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Super-Villain Team-Up #21 by Jess Nevins

FUTURE OF PAST DAYS

Part 3: Sherman, Set The Wayback Machine For 1996

Pete's thought, as he traveled through the timestream, was that he'd been dropped into Van Gogh's Starry Night. Blobs and whorls of every color flashed by him and hung in the background; the entire experience reminded him of the one time he'd taken a hallucinogen. He and the Wizard had been sharing a tomb in the Vault, and the Wizard had whipped up something to use in the prison economy. As usual, his creation hadn't performed quite as he'd anticipated. Half the Vault's population (including Pete) had seen the swirly lights, and felt the guilt-free buzz, of the Wizard's creation for days afterwards.

Pete closed his eyes; the drifting was rather pleasant, and he was tired enough to sleep even here. He jerked awake when his feet touched something solid. He looked around and saw - something he hadn't expected.

He was standing in the middle of a middle of crowd in a city square. The people around him were dressed very oddly - not at all in the 1996 fashions Pete remembered. Some - the younger, Gen-X types - are dressed in asymmetrical clothing, with bright, garish colors; they seemed to be wandering about at their leisure. Some - the older ones in the 40s/50s - were in very formal business suits; they all seemed to be walking somewhere with a purpose. it. Most of the ordinary people, though, were in raggedy clothes - shirts and jeans/pants with holes ripped in them - and looked dirty and frightened. And, scattered throughout the crowd, were figures in some sort of power armor. Not the power armor of Iron Man, but something white and smooth and featureless, with face-plates that obscured their faces. All carried rifles, and many had sidearms.

Behind and around the crowd, towering over them, were the buildings. The crowd, and Pete, were in some sort of city-square, and the buildings and skyscrapers were visible, and close. But most of the buildings were not old, but had a new look to them, and were white and smooth, with few windows or even corners. They gave Pete the impression of being smooth and featureless cylinders, although some seemed to combine cylinders and spheres in odd ways. The few old buildings were dingy and brown, and gave the appearance being run-down and even abandoned.

The crowd around Pete immediately began drawing away from him, their expressions ranging from alarm and fear to contempt. Pete, knowing he had to find cover, and quickly, pushed his way through the crowd, heading for the nearest street. He finally broke free of the press of the crowd and dashed into a street feeding in to the city square, and from there ran into a nearby alleyway. Peeking around the corner behind him, he saw some of the armored figures walking in his direction.

He immediately flipped a switch on his glue-gun and shot a thin, almost invisible thread high up the alley's wall; he double-clicked the trigger and held on as the gun tried to retract the thread, which drew the gun - and Pete - upward. Pete, during his time in the stir and the years afterwards he'd spent fighting crime instead of causing it, had had a lot of time to think about what he could do with the gun. One of his improvements had been based on Spiderman's webbing; Pete had designed the gun so that it had a reel of toughened wire inside it. He could fire the gun and the wire - based physically on spider's webbing, but with even greater weight tolerance - would shoot out of it, with a dab of glue on the end. The result was something very similar to Spiderman's webbing, although only the end was sticky, and Pete had learned to propel himself around the city by the wire, in much the same way that Spiderman and Daredevil did.

Pete began traveling across the city, looking for familiar landmarks. He found a few - the Statue of Liberty, the Twin Trade Towers - but many more - the Cloisters, St. Mark's Place, the Village - were gone, seemingly vanished and covered over with new buildings. Pete was finally successful in locating one of his crash pads - an old apartment in the Upper West Side that he'd saved for when he was on the run. Oddly enough, although the electronic locks responded to the combinations he remembered, the apartment itself was covered with dust, and did not seem to have been used for months. The contents of the safehouse, too, were substantially more primitive than what Pete remembered having in 1996. Pete was too tired to give the matter much thought, though, and threw himself on the bed, being asleep almost before his head hit the pillow.

12 hours later, after Pete had showered and eaten his way through much of the apartment's food supplies, he took stock of the contents of the safehouse. The technology was markedly inferior to what he already had, but it did have a great amount of raw material, which Pete used to restock his supplies. Better still, it had some of the old anti-gravity discs the Wizard had given him. Pete then used the micro-computer he had in his costume to tap into the phone system (something he'd never have done back in his own time and place, for fear that the Centurion would find him, but there should be no danger of that here, he thought) and set out to search the Internet for the locations of the men he intended to contact. The ‘net was a good deal more advanced than he remembered, but that didn't really bother Pete - it merely made it that much easier to find his targets.

As he'd anticipated, the Wizard was the easiest of them to persuade. Of course, there was a small matter to overcome first.

"Hmmm. Interesting." The Wizard inhaled on his cigarette. "Tell me, how did you recover from your execution? Usually particle beams are not easily shrugged off. And I would have thought that the Warlord's guards would inspect their prisoners to make sure of their kills."

Pete could only stare. He had no idea what the Wizard was talking about. He'd thought that the Wizard might be happy to see him; they'd never been close, but at least they had fought side-by-side against the heroes several times, and that had to count for something, Pete thought. But once Pete found the Wizard, in what seemed to be his headquarters, in Jersey City (Jersey City, of all places!), the Wizard hadn't said a word of greeting to him. He'd just picked up what looked like his tv remote and looked at Pete. Finally he'd spoken - but what he was saying to Pete might as well have been gibberish, for all of Pete's understanding.

Pete finally spoke. "Uh....Ralph, I--"

"Peter, please. You know I loathe that name. Call me the Wizard."

"Oh, yeah. I'd forgotten about...well, never mind that. Wizard, I need your help."

The Wizard raised his eyebrows in that condescending manner that had always driven Pete crazy. "Leaving aside the matter of your death, Peter, what could you possibly want from me that I'd be willing to help you with? You know what happens to rebels - wasn't that what the Warlord had you killed for? - and any crime that deserves my involvement would likely be nothing I'd want to share with you."

Pete sighed heavily - he'd forgotten how the Wizard got when he was feeling shirty - and said, "Just listen, Wizard, okay?"

The Wizard took another drag on his cigarette and looked at him expectantly. Pete tapped a button on the side of the time-machine belt.

A holographic image immediately formed (Pete had known about what the belt could do and how Cap meant to rally help in the past for their cause; everyone had been briefed on what was going to happen, although it was Cap who was going to go back in time). It was Captain America, standing next to Doctor Doom. Cap began speaking.

"Most of you know who I am. Some of you I've fought with, against various evils. Some of you I may have fought against. All of you know me as an honest man. I would not say to you what I'm about to say if I did not believe it to be true.

"We, the Avengers of the future - the year 2003 - are fighting the greatest danger ever to face mankind. His name is the Scarlet Centurion, and he has already destroyed most of the Earth. His surprise attack managed to kill most of the superheroes and supervillains of Earth, and in the days and weeks since then he's murdered millions of humans. Only a handful of Avengers remain to fight against him, and it is only a matter of time before he defeats us." Cap then seemed to nod at Doctor Doom, and Doom began speaking.

"You will not credit that I, von Doom, would ally myself with the Avengers, much less Captain America. Some of you will think this is a stratagem by me, and that Captain America is somehow under my control. Others will believe that this is a trick by the heroes to lure them to their deaths. I give you my word that neither is the case, and that what Captain America says is the truth."

Cap then resumed speaking. "You all know Doctor Doom as a man of his word; he does not lie. So please, believe me when I say that we need your help. With the aid of the belt (and the holograph momentarily changed to an image of the belt that Pete was wearing) you can travel back to our time and place and help us fight the Centurion.

"I appeal to you, in the name of humanity, help us!"

The hologram then winked out. The Wizard put down the remote-looking thing and stared at him for some seconds. Finally, he held out his hand and said, "Your gun, please." Pete, mystified, handed it over. The Wizard inspected it from what seemed to be every angle; he even got out his helmet (Pete had always thought that it made the Wizard's head look like a giant purple dildo, but he held his tongue) to examine the gun. Finally he returned it to Pete and smoked another cigarette, looking thoughtful.

"You make use of a holographic technology in miniaturized form - something even I am not capable of creating. Your gun is also far more advanced than is possible for this time and place, and employs certain microcomputer technologies that I've not seen before. You are older than the Peter Petruski I knew, and bear a number of scars he lacked. And you are quite clearly alive, whereas he fell victim to the Warlord's executioners. Very well; I am persuaded that you are who you claim to be. Nonetheless, why should I help you?"

Pete was disappointed, but not surprised. "We need your help, Wizard; without you, the Centurion will conquer the Earth. I escaped just ahead of his forces, after they'd killed most of the other Avengers. If I don't bring back help, it curtains for humanity."

"My dear Peter, that's beside the point. I'm somewhat familiar with the Centurion; he's a variant of the creature calling himself Kang the Conqueror. With my devices I'm a match for any man. But Kang has access to centuries of future technology - and if he managed to slaughter these Avengers of yours, then I very much doubt I'll be able to do much against him."

Pete thought to himself that the Wizard likely didn't believe that, and said, "If you help us beat the Centurion, his technology will be yours, Wizard. You'll have your pick of the Earth's technology."

The Wizard smiled without humor briefly and said, "It will do me no good if I'm dead, Peter."

Pete sighed - he hadn't wanted to take this tack - and said, "I'm not sure you've thought this through, Wizard. (That earned him a slight sneer and a raised eyebrow from the Wizard; gods, Pete thought, I've forgotten how irritating he could be) The Centurion can travel through the timestream. He's just wiped out the Avengers, and we were the last ones stopping him from conquering the Earth. I was the only one to escape - and I did that by jumping back in time. Where do you think he's going to go next?"

That gave Pete the singular pleasure of seeing the Wizard lose his aplomb. "What? You mean you led him here? But....but...."

"Not deliberately, Wiz. I'm just trying to get some help. But if I don't find someone to stop him in 2003, he's going to follow me here. He'll want to punish me, you see; he seems to hate loose ends. And once he's here, he'll decide to take over this world. Best thing to do is come back with me and launch a sneak attack."

The Wizard began pacing. "I admit to the truth of what you say. But what can I do against him? I lack the weaponry--"

"I know, Wiz, I know. But you're the smartest guy I know (not strictly true, since Pete had known Victor von Doom, back in 2003, but Pete figured flattery couldn't hurt). The other guys I get will provide the weaponry; you I need for brainpower."

As Pete suspected, that hit the Wizard just right, and he straightened up and began stroking his mustache. "You are correct in that surmise, Peter. But how....no matter. Tell me, who else did you have in mind?" As the Wizard began suiting up, Pete told him. The Wizard approved. So, later, did the Leader, the Maha Yogi, Maximus, Mastermind, and Baron Mordo.

jess - next issue: "Beware Of The God."