This ain’t the Garden of Eden

There ain’t no angels above

And things ain’t what they used to be

And this ain’t the Summer of Love...

High above San Francisco, a crescent moon beamed down its silvery light.  It looked very much like a smile when seen from one angle, or perhaps like a frown as seen from another.  It could also be taken as the blade of a sickle if one were so inclined...

Much closer to the rooftops – or rather the crumbled and stunted remains of them in this neighborhood – another crescent moon cut a pathway through the air.  This one was made of metal, also silvery in color, and was actually a highly maneuverable airship, currently carrying two occupants toward a twisted and hollowed-out looking shell of a building that had once been a local movie theater, one of several such non-multiplex establishments that had managed to survive through decades of changing preferences and often unkind economic times.  What it had not managed to survive, however, was the harrowing event known to San Franciscans forever after as the Equinox Occurrence, or sometimes simply “E-Day.”  As with so many other buildings in so many other neighborhoods in the city, the madness that had manifested itself through the temperature-warping powers of Terry Sorenson – the deranged super-human known as Equinox – had left it in ruins.  Some parts of the city had died by ice at Sorenson’s hands; this area, known as the Marina, had died by fire.  What had once been a slightly antiquated but still somewhat charming theater now looked like the charred ribcage of some fallen mammoth.

“There it is again.”  A flash of blue light pulsed into view from somewhere inside the blackened remains of the former Presidio Theater and then disappeared.  “Pull up just shy of the building, Jean-Paul.  I’ll drop this side of it, then you circle it, and tell me what you see.”

“Oui, Marc.”  The pilot of the airship was a man of not inconsiderable size, dark-haired, and with a mustache thick and lush enough to merit a small crew of groundskeepers.  He pulled up expertly, exactly as his passenger had requested, perhaps twenty meters in front of the roasted hull of the theater, and he hovered there, about two stories above the broken asphalt of Chestnut Street.

His comrade was already halfway down a rope ladder, and as soon as Jean-Paul “Frenchie” DuChamp halted his descent, the man leaped the rest of the way to the street.

As fit and robust as Jean-Paul was, this man all but dwarfed him in comparison.  He was a couple of inches north of the six-foot mark, two dozen pounds over two hundred, and he looked to be nothing but muscle and sinew, all of it on highly intimidating display, as he was clad in a form-fitting bodysuit the color of the moon, accessorized with full cape and cowl.  He casually took hold of the cape in either hand as he gave up his hold on the rope ladder, spread it wide behind him like makeshift wings, and drifted comfortably down to the roadway, the out-flung cloak slowing his descent as though he’d made some sort of devil’s bargain with gravity.

He was already in motion when his feet touched the ground, wending his way toward the movie theater in clean, fluid fashion over the broken terrain.  The flash of blue light came once more.

“Jean-Paul?”  A transmitter/receiver rig woven into his silver-white mask enabled communications with his friend and pilot.

“Nothing, Marc.  Part of the roof is still intact, and whoever is in there, they are hidden from me beneath it.”

“Swell.  Okay, I’m going in.  Stand by...”

“Oui, Marc.”

Marc Spector, one-time mercernary and now the mystically empowered vigilante known as Moon Knight, slipped like a shade through an opening presented by what had ironically enough once served the theater as a fire door.  He heard voices deeper inside, and made his way toward them.

The Presidio had once been a single, large viewing room, and after the turn of the millennium, the owners had subdivided it into several smaller theaters.  Moon Knight was moving through one of the smallest of these, and just stepping into the largest of the rooms – and as Jean-Paul had said, the roof in that room was still essentially whole – when someone from inside that room darted out, crashing right into Spector’s unyielding chest.

It was a man – a civilian judging by his nondescript clothing and his average-citizen’s build, and then the look of honest fear plastered across his rather chinless face cemented that assessment.

“Let me go!” the man squawked.  “Come on, he’s crazy!  He’ll kill me!”

“Dammit.”  A deeper male voice rumbled from within the large room.  “Party-crasher.  We got an Avenger in the house.”

Spector made out three forms in the darkness of the theater, and thought he caught the tail end of a departure by somebody else beyond them, someone heading out the opposite door, although it was only a fleeting glimpse, and he heard nothing to confirm this, no sounds of escape.  He recognized the three forms, though, and he let the struggling man in his grip go free, not following when the man made for the street behind Spector.

The three forms oriented on him: one was a man a bit smaller than Moon Knight, readying some kind of bladed throwing weapon in each hand...one was a behemoth of a man, muscled enough to bruise the very air itself as he lumbered through it...and the third was a woman of wicked grace, all slender, athletic curves clad in form-hugging yellow, tall, and with a gorgeous mane of long, snow-white hair.

“Jean-Paul.”  Spector whispered quickly to his friend.  “Serpents.”

“Oui, Marc – a civilian just fled the scene as well.”

“I know.  Let him go for now...”  He faced the three forms slowly converging on him.  “I’m not sure how many times I have to explain this to you low-watt bulbs: I’m not an Avenger.”

“We know, sweetie, you always say that.”  The woman seemed to act as spokesperson for the trio, and long metal tendrils, crackling with energy, began to uncoil from housings surrounding each of her wrists as she stepped toward him.  “But the Avengers consider you an Avenger, is the thing...so it doesn’t really matter how deep in denial you want to get.  If we scrub you, we have them down on our heads – fact.  So as far as the Serpent Society is concerned...an Avenger you is.”

Spector circled slowly to his left, running down his options in his head.  Two out of the three Serpents before him – Coachwhip, with her long metal whiplashes, and Boomslang, the man with the throwing blades – could get him from a distance.  Only the behemoth, Puff Adder, needed to get up close and personal.  The downside of having him that close was that he’d then not only have a shot at crushing an opponent to jelly in his super-strong grip, but he could also spit venom and emit toxic gas from his mouth...the upside, however, was that he was so huge, he’d make for an outstanding shield against his teammates’ longer-range attacks.

“That reasoning might hold water for you, Coachwhip,” he told the woman, “but I think your big buddy here is just too dense to retain even the simplest facts, that’s all.  Isn’t that right, Puff?”

The giant advanced on him.  “You callin’ me dumb, chump?  ‘Zat what you’re sayin’?”

“If you weren’t dumb, Fraley, you wouldn’t have to ask.”

Puff Adder took another two steps closer, semi-blocking his teammates’ lines of fire at Spector, and the Moon Knight blurred into motion.

He pulled free one of his own throwing weapons, a crescent-shaped blade he referred to as a Moon-dart, and he let it fly, singing through the air toward Boomslang.  It lodged in the man’s collarbone with a sound like an axe hitting wood, and Boomslang dropped his own similar weapon, crying out a sound that was wordless and inarticulate, yet still somehow seemed to carry his thick Australian accent.

Even before Boomslang’s blade had hit the carpet of ashes that covered the theater floor, Spector was pushing his attack on the others.  He grabbed the end of one of Coachwhip’s long metal lashes as it flicked toward him, his insulated gloves filtering out most of its fierce electrical charge, and he tugged it along with him as he slid beneath Puff Adder’s grasp, right between the giant’s legs.  He popped up to his feet behind the man, and yanked the whip toward himself for all he was worth, which, especially at night time, even on a moonless night, was worth quite a lot: due to the nature of his mystic empowerment, Marc Spector grew stronger at night, and the fuller the moon, the mightier the Moon Knight.

In this case, the results were fairly spectacular: Coachwhip hurtled forward helplessly, crashing shoulder-first directly into Puff Adder’s groin, toppling the enormous criminal right down on top of her in a tangled heap, her charged whips adding to her teammate’s pain.  Spector whirled to finish off Boomslang if need be, and was surprised to find that the man had vanished – had he fled the scene to tend to his wound?  The Serpents were generally a rather soldierly and professional lot, despite their otherwise questionable morals, and they had their own built-in rescue service thanks to the teleportational abilities of Seth “Sidewinder” Voelker, their leader.  Voelker’s teleports, however, slick though they were, definitely came with an audible component, and Spector hadn’t heard anything to indicate that the Sidewinder had arrived to ‘port Boomslang out of the fray.

Mystery for another time, though, as Coachwhip began to push her way clear of her giant crony.  Spector readied himself for another round with her – he considered her easily the most dangerous of the three Serpents he’d been facing – when Voelker’s signature teleport effect did flare up nearby.

The sound was something like a balloon popping in reverse.  It happened twice, and two new snakes appeared in the wreckage of the theater.  Voelker himself didn’t stay to chat, but the reinforcements he’d brought looked hungry for action, and far more formidable than Boomslang: Blanche “Anaconda” Sitznski was almost as big as Puff Adder, almost as strong, and had a limited sort of stretching ability that allowed her to telescope those well-muscled arms outward, enabling her to bear-hug from a distance...and Quincy McIver, the Bushmaster, was a half-man, half-snake thing that was as horrible and dangerous as he looked.  McIver was a big, strapping specimen who had suffered massive trauma earlier in life, and had undergone multiple surgeries of a highly experimental nature, consenting to have his accidentally amputated limbs replaced with bionic parts of a unique design.  His new arms looked mostly humanoid but for the large, poisonous spike protruding from the back of each wrist, and he remained essentially human-looking from the waist up.  From the waist down, however, McIver was now all serpent, with a long, powerful tail he used for locomotion exactly like a real snake would.  McIver had already been a thug and a criminal before his transformation into a snake-man, and the change had not done his overall mental stability much good.

“Jean-Paul – got reinforcements here.  Four total now.”

“Not much I can do from here, Marc, short of a missile strike.  Can you lead them out from under that cover?”

Moon Knight had his back to one of the more solid walls in the place, which did negate the Serpents’ ability to circle up and get him from behind, but he had no real avenues of escape open to him now.  Bushmaster, much quicker than he looked, and utterly unbothered by the broken terrain, was cruising in from Spector’s right, Anaconda was ambling up from straight ahead, and Coachwhip was clear of Puff Adder now, on her feet, and shaking the cobwebs out of her head over to the left.  Puff Adder himself had stopped groaning, and looked like he, too, would be reentering the melee shortly.

“I think I might be here for the duration, Jean-Paul.”

“I’m coming, then...”

“What?”

No more time to speak then, as the Serpents attacked.

Anaconda, still a dozen feet away, launched a right cross at him, her arm reeling out like fishing line.  Spector ducked it, and the punch thundered through the wall behind him, shaking the remaining parts of the structure of the place that had managed to survive Equinox.  Moon Knight grabbed Anaconda’s fist as she tried to retract her arm, spun on his heel, and flung that same fist at the striking Bushmaster.  It scored only a glancing blow, but it did buy Spector a moment or two as the two Serpents were obliged to pause so that Anaconda could disentangle her arm from around Bushmaster’s head and neck.  Spector was still moving, vaulting over Puff Adder’s broad back as the man tried to rise from his hands and knees, and drove both feet toward Coachwhip’s head.  She saw him coming, though, dodged his kick, and answered with one of her own, her long, shapely leg just a blur, stopping his forward motion and snapping his head back as she connected with his cheekbone.  Puff Adder, still on his knees, rose up enough behind Spector to launch a punch at the vigilante that was like a small armageddon.  His gargantuan fist caught Moon Knight square in the back, and sent him rocketing into the same wall Spector had been standing in front of only seconds ago.  Puff Adder’s punch sent him nearly through it, and he dropped to the ground, semi-dazed. 

He was trying to push himself upright, his limbs slow to respond, and his thoughts feeling just a trifle gummy, when Bushmaster appeared.  He picked Moon Knight up by the bodysuit equivalent of his lapels, holding him with one bionic arm so that the two men were face to face, and he brandished his other fist in front of Spector’s eyes, showing off the evil-looking metal spike jutting from his wrist, a single drop of venom beginning to swell into view from its tip.

“Say goodbye, Avenger,” Bushmaster gloated.

“I keep...telling you...I’m not...”

He didn’t have time to finish his thought.  There was a burst of gunfire, and Bushmaster’s entire forearm – hand, wrist, and poisonous spike – all disappeared with an angry crackle and flash.  The snake-man cried out, more in anger than actual pain, his face twisting with rage, and he turned to see who had attacked him.  More gunfire, and his other arm was severed just below the elbow.  He pushed back from Spector, no longer holding him up, and Moon Knight realized that the villain’s bionic hand was still grasping the lower portion of his cowl, even though that hand was no longer attached to its owner.

A torrent of French oaths poured into the theater, and Spector realized that Jean-Paul, unable to help from the Mooncopter, had left it on autopilot and come to help out on foot.  This was good, in that he had just spared Moon Knight the unpleasantness of an eye-socket full of poisonous metal spike, but it was bad, in that Jean-Paul, brave and experienced though he was, was just one man, and one not that heavily armed, and not that heavily armored at the moment.

Jean-Paul came on, firing at the generous target presented by Anaconda.  He scored well on hits to her midsection, but due to her body armor and semi-invulnerability, did little more than stagger her back a few feet and make her say “Ouch.”  Moon Knight knew he had very little time before Jean-Paul ran out of ammo or took some serpent-themed weapon to a soft body part in a lethal kind of way. 

He tore Bushmaster’s severed hand and forearm from his throat, and then taking careful grasp on the fist, making sure to avoid the toxic point of the metal spike, he swung the half a forearm around and bashed the still shocked Bushmaster across the face with it.  He got in three more such blows, and Bushmaster finally started to sag. 

Spector wasted no time, reversing his hold on the hand, dashing past Anaconda, leaping onto Puff Adder’s back, and plunging Bushmaster’s spike into a huge patch of muscle above the man’s right shoulder-blade. 

“Aw, crap,” the big man said, knowing what Moon Knight had just tagged him with.  “This is gonna make me sick as a dog.  Goddammit, Quincy...”

He stood up, flexing, and dislodged Spector from his back, reaching for the spiked hand.

Moon Knight fell clear, and had time to see Coachwhip successfully lash one of Jean-Paul’s pistols from his grip, and saw the resulting charge from her whip arc momentarily across his friend’s form.  It was thankfully only a glancing blow, but then Anaconda stepped up, delivering another of the same flavor of haymaker that had nearly demolished the theater wall earlier.  This one caught Jean-Paul under his right arm, crunching into his ribs with audible results, and Moon Knight’s pilot and best friend shrieked and fell.

“Jean-Paul!”  Spector was on his feet, and had his truncheon at the ready.  The streamlined club was a veritable war-stick, a marvel of engineering that looked like a plain, silvery-white staff when at rest, but which bristled with fearsome technology, and was like a symphony of combat in the right conductor’s hands.  The Moon Knight cracked Puff Adder in his big skull from behind with it, right-left-right, and the giant groaned again, poison leaking out of his mouth like drool.  Spector touched a stud on the truncheon, and nine inches of blade whickered forth, stiletto-style, from one end of it.  The blade was no more than half an inch across, and not much thicker than a piece of paper, hundreds of layers of metal hammered down together in katana fashion, making it something like a small samurai sword.  Moon Knight leaped at Coachwhip, swinging the blade around, really putting his back and shoulders into it, and he managed to cut through one of her electrified whips.  The feedback was enormous, and was greatly intensified a split second later when Coachwhip, consummate professional that she was, brought her other whip around, this time scoring a full hit on Spector.  The steel-link weapon couldn’t penetrate his carbonadium-weave bodysuit, but the force of the blow was rather punishing, and was made vastly worse a second later when she discharged almost her full load of electrical current through it, lighting up Spector’s form like a Vegas casino. 

She retracted the whip, assuming she had just killed one of the legendary Avengers, and was stunned to see him remain on his feet.  He was swaying, and certainly smoldering vigorously, but he was decidedly not falling down dead.

He looked at her and hissed.  “If you killed my friend...”

“How...?  How are you not dead from that?”  Coachwhip had light-sensitive eyes, and so always wore special polarized goggles that partially obscured her expressions, but she was clearly dumbfounded.

The remaining Serpents were also surprised, but were nevertheless moving in from behind Spector to finish the job.

“If you killed my friend...” he started to say again, but that was as far as he got.

“All bets are off?  You’ll kill them back?”

Something flew out of the darkness to strike Anaconda in the knee, dropping her with a cry.  The same something continued on, ricocheting off of a slab of concrete that yawned up from the floor nearby, hit the wall Spector had been backed up against earlier, glanced off of Puff Adder’s big steam-shovel jaw, and returned to its original source.  A male figure came forth from out of the black, all limber and agile, clad entirely in red.  Devil’s horns protruded from the man’s forehead, and in one hand he held a long club that looked a good bit like a red-colored version of Moon Knight’s truncheon – this was obviously the missile that had just careened so expertly through the battleground.

“Aw, jeez,” muttered Anaconda, on her feet now, but rubbing at the knee that had just been struck.  “Another one.  The Hero o’ Hell’s Pantry.  Just what we needed.  Couldn’ta stayed in New York, huh, guy?”

“That’s Hell’s Kitchen,” said another voice – this one was female, and came from above.  Part of the roof over their heads was torn up and off, revealing a swatch of starry sky, and another red-clad figure dropped down, hovering in mid-air.  “And some of us are happy to have him here.”

“The Spider-Lady.  Okay, this one might be goin’ pear-shaped, as Boomslang’d say.  Coach?”

“I think you’re right, Blanche.”  Coachwhip seemed to be rubbing one wrist, but was more likely depressing some hidden stud in her glove or on the housing that surrounded the bases of her whiplashes.  “Calling for pick-up now.”

“They’re ‘porting out!” Moon Knight tried to warn the newcomers.

“Hey, don’t leave on our account!”  The woman hovering in the air – Spider-Woman, as she was correctly known – darted toward Coachwhip, but she was too late.  There was a succession of those reverse-balloon-popping sounds, and the Serpents’ leader, Sidewinder, flashed into view and then back out, each time taking another of his people with him.  In mere moments, the heroes were alone.

Spector dashed over to the fallen Jean-Paul.  The man in red – widely known as Daredevil, the Man Without Fear – came close as well, and then tried to offer comfort: “He’s still alive, Spector.  He’s bleeding internally a bit, and his ribcage is a mess, but he should make it.  We need to get him medical attention, though, ASAP.”

“How do you figure on doing that, Murdock?  We just call for one of those new anti-gravity ambulances all the hospitals are using these days?  Nothing can drive over this broken ground.”  He gestured at the ruins around them.  “Look...I’ll get a gurney from the Mooncopter, hook him up to it, and I’ll fly him to the nearest ER.  Too bad we don’t have our own damn doctor and tricked out trauma center somewhere...”

“Moony?”  Spider-Woman touched his arm.  “Why don’t you get the gurney and then let me fly him in.  I’m faster and more maneuverable than the Mooncopter in populated areas, and I won’t have to worry about where I can land, and...well...to be honest, real people kind of like me better than they like you.  I’ll get less grief, and Jean-Paul will get help quicker.”

“She’s right, Spector.  Let her take him.”

Moon Knight considered for a moment, arguments rising up in his throat, but then he relented, knowing his friend’s welfare had to come before his own pride.  “Fine.  You take him.  I’ll be right behind you, though, Drew.”

“Understood.  Meet me at St. Luke’s.”

New York.  Greenwich Village.

It seemed as though the same exact cool, gray weather had followed Spector east from San Francisco.  The scenery was different, but the climate was almost identical.

He’d waited until Jean-Paul’s condition was pronounced stable, and then he’d paid to have his friend flown back to New York, where Jean-Paul wanted to convalesce at Spector’s large “main” home.  During the time spent between then and now, Spector had had a lot of time to think about the conversation he’d had with Murdock as they flew from the ruins of the Presidio Theater over to St. Luke’s hospital to see about Jean-Paul.

“You can’t do it all yourself.”  The man called Daredevil kept harping on that point.  “The Avengers have pulled up stakes and skipped town, and if Jess and I hadn’t come by when we did...”

“How did you manage to come by right when you did?”

“I was actually headed over to her place in Pacific Heights to talk about one of the cases we’ve been working on – you know she’s working as my investigator now, I’m guessing? – and I heard the commotion.  She doesn’t actually live all that far from the Marina.  She took a look and saw the Mooncopter hovering, so we headed over.”

Spector grunted.

“You’re welcome.  Anyway, look...your friend will have to sit on the sidelines now for at least a couple of months, I’d bet, minimum.  You’re not only without teammates now, but you don’t even have your pilot for a while.  And this city is just about bursting at the seams with extra-human criminals.  Not to mention all the vampires, weapons caches, mutants streaming in, the occasional alien...”

“So what, are you proposing a team-up or something?”

“You mean a you-and-me team-up?  Oh, lord, no!  I don’t do so well in groups, you know that – my senses get in the way.  I can’t really take the overload.  And then you don’t do so well in groups, largely due to your sparkling personality.”

Spector grunted again.

“I’m not sure what I’m proposing you do.  What I’m proposing you don’t do, though, is try to clean up the entire city by yourself.  It’s too big a job.  At the very least, wait until your friend gets back on his feet so he can help you with some of the load.  And if you can’t wait that long...then find someone else you can work with.  I don’t know who that is, but find them.  Or you’ll be beaten within an inch of your un-life, repeatedly, until finally not even your moon-god will be able to put you back together again.”

They’d flown the rest of the way in silence, and after checking to be sure that Jean-Paul would indeed recover with time, Murdock and Drew had taken their leaves.  Murdock had given Spector pause for thought, though, and probably a lot more so than he would have expected when offering his advice.

Spector never would have admitted it to him, but what Murdock said made a lot of sense.  In the wake of the massive destruction suffered on E-Day, San Francisco was wounded and vulnerable, and hordes of wrongdoers had flooded in to take advantage of the situation.  Like Murdock had said, there had been an influx of vampires, and in the epicenter of the destruction, the part of the city now known as the Equinox Zone, the place also seemed to be suddenly lousy with young mutants hungry for turf to call their own.  Weaponeering groups from both sides of the law – groups like SHIELD, AIM, and Hydra – had left behind formerly hidden technological outposts, the fruits of which had been bobbing to the city’s surface in unversed hands, or had been outright plundered by professionals.  There also seemed to have been mystic leaks of a sort in the wake of the E-Day catastrophe, breaches in dimensional walls or some such, allowing sorcerous energies and entities to step into this plane.  Chinatown, for instance, was an especially strange place to be on certain evenings.  Worst of all, though, were the costumed criminals – and it wasn’t just the Serpent Society, although they were a constant annoyance, and chief among the technology-plunderers.  There was also the large group massing under the banner of the French super-criminal known as the Grey Gargoyle.  His Emissaries of Evil he called them, most of whom had until recently been under thrall to that walking epitome of malevolence called Fu Manchu – and if that nightmare himself was truly gone from the city, Spector would eat his own cowl.  Other costumed super-goons also strolled through the dark places at night, and some even ventured out in broad daylight, feeling especially untouchable in the heart of the Equinox Zone.  And Murdock sensed what Spector’s mental state was like right enough: he had no intention of mothballing his war until Jean-Paul was ready for duty.  There was no way he could afford to let the black hats gain that much ground unchallenged.

Which led to the key question: who could Spector work with?  Who could he trust to do the job, and to also stay the hell out of Spector’s way while they did it?

He thought about the Avengers, and why he always wrote them off so quickly.  It wasn’t just the blind adherence to absolute nobility, embodied in such heroes as Captain America.  That could be a pain at times as well, yes, but Spector realized that if anything, it was the parachute-drag of bureaucracy that most rankled him when working with the Avengers.  Everything had to be done just so.  Everything was governed by procedures, and aligned with certain concerns, none of which were his own.  There were all these outside interests making their wants and needs a high priority: Stark and his financial interests...the Federal, state, and city governments, all wanting a piece of the decision-making pie...the UN, should the group step off of American soil...and other heroes not even currently serving with the team, but demanding the right to drop in their two cents on every tough call, and being granted that right due to history with the team or some other political concern.

No, what Spector needed was a small, streamlined group – one that could act swiftly and decisively.  It would have to be made up of mostly like-minded individuals, and self-funded.  Spector was a multi-millionaire – on good days, when the Dow-Jones Industrial Average was blowing in the right direction, he topped out as an actual billionaire – and he could either fund it himself, or find another loaded vigilante-type or two to partner up with.  Stark was out for all of the reasons the Avengers were out, but there were others...too bad Warren Worthington was so entrenched with the X-Men.  But there were more.  One in particular...

And so on this cool, gray day in spring, Marc Spector found himself in his civilian guise, stepping up to the large front doors of a most unusual manor house in the middle of Greenwich Village.  He was still puzzling over the phone call that had led to his invitation here.  He had identified himself to the manservant of the manor’s owner, and then requested that he be put in touch with a mutual acquaintance of theirs who, like himself, was a billionaire playboy type by day, and who took his unusual nightly pleasures by dressing up in a gaudy costume and trouncing criminals.

“‘A billionaire by day, and vigilante by night,’” came the calm voice over the secure phone line.  “If I may ask...which one would you prefer to speak with, Mr. Spector?”

“Which...are you in touch with more than one person who fits that description, Wong?”

There was a brief silence, and then: “Perhaps Mr. Spector would care to simply visit in person?”

Mr. Spector did care to so visit, and he came straight across town.  Two billionaire-vigilantes that were buddied up with Dr. Strange, the world’s foremost Master of the Mystic Arts?  Two, or even more...in addition to himself?  He’d really only been thinking of one: Kyle Richmond, the costumed adventurer and crime-fighter known as Nighthawk.  Richmond had been partnered up with Dr. Strange for several years when the two were stalwart members of the oddball crime-fighting, ghost-busting, demon-smiting unit called the Defenders.  Richmond had even bankrolled the group, which is what called him to mind for Spector, who had actually joined forces with the Defenders on more than one occasion back when they were all younger and stupider and far more naive.

His reverie traveled across Manhattan with him.  Who else like Richmond and himself would be at Casa de Strange?  And was Richmond even there, or was Wong hosting some bizarre billionaire/super-guy sleepover featuring other such guests that Spector wasn’t even thinking of, or didn’t yet know?  He doubted that last part, as he made it his business to know pretty much everyone in their realm, although it was theoretically possible that there were still a few people under his radar...

Wong met him at the front door, ever the soul of etiquette, and showed him into the grand foyer.  Twin staircases spiraled off and upward at either side, and more rooms and hallways stretched on forward than should have been able to fit inside the building, judging by its dimensions as seen from the street.  Wong insisted on taking Spector’s overcoat, and as he was divesting himself of it, the Moon Knight was hailed by a voice from above, its owner descending the right-hand staircase.

“Marc Spector!  How long has it been?”

Spector showed a rare sliver of surprise.  This other man was dressed casually in jeans and a light sweater, his thick blond hair looking hand-combed to one side, fresh out of a shower.  “Rand!”

Danny Rand was indeed a terrifyingly wealthy industrialist, and he was also the world-class martial artist and costumed crime-fighter known as Iron Fist.  Spector shook the man’s offered hand, marveling that he hadn’t thought of Rand when putting together his very short mental list of possible collaborators.  Then again, while Rand mostly worked out of New York, and it wasn’t inconceivable that he and Strange might have crossed paths and got on well at some point, he was hardly a long-standing member of the Defenders, and Spector could probably be forgiven at least for not thinking of him in this Strange-centric context.

“What are you doing here?”  Spector couldn’t quite resist standing up to his full height, which gave him about three inches’ advantage over Rand.

“Nice to see you, too.”  Danny Rand had a smile that was winning while also absolutely lacking in guile.  “Why I’m here...the short version is that I had actually been having some...well, personal difficulties.  Luke Cage and I had had another iteration of the Heroes for Hire going, and those personal problems of mine didn’t help matters at all, and our last job played out badly.  I was at loose ends after that, you might say, while waiting for Luke to recover from some injuries, and the Doctor was generous enough to offer to provide some advice and guidance.”

Wong silently ushered the two men deeper into the house, and set them up at a large dining room table.  He disappeared in a way that somehow wordlessly assured them that he would be back with refreshments.

“So these ‘difficulties’ of yours...?”

“Let’s call them ‘spiritual,’ with a side-order of ‘mystical.’”

“And now?”

“And now,” another voice chimed in from one of several doorways that opened up onto the dining room, “he’s as right as rain.  Righter than rain.  Rain wishes it could be as right as him!  He could kick both our asses without even getting up from that table.”

“Richmond.”

“Spector.  How’ve you been?”  Kyle Richmond was built very much like Danny Rand, and had similarly bushy hair, although his was a deep chestnut brown compared to Rand’s blond.  Spector rose from the table to shake his hand, and again stood tall.  Richmond’s smile was as genuine as Rand’s, with maybe a touch more self-consciousness about it.  All three men were of roughly the same age, although Spector had a bit more of a grizzled air about him than did the other two, as if his aura itself were somehow intangibly battle-scarred, even though his physical self wasn’t too horribly marked by his years of combat, all things considered.

“I’ve been busy, that’s for sure,” Spector told the two men.  They seated themselves, and Wong returned, pushing a beautiful cart that looked hand-carved from cedar-wood, it’s top brimming with drinks and several varieties of fresh fruit.  They all thanked him, and he turned to go, but both Richmond and Rand stopped him and asked him to join them.

The three men gathered before Spector all looked around at each other as if conversing telepathically, and then Richmond spoke for the group.

“We know why you’re here, Spector.”

“You do?”

“Yeah.  The Doc had a kind of...well, call it a vision, I guess.  I’m sure Wong or Danny would have a better word for it, but it’ll get us where we’re going.”

“Speaking of...where is ‘the Doc,’ anyway?”

The other three men all twitched or fidgeted.

“He’s...ah, let’s just say he’s off doing Supremely Sorcerous things and leave it at that.  To be honest, I don’t even get it myself.  I couldn’t tell you where he is, how he got there, or what he’s actually doing, and I have no idea when he’ll be back.  Just, suffice it to say...he ain’t here.”

Spector shrugged.  “Okay.  Fair enough.  So this vision...?”

“Yeah.  The Doc saw all three of us in his vision.  Like, working together.  He said we three were circled up, back to back...uh, to back.  And we were forming the heart of something that was, sort of – this is how he put it – ‘stemming an evil tide.’”

“He saw us in San Francisco.”

“It took a little discussion to nail down the details, but yeah, pretty much.”

Danny Rand spoke up.  “He said we would travel to you, and join you in a place where our energies were already invested.”

“I guess that applies: you two have both made sizable donations to the relief effort out there.  Is that what he meant?”

“We think so.”  Richmond tugged at his hair, and then raked it back off his forehead.  “It makes about as much sense as anything else.  And remember, we only got this from him when he was still surfacing from the experience, and then he took off again before we really had much chance to process everything he said.  And hell, even in the best of times, the Doc’s pronouncements don’t exactly come with a Cliff’s Notes, you know?”

“I understand.  But you bought into whatever it was that he said?”

Rand spoke up again: “We know the Avengers left San Francisco again, Marc.  We know your partner was injured.  We know you’re alone out there at the moment, and we all know you well enough to guess that you’re not about to call a time-out in your one-man war.  You need some help out there.  And to be honest, the timing is almost supernatural: my own partner is also recuperating from injuries, while here I am, just coming out the other side of a rough period and feeling especially ready for some new exertion.  Even better if it comes with a change of scenery.  All of this gibes with everything Doctor Strange and I uncovered in our sessions together.”

“Same goes for me.”  Richmond had grabbed a handful of purple grapes from the refreshment cart, and was popping them into the air one at a time and then catching them in his mouth.  “I hit a tough stretch myself, and like some of us will do when that happens, I came to see the Doc.”

“A tough stretch.  Let me guess: spiritual, with a side-order of mystical.”

Richmond and Rand both grinned, and even Wong seemed to evidence humorousness in his silent way. 

“Pretty much.  So Danny and I both showed up here at about the same time, both looking for some guidance...and we both got it, and are ready for action, and we both could use some new surroundings for a while.  And here’s the Doc, telling us that you’ll be showing up with the answer for us within the next week or two – well, he said ‘before the next new moon’ – and here you are, just like he said, looking for people to help you clean up San Francisco.  That is why you’re here, right?”

“I could split a few definitional hairs here, but yes, that’s basically why I came here.”

“You look disappointed, Marc.”  Rand was amused.  “You expected resistance.  You had a whole sales pitch ready, didn’t you?”

Spector held out his hands.  “I guess I did expect to have to do some selling.  When things line up too easy...it makes me uneasy.”

Richmond set aside his now empty grapevine.  “Well, we’re dealing with Doctor Strange here – which is to say, we’ve got friends in some very weird places.  I say take it as a good thing, and let’s get busy.  Oh!  One more thing, though...”

“That’s right.”  Rand’s good humor was momentarily banished.  “Wong, you might best tell it.”

The slim Asian man nodded, leaning forward.  “There was something else in my master’s vision, Mr. Spector.  Something he wished us to impress upon you.”

“Okay...?”

“He said that you must beware another revenant.  You know this term?”

“I do.”

“He said that a revenant who is called ‘Roland’ is hunting you...and that this Roland may be the death of you.  The real and final death of you.  He cannot be taken lightly, for one revenant may have intervals open to him during which he may slay another revenant with permanence, even when mortals would fail.  Do you understand?”

Spector felt all eyes on him.  He looked at each man in turn.  “I already know this other revenant: his name is Roland Burroughs.  Death Adder.  He’s a criminal, a member of the Serpent Society.  A killer.  But I know all about him, Wong.  I know he’s out there, and I’m as ready for him as I am for any other like him.”

“My master asked me to repeat this to you, Mr. Spector: do not underestimate this man, this Roland.  He may be the unending death of you.”

“Duly noted.  And I do thank both you and the Doctor for caring, Wong.  But I’m ready for Burroughs, and it’s just as likely that I’ll turn out to be the unending death of him.”

None of the other three men looked happy with this, but they couldn’t think of anything else to add.

“Well, then...”  Spector pushed back from the table.  “I’m glad you both want to throw in.  I’d say we have some planning to do.  Shall we adjourn to San Francisco?”

“I’m down,” said Kyle Richmond.  “Whose jet should we take...?”

AUTHOR’S NOTE

Hey there, M2K!  This issue represents my first-ever piece of writing done for this website.  I’ve been kicking around the Heroes fanfic community for something like 7+ years now, and yet somehow, in all that time, I’ve managed to steer clear of M2K as a writer (not as a reader, of course – too much fun stuff housed here!). 

Not too long ago, though, esteemed co-EiC Josh Reynolds performed two feats that got me fired up to finally end my own personal M2K-less writing streak: 1) he uncorked a very long, very consistently excellent AVENGERS WEST COAST series that roped me in as a devoted fan from the get-go and never let me down in something like two and a half years’ worth of stories, and 2) he then posted an essay on why there was a ton of story potential at M2K for Daredevil.  Now, the discerning among you may have noticed that while ol’ Hornhead makes a bit of an appearance in this tale, it’s really just a glorified cameo, and he’s certainly not the star of the show.  That’s all true.  What really got me about Josh’s essay wasn’t the DD-focused stuff, though, so much as it was the San Francisco-focused stuff.  M2K’s San Francisco is not quite the same as the real SF, which lies right across the SF Bay from me as I write this.  M2K SF was kinda/sorta destroyed by Equinox, a low-level villain I personally love.  As Josh broke it down, the M2K SF has become, in the wake of the Equinox Occurrence, a villain-infested, lousy-with-vampires, bristling-with-techno-caches, battleground of a place with a semi-lawless air I find fascinating.  As mentioned, M2K’s Daredevil is now located there, and so are a few of the members of Josh’s AWC cast: Moon Knight and Spider-Woman.  I started thinking about all of this, and it dawned on me that given the street-level, vigilante-ish nature of these characters, a writer could make a great case for a title set in M2K’s SF that would be sort of like a “Marvel Knights West Coast.”  I inquired about a few other characters that I thought would fit the same vibe, and after total cooperation and enthusiasm from a few other writers, I cranked out a pitch for exactly that book.  Josh and Cory both gave it a thumb pointed upward, and so any of you interested can consider this anthology a sort of #0 issue for the upcoming MARVEL KNIGHTS title.  I hope you enjoyed this opening tale, which sets a bit of groundwork, and will check out the series proper.  I can promise more Knights, more Serpents, more additional villains from Josh’s AWC run, more additional villains who did *not* appear in Josh’s AWC run, and hopefully acceptable amounts of fun in the telling.  Hope to see some of you there!

- Steve Seinberg