Hello again, ladies, gents, and those elsewhere on the spectrum! This chapter, longer than average befitting its content, should be something of a treat, one of several to come. A lot of stuff I've been planning for a long time (about a decade, for some of it, at least eight years for most of the rest, and one or two things just thrown in), is coming into the story at last.
Some of you may know that I'm planning the book after Surtur's done and dusted (an event which will probably require a book/novella of its own), and I'm provisionally titling it Time War. This… well, it's already begun, really. It began long before the events of the story started. But Forever Red was the first arc where it really hit.
This is the second.
With that in mind, strap back in and have fun.
Oh, and the title images for this series are the product of my messing about with an AI art generator. I know the ethics are greatly debated, but for those of us who have the artistic talent of a dead mouse and lack the money to commission things (and, if I say so myself, have a way with words), it is marvellously helpful.
NEWS ANNOUNCEMENT: Since some people have asked if I have a Discord, and I did in fact set one up last year (I just didn't bother to advertise it and mostly forgot about it because I almost never use Discord), I figured, what the hell, why not let those who want to mosey on over have a look? You can find it here, after you remove the spaces and brackets/make the apt substitutions (if it doesn't work, it's expired, just drop me a PM): hxxps: / / mh86D3GQ
(That should be sufficient. I think)
Now, this… this is where things start to get really interesting. A whole lot of dominos I set up almost a decade ago will fall, and a whole lot more are being set up to make new patterns.
BhodiRook: I wouldn't be so sure about that. Thanos is terrifying – he has killed Phoenix hosts in the past. Also, this level of power is temporary. Phoenix Fire is very circumstantial; for one thing, it needs room.
"Ow. Fuck. Ow."
As lines on entering a new reality went, it was not exactly up there with 'one small step for man'. To make matters both worse and more understandable, this pronouncement came not from a bold explorer, setting foot on virgin dust, in every moment in awe and aware of how they were making their place in history, but from a teenager lying flat on his back in what seemed to be a rubbish tip. The fact that it was, apparently, the rubbish tip at the end of reality didn't make it any better or any more glamorous. If anything, it just made the smells that much worse.
He groaned and sat up, before looking around. What he beheld left him decidedly unimpressed.
"Blurred red-blue sky, weird probably alien architecture, and a rubbish tip the size of a city," he muttered to himself. "Well. That's different."
He squinted, trying to focus his cosmic senses and learn more.
That, he would later reflect, was a mistake.
Everything blurred and swam, and then, without warning, he was violently sick. Following the run of his luck so far, it landed in the midst of what was possibly the only approximately clean thing within ten miles: his lap.
He stared down in silence, and sighed, and carefully floated to his feet and inspected the damage. He had, as they said, had worse, he thought while wiping the remainder and muttering a cleaning charm. The vomit vanished, leaving only an acidic tang of bile. The rest of the stuff that had attached itself to him, and he really didn't think he wanted to know what it was, was a bit more resistant. He eyed it, considered his options, then closed his eyes and took a deep breath, something he immediately regretted.
Phoenix fire burst around him, and for an instant, the persistent miasma was burnt away, leaving only the smell of woodsmoke. Well, there were undertones of other smells too, but Harry was going to take what he could. He wasn't holding his nose, but he was breathing relatively shallowly. He had become accustomed to many strange and unpleasant smells over his short lifetime, some of them extremely nasty (usually those that involved parts of the human body melting or being detached). This, however, took the rotting cake.
"So," he said to himself, hovering out of the crater of broken parts and disturbingly organic gunk he'd made on landing and inspecting his surroundings with some disgust. "I get sent back in time to relax, have fun, and sort out a lot of issues with a martial arts dragon, all going as planned. Then, I meet my many times great-aunt, get to know her, fight off an invasion from a parasite reality, purge its infection with the Phoenix, which I'm finally figuring out, and that, too, is all going as it should."
He sniffed, then wrinkled his nose.
"Then, I meet another avatar of creation and destruction on a noble errand on behalf of cosmic balance, and somehow, I end up getting dropped headfirst into the rubbish tip at – or even beyond – the end of the universe. And then, when I try and use all my fancy new cosmic senses to figure out exactly where I am, lunch comes back up to say hello. All over the rest of me, naturally. Emphatically not as planned." He inspected a mote of ash on his suit suspiciously, then brushed it off. "What a wonderful adventure. I can't wait to tell all my friends."
He flew up higher, letting ordinary senses and a bit of height serve the purpose of more advanced ones. He blinked. Then, he blinked again.
"Okay," he said. "This is different."
OoOoO
A little earlier…
Silence. Utter silence reigned throughout this portion of the universe as the psychic echoes of a cosmic challenge faded away, and an entity as old as the universe – and, perhaps, older still – stared down at the two specks before it. Such small things should not have engaged the attention of the Devourer of Worlds, should have been as unnoticeable to it as bacteria on human flesh.
And yet, Galactus had not seen the universe with merely mortal eyes in a literal life age of Eternity, and on a metaphysical scale, these were far from specks. Rather, they were fellow titans, though clothed in semi-mortal flesh, and neither was in a particularly good mood.
All told, it was not surprising that he noticed them. It was even conceivable that he might be relatively polite, recognising a certain kinship between them, even if that connection was reviled by the others. Nothing they did would be likely to change his fundamental state of being, however.
Galactus… Hungered.
Right now, however, Hunger was superseded by something else.
Galactus… Puzzled.
LADY PHOENIX. PRINCESS OF ASGARD. IS YOUR COMPANION, YOUR FELLOW BEARER OF THE ETERNAL FLAME… CHALLENGING ME?
It was a voice that pronounced the doom of worlds. It was a voice that shook dreams and nightmares across a sector. It was a voice of endings. Such a voice could only be perceived by the subconscious and filtered through it, passing from something unknowable to more or less understandable by those who heard it.
It was, all things told, not a voice that one would expect to sound confused.
Sunniva eyed Harry, who folded his arms and glared. "I think," she said. "That it would be best translated as a warning, in the form of a challenge, that if you should threaten any of the worlds we have just saved, you would have to face him." She looked up at Galactus. "Or, rather, us." She paused, eyed her nephew again, then added, in the spirit of honesty, "And I think that there's a bit of a threat in there too."
Galactus stared at them through moon sized glowing eyes, then seemed to peer down at Harry. No expression was discernible in the great void of his 'face', but the sense of bemusement only increased.
I AM THREATENED BY A CHILD?
"Oh dear," Sunniva said, as Harry's eyes narrowed, internal furnaces burning with the heat that forged supernovas. "He is young, Galactus," she replied evenly, laying a forestalling hand and thought upon her nephew. "Unusually so, it is true." Her own eyes narrow, and her own eyes glowed as a harmonic of flame and warning. "Nevertheless, he has proven worthy of that power. You WILL show him the due respect, Devourer. Or you WILL answer for it."
Galactus stared at her, then at Harry. Then, without warning, he collapsed, from an entity the size of a star to one a little less than two feet taller than both of them. Perversely, this was more unsettling than the alternative – especially as neither this, nor his previous colossal size, had had any effect on the local gravity.
I MEANT NO INSULT, he murmured. If a supernova could murmur, it would sound like that. I AM UNACCUSTOMED TO NOVELTY. He looked at Harry. I DO NOT SEEK BATTLE, PHOENIX-BORN. I HUNGER, BUT FOR NOW, MY HUNGER MAY BE SATED WITHOUT FEEDING ON WORLDS YOU WOULD SEEK TO PROTECT.
His gaze shifted, a reflection of a change in his attention, directed to a selection of worlds. It was a comparatively small slice of space, only a few dozen systems. It was also dead… more or less.
"Oh," Sunniva said quietly. "Of course."
"Auntie?" Harry asked, frowning.
YOU PURGED THE CONTAMINANT, AND SCOURED ITS INFLUENCE. SOME WORLDS WERE TOO FAR GONE TO BE SAVED, AND WERE PURGED COMPLETELY.
"And others linger," Sunniva said. "Whatever, or whoever, lived on them is gone. They were infected, nephew, and while the infection was removed, they were too damaged to save. What remains is rotting on the vine."
"But maybe," Harry began, reaching out, touching the minds – and recoiling, violently, retching at what he felt; the screams of billions upon billions of souls, seas of rancid magic, and the putrid remains. A moment later, he felt his aunt's arm around his shoulders.
"Even we cannot save everyone, nephew," she said gently. "For all our power, there are some things beyond even us. The laws of physics and nature on those worlds are permanently tainted, turned that slightest bit out of true – a scar from the invading reality. Everything, everyone on them is dead, or worse. The change was enough to see to that, and to make it inhospitable to any future life. At best, those worlds would simply die. At worst, they would become cancerous, metastasising and creating a whole new disease, one all the deadlier for being partly of this reality."
She looked sadly at the Corpse-Worlds.
"All we can hope to do is to honour them, for having fought as long as they could," she said. "And to ensure that their deaths are not in vain."
"And feeding them to him is honouring them?" Harry asked bitterly.
Sunniva's face hardened as she looked at Galactus, then sighed. "In a way? Yes," she said. "All we could do is make pyres of them, nephew. Allowing Galactus to feed will give them a pyre. A pyre, and more."
I CONSUME LIFE THAT HAS RUN ITS COURSE, Galactus said. I PROCESS IT. I TRANSFORM IT. AND I GIVE IT NEW PURPOSE.
"Normally, I would debate the first part, Devourer," Sunniva said coldly. "Your feeding is wanton. You care little for the potential a world might have, what it could have been but for your Hunger. You are a Necessity, Galactus – that does not mean all your actions are justifiable or beyond reproach."
Her expression softened into something more weary.
"But the essence of what you say is true," she admitted. "There is a legend that transcends the space-ways, nephew, one that says that in the end, Galactus shall give back all that he has taken and far more. Some have taken it as an omen that he shall start the next universe once all life has died. Others think that at some point, he shall turn from Devourer to Lifebringer, creating worlds rather than destroying them. Both have elements of reality to them, but the latter is closer to the truth. Galactus is the Devourer of Worlds, yes. But he is the Seeder of them, too."
Harry frowned, then tilted his head. "Fire and Life," he said. "Creation and Destruction." He cast an unfriendly look at Galactus. "And he's an aspect, isn't he? He's not just one side of the coin, he's both."
Sunniva nodded. "With the energies of one world, if he is unmolested and does not have to confront too many threats to our reality – his feeding grounds – he may spark the lives of a dozen more," she said. Her lips twisted. "All the universe is his farm. It is in his interest to maintain the crop."
Harry looked at her. You really hate him, don't you? He said in the privacy of her mind. Why? It's not just what he is.
If he was a mindless predator, I would not hate him, any more than I would hate the wolf or the bilgesnipe, she replied, after a moment. He would not be able to help his nature. Her light eyes were hard as stone. But he is more than a predator, much more, and more than his nature. He has a responsibility to be more, just as we do. Him above all, in fact. What can the harvest hope for, if not for the care of the Reaper Man?
She shook her head minutely.
I rage against his function, as you would against a volcanic eruption or a flood, but I accept it and adapt to it – the same disaster that brings death and destruction prepares the way for new life. In the meantime, one can get out of its way. But he is not just a natural disaster. He can control where he passes. But he does not care, and that is what I loathe. He has a responsibility, and he shirks it.
Harry scrutinised Galactus.
So, you're saying that, oh, I don't know, hitting him in the face with a spare planet would be well-deserved.
That got a psychic snort of amusement. Well deserved, but ineffectual. I despise him, but I do not underestimate him. He is no lesser aspect, nephew, like those birds you know – Galactus is great and terrible.
Then why is he bothering to talk to us? Why come over here at all, if he's got his next few meals lined up?
Good question, Sunniva replied grimly, then voiced it to Galactus. The entire conversation had lasted a matter of milliseconds.
The reply was prompt. And ominous.
BECAUSE MY HERALD HAS BEEN TAKEN. I SENSE HIS PRESENCE STILL, BUT THROUGH A VEIL. HE HAS GONE TO A PLACE THAT I CANNOT GO.
Is that bad?
Very.
How bad?
Galactus' Heralds are his scouts and hunters. They are to him as we are to the Phoenix. While far less than Galactus himself, less than us in our full might, they are invested with a considerable measure of his power. It makes them as mighty as the Greater Gods, such as the Lords and Ladies of Asgard. They possess much of his cosmic knowledge, too. Her lips thinned. And they specialise in passing between spaces, defences, and realms.
… shit.
"So, we need to get him back," Harry said, emerging from psychic discussion, as a vague memory of a silvery figure nagged at him; as smooth as mercury, beautiful and remote soaring through the stars. Had he met this 'Herald' before? Hmm. A question for another time. "And for some reason, it has to be us, because…"
"… Galactus cannot leave our reality."
"Right. Where's he gone, exactly?"
Galactus' gaze turned, Harry's gaze following him, to what Sunniva was already grimly staring at: the vast swathe of space that had, not so long ago, been full of thriving worlds, then filled with vast tears in the tapestry of creation. The incursion point.
THROUGH THERE.
And lo, in that moment, two Phoenixes spoke in concert, their voices as the song of the spheres.
"Ugh. Of course he has."
OoOoO
Reflecting upon this, and the mind-bending, stomach twisting passage through the cracks in reality and not being rendered down into component particles courtesy of Galactus actually being helpful (apparently, the fact that he was about to eat several doomed worlds meant he had power to spare), put Harry in a bad mood. Especially since he'd drawn the short straw and landed in a rubbish tip.
Of course, Sunniva could have landed somewhere worse, like a sewer, but he deemed it unlikely. The fact that she could have landed somewhere dangerous didn't really occur to him as a concern, save the thought that her appearance would have made it exponentially more dangerous and a vague pity for whatever unfortunate idiots might think that she was an easy target.
Besides, while he wasn't going to reach out with his senses again until he'd got his feet under him properly and figured out just what exactly he was dealing with, he could still sense her in the back of her mind. She did seem a long way away, insofar as he could tell – space and time seemed decidedly relative where the Phoenix was concerned - she didn't seem distressed, or worried. The latter was probably because she could sense him and therefore the fact that he wasn't anything more than annoyed. As a result, he was inclined to leave it at that. He had a rough bearing on her, she probably had a rather better one on him thanks to experience, and if needs be, they could find each other.
For now, though, he needed to figure out where he was. Also, preferably, to know why he'd thrown up like that, because he really didn't want to do that again.
He strolled through the junkyard, ignoring the occasional curiosity from those scavenging amongst it. They were a whole selection of species, with little in common beyond ragged appearances and a desperate edge to them, suggesting that this place, whatever it was, was pretty cosmopolitan. It also quite clearly had a nastier side, as some of them were starting to weigh him up; some for value just as they would scrap, some for other things he really didn't want to contemplate, and some… well, his telepathy was working just fine, and even if it hadn't been, he knew hungry when he saw it. He could try the diplomatic angle, but no. That wouldn't work. He might not recognise the species, but he recognised the type.
He glared, pulsing a telepathic snarl of threat-warning-are-you-feeling-lucky-punk.
The scavengers shied away, some turning and fleeing outright, while others made sure to give him a wide and respectful berth. The reference might be lost on them, but the power and threat were not. An apex predator stalked amongst them, and it wasn't in the mood to be interrupted.
Of course, Harry mused to himself, that would be all the more helpful if he actually knew where he was stalking, figuratively speaking. That was to say, both where he was and where he was going.
The summary that Galactus had given them, and that Sunniva had translated, had been vague to say the least: as a being of their reality, fundamental and baked in, he was vastly knowledgeable about things within it, to the point of nigh-omniscience. However, this was something of Outside.
But it wasn't, not exactly, Harry realised. The queasiness, yes, that had some of the hallmarks of Outside; not just the invasion they'd fought, but echoes of the Battle of London, Chthon unleashed, Chthon burrowing his way into his soul… that was familiar enough.
Chthon, however, had been a being of primordial chaos – the God of Chaos, in fact – and had been trying to reduce the universe to that. Things were a little more complicated than that, as he'd originally been a being of their reality before being chucked out… though if you reeled back into the early days of the universe, the boundaries between Order and Chaos and therefore between realities were probably a lot more flexible.
Likewise, Sunniva had explained to him that what they had encountered was an incursion from what could best be described as a parasite reality: a multiversal predator, a reality that had either not developed as it should, or was a splinter reality, a warped pocket universe, or even something mysterious from outside reality trying to claw its way up from the dump at the bottom of the multiverse and take definition from another reality. There were a fair few possibilities, none of them pleasant, all part of the horrors and wonders of the Spaces Between.
In any case, it had been trying to inject its essence into their reality, to digest it and transform it into more of itself, growing bigger and stronger, and theoretically consuming the whole damned thing. If it failed, it would fall away, or just feed as a parasite, clinging onto existence. If it had succeeded in consuming their universe, it would either settle as a universe in its own right, probably a warped version of the one it had consumed (i.e. theirs), or become something like Galactus: a devourer of universes.
Of course, she hadn't put it exactly like that, but he was summarising as best he could.
"So," he said to himself. "It's familiar, but not exactly. It's not as… warped as I would have expected, but things are different here." He rubbed his jaw. "So, working theory, this is part my universe, part… not. Part Outside? But how does that work?"
No answer, naturally, was forthcoming, and he sighed gustily, looking up as he did. And up. And up.
"Yep," he said eventually. "Things are veeeery different here."
He looked around, paused, then took off, attracting no small amount of attention, most of it from the drivers of what seemed like flying cars. Their irritation was quite hypocritical: unlike the movies, they weren't in sedate lanes, but weaving in and amongst each other like Quidditch players.
As he soared up between the strange patchwork buildings, he began to take stock – starting with the buildings themselves. They were very strange. Some were like someone had pasted together grand pagodas and stark skyscrapers, while others were gleaming towers surrounded by floating rings of… space cottages? Space cottages?
"That's a phrase I never thought I'd think," he muttered, looking around. There was a lot to take in.
The architecture varied between the sublime and the blatantly scavenged, sometimes merging the two. Futuristic towers shone with soft multicoloured lights, sharp angles blurring into rounded curves, leaning sometimes precariously, sometimes impossibly, over rounded domes that were surrounded by grand boulevards that swept and zig-zagged through the vast metropolis, one that seemed to be without end.
Some buildings seemed entirely innocent of gravity, slowly moving like some kind of spiral escalator the size of a castle eight thousand feet in the air. Up above, and often amongst these strange buildings, shimmering clouds mingled with vast asteroids, chunks of rock the size of mountains drifting like rain on the breeze. Sometimes they captured or simply bulldozed some of the floating buildings if they weren't fast enough to get out the way, or perhaps simply unable, but this met with limited concern.
The only attention seemed to be from crafts (or creatures, it was a little hard to tell) the size of double decker buses that flitted around the sky, hovering periodically, then either darting down to snatch up some of the falling wreckage, their tops opening and spreading wide to capture the falling debris, or landing on top of the drifting mountains, descending on the ruins like a vulture on a corpse.
He rose higher, above the drifting mountains, above the clouds (some which smelled alarmingly like the contents of some of Pepper's cocktail glasses), looking through both. Thankfully, that aspect of the Phoenix senses seemed to still be working. He was trying to get some sense of where he was, make some sense of it.
The answer was still much as it had been before: an apparently endless city, one now cast in an underlying bronze, overlaid with shimmering sea-greens, dull blues, pale and bright yellows, and blood-oranges. It was like a child's collage of cityscapes from the cosmically futuristic to the astonishingly mundane, with styles and materials blended into a bizarre fusion that cared little for taste or, apparently, the laws of physics.
In fact, there was something very childish about it, in the haphazard mixture, in the way a grand forest of towers (quite literally, in fact, with lesser towers branching off, and little bungalows hanging or even floating like fruit) could abruptly become a broad steppe with trundling caravans across it. Floating caravans. That were moving in herds, herds that migrated around sweeping temples and colosseums, carved from stone and weathered by eons, dedicated to unknown gods, before being somehow inverted into the surface.
And as he looked deeper, morbidly fascinated, he could see beneath – this place was built in layers, uneven and rickety layers, staggered in any old fashion, shifting beneath one another like tectonic plates, each an apparently independent remix on the one above, like someone had squashed the surfaces of a thousand planets together like the pages of a book. Some of them were very different indeed. The third layer down, for instance, looked almost quasi medieval. Except that, apparently, they were growing machines. In fields.
It was like the Creator, whoever they might be, had designed this planet while in the excitable, giggly stage of drunkenness. Or had been truly and profoundly stoned out of their omnipotent mind.
Oh, this place was giving him a headache. Especially since he'd just spotted the sun, or its local equivalent, which seemed to be a globe the size of a small moon on a relatively thin stick, in the middle of a particularly urban area.
It was tinged pale blue. Then, as if to spite him, it split before his eyes into countless country sized… mini-stars, each apparently picking a shade between traffic light green and deep, burnt crimson, and began to drift around. As they did, a selection of craft began to collect around them, like flowers opening in sunlight.
Another person might have found this magical. Harry, in this time and place, just felt like he was about to be sick again.
Yet there were places where some form of order had been imposed, either by the creators of this place, or some later residents. Vast, sweeping swirls of light emerging like mist from a bronzed-brown lower layer, in looping patterns that carved through the city, separating some areas, and connecting others. They were… quite peculiarly beautiful. Which, it had to be said, was a vast improvement on vomit-inducingly confusing, especially when most of the whole was lit in such a way that the colour palette looked like the bastard offspring of a sunset and an oil slick.
He grimaced, and shook his head, before rising higher, towards the edge of the atmosphere, revealing the glory of the cosmos.
Planets loomed impossibly large in his vision, shifting and bending into vast rings of gravitationally distorted matter, baring boiling magma to his gaze, before snapping back together at the descent of their orbit like a rubber band. A swirling rainbow of burning gas, some kind of warped star, hung above and swept around like a serpent; predominantly shades of green, deep blue, and royal purple, it was interspersed with gleaming points of white flame like diamonds, golden lightning dancing from point to point. It was a cosmic thunderhead roiling up above, illuminating the black sky… which would have been comparatively normal, if it hadn't faded to an aurora-like greenish-white around the edges.
More significantly, there were great gates of bronze and burning golden-blue light, hanging in the night sky. Some were small enough to only admit a few people at a time, some large enough to swallow stars, and all contained the same rippling blue-white light, illumined with concentric white circles that bent and shifted on the whims of local space-time like a flag in the wind, all concentrated to a single point of absolute darkness. A black hole.
And on the outer edges, throughout, in fact, that same kind of swirling pattern of misty light emerging from bronze as he had seen on the surface below.
Harry recognised the what, if not the who, latching gratefully onto the point of familiarity, and trying to dispel the feeling that he was inside some giant black soap bubble: these were portals. These were the machines of the gods.
Which rather raised the question – what god, or gods, had built these?
The next step would be to catch up with his aunt. She was much more likely to know what was going on than he was. He hoped.
He looked down, realising as he had that he had risen far above the planet's surface.
"Ah."
The planet, it seemed, was not exactly a planet. It was, in fact, a not inconsiderable portion of a galaxy; recomposed matter, repurposed star-fire, the building blocks of the positive universe, pieces of countless worlds, bolted together into a sprawling network of worlds, ring-planets, and cosmic collectives.
It was a child's idea of reality, a billion Lego sets mixed together and mashed up into whatever caught the eye and the brief attention span.
It extended as far as even Phoenix enhanced eyes could see, and as far as those eyes could tell, it was very, very large. In fact, some of it was familiar. Only little bits and pieces, seen through a trillion eyes in a single, shining moment, but it was enough.
Apparently, he thought grimly, the parasite universe had taken a unique approach to absorbing and digesting parts of their reality.
He took a deep, metaphorical breath, and reached for the Phoenix. It was there, burning merrily, and he leaned into it, reassured. And stopped. Normally, the Phoenix was constantly recharging, even passively, off the lifeforce of their reality. The Phoenix was an entity of their reality. This was not their reality, not entirely, not even mostly. Perhaps not even slightly. Which meant that the only immediately accessible fuel it had to charge the metaphorical battery… was him.
"This," Harry said, in possibly the understatement of the millennium. "Could be a problem."
OoOoO
As Harry would later come to realise, one problem with threat displays was that while they were marvellous at getting rid of potential irritants and ordinary predators, they also tended to attract attention. Though, admittedly, soaring into the skies, even up beyond the atmosphere, before making a comparatively leisurely descent, meant that he was rather hard to miss.
All the more so, in fact, as he had decided to combine finding his aunt with thinking, and had not wanted to be interrupted. Which meant that he had taken the entirely logical decision to sit on – or rather, lie back on top of – the roof of a surprisingly sleek mag-lev train travelling at approximately three hundred miles per hour in approximately the right direct.
For him, it was convenient. For the more discerning bounty hunters of Sakaar, who held themselves above the scrappers who had scrounged and scavenged around the edges and clubbed the vulnerable and newly arrived into submission, and the scraped together militias that maintained some form of rickety law enforcement across the many Sectors, it was Christmas.
A remarkably high power signature, commanded by a so far unclassified being that was lying out in the open apparently without a care in the world, making no effort to conceal themselves, in a location that while mobile, was mobile on a strictly defined and predictable path? Who could resist such a temptation?
That was how Harry was jolted out of his latest musings – this time on the vaguely irritating visage that was popping up everywhere, of an apparently human man in later middle age, wearing gaudy multi-coloured clothing and a toothy grin. It made him feel mildly ill for some reason. The various shades of neon, perhaps?
That was the point he had reached when a projectile exploded in front of him, unleashing an electrified net with gravity warping weights, followed immediately by half a dozen jet-packed mercenaries and their diamond shaped craft.
Professionals though they might be, veterans of a hundred capture missions of high value targets, who compensated for a relative lack of personal power with training and technology, a part of them was already thinking of the price such a unique specimen would command from the Grandmaster and his entertainers.
After all, they had assessed the target, chosen their gear according to the power levels they had detected, and struck with perfect timing and absolute precision. They had taken no chances: the electrical charge alone would have subdued a War-Form Power-Skrull, or a Kree Accuser, easily, while the gravitational effects would bring down a titan. And he had seemed blissfully inattentive to his personal safety, and totally unaware of his surroundings. Easy prey, in other words.
All things told, they were quite surprised when a vast lightning bolt roared upwards, turning the net to ash and tearing the ship in half. It only took a split second for the hunters helmets to adjust to the flash of light and roar of thunder, but by the time that instant passed, the burning ruins of the ship had been reduced to dust and the pilot was preoccupied with trying to make sure that their gravity belt didn't carry them into the path of oncoming traffic.
Their training was to surround the target from above and pin them down, but the formerly recumbent humanoid was moving in a blur, evading their fire with a ducking spin of fluid grace and gestured as he did, his fist snapping open wide. Quite suddenly, all of them were deprived of their jet packs and almost everything but their underwear, plummeting until they activated their gravity belts.
Do not follow me, a soft, dangerous voice spoke in their heads, in each of their native tongues, as a cold gaze followed their descent. I will not be so merciful a second time.
Then, he spun, anchoring himself to the roof of the train with a little magnetic trick, every sense scanning his surroundings, even when they recoiled from the strangeness of them. As he had suspected, these were only the first.
One, humanoid, leanly built, close-fitting body armour of some kind, military black and navy blue like the carapace of an insect, an impression encouraged by the slight hunch and additional mass on the back and the way the helm was framed by two pincer like projections. It was also utterly impenetrable to psychic scanning. Interesting, and worrying.
The second, also armoured after a fashion, but more biotechnology than anything else – another organism, mentally merged with its host, adapting and accommodating itself to it's the host's will and greatly augmenting their natural abilities. He sensed a kind of psychic defence that might normally have troubled him, as two minds almost cancelled each other out, but now? Kree warrior, from some decades in the future from his perspective (something Harry took note of), merged with a shapeshifting organism bred for combat, one surprisingly reminiscent of some of the creatures Carol had fought at Project Pegasus. Both sang with a bloodlust.
The third, a thermokinetic, manipulating heat and cold. Also immensely strong if his unguarded memories were anything to go by, a 'Gramosian', augmented by his people for deep space exploration and more or less any problem that might come his way. This one was more calculating, hanging back, looking to manipulate his energy and those around him to make him vulnerable.
The fourth was not one, but two: a pair of massively built humanoid aliens of some description, who called themselves 'the Blood Brothers'. Presumably an attempt to establish their reputation. Their sheer muscle bowing their bodies forward into a gorilla-like hunch, and they were vastly strong. He could sense a link between them, somewhat psychic, and tested it. It was interesting: the two fed into each other, generating power, potentially immense power – together they could contest with the Hulk. Up to a point. Then there was the coordination aspect, he was sure they'd have worked on that. Separate them, though, and the power would diminish, rapidly: the link was artificial, limited in range, and hardly developed. Not a problem for him, even normally.
The fifth was a great surprise.
"Warren?" Harry muttered to himself, before recalling once again that there had been extensive mention by Carol, and others, of fighting winged people (completely feral winged people) with metal wings like Warren, and metallic carapaces, like some evolution of Warren, augmenting already notable strength and durability. And hadn't there been a few stories, in the aftermath of the Battle of New Orleans of people developing wings among other latent magical gifts?
Yet this one was very sure that she was not from Earth. A world called… Thanagar. Also interesting.
All this was scanned in the blink of an eye. Three were on the train, two were in the sky. All were, in their own way, quite formidable.
Of course, Harry mused as the Blood Brothers charged, everything was relative.
OoOoO
Approximately two seconds later, the Blood Brothers hit a derelict building three miles in a flat trajectory with the force of a Dambuster, reducing it to rubble.
Most immediately scattered, or pointed excitedly at the battle atop the flying train, because if there was one thing the cosmopolitan population of Sakaar shared, it was that they all loved a piece of street theatre as much as any other people in the universe – and a great deal more than most.
One, however, swooped down to briefly examine the site. At a mere glance, they would have passed for one of the earlier mercenaries; though what seemed to be a jetpack was nothing of the kind.
"Some kind of bounty putting up a fight?" came the speculative mutter. "A deal gone sour? Hell, someone not pay their bar tab?"
The figure's glowing gauntlet was raised over the Blood Brothers' recumbent forms, as if scanning briefly, before the floating figure – whose appearance occasioned little further comment, save perhaps a few wagers on what would happen next – turned to look up at the battle. He scowled, and the gauntlet clenched into a fist, burning like an emerald star.
"Whatever it is, I'm not having it. Not in my sector."
OoOoO
Three minutes had passed.
The Gramosian thermokinetic had been switched off. No point getting in a drawn out fight there, a lot of civilians could have been hurt, especially when he had a psychic weakspot the rough size of Belgium.
The Archangel, Thanagarian… whatever she was, had been quick, strong, and agile. Oh, and vicious. She'd closed the distance while he was distracted, punched like a hammer and the claws had had a close encounter with his fringe. However, her armour had not rendered her immune to either a brutal gut punch (not with the amount of power he'd put behind it, anyway), the follow up to the throat, or to the nerve toxins on the tips of her own projectile feathers – the initial distraction – especially after a good half-dozen had been returned to sender through major nerve clusters.
The Kree enhancile had been more slippery, with the symbiote ripping a passenger out the window and into its body mass to become a new host while the original host opened fire with a pistol that had the roughly output of a tactical nuke. Gratuitous overkill, really. Except here, of course, when it would have been enough to severely irritate him. Harry had forced the symbiote to relinquish its new host, sent the gibbering being back below, crushed the pistol, and knocked out the original host, before reattaching the somnolent symbiote with a stern warning to behave.
All three had then had their clothes and several layers of skin merged together, and the resultant molecularly bonded bundle had been dropped onto one of the apparently ubiquitous rubbish tips. They'd be fine. Probably.
Oh, and the Blood Brothers had been neutralised.
All of that had taken about twenty seconds.
The other two minutes and forty had been spent crossing conjured blades with the humanoid in the insect-like armour, who had finally condescended to get involved, forearms transforming into serrated claws. They were nearly as fast as he was, ridiculously strong despite their slenderness, exceptionally skilled, psychically impenetrable (for now), and even trying to read their life didn't get him much of anything.
Whoever this was had been exceedingly competent warrior and assassin for a long while, they were far more powerful than they were letting on (enough that he was glad that they were confining themselves to blades, anything more energetic would wipe out vast swathes of the city), and they were hiding something.
All of those were things that he could see quite clearly by himself, thanking you kindly, along with the fact that they had excellent footwork and weren't in the least fazed by duelling on top of a speeding train. He also got the distinct sense that whoever this was, they were testing him, restraining themselves as much as he was doing the same. In Harry's case, he wanted at least an approximation of discretion.
He grimaced at that thought.
Well, okay, that was probably well out the window, but he didn't want to use the Phoenix if he didn't have to, or attract the kind of attention that actually using it would get. Which would probably burn it up faster, and thus, him. He'd already had a lot, sure, but he got the impression that displays like this weren't too far out of the common way on this bizarre franken-city-planet. Well, city-dwarf-galaxy, really, it was too damned large. He could sense tens of billions of minds, and if even a fraction of a percentage were brought to bear against him, let alone whatever power was behind all of this…
He sighed inwardly, weaving in and out of the bounty hunter's range, marking them for the first time with a blade that burned like a star. Naturally, it only scored a mark a centimetre deep, one that quickly sealed. He really should have been more careful. Still, no use crying over spilt milk. Best to either take this fight somewhere less visible and finish it quickly and brutally – which he could, now that he had their measure – or just to cut and run. On the other hand, the former could still get a lot of attention, and the latter… running with someone like that at his back wasn't the best idea he'd ever had, especially if they were determined to run him down.
"Don't suppose you'd care to tell me who you are?" he asked, as he forced a blade-lock.
The expressionless mask didn't reply.
Emerald light flared between them, hurling them apart like they'd been struck by a jackhammer, knocking each the length of a football field, as something large slammed into the roof, sending ripples through the carriage's super-structure.
Both combatants were on their feet instantaneously, hardly having left them, staring at the new arrival.
Like Harry's opponent, he was wearing a kind of armour, though it was a bit different – less close-fitting, for one, more functional than futuristic, and more designed for an explorer than a soldier. There was no helmet, for one thing, just a set of smoked flying goggles, so that the wearer's face (human-looking, currently splitting the difference between warning, wary, and downright determined) could be clearly seen. Tubes, power-lines, ran from the glowing circular generator on his back, connecting to a gauntlet on the right arm, one glowing just as brightly.
The whole thing looked cobbled together, like a steampunk parody of a suit of power-armour, power coming in fits and starts. But there was something profoundly familiar about it. In fact, Harry knew exactly what it was. And as a result, he was absolutely not going to take this person lightly.
"I don't know what this is about, fellas, and I don't know either of you," he said, revealing an American accent. "So let me introduce myself. I'm the Green Lantern. This sector, and everyone in it, is under my protection. Here, I am the law. Which means that as long as you're here, you solve this like civilised people. That means either by talking, or by organising a time and a place and selling tickets. Or, you face me, here and now. One at a time, or both at once, that is fine by me."
He clenched his gauntleted right hand into a fist. It burned.
"So, are we going to do this nicely? Or not?"
"I'm okay with nicely," Harry said, shrugging, and keeping half an eye on his opponent.
The figure cocked their head suddenly, in a way human necks weren't to go, studying the Lantern, then Harry, before quite literally vanishing.
The Lantern cursed, raising his gauntlet.
"Camouflage," Harry said, vanishing both blades. "They're gone. Whoever they are. Whatever they are."
The Lantern nodded briefly, but kept his gauntlet up for a moment, then relaxed. "My scans say the same," he said, before eyeing Harry speculatively. "So… care to step off this train and tell me what the hell that was about?"
Harry considered the matter for a moment. Sunniva wasn't far, and if he waited another twenty minutes, he'd probably be in easy walking distance of her. On the other hand, this was exposed, there was no need to go running immediately (and if he did, he could cover the ground quickly), and… okay, he was curious.
"Fine by me," he said, then stepped off the edge of the carriage roof.
The Lantern swore, leaping after him, before finding Harry floating smugly in mid-air as the train rushed by.
"Cute, kid," he said.
"I try," Harry said, dropping the sixty feet to the ground and landing easily. "Though I can't really tell you much about what happened other than I got attacked for existing. There wasn't anything more to it, unless someone sends out bounty hunters for road rage 'round here."
"Road rage?"
"I went flying. No one crashed."
That got a waved hand as the Lantern's goggles retracted. He was white, with long and seldom cared for brown hair, tired brown eyes, and stubble from irregular shaving. "You'd have been forgotten in a moment, flying kid or not," he said.
"Then I'm pretty sure it was just for existing."
The Lantern nodded. "That explains the Blood Brothers," he said. "And the reports I've been picking up of a bunch of other bounty hunters who tried their luck and ended up either mostly naked, or in a sewage plant."
"… in my defence, I thought that was rubbish tip."
"Nicer than they'd have done in your place, with your power, kid," the Lantern replied, amused. "They were after you because you were powerful, in the open, and probably acting like a total newbie."
"That would be because I'm a total newbie."
"Then I, Hal Jordan of the Green Lantern Corps, welcome you to Sakaar, home of the weird and land of the bizarre," the Lantern, Hal, said extravagantly. "Which will be your home for the rest of your existence. Sorry about that."
"It really won't be," Harry said absently. "So, I was attacked for being powerful? Someone thought I was a threat? I'm Harry, by the way."
"Nice to meet you, Harry. And nah. They thought the Grandmaster and his people would pay top dollar for someone with your power levels," Hal said.
Harry eyed him. "There's a missing addition to that," he said.
Hal grimaced. "You're young, and going by past experience, you're a looker in the way he likes," he said. "You'd have been a contender in the Contest of Champions, or something pretty to show off at his court. Or, uh."
"Or, some of those at court aren't too particular about what they eat and they might find me tasty," Harry said sourly, swallowing some bile and an involuntary shudder at the ghost of a whisper, at the idea of being something pretty to have. "Lovely."
Hal eyed him. "You're psionic," he said. "My gauntlet's been having trouble classifying your powers, but I've learned to spot a psi."
"Picking up noisy surface thoughts, nothing more," Harry assured him. "I've got enough trouble keeping people out without going looking." He studied the gauntlet. "Green Lantern Corps, huh?"
That got another grimace. "Well, a Corps of one," Hal said. "Only managed to get this battery working, with help – a friend designed this whole rig for me – and the damn thing's slower to recharge each time. The AI's mostly fried, too." He shook his head. "Once, these things worked on little rings that could go for ages without a charge, even all through heavy combat. Now?" He sighed gustily. "I make do."
Harry, who had been examining the Lantern in earnest, raised an eyebrow. "I am genuinely amazed you made it work at all," he said.
"Thanks, I think," Hal said. "Which is why I usually drive. No use wasting power," he continued, as a flying car drew up. It looked sleek. It looked fast. It was also black. Hal Jordan, Harry decided, was a man of taste.
Harry got in the passenger seat, and the machine took off with a smooth purr. Harry smiled appreciatively. Definitely a man of taste.
"So, you were attacked by bounty hunters, yeah, which makes sense," Hal said, once they were well airborne, comfortably weaving in and out of traffic. "Some of the biggest and baddest this side of the inner rim, in fact, with one exception. Lucky for you, he seems to be busy. What doesn't add up is why a Beetle, of all things, was involved."
"A Beetle?"
"Yeah, the one you were squaring off with when I got there."
"Thanks, but that tells me exactly nothing," Harry said, getting in the passenger seat. "What the hell is a Beetle?"
"Beetles… they're weird little things," Hal said. "Scary powerful, smarter than they look, and there's some kind of techno-organic fusion going on there. So far as I know, no one knows what their deal is. They're really called Scarabs, technically speaking, but beyond that, it's a mystery. They could be a species, a caste, an army or part of one, or, hell, even some kind of cult. It doesn't help that the damn things never talk – though they can make themselves understood just fine." He looked at Harry, expression thoughtful. "They don't usually pick fights with people. And when they do, they don't usually do it in the open. Or hold back, come to that."
"They were testing me," Harry said. "If things had escalated, I'd have vaporised them, and I think they suspected that."
Hal cocked an eyebrow, but didn't disagree. "Well, whatever they were up to, I think they got as much as they wanted to," he said. "That, or they figured it wasn't worth troubling the two of us."
Harry nodded. "You're trying to lose a tail," he remarked after a moment. "And you're good at it."
"Compared to dog-fighting with demons over London, it's a piece of pie," Hal commented, before pausing. "Crap, you –"
"I was at the Battle of London, so yes, I know what you're talking about."
Hal stared at him, stunned. "You can't be more than twenty," he said.
"Fifteen," Harry said, stretching in the seat. "Fourteen, technically, but between a bit of time travel and some… out of body experiences, I'm probably about…" He pursed his lips. "Fifteen and a half? Huh."
Hal continued staring at him. "How long has it been?" he asked carefully.
Harry looked at him, and realised with a sudden surge of pity why he was asking. "On our end?" he said gently. "Maybe eight months. Less."
Hal slumped. "Well, shit," he said.
"It's been longer for you, hasn't it?" Harry said quietly.
Hal took a deep, rattling breath. "Not that you'd know it to look at me, but yeah. A lot longer. I was swallowed up a big old rift over London, and spat out here. Time… well. Things work differently here. Best we can work out, for me, it's been… fourteen years. Yeah. About that."
Harry looked up at him, doing his best to shove down a surge of guilt. Hal had been beyond his reach by the time he'd had the power to set things right. What had happened could not be changed. Besides, what couldn't be done then, could be done now. So, for now, he took the older man's free hand, and squeezed it gently. "I'm sorry," he said.
That got a rough laugh. "Don't be! If, by some miracle, there's ever a way out of this damn place that isn't through a coffin, then I can pick up where I've left off. Best news I've had since…" He exhaled. "Since a long time."
He shot Harry a sharp look.
"What was a kid doing on a battlefield, anyway?" he asked.
"Among other things, rescuing some friends of mine," Harry said. "Long story."
Hal grunted. "Well, you can handle yourself in a fight, I'll say that," he said. "And you've got more than enough power to shrug off practically anyone. Could have been worse. Still, you shouldn't have seen what happened that day. No one should, least of all a kid." He sighed. "Same way a kid shouldn't be stuck here."
Harry inwardly debated telling Hal that he'd a) not been even remotely as powerful then as he was right now, b) been dealing with murder attempts for years before that, c) seen worse, and more of the stuff on that day than anyone, d) almost certainly (there was no certainty in anything, but…) not be stuck here. In the end, he decided against it. They could address those of which they had to when they came to it.
"If wishes were horses, beggars would ride," he said instead.
"Ain't that the truth," Hal sighed again, slowing the car. "I think we've lost them."
Harry reached out cautiously, scanning the area. "I'd agree with you, but that's usually a cue for someone to immediately prove me wrong," he said.
"I'd call that superstitious if I didn't believe you," Hal said wryly. "Anyway, I think they've probably decided we're too much trouble. Which is why you should just be glad Lobo wasn't here."
Harry eyed him. "You say that like I should know who that is."
Hal grimaced. "If you don't, then keep it that way."
"He's that bad?"
"Mostly, he's that annoying," Hal said, rolling his eyes. "Though he's also someone you don't want to mess with. Well, I say 'you', when I mean 'me': he might an ass, but the guy can juggle planets and he's more or less indestructible. That might not be a problem for you, but for some of us, it's a bit of an inconvenience."
Harry hummed thoughtfully, then tilted his head as he noted a spike in annoyance from his aunt.
OoOoO
"Well, ain't you a long drink of delicious?"
Sunniva paused, then slowly rotated on the spot, eyes aglow. She had been keeping a low profile, masking her power-signature, telekinetically redesigning her clothes to blend in, things which her nephew had apparently not bothered to do judging by what she was getting off him. He seemed to be in a fight, though not an overly serious one.
Still, she hadn't been overly pleased by their separation, or by the feeling of their transport through the rift, or by the fact she had almost thrown up at the sheer wrongness of the realm around them. Or that they were on an errand from Galactus, to be frank.
In fact, not all that much had been calculated to please her all day, save that she had been spending time with a nephew of whom she was increasingly fond, learning again how rewarding it was to teach, and doing some good. All of which was rapidly receding into the rear view, save the fact that said nephew was finding his way to her on his own and other than some travel sickness, seemed largely fine.
Well, he seemed to have taken a detour, but not one too far out of their way, and motivated by curiosity and… concern? Of course. Not for himself, but for another.
That had left her with a small smile, one that had now evaporated. She had been made, by someone who sounded, felt, and as it happened, looked, like an utter barbarian.
He was about a foot taller than her, broad shouldered and heavily muscled, clad in black leather, with long, dread-locked black hair, a moustache that reached down the sides of his smirking mouth, an abundance of dark hair on skin as pale as Midgard's moon, and insolent black and red eyes, with black markings or tattoos around them. He radiated power – vast power, in fact, enough to rival most Greater Gods – and he knew it, revelling in how he was given a wide berth by all around him as he lounged insouciantly against his flying vehicle.
"If all my bounties were as pretty as you, I'd never stop chasin'!" he went on, grinning.
"Bounty?" she said coldly.
"Yeah, it ain't nothing personal," the bounty hunter said. "See, my hog –" He patted his conveyance affectionately. "– picked up your power signature, and I sensed a business opportunity. Power you're putting off, whoo-eee! The Main Man ain't turning away from that, not when you're gonna be worth mucho dinero to old crazy up in the palace! Still, lookin' at you now, gettin' a closer scan with my hog, I am left with what you might call a conundrum."
"What is that… Lobo?" she asked, plucking the name from the minds of those around her.
"Well, I'm torn, aren't I?! Normally, I'd just beat you up and take you in, and hell, it'd be fun," he said. "I ain't tussled with an Asgardian in ages, and you, Red, look like you got game! Beating people up is fun, but beating people up who can fight back? That's even more fun! Besides, you and me, I'm sensing a certain free-sown, if you know what I mean."
One downside of being a telepath was that, unfortunately, she did. She could also sense where he was leading this conversation.
"The money, for a competitor of your stature, that would be a juicy prize, but you're looking all the juicier to me," Lobo said. "So, howsabout we have a different kinda tussle? Ain't done that with an Asgardian in a while, either. Especially not with one wound so tight. Then, we call it quits." He smiled a smile full of grease and what was probably supposed to be charm. "You look like you could do with some unwinding, and if there's one thing the Main Man knows, it is how to unwind."
Sunniva considered, for a moment, the satisfaction of turning him to ash. Instead, she looked him slowly up, down, up again, then very pointedly down. The contempt would, she thought, hurt more.
"Unwind with your hand, Lobo," she said. "I imagine that it is the only thing that will be remotely impressed by the prospect of any kind of 'tussle' with you."
She turned, and as she did, flicked her hand. All the black leather turned into pink silks. Rather revealing pink silks. As for the chains, they remained chains, but of daisies, rather than steel.
"Hey!" the bounty hunter snarled, incensed, leaping forward and snatching at her shoulder. "No man disrespects the Main Man!"
Sunniva's eyes narrowed, half-turning as the flying motorbike swept across the ground into her grasp. Its rear crumpled under her grip as its owner was sent into a flying somersault. She wound up.
"I am no man."
OoOoO
Harry cocked his head and said slowly, "Hal?"
"Yeah?"
"This Lobo... about seven feet tall, human-ish, hairy, chalk white, black dreadlocks, reddish eyes?"
"Could be him," Hal said, glancing around warily.
"Terrible moustache, worse attitude?"
"Definitely him," Hal said grimly. "Ring, scan for Czarnian – "
"Just been smacked in the face with his own bike?"
Hal stared at him. "What makes you –"
Harry pointed. Hal created a set of binoculars, designed for long distance viewing. He was just in time to catch a glimpse of a visibly cursing Lobo zooming into the upper atmosphere like a rising bullet.
"That's Lobo all right," he said mildly. "Though I've got to say, the lingerie is new." He eyed Harry. "Tell me, how did you know something that awful specific?"
The teenager smiled a feline smile.
"You know that I'm psychic."
"That I do."
"Well, I should have mentioned – I didn't come here alone."
"Oh?"
"Yeah. He ran into my aunt. She didn't take to him."
Hal stared at him, then at the distant burning trail of re-entry that Lobo was leaving behind him as he descended, inevitably to land on some poor soul some two thousand miles distant.
"I like her already," he said, and followed the descent for another, long moment, as if savouring it, then smiled a crooked smile. "Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy."
"As far as I can tell, that's more or less what she thought," Harry observed. "So, where are we going?"
"You're here on purpose," Hal said after a moment. "Aren't you?"
"With my aunt, yes."
"Then you have questions, and as it happens, so do I," Hal said. "Plus, I could eat. You?"
Harry tried to remember his last meal. Phoenix or not, it seemed quite a long time ago, probably because it was quite a long time ago.
"Sounds good to me," he said. "Though I do need to meet up with my aunt."
"If you're connected, she can probably find you, and even if she can't straight off, I don't think there's much on Sakaar that's gonna faze a woman who hit Lobo for a home-run," Hal said. "So we're going to make a stop, if that's all right with you."
Harry nodded.
"Fantastic."
OoOoO
"Maupin's," Hal said, as they drew up outside a large club, adorned with geometric bronze designs on a deep blue background. "It's a good place to place to stop for a drink and grab something to eat. It's a better place to stop for information. Plus, nobody starts trouble in here lightly."
"Tough bouncers?" Harry asked, eyebrow raised. Of all the places they were going to stop, this was not the sort he'd expected.
"Something like that, I guess," Hal said. "I've never actually seen anything go down there, though I do know I wouldn't want to pick a fight with the barman. He looks human, but I scanned him once and… yeah, I'm not picking that fight."
Harry raised the other eyebrow. That was interesting.
"Who is he? Or, perhaps, what is he?"
"No idea," Hal replied. "Whatever he is, he can block the ring's scans, or at least the fine detail. Coming at it sideways, with some advice from a few geniuses I know, I managed to get enough of a reading on his power signature to know that first, he's cloaking pretty much all of it, and second, he's just about the most powerful thing on Sakaar aside from the thing that rules it."
He looked at Harry.
"Or that's what I thought. Then, I ran into you, wonder boy. Asgardians, superhumans, post-humans, I've run into them all on this multi-system junk pile of weirdness, them and much, much more. What I haven't run into is anyone or anything giving off a power signature like yours."
"I'd be very surprised if you had," Harry muttered.
Hal shot a look that mingled curiosity and suspicion, but when Harry didn't elaborate, he shrugged. "Truthfully, that's part of why I'm here," he said. "I know who you are, but I'm not sure what you are. Before I take this further, I want to know that, and why you're here. The lady who runs this place is the only person on Sakaar who's likely to have the answers."
"You're being remarkably upfront about this," Harry remarked.
Hal snorted.
"Kid, I've been scanning you seen before we talked. You could turn me to ash with the blink of an eye, and you're psionic enough to blow the Kiatna scale," he said. "I've handled my share of psychic warfare and I've got some decent defences, including being one of the most ornery bastards this side of the universe. I think we both know that I can handle myself. I think we also both know that the only thing keeping you out of my head is good manners. Which, by the way, I appreciate."
He shrugged.
"Also, I figure that you've got things you want to know too, and I'd much rather you found them out and started chasing up what you want to find where I can see you. If you go about this wrong, then everything goes sideways, and the Grandmaster decides to have a hissy fit. Millions of people will suffer in ways you can't even imagine. I can't stop you, I don't even have a hope. But maybe I can help you do whatever you need to do right."
"Friends close, enemies closer, that sort of thing?" Harry asked.
Hal shrugged again. "Something like that," he said. "If it helps, I don't see you as an enemy. I see you as someone else in my sector, someone else who's my responsibility, someone who could do with some help. You don't seem like a bad kid."
"But…"
"… you do seem like someone who could be incredibly dangerous, even if they're trying not to be. And if you piss off the Grandmaster, even just annoy him a little… then there will be consequences. Not just for you, but for everyone in my sector, maybe all of Sakaar. Now, I can't stop that. I sure as hell can't stop you. But even an instant of warning will save lives and that instant is one I'm only going to get if I keep an eye on you."
Harry nodded soberly. "That's fair," he said. "I know a thing or two about the law of unintended consequences and the whims of warped gods. That's part of why I'm keeping a low profile. Relatively speaking."
He looked up at the club's exterior thoughtfully.
"It's very… Earth," he said. "Retro."
"It's very 20s, yeah," Hal said, leading the way in, flashing his ring at the doorman. "I'm not sure if Lady Maupin's a fan of the period, if she's from there originally, or, hell, if she visited there at some point."
"But you are sure she's human," Harry guessed.
"Human as they get," Hal said. "Well, human as you can stay in a place ruled by a mad god where nobody ages unless they catch a bad warp."
He glanced at Harry, as he led them through a plush interior with red velvet and gold corded hangings, with scanners like films of soap bubbles artfully worked into the design.
"Don't ever underestimate her, though – Lady Maupin knows everything that's going on. And I mean everything. Never figured out how, but she does, and as a result, everybody who's anybody on Sakaar thinks twice and twice again before crossing her, but for our crazed lord and saviour himself. Him, I doubt he even notices anything about her, other than that she's one hell of a singer. And she is most certainly that."
He pushed open the curtain, revealing a room half the size of a football pitch ringed by a balconied second floor and two swirling wood and metal stair cases that seemed to almost flow up to the upper levels. It was filled with soft lights against warm bronze-gold surfaces, reflecting off wood, glass, and marble, leaving shallow shadows for customers to sit comfortably in, and much of the light was reserved for the bronze, glass, and polished wood of the bar.
Behind it stood the barman that Harry assumed Hal had been talking about – there was a definite muted buzz of power around him, and that aside, he was taller than Harry's father, and was built like a barrel, with a bit of a belly and muscles that visibly bulged whenever he moved. He had intelligent dark eyes and craggy features, ones that would probably have been considered handsome in a rugged sort of way as a younger man, and now mostly made him seem somewhat… enduring. It was a face that had seen a lot in its time and had been fazed by very little of it. Despite the cropped grey hair and beard (and the finely tailored waistcoat, shirt, and trousers for that matter), both his build and demeanour, he looked like he could comfortably bounce most unruly customers off the walls and out the door without breaking a sweat.
Really, Harry thought, as familiar music washed over him, he absolutely could have been in some kind of old fashioned club on Earth. If, you know, it wasn't for the clientele, a bare majority of whom looked human, let alone were. Then again, the screens inbuilt into the tables, holographic menus and what looked like a teleportation based delivery service (probably for the best – the barman looked like someone who did things very much at his own speed and without much interest in conversation) were also clues.
Finally, at the end of this second long scan of the club's floor, his gaze settled on that which most of the patrons were paying attention to: the singer, whose smooth contralto had them all thoroughly enraptured. Though, Harry had to admit, that probably wasn't the only reason.
She was tall, slim, and alabaster pale, with bobbed black hair, pale blue eyes, and just a hint of mischief in the curve of lips that looked used to smiling. She looked somehow ageless, a sense of constancy that mirrored that of the bartender, yet without any sense of anything supernatural about her. A mystery tied up in an enigma, all wrapped up in a very flattering dark red dress. It was slit well up the thigh, which Harry noticed for entirely professional reasons. Well. Mostly professional ones. Stuffing his libido into the back of his head and telling it to behave, his more practical eye noticed that the legs might be smooth and the arms might seem slender, but there was muscle in both, the trained muscle of an athlete. A dancer, perhaps? He doubted it was anything so ordinary as that.
Her demeanour also bore noting; there was an absolute confidence in her, not arrogance, but easy certainty that this was her place and her domain. It was where she made the rules. Sakaar might be ruled by a mad god, but within these four walls, she held all the power. In ways, he rather suspected, that had only a tangential relationship to how well she wore a red dress.
And there was a niggling sense of familiarity. Not that he had met this woman, no. But she did remind him of someone. A few, actually. A hint of Betsy, a touch of Gambit – he stopped, as he realised he had been spotted. Despite instinctively sliding into the shadows of the crowd, he had been effortlessly picked out and scanned with little more than a glance.
Her lips spread into a small smile as the song shifted gear, and she winked at him, before her gaze deliberately drifted away. Another man, young or old, might have taken it as an expression of interest, an enticement, a hint of a suggestion of a promise of… something. Spoken for though he might be, a normal person in Harry's position would have considered it flattering.
All things told, he wasn't sure what it said about him that he immediately dismissed that possibility. Instead, he recognised that while it was artfully disguised as such, it was nothing of the kind. Rather, it was a playful acknowledgement of both him and what he'd been doing, a welcome, and a hint of challenge, from someone who'd been playing this game a lot longer than he had. A light shot across the bows to establish credentials. After all, they both knew that she hadn't needed to let him see that she had seen him.
"Enjoy the show, kiddo," it said. "And remember: this is the easy part."
Yes. A hint of Betsy's glamour, a touch of Gambit's charm… and more than a little bit of Natasha's everything else.
Harry dubiously eyed the drink that Hal had bought him (non-alcoholic it might be, but it was still a faintly alarming shade of green), then Lady Maupin up on the stage, and took a fortifying gulp. It tingled all the way down his throat. Much as a sense of foreboding tingled its way down his spine.
This was going to be interesting.
Well, now things are starting to unfold, now aren't they? Cameos in cameos, layers in layers, and mysteries wrapped up in enigmas. Some of this relates to stuff that I set up a decade ago, and some that probably won't come to fruition years from now. May the guessing games begin! Catch you all on the flip side – and, perhaps, on the Discord. I could do with a whole new venue to be infuriatingly vague in…