Time passes, years go by as comicdom recovers from the Wave with lots of silliness...

Lots of babies this past year. It was a good thing to see.

The Richards had a little girl, Valeria, who turned out to be at the apex of straight human intelligence, despite somehow not inheriting ANY Powered genes from her folks. It was a good thing there was telepathy in the family, or her thirst for knowledge would have been on hold for years before she could get to stuff herself.

Heck, she was teaching her dad new ways to open his brain.

Ben Grimm and Alicia had adopted a couple aliens, kids who had been raised as gladiators in some bizarre betting scheme and treaty. If raising a Kree and a Skrull wasn’t hard enough, they had one of their own, too.

The Baxter Building had a new hero around, too. Sunfire, a Japanese mutant who was very unappreciated at home, had been brought home by LJ after the Annihilation War, and had loosened up considerably after being around such a close-knit family. They had one on the way, too, and if there were two firetops around the Building, that only made it warmer.

Peter and Red MJ had a daughter, May, with active Spider-totem powers, albeit at a reduced level. It didn’t matter much, considering who her mom was. She was going to be at a minimum as nasty as any full-powered Totem.

Peter himself took a step back from active Spidey-stuff once he had his daughter, working back-up to the other Spiders, who alternated between being the most visible street-level heroes of New York City and taking trips out into the Spiderverse to hunt variants of Morlun and his family down, and not coincidentally running into other dimension-hoppers with aspirations of idiocy. It was like the Weavers arranged for them to run into one another or something.

Red MJ still found herself on call for a lot of the idiotic mystic shit that seemed to want to happen all the time. Having a terrifyingly dangerous Null on hand to deal with magical creatures was extremely convenient for the Scarlet Sorceress, and if Peter happened to come along with his wife, that was just keeping up the tradition of Spiders and Sorcerers Supreme. If he happened to be taking magical lessons on the side, horrors, putting those brains to use by cross-training from super-scientist? What was the world coming to?

Jessica was a full-time Red Widow now, working with the Alternity teams, the start of a whole new Powered tradition as Gamma and lower-Level Powered were slowly recruited for the program and official training. The White and Black Widow programs stayed purely Forsaken and Primos, wrapped up with enhanced genetics as they were.

Kubark, Son of the Very Important Praetor of the Shi’ar Imperial Guard, had been given his powers back long enough to contribute to the planet’s defense against the Annihilation Wave, and had been astounded by the Pulsar Corp matriarchs and how well they had performed.

He’d also been shocked at his own improvement after not having his own powers for so long, and finally realized there might be something to training and working with others. Seeing Cyclops kill whole squadrons by looking at them far harder than Kubark could, the Phoenix burning up space as she tore through ship after ship, and the other Summers Brothers demolishing everything in their path while their wives wove their ship an untouched path through the Wave’s assault also really drove the point home that there were some incredibly powerful native Terrans around.

If Primus’ kids had just happened to visit at the time of the Wave attack, well, things happen, right?

Richard Ryder and Jessica had their first boy, promptly named Roman in honor of the Xandaran Centurion who’d passed his Core onto Richard.

All of the Summers families were expecting now, and that included Scott’s dad, he and Hebzibah using advanced genetics to make a child, something duplicated by Lilandra and Xavier at the imperial level, giving the Majestrix of the Shi’ar an official heir.

Luke Cage had married Monica Rambeau, a Powered exile he’d met in the Tribal lands, and Danny tied the knot with Colleen Wing, one of his fellow Dragon students and a trainee under Red MJ, a Null Forsaken vying for Seven Dragons Swordplay. Kids were on the way on both sides there.

Tony and Pepper were working on their third now, Clint Barton and Bobbi Morse were up to three, Wanda and Johnny Blaze had a third to add to their twin boys... and Magneto was courting the Scarlet Sorceress, much to the scandalized dismay of his daughter.

Matt Murdock and Foggy Nelson finally made their bids for Mayor of New York City from the latter’s District Attorney status, steamrolling their opposition. Foggy and Karen Page had long been married by now, and Matt had a former Hand assassin, Greek heiress, and ex-college flame as his lover. There was a bit of a tiff-up concerning Elektra Natchios’ past and Hand obligations, which were satisfied by completely wiping out the Hand Clan that had trained her, closing all debts. Matt’s unstinting efforts against crime and truly closing so many cold-case files had done a lot to clean up the city over the years, and he had a lot of quiet help on the side, as well as the most feared legal firm in the city AND some of the most powerful clients in the nation to back him up.

Wilson Fisk looked on, the bulls-eyes etched onto his office window not going away, and he made no move to oppose Murdock. The Kingpin could always be replaced, after all, and if he didn’t like it, we didn’t like him, and were at least as ready to kill him as he was to kill us... and much more capable of doing so.

Crusher Creel had tied the knot with Titania, and the Juggernaut was an item with Volcana, what with him winning the Contest of Avatars of the Octessence and earning himself a bit of leeway with Cyttorak’s demands in doing so. Black Tom was back down to his normal powers and feeling sorry for himself after seeing his big chum so happy, but they soon got back into the mercenary business, although this time working through the Colosseum with Emil Blonsky and his Brute Squad. There was literally endless amounts of work against the settling Negative Zoners across multiple galaxies, after all...

------

For the first time in my life, I gave Mr. Hill a cigar, and lit it for him. Lit one for Dealer, too.

He had the widest smile on his face I’d ever seen as he puffed it, inhaling deeply and exhaling a long stream of green smoke glittering with diamonds.

“I didn’t think I’d ever see the day, kids,” he murmured, and I was pretty sure if I wasn’t there a tear would’ve been rolling down his face. Nope, hey, lookit that, there was one tracing a stream down the craggy lines. Totally new course, I was certain.

“I hear ya, Mr. Hill,” Dealer said, puffing on her own. “And now yer gonna have to deal with two of ‘em!” she smiled cheerfully.

Thundra had a half-brother and half-sister for Serenity, who was in with her mother now.

“Two little rugrats running around,” he mused, closing his eyes and exhaling more sparkling green. “They got Powers, girls?”

“Given their parents? Yeah,” I answered, puffing out swirls of glittery whiteness, where Dealer was streaming rainbows and bubbles, which looked pretty rad. “Just what will take some time to manifest, just like normal.”

“You can delay that, right? So they can have something like a normal life?” he asked after a gruff moment, weighing something in his head.

Dealer and I looked at one another. “Mr. Hill, they ain’t gonna have a normal life, given who their folks are,” Dealer said, wagging her cigar at him. “But... if you want us to delay them getting their powers until later so they know what it means to be a normal person in a world with Powered... yeah, we can do that. We just ain’t gonna conceal it from them.”

“Best to make it something they can take off, just in case of danger. Maybe require permission,” I added. “Because you just fucking know someone is gonna try and mess with you through them.”

For just a fraction of a second, the gravity on the whole planet pulsed once. Dealer looked at me, I looked back at her, and we both nodded at the cold, cold ice in Mr. Hill’s grey eyes.

“Anyone messes with my kids or their mother ta get at me, they are dead,” The Mountain stated flatly. Terra’s Avatar loomed in the tides of fate, and his promise sank right down into the stones, trembling there with awesome weight to it.

Mess with The Mountain, and he might bury you. Mess with his family, and you were going below the roots of the world. They were never gonna find your bones.

“We’ve got your backs, Mr. Hill,” Dealer promised, holding out her hand. I extended mine to do the same, and he solemnly swallowed both of ours in his massive mitts, shaking them together solemnly.

“Schmot Gurls,” he smiled grimly, satisfied. “I’ll hold ya to that, ya know.”

“Of course you will. You owe us too much money not to,” Dealer scoffed right back at him, puffing merrily.

“Huh.” He looked up at the sparkly emerald cloud he exhaled. “Am I gonna have ta spring for Energized stuff for ‘em to eat growing up? I’m gonna be in hock to ya forever if that happens!”

“You could sell off the kids to us,” Dealer hinted slyly.

“Lemme try being a dad first. I’m sure I’ll get frustrated enough at some point ta seriously consider it,” he deadpanned back. He puffed quietly for a moment. “Okay, yer too smart ta say that stuff without a reason. You thinkin’ someone’s got designs on my kids already?”

Dealer inclined her head at me, and I sighed. “At least four mastermind types, six criminal organizations, and five governments. The most important of which are Doc Psycho, who wants a powerful young body; Mechanar, who wants to build the ultimate loyal cyborg child; the Crux, who wants to make super-soldiers out of them or dissect them; and the Krinstivi, who want to blackmail you into flattening New York, or something.”

The next cloud he exhaled was quite cold, falling rapidly to the ground, where it swirled around in defiance for about a minute before dissipating.

“Psycho. That pervert wants to bodyswap one of my kids, instead of his brainwashed cultists?” His grey eyes actually glittered. “I ain’t no Psion, kids.”

Dealer just looked at me. “Dunno why Sama’s not dealt with the prick. She’s not going to argue if we sanction the creep.”

“The Moondragons basically exist JUST to get rid of that kind of psychic predator. We should totally get Kwannon to go off on the bastard,” I noted thoughtfully. “The Crux, that’s from Odvunskin’s division.”

“The dickless fat man?” Mr. Hill narrowed his eyes, and his frown was actually amused. “He’s a fanatic who holds grudges against anything that doesn’t bow and scrape to him. Probably doesn’t even known I’m a quarter-Niger, quarter-Shawnee, and Thundra doesn’t even have a father.” He shook his head slowly. “Him I can find a contract for. Mechanar, though. That idiot’s actually thinking of messing with me?” Harsh lines on his face seemed to become literal canyons.

“His advancing cyberization IS messing with his sanity,” Dealer noted acerbically. “I think it was that time you threw him out of the game in Madripoor.” The King of Cyborgs had gone somewhat ballistic after all his odds calculations didn’t help him win against the other gamblers who were better bluffers.

“Him I can get contracts on, too. Let ‘im know exactly what I think of his desires. The Hag should just issue a general contract on him an’ be rid of him.” He puffed a couple of times thoughtfully, knowing that wouldn’t happen as long as Mechanar was on The List and satisfied his obligations... like, oh, helping defend Crimson Towers in distant galaxies. “The Krinstivi. They get tossed outta Russia and think they can still be players in power politics. One little contract against ‘em, and they think they can hit my family, do they?”

“Isabella has been considering them a nuisance for some time now. Perhaps a nice contract paid for in Ice Emeralds and Sapphires?” I proposed.

His eyes lit up. “That woman knows how to feed me proper-like. Even that Ice Silver went down like ice cream. Yeah, let’s make it both business and pleasure, then.” He puffed a few more times. “Think that’ll warn off the rest?”

“Some. Others always think it won’t happen to them,” Dealer laughed knowingly.

“Damn Schmot Guys, thinking with their arseholes as normal.” He was fatalistic despite being angry. It was the world we lived in.

“Got a spotter for one of ‘em in the window across the street. Shotgun mike and everything, trying to eavesdrop on us,” I pointed out after a glance about us.

Mr. Hill didn’t even bother to turn around. “Working for?”

“Usogarmund, I think?” I turned around, looked right at the guy, and waved. “Yes, he just panicked when I let him hear me.”

“Boy,” Mr. Hill said to nobody. “You tell Mr. Brown Undermunds to give me a call within five minutes, or I’m going to pay a call on him, and let him know what I think of him spying on me so he can get some revenge for Munich.”

The watcher swallowed, and hurriedly made a call...

Ah, the mundane lives of high-end Powered. It was very, very good to get back to them...