Chapter 14
By Carycomic
ISLAND OF HISPANIOLA,
EARTH-774 (JULY 1940)
It had been a rough three weeks for Eric Van Doorn.
Oh, the first leg of the journey had been pleasant enough, what with he and all those other refugees from the Dutch East Indies having been transported from Australia to South Africa aboard a Red Cross hospital ship! Nor could he fault the efficiency of the American squadron of DC-3's that had airlifted them (on a rotating basis over a five-day period) from Capetown to Brazil via Liberia. It was only after his arrival in Brazil that the real discomfort had begun. First, physically, with that rattletrap airmail plane that had relayed him to Sint Maarten via Aruba for his rendezvous with Fritz von Voltzmann. Followed by the nerve-wracking mental tension of having to fight not to lose his patience with what he had increasingly considered the over-cautious slowness of the Vichy French fishing boat whose captain had been bribed to smuggle them to the Dominican Republic.
But successfully fight it he did. So that now, twenty-four hours after disembarking in Santo Domingo, he and the deep-cover Nazi spy had finally been guided to their ultimate destination. A small clearing in the mountainous back country just over the border in Haiti. But they did not arrive until well after dark. Only then had the Sumatran-born Dutchman finally felt at ease enough to lean back his head, look up at the full moon, and shamelessly yowl in bestial delight.
"M'sieur Van Doorn, je suppose?"
The startled Voltzmann instinctively reached for his Luger. Nor could Van Doorn blame him. For even his own feline senses had failed to detect the arrival of this ritually dressed stranger who now stood before them! A stranger whose face bore no sign of any fear... at beholding a bipedal were-tiger.
"You must be Boanga."
The bokor* nodded. "Oui, m'sieur. And I further presume that your compagnon has explained to you the terms of our entente?"
"Yes. I kill the missionary who's been converting your followers. You take them back... and turn them into the nucleus of an army for the eventual overthrow of the present Haitian government."
"An army which the Third Reich has agreed to equip," added Voltzmann. "But, only in exchange for a naval base for our unterseebooten!"
Boanga glowered at him. "Pas no souci, m'sieur! I shall honor my end of the bargain. And I shall accept no less from... vous deux."
The were-tiger and the Gestapo agent nodded in unison. Unable to resist grinning at the Haitian's deliberate pun!
"All I need now," declared Van Doorn. "...is this missionary's name and location."
"His location I will escort you to, personally," replied Boanga: "His name? M'sieur Le Docteur Robert Warren."
EMPIRE STATE UNIVERSITY,
NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK,
(ONE MONTH EARLIER)
Professor Miles Warren looked at the credentials shown him by Phineas Mason... and arched his eyebrows in surprise.
"I thought SHIELD had been disbanded!"
"Publicly, yes," replied the former Agent 2-X. "We now exist only behind the scenes. My reason for divulging this top-secret fact, professor, is because I need your help. I understand you've made unexpected strides in the science of human cloning. Including hyper-accelerated physical aging of the clones from infancy to adulthood. As well as flawless genetic transmission of the consciousness of the original person- -memories and all- -into the clone!
The geneticist was flabbergasted. "How…?"
"Let's just say we have a mutual acquaintance who works for the Liberty Corps. This raises the question: was he telling me the truth?"
Miles Warren hesitated a second or two before finally replying. "Tell me, Agent Mason. Would you like to meet my father?"
MALIBU, CALIFORNIA
(THE PRESENT)
Nightveil did not hesitate for a second. As soon as the first laser beams began turning Nicholas Trask's beach house into architectural Swiss cheese, she uttered a spell that encased the entire exterior within the impenetrable Crimson Bands of Cyttorak. Thereby giving her enough time to improvise a battle plan.
"Synn! I'm going to switch over to a hemispherical Shield of the Seraphim concentrated on the front of the house. That's where the beams seem to be coming from! When I do, you and Spidey go out the back and get an aerial view of the snipers' exact location. The moment she does, Spidey, just concentrate on the mental image. I'll pick up it up, telepathically."
"Roger that," said the shrunken webslinger from Synn's left shoulder. Upon which the Sorceress Supreme chanted once more, making the Crimson Bands disappear from that portion of the beach house balcony facing the beach. Synesthesia then used her power to make the sliding glass doors temporarily disappear. Allowing her to fly out and upward. As soon as she had done so, a stream of laser beams began firing up at her from one of the foothills overlooking the beach house.
The shrunken webslinger used his spider-sense to home in on the snipers' hiding place by seeing which direction seemed to cause the strongest "tingle." When that ploy finally proved successful, he did as Nightveil had recommended.
"They're halfway up the nearest hill," he thought to himself. "Alien lizard-men similar to your magic hologram. But wearing some kind of robotic battle armor painted in greenish-brown camouflage!"
"Techno-barbs," replied Nightveil. "Technological barbarians! Non-shapeshifting Vardax who do most of the heavy fighting in any of their wars of invasion."
"What do we do, next?" asked Synn (just as telepathically).
Nightveil grinned and concentrated on what she considered a suitable mental image. A grin that was instantly mirrored on the faces of Little Spidey and his platinum-blonde ally. Two seconds later, the techno-barbs found themselves suddenly being divested of their battle armor by psychokinetically constructed images of ten foot-long can openers!
When they had been stripped down to the extra-terrestrial equivalent of black "speedos," that was when Little Spidey went into action.
"Synn! Size me up!"
The platinum blonde smiled. "You got it."
As a result, within seconds of leaping off her shoulder, the shrunken webslinger had been psychokinetically re-enlarged to his normal height. Consequently, pressing his web-shooters even before he landed in the ground in a shock-absorbing crouch! That, in turn, led to the Vardax nearest him, on both his left and right flanks, completely ensnared in web nets from head to toe. The remaining four Vardax were not about to let their fellow techno-barbs be so easily captured, however. For even without their battle armor, they were warriors, first and foremost!
Hence, the next pair rushed in from either side while the last pair sought to tear the web nets apart with their clawed hands.
Yet, the webslinger was no stranger to battling reptilian humanoids. He therefore leapt upward, somersaulting in mid-air, before landing behind the Vardax charging at him from his right. As a result, the latter collided with his fellow Vardax. Leaving both of them vulnerable to getting webbed up, face-to-face. Spidey then spun about, shooting out another line of webbing at the Vardax immediately behind him. That one, however, lifted his already webbed-up comrade and used him as a shield! He then dropped his comrade in order to grasp the web-line with both hands and tug on it, thereby pulling Spidey straight toward him! But the webslinger had anticipated that. Therefore, not only did he not resist the tug. He leapt forward with it! Employing his forward momentum as a way of overshooting his would-be captor and landing behind him. Forcing that particular Vardax to spin about... and leave his lower jaw vulnerable to a right cross that robbed him of consciousness.
That left only one disarmed techno-barb to deal with. Then faster than one might be able to say "thwip," the sixth Vardax suddenly found himself convulsing in pain, right where he stood. His entire body being electro-shocked by FemForce Reservist Rayda (nee Dinah Morisi)! Consequently, when she finally let up, her opponent fell to the ground face-first.
"Nice timing, partner," Synn yelled down from above.
"Thanks! I got here from Downtown LA as fast as I could. But now that we have them, what do we do with them?"
Spidey instantly recalled something he had read in a Sunday supplement of The Daily Bugle, three months earlier. "Isn't there a super-group, out here, called The Protectors?"
Rayda nodded. "They're based in a high-tech compound in Palos Verdes."
So that was precisely where the FF contingent and their allies brought their unusual prisoners.
CLEVELAND, OHIO
(EARTH-7642)
Llyra of Lemuria pointed to the television news coverage of the titanic struggle now going on between Hoppy the Marvel Zombunny and the Fin Fang Form the Proteus-possessed Impossible Man had once more assumed after emerging from an interdimensional rift over Lake Michigan. Followed by a roughly eastward march toward the shores of Lake Erie.
"For all its power, that undead lagomorph will not be able to stop Proteus alone, Agent Harris. If Proteus reaches the Cleveland Hellmouth, he will have an unlimited supply of energy for reshaping this entire world! And if this world falls... the rest of the Omniverse will inevitably follow."
DEO SAIC Alexander Harris (grandson of legendary GCPD Detective Harvey Harris) paused a moment or two before replying. When he did, it was not to Llyra. Not directly, anyway! Instead, he flipped the switch on an old-fashioned intercom.
"Dr. Summers? Print up a hard copy for the Karshon-Ulthoom ritual and bring it to my office. Immediately!"
Less than five minutes later, Wiley Summers brought in a sheet of paper which, at a nod from his supervisor's head, he handed to the green-skinned amphibious woman standing in front of Harris' desk. Llyra accepted it... and grinned as she read (and automatically translated) the Latin inscription at the top of the page.
"Rite for the Invocation of the Living Sharknado."
tbc
*GLOSSARY
Bokor: in most modern pop-culture, the voodoo equivalent of an evil sorcerer.
". . .je suppose" ("I presume").
Entente: agreement.
"Pas no souci. . ." ("Do not worry").
". . .vous deux" ("you two").
DEO: Department of Extra-normal Operations.
SAIC: Special Agent in Charge.
