Prologue.

The front door creaked open, and a very blurry-eyed Batroc the Leaper stuck his head through into the gloom of the entrance foyer.

"'Ello?" he asked the empty house. He pushed through the doorway, nearly tripped over a doormat the Cerberus puppies had turned into a chew toy, and put a hand on the wall to steady himself.

"Where eez everyone? Do you not want to bask in zee glory of ze... ze Leapair? I do not offend, do I?" He smelled each of his armpits, decided they weren't too bad, and skulked through into the livingroom. The Cerberus puppies were curled up on the couch, sleeping. Their father was nowhere in sight. Nor were any of the other Champions.

"Urp," Batroc opined, and moved into the kitchen. All the polls weren't in yet, but he harbored a strong suspicion that he was very, very drunk. He was in no mood to deal with his teammates -- Firebird, in particular, would give him the hairy eyeball if she knew he'd been out drinking all night -- but the house's preternatural stillness was almost enough to crack the blissful armor of his stupor. Usually Flash and Firebird -- Mr. and Mrs. Clean-Living -- were up by this time. And why weren't the puppies in sleeping with young Cassie Lang?

He reached the refrigerator, intent on getting some orange juice -- or, mon dieu, since he was already somewhat set on destroying himself, maybe another beer -- but paused with his hand on the door handle.

Taped to the door was a white sheet of paper, a note jotted on it in Cassie Lang's measured schoolgirl hand. He had to lean close to read it -- his vision kept doubling when he tried to focus -- and finally, with his nose practically pressed against the paper, he read:

 

Mr. Batroc, We've all gone with Greg Wallander to save the universe and my daddy. Will be back soon. Love, Cassie P.S. Don't forget to feed the puppies! P.P.S. Greg says he's from the future and he's my boyfriend. Yuck!

"Zut Alors!" Batroc exclaimed, standing suddenly upright and somehow managing to keep from toppling over when he did so. The team had gone to deal with Aeon, called into battle by a member of that band of future Champions. Braving the perils of the timestream. Thrown into a conflict they didn't understand, against an enemy of untold power, with uncertain allies guarding their back.

Their chances of survival would be slim to none, of this Batroc was certain, and slim had just left town. They're sole hope then -- the universe's only hope -- could only be--

"C'est moi!" he exclaimed. And in that moment, all the doubt and self-loathing he'd been suffering since the Toad had defeated him* washed away. The Champions had gotten into trouble again, and only the Leaper could get them out. Yes, yes. It was so.

(* In issues #43-44 -- Russ)

Batroc turned, ready to march off in search of his comrades... but a thick boot attached to a strong foot attached to a sinewy leg attached to a hip with a lot of strength behind it slammed into his jaw, throwing him back into the refrigerator door. His head bounced off the appliance with an audible whack, and the Leaper slid to the floor, unconscious.

<"Cretin,">* the Red Guardian growled, looming over the Champion's sprawled form. Then he grabbed Batroc by the ankle and began dragging him, past the drugged Cerberus puppies, toward the basement.

(* Translated from Russian -- Russ)

End Prologue

Issue # 48 - April Year Five

AEON FLUX

Part 1: "Exposition"

by Russ Anderson

Elsewhen.

"Where--where are we?" the young Champion known as Guinea Pig ventured.

He and the rest of his teammates -- plus young Cassie Lang, their captive Plasma, and the visitor from the future, Greg Wallander -- had found themselves immersed, surrounded in an unending sea of kaleidoscopic color, the whorls and eddies occasionally broken by brief glimpses into strange worlds not their own.

The ground seemed no different from the sky here, but they were all standing on something solid, at least.

"Greg?" the Black Widow -- leader of the Champions -- asked uncertainly.

The young red-haired man whose magic had propelled them into the timestream looked uncertainly at the white wafer in his hand. "I... don't know. We should have appeared in Champs HQ in my era."*

(* Greg is a member of the Champions 10 years in the future -- Russ)

"Look at this place," Bonita Dominguez, Firebird, said softly. She put a hand out and electric lines of quicksilver etched out from her index finger where it touched a transparent surface. "We've been here before."

"After the Masters of Evil tried to send us to the Negative Zone."* The Flash moved quickly around his friends, touching the same transparent surface Bonita had discovered. "We're in some sort of sphere, protecting us from the energies out there. Just like before."

(* See Champs #37-38... makes you think we've been planning this all along, don't it? -- Russ)

Greg was fiddling with the device that had brought them here, using his thumbnail to manipulate some unseen control. Sweat ran down his pale forehead, and he kept muttering, "Not good, not good..."

"Zounds!" Hercules exclaimed suddenly, slamming a fist impotently into his palm. "When last we traveled hither, 'twas the doing of--"

"Aeon," the Black Widow finished.

And there he was, as if summoned by the Widow's words.

Swathed in a swirling cloak the color of arterial blood, the timelord loomed over the gathered Champions, his face hidden beneath the folds of his cloak. He was enormous, grown to easily ten times the size of the tallest of the heroes. Angry red eyes glared out from the shadows of his cloak.

"Scott!" the Widow cried.

"Daddy!" Cassie Lang screeched at the same moment.

Aeon -- formerly the man Scott Lang -- didn't acknowledge either of them. Instead, his crimson glare fell on Greg Wallander, and beside him, the trapped liquid form of Plasma.

"Still you oppose me, still you muster forces against me. You don't understand the responsibilities I bear, the threat I oppose.

"But you will."

His bare hand snaked out of the robes toward them, and the Champions had only a moment to ready themselves before the protective bubble they were enclosed in shattered.

Sounds and lights and smells and sensations from a million different worlds hit them all at once, sending them spinning out into eternity with no anchor, no guide. The Black Widow saw Aeon's massive hand close over the jewel holding Plasma as the ground beneath her splintered and threatened to vanish along with the rest. She steadied herself, years of utter control over her body allowing her to not lose balance or perspective in the precious few seconds left to her. Crouching, not knowing what else to do, she leapt across infinity, reaching for that giant fist.

Somewhere nearby, she heard Cassie calling for her father. Felt it in her chest when Hercules roared his Olympian rage. And then the universe exploded in a riot of light and sound that left her seeing no more for a very long time.

When the Widow came back to her senses, she didn't at first realize she was awake. All she could see was red. A dark, liquid red that pressed in from every direction.

It almost made her think she was dead.

But her atheist upbringing didn't allow her to believe in an afterlife. And even if it had, she would have had a hard time believing said afterlife consisted of a great, featureless plain the color of black raspberry Kool-Aid.

Pain in her cheek and hip finally convinced her she was very much alive, and that she had been lying on a hard surface for some time. Carefully, she propped herself up and looked around.

She was in a room made entirely of smooth, red crystal. From where she lay, she could tell the room was a cube. Probably not very large either, but the unflinching uniformity of color made it hard to judge dimensions.

She was completely alone.

She got to her feet, quickly testing each of her joints. Nothing was broken or sprained. In fact, the only ache she had was from lying on this cold, hard floor. She felt like she'd awakened from a deep sleep rather than unconsciousness.

"Cass--" She caught herself before she finished calling the girl's name. She didn't know where she was, didn't know the circumstances of her imprisonment if that's what it was. There was no point in announcing herself until she got a better idea what was going on here.

Stupid, rookie mistake, opening her mouth like that. Her mind was obviously still back in Phoenix, with the Red Guardian and the quandary he represented.*

(* The new Red Guardian claims to be the Widow's long-thought-dead husband, Alexi Shostakov -- Russ)

<No time for that now, Natalia,> she chided herself in her native language. <See to your friends and the safety of the universe, then worry about your dead lovers.>

Now that she was standing, she could see that her room had an open doorway in one wall. The corridor beyond it seemed to be the same color as the room, making the portal invisible except from extreme angles.

She took one second to make sure her widow's bite was armed, and then she moved out into the corridor.

The hall plunged deep into the building. She came upon several more rooms as she moved down it, but they were all as empty as hers had been. The entire structure seemed to be made out of the same red crystal substance, and given the color, it was hard not to think of this corridor as an artery in a great crystalline body... which, she supposed, given the color of her uniform, made her a tumor waiting to be excised. It wasn't a comforting thought.

Voices.

Natasha pulled up short, pressing herself against the wall at a bend in the corridor, listening to the monologue just out of her sight. She knew the voice, though it had been a long time since she'd heard it like this.

"--different universes; it's like the old Quantum Leap show--"

"Scott," she breathed, and risked a glance around the corner.

Scott Lang -- still done up in the garb of Aeon, but with his hood thrown back to reveal his strong, Scandinavian features -- knelt on the floor next to his daughter, Cassie. Cassie still had the Ant-Man helmet she'd brought along tucked under one arm, and she was listening intently to her father as he delivered, from what Natasha could tell, a lecture on quantum reality theory. Behind them, a primordial beast the shape of a crocodile and the size of a mammoth, stomped by soundlessly, vanishing when it reached the opposite wall of the corridor.

The Widow ducked back behind the wall, considering her next move. Should she take Scott down now, while he was off his guard? But what if she couldn't? And where were the others?

"Natasha," Aeon said from around the corner. The sound of her name cut through the Widow's thoughts like a knife. "Come on out. I'm not going to hurt you."

For one moment, she considered turning and dashing back down the corridor. But to what? She was a master of getting out of tight spots, but even she had seen no way to escape this place.

No, her only chance was reason. And the dim hope that there really was some Scott Lang left in the creature that called itself Aeon.

She rounded the corner, her widow's bites at her side. Aeon and Cassie were standing as they had been a moment before, and when Cassie saw the Widow, she grinned and bolted to her.

"Tasha!"

The Widow put a protective hand over the little girl as she embraced her, but her eyes never left Aeon's.

"Welcome to the Crux, Natasha," Aeon said in his Scott voice. He made no move to pull Cassie back or even approach either of them. "Welcome to my home."

"Where are the others?"

Aeon gave a knowing smile -- an okay-if-that's-the-way-it's-going-to-be smile -- and shrugged.

"They're... elsewhere."

Elsewhere.

The man in the costume still remembered the day his life changed, the day a police officer, on his way to foil a robbery, had sped down his street and run down Sparky, his faithful aussie terrier. Ever since that day, he'd pledged himself to the eradication of all that was good and lawful. Training his body, honing his mind to a razor's edge.

As he entered adulthood, his purpose as clear as it had been on the day Sparky fell beneath the wheels of an uncaring Gestapo, it had remained only to select a mantle, a symbol to strike fear into the hearts of do-gooders everywhere.

It wasn't until his twentieth birthday, when browsing through a china shop, that fate had lent him a clue.

Tripping on a small child, he'd gone crashing through an entire shelf of crockery and cookware, upsetting yet another shelf and another, until nothing was left of the china shop but the glinting ceramic shards of his own innocence.

And that was when the man had known what his symbol would be.

He would become a bull.

The Orange Bull, to be precise.

(First of course, he had to escape the police after trashing that china shop, but such ignominious beginnings were the birthplace of legends)

Now he stood flexing in his bedroom mirror, his costume completed after many, many hours of on-the-job training in needlework. He was ready, and very soon, the police and superheroes and other watchmen of this world would quake in terror as they were ground beneath his cloven hooves.

That was the plan anyway. But then there was a flash of light in the room behind him and a massive, 3-headed dog was growling at him in his bedroom mirror. Screaming at a pitch not unlike that of a frightened schoolgirl, the Orange Bull dashed out of his bedroom, and right out of his own house.

"Peace, brave Cerberus," Hercules said, grasping the demon-dog by one of its collars.

"Where are we now?" Firebird demanded.

There was a blast of wind, and the Flash was standing in front of her. "Back where we started, looks like."

"Our house?"

The Flash nodded. "But something's wrong... besides the fact that we seem to have lost Cassie and the Widow. It's our house, our street, but..."

"But we've been shunted into another reality," Greg Wallander finished. "Damn it, I was hoping we could keep hold of Plasma until we figured out what he wanted with her..."

"Does this house belong to somebody wearing a funny costume in every dimension?" the Flash wondered.

"What about Tasha and Cassie?" Guinea Pig asked.

Greg didn't answer. He was angry, distracted. "This is not good, not good at all. If Aeon knew about me going to get you guys, that means he probably knew about the rest of the team getting ready to assault him in Limbo." He jabbed at the stylized "C" patch on one arm of his jacket.

"Boy," Hercules began, his face darkening, "what of our fri--"

Greg put up a finger, and to everyone's astonishment, Hercules shut up. There was a moment of expectant silence, and then a voice emanated from the C-patch.

"Greg, is that you?"

The young sorceror's eyes fluttered closed. "Yeah, it's me, Ant-Girl. You guys too, huh?"

"We never had a chance, Greg. Never even got into his citadel."

"Okay, I think I've got a fix on you. Stay there, we'll join you in a few. Greg out." He tapped the patch again, signing off. "Hold on guys, we need to go on one more jaunt."

The former sorcerer supreme of the Earth dimension gestured, and he and his five companions vanished.

A brisk wind was roaring in off the Atlantic as the six heroes materialized atop the Empire State Building in Manhattan. The Flash sighed in something like relief at the sight. Here, at least, was something else that had endured across realities, something familiar... comforting.

Not to mention submerged.

He zipped to the edge and looked over the side, realizing with a sinking feeling that was the direct opposite of the relief he'd felt the moment before that his eyes hadn't deceived him. Fully half of the 86 floors below the observation deck were beneath the advancing waters of the Atlantic Ocean. And so was the rest of Manhattan.

"My God," he heard Bonita breathe behind him.

"It's about time you guys showed up."

The Flash whirled, and found himself facing, not only the people he'd arrived with, but three more familiar faces. Greg Wallander's teammates, the future Champions, had circled from the other side of the tower. They were Ant-Girl -- a grown-up Cassie Lang -- the second Iceman, and the towering robot called H.E.R.C. 2000.

"Cassie!" Greg Wallander cried, and whipped his girlfriend up into his arms. She laughed, tore off her silver helmet and kissed him.

"Dios, get a room, you two," Iceman said. He was a young Hispanic man, still in his teens, wearing street clothes topped by a jacket similar to Greg's. He wore darkly-tinted sunglasses, and his hair was slicked back tight against his scalp. He pushed past the reunited couple and offered Hercules his hand. "Hey, good to see you guys again."

"Verily, we are well met," Hercules agreed, taking the offered hand and pumping it enthusiastically. "Your entire company is not present."

"Nah," Iceman agreed. "Jocasta can't come with us this far into the field, being a sentient piece of software and everything. Ghost Rider... well, he was with us at the start, but we lost him when Aeon zapped us here. That guy's impossible to keep track of... who knows where he got off to."

Hercules gestured behind him. "Young Guinea Pig, you were not part of our company when last we met these men and women.* Come forth and meet the Champions yet-to-come."

(* See issue #40 -- before-my-time Russ)

Iceman slid his sunglasses down his nose to get a better look at Guinea Pig. His eyes were ice blue, with no pupils or corneas. "GP? No way, man, you was never that young!"

"Excuse me?" Guinea Pig said uncertainly.

"You're still around in our reality, GP." Iceman shook the youngster's hand. "You been a mentor to this team of Champions. You're one of the greats."

Guinea Pig blinked. Iceman's grip was, unsurprisingly, ice-cold, but he still felt a wave of warmth at the future Champion's flattery.

"Am I... am I married in the future?"

Iceman scoffed. "Who's got time for marriage, brotha? You're too busy playing the field and fighting for justice. You ain't had to spend a Saturday night alone since you single-handedly took down Thanos and his Death Throws a few years back."

"Thanos?"

"Yo, does everything you say end in a question mark?" Not waiting for an answer, Iceman hooked a thumb at his robotic companion. "The heavy metal dude is H.E.R.C. 2000. Big-ass uru robot, made by the Asgardian trolls as a favor to Odin, and infused with the spirit of Hercules by our reality's Zeus."

"WELL MET, FRIEND GUINEA PIG," the robot said.

"Okay, your team's all here," the Flash said, interrupting the various reunions. "But can someone tell us what happened to our team now."

"Best guess is that they got sucked along in the chronal slipstream when Aeon stole Plasma," Greg replied. He had set Cassie down, and his mind had seemingly returned to business.

"What if they didn't?"

"Then they could be anywhere in the multiverse. Assuming they're not still drifting helplessly in that cross-time region we were in."

The gathered Champions were silent for a moment, taking this in.

"Uh guys... what's that?"

The Champions turned and followed the line of Guinea Pig's finger. He was pointing Southwest -- where the harbor had been before all of Manhattan turned into a harbor. They could see the shoulders, head, and upraised arm of the Statue of Liberty out there, but that wasn't what Guinea Pig was pointing at. To the right of Ellis Island, from their perspective, was a mile-wide cyclone of swirling light and color, stretching from the surface of the water up to the low-hanging clouds.

"We were wondering the same thing," Iceman replied. "It's been there since Aeon zapped us here a couple hours ago."

"Magic," Greg said. "It's magic, whatever it is."

"We think it's linked to what happened to New York," Ant-Girl explained, fitting her helmet back over her head. "And it might have something to do with why Aeon wants to destroy this reality."

"He wants to destroy this entire universe?"

"Yes, that's why Plasma was running from him when you found her.* She's from here."

(* In issues #43-44 -- Russ)

"But why would he do something like that?" Firebird demanded.

"Well now..." Ant-Girl said, "that's the question, isn't it?"

The Crux.

"I'll bet you're just full of questions."

The Black Widow didn't reply as she and young Cassie Lang accompanied Aeon (Scott, she chided herself, think of him as Scott) down the passage of his crystal citadel. Even with everything she had on her mind, she had to admit the place was amazing. Various rooms had glimpses into the history of any of what seemed like thousands of planets -- which explained the croc/mammoth anyway -- though this only seemed to be the case when Scott himself was looking into the room in question.

Aeon didn't wait for her to reply in the affirmative, didn't even look over his shoulder to make sure she was still there, just went on talking.

"The thing to keep in mind when dealing with alternate realities is that there needs to be some kind of force, a lynchpin holding each continuum together and linking it to all the others. Scientists assign names like 'The Four Fundamental Forces' to such a concept, because they're scope of reasoning doesn't allow them to understand any more than blind men groping at different parts of an elephant. They feel the trunk and the tail, but don't understand that there's an elephant from which both stem. Do you understand?"

"I... think so."

"In the universe both of us hailed from, the 'elephant' is called Eternity, a great cosmic consciousness that encompasses everything that is, was, and will be in that continuum. Eternity exists, in one form or another, in every naturally-formed continuum. Such a being is absolutely essential to any one universe. Remove it, and the entire reality will first go mad, and eventually collapse in on itself."

"Go back. You said 'naturally-formed'."

"Ah... observant as ever, Natasha. Yes, naturally-formed by the branching of probabilities in a timeline. But... say someone were to create an entire reality by artificial means? Would it have an Eternity? Would it need one?"

"I--"

"Don't answer that. It's a rhetorical question. Come, let me show you what I mean."

They had reached the end of the corridor, where a wall of dull colors -- like a rainbow cast on a puddle of oil and water -- stretched across the hall and blocked their progress. Scott waved and the wall moved to one side, allowing the three of them passage into an enormous, miles-wide chamber. Natasha squinted across the expanse of red crystal. She could just make out a speck some miles distant, something man-sized standing near the center of the chamber.

And then, as if they'd been teleported, they were standing next to the speck. It was a night-blue pedastal, several feet tall, with what looked like a child's rubber ball hovering about a foot above it. Scott reached out and traced his fingers over the energy field holding the ball in place, sending red lightning bolts shooting across its surface.

Natasha's eyes went wide.

"You recognize it, don't you?" Scott said softly.

Elsewhere.

"Apparently, a child from your reality created this world."

"A child--?" the Flash said, his brow crinkling in disbelief.

The gathered Champions were crossing the plain of seawater separating the Empire State Building from the technicolor storm raging near Liberty Island, riding a hovering platform forged from the mystical power of Cytorrak. Greg had guessed that the storm might have something to do with Aeon, and it therefore deserved their attention. If nothing else, they were apparently the only metahumans present, so it was left to them to determine whether the storm was a threat or not. Being outside their own reality didn't negate their responsibilities.

"Franklin Richards," Firebird said, nodding grimly. She was the only one not riding the platform, choosing instead to fly beside it. "When the Fantastic Four and Avengers battled Onslaught, they were put in a situation where they were all going to die. So Reed and Sue Richards' son Franklin used his reality-altering powers to create a world to house them safely. They stayed in that world for almost a year, unaware of any prior existence, until they were brought back to our universe."*

(* A capsule explanation of events from Marvel's "Onslaught" crossover, through the "Heroes Reborn" books, and into the Heroes Return mini-series -- Russ)

"And that's the world we're in now?" Guinea Pig asked.

"Seems that way." Ant-Girl was looking at Firebird. From what she remembered of her reality's Bonita Dominguez, the woman was devoutly Christian. The idea that a little boy had the power to create life probably didn't sit too well with her or her faith.

"Hark, friends," Hercules said, cutting off Ant-Girl's thoughts in midstream. "The storm grows nearer."

Ant-Girl looked around, and saw he was right. She told Greg to rein in.

"Looks solid," the Flash said. "It's probably not a good idea to just go barreling in, especially where magic is involved. I could..."

"Hold on, Mr. Allen," Ant-Girl said. "Let's see if my honey can do anything before anybody goes sticking their necks out."

Greg nodded, giving her a thank-you-very-much look, then turned his attention to the storm.

It felt... not sentient really, but at least aware of him. Reaching out with his own power, he offered humble greetings, displayed his credentials, then respectfully asked the storm to reveal its secrets.

All metaphorically -- and magically -- speaking, of course.

The effect was immediate and dramatic. The wash of color raging between sea and sky split vertically, and slid open like a pair of Arcadia doors. A giant figure stood on the water inside the storm, cackling madly up into the heavens, a limp human-sized body clutched in one fist.

"By my father's beard!" Hercules proclaimed. "I know yon madman! 'Tis none other than--"

The Crux.

"When Franklin Richards turned his eyes and his subconscious away from the universe he'd created," Scott explained, "it lost its lynchpin."

"Its elephant," Cassie piped in suddenly, surprising both of her adult companions.

"Very good, Cassie! Yes, it lost its elephant. This wasn't a problem at the time, because a Celestial by the name of Ashema the Listener took the universe into herself, became its consciousness in a way that I have yet to fully understand.*

(* At the conclusion of Heroes Return -- Russ)

"But Ashema made a mistake. Her experiences with young Franklin and the mortal heroes had made her curious. And so she chose to occupy this 'Franklinverse', not only as a deity, physically containing its space, but also as a mortal. She wanted to experience what it meant to be human.

"And so someone killed her."

"Who?"

"It doesn't matter, Natasha. All that does matter is that the Franklinverse now no longer has an abstract consciousness holding it together. Its creatures will go mad, and then it will simply fall apart. Do you know what effect this will have on neighboring realities? On universes separated from that one by only the tiniest measurement of vibration?"

"No."

"And neither do I. That is the purpose of the Shaping, Natasha. It is the reason for Aeon's very existence, why there must always be someone who bears this title, this burden.

"As Guardian of the Fifth Order, as defined by Immortus himself, it is my duty to protect the multiverse from dysfunctional continuums. I will fulfill my duty, I will shape time to keep the Everything safe.

"Even if that means I have to wipe this artificial universe and all its people out of existence."

Elsewhere.

"--Loki!"

The giant standing on the water stopped laughing abruptly and turned his pupil-less eyes on the hovering Champions. He was dressed in a fanciful, skintight yellow-and-green costume, with a flowing golden cape and enormous curving horns sticking out of the front of his helm.

"Aye, Heracles! 'Tis none other!" The Norse trickster god laughed, and everyone present, with the exception of the Flash, realized immediately that this being wasn't their Loki. The half-brother of the Mighty Thor was evil and halfway-deranged in their universe, but this Norse deity had gone far, far over the edge. Naked power bled out of his bulging eyes, and in his fist, he held the crushed body of a human woman. She was olive-skinned with long, flowing black hair.

"I know not what brings thee here, Olympian, but thine comrades and thee hath arrived at just the moment to pay tribute to this world's one-and-only true God!"

The giant Norse god held out the hand with the crushed woman in it. "For I hath discovered the truth about this Midgard. And the truth hath set me free. None may stop Loki from taking what is rightfully his any longer.

"Least of all thee and thine mortal pets, little godling!"

"Oh man," Ant-Girl muttered, looking uncertainly toward Greg. "I think we just did a bad thing..."

And then lines of power lanced from the giant's eyes, and the Champions' world was consumed in a harsh, blinding light...

NEXT: Batroc vs. the Red Guardian! The gathered Champs vs. Loki! And what is Aeon doing in the middle of all this? Be here to find out as we continue building towards the mammoth issue #50!