Snippets, Omakes and Short Stories

[AntonioCC]

Not my best effort, but at least it will start to wrap the Red Hood section of the story.

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By the time Batman arrived to the scene the man that Jack had been talking to was dead, his throat slit by a very sharp blade, like Jack's knife. The corpse was at the entry of an access to the plant underground waste storage, where the residues of what had survived the fire had been stored.

It should have been pumped out and disposed of by now, but the legal battle between Thorne and City Hall about who had to pay for the damage and to dispose of the chemical waste of the plant had paralyzed everything.

If he remembered correctly the plans of the plant, once you passed the vats, you'd end in the small adjacent building that housed the pumps. In short, they would escape. So, being who he was, he dashed behind them, jumping over the heavy coat that he identified as the one the Red Hood had been wearing.

As he was about to turn a corner, he heard a voice he had not heard before. It was a young man, and looked to be exhausted.

"Jack… wait." Said the man between wheezes.

"You're useless. The Bat is hot on our heels and you want to sit down?" he heard Jack saying. "You…" he said, accompanied by a snapping of his fingers "Go and try to keep the Bat busy."

"But…" another voice started to say "Okay, okay, okay, I'll do it."

As soon as he heard him close to the corner, he went and hit him in the head, then in the gut before taking his head and crashing it in his knee. After leaving him there he advanced toward…

"Don't." Jack said, holding a knife to the neck of the other guy. By the red cloth on the ground, he assumed that the thin man was the Red Hood, and given the wounds in his face, Jack had already been "playing" with him. "Or this little bitch dies."

"Isn't he your boss?" Batman said.

"Ah, yes, the infamous Red Hood." Jack said with a chuckle "Everybody thought that the gang boss was him, but it was me, Jack!"

"So, the Red Hood was always a figurehead and you were the real boss all the time."

Jack only grinned and started to walk back, to the portion of the passage that was between the open vats of chemical waste. Batman tried to advance but Jack moved the knife closer to the other man throat.

"No, no, no. Look Bats, can I call you Bats? If you give another step I'll start cutting."

"Please, my wife is pregnant…" the man said, pleadingly.

"You are a fucking loser, you know that?" Jack said, as he kept walking backwards with his hostage. "Besides…well, Bats, why don't you give him the bad news."

"What bad news? What the hell are you talking about?" the man said, before a look of horror crossed his face "What has happened to my wife?"

Batman looked away.

"So you know." Jack said. "Come one, Bats, you know what is going to happen. Why don't you tell this worthless piece of shit the bad news?"

Batman said an address,

"That's where I live!" the man said, struggling nm vain against Jack.

"There was a fire, faulty wiring apparently, in that building." Batman slowly said "There were no survivors."

"No…No…No. It's all you fault…ALL YOUR FAULT!" he said struggling with jack so strongly that Jack lost his footing, and fell by the side, still clinging to the other man, who fell with him into the vat of chemical waste.

 

[AntonioCC]

"Fuck." He said to himself when he saw the consequences of... well, whatever was what had happened, although he had his suspicions..

To his side, Martha opened her eyes, looking stunned at first, but she recovered her wits soon enough.

"What the…?" Martha said, before turning to her right, and seeing that Jonathan was also coming out from unconsciousness. "Jonathan,?"

"I'm here, honey." Jonathan answered, before groaning, and gingerly touching his side "God, I think that I have a broken rib. What the hell have just happened?"

"I think..." Nick started to say, stopping himself for a moment before pursing his lips and continuing to speak "I think that it was a meteor storm." Nick said, as he tried to open the right door.

"A meteor storm? In Smallville?" asked Martha "How is that…?"

"I would like to… hnnng…" Nick said, finally managing to open the door with a strong push. "…know it myself." He paused for a moment "If I haven't seen it with my own eyes I wouldn't believed it possible."

Nick got out carefully, and then stepped down to the ground, taking care of not upsetting balance of the pick-up much. He helped Martha and Jonathan to get out from the vehicle, and then the three of them pushed to set it over its four wheels. As they were going to see if the pick-up started, Martha turned her head toward the left, where one of the meteorites had fallen, leaving a streak of burned grass and a small crater.

"Did you hear that?" Martha said.

"What?" Jonathan said, straining to hear whatever it was..

"It sounded like the wail of a child." Martha said, looking in the direction of the crater.

"I'm not hea…" Jonathan started to say and then stopped himself, as the he could hear it now. "I'm now hearing it."

"So do I." Nick said, looking at the same crater Martha had been looking at.. "It seems to come from that crater."

Without saying a word, Martha ran toward it, soon followed by Jonathan and Fury. In the center of the crater there was something half-buried, with a small hatch open, from which the wails came. Martha jumped inside the crater and looked inside the hatch.

"There is a child here!" she said and proceed to try to get the child out.

"Martha, I wouldn't do that… Too late." Nick said as Martha retrieved a bundle of clothes from… whatever it was that.'Probably some kind of spaceship.'

Martha opened the bundle to reveal… a perfectly normal baby boy with a tuft of black hair and blue eyes.

 

[AntonioCC]

Rogue didn't noticed Well's interest on her, continuing her way. Irene's list had a few shops that she intended to visit, mostly to look clothes and restock her supplies of make-up that were running a bit low by… had it been yesterday? It seemed like a long time ago...

She stopped for a moment and thought of Cody. Irene's had assured her that he would be fine, eventually. But, even with all that had happened yesterday, she hadn't even stopped to think of him on any moment. This killed her desire to go shopping, so she called a taxi to go back to Ma Hunkel's place.

S.T.A.R. Labs​

Harrison Wells had returned to the labs and after exchanging a few words with Cisco and Ronnie, he made himself scarce in order to check something in his secret room, where he had hidden the things he brought with himself from the future, as well as the A.I. Gideon.

"Welcome, professor Wells."

"Gideon, I need to identify a girl I met in the music store…" Wells paused, trying to remember something.

Gideon didn't answer instead showing a video of Wells entering the music store.

"Yes, that is the store. Fast forward a bit."

The image advanced quickly until the girl entered the plane. She was quite distinctive with that white streak on her hair.

"Try to get a good image of her face, and run it through your database." Wells said, frowning "I have the feeling I have seen her before."

Gideon did as ordered, and after trying to match the face to many women, it stopped, showing an image of the face of a woman, clearly a grown-up version of the girl, dressed up in some kind of blue and yellow uniform, from which only the shoulders were visible.

"Her civilian identity is Marie B…" started to said Gideon.

"Yes, yes, Rogue. She is a mutant, one of the X-Men. I fought them, once. " Wells said, deep in thought. "What is she doing here, on Central City?"

"Unknown, professor. Our records of the activities of the X-Men on this time period are very incomplete." Gideon said.

"Find where she is lodged, and then…" Wells started to say before stopping himself. "Just find her. I have to check something in person."

"Yes, professor." Gideon said.

Ma Hunkel's Bed and Breakfast place​

Rogue was lying down on the bed of her room, brooding. She hadn't realized the implications of her powers until now. She had become some sort of living vampire, doomed to never know the touch of another human being.

 

[AntonioCC]

González took a deep breath while he tried to assess the situation more calmly. If Gómez had tried to kill Molina now was because he judged that he was a danger right in that moment, and he had followed his orders to kill him when he judged that it was the moment more appropriate.

The communication they had received from Nayal said that Molina had gone to talk with his wife, which he found quite doubtful, given that it was her rather gruesome death what had put the Presidency Information Service, which he headed, on Molina's trail. He had already contacted his people to see if a call had been realized from that location, but it would take time.

A town not too far from the lake Petén Itzá​

The helicopter that was transporting Molina back to the base was only a small shadow against the swiftly darkening sky. The soldiers had already set their defensive situations, hoping that the demons would take the bait, and they attacked the town.

"When they are in a feeding frenzy they attack in masse, without any thought to tactics or strategy." Miller explained to the newbies.

"That's good, right." Said one of them.

"Half and half, because that means that they are in a berserk state, so they won't retreat if they are having horrendous losses." Miller said, shaking his head "On the other part, if there is a king controlling them… Last time we had to fight a king, we were lucky that the guy didn't have any idea of tactics or strategy, and even then it was too close."

Not too far from there, Garrett heard that and turned to Coulson who was nearby.

"So, did you manage to talk with Mindy?" Garrett asked.

"Yes, I managed to talk with Melinda. And you know she hates being called Mindy" Coulson answered, a bit annoyed. "They are in position, if things go south, Team Two, Melinda and a squad of SHIELD troopers will be here shortly."

"I hope that we can resist that 'shortly'." Garrett said with air quotes included "In fact…"

"They're coming!" said the man atop the church bell tower, interrupting whatever Garrett had to say."

 

[AntonioCC]

Before he could do anything or even see if any of them had survived the drop, he heard the cocking of a revolver behind him and instinctively dropped to the ground when the shot was fired.

He didn't need to look back to guess that it was the thug he had dropped before confronting Jack and the Red Hood. Judging by the noise of the shoot, he was carrying something heavy… too heavy for the light armor he was using right now. Adding to that that the air down here was so saturated by the flammable vapors of the chemical mixture in the vats...

He cursed silently and started to run toward the other end of the passage, where he could glimpse a safety door. He zigzagged, as much as he could in the narrow passage, to make more difficult for the thug to aim. He had just passed the vats and noticed, in passing, that one of them, either Jack or the Hood, was climbing out of the vats, while kicking the other down, trying to avoid for the other to follow him.

When he reached the emergency exit, he stopped, trying to open it, giving the thug behind him, who had already reached the other end of the vats, the time to aim. Unfortunately he didn't realize what he was going to unleash, as soon as the gasses from the ignited propellant left the case, the air itself around him seemed to catch fire.

Batman quickly ran through the door he had just opened and closed it behind him, just as the flames reached it. He looked around, there was heavy machinery around, pumps, and he realized, probably the ones that should be used to empty the vats.

There was a ladder that went up as well as a non-functioning lift. As he stepped up the ladder, he saw that he was on the opposite side of the plant where he had entered, and that the flare up had caused parts of the plant to catch fire. He pursed his lips and called Alfred.

"Alfred, make a call to emergency services, and warn them you have heard shootings and what sounded like a large explosion at the Monarch Chemical plant." He said.

"An anonymous call, I presume, Master Bruce?" Alfred asked.

"Yes, the usual protocols apply." Batman said.

"'Master Bruce', so the Batman was you all along, Brucey?" said a female voice with a Californian accent to his back.

 

[AntonioCC]

"Isn't he gorgeous, Jonathan?" Martha said looking at the child, who had stopped wailing and was looking at them with a look of intense curiosity.

Nick winced for a moment, thinking of the talk yesterday night. One of the things that he had learned was that the fact that they couldn't have children had been an ongoing cause of grief for the couple. And now, they had a child literally falling from the sky before them. A child of unknown origin that had come in a spaceship. If the kid wasn't some kind of alien, he was going to eat his hat. But... he had only to look at the faces of the Kents to realize that it would be easier to convince them to sell their land than to separate them from the child by now.

"Jonathan, why don't you bring the pick-up here to put this on the bed." Nick said.

"Good idea, and we have some tarps that will cover it." Jonathan said and ran back to the pick-up.

Not too far from there​

Buried on the ground the drone ship assessed the damage. Just as it was maneuvering to shot the ship it had been tasked to destroy, one of the debris fragments had impacted on it, causing it to being unable to change its course and fall with the rest of Krypton's planetary debris.

The evaluation was short and showed the ship couldn't take off again, and all long range weaponry seemed to be disabled. So it decided to shed part of it mass, including where a fragment of the debris was still embedded, in order to initiate its reconfiguration into the drone's ground mode. Afterwards it would unearth itself and continue the mission.

Back to the Kents​

"I wouldn't start to picking names for the baby just yet. How do we know that his family it's not looking for him?" 'Or that it isn't some kind of infiltrator for an invasion.' Nick said after they had put the ship on the pick-up.

"Look at where he came, I don't think that he is from... around here." Martha said.

"And if your next words are something related to alien invasion, be serious." Jonathan said "Why would they send a defenseless baby?."

Nick didn't answer, because he didn't have a good answer, only the paranoia that he had acquired on many missions. A paranoia that had almost destroyed his relationship with Val, and put a heavy strain in his relationship with his brother.

He decided to let the matter lie by now.

His thoughts were interrupted by a loud rumble to the east, where another of the meteorites had fallen. He looked there and saw the earth starting to move.

"Get in the car! NOW!" he cried. He didn't know what the hell was that, but he had seen enough crap to know that it wasn't nothing good, and putting miles before them and whatever was unearthing itself was a pretty good measure.

He had already his cellphone out as he got into the pick-up and by the moment that Jonathan had managed to start it, he was already calling SHIELD. But he found that whatever problems were plaguing the SHIELD comms this morning, they were still there. He then looked at the rear-view mirror and saw what had been hidden there, a crystalline... thing on six short, squat legs that was already starting to pick speed behind them.

'Fuck it.' He thought and keyed another number.

"Who are you calling?"

"Somebody who I know." Fury said. The phone rang, once, twice, thrice...

"Carter residence, who I am speaking to?" a old female voice said.

 

[AntonioCC]

She looked at Irene's first letter. Her reassurances that everything would work out at the end sounded hollow now, after she realized what her powers really entailed. Yes, she had always been a loner and a bit of an outcast, but it had been by choice. Now, her powers had robbed her of that choice…

Her thoughts were suddenly interrupted by a knock in the door.

"Honey, are you all right?" she heard the voice of Ma Hunkel through the door, "I saw you when you came, you looked like death warmed over… and not in the usual Goth way."

"I'm fine, really." She said, trying to go for a perky voice to reassure her.

"That settles it. Honey, I'm coming in." Ma answered, opening the door with her own keys. Obviously her attempt to dissemble hadn't worked. Then Ma stood in the door and looked at her. "Come on, Rogue, you have been raised by Irene Adler, you should have learned to lie more convincingly."

"What?" Rogue said, as this had come completely out of the left field.

"She didn't told you?" Ma said, looking at her. "We met her thirty years ago, when she tried to con me."

"That's why you said I should have learned to lie better." Rogue said.

"'xactly. I didn't held it against her, though." Ma said, lost in memories "We ended as friends, but that's too long a story to tell now."

She sat on the only chair on the room, in front of Rogue.

"What is important is that she called me this morning and told me that a Goth teen could be passing through here in short order." She continued "And here you are."

"And what else she said?" Rogue asked "I mean…"

"If you mean that if I know about her powers, yes, I do. They helped us when we got into a mess that time." Ma said. "And, by what you are saying, you probably had powers of some type too, do you?"

Rogue didn't answered immediately, trying to gauge what to say or not to say. It was moot, anyway, because Ma looked at her and said with a kind smile.

"Yes, you have them. It's written all over your face that you don't know what to tell me." Ma said, with a kind smile "I guess that your powers are of a bad sort, right, honey?"

Rogue sighed and started to speak, her gaze firmly on the floor.

"Yeah… I can suck memories, skills and powers, if they have them, through skin contact. And I can't control it."

 

[AntonioCC]

"My god." Ma said.

"The worst thing about it?" Rogue said "I discovered that I had them when I was kissing the first boy that had asked me on a date."

"…Fuck." Ma said, which prompted a look from Rogue, who had heard her reprimand another guest for his liberal use of profanity earlier. "I'll clean my own mouth with soap later, honey…"

The sheer incongruence of the phrase made Rogue snort. Ma Hunkel was old-fashioned, but not in a bad way. Not like that old lady, back home, who pursed her lips each time they meet on the streets, because she didn't dare to try her fire and brimstone bullshit again after the verbal smack-down Irene gave her the only time she tried with them.

"What's so funny?" Ma Hunkel said, the twinkle in her eyes the only thing betraying she had done it on purpose to dispel the heavy atmosphere. "Okay, now that you aren't as depressed, can you come with me? I have something to show you."

Rogue followed Ma Hunkel, curious despite herself, to the attic, where Ma took the key ring she always carried on her and opened an old cupboard. Inside there was an old scrapbook, leather bound, with some kind of faded shield on it. Ma opened it and leafed through it quickly, as if searching for something.

"Aha, here it is!" said Ma, taking a picture from the scrap book and showing it to Rogue. It was a black and white picture of a blonde woman in a tight black costume with a spider motif.

"Who is she?" asked Rogue.

"I met her in New York, she was a vigilante that fought specially the people who preyed on young women." Ma explained "A gang attacked me one night. I was still struggling when she appeared and started to throw them away. One of them managed to recover a jumped her with a knife, she tried to catch him, and I'll never forget what happened afterwards."

"What?"

"As soon as she had touched him, skin against skin, he started to scream as he started to rot from inside out." Ma said "She explained to me that one of her powers, besides super-strength and flight, was a 'touch of death' that wasn't entirely under her control. That's why she usually wore long gloves like the ones you are using, but in the fight they had been torn."

"And what happened to her?" Rogue asked.

"We kept in contact, but one day she disappeared. I heard that she was seen in Europe, but it have been many years." Ma said "But the important thing, was that her powers didn't stop her from having a life, despite everything."

 

[AntonioCC]

"Really?" Rogue said, clearly skeptic "Because that power sounds even worse than mine. Not to mention she killed that guy."

"She learned to control it, eventually. By the time she went to Europe, she was capable to do it at will." Ma said "And well, it was another time. The cops only did a cursory investigation, and not even his fellows saw what happened to him. Soon it was only just another one of the 'cold cases' in the Big Apple."

"When did that happen? And why nobody has talked about superpowered people before Iron Man?"

"That's a long story, honey, and besides, I only know part of it." Ma said with a sigh, and then she looked at the time "Tonight, I may tell you what I know, but it's getting late for supper."

STAR Labs​

"Greetings, Professor Wells." Gideon said as the man got near its interface.

"Gideon, Hartley Rathaway. Is he still planning to sneak inside the lab tomorrow?" Wells said, without preamble.

"Yes, Professor Wells, he isn't showing any sign of deviating from his plan."

"Good, I'm probably going to need the Piper to motivate Barry, eventually." Wells said "What about our erstwhile mutant?"

"She is lodged into Ma Hunkel's Bed and Breakfast Inn." Gideon answered.

"Not in person, then, it would attract the attention of the Society." He mused aloud.

"Can you repeat the question?" Gideon said.

"It wasn't a question, I was just thinking aloud." Wells said "Do the Friends of Humanity exist already on this time period?"

"No, according to records." Gideon said.

"But we have screwed the timeline enough that it may have some unexpected repercussions. Check what some of its historical leaders are doing just now and compare with the historical database."

"Processing… Anomalies found." Gideon said "Bolivar Trask and Graydon Creed have left SHIELD nearly a year before they did in the records. "

"So a version of the Friends of Humanity could be already in existence." Wells said "Try to locate either of them, or their more notable lieutenants."

 

[AntonioCC]

It seemed that he had underestimated Buffy's stealth, as well as her hearing. He quickly reviewed his option and discarded them one on one. So, at the moment only one option remained: dithering.

"Not here." Batman hissed "Too many ears."

"That's why I never was a good Secret Identity Girl. I never cared about who was listening." Buffy said with a mock surprised tone. When Batman glared at her, she only smiled.

"We need to make ourselves scarce." Batman said, "This district precinct is notorious for being more than a bit trigger happy."

"And being shot is not of the good." Buffy said. "Do you remember where you parked the Batmobile?"

Batman didn't answer, instead using his grapple pistol to go to the roof of the plant, and start to go toward the front, not before leaving down another line for Buffy to climb.


When Buffy reached the front part of the roof, Batman was standing, almost on the edge.

"What are you...?" Buffy started to ask when he heard a high-output engine closing by. "...waiting for?" she concluded lamely, as the Batmobile parked itself before the plant.

It was so fleeting that, afterwards she wasn't sure if she had really seen it, but she could swear that Batman had smirked. Then, he using the grapple gun in a nearby building, described a great arc in the air, and fall standing up over the canopy of the car, that opened to let him enter. Buffy directly jumped down on the companion seat. The canopy closed and they sped out of the plant just as the first emergency vehicles started to arrive.

"Do you have some way to call from here? My phone broke during the fight with Blackout."

"I was wondering what happened to the headset you were wearing earlier." Batman said, pushing button in the driving wheel, which transformed a screen into a numeric keyboard. "Call her."

"Okay. So what's the real story, Bruce?" Buffy said, as she was keying the numbers. "Why did you became Batman."

"You know why." Batman said.

Wayne Tower Penthouse​

Dawn was beside herself with worry. She had been experimenting a bit with her newfound portal opening ability, having finally getting the hang of it, when Buffy's signal shut out during the fight with Blackout. Despite the dorky name, if he was really from Lilith's brood, he would be dangerous.

She paced around for several minutes, increasingly worried, until her smartphone started to ring. It was a hidden number, but she had the feeling that she knew who was calling.

"Dawn Summers here."

"Hiya, Dawnie."

"Buffy! What the Hell did happen?" she said, relieved.

"The phone broke. Sorry for having worried you." Buffy said "I'm calling from the Batmobile, and well, something has happened."

"Are you hurt?"

"Nah, it's something I can't discuss by phone." Buffy said, "Look, Bruce's butler, Alfred Pennywise..."

"Pennyworth." Dawn corrected her. "Alfred Pennyworth. Pennywise was the clown demon from 'It'"

"Okay. Alfred is going to come to take you to Wayne Manor."

Dawn looked at herself. She only had to put the sneakers on to be able to get out. As she reached for them, she had another idea, and checked two locations in Google Maps, distance and direction between the. She then opened a portal, that showed the front porch of a stately manor. She quickly looked pictures of Wayne Manor in Google and saw that it matched.

"Dawn? Something to the matter?" Buffy asked as Dawn ended to put on the sneakers.

"No need for Alfred to come for me." Dawn said, crossing the portal.

 

[AntonioCC]

"Director Carter. I'm Nick Fury, from SHIELD." Fury said.

"Ah, yes, I remember you." Carter said. "Why are you calling, it must be quite early in the States right now?."

"There have been a meteor storm on Smallville, Kansas, and something came out from one of the impact craters. It looks like a six-legged cross between an elephant and a beetle, made of some kind of crystal. I have tried to contact SHIELD, but the communications have been off since this morning, and you were the only person with some kind of pull that I wouldn't have to go through three secretaries before I could talk to them directly."

"Smallville, Kansas, you said?" Carter asked, and in the background he could hear her rummaging in her handbag. "Now, repeat what it happened slowly while I take notes, my memory is not what it was."

Fury explained what had happened, omitting the pod and the kid now safely nestled on Martha's arm, but giving a more thorough description of the hexapodal crystalline thing that was chasing them, as well as talking about the communication problems that had plagued SHIELD for the last weeks.

"That's odd, and very uncharacteristic of Faraday." Carter said "He was a bit of a scratched record on the importance of communications in the modern world." Carter sighed and then added. "I'll make some calls, to see what the hell is happening with SHIELD and what can be scrapped to help you."

"Thank you. Any help will be well received." Fury said "I'm going to try to drive it far from town."

"That's very dangerous!"

"Less than let it go into the center of a town of 10000 people." Fury said. "We'll talk later."

"Are you crazy?" Jonathan said.

"No, I'm not. Think about it, what are the odds that the kid and that thing are not related in some way." Fury said, and then signaled toward the thing "And it's coming for us, anyway. So, pedal to the metal, we're going to need all the speed this old thing can achieve."

 

[AntonioCC]

Everybody looked in the direction that watchman was pointing. Black winged shapes could be barely seen against the last gleams of twilight. Riley made the signal, and all lights got turned off, while two spotlights, not unlike the ones used in air defense in World War II, were rolled to the front, close, but a bit ahead of the two AA guns they had brought.

The spotlight would fuck with the demons vision a lot more than it would with the defenders as well as letting them aim more easily to the creatures. Just in the case of the demons managing to get the lights out of commission, there were a number of people kept out of sight of the spotlights, so they wouldn't be losing more night vision than necessary. Everything was set.

Suddenly the radioman started to curse.

"Sirs, the helicopter transporting Commander Molina is under attack by what they are reporting as giant bats." The radioman informed "They... damn... the communication cut suddenly, sir. I'll try to regain contact."

The base​

'If Molina have prepared this somehow, he is more dangerous that we feared.' Gonzalez thought. 'Well, the President gave me the order to deal with this with any mean necessary, and I'll do just that.'

He excused himself again from the communication room, he had to make some calls. The President wasn't going to like this, but tough shit, he was a professional, and it was time to get the big guns out, as he had wanted to do from the beginning.

The town​

They hadn't been able to regain contact with the 'copter or any possible survivors since it was lost. This was adding to the tension of the situation as the demons seemed to have kept themselves in a flight pattern just outside the reach of the lights.

And then, suddenly, they started to charge in masse.

 

[AntonioCC]

As soon as the demons started to move in their direction, they started to shoot. The AA guns, as fast as they could, while the Initiative troopers and the Guatemalan Special Forces used 3-shots grouped fire, which was, usually, enough to dispatch any of the demons. While at first it seemed to be working, it was not that long before Graham noticed something.

"They are not in a feeding frenzy." Graham said.

"Really? Because they seem very frenzied to me!" said Rumlow.

"He is right, fuck it!" Kate said, and she shot down another of the beasts with a precise shot. "They are ignoring their dead."

"Yeah, when frenzied they eat their own." Riley finally spoke, looking at Coulson. "Plan B is, then."

Coulson nodded and shot a flare into the air, the signal for retreating into the backup position. They left the AA guns in place, as they were too cumbersome to move they were probably safe from anything.

Belize. SHIELD base.​

"I could get used to this." Sam said looking at the facilities around her.

"Well, the older facilities were not so nice. Director Fury have made a mission of modernizing all our installations." Agent Mai commented. "Where is your XO, by the way?"

"He found some people to play poker with." Sam answered. "Knowing him, he have already won three rounds."

"So, he is good." Melinda said, interested.

"Pretty good. Why?"

"I haven't had a good enough rival since Venable retired." Melinda said. "In fact… Hang on." She said as her mobile phone started to ring.

"Yes, sir. Agent May here." She said to the phone "I have Major Finn with me right now, sir… How did he…? Understood, sir… Half an hour, maybe less… Yes, sir, she always liked white roses… Goodbye, sir."

"White roses?"

"I'll explain later." Melinda said "We need to get our people in motion and pronto."

---

And with this, Change of guard enter in a temporary hiatus. I'll keep with the other stories until I'm ready to return to this, or until I have enough from another story to replace it. That, if I don't start again, and rewrite the story from the beginning.

 

[AntonioCC]

The parking of a road inn somewhere in Mississipi​

Steven Lang looked at Alex Trent, who was screaming to his ex-wife on the phone, with distaste. Lang was a scientist who had worked closely with Trask, and Trask mysterious benefactor, in developing countermeasures to the mutant problem. He respected Graydon Creed's zeal, even if he thought that Creed was a bit too blinded by his own rage at times. But Alex Trent? He was exactly what the Friends of Humanity shouldn't be, a holdover of the old bad days.

Trent suddenly stopped mid-tirade.

"The bitch hung on me." He said, with an slightly stunned look.

"What did you expect? You have been screaming at her for five minutes straight." Lang said. "Maybe if you weren't so much of an asshole, the court wouldn't have retired your visiting rights."

"Fuck you." Trent said.

Lang didn't dignify that remark with an answer, focusing in getting back inside to pay their bill, when his phone rang. He looked at the screen and saw that it was a hidden number. Nobody, other than the FoH had the number, so who the hell…? He stopped and went back to the parking to answer the phone, while signaling Trent to stay there.

"Who is this and how did you get this number?" he asked without preamble.

"That is not important, Mister Lang." Somebody, speaking with an electronically distorted voice, said, "What is important is that I know of the location of one of the mutants that managed to flee Mister Trent ambush yesterday night."

"Even if I knew what you are talking about..." he started to say.

"Oh, please. Don't try to dissemble; I know a lot of things about you." The voice said, "You came to SHIELD full of ideals to protect humanity, only to find that, as always, politics reigned supreme and a good man you idolized was being thrown to the wolves. So, when he left you left with him, and now you and him are full of plans for a final solution to the mutant problem."

"I'm not a fucking Nazi! Mutants are a real danger, not a scapegoat, you fucking…!" he started to say, hotly, having caught what the other man was implying immediately.

"Ah, did I touch a nerve?" the voice said with a chuckle.

"What do you fucking want, Mister Know-it-all?" he said.

"As I said, I know of the location of one of the mutants, the teenage power drainer." The voice said, unperturbed.

"And you are doing this out of the goodness of your heart."

"Hardly. I have my own motives." The voice said, and then he said an address "It's in Central City." And he hung up.

Lang swore for a few minutes, to the amused look of Trent. He glared at him, and went inside to pay, before coming back and calling headquarters.

 

[AntonioCC]

Dawn stepped out of the portal, finding herself in front of Wayne Manor. And she quickly found herself having to take refuge in the manor porch as the drizzle that have been falling intermittently for quite a while was starting to become a serious storm.

Nonetheless, she looked around and thought that the pictures that she had seen on Internet didn't do the old building justice. It looked a lot more homely, than the creepy manor that the pictures showed.

She then remembered that she still had the phone in her hand.

"Buffy, remember what I said earlier of things keyed to me?" Dawn said to the phone.

There was no answer, so she then looked at the phone, and found that the call had been cut. She face palmed hard, realizing that obviously the same cell towers wouldn't service the city center and a Manor located in the outskirts of the city, near the coast.

She put the phone in her pocket, went to the main door and rang the doorbell. If she knew her sister Buffy would call her as soon as she could, so better to get it with the program to see why Buffy wanted for her to come to Wayne Manor.

The door opened, revealing Alfred in his spotless butler uniform.

"Hello, Alfred." She said.

"Miss Summers?" he said, arching an eyebrow. "What an amazing coincidence, your sister called earlier, asking me to bring you here."

"Ah, well, it's a long story, and I would like to tell it to everybody at once." Dawn said, fidgeting a bit.

"Of course." Alfred said, before stepping out of the way for her to enter. "If you may come with me, I'll prepare you some refreshments while your sister arrives."

"Thank you very much, Alfred." Dawn said, entering the manor and following Alfred to a room that looked like a mix between a living room and a library and dominated by a big portrait of a couple, Thomas and Martha, she assumed, over the fireplace.

"Now, If you excuse me, Miss." He said, before disappearing on a side corridor.

As with the apartment, the place was furnished with taste. The sofas and armchairs were comfortable, and in a corner there was a grandfather clock… that was not working. Intrigued despite herself, she went to check if there was some problem with it, starting with manipulating the clock hands. They were a bit stiff, so she had to lean on the clock to exert more strength. So, when the wall behind the clock moved she fell ahead, into a set of stairs.

 

[AntonioCC]

Peggy Carter residence. British countryside​

It was as Fury had said. SHIELD communications were in the fritz... or were they?. Something about all of this did not feel right to her, but first things first. Who to call? Then he remembered that an old friend who had managed to land a job as one of liaisons between SHIELD and the Pentagon after retirement, and called a number from memory.

"Are you aware what time it is?" said the sleepy voice of Lieutanant General (retired) Gabriel Jones.

"Hi, Gabe. It's Peggy." She said

"Oh, god. What has happened?" Gabe asked, suddenly fully awake.

"I received a call from a SHIELD agent, Nick Fury, there has been a meteor storm in…" she said, checking again the notepad "…Smallville, Kansas, and some kind of alien war machine has apparently got out from one of the craters, and he is unable to communicate with the Triskelion."

"Oh, God, don't tell me that it's the Martians again?" Jones said with a resigned voice.

"From what Fury said, I don't think so. He described the machine as, and I quote, 'a crystalline rhino beetle with six elephant legs'." Peggy explained.

"Not the Martians, then." Gabe said with a relieved sigh "I don't look forward to call John again. I'll check what assets we have on the area, and well, about the Triskelion, the problem is finding somebody who has the clearance to know about it…" he suddenly snapped his fingers "Lane."

"Who?"

"Sam Lane, he is a Colonel in Fort Myer, had some dealings with SHIELD a couple years ago." Gabe said "He has enough clearance, as well as a good head over his shoulders. A bit more vindictive than I would like, but, well…"

"Yeah, it's not like there are many choices." Peggy said. "Do I call the Council? Or do you want the honors?"

"I wouldn't call it an honor, precisely." Gabe said with a chuckle "But, I'll do it myself, if not for other reason, than because officially you are nothing more than a civilian and some of the members are a bit too punctilious about protocol."

 

[AntonioCC]

Central City. Ma Hunkel's Inn. That night​

It was a bit late that night. All the other guests had already gone to bed when Rogue went down the stairs to the living room were Ma Hunkel was knitting, sitting in a rocking chair.

"Mrs. Hunkel, I'm here."

"Call me Ma, honey." She said without lifting her eyes from the knitting needles. "Everybody call me that, anyway."

"It's about what we talked earlier. About people with..."

"Powers? Special abilities?" she said "Yes, I remember. 'Mystery men', was how they were called back then. The term 'superhero' hadn't been coined back then, you see."

"And when was then?" Rogue said, curious.

"Another age, some people called it a Golden Age." Ma said, "I always thought of that name as nostalgic hogwash, though. "

"How so?"

"It was simply a time like any other, with bad and good things. You see..." she started to say when the telephone rang. "One moment."

"Ma Hunkel's Bed and Breakfast Inn, what can I do for you?" She said, "Hello, Fritz, so how things are going on Keystone?... Really?... Yes, that's worrying... No, I don't have any guest that looks like that." This final sentence was said looking at Rogue, who noticed the gesture. "I'll keep that in mind... Bye."

"What was that?"

"One moment, I have to make a call." Ma said.

She keyed a number from memory and waited for the answer.

"Fred, it's Abby Hunkel... Yes, Ma Hunkel. Listen, I received a call from Fritz, in the Keystone office, about a fugitive that may be lodging here... No, she is not here, but that's the kind of thing that you usually manage, not Fritz... Really? That's odd. Fritz seemed convinced that it was real... See you."

"What was that?" Rogue repeated.

"Things are not safe for you here anymore, honey." Ma said, as she was writing in a notepad, "Collect your things, and go to this address." She ripped a leaf from the notepad and gave it to her, "It's the house of a friend that it's out of town right now."

Ma accompanied her to her room, to help her packing, as well as giving her a bit of an explanation.

"Fritz and Fred are the head of the FBI offices in Keystone City and Central City, respectively. Given that the cities are just across the river from each other, it's not unusual that notices to one office go also to the other."

"But from what I heard, that haven't been the case."

"Yes, and Irene warned me that the people after you may have contacts in Law Enforcement." Ma said, "Now call a taxi, and get to that address. Do you have some way to get in contact with Irene?"

"Not quickly." She shook her head, "She left a Post Office Box address and that is."

"Goddammit." Ma said. "Look, down the street there is a phone box. Call a taxi from there. I'll keep the FBI people busy."

 

[AntonioCC]

Fortunately, Dawn managed to stop in a turn of the twisting stairs before she could fall down more. She got up with difficulty and checked herself. Some bruises, but nothing more serious.

She was about to call Alfred, but she topped herself, remembering Buffy's word about Bruce hiding something. And whatever it was it was probably related to these secret stairs.

She checked that her smartphone had not broken and activated the flashlight app. The stairs were carved on the rock, supplemented here and there by some concrete, and descended into a stygian darkness. The door that she had fallen through had a handle to open it from the inside, so she closed it carefully, trying not to make a noise.

She walked down the stairs, until she found a door at the end of it. A heavy door, the style you would find in a fallout shelter. She opened it and stepped into... the Gray Ghost Lair?

Okay, it was a pretty faithful recreation of the lair. She had seen more than a few episodes over the years, as it were one of Xander (and Andrew) favorite series. She was going to look around, but a noise attracted her attention. The noise of a car coming from… a tunnel to her right, and it was getting louder.

She hid behind a rock, in one of the areas of the cave that haven't been worked over to give space for… this, whatever it was. She didn't have to wait much, as the car soon appeared. An sleek black car with a bat-shaped frontal that could double as a battering ram.

'Wait a minute! Bat?' she thought, the pieces falling into place.

The car parked in a circular platform, and soon enough, as she already suspected, Buffy and Batman got out of the car.

"Now, we'll see how Dawn receive the news." Buffy said.

Batman didn't answer immediately, instead looking around until he was looking straight toward her.

"No need for that, she already knows." He said, removing his cowl to show the face of Bruce Wayne, "Dawn, come here."

 

[AntonioCC]

The Batmobile. Racing through Gotham's outskirts. A few minutes ago​

"Hold on. Alfred, can you repeat?" Batman said, as Buffy was trying, unsuccessfully, to call Dawn again. "Don't bother, Dawn is in Wayne Manor. The reception is spotty at best there."

"How can she...?" Buffy said, before she realized what had happened "Oh, God, so that's what she meant!"

"What are you talking about?." Batman said.

Buffy took a deep breath before she started to explain

"It's a long story, but to make it short, there was a prophecy about a Key to open a portal to a Hell dimension, and Dawn fit the bill." She said, "Well, there was a time limit, and we tried to run, but she was captured and some bozo tried to sacrifice her. We managed to stop it in the proverbial nick of time and she only suffered a couple of nasty wounds." She put the hand on her temples, as if to forestall a headache "The kick is that a portal really started to open after the blood started to flow. She has never shown signs of having any ability to open portals afterwards, though."

"Until now." Batman said

"Yeah, until now." Buffy said, thoughtful. "She must have opened a portal to Wayne Manor, somehow."

"...Okay." Batman said. He sensed that there were more to the story than what she had said, but he wouldn't pry, for now.

They didn't talk for a while, the Batmobile going through a dirt road until they reached a craggy rock wall, not too far from Wayne Manor. The dirt road ran parallel to the wall for quite a while, but after Batman pressed a button in the steering wheel, a section of the wall, just in front of the turn of the road, opened, revealing an underground access.

"Wow, so your underground base is under Wayne Manor, right?." Buffy said, "How... Zorro of you."

Batman pursed his lips but he didn't say anything. She wouldn't know, of course, about the movie they had gone to see that night.

His thoughts were interrupted by an alarm that showed in the HUD integrated in the cowl. Somebody had opened the access to the Batcave, and hadn't pressed the button to stop the alarm. Probably Dawn, although he wouldn't discard the possibility of somebody had used the distraction provided by her arrival to enter the cave.

He made a mental note make more difficult to find the right combination, just in case another guest tried to fiddle with the clock, as well as placing some cameras in the passage. Anyway, they would know soon enough, anyway as the car started to go through the passage toward the cave.

Not too long afterwards he was stopping the Batmobile onto the platform. When they both got out, Buffy talked while he was looking for the intruder.

"Now, we'll see how Dawn takes the news."

He didn't answer immediately, looking around until he saw part of an sleeve behind an outcropping of rocks.

"No need for that, she already knows." He said, removing his cowl to show his face, Bruce Wayne's face, "Dawn, come here."

Dawn stood, looking at them.

"Hi." She said, waving her hand and smiling sheepishly. "Sorry, Bruce, I saw that the clock was broken and tried to fix it…"

"And you accidentally opened the secret passage." Bruce said, with a sigh. "I need to improve security there." He sighed for a moment, before adding "I'll call Alfred, he must be looking for you all over the mansion." Then he pointed to a zone that seemed to be separated from the rest of the cave by scaffolding, which also seemed to hide whatever was there from view. "If you don't mind, can you wait for me there?"

The sisters looked to each other and nodded at the same time.

"No problemo, Bruce." Buffy said.

 

[AntonioCC]

A dirt road, not too far from Smallville, Kansas​

"Where the heck do we go now?" Nick said, as he looked behind, the thing still in pursuit, though not gaining on them despite its efforts.

"How long until your friends arrive?"

"I don't know. That thing is going to require heavy ordinance to dispose of, if my experience is anything to go by." Fury said, "It's not like we have high explosive..." he trailed off as his cellphone rang again. He looked at the number, if he wasn't wrong it was a number from Fort Myer… "Hang on, I think that the Cavalry is calling."

"This is Nick Fury, who I am talking to?"

"Hi, Nick, it's Gabe Jones, it has been a while." He heard a familiar voice answering. "Carter roped me into helping you with both these messes. I'm about to go to the Triskelion with a pissed off Colonel and a platoon of rangers."

"I'm more interested in the alien war machine that is following us." Fury said "I think that it haven't ranged weapons, at least it doesn't seem to have used them, but I'm not sure of that."

"Okay, we managed to get the Air Force involved, an squadron of F-16 from Whiteman is going to attack it in thirty minutes or so." Jones explained "An squadron of A-10 from Buckley is going to arrive in fifty minutes, give or take."

Fury thought for a moment. That was all well and good, if they managed to last that long.

"Jonathan, how full is the tank?" Fury asked

"Half full, more or less. Ninety minutes or so at this pace." Jonathan said.

"Okay, the thing is chasing us." He looked at the baby and decided against telling it at the moment. "I don't know why." He paused a moment to gather his thoughts "Listen, I'm with two locals. The son of Jack Kent, if you remember him, and his wife."

"Yes, I do. Your father's last will, I presume." Gabe said. "And I presume you can't ditch them."

"We'd have to stop the car, and that thing is faster than it looks." Fury answered.

 

[AntonioCC]

"Okay, keep going. Try to stick to dirt roads and secondary roads… and try to stay out of the emergency vehicles way." Gabe said.

"Gabriel, I know how to do this shit." Fury commented with an eyeroll.

"I never doubted that, Nick. See you, after all this mess is done." Gabe said.

"See you." Fury answered just before Gabe hung up. He then turned to the Kents "Good and bad news."

"First the good and later the bad, I guess." Martha said after she and Jonathan looked at each other.

"Okay, the good news are that two ground attack squadrons of the Air Force are on their going to attack that thing." He said pointing back. "The bad news is that the closest one is going to need half an hour, and the other fifty minutes."

Fort Myer. Virginia​

After the troops boarded the Humvees, Colonel Sam Lane boarded the one in the lead, that he was going to share with General Jones. After he closed the door, he turned to the odler man and asked.

"And now, sir, can you tell me what was that important to make me miss my first day on leave since my daughter's birth?" Lane asked. "Beyond the 'Federal Building presumably taken by terrorists' thing that we have told the soldiers. I won't enter into 'Posse Comitatus', as I assume that it have been handled over my head."

"You are right, it have been handled way over our heads. And what we have said to the troops is roughly true, the thing is that there are complications."

"Such as?"

"The building is the Triskelion." Jones said, and then added, seeing Lane Blank expression. "SHIELD HQ."

"…Fuck." Lane said.

"Pretty much. Contact was lost yesterday night, at 23:48, Washington time." Jones explained "But as communications in and out the building had been acting up for the last weeks, nobody noticed anything until this morning."

"Nobody thought to send somebody to check what was happening?." Lane said.

"As I said Comms have been bad for a few days." Jones repeated "As soon as the Pentagon got the news, they called the FBI, as it is on Federal land."

"Teddy Roosevelt Island, isn't it? I always wondered what was that eyesore." Lane commented.

"Exactly." Jones said "The FBI have sent a HRT tactical unit to take a look from a distance, and to serve as the primary assault force, your people are there as reinforcements." He paused for a moment when he saw Lane expression, "Political reasons."

"Whatever." Lane said. He didn't have anything against the HRT, but ge felt that this was one of teh things best handled by teh military.

"They'll fill us on what they have seen when we arrive." Jones explained "If they are there, there had been no communication with them since they arrived."

 

[AntonioCC]

When Bruce arrived, Buffy and Dawn were looking all over the device that was sitting there, with a chair before it. The device looked like a big screen surrounded by smaller screens.

"Bruce, what the hell is this? It looks like a computer, but I can't see..."

"One moment." Bruce said, sitting on the chair, and pressing a hidden button on its arms. A panel slid open, revealing a lens. When Bruce put his eye in front of the lens, it scanned the eye and the main screen turned on, and a female digitized voice said:

"Password: Criminals are..." and it left it hanging.

"A cowardly and superstitious lot." Bruce said, ignoring Buffy's 'really?' reaction.

"Voice recognized. Welcome, Batman." The voice said and a holographic keyboard and trackball appeared before him, at the same time the computer initialized.

"A sweet setup you have here, Bruce." Dawn said with a whistle.

"Don't let Andrew near it ever." Buffy said, and both Summers sisters shuddered.

"Who is Andrew?" Bruce asked.

"Watcher in training, he is an uber-nerd." Buffy said. "He was of great help during the last weeks on Sunnydale, though."

"I presume that Sunnydale's collapse wasn't a natural event." Bruce said, while correlating data on the computer.

"No, it wasn't. Sunnydale was built over a Hellmouth, and yes, a Hellmouth is exactly what it sounds like." Buffy said, "When we managed to close it, the cave system that contained the Hellmouth proper collapsed completely."

"Hum." Bruce said, as he put a map of Gotham City on the screen. Twelve red points appeared over the two worse districts of Gotham, "The Bowery murders, they are quite spread over the district, but if we add the last places where the victims were seen..." other twelve points appeared on orange "...and we add the last places where the people missing during the spikes of missing people were seen last time." A good number of yellow dots appeared, and a pattern had emerged. A good of them seemed to be concentrated over a narrow strip close to the border between the Bowery and the Narrows.

"What is there?" Dawn asked.

"Grant Avenue, that is crosses with state route 39." Bruce said, enlarging the map and showing a map of Gotham county and the adjacent counties with the road highlighted. "On a couple of the victims the forensic department found traces of a kind of clay that appears in a few places in the state, but only one of those places is close to route 39.

 

[AntonioCC]

Xavier School for Gifted Youngsters​

"I hope that we didn't ruin your date, Jean." Ororo said to the redhead who was walking down the corridor with her.

"Not really, I was already on my way back, when I received your call." Jean said with a wave of her hand. "Whatever plans Duncan had, they were ruined by the storm."

"It wasn't mine." Ororo said, before adding with a pensive face "It is a weird storm, though."

"How so?" Jean asked, curious.

"On itself it isn't really unusual, other than its suddenness, but there is a straight line of storms from the Mid-Atlantic all the way to New Mexico." Ororo explained, "Something that we better investigate later."

"You are the one with weather control, Ororo." Jean said "So, what's the problem?"

"Cerebro has detected another mutant, but Charles won't be back until tomorrow, and by then the trail will be too cold." Ororo said.

"And as I am the only telepath in the team, and the professor have been training me to use Cerebro..." Jean continued. "I'll see if I can retrieve it."

They finally enter Charles study, where Ororo got the secret panel to open and Cerebro was there. Jean took a deep breath and sat in a chair in front of the device, putting the headset on her head. Immediately she was assaulted by the thoughts of everybody and it took all her training to block it, down. She closed her eyes and focused into following the sign of mutant activity that the machine had detected.

Her mind-self flew, until she found the trail she was looking for, and read the psychic traces associated with it.

"Dawn... Summers..." she said, picking the name from it.

"Dawn Summers, are you sure?" Ororo said.

"Yes... why?" Jean said, still trying to get the location of the girl.

"Because she is Scott cousin, I met her earlier today." Ororo explained, before noticing something, "Jean, your nose…"

"Just… a moment." She kept reading the traces, despite the pounding she was starting to fell in her head "Portals… open portals… Gotham City… Wayne Manor." She said and then after a moan of pain, she started to add "I'm going to…"

Suddenly she became aware of a dark presence. It felt asleep, but it was still hungry and malevolent and devoid of anything that could be considered... human. She wanted to get away, but its might and hunger had drawn her to it like a moth to a flame.

She fought, she fought with all her psychic might until she felt something shift in her mind, and a voice that sounded like her own, but crackling in flames said, as she felt like a wall in her mind started to crumble:

'SHE'S MINE!'

And she didn't know anything else. She awoke, finding herself again in Charles study.

"Jean, what has happened?" Ororo said, "You started to bleed from the nose, you looked like you were in pain, but before I could disconnect Cerebro you glowed like a flame for a moment, and fell down from the chair."

"I… don't know." Jean said, the last minutes of her using of Cerebro having vanished from her mind, as if something didn't want Jean to remember what had happened.

 

[AntonioCC]

"And nobody else thought to go to take a look?."

"What do you think we are going to do?" Jones said, "Besides, HRT went quite light on equipment, and if the Triskelion jammers are active, any radio communication, and that includes cellphones, would be impossible."

The rest of the way they were in silence, until they arrived to the place where the FBI had set camp.

"General Jones? Colonel Lane?" said the man who looked to be the squad leader. As with his teammates, he was clad in black tactical gear, not too dissimilar, except for the color, from the one that the Rangers were wearing.

"That's us. We come with two squads of Rangers just out of a training course in Fort Myer." Jones said.

"I'm Agent Garner, leader of the HRT Gold Unit." The FBI man said "I presume that you want an appraisal of the situation."

"That would be correct." Lane said.

"Okay, when we arrived here the building was seemingly deserted, with the gates locked up, and covered by steel sheets." Garner said

"That mean that they are in a full lock-down." Jones said, and then explained. "A full lock-down means that the building is completely closed, radio and cellphone jammers are active, and the landlines are cut."

"Yes, we have been unable to call my superiors since we arrived here." Garner said "As we didn't have the right communication equipment, I sent one of my men with a cellphone to call our superiors."

"Good thinking. We can set a transmitter and cable up here, we brought it, just in case." Lane said. "What has happened since then?"

"Roughly twenty minutes ago, we observed activity on the upper levels. And by activity I mean fighting, soon afterwards one of the windows on those levels opened and one corpse was thrown out of it."

"Godammit." Jones said. "This I must see it by myself."

Wordlessly the FBI agent gave him binoculars, as well as indicating him where to look.

"Cain Chandler." Jones said, after getting a good look at the corpse. "That scar in the face is very distinctive."

"Who?" Lane said.

"Cain Chandler was the head of the SHIELD Internal Security Division, the internal affairs people, basically." Jones said "What is worse was that they managed to open a window. The only way to open any window if the building is in full lock-down is with the master codes." He lowered the binoculars, and said "And only three people have those codes: Myself, Chandler and the director."

"Then Cain was caught and spilled the beans, or..." Lane started to say, stopping himself of saying what was in his mind.

"Or Director Faraday is on it." Jones said, completing what Lane had been unable to say.

 

[AntonioCC]

"But you just have basically told the FBI guy that I'm not here." Rogue asked.

"Yeah, but Fritz is pretty by-the-book. He'll ask Fred for help and they'll send a few agents to look around and make a general nuisance of themselves in this neighborhood." Ma Hunkel said "With luck, nobody will think to check there. Tomorrow, I'll go there to help you, but don't forget to check that P.O. Box."

They got out through the back door, and Rogue walked down the street toward the pay phone. Ma Hunkel went back to the kitchen to prepare a tea for herself. Just as she was doing that, she looked and saw a black car stopping before the inn, and two men in dark suits with sunglasses stepped out. Ma frowned, there hadn't been time for them to come here from the FBI office. They could have been doing anything closer to here, but the timing was very, very suspect.

The FBI agents were two young men, a crew-cut blond with a bodybuilder physique, while the other was a red-haired man with a swimmer physique and longer hair than his partner...

Something was bothering her about those two. She had talked with a lot of G-men over the years, and these two... something about them was off, and it gave her a bad feeling. Well, thanks to Rex she had something better than long johns and a pot, if things went South. And fortunately the only guest tonight had been Rogue, so she shouldn't worry too much about people getting in the crossfire.

~~~~~~~
​

"What do we know about this woman?" Trent asked, adjusting the necktie of his suit. Looking the part of a Fed irked him, given their part on the death of his father.

"Not much, she is a widow from New York, and she moved to Central City with her family 'round twenty-five years ago." Lang answered, checking his smartphone for the data that have been sent from Central. "Hmmm... strange, it is almost as if she had suddenly appeared thirty years ago with her kids."

"Witness protection?" Trent asked.

"Maybe." Lang said, as they reached the porch of the inn.

After they rang, they could hear a muffled 'coming' from the back, and a couple minutes later, a sixty-something woman, dressed in a maroon robe over bright-yellow pajamas opened the door.

"Ma Hunkel Bed and Breakfast place. What can I do for you?" she said with a friendly smile.

"Abigail Matilda Hunkel?." Trent said, trying his best to sound official.

"That's me." She said, with a confused expression.

"I'm Agent Alexander, and this is Agent Stephens." Trent said, using the names in their fake FBI IDs. "We have received a confidence that a fugitive could be lodging in your establishment."

"Yes, Fritz, from the FBI office in Keystone called me earlier." The woman said, "I didn't recognize the description he gave me, but if you have a picture..."

Trent and Lang looked to each other, clearly thinking the same thing. 'What the fucking hell?.' The real FBI wasn't supposed to know about this.

"Yes, yes. One moment." Trent said, getting his hand into his jacket, but no picture was produced. Instead, Ma Hunkel found herself looking at an 9 mm automatic pistol. "The girl, where is she?"

 

[AntonioCC]

Not too long afterwards, Ororo, Jean, Scott, Kitty and Kurt were all together in the mansion living room.

"So, this Dawn Summers is your cousin?" Kitty asked.

"Yeah, the daughter of my uncle Hank." Scott said.

"If you have an uncle and cousins, why you have never mentioned them before?" Jean asked, curious.

"Jean, you know the memory problems that I had because of the accident." Scott said, shaking his head, "And Hank... well, apparently he and my father had problems, I don't know why. But I'd never thought that he would act as if everybody died in the crash."

"Going back to this, Dawn and her older sister, Buffy..."

"Buffy? I mean, like, really?" Kitty said, which earned her a 'look who's talking' glare from Ororo and Jean.

"As I was saying, Buffy and Dawn had an appointment in Gotham City this evening..." Ororo explained the reason the Summers sisters had gone to Gotham, and why it was likely they were on Wayne Manor. "Have you tried to call her, Scott?"

"No, sorry, I just forgot." He said, taking his mobile phone and calling Dawn to the number she had given him earlier. "It's apparently out of reach." He tried another number. "Buffy's phone is the same."

"Jean, you said that this Dawn was in Wayne Manor." Kitty asked, after having been loking a few things while Ororo had been explaining the situation.

"Yes, the psychic trace was pretty clear." Jean confirmed.

"Well, I have been looking the location of Wayne manor in relation to the nearest cell towers, and it's, like, too far." Kitty explained, "There is not even a Wayne Communications tower nearby."

In the end they decided to visit Gotham the next day, as with the storm raging outside it would be dangerous to drive, not to talk of flying, to Gotham City. When they were going to their bedrooms, Scott made a signal to Jean to come to talk to him.

"Ororo told me what happened, Jean." Scott said, "How are you, really?"

"I don't really know, I mean, I feel well, but..." Jean said, "That memory loss frighten me, because if somebody did it to me that means that there is something out there, that walked through my mental defenses as if they were made of cardboard. And if I did it to myself, that means that I found something that made me take such a drastic measure."

 

[AntonioCC]

The Batcave​

"Buffy, you're the expert in vampires. What should I look for?" Bruce said.

"I'd check if somebody had stopped buying food in that area or close to." Buffy said after a moment of hesitation. "Vampires only need blood to survive, after all."

"But if they're keeping their victims alive, that won't reflect on the charges. Vampires don't have to eat, but their victims have to, if they want to keep them alive for weeks." Bruce countered, finding immediately the flaw in Buffy's logic. "In fact their food orders may have increased, depending on how many vampires we are talking about. Can a vampire put somebody in thrall, like in the movies?"

"You usually only see older vamps doing that." Buffy said, with a shrug, "But I have met enough exceptions to be wary, why do you ask? Oh, you think that they may be enthralled somebody to buy the grocery list? A person enthralled acts weird enough to be noticed."

"…bator." Dawn said, and the sisters collapsed in giggles.

"What was that?" Bruce said.

"Sorry, it was something that happened when one of our friends in Sunnydale got enthralled by this really old vampire." Buffy said, "He even started to get all Renfield-like, eating bugs and all."

"…Okay." Bruce said "Why don't you give me a primer on vampires? I think that it'd be better than playing twenty questions."

An old manor near Slaughter Swamp​

Sidney DelVeccio carved another mark in the walls of her cell, and looked at herself. She had lost close to thirty pounds since those people had brought her here, wherever it was. She had been a waitress in a fast-food place in one of the less bad parts of the Bowery, and she had just getting ready for a job interview on Metropolis, across the bay, when those… monsters had caught her in the way to the ferry.

She had been walking toward a bus stop when she heard a van braking noisily and she suddenly felt herself dragged into the van and injected with something. That was the last thing she remembered before waking here barefoot and chained to the wall.

A bit of light entered from a small window, and that was how she could tell the pass of the time as her captors brought them food at irregular intervals. At first she had heard voices, but every time they sedated all of them, with a dart pistol, there was one less voice. Now she was alone, and her turn would come soon. She tried to fall asleep, to see if she could dream again with those girls that fought monsters. It gave her hope, she didn't knew why, becasue the girls ofter ended killed by those monsters.

The Batcave​

"…and that's all." Buffy said.

"Interesting." Bruce said, and keyed a few commands in the computer. A list appeared and Bruce started to add filters to the search; soon the list had shrunk into a single name. "DuBois Manor. It's close to Slaughter Swamp."

"A charming name." Dawn said. "And I suppose that it has a history of weird events."

"Yes." Bruce said, as he was looking for info about the manor. "There are several legends associated with the swamp. But DuBois Manor has its share of oddities, too."

 

[AntonioCC]

"Don't tell me. It's supposed to be haunted." Buffy said, rolling her eyes.

"Yes, but that's not the weirdest thing about the manor." Bruce said. "Nicholas DuBois and his sister Dala were run out of Gotham County in 1857 due to something that was hushed over. The manor fell in disrepair, and in 1882, a son of Nicholas appeared with all the documentation to prove it and proceeded to rebuilt the manor, but something happened, and Dubois Junior never came back to Gotham. Since them the manor has changed hands through the Dubois family, where heirs seems to pop out like clockwork."

"Like the Mayor." Buffy said, and then started to explain, "The Mayor of Sunnydale was an immortal sorcerer, that…"

"I get the picture." Bruce said, raising his hand to interrupt her, "There are no pictures of any of the DuBois after Nicholas. And the current Dubois, Louis, controls a modest-sized shipping business in New Orleans, Demeter Lines, and his legal affairs are usually managed by… Wolfram & Hart." Bruce frowned, while Buffy and Dawn grimaced, "Even if Dubois is not a vampire, I have never met somebody represented by Wolfram & Hart that wasn't rotten to the core."

"Of course, they are evil." Buffy said.

"They are a law firm that seem to be very unscrupulous in their choice of clients, but why are you saying that they are evil?".

"A… friend of mine in Los Angeles has clashed with them over the last years." Buffy said, "Apparently the Senior Partners of Wolfram and Hart are demons, and to work there you have to sell them your soul. They have been mixed in a lot of supernatural crap in the L.A. area in the last years."

"Interesting, but that doesn't really pertain to the matter at hand." Bruce said, "Dubois Manor is currently being taken care by a group that started to work there… eighteen months ago. Just when the Ripper murders started."

"Well, what are waiting for?." Buffy said. "There may still be somebody alive there."

"I need some additional equipment." Bruce said, before turning to Dawn, "You can go upstairs, it's quite late."

"And stay awake worried for you and Buffy? Not a chance." Dawn said.

 

[AntonioCC]

Ma Hunkel didn't panic when the crew-cut blonde aimed at her with a pistol. It wasn't the first time that she had been threatened by a gunman, and frankly, these two weren't all that scary compared to some of the people who had been after her in the past.

She then noticed that the other man had pursed his lips when his partner had aimed the weapon at her. 'Interesting.' She thought. It seemed that these two weren't exactly in the same page.

But it would be better to play along for now, maybe they would let slip something, so she opened her eyes wide and managed to say, faking a convincing frightened tone:

"But... but... I have told you the truth. No goth teenager had been lodged here in the last days." she said, adding a shiver for effect, "A girl came this morning, but she didn't look like at all like that. And I didn't let her lodge here without a valid ID."

They seemed to have swallowed it, as the blond muscle lowered the gun, before the other talked again.

"How did she look?" he asked.

"Green eyes, bottle blonde, wearing a gray turtleneck, jeans and boots." Ma said, lying through her teeth, "Ah, and she was carrying a backpack."

"Something else?" the redhead asked.

"No… wait, she mumbled something about meeting somebody mid way or in Midway when she was leaving." Ma said.

"Midway? In the Pacific?" Blondie said

"No, probably Midway City, in Michigan." the redhead said. "Anything else, Mrs. Hunkel?."

"Nothing that I can recall." She said, and then added when the blonde raised his weapon again, "Really, I'm telling you the truth!."

"I believe you." Blondie said with an ugly smile, before shooting her twice in the chest. She fell on the floor, just before her seat.

"Godammit, Trent." Lang said. "It was necessary?"

"Yeah, you heard her, she had friends in the local FBI office." Trent answered, with a shrug, "Better this that having the feds after us."

"You deal with Trask after this. I guess he isn't going to be very happy with you." Lang said, rolling his eyes as he followed his partner toward the exit door.

They left Ma Hunkel lying on the floor, and it was not long before the car left the street. Ma took a deep breath when she heard them leaving and sat on the floor, examining the marks that the bullets had left on the bulletproof fabric. It hadn't penetrated it, but given the pain she was feeling, it was going to leave a couple of bruises.

But at least she already had a name, Trask. She had to call Rex and Carter about this, before she went to join Rogue on Jay's safe house.

 

[AntonioCC]

"Damn it. So whoever is killing people there, has control over all the approaches?" Garner asked.

"Not all of them." Jones said, after a pause. "There is an underground tunnel, part of a unfinished command bunker complex. During the construction of the Triskelion, Director Carter decided to keep it as an alternate entry or escape route in case of a lock-down. And the more important thing about it is that no one of the current SHIELD leadership knows about it."

"How is that possible?"

"Long story short: politics." Jones said, a hint of bitterness on his voice. "You would have to sign NDAs by the wazoo to be told the rest."

"Okay." Lane said, rolling his eyes, "Where it is located?"

"That's the thing, the bunker was supposed to go partially under the Potomac, and the entry to the tunnel is in the other side of the river." Jones said, "And I don't know how well preserved it is after... what happened. For all that I know, the roof could have crumbled and it could have been filled with water."

Inside the Triskelion. Roughly at the same time.​

The SHIELD agent with the deep scar in his face sighed and looked at his companions in this hiding place. He was the only one with combat experience, as most of them were administrative and technical personnel. When everything had gone South, he had managed to get some of the people of his section, where he had been doing administrative work until the doctor confirmed he was totally recovered, out of the way. But their little hideout wouldn't remain secure much longer.

"We could go to Underground Level Three." Said one of the paperpushers, a man in his late '40s, "There is an old storage area there, full of old files. I don't think that nobody else had been there in the last decade."

"And how do you know that?"

"Ah… sometimes I go there to smoke." The man said, sheepishly. "I keep away from the files, honest!"

The field agent didn't answer, while mentally reviewing the floorplans of the Triskelion, to see if there was some way to go to the lower levels, without attracting undue attention. He could do it easily, he was already a very experienced spec ops soldier even before being recruited by SHIELD. Though with this gaggle of civilians… he didn't like the odds.

But he liked less the fact that the butchers that were roaming the corridors right now would shoot first and ask questions later if they discovered them first. He had seen it all the time with his former boss, may he rot in Hell for all Eternity

'Okay, John, back to the present, the past is the past and you can't change it. The best option would be…' he was thinking as he elaborated the plan in his head.