Heart of the Mountain! My take on the Avengers, guest starring the Valkyrie

A soldier: his world, changed forever by a Valkyrie who came to him but spared his life, one destined to someday collide with Captain America! Iron Man! Mighty Thor! She Hulk! Hawkeye!
STAN LEE WOULD PRESENTs IF HE COULD: THE mighty Avengerz ! (From the Roger Stern days)
Cut and paste this
http://ceaseill.blogspot.com/2010/05/iron-man-heart-of-mountain-feat.html for the Entire thing!--Cease

THIS Sherpa IS VERY NERVOUS.
When Ruali took this job, he was pretty sure this man known as Creel was a hardened criminal---but the money was good enough, and the implied threat made refusal seem a flirtation with disaster.

When the Frenchman and the savage whose accent was vaguely North American joined the party, Ruali was very sorry indeed that word had spread of his discovery, amidst the ancient rocks, of a relatively new disturbance, an idol as yet unseen, before a temple that seemed both ancient and ominously, immediately clawed from the bowels of the mountain.

When the strange Irish-voiced man with the fierce dark features and his brawling companion came into sight and began to taunt the members of Ruali’s party, with the rising, shrill call of flight in his stomach, Ruali understandably began to fumble through his memory for half-forgotten childhood prayers.
When the Juggernaut and Black Tom come to call, there is little else, and no mercy.

Pg.2
Juggernaut: What do you think those guys are doin’ snoopin’ around this site?

Tom: Alas, it cahn’t be no coincidence, Cain! There’s loot to be had from those strange creatures that holed up here sometime back: a hidden race, they say...
Juggernaut: Deviants, I heard’em called! I can’t say any of it’s crazy, after what I seen...
Tom: Speakin’ of seeing, we may as well not have any competitors...nor witnesses. I’ll channel muh mutant energy through muh sheileigh...

Juggernaut: You’re not just gonna shoot’em in the back are ya?
Tom: Ah! ‘Tis hardly sporting, true enough. It’s on you, then.
Juggernaut: At least give’em a few last seconds to ... (shouting) TURN AROUND!
Creel: Me first!

Juggernaut: Prepare to meet your maker!
(tom’s blast rings out to consume its target...who stands charged red with its energy.)
Absorbing Man: Surprise, jerkfaces!
ZZAARRKK!

Tom: Faith b’gorrah, Marko, ‘tis the Absorbing Man!
Juggernaut: Hit ain’t gotta last but another minnit! I got something buddy boy kin absorb right here!

(next panel)
Blast away, nothing can save you now!

(One of the figures sheds his coat to reveal a grey hand of stone, which he then presses to his face, transforming his body to appear granite in mass and texture.)
Grey Gargoyle: Mon ami, I have often wondered...

(he touches the Juggernaut, who begins to turn partially to stone)
...how the touch of the Grey Gargoyle might fair against the power of the Juggernaut, for such you surely are...
Juggernaut: Hell did you do to my legs? I can still...!

(the other figure stands revealed as the feral marauder Sabretooth, who quickly shoots up under the Juggernaut’s guard and tips him back off the ledge)
Sabretooth: Why don’t you take a load off over here?

(Juggernaut falls down the side of the mountain, bellowing, as Sabretooth leans over and says for his own benefit:)


All that stress is gonna lead to a crack up, believe me!
Black Tom: Cain! Saints, I cannae reach ye!

Absorbing Man: Lemme give ya a little push-off there, Irish... (zaps Tom’s hold with the absorbed mutant energy)
Hahahaha!

Grey Gargoyle: Hoist by their own petard, it seems.
Sabretooth: Snort! Whatever! But we can yuck it up after we ransack the goodies we came for! Those two are a sure sign the word is out!

Absorbing Man: Believe me, when it comes to this Asgardian stuff, it’s got powers beyond imagining!
Grey Gargoyle: Pity they disposed of our guide.
Sabretooth: Sniff* there’s a passage with wet clay, an opening beyond that boulder. I can hear the wind catching a note off its mouth.

Absorbing Man: Nice work, wolf man! There’s some kinda weird cave paintings inside. My ex-partner Titania disappeared looking for something they whisper is the Ultimate Destroyer, and the last goons to hijack it abandoned this place sometime after that big robot popped up in San Francisco!

Grey Gargoyle: It appears to be some kind of place of worship!

Sabretooth: I dunno what kind of god or demon we’re desecrating, but I don’t smell any watch dogs and I’m ready to ransack this crypt and move on!

Absorbing Man: Keep yer pants on, Creed! I don’t recognize those other markings, but I seen THAT sign in Asgard! We’re just a little palm sweat away from our meal ticket!


Hope that builds an interesting mystery; sorry for my readers who don't think they are into this kind of thing, but it's the last part, chronologically, of my love letter to Marvel Comics, written last spring, using these old stand-bys in working out my novel TRANZ, while I complete a new piece of fiction behind the scenes. This one's a nice sequel to the X-Men or Defenders stories I just posted, and really has the least to do with TRANZ, but now I've written about all my favorite Marvel characters!

this whole thing's up at http://integr8dfix.blogspot.com/2010/05/iron-man-avengers.html

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Avengers: Ghosts of the Deviant Stronghold!: the Power of the Destroyer

From

http://ceaseill.blogspot.com/2010/05/ghosts-of-deviant-stronghold-iron-man.html

NOW:
When the Enchantress returns to the chamber, she levitates the body of the Absorbing Man close beside the Destroyer. As soon as they are at arms’ length, the mind becomes active again in the criminal, leaving the brutal destruction engine standing, inert.

“My intentions were to use the captured Valkyrie as the means of bringing Destroyer to life! Though I am loathe to leave my nigh-immortal, graceful frame...”
Suddenly, she merges her mind with the Destroyer, who raises its fists in defiance of all life present!

“Beware, Avengers!” shouts Thor. “Yon construct was created by Odin himself to stand as defense against the Celestials! Brute force will not be enough to stop it!”
“I have a plan!” shouts Cap. “But we have to get Gargoyle and the Destroyer lined up in position.”
With a concussive blast from its fingers the Destroyer crushes Thor into the wall; with its lowered visor, it opens fire on Iron Man. But which of the five is the real one? The walls behind the phantom images pulverize, even as the unharmed Avenger blasts the Destroyer with his chest-mounted unibeam. With a wave of its hand, the Destroyer begins to use magnetism to begin spinning the actual Iron Man beyond his own control.


(Prototype action cartoon)
Captain America leaps to Iron Man’s aid, to steady him, his shield now strapped to his back to free his hands. Just as Iron Man’s gyros begin to orient him, he begins firing his boot jets, the thrust directing him into an awkward headstand, crunching his fingers down into the ground. The Grey Gargoyle grabs the stone form of Hawkeye and hurls it at the star-spangled Avenger, who rolls forward tucked in a tight ball, springing out at full length to perform a hand stand and kick Sabretooth’s jaw.


Iron Man’s pulse bolts increase with kinetic force as they rush towards the Destroyer; still, the robot advances, haltingly. “Thor? Can you engage the Destroyer for a few seconds? I’m going to try generating an electromagnetic impulse...”


Grimly, Thor takes a blast from the Destroyer, then raises Mjolnir to batter the impossible foe. Captain America asks: “isn’t this creature powerless without the spirit of another within it? If we find the person’s body...”
“It’s the Enchantress, here,” says She Hulk, “but I can’t reach her body! There’s some sort of ward set over it.”

“Then let’s deal with this in a more nuts-and-bolts approach!” declares Iron Man. “EMP active in three...two...” A strange sound emits from his armor, which then collapses. However, the Destroyer continues to advance, unaffected. “That...that should’ve shut down its circuits!” says a frustrated Iron Man.



“Reminds me...I really HATE magic! It's not so much I wouldn't love to know it in a strictly mathematical way...but it's so unpredictable when you're fighting it for your life!"
Cap evades the Absorbing Man’s ball and chain, thrown like a hammer. His own throw connects with Creel, but unfortunately gives him the properties of Cap’s indestructible shield! This provides him protection when the Destroyer’s pulsing bolts blast away a huge chunk of the cavern. She-Hulk hammers away at him, but he remains unharmed. He then decides to try absorbing some of She-Hulk’s strength, as Titania rises again and crushes a boulder into the back of She-Hulk’s head.


Treacherously, the Grey Gargoyle speedily touches the shield while Cap’s back remains turned. The stone-heavy shield throws off his balance, but Cap delivers a round house kick to Gargoyle’s bread basket.



Thor notices the Destroyer again lowering its visor: "The disintegration beam! Nay, Destroyer!" With his magic mallet bearing the malevolent might of its attack, Thor leaps between the beam and his fellow Avengers, enduring its devastation! For what is immortal life, if not a gift freely offered for one's friends? The Destroyer directs the binding universal force of gravity, to nail Thor, arms to the sides, down on his knees to the spot. She Hulk, however, quickly bears the wounded Thunder God out of the way of the beam's smoldering passage.


Rushing to protect Captain America's flank, She Hulk runs up behind Grey Gargoyle, subduing both his arms with a full nelson hold, as a shieldless Captain America narrowly evades more crumbling stone. Thor collides with the Destroyer, battering it with his hammer. At that moment, the small black man with one hand, from the airplane earlier, strides into the chamber, smiling with determination in his eyes.

“Too bad I couldn’t get my hands back on the shield!“ says Absorbing Man, “The energies from that blasted robot are getting to me!” He advances on Iron Man, as eldritch energies crackling from the Destroyer run riot throughout the chamber. Iron Man, still rebooting his online systems after the EMP, uses his back-up power to his exo-skeleton to throw his refractory-coated armor in the way of the deadly beams from its head. The Destroyer trains its power upon Thor, then turns to bat Iron Man. Absorbing Man closes the gap now. “Guess I’ll have to settle for the armored Avenger!”


Absorbing Man touches Iron Man’s armor, and begins to take on its appearance. “Be a pleasure, clobbering ya with your own armor’s power!” His face becomes metallic, with circuitry appearing all over his skin.
Cap assesses the positions of the villains and shouts:

“She Hulk! Throw Grey Gargoyle at Sabretooth, NOW!”

“Have a nice trip, you bad-tempered garden gnome!” she says, as she launches him like an inhuman missile towards Sabretooth. The feral villain snarls and drops on his belly, out of the way. However, to his dismay, the Gargoyle’s touch freezes the Destroyer, stone cold, in its tracks!

“Take care, my friends,” says Thor, “I know not how long this ploy will keep the Destroyer at bay!”

“Who are you?” Iron Man asks the small black man. “In this melee, you could be totaled!” His armor has begun working again after the electromagnetic impulse; he lurches to his feet.

“They call me Nido,” he replies, without glancing backwards. “Just one thing I need to take care of here!”

Punches through his powerful exo-skeleton fail to free Iron Man. Then he stops to think. He gives a cybernetic command as he gestures with open hand over his head and begins to emit sound waves. When Absorbing Man takes on their properties, he begins to vanish, transmuted into pure sound!

“Noo!” cries out Titania. “What have you done with Crusher?”
His angry scream is the last sign of his presence.


Iron Man takes out a strange-looking device from his chest-plate and aims it at the statue-like Hawkeye. "Perhaps this will help loosen you up a bit---a cobalt ray based on a device the Gargoyle once attempted to steal! It made him human; let's hope it'll do the same for you, Archer!"

"If a lil' ole ray beam can make Mr. Disposition here human, you might have to put it on the market!" snarks She Hulk.



Next: The Enchantress' final stand! Her Destroyer plan fully revealed! WHO are the Celestials? And WHAT is the connection between the Celestials and gods that led to the Destroyer's creation in the first place?

The mystery of the twins, the phantoms of the lost Deviant catacombs, and the enigma of the one called Nido! Prepare for the smash conclusion: "Heart of the Mountain!"







Continues on

Heart of the Mountain: Avengers Assemble (pt 2) with Thor, Captain America, and more

Iron Man's repulsor nearly tracks the lithe form, twisting out of reach atop his flying discs. While Iron Man doesn't recognize Midnight Sun as a former pawn of Fu Manchu, he finds the physical skill a nuisance to his plan to quickly knock him out before he can draw another bead on Hawkeye. With the two of them to fill the air with peril, however, Midnight Sun can't attack either of them, and so he speeds into a crevice, almost vanishing before the naked eye, as Hawkeye's last arrow travels in a near-perfect arc to pulverise the stones beside the speeding criminal, who is showered by loose dirt and stones. He plunges within the mountain with Iron Man in hot pursuit.

Sabretooth roars, right in the face of the She Hulk, whose eyebrows arch as though disappointed. She then roars back, and says, "happy?" He sniffs the air, says, "no sweat." She connects much of a powerful punch to his face, saying, "Probably."
He's tantalized by her colossal power. "I've never killed a green babe before," he snarls, smiling.
"Put up or shut up," she says, advancing on him, "you're not stopping me from going into this cave. You don't look the type to surrender."
"But it might be a good idea," says Hawkeye, drawin his arrow. "Just sayin'."

Sabretooth turns and lopes away, full bore, for the crevice that received Midnight Sun.
"Can always finish you off in the dark," he says, darting in. But an arrow flies towards him, with a shaft full of gas that imparts to his steps a drunken lethargy.

"Of course," She Hulk says, "that's the direction we're going, too."
"Es nada, Shulkie," quips Hawkeye; "We'll have this sky-bike you safely parked going before you can say, 'two in the hole!'"
"Think I can withstand the gas cannister," retorts She Hulk, "how bout I use some of that marksman ship you showed me and just pitch you into the cave?"

"That's an X-Men cliche, this is the Avengers," says Hawkeye. "but I'm flattered you'd like to thrust me into..."
"There's a fine line between jokes and sexual harassment, Robin Hood," says She Hulk, righting the Avengers Sky Jet. "if this thing's in running condition, grab a seat on the back, we've got to catch up!"
"CaN i HOLD on?" he asks.
"No."

"Iron Man, this is Captain America; do you read my position?"
"Fixed, Captain. Zooming after this character into a sightless catacomb! I'm not picking up any navigational technology on him, yet he's instinctively cutting a swift path to the heart of the mountain!"
"That's where the strength for an ambush lies. But they don't know I'm almost right on top of them!"
"You ringing a doorbell to get in?"
"I've got a Norse god of thunder with the biggest doorknocker in the business converging with me on this hillside!"


And inside...

Absorbing Man! That android...posed to strike!
He's froze up, sure as you touched him yourself, Gargoyle!
Who is that woman?
TITANIA! Baby, izzat YOU?!

She and this machine are at the moment of transfer---of her mind into its body!
Enchantress!!! What's the game, woman?






So you DO care for this girl! I recognize Doom's catspaw from the Beyonder's world...Take her out of the way, at the moment I bring forth a substitute of my choosing, and she is yours!

Holt (thinking) Is this what's drawn me into this place? What can I do against a group of world-beater supervillains? What is the purpose of havi---those crystals! The size of a phone booth...there's someone inside! It's---it's HER!!!The Valkyrie! I can't leave her there---I've got to book it over to her, even all I can do is wish really hard to free her!

(whispering from shadows): Look! Our dad's going for it!

Kinda hope he’s not in the middle of this scrap, ‘less he has powers like Dad where we grew up!”
“This’ll be a different version of Dad, anyway."

"C'mon, dude, we've got to distract the stony grey guy! He's walking up on the huge stones with the lady inside!"
"Is that Mom?"

Absorbing Man:
Waitaminnit, Enchantress! How cum you've already got a patsy on hand for yer switcheroo? I ain't dumb enough to wonder why you have a plan!

I'm doing you a favor, Creel! If you want the wench, remove her from the Destroyer's reach while I bring forth the Norn Stones!

Holt (thinking) Keep talking, I've almost reached you, Blondie...

(whisper): Dad doesn't see him!
Grey guy! Let's move on him! While the others are talking!!!
Hey! We've got the stones to stop him, right here!
Say what?
Let's rock these boulders onto him!

Gargoyle: Wha?!?

(from shadows) We're not interested in your version of freeze tag, Frenchie!


Enchantress: Something's happening beside my Norn Stones!
Absorbing Man: Somebody rattlin' yer Asgardian jewels? Why don't I step up and touch this robot myself---we'll find out whatever properties it's got when I absorb its...


THOOOM! THOOOOM! THOOOOOM!


The whole cave is shaking!
One thing in the universe makes that noise! Quickly, fool, take her before...

Gargoyle: I know you're up there...whoever's dumping these pathetic rocks will soon find themselves a statue of unliving stone!

Holt: Got you, babe! I wish I could just carry you out of ...what the hey? The crystal's shrinking! It's palm-sized!

Enchantress: You grey buffoon, someone's taking the Norn Stones!
Absorbing Man: Don't worry, Titania, 'bout being frozen beside some idol! The Absorbing Man's got the touch!!!

KRAA-KA-DOOOOOM!!

Enchantress!! Absorbing Man! Be still!!! Heed the words of Thor, Son of Odin, villanous ones!!!

Iron Man(flying in): Can't top the man's entrance without a few showgirls---but how bout some fire works?

Grey Gargoyle:
The mountain side!!!It's ripping open! After all these years, the power of the Thunder God...

Absorbing Man:
At least now I got enough light to split open their heads, with the power in this ro---

Enchantress: NOOO!!!

Captain America: Iron Man! Thor! AVENGERS ASSEMBLE!!!!






Picks up, part three, on http://ceaseill.blogspot.com/2010/05/ghosts-of-deviant-stronghold-iron-man.html

The Collag-ical Mystic: Integr8d Soul Presents

Some of Marc Kane's works, including the start of the Mermaid Series


















"Avengers" characters featured along with Prince Nicola, from the story next week adapting our novel, TRANZ RUPTURE










Also featured are the "crystal ball" photos (Orb of Agamatto) from "The Spell of the Wolf" on this site, an adaptation/ pastiche of our novel, featuring the Defenders (complete in serial form, starting with http://integr8dfix.blogspot.com/2009/12/remus-sharptooth-regrets-pt1-of-2-weird.html

and its prequel, "Calinferno" also complete on this site at http://ceaseill.blogspot.com/2009/11/calinferno.html










Collage Mystic vision of Prince Nicola, involving the Defenders and Avengers alike, as both story tie to one another, "The Vanishing Wave" (featuring the Fantastic Four) and the adaptation of our novel.





Experiment with light and Prismacolor (for Angie Witty)








Cool temperature "Mermaid" inspired by Heather Leilani Green

Collage, upcoming TRANZ-RUPTURE: avengers
















Self Portrait by the Marc Kane








Detail, Viking Battle requested by David Wayne Clark, Jr.

Look for our guest art by professional comics colorist Ian Sokolowsiski, featured on his site "Machine Gun Guitar"!