Chapter 55

"And that's the last of the equipment," the blue-furred, simian-like man in the lab coat said. "Now I just need to..." with a flick of a button, a variety of machines surrounded the old shack whose door held the portal to the Boiling Isles and came to life with flashing lights, whirling motors, and rotating satellite dishes. "And we are getting readings on dimensional frequencies... Not any dimension I'm familiar with," the man said, "but cross-referencing it against the frequencies of the dimensions that Stephen has narrowed it down to should give us a working idea of where in the multiverse this 'Demon Realm' is located."

"Thank you, Dr. McCoy," Camila said. "Everyone. It... It means so much that so many of you came to help."

"We're superheroes, Ma'am," said the man perched in the tree behind her. Dressed in iconic red and blue, Dr. Parker, the Amazing Spider-Man... He wasn't Captain America, but when it came to bringing hope just by being here he was the next best thing. "It's what we do. People are in danger, we help. However, we can."

"Honestly there should be more of us here given the scale and nature of the crisis," said a blonde girl who couldn't be older than twelve, dressed in a tight blue uniform with a 4 logo encircled over her sternum. "An Earthling makes first contact with another dimension and their first instinct is xenocide? We should be here in full force just to show those people that not all humans are like that but between the goof-up with the Cotati drawing the Avengers to space and Uncle Doom's latest tantrum keeping most of my family busy..." She started looking over one of the screens on the equipment that had been set up around the shack.

"The word's still spreading. Until then, we make do with what we have Val—"

"It's Brainstorm when I'm on the job unless you want me to call you Uncle Pete."

"Fair enough, Brainstorm," Spider-Man agreed. "But personally, the scale doesn't matter. I'd be here if it was just the one kid in trouble. I've got girls your daughter's age myself, Mrs. Noceda... That reminds me," he said as he landed next to Camila. "You might need these," he said while handing her a pill bottle with a label that was a big science word she likely couldn't pronounce if she tried.

"What are these?" she asked.

"Hormone supplements," the wall crawler explained. "Adrenaline, phenethylamine, a few other things. Logan said your girl is part symbiote... Somehow? So's my April. Symbiotes feed on this stuff, usually from hosts, especially if they're young and still growing or if they get sick. However, hybrids don't have hosts, and... Well, a synthetic hormone pill a day is a lot easier and cheaper than binge eating an entire bodega's worth of candy bars every few days."

"...What happens if she needs these and doesn't take them?" Camila asked, suddenly concerned.

"Increased aggression," the hero said with none of his trademark jovially. "Not all the time, but she might be a bit more willing to joke about inflicting violence on someone. Under high-stress situations, or if someone makes her mad, she might make more serious threats or... April punched a cop once."

Camila carefully pocketed the pill bottle to discuss their use with Luz once her daughter was safe.

"Worst case scenario," he continued, "if she needs this stuff and goes too long without it, and something makes her really, really angry... Symbiote instincts might take over and a hangry symbiote is likely to just straight up eat a person."

"Duley noted," Camila said nervously.

"That out of the way, we are really cutting it close to the wire," the hero continued. "Magic team!" he called out. "How are things on your end?"

"Magik still isn't back from checking the Libraries of Limbo, Strange got a phone call from a distrubingly British sounding ringtone, and I'm only here because my apprentice threatened to let it get out that I was fooled by a shapeshifter," said Former President Laufeyson. "I respect their cunning, but I also hate them for it."

"...Okay, I know you saw me walk up," came Masha's voice from up the path. "Anyway, Mrs. N? There's a sitch back at the house."

"What's wrong?"

"You know those two old guys who were in town a few months ago looking for ghosts, helped us out when we went to get Luz back from Hopkins?" Masha began. "Well, they're back in town. We ran into them earlier that day, turns out the smart one was in the Boiling Isles for a bit and Luz agreed to an interview. Vee is trying to explain what's going on, but..."

"But nothing," came the deep voice of Stanford Pines. "This young woman explained it adequately enough," while gesturing to Vee, who was following behind the man and his brother. "I'm something of an expert in portals and extradimensional—"

"Standford Pines?" The young girl who called herself Brainstorm asked. "The author of The Journals on The Nature of The Paranormal In Relation To Transdimensional Physics?"

"Yes, I am that Standford," the man in question confirmed.

The girl walked up and extended her hand, "Valeria Richards, I'm a big fan."

Stanford took the girl's hand and shook it. "Call me Ford."

"Val," the girl replied. "My Dad read me... Your book was basically my bedtime story when I was little."

"And you're Dr. Reed Richard's girl?" Stanford asked.

"Yes sir."

"Well, then that's high praise indeed," Stanford admitted. "So, what sort of OS is this equipment running on?"

"Hey, Ford," the man's brother, Stanley if Camila recalled, "You think that colleague of yours could help?"

"He's more someone I kept stumbling across than someone I have a means of contacting," Stanford dismissed. "I don't even know what Earth Dimension he's native to. Besides, given his, let's say temperament, he's just as likely to make things worse as he is to actually help."

"He can't possibly be that bad," Stanley pointed out.

"Stan, you and I... We're complex people, right? We're capable of growing, we contained multitudes, right?"

"I guess," Stanley replied.

"Imagine if we... didn't," Stanford continued. "Imagine the two of us... As we were ten years ago before we met the kids. And as... Completely flat characters, our best and our worst without any of the traits that give us dimension, that make us real people."

"Okay."

"Now imagine those two caricatures smashed together into one person, and round it out with crippling, nihilistic depression and an intellect to rival Doctor Richards," Staford finished. "This is a man who could change the world—the universe—in a heartbeat but is too busy destroying himself with drugs, alcohol, unprotected sex, and random acts of violence to do anything truly productive because he can't cope with his pain and refuses to accept help."

"...Ah, Geeze. He sounds like Bill."

"You're not far off if what we derived from that tome before disposing of it is accurate, though given the choice I'd take Sanchez," Standford concluded.

Doctor Strange then returned from wherever it was he departed to, melting out of the treeline. "Sorry about that. Blade called to inform me that a clone of Dracula has managed to steal an unabridged copy of the Darkhold so I had to refer him to someone who could provide more immediate help. Genocide takes precedence, obviously. Then Elsa Bloodstone called, apparently some lunatic injected himself with all the major strains of true lycanthropy and now she's stalking a 'super werewolf' across New England." There was a pause for a moment. "She didn't say where in New England though, so I'm probably going to have to release a statement to the press later. Anything happen while I was gone?"

"The man who my vice president requested I pardon of an absolutely massive number of theft, fraud, smuggling, and embezzlement related crimes and his twin brother who actually committed those crimes showed up," Former President Laufeyson quipped. "Apparently he's an expert on the subject."

Just then, a massive circle of light appeared on the ground and a woman materialized from it as it faded. She was young-looking, maybe mid-twenties. Blonde and dressed in revealing black clothing while holding a sword. "The Libraries of Limbo have no references to the Boiling Isles or any realm that could be such as described. Belesco didn't know about it either when I went to beat any knowledge he might have on the subject out of him."

"Well, nothing is still something when it comes to tricky business like this," Strange admitted. "If it's never had contact with Limbo then that actually narrows it down by a lot. As of now, with all the tools of science and sorcery available to us the only way to narrow it down further would be something of immense power from that same dimension."

"...Like Titan Blood?" Vee asked.

"What?" Strange replied.

"Titan Blood it's... the blood of The Titan," Vee continued. "the strongest source of magic in the Demon Realm. We found a vial of it that someone hid in the old graveyard and it's been in a safe at the house ever since. The glyphs Luz uses for magic don't work in the human Realm without it... So."

"That would be of immense help at this stage," Strange said.

Before anyone could run to the house to retrieve the vial, however, a staticky sensation was felt as a man clad from head to toe in blood-red armor framed with a royal purple cape floated down from the sky.

Camila had to repress a shudder as he touched down on the grass. She knew that the man in question had supposedly changed, but she was old enough to remember some of what he was like before the Phalanx invasion before the Genetic Diversity Protection Act was passed, before he willingly submitted himself to trial for his crimes and paid his debt to humanity. He may be a kindly grandfather figure now, but this was still a man with blood on his hands. Even now, rumor has it that he still murdered Nazis for a living.

"Ladies, gentlemen," Magneto greeted. "It has come to my attention that you are attempting to prevent a fanatical madman from committing genocide. I hope you don't mind if I throw my efforts behind your own."