DEFENDERS/ TRANZ #2 part three "Remus Sharptooth Regrets...!" (Smoky Dean and the fire fighters)

Knocking the Four Armed Man unconscious, Hulk feels a twinge of remorse beneath his battle fury. “Hulk is glad fighting is over!” he says, shaking his head. With the Tranz Rupture swirling the thoughts of individuals into the conscious mind of each person present, Hulk feels the urgency of stopping the fire, the physical threat to everyone. He sees a fire fighter, who calls himself Smoky Dean, beckon him back to stopping the inferno. The Hulk slams together his hands to create a massive wind, blowing down the flaming trees directly in front of him.
Smoky Dean runs the other direction, shouting the Hulk’s praises. As he plunges into another side of the inferno, however, he finds firefighters fallen, and feels their misery. He walks up to one to make sure he is not suffocating or falling prey to heat exhaustion; he immediately feels the grasp of the Voidons upon the emotions of his fellows. “All they need is to revive enough to fight back!” he thinks, but he does not know what to do for them, individually. “Then I’m just going to have to stay strong, myself!” he decides. In setting his intention, Smoky Dean calls upon inner reserves: the love for his wife and child he wants to see again, and his own self-taught determination.
He remembers training for his pack test last month: a walk of three miles in forty-five minutes,

wearing a vest weighing 45 pounds. Running would disqualify him. Only endurance and a steady

certainty could see him through. This emotion begins to spread among his desperately rallying

fellows.


Aching, Nighthawk takes flight again, overhead. “Interesting how you can lose track of what county you're in in the middle of a huge fire, “ he thinks; “the soot must be unbelievable, gets down into your clothes...my hair’s going to smell like fire a long time!” He begins diving in, taking up fire fighters for air above the smoke. “They can’t even wear a mask---too dangerous!” he reasons.

He also becomes aware of the emotional confluence, you might say, as he whisks fire fighters upwards from the psychically feeding Voidons. “The time I spent conscious without my body, thanks to the Headmen, has given me sort of vantage point of detachment,” he intuits. “I perceive whatever energy field is opening us to one another, and I see it reaching my mind, but also, my choice beneath the miasma of emotions. If the field will take my projection, of my thoughts, into the mix, perhaps it help make the firefighters deal with the physical element of these feeling-void attacks! As it is---I only hope Val and Patsy have got some angle on how to bring this down at its source, or a massive wildfire might be the SMALL problem!”



Hellcat reaches for her cell phone once again, as she swings out of reach of the she-wolf, Corpse Flower. “I don’t know where in the universe Doctor Strange is, but we need him---or Clea---to find the key to whatever’s going on here. Okay, Clea, it’s ringing...pick up before this kitty becomes wolf chow on the hoof!”

The scene: a tarot drawing, begun after a trance session. It s participants include Clea, Doctor Strange, and Madame Blavatsky herself, who exclaims, “I could feel your presence with me, Strange! We reached the universal holographic shift into the Invisible College!”

Clea stretches, her body relaxed from the trance; she then becomes aware of her enchanted Blackberry. “I knew it would be wise to bring some form of contact with our home timeline when Stephen and I came back to continue our tour of occult American history!”

Hellcat speaks: Clea, where are you and Doc?
Clea: Back from ghost-detecting with Ben Franklin and his illuminator this morning...I believe we’re in New York, somewhere in the mid-19th century with the founder of the Theosophist movement...

Beginning to adapt to the oddness of her mystical company, Madame Blavatsky lays a tarot card, the Universe, on the table as Clea steps away to listen.

Hellcat: You must have the best long distance plan EVER! Can you offer me any energy or guidance? The mental reality around us is flipping out, and I think the physical world’s next!

Clea reaches within the perceptions of Hellcat, and directs her mind into the thoughts of the psychic Emma, who appears nearby, reading the telepathic manifestation of the sorceress. The she-wolf flees Valkyrie’s sword strikes with Dragon Fang. “Your cause is lost, anyway, Norse woman,” she spits, “because even though you’ve deposed our genetically-engineered allies, nothing can stop my champion Remus Sharptooth from completing the spell! You cannot hold the tide of the changing world BACK!!!”

concludes next