Author's Note: Well, if you've been reading Batguy01's stuff recently, you probably picked up on the fact that the two of us have been developing a new Infinity Crisis story for a while. Specifically, this is a sequel to his story The Spirit of Halloween, but also to one of the chapters of Tales of the Beyond, aka my first IC fic. Now this is actually a prologue/prelude of sorts rather than the first proper chapter, but I'm hoping that'll be enough for now. Enjoy!
Earth-83
The Ghost Zone
The Fright Knight sat on an ornate antique chair that itself sat on a massive, jagged chunk of stone that floated in the swirling purple and green void that served as the sky of the Ghost Zone. He was flanked by other wicked ghosts; To his left was a gaunt lanky humanoid ghost with pale blue skin, long gray hair, and red eyes, who wore a spiky green crown and a long black cape over a purple and gray outfit. He was using a long spiked chain as a leash for a ghost beast that resembled, of all things, a monstrous, demonic giraffe whose charcoal gray pelt had purple skulls as spots. The beast spat a glob of burning slime onto the ground by its hooves.
"Did you really need to bring your Questing Beast on this day, Prince Aragon?" questioned the ghost standing to the Fright Knight's right.
This ghost was another humanoid, with the stature of a young boy. He dressed in the garb a classical harlequin, albeit with a largely orange and black color scheme, and a face concealing porcelain mask that evoked the appearance of a wide eyed cat. A ghost cat licked its paw by the harlequin-like ghost's feet, and looked mostly like a normal black cat, but had a huge, glowing white and green eye growing from its chest, while its normal eyes were graphically stitched up.
"Your Cat-Sith is hardly winning any beauty pageants itself, Arlecchino." Prince Aragon hissed, showing his pair of fangs.
"I can tell when something is troubling you, my lieutenants," the Fright Knight spoke and turned to his right. "Am I correct or nay, Arlecchino?"
"Well, my liege," Arlecchino tugged at the big white frill around his neck. "You know we are all overjoyed that you have made such a fearsome alliance, but Aragon and I were wondering why we're helping them first."
The Fright Knight glanced to his left.
"Arlecchino speaks the truth, Fright Knight," Bredbeddle bowed. "We should unite both our forces to smite the half-ghost first, before anything…unforeseen occurs."
"Oh, we will do precisely that, my bitter prince," the Fright Knight chuckled. "But first we shall prove our worth to this…former explorer, as he described himself. In the meantime, you and Arlecchino should occupy yourselves with preparing our remaining forces for the day that time comes.
He then held his recently enhanced blade - Soul Shredder - and tore open a pulsing hole in reality itself. While the portal did show an American town in a world inhabited by the living, it was not Amity Park, Washington, but the town of Hawkins, Indiana. He then opened another, showing Not only that, but it wasn't even the same universe.
"As for myself, I have called upon my chosen agents for this new mission so that I might send them on their way," the Fright Knight spoke. "They should be arriving shortly."
"Do you trust them to succeed, my master?" Arlecchino asked.
"Oh, they shall not fail…" the Fright Knight leaned back in his seat. "For if they do, we shall feed them to your darling pets!"
He let out a proud, booming laugh that mixed with the roar of a motorcycle that could be heard from the distance as its riders grew closer and closer, on their way to the portals to the other universe that the Fright Knight's ally was so determined to see crumble.
Earth-80216
Lenora Hills, California
Matt looked at Lenora Hills High School through a gap between two large trees where he was hiding. With his powers, he could safely levitate himself somewhere else if any of the students outside the building were to look up at where he was. In the time since the being known as the Phantom Stranger had tasked him with filling the girl known as Eleven's role as a super-powered being on her version of Earth, Matt had made it a point to make sure Eleven was safe, at least until she hopefully regained her own powers. Matt knew there was no guarantee that such a thing would even happen, but he hadn't lost hope yet. It had been a long time though, and in that time he had learned all the best ways to secretly check in on Eleven's status. At the moment, Eleven had been walking up to the front door of the school, followed by the boy named Will Byers.
"Hey, freak!" a blonde girl in trendy, but gaudy 80s clothes hopped out from behind a tree. "I heard you're feeling blue!"
"Angela?" Eleven mouthed, breaking her smile. "No, I'm not fe—!"
Angela threw a large balloon full of paint straight at Eleven. The popular girl's many cronies cheered for her as it flew through the air, but this stopped when Eleven leapt out of the way and it hit Will instead, covering his shirt and parts of his face and hair with blue paint.
"You ruined my pun, you loser!" Angela screeched while stomping her feet in anger. "Maybe your dad wouldn't have let himself die if you let yourself get hit by paint more often!"
"Yeah!" Angela's platonic male friend Chad nodded as if her nonsensical jibe made any sense at all.
The growling Angela walked away to enter the school through another entrance and her absurdly large posse all followed her, fully prepared to fight each other for the honor to open the door for her, carry her books for her, and get spat in the face by her. Matt knew that would be the case because he had seen it all before while checking in on Eleven.
"Good lord," he shook his head disapprovingly. "Someone really needs to step in at some point with those kids."
Even though Matt knew that he really shouldn't interfere, he could feel it in his gut that it wouldn't be very long before he would have to make his presence known.
To Be Continued in Infinity Crisis Aftermath: Dead Menace Chapter 1