#3 - "Fighting Makes the World Go 'Round"

"Look! There's two more of 'em!"

"Let's get'em!"

Spectrum and Icicle turned to face the sudden voices and saw six costumed people charging straight at them. The two closest were a man in a light brown costume with black trim, boots and face mask and a woman in a white costume with black sleeves, mask and boots. Each had an odd feature: the man had a ringed tail like a raccoon and the woman had black fuzzy ears that resembled those of a panda.

"This is getting monotonous", Spectrum groaned. "Now what do these clowns want?"

Behind Raccoon and Panda was a man in an all black costume, except for a white belt with a 'V' and a white hand on his chest. Nearby was an attractive woman in a skimpy purple costume. She wore an elaborate headdress-mask which had a large white gem mounted in the forehead. Circling around the side was a monstrous snake-like creature. It was vaguely humanoid, but with golden scales and serpentine eyes and tongue. The creature was completely hairless. Lastly was a somewhat familiar face.

"Old stone-face is back!" Spectrum was, in fact, referring to Brother Basilisk. Inexplicably, he was now here on the side of this new group. "Hey, Icy, are you alright?"

Spectrum turned to look at his current companion, but she doubled over, her hands holding her head. A lavender glow seemed to surround her, which matched a similar one on the woman in purple.

"Good move, Mind Slayer", the Raccoon said. "Maybe these are the last two opponents of the test."

"Then we can get out of this 'place'?", Panda asked, a British accent recognizable in her speech.

"We don't even know what this place is...", the man in the black costume said. Suddenly, an eerie ghost-like hand sprung from his chest. It moved toward Spectrum.

"We agreed that this is some kind of contest, Void. We just have to keep fighting these imaginary foes until we beat them all!", Raccoon answered.

"What are you people talking about?" Spectrum was confused. But he knew enough to avoid the cartwheeling raccoon as he moved in on the attack. Taking to the air, Spectrum also managed to evade a tackle by the gold-scaled snakeman.

Icicle was down on one knee, when the Void changed directions and commanded his ghostly hand towards her. Just then something else caught his attention. He was not fast enough to avoid the silver, stony fist, however. Void crashed to the ground some 40 feet away. He sat slumped on the ground for a moment, shaking his head, the ghostly hand nowhere to be seen.

"Heads up, group, we've got more company!", Raccoon alerted his teammates.

"Giganto help friend. Take friend with." Giganto raised his fists at the opposing supervillains.

"Well, he's persistent", Spectrum muttered to himself upon seeing that his 'friend' was back. "I'll give him that."

Black Mamba leapt onto Giganto's back, as Raccoon smashed into his chest with both feet. Meanwhile, Mind Slayer took to the air and assaulted Spectrum's mind with her own. The force of the attack stunned the colorfully garbed mutant and drove him to the pavement. He rolled over just in time to see Void's ghostly hand reach for him.

"Man, this has not been my day." It would be the last thing Spectrum said for some time.

"Bright eyes!" Shadow Queen had just appeared on the scene again, when she saw Spectrum knocked unconscious in the grip of some ethereal hand sprouting from Void's chest. Her shout drew Panda's attention and she sent a psychic blast toward Shadow Queen. Catching Shadow Queen completely surprised, the force of the blast stunned her. Brother Basilisk moved in on his ex-teammate and with potent beams of energy emanating from his eyes, unleashed them on Shadow Queen. Her movements slowed and her skin slowly took on a stony texture, before she could react. In but a moment, the Shadow Queen had been turned into a statue!

"This big creature is tough, but we can wear him down!" Raccoon was bouncing around Giganto, continuing to draw his attention, while the other members of the group attacked from the flanks or rear. None of them were willing to go toe to toe with the bruising villain, but slowly they were getting the best of him.

"Panda! Let us attack the creature's mind together!" Mind Slayer suggested as she flew overhead of the creature, well out of its reach.

"Okay!," Panda replied as she set herself to the task. Both Panda and Mind Slayer had received similar training in the use of their mental powers. Coordinating their attacks would be very effective.

The Black Mamba leapt in one more time. Giganto grabbed the scaly villain and began to crush him in a massive bear hug. Just then, Panda and Mind Slayer attacked together. Their combined mental attacks were too much for Giganto, who had not fully recovered from his sparring match with Grond. He fell to the ground with a loud thump. No one seemed to notice the whiteness that suddenly appeared around them all....

Spectrum began to wake, as if from a strange dream. Everything was still somewhat fuzzy and slightly unclear, but there was motion in front of him. As the scene began to come into focus, he appeared to be looking through a window of some sort. On the other side, a number of technicians seemed to be working on machinery that mostly was out of his view. Strangely, there was no sound. He could see them looking at him occasionally and then continue their work. Then everything went black....

Spectrum began to wake, as if from a strange dream. Everything was still somewhat fuzzy and slightly unclear, but there was motion in front of him....

"...Think we should just knock 'em out again." Raccoon was saying the recovering supers.

"But they didn't fade out this time when we knocked them out," Mind Slayer countered.

"Perhaps, they are real," the Void added. "Like us."

"Darn right I'm real. And I got the headache to prove it." Spectrum looked around him and was confused. He seemed to be sitting on a featureless white plain. Only the other eight supers could be seen anywhere. "Now, I'm really, really confused."

"Join the club, bub." Raccoon answered. "Everything went haywire during our fight. Just who are you anyway?"

"Spectrum. I recognize some of you, but not all of you. I know you're the Raccoon, and Panda's your wife."

Panda and Raccoon had originally met under unusual circumstances. At one time Panda had been an operative of the small European Branch of PSI, the Parapsychological Studies Institute, an organization bent on controlling all of the world's mental mutants. She had been sent to America to eliminate the Raccoon, who had been helping VIPER destroy the Midwest operations of PSI in the United States. Panda had tracked Raccoon down, but instead of killing him, she ended up falling in love with the mutant. Since then they have been on the run from both PSI and VIPER.

"Scaly must be Black Mamba." Spectrum continued to list those present the he had knowledge of.

"The others are Void, Mind Slayer, and Brother Basilisk," Raccoon stated. "The last I had heard you were paling around with Terror, Inc."

"I beg your pardon? Terror, Inc.? Aren't they terrorists or something?"

"Probably why they have that name, huh?", Void interjected.

"If I did hang around with them, I don't remember it." Spectrum seemed genuinely confused. "There's a lot of things I don't remember." Raccoon and Panda looked at each other skeptically.

"Look, if you don't want to talk about it, that's fine, luv," Panda said. "Perhaps we should concentrate on figuring out what's happened to everything." She gestured around at the great expanse of whiteness surrounding them all.

"That's probably a good idea." Spectrum wondered to himself just what else he couldn't remember.

"Perhaps this is a signal we have defeated the final foe," Black Mamba said, a hiss lingering on his S's.

"Then what happens next?", Brother Basilisk asked.

"Ooh, my head...". Icicle was just coming around. Nearby, Shadow Queen was beginning to stir as well, her skin long since reverting back to flesh. The stoning effect of Brother Basilisk was only temporary.

"Sorry, for the thumping, missy," Panda apologized as she helped Icicle to her feet. "We thought you were imaginary foes."

"The way I feel, I wish I was imaginary."

"So, where are we? This definitely isn't Los Angeles," Spectrum asked.

"We have deduced that all of us are located in some kind of amalgam of our memories. This 'city' has parts of numerous cities in it: New York, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, possibly others as well," Black Mamba explained.

"We also determined that the foes that kept appearing were not real," The Void added.

"Yeah, I was getting the impression that some of these villains were drawn from people's memories. Giganto seems to know me and the Thugmaster's Elite was from Shadow Queen's memory," Spectrum explained.

"There were also attacks from King Cobra, VIPER, Quantum, and the Knights of the Round Table," Raccoon said.

"They would then disappear when we defeated them," Mind Slayer added.

"You mean I was running from my imagination for 3 days?", Icicle asked. "Why did they seem so real then? I mean, look at me!" Icicle's body showed the wear of her running battle to stay away from this imaginary Grond.

"The opponents were real and the fighting was effectively real." Mind Slayer said. "At least to us. Some of them even seemed to detect mentally for a time."

"It's like some kind of big experiment", Panda offered.

"Yeah, and we're the guinea pigs, huh?", Void chimed in.

"I guess that explains the guys with lab coats I saw, when I was snoozing", Spectrum remarked.

"Lab coats?", Raccoon asked. "What do you mean, you saw them?"

"I'm not sure what I saw exactly, but just before I woke up, I saw a bunch of people who seemed to be working on machinery. They looked like they were behind glass", Spectrum explained.

"Or you were behind glass, eh?", Panda interrupted.

"Perhaps we are getting somewhere", Black Mamba hissed with excitement. It was hard to imagine Black Mamba as anything but a monster. His golden scaly appearance certainly fit the bill. Underneath the reptilian exterior was the mind of a Nobel Prize winner in the field of biochemistry.

Jefferson Durant had been mutated by the infamous Coil-gene, a special genetic material insertion technique that gives certain humans the features of snakes. King Cobra had been directly responsible for his mutation, as well as the mutations of countless others. Durant was now obsessed with the destruction of King Cobra.

"I don't believe what I'm hearing," Shadow Queen said, as she stepped to the center of the group. As always she needed to be the focus of attention. Mind Slayer's lip curled slightly as she watched Shadow Queen.

"Well, that's not going to change what's 'appening," Panda jabbed. Shadow Queen was about to say something, but kept quiet and simply pouted.

"It is possible," Black Mamba said, returning to the subject of importance, "that this imaginary place we are in has been damaged somehow."

"That's why the background is gone?", Void asked.

"I noticed that during the fights, there seemed to be no regular background noise." Icicle added. "When the fighting was over, it seemed to return to normal. I thought I was just being paranoid."

"Now that I think of it," Panda added, "I felt the same way too."

"And when you were knocked out, Spectrum," Black Mamba explained, "you must have been witnessing reality. We must have damaged their systems."

"So, how do we damage them enough to get outta this place?", Raccoon asked.

"Well, there's always the time-honored tradition of overloading their computers," Spectrum said.

"It appears possible," Black Mamba hissed. "The most damage seemed to occur during our largest battle."

"And since we have determined that our foes have been mental constructs,..." Mind Slayer stated.

"All we have to do is think about a whole lot of people," Spectrum concluded.

The nine supers, Spectrum, Raccoon, Panda, Icicle, Black Mamba, Shadow Queen, Void, Brother Basilisk, and Mind Slayer, gathered in a small circle and began to concentrate. After a moment, Lady Blue appeared, or at least a mental facsimile of her. Nearby, King Cobra popped into view and next to him was Giganto. A few moments later, there was Grond, Ripper, and Dreadnought.

"This is starting to look nasty," Raccoon said.

"We need more opponents," Black Mamba said as he rushed towards the fake King Cobra. "We need to completely overload the system!"

"Why do I get the feeling this is going to hurt?", Spectrum commented as he took to the air. He concentrated a little more and the rest of Terror, Inc. appeared. He then opened fire on Professor Muerte and Scorpia.

"This is crazy!", Shadow Queen complained. "I don't want to get hurt!" As if to illustrate her point, two energy beams slammed into Brother Basilisk, dropping him unconscious.

More and more heroes and villains started to appear as the real supers surged into the waves of opponents. Void slipped to one side of the group and repeatedly grabbed enemies with his ghostly hand, while above Mind Slayer followed up his assaults with mental attacks. She was quickly shot out of the air by a blast of energy from a squad of VIPER agents. She hit the ground with a thud and didn't stir.

Meanwhile, Raccoon was holding his own against Bulldozer and Lady Blue, but he never saw the fist of Dreadnought smash into his back. With a sickening thud, Raccoon landed far away. Panda was about to rush to his aid, but she too was cut down by a multitude of energy beams before she reached his side.

"We're doing it!," Black Mamba shouted. He stood over the motionless form of King Cobra. These opponents, being merely mental images of the real supers, did not necessarily share the same powers and skills of their real-life counterparts. "Look! Some of their images are wavering."

It was true, much like a bad signal on a television, the many mental images still remaining were fading in and out of focus. Spectrum sped over the featureless battlefield firing beams of light energy as he went. He could see that Shadow Queen had fallen. Nearby, Icicle was firing ice beams as quickly as she could, but she was wearing down. The combined assault of the Hornet, Power Crusher, and Ankylosaur was too much for her and she dropped under the force of their attacks.

"Looks like it's just you and me, Void." Spectrum landed near the black-garbed villain. Black Mamba had just fallen, leaving the two remaining mutants. A badly in focus group of heroes and villains surrounded the pair, looking like some deranged television nightmare.

"Famous last words," Void said. Spectrum closed his eyes and waited for the final blow to come. He didn't have to wait long.