Chapter 5: Nekra's Tale
"Seriously, woman? You've been doing drugs?" She-Hulk chides kneeling Nekra.
The bedraggled Nekra stoops upon the sharp stones, her undone hair wafting in the wind. The north wind is steady and chilly over the semi-naked Nekra, and it visibly steals her breath in long, white wisps. Grayish tears flow from her glassy eyes to her slack jaw. They are probably from the buffeting gusts spraying Atlantic saltwater in her face, but they might also be from an insidious torment within her emaciated breast. Her bra and shorts hang a little loose on her frame, and a person can discern her ribs. Always, as befits her name, Nekra is cadaverous—with her ashen skin and raw flesh on display. But, she seems remarkably wizened here and now. Perhaps, drugs are to blame, for she does resemble strongly an enervated addict.
"Nekra! Nekra Sinclair!" She-Hulk solicits some attention.
In response, Nekra flips over a stone at her bloody knee. Beneath, beetles feed upon a rotting fish. To some surprise, Nekra swiftly scoops up the insects and pops them into her mouth. She chews and feeds. Then, she grabs the rotting cod for seemingly the same purpose.
She-Hulk swats away the fetid fish before it reaches Sinclair's lips. "We can get you something better on shore," Shulkie assures.
"Nekra does not seem mad that you did that," Marrina Smallwood stands a wee away, "And, Avengers files say that anger is Nekra's thing."
The Amazonian Avenger looks over her shoulder at her two companions. Avenger alum Marrina stands next to intent Guardian of Alpha Flight here on Funk Island. Funk Island is a craggy Canadian cay thirty-seven miles northeast of Newfoundland. It is a barren place but for boulders, brambles, bugs, and seemingly a billion birds who call the rock home. Some joke that the birds give Funk Island its name, for their deposits cover much of the place's half-mile by a fifth-mile surface area.
"I wonder why she is at this crappy location," concerned Guardian indicates Nekra.
"Sometimes, drug abusers pick some pretty depressing dens to do their thing," She-Hulk says, "Funk Island might be as barren without as a murderess' soul is within and as tempestuous as her inner rage."
"I don't know that drugs are the issue here," Marrina comments, "There seems to be something else going on." Marrina Smallwood has often been the plaything of the Master of the World and of her own alien physiology. She has a sense of certain things.
The algid autumn wind increases over the exposed on the open isle. All four are superbeings capable of surviving uncomfortable conditions. But still, She-Hulk decides that it is time for everyone to get ashore. Shulkie hugs Nekra close and hauls her limp, scantily-clad carcass to its feet. Surprisingly, the Priestess of Hate does nothing in protest. Instead, the lady villain languidly blinks a few times, looking the Avenger in the eyes.
The Jade Giantess carries the Lethal Legionnaire across her arms and takes a deep breath. Surely, Nekra will slug her in a rage. But, the villainess is slack and slobbering. The ongoing bluster carries Nekra's spit into her black hair, staining it.
"How did we get here again?" She-Hulk walks with heroic colleagues toward a moored boat a bit offshore. She-Hulk can leap to it. Marrina can swim. And, Guardian can fly.
Guardian answers Jen's question, "As an Avenger, you put-out an a.p.b. of sorts to intelligence agencies: SHIELD, the U.S. FBI, and all North American organizations. You sought an aircraft that someone had dared steal from the Kingpin, and you provided everyone the tail number. Jeff Brown of Canadian Security Intelligence Service is good at his job, and he noticed when the Mounties found your missing plane in Newfoundland. Jeff certainly knows us in Alpha Flight, and he contacted me, the team's leader. I figured that one should contact in turn Marrina, whose home territory is Newfoundland, and you. We met-up in eastern Canada here. I thought that we might be going after gangsters, Kingpin competitors, from south of the border."
"However, upon arrival, you informed us differently," Marrina takes-up the story, "We three were actually tracking a Lethal Legion member named Nekra. We went to Wesleyville where the plane was found—despite having no nearby airstrip. In Wesleyville, we questioned residents and pursued leads. Local fishermen reported sporadically spotting a strange woman with blanched skin and a black bikini on Funk Island. Oddly, she would appear one minute and disappear the next."
"I asked about a shaggy-haired man who was perhaps accompanying her," She-Hulk adds. Kingpin's pilot had said that a shaggy-haired man was the plane's thief. An experienced crimefighter suspects that he was also Nekra's partner-in-crime or her absconder.
Moaning, Nekra clenches her teeth and tightens her jaw. The villainess reacts to mention of the shaggy man. She keens crossly. She blinks rapidly. She mutters something.
"What did you say?" She-Hulk inquires.
"Angst," Nekra whispers into the whistling wind.
She-Hulk cannot hear. "What did you say?" the heroine leans on in.
Into Shulkie's eyes, Nekra's fingers fly. The gamma-enhanced green peepers do not pop, but the attack plenty hurts. She-Hulk cringes and plaints. Posthaste, Nekra's powerful knee knocks her hefter across the face too. She-Hulk drops her suddenly lively load.
Nekra instantly stands and incoherently screams like a beast for a moment. Bestially, she stomps the granite ground and grips the passing air. The next moment, Nekra screams, "Aaaaangst! Aaaaangst! Where are you, Mangles?!"
Guardian wraps Nekra from behind, and he prepares to shock her into submission. Apparently, Nekra has found the adrenaline that activates her super-strength, remarkable resilience, and savage nature. Some Guardian juice ought to arrest her bad humor.
However, before James Hudson acts, Dr. Angst—a shaggy-haired sorcerer—manifests behind him. She-Hulk recognizes Angst immediately and strides toward the threat.
Dr. Angst incants, "You're Guardian, and I'm glue. Whatever you do to Nekra, I do to you."
The Master of Mundane Mysticism specializes in a silly, "lame" magic in which so-so sing-song succeeds as spellcasting. The evil wizard places his palm upon Guardian's back. James Hudson's electrostatic shock stuns himself instead of the seized supervillain. The hero simply spasms and slumps supine, still and unconscious.
Raging Nekra wheels around to her enemy Angst. She-Hulk rushes forward to her past foe Floyd Mangles. Marrina dives through the air at the adversary who attacked her friend and leader.
With a pompous flourish of his purple cape, Dr. Angst disappears into a smoky poof. The three super-ladies impact into each other with great force. They fall onto the Funk Island firmament with a big, dusty puff. The Howard the Duck nemesis has brought some slapstick to this stark setting. Somewhere, he smiles smugly.
Snorting dust and snot from her snout, savage Sinclair seizes She-Hulk's hair and yanks the green girl to her feet. She-Hulk stands up straight, and the grasping hellion hangs suspended a foot from the ground. Her flailing feet abuse She-Hulk's shins. Her free fist thumps She-Hulk's ribs. Her vexing wails resound in She-Hulk's ear.
"Let go," Jen calmly orders.
"Aaaaah! Puny Jade Giantess! The madder I get, the stronger I get!" the berserker bellows, "Nekra smash you and then smash Angst!"
"And quit stealing Hulk lines," She-Hulk adds.
The hair-puller bites Jen on the neck like an actual bitch. Hulk hide is too hard to easily penetrate, but the attack hurts. And, She-Hulk has a temper herself. Her forceful fists hammer hanging Nekra like a swinging punching bag. The Lethal lady lets go.
Amazingly, she leaps right back up though. Nekra's unrestrained haymaker actually jolts She-Hulk. The mutant's magnificent hormones must be working overtime. She lands another punch. And, Marrina lands on her back and tries pinning back her amped arms.
Marrina tells Shulkie, "Punch-out Nekra while I've got her a second."
"You've got me? I've got you!" fierce Nekra tells Marrina. The femme fatale sprints for the Funk shore, Smallwood on her back.
"The sea? Seriously? You must be hysterical," the aquatic Alpha announces. The two tumble into the rough Atlantic where perhaps only Nekra will have a rough time. Or, Marrina might have a tough time. The madwoman seems pretty provoked.
Deliberately, She-Hulk scans for Angst, albeit not nervously. She goes to Guardian who is now stirring.
"Are you alright?" She-Hulk asks, "I kind of need buddies on this mission. Our wild child there sometimes works with parties capable of subduing Wonder Man and the Vision simultaneously. I cannot be alone in this excursion."
Guardian groans and rouses. He reaches for his temples and rubs. She-Hulk raises him slightly and rubs his back. All of a sudden, the Canadian champion ruffles and points behind his helper.
She-Hulk turns to see. Dr. Angst exits his Dropcloth of Invisibility, which magically hovers unseen in mid-air. The occult curtain does not even flap in the persistent sea breeze.
Above the wind, Angst announces ostentatiously, "I am the Master of Mundane Mysticism! Fear me!"
Before any hero reacts, the rogue ignites the great auto headlight, hanging like the Eye of Agamotto, attaching his cape. He shines his sinister "high beam" upon the two do-gooders like deer in a headlight. With She-Hulk, the light goes to her head temporarily, and the "high" beam causes brings euphoria to her being. The light-headed gal hangs loose, and her heavy arms release her ally. For Guardian, the shine sends the semi-conscious cynosure speedily sky-high before he can possibly react. He is instantly but a red and white rocket high over the Atlantic.
Dr. Angst deactivates his awesome amulet. She-Hulk shakes her head vigorously to clear vapors.
"So, we meet again," Angst iterates a hackneyed line.
"Indeed, we do, Angst," the Avenger acknowledges, "And, you will meet defeat like you always do."
"Always do?" the doctor inquires, "How can I perpetually meet defeat? I have only two appearances: Marvel Treasury Edition #12 and your Sensational She-Hulk series."
"Sheesh! How can you read that s***?" the comic critic comments upon Marvel magazines, tabloid entertainment on Earth-616.
Floyd Mangles replies, "Well, the Conjurer of the Commonplace would be someone who loves popular literature. Mundane objects and artifacts make my mojo, after all. Insipid stories are where the bandleader of the bland lives."
"Then, let me provide you some excitement," the heroine traipses toward her foe.
"You're loony," Angst makes a bad pun. With sleight of hand, the mundane magician produces a loonie, Canada's dollar coin. His fingers flick it end-over-end at advancing She-Hulk.
The loonie enlarges to the size of a queen-sized bed. Strong hands catch the incoming object and merely toss the coin aside. It shrinks back to its normal size and plinks into the Grand Banks offshore.
"How flippant," She-Hulk comments on the coin.
With a sleight of hand, the prestidigitator produces a plain key (which happens to be the purloined plane key). "Behold the key to your defeat," says he.
In an unholy high pitch, the upheld key emits a shrill sonic attack that shakes Shulkie from skull to soles. Still, She-Hulk stoically trudges toward her enemy, apparently unrattled. She claps her mighty mitts together as her cousin might—with a resounding boom. The counterattack does not produce a shockwave (as the Incredible Hulk might), but it does create a disruption to the damaging din. The earsplitting enchantment breaks, and the immediate area falls briefly silent.
Over Dr. Angst, She-Hulk towers as she arrives. She reaches down for him. He points to the ground. "Let me rock you with real rocks," the Wizard of Weltschmerz smarts off.
The rocks spin like reversed rollers beneath She-Hulk's boots. Surprised, the Fantastic one flails comically for a second or two. Then, the stones dump her on her ass on the earth. Irked, the Jade Giantess kicks a sizable surge of soil at Angst, and it lands completely upon him. Angst should momentarily lack oxygen until She-Hulk digs him out unconscious.
However, the giant Broom of Whazoom appears at the heroine's flank. It swats She-Hulk aside. The broadsiding Brobdingnagian Broom of Whazoom frees its master. Then, the sizable spellbound sweeper sorcerously splinters into a colossal cloud of wood, straw, and dust that pelt and wrap She-Hulk on violent winds. The Savage one snorts and sneezes while shaking her tresses and swiping clean her clothes.
From the cloud, She-Hulk leaps the forty feet to Dr. Angst. She shatters his headlight. She cuffs his head. She grabs his shirt and slams him hard to the gravel.
"Ooouch," Floyd Mangles groans.
Kneeling over Angst ominously, Shulkie says, "Surrender now. Otherwise, face some real agony, Angst."
Obstinate, the Conjurer of the Commonplace commands the heavens, "Gather my gulls."
Overhead, swarming seabirds amass. The common, and perhaps vulgar, creatures gather as they shriek, ululate, and call their threat to divebomb and, um, "drop bomb". Shulkie won't have the sh**** situation, so she slaps the sorcerer—breaking his concentration. The concentration of upset avians disperses as well.
She-Hulk hauls flaccid foe to his feet. She asks, "How did Nekra get to Funk Island?"
"I kidnapped her," answers Angst.
Potentially disgusted, She-Hulk shakes the stupid man, "Why would you do that?"
Mangles manages to declare, "I-I-I love her."
Further disturbed, the frightful attorney interrogates, "How the hell is that? I always figured that Band of the Bland teammate Tillie the Hun was your mama or maybe the Spanker your daddy." The piqued powerhouse is not too p.c. at the moment.
Floyd explains, "Nekra and I met at a Massachusetts penitentiary dance. The Old Colony State is very progressive, and its prisons have, of course, co-ed events. At the ball, I fell head-over-heels for fair, full-busted, barefoot Nekra. And, I have been obsessed ever since.
"In the past, I have attempted to assassinate aspiring politician Howard the Duck, and I have conspired to squish the entire cosmos. But, I have never pursued a plot like plucking Nekra from Staten Island, paralyzing her over Connecticut, proposing to her in the heavens over New Hampshire, plastering her displeased mouth shut over Maine, pacifying her over the Atlantic, plunging our transport into Newfoundland, placing her on this Atlantic pedestal, and possessing her precious mind and pretty person. I have plunked my pulchritudinous puppet beside me every night since arrival and placated our every need for pabulum and warmth. I am madly in love with my lady, and I shall fight the entire Lethal Legion itself if they ever show!"
Growing greatly angry, the green gargantuan grills, "Doctor, how can you not see that you have a sick infatuation with Ms. Sinclair?"
"Oh indeed! I'm the biggest Nekra-philiac in the world. . . . . Um, that came out wrong," flustered Floyd's face flushes a wee.
Shuddering slightly, She-Hulk seizes shaggy hair and suspends the scuzz painfully by his scalp. The two nemeses are nervous gaze to narrowed eye. Solicitor Walters wants specifics before She-Hulk serves harsh justice. The Jade Giantess adjures, "Tell me before I pound you to pulp. What were your specific improprieties with Nekra? Did you despoil her? Did you plow her? Is she pregnant?"
Shocked and nonplussed, the pathetic perpetrator pronounces, "What kind of pervert do you think I am?! Dr. Mangles' transgressions are ever mediocre. I merely kidnapped and kissed comely Nekra Sinclair. I have plugged my passionate lips to her plush ones and have planted my hand on her hip and on her palpitating heart while peering into her pleading pupils. I gave her pleasurable potions to make her pliable, less repulsed, and placid. I petted her plummy hair and patted her firm fanny. But, I never consummated our love. That would be fiendish and foul. Instead, I gave her a Funk Island fairy tale, nigh platonic!"
"What you did still counts, creep," She-Hulk prepares to punch out Angst. Her free fist clenches with a crack.
Abruptly, a crash offshore distracts the aspiring avenger. Something swift has bumped the boat bow so hard as to put the craft into a spin. She-Hulk sees Marrina and Nekra surface for a second in a high spiral over the sea. The supernatural swimmer can manipulate the ocean so. In the maelstrom, Marrina, talons extended, claws Nekra's eyes, and Sinclair slugs Smallwood across the chin. The lofty spire topples, and the two combatants tumble toward the shallows off Funk. Marrina wraps Nekra's waist and slams her with a splat into the seawater and sediment stories below.
Recovering quickly, Nekra rises wobbly but resolute with rage. Just as quickly, Marrina rises scowling behind her. The Avenger drags Nekra beneath the rough and rolling surf and shoots both battlers out to sea.
She-Hulk returns to her reprobate. She aims her punch. But, her furious fist phases through the terrible thaumaturge who teleports from the great green grip.
Dr. Angst gets but thirteen feet away, for his magic is middling by nature. She-Hulk grinds her teeth and goes for Mangles. But, a flash of red and white gets to Floyd before she does. Guardian returns for Dr. Angst, and Canada's champion carries the cad away by the collar. The criminal's purple cape shreds as speeding Guardian scrapes him over the scrub. The bad guy's green blouse rips when the good guy abruptly stops, and the barechested scoundrel skids through sticky, thick guano. Wearing stinky white waste, Angst raises himself upright. Guardian uppercuts Angst so hard that a brown boot falls off. Flopping onto bird mess, the Master of Mundane Mysticism begins mumbling a spell. The northern knight notices the attempted mischief.
Weapon Alpha addresses woeful Angst, "You appear to be a wizard, fella. I can do magic too. As a brilliant and experienced engineer, I know just how to make you disappear."
For his next trick, Guardian blasts a big electric bolt through the gassy surroundings. The air ignites immensely. An explosion propels the Conjurer of the Commonplace from the earth on a fireball through the wind into the water. In his supersuit, a force field protects smirking Guardian. James Hudson hopes that Marrina recovers the rogue before Angst drowns. Otherwise, the cyborg can find the supervillain expediently if need be.
As it happens, Marrina comes ashore at that moment, and she brings neutralized Nekra with her. Jen helps drag the limp Lethal Legionnaire inland. To her consternation, Walters notices that Sinclair is not breathing.
"She has water in her lungs," She-Hulk lets Marrina know.
"I know. I half-drowned her to pacify her," the Plodex plugger replies.
She-Hulk positions the half-naked, alabaster body for resuscitation. Her powerful palm pushes the brine from Nekra's breast, and some coughs come from the off-color offender. She-Hulk keeps the Priestess of Hate pinned, lest she weakly lunge at her savior. Heaving a sigh, the heroine beholds the poor being before her.
She-Hulk tells Marrina, "Murderess or not, I feel bad for Nekra. She has been beneath Mandrill's thrall—not a thrill—and now this degenerate."
But, Marrina and Guardian are not there. They are underwater retrieving Dr. Angst. She-Hulk hopes that Hellcat and Howard the Duck are not having such bizarre adventures elsewhere in New Orleans and New England.