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| Issue #4 March 2009 |
"Race" Written By Ed Ainsworth |
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Sweet salty sweat dripped over Nate’s top lip as he drove his hands into the roving mess underneath him. He’d already pulled two genotypes from their oppressive animalistic rage that had infected the entire variant world of humanity.
Eternal's fought Inhuman's, and Atlantean’s against Deviants. It was hell on Earth, and Nate knew it was going to get worse. As Blood trickled down his nose, his mind called out, asking for those favours he knew others held for him. His time spent on his Shamanistic quest had earned him a few favours, as well as granting him the knowledge that he required for this major event in human history, even if the humans didn’t know it was going on.
Pulling his ichor covered hands from the mind reef floor below him, he ran the back of his wrist against his face, smearing blood over his lips and cheeks, the upturned face of the entity beneath him suddenly coming to terms with what was going on.
“Nathan?” Crystal, of the inhuman Royal family asked, her Red hair flowing as she pulled herself physically into heightened consciousness. Everyone’s arrival into the realms of the Mind Reef was different, especially with consciousness. Thor’s had been met with violence and anger as his animal brain was forced into logical thought processes. Crystal’s body seemed to crackle with elemental energy, electrical impulses beating across her body with every pulse of her heart, her hair held in invisible winds, almost as though it was underwater, and fire burned in her eyes, very visibly.
“Crystal, I apologise for pulling you out of your reality, but I really need your help, and after the event with the Alpha Primitives, you know that you owe me one.” He planted his hands firmly on the reef below. He was out of energy and steam, he’d already sent the previous rescues to their locations to try and fight the good fight for him, with their selective mental evolution taking hold. It appears that once the heightened consciousness had taken place, there was nothing more of the original mind set left – Personalities the same, but ideals and thoughts were transcendental of their previous state. They effectively became a “revamped” person once they awoke on the mind reef.
“Nate.” Crystal said warmly, wrapping her arms around him. The Alpha Primitive event that Nate refered too was actually an uprising within the ranks of the Primitives, while they were a supressed class in Inhuman soceity, they now worked the smaller labour jobs and had more rights, thanks to the involvement of Nate and Crystal, evolving their mental processes rather than their bodies, almost the dichotomy of the Inhumans themselves. Both used the terrigen mists, but the Alpha's used the Crystal's themselves as a focusing agent for their mental progress.
“I'm going to need your help, Crystal. We're fighting a genetic war now, and I need your inhuman mind to help me crack this.”
She smiled and took his hand, the fire in her eyes burning brighter.
“What are we waiting for? Where are the rest of the recruits.”
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Her breath was short and ragged. She could see the bomb before her, it was just beyond the verge, sitting nicely in the cleft of a metahumans brain. It could go off again at any moment, and secretly, Threnody wanted it to happen.
She was more than sated at the moment, she was practically orgasmic with her fill of death and that's what scared her the most. Death was her food source now, and she wanted to gorge herself.
She crouched low with her new friend, the man known as Blackheath, who had formally been known as Samuel Smithers, the Plant man. Transcending the barriers of man and plant, he held himself outside of the realms of normal men now, conducting his business of watching over the plant related biosphere as a totem of plant life. He rested his hand on Threnody's back.
“This is the destruction of life you are talking about? How does this even effect my world, Threnody?”
Thren sighed, and looked back to Blackheath.
“We're all linked right, and the death would feed your world for a while, but it'd fall out eventually. Plants wouldn't be able to reproduce properly, no animals would exist to move your seeds, the hardier plants would survive for a while, but there'd be no genetic drift, we're talking a complete and utter removal of anything conscious, subconscious or social construct present across the board, Blackheath. This is the death of the Earth itself.”
The green faced man took a moment to think this over, the bark covering his face cracking as he smiled.
“How can I argue when you put it so eloquently.”
“Shut up.” She said, climbing over the verge, running down towards the Meme bomb.
“NOW!” She screamed, as Blackheath's body stretched over the verge, biomass coming into his form to allow him to do this. He reached his extended arms as far as they could before the Meme bomb took off and shot away from them.
“Shit.” Threnody said simply as the creation sped away, leaving a trail of disenchanted ideas behind it.
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“These are the rest of the recruits.” Nate gestured behind him, where a man, feeling the contores of his face held his body away from them, muttering under his breath.
“ugly, so ugly. Why am I cursed this way? Why?”
“Whats wrong with..” Crystal was cut off, as Nate raised his hand, putting his arm around Crystal's shoulder and pulling her away.
“Ransak the Reject is a Deviant cursed to look like an Eternal. He's been shunned by his people, and it's had a very direct reaction to his removal from the Mind-Reef. Whereas your powers have been externalised, his insecurities and paranoia has been externalised, so instead of manifesting his powers, he's outwardly noticing everything that's ever made him concerned or hate himself. “
“Will that not prove to be problematic?” She asked, looking over her shoulder at the shaking man.
“Perhaps. I know that we're all experiencing Shamanic upheavals, becoming the Shaman for our own tribes, some of us will experience if differently to others, Threnody is the only one who won't be feeling this, she is immune to this effect because of her...Powers.”
“What are they?”
“She absorbs death. She isn't a shaman, she's a spirit guide in this world. She is my totem of love and life, I'll follow her anywhere, to hell and back.”
Crystal smiled. Such love was a rare thing to see, especially for the woman who had two failed marriages at the hands of heroes such as Nate, perhaps he truly was a different breed altogether.
“And her?” She pointed towards the woman who's armour appeared to be transparent and constantly shifting. Her low hanging fringe just lifted right over her eyebrows giving her a very distinctive look.
“Wait.” Crystal said, holding her hand up for a moment.
“Sersi?”
“Crystal.” The moment said, moving towards her, the armour dropping away, and her arms outstretched. The woman hug and reacquaint themselves while Nate attends to the last member of his strike time. Sat on the edge of the mind reef, looking down onto the soul-shores, bald head in his hands. Much like the Reject, only this was more of a bewildered motion, his body stiff rather than crumpled.
“Krang?” Nate asked the blue skinned man as he stood behind him.
“Are you alright?”
“No, Grey, I am not alright.” The bearded Atlantean looked up from his hands, tears marking the corner of his eyes.
“This is...all too much for me, Grey. I saw the origins of my people, of their purpose and their ways, I saw their culture all in the blink of an eye. I know them more than I know myself, and the way I have acted, the way I have...opposed my king...There is no forgiveness large enough for my sins.”
Nate places a hand on Krangs shoulder, not saying a word. Change has come for them all.
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Under the waves of the Ocean, A great battle takes place. Deviants, no one the same, battled the unified front of the Atlanean army. It seems their unique structures had allowed the Deviants some form of intelligence in their animal like fury, unlike the other races involved in his war. The only entity in this battle of their full capacity to think and rationalise was one who barely even considered it a possibility. The Self styled man who was a machine who was a man who wanted to be a machine cut his way through the warriors with the ease of a knife through butter. X-49 was a machine man from the same stable as Aaron Stack, but much less stable in his head. He had been brought from the Altered states of artificial intelligence, where machines go to dream of being more efficient and less fleshy.
The Deviant's fell before him as their weapons clanged off his hard plastic exterior. His arms morphed through a thousand blunt and sharp edged weapons leaving a trail behind him thick with blood and ichor and pain. He was waiting for any response from Nate Grey, but an excuse to let some blood on the fleshy ones was more than a welcome diversion for X-49.
So he continued his indiscriminate rage.
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Fragments of the moon floated away from their moorings, the gravity of the satellite not great enough to hold onto it's fractured remains. On the surface, Thor tried to mediate the battle between the king of the Inhumans, driven into a silent rage, a testimeny really to the control of Black Bolt himself, even with his human mental faculties removed he still have enough control over himself not to speak or shout, and the attacking Eternal Squadrons. Their numbers now in the twenties, each Eternal was cutting a swath through the Inhuman's defensive lines, eye-beams and super strong fists dashing the people of the blue-area off their knuckles as a dog would shake off snow.
He held his hammer up as a defensive moment, a fist crashing down on it's shaft. Thor's eyes turned to murder and his thoughts to the violence he would inflict upon these people, before calming himself and succumbing to his role as the Shaman of the Gods. Twisting the Shaft and Head of his hammer, he caught the Eternals wrist between the metal and the wood, throwing him off balance and knocking him further into the moon rock with a heel drop.
“I hope you know what you're doing, Nate.” Thor said, summoning Thunder and Lightning where there really shouldn't be by the laws of nature.
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Nate stood atop the highest of the Helix structured trees, his bare feet twisting, allowing each strand of Darwinian branch to poke through his toes. The trees were nature herself, something that Nate appreciated, each tree, and indeed each branch representing a a group of animals and each individual species. The densest part of the forest around them was home to the insect trees, gradually thinning into mammal, bird and reptile patches. Above a mountain of Extinct trees, each bent to the will of nature herself and piled on top of each other like biological fire wood stood a man, glowing with radiant light, tending to each tree with nurturing hands, whilst watching the outcome of this war through two large pools before him.
“Evolutionary.” Nate began, as the radiant being turned around, holding a sceptre in his left hand.
“Nathan Grey.” He said quietly, his voice a hush of crushed leaves and whale song.
“It has been a long time, and I see you have advanced some friends.” The evolutionary state, placing his hands on his hips.
“I have, and we've come to ask you a boon.” Nate stated, directing the others kneel, as he dropped down to one knee himself.
“You know me to be proud, Evolutionary. I wouldn't be doing this unless It was dire.”
A smile spread over the Evolutionary's face.
“Go on.” He stated.
“Times are dire on Earth, a meme bomb has been effecting every other speciation of humanity on Earth, and it's set them on a course to destroy each other. We have come here to ask you to help us in preventing this from happening.”
The Evolutionary paused for some time, causing Nate to grind his teeth in anxiety. Looking around at the people behind him, he could tell that Sersi was loosing her temper. He honestly expected Krang to be the one, but his shaman experience had left him emotionally distraught, unable to currently come to terms with his previous life as a rabble rouser in Atlantis.
“You want me to stop this war?” The evolutionary finally asked, holding his Sceptre at chest height.
“Yes, Great Evolutionary.”
“No.” he said simply, turning his back on the grouping and looking down at the pools.
“But..”
“But nothing. Evolution is formed of conflict, you should know this Grey, coming from the world you do. Survival of the Fittest is the key, and without it we are simply causing genetic problems in the future for ourselves. I say let this go on, we shall see how this plays out.”
“Why you piece of..” Sersi's thought form armour snapped into place, building up panel by panel from her feet upwards, she lifted her massive fist into the air to smash down on the Evolutionary.
A burst of light shot her, shattering her armour, and sending her crashing into a helix tree beyond the group.
“Never raise your hand to me, Girl. I made you, and I understand you from the structure of your hair, to the very organs that make your pathetically weak form viable. Stay down.”
“Damnit.” Nate coughed under his breath. What now?
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Threnody and Blackheath charged forwards, once again they saw the Meme bomb before them, Threnody was desperate and determined to get it this time. They had devised a plan. Blackheath would grow a barrier of wood around the bomb, and Threnody would channel her accumulated death energies into it, to prevent it from moving and hopefully render it inert. Death came to all things, including ideas and societies.
As Threnody gestured towards the meme bomb, she noticed that Blackheath wasn't moving, his body was laying limp on the ground. Swearing under her breath she ran over to him, pushing his shoulder and whispering.
“Smithers? Blackheath. Ssst. Wake up.” She implored, only for the world to grow black around her from the sudden blow to the back of her head. As she hit the ground, she rolled over, her eyes lulling open for a moment, to give her a blurry vision of a figured shrouded in black.
Next Issue: More Revelations
