Hesitantly, Peter crawled through the open window and stepped down onto the floor of his big city apartment. Pulling off his red, webbed mask, he looked silently at his wife's back.

"Look MJ, I'm sorry. Sometimes a super-villain decides to trash downtown without consulting my schedule first. I had to bail on that movie premiere to stop--"

"Oh Petey, I know that," Mary Jane said, snuffling. "But... with my first big premiere and all... tonight should have been one of the happiest nights of my life, and instead I spent it being worried about you."

"Look," he said, turning her gently around by the shoulder. "I'll make it up to you alright? Alright? I promise, MJ."

She smiled at him, blinking away her tears, and finally said, "Oh what the hey." She leaned in to kiss him.

And then a flash of brilliance painted their livingroom white. Peter had already begun to move when it happened, his spider-sense obviously warning him of possible danger. Mary Jane put her hands over her head as her husband bounded to the wall, pulling his mask on as he went.

Standing in the middle of their livingroom was Batroc the Leaper, naked as the day he was born, and an equally naked Russian man who, until moments ago, had worn the uniform of the Red Guardian. Capering at their feet were five collie pups, each of them with three heads.

Batroc whipped his head from side-to-side, taking his surroundings in, until finally his gaze found the figure in the webbed bodysuit stuck to the far wall. His eyes widened.

"The Spectacular Spider-Ham at your service pal," Peter said, cracking his knuckles and rubbing a fist over the end of his masked snout. "Now why don't you tell me what you're doing in my--er, this lady's apartment... this lady who I'd never met before today, but I just happened to be swinging in for..."

Batroc looked at the 'woman' -- a bipedal, red-maned cow from the looks of her -- and then returned his eyes to the wafer-thin chip in his hand.

"You are trying nothing, Batroc!" the Red Guardian exclaimed, pouncing on the Frenchman. At the same moment, Batroc pushed the button, and they and the puppies vanished as utterly as they'd appeared.

"Huh... funniest hairless apes I ever saw." Peter Porker removed his mask again and hopped down from the wall. He looked toward his wife, super-model Mary Jane Water Buffalo-Porker. "A quiche?"

One moment, Barry Allen -- the Flash -- was swimming with his teammates in an expanded Atlantic Ocean, watching a kid barely in his twenties weave a magic spell to carry the lot of them diagonally across time and space in pursuit of a mad god. The next, he and those same teammates were standing on a gray field. At their backs was an enormous red crystal structure, climbing out of sight into the impenetrable gray mists that enveloped this land. At their fronts was the mad god they'd been chasing -- Loki, the Norse trickster. And at his feet, swarming toward them, was an army of pink, gelatinous creatures that were pretty darn close to the most horrible things Barry Allen had ever seen in his life.

"Wraiths!" the future Champion known as Iceman exclaimed. He shot a look at his team leader, Ant-Girl. "Nobody said we'd have to deal with Dire Wraiths!"

"Tremble insects!" Loki bellowed from on high. "Tremble before the might of a god unchained!"

"And it looks like the Wraiths are playing on Loki's team." Ant-Girl looked around at her loose scattering of present and future Champions. "I guess that pretty much decides us on whether he or Aeon are the greater evil, doesn't it?"

"Aye, Fair Cassandra." The uru robot known as H.E.R.C. 2000 made a motion as if to crack its knuckles. Ant-Girl noted that H.E.R.C.'s namesake, Hercules, was nowhere to be seen, but she couldn't worry about that right now. Hercules was an honest-to-gosh god, he could look out for himself.

To the right of the other Champions, farther down the crystal wall, stood a lord of time swathed in red, and a woman named Natasha Romanov, sometimes called the Black Widow. The red man was Aeon, and until moments ago, he had been lord and master of this small tract of infinite Limbo. The woman, likewise, was rapidly beginning to feel out of her depth.

They could see the Wraiths swarming toward their position, could see Loki standing 50 feet tall above them. The Black Widow didn't know what she could possibly do against this horde, but she wasn't going to just let them take her. While Aeon continued to gape, Natasha primed the golden bracelets that were her widow's bites.

Then she saw a wall of flame descend in front of the Wraiths, cutting off a large contingent of them from the crystal building; saw a metal fist flash through the mist and cut down half a dozen Wraiths with one blow; caught a glimpse of a red blur moving among the aliens and doing what damage it could, a red blur that might have been a man.

Natasha's eyes widened. Her heart -- so preoccupied with other troubles since she'd arrived here -- swelled in her chest. For a moment, she thought she might weep in relief. "The other Champions! They're alive! They're here!"

"Perhaps too little too late... but we shall have to make it enough." Aeon had seemed to regain his footing, and now he reached out a hand to grasp the Widow's arm. "Come, Natasha. My powers are greatly depleted, but we may still have time to--"

There was a tap on his shoulder... and Aeon turned right into the pistoning fist of Hercules. There was a crunch as something in Aeon's face broke, and the timelord was sent flying back into the red crystal wall at their backs.

The Prince of Power shook off the Black Widow's grip carelessly and began moving toward the crumpled form of Aeon. "Fear not, Friend Natasha. 'Twas the least of my princely Gifts. Scott shall now explain his recent actions, lest he desire a more potent repetition."

Above them, Loki brought his fists crashing down against the crystal wall. The entire structure, enormous as it must have been, quaked at the impact, and so did the ground. Wraith and Champion alike were hurled about like tenpins, and Aeon slapped his hands to the sides of his hooded head and screamed in agony.

"'Twas not my doing," Hercules replied. He looked at the crystal wall Loki had just battered, taking in as much of it as he could in the unending mists. "'Twould seem Aeon hath a connection to yon edifice..."

"Hercules, listen to me..." Aeon said, struggling to his feet as he gasped for breath. "If Loki collapses the Crux, it will wipe out the Franklinverse -- the place you and the others were just in. Do you understand me? The Franklinverse's carrier medium is inside this building! Tell him, Natasha!"

"I've got to stop Loki before he brings the whole thing down, and you know I'm the only one who can stand against him. But I can't hold the building together and fight him at the same time. Do you understand?"

Hercules' eyes narrowed. After a breathless moment, he slowly nodded. " Aye. Very well. But after this affair is settled, there shall surely come a reckoning 'tween you and those who would call you 'friend'."

"'Bring the whole thing down'..." the Widow muttered, her eyes sliding over the face of the Crux. "Oh my god... where's Cassie?"

Stupid question, she knew. Cassie Lang was still inside the building somewhere. The last time Natasha remembered seeing her was near the prison of the galactic herald named Plasma. When Loki had attacked, both she and Aeon had rushed out here without a thought to the little girl or her safety.

Aeon seemed unconcerned with this, as he begins to grow. Ten feet, twenty, and soon he was barely visible in the mist overhead, easily as gigantic as Loki.

The two giants came together, and the entire field rocked again with the fury of their blows. From where Hercules and Natasha were standing, they could see the others engaging the Wraiths, wading into battle. For a long moment, Hercules looked after them, his eyes spinning the tale of how desperately he wanted to join them in glorious combat.

Instead, he turned to the Widow. "Come, friend Natasha. We shall find young Cassie, and mayhap the Prince of Power may yet fulfill his role in this drama."

The tall black man looked down at the small blonde-haired girl and smiled his big, toothy grin. He had long dreadlocks hanging to the middle of his back, and he wore street clothes over a body that would have looked at home on a football player. The smile only went as far as his lips though, as his eyes were covered by black sunglasses.

"You know my name Cassie. It was written over that jewel Aeon was keeping me in."

To either side of them, the seemingly endless crystal corridors of the Crux stretched out of sight in both directions. Since she'd set him free, Mondo had been walking confidently, like he knew exactly where he was going, and Cassie had tagged along for lack of anything better to do. Now she shuffled her feet and cast her eyes toward the floor.

"Then you know how to fix that universe, right? The one that lost its elephant."

"Let's hope so. 'Cause whether your daddy realizes it or not -- and I can guarantee he doesn't realize it -- that's exactly what he brought me here for."

The future Champion named Iceman leapt over the swinging, fleshy tendril of a dire wraith and hit the ground rolling, his handguns stitching the creature's side with completely ineffectual lead.

This was crazy. His team and that 'other' team of Champs were good, but there was no way they could hold back this wave of Wraiths for long. They were going to get buried if they didn't do something to turn the tide soon.

He saw a wraith reaching for the chubby kid named Guinea Pig -- that goofy teenager who would grow up to be one of the world's most respected heroes in Iceman's time -- and he unloaded half a clip from each gun in the creature's face.

"GP! You and Flash and Firebird and the dog gotta watch out for their tendrils. The rest o' us are inoculated against wraith infection, but--gnah!"

A lash fell across his back, splitting his black Champions jacket and the skin beneath. He fell to the gray earth, too preoccupied with the pain to notice his guns skittering out of his reach.

The Wraith that had struck him was huge, its pink hamburger skin rippling as it moved forward. "But you are not inoculated against our physical strength, are you Earthman... Eh?"

The tendril the wraith had used to fell Iceman slithered into view and the monster looked at it curiously. The Champion's blood -- white-blue in color -- still clung to the appendage, and now as the wraith watched, that blood began to freeze, and the wraith flesh beneath it froze as well. Quickly, the freezing effect began to creep up the tendril toward the alien's torso.

"Think I'm called Iceman just 'cause I'm so freakin' cool? Live and learn, pendejo." Iceman touched his fingers to his still bleeding back, considered the drops of white-blue liquid on his fingers, and then flicked it at the wraith. The alien got out a strangled "NO!" just before the spray of blood hit, and then it froze solid.

The giants overhead went crashing by, and Iceman leapt away as they smashed the ice sculpture that had once been a dire wraith underfoot. Unconcerned, Iceman leapt back into the fray.

King Balder -- once known simply as Balder the Brave, once the mightiest soldier of Asgard save for Thor himself -- sighed and rubbed his palms briefly over his face. At moments like this, when matters of state and diplomacy insisted he couldn't just smash his bickering allies' heads in with a cudgel, he felt more useless than ever he had before accepting this crown and this throne.

It was Ash'lin and Kovar of course. It was always Ash'lin and Kovar. At times, Balder thought it may have been foolish to bring representatives of the Shi'ar and the Kree together at one table and expect them to not spend the bulk of their time trying to politically (and sometimes literally) disembowel each other. But the two races were vital in the alliance's war against Thanos and his army of Eternals. And so Balder left his cudgel at home, out of reach should his normally mild temper get the better of him.

This time the subject for debate was the Kree share of the Alliance's funding. Ash'lin insisted that the rest of the allied races, who were each in dire straits themselves, should not have to dip farther into their own coffers to cover the expenses of the Kree. What Ash'lin was not taking into consideration was that Hala, the Kree homeworld, had recently been decimated by Thanos' armies, and that half of their people had subsequently defected to the Mad Titan's cause.* Everyone understood this, even Ash'lin, but the Shi'ar couldn't resist embarrassing and making trouble for her Kree counterpart.

"The Shi'ar have troubles of our own. We cannot be expected to pick up the Kree share of the funding as well as--"

Kovar the Accuser gritted his teeth, fingering his Universal Weapon and perhaps sharing King Balder's desire to brain his fellow councilman with it. "No one is asking the Shi'ar to do so, Ash'lin. Each member of the Alliance will cover only a part of the expenses until the Kree are able to restore commerce on Hala. Suppose Chandilar was laid--"

Beside Kovar, the Skrull ambassador -- the deceptively thin and soft-spoken Skrull 4 -- sighed and sank more deeply into his chair and his tattered brown robes. Across the table Captain America, the Universal Protector, shared a look with Danielle Moonstar. A silent communication seemed to pass between the two lovers, and the Captain rose to his feet, placed his palms on the table, and opened his mouth to speak.

And then a blinding flash of light stunned all at the council table into silence. Balder reached for his sword -- he kept at least that nearby at these meetings -- but what he saw when his eyes cleared stunned even him into immobility.

Standing atop the council table were two muscular, utterly naked Earthmen. One of these had jet-black hair, and a mustache that would have done Fandral the Dashing proud. The other was trying to wrench his heel out of the jaws of a three-headed dog. As Balder was still taking this in, this second man lost his balance and fell over practically in Ash'lin's lap. The Shi'ar ambassador squawked indignantly and leapt to her feet.

The first man, the one with the mustache, looked around blankly for a moment, before his eyes fell on Captain America. For a moment, the two men froze like that, gazes locked, and then the naked man cried, "Le Capitan!"

"Curse these mongrels!" the second naked man cried, now beset upon by two of the cavorting wolf cubs.

America looked at the quantum bands he wore on his wrists, then turned his eyes back up to Batroc. "Batroc, how are you here? Is this Doom's time machine?"

"Non, Capitan. We have simply missed our mark again." The Earthman snapped off a jaunty salute and thumbed a tiny white wafer in his hand. "Adieu."

Another flash of light, and this time when Balder's eyes cleared, the two men and the cubs had disappeared. Captain America was rubbing the back of his neck, wearing a bemused, weightless look Balder hadn't seen on his face in decades, like he'd just been reminded of a particularly good joke that he hadn't thought of in ages.

Aeon hit Loki with a blast of swirling, silver power that drove the mad god back two steps. His foot came down on half a dozen Wraiths, nearly crushing Ant-Girl and Cerberus in the process of saving them from the aliens' approach.

Ant-Girl twisted her jaw, activating the microphone in her helmet. "Greg, this is no good! They'll bury us by sheer numbers... we've got to call in the reinforcements!"

Greg Wallander's voice came back moments later. Ant-Girl couldn't see him anywhere on the battlefield, but the mist was so thick he could have been standing ten yards away and she wouldn't have known it. "Are you sure, babe? We might be playing our hand too soon..."

"Whatever ace you've got up your sleeves, I suggest you play it!" Ant-Girl heard over Greg's mike, and she recognized the voice as that of the Flash. "And quickly!"

There was a... ripple in the air, seeming to reach down into Ant-Girl's very atoms as Greg Wallander punched a hole back into his Earth dimension from Limbo. It was crude -- he wasn't following Loki's trail this time, and he didn't have any of his mystical supplements to make the process any smoother -- but it was also effective. A luminous tear, 8 feet high and 4 across, appeared in the air near Ant-Girl.

A wraith that had been near the tear when it opened, leaned into it cautiously... and for its troubles got a sword colored black as night buried in its forehead. On the other end of the sword, emerging from the tear and yanking the blade free from the dead alien's head, was a woman dressed in the mail, armor, and cape of the Black Knight. Without a word, the woman kicked the dead Wraith aside and charged, her blade flashing into the wall of pink flesh.

Behind her came a motley assortment of costumed adventurers, some of them known to the present-day Champions, but most not. There was Prodigy; the latest Spider-Woman; Cardiac; Julie Power, a.k.a. Powerpax; and Christopher and Derrick Sands, codenamed Voice & Suds.

"Wraiths?" Voice demanded. He was a tall, good-looking man in his mid-twenties, and his eyes immediately went to Ant-Girl. "Cassie! We're supposed to be fighting Aeon! We didn't sign up for Wraiths!"

Voice opened his mouth, and what came out was the rumbling, eardrum-shattering boom of a volcano exploding. Ant-Girl covered her ears, and the phalanx of wraiths that Voice had been facing were hurled back as if struck a physical blow.

Voice grinned, cleared his throat, and then he and his brother, co-leaders of the Earth's mightiest super-team ten years in the future, shouted, "Avengers Assemble!"

Above them, Loki and Aeon went crashing by again, grappling. Loki forced Aeon back and the timelord fell against his own citadel, making the entire structure quake beneath his weight.

The Black Widow and Hercules were dashing down the bewildering corridors of the Crux when this latest hit came. The floor rippled beneath them, and the Widow was hurled from her feet. She rolled, trying to get her feet under her again, but the hallway was too close. Her head hit the crystal wall hard and as she slid to the ground, she could only watch in dazed wonder while the ceiling above split in two and began to come down.

Natasha closed her eyes. She and death had been friends since the first time she had thought her husband dead, but she had no wish to watch it come for her.

But it didn't. She was still alive, still breathing -- almost untouched in fact save for the new split in her scalp. Cautiously, Natasha peeled open one eye.

Hercules was standing in the middle of the corridor, bent slightly at the waist, his arms and shoulders pressed upward against the ceiling and the massive weight above it.

"T'would seem..." he began, his brow furrowed with effort, "the Prince of Power... hath found his role..."

"Go, friend Natasha. I can... bear this weight... but the edifice itself... may not hold..." The Widow hesitated, and saw an unfamiliar rage fill her teammate's eyes. "Go! Young Cassie... is dependent upon thee..."

Nodding, Natasha regained her feet, turned, and dashed down the hallway as fast as her spinning head would allow, hoping all the while she was headed in the right direction.

Deep, deep within the crystal citadel, in a place Aeon had designated to hold the few prisoners his duties occasionally required that he take, the ceiling cracked open. The entire corridor might have come down had Hercules -- far away from this point, but still balancing the weight of the structure on his back -- not put his shoulders to the problem a moment later. As it was, crystal dust sifted slowly down, over the open jewel that had, until twenty minutes ago, held the omniscient Mondo Kane. The dust also fell on another jewel, this one still closed and holding its prisoner in stasis.

But then the building shifted again, the crack widening and spreading, and this final occupied jewel split apart and disgorged its occupant.

Plasma was instantly awake and aware of everything that had befallen her. She was a herald of the late world devourer Galactus, in a universe that the monster Aeon intended to erase from the Everything. Aeon had captured her, humbled her, and probably had already dispatched the allies, the champions, she had escaped to another reality to recruit.

What Plasma did not know was whether or not she was too late. Did her world still exist?

In truth, it didn't matter at just this moment. Whether he'd carried out his directive or not, Aeon was going to pay dearly for the injustices he had heaped upon her and her reality. Starting now.

Focusing her Power Cosmic at the rent ceiling above, Plasma began to blast her way out into the air of Limbo.

Mondo Kane had led Cassie unerringly through the bewildering array of corridors inside the crystal building, and they were just stepping into the chamber with the universe ball in it, when Mondo suddenly paused and put one hand against the wall.

The floor of the massive chamber rocked like a see-saw, and Cassie was hurled onto her back, her arms squeezing reflexively around her daddy's Ant-Man helmet even as the air was blasted from her lungs.

Mondo was moving again before Cassie had even recovered enough to try to regain her feet. He approached the night-blue pedastal positioned in the center of the room, and the child's rubber ball hovering above it. When Aeon had brought Cassie into this room, it had seemed larger than a football field, now it was about the size of the living room in the Champions' homestead headquarters -- spacious by those standards, but not vast. Mondo was standing beside the pedastal in three long strides.

"I know," Mondo replied, his hands hovering at either side of the ball. Beneath his black sunglasses, the stars and constellations in his eyes swirled.

Cassie felt a sudden chill, and looked up as a man-shape seemed to melt out of the shadows in the far corner of the room. The shape wore a mask that covered its entire face, a wide-brimmed hat, and a great, flowing cape, all as white as sun-bleached bone. In fact, the only part of this apparition that wasn't spotless white were the ivory-handled six-shooters hanging from its hips.

"I came seeking vengeance for those who have died at the hands of Aeon," the Ghost Rider growled in a voice that made Cassie's legs wobble. "Instead I find an entity who has no place in man's world, his hands almost as awash in blood as Aeon himself."

Sister Elektra Natchios regarded her pupils sternly, looking down her long Greek nose at the lot of them as she tapped a ruler in the palm of her hand. The thirty some-odd girls, ranging in age from 8 to 17, watched her with all the rapt attention of acolytes.

"SIN!" the sister bellowed suddenly, bringing her ruler down in a thunderous crack on her desktop.

The girls all gasped at this outburst, as if they hadn't been expecting it. Two actually swooned and fell out of their seats.

The girls were in rapture now. Several more had fainted dead away, and those still conscious were swaying to a rhythm only they could hear, their faces turned up to the low, stained ceiling of their classroom. Sister Elektra herself was quite pleased with their performance today. Perhaps she would cut today's period of self-flagellation by five minutes to show her appreciation.

"If you so much as look at a naked man of your own free will, what will the Lord do to you?"

A flash of light cut off the girls in mid-chant, and Elektra was horrified to find two very naked men, along with five dogs that could only have been born in hell, standing on her desktop.

"Sacre bleu!" Batroc exclaimed, trying to cover himself while the girl's screamed in the agony of the damned. "Catholic zchoolgirlz!"

"What is--?" Sister Elektra started to demand, then, realizing she could see more of the man than was proper, shielded and averted her eyes. "What is the meaning of this?" she cried, wagging her ruler at the men but refusing to look in their direction.

"At this rate, you will kill yourself long before I get a chance to," Red Guardian grunted as he continued to wrestle with the puppies.

"Zip eet," Batroc growled, and pushed the button again, taking them away from the classroom in another burst of light.

Sister Elektra, seeing that the men had vanished back to whatever hell they'd originated from, straightened and cleared her throat. One of the girls that hadn't been reduced to tears or unconsciousness by the experience tentatively raised her hand.

Firebird burned a landing pad in the horde of wraiths swarming over Limbo's landscape and dropped down next to the battling forms of Ant-Girl and Guinea Pig. H.E.R.C. 2000 stood fast next to the two, having taken it upon himself to protect Guinea Pig, and this reminded Bonita of their Hercules. She hoped he was alive, wherever he'd gotten off to.

"This isn't working!" Bonita said. "Even with your Avengers here, we're not accomplishing anything except holding them back!"

"I know! I've got an idea... a long shot! But we're going to need the Flash to implement it!"

A scarlet blur coalesced into the red-and-yellow clad Flash beside the ladies. "Somebody say my name?" When they looked at him in astonishment, he shrugged. "I passed you four times while you were working on that last sentence. Would have been here sooner, but I was occupied..."

"Cass, what are you doing?" Greg shouted from the other side of H.E.R.C. 2000. He was busily binding a dozen or so wraiths in the Crimson Bands of Cytorrak. "This is no time for tribal council, babe!"

Ignoring her boyfriend, Ant-Girl put a hand on the Flash's shoulder. "How fast are you, Mr. Allen?"

Barry's eyebrows went up, and for the first time he looked uncertain. "I don't even know if that's possible, Ant-Girl. The mist seems to be... part of this place."

"I think I can take all of these wraiths out in one fell swoop, but I need to be able to see them."

In another scarlet blur, Iceman was standing next to her, looking bewildered. "What the f--?"

Young Cassie Lang turned as the Black Widow appeared in the doorway and scooped her up. In the middle of the room, Mondo Kane and the Ghost Rider still faced each other, unmoved by the Widow's explosive entrance.

"Mondo?" Natasha was reeling -- her head was still spinning from its collision with the wall, and she was frankly surprised by the fact that she'd actually found this room. Now... she didn't know the black man, but the cowboy in white was Ghost Rider of the future Champions.

"It's okay Cassie Lang," the black man said in a deep voice, rich and soothing and, even amid all this madness Natasha thought, more than a little sexy. "Really. Why don't you give me your daddy's helmet?"

Cassie looked at the Ant-Man helmet clutched in her arms, looked uncertainly up at Natasha, and then made her decision without any help from the Widow. Wiggling out of Natasha's arms, Cassie stepped forward and held the helmet out to him.

Mondo took it with a nod and, nonchalantly, slipped it over his own head. "Okay Spirit of Vengeance, ready when you are." He waved his hands at the Ghost Rider. "Blood of innocents and all that."

The Ghost Rider's hands vanished in a blur of speed that might have done Barry proud. When they came back up there was an ivory-handled, silver-barreled six-shooter on the end of each of them. The Widow seized Cassie and pulled her protectively toward her.

He and his Russian tagalong and the five Cerberus puppies all appeared several feet above the floor. Without his intending it to, Batroc's initial landing was made on top of Ghost Rider's head, sending the Spirit of Vengeance's first shots harmlessly into the crystal floor.

"Pardonnez-moi, mon ami," Batroc apologized, flipping forward and landing gracefully on his feet as the Ghost Rider crumpled to one knee behind him.

"Ah... ze lovely Black Widow. Forgive my ztate of undresz, but I zeem to have left my clothez in another reality..."

The Widow reflexively slapped a hand over Cassie's eyes. "What are you--?" Her gaze finally found the man Batroc had been traveling with. "Alexi?"

The man known as the Red Guardian finally managed to pull free of the snapping Cerberus puppies, and threw himself across the room at the Leaper, knocking him down and knocking the wind out of him before he could reveal the secret. He spun around, ready to finally lay the matter of the Black Widow to rest, but the Widow's booted foot snapped his head back. He stumbled back one step, waited for the follow-up he knew would come, and snagged her other foot as it came up. Natasha yelped in surprise and, still holding her leg up, the Guardian drove an expert fist into her kidney. She went down as surely as Batroc had.

Cassie looked to Mondo Kane, extending a foolish hope that he would help against this unknown menace, but Mondo just winked at her from beneath the Ant-Man helmet. And then he vanished... simply vanished with no lightshows or fanfare. It took Cassie a moment to realize that he must have used the special gas in the helmet to shrink out of sight.

The Red Guardian had Natasha by the hair, and was pulling her head back, exposing her throat. "Do you recognize me yet, you frigid prima donna?" he spat angrily. "Do you remember the foolish boy who threw himself on your mercy after your traitorous husband 'died'? Do you remember rejecting me when all I ever wanted was to make you happy?"

"Heez name... eez Nikolai..." Batroc wheezed, trying to regain his feet in time to stop the Guardian from breaking Natasha's neck.

Natasha's eyes cleared, focusing on the man wearing her dead husband's face. The light of realization glinted in those eyes and her mouth fell open.

"Stalyenko," she breathed, and the Red Guardian laughed... a laugh cut off abruptly when the Widow fired her Widow's sting into his exposed groin.

His eyes went wide, his mouth dropping into an O of indescribable pain and surprise. Had he not been in so much agony as he stumbled backward, he might have marveled at the ridiculousness of a professional fighter and athlete like himself taking a hit in that most obvious of soft spots. As it was, all his thoughts were consumed by red, glaring pain.

"You... adolescent... bastard..." Natasha rose to her feet, wiping the back of her hand across her mouth, then vanished into a high-speed roundhouse kick that threw the Guardian back against the wall. The puppies capered toward him, but the Widow barked "Sit!" and they all complied.

"Tasha!" Cassie's voice, cutting through the Widow's rage like a scalpel. "Look out!"

She whirled, found herself staring down the barrels of the Ghost Rider's six-shooters. "Vengeance!" the apparition cried, and in the next moment, Batroc was tackling her out of the way, leaving the way open for the Spirit of Vengeance's true, blood-soaked target -- Nikolai Stalyenko, the Red Guardian.

He circled the field again and again, gaining speed with every stride until his movement had caused an upward-moving hurricane, a tornado of super-speed that should have ripped the mist of Limbo from the ground and hurled it up into the heavens. But the mists would not be moved. The best he was doing was cutting a circular path through them. This at least kept him from getting lost out on the far edge of his loop, but it wasn't good enough.

Above him, Julie Power, the Avenger named Powerpax, described a circle of her own, a rainbow of light trailing out behind her as she moved over the battlefield. On her back were the Champions Ant-Girl and Iceman.

"Not at all... with my gravity powers, you're light as feathers. But... Cassie, I don't think he's going to be able to do it." Powerpax buzzed low so the trio could actually see the line the Flash was cutting in the fog.

Back on the ground, Barry was moving so quickly he was catching glimpses of his after-image from the previous lap as he tore around the circle. He had created a high-pressure cone of wind around the main body of the wraiths, but he couldn't make the mist let go of the ground. He needed...

"Bonita!" He cut off from his loop and zoomed across the battlefield, covering every inch of it in a handful of seconds, narrowly avoiding a stumbling sidestep from the still-grappling Aeon and Loki. He found Firebird herding a pair of wraiths away from the injured Avenger, Cardiac. She turned at the sound of her name and dropped down next to Barry.

"I need a pocket of heated air!" he explained. "Right in the middle of the circle! Can you heat an area that large?"

"Yes, of course. I--" She was cut off suddenly as the Flash grabbed her by the upper arms and kissed her. He had intended it, he would tell himself later, as an exuberant display of gratitude, but it quickly became clear that it was more than that. Bonita, after a moment of surprised resistance, fell into him and returned the kiss in kind. By the time the two of them separated, they were breathless.

Bonita didn't know what to say, looking into this man's eyes. So she simply nodded.

This time, when the Flash circled the wraiths, roughly shoving stragglers back into the circle, Firebird psionically agitated the air molecules within the loop. Flames licked from her eyes as she concentrated, heating the air, but not so much so that it to burst into flames.

That did it. Warm air rises, and it took the mists of Limbo with it right up the funnel the Flash had created. The veil peeled back and Ant-Girl, Iceman and Powerpax were left with a clear view of almost every wraith on the field.

Powerpax dove, her charges clinging to her back, and as she swooped low over the aliens, Ant-Girl twisted open the spare shrink-gas canister she kept on her belt and spread it over their heads. Iceman, sitting behind her, blew out an arctic breath. The cold counteracted Firebird's heat and the upward surge of the wind funnel, weighing down the particles of the shrink-gas and bringing it all down.

The wraiths vanished... or at least seemed to. As Powerpax dropped to the ground, it became clear that the gambit had worked. Every single wraith within the circle had been shrunk to one-inch tall, and now they swarmed confusedly over the ground like a colony of ugly, pink bugs.

Spinning at high speed, the Flash managed to dissipate the remainder of the gas, if not the restored mists, and the assembled heroes congregated on the spot.

The Avengers co-leader did as he was told, and H.E.R.C. 2000 appeared behind him. Crouching, the robot dug his uru fingers into the soil to one side of the scampering wraiths.

Too late. The robot tore up an enormous strip of earth and unceremoniously tipped it over onto the wraiths. There was an ugly SQUISH, and a prodigious jet of pink goo squirted out the sides and slimed the legs of the gathered Champions and Avengers. Guinea Pig turned suddenly green and turned away to vomit, while Iceman chuckled and patted the kid comfortingly on the back.

"Well, that's that then," Voice proclaimed. "Now all we have to worry about are those two--"

His sentence was cut off as something very powerful and very angry punched a hole through the front of the Crux. Shooting out of this hole like a silver bullet, shining bright as a sun, was Plasma.

"AEON!" she bellowed. The timelord turned reflexively at the sound of his name, and was subsequently battered by a liquid-silver blast of Power Cosmic from one side, and Loki's descending fists on the other. He staggered, fell to one knee.

Plasma swooped around for another shot, neither knowing nor caring who the buffoon in the horned helmet was or why he was helping her crush this monster. She powered up, certain that she could at last end the threat of Aeon.

But then a bird of flame rose into her vision and, for one frightened moment, she was certain that she was somehow facing the Phoenix Force Itself. But no... her eyes had played a trick on her. It was only a woman in yellow, a red cape in the shape of wings flaring out behind her. Firebird of the Champions.

"Of course I understand," Plasma growled, and fired with every intention of roasting the meddling mortal alive. There was no time to explain, and if these Earthmen were too thick to see the threat here...

Plasma's rationalization was interrupted as her blast was met with one of Firebird's own. The bursts collided, and for a moment Limbo was lit up as bright as day. When the flare dissipated, all concerned were left staring in shock at the two warring powerhouses.

"She... she deflected a blast of Power Cosmic." This from Greg Wallander, who had a hard time saying it with his mouth hanging open in surprise as it was.

"I... don't think she knew either," Barry breathed. And this seemed to be true. Firebird stared at her hands, just as dumbfounded as everyone else was.

Behind her, Aeon tried to rise to his feet, but Loki pressed his advantage, blasting the timelord with ivory beams of power from his eyes. Aeon screamed, and fell back against the Crux, cracking the structure and collapsing it further as he fell into it. Worse, he seemed to be shrinking under Loki's onslaught.

Aeon did just that, continuing to shrink as he toppled down the crumbling facade of the Crux.

Inside, in a certain corridor, the son of Zeus, Lion of Olympus, went down to one knee as new weight was dropped on top of the load he was already bearing. He prayed to his father that Natasha and the others would finish their business soon, for he was balancing this structure like a pin might balance a balloon. The slightest misapplication of pressure and the entire building would crumble around him.

Sweat dripped into his eyes -- Sweat! How long had it been since he'd experienced that? Gritting his teeth, he pressed upward, roaring with the effort until he was again on his feet.

His shoulders had once held aloft the sky, and they would not waver beneath this burden. He would not.

Though Cassie Lang hadn't seen him do it, at the exact moment Mondo Kane began to shrink, he leapt at the ball hovering above the pedastal.

By the time he landed on the ball's blue rubber surface, he was roughly the size of a grain of salt. The ball spread out around him like the surface of a planet, and anyone else experiencing this rollercoaster plunge of perception and size -- particularly anyone who'd never seen such a thing before -- would have been struck dumb, or perhaps even driven mad, by it. Mondo Kane, however, had been living with the stars in his eyes for so long that nothing could truly surprise him anymore.

Down, down he shrunk. Past the normal limits of Henry Pym's shrinking gas. Past the point where the violent activity in the room above him had become invisible to his nearly-microscopic eyes. There was a... shift of perception, and suddenly he could see the atoms that made up the ball's surface. He was standing on one in fact, and even as he considered the yellow electron cloud that surrounded its gelatinous nucleus he shrank past it.

He fell then, fell past the individual atoms and into a colorful riot of quarks and leptons. He wasn't breathing oxygen anymore, he realized -- how could he when he was so much smaller than the smallest O2 molecule? But he hardly cared to consider the implications of this, as the quarks and leptons grew to stupendous sizes around him. For just a moment he was swimming in a kaleidoscopic sea of flashing particles so small that science hadn't even discovered -- much less named -- them yet.

He floated in void, out on the edge of the Franklinverse. Here he was roughly the size of a galaxy, and he laughed a silent laugh with lungs large enough to inhale entire solar systems. He plunged his hand into an asteroid belt, scooped up a dozen uninhabited worlds the relative size of pebbles in one fist, tried to hiss in pain as a star's heat scalded him with the same measure of pain as a bee sting.

He was still shrinking at inconceivable speed, and by the time his own internal pressure caught up with him, he was barely as large as a medium-sized star. He understood what was going to happen next, and he quickly discarded the Ant-Man helmet and his black sunglasses. They floated away into the star-speckled dark, large as planets.

And then Mondo Kane opened his eyes and, even as his body exploded like an overfilled balloon, the stars in his eyes flashed outward.

Loki moved in for the kill. There were only moments left to act before he vaporized the still-shrinking Aeon, and as the Flash was running down a very short mental list of what he could do to distract the behemoth, Firebird took the matter out of his hands.

Plasma was tracking her, intent on burning her out of the air like a moth, but Bonita juked left when Plasma expected her to go right, and the blast of Power Cosmic that was supposed to put an end to the troublesome, surprisingly powerful mortal, instead exploded against Loki's lower back.

The Norse God staggered forward, nearly falling on Aeon and the crumbling remains of the Crux, and then he wheeled about, eyes flaring with newfound rage.

"Wish you to test thine fledgling might 'gainst one who controls the very stars, herald? So be it!"

He attacked, his eyebeams punching holes through the mist. His first salvo missed, but Plasma was forced to drop her pursuit of Firebird to defend herself.

"Thank God he's easily distracted," the Flash muttered. Then, remembering their reason for being here, he zipped across the plain to where Aeon had fallen. The timelord was lying atop a small mountain of crushed crystal -- this portion of the Crux had been utterly demolished -- and he was still shrinking. As Barry reached his side, he'd nearly reverted to normal size.

And there was something else. He seemed to be... flickering between two states. One moment, he'd be wrapped in the red cloak of Aeon, the next he was dressed in the tattered Ant-Man uniform he'd been wearing when he'd become Aeon.* Then he'd change right back into the timelord, and so on, again and again.

"What's happening to him?" Ant-Girl asked at Barry's shoulder. The others had joined them, though most were keeping their eyes on the vicious battle above their heads.

"I--I don't know." Barry reached out, and when he touched Aeon, the hand instantly grew dark, and sprouted fur. In less time than it took to tell, Barry Allen had been devolved into a monkey in a Flash suit. Yelping, the monkey fell back from the timelord, and changed back to normal as soon as he'd broken contact.

"He's spewing chronal energy," Ant-Girl decided. "He's in a state of flux between his two states, and he's barely keeping his powers in check." She reached up, flipped a hidden catch on her helmet, and lifted it off her head. For a moment, Barry was startled by how much she looked like her father -- he knew she was a future version of Cassie of course, but he'd almost forgotten in the ensuing madness.

Cassandra Lang turned her eyes up to the giant. "This is more than Loki pounding on him. Something else is going on here."

The flaming shells from the Ghost Rider's guns cut Nikolai Stalyenko down where he stood. He had time to get out one truncated scream -- a hopeless testament to all the betrayal and innocent bloodshed he'd been party to in his life, all of which the bullets made him relive in the instant before his death. And then he crumpled, leaving a sheet of blood down the like-colored crystal wall at his back.

"Ale--" The Widow caught herself before she said her dead husband's name, but ran to the imposter's side anyway. "Nikolai!"

"Zat is enough, mon ami!" Batroc said in the Ghost Rider's ear. He'd moved behind the Spirit of Vengeance and pinned his arms behind him.

Through all this, young Cassie Lang stood transfixed, staring at the blue ball still hovering above the pedestal. She didn't have any idea what was going on here, but it was clear that something was happening.

It was shrinking. At first Cassie had thought it was a trick of the light, but no... it was already half the size it had been when Batroc and the puppies had arrived, and it seemed to shrink more quickly as the other eyes in the room turned toward it.

But Cassie never got the question out. With a hollow tok sound, the ball winked entirely out of existence. And then the entirety of the Crux began to shake in earnest.

The being that had once been called Mondo Kane felt his consciousness expand into the Infinite. As the body he had left behind was still in the midst of rupturing into the uncharted void, his mind was spreading across the Franklinverse with a speed that defied every understandable concept of the word. He was in a sun as it went nova, and he was in every single inhabitant of the living world that died along with its star. He felt the fear of a race taking its first tentative steps up the evolutionary ladder, and felt the rock of his being shatter as two minor asteroids collided 400,000 light years away from his still-exploding body.

He was part of it all, and all of it was the stuff of which he was made. He reached out hands that could never truly be called hands again and stirred the hot jumble of stars at the center of a galaxy as easily as he might tousle his own hair. He entered the body of a sentient crystal and remained fascinated by its language of refracting light for an entire picosecond before flashing back to the spot of his demise to check on the state of his body.

It was almost completely split open now. Soon it would explode altogether and fragments of the man he had once been would petrify in this void, perhaps falling into a star thousands of years from now, but otherwise preserved in the vacuum. He laughed and left the meat to the mercies of the four fundamental forces. He had no more use for it, and his new perspective had wiped away what little sentimentality he might once have harbored.

Once he had been a man -- an extraordinarily gifted man, but a man nonetheless -- who had preached the philosophy of chaos. He had held court over a kingdom of fools who, no matter how pessimistic they believed they were, deluded themselves into thinking their lives had some higher meaning. He had known then, and he knew now, that there was no meaning. Fundamental connections, yes, but no real meaning.

Once he had been a chaos-speaker. Now, thanks to the genetic forces that had randomly blessed him with the stars in his eyes, he was much more. In young Cassie Lang's words, he was this reality's elephant. He was a living, expanding universe -- Chaos itself, given abstract form.

On his second circuit around his new body, he noticed that a minute portion of his newfound might was missing... stolen by a refugee from this reality. Distractedly, he reached out and took the power back.

Loki convulsed, his hands snapping to the sides of his head as he staggered forward. His eyes flickered closed, and when they opened again they had lost that flat off-white glow they'd had since the Champions first encountered the mad god in the Franklinverse's New York City. Plasma and Firebird circled him warily, neither of them quite ready to buy into what might be a ruse. Loki was the trickster god, after all.

But this was no trick. Loki convulsed again, and then he lifted his head and wailed in that stentorian voice of his -- more in frustration than pain, Firebird suspected, but there was plenty of the latter in the cry as well.

"He's shrinking," Powerpax observed, flashing up to Bonita's side. And she was right. Loki's massive 50 feet had been reduced by a third in the moments since he'd been stricken.

By silent mutual consent, all three airborne ladies turned and focused their powers on the weakened god. Loki just had time to raise his clenched fist in defiance before flame, Power Cosmic, and Kymellian bio-energy slapped his still-shrinking form backward and into the wall of the Crux. His stature was slight enough by that point that the blow knocked him senseless.

"You got it," Greg Wallander said from the ground. He gestured, and a crimson bubble similar to the one he'd trapped Plasma in not so long ago formed around the senseless Norse god. "You skrag 'em, we bag 'em."

But the three women hadn't stuck around to hear Greg's attempt at wit. Followed closely by Powerpax, Firebird and Plasma dropped to the crystal-scattered Earth where Aeon lay. Ant-Girl was kneeling next to the timelord's still-flickering form, and the Flash was standing nearby. Everybody else was keeping their distance.

"Bonita," Barry said, his eyes brightening as she came into view, "are you okay? What happened up--?"

"Now!" Plasma declared, moving forward, her fists flaring with liquid power. "While the monster is helpless! He must not be allowed to terrorize any more worlds!"

Bonita, who'd been moving to stand next to Barry, spun around and regarded the herald with eyes that licked flame. "Touch him and you'll have to contend with me again."

"Do not mistake a lucky shot for formidability, mortal. Stand aside, or I'll--eh... what's this?"

Plasma's liquid skin had begun to bubble. She looked at her hands, then looked down to her torso. It was the same all over. Before Bonita's eyes, the herald was rapidly turning into a white, foaming pile of...

"Suds!" Iceman barked, slapping one of the co-leaders of the future Avengers in the back of the head. "Stop that!"

"Just trying to help out!" Suds said, crossing his arms glumly. The soap bubbles invading Plasma's form immediately vanished. "She was starting to get on my nerves..."

With a bellow of rage, Plasma sidestepped Firebird and fired a bolt of plasma at the helpless form of Aeon. The bolt struck before anyone, even Barry could do anything about it.

The flickering that Aeon/Scott was experiencing quickened. His back arched, his eyes shot open, and he screamed in perfect concert with the Galactic herald.

Before their helpless eyes, Plasma began to devolve... from Galactic herald to Shi'ar female to vaguely humanoid bird-thing.

She fell backward, snapping back to her true form as surely as Barry had once he'd broken contact. But she was unconscious by the time she hit the gray earth, her liquid form softening and puddling slightly beneath her. Scott/Aeon, however, went right on screaming.

"Come on daddy," Ant-Girl breathed, tears she thought she'd finished shedding years ago cascading down her cheeks. "You can break this. Come back to us, daddy..."

In another place, nearer the scene of impending tragedy than one might expect, two dead men faced each other on the bleeding edge of oblivion.

"This isn't like when I was given the power. You actually have a choice. And you must be sure."

"My only alternative is the final death. And I wish to make amends for my wasted life."

The Crux gave a final, wrenching groan, and began to come apart in earnest. Inside the Franklinverse chamber, Batroc released the Ghost Rider and scooped Cassie up, the puppies loping at his heels as he bolted for the door. The Widow remained crouched by the rapidly cooling corpse of the man wearing her husband's face.

She didn't seem to hear him. She knew this man wasn't her dead husband, but seeing him die again in almost exactly the way the real Alexi had died, tore her heart out. She let her eyes flutter closed and shook her head. Then she reached over and shut the man's eyes.

Then she stood. The puppies were frantic. The Ghost Rider had vanished again, and Cassie was perched on Batroc's bare back. It was time to leave.

Chunks of the ceiling were dropping all around them as they raced down the crystal passageway. Natasha had no idea whether this was the way she had come or not, but she was starting to understand a little about how Aeon's Crux worked. It always seemed to get you where you needed to go. By that logic, any direction would lead them to the exit. All they had to do was survive long enough to find it.

They rounded a corner, the Widow still in the lead, and spotted Hercules. He was bent over nearly double now, the ceiling pressing his shoulders downward. She didn't want to think about how much weight he was propping up at the moment.

"Hercules! Time to go!" she cried. She came to a halt and waved the puppies and Batroc past. One by one, they filed past Hercules, Batroc having to stoop down to get himself and Cassie through the narrow passage.

"Aye, Natasha... but I must... tarry a while longer... until thou art closer to yon egresses."

With a great effort, the Prince of Power shrugged. There was a terrible, rending crack from above, and a chunk of crystal the size of a Volkswagen hit the floor not two feet from where Natasha stood.

There was no point arguing. Natasha got a running start and fell to the ground, slipping between Hercules' legs like a baseball player sliding into home. On the other side, she sprang to her feet and began running. Batroc and Cassie had already gotten a lead on her.

He obliged her, and the sound of that final support failing was absolutely cataclysmic. Natasha was nearly tossed from her feet as the passageway began to disappear under the avalanche behind her. She didn't dare look back to make sure Hercules was back there.

And then she finally saw it. The dim gray rectangle that marked the doorway to the outside. She put her head down and ran, nearly alongside Batroc now. The tunnel continued to collapse around them, and she realized despairingly that they weren't going to make it. The passage to the outside was too long, the ceiling was going to cave in before they got there, cutting them off if they were lucky -- though it was far more likely they would simply be crushed.

There seemed to be no hope left until, over the din of the collapsing structure behind her, she heard the incongruous thunder of hoofbeats.

When Aeon/Scott finally stopped flickering between his personae, it was probably the least spectacular event of the day. There was one final, stuttering change, and then it simply stopped. Laying unconscious amid the rubble before them was Scott Lang, dressed in his Ant-Man costume.

What followed next made up for any sense of anti-climax Scott's reversion had bred. What was left of the Crux shuddered, and then split straight down the middle.

"It's coming apart!" Guinea Pig cried. H.E.R.C. 2000 seized Scott and tossed him over one shoulder while Powerpax decreased Plasma's personal gravity and hurried the unconscious herald away from the structure. The rest of the Champions and Avengers followed as the building continued to crumble.

"I hope Natasha and Hercules weren't in there," Greg Wallander said. The Flash looked at him with realization, and was just about to zip toward the building to check, when the Crux finally gave up the ghost and collapsed altogether.

There was a beat of silence, as gray dust speckled with red billowed out from the wreckage... and then, the rhythmic drum of galloping hooves pierced the breathless silence.

Emerging from the dust at a run was the Ghost Rider's ivory horse. The Spirit of Vengeance himself was hunched low over the animal's pumping neck, and behind him sat the Black Widow, young Cassie Lang, and a very naked Batroc the Leaper. The Cerberus puppies were at the horse's heels.

"Daddy!" Cassie Lang cried, and shimmied down off the horse as soon as it had slowed to a trot. She fell, got back up, and flung herself on her father, who was just now beginning to wake.

"Cassie?" Scott Lang asked. Then his eyes cleared and he sat up, clutching his daughter to him. "Oh, thank God you're all right. Thank God!"

The Widow jumped down from the horse right after Cassie, but instead of running toward Ant-Man, she whirled around and faced the rubble.

"Hercules!" She began moving back toward the rubble, nearly invisible now beneath the combination of dust and Limbo mist.

"Flash! Come with me! I may need you to vibrate through some rubble to find him. We can--"

A dark, massive shape loomed out of the cloud, and a familiar voice halted the Widow in her tracks. "Be still, friend Natasha. Not e'en yon structure could end the life of the Lion of Olympus."

He moved slowly out of the cloud, gripping one arm close to his side. His red-brown beard and hair were coated in dirt and grime, but he seemed relatively unharmed.

The Widow threw herself on him, and Hercules accepted the embrace gratefully, though he moved her gently to the left to avoid his injured arm. He looked past her, and saw Scott, sitting on the ground and clasping his daughter to his chest. Slowly, Hercules placed Natasha back on the ground.

Scott looked at him for the first time, then at Natasha, and then back at Hercules. An understanding seemed to flash between the three of them, and Scott nodded.

"Let's just say... somebody else agreed to take the job." And that was all Scott Lang would say for a time, as he buried his face in his daughter's shoulder and held her with all the strength in his body.

To absolutely no one's surprise, Loki had vanished at some point during the collapse of the Crux. He might have been buried when the structure came down -- no one present had been too worried about saving him in the heat of the moment, that much was certain -- but they didn't really think that was the case, and it was confirmed after Greg pulled the prison he'd made for the mad god free of the rubble. It was empty, and so it was likely that Loki had found a way to limp back home. For now, he would have to be the Franklinverse's problem.

Plasma was another matter entirely. With Aeon and, reportedly, the threat to her universe gone, she became docile, almost helpful. No love was lost between her and Bonita, but neither were anymore harsh words exchanged. There was a tacit agreement between the two of them to respect the other's power and leave it at that. Bonita, who had suspected since joining the Champions that she was only scraping the surface of her abilities, felt humility at finding that she had been right, and so did nothing to make Plasma's mood worse.

Expressions of gratitude were exchanged, as were long-delayed moments of awe between the heroes from past and future. The Avengers were amazed to be in the presence of the legendary heroes they'd thought long-lost. The present-day Champions were struck again by which heroes had unexpectedly emerged as the world's mightiest in this alternate reality.

When the Cerberus puppies used H.E.R.C. 2000 for a fire hydrant though, it became clear that maybe it was time for everybody to go home.

Luckily, this wasn't a problem at all. Greg Wallander had never been able to get his team into Limbo without help, but going to other realities from Limbo was an easier matter altogether.

"I... apologize for my actions today," she said, not quite able to look at Firebird as she did so. "I acted rashly in the belief I was protecting my home."

"No one holds it against you Plasma," the Black Widow assured her. "In the end, you fought with the home team. There's nothing to apologize for."

Plasma nodded, but she still seemed miserable, whether from her failure or the sudden realization that she was returning to a reality without a Galactus.*

(* Galactus died in the Franklinverse in Marvel's Captain America vol. 2 #12 -- Russ)

"Fare you well," she said simply. And then she stepped through the portal and vanished.

The future Avengers went next. The assemblers bid farewell to the Champions past and present, and then they were gone.

"Until the next cross-time crisis," the Widow added with a smile. "Give us a call if you ever need our help. You know where to find us."

"Daddy," she said, looking to Scott now. Clasped to his side was the younger version of Cassie, looking with wide-eyed wonder upon this woman she would become.

Ant-Girl paused. "I'm sorry, I know you're not really my father... not really. But it's good--" She put a hand atop young Cassie's head, "--it's good to see you back with your daughter."

"Both of them," Scott agreed. He smiled at her look of surprise, then pulled her into a rough embrace.

"Herculez, are you well?" Batroc pulled Firebird's cape more tightly about him -- he had been perfectly happy to walk around in the buff, but Bonita wasn't having any of it.

"Aye, friend Batroc," the Prince of Power replied, his hand at his face. "It seems I have something in my eye..."

"Okay... enough with the Hallmark moments," Iceman declared, slapping his sunglasses back onto his ice-blue, pupil-less eyes. "Greg, get us out o' here, brother."
Greg cast the now-familiar spell, and his team of Champions vanished.

"You guys ready?" he asked the present-day Champions. In answer, they gathered into a small knot and looked at the young wizard expectantly. He raised his hands to cast the spell.

"I'm sorry what I said about you being my boyfriend," young Cassie Lang said suddenly. Greg paused, then gave her a surprised smile.

"That's not your future now, Cassie. But I'll bet your Greg would love to meet you. Just steer clear of a fella by the name of Kristoff Vernard, okay? That guy's nothing but trouble."

"Kristoff?" Cassie said, looking up at her father. "What's wrong with Kristoff?"

"How about you just steer clear of boys altogether for the next 10 years or so hon," Scott replied. Then he nodded in Greg's direction.

Greg waved his hands, and the Portal of Parthenes whisked the Champions away as surely as they had the others.

Greg sighed and turned, taking in the landscape, the pink smudge nearby that was all that was left of Loki's wraith army, the small portion of the rubble from the Crux that was visible through the mist. He wouldn't miss this place, that was for sure. And hopefully his team's problems with Aeon were finally concluded. He could hope--

He blinked. His eyes narrowed and he took a step toward the hill of broken crystal. Was it a trick of the mist or--

Someone was standing atop the rubble, someone whose shape was uncertain beneath a swirling cloak. He couldn't be sure at this distance, but the cloak might have been red.

The figure raised its hand to him, palm out in farewell, and Greg, after a moment's hesitation, nodded in response.

"Two days," Rachel Leighton said, looking into the empty coffeepot and trying to decide if she really wanted to make more. "They've been missing two days at least. Maybe we should have contacted the Avengers..."

"Oh, you're funny." Rachel smirked, and popped Johnny Domingo in the arm with the back of her hand. "You should take that show on the road."

"Nah, I'm too damned talented in other areas to waste time doing stand-up. Here, let me make the next pot. You're gonna go blind staring at that thing."

Rachel surrendered the coffeepot and leaned against the counter as Johnny pulled the Folger's can down from the cupboard. "I really am starting to get worried. That mess we found in the basement* looked bad, too much like a struggle."

"There probably was one. Some nefarious bad guy probably broke into our highly-secure headquarters--"

"-- and engaged the entire Champions team in a brawl that resulted in all of them getting beamed to the planet Morg or something. Now they'll just stomp the bad guy and find a way home. A week, tops."

"You're awful optimistic for someone who's hardly worked with any of these people."

"Trust me, Rach. The Champs are going to pop up again right when we least expect--"

The kitchen vanished in a wash of white light that blinded its two occupants. Johnny's ultra-sensitive eyes were hit the hardest, even through the black sunglasses he was wearing -- when Rachel's vision cleared, he was still rubbing at them. She reached out a hand to him, but paused when she realized the kitchen had somehow gotten a lot more crowded.

"Rachel!" Firebird cried, and whipped her friend into her arms. "When did you get home? Are you staying?"

"Two days ago. Bonita, where have you guys be--?" She looked over Firebird's shoulder -- somehow unsurprised to see Batroc naked except for Bonita's cape, which he had fashioned into a red and yellow kilt -- and took the others in. They looked weary, worn, but happy to be back home. And standing among them, one arm clutching his daughter and the other wrapped around the Black Widow for support, was...

"Yeah, Rach. No more Aeon." He grinned and looked at the Widow. "Natasha... before I went to Aeon, I -- I kissed you, and I just wanted you to know that--"

The Black Widow kissed him before he could say anymore, Cassie squished uncomfortably between them. Batroc sent up a round of applause, and was immediately joined by Rachel. Johnny continued rubbing his eyes, wondering what the hell was going on in the land of the sighted, and Rachel moved to put an arm around him once Firebird had set her free.

Cerberus went off in search of his food bowl, his children nipping at his heels.

Bonita shared a look with Barry, and the two smiled hesitantly at each other. It was good to be home.

Batroc nudged Hercules with one elbow and waggled his eyebrows playfully at the bigger man. Hercules shoved him away with a "Nay!"

Scott and Natasha released each other's lips and smiled at each other, their foreheads pressed together.

They kissed again. Cassie Lang, still mashed between them, ceased her struggles and rolled her eyes up to the heavens. "Grownups..." she sighed.

The god of mischief opened his eyes and found that he was no longer all-powerful. This all but negated in his mind the importance of the fact that he no longer knew exactly where he was.

Rising to his feet atop the mile-wide sliver of asteroid he'd found himself on, he considered his situation. He was still in possession of his own magic -- which was formidable -- but he was floating in outer space, with no planets, and certainly not Earth, anywhere in sight.

It matters not, he thought. Loki shall return home, and he shall reclaim the power of the dead Celestial. And then he shall return to Limbo and murder the world-killer named Aeon before the fool has a chance to turn his eyes back toward this reality.

Loki started, and spun around on the asteroid. It was ridiculous, of course, to think that the voice had come from anywhere but his own head. Even if someone was on this asteroid with him, there was no way they could project their voice through the void.

Before Loki's horrified eyes, the stars above him, a distant galactic cluster that splashed a mosaic of brightness across the void, changed shape before his eyes. Impossible, utterly impossible, but...

What was once a haphazard smear of light-points had now formed into a child's dot-to-dot drawing of a man's face, hundreds of thousands of light-years wide.

WELCOME TO MONDO'S WORLD, LITTLE GOD, the face said in his mind, and Loki began to scream into the unending void of the Franklinverse.

The man in red had been walking the unending desert of Limbo for two days now, and the terrain had not varied even once since he'd left the Crux. The mists had claimed the place as soon as he'd moved away from it, and they had also in a way, he supposed, claimed him.

Aeon #132, pre-designate Scott Lang, was gone. Now only Aeon #719 remained. And this servant of Halcyon, this guardian of the fifth order, was rapidly learning that sometimes you had to lose yourself to find your way home.

Not that he felt lost. For the first time in his life, the man beneath the hood swelled with a higher purpose than his own. This was good. This was better than what his pre-designate had been.

After a time, the man came to a halt. Nothing had changed. The earth and the air were still the same uniform gray. But the man knew somehow that he had at last reached his destination.

The ground rumbled, and a single needle of red crystal burst through the earth at his feet. Slowly at first, the needle rose, revealing itself to be the uppermost point of a stunning crystal minaret. The structure continued to rise, gathering speed and force as more of the underlying building began to pierce the dead soil. The minaret dissolved into a tower, which terminated in the upper bulwarks of a castle wall, and now that wall was racing upward not two feet in front of him, reaching impossibly high into the untold Limbo sky.

He was standing in front of a simple doorway. It opened into a crimson structure that was at once enormous and unknowable, seeming to embody the essence of Limbo itself.

Sometimes the centerpoint moved, Aeon #719 mused, but the Crux of time and space always remained the same. And with that, the man who in another life had been called Nikolai Stalyenko entered his new home.

BEWARE

OF

DOG

And there you have it.

Mark Beaulieu's initial run on this title has always been, IMO, one of MV1's high watermarks. For 21 mad issues and an annual, it was like the Avengers on laughing gas. No situation or villain was too absurd (the Platypusinator, anyone?), and even though the phrase maybe gets thrown around a little too loosely in our community, it truly has been *an honor* to get to leave my mark on Baloo's baby.

This has easily been the most rewarding work I've done at MV1, both in terms of satisfaction with the work and feedback received, and I'm sorry to step down, but I've done 10 issues and a quintuple-sized Giant-Size special, and it's time for fresher hands to work here. I'll miss every one of these characters, but I think it's best to move on before I get too comfortable.

Special thanks to Barry Reese, who bowed out of his run early, leaving me with a viper's nest of unresolved plot threads and a goldmine of general ideas on how to clean them up (Barry: "Hey, let's bring back the Red Guardian!"; Russ: "Okay... how?"; Barry: "I don't know... you're the writer, man!"). Barry is one of the premiere talents in fanfic, and its unfortunate that he's no longer around at MV1.

If you've enjoyed my work on this title, be on the lookout for an upcoming thingamabob titled EGO: WORLD PAIN. The maxi-series will spin out of events from the "Zodiac Rising" crossover... and that's all I'm telling you about it at this time. If you thought "Aeon Flux" was big, you ain't seen nothing yet.

As Hercules would say, "Fare thee well". As Batroc would say, "Adieu, mes belles". And as Cerberus would say, "woof".

- Russ Anderson
22 March, 2002