7 7

This is Cedar Rapids. And in 1869, the rapids in the Cedar River couldn't be more active. And the cedar/juniper trees on the banks still stand as still as stones. They wouldn't in a storm...but soon, a storm will be the least of the local land's worries.

Nearby, a youth's band camp is in session. Horns make noise. Drums make noise. The occasional woodwind instrument disturbs. It's noise hell out here. And for that reason, some of the camp's chaperones have sought out a temporary escape from it all.

This is the cedar forest. Somewhere in it, there's a tent. Steam isn't spewing from its flaps...but it should be. Its two guests are behaving very queerly...and it goes without saying that if they tried to do this at home, they'd get disciplined with the force of a regiment of Yankee rifles, and about three batteries of Yankee cannons.

In the tent, the band director copulates with one of his students. He's a trumpet-player, of course. As much as he loves some of the drummers, most of them reject him when he tries to get horny with them. It's almost as if drummers aren't at all embarrassed about having crushes on women.

The band director doesn't understand them. But it doesn't matter; this chickenhawk has found a chicken worth sinking his talons into-and he SO will the whole time, if the whole Iowa militia has to peel them apart like a spoon and a fork that've been fused together at their tops-or better yet, their handles.

Band director and trumpeter moan. They pant. They sigh. They're both in paradise; any fellow pooftah would be able to tell.

Peter, of course, wouldn't know how he feels about this. Fortunately, he just has to protect them; not join them for a threesome.

"Oh Roger," the director says in a strangely Afroasian accent, "you're the best!"

The trumpeter doesn't notice...although he should. Afroasians don't usually settle this part of the Union...if at all.

Suddenly, their tent is ripped in two above them. The moonlight spotlights them like a beacon. They both roll over and stare up at who's dared interrupt their quality time. At first they're both worried it's the Iowa militia...

On the upside, it's not. On the downside, it's a scary merc with eerie green shades, and four metal tentacles.

Band director and student both scream...like girls. The merc only crosses her arms, and shakes her head.

"Typical," she hisses. "I always KNEW there was something about the way you made love to me I didn't like!"

"Please don't kill me," the band director stammers. He reaches into his clothes, and offers her the medallion-that would hang around his neck, if not for the demands of copulation. "I've spent years making a life for myself out here! Why would I go back?"

Nearby, the trumpeter gapes at his band director. "Mr. Foley...why are you speaking in an Arabian accent?"

"Well, junior," Dr. Octopussy enlightens the chickenhawk's chicken, "that's because your band director's real name isn't Mr. Foley. It's Mr. Fathi. He was once a great man, with a harem as big as a nation." She flaps her hair. "I might not have been his favorite wife, but I was sure as hell his smartest!"

"Now listen, you bitch," the trumpeter shouts. "This here is my band director. He is not Arabian, and he's not your husband. Now if you don't..."

"Roger," Mr. Fathi begs his chicken, "please don't! Just run!"

Too late. Dr. Octopussy takes Roger's head in the claspers at the ends of her two top prosthetic tentacles, and holds his face up to hers. He's terrified. The chicken's bitter end is only two dual squeezes away.

"Please," Mr. Fathi begs, "don't hurt him."

"Ah," Dr. Octopussy smiles, and caresses the boy's hair with her exposed fingers. She lifts her shades, and reveals her Albanian green eyes. In her clutches, the chicken trembles. It's as if he was an actual chicken-and a hen, at that.

"Ah, Mr. Fathi. As a chickenhawk, your tastes in chicken never cease to amuse me. Skin so light... Meat, no doubt," she pinches the boy's thighs with her other prosthetic tentacles, causing him to squawk, "even lighter. And yet...why do they have to even exist? Why can't all boys this cute be straight? Don't they know how lonely my kind are?"

"Please," Mr. Fathi whimpers, "let him go."

"Hmm," she takes off her green shades, "I don't know. It's been SO long since I've been just an average Afroasian wife, with REAL chickens to behead, all for the love of a hungry husband, who I once thought loved women more than the Afroasian flag, or its mosques, or its synagogues, or it's babies...not the girl ones, at least..."

This monologue is cut short, when Dr. Octopussy finds herself frozen in place by a tremendous amount of electricity going through her suit. In her clutches, Roger seems to get a lot more charge than she does.

"Stop," Dr. Octopussy shouts. "For the love of perfectly capable women everywhere, STOP!"

The surge stops. Dr. Octopussy opens her eyes, and looks the chicken in his. His eyes are fixed. His body is pale, and he draws no breath.

Dr. Octopussy sighs. "I had it under control! And need I not remind you that these tentacles are made of metal? If not for the power-dampeners I put in them a few weeks ago, this team would now be leaderless!"

A hot chick appears from behind the dead boy. She wears a bandanna around her head. She carries twin sais-which are now blood-stained. She generates a surge of electricity through them both, disintegrating the blood, and scattering it everywhere, as ashes.

"With you in charge," Elektra hisses, "reciting all of those monotonous monologues, when you should be just stepping up and running them through the spines with too much of their own electricity...I'm honestly shocked that we ever kill any victims at all."

Both villainesses look around. Mr. Fathi has abandoned his wallow. Far away, a man runs over a ridge, tripping to dress himself. He vanishes.

Elektra and Dr. Octopussy look at each other. "KILL DA BAND DEEWEKTAH," they both shout.

Panicked, Mr. Fathi runs through the forest. The juniper branches sting him as he does. It isn't far. He must get help...

He sees the rest of the camp. He runs towards it, with hope...

Elektra leaps, cuts him off, summons lightning with her sais, and threatens him with it. He screams like a girl, and stands petrified, in his boxers, waiting helplessly for his judgment by the remorselessness of a pair of bad girls gone worse.

"Please, I'll give you anything? You want my medallion? You got it! This life is all I have left; please don't take it from me, like you just did my chick-uh, ROGER!"

Dr. Octopussy arrives. She travels through the treetops via her four metal tentacles.

"Don't be a pussy, Sheikh-been-all-Faggoty! We don't want your money...even if it is forged property from the Afroasian treasury!" Elektra lights up her sais; Ock bares the grabbers at the ends of her metal tentacles. "We want your blood!"

Mr. Fathi screams like a girl. In camp, the campers just roll over in their beds and complain; there ought to be a noise control force at band camps.

Elektra's sais fly out of her hands. They sing like wind chimes as they fly away. Elektra stares after them, confused. She doesn't know how she lost them.

"Dijana," Ock mutters, "do you mind? This faggot won't kill himself."

"I...lost my sais. I don't know how."

"Well, GO GET THEM! Seriously; do I have to do all the thinking for this team?"

Before Ock can say more, she falls over, on her own tentacles. They've powered down.

"Out of juice," Ock mutters. "Give me a hand?"

"I'm...not used to doing it without my sais..."

"Elektra? We should've killed that son of a bitch days ago."

Elektra sighs, sends arcs of electricity through her hands, and kneels over Ock's octopus harness. Nearby, Mr. Fathi looks for a means of escape that doesn't require him to run lost through the wilderness indefinitely; Elektra and Ock are sealing off the only one.

"Sure hope this doesn't hurt you," Elektra whispers.

"PAIN IS POWER, DIJANA," Ock shouts. "WE BOTH NEED IT!"

Somewhere over there, one of the camp staff members wakes.

"Fine. Here goes..."

In the camp, a lamp is gaslit. Elektra freezes. Nearby, campers and staff folks are emerging from their tents. They see what's going on...all of it..."

"Dijana," Ock whispers, "seriously; hurry!"

Elektra nods, lights up her hands, and re-powers Ock's harness.

When she does, she sees that the harness isn't the only thing that powers up. There's webbing all over the harness. Its strands aren't very thick...but Elektra's impressed by how much was woven, and how its weaver could've woven all of it in such a short time.

Elektra shows a handful of it to Ock. She takes it in her hand, and analyzes it with the HUD in her green shades.

"Spider-Man," Ock hisses. "Bedir didn't kill him; she merely contracted him!"

"What do you mean 'contracted?' How is this stuff even Spider-Man's?!"

"Power down," a squad of sheriffs shout, while pointing repeating rifles at Elektra and Ock. "Put your hands in the air-all six of them!"

Ock sighs, inflates a balloon in her harness, and flies away. The sheriffs shoot at her as she leaves, but in vain.

Elektra stares at Mr. Fathi. Fathi shivers all over. She sends Fathi a taboo signal with her hand (one would have to be Afroasian to understand its offensive connotation), turns into electricity, and uses the water in the ground to slither away. They'll be back; just not when Fathi's at band camp; that'd make their next attempt to kill him too predictable.

The sheriff's advance, and accommodate for Mr. Fathi-who, for the time being, is Mr. Foley again. He isn't sure for how much longer.

"They killed a student," he tells the sheriffs, when they question him. "He's in the woods."

"Were you both in the woods," a sheriff studies the chicken pattern on his boxers, grinning, "or was it just him?"

Foley freezes. He isn't sure how to address that.

From somewhere in the woods, Maria Hill saw the whole thing. She gives the band camp the slip, before the sheriffs come out into the forest and search all of it.

Hill's camp is in the highlands, where the Cedar River begins. In it, there's a bulletin board, with pinned yarn connecting many photos. It's safely concealed between two hills. With luck, a heavy rain won't flood Hill's hideout before her use for it is ended.

She sits at a desk, and reaches for her typewriter. But she hesitates. She shakes her head, and gets a sheet of paper. She grabs a pen to start writing...

From up above, Ironheart arrives. She lands near Hill's camp. Hill sighs with relief, and puts the paper and pen away. She rushes out, and meets the West Coast Avengers trainee.

Her helmet vanishes. Hers is the head of Riri Williams.

"We've been strangely fortunate," she tells Williams, "but I don't know for how long. Spider-Man's alive."

Williams gapes...for a long time. "Where is he?"

Hill looks around. "He could be anywhere...but he's probably still around her. But I'd step lightly everywhere, if I were you. And I sure wouldn't squeeze anything I touched."

"What's wrong, Ms. Hill? You're scaring me."

"I have an idea about how to find him. But you're not going to like it."

Williams chuckles. "I'm Ironheart. I'm Hawkeye's best protege. What can't I handle?"