Part 18
by DarkMark
Ivan Petrovitch hadn't been exaggerating. There were a lot of guys in costumes down at Golden Gate Park, there was a big hairy guy with horns among them, and they were holding a lot of hostages.
The SFPD had surrounded the park with black-and-whites and men with guns and megaphones. Chief Ironguts O'Hara was trying to scare the bad guys into surrendering. It wasn't doing much good. The force didn't mind opening up on the nut jobs in union suits, but there were a lot of John Q. Publics in harm's way, and it only took one of them going down to lose a cop his job forever.
It was a clear enough day for the TV helicopters to do their work effectively, but they made sure they didn't go in for any closeups. The audience was treated to the sight of a colorful mob whose regalia put to shame any of the hippies and straights whom they held prisoner within their human ring.
Four of them had worked together extensively. They wore animalistic costumes and went by the names of Frog Man, Cat-Man, Ape-Man, and Bird-Man. The Jester, a loon in a court fool's costume, was holding some children hostage with a deadly, razor-bladed yo-yo. Crime-Wave, a masked man nobody much could remember seeing, had several couples helpless at the point of a conventional gun. The Tribune, some nut in a judge's robe and mask, covered several others with a gavel that fired bullets. There was a woman named Suprema and her partner Scarbo, whom none of the others had met before. Of course, the Man-Bull was present, twice as big as a normal man and hairy, with two bull's horns growing out of his head.
Presiding over the lot of them was the Owl, former ganglord from New York, in his fancy haircut and strangely-cut suit. He had a megaphone of his own, and he wasn't shy about using it.
"All we require is Daredevil," he boomed out over the park. "You can throw in his lady friend if you wish. Give us them, and your difficulties will be over."
"Look, uh...Mr. Owl..." began Ironguts O'Hara, over his own bullhorn. "It's not exactly like this DD character is on the city payroll, for cripes' sake."
Ape Man sneered to his partner Frog Man. "Does he think we're imbeciles? We know how the guy operates."
"Just doin' his job, Keefer," said Frog Man, laconically. "Just doin' his job."
"I want that hornheaded twit," snapped Crime-Wave, handling his gun in an unsettling fashion. "I want him so bad I could rip out his jugular with my bare teeth. I want him so bad I could take his woman in front of him. I want him so bad..."
"So what'd he do to you, already?" said the Jester.
"Broke up my plans for criminal domination and sent me to jail."
The Jester smiled even wider than usual. "Welcome to the club."
One of the hostages, a hairy type named Dean, tried to rise up from a sitting position. The Tribune's gun waved menacingly in his direction. "Siddown, hippie," the masked man snarled.
"Uh, hey, man, I can relate to a protest type situation," Dean said, hoping that his girl Melanie nearby was at least slightly impressed. "But, first off, you haven't really defined your terms. I mean, politically. I mean, sure. You want Daredevil. But where does that fit into the larger picture? I mean, you need to state a position on, say, Viet Nam, and black rights, and student rights, and..."
A shot kicked up grass and dirt near Dean's feet. He drew in more breath than he thought himself capable of, and held it.
"Shut up, you ******* Communist pinko fag bleeding heart liberal sonofa..." the Tribune began. Scenes from Dean's life began flashing before his eyes. He was just getting down to Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young at Altamont when a large, horned man grabbed the Tribune's gun hand by the wrist and pointed it upward.
"Lay off with the gun," said Man-Bull. "You know the plan."
"Plan? PLAN?" yelled the Tribune. "It's hippie druggie left-wing good for nothing anti-American scum like this that's ruining this country! That...that...you know what he is...put me in jail for bustin' things like this pot-smokin' no-account longhaired doper fag in front of me. And he ruined my career! I can't sing country no more, and no station'll play my records. Can't even get a gig in a bar no more!"
"I am so worried sick about it," Man-Bull replied, and squeezed the Tribune's wrist a bit. "Now. You want to complain some more? No?"
The Tribune tried to be silent, but he whimpered a bit. "Goldarn it, that smarts."
"Uh huh. So you be a good boy from here on in, or it gets worse, okay?"
The Tribune said nothing, but finally nodded.
"Fine. Let's keep it that way." The Man-Bull released the Tribune, and the man in the judge's outfit crumpled on the ground. Dean took Melanie by the hand and got to his feet, beginning to exit the scene.
The Tribune transferred his gun to his left hand and pointed it. "Don't you even think about it," he warned. Dean and Melanie sat back down on the grass.
Man-Bull, walking off, passed by the duo of Suprema and Scarbo. The woman, Suprema, was an attractive black-haired wench in a tight-fitting green outfit. She looked threatening enough and never seemed to be off guard. The man, Scarbo, was one of the largest in the bunch, bald-headed and unspeaking. Man-Bull towered over him.
"So how'd you guys tangle with Daredevil?" asked the horned man, casually.
"Never met him," said Suprema, her arms crossed over her chest.
"Why are you here?"
"The Owl hired us," Suprema answered. She turned away from Man-Bull. He shrugged and continued on.
All told, there were about 36 people being held by the villain group. The Owl's men could have rounded up more, but they opted for a smaller, more easily-guarded number.
"How much longer we gonna wait, Owl?" asked Bird Man, flapping over the portly figure in the green cloak.
The Owl regarded his hireling with distaste. "Have you not played this scenario out before, sir? We wait till the prey is lured into our claws. Then we spring our trap, and voila! The mice are ours."
"People been layin' traps for Daredevil ever since 1964. He's still here, and we all been in jail."
"Some of you have," the Owl pointed out. "Not I."
The ominous overlord of crime, as he liked to refer to himself, took out a pair of binoculars from a bag and scanned the perimeter. Inwardly, he regretted the fact that he had so few opponents of Daredevil to ally himself with. Most of the good ones were hooked up with Electro, and Electro had been assigned to New York, thanks to his Sinister Six connection. That left the Owl to forage, and he'd even had to hire Suprema and Scarbo, two old enemies of Captain America, because their employer had insisted on a woman in the group. Well, that made sense if you took the Black Widow into account. She had no surviving enemies of her own.
Not that he had anything against killing a woman, if need be. But it was much better to let one of the same sex handle that, if need be.
The Owl kept looking at the cops, the gathering crowd behind the barricades, the helicopters, and, occasionally, the villains and the hostages. Daredevil would make an appearance before long. He hoped they could get this thing over with soon. San Francisco, with its fog and unclimbable streets, was not a city he particularly liked.
In one of the news helicopters above, two passengers who were not journalists surveyed the scene below.
"So when will you find what you're looking for?" asked the Black Widow.
Daredevil, leaning his head cautiously out of the helicopter hatch, said, "It takes a little while, Natasha. Even with radar sense. But..." He lifted a hand. "Wait. Tack over a few degrees to port, please."
The pilot obeyed. A few seconds later, Daredevil nodded. "There. In that copse of trees. He's sitting on a bench, wearing a hat and overcoat. He smells very sweaty. I'm not surprised."
"Is he armed?"
"Doesn't need to be. Also, Ape Man, another big man, and a woman are standing guard. Never met the other two before. Ready?"
The redheaded Russian woman smiled. "Always."
The two of them leaned out the hatch, side by side. The Widow shot out her widow's line from her wrist bracelet. The grappler on the end of it caught the chopper's landing gear and fastened itself tightly around it. Daredevil flipped out his billy club and let the cane handle catch on the gear beside her line, trailing its swing cable.
Then he looked up. "Company," he said.
Bird Man was flying towards them, his wicked grin showing underneath his red hawk's headpiece. "Knew you'd be tryin' something like this," he rasped, his claws outstretched. "It's the only easy way in. That's why I get first dibs."
Natasha slacked her line a bit and pointed her wrist at him. "That's why you get first bite."
The winged man took the Widow's Bite full in the face, getting an overpowering blast of electricity that robbed him of consciousness. Daredevil leaped out and, holding onto his billy club with one hand, snatched the Bird Man's ankle with the other. Villain or not, they couldn't let him fall to his death.
He sensed heads all over the park turning upward, some drawn by the sight directly, others by those pointing him out to their companions.
"Let's go," he said.
Hero and heroine swung down on their individual lines, Daredevil dropping the unconscious Bird Man from a safe height into the top of the trees overshadowing their quarry. The element of surprise might last about half a minute, tops. Their reactions would be quick and deadly.
So his and the Widow's actions had to be quicker.
The Widow and DD both hit the ground between the trees, crouching and springing up to take the impact, releasing their lines from the helicopter and retracting them. Ape Man, Suprema, and Scarbo were heading for them. Natasha whipped her hair back from her face and bent her wrist towards them. "This is what I used to bring your friend down. Anyone want to argue with it?"
Suprema grabbed Scarbo by the shoulders and pushed him in the Widow's direction. "Sorry, brother," she murmured. He stumbled forward and the Widow zapped him, making him fall like a dead weight. She was quick behind him, and the karate kick she unleashed against Natasha was as fast as it was unavoidable.
The kick made her see stars. Even so, she flipped herself out of the way, and swung her hand around, blasting. Both Ape Man and Suprema ducked under it. Well, nobody told her things were going to be easy, either when she was KGB or when she became a defector superheroine.
Natasha regained her feet and shook her head to clear it. The woman was coming forward. She wanted a fight. That'd be fine, but Ape Man looked like he just wanted to crush her to death. With his mechanized costume, he could, if she let him.
The sleek woman in the black catsuit didn't intend to let him.
She whipped out her web-line, swung it so the end of it wrapped around his neck, and ran as fast as she could towards the trees. Despite himself, Ape Man was dragged along with her, and contacted a tree trunk full on with his face. Despite his padded mask, it stunned him.
Natasha retracted her line. All to the good, she thought. Two down, probably a dozen or more to go.
Daredevil himself knew his quarry. The hostages nearest them had picked themselves up off the ground and were heading anywhere else they could run to, as long as it didn't bring them into range of one of the other villains. He had to get his man, and get him now.
The man he sought was simply sitting on a bench, under a tree, holding his cane. The Man Without Fear sprinted for him, seeing his silhouette reflected by the unknown radiations that his brain or body sent out in all directions and which he interpreted when they bounced back to him. There wasn't any time for jokes. He balled his fist and leaped at his prey, just as the man looked up at him in horror.
"Ki—umphh," was all he could get out before Daredevil bashed him in the jaw. The strangely colored man fell sideways off the bench. DD paused and took in air. Another figure was approaching with great speed, and leaping. He knew who it was before the villain's spring-fed feet struck him in the side of the head, knocking him sprawling.
Frog Man abandoned Daredevil to grab Killgrave the Purple Man and slap him back to semi-consciousness. "Come on, punk, wake up. Say your magic words. Now!"
"Now?" said Killgrave, groggily.
"Definitely now," said Leap Frog, looking at Daredevil getting back to his feet and brandishing his billy club.
In a loud voice, the Purple Man shouted, "KILL DAREDEVIL AND THE BLACK WIDOW!"
The bad guys didn't have to be persuaded. But elsewhere, the hostages, police, and onlookers stopped in their tracks.
Then they started repeating mantras among themselves as they turned back, scanning the area: "Kill Daredevil...kill the Black Widow...kill Daredevil...the Black Widow...kill her...kill him..."
Natasha, fighting with Suprema, saw the hippies and straights suddenly turn back towards them and begin walking in her direction, like zombies in tie-dyed shirts and peace medallions. She parried a blow from her rival and struck back, but abruptly shoved the villainess away and backed off to assess the situation.
Suprema smirked. "The other outfits may need backup. We just make our own."
Apparently, the Owl and his minions knew what part of the park they were in now. She saw the crimeboss in the air just above the treetops, using his uncanny gliding ability to head towards them. He was smiling with satisfaction. From the sound of things, Man-Bull was leading a charge in their direction.
Daredevil was trying to get to the Purple Man, knowing that if he could be kayoed, his command to the crowd might dissipate. But the crowd of people were forming a phalanx in front of Killgrave, and try as he might, he couldn't get through them. Worse, he knew he couldn't really use as much force against civilians as he could against a super-criminal. The crowd, motivated by Killgrave's hypnotic power, didn't have any such problem.
He heard Killgrave call out, jauntily, "Just like old times, eh, Daredevil? Only this should be the last old time we'll have to meet!"
"Same old song, not much of an arrangement," commented Daredevil. "See you in Round Two, Killgrave."
"Why? We don't intend to let you get past Round One!"
The Owl, swooping lower, brandished a weapon that looked like something beyond the usual NRA dreams. It was pointed straight at Daredevil. The masked man threw his billy club up expertly. It smashed against the Owl's jaw and dropped him like a plummet. The distance wasn't deadly, but it stunned the heck out of the bad man when he hit the grass.
Daredevil shoved away the crowd nearest him and flipped over to where the club was coming back down. Putting out a hand, he caught it as expertly as an outfielder dragging down a potential home run. Then he snagged an upper branch of a tree, swung himself up, bounded to another, and dropped to the ground in time to give Natasha a hand with beating back the civilians that were trying to drag her down.
"Nice of you to come," she grunted, punching out a stockbroker wielding a stick.
"All comes with the costume," he replied, lifting a longhaired guy in a U.S. Army jacket and throwing him back into the crowd.
But a new arrival was shoving away the crowdspeople before him with much less care than Daredevil and the Widow, and it wasn't hard to see him coming. Man-Bull towered more than a head above everyone else around him. He looked as enraged as if someone had been flapping a matador's cape at him. "Devil! I'm comin' for ya, Devil! I'm gonna send ya ta Hell!"
He was now in front of both of them, his powerful arms outstretched, seemingly to crush them both. "Well? Whatcha got to say for yourselves, before ya die?"
Both the Widow and Daredevil flipped over onto their hands and used one foot apiece to kick him expertly on each side of his neck. The Man-Bull's bovine eyes crossed and he hit the dirt, face-first.
The two of them regained their footing before sharing a brief grin. But the mob was closing in on them again. "What next?" asked the Widow, back to back with her lover.
Daredevil's ears had told him the answer before anything else. "That," he said, pointing upward. The helicopter that had brought them in was descending. But the pilot didn't look like he had their best interests in mind. He was barely skirting the trees, and he had a gun in hand, trying to get to a place where he could properly aim it.
This had to be done precisely. But Matt Murdock had been doing things precisely for eight years now, and saw no reason to stop at present. He grabbed the Black Widow about the waist with one hand and flicked his billy club's cable at another high tree branch. Before the zombified crew could get to them, he had the two of them swung back into the tree. The chopper was coming nearer, and the sunglass-wearing pilot looked cheerful about having a clear shot at them for once.
The billy club's business end bounced off his jaw and knocked him unconscious. He slumped and dropped the gun to the floor of the craft.
Before the chopper could do more than list, Daredevil swung the grappling-hook section of his club and snagged its landing gear. Then he retracted it, swinging himself up to the ship. A backflip brought him inside, where he shoved the pilot into the copilot's seat, grabbed the controls, and righted the chopper.
The Widow's line was already wrapped about the landing gear. "Permission to come aboard, tovarisch," she said, flipping inside.
"Permission granted," he said, holding the controls steady. "Don't think I could stop you if I wanted." As soon as she had strapped herself in her seat, Daredevil took them up. The mob was already trying to climb the trees to get at them.
As they ascended, DD saw that it was just as bad as he expected. Killgrave's influence had spread to the police on the perimeter. Soon, shots were ringing out. He took the chopper away from the scene before they could get any nearer.
A few minutes later, he landed the helicopter in a mostly-empty parking lot near a closed department store. The place had been chosen deliberately. The two of them got out, leaving the still-unconscious pilot in the chopper, and raced over to the Rolls which Ivan Petrovitch was driving towards them. Both of them swung the back doors open and got in, slamming them shut afterward. Ivan steered the car away.
"Appears that it didn't work," remarked Ivan, keeping his eyes on the road.
The Black Widow took the car phone from its cradle and dialed a number. "Hello? Police department? This is the Black Widow. Natasha Romanoff. I have some instructions you must pass on to Chief O'Hara. What? Yes, Daredevil is with me. But I...ah. All right, I will put him on." With a look of discontent, she passed the phone to Daredevil.
"This is Daredevil. Code is Tiresias. Confirmed? Listen closely. Killgrave is in mental control of the crowd within the park. That's right, Zebediah Killgrave. There are several police under his domination already. Tell Chief O'Hara to establish a separate perimeter around the old one, with a buffer zone. I don't know what they're going to try next, but other people must be kept out of the park. Anyone who goes in there risks being a slave of Killgrave. The hostages are under another kind of threat now. They're being controlled by Killgrave. Well...we tried. We'll try again, very soon. Thank you. Yes, we'll stay in touch. Goodbye."
He handed the phone back to the Widow, who hung it up. "They still don't trust me that well," she said.
Ivan shrugged as he took them downtown. "Once a Communist, always a Communist. That's what they think."
"Not all of them," she said. "But enough of them."
"We've got other things to worry about," said Daredevil, checking his billy club. "By my count, that crowd in Killgrave's thrall has expanded to over 70. If he and his entourage just decide to take a stroll out of the park, he can add more to his control, exponentially. At least it hasn't been that long since he struck here, so they'll take his threat seriously."
"Yeah," said Ivan. "Not to mention those other playmates of yours that've been hanging around the park."
"Definitely," DD confirmed, returning the club to its holster. "Our strategy, with or without Ironguts's help: take out Killgrave, then worry about the Owl and company."
"And how are we supposed to do that, Matt?" asked Natasha.
"We'll work on it. Very, very fast." He paused. "I'm bothered about this another way."
"What way is there left?" muttered Ivan.
Daredevil rubbed the back of his neck. His hands were soon joined by Natasha's, which did a much better job of massage. "This has to be connected with the villain uprisings we've seen over the country in the news. In each one of them, the M.O. has been similar. Every time a team of super-villains gets put down, a backup team shows up out of nowhere. The ones we fought today may be just the ones we can see."
"I doubt that, Matt," said Natasha, working on his shoulders. "The girl I fought told me that they didn't need any backup, with the civilians under their control."
"Never take the word of an enemy at face value," said Daredevil. "I wasn't listening to her pulse when she said that."
"This has to be part of that operation I heard of," said the Widow.
DD looked at her.
Natasha looked at him, steadily. "I have informants even you know nothing about, Matt. I learned of an operation that had been recruiting even super-agents from the Motherland. The only thing beyond that he could tell me was a purported codeword: 'Fire'."
"'Fire,'" Daredevil repeated. "Have you told SHIELD?"
"Not yet," she admitted.
"Get on the phone to Nick Fury."
She sighed, picked up the phone again, and began to dial. Ivan looked towards the back, momentarily. "DD, one thing I have to know."
"What's that, Ivan?"
"You managed to fly and land a helicopter today. As good as any pilot I've ever seen. How?"
Daredevil leaned over conspiratorially. "Don't tell anyone I'm blind. I could lose my pilot's license."
-M-
The tide of battle had turned in favor of the X-Men, not surprisingly. Cyclops and his team had a long-standing grudge against Magneto, their first collective foe, and they meant to settle it today if they could.
It was the first time the original X-Men had worked together since the breakup, and the first time ever that both teams of heroic mutants had united in combat. Cyclops, after landing several powerful blows to Magneto's head and body, had been smashed back by girders which leaped from a pile and shoved him away. Havok blasted the metal away from his brother, but Magneto had retreated a bit, and both knew he was deadlier than they wanted to contemplate.
Other girders were battering at Juggernaut, wielded by Lorna Dane. Marvel Girl joined with her, using the telepathic abilities she had been bequeathed by Professor Xavier to assault his mind. For all that, Cain Marko was still up and fighting, gathering himself up and preparing an assault. But as he stepped forward, he slipped on a newly-formed sheet of ice and went to his back, swearing.
"You think you've got the edge, now," he roared. "You've only given us more targets!"
The Iceman hit him in the face with a slushball. "And you're too big a target to miss, Juggy. Sorry, couldn't resist."
The Angel dive-bombed the lesser villains still remaining, but found the Vanisher appearing on his back. The teleporting villain had a knife. That didn't seem to bother Warren all that much. He did a barrel roll and the Vanisher fell away, screaming. He fell half of the forty feet to the ground before he could trigger his teleportational power. Nonetheless, where he landed, he landed hard.
The Beast found Magneto as he was about to unleash his power against Lorna and Jean, did a double-flip, came down hard with both outsized feet on his foe's purple-caped back, and heard a "Whuff!" as Magneto went down hard on his chest and face. Hank McCoy smiled, but he didn't even pause. He grasped the master villain in both hands and threw him as hard as possible towards his teammates. Magneto hit the ground a second time, trying to get his breath back, planning a deadly attack for the indignity.
He was abruptly assaulted by burning hellfire and a shrill scream that threatened to split his ears. Banshee and Sunfire were still in the game.
The master of magnetism rose from the ground, shielded himself with his cape, and raised his hands. At his bidding, the cars stacked round about the area as a barricade rose into the air and hurtled towards the two X-Men. Toshiro and Sean changed their tactics. Sunfire blasted away at the flying vehicles, trying to melt or dissect them before they hit. The Banshee unleashed his sonic blasts, trying to shatter the metallic missles, but it was a straining task.
This, Magneto decided, had gone on long enough.
He pointed his right hand at a seemingly-bare patch of ground. It erupted from the force of something emerging beneath it. It was black, metallic, and looked like nothing more nor less than a coffin. At his gesture, it hovered, then moved where he directed.
It moved swiftly towards Cyclops and Havok.
The two brothers saw it coming only a second before it separated, lid from body. Alex Summers had time to say, "Cyke, what–" before the object engulfed him.
Havok was scooped into the body of the coffin. The lid clamped over him. Cyclops immediately blasted it, but it resisted his attack. The coffin soared away, into the air, beyond their reach. The Angel tried to track it, but it eluded him. Even Jean Grey and Lorna Dane were unable to tag it with their powers.
"What in the de'il's name is happenin'?" cried Banshee.
Cyclops, who knew exactly what was happening, tried to train his visor on Magneto. But it was already too late.
The wall of a nearby building which was still standing erupted in stone and steel fury. The eruption was caused by the pressure of a stone-grey figure within, clad in gleaming metallic armor. The figure grew, and grew, and grew.
"Dear...God," whispered Marvel Girl, and threw an arm up before her face.
"Jean, what is it? What's happening?" asked Lorna, in terror.
Magneto, standing atop a mound of rubble, told them. "Almost my final gambit, X-Men. I gave you the chance of alliance. You refused. Then you brought in reinforcements. Very well, I resort to my hidden weapon. I believe you have already met...the Living Monolith."
And with that, the Monolith, who towered fully thirty feet high, brought his massive fist down in a blow that flattened everything beneath it and scattered everyone within range of it.
Cyclops had known what was in the offing, after seeing Havok scooped up by the flying coffin. Alex and the villain known, alternatively, as the Living Pharaoh existed in a strange symbiosis. When Alex was cut off from the cosmic rays that powered him, the Pharaoh was transformed into this almost unstoppable titan of destruction. The X-Men had faced him only once, beaten him only by a hair. The real way of doing it was to find and liberate Alex. But Alex was gone.
The dynamics of battle had changed.
"X-Men," Cyclops yelled, "retreat! Marvel Girl, Magna, pick up the ones who can't run with your powers. Move it!"
Then he had to run, himself. The huge foot of the Monolith came down where he had been standing.
Looking at his fleeing foes and his titanic ally, Magneto smiled, within his helmet.
It was going to be a good day after all.
-M-
PARKER
I think about the toughest thing about the whole affair for me, up to then, was just waiting.
The Bugle hit the streets that morning with a headline: SPIDER-MAN WANTS CONFAB WITH NICK FURY. Some people thought Jameson had gone nuts, publicizing for the guy he hated most in the world...well, maybe after Adolf Hitler. But after all, Hitler was dead, and crazy seemed to be the norm that week, and...
...well, even Jonah had to admit that we needed help. I admitted that I needed help. The whole country needed help. Nobody knew how bad. Not just yet.
President Nixon had gotten on the horn and declared a national emergency and, as usual, left it to us heroes to take care of things. In the meantime, rioting was going on round-the-clock. Places like Bed-Stuy, Watts, Harlem, all of them were in flames again. Just like it all started, back in 1965. The fire...
That's getting ahead of myself.
What did I do with myself?
Well, after I went to see Jonah, came home to Gwen, had dinner, watched TV, talked, and did what married people do, I slept, got up, had breakfast, and went to work.
Don't believe all the things you read in Superman comic books. I couldn't just fake an upset stomach, jump into a storeroom, and jump out in my Spidey costume. Not if I wanted to keep my job. I had a work record to uphold, same as you will in a few years, so I tried to keep my mind on my job. It wasn't easy. But, considering I could have blown up a good part of Stark Labs with what I had at hand that day, I managed.
After 5:30, I phoned up Gwen and told her I'd be in late. She argued with me. There were tears. I had to hang up quick. I know that doesn't paint me in the best light, but that's how it was. I was a dutiful guy. The shame was, I put those duties in front of my duty to my wife.
I know I've said it a lot: "With great power comes great responsibility." The big problem is finding out which set of responsibilities to put first. I haven't always chosen well.
But I had a job to do.
I called the Daily Bugle at a number Jameson had given me. He answered the phone, didn't even bother cussing me out. Just gave me a number he'd been given by, I suppose, an agent of SHIELD. It told me where to go. Not where Jameson would usually have told me to go...just to a rooftop in central Manhattan. So I changed clothes and got swinging.
The webline jazz got me to the building and my sticky feet and hands got me to the top of it. So I stood there for awhile, looking out at the city, wondering what was supposed to happen. Jameson might have been made a patsy, after all. It might have been a setup from one of my enemies. I was never lacking in those.
I could see flames from some sections of the city, up where I was. It looked like it was in the poorer neighborhoods, if I was guessing right. I was too far away, and I wasn't much of a fire-fighter as it was. I was there to fight another sort of fire.
Then the old spider-sense kicked in. It was coming from overhead, so I looked up. No Vulture, none of my enemies who could fly. It was something a lot bigger than that.
It was the SHIELD heli-carrier.
It'll be hard to describe it to you kids, but the easiest way of doing it is to tell you it was literally a ship in the air. Like an aircraft carrier and an ocean liner all in one. It was maybe as big as the Enterprise on Star Trek, even though it didn't look like it. It was held up by a bunch of big rotor blades, and don't ask me how. Most of the time it didn't come over Manhattan. It was usually guarded by a fake cloud cover, and it was always guarded by a bunch of aircraft.
This time, it was coming towards me.
There is no way you couldn't be awed by that thing. I'd seen a lot in my time...really, I had. I'd been to a separate dimension with Doctor Strange. I'd rassled a flying space capsule to save Jonah Jameson's son. I'd met a ton of bad guys, and most of the good guys. But one of the good guys I'd never met was Nick Fury, and I'd never seen the heli-carrier before. How could a thing so big be up there in the sky without falling? It didn't seem real, much less airworthy. But there it was.
I had a few thoughts about backing out. But I told them to shut up, and just stood there.
The carrier came to as much of a stop as it could right over me and the building. Then the spider-sense went off again, and I jumped to face the way it was tingling. It wasn't a threat, just something I was supposed to be aware of.
There was a little floating monitor in front of me, with a tiny little jet engine in the bottom of it and a whirling prop on top and another one in back of it on a tail. That, I guess, was for directional flight. But I was looking at the face on the monitor.
The face wore an eye-patch.
"Spider-Man," he said. "Ain't got time to talk. Get on that purple disk you see on the roof and hold on tight."
"You Nick Fury?" I said.
"Nope, I'm Eleanor Roosevelt," he said. "Now get the hell on the disk!"
So that's what I did. Then a big red beam stabbed down from the bottom of the heli-carrier, and I went up, disc, webs, and all.
To say the least, it was an uplifting experience. I was uplifted about 1,000 feet into the air. It took under a minute, and before three seconds were gone, I was plastered all over that disc, hanging on firmly by my hands and feet. I'm told you can get used to it, but I wasn't taking any chances.
I'd like to say that I could see the island of Manhattan getting smaller and smaller below me, but that would be a lie. My eyes were closed. Sure, I was used to swinging on skyscrapers from weblines and duking it out with guys who usually wanted to kill me. But that was stuff I was accustomed to. I just hung on and waited it out.
Then the disk's progress seemed to slow, just like an elevator losing speed when it gets to your stop. I looked up, since I didn't want to look down. The heli-carrier was above me, all above me. But right over me was a circular port, and an iris door was opening up. That's what admitted me into the carrier.
A second or so later, the disc stopped moving, a couple of holders came out to catch it and me, the iris door was shut, and the red beam cut off. I was surrounded by a bunch of guys in uniforms with high-tech rifles. They weren't pointed at me, luckily, but I didn't make any fast moves.
"This the part where I say, 'Take me to your leader?'", I said.
I had a habit of cracking wise when I was nervous. It tended to work. Rattled my opponents so that they were concentrating more on what I said than what I was about to do. I got better at it as I went along, kinda like starting out as a stand-up comedian. Not that I'm that good, of course, but I kinda fantasied that sometime Woody Allen would be in the crowd watching one of my fights, and I'd hear one of my lines stolen for a movie. No such luck, though.
Anyway. One of the guys there said, "Don't move, Spider-Man. We are subjecting you to a scan to verify your identity. Please cooperate."
Since this was SHIELD and not Doc Ock's laboratory, I tried to comply. In about ten seconds, the guy said, "Verified. Please step off the disk."
I jumped off it and landed in the midst of them. Guns were clacking and pointing at me as soon as I made a two-foot touchdown. That was when I really didn't make a move.
But I could see the heli-carrier chamber, all metal, plastic, glass, monitors, personnel, guys at monitors, guys with guns, observers from an upper deck, the whole nine yards. It was something out of a Stanley Kubrick nightmare. Even Dr. Doom wouldn't have had the budget for this kind of setup. I was, to say the least, impressed.
Then one guy in an orange uniform pushed two guards out of his way and came over to me. "Spider-Man?" he said. Remarkable deductive ability, but that's why he was an agent, I guess.
"When last seen," I said.
"I'm Agent Gabriel Jones," he said. "Col. Fury wants to see you. Come with me."
I followed the guy without saying anything else. A few guards followed us saying even less. It wasn't my scene, but it wasn't as much not my scene as, say, the time I had to fight the Big Man, the Enforcers, and their whole crime syndicate in a warehouse. So I coped.
Down a few hallways, up a few lifts...and when I say lifts, I mean lifts, they operated magnetically, not like elevators...through a few doors and checkpoints, and, finally, past one place where I was x-rayed, gamma-rayed, and everything-else-rayed until my spider-sense was tingling like a third alarm. I told them to cut it out or I was going home. Nobody asked me how I was going to do it.
Then I finally got to the last checkpoint, through something that amounted to a heavily-defended airlock, with Jones and three guards alongside me. Actually, they were along every side of me. I could have jumped up, clung to the ceiling, and scurried away, but that might have been hazardous to my health. Those agents weren't packing bb's in their rifles.
I was escorted into a fairly spacious room that looked pretty much like an everyday businessman's office. The guy behind the desk wasn't in his black neoprene suit. He was in a white shirt with the sleeves unbuttoned, a half-done tie, a pair of black pants, regular leather shoes, and, yeah, an eyepatch. His hair was brown, except at the temples, where it'd gone white. He had a cigar in one hand and some papers in the other. I'd seen tough in my day, hard guys like the Sandman, Man-Mountain Marko, the Ox, any number of big and small crooks and super-villains.
But this guy, somehow, made them look like a package of weenies.
"Siddown," he said, and waved to a chair in front of the desk with his cigar hand.
I did, and got back some of my equilibrium. "Hello," I said, with as much aplomb as I was capable of.
"Heard you wanted to see me," he said. "What about?"
Fury, I'm told, didn't always beat around the bush that much. He must've liked me.
"I know about all the hell that's been breaking out, all over the country," I ventured.
He just gave me the eye and put his cigar in his mouth. Yeah, it sounded stupid and obvious. What else was I supposed to say?
"Every super-hero I know is out of town," I went on. "You're the only guy I can think of left to link up with. If I can be of help, and I think I can, I'd like to lend a hand."
The man tried to keep his voice even. "I've got a man down, in sick bay. A guy with a laser just about cut his damn arm off. Think you can help with that?"
"No," I said. Then I told him, "A group of my old enemies and Daredevil's threw down on me on the docks a day or so ago. Think you can help with that?"
He took the stogie out of his mouth and looked at me for a long moment. Then he said, "Maybe we can help each other."
"If you're game, I'm game," I said.
The colonel stood up and said, "Come with me." I did. Only a couple of guards came with us, and they were a few paces behind. Fury took me through another airlock kind of setup and down another hall. On the way, he talked to me.
Or maybe he talked at me.
"I never liked fancy-pantses," he said. "Even back in the war. First one I ever met was Cap. He was more man than I saw anywhere, even back in Hell's Kitchen. But I didn't like the costume."
"So you gave him fashion tips?" I said.
"Don't get smart with me, kid," he said. "I've been through too damn much for that. The Kree / Skrull thing, the business with HYDRA, the Hulk trial...I just wanted some peace and quiet. Now this."
"What is it, Colonel?"
"Damned if I know, kid," he said. "But it's planned. It ain't random. It just looks that way. I know better, and they know I know better, too."
"Who's they?"
"Whoever's behind this," he said. "But I don't know who it is."
"Doc Doom?"
Fury shook his head. "Doubt it. My intel has sources even there in Latveria. He's been busy on other stuff. If he'd been plannin' this, it would'a put more of a drain on his time than we know about."
I thought Doom would be a good candidate. Just about every good guy and bad guy who wore a costume had turned out in '65 to fight at Reed and Sue Richards's wedding, me included, and Doom wasn't among 'em. Reed told me, later, he was pretty sure Doom was behind it, though we never knew for sure. "Who's next runner-up?"
"That's what I wanna find out," he said. "That's where you maybe can help."
We went past another checkpoint into what was darned near the biggest room I'd ever seen in my life, up to then.
Most of it was taken up by a big machine and three people.
The people were lying on couches with their heads in three helmets which covered their eyes and which were connected to the machine. It looked like Galactus's hairdryer. I can't describe it more than that. It reached up to the ceiling and I was glad it was fastened tightly up there, or it probably would have made mush out of the heads of the three people connected to it. One was a woman and the other two were males.
"Welcome to the SHIELD ESP division," Fury said.
"Okay," I said. That was about as profound as I could get.
Fury pointed to them with his cigar. "These three agents are monitorin' the globe for eight hors a day, tryin' to figure out the next hot spot to go off, what's gonna happen, and what we'll have to do to put it out. We got three others come in after them, and three others after them, in rotation. The ones you're lookin' at are the best of the bunch."
"What've they been able to figure out?" I asked him.
"Not enough," Fury told me. "That's where you come in."
"Me?" I pointed at myself, really surprised. "Hey, man, I swing on webs and fight Doc Ock and jump over small buildings in a single bound, but I hate to tell you this, I'm not Jeanne Dixon!"
He wasn't perturbed, much. "Shut up and lissen'a me, kid. You got this thing called spider-sense, ain't 'cha?"
"Of course," I told him. "How'd you find out?"
"We got ways, kid," he said. "How does it work?"
"Well," I said, "it alerts me whenever danger is around. Kind of like a tingling I feel. But if you think that's ESP..."
He looked at me without saying anything.
"All right, all right, maybe it is a little like ESP," I admitted. "But...you can't hook me into that thing and expect me to..."
"You said you wanted to help," Fury said. "Got a better idea just now?"
He had me.
After that, he took me down to the floor. "We're gonna put you in a receptor," he said. "It won't hurt. Much, anyway."
I told him that was reassuring. He ignored me. He said, "You'll be hooked up in what they kinda call a gestalt...hell, I'd just call it a combine...with our three aces here. They know what to do, an' they're gonna guide you. You're gonna guide them, too."
"To what?" I asked.
"To whatever's causin' whatever is goin' down," he said. "If we're lucky."
"Colonel," I said, "go ahead and hook me up."
So three or four guys rolled out what looked like a portable couch with a headset and told me to get on it. I said I wasn't going to take any drugs for this, and they told me I didn't have to. I lay down on it and just before they fitted the gizmo on my head, I turned to Fury. "You do have insurance for this kind of thing, don't you?"
"Kid, I thought I told you not to get smart," he said, and then just watched.
A doctor came in from somewhere and took my vital signs. Then they rolled me and the couch over to the main setup, and connected some wires to what amounted to the mainframe. The doc told me to lay back, relax, and close my eyes. I did the first and third.
For a few seconds, I don't think I saw anything but the backs of my eyelids.
Then things...changed.
Three people were saying hello to me in my head.
My Spidey-sense was going on full-blast. More than full-blast. But it wasn't like it was reacting to some danger. It was like it was being...expanded. I've never taken drugs, but there was a phrase we used back then, sometimes: "mind expansion". I have a feeling the heads back then were just pikers to what I was getting into, just then. I was experiencing the real thing.
I wasn't exactly seeing three other people as much as I was sensing them. It was more effective than sight. They introduced themselves and told me their names. I won't repeat them to you here. Even this late in the game, I respect a trust. I asked them if they knew who I really was. They said yes, but that they would blot that from their conscious minds. They wouldn't even tell Fury.
Nobody else had ever learned I was Spider-Man, up to that point. That disturbed me. But somehow, in that environiment, I knew that they couldn't lie to me. So I soldiered on.
I asked them what I was supposed to do. They said I was supposed to come with them, all over the nation, maybe all over the world, and find out what the source of the problem was. That sounded okay by me.
It wasn't exactly like being taken by the hand. It was more like swimming in a pool, or kind of lying there while others are holding your arms and swimming to guide you. I guess I was sort of a human mine detector for them. They were using my spider-sense to guide their ESP the way it should go.
And I suppose it worked.
We must've started out in New York. I remember my senses going off so much at first there that it almost scared me. But there was always trouble in New York, and we knew it. The Diamond Heads in Harlem, the students up at ESU, maybe more than that, and probably some villains, too. It was hard to guess. I knew we were moving out when the pressure got lesser.
I don't know the exact procedure of that Magical Mystery Tour. I think I knew we were in places like Dallas and San Francisco because they were thinking of Dallas and San Francisco when we were moving through there. They were thinking of those places because that's when my spider-sense went off. I got impressions of what was going on...not definite, not well-drawn, but impressions. Battle, danger, some people I had known as Spider-Man. And something worse. Something everyone on the other side seemed only half-aware of.
I guess we went up and down the country several times, though I couldn't testify to it in court. They may have tried overseas, too, but nothing much happened up there. We kept coming back to New York. The worst concentration seemed to be there. So we sifted through it again.
It was hard to pinpoint stuff. But we went through it, and kept refining our search, kept centralizing it, until my spider-sense made my head feel like the housing of a Concorde jet engine. And I'm not exaggerating much, either. Whatever it was, it was big, it was bad, and it was there.
About a second after that, objectively speaking, I suppose, they brought me out of it.
I saw the doctor's and Fury's faces over mine. The colonel looked a lot less hostile, now. He even looked concerned. I guess I couldn't have blamed him.
"Well, kid? What'd you get?" he asked.
I shook my head to clear as much of it as I could. Not a lot of what I'd experienced stuck with me all that much, and I was grateful for that. I couldn't imagine somebody taking that for eight hours a day. I hoped they got off weekends.
The doctor told the colonel to ease off, I wasn't experienced at this. But he just put his hands on my shoulders and said, "Kid...did you get anything?"
I looked up and told him.
"New Rochelle," I said.
"That's where you're going," he said.
-M-
Simon Gilbert didn't have a key for his son's house. But he saw the car in the driveway, and he kept beating on it till he heard Gary's voice within.
"Hi, Dad," said Gary from a door speaker. "Can you come back later? I'm a little busy now."
"No," Simon answered. "Whatever you're doing, shut it down and let me in."
"Dad, it isn't a what," Gary said. "It's a who. I'm sure you understand. Come back in an hour, okay?"
"Gary! Open the blasted door! Quit trying to lie to me."
"I'm not lying, Dad," the voice said, with a touch of irritation. "I'm very, very busy. This is an important thing I'm doing here."
"Son," said Simon Gilbert. "Gary. Can you see what I have in my hand?" He held the papers up to the door's spy hole.
There was nothing for almost ten seconds from within. Then the door lock clickety-clacked, and the door itself opened.
Gary Gilbert stood there in a leisure suit, smiling at his father. "Okay, Dad. It's great to see you again. Come on in. I'll send out."
Simon shook his head. "We have a lot to talk about, Gary. A lot."
Gary shrugged. "So come on in. We'll talk."
A twinge went through Simon's frame, then, making him remember a moment from World War II. His unit had been doing house-to-house fighting in France. They'd come upon a wine cellar, a particularly spectacular one, and another soldier had put out his hand to pull out a bottle. Something just didn't seem right, although Simon couldn't have told anyone, even himself, just what. He had yelled out a warning and hit the floor, face down.
His buddy had gotten blown to smithereens by a booby trap.
But today...well, there was nothing left to do but talk to his son. So he stepped inside.
Gary closed and locked the door behind him and stood in front of it with arms crossed. Simon turned to him. "Son. These budget figures just don't make sense. There are discreps that add up to...well...millions, if I've figured right. And that's just using an adding machine and pencil and paper."
Calmly, Gary said, "Who else have you told about this, Dad?"
"No one, Gary. I want you to explain it to me, and to me alone, before anyone else."
"I'd be glad to." Gary Gilbert gave a nod in the direction of the other room. Simon Gilbert wondered whether he was directing them to the kitchen, to have the discussion there.
Instead, a man in hippie regalia came in from that way. He was bearded, long-haired, powerful in the arms and chest, and, most importantly, he was carrying a gun.
"What's this about?" asked Simon, wishing numbly that he'd hired a bodyguard.
"Sit down, Dad," said Gary, reasonably.
"What?"
"Sit down," Gary repeated. "I think it's time you learned about the Fire."
To be continued...