To Boldly Go... (RP 2 of 5)

In the center, a crimson glow spread, parted; blazed into a pair of Luciferian eyes that glared at the young woman with naked malice. From somewhere came the discordant chime of an ancient clock.

And, as she watched in mounting dread, the burning scarlet eyes merged again into amorphous color. From hellish chaos came the form of a single, Brobdignagian hand, star-bright and blood-red.

The hand reached for her, and she fled; but the Void engulfed her in a dark-crested wave, bringing her within easy grasp. Fingers like steel closed around her... clenched into a fist, ever-tightening. A whisper in her mind exulted in death and hinted at worse.

With a start, Bonnie Blue awoke, leaning against a workbench in Tesla's lab -- to find everyone staring at her; Omega and Polar with concern, Nightmare with scorn. Abject terror faded into vague unease, even as her cheeks flushed with embarassment.


"Am I boring you, Miss Blue?" Tesla asked archly.


Feeling like she was back in high school, and a pang of guilt that had nothing to do with the sharpness of the scientist's tone, Bonnie shook her head. It was odd; she hadn't even been tired -- certainly not in the aftermath of an alien incursion -- and yet, her mind had drifted so easily... She mumbled a hasty apology.


"Good. As I was saying," he went on, "this alloy is unlike anything made by man. There are elements within not to be found anywhere on Earth, as one might conclude, given the nature of the craft. Thus, I have devised a periodic table of exo-elements. Computer?"


"This unit has a unique identifying designation, user: Nikola Tesla," came the response.


The scientist sighed heavily. "Please engage holographic display mode, Mister Seven."


"Sarcasm detected. Initiating subroutine: moral high ground. Engaging holographic display mode."


All at once, the laboratory lights dimmed, and a beam of light shot from the ceiling to resolve itself into a grid. A few of the squares were filled in with chemical symbols and atomic weights, but the majority were blank. At Tesla's command, a colorful diagram of a molecule joined the chart hovering in the air, delicate lines tracing a connection to the named elements.


"As you can see, the hull of the spacecraft is comprised of a carbon fiber blended by some as-yet unknown artifice with these three elements." Nikola Tesla pointed them out as he named them off. "Nitrium, Solarite, and a conductive material I like to call Teslanium. The result is an ultralight alloy resistant to extreme temperatures, and hard enough, as you all discovered, to withstand most forms of ballistic bombardment."


"The point, Nicky..."


Tesla shot Omega a look. He noticed, however, that he seemed to be losing his audience, though he couldn't fathom why.


"The point, Jim -- and don't call me 'Nicky' -- is that with more time to study the material further, I am confident that I will divine a means by which to reproduce this alloy. I shall then," he added, an eager gleam in his eye, "commence to outfit this party with gear more befitting its lofty status."


This revelation was met with sufficient enthusiasm that the sardonic note in his voice went overlooked. Only Bonnie remained troubled, her mind still plagued with images of a red-handed foe. Aliens, even hostile ones, she could handle. Superpowers? No big deal. Genetic tinkering had long since activated dormant evolutionary paths -- or will have done, in another hundred years or so. But the return of the Dark Timekeeper, with Nathan von Liebert as his henchman... that was another matter entirely.


Where is the Timekeeper? Bonnie wondered. Where's Johnny Reb?


"Hold up," said the Polar Phantasm, getting everyone's attention. "Before we get too excited, there's still the matter of where that ship came from. Reluctant as I am to say it, that takes priority over shiny new toys. Bonnie, how's your astronavigation?"


The young blonde gave him a half smile. "Solid beta-neg my senior year."


"Good enough," he decided. "I want all hands on deck for this. Jay, Crystal, I need y'all to track down Alex Richards. If my guess is correct, we'll need his particular brand of weird."


Nightmare looked dubious. "Cam... you're not thinking what I think you're thinking. Are you?"


"Yes! But there's no time for that, woman! We have an alien crisis on our hands!"


Cameron Bankston, Jr. shot his wife a huge, cheesy grin. The scowl she returned was halfhearted, at best.


"You're seriously planning on going to whatever extraterrestrial shithole that thing came from?" she asked.


He nodded, all but a trace of humor gone from his expression. "It's a Guardians thing, Crystal."


"Yeah, yeah. I understand," she said with a sigh. "Doesn't mean I like it."




Ten minutes later, they were in the air. Jay Omega took point, the slender pod little more than a streak of blue in the sky. Crystal Bankston's hovertank glided behind, like some enormous bird of prey. She opened up the communication relay.


"You reading me, Omega Man?" she queried.


"Loud and clear," he replied. "Activating tracker now."


"There's a tracker in the Strange Rover?"


"We've all got them. Nicky insisted," Omega explained. "In case anything happens to us. We can't leave this stuff lying around for just anyone to find."


The vehicles soared through the sky, not too fast, and keeping low to avoid radar detection.


"I guess that makes sense," Nightmare admitted. "It's just... after working for the government, I'm not a huge fan of surveillance equipment in general."


"Well, if it makes you feel any better... we are definitely not the government," Jay told her. "Oooh. Got him."


Across each of their viewscreens, the outline of a map appeared. GPS coordinates scrolled along the bottom of the display. Crystal frowned at it for a moment, then cleared the screen with a wave of her hand.


"Looks like he's still in Chicago," she said, altering her course.


"Yeah, and I've got a pretty good idea where," Omega said. "Stay close and I'll guide you in. Landing could be tricky."


"Roger that."


They were in Chicago inside of two hours -- good time, considering the tortuous routes they'd had to fly to avoid contact with other aircraft -- and circling a building with a large neon sign that read: The Slosh Pit. Delicately, Nightmare drifted the hovertank down to rest in a small lot behind the bar; Omega, on the other hand, parked his podcycle right out front. He waited for Crystal to catch up, and the two of them proceeded through the bar's front door.


It wasn't locked -- odd, considering they had arrived well before business hours -- and the interior was a mess. Tables and chairs overturned, broken liquor bottles, sticky residue on the varnished hardwood floors. Several bodies slumped in awkward positions. Nightmare thought they were dead, until one of them rolled off the bar and crashed to the floor with a groan.


"Oh, she's going to feel that later," Jay observed with a soft chuckle.


"Must've been some party," Nightmare said, looking around.


"Ain't no party like an Alex Richards party..."


"No shit. Where the hell is he, anyway?"


Omega did a quick visual scan and located the only area not in a complete shambles. He pointed to a partially enclosed booth in one corner, where a pair of enormous feet protruded from behind a velvet privacy curtain. "There. Eye of the storm."


They drew back the curtain and looked down at the Archduke of Mass Confusion, so thoroughly passed out that he might as well have been in a coma. Crystal tried slapping him awake. His response was a low moan that sounded suspiciously sexual in nature; a suspicion confirmed when one enormous hand absently groped at his own crotch. Nightmare retreated quickly and regarded the sleeping giant from a safe distance.


"I think we're going to have to carry him," she concluded, after a moment. "Let's go see if there's a hand truck."


"Way ahead of you," Jay told her. He disappeared into a room behind the bar, then returned in seconds wheeling an industrial dolly through the mess. "Not my first rodeo."


With some difficulty, the pair managed to maneuver Richards out of his booth and more or less onto the dolly. He fell off three times on the way out to the parking lot, but between them, they got him to the Strange Rover. Once he was safely inside, Nightmare plugged in a set of coordinates and turned on the autopilot. The vehicle roared to life and, after running a self diagnostic scan, took off down the road, heading for Colorado.


They watched until the Rover was out of sight, then boarded their own transports and headed back home.

Guardians HQ

Hologym

The Polar Phantasm and Bonnie Blue stood in the middle of a three-dimensional projection. Stars and planets, nebulae and galaxies, spun slowly around them as if they were the center of the universe. Bonnie reached out and touched a pale blue dot.


"Here's us," she said, unnecessarily. "An' here's where Eye-Seven first detected the alien vessel. Now, we got three possible approach vectors... here, here, an' here..." As she pointed them out, rays appeared in the hologram, radiating in straight lines outward. One disappeared at the pass of her hand. "This one ain't no good -- that's K'Vrgian space, an' that was definitely not a hiveship."


Bonnie paused when she noticed Polar staring at her in wonder.


"What?" she asked.


"This," he replied, waving a hand around at the 3-D star chart. "We just made first contact with an alien species -- not in the way I'd hoped for, but... Aliens!" He made air quotes, for an obscure reason Bonnie couldn't quite grasp. "And now we're talking about where they came from, and how to get there. I can't quite get my head around it."


"Y'had to at least suspect there was other folks out there, though. Right? This century ain't that backward, is it?"


"Depends on who you ask," he said, but didn't elaborate. Instead, he pointed at one of the lines. "What about that one? Where does it go?"


"Past this solar system, there's a couple of diff'rent paths. Gonna need a little extra help for this."


"Gotcha. Eye-Seven, did you crack that black box yet?"


"Negative, user: Polar Phantasm. Xeno-technology designated "black box" is incompatible with this unit's systems. Recommended action: percussive maintenance."


"You, or the black box?" Polar teased.


"This unit declines to dignify that with a response," replied the computer.


"I got an idea," Bonnie said. "If Eye-Seven can't access the flight recorder, maybe Grimmauld can."


"You want to feed questionable alien tech to our space dragon?"


"Yes."


"And you wonder why I can't focus on wrestlilng," he said. "Everything is so much bigger than I could have imagined. What we do in the ring sort of...pales in comparison. I feel like my whole life has just been waiting for all of this -- and at the same time, I have to wonder: why me? Why us, out of the billions of people on this planet alone? We have a science wizard from the past inventing cool shit faster than we can play with it, a living dragon-ship, and apparently I can freeze things now." He shook loose the frost that had begun to form at his fingertips.


"Not to mention a resurrected evil Time God hellbent on multiversal domination," added Bonnie, in a darker tone. "Both Scathe an' the Dark Timekeeper have used those battles in the ring to further their own ends; now they're merged into a single entity. An' I gotta fight his, pardon the pun, right-hand man this Sunday. That's 'bout all I can focus on."


That thought was sobering. The Phantasm put a sympathetic hand on Bonnie's shoulder. Abruptly, she jerked away with a hiss.


"Damn! That is cold!"


"Shit. Sorry. I forgot." Cam brought his hand up, gazing at it speculatively. Ice crystals swirled around his palm, spiraling upward to form a delicate frozen construct. "Weird."


"This ain't even the tip of the weird-berg," Bonnie murmured under her breath.


"What was that?" he asked, allowing the ice sculpture to dissippate.


"I asked what ya think I oughta do. I mean, this is one of them Duel of the Fates moments. Obi-Wan vesus Darth Maul, y'know?" She hesitated. "Only I don't get a lightsaber. This whole thing's damagin' my calm."


Try as he might, all the bravado Cam could muster barely hid the worry in his eyes. This was not the Nathan von Liebert he had faced before. Still cruel. Still vindictive. He was far more powerful now, and in firm control of his impulses, which made him infinitely more dangerous.


"You want my advice?" Polar raised an eyebrow. A sudden drop in temperature had nothing to do with the cold he was radiating. "Snap his fucking neck. The minute you get a chance, kill him. I'm not kidding. That's the rules we're playing by now, right?"


"I don't know if -- "


"Well, you better get to knowin' real quick. I guarantee he won't hesitate to do the same to you."


Bonnie's face was ashen, but resolve showed in the set of her jaw. Determination sparked in her blue-green eyes, and she nodded. "As long as the Precepts still hold true, there's a good chance I can defeat von Liebert."


"Precepts?" asked Polar.


"The rules established by the Architects, an' enforced by the Timekeeper," she explained. When that failed to clarify things, she went on, "The Architects of the Omniverse -- there's seven, includin' the Timekeeper -- are a class of higher beings who, legend has it, took a hand in shapin' all reality. An' in so doin', are charged also with safeguardin' it. Even as powerful as they are, the Architects can't possibly oversee every version of reality that exists; so they choose proxies -- champions to fight on their behalf. The Precepts are the laws that govern these battles."


"And these Precepts would be what prevents you from going all Hiro Nakamura on people in the ring," he concluded.


"Exactly. But with the Dark Timekeeper back in the Rock of Ages, and the real Timekeeper missin'... ain't no tellin' whether the Precepts still apply, ya dig?"


"Yeah... yeah, I dig. And you're worried about matching him power for power."


A slight frown creased her brow. "Damn right, I am. Cam, he can do all the things I do -- but with control. Refined. He's had longer to master his abilities. I... don't even know how it happens. How to make it happen. And... that hand..."


"Don't let us get ahead of ourselves," Polar said. "Sunday night is still days away, and chances are that these Precepts of yours aren't dependent on the Timekeeper alone." He paused, thinking; that was only the third-strangest thing he'd said today. "Right now, we need to backtrack that scout ship so we can go meet the neighbors -- and apologize for running over their dog."





Transmission begins: Clad in a form-fitting sapphire flight suit, Bonnie Blue leans against the bumper of her Ford Ranchero, parked in the Guardians' hangar bay. Her expression is indecipherable as she gazes at something just out of view for a long moment, before shifting her attention to the camera.


Things are happenin' much more quickly than I'd imagined, Nathan. Not one to waste time, are ya? Ironic, considerin'... I mean, I'm assumin' this is more'n chance, us gettin' thrown together in this match. An' after we'd only just met, too...


Now, wait, lest ya reckon I'm inclined to make the same mistakes my father did. He underestimated ya, took ya for a joke -- an' maybe ya was, in them days. I dunno. That was another time, another place, an' you are far from the same man. Does that word even apply to you anymore?


The Daughter of Time shrugs.


Don't reckon it matters. You and I, Nathan von Liebert, represent opposing forces. We find ourselves burdened with glorious purpose -- to paraphrase from a movie I watched last night -- an' we stand poised on a precipice, caught up in a moment fraught with import. What happens in the ring between us at Lazarus on Sunday night could well tip the scales, shift the balance of power in the multiverse.


I know how the story goes, if you win. I've seen what happens to the places ravaged by the Dark Timekeeper -- your master took everything from me, Nathan. Everyone I ever knew or cared about, gone; wiped out at his order by the same foul creatures you now command. It ain't happenin' again. Not here; not now.


My partner reckons I oughta kill ya. If I thought it was an option, I might even try. Got a sneakin' suspicion it'd only be a temp'rary condition, anyway; unless I miss my guess -- an' I very rarely do. Why should I go to all that trouble, when your days are numbered?


Bonnie pauses there, for effect. A hint of a smile crosses her lips.


Y'see, Nate -- can I call ya Nate? Not a real dignified name for a chronomancer, so nah. Nevermind. Nathan it is. Or... is there a title? Y'got that fancy castle an' all. Count, maybe? Like Victor Von Doom? Oooh...or is it Darth? Darth Von Liebert! Work with me, here. It's a pretty good analogy.


Anyway, sorry, I mighta got a little baked before I started this. Point is, you've made a very dangerous bargain. I ain't gotta know the details to know that cuttin' a deal with the Dark Timekeeper -- or whatever he's callin' himself now -- is cuttin' your own throat. Ya done sealed y'own fate. Them powers he conferred on ya, Nathan, they're a double-edged sword. I seen how the Dark One handles the failures of his underin's -- an' don't ever make the mistake of thinkin' you're anythin' more'n that to him.


So, while I'd personally like to present Cam an' Crystal with your carcass, all hollowed out like a bearskin rug, I'm gonna let nature take its course. Sunday night, Nathan, when I put your shoulders on the canvas, I want you to remember who it was that handed you your first defeat in this world, in UCI. When the referee counts three; when the bell rings, an' my arm is raised, an' the crowd cheers for my triumph, Nathan -- an' when ya find out that I was right, when ya see what awaits those who disappoint the Dark Timekeeper -- know it was me who beat you, but it was your lust for power that doomed you.


I don't envy ya that fate, Nathan -- even you might not deserve it. Then again, the things you've done, the horrors you've wrought; in this world, an' the one before it... On second thought, yeah, maybe ya do. But before the inevitable messy end, I want you to take a message back to your boss.


Tell him that his presence defiles the Rock of Ages, and I shall not allow it to continue. Tell him I am coming to reclaim the Rock in the name of the real Timekeeper -- an' no power in the 'verse can stop me.


Transmission ends.

Guardians HQ

Missile Silo

The dragon crouched, his armored underbelly resting on the ground, fleshy ramp extended between long forelimbs, and regarded four human creatures curiously. Such noisy little things, they were; jumbled thoughts and primal emotion, with only the barest hint of the clarity of mind that was the hallmark of so many intelligent races. Their babble reminded him of new hatchlings, excited and filled with wonder. Fourteen-hundred brood-cycles had acquainted him well with paternal patience.


One of them -- a female, he thought, though he wasn't certain -- hesitated as the others climbed aboard. He tried to transmit a sense of reassurance to her, and slowly, she walked up the ramp, which he sealed tightly behind her. Then, with a single thrust of powerful hind legs, Grimmauld leapt clear of the missile silo. The sudden burst of sunlight on his metallic hide was an unexpected pleasure after weeks of skulking underground, and he took a moment to bask in its golden rays before launching himself skyward in another mighty bound.


Spreading his wings to catch an updraft, Grimmauld engaged the ion drive he'd assimilated and soared through the stratosphere. Gravity tugged at him, but it was an afterthought in seconds as he plunged headlong through the Earth's magnetic field and out to freedom. Dodging the moon where he had lain, injured and beyond hope for so long, with the merest twist of his sinuous body, the dragon folded his wings against his body again. A spiny ridge along his back raised a series of sail-shaped fins; pearl-white, gleaming membranes stretched between cartilliginous ribs that caught at the solar radiation and dispersed it throughout the dragon's body.


His senses came alive, and for the first time in eons, Grimmauld felt true delight and a renewed purpose. Swiftly, he sped past the farthest planet of the modest little system, and there he detected the faint scent of an exhaust trail. He struggled to understand the data he'd retrieved from the alien flight recorder. While he could follow the spatial coordinates back to their point of origin easily enough, there seemed to be some confusion regarding the ultimate destination, as if the vessel had taken two divergent courses at once. Now, however, was not the time to worry over a data discrepancy. Technology was imperfect without organic temperance; it was probably junk data, like the repeated code 1he wav3.


Grimmauld warbled a light, joyful melody as he shifted from impulse drives to his extraluminal engine, streaking past a comet. He became a blur as he entered the slipspace of translight, and sailed with ease along his chosen path. Meanwhile, inside the armored cradle beneath the dragon's mighty bulk, the Guardians passed a joint and discussed tactics.


" -- reckon we oughta come in real quiet-like," Bonnie was saying, "so we can check 'em out before we say howdy."


They sat in a circle of mismatched lawn chairs, owing to Bonnie's inability to explain furniture to Grimmauld's satisfaction. He had acceeded to their need for individual privacy, especially as it pertained to bodily functions, and had accordingly formed his inner space into a series of personal berths for each of them. When it came to the finer points of interior decorating, however, they were on their own.


"Agreed," said Polar, passing the joint to Omega on his left. "I'll take the A.R.C.T.I.C. out and get the lay of the land -- so to speak -- and if they're friendly, we'll make contact."


"Judging by the way that scout ship fired on us, I'm not counting on making new friends," Omega told him. He buffed one final smudge off the barrel of his sidearm, and shoved it into the holster.


Nightmare nodded. "Jay's right. Someone should go with you, watch your back."


"You're forgetting one thing, Crystal," he said, smiling. "We have a dragon. He's probably deterrent enough to keep them from firing on me the minute we show up on radar -- or whatever they use here."


There was a sudden commotion from the room where they'd left Alex Richards to sleep off whatever bizarre concoction he'd ingested. Conversation came to a halt as all four of them watched the Archduke of Mass Confusion destroy a couch before stumbling out to join them, looking extremely uncomfortable with his state of near-sobriety.The Polar Phantasm smiled and offered him the smoldering joint.


"Welcome to Grimmauld, Alex," he said.



To be continued...




RISING DARAN

Episode Two: To Boldly Go...
Series conceived by the Polar Phantasm
Series directed by Jay Omega
Episode written by Bonnie Blue


[(c) United Championship Infinite 2016. All rights reserved.]