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Natasha awoke to find herself lying on the hard metal floor of the Skrull saucer’s bridge. She looked around in a daze, unsure if she was even alive or dead. Alive, she finally decided. Her meeting with the late Daredevil and Mr. Kline robot* seemed like no more than a dream already. Feeling more than a little spaced out, she forced herself to focus and listened to the hum of the ship controls and the sound of static over the Avengers’ radio headset that she had back on her head. No, always had on, she corrected with due consideration as she tried with earnest to shake off the disorientation that came from regaining consciousness after suffering a blow to the head…if not returning from a trippy trip to the afterlife.


But if this indeed was real life, it was not going well. The last thing she remembered – what she knew for certain had been real – was deliberately colliding into the three Skrull ships that had been making an attack run on earth. She had destroyed the ships and should have been herself destroyed in the process. The question was…why hadn’t she been? Could it be true that heavenly angels were intervening on her behalf? She smiled to think she was taking the idea so seriously. In the Soviet Union she had not exactly had a religious upbringing. Whether this was an act of higher powers or some stroke of sheer luck all that really mattered, of course, was that she was alive.

“How about that?” Natasha laughed and keyed the mike on her headset. “Clint, Peter, Dane, any of you out there? I’m still here, believe it or not. I don’t know how, but I am…do you guys read me, over?” There was no response and she gave a slight shrug. “Guess not. What did Tony say the range of these things was anyway, two thousand miles? Pretty good on Earth, but distance has a whole ‘nother meaning up here in outer space. So okay, I should quit talking to myself and just pull myself together here, right…”

Taking a deep breath, Natasha did just that. She rose up and, using a chair for support, slowly eased herself over to the central chair in the room and slid into it. There was a miniature display screen on the arm of the chair and, while she was not entirely sure what it meant, she could guess that the chart she was looking at showed a power spike from minutes earlier that went higher than the top of the chart.

Natasha was jolted out of reflecting on that when another image suddenly popped up on the large display screen – or was it a window? – at the front of the room and saw a familiar blue and green orb floating in space in front of her. The Earth!

“Can that be right…?” She moved over to a nearby console with a lot more controls on it and tried to reason out which ones did what. Her brow knit with concern. If she had survived the collision with the Skrull ships, then what if they too had survived and were even now attacking the planet? She needed some kind of sensor readouts. Without an instruction manual in English in sight, she settled for pushing buttons that felt right.

A third screen on the console suddenly turned on and showed a circle – presumedly Earth – with about 24 red dots around it. Had that many attack ships still got through? She touched one of the red dots on the smaller console screen and the larger image on the main screen changed, zooming back and showing two dozen spaceships in orbit.

“No…” Natasha said. How could they be right back where she started? The image started to slowly zoom in on Earth again just as loud alarm sounds began to buzz all around the room and bright lights flashed. Was her ship under attack? Natasha grabbed the console and braced herself for an impact but felt nothing. It was only then that another possibility began to sink in. “What if…” she said, giving voice to her newest concern, “the camera isn’t zooming in at all…but I’m falling out of orbit?”

Her newest concern seemed increasingly likely as one of the two dozen spaceships came into view between her and the Earth, just over Central America. The other ship had a malevolent looking design and bristled with oversized weaponry. It pivoted and began to slip out of her path as her vessel drew nearer. Whatever the ship’s intentions towards Earth were, it did not see her as a threat yet.

There was a navigation console in the room with what appeared to be a very simple, U-shaped steering wheel set in it. Natasha moved to it just as she heard a voice over a loudspeaker. It had to have been a Skrull speaking in their own language but it sounded rather like a recording of a Skrull speaking calmly rather than someone reacting to the current situation. She only wished she knew what it was saying. She almost immediately was given a good clue when the floor stopped being down. Down was now in the direction of the console in front of her and she fell against it. Shifting her body and kneeling on the console, she managed to grab the seat in front of the console, pull herself up to it and awkwardly strap herself in. Only then was she able to go back to manipulating the wheel. The image on the main screen moved with her movements, but she could only hope she was steering the ship and not just the camera. North America came into view and was growing in size.

Tapping her headset, Natasha tried again. “This is Black Widow of the Avengers, is anyone receiving me? Avengers Mansion? Baxter Building?” Natasha shouted her hails over the blare of the alarms and the recorded Skrull voice as she veered towards New England. If she could not raise someone to help soon, she would overshoot New England and try to put this thing down in the ocean. If she could…

Something did not look right, even from this height. The cities all looked strange. She needed a better look but the monitor she needed was against what had been the side wall and was now the ceiling. She unstrapped herself, climbed around to the back of her chair, stood on top of it and jumped up to the central chair in the room. Then she repeated the same steps, clambering onto the back of that chair and jumping up to the far console. While clinging to the chair in front of it, she touched the smaller screen and looked down to see the main screen below her. Sure enough, she was manipulating the camera from here and was able to, with some tinkering, zoom in on Manhattan.

Manhattan was just…gone. Decimated. The World Trade Center, the Empire State Building, the Baxter Building, the Chrysler Building…every single one reduced to rubble. It was the same with other boroughs, except the ruins of Queens seemed to be overgrowing with trees and other vegetation.

“What is going on here? This…” she said, starting to tear up but was interrupted when her down-orientation started to shift to the far corner of the room and she nearly lost her hold on the chair. She dropped down to the central chair, bounced off of it and landed on the side wall that was now a slanted floor. She skidded down the wall/floor until she could jump up and grab the navigator’s seat again. After strapping herself back in, she struggled to level out the ship as her mind searched for explanations. Perhaps it was a giant hologram or illusion to fool invaders? “That has to be it!” she said out loud.

Just then the ship lurched as if against some physical impact in the air. It had not come from one of the alien vessels up in the sky though, but from somewhere on the ground. Someone on the ground was firing some kind of powerful energy weapon at her ship. The ship shivered and shook in response. She tried to turn the ship into a barrel roll to avoid the energy weapon. From somewhere outside the room she could hear an explosion. She kept her eyes glued on the main screen, searching the ground for her attacker until she finally caught sight of it, hovering low in the sky over Manhattan. The source of the energy beam was a tall metal tower that splayed out at the bottom like a giant tripod, floating about 10 miles over the surface.

The room was growing painfully hot. Natasha ignored it and screamed a cry for bloody vengeance as she aimed straight for the tower, intent on ramming it. The ship was rocked by another explosion and the main screen went blank just as it looked like she was about to hit the tower. The next shockwave that ripped through the ship tore the navigation chair loose from its moorings and sent Natasha, still strapped in, rolling across the floor toward the back of the room as the whole front end of the room buckled inward and the screen exploded into shards. Natasha was aware of flashing light, sparks flying, flickering flames and then cool, moist chemical foam smothering her before she stopped being conscious of anything for a time.

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The Isle of Manhattan
July 21, 1998

Three riders on horseback rode towards the downed space saucer, so unlike the Martian Tripods in design, that had just dug a long, deep trench through the ruins of the Financial District.

“Up ahead. Isn’t that Arrow on top of the ship already?” Killraven asked.

“I’m sure you’re right,” M’Shulla said. “Arrow can smell salvage from miles away.”

Arrow recognized the three of them and waved his sword in the air to let them know the way was safe.

“I wonder who did this to this ship…” Killraven said, dismounting as they drew up close to where Arrow was fidgeting with what appeared to be a hatch. The saucer ship was as wrecked as the buildings around it. “It wasn’t our side.” His companions dismounted behind him.

With a triumphant smile, Arrow turned to the others as the hatch opened with a hiss.

“There’s someone alive in there,” M’Shulla said. “Human, I think. What shall we do, Killraven?”

“Do? Isn’t it obvious? We see if it’s a traitor or a slave,” Killraven said as he went straight inside. “It’s a woman!”

While Arrow clambered up to the top of the saucer for another look around and the woman with Killraven stood like a sentry at the open hatch, M’Shulla joined Killraven inside. The interior was all wrecked, burnt and covered with foam. A soft moan came from the red-haired woman on the floor.

“Another redhead!” M’Shulla joked, nudging Killraven and referring to his own crimson locks.

“She’s alive is all I can tell. We’ll examine her better in the light of day,” Killraven said and the two men gingerly picked her up between them.

“A ferry is coming!” Arrow said before they were even outside.

“No doubt to investigate the crash. Then we don’t have much time to deal with our prisoner here…” Killraven said as they laid Natasha down outside.

The fresher air outside the spacecraft was already starting to bring Natasha around as soon as they laid her down. “Who…?” she asked, disoriented again.

“We have not much time for words,” Killraven said, drawing his own sword. “Are you for or against the Martians?”

“What?” was all Natasha could ask, blinking in the sun and raising her arm slowly to shield her face.

“You don’t have any time now,” Arrow said. “I can see robots coming off the ferry.”

“Then we leave her here and attack!” Killraven said. “If there is anything still of value on this wreck, we can’t let them have it!”

“Wait…” Natasha said feebly as she slowly lifted herself up. She could see a weird collection of two white men, one with long red hair, a blonde-haired woman and a black man running away from her down the cracked and broken remains of a city street. They were all dressed in some weird, medieval fetish clothing and sporting swords in their hands. Only the woman turned back and looked at her. There was something familiar about her face, but Natasha did not have long to consider it as she found everything begin to fade away around her. At first she thought she was losing consciousness again but she was more alert than before. No, it was the world fading around her. And then was gone.

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