Sisters – Ch33 – The coming of Captain Marvel… again!

Monica Rambeau of the New Orleans city police had a big secret. She had had it since she was a small child, and had never revealed it to anyone, except for her mother, her sister, and a few of her superiors in the force. She had a strange and fearsome power: to turn into an "energy form" which could, at will, become intangible or as bright as the sun, unleash blasts of various kinds of energy, and fly.

She had kept her powers secret for two terrifying reasons. The first was that she had found out early on that her energy form could be disrupted and destroyed. One day, when she was about twelve and was familiarizing herself with her powers, she went exploring the bayou east of the river, and she noticed some men setting up some strange gear on the shore of a swamp lagoon. She noticed that the place they had chosen could not be observed from the railroad line that ran nearby, nor from the closest houses. They wore yellow body suits that concealed their faces, and the whole set-up suggested secrecy and bad intent. Little Monica approached them – as she thought – carefully, on tiptoe, trying to get close enough to hear them speak. Then suddenly she was seized from behind and lifted from the ground. One of AIM's watchmen had found her.

Monica never knew that she was, in that moment, closer to death than she had ever been. AIM's policy about anyone who stumbled on their secret experiments was "Kill'em, quick." The only reason why the guard had not shot her on the spot was that he did not want to startle his colleagues with unexpected gunshots, but to see the prisoner and understand what was going on. But Monica knew enough to be scared. She exploded into her energy form and burst out of the guard's hold, tearing apart his uniform and scorching both his arms. She struck a tree, bounced against the ground, and then smashed into a pair of bewildered AIM me. She ripped right through and smacked into a large, active machine.

There was a ghastly, anguished child's shriek, and a blinding flash of light. Most of AIM's probes shorted out, but the few that kept working recorded a violent, extreme spike across the electromagnetic spectrum, lasting only a few fractions of a second, and fading swiftly into nothing. And miles above the Earth, in the tropopause, at the edge of the stratosphere, Monica regained control; only to find that not only she was freezing, but also that she was haunted by the devouring hunger that always followed an excessive use of her powers. In fact, she could literally say that she had never been so hungry. And she realized in horror that two fingers of her right hand had disappeared, leaving only bloody stumps behind.

The terrified child followed the screaming instinct within her, that howled at her to eat, eat immediately, eat to save her life. She streaked back down to earth, even though fast flight ate even more into her – smashed into what turned out to be the back quarters of a local Macdonald's, and flew away with the whole compressed leftovers of a morning's work. Those included dozens of burgers, lukewarm and squashed, but perfectly edible. Monica devoured everything in sight with relief, and felt her fingers slowly grow back.

That was how it was for many years, before Graviton and the battle of Manhattan. As ordinary mankind went heedlessly about its business, a small number of clandestine organizations and shadowy individuals, most of them connected with superpowers one way or another, studied, plotted, recruited, fought, and grew. Of these, AIM was probably the weakest, visible enough to be pursued by several law enforcement agencies. A few months after Monica's scary adventure, the FBI had shut down their New Orleans branch – as events suggested, they had grown entirely too relaxed about their security, and other eyes beside Monica's had seen them in the bayous. In the disorder that followed, the few hours of study they had been able to make of Monica's incident had been entirely lost, and, more important still, so had all the studies and prototypes for a matter-energy machine, something no other AIM branch had been even dreaming of.

But Monica knew nothing of that. All that she had taken from her awful adventure (which, she had been surprised to find, had taken less than an hour from her first glimpse of the men in yellow overalls to the last cold, squashy quarter-pounder-cheese; her mother had never suspected a thing) was the certainty that somewhere there was a machine that could eat her energy form alive. And men who knew how to use it. From then on, she was much more careful about when and how she used it.

Monica's other reason to keep her powers a secret took shape a few years later, from many experiences that went with being part of a poor community in a famously corrupt city. One event, in particular, stayed in her memory for a long time, giving her both an incentive to keep her powers hidden, and an incentive to join law enforcement when she grew up. One day, a few weeks after her sixteenth birthday, she had been sitting around talking about her classes and her homework with her parents and sister – a family habit – when the doorbell rang as if a drowning person were clinging to it. Her father went to open the door, and their neighbour Minnie-Jean practically fell in his arms, sobbing.

Minne-Jean was a large, indeed fat, single mother of two, unconquerably merry and bright, a good neighbour, hard-working – she often held down two jobs at once – and devoted to her two daughters. They were fourteen and thirteen, and Monica, from the height of her sixteen birthdays, tended to look down on them as "kids". But they were lovely people, good guys, and to see Minnie-Jean so upset was not only worrying, but also terribly sad.

After a while, the story came sobbing out. The previous Christmas, Minnie-Jean had found herself in need of some money, and had been misguided enough to borrow it from "Big Jonny" Levesque, a former championship boxer who was the local loan shark. Big Jonny had been as nice as pie until she had repaid both capital and interest; then he announced that her accounts did not match his, and that he would let her know when she had paid enough. She had tried to resist, and so – that very day – he had lowered the boom. He had met her daughters as they were leaving school, and he had walked them home. He had been quite charming to them, even bought them ice cream; but the sight of him, huge and muscular, looming over her two little ones as she opened the door, had conveyed everything he intended it to convey. He could do what he wanted, when he wanted. There was no escape.

As she and her family tried the best they could to comfort poor Minnie-Jean, Monica was thinking furiously. Her first impulse had been to fly over to Big Jonny's and beat the… materials… out of him, and end the beating with an order to get out of town – or else. No matter what boxing muscle power he had, surely he could not deal with her energy form, which would also keep her identity from him. Then she thought better. The monster had proved that he could think. If he was assaulted so soon after his dealings with Minnie-Jean and her daughters, it would be easy to connect them with the assault; and once he had excluded Minnie-jean and the kids from the roster of suspects, he would soon come to consider her family. She had never realized quite so clearly before the importance of a secret identity.

She took to watching Big Jonny carefully, familiarizing herself with his routines and contacts. Months passed – she could not dedicate all her time to this, she had school and time with her family; but she stuck to it till she knew when she could best strike. And then, six or so months after Minnie-Jean had been intimidated, she waited for him in his own home, and finally unleashed all her rage and loathing. The beating lasted twenty minutes. She certainly was not proud of it afterwards; but the order to leave town was carried out to the letter.

She found that this adventure had somehow clarified her own view of herself and her future. She would keep her superpowers a secret. She would join the city police and work to keep the peace; and she would leave herself the option of using her powers as and when they might be useful. As for boyfriends, well… she'd burn that bridge when she came to it, she said to herself. She did not want to be stuck with an unexpected baby to get in the way of her career. No matter what the rules, babies cost money and time.

Three years later these resolutions began to turn into reality. Resolute and hard-working, Monica Rambeau made a good impression from the start. And every now and then, her path as a policewoman crossed that of the mysterious, luminous figure who was sometimes seen in the streets of her city, beating up gangsters or helping victims of accident, and who had led some journalists to wonder whether the city of jazz now had its own version of Spider-Man.

What was certain was that the atmosphere around the city began to get lighter. It wasn't paradise or anywhere near it, of course. But here and there, one or two gangsters would get arrested together with their whole staffs, leaving their gangs in disarray. Or an old, corrupt businessman would decide to retire to a peaceful and well-insured private life abroad, while a couple of less wise colleagues suddenly found themselves in court, besieged with lawsuits – fraud, false accounting, health and safety violations, violation of workers' rights, and that holy terror of Americans, the IRS. A famously corrupt politician retired to a modest private life in French Martinique, while another suddenly discovered he had a conscience, and poured out to astonished prosecutors the secrets of thirty profitable years in the politics business. And below the pay grade and visibility of people like them, dozens of thugs and crooks were being successfully processed through the courts, or discovered the advantages of an honest life.

As the years passed, stories about the city's mysterious superhero solidified around two ideas: "The Captain," a police captain who had resolved to use his powers in secret; and "Merveille," an angry Cajun woman. In the Rameau household, of course, these stories caused great hilarity. A few months after driving Big Jonny from the neighbourhood, Monica had revealed her secret to her increasingly suspicious parents. From then on, of course, guarding it had become much easier, and family chats more useful – and amusing.

Their amusement reached new height when a small, shoddy-looking comics pamphlet began to appear in a few local newsstand, called "Marvel and the Captain," and clearly modelled on the ancient "Captain America" comic books that had been a popular fad during the second world war. The comic brought together all the strands of confused information, rumour and unconscious fantasy that had been unleashed by Monica's few, prudent public manifestations. It was quite a little hit in the city and neighbouring counties, partly thanks to a certain air of confident and precise knowledge. Neighbourhoods and landmarks were clearly identified, people and institutions – though largely invented or modified to avoid libel – were credible, and the stories frequently touched real events. The writer later turned out to be a frustrated local journalist who had decided to weave his own ideas around the fragments of uncomfirmable ideas.

The fact was that if police forces want to, they can conceal an awful lot. From the moment Monica became a policewoman, her opportunities to cover up for her secret identity increased. When she judged that her sergeant was clean, she confided in him, and they grew. When they agreed that their captain was OK, they took him into their confidence, and opportunities multiplied. All the while, first alone, then in their confidence, Monica had been carrying out a slow, patient sort of covert clean-up of their precinct, and then of neighbouring ones, finding ways to discourage or retire the more dishonest cops.

Monica deliberately remained at the bottom of the ranks, a beat cop like so many others, because, in her view, it gave her more freedom – and less visibility. Even local street reporters paid no attention to the lowly patrolwoman when there was a sergeant or a lieutenant available to interview about the latest outrage or arrest.

Nonetheless, her status troubled her and her colleagues. Operating in secret and effectively outside the law did not sit well with people who regarded themselves not only as honest cops, but as being on something of a crusade. No matter what their results, was it not the case that they were intimidating villains and hiding from any potential responsibility behind a mask? Monica and her circle discussed and debated the issue till they were on the point of starting half a dozen quarrels.

They managed to avoid that. Their ultimate agreement was that they would make Monica's secret partially – only partially – public. From now on, the public would know that New Orleans did indeed have its own superheroine, who collaborated with the city police. And just as they were agreeing to this, the Manhattan disaster happened, and completely changed the profile of superheroes. Indeed, Monica, Sergeant Steve Kovacs, and Captain Tony Lefebvre were together, in Captain Lefebvre's little house, talking about the issue, when a colleague rang up the Sergeant and told him to switch on the news.

It was a difficult day. They had to go to work in the afternoon shift, while the catastrophe was still taking place. It was not hard to keep track of events, even while they were working, since everyone was talking about it. Even the villains had no other subject. Monica and Sergeant Kovacs had to break up a fight between local tough guys, some of whom were angry because they had relatives or friends in the Big Apple, while others thought this could only be bad for The Man and no problem of theirs.

They came together again at the end of their shift; not, this time, at Lefebvre's address, but at Monica's, to discuss matters with her parents and sister. It was the Captain who, at one point in the discussion, pretty much summed things up:

"Until now, superheroes were pretty much a joke. People thought of them as weird guys in harlequin masks, or else crooks in fancy dress, enforcers and thieves. A few steps below Mexican luchadores. Now, suddenly, you've become a national… probably international… issue. The first thing people will do will be to chase you, look for you, everywhere – journalists because a story about you would be gold dust just about now, and cops because they will want to show that they are doing something about the issue. We must control the release of information about you, or else they will hunt you down like the Daily Bugle with Spider-Man, only worse."

Of course the Captain did not know much about the Daily Bugle and their local masked hero. He only repeated what everyone thought they knew. But the warning itself was justified, and Monica and her family and friends agreed that she now really had to go public, and to involve SHIELD as the law enforcement agency for superheroes. So, on the very next day, a telephone call was made.

"Hello? Am I speaking with SHIELD New Orleans?"

"SHIELD speaking. Do you want to report a superhero incident?"

"In a sense, I guess. My name is Monica Rambeau, and I am about to go public as a super-heroine, and I thought… that is, my support group and I thought… that we had better get in touch and consult with you before I do. You are the appropriate authority, I guess."

"I see. Let me pass you to our regional director."

A few seconds later, a different voice spoke.

"Hello? Miss Rambeau?"

"Yes."

"I am Ronnie Montano, regional director of SHIELD for the south central USA. I understand that you are about to go public as a superheroine?"

"I am, sir."

"And… would you have anything to do with the rumours that have been going around the city for the last few years?"

"I would."

"Great. Tell me more about yourself. Do you have powers? What's your code name?"

"Well, my powers – they're a bit hard to explain. It would be easier if I could show you. As for the name, I was thinking of Captain Marvel."

"Captain WHAT?"

"Is there a problem?"

"There might be… can you hold off going public until my boss and I have met with you and discussed… things?"

…..

There were a few more phone calls; between Montano and Nick Fury; between Fury and Montano again; between Montano and Monica. At some point during all this palaver, Montano and Fury became aware that Monica was a serving policewoman, and that her immediate superiors knew about her. That made it easier to arrange a meeting, pretending that it had to do with some matters of superhero law enforcement. Otherwise there was a risk that Nick Fury's sudden flight to New Orleans would have been noticed. SHIELD were aware that, after the Graviton affair, journalists were watching them like hawks.

Fury took Alison Brand with him, and Mar-Vell. After all, as head of SWORD, The meeting took place in SHIELD's New Orleans office, in a small and unpretentious meeting room, with space for maybe a dozen people. But it was robustly built and highly secure, woven through with microphones, miniature cameras, and alarm devices, and the seats were comfortable and well designed.

Monica, and Captain Lefebvre were not surprised to find that the SHIELD delegation included a tall man in a superhero uniform they had never seen before. Captain Lefebvre took a risk in opening the conversation.

"I take it that your codename is 'Captain Marvel'?" said he, even before the introductions had been made.

"I like the swiftness of your deductions," said Brand with something approaching a smile on her normally stony face.

"Hey, I'm supposed to be a detective," answered the captain. "See, observe, record, deduce, conclude. went into a tizzy the moment he heard that our superheroine friend here wanted to call herself 'Captain Marvel', and now you come along, not only the required amount of folks in uniform, but also a superhero we never heard of before. Conclusion…"

"Actually," said the tall man, "I am a military man as well. Captain Philip Lawton, USAF, at your service," he went on, as his uniform changed into an Air Force parade one before the surprised eyes of the New Orleaners. "And to conclude the introductions, lady and gentlemen, this is Colonel Abigail Brand, director of SWORD, Colonel Nicholas Fury, director of SHIELD, his assistant Agent Valentina de Fontaine, and Agent Ronald Reagan Montano."

The New Orleaners looked at each other. Two national agency heads, plus a superhero? If it ever came to a disagreement, they would be seriously outgunned.

"Pleased to meet you. I am Captain James Anthony Lefebvre. These are Sergeant Szent-Istvan Kovacs, known as Steve, and Patrolwoman Monica Rambeau, our 'so far nameless' superheroine. And I hope you don't take it ill, but I am rather concerned that itwo/i federal agency bosses come down all the way from DC just to see us."

"Yeah… sure. Captain, we're not here to make trouble," said Nick Fury, and Alison Brand nodded. "Normally, you'd just have met Agent Montano. At most, you might have been invited for a visit to our office on the Potomac. But these are not normal times. Someone seems to have declared war on us, and just by chance, Patrolwoman Rambeau's choice of code-name may interfere with some real sensitive business."

"Before we start on our business," Brand broke in, "we have to be sure that Patrolwoman Rambeau is willing to work with us."

Monica was a bit startled. She had not thought about collaboration. Although, after all, SHIELD was just another law enforcement agency. They were Feds. It was like when FBI agents hit town. Although she tended to be out of the loop in those cases, because Feds would talk to the Captain, or even to the Sarge, but not to her.

She looked at the Captain and the Sergeant. Was there anything that unsettled them? Did they want her to slow the pace down? But neither of them seemed either upset or dubious.

"Well, I would like to know what you mean by 'work with you.' I'm just a beat cop, and I would like to go on working in New Orleans. I guess my loyalty is to my city."

"We understand that. We have no objection to you living and working here, but if there is a national-level or world-level threat, could we call on you?"

"I don't know… I mean, if it's that bad, I guess I would want to help. I just don't know what I could do."

"And would you work with other superheroes? That's an important point."

"Can't see why not. I'm a cop. I'm used to working in groups. And to take orders, if it comes to that."

"Last question, patrolwoman," said Brand. "Can you keep a secret? A top state secret?"

Monica was offended. Confidentiality was the first thing that a law enforcement professional had to understand. She would never have lasted five or more years if she hadn't been able to keep a secret. But when she answered, her voice was neutral.

"You won't know that by my saying yes. Or no, for that matter."

The SHIELD party looked at each other; then, with visible distaste, Nick Fury embarked on an account of the Kree affair. The three cops were visibly bewildered.

…..

"...in the end, we've got two problems. One, first, if the Kree ever think that you have anything to do with their own Captain Marvel, you might draw, well, attention for which you aren't prepared."

"I can take care of myself," said Monica. She stood up and, with a bright flash of light, turned herself into her energy form. A couple of the SHIELD people smiled. They were familiar with this kind of thing.

"We don't doubt that," answered Fury, "I've been reading our New Orleans reports on my way here. But you'd be dealing with tech only our friend here knows or understands, and with enemies who look exactly like us, but with ways of thinking we may never have met. And, point two: as things are , we are setting up security protocols and other stuff 'round our friend here. Most of which I can't discuss with you or anyone. If you took that name, I'd have to set up something like that around you, very expensive, probably useless, and doubling the risk."

"All right, all right. So what shall I call myself? The Generic New Orleans Superheroine?"

"Sorry, Miss Rambeau… patrolwoman Rambeau. We didn't mean to annoy you." This was Montano. "Can you think of any other name you might like?"

"Yeah… Well, I don't know. I mean, I see your point, and I even guess you may be right. It's just that it's hard to switch like that, from one moment to the next. As long as I thought of any name at all, it was always something or other Marvel. Or Merveille."

"Because of the comic?"

"I think I thought of it first. It was going around. I think that if you look in old newspapers you might find it mentioned. Anyway, I'm pretty sure I first got the idea from Captain America."

"Really?" said Lefebvre with a grin, "so you don't have any designs on my rank?" But the SHIELD people's attention sharpened, and they looked at each other.

"Cap'n, when I first thought of being a superheroine with a costume and codename, I had no idea you existed."

"Really?"

"I even got myself a Captain America suit for a costume party, on Mardi Gras."

"Oh!" said her mother, who had been listening without intervening until now. "Was that what it was about?"

"I wanted to see how it felt, Mom. I'm surprised you haven't thought of it since."

"I guess I forgot about that. Lots of things have happened."

"Well, I tried. And I pretty much hated it."

"Why?" Valentina broke in, after a glimpse from Nick Fury. "You would get immediate recognition. And since you have real powers, you wouldn't look like a wannabe." For there were stories about people who had tried to wear the star-spangled uniform after the original Captain had gone missing presumed dead. Most of them had not ended well.

"Well, I remember looking at myself in the mirror and feeling like a fool. That was before I even went to the party. And I'm not sure the colours go with my skin. And then, at the party, the kids gave me a hard time.

"Above all, I thought about it later, and I suddenly realized that the idea scared me to death. I mean, I can be a heroine, I guess. I can use my powers. I can show myself in a mask and mean something to people."

"Yes you can. That's the real value of superheroes; they give ordinary people courage. They are something to look up to."

"And I could. It's scary, but I could. But who on Earth could possibly stand for three hundred million people? For three centuries of history? Let alone that that history includes slavery, lynch law, and Jim Crow? Steve Rogers was white. And I guess the country was at war then, and he could just take on himself that role because everyone pretty much agreed with it and the country was pretty much of one mind. But now? I look at the flag… I think of the responsibility… and my knees just shake. What if I did something that people thought helped racists? Remember who I am, what I am… Understand, I iwant/i to represent all those things. 'Truth, justice, and the American way,' so long as the American way is the way of Martin Luther King and Harriet Tubman and like that. But how do I go about it? And I guess that as a heroine, just like a policewoman, I have to be there for everyone, and everyone has to respect what I represent. And I think that if Captain America came back as a black woman with a N'Awlins accent, half the country would get heartburn."

"Not half, surely…."

"Plenty of people, , plenty of people. I think my daughter's right. Lotsa people aren't ready." This was Monica's mother.

"Well," said Fury, "let's see. Can't you something, I don't know, something New Orleans-related?"

"No...no. I don't know. I've got this instinctive no reaction. It's like… Captain America is too big, but Captain New Orleans would be way too small."

"Captain Wonder, then?"

"Oh, come on, no!"

"Besides," Sergeant Kovacs broke in, "the guys who make 'Marvel and the Captain' tried it a couple of years ago, and they were nearly sued out of existence. It seems that someone still owns the copyright to the old Wonder Woman comics, and that they aren't afraid to defend it."

"Wonder Woman?"

"You've got to have been a teenage boy at the time, like me, to understand, Val," answered Fury. His face held, of all things, a slightly shame-faced grin. "It was one of those superhero comics they made up in the wake of Captain America. The heroine didn't wear much… It got pretty porny towards the end. It was one of the great secrets of sixties teenage boys, along with naturist mags and art photo publications."

"Oh, all right, then. But I'd still like to have something Marvel."

"Madame Marvel?"

"That's too… too middle-aged."

"Hmm… Miss… Miss Marvel. Why not?"

"Yeah," said the Captain, "that sounds right. After all, patrolwoman, you are still a young lady."

"Miss Marvel it is, then," said Monica Rambeau.

…..

It was only a few minutes later, when the discussion had wandered over to minor matters, that both Director Fury's phone and Valentina's rang, virtually at the same time. They answered, listened, and looked at each other. Everyone else noticed. Eventually, the Countess walked over to a TV screen and turned it on. She sought out a particular news channel.

"...the flying young woman said that we should call her 'Captain Marvel,' and disappeared. According to one of the victims, she had smashed through a solid concrete wall to reach them before it was too late. We now hand you over to…"

"Oh, come on!" said Monica Rambeau, "this is ridiculous..."