Eric Simon Payne stepped over a fungus-covered tree root and paused to look around. The swamp encompassed him, buried him in its green and brown folds, its smells and textures hinting of constant death and rebirth.

When all was said and done, he definitely preferred the desolate, dry beauty of America's Southwest to the wet decay of her Everglades. Still, this was a place of power, a place where demons and angels sometimes walked. He had been a Devil-Slayer long enough to be able to recognize such things.

An insect that hadn't originated on this planet chirruped nearby, and Eric knew he was close to where he had to be. The Nexus was near.

A massive shape shuffled out from under a nearby tree -- a shape Eric had mistaken on first sight for a mass of undergrowth. He saw his mistake now as the thing's great red eyes appeared and looked on him impassively.

It was huge, whatever it was. Eight feet of wet, green swamp, standing upright. It was slouched, and its face consisted solely of the red orbs and a strange trunk-like proboscis that hung most of the way down its frame. Eric reached behind him, into the orange folds of the cape draped over his shoulders. The creature didn't look like it wanted to attack, but it would be best to be pre--

He paused, looking into the thing's eyes. It looked back without reaction.

Eric straightened, letting his hand fall back down to his side. Then he gave the muck monster a little bow. "My apologies. I didn't realize at first, but... you're just who I'm looking for."

Unsurprisingly, the Man-Thing remained silent.

So Eric had a seat on the driest tree root he could find. And he waited.

The blinding light died off. Her blonde hair curled under her thin face, lit with a thin nose and thin lips. The whole of her body was lithe and petite under a familiar black and yellow spandex.

"Hi," she said again, unsure of the place or the people. She had heard of Doctor Strange's sanctorum before, seen it from the outside even. But inside it was dark, dark even for night, and the people (if they could be called that) gathered there were the same: gaunt, and quiet. They stared back at her blankly. Daredevil smelled magic.

She continued, stepping forward. "My name...I've been called Magik, but my name is Illyana Rasputin. I'm sorry if I'm intruding, but--"

"But you are anyway," said the green one, the Hulk. His body rippled when he spoke. "Doc, can't you put a magic fence around this place or something? Keep these people from barging in all the time?"

"If he did, it wouldn't keep me out," Illyana said. Very few people were capable of ignoring the man-giant, but she did, walking past him and his snide tone - as well as the Valkyrie, bruised and laid out on the couch, and everyone else staring at her - to Doctor Strange. "Sir, Limbo...Belasco's Limbo. I'm more than familiar with it, and--"

"Excuse me." Strange didn't bother to use his polite voice. "I'm sorry...Magik?"

"Illyana."

He nodded. "Of course. Illyana -- This is not the best of times. And as I'm sure your business is important..." He looked around the room, making a gesture with his eyes. Illyana followed them and saw what she had already seen: the gloom. The injury. These were heroes? She couldn't tell just by looking at them. "Well, as you can see, this is hardly the best time. If you could come back another time..."

He was the Sorcerer Supreme. He was supposed to understand. "But..."

"You heard him, child," Namor barked from behind the couch. "We don't have the time. And this is far from your own business."

"Hey, come on," Black Widow said. She strolled over to Illyana, who had made two very tight, tiny fists. "We don't have to take it out on her alright?" Natasha faced her. "Look Illyana, we'd help you in any other situation, but this is a bad time. A really bad time. Maybe you could go to...Oh, I don't know. Who's another mystic? Dr. Druid? No, no, he's dead..."

Illyana made a face that was meant more for Namor and the Doctor. "Belasco is gone." Natasha stopped talking just from the face that Stephen made. In fact the whole room stood still because of it, besides Illyana. "That is what I've been trying to tell you."

"Who's Belasco?" said Daredevil, having heard Doctor Strange's heart rate kick up.

"...The ruler of Limbo. One of the Limbos, at least," he said. Already he was stepping further away from everyone as invisible forces swept around him. "You are sure then, Illyana?"

This was more like it. "Limbo was my home once. I'm sure." Strange nodded as a third eye slowly formed on his forehead, shut tightly.

"Valkyrie encountered a Hel without a Hela..." Stephen pondered. "And we've dealt with both Daimon Hellstrom and Gargoyle recently."

"I... think see a pattern," Kyle Richmond said. "Hell. God, can't any of us escape that place?" Stephen closed his two usual eyes tightly as his third opened up.

"Give me a moment. I'll see if there is anything..." The Eye of Agamotto pierced the walls of the sanctum, pushed past the barriers of the mundane world and searched for the fiery depths. Stephen could feel the heat, and he could see the fire blinding the Eye. Hellfire had never been so bright before. He pushed deeper and found it much more difficult than it should have been. "...There..."

Something impenetrable. Thick, dark... powerful. It came from a source within the inner circles of Hell. Stephen pushed the Eye to go deeper. It tried, and it failed. For an extended second the flames touched the Eye, and so they touched Stephen. He cried out at the burning pain and at the same time felt more behind it. A gathering of power, so black, so evil...

Stephen couldn't control the scream because it wasn't his own. "...Aghhhhhh!"

The Eye returned its gaze inward. It shut quickly and retreated to the pendant around Stephen's neck. When he opened his own eyes again, he was shaking. "Doctor?" Daredevil approached him cautiously. Whatever vital signs he was giving off weren't right at all. "Stephen, are you okay? What is it?" He helped Strange to a chair, where the mage sat, looking very pale.

"No, I... I'll be fine, thank you," he said, then looked up at Illyana. "I found Belasco."

Illyana leaned in closer. "You did? So he's in Hell?" Stephen wiped his perspiring forehead and nodded weakly.

"Yes. He's in Hell. As is Isaac," he announced to the room. "And Daimon. I felt Patsy there too. And..." Everyone but the Valkyrie was crowded near Stephen. He surveyed them with bloodshot eyes.

"And I can't begin to imagine who else. But they are keeping me out."

Him, Illyana realized. The supreme sorcerer.

Hell.

If you had asked Mark Garney what the word meant to him a month ago, he would have told you it was the fiery place where bad people go when they die. A place that hurts you over and over again for all eternity. But in his heart of hearts, he would have equated that damnation only with the worst things in his life up to that point -- Saturday morning cartoons preempted for boring news reports, really cool toys without batteries to make them go, imprisonment in a second grade classroom when all he really wanted was to be outside, brussel sprouts. Things like that.

Now he was getting the real deal, the full effect of Hell in 3D and surround sound, vibrant colors that all seemed to end in a red tinge, roiling up against shadows blacker than any night Mark had ever been lost in. The ever-present sound of untold millions screaming, creating a barely-audible hum in the dry, hot rock of this land. No plant-life to be seen. Hell was dry rock, raging inferno, and blackened sky... and that was pretty much it. Nothing else could long endure here. Particularly the still-living.

His feet dragging, Mark tripped and fell, going facedown on the rock. He heard his guide pause, turn and, with a grunt of displeasure, return to his side.

"Come brother," the Gargoyle said, prodding Mark gently with one claw. "The father will not be happy with us if we tarry."

Mark looked up at the monstrous, orange-skinned demon that had once been a god-fearing man named Isaac Christians. "Thirsty," he croaked. "I'm thirsty..."

The Gargoyle leapt from foot-to-foot, looking -- Mark thought dimly -- like he had to pee. Had he not been so thirsty and so tired, Mark might have laughed at the idea.

"You will slake your thirst on the blood of thousands, brother. You will never go thirsty or hungry again, for the untold billions you will sup from. But you must get up. The father is near."

Mark nodded, as if this all made perfect sense to him. And it did, in a way... tho if you'd asked him to explain it he couldn't have. Putting his hands beneath him, he tried to push himself up... but his limbs quaked and failed, dropping him back onto the rock.

"You have the strength, brother, but you must reach deep," the Gargoyle prompted, his prancing growing more and more urgent by the moment.

"Can't..." Mark moaned. "Too tired... hungry... just wanna sleep..."

"You must!"

"Tired..."

"GET UP, YOU LAZY LITTLE TOAD!" Gargoyle roared, slamming his hands down on either side of the boy, hard enough to make Mark flop on the barren stone. The thing that had once been Isaac Christians straightened, eyes going wide in guilt and fear. He looked all around and then, satisfied that his loss of control hadn't been witnessed, he leaned over the boy again.

"Forgive me, brother... I don't know what came over me."

Mark looked back at him. He wasn't at all afraid of this man/demon, no matter how horrible his form was. If anything, Mark pitied him, and was just a little bit disgusted by him.

"Come. I will help you to stand, but you must continue the journey on your own."

"Okay," Mark replied quietly. He took the Gargoyle's claw and let the demon help him to his feet. He thought maybe he could go on after all. Isaac's weakness seemed to have invigorated him somehow.

Together, the boy and the demon/man started walking again, blissfully unaware that another set of eyes had seen their exchange. Swathed in the shadows that had borne him, the owner of those eyes moved to follow.

She had been mad before. Utterly, stark-raving mad. It wasn't all that long ago, and she had been forced to revisit that dark patch of her past just hours before.

So why wasn't she mad here? Here, of all places. The queen throne of Hell itself, overlooking a captive audience of all the death lords, all the high demons and devil wannabes in existence - The ones that hadn't been killed and absorbed yet by her king. Patsy Walker was forced to endure their belittling stares, to look into their souless eyes. Why wasn't Patsy cracking?

She knew why: This was "normal" for her. To Hellcat, member of the Defenders, a literal gang of introverts and iffy archetypes. To Patsy Hellstrom, wife of the Devil's son himself... soon for the second time. Hell was growing to be a place of not quite comfort, but far from the horrible feeling she used to get visiting the infernal.

"How is she doing?" Daredevil asked, leaning over the back of the couch.

"I don't know the woman that well, but I would guess she's been better," the Widow sighed. Beneath her, Valkyrie lay immobile across the cushions, flittering in and out of consciousness, her golden tresses pasted to her forehead by sweat.

"Besides, you should be able to see more than I can. What do you think?"

Daredevil was silent for a moment. "Her heartbeat's strong... though a little more rapid than it should be. Her breathing's not as shallow as it was when she got here -- that's good." He paused and pulled one of his scarlet gloves off, touching the bare fingers to Brunnhilde's naked forearm. "Surface blood vessels are starting to expand again. I'd estimate body temperature at about 94 degrees. All in all," he said, pulling the glove back on, "I'd say she's coming out of it."

"Showoff," the Widow muttered. But she smiled when she said it -- Daredevil could hear it in her voice -- and it made him feel a little better. Whatever she was angry with him about, he could still make her smile if he tried hard enough.

On the other side of the room, the Hulk was pacing angrily.

"So what now, Steve?" he demanded. "Gargoyle's in Hell, her boss is in Hell--"

"Belasco," Illyana said. "His name's Belasco."

"Are you still here?" the Hulk demanded. Then, as if she hadn't spoken, "But you can't get us there. So what now?" Great tracts of muscle flexed and moved across the Hulk's back and shoulders. Across the room, Wong winced. The Hulk needed to vent, but there was little the man-monster could do that wouldn't result in damage to the master's home. Even slapping his fist into his palm would likely blow out all the windows in the room.

"There may be more at stake here than just the fates of Isaac and Belasco, Bruce," Doctor Strange replied. "The power it would take to seal off Hell from the Earth dimension... it beggars the imagination..."

"We'll deal with it, just like we always deal with it. But right now, at just this moment, that," he jabbed a green finger across the room at the prone form of Valkyrie, "needs to be our primary concern. I've fought beside Val a lot, but I've never seen anybody tear her up that bad before."

"Nor have I," Namor said beside him.

"Me neither," Nighthawk agreed.

"And it was a friend that did it to her!"

Strange shot them all a look of irritation. "I'm well aware of what happened to Brunnhilde, gentlemen, and I'm doing all I can. Perhaps the Orb of Agamotto could pierce the barrier. That would at least give us a look at what we're dealing with..."

Nighthawk stole a look at Regina Garney, who was seated on the edge of an ottoman, her hands pressed together in front of her face as she watched the superheroes decide how best to go about finding her son. It was obviously taking a great deal of effort for her to remain still, and Kyle Richmond admired her strength. He wanted to help her because it was the right thing to do, but part of him also wanted to live up to her trust.

And yet, he had been to Hell recently, hadn't he? He didn't even like to think about what had happened to him there... tho he wasn't very likely to forget, given his penchant for transforming into a bat-winged demon every nightfall since his return.

Still, there was Regina... being strong and silent because she knew it was the course most likely to return her son to her quickly. Could Kyle show any less strength than her?

"What of our young friend?" Namor asked, nodding at Illyana. "She seems to possess some ability to traverse dimensions. Can she attempt a crossing?"

"Excuse me!" Illyana growled. "I'm standing right here, your kingliness. You could ask me directly, you know."

One of Namor's eyebrows jagged upward. "Very well. Are you able to attempt a journey to Hell, little one?"

Illyana's eyes fell. "Well... no. Earth and Limbo are the only places I can teleport to..."

The Hulk threw his hands in the air, making Wong wince again. "Oh for--"

"What about the Man-Thing?"

The Hulk froze, as did everyone else in the room. One by one, they all turned toward the person who had spoken, the person who still sat calmly on the ottoman. Regina Garney let her hands fall from her face and folded them in her lap.

"I've been thinking... that maybe he had something to do with Mark's disappearance in the first place. He was lurking around the Quinjet while the rest of you were in Wonderland. And you said he's in charge of some sort of dimensional nexus, right?"

"Not some sort of. The Nexus," Strange replied softly. "But yes, Regina, you are correct."

"Well, maybe I'm oversimplifying... but it seems to me that if the traffic control guy can't get us where we're going, nobody can."

"It may not be that simple," Namor said. "The Man-Thing has ever been a quandary, nearly impossible to communicate with..."

"But she's right," Strange chimed in. "Absolutely right. Damn it all, I should have suspected the Man-Thing as soon as I learned Mark had vanished. If nothing else, he is certainly our best chance for piercing the barrier that's been erected around Hell."

"Then what are we waiting for?" the Hulk demanded. "Magic us there, Steve. If Manny gives us any crap, I'll kick the chlorophyll out of him."

"I want to go too," Illyana said from the Hulk's elbow. The green goliath glared at her. "If Belasco's involved, it's my fight as much as it is any of yours."

"That's arguable," the Hulk replied. "Besides, haven't you been listening? This is hell, little girl. No place for a young lady."

Illyana scowled. "I've been at this almost as long as the rest of you, Dr. Banner. As for Hell... I've been there... I was even dead for awhile..."

The Hulk laughed at that. "Take a look around the room, girlie. If you haven't been dead, you're in the minority. Wong, you've been dead, right?"

"Yes, Dr. Banner."

"How 'bout you, Namor?"

Namor rolled his eyes and looked away. "We are wasting valuable time..."

"Trust me, he has. You, Nighthawk?"

"Twice."

"Steve?"

Illyana waved her hand and a glimmering stepping disk came into view. "Look, let's just go, okay? I can get us to the Everglades, and I can be of use wherever we end up too. This is the Defenders, right? I thought you just let people walk in off the street and join."

"You heard wrong, little girl."

"Your help would of course be welcome, Illyana Rasputin," Strange finally cut in, stepping forward and laying a hand on Illyana's shoulder. "And your mutant ability to teleport will allow me to save my own energies. Thank you."

The Hulk glowered at them both, but fell silent.

"I'm going too," Regina announced, standing up. "If that monster had anything to do with taking my boy away, I want to be there when we find out."

"Gina, I don't think that's such a--"

Regina swiped a hand thru the air, cutting off Nighthawk's protests and the ones she could see forming on Dr. Strange's lips. "Let's just skip the part where you guys try to convince me it'll be too dangerous, okay? I'm not crazy about using them, but I do have metahuman powers. I'm far from helpless. And this is my son we're talking about here..."

"I'm staying," the Black Widow announced from her position in front of the couch.

The Hulk chuckled at that. "Getting too hot for you, Widow?"

"Not at all," she replied icily. "I'd prefer to stay with Valkyrie, see that someone's here to offer some emotional support when she wakes up. No offense, Wong."

"None taken, miss."

"I'll stay too then," Daredevil announced. The Hulk made a dismissive noise.

"I... don't think that's a good idea," the Widow insisted. "I think you need to go, Daredevil."

He blinked, cocked his head in her direction. "Why?"

"If it wasn't for you, we'd all still be stuck in Wonderland. You might be a lot more use than you think. Besides, you've been to Hell, even fought Mephisto. You might be able to offer some insight."

Daredevil frowned at his former lover, listened to the steadiness of her heartbeat. Whatever her motivations, she wasn't being deceitful... she really did think it would be for the best if he tag along. That didn't make him feel any better about her basically telling him to go away, but at least she wasn't trying to hide those sentiments.

"Okay," he sighed, straightening from where he'd been leaning on the back of the couch. "Not sure what I can handle that the sorcerer supreme or the Hulk can't, but if you guys want me, I'll come."

"We can of course use all help that is willingly given, Daredevil," Strange replied. "Now, if we are all of one mind... Illyana?"

The Defenders gathered around the Russian girl. Another glowing stepping disk materialized beneath them, and in the next moment they were gone.

It had been some time since Dane Whitman, the Black Knight, had attended an Arthurian feast in ancient Camelot. Generally preceding the onset of a dangerous campaign, he remembered them as raucous affairs, the Knights of the Round Table hammered to a man (except for Galahad, of course -- noble, teetotal, saintly, utterly boring Galahad). Sometimes massive acts of violence would be acted out between drunken knights on the very table they all ate from. On other occasions, serving wenches would be had by the dozens on the same table.

On this night, Dane suspected there would be a little bit of both types of revelry. This feast was slightly different for the Black Knight, however, as the celebration was in his honor. He was the one who would be embarking on a dangerous crusade on the morrow. He was the one who would raise his sword against the forces of evil.

His sword...

He raised the Ebony Blade from where it lay on the stone floor at his feet. Ponderously, he drew the black sword from its sheath and looked upon it.

The Blade had a blood curse on it, one that had haunted his bloodline for centuries. Anyone who wielded the Blade and drew blood with it, would be driven to draw blood again and again, in a futile attempt to slake the sword's undying thirst.

He thought he had escaped the curse at last when the Ebony Blade was claimed by the Bloodwraith. The Bloodwraith had promptly brought the curse on his own head, and even tho Dane had always felt terribly about that, there was still a part of him that was very thankful that it hadn't been him.

But then Merlin had stolen him back in time from his native 21st Century, had bequeathed upon him this earlier version of the Ebony Blade, from Merlin's own time.

And this morning, Merlin had informed him that, in order to save heaven and earth, not to mention the Nine Rings themselves, he would have to kill a man with it.

The festivities continued, but Dane Whitman remained a pensive calm at the center of that storm.

Eric looked up as he felt it: An arrival. Sitting in this swamp, the Nexus, he felt slightly more attuned to that sort of thing. He looked up to the red, tear-shaped eyes of the root-creature. "That should be them, I suppose," Eric said, and knowing there would be no answer, followed the voices that were fading into earshot.

"...really wouldn't mind coming here so often if it wasn't for the smell." He didn't recognize that one. Eric followed further.

"I don't smell anything." Kyle, he assumed. The rumors were true, apparently: He had returned. He sounded almost the same as the last time they met. Further.

"Well we wouldn't have to make the place our damn vacation spot if Cyndi Lauper here could 'port somewhere besides some place we've never heard of." It sounded like...No. It couldn't be. That cynical tone was too much for him. "As it is, we might as well set up a freakin' hotel here."

Another voice. Young, female. Eric didn't recognize it, but felt like he'd follow it anywhere. "Hey, I got us here, didn't I?"

"Please, both of you," And that one was unmistakeable, confident like a surgeon's hands. "This is neither the time nor the--"

Stephen and the others walked into a clearing -- as far as that goes in the swamp -- and stopped cold. He saw someone in the distance, thought it couldn't be. But it was. "...By Hoggoth -- Eric?"

The Devil-Slayer stepped forward. "Yes. It's me." They kept towards him, some familiar, some not. But he felt it from them, they way they spoke to each other and they way they walked - Never too close together: This was still the Defenders.

"Eric, man!" Kyle said. Why wasn't he in costume...? It didn't matter.

"The Devil-Slayer has been long missed, Eric," Namor said with a quick, strong squeeze of his shoulder. "But why here? And why now?"

"Because that is how it has to be," Eric said. Calmly and without a word, he led them back through the brush again to where he had sat before. There they found another smaller clearing, and at its center, the Man-Thing.

"Then... You know?" Stephen asked.

"I've known since yesterday. When my battle with the Adversary, meant to last forever, was cut short by his disappearance, I knew. When I arrived back on Earth, I knew. There is a rumbling in the Gray Lands below," And he pointed down as he walked to the side of the Man-Thing. "Where the dead go. This is my true calling as the Devil-Slayer. So here I am."

"Then this thing?" The blonde girl, Illyana as Eric would learn, asked. "It... will take us there?" Eric shook his head, already reaching for the pouch at his side.

"No. At least, not as you are now. I don't doubt that you've already looked into Hell, Doctor?" Stephen remembered and shivered at the thought, but managed a nod. "Then you know there is something there."

"I don't know what," Stephen admitted. "It's like... afield. Something distorting the usual entrypoints to Hell. It was... very painful. Even I couldn't withstand it."

"And none of us could, or will," Eric said as he fished something out of his pouch, "without this." He held out a gloved hand, little brown, organic beads in his palm. A wrinkle went through Daredevil's nose.

"That's not..." He tensed. "No. No way. Do you know what that will do to m--" Secret identity, Matt, He remembered. "To us?"

Devil-Slayer scowled. Of course he did. "It will seperate your mind and spirit from the shell of your body. It will make you... malleable enough to pass through the distortion around Hell unharmed."

"But..." He was grasping for words. There were morals, and there was reason. The others remained quiet. "Doctor Strange -- Stephen, tell him this isn't necessary. We have two sorcerers and the Man-Thing..." Strange said nothing, just stroked his beard. "Oh my God! That's peyote. You're actually considering this?"

"Only... only if it is absolutely necessary." Stephen aimed this at Eric.

"My time with America's natives has taught me much. This is the only way to arrive in Hell safely."

"Then..." Stephen sighed. "It is the only way." They didn't all agree. Illyana had seen seen Forge on this before... it had scared her. But when Stephen spoke, it was often the decision of the others, too.

"Don't worry, man," Kyle assured Daredevil as the buttons were passed out. "I took some of this stuff in college... it's kind of cool, actually. I mean, in a better situation..." Daredevil didn't respond.

"I guess you have to try everything once..." The Hulk said as Eric came to him. He shook his head.

"I'm afraid not, Hulk." The rest of the buttons went back into his pouch. "You won't be able to join us."

"And why the Hell not?"

"Why not...? Look at you. I wouldn't have enough for you even if I didn't have to supply everyone else." Hulk breathed very loudly through his nose.

"Listen, Payne! I didn't come along just to get pushed to the side, and--"

"Oh, for God's sake!" Said Illyana. With her free hand she conjured a glowing disk near the Hulk while he was giving Eric the evil eye. "Just go back to Doctor Strange's and wait!"

"...I never liked you, Eric," Hulk said as he slipped a bukly leg into the disk. Eric looked him over.

"You're much different from the last time we met, Hulk," he said as the disk swallowed the Hulk's body. "And still very much the same." And then they were sitting, in the swamp, buttons in hand. Eric joined them, sitting Indian-style by the Man-Thing.

"I'm ready when you are," he said. Stephen looked around to see them all doing the same. They ended up looking to him. Of course. Of course he would have to go first.

"...For our friends," He said finally, and in a rush, popped the buttons into his mouth. They tasted dry and bitter, but he managed, and swallowed the handful with a gulp. It was their turn. One by one, they did the same, reluctantly. Daredevil went last.

"So... what now?" he asked anxiously.

"Now," Eric said, relaxing, "we wait."

A flash of light, a descending disk of white, and the Incredible Hulk was standing on Bleeker Street outside of Strange's Sanctum Sanctorum.

"Kid couldn't be bothered to drop me off inside?" the Hulk grumbled. "This what I get for giving her a hard time over the being-dead thing? See if I don't twist her into a Britney-pretzel next time I see her..."

He got some strange looks as he approached the front door -- it was night, but the streets were never empty in Greenwich, and the sight of the Incredible Hulk just appearing and knocking on somebody's front door would raise even the most jaded New Yorker's eyebrows.

He ascended the stoop and raised a finger to tap gently on the door... then paused. Squeezing his eyes shut, he shook his head, as if to clear it. "Shut up, Betty," he growled. "Just shut up."

Then he knocked. A moment later, the door opened, and a surprised Wong allowed him back into the house.

As the door shut behind him, a pair of white, pupil-less eyes watched from the shadows across the street. Kurt Wagner had been investigating a supposed demonic sighting in Greenwich for most of the evening. All he'd gathered in the hours he'd been searching was that there had indeed been some sort of metahuman battle between the Sub-Mariner and an orange demon that then disappeared into the street. The accounts were jumbled, and Kurt was sure he could find out more if he could question the populace without fear of them tying him to a stake and burning him alive. Still, he'd decided not to use an image inducer anymore... he was now an empowered representative of the holy mother church, and he would not hide his true appearance any longer.

None of this was on his mind as he watched the Hulk disappear into the Greenwich house tho. What was on his mind was the fact that he'd walked down Bleeker Street three times tonight, and hadn't noticed that house until a 9-foot green giant walked up to it.

But now that he did see it, he knew it for what it was. The home of Dr. Strange. Kurt wasn't sure what business the Hulk had with Strange, but if anyone could give him answers about what had happened here yesterday, it had to be the Sorceror Supreme.

Of course, the Vatican probably wouldn't be happy to learn that he was consorting with magicians, but he supposed he could just leave that part out of his report.

Looking both ways, Nightcrawler crossed Bleeker Street and approached the front door of the Sanctum.