Rise of an Immortal

[New York City, Baxter Building Vicinity, 28th September 2010, Evening]

Diana looked around, noting the sparse crowd, and lifted her gaze upward to find herself standing near the Baxter Building. The towering structure loomed against the evening sky, unmistakable and familiar.

The base of the Fantastic Four. The home of the team that Susan Storm belonged to, the woman who shared the man Diana loved.

A small smile touched Diana’s lips. It had been ten days since she crawled out of five different hell dimensions. The thought of catching up with Susan, simply talking, without a blade in hand or fire at her back, sounded like exactly the kind of peace she needed right now.

She took one step toward the building.

BOOM.

The top floor of the Baxter Building erupted. A column of fire and smoke punched into the sky, the shockwave rattling windows across the block.

Before Diana could react, a massive, rocky silhouette came hurtling out of the explosion, wreathed in flames, and slammed into the pavement a few feet from her with a ground-shaking crash.

BOOM. CRUNCH.

The handful of pedestrians nearby screamed and scattered, heels scraping against concrete as they bolted.

All except one man. An office worker with coffee cup in one hand and a briefcase in the other, who looked up at the flaming crater in the building’s facade, exhaled a long, tired sigh, and kept walking.

"Better than my Monday," he muttered to no one in particular, stepping around a chunk of fallen debris. "At least I don’t have to worry about the quarterly deadlines."

He glanced back at the people running and shook his head. "Why is everyone panicking like this is the first time?"

He adjusted his tie and continued down the block at a steady, unhurried pace, as though the Baxter Building exploded every other week and he had simply learned to factor it into his commute.

Knowing this route as well as he did, with the Fantastic Four next door, trouble was basically a standing appointment. He had long since stopped finding it alarming and started finding it deeply inconvenient.

Diana stared after him for half a second, then turned back to the crater in the pavement. "Sir, run! Get away from here!"

He waved a hand without turning around.

She let it go and stepped toward the smoldering shape on the ground, crouching down to find Ben Grimm pulling himself up from the rubble, orange hide cracked and scorched, cursing under his breath with a fluency that would have impressed a sailor.

He rolled his massive shoulders and pushed to his feet, already turning back toward the building.

"Hey." Diana moved into his path. She was in her civilian clothes, her dark hair loose, nothing about her appearance announcing what she was. "What is happening up there?"

Ben stopped and looked at her. Recognition crossed his craggy face. He had seen her at Ethan’s wedding. One of the man’s girlfriends. The one Sue had told him about.

"You’re one of Ethan’s girls, aren’t you," Ben said. It wasn’t really a question.

Diana nodded. "Diana Prince. What is the situation?"

Ben opened his mouth to answer.

BOOM.

A second explosion tore through the building above them, and out of the fire, a human-shaped comet launched into the sky trailing orange and gold, looping around the upper floors with blazing fists.

Johnny Storm, the Human Torch, dive-bombed something still inside the building, leaving a streak of fire across the evening.

"We’re under attack," Ben said, his voice dropping into something flat and serious. "And maybe we could use a hand."

He knew Diana was no ordinary woman. Sue had told him enough. She was from another universe.

The Wonder Woman, the very comic book character that existed as fiction in this world, standing in front of him in a pair of jeans.

Reed had nearly had a breakdown when he found out and had gone after Ethan with forty-seven questions, all of which Ethan had shut down without answering a single one.

Reed hadn’t slept for three days because he couldn’t find the answers he needed, but he refused to give up and kept searching for them on his own.

Diana’s expression sharpened and she nodded once. She stepped back, raised one hand, and the familiar shimmer of a Requip spell rippled across her body.

The civilian clothes vanished.

In their place: a gleaming tiara framing her dark hair, a fitted dark blue corset trimmed in gold with a red eagle embossed across the chest, a golden belt cinching her waist, dark leggings, and greaves of bright silver running from ankle to knee.

A deep red cape swept from her shoulders. The bracers on her wrists caught the light as she straightened, golden lasso coiled at her hip, every inch of her the warrior she was.

BOOM.

The explosion threw Johnny clear across the sky. He spun, corrected, and came down near them as Sue appeared from empty air beside Diana, the shimmer of her invisibility dropping as she let it go.

Her blue Fantastic Four uniform was scorched along one side, her blonde hair loose and wild from the fight, but she was upright and her eyes were clear.

"Diana." The relief in Sue’s voice was immediate.

"Susan." Diana gripped her arm briefly. "Are you hurt?"

"I’m fine," Sue said quickly. "But we have a serious problem."

Ben was about to add something when the sound reached them first.

A deep, guttural engine roar, not the smooth rev of a sports car or the idle of traffic, but something that sounded like it was fueled on something other than gasoline. Something older and meaner.

They all turned to see a motorcycle descended vertically down the face of the Baxter Building. Its wheels burned.

Its frame burned. The rider burned, and not with any ordinary fire. Where a head should have been, a skull sat wreathed in pale orange flame, the eye sockets hollow and lit from within like twin furnaces.

A length of heavy iron chain hung from one hand, swinging lazily with the motion of the descent.

The bike hit the pavement with a concussive boom that cracked the concrete in a spiderweb pattern twenty feet wide.

Diana’s eyes narrowed. ’No ordinary men have a head like that. That is a demon.’

"That guy appeared inside our home," Sue said, low and tight. "Without warning and attacked the moment he was through. He came specifically for me, and I have no idea why."

Ben stepped forward, fists up. "Long as I’m here, nobody gets to Susan."

Johnny flared higher, fire rippling off him in sheets. "Nobody touches my sister, Skull-Face."

Ghost Rider did not react to either of them. His burning gaze swept slowly across the group, unhurried, as though he had all the time in the world. Then his hollow eyes settled on Susan Storm and stayed there.

The chain moved and launched from his hand in a wide arc, fast enough to blur.

But Diana was already moving. She stepped into its path and caught it with one hand, the impact rattling up her arm with a force that would have taken a lesser fighter off their feet. With her other hand she drew the golden lasso from her hip in a single practiced motion and cast it forward.

The loop settled around Ghost Rider and tightened.

"The lasso commands you," Diana called out, her voice carrying authority that cut through the noise of burning debris around them. "Identify yourself."

The lasso blazed gold. Ghost Rider’s frame shuddered, straining against the truth that the weapon demanded. The chain in Diana’s grip pulled. He fought it with everything he had, a low, guttural sound rising from him like the groan of something ancient being forced open.

"I am..." His voice was gravel and hellfire, scraped up from somewhere deep. "I am..."

The glow intensified.

"The Spirit of Vengeance."

Then the chain in Diana’s hand erupted. Hell fire poured up the length of iron and hit her grip in an instant, throwing her backward with enough force to send her skidding across the pavement.

She released the lasso to keep her footing, and Rider tore free of the loop in the same motion, the truth weapon sliding off him as his hell fire consumed the binding.

He turned back to Susan. Sue threw up a circular psionic force field around herself, the translucent barrier snapping into place with a sharp crack of concentrated will.

Rider walked into it and pushed. The field held for two seconds, three, then buckled and shattered under a surge of hellfire that turned the air around it orange.

Ben charged. His massive fist connected with Rider’s shoulder and accomplished little beyond briefly shifting the man’s balance. Rider turned, looked at Ben with those empty burning eyes, and backhanded him with hellfire blast into a parked car with one arm.

Johnny came in low and fast, hands blazing, landing a series of fireballs directly into Rider’s chest. The flames washed over him like they were coming home. Rider glanced down at the impact, then looked back up at Johnny with an expression that could only be read as faint disappointment.

The Rider lashed out with his chains and slammed Johnny out of the air. Johnny tried to dodge, but the chains moved as if they had a mind of their own, sending him crashing into a building.

"Johnny!" Sue dropped her field, became visible, and ran towards him.

Rider saw the opening. He turned toward Ben who is again charging towards him, picked up the fallen fire extinguisher from the building wall beside him, and held it.

The metal darkened and warped, and in his grip it became something else, a weapon of condensed hellfire shaped like a cannon. The blast hit Ben square in the chest and sent him flying three blocks down the street, crashing through a fire hydrant on the way.

Diana slammed the fire extinguisher, which the Rider had transformed into blazing fire, unleashing Revervier. She tore it from his hand with the Lasso of Truth, and then hurled her shield to keep him focused on her.

Then she hit him from behind. The Divine Reaver carved across his side in a clean diagonal strike.

The blade, forged to cut through almost anything, drew a line through the material of his form that made him stagger sideways.

He turned to face her and for a moment they stood at close range, and Diana did not give him the second he needed to adjust. The Aegis of Dawn came up and she pressed the attack, sword and shield working together in the measured, efficient pattern of a warrior who had spent ten days in hell killing things far older than this one.

Rider was fast on the bike. He disengaged, mounted in a single motion, and circled her with the cycle’s hellfire wheels leaving scorched rings on the pavement.

The chain whipped out and she cut it in two with the Reaver. He grabbed the frame of a collapsed scaffolding nearby and it transformed in his grip into a flaming spear, which he hurled.

Diana deflected it with the Aegis and felt the counter-spell absorb the impact, but the feedback dodged by the Rider in bike.

The area around them was a ruin. Cracked pavement. Burning vehicles. Shattered storefronts.

"Better to call this guy Ghost Rider," Johnny rasped from the ground nearby, half-conscious and still smoking. "He’s got style, I’ll give him that."

"Shut up and fight if you can talk back!" Ben’s distant voice echoed from down the block as he began the long walk back.

"Fight what?" Johnny called back weakly. "My attacks aren’t doing anything. At least you were a distraction. He’s completely ignoring me."

Sue’s voice came from somewhere behind Ben as he returned, invisible again. "This is not the time."

"Where the hell is Reed," Johnny muttered.

Reed said he was going on a trip, and he had been missing for two days. They couldn’t reach him by phone, and they were planning to track him tomorrow—but then this happened today.

Ben arrived back at the edge of the fight, cracked and singed, and put his fists up again.

Susan supported them whenever they needed it, but her force fields didn’t hold for long, and it was clear she was still weak.

Johnny got back into the fight as well, even after being half-burned. He couldn’t back off now—this guy was after his sister, and it was his job to protect her.

Diana was the only thing standing between Ghost Rider and Susan Storm. She knew it and they knew it, cause Ben and Johnny are acting as distractions for him and Diana is the main damage dealer.

Her sword kept him honest, the shield absorbed what the sword missed, and her experience in five hell dimensions in ten straight days gave her an edge that had nothing to do with raw power. She had fought demons. She understood how they moved, but planned to take this to somewhere where she can unleash her full power. She didn’t want to use her full power and God Slayer Armour her as it can damage this place more.

Then Human Torch made his move again, but this time Rider responded with his own he’ll fire.

The human torch had made the mistake of thinking The Rider’s flames were normal fire. Johnny’s own fire, and Ghost Rider’s, were a different matter entirely.

He took a point-blank blast of hellfire to the chest and went down hard, hitting the rooftop of a car before rolling to the street, smoking and burned in a way his own flames had never managed.

Susan cried out, "No... Johnny," and ran after him.

Ben was enraged, and he tore a heavy pillar from a nearby building to slam into the Rider.

But the Rider moved faster.

From nearby, he yanked an iron rod, coated it in hellfire, and surged forward at blinding speed. Before Ben could bring the pillar down, the Rider struck him with the blazing rod, and the impact sent Ben hurtling through multiple buildings.

Rider pulled back. He looked at Diana, then looked at the sword still smoking from where it had cut him, and made his calculation.

"You are not guilty of sins," the Rider said, "and you are not my target. But since you wanted to fight me, so be it."

He gunned the bike and drove directly at her. She caught him with the shield and the counter-spell threw him off the bike and into the half-framed steel skeleton of a construction site two blocks away, rebar shrieking as he hit the structure and it folded around the impact and Diana flew after him.

...

[Nearby Construction Site]

Rider pulled himself from the wreckage without hurry, crouching in the ruin of bent steel and scattered concrete dust, and watched her land in front of him. His chain had reformed.

The fight continued there, away from the civilians, which was exactly what Diana had intended the moment she recognized the damage spreading through the block.

She cursed herself anyway. She should have moved it sooner.

...

[Baxter Building Vicinity, Ground Level]

Sue knelt beside Johnny on the pavement, both hands pressed to his chest and her expression tight. His burns were severe. The hell fire had done something that his own flame resistance could not simply shrug off, and he was pale beneath the scorch marks, breathing shallow.

Sue’s hands shook. She reached into the front pocket of her uniform and drew out a small smooth stone, pressing the flat of it against her palm.

She bit the tip of her finger without hesitation, and used the welling blood to draw a single rune across the stone’s surface. Her memory of the character was imperfect, practiced but not fluent, the result of ten days of study from a knowledge set that Ethan had placed directly into her mind before leaving for his honeymoon.

Before he, Jean and Anna left, he had used his telepathy to give her the full knowledge of the Runes of Asgard, the whole library of it placed into her mind like a book she now had to read at normal speed to actually understand. Ten days had given her one rune she trusted.

The stone glowed faintly. She placed it against Johnny’s chest, and the glow spread, slow and uncertain, but real. His breathing steadied slightly. The worst of the burns began, very slowly, to knit.

It was working. Just not fast enough.

Sue pressed her other hand flat against the ground and closed her eyes. She was supposed to call for help. Anna, Jean and Ethan were one universe away, but Diana was right here, and she had told herself they could manage.

She had been wrong.

’Why didn’t I call Didi earlier. Why didn’t I call her the moment that thing walked through my wall.’

The thought curled tightly in her chest. This was because of her. Rider had come for her specifically. Johnny was burned half to death on the pavement in front of her because she had been his target and her brother had gotten between them without knowing.

It was her fault, and she could not even make the rune work fast enough to fix it.

"It’s a bit sad, isn’t it?" said a voice. "Miss Storm."

Sue’s head came up.

A man walked toward her across the debris-scattered street. Late thirties, well-dressed, unhurried.

He moved with the careful precision of someone managing a bad leg, a carved cane clicking against the cracked pavement with each step.

His smile was small and easy and entirely too composed for a man walking through the aftermath of a supernatural battle.

No ordinary person walked toward the fight. They ran from it.

"Who are you?" Sue’s voice was flat. Her hands did not move from Johnny.

The man’s smile widened slightly. "Just an old man," he said pleasantly, "who happens to have exactly what you need. And I am more than willing to give it to you."

He stopped a few feet away, looked down at Johnny with the same calm expression, then lifted his gaze back to Sue. The healing rune’s faint glow reflected in his eyes.

"He’s healing," the man observed. "Slowly." He tilted his head. "But it’s not fast enough to save him, I think. Not at that pace."

Sue’s jaw tightened.

"How about a deal, Miss Storm." His smile did not waver. "I can give you exactly what you need to get out of this mess. All of it." He spread his free hand, an easy, open gesture, as though he were offering her directions. "Are you interested?"

Sue stared at him. Her hands stayed on her brother. Her mind was already working, already calculating, already measuring exactly how much trouble she was in.

The man waited, perfectly comfortable with a cane in hand, smiling at her like he had done this a thousand times before.