Marvel Team-Up #3 - December 2007

“Are you sure about this, Kurt? Maybe some things are better left a mystery, you know?”

The two of them are strolling through Battery Park. The girl who has just spoken, a pretty brunette with elfin features and a boyish figure in ripped jeans and a sleeveless t-shirt, is feeding ducks with pieces of bread from a paper bag. She looks normal, but she isn’t – something that can be said for a lot of folks in this day and age, where one person in every thousand is said to possess some kind of genetic quirk, even if it remains dormant. This girl can psionically disperse the atoms of her body and thread them between the atoms of another physical mass, a process that allows her to phase through solid matter in an intangible state. So, absolutely: not normal. But at least she can pretend she is when out walking on a warm summer’s morning. The guy beside her? He’s not so fortunate.

Kurt Wagner, like his companion Katherine Pryde, is a mutant. As well as possessing a preternaturally developed level of agility and dexterity, his primary talent is an ability – along a similar yet significantly diverse principle to his friend – to thread his atoms not through physical matter but rather through the fabric of reality. Or, more precisely, through the fabric of this reality; this dimension. Kurt is able to vacate the Earthly plane through this method then re-enter it at another juncture, having travelled between these two points via a second, altogether separate dimension. In colloquial terms, teleportation. Again, not normal. But Kurt, unlike Kitty Pryde, bears his mutant heritage for all too see.

Kurt’s flesh is black, covered with a sheen of velveteen-soft fur that is the deep indigo of twilight; his eyes are a pupil-less gold; and his hands and feet, each comprised of three dextrous digits, are sheathed in specially-designed gloves and boots of black leather. His ears are pointed at the tips, his teeth sharpened to fangs, and he sports a long, prehensile tail tipped with an arrow-shaped point. It’s not uncommon, nor entirely surprising, for regular humans to liken him to a demon, although nothing could be further from the truth; contemplative, soulful, renown for his dry humour, there can surely be no gentler spirit than Kurt Wagner, the man otherwise known as Nightcrawler. Kitty Pryde is a good judge of character, with a perception far beyond her years. She knows this world is full of liars and sinners. But, although she is in love with another man, she adores Kurt with all her heart – feels more comfortable in his presence than with any other – and she would lay down her young life for his in the blink of an eye.

Thus, to hear of his latest plan, well… it leaves her extremely concerned. And, even though no names have been mentioned, she knows damn well who’s behind it all…

“That duck is fat,” Kurt declares, pointing a stubby finger at a waddling grey specimen. “Do not feed him any more, kitten.”

Kurt, Bavarian born, speaks with an inflection of brooding Germanic accent. Kitty, in contrast, is pure Illinois drawl. “Stop changing the subject,” she snaps. “We’re talking about this ridiculous scheme of yours, not - ”

“I prefer to experiment outside of confinement,” Kurt says with a broad grin. “I am, as you know, a swashbuckling free spirit…”

“…who, in the process of attempting to determine the nature of the otherworldly plane he’s been using as a stepping stone for the last few years, could end up being stuck there.” Kitty scowls and flicks a morsel of bread at the nearest duck. It bounces off the confused bird’s head. Kitty purses her lips. “Sorry.”

“I said I was sorry!” Kitty glances across at her friend, her expression guarded. “Seriously… I can understand why you’d want to know everything there is to know about what you can do. But to do it alone?”

Kurt rolls his eyes. “You know who. And I know you know. And you know I know you know.”

Kitty affects complete innocence. Kurt sighs and mutters something in German beneath his breath. “It’s Amanda,” he says. “Amanda will be aiding me.”

Kitty harrumphs, a sound that no-one as young as her has any right to be able to make so well. Amanda Sefton is an alias used by a woman named Jimaine Szardos, Kurt’s childhood sweetheart; she is now better known as Magik, a powerful sorceress who rules a plane of existence called Limbo, a pocket dimension that exists outside of time and space. She is the second human female to have adopted this identity. The first was Kitty’s friend, Illyana Rasputin. Illyana is dead now. And as far as Kitty is concerned she has absolutely no interest in the core concept of alternate or disparate realities, and to be honest she doesn’t trust Amanda that much either. It’s no wonder that Kurt was trying to keep her involvement quiet. Kitty glares at the ducks as if this is all their fault.

Nightcrawler inclines his head. There’s history between Kitty and Amanda, all tied up with an arcane artefact known as the Soulsword, a weapon of pure mystical manifestation once wielded by Illyana, then by Kitty, and now in Amanda’s possession. The Soulsword almost destroyed Kitty, for she was no sorceress and was corrupted by its inherent power; when Magik took it from her it was an act of kindness that likely saved her life. But relinquishing the blade was akin to abandoning her last link to Illyana, and Kitty still has – and will always have – conflicting emotions regarding that episode of her past. The fact that the very mention of her causes Kitty to bristle so renders Kurt’s position decidedly… delicate.

“Actually,” the blue-furred mutant eventually says, with a forced cheeriness, “Amanda is as curious as I am regarding the nature of whatever dimension it is that I’m passing through every time I teleport. It’s a realm she can’t enter, you see. She can, to use a metaphor, hold the curtain aside whilst I explore, but she personally can’t see beyond the veil.”

“Of course,” says Kurt, beaming once again. “But, like watching a scary movie or riding a rollercoaster, that’s just part of the appeal, ja?”

Kitty sighs heavily. She then sees Kurt’s smile falter, and she looks concerned. “Besides,” he tells her, suddenly solemn, “there’s something else. Recently, whilst teleporting, I’ve been convinced that I’m… not alone. I’ve never experienced that before. And sometimes I can hear a strange voice in my dreams, and I know this is connected. Considering that we X-Men habitually encounter telepaths and alien consciousnesses of incredible power I believe it is my responsibility to investigate, to determine if any fleeting presence I’ve perceived is benign – or hostile. You see?”

“Right. Well.” Kitty fixes him with a stern gaze, her hazel eyes shining. “Just you promise me one thing, Kurt Wagner. You promise me that Magik will do her damnedest to keep you safe, you hear? Because I’ve had my fill of losing people I love. I refuse to lose you as well.”

Kurt smiles once more, with such gentleness, and gathers his friend close to his chest. “Let your heart be at rest, fraulein,” he murmurs. “The Nightcrawler is a hardy beast. I shall return forthwith. After all… what could possibly go wrong?”

Kurt Wagner, Nightcrawler, casts his companion a cheeky grin, then curls his tail about his legs, tenses… and with a loud BAMF! of foul, sulphurous air rushing to fill the sudden breach in the very fabric of existence, he vanishes, travelling from this plane of reality to another. Kitty Pryde stares on miserably, unable to escape the all-pervading sense that this is a very, very bad idea – and exactly the kind of stunt that her adventuresome, mule-willed friend would indulge in, regardless of the consequences.

“Well, okay,” she says, forcing herself to smile. “You asked for it. Just don’t blame me if you sink like a stone next time you go swimming…”

Best technological advancement of the new millennium? Digital cameras. I swear, you have no idea how much cash I flushed away back when I was using rolls of film. I mean, I always earned enough from selling pictures of that masked menace, the spectacular Spider-Man – that’s me, by the way – to The Daily Bugle to make the whole process worthwhile, but even so.

See, the way it would work is that prior to a particular event – a set-to with a mad, bad and dangerous to know Doctor Octopus, for example – I’d set up my original camera in some unobtrusive nook and cranny and have it take pictures on automatic, triggered by a handy-dandy remote relay device secreted in the belt of my costume; whenever I passed in front of the lens, the relay would operate and the camera would take the shot. But what about the composition, I hear you cry? Angles? Lighting? Well, hey. That’s the problem. We’re not talking professional exposures here; for every picture of me in fight or flight there were a dozen shots of a blank wall or a coloured blur or a surprised pigeon having an aneurysm, hence the waste of film. And even the pictures where I actually appeared weren’t the greatest. But The Bugle bought them up like candy anyhow, simply because all their other photographers – staff or freelance – only ever brought them generic shots of Spidey-swinging-on-a-web. Peter Parker – again, that’s me – always came up with the good stuff, such as Spidey being pounded into hamburger by a tentacle or a dislodged hunk of concrete the size of a Buick, even if the composition was excruciatingly poor.

I’m not the only person who makes a living from their pain being captured on celluloid. I believe the accepted term is extreme performance art – that or pornography. But, whatever. The fact I now own a digital camera hasn’t improved the automatic process but, on the plus side, all the wasted shots no longer cost me cold, hard dollars, you know?

However, all this is by-the-by on this particular sunny morning. Today, whilst I am dressed as Spider-Man rather than Peter Parker, I’m not the subject of my own photo-shoot; instead I’m dangling on a thread of webbing from an elegant, third-storey cornice and personally taking pictures of an event that – shock! horror! – doesn’t revolve around me. Or, at least, that’s what I’m hoping. I’m wearing the suit because, well… you can never tell, can you? Not in this crazy town.

The scene below me is taking place on the steps of the newly-established Delqitari Embassy just outside Battery Park. Delqitar, for those not in the know, is a small African state of recently declared independence. Don’t worry if you’ve never heard of it; someone had to point it out to me on a map yesterday, and I was still none the wiser. The Head of State is a man named Coloi Achebe – mid-fifties, ex-military, looks a little like a cross between Bill Cosby and Mike Tyson. You know, mean and heavyset but probably a sweetheart with a martini-dry sense of humour. Probably. The woman currently standing by Achebe’s side is his wife, Saliyah. Twenty years his junior, slender and beautiful to his squat and pugilistic, but seemingly shy bordering on anxious. Maybe she just isn’t used to so much attention. We can’t all be showboats like me, I guess.

Achebe and Saliyah are surrounded by their own bodyguards as well as a scattering of black-suited FBI, maybe a couple of CIA. And, of course, journalists. For once the journalists are outnumbered, and a touch intimidated. This is the first time the Head of State has set foot on American soil after a less-than-savoury political brouhaha between the US and Delqitar six weeks previously. To say that today’s visit to the Embassy is a diplomatic time bomb is an understatement, which is why I’m observing from the sidelines in costume rather than mingling with the crowd as plain old Parker. The bodyguards and Feds should be enough to deter the majority of opportunists, those fruitcakes who’d be all too happy to trigger an international incident by gatecrashing proceedings, but if New York is anything it’s unpredictable. I’ve seen days like this descend into chaos all too quickly, when a Vulture or a Brotherhood of Evil Mutants decides to make their mark. Fortunately every angle seems well-covered in this instance; not a single supervillain or political terrorist on the horizon. In fact, as Achebe makes a brief speech to the assembled press courtesy of his translator, and then steps back to smile benignly for the cameras, I allow myself to think that everything’s going to go perfectly smoothly and that nothing’s going to spoil the sunshine.

Sigh. You really think, after all these years, I’d have learned not to be so dumb, right…?

The attack, when it comes, is over in seconds. One moment everything’s fine, and the next there’s shock and pandemonium. The man who materialises from thin air behind Achebe and Saliyah is mostly obscured by a swirl of olive green and crimson – a cloak – but I catch sight of his rather distinctive mask all the same. Crimson again, with a pronounced ridge of brow above a pair of glowing, golden eyes and a rictus grin. Ten-to-one odds that at least two-thirds of the press corps will think this is an assault by The Red Skull. But it’s not. I’ve never tangled one-on-one with this guy personally but I recognise him from browsing computer files and debriefings during my short-lived membership of The Avengers. His real name’s Seth Voelker. His villain moniker is Sidewinder, like the snake. His power…? Well, his power’s all wrapped up in that cloak. It gifts him the ability of teleportation. And, in this particular situation, that means trouble with a capital uh-oh…

Sidewinder lunges forward as the press gasp and the various bodyguards and federal agents make a desperate snatch for their weapons. But none of them are fast enough. Achebe roars and stumbles… Sidewinder spreads his cloak… but then, to the astonishment of all concerned, he grabs Saliyah rather than her husband! As the screaming woman vanishes beneath folds of green and red so Sidewinder tenses, head bowed – and immediately begins to dematerialise once more, long before a single bullet can be fired. As I said, none of the armed response assigned to this situation are fast enough to react to a shock assault from a teleporter who can appear and disappear at will in their midst. Lucky for all concerned, then, that I’m a heck of a lot quicker.

Spurred by my spider-sense, I’m instinctively swinging forward into the fray within a second of Sidewinder’s manifestation. Therefore, as he begins to fade, I’m close enough to snag him with a web-line, intending to yank him off his feet and disrupt his vanishing act – but too late! He stumbles as I pull, but – blink! – he’s gone, along with Saliyah… and a certain well-crawler who just can’t help butting into the business of others and who, attached to his foe by a single thread, is unwittingly dragged out of one existence and into another that is utterly, overwhelming different…

As otherworldly dimensions go, the Linkspace – as Kurt Wagner, for want of an official name, has decided to call it – could be worse. It could be far worse. There are no lakes of liquid fire or whorls of destructive anti-matter or swarms of sentient protoplasm, nor are there legions of demons of any shape or form hungering for blood, any of which might be considered de rigueur for an extraterrestrial experience. This stands to reason, of course. After all, Kurt muses as he drifts upon the currents of an alien ether, if the territory of the Linkspace were in any way hostile then he would have been devoured mid-passage long before now. That doesn’t prevent this plane of existence from being decidedly odd, however.

The core environment is characterised by a vast emptiness, the blue-black of a moonless night above a lonely, winding road, but instead of a sky fractured with stars this landscape is punctuated with thousands of shapes of a fluid determination; sometimes ovals, sometimes rectangles, sometimes spirals, all of different sizes not necessarily established through distance, all reflecting a pallid, colourless light rather than generating any luminescence of their own. Kurt is reminded of crystalline wind chimes flickering with droplets of sunlight as they sway in the breeze, although this light is far more subtle, pulsing rather than glittering. He understands, instinctively, that each perpetually shifting shape is a window – or, to be more metaphysical, as the Linkspace demands, an opportunity – that gazes out upon the plane of reality he has just vacated.

There is a sense of tranquillity here: no noise, but also no oppressive silence. Just serenity. Certainly no trace of any presence, dangerous or otherwise. Kurt continues to drift in the absence of gravity or directional perspective. Could he have been wrong? It wouldn’t be the first time his overactive imagination has led him astray. He thinks of Magik – Amanda – orchestrating this expedition from Limbo, utilising the essence of that timeless dimension to dramatically slow his journey here. Typically he would pass through the Linkspace in the course of a teleportation at such speed that this other plane wouldn’t register in his mind, not even on a subliminal level; now he is able, to use a colloquial expression, to stop and smell the roses. Not that there are any roses, or indeed anything of note, with the exception of the glowing shapes all around. It’s beautiful in an abstract way, but no more. Kitty would be relieved, of course, but Kurt can’t help but feel disappointed. Surely just a tiny swarm of protoplasm wouldn’t be too much to ask, just to liven things up? Because this is actually all rather –

Kurt Wagner wheels, golden eyes suddenly wide and teeth bared. The sound – the first and only noise he’s heard since his arrival, aside from his own breathing – isn’t particularly loud, but is startling nonetheless. The sudden appearance of a mass of flailing arms and legs, quickly separating into three distinct figures, is no less dramatic. Kurt sees an attractive African woman in colourful skirts and a masked man in a green and red cloak, neither of whom are familiar… but who are accompanied by a fellow in a red and blue costume who most definitely is. That would be me again. Seriously, you just can’t get rid of me. I’m like the superhero equivalent of Athlete’s Foot.

“Hey there, twinkle-toes!” I declare cheerily, waving. “Long time no see. Sorry to just drop in like this, but I’m pretty sure last time we hooked up you told me I was always welcome. Or were you just being polite? I can never tell. I swear, I am the king of faux pas…”

“Spider-Man?” Nightcrawler splutters. “Mein Gott… what are you doing here? And who are your companions?”

I hear Saliyah scream and turn to witness her horror as she struggles free of Sidewinder’s grip and takes stock of her new surroundings for the first time. It’s difficult to tell through his face mask but I’d lay a bet that old snake-shoes isn’t too impressed with his current predicament either. And me? Hey, no sweat. I’ve accompanied Doctor Strange to the oogly-boogly dimensions of Watoomb and Hoggoth and Ditkoesque or whatever he likes to call them. Compared to those underwear-twisters, this place is a veritable beach paradise…

“That’s the bad guy,” I say, pointing at Sidewinder. “He’s a teleporter. And she’s the First Lady of Delqitar, who he was in the process of kidnapping when I came bounding up like a playful puppy.”

Sidewinder snarls, finally gauging how to manoeuvre in the ether and whirling towards me. “You don’t understand, you idiot! This isn’t what it - ”

“You use this dimension for teleportational travel?” Nightcrawler asks, with that almost childlike curiosity that is so unmistakably him. Regrettably, it seems that Sidewinder isn’t in any mood to be friendly.

“What?” he snaps. “How the hell should I know? Usually I just disappear from one spot and then reappear a few miles away, in whatever direction I was thinking of at the time.” The villain gathers his cloak about his body, his movements agitated. “It’s not me,” he tells us. “I’m not a mutant. It’s this, the cloak. I don’t even understand how it works…”

“And it sure isn’t working any more, is it?” I say, rather smugly. I can’t help myself. It’s so unmistakably me. “I guess that makes you powerless.”

Sidewinder sneers and extends both hands, his gloved fingers unfurled into talons – talons with sharp points that glisten with what can only be venom. “There’s more to this snake than a vanishing act,” he hisses.

“The Linkspace – this dimensional plane – has been purposefully affected by an outside influence,” Nightcrawler says, somewhat apologetically. He absently taps his chin with two of the three fingers of one hand, completely oblivious to Sidewinder’s aggression. “A comrade of mine, she has certain power of dimensional flow. Your passage through it has been slowed, just as mine has. But the fact that you can’t simply return to our Earthly realm at your whim is rather concerning…”

“Maybe we should worry about that after we’ve taken care of the poisonous-serpent-maniac-guy?” I muse. “Just a suggestion.”

I hear Saliyah scream again, and when I look I see that she’s drifted away from the rest of us by some considerable distance. Actually, she isn’t drifting – that would imply the vaguest of motions. Instead she’s travelling at a rather alarming pace, and accelerating into the bargain. It’s as if she’s caught in some manner of slipstream. And her apparent destination…?

It’s next to impossible to measure spatial distance in this environment, but the First Lady of Delqitar seems to be passing between an avenue of ever-changing shapes and heading directly for one profile in particular – a shimmering rhombus that isn’t reflecting pale, neutral light like its brethren but which is instead cast in a dark, shadowy green. Once I set eyes on this shape its incongruent qualities shine like a beacon. I notice that Nightcrawler is under the same impression. And, suddenly, the sense of tranquillity that we were previously experiencing is replaced by a rush of what can only be described as dread – a wave of pure, unadulterated fear.

“The presence…” I hear Nightcrawler breathe. He glances at me, stricken. “I’ve recently been aware of an unsettling aura whenever I’ve teleported. But this is many times more virulent – and it’s emanating from that portal. That woman is in grave danger. We have to save her!”

Sidewinder dives at us, driven by panic now rather than belligerence, but Nightcrawler slips beneath his lunge and kicks him in the abdomen, sending him spinning. I duck beneath a slash of poisoned claws and grab the villain’s cloak, dragging him close. He flails, and almost catches me off-guard, my enhanced agility no use to me in this environment; fortunately there’s also more to me than fancy dance steps. Grimacing beneath my mask I twist and snare Sidewinder’s threatening hands in a spool of silvery webbing, much to his consternation. “You, you little skink, are coming with us,” I bark. “Much as I’d like to abandon you here for getting us into this mess in the first place…”

“As I was trying to tell you,” Sidewinder rasps, “your perceptions are mistaken. I wasn’t kidnapping that woman. I was rescuing her! She’s the one that hired me.”

“A discussion for another time!” Nightcrawler suggests. “You can unravel the truth later, Spider-Man – for now we have to concentrate on our own rescue, yes?”

I sigh. I hate mysteries. I hate not knowing what’s going on, period. And I can’t help but think that this little expedition is going to become more convoluted the more it goes on…

The throne room – for that is an appropriate description as any – is vast, as vast as its creator decrees it to be by sheer force of will. At this precise instant – although in timeless Limbo there are no instants any more than there are minutes or hours or days or eons – that creator is languishing in a throne of bronze and bone before a roaring hearth. The flames burn in a multitude of colours, a hundred more than might exist in an Earthly spectrum, and are fuelled solely by magical combustion. A dark, rich wine fills a goblet, untouched. There is the scent of some beguiling incense upon the air. The creator sits in silence, her face a mask of brooding concentration.

She is coldly beautiful, with a sweep of reddish-blonde hair and glacier eyes, and a red rosebud of a perpetual, sultry half-smile. She wears a robe of ivory silk, cut low at the valley of her breasts and slit to mid-thigh to expose a delicate curve of leg, but in the blink of an eye she could cast her herself in a wholly different image of cloak and steel and coiled horns. Her name, depending upon what time one has encountered her, is Jimaine Szardos or Amanda Sefton…

She has been a friend – and sometimes lover – to Kurt Wagner for many years. Contrary to the suspicions of Kitty Pryde she was no more in favour of Kurt’s impulsive excursion into an unknown world than the girl currently feeding bread to ducks in Battery Park. And this is why.

Magik’s eyes darken to molten gold, absorbing the light from the sorcerous fire before her. Slowly, her gentle hands clench into a warrior’s fists. In her mind she feels the darkness – the foulness – reaching out to engulf those invaders trespassing upon a hitherto unexplored corner of the Linkspace that should never have been approached. Something has awoken there. Something that exhales fear and despair; something that hungers.

“Hold fast, Kurt Wagner,” Magik breathes. “Though navigation of the mysterious realm you travel is denied to me, access to your destination is not. Therefore, though treacherous, I shall take my place by your side. And woe betide any adversary who chooses to stand in my way…”

If you’d like to give feedback on this series, positive or critical, please don’t hesitate to drop a line to ameriades@hotmail.com.

"WHEN I'M ALONE AND BLUE AS CAN BE"

Written by Meriades Rai