Previously…
"Okaaaay,” said Agnes, looking at Wod with an expression somewhere between bewilderment and amusement. “Well, follow me then, although I can’t guarantee she’ll want to talk to anyone.”
“Has there been no improvement since last time?” asked A'Jax, with sincere concern.
Agnes merely glanced at the Martian and shook her head as she passed him on her way to the fireplace.
It was a cave, clearly.
But it was a cave intrinsically linked to the Addams Mansion, so it was impossible to say how much of it was natural and how much had been shaped by the family and their peculiarities over the centuries. Parts of it were ordinary geological formations, others had been hollowed out by prehistoric ghouls, and still other spaces had been blasted into existence by some enthusiastic Addams with a generous use of dynamite.
The result was a massive underground complex consisting of multiple cavernous chambers filled with a variety of objects and tools that clearly reflected the career of its last owner.
In various chambers, one could see a collection of suits and armor representing a wide range of capabilities, as well as numerous vehicles ranging from relatively ordinary but visibly modified models to others that were clearly custom-designed pieces of cutting-edge military technology for travel by land, sea, or air.
And just like the Mansion, there was a certain museum-like quality to the whole place, with objects that were clearly “trophies” from past adventures: a huge taxidermied dinosaur, a giant silver quarter, a collection of typewriters with burnt-out bulbs marked with a “?” symbol, and so on.
“It’s just like one of those Batman comics Pugsley’s always reading,” Pup muttered, looking around as she, Wod, and A’Jax followed Agnes.
“I really must get my hands on a copy of that peculiar literature, Lady Pup,” replied Wod, taking in the surroundings, “And I must confess, this is giving me some ideas on how to make use of some of the catacombs beneath my castle.”
“Shh,” said Agnes, “We’re almost there…”
They had reached a projecting section of the central cavern, a rocky platform that overlooked a chasm shrouded in darkness, the bottom of which was invisible.
The area was dominated by an enormous computer and its many giant monitors, next to which was a section almost decorated like a living room: a couple of sofas, a table, and a couple of shelves filled with books, manuscripts, and maps.
Agnes led the visitors toward an opening in the rock wall, a tunnel lit by fluorescent lights that led into a smaller cavernous chamber. In this case, the space resembled a room, complete with a fireplace carved into the rock. There were rugs, a desk covered with papers and notes, a regal-looking bed, medical instruments in plain view, and an armchair in the center.
And sitting in a wheelchair by the fireplace was Wednesday Addams. The Moon Raven.
She was pale, but it wasn't the natural pallor typical of an Addams. Her marble-like skin, glistening with a thin sheen of cold sweat, suggested she was recovering from an illness. Although she was a young woman, she also seemed older than her years, as if she had aged prematurely.
But the most striking and alarming thing about her appearance was the absence of her left hand and the fact that her body, wrapped in a piece of black cloth, was encased in what could only be described as a sort of exoskeleton… a series of mechanical joints and limbs attached to her extremities and a sort of metal corset keeping her back straight.
“I see you’ve brought visitors, Agnes,” she said, her voice sounding almost broken. But the look in her eyes as she fixed them on her guests was sharp and alert. “A’Jax, it’s been so long since I’ve seen you. I told you not to bother me unless it was an emergency…”
“Ah, well, you see, it’s just that…”
“I can see that, A’Jax,” said Moon Raven, “I was expecting them.”
“Ah. Of course you did.”
“Were you truly expecting us, my lady?” asked Wod, intrigued.
“To be honest, you don’t look too bad for someone who was supposedly vaporized by a teleportation platform,” added Pup.
Moon Raven smiled… if you could call it a smile. If there had been babies around, they would have started crying.
“That contraption… was experimental, as far as I could tell later,” explained Moon Raven, “It genuinely vaporized Galpin, or at least I hope so. I had better luck. Or worse, depending on how you look at it.”
“That old clunker teleported the boss, but left one of her hands behind,” continued Agnes, who had slumped into the armchair. “The problem is that the teleportation was a bit of a mess when it rearranged the molecules upon dropping her off at the destination.”
“It didn’t turn me inside out, but it almost did,” Moon Raven continued, “I appeared out of nowhere, in some corner of the desert in Nevada, vomiting blood. When I came to, the teleportation had caused a complete situs inversus in all my internal organs… all my organs were in the opposite position from where they should normally be, like a mirror. I think I only survived because I’m an Addams.”
“And that’s when things got weird…,” A’Jax continued, “I sensed a psychic cry for help and went to her, but by the time I arrived, Wednesday was already convinced that she had to keep her survival a secret, and she made me swear that I would never reveal the secret to the rest of our companions.”
“Why?” asked Pup, though something immediately clicked in her mind, “Oooh, you had a vision, didn’t you?”
Moon Raven raised an eyebrow, impressed, “I see you’ve met other variants of us with that gift. And yes, it was a vision. Of my own death, right here. And with all of you present.”
“What!?” exclaimed A’Jax. “You didn’t tell me that!”
“Damn it, boss!” shouted Agnes.
“Well, I suggest we power up our devices and get her out of here as soon as possible, Lady Pup,” said Wod. “If her visions are as accurate as Weds’ and those of the other raven Wednesdays we’ve met, we’d better act quickly.”
“I completely agree,” Pup began to say, but her voice trailed off little by little.
Why? Because when she turned to look at Wod, she could clearly see the unfamiliar figure that had apparently appeared out of nowhere and was now standing behind A’Jax.
“A’Jax!” she shouted, “Behind you!”
The Martian Gorgon turned around, his instincts and years of heroic experience urging him to act immediately without wasting time on questions, suddenly aware of an enemy’s presence.
How could I not have sensed her?, he thought, I can't sense her mind, not even passively... it's like a void.
His fist, with enough force to shatter steel as if it were wet cardboard, flew toward the intruder only to be stopped by an invisible force, almost like a telekinetic aura or some kind of invisible force field.
“Oooh, you’re a shapeshifter, aren’t you?” said the intruder, a woman wrapped in a cloak, her face hidden by a black hood that seemed to absorb light and from within which the cawing of ravens seemed to echo. “I wonder what will happen if we give your morphic field a little nudge…”
A’Jax knew what was about to happen, and his brain felt the pain in fractions of a second before his body could register the sensation of every single one of his cells burning like a million red-hot needles. He tried to scream but couldn’t. The Martian expanded, suddenly losing control of his entire form, falling to the ground transformed into a nightmarish mass of shapeless, multicolored flesh from which snakes, tentacles, arms, and legs, multiple mouths and eyes emerged and were reabsorbed…
A series of sharp blades, vaguely shaped like a bird, flew from Agnes’s hands toward the intruder. The intruder simply tilted her head first in one direction and then the other, as the flying knives passed by her face without even grazing it.
“Ah, a DeMille… it’s always curious to come across one of you. You’re so rare… almost like a footnote.”
“Who… are you?” asked Moon Raven. “The vision only showed me a silhouette, but it was someone wearing a crimson hood…”
“Ah, one of my Nine,” said the intruder, tapping her chin with a finger. “I assume the future foretold in your vision was altered by the various multiversal interferences that have occurred lately. You see, I don’t usually intervene directly.”
“You’re the leader of the Normalcy Nine,” said Pup, looking away from the poor A’Jax, who, fortunately, had fallen unconscious.
“Please call me The Unkindness,” the hooded woman introduced herself, “Since you don’t work for me, it would be inappropriate for you to call me Mistress.”
“How humble of you,” muttered Wod, drawing his sword.
“Oh, I have no intention of ruling over anyone,” said the woman, “Of course, I’m not going to explain my plans to you either, since you’ll soon be… WOAH!”
She had to stop mid-sentence and move quickly to dodge a slash from Wod’s sword, who in seconds had shifted from his starting position to stand in front of the hooded woman with a speed few would expect from someone in heavy armor.
The Unkindness seemed slightly unnerved for the first time. In one hand, between two of her fingers, she held a strand of long hair.
“You’ve actually managed to cut me,” she said. “Impressive. And even more so since I don’t sense a trace of magic in that piece of steel you’re holding. That sword is, for all intents and purposes, as mundane as a sword can be.”
“No sword is mundane in the hands of a scion of the House of Adamo!” replied Wod.
“Adamo, Adamo… Ah, Addams!” said The Unkindness, suddenly cheerful, snapping her fingers, “You’re a Wednesday, of course!”
What happened next was too fast for human eyes to follow.
The Unkindness moved. But how and when she did so could not be easily explained. In the blink of an eye, she found herself where Wod had been, and the knight in black armor had been sent flying through the air, crashing into one of the bookshelves lined up against the cavern’s rock wall.
“Wod!” Pup shouted.
Wodnesdæg, prince of the House of Adamo, shook his head, dazed.
He felt, not without some apprehension, the dent in the chest plate of his armor where he had been struck and the pain of multiple broken ribs. Despite this, he rose on his own, without even needing to lean on his sword as a crutch.
Wod embraced the pain and let it wash over him like a soothing balm. There was something strange about it. Something familiar, something…
Oh.
An Addams is an Addams.
“You can’t kill me,” he said, a note of surprise in his voice as he realized the true nature of his opponent, “I can already feel my ribs snapping back into place…”
“Very sharp,” replied The Unkindness, “But your death is not really my intention. And there are always worse things.”
“Lady Pup,” said Wod, raising his sword once more and assuming a fighting stance, “Take Lady Moon Raven and young Agnes and leave with them; I’ll hold off the enemy.”
“I’m not leaving you here alone, Wod!” replied Pup. “I’m not going to…”
“Do it. Please. And tell my Eneit and my Geraint that everything will be all right.”
“Oh, yes, please leave,” added The Unkindness, “Oh, this is so lovely. A heroic, chivalrous sacrifice… I mean, it won’t do you much good…”
The cave trembled.
“Oh, what’s this now?” asked The Unkindness, “An earthquake?”
The tremor struck again, and within seconds the rock wall of the cave behind The Unkindness turned red as if something had heated it to incandescence before it burst into pieces, giving way to a reddish-blue mass that crashed into the intruder with the force of Armageddon itself.
The impact hurled The Unkindness against the opposite wall of the cave, smashing through it and leaving a dark crater behind.
And where the cloaked intruder had once stood facing Wod, there now stood a tall, muscular blonde woman dressed in a blue uniform and a red cape.
Enid Sinclair.
Superwolf, the Last Werewolf of Krypton.
“Enid,” Moon Raven murmured.
The alien werewolf looked at her with an expression that was somewhere between sadness and resignation, a silent exchange that spoke louder than a thousand words.
“Wednesday.”
“How did you… ? Did A’Jax… ?”
“Jax never told me anything, silly,” Superwolf replied with a sad smile. “I always knew you’d managed to survive. Did you really think I wouldn’t recognize that heartbeat of yours among all the billions in this world, eve if it was inverted? I just decided to wait until you were ready to come out of hiding.”
“Enid, I’m s…”
“Shh, there’s no time for apologies,” said Superwolf, “And you can get out of there.”
The Unkindness emerged from the crater she had left behind, almost as if the shadows themselves were vomiting her out. The blow she had received would have blown a normal human body to bloody dust. It would have caused at least a few scratches to various alien species or cosmic entities. But there didn’t seem to be any visible signs of damage on the woman… the only change was that her hood had fallen, exposing her pale face.
When she saw her, Pup couldn't help but feel a sense of dizziness.
“M… Morticia?” she asked.
The Unkindness turned to her with a puzzled look before bursting into laughter as if she’d just heard the funniest joke in the world.
“Good heavens, no!” she laughed. “Oh, that would be so utterly Freudian!”
“Wod,” said Superwolf, without taking her eyes off her enemy for a moment, “I suggest you stick to the escape plan and go with your companion and Wednesday and Agnes. I’ll be the one to hold this thing off. I’ve already sent a signal to my team to come get Jax.”
The prince of the House of Adamo nodded, though part of him couldn't help but feel as if he were swallowing ashes as he retreated. But pragmatism and common sense always won more battles than pride, a lesson he had learned the hard way long ago.
When he stood next to Pup, Moon Raven, and Agnes, his fellow traveler was already activating the dimensional jump device. In a matter of seconds, they would be out of there, out of that universe, leaving behind the uncertainty of whether that Enid could win the battle she was about to engage in.
The last thing he saw before the multiversal jump was Superwolf lunging at The Unkindness.
The Unkindness completely ignored her. In that split second, before the Kryptonian werewolf's fists could strike her again, the intruder's full attention was fixed on them.
She smiled and winked at them. And somehow her voice seemed to echo inside all their heads.
See you soon!
And Wod felt terror.
Because he knew that The Unkindness wouldn't be easily defeated. That she wouldn't give up, that she would be stubborn, determined, and capable enough to follow them all the way to Hell itself if necessary.
Because she was an Addams.
Worse.
She was a Wednesday.
NOTES
And with that, this mini-arc comes to an end… and technically, so does this entire series of dimensional leaps with the main group split into multiple teams. And yes, I’m aware that this leaves the The Next Generation segment with only three parts instead of four, but it just got resolved sooner than the others. A small miscalculation on my part, sorry 😅
And well, there are no more doubts about who The Unkindness is. I hope.
Of course, now the question is… What the hell is her real plan?
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