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#01

"Dispersal"

By Ed Ainsworth

 

"Christ."

Buddy pulled himself up in the arid desert of Ranagar , brushing his body off and looking around. He ran a hand through his hair and set about getting his Barings. The terrain was familiar to earth, he'd taken a quick look around when they originally came to Ranagar, but never took to much attention.

A barren planet, dominated by animals that shouldn't exist, Sand Devils, Wind beasts, giant winged Reptiles.

"It's like Jurassic park had an abortion." Buddy muttered as he dropped down the hill, his Spandex boots diving deep into the sand, as he skids down the slope of the hill. He reached the bottom and scouted around.

He closed his eyes, reaching out into the Morphogenetic aura; he knotted his brow and forced himself to feel the fringes, the very, very frayed fringes of Ranagar's field. There was little to no information in Ranagar, nothing that could be viewed as important for evolution. It had long since been known that Adam Strange's son had been the first important live birth on Ranagar in sometime.

".Nothing here. Nothing to grab onto. Maybe it's me? (Why am I talking to myself out loud?) Did I loose it? Have I lost the Red?" He put a palm against each temple, rubbing his skull gently.

Interlude: Ranagarian Desert - 2 Miles from Buddy Baker

Where am I? Who am I? When Am I? These are the questions I have to ask myself to move forwards through my temporal reality. I reach out into fields the Earth and Humans ignore and cannot perceive because their perceptions precipitate their own desires. What am I doing here? Wandering the deserts of Ranagar, trying to face my own demons and inner desires, whilst forming my own perceptions of self.

I can see the seconds tear by my eyes; hear the sound of time dripping from the Canvas of reality. I see Rip Hunters after image embedded on the colours of now, written in the features of tomorrow. Yesterday is only today before Tomorrow. Some kind of half witted existential reality written into the sands of time, the sands that are crushed underneath my feet as I walk. Do I ever trying walk? Why is my whole world being deconstructed? I've lost my way; I've lost my connection to something. What? WHAT?

End Interlude.

Ten minutes after reaching into the Morphogenetic aura of the planet Buddy's eyes started to fail on him. He moves through the sands of the planet, stumbling forwards, crying out as tears run down his face. The morphogenetic field had failed him. He had failed it. No less than a day out of its womb, had he forgotten his past, his powers, and his connection. It was all meaningless. Some city of glass that cut into his skin, the wind whipping up the fragments of silicate cutting not just through his costume and skin, but into his core. His eyes showed him only black, showing the nothingness of the Red.

White. Pure white. Negative of black, inverted reality. Everything was turned on its head as Buddy's eyes clicked back into place. His brain suddenly processing the information of everything. He threw himself back, tears rolling from his tear ducts, a howl ripping free from his mouth, tearing through the cold, hard world of black and white.

He lay in the sand for what seemed like forever. His eyes tightly closed, trying to force out the white, to bring back the black. There was no happy medium, there was nothing there that could appease the pain or the loss or the nothingness he was feeling.

A hand touched Buddy's face.

"Buddy?" Her voice was soft, like freshly laid snow. This immediately struck Buddy as odd, since that was a texture not a sound.

"Y-Yes?" He replied his voice shaky and cracked from his howling.

"I heard you scream. Are you alright?" her voice cut through the whiteness, as though Buddy could see the connections between the Atoms, the vibrations pushed through the atoms of Oxygen, and Nitrogen and CO 2 in the atmosphere from her Larynx.

"Who's there?" Buddy probed the air in front of him with a fingertip, he could trace the disrupted atoms with his fingertips, he could see their rough outline, as though someone had drawn him with a pencil on paper, but he lacked shading, definition, As did she.

"Buddy, its Lady Quark. We only met a few times, during the first Crisis, and beyond that. Buddy, I'm not going to lie to you. You don't look very well." Her tone was concerned, as her cold fingertips touched his face gently.

"I won't lie to you; you don't look so great yourself. I, it's like my eye suddenly stopped working. I've only got the outlines of the Universe, like I'm looking from the outside in." He looked up at her, his eyes purest Red, energy spilling from his iris.

"Shh. It's alright, you're.you look like you're enveloped in energy, like it's become grafted to your skin. I know something about that."

"But you're radiation energy, right? I remember J'Onn saying something along those lines. You're some kind of atomic powered woman, yeah?"

Quark pushed some sand underneath Buddy, redistributing it around the two of them, molding it with her delicate fingertips to create a sort of a chair of her to sit in.

"Something like that. Buddy, I can see Energies. You're totally saturated."

"I know, I can see.all sorts of things. It's starting to scare me, Lady."

"Please Buddy, call me Tashana. Buddy, where do you get your powers from?" Tashana enquired, place a hand on his forehead, mopping his brow with her cold hands.

"The Red, it's...well, it was like another Dimension, where I can call upon the totemic stuff of animals, like the Hawk totem, and the Bear Totem, take on the forms and the characteristics of the Animal life of the planet." He turned his head to look at her outline, again, just her rough shape, but now with features, vibrations of atoms as she blinked the soft inhalations and exhalations exciting the molecules in the air in front of her face.

"I can't see your features, but I see your outline, but none of your features."

"Buddy, what happened to the Red?" Tashana removed her hands, looking directly into his eyes and over his body.

"It's dead. Empty. It's where I've been for the last year, huddled up reliving my life, even that time I got caught up thinking I was some kind of Shamanic deity, letting my hair grow long and dying it white. What was I thinking?"

"We do many strange things with our lives, Buddy. You wouldn't be the first to make a mistake, nor the last." She cooed soothingly to him. "Buddy, have you been able to access you powers since you got out of the Red?"

"No, that's the strange thing. I probed the Red on this planet, and at first everything was alright, but now I can't see properly, and all I can think about is Ellen and Maxine and Cliff." He titled his head in the sand, looking up at the outline of Quarks face.

"I'm scared, Tashana. I don't want to die and not see my family again. I don't want to die in the sand somewhere. There's nothing heroic about that. Nothing."

"You're not dying, Buddy. I think I know what's happening. I can see energy, not many people know this, and I've noticed that you're completely saturated. You've not been this energized in all the times I've seen you. It appears that you've got a thin layer around yourself."

"Thin layer of what?"

"Buddy, I think it's the Red. When I Probe it deeper, my eyes naturally flick through wavelengths of energy the same way you distinguish the different colour wavelengths in light, it goes much deeper than that. It's like it opens up into a whole other realm."
"Tashana, are you saying that I'm wearing the Red?"

"Essentially, yes."

"Wow. Does it suit me?"

"It doesn't really change your appearance, Buddy, at least not to people who can't see what I can. Buddy, when I probe deeper, I see that you're connected to everything. Do you know what this means?"

"I am going to have really high internet bills?"

"Buddy, now this is just a theory, it's possible that you can connect to things on various levels. Whilst I was with L.e.g.i.o.n., I studied the files of many meta-humans on Earth, yours, Vixens, Aquaman's, the Red Tornado. You may be able to access all kinds of fields."

"Wait, wait. This is a bit much. What does this have to do with my vision?" Buddy sat up quickly, scratching his forehead and waving a hand in his face.

"It's like I can see the path my hands make but nothing else."

"You're mind is learning to re-distinguish matter, and ideas. It's going to take a while. It's highly probably that you're going to be able to see things that you never saw before. It's quite exciting in a way, isn't it?"

"Tashana, can I ask you something, and I don't want you to get offended." Buddy asked, reaching out for her outline.

"Of course, Buddy." She smiled, not that he could tell.

"You're very different to the way I remember you. You were always very aloof, and aggressive, like we were all beneath your notice. I figured that was because you were from a monarchy on a dead world." He cringed. He was just talking but he felt he should have been more tactful than that.

"No, I completely understand, Buddy. I used to be that way because I did honestly believe what I was thinking, but being connected to Alexander Luthors Machine, I saw something. The world, Buddy, I saw it all from a different perspective."

She smiled again and got to her feet, looking at her hands and across the vast Rangarian desert.

"I saw the world for what it is. A swirling mass of matter; an infinite melting pot of ideas, energies and power sources. The Earth is the biggest power source, next to the sun, which powers the plants, which feeds the beasts, which feed the humans and create Culture and ideas and sociology. I've begun to believe in all those existential theories that make the villains and some of the heroes so angry, Buddy, but I've felt so lost."

Buddy got to his feet, stumbling slightly as he tried to adjust to his new vision, moving towards Tashana.

"Why have you felt lost?" He asked, placing a hand on her shoulder gently. Quark turned into him, hugging him around the waist and laying her head on his shoulders. Buddy jolted a little at this sudden movement, but wrapped his arms around her and hugged her.

"Because I don't know my meaning anymore, Buddy. I'm from a dead world, all that energy and matter can't be recycled the way it is here, there's no link to my world for me. I took a year here, Buddy. I took a year on a barren planet to live alone and hone my powers and my patience. I don't want to distance myself from people anymore, buddy. I've seen what being alone and fixated on something unattainable does to a person. I don't want to become another Alexander Luthor."

For a few moments, Buddy just hugged her in silence. A few moments later her pulled her away from him, and placed his hands gently on her cheeks.

"I've seen the universe from Above as well. Teaches you something about time and space and Mortality doesn't it?"

She nodded in his hands, looking desperately at him.

"I don't want to die alone, Buddy."

"You won't, Tashana. I'll be with you. You're not going to die for a long time yet, Okay? You and Me, we're going to find a purpose in this world, and I think I know where to start."

Tashana took his hand gently and gave it a squeeze.

"You're a good man, Buddy Baker, if a little bit strange. Not many people would understand what I was saying."

"Strange is as Strange does. I've seen a lot of weird things in my time, and I get the feeling we're going to be seeing something's that will get weirder. Do you want to help me, Tashana?"

"Of Course Buddy."

"I need your help anyway. I need you to help me work out my new vision, my new eyes and my new powers. I'm not even sure what or where to start."

"That I can help you with, Buddy, the Red looks like its just energy, and energy is something I know."

"Good, that's given me a fresh start, and honestly? That's all we really need."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Space:

Since I've spent some time with Buddy, I don't feel so lost anymore. I thought I was wandering the deserts to face my desires and demons. To face myself, but now I know that I cannot face myself until I know who that is.

I still see Rip Hunters after image, and the collapses and coalescent entities that lap against the energy shores of our reality, particularly at the heels of Buddy, but I can't concern him with what we cannot see, or what we cannot battle.

As of today I look to the Future, I won't be dwelling on what happened in my past. I had a world, and a life and love, but I cannot dwell on it any longer. The path for healing leads through the pain, and out the other side. It is time for me to begin my journey with Bubby, though we walk different paths and ideals.

Next Issue: The Return to Earth; Reunited with His Family, How will Buddy go about Explaining his Plans? PLUS: When is Rip Hunter?