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#02

By Ed Ainsworth

 

Superbia: Earth 1: 02.00 Hours

The C.O.R.E Operatives exploded into the air, their jet pacts bursting huge gusts of energy and power downwards to counter gravity, as a pissed off Greek Superman powers across the metallic surface towards them. The first operative explodes into meaty chunks, the second impaled on Olympians helmet. He emits a blood curdling roar, as he approaches mach one, the sonic boom cocooning around him, and blowing the face plates of the operatives out. They never had a chance against Greece 's mentally disturbed Superman. He banks in the air, moving down with the grace of a lion, and the mentality of a 35 year old internet stalker. His fists explode through the midsections of two operatives, their internal organs rupturing through the hole, and Olympian emits another insane scream as he tumbles through the air and into the groundwork of Superbia, leveling several blocks of temporary housing.

"Crap." Vixen's face was pushed up against the pane of her window; she was having to hang from the light fixture since her room was 180 Degrees off its normal moorings. She dropped down next to Impala and pushed his shoulder gently.

"Hey.Hey.Wake up, something's going on outside. I don't think it's good either." She looked up again and sighed, gripping her pendant and muttering a soft prayer to no deity in particular.

Fleur De Lys however was out of her quarter's door and moving silently towards a group of C.O.R.E operatives. Her white costume betrayed her movements in the dark, but she had nothing to fear. Her slender fingers tightened around the hilts of her swords, and she let out a measured breath. Her thigh muscles tensed and she leapt silently, the ball of her left foot touching the side of the wall, as she twisted in mid flight, bring her sword point into the back of the first operatives neck, the second sword slicing downwards with added momentum, separating another operative from his arm. She landed silently, with seemingly little effort, her knee snapping upwards into the first operative's skull, dropping him heavily with a loud gurgle from him as his throat filled with fluid. She bares her teeth, as the rest of the group turn, training their weaponry on the French woman.

" Je veux que vous partiez."

The Wild Huntsman on the other hand, was lying on his back, in the middle of his completely destroyed Ward-robe, with his hunting dog and Axe by his side, snoring completely oblivious to the events outside and around him. Whilst the assumption had been that all the Ultra Marines were unconscious, as was the case with Tazmanian Devil, and Impala, Huntsman was simply in a mead induced coma, the powerful affects of his favorite beers putting him into a state of suspended animation that could only be razed by the powerful need for more beer, or the desire to use the toilet, neither of which figured greatly on Huntsman's bodies plan. Since the Infinite Crisis, the Ultra Marines cause had been greatly reduced, and many of it's members skills had degraded or been neglected, most of all Huntsman, who'd slumped into a ritual of drinking, eating and laying around, betraying his true Viking Heritage.

Ultra Marine Base: Qwerq: 04.00 Hours

John is one of those people who attempts to impress the others, but puts up a veil of aloof and cold-heartedness to try and cover his deep seated insecurities and his own problems. I like him never the less, but his need to harp on about his Cosmic Keyboard and Zen training irritates me. I'm a solider, simple as, I follow orders and in this case, I give them. I may question myself, but I hate being questioned by my team mates.

"Having problems are we, Scott?" The yellow, emotionless face plate of John didn't mask the Sarcasm in his voice.

"No, John. I'm just being esoteric. Something that's supposed to be your area of Expertise, and yet, when I look around, we're still holed up in this crap hole."

Dan, the giant liquid based Ultra marine pushes himself in-between the two warring Ultra Marines.

"We're here for Lea, Remember? Just calm yourselves for a moment and let's try and work out what is going on here."

Dan touches my shoulder, and I sigh, hanging them and my head. Lea hadn't been the same since our first encounter with the Universal man. Frankly, I didn't blame John for being tetchy. He was supposed to be the master of time and space and all four Dimensions with his Cosmic Keyboard, but even that had little in the way of Information.

"What Do we have then, John?" Dan said softly to his team-mate.

John turned and looked directly at me, placing both of his hands on my helmet and twisting it, removing it's protective sheath, and leaving me exposed to the world, since the Battle I'd been absorbing things.

John braced himself, and tapped away at his esoteric keyboard, cutting and pasting a fragment of my body, pulling it into a Petri-Dish, he waved his hands and I replaced my helmet.

"Well?" Dan Inquired, his curiosity piqued.

"I think I've isolated the bonds that have been causing Scott to become a human Black Hole." John took a breath and placed a hand on his forehead gently.

"It's hard work, Scott. It appears that the universal man pierced your "soul". When you first got your powers, you were pushed out of Phase of reality, correct?"

I nod, and push my mind back to that fateful day. My meta-gene stimulated artificially causing my body, piece by piece to be sucked out of this vibrational attunement and into a void between realms. Not many people know, but I can see things. Things other people can see, my entire range of site and sense have been augmented beyond superhuman levels. I need conditioning to tune them out. The entire electromagnetic spectrum is visible to me; I can see the sound waves as John speaks. It turns my stomach.

"Scott, basically, your vibrational attunement is now that of a miniature black-hole, within you, where your heart was formerly located is a quantum singularity, only instead of sucking stuff in and destroying it to an infinitesimally small amount, you are proving Stephen Hawking's latest theorem, and actually pushing the mass and things you're sucking into another world. You are both simultaneously a Black and White Hole."

"But how does this Help lea, John?"

John shakes his head and sits down heavily.

"I'm working on it."

Japan : Earth 1:

"Eye BLOODY Spy? I'm an Irish Super-commando with mystical totemic power. I do not play bloody Eye Spy." Dan protests throwing his hands in the air in desperation, he was always a bit theatrical.

"Dan, Come on. Goriko is going to be in there for hours, you know she needs to harness her powers more than anyone else." Little Mermaid put a hand on Dan's shoulder; she smiled at him, her little eyes glistening with a thin film of water that covered her entire amphibious body. It was no secret that she had something of a small crush on Dan, so he quickly pulled himself away.

"No, I know. I know. I've just nae been so bored in my life. I always thought trainin'd be a fun exercise, not sitting a tiny Japanese girl down in a dark room and making her alphabetically organize sub-atomic structures and asking bloody daft questions, like "Is there really a universe, or are we just dreaming it into consciousness."

"Good Question, Dan. I'd be curious to know if I was dreaming the universe, why I'd include such an annoying imbecile along with it?" Chrysalis was sat, her large wings folded behind her, and her large eyes focused firmly on the door, waiting for either Goriko or an attack.

"Do ye have to be so bloody stoic over there? All you ever do is sit around and act like ye've got a bloody stick up your arse." Dan expressed, taking a few steps towards her, and ripping his mask off.

"Dan.Don't start again, I don't like it when you're angry." Mermaid reached out to him, but didn't move with him.

"I'm sorry, but this is bloo." Before Dan could finish his protest, the door exploded off its hinges, hitting him firmly in the side and thrusting him against the far wall with the splintering of wood and the crack of several of his ribs. He goes down hard.

The Little mermaid and Chrysalis leap to their feet, with Chrysalis taking an energy blast to the side of the head, sending her wheeling at an angle through the chair and into the ground. The C.O.R.E Operatives move in on Mermaid, showing her the extent of their fury, by ganging up on her and repeatedly beating her with their fists and the butts of their guns, leaving her face a bloody mess, and virtually every support structure of her skull fracture or clearly snapped.

"The Insectoid." The lead C.O.R.E operative points to the Unconscious Chrysalis face down in her broken chair. The Door slides off Dan as he attempts to get himself up, the world spinning around him.

Another howl of a laser turret as Dan leaps through the air landing awkwardly, but avoiding the shot, smashing his fist into the nearest faceplate, sending the operative wheeling backwards. However, he receives a shot in the back, and several in the chest, dropping him with severe pain and smoldering flesh.

The C.O.R.E operatives carry out their plan, repeatedly firing on Chrysalis until she is little more than a smoldering pile of insectoid parts and leaking transparent fluid onto the ground.

Superbia: Earth 1: One Year Ago

"Nfrm."

The body of Dan AKA Flow is made from an oxyhaemolypmh-liquid substance, with no discernable vital organs, including a brain; it leaves John with only one hypothesis. Dan is a Liquid mentality, and as such having Dan along allows problem solving without having to work through the limited processing power of synapses in the human brain and without calling on other ideas and previous experiences. Dan's brain flowed around ideas and constructs as easily as water. However, it mean his subconscious was basically the adhesive qualities of water, leaving his consciousness the miscus of the liquid, and his ego and mentality the cohesive properties. Put simply, Dan was a watery brain.

Dan's brain however often dreamt of what had been before, in this instance the events leading to the team being trapped in the infant Universe of Qwerq. He remembers the Universal man, a starscape of energy collecting on the prow of the Superbia construct, before it went silly.

Dan grunted again, the Gelatin software plugged into his haemo-lymphatic fluid recording the output of his adhesive subconscious. It was almost enough to change the properties of the Gelatin recording equipment.

Images flash across his liquid tipped eyes. The Universal man was tearing into WarMaker one, tossing his robotic body across the room, smashing it through the wall. His sentient gaseous construct body, slightly out of phase from reality, folded in on itself, sucking energy, light and mass towards its covalent centre.

The Universal man flicking his fist through 4D, smashing her into composite parts, a Three dimensional woman thrown through time and space, a two dimensional woman thrown onto the ground, and a single line to represent the 1Dimensional construct of Lea at that time.

Dan remembers his own personal view of these occurrences; the fear he felt in the pit of his stomach, the semi-solid fury of his liquid temperament.

Great jets of water explode from his hands, as the universal man sets on him, pushing himself through the fluid and right up to Dan.

"Can the Water man Drown?"

C.O.R.E Brotherhood Space-Station: Earth 1:

Green Lantern Captured, Owl woman sneaks around all stealthily

God, this scares the living crap out of me. Sneaking around a star-ship in interstellar Orbit, we just sling-shotted through the gravity well of Saturn. SATURN! God. Is Sling-Shotted even a word? Two Words? Nevermind.

Owl-Woman, a former member of the Global Guardians, now freelance Stealth Lady, and current inhabitant of the Universal mans starship skulks around a corner. On the ceiling. She had seen the new Green Lantern, what she assumed to be a Green Lantern, since it was wearing their colours be carried past. It resembled a cross between a Frog and a Flatworm. A thick, long almost flat body, with a large head, large eyes, but barely blinking, reminding her of an Octopi, from it's segmented Pupil. The Green Lantern looked slightly worried as they pulled it through the air lock, and tossed it onto the ground roughly, its legs and arms wriggled and it gasped loudly, swearing or speaking in whatever language it speaks. It sounded like air escaping from a Crab.

That this is truly wrong looking, never the less, I have to rescue it to live up to my potential as being, well, a super-heroine. God, this job sucks. I hope I get paid well for this. Just because I'm a Native American, doesn't mean I'm going to take crap for this.

She removes her large fingers from the ceiling and drops down silently, the rows of Feathers connecting her belt to her wrists splayed out to allow her a silent landing. She pushes the door open silently, and leaps into the air, landing on top of a C.O.R.E operative and slamming her "talons" into the top of his head. He dropped hard, leaving the final C.O.R.E scientist to wet himself and faint.

"Inuckchuk, Indeed."

Superbia: Earth 1:

The Huntsman's eyes snap open, he strokes his beard as he gets to his feet, completely naked and pressing his face to the window. Not even noticing he was sleeping in a broke wardrobe, or his room was shattered. All he saw was Olympian whizzing through the sky, like an insane golden fly.

"I knew this day would come." He put on his helmet and grabbed his axe, but left the rest of his body completely nude. He took a short run and smashed through the wall of his room and out into freefall, swinging in the air to ram his axe into the side of the Chimney, carving a huge slice through the chimney. He smashes his massive hairy feet into the metal and leaps through the air.

"OLYMPIAN! FACE ME!"

Huntsman got the Greek Supermans attention as he collided with the golden hero, and shoved his helmet into his face, knocking the Greek heroes own helm off.

Olympian retaliates with a fist to Huntsman's face, sending him spiraling downwards into the ground below. The Viking pulled himself from the impact mark, and parried the blow of Olympians fist with his own, sending shockwaves of sound. Huntsman reaches upwards and grabs hold of Olympians shoulder, pulling him down into the ground, and smashing his bare foot into the Greek mans back, between his shoulders, whilst maintaining his grip.

Olympian yelped in pain and twisted around, completely dislocating his arm and kicking up at Huntsman, sending the Bearded man flying into the air, and hitting the ground in a soft dust cloud, however, before Olympian could recover, Huntsman was up and leaping through the air, securing a hold of the insane heroes neck.

In the midst of all of the chaos, a Starscape rounds over the verge, a man whose very being was made of colliding planets, and stellar moments. A spec of dust for each eye, glowing with a violent fury; a fearful symmetry to his Astrological face. He stands silently, moving his hands forwards. The sun is blocked out as a massive movement of mass moves up behind the universal man. He lets out a blood curdling laugh, as Huntsman realizes what the mass is.

"Gods; It's the refugees. He made all our dead into Zombies."

Olympian, whose throat was being clutched in the Huntsman's hand gurgled a little and let out a laugh, insane laughter ricocheted around the barren wasteland that had once been full of refugees, and happiness. Huntsman's grip increased and he yanked upwards, pulling Olympian up to his face.

"You think this is funny?"

"No, I think this is DEAD funny."

Gorilla City : Earth 1:

Beryl shakes the hand of the Gorilla diplomat, whilst the Knight stands behind her, his arms crossed and his eyebrows knotted together in both worry and a constant state of anger.

"I don't know how to thank you; the other countries of the world simply don't have the intelligence or the man-power to handle the specialist needs of these Animals. I can assure you that we'll search for the reason these animals have been hyper accelerated. In fact, Knight and I are tracking the signal this moment." Beryl turns to the knight, who has moved again. He was like a child, moving from impulse to impulse, this time he was wandering back towards the small Delta-Flyer they'd taken from Superbia, taping away at the small keypad in his hands.

"Wait one moment, Noble Knight." A gruff voice expressed, as a large, middle-aged mountain Gorilla lumbers towards the Hero, extending a large wrinkled palm.

"I am Anatu, I have heard of your cause, and I wish to extend my services."

The Knight pauses for a moment, and pushes himself right up into the Gorilla's face, his lower jaw jutting out in some action-hero ultimate pose.

"You think it's that easy to join the Ultra Marines, huh? You think we all just run along collecting do-gooders and idealists and throw them all onto the Superbia construct and hope for the best?"

Anatu wipes the spittle from his lower maw, and looks slightly shocked at the Knights reaction. Gorillas are naturally powerful animals; he was sure that that single fact alone would prove an advantage over other applicants.

"Being an Ultra Marine is a Twenty Four hour a day job, you have to eat, sleep and drink sweat, blood and tears. You need to dream of making a difference and crap out Tolerance, am I making myself clear here, Mr. Bibo?"

Knight chuckled at the Obscure reference to a Zoo animal from the 1970's, however, what he didn't realize was it was Mr. Bobo, and he was a chimp. Regardless of which, Anatu soldiered on and extended his hand to Knight again.

"I bring you both gifts and power. I am a Gorilla Shaman; I have both power and wisdom of the Forest and the Gorilla mind to drawn upon. I see things differently to humans, and all I ask is the chance to represent my country, and my home on a team solely populated by humans."

Squire placed a hand in front of knight before he could say anything else stupid, and took hold of Anatu's hand.

"We'd be delighted to have the first Gorilla super-hero on our side. Thank you for your services, if you want to accompany us back to Superbia, we're going to have to take a small detour."

"I would not have it any other way, Squire." Anatu slowly announced lumbering towards the Flyer behind Squire leaving the Knight stood on his own, back to the pair slowly clenching and unclenching his fist.

"Squires are supposed to serve Knights. Not the other way around." He hissed through his teeth, and turned silently. Knight was going to have to teach Beryl a lesson.

Next Issue: From Worse to Bloody Abysmal.