Fours days earlier…

It began in Maricopa County, Arizona, in the Sonoran Desert, just after dusk as the temperature of the day rapidly cooled and coyotes went hunting cottontail and quail beneath a deep indigo sky resplendent with stars. The desert itself colored now, from tan and amber through the pink, cerise and gold of sunset to swathes of moonlit black. A faint wind blew. Out here, five miles distant from the nearest town, there was a heavy silence broke only by the intermittent calls of animals and birds… and by Rose Carnegie's soft moans as her new boyfriend Brett explored the mysteries of her nineteen-year-old body for the first time beneath a blanket in the back seat of his truck.

Brett was inexperienced, but a quick and enthusiastic student. Rose was an eager teacher. Between them they'd drunk a quart of bourbon before parking up and getting down to business. It was no wonder they didn't hear the approach of the creatures - at least, not until it was too late, and Rose happened to glance past Brett's shoulder and out of the near window with heavy, happy eyes, and see what was staring in at her.

Rose made a sudden, strangled sound. Brett grinned and kissed her throat, believing that this was a sign he'd earned his diploma in the finer arts of love. Then Rose screamed, and Brett panicked and rolled off her with a blanket tangled about his legs, and Rose clasped a desperate arm across her lively, naked breasts, and screamed again.

Outside the truck, the enormous creatures swayed as one as if listening to some inner music.

And then, still as one, they turned and began to shuffle away. They weren't interested in the fleshy mechanics of young lust, for that was a human quirk; they were utterly inhuman, driven by some other urge entirely, and their calling was in a place far from here.

Abandoning the girl to her plaintive cries and the heave of her bosom in the pearly moonlight, the creatures set off towards Los Angeles, California…

…the home of their hated enemies, the Avengers West Coast.

---

Now…

"…what in the world were you thinking…?"

"…of all the irresponsible, harebrained…"

"…honed skills, you said. No kids, you said…"

For any child who'd ever grown up in a household where their parents occasionally retired to squabble in another room, there was something disturbingly familiar about the situation in which Angela Del Toro, Robert Farrell and Elsa Bloodstone now found themselves. They weren't children, of course, but that didn't change the fact that they still felt mortified as they listened to the muffled grumble of raised, angry voices coming through the walls. The only difference was now they were expected to sit around on sofas and drink tea instead of being able to hide under their bedclothes with a flashlight and some old comic books. It didn't make the experience any easier.

"I get the feeling we're not going to be as welcome as we were led to believe," Angela said, gazing sadly into her teacup. To her left, Elsa nodded.

"Darling, I've been to Hell and back. And, let me tell you, this is far more excruciating."

"I feel like I'm ten years old," Robbie murmured, to which Elsa and Angela exchanged knowing glances.

"Well, to be fair," Elsa said, "you do have a bit of the cute babyface thing going on…"

Robbie glowered. Angela grinned. Through the wall someone called someone else an insufferable ass, which wasn't what one would expect to hear from the Avengers. Then again, maybe all meetings of the Earth's mightiest heroes ended like this. The three companions looked at one another and suddenly the tension spilled over and they began to giggle. A moment later, when Elsa accidentally snorted tea from her nose, the howls of laughter became uncontrollable.

Bloody kids.

---

"Well, I'm glad someone's finding this amusing."

Tony Stark stared at the three-dimensional holographic display being projected in mid-air just ahead of him and shook his head, his expression furious. To his right, seated primly on the edge of a circular conference table with a scowl that could scorch steel, Janet van Dyne could only concur. Even Clint Barton, known for his usually irrepressible humor and considered the man most likely to make comedy noises with his armpits at a funeral, was solemnly irked as he languished in his chair, his golden bow across his lap. Tony, Jan and Clint - the Avengers known respectively as Iron Man, The Wasp and Hawkeye - were three of the world's greatest heroes, highly regarded for their length of service, coolness under pressure and formidable acumen. However, that didn't mean they weren't prone to making horrendous mistakes on occasion…

"We explicitly agreed that we'd be bolstering our ranks with trusted, experienced individuals," Stark snapped, turning on his companions. "But, here you are, bringing the exact opposite to the table!"

"Hey!" Jan barked. "Don't you dare take that tone with me! Not when you've done the same thing. How old is that lad you've got in there? Twelve?"

"He has got youthful looks, I admit. But at least he's not been featured on all the local television networks blasting nuns out of the sky with a shotgun!"

"Hello? Possessed nuns. The whole out-of-the-sky thing's the giveaway, what with most normal, un-possessed nuns not flying around on with fire coming out of their backsides."

Stark waved his hands. "It doesn't matter. Hellfire shotguns don't scream Avengers material to me."

"Says the walking tin can arsenal with lethal weapons plugged into every square inch of his body…"

"It's the magic thing," Clint said. "He hates magic, remember?"

"Oh, yes, of course." Janet rolled her eyes, realization dawning. Stark glared at Clint, who snorted.

"Listen, don't you think one armored Avenger is enough for any team?" the archer asked, leaning forward. "My girl, Angela, she's something different; something special. Fighting skills, speed, close-range combat… she can give us everything T'Challa would, in time."

"We don't have time," Stark insisted. "We're not a crèche, or even an academy. We need recruits who can hit the ground running, even if they're raw. Robbie, he's a genius, and this suit he's designed-"

"You want a protégé."

"No, Jan. I want Avengers."

"Elsa can be an Avenger."

"So can Angela," Clint snapped. Stark waved his arms some more, even though it didn't seem to be doing much good thus far.

"But Robbie, he's got this rocket-powered punch…"

"…that sounds completely lame and nowhere near as impressive as mystical amulets from a city that only exists when it wants to…"

"…and his anti-gravity board…"

"…and she can turn into a tiger - sort of - and…"

"Elsa's blonde, English, pretty, and completely uninhibited."

Stark and Clint both faltered and looked at Janet. Then they looked at one another. Then they frowned. Okay, actually, when someone put it like that…

---EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE---

At this sudden explosion of high-pitched whine Clint jumped in his seat like a scalded cat, his hand instinctively closing about the polished curve of his bow. It began to glow, but neither of his companions noticed, being preoccupied with a new holographic projection that had fizzled to life before them: a schematic of the Avengers West Los Angeles compound, where their meeting was currently taking place.

"Perimeter alarm," Janet cried. "We're under attack! Is it…?"

"Not Ultron," Stark murmured, correctly guessing his colleague's concern and deliberately refusing the use the name Nikola, the name this version of the homicidal robot had chosen to answer to.

"What then?" Clint asked. "Masters of Evil? Doom?"

Stark shook his head. "Multiple bogies detected, but no genetic or technological match on the database, Ultron or otherwise. No robotics… but no heat signatures either? Whatever they are, they're not… alive. So what in the world…?"

Stark flicked a hand and the virtual image before him shimmered. "Going to standard visual. Let's see what the hell's swarming past our automatic defenses and… oh, man. Oh, you've got to be kidding me…"

Jan and Clint both leaned forward, eyes wide. Like Stark, neither of them could believe what they were witnessing as they studied the relayed scene playing out in mid-air before them.

They were under attack, that was beyond question. But the unliving creatures undertaking the full invasion of the compound could scarcely be believed.

Jan bowed her head, the corners of her mouth twitching. Clint snorted. Stark just looked incredulous.

"Cactus?!" he roared. "Oh, because today just wasn't awful enough…"

---

Once upon a time there was an alien race, the Quist. A militant faction of Quists, the Arcane, created a sentient computer module called Dominus, which they used to conquer other worlds by mentally enslaving its dominant species - and one of the planets they had their eye on was Earth. The Dominus machine, adopting a humanoid form, was dispatched to Earth and made its base in the Arizona desert, whereupon it intended to triumph over mankind. Dominus failed in its mission due to the interference of a team of costumed heroes known as the West Coast Avengers… and everyone lived happily ever after. Or not.

But none of that is particularly important.

What is important is that Dominus used advanced, extraterrestrial technology to create an army of synthetic creatures out of whatever it had to hand, and set this army against his enemies. The legion consisted of mutated lizard clones known collectively as Gila, golems fashioned from rock and mineral known as Butte, and multiple manifestations of animated saguaro pulp known as Cactus. There were, at the commencement of battle, over fifty individual specimens of each creature in existence at once, but despite these overwhelming odds the Avengers team of the time - including Hawkeye, Iron Man, Tigra, Mockingbird and Wonder Man - hadn't been overly bothered. In fact they'd found the whole experience amusing, which was justifiable considering that their foes were more ridiculous than threatening.

Especially Cactus.

But that was then, as they say, and this…?

This was something else entirely…

---

"Right then," Elsa Bloodstone said, in a sweet and understated English way. "Did anyone decide if I was an official member of this merry little band of yours? Because I'd like to know if I have to put my resignation in writing."

"Oh, come on," Rocket Racer grinned. "This is awesome and you know it…"

Cactus was everywhere and it was deeply unpleasant.

It numbered in the dozens, but - unlike the last occasion this creature had been abroad in the world - each individual Cactus wasn't identical to its brethren; this time there were tall, skinny Cactuses and short, fat Cactuses, and twisty Cactuses and blobby Cactuses and even a few bizarrely animal-influenced Cactuses with multiple legs and beaks and wings and tails and teeth and all manner of other odd appendages. And they were all a deep, mottled yellowish-green and covered in a thick hide of spines, and they all had approximations of faces: black eyes and contorted holes for mouths and a definite wrinkling to the pulp flesh that suggested screams of rage.

They were swarming over the walls of the compound, navigating a web of defensive stun lasers and wire net trapping without much effort due to their sheer numbers and the fact they didn't seem to feel pain. Localized bursts of sonic disruptors or electromagnetic pulse didn't faze them as they would even the most sophisticated automated invaders. Anything that hindered or snared or bludgeoned them had no real lasting effect; the Cactus army just kept pushing on and through and over and under, overwhelming whatever was before them.

And there, the last line of defense before the main body of the compound itself, were the Avengers West Coast - Iron Man, Hawkeye and The Wasp to the fore and their possible new recruits Elsa Bloodstone, White Tiger and the Rocket Racer alongside. No one appeared particularly impressed, and a few stern stares migrated in Iron Man's direction.

"Don't blame me," Stark's electronic voice sounded through the grille of his gleaming golden faceplate. "These defenses are state-of-the-art, designed to withstand armed assault from the world's most malevolent threats. I never anticipated they'd be put to the test by rampaging vegetable matter."

"Some futurist you are," Clint sniffed.

"Oh, shut up."

"Excuse me, boys…"

Elsa Bloodstone stepped forward and shouldered her shotgun. Iron Man made a sound of disapproval, but Elsa just cocked a pretty eyebrow at him. Then she pulled the trigger.

Both barrels of the gun erupted with a barrage of pure hellfire, engulfing a half-dozen approaching Cactuses before they could cover the twenty feet of distance that remained between them and their quarry. Shrunk to her insect size, Wasp recoiled with a gasp, and Rocket Racer squeaked like a girl, of which he was instantly ashamed. Iron Man swore. Hawkeye had been on the money earlier: Stark loathed magic. When a man surrounded himself in a shell of cold, hard steel, and based every principle of his existence on theories of mathematical physics, the very idea of the unreal - the supernatural, the mystical, the theological - brought him out in a cold sweat. Elsa Bloodstone claimed she'd been to Hell and fetched a piece of it back with her. Until he was able to analyze hellfire itself and break it down into its elemental constituents - if he even could - then Stark wasn't going to trust it, or the girl wielding it, in any way whatsoever.

The Cactuses roared as they burned - but they kept on advancing, the hellfire dropping from them like liquid gold and smoking in the shape of clubbed footprints in their wake. They looked annoyed, as was only to be expected, but they weren't scorched or fried or boiled, and they certainly weren't exploding, in the manner of the demonically-possessed nuns Elsa had recently encountered. They were just… alight.

"Cactuses on fire," Hawkeye noted, helpfully. "Fiery Cactus."

"Nicely done," Rocket Racer agreed, sarcastically. Elsa was unperturbed.

"They're not supernatural," she said. "Or even truly organic. They're synthetic. But, in any case, hellfire doesn't work on them. Apparently."

"So you'll be sitting this one out then?"

Elsa snorted. "Not bloody likely, Robbie Rocket. There's more to me than guns. Oy! Spiky!"

Elsa casually altered her grip on the shotgun, resting it against her chest, and stepped forward to meet the nearest of the smoldering Cactuses. She then swung the weapon like a club and lobbed off the creature's blazing head with one almighty chop, sending it spinning upwards through the night sky like a falling star heading in the wrong direction. She smiled, gratified. Then the headless Cactus reached out and grabbed her by the face with one spiny, fiery paw, and began to shake her like a doll. The heels of her boots clacked together and obvious parts of her wobbled. Cactus only let go when Iron Man aimed a repulsor blast and slammed the beast backwards off its feet, sending it skittling into a number of its fellows.

Elsa righted herself shakily, blowing a lock of singed hair from her eyes and smoothing out her shirt as best she could. She'd lost a button, and she'd only had two to start with. Any more of that and she'd be positively rude instead of just cheekily racy. Thankfully, although her face was blackened it was merely with flakes of Cactus's peeling pulpflesh, and her own skin was unharmed.

"It's okay," she said, tapping the ruby pendant around her throat. "It's fine. Bloodstone choker. Virtually invulnerable, et cetera."

Then she grimaced, sulking. "Bloody good job too," she muttered under her breath. "Big green lump of porcupine broccoli bastard…"

"Right everyone, look lively!" Wasp commanded, flitting and back forth among them on quivering wings. "Yes, it's Cactus, and that's all very amusing, but he's still dangerous, and there's civilian staff on site here whose lives are at risk. So let's stick it to this overgrown pot plant! Avengers Assemble!"

The Wasp shot forward, aiming a volley of bioelectrical stings in the direction of the Cactus horde, whilst Elsa weighed in with more hefty swings of her shotgun. Rocket Racer gunned his jet-board with its AGRs - anti-gravity rings - and rose into the air, his slimline armored suit of crimson, gold and black gleaming with the reflected light of spotlamps from the surrounding rooftops. He then shot forward with a whoop of delight - because, seriously, in his years of inactivity since his misspent youth he had so missed this - and treated a gaggle of Cactuses to his swift and deadly rocket-powered punch. In his wake, Angela Del Toro clutched at the emerald amulet about her neck and immediately transformed from a slight Puerto Rican girl in sweater and Levi's into a lithe, barely suppressed warrior clad in a costume of snow white hide marked with distinct black striping: the White Tiger. The Tiger then leapt into the fray, her black hair snaking out behind her and her ivory claws glinting eagerly.

Iron Man and Hawkeye watched the young, would-be-Avengers launch themselves into battle, and they exchanged glances. They'd all agreed the kids weren't ready, but sometimes a situation just took matters out of a person's hands…

Hawkeye sighed and readied his bow, but without reaching back over his shoulder to his half-empty quiver and retrieving an arrow. Instead the bow began to glow brightly all on its lonesome, and a shaft of pure, brilliant lightning materialized from thin air, ready to fire.

Behind his faceplate, Stark raised en eyebrow. "Well, look at that. You know, I thought you'd taken to carrying less arrows recently. New toy, Clint…?"

Hawkeye looked guilty. "Yeah. Well. I was going to tell you all about it, but the right opportunity never came up. See, back when I was lost in time and hanging around with these couple of barbarians-"

"It's magic, isn't it? Again with the magic. You bastard."

"Look, I didn't pick it up on purpose-"

But that was where the conversation ended, because a tall, twisted Cactus chose that moment to hurl itself forward from the pack and wrap its spiky arms about Iron Man's chest. Hawkeye aimed and let fly, and the shaft of crackling light arced out and speared the Cactus through the head, detonating the entire upper half of its body. The air darkened momentarily with green mist and the taste of charred pulp, and the remnants of this particular Cactus stumbled, spilling pulpstuff from its sundered waist. But it didn't fall. The legs staggered on, albeit in the wrong direction.

"Totally not like Resident Evil," Hawkeye lamented. "There, if you take out the head then the rest goes with it."

"These are Cactuses, not zombies!" Wasp cried as she circled overhead, attempting to elude a Cactus that had clambered over the shoulders of one of its brethren to clutch at her. She spiraled elegantly and released volley after volley of stings, detonating her enemies wherever possible, but it wasn't stemming the tide. Indeed, despite her speed and intuitive reflex she was almost tagged by a spiny fist until Rocket Racer intercepted the blow, angling his board with the deftest touch of his foot to put himself between Wasp and Cactus. He charged his arm and then unleashed a rocket-powered punch, the impact of the strike reducing his foe to pulp dust.

But they still. Kept. Coming.

White Tiger was a blur of motion, snarling and clawing in the midst of a dozen Cactuses, some of them still smoldering with Elsa's hellfire. The Cactuses clubbed and swatted at her as she moved among them but the majority of them ended up clobbering their fellows rather than her, her speed and instinct too much for them to counter. When one did manage to grab at her, pinning her down, it was Elsa who came to her rescue, grappling the offending Cactus about the midriff in an armlock and then bodily hefting it from the ground, over her head, her bloodstone enhancing her physical strength as well as her endurance.

She hurled the Cactus as far as she was able. Another one pawed spikily at her jeweled choker but Tiger returned the other girl's favor and severed the outstretched pulpy arm with her claws. The hand fell away and the remaining stump flapped uselessly. But the creature didn't fall.

"Everyone hold on!" Iron Man suddenly barked, raising both gauntlets and revealing glowing circles in his open palms. "Auto-lock and fire."

It had taken a minute or two to configure his targeting system with the Cactus army's physical templates but now he was ready to act. Employing his onboard computerized guidance matrix he locked on to no less than forty-seven individual Cactuses at once - approximately a half of the overall mass - and then set the release code for a high-speed repulsor cascade, drenching the immediate area in a firecracker display of light and power. Pulse bolts launched in all directions, slamming into spiny Cactus trunks and reducing them to a fog of pulp tissue. The air and ground was instantly awash with dry, pulpy splats. Wasp screamed as she got some in her hair, which was doubly unpleasant for her as anyone else considering her present diminutive state.

A few seconds later the mist cleared.

But the Cactuses kept on coming, whole or otherwise.

"Oh, for… this is insane!" Hawkeye yelled, letting flying with lightning shaft after lightning shaft but to little avail. "Make one big Cactus into a thousand little Cactuses and they just don't stop. How the hell are we supposed to wipe these things out…?"

"Water."

It was the White Tiger who spoke, from above. Everyone looked up to see her crouching on the rooftop edge of one of the compound residences, framed against the dusky skies. "My college flat-mate," she said. "She had the touch of death."

"She was a mutant?" Rocket Racer asked, skimming between two Cactuses and causing them to impale upon one another. Tiger glared at him.

"No, muppet. Hush. I mean she was one of these people who couldn't help but kill plants. You know? Friends, family, they kept buying her potted flowers and shrubs, and… muerte. They didn't stand a chance."

"Right," Elsa said impatiently, punching a Cactus in the general vicinity of where its genitals would have been, if it had any among the needles. "Delightful. This flat-mate, is she on hand? Because-"

"Listen!" Tiger snapped. "Cacti, they're supposed to be the hardiest plants you can get, right? They survive in the harshest conditions. Well, my friend, her mother bought her a cactus and my friend killed it inside a week. She watered it to death, see? She thought, coming from the desert, it probably fancied a good old drink. But cacti, they can only take on so much liquid before swelling up and… well."

The Wasp flitted forward. "Not too bright then, your friend?"

"She was a bit thick, yes."

"But the moral of the story being-"

"We give Pulpy here a drink?" Hawkeye asked. "Which is quite handy, because the Avengers West compound…"

"…is situated smack bang on the Pacific coastline, a stone's throw from the ocean," Iron Man finished. He turned on the horde of Cactuses, grinning behind his faceplate. "So, who fancies a midnight swim?"

The Avengers vacated the compound as one, Iron Man, Wasp and Rocket Racer leading the way on high with White Tiger, Hawkeye and Elsa following at ground level. They passed the perimeter with an anxious backwards glance, worried that the Cactus army wouldn't follow them, but their instincts were on the button; it was them the Cactuses were after, so wherever they went their enemies followed, be they whole or be they maimed, crawling or limbless. Thereafter it was easy to lead the creatures away from the handful of innocent staff resident at the compound and down to the nearby beach where, among the sand and rocks, they proceeded to commit one final, necessary act:

Hurling Cactuses out to sea.

Most of the creatures didn't come back. The ones that did, the tougher specimens, swollen but undefeated, were simply thrown out once more. Or Iron Man and Rocket Racer flew them out and dumped them a half mile from shore, from which point it would be impossible for them to return. Because the Cactuses weren't truly alive there was always a chance that this ploy wouldn't work - but, if that had been the case, the heroes would have just had to think of something else.

They were the Avengers, after all. And winning is what the Avengers do.

Fortunately, White Tiger's suggestion worked. Angela Del Toro, through quick-wittedness, had saved the day.

"I bet you're thinking that makes you our prime candidate for Avengers membership," Iron Man said sternly, after the mass cactus cull was done. He glared at the woman in the white-and-black striped costume, moonlight reflecting on his golden faceplate. The White Tiger simply stared at him in return, her expression unimpressed. She then turned to her two companions, Elsa and Rocket Racer.

"Actually," she said, "I was thinking my new friends and I would be better off forming our own group. One for adults. You know, where the supposedly mature and even-headed heroes don't squabble like spoilt adolescents?"

"Spot on, love," said Elsa.

"Absolutely," Rocket Racer nodded. "I think tonight's been a bit of an eye-opener, tell the truth."

The Wasp and Hawkeye stared at one another. Then they both glared at Iron Man.

"She's talking about you, you know," Hawkeye said.

"And you," Wasp snapped at Clint. "Men and your silly one-upmanship…"

"…oh, don't pretend that you're not part of this…"

"…can't believe you'd start this again…"

"…honestly, Steve Rogers would die of embarrassment if he could hear you…"

"…don't you dare take that man's name in vain! You…"

Elsa Bloodstone, White Tiger and Rocket Racer exchanged weary glances.

"Trial period."

The three younger heroes turned at the sound of Iron Man's voice. They saw that Wasp and Hawkeye were blushing, and they suspected Stark was doing the same behind his faceplate.

"A trial period, for all three of you," Iron Man murmured. "To see if you've got what it takes."

Elsa, Angela and Robbie each grinned.

"We'll think about it," they said.

---

In Maricopa County, Arizona, in the Sonoran Desert, the shadows stirred… and the Lords of Fear muttered among themselves whilst their not-quite-human companion studied the stars overhead, his expression inscrutable.

"Blehdh."

The man frowned, glancing away from his nocturnal perusings. "An unmitigated disaster?" he said. "Poppycock. And certainly not like our business with the Straw Man, which I maintain-"

"Blehdh!"

"Yes, well. It was never intended to be a serious gesture. A test, nothing more."

"Blehdh."

"And they were always likely to pass it!" the man snapped, before recovering himself and holding up a gloved hand of apology. "But. Now, at least, we know more about them. We've observed them through the eyes of our emissaries, felt their heat and the flood and pulse of their hearts, tasted of their auras…"

"Blehdh?"

"It's enough for now, yes."

In the shadows, beneath the bleak desert skies and in the chill stillness of the twilight, something smiled. Something with such terrible, terrible teeth. The man grimaced and couldn't help but shy away.

"The Master says we should take our time," he murmured, almost to himself. "Shred them piece by bloody piece. And what the Master wants, the Master gets…"

---

End of First Blood. Intermission. And then...