by Stuart Moore
But to Kamala, Jen was twice as cool. Imagine being as strong as the Hulk, and a lawyer too! And that suit she wore wasn’t just expensive, it fit her perfectly. Jen seemed incredibly confident, too, like she knew exactly how cool she was. Like she’d never doubted it for a second.
Unflappable, Kamala thought. That’s the word. She’s unflappable.
The building shook again. Tony cocked his head, listening to a voice in his helmet. Then he jetted up into the air and arced over the wreckage of his desk, past the tattered canvas that had been his father’s portrait, to land in front of Jen and Kamala.
“The Guardians,” he said. “That janky spaceship of theirs is hovering directly over this building. You two want to check it out? I’ll handle the imbecile on the ground.”
“Got it,” Jen said, turning toward the door.
“Wait a minute,” Kamala said. “What about Halla-ar?”
The young Kree stood against the wall, eyeing them all suspiciously. Even me, Kamala thought. Was he right? Had it been a mistake to bring him here?
“Right.” Tony willed his helmet to close, hiding his eyes. “Get down to ground level, Kree kid. Find a place to hunker down and stay put. And stop looking at me like that. I hate it when people look at me like that.”
Halla-ar stood his ground, glaring.
“Hey.” Kamala approached him. “It’s OK.”
“Tony, I’ve never met the Guardians,” Jen said. “How many are there?”
“Well,” Tony said, “let’s see. There’s the sword-woman, Gamora, and… oh, I dunno. Anywhere from two to five – maybe more.” He spread his arms, took to the air, and jetted over the desk-wreckage. “I’m calling in the guns, just in case. Backup.”
He reached down to open the window. It didn’t budge. He swore and pulled harder; nothing. “Aw, Dad,” he muttered. “Really?”
Kamala stifled a giggle.
Tony sighed, reached out a glowing hand, and blasted the windowpane to pieces. Kamala jumped, startled. Jen just shook her head.
Tony paused, turned, and surveyed the wreckage of his office. “Yeah,” he muttered, “definitely time for an upgrade.” Then he lifted off and flew out the window, not looking back.
“We’re up, kid,” Jen said, starting for the door. “Let’s go.”
“Coming!”
Kamala turned to Halla-ar. Reluctantly, he took her hand and followed them out the door. As soon as they stepped into the hall, the entire building shook again.
“We’ve gotta get to the roof,” Jen said. “Stairwell?”
Kamala pointed, leading the way. She took huge strides, stretching and retracting her legs. They rounded a corner and came to a fire door that had been wrenched off its hinges.
Jen looked at her, impressed. “You did this?”
Kamala cocked her head at Halla-ar. “Kree combat training,” she explained.
Jen was already inside the stairwell, heading up. “Come on!”
“One sec.” She turned to Halla-ar – who stood in the doorway, not moving. “Just go home, OK? We got this.”
“My sister works in this facility,” Halla-ar said. “I must find her, make sure she’s safe.”
“Oh. I get that.” Kamala frowned. “Just be careful, OK?”
“I do not trust any of this.” Halla-ar looked away. “You have only the word of Tony Stark that these Guardians are your enemies. What if they are here to help my people?”
“Then I’ll take their depositions and add ’em to the court filing,” Jen said. “Ms Marvel, let’s go!”
Kamala took Halla-ar’s hand again. He frowned, nodded, and leaned in close. “I will be careful,” he said. “Don’t worry about me.”
Before she could blink, he was down the stairs and out of sight.
She cast a quick, worried glance after him, then began climbing the stairs. Jen had a big head start, so Kamala stretched her legs and vaulted up an entire level to catch up.
“Your boyfriend’s a little suspicious, huh?” Jennifer shrugged off her suit-jacket, revealing a sleek purple-white costume beneath.
Kamala dodged the flying jacket, turning to watch as it fluttered down the stairwell. “He’s not my boyfriend.” A thunderous boom rang out, shaking the stairwell. She reached for the railing to steady herself. Jen just kept on running, her muscular green legs pounding on the metal stairs.
“Halla-ar told me about the Kree planet blowing up,” Kamala said. “And about the working conditions here. That’s a real thing?”
“It’s real, and it’s a problem,” Jennifer said. “That’s why I signed on with them. But there’s stuff that doesn’t add up.”
“You believe Tony?”
“I believe he doesn’t know what’s going on. Wouldn’t be the first time.” Jen sighed. “But it’s more than that. Their planet didn’t just wear out and explode all by itself… Someone detonated it, deliberately. From what I hear, it might have been one of the Kree.”
“Where…” Kamala struggled to keep up. “Where did you hear that? Is there a galactic TMZ or something?”
“Nope. Heard it from the Kree themselves. Some of them suspect the planet-killer might be here, hiding among the refugees.”
“Here? Are you sure?”
“Nope. That’s why I used the word suspect.” Jen shrugged. “Innocent till proven guilty.”
Kamala frowned. An alien planet-killer was a disturbing enough idea, but an alien planet-killer here on Earth? That was terrifying.
“Powers, Avenger,” Jen said sharply. “What can you do?”
“Uh, they call it morphogenetics. My mass sort of travels through time, connecting different versions of–”
“The short version, please. We’re almost out of stairs.”
“I can make parts of me bigger or smaller. Or all of me! I heal pretty fast, too.”
“That’s useful,” Jen replied. “Mostly I just punch stuff.”
The stairs ended at a thick wooden door with a sign reading NO ADMITTANCE TO ROOF. Jennifer stopped, smiled at the thick padlock on the handle, and motioned Kamala back. Then she clenched her fist, reared back, and let fly a punch that shattered the door to splinters.
Kamala grinned. So cool.
She stuck her head out the door – just as a bright red beam of light shot down from above. Jen jumped back, shielding Kamala with her arm. The beam sizzled hot as it struck the roof, filling the air with a rich burning smell. The roof was pockmarked with blast craters, hot smoking depressions where something had melted the weathered tar of its surface.
A roar of sound washed over them. Cautiously, Jen stepped outside. Kamala followed, turning to look up…
A spaceship hovered in place, not more than twenty feet above. It was about the size of a military helicopter and shaped like a bird of prey, with sharp wings jutting out from both sides of its compact body. Jets pulsed along the lower hull, buffeting Jen and Kamala with blasts of hot air.
“That’s the… janky spaceship?” Kamala asked.
The ship began to move, rumbling through the air. In a few seconds it would be out of reach, headed inland toward the newer, high-tech sections of the Stark Enterprises complex.
Jen sprinted after it. “Come on!”
Kamala felt a stab of fear. No, she realized, it wasn’t exactly fear, more like insecurity. Jennifer Walters – the She-Hulk – she’d done this a thousand times, fought alongside the Avengers against unimaginable cosmic threats. Can I keep up with her? Kamala wondered. Am I actually ready for this?
Jennifer reached the edge of the roof and, without the slightest hesitation, leaped off. Hands reaching, scrabbling, she grabbed hold of the spaceship’s wing and pulled herself up onto its hull.
Kamala steeled herself, gritting her teeth. There was no time for doubts; like Jen had said, she was an Avenger now. She ran forward, covering
the roof in three long strides, taking care to avoid the burned craters in the tar. Then she stretched out her arms toward the fleeing ship, hissed in a breath, and jumped.
Chapter 15
Tony Stark paused in midair, just outside his shattered office window. The pier lay below, strewn with girders and cinderblocks, separated from the mainland by an old chainlink fence. Peter Quill – Star-Lord of the Guardians of the Galaxy – hovered a few inches above the pier’s surface, arguing with a trio of workers in faded green jumpsuits.
Kree, Tony thought. The workers must be Kree…
“F.R.I.D.A.Y.,” he subvocalized. “Who did Ms Potts place in charge of the Kree program?”
“No details available,” the voice said. “That information seems to have been deleted from the main server.”
“Well, that’s not suspicious or anything.”
He frowned. He didn’t know quite where he and Pepper stood. That was a puzzle for another day. But she would never have deleted or hidden sensitive information, any more than she would have hired vulnerable workers under punitive contracts. Not Pepper. Which meant that something else was wrong inside Stark Enterprises.
“Track it down, OK?” he asked. “At least find out which office they’re working out of.”
Down on the pier, Quill whipped out his element gun and started shouting. He wore his usual stupid cowboy suit, but no faceplate. He seemed angry.
“Data tracking will take a few minutes,” F.R.I.D.A.Y. said. “There are some odd glitches in the system.”
“That’s OK,” Tony replied. “I think I’m about to be busy.”
He sent a silent command, ordering his armor to amplify the volume of Quill’s voice. “…when somebody blew up the whole frickin’ planet,” the Guardian said, pointing at one of the Kree. “Maybe it was you?”
The Kree, a short muscular man with a crewcut, responded with a string of untranslatable obscenities. He seemed angry, but not intimidated.
Quill reached forward and grabbed the man by his shirt, hoisting him into the air. “I got some intel from a Jovian on Xandar,” he snarled. “He said the planet-killer was a Kree with a scar.”
The man looked puzzled, even in the air. “I don’t have a scar.”
“Well, I think he said scar. Might have been an ascot.”
“I don’t have one of those either.” The Kree cocked his head. “Are you stupid?”
The other two Kree laughed. They looked like tough dock workers, the Kree equivalent of the working men who’d once hauled heavy equipment during wartime. Tony could almost see the scarred battleships parked alongside this very pier, majestic in their tarnished grandeur. How long ago had they stopped coming? He couldn’t remember.
Quill pivoted in midair, pointed his element gun straight down, and fired. A blast of air shot out, blowing a hole in the splintered wood.
Tony turned and shot down toward the pier. By the time he stopped, a few feet above, Quill was dangling the crewcutted Kree over the hole. The man looked down at the roiling water.
“Know what that is, smart guy?” Quill shook the man. “That’s the Long Island Sound. You don’t wanna go for a swim in that sewer, I can tell you.”
“Actually,” Tony said, “Sound’s pretty clean.”
Quill whipped his head up, pointing the element gun shakily in the air.
“Now, you want to play Jack Bauer with some poor alien…” Tony jetted sideways, still hovering in the air. “I’d threaten them with the Hudson next time. Much sludgier.”
“Iron Man,” Quill growled. Then, astonishingly, a smile spread across his face. “Iron Man! Been a while. What are you doing here?”
Tony raised an eyebrow and gestured inland. Quill squinted across a disused area just past the pier, overgrown with yellow grass. As he focused on the tall factory complex to the left, he mouthed the word spelled out in eight-foot letters on the building’s side: STARK.
“Oh yeah! Stark!” Quill looked sheepish. “Forgot where I was.”
The Kree in Quill’s grip shook his head. One of the other Kree let out a hiss of disgust. “Stark?” he growled. “The oppressor himself?”
“Come to watch us get shaken down?” another Kree asked, balling up his fists. “Maybe hand out a few eighteen-hour shifts?”
Jen was right, Tony thought. Something is definitely wrong in Kree-town.
“Eighteen-hour…” Quill’s eyes narrowed. “You running some kind of sweatshop here, Stark?”
“Quill.” Tony fought to control the impatience in his voice. “Let the man go, OK?”
“Not till I find out if he’s the Kree with a scar. Or maybe it’s a scalpel.”
“Do your worst, Earthers,” the Kree hissed.
Quill shook the man. “That’s half-Earther to you!”
One problem at a time, Tony thought. Idiot first, Kree second. He reached out, selected a low repulsor setting, and fired a blast just below Quill’s hovering feet. The bolt seared the surface of the pier; Quill tumbled out of the air, landing face-up with a groan. The Kree jumped free and ran to join his friends.
Before the Guardian could recover, Tony jetted over and landed with a thump, planting one foot on either side of Quill’s body. “Listen, D’Artagnan,” Tony hissed. “I don’t know what kind of bounty you’re chasing, but this is not going to produce the result you want.”
“Boss Stark,” Quill snarled. “Just another rich guy…” He raised the element gun and fired.
A tidal wave of water slammed into Tony, flinging him up into the air. He flailed, momentarily blinded, and came down hard, skidding across the length of the pier. He dug metal fingers into the surface, grabbing for the wooden posts along the side – slowing his progress until he jolted to a stop, his back slamming up against some barrier.
He turned to look. It was Shackie, the shack he’d hidden in as a kid. Its windows had been boarded up, the wooden door padlocked. The wall had a brand-new Iron-Man-shaped dent in it. He sighed in annoyance, tinged with a certain level of fatalism. Encounters with the Guardians usually turned violent sooner or later.
“Stay down, Stark.” Quill stalked toward him, gun held high. “What’s wrong with you, anyway? I’m just trying to mete out some interstellar justice here.”
“Mete? Did you just say mete?”
“It’s a word!”
Tony struggled to his feet, limbs aching. On paper, Quill’s gun was no match for the Iron Man armor; it channeled a tiny fraction of the energy at Tony’s command. But there was a weird, primal power to the Guardian’s weapon. It packed a punch that couldn’t be explained in strict engineering terms.
“What do you really want, Quill?” he asked. “There a reward out for this planet-killer, by any chance?”
“No! Well yeah, actually. But that’s not the main reasAAAAAGGH!”
Quill swerved, almost dodging the twenty-foot girder Tony had hurled at him. Almost, but not quite. The half-ton of metal grazed his side, knocking him off balance. “Buckle up, Bill Gates,” he hissed. He dropped to a crouch and began throwing cinderblocks, one after the other.
Tony dodged, jetting straight up into the air – with Quill right on his tail. One of the concrete blocks crashed into Shackie, punching a hole in the wall.
“Quill!” he called. “This is, like, not normal behavior. Are you on drugs or something? Space drugs?”
Quill snorted. “I wish!”
He lunged, reaching for Tony’s feet. Tony flexed his leg and let out a sharp blast from his boot jets, knocking Quill off balance. But Quill fired as he tumbled away, sending out a spray of rocky earth-soil. Stones pelted Tony’s helmet, blocking his vision. He maneuvered himself lower, using radar to zero in on the pier.
The workers turned to watch Tony land, glaring at him with undisguised hatred. A few more Kree had joined them, all wearing those vaguely alien-looking jumpsuits. �
��Listen,” he said, spreading his arms. “I swear to you I know nothing about your difficult working conditions. When this is over–”
Fire engulfed him, setting off a swarm of alarms inside his helmet. He turned to see Quill swooping down, flame pouring out of that bizarre gun.
Stupid, Tony thought, activating foam nozzles to suppress the flame. I got distracted, waited a moment too long – gave him just enough time to recover. All this stress, all these distractions – I am definitely off my game–
Then he saw the girder in Quill’s hand. “Batter up!” Quill called.
With a deafening clang, Tony shot backward through the air. He flew over the hole in the pier, past the glaring Kree workers. He craned his head around to see his path, and his heart sank. No, he thought. Not Shackie–
The weathered wall splintered under the first impact, barely slowing him down. He glimpsed the dusty crates inside the shack, the little improvised desk he’d hidden under as a child, as they sped by beneath. When he struck the second wall, crashing through it like a missile, the little shack buckled and crumbled.
He had no time to register the loss. He blasted his boot-jets, slowing his flight, and tumbled over the barrier at the end of the pier, splashing down into the water in a hiss of steam. Then he flailed beneath the surface, fuming. Suckered by that space idiot, he thought. Maybe I should just stay down here. Less humiliating.
“Boss,” F.R.I.D.A.Y. said in his ear, “I have secured the information you wanted–”
“Bad timing, F.R.I.D.A.Y.”
Enough, he thought. Time to straighten up, deal with this once and for all. This was Stark Enterprises, a highly respected research and development facility. Who did that cut-rate space cowboy think he was?
Tony flexed his armor, swimming upward. Checked the readouts, one by one, watching with satisfaction as his power levels rose. He fired up both repulsors and activated the uni-beam in his chest. By the time he cleaved the surface, he was glowing like a star.