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Isssue #4 starring Animal Man

"Vicariance"

By Edward Ainsworth

 

Buddy Baker is a man who knows what he wants. And given the events of the last Crisis, he now floats somewhere in space.

Is it space? All I can see is Red. Red dots floating on a darker red background. It's awful. And it hurts, so much. Is this what dying is really like? It's like Watching Shades Coat.

Buddy Baker floats, his body limp, torrents of sweat and tears flowing down his face like rivers of stress and tears. Slowly but surely the realization of what has occurred moves over his body, his neurons firing and latently tapping into the Red around him, the dying Red, to replay the thousands and thousands of collective memories taken from every animal species around the world.

From the fractured vision of a fly, landing on freshly laid cow dung, to the complicated musings and pseudo-human thought of the Bonobo's.

Buddy's memories, his inner most thoughts lost their cohesion. His son and his daughter, his life and his wife, everything from his best friends to his worst enemies floated through his brain in an unfixed pattern. With the Infinite Crisis over, Buddy's brain was healing, slowly pulling itself back to together, along with his immune system, his organ system.

Buddy had a unique view of this, existing as part of the Red and himself, he saw his body and mind remade, whilst experiencing it first hand. His unique opinion on the nature of science and magic and the universe allowing him, of all the heroes to be truly open-minded. He knew that the Mind and Soul were in a truly complicated and intimate ecosystem with the body, a trophic level of spirituality.

The nature and magic-based heroes hadn't been hit as hard as Buddy had, simply because Buddy was a combination of the two. He was a total mix of nature and magic, inextricably linked together, and he was suffering. Badly.

He desperately tried to piece together everything, as his mind healed and his soul sewed itself together again. He lulled himself back into the diapause state, his mind leaving his body again and reacting to his memories of this most recent Crisis.

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Pre-Infinite Crisis

Buddy remembered the Red. The Red was dying. It's connection to Buddy causing him to do crazy things. He spent an hour thumping his foot against the floor. Buddy had spent years studying animals from both inside their psyche and out. Bird Migration patterns were wrong, Whales were beaching themselves, insects were going crazy, cannibalism and predation out of whack.

Something is wrong. Something is wrong with the Red. The Animal Totems are gone. The Morphogenetic Field is dying. I can see it. Feel it, the animals are going.

Evolution is dying.

His memories flick further, past the initial destruction of the Spectre hunting the magic based heroes. He remembers the Oblivion bar, and he remembers discussing things with Vixen, before they left. The Fate of magic and the world seemed to hang by a single string.

Then he left. He left the bar; he left the world of superheroes and hung up his costume. Supposedly for good, assuming that if he presented no threat to the Spectre, if he didn't tap into the Morphogenetic field, he could live out his life with his family.

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Infinite Crisis

Buddy Baker remembers sitting within the Sphere, the tiny metallic object that had flown to him, from new Cronus. Donna Troy needed him; the whole superhero community needed him, once again. As he sat within the cool, dark sphere he reflected upon the events of the world. What he had heard and seen.

He had heard that magic was broken. The Spectre had brought an end to the ninth Age of Magic, Nabu dead. OMACs nano-tech enhanced humanoids fly through the air, hunting heroes, whilst the brain, that control the pawns floats in space. Rann versus Thanager in space, the battle for their own planets, a threat no natural cause could generate, once again the meddling of humans, or in this case Kryptonians from alternate worlds. Green Lanterns, and the heroes of earth involved in the devastating consequences, the destruction of friends and alliances and the stability of the universe. The Villains have banded together to beat the heroes, the Secret Society formed to cast more disillusion and doubt across the world.

He Remembers thinking - It's the end of the world, and I'm in space, with Firestorm. I've synched with animals I never thought I would see, a Thanagarian Hawk, an Animal which shoots lightning from its face. I've been to worlds and fought beings I've not seen in an age. But Magic is Dead, and so is the Red.

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Post Infinite Crisis

Buddy Baker remembers the cruel harshness of the space. He remembers the starscape and he remembers floating, weightless as he attempted to save the Universe and the Earth once again.

"JESUS!" Buddy circled around as giant hands explode from the universe, through a tear in anti-matter, the barrage of foreign particles, of a universe of different ideals, different physics, different nature, hit Buddy like a freight train.

"Donna? Firestorm? Metamorpho? God.This is the end isn't it?" Buddy twisted in space, particles exploding past him, as the backwashing vacuum pulled him towards Alexander Luthors giant hands, smashing Earth's together like giant marbles. He screamed until his throat was raw, he couldn't help it.

The backlash of natural energies from each other was like having his inside reordered and destroyed repeatedly. Entire natural systems from plate tectonics, to the tiniest ecosystem of Bacterium were being destroyed on global levels. Pain such as this has never been felt, and will never be felt again.

Buddy was pulled through the tear in space time, into the nether space, the Null patch where Anti-matter and matter collided. Where the Red, and Magic lived. And there he floated.

"Ellen.God." Buddy stirred gently, awaking and sitting up. If that was possible, as such he just floated more like a cosmic foetus than a man.

For the first time in his life Buddy Baker was at a loss for words. He'd been floating here for some time, whilst his mind and body healed from the backlash and destruction of the Universe. He'd not seen anything like this before.

"I.I am responsible for this. I need to be made accountable." He spoke softly at first, looking around, and the billions upon billions of natural lives gone. Erased forever, never to be seen by human eyes again.

"IT'S NOT F**KING FAIR!" He removed his goggles and threw them into the void, holding his head into his hands.

"All these lives, all these animals, the bacteria, the birds, so much more beautiful, so much more precious than anything else in the Universe. God, almighty. Who would do such a thing to us? To the natural world?"

Buddy had been asleep for a long time. A long, long time. And for the first time in what seemed like an age, he broke down. All his defences, everything put in place to prevent his children, his wife, or his super heroic friends from seeing the pain, the hurt, the emotion and responsibility for the natural world.

A long time passed. Several hours, days even. It didn't matter, Buddy hurt, and he would continue to hurt. He pushed himself up, and stumbled, bawling like a baby towards a memory, an ancestral recognition of a female lion tending to her offspring.

"No. it can't end like this. And it won't." Buddy said to himself. There was no-one around. But he'd continue to speak to himself, he needed the company.

"I won't let it. FOR GODSAKES, the RED DESERVES TO LIVE." He shakes his head and tears at his hair, smashing his fists into the memory, and pushing forwards, instinctively pushing outwards with his Morphogenetic memory. Pushing himself to his last "save point". The last morphogenetic aura he came into contact with.

The world changed, and Buddy was sick. Repeatedly. He hit the ground hard, rolling and flipping over a stone. He came to a halt and let out a loud sigh, he looked up at the architecture and the devastation around him. He took a deep sigh and whispered his words.

"Ranagar."