Amazing Fantasy (vol. 2) #8
Motherless Country
On the flight to Madripoor, Carmilla Black has a dream where she arrives at a Madripoor Orphanage. Entering the building, she thinks about how she always secretly thought she was lucky that she was adopted thinking that her real parents were out there and that they were cool and rich and famous. As she walks through the orphanage she looks into a nursery and finds her adopted parents — Tim and Julia Black — laying in the beds. She then goes down a flight of spiral stairs into the basement. There his mother, Monica Rappaccini the head of AIM, is glad that her daughter has finally found her as she never felt complete without her daughter. To represent this, Monica has a hole in her chest in the form of a woman. Growing in size, Monica then picks up Carmilla and pushes her through the hole. She tells her daughter that there will be nobody to stand in her way as she suddenly begins walking across a field of dead bodies.
Carmilla wakes up on the airplane just as it is about to land. Her seatmate is a young man named Troy Goddard who is also traveling to Madripoor. Since neither of them have been to the country before he suggests that the two explore the place together. She agrees, and Troy excuses himself to go throw up in the bathroom, unaware that Carmilla’s stinger was making him sick in the first place.
Once she arrives, Carmilla goes to Lowtown, the section of Madripoor reserved for its poor. There she finds the Prince Baran Hospice for Motherless Waifs where she hopes they have documents about her adoption. She is taken aback by how miserable the place is. When she meets with the headmistress of the orphanage she kicks Carmilla out when she can’t produce any documentation to prove her claims. She decides to get over this dead-end by spending time visiting the Royal Palance and Museum with Troy Goddard. Seeing that the locals are preparing for a parade, Troy tells Carmilla that the prince’s cousin had recently died and the parade is in her honor. He then tells her how her body is going to be taken to a nearby tower where it will be floated downriver to a Lowtown temple where her body will be cremated. Troy finds this all exciting, saying that he wants to be a writer but has no life experience so he decided to travel the world to find himself. Carmilla muses that there is a lot that going around. Inside the museum, Carmilla reads about how the royal family of Madripoor is descended from Malay Pirates and that everything on display are stolen riches. Troy uses this opportunity to make a joke about being in a booty museum, prompting them both to rush outside before their laughing interrupts the tranquility in the museum.
At the end of the day, Troy walks Carmilla back to her hotel, and along the way, they bump into a man who bumps into them as a distraction for a woman to drop a package into Carmilla’s shopping bag. Unaware of this theft, Troy suggests that he come up to her room, but before things can get romantic an alarm goes off on Carmilla’s bracelet. Not wanting to blow her cover as a SHIELD operative, she tells Troy that it was a message from the tourism gods to call it a night and says she’ll meet him tomorrow for the funeral parade. Once up in her room, Derek Khanata and his operatives communicate to her through the bracelet telling her that they are working on a tight schedule. Since the orphanage won’t give her the information freely, the Scorpion will have to break in and take it. They tell her to look in her bag and she finds a costume that SHIELD has provided for her.
Putting the costume on, Carmilla goes out into the night as the Scorpion, although she’s not impressed with how the outfit exposes her midriff, wondering if it was designed by a pervert. Derek informs her that the costume is constructed to be bulletproof, while the mask allows her to communicate with her SHIELD handlers without having to actually speak. They can also communicate to her through vibrations that travel up her jawbone into her inner ear so nobody can listen on them either. Breaking into the orphanage, the Scorpion comes across a room where a bunch of men are playing video games. Spotting a tattoo on one of them, Derek asks Carmilla to point her gauntlet at it so they can get a scan. Noriko Nagayoshi runs it through their database and confirms that these men are members of the 4T’s a gang that runs guns, drugs, and slaves throughout the Pacific Rim. They figure these men are also connected to the notorious General Coy.[1] Breaking into the archives, the Scorpion finds a number of other birth documents bundled with the records on Thasanee Rappuccini. Derek has Carmilla take photos of all the documents and then has his team to crossreference the names with the Department of Homeland Security’s records. When the Scorpion asks what the information is all about, Derek tells her that it’s on a need-to-know.
On her way out, Carmilla sees a spiral staircase similar to the one in her dream and decides to go down to see what’s at the bottom. When Khanata asks what she’s doing, she tells him it’s need-to-know. At the bottom of the stairs she finds a cell full of young girls. When Derek confirms her suspicions, that they are going to be sold into slavery, Carmilla ignores orders and shatters the lock on their cell. This sets off an alarm that warns the 4T gang members of the intruder on their premises. As they reach the exit the gang members try to stop their slaves from escaping. The Scorpion covers the children by fighting the gang members. She is gaining the upper hand when one of the gang members injects her with a lethal dose of Curare — a muscle relaxant — causing her to vital signs to flatline. Fearing reprisals from General Coy, the leader of the gang suggests they burn the intruder’s body.
The following morning, Troy Goddard knocks at Carmilla’s hotel room door but when she doesn’t answer he goes to watch the funeral parade without her. Unknown to anyone, the Scorpion has been placed inside the casket with the prince’s cousin. Surprisingly, the Scorpion wakes up moments before the funeral barge is set ablaze. At that same moment, Monica Rappaccini arrives at Carmilla’s hotel and asks the front desk what room she is staying in. When the desk clerk says they can only release that info to members of the family, Monica smiles and tells him that there is no getting closer than she is.
Recurring Characters
Scorpion, SHIELD (Derek Khanata, Noriko Nagayoshi, Ayna Savera), Monica Rappaccini, Troy Goddard
Continuity Notes
That would be Nguyen Ngoc Coy, uncle to Karma of the New Mutants, first seen in Marvel Team-Up #100. References to him being a former member of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam should be considered topical as this militia was disbanded in 1975.
