The Golden Hag generally said nothing, and let her deeds speak for her. She was probably in Michigan, because she wasn’t afraid of taking the blame for bloody military actions. I imagined Hercules had led the team into Atlanta to deal with whatever had happened there.

When the Great Bear said repercussions, that probably meant the Golden Hag or her agents would visit those issuing such disinformation personally, as well as the ones who told them to do so. It also probably meant the States’ communication network and personnel would be receiving an overhaul, in crimson and mangled steel.

“In terms of United States sovereignty and image on the world stage, this is horrible,” Richard Ryder pointed out after joining us, General Rogers being one of his heroes. Hey, benefits of very intense nightly education from an alien AI, he actually could look at international politics from an outside perspective. “How much of the rot was actually cut out, sir?”

Steve Rogers sighed deeply. “The vampire and werewolf numbers in the country are less than ten percent of what they were, and they are being hunted very hard right now, as are those who spurred all of this on. Their supporters in the military and government are mostly dead, but rooting out the rest will be, mmm, difficult, although I understand the Russians in particular have made it a priority to track them over the decades.”

As probably had he. The ability of a super-soldier to measure people was constantly underestimated. He probably had the single best framework of the network of command and influence of those people on the planet, and if he couldn’t possibly dump the whole load of intel on a foreign power, it only took a few words to set them on the right path.

Also, Peggy wouldn’t have nearly the same problems with cutting out the rot, and would have inquired into anything she missed while building up the same assessments as he had.

It was one Hell of a day for the United States. What the radios and TV’s were going to be playing as they hastily revised their own history, and what the newspapers printed, was going to be something.

---------

“How’d things go at the Baxter Building, Ben?” I asked on my linked Vaccine quietly, while I picked up a multi-ton chunk of rubble and tossed it onto a neater stack. Collapsing buildings from superhuman combat was a thing, although vamps and werewolves weren’t nearly as destructive as Bricks in that regard, they just tore more people apart.

A somewhat ashen Quicksilver reported he alone had to vivify over two thousand corpses killed by vampires, or they would have risen as the same. No one who had died was allowed to be buried. The mass funeral of closed boxes of white ash was already being set.

The holo showed Ben sitting at one of the window accesses, looking at the sun as his rocky feet dangled. I could see scoring on his orange hide, nothing dangerous, but they’d been trying for his eyes and mouth.

“Peggy’s plan worked pretty good. They came here an’ to Stark’s place, not just Strange’s. The SHIELD guys ran the defenses over at Stark’s, and I set up the funnels here as Peggy instructed. Brought them right into me as they wuz ripping and tearing everything they could.”

I pictured a horde of werewolves, ghouls, vampires, and Drinkers running straight into The Rock wearing a set of mithral gauntlets with no intention of holding back.

Earth Avatar and former soldier against the mooks of supernaturaldom. I’d already placed my money.

“Still burning?” I asked shortly.

“Yeah,” he replied, putting back a bottle of Dealer’s Best at 8 AM. “I’ll go check on it inna hour or two.”

“Estimates?” I sighed.

“Couple hunnert, at least. Ambush outside got several dozen of ‘em.”

“Sorry you had to go through that, Ben.”

“Hey, better me than the civvies.” He paused a moment. “You heard what’s goin’ on around the country, right?”

“The Patriot told us himself, yeah.”

He took a deep breath. “How bad up there?”

“If we hadn’t been here... there’s a confirmed thirty-two hundred dead, and they’re looking for buried and hidden corpses right now. Dealer took care of most of the casualties, and has Purified everyone wounded by werewolves that we could find. That was a good five or six thousand. Hopefully any others will come running to get treated...”

“But some will think it’s their chance to get Powered.” He got it.

“Yeah.” And embracing the Curse meant it couldn’t be removed, so there was only one alternative.

“How many on your end?” he asked somberly.

“Three hundred and twenty-six, but forty-two were still in their coffins.”

He slowly sucked in a breath. “That with you running all over the damn place, too?”

“I would have run out of ‘em quick if I stayed in one place, yeah.”

“That set a record or sumthin’?” he had to ask.

“No. Quicksilver could have definitely claimed the prize for that, but he had the grimmer job of clean-up. Scott definitely took the prize for kills. Bobby pinned them with ice in the sewer and subway lines, and Scott mowed them down. They didn’t have a prayer. He cleared out at least several thousand by himself.” Shape Stone began moving random bits of stone and facing out of the way and reforming them into easily handled blocks for disposal by work crews.

“Somehow I’m not surprised. Kid’s got some real power behind those eyeballs of his.”

“Truth.”

“Kinda glad Stretch and Suzie ain’t here to see this.”

“If all of you were there, they would never have gotten inside the building at all.”

He thought about Susan penning them all in, and Johnny going nova on their asses. “Got that right,” he admitted. “Stretch would’ve turned the night into day, probably turned the pups back to human, and fried the vamps at the same time,” he guffawed.

“Yeah. There’s no hope for vamps, but he would’ve tried with the wolves.”

A couple long breaths. “Good thing him and Suzie weren’t here,” Ben repeated, grimly this time.

“Yeah.”

--------

It was a week before the last of the foreign teams left the United States, having pursued werewolves and hunted vampires across the entire map of the country if they had to. More than a few half-crazed gun-owners shouting about foreign invaders and occupiers who took potshots at them had died rather abruptly, too. The hunters had no patience for Muricans trying to shoot them while hunting down the rot infecting the country, and the fact werewolves looked perfectly human if killed in that form didn’t help matters.

But leave they did, rather to the amazement of many, vanishing as rapidly as they’d come, suddenly no longer there, and all the resistance movements urgently taking place in the shadows found they didn’t have any oppressors to start a guerilla war against, dagnabit!

Well, except for the covert ops teams waiting in the shadows for hidden vamps or wolves to move and restart things, but they were in deep cover, hunters hunting hunters, and the stalking of the nights began once again.

Many people refused to believe what had really happened, but the media was warned what was going to happen to them if they twisted the facts, so the truth was published regardless of how unpopular it would be. Editors had families, too...

------

Several days later...

“Good job,” I murmured to Scott and Bobby, who were slumped down on their Disks in exhaustion.

Below us, spreading out for a two-mile radius, was a solid field of sparkling black glitter, molten rock super-cooled and starting to glitter with condensing ice.

The Chattanooga Pit was solidified after a solid week of resisting the Lantern’s attempts to quench it and Comet trying to drain it dry. Dr. Strange had come by to inspect it, muttered something about Grand Rituals and things, and recommended Cyclops and Iceman take care of it.

So, the two young men had.

The strongest cryokinetic in the world working with an optic beamer didn’t seem all that sensical... if you didn’t know that Cyclops was up to five colors of eyebeams.

A lot of people knew he had red and orange/fire now. His acquaintances might have seen him pull out gold/lightning.

Only those who helped him practice and fed him data knew he had emerald/stasis and sapphire/cold.

In fact, Scott’s unlocking his sapphire beam had been a big impetus for Bobbie to get better at his own ice-making, as he didn’t want Scott to show him up in his own shtick.

That wasn’t going to happen, as Scott wasn’t a hydrokinetic and couldn’t actually make ice without, say, freezing a pond or something. It was a pure cold beam, awesome amounts of kinetic energy neutralizing thermal vibrations on that which it hit... but it was a LOT of cold.

Pour all that cold into the Iceman, and even a Hell-wrought pit made from sacrificing a hundred thousand innocent souls to creatures from Below could be frozen solid.

“I think I put in enough power to start another Ice Age down there,” Bobby huffed as he morphed out of his ice form. He was getting really good at shifting his ice form around now, nearly as morphable as water after his continued practice and advice from Cassandra Rantha set him on a course of study and practice in combined cryopsi, hydropsi, and biopsi disciplines.

Scott had his goggles off, his eyes sidelined as he sprawled backwards. “First Core empty,” he told me as I floated there, not jinking around as much as I had a week ago, but still sparking and arcing continuously and randomly.

“Veil resilience back at 100% in this location, Dynamo,” Hank McCoy informed us, which the Lantern was also confirming as his Orb scanned the black ice below. “I think you can light it up.”

My Bites lit up with vivic fire, and my secondary voltage streams fed into them. Only 14d6, but they were carrier effects, so I wasn’t too worried about it.

I began to cross-cut the whole place with plasma beams carrying vivic fire, the black ice promptly erupting in unwhite fires. Constant streams and beams of bright particle beams cracked and spat down, chewing lines in the ice, and vivus erupted off the Hell-born magical energies caught in the grip of cold so terrible and chill it could freeze atoms.

It was a psionic and magical effect combined, so all that expended energy was, in the end, just going to get fed into the Land, and all the adverse effects of this level of fire and cold were just going to go away as they were ‘corrected’. Even the crater would fill itself back in, leaving just an empty white patch of ground that would rapidly sprout green, with no sign that people had ever lived here at all...

It took me most of an hour to cover the ice to my liking with streaks of vivic fire, and watch them slowly grow after I had done so.

The Lantern had pulled up beside McCoy to watch as I finished up, his crimson face neutral as he regarded this whole show. “How long will this be burning?” the alien lawman asked neutrally, his dark eyes not reflecting the spiritual fires.

“Probably a week or more,” I replied to the Lantern calmly. “It has to eat its way all the way down to the bottom of the effect. The center goes down at least a hundred yards, plus the four conduits are at least a half-klik deep.”