Project: Magnus

Over on G+ Bliss Mor­gan put up a chal­lenge where peo­ple had to make a story from the phrase And if by noon I'm blub­ber­ing like a baby, I'll be scream­ing your name and beg­ging you to save me

This is my take :)

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"What the hell is that idiot doing now?"

Michaels chuck­led to him­self as the Com­man­der walked into the obser­va­tion deck. "He's cel­e­brat­ing, or com­mis­er­at­ing, or com­muning… I for­get what word he actu­ally used, it started with a 'c' however."

"Okay," said the Com­man­der as he stopped in front of the floor to ceil­ing win­dow to watch the float­ing fig­ure, "did he say why?"

Michaels took a seat in the lounge couch, sink­ing into the overly soft cush­ions and feel­ing deca­dent as he did so, "He's explained it to me sev­eral times, but to be fair, I don't under­stand it. It's the anniver­sary of the death of his wife and son."

The Com­man­der turned to glare at Michaels. "And what exactly does that have to do with him float­ing away from the sta­tion with no tether! He's going to get him­self killed and us sued!"

"On this day every year he makes arrange­ments so that he is in space, on a sta­tion or dock or some­thing like that. Never a ship. Once he did a cruise liner but it was docked so I'm not sure it counts."

"Once? That crazy Russ­ian has done this before?"

"Every year on this date for the past fif­teen years. Ever since the base he was sta­tioned on was attacked and they were all vented into space." Michaels crossed his legs and smiled. "He puts on a suit and stands in an air­lock. At pre­cisely 12:24 in the morn­ing he opens the lock doors and just floats out. He then drifts there for four hours before moving."

Com­man­der Reynolds leaned back against the thick view­port glass and ran a hand through his hair as he watched sev­eral crew mem­bers walk across the view­ing area.

"I'm going to regret ask­ing, but then what?"

Michaels stood up, regret­ful to leave behind the com­fort­able couch and walked over to stand beside the Com­man­der. He put his hand on the glass , "Then he does what­ever he can, short of call­ing for help, to get back to safety."

"And what if he isn't able to make it back? We just let him die?"

"He said not to retrieve him unless and until he speaks the safe phrase."

Com­man­der Reynolds sighed, "And what might that phrase be?"

"And I quote 'And if by noon I'm blub­ber­ing like a baby, I'll be scream­ing your name and beg­ging you to save me'. Hon­estly, I have no idea what it means," Michaels said throw­ing up his arms in a defen­sive pos­ture, "but appar­ently those were the first words he said when the res­cue team found him."

"And he does this every year? Recre­ates the event and cir­cum­stances of that event."

Michaels turned around and leaned against the win­dow as well, fold­ing his arms across his chest as he did, "Every sin­gle year."

The Com­man­der stepped away, shov­ing his hands in his pock­ets. "Why? What's the point? What point does it serve to put him­self in dan­ger every year?"

"Maybe he's just remind­ing him­self of how close he came to dying. Or maybe he's angling for a Sec­tion 8. Who knows."

"Well, at least he comes by that 'Mad Russ­ian' nick­name honestly."

Michaels sim­ply nod­ded and smiled.

He's out there some­where. My men­tor. Teacher. Father.

Some­where in the shad­ows, watch­ing. Wait­ing. Try­ing to see how badly I've fallen from his blessed pedastal.

He once gave some stu­pid speech about walk­ing the road of ven­gence and dig­ging two graves… blah blah blah. I wasn't really lis­ten­ing. Didn't really care.

I'm tired of play­ing it his way, tying them up for the police or drop­ping them off in from of City Hall. They keep com­ing back more pissed, and stronger than before.
It's insane that we keep fight­ing these idiots, putting them in what are sup­pos­edly hyper secure pris­ons only to fight them again in six months. So I'm doing some­thing about it. I'm cross­ing the line he would never cross.

I'm end­ing their fight for good.

He told me that we could be a hero and save the world while killing the bad guys. That it 'bank­rupted our souls'. Whatever.

If that's how he feels so be it, call me Bankrupt.

“I am look­ing for a piece of the Matrix.”

“A piece of a matrix? Why come to me with this?”, asked Talos as he

“Not a matrix.”

“Wait, you are look­ing for ‘the’ matrix? The World Matrix?,” Talos asked laugh­ing, “Son, thats just a leg­end. A fairy tale told to young bots to get them to sleep. It is not real.”

Aneil shifted in his seat. He was becom­ing most decid­edly uncom­fort­able with the laugh­ing the old shaman bot was doing at his expense. He had been to the Dark Con­ti­nent sev­eral time in the past as a researcher and infor­ma­tion gath­erer. He had per­formed his duties well enough that he had been assigned Lead Researcher for the Noble Project, which was where he had encoun­tered the leg­end of the Matrix.

At first he had dis­missed it as just another crazy story just as the shaman had, but the more research he did for the Noble project the more he dis­cov­ered ref­er­ences to the ancient leg­end. So many so that he had began to won­der if there might actu­ally be some­thing to it.

He sub­mit­ted a pro­posal to the Admin­is­tra­tors but was refused on the grounds that it was all based on here say and cir­cum­stan­tial evidence.

Which meant he was fund­ing this trip with his own credits.

The sounds of the ser­vos whirring in the old bot as he paced around the room brought Aneil out of his mem­o­ries with a start. He real­ized Talos had been talk­ing to him. He glanced up to see him star­ing down as if expect­ing an answer.

“I am sorry, I was not lis­ten­ing. What did you say?”

“I was say­ing, assum­ing this ‘world matrix’ is real what makes you think it is around here or that I could help you?”

“It is real Talos. I've found it. Well, most of it. Accord­ing to the leg­end it was …”

“Bro­ken into a hun­dred pieces and scat­tered across the world. Yes, I know the sto­ries as well”

Aneil stood and waled over to his pack. He extracted a small, intri­cately carved, metal box along with a small cir­cuit chip, ancient things he had found in an old tomb not far from here. He han­dled the chip del­i­cately over the Talos, then opened the box. Inside was red tri­a­con­ta­he­dron shaped object about the size of a closed fist nes­tled inside a blue lat­tice work cage. As Aneil removed the con­tents sev­eral places were vis­i­ble where pieces of the red inner object were miss­ing. Talos sim­ply stared.

“As you can see, it’s not quite hun­dreds of pieces. But it is real Talos. Only a few pieces are miss­ing. That crys­tal con­tains all the infor­ma­tion about the Novatun tribe that lived about 60 kilo­me­ters north of here. Within that infor­ma­tion I have found sev­eral ref­er­ences to the Matrix, or at least what I believe to be the Matrix. There are mul­ti­ple ref­er­ences to the ‘heart that rules the world’ being bro­ken and scat­tered. It con­tained a list of places where the ‘heart was kept’ once it was bro­ken. I’ve man­aged to deci­pher most of them.”

Talos just stared at the crystal.

“Sorry, it is in an ancient for­mat and syn­tax, how­ever you can read it if you use your uni­ver­sal bus port. “

Talos did as sug­gested and inserted the crys­tal into a slot on his left wrist. He froze for a moment as he quickly down­loaded and scanned the doc­u­ments it con­tained, search­ing for the ref­er­ences Aneil had mentioned.

After a few sec­onds he removed the crys­tal and handed it back to Aneil, “Yes, I see what you mean. There are a sub­stan­tial num­ber of ref­er­ences in the doc­u­ments. I assume this was an ancient archiv­ing device?”

“That is my belief yes. We found it dur­ing a dig over a hun­dred and twenty-​​five years ago. At first it was just mean­ing­less infor­ma­tion and we sim­ply cat­a­loged it and put it in stor­age, not giv­ing it a sec­ond though. It was not until I began see­ing more and more ref­er­ences to the leg­end that I went back and res­canned the infor­ma­tion on this crystal.”

“Assum­ing I agree with you and I know some­thing about where the Colos­sus is, why would I help you? Telling you would bring hoards of vis­i­tors to my per­sonal paradise.”

“Because I’m not the only one looking…”

Aneil was inter­rupted by a series of explo­sions out­side. As both he and Talos started towards the door a small rust red bot cov­ered in soot and oil clam­ored through cough­ing and stammering.

Talos knelt in from of the new­comer and took his by the shoul­ders, “Tim­Tim, calm down. What is happening?”

“The Vok,” gasped Tim­Tim just before he collapsed.

“The Vok! You brought those insane bots here?” Talos turned to Aneil.

“No. I was track­ing them actu­ally, but when I real­ized they were headed in this direc­tion I rushed ahead. I had though I would have more time. We must go before they find us.” Aneil said as he turned and grabbed his pack.

“Go? I’m not leav­ing. This is my home now.”

“Old man,” began Aneil as he pulled an elec­tronic device from his pack, “I do not have time for fool­ish argu­ments. You now con­tain a copy of the infor­ma­tion on the chip. Infor­ma­tion the Vok lack but greatly desire. If you stay they will destroy you to get it. Even if you offer it up. You know them, they will assume you are hold­ing some­thing back and tear you apart, vir­tu­ally and phys­i­cally to make sure. I will destroy you myself first.”

Talos stared down the bar­rel of the Sta­tic Gun, "Fine, I will come with you. But be warned, I will not for­get this."

“Uh, who exactly are you?”, Harley asked, wide eyed, as he sat on the console.

"More impor­tantly, how did you get on this ship?”, Cap­tain Remark­able stepped for­ward, address­ing the new­comer directly.

"I took the sleigh.”

“You took the what?” Harley perked up.

“That doesn’t answer my ques­tion, we are in the Cloud for cripes sake."

“Think of me as a hitch­hiker Captain.”

“Funny, I don’t remem­ber pulling over.” Phineas asked, walk­ing into the room,  “What I miss?”

“I don’t have time to go into details at the moment.  Suf­fice to say I work for the San­tas.  We can find any­one any­where, I was sent to seek you out and ask for your help., he smiled, “To answer your ques­tion Harley, my name is Faulkner.”

“Why are you here?

"Some­one stole the Santa Man­tle and kid­napped Santa Prime.

"Some­one stole the what and kid­napped the who?”

Faulkner sighed heav­ily and wearily.  This was the con­ver­sa­tion he really wasn't  look­ing for­ward to hav­ing for many rea­sons.  Not the least of which being time. Or the lack of it.

It was always the way in sit­u­a­tions like this.  The peo­ple involved need to know what has hap­pen­ing and why and how they were sup­posed to help, but the was always a time limit.  

"There isn't time to explain every­thing really, but I sup­pose I have no choice.  I'll com­press it as much as I can for now and will be glad to answer any ques­tions you may have when pos­si­ble. I sug­gest we all take a seat."

Once they were all seated Faulkner paced around the room.  Every­one twisted or swiveled in their respec­tive chairs to fol­low him as he told a tale that kept each of them enrap­tured.  Every­one except the Cap­tain.  He assumed this was all an elab­o­rate scheme to take over his ship.

“Let me start by say­ing that every­thing you know about the per­son called Santa Claus isn’t exactly true.”

Harleys ears drooped.

“Easy Harl.  Let me explain.  As I said, what you know isn’t exactly true.  Or at rather it’s not the entire truth.  The real­ity has become cor­rupted over the years, but since it actu­ally serves to help hide the truth of who Santa really is, we began to encour­age the tales and stories.

The one you call ‘Santa’ we call ‘Santa Prime’.  He is in charge of the other San­tas and man­ages the pro­duc­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion of the toys and gifts.”

“Wait, so Santa is a CEO?”

“Tech­ni­cally speak­ing, yes.  How­ever he is also much more that that.  He’s also the guardian of the ‘Spirit of Christmas’”

“What’s christ­mas?”  

“Christ­mas, Harley, is what you call Yule Night.  It’s known as dif­fer­ent things in dif­fer­ent places.  It’s orig­i­nal name in fact isn’t Christ­mas but some­thing lost to time.  

Any­way, get­ting back to my story.  The ‘Spirit of Christ­mas’ that Prime guards is what we call the Santa Man­tle.  It’s what lets him dis­trib­ute joy and cheer through­out the year and what allows the other San­tas to travel and deliver so many gifts. “

“I told you he had cool tech­nol­ogy!” exclaimed Harley.

“Stop inter­rupt­ing Harley,” Faulkner smiled, “It’s not tech­nol­ogy. It’s magic. A very old, very spe­cial kind of magic.  

The Man­tle was stolen yes­ter­day, pre­sum­ably when Santa Prime was kid­napped.  We must find it and get it back and the Prime back before Christ­mas Night… I mean Yule Night.

Right now Max­amil­lian, Santa Paws is track­ing the ones that took the Man­tle.  Horus, also know as Santa Claws, that’s C L A W S, is fol­low­ing up on a lead to locate Prime.  

We need your help Harley.”

“My help?  Why me?”

“The short answer is, there is a pro­vi­sion that should some­thing hap­pen to the San­tas we were to con­tact you.  There were some that argued it was too early, that you weren't ready but I won the debate.  Or rather I ignored them and came after you any­way.  I can’t really say more than that right now.”

“You’re ask­ing us to take a lot on faith Faulkner” the Cap­tain said as he stood up.

“Yes I know.  And I’m sorry.  I’ve told you all I can for now and we are short of time.  Yule night is in 2 days.”

“How many San­tas are there?” asked Harley cheerfully.

“Quite a few.  In addi­tion to the ones I already men­tioned there is Cyn­derk­las, Father Yule, and Saint Kristo­pher to name a few.

"So where do you come into all this?" asked Phineas

"I'm a Com­man­der in the E.L.F., and was assigned to pro­tec­tion of the Prime.  I'm respon­si­ble for him and it's my job to get him back."

"Wait, “said Harley, "You're an elf?"

"No, I'm a mem­ber of the E.L.F., that stands for Extremeis Liber­i­tus Forte.  It's essen­tially a police force assigned to guard and pro­tect the Santas."

"I don't under­stand.  You're wear­ing green, but aren't you sup­pose to be short, and have pointy ears?"

“I’m not an elf Harley.”

“Denial is the first sign."

Faulkner sighed, “I assume you've heard of the MCU?”

Every­one nodded

"We are the MCU for the North Pole.”

“North pole?  We don't have a north pole. We don’t even have a north”

"Every planet has a north Phineas.  Besides, it's not a place per se, that's actu­ally the code name of the Candy Cane Fac­tory, the place where all the gifts are man­u­fac­tured.  It's a heav­ily guarded secret and no, I won't take you to visit Harley.”

“Won’t you get in trou­ble?”, Harley asked in earnest.

“Prob­a­bly.  I intend to resign once this is over any­way.  In all the time since the ELF has been estab­lished no one has ever lost a Santa.  I'm the first. “

“What can we do to help”, vol­un­teered Harley to the unsmil­ing faces of Phineas and the Captain.

"I hon­estly don't know.  I was hop­ing you knew of a way to find a res­cue the Prime.  If you don't I …”

Harley grinned.

“Harley,” began the Cap­tain, “Am I cor­rect in assum­ing that the words "I have a plan" are head­ing with unwar­rented enthu­si­asm in the direc­tion of this conversation?

“Yes sir, how­ever, I don't think anyone’s going to like it.”

“When do we ever?”, Phineas smiled.

Phineas stared. He wasn’t sure if he was hugely impressed, or supremely ter­ri­fied by what he was look­ing at. Either way, it held him in awe.

“What were you try­ing to do?”

“I was try­ing to cap­ture Santa!”

Phineas did a dou­ble take at Harley. Being four­teen inches tall and twenty seven inches long might be aver­age for a Dawg of his breed but it didn't’ allow much room for a grin the size of the one he was cur­rently wearing.

“Why.”

“Because I want my pressies.”

“What does that have to do with cap­tur­ing Santa,” asked Phineas as he sat on a stool and looked around for the plate of cook­ies he had brought down.

“You have to cap­ture Santa so he will give you presents. That’s how it works.” Harley, real­iz­ing some­thing wasn’t right cocked his head and looked at Phineas who was eat­ing a cookie, “Isn’t it?”

“Um, no. You don’t have to cap­ture Santa for him to give you presents. He brings them to all the good lit­tle boys and girls."

"And dawgs," Phineas quickly added, "He leaves them for you under the tree. No cap­tur­ing involved.”

“Are you sure?” Harley asked nar­row­ing his eyes and star­ing at the metal con­struct designed to hold Santa.

“Yes I’m sure you nut job.”

Harley looked crestfallen.

“Well he must have some really cool tech­nol­ogy,” he announced cheer­ing up and danc­ing around the room.

“I’m sorry?”

“How else would he be able to travel around the entire planet in a sin­gle night deliv­er­ing toys to all the good lit­tle dawgs everywhere?”

Harley bab­bled as he dashed around the room twist­ing dials and flip­ping switches. The Santa Trap was fairly new and had never been tested until today, but it was based on a pre­vi­ous design so he was con­fi­dent this would work.

Granted the pre­vi­ous design had blown up rather fan­tas­ti­cally. He cast glances over at the large metal object sit­ting in the mid­dle of the room. It eas­ily stood six feet tall, was shaped vaguely like a bul­let and had any num­ber of wires and hoses com­ing out and going in.

To this day Phineas was unable to fig­ure out how a Dawg as small as Harley was able to build some­thing so large. It didn’t seem phys­i­cally pos­si­ble since he was only twice his cur­rent height even when he stood on his hind legs.

Appar­ently Harley ignored the laws of phys­i­cal pos­si­bil­i­ties. At least it the the only expla­na­tion he could come up with.

“He must to have a quan­tum deluxe time dila­tor or flux capacitor.”

“A what or a what?”

“Or maybe he’s dimen­sion­ally transcendental.”

“What the heck does that mean?”

Harley stopped fid­dling with the screen he was adjust­ing and looked over at Phineas, “No idea but it sounds cool,” He said as he smiled.

They both jumped when the bang­ing started. It had been a quiet knock­ing at first, and think­ing back Phineas real­ized it had been there a while, he had assumed it was sim­ply part of the machin­ery. The sud­den increase in vol­ume and inten­sity dis­pelled that illusion.

“When you guys are done chat­ting would some­one please let me out of here?"

Harley flinched.

Phineas sim­ply stared.

“Who exactly did you catch?”

“I… I’m not sure.”

“You said this was designed to catch Santa.”

“Well yes, but that doesn’t mean some­one else can’t acci­den­tally get caught.”

“Some­one else did get caught,” came the voice from the metal container.

Phineas crept over to where Harley sat on the desk, “Dude, you caught the captain.”

Harley’s eyes widened. He stood, jumped off the desk and began to trot quickly towards the door.

“Where are you going, are you actu­ally run­ning away?”

“I pre­fer to call it a strate­gic retreat.”

Phineas walked over the the cap­sule and began try­ing to pry open the cap­sule doors, “Get over here and help me get the cap­tain out of here.”

“Are you insane? He’s going to kill you if you let him out.”

“No he won’t, he knows who is respon­si­ble for this. You’re the one he’s going to kill.”

“Me?!”

“Who else on this ship comes up with these kinds of schemes.”

“Seri­ously, you’re just going to throw me under the bus like that?”

“You two are aware of the fact I can hear you right?” came the muf­fled voice again.

Harley blanched. Which for a black and brown haired Dawg was an impres­sive feat.

Harley trot­ted back over this his chair and worked his way back onto the table. After a moments hes­i­ta­tion he flipped a switch and pressed a cou­ple but­tons caus­ing the metal mon­stros­ity to shiver. As it the door opened as the ships cap­tain slowly stepped out.

“Heh. Sorry captain.”

“Harley, what. Are. You. Doing?” asked the rather annoyed Cap­tain Remarkable.

Harley froze, his ears erect and swivel­ing back and form, search­ing, “I hear something!”

Phineas and the Cap­tain turned to look towards the door.

Out­side there was a sound. A faint, quiet lit­tle sound that echoed through out the entire ship. A sound that slowly grew slightly louder. It sound, at first, like a hard rain when it fell against the hull of the ship. As it grew it changed. Now it began to sound like bells. Hun­dreds of small metal bells. The kind one might find on a sleigh.

Phineas turned to look at the cap­tain, a look of dis­be­lief on his face,”Santa?”

Harley grinned, “Santa!”

The head of the task force assigned to work with us in deal­ing with Asgard has been going over the reports and after­math of the encounter in the Boston area for the last 15 min­utes but I've tuned out.

We lost 8 of our own and only man­aged, through shear luck, to cap­ture 1 of them. None of the Asgard fell. From the tiny bits of infor­ma­tion we were able to extract from our pris­oner they not only have the force­field that I encoun­tered, they have also devel­oped a device that allows them to tele­port as well as anti-​​matter bombs. The lat­ter we think was used in the North End.

It means they can strike any­where at will and com­pletely dev­as­tate everything.

It also means they can kill hun­dreds, maybe even thou­sands of peo­ple in the blink of an eye. Ini­tial esti­mates put the loses in North End around 900. We will never know for sure because there are no bod­ies to count.

Some of the ana­lysts now believe that the bank heists and other rob­beries were designed to acquire funds to develop this tech­nol­ogy. Some­one on their side has to have an extremely high IQ. This is tech that's been dreamed of for years but no one else has been able to even come close to these kind of devices. They man­aged to do it in a lit­tle under two years.

The other thing we've learned is that their head­quar­ters is located in Que­bec. They are using one of the older north­ern cas­tles as a base of operations.

I have no idea why Que­bec would aid and abet these peo­ple but ever since they gained their sov­er­eignty the gov­ern­ment up there has gone out of it's way to piss off Canada and the US. What bet­ter way to do that then to pro­vide asy­lum to our biggest threat.

After the debrief­ing we met with the lead­ers of the mil­i­tary arm of the project to dis­cuss the next move. After some debate it's been decided that we will take the fight to them, we are to air drop into their home base and let the gov­ern­ment deal with the con­se­quences of what will be con­sider an inva­sion into Que­bec territory.

Drop from twenty thou­sand feet with­out a para­chute isn't for the weak of heart. It took me sev­eral months to get up the nerve. And like the joke says, it's not the fall that kills you but the sud­den stop at the end. 3 of us have tele­ki­netic abil­i­ties and we use them at the last sec­ond to slow everyone‚Äôs decent at the last sec­ond. We agreed ear­lier not to bring us to a com­plete stop but to land heav­ily in the stone court­yard of the cas­tle. A bit rem­i­nis­cent of the scene in Suck­er­Punch and maybe a lit­tle cliche but it was cool. Con­sid­er­ing the cas­tle looks a bit like the one in the movie it was all the more surreal.

I sent one group to work their way around the right side of the cas­tle and another to the left. Myself and the rest walked straight through the front door like we owned the place.

We searched for hours. Not that the cas­tle was very large, but we looked for hid­den door­ways, secret pas­sages, or hid­den rooms. Any­thing to explain why the build­ing was com­pletely deserted. Sad to think our show in the court­yard went unseen.

Every­one finally mets together in what appears to be the throne room. Along one wall, oppo­site where I imag­ine the throne would be, but where now sits a large orange sec­tional sofa, are four large tele­vi­sions mounted on the wall.

We are all milling around the room try­ing to decide what to do next, the mil­i­tary attach­ment is actu­ally look­ing a bit relieved, when the hiss­ing starts. Our first reac­tion is panic, that we walked into a trap and that an anti-​​matter bomb is about to go off. Funny how we didn't think of that before hand. Only when the tv's flash to life and we are all star­ing at the face of what has to be the ugli­est man alive do we real­ize that it was indeed a trap but that we aren't going to die just yet.

"Inter­est­ing. More of you sur­vived then I expected" says the voice from the tele­vi­sions, "I'm slightly impressed. Not that it matters."

I step for­ward and address the screens.

"You are the one they call Exo­dus I presume?"

"You pre­sume cor­rectly. And you are the son. Father would be proud."

"You do not get to call him 'father'."

Exo­dus laughs and waves his hand, dis­miss­ing my comment.

"Spare me the the­atrics. He was the cre­ator of all of us. He cre­ated the serum and the process that gave us our pow­ers, that made us more than human. He was our Gen­e­sis and I carry on ful­fill­ing my inter­pre­ta­tion of his vision, which is why I call myself 'Exo­dus'. But I don't want to upset you lit­tle one, so I shall refrain from using the term again."

"What do you want? I pre­sume there is a rea­son we are here and you are talk­ing to us?"

"Yes, there is a rea­son. I want you to run home and tell your pres­i­dent and mil­i­tary lead­ers I have a pro­posal for them."

"And what might that pro­posal be?"

"That is for them to know lit­tle one."

"You can't really expect me to tell them you want to talk and not give them a rea­son why?"

"Tell them I wish to make a deal."

I almost fall over laugh­ing. After all this he really thinks they are going to nego­ti­ate with a terrorist.

"What deal?" I ask when I finally catch my breath.

"We want immu­nity and gov­ern­men­tal sup­port to sell the Ich­a­bod drug to any­one that can afford it. Tell them that if they don't agree we will destroy a city every hour until they do and the clock starts in five hours.", Exo­dus leaned for­ward into the screen, "And you know we have the abil­ity to do just that. Now run along."

Build­ings all around where I sit have col­lapsed and the streets are lit­tered with aban­doned cars and debris from the bat­tle. From the repots I'm get­ting over my head­set we held the city but at a steep price. Cam­bridge is pretty much lev­eled, and the North End is gone. No one has any idea how. It wasn't lev­eled or destroyed, it just isn't there. Some­one said it just dis­ap­peared in a flash of light.

It's amaz­ing what passes through your mind some­times. As I sit on my knees feel­ing the pain of my dis­lo­cated right shoul­der and bro­ken fore­arm I remem­ber the last time I felt pain like this. The day I went through the trans­for­ma­tion process.

It hurts. They didn't know that at first, though in hind­sight it should have been obvi­ous. The first test sub­ject died from the pain before they fig­ured it out. The sec­ond went mad before they were able to get the pain and anes­the­sia lev­els right. Even then you feel it and it's still the worse pain you've ever felt in your life. The process causes your bones to re-​​knit them­selves so that they become stronger. Your mus­cles are restruc­tured as mil­lions of new fibers are cre­ated and your skin is reworked so that it's denser and vir­tu­ally impen­e­tra­ble. In essence every cell in your body is trans­formed. In minutes.

All this passes through my mind in an instant. Even now the mem­ory is still enough to make me catch my breath. Which the titan of a man in front of me appar­ently took as a sign of pain or weak­ness because he started laugh­ing. Frankly it's rather annoying.

I raise my head and look at titan boy. He's at least 8 feet tall and built like a young Arnold Schwarzeneg­ger. I have no way of know­ing if was like that before or if the process did this to him. Either way, he's big. The process is also what gives us our pow­ers. Every per­son is dif­fer­ent so we never know what we will end up with. Some pow­ers are, for lack of a bet­ter way of say­ing it, use­less. Hav­ing the abil­ity to grow plants well doesn't really help. Pow­ers can range any­where from telekine­sis to super speed, although not on the level of the Flash, to a super genius. And every­thing in between. I was gifted with telekine­sis. A rather strong form of it too. Where as most have trou­ble mov­ing any­thing larger than a mid-​​sized SUV, I can bring down build­ings. I've men­tioned that the process reengi­neers every cell and makes us stronger and our skin denser. Any­thing short of an armor pierc­ing shell will basi­cally bounce off. It hurts like hell, but only for a sec­ond. It's the equiv­a­lent of being smacked with a ruler for normals.

With that said, physics is still physics. If I hit him with some­thing big enough, and with enough momen­tum, it won't stop him, but might put him down long enough to get away. Instinc­tively I reach out and grab whats left of the side of a 7 story build­ing behind me. He sees the wall start to shake, places his hands on his hips and starts laugh­ing even louder. Not exactly the response I expected but he's start­ing to piss me off so I don't bother restrain­ing myself and fling it at him with every­thing I've got.

The impact is tremen­dous, I feel it from where I'm sit­ting sev­eral hun­dred yards away. It's enough that a cou­ple unsta­ble struc­tures near us start to col­lapse and fall into them­selves in response. I head the crack­ling and tin­kling of small stones falling back to earth after the impact sent them sky­ward. I strug­gle to stand, when a tremor shakes the area and knocks me back on my ass. Trou­ble is it doesn't feel like a nor­mal tremor, nor does it come at the right time. There was too much time after the impact for the two to be related.

That's when I real­ize the crack­ing sounds I heard ear­lier weren't stones. Now that the dust has set­tled I see him kneel­ing on the ground with his left fist on the ground. He has caused the tremor by pound­ing the earth. And he has a force­field sur­round­ing him. That's new.

He grins and picks up the burnt out remains of a car next to him and heaves it at me. Can't dodge with my arm and shoul­der so I push myself up and over using my gift, som­er­sault­ing badly over the car. I land wrong caus­ing pain to flair in my shoul­der and wrench my ankle. No dam­age is done but it puts me off bal­ance long enough for him to uproot a light pole and swing at me. I can't recover in time and the impact throws me across the street. When I land the impact shat­ters my head­set, how­ever my only thoughts are that I'm glad he doesn't play for the Yan­kees and that he's left handed.

He launches him­self into the air directly at me. It's one hell of a leap, but based on the dis­play so far noth­ing for some­one with his strength. As he's in the air I real­ize where we are and using my power grab him in mid air and slam him into a con­crete build­ing in the cen­ter of the street. It's the build­ing where the Red Line goes back under­ground so I put every­thing I have into forc­ing him as far down as I can and pil­ing debris on top.

It won't hold him for­ever but should long enough for me to get away.

I go north, plan­ning to cross over the Charles at the museum head­ing for the Gar­den where our HQ is set up. They need to know that the game has changed.

It shouldn't be such a nice day

We buried my father today. A man con­sid­ered by many as the bright­est mind that ever lived. Oth­ers called him the har­bin­ger of doom. Appar­ently that's the way it works with men who are super geniuses. If his death had been nat­ural I might not hate the sun­shine and cool breezes blow­ing around me as I stand here on the bal­cony over­look­ing the grave­yard where his body now lies.

My girl­friend is with me and has been try­ing to con­sole me all after­noon. Unfor­tu­nately this is one of those sit­u­a­tions where unless you've expe­ri­enced it, you can't even begin to under­stand what it's like. She kept remind­ing me that her father was killed when she was 12, and while that is true, her father wasn't killed by a ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion that was cre­ated specif­i­cally to destroy his work. She can't under­stand that because of his work in genet­ics and biol­ogy, and because of the pow­ers he gave me and oth­ers like me, he was tar­geted from the beginning.

I don't blame her. I can't. Of the 10 bil­lion peo­ple liv­ing on this planet and the moon only 15, the ones dad chose for the Ich­a­bod project, would even begin to have an idea of what it felt like. Of those, only five had a par­ent in the project. Then of course only I was lucky enough to have the man that started it all, the man that dis­cov­ered how to give ordi­nary peo­ple what amounted to super pow­ers, as a father.

Right now she is in the other room try­ing to absorb every­thing I told her. In this case I can imag­ine what she is going through. I went through some­thing sim­i­lar 5 years ago when dad told me all about the Ich­a­bod idea. He told me about how he had worked out how to alter a per­sons phys­i­ol­ogy and bio­chem­istry to give them super human abilities.

He had got­ten FDA approval to begin test­ing on humans, and wanted to know if I would be will­ing to be part of the trials.

That's when every­thing went to hell. A group call­ing them­selves 'The Asgard' broke into the lab in Boston, stole all the serum and notes and research and blew up the lab. Injur­ing my dad in the process. They began to exper­i­ment on them­selves. No one is sure where their sci­en­tist came from, or if they even had one, but sud­denly they began to acquire abil­i­ties that were unsta­ble and dan­ger­ous. Well, more dan­ger­ous. Espe­cially in their hands.

Dad went into self-​​imposed exile to recover from his injuries. The worst of which was a shat­tered spine which left him unable to walk. 'Very Pro­fes­sor X' I always said, teas­ing him about it. At least it made him smile.

When he recov­ered to the point he could work again he ded­i­cated him­self to devel­op­ing a serum that would counter the orig­i­nal drug, hold­ing him­self respon­si­ble for all the death and dam­aged caused by Asgard.

Then a year ago they changed course. Some said that the lead­er­ship within Asgard changed, that there had been a coup of some kind and that was why the change of phi­los­o­phy. Oth­ers said it was because they had found out about dad's lit­tle fail safe. That those given the treat­ment became ster­ile and could not pro­duce off­spring. He had said it was to pre­vent the pow­ers from get­ting out of con­trol and evolv­ing into god knew what.

Either way they went from com­mit­ting crimes like theft and extor­tion to ter­ror­iz­ing the gen­eral pop­u­la­tion. I'm con­vinced that they did it inten­tion­ally, know­ing dad would do some­thing and it would bring him out of exile.

And they were right. He came out of seclu­sion and, with the help of the gov­ern­ment, formed the super-​​human group he dubbed 'League'. He kind of named it after the 'League of Extra­or­di­nary Gen­tle­men', but also, as a pri­vate joke, because the train­ing part of the pro­gram would be called 'The Minors'. He did love his baseball.

Because I was his son I was recruited to join. Train­ing was bru­tal. Not only did we get train­ing in using our pow­ers but we went through the stan­dard Marine basic train­ing. Only it was accel­er­ated because no one felt we had a lot of time to fig­ure it out.

We held our own the first time we face Asgard. No one died and no one got seri­ously injured. How­ever in retal­i­a­tion they attacked and lev­eled Atlanta. Sher­man would have been proud, and prob­a­bly a lit­tle embar­rassed. That was six months ago. They are still search­ing for miss­ing peo­ple. They announced a cou­ple weeks ago that they were tar­get­ing Boston next since that was where it all began and where League had setup it's headquarters.

When the announce­ment hit the news dad jumped on a plane from LA, where he had been work­ing to setup a west coast divi­sion, and headed back to Boston. They attacked his plane some­where over Kansas and brought it down. They pulled my father from the plane, tor­tured him for fun then fin­ished the job they started back when they first attacked the lab. I'm told he died quickly once they decided to kill him. Small consultation.

Steph came out after a cou­ple hours and is stand­ing next to me. We stay like that, nei­ther of us talk­ing for sev­eral min­utes until the sirens start­ing going off, announc­ing Asgards arrival in Boston, and my sig­nal that it was time to met the rest of the team.

I really wish it wasn't such a nice day.

---

This isn't my strongest piece and con­sid­er­ing that I've been bad sick all week I prob­a­bly should have stayed in bed and left well enough alone.

Yea, right.

This is also an exper­i­ment. ¬†I'm decent at descrip­tion but wanted to try doing some­thing in pure dia­log to see if I could carry a story that way.

Any­way here is my Sep­tem­ber 18^th #fri­dayflash. Please com­ment below!

(more…)

(be gen­tle, this was writ­ten in about an hour on the train this AM. ¬†I just learned about #flash­fri­day yes­ter­day (thurs­day) and wanted to join in)

David sat on the couch. The tele­vi­sion was on but he was read­ing the fun­nies from the news­pa­per while scratch­ing behind Zena‚Äôs ears while she strug­gled to occupy as much of his lap a possible.

The noise served to dis­tract him, as did read­ing the comics. His girl­friend has left him recently so he was try­ing to avoid think­ing about any­thing as much as pos­si­ble. She hadn‚Äôt bro­ken up, just left. Moved to a dif­fer­ent state.

She had come by, told him of her plans, hugged him, kissed him, said see you later and drove away. She didn‚Äôt ask him to come, and she didn‚Äôt tell him where she was going other than another state. It wasn‚Äôt that she avoided telling him, it just had some­how never come up.

As a result of his efforts every­thing was serv­ing it‚Äôs pur­pose. The TV, AC, comics and Zena‚Äôs wig­gling had kept him dis­tracted for the bet­ter part of 10 minutes.

The pierc­ing beep that started com­ing in from out­side also dis­tracted him. But it mostly dis­tracted him from his dis­trac­tions. Annoyed he grabbed the remote and punched the but­ton to increase the volume.

In defi­ance the beep­ing increased it‚Äôs vol­ume as well.

Grumpily David forced him­self off the couch and went over to the win­dow and closed it. The AC had been on for the noise, and he casu­ally reached over and turn the fan up louder.

He stood there star­ing out the win­dow in utter dis­be­lief. In front of him was a truck. A big red rig with a flatbed. The truck itself wasn‚Äôt unusual, but the fact that it was in his dri­ve­way and back­ing up was.

He made his way down the hall to the back door try­ing to fig­ure out what could pos­si­bly be hap­pen­ing. ¬†He quickly thought of every­thing he might have ordered over the last cou­ple of months, none of which seemed to require a truck this size to be deliv­ered. He hadn‚Äôt ordered a hot tub or swim­ming pool or a new any­thing really.

David walked out the door with his head down deep in thought and barely saw Zena dash past him and leap down the porch steps, miss­ing them all. At the bot­tom of the stairs he turned left to look at the truck, raised his head and stopped dead in his tracks.

There, in the reflec­tion of the side mir­ror he saw the dri­ver. Or what should have been the dri­ver. Instead a gold face with two black spots in the area where the eyes should be, and a black strip run­ning down the cen­ter of the face stared back. Care­fully he turned his head and, for the first time, saw the fig­ure on the back of the flatbed stand­ing near what appeared to be a giant gold and black rectangle.

The fig­ure had the same black and gold face, as well as a golden body with black accents in var­i­ous places. The thing that most drew his atten­tion was the what the fig­ure was wear­ing: golden ban­dages wrapped around his body like a mummy.

David con­tin­ued turn­ing his head and saw yet another fig­ure. This one was prac­ti­cally iden­ti­cal to the sec­ond except he was stand­ing in Davids veg­etable gar­den. Or more cor­rectly it was strad­dling the fence that cor­doned off the gar­den from the rest of the yard.

‚ÄúExcuse me,‚Äù said David finally, ‚Äúwhat exactly is going on?‚Äù

‚ÄúGnuh.‚Äù replied the fig­ure strad­dling the gar­den fence.

‚ÄúWhat? What did you say?‚Äù

“Gnuuh!”

‚ÄúLook, I can‚Äôt under­stand a word you are say­ing but could you please get out of my garden?‚Äù

“Gar. Den.”

‚ÄúYes, gar­den. The thing your almost stand­ing in. What are you? You look kind of like a mummy but your not human. Robot maybe?‚Äù

‚ÄúGnuh.‚Äù replied the gar­den mummy as he pointed to the box on the trailer.

“Gnuh,” he said again as he pointed to the garden.

“You want to put that thing in my garden?”

The gar­den mummy nodded.

‚ÄúNo chance! Thats‚Äô my veg­etable garden!‚Äù

‚ÄúFFFoooood.‚Äù replied the gar­den mummy.

‚ÄúFood. Yes, that is food.‚Äù

Sud­denly the mummy on the trailer leaped to the ground which a huge thud. David jumped and stepped back as it walked over to the gar­den mummy and stood in front of it. It began emit­ting beeps and whis­tles and flashed some kind of light for a few sec­onds then turned to David.

‚ÄúWe are Cybex.‚Äù

“Cybex? What is that, some kind of nationality?”

“We are Cybex. We are not from this planet.“

‚ÄúWait… what? Aliens? From another planet?‚Äù

The sec­ond mummy nodded.

‚ÄúAliens from another world that look like robot mum­mies? Aliens from another world that look like robot mum­mies stand­ing in my veg­etable gar­den? Aliens from another world that look like robot mum­mies stand­ing in my veg­etable gar­den try­ing to bury a giant box? Wait, wait wait…‚Äù

‚ÄúSar­coph­a­gus.‚Äù

“What?”

‚ÄúSar­coph­a­gus.‚Äù

“What?”

‚ÄúAliens from another world that look like robot mum­mies stand­ing in your veg­etable gar­den try­ing to bury a sarcophagus.‚Äù

‚ÄúThat‚Äôs a… your try­ing to bury a sar­coph­a­gus? In my gar­den? Why?‚Äù

“Food.”

‚ÄúFood? That‚Äôs your food? Your stor­ing your food in a sarcophagus?‚Äù

David put his hands to his head and cov­ered his eyes and shook his head and sat down. Meet­ing aliens would have been bad enough on it‚Äôs own, but meet­ing aliens named Cybex who were try­ing to bury a sar­coph­a­gus in his gar­den was a bit much. He had just had break­fast, it was too early for com­pli­cated thoughts.

Slowly he stood, took a deep breath, wasn‚Äôt too sure he enjoyed it and let it back out rapidly through his mouth. He glanced at each of the three mum­mies in turnt.

Okay. First things first, how can you speak english?”

‚ÄúAssim­i­lated from lis­ten­ing to you speak‚Äù

‚ÄúOkay. Sec­ond ques­tion, why are you try­ing to bury a sar­coph­a­gus in my gar­den filled with your food?‚Äù

‚ÄúNot our food.‚Äù

‚ÄúHuh? You said it was food.‚Äù

“Yes, food for the plants.”

‚ÄúFor the… you mean like fertilizer?‚Äù

‚ÄúFer­til­izer. Yes, it is fertilizer.‚Äù

‚ÄúOkay, fer­til­izer. But why my garden?‚Äù

‚ÄúIt was there.‚Äù

David stared with his mouth slightly open. Shocked. Or sur­prised. Either worked.

‚ÄúLet me get the straight. You, a bunch of aliens from another planet, want to bury a sar­coph­a­gus full of plant fer­til­izer in my veg­etable gar­den, just because it‚Äôs there?‚Äù

“Yes.”

David stared again. He thought about all the pos­si­ble options. One, let them. Two, don‚Äôt let them. That pretty much exhausted all the options he could think of at the moment.

He glanced between the mum­mies in the gar­den and the sar­coph­a­gus on the trailer and back again.

Then repeated it sev­eral times while rub­bing his chin with his right hand.

Then repeated it sev­eral more times with­out rub­bing his chin.

He stopped glanc­ing and looked straight at the sec­ond mummy he had seen, the one that had done most of the talk­ing and said:

“Okay”.