Now.

The business of money waits for no man. Those who dawdle are swept away as surely as kayakers who stop paddling in a heavy current. This is why ulcers and suicide are the most likely rewards of a career in stockbroking. And, to a smaller degree, it's the reason why the lines at your local bank are never anything less than atrocious, and why bankers feel secure enough in their jobs to work four-hour days.

The main Los Angeles branch of Metrobank was right in the middle of that four-hour shift on a Wednesday, when the plague struck.

Harold Carter, a 72 year-old veteran of the Korean War, was the first to succumb. One moment, he was standing impatiently in the line he'd been trapped in for the last twenty minutes, the next he was doubled over, wheezing, clutching at his chest. The moment after that, he was on the cold tile floor, his lungs too full of fluid to pull in any air.

Someone surely would have moved to help him, if twenty other people in the bank's lobby, fully half the people in the room, hadn't picked that moment to also fall over in various stages of suffocation. Tellers, customers, and managers alike were affected.

It didn't take more than a few seconds for someone to think of chemical weapons. And from there, it was only the flash of a synapse to the cry of "Terrorist attack!"

Most of the unaffected people in the lobby bolted for the door, even employees. A few lingered to see what they could do for the dying, but only a few, and those cleared out quickly when it became clear that the affected were either dead or as good as. No use sticking around and adding to the body count.

When all those who could had cleared out, when sirens had begun wailing somewhere nearby, when the strongest of the plague-stricken made one last attempt to pull air into their water-filled lungs and then fell into the unconsciousness preceding death, only then did the ghostly white man sitting in one of the plush chairs in the waiting area stand up, brushing off the knees of his black pants and adjusting the rolled sleeves of his trenchcoat.

"Off to a nice start," he decided. And then, stepping over the splayed body of a pretty, blue-faced account officer, he moved toward the door and the street beyond. Out where the negative emotions of the survivors would provide a nice appetizer to the feast that was soon to come.

Before - Seattle, Washington.

"The Avengers? Aren't they dead?"

The man in the six-and-a-half foot tall suit of gold and scarlet armor shook his head. "You should know better than that."

Carol Danvers, once known as Ms. Marvel, now known as Warbird, leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms over her chest. "What would I know about the Avengers, Tony? If I knew the first thing about them, I wouldn't have gotten myself kicked out."

The man inside the Iron Man suit didn't say anything for a moment. Then, slowly, he nodded.

"Okay," he said. "I see how this is going to be."

He turned to leave. Carol's eyes bulged at his back as she sat up.

"Wait a minute!"

He did, pausing at the sliding glass door leading onto the balcony of Carol's Seattle apartment, but he didn't turn. With his back to her, he said, "I've been asked to put together a new west coast team, Carol. Since I'm of the opinion that the world is better off with the Avengers than without them, and because I know nothing about these people Thor has recruited to fill the East Coast ranks, I'm doing it."

"That doesn't change the fact that..."

"You're right," he said, looking back over his shoulder. "It doesn't change a thing. It doesn't change the fact that we were right for ejecting you from the team months ago. And it sure doesn't change the fact that in the intervening time, you've worked your ass off to get past an addiction we both know is worse than anything Kang or the Zodiac could ever do to us. You've earned your place back on the team, Carol, and it's there for you. But I'm not going to apologize for what we did, and I'm certainly not going to beg you to come back.

"You know where to find me if you change your mind."

He turned back toward the window, but before he could push aside the drapes, there was a flash of light from behind him and the sound of Carol clearing her throat. Iron Man didn't have to look to know that she had changed into her Warbird costume.

"What the hell," Carol said. "Maybe it'll give me some ideas for my next book."

Beneath the helmet, Tony Stark smiled.

Now.

"Twenty-one dead," the detective said, drawing the sheet back from the body she was squatting next to. "And nobody else in the building at the time of the attack has so much as the sniffles."

"So you're sure this was a chemical strike?"

"Not much else it could be, don't you think? Someone released an unidentified airborne agent in this building and it killed an assortment of individuals as close to instantly as these things ever do. Filled up their lungs and sinuses until they drowned in their own fluids."

"How can you be sure it's dissipated?"

"Because none of us have died since we got in here. Whatever the agent is, it kills fast and disperses quickly. Only good thing about this situation, to tell you the truth." She flipped the sheet back over the old man's face. "Sucks for these guys, though."

Iron Man ran an atmosphere check anyway, double-checking the seals on his armor while he did it. Nothing in the air except for Los Angeles' standard levels of air pollution, and the lingering odor of death.

"Why did the mayor call you in anyway?" the detective demanded, rising to her feet and snapping off her surgical gloves. "A terrorist strike seems a little below you guys. Unless a couple of towers are getting knocked down, that is."

Iron Man regarded her. You guys?

"Do we have a problem, Detective Gonzalez?"

"Yeah, we do. This is police work, Iron Man. I don't understand why a glorified bodyguard gets to stomp through my crime scene. Bad enough Homeland Security is going to be all over this one..."

Tony Stark allowed himself a rueful smile beneath the mask. There always had to be one, didn't there? Something told him he'd be seeing a lot more of Detective Gonzalez over the next months, especially once the public found out the Avengers were setting up shop in the neighborhood again.

But he was okay with that. He'd been a capitalist long enough to understand that a little discontent kept powerful people honest. And Tony fit that description in both aspects of his life.

"I'm only interested in catching the bad guys, Detective," he said, as a small compartment on his forearm snapped closed and sealed with a hiss of compressed air. "I've taken the liberty of obtaining an air sample. I'll be in touch if I come up with anything."

He felt the detective's eyes in his back all the way to the glass doors.

Before - New York City, New York.

"See you've gone back to the red and gold," Clint Barton said.

Iron Man chuckled, looking down at his armor. "It always happens sooner or later."

Clint opened the refrigerator, began to reach for the beer, then thought better of it and pulled out a couple of sodas instead. He offered one to Iron Man and the Avenger nodded, lifting his faceplate before he took it.

"So..." Clint began.

"So."

"The Whackos ride again, huh?"

"If I have my way. And it wouldn't be the same without you, Clint."

"That might not be a bad thing. The last time didn't end on a high note, you know."

"That was hardly your fault. Besides, I need somebody I can trust in the driver's seat..."

"See, that's another thing." Clint cracked his Pepsi open and took a swallow. "After the West Coast team was disbanded the last time, you brought everybody back together for Force Works. And even though it was your funding, your idea, and your house, you put the Scarlet Witch in charge. I wasn't around at the time, but I've talked to Wanda, Tony. She says you stepped all over her authority. It can't be that way with us."

Tony shook his head. "It was different with Wanda. I was going through a lot of things in my personal life, and I needed to feel like I was in control of something. That's over now. And I think I've demonstrated that I can follow your lead without complaint."

That was hard to argue with. Iron Man had been a member of the West Coast Avengers, under Hawkeye's leadership, for a long time. He was too much the boy billionaire to not suffer the occasional twinges of imperial arrogance, but Clint knew Tony had plenty of respect for his leadership abilities.

And at the end of the day, there just weren't that many other Avengers Clint would rather have at his back. If they were really going to try to make a go of the West Coast branch again, especially after the messy way the East branch had recently split up, it'd be nice to have Iron Man's power and a direct connection to Tony Stark's resources.

"Okay, you can count Br'er Hawkeye in. On two conditions."

Tony nodded for him to go on.

"One, I get final approval on all candidates before we approach them for active membership."

"Fair enough."

"And two, we're not living in that high-tech Jetsons place you set up for Force Works. No thank you. Intelligent machines make me nervous, especially after all that stuff that went down with the Vision."

"What did you have in mind then?"

Hawkeye smiled. "What kinda shape is the original Whacko compound in these days, do you think?"

Now.

Hundreds of masked faces looked with wonder upon the man on the stage, and why not? He was a great man, a pure man. And it had been his inspiration, his drive, which had brought them all to this place and time. A crossroads had been reached, and if his followers were only strong enough, the man known as Seth would guide them down the correct path.

"What sacrifice are you willing to make?" he asked the gathered men and women. His voice was low, conversational, but it carried easily out over the makeshift auditorium.

There was no reply except for the uncertain mutterings of the audience, so Seth leaned forward, the stylized hood dipping low and making it look, for just a moment, like he actually wore a snake's face.

"Are you willing to die?" he asked.

More definite response to that one. A couple of scattered cheers. The question had caught them off guard, but at least they knew the answer to this one. Yes or no questions they could handle.

"Are you willing to die in pain? Because I tell you right now, early this morning, one of our brothers unleashed the Copperhead Strain in the heart of Los Angeles. Twenty people died. Our brother, who had refused innoculation, was one of them."

There was a solemn silence. Having given a death, Seth turned to the problem of turning the late Harold Carter into a martyr. For that is exactly what he would need if the Sons of the Serpent were to take the next terrible step.

And waiting in the wings, the white man in the black trenchcoat licked his lips and watched. Soon, soon.

Before - Phoenix, Arizona.

Tony Stark had always been a ladies man, and the fact that he spent most of his time with superheroines and starlets had never been able to diminish his appreciation for well-toned female bodies.

Bodies like the one performing a complex series of jumps, spins, and flips across the sun-bleached rooftop of KIKK radio station in downtown Phoenix.

"This...really isn't necessary, Miss Lyons," he said.

She spun around a large antenna -- Tony wincing inwardly, sure it would break under the strain -- then planted her feet and launched herself straight at him. She described a slow, graceful forward flip, and touched down in front of him.

"Not necessary?" she asked, grinning. She was breathing hard, but he got the feeling it was more from excitement than exertion. "But don't you want to see what I can do?"

"I know you ran with Nomad for a while," he said, putting his hand on her shoulder. "I know you know what you're doing and that you'd make a good Avengers. But even if I didn't know all that, just from looking at you... Captain America recommended you. That's more than good enough for me."

This is what he said. Inside the armor, he was wondering again if this had been a mistake. In terms of ability and skill, she was obviously everything Steve had said she'd be, but this unabashed eagerness worried Tony. If only there were just a few more established Avengers living on the west coast...

Her grin slowly spread as she understood what he was saying. "So I'm in?"

"On a probationary basis," he said. "Of course, you'll probably have to relocate to LA. If you're dug in here in Phoenix..."

"Are you kidding? Who wants to be a radio traffic reporter when you can be an Avenger? I can be in LA in two days."

"Make it a week. We're still getting the compound ready." He fired his bootjets, rising into the air and tipping her a salute. "I'll see you then, Vagabond."

His sensitive audio receptors were still picking up the sound of her cheers when he roared out over the desert.

Now.

"Glad you could make it, Shellhead! Not interrupting your morning coffee, are we?"

"Uh oh. I know that tone." Iron Man dropped to the well-manicured lawn outside the command building of the Avengers West Coast Compound. Hawkeye was waiting for him on the front steps.

"This is Drill Sergeant Hawkeye I'm talking to, right? Not Jokester-Foil-to-Captain-America Hawkeye."

"It's Been-Up-All-Night-Looking-for-Avengers Hawkeye, actually." Clint turned, and the two of them strode into the building side-by-side. "Back in my day, we were stumbling over each other to be in the Avengers. Now..."

"Now everybody's too busy," Iron Man sighed. "Or disenchanted. The biggest problem is that only a few former Avengers live on the west coast. Just about everyone said, 'Call me if Thanos wants to blow up the planet', but no one is willing to relocate to serve as a full-time member."

"Leaving us with a very powerful lady with a chip on her shoulder, an overeager rookie, and a--"

"Don't forget the former supervillain and the recovering alcoholic," Iron Man said, looking sideways at his teammate.

"Yeah, them too. 'Morning, Conchita." Hawkeye raised a hand to the young Hispanic woman in a maid's outfit who was working in the kitchen as they passed.

"The staff's all in place then?"

"Yep. The cleaning crews just left yesterday. Too bad we couldn't get the old crew back, but the new ones seem to be working out just as well." Hawkeye pushed through a doorway to the left, and into a large room with monitor and computer equipment lining one wall.

"Welcome to the new monitor room. Or, as I like to call it, the House That Big Brother Built."

Iron Man gave a satisfied nod. "Hard air interface tech and Heisenberg-class chaos calculators based on my old PLATO technology. I take it it's all working."

"Who knows? I can't handle that Wizard of Oz crap." Hawkeye crossed to a bank of older equipment with a massive picture tube monitor on top of it.

"Clint, that equipment is at least five years old!"

"And it took me that long to figure out how to use it, thanks." Hawkeye keyed in some commands and watched as the screen flickered to life. "I'm not emotionally ready to upgrade yet. Fortunately, this Beta does almost everything your DVD player does, just without all the pretty colors and flashing lights."

"You're worse than Cap, and he was born in the twenties!"

Before Hawkeye could reply, Iron Man put his hands out, palm-down, in front of the newer machinery, and began tapping on the hard-air keyboard that had materialized under his fingers. A moment later, a viewscreen had appeared in the air in front of him, and Hank Pym -- world-renowned microbiologist and co-founder of the Avengers -- was looking down from it.

"Iron Man. Thanks for returning my call."

"Good morning, Hank. Or is it still evening there?"

Hank chuckled. "Who knows? I don't keep clocks in my labs. Jan hasn't been in to chew me out for working all night yet, so it must still be the wee hours of the morning."

"What've you got for me?"

"Well, that air sample you sent me wasn't much help, since there wasn't enough of the agent left to learn anything. However, I was able to obtain some tissue samples of the deceased from the joint LAPD/FBI task force. Talked to a charming woman named Gonzalez. She sends her regards."

"I'm sure."

"Anyway, I think I've got it. You've heard of cystic fibrosis."

Iron Man nodded.

"CF attacks the respiratory and digestive systems, fills them with mucus and fluid. This agent is attacking its victims on a genetic level, inducing a kind of super-CF on them and pushing them in seconds through stages that would normally take years."

"A genetic plague..."

"It gets worse. Something you may not have noticed on the scene...every person who died in that bank was Caucasian. CF is much more common in whites than it is any other racial group. If I had to hazard a guess, I'd say--"

"Whoever's doing this is racially motivated."

"Right. That narrows our list of past offenders down to pretty much nothing. If it was an attack against a minority group, we'd have all sorts of suspects, but--"

"Offhand," Hawkeye said from across the room, "I'd say the Sons of the Serpent are behind it."

"The Sons of the Serpents are a white supremacist group, Clint. That doesn't make any--" The words died in Iron Man's throat as he turned.

Hawkeye had brought up CNN on the older monitor, and a man in a snake mask that covered everything except his cold-as-flint eyes filled the screen. It was obvious, by the skin around those eyes, that the man wearing the mask was black.

"--e have accepted and absorbed your slurs and slanders, made them part of our culture. Now we accept and absorb your masks and your methods. The original Sons of the Serpent were Egyptian--black priests of their death-god Set. And so are we.

"We have already successfully tested this plague. Ask your police and your government why they have not shared this information with you yet. And do it quickly, because very, very soon, the plague will be released among you. Three-quarters of the hate-mongering, slave-driving, overpaid, overfed whites in this country will die. We will make no accounting for age or gender. Only race. Just as you have always done to us.

"That is all."

The image changed to a very serious, very frightened young woman at a news desk. She was saying something, some witty summary of what they'd just seen, but none of the three Avengers watching her could hear a word.

"God," Hank said finally.

"Get the others in here," Hawkeye said. "Looks like we're getting our trial run, whether we're ready for it or not."

Before - San Francisco, California.

"You... want me to be an Avenger?"

"You already are an Avenger," Iron Man said, standing over the lithe kid in the black body armor while said kid went about trussing up a mugger.

"Was. For like five minutes. And yes, that's an exaggeration, but not by much." The vigilante known as Darkhawk straightened and tossed a purse to Iron Man. "Can you make sure the old lady he took this from down the street gets it back? I'd handle it myself, but I usually end up scaring people worse than the muggers do."

"Once an Avenger, always an Avenger," Iron Man replied, catching the purse. He wasn't happy to be here. Vagabond had been bad enough, but at least Cap had put in a good word for her. This Darkhawk kid... well, he was just a vigilante. A poor man's version of Spider-Man. But he had been an Avenger for a brief moment a while back, and they hadn't had much luck finding people who fit that bill. They were scraping the bottom of the roster barrel with this one, and Iron Man knew it.

"We'd like to have you on the team, Darkhawk. Since you're operating on the West Coast now, I can only assume you decided you needed a change. But if you're not interested..." He raised his arms, preparing to launch himself out of the alley and into the San Francisco sky.

"No...wait." Darkhawk rubbed the back of his helmeted head and shifted uncertainly from one foot to the other. "The team draws a stipend, right? And we get free room and board?"

Behind the mask, Tony Stark's eyes narrowed. "Yes, that's right. But if you're just doing it for the money and the perks..."

"No, no. Of course not. I mean, I beat this guy down for free, didn't I?" He nudged the mugger with his foot, and the punk immediately began threatening him with litigation. Neither of the costumed adventurers was listening, though. "But I can do a lot more good as an Avenger, and if you think I'd be a good addition to the team..."

"I wouldn't be here if I didn't."

Darkhawk nodded. "Then I guess I'm in."

"Guess you are," Iron Man replied, hoping he wasn't making a mistake. The last thing they needed on this new team was a mercenary.

"I'll return this to the lady it belongs to," he said, gripping the purse and rising into the air on his bootjets. "Report to the LA compound sometime in the next week, and Hawkeye will get you squared away."

"Sure," Darkhawk said. To himself, he was unknowingly echoing Iron Man's concerns that he was making the wrong decision. But then the armored Avenger was gone, and Darkhawk was committed.

"Guess you San Fran boys get a break, starting in a week or so," he said to the bound mugger. Then, at the sound of approaching sirens, he added, "Too late to do you any good though," and fired his grappling hook at a nearby rooftop. By the time the police roared into the alleyway, Darkhawk was long gone.

Now.

"Sacrifice," Seth said, pacing now on top of the stage as his followers looked on. "Nothing in this world that is worth anything is available without sacrifice. And when the goals, like ours, are tremendous, so must be the sacrifice.

"Too long have the inferior races played their games of self-pity and self-aggrandizement. Bad enough when we had to share our buses and our restrooms and our drinking fountains with them. But now you can't even speak of race without the dogs baying at your heels, demanding recompense for imagined slights.

"I am tired, my brothers. Tired of bowing to lower creatures. Tired of watching our children take the mongrels as mates. I would rather our daughters bedded dogs than niggers! At least then there would be no hope of half-breed children!"

Seth had to shout to make himself heard over the tumult now. He shook a fist in the air, and the roar that pounded him from the mouths of the gathered masses was nearly palpable.

The albino in the wings, still unseen, rolled his eyes and licked his lips at the taste of negative emotions filling the hangar.

"But not everyone agrees with us. There are many whites who actually enjoy kowtowing to the yellows and the reds and especially the blacks. They have been seduced by their not inconsiderable but doubly insidious charms. Our children like to dress as the blacks do. Our companies hire Chinks and Japs out of some misguided belief that they work harder than whites. The bleeding hearts of this country refuse to persecute any middle-easterners despite the fact that they perpetrated the deadliest attack against our nation since Pearl Harbor!"

Someone in the audience managed to make a cry of, "Avenge the Towers!" heard over the general tumult, and it was picked up by others. Seth nodded, encouraging them.

"But we will make them listen, my brothers. We will make them listen even if we have to kill them. Only then, only when we release Copperhead and lay it at the blacks' door, only when the pure-born of this country realize what danger they are in, only then will they see the righteousness of our cause. Only then will they join with us in expelling all the lower races from our country."

The cheers had fallen silent. All of the men and women in the audience knew about the Copperhead Strain of course, and all of them knew what it was going to be used for. But to hear it laid out like this, so plainly, silenced them for just a heartbeat. Seth knew his control hung by a thread in that moment. No matter how strong their convictions, all of them knew that this virus would probably kill many people they knew and loved. One wrong word, and his army would turn on him.

"Drastic measures?" he began breathlessly. "Yes. Without a doubt. But incredible goals call for incredible sacrifice, my friends. A lesson must be taught to the misguided whites of this country, and nothing worth learning can be learned without pain. Our sole consolation in this is that the country we rebuild afterward will be all the better for the blood it cost to cleanse it.

"Each of you is inoculated against Copperhead, and you will carry on after it is released. But the war will be just beginning, and the strength you displayed in joining me in this endeavor must continue for a time afterward. Stand with me, my brothers, and understand that for the first time in the history of man, an ideal is about to be achieved. And understand that you are a vital part of it."

A beat of silence. And then the hangar exploded with the roars and applause of Seth's people, his army. He grinned, not quite able to hide his glee as his people joined with him once and for all.

He didn't notice the black cable with the claw on the end of it until it had looped all the way around his neck and pulled taut. The triumphant applause of the Sons turned into a collective gasp of surprise and outrage as their leader was yanked straight upward by the throat, all the way up to the rafters, and the black-clad vigilante who waited for him there.

"That thing about girls sleeping with dogs? That was gross, man," Darkhawk said, dangling the man by his claw-cable. "And it wasn't even the most disgusting thing you said."

"Who--who are you?" Seth croaked, clawing at the line.

"Me? I'm nobody. The people you really have to worry about will be here in just a sec." He pointed toward the far end of the hangar. "'Cause, brother, do you have some 'splainin' to do."

Twin repulsor beams tore through the sturdy metal wall of the hangar, pulverizing the concrete floor and kicking up a cloud of rock and dust. The Sons of the Serpent turned, and as the smoke cleared, leveled their weapons at the four colorfully dressed adventurers waiting outside.

"What are you waiting for?" Hawkeye demanded. He let an explosive-tipped arrow fly as he waved Iron Man, Warbird, and Vagabond into the hangar.

"Avengers Assemble!"

Trust me... it wasn't my idea.

Chris Munn (writer of Thunderbolts over on the Knights Branch... if you're not reading it, you suck) put together a proposal for this series late last year. He picked the team members. He decided the new Whackos would be fighting the Sons of the Serpent in this first arc. He sketched out broad plans for the first 18 issues of this series. I looked at the proposal, liked what I saw, told Chris so, and promptly forgot about it.

Fast-forward a month or two. Chris has decided to step down from some of his fanfic commitments, trimming his impressive list of titles down to five. While T-bolts made the cut (thank God), the not-yet-begun AWC didn't. At least not until I threatened Chris with bodily harm should he refuse to continue it.

Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on whether you're seeing it from my point of view) several titles I'd been writing for other sites had fallen through, due primarily to the death of those sites. I was looking at M2K again, the home I always return to, wondering if there were any titles open I'd be interested in taking up again. Also, I'd been trying to find someone to co-write a title with, to share ideas and swap scripting duties between arcs. Since Chris already had an 18 issue outline, this seemed like the perfect place to have my cake, eat it too, and even upchuck it if I wanted to. Hey, it's at least half my cake!

Besides, writing this title also means I get to write Iron Man again, which is also like coming home in a way.

What you can expect in this title (besides at least two more Avengers showing up before the end of the first arc) is an unintentionally more-traditional counterpoint to the mad stuff Brent Lambert is doing on the main Avengers title. Oh... and an assload of formerly lame supervillains. Chris and I both love to do new things with formerly lame villains, and he pulled out a fantastic assortment of them when putting together his outline. This is definitely going to be a hoot. Just wait until Toomba shows up...

Anyway, feel free to drop me or Chris a line if you like what you see here. If you don't like it... well, go read an X-title or something. Just come back in two weeks for the second part of our opening arc, wherein a whole bunch of asses get kicked in a whole bunch of interesting ways. And wait'll you see who pops in for a visit at issue's end...

- Russ Anderson
31 January, 2003

- See current issues of M2K's Avengers to learn more about Thor's East Coast Team.

- Warbird was court-martialed and ejected from the Avengers for negligence brought on by her alcoholism in Marvel's Avengers, vol. 3 #7.

- Iron Man wore a new red and silver armor briefly in M2K's Marvel Fanfare #16 and Iron Man #16-18.

- The original West Coast Avengers were disbanded by the East Coast team in Marvel's Avengers West Coast #102.

- Iron Man formed Force Works from the remains of the West Coast Avengers in Marvel's Force Works #1.

- The Vision tried to kill the Avengers, and was killed himself by Giant-Man in M2K's Avengers #13. The East Coast team dissolved as a result of this, off-panel, before issue #14.

- Hawkeye began his career as a supervillain, only going straight once he'd joined the Avengers in Marvel's Avengers, vol. 1 #16.

- The Sons of the Serpent first appeared in Marvel's Avengers, vol. 1 #32. Different incarnations of the group have battled the Avengers, the Defenders, and the New Warriors.

Story © 2003, Russ Anderson and Chris Munn. Most characters presented are property of Marvel Entertainment Group.