Calinferno! Marvel's Defenders meet the world of TRANZ

BEEP!



A green dune buggy roars down highway five in the Southern California afternoon, spilling sand from its beachside trek. Its occupants: a firecracker Bay Area girl in red tresses, with a hint of jasmine and seawater, hanging out in her home state, showing the palm-tree studded sites within the shade of coastal mountains, to her blonde, half-smiling Norse friend, every inch the Valkyrie, melting just a bit in the easy going company, the newly clothes, the silver Marc Antonio high heels she took off to feel Ocean Beach, pulled up to the seat.

“Patsy, do you think we are abiding the speed limit?”
“Oh, sure, Val! Whoo-hooo!”
“I only ask because a speeding ticket would cramp your style.”
“Yeah! They hate it when I don’t have a license!”
Patsy Walker shares a common secret with her friend: another name, another life. Every since the day a housewife drop out made a deal for a prowess enhancing costume, she plays the adventurer, Hellcat.




The name suits the lady.
"Avengers Clearance, right?" says Patsy. "Well, I don't know, Hank tells me about this Gyrich fellow throwing his weight all around Avengers Mansion. Val, remind me to check on that...WOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!" “Not nearly as comforting as riding my winged Aragorn, but a rush...” she thinks. “Ready to go off road? Pumpin’ some Sublime, catching a wheel in the desert---you can say you partied down, Val, in the style of So Cal!” “Warrior maidens did not go for spin-outs in Asgard.”
“Not nearly as comforting as riding my winged Aragorn, but a rush...” she thinks.
“Ready to go off road? Pumpin’ some Sublime, catching a wheel in the desert---you can say you partied down, Val, in the style of So Cal!”
“Warrior maidens did not go for spin-outs in Asgard.”
SKKREEECH!

“Couldn’t be heaven without a way to fly! But does your tummy tickle in the realms celestial? Like it will when we catch air off this dune? Owww!!!!”
“It’s a little (uh) like training a pegasus, I guess.”
“Haha! “
BOOMP! BOOMP!
“Woo-hoo! Mom used to bring me down to Malibu to model, and I’d beg her to let me see the ocean. As soon as I could, I started sneaking down the coast for the weekend! Charm schools never teach ladies a spin out like THiS! “
“Indeed.”

VRROOM! rrrUNunanunnanunna Vrooooom! SWahhsshh!
“Ah-hech-huf!”
“Woooo! Hech-keff! Having fun

yet?”
“Just remember I’m a good deal more indestructible than you, Patsy!”

“Hahah! I thought those guys were going to strain their necks watching you

at the beach. Golly, everybody!”
“How is it again you say this is a good thing?”
“Look, Val---you are almost six feet tall, blond hair, powerful from the inside out, shapely as a statue---you are going to get looks. I get my share, too, and I tell you why that’s okay. They’re giving energy you can use, if you figure out how to take it and use it for your own---take the attention and let add it to your strength!"
“Sometimes I find the leers less than flattering!”
“Yeah, but look! At least you don’t threaten to run them through with Dragonfang so much anymore! Take what they offer for yourself, asking nothing, and taking nothing you don’t want. I don’t feel like an object, really. It’s just beauty, and I play my part in its appreciation! They are connecting with something, and I have my own understanding of that something---and I let it serve one, big bad purpose...”
“To make you happy.”
“Yeah, you know it! Gimme a hug, girlfriend! You’re gonna figure out this crazy world yet.”
“I will always be an outsider, I think. The Defenders give us a common cause, even if we are not a team... but it seems to have given me something I’ve not felt since my exile from Asgard...”
“A migraine?”
“No...a sister...”
“Aww! Oh, that’s my phone! Hillie, baby, que onda?”
A young man is depicted with short brown hair and piercing but jovial eyes, holding a cell phone.
“Nada mucho, Hellcat! I can’t believe you’re really out here!”
“When you saw me on Dollar Bill’s home page and added me as a friend, you didn’t know what you were starting, huh? Hah!”
“All set to meet me at Castles in the Sand Bar and Grill?”
“Sure! Say ‘hi’ to Val, Hillie!”
“Uh...hello! Cool! How are you?”
“Rushed!”
“I know the feeling! So Patsy, am I going to meet all you Defenders?”
“Easier said that done, kemo sabe! There’s no membership set in stone, it’s really just whoever can show up when there’s trouble. So if you’re around when That happens, hang onto to your director’s chair!”
“I’m the master of no-budget cinema---I’m sure I’d find some way!”
“If you meet our pal Kyle, though, let’s just say he had a reality tv-type disaster, last time our pal D- Bill shot a documentary...everyone this side of Captain Ultra stampeded his Riding Academy for a membership drive...so you might not wanna, you know, bring up the idea...”
“Oh! Hahah, if I can just have a drink or two with you ladies in peace, that would make my month! All I do is edit these days!”
“Well, all work and no play, man...”
“Right! Think you’ll be there around 7?”
“IF we can keep the beach bums from turning our heads, we should arrive in good form! When you hear the royal flourish, roll out the red carpet, okay?”
“You bet, Patsy! Later!”


A woman, standing cloaked, looks up as though from the midst of a great fissure opening so far beneath the earth the sky is but a sparkling crevice.
I cannot identify my location, but only trust my intentions, from when I did knowingly cast my last spell on Earth, to send with the Slave Box we banished the one quality it could never contain: hope! Where, then, is my love, Nicola? I feel you all around me! That is only an answer of sort to one critical piece.
Where, Solskin, my brother? You sealed the Slave Box from Man, but I sense a gulf, like a thousand circles’ journey in every way beside the sun! We are as near as dreams to that world long after we did walk, though fell we there into the mountain’s maw only moments before...if I am near again to the Earth, then, too, my lost brother, what of the temptations and powers within the Slay Box? If already we have given three lives to rid our world of its influence, would that I had but one more with which to strive, with a conceptual force which humanity has never understood...lurking, connecting, drawing once more the power mad pawns and monsters.
“World, where are you in time? No moment for surrenders!
Earth, I cry to end this crime:
Who Call You Now, Defenders?”

“Ripped Open Dreams” or "Calinferno!"
written by Lue Lyron
Featuring art by Lue Lyron, with Marc Kane
Hellcat, the Valkyrie, Doctor Banner, Kyle Richmond, and Machine Man are all trademarks of Marvel Comics. Gnomlins appear courtesy of Danny Johansson, from his upcoming domain, SEMIECARDIA, copyright 2009 Dark Poet Trees; Remus Sharptooth and Corpse Flower created by Cody Guinon and Lue Disharoon, copyright 2009 Cody Guinon; all other characters and photographs copyright 2009 Integr8d Soul Productions. Edited, produced by C. Lue Disharoon

A man and woman are seated, eyes closed, hands clapsed, in the middle of the woods. The man is dressed as though in silks and a cloak and hide boots that seem to suggest he is a Viking; the woman is dressed in a smart variation on the flapper skirt with a playful yellow and orchid pattern, and bangles, suggesting the Roaring Twenties. There is a supernal darkness that seems to imbue every living thing with an eerie luminescence, as the Viking snaps his eyes open and says, “I could hear her...she senses me, but she sees me not...”
His face is filled with a mournful sadness, but the grief washes away before Emma Johansson’s eyes, as he looks earnestly into them. “She senses this world is where the peril of Slay Box has fallen. She believes, if we could only locate her brother...did you see?”
“I believe I can sense who we are looking for,” she replies. “The energies of the spell, similar to those of you, its one survivor...”
“And I, but a shade at that! Your mercy provides me my one hope, that we see this banishing through...” He reaches out to brush her cheek. “I do not know why you have been called to summon me to consciousness, Emma Johansson. All I can promise you is a glimpse at madness, and magical dangers that provide such dangers as my thousand year leap from one side of time’s channel, to another!”
“It doesn’t matter if I understand,” she replies. “All I can do is promise to help you find your partner...and pray that together you can summon the power to subvert this otherly intelligence that precedes you from the Dark Ages.”
“And pray, also,” she thinks, “ I do not foolishly lose my heart by your side, for you love another...”

(continues on next post)