by The Eurostar
Chicago, a few hours later, the same evening:
"Are you sure this the place?" asks Rhyme Guardian, looking around in the darkness.
It's an underground garage. There is a twenty-year-old Ford Fiesta surrounded by tons of garbage, stuffed animals, toy guns, old Halloween costumes, an inflatable dinosaur, a big poster with the picture of a penny, and a long line of portraits hanging from one of the walls.
Zed walks closer to them and sees they are several copies of the same photo, each one altered slightly in a different manner with a felt tip pen. One of the photos shows a man with a mustache, one with a seventeenth-century wig, another in a domino mask, and so on. "Seems a parody of the generational line of Nowheremen on our world," observes the blue-dressed hero.
The others look around, puzzled at the bizarre collection. "Yes, it's the place, the address Cicciotto gave us," observes the Lioness.
"RHYMER?" An excited voice from the darkest corner of the garage makes all the heroes turn at once. They see a tall and muscular man dressed in black, wearing a pair of dark sunglasses.
"Nowhereman?" wonders Rhyme Guardian. The man lacks the costume, but the face is unmistakable. Nowhereman, last of a long line of crimefighters going back to seventeenth-century England, whose father -- Mister Nowhereman -- was a teammate of Rhyme Guardian during World War II, in the Mysterymen Board Society.
"Rhyme Guardian! It's about time you fucking MBLers found me. Reality's gone all crazy!"
"We noticed," says Rhyme Guardian, not sure about the sanity of the man. "Cicciotto led us to you. He says you are the only one to remember the truth."
"Cicciotto of this time?" asks Nowhereman.
"Why? There is one in our time, also?"
Nowhereman frowns. "What fucking time period did you come from?"
"October, 1999," sighs Rhyme Guardian, already tired of the man's arrogant nature.
"Hmm... just weeks before I joined up."
"You joined the MBL?" exclaims Smasher.
"Biggest mistake of my life," answers the English crimefighter.
"Okay, okay," says Rhyme Guardian, "better if we stay on topic. Do you know why you still remember the old reality? Do you know who is behind all of this? The Arch-Moderator, the Hypertime Entity, Viper?"
Nowhereman laughs. "If it were only that simple." He shakes his head. "No, guys... and gal... the cause of all of this is Prometheus X... or Gooz!"
Thunder City:
"Hello, Vanguard? Charley? Yes, I am... I need to talk with Grimm. No, wait, Tayden is better. Okay, I wait." Edulcore Cicciotto, the Raptor, phone in one hand, looks out the windows of his room near Father Sean's church at the full moon rising above the roofs of the city. In a little bed, his son Eddie is sleeping.
"Tayden! How are you? Yes, I am fine. I... no, I don't know if and when I will return. Wait, this is urgent matter. Hear me. Here in Thunder have appeared a bunch of metas that claims to be from an alternate reality... the same which Nowhereman was always speaking about, before you joined. What? The one that seems the leader has red capes and boots, a red masks and a X-shaped thing on the chest. Then there is a giant with rock skin... What? Yes, yes. So they have appeared there before?
"Well, let me speak. They saved my life, but then I said them that Nowhereman talked about them, so they asked me its location. I gave him the old address where I found him in 2001. The problems is what I have heard them say before they left. They want to transform the reality back in what they think it once was! Our reality! They want to cancel our lives! You are the only ones that can stop them."
Back at Nowhereman's place:
"The story is very complicated... and long. I'll just give you the short version, and I'm not really sure I should, since you come from further in the past. Anyway, I think it's better if you all take a seat," says Nowhereman. "It started in 2001, or maybe even before, with the Triarchy War. Anyway, what happened was that Hell got loose on Earth."
"What?"
"Yes, literally. It was something that many predicted and that others worked hard to keep from happening, a complex scheme involving magic, aliens, alternate dimensions... all conjured up to opening the gates of Hell. Many cities were destroyed... Mandelovia, Thunder City. There was a huge battle in Thunder City, where basically all the heroes of Earth fought. The city was leveled, and many died. Many thought that was the end and that the war was won. Even Prometheus, who by then had renounced the godhood of the X, and his son Ry-Chard, had died then.
"Eurostar, our reality's Cicciotto, came with the announcement -- he was a fallen angel at the time -- that the heroes had to bring the war to Hell to defend Heaven and assure Earth's continued future. We were gathered in the MBL Headquarters to hear what Gooz, the MBL leader at the time, would have planned, when Euro came with the most unexpected declaration.
"That fateful day, when Eurostar asked to prepare two teams, one to invade the Hidden Realm of Sir Justin, and the other Hell itself, Gooz shook his head and said something like:
"'No. I've given up. Over the last few years, things have just got worse and worse, up to a point where things don't make sense, like some higher beings are just trying to fuck us over. The League is dead. TOMB is gone. Maybe, just maybe, it's better that way. I died along with the League.'
"In that moment, he finally made the decision he left suspended for many years, from the fateful day that Prometheus X revealed to him that they were the same person, and that Ritchie Steven was destined to become him. That revelation never really tempted him. It frightened him, because he never feared anything more than losing his humanity to become the cold stranger called Prometheus X.
"And when, years later, he met the now-human Prometheus enjoying his newfound mortality, happy among men that he finally could call friends, his destiny become more and more a burden too heavy to sustain. After the vanishing of Prometheus, the destruction of Mandelovia and Thunder City, the suicide of Avatar, and the death of so many heroes and peoples alike, he simply gave up. He could never be Promethus X. That future could go literally to Hell.
"In that moment, Prometheus X ceased to exist in any point of the timeline, in any part of hypertime. And without Prometheus X, there would never have been a Meta Board League, Edulcore Cicciotto would never have come to America, the Eurotsar would never have been created and would never have gained uncanny powers to become Continuity. And the War of Light and Darkness would never have started.
"Our reality changed, becoming this one. What once was a paradise for metas and norms living together, fighting together to end oppression and evil, has transformed into a nightmare world where metas are hunted, killed, captured, and experimented upon.
"The new reality was born out of that fateful day in September, 2001, complete with a cohesive past. But the true past is not lost... your existence, your arrival here shows that the TRUE past still exists, with a definite end."
Rhyme Guardian frowns behind his mask. "It's incredible... but I still don't understand how you can remember it all."
"It's because those fucking morons in the Courts of Light, the gods, gathered us all to the Phantom World to explain what the range of Gooz's decision. It was unexpected even for them... in fact, they too were affected by it and would have been altered by the event. So they told us what would have happened if things kept following the established path... as always maddening themselves with the wisdom of their plans. And while they were talking, and talking, and talking...
"I built a chrono-scrambler device out of some spare parts in my utility belt. Nothing powerful enough to stop the altering of reality, but enough to stop me from being changed. And that's why I can remember."
Rhyme Guardian stands up. "Ingenious. So... what can we do now? How can we re-establish the correct flow in time? We go back to September, 2001? We lead the MBL instead of Gooz into Hell?" The Australian metahero looks at each one of his teammates, uncertain as to what to do.
Nowhereman shakes his head. "That would overcomplicate things. The war was not won simply because Prometheus X was not around. His power was lessened, mixed with Viper's power in the Watcher, Ry-Chard. It's just my guess, but the old reality disappeared because Gooz did not accept his fate to become Prometheus X. I think what we'll just need to do is to convince him of his mistake."
"Who? Gooz?"
"Yes."
"How?"
"I don't know. But, after more than two years, I have finally found where he lives in this reality... under the name of Ritchie Stevens."