by Greg Cox
The Maid of the Mist was the latest in a string of vessels, all bearing the same name, that had taken sightseers for a close-up look at the Falls since the middle of the nineteenth century. Under ordinary circumstances, the ship could carry up to six hundred passengers, but Barron and Muck had the boat to themselves, given that the Hulk crisis had pretty much curtailed tourism as usual.
Nothing like a berserk monster and frightening mutant terrorists to put a damper on a vacation, Barron thought. As the Maid sailed upstream toward the Horseshoe Falls, carefully skirting the rocks below the American Falls, the ambitious reporter experienced a troubling moment of anxiety when he recalled that he had forgotten to get a receipt for his expense account. Maybe I can get the boat guy to write something up later, he speculated.
The crescent-shaped curtain of water that was the Canadian Falls grew larger and more impressive as the Maid came within a few hundred yards of the wide, cascading spume. Staring upward through the thickening mist, Barron could barely see the superhuman figures of the Vision and the Hulk fighting it out at the brink of the Falls, close to two hundred feet above him. From where he now stood, upon the increasingly slippery deck of the prow, they looked like a pair of dueling green action figures. Barron assumed that Muck’s telephoto lens was getting a better view of the action; after all, that’s what the fainthearted cameraman got paid for.
It took a few minutes for Barron to decide on the ideal spot for his soon-to-be-historic broadcast, with just enough mist and spray to look dangerous and authentic, but not enough to mess up his hair or makeup. The Falls providing a magnificent backdrop behind him, he carefully adjusted his own blue slicker, now bedewed with condensation, while he waited for his cue, smugly noting the absence of any other boats on the river. He had this scoop locked up tight.
Eat your heart out, Dan Rather, he gloated.
Muck signaled him they were about to go live, counting down on his fingers, so Barron cleared his throat, slicked back his dyed chestnut hair, held onto his microphone, and launched into his spiel:
“This is Cliff Barron of WDRP, on the scene beneath Niagara Falls, where an apocalyptic confrontation with the incredible Hulk and the infamous X-Men has escalated into open warfare, transforming this otherwise peaceful and romantic vacation spot into a veritable battleground, and pitting an unholy alliance of mutants and monster against the armed forces of two nations, as well as the Avengers themselves.”
Not a bad intro, he congratulated himself, although describing the Hulk as “incredible” was a bit of a cliché. I probably should have used another adjective. The crashing water and ear-splitting explosions were making quite a racket, he fretted; hopefully, the sound guys back at the studio could filter out most of the background noise. If not, he vowed, heads will roll.
“As this exclusive live footage shows, Earth’s Mightiest Heroes are leading the fight against the … dreaded … Hulk and his mutant confederates, but whether their unquestioned courage and power can prevail remains to be seen. Even now, the … stupendous … Hulk is locked in mortal combat with the android Avenger known only as the Vision.”
He winced inwardly at his own words. Mortal combat? That sounded too much like a video game. Probably a licensed trademark, too. Just what I need, he groused. Another whiny memo from Legal.
Muck took advantage of his pause to tilt his camera back up toward the top of the Falls, where the fighting was. “Make sure you’re getting all this,” Barron whispered to him urgently, placing his hand over his mike. Should’ve had two cameramen, he realized. One for the action footage and one for his close-ups. But what could you expect from a mom-and-pop operation like WDRP? I won’t have to put up with shortcuts like this after I make my move to the networks. Then it’ll be first-class production values all the way. Maybe a couple of Emmys, too.
The cool, misty air was refreshing and invigorating; Barron recalled that the Falls supposedly produced “negative ions” that were highly conducive to romance, part of the region’s claim to fame as the honeymoon capital of the U.S.A. Maybe I should bring the wife up here for a weekend, he thought idly, while Muck kept his telephoto lens focused on the ratings-grabbing spectacle above. Better yet, maybe I should bring Tiffany. Why waste all those ions on the spouse?
Squinting through the viewfinder, Muck kept his camera rolling— until his jaw dropped unexpectedly and he scurried backwards upon the deck, almost losing his balance atop the slippery metal. Lowering his camera, he started shouting at the captain in the wheelhouse.
“Back up! Back up!” he shrieked in panic, waving his free arm wildly in a desperate attempt to attract the boatman’s attention. “We have to get out of here!”
Barron was shocked by the cameraman’s unprofessional behavior, and right in the middle of Barron’s big break. What did this clown think he was doing? Who the heck did he think he was to decide when the broadcast was over? Barron saw his future Emmys going down the drain and wanted to shoot Muck. He was spoiling everything!
The Maid sluggishly began to turn around, but not quickly enough for the hysterical photographer. Clutching the camera under one arm, Muck pointed frantically at the Falls and yelled at the indignant anchorman, practically jumping up and down in his anxiety.
“Look out!” he cried.
A sliver of urgency penetrated Barron’s frustrated ambitions and preoccupations. Still fuming indignantly, he turned around and looked up, his telegenic blue eyes widening at the sight of a green-and-yellow figure plummeting toward them.
“Ohmigod,” he whispered, unintentionally sharing his surprise with countless TV viewers. “We’re all going to die!”
Instantly abandoning any semblance of journalistic dignity, Barron darted madly away from the prow, colliding with Muck in his frenzied stampede to safety. They tottered upon the deck, grabbing onto each other for balance while the expensive camera crashed upon the wet steel flooring, accompanied by the ominous sound of something crucial breaking inside the apparatus.
A moment later, the ultra-dense form of the Vision smashed through the deck, leaving a gaping hole in the prow. He tore through the bottom of the hull as well, as evidenced by the huge gush of water that came spewing up from below deck. The river poured through the Vision-sized rupture, swamping the deck, which tilted beneath Barron’s feet as the Maid of the Mist rapidly reenacted the last moments of the Titanic.
“Abandon ship!” the captain cried, giving Barron a murderous stare before leaping from the forecastle to the relative safety of the river. Muck merely shrugged once more, too much in a hurry to even say “I told you so” as he climbed over the rail, dutifully reclaiming the dropped camera before he splashed into the water, leaving the distraught anchorman alone aboard the sinking tour ship.
Afraid that it would make him look fat, Barron had declined to wear a life jacket under his plastic wrap. Now he groped desperately for a donut-shaped life preserver, his dreams of network glory supplanted by eyewitness imaginings of drowning beneath the waves.
So help me, he thought, scrambling off the stern just before it slid beneath the surface of the river, the freezing water swallowing him up to his head and shoulders, I knew I should’ve taken that sportscaster job in Poughkeepsie…
* * *
“GOOD Lord,” Iron Man exclaimed, shocked at what he beheld through the rectangular eyeslits in his faceplate. The Hulk had ripped the Vision’s arm off! Or ripped the Vision off his arm, which amounted to the same thing. Iron Man watched in horror as first the severed mechanical arm, then the rest of the heroic synthezoid, went plummeting over the Falls without so much as a barrel to protect him. Thank goodness, he thought, that the Vision wasn’t remotely human; there was always a chance that he could be salvaged and repaired, unlike a flesh-and-blood human being suffering the same fate. I’ve helped rebuild the Vision before, he remembered. I can do it again.
But first he had to stop the Hulk from hurting anyone else. Already the Hulk’s titanic temper tantrum had yielded collateral damage in the
form of what looked like a small tour boat, now foundering below the Falls.
“That does it,” he decided, diving to the rescue, his arms rigidly held out above his head to maximize his aerodynamic potential. “No more Mr. Nice Guy.” As far as he was concerned, the Hulk had used up whatever sympathy or special consideration he might be entitled to from his days as an Avenger; that karmic investment had been spent. The mutated missing link was a menace, pure and simple, and Iron Man wasn’t afraid to take him on.
To his relief, the torpedoed ship had apparently carried only three passengers, all of whom were now floating down the river toward the Whirlpool waiting beyond the Rainbow Bridge. Wondering briefly who in their right minds would pilot a boat toward the Hulk, he plucked all three survivors from the current, grabbing a soggy refugee by the collar with each hand while lifting the third victim, who held onto a circular life preserver for dear life, by means of a tractor beam issuing from the projection unit in his chest. The glowing purple ray held the pale, dripping castaway suspended in the air while Iron Man flew toward the nearest shore. Was that make-up, the Avenger wondered, running down the unlucky man’s face?
It took Iron Man only minutes to deposit his three hitchhikers safely on the Canadian shore, where cooperative soldiers quickly took custody of them. Iron Man’s boots barely touched the ground before, his mission of mercy completed, he doubled back into the sky above the Hulk. Going into a power dive, he jetted toward the Falls headfirst, the palms of his gauntlets held out in front of him. Display panels before his eyes charted his acceleration and energy output, the latter spiking dramatically as he unleashed his repulsors from both metal gloves.
“Okay, Hulk,” he murmured to himself. Laser targeting systems drew a bead on his gargantuan target. “Here’s what you get for mutilating an Avenger, even an artificial one.”
Orange beams of force struck the Hulk head-on, staggering him. Iron Man upped the intensity, diverting power from secondary systems into the neutron projectors in his gauntlets, each one costing close to two million dollars.
“Let’s see how you like a trip over the Falls, sans barrel,” he said, wishing now that he had joined the fight against the Hulk immediately, rather than conducting an aerial reconnaissance first. If he had gone on the offensive earlier, maybe the Vision would still be intact. But how could he have known at once who required the most immediate assistance, Cap, the Vision, or even the Beast? He had also wanted to scan the vicinity for the rest of the X-Men, particularly Banshee, Iceman, and the other mutants known to have invaded the S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier. Even now, he kept expecting more of Xavier’s renegades to appear on the scene. If Wolverine shows up, a major brawl is almost guaranteed.
More provoked than punished by Iron Man’s repulsors, the implacable Hulk struck back, leaping at the golden Avenger as if fired by a cannon, his open hands reaching out for his foe. But Iron Man’s forward proximity sensors detected the oncoming threat even before it registered on Tony Stark’s human brain, and the computerized armor automatically took evasive action. Retro rockets surged in his starboard boot, causing him to execute a sharp left turn at the last minute. Prodigious as the Hulk’s leaping abilities were, he could not change course in midair, so the enraged brute zoomed past Iron Man, missing his intended target by several feet.
That was a close one, Iron Man thought. If he had been only a few seconds slower, the Hulk would have grabbed him for sure. Have to keep out of his hands or I’ll end up like the Vision. The latest generation of his armor was pretty damn indestructible, but he knew better than to underestimate the Hulk’s phenomenal strength. After all, not even the mighty Thor had ever managed to surpass the Hulk where raw physical power was concerned—and Thor was a bona fide god! Iron Man’s armored exoskeleton amplified his strength a hundredfold, but that wasn’t enough to put him in the same class as the Hulk, so the Avenger intended to take full advantage of his aerial abilities and long-distance weaponry in this particular contest of arms. Against the Hulk, I’ll take every edge I can get.
Howling in frustration, the thwarted Hulk landed right back where he’d started, at the very crest of the Canadian Falls. His face contorted with savage fury, he glared at Iron Man with crazed green eyes; even though he knew better, Iron Man found it hard to accept that a brilliant physicist was locked away somewhere inside the bestial creature he saw below him. The Hulk looked more like a sub-human evolutionary throwback than a mutated scientific genius.
Iron Man decided to keep the Hulk off-balance by varying his attack. Giving his gauntlets a chance to cool off, he activated the vari-beam projector at the center of his chestplate. Incandescent blue pulse bolts fired at the Hulk, gaining in power as they accelerated through the open space between Iron Man and his foe. One after another, the plasma bolts hit the Hulk, releasing all their accumulated energy on impact with his head and shoulders. Bright cerulean flashes briefly obscured the Hulk’s face, only to fade within heartbeats, leaving the man-monster looking even more frenzied than before. Bristling green eyebrows, seared away by the hot plasma, grew back instantly while the Hulk rubbed watery eyes with his huge fists. The bolts had hurt him, obviously, but had not succeeded in budging him an inch closer to the steep, watery drop-off behind him.
“Good God,” Iron Man whispered within his helmet, impressed despite too many past encounters with the Hulk. “What’s it going to take to faze him? A couple of low-grade nukes?”
The pulse bolts were too energy-expensive to employ for a prolonged period of time, so he switched back to his repulsors, swooping in closer to the Hulk in hopes of increasing their impact. He wasn’t thrilled about getting any nearer to the Hulk’s destructive wrath, but it was a calculated risk; hopefully, his superior maneuverability would still keep him out of range of those piledriver fists.
“This would be a lot easier if you’d just change back to Banner,” Iron Man muttered with more than a trace of irritation in his voice. Repulsor rays battered futilely against the Hulk’s impervious hide.
Right now, Tony Stark wished Bruce had never passed high school physics, let alone heard of gamma rays.
* * *
THE flattened forest swam before Storm’s eyes. The pounding of explosives, coupled with the continual tumult of the nearby Falls, matched the throbbing in her head. Blood trickled from numerous small cuts and scratches on her head, arms and legs, stinging every inch of exposed skin.
What is happening? she wondered, teetering upon rubbery legs as she tried to orient herself. Who is firing upon us, and why? The last thing she remembered was summoning a fog to hide the Hulk from his tormentors. That’s right, she recalled, the painful memory gradually resurfacing through the haze within her mind. The Hulk… he hurt my fog, hurt me…
“Ororo,” a plaintive voice cried out weakly. Struggling to clear her head, she glanced around her and was distressed to see the Beast, lying on his back beneath an overturned tree trunk several yards away. His eyelids flickered as if he was barely conscious. “I fear I am in unqualified need of a certain degree of succor,” he confessed during a momentary lull in the thundering report of the guns, “as well as extrication from my present circumstances.” His inimitable vocabulary deteriorated as his alertness ebbed. “Help me, Ororo. Help…”
“I am coming, my friend,” she called out to him. Her own pains temporarily forgotten, she rushed to his aid, dropping down on her knees beside him. Scattered leaves and broken branches littered the ground. The matted twigs and pine needles stung the scrapes on her knees as she promptly took stock of the Beast’s predicament. Bright Lady, she prayed, let his injuries be minor.
The fundamentals of first aid came back to her quickly, so she hesitated to move him too quickly. Climbing over the heavy log that weighed upon the Beast, she prodded the calloused soles of his hairy feet with a gentle finger.
“Can you feel this?” she asked, having to repeat her query twice before the dazed Beast responded with a nod. The Goddess be praised, she thought in relief, but carefu
lly checked each limb before returning to the other side of the log and cradling the Beast’s shaggy head in her lap. His bristling blue hair scratched against her already abraded legs, but she made no complaint, instead laying a hand against his neck to check his pulse, which proved to be reassuringly steady. Although she held no medical degree, it seemed likely that Henry McCoy had merely been trapped and knocked unconscious by the falling maple. Grateful, she suspected that he would soon recover, although she might need Cyclops’s assistance to free their comrade from the sturdy wooden encumbrance that pinned him to the forest floor.
“Hold on, my friend,” she counseled the Beast, raising her head to search for their absent teammate.
A gush of icy water struck her in the face, soaking her to the skin and chilling her to the bone. Her snowy tresses hung limply over her shoulders as she sputtered and coughed, clearing her lungs of the liquid she had inadvertently inhaled. Water streamed down her body, pooling around her legs.
“Who dares?” she demanded indignantly; shock, fatigue, and lack of sleep doing nothing to improve her temper. She looked up, surprised to see a gleaming metal figure cruising through the sky above her.
A Sentinel? she thought at first, blinking against the glare of the sunlight reflected off his shining armor before recognizing the robotic figure as Iron Man. The Avenger here? she wondered. Is he responsible for this affront?
The deluge had turned the forest floor to mud. Twigs, leaves, and needles floated atop filmy puddles all around Storm. Lying in the ooze beneath her, the Beast coughed up a mouthful of cold water. His furry pelt was drenched, making him look thoroughly miserable if slightly more alert. The smell of wet fur filled the air.
Nothing like a bucket of water in the face to restore one’s clarity, she reflected ruefully. He mumbled what Storm assumed was an amusing witticism, even if she could not hear it over the renewed fury of the guns. Removing her headdress, she used the stiff crown to cushion the Beast’s head, and lift it above the mire, before she rose to survey her surroundings.