Back to GatefoldIssue #11 by Ed Ainsworth
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"Chaos Arousal Contact"
Mark retreated to his room, kneeling down on the cold, dark metal floors of his once shared quarters, he took a moment to reflect upon his journey during his time on the Conquistador. Ever since their first notification of the impending attacks, when the Omega Sentinel had to be rescued from the Celestial Gatherer, Mark had been building up to something.
He walked silently towards the wall of his bedroom where his plans had been laid on in the most basic of manners. Paper, and mark pen lined the walls, with circles drawn around the key members of the group and arranged into a formation.
This was his battle plan. This was his last stand against the forces that would wipe humanity off the Earth. Mark knew he needed something more powerful than just his own might or the individual powers of the people he'd gathered, so he'd created a way, through liaising with nature herself, to strike back at the Celestial Group headed their way.
The small drawings, almost as though they were ancient depictions of people drawn on cave walls, were organised into a round structure, with annotations coming off written in different languages. A plan drawn and written in a code only he'd understand, with the possible exception of Dinah Soar and Amalgam.
Within the centre, the “control area” as he had written in a mixture of Gaelic and Chinese, were the crude diagrams of Monopole, Mattie Franklin, Boost, Arcadia and Mr. Immortal. A secondary layer, built from the extended form of She-Thing and the combined and amped up abilities of Dinah Soar, and Chrome created the “Atmospherics”. Omega Sentinel, Dragonblood and The Isolationist were all in a large volcano like protrusion labelled as the weapons centre. Snowbird and Amalgam were on their own, almost separate to the rest of the large dual circles, labelled as the tethers. In the mean time, Mark had drawn and labelled every other member of his team who would be coming to confront the Celestials, but as Serafina had noted – The Children of the Vault were not.
Now, Mark reviewed his plans, because very soon they would have to come to their ultimate conclusion and he wasn't sure if they were ready yet.
Or if he was.
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“Are you sure you're up for this?” Uylesses Dragonblood, the Deviant protector of Arcadia Deville asked, as the small, blue haired woman looked up at the sky before them.
“I think I am,” she replied, giving him a wary smile. He nodded slowly.
“Mark has explained the plan to me, and to you. You understand that for this to work, you will be required to concentrate for a long time. You are the glue of this plan,” Dragonblood explained again. Arcadia nodded, with irritation.
“I know, I know. Boost and Spider-Woman first, then Monopole goes in the middle. She-Thing expands over him, and we're all linked together with his Psionic webbing thing. I get it!” she sighed again and touched Dragonbloods arm. “I get it.”
He nodded and offered her a weak smile, gripping her hand tightly.
“Know this, Arcadia Deville. I love you, like a Daughter. I would put my life before yours in every second of every day, as you are my only reason for continuing this hateful life.”
Arcadia kissed Dragonblood on the cheek and offered a distant smile.
“If I die tomorrow, Uyle, then you need to know one thing. I know that, and I love you to,” she blushed and squeezed his hand, “I love you differently than a Dad though, Uyle. I love you in a different way.”
She looked up at him and batted her eyelids slightly, before blushing and turning away, heading towards the smaller gathering of people before her.
“Hrm.”
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A knock resounded on he door in front of him. Boost stood in silence, waiting for Mattie Franklin to respond.
“Mattie?” he said after a few minutes, “Hey. I know you're in there. We're needed, we're kicking this thing off.”
Boost sighed as no movement happened from inside the room. He paused for a moment and tried the handle. It was locked. She was in there alright. These doors could only be locked from the inside.
“Mattie...what is it? Are you scared?” Boost ran a hand through his pure white hair and leaned his back against the door.
“If it helps. I'm completely shitting myself. We're about to take part in a completely insane idea that Mark came up with, probably while he was drunk, to defeat Gods that created that horrific monster we fought last week and the beasts from the weak before. Literal. Actual. Gods.”
He paused and smiled, looking down at the floor.
“Not helping. Sorry. Look, the thing is, Mattie. You know a thing or two about this hero business. You know how it works and why it works the way it...works. I'm new to this. A hero virgin, if you will. I've played a little with Mark, we did some things over the years but...” he sighed and turned to face the door, pushing his forehead against it, “I need you to help me, Mattie. I'm really, really scared.”
He waited for a minute or two before he sighed and made an attempt to move away from the door. It clicked and opened slightly. Boost allowed himself a smile before he walked through into the dark room. Mattie stood, shaking, in her costume, a duvet wrapped around her body.
“Come here,” he said, pulling her into a big hug.
They both stood shaking together.
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“I don't think we should tell anyone about this,” Chrome said, pulling himself off of the Orange skinned form of She-Thing. She looked away from him and pulled the bunched and scorched sheets over her naked body.
“I think you're probably right,” she said, staring at the floor as he sat awkwardly on the other edge of the bed.
“Sharon...”
“Don't. I don't want to talk about it. We could very well die doing what we do next, I don't want you to mar it all by being nice or whatever else you could possibly be.”
Chrome sighed and put his head in his hands.
“That was the best sex I've ever had,” he whispered to himself. Sharon sat bolt upright. She didn't expect him to say that, or for her to even smile at the prospect of her being the best at something. Especially not something like that. She smirked wider, feeling a slight pang of guilt for the Inhuman she'd done the same thing with.
“We need to get ready,” she said with a wide smile, “Well, not right now...”
She grabbed hold of his shoulders, throwing him on the bed and straddling herself over him.
“There's still time for another round. Lets see if we can improve that score...”
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“Hey, Arcadia,” Craig Hollis known as Mr. Immortal said, greeting the young woman. He took her hand and shook it firmly. She smiled sweetly and looked at the slightly uneasy form of Monopole next to the man.
“James is feeling a little queasy about all this,” Craig said turning to the beautiful, slender and reptilian looking pink form of his wife. She cooed quietly, and fluttered her large wings. “Dinah says don't worry about it, at the Core you're going to be fine and she...we, will look after you.”
Craig beamed, and clapped a hand on Monopoles shoulder. He eyed the others around him nervously, including Arcadia, who appeared to be taking this in her stride.
“You know this is completely insane, right?” James asked, running a hand through his dread locked hair. “You want me to sit on the inside of this...whatever this is, and power it with my power? This is insane. You're all insane.”
“James...” Craig began, turning the young mutant away from the rest of the group, “I understand that you're worried here. Hey, I'd be worried too, but...Mark has this vision, and we're all part of fit. We all have a big starring part in this and...who would you rather have guiding this thing?”
“We're all scared,” James said, looking up at Craig. “Arcadia, me, Mattie, Boost. We're all scared of this. This is huge.”
“If you weren't scared then, then I would be really worried, James. Fear is good. It'll keep us focused.”
He guided James back to the slowly amassing group, Arcadia stood next to a worried looking Mattie, who clung to Boosts arm tightly. A smug looking She-Thing quietly spoke to the pair, while Chrome avoided looking at her. Craig smirked, and nodded to Dinah, who stepped forwards a few steps. He kissed her gently, and turned into the group.
“Lets make a planet.”
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“I can't believe this is actually happening,” Mark said, watching it all begin to come together. Next to him, resting with her head on his shoulder, and white hair splayed over his bare chest stood the entity known as Amalgam.
“I can hardly believe it, either,” she said quietly, looking down at Marks hand, which gently stroked her thin fingers.
“This is all for you, you know that don't you?” he said, looking down at her head. She nodded gently, and touched his shoulder.
“You said as much when we were under the ocean*.”
(*See Last Issue!)
“Its true though. In many ways, you are the crux of this. We're all doing this to make sure you're okay,” he admitted playing with a curl of white hair in between his fingers.
“You always did like to sound more altruistic than you were Mark, you are doing this for yourself as much as me. You don't want to die, none of these people do. As much as you would hate to admit it to the others – this is to make sure you continue to live.”
Mark shrugged and dropped the tendril of hair.
“I might have more than one child in the world, Mal. Maybe that made me sentiment, or maybe I just ain't ready to die yet.”
“Nobody is ready to die, Mark.”
“No, but I really ain't ready. Besides...Gods're scared of me. I ain't dying yet.”
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“Is this the right thing to do, Josef?” The Omega Sentinel asked. Her face was scrunched in concern as she approached the huge perspex stasis tube before the pair. Josef said nothing, simply pulling his hood over his bald head.
“I believe that what we're doing will benefit life on Earth in the long run,” he said quietly.
“That isn't the same thing. When I came to you and Mark I was being chased by their attack dogs*,” she remembered, a half smile on her robotic face.
(*See Elementals #1)
“Now we're taking it up from their pets all the way to their masters?” she asked, closing her eyes and touching her forehead gently. “It's all a bit much for me.”
“Hrmp.” Josef managed, taking the device from the side and quickly inserting it through a tiny gap in the back of the tube. The device, a small square extracted tiny legs from it's corners and climbed up to the base of the weapons neck.
“Jude, the Entropic Man. He brings death to anything he touches,” Josef said, staring at the creature with dread fascination. “He is a weapon.”
Karima said nothing, taking a tiny cage filled with shining, and jostling tiny creatures, and began to force them into a large mechanical chamber.
“These weapons...are we sure they're going to work?” she asked Josef.
He nodded slowly.
“We're attacking our opponents with nature itself, Karima. With Jude and Death, with the Elements of Doom that you hold in your hands, with Humus Sapiens, that inhuman woman and with whatever Astra and Darwin brought back with them from space.”
He offered her a dark smile, leaning against the tube gently.
“Karima...how could they not work?”
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His eyes fluttered open. The last thing he remembered was fighting Brother Nature and the High Evolutionary in Wundagore. He was kept against his will, forced to be part of terribly experiments that racked his body with pain.
Now, as his eyes adjusted he found himself in a dark room, filled with blue light. He looked around for it's source and witnessed something beautiful.
A demi-Goddess, by the name of Snowbird, stood in all of her nude glory. Her hair was full of volume, her costume fluttered beside her as her naked chest cast strobing colours against the wall of the room they both sat in. Humus Sapiens, former test subject and mutant, watched as she calmed him with her glowing form.
“Are you comfortable?” she asked, with almost mocking tones. The young man nodded, fixated on her body.
“We have freed you from your warden, Sapiens, but we have something to ask of you,” she moved like silk, her slender legs gently strutting with no sound towards him, across a bed of furs, each with different textures and colours. She stood before him, as the young boy, who'd never seen a naked woman before, struggled to contain himself.
“Anything,” he said, looking up at her face. She knelt down next to him, her chest level with his expectant eyes.
“We need you to fight for us, Sapiens. We need to you to hurt someone who is even worse than your previous captor. Will do you do that for me?”
Humus Sapiens nodded fervently, as she pulled him into her chest.
“Now a Goddess meets Nature.”
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“How are you feeling?” Will O' the Wisp asked the only other scientist he knew on the newly created planetoid.
“Somewhat sick,” Sundown said, rubbing his face tiredly. He lay spread out on a beach a few hundred miles away from where the Conquistador was moored.
“Hrm,” Wisp knelt down next to the laying man and pushed his face into view, blocking out Sundowns sun. “You weren't Green originally were you?”
The Scientist, David Lowell, looked at his hands. It was true, they were a deep shade of green, almost as though his experiments into Photosynthesis powering humans had infact infused itself into his body.
“That's certainly original.”
“Not really,” Wisp said sitting down heavily, and looking out across the idilic beach before them, “Hulk beat you to it. She-Hulk too. Pretty much any Hulk related bad guy.”
“Green Goblin as well,” David said, rolling onto his side to look at the long haired scientist before him, “You're a scientist as well, aren't you?”
Wisp nodded, and sighed, looking down at the sand.
“Not a terribly good one any more, but I try to keep my hand in.”
“Is that what this is then?” David asked.
“What is?”
“You, with these guys. The same reason I am with these guys. Some sort of...retribution? Reconciliation. I want my studies to get noticed but I want to attone for...some of the things I did when I first made my discoveries.”
“Attonement. Hrm. I guess I considered that possibility,” Wisp admitted, pulling his long hair back into a pony-tail, “If I am honest, it was something akin to putting a juvenile delinquent into the armed forces.”
David laughed lightly and sat up on his elbows.
“Keeping you on the straight and narrow, right?”
“I have little in the way of will power, if I am honest,” Wisp said, with a shrug of his shoulders, “I need something to keep me on the right path otherwise I sort of...default to what I was before.”
David looked down at the sand and shifting his fingers through the sediment.
“I tend to default to spineless scientist, so having insane levels of strength and being able to fly are something that's going to prevent me from spending my evenings reading journals and listening to classical music.”
Wisp shook his head slowly.
“Don't let it change who you are, Sundown. You can't let this power change you.”
The two men sat in silence for a while, staring out at the ocean.
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“Here,” Mark said, pushing a thick document hold across the table towards Serafina. She took it in shock, not expecting Mark to be so direct with her, or even talk to her at all.
“What is this?”
Mark shook his head and pointed to the front of the folder.
“Everything you need is in there. I made a promise to you, and to Sangre and Cadena. I know where a lot of your family are, I know a lot of people who will know as well. In there is everything I know about your family. About the Children of the Vault.”
“Why didn't you..” Serafina said, looking at at it, and back up to him. “Why didn't you say this earlier? You let me think you didn't care that you weren't doing this...Why?”
Mark offered a slightly viscious and bitter grin, turning away from her.
“You're just as bad as the rest of them, Sera. You're governed by everything you can see, and nothing of faith or trust. You didn't trust me to stay faithful, you didn't trust me to not ask about my past even though I asked you not to, and you didn't trust that I was working on what I promised. You never trusted me, so we were never going to work from the offset.”
He turned to face her, as he watched the Planetoid before him begin to construct itself. Monopole was the gravitational centre, with Arcadia creating the planet around him. Mattie was slowly spinning her webbing, allowing it to spool around her feet, with Boost melded into her body. Mattie was going to connect everyone psionically, and Boost to amp up everyone's powers. Craig Hollis had just kissed his wife goodbye, and was preparing to settle himself down in the core with the other three to be the planetoids pilot.
Meanwhile, She-Thing, connected to Mattie and Boost was seperating herself out to create a layer on which Chrome was building an Atmosphere. Two large protrusions on the planetoids surface served as the Tether, where Amalgam and Snowbird would set and create a connection to the power of nature and mythology that made the Earth so strong, and the other would be home to the main weapons systems, where Dragonblood, Isolationist and the Omega Sentinel were slowly preparing their weaponry. It would hold the delivery bays for the guns and the other secret weapons Mark had gathered.
“We've been building up to this for months, Sera. I've been planning everything down to the last detail, or trying. Nothing is left to chance when we face the Celestials,” he examined her face as he tore his clothes off, standing naked, as he always did, on the bow of the ship. Something was different this time though, aside from the myriad of bruises that littered his body from the battle with Gilgamesh.
“I'm ready to die this time, Sera. I'm ready for all of this to end.”
She stood in silence for what felt like hours, as Mark watched her face for anything more than shock. He shook his head and smiled, walking past her. She watched him leave, waiting for her voice to return.
“I should have known better, Sera. You're just a kid. You wouldn't understand what it's like to live the life I’ve led. So you're better off just staying out of it.”
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“I don't know why you trust him,” Kate Waynesboro said to the silent Inhuman woman before her, “I know him pretty well. I don't trust him at all.”
Iolande, the Inhuman with potentially untold abilities to tap into Cosmic Energies, pulled her hands through her body length crimson hair staring at Kate.
“People in my home say that I am very similar looking to our Queen. That I am a representative of the Royal Family because I look so like her, but my powers make it impossible for me to stand within the city with my people,” Iolande explained, sitting down slowly and gently on the soft chair behind her.
“My Mother and Father passed away a long time ago as a result of my abilities, and in standing with Inhuman laws, until I could come to control my abilities I was incarcerated within the complex Mark found me in, and forced to train and understand my abilities every day. Something that despite my increasing age, I have yet to do.”
Kate said nothing, simply listening to the woman. She knew nothing of the Inhuman culture, and didn't want to offend the kind hearted and genuinely sincere girl before her. Kate hadn't seen that sort of innocent for a long, long time.
Especially not in the mirror.
“Mark spent a lot of time in Atilan before he moved away from the Inhumans, and he spent a lot of time with me,” she blushed and looked away for a moment. “I love him. Deeply.”
Kate sighed and rolled her eyes, putting her hand on the girls shoulders.
“Mark doesn't love anything other than himself, honey. He is the most self centred man on the planet.”
“Too you perhaps,” Iolande said quietly, looking at up the scientist, “He doesn't love me. I know that, but it doesn't mean that I can't love him. That's just the way the heart works and the world works.”
She sighed loudly, and folded her hands into her lap.
“I am destined to be alone in my body and in my heart.”
Kate knelt down next to her and took one of her hands.
“If we survive this, Iolande, then you're coming to work with me. We can see what we can do to make sure you're not alone in your body or your heart.” Kate smiled and gave the girls hand a little squeeze.
It was a pretty big if.
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“Well, if you'd like to hurry yourself along, I've got more important things to be doing with the dwindling evening than watch you fart-arse around Feron,” Astra spat, crossing her arms as the elven man floated towards the large planetoid.
“So...what exactly do I do here?” Feron asked, as Astra thrust a glowing shard towards him.
“We've made this. Darwin, Sundown and I had to travel through space to the other end of the Universe practically, to get you a sliver of something you apparently are supposed inherit.”
Feron took it gently and examined it, feeling its heart and its heat.
“Phoenix, but...not quite?”
Darwin nodded pointing to the large chunk of missing flesh that had carved a hole from his body. It had been bound with gauze and with bandages, but his body wasn't reacting very well.
“Its an Artificial Phoenix Force. I had to try and grow it inside of me,” Darwin said, biting his lip as an incongruous sign of bemusement.
“Inside of you?” Feron asked. Astra nodded dismissively and pushed him away from them.
“Yes, yes. Theres time to explain all this sort of thing later, but right now you need to just put your feet down on the planet and actually inherit this thing that has ignored you because you're so bloody pathetic.”
Darwin shrugged and offered a silent apology mouthed to Feron who clutched the shard and tentatively moved to touch the ground with his feet.
“Are you sure this will work?”
“Are you sure that you're actually worthy for this? Because I am 100% certain it will work.”
“Not 110?” Feron asked, worriedly.
“No, because percent is out of a hundred. You cannot get 110%, you idiot. Touch.The.Ground.” Astra ordered. Feron obeyed almost immediately, the balls of his feet first then the heels.
Almost immediately, Darwin and Astra were blown off their feet by the burst of cosmic power and intense heat. Feron beamed with joy, as he opened his arms, the brown tunic he wore burned off by the incredible heat of the Bird of Cosmic Fire.
He turned to the pair and tried to speak, but couldn't. His excitement had taken over.
“Yes, yes. Your welcome,” Astra said, as Darwin pulled her to her feet. Feron gurgled a moment, his eyes getting a far away look. The pair quickly turned, expecting him to have melted or something else, a strange side effect from the Artificial Phoenix Force.
“Huh,” Feron said, looking into nothingness, “I can feel them coming. The Celestials...” he turned to Astra and Darwin, the huge crimson flames around his head curling around into wings, “They're nearly here.”
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“Well, here we are,” Mark said, standing on the bridge of the Conquistador, for the last time. He looked before him at his creation.
“They've done well,” Amalgam said, putting her hands on his shoulders.
“Shouldn't you be getting ready with the others?” Mark said, looking down at her.
“Wanted to get your opinion before we set off into the middle of the Solar System,” she smirked.
“My opinion?”
“Yes. How did you do?”
Mark sighed, and leant on the railings.
“Pretty well, I guess,” he looked back at her and offered a weak, short lived smile.
She smiled and touched his cheeks gently.
“Not yet you don't, not yet. Your weapons are in place. Sundown and Will O'Wisp are in the core control room, with Omega Sentinel and Josef. Jude, the Elements of Doom, Sapiens, Feron and even Darwin are prepared. They're just waiting for you and me now, Mark.”
“Well then,” he said, taking her hand and standing on the very edge of the Conquistadors railings, “Guess we better not keep them waiting.”
Next Issue: The Final issue of Elementals?! Mark and his group have revealed their plan. They've made a planet, a super-sized weapon that is capable of at least bringing the battle to their enemies...the Celestials who are quickly approaching Earth, to wipe it's contents clear and begin again.
He walked silently towards the wall of his bedroom where his plans had been laid on in the most basic of manners. Paper, and mark pen lined the walls, with circles drawn around the key members of the group and arranged into a formation.
This was his battle plan. This was his last stand against the forces that would wipe humanity off the Earth. Mark knew he needed something more powerful than just his own might or the individual powers of the people he'd gathered, so he'd created a way, through liaising with nature herself, to strike back at the Celestial Group headed their way.
The small drawings, almost as though they were ancient depictions of people drawn on cave walls, were organised into a round structure, with annotations coming off written in different languages. A plan drawn and written in a code only he'd understand, with the possible exception of Dinah Soar and Amalgam.
Within the centre, the “control area” as he had written in a mixture of Gaelic and Chinese, were the crude diagrams of Monopole, Mattie Franklin, Boost, Arcadia and Mr. Immortal. A secondary layer, built from the extended form of She-Thing and the combined and amped up abilities of Dinah Soar, and Chrome created the “Atmospherics”. Omega Sentinel, Dragonblood and The Isolationist were all in a large volcano like protrusion labelled as the weapons centre. Snowbird and Amalgam were on their own, almost separate to the rest of the large dual circles, labelled as the tethers. In the mean time, Mark had drawn and labelled every other member of his team who would be coming to confront the Celestials, but as Serafina had noted – The Children of the Vault were not.
Now, Mark reviewed his plans, because very soon they would have to come to their ultimate conclusion and he wasn't sure if they were ready yet.
Or if he was.
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“Are you sure you're up for this?” Uylesses Dragonblood, the Deviant protector of Arcadia Deville asked, as the small, blue haired woman looked up at the sky before them.
“I think I am,” she replied, giving him a wary smile. He nodded slowly.
“Mark has explained the plan to me, and to you. You understand that for this to work, you will be required to concentrate for a long time. You are the glue of this plan,” Dragonblood explained again. Arcadia nodded, with irritation.
“I know, I know. Boost and Spider-Woman first, then Monopole goes in the middle. She-Thing expands over him, and we're all linked together with his Psionic webbing thing. I get it!” she sighed again and touched Dragonbloods arm. “I get it.”
He nodded and offered her a weak smile, gripping her hand tightly.
“Know this, Arcadia Deville. I love you, like a Daughter. I would put my life before yours in every second of every day, as you are my only reason for continuing this hateful life.”
Arcadia kissed Dragonblood on the cheek and offered a distant smile.
“If I die tomorrow, Uyle, then you need to know one thing. I know that, and I love you to,” she blushed and squeezed his hand, “I love you differently than a Dad though, Uyle. I love you in a different way.”
She looked up at him and batted her eyelids slightly, before blushing and turning away, heading towards the smaller gathering of people before her.
“Hrm.”
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A knock resounded on he door in front of him. Boost stood in silence, waiting for Mattie Franklin to respond.
“Mattie?” he said after a few minutes, “Hey. I know you're in there. We're needed, we're kicking this thing off.”
Boost sighed as no movement happened from inside the room. He paused for a moment and tried the handle. It was locked. She was in there alright. These doors could only be locked from the inside.
“Mattie...what is it? Are you scared?” Boost ran a hand through his pure white hair and leaned his back against the door.
“If it helps. I'm completely shitting myself. We're about to take part in a completely insane idea that Mark came up with, probably while he was drunk, to defeat Gods that created that horrific monster we fought last week and the beasts from the weak before. Literal. Actual. Gods.”
He paused and smiled, looking down at the floor.
“Not helping. Sorry. Look, the thing is, Mattie. You know a thing or two about this hero business. You know how it works and why it works the way it...works. I'm new to this. A hero virgin, if you will. I've played a little with Mark, we did some things over the years but...” he sighed and turned to face the door, pushing his forehead against it, “I need you to help me, Mattie. I'm really, really scared.”
He waited for a minute or two before he sighed and made an attempt to move away from the door. It clicked and opened slightly. Boost allowed himself a smile before he walked through into the dark room. Mattie stood, shaking, in her costume, a duvet wrapped around her body.
“Come here,” he said, pulling her into a big hug.
They both stood shaking together.
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“I don't think we should tell anyone about this,” Chrome said, pulling himself off of the Orange skinned form of She-Thing. She looked away from him and pulled the bunched and scorched sheets over her naked body.
“I think you're probably right,” she said, staring at the floor as he sat awkwardly on the other edge of the bed.
“Sharon...”
“Don't. I don't want to talk about it. We could very well die doing what we do next, I don't want you to mar it all by being nice or whatever else you could possibly be.”
Chrome sighed and put his head in his hands.
“That was the best sex I've ever had,” he whispered to himself. Sharon sat bolt upright. She didn't expect him to say that, or for her to even smile at the prospect of her being the best at something. Especially not something like that. She smirked wider, feeling a slight pang of guilt for the Inhuman she'd done the same thing with.
“We need to get ready,” she said with a wide smile, “Well, not right now...”
She grabbed hold of his shoulders, throwing him on the bed and straddling herself over him.
“There's still time for another round. Lets see if we can improve that score...”
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“Hey, Arcadia,” Craig Hollis known as Mr. Immortal said, greeting the young woman. He took her hand and shook it firmly. She smiled sweetly and looked at the slightly uneasy form of Monopole next to the man.
“James is feeling a little queasy about all this,” Craig said turning to the beautiful, slender and reptilian looking pink form of his wife. She cooed quietly, and fluttered her large wings. “Dinah says don't worry about it, at the Core you're going to be fine and she...we, will look after you.”
Craig beamed, and clapped a hand on Monopoles shoulder. He eyed the others around him nervously, including Arcadia, who appeared to be taking this in her stride.
“You know this is completely insane, right?” James asked, running a hand through his dread locked hair. “You want me to sit on the inside of this...whatever this is, and power it with my power? This is insane. You're all insane.”
“James...” Craig began, turning the young mutant away from the rest of the group, “I understand that you're worried here. Hey, I'd be worried too, but...Mark has this vision, and we're all part of fit. We all have a big starring part in this and...who would you rather have guiding this thing?”
“We're all scared,” James said, looking up at Craig. “Arcadia, me, Mattie, Boost. We're all scared of this. This is huge.”
“If you weren't scared then, then I would be really worried, James. Fear is good. It'll keep us focused.”
He guided James back to the slowly amassing group, Arcadia stood next to a worried looking Mattie, who clung to Boosts arm tightly. A smug looking She-Thing quietly spoke to the pair, while Chrome avoided looking at her. Craig smirked, and nodded to Dinah, who stepped forwards a few steps. He kissed her gently, and turned into the group.
“Lets make a planet.”
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“I can't believe this is actually happening,” Mark said, watching it all begin to come together. Next to him, resting with her head on his shoulder, and white hair splayed over his bare chest stood the entity known as Amalgam.
“I can hardly believe it, either,” she said quietly, looking down at Marks hand, which gently stroked her thin fingers.
“This is all for you, you know that don't you?” he said, looking down at her head. She nodded gently, and touched his shoulder.
“You said as much when we were under the ocean*.”
(*See Last Issue!)
“Its true though. In many ways, you are the crux of this. We're all doing this to make sure you're okay,” he admitted playing with a curl of white hair in between his fingers.
“You always did like to sound more altruistic than you were Mark, you are doing this for yourself as much as me. You don't want to die, none of these people do. As much as you would hate to admit it to the others – this is to make sure you continue to live.”
Mark shrugged and dropped the tendril of hair.
“I might have more than one child in the world, Mal. Maybe that made me sentiment, or maybe I just ain't ready to die yet.”
“Nobody is ready to die, Mark.”
“No, but I really ain't ready. Besides...Gods're scared of me. I ain't dying yet.”
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“Is this the right thing to do, Josef?” The Omega Sentinel asked. Her face was scrunched in concern as she approached the huge perspex stasis tube before the pair. Josef said nothing, simply pulling his hood over his bald head.
“I believe that what we're doing will benefit life on Earth in the long run,” he said quietly.
“That isn't the same thing. When I came to you and Mark I was being chased by their attack dogs*,” she remembered, a half smile on her robotic face.
(*See Elementals #1)
“Now we're taking it up from their pets all the way to their masters?” she asked, closing her eyes and touching her forehead gently. “It's all a bit much for me.”
“Hrmp.” Josef managed, taking the device from the side and quickly inserting it through a tiny gap in the back of the tube. The device, a small square extracted tiny legs from it's corners and climbed up to the base of the weapons neck.
“Jude, the Entropic Man. He brings death to anything he touches,” Josef said, staring at the creature with dread fascination. “He is a weapon.”
Karima said nothing, taking a tiny cage filled with shining, and jostling tiny creatures, and began to force them into a large mechanical chamber.
“These weapons...are we sure they're going to work?” she asked Josef.
He nodded slowly.
“We're attacking our opponents with nature itself, Karima. With Jude and Death, with the Elements of Doom that you hold in your hands, with Humus Sapiens, that inhuman woman and with whatever Astra and Darwin brought back with them from space.”
He offered her a dark smile, leaning against the tube gently.
“Karima...how could they not work?”
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His eyes fluttered open. The last thing he remembered was fighting Brother Nature and the High Evolutionary in Wundagore. He was kept against his will, forced to be part of terribly experiments that racked his body with pain.
Now, as his eyes adjusted he found himself in a dark room, filled with blue light. He looked around for it's source and witnessed something beautiful.
A demi-Goddess, by the name of Snowbird, stood in all of her nude glory. Her hair was full of volume, her costume fluttered beside her as her naked chest cast strobing colours against the wall of the room they both sat in. Humus Sapiens, former test subject and mutant, watched as she calmed him with her glowing form.
“Are you comfortable?” she asked, with almost mocking tones. The young man nodded, fixated on her body.
“We have freed you from your warden, Sapiens, but we have something to ask of you,” she moved like silk, her slender legs gently strutting with no sound towards him, across a bed of furs, each with different textures and colours. She stood before him, as the young boy, who'd never seen a naked woman before, struggled to contain himself.
“Anything,” he said, looking up at her face. She knelt down next to him, her chest level with his expectant eyes.
“We need you to fight for us, Sapiens. We need to you to hurt someone who is even worse than your previous captor. Will do you do that for me?”
Humus Sapiens nodded fervently, as she pulled him into her chest.
“Now a Goddess meets Nature.”
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“How are you feeling?” Will O' the Wisp asked the only other scientist he knew on the newly created planetoid.
“Somewhat sick,” Sundown said, rubbing his face tiredly. He lay spread out on a beach a few hundred miles away from where the Conquistador was moored.
“Hrm,” Wisp knelt down next to the laying man and pushed his face into view, blocking out Sundowns sun. “You weren't Green originally were you?”
The Scientist, David Lowell, looked at his hands. It was true, they were a deep shade of green, almost as though his experiments into Photosynthesis powering humans had infact infused itself into his body.
“That's certainly original.”
“Not really,” Wisp said sitting down heavily, and looking out across the idilic beach before them, “Hulk beat you to it. She-Hulk too. Pretty much any Hulk related bad guy.”
“Green Goblin as well,” David said, rolling onto his side to look at the long haired scientist before him, “You're a scientist as well, aren't you?”
Wisp nodded, and sighed, looking down at the sand.
“Not a terribly good one any more, but I try to keep my hand in.”
“Is that what this is then?” David asked.
“What is?”
“You, with these guys. The same reason I am with these guys. Some sort of...retribution? Reconciliation. I want my studies to get noticed but I want to attone for...some of the things I did when I first made my discoveries.”
“Attonement. Hrm. I guess I considered that possibility,” Wisp admitted, pulling his long hair back into a pony-tail, “If I am honest, it was something akin to putting a juvenile delinquent into the armed forces.”
David laughed lightly and sat up on his elbows.
“Keeping you on the straight and narrow, right?”
“I have little in the way of will power, if I am honest,” Wisp said, with a shrug of his shoulders, “I need something to keep me on the right path otherwise I sort of...default to what I was before.”
David looked down at the sand and shifting his fingers through the sediment.
“I tend to default to spineless scientist, so having insane levels of strength and being able to fly are something that's going to prevent me from spending my evenings reading journals and listening to classical music.”
Wisp shook his head slowly.
“Don't let it change who you are, Sundown. You can't let this power change you.”
The two men sat in silence for a while, staring out at the ocean.
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“Here,” Mark said, pushing a thick document hold across the table towards Serafina. She took it in shock, not expecting Mark to be so direct with her, or even talk to her at all.
“What is this?”
Mark shook his head and pointed to the front of the folder.
“Everything you need is in there. I made a promise to you, and to Sangre and Cadena. I know where a lot of your family are, I know a lot of people who will know as well. In there is everything I know about your family. About the Children of the Vault.”
“Why didn't you..” Serafina said, looking at at it, and back up to him. “Why didn't you say this earlier? You let me think you didn't care that you weren't doing this...Why?”
Mark offered a slightly viscious and bitter grin, turning away from her.
“You're just as bad as the rest of them, Sera. You're governed by everything you can see, and nothing of faith or trust. You didn't trust me to stay faithful, you didn't trust me to not ask about my past even though I asked you not to, and you didn't trust that I was working on what I promised. You never trusted me, so we were never going to work from the offset.”
He turned to face her, as he watched the Planetoid before him begin to construct itself. Monopole was the gravitational centre, with Arcadia creating the planet around him. Mattie was slowly spinning her webbing, allowing it to spool around her feet, with Boost melded into her body. Mattie was going to connect everyone psionically, and Boost to amp up everyone's powers. Craig Hollis had just kissed his wife goodbye, and was preparing to settle himself down in the core with the other three to be the planetoids pilot.
Meanwhile, She-Thing, connected to Mattie and Boost was seperating herself out to create a layer on which Chrome was building an Atmosphere. Two large protrusions on the planetoids surface served as the Tether, where Amalgam and Snowbird would set and create a connection to the power of nature and mythology that made the Earth so strong, and the other would be home to the main weapons systems, where Dragonblood, Isolationist and the Omega Sentinel were slowly preparing their weaponry. It would hold the delivery bays for the guns and the other secret weapons Mark had gathered.
“We've been building up to this for months, Sera. I've been planning everything down to the last detail, or trying. Nothing is left to chance when we face the Celestials,” he examined her face as he tore his clothes off, standing naked, as he always did, on the bow of the ship. Something was different this time though, aside from the myriad of bruises that littered his body from the battle with Gilgamesh.
“I'm ready to die this time, Sera. I'm ready for all of this to end.”
She stood in silence for what felt like hours, as Mark watched her face for anything more than shock. He shook his head and smiled, walking past her. She watched him leave, waiting for her voice to return.
“I should have known better, Sera. You're just a kid. You wouldn't understand what it's like to live the life I’ve led. So you're better off just staying out of it.”
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“I don't know why you trust him,” Kate Waynesboro said to the silent Inhuman woman before her, “I know him pretty well. I don't trust him at all.”
Iolande, the Inhuman with potentially untold abilities to tap into Cosmic Energies, pulled her hands through her body length crimson hair staring at Kate.
“People in my home say that I am very similar looking to our Queen. That I am a representative of the Royal Family because I look so like her, but my powers make it impossible for me to stand within the city with my people,” Iolande explained, sitting down slowly and gently on the soft chair behind her.
“My Mother and Father passed away a long time ago as a result of my abilities, and in standing with Inhuman laws, until I could come to control my abilities I was incarcerated within the complex Mark found me in, and forced to train and understand my abilities every day. Something that despite my increasing age, I have yet to do.”
Kate said nothing, simply listening to the woman. She knew nothing of the Inhuman culture, and didn't want to offend the kind hearted and genuinely sincere girl before her. Kate hadn't seen that sort of innocent for a long, long time.
Especially not in the mirror.
“Mark spent a lot of time in Atilan before he moved away from the Inhumans, and he spent a lot of time with me,” she blushed and looked away for a moment. “I love him. Deeply.”
Kate sighed and rolled her eyes, putting her hand on the girls shoulders.
“Mark doesn't love anything other than himself, honey. He is the most self centred man on the planet.”
“Too you perhaps,” Iolande said quietly, looking at up the scientist, “He doesn't love me. I know that, but it doesn't mean that I can't love him. That's just the way the heart works and the world works.”
She sighed loudly, and folded her hands into her lap.
“I am destined to be alone in my body and in my heart.”
Kate knelt down next to her and took one of her hands.
“If we survive this, Iolande, then you're coming to work with me. We can see what we can do to make sure you're not alone in your body or your heart.” Kate smiled and gave the girls hand a little squeeze.
It was a pretty big if.
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“Well, if you'd like to hurry yourself along, I've got more important things to be doing with the dwindling evening than watch you fart-arse around Feron,” Astra spat, crossing her arms as the elven man floated towards the large planetoid.
“So...what exactly do I do here?” Feron asked, as Astra thrust a glowing shard towards him.
“We've made this. Darwin, Sundown and I had to travel through space to the other end of the Universe practically, to get you a sliver of something you apparently are supposed inherit.”
Feron took it gently and examined it, feeling its heart and its heat.
“Phoenix, but...not quite?”
Darwin nodded pointing to the large chunk of missing flesh that had carved a hole from his body. It had been bound with gauze and with bandages, but his body wasn't reacting very well.
“Its an Artificial Phoenix Force. I had to try and grow it inside of me,” Darwin said, biting his lip as an incongruous sign of bemusement.
“Inside of you?” Feron asked. Astra nodded dismissively and pushed him away from them.
“Yes, yes. Theres time to explain all this sort of thing later, but right now you need to just put your feet down on the planet and actually inherit this thing that has ignored you because you're so bloody pathetic.”
Darwin shrugged and offered a silent apology mouthed to Feron who clutched the shard and tentatively moved to touch the ground with his feet.
“Are you sure this will work?”
“Are you sure that you're actually worthy for this? Because I am 100% certain it will work.”
“Not 110?” Feron asked, worriedly.
“No, because percent is out of a hundred. You cannot get 110%, you idiot. Touch.The.Ground.” Astra ordered. Feron obeyed almost immediately, the balls of his feet first then the heels.
Almost immediately, Darwin and Astra were blown off their feet by the burst of cosmic power and intense heat. Feron beamed with joy, as he opened his arms, the brown tunic he wore burned off by the incredible heat of the Bird of Cosmic Fire.
He turned to the pair and tried to speak, but couldn't. His excitement had taken over.
“Yes, yes. Your welcome,” Astra said, as Darwin pulled her to her feet. Feron gurgled a moment, his eyes getting a far away look. The pair quickly turned, expecting him to have melted or something else, a strange side effect from the Artificial Phoenix Force.
“Huh,” Feron said, looking into nothingness, “I can feel them coming. The Celestials...” he turned to Astra and Darwin, the huge crimson flames around his head curling around into wings, “They're nearly here.”
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“Well, here we are,” Mark said, standing on the bridge of the Conquistador, for the last time. He looked before him at his creation.
“They've done well,” Amalgam said, putting her hands on his shoulders.
“Shouldn't you be getting ready with the others?” Mark said, looking down at her.
“Wanted to get your opinion before we set off into the middle of the Solar System,” she smirked.
“My opinion?”
“Yes. How did you do?”
Mark sighed, and leant on the railings.
“Pretty well, I guess,” he looked back at her and offered a weak, short lived smile.
She smiled and touched his cheeks gently.
“Not yet you don't, not yet. Your weapons are in place. Sundown and Will O'Wisp are in the core control room, with Omega Sentinel and Josef. Jude, the Elements of Doom, Sapiens, Feron and even Darwin are prepared. They're just waiting for you and me now, Mark.”
“Well then,” he said, taking her hand and standing on the very edge of the Conquistadors railings, “Guess we better not keep them waiting.”
Next Issue: The Final issue of Elementals?! Mark and his group have revealed their plan. They've made a planet, a super-sized weapon that is capable of at least bringing the battle to their enemies...the Celestials who are quickly approaching Earth, to wipe it's contents clear and begin again.