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List of important happenings and plot development:

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Page 2 (continued)





[enter the Hulk and Rosie from New York City]

Hulk soon found himself in a set of ruins that caused him to stop, for two reasons. First, he didn't cause them. Second, he didn't know what DID. Looking around, the green behemoth figured that the area was safe enough. It was at this point that he set Rosie down on the ground. After doing so, he stood fully upright and regarded the little girl more carefully.

Rosie simply stood there and stared wide eyed up at the Hulk, her little mouth gaping. She only stood a little under hip high around most people, she figured she hadn't been created very tall to add to her overall cute factor. But this...she...she'd be flattened if the thing took a step forward.
"......wow.....you're really, really tall......" she said quietly. It was all she could think to say really. She was honestly stunned. THIS is what the man was talking about earlier. Holy CRAP!
Well...it did save her. So...maybe she didn't have too much to worry about. As long as she stayed clear of his feet. ...or fists. ...or pretty much any body part that he decided to slam down. "I....um....thank you...."

Hulk looked at Rosie carefully as she replied, and finally said in return, "Safe now. No danger for Hulk or Rosie here." Rosie looked up at him a moment, then relaxed a bit and gave him a little smile. "Yeah...thank you, Hulk." Well, he seemed...kind of nice so far. Maybe she really didn't have anything to worry about.
"Rosie quiet," Hulk reflected out loud. "Hulk like Rosie." He held down a hand on the ground, to let her climb on again. Rosie looked at his hand a moment, then practically beamed as she carefully climbed into his hand. "I think I like you too, Hulk." Rosie replied with a bright smile. After what she seen Hulk do in the plane, then how easily he got here, and how big he was...he liked her. This. Was. Awesome.



"Exccccelent," the creature hissed gleefully, "Let's get started, then. You can start searching immediately, but remember the rules!" The next instant, both she and her prisoner had vanished.

{Exit Supergirl to Unknown}

Shadow stared off at where the creature had been, then down at the ground. She was going to kill that thing once she was able to. She'd just have to play it's game until then.
She paused a moment, in thought, then visibly became angry again. Riku was gone. How the Hell did he manage to break free?! She started to sink into her shadow to find him, but stopped herself and blinked. There was another shadow nearby...Rosie's. And one she didn't recognize.
She grimaced again, then sank into her shadow.




Page 3


Once she was safely in his hand, he lifted it up so that it was level with his chest and began walking. Decent imprints of his feet were left in the ground as he walked. Looking around, he said "Hulk confused. Hulk doesn't know this. Hulk didn't cause this."
Rosie looked around as well. "I don't know. I don't recognise this place either." Rosie replied. Hopefully this wasn't a city like...an hour ago. Hopefully this was just...slums or something. Yeah.

Shadow soon emerged from the shadow of a nearby rooftop. She didn't want to just pop out of Rosie's shadow, especially since her shadow had diminished to such a small size for some reason.
Carefully, she looked out over the edge at where the child should be. She stared down at the masive green...thing...and at the little red and white girl in his hand.

Hulk continued to look around. The whole scene was a little bewildering. Usually, this kind of destruction was there because he CAUSED it. This time, it was already here. It disturbed him, for some reason. It may, or it may not, have had something to do with how Bruce would have felt about it. Neither Hulk or Bruce would ever know.

Shadow stared down at the two for a bit longer, then stood rather than in a stealthy crouch. The beast didn't look like he was there to cause a commotion...or to hurt Rosie. Well then, suppose she could try to take Rosie out of his hand....so to speak. The creature wouldn't have put Warp anywhere remotely close to here, so there was no point in making her head spin trying to find him right now.



{Enter Deadpool from Oscorp}

"--it." ... Wait... what the hell? He couldn't pull his hand off of the button. ...Why not?! WHAT?! He'd just teleported again, which meant that any second now--

{Exit to Warehouse}



Hulk continued walking. There was a strange feel in the air. It was too clean. "Hulk think no one here for long time."
Rosie looked around, then nodded in agreement. "It sure doesn't look like anyone's been around here." she said, looking back up at him. Then she paused a moment and stared past him at a nearby building. More specifically the woman standing on it.
Hulk felt Rosie tense up in his hand, and looked in the direction she was looking. He saw her. "Someone here. Here for Hulk?!" His temper was already nearly out the window.

Roxanne grimaced a bit. Alright, so he was massive and had a problem with overreacting apparently. She needed to try and keep him as calm as can be until Rosie was safely out of the way.
"No, I'm here to take Rosie back." she replied gently, but loud enough that he could hear her.






"Mask Woman want Hulk's friend?" Hulk sounded quieter, but appeared to be even more disturbed by this development. He wasn't in a rage so much as a quiet anger. A deep, tense quiet anger. "Hulk won't let you near her. Hulk will smash Mask Woman like bug."

Roxanne tensed a moment. Friend? Alright, well she didn't have to worry about that thing hurting her. But...she wasn't comfortable with just leaving her with him. Something had almost happened to her twice while Shadow was away from her. Now she had just lost Warp. She wasn't taking any chances. "I'm not going to hurt her." she replied calmly.

Quite suddenly, something black was standing right behind the Hulk, close enough to whisper into his ear. No prizes for guessing who. In a low, two toned voice, it hissed, "She is. That's all she wants. She wants to hurt Hulk, and after Hulk is gone, she will hurt Hulk's friends. All of them. Starting with the little girl." Its nightmarish mouth opened into an even more terrible grin, and then it vanished without a sound before the green behemoth could turn around.

Shadow's eyes snapped behind the large green creature a moment. Still being on the roof of the building, she could see behind him, but couldn't really make out what it was. She had a strange feeling she knew what it was, and just the thought of it made her angry. Whatever the case, it was gone before she could really be sure.

Hulk's rage was growing, thanks to Supergirl's quick role-play of the shoulder-devil. "Masked Woman has one chance to leave Hulk and Hulk's friend alone!" He bellowed, the cry echoing throughout No Man's Land, and into some of the restored district of Gotham. Somewhere in his heart, Hulk didn't want to subject Rosie to violence, but if he had to, so be it.

Shadow automatically tensed as the thing bellowed at her. Her immediate reaction was to do as the thing said and just leave. She still had to find Warp...and this was wasting time anyway. The thing seemed very determined to protect Rosie, perhaps he wouldn't let anything happen to her.
Logically, that probably would be best. Could she really take this thing on anyway? While her mind was on looking for Warp?
Emotionally though, she wanted to be sure nothing happened to Rosie. She kept picturing Rosie's terrified little face as she huddled in the corner of a store all by herself. The horror she could feel radiating off of Rosie after one of her duplicates had been killed while Shadow was gone.
She didn't want that to happen. Not again.
Roxanne hesitated for a moment, trying to decide on what to do.

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Rosie waited a moment longer to make sure that he was in a calmer state, then smiled a bit and carefully made her way out of the building. She walked up to Hulk as gently and carefully as she could, not wanting to make any hurried movements that might make him anxious again. Once she was within a few feet of him, she stopped and looked up at him.
"Are you ok?" she asked gently.

Hulk turned around slowly, to make sure he didn't accidentally hit her, and once he was saw her, he sat down in front of her. "Rosie safe now." That was all he had been concerned about for a good moment. He was glad that he had succeeded.

Rosie looked at him a moment, then gave him a surprisingly loving little smile. He really was worried about her. She officially had no reason to want to use or trick him then. Of course...if a situation arrived that having a huge guard dog would be a good thing, she could manipulate that a bit. But...she wouldn't if it mean he could get hurt.
Carefully, she made her way up to Hulk and sat down next to one of his legs, giving it a small hug since giving him an actual hug was next to impossible. "I'm glad you didn't get hurt."

Hulk smiled a little. He didn't try to return the hug, because he didn't want to risk hurting her. "Hulk don't get hurt easily, like humans. Hulk tougher."

Rosie looked back up at him and smiled. "Good. I don't want you to get hurt."

Hulk held out a hand for Rosie to climb back onto. "Hulk want to find friends. Help protect Rosie. Help find Rosie's home."

Rosie's smile grew, and she climbed back onto Hulk's hand. "I want to be your friend too, Hulk." she said as she sat down, facing him. "I don't mind if it takes a while for me to find home. I'll be alright if I'm with you."

Hulk smiled wider this time. It wasn't often he was around people that liked him. He started walking again. "Which way is Rosie's home? Rosie family surely miss Rosie..."

Rosie looked around a moment, then pointed towards Gotham. "I think that way." she replied. "I don't really know."

Hulk started walking in the direction Rosie indicated. "Hulk help Rosie."

Rosie smiled up at Hulk. "Thank you." she replied warmly.

Hulk kept looking in the direction he was heading. "Hulk not have many friends. Avengers, sometimes. Spider-Man, sometimes. No one all the time." It didn't really compute to him that the times that they weren't were because he was endangering people.

Rosie looked up at him a moment. In all honesty, she didn't either. She wasn't sure how her other duplicates were faring, the friends they probably did make, only liked her because she was a helpless child. If they found out who her mother was, what she herself was capable of, they probably would really be her friend. The life she was probably bound to have, she probably wouldn't have many real friends.
"I'll be your friend all the time." Rosie said with a small smile. "It must be lonely. I don't want you to feel alone, Hulk."

"Hulk no go to big places with people much," Hulk replied. "Avengers tell Hulk that Hulk is dangerous. Also, big places are too loud for Hulk. Hulk like quiet. Like here. Hulk like it here." He looked around in something akin to happiness. "When Hulk find Rosie family, Hulk might come back here."

Rosie thought for a moment. "Yeah, I guess a city would be too crowded. If you come back here, I'll be sure to come visit you a lot. Maybe I can bring stuff with me that we could do. I'm sure Mom could help."


Page 7


Hulk smiled. "Hulk like that." He continued walking towards Gotham City.

[exit Hulk and Rosie to Gotham City]







{Enter Black Cat from unknown}

With a sudden flash of orangy-yellow light, Felicia Hardy, AKA the Black Cat, appeared. She looked just like she always did... save for a somewhat vague expression and the fact that her normally bottle-green eyes flickered with an eerie orange light. However, the next second that extinguished itself. She blinked once, wobbled a little on her feet, and then crumpled with a little sound that would have been called a whimper if she'd been anyone else. Luckily, she managed to land without whacking her head on a piece of shattered concrete, but it was a very close thing.



ENTER Rapture, Kenji, and Riku FROM LEX CORP

Rapture dove through destroyed buildings and around broken chunks of stone, trying to get some distance between himself and his pursuers. He made sure he kept his camouflage ability up, so that he could at least hide from Kenji. Riku, on the other hand, would probably still be able to sense him unless he shook the boy off his tail.
Once he found a suitable place to hide, he ducked into it and paused there a moment to catch his breath. This was ridiculous. He should have took to flying when he was on high enough ground to do so.

Kenji and Riku, in his Blood form, kept moving across the rubble, trying to keep up.
"Which way is he?" Kenji asked.

"In that direction." Riku replied, out of breath.

"You hang back then for a minute. I'll try and head him off." The next second, the man was gone.

Riku grimaced and tried to move faster. Unfortunately, the opposite was all he got. Unable to move much more, Riku had to stop and take a break. They'd been running for miles.
Landing on a large broken bolder, Riku sat down and let the majority of his Blood retract. Not all of it though. Needed some to be on the alert in case he needed it.
Damn it...why was NOTHING going right today?
He attacked and nearly killed Sapphire, managed to get captured as a result, then spent a few minutes with some stupid talking cat, tried multiple times to get Rapture to help him make a cure for this Blood problem, almost got his original Blood back, nearly got killed by Reaper, and what was surprisingly the worst of all...Kenji told Alex that he had a crush on her. Damn it! Why did he have to do that?! As many times as he tried to kill Sapphire, there was no way Alex would ever consider liking him. And now things were going to be...Ugh.



{Enter Slaughter from Titan's Tower}

"We need to speak with you," came a rather bored voice. The girl with Riku's blood was hovering well out of range of his kryptonite blood, 'her' arms crossed over her chest. "Can we trust you to behave yourself for the duration of the conversation?"

Riku's attention snapped back to reality when he suddenly felt the presence of something very, very familiar. Turning, he glared a bit up at the woman who wore his old blood. He hesitated a moment or two before answering. "As long as I can trust you to do the same." he called back, letting a small bit more of his Blood retract as a small gesture of truce. To be honest...he didn't have the energy to try anything right now.

"You tried to kill OUR host," the creature snapped, "So don't even try to pull that. Alright: we are going to spell this out for you. We. Don't. Want. To. Come. BACK. Okay?" It shook its head. "We thought that was pretty obvious when we went with Fisk, before Supergirl even came into the picture. It's not that we don't harbor some affection for you... Some VERY small amount," it added, its tone almost humorously defensive, "But it's just not working out. Did we mention that this girl is immune to sonics AND fire? So... stop stalking us, or we'll be forced to eat your spleen, and that wouldn't be fun for anybody." Whatever it said about Supergirl's mind being completely dormant, her speech patterns were still definitely there.

Riku's features twisted into something close to anger. What was more noticable than that, at least by anyone who had blood of their own, was that his new blood gave off more anger than he did. "Funny...you're the one who found me. I've found someone else to chase lately." he growled. "How does that work for me stalking you." Then he paused a moment, and his tone carried a hint of reluctance. "And I suppose we've both found something better. You don't have to worry about me trying to get you back."
His new blood was stronger, and for once, it actually refused to leave him. Something his old blood was rather quick to do. And...what the monkey had said after the girl had been taken away...actually made a lot of sense once he calmed down enough to think about it.

"Excellent." Its tone was bordering on angry, now, as well.

Riku paused a moment to see if Slaughter had anything else to say. "Is that all you wanted to talk about? I was kind of in the middle of something."

It glared; this wasn't going the way it had pictured things. "That's all," it snapped. The next moment, it was gone.

{Exit Slaughter to Unknown}


Riku stared at where the creature had been for another long moment, then relaxed and sat back down on the rock. If he wasn't ticked off before, he was now. It wanted to leave him from the start, huh? It even thought that Fisk was better than him.

'He's not...' a voice said gently. "You seen how quick it was to return to you when Fisk was taken down."

'It was just as quick to leave me when things were rough.'

'It didn't care about you...not the way you cared for it. As many times as it left you when you needed it, it only cared about itself. It only came back when it was convenient for itself.'

Riku paused a moment and stared at the ground. This was stupid. He felt like...he felt like he'd been dumped by his first crush after dating for years. He felt jealous. Angry. And more than a little hurt.

Without him telling it to, ink black 'skin' slid over his body and wrapped around his form, almost like a hug. 'I know it hurts...' the voice spoke again. 'And I know moving on won't happen quickly. But you don't need to worry about anything now. I do care for you. I won't leave you to save myself. I will take care of you.'

Riku paused a moment again, though he felt a little bit better.

'Should we find Alex after this?'

"Alex?" Riku asked out loud.

'Yes. If we cannot find Rapture, wouldn't you rather find her?'

'You...you're really going to let me try to talk to her.'

'Did your other not like her?'

'No, it...it didn't like it when I gave someone else more attention than it.'

'It was selfish. I am not. I don't mind if you give attention to someone else. I am with you every moment, so having someone else will not bother me. What does bother me is that you are not happy. If being with her will make you happy, then it's a good thing.'

Riku paused another moment, then let a small smile curve around his face.
This blood really was better than his old blood.



[Enter Azazel from Unknown.]

With a puff of purple and red smoke, the devilishly handsome demon known as Azazel appeared, regarding the world around him with interest. After having been thwarted in his last attempt to mate with a woman - that damn Cat, Hardy - he had retreated to his own dimension and plotted for a while, deciding to come back and try against with the woman.
Ah, speak of the devil. Mere yards away, he could see Black Cat laying on the ground, evidently out of commission. That worked nicely. Azazel strode towards her, his body shifting as he came until he looked exactly like one Peter Parker, AKA Spider-Man, and he knelt to offer her a hand.
"Hey Cat," he said gently, his voice also identical. "You look like you've been through Hell. You all right?"

She stirred immediately at the familiar voice. "Nn... What?" Her eyes blinked open reluctantly. "... Spider?" More blinking, mostly to facilitate actually getting her eyes to focus. "What the hell?" Nonetheless, she took his hand automatically and allowed herself to be pulled to her feet, even as she looked around, her expression stunned. "Did we get hit with a nuke?" It sure looked like it. If this was what was left of Stark Industries, Tony was going to throw one hell of a temper tantrum.