"Tsunami"

BY JACOB MILNESTEIN

"This is the truth, at least that was the way we were always told it."

With delicate eyes she looked out across the streets, pale hordes of shadow coloured cars stretched out across the pollutant-intoxicated streets in a myriad of ecological evils, each following one after another.

That was the price for the technological hedonism of the twentieth century, the next hundred years to be forever spent in a climate of political disrepute and antagonism.

Her hand shook nervously, the fire dancing for a brief moment before she was able to light her cigarette.

"You see, nothing matters anymore," she whispered. "God, Hiroshima - they were always the same thing. Time isn't just a stream that we wet our feet in, it's the last pestilence that we, as a race, will ever have to face."

There was a confused silence and she found herself leaning forward, her breath stale within the confines of architecture.

"Look, let me tell you a story - a story about the Devil, the real Devil."

The shadows murmured their consent; forms twisting in perverse mathematics like the dawn was upon them.

A smile flickered across her face, momentarily lit by the grim tube station subway light.

She placed her hand over her mouth and coughed gently, a subtle effluvium of cigarette smoke and tainted breath.

"Do you remember Excalibur?" she asked.

The shadows shuffled nervously as if recognition in some way led to recrimination.

She nodded gracefully.

"Good. That makes all this a lot easier." She paused, grinding her teeth, and the cigarette between them, together.

The shadows shifted once again.

"The arrival of the Anti-God changed everything. Once again, we find ourselves facing the dark shadows that we thought had been prevented when the assassination attempt on the 'American' was averted." A meaningful pause as Konstantinova glared into the abyss for several minutes. "We were wrong. His continued existence preserved the eighties - it won't save us." Another pause, silence lingering in the Kings Cross twilight. "Alliances must be formed if we are to take a stance against both America and the Anti-God Baal in the forthcoming war; to that end we will need an emissary to Faerie." Pause. "Any suggestions?"

The shadows coughed and shuffled, finally giving way to a shape - a young woman, her face covered in dirt and her hair matted and dreadlocked.

"I'll do it," the girl whispered quietly.

Konstantinova arched her eyebrows, forming a single line above her eyes.

"Toppers." She smiled.

Yet her smile quickly transformed itself into a frown, her gaze settling on the young child's pointed ears and sighing.

"Okay...you're either some fuck-wit alien from some crap American TV show like Star Trek or, alternatively, you're actually a real fucking faerie lass which would explain why you look so bloody young."

The 'child' bowed her head, somewhat ashamed.

"My name is Meggan Fey. I am a former subject of the court of her majesty, Queen Titania."

Konstantinova offered her a quaint smile.

"That just made our odds a tad better," she replied gently in her throne of refuge.

In the outside world, pale chemical light glimmered across the collapsing structure of the building and quietly, the world prepared for Armageddon...

Chesterton straightened his imposing black tie and spat the foul taste of paper cup brewed black coffee out across the floor in strings of phlegm and the aforementioned offending coffee.

It had not been an entirely great week for Black Air.

First they had 'lost' track of Braddock, a man they had been keeping tabs on for the past sixteen years -- since the Excalibur team had been shattered by certain Code Black events -- and then shortly after that their ambassador to Hell, Christian Fry, had been prematurely terminated by Baal, the Anti-God and current Prince of Darkness.

Now it seemed as though that were just the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

New methods had to be pursued; new ways of control would have to be employed.

When SHIELD had suddenly developed a conscience during the late Eighties, an organised genetic witch-hunt had been set in motion.

Many of Extechop's brightest sparks had fled America for fear of being dragged before Colonel Fury and/or President Wind and so they had fled their motherland - the trouble was that once you leave America, you're in the arms of Black Air.

Now all that remained was to place the final pieces on the chessboard.

Chesterton reached out and placed a fine, carved oak figure on the board before him.

Soon Baal's forces would rise up once again and then Black Air would seize control of both Doomshield and Excalibur.

He smiled to himself and then silently turned towards the exit.

Soon...

Konstantinova stood within the confines of her atrocity exhibition, her pale hair dancing from side to side in what she considered to be an ironic yet artistic fashion and reflected.

None of this would have been possible had not the timelines been so violently assaulted by time-active civilisations back in the early nineties.

The world in which these people had once lived had slowly been swallowed by her own Earth, causing ripples across the surface of reality and a paradox so big you could hide an orchestra in it, splintering out in fragmented realities where both identity and individuality become null and void.

This strange new world that she had glimpsed through the dreams of her childhood had become a part of known history and the main focus of events seemed to be in the early twenty-first century.

The faerie girl, Meggan, looked uncomfortable as she followed her up the corrupted stairwell and Konstantinova knew how she felt.

It was bad enough having to return to the Lands of the Fair Folk for her but, for a faerie so recently enamoured with her freedom, Konstantinova could make an educated guess that 'uncomfortable' would be too polite a term.

She afforded her unusually young companion a sympathetic smile and then pushed the almost stained glass door wide open.

With a grace she only applied in the direst of occasions she stepped through the doorway.

Meggan hung back for a moment and Konstantinova thought she saw the 'child' draw in her breath before she stepped in.

The air was stale, a place where nothing moved and then the atmosphere itself seemed to move.

A pale masculine hand touched Konstantinova's shoulder causing her to almost leap back several feet.

The atmosphere smiled.

"Greetings, Konstantinova." A male voice from behind her purred. "For a moment there I mistook you for your mother."

Regaining her calm, Konstantinova turned.

"Yeah," she replied. "Sorry about that but I didn't know who else to turn to."

Doctor Occult nodded.

"Yes." He replied. "I know."

The creature moved in a symphony of flailing limbs and organic discrepancies.

It was beautiful, or as close to beauty as an emissary of the seventh layer of Hell could ever hope to get.

Yes, beauty was most definitely in the eye of the beholder, the hideous Lord of Hell reflected, its malformed goat's skull/head moving from side to side, keeping track of its latest homunculette, like a twisted automaton.

"I take it all is to your approval, Lord Baal?" Mephistopheles asked, tilting its cremated head in accordance with its master's.

The Anti-God clasped its hands together, squeezing the tainted blood from its own digits.

"It will serve its purpose." It announced, pausing briefly as steam rose out of its rancid inhuman nostrils. "And how is our guest, the good Brian Braddock?"

Mephistopheles smiled darkly, revealing several rows of shattered and decaying teeth.

"He is responding well to treatment. Soon he will be ripe for your mark, my Lord."

Baal's 'grin' grew wider, shattering the laws of temporal physics and existence.

"This is good," the creature snarled. "Make sure it is so."

The daemon known as Mephistopheles genuflected before its master and quickly turned back towards the multitude of caverns that led towards Baal's 'guest'.

Somewhere in Hell, a flower was blossoming from the seeds of human flesh...

Birmingham...A collage of decaying architecture and ruined lives, one of the many cities that overlap in the complex industrial web of Britain, stretching out in ruination and failed idealism.

Sandra had lived in Birmingham all her life, watching the alleged 'progress' of first the Tories and then New Labour, as each day it arrived wearing a new masque and adding to the misery that slowly stifled her, preparing her for drowning.

But now, now she was in London, or rather what was left of London, and Sandra was quickly discovering that it didn't matter where you were in Britain because each city was a coffin made in the image of a universal State and Church.

Gently she leant over the crumpled body of Miki Manson and wiped a cloth over the young woman's face.

For the first time since she was a child, Sandra found herself praying to the dead God that her parents had raised her to believe in.

Yet in her heart of hearts she knew it was a futile gesture.

After all, parents never do stop lying, do they?

Outside, the streets tingled with anticipation, waiting for their newest master to spawn itself from the layers of sin that engulfed their mundane and puerile lives.

And soon, oh, so soon, all their prayers would be answered...

Meggan folded her arms across her chest, tugging at the thin layer of cloth that covered her in order to retain some illusion of modesty.

For years she had lived with the Underground, preparing the way for the resistance movement in the times that lay ahead.

Trouble was that the 'times that lay ahead' had come earlier, shattering all their plans and killing human and metahuman alike and with no discrimination.

Baal, the Anti-God, cared not for the suffering it unleashed upon them, all it craved was Churchill...and the Necronomicon.

The timeless war between Invisibility and Order had now blossomed into the threat of the Aztec Fifth Sun and, in the blinking of an eye, the Apocalypse had begun.

She shook her head and returned to her current surroundings - a dull London office occupied by a strange man in a dark brown trenchcoat.

Konstantinova smiled reassuringly.

"Meggan, this is Doctor Occult. He and his, er..." she paused, searching for the right word, "associate, Rose, should be able to help you get back into Faerie."

The doctor nodded.

"Tell me, Miss Fey," he began in his subtle voice. "How did you become exorcised from Faerie?"

Meggan looked up at him, her sad eyes gleaming with moisture, and tried not to look as uncomfortable as she actually felt.

She coughed politely.

"When I...when I first joined Excalibur, I was assigned as a sort of emissary from the Fair Folk. It was always a complicated situation and one that was never really talked about that much. I think it made Brian feel uncomfortable, like he was being watched." She paused, looking sorrowfully out of the window and down at the decimated London streets below. "The women of my family have always been emissaries and envoys; my sister, Nuala was also an envoy...though the tides of time soon brought her 'arrangement' to an end." She paused again, saddened memories clouding her judgement. "But that is all besides the point now," she continued. "I have been forsaken by both my friends and family."

She bowed her head, staring intently at the dirt that lingered between the toes of her bare feet.

The man known as Occult nodded.

"Yes, Faerie has a bitter judgement," he reflected. "Yet, I believe I can help make amends."

Meggan looked up, her expression both cynical and hopeful.

"You know the doorway by which to enter Faerie?" she asked.

Occult allowed himself the faintest of smiles.

"Yes, I do," he replied.

Konstantinova rose from her seat, comfortable as it was.

"Then what are we waiting for?" she asked. "Time is scarce."

Doctor Occult stood up also.

"I must agree, it is best that we make our way to Faerie as soon as is possible."

Meggan paused, her expression worried and confused.

"Are you okay with this, Meggan?" Konstantinova asked. "It's just that we could really do with a hand, you know?"

She nodded.

"Yes," came the reply. "I understand."

Occult made an encircling motion in the air and then all three of them turned away from the light of present reality and entered eternal summer.

Like a bittersweet rain of infection, the once great city of London fell, its towering icons splintering under the assault of Baal's minion.

From the most loathsome and corrupted decadence of the lowest levels of Hell it came, an abomination sanctified by all that is unholy and impure, its face contorted in layer upon layer of wilting flesh and the harsh tattoo of nationalism grafted upon its features.

Beyond the pale, the Anti-God watched with an almost childlike glee as the homunculette reached out and feasted upon the pestilence that bred below.

Once it had been but mere mortal flesh yet now it was infinite - its consciousness devouring worlds that not even Galactus would have tainted.

It was a monkey, a puppet - yet now it was also its own God.

And deep inside its hideous daemonically polluted core it was also Brian Braddock.

For centuries she had waited in fear of this day, cold sweat clinging to her tender childlike skin, waking in the night, words proclaimed in her native language bruising her lips.

Yet now that the day had arrived, Meggan Fey found that she was no longer afraid.

She looked up, conscious of how inadequate she felt and also of the strange woman, the person who had formerly been Doctor Occult, waiting in the wings behind her.

The Queen of the Fey folded one arm over the other with a bemused expression, her eyebrows arching high up into her forehead.

"So," she smirked. "After all this time, our prodigal emissary has finally returned."

Occult's alter ego stepped forwards, her short bobbed hair swaying from side to side in the breeze.

"Please excuse this intrusion, my lady. But things have reached so near breaking point in the outside realms that we thought it would be wise to inform you of this."

Titania's eyebrows arched up another level.

"We?" she asked.

"Myself, the Lady Meggan and the Lady Konstantinova."

The girl with the matted hair stepped forwards and Titania's expression took on a new definition of perplexity.

The air around them grew silent with the stale touch of confusion.

"You?" she finally said. "I must admit I'm surprised to see you here."

Konstantinova looked down towards her feet.

"Aye, my Lady, had the times been less desperate ones then I would not have come here." She paused, raising her head just enough to briefly look the Faerie Queen in the eye. "I trust my grandfather is keeping well."

Titania smiled.

"He is well - or at least as well as one such as he can be expected to be."

Konstantinova gave her a wry grin.

"Yes, Mother had hoped he would be." She paused and looked towards Meggan. "Yet with all due respect this is not about the affairs of my family but rather the more delicate nature of my comrade's reinstatement."

Titania nodded.

"Yes. Well, your presence does put a different angle on things."

Konstantinova beamed broadly.

"Then you'll consider it?" Meggan asked in a hopeful voice.

The Queen of the Fey nodded.

"Yes," she replied quietly. "I shall consider it, but first there is something that you can do for me."

Churchill reached out, gently shaking Miki's shoulder and rousing her from her sleep.

"We've got six minutes of time." Joolz's voice echoed through out the dormant Saint Paul's underground chamber.

Doctor Churchill nodded grimly at the Doomshield medic - Sandra, he believed her name was - standing at Miss Manson's side and looking particularly nervous.

"Miki," he whispered. "Miki, we need your help."

The Angel Core looked up with bleary eyes.

"No," she whispered in pained tones. "Please don't make us go in there again. We don't want to." She paused, then with meaning she added, "We're scared."

Churchill looked down with compassion.

"I know Miki, I know, but we don't have a choice anymore. It's not about us or the Necronomicon now, it's about innocent people."

Her eyes welled with gleaming transparent tears.

"I can't do it," she whispered. "We're scared."

The monitor relay systems flashed with dark light and Churchill looked nervously from the pictures of the outside world to the Angel Core.

"Miki, we need you," he whispered through gritted teeth.

She looked up once more.

"We won't do it," she replied in a final act of defiance.

Then came the sound of the building's limbs shattering into fragments of wood and brick and Baal's new plaything broke through.

A large man in a dark crimson velvet jacket stepped forwards from the shadows behind Titania's throne.

At his side was a young girl - fourteen, fifteen at the most - dressed in a dark silk Chinese top and a late nineties reversible jacket.

At first Konstantinova looked confused but slowly her confusion turned to joy.

Quickly she darted forwards past Titania and threw her arms around the slightly obese man.

"Jesus, its good to see you again." She beamed, looking up into the man's aristocratic face.

She pulled back slightly and prodded him in the stomach.

"When did all this happen then?" she asked.

The man coughed politely.

"A rather unfortunate incident with that Death's Head fellow," he beamed. "Still that's all in the past now. How have you been?"

"I've been fine, ta," she replied. "I see you've got yourself a new little friend."

The young girl scowled at her but the Doctor remained smiling in his typical vague, aimless fashion.

"Yes, this young Urchin is Jennifer," he announced, tapping his question mark handle cane against the ground. "But still, I don't believe we're here to talk about me, which is most unfortunate but necessary."

Konstantinova turned slightly, just enough to be able to see her fellow comrades out of the corner of her eyes.

"Now, I believe you have a problem with a certain Anti-God. May I be allowed to make a few observations?"

Titania waved a graceful yet bored hand and the Doctor sat himself down on the steps, pulling a thin piece of chalk from the inside of his coat.

"This is the way I see things," he stated and began to make pale shapes against the stone.

The creature rose up, the foul burnt flesh of its hand hanging in the air above it and preparing to crush the structure of the cathedral below it.

Inside its warped and twisted mind, Braddock's voice whispered a pale litany of half-truths and unfinished sentences, praying for an end to the chaos that he was submerged in.

Without warning a pale burst of light broke forth from below the cathedral, darting back and forth around the decimated London and violently transforming into the shape of a Necronomicon-born angel.

The creature tentatively stepped back as the archangel known as Marigan oriented itself to its current surroundings.

Then violently, its indecision apparently overcome, the creature moved forwards, limbs flailing against the air and its claws smashing into the archangel's chest.

Marigan faltered slightly and then painfully reconfigured its open hands into fists and attacked...

The Doctor tapped his cane three times and stood up, the faerie known as Meggan standing at his side and looking fearful and perplexed.

"And that's that," the Doctor announced, slapping his hands against his legs and standing up. "Quite simple really."

Meggan looked down at her feet.

"Is there no other way?" she asked, already knowing the answer.

The Doctor shook his head in a sorrowful fashion and placed his hands on Meggan's shoulders.

"I know this is not the way you would have chosen things to go but trust me on this one," he replied.

Meggan sighed, turning towards Titania, her eyes deep and sorrowful.

"It looks as if I'm going to have to owe you a favour then," she whispered in pained tones.

Titania smiled her perfect smile.

"Yes, it appears as if you will," she purred.

Marigan slammed its fist into the tattered flesh of the beast's chest, breaking the layers of mucus and stitched organic confusion.

"There's a core entity at the centre," Churchill's voice whispered through out Miki's ears. "Try to remove it without destroying it."

Miki Manson's body shuddered with pain.

"We can't do it, John," she whispered. "Let us out."

Her voice rose to a high level of hysteria and the archangel Marigan faltered, its huge electroplasmic body mimicking Miki's actions.

Baal's creature darted forwards, taking advantage of the situation and seizing the archangel's head in its hands.

And then the unexpected happened.

The chimera began to shudder violently, its flesh opening in rifts of unprecedented stigmata and its body tumbling backwards in accordance with the laws of gravity.

There was a moment of requiem silence and then the creature's very essence exploded in a shower of shattered limbs and leaking bio-mass.

In an instant Marigan transmuted and evaporated into a burning white ball of light.

Stretched out across the shattered landscape was the broken body of the man who had once been revered as Captain Britain.

His eyelids flickered with a brief moment of lucid consciousness as he slowly became aware of his surroundings and then all else paled to insignificance...

The Russian air became painfully awake with sorrow.

They were all gone, all of them...

His parents, Illyana and now...now Jubilee.

A carved icon of cold marble and ice imbedded within the burnt soil of a scorched Earth.

He raised his hands up towards the Heavens.

Never again would it be like this, he swore.

Never again...