will only say that, with the other heroes of America fighting other menaces, this lot falls to us. I will ask for your answers individually."
Banshee didn't wait for Xavier to complete the last word. "I'm goin', Professor. Never let it be said that a good Irishman ever backed away from a fight."
Sunfire was the next to step forward. "You shame me, Sean Cassidy, in volunteering before myself. Send me where you will, Professor. Sunfire stands ready."
Almost too quickly, Havok made his step. "If I'm supposed to be the field leader of this bunch, I should have been the first. But I'm going, Prof. Better believe it."
Lorna took Alex's arm, and nodded, briefly. She said nothing.
All eyes turned to the Mimic. He was breathing shallowly, holding in the effort not to duplicate powers as of yet. He noticed them looking at him, finally.
"I'll go," he said. "I'll go."
-M-
In Dallas, the cops were practically stumped.
Guns didn't work against Magneto and his crew. Blob, Unus, and Juggernaut were apparently bullet-proof. Also, the magnetic mutant himself could either freeze the bullets in mid-air, or just rip the guns out of the hands of police and beat them senseless with the barrels. Thankfully, he had not chosen to fire the guns back at the cops. Yet.
They'd also tried using tear gas, but the stuff came in metal containers. Magneto had simply torn the canisters off the backs of the men who brought it in, turned the nozzles in their direction, and opened the valves. A bunch of blinded policemen had to stagger away from the scene.
The National Guard had been called in, and were assembled at what they thought was a safe distance from the scene. But when you couldn't use metal against a foe, that pretty well ruled out the use of helicopters, tanks, jeeps, bazookas, grenades, guns, and the like. Sending guys in there to bop the mutants over the head with wooden clubs and bricks also seemed out of the question.
Another problem, unexpected by the authorities, emerged. More than once, when strategies were being planned in City Hall, at the police commissioner's office, or simply at the scene of the disturbance, a strange bald man in a green costume and a domino mask appeared out of nowhere, was seen after a few minutes, and vanished before they could lay hands on him. The cops called the FBI, the FBI called agent Amos Fred Duncan of Department M, and Duncan told them it had to be a mutant called the Vanisher.
That didn't really help, but it made them feel a little better.
Dallas wasn't used to super-hero fights. The last time they'd experienced something like this was a race riot a couple of years back, when a policeman had shot a Mexican boy and La Raza Unida took to the streets to protest. As race riots went, it was small, but scarifying. This was nastier stuff. Some residents had flashbacks to the day of November 22, 1963, even though it hardly seemed to apply.
So everybody was waiting for some super-heroes to arrive, and that included Magneto and the Brotherhood as well.
"Don't like the idea of waitin' out here like a buncha sittin' ducks," groused the Blob. His huge bulk, clad only in a pair of trunks, almost made the pavement groan underneath him.
Unus, in his red and black outfit, quirked an eyebrow. "S'matter, Blobsy? You forgot your sunscreen or something?"
"Hell, Unus, I was raised in Texas," snapped the Blob. "Takes more'n this to burn me. I'm just tired of sittin' around, is all."
Mastermind, in his brown suit and opera cape, mopped his brow with a scented handkerchief and sneered. "It is so heartening to see Factor Three in action again, as one coordinated unit...sweltering in this infernal Texas heat."
A man beside him, clad in an outfit reminiscent of an ancient Egyptian monarch, scoffed. "Try the climes of Egypt sometime, and you will beg for the temperatures of Texas, Mastermind," said the Living Pharaoh. "As for me, the only thing that will matter is if the one called Havok appears."
Merlin, sitting on a curb nearby, said, "These idiots are but lures for our real foes. When we destroy them, we will draw the wrath of the original X-Men. Those are the only ones about whom I give a fig."
"You certainly seem sure of yourself, Merlin, for a man who had trouble coping with me the last time around," grinned Mesmero. The green-faced mutant had a fracas with Merlin not long ago, when both of them tried for revenge against Iceman, Angel, and the Beast, and both ended up in Riker's Island. Though Mesmero and Merlin were now part of the Brotherhood, neither of them had much love for the other. Merlin's eyes blazed as he began to stand up, facing Mesmero. The green man tensed, ready for action.
Between them, a huge armored shape interposed itself. "Cut it out. NOW," said the Juggernaut. Reluctantly, the two evil mutants subsided.
Then, before them, another stood, and all fell silent. "Do I hear dissension in the ranks, gentlemen?"
"Just a difference of opinion, Magneto," said Mastermind. "Mesmero and Merlin were just reminiscing over old times. It's the heat, you know."
In a flash, Magneto's hands were on the necks of both Mesmero and Merlin, and both of them looked terrified. He lifted them from the sidewalk, effortlessly. "Is there a problem that should be addressed?"
"No. Of course not, Magneto," said Mesmero, desperately.
"We're best of friends," said Merlin. "And of course you know we're loyal."
The helmeted man looked up at them and held his silence for a moment, still holding them firmly. Then he said, "Once, Mastermind himself made such a statement. I will tell you what I told him then. Loyalty means nothing to me. I expect fear...and blind obedience." He removed his hands, and both remained in the air, a few feet off the ground. Then he undid his magnetic suspension, and both fell to the walk.
Softly, Magneto walked away. The others looked in Mesmero's and Merlin's direction. Neither one was hurt, but they were both awed. The Juggernaut was the only one who trailed Magneto. Once they were apart from the others, Cain Marko said, "Way to go, Mags. I admire your style."
Magneto, folding his arms and looking out at the army of police beyond the barricades, did not turn to face him. "I do not," he said. "But it is the only style the world will let me have."
The Juggernaut looked puzzled. But he said nothing.
For another few minutes, the two sides remained at a standoff. Then, in the background, Magneto heard Mesmero make a statement. "Incoming," he said.
"From what direction?" asked Magneto.
The telepath pointed towards the southwest. "That way," he said. "I can sense their thoughts, even though X must be shielding them from us."
"Just so," Magneto muttered. "Once again, we play the game. We shall take the measure of Xavier's new defenders, and see what is to come. Remember your places, gentlemen. Remember your duty. And remember revenge."
Nobody seemed to have to remind them of that.
In a few moments, a VTOL craft with an X on its fuselage managed a landing in an open area nearby. Five figures emerged. Their credentials got them unimpeded through the sea of cops. Within minutes, Havok, Polaris, Banshee, Sunfire, and Mimic were within eyeshot of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants.
Alex Summers picked out the figure of the Living Pharaoh almost before he identified Magneto. If Havok went down, the Pharaoh would transform into the titanic Living Monolith. That possibility had to be avoided, if possible.
So did death.
Magneto raised his arms. "Welcome to your first battle with the Brotherhood," he said. "And your last."
-M-
PARKER
Stark Labs was still in operation, and I put in a full day at work. But we kept up with the national news on the radio, and on TV in the break room. Seemed like everybody knew about the big fights breaking out over the country. Sure, it'd happened all the time like that in New York. But it'd never taken place in so many places across America, all at the same moment.
Somebody had to be behind it. Nobody was sure who. The usual suspects were trotted out...Dr. Doom, the Mandarin, Magneto, even Kang the Conqueror...but no one could get a handle on who it really was, or what their objective was.
Then the SHIELD riot happened downtown, and New York was right in the middle of it again.
Gwen begged me to stay out of it, and I was halfway to obliging her. But I knew I couldn't.
There'd be no way that Spider-Man could stay out of this, no matter how hard I tried.
-M-
The Owl had never met the huge man into whose quarters he was escorted. But everybody in his line of work had heard of him, and all of them feared him.
"Sit," said the Kingpin, indicating a chair at the table opposite where he sat.
The man in the large-caped outfit, his hair cut in a manner that suggested the shape of an owl's head, pulled out the chair and sat in it. He clasped his hands together in front of his face and gave the Kingpin a stare back as hard as the latter's. "Why did you summon me?"
"Only because I know you must have received the same invitation as myself," the Kingpin replied. He was at least twice as large as a normal man, obese, but every last inch of it muscle. Even though he was a non-powered human, he was fully capable of trading blows with Spider-Man, and had done so often. It was an occupational hazard he encountered, from time to time, in running the New York underworld.
The Owl had put together a syndicate that almost managed that, years before the Kingpin's emergence. Daredevil had brought that down, but the Owl still knew the ropes very well. "Well, then?"
Unhurriedly, Wilson Fisk said, "I would assume you will lead some ragtag band of operatives to San Francisco, to attack your old enemy. Is this true?"
Shrugging, the Owl said, "A world without Daredevil would be more pleasant, to my thinking. Why are you concerned?"
"Only because I wish to impart information," said the Kingpin. "If you are successful, and you wish to return to your empire building, should you decide to remain in San Francisco, you will be unhindered. As fellow businessmen, we can appreciate the concept of spheres of influence and cooperation. Agreed?"
"What are you going to be about, yourself, with all this hell breaking loose?" queried the Owl.
"Agreed?"
The Kingpin looked at the Owl steadily. His expression did not change.
After a moment, the Owl said, "I think we can work something out."
"It is already worked out, to use your phrase," said the Kingpin. "Your day, and that of the petty potentates such as the Big Man and the 'Crime-Master', are long done. The silent forces of this city now operate under my supervision. Their efficiency has climbed since I assumed command. Study my methods and you may profit. Attempt a coup, and this I promise you: at every meeting, my lieutenants will gaze upon a stuffed Owl."
The Owl said nothing.
"You may go," said the Kingpin. A door behind them opened and two gunsels came in, one at either side of the Owl. They escorted him out.
The Kingpin contemplated the silence and semi-darkness, once the door had closed behind them. He would stay aloof from this undertaking. What he had learned of it convinced him that it was not a plot which he would find profitable, or even palatable. The collaboration with HYDRA had been a debacle. This would probably prove a full-scale disaster.
But he wondered, inside himself, if anyone, even he, could pass unscathed through the Fire.
To be continued...