Kabuki, Shi, Boon and the rest had escaped the Ogre Magi's influence, and therefore the Hand, but they felt vulnerable. Yukio was a dangerous ally. She was infatuated with Boon and that was their ace in the hole but how long would that last? No one really trusted Yukio, not even Boon, but no one really could guess whether she would turn on them.

For that matter, the other Noh assassins were a dangerous commodity. Each of them had pledged to slay Kabuki and who knew if they'd truly renounced their pledge.

The group had found refuge with a kindly mountain farmer and goatherd who was temporarily sheltering them. They could only hope they hadn't put him and his family in mortal danger.

Divebomber decided to go into hiding. After a long flight, he found a cluster of hills where he might hole up. He needed to recover from injuries. That chimera was extremely deadly. Divebomber was lucky to have survived. It would be a while before he would be able to infect anyone with a brood embryo anyway. He settled down to recover.

DD, Marrow and Samandahl Rey began dealing with the infected Brood. Harmless nymphs had been turned into murderous monstrosities. Hedonous Satyrs had been subverted into destructive beasts. Noble centaurs had been transformed into selfish insects.

They had no choice but to destroy the infected. There was no way they could restore them. If they didn't stop it now, it would only spread and get worse.

When they thought they had it under control, Samandahl Rey flew off in search of the infected chimera.

Daredevil and Marrow were left to compare notes and try to make sense of the carnage.

superb bit of comic team uppery? always lookin forward to this story.

Raksor, Nenora and Paibok; who were acting regents ruling the Skrull Empire, were receiving a report from field agent Skrulls.

A Skrull ship had located a previously uncharted planet called Kalanor. The planet seems to be undergoing the same process that the Skrull planets endured previously. The Skrulls have claimed the planet as property of the Skrull empire.

The other order of business was that both the Skrulls and the Saurians were being harassed by Manhunter robots. Each race was on alert.

There were also unconfirmed sightings of Acanti. This was bad news indeed and all starship captains were ordered to destroy them on sight if spotted. The Saurians were also advised to destroy any Acanti encountered without reservation.

The Brood infected Chimera managed to implant eggs in several large creatures including a cyclops and several griffons, though it died implanting an Androsphinx. Although the Androsphinx destroyed the chimera it soon after became the primary Brood infector for larger monster and a Brood pandemic was beginning.

Samandahl Rey found himself quite busy dealing with the more powerful monsters that had become Brood.

Daredevil and Marrow were battling the less powerful Brood infected creatures while Daredevil tried frantically to locate the Mole Man.

Judge Dredd, Judge Anderson and Judge Hershey were assigned to work with a small contingent of Shield Agents; including Clay Quartermain, and a few Checkmate agents. Their goal was to try to ferret out the whereabouts of the Dark Judges.

So far they had no leads.

After John Stewart helped liberate Moondragon's spaceship, he created a wormhole and sent her ahead of him to Xandar to entreat Firelord on their mission.

John Stewart then took it upon himself to observe the Skrulls and get a feel for their motivations.

Zatanna and the Scarlet Witch went back to their mission of putting up wards to try to prevent intrusions by Nightmare in the various headquarters. They were working on Avengers Mansion now and were going to do the JLA HQ next.

The newly arrived citizens of Smallville were having trouble accepting the Legion members story and it took reassurances from the Flash and Wonder Woman to assuage their fears.

Starfire (Koriand'er) was released from Themiscyra to join Beast Boy in New York City and Captain America and the Wasp were needed to explain to the newly arrived city residents (who appeared to be solely from the Marvel universe) who they were and why they weren't a threat.

Medusa had her hands full calming the citizens of Attilan on the Blue Area of the Moon while trying to help them understand why the rest of the Royal Family weren't there and attempted to explain the second more fertile moon.

Jack Knight (Starman) had successfully calmed the residents of Opal City with the peculiar help of Plastic Man who had joined him to protect the city. To Plastic Man's delight, he discovered his old friend Woozy Winks was in the city.

In Capital City, Doc Samson was offering his therapeutic services to any Easy Company soldiers who were suffering from future shock.

Things were relatively peaceful in Central and Midway City.

Metropolis still suffered under the iron grips of both Bane and Lex Luthor.

Gotham City had settled into a reasonable routine with the unusual caveat that (with the exception of the Penguin, who had Batman's reserved blessing) none of Batman's many enemies were at large.

The Danger Girls; who were in Gotham City at the time, were delighted to discover that Deuce, Silicon Valerie and Johnny Barracuda had docked the Danger Girl yacht in Gotham Harbor and staying there.

Day 9: An alternate reality Earth, on an unexplained second moon, mysteriously containing an atmosphere and gravity.

Hepzibah had tumbled through the reality rift whiler fleeing a mob trying desperately to kill her. The rift seemed to be a convenient; if suspicious, means of preserving her life.

When she landed; the rift closed behind her, blocking her pursuers. She landed deftly and was immediately assaulted with many odors.

Blood was in the air, and something even more ominous. She smelled the Brood!

Alarmed, she whipped out her Shiar energy gun and looked around hard.

It was then she noticed the peculiar cluster of odd yellowish creatures blinking at her.

They seemed to be blind or having difficulty with the bright sun and had their own peculiar odor.

Whatever the case, they seemed harmless and likely candidates to be prime Brood victims.

Hepzibah tried to take stock of where she was. She was astonished to see the silhouette of the Earth looming large in the sky. How could that be? The Earth's moon was uninhabitable! This did not make sense.

Hepzibah looked around to spot any Brood. None were in sight but she saw the carnage of several corpses that suggested the Brood had been here. Her keen ears picked up the sounds of battle somewhere in the distance and decided to investigate.

Meanwhile; the Moloids, through some unknown sense of their own, sensed the presence of their leader and began an en masse exodus in his direction.

Hepzibah discovered a bizarre duo battling creatures infected by the Brood and used her energy gun to eliminate the Brood and end the fight quickly.

Marrow looked at who was doing the shooting and decided that weird was the order of the day. A humanoid skunk woman with a ray gun! How crazy was this day going to get?

Daredevil stopped pummelling the now deceased Brood/satyr and aimed his own senses at the newcomer.

He too was not sure what he was sensing. An anthropomorphic skunk? What was this about?

Hepzibah cautiously approached the others, who looked as strange to her as she did to them. Not sure what language the strange duo might speak, she made gestures with her hands to indicate her peaceful intent.

She was shocked when the bright pink female said, in English: "What or who the heck are you?"

Hepzibah had learned English during her long stay on Earth and introduced herself, mentioning the X-Men as her good friends.

Marrow's eyes narrowed at the mention of the X-Men. She had mixed feelings about them.

Daredevil was familiar enough with the X-Men as well and wasted no time being suspicious of the newcomer. Instead; knowing that Marrow had appeared along with the Brood, and he had appeared along with the mole Man, he asked Hepzibah if anyone else had appeared with her when she arrived. Hepzibah described the herd of moloids and Murdock knew that the Mole Man's servants had joined him in this strange place.

To him it merely meant more potential victims for these strange creatures and Daredevil began grilling Hepzibah on what she knew about these Brood creatures. Soon he and Marrow knew just exactly what they were faced with. They were just a little dismayed at what they heard.

The moloids moved unerringly toward their master. Two Brood infected centaurs moved to intercept them but were overwhelmed by the swarm of moloids which proceeded to take them apart, overwhelming them by sheer weight of numbers.

This happened several times until the infected creatures began to avoid the swarm of moloids altogether.

Finally the moloids located their target. The Mole Man, heartened by the presence of his faithful followers, rallied to overcome his agoraphobia and set out with his mass of lackeys to brave this strange new world.

The morning progressed with an ongoing struggle against the Brood.

Samandahl Rey battled and destroyed the greater Brood infected menaces while Daredevil, Marrow and Hepzibah did what they could against the weaker Brood infections.

The Mole Man guided his moloid horde along and generally overwhelmed lesser brood infected creatures as well, though he failed to cross paths with Daredevil's small team.

Every time DD detected the Mole Man's scent they were interrupted by attacking Brood infected creatures and driven away.

Meanwhile, the Mole Man drove his relentless horde of moloids through the devastation with aplomb, his agoraphobia forgotten in his triumphs against the Brood.

Luckily; and unknown to him, Samandahl Rey was keeping the more powerful infected monsters away from all of them.

Day 9: An alternate universe Earth, on an unexplained second moon, Noon.

Ilyana Rasputin; also known as Magik, looked down at herself incredulously. She was dead! She died of the Legacy virus! She bid goodbye to her Piotr just before she died! It was still fresh in her memory!

How? How was she alive? How could it be? Was this the afterlife? Yet here she was, dressed in her New Mutants costume and armed with her soul sword.

She looked around and met the icy stare of a tall uniformed blue skinned alien she knew from the training she'd received from Xavier was a member of the Kree.

The dour creature aimed his weapon at her and began speaking unintelligibly at her.

She had no idea what he was saying but she did know that he was in dire danger as some strange creature; clearly infected by the Brood, was about to pounce on him from behind.

Shouting a warning and pointing behind him, he barely saved himself with a blast from his laser rifle and then he was beset by two more Brood infected creatures.

She wanted to help him but she found herself beset by her own attackers.

Desparately, she found herself swinging her soul sword at the Brood and found that because the infected creatures were magical, her soul sword was effective.

Still; more Brood creatures were advancing, and she was forced to flee, leaving the lonely Kree warrior to his own devices.

Looking back once, she saw that he seemed to be holding his own.

Magik fled the advancing Brood/centaurs as fast as she could, which wasn't very fast because she was only a normal human physically.

All seemed to be lost when she nearly ran into the Mole Man and his horde of Moloids. The Moloids swarmed her attackers and destroyed them in short order.

It was then that Illyana noticed the looming Earth image that hovered above her like a displaced teacher's globe.

Once again she was dumbfounded. Where was she?

The Mole Man approached her and asked, "Are you all right girl?"

Illyana nodded and pointed up at the inexpicable sight. The Mole Man's eyes were poor and because of that he didn't get what she was driving at initially.

Eventually, he realized what she was pointing at and told her about what had happened to him, leaving out references to Daredevil that she needed to know.

Steeling herself, Illyana told the Mole Man to hunch his moloids together because she was going to try something wild with her mutant power. If it weren't for the Brood, she might never have tried this.

Concentrating; she applied her mutant power toward the Earth above, taking herself, the Mole Man and the entire moloid horde with her. It was her most ambitious teleport she'd ever tried.

She found herself, the Mole Man and the entire moloid horde, securely in a vast cavern that the Mole Man seemed completely at home with.

A grateful Mole Man told Illyana that she would always be welcome among him and his moloids.

Illyana accepted his gracious thanks and assessed what the results of her teleportation meant.

She soon realized she'd taken them all a week into the past. The past of this alternate Earth. She teleported again and found herself back where she'd left, only a half hour later from when she'd left. The brood infected creatures had moved on.

She found no sign of the Kree warrior.