Hey everyone! Sorry for the long update. Anyways, I hope you guys enjoy this!
Inversion Chapter 10 – End of the Gem Hunt
Kane looked around at everyone assembled in the throne room.
Currently, he was in Latveria. After Diablo Muerte was trashed by the Inverted, Doom had offered the Resistance to use his castle in Latveria. At first, he thought that everybody would be suspicious about the Soul Gem, a.k.a Black Knight, showing up as he did. However, everybody accepted his story – that he was a man named Robert Kensington who was chosen by the Soul Gem to act as its guardian. Once they had a moment alone, Kane whispered, "How did you pull that off?"
"When you get into tussles with the likes of the Silver Surfer and Thor," Black Knight whispered back, "learning how to convince people becomes a piece of cake in comparison."
A lot more people started showing up after that. Quantum, Mystique and Mysterio showed up an hour after Kane and his group arrived. Quantum looked like she was extremely sick, with her hair matted to her face with sweat and her skin far paler than it should have been. Kane asked her why she looked like that, but she refused to talk about it, saying that she wanted Concussion here so she only had to say it once.
Carnage and the rest of the Collective arrived the next day. Strangely enough, they were all dressed in formal wear. Even Sabretooth had cleaned himself up, combing back his hair and dressing in a yellow polo shirt and black slacks. Electro seemed to be extremely depressed – he would wander around the castle and wouldn't speak to anyone, not even his own teammates.
Concussion arrived a day after that. Out of everyone, his group seemed to be enjoying themselves the most. For some reason, Taskmaster was with them. They were joking and exchanging stories. Most of them concerned Deadpool.
It had been three days since then. Nobody else had arrived, and the Resistance was starting to get worried. At the moment, Kane, Quantum, and Concussion were all in the royal dining room. Blackheart and Mystique were there as well, but they got their own table so the teenagers could enjoy themselves. While they were all eating, the teenagers exchanged stories. Kane left out the bit about the true nature of Black Knight, instead telling them the story that Black Knight concocted. Quantum told them about her time at the Xavier Institute, which left Concussion throwing up and Kane saying "That's just wrong!" at least three dozen times. Concussion then told his story, which actually was readily accepted.
"You mean you guys actually believe me?" Concussion asked.
"Of course," Quantum replied, taking a bite of her vegetarian lasagna. "What else would the Time Gem be doing in the Savage Land?"
Concussion couldn't find an argument to that. That's when he saw that Kane had a hand over his mouth. "Is everything alright, Kane?" Concussion asked.
"Deadpool thought you were Justin Bieber," Kane said through his hand, his smile more than evident in his accusing tone.
With that, everyone started laughing. Concussion was rolling on the ground while gripping his sides, Quantum put her head between her arms on the table as if she was crying, and Kane just threw his head back. It got to the point where the other occupants in the room, Blackheart and Mystique, started staring at them.
"What is going on here?" Blackheart asked.
"I'm not entirely sure," Mystique replied.
"Teenagers," Blackheart muttered, taking another bite of his completely raw steak. "I'll never understand them."
The laughter would have continued had a strange sound not filled the room. It was certainly odd, to say the least – it sounded as if electricity was exploding. In a flash of purple, Ultron appeared in the middle of the dining room. He was missing his left arm, and in his right he had the Space Gem.
"Power… fading…" Ultron rasped. "Need… gamma radiation…"
"Way ahead of you, Ultron," Blackheart replied. Rushing to Ultron's side, he grabbed the Space Gem. "I know where Doom's lab is. We'll get you a new gamma radiation generator and a new arm." Turning to Quantum and her friends, he ordered, "Go get Doom and the rest of the Resistance. They need to know what happened."
An hour later, they were all in Doom's laboratory as Ultron's repairs were just finished. Flexing his new adamantium arm, he got off the table he was being "operated" on. Lifting up his faceplate, Doom asked, "Well, Ultron? How do you feel?"
"I feel a lot better," Ultron replied. "Thanks Doom."
"What happened?" Mystique asked as she, Black Knight, Carnage, and Osborn entered the room.
"Everything was going so well," Ultron said, his eyes focusing on something in the distance. "We had gotten the Space Gem from the Inhumans. Annihilus and I had almost no difficulty doing so. That's when The Kree With No Name showed up. Wraith killed Annihilus, and would have killed me too had I not escaped using the Space Gem. Unfortunately, he left a parting gift," Ultron finished, gesturing to his left arm.
Or so it seemed. "Things got worse after that. I got a transmission from the High Evolutionary just before I used the Gem. He was screaming at me for help, saying that his entire team was killed, that the Inverted already got to the Power Gem. Then I heard a new voice, right after I heard High Evolutionary's head being taken off. It was… him. He told me that they already had the Twilight Sword, and that they were going to use it tomorrow."
"That only gives us twelve hours to find them and stop them," Carnage said, crossing his arms over his chest.
"Black Knight," Mystique asked, "could you use the Soul Gem to track down the Power Gem?"
Black Knight shook his head, saying, "I've been trying that ever since I… became the Black Knight. But it's like the Power Gem never existed. I can't find it anywhere in the universe."
"Ultron," Osborn asked, "do you think you can trace the message you received back to the location it was sent from?"
"I don't think so," Ultron replied. "I was in a pretty sorry state when the High Evolutionary contacted me, and tracing his communications is impossible at the best of times."
"What if I boosted your powers with the Mind Gem?" Quantum asked.
Everyone turned as she walked into the room. "My friends and I heard everything. Would the Mind Gem make a difference?"
"If my brain was organic or yours robotic, it would," Ultron said. "Unfortunately, as things stand we can't do anything."
"Then I'll use the Reality Gem to forge a connection," Carnage replied. "It won't be for long, but maybe you could do what you have to do in that time."
"Then let's do it," Ultron replied. Quantum and Carnage held out their respective Gems as they started to glow. With no warning whatsoever, Quantum blacked out.
When she awoke again, she was inside a… she didn't know what to call this. It looked like a tunnel, but it seemed to be constructed entirely of numbers and symbols found in the highest levels of math. Quantum herself was floating in the center of the tunnel.
"Where the hell am I?" Quantum wondered.
"Have you forgotten already?" A familiar voice asked. Turning around, Quantum found herself face to face with Ultron. He rushed past her, shouting, "Quickly! We have to move before we run out of time!"
Quantum wasted no time in taking after Ultron. As they flew through the tunnel, Quantum shouted, "What are we looking for?"
"I highlight all my communications in red so that, when I pass through here, I can find things easily! The brighter the shade of red, the more recent the recording is!" He shouted back.
With that, Quantum and Ultron focused on finding the recording. The more time they spent in the tunnel, though, the more the fuzzy it seemed to Quantum. To Ultron, Quantum started to get fainter and fainter. Neither of them kept track of how much time had passed when they found the code they were looking for.
"Excellent! Now what?" Quantum asked.
"Now you use the Mind Gem to force the code into me," Ultron replied. "Or rather, the version of me that you're currently looking at."
Quantum didn't know what to do. When she used the Mind Gem back at the Institute, she had no clue what she was doing. She just treated the Gem like it was her mutant power, freezing everybody in their tracks. This was something completely out of her league.
Ok, Mind Gem, she thought to the Gem she knew her real self was holding right now. You heard what Ultron said. We need to get that code into him right now!
She had no sooner thought that when the code started to swirl around Ultron. As they spun faster and faster, they started approaching Ultron's eyes. Without warning, they flew into his eyes. He arched his back in pain, but he didn't scream. When the last bit of code entered his eyes, everything started fading to black.
Ultron awoke standing up. Thank God that he decided to put locking mechanisms into his legs. Quantum was starting to wake up as well, shaking the grogginess from her head as she stood up.
"Well, Ultron?" Mystique asked. "Do you know where the Inverted have their super-powered Twilight Sword?"
"I just got the information, Mystique," Ultron replied. "Give me a second to process it."
Ultron's eyes narrowed to thin lines as he concentrated on the data swirling inside his head. Like a microscopic puzzle, he started to piece it all together.
"Oh, God…" Ultron whispered. "That's where they are."
"WHERE?!" Mystique shouted.
Ultron looked at everyone in turn. "The Inverted have it where it all started. It's in Avengers Mansion."
Sorry for the super-long update! I'll do what I can to update more often. Until next time, viva Templar!