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SALEM, MASSACHUSETTS
1692
Out in the forest a pair of girls in dark robes huddle around an old dead tree stump. Arms raised in v's, they chant and they chant and they chant. On the flat part of the stump is some sort of concoction of potions and dead animals, and trinkets they had picked up along the way.
While the first girl chants rhythmically in the background, the second begins to call out loudly.
"Allies of Darkness!
We call to you in our time of need
Bring forth a beast from the past!
Bring to us a savior and protector
From the nether reaches of an earlier age!"
Both girls hold their hands up high as if waiting for something.
And they wait.
And they wait.
And they wait.
"Did it work?"
"I don't think so."
One of the girls swipes a backhand at a dead rabbit atop the trunk, which goes flying.
"I told you this black magic stuff wasn't going to work."
"We shouldn't have listened to Old Maid Willings. I told you that. If you'd have just listened to me—"
And it goes on like this.
MANHATTAN, NEW YORK
1964
Peter Parker is worried he might be late for his job. To be specific, he is late for his third job, which is valeting for a ritzy diner in midtown Manhattan. He's been late several times already and was summarily warned that he could not miss any more work or he'd be in the market for still another job.
He shuffles past several tourists, nearly knocking over an elderly woman in the process. "Sorry!" he exclaims. He should probably check that she's going to be okay, but he can't. He can't lose this job. If he loses this job he's not going to be able to study abroad next semester in France and he really wants to go to France because his friend, Liz Allan is studying in Paris and she has talked about what a beautiful city it is and how romantic it is and he just knows that if he studies abroad all of his wildest dr—
Wait.
"Is that a dinosaur?" asks someone who points up into the sky.
"Seriously?" exclaims Peter with a sigh and his hands go up in a moment of helpless exasperation. Sure. It's a dinosaur.
Actually Peter, it's three.
As Parker goes to find an alley, loud thumps announce the presence of a giant Tyrannosaurus Rex. Worse, fortyseven feet tall is something called a giganotosaurus, and for good measure there's a little tiny velociraptor making its way around, terrorizing folks.
Good times.
Harper was just trying to enjoy the afternoon. That's one of the benefits of working jobs where people pay you very well for your skills. You don't have to rush to multiple minimum wage jobs to make ends meet. But while she's used to a certain level of weird, dinosaurs absolutely exceeds that level of weird. As people start to cry out, she stops short, turning on the sidewalk and blinking at them. Her brows furrow, and her first thought is actually that they must be an illusion.
Until she reaches out with her powers to find that it's at least not a trick of the light.
Robbie didn't have a car. He should have a car. Ladies really liked being picked up in a car rather than just off the ground and haphazardly flung drive-in ward.
Then there's those whole standing there…
For the duration of a whole movie.
Worst date ever.
Man, not having a car kinda sucks. Needing a new TV kinda sucks too. When your cat falls off the back of yours and accidentally throws it across the room? Well… he was glad it was a cat and not a large dog. Those don't even belong on televisions much less have super powers. Still Robbie's feet carried him down the street kicking a rock to stay ahead of him while he thought about his grandoise and superficial woes. There has got to be an alternative.
There was. Three of them. He stopped on the sidewalk and stared. His eyes got big and a lopsided grin stretched on his face, "That's so far out!" Panicking people? Giant dinos? No school tomorrow? Best Friday night ever!
Julie is in work clothes from some local garage, …presumably one called "Uncle Sal's Garage," since that's the lettering on the side of the smallish old Studebaker tow truck, turn signals blinking. She's got a jerrycan of fuel of some kind held up to the back of a Lincoln, where the fuel's presently pouring into. There's a rather embarrassed-seeming lady in nice clothes standing nearby, presumably so-embarrassed about having run out of gas right in Midtown, when the sound of dinosaurs landing ripple up the street. "Awright," the girl says, at first. "Did something just go bump in the night, or is it me?" Then… It's dinosaurs. "Oh, holy mothera moly." The can's set down with a thunk. "Ah, probably now's a good time to make tracks, lady."
He's seen a great deal of weird. Fought a lot of it. But dinosaurs….those are beyond the Shadow's experience. It's usual mortal criminals who are his foes, after all. The presence of enormous monster lizards is enough to stop him cold on the sidewalk, looking up from his watch to peer narrowly at them.
Nothing he's currently carrying has the firepower to stop them, save maybe the 'raptor. Presumably something that small and relatively unarmored will succumb to .45 rounds. It's the Tyrannosaur who's going to be trouble, though. That and the other big guy. Can his powers affect something that big and that primitive? Worth a try. He's reaching out with it, trying to blind it - convince it there's nothing there to see.
Being attached to the house of Strange means you get alerts when spooky things are about to happen. Depending on how big or old the spooky thing is you sometimes get more warning. When Wanda told him to keep an eye out here. Pietro never imagined dinosaurs.
Standing on top of the roof of a local store looking through a pair of binoculars he sees it but at first doesn't believe it. After a what to him is a long, relaxing moment of taking in all the glorious details of the T-Rex Pietro decides yes, it is real. Not only the large T-Rex but adorable little razor teethed, chicken sized dinosaurs he recognizes from the history books Compsognathus commonly referred to as Compy. They are swarming over a car about to leap onto a mailman and devour him alive.
"I love this country so much." the speedster says as the world moves in slow motion around him. Leaving the binoculars hanging in the air he runs down the side of a building until he finds an empty van.
Popping the handle on the door to the van and starting it to open he zooms back down the street to where the adorable, tiny feathered dinosaur is about to sink his teeth into the cheek on the face of the mail man, Pietro pauses and gently closes the slowly moving dinosaurs mouth and zips away with it putting it inside the van. Repeating this action one after the other as the adorable little flesh eaters leap in for the kill he collects them all inside the utility van and locks them inside.
To those who don't live in accelerated super-speed, all they see is a pack of ravenous little eating machines leaping at a mailman then disappearing in a blue blur. The mailman falls back onto the sidewalk screaming as his brain tries to catch up to what happened but then he is gone too. The blue-silver streak starts making civilians disappear moving them out of the way of the destructive dangerous creatures and freeing up other people to do the hero work.Quicksilver is on crowd control.
Lamont's trick does, well … the trick and at least disorients the T-Rex. The beast lets out a mighty roar and is about to chomp down on some people in anger as they flee, flailing madly. But don't worry, dear reader, because its jaw is webbed shut by a blue and red clad superhero who webs in from the side. "Look at those arms!" Spider-Man exclaims, pointing towards the T-Rex's short little appendages. "Don't use em, lose em. Hit the weights, kids."
Meanwhile, the Giganotosaurus suffers both from a difficulty in having its name spelled and potential future indigestion as it scoops its mouth on the ground and tries to swallow a van. Luckily no one was in the back half and those who were in the front half look desperate to make their escape.
A velociraptor is chasing a teenager.
Don't just let him get the kid because it's a teenager. That's wrong, guys.
Wow…the things you see when you don't have your Lindstrat.
Gwen was driving back from a failed gig—the lead guitarist went all Alpha Male on her, telling her they were looking for less Elvis and more Burt Bacharach. Which meant she was outta there, and so much for getting $20.
So she saw the big lizard and her first thought was, *Well, that should keep the big gorillas away."
Then she saw the smaller dinosaur chasing down a teenager. Making good time, too. Too good.
She didn't think, she just did it. She gunned the engine, honking the horn as she shot through the gap, accelerating solidly as she prepared to do a hut-and-run on a velociraptor.
It's flashy to throw a car, but two tons of rolling Detroit iron, rapidly accelerating, can do much more damage,
Harper is a little bit slower on the uptake than Lamont. It's like no one ever trained her to handle dinosaurs or something. She reaches toward the small of her back, but comes to much the same conclusion as the Shadow: that's not going to accomplish much. She turns her attention to the gigantosaurus, weaving a web of darkness over its eyes. At least that should limit it to accidental destruction, right?
This was it! That golden moment to do something groovy and awesome with his afternoon. It did occur to him that he should change first. At least that was the easy part for him. Robbie ducked down the alley and slammed his shoulder into the wall as hard as he could activating a kinetic reaction that masked him, his clothes and sent him flying into the wall opposite causing a rebounding effect until he came out over the top of the buildings.
"Whoooo this dino needs a dentist!" Getting head level might not be the best idea ever but ever terrible idea spoke up at once and convinced him that riding a dinosaur would definitely improve time off between classes. Looking down it almost stepped on a- hey where'd those people go? There was a blue blur between the toes but, well let's hope those people didn't turn into blueberry jam. To grab momentum back he lunged off the three story building not at the Dino, but at the ground first to build up speed before flinging himself towards the back of the big guy's head. Caught!
"YES! Ummm… Heeeeey guys? How you valet park a dino? I don't think this lane is cleared for lizard rampage." Okay he was on it's head… now what?
Julie looks a bit flat-footed for a moment, eyes fixing on ….the van… and really big monster. Eyes dart around as she runs *toward* the crisis, reaching into a pocket for some weighted steel cables, which she begins looping over her head. A blue blur, perhaps, decides she's therefore not a bystander, and diverts around her: She holds out the other hand, and there's a VVVRRR as….for some reason perhaps, the van's front wheels start to spin in place, creating some clouds of tire smoke, and just possibly some forward motion for the van. The cables start to spin faster in hand, meanwhile, "And I thought this was as big as I'd ever need," she chides herself.
God willing, Lamont does not shoot Gwen as she comes for the raptor. Because that's the one a pistol might kill, and satisfied he's distracted the Rex for a moment, he's pulling and aiming a Colt 1911 at it. Why an impeccably dressed guy has come armed for bear isn't clear…but he fires without hesitation, the noise of the report nearly lost in the sound of the crowd's panic.
WHIPAMPH!
The giganotosaurus is blinded, which is awesome, but his tail slams into a building, which is not awesome. But then, a slight uptick in awesomeness as Speedball begins to ride the prehistoric animal. We end up in a really confusing picture of falling rebar, flailing large dino, and riding superhero. Picture that how you will.
Meanwhile, Gwen comes like a bat out of hell, and nails the velociraptor. The teenager probably has something self centered to say that has little importance to anyone but him, but suffice to say that as the little dino go skittering down the sidewalk in a claw tumble, no one really cares and we won't talk about him anymore this scene. More importantly, the raptor's life comes to an end. When it breathes it's final, something odd happens, however. It dissipates, fades, and disappears.
Julie is motoring on towards the giganotosaurus, you know, the one that Speedball is riding. Surely by next round they will collide unless someone is a chicken, an ancestor of a chicken, or cooler heads somehow prevail. Stay tuned.
BLAM!
Onomatopoeia aside, Lamont's shot blasts right through the t-rex's mellencamp. It begins to bleed profusely at first, flail at second, and slowdown at third. As it stumbles, Spider-Man slows to a stop, hitting the ground just before it does. He approaches it as it lies upon the ground, breathing with extreme difficulty, careful to stay away from those nasty teeth.
"I hate this part of Old Yeller," Spider-Man says sadly.
With cars flying and dinosaurs going everywhere, Harper…is outgunned. But not useless. While the muscle takes care of the giant monsters, she lights of a path for civilians, flashing arrows pointing them away from the danger while she hugs a wall herself.
The only textbook aspect of the maneuver was its execution. Hitting the thing with the exact corner of 3,300 pounds of vehicular excellence takes pinpoint accuracy, but her reflexes have increased since she was blown up.
The body bounces over the hood, cracking the windshield, rolls off the hood…and disappears.
Dad was going to KILL HER!
Robbie did the only thing he could thing of seeing them doomed for a head on collision: Hod on and try to veer to the right. Ya know it was really hard to figure out which side of the road he was supposed to be on here. "Incoming!" He balled up a fist and slam-slam-slammed ti into the side of the dino trying to draw it's attention to veer in that direction trying to chase him. It was a lot like being hit by three cars but the insurance rates were much better. "High-ho, Dino! Away!" Though instead of the sunset, he was happy to aim for 'just not into the hardware store'
Julie isn't quite foolish enough to dispute a chicken's ancestry, but collisions aren't really what she has in mind, or, in fact getting within tail-swinging range, really: instead, the arrangement of weighted cables spins ever-faster, especially once she slings it, toward the gigantosaurus' ankle. Keen eyes or silver-blue blurs may pick out it's a homebuilt set of bolas, steel bearings welded to three lengths of cable. She's hoping to take a leg out of commission, or at least continue to distract the huge beast when it wraps tight. It's surprising how many monsters a girl runs into in the towing business. Yeah, that's it. A hand… And 'Vrrr' sound effects, follow the affair toward the monster's leg.
So….that just happened. Lamont's all about the sangfroid, but he has never straight up murdered a dinosaur before. Even one made out of magic and illusion. So it's pure reflex that has him approaching it, with enormous care, and then unloading the rest of the magazine into one giant, dimming eye. He's utterly expressionless with shock as he reloads….and his hands are shaking like it's freezing out.
Pietro isn't the kind of man to seeks fame or recognition for his actions. He just likes to help then get on with his life. He doesn't have time to deal with fans. When he runs the people to safety he deposits them in a grassy clearing in the park close to a water fountain. That way when the ones who are going to vomit from the sudden acceleration do, they can wash the taste out of their mouths right away but he's gone as soon as he steadies them to get more.
Appearing next to the wrecked car involved in the dinocide Pietro pauses and returns to normal speed, seeming to appear out of nowhere in his tight, form fitting blue and black form fitting running costume. He knocks on the car door and says, "Excuse me, Ma'am. I'm going to need your name and phone number, also your astrological sign and favorite food." he says smiling at the woman as she sits there regretting what she has done.
Harper's attempts at opening up a pathway for people to leave is helpful in getting civilians out of the way, especially of the rampaging giganotosaurus, which, while being ridden by Speedball and being, still, as it rampages along.
Speaking of Speedball, his quick thinking saves Rickibald's Hardware store. That fruit stand, though? Well it goes to that place where all fruit stands go to when they are destroyed in some sort of media presentation.
Meanwhile, the tow cable that Julie is prepping and ready to go. Right after it's sent out there, the leg does as hoped and buckles. Speedball is nearly thrown from his perch, but is able to maintain a good hold as the monster's mouth slams on the ground.
Pietro comes to a stop and starts making his move, to which Spider-Man jabs a thumb in his general direction. "I like that guy's style."
Lamont empties shot after shot into the head of the t-rex. And one more for good measure. Spider-Man turns to him and stares, silently for a long moment as the smoke begins to rise. "Really, man?"
Pause.
"I mean, do you have another clip? By all means. Beat the dead t-"
But, then it starts to disappear too.
Just then the Gigo roars angrily and pulls to its feet. Its tail is swishing madly and intent on hurting someone that Harper didn't help and it's getting late and we got to finish this next round OH NO!
Gwen gets out of the car, not quite slamming the door closed. She looks to the guy, blinking. Wow, another hero. She doesn't even look at the car, she's scanning the road for the teenager who was about to become dino chow before her vehicular interference.
She looks back to the hero. "That guy, the one running from the dinosaur? He's…he's okay, yes?" She looks scared, but not for herself. "Please tell me he's okay. I have to explain to my father how I damaged the car on a disappearing dinosaur, so PLEASE tell me he's okay!"
Harper looks over just in time to see the T-Rex disappear as well, brows furrowing with a frown as she watches it happen. Something about it tugs at her senses in a way she isn't entirely familiar with, but now isn't really a good time to explore just why that is. There are people in danger from a rampaging dinosaur. As it turns, swinging its tail, she fires off an explosion of light and sound on one side of its head, meant to make it swing in the other direction.
Speedball was at least seeing some sort of positive resul- oops! "Free fruit salad. Um, you're welcome! Hey lady, can you keep clearing a path Maybe we can wear the big guy down?" He kept wailing on the dino and while he wasn't tired did have to lament a slow but at least steady progress, "Awww if we had a big newspaper to smack em with I bet this'd totally go faster. Down, down dino. Bad, Rex!" Hey, it was worth a try. In the end he was happy to try to concuss the great lizard to try to wear it down. Steering was priority though as when it came down? Well having people under it would be decidedly bad.
Julie lets out a little whoop, as the monster faceplants, "How's your circulation, Puff the Magic…" She whoas, though, as it shows its jaw is still working, and begins struggling up again. "Help!" she yells, and, she charges… At fleeing-guy, to knock him sideways before those jaws snap,hoping the tackle's enough.
Spiderman gets a dry, sidelong look from Lamont. "I'm sorry," he says, with an utter lack of actual contrition, "Did you have a ticket for the next ride?" Little superhero, meet old pulp hero who is too tired and cynical to really give a damn. Though he's hardly in full Shadow drag, at the moment - jus a middle-aged man in a good suit and a Panama hat who happens to be carrying a pistol. Then he's turning away to see what the other giant monster is doing. Might be better to try and kneecap this one….assuming the bullet doesn't just feel like a bee sting. There're the sharp reports of pistol fire - not trying just one shot, this time.
Pietro smiles at the woman and says, "He's fine. Probably chucking up his lunch in the central park. He's fine. I've been moving people to safety." he says then looks at the car, "This, this is nice. Very American. You have good taste." he says casually as he watches the chaos unfold. The only people left on the streets should be heroes. "Don't worry about them. Once they are down there will be no more. I checked. No open portals. No more are coming. Is probably just a fracture in time and space. Those happen. More than you would think. I met my great, great, great, great, great, great, great, grandfather once. Nice man, great beard. I'm Pietro by the way. " then there is a card in his hand being offered to Gwen, "Avenger, X-man, Demon slayer, Vampire hunter, fan of musicals, charter member of High Council Terrol's, Elvis Presley fan club in the 17th dimension. They did not have music until I showed them Elvis. Was very sad people." he totally made that last part up. "Call me some time if you want to see Paris." he says then just like that, he's gone and the card is fluttering up into the air on the gush of wind left in his wake.
Gwen plucks the card out of the air and blinks. Okay…that was different. She checks the wheel well, then nods and gets back in the car; She is getting out of here, and she can get the car to the garage four blocks over before it overheats. Gotta love having access to the cop motor pool.
Explaining all this to her father? Ergh…some things spider powers can NOT help you with.
She fires up the Sting Ray and gets the hell out of there.
At Harper's distraction the dino swings the other way, narrowly avoiding hitting people. Speedball continues to smash at it, attempting to knock it out, and is doing quite a bit of damage and weakening ole Giganto.
Gwen's concern for the teenager is well placed but unneeded. He's three blocks away now, and well out of harm's way.
"Well, did you see that guy over there?" Spider-Man says, motioning over to Speedball as Lamont is walking towards the other dinosaur and just unloads on him. The gigo is kneecapped pretty bad and won't be dancing a jig anytime soon. But oddly, even though it doesn't die, the gigo is also disappeared into nothingness, leaving all the bystanders confused. There should be carcasses. There should also be universal health care and freedom from poverty and sin and from any of the other chex mix ingredients other than the little toasts which are the best. "Well, that did it," Spider-Man says as he tries to remember what—OH CRAP.
_ _ _
25 minutes later…
Peter Parker, out of breath, but back in his valet suit arrives way too late. That being said, since the valet bay is so busy his boss doesn't seem to notice. "Peter!" he exclaims with a pair of car keys in his hand. "I got two in the hole. Show us some of that Parker speed!"
"Right away boss!"
Peter hops into the car, a nice sporty one that you might see in a James Bond movie. It takes everything in his power not to rev the engine like he's going to race it down the road and never bring it back or maybe just bring it back with more miles on it which would necessitate you to put it up on blocks and try driving in reverse to remove the miles which doesn't work in the 1980s but may have worked in the 196—
BAM!
As Peter pulls out he's side swiped because he was distracted and did not check his mirrors. Though no one is badly hurt, Peter's head is in his hands. Oh no. Not France. He wanted to see Paris, Pietro. He just wanted to see Paris. But he won't now, at least not with Liz Allan. Not any—
"Parker! You're FIRED!"
THE END