"Ngh… what just happened?"
Maya looked down at the hand-blade punched through her heart, coughing blood, and forced the words out.
"I am the Traveler—Sir Warren Traveler, wanderer of space and time! Thank you. Your blood has brought me back to my senses. This cursed Eye of Watoomb—you will not control me, nnnghAAAAH!"
The aged man seemed to have snapped back to himself—only he'd managed a few sentences before his eyes flooded gold again and he seized his head and shrieked in agony.
"Haah—haah—hah—"
After a while, Warren Traveler sank to one knee, dragging in great ragged lungfuls of air. It was then he noticed something off about his right hand. The person in the spider-suit—the one he'd run clean through—was gone. All that was left was a charred scrap of burnt clothing on the ground, and a pair of silver metal boxes, scorched and buckled out of shape.
"Did that person burn to ash in a heartbeat? Nnngh—AAH— damn you! You are only a weapon. A weapon! I am the Traveler. I am the Sorcerer Supreme. How dare you invade my mind—AAAAH—"
(Author's note: "Sorcerer Supreme" is just a rank of mage—it's not the Ancient One's exclusive title. Same as Wilson Fisk's "Kingpin": more of a class, like "Emperor" or "Overlord" back home.)
Warren was still screaming his throat raw when, all at once, the threads scattered across the ground sprang up as though they'd come alive and lashed him tight from head to foot.
BOOM! BOOM!
Before he could even register it, a small golden fist slammed into the spine at his back.
CRACK!
"Ah—gah—"
Warren Traveler's body snapped in two clean across the waist!
And it was at that moment that a dark-gold-haired "Itachi" appeared over Warren's corpse. Who else could it be but Maya's Itachi disguise?
"Hmph. You thought killing the Spider-Man ended it? How naïve. Today the great and mighty Itachi will be the one to finish you!"
Clearly, our Maya—having just dropped a monster of an enemy—was starting to let it go to her head.
Only, as the saying goes: flaunt it, and the lightning comes for you.
CRACK!
Ssschunk!
"Gah—how are you not dead?"
Maya looked down at the blade of thunder run straight through her heart and asked the question through gritted teeth.
The two severed halves of the corpse on the ground slowly went hazy and dissolved into nothing. And a figure bound tight in thread knelt, disheveled, at the lip of the great crater—Warren Traveler, from a moment ago.
Warren, spitting blood, wrestled against the threads and let out a low heh-heh of a laugh. "Marvelous fist. You're running with that spider-fellow, aren't you? After everything Watoomb put me through, it owed me something in return, didn't it? You did ambush me, I'll grant you that. Bound me so I couldn't so much as trigger my Time Reversal. Fine timing, a clever, tidy little plan. But—heh—in that same instant my psychic power had you good and turned around. Your fist landed a touch off the mark."
"Is it that golden eye? What is the Eye of Watoomb?" Maya asked weakly, sprawled on the ground.
Warren didn't answer. Instead he came swaying forward, planted a foot on "Itachi's" back, and asked, "And who are you? Iron Fist? Was that other one the Spider-Man? He didn't sling any webs—had some idiotic iron box strapped to his waist—and the timing of when you two appear is all wrong."
Something turned over in the mind of the Maya on the ground. Quick as anything she rearranged her expression into the slack, unfocused look of someone already at death's door, and mumbled, dazed, "We're… a superhero squad. Tony Stark put us together. He built himself a suit of iron armor, too—goes around calling himself Iron Man. Me, I'm just hired help. Tell me—who are you? Why did you level this whole block?"
Is there something off about this Stark? Warren's eyes narrowed. I'll have to take a good hard look at the man later.
He mulled it over, glancing again at the strange, half-dead "Iron Fist," then said, "I am the Traveler of space and time! In another universe, wandering idly through London, I stumbled by chance upon a magic shop. And better still—the fool who owned it hadn't the faintest idea what he had. He'd set the Eye of Watoomb right out on a shelf. Heh. Even so, he wanted 800 Galleons for it—more than I could afford. But I am the Sorcerer Supreme! I swallowed the fool's sneering, made a show of haggling, and all the while quietly picked apart the wards guarding his shop."
"Yes—when I killed him, he wore the very same face you're wearing now. Can't-believe-it. Ha ha ha ha! The Eye of Watoomb—I had it, the Eye of Watoomb was mine! And to shake off those broomstick-riding halfwits on my trail, I chose a safe, quiet, peaceable universe. Yours. By my reckoning, Earth in the year '93—Manhattan ought to have no superheroes at all. No one should have been able to disturb my work. Who could have guessed two little insects like you would come crawling to my door so fast? Still—to die at the hands of the great Sir Traveler, even a bug ought to feel some pride. Ha ha ha!"
So that was the story. But—does the Marvel universe even have someone named Warren Traveler?
Maya's head snapped up, all at once bright and alert. "You call yourself 'Sir.' Did you go and butter up some Earth's British king, and he gave you a little knighthood out of the goodness of his heart?"
"How did you—ngh—hmph. I don't butter anyone up. Queen Elizabeth has an eye for a hero. She knew my worth, and she knighted me herself!" Warren's face twitched; he explained it with a distinctly forced air.
"That reminds me—why are you still not dead? I ran you through the heart."
Maya didn't answer. Instead she slid a blue-glowing kunai from her waist and stabbed at Warren's calf.
"I am Itachi! You dare use genjutsu against me, you English country bumpkin?"
Facing the incoming little pigsticker, Warren didn't so much as flinch. He stamped down on Maya's right foot, and a crackling sheet of electric arcs ripped out of it.
"Gah—ah—nnngh—" Maya screamed and convulsed.
Cling. The kunai dropped to the ground.
Curious, Warren stooped and picked up the ghost-blue kunai, marveling. "Now this toy of yours isn't bad—a magic item, no less. This Earth of yours confuses me more by the minute. Since you've handed me a gift I quite like, I'll forgive that little insolence of yours just now. The wind-blade death-of-a-thousand-cuts—no, too cruel, we'll skip it. Tell you what: how about I summon a hellhound to eat you? Soul and all, swallowed whole—doesn't that sound splendid?"
"I am the Iron Fist! I am K'un-Lun's Iron Fist! Don't you dare try to humiliate me—behold, I'll detonate the Power of Shou-Lao and take you with me!" Maya cried, thrashing.
Hearing that, and seeing the bizarre "Iron Fist" on the ground start blazing gold from head to toe, Warren's heart lurched—fwip—and he flung himself a good ten-plus meters clear.
Ssschunk. Bang! Maya's Shadow Clone vanished.
"Ngh—wasn't that supposed to be a divine-power self-destruct? Why was the blast so feeble?" Warren muttered, wary and unsure.
Elsewhere—atop a certain shipping container down at the docks.
"Well? Maya—did you learn anything?"
Stick, wheezing, put the question to the Maya sitting cross-legged before him.