Mandarin’s Space Station:
“So your plan was betrayal all along?” Diablo appeared before the Mandarin, his Philosophers Stone dispersing the shadowy veil that had previously concealed him.
“You, Alchemist, are as no threat to me. Be gone now and perhaps your unnatural life shall be spared.”
“I had similar notions for you, Chinaman.”
The ultramundane energies of the Mandarin’s rings clashed against the ancient mystical arts known only to the Diablo and the two villains deadlocked in battle.
Earth:
“Vision, have you any idea what it is exactly that’s coming our way?” Jim Hammond, the android Human Torch asked his team-mate.
“An intense cold front, it seems to be caused by a moving epicentre. That cause is heading for us.”
“Intangible it shouldn’t harm you and with my flames I should be fine—able to melt the ice and keep it away from me—we have to find out what’s going on,” Hammond said, formulating a plan.
“I concur, let us away,” Vision rose like a brightly coloured spirit, Hammond flamed on and joined him in the sky. A small hole opened in the shields constructed by Rhodes and Darkstar and the two passed through to the open sky.
They flew, Vision leading the way as Hammond amplified his heat output, melting the encroaching ice before him to clear a path to the source. The moving epicentre slowed down for a moment but the ice started to change, great spikes were thrown at the heroes, spears of ice a hurled at them from seemingly no-where, but they pressed on and finally reached the source.
“Jack?” Hammond shouted out to his old colleague. The wintry warrior gives him a long stare of spite and raised his hands, calling the ocean water around him hardening it into more ice, calling moisture out of the air to him, condensing it again into ice to strike at his opponents. The temperatures surrounding him lowered, the ice is incredibly hard, he launched an ice spear at Hammond, the air so cold and dry, along with the intense subzero conditions allowed the spear to glance Hammond’s side.
In anger and shock, Hammond intensified the heat around him, as the pyrokinetic android and the winter-spirit become locked in elemental battle.
As Hammond occupied Jack, the Vision floated behind Frost and unleashed a small solar blast. It took Jack by surprise, searing him somewhat. A second, much more intense blast subdued him. Vision seemed weak.
“You okay, Vizh?” Hammond asks.
“I believe so, Torch, I simply had to expend a great amount of energy on your former colleague here. Already I am absorbing the sun’s rays to replenish my stores and should be fine in no time, I shall carry Jack Frost, see if you can melt this ice.”
Vision altered his density, enough to remain in the air but solidifying enough to bear a solid form aloft with him. He rose into the sky, the sun’s rays shining down on his ethereal form, the android for a moment smiled, his persona had grown colder recently it seemed and for reasons unknown.. But even for an artificial being, the warmth of the sun, the celestial mother, had a calming and elating effect.
Hammond focused and pumped out more heat, making several passes over the path of ice which had enveloped huge tracts of land and sea. Much of it he melted and the rest he set to thawing.
Mandarin’s Space Station:
The Mandarin let loose with his electro blast ring, the powerful electrical energies flashed and lashed out at Diablo, who deftly avoided them and using his powerful alchemy, transformed the floor beneath the Mandarin into some adhesive substance, Diablo then unleashed a blast of energy at the immobilized Mandarin.
Mandarin lashed out with his vortex beam ring, deflecting Diablo’s blast, then Mandarin shot at Diablo with his impact beam shoving the immortal Spaniard into the hard metal wall behind him. With his matter rearranger ring, the Mandarin divested himself of the adhesive and once more mounted an attack on Diablo.
Earth:
Hammond descende,d his flames snuffing out as he landed with the Vision by his side. In the Vision’s arms lay the unconscious Jack Frost.
“Mimic, can you scan his mind, find out what happened? He’s a friend of mine, one I haven’t seen in a very long time but he was nothing like this,” Hammond spoke with urgency.
“I don’t know, I’m not an adept telepath, I borrowed some of Jean Grey’s abilities years ago, yes, but I’m no master with them,” Mimic said, of all the borrowed powers he’s used in his life, those of telepaths have been his least favoured. Something about the intrusive nature of telepathy has always given him the chills.
“Can you try at least?”
“…Yes,” and Mimic closed his eyes, Vision lays Jack Frost on the ground, Mimic knelt by the wintry man’s side, his hands on the man’s temples to help focus the mental link.
While still probing the depths of Jack Frost’s consciousness, he found several images, the ice worm, his reawakening by Captain America a couple years ago, reentering the worm and coming out again, this time to find…the Mandarin! Now in Jack Frost’s memory he saw the jewel on Mandarin’s mento-intensifier ring flash and Cal knows that the Mandarin used his powers to forcefully conscript Jack Frost.
“It seems he was recruited by the Mandarin, brainwashed into service. I don’t know what for, Mandarin didn’t ever really trust any of his Lethal Legion…for good reason I guess. I can stay here and try to ‘fix’ the damage.”
“Where is the Mandarin?” Hammond asked, his voice dripping venom.
“His Space Station, I’d have assumed he’d show himself by now, with his plans falling to pieces,” Mimic replied.
“Where is this Space Station?” Jim Rhodes asked.
“I can telepathically give the coordinates and guide you to it, it’s in orbit around the earth but cloaked. You’ll need this,” Mimic tossed Rhodes a bauble given him by the Mandarin, which will de-cloak the station if any of the members should approach from space.
Rhodes nodded, he ascended into the air, Vision and Darkstar following him.
“Stay with Frost and Mimic, you two,” Rhodes addressed Hammond and Warbird, see if you can keep some of the Lethal Legion from escaping.
“I put a call in to S.T.A.R.S. some of their operatives should be here soon to help us clean this up,” Mimic says offhandedly as he worked on Jack Frost.
“Thanks, Cal, we’ll see you soon, hopefully,” Rhodes said and they three of them took off into space. Rhodes enveloped Darkstar and himself in a protective sheathe for the journey through the vacuum of space.
Mandarin’s Space Station:
Soon they arrived, Rhodes worked the de-cloaking device and the space station appeared in its terrible glory. They found an air-lock, Vision floated through the walls and worked the controls, while Rhodes reached out with his prism energies to interface with the air-lock. Once Vision opened the doors, Rhodes and Darkstar climbed inside, closing the air-lock, they entered into the chamber before them and started to tour the vast complex.
“I’ve increased the sensitivity of my sensors, I’ve detected some activity a few floors above us,” The Vision stated.
Rhodes smiled and lashes out with his prism energies, forming a great spike to tear through the floor.
“Careful, James, we must be wary here, out in space,” the Russian beauty, Darkstar reminded him.
Rhodes plowed through more rooms, in search of the activity Vision mentioned, while the Vision himself intangibly flew through the complex. Soon he gave a great shout, alerting the others.
“Hurry!” the urgency in his android voice made any other words superfluous, his fellow Avengers hastened to his location.
Rhodes flew in and uttered a single word “damn.”
Before them hung Tony Stark, half-conscious, delirious and beaten, suspended by the Mandarin’s high-tech shackles, the Iron Man armour in its suitcase sat on a table across the room.
Despite his distaste for Stark, or perhaps because of the friendship they once shared, Rhodes reached out with his prism energies and freed the man instantly.
Throughout the commotion, Stark somehow managed to mouth the words “thank you.”
“Get him out of here Darkstar,” was Rhodes’ only reply. He didn’t forgive Tony yet but he cannot wish harm upon the broken man. Darkstar used the darkforce dimension to teleport herself and Stark back to earth.
“I doubt a beaten Tony Stark was the activity you detected. Who else is still here?” Rhodes asked his android compatriot.
“You are correct. The activity is moving they are now…directly above us,” Vision strained his neck to look at the ceiling and then flew up and phased through. Rhodes created a large spike out of prism energy and ramed it through the ceiling, destructively clearing a way, he flew up through the hole and saw the Mandarin and Diablo battling before him.
“Mandarin!” Rhodes roared and lashed out with his prism powers, encapsulating the menace in a bubble of rainbow energy, slowly constricting it. In a rage the Mandarin unleashed a dizzying array of power from his rings, cracking and breaking the energy bubble. Rhodes flew at the villain with a vicious blow, enhancing his strength to superhuman levels with the thin prism field around his body.
The Vision flew about the villain Diablo trying, in vain, to apprehend the alchemist. Diablo seemed to bounce around the room, using his various potions to transform the materials around him, create explosions to deter the intangible hero. He formed two great metal monoliths out of the shards of broken material around him and animated them to attack the Vision.
The Vision flew through one of the monoliths and turned abruptly, wrapping his arms around the metal monster, then he turned tangible and increased his density to diamond hardness, now weighing many tons he dragged the unnatural menace down and tore it in half. Then the heroic android turned to the second monster and unleashes the fury that is his solar beams at the monster. The metal monolith fell back, alight and melting. Unfortunately, this played right into Diablo’s hands, as he cast his Nature Control potion, pulling the fire from the hulking, inert form and manipulating it in the air before him, striking out at the Vision with it all the while using his other potions to create more explosions and smoke to confound the Avenger.
Meanwhile, Rhodes captured the Mandarin in bands of prism energy. He whipped the Mandarin around and tossed him hard into a wall, then again capturing him.
“Despite the power you have in those rings, Mandarin, you’re still human in form and it’s pretty easy for me to put the squeeze on you,” Rhodes half attempted a quip as he constricts the energy bands around Mandarin like a vice.
“That…may well be, James…but…you don’t know the true power of…the Mandarin!” the Chinese warlord growled and with his Black Light ring, he enveloped Rhodes in a cloud of viscous, choking darkforce material. With his Ice Blast ring, he lowered the temperature around Rhodes, slowly freezing him.
“See now, you too rely on mere trifles. Without those War Machine suits, you are nothing. Without that new toy you’ve picked up, you are nothing. You are below my notice and I shall kill you now and then I shall kill your friend and comrade Tony Stark, if he has not died already in my absence,” Mandarin finished with a laugh.
However then, Mandarin notices something odd, a green clad hand protruding from his chest. The Vision momentarily increased his density within the Mandarin’s chest and rendered the villain unconscious. The darkforce energy and the intense cold dissipated.
“Come James, I will need your help escaping,” the android’s voice sounded, calling Rhodes back to his senses. Still a bit shaken, he managed to stand. Creating constraints out of the prism energies, he bound the Mandarin.
“Where’s Diablo?”
“He escaped. Using his powers to manipulate a fire, he set off several explosions, with those diversions he managed to escape, teleporting away. However, as a small consolation, I found this man, during our fight, unconscious,” the Vision motioned to an adjacent room and they found the crumpled form of Blackwing. Rhodes bound him up too and created a pressurized bubble around them to keep them safe in the vacuum of space.
Vision floated through the walls of the station and finally emerged into the dark eternal void. Rhodes made his way, a bit more percussively, through the station and finally joined his team-mate and with all available haste, they returned to their native sphere.
Earth:
Finally, the Vision and James Rhodes made there way through the atmosphere and down back to New York, where they had left from, surveying the empty scene of their previous battles near the bridge, they now made their way to Avengers Mansion.
Within now stood a variety of characters: Edwin Jarvis, the faithful butler, bustling about to accommodate the needs of the new team despite the fact that all of them insist he desist from such activity and slow down, as they are quite set; as to the Avengers themselves, currently in their number are Carol Danvers the heroine Warbird, Jim Hammond the original android Human Torch, Laynia Petrovna the mutant heroine Darkstar, Felicia Hardy the sultry Black Cat and Warren Worthington III the high-flying Angel. And with them now at this moment is Calvin Rankin, the Mimic, one time adversary to Angel and the X-Men but now an elite operative for S.T.A.R.S. and also the winter warrior, mystical elemental spirit, Jack Frost, friend and comrade to Jim Hammond from the 40s and 50s and member of the long defunct Liberty Legion.
Now, through the front door floated the Vision and Jim Rhodes, behind him bound in prism energies, were the villains Blackwing and the nefarious Mandarin.
“Jim!” Warbird exclaimed to the Vision’s chagrin and Rhodes’ delight.
“I’ll get on the phone with our government liaison and have these guys picked up,” Black Cat said and walked downstairs to the communications room.
“I suppose it’s best I be going then,” Mimic said, rising from his chair and Angel rose as well.
“Cal…we may have had a rocky start all those years ago and throughout your career, but it looks like, to me, you’ve finally found where you belong,” Angel said to his old enemy.
“Thanks, Warren. It means a lot to me to hear you say that, it kind of validates everything I’ve done. You ever need help, you know where to find me,” and the man called Mimic smiled and shook Angel's hand before stepping out into the yard and taking off into the sky.
Ryker’s Superhuman Wing, the next day:
“Come to gloat now, Anthony?” The Mandarin asks his long-time nemesis.
“No, because I know this won’t hold you, Mandy,” Stark says with a smirk “but I’ve had this special containment cell built just for you.”
“Yes, that’s right isn’t it, my rings, they can no longer be removed and your weak Constitution rules against dismemberment now doesn’t it. You simply plant the seeds for my next ascension,” the villain espoused with a snarl.
“And I know the Avengers will be there to stop you. I may not have had an active role this time; but you spoke of seeds. I planted the seeds for the Avengers many years ago, to fight people like you. Have fun getting past them, next time, Mandy,” Stark finished up, still bruised and battered, he slowly walked, almost hobbled, away leaving Mandarin in his cell; forever sitting, with his hands raised outwards, in titanium casings where inside Stark has put in place measures to absorb the energies from Mandarin’s rings and negate any of the rings effects. Meanwhile, a needle in the back of Mandarin’s neck fills him with sedative. For now, this should hold, until Stark should build something new.
Outside the prison on the side of the street, Anthony met his friend James.
“Thanks, Jim…for everything, I realize I haven’t been a good friend—“
“No, you haven’t. You stretch logic too far sometimes, Tony. You say you’re a ‘futurist’ but that leaves you blind to the present half the time. I think as advanced and complex as machines, especially your machines, can be, people will always be just a bit more complex. You’ve got to pay attention to people, Tony.”
“I—I think I’ve begun to realize that, Jim.”
“Good, now let’s grab a bite to eat, your treat,” and Rhodes started to forgive his old friend. He put his arm out, on his wrist, fashioned into a golden bracelet, sat his power prism. He creates a platform and seat for his friend, Tony sat gracefully, and they take off into town.