by The Eurostar
The Vanguardians (Grimm, Priest, Banshee, Ozzy Baxter, Adem Different, Tayden, Phil Smith, and Drake Marshall) and the MBLers (Rhyme Guardian, Smasher, Zed, Agent F7, Disco Stave, the Caped Cadet, Johnny Monolith, and the Lioness), who had vanished a moment before from the meeting room of the Complex in La Perdita, reappear after a moment in a huge, dome-shaped space, something so wide and tall that it could have contained many airport hangars. Exactly in the middle of the circular base, there is something shaped like a miniature volcano, one-hundred yards in diameter, thirty yards tall, metallic, and with a myriad of intermittent, multicolored lights.
Erupting from the man-made volcano is an ectoplasmic substance continually changing shape, texture, and color, but also growing bigger as the seconds pass.
Around them, dozens of scientists with lab coats are busy working over the controls, hitting keyboards and turning knobs and pushing buttons. Armed guards are at the many gates located at regular distances around the base of the dome. They face the center, as if their role was not to stop people coming in, but instead to keep the personnel of the uncanny laboratory from escaping.
The assembled heroes materialize right in the exact center of the dome, one-hundred yards above the ground, inside a floating bubble created by Zed. It is a lucky circumstance, because no one notices their appearance, so they have all the few seconds they need to learn the situation.
Suddenly, the sirens of an alarm begin to scream. "Alert: intruders in gate area. Repeat: intruders in gate area. Ground forces to converge over gate area." After a small pause: "All cadets required to get ready and go into action. This is not a drill. Repeat: this is not a drill."
Inside the bubble, the heroes are trying to figure out what action to take. They have no plan. They have had no time to prepare one, nor did they know where they had to go. They have just one resource: Phil Smith's telepathy. All their minds are connected, all their thoughts, considerations, ideas are simultaneously shared, evaluated, kept, or discarded by everyone. A plan can be formed in seconds, instead of minutes.
"Military facility. No private group could afford so many worthy devices."
"The H.E.'s still not managed to travel here. There is still time to destroy the gate."
"Few guards. Could be taken down easily."
"Flying heroes shot from above at the guards. Heavy duty ones destroy the gate. The others take a look around and figure the enemy."
"Ready?"
More guards swarm in, hundreds, coming from all the reinforced doors lining all around the base of the dome.
"Still easy."
"They carry simple weapons."
"Not really many. Should fall like leaves in autumn."
"Ready?"
"Ready!"
"WAIT!"
Too late. The warning of Rhyme Guardian arrived too late. The bubble opens, and the sixteen heroes fall or fly to their appointed destinations.
But, right in that moment, the changing form sprouting out of the central gate stabilizes its shape. It is an enormous humanoid being, black and cold as the void of outer space, dotted by millions of stars and by gaseous, multicolored stripes. Looking upon it is like unto to gazing at the heart of the galaxy itself. And in what seems the being's head, a black hole opens, and a maniacal, heart-piercing laugh is released. "HA HA HAAH... I AM FINALLY FREE! BORN AGAIN IN A UNIVERSE SO EASY TO CONQUER!"
"The Hypertime Entity!" shouts Rhyme Guardian, sending blasts of energy over the alien being. "The transition has been completed! Regroup, regroup!"
The dome is in total chaos. High above fly Rhyme Guardian, Zed, Smasher, Drax (who has just exchanged places with Drake), and Brianna, dodging laser blasts from the guards on the ground and trying to figure out what to do.
Below, on the ground, Grimm, Ozzy, Priest, Cadet, and Monolith are charging madly at the guards themselves, while Agent F7, Lioness, Disco, Phil Smith, Adem Different, and Tayden are fighting the guards near a door to find a way out of the dome and inside the rest of the mysterious facility.
"Regroup!" shouts Rhyme Guardian, fully aware of the threat that the apparition of the Hypertime Entity means. "REGROUP!" he shouts again, when he feels his body becoming heavier, and falls suddenly to the ground, impacting the floor hard. If not for his own force field, he would have been seriously wounded.
"Pyro! I have taken one down!" shouts a man in all-black spandex running toward him, and, when he nears, Rhyme Guardian sees he is nothing more than a boy.
Rhyme Guardian looks around. There are another eight of those kids in costumes, some flying, some running on the ground. Some of his comrades, too, are on the ground, hit by the newly arrived costumed fighters. "Smith. SMITH! Share the minds!" orders the fallen demigod.
Instantly the link between the minds is activated, and a whirlwind of sensations hit Rhyme Guardian's mind. He instinctively opens his mouth to shout louder, but then shakes his head and simply concentrates, with all the decades of experience at leading metaheroes, ordering through telepathy, "MBL, take down the metas! Vanguard, the H.E. is yours."
The answer in his mind is a complaining choir.
"The H.E. is too powerful for them!"
"We don't know what that thing is."
"We are better suited."
"Leave the metas to us."
Rhyme Guardian looks around. When his eyes lock into the sparkles of Grimm's empty eye sockets, he feels relief. The Vanguard leader is not protesting. He is ready.
Standing up and firing rhyme force energy blasts at the incoming meta, Rhyme Guardian orders again, "Vanguard on the H.E.! The beast doesn't know their powers, while he perfectly knows us!"
Monolith runs toward Rhyme Guardian, followed by a flying man in black that seems able to send shockwaves over the ground. Monolith loses balance and falls to the ground, but instead of crashing heavily, he is able to roll up to Rhyme Guardian's position. The rock man raises his head. "Rhymer, they're too lightweight! Only we can stop the H.E.!"
Rhyme Guardian smiles. "They nearly killed us all. I know they can do it!"
Hundreds of feet away, Grimm raises his axe, while around guards fire lasers in all directions, and, in the space above, the flying heroes were fighting with some of the men and women in black. The skull-faced leader of Vanguard looks around and then shouts, "You heard Rhymer! VANGUARD, MOVE YOUR ASS!"
The avatar of death runs to the main console in front of the central gate, where the giant being is shaking and twisting. Phil is already there, surrouned by a few men in lab coats fallen on the ground. The unidentified man quickly types over the keyboard, looking at the lines appearing on the monitor.
Adem is next to him, having just downloaded Jym into the computer.
Phil glances at Grimm. "There is a containment field around the gate that should contain the being. But Jym's calculations show that it will short circuit in less than ten minutes. The electrical activity of the H.E. is too damn powerful. Seems to tap into inexhaustible sources."
"Seems connected to the core of the galaxy itself," points out Adem.
Grimm raises his head, looking at the gigantic being. "We can't wait for the force field to collapse. Then, if we can't stop that thing, he will break loose. We have to get inside now and push it back before the field stops working. Can you command the device from inside, Phil?"
The young man frowns. "Yes, I guess so."
"Okay, then. Deactivate it, we'll jump in, and then put it on again. On the count of three, Vanguardians, fall in! One... two... three!"
Smith lowers a lever and catapults himself inside the gate's rim with a burst of telekinesis in unison with the other seven Vanguardians who have jumped or fled. The force field closes behind them as he raises the lever with his mind.
Inside, the Hypertime Entity screams and roars in frustration, "PUNY LITTLE HUMANS! WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU CAN DO TO THE MASTER OF HYPERTIME, THE MASTER OF TIMELINES?"
The Vanguardians looked at the giant and then at each other. The space inside the force field, where they now were, was under the influx of the power of the cosmic monster, and their own appearances were now constantly shifting, jumping from the aspects each of them sport in different timelines.
"What do we do now?" asks Phil Smith, dressed in a long, white tunic, a turban covering his head.
Grimm, now covered in a heavy steel armor, raises his axe and says, "I don't know about you, but I'm gonna slice that thing like a salami."
"Leave a piece for me, honey," says Brianna, sporting very short, spiky hair, tinted in blue, and wearing a form-fitting, black leather outfit.
But the laugh of the monster freezes them for an instant. "YOU ARROGANT FOOLS! YOU WILL NEVER SET FOOT WITHIN TEN FEET FROM ME!" Those words said, he opens his palms, and from within the darkness come dozens of people. It takes only moments before the Vanguardians, now all sporting clown costumes like the parallel versions of the team that never left Mr. Wong's circus, the home of the Revolutionaries, recognize in the swarm of aggressors many of their enemies, captured across time and space and brought there, all together, their only goal to kill the Vanguardians.
The team sees K'tl and Ma Kalunga, Knell in Leviathan form, Mr. Smith, the Scorpion Brothers, the Chicago demon, a few mastiffs of war, Aurochs, Agent Turner, Agent Tweed, Agent Owen, Agent Reynolds, Agent Milton, Agent Lochlan, Agent Richards, Agent Curie, many vampires, Johnny Omicron, X-Acute, Arges, Rose, Mimic, Sheik, Pneuma, some Clockmen, the Jabberwock Killer, the sideshow freak, Tripps, Rothman, Captain Ekorre, Agent Albino, Agent Hero, Agent A.C.K., Agent Darkstar, Agent Inventor, Agent Mindgame, Agent Morphina, Agent Eden, Agent Digigirl, Agent O'Ken, Agent Shadow, Amuck, Agent Fire, Agent Shock, Agent Fangs, many T5 robots, some Annunaki, and the red Naecken.
"They're all the adversaries Vanguard, in its previous and current incarnations, have faced!" observes Jym, which by now has the form of a little hovering robot, rounded with a T-shaped head over a long flexible neck, not unlike an aerodynamic vacuum cleaner.
"Mierda!" says Priest from behind. All turn to look at him. He now wears a Zorro costume, only high-tech, is white-skinned and tanned, and sports a long mustache.
"Probability says they'll destroy us in less than five minutes, twelve seconds," says Adem, now wearing a very cheap blue T-shirt, with long, pointed ears and a Spock-like haircut.
"Fuck probability!" shouts Grimm, now looking like one of the Who, only bald, as he raises his axe. One step more, and he becomes a true skeleton, cloaked in a tattered black mantle and raising high above his head a very sharp scythe.
"Kreeee!" screams the Banshee, an old-looking woman floating like mist over the rest of the Vanguardians. The first line of enemies fall down.
"Strike!" shouts Smasher on the battleground around the central gate outside the force field where the Vanguardians face hordes of old enemies. One of his energy blasts has just sent to the ground two dozen armored guards. Suddenly, his body is aflame. Smasher screams, the pain unbearable. He tries to raise his force field, but to no avail. It is his own body burning, not an external attack.
"Patrick, jump into the portal," cries the Lioness, opening a shaft to another place for her friend. Smasher jumps in, still reeled by flames, but, instead of disappearing, he simply bounces back.
Lioness looks around, surprised, and sees a girl, no older than seventeen, pointing her hand at her. "Call me Padlock, sis!" the girl says. Lorena creates a portal to jump away, but she is unable to go in, as if it is locked. The girl smiles.
Zed, flying above and shooting energy darts at the guards with a giant bow created by his gauntlets, sees the scene and flies down to attack the girl. She raises her arms again, and the gauntlets of Zed fall off. The lone survivor of a dead universe falls to the ground from sixty feet high. The fall would have killed him, if not for Lorena, who stops his fall in mid-air with her telekinesis and then levitates him gently down.
Then she turns to the girl, raising her hands to push her away, but the power does not manifest. Agent Padlock smiles again. "I didn't know they were two distinct powers. No prob. It just takes two locks."
The ground then shakes under Padlock's feet. She turns to see Johnny Monolith running at her. She waves her hands, but nothing happens. "I don't have any powers to lock, little girl... I'm just made this way!"
Before he can grasp her, a heavier quake causes him to fall. He turns to face his aggressor from earlier. "Sledgehammer, thank God you've arrived!" the girl shouts.
The young man in black presses his hands over the back of Monolith and, before the hero can do anything, powerful shock waves put him out of commission, while his rock-hard skin crumbles like sand.
"Arghhh! He's killing me!" screams Ozzy Baxter, his gleaming adamantium body beginning to crack under the heavy lighting bolts coming from Agent Turner. The pain is put to a halt by Drax, now a humanoid with green skin and fins, who sets the EPS agent on fire with a natural flamethrower.
Brianna, a feathered harpy, dives toward Grimm, now completely human in his aspect and wearing a black T-shirt with a white skull and crossed bones. "We can't defeat all of them," the mythical bird shouts.
The avatar of death smiles and replies, "Why not?" He opens fire with a machine gun. An entire row of Strikeforce agents is killed, but Grimm, now changed into a Japanese woman dressed in a long, white kimono and sporting a long katana, would have been trampled by a mastiff of war if not for the timely intervention of Priest, now literally a Catholic presbyter armed with Saint Martin's sword and Saint George's spear, which he uses for cutting the legs of the mastiff, destroying it.
"Thank you, pal," whispers Zed as he stands up and begins to walk over to his nearly killed friend, Johnny Monolith, who is being attacked by Sledgehammer. The lone survivor is ready, despite his powerlessness, to get back into the fray, but a hand over his shoulder stops him. It is Agent Pyro, the kid with the fire power who previously hit Smasher.
He winks at Zed and runs at Sledgehammer, who was in the process of killing Monolith. Pyro runs up to Sledgehammer, smiles, and says, "Hey, need some help?"
Sledgehammer smiles back and says, "Nah, this is gonna be a piece of cake."
"Cool," Pyro says as Sledgehammer turns his back to deliver a few more blows to Johnny Monolith. Zed, watching from afar, sees the kid suddenly spin and deliver a roundhouse kick to Sledgehammer's face, causing him to fall down, senseless.
Pyro then looks around, searching for other enemies, and spots another black-dressed agent, a short but beautiful girl who looks enraged at him. Her fiery eyes light up, and he screams as his face begins to vibrate, until the face of the young Agent Pyro vanishes, leaving the featureless face of Agent F7.
"No liar can survive Truth!" shouts the girl who has just exposed Agent F7, laughing madly and running away. The Englishman is left passed out out cold on the floor.
Lioness, powerless, runs at him, repressing the tears that appear on the rims of her eyes. But she becomes petrified at the sight of another agent, who, simply staring at the senseless body of F7, causes the Englishman to begin to decay, as if an active necrosis is eating him alive.
Meanwhile, Disco Stave runs and jumps like mad between the guards, avoiding their lasers and hitting them with his staff, until a bullet shoots across his left arm. He falls to the ground and rolls away behind a fork lift. A blast of bullets nearly hit him from behind. Someone is able to shoot over the rounded wall of the dome with the exact angle to have the bullets reflect over him.
Steve unleashes a series of disks and then jumps over the forklift, and from there again up in the air to land as far away as possible. There he sees another black-dressed youth, this one the same age as he, aiming his big rifle at Disco. For the youngest MBLer, there is no way to avoid being hit, as he is still in air. But the bullet turns at a ninety degree angle, hitting the sniper in the hand.
Steve smiles. Only one man can do that, his old friend in the Seven Senses team called the Cadet, master of virtual reality. He looks around, but he spots the Cadet on the ground, fast asleep. Near him, another girl in black smiles at Disco. "He has too vivid an imagination, so I put him to sleep, 'cause I am Valium, pal, and I won't tolerate my man, Hunter, being harmed."
"Nooo!" screams Tayden, the only Vanguardian unaltered by the Hypertime Entity's powers, being the one and only across the different timelines as a creature of the choir of creation. He sees Rothman torturing Phil Smith, dressed in a black tuxedo and obviously depleted of his mental powers, and then suddenly reshaping into the look of a bald, middle-aged man in a wheelchair. Rothman laughs and is ready to blow up the man with a single punch, when a mental blast sends him far away. But then, for each villain defeated, ten more show up, charging simultaneously at the mindreader.
Dodging the assault of a vampire, Adem looks around, observing Grimm, Priest, Banshee, Ozzy, Tayden, Phil, and Drax nearly submersed by the flood tide of villains but still fighting with deadly determination, killing enemy after enemy with their axes, blades, sonic screams, mental blasts, pulse charges, and mere punches. But the villains seem to be countless in number and near to complete victory. His eyes go to the Hypertime Entity, who stands still, as if in deep concentration, while villain after villain pour out of the darkness of his mind.
We can't win this way. We need teamwork, thinks Rhyme Guardian as he heals the burned skin of Smasher. "They're perfectly matched for our power, Patrick. They must be a fail safe if the original plan failed and we survived the fight with Vanguard."
Smasher nods. "They've been chosen to counteract our powers one by one."
"Yes, but they are young. They have no experience," continues Rhyme Guardian.
"What do you have in mind?" asks Smasher.
"You'll see. Now, create a diversion," orders Rhyme Guardian.
Smasher activates his force field and takes flight. The dome has now been sealed. All the doors are shut, and no living soldiers are left in the enormous space. In the middle, encased in a force field like fishes in a fish tank, the gigantic form of the Hypertime Entity and countless men and women were fighting for their lives. Outside the central gate, very few people are still on their feet.
The battle count favors the side of the baddies. Sledgehammer and Hunter are down, but Pyro, Necrosis, Gravity, Truth, Valium, and Padlock are fine.
Of the MBL, Smasher observes desperately, he and Rhyme Guardian are the only ones more or less in shape. Zed and Lioness are powerless, but still on their feet, although under the aim of the adversaries. Agent F7, Disco, Cadet, and Monolith are senseless on the ground.
Smasher takes velocity and dives. He cannot use his energy blasts, or they would harm Lioness and Zed, so he simply flies around as quickly as possible, as if to challenge them. And they fall for it. The one called Pyro follows his trail and begins charging at him, but the force field protects Smasher from the telekinetic fire of the young meta, and the hero continues to fly across the space of the dome.
"Let me succeed where you failed, Cal," says the one called Gravity, talking to Pyro, and takes flight himself, facing Smasher directly. Before he can shoot his blasts, Smasher feels himself much more heavier and falls to the ground, where he finds himself unable to get back on his feet.
The six young metas gather near the MBLer, looking at him from above. "He's still alive," says Valium.
"He won't be after I burn him up," says Pyro.
"Cal, you set him on fire before, but he healed so quickly," says Necrosis.
"James, it was Rhyme Guardian who healed him," says Truth.
"Rhyme Guardian? Where is he?" asks Gravity.
"He's there, Frank!"
Rhyme Guardian, who had waited all that time to attack, now charges directly at the assembled metas. He flies at them at Mach 3 speed, hoping Smasher's force field is still on, planning to simply create a crater where the six enemies are reunited.
But Gravity raises his hands, and Rhyme Guardian's flight bends in a much less wide arc. He crashes just feet away from the youths in black. Pyro uses his telekinesis to raise his body and puts him next to Smasher. Then he looks around. One by one, the MBLers -- the two still okay but powerless and the four senseless -- are put all together, lined up next to each other.
"Annabeth, deactivate Smasher's force field," requests Truth.
"Done, Joska," says Padlock.
"Cal, set them all on fire," says Truth.
Ignoring the screams and begging of Lioness and Zed, Pyro starts the fire. An unbearable smell permeates the place, but the kids have been trained to ignore it.
After some time, some are dead, but others, their skin much more impervious thanks to the metagene, are still alive, burned heavily but alive. "James, your turn," says Valium.
"With pleasure, Lorraine," says Necrosis, and, starting from the few deeper wounds, begins his work, causing tissue to die, cell after cell, making the body decay limb after limb, muscle after muscle, until the hearts cease to beat.
"It's done," they say in unison. They then turn toward the central gate and go to the edge of the force field. Inside, the Vanguardians are no more, submersed by a true invasion of old and future adversaries.
"All it's done," they say again.
Truth speaks. "In a few minutes, the warriors from the alternate timelines will be absorbed again by the H.E., who will remain trapped inside the force field until the master feels it useful for the invasion. It's done, really. Let's go report to the master."
Inside the force field, the Vanguardians have been literally sucked into the growing mass of enemies. Adem has found a way to reach Grimm, now a robotic being equipped with weapons of mass destruction that were nearly unusable with all the indestructible bodies crawling over his own.
"Grimm, I think I found a way to defeat the H.E.," whispers Adem, now half a metre tall, naked, gray-skinned and with wide, big, black eyes.
"H-o-w?" the robotic Grimms says with a halting, tinny, monotone voice.
"I noticed that, in the moment you made the strongest attack over the assaulters, the creation of new ones slowed down. They aren't real people taken from the time stream," explains the reptilian-looking alien. "They're more like copies that are directed by the Hypertime Entity, like puppets. It takes a great deal of concentration for him, so I think if we manage to concentrate our attack at the same moment, then at the same time the H.E. should become vulnerable."
"O-k-a-y," agrees the robot, now changing into a cloaked man with the eyes of an owl. "I need to find Phil," he says, killing the villains around him with a wide beam from his eyes.
Mere seconds later, the whole mass of villains is shaken from side to side. Drax, Ozzy, and Grimm with great effort charge from within the mass of villains in opposite directions. Phil Smith locks his mind to Tayden's and feeds his peaceful, taming thoughts directly to the cerebellum of all the villains, right in the moment they are taken by surprise by the coordinated attack of the three powerhouses. As they stand still, all the Vanguardians run outside the fray while Brianna hovers above... and screams.
The Hypertime Entity shakes. In that precise instant, Priest finds his true look again. He pushes his fist inside the ethereal substance of the Hypertime Entity and begins to pump into himself the cosmic energy. The tall soldier from the future trembles and shakes, not expecting such a powerful wave of energy, but grits his teeth and keeps on, sweating madly.
The Hypertime Entity starts to become smaller and less distinct, screaming in rage. Priest continues to absorge energy from the beast, until it finally gets sucked inside the gate and disappears. Vanguard's enemies, which had been disappearing rapidly, were long gone by then.
"We did it!" cries Brianna in joy.
"Not yet," says Grimm, looking at the enormous, distorted figure of Priest, containing an uncanny amount of energy.
"He is going to explode, if we don't let him expel it," explains Adem.
"Phil, open the force field!" orders the Vanguard leader.
The field fades. On the other side, the eight Vanguardians stand smiling. "You did it!" says Lioness, smiling.
"And so did you, it seems!" replies Brianna, looking at the hundreds of guards lying on the ground, like the eight black-dressed kids equally fallen and comatose.
"No time for cheers!" shouts Grimm. "Open the portal to La Perdita, Lioness!" orders the Vanguard leader.
While the MBLers and the Vanguardians, one by one, leave the place, Grimm stands next to Priest. "Discharge NOW!"
The future soldier lets his energy loose, aiming it over the central gate. The flood of energy waves totally melt the uncanny device and the nearby ground for hundreds of feet.
"Chain reaction!" announces Jym. Adem still stands there with his two comrades.
"Go! Go!" shouts Grimm. The three last heroes leave, and the portal closes behind them. Sparks begin appearing all over the devices in the dome. Before the portal closes behind him, Priest, now returned to normal proportions, distinctly hears a loud explosion.
"...And we opened the force field," Brianna says, concluding her narration. "Your turn now."
Vanguardians and MBLers are sitting around the meeting table at the Complex, sharing the stories of how they defeated the mysterious organization.
"Uh, well, it's a little complex," begins Smasher. "Me and the Rhymer were the only ones left, so he had this great idea. Send me to create a diversion, calling all the kids behind me. Meanwhile, he went and healed the Cadet, and had him create a virtual reality setup where the kids were beating up me and Rhyme Guardian easily and then killed all of us. The truth was that Rhyme Guardian knocked them all down while they were thinking of winning the day. Then he healed all of us."
"You did a good job with us, also," says Brianna, looking at Rhyme Guardian.
"Yes, this is one time I didn't have to open the infirmary after your return from a mission," says Dr. Henry Quantos, grinning happily.
"Too bad you weren't able to collect any data on the whereabouts of that dome and who controlled it," says Adem Different.
Zed shrugs. "It's enough that we've stopped the H.E. and save life back home, pal."
Grimm looks at Grissom, asking, "But there are no sign of huge explosions on Earth's surface?"
Montag shakes his head. "No. Neither on the moon. Probably the place you were was underground. There have been many quakes today, and it's impossible to say if one was artificial."
Grimm shrugs. "I guess we'll never find out who they were. Luckily, after Priest's job, it'll take years to rebuild that base, if they ever tried again."
They share laughs until Smasher stands up. "Well, we've paid back those who framed us, with interest, but it doesn't change the fact that the future is still altered. What are we going to do?"