Last Time:
A happenstance bungling by members of the villainous organization known as Advanced Idea Mechanics has allowed a creature to escape into the sewers of Manhattan. The alien organisms known as Hedorah consume pollution and toxic waste and are absolutely lethal to life on Earth.
Pushed out of their underground existence by the invasive smog monsters, the mutant sub-group the Morlocks have surfaced to ask for help.
The Fantastic Four have been asked to find a way to put an end to the Hedorahs' threat and find out how xenokaiju from Godzilla's universe wound-up in the hands of A.I.M. in the first place
Determined to clear the underground of New York City of the monsters, four teams have descended into the artificial circulatory system armed with the means to either destroy or contain the aliens. But they may have underestimated their quarry, as each team now reels from the proliferation of the smog monsters.
FANTASTIC 4
'CONTAMINATION'
PART 3
Of all the places and environments, who would doubt that life, some kind of life, would arise in that which might seem impossible? That something with consciousness might lift its head from the muck of hostile elements and seek out its own existence however it may. Somewhere out there, out amongst the stars, amidst conditions that would invoke our final breath, something… took its first.
In the sewers of Manhattan…
The chamber became a lightning storm. At the command of Mr. Fantastic, the electrode panels affixed to the wall partitions burst with an explosion of white arcs, bolts writhing and convulsing between contact points. As planned, the light-construct sphere of the Invisible Woman held against the electrical assault, the arcs diverting around it. Protect them as it did, it did not shield them from the cacophony of wicked shrieks and wails riled up by the intended targets.
Hedorahs loosed alien death-rattles as enough milliamperes to reduce a man to cinders coursed through the swarm, reacting to the heavy-metal elements that, in part, comprised their permeable bodies. Even Ben Grimm couldn't help but scowl at the unearthly howls of agony. Hedorah threw themselves against the barrier in desperation, tiny lamprey-like mouths attempting to bite their way through. A frantic red eye pressed itself in, searching for some rescue only to find the humans glaring back at it with revulsion.
As a biologist, Susan Richards considered herself an aficionado of all forms of life, and as she looked on, she nonetheless felt a pang of remorse for the suffering they were inflicting. Inarguably dangerous as they were, the Hedorah were still sentient creatures experiencing pain and terror like any other animal on the wrong side of Man's interests. But she steeled herself with a bite of the lip, doubling her concentration on the only thing that kept them safe.
Reed's mind, as typical, was focused on technical matters. Calculating the exact time it should take to reduce them to a powdered state, he simultaneously formulated a strategy on how best to get to the aid of Callisto's team. Which came to a startling end when another voice on the radio answered the call for help, superseding him by proximity. He would have liked to have more details as to the nature of their distress, but solving that problem would have to wait until they had resolved the one here.
"As soon as we clear these," He began to his wife, "We'll make our way to them!"
"If they last that long!" Thing said, anxious to be removed from the epicenter of this eldritch nightmare. "Hell, if we last that long!"
"Shrinking the bubble to just me and Reed would be easier," Sue said coldly. "I'm pretty sure you'd survive."
Ben rolled his eyes. "How many times have I heard THAT one before?"
"And I've been right every time thusfar."
When Reed saw one Hedorah that had managed to climb its way to the equator of the sphere finally slough-off, grey particulates wafting away, he nodded his head.
"Another 10 seconds should do it." He concluded. "I'll have to set the machine to recover the remains automatically."
Sue agreed. "We don't have another choice."
Elsewhere…
It reminded Steve Rogers of something out of an H.P. Lovecraft story. Standing at the threshold to a very large chamber filled with valves and pipe intersections, he stared with indescribable bewilderment at the mass of squirming and pulsating blobs that clung to the walls and support pillars. Whether it was a thousand separate, indiscernible creatures or a single globulous entity with a hundred independent eyes he couldn't say. Though perhaps with Hedorah, there was little functional distinction between the two.
A sharp beeping from the communication device mounted on his wrist began to sound, and he stifled it instantly, quickly checking to make sure it hadn't aroused the attention of the colony. The purring was incessant, spread out among a hundred sources and filling the air with a palpable thrum.
"Callisto's team is calling for help." One of the SHIELD agents on his squad informed in a low tone.
A second later, new traffic came over the comm-link. Agent Victoria Hand's team was closest, responding that they would rendezvous shortly.
"Let them handle it," Steve told the agent. "Right now we have to take care of this one."
Moments later Bobby Drake was at the front, the team activating their protective masks in proximity to so many of the creatures.
Rogers took him by the shoulder, "Start with the closest and work your way back."
"What are we gonna do with all of 'em?" Drake asked, frost proliferating at his fingertips as he took in the scope of the job.
"We'll have to call an extraction crew to cut in from above and remove 'em." Glancing to the ceiling, the memory of a super-soldier bore the fruit of estimating their location relative to the surface above. He turned back to one of the agents and issued the command to relay their position and summon a top-side team to manage the removal.
"Spread out." He told the rest. "Make sure we're not overlooking any."
Bobby, curious, hesitated to begin his work, approaching with his rime-covered hands he inspected a singular blob attached to a column. Splattered across the surface like it had been spat out, the mound in the center was dark, the eye shut.
I guess even smog monsters have to sleep sometimes.
It was when he took one more step that the eye opened, singular and red, roaming until it found the stunned human. Drake froze, figuratively, unsure if the slightest twitch would provoke a poisonous cloud he could not hope to avoid. But as happens sometimes across the boundaries of species, was a truce, however fragile and temporary, where the parties simply made inspection of one another. The Hedorah regarded him with a timid unsteadiness, whatever considerations occurring behind the lens remaining unspoken.
"Okay…" He swallowed a lump of nerves and elected to begin backtracking ever so slowly by sliding his feet in a faux moonwalk. Whether it was a similar desire to avoid conflict or an attempt at mimicry, the Hedorah started to slough itself down the wall in a mutual disengagement. Drake twisted himself away and put his focus towards casting his frozen power at a pillar not so close.
Recalling that bright lights would draw the creature's attention, Rogers' ordered that his men refrain from using flashlights to aid their inspection, as difficult as that might have made their task. So while they relied on their night-vision goggles, Steve preferred the quality of his own two eyes.
Once Iceman began his work however, the purring that had been rising and falling with the rhythm of breath consolidated into a singular pattern. Cap regripped his shield, suspecting the Hedorah of conspiring amongst themselves. But the droning came to an abrupt end when the multitude of eyes started blinking out.
"On your toes everyone," He muttered into his comms. "They're up to something."
A flash of dull light like a bulb burning out preceded a shimmer of sparkles washing over the colony. From the outer edges in, the mass of the Hedorah was taken in the opalescent transformation, to what end, Rogers could only dread.
Then the purring started again, though not in the surround-sound as before, but a single subwoofer that set stone and water to shiver.
A gurgling in the dark gave way to the dawn of a new eye, unified in size and scale, big enough Steve judged at his distance, that he could stretch his arms side to side and barely span the diameter.
"Everyone out." He grit over the radio. "The Hedorahs have merged. Drake, rally on me."
Where the Hedorah colony had been spread out over the surface of the room, it now writhed in coordination, coalescing towards a center.
Its evolved… Refusing to take his gaze from the threat, Steve used his peripheral vision to make sure he was the last to exit.
Something, some limb of the Hedorah moved forward with a warbling purr, splatting down with a wet impact. Measuring the outline of the mass against the background, he estimated its rough size comparable to an elephant.
A chill tingle on the back of Steve's neck told him Bobby Drake was in proximity.
"If you attack it directly, it might release its smoke. Wall it in, Bobby. We can't let it get out and grow any bigger."
"You got it, Cap."
The Hedorah lumbered forward on an unclear number of legs, elastic portions of its body coming unstuck from the walls as it moved. Sacks on its back began to inflate and swell with every breath, the vertical slit of its eyelids blinking while the eye tracked the humans.
Once all the agents were behind them, Iceman began sweeping his arms left to right in wide arcs, building a wall from the ground-up between them and the shambling creature. It would cut off the third of the room that held the exit, and ideally, imprison the creature on the other side until the containment crew could attack it from above.
Seemingly unaware of the implications of becoming the kaiju Fortunato, the Hedorah ambled calmly until it encountered the ice barrier that had by then surpassed its height. Paws of black sludge searched for purchase on the icy bulwark, sliding off unsuccessfully and leaving streaks of frozen muck in their wake. It emitted a high-pitched trill and skulked for an open avenue.
Isolated in the darkness, it wasn't until it heard the sound of demolition from above that it turned its attention upwards.
Elsewhere…
The deadly exhaust flooded the tunnel with all the mortal menace of a biblical plague, a creeping death that promised to consume man and mutant with equal lethality. Crimson sclera burning with an alien malevolence was all that projected through the accumulating smog, accompanied by the sinister purr.
A purr that sent a cold shiver down Callisto's spine, conjuring the faces of her friends, who fell in the gutter and died an inhuman death. Despite this, her face hardened into a mask of determination, and her mind focused to an edge.
"This way!" She called out to the rest of the team as they fired their electrobolts into the oncoming cloud. "I know where we can seal it off!"
Seth Makon, the SHIELD agent who had shown remarkable consideration for her and the Morlocks was yelling into his comms-device as he signaled for his men to follow her. She noted the burn across his face, even caught the noxious stench of the caustic tar eating flesh as he passed by.
She led them down to a hard left in the system and onto where a water-tight bulkhead-style door had been installed to protect a Morlock den from sewage floods. Hopefully that seal would keep the toxic smog at bay, giving them the time to recover and link-up with their reinforcements.
If the Hedorah was in pursuit they didn't spare the glance to verify, not wanting to turn back only to see creeping death about to overtake them.
Agent Makon cursed and spat, forced to shut his eye on the damaged side to protect it from the caustic particles searing through his cheek.
"Goddamn it! Somebody get me a f****ng chemical flush!" He roared, throwing himself against the wall as they took a corner.
Splashing down another corridor, Callisto reached the bulkhead and began turning the wheel, arduous at first until an agent joined the effort.
"In here! Let's go!"
One agent lost his footing on something slick, colliding into a female agent beside him and knocking them both into a clunky sprawl. The commotion halted Seth in his tracks, and for the first time he looked back to see his agents stunned. He also saw the wave of black smoke reach the previous intersection and split into either direction. Makon lunged for them, the male agent pushing the woman back to her feet before getting up himself.
She came up readily, helped by Makon tugging on her wrist and pulling her past him. He reached down and seized the fallen agent by his body armor, but the man buckled as he rose.
"My knee," He grunted, bracing his faltering step against the wall.
But Seth yanked the man's arm around his neck and hauled him upright. "About to be a lot worse!"
The first spicy hints of the noxious fume were prickling their nostrils when they cleared the bulkhead door, a pair of agents slamming it closed behind them and turning the lock.
"S.A. Hand's team is moving on our location." One of the other agents informed their leader.
Seth nodded, readjusting his injured troop. "Callisto, what's the quickest way we can get this man topside?"
Once a hasty set of directions was given, the hobbled man was handed off to another agent and the two were sent for the surface.
Callisto went to Makon as he was bent over, a milky solution being squeezed from a pouch into his facial wound.
"Welcome to the club."
The decision was not a welcome one, when Victoria Hand made the call to abandon the Hedorah colony her team was steering to the electrode trap and rush off to the aid of Makon and Callisto. Indeed she had hoped to avoid any more catastrophes beyond the death of the NYSD worker. But if she had to put off this monster in order to save the other team, then there wasn't really a choice to make at all. They shot one last stink grenade off into what the schematics told them was a dead end, thinking to distract it long enough for them to break contact safely.
A confused collection of Hedorah suddenly found themselves at the end of a trail, locating the spent lure cartridge. Two of the individuals converged on the shell at the same time, their bodies amalgamating in the process to put one eye cocked above the other asymmetrically. Its back arched violently, a front portion of its slug-like body lifting off the stone and rippling along its length to the back. Grasping a newfound locomotion, the Hedorah used the oscillating movement to inch its way away from the main colony and towards a dark spot where a brick had been dislodged.
"Air approaching dangerous toxicity." The agent said through his filter, displaying his monitor for Agent Hand to see for herself. "This gets worse, I don't know if our masks will be able to protect us."
"It'll have to do." As efficient as they were, not even SHIELD's gas masks were impregnable. Victoria had stopped her team about a block away from where the GPS for Agent Makon was pinging. The air here was hazy and their NVG's failed to penetrate far enough for her comfort. It reminded her of having to pass through a chamber of CS gas in basic training, wafting particles all about to create an ethereal environment.
Hefting her weapon, she steeled her posture and stepped out to the lead. "Come on."
Neither team had confirmation if the Hedorah was near, whether it had followed them or lost interest. Hand pied around a corner, careful to take in every aspect of the path ahead. There was little certainty that the Hedorah was not lurking somewhere in the obscurity, where only a single misstep or unaccounted blindspot could prove a deadly error. Despite the dual filters on either side of her face, noxious elements were making their way through the system to irritate her senses. Her eyes began to chafe and her nostril curled, a distraction on top of everything else that imperiled her.
Checking the digital map affixed to her left forearm, Victoria found herself at an intersection just around the corner from the bulkhead door. There appeared no sign of the Hedorah in the vicinity, either the large one or any of its smaller kindred. Her team moved behind her, she could hear the stifled coughs and wheezes as they suffered. She imagined they would all be enjoying some partial disability payouts from SHIELD in years to come.
Hand crept up to the door and rapped on it, gloved knuckles muffling the sound to a dull thumping. A corresponding series of taps on the other side answered her call, and the door began to unlock. She glanced back and saw her agents take up positions at the intersection, relieved that they were proficient enough to not rely on her micromanagement. With her senses under assault and the very real mortal threat skulking just out of sight, she didn't need any more stresses.
"I think it retreated." Victoria said once she was inside, locating Callisto and Seth as his face was being bandaged. "Maybe it lost interest."
"Or maybe it just chased us out of its turf." Makon spat. "Stuck our hands in an animal den and got ourselves bit."
"These things are a bigger problem than I thought." Thumping her back against the brick wall, Callisto chewed on her lip. "They're too dangerous. Trying to hunt them down one by one is just going to get your agents killed."
Hand assessed the situation with a sigh, a grim reality setting in that they stood a feeble chance of eradicating these creatures while they were entrenched in the sewers. And they would only get worse.
"Not yet." Using a cloth to wipe her face, Victoria refused to let the situation defeat her. "We know what they want, and they come for it quick enough. And the more of them that clump together, the easier it'll be to destroy them without having to dig 'em out of every nook and cranny."
Makon bobbed his head, "So instead of fighting a thousand little ones, we try to fight a couple big ones."
"Isolating the system would be a logistical nightmare." Crouching down next to him, Hand weighed a few ideas. "We'd need a way to draw them all to one spot."
"We use something like Richards' lure, just on a bigger scale, get them all to converge."
Callisto came off the wall, a finger pressed to her ear, "Listen!"
An urgent message was being put out over the main channel, cast to all teams. The site where Captain America had called for a street-level crew to subdue a Hedorah that had been isolated. From the panicked transmission, they learned that the crew had been over-powered once they breeched the chamber and had been forced to fall back. The three exchanged tense looks of increasing anxiety as the words gave way to incoherent coughing.
Victoria tightened the grip on her weapon. "Shit."
Another voice then came over the frequency: "This is Richards, we're on our way."
Topside…
Johnny Storm paced back and forth as he listened to the terrible cries of the team dealing with the Hedorah not too far away.
"Reed said to standby in case any got loose onto the street, didn't he?" He argued to himself, trying to justify shooting off despite the pang of uncertainty inherited from his sister's frequent scoldings. On the other hand, there might be a very hot and very grateful female SHIELD agent to rescue…
"Reed, I'm heading over!" He declared into his commlink, abandoning his post to rush in the direction of the embattled team.
"FLAME ON!"
With a rocket ignition, he was propelled into the sky, a burning exhaust in his wake.
"Well that didn't take long." Reed mused as he, Ben, and Susan sped through the tunnel in one of her hard-light constructs.
"If he set's that thing to flame, it could create a toxic smoke cloud over a quarter of the city." She said, brow pinched in worry. "And kill everyone under it, including himself."
"Of all the times for that hot-head to go flying off tha' handle!" Ben grunted. "Just like in the Negative Zone!"
Mr. Fantastic bobbed his head to the side, "To be fair to Johnny, Annihilus did have a habit of leaving himself open."
The warehouse was thankfully unoccupied when the SHIELD agents breeched the door and set themselves up to cut into the concrete floor, and accessed the trapped Hedorah below. But their plasma cutters and power saws had betrayed them to the creature, their sound reaching through to below and giving the monster warning. A curious red eye looked up in the darkness, watching, waiting.
After the layer of concrete had been removed, men worked furiously with shovels and picks to mine through the soil, the only thing left between them and the ceiling to the chamber.
The lattice of pipes, small and large provided ample means for the Hedorah to ascend the height of the room. Repelled by the cold of the ice wall and drawn by the sounds, leaving partially eaten metal in its path.
Finally the SHIELD crew met the stone brick of the chamber's roof, expectations vindicated. Laying down a prepared explosive shape-charge, they exited the ditch and readied themselves to make their encounter a swift one. The C-4 detonated with a compact bang, the energy of the blast forced downwards to sunder the stones.
They approached the aperture with electro-weapons even as the smoke cleared, battery magazines glowing through the haze. Others planted rappelling pitons into the floor, feeding ropes into their harness and backing towards the breech.
"It's there!" Someone called out, followed by the rapid-fire tush-tush-tush of the electro-rounds from the agents surrounding the hole. The barrage was answered by a mushroom cloud of black smog that went up with an audible doofff!, engulfing those nearby. An agent began yelling into his ear-comms, calling for aid as he struggled to untether himself from the rappelling system before the shroud of death claimed him as well.
Issuing excited warbles, the hexapodal Hedorah plodded its way through the opening, it's motion somewhere between a gecko and a centipede. The humans scattering before it fired random shots, hoping to fend it off. But such meager amounts of amperage did little more than irritate the creature and draw its attention. A plot of muck the size of a basketball ejected from what might be considered an armpit of the Hedorah, and collided into an agent before he could sever his rope. The impact knocked him to the ground, pinning him for the last few struggles of life fate allowed him.
A burning comet smashed through an elevated window, "HEY!" Johnny Storm yelled, spying the alien below.
It glanced up at him with blank interest and a clicking sound.
The aura of heat served to buffer the worst of the noxious fumes from Johnny, but he was still compelled to amplify his static burn to fortify the shield.
"Okay… How do I do this?" Seeing past the monster, Torch saw an agent sprawled on the floor in a mad crawl to escape, pulling against the rappel line still anchored in the concrete.
Johnny shot past the Hedorah and brought his foot down on the line, severing it with a snap! Extending his hand with fingers in a blade, he cast a gout of fire across the floor in a line that partitioned them from the creature. The Hedorah warbled, investigating the wall of flames the way a dog might scrutinize an unfamiliar hydrant.
"That oughta keep you still for a minute."
"Johnny, what's the situation?" Reed's voice asked in his ear.
"Well, most of the SHIELD guys made it out alive, and I've got the monster penned in place."
Indeed, the frantic agent managed to scramble to his feet and get away, while other agents recovered the one that had not survived the direct shot of the xenokaiju's muck.
"Just keep it there," Susan said, sounding anxious. "Whatever you do, don't start burning it!"
"Yeah, try not to make things worse before we get there, ya knucklehead!"
"Thanks for the vote of confidence, Ben!" A rising trill drew Johnny's attention, he craned his face upwards to see the Hedorah rearing back on its hind appendages and posture upright. It peered down at him over the tips of the flames, an undulating glow behind the crimson & yellow eye highlighting the inhuman thought process at work. Pupil drifting back and forth, it seemed to consider how to handle the barrier.
"Don't do it!" the Human Torch scolded the creature with mock authority, pointing a stern finger for emphasis. "Stay!
In a massive flop, the Hedorah let its body collapse over the burning line, splattering black muck in every direction. Johnny put his hands out to create a fire-shield to protect himself, incinerating a hail of gobs before they could reach him. Its body smothered the flames underneath, but a dark miasma began to fume from the sides. Whatever sensation it felt from the fire eliciting a loud series of clicks.
"Oh no…" Storm muttered, smoke rising up and pooling under the ceiling.
From above the water sprinklers kicked on in response to the fire, giving the impression of a rainstorm from thunderclouds. Johnny was strong enough to keep his flame burning under the shower, but the barrier he'd laid down was doused in short-order. The Hedorah became slicker and slimier, its body was transformed in a glittering shimmer; the back four limbs morphing into a pair of writing tails and the two forelimbs into walrus-like flippers.
Torch shook his head, "I'm not sure if this is worse or not."
Hedorah squirmed, the tails slapping with wet smacks against the concrete.
While the space was mostly empty, there were several rows of large shelves stacked with wooden crates, and a forklift parked between them. What the boxes contained was not apparent on any signage, but an amount of dust and spiderwebbing indication a good duration of idleness.
"Hope there's nothing explosive in here!" Dashing into the air, Johnny set a continuous ray of fire across the base of the nearest 4-tiered shelf, heating the metal framework enough to collapse the structure. Exercising its new configuration, the Hedorah didn't bother moving as tons of steel and crates avalanched over it in a disastrous calamity of demolition. Steam and smoke rose in a mixture under the ongoing sprinklers, the creature uttering a high-pitched squeal of surprise.
Unfortunately, the sudden weight crushing down on the alien was enough to squeeze out a plume of black smog, and it spread high and wide.
"Uh… Come on!" Even through the nimbus of fire, the aerosolized toxins were reaching the sensory organs of the Human Torch, forcing him to pull away.
The wreckage bulged upwards, the metal frame breaking apart at the points of contact with accelerated corrosion. A great sucking sound preceded a warbling, louder this time as the Hedorah rose from the pile amid snaps and breakage. One of the crates fell apart, the wood disintegrating to reveal a quartet of black oil drums rusted with age. A few seconds contact was all that was needed to eat through the skin of the drum and loose the pitch ichor within.
Immediately, the Hedorah's eye went to the leaking fluid, and it gave a hungry trill. It rolled onto its back, pinning the barrel between its flippers and letting the oil splatter over its underside. Johnny choked back a sickened gag as an orifice, of loose definition, roughly where a mouth might be opened and closed to drink in the crude.
"Why couldn't it be killer robots?" He groaned.
Now savvy to the fact that sustenance might be found in the crates, upon draining the drum, it allowed the barrel to fall onto its body as it flopped upright. The Hedorah wiggled its body towards the nearest box, the twin tails working in tandem with the flippers to propel it along. It heaved its body over the crate with a muffled sound of wood splintering and a heavy murmuring of satisfaction.
"What a glutton." Given little prospect of counteracting the monster with his particular set of powers, it occurred to Johnny that if he couldn't fight the creature he might be able to keep it entertained. He eyeballed what remained in the warehouse.
"Let's see what else I can distract you with…"
The Hedorah leered at them warily, its bulk taking up nearly the entire space of the tunnel.
Reed, Sue, and Ben cautiously appraised their options. They kept the lights from their crown-mounted flashlights lowered so as not to shine it in the creature's eyes and invoke a hostile response. Nonetheless the glow from behind the large, inscrutable lenses gave enough menace to keep the heroes at bay for the moment.
"Sue, if you press it to one side, I think we can all get by." Mr. Fantastic suggested.
"And just leave it here?" She shot back, sounding doubtful.
"Sorry, Suzie, I left the wet-vac back at the apartment." Thing said.
Reed grimaced in dissatisfaction, "We don't have the means to contain it right now. We'll just have to hope it finds the sewers a more appealing environment and come back for it later."
Her mouth scrunched, stifling a complaint but she raised her hands anyway.
"Go for the left side."
A pane of translucent energy manifested before her, in a shape that filled the borders of the tunnel from top-to-bottom and side-to-side. With a thought, she pressed the wall back towards the creature, water piling up at the base as it moved. The Hedorah seemed to be startled by the phenomenon, its eyes twitching with agitation, back arching like a cat. Just as the shield would collide with the monster, it slanted to the left, opening a path along the wall and forcing Hedorah aside.
Extending her left hand and tilting her right, The Invisible Woman sealed the alien on the other side of her barrier. A shifting chaos of dark shades played like a living mud aquarium for the adventurers as they hurried through the gap.
"Sweetheart, be careful to avoid the floor." Reed cautioned his wife before stretching his limbs into the space. Naturally, he used the opportunity to examine the creature, inspecting with rapt focus the movement and viscosity of the Hedorah's layers. When a puff of smog was excreted from some unspecified port and swirled in the confinement, he made sure to stretch his neck close enough to get a good look at its composition.
"Ben you go next." Sue told her friend.
Thing snarled as he began trudging. Though the caustic material wasn't able to damage his rocky dermis, he still didn't like the idea of having the gunk attached to the soles of his feet.
"Eh! I'mma need a gallon of diesel and a steel brush to get this crap off!"
With a pinched brow, Susan levitated herself with a disk of light under her feet and moved inches above the black-stained concrete. She adjusted her focus as she floated through, making sure Ben was ahead of her. Pulling the construct behind, Sue finished with her wall on the backside of the creature.
With remarkable agility, the Hedorah spun aft and fixed its expressionless gaze directly on her. Like huge billows inflating and depressing, it breathed in steady, resonant rhythm.
She couldn't articulate it, there was certainly no communication from the creature she could interpret what it was feeling. But in the way any two living minds may connect through the intimacy of a held gaze; a foreboding hand laid on her chest, that something malevolent had its attention isolated on Susan Richards. She exhaled a nervous breath and began backing away.
Her husband and the Thing remained quiet behind her as she held her barrier in place for as long as she could maintain concentration.
"Come on." Reed said with a hand on her shoulder once the creature was left comfortably behind them.
Refocusing her power, Sue encompassed the three of them in a translucent sphere, despite the density of Thing eliciting a grunt of effort when she took him up.
The SHIELD tactical vehicles came to a squealing halt as a light sprinkling of rain began for the night. Double doors at the rear of the vehicles swung open to allow the fatigued agents to deploy. Victoria Hand practically leapt out of the passenger seat of the cab, issuing orders to her subordinates as they dismounted.
"Get the covers off!" She barked. "I want those trucks in position in two minutes!"
Agent Seth Makon descended a bit slower from the passenger side of the other vehicle, a portion of his face bandaged. With no apparent hurry to his agenda, he let out a long exhale and shrugged.
"Why the hell didn't we just do it this way to begin with?"
In short order, large dirty trucks of differing types began backing themselves into the intersection; old garbage compactors, asphalt dumptrucks, anything that spewed the most noxious exhaust available. Flatbed trucks arrived with large canvas sheeting for workers to begin pulling them off and dragging them over the bait trucks.
Six electrode devices similar to the smaller portable ones they carried in the sewers were brought in on the back of black-matte Humvees. These ones the size of rock-concert speakers and positioned directly across from one another. These units had in fact been retro-fitted from the kind of high-intensity sound projectors once used against a different type of invasive alien species.
Victoria forced herself to pause where she stood and speak into her ear-comms, "Captain America, this is Hand: my team and Makon's have relocated topside; we're establishing a lure trap at 10th and West 51st."
There was a few moments pause before she got a response from Rogers.
"Little occupied at the moment, Hand."
His voice sounded tense, but unworried. She was sure it was nothing the First Avenger couldn't handle.
"Okay…"
In sequence, masked agents used hooks to remove manhole covers as a second wave stepped in to fire their lure grenades down into the pits.
Seth Makon swaggered up behind Victoria, "You know, wiping these things out is gonna take weeks." He sighed with his right hand resting on his slung electrobolt weapon.
"And here I was hoping my first assignment would be something nice and clean, like terrorism or arms smuggling." She joked flatly.
"Eh, you get used to it. I once spent a month doing a stake-out on Blob and Toad up in Maine. I tell ya, I'd rather be back in Bosnia."
With the agents at work, Hand could spare the minute to refrain from issuing commands, taking off her helmet and shaking her raven hair loose.
"I spent my first year as logistic support for the Avengers aboard the Helicarrier. The only reason I'm in this position now, is because the next 11 people ahead of me got obliterated by Godzilla.
Now, I'm in charge of the metro division in the most concentrated sector of superheroes and villains on the planet. I would have liked to have a few more years on my resume before having to deal with this kind of bullshit."
Makon leaned his back on the corner of a vehicle, glancing up to the sky and letting the tiny drops wash his face.
"Yeah, having to dodge a giant space-dragon from another universe wasn't exactly on my professional bucket-list. But here we are, is what it is."
Victoria clicked her tongue and rolled her shoulders. "Well… Let's just hope the Director has such a nonchalant attitude about it."
Callisto was the last to come around to the scene, arriving in a separate four-seater Humvee. No longer encumbered by the bothersome helmet and nightvision goggles, she looked on at the hustle of the agents constructing this large-scale trap for the Hedorah. The scope of the effort was just now beginning to really impress itself upon her, having come from the Morlocks skulking in the tunnels. She began to contemplate the tenability of their future if they tried to return to the old ways. Maybe Seth was right, maybe they had indulged their own sense of oppression for longer than was practical.
But those were problems they could start solving tomorrow.
A hulking dumptruck rolled past her, trailing a nose-curling smoke from its bed. She wasn't sure what the load was comprised of, but she imagined it to be of the sort that would normally be sealed under biohazard warnings.
"Hey"
Callisto turned to see an agent she was unfamiliar with holding out a jacket for her, a young man offering a SHIELD-issue raincoat.
"Thank you." She took it, and the man spared her a nod before hurrying off to whatever task he had next. As she put it on, she spoke abruptly.
"Wait…"
The young man halted unexpectedly, a leg mid-stride as he whipped his face around.
"If you don't mind me asking," She began. "What made you join SHIELD?"
Struck by being asked such a personal question, his mouth hung slightly open as he formulated a response.
"Uh… Well, I guess you could say it's a family legacy kinda-thing. My grandfather was an agent, my father, and my older brother."
"Really?"
He shrugged, "Until recently anyways."
He didn't elaborate, choosing to make his exit at a purposeful stride. Callisto couldn't be sure what to think about his last statement, and could only speculate about the flat tone of the words.
"Dude!" Back at the entrance to the warehouse, Captain America and Bobby Drake stood in shock, watching the creature.
"Have you been feeding that thing?" Drake accused, pointing to the monster's babyish behavior.
"No!" Storm shouted back, gesturing with his hands to the side. "
By now the sprinkler system had run its course, and the Hedorah was climbing the standing shelves, moving from crate to crate like an octopus cracking open a crustacean. Eventually the framework surrendered to the corrosive effect of the monster's biology, and three levels of shelving collapsed in a jumble of rubble and black splatter.
Rogers cocked his head, "This one doesn't seem as… hostile as the others."
"I expected some behavioral variances in the population."
His body stretching up from the blast hole in the floor, Mr. Fantastic grasped onto whatever he could to avoid contact with the sludge trails as he kept his attention on a translucent tablet through which he viewed the writhing creature. The Hedorah was wrestling playfully with the items that had fallen, holding one rusted barrel to its belly like an otter with a clam.
"It appears we have a tame one."
Thing was next out of the breech, "Yeah, sure, stretch. Why don't we just take him home, make a cute Youtube video about 'em." He griped as the light disk under his feet deposited him on the concrete.
The Human Torch smirked, "Well you know what they say about pets and their owners, Ben."
"Johnny, can you save the jokes for after we get a shower?" Wiping her brow of sweat, the Invisible Woman levitated her own construct above the debris and black water. "And I can suck down a few aspirins…"
"It's transformed since I first saw it." Steve noted to Reed as the scientist came to stand beside him.
Richards nodded, "The species is highly adaptive, morphing it's body to suit whatever objective it seeks to achieve. They can even adapt the ability to fly."
The idea of any of the smog monsters going airborne struck Cap with an immediate concern.
"You mean these things can spread even farther?"
"And with quite a lethal capacity." Reed amended. "Their flying form emits a caustic exhaust that can dissolve organic matter with extraordinary speed."
Even Captain America flinched at the thought.
"Bobby." Hovering atop her platform, Sue gestured for Drake to join her. He did so with an ice ramp, and the pair moved atop one of the other tall shelves that hadn't been demolished where she could release her construct.
"Alright, here's the plan, bud," Susan reached out with both hands forward. "I'm gonna close him off in a bubble, and you are gonna fill it with your ice."
"Word." He said with a wink.
Lowering her head and concentrating, from between Susan's hands formed a translucent tube that grew and stretched down until it came just a few feet above the purring Hedorah. Once there, it expanded outwards until it resembled a retort flask with its neck angled upwards. The monster eyed the phenomena with some curiosity but remained satisfied with its feeding. A barely visible enclosure sealed the creature within, wreckage and all.
"Okay, now you." She urged, turning her face away from the only ventilation the Hedorah's odor could travel.
Reaching his hands inside the mouth of Sue's construct, Bobby began pouring his ice power into the funnel, the misty frost traveling down to swirl and collect around the Hedorah. It emitted a surprised trill of clicking, finally abandoning its food to paw at the wall of its trap. As freezing air filled the space, the extremities of the creature stiffened and broke as the main body scrambled for an escape. At last, a puff of black vapor swirled itself into the white, one final defensive mechanism.
The rise in pressure forced Sue Richards to breathe a bit harder, leaning into the strain of maintaining the dimensions of her bubble. Iceman too could barely keep his eyes open despite the noxious stinging, but still he kept the rime flowing. Eventually the Hedorah was lost in the mist, it's flipper thumping once more against the confinement.
"The smog is coming up!" Rogers warned, pointing to where streaks of black elements were crawling up the funnel, forced by the pressure into the sole avenue of relief.
"That should be enough!" Bobby said, pulling back.
Just as quick, Sue pinched her end of the tube shut and cast it away from them, redirecting it towards a high window. The tip broke through the glass and vented the excess gas outside, where she hoped the rain would tackle the worst of the toxic elements from dispersing too far. After a few moments of morphing her bubble to finesse as much of the smog as she could outside, she released her concentration.
What was left on the warehouse floor, was a sparkling hodgepodge of Hedorah and wreckage, with the ostensible face of the creature extended upwards, frozen in place.
With a tired sign, Susan gave Drake a pat on the back.
"Can you give us an extra layer, just to be safe?" She asked.
"No problem." Astride an icy slide, Bobby set about covering the berg in a thicker coating of white.
"I know it's dangerous and all…" Johnny Storm began, doused of his flame and standing with his hands on his hips beside the others. "But, I mean, it's just an animal, right?"
"Technically, yes," His brother-in-law agreed. "But whatever sympathy we might feel for this displaced creature, Johnny, we have to treat it like the hazard it is."
"We should treat it with a high-pressure wash and some bleach." Thing suggested, crossing his arms.
Captain America stepped forward, "We need a plan on what to do with this thing. I doubt SHIELD will want to just stuff it in cryo-storage."
"Once we get the equipment in, we can simply destroy it piecemeal." Richards held up his tablet, showing a rough animation of a fragment of the frozen hunk being broken off and dissolved between a pair of electrodes.
"It'll take some time, but a relatively straightforward process."
Susan floated down to her husband's side, running fingers through her hair with a scowl of revulsion. "Well, that's one down."
Recalculating his metrics, Reed stretched his fingers across the breadth of the screen.
"While I don't have as much data on their species as I'd like, they do seem to seek community with each other. It leads me to think that consolidation into larger, more powerful forms is a natural progression. And if they can't achieve it by assimilating material…"
Susan finished his thought, "Then they achieve it by merging, becoming a new, singular entity."
"Ah, just as I suspected." Holding up his tablet to frame the frozen monster within its borders, Reed showed the others a blob of heat surrounded by otherwise deep shades of purple and black.
"Much like with electrical attacks, it's withdrawn its vital components to protect them from the cold."
"So it's still alive in there?" Bobby asked, skating to the ground, his legs and arms crystalline with ice.
Mr. Fantastic shrugged, "In a manner of speaking, yes."
Unbeknownst to any of them, an invisible eye hovering beyond one of the warehouse windows focused in on the thermal display of Reed's tablet.
Elsewhere in the city…
Observing the activity of the SHIELD agents and the heroes, a small group of shadowed figures watched the various video feeds concerning the efforts to combat the Hedorah. Standing around a circular table, this silent council stood rigid as the many displays rotated in the free-floating column of light.
"The creatures are proving quite a problem for the humans and the powered-ones." One of them stated dryly. "Only the X-Man and the Invisible Woman seem capable of effectively containing them."
"As our files indicated." Another responded.
"What is the status of our captured scientists?"
"Liquidated. Mr. Fisk's operatives are remarkably efficient."
"As our files indicated."
"Any warnings from the computer?"
"Negative. The plan is unchanged."
"The Controller?"
"Satisfied with our data collected so far."
On one of the windows, the huge canvases of the SHIELD trap were pulled taut over the back of the trucks even as one drove away, its bed still tilted back. Whatever refuse it had dumped still concealed underneath.
"A crude stratagem, but with likely success."
"Let them destroy as many as they can, it matters little to us."
"Our plan proceeds as scheduled."
"As our files indicated."
The intersection was filled with the noise of old diesel engines, the trap fully baited. Tubes affixed to the exhaust pipes of the vehicles fed directly into the open manholes, pumping gaseous poison to tantalize whatever sensory mechanisms the Hedorah possessed. In the center was a collection of industrial waste and manure, hastily procured and piled with an intentional haphazardness.
It wasn't long at all before the first mucky creature emerged from the underdark, trilling excitedly as it crawled towards the source of such enticing particles. As interesting as the exhaust fumes were, upon cresting the manhole it caught scent of the toxic offerings, its interest shifted. With a body structure roughly that of a medium sized dog, its head cocked sidelong at the offerings, front paws stepping hesitantly.
"Come on you little monster…" Victoria bit, standing among the others at the make-shift command center atop a three-story building that overlooked the intersection, protected by a trio of portable canopies. Wireless cameras within the tent gave her, Agent Makon, and Callisto a view inside the lethal enclosure on the monitors set up across a table. Visibility was minimal, the only light coming from whatever managed to filter through the canvas from the streetlights.
"All you can eat."
Not far behind the first Hedorah, another popped its head onto the street, shambling on two forelimbs like a legless muppet. A minute later, they started coming by the handful. As one crawled out, a second thought to overtake it by clambering atop. But the separation between them surrendered, and the one atop sank into the other with a flash. Thereafter, the new form resembled a sprawling lizard with an arrow-shaped tail, moving with a diagonal gait.
Over the course of an hour, the Hedorah swarmed the pile like seafloor critters over a whale carcass. And the more that converged, the more that consolidated. Hedorah's amalgamated seemingly on accident of proximity, flashes of sparkling light going off every minute to signal another instance. Content to suckle on the refuse and bathe in the poisonous air, they paid no mind to the activation of the electrode panels.
Finishing his drink from a Styrofoam cup, Agent Makon nodded to Victoria, "I think it's time to fry a batch."
Only a few Hedorah had appeared in the last 20 minutes, and none in the past five.
"Might as well." She agreed. "Activate the panels."
A technician seated at a control array flipped a series of toggle switches, a red light just above them indicating an active power status. His hand then came to rest on an orange and black striped lever, and he glanced to his superior for the final command.
"Fire."
Bolts of artificial lightning surged from the conductive panels of the electrode units, instantly attracted to the metallic elements within the Hedorah. The creatures shrieked as white veins lanced through them and coursed over their exterior, burning black smoke filling the space. As the assault came from six different directions, there was no route it could move to reduce the torment. With no reprieve from destruction, they did the only thing left that might save them and huddled together.
There was a rumble in the distance.
The noise came from somewhere southeast of their position, Callisto and Hand turning their heads briefly with suspicious concern.
"The hell was that?"
"Standby." A female agent said, working over a laptop, several beats going by before she lifted her head.
"Explosion at the Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant."
"One guess how that happened!" Makon growled, doffing his raincoat and heading for the roof's access door. "I'll grab a team and head over."
Callisto caught him by the arm, giving him a hard stare, "You in good enough shape?"
"To do my job?" He queried back with a playful eyebrow and slight smirk, as if the truth were self-evident. "You betcha."
"I'm coming." She told him, hefting her electrobolt weapon.
He began to protest, but she brushed past him, "Not doing any good standing around here."
Victoria said nothing as she watched them depart. She wasn't one to dish-out compliments, but she did respect Seth's leadership hustle, and she wondered if he wasn't better qualified for her position.
"Hedorah confirmed at the plant, ma'am." The female tech announced.
On an offshoot street from the intersection, a red eye glared out from a stormdrain focused on the source of the agonized wailing.
Stationed at a traffic-barrier the SHIELD agent had let his attention drift, and between the darkness of the night and noise of the trap, failed to detect the dislodgement of the sewer grate hidden on the other side of a parked car.
Not until the acrid stench was already assailing his senses.
Coughing and squinting, he turned and saw a huge Hedorah pushing aside the sedan as it forced its way onto the street from underground, erupting from concrete and asphalt. His barricade lay between it and the trap, a fact he realized with stark terror, grasping simultaneously for his weapon and his radio.
"Hedorah at checkpoint 3!" He shouted. "Hedorah at checkpoint 3!"
He brought his electrobolt weapon to a high-ready and began firing as the monster cleared the vehicle.
Tush-tush-tush
The taser-rounds did little to a creature as big as the one who set its baleful eyes on him, however. An angry growl signaled the projection of a grey blot of sludge that struck the barricade, bowling it over and nearly taking him with it before he leapt out of the path. By the time he rolled back to his feet, the Hedorah was already in mid-bound, passing over the agent's head by less than an arm's length. A reflexive gasp proved to be his mortal mistake, and his lungs were filled with a poisonous wind and his eyes, open in shock, stung and clouded over from the caustic exposure.
He fell twitching to the pavement, clawing at his neck and unable to breathe or expel the lethal air in his lungs.
An alarm went up around the site as the Hedorah landed, its ursine morphology thundering on impact. It rose up and pounded its forelimbs down on an electrode-panel truck, crushing it with fire and sparks.
"Drive it back!" Victoria barked from her vantage, using the ledge of the roof to post her own rifle and begin firing.
But the barrage of incoming shocks only served to further infuriate the creature, throwing its bulk against one of the garbage trucks and toppling it.
Inside the trap, the Hedorah sensed the opening, and the dried husk of an outer layer split open to birth a smaller, serpentine entity that scurried frantically in the only direction that didn't hurt. It slithered out from under the disrupted section of canvas only to be pinned in place by a heavy limb.
The ursine Hedorah mounted the serpent and pressed down against it, absorbing its kindred. Limbs shifted, the tail grafting to the rear of the monster and the eye floating to a middle position above the other two. By now, its bulk was greater than the trucks, its back inflating with a pair of balloon-like sacks.
The sacks contracted and a rush of dark smog spilled out from underneath the Hedorah, enough to shroud the thing and spread tens of meters in every direction. Agents turned and fled, aware that death itself rode on the fell wind.
"MASKS!" Victoria shouted, dropping her weapon and hoping that the quality of her agents training would show itself once more, that they would don their protection in time.
Though no human would see it, there was a muffled flash of light within the smoke, and the Hedorah emerged a moment later with a pair of triangular wings grown from its back. A set of living exhaust sphincters located above the rear hips opened with wet sucking gasps. Galloping forward in a series of bounding leaps, jets of shadowy exhaust shot from the open ports, increasing the distance with each jump.
Then it stayed in the air, absorbing its legs underneath to assume the shape of a nightmarish skate fish. Anything under its flightpath suffered; cars deteriorated, paints peeled, people fell.
Agent Hand just caught sight of its exit as she brought her rifle back onto the ledge and could only stare with incredulous terror at the airborne kaiju.
"F*** me…"
With visions of catastrophe dancing in her mind, she pressed her ear-comms.
"All teams, all teams: this is Agent Hand; A Hedorah is airborne and heading north." She panted a few breaths, licking her lips. "We're gonna need a lot of EMS."
Central Park
Minutes Later…
The droning woosh of the Hedorah's propulsion came in low over the greenery, leaving grey arboreal necrosis in its wake. Bystanders fled where they could, none of the creature's three eyes paying mind to their cries of alarm.
It was over the Sheep Meadow that the spear of ice struck from above.
Like frozen lightning, a jagged length of ice pierced the back of the kaiju with such weight that it was forced to the ground.
"Great shot, Bobby!" Susan Richards told the young X-Man who rode beside her on the translucent platform.
Drake grinned, "Thank Scott for all the target practice he made me do!"
The Hedorah squealed as it crashed to the ground, skidding for two dozen meters until it went into a roll that broke the ice-spear.
Susan brought them close enough for Bobby to get an effective shot at the monster.
"Now Bobby! While it's disoriented!"
But the kaiju was not as vulnerable as they might have wished, and its wings folded as a shield against the freezing stream. In a flash there were legs underneath the monster once again, and a smog cloud was emitted to shroud itself from direct view.
Sue reeled the platform, moving them back to avoid the particulates, but in doing so, gave the creature enough of an opening to counterattack. Pouncing out of the mist, the Hedorah's third eye exercised vertical lids, its cranium swelling like a muffin to expose a pulsating crimson membrane from within. Her memory flashed to footage she'd seen of the kindred monster in the other universe and recalled just what the red glow meant.
She hoped that her hard-light would be enough to protect them as the crimson bolt raced out from the top of its eye.