Disclaimer: None of the League here are mine, and Eilidh and Fiona belong to themselves and their names are used here with their permission. The same applies for Sarah and Jeremy Nivern (Although Sarah's the only one of the two I like) and Gash. Oh, and I don't own Im Ho Tep's back-story; that belongs to the creators of 'The Mummy' and 'The Mummy Returns'. (AN: Thanks to Clez for providing me with some much-needed information about 'The Mummy Returns'.)
Feedback: Much appreciated
Lady Moon3: True, but that's megalomaniacs for you; too damn stubborn and stupid to know when they're beaten.
Sean Molloy-1: Thanks for the point; I was keeping that in mind, but I figured it wouldn't matter if I didn't mention it. Anyway, enjoy the rest.
Stallion: Glad you're liking this so far. By the way, can I ask you a favour? I have plans for a speedster to be introduced in later chapters, and I was wondering if I could use your name for him. If that's OK, could you just let me know as soon as you can?
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen 2004
Looking back at Fiona, Bond nodded to her with a smile on his face. "Thanks," he said to her. "If you hadn't managed to take your opponent down, we'd have been in serious trouble."
"You're welcome," Fiona said, smiling at Bond as she became visible once again. Then her face become more professional. "But don't think I'll be able to do that in our next fight."
"What do you mean?" Elektra asked, looking at Fiona with a curious expression.
"The only reason Jeremy fell so quickly was that he thought my only real power was the ability to turn invisible," Fiona explained. "He wasn't expecting me to be nearly invulnerable as well. If it wasn't for that..." Suddenly she stopped talking. "Wait a minute..." she whispered to herself, before glancing around at the others. "Did everyone else kill their opponents when they beat them?" she asked.
"Well, I don't think Harvey's dead, but he's so close I doubt we can help him," Angel said. "The others..." he paused and sniffed the air before talking again, "Nope, they're all dead."
"What?!" Fiona cried, horror on her face. "But... but I only knocked him out..." she said, looking over at Jeremy's body.
The League raced over to the fallen assassin, the Doctor reaching the corpse first.
Crouching down, he briefly looked at the body, and looked up at Fiona.
"It wasn't you," he said, indicating the man's face and lips. "He took a cyanide capsule. Evidently, whoever sent him either picks extremely loyal soldiers, or his soldiers are absolutely terrified of the consequences of failing him."
"Dammit!" Fiona groaned. "So much for getting information from him..."
"Tell me about it," Harry said. "However, maybe we should discuss this back at the League-mobile? I get the impression none of us want to be found here with all these corpses lying around."
Bond nodded. "Good point, Mr Potter," he said, looking at the other League members. "Let's go."
The League turned around and walked out of the warehouse, leaving the decomposing corpses of their foes to lie until their discovery.
After arriving back at the League-mobile, the Doctor quickly drove it onto the outskirts of Las Vegas, parking it in an open alleyway he found. The incredible car now concealed from view, the Doctor shut down all exterior lights and then joined the rest of the League.
As the Doctor joined the rest of the League at the large table in the centre of the League-mobile, Bond looked around at the group.
"So," he said, smiling slightly at the team. "The League is set. We've had our first fight as a team, and come out of it fairly well. We've learned what kind of soldiers our enemy has working for him, and we know we can stop them. The only thing we don't know yet is who he is and how we can fight him."
"Maybe we could start by tying up one last loose end?" Gwen asked, looking over at the spy. "Namely, where these guys are based? You mentioned you had access to that particular information, but you were saving it for when we were all here?"
"Of course," Bond replied, as he placed a file in the centre of the table. Opening it, he showed them all a photograph at the top of the small collection of papers; a vast ruin of what looked like an abandoned fortress, covered partly by snow.
"The Mongolian fortress where the League of the nineteenth century battled the man known publicly as 'the Fantom'," Bond explained, as the League looked at the picture. "It's been abandoned for over a century, but we've received intelligence from some of our undercover agents that our opponent, whoever he is, has set up shop here; we only haven't attacked it yet because we couldn't get in a force that would be strong enough to penetrate its defences until now." A thought occurred to him, and he sighed. "Of course... some of the scientist's notes on the Hyde serum must have survived its destruction. Why didn't we consider that as an option...?"
"Hyde serum?" Eilidh asked, looking over at Bond. "Would this be connected to what the Doctor mentioned in the warehouse? You know, about a member of the original League of Extraordinary Gentlemen being Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde?"
Bond nodded. "Of course, Hyde was rather different from his character in the book; he was eight feet tall and possessed phenomenal strength, rather than being more than a devious imp."
Clark looked up, a quizzical expression on his face as he looked over at Bond. "But if this guy has access to stuff like the Hyde formula, why is he only using vampires? Oh, wait, I get it; the serum takes a while to wear off. Even assuming the guy could get to his victim without anyone spotting him, he'd then have to wait a while until he could get out without anyone seeing him."
Angel nodded. "Exactly. Anyway, there'd be no guarantee nobody would walk in on the Hyde while he was waiting. This guy may be dangerous, but he's smart as well."
"The question is, are we smarter than him?" Elektra asked, looking over at the Doctor. "After all, we have got nine different people here, and he's only one man. Surely all of us can out-think him, no matter who he is."
"How do we know there's just one of these guys?" Harry put in.
The rest of the League looked over at him. Harry gulped. "Just a thought," he said, sounding a little sheepish.
"Unfortunately," Gwen said, speaking for the entire League, "it's a good one. What if this is some kind of... I dunno, group or cult or something?"
"Well, if it's any help, Jeremy did mention his boss's name when we were fighting," Fiona said. "I just wasn't sure how helpful that would be; it's something strange, like 'Im On Top', or.... I don't know..."
"Im Ho Tep?!" Harry and Angel asked, looking over at Fiona with fear in their eyes.
"Yeah, that's it!" Fiona said, smiling a little as inspiration struck her. Then she noticed the worried expressions on Angel and Harry's faces, and the smile vanished. "That's bad, right?"
"As bad as it could get," Harry said, looking over at Angel. "You want to tell them, or shall I?"
"I'll tell them," Angel said, looking over at the rest of the League. "Im Ho Tep was originally the High Priest of Osiris, Keeper of the Egyptian Dead, in the city of Trebes in the year 2,134 B.C. He defied all the rules of his culture and became the lover of Anck-su-namun, Pharaoh's Mistress. No other man was allowed to touch her, but for their love, the two were willing to risk life itself. When Pharaoh discovered about her betrayal, he tried to have Im Ho Tep killed, but Anck-su-namun killed Pharaoh instead, then sacrificing her own life to let Im Ho Tep escape."
Gwen coughed politely. "Um, Angel? Tragic as that story was, what does it have to do with this situation?"
"I'm not finished that part yet, Gwen," Angel said. "Anyway, Im Ho Tep managed to steal Anck-su-namun's body before she could be cursed for killing Pharaoh, and tracked down the Book of the Dead."
"The what?" Eilidh asked.
"Supposedly, it was a book that contained the incantations that could bring a dead body back to life. It was hidden at Hamunaptra, City of the Dead, inside the statue of Anubis, so that no such sacrilege might ever disgrace Egypt, but Im Ho Tep's love of Anck-su-namun drove him to defy the gods themselves, and he attempted to resurrect her. However, he was interrupted before he could finish the ceremony, and she died a second death. His priests were sentenced to be mummified alive, and Im Ho Tep was forced to undergo the Hom-Dai."
"What was that?" Clark asked. He seemed to be caught up in the story already, hanging on Angel's every world with intense interest.
"The worst of all ancient curses; one so horrible, it had never before been bestowed on anybody. Im Ho Tep was made to eat sacred scarabs, which would curse him to live forever."
Angel sighed a little as he continued to speak. "Im Ho Tep was to remain sealed inside his sarcophagus, the undead for all of eternity. They would never allow him to be released, for he would arise a walking disease, a plague upon mankind, an unholy flesh-eater, with the strength of ages, power over the sands, and the glory of invincibility. And if he could raise Anck-su-namun from her place in hell, together, they would be an unstoppable infection upon this world. The Apocalypse. The End."
Angel stopped talking, and looked around at the others. "And there you have it," he said, bluntly. "The background on one of the most dangerous characters to ever walk the Earth."
"Yikes..." Fiona said. "And what happened then?"
"Well, Im Ho Tep was trapped in his sarcophagus for several thousand years, until the year 1926, when he was accidentally awakened by a couple of archaeologists, brother and sister Evelyn and Jonathan Carnahan, and former soldier Rick O'Connell accidentally freed Im Ho Tep, who then attempted to regain full power and sacrifice Evelyn to restore Anck-su-namun to life. He reached full power, but Rick O'Connell managed to keep Im Ho Tep distracted before he could resurrect Anck-su-namun, allowing Evelyn to find the Book of the Living and render Im Ho Tep mortal."
"Well, if he's dead, what's the problem?" Elektra put in.
"He came back around ten years later, in 1933," Angel said, as he continued talking. "By some complex chain of events, his corpse arrived in the British Museum, and was resurrected by a woman called Meela, who was the reincarnation of Anck-su-namun. She wanted Im Ho Tep to battle the Scorpion King, a legendary warrior who sold his soul to Anubis so he could command the Army of Anubis, an army of unstoppable demons. The idea was that Im Ho Tep would defeat the Scorpion King and thus gain control of the Army of Anubis, which he and Anch-su-namun would then lead to conquer the world. However, Rick O'Connell, now married to Evelyn Carnahan, managed to defeat the Scorpion King with the aid of a golden spear called 'the Sceptre of Osiris'."
"So, Im Ho Tep's still around?" Eilidh asked, looking slightly hopeful at the idea that they were getting somewhere."
"No, he's not," Angel said. "After the Scorpion King was defeated, Im Ho Tep didn't feel like there was much point in continuing to live. He'd seen the love that existed between Rick O'Connell and Evelyn Carnahan, and had realised that Anck-su-namun would never give up her safety for him, or risk her own life for the sake of his. He basically just... gave up after that, and fell down into the underworld, which had been opened in the battle with the Scorpion King. He was never seen again."
Fiona sighed. "Tragic," she said, looking over at Angel. "Really tragic." Then she groaned and looked over at Angel. "But if he's in charge of these guys, that must mean-"
"It's not him," the Doctor put in suddenly.
The League looked down towards the Doctor, who was lying back in his seat with his shoes on the table (The shoes in question were leather buccaneer- style boots), his hat pushed down over his eyes. He looked as though he hadn't been paying attention in the slightest, but that theory was discarded by the League almost at once as he swung his feet off the table and pulled his hat off, meeting their stares with a stare that almost equalled theirs in intensity, even with their advantage of numbers.
"What do you mean, Doctor?" Elektra asked, speaking for them all.
"Look at it logically, Elektra," the Doctor said, as he sat back in his chair and put his feet up again, his hands clasped and the index finger raised to his lips in an professional-looking manner. "Both times he's been resurrected, Im Ho Tep's goals and methods for achieving them may have changed, but one factor has always remained the same."
Harry nodded a little, as he thought over the point that his new teammate had just raised. "I think I see what you're getting at, Doctor. No matter what his plan has been, he's always used the magic of the ancient Egyptians to achieve it. Why would he change tactics now?"
"He couldn't think of anything Egyptian he could use to achieve his goal?" Clark asked, raising an inquiring finger.
The Doctor looked over at his fellow alien with an inquiring expression on his face. "Thank you for raising that point, Clark. You have raised an excellent question; what would Im Ho Tep be trying to achieve by assassinating important global figures?"
"Well, he's trying to... trying to..." Clark's voice died down, as he realised how fragile his argument really was. "I've missed a couple of vital steps in my reasoning, haven't I?"
Bond nodded, and turned back to the rest of the League. "You see the problem we have right now," he said, looking over at them all. "We know what our foe is calling himself, but we don't know who he really is. We know what he's doing, but we don't know why. We know what kind of soldiers he is using, both for his assassins and for combat, but we don't know why he chose to use those particular soldiers. We know where he is stationed, but we don't know why he picked that particular area." He groaned a little, and slumped back down in his seat. "So, now that I've said my piece, has anyone got any ideas as to how we find out who he really is?"
The League looked around at each other for a while, mentally thinking about what kind of move they might make next. Then Fiona coughed politely, and the rest of the League looked towards her.
"Yes?" Elektra asked, raising an inquiring eyebrow at the sometimes- invisible woman.
"Well, it's only a thought, but the way I see it, those guys we took out in the warehouse must have real identities, right?" Fiona said, sounding slightly uncertain of her ground. "Therefore, if we can find out who they were before they became vampires or werewolves or Hydes, maybe we can get some idea of their boss's movements before he set himself up in the fortress?"
The League looked at each other for a couple of seconds, before Clark spoke for them all.
"Good idea," he said simply. "Let's do it."