Mandipoor, Devil’s Island, then

It'd all gone to hell in the blink of an eye, reflected Union Jack. Somehow, everyone had been alerted to Excalibur's presence. Jack knew this, because somehow the information had been thrust into his skull as well. Magic was his first guess (he'd been around Captain Britain and others who used it often enough), though it didn't much matter now. A mercenary Union Jack recognized as Bombshell threw one of her patented explosive, and he had to move now. Throwing himself backwards, he gambled that his suit's armor would save his life.

The force of the explosion threw the patriotic hero Union Jack through the air, but even as he was crashing back towards Mother Earth, his battle trained reflexes activated his earpiece, and he shouted for reinforcements.

Hitting the ground hard, Rock rolled to the side as he upholstered his weapon. He fired several wild shots, hoping to ward off potential attackers than actually hitting anyone.

“I need some support, damn it!”

Union Jack rolled to a stop, so that he could assess the situation. That would prove to be possibly fatal, for when he came to a stop, Union Jack looked up and saw several Hydra soldiers had their weapons trained upon him.

“Hail Hydra!” the four soldiers seemed to shout as one, before the closest one took aim with his automatic.

Union Jack lashed out with his leg immediately, kicking the barrel of the gun into the air, where it fired off harmlessly. Pushing himself up by his hands, Jack swung his feet to underneath his body, and sprang forward, tackling three of them to the ground at once. He dispatched the first one with a headbutt, dispatched the one on his right by slamming the palm of his hand into the unfortunate bugger's face, and defeated the one on his left with a powerful chop to the neck.

Unfortunately, that left the fourth and final member of Hydra, who managed to scramble to his feet, and had his side arm drawn and pointed at the British Hero's eye.

“We are Hydra, cut off one limb and another will take its place!” he bellowed.

“Well, get ready for the cut mate.”

Jack ducked his head, and a whirling, indestructible metal shield slammed into his assailant. The metal disc ricocheted perfectly into the hands of U.S. Agent. Silverclaw and Sabra were close behind, along with Hellios, Darkstar, Scarlet Scarab and the soldiers they were leading

“Thanks, Agent,” Union Jack stood up, and took a split second to appraise the situation.

FUBAR was all he could come up with.

“Sabra, take your team and flank left, Scarab, flank right!” Rock ordered, “hard and fast, and don’t give them time to group together!”

Though he was pleased to see his orders were being followed, Union Jack knew in both his head and heart that the only thing he could really do in this situation was ride herd until the end. There were too many criminals, too many soldiers, simply too damn many factors.

But he fought on despite knowing that. He was Union Jack, after all. It was almost tradition.

When Josiah Holt, AKA Night Strike in law enforcement and Human Rights circles, saw and sensed that Excalibur was on the same island as too damn many criminals to count, his first thoughts weren’t of panic.

No, he felt an overwhelming sense of relief bordering on elation.

Holt was a professional saboteur, assassin and general jack of all trades mercenary, these days at least. He had decided to attend this clan-destine meeting for two reasons. The first had been to network, to integrate himself even deeper with others in his field. It never hurt to establish a professional relationship with others in the same field before a job came along.

But the second reason he’d chosen to attend is because he really, really had his heart set on either stealing, purchasing or bargaining for nasty extra normal weapon. Maybe a gamma bomb, legacy virus laced intercontinental, or perhaps something as simple as admantium laced sword. This summit was as much for displaying, high lighting and demonstrating highly illegal weapons as it was for networking with one’s fellow criminal, after all.

As a matter of fact, he’d already found something that caught his eye, even as he knew it was (way) out of his price range. Holt had been mentally contemplating ways to make it his (up to, but not limited to stealing, begging or selling his soul, both figuratively and literally) when those idiots came barging in.

“There is no chance I’m going to pass this up,” he swore to himself, even as laser fire flew overhead. Ducking behind a covered jeep, he took a glance out to note the positions of the Excalibur team and their support troops before he made a dash for his objective. Excalibur was having a hard enough time keeping people from running; he doubted they would target anyone running into the chaos.

That was their mistake, and Night Strike was willing to gamble it would cost an entire country their existence.

A dozen yards away from where the fire fight, appeared a single man, carried to the beach by his personal teleporter signal.

He wore a black, skin tight suit with small, silver circuits laced across it almost like webbing. Draped across the suit was a dark, sleeveless trench coat. The man himself sported brown hair, and wore a pair of round glasses across his face that seemed more suited for a High School book worm than a man of action. On his hips he wore two seemingly empty sword sheaths.

No longer going by his birth name, he was recognized by his few peers by the name of Ninjato. It was a sword he’d used while traveling Asia, and while it wasn’t his preferred weapon of choice, the man thought it best described his nature, and yet wasn’t revealing enough to give his foes any real knowledge about his abilities. Why some superhumans advertised their powers in their code names, Ninjato had no idea.

Casually placing his arms behind his back, he observed the battle for a moment, taking in the utter chaos as if it were simply an article in the morning’s paper.

Finally, he found himself motivated to action when three mercenaries, armed to the teeth with automatic weapons.

Without a second thought, the young man approached them with the greatest stealth possible until he was within several yards of the men. The soldiers, though possessed of battle trained instincts, foolishly focused their attention on the battle they had just escaped, and not in front of them.

Removing three thin needles, no larger than regular pencils, from his pouch, Ninjato threw them with surgical precision, where each one embedded themselves into the left eye of the men's skull.

“Arrgh!” Only one of the men managed to scream out before the needles released their payload of nano-technology directly into their brains. The microscopic robots began their work on their brain tissue and basic DNA, re-knitting synapses, overriding the existing genetic code into something stronger, something deadlier. The men would have screamed, if they could, as their muscles tore themselves and reformed at three times their original strength. But their vocal cords were the first thing Ninjato’s nano-bot’s shut down, leaving them unable to even whimper as their entire bodies were changed down to an atomic level.

Watching with sick scientific detachment, Ninjato waited a full minute before his designer weapon had completed its work. Then, as one, the three men rose. Their skin was bright red, from increased cellular oxygen intake, and their eyes seemed dislodged from their skulls, though one would never guess that their vision had just been greatly enhanced, so much so that they could read a newspaper from fifty yards away. Their minds and bodies held the muscle memory of a dozen new and hard fought battles, in addition to their already impressive skill.

“Unit Trinity read for your orders,” they droned together.

Ninjato nodded impassively. Though others might have been impressed with it, the scientific supervillain knew that his ‘soldier juice’ was hardly anything a true scientist should be proud of. The strain it caused on the men’s body would kill them in twenty hour hours, and they’d only be operable for half that time. That wasn’t too much of a concern, though, it wasn’t as if he needed them that long, after all.

Striding into the carnage with his newly drafted troops, Ninjato silently smirked at the irony of a pawn using even more pawns for his own ends. Oh, how the master would laugh.

“Silverclaw, stay close!” Sabra barked as a large Alpha Class Hydra Man-droid battle armor began stomping towards them, kicking up the beach sand as it went.

The Israeli super agent went through the armor's history in her minds eye as it bore down on her. Designed as the terrorist's answer to the walking battle tanks known as Man-droids, the things stood some nine feet tall, five feet across with gleaming green armor and that damned Hydra symbol at the center of it's chest, it was faster and more maneuverable than the average Man-Droid, though lacking in firepower in comparison.

“Uh, you want to take this one?” asked U.S Agent

“Gladly. Cease fire!” Sabra ordered to the soldiers flanking her, moments before the battle armor was almost upon her. The last thing she needed right now was the distraction.

The battle armor was nearly on top of her when Sabra leapt into the air, and drove her powerful fists into the metal chest of her armored attacker. The punch was so powerful that the pilot inside the armor found himself thrown for a loop, falling backwards on his ass like a sucker punched drunk. In the several seconds it took him to recover his wits, Sabra was standing over him, her powerful fists clenched together.

The Hydra soldier shrieked as Sabra brought her fists down with enough force to split steel. In his panic, the man had forgotten that six inches of armored glass. When Sabra’s fist struck the glass, it cracked like an egg. Wedging her fingernails inside the glass, Sabra strained her muscles before the armored glass popped off like a beer cap.

“Don’t kill me, please!” begged the soldier, who’d suddenly realized he’d been ordered into battle as a delaying tactic, chum thrown into the water to keep the sharks from the bigger fish.

“Shut up,” Sabra activated her wrist needles, a single dart piercing the man’s flesh and rendering him unconscious. Not for the first time, Sabra was thankful that her superiors insisted she carry some non lethal weapons into battle. The use of lethal force always managed to escalate battles, and that was the last thing they needed right now.

But with the immediate threat dealt with, Sabra found herself at a loss for what to do next. All over, there was chaos. The gathered terrorists had turned against each other as well as Excalibur, and began exchanging fire.

“Look out!”

Given the pandemonium, Sabra could be forgiven for not seeing the feet that collided into her mid section before it was too late. The Israel super agent was tossed backwards, striking a hum-vee so hard the bullet proof steel was dented.

“Sabra!” Silverclaw shifted into the form of a humanoid cat, and snarled at the man who'd struck her mentor. The man was tall, easily six feet and while not broad shouldered, was far skinny. Dressed in all black, with a white spider-symbol between the eyes of the mask, Silverclaw had little trouble recognizing the man as the infamous Black Tarantula, a drug lord from her native South America.

“As tempting as it might be flee this confrontation, I'm afraid I must make an example of the United Nations law enforcement,” Black Tarantula's tone was cold and impersonal, though his words were anything but, “first X-Force, now this. If I'm to maintain my reputation, I simply cannot allow this to go unpunished.”

“I'll tear you to shreds!” hissed Silverclaw.

“'Claw, no!” U.S Agent grabbed for the youngest member of Excalibur, but missed by inches.

Almost casually, Black Tarantula knocked the young heroine aside. Silverclaw landed on her feet (in no small part thanks top the cat form she'd assumed), but when she looked up to face the enemy, she saw his eyes glowing with power.

“I will make your death swift.”

Energy lanced outwards from the crimelord's eyes, and all Silverclaw panicked, raising her arms in front of her face to protect herself (as opposed to dodging or something more useful, lectured a small voice), but was shocked when she heard a -clang!- and felt someone fall on top of her.

“'Agent!”

“Don't respect your elders in the field, you get killed,” groused Walker as he stood up, his shield between him, his teammate, and the super powered drug lord.

“Sorry, what he did to Sabra...”

“Ought to have been a clear sign not to under estimate him,” finished U.S Agent, “this bastard is a class three superhuman, at least. I doubt you know what that means, so let me make it simple. Not only is he dangerously strong and powerful, but he's trained to use said power to its fullest potential. Think Jackie Chan with super strength.”

Silverclaw gulped audio ably.

“Yeah, my thoughts exactly.”

“You flatter me, U.S Agent,” Black Tarantula fell into a fighting stance, “but I've read your file too. If I may say so, my training and strength greatly surpass your own. I warn you now, I will kill one of you for today's trouble. Decide amongst yourself, now!”

Black Tarantula was a second away from leaping into action when Sabra's fist slammed into his kidney. Survival instincts flaring, Tarantula swung his fist behind him as he spun around to face his opponent, but the super agent fluidly ducked under the blow and delivered another two strong punches to the villain's kidneys.

“I've already decided who will die here,” Sabra snorted as she leapt back. Pointing her wrists, she unleashed a barrage of her specially designed needled. Laced with energy, they didn't need to pierce the flesh to paralyze whoever they struck, though made from surgical steel; they had little trouble doing both, as Black Tarantula discovered.

“Arrgh!” Though blessed with superior healing, Black Tarantula was hardly immune to pain. He tried to brush some of the needles off his chest, but he made the mistake of again ignoring Sabra. He'd barely removed a quarter of the needles before Sabra lunged at him, furiously battering his body all over.

One well placed snap kick caught Sabra in the chin and drove her back, but Black Tarantula realized the damage was already done. The heroine had driven the needles further into his skin as his body healed. With his skin healed over the needles, they now stabbed painfully at his nerves, little blades constantly slicing underneath his flesh. The villain knew that nothing short of surgery would get them out now, damn his healing factor!

“According to Mossad files, you are in fact a talented fighter,” Sabra cracked her knuckles, “care to test your skills against a seasoned Krav Maga fighter?”

“Love to,” snarled the drug lord.

Cybermancer bobbed and weaved through the night sky, her scanners working furiously to work out a flight pattern that wouldn’t get her killed. She was in the middle of returning fire with a horde of private mercenaries, when she realized that just to the north of her scanners were blank, literally. An entire section of the beach was a perfect blank slate, according to all casual scans.

Suzi didn’t become a scientist by being an idiot. With a simple radar scan (ironically, most advanced cloaking devises still had trouble with basic radar simply because the people who built them assumed no one would use such a primitive method), she pierced the cloaking field. What it revealed made her stop dead.

“Eshu, I need you here, now!” shouted the armored heroine.

Eshu, a shapeshifter, had just polished off several AIM agents when he heard his teammate call for him.

Stretching his legs forward, he was at her side in three lengthy steps.

“What’s the deal, Cybermancer?”

Cybermancer began adjusted a knob on her gauntlet, and pointed it towards the seemingly empty corner of the beach, “You’ll see in just a second.”

A flash of energy was released, and Eshu knew his heart would have stopped if he still had one. Standing revealed before them was an AIM modified, intercontinental ballistic stinger missile, nick named the ‘country killer’. Twenty feet long and built like a dump truck, it carried a missile half that size, armed with several metric tons of radiological and biological weapons. It had been used only once as a weapon of black mail, before a Shield team shut it down, that was one time too many. The weapon's very existence scared the living hell entire intelligence community, and looking at it, her scanners detailing each and every deadly toxin and radioactive element inside the payload, while knowing that it could strike anywhere on the planet, Suzi could see why.

The thing was a marvel of extranormal technology, with Pym particles shrinking down literal tons of chemical weapons mixed with radioactive elements that would ground the poisons for thousands of years, and a payload system that could circle the earth twice before coming down within inches of its designated target. It was a work of genius. Twisted and evil certainly, but genius all the same.

Eshu whistled softly, never expecting to actually be in the presence of such a feared weapon. In its own way, it was like seeing a perverted version of the Enola Gay.

“We have to secure this thing,” snapped Cybermancer, “there is no way in hell we can let anyone take this thing with them as a keepsake. I'm going to start disabling the rocket, you cover me.”

“You better work fast,” Eshu pointed towards a figure running away from the weapon, “because there’s no way that’s a good thing.”

“Damn it, stop him!” Cybermancer barked, “we have to know what he did!”

Cybermancer shot towards the man, but unfortunately she’d already been spotted. The man removed a gun from his side holster and fired. Cybermancer, confident of her armor’s abilities, never thought to dodge, and it was a mistake she paid for when the specially designed missile struck her chest plate. The size of a pencil, it was a specially made localized electro-magnetic pulse weapon. While it didn’t crash all her systems, her boot-jets and flight computers were instantly compromised, and she crashed to ground in a heap.

“No sleeping on the job,” teased Eshu, his malleable body reaching out with tentacles, ensnaring their mystery foe.

“Damn it, Kevin, let me go!”

Eshu did a double take when he heard his birth name. No one, not even his fellow members on Excalibur, knew his real name. Keeping his body firmly wrapped around the man, Eshu squinted his eyes, and was stunned to find that he recognized the man.

“Holt?! What in God's name are you doing here?”

“What do you think I'm doin'? Man's gotta eat,” he spat, trying to struggle his way out of Eshu's grip, “ever since the U.N., your employers gave Magneto our homeland, us Magistrates have had to resort to merc work just to feed our family!”

“Do you know this man?”

“Yeah, we…worked the same detail in Genosha,” Eshu explained carefully, “his name is Josiah Holt, call sign Night Stalker. He and I…sorta dealt with dissenters back in the ol’ mother land.”

“What he means to say is that we kept our fellow mutants down,” Holt grinned. Eshu tightened his grip around his once fellow officer, but he kept on talking, “we were some of the best capture/kill units.”

“Shut up!” snarled Eshu, this time constricting his body so hard his captive howled in pain, “we were never that close in Genosha, Holt. Want me to fix that?”

“Forget your grudge,” Suzi insisted, “we need to know what he was doing with that missile.”

“You're pretty dumb for someone so smart,” snickered Night Stalker, “the United Nation gave Magneto Genosha. Where do you think I aimed that damn thing at?”

The entire beach seemed to shudder, and the two heroes watched in horror as the missile began its pre-flight. The rockets began flaring, covering the area in exhaust.

“Ha! I wouldn’t want to be on the other end of that thing!” smirked Night Stalker.

“Hellios! We need you here!” Cybermancer shouted into her radio. Once glanced at her HUD told her that her armor wouldn’t fully reboot for another full minute, but the rocket would be ready to launch in half that time “Hellios, answer me, this is an emergency!”

A roar of pain was her response, and for a second Cybermancer realized just how out of control this entire situation was. All around her people were embroiled in their own battles while a missile with a payload powerful enough to kill a nation was readying to launch less than twenty feet away.

“Damn, damn damn!” Suzi ripped open a panel on her gauntlet, determined to rewire her armor by hand if need be. But by the time she got to the first wire, the missile’s rockets began firing, and lifting off it’s launch platform.

“No!”

Eshu took a moment to look at his teammate, Holt, and then the rocket. With great reluctance but amazing speed none the less, he shot out his hand like a fishing reel and grabbed the side of the missile, his shape shifting body holding on like gum to a sidewalk.

“Eshu, don't!” Suzi saw it happen almost in slow motion, but it was already too late. The shapeshifter had released Night Stalker, and was clinging to the side, dangling like a fish on a reel.

The lenses on Suzi's armor picked up Eshu worming his way inside the missile, his pliable form slipping through cracks in the missile's designs. But the fact that her friend was now inside a deadly missile capable of wiping out an entire country naturally did nothing to ease her anxiety.

“That kid was always stupid,” remarked Holt.

“Shut! Up!” Suzi spun around and smashed her steel gloved fist into Night Stalker's face, loosening her fair share of teeth and breaking his jaw.

Ten seconds later her armor fully rebooted, and the armored heroine didn't hesitate to activate her boot jets.

“‘Jack, this is Cybermancer!” she called out over the comm., “I'm pursuing a ballistic missile armed with radioactive bio-weapons! Eshu is already on board!”

“Bloody hell! You two picked a wonderful time for a vacation!” Suzi grimaced, realizing she could hear the sounds of battle clearly over Rock’s voice.

“We don’t have much of a choice here, ‘Jack!” Cybermancer hated the thought of deserting her teammates when they needed her most, but the lives of millions would always have more weight measured against her life, and that of her teammates.

Not all of Excalibur struggled against overwhelming power, though. Darkstar, Scarlet Scarab and Hellios, easily the three most powerful members of the team, actually managed to hold their own fairly well.

Darkstar created ebony walls to barrel roll soldiers, while Scarlet Scarab's powerful blasts cut down several thugs armored in outdated Crimson Dynamo armors, while Hellios simply waded through a mob of soldiers who actually choose courage instead of flight (likely knowing they sure as hell wouldn't get far. They were on an island, after all).

But all the same, it was like trying to catch roaches after someone flipped the light on. Both Scarlet Scarab and Darkstar were terrified out of their minds, fighting on pure emotional instinct.

“That the best you can do? Come on, then!”

Hellios, however, wasn't quite as worried.

Plasma bursts, nano-tech bombs, gamma bursts and even the occasional knife or arrow bounced harmlessly off his super powered form. Nothing that they threw at him even gave the solar powered hero pause, and he was confident nothing would.

Even hip deep in AIM Dreadnaughts, he was already envisioning, in his mind's eye, how he would save the entire team from this disaster.

Sadly, reality had other plans.

“Die for Set!” Hellios saw a man, dressed in a green, snake like uniform, aim a rocket launcher and fire. Thinking the payload was nothing, Hellios plucked the missile out of the air like it was a paper plane, and crushed it in his hand.

Almost immediately, he realized his mistake, as his hand began to feel numb, while glowing brighter and brighter.

“That bomb was designed to tear the energy from your power soaked cells!” raved the madman as he marched forward, ignoring the scorching heat that was already radiating from Hellios' body, “I've turned you into a living, solar powered bomb! Kill for Set! The glory of the death god...”

A surge of pure energy reduced the man to ash, but Hellios hadn't noticed, nor did he hear Cybermancer's cry for help over his own scream of pain.

“Hellios!” Darkstar saw her teammate in agony, and reached out with her darkforce powers, hoping to contain his rampaging power. Unfortunately, the raw solar power dissolved it instantly.

“Laynia! Don't get too close!” Scarlet Scarab warned.

“We have to do something!” By now, Hellios was radiating so much power the sand beneath him was molten glass, “you heard that madman! He could destroy the entire island!”

“I'll try to siphon off his heat, maybe get it under control!” Scarlet Scarab proposed, trying not to let the doubt he felt slip through his voice. Even with his own great strength and endurance, he was beginning to sweat. Already Darkstar had flown back some ten feet to avoid being baked, and it was barely enough.

“Can you handle that much power?”

“I don't know. But if I can’t, will it really matter?”

U.S. Agent watched Sabra and Black Tarantula fight back and forth for what seemed like an eternity. While he wanted to help her with every bone in his body, he also knew that he’d just be getting in the way at this point.

But like a good teammate, he kept his eye on the fight while he dealt with the riff raff. And it was because of that, that U.S. Agent say a most curious sight.

“What in hell’s name…?”

To his astonishment, U.S. Agent saw the mysterious Ninjato, flanked by his enslaved helpers, actually walking into the chaos. The fact that they were heading into the firefight, and not away from it, was suspicious, but from the look of him, he knew exactly where he was going and what he wanted.

Something tugged at the back of Walker’s mind, an inkling of a theory. A man of action, John Walker lived by his instincts, and his instincts were telling him to investigate.

“Silverclaw! Watch your back, I need to check something out!” Agent hollered to his teammate as he dashed off.

U.S. Agent tried his best to keep an eye on the men, but there was a burst of light and wave of heat from somewhere that blinded him for a split second, but that was enough to lose the mystery guest.

U.S Agent cursed, but recovered quickly enough. He scanned the ground, looking for foot prints, “Where’d that little bastard disappear to…?”

It didn’t take him long to find their trail, and he followed it for several feet before it literally disappeared into a well lit tent, that appeared to be almost completely empty, with the exception of a few crates, though a glance at the two dead AIM soldiers told the former Avenger that this was no mere tent.

“This is a bad idea,” U.S. Agent took a few steps back, then charged forward, “this is a really bad idea!”

As he plunged into the tent, the background changed from empty tent to sleek, metal room filled with all kinds of equipment and weapons. Besides enough technology to keep the average mad scientist busy for a year, there was of course Ninjato, and his three zombie soldiers.

“I don’t recall inviting you,” Ninjato said simply. He glanced at his soldiers, “Kill him.”

U.S. Agent brought up his shield as he unholstered his weapon, diving to the side as he returned fire. And though he wasn’t Clint Barton, he still managed to do fatal damage to the three by the time he landed.

Observing the three corpses on the floor, Ninjato could only sigh, “And I brought them along so that I wouldn’t have to get my hands dirty. Did you really have to kill them, John? You really did limit their usefulness.”

U.S. Agent tried to react to hearing his real name. He knew that, within certain intelligence circles, both good and bad, his entire history was an open file, literally, “Sorry buddy, I can’t stand henchmen. I’m impatient that way.”

“Very well then,” U.S Agent saw his foe reach into his coat and slash his hand towards him. Though his first thought was that it was merely a feint, his instincts took over regardless, raising his shield in front of his body and a split second later, he heard something shatter. Looking down, he could see some type of glass or crystal on the floor.

Didn’t even see the damned things, thought U.S. Agent. As he watched Ninjato grab his seemingly empty sheathes that were around his waist, Walker prepared himself for one nasty fight. An opponent who’s abilities he didn’t know but was obviously both intelligent and skilled, in a high tech warehouse filled with God knows what while smelling like a chemical factory.

He could already feel the head ache building.

“Ugh!”

Sabra stumbled back, having taken a direct punch to the head from Black Tarantula’s fist. When Black Tarantula stepped forward to follow up with a left hook, Sabra stepped back and brought her foot up and smashed it into the villain’s knee. The damage wasn’t enough to prevent him from ramming his shoulder into her stomach, but Sabra didn’t mind the pain too much.

Not when it gave her the chance to slam both fists down upon the Drug Lord’s back with enough power to kill a herd of rhinos. Grabbing underneath the man’s armpits, Sabra then pitched him bodily into a nearby hover tank.

They’d been fighting back and forth for a full ten minutes now, neither gaining an advantage.

Unfortunately for the two, they were too evenly matched. Strength, combat experience and just plain toughness, neither seemed to be able to gain an advantage, at least at first.

When Sabra saw Black Tarantula’s eyes flair with power, she knew what was going to happen next. With a burst of energy, Sabra found herself pitched backwards, slamming into a parked hummer, her powerful body bending the steel door.

“Surrender…and I promise to end this quickly,” gasped Black Tarantula, his chest heaving with exertion.

“If the son of a whore killed me here…I’d never live it down,” Sabra hissed. She tried to stand, but then clutched her hands to her side and hissed in pain.

Incensed, and seeing such an obvious weakness, Black Tarantula marshaled his strength, rushing forward like a drunkard with the hopes of finishing this fight and then escaping.

Sabra saw then, and began limping towards the front of the hummer, as if to get away. But when Black Tarantula was only a mere five feet away, Sabra stood straight as if she’d never been hurt, grabbed the hummer’s bumper and swung it towards her foe with all her mighty strength.

Black Tarantula never had a chance.

The hummer slammed into him bodily and threw him into the air, and far, far away from the battle.

“Idiots are always too willing to see weakness in woman,” muttered the Israeli agent as she discarded the hummer.

“Sabra...!”

Sabra turned to see Silverclaw rushing towards her, along with a giant piece of shrapnel that was hurtling towards them both.

“Down!”

Sabra grabbed the younger heroine and placed Silverclaw in front of her while she braced herself for the impact. The flaming Man-Droid battery slammed into her back, but thankfully wasn’t enough to hurt the Israeli agent.

“Oh man…” Silverclaw looked at the wreckage that mihght have taken her life, were it not for Sabra.

“Maria, we don’t have time to stare,” snapped Sabra, “we need to get this situation under control. So report, or start fighting!”

“Something’s wrong with Agent!” Silverclaw explained hastily.

Sabra scoffed. Despite the man’s brash attitude, he was one of the most capable members of Excalibur.

“U.S. Agent can handle himself just fine. We’ve enough to do here without stumbling over him.”

“No, you don’t understand!” insisted Silverclaw, “I can smell his blood! He’s being cut to pieces!”

Just how did this happen? Agent asked himself as he clutched his chest, his hand draped over a deep cut that ran across his entire chest. That wasn’t even the worst of it. In his short battle with Ninjato, John had picked up a dozen similar cuts, a raging headache and burning eyes that struggled to see his foe, as the room itself seemed to spin.

“Come now, John, I know you can do better than this,” stated Ninjato, his tone only slightly sarcastic. U.S. Agent replied with a hail of gunfire, all of which was easily dodged.

“Feeling a tad sluggish? Trouble breathing, perhaps?” Ninjato swung his swords almost casual, slicing into Agent's shoulder, “you've no one to blame but yourself.”

U.S. Agent caught a look at the men he'd shot, and saw their rapidly decomposing bodies. They almost looked as though they were evaporating. Even through the poison haze that enveloped his mind, Walker knew what had happened.

“Even in death, my cannon fodder has it's uses,” Ninjato explained, “though they're less effective in an open environment.”

A well placed kick sent U.S Agent stumbling backwards, but he remained standing by strength of will alone.

“This has been amusing, John Walker,” Ninjato stood in front of the bloodied hero and leveled his sword over his shoulder, “but my master desires the contents of this tesseract, and that requires your removal.”

“Agent, report!” Sabra snapped as she stepped into the room. She took a single whiff, and stopped dead.

“Silverclaw, stay back!” she barked, “there's poison gas in the air. I can handle it, you can't!”

Sabra stepped quickly though. She knew her limits, and knew today wasn't the day to test them.

“Walker, are you alright?”

Sabra had just stepped past a metal column when she saw it. John Walker, U.S. Agent, sliding off the glass sword of an unknown enemy, a pool of crimson gathering around him.

“If I had to venture a guess,” answered Ninjato, “I would have to say no.”

Next issue: Excalibur is pushed to their limits as they try to contain the situation and restore control! But is that even possible as they lose members left and right? Plus, two explosions and at least one death as Meeting Ruin comes to it's explosive finale!