Pendragon Comics - The Pendragons 23

The Pendragons

Issue # 23

Brought together in defense of Avalon and the British Isles, the Pendragons are the officially-sanctioned heroes of Great Britain. Originally led by the Black Knight, the group is composed of the remnants of the old Knights of Pendragon group, as well as several other heroes. Willing to die for their beliefs, the Pendragons stand united as England's best defense against threats of a superhuman nature.

Pendragons logo created by Des Davies!

Written by Barry Reese

What's Been Happening: The Pendragon known as Adam Crown journeyed to Glastonbury in search of his birthright -- the legacy of the famed King Arthur. He succeeded in his quest, though he had to first overcome the evil of Mordred the Black. Adam, along with his allies in the Cult of Albion, are now dedicated to helping England steer a path through the darkness. Meanwhile, Dark Angel has uncovered a shocking truth -- that the Warren Worthington who has served in the Pendragons for several months is not who he seems. The unexpected arrival of a mystery woman named Blink has only added to the confusion. Finally, the heroine known as Spitfire has rescued her grandson from the clutches of the Baroness Blood, beginning a new day in the lives of the Crichton family.

"For a metal ass to chap? Why don't you say something about your ass rusting? That's more likely."

"Shaddup!" The armored assassin known as Death's Head II shifted in annoyance. He and his partner Tuck were some two hundred feet away from the structure called Darkmoor Castle. The Castle was home to Shevaun Haldane, the Pendragon known as Dark Angel -- but Death's Head was not here for her. Not this time.

Instead, he had come looking for the young boy who had recently claimed the armor and identity of the famed hero, Albion: Cam McClellan.

Tuck, wearing only a skimpy one-piece costume and thigh-high boots, cracked a grin. "You're just ticked off because you might have to throw down with Shevaun, aren't you? I always suspected you got a crush on her back in the old Dark Guard days."

Death's Head turned his monstrous visage on Tuck. Never designed for anything other than striking fear into the hearts of those he was pursuing, the android once called Minion bore a perpetual snarl on his face, with a strip of metallic flesh linking his lips together. Horns on the side of his head, meant for gutting his opponents, glistened in the early morning sunlight. "I thought sidekicks were supposed to know when to keep their mouths shut. Let me explain it to ya -- I come up with the brilliant plans and you say 'Wow! Great work, DH!' and then I say 'Thanks, little buddy.' That's how it works."

Tuck rolled her eyes. She was about to unleash another sarcastic reply when she saw a red-white-and-blue form streak across the sky. As it neared the Castle, she could see that the form belonged to a woman -- Captain Britain. The leader of the Pendragons landed just outside the front entrance to the castle, where she was met by Shevaun Haldane. Haldane was a beautiful woman, though her penchant for tattoos and body piercing made Tuck wonder what Death's Head could actually see in her. "When are we moving in?" she asked.

Death's Head grunted. "Soon. If at all possible, we oughtta try and catch McClellan when he's alone. If we move in now, we'll have to take on the whole freakin' Pendragons team."

Tuck stared at him for a moment before laughing. "Jealous? Oh, that is rich...."

Betsy Braddock shook her head with an expression of extreme weariness. "Shevaun, you really don't want to know*. The Manor's been destroyed and Brian's kingdom is under threat of war -- beyond that, I really don't feel like going into it."

(*But if you want to know, feel free to check out Captain Britain: House Braddock # 1-4.)

Dark Angel felt a thousand questions run through her brain, but she held off on voicing them. It was obvious that Betsy was emotionally drained -- and what was about to come would only make that worse. "Jackie and Joey are the only ones not here -- they're at Jackie's estate, taking care of the baby."

Captain Britain allowed Shevaun to lead her through the interior of the castle, keeping her mind half on what Shevaun was saying. The other half was occupied with trying to prepare herself for the truth about Warren. "You're sure about this... Of course you are," she added with a hand of her hand. "I don't know why I'm even asking."

Dark Angel stopped outside the doorway to one of the castle's sitting rooms. Through the closed door, the sounds of voices could be heard. Some of them were raised in anger. "Betsy... There was no deliberate deception here. Not that I can fathom. It's all a dreadful case of mistaken identity." Shevaun reached out and rubbed her friend's shoulders. Long before the Pendragons had ever been formed, they had bonded and become confidantes. That familiarity allowed Shevaun to now move into private territory. "It does explain his memory lapses... and his lack of emotion towards you."

"If you're saying I should feel better now that I know he wasn't outright rejecting me, it's not necessary. I just want to know who this person really is -- and why they have Warren's memories. I saw them in his head!"

Shevaun looked thoughtful. "Well, we'll know more in a few minutes, but I don't think those were really Warren's memories at all. They were... Well, they were a mixture of things this person witnessed, things they were told... and things they may have picked up from you."

The door opened behind Dark Angel and an attractive woman with Asian features stepped out. She wore a skintight pink bodysuit and looked almost as tired as Betsy did. "Captain Britain? I'm Sunfire. We've been waiting for you to arrive before we could begin. So... If you don't mind...."

Betsy didn't move. Instead, she folded her arms across her chest. Recent events -- ranging from the whole Infinitus affair to the current plots against her brother in Otherworld -- had left her feeling a bit sharp and angry. "Sunfire? Doesn't anyone around here use their own bloody names? Or do you all go about borrowing other people's identities?"

Sunfire smiled in response, as if she was perfectly used to such confusion amongst those she met. "I'm not from this world, Betsy Braddock. Where I come from, I am Sunfire. I don't see any reason to alter my codename just because it's in use by someone else around here."

Betsy sighed, realizing how abrupt she was coming off. "Sorry. It's been a rough day."

"No problem. I've been having one rough day after another for a few years now." Sunfire stepped back, allowing Shevaun and Betsy to enter the sitting room. It was immaculately decorated, but with a bizarre sense of design. There were some things which looked so Victorian that Betsy thought she'd wandered into the home of an old matron, but side-by-side with them were bits of hi-tech modern technology. A fireplace burned brightly, warming the room, while a plasma screen television ran on the far wall, with the sound muted. Onscreen, the Commonwealth -- the EU's official superhero team -- were doing battle with some French paramilitary group.

But it was the people who really caught Betsy's eye. Not just her teammates -- Miracleman, Albion and Adam Crown -- but the colorfully garbed newcomers who were, presumably, associates of the female Sunfire. One of them, with pale white skin, was cavorting about in the garb of a Buckingham Palace guard. He was striding back and forth in the room, occasionally muttering "Tut, Tut, Old Chap" to himself.

Sunfire appeared at Betsy's side, gesturing towards her friends. "Captain Britain, let me introduce you to the rest of the Exiles -- Blink, Morph, Deathlok and Puma. And Mimic, of course."

Betsy used her telepathy to match names to faces. The purple-skinned girl with the odd facial tattoos was Blink, while Deathlok and Puma were known to her from their counterparts on this Earth. Morph... The strange one with the white skin. She allowed her eyes to travel over towards a blond man who wore a yellow costume, with goggles resting atop his head. Beautiful feathered wings jutted from his back. He was much bigger than Warren -- thicker and more muscled, but she knew immediately that this was the man who had been part of the Pendragons for the past few months. "Mimic. Calvin Rankin?" she asked, having placed the codename with one that she remembered from her days with the X-Men.

The man looked away from her -- from all of the Pendragons. He seemed sheepish and almost embarrassed. "Yes. But not the one you probably know."

Adam Crown moved forward. Something seemed subtly different about him, but Betsy couldn't place exactly what it was. He seemed... larger... somehow. Not physically, but in terms of his overall presence. "These beings are wanderers from their own timelines, Captain. As their name suggests, they are Exiles -- forced to travel from reality to reality setting things right in the timestream. If they are lucky, they can eventually return home... but they run an equal risk of disappearing from existence entirely as their realities are closed off."

"Right," the girl named Blink said. "We just came from a reality where there was a crisis involving the Avengers and a group called the Gatherers*. But some of the worlds are almost too bizarre to believe." Her words drifted off in a way that suggested that she found this one -- with Europe underneath the Black Mass Barrier -- to be in that category.

Betsy looked at Albion and Miracleman, but both of them looked as if they had heard this before and accepted it. Nodding, she said "Okay. I can handle the notion that you're from other timelines -- but I'd love to hear how and why Mimic thought he was Archangel."

The man called Puma snarled under his breath "You won't like the answers, Braddock."

Jackie cradled little Kenneth in her arms, marveling at the way his eyes seemed to follow her every move. His skin was white, almost startlingly so, but his eyes were the purest blue that she had ever seen. "He makes me feel young again, Joey. Not just in form, but in spirit."

Joey Chapman watched Jacqueline with a bemused expression. He was glad to see her so happy, but he worried about her... for this child was no normal infant. Born to vampire parents, young Kenneth subsisted on a daily diet of fresh blood -- administered at the moment by a young girl named Gloria. The girl had been a servant of the Baroness and was fiercely protective of the child -- even now, she hovered like a specter nearby, making sure that the baby was not mistreated. "I'm just glad he's someplace safe, Jackie. Being with that witch was anything but."

Jackie flashed him a warning with her eyes. Gloria was still adamant that there be no criticism of the Baroness and Jackie was willing to let the girl slowly come out of the hypnotic spell she'd been under. "It's going to take time away from my duties with the Pendragons, I'm afraid."

"No..." she whispered. She offered the baby back to Gloria, who took it eagerly. "We've been given a sacred duty and I'm not anxious to pass that off on someone else. But the others will have to understand that I won't be present for all meetings."

Joey heard her words dissolve into a buzz of nonsensical mutterings. His ears suddenly ached and he felt a shifting on his skin, as if every hair on his body was suddenly standing on end. He reached up and touched his forehead, hearing -- no, feeling -- the siren call of the familiar.

Jackie called out his name, but Joey did not hear it. He was lost in a realm of alien loneliness, of feeling like calling for like. His alien costume -- the stupid bugger who had bonded with Joey and who now refused to end their relationship -- sensed another. One like itself, in London.

Joey felt Jackie's arms slip around him, holding him in place. His mind seemed to reassert itself, finding his bearings in a world that had seemed so dreamlike and fluid just seconds before. He saw his love's face drawn tight with concern.

"Don't give me that," she snapped. Her eyes flashed with a mixture of anger and betrayal. "You've been hiding something from me ever since we got back from Battleworld -- Now, what is it?"

Joey looked over at Gloria, but the girl had stepped outside as soon as Joey had begun to sway on his feet. Smart girl, he thought. Maybe Jackie did right in bringing her into her home. "It's my new costume...."

Jackie looked surprised -- she obviously been expecting Joey's problems to center around the new suit he'd been sporting lately. "Go on."

"It's alive. I've been doing some research and --" Joey grunted in pain as the feeling, the presence, came again into his mind. He felt another mind touch his own, ever so gently. Teasingly it probed before moving away and this time Joey understood why there was such an odd connection between these creatures. "Venom."

"The costume I got on Battleworld -- it's alive, Jackie. The bloody thing's some sort of alien lifeform. It's grafted onto my nervous system, too -- and I can't get rid of it!"

"Because getting the baby back is more important, that's why... besides, it took me awhile to figure out who this thing is...."

Jackie's eyes opened wide in realization. "Venom. You're talking about the same suit that Venom wears."

"Yes... And he's in London. I felt him. Or rather, this damned suit did. They're the same creature, Jackie. Brian Braddock manipulated us into going to Battleworld to toughen us up for facing down Infinitus... But that never happened and we're still having to live with the consequences! Makes me want to kick his arse from one side of England to the other!" As Joey spoke, his voice began to grow deeper and colder, until it barely sounded like his own at all. His costume crept over his skin as well, leaving him clad in his Union Jack uniform.

Joey stared at her for a long moment, breathing deeply. Jackie wondered if he meant to attack her, and she tensed -- ready to use her superspeed to carry her to safety. What if it's taken over his brain? she wondered. Will I have to lose Joey to that suit the way I lost Kenneth to the Baroness....?

Instead of launching himself at her, however, Joey sighed wearily. "I'm going to find bastard, Jackie. I'm going to find him and see if he has any clue as to how I can get rid of this thing."

"No. Venom." Joey raised a fist and stared at it, feeling the power in his limbs. "And after that, Brian will get his."

"We travel from timeline to timeline via the Tallus," Blink explained, holding up her wrist to show off the metal device that was attached there. "Whenever we arrive somewhere new, we're giving brief instructions on what we have to accomplish to set things right. Usually, one of us disappears when that's over and done with -- after our most recent mission, for instance, we lost a teammate named Chrome."

The Pendragons, as a whole, listened intently, though Betsy found her gaze drifting back to Mimic over and over again. She'd beared her soul to this man, in a vain attempt to rekindle the feelings she'd thought dwelled inside him. Now she felt like a silly little schoolgirl who'd just discovered that the object of her affections wanted to date her best friend instead.

"More or less," Blink confirmed. "We'd just finished with a task that had cost us a teammate and we'd picked up Deathlok in his place. But when we made the next jump, something weird happened -- it felt like we were all tugged in one direction but ended up going in another. When we arrived at our destination, Calvin was gone."

"I was sucked in here -- to this universe. Apparently, the Tallus takes us through multiple timelines before we end up in our chosen timeline. When we passed through this one, I was caught up by the Black Mass Barrier and trapped. The magic field ended up causing my powers and memory to go haywire -- I remembered very little about who or what I was. But something called out to me. A powerful telepathic force. It was filled with so much yearning and desire that I latched onto it, with the remnants of my own telepathic powers -- the ones that I once borrowed from the Marvel Girl of my universe. Before I knew it, I was Warren Worthington. I mean, I co-wrote the man's biography so I knew most things about him and some of the rest I picked up from the mind that touched mine."

"I didn't know you could change your shape, Cal -- You horning in on my territory?" Morph asked.

"Well, the Mimic of our universe became a 'clone' of Wolverine at one point, even mimicking Wolvie's physical appearance*. It could be a latent part of Calvin's power, the ability to not only absorb a mutant's power -- but also aspects of his physical being." Dark Angel sipped a cappuccino while she waited for the tale to continue, but she could sense that several people in the room were impressed with her knowledge of the team's files. A hoarder of knowledge, though, Shevaun frequently entertained herself in off hours by reading through the database.

"But what mental force called out to you?" Albion asked. The youngest member of the Pendragons, Cam McClellan felt like he was a bit out of his depth in all this, but he was hiding it well.

"That would have been me," Betsy murmured. "I was thinking a lot about Warren in the days before he arrived* -- or Calvin arrived, I should say."

"But why would your desire for Warren have this kind of effect? I mean, changing someone's whole appearance and personality?" Albion inquired.

"We've all heard about the Barrier doing strange things," Miracleman pointed out. The tall blond man looked thin and handsome, with an impossibly pure expression in his eyes. He melted the hearts of all who saw him, male or female. It wasn't a lustful emotion they felt, however -- it was more a warm, comforting love. "Some people gain new powers, others see their fortunes dramatically rise or fall. Maybe this is one of those times."

Blink moved closer to Calvin, wrapping an arm around his waist. It was obvious to all of them -- even the non-telepaths -- that the two were lovers. Somehow, the realization made Betsy's heart ache. She knew and accepted that this man was not Warren Worthington, but it didn't make things any easier. In fact, it only made her miss the mutant named Archangel all the more. "Now," Blink said, bringing Betsy back to the present, "We leave. The Tallus brought us here to fetch Calvin. Since that's been accomplished, we're going to head on to our next stop."

Albion rose quickly, moving over to face Mimic. Though the young hero wore his armor, he had the helmet that normally hid his features from the world. "I'm going to miss you, mate."

Calvin smiled then, a genuine one that lit up his whole face. "I'm going to miss all of you," he replied, hugging Cam against him. "Being here was the closest thing to being home. I was part of a team. A family." When he pulled away, the big man's eyes glistened wetly. "You're going to make up with your mom, right?"

Calvin rubbed the boy's shoulders before looking at the other Pendragons. Most of the ones he'd become close to had been part of the so-called 'Replacement Team' that the government had assembled during the time the main group had been missing, but he'd grown to like the others, as well. He looked at Betsy with a sad expression, stepping towards her. He knew Clarice was watching, and wondering, but he knew he had to do this. Leaning close, he whispered "Someday you'll find him. The real him."

Those words made him wince as if struck. "No, not home. Maybe not ever. But I am... going. I have to, just in case I somehow make it back to where I belong."

Betsy looked past him at Clarice. "Maybe you are where you belong. Home is where the heart is, after all."

"Doesn't change it." He reached out and took her hand. Staring into her eyes, he said "He's a lucky guy, Betsy. Don't give up."

Betsy watched as he turned and moved back to the rest of the Exiles. Without another word, they were gone, stolen away to some new reality, some new adventure.

In the silence that followed, no one seemed to quite know what to say. It was almost a relief when the team's communicators began to chime. Betsy answered hers first, asking "Yes?"

The voice of a worried man rang out "Pendragons -- We need some help. There's some sort of demon -- a monster of some kind -- attacking Birmingham!"

Without even asking who she was speaking with, Betsy replied "We're on our way."

As the group began to file out with urgency, Shevaun locked eyes with Captain Britain and grinned. "It never ends, does it?"

The team's adventures of the early afternoon had been quickly set aside, nothing more than a blip on the road map of a superhero's life. When the evening had come, Micky had found himself watching the telly, trying his best to adjust to the bizarre world of the early 21st Century. It was still a frightening place, full of sex and violence -- here, people said words on primetime television that Micky and his friends would never have spoken in a million years.

But in his dreams, things were even stranger. The antics of the EastEnders were nothing compared to this... this strange wasteland that he wandered at night.

He flew over a London that could not have existed, one of dark steel and bright lights. A woman was at his side, dressed in a revealing variant of his own uniform. Her golden hair fell across one eye, which seemed to irritate her. From time to time, she pulled her hand from his own and reached up to brush the stray lock of hair away... the gesture was oddly familiar to Micky and he felt as it were something he had seen a thousand times before. He felt a warmth towards her, especially when she looked at him with those piercing blue eyes, so like his own. They were kindred spirits, Gods of a new age -- one of mythological heroes taking flight from the fanciful dreams of land-locked mortals.

Her words were spoken with barely more than a whisper, but Micky could hear each syallable as if she had shouted them across an empty room. There was a gulf between them, some unimaginable distance, but he felt her nearness, as well. And the way she called him Michael -- such an adult name, spoken with such tenderness... Were they lovers? Yes. They were.

"Where are you?" he asked, watching as she rolled over in the air, to fly upside down over the London of his dreams. Her breasts, her flat stomach and her long legs were displayed to him now and he felt the excitement of longing overtake him. To make love to someone like himself, a creature of unparalleled power and grace... What would that be like? He suspected she knew.

"Where I've always been. Where you've always been afraid to look." She held his gaze with her own. "Find me. Find all of us."

Micky Moran flew on with her, riding high on the tide of his dreams. He was confused, but he would not let it disturb him -- not now.

Next Issue: Union Jack takes center stage, as something dark and sinister begins to haunt the streets of London -- and all signs point to the sudden arrival of the Lethal Protector known as Venom! Plus: Death's Head and Tuck strike out at their intended target -- the young man known as Albion!

Welcome back! It's always fun to visit with the Pendragons, isn't it? For me, at least, that's true. These guys are old friends and loved ones -- and I promise that the next few issues are going to knock your socks off.

Next issue, we have Death's Head II clashing with young Albion, while Union Jack finally throws down with the Lethal Protector himself, Venom! How can you possibly resist this fanboy extravaganza? :-)

Thanks are given to Thomas Deja, whose ideas for an upcoming spin-off inspired the epilogue to this issue. Be on the look out for Tom's new Pendragons project, which should be quite a blast for all concerned. Also, thanks to all those who nominated this series in the Heroes 2003 Awards -- I really appreciate the thoughts! You can cast your votes for this or any of the other fine nominees by visiting here.