Carl Creel/Alloy

Creel walked through the streets of New York on his own, taking in the sights and sounds as he hefted a duffel bag over his shoulders. Night was coming down on the city, but that meant nothing to New York. The city that never sleeps, after all.

It helped, walking through the city. In some ways, it reminded him of the old days. It was hard to feel the sad nostalgia he was feeling now when he was on patrol with the others. When he was jumping from rooftop to rooftop, fighting alongside werewolves and Hulk’s, it was hard to feel like he had as a younger man.

Now though, strolling slowly down the sidewalks… It was like the good and bad old days all over again.

He walked past one restaurant where he'd taken a girl on a date when he’d been just a kid. Then past an alley where he’d beaten a man who hadn’t been able to pay the mob back in time. He didn’t look at either place.

After coming back from the Savage Land, like Dial and Fantasma, Creel had been contemplating how to improve his fighting ability. It was something he hadn’t thought about before. Ever since he’d gained his powers, he didn’t really think of improving beyond finding some new material to absorb.

The bald superhuman glanced at the gauntlet on his arm. The thing was… that wasn’t enough anymore. A whole lot has changed recently. During their battles alongside the Winter Guard, he’d been hit by enough plasma blasts to turn him almost molten hot over time. That had freaking sucked.

Then, there was the fight against Sauron. A lot of the fight, he’d barely been able to help. He wasn’t fast enough to really catch up, and when he’d been hit by that nuclear attack, he couldn’t really protect Dial and Fantasma.

They both said that he was doing his best. But for the first time in decades, Creel felt like he was lacking in some way. He wanted to get stronger. To get more skill. So he was taking steps towards that.

He’d heard about Fogwell Gym years back. From what he knew, they were open pretty late sometimes. He entered the doors of the gym, looking around and taking a deep breath through his nose.

Home. There was something about a boxing gym. There was a smell that got soaked into the leather of the bags, the ring, even the stones. Something like the ghosts of boxers past.

Creel looked around. The place was empty. He noticed a nearby wall with a poster on it. While much of it was ripped up, enough remained for him to read it.

Carl ‘Crusher’ Creel vs ‘Battlin’ Jack Murdock

Creel stared at that poster for a moment. Then he looked around again. More posters of Jack Murdock’s fights were around the room. For a moment, he simply stood there. Then he took a deep breath, releasing it.

“What are you doing here, Creel?”

Creel spun, raising an arm, but froze when he saw who stood across from him. Matt Murdock. The younger man was carrying a cane, his eyes covered in sunglasses. For a moment, Creel thought Matt was looking off to the side before he remembered he was blind.

“Murdock…” Creel lowered his arm. “I uh. I just came to get some training in.”

“Don’t they have training facilities in that fancy tower you live in?” Matt pointed out. The blind lawyer walked in towards the ring. Creel watched him carefully, noting that he was wearing sweats. In fact, he looked as though he was ready to workout.

“They do. I just wanted to try something new.”

“...Did Mahmoud tell you about this place?”

“No.”

Creel didn’t mean to snap. He couldn’t help it though. Why was Mahmoud always coming up?

He liked the guy. In some ways, he considered Mahmoud his best friend. But part of the reason, deep down, why Creel wanted to get back to basics was that he was finding it really damn hard to keep up with everyone. And Dial was the worst culprit.

The alien shapeshifting hero just kept getting stronger. He was getting new form after new form, his old ones were already damn beasts. It was hard to feel like he was lacking in some way compared to that. And he didn’t even notice, was the worst part. Creel couldn’t help the resentment he felt towards his friend sometimes. He’d thought, with his new gauntlet, with his vibranium form, he was finally able to stand against him. But it was clear that those didn’t matter. Dial was the stronger one. The one who everyone else looked to when they needed help.

Creel, Alloy, was just the big dumb muscle. Second place.

Dial was oblivious to Creel’s darker thoughts. And that made Creel feel guilty. Which made him resent him more, which made him feel guilty more. It was a vicious cycle.

Creel hid those thoughts and focused on Matt. “I heard this place sometimes opened late. I sort of…” he hesitated. Hey, if you could be honest with anyone, why not the son of a guy who kicked your ass? “Lately I’ve been having trouble catching up. I wanted to come to someplace like the gyms I trained in as a kid. Start from the basics. Polish my skills, you know?”

He walked up to a boxing bag and experimentally punched it. “I’ve been trying to find some way to catch up.”

“...I can understand that, I suppose,” Matt lifted his bag off his shoulder and tossed it on the ground.

“How about you?” Creel asked him. “I mean… You’re blind. But you’re wearing fighting gear, in a gym at night,” pieces started coming together for Creel. “Scars on your knuckles… and I can’t help but notice you don’t seem to have trouble moving around without that cane of yours.”

Matt smirked. “You uh, you a detective, Creel?”

“I’ve been taking notes from some pretty smart guys,” Creel stared at Matt. “How often do you come here?”

“...Every night I can, to be honest,” Matt looked over at Creel. “Go ahead and practice as you like. I’ll find another gym-”

“No,” Creel was eyeing Matt, curious now. “No, I get it. You have your secrets. I won’t ask, and I won’t tell…” Creel finally couldn’t help it. “Okay, one question. How does a blind man box in a gym, anyway?”

“With his fists,” Matt said with a smirk.

Creel laughed. He couldn’t help it. “Fine, fine. I’ll just train over you here, and let you do your thing… Thank you.”

“You didn’t need my permission, Creel.”

He did. Creel felt, on some level, like he’d been let into someplace sacred.

That was fine by him. It felt right, somehow. He wrapped his fists and got to work.

There was a lot of work to do. If he wanted to stop feeling like he was getting left behind, he needed to push himself beyond his limits.

Matt’s senses followed the last man his father fought as Creel began his warm-ups. Then Matt began his own.

------

Mahmoud Schahed/Dial

We walked through a swamp. Yeah, I know. Swamps in Greece. I’d mentioned earlier that Greece was a place that just seemed to summon myths around it. The sheer breadth of locations within the country was one of the reasons why.

They were low, with no trees or anything. It sort of reminded me of the Dead Marshes from Lord of the Rings, the Two Towers one. Just not as spooky. Still wet though.

Ares was leading us. Then Bucky, Jen, me, and Steve, in a straight line following the tall Olympian.

“Ugh,” Jen mumbled, walking through the watery swamps. She’d exchanged her jeans for galoshes, but was still glaring at the water. “Mahmoud, sweetie, when you said you were taking me to Greece, this isn’t what I wanted.”

“Don’t blame me, the tour guide’s the one that brought us here,” I said with a nod at Ares.

“You should have paid extra if you wanted to stay dry,” Ares was apparently old hat at banter. He gave us a grin before facing forward again. He’d strapped that giant sword from earlier to his back next to a grenade launcher, and was carrying an assault rifle in his hands.

Steve gestured for me to come closer to him as we continued to trudge through the swamp. His eyes were still on Ares as he spoke, keeping his voice low. “What do you think?”

“That my multiversal knowledge is useless here,” when Steve gave a look, I shrugged. “Steve, Ares is Ares. He’s the God of Soldiers in War. That means guys like you. Honorable men fighting for a good cause, fighting for their nation. But it also means the guys who enjoy it. The monsters who fight just to spill blood, man,” I sighed. “Ares isn’t a bad guy in the universe through the dimensional viewer. Dangerous, and does some messed up things. But he fights for good. So, keep an open mind.”

Steve chuckled. When I looked at him, he smirked. “That’s what I would have done whatever you told me.”

I chuckled as well. Yeah, Steve wasn’t the type to judge someone without knowing for a fact they were assholes.

“So this isn’t the first monster you all have had to deal with recently?” Bucky was asking Ares.

“Not at all. The first that I had to deal with was a catoblepas.”

“A what?”

“It’s a bull. A magical one, right?” Jen stumbled as she spoke. I caught her mid-fall and helped her to a more stable section of swamp.

“More or less,” Ares shrugged. “It has a gaze that can turn mortals to stone, and breath of fire. Nothing too dangerous for those like us, but troublesome for normal men. Once I took care of it, more seemed to rise from the underworld. A manticore, some Stymphalian birds, a wyvern, even a bilgesnipe from Thor’s lands.”

“Why haven’t we heard about this?” Steve asked behind me.

“Because we kill them,” Ares looked over his shoulder. “Captain, you know as well as I that no beast, no matter how monstrous, can match the evils men and gods can bring upon themselves.”

Steve frowned.

“Well, at least we all know how to kill this thing,” I said idly, slapping a mosquito coming at my face. “Cut off the heads and burn them, right?”

“Like Hercules did?” Jen asked.

Ares scoffed. “Please! That blowhard would have been lost if it wasn’t for Iolaus. ‘If I cut it enough times it’ll work, right!’”

“Is that a little bit of sibling rivalry I hear?” I teased.

“...No.”

Heh.

“We aren’t going to get attacked by PETA for this whole thing, are we?” Jen asked.

“First of all, I’m given to understand they kill more animals than they save, so they would be hypocrites if they did decide to make a complaint,” Ares scoffed. “Second, hydra’s are not animals. They are in fact, magical monsters. They do not kill because they are hungry, they do not fulfill a role in the environment around them. They destroy all life around them, poison the waters of their homes, and make the areas they live in uninhabitable for miles around if they are given the slightest chance.”

“So… they don’t make cute pets?” Bucky said.

“If they did, I would take them in to the zoo, along with the others.”

“Others?” Steve asked.

“You thought I was just killing everything I found?” Ares asked.

“Aren’t you the god of murder?” I asked with a chuckle.

“Yes. Not the god of animal cruelty.”

“Wait,” Jen stopped walking and stared at me as though she’d come onto a sudden realization. “Mahmoud. This is a swamp.”

“Yeah?” I asked, confused.

“A swamp full of plants. So why don’t you just turn into Swampfire?”

“...I’ll be honest. I kinda forgot that was an option,” I admitted.

“You could have been making bridges for me,” Jen said.

“...Sorry?”

“You’re on thin ice.”

I looked around. Ares coughed and looked away. Bucky was grinning. Steve chuckled a little.

Traitors, the lot of them.

With a sigh, I raised the Omnitrix up and twisted the dial. You know what happened next.

“Swampfire!”

“I have trouble remembering all the options I have sometimes,” I admitted in my slightly nasally voice.

Ares frowned thoughtfully about that. “Truly? Has it been an issue in the past?”

I tossed some seed pods into the swamp water and reached out in that telepathic void I shared with all plant-life, spraying my pheromones across the area as well. As my seed pods cracked open and started creating a path of wood for the others, I thought about Ares’ question.

“Not really? Usually I’m in the right form for the fight, and I always think of the one I need if I really have to change.”

“Bah!” Ares shook his head. “That is not enough. A soldier needs to know every weapon, every tool at his disposal, perfectly. When you fire a gun, you aim. When you swing a sword, you aim. Nothing in battle should be a matter of ‘it might be good for this situation.’ You don’t win, lose, or die by percentages. It is a warrior's duty to remove chance from the equation.”

That surprised me, if I’m being honest. Not what Ares was saying, but how he was saying it. I mean, I didn’t disagree with what he was saying. It’s not like I wasn’t thinking the same thing. Part of the training I wanted for myself was to learn to instinctively reach for the right form for every scenario.

The fact he was trying to guide me the same direction was interesting though.

“Is that like a, ‘God doesn’t play with dice, and neither do I’, kind of thing?” Jen snarked.

“If that’s what you want to call it, yes,” Ares said gravely. “I will say, there are pantheons of gods who attempt to play games of chance with the lives of the mortals in their realms. But a smart warrior makes any game of chance a useless endeavor. He takes pains to be sure nothing will stop his assault. Because while you cannot plan for everything, you can at the least understand your own options and abilities. It is something the greatest soldiers do well. Something even I have sometimes failed in, for all my experience.”

We continued walking over the bridges of wood I was making for us, before we finally came to a spot where I felt something through my connection to the plants around us.

“Wait. Just a sec,” I frowned, looking at one specific section of swamp. I raised a hand and closed my eyes, reaching out mentally for the plants. “There’s something in that swamp.”

“The hydra,” Ares said with relish, chuckling. “Well then. According to reports, it’s already on three heads. I have no wish to waste time cutting more and more off, so we stick to our plan.”

“Fine by me,” Jen said with the same relish in her voice.

“I’m already in Swampfire form, so I’m good to go,” I said with a shrug.

Bucky and Steve didn’t say anything, just raised their own weapons.

“Then it is time to unleash hell,” Ares chuckled, raising his assault rifle in one hand and reaching over his back to take his grenade launcher in the other. “Jennifer. If you please?”

Jen’s teeth flashed with glee. There was absolute joy in her movements as she pulled her hands back, then brought them forward. “THUNDERCLAP!”

The air erupted from around her, sending us all back a step while the plants were bent by the wind. The majority of it smashed into the water, parting it like Moses had decided to join our little posse.

And there it was. The monster we’d all been waiting for.

It was a big boy. Weren’t they all? Around the size of a school bus, with scales the color of mud, it was shaped like the brontosaurus’ I’d seen in the Savage Lan. Smaller, but built with a lot more muscle, like it was the shorter and buffer little brother.

It let out a sound like gas escaping a propane tank when it realized the waters it was hiding in had been blasted back. The waters fell back to surround it, but the jig was up.

“There you are,” Ares whispered.

The HYDRA, I mean, the hydra, let out that sound like hissing gasoline again, lifting its heads high into the air. One. Two. Three… four. Five? All of them ringed with fringes of scales.

“That’s more heads than you said there would be,” Steve pointed out to Ares.

“Hey, who’s surprised a situation we’re involved in got worse. Because I’m not,” Bucky said, raising his sword.

“That’s why the plan accounted for up to nine heads,” Ares chuckled.

“Avengers!” Steve shouted, his iconic shield raised high.

The hydra roared, and we leaped into battle.