New Earth

Chapter Three: Defense of Self

September 2018

Numerous reporters gathered in front of the lectern bearing the US Presidential Seal to hear the response to the legal challenges that had cropped up like weeds in the weeks following the announcement of the Enhanced Draft.

"In 2010 Tony Stark stood in front of a Senate hearing committee and bluntly refused to turn over the capability to reproduce the Iron Man technology to the U.S. government. In the years since many, many other enhanced individuals have repeated that sentiment: Their powers were their own. They did not trust any military or government with their abilities. The militaries of the world did not need that kind of power because we could count on our heroes to take care of us. This prevalent attitude among the enhanced community culminated in 2016 when Steve Rogers, Captain America, made it abundantly clear that, not only would he refuse to aid in any governmental attempts to recreate his powers, he also would not be bound to follow the orders of any government body or the United Nations. In short the Enhanced are more responsible and know better than the rest of us so we should just sit down and shut up while they get on with things.

"The Avengers and others like them have repeatedly and conclusively demonstrated the difference in powers between the Enhanced and a standard military unit." The president gestured to a screen showing confrontations between military forces and the Hulk on several occasions including Culver University, Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes in Bucharest and Berlin as well as dozens of confrontations between police and Enhanced criminals. "Normal military troops cannot, they simply cannot, go up against Enhanced forces and expect anything other than disaster.

"In 2012 Thor Odinson, first Prince of Asgard informed the people of Earth that experiments with the alien artifact known as the Tesseract had signaled to the greater universe that 'Earth was ready for a higher form of war'. At that same time the Earth was invaded by an alien race, the Chitauri, while they were turned back and the portal that they arrived through was closed, Tony Stark reported seeing a massive armada waiting to attack the Earth. It was his belief that the Invasion of 2012 was only the first attack on Earth.

"Tony Stark was right, the armada he saw on the other side of the portal in 2012 is now visible to Earth's telescopes. In another year it will be within our solar system. The Enhanced Draft is a necessary measure to protect the continued existence of the planet Earth. And it is necessary as a direct result of the actions and attitudes of the Enhanced.

"A force fifty times larger than the one the Avengers drove back in 2012 will be at our doorstep in one more year. The Earth's military forces have no hope of defeating it. The Avengers and others like them have repeatedly and emphatically declared that military and government forces cannot be trusted with the sort of powers they possess. They have assured us, repeatedly, that we could count on them to be there when we needed them. Well that day is now. They assumed responsibility for the defense of the planet every time they refused, obstructed or sabotaged governmental attempts to develop powers equal to theirs.

"Now, none of us have a choice. Thanks to their efforts we can't fight without them, so they must fight for us. The mandatory Enhanced Draft is nothing more than the natural consequences of the Enhanced's careful hoarding of their powers."

Several weeks later much the same scene was repeated although this time it was a White House spokesman rather than the president himself facing the press. "Naturally the Enhanced Draft will adhere to all existing statutes regarding minors. While they were not explicitly excluded from the Executive Order issued on August 6th the administration believed it would be understood that the order would not supersede existing laws regarding the treatment of minors."


March 2019

As Terry Ward flipped through his mail one return address jumped out at him. Quickly he shoved the letter in his pocket and hurried back to his dorm room, head down, shoulders hunched defensively.

Once he was alone he took the letter out and just stared at it. The return address was from the Immigration Office. He'd submitted his application to join the evacuation twelve hours after the government had clarified that minors weren't included in the prohibition on Enhanced leaving Earth. The way it had been stated, the intent was to avoid breaking up families but no one ever said that a minor couldn't go on their own. Terry was seventeen and desperately hoped that he'd be gone before that loophole closed for him.

The letter Terry held in his hands could be his ticket out or it could be a rejection of his application. Terry stood there in the center of his room crumpling the letter further between his hands. Finally he slid his finger under the flap, pulled the letter out and started reading.

...A month, he had a month to get ready to leave the planet forever. There had been a lone berth empty on the next ship so he hadn't had to compete against people leaving with their families. A month to leave everything he'd ever known behind.

Terry glanced around his room a little bit wildly. With Dr. Pym's technology to shrink luggage pets were about the only thing people couldn't bring with them. On the News he'd seen people pull up to the Nova Empire docking platforms with whole moving vans. But having too much baggage wasn't really a worry in Terry's case.

He hadn't been home since the night his powers went out of control and he'd been arrested. His mother had moved rather than continue facing neighbors whose children had died that night. The only time Terry had spoken with her since that night was when he'd called to ask her to sign the consent form that came with his application to immigrate. She hadn't thought twice before agreeing to sign, only saying, "Well, I wasn't planning on letting those aliens force me out of my home." Terry had replied, "And I'm hoping I can make a home if I can get the hell away from here." But now that he was going Terry wondered if his mom would pack up some of his room if he asked and if she hadn't thrown his stuff out already.

Terry pulled out his suitcase and started packing his summer clothes then he paused. "Everyone's going to hate me."

Hours later a knock on his door startled Terry out of his thoughts. "Hey, you alright in there?" a girl called through the door. "You weren't at dinner, or lunch."

Terry hesitated briefly then opened the door to admit a girl with dyed black hair, pale make-up and a lace skirt with a dramatically uneven hem. Silently he handed her the letter. "So Nico… Am I traitor or a coward?"

Nico Minoru reached over and hugged him, "Neither, you're just doing what's right for you. I'll miss you but I'm glad you got the chance to go." She looked around at Terry's spartan dorm room. "I'm going to talk to some of the other sensible people around here, we'll scare up some sort of care package to send you off with."


April 2019

Scott curled up in a corner of the bare concrete cell, rubbing his broken arm and trying to break through the fog in his mind. He remembered a dark haired Inhuman coming into the cell that morning shortly after he'd finished his MRE breakfast. Now his arm and head were competing throbbing pains, he felt exhausted and there was a blur of activity that represented the day. The only thing he clearly remembered was the one Inhuman, Max he thought, looming over him.

The door opened and a blonde woman Scott vaguely remembered from the prison break came in with a tray of food. She took one look at Scott's swollen, bruised arm spun around on her heel and stomped out. Her raised voice drifted back into the room, "Max! What the hell! Why hasn't anyone treated his injuries?"

"When he's under my control he doesn't care," a man said carelessly, his voice growing more distant as he spoke.

Scott stared at the open door. Then, clutching his broken arm to his side, he rolled to his feet and staggered out. Every step he took jarred his arm sending flashes of white across his vision. At the door he turned in the opposite direction from the way the blonde had gone.

The door next to Scott's clearly led to another cell. He let go of his broken arm with a groan and used his good hand to slide open the tray slot. "Hey," he whispered as he knelt to peer through the slot. "Wanna join my escape?"

The girl inside the room looked young, fifteen or sixteen, "Really? You're helping me?" she asked hopefully.

"Course," Scott said. "Just let me see about this lock. I'm pretty good with locks-"

"Sorry, but no," Skye said coming up behind him. She took him by his good arm and started steering him back to the cell.

Scott tried to put up a fight but the jolt to his arm all but caused him to blackout and Skye ended up half carrying him back to his cell. "We could be nicer if you'd cooperate," she said.

"Look um…"

"Call me Quake."

"Sure, Quake, I'm not going to help the bad guys steal Hank's tech."

"We're not the bad guys," the blonde said tearfully as she returned with an armful of medical supplies.

"Crystal, you left the door open," Quake sighed.

"Sorry, I- His arm- I thought-"

"If Max can force him to ignore his injury to work we have to assume he can force himself to ignore it to try to escape," Quake said.

"We're not the bad guys," Crystal reiterated as she set to splitting Scott's arm. He shrieked in agony as she set the days old break. "We just want to leave, to be left alone."

"Tell it to the kidnap victim next door," Scott snapped.

Crystal shook her head violently, "We didn't kidnap Kamala!"

Scott snorted.

"We really didn't," Quake said. "Her mother didn't want the government forcing her to fight in a war. Kamala thinks she wants to be a hero but she's just a kid and her mom doesn't want her co-opted into this."

"So you have, what? A permission slip for keeping her prisoner?" Scott scoffed.

"Would you let your daughter fight, Mr Lang?" Quake asked. "Even if she said she wanted to? She's what? Ten or Eleven now? Only a few years younger than Kamala."

"Humans locked me up six years ago," Crystal said. "They made me have my baby in prison and then they took her away and I never saw her until Quake brought her to us." She glanced away, "I would have seen to your arm the first day we got here but I hadn't seen my daughter since she was born."

"Wait! What?" Scott exclaimed. "SHRA and the Accords didn't even exist in 2013."

"They said my boyfriend was HYDRA," Crystal said. "I didn't know, I thought he just didn't want his sister knowing about us! Then they said my powers were too dangerous and they couldn't let me go."

"Governments have been trying to control the Enhanced long before Sokovia's destruction Mr. Lang," Quake said.

"But isn't that supposed to be the good thing about the Accords?" Scott asked. "Getting that sort of crap out of the shadows? I mean, shady governments telling the Avengers who needs saving, we've gotta agree to disagree about whether or not there's any other kind of government. But a bunch of shady governments all keeping their eyes on one another to keep stuff like that," he nodded at Crystal, "from going unnoticed? I can pretty much get behind that, once I thought it through."

"It's complicated," Quake said. Which was the quick way of saying that Pietro Maximoff hadn't been half as sneaky as he probably thought he had been about his secret girlfriend. HYDRA had known what their little lab rat was up to and when the relationship turned fruitful they notified their cohorts in S.H.I.E.L.D., most likely planning to keep a closer eye the pregnancy by getting Crystal's unborn baby on the Index. But no one had realized that Crystal had powers of her own or that her ingrained fear of discovery would result in her panicking and killing three S.H.I.E.L.D. Agents as soon as they identified themselves. Crystal's baby had been, to HYDRA, disappointingly normal in spite of having two Enhanced parents and had been quietly dumped in the foster care system. HYDRA was discovered in S.H.I.E.L.D. ACTU rose to fill the gap left by S.H.I.E.L.D.'s fall. The Accords and SRHA were passed and policies around Enhanced that ACTU had inherited from S.H.I.E.L.D. came under review. But whatever nefarious designs HYDRA might have had on Crystal and her unborn child the fact remained that she'd killed three government agents for nothing more than identifying themselves. And so she'd been transferred from one of several secret facilities S.H.I.E.L.D. used to lock up Enhanced who were deemed too dangerous to the new, UN inspected, supermax prison in Nevada and there she'd stayed until the prison break.

"You're still kidnappers from what I've seen," Scott replied with a shrug.

"And I can still make you do what we need," Max announced with a nasty smile as he leaned against the door jam. "What a human like you thinks is irrelevant."


After Scott's injuries had been treated Skye excused herself. Since they'd arrived she'd made a regular practice of wandering around Afterlife, looking at the places she remembered from her earlier stay, examining the damages from the battle Jiaying had staged and those from the years of abandonment. It was an easy excuse for occasionally wandering off on her own.

Once she'd garnered some privacy Skye slipped an earpiece in and dialed a number on her phone. "How's the weather in China?" Coulson asked, picking up on the second ring.

"Menacing with a hundred percent probability of coercion," Skye replied. "Given his past alliances I thought Lang would be falling over himself to help the others get away from the Big Brother."

"People change," Coulson said, his tone apologetic. "That aside?"

"There are about two hundred and fifty people of Inhuman descent from all over the globe currently at Afterlife," Skye reported. "Maybe two-thirds who have not undergone Terrigenesis. When Jiaying scattered the former colony a good portion of them went right on locating potentials. They've also been making contact with the newly empowered and helping them stay off the radar. Some of those without powers already have official berths on the ships out."

"We've had our suspicions that potential Inhumans might have made up a fairly high percentage of the early New Earth immigrants," Coulson remarked.

"Yeah," Skye confirmed. "From what I hear pretty much everyone with ties to Afterlife has been volunteering to leave. They've felt alienated for a long time, fighting for Earth's future doesn't hold much appeal. The ones here are just helping those with powers get off planet and they're doing the same thing everyone else on the planet is: Bringing parts of their culture that they want saved, a Diviner included, to one of the fifty cities. With what we stole will one of the other cities have to stay behind?"

"Fifty's such a nice even number don't you think?" Coulson remarked. "The UN always knew picking the cities and organizing their removal to New Earth was going to be an ordeal. So they chose a number. Pym made nearly three hundred extra Reduction Staves, replacements for defective ones, extras to deal with unexpected terrain variation, etcetera. The Staves needed to move a small place like Afterlife won't be missed. How about those less enthusiastic to be included in the Inhuman population?"

"Bolt and Amaquelin are determined not to leave any Inhuman at the mercy of a human government," Skye signed. "They 'rescued' James and Shockley along with the other incarcerated Inhumans but I'd guess those two would rather be in government custody if it's a choice between that and here. We've also got maybe two dozen kids who were registered by various governments and were getting official training to use their powers. They've all got at least one parent who wants them out of the fighting but a lot of them aren't so keen on the idea of leaving."

"At least one parent?" Coulson groaned, "So we're in custodial kidnapping territory, at the least. Joy."

"We thought this would be a quick fix," Skye mourned. "The law was a bad one but no one wanted to back down after Mount Rushmore. So we step in and help them get what they want under the table, I mean their demands weren't really that unreasonable. Then with the terrorist pressures off the legal challenges would finally get somewhere and…" Skye sighed. "But this is a mess. Forcing people to go isn't any better than forcing them to stay. I'm worried about Lang, Max Bolt is a psychopath and we're letting him tromp all over Lang's brain. I'm at the point of saying the only good thing to come out of this is getting Luna back to her mom. I really don't think Crystal would have freaked out like she did if she hadn't been indoctrinated to think humans are all out to get her. She didn't deserve what happened to her."

"Neither did the people she killed," Coulson remarked. "Luna… She's what five? Same age as Lang's daughter was when he first got himself thrown in jail. See if you can get her in a room with him, get him thinking about keeping Crystal and her kid together. The sooner they get off the planet the better, getting his cooperation would be big step in the right direction… Or we could call it a bad business. Tip off the Avengers, try to cut losses."

"No," Skye sighed after several minutes. "Max Bolt is a psychotic asshole, Brian and Melanie mean well, by the Inhumans at least and Kamal's style of pragmatic is a little creepy but most of the people here are just people, it's not their fault that their leaders are zealots."

"When your society's primary virtue is secrecy it encourages or at least enables, a certain degree of extremism in your leaders."

"People in glass houses Phil," Skye replied.

"Should I take that to mean you're still in? Reservations aside?"

"I'm still in," Skye said. "I can't help but think this is the best thing for them: A new planet, a new start."

"They still plan on sharing a planet with humanity," Coulson pointed out.

"Only so those who left with the Nova Ships can rejoin the colony," Skye replied. "But I gather the fifty cities are planning on putting down roots fairly close together for mutual defense. It's a whole world, the humans and Inhumans won't even be sharing a continent for generations. Hopefully by the time they need to co-exist again we'll be less suspicious of each other."


Captain Carol Danvers sat in her office at the Avenger's Academy and listened gravely to the heavy set man standing in her office wringing his hands. "I thought perhaps that Kamala had returned to your school," Mr. Khan told her. "She was very unhappy to leave but with everything that has been going on I wanted her close to home."

"No, she hasn't been at the school since you withdrew her," Danvers said. "Hold on a moment." She reached over and hit the intercom button. "Ms. Boylen, please report to the main office immediately."

Several minutes later girl with light brown hair riding on a cloud zipped by the window then they heard someone running in the hall and the same girl burst into the office. "You wanted me Captain?" she exclaimed breathlessly.

"Take a moment to breath, Abby," Danvers said.

The girl nodded.

"Abby, this Kamala's father, Mr. Yusuf Khan. Mr. Khan, Abby was your daughter's roommate here at school," Danvers performed introductions. "Now Abby, this is very important. Have you heard from Kamala since she left school? Any friends she might have gone to visit…"

Abby's mouth gaped open, "Oh my gosh, did Kamala run away?"

"That's what we're trying to figure out," Danvers replied seriously. "Because the other possibility is that she's been kidnapped and if that's the case we need to go after her right now."

Abby shook her head violently. "No, Kamala though being pulled out of school was seriously uncool-" She glanced over at Mr. Khan apologetically, "Sorry. But she never said anything about running away. We were calling each other every few days until about a week ago. When Kamala stopped talking to me I thought, maybe, she was mad because Colonel Rhodes got the rules changed and now we get to learn more combat stuff, like my riflery class, even if we can't join a team until we're eighteen."

Mr. Khan's mouth turned down at that.

"This is voluntary," Danvers said quietly. "When the attacks start it's going to be hard to keep the ones that want to fight out of it, regardless of their age. We're still trying to keep them out of combat until they're adults but under the circumstances it seemed better to offer the training than not." She turned to Abby, "Thank you, you can go."

"Do you think Kamala got kidnapped?" Abby asked tremulously. "Like by those horrible Watchdog people or something?"

"I hope not but we'll find her," Danvers replied, putting a comforting hand on the girl's shoulders as she showed her out. "Mr. Khan, Kamala didn't come back here. So can you think of anywhere else she might have gone?"

"I-" he hesitated. "Representatives of an Inhuman group came to talk to us about Kamala, about her ancestry and how she came by her powers. I wasn't impressed by them and I thought Kamala felt the same but perhaps I was wrong."

"The terrorists," Danvers groaned.

"They were not the pair from that video," Mr. Khan said cautiously. "But their message was not unrelated."


September 2019

"I'm registered as Enhanced but when I attempted to follow the latest rendition of the Enhanced Draft Law my application was rejected because I'm also legally blind," Matt explained to a group of reports that were waiting outside of the courthouse as he and Foggy filed charges against yet another revision of the Enhanced Draft. "Enhanced is a blanket term. For myself I could argue, I could demonstrate, that I'm as capable as any sighted person in hand-to-hand combat but I would guess that at least forty percent of the people in listening to me hold a valid driver's license. Guess what, despite not being Enhanced, forty percent of you are capable of doing something I can't.

"Being 'Enhanced' does not automatically confer a combat ability in excess of armed, trained military personnel. Still the Enhanced Draft operates under the assumption that every Enhanced Individual is more capable of combat than the average citizen could be if given military training and that is simply not true. Not every power has a combat application, not every person should be in combat. The military does not consider me physically capable of operating a vehicle despite being Enhanced, I don't dispute that.

"There are numerous examples of individuals who have been enhanced via variants of the Super Soldier Serum, deliberately enhanced for the specific purpose of heightened combat abilities… And yet many of them are, as a direct result of those enhancements, no longer mentally capable of operating as a member of the US military. Harlem might recall Captain Emil Blonsky of the British Armed Forces. He was a highly decorated military man prior to undergoing experiments designed to enhance his combat abilities. After those treatments he became an abomination, responsible for the senseless loss of hundreds of lives and the destruction of entire blocks of their city. We could put him back in the military, point him at the enemy and hope he remembers how or even cares to differentiate friend from foe… Or we could acknowledge that despite his power, in fact because of the Enhancements he underwent, Emil Blonsky is completely unfit for military service. The Enhanced Draft, as currently written, assumes that every Enhanced can and should serve in a combat capacity. It is an unrealistic and vastly overbroad law."

"Not to mention that it is a pointless exercise in alienating the very people the Enhanced Draft claims it needs," Matt continued. "If the current administration had bothered to check their facts before pushing their new law though they might have noticed that we already have a quite functional selective service system, have for over a hundred years now. As for the argument that the Enhanced are uniquely necessary for this war? Ninety percent of the graduates of the Yinsen Academy for Enhanced Humans who have powers suited for combat have elected to join teams like the Avengers once they turned eighteen and completed combat training. So what exactly is being gained with the Enhanced Draft? Individuals with powers unsuited for combat. A hand full of people who have the physical capability to be soldiers but not the mentality. And resentment. Because just like the rest of you, we don't like being forced into things.

"This law was founded in fear and mistrust. It breeds estrangement and discord. We've opposed the last three versions of the Enhanced Draft and we'll go on opposing any new versions that continue to view Enhanced as assets for the government to use rather than as citizens of this country."