Disclaimer: I do not own any of these characters except for those I invent.
For those who have seen sci-fi movies with a similar plot, I apologize for boring the socks off you.
Also, I don't want to be reminded that Marie is Rogue's real name. I know, I know. I picked it because it is French and easy to remember.
D.C. is a character I invented. For details, see "D.C. and the CN Tower" chapters one, two, three, four, and five.
The blue haze gathered over France. Then, four distinct arms formed, like those of a spiral galaxy. Most of the haze was coming from North America, a steady stream of blue so thick people on the West Coast couldn't see the sun, and people on the East Coast couldn't see the moon or stars. Satellite pictures showed the whole planet engulfed in blue, almost as if the oceans had swallowed up the land. But it was obviously not water. France could not be seen anymore, just the four arms that slowly revolved around Paris.
In the region surrounding Paris, it was bedlam. More people then ever were pouring out. The mist had been thinning, so that grotesque shapes could be made out, but suddenly it turned blue, and then a big huge cloud, colored blue of course, closed in on all sides. It was like a noose tightening in the sky. The hole in the middle grew smaller and smaller. When it finally closed, the four arms combined together into a whirlpool of energy, which swirled down, through the mist.
When it passed into the city, it was right above the Eiffel Tower. It touched the antenna on the very top and then crackling swords of lightning ripped through the structure.
D.C. was on the very top floor. He was exactly in the middle of the building. His eyes were a cold dead icy blue. They stared lifelessly ahead. Half of the gray metal on his neck was gone, and sparks kept fizzing out of it from time to time. Then, a beam of pale blue light burst out of the ceiling, right above him. It passed barely ¼ of an inch in front of him. When it touched the floor it sagged and ripped with a blood-curdling shriek. And the beam passed through and continued down, through the second level, and then the lowest level, and into the ground.
Meanwhile the blue mist and haze was thickening in the skies of Earth. It had come out of all artificial energy sources in the world, but now the very energy of the Earth itself, the heat of magma in the mantle, that radioactivity of uranium deposits, the gravitational force, all were being sucked out. Mauna Kea, which had been continuously erupted slowly for the last 20 years, stopped flowing. The slow march of the continents slowed and died. Hot springs turned cold. Deep undersea fissures a mile under the ocean stopped pumping out mineral rich fluids. And the iron core stopped spinning as what had been liquid rock turned solid. And Earth's geological activity became as dead as Mercury, Pluto, or the Moon.
All the energy the world had to offer was being concentrated on the surface in France. The pale blue beam rushing through the direct center of the tower had intensified, throwing ominous shadows over the mist-covered city. Balls of brighter blue were rushing through it every few seconds, like marbles in a plastic tube. Every time one hit the ground, the ground beneath it bubbled and frothed, as the energy of a planet was focused on a piece of dirt a foot in diameter. This shaft of energy was all that was keeping it from exploding. Once all the energy in the world was focused on that spot, the shaft would fall apart and dissolve, allowing all that pent-up energy to turn into heat, causing an explosion that would ultimately result in the wiping out of all life and the projection of Earth into the sun along with Jupiter and its moons.
What the heck was that? All eyes were trained on the beam of light. It was so beautiful, yet Marie couldn't shake the feeling that it was dangerous. She looked down toward the ground, trying to find the spot where it made contact with the ground. Then she felt Jean-Pierre slid to the ground behind her. Turning around she saw that he was horribly pale, and he was panting for breath as if fighting for every molecule of air.
"Something…is…wrong. The…earth…doesn't…feel…right…" Then he fainted.
"Marie? Marie!"
"Jean-Pierre fainted! Something's wrong with him!"
One of the women rushed over and crouched next to Jean-Pierre.
"My name is Jean Grey. I'm a doctor, but I have no idea what's wrong."
"Marie, Jean-Pierre will be fine, but can you get Storm, Wolverine, and me up there?"
"What, have you been blind this whole time?"
Before Cyclops could reply, she grabbed him and the other two and jumped, leaving Jean to take care of Jean-Pierre.
Meanwhile, all the rest of the energy still in the sky was drawing together, forming a super-concentrated ball. It contained more then ¾ of all the energy on earth, but it was only about 4 meters across. It started to descend down the shaft of light, the final stage in the destruction of Earth, looking like the ball in Times Square that falls down the pole on New Year's Eve.
The controller on D.C.'s neck was still there, and still had him in its clutches, but it was loosing its grip. Then it sensed more people coming up fast, so it weighed choices, and found that it couldn't allow D.C. to fall into enemy hands. The only course of action? Self destruct.
Pain beyond pain! The real D.C. came back into being, but with all the pain he wished he could just go to sleep or die or something! He was lying on his right side, and he felt something wet streaming down his neck. He also found it hard to breathe, and when he painstakingly raised his hand to his neck, he found out why.
Part of his neck was gone.
He moved his hand in front of his eyes, expecting to see bright red. But he didn't. He saw a strange silvery substance. Mercury. And suddenly, through all his pain, misery, and shock. He noticed something. The world seemed devoid of energy. Usually he could feel energy all around him, swirling around, the energy of magma beneath him, the energy of the air, But no he could only sense energy in the air. The Earth seemed dead, desolate. And why the heck was there a trillion trillion trillion joules of energy confined in a tube 889 feet tall and 4 meters wide?
When Marie landed on the third level through one of many holes in the floor, she thought at first that all the paint had melted and the iron had turned to stainless steel somehow. But then she noticed the guy lying in the middle of the silvery stuff, and when she realized what it must be, she felt she might be sick. Cyclops broke away from her powerful grip and ran toward D.C.
"D.C.? Are you there?"
D.C. struggled to speak, and when he finally did, it was a raspy bubbly sort of voice.
"Hey Cyclops. What's shakin'?"
"Why did you attack us?"
"What? I did no such thing."
Cyclops turned around.
"That gray thing that was on his neck is gone. I think Jean-Pierre was right. Something was controlling him." He turned back around. "D.C., listen to me. Somehow, someone forced you to do something. Do you know what happened? What is that blue stuff?"
"It's energy." rasped D.C. thickly. "It's all the energy in the world and I don't know how it got there."
"Can you get it back to where it all was?"
Suddenly, the concentrated energy ball stopped, one foot above the ground. It spread back out engulfing the tower in blue mist, then all of Paris, and then it made contact with the constraining mist still surrounding the city.
From outside the sight was incredible. It looked like a wild animal caught in a huge garbage bag. The mist still was blue, but it became brighter and brighter as it frothed like mad. And then the whole thing blew away. Blue mist flew at supersonic speeds away from Paris. The surrounding area had been a black out, but as the mist blew through it, the lights turned on, brighter then ever intended. But as the mist blew away, they slowly dimmed to their regular brilliance.
Up in space, an amazing thing seemed to be happening down on the planet. The blue mist was again sweeping across the face of the earth, but much much faster then last time. When it had been sucked into Paris, it had never gone higher then two miles. But now it boiled up into the air, ten, twenty, thirty, forty miles up. It looked like a gigantic mushroom cloud bigger then all previous mushroom clouds put together times ten. It spread and became lighter and thinner. Whirlpools of energy formed over volcanoes, returning the energy back to the mantle and core. The iron-nickel core started to spin again. Electric lights and fires, stoves and nuclear reactors, uranium deposits and deep sea fissures, all came back to life, as their human counterpart slowed and died.
Marie, or anyone for that matter, had never seen anything like this. As the energy cloud thinned and disappeared, D.C.'s eyes, which had turned a bright blue as he returned the energy to its designated places, turned red, then brown, then a dead black. His shoulder length hair also turned darker and darker till it was a drab brown. D.C. took one shuddering breath and managed to whisper, "Away I go. See you guys later." Then his body sort of seized up, and then relaxed. D.C.'s skin turned a deathly white, and the mercury stopped flowing out of his neck. He was certainly dead, no question about it. And the air around D.C. turned cold, as the air right next to his skin turned solid, encasing him.
Down below, Jean was working hard to revive the poor boy when he sat up suddenly. He shook his head a few times and said in a tired sort of voice, "I am never coming near here ever again."
`Cyclops bent his head in sorrow. Who had done this? Who? And quite unexpectedly, his question was answered.
`They all heard a faint roaring sound. It grew louder and louder. Marie was the first to turn toward the sound and her jaw dropped.
A spaceship, looking like some sort of an airplane with little bumps and towers all over it, swooped out of the sky. From its underside, a small red light appeared. Then, a beam of light came out and zipped through the window and made contact with D.C.'s body. He instantly disappeared along with his silvery blood, and before Cyclops could hit them with his eye beam, or Storm could stop them with some sort of weather condition, it zoomed off into the sky. Cyclops turned towards Marie, a slight quaver in his voice.
"Do you have anywhere to go?"
She swallowed, and said "No. Jean-Pierre and I live at an orphanage."
"Would you like to come with us to our school?"
"Sure."
"OK. We'll all go down. We need to tell Jean what happened, and also find our jet."
Marie nodded. They'll all walked toward the door. Marie didn't feel like jumping down, especially at such a mournful moment.
High above, hiding once more behind the moon, the six-armed aliens bent over D.C.'s body, examining it.
"There is nothing we can do for subject. We will have to discard him."
"But if he proved ineffective, how will we be able to defend ourselves against the mutants on this planet? Their probe will reach the home planet soon, and then it will release the submarine and discover our civilization under the ice! You know how warlike this people are. They will destroy us!"
"We will just have to think of something. Jettison the human."
And so it was. A port opened and D.C. floated out into space, tumbling head over heels. Abandoned, alone, injured, and almost dead.