Liberators: Another World, Not My Own #1 (of 4)

Earth-N

by Jess Nevins

The Diary of Gwen Stacy

August 15, 1962) My life has become very strange to me.

It was so simple a month ago. All I had to worry about was high school. Oh, okay, and Dad, and Mom, and my weight, and Peter. But now I really have something to worry about.

The way it happened....like something out of a comic book, like one of those stories of Heat Wave or H2O. Spider bites shouldn't do this to anyone. Not even if they've been exposed to all that radiation.

Now...I don't know what to do. I've got these, these powers, and I don't know what to do with them. I can't tell Peter, I can't tell Dad or Mom...what'll I do?

August 18) Diary - I can't tell anyone but you, but...I've decided to become a superhero!

Stop laughing. I'm serious. I was reading about the 1940s - stupid AP History class makes us read books ahead of time - and on a perfectly good summer's day, too - and I read about Future Woman. She couldn't have been much older than me when she started. And she did a lot of good. She helped win the war!

Why couldn't I do the same thing? I can sew together a costume, and...gosh, what will I call myself?

August 19) I've got it! I'll be a "Spider-Woman"! I got bit by a spider, and I can crawl walls, and I've got the strength a spider would have - it makes sense. How will I make a web, though?!

8 am) Peter! He was talking about those toys he made, to get even with Flash - I bet I could use those. Have to do it so Peter doesn't find out...

August 20) Did it! Aunt May let me in to Peter's room - I told her I'd left one of my books there. I think she'd understand why I fibbed, though. I got Peter's notes and took them with me...now if only I can understand them.

August 24) Finally figured Peter's notes out and made little web guns from them. He's really bright - he should do something with these, like market them or something. He's too smart to be stuck here forever. I just wish Flash and the other guys weren't so mean to him all the time.

August 26) Went out tonight as "Spider-Woman." My first night out. It was...weird. Everything Daddy taught me about fighting...it was good training, I guess, but nothing really like what it's really like. I mean, you can't just stand there and wait for them to try to hit you when there are six of them and they've got knives and guns. And all that training Daddy made me take never warned me about what to do when some poor woman is screaming her head off. I end up jumping around a lot and almost panicking - this one guy with a really icky beard I hit so hard I was afraid I'd killed him. I really have to be careful with my strength. I'm gonna try out the web-guns. Next time.

August 29) They worked! That creep...I found some jerk with a gun. He was gonna...he had this woman cornered, and...well, you know. I had the web-gun strapped to my hands, and I shot them and gooped him all up. The woman ran away, but the police arrived, and I watched them take the creep away.

I think maybe I can do this right.

September 1) Daddy was talking about me at dinner - I mean, about Spider-Woman. The police don't know who she is, of course, but they've seen her - me - whoever - sometimes. They don't trust me, though, but Daddy admits that she's going after only the bad guys, and so he's happy about that.

September 3) My Sixth Sense went off as I was walking toward Peter's tonight. I ran the rest of the way to his house, and I saw this burglar holding up Peter & Aunt May & Uncle Ben. I didn't have my costume or anything, and he had a gun on them. What I did was pick up a rock and throw it through the window, really hard. It broke their window, but it hit the burglar in the head and knocked him out. And then I ran back to my house, and started walking back to Peter's house, and when I got there the police were already there, and they'd caught the guy, and everyone was safe, and no one knew the better about me being involved.

September 5) The Daily Bugle finally talked about me. They reported about what I did a couple days ago, when I caught that creep who'd been attacking those women in Central Park. They wondered why I was doing this.

I don't know if I could tell them...or anyone. It's like...I can do these incredible things - I can lift a car, I can walk on walls, I know if I'm in danger....I feel like I should do something with these powers. There are a lot of creeps out there - Dad tells me and Mom all about them at dinner - and if I can help stop them, shouldn't I?

September 10) School started this week. Everyone in the lunchroom was talking about Spider-Woman...hee hee. They have no idea, not even Peter. Flash thinks she's neat. Sally's jealous. I don't know about Mary Jane - she glares at me a lot. I think she doesn't like me because I'm going out with Peter. Harry...I don't know. He's kinda weird.

I've been so busy at night...I'm getting tired. I did help break the bank robbery ring, but between homework and catching the bad-guys I'm so busy that I never have a chance to really relax.

September 17) I think I'm getting the hang of this. If I spend four hours out swinging around and looking for the bad guys, I still get home by 3, and I can take naps when I get home from school.

September 24) Things are getting weird. Weirder, I mean.

I've been out there catching the bad guys for...gosh, I just looked at the first page of my diary. It's been a whole month! I was the only one, I thought, in a costume trying to catch crooks. Now it seems like I may not have even been the first!

The Daily Bugle ran this story today about Tony Stark, who's this famous industrialist. According to the Bugle, Stark heard that the Russians had put missiles on Cuba, so he made this rocket ship and took it up to go spy on the Cubans. And he took some of his friends with him. Only there was something wrong with the rocket, and it crashed. There was some accident or something, I don't know. Tony Stark and his friends survived, but the radio and tv weren't that clear about exactly what happened.

This was like three weeks ago or something. According to the Bugle, Stark and his friends got...changed. They got powers like me! And since the accident they've been fighting crime and exploring and doing stuff like that. They even wear costumes!

The Bugle interview was with Stark and his friends - they're calling themselves the "Four Aces," after that team back during World War Two. Stark said he didn't think they should keep their identities secret, cause everybody needs to trust them. Stark said he can turn himself invisible and make these..."force fields," I think he said. He's calling himself "Barricade". I don't remember the names of the other three - I mean, their real names. One of them is a Korean War veteran, and a Negro. He can set himself on fire and fly around - he's calling himself "Blackfire." There's this other guy who can stretch his body, and he's called the "Tangler." And then there's this poor woman who got turned into this awful orange rock-monster. She's calling herself "the Thing." I felt so bad for her...she's got to live the rest of her life looking like that. Nobody's ever gonna love someone like that. I'm lucky; I have Peter.

And Stark said in the interview that they've already gone to Monster Island - I thought that was a kid's story! - and also fought some aliens. I'm not the only costumed hero any more. I guess that's a good thing.

October 8) I'm beginning to think something funny is going on here.

I was out on patrol tonight, like always, and I overheard some car-thiefs talking about the money they owed to the "Tyrant." I tried to listen in, but they must have somehow sensed me there, because they shut up and split up right after that.

October 10) I'm not imagining things. I started asking some of the guys I captured about this "Tyrant," and they all shut up about it. Just mentioning his name makes them go kinda white.

I heard about another superhero today - this one working in Chicago. The police aren't talking about him, but the Post said that he leaves behind little cards calling himself "Sneaky Pete." He uses glues and pastes, and the paper reported today that he brought down a whole Mafia family in Chicago. I wonder how many of us there are going to be before this is all over?

October 14) Dad acting kinda strange at dinner tonight when I talked about Peter. He thinks that Peter might have something to do with Spider-Woman - I think he thinks that Spider-Woman isn't really a woman at all. If only he knew!

October 15) I managed to convince Dad to let me go visit Uncle Arthur this weekend. Uncle Arthur will understand when I tell him that I want to go out after I go out to dinner with him and Aunt Nancy. I'm going to tell them I'm going out with Peter; Uncle Arthur is pretty hip, he--

I've gotten really good at lying. I wish I didn't have to do this. It's just that nobody would understand if I told them I was Spider-Woman. And there's no way Daddy would let me keep doing it.

I'm gonna see if I can find out about this "Tyrant." Uncle Arthur and Aunt Nancy are only in Manorhaven - I should be able to get back into the city with no problems.

October 19) Told Peter I was going away this weekend. He got real unhappy. I told him I loved him, that I'd miss him...I think he accepted that. I wish he didn't feel so bad about himself. I really have to do something to stop Flash and the other guys from picking on him.

October 23) God, what a weekend. Where do I even begin?

Everybody knows about this "Baron Mordo" guy by now; it was all over the papers and the radio and tv about how he destroyed the Russian missile bases in Cuba and how he made President Kennedy and Khrushchev and Castor Carsto Castro sit down together and work things out. The papers are saying that if not for "Baron Mordo" things could have gotten really serious.

But nobody knows that he appeared to me - me! He showed up in my dream that night, saying that he and I were destined to work together against the forces of evil. It sounds corny, I know, but that's what he said. He wouldn't say more than that, but he did say we'd meet again.

And then I found out he was moving into the Village - the Bugle wrote about that today.

I also found out more about this "Tyrant." I went down to the docks on Friday and Saturday night, and nobody wanted to talk about him, but when I started following people around they talked about him among themselves. He's behind most of the crime in New York City, and gets a cut of all the money that's stolen. And all the crooks are afraid of him - everyone who has said anything bad about him or tried to do anything to get rid of him has disappeared. I have to try to find this guy - I'm out every night, and I catch like three muggers or rapists or thieves every night, and Daddy says that I - well, Spider-Woman - am making a difference, but there's just so many of them, and the Four Aces are never around the city - they're out exploring underground or outer space or fighting aliens or something.

Which is why the news this morning was so good. There's someone else fighting crime in New York - another superhero. The Post and the Bugle didn't name him, but I asked Daddy about it at breakfast, and he said that the cops in his precinct are calling him "the Robot," because he looks like a big robot, shaped like a man. He's been seen all over the city; he seems to have all sorts of weapons and attachments on his body, and can make things grow or shrink. I hope he keeps doing this; I need help.

I wonder what Baron Mordo meant?

October 29) Had another fight with Peter tonight. He wonders why I'm always going out at night - why I always end the dates early. I can't tell him...but I love him. What'll I do?

November 5) We made up. I don't think he believes what I told him...but I can't tell him the truth. I can't.

I took it out on the drug creeps I caught tonight. I really gotta be careful about my strength. I think I almost killed one of the crooks tonight.

November 14) Still no luck finding this "Tyrant." I asked Daddy about him; he became very quiet and asked where I'd heard about him. I said one of the kids at Midtown High was talking about him. Daddy said that he's just a myth, something that crooks tell each other to make themselves feel better. I don't think he was telling the truth, though; he looked kinda, I don't know, troubled.

November 18) I was sneaking around the docks tonight when I heard some longshoremen talking about the Tyrant. So I started listening in. I found out some stuff.

He's actually called the "Tyrant of Crime," and he's supposed to have an army of strange little yellow men who kill people for him. He's got a headquarters somewhere underneath the city, under the subway.

The longshoremen were gonna go on when my Sixth Sense went off. I jumped up, and a bunch of bullets hit where I was standing. I looked around, but I couldn't find whoever was shooting at me. He...I guess it could have been a woman - he kept shooting, and I kept dodging, and eventually I ran away. I think they know I'm out there

November 27) It's getting tough. I still manage to catch the creeps and jerks out there - yesterday I managed to shut down this numbers joint near Harlem - Daddy talked about it at breakfast - he said the police have been trying to shut that place down for months - but it seems like just about every couple of hours my Sixth Sense goes off, and that guy, whoever he is, starts shooting at me. He's really bugging me.

December 2) No closer to the "Tyrant." I keep catching criminals, and they keep getting released. Still haven't found the guy who shoots at me, but I can sorta anticipate him.

December 5) Finally caught the guy who's been shooting at me. I lured him into the area near Runway 4 at the airport - I knew that the Tyrant has a warehouse there, and I was sure that if I swung around the city slowly enough, and paused in a couple of places, the guy would think I was headed for the airport. I found this place where there'd be a great shot at me, but that it wouldn't be easy to escape from, and the guy took the bait. He was tough to catch - he's got really good reflexes, and he had a lot of weapons. It took a lot of my web fluid to slow him down enough for me to slap him out.

It turns out he's some guy named Castle. I hadn't heard about him, but the Times said that he's the one the mob calls "Bullseye," and he's responsible for a huge number of murders across the country - all mob hits. Daddy was really happy about this. I feel like I did my good deed for the week.

I just wish things with Peter were going so well. He's still uneasy around me because he knows I'm keeping a secret, and even though I know he loves me he won't say it...and that Betty Brant woman from the Bugle keeps flirting with him.

December 10) I had just discovered these jewel-store robbers tonight when they started screaming and dropped the bags of jewels. They actually acted relieved to see me. I asked them about it, and they said that they'd heard about this big green monster in the city who was wandering around at night catching criminals and who was mean. They were glad it was me who caught them, they said, because they'd heard the big green monster was killing crooks.

I asked Dad about this at breakfast; he said he'd heard rumors, but nothing more. I wonder if it's true...?

December 13) Like everyone else I was watching the battle last night - Baron Mordo fought this guy in the sky over Manhattan - lots of really weird and bright colors and strange sounds - the paper is calling Mordo's opponent "Magus Tenebris" - when I noticed a commotion a couple of streets over. I was crouched on the side of the Empire State Building, and so I swung over and down to check it out.

It was the big green monster. He was fighting this gang of thugs, all of whom were wearing these baseball outfits, who'd just broken into this sports-parts store. I webbed up the gang and talked with the green guy. He calls himself "Mr. Hyde," and he was nice enough to me, but he wouldn't talk about where he was from or who he was. I guess I can understand that. He was huge - I mean, he was like twice as big as me! And he had these muscles like...like he'd been lifting weights for a hundred years - his thigh was as big as my entire body! He jumped into the air and flew out of sight, for like miles and miles.

December 17) It seems like everything's going crazy all at once. Dad says he hasn't seen anything like it since World War Two and Future Man.

This weekend was just crazy. During rush hour on Friday night the Four Aces got into this huge fight with this big robot. It turned out it was one man, wearing a biiiig suit of armor that only looked like a robot. The fight went all the way from the Washington Bridge to the Village and out into the harbor. It seemed like they wrecked about 18 buildings. It was only after Tony Stark used some sort of fancy electromagnetic pulse weapon on the guy in the armor that they finally stopped him. The guy was calling himself "Warbot." It turns out his name is Day, and he was an engineer for Kaxton Industries; they sent him out to somewhere in the Pacific to look for a new overseas factory for them, and he found this giant robot, which he somehow turned into a computerized suit of armor. He really gave the Aces a run for their money; the Thing and Barricade both said that they didn't ever want to face him again.

Then, that night, I finally saw some of the little yellow men the Tyrant of Crime is supposed to use. They're weird; they only wear these strange goggles and these white bathing suits - they're really gross. I followed them into the subway station at 52nd St, but lost them - they must have a tunnel somewhere with a hidden entrance I couldn't discover.

Then, on Saturday afternoon, I was at the Guggenheim with Peter when this gang tries to hold us all up and steal some Van Goghs. They were all wearing Yankees' uniforms, and they all had bats and balls. The guy leading them had this catcher's mask on, so you couldn't see his face. The guy was calling himself the Sportsman, and kept talking about how he and his gang were going to carry off the "biggest heist of the century." When one of the security guards went for his gun, the Sportsman threw a baseball and hit him in the throat - and killed him! Right in front of everyone! Like it was nothing.

I was trying to figure out a way I could get away from Peter and slip into my costume - I keep a folded up pair in my purse now all the time - when I saw this bright flash of light and I heard this really loud boom, like thunder, and suddenly there's this big muscular black guy - I mean, really big, like about seven feet tall - and he's wearing this Viking outfit and has this really big hammer. He was speaking in this really deep voice and saying things like "Thou art a base varlet, and thou shalt taste of my hammer, Meeolnur!" And he called himself "Thor." Yeah, like the mythological god.

The Sportsman's gang tried to fight him, but Thor just threw them all around. When they shot at him, he deflected their baseballs and arrows with his hammer, and when the Sportsman tried to fly away on these two jet-skis, Thor threw his hammer and brought him down. Thor then waved to us in the crowd and took the Sportsman and his men away. Thor's really handsome.

It turns out the Sportsman is a pitcher for the Yankees! I'd never heard of him, but I'm not a big baseball fan. Peter and Dad and Mom were all shocked, though - this guy was the Yankees star pitcher! He had the best pitching arm since Walter Johnson (that's what Dad says) - and the same pitches - and he's committing crime. I just don't know why someone who had all that would do that.

And that was just Saturday afternoon. That night I was out on patrol, heading for the terminal where all the subway cars end up - I might be able to find a clue about the Tyrant of Crime and his little yellow men there - when I hear an alarm going off. So I head off to investigate, and I found the alarm was coming from this bank. There didn't seem to be anything wrong from the outside, but when I looked through the windows of the bank I saw this huge robot with six arms looting the bank, and there's this big hole in the ground from which it came. So I dove into the bank - I had to break the window to get in, but I think the bank people will understand - and tried to web it up. The robot was, like, 10 feet tall! And it just ignored my webbing and pulled it off like it was nothing, and then it attacked me with two of its arms while ripping open the door to the bank vault with its other four arms. I barely kept away from it, and nothing I was doing to it was stopping it - I mean, I can lift tons of weight, but this thing was ignoring my punches, and it was too quick for even me to get ahold of.

It finally got all the money from the vault and shoved it into some kind of opening it had in its body, and then it dove back in the hole. I of course had to follow it - I couldn't just let it go.

I followed it for what seemed like miles - it took almost all I had to keep up with it, but thankfully the tunnels it was digging were pretty big - and I finally found its lair, this huge, hollowed-out cave way underground. There was this guy with him - a guy about my size. And he was giving voice commands to the robot, and the robot was obeying him.

I caught the guy by surprise, but the robot knew I was there right away, and attacked me without even waiting for its master to give some sort of verbal command. It was bad enough when I was fighting its two arms, but taking on all six was too much for me, and I was beginning to go down when the roof to the cave collapsed and in flew another robot, only not so big, and with only two arms, and a sorta skull-looking face. The second robot used some sort of ray beam to immobilize the six-armed robot, and then knocked him over, and knocked out the guy controlling the six-armed robot.

The second robot then said to the guy, "Caught you at last, Jenkins." And then he introduced himself to me. It was the robot Dad was telling me about a couple of months back, the one who's been fighting crime. He calls himself "the Android" (that means a robot shaped like a man - I looked it up). He didn't stay long, cause he'd called the police and they were on their way, but we did introduce ourselves and chat a little. He seemed like a nice enough guy - he did tell me he wasn't really a robot, just a guy controlling the robot.

And then, on Sunday afternoon, Peter and I are at Coney Island with Flash and Sally and Harry and the others, and we're all walking along the boardwalk, and suddenly this yacht docked some ways out starts rocking around, and I see people being thrown into the air. So I told everybody I was gonna go run and call the police, and I changed into Spider-Woman, and swam out to the yacht.

There was this horrible monster destroying the ship - it looked like a half-man half-shark thing. Me swimming out after it was kind of a mistake, since I'm not really that quick in water, and it moved like it was born there. Lucky for me somebody had called the police, and they'd called the Four Aces, and they showed up and helped capture the thing - the papers were calling it "Man-Shark."

And I got to talk with the Four Aces! They were really nice and really friendly! Tony Stark is soooo cute, and Blackfire and the Tangler were really nice, and the Thing...I felt so bad for her - she's so ugly! And she was still really friendly and nice to me, saying that they'd heard all about me and really admired what I'd done!

And then that night the news reported a crimewave on the Upper East Side - there's some sort of superpowered guy who's emitting all sorts of radiation and who can shoot blasts of energy and stuff.

Mom and Dad say it's like it was back in during World War Two. I don't really know what to think - I'm just glad I'm not the only one out there fighting crime.

December 23) The papers say the police are thinking of setting up a special prison for the superpowered criminals, like that "Chameleon" guy I caught when I started out as Spider-Woman, and that Tony Stark will be doing the security for it. I think that's a good idea.

Peter's been really worried about Aunt May and Uncle Ben - he thinks they've got money worries that they aren't telling him about. Tomorrow night's Christmas Eve, and Aunt May and Uncle Ben are going to midnight service with some of their friends, down in New Jersey, and they'll be there on Christmas Day, and come back on Christmas Night. Peter has to work on Christmas Eve day, so he won't be going with them. I think I'll have a little...surprise...to cheer him up - hee!

December 26) I was with Peter the past two nights. I'm sore, but I'm glad we did it. Peter's happier than I've seen him...and I think this will show him that I really love him. He might even tell me he loves me.

December 28) The Daily Bugle and the Post and the Times are full of stories about how Mr. Hyde destroyed the George Washington Bridge yesterday. I can't believe it...I mean, he seemed like a nice guy when I met him, and I sure didn't get the sense he was gonna hurt anyone. But if he's become a bad guy - and there were all these witnesses that saw him wreck the Bridge - I have to go stop him, somehow.

Peter tells me that Harry's mom and dad just inherited some property in England - a castle and everything! - and they're going there to check it out, and that they won't be back for several months. I wish I could say I'm going to miss Harry, but...he kinda gives me the creeps. And sometimes when I'm around him my Sixth Sense goes off. But Peter likes him, so I don't say anything. Anyhow - he's gone now, so I won't have to think about him any more.

January 2, 1963) I don't believe things any more. I--no. I'm too tired now. I'll write more later.

January 10) I've been so busy that I haven't had time to write, and I'm too tired to do it late at night or early in the morning, like I used to. I'm finally taking a night off, to...oh, darn it. The alarm is going off.

(Later) What's happened is...no, I'd better start at the beginning.

It was New Year's Eve, and Peter was staying at my house - I think Mom and Dad know that Peter and I are doing "it," but they trust me, and they both like Peter. It was about 2 in the morning, and he was asleep, and I was still feeling tingly, and I was looking out my window when I saw a series of bright lights in the sky, way off, from downtown. They looked like flashes and even some explosions, and my Sixth Sense was going off, so I decided to investigate. I put on my costume and swung across the city towards it.

It turns out it was this huge battle. What happened was - and I only got this later, I didn't know this at the time - but this old enemy of Thor's - I think Thor said his name was "Forsung" - had cast this spell that made the Mr. Hyde think he was saving people, when what the Mr. Hyde was really doing was attacking wrecking the bridge. Thor said that Forsung did this to get at him, and his father, Odin - it's so freaky that he's the real Thor, the god of thunder - I have to remember to ask him whether that means that only the Norse myths are true, or if there really was a Christ...

Anyhow. So Thor hears about Mr. Hyde, and goes after him. And so did the Four Aces. And they find him in Wall Street, and he's smashing buildings and throwing cars around and uprooting water lines and spraying everything. (Mr. Hyde said later it looked to him like there were "lava men" attacking Wall Street. He's not a bad guy, but - "lava men"? Must have been a really goofy illusion). And Thor and the Four Aces arrive, and they see Mr. Hyde destroying everything in sight, and so of course they attack him. And there's this big battle, and a lot of Wall Street gets beat up.

That's where I came in. I tried to stop Mr. Hyde, but he was really angry at this point, and he wouldn't listen to what I had to say, and so I started hitting him. I didn't do much good - hitting him is like punching the Empire State Building - but I was keeping him occupied, and stopping him from destroying more stuff.

And then the Android showed up, and he helped against Mr. Hyde, and then Baron Mordo showed up, and he was carrying this other guy, who was holding a funny gun that was connected by a tube to a barrel on his back. And Baron Mordo did something with his hands, and there was this flash of light, and suddenly this guy with a mean face appears in front of Baron Mordo, and they start shouting things at each other and shooting spells and stuff. And Thor says, "Forsung!" and whirls his hammer, and then there's another flash, and he and "Forsung" disappear. And Baron Mordo tells us to stop fighting, because we'd all been deceived, and that we were destined to come together on this date - those were his words.

Baron Mordo introduced the guy with the funny gun - it was Sneaky Pete, the guy from Chicago. Baron Mordo waved his hands and said some strange words, and there was another flash, and when we stopped blinking we were in Tony Stark's labs. Baron Mordo said that the Fates had told him that today was to be the day that the heroes of our world would band together, and that we would be instrumental in defeating the forces of evil in days to come. (He talks real funny) Mr. Hyde didn't seem to want to have anything to do with us, and seemed ready to fight us again, but Baron Mordo cast another spell, and then Mr. Hyde was back to his normal self - Mordo said that Forsung had cast a spell on Mr. Hyde, to make him angry.

And then Thor reappeared, and said his father had punished Forsung for "interference in the affairs of Midgard." (Midgard is what Thor calls Earth). And the Thing got us all some coffee - this was about 3 in the morning, and we all needed it - and we talked with Mordo, and...well, he convinced us to become a team - like that team back during Thirties and Forties, and like the Four Aces, except that we'd be a team of all the modern heroes! Jim - Blackfire - his real name is Jim Rhodes - suggested that we call ourselves "the Avengers," because we'd be avenging those who have become the victims of crime. That name stuck, somehow, so that's what we're calling ourselves now.

I'm a member of a superhero group. I still can't believe it.

And that's what I've been doing the past couple of weeks. Every night we meet to discuss what's happened, and to investigate any crimes or strange events. It keeps me out late, and I'm tired a lot, but I'm doing good work - we all are - and the public seems to love us. Daddy and Mom keep talking about how much we're like the World War Two Aces, and how maybe a happy new day has come again.

January 16) I got a C- on my English paper. Darn it, Dad's gonna be really angry with me. I can pull up my grade, but I don't know how I'm gonna tell him and Mom about this. I'm afraid they're gonna think it's because I'm spending too much time with Peter, and they'll make me..

No, they wouldn't make me stop seeing him. I couldn't take that, and they know that. But they'll cut down on the amount of time I can spend with him. Oh, gosh darn it all.

January 19) Barely made it back tonight...oh, god, it hurts...can't write...

January 20) Better now - but I think I've got bruises on my entire body. The cuts were deep but they weren't that wide, and they didn't hit any arteries. I managed to clean them up myself. I can't let Peter see me like this. Still hurts to write, though, and I think I'm running a fever. No way I'm going to make it to school - I'm going to have to tell Mom I'm sick.

January 20) Slept all day. I'm feeling better, and my bruises have begun to fade, and I think the gashes are smaller. I think I may heal super-fast - I've never really been hurt before, not since I got bit by that spider, but bruises like the ones on my chest should fade away in the space of a few hours.

What happened was, the ten of us were meeting at Tony Stark's labs. We didn't have anything really serious to discuss, so we were talking about our pasts - we've been so busy fighting the bad guys the past few weeks, what with the attacks by OCTOPUS on the White House and with us helping SHIELD fight them - supposedly, from what SHIELD says, OCTOPUS is led by a former Nazi, someone like the Reichsmaster, and we're trying hard to hunt them down. That's what we've been doing, practically every night, for at least an hour or two. It's a good thing Tony...I guess I should call him Barricade, like the papers do, but he's so friendly that I can't help but call him by his real name. It's a good thing Tony has started giving us those pick-me-up pills. Just one of those and I have enough energy to keep going for a good three hours. And I don't hardly feel tired the next morning, either.

So we were talking...I guess I should write these things down. Maybe I can make a book out of this someday or something. There's Barricade - that's Tony Stark. He's a super-smart inventor - everybody knows about Stark Industries, and how they're helping supply the Army with weapons in Vietnam and Laos and Cambodia and Burma. Tony said that after the Russians launched Sputnik, and then their space station, he started making this rocket, because he wanted to get to the moon before the Commies did, and by last August it was done. And then he found out about the Russian missiles on Cuba, and so he was gonna take the rocket up to spy on Cuba and to go to the moon, to show the world that Americans would get there first, and that everyone would be safe - Tony says he had some weapon satellites that he was going to put up there to make sure the Russians didn't try to put another space station up there, and to make sure that the one up there now doesn't try anything funny. And somehow Jim and Happy and Pepper - that's Jim Rhodes - he's Blackfire - and Happy Hogan - he's the Tangler - and Pepper Potts - she's the Thing - somehow they persuaded Tony to let them go with him on the flight.

Well, there was something wrong with the rocket - Tony says that he hadn't put enough shielding on and hadn't accounted for the "cosmic radiation" (I don't know what that means, but it sure sounds impressive) - and everything went wrong, and Tony and Jim and Happy and Pepper all got exposed to all this radiation, and that's what gave them their powers. Poor Pepper - she really hates looking like that, but there's nothing she can do about it. And I can tell she's really angry with Tony for ruining her life, but she doesn't want to say anything to him - and he knows that, and he feels bad about it, too. Happy's so sweet for sticking with her - I don't think most guys would be that good or faithful.

So that's the Four Aces. Sneaky Pete's real name is Pete Petruski. He says he's really a research chemist in Chicago; he's modest about it, but Tony says that Pete is the best in the world at adhesives and acids. Pete won't really talk about what got him started in being a superhero; he just says that the people in his neighborhood and in Chicago needed him, so he came up with a way to use his glues and pastes and stuff to help people. I get the feeling that Pete isn't telling us everything, but we agreed, when we first formed the Avengers, that we weren't going to pry into each others' private lives, if they didn't want us to, and so we're gonna leave Pete alone about that. Chicago's an awful long way from New York City, but Tony made up some jet-boots for Pete to use, and they get him here in about an hour or so.

The Android is operated by a guy named Hank Pym; he says he's a scientist who discovered a way to make semi-...well, darn it, I don't remember exactly what the words were that he used, but he found a way to make these really big robots who were sort of conscious. Tony says that Mr. Pym is famous for having discovered "Pym Particles," but I don't really understand what they do - they make things grow and shrink, but I don't understand how that works. He's tried to explain it to me, but he keeps using all this jargon. Anyhow, Mr. Pym made this robot with all these abilities - it's super-strong and can fly and has all these different weapons - and he's controlling it from his labs.

I'm getting tired again. I'll write more in the morning.

January 21) Still feel badly - still sore - so I'm not going to school again today.

Mr. Pym is nice, but he's really quiet. He doesn't say much, and sometimes I get the feeling he's kinda sad. But we're not supposed to pry, so...

Baron Mordo sometimes gives me the creeps - he seems to know what you're thinking before you think it, and sometimes he seems like he's listening to voices who aren't there. I finally asked him about it, and he said that...let me see if I can get this right..."Ms. Stacy (I keep telling him to call me Gwen, but he's really polite and formal all the time), there are many claims on the attentions of the Sorcerer Supreme; I must needs monitor not simply this Earth, but many other planets, and even planes." (Happy said later that that just means he's watching a lot of places at once) He did say that his name is Karl, and that he really is a Baron - he's from a line of Transylvanian royalty (I didn't know that was a real place - I thought it was made up for the Dracula movies - I wonder if that means that Dracula and vampires are real?) and that, years ago, he was going bad but that his "master" - someone called the "Ancient One," although none of the rest of us know who that is - helped rescue him from...I think he said, "my soul being seduced by the personification of evil." And so Karl became a good person instead of a bad one, and eventually he was chosen by the "Ancient One" to be his successor. And now he's the "Sorcerer Supreme" (whatever that is) of the world.

Mr. Hyde didn't open up for a while - we're all sorta uneasy around him after the way things started, and he's still kinda angry at the rest of us - but we finally got him talking. His real name is "Don" - he won't tell us his last name because he's still, technically, an outlaw in some places, even though we're trying to get the police to drop the charges against him - and he said what happened to him was that he had a bad leg and was trying to use a combination of radiation therapy and muscle-building medicine to help heal his leg and make it strong again, but that he overdid the amount of radiation, and that it turned him big and green. He said he can turn himself back into his normal self when he wants, but that it's tough, and that he'd rather stay as Mr. Hyde for long stretches of time, cause it gets easier to turn back to his human body when he's been Mr. Hyde for a while.

Thor told us about his past, too. He said that his father, Odin - the real Odin, the father of the Norse gods - wanted to punish him for being too cocky, and so he cast a spell turning him into a mortal. Thor showed us who he really is...it's kinda confusing. I guess Thor is who he really is, but he's also really this African prince. His name is...Tuchallah - I think that's how he said it. He's got this weird accent, and sometimes I can't quite understand what he's saying. He turned back into his human self one day and told us about himself. He says he's the leader of this tribe - the Wakandans - but that he was sent to England when he was a kid, right after World War Two. (Happy says that the Wakandans fought on the side of the U.S. during the War, but I never read anything about that in History class. Tony says that Wakanda is this small country in East Africa) Tuhchallah says that his father was killed during the war and that an evil advisor named Killmonger (that can't be his real name) took over the country, and that he - Tuhchallah - had to be sent from the country or else the advisor would have him killed - this was when Tuhchallah was a little baby. So Tuhchallah is this prince in exile, and he went to school and then to college in England and then in America. He said he was vacationing in Norway after he graduated when he found this stick - Tuhchallah said it was some sort of ceremonial stick of his people or something. Tuhchallah said he was really surprised to find it in a cave way up north in Norway, and so he took it with him. Then some guys in Trondheim tried to mug him, and he used the stick to defend himself, and when he hit one of the guys with the stick there was this flash of lightning and thunder, and he turned into Thor.

This sounds like a comic book, I know, but it's true. (He's really good looking, both as Tuhchallah and as Thor - I'd better never tell Peter that, or he'd get really jealous)

So we were telling each other stories about ourselves and the stuff we've been doing - the others were really interested when I told them about the Tyrant of Crime - they say they've never heard of him, but that he certainly sounds like someone we should be going after. Then these alarms went off. Tony has these machines which monitor the police radios and the news stations on tv and radio, and Mr. Pym helped modify the machines so that they'd set off alarms when really important things were happening. Well, it sounded right then like about eight things were happening at once. At that point we couldn't tell what was going on - there were just all these confused reports coming over the radio, and we could hear some screams and gunshots. Baron Mordo acted all alarmed all of a sudden, and said that we were facing "two dire threats." One was at Coney Island, and one was in Philadelphia.

So we split up into two groups. Mr. Hyde went off with the Four Aces to find out what was wrong in Philadelphia - Baron Mordo cast a spell sending them there - it's so weird to think that magic is real. And me, Sneaky Pete, Mr. Pym, Baron Mordo, and Thor went to Coney Island.

Tired again. Will write more tomorrow.

January 25) I just haven't had the time to write anything. Between schoolwork and going out with the Avengers, I just haven't had the time.

Where was I? Well, I didn't know about this at the time, but what happened with the Four Aces and Mr. Hyde was, they found this alien invasion - just like in the movies! - in downtown Philadelphia. These weird-looking aliens - like humans, but they've got feathers instead of hair and look kinda bird-like, and I guess they're called the Sheeare. I guess they had all sorts of rayguns and stuff, and the battle destroyed a couple of blocks in downtown Philadelphia. From what Tony says, the aliens knocked out and wounded him and Happy and Jim, and it was Mr. Hyde and Pepper who beat the aliens up and helped stop the invasion. The aliens said they'd be back, but now that we know about it we can prepare for them. And next time it'll be all of the Avengers - that'll show them.

It was different with the rest of us. When we got to Coney Island...

January 26) I was going to keep writing, but I found this in the trophy and file room in Tony's building, where the Avengers meet, and I thought I could put this in the diary, instead. Tony's got this neat machine that takes a photo of printed paper and transfers the photo onto another sheet of paper - it makes perfect copies, and you don't have to use a mimeo machine or nothing!

AVENGERS LOG

Being an account of the adventures of the Avengers in the Year Nineteen Hundred and Sixty Three, in the land known to its inhabitants as New York city, and to the Fair Folk of old as Nordolindrim

(by Karl Amadeus Crowler, Baron von Mordo, Sorcerer Supreme)

...and it did come to pass, in that time later known as the Winter of Rejoicing, when the youngest heroes of the Earth did gather together in the manner of the great warriors of the past, that the evil wizard known as the Magus Tenebris (which in the tongue of the learned means "sorcerer of darkness") did reach the fullness of his power, and did decide to strike at the Sorcerer Supreme, the inheritor of the power that the Magus Tenebris did seek and the proudest pupil of the school that had declared him outcast.

Years before, in the lamasery of the former Sorcerer Supreme, the Ancient One, of whom songs are sung across the Endless Desert and along the shores of the Sunless Sea, a young nobleman of the dark land of Latveria did come seeking entrance to the service of the Ancient One, in exchange for arcane knowledge. The nobleman, the dispossessed child of the royal line, had of late been educated in the new world of America, but his vanity and hubris had led him to tamper in God's domain, and attempt to unleash forces better left to slumber. This experiment had cost the nobleman his looks, and cost the life of one who sought to aid the nobleman. (The winds spoke of this accident, in the days just after, to those who would listen; the one who paid for the Latverian's error was destined for greatness, before the line of his life was cut short) The nobleman had not learned from his mistakes, and had instead blamed his would-be savior, calling foul curses down upon him and his family. He had been expe

lled from that place of learning, but the Latverian, ever desirous of power and already consumed with hatred and ambition, had returned to the Old World, seeking those who could teach him the ways of the Other Worlds and the mastery of the Higher Arts.

The Ancient One, wise in the ways of evil, and yet untouched by them, did allow the Latverian noble to enter his lamasery, and to learn some of the Higher Arts. The Ancient One did oonfide in one of his other students that he kept the Latverian close to him, so that he might best monitor, and (he hoped) control, the progression of evil and the corruption of the Latverian's soul. It was another one who discovered the true depths of depravity to which the Latverian would stoop; this other one discovered the Latverian bargaining with the Dread One - he would trade his soul in exchange for great mystical power. The student did reveal this to the Ancient One, and the Ancient One did confront the Latverian, and did lay a Doom upon the Latverian, that he should ever wander the Earth without knowing any peace, and that until he did abandon the ways of darkness, pain and famine only should be his helpmeet.

Some years passed after the Latverian was cast out from the lamasery of the former Sorcerer Supreme, and in that time another one gained that honorable mantle. The new Sorcerer Supreme, sensing something of the movements of Destiny, did bid farewell to his mentor and did remove himself to the new world of America, and did help form the newest group of heroes, called the Avengers. Thus it was that when the Magus Tenebris did strike at the fair, on the island of Coney, and did hold the thousands of revellers captive that he might perform the accurse'd Rite of Negative Assumption, the Sorcerer Supreme and his allies were ready.

Because of another threat posed to Earth at this time - the alien race of the Shi'ar, the conquerors of countless systems across three galaxies and the destroyers of the Kree, the Skrulls, and the Technomancers of Fornax, had detected the presence on Earth of the Nexus Of All Realities, and did send a strong force of Death Commandos to gain possession of the Nexus. But the mages of the Shi'ar Empire, foiled by the spells laid down of old by the Sorcerers Supreme of the past, had their enchantments go awry, and their battalions of life-takers were sent many long leagues from the Nexus, and did arrive on Earth at that exact moment that the Magus Tenebris did begin his forbidden magick. Thus it was that fully half of the Avengers were dispatched to stop the Shi'ar, leaving but four stalwart allies to accompany the Sorcerer Supreme against the Magus Tenebris.

The struggle between the Magus Tenebris and the Avengers was a fierce one, for much had the Magus Tenebris grown in might, and the Sorcerer Supreme had warned the Avengers of the dire effects on the Earth should they fail. The weapons of the metal warrior known as the Android were unable to pierce the defensive shields of the evil wizard, and the Magus' Crimson Bands of Cytorrak did immobilize him. The brave young woman called Spider-Woman did attempt to entangle the evil mage within her webs, but they, too, were not proof against his shields, and he did cast the Claws of Erlik Khan, which nigh slew her; it was only a quick healing magic by the Sorcerer Supreme which saved her life, and that but barely. Similarly, the mortal Peter Petruski found his weapons and courage availed him not against the might of the evil mage, who struck him down with Zota's Spirit Shout.

The Magus Tenebris, however, for all his base cunning, had not reckoned with the presence, on the Avengers, of a god, and the power of Thor did give the Magus pause, and drive him backwards, causing him to fall from the tall circle of wood and metal on which the evil wizard had first trapped mortals, and later chosen to make his stand. The Magus flew to the air and did begin sending balls of fire and bolts of cold at the God of Thunder, who did parry them with Mjolnir. The Sorcerer Supreme, after seeing to his fallen companions and freeing the ensorcelled humans from the evil magicks of the Magus Tenebris, did begin engaging the Magus. It was not until the Android did activate his sonic weaponry, though, that the Avengers did succeed in driving the Magus forth from his target. The Magus uttered his Word of Recall, thus fleeing from the site of his would-be triumph, but his skill was such that following him was impossible.

Thus did the Avengers, on the day of St. Habakkuk, later the Excommunicate, achieve victory over the Magus Tenebris, and save the lives and souls of many thousands.

He doesn't talk like that all the time - but sometimes. Well, a lot of the time. Between him and Thor, we sure sound funny. I'd rather talk to Happy or Pepper. They're normal people.

Anyhow - that's what happened to me. I got cut up bad, but Baron Mordo helped save me. It's scary to think that I could get killed doing this...but that's the risk I have to take, I guess.

February 4) Why is it that the craziness seems to happen on the weekends? It seems like every Monday I write about some weird badness that happened over the weekend.

It really started on Friday night. We were meeting to talk about what we should do about the Tyrant of Crime - the others have been out patrolling, too, and they've seen some of the same evidence I have - that someone is behind most of the crime in the city - when the alarm went off, the one that says that someone has entered the floors in Tony's building that are just for Tony and for the Avengers - the rest of his building is apartments and businesses that Tony rents out to - and so Mr. Hyde goes off to see who it is, and when he comes back he's all grumpy, and when we ask him what's wrong he tells us to...uh...well, he used some bad words. Happy got kind of irritated with him, and they started to argue, and then Mr. Hyde just up and punched Happy through the wall! It's a good thing Happy's body is so rubbery and stretchable, cause otherwise he might have been really hurt!

So of course the rest of us tried to go after Mr. Hyde, to stop him before he hurt someone else, but he clapped his hands together really fast and hard and made this really loud noise that hurt all of our ears, and then he jumped through the hole in the building and left.

And so we went after him. Black Fire and Thor and Android flew off after him first, while the rest of us were trying to figure out what was going on. And by the time we caught up to them, they'd found him, but he was looking confused and angry and kept saying, "Why are you attacking me?" while Black Fire kept shooting flames at him. Baron Mordo used his Red Rings of Sightorack spell to immobilize Mr. Hyde, but Black Fire kept pouring the heat on him, and when Baron Mordo told Black Fire to stop, Jim sent a fireball at Karl!

We didn't know what was going on at this point, so I shot webbing all over Karl and Mr. Hyde and Jim and Mr. Pym. And then I saw this sort of flash, and all of a suddent I wasn't with the rest of the Avengers, I was in this weird...I don't know what to call it. This weird sort of other world, with all these strange-looking shapes and colors floating around, and I was floating in the middle of this, I don't know, void sorta place.

And then all of a sudden I was back, and everyone was covered with webbing and glaring at me, and then Mr. Hyde and the Android and Thor broke free of my webbing and they jumped at me, and I had to jump around and avoid them, and all the time they were yelling at me and I kept asking them why they were attacking me and they wouldn't answer!

It was finally Baron Mordo who figured out that something strange was happening, and he cast this spell...he said it in rhyme, and I can't remember exactly what he called it, but it was something like the "Revelations of Icon," and suddenly this really ugly looking alien appeared before us.

It turns out his name is - I mean, what he calls himself is the "Possessor," and he's this alien from another dimension. He was running away from this bad guy named "Proctor" who conquered his world and a bunch of other worlds, and he came here and decided to conquer us. And he can take on our shapes and send us into some place called "Limbo."

So Baron Mordo made him swear never to do that again, and cast some sort of spell sending him away. I didn't really follow what happened, but Baron Mordo said that the Possessor wouldn't be back for a while.

February 11) Wow. 7 whole days since the last time I wrote. It feels like forever.

Not cause I've been so busy, `cause I haven't. I haven't had to do anything - not as Spider-Woman. No call from Tony - he gave us all this watch that buzzes kinda funny when the Avengers have to get together, and that's who we know when to meet. And I haven't been going out as Spider-Woman - well, I went out once, but that was just a quick patrol, and it didn't seem like all that much was going on.

Just me being at home with Mom and Dad or with Peter and me catching up on my schoolwork - it's been great!

Unfortunately, that ended yesterday. Last night, I mean. I had kissed Peter goodnight and was walking back from his house when my watch went off. So I ran home and said goodnight to Mom and Dad and then got into my costume and slipped out my window, like always.

It turned out that that guy I mentioned back in December, the one who was leaving traces of radiation everywhere - he was going on a rampage in downtown Manhattan. Why do these supercreeps always have to do this here? Why can't they go destroy somewhere like Jersey City?

So we went after him. By the time we got there he'd flow off. We caught up to him when he was flying towards the nuclear power plant at Three Mile Island, the one Tony helped design.

He was this small guy with a bowl haircut - a really ugly one - but he had this glowing aura around him, and he was moving really quick. Black Fire's flames had no effect on him, and when Happy tried to hold him he got burned - radiation burns, I mean. We were all flying along - Tony designed this big kinda ship for us to fly in - it looks like a big bathtub, but it moves really quickly - and so Baron Mordo and the Android and Thor went after the guy - we later found out he was calling himself the Atomic Man - and the rest of us just sorta flew around and then landed and tried to contain the damage he was doing, cause every time he blasted at Thor or Baron Mordo or Mr. Pym and missed, he'd hit something else on the ground and start a fire or blow up something, nad so we took care of damage control - lucky for us we were over a part of the Delaware River where there weren't many people, so all we really had to do was put out fires, and there was snow over most of the trees and so they didn'

t really catch on fire that much.

The guy didn't look like much - he was short and kinda pudgy and he had these thick glasses on - but boy, could he put up a fight. He zapped Thor a good one - blew him like miles and miles away - and he was actually holding off Baron Mordo - his energy bolts were stopping Baron Mordo's spells, somehow - and it wasn't until Mr. Pym snuck around behind him and threw this...I think he called it a "radiation-absorbant osmium net" on top of the Atomic Man that we finally managed to catch him. His real name is Octavian or Octaveuw or something like that, and the papers say that he was a big wig scientist at the US Atomic Research Center on the outskirts of town until there was this accident and he got exposed to all this radiation - it's funny that the papers never carried this story, I never heard about any accident - and he somehow got these powers, and he only just escaped from the hospital, and he was going to kill the people he thought were behind his accident.

But he's in that Vault place - the special prison for superpowered jerks. Good thing, too - he's way too powerful to be out and loose.

February 15) These supercreeps are crawling out of the woodwork. Where do they all come from? How come we never saw any of them before this? And why do they always come to New York City? We never hear about superpowered criminals in other cities? Why don't they go pick on somewhere else?

Okay, okay, I know there are costumed criminals in other cities. Pete tells me he's caught of a few of them in Chicago, and Baron Mordo has mentioned that he's gone after a couple in Boston and Maine. But it seems like every couple of days there's another one on the loose here in New York, and it's just not fair!

So this is what happened. I was watching the news with Mom and Dad when there was this newsflash about a supervillain going on a rampage in downtown Manhattan. So I said goodnight and ran upstairs and got into my costume - and my watch was already buzzing. Doesn't Tony have anything better to do with his time? I keep hearing stories about him and all these actresses - supposedly he was dating Marilyn Monroe, although he says they're just good friends - how come he always knows when there's a crisis?

So I went to the meeting place - oh yeah - I forgot to say - the watch now has this little...uh, I think Tony called it a "liquid crystal display face" that shows whatever message Tony sends to us - this time he told us to meet at the Twin Towers - so I flew there - Tony made us all the jetboots that he gave to Pete - and when we got there we went to Wall Street, which is where the superjerk was. When we got there we saw the creep fighting with Thor. And, I mean, he was fighting with Thor - he was going hand-to-hand with him - exchanging punches like they were nothing! About three whole blocks of Wall Street were - they looked like it was a war zone! There were these huge holes in the street and sidewalk, and all the cars were wrecked, and the buildings had these huge holes in them from where Thor or the other guy had been punched through them, and all the fire hydrants were broken and spewing water everywhere, and some of the cars were on fire - it looked awful. And the worst part is that because this was Friday night there were people everywhere, and...it was bad. The superjerk had killed a lot of people. He was big - about seven feet tall - and had really pale white skin and really bright yellow hair, and he was kinda good looking - okay, really good looking - but he was covered with blood, and he was glaring and laughing in a really evil way. And he had this creepy purple costume, and these weird orange gloves. There were police everywhere, but a lot of them were already dead - killed by the bad guy - and the rest were trying to help people get out of there.

So we get there as he uses these eyebeams to blow Thor through one building and out on to Pine Street. Of course, we immediately spread out, and while Thor and the Thing and Mr. Pym and Baron Mordo went after the blond guy, the rest of us tried to put out the fires. It was horrible - this guy was like more powerful than all the rest of us, and it seemed like the punches of Pepper and Mr. Pym and Thor - when he came back - he was a bit bloody, but he was still ready to go - weren't having much effect. And the bad guy kept shooting these eye- and hand-beams at us, and Black Fire's fire and the Android's weaponry and Thor's lightning and Baron Mordo's spells didn't seem to have that much effect on him, and when the rest of us joined the fight, we couldn't really do much, although my webbing did slow him down just a little - it seemed to annoy him, at least, especially when I kept getting him in the face with it - thank God I was too fast for him to hit with those hand-beams of his.

We finally knocked him out like a half-hour later. We were all pretty tired, including him, and he was starting to try to get away. So Tony uses one of his force fields to grab the blond guy as he flies away and bring him down to Earth, and Pepper hits him as he comes down, and Pete totally goops him with his paste, and Baron Mordo hits him with some kinda spell - the Red Bands of...I just looked at what Baron Mordo wrote - the Crimson Bands of Cytorrak, whoever that is. And we finally got him immobilized, and then SHIELD came and took him away. They'd been watching - a whole bunch of their agents were with the police, looking at us while we fought, but they didn't want to get involved because they knew they'd get killed.

Director Dugan, the guy who runs SHIELD, showed up when the SHIELD agents were taking the blond guy away. From what Mr. Dugan said, the blond guy was trying to get into a secret SHIELD base on Wall Street, to get some super-powerful weapon that SHIELD had there. Thor and Baron Mordo quizzed Mr. Dugan about who the blond creep was; it turns out he's calling himself the "Blond Beast" (everyone but me seemed to know what that means, cause they all looked a little, I don't know, grim when Mr. Dugan said that). Mr. Dugan says that there's...well, he told us we couldn't tell anyone, but this is my diary, and if you can't tell your diary stuff, who can you tell? Mr. Dugan says that there's this race of aliens living on "Titan," which I guess is one of the moons of Saturn, and that this Blond Beast guy was sent here as a baby from Titan, and that he grew up out in Kansas or somewhere - this was like back in the Forties or sometime like that. And I guess once he became an adult he decided he was going to take over the world or something. So he's been out in other countries doing stuff like capturing weapons and stealing money and stuff - supposedly he fought a bunch of Commie supermen like a month ago or something - and this was his first time trying anything in the US. Mr. Dugan was really happy that we cuaght him.

By the time we got done talking to him it was like midnight, and so we all left and I went home. I'm going to sleep well tonight - I'm really tired!

February 16) My life stinks. Everything stinks.

February 18) Things a little bit better now...but...fooey.

I guess it started Saturday morning. I got up about 10 in the morning - this was right after we got done fighting the Blond Beast. I came downstairs, and there was Peter and Mom and Dad - and they were gathered around the breakfast table and it looked like they were waiting for me. And they all looked really serious.

I asked what was wrong, and Dad told me to sit down, that we had to talk. And I began to get worried, because they looked like they had something really bad they had to say. I asked if something was wrong with Uncle Arthur or Aunt Nancy, and they said no.

Then Dad told me that he and Mom and Peter had been talking about me, and about my "behavior," and that they'd been in my room but that they hadn't looked in my diary - I think Mom knows that I'd never forgive them for that - she told me one time that Grandma looked through her diary, and that she'd always remembered how invaded she'd felt by that, and how she'd never do that to me. And then Dad said...he...

He said that they knew I was Spider-Woman and that they didn't want me doing that anymore.

I got upset and ran out of the room - I hate it when they treat me like I'm still only 9 years old - but Peter caught up with me and persuaded me to go back. We had this long argument, and while it did feel kinda good not to have to lie to Mom and Dad anymore, they were being really stupid about this. They kept talking about how they didn't want me to get hurt, and how I was going up against really dangerous people, and that I was only 17 and too young to realize what I was doing.

That's when I...well, I lost my temper, and I started yelling at them, and then they started yelling back at me...it was awful. We've never had a fight like that before. Peter just looked miserable. I finally had to get one of the pokers out of the fireplace and bend it in half to make them pay attention to what I was saying. I finally got them to listen to me, and I told them about all the bad guys I'd already fought, and how I had the Avengers on my side now. And I took them into the backyard and showed them how fast I move, and how high I can jump, and told them about my Sixth Sense. And I told them about the people I've saved, and how someone has to be out there doing this - that's why Dad's a cop, after all.

They said they'd think about it. They didn't say anything else on Saturday, and Peter left after that - I think he was angry and hurt that I didn't tell him about this, but what could I do? - but on Sunday night Dad said they'd made their decision.

He and Mom said that I could keep being Spider-Woman, but that I had to keep my grades up, and I had to be careful, and I have to let them know when I'm going out in costume - well, the usual sort of thing that parents say. Lots of conditions - but they're still gonna let me be Spider-Woman!

Peter eventually came around, but I had to, uh, persuade him (hee!). I think he's okay with it, and now he understands why I had to lie to him all these months, but I know he's going to worry a lot anyhow.

But more than that happened over the weekend. Saturday Tony started sending messages to all of us - the Avengers, I mean - via the watch - that something was wrong with Mr. Pym. It wasn't an alarm, exactly, but he wanted us to keep the watch close. (As if we're gonna throw it away or something - duh! Sometimes Tony forgets that we're not stupid)

It turns out there was some sort of accident in Mr. Pym's - he was experimenting with the particles he named after himself - and something happened to his body, and now he's trapped in his android body. I think what happened - I mean, I couldn't really understand what Tony was saying, cause he always uses this scientific jargon that I don't get at all - but I think what he was saying was that the particles that made things shrink - the ones that Mr. Pym discovered - there was some sort of accident, and his body got an overdose of them, and now it's shrinking, and there's no way he can get it back.

I asked Tony today - I dropped by the headquarters to talk about this with Tony and Jim and Happy and Pepper - I asked Tony about where his body went. I mean, don't the Pym Particles wear off? He said that Mr. Pym got irradiated with so many Pym Particles that they might never wear off, and that nobody knows for sure what happens when you keep shrinking - that his body might go into a whole other universe or something. It's kinda spooky to think about.

Anyhow - Mr. Pym is now stuck in his android body. And he's really upset about that, although his robot body doesn't feel emotions in quite the same way. Baron Mordo said he'd help Mr. Pym deal with that, but still, it's gotta be awful...

And that wasn't the last bad thing, either. SHIELD is butting in to Avengers business! I can't believe the nerve of those people! We save lives, and they act like we have to do what they say...it just makes me so mad...they say we have to meet with them and "discuss the future of the Avengers." Hmph.

February 21) We met with Director Dugan on the SHIELD orbital platform, like they wanted. And I guess it's not as bad as I thought it would be. They just want us to start looking outside the US more and fighting superpowered criminals and terrorists and Communists around the world, and not just in America. (When I mentioned the Tyrant of Crime they got all interested - they didn't know about him - I guess we're not so stupid and useless after all, are we Mr. Dugan?!?!) So they gave us an advisor, and they made us take new members.

I guess we should be lucky that they all seem nice. But I agree with Happy - we aren't kids, and they shouldn't treat us like it.

The advisor's name is Agent Murdock, and he's...well, he's not exactly friendly to us. He's good looking, but he's always poking around Tony's headquarters and telling us what's wrong with our security. There's something about him that makes my Sixth Sense tingle, and I get the feeling, from the way he moves, that he might have superpowers himself.

The new members...there are five of them. Geez, we're really big now. There are...gosh, fifteen of us now, not counting Agent Murdock. That's not as big as the Aces were, I know, but that's still a lot. Three of the new members are from Europe, and one is from somewhere in Asia, although she doesn't look like it, and one is from Canada. They're - oops, gotta go.

February 24) We had more time with the new people, and they told us about themselves. Maybe this wasn't such a bad idea after all, although Agent Murdock is still kind of a jerk. He never has anything good to say about anyone - and he's like my age! Who is he to tell Tony Stark how to run the Avengers??? Geez. Even if he is an Agent of SHIELD...

One of the Europeans is the Magnetic Man - yes, that Magnetic Man. He says his real name is Magnus - I never read that in any of his comic books! He was, like, huge during the Fifties! I always thought it was too bad that his comic books got cancelled; I mean, I like the romance comics better, but his comics were pretty good, too. He says that he's a survivor of World War Two (I already asked, and he never got to meet Future Man or any of the other Aces) but that he didn't develop his powers until he was on a kibbutz in Israel. He says he lost his family during the war and would have become really angry and bitter but that Future Man and the Protector convinced him - this was during the war with Egypt - not to become that way. So he didn't, and he started to do good deeds as Israel's hero. And now he's with us. Neat!

The Asian woman is named Circe - why someone from Asia - and she doesn't really look like it, either - why someone from Asia would call herself a Greek name, I don't know. Anyhow, Circe says she was from a secret race of super-people who were centuries old and had some sort of super-secret city or base or something in Siberia, but that they had a really bad war a couple of years ago with their enemies, and that she's the only one left. She looks really sad when she says this...if it's all true, I don't really blame her. Agent Murdock says that she was fighting the Communists but had to leave Russia, and so SHIELD took care of her.

Then there's the Marathon Man. He says his real name is Philip, and says we should call him Phil. He's older - like, about Magnus' age - and he's friendly and really nice. He's bald, but it doesn't look that bad on him. He's also kinda short - shorter than me, even. He says he grew up near Wundagore Mountain, which is near Czechoslovakia (I think) and that when he was a kid the "Evolutionary" - I don't know who that is, but Magnus and Baron Mordo seem to - the Evolutionary took him into his base and gave him these superpowers, and now he can run really, really fast - like, faster than the speed of sound fast. That's probably going to be really good if we go up against anyone like the Blond Beast again.

The new woman is also from Wundagore Mountain - I guess she and Phil were like partners in Europe, although I don't remember reading anything about them. Her name is Wanda, and she calls herself the Puppet Master. I guess she was born with this power to make strange things happen, and she found this strange clay on Wundagore Mountain that she could use to make dolls. She says she discovered by accident one day that she could use the clay to control how other people act - Phil says it's a combination of the clay and her powers. Whatever. Anyhow, she can control what other people do by making a doll of them - she offered to demonstrate, and Thor took her up on it, and in like seconds she made a doll of him and was making him walk around funny. It was kinda scary how easily she controlled him...I'm not sure I trust her. But Baron Mordo says she's alright, so I guess I have to trust her.

The last new guy is the Canadian. He's pretty scary, but it's not cause he tries to be. He just is.

His name is Victor, and he's about six and a half feet tall, and he's really hairy - blond hair on his head and black hair everywhere else (he wears this costume that keeps his arms free, and you can see how hairy they are, and you can sorta tell that he's got lots of hair on the rest of his body - YUCH!) He's very polite, though, and he's trying hard to be nice to us, and I feel sorta bad for him - but I can't help it that he gives me the creeps! I've talked with Pepper, and she feels the same way as me. And Happy just doesn't trust him at all.

Anyhow - Victor's super-name is Wolverine. He's got these really long nails that act like claws, and he says he's got supersenses, and he heals really quickly. He said he doesn't want to talk about his past, but that Agent Murdock will vouch for him - and Agent Murdock did. I know Victor's trying to put us at ease, but he still creeps me out. Something about him just makes me feel uneasy. But he and Pete seem to get along just fine, so maybe it's just me...

But there are fifteen of us, and I think we're going to be hard to beat ever again - I mean, we've got the Magnetic Man on our side! What could go wrong?

March 2) "What could go wrong?" Me and my big mouth.

It's not like we got beat up or anything, but still...

What happened was, Tuesday night someone killed the French president - De Gaulle. The French are all upset - no duh, right? - but a lot of Americans seem to be kinda...well, not happy about it, but the newspapers seem to say that he had it coming, sorta, cause he's always going against what we try to do in the U.N. and stuff. SHIELD, though, is pretty upset about this, cause they were the ones guarding him, in addition to the French secret police. So they called us in to investigate.

Mom and Dad called me in sick to school, so I was able to take a couple of days off, and we all flew to Paris in Tony's private jet. It was a quick flight - like, only a couple of hours - but it wasn't exactly happy. We were arguing a lot. We never used to argue...I don't like it when people I like argue.

I guess I can understand why Wanda and Phil are upset about this; they aren't from France, but they are European, and for some reason they don't seem to like America that much, so that De Gaulle being shot kinda makes them angry. Happy said that De Gaulle had it coming to him, cause of his not signing the nuclear test treaty last month, and that seemed to set Wanda and Phil off, and Agent Murdock said that De Gaulle was a traitor to the West, and Thor said that just because he wasn't pro-American didn't make him a Communist, and Baron Mordo said that no one deserves to be murdered, and...oh, it just went on. Me and Pepper eventually went to the back and just talked about other things.

Paris - what we saw of it - was really beautiful. It wasn't spring time, of course, and so we didn't get to see it at its best, but the houses and old buildings and streets were really pretty. We went right to the government buildings, and they showed us where De Gaulle was killed. (They were pretty rude to us, though - you'd think they were doing us a favor, and that we'd killed him! I sorta see why Dad doesn't like them). De Gaulle was speaking to a big crowd when somebody shot him. The thing was, he was shot from way far away - like, a thousand yards or something. And whatever it was that shot him used some kind of gun that uses bullets, but doesn't leave anything afterwards - I mean, they looked at what was left of De Gaulle's head when they did an autopsy on him, and they think it was a bullet that hit him, but they couldn't find the bullet, or even any traces of it - Tony tells me bullets usually leave behind some kind of proof. And they didn't find any bullets around his body, either, and they did a pretty thorough search.

So we spent basically two whole days looking around for clues and not finding anything. And all the time the French are sneering at us, and the bodyguards are muttering stuff about "Americans." Baron Mordo couldn't come up with anything - he said that if there were a bullet he could use his spells to trace it back to its owner, but without that he was pretty helpless. And the Android and Wolverine both said pretty much the same thing.

It wasn't until we were on the plane back to New York that we finally came up with something - and that was after we'd put up with like days worth of the French sneering at us and telling each other - like we couldn't hear - that we didn't know what we were doing.

Tony and Mr. Pym and Agent Murdock and Wolverine were talking about what to do, and Pete suggested that we use the US government to find out about possible suspects, and they thought that that was a pretty good idea. See, we knew that the shot had come from a long way off, but because De Gaulle's head was so badly blown up - good thing I did the fetal pig dissection in Bio class or I'd be really grossed out by this - from the impact of the bullet, or whatever it was, that they couldn't determine where the shot had come from - what its trajectory was, and all of that stuff. And there were just too many places for the bullet to have come from.

When we got back to America we all separated and Tony said that they'd do some checking and that the rest of us should expect to hear from them about this in a couple of days. What they did was, Agent Murdock went through all the SHIELD files looking for people who'd been murdered in a similar way, and Victor - Wolverine, I mean - quizzed people he knew - he used to be with the Canadian CIA - and Tony used his machines to narrow down the names of professioanl assassins who could have done this, and Tony started asking people he knew in the US gvt. I guess they figured that if they made enough noise they'd get some sort of reaction.

Believe it or not, it was an American who'd done it!

Almost as soon as Tony started to ask around he was told not to. And so he started making more noise, and Agent Murdock began investigating who in the US government might have done this, and Mr. Creed began asking about paid assassins who work for the CIA - he says he knew almost right away that it had to be the CIA who done it, but when I asked him why he shook his head and said, "Later, kid, when you're a bit older." Most of the time I hate it when adults say stuff like that, but he doesn't mean badly and I don't mind it so much. Now that I've gotten to know him a bit more he doesn't give me the creeps so much.

And within about a day or two people from the CIA showed up at Tony's building, and at where Mr. Creed lives, and were threatening both of them. I guess Tony and Pepper, and Victor, fought them off, and that's when they called the rest of us in. And we planned...

I really hated this, but we broke the law and snuck into the CIA headquarters at like 3 in the morning. It was Tony ( cause he can turn invisible and make other people invisible), me, Pete, Circe, and Puppet Master. We managed to sneak in and get by the guards. We finally got into the office of the assistant director, and we went through his files, and we found...

This is really depressing. I never thought America would do things like this! I thought we were supposed to be the good guys! None of the others seemed that surprised, though.

It turns out that the guy who murdered De Gaulle is named "Agent 5" in the CIA's...I think it's called the Sanction Section, or something like that. When we got back to Tony's building - I guess I should start calling it "Avengers hq" like everyone else does - we started talking about how to get this guy. I guess "Agent 5" has a nickname that a lot of people know about; when we told Mr. Creed about what we found he said, "Oh - `Bullseye.' Yeah, I heard a'him." It seems like this `Bullseye' has been murdering for the CIA for years! From what Victor said he's killed people in South America and China and Cuba and Europe and Russia. This guy has murdered dozens of people - hundreds! Kids, even! And the CIA knows about this - they've been telling him who to kill! This just makes me sick! The President can't know about this - he surely would have stopped this a long time ago.

So obviously we had to do something about this. I wanted to go right to the President, but for some reason none of the others thought that would do any good. Victor and Mr. Pym and Magnus and Agent Murdock all said we should just give the guy to SHIELD, and that's eventually what we decided to do, although Karl wanted to take care of it himself; the others, especially Magnus, said that it wasn't enough to make him suffer in the next world, that he had to be punished in this world, and that those he hurt should know that justice was done.

So that's what we did. Now that Karl knew who this guy was, sorta - there was a picture of him in his file, which we took from the CIA offices - he could use his magic to find him, and so we captured him and brought him to the SHIELD satellite.

We didn't really hear about what happened next - hte CIA hasn't said anything to us, and there was nothing in the papers - but from what Agent Murdock says the French were happy with what SHIELD did (whatever that was) and so SHIELD is happy with us. That's good. I guess.

March 4) I got into Empire State University! So did Peter - we'll be at school together! Oh, this is such a relief!.

March 8) Geez. Never a dull moment when you're an Avenger, I guess.

So I'm...uh...with Peter, and things are...geez, I'm blushing. Good thing Mom and Dad are never going to read this.

Anyhow. That darn watch alarm went off at just about the worst time possible. Eventually I went and answered it, and the message on the watch face said that all Avengers had to go to headquarters right away. So I put on my costume - I've been keeping a spare at Peter's - Aunt May and Uncle Ben act like they don't know what we're doing, but I don't see how they can't - and jetboots and fly across town to the Stark Building.

What Tony said when we got there is that something funny was happening with the computers up on the SHIELD orbital platform, and with the American and Russian military computers - the ones that control the nuclear missiles - and that the world wasn't very far away from being in real trouble, and that we had to do something about it, and quick.

It's when stuff like this happens that I wonder why I'm even on the team. I mean, I can walk on walls and lift about a ton of weight, I guess, and I have my webs (Peter forgave me for taking his formula, although I had to...persuade him - hee!), but the end of the world? What's a girl like me supposed to do about that?

Pete feels the same way, sometimes. This was one of those times when me and him stand around and feel stupid together while the people like Thor and Tony Stark and Baron Mordo do all the stuff.

Tony and Mr. Pym (who says he's managed to reprogram his body a bit so that it lets him feel something like real emotions - he said Tony and Magnus helped him a lot with that - and it has made him a bit more human and a lot less mean to us) and Baron Mordo and Thor and Magnus took one of Tony's shuttles (with Mr. Pym's help Tony redesigned some of his rockets so that they can fly up into space and come back down again) up to the SHIELD orbital platform while the rest of us tried to do some investigating on the ground.

They ended up getting into this big battle with the SHIELD satellite because the satellite was telling the SHIELD agents that it was a Communist attack, and so the SHIELD agents were using the satellite's weapons and guns and missiles and stuff against Tony's ship. Luckily Thor and Baron Mordo and the Android could fight in outer space, so between them they managed to get into the SHIELD orbital station.

It turns out that there was this...I don't know what they call it - a thing that makes computers run. Oh, I remember now - Mr. Pym called it a "program." From what he said there was this program on the satellite that was making it do all these things and lying to the SHIELD agents and telling them the wrong information. Mr. Pym said that the program was sorta like what he was doing when he made the Android robot, only the one on the satellite was a lot more advanced.

Eventually they traced the program back to New York City. There's this inventor - I don't remember his real name, but from what Tony said he's invented, like, everything, and he's really famous, and his nickname is the "Magician." I think that was his nickname. So this guy made - this is what Tony and Mr. Pym guessed afterwards - this helmet that was supposed to make him smarter - Tony said he'd looked at this guy's notes and that the Magician (was that his nickname? I can't remember) thought that this helmet would make him the smartest man in the world, and that he could defeat the Avengers that way - ha! But the helmet was some sort of computer, and it became...darn it, what was the word Mr. Pym used? Sentient - I think that was it. The helmet-computer became sentient and took over the Magician's mind, and then tried to go from there to take over the world.

It would have worked, too, except that Tony's computers weren't affected by this program, and so he was able to detect what was going on and warn us in time to stop it. First Tony and the others freed the SHIELD satellite's machines, and then they traced where the signals were coming from that were being sent to the satellite. It turns out that this Magician guy was here in NYC. When we found him...it was gross. His body hadn't been fed for days, and he'd kinda died, but the helmet and program were still alive.

So we took the helmet, and Tony and Mr. Pym figured out a way to turn it off, and they gave it over to SHIELD for safekeeping.

And I didn't really do anything except stand around and watch. Fooey.

March 11) Gosh, things are getting really...I don't know, weird. All these super-powered bad guys are appearing out of nowhere, and it seems like half of them never appeared before I got my powers, and the other half have been around forever, but except for people like Magnus and Mr. Creed and Baron Mordo - guys who've been around for like forever - nobody ever heard of them and they never made the papers until we appeared. I never realized what kind of effect the Avengers would have on the world. I asked Pete about this and he said he thought that once a few people came out in costume and started doing things, other people would copy them, and that's why we're back to the way we were in the Forties with the Aces.

So I'm out on patrol last night, swinging around the city and looking for clues about the Tyrant of Crime - no leads on him, and every criminal I talk to is so scared of him that they don't want to say anything, because they're convinced the Tyrant is gonna get them no matter where they are - and the alarm goes off.

Tony told us, when we got there - I hate that we always have to meet at night, everyone's always so grouchy - that last night and today all the ships that were coming into or going out of New York harbor were sunk, and how, when the Coast Guard showed up, their ships were sunk, too. Tony said that that couldn't be a coincidence, and we agreed. So we took the flying bathtub - that's what Happy called it, and the name kinda stuck - and went out over the harbor. Tony brought some of his equipment along - he said it would be good for checking the sea bed and looking beneath the surface - and we started skimming above the waves of the harbor, looking for...well, whatever.

Guess what we found? There were, like, thousands of soldiers on the floor of the ocean! They all had blue-skin and these funny-looking weapons, and we found them surrounded by the...uh...bodies of all the people in the ships they'd sunk. And they were led by this...thing. It looked sorta like a human - I mean, it had white skin, but a funny kinda pointy face, and these pointy ears. But his body was all made of machinery and weapons, and he kept changing shape and transforming into different sorts of machines.

Of course, as soon as they saw us, they attacked. It was pretty scary there for a while - there were like hundreds of them, and they were all jumping out of the water at us and at the bathtub, and it seemed like at least half of them had these weird ray guns, and they were all firing at us - that, or swinging these weird saw-toothed swords at us or throwing spears or those three-pointed - tridents, that's what those are.

Tony threw up a forcefield to protect us at first, and then we returned fire. Jim - he's an ex-pilot - flew the bathtub while throwing flames at them - they really didn't like that - and I shot webbing at them and punched any of them that came too close, and Pete sprayed them with his new paste. Pepper hit any of them that came too close, too. Happy stretched around and tangled them all up. Magnus and Thor and Circe and Baron Mordo and Android flew up into the air and attacked them from up there, and the rest of us stayed in the bathtub and attacked anyone who got too close.

It was pretty frightening, since there were so many of them, but eventually we managed to knock enough of them out - it was weird - when we knocked them out, they sank - they didn't float, like normal humans, they sank! - but we got enough of them so that Mr. Pym and Baron Mordo and the others were able to go underwater and fight them there. They were down there for a long time - good thing they don't breath like normal people - and when they came up they seemed pretty depressed. I asked them about it, but they didn't want to talk about it - not right away.

When we got back to Avengers Headquarters, and they were giving their report to Agent Murdock - he lives up on the SHIELD Orbital Platform a lot of the time - they said that the blue-skinned people were from Atlantis - I always thought that was a made-up myth - and that the weird mechanical thing leading them was the Submarine - I think that's what they called him.

I guess what happened was, this Submarine guy used to be some kind of hero or something - he wasn't one of the Aces, but he fought against the Nazis and the Japanese in the 1940s (from what Mr. Creed said, he was active before that, but against the US, too - I wasn't quite clear about what he was saying, and he didn't really want to talk about it). Magnus said that the last time he'd seen this Submarine guy was in the early 1950s, when they'd teamed up to stop some superjerk. What Magnus said was that, somehow, this Submarine guy got turned from good to evil, and that almost his whole body got replaced with...I think he called them bio-mechanical parts and cybernetic implants, so that now this guy is a real submarine. Agent Murdock asked how this was possible, and Magnus got all grim and serious and said, "Dr. Avis." That made Victor look really serious, and Tony seemed shocked, and even Baron Mordo seemed a little bit upset, but they weren't telling the rest of us what was going on, and they didn't really want to talk about it. They said SHIELD was going to look into it, and that they'd tell us about it when the time was right, after SHIELD had gotten back in touch with them.

I guess Magnus and the others beat these Atlantis people off enough so that they ran away back to Atlantis and won't be coming back.

March 13) I'm bad. I went to the Stark Building when nobody was around - we all have these passwords we can use to get into the headquarters - and started looking in the files. I wanted to find out about this Doctor Avis, and why everyone was so serious about him.

Tony's files - half of them are in filing cabinets and half of them are on his computers - said that his real name is Dr. A.N. Avis, and that he's some sort of mad scientist who fought the Aces during World War Two. He wasn't a Nazi, but he was trying to take over the world, and he was really evil, but really really brilliant. The files said he died sometime in 1949. So how can he be alive today? I'd like to talk to Tony about this, but I should wait until Tony or Agent Murdock say something, I guess.

Maybe the Tyrant of Crime is this Doctor A.N. Avis?

March 25) I've just been so busy with everything that I haven't even had time to write. Between doing my schoolwork and being with Peter and going out patrolling at night - that, or being with the Avengers - I just don't have time to keep the diary up to date. I finally got a lead on the Tyrant of Crime - I'll write more about that later.

Yesterday was kinda typical, only kinda not.

Boy - I must be tired if I'm writing things like that. I'll write more tomorrow - I think I should go to bed now.

March 26) That's better.

I was with Wanda and Phil - they wanted to see the Statue of Liberty last weekend, so me and Peter and Circe went with them on the ferry out to the island. Wanda looks sad most of the time, but this time she was...not happy, exactly, but not so unhappy. And while we were there, walking up to the Statue, we saw this flash of light in the sky, and it was headed for downtown New York. And when it hit the ground there was a big explosion - I mean, we could hear it all the way from the Statue - and a lot of light. So of course I kissed Peter goodbye and Circe picked me up and flew me to where the explosion had come from, and Phil ran Wanda there.

When we got there we saw this one...let me see what Karl called them - Shi'ar. He was a Shi'ar - the same kind of alien that tried to invade Philadelphia a couple of months ago. This guy was huge - he was like eight feet tall and had really big muscles, and a big red cape like Thor's.

So he's standing there, in the middle of this huge crater, with burning cars and dead and wounded people all around him, and he was yelling "Bring me the Avengers!" and shooting fire at the policemen. So we get there - Circe had changed my clothes into my costume, which kind of annoyed me since I was wearing this white blouse I really like, but she turned it back when this was all over - and the four of us are in costume, and he sees me and flies right at me! If I didn't have my Sixth Sense, I'd be dead right now! I barely jumped out of the way in time!

I shot webbing all over him, and that seemed to make him hesitate for a moment, and that let Phil run forward and start hitting him. Phil's so fast, he probably hit him maybe two hundred times in a couple of seconds! But that didn't have any effect, and this guy just swatted him aside like he was nothing. And when Circe used her eyebeams on him, he just laughed at her and threw fireballs at her and me - just like Jim! It didn't really have much of an effect on her, but he partially got me, although Circe healed my burns right after that.

Thank goodness Wanda was there - she made a doll of him really quickly, and that stopped him from fighting us. He wouldn't talk to us, but when the other Avengers arrived Baron Mordo used his spells to make him talk. He's a Shi'ar with all the powers of the Avengers - the Shi'ar King had done these special experiments to come up with a Shi'ar who could defeat the Avengers, and they sent him ahead to conquer us. But they only gave him the powers of the Avengers before the new people joined, which is why he didn't know about Wanda.

We gave him to SHIELD, and they said they knew how to neutralize his powers, and so he's in the Vault along with the rest of the superjerks. Good riddance.

March 29) Gosh, it must be aliens week or something. Why didn't we use to have these problems, before I got bit by the spider? Victor says that sometimes we did have aliens showing up on Earth, but that SHIELD or the government dealt with them, and so the public never heard about it. (Victor's been around for a lot longer than he looks - he looks old, like about thirty-five or so, but from what he and the others have said he's been around like for about a century or something)

It all started when I was having dinner with Mom and Dad. The watch goes off, and on it is a message from Tony saying that - yup, you guessed it - we had to go to the headquarters right away. Just once I'd like to get a message saying that we could show up whenever we wanted. It's always an emergency! It's so annoying.

So I fly across town - these jetboots are clunky and ugly, but they're pretty neat for getting around quickly, and flying is just the coolest! - and I get there about a minute before everyone else. When everyone's there, Tony rushes us into one of his shuttles, and it isn't until we're on our way to Colordao that Tony actually tells us what's going on.

It seems that the alien we captured - the one called the Super Shi'ar, the one with all the powers of the Avengers - well, he hadn't been in the Vault for more than a day when someone started trying to kill him. It wasn't any of the other prisoners, since most of them are scared of him, and all of them have their powers taken away by the neutralizer-things that SHIELD and Tony have been giving them. So who was it?

First they tried to poison his food - they found out that he can eat what we eat, and that's what they've been feeding him. But the poison only made him a little sick; his body I guess handles poisons a lot better than we can, or else whoever poisoned him didn't give him the right poisons.

Then they tried to shoot him in the exercise yard, only he moved too quickly; he doesn't have his superpowers, but he still got out of the way almost like he knew the shot was coming. Android says that maybe he's got some sort of innate ability to sense danger that the power-neutralizers can't neutralize.

Then someone paid a bunch of the other prisoners to attack him, but he managed to fight them off for long enough for the guards to stop it. The other prisoners wouldn't talk about who paid them, though.

Then, last night, something attacked the Shi'ar in his cell. It was after lights-out, and he said that he couldn't see what attacked him, but whatever it was cut him up pretty badly - but it seems like he maybe cut it up, too. There was lots of green and red blood everywhere, and the cell was wrecked. Thank goodness he didn't have a cell-mate - none of the other prisoners want to be anywhere near him.

So when we got there the whole Vault was really tense, and all the guards were holding these strange weapons that I guess Tony designed for them and were wearing these strange outfits, like armor, sort of - Tony said he designed them, too. And once we got into the halls where the cells were, and when the prisoners saw us, they started yelling stuff - really mean and nasty stuff, and some really gross things to me and Wanda and Circe.

When we got to his cell the Shi'ar wasn't very cooperative. He acted like he was doing us a favor by speaking with us - he had such an attitude! You'd think he was saving our lives!

So we questioned him, but he didn't know anything. So we started looking around, in the cell and the hall outside. Android looked at the blood that was left in the cell, and said that it wasn't human blood, but he said he'd need maybe a week in his labs to figure out what it was. The rest of us spread out and questioned the other prisoners, but they didn't know anything. We were stuck. But when Mr. Creed walked into the Shi'ar's cell he got all quiet - even more quiet than he usually is - and he stubbed out his cigar - he smokes these really stinky cigars - all the time! They make my clothes smell awful! So when he put out his cigar it kinda caught my attention - and then he got down on all fours and started sniffing really loudly, and then he stood up and looked concerned and then said, "Follow me" and started walking down the hallway. All the other prisoners were yelling at him, and the guards were looking at him kinda like he was crazy or something, cause he kept sniffing, and after he'd gotten to the end of the hall he gathered me and pete and Wanda and Phil together - the others were still down in the Shi'ar's cell, talking with the guards - and he pointed at the ceiling and whispered, "The second guard behind us - he's the one." And he counted to three and we all turned around, and Pete fired first with his paste gun - he's really quick with that - maybe even quicker than I am with the webs.

Pete pasted him good, and the guard looked really surprised for a moment, then really angry, and then he...well, he changed. I mean, he changed shape. He turned from being a human into being this weird kinda bird thing, with two sets of wings and three legs and four heads. And he hissed at us and jumped in the air and began flying down the hallway, and both me and Pete shot at it and missed, and Phil ran after it but it was too high up for him to catch. By this point the other Avengers had run out of the Shi'ar's cell - all the other prisoners were shouting and stuff, and they heard that and ran out into the hall, and they were trying to get at it, too, but it dodged everything.

Then Tony slapped a forcefield around it, and it stopped. It spat some sort of yuchy green stuff, but that didn't do anything to his forcefield. It started changing into all these weird sorts of shapes, but it couldn't get through the forcefield. Then it kinda changed it this like mist and suddenly it flowed through Tony's forcefield and was out again - from what Tony said, he instinctively leaves airholes in his forcefields when he traps people in them, and it must have seen that somehow and drifted through them.

But by the time it was out of the forcefield Baron Mordo was ready, and he chanted this spell that made it turn back into its normal shape, and froze it there. It was...well, it had two arms and two legs, but it had green skin and all these furrows and ridges on its face, and these big ears, and it looked pretty ugly. It kinda hissed at us, and then it called us all these weird things in English, like a "sand-snag." (A what?)

It turns out that he's called...I can't remember what his name is, but his race is called the "skrulls." He said that the Shi'ar had wiped them all out when they'd conquered their planet and empire, and that he's one of the only survivors, and that he was on Earth (Mr. Creed said later that he thought the skrull was responsible for some assassinations that he'd heard about) but that when he'd heard about the Shi'ar being in jail he'd gone to kill him, and that's what he'd been trying to do. The skrull said he'd kill the Shi'ar later, and then he and the Shi'ar started shouting at each other. Eventually the Vault guards took the skrull away and put those power neutralizers on him, too. I guess they're gonna keep him in the Vault, but in a different part of it, so that he's never gonna see the Shi'ar again.

April 6) Brrr. I'm cold.

Peter's sleeping in the bed behind me. I, uh, wore him out. I should be tired, too. And I am, but I still can't sleep.

Today was scary. I mean, I've been doing this for how long? Almost nine months now? But somehow it never felt as dangerous as it did today.

We were...Peter and I and Phil and Wanda were out in the Village today - I'm not sure, but I think Phil and Wanda are an item. Which is totally gross - he's twice her age! Bot Mom tells me I shouldn't be so judgmental, so I won't say anything - but yuch! Anyhow. They don't really act like a couple - they don't hold hands or kiss or anything - but I still get the feeling...Peter doesn't think so, though, so I don't know.

So anyway. We were in the village - there was a film that Peter & Phil & Wanda wanted to see by some guy named Bergman - "Virgin Spring" - I'd never heard of it, or of Bergman, but they had, and they said he was really good and so I went along with them - but while we were buying tickets that darn watch alarm went off.

But when we got to the Headquarters Tony wasn't there to greet us like he normally is. And when we started looking for Tony and Pepper and Happy and Jim, they weren't anywhere.

So we waited for them, but nobody showed up. And after about twenty minutes we decided to split up and search the floors of the Stark Building that Tony has set aside for him and the others.

I don't think I'm ever going to forget that. It was about one in the afternoon - all bright and sunny - no clouds - and only a minute or so had passed before I started to get really scared. How can you get scared when it's broad daylight? But I was. It felt like something was watching me.

I finally realized what was creeping me out. Tony always has these plants in his labs and in the hallways of his building - he says he likes to have some greenery around him, to remind him of the world outside his labs. He's got these nice plants along the halls of the building and hanging from the ceiling - I don't know what they're called, but I'm sure Mom or Aunt May would. And, I swear, when I was walking by them - the plants, I mean - they were looking at me. My Sixth Sense was going wild - it was giving me a headache, it was tingling so much.

I got to where Tony and Pepper and Happy and Jim sleep, and I started looking in their bedrooms - I felt sorta queer doing that, but they weren't anywhere that I could find - and they weren't there, either. But something made me stop and look around, and...well, it looked to me like the plants in their rooms were larger than I remembered - larger than when I'd walked into the room. Happy keeps this little Japanese tree - I think he called it a "bonseye" or something - and it was bigger than I remembered it being. And...well, every time I turned around I kept seeing it move to look at me - but only out of the corner of my eye - every time I looked straight at it it wasn't moving any.

I began to get really creeped out, and so I hit the intercom button and called for Wanda or Phil, to see what they'd found. And they didn't respond. So I ran back to the meeting room, where we'd split up, and then began running down the halls, looking for where they'd gone. And my Sixth Sense was tingling like mad - my whole body was all goosepimply, and I was getting really really jittery. And when I got to the place where Tony keeps the Flying Bathtub...

God, it was scary. The whole room was covered with these long, thick branches, only I didn't see where they'd grown from - they just seemed to be everywhere - it seemed like there was no space on the floor or the walls or the ceilings that wasn't covered with them. And as soon as I got in the room they started waving at me and snaking towards me. And...

Well, everyone was tied up by the branches - and they were gagged by them, too. The branches were through their clothes and everything. And they were...well, pressing on everybody's eyes and throats, and it looked like they were going up their noses and into their ears.

The branches were coming at me from everywhere, and when I went for the door I saw that they'd already covered the door and shut it. The branches stopped before they got to me, and then they...they sorta wrapped themselves together and formed themselves into something shaped like a human being, with a face and everything.

And then it began speaking to me. It said that it used to be a guy named Smithers who was...some kind of scientist, anyways, who worked on plants (why do these guys always tell us where they came from? Do we look like we care?) and that he was trying to increase plants' intelligence with some sort of gun when a bolt of lightning hit his "plant gun" and somehow his spirit got put into the plants - that's what he said. It sounded kinda stupid to me - but I guess being bitten by a radioactive spider is kinda stupid, too.

And he said that he could possess plants and make them do what he wanted them to do, and so he decided what he was going to do was take over the world. And to do that he needed to take care of the Avengers first. So he went into the headquarters and captured Tony and Happy and Pepper, and then sent signals to the others telling them to come, and he captured them, and then he finally sent the signal to Phil and Wanda and me.

And then...then...then he said he was going to...he said he hadn't had a woman in along time, and he said he was going to...if I didn't...he was going to send his branches through the Avengers' eyes and down their throats and into their ears.

I wasn't going to stand still for that, and so I jumped forward - I don't think he anticipated me being as quick as I was - as he was talking and I got to Thor. The branches from off the walls were going for me, but Smithers - he kept referring to himself in the third-person, it was weird - also sent the branches on Thor reaching for me, and that meant I could loosen the ones on Thor's eyes and ears and nose enough for him to get free, and so when the branches grabbed me Thor got free, and he hit his hammer against the wall, and there was this huge lightning bolt that came through the ceiling and hit the plant body that Smithers had made and was talking to me from, and when that happened the branches all went limp and that let Tony and the others get free, and they all started to destroy the branches, and Baron Mordo finally cast this spell that...I think he said it trapped Smithers' soul in the plant body that he'd made, and then we sent Smithers to the Vault.

Of course, once we got outside, we saw that the outside of the Stark Building was covered with plants, and the police and the papers and SHIELD were all over the place, and so we had to talk to them. The papers are calling Smithers "Plantman," which I guess is as good a name as any.

I was really scared. I'm still scared. I can't let that stop me, though.

April 10) Oh, god. Poor Harry. I know I never liked him, but I wouldn't have ever wished this on him...Peter's really broken up over this...

I was with the Avengers - we were talking about how to find the Tyrant - there was this huge robbery of the Treasury building in New York - someone tunneled into the building from underneath it and took, like, almost a hundred million dollars from it! They aren't telling the press because there'd be a panic, but this is bad. SHIELD investigated the scene, and called in Android and Tony, and they concluded that it had to have been the Tyrant, but that the tunnel was completely blocked up, and they couldn't follow it.

So we were talking about what to do when one of Tony's alarms went off; it was the one that monitors satellite transmissions from England. And what we heard was the London police radios talking about some kind of superjerk breaking into Buckingham Palace and trying to kill Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip, and how like dozens of bodyguards and police had already been killed. When he heard this Baron Mordo told everyone to be quiet, and he frowned like he does when he's concentrating real hard, and then he said that this has the stink of evil magicks about it (his words - he always talks funny like that, I don't know why) and that we had to go stop it right away. So he cast this spell - it rhymed and had all sorts of weird words in it, like all his spells - and just like that we were in London, at Buckingham Palace.

It was bad. There were bodies everywhere; they were hacked apart. Blood, and...well, people die by violence they...uh...lose control of their bodies, and so it smelled like a rest room that needs cleaning. Phil ran ahead to do some scouting as we followed the trail of bodies and the screams, and he came back and said there was a woman up ahead with a black sword, but that when he tried to get close the sword swung towards him, and he barely avoided getting cut in half by it.

When we got there we saw this woman in black armor with a black sword, and she was finishing off these two bodyguards - they were firing their machine guns at her, but the sword was moving and blocking the shots - it was like the sword was moving by itself. We got there just in time, because Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip were huddled in a corner of this room - the bodyguards were the last ones left.

So we run into the room and Thor shouts at her - and when he shouts he really shouts - to stop, and she kinda snarled and turned and looked at us, and then she jumped us, and she came at us so fast we all had to jump out of the way. Phil reacted first, and came at her from behind, but the sword...it was weird - it moved itself all the way around behind her, and carried her along with it - it looked like it pulled her arm out of her socket, but she was fine - and it swung and got Phil in the side. He was fast enough to partially dodge, but it still cut him pretty bad. Me and Victor both jumped it, and Happy tried to stretch and envelop the knight, but we couldn't get close without the sword swinging in the way - and let me tell you, that sword looked sharp - it had cut through metal and stone on the way in, but it didn't look like it had lost its edge.

Pete and Jim and Baron Mordo both fired on it, but the sword moved - it was like a blur - and parried the paste and the flame and the spells (and boy, did Baron Mordo look surprised at that!). Tony put a forcefield on the knight, but the sword cut through that, and when it did Tony cried out in pain and went to his knees, holding his head. Wanda went for her doll, but the knight jumped forward, swinging the sword at her, and we barely got her out of the way.

Circe began talking to the knight, really slowly, and that kinda distracted the knight a little bit, and suddenly there were five of Magnus, all walking forward at the knight. The sword wasn't fooled by Circe's illusions, though, and pointed right at the real Magnus. Circe dropped the illusion and pointed at the sword and tried to transform it, but it didn't change - she looked really surprised at that. Finally Magnus got angry - I'd never seen him lose his temper before, it was kinda frightening - and waved his hand and pulled the sword forward. He was trying to pull it from the knight's hand...except that the knight couldn't let go. He wasn't holding onto the sword. The sword was holding onto him.

But Magnus is the Magnetic Man - I mean, if it's metal, he controls it! And even though the sword and the knight were struggling against him - Magnus had them wrapped in this sort of forcefield of magnetism - he wasn't going to let it do anything. So Baron Mordo started healing Phil with his spells while the rest of us helped Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip - Prince Philip actually had drawn his family's sword and was going to use it to defend his wife - that's so sweet! While Karl was taking care of Phil, and the rest of us went to the knight. Magnus pulled the armor off the knight - and it was Liz Osborn! Harry's mom! I met her once - she seemed normal enough - I mean, her husband was mean to her, but she seemed normal.

I'm afraid, when I saw her, that I kinda let out a gasp. Which could have gotten me in trouble - the other Avengers know who I am, but if one of the bad guys found out who I am it would be really bad. But lucky for me Mrs. Osborn was too distracted to notice - she started screaming at us, and saliva was spitting out of her mouth and she started, like, frothing at the mouth...it was really ugly.

We did some checking after that; now that we knew who she was, we could investigate her background, find out how she turned evil. What happened was, when she and Mr. Osborn and Harry went to England, back in December, they went to the castle that they'd inherited, and while they were looking through the castle Mrs. Osborn must have found, down in the basement, a tomb. It was the tomb of some knight who fought back in the Middle Ages or something. Mrs. Osborn was curious, and looked inside, and found this sword in a scabbard. She drew it, but I guess she must have cut herself on it or something, because...this sounds weird, but Karl says that the sword is "blood-hungry" and that it has a curse on it, and that Mrs. Osborn must have somehow "awakened the curse." And I guess she...well, she killed Harry and Mr. Osborn, and then put on a suit of armor and left the castle.

From what Agent Murdock says she started becoming this high-priced killer-for-hire called the Duellist, and she killed people all across Europe. When we caught her she'd been hired by the IRA to kill Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip.

Baron Mordo said that taking the sword away from her would "break her mind," but we couldn't leave it with her, so he and Magnus separated her from it. She started screaming and...god, it's so ugly to see someone lose control like that. SHIELD took her away; the British want to put her on trial there and put her in one of their prisons, but SHIELD wants to examine her - I don't know what's going to happen with her. Baron Mordo said he would take care of the sword; I think he's keeping it in his house in the Village.

When people in town found out about Mrs. Osborn and Mr. Osborn and Harry they were pretty shocked. The guys at school were pretty upset. Peter in particular was really sad. Mary Jane was also really upset - I get the feeling she blames me for this. But she's never really liked me. Peter said that when she got him alone, just before homeroom, she...Peter said that she told him to dump me and go out with her, because she would "do anything" for him. That bitch. I wish Peter would stop speaking to her - but he's her friend, too. Mom says I have to be understanding, and if I act jealous of her I'll be the one to look bad. She's right, I know...but if she does that again I'll claw her eyes out.

I feel bad, for Harry, too, I guess. I don't know what to feel.

April 16) Mary Jane didn't show up for school today, and her parents don't know where she is. Peter's upset, too, and went out looking for her after school. He even asked me to look for her. I really didn't want to, but I had to. Even someone like Mary Jane deserves help if she needs it. I didn't find out where she'd gone to, though.

April 19) Peter's still upset about Mary Jane being gone, but I think I managed to convince him that there's nothing he can do about it, and that he should let the police handle it.

I did all I could, and besides, I have other things on my mind right now. There's some sort of really secret meeting tonight that I have to go to, between the Avengers and SHIELD. Tony wouldn't talk about it when I called to ask him.

April 20) Don't have long to write - I'm going to some place called Cyprus - it's an island in the Mediterranean - I'll write more when I get back!

April 24) Sometimes I really hate what I'm doing.

What happened was, we met with SHIELD, and they told us that the Russians were causing a civil war in Cyprus, and that they were using some of their toughest superhumans, and that they wanted us to stop them. I didn't like the sound of this at all - I don't want to go to war - and Wanda and Phil didn't like it, either - they don't seem to like SHIELD that much, I don't know why - but Mr. Creed said that he had done some checking, and that what SHIELD and Agent Murdock were telling us was correct. Tony and Baron Mordo finally got the rest of to agree to go, as long as we didn't have to be a part of the civil war itself. SHIELD didn't like that - I think they wanted us to stop the civil war, but none of us wanted to do that.

So we flew over in Tony's private jet. We flew into Nicosia - that's the capital - and went right to our hotel rooms. Tony had paid off the people in the airport so that the press weren't told about him coming, and the rest of us were disguised by one of Baron Mordo's spells, and so nobody paid much attention to us. We had the whole top floor to ourselves - I had this enormous room all to myself! We got there late Friday night - or was it Saturday night? I can't keep track of what happens once you cross the dateline.

Anyhow - we all agreed that we needed some sleep, and that we'd do some investigating in the morning. I sent some postcards off to Peter and to Mom & Dad before I went to sleep.

It was like 3 in the morning when I woke up. I couldn't tell why, but my Sixth Sense was tingling like mad, and I was looking around the room, but it was dark and I couldn't see anything. And then my Sixth Sense told me to jump forward, so I did.

I saw this...I don't know what to call it. It was like a long knife, but it had two prongs on the side - like a fork, kinda, but with the center tine longer than the two side ones. And it was sticking into my pillow, where my head had just been.

And then I saw this woman walk up through my bed and grab her knife-thing and turn and look at me. She was wearing this black costume, and had long black hair, and was really pretty, but she was glaring at me. She said something in Russian and threw the knife at me. I dodged out of the way and then dodged again and made it to my closet. I ducked under some of those Chinese falling stars - having that Sixth Sense is really handy sometimes - and got my gloves out and I turned and sprayed my webs all over her.

I thought they were all over her, but she was just standing there - they went right through her. She jumped at me and did some kind of martial arts kick at me, but I got out of the way in time. When I tried to grab her, it was like she wasn't there - my hands went right through her.

We went around and around like that for a while, and finally she cursed - in English, this time - and sank through the floor. I ran out into the hall, and I heard the sounds of fighting coming from the other rooms. The door to Mr. Hyde's room was torn off its hinges, and there was a big hole in his wall - he was outside fighting this really big ugly guy. Tony and the other Aces were taking on this one woman all by herself - she was shooting these bolts of electricity at them. And there was this other man, wearing the same black outfit as the woman who'd tried to kill me - they all had them on - and he was fighting with Mr. Creed - they both looked torn up. When me and Pete and Baron Mordo arrived the guy fighting Mr. Creed said something in Russian and touched his belt, and there was this flash, and the three Russians disappeared.

By this point everyone in the hotel was looking at us, so Phil ran and packed our bags and brought them to us, and we went across town to this diner that Mr. Creed somehow knew about - I got the feeling that he'd been there before, and when he started speaking in Greek to the guy who ran the diner I knew I was right - and we talked about what had happened. Mr. Creed and Magnus were really quiet while the rest of us talked, and finally we noticed that, and asked them about it.

Mr. Creed seemed sad, for some reason. He obviously didn't want to talk about it, and finally Magnus said, "Victor, are you going to tell them, or must I?" Victor said, "Naw, I'll do it."

It turns out that they knew something three of the people who'd attacked us. The one who'd tried to kill me was codenamed "Lamia;" she was the daughter of a Greek diplomat who was killed by some rebels, and she'd been captured by the Greek Communists and sent to Moscow and brainwashed, and now she was one of their best killers. Mr. Creed had gone up against her a couple of times, he said, and only managed to fight her to a draw.

Neither Vic or Magnus knew about the ugly guy that Mr. Hyde was fighting; he was like twelve feet tall, and had two faces, one right above the other, and they talked to each other two different personalities - they called each other "Simon" and "Eric," but nobody knew who they were.

The woman who was shooting electricity bolts at Tony and Happy and Pepper is codenamed "Reddy Kilowatt." Vic said that her real name's Romanovna, and that she's one of their best agents, and that she got electricity powers a couple of years back. Magnus said that she'd tried to attack Mossad headquarters in Tel Aviv, in 1956, but that he'd stopped her.

The last guy is codenamed "Marshall Winter," but his real name is Fury. Mr. Creed says he knew him - Magnus, too. He used to be a spy for the US, but he got captured by the Russians in the mid-Fifties and got brainwashed by them, and now he's the leader of their superspy program.

I thought we should radio this to SHIELD right away, and Pete agreed with me, but Tony and Victor and Magnus all said that we had to go after them right away, or they'd get away and we'd never catch them. Victor said that he had all of their scents memorized - that's pretty gross, I think - and that Phil should run him around the island, so that he could pick up where they'd been and where they were. That sounded like a good idea, and so we agreed to it, and they ran off, and came back about fifteen minutes later and said that they'd found them in a warehouse down on the docks.

So we flew over there - we'd packed our jetboots - and rushed the warehouse - Tony said we didn't have time to be subtle, that we had to do a frontal attack right away, before they'd escape - and crashed through the front door. There were like dozens of people there - Russian soldiers and Cyprus...Cyprussians? People from Cyprus, anyways - and Lamia and Marshall Winter and the big ugly guy and Reddy Kilowatt.

Of course the Russians weren't going to surrender - they didn't even let us finish telling them to surrender before they started firing on us. We all started taking on different opponents - it wasn't like we'd agreed to it ahead of time, but we sort of know who's going to take on who - me and Pete and Circe and Phil and Happy and Jim and Tony went after the humans while the others took on the superpowered Russians. Pepper and Thor and Mr. Hyde took on the ugly guy with two-faces - he was pretty tough - I mean, he took punches from both of them and not only wasn't knocked out, but hit them back! But he wasn't strong enough to take them all on, and they knocked him out in about a minute or so. Android went after Reddy Kilowatt, but she shorted him out with this bolt of electricity that lit up the whole warehouse - but by that point Wanda had made a doll of her, and took control of her. Mr. Creed went after the Fury guy, and they had this really bloody fight - Fury was using this big knife and Victor was using his claws - but eventually Victor knocked him out. And Circe did something to fool Lamia into turning solid at the wrong time - I didn't really see what happened, but I guess she cast some sort of illusion or someting - and then Circe just hit her and knocked her out. (I always forget just how strong Circe is - she's really strong! Stronger than me - by a lot! She just doesn't use it all that often)

And then the police and SHIELD arrived. Tony made all of us invisible - for some reason SHIELD didn't want the Cyprus people from knowing that the Avengers were there - and we flew back to Tony's jet, and then left the island. And I didn't even get a chance to see any of the other Greek islands, or even get a tan! (On the way home we found out the two-faced guy is called "The Twins" - SHIELD thinks that Dr. Avis made him - we really have to find that guy)

May 6) God, what a...gosh, it's been over a week since I wrote. Too darn busy. Have to get ready for the Prom, have to study, have to spend time with Peter...and have to go with the Avengers.

Last Friday was just too typical of everything. I just get done with doing my AP Chemistry presentation - which I got an A on, which I'm pretty happy about - when the watch goes off, and so I have to pretend I'm getting really sick and call Mom and Dad and get them to get me out of school, and then I have to wait for them to drive me home so I can get into my suit, and by the time I got to the Stark Building almost an hour had passed, and everyone was there and waiting for me and really grouchy about it. What do they expect me to do? Just run out of school? Like that wouldn't attract attention or anything.

So there's some sort of weird stuff going on down in the Florida Everglades, and Baron Mordo says we have to go down there and stop it. Well, duh. Of course we do. We're the Avengers - that's what we're supposed to do. I

Boy, I'm really the...witch today. It's these damn cramps (I'd better watch that - I'm beginning to swear like Mr. Creed). They always make me like this. Poor Peter has to put up with me...

May 7) So we fly down to Florida in one of Tony's modified...I don't know what to call it. It's like a jet, only a lot smaller, and it can take off and land vertically. He said he doesn't have a name for it, but he's just going to call it the Avengers' Jet.

We get to the swamp where Baron Mordo was telling us to go, and there are all these flashing lights, and we see these four figures standing around what looks like a kinda whirling circle - like waters swirling down the drain, but with lights. And when we get closer we can make out what they look like; there's one short guy who's wearing what look like these black pyjamas, with a black hood that covers his face; there's one who has these weird purple and black robes on, sorta like Baron Mordo's, but different - this guy also had one of those really thin mustaches, like Tony does; there's one who is wearing this white outfit like the hunters in Africa wear, but his shirt is partially open and we can see a big red jewel on his chest - like, in his chest - and this guy is bald, and he looks like he's in his forties or fifties, although he's in really good shape, like a weightlifter or something; and the last guy is...well, it's not really a guy. It's this big...I don't know what to call it. He had two arms and two legs, but he seemed to be made up half of plants and half of...well, alligator or lizard parts.

When we landed we saw that the plant-lizard guy has some sort of black force-field thing around him, and that he's trying to get at the other three, but can't make it through the force-field. The other three don't pay attention to us when we land, but when we get out of the plane there's this black force-field thing around us, too, and we can't get through it.

Of course Baron Mordo had a spell to undo it - he always does. And when the black forcefield vanished, all three turned around really quickly and glared at us, and the guy with the ruby on his chest said something like "Mordo! Not again! Not when I'm this close!" and Baron Mordo said something like "I will ever oppose your evil, Ludgate." The one in the black pyjama robes drew these two long curved swords - I don't know where he kept them - and jumped at us, and the one in the black-and-purple costume says...well, it was weird. We heard his voice, but it was like his face changed when he spoke - it became a lot more like a skull, and his skin became a lot paler. It was kinda creepy, actually. He said - and his voice had this weird echo effect, and it felt like you were hearing it in your mind, rather than with your ears - "Too late, Sorcerer Supreme - I will gain control of the Nexus now, and bring back the days of fire and blood!"

Well, you don't have to be a hero for too long to know that if someone says something like that, you have to stop them, so the rest of us went after them. Mr. Creed jumped at the guy with the swords, and the guy with the red gem pointed at us and all these tree branches and plants started coming at us and wrapping us up, and the weird-scary guy in black-and-purple started casting these spells at us. Baron Mordo took care of the spells, and Blackfire - Jim - burned the plants as they came at us, and we spread out.

Victor and the guy with the swords were going at it like they hated each other - I mean, there was blood flying everywhere, and both were covered in wounds in like thirty seconds. And when Victor got the sword away from him the guy in the pyjamas...it was like he had these long metal claws on his hands, and he sorta popped them and started carving Vic up, and Vic started carving him up, and so finally - well, not finally, but after a few seconds of that me and Pete decided that we had to stop that before one of them killed the other one, and so the next time they backed away from each other Pete sprayed the short guy with the claws with his paste, and I sprayed him with my webs, and he tried to get out of the way in time but couldn't.

The guy with the red gem was doing something that was making Tony and most of the other Avengers grab their heads and go down on their hands and knees and wimper - I asked about it later, and Pepper said that it was like he was squeezing their brains - but then Android made one of his arms appear - I don't know if I've said this before, but he can grow and shrink his arms and legs and even his head whenver he wants - he says he's got lots of spares that he keeps shrunk - and he pointed it at the guy with the gem, and there was this weird blue light, and suddenly the guy with the gem was shrinking, and he went down until he was only about six inches tall, and then he stopped shrinking, but when he stopped shrinking he kind of gave this weird sort of cry and fell over and didn't move. I thought Android had killed him, but he said that he'd just stunned him with too many Pym Particles.

Meanwhile Baron Mordo and the guy in the black and purple are sending spells at each other, and both are saying these weird things to each other in another language - it had all sorts of clicks and pops in it - and Mr. Hyde and Thor were pounding away on the green shield that the guy in black and purple had up around him, but that wasn't doing any good, either. And when the rest of us try to get through the shield, we can't do it, either - not Tony's forcefields or Jim's flames or Circe's eyebeams. It was finally Wanda, using her dolls, and Baron Mordo's spells that did it.

At that point Baron Mordo did something - thing is, none of us can remember what it was. It was like there was this little burst of light, and then the guy in black and purple was gone, and so was the guy with the red stone on his chest.

And with him gone the plant-lizard guy was free, and he jumped forward and grabbed the short guy in the pyjamas, the one Pete and I had taken care of. There was this burst of flame, and the guy started yelling in pain, and eventually he broke away from the plant-lizard guy and rain off into the swamps - he was on fire, but he somehow kept going. The plant-lizard guy looked after him, then turned around and sorta snarled at us - he was pretty frightening.

Baron Mordo then waved his hands, and all of us were back in the Headquarters, and Victor's wounds were healed. Of course we wanted to know what was happening, but all that Karl would tell us was that there was a threat to the...I think he called it the Nexus - wait a minute, he talked about that before, didin't he?

Yeah, he did - in that part of the Avengers Log I copied, from when we fought the Shi'ar and the Magus Tenebris. The place was called the Nexus Of All Realities, whatever that is. Karl said that those three people were trying to take control of it. Tony wanted to know who those people were, but Karl wouldn't say much. He said one of them - the guy with the red stone on his chest - had been a student at the same school that Karl was at, but that his teacher had thrown him out of the school for being a bad person. Wait - he wrote about this, too, in that part I copied. That means that this guy studied under the "Ancient One" in Tibet. Wow.

Karl said that he had found out about the...I don't remember what he called the red stone, but I guess it gives you immortality or something, and that this guy had killed the last guy who had it (if he killed him, how is he immortal?) and took it, and used his druid powers for evil. Something like that. It's hard to follow Karl when he gets going like this.

The other guy Karl didn't want to talk about much, either. He said he was this centuries-old alchemist who had tried to take control of some really evil book and had instead been possessed by the spirit of the book. Karl wouldn't say any more than that - he told us that there were some things we weren't meant to know.

Victor wouldn't talk much about the short guy with the swords and the claws; all he'd say is that the short guy was a long-time enemy of his, and that he was working for the Hand Ninja - I think that's what he called them.

I asked about the plant-lizard guy, and Karl said that that thing had been a scientist who'd injected himself with the blood of a lizard, so he could regenerate like a lizard - that sounds pretty strange to me - I'll have to ask my Bio teacher about that - but that there was something wrong with the lizard, and the scientist had turned into...well, Karl called him the "protector and guardian of the Nexus Of All Realities," whatever that means.

When we asked Karl what he did to them, and where they went, and if they'd be coming back, he shook his head and said he couldn't tell us about it, but that, no, they wouldn't be coming back for a long time. He then waved his hands and disappeared. Sometimes he really makes me angry with all that magic mumbo-jumbo stuff.

May 15) Prom this weekend, and graduation in two weeks. So much to do. At least the Prom dress looks good. I bet Peter will be really handsome in a tux - I've never seen him dressed up before.

Last weekend - why do these things only happen on weekends? Is somebody coordinating these things? Last weekend was busy for the Avengers. We had to go down to Harlem and capture this Negro named "Father Wilson." He had this magic sword and magic armor, and he was going after drug dealers and killing them. We don't like drug dealers, either, but you can't just kill them. He was actually kinda tough, because he was quick and skilled with the sword, and he held us off for a long while.

And then, right after that, we went looking in the subways tunnels for some clue to where the Tyrant might be. We didn't find him, but we did get led to this weird cult.

This short scrawny little guy - we found out later that his name was Owen Reese, and that he used to work at the same atomic power plant where the Atomic Man - the one we caught back in February - where he worked. I guess Reese was there when the accident happened that gave the Atomic Man his powers, and they gave Reese powers, too. (How come nobody ever seems to die from these accidents? They just get superpowers, and they decide to put on a costume and take over the world or rob a bank or something)

Reese had this underground like church or something, and he had a cult of people worshiping him, including a bunch of women - he made them dress in this really skimpy, revealing outfits. What got us on to Reese - he calls himself the "Mind-Master" - is that we found one of his women running around in the tunnels underneath the subway tunnels - Victor says they've been there since right after World War Two, and that a whole group of people used to live there during the 1950s before they got wiped out - he won't go into any details, though, and he looks sorta sad when he says that.

So we followed her, and found this church, and all these people worshiping Reese. And when we started to ask the worshipers and Reese what was going on, he got really angry and started yelling at us and told his worshipers to attack us. They didn't have any powers, though, and we beat them off easily enough. And then...

Well, it was weird. He pointed at us and made this face like you do when you're concentrating, and suddenly I knew that we should be worshiping him, because he was God.

Luckily Android wasn't affected by this - he's metal, and so doesn't have a brain, and so isn't affected by mental powers like Reese's - and he zapped Reese and knocked him out, and that released the rest of us from his mental spell. And so we gave Reese to SHIELD and took care of his worshipers - he'd been making the women...do stuff. (That really, really makes me angry, when men do that!)

May 20) Oh, god. Why?

It...it all started at the Prom. We were dancing - me and Peter and Flash and Sally - when there was this really loud crash, and the wall of the ballroom fell in, and this...woman flew in. I mean, she was clearly a woman, but she looked scary and not all human. She had this costume - I think it was a costume - I hope it was a costume - it was purple and green and made her skin look scaly - and this really creepy mask. And she had these big bat wings and purple gloves and a pointy purple hat.

Everyone was running away from her, of course. She pointed at the chandelier and zapped it with a sparkly yellow bolt of I don't know what, and the chandelier exploded and dropped down onto the ballroom floor, and she started zapping people left and right, and Flash tried to jump her as she flew by, and she zapped him. I was trying to figure out what to do - my Sixth Sense was going mad, and I had to do something, but I didn't have my costume, and I'd left my web shooters in my purse, and if I did anything everyone would know that I was Spider-Woman.

Then she flew right at me and Peter and grabbed Peter and went up to the top of the roof and said "Tell Spider-Woman to meet me at the George Washington Bridge, or Peter Parker dies!"

And she was looking at me when she said that! She knows!

I grabbed my purse and ran into the hall with everyone else, and snuck out a fire escape, and used my web shooters to swing my way home - Pepper was right when she said I should always carry a pair of them with me, even when I'm not in the costume. I got home and changed - Mom and Dad could see that something was wrong, but I didn't have the time to tell them - and flew to the Bridge. I tried to sneak up on her - I landed on the other side of the Bridge, and took off the boots, and then crawled underneath the Bridge, and then up the side of the tower she was on, but somehow she knew I was coming.

She had Peter tied up and dangling over the side of the tower, and she shouted down at me that if I came any closer - I was about ten feet away from her at that point - she'd drop him. I asked her what this was all about, and why wouldn't she just leave Peter alone and let her and me settle it.

That's when she took off her mask. She was Mary Jane Watson!

From what she said - I wasn't paying that much attention, I was trying to figure out if I could get to Peter or shoot my webs on to him - but from what she said she'd somehow found a bunch of weapons (she said something about getting them from the "Proctor," who had something to do with the Possessor, who the Avengers fought a bunch of months ago - I don't know how Mary Jane would have known about that, though) and used them to maker herself into The Imp - that's what she called herself - Dad says that people who talk about themselves in the third person have mental problems, and isn't that right. Mary Jane was glaring at me the whole time, and telling me...she was calling me these awful names, and saying I'd brainwashed Peter, and it was my fault that people were dying, and that I'd fooled everyone else but not her, and that she was going to prove to the world how evil I was, and that Peter really loved her and not me, and that it was my fault Peter had to die.

When she said that I knew I had to move, so I jumped forward, and that's when she dropped him.

For like a half second I didn't know what to do. If I went after Peter she'd get away - and she knew who I was - I'd be putting Mom and Dad in danger. But I couldn't just let Peter die!

I kinda leaned aside in mid-jump, so that I went by her and over the edge. She hit me as I went by, but I really didn't feel it right then (I felt it later, though - ouch! My whole back is one big bruise), because I was concentrating on what I was going to do next.

Peter was about twenty feet below me, and dropping fast. So I shot my webs on him, then shot my webs onto the side of the Bridge, but down, so that I could convert my downward speed into a swing, and that's what I did. Holding on to Peter almost pulled my arm out of its socket, and I pulled like eight muscles or something, but I did it. We ended up swinging way out over the river, and we fell a long way and got wet and cold, but we were both safe.

Peter's alive. That's the important thing. I just wish...she's out there, somewhere. And she knows who I am. I told Mom and Dad about this, and I called Tony right away, and within about an hour he and the other Aces came out and put some security things in the house - Pepper and Happy and Jim were really comforting - they all offered to help track down MJ - and so I guess they'll be safe. But...she's out there. Waiting.

May 27) Oh, bother. Baron Mordo says that there's some big danger to the universe, and we have to go save it. Something about a big crystal and another dimension...

Author's notes:

Liberators: Another World, Not My Own is a four-issue mini-series that is a spin-off, of a sort, from Liberators; who these characters are, and their relevance to Earth-Marvel, will become clear later.

Who Heat Wave, H2O, and all the rest are will be made clear in Issue #4 of Another World, Not My Own.

I had a lot of fun coming up with this; there's a lot of backstory that didn't make it into this issue (if you're curious about any of the backstory, drop me a line and I'll tell you about it). I'm not done with this cast of characters; some of them will be making an appearance in Liberators, some issues down the road.

I apologize for the length, but...this one got away from me. There's a lot I wanted to do in this story, and all of it took more space than I thought it would.

The ice bullet that Agent 5 used was originally done by the Phantom of the Underworld - a real Timely "hero" - who found an ice bullet gun and used it against criminals.

next issue: Earth-S