NARCOLEPTIC DOGS PRESS, IN ASSOCIATION WITH COHERENT COMICS UNINCORPORATED,
PRESENTS...

WARDEN: AN ASH UNIVERSE COMIC

(ASH property of Dave Van Domelen.  Warden property of Matt Rossi and Dave
Van Domelen.  All Rights Reserved.  Copyright Matt Rossi 1998.)

ISSUE NUMBER 9: CRITICAL CARE WARD
(Adult content, language and situations - Please be advised.)

     [A giant bronze fist is slowly crushing a limp, unresisting Warden. 
      Surrounding the action is a dancing, singing crowd of kids who seem
      to be enjoying the sight.]

I can feel you breathing and you're sticking to my skin,
Someone shut the morning up; My conscience creeps back in.
I don't hear the words you say when you just come around
I don't hear the words you say, I just see you lie.
There's one thing that I should remember;
There is a light at the end of the tunnel.
**Therapy?, 30 SECONDS


31 December 2023, 1:04 PM

     Warden leapt up to the window of the loft apartment after making sure
that there was no one in it.  Better to be safe than sorry, after all.
Lately, Jimmy and Maddie had been making him rather nervous, and considering
what he was about, he didn't want to be made nervous today.
     Landing in the kitchen, he thought about what Hooks had told him.
     The risk was great, but the benefits....
     If Warden could do enough damage at the little 'party' that NYC's
Paragangs were planning for the evening, he could destabilize the situation
enough that their petty truces would fall apart like cheap cloth, giving him
all the leeway he'd need to work them one at a time.
     He could tear them apart and then, like the wild animals they were,
they'd fall upon each other.
     He got a glass of orange juice out of the refrigerator and began
thinking about how to best work the situation.  Even with his powers, just
rushing in would be a mistake.  After all, Mountain would probably be there,
and Dr. Jacky wouldn't leave his posse out of any partying that'd be going
on.  Not to mention Cockatrice and Bathory...it was their gala, after all.
They'd be sure to attend.  Each of the women, in her own way, liked to be the
center of attention.
     No, simply showing up would be suicide. 
     And while the Warden was driven, Thomas wasn't suicidal enough to let
himself just attack.
     He drank his orange juice, enjoying the cold glass in his hand,
thinking.
     Then he smiled.
     And then he picked up the phone.
     He wasn't sure how he knew the number, but he'd had enough run ins with
the man to be pretty sure that it was the right one.
     It rang three times.
     "Kelly, Special Investigations."
     "Lt. Kelly. This is Warden."
     Dead silence on the other end of the line.  Thomas wondered idly if they
were going to try and trace the call, but he didn't worry about it.  He wasn't
going to stay on the line all that long, and the NYPD didn't have the budget
to keep special resources on staff, just waiting for _him_ to call.  Not to
mention, the NYC phone system was still something of a rat's nest since the
recovery period in the early part of the century.
     "How do I know..."
     "That really isn't important.  Tonight, Times Square, there's going to
be a party.  I'm going to be there.  So are the Fifth Avenue Snakeaters,
Dr. Jacky's Boys of Pain, the Snow Leopards, and any number of the lesser
hangers-on.  Midnight.  You should come armed."
     Thomas hung up the phone.  He knew the police would be there a lot
earlier than midnight, but he also suspected they'd wait for him to make the
first move.
     It was becoming a habit for them.
     Thomas walked into his room, his brow furrowed.  The situation with the
Police was something he'd have to deal with, sooner or later.  Eventually
they'd turn on him again, the way they had acted when he'd first begun his
'career' as the Warden.  He knew from Beth Willot that his very presence,
untrained and working for his own agenda, was something the various
governments that held sway in New York would only tolerate for so long.  How
much longer did he have?
     And what was he losing?
     He pulled a slightly mangled folder out of his inside jacket pocket and
spread it out on his bed.  In that folder was his entire life, where his
parents lived, how he'd spent seventeen years motionless, and what the
doctors had done to him while he'd done nothing.  And he couldn't read it,
because he couldn't see it.  He regularly leapt off of buildings, he swung
around the streets of New York like an ape in the jungle, he could sense the
change in pressure from a three foot drop or feel a wall from thirty feet
away....
     But he couldn't read these scraps of paper.  And he was afraid to ask
his best friend to do it for him.
     Angry at himself, he turned away from the bed and began preparing for
the night.  The coil of metal wire Madelyn had weighted down with three lead
balls, the Chinese throwing coins she'd made for him, his ever present hook
sword and bundi.  The tools of the trade.
     He never quite forgot about the folder.


31 December 2023, 3:32 PM

     "I'm not in the habit of hopping to just because I get a phone call from
a vigilante..."
     "So you _do_ think it was him?"  Melissa Tao was idly flipping through
the pages of an old copy of _Danger Strikes the Swiftest_ that Kelly had
lying on his desk, but it was deceptive; she'd been on alert since John
Kelly'd received the phone call that claimed to be Warden.
     "Yeah.  I was _there_ in Central Park when he...you know..."
     "What, that actually _happened?_" 
     "Yeah.  It was weird times ten."  John leaned back in his chair, his
close-cropped red hair gleaming in the light coming in his window.  "That was
him on the phone.  If I had money to bet, I'd bet it.  Which I don't."
     "Well, then, what do we do?"
     "Our little two-person unofficial Warden task-force, you mean?  The
department sure doesn't care."  Kelly put his feet up on his desk and
swiveled to face Tao.  "I half-suspect he's got admirers among the brass
upstairs."
     "We can't just ignore the call.  _Or_ the fact that he's getting in
deeper."
     "No, I suppose not.  But I'm damned if I know what we should do.  I'll
give Harris Wu a call...he and his SWAT boys'll at least be useful for
mopping up the 'gangers.  As far as Warden is concerned...here's to hoping we
don't have to make that call yet."


31 December 2023, 6:47 PM

     For the rest of the day, Warden contented himself with smaller tasks.
     He flitted towards the waterfront and again checked on a warehouse
belonging to the Cyber-Nostra.  Ever since one of their strange Supertech
killing machines had made an attempt on his life, he'd been keeping track of
them.  This particular warehouse contained seven of the Optimal-Killers,
cyberlink controlled flying tanks without crews.  There was also enough
munitions inside the warehouse to blow the Empire State Building into rubble.
     Warden was merely making sure of it now.  Eventually, when he had time
and the gang situation had calmed down a bit, he'd move on them.  For now, it
was enough to learn as much as he could in preparation for that day.
     He then spent three hours patrolling the city, from Battery Park to Wall
Street, making sure that Manhattan Island was as crime-free as he could.
Granted, there were other boroughs, but they were sparsely populated as yet.
New York was thought of as unlucky by much of the rest of the North American
Combine...nobody wanted to live in the City of the Missing Dead.
     In the time before the raid on the park, Warden stopped two muggings,
one organlegger attack, broke up three open-air Jaz markets, and prevented
six accidents.
     Then he headed towards the center of the city, for Times Square.


31 December 2023, 8:07 PM

     At JFK Airport, a large man was getting off of a transport.
     He strode through the airport, absolutely confident.  In his time he'd
been the champion of the death-fights semi-sponsored by the Khadamnite
Government; he'd controlled a large portion of the Pranir trade in illicit
goods up and down the European Sub-continent; he'd evaded the likes of the
Dioscurii in Italy and Rasputin in Russia; he'd killed bears in the Siberian
Taiga and mutated lions in the African Savannah with nothing more than his
bare hands.  He was dark of hair and skin, with features and build that would
have been at home on a statue in the Rhodean Harbor.
     He saw a man in a dark suit holding up a sign.  The sign read "Rex
Umbrae."
     "Mister Umbrae?" 
     "Yes." He smiled, his canine teeth showing past his lips.  "Is
everything ready?"
     "As you specified, sir."
     They walked to a waiting car.  It was a stretch limousine, heavily
armored, with a weapons suite so well concealed that you would need
superhuman senses to detect it.  Those able to detect it would also know that
the technology was not entirely of Earthly manufacture.
     He sat down and looked out the tinted windows as they drove into the
city proper.  There was a heavily modified brownstone waiting for him with a
view of Central Park.
     _Control._  That was key.  Control and ruthlessness.
     He already had the second.  It would be the key towards enforcing the
first.


31 December 2023, 10:21 PM

     The enormous bronze statue stood straight and tall.  The assembled kids
and Paragangers who'd been laying in supplies for the night's festivities
bore witness as metal limbs straightened out, a metal face twisted into an
expression of rage.  A titan took its first steps across the sidewalk in
front of the crumbling church it had silently guarded for decades.
     The cement cracked under its foot.
     It kept walking.  The cracks meant nothing to it; the glorified children
who ran from it meant nothing to it.  There was crudely scrawled graffiti
painted across its face and body (as it walked past a window, a young couple
in coitus interruptus saw LUCY + JOHNNY on its stylized features) and this,
too, meant nothing to it.
     The only thing that _did_ have meaning to it was its mission.  It had
been summoned by magic, dispelled by magic; the rage that had created it
proved too weak to keep it in this world yet too strong for its weakened
vessel.  But there was more hate in New York City than could be measured, if
you were open to it, and this new vessel was up to the task.
     Weregild no longer, Atlas stalked the city.  Revenge was still its goal.
     Only the targets had changed.
     Ponderously, it walked.


31 December 2023, 11:03 PM

     The party was in full, riotous swing.
     Thomas perched over the Jumbotron, listening and smelling and tasting.
It was, in its own way, direly fascinating.  The heavy stench of sweat and
the musky reek of something new, redolent with experiences he had never had,
and the grunts and moans from the shadows that were invisible to him mingled
with the stale smell of cheap alcohol and the acrid burn of Pranir opiates
and stimulants.  The sound of roaring music, staccato beats of the new fusion
of several musical styles, hit his amplified hearing like a small chorus of
train wrecks.
     He hated the fact that it interested him.  They were doing things down
there that he had no understanding of.  He'd only been awake for a year, and
the few times he'd entered one of their minds, it had been for the express
purpose of altering their perceptions or learning their combat techniques.
But in a way, despite his strange mission, he had a lot more in common with
them than he'd care to admit.
     His eyeless face furrowed as he frowned.
     _You do.  You're no older than they.  You're only eighteen.  And you've
only been _awake_ for a year.  You've even less life than the youngest of
them._
     Every so often, the scent of a woman would reach him, and his whole body
would tighten.  There was a dark, exciting smell just underneath the perfumes
and the sweat, something primitive.  He knew he was more vulnerable to it
than anyone else in the world, but he couldn't tear himself away from it.
     Off in the distance, just beyond the sounds of the party, he could hear
a faint grinding sound, like metal against asphalt.  And, every ten seconds,
something like a heartbeat but louder, a hammering.  _thoom..........
thoom..........thoom_ it went, slowly getting louder.  He didn't know what it
was.  He knew he should go check it out.
     He would.  After he'd experienced a little more.
     He wanted very much to go down there and...what?  The gangs were not the
only ones there, of course; for every para in the crowd there were at least a
dozen who were just there for a big party.  Warden could sense their minds,
taste the adrenaline in their sweat, and by listening to their heart-rates
know how many there were, what each of them was on...he jerked as he realized
he was expanding his perceptions pell-mell over the crowd.
     It was like a drug.
     _thoom.......thoom........thoom.......thoom......THOOM_
     Was that getting closer?
     Then a building exploded from the inside out, scattering glass and brick
everywhere, and suddenly Warden realized the depths of his negligence.  He'd
been so intoxicated by his surroundings that he'd failed to investigate...
_that._
     It was at least forty feet tall, and made of bronze.  That much, he was
sure of.  Using the screams of the crowd and the echoes of the music, he
could "sonar" in on it.  The inside of it was hollow, acting as a giant metal
drum, sending the sound back out so that Warden could easily 'see' using it.
     He froze.  Paragangs, he was used to.  But giant metal men?

     Mountain snarled.  He was an enormous man, easily ten feet tall and
seemingly made of blood-engorged muscle.  His black hair was close-cropped,
and his teeth were filed to points.  Reaching down with one hand, he touched
the street and tapped the power of the Earth beneath it, increasing his
already immense strength to superhuman levels.
     Atlas kept on coming, unaware.  Or unconcerned.
     Mountain charged, shoving several fleeing people out of his way as he
picked up speed.  By the time he'd closed the distance between himself and
the metal giant, he was moving at a hundred miles an hour.
     The peal that rang out on impact drowned out everything else.  Mountain
bounced.  Looked up.  Saw the metal head staring down at him.
     Then Atlas brought a foot down.
     When he picked it up again, there was a Mountain-sized hole in the
street leading to the sewer system.
	
     From his vantage point, Warden sensed it before anyone else did.
     The metal man had grown a full foot after smashing Mountain through the
street.
     This was not good.
     He could sense the Snow Leopards fanning out, trying to engage the
statue.  Cockatrice tried several of her ice-blasts, but the metal man
apparently wasn't in the mood to be turned into ice.  He weathered the blasts
easily and barely missed crushing her into pulp with his fist.  Warden could
smell the thick, polecat musk of Bathory as she leapt, carrying Cockatrice
out of the way of that enormous hand.
     Then Warden sensed the crowd about to be strode through by the giant.
And there was no more time to stand and watch.

     Eliza Lasher wasn't a paraganger.  She went to college at the New School
for Social Research, which had somehow kept its doors open through all the
mayhem of the past three decades.  She was nineteen, an aspiring journalist
who didn't really know much about what she wanted to be or who she admired
yet.  She'd come out to the big party with her friends Jia and Mark because
she liked to dance and have a good time.
     Now she, Jia, Mark and about thirty-five people she didn't know were
about to be smashed into paste underneath big metal feet.
     Eliza picked this moment to trip.  Well, no, actually...if she'd had the
option, she'd have picked any other moment to trip.  But this was the moment
she _did_ trip.  She managed to get her hands beneath her, scuffing her palms
and cutting her forehead on the street, and then she prepared as best she
could to die.
     She didn't see the boy in the bandana come hurtling down, swinging on a
broken length of power-line, then bouncing off of a parked car and rolling to
where she lay.  She _did_ feel a sudden lurch in her stomach as he leapt,
barely avoiding the bronze toes as they dragged sparks off of the ground
where she'd been prone a second earlier.
     Warden landed on top of the makeshift platform where the turntable and
sound system had been.  Where they still _were._  It was just the DJ and the
dancers that had fled.  For a second, he found himself very conscious of the
warm body in his arms.  Then something cooled his brain down and got his
attention.
     The metal man had turned its head and was apparently looking at Warden
very, very closely.  This did not seem like a positive development to him.
     "What...what is that...who are you...what's going on...."
     He turned his head and 'looked' at Eliza.  It had no effect on his
echolocation of the giant, and he'd learned that people responded better when
you addressed them if they thought you were making eye contact.
     "Does it matter?  Get out of here.  Now.  I'll try and keep it
occupied."
     Not that he knew how.

     Inside the 'mind' of Atlas, a struggle ensued.
     On the one hand, it was originally created with the express purpose of
eliminating the tiny speck on the ground over to its left.
     On the other, it had a new purpose.  Those who killed indiscriminately
were here.  The hate that fueled it now was broader, more expansive...it was
hard to decide.  This took thirty seconds to work out.
     Then it pulled back its impression of a mouth in a smile.
     _Why not, after all, do both?_	
     It moved.

     Warden boosted his speed and leapt as the enormous metal hand came
slamming down where he'd been standing, smashing the platform into kindling.
     _Well, at least I don't have to worry about keeping it occupied._
     Moving as fast as he could, Warden moved from street to building,
evading those metal hands as best he could.  The giant was huge and powerful,
but slow, and the growth it had experienced since arriving had only slowed it
down.
     This was not a bad thing.
     He whirled off of a wall, kicking off of a flagpole seconds before the
whole section of brick was torn away by the giant.  Warden actually bounced
off of the thing's _head_ and spun in the air, kicking off of the Jumbotron
just before a metal fist smashed the relic into shards. Despite the ponderous
nature of the bronze man, it took little effort for the thing to cover twenty
feet with one roundhouse swing of the arm. Keeping out of its way was not
easy.  If not for his enhanced hearing bringing him the sounds of the metal
squealing as it swung, it might well be impossible.
     This did not take into account that Warden, despite his unusual powers,
was only flesh and blood, and would tire.  The giant _was_ not, and
presumably _would_ not.

     Atlas was not new to the violent emotions.  They were, in fact, what was
animating and sustaining the golem.  However, even _it_ felt the rage growing
as the tiny deathmarked speck kept leaping out of the way.  Atlas now knew
the anger of the man flailing to kill a wasp that simply _would not hold
still and die._
     It strode through the facade of another building, trying to cut the
distance and make contact, but the speck somehow seemed to know what it was
doing and actually _bounced off of the forearm_ that was coming to kill it!
Using the momentum of the blow to shoot entirely across the square, the speck
landed back at that strange angled building.
     This was _intolerable!_
     Atlas decided to stop playing nice.
     It tore a huge section out of the rubble it was standing in and flung it
across space at the speck.

     Bathory watched as the corner of building streaked across the square,
her jaw down somewhere near her chest.  That thing was going to tear Times
Square to rubble!
     "Tell me, Cockatrice...does that giant _remind_ you of anything?"
     "The Weregild."  She spat angrily, blood leaking from her mouth.  A
glancing blow from the giant had broken three of her ribs.  "Remind me again
why we decided the CSV would make good allies?"
     "Their reputation, their power...and obviously, if that's what they can
summon, the power aspect is well deserved.  I _do_ wish someone had mentioned
the tendency for these things to go on rampages during _my perishing party!_"
Snarling, Bathory whirled to her bestial slaves.  Then she stopped, unsure as
what to _tell_ them.  "Cockatrice...do we have a reason to stay and fight
that thing?"
     "Certainly no money in it.  Let Warden get killed.  It's what the damn
thing was _supposed_ to do anyway."  The ice-witch pointed across the square.
"Dr. Jacky is already pulling a fast fade, Mountain is either dead or
swimming for dear life...let's put on our boogie shoes."
     "Someone's been watching documentaries again.  Still, I can't argue with
your logic."  She growled at her servants.  "Time to go, pets."
     As they pulled out, she spared one final look back at the fight.
     _Good luck, Warden.  I have to admit, I'll miss you._

     Warden was panting heavily.  His left leg ached where brick shrapnel had
scored it, his whole body felt like a giant bruise, and he was slowing down.
Even with his ability to control his bodily processes, he simply couldn't
keep coaxing this kind of performance out of himself indefinitely.  He needed
to come up with a plan that had a chance of stopping a giant metal man...and
so far, he was all out of those.
     Then he heard the faint whirring of rotor blades.
     _A police helicopter._  It was far away...most people couldn't have
heard it...but Warden knew that the sheer carnage would attract them before
long.  He didn't know what good they'd...
     This was the moment where he didn't move as fast as he should have.
     As the metal fist that snatched him out of the air made clear as it
began crushing him.

     Captain Harris Wu (decorated North Am Combine Marine Corps.  Pilot with
the distinguished service cross, ret.) had seen a lot of things in his time
on the force.
     He'd been promoted to SWAT commander during the three-year "Paragang
War" that had ended with Warden's arrival on the scene last year.  Before the
eyeless vigilante had begun putting the fear of God into the freaks, Wu had
seen friends electrocuted, pulled inside out, drained of their blood, shot,
stabbed, and even one of them transformed into ice.
     So, for the most part, he actually _liked_ what Warden was doing.  He
was a cop first, and would arrest him if he got the chance...but he wasn't
looking for one.  After all, the weirdness on his beat had taken a serious
downturn lately....
     That is, until he saw the statue of Atlas, grown to fifty-five feet
tall, standing in the middle of what had been Times Square until recently.
It was crushing a man in its fist.
     At that range, Capt. Wu couldn't see who it was, not that that really
mattered.
     "Kelly...what in the name of Tym did you get me _into_ here?  For _this_
I'm missing the Office Party?"
     He began to direct the crosshairs in his helmet HUD towards the thing's
torso.  NYPD copters only carried two missiles, both old Sidewinders from
Military Surplus.  He'd probably need both.
     His watch was set to ring at Midnight. 
     He wanted to be away from there when it happened.

     Warden 'saw' everything from Captain Wu's POV.
     He'd shut off his own tactile sense, not wanting to feel the pain as the
hand slowly closed.  On the up side, he'd apparently angered the thing enough
that it wanted to enjoy killing him, and was taking its time.  On the down
side, there wasn't much he could do about it.
     Then, it occurred to him.  He couldn't affect the metal man....

     Captain Wu felt slightly "off" as he drew a bead on the back and chest
of the overgrown Atlas, but finally achieved target lock.
     "Missile One away." He spoke into the microphone at his lips.
     The missile arced a perfect path towards the statue...and then, somehow,
missed the thing's back entirely.
     It did, however, slam directly into the wrist of the hand crushing the
man Wu couldn't quite see at that distance.

     Warden cranked his strength as high as he could as soon as the missile
tore the wrist in half, spraying metal fragments everywhere.  In that second,
only bronze was holding him, not the strange eerie strength that filled the
statue, and he bent the fingers apart and flipped out of the grip, twirling
end over end and landing on a nearby ledge, catching onto the wall with shaky
fingertips.
     The helicopter launched another missile, this one catching the statue in
the chest and sending more shrapnel into the nearby walls.  One piece
narrowly missed Warden's skull.  He leaned against the wall and gasped for
air, feeling his ribs with his left hand to see if any were broken.
     The statue, meanwhile, was concerning itself with the helicopter.
Captain Wu had begun firing repeatedly at the thing with a chaingun mounted
to the underside, but that wasn't likely to do any good.  The statue (from
his moment within Wu's mind, Warden now knew it was named Atlas) was already
'healing' the missile damage.  What was needed was a way to inflict so much
damage so quickly that....
     Warden smiled.

     Wu jerked the stick hard, getting as much altitude as fast as he could.
Atlas kept hurling chunks of nearby buildings at him, and it was a right
bitch keeping out of the thing's way.  The missiles had done bubkiss and he
was almost out of bullets....
     _Ca-chunk._
     Correction: He _was_ out of bullets.
     "This is Wu to NYPD SWAT Air Command.  I need backup!  Repeat: I need
backup ASAP.  There is a giant metal statue running amok in Times Square...
and yes, before you ask, I _know_ how crazy I sound right now."
     Then a chunk of cement slammed into his rotors...which fragmented,
shearing open the cockpit.
     "Oh, son of a...!"

     Warden 'heard' Wu's last thought before impact.
     He wondered why they called it 'piling in' but didn't have the time to
worry.  Instead, he leapt off of the ledge, bounced off of Atlas's head, and
arced up as high as he could, landing on the side of the madly twirling
helicopter.  He drew both blades from their sheaths on his back.
     Wu had his eyes closed tight and was muttering to himself.  Warden
didn't have time to care what.  Instead, he slashed his bundi across the
man's restraints and hoisted him out of his seat, ignoring the man's grunt of
surprise.
     Then he jumped blind, not having time to try and echolocate.  He hoped
that he remembered the square well enough to estimate the distances....
     As the copter slammed into the very spot where the giant ball had once
descended to mark off the year and burst into flame, Warden dimly heard Wu's
watch alarm go off.  It was Midnight.
     Happy New Year.
     He swung his hook sword, catching the blade on the edge of a building,
dislocating his shoulder and sending agony up his arm and down into his whole
body before he could even try to keep from feeling it.  Gasping, feeling as
if he was going to throw up, he pushed himself up the wall with his feet and
got on top of the building.  So far, Atlas was staring at the flaming wreck
of the copter, trying to tell if they'd gone up with it.
     Warden, Wu still on his back, crumpled onto the rooftop and lay there
for a few moments, short, ragged breaths the only ones he could take.
     "Are we alive?"
     "Apparently so."  Warden didn't move...couldn't.  "I need you to pop my
right shoulder back in."
     "You're lucky you didn't tear your arm off."  Wu checked it, noticed the
whitening of the young man's lips as he did.  "You need a doctor."
     "No time. I have to stop Atlas."
     "You don't have a prayer!"
     "Then say one for me and _pop my shoulder back in._"  Warden groaned.
"Or do I have to do it myself?"
     Wu swore softly, took hold of the young man's arm, and suddenly twisted
on his own hip, driving the joint back in with a light pop.  Warden didn't
scream, didn't even make a sound.  Of course, that was only because he'd shut
off his pain center.
     As Wu watched, the hideous lividity faded to the same pale white it had
been, leaving only a sickly purple and yellow bruise on the front of the arm
and shoulder.
     "Holy..."
     "No.  Just paranormal.  I can heal quickly, if I get a chance.  It will
hurt and be stiff, but it will have to do."  Warden strode to the roof edge.
"When the backup comes, tell them I'm heading to the docks.  There's a
warehouse there...a front for the Cyber-Nostra.  That's where I'm leading
it."
     "How do you...?"
     Warden leapt off of the roof and dropped, his coat fluttering behind him
like a cape.
     He landed right on top of Atlas, who was now easily eighty feet tall.
Apparently it was feeding on _something_ that the attack on Times Square had
generated, and was swollen with it.  As it realized that Warden wasn't dead,
the vigilante kicked off the top of its head and began bouncing from rooftop
to rooftop, heading away from Times Square.
     Atlas followed, taking enormous strides, feet ringing on the street
below, kicking up potholes as it went.

     Salvadore Serrano had worked as minor muscle for the Cyber-Nostra for a
decade.  Upon his retirement, he'd received the extremely cushy job of
guarding their warehouse on the docks.  It was fairly simple. You sit in an
air-conditioned room ten blocks away, watching monitors for any idiot stupid
enough to try and mess with a warehouse full of cybernetic death machines
controlled by remote link.
     In the two years since he'd received the assignment, no one had so much
as _spit_ on the place.
     Streaks have a funny way of coming to an end, though.
     The external mikes picked it up first.  The _thoom..........
thoom........thoom......thoom_ got louder and louder.  Sal turned on the full
sensor package, sweeping for contacts.
     At first, all he saw was one guy jumping around like an idiot.  Sal
wasn't too concerned about _that._
     When the big metal guy walked _through_ a nearby warehouse after the
jumping guy, however, _then_ he was concerned.
     Sal began frantically pushing buttons, activating the perimeter guns
(like the chaingun on the helicopter, they did nothing to the giant) and then
the cyberlink to the Optimal Killers themselves.
     The floating death machines popped out of their slots on top of the
warehouse and engaged the giant, blowing big holes in it with their missiles.
Sal smiled...and then stopped, rather abruptly, as one by one, the silver
death machines went off-line.
     Sal immediately began trying to think of a suitable answer for his
employers.  He was incredibly grateful for the recording system in the
console.

     Warden landed inside the warehouse.  He knew that Atlas wouldn't be far
behind...in fact, he was _counting_ on it.  Already, he could hear the sounds
of missiles and explosions and metal on metal crunching.  He didn't expect
the Optimal Killers to _beat_ Atlas...it would have been nice, but his day
wasn't going to be that easy...just delay and damage it.
     What he was looking for was in a crate buried behind a sizable amount of
Jaz and other Pranir pharmaceuticals.
     Stack upon stack of armaments.
     Including a sizable amount of grenades, racked missiles, and stuff
Warden didn't even understand.  He didn't have to understand it.  He knew
what would happen.
     He scurried away as Atlas crushed the last Optimal Killer and headed
forward.
     The reinforced metal wall bent, twisted, and tore.  Atlas walked into
the warehouse, the pilings trembling under his feet, the roof a few feet
above his head.
     It scanned the area, looking for its target, which was perched above it,
on a ledge on the far wall.  No more room to run.  Another step. More
shaking.  The floor didn't seem as solid here....
     Warden tossed a grenade into the pile directly under Atlas's feet.  Then
he slithered through the vent at his back and was gone.
     Atlas looked down at the pile at its feet, uncomprehending.  Then the
grenade went off.
     Atlas shrugged.
     _Then_ the rest of the pile began to detonate.

     Warden splashed down into the murky water of the East River [much
cleaner than it used to be, thank you. - Ed] just in time to feel the
shockwave as the warehouse became a gigantic Roman candle, exploding and
exploding _again_ and again.  The stored munitions were not of earthly
manufacture, but like all explosives, they had a tendency to release their
stored chemical energy when properly primed.
     As he swam away, Warden saw the half-shattered body of Atlas fall into
the water as the warehouse pilings were crushed and the floor smashed by the
explosion.  As the giant began taking on water, it attempted to march itself
back onto land.
     Instead, it fell apart.  Piece by piece.  Between the heat, the blast,
and the sudden dunking, even the great magic that had animated it couldn't
sustain it any longer.  It simply...fell apart.  And drifted away, bit by
bit.
     Smiling, if incredibly sore and battered, Warden swam for shore.


1 January 2024, 3:23 AM

     He climbed into the window of the apartment still somewhat soggy, his
hook sword blunted, with hideous purple splotches on his chest, shoulder, and
legs and a chunk of glass in his left arm.
     Jimmy and Maddie were in the next room.  He could hear them.  There was
a faint smell in the air of grapes and alcohol, and echolocation showed a
bottle and two glasses on the kitchen counter.  They'd had a little New
Year's celebration, it seemed.
     He smiled.
     "Hey, Tommy, that..."  Jimmy came into the kitchen and turned on the
light, then froze at the sight of his roommate.  "_What happened?_"
     "You should have been watching TV.  You'd probably have heard all about
it."  Thomas pulled the glass out of his arm and rummaged around under the
sink for the first aid kit.  "The statue from Rockefeller Center tried to
kill me."
     "It did."
     "But I stopped it.  _And_ I managed to get rid of that Cyber-Nostra
warehouse in the process."
     "You did."
     "Yep."  Thomas poured witch hazel over his cut and smeared Opti-
Bacitracin on a gauze pad, then secured it to his arm with gauze.  "All in
all, it was quite the night out."
     "Well, that's...I mean...what I...."  Jimmy sputtered to a stop.
"Tommy, is it possible you'll ever come in the window and say something that
_doesn't_ sound deranged?"
     "It could happen."  He put the first aid kit away.  "In the morning, I
need to ask you a favor.  There's something I need you to read for me."

NEXT ISSUE:

TENTH ISSUE EXTRAVAGANZA! GUEST STARRING DEVASTATOR! TYM! THE NORSE GODS!
(Actually, none of them. Sorry. I got excited there for a second. Pretty much
just the usual cast of misfits, really. But there'll be MORE of them...)
	

WRITER' S NOTES:

Howdy. 

     It's Matt again.  Did you miss me?  Well, despite my fondness for
crossovers, there really _wasn't_ a good way to work Warden into the CSV
carnage that Mssrs. Singer, Pi and Van Domelen inflicted upon y'all...hope
you liked Dave's compromise, which was about as good a tie-in as you could
get, and better than what I had in mind.  I mean, was there really any
interest in watching the CSV and then ASH beat the heck out of poor Tommy
Malfeas [As the crossover's early plots had happening - Dave]?  I think not.

     So here we are, on the threshold of issue #10.  What, you may ask, is
coming?  Good question.  Beats the urine out of me.  Well, no, that's not
strictly true.  I expect to play around with Warden's role in NYC, deal with
the tensions with the NYPD and MetaPsych, and maybe eventually get around to
that ASH appearance I've been wanting to do.

     So stick around.  Warden #10 is coming, and it'll be really neat.