MV1 #3 FEBRUARY Year 1

by Sam Everett, with Jason Kenney

A Tale Of Marvel Volume One by Sam Everett

The smoke from her cigarette hovering over my face couldn’t affect the familiar post-orgasmic haze wrapped around me.

“Damn, Max. You were great!”

“Yeah, I was, wasn’t I?”

Finally, slowly, the real world crept up on me, and I took the girl’s--what’s her name?--soft wrist and checked her watch.

“9:15?! SHIT!” I jumped out of bed and hastily put yesterday’s clothes on.

“Where you goin’, Max?”

“Press conference. Avengers Mansion.” I hopped toward her bedroom’s exit on one foot as I slipped the other into my sandal.

“Avengers Mansion? Wow! But last night, you said you’d make me breakfast....”

Heh.

I was out the door, and in her apartment building’s parking lot. I’d never see her again, but you know there’d be another one just like her tonight. Such is the life for Max Davis, womanizer extraordinaire and all-around smooth player.

Ten years ago, I’d have never thought I’d be strolling through Avengers Mansion as a part of my job snapping photos for the Bugle. Ten years later, it’s no big deal. Just another big house. Gathers dust like every other place.

Today, we were here for just another big shot: Captain America. Don’t say that to my partner, Josh Anderson, though. Cap--hell, all the “Marvels”--were like gods to him. They had to be if he was gonna cover them with the same respect his gramps, Phil Sheldon, did. Yeah, hell of a shadow to have looming over you, I know.

“What do you think this is all about?” I asked Josh while we waited in the bustling press room for The Man himself to make his arrival.

“Who knows? Maybe Bucky’s back.”

I snorted. “Sidekicks. God help us all.”

We both couldn’t help but notice the...weirdo...sitting next to us, twitching and mumbling to himself. How’d someone like him get into Avengers Mansion?

“Any chance of him tellin’ himself to shower?” I whispered--no need for a nut to hear me.

“Something’s not right there,” Josh agreed, eyeing the man peculiarly.

Then, a hush fell over the room as Captain America took his place at the podium in the front of the room.

I readied my camera. Try to stay awake, Max.

Twenty minutes later, I was certainly awake.

Josh and I, along with the herd of reporters and photographers from the press conference, were being escorted out of the mansion “for our own safety.” My neighbor the nut turned out to be my neighbor the mutant-hating nut. Tried to cap Cap during his speech.

My ears were still ringing. “How about that? You don’t seem to be too fazed, Josh.”

“After my last few assignments, this kind of thing is almost becoming normal for me.”

“Well, between Cap’s hokey ‘Love Thy Mutants’ speech and the guy sporting the sleeveless jacket right about now, this story oughtta write itself, huh?” I pointed down the street, toward Jack’s, our little reporters bar, but Josh gestured in the negative.

“Everyone’s gonna cover the anti-mutant activity. I want to follow up on Cap’s speech. Pretty...revolutionary stuff. It’d be nice to get a common mutants’ opinion on the speech.”

“You’re kidding, right, Josh? They’re mutants--menaces--terrorists. Screw ‘em. Jameson gives ‘em enough ink as is.”

“Maybe they deserve it, Max. This could be the modern day civil rights movement--it deserves print.”

I shook my head. “Civil rights movement? Please! It’s not--”

“Doesn’t Jimmy supposedly know a mutant?” he asked, all but ignoring my comment.

I sighed. “Jimmy With the Mole or Jimmy Downtown?”

“Jimmy With the Mole.”

“Oh...yeah. So....”

Josh pulled his cell phone from his back pocket. “So...you’re gonna call him and set us up with his mutant friend.”

“What’s with you, Josh?”

He didn’t answer, but practically forced the phone into my hand, expectantly.

Damn. I really needed a drink, too.

One phone call and forty-five minutes later, me and Josh were pulling up to some shack near the Hudson in search of Arthur O’Herri. According to Jimmy, O’Herri was a straight-outta-Dublin Irishman, run out by the superstitious villagers after his mutant powers started to manifest. Drove him crazy. Jimmy said O’Herri was a bit of an eccentric now. Great. Never did say what his mutant power was. I didn’t ask--didn’t really want to know. Maybe he shit Lucky Charms.

We walked through the gravel, away from Josh’s ride, and toward the old, wooden, crumbling shack. No front yard to be seen, but plenty of foliage around the place. Kind of surprising. I’m no gardener, but it seemed impossible to get anything to grow around here.

Josh knocked on the fragile door once, twice. Nothing.

“I guess no one’s here, partner,” I said, eyeing the bleak surroundings nervously. “Oh well.”

Josh gave a mischievous grin and turned the door knob. “We’ll just let ourselves in.”

Shit.... B&E’s all good...EXCEPT on mutie property. Shit!

And things got stranger. When we walked in, we were staggered by the sea of withering, entangled ivy all along the wooden floor of the shack. The greenery climbed up the walls, stretched across the ceiling, and had forced its way through musty windows. It had also invited critters of all sorts. The place was enough to creep me out.

“I’ll be....” Josh gasped.

“Yeah, and I’ll be leaving. Seeya out in the car.”

Josh grasped at my shirt before I could dart out like the good looking coward I am. “Not so fast, Max. I’m gonna need some pictures, y’know?”

Sonuva-- “Alright...but let’s make this quick.”

Josh chuckled as we made our way to the ivy-covered steps that led upstairs. “He’s a mutant. He doesn’t worship the devil or anything like that, Max. He lives in a shack, for God’s sake. I’m sure he’ll be just as scared of you as you are of him.”

Yeah, that’s what my mom said two seconds before a bee stung me when I was nine.

As we made our way up the ivy-covered stairs, I noticed that other variations of plants starting to show. Daisy petals and shrubs, and even a small palm seemed to grow directly out of the wood of the old place. It finally occured to me to start snapping shots--just in case this led to something.

And then we heard moaning--twice in one day, for me.

Josh rushed into the room at the end of the second floor corridor, and, like a fool, I followed.

And what we saw was...disturbing as all hell.

O’Herri--I guess it was O’Herri--lay on a tattered old mattress on the floor, in bad shape. I’m no writer, so it’s hard to describe the...state...the guy was in. Several thin grape vines lead out of his mouth, his moans were muffled by the unidentifiable shrubbery that filled his mouth, his eyebrows were green with teardrop shaped leaves, what was left of his hairline was replaced with what looked like thick, brown roots. And the rest...oh. Maybe the rounds of his eyes had always been green, but I’d bet that the whites of his eyes weren’t supposed to be that sickening lime color. In fact, his skin tone was mixed with olive at some points, and a yellow-green others. The hair on his arms had turned to ivy sprouts, and his fingers had blossomed red and golden petals at the ends. His legs may have still been attached to his body, but they were covered in a mass of foot-round tree roots, visibly protruding from his tailbone.

I heaved.

Meanwhile, Josh knelt over O’Herri, speechless. And then, “Sir? We have to get you help! What’s happened?”

He replied with shrub-filled gibberish that I couldn’t understand, but that Josh seemed to.

“Sounds like...’Legacy’.”

I froze. “The Legacy Virus? Let’s get the hell outta here!”

“We’ve got to help him.”

“What? What are you talking about? There’s no helping him. We’ve gotta go!”

“But....”

I took his arm--this was serious. I’d heard that more than a few humans had contracted the damned virus. Josh knew it, too. So why was he staying? “Let’s go NOW, Josh!”

Then, when shit couldn’t get any stranger, the ivy around us came to life, by God, and slowly, then faster, it focused in on the center of the room. On us. It wanted us. Damn mutant’s last thought was to kill the normal people.

Figures.

I pulled Josh out of the room behind me as we escaped the living Ivy. We rushed down the stairs and out to his car, then booked it the hell outta there.

I swear. Mutants aren’t nothing but trouble.

Wouldn’t end up with anything more than a blurb on page three the next morning about the attempt on Captain America’s life. Josh was pretty bummed. We went through all that shit at the shack for nothing.

But that night, at Jack’s, folks had been bored to tears by CNN’s coverage of the press conference incident, so we skipped over that story. Instead, no one could believe our gruesome little tale about O’Herri. We had the house hanging on our every word. Just between you and me, it seems this one blonde was especially interested. Must have told the story twenty-five, thirty times that night.

But I never said what I really wanted to say. Not until about 10:30, when the stories stopped with the drinking. And as I walked Josh out to his car, I finally asked, “What was with you today, Josh?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, first you went out of your way to tell both sides of a story that people don’t really want to hear. It’s not necessary. Jameson wouldn’t expect that, I know.”

“I’m a reporter, Max. It’s my job.”

“Yeah, I know, but it seems like lately you’ve been trying TOO hard to do right.”

That seemed to amuse him. He unlocked his car door. “Glad you noticed.”

“I’m just saying, be you, Josh. Don’t do it for your pops. That IS why you’re doing it, right? For Phil?”

“I’m not really sure,” he said as he started the car. Then, without another word, he was off.

What the hell did that mean? Fuck it. His problem.

Now, about banging that blonde...

Notes and Such: I just want to give a big thanks to Jason Kenney for letting me contribute a little MV1 story to this big MV1 SAGA.