The world isn’t teeming with poets and painters and craftsmen of every ilk; the artisans are the exceptions. For every sculptor and every smith there are a hundred, perhaps a thousand, who possess no skills to speak of, whose mundane lives will never be coloured with inspiration. It’s a bleak prognosis, and there’s little wonder society is more inclined to believe an aphorism that gives each individual hope that they are, beneath it all, special. But a kind falsehood is still false.

Tony Stark was a gifted man. The tools of his particular trade weren’t words or pictures, but just as a writer could seemingly draw muse from some invisible well to craft the most magnificent tales so Stark, the spiritual descendant of Tesla and da Vinci, was able to imagine. And with his tools - with metal and wires and electricity - he could create, to a standard of such remarkable complexity and efficiency that he outstripped his modern-day peers without a backward glance. As testament to his genius, Stark’s greatest feat of engineering - a full suit of sophisticated body armour he wore in his secondary identity as the invincible Iron Man - had originally been forged over ten years previously and had been constantly upgraded ever since. None of his envious contemporaries had been able to replicate his technology, let alone surpass it; just as the world wasn’t full of poets, it also wasn’t full of Iron Men.

This, perhaps, was a shame. Because for all of Stark’s amazing gifts, and this incredible armour hewn from instinct and intellect, one Iron Man wasn’t going to be enough to save the city of San Francisco from certain doom…

Scientific study of long-term memory in animals has revealed that odour is a key factor in cognitive association. It’s been theorised that some animals - dogs, for example, and rats - can retain knowledge of specific scents for remarkable periods of time, and can correlate these scents with conscious recognition of certain people or places or things years after exposure.

A fascinating field of analysis to some. However, to the man who was currently prowling the veranda of an exclusive Bayside residence beneath a full, copper moon… well, not so much. This man had little time for science. Which wasn’t to say he was uneducated, far from it; it was simply that science had rarely treated him with kindness. Just the opposite in fact. He was a fellow who relied on instinct and who was concerned only with the corporeal aspects of the natural world, for good or ill, and for whom the disciplines of technology all too often reminded him of pain.

Nevertheless, this man understood the psychology of scent memory. For him it was an absolute, not theory. He experienced the world not only though sight and sound as a normal human might but through every sense, smell included, heightened to a preternatural degree. Tonight, his expression was inscrutable as he surveyed the carnage that littered a lavish stone and marble courtyard before him. The blood, the pulped flesh, the half-digested corpses that littered the flagstones and floated in a swimming pool darkened to inky scarlet… this was fresh butchery, and another man might have recoiled at the stench of death. But not him. He was interested in another scent, bitterly pungent and familiar, lingering upon the carcasses.

The man had been alerted by the faintest trails of this specific odour on three occasions in as many days. Tonight the scent was strong, an indication that his worst fears had been realised. For a second or two, the man stood motionless upon the veranda overlooking the scene of slaughter, his eyes dark and sharp as glass beneath bushy brows. In that moment he resembled a fox or coyote, silent and black, eyes shining like white fire in the moonlight; a predator lost in the urban sprawl, wishing he was somewhere else, anywhere else, but unable to escape the relentless spread of civilization.

Then, with a sound that was more a grunt or a snuffle than a sigh, the man turned away.

Somewhere else, anywhere else. Dammit. It was going to be one hell of a long night…

When a chunk of masonry the approximate size and shape of a Cadillac came hurtling through the air towards him, Tony Stark was somewhat surprised. This was understandable. One didn’t expect to be pelted with four times one’s own body mass of concrete whilst taking a leisurely meander along Columbus Avenue, the principal thoroughfare of San Francisco’s North Beach, otherwise known as Little Italy. Of course, when one was clad in a suit of streamlined crimson and gold armour, and when one’s meandering was not being conducted on foot but rather some twenty metres above street-level with the aid of jet-propelled rocket thrusters projecting from the soles of one’s boots… well, then, yes, perhaps one was making oneself into a rather more visible target. But, even so.

Stark was in San Francisco for one night only, to attend a charity fundraiser for a high-profile anti-pollution campaign. Such events were typically dull affairs but this particular gathering had been quite momentously dreary, so much so that he’d barely been able to last an hour before making his excuses and departing. It wasn’t as if he needed to listen to tales of woe regarding the contamination of the Earth, anyway; it was his money that was important. And Stark Industries was already leading all the league tables for reduced consumption and emissions by a country mile, so no one could accuse him of not doing his bit to safeguard the environment. Not to mention the fact that, as one of The Avengers, he saved the planet on a weekly basis. If anyone deserved to be pardoned from three hours of listening to a stick-thin woman in a natural-fibres-kaftan named China or India or whoever, droning on about fluorocarbons and oil spills, then it was him, surely.

And so, now, here he was - but it wasn’t Stark who was enjoying the bright lights and music and general merriment of Columbus. Instead it was Iron Man, rocket boots being by far the best way to navigate the city in search of a restaurant that was more high class than tourist trap. He’d just spotted a rather charming looking seafood establishment, and had run its credentials through his onboard database to determine its authenticity and Michelin star rating, when his synchronised radar system had alerted him to the car-sized hunk of rock approaching the general coordinates of his head. It was all terribly inconvenient.

Implementing automatic collision avoidance through the activation of a simple neurotransmission of binary code, Iron Man swept clear of the incoming missile with a second to spare then instinctively angled his present trajectory arc down towards the street below, where a scattering of pedestrians were rooted in blind panic, shrieking and flailing and pointing at their impending doom… until that doom was quashed by a single repulsor beam from the palm of Iron Man’s outstretched right gauntlet, the exact direction and intensity of his blast calculated by a computerized program based on a multiple hypothesis model. As predicted, the slab of masonry didn’t shatter - thereby causing a potentiality for more widespread harm - but was instead diverted at a precise angle into the side of a parked Buick. With a crunching impact of stone and splintered metal the vehicle crumpled and shunted into the wall of a building. It was a devastating spectacle, but one that claimed no innocent life in the process.

Iron Man didn’t even pause to admire his handiwork. He had long since ceded complete trust to his onboard emergency systems to cope with split-second eventualities such as these. Instead he was more concerned with the source of the attack - and with the reaction of certain members of the public to what had just occurred. A few metres away, amidst a hysteria that had now gripped Columbus Avenue and was causing people to scatter in all directions, a handful of young men and women were whooping and clapping as they waved cell phones and digital cameras in the air. Blinking in disbelief behind the gleaming faceplate of his helmet, Iron Man came to ground and stalked forward with a ring of metal on sidewalk.

“What in God’s name do you people think you’re doing?” he snapped, his voice distorted by his helmet’s synthesized mouthpiece and imbued with a chilling, alien quality. The gang of youths turned and, as one, began to squeal and skip with delight. Iron Man exhaled a wordless sigh of despair as a half-dozen video cell phones flicked in his direction.

“Dude, the city’s being torn apart!” a girl with braided blonde hair gushed. “It’s, like, totally Cloverfield!”

Iron Man faltered. “Totally what?”

“Cloverfield, man! Y’know, the movie? What, you don’t go to the movies?”

“Not recently. Can’t stand all the overblown CGI. Give me Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr any day.”

“Cary who?”

Iron Man rolled his eyes behind his faceplate. The girl snorted.

“Whatever, dude. Just remember, next film you see? Stay through the credits. They tack all the cool stuff on the end these days, y’know?”

Iron Man suddenly whirled as Columbus Avenue was rocked by an explosion from somewhere behind him. The night air was filled with waves of heat and dust, and an escalation of panicked screams. The pack of gawping kids stumbled backwards, their smiles suddenly failing and their phones now limp in their hands.

“Whatever that is up there,” the armoured man murmured, staring away into the distance, “it’s no movie monster. It’s real. And it’s coming this way. So stop recording and beat it!”

The youths didn’t need telling twice, turning tail and scampering for safety. Iron Man’s eyes narrowed as he issued a series of binary instruction codes.

Lock. Magnify. Analyse. Transmit.

As he waited for the armour’s computer to download imagery data for him to view on an interior virtual reality display, he became aware of a gigantic shape up ahead, lurching out of the darkness, unhindered by anything in its path. Buildings were being demolished, vehicles crushed underfoot. The stream of people fleeing from certain death had now become a tide. Recognising that there was no way to quell the panic, Iron Man prepared to ignite his jets and take to the sky once more. Then, just as his onboard scanners began to relay the first images of the unknown threat he was facing, he had a voice behind him. Low, guttural, a drawling cadence.

“Ugly bastard, isn’t he?”

Iron Man turned, his armoured body afire in the blaze of the streetlights all around. The individual now facing him - short, stocky, dressed in tassled hide and cowboy boots, with a mane of wild black hair and a grim, swarthy countenance - grinned a grin that revealed a glitter of teeth. Behind his faceplate, Iron Man’s eyes widened in recognition.

“That creature you’re looking at? Its name is Spore,” said the mutant known as Wolverine. “And if we’re going to have any chance of stopping it slaughtering everything in its path between here and the east coast… well, Bub, you’re going to have to pay attention to me.”

The encounter had taken place three years before, on the island nation of Tierra Verde, located in the Gulf of Mexico one hundred miles northwest of Cuba. Ruled by a ruthless and corrupt President, Felix Guillermo Caridad, the country’s principal trade was the trafficking of cocaine, from a specific crop grown on a mountain named el Jardin del Rey, ‘the Garden of the King’. In this Tierra Verde was a nation no different from many Central American republics, but in one respect it was actually unique: the cocaine harvested from el Jardin del Rey was contaminated.

And it was contaminated by a substance not of this Earth.

Millennia ago the world had been inhabited by two warring species, the Eternals and the Deviants. Always searching for new ways in which to wreak destruction upon their enemies, the Deviants had utilised advanced techniques of genetic engineering and biochemical experimentation to create a truly devastating biological weapon - a sentient disease. This organism had come to be known as Spore. With a physical mass composed of unorganised amorphous material, Spore could literally consume any living thing with which it came into contact, engulfing, infecting and ultimately assimilating its victims into its ever-increasing bulk. It was one of the Deviants’ greatest successes, a walking plague, and it may well have turned the entire war against the Eternals… if not for the intervention of the galactic beings known as the Celestials. Deeming Spore too dangerous a force to be allowed to exist they rained cosmic fire upon it, reducing it to a dissipated cellular state.

The Celestials had believed Spore to be forever vanquished, and indeed for millions of years the creature was to remain nothing more than disassembled particles soaked into the soil and rock of the location where its destruction had taken place. And yet, and yet…

Spore’s obliteration had occurred upon the mountain that would one day be known as el Jardin del Rey. Those lingering particles had unwittingly been incorporated into the cocaine crop harvested by Caridad, and through the contaminated narcotic the essence of Spore had begun to reconstitute as it infected the physiology of any human who ingested it. Three years ago, faced with a threat to his political power, Caridad himself had knowingly consumed his cocaine, allowing Spore to manifest fully through him. That threat had been Wolverine, present in Tierra Verde to unravel the island’s mysteries.

Wolverine had ultimately helped conquer Spore, but it hadn’t been an easy-won victory. And now the beast had returned…

Wolverine related the story of Spore succinctly, aware that there was little time to waste but also an experienced enough combatant to recognise the value of being privy to all the necessary information. Another fellow may have expressed disbelief at such a tale or demanded greater detail in the telling, but Iron Man was of a different ilk; as an Avenger he had encountered extraterrestrial and other-dimensional threats aplenty in his time, and the names of Deviants and Celestials were not unfamiliar to him. He listened without speaking, and without being distracted by the carnage being wrought nearby.

In fact, Iron Man was so unresponsive - the very definition of unreadable - that Wolverine couldn’t help but dislike him.

It would perhaps come as a surprise to many who saw him only as - to coin an expression - a hairy little savage, but Wolverine was in fact highly intuitive. His heightened perception stemmed from being a keen study of behaviour, of analysing body language, mannerisms, intonation of speech and reflexive actions; he played the role of swaggering grunt to perfection, but beneath that he was as shrewd and intelligent as they came. In most cases he could understand another man’s nature better than that man himself. However, with Iron Man that insight was coldly denied. All facial signifiers where hidden behind an expressionless mask, all vocal inflexions distorted. And then there was scent, of course; all Wolverine could smell in this instance was a fog of oil and hot metal, and the low, steady pulse of an electrical energy aura.

Science. Metal. Sharp and acrid. Pain. Memories like blades, flashing back and forth in the corner of his eye before cutting deep.

Wolverine already counted one iron sentinel among his acquaintances, his friend Piotr Rasputin. Piotr was a fellow mutant, able to transform his body of flesh and muscle into one of gleaming organic steel: the hero named Colossus. But Piotr was dramatically distinct from Iron Man in that he was utterly expressive, a man of such honesty and integrity that he was unable to hide away the faintest aspect of his being. Wolverine could relax in the company of Colossus more readily than with almost any other person. To say that, in contrast, he was unnerved by Iron Man would be incorrect - he was unnerved by no one - but to be in the armoured Avenger’s vicinity was an experience that caused his hackles to rise and his mouth to curl in a hostile snarl.

“You say Spore was destroyed?” Iron Man eventually asked.

“As good as. Twice. Once by Celestials, then again - on Tierra Verde, right before my eyes - by a woman named Sister Salvation who could channel a healing light through her hands. Spore was cancer; Salvation, like her name suggests, was as close to a cure as you can get. Trouble is, with Spore destroyed then Salvation’s power faded too. Like it was a gift from God for that one moment in time, never to be used again.”

“But now Spore’s back.”

“Yep. I’d hoped all the contaminated cocaine had been dealt with, but I’ve always kept my nostrils flared just in case. Good job too. Last week I picked up traces of a scent specific to that cocaine and followed a trail to some B-list celeb’s Bayside pad. You know the kinda guy: rich, privileged, couldn’t give a rat’s ass, happy to burn up a small village’s worth of electricity to keep his pool just the right temperature. Bit like that billionaire boss of yours, right? Anyway, I was too late. Him and his party guests were all dead by the time I got there. They’d been infected then devoured from within, spawning a new incarnation of Spore.”

If Iron Man was irked by Wolverine’s crack about Stark it was impossible to tell. Instead he raised his crimson gauntlets, the circular vents in the palms already beginning to glow and crackle with a bright blue charge. “I can’t claim to be a healer,” his distorted voice crackled, “or that my energy stems from any kind of cosmic power. But I can sure as hell pack a mean punch.”

Wolverine’s eyes narrowed. “Good for you, Tintin. Now you know what we’re up against, feel free to join in any time…”

And with that the mutant stalked forward, shedding his tassled hide jacket and black sweatshirt to reveal a squat upper torso of tanned flesh stretched over ridges of corded muscle and matted with black hair. Flexing a pair of knotted forearms he locked his wrists and grimaced - and then, with a harsh whistle of steel against bone, the Wolverine released his claws, three twelve-inch blades of bone molecularly bonded with the metal Adamantium literally bursting out from between the knuckles of each hand. A fine spray of blood and lacerated flesh misted the air, but even as Iron Man looked on so the ruined skin that surrounded the exit wounds caused by each claw began to crawl and scar and knit together with accelerated cellular regeneration. Wolverine possessed a mutant healing factor, meaning that there was no lasting damage each time he unleashed those retractable claws. Even so, it had to hurt. Every time.

Wolverine glanced back over his shoulder one last time, his eyes so dark now they were almost black, his snarl a rictus of pain and rage. Coyote in the moonlight. To Iron Man this expression suggested two rejoinders: that Wolverine sure as hell packed a mean punch too and, also, that he viewed the Avenger as akin to a walking tin can that he could perforate and shred into steel ribbons without skipping a heartbeat. Like Wolverine, Iron Man was not the kind of fellow who could be easily unnerved. However, there was no questioning his private sense of relief that they were about to fight alongside one another here instead of against…

The human body is a machine, and disease - any disease, be it cancer, AIDS, Ebola, Avian flu or any of a thousand other strains - is the eternal enemy. It rots the flesh, it withers the muscles, it weakens the bones, it taints the blood. Science has stemmed the tide. In some cases, science has worked miracles. But mother nature, it has to be said, can be a bitch. Disease always finds a way. It destroys, from the inside out, sometimes quick, sometimes mercilessly slow. If there was any saving grace to the slaughter perpetrated by the ancient beast known as Spore it was that, once infected, its victims were consumed with indecent haste, with only scorched and bloodied remains left to mark their passing.

Which isn’t to say that Spore didn’t enjoy killing. It did. It had been genetically engineered to revel in its own bloodthirst and to embrace genocide in its vain quest to sate its ravenous hunger for life. And it would not stop… until someone stopped it.

The fiend lurched along Columbus Avenue on short, thick legs, its nightmarish approximation of a body swaying precariously from side-to-side. It was close to fifteen feet tall, gigantic in a fashion but a mere fraction of the gargantuan mass it had accrued in times past and, left unchecked, soon would again. At present it was also slower and more cumbersome than it would like, meaning that the majority of the terrified, screaming insects of the human species scattering before him remained safe, for now, from assimilation. There were always those who were crippled by their own panic, however, running blind or frozen to the spot, shrieking for their absent gods to save them from their doom.

The beast grinned, a black gash splitting wetly in the pale yellow mucus of its face and bleeding a filthy, steaming saliva. There were no more gods, it knew, in this era so very distant from the time of the Deviants and the Eternals, and the Celestials. No God.

Only Spore.

The fiend lumbered on, consuming a fallen man here, a hysterical woman there. It absorbed fleeting glimpses of their identities as it gorged upon their instantaneously rotting flesh but in truth it didn’t care for individuality and more than a human gave a thought to the nature of its cattle or fowl when tearing strips of meat from the bone. This, then, was a weakness; so inattentive, Spore wasn’t aware that the bare-chested man who suddenly veered into its path was no stranger but was instead familiar to its genetic memory. It wasn’t until it attempted to devour him that recognition took hold like a rusty nail - or, to be more precise, a gleaming bone and Adamantium claw. Six of them.

“You should’ve stayed gelatine, Bub,” Wolverine snarled, girding his muscles - and his quesy stomach - as Spore’s disgusting grist and membrane washed over him like uncooked egg. And then, with a guttural bellow of rage, he began to piston his arms back and forth, ripping into the creature’s underbelly with his claws.

From up above Iron Man watched on in mute astonishment as he circled in the night sky. The sight of Spore up close was disgusting enough, a bubbling, quivering bulk of putrid yellow flab and slime, but the way Wolverine hurled himself into the fray was even more arresting. Most super-powered combatants of a certain type, regardless of the nature of their abilities, fought with some measure of a defensive strategy; the likes of Spider-Man and Captain America, whilst incontestably brave and willing to put their lives on the line on a daily basis, invariably spent much of a battle avoiding their enemies, knowing that a single bullet or lucky blow could incapacitate them, or worse. In truth only the likes of Thor and The Hulk, and perhaps himself - powerhouses with augmented resistance to harm or virtual invulnerability - were inclined to go toe-to-toe with an adversary with little concern for themselves.

And then there was Wolverine.

The feral mutant was an anomaly. His skin was no thicker than that of an ordinary man. He felt pain. Every blow, every cut, every burn. Yes, he healed, but that came after; the pain was real. And yet here he was, attacking head on, with no charade of defence. Did he welcome those agonies he suffered, therefore? Relish them? Or were they simply an accepted requirement, a catalyst to engender that berserker rage of his? Whatever the answer, there was no denying his effectiveness. Size apart, this was no David versus Goliath skirmish - with every cut and thrust of his claws, Wolverine was driving Spore back. And that was Iron Man’s cue.

The armoured Avenger extended his gauntlets and the glowing circles in his palms lit bright. Computerized risk analysis complete, he triggered his repulsor rays - and suddenly, in an instant not unlike a lightning strike, night transformed into day. Twin streams of electric blue energy pulse hammered down into Spore’s back from overhead, the force of each repulsor bolt increasing in intensity as it travelled. Spore shrieked, the approximation of a flattened head thrown backwards and its maw wide and black, as it was bludgeoned to the ground, shedding huge chunks of its body mass with the impact of each pulse bolt. And then, as the fiend writhed, Iron Man saw Wolverine roll clear, his skin blackened and smoking, and covered with horrific blisters. Behind his faceplate, Stark almost gagged.

Spore screamed once more, twitching in endless spasm. But then, almost immediately as Iron Man ceased to rain down repulsor rays upon it, it began to reconstitute itself once more, gathering the slime particles of its fragmented hide to its core and rising again on its stubby legs. Iron Man swore and unleashed another wave of pulse bolts, achieving a similar effect as before - but, a second time, the instant he ceased his assault so Spore was already recovering.

Ironically reflecting this rapid regeneration, Wolverine was also being restored to some semblance of health by his mutant healing factor, new skin and hair growing through with impossible speed to replace his old, ruined epidermis. “Yeah, that’s what I figured,” the mutant muttered darkly as Iron Man descended nearby. “It’s already absorbed enough human matter to spontaneously rejuvenate. We can break it apart from now ‘til Christmas and it’ll just keep pulling itself together again. My claws and your little light show ain’t enough, Tin.”

“I can crank up the power if I need to.”

“So why don’t you?”

Iron Man turned towards him, his gleaming faceplate as expressionless as ever but his voice terse, even through the distortion. “Because we’re in the middle of the city and I don’t want to take out the whole block, that’s why. If we can finish this without innocent casualties, then - ”

“Big if,” Wolverine murmured. “Every poor sap this bastard chews on is an innocent casualty. And, with every one, it’s getting stronger.”

Iron Man looked back towards Spore, bristling with frustration. The fiend was fully reconstituted now, as if two showers of mid-intensity repulsor bolts hadn’t even touched it. Its demeanour had changed, however. Now it was focused - on those who had attacked it. Specifically on the short, hairy man with the claws extending from his knuckles…

“Wolverine,” Spore gargled, its voice a mixture of rot and screams and the hot winds of hell. “I remember you. Mutant scum. What does it take for you to die?”

Iron Man glanced at his companion. “It talks?”

“Only when it feels the need to insult me.”

“A sweet guy like you? That’s so uncalled for.”

Wolverine glowered. Then, abruptly, he stiffened, and his eyes narrowed to black slits. When he spoke, his voice was lowered. “How much can you crank it up, Tin?”

“Given space, enough to reduce the son of a bitch to dust. But I told you, I won’t - ”

“Relax, Bub. I’m not keen on seeing the streets of San Francisco run red with the blood of women and kids any more than you. So just follow my lead…”

Wolverine cricked his neck then strode forward to meet Spore, arms outstretched like wings and claws gleaming. “You want me, you walking butt-fungus?” He roared me. “You want me? Then let’s do it!”

He leapt then, slashing with a grunt of brute force and carving a huge chunk from one of Spore’s legs. The fiend shrieked and lurched downward, reaching out with its own rotting claws, but Wolverine was a fraction too quick. He skipped off to one side and began to run, heading for a side street. Spore turned slowly, evidently still unaccustomed to its mass, but then gave pursuit. Abandoned and ignored - not a sensation he was familiar with in the middle of a conflict - Iron Man hesitated momentarily. Then he gunned his jets and shot off into the sky, leaving a scorch of vapour trail in his wake.

Wolverine raced on, his body held low in more of a lope than a sprint but still swift enough to keep ahead of Spore’s enraged charge. High overhead, Iron Man looked down on his companion’s progress with continued puzzlement - until, mapping Wolverine’s trajectory onto a three-dimensional map display via neurological transfer, the mutant’s immediate destination suddenly became clear. He was heading for the waterfront. A half dozen blocks north of Bay Bridge to be exact, across the Embarcadero and out along the length of one the bay’s many piers. Realising that his enemy had become fixated on annihilating him, Wolverine was leading Spore to the ocean!

Instantly Iron Man felt that he could take a wild guess at Wolverine’s intended plan… but would it work?

“What’s up, Spore?” Wolverine snarled, whirling to face his enemy upon reaching the far end of the pier. Behind him, Spore’s advance had slowed. Wolverine cocked his head and flexed his claws. “Come on!” he snapped. “What’s the matter, afraid of getting your stinking feet wet?”

“You forget, mutant,” Spore growled, “Tierra Verde was an island. I hold no fear for water. As you should be well aware, disease breeds in your polluted seas as surely as it does on land. Given time, your species could drown itself in filth without my help…”

“They’re not my species.”

Spore seethed and shifted, slowly rolling forward along the forward, more a dense-liquid blob now than a beast with definite form. Yet its hideous mouth remained, enough to spit out one last bark of contempt. “I’ll not fight you the way you wish,” it hissed. “Whether I infect you or shatter your reinforced bones, your damnable healing factor will simply keep you alive. But what if I turn that against you? Tell me, Wolverine… the mortal brain, deprived of oxygen, will cease to function and lead to irreversible damage in a human. But what of yourself? Can your brain repair itself fully once suffocated, or will you simply heal in a vegetative state…?”

Spore lurched forward then, spread wide and high, an onrushing tide of filth that Wolverine couldn’t avoid. Engulfed, the savage mutant began to flail wildly with his claws, a fighter until the last - but then, carried backwards off the edge of the pier, he vanished with a crack beneath the black glass of the water of San Francisco Bay, the air hammered from his lungs. Foul, rubbery death - Spore’s flesh - pressed into his mouth and nostrils, holding him tight as he thrashed. The beast was correct in that it wasn’t enough to contaminate the mutant’s blood, but to drown him was another matter entirely. It -

Iron Man smacked into the water like a gold and crimson bullet, penetrating the back of Spore’s head and causing a localised eruption of fetid matter. Having activated miniature visors to shield the mouth and eye-slits of his faceplate the Avenger was currently breathing filtered oxygen and was unconcerned with drowning, and his armour was streamlined enough not to be sluggish underwater, yet still he was at a disadvantage in this environment. Amorphous, Spore was quick to react and, again, to reconstitute its form. Expecting Iron Man to try and shoot clear so that he might attack again, Spore reared in all directions at once, smothering his enemy like a blanket - but, in truth, this was exactly what Iron Man wanted, just as Wolverine had wanted to goad Spore towards the water.

“That’s right,” Stark whispered beneath his breath, sweat beading on his forehead inside his helmet. “Draw me in. Try and infect me. See what you get…”

Iron Man had anticipated Spore’s intentions perfectly. His armour was hermetically sealed to an efficiency of a fraction of a percentage, but Spore operated on a cellular level. It knew that with persistence it could infiltrate its adversary’s sleek shell, and once beyond this barrier it could pierce skin and curdle the human’s blood. It didn’t realise for a moment that Stark had constructed his armour to be resistant to physical disease - bacteria and other harmful microorganisms - in much the same way as a sophisticated anti-virus protected his computer circuitry. As Stark felt Spore begin to permeate his defences like a parasitic weed invading the tiniest cracks in a concrete boulevard, he smiled grimly to himself.

And then he flushed.

Utilizing a cryogenic jet extractor to cleanse the interior and exterior layers of his suit through a system of microscopic pores, Iron Man expelled Spore in a rush of carbon monoxide - and, into the bargain, he released a discharge of customized ultra-freon particles, a modified strain of the chlorofluorocarbon refrigerants used in air conditioning systems. Spore shrieked, writhing in the murky depths of the Bay in a manner not dissimilar to an octopus, its bodily substance temporarily dislocated into wildly trailing tentacles. The freons attacked the beast on a molecular scale, causing it intense distress and slowing it considerably. But this in itself wasn’t enough to stop Spore. Far more extreme measures were required.

Stark breathed deeply, eyes narrowed. He couldn’t see Wolverine in the immediate vicinity and his systems weren’t registering his vital signs, but that might have because Spore’s mass was clouding his radar. Had Spore’s supposition been correct? If Wolverine’s brain was starved of oxygen could he recover? And if the mutant was present, could he survive what was about to happen next? Iron Man didn’t know. But, when all was said and done, he didn’t really have a choice. Spore was already beginning to recover, adapting to the freons. Iron Man steeled himself.

And then he activated the atomiser pulse.

The pulse was a high-frequency vibration wave that radiated outwards from Iron Man’s chest unit, atomising all physical and liquid matter within a localised area. Compared with much of his high-tech arsenal it was a simple weapon but a devastating one nonetheless - and, underwater, it was also visually dramatic. The resulting explosion was equivalent to a dozen depth charges being detonated simultaneously in a perfect circumference, driving numerous funnels of water high into the air above the surface of the Bay, rolling docked ships upon a tidal surge and causing the reinforced struts of the surrounding piers to buckle and quake. The damage to the harbour environs would be extensive and costly to repair, Iron Man knew, but it was better than the alternative. With luck, no further lives would be lost as a result of his actions than had already been claimed by Spore before he and Wolverine had stood firm against its ancient threat. If the atomiser had been unleashed above water it would have been a far different story.

When the water finally settled some minutes later there was no trace of Spore to be found. Iron Man returned to the quayside but ignored the crowds that were beginning to congregate on the perimeter of the docks, his mood solemn as he scanned once more for sign of Wolverine.

The feral mutant would have had no idea regarding the specifics of Iron Man’s armoury. He had simply judged the situation by instinct and trusted in the golden Avenger. Wolverine had a mixed reputation among the hero fraternity; some of his peers didn’t trust him in the slightest, decrying him as a savage killer who couldn’t control his base emotions, while others swore that they would depend upon him with their lives if that situation called for it. Outside of The Hulk he polarized opinion like no other super-powered individual that Iron Man had ever encountered. After today he personally would be happy to declare himself a member of that second camp. And, maybe, they were alike, these two. One a man of flesh and blood inside a metal shell, the other a mutant of flesh and blood over a metal skeleton. Of course all of this was moot if Wolverine had been caught at the heart of that detonation and had been atomised as surely as -

“Nice ignition, Tin,” a low snarl of a voice murmured at the Avenger’s shoulder. Smiling slowly behind his faceplate, Iron Man turned.

Wolverine’s naked upper torso was scorched and smoking and his hair was either singed or soaked, in some places both. He was scowling, but with his hair plastered to his scalp like a wet dog it kind of ruined the effect. “Say anything,” he growled, “anything, and I’ll carve you open like a can of sardines.”

“Not even ‘well done’?”

Wolverine’s eyes narrowed.

“As in, well done for what you did,” Iron Man said, “not well done as in, you look like a rump steak straight off the grill. Because you don’t, of course. At all.”

The armoured Avenger’s filtered voice remained distorted and oddly inhuman, yet Wolverine could swear that the man inside was laughing. He grunted and flexed his muscles. Already much of his skin was now glowing pink as the burned outer flesh fell away. It was… uncanny.

“Is that the end of it?” Iron Man asked. “If Spore survived before…”

“It took the bastard millions of years to recover from being flash-fried by a Celestial. Yeah, it’ll be back one day - they always are, right? - but you just reduced it to microscopic plankton. I reckon there’ll be no more Spore in our lifetimes, Tin.”

Iron Man stared out into the Bay. No, there was no sign of Spore - but the water’s surface was rippling with oily froth, beer cans, corroded steel and all manner of other detritus, much of it brought to the surface by the recent explosion but not all. The kind of everyday junk that was so commonplace people stopped to notice after a while. The fiend’s words echoed in Stark’s brain: perhaps, with all this pollution, there didn’t even need to be a Spore. Perhaps mankind was contaminating itself just fine. He thought of the fundraiser he’d slipped away from earlier that evening and a heaviness came to rest upon his heart. China or India or whoever in her kaftan, so earnest, so desperate for people to listen. To hear her message. But, like him, who would even remember her name?

“You’ll have to excuse me,” he said, turning away from the pier. “There’s somewhere I need to be. That billionaire boss of mine, remember?”

At first Wolverine didn’t reply. Then, his nose twitching as if detecting some distant scent, he smiled faintly. “Fine by me, Bub,” he murmured. “Fine by me.”

Encased in a shell of iron and circuitry that was usually so effective in sheltering him from the world around him, Tony Stark probably didn’t hear. His genius intellect was already beginning to tick, considering new ways to improve on established models. Stark Industries was top of all the league tables for reducing emissions and consumption. But that didn’t mean he could just sit back and congratulate himself. He could make a difference. That was his gift. And he had to use it.

Because otherwise, even though Spore had been defeated today, there would be no stopping the disease that threatened to claim the planet…

NEXT ISSUE:

SPIDER-MAN...and THE BLACK WIDOW

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.

For those interested, a list of my fanfiction can be found at http://meriadesfiction.livejournal.com

Thanks for reading!

- Meriades Rai