Trinity
Part One – Colossus
It all started in the sky.
As most things that start in the sky tend to be, this thing was by nature foreign to the race of monkeys below the sky, living, fucking, and dying on a ball of mud hurtling through the universe.
Recently, a pair of things that in all other circumstance should not be due to their impossible nature visited many iterations of said mudball.
One of them died.
The other forgot how to live.
In the process of dying however the last spiteful application of a complex system of weapons opened in the impossible workings of the thinking corpse's mind.
Monsters. She'd create monsters.
Great champions to fight them as well, but monsters.
One way or another, she would bring one last End.
Julian Keyes stared at a screen for money. When something on the screen was abnormal, he would tell someone. The thing that was on his screen at this exact moment was thoroughly not normal and in fact, rather worrying. So he voiced his objection towards the abnormality and his opinion was heard.
"What do you mean it just "appeared" there?"
The person that was responsible for signing Mr. Keyes checks was sweating.
"I don't know, Mr. Walsh. The object isn't very large, but its projected trajectory puts it within an uncomfortably close range of a major population center. It's gonna hit Athens, sir."
"Hrm." A grunt and neat mopping of the brow seemed to calm the suited overseer's nerves.
"Phone the Protectorate and inform them it would be prudent of Seraph to intercept it, unless they want a major disaster in a civilian area."
"Isn't that what superheroes are for, sir?'
"Indeed."
-
Adelaide Hiller was troubled. She was a member of the most powerful group of Parahumans on Earth, she was reared as the personal savior of her homeland and she had abilites of the mind unpossessed by any mortal. She was the incarnation of grace, dignity, civility, and beauty.
She couldn't see a damn thing about this stupid, cowfucking meteor. She had racked her brain the entirety of her flight to Greece, crossrefrenced the past, present, and future instances of herself and simply found nothing regarding this thing. It could be a part of its spaceborn nature, or a natural result of not being an object originating on earth. She continued pondering, even as she touched down in the heart of Athens. Due to being informed of her presence there and the disaster she was preventing, evacuation efforts were minimal and mostly performed by the paranoid or panicky.
Or lucky.
Adelaide soared into the sky, penetrating the atmospheric layers and preparing to grab the meteor with her prodigious telekinetic skill. She could see the streaking point of light above her, a fireball the size of a house.
She couldn't grab it. She-She-why can't she - why is it such - SHE CANNOT GRAB IT
The small group of civilians beneath her began to express fear and panic. Why couldn't this great champion grab the stone? Evacuation efforts sharply increased in volume.
They needed to get away, this could be very very ba-
Impact.
Death, massive. The force of impact? Equivalent to that of a nuclear blast. Earthquakes that shook the Earth and tore the streets radiated from the decimated epicenter.
And then the meteor got up.
Adelaide, from her aerial vantage point, was only mildly concussed from the raw force of the shockwave that struck her body. So she was one of the first to ever view the creature. The impossible, beautiful creature.
Large. The size of a five-story building at least, maybe more. A strange mockery of a human figure, evoking thoughts of a broken, Hellenistic sculpture. The stony parts of the beat appeared to be made of polished marble, with rivulets of writhing metallic not-bronze twisted and throughout, as if fighting the stone for dominance. In random arrangements this sculpted armor surrounded the creature's entire, humanoid body. Truly a perfect figure, a beautiful mockery of human form. A bald head composed entirely of the stuff crowned the beast, with a cold, unblinking, but assuredly feminine face staring emptily at the devastation. In the partitions and places where the statue-flesh was not, lean muscular flesh as solid black as the devil himself and his foulest nightmare fused the shattered pieces.
It looked massive, impossibly heavy and at least partially inorganic.
And yet it moved.
The colossus rose to its feet steadily and surveyed its surroundings with stony eyes. It looked upon all it was to destroy, as the impossible thoughts racing through its core instructed the massive beast. It felt...intelligent. Like it could process the scene around it with impossible clarity. It then moved. It moved far more quickly than one would expect, swooping towards a building, windows shattered and body battered. With one swipe of itss almost skeletal hands and lithe arms, the titan tore through the structure as if it was cleaving through butter.
Adelaide thought they may have a problem here.
And so they battled. The assembled heroes of the mudball fought on a grand stage with the towering creature. In a world where men were known to create fire and lightning from air, the creature's abilities were fairly straightforward. It extruded far, far more strength than a creature of its size and mass should have, pounding into the Earth with shattering force and tossing skyscrapers around as if they were props in a grand comedy.
It moved very quickly, dashing across the landscape, taking flight above the battlefield from time to time.
It thought. They had not thought it could think but it thought with more systematic precision and speed than nearly any of the creatures in its path. It countered attacks with stunningly good timing, warding off blasts of scouring light with simple maneuvers. It could defy gravity and deftly take flight, sometimes striking into the earth to trigger further blasts and earthquakes.
It simply refused to die, and that was the worst part. It could survive any attack placed upon it with a stunning lack of giving a shit, emerging from nuclear fireballs and storms of scouring dust with nary an abrasion on itself. More esoteric attacks, blenders of space and time and what can or cannot be done could wound it, but slowly. Not too little. Just a small enough amount that the actions of defending capes could be counted as little more than an annoyance by the Colossus.
After a combination of simply ravishing the city until a true wasteland had formed and the somewhat inconvenient damage it had accrued, the Colossus simply raised its arms and ascended.
And so it was, the first of many. Enormous beasts that would strike population centers, retreating to unreachable locales for safety between strikes.
Many names were slung around for these beasts. Harbinger, Titan, Olympian. Of course, only one name would be chosen in the end. One name could suit these great beings that butcher so many like pigs.
Endbringer.
