Spider-Bat: New Way Home

Chapter 10: You're the Devil in Disguise

It was devastating… The rescue mission for the Discovery 13 was now on hold due to the terrible accident that occurred at the New Mexico military base. Gamma-radiation had leaked out of the facility, and everyone on the base had to be quarantined. The worst of it was the fact that the Gamma-blasters were ruined, and the Sterns brothers were nowhere to be found. The only thing they did find was Samuel's biohazard suit still lodged into the gear-shaft, and there was absolutely no trace of him or his brother, Phillip.

The accident was also a terrible let down for the military. General Ross couldn't even look at Bruce Banner the same way anymore after he allowed such a disappointment to occur. He blamed Bruce for the entire failure, saying Bruce was responsible for the hiring of the Sterns brothers in the first place, and that he didn't supervise them properly.

Bruce was quite shaken up by the whole ordeal as well, mostly because he knew Betty Ross was visiting the military base the same day of the radiation leak, and he was afraid to find out that something bad might have happened to her. Luckily he had taken prior steps to inoculate everyone who worked at the base, but that was for a low dose of contact, and he wasn't sure to what extent the base was contaminated. He immediately flew back to New Mexico so that he could determine the scope of the damage.

Victor, Reed, Ben, and Sue had to sit patiently while waiting for Bruce to come back with a status report. They prayed that the Gamma-blasters could somehow be repaired because it was the only way for them to open a worm-hole big enough to rescue the SSD13. Reed's spacecraft had the capability of reaching the shuttle on its own power, but it would still take nearly five years to make it all the way out by planet Neptune, and the members of the Discovery 13 would have been doomed by that time.

And of course… As soon as J. Jonah Jameson found out about the disaster at the military base, despite the government making him swear to secrecy, he completely blabbed about the entire failure of the Discovery 13 reaching Mars. He managed to print two different headlines at the Daily Bugle, "National Hero Lost In Space," and "Scientists To Blame For Foul Up," explaining what had gone wrong. But before he could print anything else, the government came in and shut him down. However, by then it was already too late, and the word had already spread far and wide. Even Perry White, Editor at the Daily Planet, took interest in the story, doing interviews of his own. At that point, Reed Richards and his crew were being hounded by every news outlet in the country, making them famous overnight.

Reed would always keep a calm, cool, and collected demeanor when speaking in front of the cameras, assuring the listeners that everything was going to be okay, and that they were just working out all the kinks.

Ben wasn't as polite, never wanting to give the reporters a statement, and if he ever did give them anything at all, it was mostly just his middle finger.

Johnny loved the publicity, though most of the reporters never took him too seriously since he had only just turned thirteen years old. They couldn't even quote him in the papers because he was so young. That didn't stop Johnny from trying to get their attention, as he would constantly interrupt interviews being given to Reed.

Sue always tried to stay quiet when the cameras were out. She seemed to find a way to just mosey right on by them as if she were invisible. The press would mostly blurt out questions pertaining to her and Reed's love-life anyway.

A couple days later…Bruce was finally able to get back to Reed's team with a report. He had several things to tell them.

"First, the Gamma-blasters were damaged, but I believe they are salvageable. However, the radiation is no good and all the timing sequences have been compromised." Bruce informed them.

Johnny quickly interjected. "Cool, let's just get some more radiation, and we can get back on track."

"It's not that simple, Johnny." Bruce retorted. "Gamma-radiation isn't something we can simply pick up at the local Walgreens. We have to produce it. And that takes months of harnessing small neutron explosions."

"What if we could make the explosions…bigger?" Reed questioned. "Then we could obtain the radiation that much quicker."

"Impossible." Bruce replied. "It's too dangerous. Besides… We don't have a way to harness a bigger explosion. We are already using the latest… and safest… technology available."

"I know a way we can harness the explosion!" A man's confident voice spoke up from behind the crew.

When everyone turned to see who it was-

"Oh no. Not this guy." Bruce muttered.

"Yes. This guy." The man stepped in the room to shake everyone's hands. "The name is Stark… Tony Stark."

"What can you use to harness the explosion," Reed asked.

"Well… For starters-"

"-We don't need this guy's help!" Bruce interrupted. "He makes weapons of mass destruction for the military. He's no scientist!"

"That is just some of the things I do." Tony fired back. "I'm pretty sure you guys could use my help. That is- unless you are just going to let the crew members of the Discovery 13 die."

"Let's hear him out." Reed urged, wanting to know what Tony was talking about.

"I have in my possession, what I'd like to call… The Arc Conductor. It could withstand the Gamma-blast, and absorb the radiation."

"It's still too dangerous." Bruce continued. "The size of the blast alone could create environmental issues."

"There's plenty of space available in New Mexico. We could do it near the military base you have already contaminated." Tony smirked, needling at Bruce's foul up.

Bruce gave Tony a menacing glare. "Are you trying to make me angry, Tony?"

"He may be right." Sue chimed in, showing some calculations on the computer screen. "There is enough space. Plus, we might be able to absorb some of the radiation leak from the base. If Tony's Arc Conductor is everything he says it is, there wouldn't be any environmental fallout."

"We might have other problems on our hands." Bruce piped up.

He then laid out a couple pictures on the table. "Despite the radiation messing up the cameras on the base, they managed to retrieve these photos. One of the photos is showing Emil Blonsky, the Head of Research, approaching the laboratory, just before the accident happened. And the other photo shows a man leaving in a jeep, who appears to have Emil's outfit on, but it doesn't look like Emil's face any longer. It's hard to make out the face because the picture is a little bit fuzzy."

Reed looked at the pictures. "It isn't fuzzy. That's his face," he frowned, recognizing him immediately.

"What are you talking about?" Bruce asked.

"It's a long story." Reed replied.

"Why don't you give us a quick summary." Tony insisted.

"His name is Dmitri Smerdyakov. He migrated here from Russia."

"How do you know him?"

Reed turned towards Ben and then pulled the two stones out of his ears. "These… are how I know him."

"Rocks?"

"Malleable meteorites, to be more precise."

"What?"

"I discovered these meteorites nearly twelve years ago. After studying their properties, I discovered that the meteorites were malleable. You could smash them with a hammer and they would regain their shape. In fact, I could melt this stuff down and stretch it around this entire room like a rubberband, and it would never break."

"Okay? So you found a rubber rock! What does any of this have to do with the guy in the picture?" Bruce asked.

"I'm getting to that." Reed replied. "After I discovered what this stuff could do, I went on a scavenger hunt to find the rest of the samples. I even hired a well-known treasure hunter, by the name of Matthew Hagen, to help me out. He told me that there was an entire pool of this stuff hidden in the jungles of Russia, and that he had seen it with his own eyes before being chased away by an animal of some kind. He said he barely made it back to the chopper alive.

That brings me to Dmitri. It was Dmitri who told Matthew about the pool of radioactive protoplasm in the first place. So… we tracked Dmitri down. He was in the states because he wanted to be a method actor on Broadway. Anyway, he told us he could help us find the pool again as long as I paid him good money. Of course, I agreed to the price. He then made a call to his brother, Sergei Nikolaevich Kravinoff. He called him Kraven the Hunter, and said he could track down anything.

After meeting up with Kraven, he took us deep into the wilderness. At one point I was terrified when a pack of wolves tried surrounding us. But when Kraven showed the pack of wolves his own fangs, the wolves ran off as if they were the ones who were terrified. I had never seen anything like it before in my life. Kraven then started rambling off stories about how he had caught every animal with his bare hands, and how he beat the Wendigo himself. He said he had even beaten the Great Ra's al Ghul and bathed in his Lazarus Pit… Whatever that meant. Apparently he was planning on trying to track an animal living in Northern Canada next… I believe he said it was a wolverine.

Finally, Kraven had led us to the pool. I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw the green glow and the swirling black tar-like drizzles circulating through it. The ground around it was made up of a hardened clay.

I dropped a weighted sensor into the oozing substance so that I could get a reading of how radioactive it was. The sensor must've traveled downward about fifteen feet or so before it suddenly spit it back out at me. It was then I realized it wasn't liquid, but rather a malleable substance, which was so thin, it resembled the sight of liquid.

As I bent down to try and get samples, Kraven stopped me. "Make me enemy," he said.

Make you enemy? I asked, not sure of what he meant by that.

Dmitri then informed me that Kraven wanted me to use the magical pool to create a formidable opponent for Kraven to fight.

I told him I wasn't even sure of what I could do with it at that point, and that I needed to take some samples back to my laboratory so that I could study it further. Kraven didn't look very happy about that. Apparently his brother had promised him something much different… something I wasn't aware of.

Kraven then told me, if I wanted the samples, I would have to let his brother work with me on the discovery. Again, I agreed to the demands, I could only imagine what would've happened if I said no.

However, just as I was leaning back down to try and get a sample, Matthew somehow fell into the pool and was swallowed up instantly. Kraven might have even pushed him, I don't know. Seconds later, the only things the malleable pool spit back out were Matthew's clothes and backpack. I think it somehow absorbed the rest of him. I couldn't do anything at that time, nor could I tell anyone about it. No one would have even believed me if I tried. So, I took my samples and came back to the states.

A few days after returning, I found out that Dimitri had broken into my laboratory, disguising himself to look like me, and stole all my samples. Apparently he had been doing his own studies of the substance himself. The last picture I saw of him looked a lot like that picture of him in the jeep; with the same blank face and all."

"AHEM!" Tony interrupted. "Just for the record… That was not a short summary of how you know this guy."

"So…?" Bruce spoke up. "Do you think he sabotaged the Gamma-blasters on purpose? What would he have to gain by doing such a thing?"

"I don't know." Reed answered, puzzled himself. "Maybe his brother is upset that I never created a proper opponent for him to fight. I honestly couldn't tell you what he had to gain by doing this."

"Why does his face look like that?" Johnny piped up.

"I believe he might have tried dabbling with the radioactive protoplasm, injecting himself with it and somehow turning his face into a shape-shifting, malleable substance. He seems to be able to replicate anyone he wants."

"Hmm… Didn't you say that treasure hunting guy, named Matthew, fell into a whole vat of that stuff? I can only imagine what it might have done to him. Maybe he turned into a plastic man," Johnny quipped.

"You said the radioactive ooze was green colored, with swirls of black tar-like substance circulating through it, correct?" Banner asked.

"That is correct." Reed replied.

"And you said you discovered this about twelve years ago?"

"Correct again."

"That was about the same time the meteor shower happened, the one that brought down bright green meteor fragments, along with a black tar-like substance, later to be discovered as a living alien compound." Banner continued. "Do you think the alien compound and the green rocks landed in that pool of water, creating something completely new to this planet?"

"It's possible, I suppose." Reed replied.

"If Dmitri stole all your samples, how did you still manage to invent your flexible material for protecting the starship? Did you go back to the pool located in Russia?" Banner asked.

"Go back to the pool? No. I couldn't find that place again if I tried." Reed answered back. He then held out his palm, revealing the stones he had retrieved from Ben's ears. "I was able to continue my research thanks to these guys," he continued. "I replicated the substance, creating a synthetic blend of my own."

"Perhaps Dmitry and the Sterns brothers are working together." Tony suggested. "Maybe they figured out a way to use your stretchy stuff and Banner's Gamma stuff for something else."

"I don't know about that. Samuel's biohazard suit was lodged inside one of the Gamma-blasters. I don't know how he could have survived being exposed to that much radiation. If anything, his body might have dissolved into nothingness by the time someone found it."

"Well... Regardless of all this espionage bullshit, don't we still need to blow up some neutrons, so that we can harness the Gamma-rays with my Arc Capacitor, so that we can save the crew members of the Discovery 13?" Tony asked rhetorically.

Everyone looked towards Bruce for his answer. Bruce sat and stared back at them for a few seconds, and then he finally replied, "Sure. Why not? Let's go blow some shit up."