He stood...waiting for the sign. It would come. The Three had told him that the sign would come... to let him know the right moment to strike.

They had it all coordinated. This time there would be no failure... no, humiliation.

DeathUrge stared out into the darkness, waiting for his moment... for his revenge.

The Defenders had thought him dead... they thought that they had "gotten their revenge" for what had happened to Patsy Walker*.

(*In the classic Defenders #155 - GD)

He laughed... quietly. He was not one that could be killed. That even the Sorcerer had believed such naive tripe was a sign that they understood little of how the universe truly worked.

He had been destroyed... but Death required a harbinger. It did not claim them... for long.

He waited, aware of the others gathering... the other Dark Ones. He would join them soon... join them in one last effort to destroy the Defenders...to exact HIS revenge. His cold, dark and silent revenge.

The man in green had said nothing. He simply stared into the darkness. Mephisto shifted from one foot to the other.

"Is it almost time?" he found himself asking, wishing his voice did not sound so sniveling.

"Nearly so" the man in green replied, and resumed looking out into the darkness.

Mephisto wished that Hela had stayed with them. But she was busy readying the legions of the damned to seize the soul of the one called Valkyrie and whatever of the world that they could.

The Lord of Lies shook his head. That was why she would never really truly make anything of herself. She refused to delegate. He had several lower demons marshalling his forces in his absence... freeing him to use his time more constructively... He turned and looked at where the man in green was standing and shivered.

Perhaps Hela was far more clever than he had thought.

She sat and waited. She waited and wondered if it all would be worth it.

She had taken a gamble by not taking part in the plan to destroy the Defenders. It would have been simply easier to just be one more atomic bomb falling on a cockroach.

But as even the condemned of Hell could attest to, you could never truly count a cockroach out. They had ways of surviving... of thriving under conditions that would break the strongest of souls.

The Defenders were bugs. Tiny, insignificant bugs that often got under foot.

And yet, time after time they had come out on top.

Mephista sat on her throne of bone and wondered if she had made the right decision. Her father had asked, begged, and more than threatened her to join the cause. An alliance with someone that frightened him to the core.

She had seen her father in many ways before. Arrogant. Angry. Defiant. Even beaten. But never before had she seen him as scared as he seemed to be of his new "comrade".

Had she joined, had she taken the insult of her assistance being assumed - she would have been one more involved in the slaughter.

As it was though... as it was, she was keeping her options open.

She stared through the portal to Earth, watching and waiting for all Hell to break loose - perhaps literally.

She sat and watched as the events progressed, and planned what her next step should be.

Somewhere in Asia

She knelt down in the dirt, feeling, probing for the last of it.

She sensed it beneath the surface, the final element she needed.

She didn't even have to concentrate hard to pull it out, it seemed to want to come to her. Most of the pieces had.

She looked down at the lump of material in the dirt beside her. Lumped together in a blob no one would suspect that she had gathered pieces of both fairly common minerals, kyanite and quartz, from several "mystical hot spots" around the world. And even if they did, they would have no doubt figured that she was wasting her time.

Lorna Dane, the mutant known as Polaris stared at the lump of minerals again and shaped the image in her mind. The image of what was to be. The image that Rina had described for her.

It would be easy enough to fashion into the proper shape, for someone who possessed the power to do so.

She watched as the final piece of kyanite pulled itself free from the earth, shoving itself up through the dirt as easily as time and gravity had forced it down beneath it.

She allowed herself a smile as she placed the piece with the others.

She tapped into the Earth's magnetic field, allowing herself to flow across the key lines of power. Her mind went down the paths she expected them to, to a point.

She shook her head and forced herself back into her own body.

Rina Patel, Timeslip, had sent her forward in time to complete this task. A great evil was coming, and she had to do her part to help stop it. Even if she wasn't a Defender anymore.

She was apparently back with X-Factor in this time, sort of, and not having the best time of it. She had felt that much, but not much more.

There were some things that were better to learn as you went.

Lorna Dane stared at the lump on the ground for a moment and smiled. All she had to do was to shape the minerals to specification and deliver it to the right time and place. It didn't seem like much... but Rina had acted like it was.

It was something important that only Polaris would be able to pull off. She was... needed. Lorna hugged the word close to her bosom for a moment. No matter what else happened, she would remember the feeling she had gotten went Rina had told her that.

"You are needed". It wasn't much sentence-wise, but it meant more than the time traveler might possibly know. It meant that she was of use. That, even if circumstances never permitted her to return to the fold, that deep in their hearts... deep in her own heart... she would always be one of

	October- Year 4
	#198

Fire Lake

He would always be a Defender.

Even if they didn't like it.

"Face it Daimon" he muttered to himself, "They don't."

"Did you say something?" Jaine Cutter questioned from where she lounged on the sofa.

He shook his mane of hair in her direction, "Just talking to myself again." he said with a half-hearted smile.

She got up from the sofa and started walking over to his chair.

He stared at her as she walked, with more than a half-hearted leer.

She had died for him, back in the war that had attempted to tear apart Hell. She had the potential to die for him again.

Loyalty was hard to find, especially if you happened to wear the Black Halo that marked you as the King of Hell.

She knelt at his feet, a deadly supplicant aimed at the hearts of those who dared to stand in his path.

He stared out the window and tried his best not to shudder. IT was coming, he smelled it on the wind.

There was a force out there bent on destroying his old team. Bent on destroying the old friends who would gladly take his head if given half the chance.

He didn't blame them. Or tried not to at any rate. He had always tried to keep that part in check when he had been with them. Not just the "Darksoul" that dwelt in him... but the fact that, at heart, he was a complete bastard. He had been known as the "Son of Satan" in their ranks, but none of them, not even Patsy, had truly understood what that meant. None of them had known that one day he would have to stand exposed to the world for what he was. The Son of Satan. Someone who, by definition, had to be a complete and utter bastard at times.

It came with the territory. It went with the job.

A job that he had taken from his father when he killed him. The Black Halo had simply faded from one figure and arose on another.

But now... there was something happening. Something that gave him chills.

It wasn't that the forces of darkness were moving against the Defenders - that tended to happen every once in awhile. It was that they had not come to him. They were making alliances within the kingdoms of dread, but had not even attempted to gain his ear.

He had watched them from that point. Watched and waited for the man in green to show up at his doorstep. Knowing that it would not be far off...

He took Jaine Cutter on the hard wood floor, rolling off of her when he had finished. "Should we go - or wait?" he asked her.

She stared at him with a satisfied smile. "As long as I'm at your side my lord - I will be satisfied."

He nodded to himself. Since her resurrection, that was the only sort of answer he had found he could expect: One of devotion lacking substance.

He muttered her name under his breath, hoping that Jaine didn't hear it.

If she did, she made no sign.

"Patsy" he muttered again, as he rose back to his feet and stared out the window at the gathering storm. "I'm coming home"

In an underground complex

Boomerang shifted from one foot to the other, waiting. "Are you sure he's suppose to show up?"

Nitro shrugged, "That's what the boss said. He said he was showing up and that we needed to wait here for him."

Hammer and Anvil walked over to one of the nearby mammoth machines, as if attempting to study it.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you" Basilisk hissed. "The boss said to stay put... he didn't say anything about nosing around his machinery."

"He didn't say that we couldn't either." Anvil pointed out. Hammer smiled defiantly.

"Nor did I say that you could." a voice rose from nowhere.

There was a shimmering light, and Kang the Conqueror stepped out from it. "I did not go through so much trouble to reunite the Crime Cartel so that you could disobey me."

Hammer took a step back, dragging his partner with him via the chain that linked them together. "Sorry boss" he stammered. Anvil said nothing.

Kang nodded, once. "Where are the others?" he inquired.

The members of the Crime Cartel looked around the room, trying to figure out who was missing. Solarr was standing with his arms folded nearby, but...

"Do you mean Hydroman?" Anvil asked helpfully, "If so, we haven't seen him since..."

Kang shook his head, "No, I know where he is now... but, he is not needed for what we shall do. I am speaking of, the others..." Kang looked around the room once more, and then felt his metal features twist into a smile.

"Oh yes" he muttered, after a moment, "They've gone on ahead, so to speak."