Disclaimer: I do not own any of these characters, except for those I invent.
D.C. and Dean characters I invented. For details on DC, see "D.C. and the CN Tower." chapters one through five. For info on Dean, see "Mutant Roundup: Chapter Nine."
"Situation: We are trapped in an abandoned warehouse in the outskirts of Oklahoma City, which happens to be in the center of the state of Oklahoma. The authorities have cut the power and phone lines, so our mode of transportation cannot get us out of here. Plus, we have 12,000 mutants with us aged 10-30. We need a new plan. Any volunteers?"
Nobody, not a single person in the meeting room, raised their hand. The whole speech has been spoken by a boy named Juan at the head of the enormous table set up in the large underground room. DC sat next to him, head in his hands, thinking. He'd been trying to think up a solution for three hours, which hadn't been easy with that stupid policeman outside yelling through a bullhorn outside. His voice was cracking at all, which was the most ironic part. Then somebody at the table spoke up.
"All I can think of is what they're going to do to us if we surrender. If Aquarius' account is correct, and I have no doubt that it is, then we're looking at unfair imprisonment on some island right next to Paradise. We're all being treated like some sort of alien germ!"
Alien germ. That was a very good analogy. In spite of himself, DC flipped mentally through all the alien movies he had seen.
Mars Attacks!, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Aliens, Independence Day…Wait a minute…Independence Day…
"I've got an idea."
Everybody started and looked at him.
"Yes Aquarius? What is it?"
"Well, it included turning every member here into light except for me and my little brother and hyper-charging a cell phone or radio. Also, if you all agree, we could probably kill two birds with one stone."
"What do you mean?"
"Look, it's like this…"
DC looked through the crowd of frightened members, searching for his brother. But all the faces looked the same, scared. The warehouse was as long as a football field, and that was a lot of area to search. Finally he spotted Dean, hanging out with a group of blacks.
"Hey Dean! Come over here!"
Dean said something to his new friends then walked over.
"What do you want?"
"When you said you could control graviton particles, right?"
"Yeah."
"And you made yourself float in midair, right?"
"Right."
"Think you could do the same for an spaceship?"
The police outside were as tense as a violin string in Death Valley. They had no idea how many mutants were in there, if they'd fight back, if they'd come quietly, whether they'd have to be taken by force… but this was too much. Reports had come in about an unexplained radar blip. Usually this turned out to be a small meteor or something like that, but small meteors are not twenty miles wide. But this blip was, and it was headed for Oklahoma City.
It had been detected over the Caribbean, where it went north over the Bahamas. It then made a beeline for Oklahoma City, passing over Florida along the way. Panic erupted in Disney World when it passed directly over it, where they were just celebrating the opening of a new ride that dealt with aliens. The bright light passed into Alabama, then Mississippi and Arkansas. Finally it reached Oklahoma two hours after first appearing on radar screens, trailing behind it a smoke trail two hundred miles long. The areas directly below the light experienced power outages, which could only be explained by the fact that something was draining the system. The outages were still going even after the light had left the area. When it reached the border between Oklahoma and Arkansas, the bright yellow light faded, revealing a dark hull. It was quickly pointed out that it looked almost exactly like the spacecraft from ID4, with a few key differences. It didn't have the funny projection thing on the front. In the middle of the bottom, something that looked like a stinger hung down, with eight lines leading away from it to the edges, like the rays of a sun drawn by a child. It was slowly rotating clockwise, and several thousand lights were scattered across the surface.
The press was having a field day, trying to guess where it was going. When it became clear that it was heading straight for Oklahoma City, the authorities immediately ordered an evacuation. But since they had not figured out where it was going until it had passed into Oklahoma, they only had ten minutes to evacuate the third largest town in area in the US. There are plenty of spaces to hide in such a big city. The evacuation didn't work out too well.
Riots, panicking residents, looters, a city's worst nightmares. People began gathering on the rooftops of the downtown skyscrapers. The spacecraft could already be seen coming over the horizon. Several traffic accidents occurred, the streets clogged, people were screaming. It was a real life ID4, except it was happening in a moderate city.
The police surrounding the warehouse had not been dispatched to help with the evacuation. If anything, more policemen had been sent to the site. But almost no one was watching the warehouse. Everybody was looking towards the other side of town. The edge of the spacecraft was above the edge of town.
As the giant spacecraft creeped in over the city, the people underneth it silenced as the electricity cut out. Gradually all noise in the city stopped. No lights were on, for the city's power was drained, even the area which the spacecraft had not passed over yet. It was almost midnight, so the city was very dark. Everybody was looking towards downtown. The stinger was about ten feet long. On its journey across half a continent, the spacecraft had always stayed above five hundred feet. But now it lowered. And the stinger came within twenty feet of the roof of the city's tallest building, which was 36 stories tall. It stopped, hovering over that building, then starting moving again.
Suddenly the policemen guarding the warehouse realized where it was headed. Some of them backed away, turned around and ran. As the spacecraft approached, the lights in the surrounding oil fields, warehouses, and streets went out, plunging the area into darkness. Even the lights inside the cars darkened. And the spacecraft hovered over the warehouse, its stinger directly above it. Everyone was silent. Nobody breathed.
Suddenly, white lights appeared at the ends of the eight lines that lead to the stinger. The lights came rapidly in, converging on the stinger, and disappeared into its base. And a blue shaft of light came out of the tip and connected with the warehouse. All the windows in the warehouse suddenly shattered. And the lights in Oklahoma City suddenly blazed, bathing the city in light. But they all promptly blacked out again, starting at the edges and focusing in on the warehouse. The shaft of white light suddenly turned blue, and it was as if water was being sucked up through a clear tube. The electricity of Oklahoma City was being sucked up like a straw into the alien spacecraft. Then, the pillar of light turned black, then gray, then white, yellow, red, green. Then, when it turned blue again, the warehouse blew up.
A giant fireball engulfed the warehouse. The police perimeter was 100 yards away, but even this wasn't enough. The sphere of flame expanded far beyond that, destroying ten more warehouses the same size of the original before it finally lifted off the ground. When it came to within 10 yards of the spaceship, the explosion suddenly flattened out as if something was blocking it. Before it could spread out to the edges the yellow flames had turned to black smoke.
Then the spaceship moved on, heading west. The officers were never seen…for two days, then they were all found lost in the sewer.
The spaceship headed due west. It proceeded over Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and southern California. It was now above the Pacific Ocean, four hours after leaving Oklahoma. Then it abruptly turned south, heading straight for Hawaii.
People who hated mutants couldn't have been happier. "Even the aliens are with us!" It was a sickening sight in every city in the US and beyond, giant crowds of people holding up scarecrows suspended by sticks that represented mutants.
The spacecraft meanwhile had reached the island of Hawaii. It hovered over Hilo for a time, then moved on towards Maui. It passed over that island without stopping, went over Molokai and was presently over Oahu. It was right above Honolulu, threatening to blow up a hotel with twin towers. But it didn't. Instead it did a U-turn back over Molokai and headed back to Maui. But just before it reached there, it turned south. By this time it was being followed by a parade of boats. Coast Guard, Navy, alien enthusiasts, anti-mutant protesters, pro-mutant protesters, and a motorboat with an escaped mental patient in it, who kept standing up in his boat to yell and shake his fist at the spaceship and do obscene gestures. People in other boats tried to get near to him, but he had a shotgun.
The military was getting nervous. The spaceship was heading right for Kahoolawe, being closely followed by civilians. They ordered the Navy and Coast Guard to stop the private boats. But most of the civilians refused to stop, and just went around the blockade the Navy was trying to organize. They were in sight of Kahoolawe.
"What's that?"
"Beats me."
"Looks like a prison."
"Why would a prison be on a firing range?"
"Beats me."
"Do you suppose the military tried to stop us from coming because of that?"
"Beats me."
"Are you capable of saying anything besides 'Beats me'?"
"Beats me."
The military was getting very fidgety when it heard the boats' captains talking to each other via radio. The facility on the island was capable of holding the mutants automatically, and the prison staff was being evacuated. But not fast enough. The spacecraft was already there.