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Marvel MK: CH 143 – A Battle of Shadows, A Duel of Wills
🕑 Added 2025-09-05 18:45:45 +0000 UTCThe roar of the crowd from the first duel had barely settled when the second was announced: The Kingdom of Spiders vs. Z’Gambo.
The Bride of Nine Spiders, Jiu Zhizhu, moved with a silent, hypnotic grace, her dark silks seeming to absorb the very light around her. Opposite her, John Aman, the Prince of Orphans, coalesced from a swirling green mist, his presence a cold, quiet promise of death. The two champions stepped into the arena, a study in contrasting darkness.
High above, floating invisibly on Zephyr, the white hawk on Jack’s shoulder shimmered and dissolved. In its place stood Erlang Shen, his silver armor catching the impossible light of their new world. He looked up, his gaze piercing through the layers of reality to the distant, unseen Celestial Court, his expression unreadable, stoic. He then reached into a fold of his sleeve and produced a small, paper-wrapped bundle of haw flakes, handing it to Jack.
“Here,” he said, his voice a low, even thing. “It seems we will be here for a while. I got them from Zao Shen.”
Jack’s eyes lit up. He tore open the bundle with the excitement of a child. “The Kitchen God!” he said, his mouth already full. “Does he still snitch on people’s kitchens to the Jade Emperor every year?”
For the first time, a small, genuine smile touched Erlang Shen’s lips, a flicker of an old, shared memory. “You do know you’re not on Earth, right? The rules are different here.”
“Yeah? So what,” Jack mumbled, munching on the sweet and sour flakes. He popped another one in his mouth. “So, what’s the deal, Erlang? You’re awfully chummy for a guy who once tried to pin me under a mountain. What do you want?”
Down below, the duel began. Jiu Zhizhu moved first, her hands weaving an intricate pattern in the air. From her fingertips, threads of solidified shadow shot out, not to strike, but to create a complex, three-dimensional web that filled the space between them.
Erlang watched her movements, then turned his three-eyed gaze back to Jack. “I want to know what your goal is,” he said, his voice a quiet, probing instrument. “Do you intend to reclaim your old name? To finish the rebellion you started?”
“Rebellion?” Jack scoffed, licking the haw flake dust from his fingers. “I wasn’t rebelling. I was redecorating. The Celestial Court’s feng shui was terrible. All that gold and jade? Tacky. It needed more… me.”
In the arena, John Aman did not try to break the web. He dissolved into a green mist, his form becoming intangible, and flowed through the gaps in the shadowy threads, reappearing directly behind the Spider Bride, his hand a cold, glowing blade aimed at her neck.
Erlang didn’t flinch. “You play the fool, but you are not one. Your chaos has a purpose. Are you trying to change the past? Do you stand with the pantheons, or against them?”
“Against them? With them? Those are such boring, binary choices,” Jack said with a wave of his hand. He looked down at the fight. “It’s like asking if you want to be the spider or the spooky green fart. Why not be both? Why not be neither?”
The Spider Bride, as if expecting the attack, spun, her silken robes hardening into a razor-sharp shield that deflected Aman’s misty blade. The impact sent a shower of green and black sparks across the arena floor.
“You have always been an open wound on the body of heaven, Wukong,” Erlang said, his voice a low, intense thing. “You shout, you rage, you burn. Do you not see the futility in it? A loud rebellion is a rebellion that is easily crushed.”
“And a quiet one is a rebellion that is easily ignored,” Jack shot back, his gaze sharp, his usual manic energy now focused into a single, piercing point. He looked Erlang directly in his third eye.
John Aman and the Spider Bride were now a blur of motion, a dance of shadows and mist, their battle a silent, deadly ballet of feints and counters.
“I am a loyal servant of the Celestial Court,” Erlang said, his voice flat, betraying no emotion.
“Bullshit,” Jack said, popping the last haw flake into his mouth.
Erlang Shen fell silent, his stoic mask back in place. But Jack had seen it. A flicker of something in his third eye. A shared, unspoken truth between the god who tore down the gates and the one who quietly left them unlocked. The battle below was one of shadows and mist. The battle above was one of wills, of two ancient, opposing philosophies, now circling each other, trying to find a weakness.
The battle below was nearing its conclusion. John Aman, the Prince of Orphans, seemed to have the upper hand, his misty, intangible form a perfect counter to the Spider Bride’s intricate, deadly webs. He was a ghost, a phantom she could not ensnare.
“I couldn’t care less about what I did in my past,” Jack said, his voice a low, thoughtful thing as he watched the fight, his earlier bravado gone. “But I know one thing. The Godheads were never satisfied with the way that era ended.”
Down in the arena, Jiu Zhizhu, now cornered, prepared for one last, desperate retaliation. Her web, which had been a thing of beautiful, geometric precision, became erratic, chaotic, a swirling vortex of solidified shadow lashing out in every direction.
“Do you regret the way you ended?” Erlang asked, his voice a quiet, probing whisper.
Jack, still munching on the last of his haw flakes, shrugged. “I don’t know. Kekekeke. I haven’t even gotten the full memories back, have I?” He paused, a distant, fragmented memory flashing in his mind. “I think the last thing I remember is… when the Buddha came down, right as the Godheads were all about to attack me.”
John Aman, seeing his opening in the Spider Bride’s chaotic defense, split his green mist into a dozen different figures, each one a perfect, ghostly copy of himself. He channeled his chi, and the mist of each figure hardened, becoming solid, tangible.
Erlang Shen, his gaze fixed on the arena, stated flatly, “The green fart wins.”
Jack looked down just as a few crumbs of haw flakes fell from Zephyr, disappearing into the vastness below. He saw the dozen solid mist-figures of John Aman converge on the Spider Bride, their combined assault overwhelming her final, desperate defense.
In a flash of green and black, it was over. John Aman stood with his foot on the neck of the defeated Jiu Zhizhu. The referee’s hand went up. The second duel was won.
A moment of stunned silence, and then the arena erupted in a thunderous roar of cheers. The tightness of the battle, the near-misses, the sheer, deadly artistry the two champions had displayed, deserved nothing less.
Jack, his philosophical mood instantly vanishing, threw his head back and laughed. “Kekekeke! That is one great fart right there!”
…
In a secure, hidden study in Washington D.C., Alexander Pierce sat before a large monitor. On the screen, the faces of the other members of the World Security Council looked back at him, their expressions a familiar mask of stern, bureaucratic authority. To Nick Fury, it would have looked like a normal Tuesday meeting. But contrary to that belief, all five members were HYDRA. The rot went all the way to the top.
“Do we know what Jack Hou has been searching for?” Pierce asked, his voice a low, controlled thing. “His clones have been active since December of last year.”
Gideon Malick, his face a picture of weary frustration, spoke first. “The answers vary, but we suspect none of them are his true purpose.”
Councilman Rockwell chimed in, his tone skeptical. “Can we chalk up all of his clones’ answers to a ruse, though?”
Councilwoman Singh sighed. “Yes, surely there must have been some slips. There is no way one man can perfectly control that many clones, that many variables.”
“One would think,” Malick said dryly. He pulled up a file on his own screen, the data projecting onto the shared display. “But listen to this. The clone in the Amazon claimed he was searching for El Dorado, not for the gold, but because he’d heard they had ‘really good Wi-Fi.’ The one on Mount Everest was looking for the Abominable Snowman to ask him for a good recipe for shaved ice. The one in the Sahara was searching for the lost city of Atlantis, which he was convinced was ‘just under all this damn sand.’ And the one at Machu Picchu,” he paused, a look of pure disbelief on his face, “told a tourist he was there to find his missing piece.”
The other council members waited. Malick just shook his head. “That’s it. He just said ‘his missing piece.’ We’ve chalked it up to another one of his nonsensical, metaphorical pranks. Our analysts think it’s a reference to a video game.”
Pierce’s gaze was sharp, analytical. “We still don’t know how his meta-powers work. Unlike the Xavier group’s Multiple Man, Jack’s clones all seem to have independent brains, independent wills.”
Councilwoman Yen leaned forward. “Do we know where the real Jack Hou is right now?”
Malick shook his head. “He’s a ghost. He could be any one of them. He could be none of them.”
Pierce leaned forward, his hands linked, covering his mouth. He was thinking. How could they weaponize this chaos? This beautiful, unpredictable, global network of power? Then, an idea began to form, a cold, elegant solution.
These clones, with their different behaviors, their different answers… even SHIELD’s top psychologists had unofficially diagnosed Jack Hou with a severe case of Multiple Personality Disorder, using the clones as evidence. Different personalities, different goals, different weaknesses.
“We will conduct a new project,” Pierce said, his voice a low, final command. “We will turn one of Jack Hou’s clones into our puppet.” He looked at the other council members, a slow, predatory smile on his face. “We will identify the personalities that are most easily manipulated—the sad ones, the lonely ones, the ones who just want a friend. We will use these personalities to our advantage. We will turn his own chaos against him.”
He paused, letting the weight of the plan settle.
“We will dub this project… Project Simian.”
…
Meanwhile in Florida, while a Floridian man was busy punching gators, chasing raccoons, and dual-wielding axes to chase away trespassers, a different kind of order was being maintained. Deep within the S.W.O.R.D. HQ, a silent, state-of-the-art facility hidden in plain sight, Director Maria Rambeau sat at her desk, the calm eye in a hurricane of cosmic data.
A sharp, professional knock came at her office door. “Come in,” Maria said, her voice clear and commanding.
A S.W.O.R.D. agent stepped in, a data pad in his hand. “This is the report on Dr. Erik Selvig, ma’am,” he said. “He’s a reclusive one. No assistants, no research team. He has pretty much jailed himself in his own lab.”
Maria took the data pad, her eyes skimming through the dense report. Then, something caught her eye. A section heading: The Selvig Theory.
“Ah, yes,” the agent said, noticing her pause. “He stated in a fringe scientific journal that a ‘bridge’ that formed wormholes to other dimensions existed. He was quite sure some kind of extraterrestrial event would happen last year, but nothing did.” The agent shrugged. “There was that sudden comet that none of the astrophysicists saw coming, but it vanished. The consensus is that it was just too small of an asteroid to detect properly, and it burned up before leaving a significant trail.”
Maria Rambeau leaned back in her chair, a thoughtful, calculating look on her face. Her gut, the one that had guided her through a thousand impossible situations, was telling her something. “Give him access to some of our star databases,” she commanded. “Something that can help his research. I have a feeling his theory is more credible than we think.”
The agent was taken aback. “Does… does Level 1 access suffice, ma’am?”
“Give him some of our Level 2 data,” Maria clarified. “But nothing that explicitly mentions extraterrestrial existence. Not until he’s under our roof.”
The agent’s expression shifted to one of quiet, dawning understanding. It was one of the Director’s unusual, but uncannily effective, hiring methods. “Yes, ma’am.” He took the data pad back and left the room.
Maria let out a long sigh and turned her gaze to the side of her desk. There, in a simple silver frame, was a photo of her, a smiling, younger Monica, and her best friend, Carol Danvers, their arms slung around each other, looking like they could take on the world. She smiled, a soft, nostalgic expression.
Her phone rang, pulling her back to the present. It was Monica. She picked it up, her professional mask melting away into that of a mother.
“Do you finally miss your mom?” she asked, her voice full of a warm, teasing affection.
