Disclaimer: I own none of the rights to any of the copyrighted characters appearing in this work, and no infringement nor profit motive is intended. Rights belong respectively to Joss Whedon/Mutant Enemy/Fox, to either DC Comics and its parent companies or to the Shuster estate, depending on how a current court case turns out, or to Marvel Comics.
The vengeance demons (yes, we know they prefer justice demons as a title, but there's no need to be all PC) that serve D'Hoffryn, Dark Lord of Arash'mahar, are truly powerful. Although constrained by the need for a personal focus, they can otherwise make almost any small-scale changes to reality that are called for by those whose vengeance they are fulfilling. Such is the power of the Wish.
Even small changes to the past can be encompassed by this power. After all, major changes to the present can be the result of minor tweaks to the events of a decade ago. For want of a nail; don't step on the butterflies - you know the drill.
Therefore, when Lois Lane wishes that Superman were only a fictional character, it is not too much of a strain for Anyanka to derail Jor-El's escape plan for his son. Although the Starchild's Destiny is too great to delay forever, the Powers That Be are patient. It is not even too much of a stretch for her to insert a daydream of what might have been in two teenagers' heads, so that there is now a fictional Man of Steel where 'before' there was a real one. If this had been all that was asked of her, it would have been just another Wish duly granted.
But this was
not all that Lois Lane wished for. She also specified that all of the Man of Tomorrow's foes and allies should similarly stay "in the comic strips where they belong". There are dozens of each, including aliens from across the known universe, supernatural beings of great power, and otherwise normal humans with a Destiny or Fate to save or damn the world. Among Superman's foes there is a mischief maker from two planes up with greater power to alter reality than D'Hoffryn's brood will ever know. Among Superman's allies is the very Wrath of God, tied to the spectral remnants of a slightly bent Mick detective. Lois herself is an ally, depending on how you look at it, and definitely is a major part of Clark Kent's first, best Destiny.
This is too big a job for the self-proclaimed Patron Saint of Scorned Women. This is not the kind of job you just call up the head office about; this is the sort of job you regretfully decline. But it actually suits the purposes of certain Higher Powers from both sides to let the wish be granted nonetheless.
So not only is Superman removed from the cosmic chessboard (at least for the time being); so too are Luthor, Brainiac, Mxyzptlk (the imp doesn't take much convincing once it's pointed out he won't have Superman to play with anyway). So too are Lois, Jimmy, Perry; Bruce, and Kara, and many others.
Some have their lives and very geneaologies rewritten by one side or the other, so that their stories will not unfold for decades yet to come. Some are manipulated so that their otherwise ordained Destinies pass them by, possibly to come around again in future generations. Others still are politely asked not to visit Earth or its plane until they are called. For Anyanka is known to be arrogant and careless; eventually she will lose her power source and be rendered human, and at that point all her past Wishes that meddled with Time will be subject to... reinterpretation, if not outright reversal.
For the moment, it suits the Powers That Be, and the dark forces behind even D'Hoffryn, the Senior Partners and others even older, and especially the keepers of Balance, to sweep the board almost clean of the more powerful pieces on both sides. They will play a slower, more subtle game, where Champions on both sides operate in secret, and sometimes don't even know what side they serve. But they reserve the right to bring those pieces back when the opportunity arises.
Sunnydale, 1998.
Anyanka is careless, and her power object is destroyed. Her most recent Wish is reversed, and her past manipulations become open to revision.
The Powers That Be manipulate events so that Kal-El's capsule still lands outside Smallville, Kansas, and a couple called the Kents is there to adopt him, but rather later than in the previous version of history. They reach further back in time, and there is no fictional precursor published to the world's first superhero. Young Clark has a career as Superboy before reaching his majority, and joins a band of superpowered teens from a millenium in the future. The Senior Partners ensure that his rogues gallery appear on the scene as well, and the Powers That Be introduce more heroes.
Some two decades later, a Lois Lane who looks very similar to the one that came before, except she is dressed in Seventies fashions, walks into a bar and orders a double. Anyanka is once again drawn by her desire for vengeance, and she wishes much the same Wish, although now she refers to comic 'books' rather than 'strips'.
The board is swept of the major players once again; writers and artists are reinspired. A new generation of heroes and villains is affected by this change as well.
The Powers try again; Superman does not appear for the first time until the late 1970s. He defeats Lex Luthor, lets his secret slip to Lois much earlier in their relationship, and they are married. Then the idiot gives up his powers on the advice of a manifestation of the First. Sometimes appearing as anyone who has died actually comes in quite handy. He regains those powers in time to defeat Zod and his minions, and then he does the unforgivable; he abuses his power and erases Lois' memory of his secret identity and their love with a kiss. Lois of course eventually finds out, and the Wish is remade once again.
The Powers That Be Frustrated think they are on to something with the Superman of the 1990s, who very quickly confides his secret in Lois. Unfortunately, the schmuck fails to save Lois' parents (or his own) shortly after their wedding, and the same Wish is granted.
The careers of Superman's closest allies are tied in tandem with his own. Whenever Superman goes fictional, so too does the Batman and in some cases even all of Gotham City. Whenever Superman is brought back from limbo, so too does another version of Bruce Wayne discover his true calling. The World's Finest are too fine a team to break up; their Destinies are too intertwined.
Only those heroes and villains who are not too closely linked with either Clark or Bruce, and whose careers can be hidden from sight in the shadows of history, can avoid having their histories rewritten each time history is repeated. There is an Amazon princess who helps the Allies during WWII, and reappears during the 1970s, but her exploits are dismissed by most as urban legend. There is a Flash in Central City during the early 1990s, but his exceedingly short career is not much remembered, even by his nephew Bart.
The Powers That Be Fed Up have decided; the next revival of the Heroic Age, or at least Clark Kent's career as a costumed hero, has to wait until well
after the date on which Anyanka's power object is destroyed. That way she can't interfere again, and the cycle can finally be ended.
After all, D'Hoffryn wouldn't be silly enough to offer Anyanka her job back - would he?
Each time history is revised, some of the smaller details are left to the ground troops to arrange. That's what they're for.
The good guys get given clues to nip problems in the bud before they become menaces of supervillainous caliber, and the bad guys - they get to corrupt, distract, or otherwise derail those who would otherwise be heroes. Once all Destinies and Fates have been suitably diverted, the higher ups can take care of shifting the timeline in preparation for the next reboot, and the peons don't even remember that they were involved at all.
Holland Manners is dead, but he still has to show up for work every day. Isn't that the very definition of Hell?
He leafs through a set of folders on recent cases disposed of by the DDD - Department of Destiny Diversion.
Peter Parker - winged in a drive by shooting, unable to attend a science field trip.
Carter Hall, Kent Nelson, Ted Garrett - all denied funding for archaeological digs due to massive federal funding cuts.
Billy Batson - pulled off the streets and placed in a truly horrible foster home by a well-meaning Child Services employee.
Jim Corrigan - spared by the mob, only to face a brutal IAD investigation.
Dr. Erdel - experiments discredited, funding yanked.
Here's a funny one - the fishing village of Sinanju, subject to heavy shelling during WWII and again during the Korean War, for no good military reason that anyone can uncover. Shipments of gold confiscated by customs despite the best efforts of the nascent agency CURE; a great public scandal.
Holland muses: it's really a lot like jury selection. Each side dismisses those jurors they think will do them the most damage. Of course, you have to think about which ones the other side will want to dismiss as well; for every white piece taken out there's also a black one lost.
Leaving only those that can be best described as shades of grey.
The cycles of revision create a lot of work for a little-known division of the celestial hierarchy - the Muses.
Every time a new iteration of the Wish decrees that all the caped and masked should be 'only' fictional, not only do the destinies and fates of each player need to be altered; a host of writers, artists, and even actors need to be inspired to create the stories in which they will still appear. This is the province of Muses, and they don't mind going all through the timeline to whisper storylines in ears and paint pictures in dreamscapes; really they don't. It's their job.
What they really hate is the other side of the process. Every time the Heroic Age snaps back into actuality, all those fictional versions of the reborn Champions need to be erased or changed into something innocuous. It wouldn't do for everyone to know that Superman is really Clark Kent, only wears glasses for show, and is vulnerable to Kryptonite. It really wouldn't. People might start to catch on, and the Powers can't be having with
that, now can they?
No, the Muses don't like erasing stories; it goes against the grain. Frequently, they try to get by with converting a creator's inspiration to produce a thinly veiled analogue of the real deal. This rarely satisfies; how often is a copy preferable to the original? Julius Schwartz comes up with comic book characters Ultra-Man and Night Wizard, but they flop and he's on skid row by the time the second iteration of Superman comes around.
Depending on the timeline, though, this business of analogues can give a nice foreshadowing effect to the Big Picture, or the Whole Story, whichever you want to call it. Demonicus was once Warrior Angel's best friend in the adventures of the original comic book superhero; perhaps Lex and Clark should pay more attention? But no, if it was obvious enough for them to notice, the Powers That Be would also spot it and call the Muse responsible out for sloppy work, union rules or no.
Perhaps this is the reason that the story of Christmas is foreshadowed by the earlier myths of Adonis, Mithras, and Tammuz? Have there been earlier cycles of contested history, with the biggest players of all taken in and out of contention?
Nobody is telling. It's 1999, and in the middle of a sparring match, Riley's comment that Buffy is "Spider-Man strong" goes from being a pop culture reference to one dealing with current events.
And none of the puppets notice the hands pulling their strings. For now.
2003, Sunnydale.
Well, it happened. Evidently, even the Powers That Be can jinx themselves. Anya Jenkins, formerly the vengeance demon Anyanka, got stood up at the altar by the second biggest wild card in the deck, one Xander Harris, and decided to go back to her old job. What's more, D'Hoffryn took her back.
Oh, sure, she changed her mind
again, and is currently a human being. Still, she's too unpredictable, there's too good a chance she'll somehow gain the power of the Wish and mess things up yet again.
Conveniently enough, there's another apocalypse coming; always seems to almost happen around this time of year. Plenty of opportunity for random mayhem, won't even have to make things obvious. Besides, that Harris character still keeps cracking jokes even after losing an eye; he could stand a little more tragedy in his life, look what it did for Job.
No, Anya Jenkins is a marked woman; marked by the Higher Powers as well as the Lower this time around. She's got to die, even if it means that those less worthy survive instead.
As Kurt Vonnegut says, so it goes.
The Powers That Be and the darker Powers contend across a game board that is the world. They change the rules and the balance of the pieces from time to time, just to make it more interesting.
In a version of history that never was, the 20th century was a pageant of colors and darkness; gods and monsters walked and flew in full view of the common man. Not only was the world saved from utter disaster just about every Tuesday, but you could read about it in the daily paper.
In the now that is, 'after' (if that is even the right word for it) the umpteenth iteration of that infamous Wish, the Powers preside over a game of shadows. The world's still in peril, it still needs heroes to save it. But these Champions work in secret, their praises left forever unsung. Even the worst of evils hides in the darkness, only coming out to play when the stars are right. Humanity hides its collective head under the covers and pretends that there are no monsters under the bed.
Things are starting to change, though. A town disappears into a sinkhole, and girls all over the world start to display exceptional strength. Los Angeles experiences a rain of fire, the blacking out of the sun, and mass hypnosis by some kind of New Age preacher. New York has its Spider-Man and now the Fantastic Four, and now there are increasing reports from around the world of 'mutants' with strange powers; it's even the subject of legislation in Congress. The world is starting to wake up to the strange things that have always been there.
Why? It's simple. The Powers got bored.
Disclaimer: In addition to the disclaimer on the first chapter, certain ideas in this chapter are borrowed from Steve Jackson Games.
The Powers game with the lives of their Champions, as we have said. They manipulate events from afar, preferring subtle nudges to direct intervention. Yet they are still often surprised by the actions of their pawns; free will still sometimes throws them a curve ball. Indeed, sometimes their very own interventions come around and bite them on the ass.
Janus, Power of Chaos, provides the power for an acolyte's spell one Halloween. Xander Harris, retaining some memories and skills from that night, is instrumental in blocking the ascendancy of chaotic forces not once, but many times.
The Power one day to be known as Jasmine intervenes with a snow storm to save Angel from the machinations of the First, the better to maneuver him into fathering a miracle child and eventually becoming its grandfather on Earth. Angel finds her true name and breaks her hold on the minds of a nation; the child Connor destroys her.
Could it be the Powers themselves are somehow being played? What sort of entity could be powerful and subtle enough to play puppeteer to the puppeteers?
Destiny is a life's best, truest purpose. It can only be met willingly, by the choice to pursue it against all obstacles. Angel strives towards his Destiny, precisely because he believes he has no reward awaiting him.
Fate is that which awaits you no matter where you turn or how you try to avoid its clutches. It is often fulfilled precisely by those actions meant to avoid it. Lilah meets her Fate, and cannot turn away no matter what loopholes might be offered her; she knew what she was signing up for.
It is said that the Archangel Yves has a legion of angels that encourage mortals to find their Destiny. He is in eternal contention with Kronos, Demon Prince of Fate. This is true.
It is said that Destiny is a tall blind man with a book that records all, standing in a garden of endless paths. This too is true.
The ancient Greeks believed Zeus to be most powerful of all, with one exception. Even Zeus feared and respected the Three Fates: Clotho, who spun the thread of life; Lachesis, who wove a tapestry from those threads; and Atropos, who waited with her shears to cut the thread when life was done. The Greeks had it pretty much right.
What guardian angel kept Xander Harris alive through too many apocalypses to name? What demon whispered in Lindsey's ear to drown out his conscience?
What path is Angel truly walking? Does Buffy's life line have two knots in it where it was broken but still runs on?
And did Anyanka, instrument of the Powers in their infinite game, achieve her Destiny, or her Fate, at the end?
No one can tell you truly, least of all those who style themselves the Powers That Be.
In the world 'before' (mortal language is really not suited for this) Anyanka first granted the Wish to a tough lady reporter, there were Champions galore on both sides. In the 'new' version (which is now the way it always was) of the last century, they are few and far between. The Slayer, for however long she may last; Angel, vampire with a soul; Spike, force first for darkness and then for light; Drogyn, the Battle Brand; and others whose stories we may not yet know, but few, very few. They are valuable game pieces, and much attention is paid to their lives by the Powers. Sometimes they must feel hemmed in, hardly able to make a simple choice for all the prophecies, plots, and other goings on that seem to determine the course of their lives.
What of their lives in a world without the Wish, where any given Champion is just one among many, where they form Societies, Leagues, Legions?
No mortal knows these stories. No Muse ever whispered them in an author's ear, for these Champions were never banished from the flow of history. No record should exist.
But in a castle in the middle of the Land of Nod, there is a library that contains every book an author dreamed of writing but did not, every book a reader dreamed of finding but never would. Every one. And here the stories can be found. Here is one.
*****
Chicago, 1940.
Liam, formerly the Scourge of Europe known as Angelus, hears stories about a mysterious figure known as the Bat running around in Gotham City, scaring criminals out of their wits. It occurs to him, without benefit of Balance Demon visitation, that perhaps there is a way for him to seek some sort of redemption for his past crimes. Soon, the gangs of Chicago are also terrorized by a dark clad figure; he leaves a calling card with a stylized wings and halo behind.
He becomes known as the Dark Angel, refines his crime fighting techniques, encounters a rogues gallery of characters from the criminal and demonic underworlds. The Surgeon, reincarnation of serial killer H.H. Holmes, is among the worst of these.
The Dark Angel is invited to join the Justice Society; becomes part of the Justice Battalion in Europe when America joins the war. He ends up being instrumental in freeing a group of Kalderash Gypsies from a Nazi death camp, and reaches rapprochement with the clan leader, learning of the 'happiness clause' in his curse and how to avoid triggering it.
The Batman discovers the Dark Angel's secret vampire nature and confronts him with it; Dark Angel convinces him of his sincerity in battle against the immortal R'as al Ghul and the two become fast friends over the years, even covering each other's cities from time to time.
By the time Buffy Summers is Chosen, the Dark Angel is resident in the City of Angels. Aiding her in battle against the master vampire Lothos after her first Watcher, Merrick, is slain, he offers to train her as a Slayer and a superhero both. When the Council finally realizes that Buffy Summers is still alive and sends a green-as-grass Wesley Wyndham-Price to take over her life, he and they are coldly rebuffed. The Dark Angel and his new sidekick Blonde Fury patrol the streets of LA together.
Buffy Summers once asked what the proper plural of apocalypse was. The truth was, she had yet to see even one.
The word apocalypse comes from the Greek
apokalupsis, revelation. Translated literally, it means a revealing, an uncovering of the true nature of the world. It need not be the end, except in that it would be the end of how people saw the world before their eyes were truly opened.
Every apocalypse that Buffy has fought to stop was a complete and total failure. Nothing of the true nature, the dark underside of world was uncovered; instead, the truth was covered up, in some cases quite literally, with concrete. And Buffy fought to keep it so, even once she rebelled against the Council.
Are the Slayers and Watchers truly friends of humanity? Certainly they fight the forces of darkness, but they also keep the fight secret. How well would vampires hunt and breed if people
knew, not as legend but as certainty, not to invite strangers into their homes, to check everyone out in a mirror, and that cremation is really the best funeral arrangement? Xander loves Buffy as a friend too much to ever openly speak the horrible truth, but still he sometimes thinks -
If only you had told us sooner, then Jesse would still be alive.Is it really a good idea to place the fate of the world in the hands of a small group of friends, without informing the billions whose very lives depend on the outcome? Was it really a good idea for earlier Slayers to face these same threats without even that much support, with only the help of their Watchers?
Finally, the veil is starting to lift. There are scores if not hundreds of superstrong girls scattered across the planet; LA has gone through too much in the last few years to pretend that everything is normal. Mutants are becoming a political problem, and cities like New York and Gotham have real-life superheroes swinging between their skyscrapers. Very soon now a farm boy not originally from Kansas will truly astound the world.
And the monsters will come as well; there always must be darkness to oppose the light. Some will be costumed, some will hide in the halls of industry and politics, and some will naturally look like the demons they are. But the moment that the existence of these new gods and monsters of the age is acknowledged by the world, will that not be an apocalypse?
Now in New York, Sophie Bangs has been Chosen, not by the Slayer spirit, but by a spirit of imagination and wonder. She has become an avatar of Promethea, story made flesh. Her purpose is to usher in the Apocalypse, not through destruction, but simply by convincing the world to finally believe in magic.
Will she find in Buffy Summers an ally, or her deadliest enemy?
Disclaimer: This chapter introduces more characters and stuff that I don't own; I won't provide an exhaustive list of the actual owners, for fear of spoiling the story.
A new Heroic Age, an era of gods and monsters, is dawning in the early years of the 21st century. The Powers That Be have all their ducks in a row; the child from the stars will not rise to prominence until well after the demise of the justice demon Anyanka, lest all their careful planning be undone. Their manipulations run backwards and forwards through time, ensuring that conditions will be right for his debut, and the clearest revelation yet that the world beyond your window is truly stranger than fiction.
For this advent, this nativity of wonder to have its full impact, the true history of the 20th century must remain secret, the battles of its Champions covert, unrecorded. The world must not only believe a man can fly, but that one does so for the first time. He cannot be considered an also-ran, a Johnny-come-lately. That would not do.
Nevertheless, the previous century is full of false starts, lives and adventures that would prefigure this New Age, if people only knew or remembered them. All the corners are not tucked in, not every toy has been picked off the floor and hidden in a chest.
The word monster comes the Latin
monstrum, which can also mean an omen, portent, or sign. These anomalies, heroes and villains both, serve as warnings of what is to come for those who have eyes to see.
*****
Cousins are born to an old English family, both bearing signs arising from their ancestors' close encounter with the stars. They are strangely robust, strong, intelligent, possessed of keen senses; practically supermen by birth, refined even more by their strange upbringing.
One is lost in the wilderness, raised by creatures halfway between man and beast. He grows strong and untamed, remaining restless and unsatisfied even when found by mankind and given his inheritance. His is a long life, full of hidden cities and turbulent adventure.
The other is raised by a father ridden by guilt over past crimes, trained from infancy in every art and science imaginable. He is tasked with fighting evil in all its forms to atone for his father's sins. He becomes a surgeon, an engineer, a scientist, a soldier in a never-ending battle. Gathering other remarkable men about him, he looks down on a city that never sleeps from a high perch, pilots one of the biplanes on the day the great ape falls.
Both allow pulp writers to make stories of their lives, safely hiding their adventures and their secrets in the fiction stacks.
*****
The priests call him Gabriel, for he cannot remember his true name when they find him. He does not age as other men, and heals quickly from any injury. What he remembers best is how to fight, as though he were born to it. The Vatican uses him as a weapon against the forces of darkness, arming him with weapons designed by an older, faded warrior. He takes the last name of his mentor, and their legends become confused.
Decades later, he will bear another name, and sport new weapons that cannot be removed, for they are fused to his very flesh and bone.
*****
The young man is classified 4-F, but he has a burning desire to fight for his country. He is the perfect test subject for the professor's newly refined formula, and its only recipient as a saboteur strikes.
He is a shield against evil, a hero in red, white, and blue. Decades later he will be dismissed as a legend, or a failed propaganda effort. That there are comic books about his exploits only supports these theories. But there are men who were at Normandy, at the Bulge, and elsewhere who remember him well. No one listens as they age and fade away over the years, yet still they say he is merely dreaming, under ice, and that one day he will return.
*****
The Amazon leaves her secret island, intrigued by the young pilot and his country's struggle against a great evil. She appears in public, allows herself to be used to sell bonds, fights some foes, does some good. Still, nobody believes who does not see her themselves, and her message of peace and love goes unheard amidst a sea of hate against the enemy. When her adopted country obliterates not one but two defenseless cities with a new power, she exiles herself in tears.
Decades later she tries again, inserts herself into the military-intelligence apparatus of the world's one true superpower. Again, she is able to win some important battles, but not shape policy. Again, she is not believed, is treated as no more than a rumor.
Perhaps, she muses as she goes into exile once again, they will be ready for her in a few more decades. For now, she must refresh her heart in the bosom of her homeland, and sojourn with her sisters while the world spins on without her.
*****
The boy is still alive when the Allies come to free the camp. As he is fed, he regains strength, not just in his muscles and bones, but in his connections to the threads of force that run through everything, strongest in objects of iron or steel. He hides his talent; he knows that even bending a few spoons could result in him being taken away as a military asset.
He knows he should feel grateful to be liberated, but his family is gone. All he can think of is his need for vengeance, to assure that no one ever dares commit such atrocities again. He is offered a place in a new land, a new country, under the Law of Return; but he cannot feel at home among his own people. He knows he is something different, other, by an accident of birth. He is alone.
Eventually, he finds another, the same but different. His new friend knows his desire without the need for words, and helps him find the monsters. Once found, the boy, now a man, brings their surroundings to life around them. Some are believed to have committed suicide, whether by gunshot or stab wound. Others are found in the aftermath of what seems to have been a small bomb, filled with shrapnel that all, curiously, turns out to be made of metal. Soon there is a rumor among the old men of ODESSA about a death that awaits the unwary or unlucky; they call it
Der Metalsturm.
Soon his friend has enough of death, and turns to looking for more like them. The boy believes he has found a new clan, but his friend insists that all men are brothers. Eventually the two men who are as brothers find themselves split, at war.
*****
A man is found in the surf, with gills and webs between his fingers and catslit eyes. He joins the research team that first studies him in their submersible for a time, then simply swims away one day.
*****
He had always prided himself on being normal, everyday - not like his father, the famous (or should that be infamous?) mad scientist, castaway, kook. So naturally he had to be the one to get picked by aliens to bear their suit, to save the world.
He had never felt able to measure up to his father; a teaching certificate versus how many Ph.D.s? So naturally he lost the instruction booklet, couldn't fly straight. Almost managed to lose the world despite all his powers, where his father had (supposedly) thwarted an alien invasion with only his own ingenuity.
He was a dyed-in-the-wool liberal. So naturally they had to pair him with the most conservative, by-the-book agent the FBI had ever seen.
He never did learn to fly straight.
*****
A cloud of meteors accompanies the tiny spacecraft, changing lives forever in the small town where it lands. One large chunk is diverted far to the east, where it impacts a humble schoolteacher. Mysteriously empowered rather than killed, this peaceful man soon finds himself at war with the gangs that plague his neighborhood. He adopts a costume and code name like something out of a Warrior Angel comic book to protect his family and friends. Not much time passes before his charge of energy runs out, and he passes into urban legend.
*****
A police scientist is drenched with chemicals and struck by lightning; soon he can outrun the very bolt from the blue that spawned him. He defends a city, always a blur; the truth is only ever reported in the tabloids, and soon enough he dies a hero's death.
His lover gives her child his last name, and thanks the skies that he is normal. But adolescence proves her wrong, and soon the gingerbread boy is running away as fast as he can. Only to run into a brick wall of a Kansas farm boy, who teaches him about responsibility and learns to revel in his own powers just a little bit.
Author's Note: For dramatic purposes, I must push Spider-Man's origin back into S2, the main events of Spider-Man the Movie to S3, and have the events of Spider-Man 2 occur sometime in S7, even though it is implied in the movies that Spider-Man has not been active for quite that long. That much more of a career for him to be able to have crossovers in, I say!
December, 1998
The Slayer line has been broken for over a year, and now there are two. Buffy Summers, the one who came back, continues to survive time after time, while her replacement Kendra is killed and another is called. There is an imbalance in the Force, as it were, and the way has been opened for the First Evil to manifest freely once again. The rituals performed by the ever-faithful Bringers are merely a formality.
The First is at the root of the darkness and corruption in every human heart, but it can only fully empower a host whose soul is truly twisted. Norman Osborn is well on his way to becoming such a one, blinded by ambition and greed. The opportunity is too good to pass up; Anansi the Trickster has taken an avatar, and the First cannot risk the Spider-Man becoming an ally to either Angel or Buffy. Not at this stage of the game. A distraction is needed.
Dr. Stromm is right; the performance enhancers are deeply flawed, even deadly. Indeed, Norman Osborn's heart even stops for a moment, he is technically dead before he awakes in a drug-induced rage. That is all the opening the First needs.
It appears to Norman as a voice in his head, as his own figure in the mirror. It enters him and fills him with strength that the drug cocktail could never have provided when he dons the Goblin armor.
"What do you want?" asks Norman of himself.
"To do what you can't, to say what you won't - to remove those in your way..." replies the First, wearing his face in the mirror.
Under the First's influence, the Goblin passes up numerous chances to kill Spider-Man. Imagine if he could be made to despair, to hate the masses who misunderstand, to turn; what a warrior the First would have! It's worth the chance.
Until Osborn manages to impale himself on his glider. Oh well, muses the First. Easy come, easy go.
*****
Spring 2003
Harry can't bring himself to do it. After all this anticipation, this obsession with revenge on Spider-Man, he turns out to be his best friend Peter. And Harry needs to spare him so he can go rescue Mary Jane, who Harry still loves despite everything. He despises himself for his weakness. Disgust and hatred roil together in his heart.
The First is very active these days, orchestrating the destruction of the Slayer line. Anansi's seed has found his heart again, and it wouldn't do for Spider-Man to rescue any of the Potentials in New York City. Another distraction is needed.
Easy.
"Hello?", says Harry. "Who's that?"
"Son", says the First in a dead man's voice. "I'm here."
"Dad? I thought you were..."
"No. I'm alive in you, Harry. Now it's your turn. You swore to make Spider-Man pay. Now make him pay."
"But Pete's my best friend."
"And I'm your father. You're weak. You were always weak. You'll always be weak until you take control. Now you know the truth about Peter. Be strong, Harry. Avenge me."
The boy breaks the mirror containing his father's image. Behind it is a secret alcove, with all the Goblin's secrets. Including the drugs. Maybe the boy's heart will stop, maybe it won't. It doesn't matter, the First has him in its web regardless. He'll make a fine host, especially if the preacher doesn't work out.
Too easy.
Of course, there are many other tales that could be told of the Shadow Wars, and of the New Dawn. Here are but a few, and just a taste of each.
*****
New York City, 1972
He could not stay.
T'Chaka, Crown Prince of Wakanda, had been sent abroad to seek a bride, one day to become his queen. And he had found the one, a strong woman and a brave one, yet hardly old enough at sixteen to wed by the standards of either his people or his hosts here in America. No matter, he could have waited, and courted her properly, and all would have been well, and all manner of things would have been well.
But Nikki Wood was Called to a different destiny, Chosen for a long fight and a short life. T'Chaka had tried to help her, donning his ceremonial costume and calling upon the Primal power of the Panther God. He had aided her in destroying the creatures of darkness, not least the Master Vampire Mamuwalde. They had even been together briefly, despite the stern glances of her Watcher, one-eyed Samuel.
It could not last. She would never be able to leave her duty behind, and soon enough he was called back to his homeland for an arranged marriage. His father was ailing, soon to die, and his duty was clear as well. She said nothing as he said goodbye, turned to go.
And so it came to pass, many years later, that when Robin Wood accompanied Xander on his journey to gather the Slayers of Africa, and gave formal greeting to T'Challa, the Black Panther, King of Wakanda, each man gazed into a brother's eyes.
*****
Chicago, 1979
"Well, Mr. Kolchak, I think we can safely say you were right", said Wonder Woman as she climbed back in the hole in the wall of the fifth floor laboratory. "There
is a large green monster roaming Chicago, and probably the United States."
"I knew it", replied the rumpled reporter. "McGee may be a bit of an ass sometimes, but he's a good reporter. He doesn't just make things up, at least not that I've ever caught him at." He paused, looking around at the banks of smashed equipment and the unconscious forms of several men around him, guns lying near a few of them. "No luck finding him, I guess?".
"No", said the Amazon princess, "he appears to have jumped unharmed to the street, then sprinted off somewhere. I searched the nearest few blocks, and saw nothing. He's disappeared, again."
"Any idea what our mystery man wanted here, or why these guys were after him?"
"I'm afraid I couldn't hazard a guess, at least not one that I could share with you and your paper, Mr. Kolchak. I do know from some friends that some classified research goes on here at the University, and these gentlemen appear to resemble some Russian spies I was asked to look out for." She bent to check the condition of the nearest unconscious man as she spoke.
"Well, from the looks of things, nobody got what they wanted here, did they?" mused the reporter.
"Including you, Mr. Kolchak. I doubt your editor will let you print this story without some kind of hard evidence that either the monster or I was ever here, and even the presence of these men will likely fall under national security." She rose from her kneeling position. "For what it's worth, if you do write about the creature regardless, it may be unduly harsh to call it a 'monster'. For all that our green friend had the strength to smash all this equipment and put that hole in the wall, none of the men that tangled with it are more than mildly concussed. Nor did it seek a confrontation with either of us. I would guess it mainly reacts to perceived threats, and rather gently at that." Her face turned towards the hole to the outside once again. "Perhaps we will meet again."
It is a fallacy to think that the Internet was invented in the 1990s, whatever one thinks of Al Gore's role in its development. In actuality, Internet e-mail was commonplace between academic, military, and scientific institutions for more than two decades before the advent of the World Wide Web, but few people outside of those institutions had any inkling of its use in 1979. It is therefore perhaps forgivable that neither investigator noticed the blinking cursor on the one computer console that remained intact within the room. Before transforming into his alter ego, David Bruce Banner had just managed to send a copy of his research files to his cousin David, who was working in a military lab somewhere in the Southwest.
*****
Eastern Europe, 2005
Angel crouched on the ridgeline, looking down from the low mountain range onto the small principality of Latveria. His quest to get the remaining members of the Kalderash Gypsy clan to amend his curse had fizzled, the only remaining descendant of his erstwhile tormentors that had any magical talent both turned and staked. He had been about to seek passage back to the States, when a small item in the paper had alerted him to another possibility.
Victor Von Doom II, the effective crown prince of Latveria, had apparently gone mad and attacked not only his former business associates and new 'superheroes', the so-called Fantastic Four, but also several squad cars full of New York's finest. This had been done in full public view on the city street, using some kind of electrical device. For his trouble, he had evidently been melted or cremated into the bizarre suit of armor he had been wearing when he lost it, and his corpse, if that was the right word for a metal statue probably containing his ashes, was due to be buried with full state honors once it arrived on the next freighter.
This would normally have been of little interest to Angel, other than the item that there would soon be a freighter going back the other way, which he might use to smuggle himself back home. But something niggled at the back of his mind.
Didn't Doom Senior come from Gypsy roots? And even if he wasn't Kalderash, wasn't it rumored that he was a powerful sorceror, in addition to being a technological wizard, his inventions the basis for his small country's wealth? Angel remembered rumors that Kissinger himself had come to secretly court the iron-fisted dictator's favor, back during the height of the Cold War. That there were very good reasons none of Latveria's neighbors even thought about invading, regardless of how bad things got in the region.
Angel even thought he might remember something from the files on the Circle of the Black Thorn, that suggested Doom had refused an offer of membership with what the notation said was "extreme prejudice".
Of course, the funeral of his only son might not be the best time to ask such a man for a favor. Still, he was in the area, and surely any border defenses he needed to cross would be designed to detect the passage of living creatures, not somebody at room temperature who didn't need to breathe. "There can't be any harm in asking, can there?" muttered the souled vampire as he headed down the slope.
Disclaimer: More characters appear that I don't own.
The Doctor is not your typical Gallifreyan. For one thing, he loves to travel; just loves it. Up and down the time stream, across the galaxy, it doesn't matter; anywhere and everywhere the TARDIS can take him.
Another thing about the Doctor is that he seems to know no fear, not like those other pansies that hide out on their planet at the end of Time. Oh, he shows concern for a Companion's well-being often enough, but for himself? Nothing. If not for the endless feud between his people and the Oans over who was *really* the first humanoid race to arise in the universe, he might well have been offered a ring and a power battery. Might have taken them, too, if only to piss his own people off, but one really can't see him going for the uniform. Oh, well.
The third thing that is notable about the Doctor is that he has a strange fondness for Earth, which is, to quote the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, "an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet which circles a small unregarded yellow sun in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western spiral arm of the Galaxy." You'd think that he would have better places to go, but no, he keeps ending up back here. We could ascribe this to a selection factor, viz. the stories about the Doctor that Earth people are most likely to care about are those dealing with us or people very much like us, but he himself has remarked on his fondness for Earth and its people. Look at the number of Companions from this backwater planet alone...
But wait, it gets stranger still! Of all the many times that the Doctor, in whatever regeneration, has visited Earth, the vast majority of those visits have been to the same small island in the Atlantic - England. He hardly ever makes it to the Americas, and never during the 20th century at all. Curiouser and curiouser.
Why should this be? asks Rose Tyler. She's seen C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tanhauser Gate, but still she'd like to see the Grand Canyon for herself.
Does she remember the time she tried to save her Da, and the Reapers came to try to sterilize the wound she had created in time? Of course she does. His people may call themselves Time Lords, but even they live by very strict rules when it comes to meddling with time.
But Earth is subject to Powers that are not so restricted. They meddle in time almost at will, and feel free to jigger it about for the smallest advantage in some great game that they play. How does he know? Because the one ability you cannot take away from a Time Lord is a sense of the flow of time, along with memories of the original course of events.
The history of the 20th century has been rewritten and turned back on itself so many times that the river of time is almost ready to lap over its banks. It's almost unbearable to come back to an era one has visited before in one's personal timeline and see so much changed from how you remember it, how you know it should be - in America. England is not nearly as bad. There have been very few time reversals or revisions centered around events in England, so that's where he goes, and even then he's careful of the date. There's a reason he kept coming back to 2005, besides Rose's need to maintain connection with family and friends; there are whole sections of the eighties, nineties, and oughts that he tries to avoid if at all possible.
Still, he muses, the intervention of the Powers is not all bad; at least London is relatively intact and not a partially rebuilt ruin around a tower going into the stratosphere. In fact, the Doctor was glad to take on the issue of the crashed Qys ship himself when the Powers' seer alerted him to the issue, not that Johnny Bates' rampage wasn't a clue in itself. Earth was nowhere near ready for super-powered cloning technology, after all.
No sooner spoken, the Doctor feels another time shift pass through him. He looks over at his most recent Companion, one Rose Moran. Her features are much the same, but she looks a lot less pleased with his explanation. Explain to me again, she says, why we couldn't save my Da? I mean, sure, we don't want to change history, but his body was never found. Couldn't we have just brought him to the future without calling the Reapers?
Now, Rose, he says. Please calm down. I'll go over it with you again if you want, and if you're not convinced we'll see what we can do about things. But whatever - and he pauses to lick his lips - whatever you do, don't say it.
"Kimota!" she says, and the world explodes. The Doctor isn't caught by the blast; he was already running the moment her lips started to form the first syllable. Not that it's likely to do him any good.
Bullshit, the Doctor knows no fear.
