CHAMPIONS # 43

MV1 - December Year Four

"When The Moon Hits Your Eye..."

by Russ Anderson, from a plot by Barry Reese

In Case You're Just Joining Us:  The Champions - the Black Widow, Batroc the Leaper, the Flash, Diamondback, Firebird, Hercules, and Cerberus - returned from an adventure in time to find a new team had been formed in their absence by former Batroc Brigaders, Machete and Zaran.  While some members from both teams decided to leave - including Champion founder Diamondback - the Black Widow had the unpleasant task of telling Cassie Lang that her father, Scott, aka Ant-Man, had become a nearly omnipotent time entity and was lost to them.  Meanwhile, Firebird considered the possibility of getting Cerberus and his puppies "fixed" and a cosmic being known only "Plasma" entered our reality in search of Earth's heroes. 

“Far,” Cassie Lang announced, snapping the R tile down onto the Scrabble board.

“Lejos,” Bonita Juarez – Firebird – responded from the other side of the table.

“Lay-hose?” Cassie asked doubtfully.

“Close enough,” Bonita said.  She studied the Scrabble board for a moment, then looked to the letters she had collected in her tray, then looked at the board again.  Cassie occupied herself during this lull by figuring out and jotting down her score.

Finally, Bonita laid two new letters out, combining them with one more that was already on the board.  “Cop,” she grinned.

“How do you say that?”

“Policia.”

“Po-lee-see-ya.”

“Very good.”

“Hey, who started a Scrabble game without me?” Barry Allen asked, poking his head into the kitchen.

“Hi Barry!” Cassie crowed from her seat, waving.  “Bonita’s teaching me Spanish!”

“I thought you’d have gone out with the others, Bonita,” Barry said, zipping over to the table at super-speed and having a seat.  The stiff breeze generated by this movement disturbed the letters on the board, but he moved them all back to their original places faster than the eye could follow.

“’Going out’ isn’t truly my thing,” she admitted with an embarrassed smile.

“Mine either,” Barry agreed.

An uncomfortable silence followed, during which Cassie eyed both of the adults, seemingly confused by the silence… then her eyes widened in understanding.  A smile crept across her 10 year-old face.

“Do you want to play, Barry?” Cassie asked.  “We don’t mind starting over, do we Bonita?”

“No… no of course not,” Bonita said, rushing to gather up the tiles from the previous game.

“Well okay, but only if you girls are sure you don’t mind,” Barry agreed, settling into his chair and scooting forward.  “I think it’s only fair to warn you though, that super-speed is not the Flash’s only super-power.  I’m also deadly at Scrabble.  And I’m fair-to-middling dangerous at Go Fish too.”

“We’ll just have to see about that.”

“Game on, then.”

Rachel Leighton sipped her drink and leaned back against the bar, watching the beautiful twenty- and thirty-somethings shaking what they had out on the dance floor.  The music was deafening and the body heat was stifling.  It was perfect.  Just what she needed.

I’m doing the right thing, she told herself for the fifteenth time in as many minutes.  Leaving the Champions for a while, getting out from under the yoke she’d set on her own shoulders, would help her get her head straight… help her figure out who Diamondback was beyond “ex-supervillain” and “Captain America’s ex-girlfriend”.  She had joined the team in the first place to prove herself to Cap, to try to win him back--of course, there was also gratitude at the team risking their lives to save her from Hades… but most of it had been for Steve.  She still cared for him deeply, and knew that if he called her tonight, asked her to come back to New York with him and that all was forgiven… well, she’d go in a second.

But part of her was beginning to hate him a little bit too, for being so damned self-righteous and removing her so thoroughly--so easily--from his life.  She didn’t want to hate Steve, and the only way she could avoid it was to get out of his world for a little bit. 

“A preety mademoiselle zhould not be propping up zee bar when zere is so much danzing to be done,” a voice said in her ear.  “Particularly when ze danzing and ze partying iz in her honair.”

Rachel looked to her left, where a man with a grotesquely tacky mustache and a bad French accent stood leaning on the bar beside her.  “Batroc, are you asking me to dance?”

“Oui.  Eet would do you good to boogie a beet.”

Rachel sighed and set her drink down.  “I’ve got a lot on my mind.”

“Including Le Capitan?”  Rachel gave him a dark look and Batroc threw a hand up in the air dismissively.  “Pardonez-moi, I am only calling it az I zee it.  Weel you do me a favor when you leave tomorrow?”

“Depends on the favor…”

“Do not go to New York, nor to Washington.  Go where ze wind takes you, but do not allow eet to take you anywhere you may find Le Capitan.”

Rachel smiled at him.  “Why Batroc, you old softie.  I didn’t know you cared.”

“Zere are levels to Batroc you have yet to plumb, cheri.”  He waggled an eyebrow at her.  “Care to plumb zem before you go?”

“Thank you for justifying my lack of faith in you,” Rachel sighed.

“Any time.”  He looked back toward the dance floor.  “I ‘ave dezided I don’t wish to danze with you anymore.  I believe it will be bettair for you if you go find someone to danze with on your own.”

“Er… thanks, I guess.”

“And for what eet’s worth,” Batroc continued, dropping his voice as low as he could while still being heard amid the cacophony, “I understand your obzession with Le Capitan.  He is a most amazing specimen, non?  A back as broad as a hillside, a face chiseled as if from stone, and ze most haunting blue eyes.  I have often found myself wondering how he lookz with ze bare chest and shoulders, perhaps toiling in a field under a hot French sun...”

Rachel stared at him, speechless.

“Oh look,” Batroc exclaimed suddenly, “a beautiful, completely feminine and hetairosekzual woman geeving me ze eye from across ze room.”  He pushed away from the bar and disappeared into the gyrating crowd.

Rachel stared after him for a moment, then turned to look for her other teammates.  Hercules was down at the other end of the bar, surrounded by half a dozen women, all wooing over his biceps and Greek accent.  Guinea Pig was standing nearby, all but forgotten under the glare of Herc’s celebrity.  Johnny Domingo--Nightman, a reserve member who would be leaving for San Francisco tomorrow morning--was dancing with some woman Rachel didn’t know.

Of those who had come out, that left Natasha, the Black Widow, unaccounted for.  Rachel had seen her sneak out about half an hour ago, but hadn’t thought anything of it.  Now she set her empty glass down and began to thread her way toward the door.  Batroc was right… she needed to dance and let loose a little, but she wanted to have a few quiet words with… words with… quiet…

What on Earth…?

A man had appeared above the dance floor, passing over the capering bodies on a… a flying bicycle.  A two-seated, tandem bicycle.  The man had a long, thin mustache, and wore a green pinstripe jacket, white slacks, and a very yellow hat.  He had a closed umbrella in his hand, propped on his shoulder.  Nobody else in the room seemed to find this strange.  Nobody else in the room even so much as looked at the guy as he pedaled across the sky.  He was scowling at the dancers, and when he reached Rachel, he made a point to scowl extra-fiercely at her before continuing on his way passing right through the opposite wall of the building.  Like a ghost.

“What the hell--?” Rachel breathed.

“Friend Rachel, are you well?” Hercules asked at her side. She must have really been out of it, she thought, for Hercules – who had all the stealth of a rhino – to sneak up on her.

“Huh?  Oh fine, Herc.”  She offered him a weak, confused smile.  “Just fine.”

“You seem pale…”

“Just need some air,” she lied.  “It’s a little stuffy in here.”

“Do you wish me to accompany you?”

“No, no… not necessary.  Stay here with your groupies, big guy.  I’ll be right back, promise.”

Then, before he could insist more, Rachel moved past him and out the door.  Hercules looked after her a moment longer--his brow knit in concern--until a hand fell on his arm, and the young woman attached to it asked him to tell her again how he’d defeated the “Newman Lion”.

“’Twas the Nemean Lion, fair one,” Hercules replied, a dashing smile twinkling into being across his face, “and that epic tale begins thus--”

Natasha Romanov sat alone at a table on a brick patio and sipped black coffee from a paper cup.  She knew she should be in the club, having a good time with the others – for Rachel’s sake, if nothing else – but she just couldn’t bring herself to do it tonight.  Too much weighed on her.  Rachel’s unexpected decision to leave.  The matter with Cerberus and his puppies.  And, of course, Scott.

Scott Lang – a.k.a. Ant-Man – had been taken from them by a cosmic time-entity named Aeon, presumably to be made into the next Aeon.*  Whether Scott was alive or dead… she had no idea.  And it wouldn’t really make matters any better if he was still alive, because they would likely never see him again.  He’d left behind his daughter – Cassie – and the decision of what to do about her was something else the Widow had to deal with.

(* See Champs #40--Russ)

Good, good Natasha, she thought, taking another sip of the coffee and savoring every bitter drop of it.  Be a good leader, think on the effect of Scott’s loss on your team and his family.  But not on yourself.  Never on yourself.

Scott had cared for her.  She’d known that for some time before he’d given her that first and last kiss, just before being whisked away into the timestream.  Was her remorse made worse solely by the fact that she’d never reciprocated those feelings, or because she was sure she should have?

I hate leading teams, she thought.  Bad things always happen on my watch.  What am I even doing here?

She watched the stream of bodies pouring by on the sidewalk alongside the patio.  College kids mostly, very few of them her age.  Couples held hands and laughed together, and Natasha wondered bitterly where all the men in her life had gone – Clint, Matt, Tony.  So many left be--

Natasha blinked and stood up, the chair she was sitting in bouncing backwards and toppling over.  She couldn’t have just seen who she thought she had on the other side of the patio railing.  She couldn’t have.

But there he was again, just for a second.  He didn’t seem to see her, but he was weaving in and out of the crowd, making it impossible to hold onto him with her eyes.

Dear God…

“Alexi!” the Widow cried.  The crowd milling beyond the patio railing turned as one and looked at her, including the man she’d seen.  For a heartbeat, their eyes met, and Natasha knew she wasn’t imagining things--the man was who he seemed to be.

In the next moment, he turned and ran.

The Widow vaulted the railing and landed in a crouch on the pavement.  The crowd backed away as she sprang to her feet, then stumbled over each other getting out of the way as she bolted through them.

“Alexi!” she screamed, <“Stop!”>*  She caught sight of him, still sprinting, as he ducked into an alley across the street.  Without hesitation, the Black Widow followed.

(* Translated from Russian for your convenience--Russ)

A portion of hyperspace spilled over into the normal continuum, just outside the orbit of Earth’s moon, and deposited a woman’s exhausted silver form into real space before cross-dimensional physics pulled the spill back into its home reality.  The woman, with barely any energy reserves left, was captured by the moon’s meager gravity, and hauled down toward its surface like a rocket.

She struck with enough force to shatter a mountain, blasting tons of lunar dust and rock into orbit and creating yet another crater for the Terran astronomers to study.  Her body, composed of liquid, splattered across the crater at the impact.

For a beat, all was still, save for the debris still drifting up into the void from the impact.  Then, slowly, the millions of droplets that had once been the woman’s body came together, rolling across hundreds of kilometers in some cases, until she was whole again.  Wearily, she looked around.

“Earth,” she sighed.  “At last.”

With considerable effort, she willed herself back into the lunar sky.  Not far to go now.  But she couldn’t rest.  Not yet.  Not when the enemy was so close.

Her eyes fixed on the planet that was the last hope for her own world, Plasma plunged toward Earth.

“Alexi!  Please stop!”

The Black Widow sprinted into the alley just in time to see the man she was pursuing leaping onto a fire escape.  He pulled himself up quickly--god, he even moved like Alexi, it had to be him--and by the time Natasha reached the bottom, he was almost at the roof.

Undaunted, she followed.  The Black Widow could be quick too, and she had always been Alexi’s near-equal in climbing exercises.  She reached the roof moments behind her quarry.  He was wrestling with the door leading from the roof to the interior of the building.  Apparently, it was locked.

“Alexi, why won’t you say anything?”

He glanced her way, scowled, backed up, and kicked the door in.  Natasha began running again as he disappeared through it.

The door led into a dark stairwell.  Alexi was nowhere in sight as Natasha entered.  Down.  He must have gone down.  She leaned over the railing to look… and dove backwards again as a hail of gunfire sliced through the air around her.

“Oh no,” she hissed, yanking off her heels and jacket.  “You don’t get away that easily, whoever you are.”  She tossed the shoes into a corner, then spread the arms of the jacket out and threw it over the railing.  No more gunfire tracked it, so she peeked over in time to see Alexi kicking a door in three stories down.  Without a thought to her own safety, Natasha vaulted the railing and free-fell down the middle of the stairwell.

The man with Alexi Shostakov’s face shoved his gun at the fat man whose home he’d just broken into.  The fat man froze in his tracks and dropped the bat he’d been brandishing.

“Fire escape,” he said with a thick Russian accent.  “Where?”

The fat man pointed, and Alexi sprinted for the window he’d indicated, tucking his pistol into the waistband of his pants as he went.  Curse the luck!  He’d been preparing for this confrontation for weeks now, and the witch had spotted him at the one moment his guard was down.

The window was locked, he saw.  Without bothering to try the latch, he picked up a wooden chair and smashed the pane to splinters.

Natasha twisted and landed on the railing three floors down with both feet under her.  Letting her knees absorb the impact, she sprang upward and to the side, hit the landing in a tuck-and-roll, and came up on one knee with her widow’s sting at the ready.  She was alone in the hallway, save for a man she didn’t know, trembling in his doorway.

“Where did he go?” the Widow asked, springing to her feet.

The man pointed and Natasha dashed past him into the apartment.  The pane was smashed, but she approached carefully, not wanting to walk into a trap by rushing to the obvious escape route.

She looked out the window.  A fire escape led down to the floor of another alleyway four stories below.  She didn’t see Alexi, didn’t see anything moving. 

Had to be a trap.

She stepped out onto the fire escape anyway, moving silently but quickly downward until she stood on the darkened pavement.  A cat exploded from a trash heap nearby, nearly stopping her heart.

“Alexi?” she said uncertainly.

She heard the chamber of his pistol ratcheting back a moment before he fired.  Diving, she rolled across the pavement, the spray of bullets following her until she was safely behind a heavy dumpster.

<“Alexi, I just want to talk!”>  The alley had gone silent again.  Natasha checked her widow’s bite.  Fully locked and loaded.

The dumpster she was hiding behind suddenly lurched forward on its casters, slamming into her back.  She staggered, got to her feet, and leapt out of the way as it continued on its path down the alleyway and out toward the street.  Natasha tumbled, righted herself, and brought her widow’s stings up.  But it was too late.  Alexi’s hands were on her, expertly flipping the hidden latches that released the weapons from Natasha’s wrists.  They fell to the pavement at their feet.

She turned the movement into a double punch, driving both her fists into his solar plexus.  He stumbled backward, the air whooshing out of his lungs, and she followed up by twisting around and throwing a leg up at his head.

He caught it in mid-flight.  She staggered, off-balance, and he landed a devastating right to her face.  Bright lights exploded behind Natasha’s eyes, and as she fell back away from him, she felt his hands on either side of her head.  She knew what was coming, but could do nothing to stop him as he smashed the back of her skull into the brick wall behind her.

The Black Widow’s world faded away as she slid bonelessly down the wall.  The last thing she saw before the lights went out was Alexi drawing his gun and aiming it at her head.

“Love,” Cassie proclaimed, slapping the E tile into place.  “How do you say that, Bonita?”

“Amante,” the Hispanic woman answered with a smile.

“Ah-mahn-tay,” Cassie sighed.  “Isn’t that a romantic way to say it, Barry?”

“Er, sure...  I guess.”

“I bet boys use that word on you all the time back in your village, huh Bonita?”

“Cassie!”

“It’s true, Bonita!  You’re beautiful!  Isn’t she beautiful, Barry?”

“Yes,” Barry agreed, turning to Bonita as she looked away.  “Very much so.”

“Both of you… thank you very much,” Bonita murmured.  She couldn’t quite raise her eyes above the level of the tabletop.

“Gotta pee,” Cassie announced suddenly, hopping down from her chair.  “You two stay right here.  Together.  And talk.  I’ll be right back.”

When the 10 year-old was gone, Barry put a hand across the table and put it over Bonita’s own.  “I’m sorry I embarrassed you, Bonita.  Something tells me Cassie’s trying her hand at matchmaking tonight.”

“It’s alright,” Bonita replied, trying to laugh.  “Sometimes I fear I’m too prudish for my own good…”

“I think you’re perfect.”

Bonita opened her mouth to reply, found she couldn’t, and closed it again.  Both of them were still very much aware of Barry’s hand over hers.

“Look, Bonita,” he began, “about what happened… in that alternate future before we came home.  I think I--”

His words were suddenly drowned out by a flashing red light that came to life atop the refrigerator, and a recorded announcement of Batroc shouting.  “Get your buttz in gear!  Get your buttz in gear!” that sounded throughout the house.  Barry hung his head at the sound.

“Tell me that’s not our general alarm.”

“I’m afraid that’s just what it is,” Bonita replied, relief and disappointment all rolled into one in her voice.

“I’ll run ahead.  Meet me in the comm center once you’ve changed into costume.”  And with that, the Flash was gone--no doubt in full costume and standing in front of the basement monitors even as the tingle in Bonita’s hand where he’d been touching it subsided.

With a sigh, Firebird got up to go join him.

“Stupid cow,” Alexi Shostakov said, pressing his gun to the Natasha’s temple.  “Dosvidanya, Black Widow.”

Something small and sharp hit him in the wrist, knocking his gun away even as he pulled the trigger.  The bullet went wild, whining off the concrete at the Widow’s side and ricocheting across the alley.  The gunman hardly noticed, as his hand and pistol were now encased in a thick sheath of ice.

<“What--?”>  He looked around, in the direction the object had come from, and was greeted by the sight of a second woman as she jumped and planted a foot in his chest.  He tumbled backward at the impact, the wind blasted out of his lungs for the second time in as many minutes, and crashed into a pile of garbage along the opposite wall of the alley.

“Widow, are you alright?” Diamondback called, landing lightly and keeping an eye on the man she’d knocked down.  There was no answer from Natasha, so Diamondback slipped a hand under her jacket and drew another trick diamond from the belt she wore there.

“Keep your hands where I can see them,” she demanded as the unknown man got clumsily to his feet.  He pointed the gun at her.

“I wouldn’t recommend pulling that trigger,” Diamondback warned.  “The ice will--”

Alexi pulled the trigger.  The ice around his hand shattered and he cried out in pain as the bullet flew off at the wrong angle and buried itself in some plaster near the front of the alley.

“Idiot,” Diamondback stated, and leapt at him again.

With speed she couldn’t have anticipated, the man sidestepped her lunge and brought his good hand--the one not curled bloody and useless at his chest--down on her neck.  The blow was only a glancing one, and when Diamondback landed, she sprang immediately to her feet, twisted, and threw an elbow at the spot she thought her opponent would be in.

But he wasn’t there.  He was already at the mouth of the alleyway, running with that one hand clutched to his chest.  Diamondback considered chasing him for a moment, but then the Widow groaned, and she moved to help her friend instead.

“Did he escape?” Natasha asked as Rachel helped her to her feet.

“Yeah, I’m sorry.  Are you okay?”

“Been better.”  Natasha leaned back against the wall and put a hand tenderly to the back of her head.  She winced and the hand came away with blood on it.  “How did you find me?”

“I was coming out of the club just as you took off after the guy.  Thought I’d lost both of you when you ran up that fire escape, but then I heard the shots from this side of the building and ran over to investigate.  Tasha… who was he?”

“He,” the Widow sighed, “is Alexi Shostakov… my husband.”

“Your husband?  But I didn’t know you were…”

“I’m not,” she replied.  “Not anymore.  Alexi was the original Red Guardian, and he died years ago, saving my life.”

“Then who--”

“I don’t know, Rachel.”  She pushed away from the wall, and Diamondback moved to prop her up when her legs shuddered beneath her.  “I just don’t know…”

“Excuse me, could I have this dance?”

Johnny Domingo, the reserve Champion known as Nightman, turned at the sound of the voice, looked around in confusion for its source, then looked down.

There was a short man standing there, with bowed legs and an angular face that could only be described as sinister.  He was looking at Johnny expectantly.

“I said, ‘could I have this dance’?” the short man repeated, flipping a shock of sand-colored hair out of his eyes.

Johnny looked back at the blonde he’d been dancing with.  Her eyes were wide with terror, and she gave a quick little headshake to indicate her feelings on the matter.

“Well… I think that’s up to the lady, don’t you?”

Short-stuff’s eyes narrowed.  “Step aside, pretty boy.”

Through a tremendous effort, Johnny stifled a laugh.  “Look, buddy, nobody wants any trouble here…”

“Pardonnez-moi, mon ami,” Batroc said, appearing at Johnny’s side and placing a hand on his shoulder.  “Iz this footztool bothairing you?  Iz he keeping you from ze arms of zis lovely lady?  Shall I show heem ze door?”

“Footstool?” the short guy cried.  Without warning, he jumped--five feet straight up, without bending at the knees--and planted his feet in Batroc’s chest.  There was a loud THWOK and Batroc was suddenly sliding on his back across the dance floor, knocking dancers over as he went.

“All I wanted was a little respect, you miserable flatscan!” the short guy said, leaping in great bounds after Batroc.  “Just a single dance with a pretty woman and I’d leave this dry, miserable city behind.  But you had to push me, had to piss me off!”  He gave one final leap and plummeted downward, straight toward Batroc’s dazed head.

“Now you’ll find out what happens when you step on The Terrible Toad!”

NEXT ISSUE: Batroc vs. the Toad!  ‘Nuff said.

Special Thanks to Steve Crosby for coming up with the kicking new title for our letters section.  See next issue for Steve's guest-appearance--his reward for helping me out with the title--and the horrible fate that awaits him there.  Oh, and Batroc and the Toad will be fighting too.  And I might actually get around to Aeon this time.

Unfortunately, though issue #42 garnered a whole bunch of mail--probably the most I've ever received on a single issue--we'll have to wait until next issue to see that stuff printed.

In the meantime, go check out the first issue of Mark Beaulieu's hilarious mini-series "Road Trip", featuring the post-Champs #42 misadventures of Machete and Zaran.  This is Baloo at the top of his humorous form, folks, so don't let it slip by ya.

Send comments, quips, queries, or criticisms to RussLee74@aol.com.

- Russ Anderson
20 March, 2001