-7- BLUEBLACK
Von Nebula had long since infiltrated the ruins of the Hero Factory, leaving his Villain comrades far behind. Night had come again, and through the small cracks in the ceiling above where Von Nebula walked the weak light of the stars could be seen struggling to puncture through the layer of clouds covering the ruins of Makuhero City.
Von Nebula had progressed through the ruins, deeper into the catacomb-like maze the fallen structures and shreds of the once awe-invoking Assembly Tower created. The entire building was full of damaged computer systems and the defunct bodies of many Hero Factory personnel who were unfortunate enough to be inside the building at the time of the Cataclysm.
Aside from the faint light of the stars coming through the holes in the ceiling, Von Nebula's strange staff was the only thing generating light in the shadows of the decaying building. As he walked, he moved his staff around in front of him, illuminating areas of the rubble and ruin around him. In each area he illuminated, he craned his large black head to examine what the light of his staff had revealed. His eyes scanned the areas he lit with the bluish aura of his staff, searching for something.
Von Nebula's search continued well into the later hours of the night. He would occasionally use his immense physical strength to tear apart the large slabs of ruin that had fallen from the former height of the Assembly Tower and down to the ground. He would then enter the various chambers and rooms that these slabs of ruin blocked entry to, continuing his search inside.
As Von Nebula pushed past layers of fallen debris, digging deeper into the remains of the Assembly Tower and the Hero Factory headquarters, he began to descend into the underground depths of the former Assembly Tower. Areas of the massive Hero Factory headquarters that could not be seen from the surface of Makuhero City were buried by the rubble after the Assembly Tower crumbled to its current state. But Von Nebula had granted himself access to these underground chambers by slowly digging his way through the ruin.
At one point, he reached a large piece of rubble that was blocking a door to another one of the underground chambers of the Hero Factory. Von Nebula moved his staff in front of the rubble, releasing from the bluish-black orb small bits of energy that caused the debris to crumble before him. A cloud of dust rose from the newly fallen debris, and Von Nebula waved his staff in front of the cloud. Some force residing in the staff caused the dust to float off behind Von Nebula and clear his vision.
A simple door with only a faded decal of the Hero Factory "H" symbol on its center now stood between Von Nebula and the other side. Lifting his large right foot, the black giant slammed his foot against the door and blasted a hole through its center. He crouched through, squeezing his huge body through the space in the door and to the other side.
Von Nebula stood up after passing through the door in a smaller chamber than the ones he had traveled through. He was now deep in the earth beneath the surface Makuhero City once stood on. At the end of the small chamber was another door with the same "H" symbol decal printed on its center. But unlike the rest of the doors of the ruined Assembly Tower and the attached underground complex beneath it, this simple door had glowing blue lights surrounding the threshold. A very faint, low pitched hum could be heard coming from the door, a sound that power was running through it.
Von Nebula walked down the corridor to the door highlighted in the darkness by the blue lighting. The dark giant approached the door and saw a small panel by the door with a single button. He pressed the button, and sliding door then moved off to the side.
Revealed now by the opening of the door was the interior of a spacious elevator. The elevator stood in pristine condition, its interior coated in the sleek white coloring that used to cover the outside of the Assembly Tower before the Cataclysm. Blue lights, the same blue color that glowed outside the elevator lined this newly revealed interior. The hum that was present before the door opened had now become louder.
Von Nebula stepped inside the elevator, still slightly cramped for him due to his immense size. His cumbersome staff had to be held horizontally in order to fit inside the elevator alongside himself. After he placed himself and his staff inside the elevator, Von Nebula used his free hand to press a button on the elevator's interior walls. Once this button was pressed, he felt a brief rumble before the door he had passed through sealed. Shortly after the door sealed, Von Nebula felt the elevator he was standing in begin to descend. As it did, it slowly accelerated. Von Nebula began feeling his body moving at a slightly faster rate every few seconds. Eventually, the elevator reached a steady speed and maintained it as it continued to descend.
The elevator whirred down its shaft comfortably, a testament to the efficient design of much of the Hero Factory's architecture prior to the disaster Von Nebula and his crew unleashed. It had been several minutes of steady descent into the depths of the planet and the earth below the Assembly Tower ruins. Von Nebula took this idle time to examine the orb of blue-black energy on his staff, even though he could only barely move it in the confines of the small elevator. His foggy red eyes stared into the orb, still floating around the tip of the staff's pole.
There was a brief sound of static in the elevator, a fuzzy sound like that of a crude radio. Von Nebula looked around the elevator to find the source of this noise, until a voice shrouded in that same static and fuzz began speaking into the elevator.
"Brrrrrr-brr-brrrr-Kwa-brrrrr…" the garbled voice began. Von Nebula instantly recognized the damaged voice, spotting small speakers on either side of the elevator's roof. Von Nebula believed somewhere near those speakers were microphones that would record his speech if he talked. He remained silent.
"Brr-Kwawa-Quadal?" the voice of the once famous Hero Factory Mission Manager Nathaniel Zib pleaded through the fuzzy speakers. "Is...tha-a-a-at...y-y-you?" Von Nebula wondered why Zib's voice was so stalled.
The chopped words of Nathaniel Zib continued, "I...shhhk-k-k…f-f-found...s-s-somethi-i-ing, Quaaaaaaadal." Von Nebula suppressed an urge to laugh at the fact that Zib thought the elevator was carrying his four-armed assistant robot Quadal and not the Villain who destroyed the Hero Factory.
"I am...scs-scs-scs-scared, Quad-d-d-dal," Zib's voice, however garbled, was noticeably filled with fear. Zib continued, "It's eeeating me." Now Von Nebula permitted himself faint chuckling. He knew now Zib was in no state to detect his presence.
"Help...meee, Quadal," Zib pleaded through the radio. "I thiiink I'm...stsssss-sts-sts...going..tsh-tsh-to...die." After that message the static of the radio vanished, a sign that Zib had shut it off.
Von Nebula began feeling the elevator decelerate in its descent, prompting him to clutch his staff tightly. In response to this, he situated himself in preparation for the doors in front of him to open.
The speed of the elevator became slower and slower until it reached a complete stop. Von Nebula felt the elevator rest itself down on a flat surface, and there was the sound of some hissing machinery. Still not certain what he would find on the other end, the dark giant began focusing the powers within his staff and preparing to strike with them.
The elevator double-doors slid to their sides, revealing to Von Nebula's eyes a chamber alive with power and functionality on the other side of the threshold. Blue lights were on all across the chamber, built in the same sleek and smooth style as most Hero Factory facilities were built. The chamber was an almost perfect geometric cube. On the left and right walls of the chamber were giant "H" logo signs illuminated in blue light. The same blue light was present through the entire room, running along the walls in symmetrically oriented blue lines. The lines veered off onto the ceiling, maintaining their symmetry. These lines, along with the illuminated "H" logos and the video screen on the back wall lit the chamber where they could, shadows still present everywhere.
Von Nebula only noticed these things through the corner of his eyes. Against the wall opposite to the wall that the elevator doors were attached to was the focus of Von Nebula's gaze, greeting him immediately once the sliding elevator doors opened.
Across the chamber from Von Nebula, up against the back wall was a giant, gelatinous mass of a pitch black substance punctuated by swirls of deep blue. The entire mass was emanating a glow of the same bluish color. This blob rose halfway to the ceiling in height. Its glowing pulsated in intensity, going from a dim blue light to a much brighter blue in a rhythmic pattern. Von Nebula could even make out a faint hum that rose and declined in conjunction with the glowing, the same hum that was coming from the orb above his staff.
A visibly foreign object was lodged into the thick black substance. It was difficult to make out from across the chamber, but Von Nebula had guesses. He began walking toward the mass, noticing the bluish glow of the mass and the bluish glow around his staff intensifying as he approached it. As he neared the mass, he looked closer at what was jutting out of it. White in color and writhing in its position, the object revealed itself not to be a mere object but a citizen. Walking closer, Von Nebula confirmed his suspicions, seeing Mission Manager Nathaniel Zib's upper torso sticking out crookedly from the mass. Zib's motions were erratic and without purpose. He cracked his arms sideways, up and down for no apparent reason.
Eventually, Von Nebula stood directly in front of the mass. Zib's body hung out of the mass at Von Nebula's height. The mass towered above the both of them. The blue glow coming off of the mass had reached its brightest point when Von Nebula stood before it. Its rhythmic pattern of dimming then rising in brightness sped up in Von Nebula's presence, and the glow coming off of the similarly colored orb of energy above his staff mirrored this. The low hum from the mass had grown louder with Von Nebula's presence.
The shadowy Villain looked upward to the wall against which the mass sat. Above it in small print were words illuminated in the same blue light as the chamber lights. Von Nebula saw four words, three of them placed on the wall above the fourth centered beneath them. The three on top; "Astro, Celes, Cosmo." Centered beneath them; "Makuro."
"Quadal…heeelp," Zib pleaded, his voice as distorted as it sounded through the elevator radio. Von Nebula removed his gaze from the four words on the wall above and back to the former Mission Manager. He spotted the small microphone attached to Zib's head that he used to communicate with Von Nebula in the elevator.
Zib's gaze was distant, looking off into the chamber as if totally blind to Von Nebula's presence. Von Nebula noticed the color of Zib's eyes. The visor-like panel on which his light-eyes sat on his face used to be a faint light blue. Now it was pitch black. Instead of two soft blue lights for eyes, the black panel on Zib's face was alive with moving swirls of the same blue as could be seen on the mass from which he hung. Von Nebula began to laugh.
"Snuck in here, I see," Von Nebula whispered to the Mission Manager. "Trying to hide from my Cataclysm, were you?"
"Quadal...I…sss-sss-sssee…the…univ-viv-viv-viv-universe," Zib said in terror.
"I'll bet you do, you sorry fool," Von Nebula replied. "What did you do, come down and investigate this chamber's contents? Did you dare touch this? Oh, Zib, you poor fool."
"The…end-nd-nd…has…come…"
"Not the end," Von Nebula corrected the oblivious Zib, then taking his staff and moving the tip with the floating orb of energy into the mass. The substance was thick and viscous, and there was resistance to Von Nebula pushing the staff in. Eventually, he succeeded, and then the mass accepted the staff, slowly pulling it inward. Von Nebula grasped the pole of his staff sticking out of the mass with both of his large hands. Thick strands of the black and blue slime began twisting outward from the mass around where Von Nebula had stuck his staff in.
"Someone...is-sis-sis…c-com-coming," Zib said. Von Nebula chuckled.
"Bet you didn't know what you were dealing with when you came down here, did you?" Von Nebula asked tauntingly as the slime wrapped around the staff and began approaching his body. "Hero Factory's senior-most Mission Manager, and yet I'll bet Makuro didn't tell you anything about this place. All those sessions with the great Akiyama Makuro, and not a word about it." Von Nebula laughed, and Zib only mumbled broken words, unable to comprehend anything going on around him.
"I'll bet you didn't even know this place existed," Von Nebula ventured. "I'll bet none of the Heroes, let alone the Alpha Team or the mighty Preston Stormer knew about this place. I certainly didn't at the time."
"Quaaadal-d-d-d-d-Quadal…I'm so…afr-afraid-afr-afr-afr-afraid," Zib said. The black slime arched across Von Nebula's staff, nearing the hands that he clutched it with.
"I killed Stormer, Zib," Von Nebula gloated, knowing he would receive no response from the distant Zib. "The Heroes were burned alive hanging from poles. What do you think of that? Does that make you afraid? Well, you are in quite the nightmare already, aren't you?"
"It...hurts…Quadal," Zib said, now in a faint whisper. "Pain…"
"You have no idea what pain is," Von Nebula replied with sinister enthusiasm. "This is pain." The slime finally began climbing up onto Von Nebula's hands grasping the staff. The instant the black substance touch his hands, the entire mass, his staff, and his whole body began giving off a steady blue glow. The hum from before, once rising and falling rhythmically, had now become constant. Zib began writhing wildly in his place in the mass, his body the only thing touching the mass that was not glowing.
"Quadal!" Zib screamed in agony. "Help! I see the e-e-eeend!" Von Nebula only chuckled, watching the Mission Manager struggle in pain. Unexpectedly, Zib's body went limp, dangling from where it hung out of the mass. Shortly after this, the panel on which his eyes once sat exploded, and from this Zib's body fully collapsed. It now hung totally limp from the mass.
The black substance now began wrapping around Von Nebula's arms after having fully engulfed both the staff and his hands. He stared at the nonfunctional body of Nathaniel Zib, and began focusing his mind upon it. Power began coursing through his body. The area of the mass that Zib's body hung from began swaying and churning. Slowly, Zib's body found itself being gradually pushed out of the mass. Eventually, the mass succeeded in purging Zib from itself, the metal body of the Mission Manager smacking on the hard floor of the chamber. The area in the mass where it used to be lodged returned to normal, no longer alive with movement.
The surge of strange power Von Nebula felt within his body intensified. The blue glow coming off his body and the mass and the hum from both grew louder. The mass had now completely swallowed his staff, bursts of blue colored streaks blasting across the surface of the mass where the orb of energy atop his staff had entered. Von Nebula, twisting his arms that had fully merged with the bluish-black mass and ducking his body as needed, situated himself backwards with his back turned to face the mass. His arms, still linked with the black substance, were pulled back behind his shoulders. His gaze was turned back into the open chamber behind him.
Von Nebula began staring at the elevator entrance once again. He knew more about this chamber than any of the Hero Factory's personnel were ever told. Not even Zib and especially not the Heroes were told of this place. Only Akiyama Makuro knew of its existence, a room operating on a separate power source than the rest of the Hero Factory resting far beneath the foundation of the Assembly Tower. This was done in case something like what Von Nebula unleashed upon Makuhero City occurred, a total destruction of the Hero Factory. However, without a functioning Assembly Tower, this room would soon run out of power, and the elevator that took him and the all-too-curious Zib down here would cease to function.
The dark giant began feeling the cold touch of the black substance on his back. The mass was beginning to collect itself around his back that he had turned to it. Von Nebula offered no resistance. As more and more of the substance collected around his back, as more of its bluish glow wrapped around him, he felt more of the strange power from before running through his body. As the slime progressed across his body, he felt himself slowly falling into the mass. While his head still stuck out, he looked over briefly at the damaged body of Zib, lying without life on the ground.
"Like I said, Zib," Von Nebula whispered, feeling the bluish-black substance slither up the side of his face. "This is not the end." His limbs had been fully submerged. Only parts of his torso and face remained exposed to the chamber air. The sound of the churning of the great oozing substance filled his ears as the mass began claiming him fully. With his last moment exposed to the chamber, as the black slime reached over his eyes and face, Von Nebula finished his thought to the dead Zib, whispered, "This is the beginning."