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| Issue #5 February 2010 |
"Mad Monster Party!" Written By Thomas Deja |
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Previously: In the wake of their defeat of The Void, The West Coast Avengers finds their active roster whittled down to four members. The Falcon, The Wasp and Iron Fist choose to return to the East Coast, while Firestar steps down after discovering she's pregnant. It couldn't come at a worst time--Simon Williams, Wonder Man, has contacted the team from Bloodstone Island. He's shooting a biopic on famed monster hunter Ulysses Bloodstone, and Bloodstone's daughter, Elsa, is convinced something is about to happen....which it does, when a gaseous monstrosity calling itself Kraggoom emerges from the orafices of film producer Derek Wolfington!
Also, WCA administrator Kune Cordova prepares to meet the candidate for West Coast Scientific Advisor, Sekhmet Conoway, and a mysterious personage has asked the team's new Government Liaison to act as his eyes and ears....
Hey, don't take our word for it--check out The West Coast Avengers Transition Special for the full story.
The aerial unit caught sight of it first.
The three men in the helicopter were shooting overhead establishing shots of Bloodstone Island, the type of sweeping glamorous panoramas designed to cause the audience to catch their breaths as one. One of the cameramen, a young man named Del Wiessen, newly admitted to the Union after serving as an apprentice, was slowly scanning the horizon when the smudge near the mountain caught his eye.
Since Del was still at a point where he followed every rule and regulation put forth by the Union, he alerted the second unit director. And both men were surprised at how the smudge had not only taken on a crude humanoid form, but seemed to retain that form even in the tropical breezes of Bloodstone Island.
"Hey, Chuck," the other cameraman asked the second unit director. "Is it me, or is that thing...getting bigger."
It was not just him.
Something all three realized when it raised its hand and engulfed the copter in stream of black smoke, a mass so thick that it sounded like the rotors were struggling to keep the vehicle aloft.
And as they all succumbed to being suffocated by the strange inky smog, they heard its words in their mind.
With this act, Kraggoom makes his mark on this world!
"Thanks Miguel. I'm uploading the coordinates to your Communicard. Meet us on site."
Vance Astrovik's left hand danced over the keypad, uploading the information for the perusal of Miguel Sandoval, the young man who served with the Avengers as The Living Lightning. His right hand was securely on the controls of the Avengers Quinjet, steering his teammates to the very same location. Once the on-board computer beeped to indicate its success, Vance opened up a new channel.
"Speak to me."
"Lightning's on his way. He'll rounduevos with us at the island ASAP," Vance told Monica Rambeau, who was presently in her light form, speeding to Bloodstone Island to deal with the situation reported by former Avenger Simon Williams.
"Good. I should make landfall within the next five minutes. How about Stankowicz?"
Behind Vance, the large form of Piotr Rasputin leaned forward. "He is not responding to my pages."
"Damn," Monica muttered under her breath before speaking up. "You would think, given his history, he'd jump at filling in."
Uncertainty flickered across the chiseled, handsome features of the young Russian. "Fabian...his time with the Champions, it was not happy. I suspect he may not want to contacted. I am sure we can contact Natasha or Hercules--"
"No. They wouldn't be able to make it under their own power. Depending on what the nature of the situation, we need to strike and strike now--"
"And keep ourselves available if the Atlantis thing gets ugly, I'd imagine," Melissa Gold added quietly. She looked out the window briefly, her hand absent-mindedly playing with a lock of her pale red hair. "Do we know what's the nature of the emergency?"
"Kune's still gathering data," Monica replied. "He'll send it to us as...soon...as...."
There was a tense moment for the trio in the Quinjet. The history of The Avengers was rife with ambushes and traps--some of them actually set, willingly or unwillingly, by former teammates. Melissa's gaze went from the window to Vance, while Pitor could see the young telekine tense up.
Luckily for the trio, Monica said, "I think I know what the problem is."
Kune Cordova went from monitor screen to monitor screen, entering his findings into his PDA at a frightening pace. One of the reasons Warren Worthington had hired him to be The Champions' facility chief was because of the man's ability to process information. It was something that stood out when the time came to build the West Coast branch's support staff.
Something very peculiar was going on at Bloodstone Island. In addition to the strange electromagnetic fluctuations, the weather satellite feed seemed to indicate, of all things, the sort of ash cloud that would accompany a volcanic eruption--except that the cloud appeared without any of the seismic activity or increase in surface thermal radiation. Add in the lack of dissipation and the uniform rate of movement, and it spelled something truly bizarre.
Slipping his PDA into the front pocket of his green-and-black flannel shirt, Kune turned his attention to the laptop balanced on the networking printer. The movement and cohension indicated a sentient being; the flux indicated some form of magick. Kune had made it a point of spending two hours a day with the Avengers Files ever since The Champions signed an affiliation agreement with the august team, and these facts didn't correspond to any of the villains or phenomenon he had read about.
He began typing in keywords into the MetaBase search engine, hoping that some hero somewhere had come across this mystery guest. Kune started humming a few bars from an MGMT song, something that helped him focus.
"You got good taste," a voice came from the doorway.
"That you, Jones?" Kune asked. "Look, you think you can get in touch with SHIELD, see if that Duggan guy might remember something about a giant smog monster? He was with that kaiju taskforce a couple of years back, right?"
"I'm not Jones."
The mixed-race man rubbed his beefy neck and looked up. And found himself breathless.
Standing there was the kind of woman that made celestial beings sing. Tall and slender, she wore a simple grey suit and white blouse that barely concealed a generous bustline. Long dark hair in a cascade of curls framed a heart-shaped, dusky-skinned face that should have sold cosmetics. But even given her flawless body, her greatest feature was her eyes--brown the color of light coffee, shining with the sort of intelligence that made it clear this woman was the whole package--gorgeous and smart and attentive all at once.
She stepped forward. "Mr. Cordova, right? I'm Sekhmet Conoway. I'm supposed to meet with Ms. Ranbeau and Mr. Wilson."
Kune found it an effort to tear his eyes away from the woman. "Uh, yeah, I know...but Mr. Wilson left for New York to help in the Atlantean incursion, and Ms. Rambeau is in the field."
He watched her scan the data displayed on the monitors behind him. She stepped forward slowly, hands in front of her. "Hmmmm....some form of giant sentient, non-corporeal form held together by an electromagnetic, maybe psionic field--maybe magical or extraterrestrial in origin."
Kune laughed. "Yeah, that's what I thinking."
She turned those startling eyes to him. "Mind if I continue analyzing what you've got?"
"Not at all."
"Okay," Sekhmet Conoway replied as she began unbuttoning her jacket. "Let's make this data our bitch."
The gutteral voice hit the minds of Simon Williams and Elsa Bloodstone as one.
I have spent too long trapped in that meat's brain. I will revel in laying waste to this ball of dust!
Simon's still powerful form was unaffected by the psychic shockwave of this...what did he call himself, Kraggoom? But what impressed him was how the tall blonde stood firm. He could tell from the volume of the words in his head how powerful the psionic transmission was, yet Elsa didn't stagger, didn't stumble, just kept her ground. After the initial wave, he even saw her roll up her sleeves.
"Oh, father," she muttered to herself under her breath. Simon scanned the area as he slipped out of his safari jacket--it was company property and he didn't want to have the damages taken out of his salary. He could just make out something dark and indistinct peeking out from the skyline.
"You have any knowledge of this Kraggoom?"
"Not necessarily," Elsa replied, quickly pulling her hair back into a ponytail. "But given we're shooting on an island where my father the monster hunter held court...I would be willing to venture that it's a monster. There was a period when they all had...colorfully alliterative names. You happen to have a rubber band?"
"Not much room for that in this outfit--did your father always dress in pants so tight they cut off circulation?"
"I'm afraid the term 'absentee father' comes into play here."
The dark, indistinct form seemed to move slowly forward. "Great. It's coming toward us," Simon muttered. "You have, I don't know, a spell to keep it contained or something?"
Delicate pale blonde eyebrows narrowed. "You misunderstood the nature of monster-hunting. I'm in the business of killing these things, not asking them nicely to go away." She paused. "Still..."
"Still, what?"
She pointed inwards. "If you can take me to the interior of the island before you start punching this thing ineffectually--no offense meant--"
"None taken," Simon said.
"I can enter my father's sanctum. There's a wealth of anti-monster ordnance, and I may be able to figure something out."
"Sounds like a plan."
Kraggoom will start with this misbegotten place....maybe then the rest of your meat sack race will know to bow down to my power!
"I better get to punching it ineffectually," Simon muttered to himself. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of the dark smudge in the distance starting to move closer. At this point, the cover caused by the foliage made it difficult to tell if this thing was moving through locomotion or some form of flight. He gathered up the lithe young woman in his arms and said, "I apologize for the method of transport."
She looped one arm around his neck. "I thought you flew or something of the sort."
"Of the sort," Simon replied, smiling just a little bit, before launching himself on powerful legs.
The thunderous voice in his head had woken Derek Wolfington up.
And with it, his memories.
Kraggoom no longer needs a frail meat-host. Here--here he is akin to a God.
The grey-haired producer looked up with eyes suddenly clear after decades of being in a fog. As he caught sight of the smoky, amorphous form striding through the trees on two enormous limbs, little wisps of that greyish-black smog drifting off from the impact of the limbs, his mind told him a story he had blocked off from himself lest he go mad.
"Jesus wept...this is all my fault."
He endeavored to catch up with the retreating monstrosity, even as a streak of brilliant light flew in from out of nowhere to hit the creature--an act that caused a hole to open up in its middle, then rapidly close up. Even from this little bit of exertion, the aged Wolfington felt his lungs burn.
"Should have kept up with my gym membership," he mumbled. The man watched as the beam twisted around Kraggoom, trying its attack from another angle.
Of course. Williams was an Avenger...he must have called them.
Knowing the secret of the monster, Wolfington started making his way toward the set...maybe if he revealed the secret he had kept--even from himself--for so long, the creature known as Kraggoom could be defeated.
You cannot defeat Kraggoom, Little Mosquito!
Sonuva, Photon swore to herself as she banked left to once more strafe this smoke-being. She willed her body to transform again. There was a subtle shimmer in the air around her, and a change in color to reflect the fluctuation in waveform frequency.
She had already tried light and heat. Both punched a hole the size of an SUV in this monster...which then promptly sealed up. The nature of the gaseous substance this thing was made of seemed to be able to regenerate too quickly for her to damage it.
Maybe a burst of hard radiation..... She once more dove into the inky mass, and once more felt it dissipate around her. She emerged from the other side and flew up, turning....
Now that's interesting. The hole was closing up, but at a rate noticeably slower than before. Before she could speculate further, her commlink came alive.
"Monica...what's the sitch?"
"Pretty damn screwed," she shot back, once more willing her body to shift to microwave emissions. Of all the times for Firestar to bow out, she thought to herself ruefully. "We've got some sort of gaseous monster, calls itself Kraggoom. I've been trying different energy waves to see if anything effects it. What's the ETA?"
"Miguel will be there within two. We'll be right behind."
"Right. Have Miguel provide wide-range suppressing fire on ol' Smokey here. And have Melissa run ahead of you. Maybe if we hit it with several types of energy at once--"
She heard Melissa's voice--husky but with a great deal of warmth--come online. "I'm on it. I'll see you soon."
"And Vance--get me patched in to Simon. Let's start networking, stat. Photon out."
The creature's gaseous form shifted, the part that could conceivably be its head seeming to turn to face Monica. Have you accepted your inferiority already, meat?
"Oh, blow away," Monica mumbled before diving headfirst into the creature's form.
Elsa Bloodstone cursed under her breath. She had spent far too long a time looking for some sort of weapon. This had been the first time she found herself in Ulysses Bloodstone's sanctum on the island and it was the most frustrating headquarters she could imagine. This was not Bloodstone Curios, which at least had its feet firmly planted in the past--this was some hodgepodge of high-tech and archaic, all stored in a slapdash way. What photos she had seen of Ulysses had always shown him dressed as a hunter, a shotgun slung over one shoulder. Judging from the jumble of spears, swords, flails and other pointy things, her father had apparently decided somewhere down the line that monsters didn't respond to modern gadgets as firearms.
Elsa begged to differ.
A quick check of her database provided nothing. There was a reference to a monster called Diablo, but something in her gut told her there was no relation. This could very well be a new entity, which meant all bets were off.
She pushed aside a rack of swords to reveal a series of cabinets. "Father, could you at least have organized this pit?" she muttered. She went through the ring of keys rapidly until she found one that fit in the nearest one's lock.
She smiled when she opened it.
"Come to mama," she cooed.
Monica banked to the right and observed this Kraggoom. She smiled in spite of herself. Her speculation may have been correct; the wound caused from her microwave attack closed up slowly. Something in this thing's make-up struggled with concentrated radiation. It wasn't much--but it was something to work with.
The creature was now focusing its attention on her, which was another victory. A monster taking swings at her meant it wasn't threatening to injure or kill human beings. She rose even higher, hoping it would try to grab her.
Its laughter echoed in her head. You can never exceed my capacity to restore my form, little mosquito...but I can exceed your capacity to survive.
It raised one limb, and before Monica could react, she was overwhelmed by a wave of thick, inky blackness. Her movements were constricted by the sheer viscous nature of the medium now surrounding her. For a brief moment she flashed on a time long ago when a madman named Blackout had kept her entombed during the siege of Avengers Mansion by Baron Zemo....
Yes, it burns, mosquito...but I have endured worse than this pain. Can you say the same?
Monica concentrated, changing her entire body into a mass of neutrinos. Another moment of thought and she scattered in a thousand particles outwards, through the monster's black mass and into the open air.
In all the particles that were once her solid energy form, she could the creature laughed. I can see you. Hundreds of little fireflies, looking to return. I wonder what would happen if I caught some.
Monica did not wish to find out. Neutrinos moved at a frightening rate, but if Kraggoom could prevent some of her particles from rejoining her coherent form she could find herself missing an arm....or worse.
Luckily, Kraggoom found himself distracted. A suddenly fusillade of electrical bolts raked the creature's form, heralding the arrival of The Living Lightning. The hero maneuvered himself between the monster and Monica's still-coalescing form. "Hola, Photon. Songbird is just behind me. The others will be here soon after."
"I'm surprised you could tear yourself away from your studies," Monica remarked. She was now fully reassembled and switched to her microwave form. As Miguel let loose with another rain of lightning, she added to the barrage with some energy bolts.
"Actually, I'd hope we could wrap this up by 5--I have an anthropology final."
Another sound--a rushing of air--drew the two Avengers to the arrival of Simon Williams. They watched as he plunged into....and through Kraggoom.
"Alright--Lightning, keep strafing this thing," Monica said before opening up the commlink. "Wonder Man, just keep throwing whatever you can get your hands on at it. Colossus, when you get here, join him. We need to keep this thing from moving forward toward the movie site, and if that means distracting him, so be it. Songbird--set up sonic barriers to contain it. I know it's frustrating keeping this Kraggoom in a holding pattern, but we need more to go on here."
She flew upwards, continuing to hit the monster with microwaves. "Justice....patch me through to Cordova, stat. Maybe he has something."
Now Elsa felt more in her element. She carried the rifles she had discovered in her father's sanctum in each hand, and had filled a bandolier with specialized shells. The bandolier hung loosely on her, one loop bouncing off a shapely hip, but somehow she felt this appropriate. It emphasized that she continued to have big boots to fill when it came to the family business.
Ahead of her was the monster. The creature's towering form acted as a vaguely human slice of darkness cutting through the tropical sunlight. Making a quick decision, she felt along the base of the shells (like her father, notched to indicate the payload) and filled each barrel with magnesium shot. Magnesium meant intense light and even more intense heat, which could weaken a beast like this, especially if it was made of that strange extradimensional 'darkforce' energy.
Her hearing--heightened by heredity, and honed by practice--detected footsteps and heavy breathing behind her. She did not break her stride, fast without it looking like she was running; it did seem like Simon's Avenger friends had shown up, but who knows if their presence would help or hurt?
"Ms...Ms. Bloodstone."
Christ in Heaven....
"Not now, Wolfington. Working."
"But...but Ms. Bloodstone--I'm responsible for...Kraggoom."
"Which makes you a very, very naughty boy," Elsa replied. Ahead, the creature was being assaulted by lightning and some form of energy discharge from two of the heroes. A third hero flew in on wings the color of pale rose. The woman, with red streaks through her white hair opened her mouth, allowing a tall wall of the same rose tint to raise up. "Damnation. Have to get to a higher elevation."
"When I was younger, I bribed my way onto the space shuttle as a publicity stunt. While I was...in orbit, Kraggom captured me."
Elsa scanned the landscape. There was a hill to the northeast with enough elevation that she'd have a clear sightline. She made towards it at a run. Behind her, the producer tried to keep up. She looked over his shoulder and asked, hurriedly, "You're intent on boring me with this information, aren't you?"
"He...he needed my body to enter our atmosphere...but it must have caused me to black out...and, I dunno, it must have shut him down, given me some form of amnesia, trapping him there--"
"Until the ambient magickal energies of all the trinkets father saved up over the years freed him," Elsa said to herself as she started scrambling up the hill. "Congratulation, Wolfington--you do need to be punished. But I shan't spank you, if that's what you're thinking. Stay down. I'll deal with you later."
Vance Astrovik banked the Quinjet just above the site of the conflict. He opened up the bay doors just as he informed Photon, "I've got the channel open to Kune, boss. Colossus and I are making groundfall."
He switched on the autopilot and turned to the powerfully built Russian, who mentally triggered the transformation of his form from flesh and blood to organic metal. "Want me to airlift you down?"
"Nyezashta, , friend Vance," Colossus replied with a small, shy smile. "I have my own methods."
...and with that, he stepped out of the bay doors.
Monica wove in and out of the fusillade of Living Lightning's electrical bolts. Nothing seemed to be affecting this Kraggoom much, although the constant barrage of attacks from all sides had at least stopped its progress well short of the movie set. Who knows what sort of damage he could cause to normal men and women....
"Alright, Kune--tell me you have something," she sub-vocalized into the commlink.
An unfamiliar voice answered. "We're not sure yet."
Monica rose above the artificial electrical storm and fired two bolts of gamma radiation into the creature's form. Once again, the regeneration was slowed--but not stopped. "Who are you?"
"That's Ms. Conoway," Kune explained. "She's interviewing for the scientific advisor job."
Without waiting for Monica's reaction, Conoway said, "It's obvious this BEM is a non-corporeal medium held in a corporeal form by a containment field--but the frequency and the wave form is too...well, indistinct. We're getting too much interference to get a clearer reading. Is there some form of extradimensional locus on this island?"
Monica shifted the wavelength of her blasts to register as cosmic radiation. "This is Bloodstone Island. It was owned by a guy who ran into extradimensional phenomena on a regular basis."
"Figures." Monica heard the young woman sigh. "Well, from what I can gather, the field is either magnetic or psionic in nature--"
"My bet's on magnetic," Monica replied. She fired again. "Radiation-based attacks seem to slow the closing of the wounds."
"Okay...can you generate a magnetic pulse? Maybe an opposing polarity could--"
Before Sekhmet Conoway could elaborate further, a whistling noise heralded the arrival of Colossus. The metallic man plummeted downward, entering Kraggoom's form--
And the creature's scream seemed to reverberate in everyone's mind. His form started to lose coherence, wisps of ebon escaping until Colossus shot out of the monster's form to land on the ground directly underneath him. There was a quizzical expression on his face, as if he's unsure what he had just done.
"Or a large enough piece of metal to distend the field," Monica said. "I think I've got a strategy."
Elsa reached a position above the winged woman's barrier that allowed a clear sightline to Kraggoom. An aircraft passed above her, the sun glinting off its silvery hide. This was evidentially the Quinjet.
She scanned the area below. On the ground, she saw Simon swinging at the creature's legs with an uprooted tree; the makeshift weapon passed through the smokey substance harmlessly. It seemed that what she had said in jest was all too true.
She raised her two rifles as one, lining up the sights with the two indentations that could pass for the monster's eyes, when something broke up her shot--something humanoid, made of what appeared to be metal, and wearing a red and yellow outfit. She watched it disappear into Kraggoom's shoulder during a moment when the monster tried to swat a glimmering electrical, also humanoid form out of the air--
And then felt the monster scream inside her head. It's ebony form seemed to lose its consistency for a moment, the edges becoming indistinct. Even when the creature appeared to regain control of itself, it seemed...larger, more diffuse.
"Don't like metal, do you?" Elsa said with a smirk. She quickly brought the rifles back in line with the creature's face and fired.
The gunshots ripped through the noises of battle. The reprecussions were immediate.
The screaming of Kraggoom began anew, only this time the gathered Avengers could see something akin to flames dancing with an angry reddish-white light from inside the creature's head. Its outline once more lost definition, and the thing actually buckled, falling to its knees.
"Alright, everyone, new plan!" Monica called out. "Lightning, Songbird, aim directly for the glowy thing in its head and throw everything you can at it. Justice--give Colossus a telekinetic sheath so he can breath, and plunge him right into the heart of Mighty Joe Smog. Give me a big enough disruption in that field of his, and stand back."
Out of the corner of her eye, Monica caught some movement. Someone was leaping off of a nearby hill toward the creature. There were two more gunshots, which were followed by another scream and another burning zone opened up. She turned her attention to the newcomer and was taken aback.
"Elsie?"
"Welcome to my island, Rambeau," the woman said as she landed with a cat-like grace. "I'd have made tea, but...well, monster."
"Catch up later," the leader of the Avengers replied. "Time to put Smokey here out."
"Ready, buddy?"
"Certainly, Vance."
Utilizing the telekinetic abilities that made him a powerful Avenger, Vance Astrovik lifted Colossus up. He had given Piotr enough air for about two minutes--although, given the mutant's slower respiration rate when transformed, it could last longer. Above him, a steady stream of lightning stabbed into the angry red area where the tall girl with the ponytail had shot Kraggoom. Around them a coterie of blades like scythes, all colored a shimmery, pale rose sliced into the creature. The edges of the being's inky form continued to become blurry and indistinct.
Vance manipulated the telekinetic 'diving bell' containing his teammate, inserting him into the monster's body...
And the screams that Vance and the other Avengers had heard in their head prior to this were nothing compared to the mental assault unleashed at that moment. Vance stumbled, but held his position.
After all, he was an Avenger. And his teammates counted on him.
As he watched, ebony fog flowed out of Kraggoom like water. The creature's outline drifted and distended, as if it was struggling to keep itself together. There was a definitive hole from where Colossus had entered, and Vance could just make out his teammate moving about, endeavoring to widen the cavity his steel form had made.
Above him. Photon called out, "Everyone--drop down and avert your eyes!"
He did as he was told. His last sight before he hugged the dirt was of his team leader dive bombing directly into the wound in Kraggoom's chest. Vance recognized Photon's energy form, shining with a painful brilliance.
Monica Rambeau was bent on deliving the coup de grace with a burst of concentrated ultraviolet radiation.
Monica plunged headlong into the hole opened up by Colossus' metal form.
This is either the coolest thing I've ever done, or the dumbest, she thought as the material that made up the creature's corpus struggled to regain its integrity and engulf her. Once more she had flashbacks that disturbed her, flashbacks of being trapped by Blackout, but it only urged her onward, deeper into the bizarre being's body.
It urged her to increase the intensity of her energy output. It urged her to once more will her own coherence to relax, so that her body expanded outwards, scouring every atom of this abomination and scattering it outwards.
She could feel its body breaking up, could somehow sense its consciousness dissolving as each molecule was taken by the upper atmosphere and carried off to the four corners of the Earth.
And when she was done, she was exhausted. Monica Rambeau was unconscious before she hit the ground.
Luckily for her, an old friend was down there to catch her.
"What do you mean I'm not going to be charged?"
Monica opened her eyes to the sight of Simon Williams and, of all people, Elsa Bloodstone confronting an overtly tanned, grey-haired man who apparently tried to make up for the way the two towered over him by his attitude. She was lying back on a gurney, a cold compress on her head.
"Well, you didn't bring Kraggoom here by design," Elsa explained.
"And sadly, there's no law on the books against behaving like a dumbass," Simon added. "Hell, if you look at it one way, your selective amnesia actually kept Kraggoom imprisoned. He would've been imprisoned forever if you didn't come here."
Melissa Gold's head came into her line of vision. "You okay?"
"Outside of my aching all over? Yeah." Monica struggled to sit up.
"I'm glad," the young woman replied. "Oh, That Living Lightning guy wants to know if he can return to the mainland. Something about a final?"
Monica laughed. "Thank him and send his slacker butt on his way."
"All the same, Wolfington," Elsa told the smaller man, "I think it's best if I reimburse you for the rights to film here. Use Virtual Studio Technology for all I care."
"But...but the verisimilitude!"
Simon put a comforting hand on Wolfington's shoulder. "C'mon. With VST, you can make it better."
Monica could see Vance and Colossus approaching her. Vance had a plate of food in front of him. "Hey, Photon. Brought you something to get your strength up."
"Thanks," she said. She turned her focus to Simon and Elsa. There was potential in the two of them. "Hey, good work, Simon."
"Are you kidding? All I did was...well, punch it ineffectually."
"Every Avenger does his or her part." She took a moment to spear some broccoli. "Speaking of which...I'm short-handed on the West Coast. I know you want to focus on your acting, but we could certainly use you until we find a permanent member."
Simon rubbed his neck. "Well....I could use the publicity boost, and if Wolfington is going to relocate the shoot back to L.A.--"
"He's not shooting here," Elsa stated emphatically.
"Then yeah, I guess I can pitch in and see what happens."
"Good. Glad to have you back." Monica ate slowly, considering what she was going to say next. "I see you're letting your roots show, Elsie."
Elsa smiled archly. "Have to be true to the family. You were not kidding about your influence with the Avengers."
"Hey, seniority has its perks."
Vance looked from Monica to Elsa and back. "You two know each other?"
"What, Justice? You think all I did when I was inactive was sit by the phone waiting to be invited back? Elsie and me, we...had some adventures....and speaking of which..."
She saw the young monster hunter's eyebrows raise ever so slightly in curiousity. Monica took a moment to spoon up some pasta--while also giving her a moment to gather her thoughts. "Elsie, hun," she asked, pausing for dramatic effect. "You still doing strange things for charity?"
"A lot of endangered crypto-species out there need protecting," Bloodstone said whimsically. Monica made note of how Simon's hand--whether consciously or not--brushed against Elsa' arm.
She smiled. "Then I think I may have a proposition for you."
Next: Did someone say....Ultron?
(Okay, no one did, but they might next issue. You never know. But you will see the new Avengers Government Liaison, the arrival of our seventh member, Simon invites the new guys for a night on the town, and Kune make some pansit...yum!)
Writer's Note: Just in case people were wondering if I just made Kraggoom up because I wanted the West Coast Avengers to fight a goofy giant monster, the big lug appeared--as did Derek Wolfington--in Journey Into Mystery #79.
Alright, I wanted to see the Wackos fight a giant monster. But give me credit for doing the research.
See you next issue for more strangeness.