inVASION: Heartless & Nobody – Bane of Existence
By THE Xenomorph (aka Xenomorph666)
Disclaimer: I own only Perfection and Wraith.
DigitalMan and K2 are © My close friend.
Everything else is copyrighted to their correct owner.
Universe: Spliced-Verse (Misfit-Verse, Evil Dead, The Mask, TMNT, Captain Planet, Beast Wars, Jurassic Park)
The Suffering of a Father
Magneto sat in his office in Genosha, watching the monitors as waves of mutants filed off their many boats and planes. He smiled with contentment as his plans seemed to come to fruition. He saw mutants of all various types. Much to his surprise, he found that some humans, probably relatives or friends of the mutants, were among the crowd, something the Master of Magnetism found himself viewing as a pleasant thing. He noted the few humans that had been accosted though, remained peaceful or at the very worst were defended by those with them. It was a good feeling that sprung up within him when he saw that. It was a small reassurance that maybe Charles was right. Maybe humans and mutants could live together.
Those thoughts were quickly squashed under foot as soon as they had bloomed. The monitor for the docks showed a young mutant girl screaming, a radio call from Sabertooth told him all he needed to know. The girl had been sexually assaulted by a human. A not-very-surprised Magneto stood and walked to his sphere and within moments was at the scene, ready to hand the judgment of death down. He ordered the accused man brought forward. Sabertooth of course, tossed the man to him.
"You are accused of sexual assault towards a mutant on the island of Genosha." Magneto's glare was filled with an obvious intent.
To his surprise, the man stood straight and spoke in a voice Magneto only barely recognized. "The dead have no wants of the flesh."
"So death comes to claim me?" Magneto sneered with contempt. "Show yourself Scion, or do your supposed boogeymen still threaten you?"
All at once, a dark cloud formed and coalesced into the form of the Scion of Death. Wraith was once again in the world, and his presence caused a great disturbance as the docks deteriorated to almost nothing within moments. A few people managed to make it off the docks before it collapsed.
"You dare kill my people." Magneto growled.
"I spare them from fates worse than myself." Wraith's voice echoed an ethereal haunt. "They are here, Magneto, and though you and your new people could fight them back, you in the end would only fuel their intent."
"And the mutants would be saved." Magneto responded with a smile, "Then why bother to tell me this?"
"I cannot tell you." The light from Wraith's eyes seemed to expand and envelope the mutant leader. "Long have you been overdue for this, long have you need to see true suffering."
"I have seen true suffering!" Magneto roared as the light enveloped him totally.
When the light faded, the magnetokinetic stood in blackness that soon became a barren wasteland. Then, it became populated with millions of people. Some Magneto even recognized, Hawk and Duke from the Joes were among them.
"Some souls you see here are meant to arrive, others can be saved by simply acts of mercy." Wraith nodded, but not to the Joes. The nod was to every other person that lay before them. "The heartless shall lose this battle, though there will be losses to many sides, these deaths come at the hands of another."
"There are no mutants." Magneto remarked.
"Why would there be?" Wraith's laugh warped and twisted to Magneto's own. "You would never send your people to death after all."
"I..." Magneto looked forward. "I never wanted this."
"True, but then again you were taught early lessons in hate..." Wraith passed his arm over the landscape and it shifted to a Nazi concentration camp where Magneto saw himself being dragged from his parents.
"I am no Scrooge. My past will not change me and neither shall my future!" Magneto growled in annoyance.
"Is that so?" Wraith turned to the Master of Magnetism. "You would condemn billions of lives simply because you refuse to recognize the need to change?" Wraith cackled with a twisted glee as he seemed to float off. "Perhaps a choice vision from another future?"
"What possible better future could there be?" Magneto shouted as he looked out once again at the people he now knew he would one day end.
Wraith produced a simple device in his invisible hands. The white-haired mutant looked at the small red binocular-like device...and wondered if the Scion of Death had gone truly insane. "The best glimpses of the future complements of Chaos and the View Master."
A disbelieving Magneto slowly took the child's toy that the ghost held aloft and put the visor to his eyes. The first slide was something that astonished him; Wanda with children. One was obviously fathered by the Scion of Chaos, but the other two he could not place. His shock grew though as behind them stood their current enemy, Release, though he looked more subdued and infinitely more experienced.
He clicked down the slide tab and another vision.
This scene was Gecko, Nightcrawler, Quicksilver, Shadowcat and several mutants Magneto recognized from these very docks. They all had the symbol of a sword on their uniforms with the letter "E" above it. Moreover Gecko himself carried a blade of magnificence and a stature held normally for a king. The greatest shock of this vision though was the humans that also came dressed in the same uniform. Their enemies seemed to be green aliens, all dropping various disguises.
The tab clicked again, but he did not push it.
This vision took the mutant leader's breath away. It was a simple elegant funeral and he recognized names on tombstones around the one currently being buried. The names though were not what took his breath away, it was the dates. The births and deaths were barely two decades apart.
The tab went down again.
This vision was also the graveyard, but a form stood at the freshly tended to grave. A large black bird rested on a grave near the form. A sense of dread crossed Magneto's soul as he saw the face was that of the supposed buried person. He could not conceive of death returning someone just buried, especially not in such a comic book fashion, and he drew in a sharp breath.
The tab depressed.
This vision was a thankful reprieve, but also all at once terrifying. A man Magneto had seen with the X-Men, one who only identified himself as "The Doctor", was traveling with Polaris and Iceman in his odd police box ship. The strangest part was that the Doctor was looking at Magneto and a speech bubble simply read "It's bigger on the inside."
The tab broke this time as it went down. Magneto knew this would be the last.
This image was perhaps the most confusing. It was simply three forms with a distance measurement from Earth. One Magneto knew to be Galactus, the planet-eating being the Fantastic Four had run off. The others he could not make sense of. One was an orange dot, the other a black sphere.
To his surprise the tab went down again, though this time the toy itself broke.
The image was horrifying. The orange dot was in fact a giant transforming robot that tore planets apart to literally devour them. Magneto felt fear creep into his soul.
It clicked again, rapidly animating the remaining vision of the orange monster devouring a planet.
Then it began to animate the black sphere gliding through space and stopping to open a large door in it's center, out of which a large "arm" extended to grasp a planet and drag it into it's own terrifying core. The doors then closed and the sphere moved on.
The toy exploded in Magneto's face.
"Evil is a powerful enemy." Wraith said. "Many can be lead down it from causes meant for good." The Scion's appearance was now that of the traditional Grim Reaper, the vague outline of a naked skull was even visible under his hood, and he continued. "It is still nothing to the dangerous nature of beings that simply hunger."
"What did they mean?" Magneto asked with a visible shudder.
"Which vision?" Wraith asked, his voice distant as he looked to the sky, almost as if he wasn't really with Magneto.
"Several of them, but the first and the last mostly concern me." Magneto explained, "He's our enemy, and yet there..."
"Release..." Wraith chuckled, "There are many versions of him, the one you saw bears the burden of a powerful curse from a being of pure wrath. Fear him still, for that one is even yet more powerful than this."
"And those... things?" Magneto gasped. "What are they?"
"Eaters of worlds." Wraith explained. "They have changed much of this world's fabric, though the Beast Planet was here before Unicron was dragged through. They are drawn to Earth for different reasons. One to feed, one to destroy the last of it's enemies..."
"Galactus?" Magneto hoped his deduction was right.
"He doesn't like competition." Wraith shrugged as he reverted to his normal form and the grey, abyssal world they were in faded to the docks, where humans and mutants were working to pull as many as they could from the water. "Get better wood Magneto, I'll not be so kind as this should there be a next time."
"Should?" Magneto cast a questioning glance.
The specter merely smiled as he faded from view, but left a few parting words. "Seek peace, Max Eisenhardt."
Magneto's eyes went wide at the utterance of his birth name, but the surprise quickly faded as he realized that death of all things would always know who he was. He slowly came to the dock and looked out among the people gathered there. He was shocked to still see the humans and mutants working together.
"Sabertooth." Magneto called, an odd distance in his voice.
A sudden explosion from the far side of the island caught both their attentions however.
"Get these people to safety!" Magneto rose high to see a swarms of writhing black creatures pouring forth from the abandoned buildings on the other side of the island. "Acolytes, to me!"
AN: Hooo boy I've been gone a long while. I've no excuse other than real life kicking me in the balls repeatedly. Gonna try to get back on my writing train, but I don't even know if anyone is watching anymore. If anyone is, please let me know. Also this will no longer be as long as I thought. It will go as far as I can, then I'm taking a break from this 'verse to show off the interLOAFERs in other worlds.