The four Avengers studied the scene unfolding below them. Less than an hour ago, all these young people had been attending an Anthrax concert at the Four Seasons Stadium. The music was loud, and the crowd was a little rowdy, but something else had happened. The crowd had erupted into a fit of unrelenting violence. They had started with the stadium, uprooting seats and destroying vendors. Now the chaos had spilled outside into the parking lot. Cars were being overturned. Rocks and bottles were being thrown. People were getting hurt. They seemed to be spreading like a plague of locusts, leaving on destruction and devastation behind them.

“Can you discern the origin?” asked Tomorrow Woman as she swooped down from the air, saving a young woman from a frenzied trampling. She felt a bottle crash against her leg, but her robotic body could not be harmed in such a minor fashion. As he placed the girl on the ground, she turned to look for her assailant. “I cannot detect any external robotic or mechanical devices, and am not picking up any abnormal sound frequencies.”

“'Tis probably the foul music-players,” declared Thor, as he flew close to the ground, dropping his passenger Aquaman. “I have not heard such foul strain since Hogun tried to play the lute.”

“No,” replied Manhunter, as he telepathically continued to scan the crowd. “There is an unknown ‘presence’ inside all their minds. Some type of entity…”

Suddenly, Manhunter screamed as a lash of psychic energy surged into his brain. Unable to keep his concentration, he fell from his flight onto the hood of a green pinto with a heavy thud. Tomorrow Girl quickly raced toward her teammate’s defense, as a nearby crowd noticed the green martian’s presence.

“Are you alright, J'Onn?” asked Tomorrow Woman. Had she not been a robotic being, J'Onn would have sworn he heard concern in her voice.

“I will live,” said Martian Manhunter as he shook the cobwebs from his addled brain, “and the attack by our enemy was foolish, because it allowed me to pinpoint its location. Thor, Aquaman, it is inside the center of the stadium.”

Quickly the four Avengers abandoned the rioting crowd and made their way into the shambles of the Four Seasons Stadium. They made their way past scattered fires, destroyed vendor stands, and piles of rubbage. As they burst through the destroyed doors which led from the hallway into the actual stadium, their enemy was impossible to miss.

There, near the center of the stage, was a giant floating eyeball. Nearly three feet in diameter, it glowed with an eerie green energy.

“Is it alive?” was all Aquaman could utter before the eye fired a blast of green energy towards the Avengers. The blast struck Thor, square in the chest, the momentum sending him flying backwards, and through a section of wall behind him with a loud crash.

“Yes,” replied Manhunter as he changed his focus briefly to check on Thor. He seemed fine physically, though momentarily out of breath. J'Onn refocused his attention on his attacker, “but I am not sure it is intelligent. All I can sense is a torrid of angry and hateful emotions. Given the creature’s nature, I am trying to reach its mind, but…”

“But,” interrupted Thor, as he picked himself off the ground, “you require a distraction.” Suddenly Thor’s hammer, Mjolnir, was flying through the air at the eyeball. Following Thor’s lead, both Aquaman and Tomorrow Woman began to pull stadium seats from the floor and hurl them at the creature.

The creature seemed unsure of which attack to thwart. The creature began to project some type of green energy force field around it. The field proved effective against the chairs, reducing them to ashes, but was useless against Mjolnir. The hammer smashed with a disgusting squish into the eyeball, sending it spiraling against the wall behind it. The energy around the eyeball seemed to explode, setting everything close by into flame.

The momentary distraction seemed to be the edge Manhunter required, as he was allowed into the creature’s ‘mind’. With a blast of pure psychic energy, the Manhunter fried the creature, and it lay motionless and without energy on the ground.

While Aquaman helped the drain Martian Manhunter to his feet, Thor grabbed his hammer and twirled it rapidly, creating substantial winds to quell the fire. Tomorrow Girl made her way up to the eyeball.

“What should we do with it?” inquired Aquaman.

Tomorrow Girl responded as he picked ‘it’ from the ground, “Due to its unknown origin and capacity, the safest course would be to take the entity to Project: Pegasus. There it can be contained and studied. We had best go immediately, before it awakens…”

Arthur found Jarvis in the hallway and inquired of Ollie or Carol’s whereabouts. Jarvis mentioned that Mr. Queen was in a den room down the hall, then quietly whispered that Oliver was in a mood most foul. Instead of dissuading Arthur, this encouraged him, as he thought he would cheer him up. He considered asking Oliver if the eyeball was in fact, one of Ollie’s trick arrows, gone out of control.

Arthur discovered Oliver right where Jarvis had said he would be, and the mood in the air was unmistakable. Arthur noted to dour look on Ollie’s face, and the half-drank bottle of Kristov Vodka on the end table next to him. He also noticed Ollie was watching a local news broadcast that featured the team earlier exploits against the mystic green eyeball.

“Well, Oliver,” said Aquaman in a mirthful voice, “you missed quite an interesting battle today.”

“Did I?” asked Oliver Queen, the disinterest in his voice impossible to miss.

“Indeed. The ‘eye’ put up a good fight, even smashed Thor through a wall, but we managed to stop it,” Arthur replied, with a degree of pride.

“Gee,” said Oliver, his voice full of contempt, “and only four teenagers had to die, along with fifty-four injuries, and millions of dollars in property damage.”

Arthur stared at Oliver, perplexed, “It would have been worse if we hadn’t stopped the creature…”

“Would it have?” interrupted Oliver, as he slammed the glass down on the table, and turned to face Arthur, “I just read a book, Necessary Evil, which asserts that super villains wouldn’t exist if there weren’t a bunch of silly costumed adults running around and chasing them. It claimed without the silly fantasy charade, there would be no villains, and ‘heroes’ would do something productive with their lives.”

Arthur noticed Oliver’s voice had raised to almost yelling, and the anger in his face was beginning to show. “What would be productive?” he asked, as he noticed both Martian Manhunter and Thor at the door, attracted by the obvious conflict.

“Forget it,” Oliver said, disgusted, as he picked up the vodka bottle. “I wouldn’t expect this ‘team’ to understand. An otherworldly god. An underwater prince. A robotic girl. My god, you ‘people’ are completely out of touch with those you have sworn to protect.”

“Oliver,” said Martian Manhunter, “I think you are overreact…”

Manhunter was unable to finish his statement as the bottle of vodka that had been in Oliver’s hand crashed against the wall a few feet from Manhunter’s head.

“Look around you,” screamed Oliver, his rage intensified. “Kids died there today. You stepped over them without barely a second thought.” Oliver then picked up the television remote, and switched to cable news network, CNN. The news was showing the ravaged country of Ethiopia, and its starving population. “How many ‘super heroes’ do you see helping these people?” Oliver asked scornfully. He then picked up the magazine that sat on the endtable, and threw it at Aquaman’s feet. The magazine was Time, the cover showed a sickly pair of men, and the huge white caption read ‘A.I.D.S.?’. Oliver began again, “If famine isn’t important enough, how about disease. I realize that combating it isn’t as exciting as stopping Crazy Quilt from draining all of the color red from New York City, but get real. We have the most brilliant minds in the world in this ‘business’, and what are they doing? Right now, young Henry Pym, instead of finding a cure for lepracy or world hunger, is probably putting a new laser on Tomorrow Girl so she will be better prepared next time she goes up against the Circus of Crime. Have you seen anyone die of this ‘A.I.D.S.’ yet? I have. I watched Time Trapper die a slow, horrid death. Where were all of you heroes when she died?”

Though, he loathed to do it, Martian Manhunter decided, for Oliver’s own safety, to reach into his mind and try to calm him. Instead, while there, he discovered the secret that started Oliver’s anger and frustration.

“No,” the Manhunter whispered, the look of sorrow on his face unmistakable.

“Get out of my head, alien!” Oliver screamed. “No more of your games. No more of your silly costumes and adolescent fantasies. You are overgrown children. You couldn’t save this world, you don’t even know the real threats. I QUIT!”

The three Avengers watched, in complete shock, as Oliver pushed passed, and made his way towards the front door of the mansion. At a complete loss, Aquaman and Thor turned to Manhunter, hoping for some explanation.

“It is Carol,” replied Manhunter, as he walked from the room, his head hung low. “She has cancer. She may die.”