“He what?” I asked DiDi, not sure I believed it.

“Loki tried to organize a ‘hero-swap’ among the villains, so the good guys are taking on people they don’t usually fight. He was calling them ‘Acts of Vengeance’,” she informed me grandly.

I face-palmed. “He’s a farthing god. Does he not know how dangerous it is to bandy about that word?”

“What do you... oh.” DiDi facepalmed too as we strolled along Central Park. It was a nice spring day, so I’d dropped in to test out the air that was clearing up after the new emission laws and maybe someone was paid a few/many millions of dollars to get rid of a lot of the existing smog and residue from the city. Just plowed it all back into Grimm Materials and stuff.

“Six months. Ghost Riders across the planet,” I prophesied.

She rolled her eyes. “No bets!” she confirmed.

“So... who was surprised Matt saw them coming and handed them their teeth?”

“A big chunk of the Demolition Crew. They don’t even know he’s their lawyer for their day jobs.” They still made their day-to-day money doing brute strength jobs for Grimm Construction. I found it hilarious.

“I shudder to think of the rest...”

“Well, the Lethal Legion tried taking a stab at the Aerie.”

“That popcorn-tossing comedy three days ago? That was part of this mess?”

“Mechanar went in and mauled Avengers HQ something fierce, right?” DiDi replied.

“...” I held up a finger. “Makes note that the Stater criminals are not total idiots and didn’t mess with the Champions.” ‘Cause Mechanar was one of the few people on the planet who dared to, mostly because he was supremely convinced that cybernetics was the way to go for the planet, and taking them on was proving his point of cyber-supremacy. “So, Doc Apoc giving the Defenders down in Atlanta a teeth-shaking was, what?”

“I dunno. But Conqueror usually stays in Spain, so what was he doing messing with The Polita in Brazil?”

“That’s a big Zodiac area. Did the Zodiac hit somewhere unusual?”

“The Shore Guards over in Boston.” Oh, right. Formed after the Night from Hell, attracting some younger hero-types, sort of a training ground... who were really getting on the nerves of Midas. “They recruited some of New York’s lot, including Scorpion and Man-Bull.”

“Well, they definitely tried something. Did they actually go after the Spiders?” I hadn’t heard anything, so either no, or it was so minor Peter hadn’t bothered to tell me about his day.

DiDi laughed softly. “Doc Apoc tried to pull off something about animated sewage. He emptied out two whole city blocks with back-flows of sludge.”

I wrinkled my nose even as I laughed. “They probably smelled so bad they wouldn’t dare say anything after they... cleaned it all up?”

“They dumped the Doc into a raw vat of the stuff in revenge while he was ranting away, but given how they smelled, none of them want to talk about it. Pete and Gwen are doing some emergency research into large-scale cleaning solutions...”

“Oh, good. There’s like at least one slimer or rotting something-or-other hitting stuff somewhere per month. They can probably make good money selling that for clean-up, if it’s not too bad on the environment.”

“Yeah, that’s what I said. And, you know, for blow-cleaning sewage lines,” DiDi snickered back at me.

“Huh. Mr. Hill took a job in Britain, pounded on Cap and Megan over there, kinda thrashed the rest of their team, then took a powder. I saw it on the news.” -Hey, Mr. Hill. Any point to that job you took in Britain?- I /asked him.

-Naw, girl. Midas’ cut-outs paid me a couple mill ta be somewhere at some time and beat the tar out of anyone in costume who showed up. I just assumed it ta be a diversion for something sneaky. I got a good workout, the kid and his girl can hit pretty good, but I didn’t hurt no landmarks or nuthin’.-

-Sounds about right. Loki was playing Swap-the-Archenemy with some other villains.-

-‘Zat right. Huh. Who’d he have take on Goldilocks for him?- He /sounded a bit distracted.

“Anyone hit Thor?” I asked Didi.

“Uh, you haven’t talked to Ursula? Tiger Shark and Attuma made a stab at the Temple there with some special armor or something. They were kinda surprised she didn’t rely on lightning to take them all out. I think Thor might’ve showed up after they were half-dead.”

Ursula had the most advanced Divine Core, and I’d given her a Strontian. Yeah, they were completely not in her league, even before she began Casting. I /relayed that off to the curious Mr. Hill.

“Did someone actually decide to test out Namor?” I had to raise an eyebrow.

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“I think the Crab sent a Horde at one of the Atlantean outposts and caused a scuffle.”

“Huh.” He usually stuck to the Pacific, which didn’t have a bunch of superhuman water-dwellers who loved to fight running through it anymore, and his mechanical armies could wander freely there.

-Hey, girl, you got a few minutes?- Mr. Hill /asked me.

-Sure, old man. What’s up?- I /replied.

-There’s mercs down here shooting up Subbies. I got like a hundred dead lava-boys, and they’re hitting the moloids, too.-

Oh, he wasn’t distracted, he was angry. Well, that was different!

-Be right there.- “Mr. Hill’s got a problem in Lavatown.”

“Not the Mole Man again.” The little fellow was always trying to assert dominance over The Mountain and the tribe that had made him king, but Mr. Hill wasn’t having any of it. He never pursued the matter unless some of his boys were killed... which had NOT ended up well for Tyrannus when that dummy had the idea of taking over Mr. Hill’s little tribe. Hill had punched through a lot of monsters, grabbed that dummy, walked him over to a lava pit, and held the guy under the molten stone until there wasn’t anything left to hold.

The invading army had found it a good time to retreat. Oh, and find a new boss.

“Surface dwellers.” I frowned. “Seldom ends well. He says they’re shooting Subbies.” I swirled up a Portal as Mr. Hill fed me a visual lock, startling the other passers-by. “So much for down time.”

DiDi gave me a conciliatory pat on the shoulder, and I stepped on through.

-----

Gaia had definitely had some fun with the planet, and the Deviants had built upon it. Terra was networked by miles of tunnels and caverns located underground, in areas where it should simply be too hot to survive, let alone support large numbers of people.

Yet somehow former slave races had spun off from the Deviants, managed to stabilize somewhat, and thrive down here. That there was some subtle and powerful earth-magic or super-science making all this work was a given, and literally dozens of variant Subterranean tribes with few genetic links lived and died down here, never seeing the sun, or wanting to. Tribes with no genetic links could exist within miles of one another with no rhyme or reason to it.

I stepped out into a vaulted cavern, and was hit immediately by the unique sulfur, mold, and stone smell of the tunnel-world. In the distance were the lurid lights of magma pools, warming this place without really poisoning everything dead, reflecting off jagged ceilings which might wind up to unseen cracks in the surface far above.

Mr. Hill was standing next to me as I stepped through. I was in small form and civvies, blouse and jeans looking very out of place here.

Mr. Hill loomed up next to me, and the crimson-skinned, black-scaled lava-boys were crouched behind him a safe distance away, as attentive and upright as they could be, proud to be escorting their protector and king.

Sparks jolted and arced around me, my way of saying hello. “Dyna! Dyna! Dyna!” they hooted around in deep voices, recognizing me from previous visits, waving their spears around, some of which were a bit gory.

Also around us were a bunch of surface humans flattened to the ground, wearing some advanced tactical armor, low power-grade and completely unable to deal with Mr. Hill’s Weight.

Some of them were crumpled and crushed by heavy fists, sprawled brokenly against the stone walls. I looked around, and snarled as I saw dozens of slaughtered yellow-white moloids gunned down by these guys.

“I’m going to let up on the Weight now,” Mr. Hill said conversationally, but if you knew him at all, you knew he was just like a corked volcano. “Anybody who makes a move to a weapon takes a one-way trip to splatter-town,” he went on. “Also, they’re going to be fertilizer, and that’s a boon, ‘cause good fresh meat like you boys is a rarity down here.”

The men on the ground shuddered as the gravity let up, and their pained breathing both relaxed and grew louder in relief. None bothered to get up, however, but at least they could speak. “We’re just doing our job!” one of them blurted out. “It’s got nothing to do with you, Mountain!”

“Boy.” Oh, such much contempt in that word. “You think you have the right ta determine what does or does not have something ta do with me?” Gravity pulsed to x15 for a second, and all of the men gasped as they weighed tons once again, their heads slamming back to the stone with loud thunks. “Spill it. Yer gear’s too fancy. Yer working for a Schmot Guy with delusions of adequacy.” I eyed the crystalline-mold body armor narrowly. “Which one, and why’s he messing with me?”

“We are Purifiers, working for the High Evolutionary!” the man blurted out desperately. “These creatures are evolutionary dead ends, and we are clearing them out, as ordered by the Lord High Evolutionary himself!”

I threw up my hands, trailing hot sparks. Now I knew why they were all Caucasians. Probably born and bred on Crux propaganda before that fruitcake in pink and white armor even bothered to recruit them. “That delusional little shit is making a move like this?!” I snarled. “Where the fuck is he? I’m burning down whatever goddamn horror show of a lab he’s in with him in it, the cock-brained motherfucker!”

The guys on the grounds recognized me from the lightning, and finally realized what the croons of “Dyna!” from behind had actually meant.

“Uh, we don’t know where the main base is, Dynamo. He works out of a different location...” the speaker muttered with wide eyes as a LOT of voltage snapped and danced around me.

I walked over and crouched down in front of him. He was at x4 gravity, which meant he was very heavy, but his power armor was offsetting some of it. x4 gravity meant nothing to me, and if my clothes dragged a bit, nothing else even sagged, including my hair and cleavage.

With no effort, I lifted his too-heavy head up by sticking a finger to it, and raised it to look at me. “You know who I am, and you know I got a rep.” DiDi had been keeping it going down here on Terra, not many knew what I was doing up in the sky. “I’m very, very fair, but that is not to your favor right now.”

I turned his head around and up to look at the looming mass of The Mountain, staring down at this twat with his stony eyes, lit only by the light gleaming too red off the end of his cigar, a crimson cloud of smoke rising from it. Behind him, dozens of lava-boys were crouched silently, little waves of red bio-luminescence rising from their hides like waves of lava under the skin.

All looking at him.

“The last group of surface miners who came down here and tried to take over Mr. Hill’s lava-boys got tossed into the lava one by one, along with all their bosses, all the way up the chain to the man who signed off on them. His disappearance made the news about two years back, Jorges Galluman?” The merc stiffened in recognition. “All of them. Every single one. Mr. Hill went out there, took them, brought them back here, and dropped them in the lava in front of his lava boys.

“Mr. Hill knows what kind of people you are. Me, I’ll knock you out, strip you, bring you back to the surface, and find some very entertaining way to break the law with you and lock you up for a time now that you’re helpless, ‘cause I don’t kill the helpless.

“Mr. Hill will straight up kill you right now with about as much weight on his conscience as the lint on his toes. As he said, you’ll make great fertilizer for the mushroom fields here, mixed up with all the waste and batshit and bugs.”