CHAPTER TEN
Secrets
Captain Jean Luc Picard rushed through the halls of Admiral's Acreb flagship, the Archangel. He had gotten an urgent message from the Admiral. Something was up – all of Jean Luc's experience as a commanding officer in Starfleet told him of this.
Acreb's back was turned to the door when Jean Luc came in rather quickly.
"Admiral," Jean Luc started to say. "I got your message. What was with all of the…" Jean Luc fell silent. Outside the window was the one ship he thought that he would never see again. Picard' jaw fell open and he covered his mouth in complete disbelief.
"I know you have a deep affection for your ship and all of the crewmen, the families aboard it, and those who you have fought alongside and braved together with a thousand times," Acreb said, breaking the silence and turning to the gobsmacked captain. "And now, this is your chance to prove it. I herby present you with your ship, the U.S.S. Enterprise, once more." Jean Luc could not speak, for he was in absolute shock. Then, after several long moments, he said, "When can I board my ship?"
"As soon as you and your trusted officers are ready," was Acreb's reply.
(smooth transition)
Within a matter of minutes, Jean Luc, Counselor Troi, Beverly, Riker, Data, and Geordi were in the teleporter rooms of the Archangel. The teleporter rooms were huge, crystalline-structured chambers with twenty teleportation pads per quarter of the room, and were surrounded by force fields when not in use.
"I am detecting incredibly high amounts of energy usage from this particular area of the ship," Data remarked, his head making little jerks as he looked around the room. "This is a normal operating status, Admiral?"
"Yes, this is one of the highest energy use areas of the ship," Acreb replied, typing a code into a consol, deactivating the shields around it. "You will find that trying to hack the electrical grids in this area would be…extremely foolhardy. You would die within moments of coming into contact with the power, and there's no way to deactivate the energy long enough to hack it – that is, not without precautionary measures that only I and a handful of others in this entire fleet know. Now, if you are all ready, let us proceed with the transport." Without much further ado, the Enterprise officers made their way onto the ship. However, Data stopped just before he got onto the pad and turned to Acreb, asking, "Why did you do it?"
"Why did I do what?" Acreb asked, confused. "I'm afraid that I don't understand…"
"Why you brought us here," Data insisted. "There is no reason to bring all of creation into one place and into one time. You all wanted us here – but for what purpose, sir? What sentient enemy, or some other source of power, are you so scared of? Why is it that you choose to bring us all here?"
"I did not choose to bring you here," Acreb coldly said. "As a matter of fact, I still don't know who did…and I do not think no one will ever know – or want to. Now just get into the pad please. You're wasting my time." Acreb roughly shoved Data onto the pod, activating the transporters. The crew of the Enterprise vanished in a blast of radiant, bright purple energy, and all was silent once more.
(transition)
Down in the darkest depths of the tomb, there was nothing in the air but smoke and ash. The air stung with heat, and plumes of fire burned, absorbing the limited oxygen in the tomb. The entrance had collapsed in the explosion, sealing off the only exit. Alladin had only just regained consciousness, and was badly injured. The smoke stung his eyes, and he had to use his frayed, torn hood to cover his face, all but his eyes, which constantly squinted shut to seal his eyes from the smoke in the air.
"Hansel!" he yelled, stumbling blindly around the ruins of the tomb. He constantly kept kicking rocks and bodies on the ground. He could not see them, for there was just brownish/grayish ash in the air. The air was hot, sticky, and packed with smoke, making it extremely hard to breathe. Looking around, he struggled to keep his eyes open and his throat clear. Trying to keep his hood on straight, he frantically looked around the ruins, searching for some kind of sign that Hansel or any other soldier on Acreb's side had survived the massive, unprecedented explosion.
"Help!" cried a weak voice next to Alladin. Alladin looked down and saw the dust clearing. Hansel was covered in several large pieces of collapsed timbers. As fast as he could, Alladin pulled away the rubble. Just as Alladin was pulling Hansel to his feet, the device on Hansel's wrist buzzed loudly. Hansel looked down at the device and quickly spun the disk several times, each one emitting a loud cranking sound. He then pulled out a syringe from his coat, but before he could prep it, he staggered and had to lean against a downed column for support.
"Are you alright?" Alladin exclaimed, giving Hansel a shoulder to lean against.
"I'm fine, kid," Hansel groaned as he stabbed the syringe into his leg, right through the cloth covering his leg. After a few moments, the fire returned to Hansel's eyes ad he was back to his old self.
"What was that?" Alladin asked as Hansel replaced the spent syringe in his coat.
"I ate way too much of a witch's candy when I was little," Hansel explained, looking around his feet, kicking some of the rubble aside. "As a result, I got really sick. I have to take the medicine every couple of hours or I'll die."
There was a loud groan of pain from a little ways off, and both Alladin and Hansel spun around to the source of the groan. The giant pile of rocks was pushed aside, and Martian Manhunter, along with Superman and Batman, pushed their way out, silhouetted against the fire behind them that had consumed the evil altar. Several other soldiers pushed themselves out of the rubble, but many of them were injured – some with bloodied heads and limbs, and many having broken or totally missing limbs. And there were still many, many cries for help among the wreckage of the dark temple, smoldering and about to collapse.
Alladin, Hansel, Superman, Batman, and Martian Manhunter wasted no time in getting as many injured out of the rubble as possible, but there were just too many injured to deal with. As one deceased clone trooper fell onto the ground from above, there was a beeping on his communicator.
"TC-859! What is your position? Over," the communicator said. A moment later, it repeated, "TC-859! Do you copy?" Superman, who was walking by at the time, picked up the communicator from the dead trooper and clicked it on.
"This is Superman reporting," Superman said. "I'm afraid trooper TC-859 has not survived." There was a pause, and then the voice on the communicator said, "How many men are down?"
"Almost everyone," Superman said solemnly as he saw the bodies of the deceased troopers and warriors being lined up. "Those that we have left are mostly badly injured, and need medical attention. Can you provide us that?"
"I sure can," the voice said. "Can you give us a minute to prepare our transporter pads ready?"
"Just hurry, please," Superman said. "These men desperately need help. And who am I speaking to?"
"This is Geordi la Forge of the U.S.S. Enterprise," the voice said. "I'm sure you remember me, don't you?"
"Oh, now I remember you!" Superman said. "Head engineer, correct?"
"That's right," Geordi said. "Now let us get the transporters ready so we can beam aboard the injured, all right?"
"That's fine, just get it done quickly. Please. Superman out." After Superman shut off the communicator, he turned to Batman, who was just behind him tending to a wounded Starfleet officer, "We will have rescue in a few minutes."
"The sooner we can get all of these wounded out of here," Batman growled, pulling tight a bandage, causing the officer to squirm in pain. "The better. Sorry about that, are you alright, soldier?" The Starfleet officer nodded slowly, and it seemed that even that tiny movement pained him greatly. Nearby, Alladin was looking around the wreckage when he saw another person crawl out of the wreckage. Alladin ran up to the person, and so he was incredibly surprised when he saw that it was a lion with a mane as black as coal. Scar had survived the turmoil of the explosion, and he was very, very angry. He barred his teeth and tried to lunge, but his rear body and legs were stuck in the rubble. Not only that, but several surviving clones and Starfleet soldiers had their weapons aimed at Scar's head.
"You are coming with us," Superman boldly said to Scar, his voice echoing throughout the tomb. "Whether you like it or not."
"Oh, goody," Scar hissed sarcastically as he rolled his eyes in mock horror. "I'm so scared of you…"
"Quiet!" Batman growled, extending the mechanical claws mounted on his forearm. "Unless you want another permanent scar!" Just then, Superman's communicator beeped again, and Jeordi said, "Commander la Forge to Superman. Are you ready to transport?"
"We read you loud and clear, Commander," Superman heartily replied. "Transport at your command." At that moment, the communicator shut off, and there was a bright light and a wooshing noise, and Scar, Batman, and Superman were gone.
(transition)
In the middle of 2005 London, the citizens of Great Britain went about their ways as if it was any ordinary day. The only unusual thing was that there was a man in a dark cloak darting around the back cobblestone alleyways of the stankier, seedier sides of London. The dark cloaked man passed by many a beggar, homeless person, and criminal. As the man darted out of the sunlight again, he came across a larger alleyway. Many raggedy looking men were leaning against the walls. The cloaked man tried to go right on by, but all of the men in the alleyway blocked his path. Right afterwards, they drew many different weapons. Some had pipes, others with chains and shanks, and a few of them had cleverly disguised pistols.
"Get out of my way," the hooded man demanded coldly.
"Well, what makes ya think you're a-gettin outta here, ey?" one man laughed as he swung his chain. The hooded man had heard enough of it. He reached into his cloak, and pulled out a metal cylinder. There was a flash of light, and a red beam of energy extended out of the cylinder.
"I am not going to tell you again," the hooded man demanded. "Get out of my way!" The men jumped back when the lightsaber ignited, but one of them continued to crack up madly as he yelled, "Well son – come and get me!" He broke out into a wild fit of laughter, but all of a sudden there was a swirling, smacking sound behind and above the men. Before the men could even turn around, tentacles shot out of nowhere, wrapping around their bodies and limbs, even sticking tentacles down the helpless men's throats. The tentacles had come from a hovering dark shadow that had appeared out of nowhere. More slimy, gently swaying tentacles surrounded the shadow, and in the center of the shadow was a massive eye, cold and evil. It blinked occasionally, but very slowly, giving one the sense that this creature was slowing down time itself. A multitude of other small eyes radiated from the center, disappearing at the edges, and its voice was slow but highly fluctuating, like an old man turned human/squid hybrid.
"At last," the monster moaned in something that was half-human, half…something else. "My, champion has finally…returned, to me. I have foreseen, your return, as I knew it would. Now, champion, take your rightful place…at my, side." The men trapped in the tentacles groaned and tried to scream, but to no avail.
"What the hell are you?!" the hooded man exclaimed angrily, drawing and igniting a second lightsaber, but both suddenly turned off, and did not turn on again, despite the hooded man's attempts to reactivated them.
"I know, EVERYTHING, about you, Galen Marek, son of Mallie and Kento Marek," the hovering being. "I am the beginning, the middle, and, the end. I am the daecdric prince of fate, memory, and knowledge. I, am Hermaeus Mora, and you are, my champion."
"What makes you think I'll listen to you, you Genosian scumbag!" Galen growled.
"Cooperate," the beast hissed. "Or do not – it matters not to me. Your fate is inevitable…your illusion of choice is, meaningless in my, ever-present existence…so, I say to you again…"
"Enough of this trickery!" Marek snapped. "If you want to make it out of here alive, you'd best run and never cross paths with me again!" Galen again tried to re-ignite his blades, but to no avail. Throwing them aside, he drew a knife and used the Force to launch himself at the beast. That was of no use either, for a single, smaller tentacle almost carelessly slammed him into the ground, and then lifted him into the air by his throat.
"Do NOT, DISOBEY ME AGAIN," the tentacle-covered monster screamed in Marek's mind. Marek thrashed and writhed in agony, but all of his limbs were held in place, unmoving and tightening ever steadily.
"You have three days to change your mind," Mora warned. "Or YOU WILL NEVER SEE THE LIGHT OF DAY AGAIN, AS IS THE DRAGONBORN'S FATE." Just at that moment, am old woman on a cane was walking by the alleyway. She reflexively glanced over to where she was hearing grunting and thrashing. She turned and saw a huge mass of tentacles hovering in mid-air, with several tentacles wrapped around a man's neck and limbs. The woman was frozen in place for a good long moment, and then opened her mouth and screamed at the top of her lungs.
Hermaeus's tentacles jerked violently in shock, and as a result Galen fell to the ground, injured, chocking, and unable to move. The daedric prince decided not to hang around, and vanished in a flash of black mist. The old woman barely managed to stay on her cane as she ran away, screaming and running as if the Devil himself was after her. Unable to move, Galen began to black out, the last thing he remembering was a beastly growl of something that disappeared into a dark realm, and the sound of space engines whirring and moaning as a blue box materialized in front of him – then everything went black…
(transition)
"What's the peak intensity of the Tesseract-guidance systems?" Presul asked as he adjusted several controls on his holo-console. He was onboard the Hellicarier with Tony Stark and a bald man named Cypher, and were working on trying to crack the Tesseract's energy fields open.
"Something around two hundred giga-janskies," Tony replied as he tied in the Hellicarier's main computer with the Tesseract-guidance system that JARVIS had developed and Stark constructed. "Are you ready on the fusion injection?"
"Not yet," Cypher replied, furiously hammering away at his keyboards. "We still have to achieve the atomic fusion at the quark-level without causing the quantum tunneling effect. This cube's own energy that keeps it together is also keeping everything else out of it – how did this thing work before?"
"When New York was attacked," Stark explained. "Loki had a mind-controlled scientist use a really rare element called iridium to stabilize a cold fusion reactor that allowed the Tesseract to unleash enough power to open a stable portal to another dimension that let in an army that would have wiped the Earth clean of life – human, plant, animal, everything."
"And what about you, Mister Super-Chuck Norris?" Cypher added sarcastically, indicating Presul. "What do you think you can get out of this?"
"A clue," Presul automatically replied, his hands wreathing in fire as he tried to manipulate the energy fields of the Tesseract. "Any kind of clue that will tell me how all of these dimensions came into contact one another and crushed into one super-dimension…" Presul focused hard as tendrils of fire tried to make their way into the Tesseract, but the cube fought back, letting off blasts of energy that knocked Presul off of his feet. The Tesseract, held in a powerful magnetic field, was just not going to give in. Presul got back on his feet and tried multiple times to hack into the Tesseract, but to no avail. Over the next several hours, attempt after attempt was made by all engineers, but still nothing was working. Seven hours in, and both Cypher and Stark were losing the will to live by now.
Presul was trying a new tactic by manipulating the magnetic fields to pry the Tessereact's outer casing open, when suddenly a powerful burst of energy smashed straight into his mind.
A purple-skinned monster attempting to kill an entire planet with a staff adorned with a mighty stone…
…an explosion of the Tesseract that swept over an entire town in Main, just as a burst of purple smoke swept over the town form the other side…
…hundreds of dragons falling from the sky as thousands of superheroes were struck down by evil…
…a bald man in a green armored suit flying straight into the core of a huge weapon, a satellite dish embedded in an enormous battle station, carrying with him a thermonuclear device…
…a man in red running at multiple Mach straight into an army of Sith Lords, the shockwave of his punch flattening the army…
…a devil with a right hand of stone leading an army of Peacekeeprs and civilians against an army of metal men…
…all of San Francisco consumed by evil as Presul summoned something unimaginable…
…a snow queen and her sister with an army of mere-men, superheroes, and Titans squaring off against Delten himself…
…a void of total darkness. There was a door with a huge circle embedded in it. There were seven smaller circles on the outside of the larger circle, six of them containing shattered crystals. The seventh one was pulsing brightly, but its light was getting weaker and weaker. Without warning, the crystal dimmed into total blackness, and shattered. The entire door blew apart, visible to a massive army of enchanters, sorcerers, inter-dimensional warriors, drones, Time Lords, Jedi, elves, dwarves, men, Dark Lords, villains and masterminds, and a hundred billion superheroes. All watched the door blast open, and immediately as it did an endless wave of hell opened up, and nightmares and evil beyond all the sum of all evil and destruction belted forth from what was locked behind the door. There was one powerful chant from the army that watched the door open as it charged for the endless swarm of evil.
"FOR PRESUL!"
Presul dropped like a stone and hit the deck as the Tesseract went into something resembling a lockdown state. Presul jerked violently and suddenly went as still as stone.
"Hey hey hey!" Stark exclaimed, rushing to Presul. "Come on, man! Don't do this on us! Come on, get back on your feet!" Still, no response. Cypher was by Presul's side in a heartbeat. He attempted to carry out CPR, and needless to say he was scared senseless when Presul's chest suddenly shot straight up, accompanied by a strangled gasp. Presul was panting like an asthmatic dog, his eyes practically bulging out of his head. The shock spooked Tony so severely that he was on his butt and his feet were shaking as the adrenaline took over his blood vessels.
"What the hell, man?!" Tony exclaimed, trying to regain some amount of composure. "Not cool, dude! Not cool!"
"Sorry," Presul said weakly. Something had obviously happened to Presul, for his face was now paler, and he looked much sicker. Something had hit him hard, hard enough to leave him without breath and without basic coordination, which was basically unbelievable given what Presul was able to do.
"What the hell's up with you, man?" Cypher said. "Lost your shit already?" Presul slowly sat up and slowly uttered, "No…not even close.
"Get me Admiral Acreb!" Presul demanded, suddenly shooting up to his feet, shoving Cypher out of the way. "I need to get in touch with him – now!" Tony didn't waste time after the brief secondary shock, but not for Cypher – he was again immobilized as the adrenaline immobilized him. Tony got on the comms channel and got in touch with Acreb, while Presul sprinted down hallways and corridors at near Mach 0.5. However, just as he rounded a turn, he collapsed warning and fell hard to his feet as a burst of psychic energy smashed into his mind. Presul suddenly saw several people before him in the hallway he was in, maybe four or five. The first one, a blonde woman with a black shirt, red leather jacket, and black leather pants, was shouting frantically. In the background of this psychic transmission, explosions and extreme shouting indicated some kind of fight these people were in.
"Presul!" the woman shouted. "Presul! If you can hear me, we need your help! We're outnumbered and outgunned! Delten has us completely surrounded! We need help…"
The second person in the transmission, a twenty-something year old woman with platinum blonde hair and sporting bright blue armor, an ice sword in one hand and an M16A1 rifle in the other, shouted, "Emma – get down!" The platinum blonde pushed down the woman in red just as an arrow nearly took their heads off. The second woman fired her rifle, and a body collapsed into the screen, dissolving into red mist.
"Elsa, go! Get out of here!" Emma yelled. "Aragon! Get Elsa out of here! Find her sister and whoever survived the HAW crash! Elsa, you have to trust me!"
"Delten's juggernauts are getting closer!" Aragon yelled, cutting down an enemy droid that had tried to light them up from behind. "Elsa! Let's move!" A gas canister flew by the screen and landed a couple feet off-screen. The gas started to move across screen across the group, smothering their image. The psychic transmission began fading even further, and the last word came from the fourth individual, a huge demonic man with a ring of horns and spiked armor, who shouted, "PRESUL! You have seconds – you must come to our aid! We have thousands of heroes down! Malificent and Grimhilde's barrier shall fall any moment – we cannot hold them…"
An explosion cut the transmission off, causing a burst of psychic feedback that once again flattened Presul. Presul was left practically motionless, unable to get back on his feet. Several long, agonizing minutes passed before he managed to shake it off and actually think straight. He could not comprehend what he had seen in the vision. Shaking his head, he sprung back on his feet and rushed to find Acreb as fast as his super-speed could move him.
{This finishes the intro - now we're kicking it into high gear. You're going to see hundreds, even thousands, of heroes come together as the story begins to advance. PLEASE review - like it so far? Confused? Questions? Let me know please! Thanks!}