High Above the Northern Atlantic Ocean

James "Rhodey" Rhodes plummeted through a low-lying cloud and found to his dismay that the surface of the Atlantic Ocean was still approaching at high-speed.

Rhodey had faced death many times, both as a Marine Corps chopper pilot and as a superhero, but for the first time he really believed that his number was just about up... kidnapped by some spandex nutcase calling himself the Master of the World, then dropped over the ocean from nearly a mile up.* There was no way he could turn this plunge into a controlled dive. At the speed he'd be going when he hit, he'd splatter across the face of the Atlantic like a bug on a windshield.

(* It happened last issue, along with a bunch of other stuff -- no-time-for-recap Russ)

This morbid train of thought was interrupted when something hit him in the upper back. What little air was left in his lungs blasted out and he felt one of his recently fractured ribs give under the impact. Then a woman's voice, in his ear:

"Go limp," it said.

He tried to follow orders, ignoring the grinding in his side from the floating rib, and realized there was a pair of black-gloved hands under his arms. The ocean kept getting closer, but his speed of descent had noticeably decreased.

"James Rhodes," the female voice was saying, "former pilot to Tony Stark. Imagine meeting you out here."

He had slowed nearly to a stop, and Jim craned his neck around to get a glimpse of his savior. A striking blond woman hovered behind him in a costume that amounted to little more than a domino mask and a one-piece bathing suit, along with long black gloves and knee-high boots. Jim wasn't as conversant with the superhero set as he'd been during his days as War Machine, or as a stand-in for Iron Man, but he recognized the Avenger named Warbird immediately.

"Are you okay?" she asked. "I tried to make that stop as controlled as possible."

"Fine," Jim gasped.

"Who dropped you? Is Iron Man nearby?"

"Some guy... named the Master... dropped me. To-Iron Man went to... investigate my... shipwreck." Rhodey pointed downward and to the north.

Warbird nodded. "Okay, I'm going to find somewhere to set you down, then see if I can catch up with who dropped you."

Rhodey pointed downward and to the south this time, where the Coast Guard Cutter Lifeline lay anchored. Warbird understood his meaning and together the two of them descended toward the ship.

"What did this Master guy want with you?" Warbird asked.

"My salvage ship was... sunk by an enormous green squid... he wanted to know... about it. Said he'd return... me to the Coast Guard ship. Didn't say... at what... velocity."

Warbird chuckled grimly at that and swooped in lower towards the cutter.

Beneath the Atlantic Ocean

The impossibly strong monster dragged Iron Man down into the chasm Jim Rhodes' ship had disappeared into hours before. Inside the red and gold armor, a laser blasted a depth measurement onto Tony Stark's retina as they plunged below 1000 feet. Tony wasn't sure exactly how much water pressure this particular model could handle, but he knew the suit of armor he wore would crush him into hamburger helper long before he reached 2000 feet.

And the squid-like beast dragging him downward was moving very fast.

You're supposed to be brilliant, Tony. Think!

With a thought, he switched his visual receptors from visible light input to heat imaging. Everything in sight was a cold blue, except of course for himself and the squid. He focused on the behemoth, zooming in on the main mass of the creature, and found a warm red, pulsing light that had to be the thing's heart.

Okay, so the monster wasn't a robot. It was instead a living creature that could rip a thirty-man exploratory vessel to shreds and take a faceful of repulsor blasts with nary a flinch. It could also handle temperature and pressure extremes that would obliterate all but the most specialized of man's machines.

If the monster could shrug off shortwave radiation too, Tony Stark was screwed.

Iron Man grabbed the thick green tentacle wrapped around his midsection. Whatever the thing was, it was alive, and if it was alive, it could be cooked. He began pumping microwaves through his gauntlets and into the limb, immediately cranking the wattage up beyond tolerance levels for any land-dwelling creature except maybe the Hulk. The water began to boil around him and he had to switch his visual receptors back to visible light to avoid being blinded by the flash of heat.

He checked the depth readout. 1500 feet. He could faintly hear the seams of his armor beginning to groan.

Returning his attention to the job at hand, Iron Man pushed the output up even farther than he dared. He was risking penetrating his own radiation shields with this much power, but he didn't have many other options at the moment.

1650 feet.

The tentacle was beginning to blacken under the assault. Iron Man killed the radiation and switched on his gauntlet's laser assembly. Apparently his attack hadn't convinced the creature to stop their plunge, but he was betting it had weakened the tentacle enough that an industrial-power laser might have an effect on it. He began cutting, and one side of the tentacle separated cleanly from the other, neither stump bleeding as the laser instantly cauterized the wounds.

That got the monster's attention. A high-pitched shriek pounded upward from the beast's head. Iron Man did not hang around to enjoy it, instead angling himself upwards and firing his boot jets, heading for the sunlight. He knew the squid would catch him long before he reached the surface, but hopefully the injury it had just sustained would slow it down enough for him to reach the Santa Trelina, the Spanish pirate vessel the discovery of which had started all of this.

He had climbed barely 200 feet-still nearly 1000 feet below the Trelina-when his sonar told him the monster was charging toward him again. The chase was on.

The Throne of Atlantis

"Sir, the king does not wish to be disturbed."

Colonel Marza paused before the frowning face of the royal guardsman and offered the boy a frown of his own. "I come on a matter of great personal import to our sovereign, boy. Let me pass."

"Forgive me, Colonel. The king has expressed a degree of melancholy today, and left strict orders that he not be disturbed... 'lest the walls of the Atlantis herself are crumbling,' he said."

Marza sighed. The king was justly famous the world over for his massive mood swings, but the Colonel was convinced that he would want to hear this news.

"I bear tidings that may concern the king's dead wife, guardsman. Our former queen. I will answer for it if the king decides it was not worth his time, but I frankly doubt we'll have to worry about that. Now stand down."

The guard lost nearly all of his admittedly exceptional military bearing at Marza's mention of the queen. He glanced nervously at his companion on the other side of the enormous doors leading into the Atlantean throne room. There was no support to be had there, so the guard looked again at Marza.

With a nod, he stood aside to let the Colonel pass.

Colonel Marza, intelligence officer in the Atlantean armed forces, pushed through the great doors and strode through to meet with his king, Namor the First.

Above the Atlantic Ocean

Warbird hung around on the deck of the Lifeline just long enough to make sure Jim Rhodes was being taken care of, then rocketed up into the sky again. She could be little help with the man's injuries at this point. Her talents leaned in a different direction.

Warbird had no idea who this Master of the World guy was-though, given his name, she already had some opinions on the size of his ego-or what he had to do with this squid that had supposedly sunk Rhodes' ship. She had followed Iron Man out here after Tony Stark, the man inside the armor had abruptly left a party he'd been throwing for the other Avengers at his Seattle estate. She wasn't entirely comfortable around the Avengers anyway, and after Jacosta-the sentient program residing in the mainframe of Tony's smarthouse-had filled her in on why Stark had left, she figured it sounded a hell of a lot more interesting than the party. And she had been right.

No, she had no idea who this guy that had dropped Jim Rhodes out of a cloudbank was, but she intended to find out.

The sun was out in full force today, but there was no scarcity of clouds in the sky. She paused once she'd passed through the lowest level of cloud cover and glanced around. None of the cottony shapes were moving unnaturally or against the wind. She supposed she could try to hit all of them in, say, a 20-mile radius, but if the Master had left the area, she wouldn't know until after she'd wasted a whole lot of time. Another option was to fire an energy blast through every cloud in sight, see which cloud the beam didn't pass through. It would be draining, but it wouldn't take as long....

She paused in her thoughts and looked down through the low-lying clouds at the ocean below her. The cutter Lifeline was barely a speck to her enhanced eyesight. She estimated she was about 10,000 feet above sea level.

Long before she'd been a superhero, Carol Danvers-a.k.a. Warbird-had been an Air Force pilot. This had given her a more than passing familiarity with meteorology, and she knew from that experience that there were certain types of clouds the bases of which generally didn't form above 6,500 feet. One of these cloud types was called nimbostratus.

The heavy, flat cloud hanging stationary 3 miles to the east was a nimbostratus, and its base was at least 2,000 feet above her, putting it at 12,000 feet... nearly double where it should have been.

With a self-satisfied smirk, Warbird arrowed through the Atlantic sky toward that cloud. She slowed as she reached it, paused, then continued into the dense mist slowly. She'd descended less than thirty feet when she found the silvery hull of the Master's ship.

"Bingo," she whispered.

Feeling along the moist metal shell now, being careful not to trip any concealed alarms, she looked for a hatch. After nearly 10 minutes, she'd found nothing. In fact, the ship had very few seams that she could discern, much less actual portals to the inside.

Carol shrugged. She'd done her best to be subtle about this.

Placing one hand against the metal hull, she drew back with her right fist, wound up, and smashed through the alien metal with one punch. It was a matter of only a few more seconds to rip a hole big enough to fit through. There was some explosive decompression as the atmosphere inside blasted into the much thinner air outside, but nothing powerful enough to rip her away from the ship.

She had opened a portal to some sort of featureless hallway, she saw. Poking her head in cautiously, she looked first left, then right-

And turned right into a speeding fist. The blow rocked Carol's head back against the wall she was climbing in through. Stunned, she started to fall back out the way she'd come, but the same fist that had struck her now grabbed a handful of her long blond hair and yanked her the rest of the way into the ship. Warbird was slammed by the face into the opposite wall, leaving a Carol Danvers-shaped dent in the metal there.

The hand released her as she slumped to the floor, barely conscious. Wiping a hand across her spouting nose, she attempted to rise, but a foot that was every bit as powerful as the hand had been smashed into her stomach, lifting her half a foot off the floor before letting her fall back down again in a heap.

The hand insinuated itself into her hair again, bending her head back, then smashing her face into the floor... once... twice... 3 times. Warbird's world started to swim away under a black curtain of unconsciousness. Sucker-punched, she kept thinking. Might have had a chance if he hadn't sucker-punched me....

She dimly anticipated being smacked against the floor until she was unconscious or dead, but 3 times must have seemed sufficient to her assailant, because she felt herself lifted up by the neck, her arms pinioned behind her, and through the already-swelling flesh around her eyelids, she finally got a look at the Master of the World.

The white showing in his beard was the only real indicator of the man's apparent age. Under a blood red cloak, he wore a skintight black bodysuit over an impressive physique, and his voice, while carrying the confidence of wisdom and experience, was as vigorous as a thirty year-old's.

"Fascinating. A Kree/human hybrid. Warbird, correct? Or are you going by the appellation 'Ms. Marvel' again?"

Carol's arms were still pinned behind her, and the cold hand that had beaten her bloody was still on her neck, so she couldn't see her mysterious assailant. Whoever he was, he kept respectfully silent while the Master spoke.

"I might ask what you're doing here, Avenger. Speak quickly."

In response, Warbird slung an imaginative epithet of her own creation. It involved a request for the Master to engage in sexual intercourse with certain rare species indigenous to the African Congo. Carol hadn't used it since her days in the military, and was pleased to see it hadn't lost any of its punch. The Master frowned at the outburst.

Suddenly, she was flying through the air, smashing headfirst into the bulkhead again. Every voluntary muscle in her body went limp, but she couldn't collapse because she was still being held up by her attacker.

"My efforts to claim my divine right as unchallenged master of this planet have been frustrated time and again by the 'heroes' of this age. Whether you are here alone or as part of a team, I will not allow you to return and inform your colleagues of my presence."

The Master stepped forward and took her chin in his hand. "You will talk, little one. The only question is whether it will be before or while you adorn my vivisection table. Either way, I have much to learn from your half-Kree physiology, woman. Take her away."

The strong hands holding her stationary spun her around and started down the corridor, away from where the Master stood. Carol Danvers realized she needed a plan to escape, some way to break free. She didn't get much farther than that before she finally blacked out.

Beneath the Atlantic Ocean

Iron Man was still 500 feet below the Santa Trelina when the squid managed to snag one of his legs. He fired all the power he could spare into his boot jets, but he knew from the start that effort was doomed to failure. The monster started to reel him in.

Tony triggered his repulsors, and sent a double-shot of them streaking down into the squid's face. The same blow had given the creature pause before, but the thing was obviously a lot more pissed now than it had been then.

The blast did give Tony another look at the squid's Lovecraftian head and beak though, surrounded by flowing tentacles. As the creature dragged him down towards its gaping maw, Iron Man threw all attempts at elegance out the window. When he'd come within a foot of the thing's head, he pulled back a gauntlet-clad fist and smashed it into the squid's beak with all the considerable power at his command.

His aural receptors picked up the thick crunch as part of the beak collapsed under his fist. The monster released him and Iron Man fired himself towards the surface again.

It was a close race, but the pain inflicted by that last blow had slowed the creature enough that Tony managed to reach the Santa Trelina before it could catch him again. Swooping around the hull of the old Spanish wreck, he found what he thought to be the right spot on the port side and shoved a hand through the rotting wood. It disintegrated at his touch, and he reached inside and grasped something cool and gelatinous.

The squid arced over the deck and stopped dead as it spotted the armored Avenger standing on the shelf of rock beside the ship. Iron Man stood waiting for it, one hand holding a glowing green egg, about the size of a baseball, to his armored chest. The other hand was poised above the egg, the repulsor projector in that palm glowing ominously.

"One foot closer, ugly," Tony breathed inside the mask. "One foot closer and you'll be able to order the babies sunny side-up."

The creature hesitated. Then, with a sweep of its 10 arms, it retreated slightly, hovering near the madly tilted deck of the Trelina.

Tony blinked sweat out of his eyes and reviewed his options. He'd spotted the egg on his first exploration of the ship,* though he hadn't figured out exactly what it was until halfway through his tussle with the squid. The monster was acting as a protective parent would, chasing off and doing its best to incapacitate anything that came too close to its baby. He suspected that the divers working for Rhodey had been killed simply for happening upon the wrong place. The squid had then followed the connecting lines up to Rhodey's ship and put that out of commission as well.

(* That was the warm, indistinct shape he'd detected deep in the ship -- I-take-mine-scrambled Russ)

The Santa Trelina was perched atop a shelf of rock jutting from an undersea cliff. Iron Man backed up against this cliff now, his glove still poised over the egg. The squid watched him closely with its enormous black eye. The two of them were in a Mexican stand-off. If Iron Man blasted the egg-and he didn't particularly want to do that, no matter the circumstances-the squid would go after him with all the fury of a mourning parent. If he tried to fly to the surface, egg in tow, the monster would probably risk charging him rather than let him leave with its offspring.

Before Iron Man could dwell on this further, the cliff face above him suddenly exploded, and he ducked down under the shower of rocks, protecting the egg and his own head with his body. The avalanche of rocks completely decimated the remains of the Trelina, and while he protected himself, Tony was vaguely aware of the wreck slipping over the side of the cliff and plummeting into the unknown chasm below.

The last of the rubble had barely settled yet when he felt a strong hand grab him by the helmet and wrench him out of the pile of debris he had become buried in.

"Namor!" Tony cried in relief, recognizing the lean, athletic form and black hair of the Sub-Mariner, former ally and Avenger. The man considered Iron Man with a scornful eye and put one hand out.

"Give me the egg," he commanded.

Behind the mask, Tony's eyes narrowed. Being born and growing up with a silver spoon firmly lodged in one's mouth didn't tend to make one enamored of being ordered around. Namor was a king, he was used to his edicts being followed without question, but Tony Stark was no man's serf.

"I'm sorry, Namor, I can't do that," he replied.

"That was not a request, bondman!" Namor barked. Tony's jaw dropped at the term 'bondman', but he quickly shrugged it off, reminding himself that as far as Namor and most of the world were concerned, Iron Man was Tony Stark's employee.

Still, the Sub-Mariner had never treated Iron Man with anything but respect before, even on the few occasions they'd opposed each other.

"If I give you this egg, that squid"-Tony pointed at the monster still hovering anxiously in the background-"is going to be all over me in a second. It's too tough for either of us, Namor, and this is the only way I'm going to reach the surface with my skin intact."

Namor sighed... then belted Iron Man square in the faceplate before his opponent even saw him move. The egg was dropped and Iron Man went sailing over the side of the cliff, plunging into the murky waters below.

Namor caught the egg and held it in one hand, close to his face. His eyes narrowed at the unearthly green glow emanating from it, and a strange expression touched his face that may have been a smile. Namor turned to the still-hovering squid.

"I have it," he said in his own Atlantean tongue. "It's safe now. You're safe now. We must depart for Atlantis so that the birth can be-"

He never got to finish the thought. The rocky shelf beneath Namor's feet suddenly erupted, and the King of Atlantis was flung in the direction of the surface. Iron Man came rocketing up through the rubble.

"You wouldn't believe the kind of day I'm having, Namor," Iron Man broadcasted out through his helmet. He snagged the dazed Atlantean by his winged ankles and sent him careening farther towards the surface. "It started out well enough-the sun, the water, a good time with old friends-but then another friend almost died, and a lot of his friends did die. They died because they got too close to that damned egg."

He spun around and met the expected charge of the squid. He knew he couldn't match the thing's strength and speed. Instead, he grabbed the first tentacle that darted too close to him, leaned back, fired his boot jets briefly to create leverage, and used the thing's own momentum to smash it bodily into the cliff at his back. Not waiting to see what effect this had, he shot off in pursuit of Namor.

"I might have been able to handle all of that," Iron Man continued, firing a low-level repulsor into Namor's exposed midsection, "but to be sucker-punched by somebody I considered an ally, that's just too much to handle in one day."

Iron Man rocketed upward, catching the reeling Sub-Mariner by the ankle again and dragging him up toward the surface.

"So Namor, I'm going to have to insist that you step outside."

They exploded into the clear air above the Atlantic. Iron Man climbed a few dozen yards, then snatched the egg out of Namor's hand and dropped him back towards the water. He hit the surface with enough impact to shatter a normal man's spine, but the Son of Atlantis had emerged only a moment later. With blood in his eyes.

"Now," Iron Man said, electrified plasma arcing between his two gauntlets, "let's see how you play the game on my court."

Inside the Master of the World's Ship

"It begins," the Master of the World said softly, considering the images playing out their dance of combat on his computer screen. "I would have preferred to have done this before that half-breed Atlantean arrived. Now I must deal with Iron Man and the Sub-Mariner.

"Still," he continued, turning away from the control panel, "we may be able to take advantage of their petty bickering. I want you to concentrate on retrieving the egg, with your sister being the secondary target. Forsake her if you must, but that egg must be rescued at all costs. I will remain behind to direct the battle and offer you whatever assistance I may from here. Do you have anything to add?"

"Only one thing," his companion replied. The thin, seemingly frail woman with yellow skin stepped forward, snaking a hand behind the tall man's head and pulling him down into a lingering kiss. "You will be master of this world soon. And I will sit at your right hand."

"Soon, my love," he whispered in response, "my Marrina."

She smiled-a small smile that only curved one end of her mouth-then turned and exited the bridge. The Master watched her go, then returned his attention to the computer screen. A moment later, a flashing indicator to the right of the monitor told him Marrina had passed through the airlock, taking the direct route to the ocean's surface.

"Soon," the Master of the World repeated, and began to arm his ship's weapons.

Check out the oversized IRON MAN ANNUAL 2000 in 2 weeks for the action-packed conclusion to "Sea Monsters", then be back here for the...

Next Issue: "Hearts of Gold". We throttle down for an issue to check in on this book's supporting cast and deal with the repercussions from the "Sea Monsters" storyline.