Back to Gatefold
Issue #4 by Micah Schwantner (Volume 1)
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1 SMACKDOWN IN THE MAGIC CITY
Two Years Ago. Billings, Montana.
Frederick Billings, the city's namesake, never actually stayed in Billings Montana overnight.
“You've ruined everything, Banner,” the Abomination howled as he approached the Hulk. The Hulk lay in the center of a crater of trashed police cars and destroyed architecture. He was pinned on his under a heavy bank vault door, the only intact portion of a vault Emil Blonsky, the Abomination, had been trying to rob. “You have always delighted in ruining things for me!” Blonsky yelled.
The Hulk shifted the vault door off of himself. He rolled shakily to his knees. His hands formed fists in the asphalt. BAM! Two freight trains crashed into the Hulk's skull just as he found his feet, sending him rolling over the body of a Billings, Montana police cruiser, to a rough landing on the other side. Pavement cracked beneath him. Deadly asphalt shrapnel peppered the shields of the wide circle of riot geared policemen and S.W.A.T. Teams troopers that surrounded them. Blonsky followed, shoving vehicles and men out of the way till he reached the car the Hulk have fallen behind. Blonsky proceeded to rip the car in two, exposing the stunned Hulk. The Abomination roared smashing first one half of the car, then the other squarely on the Hulk's head.
“You will pay now!" Blonsky screamed.
BAM! The police car's engine block crumpled around the Hulk's jaw. Green flesh and green blood sprayed across the ruined street. The Hulk struggled to rise. BAM! Blonsky hammered him hard across the jaw with the police car's rear suspension and he felt his legs go weak.
"You will pay for every moment of torment I suffered, every humiliation at your hand!"
A coherent though formed in the Hulk's mind as blackness closed in. I'm going to die.
"For the last time you PAY!”
Six Minutes Later.
“Well,” said the tall man as he stood over the immobilized Hulk, surrounded by four United States Army issue HulkBuster units and a small army of technicians, “I guess there's no need for us both to call him and see who he comes to." The tall man smiled a humorless smile. He wore a black three piece suit and a crash helmet. His tie was red. He straightened his suit and dusted it off. He turned to the man next to him. "He clearly favors you, General Ross.”
“It's no great honor, Agent Pratt.” Ross told him. He stood tall, straight backed and strong as any old soldier, in his well worn dress greens and flak jacket. His Hulk hunting uniform. But he could not disguise the tired look in his eyes.
“Mm-hmm.” Glowering down at the Hulk, Agent Pratt dug a toe into the beast's flank. "Get him back to the lab, men. General Ross, a word in private?"
# # # # #
12 COLD
Now. The Negative Zone.
Reed Richards discovered the Negative Zone when searching for a method of FTL (Faster Than Light) travel.
So here I sit, shivering in torn pants and heated blankets, huddled in my cell and afraid to look out the door. Bruce Banner, super scientist, super hero, super prisoner. Now, here, at the militarized and twice broken fringes of the Negative Zone I feel very cold. This is the story of how I ended up here.
Two Years Ago. Billings, Montana.
Frederick Billings, the city's namesake, never actually stayed in Billings Montana overnight.
“You've ruined everything, Banner,” the Abomination howled as he approached the Hulk. The Hulk lay in the center of a crater of trashed police cars and destroyed architecture. He was pinned on his under a heavy bank vault door, the only intact portion of a vault Emil Blonsky, the Abomination, had been trying to rob. “You have always delighted in ruining things for me!” Blonsky yelled.
The Hulk shifted the vault door off of himself. He rolled shakily to his knees. His hands formed fists in the asphalt. BAM! Two freight trains crashed into the Hulk's skull just as he found his feet, sending him rolling over the body of a Billings, Montana police cruiser, to a rough landing on the other side. Pavement cracked beneath him. Deadly asphalt shrapnel peppered the shields of the wide circle of riot geared policemen and S.W.A.T. Teams troopers that surrounded them. Blonsky followed, shoving vehicles and men out of the way till he reached the car the Hulk have fallen behind. Blonsky proceeded to rip the car in two, exposing the stunned Hulk. The Abomination roared smashing first one half of the car, then the other squarely on the Hulk's head.
“You will pay now!" Blonsky screamed.
BAM! The police car's engine block crumpled around the Hulk's jaw. Green flesh and green blood sprayed across the ruined street. The Hulk struggled to rise. BAM! Blonsky hammered him hard across the jaw with the police car's rear suspension and he felt his legs go weak.
"You will pay for every moment of torment I suffered, every humiliation at your hand!"
A coherent though formed in the Hulk's mind as blackness closed in. I'm going to die.
"For the last time you PAY!”
Six Minutes Later.
“Well,” said the tall man as he stood over the immobilized Hulk, surrounded by four United States Army issue HulkBuster units and a small army of technicians, “I guess there's no need for us both to call him and see who he comes to." The tall man smiled a humorless smile. He wore a black three piece suit and a crash helmet. His tie was red. He straightened his suit and dusted it off. He turned to the man next to him. "He clearly favors you, General Ross.”
“It's no great honor, Agent Pratt.” Ross told him. He stood tall, straight backed and strong as any old soldier, in his well worn dress greens and flak jacket. His Hulk hunting uniform. But he could not disguise the tired look in his eyes.
“Mm-hmm.” Glowering down at the Hulk, Agent Pratt dug a toe into the beast's flank. "Get him back to the lab, men. General Ross, a word in private?"
# # # # #
12 COLD
Now. The Negative Zone.
Reed Richards discovered the Negative Zone when searching for a method of FTL (Faster Than Light) travel.
So here I sit, shivering in torn pants and heated blankets, huddled in my cell and afraid to look out the door. Bruce Banner, super scientist, super hero, super prisoner. Now, here, at the militarized and twice broken fringes of the Negative Zone I feel very cold. This is the story of how I ended up here.
“RAGE: Part One – Close to the End”
2 SUPERIOR FIREPOWER
Two Years Ago. Billings Montana.
Billings has been knicknamed the Magic City, due to the fact that it sprang up on the plains of Monatana seemingly overnight.
"What did you do to him?" asked General Thunderbolt Ross. "We both know that electricity is next to useless against the Hulk. And that wasn't electricity. What technology does the FBI have that the army doesn't, Agent Pratt?"
"The tools to do the job, nothing more." Pratt replied.
They stood together watching as the HulkBuster units loaded the Hulk's unconscious form onto an eighteen wheeler flatbed tractor-trailer. The front half of the truck bed was a huge reinforced frame, a lattice of adamantuim and concrete reinforced I-Beams threaded with straps to hold the unconscious Hulk. The back was small sphere encased in another heavy-duty frame: a Stark-Fukijawa high density shield projector, reverse-polarized to keep the Hulk from getting and allow anything from the outside to get in.
Ross sighed as he watched the HulkBusters secure his ex-son in law to the frame with titanium-fullerene cables. He turned to Pratt. "Don't bullshit me." He said. "We need that. For more than just the Hulk. You may be some big Hulkbuster now, but where will all this go later, when someone like the Abomination goes on a rampage? "
"Peace through superior fire power?" Pratt grinned. "Thats what my dad always said. He would have liked to have been here." He looked over at Ross. "I'm just a man doing a job with the tools I'm given by my superiors. I hope you can understand that, General."
Five Hours Later. The Lab, Location Classified.
Thaddeus Ross stood at the center of a room full of polished computer terminals and elaborate equipment. He watched as the only wall not coated in LCDs and arcane readouts folded itself away into the roof. Behind it, separated from him by three feet of crystalline glass imported from the blue side of the moon, force shields designed by a loaner team of Wakandan and Atlantean superhuman detention specialists, and a half mile of canvas restraining straps, lay Bruce Banner. His ex-son in law. Bruce was naked except for a diaper and a single IV line snaking up toward the ceiling from the femoral vein in his groin.
"Isn't it nice to see all of us working together like this?" Agent Pratt said behind him. "The military and the FBI. And T'challa's people? When this started a couple years back, I thought it wouldn't happen, with the Wakandan attitude about their tech, but then Captain America got them together and gave a speech about how rehabilitating the Hulk was an international problem. Hell, now even the French are helping out." Pratt laughed long and low. Ross could hear the tension in his voice.
"Don't get cocky." Ross said. "Pride comes before a fall. Mine has too often. And despite what you say you have a lifetime less experience at doing this than I do."
"Sometimes all you need is a new paradigm." Said Ross. He paused, then he said, "We got the Abomination too. The Hulk beat the living shit out of him just before we got there."
"Where?"
"At a secure facility in Mexico. We didn't want two SMDs in one place. I can take you to him after things get underway with Banner."
"You never told me why you were hunting him." Ross turned to face Pratt.
"The Abomination?"
"Bruce Banner, my son in law, the Hulk."
"Its a standing mandate and he has multiple warrants..."
"No. I know bureaucracy and I know the FBI and I know that they wouldn't be hunting the Hulk if they didn't have a reason. I think you and whatever vendetta you have against him is the reason." Ross stared Pratt straight in the eye. "Quid pro quo. I helped you, I told you how to take him down. Now you need to tell me."
"This is very need to know..."
"And no one needs to know more than I do. I like what we're doing here, but I won't be a pawn."
"Ok." Said Pratt. "Ok." He yelled over his shoulder at the double doors that opened into the room: "EVE!? GET IN HERE!" Pratt turned back to Ross, "I'll get her to retroactively upgrade you security classification for what you are about to hear and schedule you a full SitBrief." He leaned closer to Ross, lowering his voice. "We aren't."
"What?!" Ross spat. He took a step back.
"We aren't hunting the Hulk or the Abomination." Agent Pratt said quickly, his voice a near whisper, "Stop. We aren't. Not per say. We're trying to keep someone else from getting their hands on them. We're hunting the people who are hunting the Hulk."
The double doors exploded open in uncountable shards of deadly plastic shrapnel and a rolling wall of fire. Computers were picked up by the shock wave and flung across the room. Windows shattered. The room was full of fire, flying debris and broken equipment. Agent Pratt went down, blood streaming from his scalp.
"Hell." Said General Ross.
# # # # #
4 THE WORLD IS MY PLAYGROUND
Some Time Later. Some Where Else.
Not much is known about the middle of nowhere. In fact, everytime people find it, the name keeps changing.
Darkness and silence enveloped Bruce Banner. He was moving, but he could hear nothing, feel nothing. His limbs were paralyzed and isolated, dead weight in the artificial liquid absence of gravity. He couldn't feel them. He couldn't even feel numbness where they were supposed to be. The only reasons he could tell he still had a body were the pinpoints of pain in his joints and at his groin. Drugs coursed through his system, dulling any thought, any emotion. And in the recesses of his mind the reasoning and ranting had begun.
...What da hell were ya thinking? Ya just jumped da guys like some buzzed bozzo with a madon!
Hulk does not care what you think. Leave Hulk alone.
Stop fighting! All of you! This is bad, I don't think we're in the lab anymore. something is taking us somewhere and they had to set the place on fire around us to get at us. Does that not strike you as bad?
Hulk will shut you all up!
Oh puh-leeze! Look, da way I see it what doesn't kill you can be bought off...
But they took down who ever took down the Savage Hulk! And the power levels required to breach that forcefield were... awesome...
...We gotta take a good look at our bargaining position, Bruce...
Hulk shut UP!
...knowledge is power and we need to...
SHUT..!
... Da problem with these losers is that they don't see da big picture... Me...
...UP!!
"Please," said Bruce Banner, "I can't think over the argument in the base of my skull."
We have to asses the situation and come up with a rational and effective solution.
C'mon, Bruce, let me at 'em... Freedom is just a though away.
"I... I can't. I'm on some sort of drug cocktail that is keeping me calm. Its strange, I can't seem to feel any emotion about this. No motivation. I can barely think..."
Aww damn
Wait a moment. If the drugs are keeping you calm, and thus us calm, then why are we all as angry and as greedy as ever? Why is Savage even here? There's something going on, something deeper...
Hulk says shut up! Hulk has smashed out before, Hulk will smash out again! And then Hulk will make them pay... Hulk will keep making them pay... Hulk's rage makes him strong. The whole world is Hulk's sandbox and Hulk's rage will scour them off the face of Hulk's earth till any target for my Rage is gone!
"What?" Bruce Banner felt his heart beat spike. Surprise slipped under the leaden veil of drugs. "What did you say?!"
Shut up! Hulk wants to be left alone.
A light shot through the darkness around Banner. He could hear voices outside his virtual cocoon, feel liquid pulsating around him. The Hulks receded into his mental caverns while he rose toward the light through what felt like viscous slime. AAAaaaaahhhh! Bruce Banner burst up into the light. It blinded him with its brightness. He closed his eyes, blinking and squinting in an attempt to adjust. Speech was all around him, but not human speech. Whatever language was being spoken was full of unpronounceable phonemes and odd clicks of what sounded like chitinous mandibles. Bruce tried to speak and choked instead. Suddenly, all speech around him stopped. He opened his eyes.
Ultrabright white light began to fade into forms and figures. Bruce looked around. His eyes watered, as if they had not been used in days. Colors filled in shapes as the world dropped into focus like the experiments of a poorly trained cameraman. For a second all Banner could see was machinery, intricate and unfamiliar. Buttresses glowing with harsh white light and vaguely antenna-like extrusions flashing with multiple colors met above him in a series of layered spiral labyrinth shapes. Bruce lifted one of his hands against the glare and simultaneously found that it was covered with liquid and that he could feel his limbs again.
He looked down. He was sitting up in an alien casket that was full to the brim with clear gel and hairlike tendrils.. Strange alien technology festooned the room around him, which stretched upward for what seemed like miles to a ceiling hidden in darkness. And aliens surrounded him in a wide circle. they were short and wiry, with elongated heads and black pupiless eyes. Some of them looked dead, splayed on the floor with missing limbs and charred holes in their bodies. Some of them held weapons, small spheres that branched and rebranched off into lethal looking blades and barrels glowing with energy. Some held what looked like religious instruments, braziers and bizarre three-dimensional sigils crafted out of exotic metal floating around them in complex patterns. All of them had burnt orange skin and six arms.
One of the aliens stepped forward. Other than her feet moving she did not move a muscle. She was clearly female, with a soft, graceful facial structure and prominent breasts. She stopped a foot away from Bruce and ceased to move. Bruce stared at her. He coughed and gel dribbled from his throat and down his bare chest. Then he gagged, his throat suddenly full of the stuff. Her grabbed at his throat, pounded his chest and coughed again and again and again. The alien female watched him without moving. Finally he vomited gel into the casket and sagged against its side, exhausted.
The alien cocked its head. She moved her lips and her voice spoke in Bruce's mind. "Hello brcbnnr. My name is Thiai. Following a coup/religious re-interpretation/ambush/usage of weapons I am leader/prophet/scapegoat of this timeraft. I have rescued you from the former leader/prophet/scapegoat of this craft, Xi'aos. We are now removing the drugs from your system. Please contact the aspects in your mind, we wish to speak to all of you."
# # # # #
2 SUPERIOR FIREPOWER
Minutes After the Explosion. The Ruins of The Lab, Location still classified.
The recent advent of open-source satellite imagery has provided the public with details of many restricted and classified areas within the United States.
General Thadeus Thunderbolt Ross stood at the center of a sixty by one hundred foot wasteland and watched the last wall lean toward him. The wasteland had been a room, the control center at the heart of Agent Pratt's Hulk Hunting Operation. Now it was gutted, a burning pit full of crashed computers and screaming, dying men. Three of its walls were gone, exposing a maze of collapsed hallways and burning concrete. The last wall fell. Through the space where it had been came a wave of hazard suited figures, led by Eve. She was in a business suit, gray on gray with white collars, gray leggings and a knee length slitted skirt. She was immaculate. The dust didn't even seem to touch her.
Ross turned to her. "What happened!?"
Her mouth moved but Ross couldn't hear her.
"What!?" He said. Then he realized what was happening and pointed at his ears. "Explosion!"
"Aliens attacked!" She Yelled. She turned to the hazard suits. Her mouth moved as she spoke to the hazard suits.
"Get real. What the hell happened?!" Spat Ross. "I'm sick of this bullshit theatricality!"
"Extraterrestrial lifeforms appeared out of nowhere and attacked this facility! No shit!" yelled Eve with her back turned. She waved to the hazard suits before turning back to Ross. "They've captured the Hulk!"
"Aliens. Hell." Ross sat down on an overturned computer. It crunched under him and shifted precariously. He looked away from Eve. The room's roof sagged in front of him, threatening to drop its smoldering bulk onto the scurrying hazard suits. Ross closed his eyes and sighed. "Hell."
"Sir..?"
Ross turned to find a hazard suit standing next to him, pointing at the computer he was sitting on."What the hell do you want, son?"
"The computer..."
"Oh." Ross rose. He turned to find that Eve was standing at the crater where the double doors had been. He crunched over to her, picking his way around the hazard suits and the dead.
"Where's Pratt!?" she yelled when he arrived.
"Dead, I think! I saw him fall somewhere over there!" Ross pointed without looking. He swayed tiredly on his feet amid the smoke. "What about the Abomination!?"
# # # # #
3 ABOMIDABLE NATION
Two Years Ago. An Off-The-Books Facility In Central Mexico.
It is less than common knowledge that the US has many hundreds of classified facilities overseas that do not fall under US law.
The Emil Blonsky tore through his restraints with the ferocity of a wild beast. And that was what he was, that was what he had been reduced to. He had heard the screams of his master's capture in the back of his mind while deep in a drug induced coma. He awoke to find the men in white—the ones who had taken him from the FBI—had been transporting him in some kind of low flying stealth craft. Now as he killed them all, ripping them apart with mindless glee, one thought dominated his mind. Rescue Xi'aos!
Nine Hours Later. A Hijacked Private Aircraft Operated By A Terrified Japanese Pilot.
As he flew over the Pacific ocean in a stolen Learjet, Emil Blonsky laughed. He had never known he could speak Spanish until the man at the ticket counter understood him when he said that he had booked the entire plane bound for Japan. Of course, the old lady's head he gave the man as a down payment might have helped.
# # # # #
2 SUPERIOR FIREPOWER
Nine Hours Earlier. The Ruins of The Lab.
The most common mistake intelligence services make is to assume a situations status based on outdated or incomplete data.
"We still have him I...” Eve began, “Oh God, Pratt!" Eve yelled as she stared over Ross' shoulder. She rushed past him and he turned to follow her.
Agent Pratt lay on a stretcher between two hazard suits. His head was covered with blood. His left arm had two joints. A shard of shattered bone extended like a bloody crooked finger from one of them. He's dead, thought Ross.
Then Agent Pratt groaned, looked at Ross and said through a mouthful of broken teeth and a torn tongue, "Bastards... You get'm. I win."
# # # # #
3 THE HEART OF THE MATTER
Some Time Later. Some Where Else.
Often the enemy one knows is preferable to the ally one is ignorant of.
"We are the Seconds-and-Equals. We are those who travel the stars forward/after the singularity point/last battle/end. We are the sailors/worshipers of the timerafts. We can go forward/after, but are forbidden to go back/before without our prize/god/weapon/downfall." Said the alien Thiai. "When we have our prize, we will return to the Timepalace of the First-Among-Equals and together our infinite species/race/people/fleet will fall backward/before to our creation/ruination and destroy our creators/forefathers/children. This is our creed/myth/prophecy/history/directive. You are our prize/god/weapon/downfall, brcbnnr. Release the aspects of your mind that we may erase/incorporate them."
Bruce stared at her. Slowly he rose in the alien casket till he stood over her. "You can erase them?" He said, and in the split second that followed he realized something that both exited and terrified him. The voices in his head, the three other Hulks that were his constant companions were gone. Completely gone, as if they had never existed. "You can erase them!" Bruce Banner cried. "You can free me..."
"Of course." replied Thiai, "The aspects must disappear for the true/god/Rage to find freedom/destruction."
# # # # #
12 COMPANY
The Negative Zone does not appear to have its own astral plane or astral deities. One wonders why.
You aren't listening are you? I don't even know why you're here? Why have you come to me? You cannot have come to hear my story.
Actually, I have. I'm very interested in stories, you might say I'm a collector, and I will often go to insane lengths to get them. So finish yours, I insist. And when You are done, I'm beginning to think that I'll make you an offer you won't be able to refuse.
TO BE CONTINUED...
Two Years Ago. Billings Montana.
Billings has been knicknamed the Magic City, due to the fact that it sprang up on the plains of Monatana seemingly overnight.
"What did you do to him?" asked General Thunderbolt Ross. "We both know that electricity is next to useless against the Hulk. And that wasn't electricity. What technology does the FBI have that the army doesn't, Agent Pratt?"
"The tools to do the job, nothing more." Pratt replied.
They stood together watching as the HulkBuster units loaded the Hulk's unconscious form onto an eighteen wheeler flatbed tractor-trailer. The front half of the truck bed was a huge reinforced frame, a lattice of adamantuim and concrete reinforced I-Beams threaded with straps to hold the unconscious Hulk. The back was small sphere encased in another heavy-duty frame: a Stark-Fukijawa high density shield projector, reverse-polarized to keep the Hulk from getting and allow anything from the outside to get in.
Ross sighed as he watched the HulkBusters secure his ex-son in law to the frame with titanium-fullerene cables. He turned to Pratt. "Don't bullshit me." He said. "We need that. For more than just the Hulk. You may be some big Hulkbuster now, but where will all this go later, when someone like the Abomination goes on a rampage? "
"Peace through superior fire power?" Pratt grinned. "Thats what my dad always said. He would have liked to have been here." He looked over at Ross. "I'm just a man doing a job with the tools I'm given by my superiors. I hope you can understand that, General."
Five Hours Later. The Lab, Location Classified.
Thaddeus Ross stood at the center of a room full of polished computer terminals and elaborate equipment. He watched as the only wall not coated in LCDs and arcane readouts folded itself away into the roof. Behind it, separated from him by three feet of crystalline glass imported from the blue side of the moon, force shields designed by a loaner team of Wakandan and Atlantean superhuman detention specialists, and a half mile of canvas restraining straps, lay Bruce Banner. His ex-son in law. Bruce was naked except for a diaper and a single IV line snaking up toward the ceiling from the femoral vein in his groin.
"Isn't it nice to see all of us working together like this?" Agent Pratt said behind him. "The military and the FBI. And T'challa's people? When this started a couple years back, I thought it wouldn't happen, with the Wakandan attitude about their tech, but then Captain America got them together and gave a speech about how rehabilitating the Hulk was an international problem. Hell, now even the French are helping out." Pratt laughed long and low. Ross could hear the tension in his voice.
"Don't get cocky." Ross said. "Pride comes before a fall. Mine has too often. And despite what you say you have a lifetime less experience at doing this than I do."
"Sometimes all you need is a new paradigm." Said Ross. He paused, then he said, "We got the Abomination too. The Hulk beat the living shit out of him just before we got there."
"Where?"
"At a secure facility in Mexico. We didn't want two SMDs in one place. I can take you to him after things get underway with Banner."
"You never told me why you were hunting him." Ross turned to face Pratt.
"The Abomination?"
"Bruce Banner, my son in law, the Hulk."
"Its a standing mandate and he has multiple warrants..."
"No. I know bureaucracy and I know the FBI and I know that they wouldn't be hunting the Hulk if they didn't have a reason. I think you and whatever vendetta you have against him is the reason." Ross stared Pratt straight in the eye. "Quid pro quo. I helped you, I told you how to take him down. Now you need to tell me."
"This is very need to know..."
"And no one needs to know more than I do. I like what we're doing here, but I won't be a pawn."
"Ok." Said Pratt. "Ok." He yelled over his shoulder at the double doors that opened into the room: "EVE!? GET IN HERE!" Pratt turned back to Ross, "I'll get her to retroactively upgrade you security classification for what you are about to hear and schedule you a full SitBrief." He leaned closer to Ross, lowering his voice. "We aren't."
"What?!" Ross spat. He took a step back.
"We aren't hunting the Hulk or the Abomination." Agent Pratt said quickly, his voice a near whisper, "Stop. We aren't. Not per say. We're trying to keep someone else from getting their hands on them. We're hunting the people who are hunting the Hulk."
The double doors exploded open in uncountable shards of deadly plastic shrapnel and a rolling wall of fire. Computers were picked up by the shock wave and flung across the room. Windows shattered. The room was full of fire, flying debris and broken equipment. Agent Pratt went down, blood streaming from his scalp.
"Hell." Said General Ross.
# # # # #
4 THE WORLD IS MY PLAYGROUND
Some Time Later. Some Where Else.
Not much is known about the middle of nowhere. In fact, everytime people find it, the name keeps changing.
Darkness and silence enveloped Bruce Banner. He was moving, but he could hear nothing, feel nothing. His limbs were paralyzed and isolated, dead weight in the artificial liquid absence of gravity. He couldn't feel them. He couldn't even feel numbness where they were supposed to be. The only reasons he could tell he still had a body were the pinpoints of pain in his joints and at his groin. Drugs coursed through his system, dulling any thought, any emotion. And in the recesses of his mind the reasoning and ranting had begun.
...What da hell were ya thinking? Ya just jumped da guys like some buzzed bozzo with a madon!
Hulk does not care what you think. Leave Hulk alone.
Stop fighting! All of you! This is bad, I don't think we're in the lab anymore. something is taking us somewhere and they had to set the place on fire around us to get at us. Does that not strike you as bad?
Hulk will shut you all up!
Oh puh-leeze! Look, da way I see it what doesn't kill you can be bought off...
But they took down who ever took down the Savage Hulk! And the power levels required to breach that forcefield were... awesome...
...We gotta take a good look at our bargaining position, Bruce...
Hulk shut UP!
...knowledge is power and we need to...
SHUT..!
... Da problem with these losers is that they don't see da big picture... Me...
...UP!!
"Please," said Bruce Banner, "I can't think over the argument in the base of my skull."
We have to asses the situation and come up with a rational and effective solution.
C'mon, Bruce, let me at 'em... Freedom is just a though away.
"I... I can't. I'm on some sort of drug cocktail that is keeping me calm. Its strange, I can't seem to feel any emotion about this. No motivation. I can barely think..."
Aww damn
Wait a moment. If the drugs are keeping you calm, and thus us calm, then why are we all as angry and as greedy as ever? Why is Savage even here? There's something going on, something deeper...
Hulk says shut up! Hulk has smashed out before, Hulk will smash out again! And then Hulk will make them pay... Hulk will keep making them pay... Hulk's rage makes him strong. The whole world is Hulk's sandbox and Hulk's rage will scour them off the face of Hulk's earth till any target for my Rage is gone!
"What?" Bruce Banner felt his heart beat spike. Surprise slipped under the leaden veil of drugs. "What did you say?!"
Shut up! Hulk wants to be left alone.
A light shot through the darkness around Banner. He could hear voices outside his virtual cocoon, feel liquid pulsating around him. The Hulks receded into his mental caverns while he rose toward the light through what felt like viscous slime. AAAaaaaahhhh! Bruce Banner burst up into the light. It blinded him with its brightness. He closed his eyes, blinking and squinting in an attempt to adjust. Speech was all around him, but not human speech. Whatever language was being spoken was full of unpronounceable phonemes and odd clicks of what sounded like chitinous mandibles. Bruce tried to speak and choked instead. Suddenly, all speech around him stopped. He opened his eyes.
Ultrabright white light began to fade into forms and figures. Bruce looked around. His eyes watered, as if they had not been used in days. Colors filled in shapes as the world dropped into focus like the experiments of a poorly trained cameraman. For a second all Banner could see was machinery, intricate and unfamiliar. Buttresses glowing with harsh white light and vaguely antenna-like extrusions flashing with multiple colors met above him in a series of layered spiral labyrinth shapes. Bruce lifted one of his hands against the glare and simultaneously found that it was covered with liquid and that he could feel his limbs again.
He looked down. He was sitting up in an alien casket that was full to the brim with clear gel and hairlike tendrils.. Strange alien technology festooned the room around him, which stretched upward for what seemed like miles to a ceiling hidden in darkness. And aliens surrounded him in a wide circle. they were short and wiry, with elongated heads and black pupiless eyes. Some of them looked dead, splayed on the floor with missing limbs and charred holes in their bodies. Some of them held weapons, small spheres that branched and rebranched off into lethal looking blades and barrels glowing with energy. Some held what looked like religious instruments, braziers and bizarre three-dimensional sigils crafted out of exotic metal floating around them in complex patterns. All of them had burnt orange skin and six arms.
One of the aliens stepped forward. Other than her feet moving she did not move a muscle. She was clearly female, with a soft, graceful facial structure and prominent breasts. She stopped a foot away from Bruce and ceased to move. Bruce stared at her. He coughed and gel dribbled from his throat and down his bare chest. Then he gagged, his throat suddenly full of the stuff. Her grabbed at his throat, pounded his chest and coughed again and again and again. The alien female watched him without moving. Finally he vomited gel into the casket and sagged against its side, exhausted.
The alien cocked its head. She moved her lips and her voice spoke in Bruce's mind. "Hello brcbnnr. My name is Thiai. Following a coup/religious re-interpretation/ambush/usage of weapons I am leader/prophet/scapegoat of this timeraft. I have rescued you from the former leader/prophet/scapegoat of this craft, Xi'aos. We are now removing the drugs from your system. Please contact the aspects in your mind, we wish to speak to all of you."
# # # # #
2 SUPERIOR FIREPOWER
Minutes After the Explosion. The Ruins of The Lab, Location still classified.
The recent advent of open-source satellite imagery has provided the public with details of many restricted and classified areas within the United States.
General Thadeus Thunderbolt Ross stood at the center of a sixty by one hundred foot wasteland and watched the last wall lean toward him. The wasteland had been a room, the control center at the heart of Agent Pratt's Hulk Hunting Operation. Now it was gutted, a burning pit full of crashed computers and screaming, dying men. Three of its walls were gone, exposing a maze of collapsed hallways and burning concrete. The last wall fell. Through the space where it had been came a wave of hazard suited figures, led by Eve. She was in a business suit, gray on gray with white collars, gray leggings and a knee length slitted skirt. She was immaculate. The dust didn't even seem to touch her.
Ross turned to her. "What happened!?"
Her mouth moved but Ross couldn't hear her.
"What!?" He said. Then he realized what was happening and pointed at his ears. "Explosion!"
"Aliens attacked!" She Yelled. She turned to the hazard suits. Her mouth moved as she spoke to the hazard suits.
"Get real. What the hell happened?!" Spat Ross. "I'm sick of this bullshit theatricality!"
"Extraterrestrial lifeforms appeared out of nowhere and attacked this facility! No shit!" yelled Eve with her back turned. She waved to the hazard suits before turning back to Ross. "They've captured the Hulk!"
"Aliens. Hell." Ross sat down on an overturned computer. It crunched under him and shifted precariously. He looked away from Eve. The room's roof sagged in front of him, threatening to drop its smoldering bulk onto the scurrying hazard suits. Ross closed his eyes and sighed. "Hell."
"Sir..?"
Ross turned to find a hazard suit standing next to him, pointing at the computer he was sitting on."What the hell do you want, son?"
"The computer..."
"Oh." Ross rose. He turned to find that Eve was standing at the crater where the double doors had been. He crunched over to her, picking his way around the hazard suits and the dead.
"Where's Pratt!?" she yelled when he arrived.
"Dead, I think! I saw him fall somewhere over there!" Ross pointed without looking. He swayed tiredly on his feet amid the smoke. "What about the Abomination!?"
# # # # #
3 ABOMIDABLE NATION
Two Years Ago. An Off-The-Books Facility In Central Mexico.
It is less than common knowledge that the US has many hundreds of classified facilities overseas that do not fall under US law.
The Emil Blonsky tore through his restraints with the ferocity of a wild beast. And that was what he was, that was what he had been reduced to. He had heard the screams of his master's capture in the back of his mind while deep in a drug induced coma. He awoke to find the men in white—the ones who had taken him from the FBI—had been transporting him in some kind of low flying stealth craft. Now as he killed them all, ripping them apart with mindless glee, one thought dominated his mind. Rescue Xi'aos!
Nine Hours Later. A Hijacked Private Aircraft Operated By A Terrified Japanese Pilot.
As he flew over the Pacific ocean in a stolen Learjet, Emil Blonsky laughed. He had never known he could speak Spanish until the man at the ticket counter understood him when he said that he had booked the entire plane bound for Japan. Of course, the old lady's head he gave the man as a down payment might have helped.
# # # # #
2 SUPERIOR FIREPOWER
Nine Hours Earlier. The Ruins of The Lab.
The most common mistake intelligence services make is to assume a situations status based on outdated or incomplete data.
"We still have him I...” Eve began, “Oh God, Pratt!" Eve yelled as she stared over Ross' shoulder. She rushed past him and he turned to follow her.
Agent Pratt lay on a stretcher between two hazard suits. His head was covered with blood. His left arm had two joints. A shard of shattered bone extended like a bloody crooked finger from one of them. He's dead, thought Ross.
Then Agent Pratt groaned, looked at Ross and said through a mouthful of broken teeth and a torn tongue, "Bastards... You get'm. I win."
# # # # #
3 THE HEART OF THE MATTER
Some Time Later. Some Where Else.
Often the enemy one knows is preferable to the ally one is ignorant of.
"We are the Seconds-and-Equals. We are those who travel the stars forward/after the singularity point/last battle/end. We are the sailors/worshipers of the timerafts. We can go forward/after, but are forbidden to go back/before without our prize/god/weapon/downfall." Said the alien Thiai. "When we have our prize, we will return to the Timepalace of the First-Among-Equals and together our infinite species/race/people/fleet will fall backward/before to our creation/ruination and destroy our creators/forefathers/children. This is our creed/myth/prophecy/history/directive. You are our prize/god/weapon/downfall, brcbnnr. Release the aspects of your mind that we may erase/incorporate them."
Bruce stared at her. Slowly he rose in the alien casket till he stood over her. "You can erase them?" He said, and in the split second that followed he realized something that both exited and terrified him. The voices in his head, the three other Hulks that were his constant companions were gone. Completely gone, as if they had never existed. "You can erase them!" Bruce Banner cried. "You can free me..."
"Of course." replied Thiai, "The aspects must disappear for the true/god/Rage to find freedom/destruction."
# # # # #
12 COMPANY
The Negative Zone does not appear to have its own astral plane or astral deities. One wonders why.
You aren't listening are you? I don't even know why you're here? Why have you come to me? You cannot have come to hear my story.
Actually, I have. I'm very interested in stories, you might say I'm a collector, and I will often go to insane lengths to get them. So finish yours, I insist. And when You are done, I'm beginning to think that I'll make you an offer you won't be able to refuse.
TO BE CONTINUED...