JC hesitated, caught between helping his team and needing to pursue Kim. And in that moment of indecision, Natasha hit Happy with a mental blast of pure rage that rocked him back on his feet. Natasha seized the moment and threw her thoughts at the ghost of Kim, hanging on the air at the end of the corridor; and Kim screamed shrilly as streams of blue-grey ectoplasm burst out of her ghostly form, torn from her by the sheer force of Natasha’s will. The ectoplasm quickly formed itself into solid bars under Natasha’s urging, imprisoning Kim inside a spirit cage. Kim screamed again, caught between two implacable forces, both of which had power over her while she had none. But summon as it would, the unseen force could not pull Kim through bars made from her own ghostly form. The spirit cage held her.

By then, Happy had recovered, and he lashed out at Natasha with his own rage. Natasha met the attack easily. She knew all about rage and its uses. Happy quickly brought himself back under control, knowing he faced a mind easily as powerful as his own and that if he didn’t fight with all the strength and subtlety at his command, he was a dead man. He met Natasha’s cold gaze and held it, attacking her shields on a dozen different levels at once, and Natasha was forced to give him her full attention. They stood face-to-face, totally absorbed in each other, like two gun-slingers on an old Western street. There was a war going on inside their heads.

The station disappeared for them, replaced by a psychic battle-field of their own creation, a desolate plain, cracked dry earth under a night sky, full of pale, fading stars. It was cold and silent, an empty place, with no help or distractions, fit only for battle and slaughter. Happy concentrated, and great stone golems burst up out of the earth, dry soil falling away from their brute heads and wide shoulders as they levered themselves up out of the broken ground. Crude, misshapen, only nominally human in form, they lurched and lumbered towards Natasha, to break and crush her with their heavy hands. She laughed at Happy, a brief, cold sound rich with contempt; and lightning bolts slammed down from the empty heavens to shatter the golems and reduce them to rubble.

Then Natasha had the advantage, and the battle-ground changed. The two telepaths stood in the ruins of a city, in the dark time of an apocalyptic future. Tall buildings had been thrown down and lay half-buried under crawling alien plants and weeds. A pale sun hung low on a sickly green sky. Natasha shot up suddenly, growing in size until her giant form towered over Happy. She raised a pink leather boot to stamp on him. But Happy immediately increased his size, shooting up past Natasha until it was his turn to tower over her. She grew again in size, then him, then her again—two incredible giants blasting up out of the ruins of a dead city, each of them trying to outdo the other. They became vast and colossal, leaving the world behind, until they were the size of gods, and threw planets and comets and worlds at each other.