COMES THE FALLEN ONE
By: Dan Bivens
Chapter 1
"Hey, what's the idea?" shouted the gravelly voiced Ben "The Thing" Grimm after reacting to an elaborately delivered "hotfoot" via the flamed-on appendage of none-other-than Johnny "The Human Torch" Storm, still laughing almost nonstop at his unique caper. "I oughta…!"
No sooner had The Thing lumbered along in the general direction of a still-laughing Human Torch, than the self-described hotshot fully flamed-on in order to allow his formerly Human form to become a mentally-controlled burst of self-generating plasma flame that, almost instantly, allowed the young-in-years superhero to hover above the living room's carpeted, flame-retardant naturally, floor.
"You oughta," the blazing showoff said with a smirk, "be thankful it was those size thirties I flame-jetted instead of that wide load ass of yours, Rocky. Heheheh, hahaha!"
"Why you dime-store super-idiot, when I get my mitts on ya, I'll…!" snarled the rock-like, super-strong, nigh-invulnerable individual making up fully one-fourth of the often unfathomable Fantastic Four, even as the fully flamed-on Human Torch swiftly yet gracefully flew around and away from the 600-plus pound seeming monstrosity. "Hey! Stay still so's I can smash ya!"
"Hey, maybe you'd be so stupid as to wait for an ass-whoopin'," The Human Torch said while still swiftly streaking around and away from the Thing in the fully flameproof multi-levels at the top of the towering Baxter Building, "but not me! If you can catch me, rocks-for-brains, then I deserve to get swatted away like a big bug! 'Course, this 'bug' knows how to sting!"
As if to promptly punctuate his point, The Human Torch easily tossed small balls of plasma-flame hurtling toward The Thing in order to impact various areas about his tremendous rock-like torso.
"Ouch! Ow! Hey! Cut it out! Ouch!" bellowed the behemoth of human marble, still attempting to catch the ever-elusive via self-generated plasma flame Human Torch. "Wait'll I get hold'a ya, matchstick! I'll snuff ya like a freakin' birthday cake candle!"
"So says the guy so slow he couldn't catch a cold!" belly-laughed The Human Torch as he continued to swiftly circle and swoop while hurling still more small balls of flame at the immensity that was The Thing.
Because he was so hell-bent on Thing-handling the Flaming One, Ben had inadvertently trashed most of the reinforced furniture making up the sizeable nicely decorated interior of only one of several such floors specifically used by The Fantastic Four.
Such was when Sue "Invisible Woman" Richards happened to step in.
"What are you two doing?" she shouted loudly and angrily, even as The Invisible Woman issued an invisible force field, two to be more precise, to encircle and envelope both her fully flaming, and flying, younger brother as well as the thundering Thing. "Now stop or I swear I'll tighten those fields until you both find out what its like to be shrink-wrapped!"
Held utterly still, no matter now The Thing struggled with his unsurpassed super-strength or how hotly burned the plasma-flame engulfing the still hovering Human Torch, both at last surrendered to the situation as The Invisible Woman slowly released identical invisible fields of force, so psychically controlled by the beauteous blonde, before looking about at the needless debris of destruction in a used-by-all living room.
"Just look at this place! Ben…Johnny…you should be ashamed of yourselves!" snappishly said The Invisible Woman as she promptly propped tightly clenched fists upon sensuously shaped hips and angrily added, "Well, I'm not going to clear this living room of this rubble. But you two will! Or else I'll have Reed whip up something designed to totally neutralize the two of you for the rest of the week! Got me?"
Reacting exactly like little children caught misbehaving by their "mother", The Thing lightly kicked a clump of smashed furniture with a stony toe, while the fully flamed-off Human Torch held his head down in an expression of sophomoric shame, even as both muttered simultaneously, "Yeah, we're sorry, Sue."
Heaving a heavy-but-short sigh of exaggerated exasperation, The Invisible Woman spun on her heels while grumbling, "Guess I've got to tell Reed he needs to custom order more reinforced furniture. Makes me wish there were some super-villains to battle."
At that exact instant, some seven billion light-years distant in the frozen airlessness of space…
"I am free!" super-shouted, even through the surrounding depths of an impeccable vacuum, a strange creature of clearly humanoid origins, but composed of cosmic power granted, unknown eons earlier, by Galactus himself, as well as absolutely undeniable dark energy.
Streaking at speeds approaching that of the speed-of-light, from some long-lost location at the very edge of the known universe, he continued. "I had been bound within the power prison known as Kyln, those ten billion year old spheres constructed of diametric compositions of matter-and-antimatter, made especially for such as I, for longer than I can recall. Almost as long as my immortal existence untold billions of years before thanks to the purple-clad Planet-Eater! An existence so distant in time and space, as well as cosmic memory, that I can no longer conceive of a single natural name…save that which great Galactus granted unto me at my cosmic creation as his first space-spanning herald: The Fallen One!"
Soon sensing evidence of the peerless power cosmic, even across countless galactic aggregations of a wide variety of stars and solar systems, the Fallen One allowed his incomparable power, both cosmic as well as what he derived from dark energy, to send him streaking through the vast cosmos via rapidly opening space-time tunnels in exactly the same fashion as all former heralds to eternal Galactus.
Streaking, in point of fact, straight toward an insignificantly tiny spatial point on the opposite side of the seemingly ceaseless cosmos.
"Earth!"
END OF CHAPTER 1