The palatial building we were staying at was only about ten miles away, which was nothing, but we covered at least five times that amount of ground up, down, around, and through the alien city. Nova mentioned that public security was getting a lot of calls about us, but soon enough there were dozens of native Titans jumping on Bobby’s impossible ice ramps and having a bloody ball across the miles behind us. The Spiders weren’t actually interfering with anything, and they were a sight to watch, so there were flying Titans following them around soon enough, videoing everything they did with great interest.

Anything to give Terrans a zany reputation, as it were.

“Woooooooo!” Peter said as he hit the ground on the landing pad to our temporary digs. “Went through four cartridges of web fluid!” he grinned as he fell over, joined a few seconds later by the girls, Iceman, and Cyclops. Given the number of ski jumps Ice had worked into his ramps, that was totally not out of line.

“That was wonderful!” Kismet said in delight, clapping her hands as she slid off Bobby’s final ramp and stayed a couple inches off the ground. “Can we do it again tomorrow?!”

“We’re going to be underway back to LaGrange tomorrow, Kizz,” I reminded her, and she promptly pouted. “Damn, Ice, you should put up a lightfooter slide set more often. That was really damn good!” I encouraged him.

Richard and Jessica came gliding down last. “Their internet is exploding with the videos of you all. Some are hoping they preserve the ice ramps for fun, and others are calling for you to make more of them!” Rich grinned at Bobby.

Ice just tossed an icy thumb at the Spiders. “I just followed them around, don’t give me any credit. That was totally crazy and I was completely lost.”

“New armor looked good, Scott. Nice skimming!” I gave Cyke a thumbs up, and he grinned back up at me. Venting his optic blast through channels on his armor for either defensive power or some mobility had been tricky to work out, and was prone to getting broken in fights, but riding along on reflected force beams against the soles of his boots had been pretty smooth, and he had easily kept pace with the Spiders on the ice.

Flying would be difficult, but skimming along roads and fairly level surfaces was totally doable, it seemed. When solid bars of psychokinetic force were both buttressing his suit and ready to be vented for an ablative burst, his defensive ability had just been given a huge bump up, too.

Powers and superscience ftw, I guess!

“Now that you all have had your fun, I’m going to take a little break from you.” I flexed my fingers and cracked my knuckles loudly.

“You put a tracker on that douchebag,” Peter deduced promptly, and smiles slowly broke out all around.

“I have issues with serial rapists who try to assassinate me and my friends,” I totally did not confirm.

“Can I come?” Kismet asked eagerly.

“No, that might get you in trouble, and while I believe your mother would totally laugh her arse off, I’m shouldering any heat for this one.”

“Crush his balls and make it stick!” Jessica hissed at me.

“Seconded!” “Thirded!” Cindy and Gwen promptly agreed. The guys didn’t even wince, just nodding along.

“He should be so glad MJ isn’t here,” Peter mused, and even I had to smile at that.

“I will be back shortly.” Lightning flashed in a long line, and I was out of there.

-------

The woman he was about to bed was put down with careful lightning to the brain, lovely blonde thing that she was, never seeing me. Eros kind of gaped at me, realized what was about to happen, and tried to tasp me on instinct.

He was a Titan Eternal, so I didn’t totally fry his brain on the Reprisal, but he did scream at something like 27d6 to the cerebrum. Take that, Titan Eternal Racial Class!

Then I stuck his face to my fist, and instead of bashing him through the walls around us, I just crushed him into the support beams of the building, all woven of Isotopic alloys at least as strong as proto-adamantium. I proceeded to break a whole lot of things about him, starting with his bones and teeth, and moving on to things more important to him, never letting go of him for a second, mostly with his flattened nose cemented to my fist.

He’d probably been in a lot of fights over women, but being a scrapper who likely outmatched his normal opponents by a huge amount, super-strong as he was, he’d never been in a serious fight against a stronger, faster, and more skilled opponent... especially a woman, and definitely while his brain was half-melted and he couldn’t tasp the other party.

He wasn’t my equal, and I very, very emphatically let him know how I appreciated all of his antics.

I left him down in the sewers of the building for nobody to find, down in the stench and the filth as his body tried to mend. His left wrist was wrapped around the pulped remnants of his manhood with his little fertility trinket.

I also told him that if he ever saw me again, he’d best run, and he’d better never, ever come to Terra. He was only alive because his dad was a famously nice fellow, and the next time, he was just going to disappear into white dust and ash. His dad would sigh that one of his sons’ cuckolded amours’ lovers had finally gotten to him, and life would go on without him.

A’lars was tens of thousands of years old. His kids dying had happened many times before. He was used to it.

-----------

“Kree-Skrull War didn’t happen,” Ben reported as he went through the pre-flight check.

“Izzat so?” I asked, standing there with precious little to do as everyone else ran through their to-dos.

“Yeah. Some massive psionic event paralyzed both sides, and they withdrew rather than tempt whatever did it, or something.”

“And that is important to us because?” I pressed, playing ignorant.

“An arm of the fleets was actually outside the Kuiper Belt. Terra is part of the turf they are fighting over!” Ben told me.

I massaged my temples. Like, they thought the High Guard was just some chopped ham, right? Invincible ancient star empires beating on one another, nothing better to do...

If I remembered right, this whole thing was the fault of Chief Accuser Ronan sidelining the Supreme Intelligence and stirring up the flames of war. I didn’t remember what incited the Skrulls. Maybe the Cotati playing them, whatever. Maybe just general asshatness.

Oh, and there was some Senator who turned out to be a Skrull replacement involved with it all.

Captain Mar-vell was actually around, although he had nothing to do with Carol Danvers. Actually, I think he was supposed to fall in love with a woman from Titan, if memory served me correctly...

And die of cancer from something Nitro released. Mmm. Well, Sama and Briggs definitely knew he was a pink Kree; maybe they’d intervene with him, maybe not. I mean, I was certainly capable of curing normal cancer if he got it, even as an alien, as were literally hundreds of psions, so there was no way he should die from it, maybe?

Alien cancer, however, who knew. Universe taking a different path is all.

“Take us out, Mr. Grimm,” Richard said from the captain’s chair.

“Aye, aye, Cap’n!” the Rock replied, and moved the controls with easy confidence.

------

The trip back was pretty basic. We were shadowed once again in case we tried something, but anyone could have determined we were going back to LaGrange just with what we were hauling. Some of what we were transporting was raw volturium to be processed, some extremely valuable stuff with the tonnage involved, but they still didn’t bother to hit us.

After all, Primus and a Lantern were around. Wouldn’t that be a laugh if they tried something, and those two showed up?

There was a general meeting of the main crew, talking about how it all went, and we pretty much agreed the ship was sound and ready for what was coming.

Nova was particularly eager to see that Zorr got what was coming to him, and interested to see what the pirate was going to bring to the fight... because we certainly weren’t bringing a small amount ourselves.

The strategy we were going to use was basically just to turn Zorr’s tactics on their head. He was expecting us to go to Xandar, and we weren’t. He could lay an ambush, he could feign an attack on something else to divert us off, whatever... but if we were going to the Shi’ar coronation, that meant he was going to have to chase us, instead.

That was going to be a very different kind of fight. He stylized himself as Zorr the Conqueror, so he was probably familiar with a straight-up fight, but with a fully ready and manned Nova Corps ship?

We headed back to make final preparations for the trip to the Shi’ar Coronation, and not incidentally drop off a lot of the stuff we’d completed for Doc Richards to satisfy his contracts.

---------

I wasn’t worried about suddenly becoming an overnight music sensation, mainly because I hadn’t given them permission to do so. My voice, the song, and its lyrics was Off-Limits without me granting anyone permission to play or replay it. For instance, if you heard the lyrics, you could sing it out, sure... but none of your electronic equipment could carry the tune or words, and it couldn’t be recorded or passed on.

I was aware that the musicians were shopping the original recordings to agents, but my words were clear: no pay, no play. The magic around it was complex, but basically, if I didn’t get paid my fair share, a third party playing the original recordings would get nothing off them.

It meant, among other things, that the agents had to pay to hear them, and then whoever they peddled them to had to pay something to hear them... which should slow down any proliferation of the songs until I got back, or something.

Dealer was arranging things with the Asgardians to join them for their invitation to the Shi’ar Coronation, bringing her Asgardian boar with them. The Avengers were away in space still, who knew if any would make it (although I was sure Thor would show up, if nothing else), and we were certainly going to make a time of it.

Mr. Hill had thought about going with Dealer. Apparently, there was some potential business there... but he floated around the idea of hiring mercs out into super-science alien civilizations with weapons that could burn through tanking Bricks, and there was a marked lapse of enthusiasm from people.

We locked down most of the Baxter Building, save for the residential floors being used by Pietro and Wanda and some of the students at Midtown High, who were all for proving they could handle anything that popped up.

More importantly, Ursula and Felicia were watching the building, each in their own ways. I wasn’t worried about them.

------

“So, what did you two scalawags actually manage to scare up on Titan?” I asked the Fixer and Beetle back at ElectroFix.

They looked at one another, trying to decide how much to tell me.

“You’re going to tell me everything, because I will roast your nads if you don’t,” I informed them loftily. They kind of winced and sat down, reluctance abruptly going away. The condition Eros had been found in had somehow gotten all over the Titanic internet...

“Well, it’s, um, kinda sensitive, as some of this stuff kinda fell off a ship...” Beetle began hesitantly.

“Please tell me you got them off one of those Zorr informers, and you’ve gone over it for trackers and stuff already.”

They both smirked in relief. “Yeah, they thought we couldn’t tell a hypertime node or a tachyon emitter from a bat whistle, or something. The quark agitator was kinda novel. We kept ‘em all to take a good look at later,” Norbert said quickly.