Dragon's Claws #22

"So over-violent, or over civil
That every man, with him, was God or the Devil."
- John Dryden, 'Absalom and Achitophel'

Inside the Martian High Command, within the citadel that had formerly been used by the race called the Inhumans, the War Master Prime closed his eyes. He had heard everything that had gone on, had been waiting for this and now it was all gone. Someone, somehow, had managed to steal the prize from under them. However it was a minor setback and he knew that things were still restorable. The Martian forces had travelled back in time from a world they had conquered to conquer this reality. The High Overlord himself had arranged this, with the approval of the High Council. The plan had been working well, the Overlord commanding his forces, preparing them from the future while his troops in the past worked at the preparations for the conquering of Earth. It had all been planned so well, it had worked perfectly, even if the High Overlord had no real concept of time travel. The War Master Prime however had looked in to the possibilities. The reality where they came from was not the past they were now in. They had side-stepped in to another reality and were conquering it anew. The world they came from was secure, but they were spreading out across time itself.

The War Master Prime took a moment. Had it really been so long since they had intercepted a signal from this world, where one of their kind had been killed and his death cry had alerted their forces? Their expeditionary forces had taken a long time to arrive and had been killed by their own biology fighting the airborne viruses of the planet. The second time they had come, they had been more prepared and the rest was history, yet somehow in this timeline, they had not undertaken a second invasion. The High Overlord had believed that by going back in time they would create their own future. A flawed concept, but the High Council had approved it on the basis that they understood the principles better than the High Overlord did. However this had not been without consequences, for their scientists had discovered that with everything that had happened to the timeline in this era, the time stream had been damaged and their influence in this era was creating a great disruption, meaning that the various forces that protected time were powerless to stop them.

The High Overlord had not truly understood, thinking that this was his past, but they could not change the past like this otherwise they would negate the future they came from. Word had also arrived from the future that the High Overlord had journeyed back and had ended up behind the Great Barrier. The War Master Prime had been greatly troubled by this, as he was the first of the Warmaster, the field leader of the Martian forces and though he followed the Overlord's orders, he had a great deal of autonomy. However since he had travelled back, the Overlord had not been in contact and that meant that he was either trapped behind the Barrier or he was dead. Either way worked for the War Master Prime. If the Overlord was dead, then he would be in total command. Returning to the future had become an incredibly risky venture, so they would have to conquer this reality if they were to survive. The battle was not as in their favour as it had been, which was why they needed to remove the weapons and equipment that had been in the Arsenal. They were slowly turning the tide of the fight in the favour of the Resistance and that would not do.

"Contact him," he ordered, referring to their ally inside the Resistance itself. "I want to know how this happened, and where the weapons are."

"And the woman?" The War Master Prime thought about the fate of the woman they had registered as Beatrice, though they knew it was one of many aliases and she usually used the codename of Domino.

"Breeding from her would be pointless. She is already with child and to destroy the foetal matter would render her useless to our needs." He smiled a cruel smile. "Prepare her for the Arena."

An emergency meeting of the Resistance leaders had been called as soon as the news of the Arsenal had reached them, and the fact that Dragon's Claws were in the Arena. A lot of hope had been lost on all sides, but they had convened an investigation team, and now the council met once more to discuss what had happened, what they had discovered.

Forge, Rick Jones, Reed Richards, Black Panther and the Vision were assembled and waiting. There were other members of the Resistance council missing - Quasar, who along with Bishop and Deathbird had not returned from space, seeking help from their allies on other worlds and Thor was working on the evacuation of the various loved ones of the resistance being moved to Asgard. For reasons of his own, Odin had allowed the mortals of Midgard sanctuary, but he had decreed that the Asgardians would not fight the enemy on the human's behalf - Thor included. The fate of humanity was not in their hands, apparently. It was unfortunate they could not get to the other peoples of Earth, but it was too dangerous, however they were always looking for ways.

"What we've discovered is sketchy information at best," said Forge. "I managed to bypass the systems and gain entry to the Arsenal, though it took some time." He had hoped that Magnus would have been able to help, but the Master of Magnetism had other things in hand. "It appears that the power core within the Arsenal overloaded and destroyed everything within. There's no way of telling of this relates to the SX situation, but there was no sign when I looked at the system when I was fixing the cloaking device to the Quinjet. We can only assume that Cable's mission to free the Arena captives has failed."

"So we've lost everything?" Rick said and Forge nodded.

"If we assume that the team were captured and the aliens then used them to gain access to the Arsenal," said Reed, "it's reasonable to assume they overloaded the core, either by accident or design. Can we tell if they now have the technology we were using?"

"Impossible to say unless it's used against us," said Forge. "But with their own devices, they might not need to."

"And Dragon's Claws?" asked T'Challa. "What can we do about them?"

"Nothing," Rick said. "We couldn't free any of the other captives, we've not even been able to get close to the Arena itself."

"Rick's correct." Vision's voice was sombre as the holographic image spoke. "The only reason we know they are alive is because the enemy are heralding them."

"They have been putting up a very spirited defence," said T'Challa. "Samantha Hasard put up an impressive show against the Scorpion."

"As have they all," said Forge. "However, there is very little we can do for them, or for any of them."

The council took a moment to reflect on their captured colleagues, colleagues whose fabled luck had seemingly failed them when they needed it the most, but all but one of them wished them well, and that one now had something to report to his Martian superiors. However he would leave out the more worrying aspect of it all, for if the Resistance didn't have the contents of the Arsenal, and the Martian's didn't have them, who did?

It had been nine days since the team had been captured and forced to fight in the Arena, though so far they had all passed every test that had been thrown at them. The battles had been hard going, and they were indeed little more than animals fighting for the amusement of their Martian masters, but that was the way they were playing it, the way they had to play it until they were ready. It had been an interesting time, with the Claws fighting a myriad of heroes and villains. It hadn't been easy and they certainly had blood on their hands now.

Roberto's kills had included some minor villains but he'd also been forced to fight with the hero known as El Aguila, a battle of fire and electricity, and fire had won the day. Killing was something they had grown used to fighting aliens, but not their own. Even villains deserved better, though Jack had been given a fight with the Punisher.

It had been a bloody battle, both men skilled at what they did and for the most part Jack had been on the back foot, as Frank Castle was a killer, plain and simple. However, Frank had been here a long time and he'd killed quite a few people and Jack saw something in his eyes - a tiredness. He punished, he did not fight for pleasure and Jack believed he'd simply given up. Jack and Frank eyed each other and shook hands, as the internal defences of the arena powered up, as they did if a kill was refused, preparing to execute the loser and as the blast fired, Frank pushed Jack out of the way, being struck by the deadly beams and he was gone, Jack winning by default, but he suffered a severe beating at the hands of the alien captors for his disobedience.

However that was not the worst of it of what they had so far endured. Etorian Kaine had been pitted against Katie Power, and though the young girl had power she didn't have the experience to make it count against Kaine. Both knew what would happen - that one of them would die regardless and from the screams of pain of the victims of the defences, it was a horrid way to die.

"Please, mister," said Katie, looking in to Kaine's eyes and he closed them, not wanting to see this, but he heard the crack as he twisted her head, snapping her neck and she fell dead at his feet. After the bout, he'd spent half an hour throwing up and he didn't speak with anyone for a day or so.

The girls had fared better, though Jessica had been forced in to some very heavy duty bouts, against a lot of old Spider-Man foes, such as the Scorpion and Hammerhead. It had taken a lot for her to take them on, because they were giving her almost a battle a day in order to see how she operated, as well as using the alien test subjects to see if they could develop an immunity to her powers, but so far they had not.

Elena's battles had mostly been short and sweet, her psionic abilities ravaging the minds of the others and there was a distinct lack of telepathic enemies for her to fight, where as Sam had been taking on fighters such as Bullseye and Boomerang. Low key foes certainly but they were what they knew she would fight as she was quite an unknown in the pantheon of superbeings. The team were being mentally ravaged by their fights, and though they had counselling from both Doc Samson and Nick Fury, it was taking a toll on them. The whole crux of the plan to get them all out of here depended on the full team being in the Arena, fighting each other or another team, but so far the aliens hadn't taken the option and though the team kept a brave face, Elena knew that they were getting close to an edge where they lost hope. She was serving as the conduit between the team and the people who could keep their mental stability in check, though she was also concerned for herself as well. She knew she had been trained to kill, and she was keeping her former KGB training in the forefront of her mind, but she wasn't that person any more, hadn't been her for a long time and she wondered if she would be able to go back to what she had been before the invasion.

Then again, could any of them pick up the pieces and begin again? There were going to be recriminations, a lot of bad feelings and a lot of repair work. The world was going to need leadership, but from who? Plus how would those who were isolated behind the Barrier, living in relative safety in their bubble world, be able to relate to a humanity that had changed beyond their thinking? There were a lot of wounds and Elena couldn't see how they would be healed, and she knew that when she started thinking like this she needed the kind of help she was getting for her friends.

It was Samantha she felt most sorry for, for while she had lived quite a while and was no stranger to conflict and death, she wasn't as hardened as the others - there was still an purity within her and it was Sam that needed the most help coming to terms with the things they were being forced to do. Roberto and Jack had the outlook that they had been forced to do questionable things before and they had come through it. Eto, as they had started to call Kaine, was an effective warrior and killing came with the territory, though even he wasn't as immune to the butchery as he tried to be. The incident with Katie had shown that.

Then there was Jessica, who was having dreams, or nightmares depending on the interpretation. Ever since she had claimed her true heritage, she'd changed and some forces were reaching out to her from beyond and touching her dreams. She told them she was seeing images of dark deeds, of a world warped by evil magic, of champions fighting to save it but struggling as well, but the worst of the dreams was that on one side of the battle were the Pendragons, and on the other were the heroes of this side of the Barrier. If that wasn't enough she was also getting dreams in which there was a great battle between the Green and the Bane in which she arrived too late to help, and could only gather the sword from the hand of Adam Crown, who lay dead on the floor as the forces of the Bane surrounded her. She was all alone but then a voice, a voice she believed was that of Pen would tell her to keep the faith and be strong, and that she was the Pen Dragon now. Samson said the dreams were manifestations of what was happening now, and that circumstances were playing out in her head, but privately she had confided in the team that she was afraid of a conflict between her and the Knights of Pendragon, a conflict that could forever damage the Pendragon legacy, which of course played right in to the hands of the Bane. Kaine had assured her that whatever happened she would not be alone and that there were many who would work at resolving the problems that were ahead.

Kaine was a mystery, but they felt they could trust him and he knew as much about them as they did. His source on Otherworld was certainly effective, and Jessica half suspected that it might even be Merlyn himself, playing a game that only he understood. Kaine simply smiled when it was raised and said that it would all be answered in time, but that now seemed a lifetime ago, when it had been little over a week.

"Elena." Sam's voice echoed in her mind and Elena looked at her, surprised. She hadn't even felt her coming close and it frustrated her. "Are you okay, you look… haunted."

"I…" she started to try and formulate a sentence but it just wasn't coming. "We need to get out of here soon, or we're going to fall apart. We can't keep winning or going at this pace forever - they're punishing us."

"Yes," said Sam. "They are, however there is something new - Domino's been through the trials, she scheduled to fight Jessica." Elena knew what that meant, that Jessica's sleep was so disturbed that she wasn't always thinking rationally and that she might take her feelings over Cable's actions out on her.

"We have to do something before it gets out of hand," said Elena.

"Agreed," said Sam. "Jess doesn't know yet, we're letting her sleep, but Jack had an idea. We start a fight down here, start it with the champions, the big boys and get it made in to a team bout."

"You want me to get them to agree?" said Elena, knowing her powers were at a low level down here - she could form a rapport but it wasn't strong.

"We want you to goad them," said Roberto, coming over with Jack. "We're only going to go for heroes, because we can get a better fight potential - nothing better than to see heroes go at each other, right? We're thinking Doc Samson, Maverick…" Elena bristled at that one because of their history and Roberto continued. "Which also means Songbird will help him. The others are Deathbird, Bishop, and, of course, Domino."

"That's a serious amount of powerhouses," said Elena, thinking about it. "How should I goad them?"

Jack stepped up. "I don't like asking this of you, but we're running out of choices. Maverick's the weak link, you can use your relationship with him to start something with Songbird, he'll step in. Domino's already set up, Bobby's got a session with the Doc and if Sam and Kaine mess with Deathbird and Bishop, we should do it.

Roberto shook his head, knowing they were running out of options. "It's going to be distasteful for everyone. You and Maverick, I can get to the Doc and Sam and Kaine will remind Bishop and Deathbird of how they failed, and lost Quasar trying to escape the planet."

"We'll apologise later," said Sam. "However if you can telepathically help out…" Elena nodded. It wasn't going to be easy, but if she could project the anguish she felt at everything that was happening, a reverse empathy, then it might work. If it didn't then they'd have several individual bouts and that would ruin the plan.

"Will this work?" she asked.

"Only one way to find out," said Jack. "Let's go to work."

Jessica awoke from her sleep to the shouts and angry voices outside of the quarters and she went out to see what was going on, what had awoken her. At least she'd not had the dreams, but she was still irritable and was amazed to see her people engaged in arguments across the place.

"What the hell?" she said and went in to break it up. "MY GOD, WHAT ARE YOU PEOPLE DOING?!" Her voice bellowed as she got in the midst of them. "We've enough to cope with without fighting amongst ourselves."

"Maybe you should tell that to the rest of the Claws," said Samson. "I don't know what the hell's gotten in to you, maybe you're starting to believe your own reputations, I don't know, but you people need to clear your own house first?"

"Excuse me?" said Jess, not sure what was going on here. "What do you mean by that?"

"I mean your Russian bitch coming on to Maverick," said Songbird. "He dumped you, tovarsich, get over it." Jessica was at a loss as to what was happening. Her team had gone out of their way to make enemies?

"Elena?" she said, impatiently.

"I figured if she was good enough for him, maybe he'd prefer to upgrade to a better class." Songbird lunged for her and Jessica deflected her attack.

"Don't," she said.

"Or what?" said Maverick. "What are you going to do about it, Jessica?"

Jessica was agog. "You want them to fight over you? What the hell is the matter with you all?"

"We just got fed up of there being no accountability down here," said Sam. "Take Bishop and Deathbird - they claim they have no idea where Quasar is, or if he even made it to our allies. Eto and I don't believe that they don't know what happened. I think we've two more Cables." That cut at Jessica but before she could react, Domino stepped up.

"I don't care what you say, Nate wouldn't do that."

"He did though," said Jess, softly. "He betrayed us, sold out the Armoury, screwed the Resistance and all for you. He gave up the human race, for you."

Domino looked her in the eye. "I don't believe you." Jack looked at Elena and nodded.

"You're calling me a liar?" Jess asked.

"I'm saying you're wrong, and if that makes you a liar, then yes."

"Let's put it this way," Jessica said. "If Cable was here, right now, I'd kill him on the spot and piss all over his corpse." Something was wrong here, Jess thought. She wouldn't normally say that, but no matter what she did she couldn't get rid of the anger and resentment towards Cable and the cause of his betrayal, a cause that stood right before her.

"He's not here." Domino squared up to her. "I am. Only one of us will walk out of the Arena, and it sure as hell won't be you."

"That a fact?" Jess responded.

"Oh yes," came the reply. "You're not much without your friends behind you. You've had some good fights, but you're too arrogant, all of you."

Jess shook her head. "When Cable finds out his girl's dead, maybe he'll regret selling us out. If of course you're child's actually his." Domino went for her and the two of them began to brawl and without Jess keeping the others apart, it turned in to a fight very, very quickly. With their powers diminished, the others dragged them off each other, with Fury taking charge.

"I don't know what the hell is goin' on here," he snarled, every bit the Director of SHIELD if only for this one moment, "but that's enough."

"You know what?" said Domino, pushing on. "If it were up to me, we'd…" There was an alarm and they knew the aliens would soon be here to restore some kind of order to them and an announcement was made.

"Terrans, your disputes have not gone unnoticed, however to show our benevolence the contest between Jessica Drew and the female Domino is suspended, and it will be replaced by a contest between a team comprised of Domino, Bishop, Deathbird, Leonard Samson, David North and Melissa Gold, against the so-called Dragon's Claws, joined by Etorian Kaine, however the fight will be to the last one standing. Prepare."

"Guess I got what I wanted," said Domino.

"Things just fall in to place, right?" said Elena.

"I said enough," said Fury. "You see what you've done now? 11 people are going to die because of this." He walked away in disgust, letting it sink in and the two factions went separated, the lines drawn.

"There can be only one," said Kaine.

"What the hell just happened?" asked Jessica. "Did I miss something?"

Jack nodded. "Sorry, Jess, we got tired of waiting, and we wanted to make sure you didn't kill Domino out there."

"It's all in hand, boss," said Roberto and they looked at Kaine. "Now we see if this plan works."

Kaine nodded, knowing this was all on him now, but this was what he had wanted and he hoped that wherever he was, he appreciated what they were doing. It all came down to death or glory now.