Nightmare watched as the group he'd put together were coopted by the Githyanki wizard/warlord. It didn't bother him. He planned to bring them all to the attention of Darkseid soon anyway and he felt that from what he'd seen, Darkseid would have no trouble dealing with the Githyanki. What difference the ambitions of this Githyanki? It didn't matter to him! He would relish watching Darkseid crush this fool.

Just one more day and Nightmare would be ready to make his existance known to Darkseid and they would be a force together to reckon with.

Yellowjacket penetrated the caverns, travelling at the size of an insect. Grimble Grumble cast a spell on her that endowed her with infravision. He promised it would help her see in the dark caverns. She nervously flitted through the cavern looking for any sign of the monsters she'd been told to expect. In this odd world governed by magic she wasn't sure her Yellowjacket powers gave her the edge she needed to come out on top.

Suddenly she heard an odd argument. As she entered a new chamber, she spotted the bizarre two headed giant called an Ettin apparently arguing with itself. It seemed the left head had no desire to go out into the night after the Ettin had had that run in with Hercules and wanted to leave the cavern through the backway. The right head; that appeared to be dominant, said that Hercules had only been lucky and if the Ettin used it's heads it could defeat that buffoon. The left head didn't seem so sure but finally fell silent after the right arm belted it with a blow from the massive club it held while the right head yelled "Just do as I say!"

Rita couldn't help but be reminded of an old Popeye cartoon that she'd seen when she was little where Popeye had to rescue Olive Oyl from an evil Sinbad who looked suspiciously like Bluto.

Trying to suppress laughter. she flitted back to warn the party that the Ettin was on it's way.

Rita flew out of the cavern and flitted to Hank Hall to let him know first since the Ettin had been designated for him.

As soon as Hank heard, he struggled to remain nonchalant while he positioned himself to receive the ettin and bring him down. Grimble Grumble had spent a good hour explaining why the ettin needed to be put down and now Hank had gotten pumped up to deliver just desserts for such a despicable creature.

Suddenly the giant emerged from the cavern. Hawk shouted "Hawk!" and transformed to his heroic identity. The others fell back in order to give Hawk his due as he engaged the monster.

The Ettin; roaring, swung out with the huge club but Hawk's superspeed easily enabled him to evade the creatures blow and deliver a sound haymaker on the left head.

Dazed, the left head failed to mount a counter attack and actually dropped the great spear that was grasped in the right hand of the beast.

Rallying, the right hand of the ettin swung out with the club and barely missed Hawk as he dropped back to regroup.

Hawk was dwarfed by the huge ettin and he shot between the legs of his opponent and managed to deliver a back kick to the ettins rear that actually managed to cause the ettin to stagger a bit.

Angered the ettin whirled to face his opponent but Hawk used his superspeed to duck back behind the ettin and deliver another embarrassing kick to the ettins backside and then following through with an uppercut that had enough force to pulp the left head of the ettin.

The Ettin only had it's right head and right arm left to battle with. Stirred to an epic fury, the right head launched another assault that actually managed to connect with Hawk despite his superior speed. Hawk shrugged it off though because his limited invulnerability was more then enough to deflect the ettin's blow and Hawk deftly finished off his brutish opponent.

Hercules walked out applauding his new friend's skills and hefted the Ettin out of the battlezone to make room for the next skirmish.

Yellowjacket reentered the caverns to see whether any of the other monsters were going to come out. She didn't get far before she discovered a hideous creature that looked like some kind of hellish stag with a badger's head and a lion's tale. It was moving rather stealthily out of the cavern. She didn't see any sign of the other two monsters so she flitted back to the group and gave her warning.

This time Rahne was up and as the creature emerged, Rahne morphed into Wolfsbane and charged the monster immediately. She leaped for the throat but the monster deftly dodged her attack.

The two circled each other. Rahne snarled at her opponent but inside she was very afraid. The creature was one of the most hellish, ugly things Rahne had ever seen. Suddenly the creature lunged at Wolfsbane. It clamped on to Rahne's foreleg and bit down with tremendous force.

Rahne's left foreleg snapped, She howled in pain. Ripping at the Leucrotta's ear she managed to force the creature to release it's grip on her leg. The two continued to circle each other with Rahne favoring her broken foreleg.

The Leucrotta thought it had the advantage. It was larger then it's opponent and was becoming over confident. Wolfsbane actually thought she detected a sneer from the creature. Suddenly the beast reared up and gave a mocking laugh like a hyena. Wolfsbane spotted her opportunity and lunged in, ripping out the throat of the disgusting monstrosity.

As the lifeforce fled from the creature. Wolfsbane limped over to Wanda and collapsed.

Yellowjacket flew back into the cavern. After a long time she heard the noises of great beast. She hadn't seen the blue dragon so she was completely thrown when she nearly collided with the beast as she flew through, barely evading a head on collision.

As she regrouped, she was dismayed that the dragon seemed to be faster then she was and she wouldn't be able to warn the party in time.

Yellowjacket nearly panicked as she remembered that she was assigned to help eliminate the threat of the blue dragon. She hurried to catch up.

She could hear the dragon's roars as she flew along. She needed to prove to Hercules that she could pull her weight and would not betray the group somewhere down the road. She needed to earn Hercules' trust.

Luckily for her, the dragon had paused at the cavern entrance and sitting on it's haunches had reared up for dramatic effect and fired several lightning bolts into the air in a bravado performance designed to petrify his victims.

Yellowjacket flitted up to the dragon's left ear, flew in and began blasting indiscriminately at everything she saw.

The dragon's forepaws were too short to enable it to clasp it's ears but as it was, it reeled as it's equilibrium was destroyed by Yellowjacket's assault. Eventually it collapsed near the disguised Swamp Thing and the elemental simply reached out and snapped the dragon's neck, drawing on the power of the planet he existed on.

Once again Hercules cleaned up the mess.

After helping to eliminate the threat of the dragon, Rita was very proud of herself and basked in the praise of the Prince Of Power.

There was still one more threat; so dutifully she flitted back in the cave to monitor it and warn them.

This one made her more nervous then the other monsters because it was the weirdest. A giant eye with several eyestalks that each had a different power that she needed to avoid? How could that even be? She'd never heard of these things in any sort of mythology before and she suspected that if Dove hadn't blinded it, the heroes might not have won that first encounter. Heck, they even almost lost Hawk anyway!

This one was all eye! How could it not see her, no matter how small she got?

This was going to be tricky.

She found the Beholder. It looked like the monster had no intention of leaving it's lair. Disconcerted, Rita thought about her options. She could go and retrieve her friends on the assumption that the creature would stay put ---- or, she could really amaze her friends by eliminating this threat by herself.

Suddenly she noticed that every eyestalk of the creature seemed to be trained on her along with the greater eye. The damn thing had noticed her despite her small size.

Instantly terrified, Rita thought about fleeing, but she was suddenly overwhelmed by a feeling of sympathy for the plight of this poor misunderstood, kind and obviously harmless creature. so the only logical thing to do would be to fetch all her friends and introduce them so they could recognise the true benevolence of this poor misunderstood member of a harsh society.

Yellowjacket hurried to get her friends.

Yellowjacket eventually made it out and grew to human size and quickly announced "Hey friends! C'mon in! Everything's hunky dory!" and quickly flitted back into the cavern.

Hank looked at Dawn and said "Hunky Dory?" Everyone was instantly suspicious including and especially Grimble Grumble after he knew what hunky dory meant.

Grimble Grumble suggested they rush in and save their companion because she had to be under the influence of the beholder who evidently had great eyesight.

It was decided that Swamp Thing, Commissioner Gordon and Wolfsbane were to stay behind. The rest hurried to the rescue of Yellowjacket who they realised was in the thrall of the beholder and they needed to free her.

They each marvelled that the creature could spot someone the size of an insect so readily.

Eventually they burst into the chamber that contained the Beholder. As soon as the creature spotted Dove, it released a death ray but Wanda countered with a hex and the death ray slew the beholder instead.

Their obligation was over. They were free to do whatever they wanted, but all they wanted was get some sleep. it took the keen eye of Grimble Grumble to recognise the incidence of more delicious treasure, even greater then before.

And here's where I end the retcon arc.

I didn't even mean to do this originally. None of the characters that were introduced were even meant for the original plan for the story. But the odd thing is, I had a lot of fun writing it.

The folks that told me I should do it haven't even been heard from since I started it. It worked for me though.

If you aren't aware, every single character for all three Cosmic Rumble arcs were selected from the Infinity Challenge set and the Hypertime sets.

Characters from part one were selected because I opted for the top tier characters from my pov of each set. I went with spiderman and Batman because they were the promo pieces of their respective sets.

Wolverine was selected because he was a mailaway for his set, Hank Pym and Yellowjacket were Con exclusive pieces that were given away. Pym was introduced in the first arc and Yellowjacket shows up in the retcon arc because I like the character and wanted to work her in. I could easily have treated that version of Yellowjacket as a variation of Pym but I chose not to.

Several of the characters were selected from the Premiere editions.

The only ones left out were the Kingpin from Marvel and Robin and Manbat from DC.

Don't worry, you'll see all three of them eventually.

Most of the rest I selected from the overall set releases. I went a little hog wild. initially throwing in the characters I thought had the lowest profile (the generics), then I decided to add some middle tier figures who I specifically had a soft spot for and then I got carried away and added all the figures that never got a remake.

Finally there's the initial collossals that were released in tandem with Infinity Gauntlet and Hypertime. That's why the Sentinels and Sinestro showed up.


Next up is Cosmic Rumble 3 where all the characters from the other stories start interacting and I begin adding characters from Clobbering Time.

But don't expect to see the FF, Doom or Thor. They've been disqualified because of some rules I set for myself which should be obvious because of what i've done before.

I decided to add a little retcon to this retcon. I left out one more character from the Hypertime set, that I'd like to have in this story that I won't be able to introduce from a later set.


Nightmare waited until after Sinestro left after decimating part of Gotham City, then decided to visit the site himself to inspect it and see if he could learn anything useful about the denizens of this alternate universe that he was just beginning to learn about.

As he investigated the beach area where he knew each of the natives of the other universe had been appearing, he saw something large scuttle out of the corner of his eye.

Had he been a mere mortal, it would have given him a tremendous fright, but since he was the master of horror, he was completely unphased.

Instead, he cast out and against it's will, the creature was forced to reveal itself to Nightmare in all it's fetid glory.

Nightmare observed a horrid looking man spider and studied him with an appraising eye. "Not bad." He thought, "Not bad at all." Easily equal to some of Nightmare's more pedestrian efforts.

He addressed the man spider, "Who are you?'

"I am Anton Arcane." Arcane then gave Nightmare an abreviated history of how he came to be. Nightmare's interest was peaked when he learned that Arcane blamed the swamp Thing for his unfortunate state and longed to bring about the destruction of the Earth elemental.

Nightmare said "You will come with me." and gathered Arcane up and brought him to Nightmare's dimension.

Link to the Clobbering Time Arc:
http://www.hcrealms.com/forum/showthread.php?t=341297