A Private Beach Somewhere in the South Pacific
“Cheese and crackers!” Patsy Walker – aka, the super hero Hellcat – exclaimed as she stretched on her beach blanket in languorous imitation of her namesake. “Isn’t this the life?”
Her companion, Ardina, a golden woman formed of the Power Cosmic with no need of stretching, languorous or otherwise, merely shrugged. Unlike Patsy, she sat well back from the lapping waves, under the shade of a large striped umbrella. This was not out of concern for her complexion, but because tropical sunlight reflecting off her metallic skin tended to blind everyone in her immediate vicinity. Patsy had taken to wearing dark glasses around her since their vacation had started, even indoors.
“If you say so, Patsy Walker. Though I am not sure I understand what snack food has to do with the quality of human life.”
“Only everything,” Patsy laughed as she turned on to her stomach and propped herself up on her elbows to peer through oversized brown lenses at her friend. Ardina sat ill at ease on her lounge chair, still very much the newborn despite having been alive for several months, and not yet having mastered the concepts of either relaxation or snack food in that time. “But that’s beside the point. Samantha’s parents have given us the run of their private beach, along with the use of their palatial beach house and its staff, for as long as we need. It’s a quality of life that few humans are afforded, even me with my so-called America’s Sweetheart mercantile empire. We should enjoy it while we can.”
“Yes, it was kind of your friend’s parents to allow us to stay here. To allow me to stay here,” Ardina replied.
“Valkyrie is your friend, too,” Patsy insisted. Ardina only repeated both her earlier shrug and her words.
“If you say so, Patsy Walker.”
Patsy was about to remind the golden woman that saving the world from the Order had garnered her quite a lot of friends when the fine hairs on the nape of her neck stiffened and the sweat on her skin cooled to goosebumps, though there had been no accompanying salt-laden ocean breeze.
She sat up, her blue and yellow Hellcat costume manifesting on her body without conscious thought, an instinctive response to a threat she sensed but could not see. She scanned the tree line for movement, but there was nothing.
Then her demonsight flared.
“Look alive,” Patsy said, all trace of humor gone from her voice. “We’re about to have company.”
No sooner had she finished her warning than a portal opened above the bright cerulean of the ocean. For the barest of moments, all it yielded was a glimpse of a twisting darkness that made Patsy’s stomach churn. Then it began spewing demons.
Patsy had spent a fair amount of time around demons. She had married a half-demon, Daimon Hellstrom, died and gone to Hell, been rescued and returned to life, and even brokered an alliance between Mephisto, Hela, Pluto, and her now ex-husband Daimon, to save Hell from falling under Dormammu’s control.
So, yeah, she knew a thing or two about demons.
She knew they came in all shapes and sizes. Some were human-sized flies that walked upright and carried big sticks. Some looked like they’d just stepped off the set of a low-budget lagoon-monster movie. Many of them had multiple sets of something – arms, mouths, eyes. Some had horns, or tusks, or claws, or all those things, and more. And some defied description in human terms, with unrecognizable body parts arranged in unfathomable patterns.
And she knew they had all sorts of different abilities. Some could breathe fire, or spit poison, or cast spells. Some flew, some burrowed, some oozed. Most were just dumb brutes, but some were diabolically clever, able to reason, calculate, and execute plans of their master’s or even their own devising.
Patsy knew one thing more about demons.
If you were a Hellcat who could not only sense demonic energy auras, but also track them across great distances, then for you, demons had something akin to a mystical scent that was unique either to them, or to their particular hell dimension and its particular ruler.
And these demons gave off a mystic stench like a hunk of skunk-sprayed limburger that had been fished out of a restaurant dumpster and left to sit in the hot sun for a day or two. They didn’t smell all that great in the physical sense, either.
Patsy was pretty sure she recognized that foul odor, and then a giant, crudely formed humanoid figure with a single glowing red slit of an eye shambled through the spinning portal, and she was certain.
A Mindless One. An unthinking denizen of the Dark Dimension whose sole purpose for existence was to destroy whatever happened to be in front of it. These were Dormammu’s minions.
But what the hell were they doing here? Was ole Dormouse trying to conquer Earth again?
Why here, though? The island held nothing of value to an invading force, unless you were in some bizarre need of sand or palm trees. Knowing him, he’d picked this spot specifically to annoy her.
It was working.
Well, she supposed she could beat the reason out of one of his minions after she’d dispatched a few and brought the odds down to something a little more reasonable than twenty to two.
Patsy knew she couldn’t go toe-to-toe with the Mindless One, so she didn’t even bother with it at first. She launched herself at the first demon within range of a cartwheel and a roundhouse kick, one of the lagoon-monster variety, with weird fins protruding from its bulbous green head. Her foot connected with the vertical slits she assumed served as its nose, and the creature collapsed into a Christmas-colored heap, pawing ineffectually at its face with webbed claws and burbling its pain to the impassive sky.
But Patsy didn’t have time to appreciate her handiwork, or even to wonder what an aquatic-seeming demon was doing henching for the guy with a fireball for a head. She was already slicing past another pair of demons that looked like minotaurs, with tusks covered in either drool or venom, or maybe both. Didn’t matter – a single swipe left them on the sand and she was on to the next one.
Well, the one after that. A golden blast from somewhere above and behind Patsy’s right shoulder drilled into the pig-nosed demon she’d targeted and sent it slamming back into one of its axe-wielding buddies. A quick follow-up blast sent that duo through the portal opening, and it didn’t look like either of them would be in any shape to make a return trip.
Fifteen to two. That was a bit better.
Patsy focused on the gaggle of demons to her left, since Ardina had gone airborne and seemed to have the right flank covered. Wait, was it a gaggle? She knew there was a collective noun for a group of demons – she’d used it in her autobiography Gidget Goes to Hell – but the word escaped her at the moment.
Unlike the demons themselves.
Another pig-nose went down beneath her front claws, while a bat-winged one harrying her from the air caught her back claws across its abdomen, grounding its flight. A big one in the rear of the group – no, legion, that was it – was barking orders while a mismatched pair in front of him dropped to what Patsy assumed were their knees and began firing short red bursts at her from weird rifles she’d never seen before. Not that it mattered. She had long since learned how to shift just… so, causing mystical energy to glance off her aura, twisting and sliding out of magic’s grip like the proverbial greased hog. Or, in this case, cat.
Hellcat.
She danced a deadly ballet with the barrage of energy pulses, every sandy ciseaux and pirouette twirling her closer to both the weapons and their wielders. A quick feint to the left took her out of the line of sight of one of the demons, his unfortunate partner becoming a momentary obstruction between him and his target.
A fact that didn’t seem to bother the creature in the slightest as he simply shot through his counterpart, the hellish red beam exploding out of the other demon’s gut, leaving a gaping hole and sizzling innards in its wake.
Patsy wasn’t quite fast enough to dodge the unexpected bolt, and it cut and cauterized a stinging path across her thigh as she somersaulted away, berating herself for getting hit. All this lovely lazing around had slowed her reflexes. At least she wouldn’t have to worry about the wound becoming infected.
Another of Ardina’s golden blasts of cosmic power finished off the remaining shooter, taking off two of the order barker’s six arms in the process, and then there were ten. Approximately.
So, five to one. Patsy grinned. She’d take those odds in Vegas.
Well, if it weren’t for that pesky Mindless One.
She had almost allowed herself to forget about the lumbering hulk, mostly because it hadn’t actually done anything yet. It had popped out of the portal, waded slowly through the churning, pink-tinged water and up on to the beach, then shuffled through the sand like Exhibit A from a hardcore slow-vs-fast-zombie debate. Then it had just stopped and stood there, a win for the dark horse team backing stationary zombies.
Patsy had almost allowed herself to be lulled into a false sense of security, to think that she would have time to deal with the Mindless One after the demons that were actually in motion had been taken care of. As if it were just going to stand there patiently and wait for her to finish ripping through the ranks of its fellows before politely inquiring to see if she had any room left on her dance card.
Almost.
She knew better.
Mindless Ones couldn’t talk, and they didn’t dance.
What they did do was smash things that got in their way or fry them with deadly optic blasts. And since this one wasn’t doing a Hulk imitation, that could only mean…
“Ardina! Watch out!”
But it was too late. While Patsy had been waltzing her way across the beach, leaving destruction in her wake, the Mindless One had been gathering its power for a blast strong enough to stun a being made of pure cosmic energy.
The ray caught Ardina full in the face, rendering her senseless. To Patsy’s horror, the golden woman plummeted out of the sky, the impact of her body forming a grave-deep crater in the sand and causing tremors to ripple through the island’s bedrock. As the Mindless One turned its attention to Patsy, the legion’s remnants scooped up Ardina and ran for the portal.
Patsy launched her cable claws at the rearmost of the demons as she raced to beat its comrades to the spinning black aperture that led, she was certain, to the mind-bending landscape of the Dark Dimension. But this one was an oozer, and the thick cords of steel alloy sailed right through its jelly-like form.
Cursing, Patsy vaulted over the demon Ardina had maimed, grabbing up its sundered limbs and using them as throwing sticks. She hit one of the less ephemeral demons square in the back of its third head, knocking it off balance. Unfortunately, it was one that held Ardina’s arms and its momentum carried it, the golden woman, and three other demons through the portal with a high-pitched, truncated scream.
Everyone knows cats have nine lives. Patsy had already used one up, so she supposed she only had eight.
And she was pretty sure she was about to cash in one of those now as the Mindless One’s second optic blast caught her full in the back, sending her flying face-first into the surf. Stunned and hurting like she hadn’t since maybe before she’d donned Greer Nelson’s cast-off catsuit, it was all Patsy could do to roll over far enough to keep her nose and mouth above the water. She could only watch helplessly as the Mindless One trundled after the demons and the portal irised out of existence behind it.
Then blackness did the same to her vision, and she welcomed the release.
•••
Patsy woke, spluttering and choking on a mouthful of salty water. She scrambled to her feet, grimacing in pain as the warm sand shifted unhelpfully beneath her. She was momentarily relieved to see from the tide’s minimal progression inland that she hadn’t been out of it for too long.
Long enough, though.
Ardina had been kidnapped, and she’d done nothing to stop it. Worse, she’d practically abetted the perps by being so caught up in taking out the cannon fodder that she hadn’t understood what was really happening until it was too late.
Whoever had organized Ardina’s abduction had studied Patsy and had figured out that one of her greatest weaknesses was thinking she didn’t have any. Granted, she’d survived the torments of Hell and come out stronger and scrappier than ever, but she was hardly invulnerable. The spasming muscles and protesting nerves all along her spine were a humbling reminder of that fact.
Patsy limped through the tugging whitecaps until she was near where the portal from the Dark Dimension had materialized. Normally, she was able to detect and use dimensional wormholes. She called them her cat flaps, like the pet doors that let domestic cats come and go as they pleased. But much to her frustration, she sensed nothing where the portal had been, and no others close to it that she could use to follow Ardina and her captors.
Not that Patsy was in any condition to mount a one-cat rescue operation. An argument could be made that she might need rescuing herself, if the nerves currently screaming at her from the vicinity of her lower back were any indication.
A low groan from near where Ardina had taken her swan dive caught Patsy’s attention. She had thought all the legion members who could leave had done so before the portal closed, but it looked like they didn’t believe in “No Demon Left Behind.”
Carefully moving closer, Patsy saw the formerly six-armed demon sitting in a pool of greenish blood, looking dazed. Apparently, Ardina’s blasts weren’t quite as good at cauterizing the wounds they created as some of the demon weaponry was. The demon was at the tail end of bleeding out.
Better make its last moments count.
Employing her cable claws once more, she sent them flying, like steel extensions of her will, to wrap around the demon’s throat, cutting off its pitiful moaning.
“I know you can speak; I heard you playing general earlier. So, here’s the deal. You’re dying, and I don’t have the skill or, honestly, the inclination to do much about that. What I can do is make it quick. If you tell me why your hell bros took my friend. That work for you?” She didn’t need to ask who had sent them, considering where they’d come from.
The demon considered for a moment, then nodded.
Patsy let the cables loosen just enough for it to speak.
“Kill the cat. Bring the battery.”
“Battery?” Patsy repeated, nonplussed. “Battery for what?”
The demon shrugged and shook its head. Apparently that information was above its paygrade.
Patsy sighed. She didn’t particularly relish what she had to do next, even if it was ultimately a kindness, something the demon hardly deserved.
Tightening the grip of her cable claws again, Patsy took a deep breath and was about to put the pitiable creature out of its misery when it took a great heaving sigh, shuddered, and went limp. The cables went slack. Patsy gently lowered the demon’s body to the sand before extracting her claws, glad that this was one death not being added to her tally.
She didn’t know what Dormammu needed Ardina’s cosmic energies to power, but whatever it was, there was no chance in any hell that it was good. And no chance that she could handle it alone; Hellcat might be a creature of magic, but she had no aptitude for its use.
Luckily, Patsy knew someone who did. A sometime Defender and the Sorceress Supreme of the Dark Dimension who, if Patsy remembered correctly, also happened to be Dormammu’s niece.
Clea Strange.