Back to GatefoldIssue #2 by A. Crute
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"Astonishing Tales - Part Two"
Yellowjacket had his arms spread out wide almost like wings as the vibrational technology in his costume powered him forward with their force. His eyes were fixed on the anomaly before him, which his goggles had automatically polarized and shaded to protect him from the light of the tiny star.
It was actually a star; he had been referring to it as a sun so far but it was a star to be precise. If he was observing it right then he’d say it was a Population II star to be sure. It was much less metal rich than our own Sol, which meant it was burning hotter and brighter…this was not a good thing in the current situation.
He was about a foot and a half from the surface of the star (real size not relative) and the heat it was giving off was unbearable. He was thankful for his unstable molecule costume that was protecting him from any serious damage from the heat at the minute.
The star had grown rapidly since it first appeared to the naked human eye. It was about the size of a golf ball now. This was worrying, less than an hour ago it had been invisible to the naked eye and only visible to him when shrunk down using some technology. It had expanded and grown to many thousand times it’s original size.
Hank believed it was expanding out of the micro-verse into our own reality.
“The Population II star…which for now I’ll call Mah-Ria in honour of the woman who found it however unfortunate an accident this was for her…is expanding from the micro-verse if the energy emanations I’m recording are to be believed”.
Hank was recording his observations for his own thought processes and files, but they were also simultaneously being recorded onto several computer files within the networks of Reed Richards, Bill Foster, T’Challa, Tony Stark, Dane Whitman and Hank McCoy. Should he fail it would be up to them to do something about this and he would at least give them a head start.
“The heat the star is giving off is exponential, the grass in the park is already starting to scorch and the ground crack. The UV rays are giving tans to people who are over 150 feet away and the light is drawing many confused insects and birds in towards it before they eventually change course because of the heat or soar directly through it…death is obviously inevitable.”
He was silent for a second as he let his thoughts play out. He had been soaring around the surface at a safe distance for about fifteen minutes watching the arcs of plasma reach across the surface of the nuclear reaction which made up the tiny star.
“It’s absolutely terrifying but completely…well terrifying, completely and utterly terrifying in every way possible but…wow is it wonderful, amazing, beautiful. I wish you guys could be here to see it…of course if I don’t do something you most certainly will in the next day or so. God I hope I don’t screw this up.”
Hank felt a sudden twist in his stomach, the wonder of whether he could do it or not rocked through his mind.
“The equally interesting thing which may escape you for a time…though by the time you get involved it should be fairly obvious. There is a planet revolving around the star.” he fixed his eyes on the orb which was slowly orbiting through the air.
It looked fairly like Earth with a similar land, sea and cloud cover. The continents it had however were completely different obviously. “It too is growing at the same rate as the star and there appears to be some sort of field around the two, connecting them together. Something is either affecting them both externally or something on the planet is causing this…unfortunately I’m too large to investigate at the moment and by the time it grows large enough for me to do anything at my current smallest height the star will have destroyed half of the Eastern seaboard”.
He pushed it away and began to fly away from the star as he grew in size. He had work to do and he had to do it quickly.
# # # # #
Central Park
Cassie Lang stood nervously glancing over at the shining point of light that was about 200 feet away. She only looked at it for a couple of moments before she had to blink away and turn her head. It was like looking directly at the Sun.
She had heard somewhere that a ball of whatever makes up a star at human size puts out less heat than an actual person would. She was beginning to think that whoever came up with that wasn’t just misinformed but absolutely crazy…or a liar.
Her Uncle Hank had left her in control of the situation as he shrunk down to go and investigate what was going on. She was sure it was just some stupid throw away comment to make her feel that she was actually helping out and any minute he would resize up and come and tell her to move back or go home because it had gotten too dangerous for her.
The agents of SHIELD and the cops however didn’t seem to know this. They thought she was some superhero like her Dad and Hank and so were looking to her for orders. She was twiddling her long blonde hair between her fingers as she looked on nervously, awaiting something to happen.
There was a sudden WOOF! and a crackling made her turn her head. A row of trees, the closest to the star - which she was calling Pym Star 1 mentally - erupted into flames.
“Move! Get an extinguisher! Or a hose!” barked one of the agents of SHIELD and began to wave to people as he leapt over the blockade and moved towards the flaming trees.
“You…should he be doing that? Yellowjacket said for everyone to keep back!” She looked around helplessly at the agents who were either rushing to help or standing there watching as they continued their duties. “HEY YOU! STOP!” she screamed. She was rather surprised when he actually did. “Uh…” her voice returned to hesitant and unsure “…Yellowjacket said stay back here and I think we should until he gets back.”
“What if the fire spreads?” called the agent, turning his head to look at the flaming tree.
“Get some perspective. 1) There is a star burning between you and the tree and, 2) one flaming tree is going to be the least of the problems in a little while.”
Hank Pym was human sized in a matter of moments and with one or two strides reached the safety perimeter. He was right in front of Cassie and then turned to see what she was looking at.
“Get back! What did I tell you?” He sighed and started routing in his pockets. Cassie shot the agent the classic ‘told you so’ look as he weaved passed them.
Hank grinned as he held something in his hand. It began to grow and was soon the size of a baseball and then a bike helmet and then a small car. Surprisingly it didn’t seem to be getting any heavier in his palm, it took a few seconds until Cassie felt a push by the vents at the back. It was hovering using a similar vibrational energy matrix as Yellowjacket had in his costume.
The giant eye like windows looked in to the cockpit of the small aircraft. “Rover 2.0 will handle it safely. Put out the fire!” he commanded it.
“Will do, Master Pym!” squawked the electronic voice in response and rose some more before turning in the air and puttering across the distance towards the flaming shrubs.
“I’ll give it an hour or two before no amount of water or foam will put any of the fires out. The heat will just be too high.”
“Is there anything you can do?” Cassie asked, pre-empting the same question from Agent Delta. She had stopped twiddling with her hair now and was busy biting gently on the top of her bottom lip between speaking.
“I’d also like to ask what the hell is going on?” Delta offered; he wasn’t ashamed to ask a question about something he didn’t understand. Hank smiled as he admired that; so many others protect their ‘intelligence’ by just pretending to know more than they did. It took someone truly intelligent to ask such a question.
“You know about the Micro-Verse?” Delta nodded but Cassie shook her head. “It’s a series of universes accessible only by miniaturisation until you are smaller than the insides of the nucleus of an atom.”
They nodded in unison. “This star seems to be from one of those universes. It’s expanding out well passed it’s normal size…scarily far passed it actually. It’s fascinating, as I’m actually postulating that this is actually the source of our own solar system if not the whole universe and explains some of the questions still unanswered by the big bang. We expanded up from the Micro-Verse…” he nodded and stroked his chin gently, drifting off in thought for a moment.
“Eh sir?” Delta coughed. “Anything else? Something to maybe stop the star destroying all life on Earth?”
“The solar system at least actually,” Pym nodded. “That’s the intriguing part, we can’t see it yet but there is a planet revolving around that star which I think is the source of the problem. Things in the Micro-Verse you see…and things travelling between them are phased slightly out of our reality, vibrationally obviously, this is allowing the planet to pass through all matter. This is why were not getting explosions as Oxygen, Hydrogen, Carbon and whatever else collide with it…it’s passing through everything. The Star however is giving off so much energy that anything which passes through its space is being destroyed.”
“So?” Cassie offered up in a hope Hank would finish off the sentence with something which would stop the horrible crushing and churning feeling of fear in her stomach.
“So I’m going to have to figure out a way to stop it in the next…5 or so hours, which is when all of New York will be destroyed…Then the world maybe an hour or so after that...though it’s expanding at a non-constant rate so it could be sooner.”
It was not the answer Cassie was looking for.
“I’m sure there’s something I can do, I wouldn’t worry…too much.” Hank tried to smile to comfort Cassie.
“I don’t mean to be disrespectful, sir, but shouldn’t we call someone else in to help you with this? Correct me if I’m wrong but this is kind of a big important thing right? Don’t you have Schizophrenia?” Delta looked nervous as he spoke.
Pym fixed him with a stare. His confidence was very important and this was not something he needed. “Manic depressive, bi-polar, two breakdowns and I suffer from a Dissociative Identity Disorder, yes...Schizophrenic? No. I wish it was that simple, that I could solve. Now excuse me, I’ve got a world to save and you’re just wasting valuable time.”
Hank indicated to Cassie to follow him and summoned Rover. He had work to do and he needed the quickest way back to his lab.
# # # # #
Pym’s Lab, an hour and a half later...
Hank sat leaning on the edge of his lab bench with his elbows. His face was in his hands. “The Solar System is completely doomed,” he let out a scream of anger and banged his fist on the table, “all because I can’t figure out what the hell to do.”
The past 90 minutes had not been kind to Hank Pym’s confidence. He knew what he had to do, the end product, but he just couldn’t get his head around the science at the moment. It was more than a small problem really.
He had one of two options. The first was to shrink the Star and the planet down back to subatomic proportions or to shrink himself down enough so that he would be able to interact with the planet and try to solve whatever was causing the growth. The second seemed the most sensible as the first would just let the same process happen again. The science behind either one was just escaping him at the moment.
Every set of calculations he set away came back negative. Everything he was thinking of just wasn’t going to work. He was in a foul mood. He dropped his face into his hands and began to curse a blue streak.
Cassie had never seen her Uncle Hank like this. She had seen him in one of his black moods but they were generally just an air of sadness. “Is everything okay, Uncle Henry?” she chimed up gently, she of course knew the world’s survival was hanging in the balance but if Hank was only going to work effectively if his mood went away then the mood needed to go away.
“I’m fine!” he snapped. “I just need to think, need to get my head together…the star has grown to roughly the size of a tennis ball, things are getting bad…the Earth is going to be destroyed and I have to do something!”
His hand thrust into his pocket and pulled out a small plastic bottle and emptied some of its contents into his hand before hammering them down his throat.
“I’m sure my dad once said something about Mr Fantastic and Dr Doom having shrinking machines…that’s how they get to the Micro-Verse and stuff. Can’t you just use that to go smaller?”
Cassie was worried for a second that the reference to Reed Richards would make Hank feel even worse about himself.
“Pffft,” hissed Pym and shook his head. “What does Reed know about size changing…or Doom. Those damn rays they insist on using play havoc with the human body, it leads to all kinds of crazy biological malfunctions…I know my Pym Particles don’t have a perfect track record but that’s always due to outside interference. The ray is only a short term system anyway, you can’t sustain that size for very long at all”
“Don’t we just need something short term?” Cassie was beginning to get very worried about the expanding star. “Something to stop the star before it expands.”
“That’s the problem though, the star and the planet are expanding at quite a rate. Should we use the shrinking ray then the planet expands I’d be stuck at several thousand times smaller than I need to be, I need to be able to control any size shifts I need.”
“Maybe if you talk it through out loud, it usually helps me when I’m trying to figure something out” Yellowjacket was about to snap at Cassie again when he saw her smiling. She was only trying to help he realized.
He nodded and with a sigh began. “I need to shrink down to a size almost 2,000 times smaller than my current lowest limit. I can no doubt supercharge some Pym Particles to do such…but doing so would cause all of my biological systems to break down instantly. The membranes of my cells would be too weak, the ion exchanges wouldn’t work…I’d likely just dissolve into nothingness, going completely insane as I did so as my brain collapsed in on itself…and in screaming agony.”
“Shrinking suddenly sounds scary,” Cassie inhaled sharply.
“Oh it’s not to the size I, Jan and your Dad go to. That is relatively safe…much harder to achieve safely than growing, however.” He nodded and rubbed his chin thinking back to the breakthroughs he had had when he first started to explore the fields of size changing. “The part people don’t understand you see is that it’s not simply getting bigger or smaller. All of the biological functions, everything, has to be altered for you to continue functioning. Every chemical reaction which occurs in the body has to be altered in some manner or another.”
“I haven’t really had a chance to test it but I think when shrunken none of us would actually classify as being human. The Pym Particle causes all of these changes instantaneously and simultaneously. Growing in size is fairly simple in comparison, you just have to increase the volume of the needed chemicals to create variable membranes and neurotransmitters etc. Shaping the senses so they don’t get overwhelmed I’ll admit did hold me up for a day or two…the biggest problem was really finding away around the fact that when I double in size my mass should increase by many more times. If the particles didn’t do something about it then I’d break all my bones trying to move.”
Hank stopped silent for a minute, a big grin spread across his face. “You genius!” he cried and launched forward and began to scribble.
“What did I say?” Cassie queried, she tried to look over Hank’s shoulder to get some idea of what was going on but there was just a long equation being scrawled out by him by hand.
“No…sorry, not you, I was talking to myself.” He would have normally been embarrassed by the outburst and the general situation but he was too locked in a brainwave at the minute to really care. “You did let me free up my brain though, got me out of the damn block I was in.”
He rocked back in his chair and looked at the formula. “This should work! Sub-atomic inducing Pym Particles…the secret is to expand the subatomic structures in your own body in a phased out manner and then integrate them with your biological systems before allowing them to return to their usual size whilst expelling your own mass!”
Cassie’s eyes opened wide, her mouth opened slowly. “Huh?”
Hank had already burst away from her and was tapping away at some kind of machine. Lights were flashing inside. Hank took a step back and turned flashing a smile to Cassie.
This was the Hank Pym that she loved. The energetic and excited man who always made everything seem fascinating.
He waited a second before surging forward and flipping open a small hatch. He thrust his hand into the small compartment and then pulled it out. A shimmering waving effect hovered around his hand.
“These are the newest batch of Pym Particles.” He then smiled more warmly at her. “Or the first batch of Pym-Lang Particles, if you’d like.”
“Really?” Cassie smiled.
“I wouldn’t have been able to create them, and wouldn’t be able to save the world, without you.” He angled his hand and prepared to press it to himself, where the Pym Particles would merge with the ones already saturating his body.
“Shouldn’t we test it on something first? Like a Beta test?” Cassie ventured. Hank paused, they didn’t really have the time for a properly monitored scientific test sequence. He nodded however and stretched out his hand to grab a test tube.
He focused on it for a second and sent the mental command from the Pym Particles in his brain down to the hovering cloud over his hand and watched the test tube intently.
It hissed and fizzled for a second before melting into a cold mass across his hand.
There was silence in the lab. Cassie’s heart skipped a beat. “Oh dear,” gasped Hank. A look of dismay crossed his face but it was mixed with a little fascination as he tilted his head from side to side looking at the liquidised glass. It passed quickly.
Cassie could see the figure of Hank suddenly drop, his shoulders hunched forward and his head drooped slightly, he was crestfallen. His hand was beginning to lower taking the shimmering field with it. The Pym Particles already in his body acting like a magnet to the new version. It dropped to his side.
She watched as it shimmered and then shifted before arcing away from him toward the small dark brown mass that was skulking across the floor. She was Tabby, Hank Pym’s faithful feline friend since before he’d ever been a superhero. She was now getting on in years and didn’t move so fast.
The cat let out a meow as it began to shrink. “LOOK!” barked Cassie as she pointed to the rapidly vanishing cat.
Hank watched Tabby vanish from sight and then held out his hand. Willing the Pym Particles to reverse their course. Tabby quickly appeared in view again and meowed in shock.
Hank swept the cat up into his hands and held her far above his head. “Tabby I love you! They work!”
“What happened to the test tube then?” asked Cassie.
“My calculations, I didn’t even realized but I accounted for Pym Particles…anything which has already been dosed with them can use Pym-Lang Particles, anything which has not…goes like the test tube!”
“I’ll whip up another batch, you summon Rover back to the window and then call your Dad. We have work to do!”
# # # # #
Central Park, 25 minutes later…
The media were out in force now. Helicopters were buzzing as close to the park as they could before being scared off by the flying SHIELD hover cars.
The ground forces of the ‘Jornos’ were swamping the exclusion area though. Hanky Pym approached the group and was instantly pounded by a series of questions about the phenomenon and whether anyone else was going to be involved (much to his chagrin as it smacked of lacking in confidence) such as the Fantastic Four.
Hank couldn’t help but notice the crowd of protestors holding up all manners of variations of ‘The End is Nigh!, John 3:16’ and everything else. He had seen some of the faces before, every big super fight or crisis you’d get some of them thinking the rapture had arrived.
The light and heat being given off by the star was considerable now. The star was about the size of a soccer ball and the grass and trees were beginning to openly burn.
Hank steered Cassie with hands on her shoulders through the crowd and then broke free as they moved through the makeshift barrier. His team was standing waiting for him. Cassie ran to one of them and gave him a hug.
He was her father Scott Lang AKA Ant-Man (II). He smiled down at his daughter and returned a deep and long hug. If anything was to hammer home to him how important their mission was it would be the embracing of his daughter, a child who could cease to exist in a couple of hours if he doesn’t do his job right. He was the newest to the job out of all those present but it could be argued he had just as much experience having been a member of The Avengers, Fantastic Four and one of the more illustrious Heroes for Hire with the Black Knight, Hercules and the Original Human Torch.
Janet Van Dyne AKA the fellow founding Avenger the Wasp was standing next to him. Hank greeted her with a hug. He had almost lost her recently during the attack at Avengers mansion. It had reignited something in him, the feelings he had for her were stirring again and the hopes that some resolution for their relationship could be reached had reared its head. “How are you?” she asked, some happiness but a hint of worry in her voice.
“I’m great….several scientific breakthroughs and groundbreaking theories I’ve made today. I just need to stop the world from ending in order to get them published.” He smiled slightly and gently, a look of mischief on his face.
“Amen to that, those audio files you sent me are fascinating,” Bill Foster AKA Goliath, the fellow scientist of the group. Smiled and shook hands with his good friend. “I do hope since I’m accompanying you I’d get a joint article in with you about the theoretical possibilities that we two were in the Micro-Verse originally.”
Hank smiled and nodded. “Even more fascinating is that this could be a normal and naturally occurring event which is occurring in places across the galaxy right now.”
“This is all very fascinating I’m sure but shouldn’t we get moving and do something?” Jan flashed a smile. She wasn’t a ‘big brain’ but she was just as much a pragmatist and realist as Hank, it was what made her such a good leader when she was in charge of The Avengers. It was also why he intended for her to take the leadership role in this mission.
“Indeed,” Hank nodded and began to fish in his pockets pulling out some pill form Pym Particles which he handed to his companions. “I tested it briefly on the way over in Rover, there might be some uncomfortable sensation in your stomach and extremities as you reach a cellular level but it passes quickly and then actually feels rather nice,” he smiled.
“Daaaaaad?” Cassie began, stretching out the vowel sounds.
“No,” Scott responded. He fixed her with a solid stare. His face was intended to tell her he was serious, though it hardly ever worked.
“You don’t even know what I was going to ask,” she falsely pouted. Cassie was definitely her father’s daughter. They had the same light skin, blonde hair and deep eyes. Their personalities were also closely matched, both were generally happy and always with a smile or a joke but were both very empathetic and caring to everyone around them. They gelled together perfectly.
“You were going to ask to come with us, weren’t you?”
“No…” she continued to pout. “…but now that you mention it, surely another person along for the ride would really help…and it’s not like it could hurt, if we fail then I’m dead anyway.”
Scott was silent for a second. He hated to hear his daughter talk like this, thoughts that he would actively force from his mind lingered in hers and seemed to have no problems. “I’ve told you you’re not allowed powers until you’re 18, then I can’t stop you…but I will try. What kind of father would I be to take my 14 year old daughter into a dangerous situation to fight god knows what?”
“THE BEST DAD EVER!” She yelled, grinning up at him.
“No, I’m letting you stay here rather than make you go home to your mother…seeing as you pointed out it doesn’t matter how far away you are…but actually give you’re Mom a call; she and Blake would really appreciate it.”
Cassie nodded. Her father leaned forward and kissed her on the forehead “Love you….Love you, too,” they said to one another and he donned his Ant-Man helmet and made his way to the others and a rapidly growing Rover.
They climbed in and fastened themselves in. Hank stood in the doorway of his creation for a moment. He could feel his heart pounding wildly in his chest. “You can do this,” he repeated to himself. He looked out at the crowds, behind them the city grew out of the tree line, then up to the cloudy overcast sky. “You have to do this, there’s too much to lose.”
He moved inside allowing Rover to seal itself and took his seat at the controls. “Ready when you are, Yellowjacket,” informed Wasp.
“Lets go then,” nodded Hank and pressed the button to lift off.
“No initiate? Or ‘Make it so?’” Ant-Man asked as he turned to face his fellow Avengers. He was the most easy going and likely to throw in a quip of some kind, even with everything at stake.
Rover rose into the air silently and began to shrink rapidly as it moved towards the growing star. The heat on the hull was nearly unbearable but began to lower as the vehicle shrunk along with it’s four passengers and phased out of it’s original reality.
It took a minute or so before the world stopped looking like it’s normal self. The three new passengers looked through the windows astounded as the atoms and molecules in the air became visible, their reactions whizzing around passed them like tiny insects.
“Thankfully we don’t need to go fully Subatomic this time, the planet is already big enough for us to interact with at about a hundredth of the size of a bacteria.”
“That’s somehow not comforting,” Goliath grinned. “I usually just like to grow.”
“Compensating,” coughed Scott through his hand. The entire group couldn’t help but laugh at that one.
“The planet is straight ahead Wasp, we can be entering the atmosphere in just under a minute,” Hank offered, his eyes moved to Jan. His heart skipped a beat again, she was just as beautiful as the first time he had laid eyes on her.
Jan’s stomach was churning, it always did when she was on a mission but she didn’t show it one bit. She was the image of a calm professional who had done stuff like this a thousand times before.
She looked over at Hank and nodded. His face shifted to one of concentration with just the hint of a smile in the corner of his mouth. Her heart skipped a beat now. Hank Pym was the first man who she had ever loved, and the only if she was honest. Things went wrong and things were bad between them for a long time but then they became friends again. She had been recently feeling something, something which confused her but she couldn’t deny it. Seeing him in the moment she just had made some things clearer, the serious look of the strong man he could be across his face twinned with the boy like joyous smile at adventure and discovery.
“So, what’s the plan, boss lady?” Goliath asked as he leaned forward.
“Rover will zero in on the source of the disturbance and we’ll head straight there. I know this is a whole new planet full of wonders to explore but this is a crisis not a holiday. We’ll then find the quickest and most direct method into the base…or whatever is there and try and track down the source. We’ll try and talk it out if possible, whoever is doing this may not even realise they’re causing a problem.”
“If they don’t take to the talking well?” Scott asked.
“We grow to a relative size of a couple of hundred feet each and smash the machines up,” Jan nodded. Like I said, she was just as pragmatic as her ex-husband.
“Hey, yeah, that’s an idea, isn’t it?” Scott grinned. “We can relatively grow much bigger than we can normally…relatively of course.” He wondered if the second relatively was really needed.
Rover suddenly shook violently as it tore through the environment. “I’m changing size to make it a little more comfortable, growing in relative size!”
“Were going to look like Independence Day to these guy’s aren’t we…probably not the best way to appear friendly,” Scott grunted as he was buffeted sideways.
“It’s either this or burn up on entry!” Hank let out a grunt of strain as he tried to steer Rover.
“Independence Day it is then,” Scott nodded. He lurched forward and then back and seemed to sail smoothly. Rover had cleared the O-Zone and was safely flying under it’s own power in the atmosphere.
“If you look out of the right window…Rover is picking up a large settlement, a veritable city and the source of the energy beam,” Hank smiled and tilted Rover slightly. “The beam is…BAIL OUT!” He tried to shift the controls and then slammed his hand onto a button on the control panel causing the top of Rover to blow open and the seats to unfasten.
Hank and Jan immediately swept into action and began to fly, spinning around to catch their falling comrades. The two men began to shrink down further to make it an easier task.
BOOM!
The noise was defining and they could feel the heat of the flames close behind them as they fell through the air.
“What happened?” Jan barked to Hank.
“The beam, changed direction…struck the ship and then shifted back. It overloaded Rover’s circuits.” Hank swore aloud.
“Head towards the source of the beam,” Jan commanded.
The two pairs began in a controlled manner to descend towards the source of the beam.
The city looked just like all those Sci-Fi cities that you see in the old movies, comics and book covers. Massively tall smoothly ascending towers with large bulbs on the top much like the taj mahal dotted the cityscape in a number of different colours. Walkways and roadways stretched between them high above the surface of the planet and hovering vehicles could be seen zooming around.
Hank, Bill and Scott didn’t know where to look first. This was like all of their dreams come true, they were making mental notes of things they’d love to investigate or making mental notes on how they thought something must be done. Jan was focused solely on the tower that stood above all others.
The shimmering energy was clearly being emitted from it. There was only one small opening on the entire tower. It was a large marble archway over a balcony that looked out over the entire city, and that was what the makeshift team made for. They landed silently on the balcony.
“You think we should shrink down and try to gain access quietly?” Goliath asked.
“They shot us down, chances are they know were here already,” Jan replied. She made a signal for them to follow her and took a step forward. She suddenly let out a groan of pain and crumbled forward to the deck.
Hank’s head flew in the direction of the blast just in time to see Goliath get blasted from the same energy source, then Scott.
The pink beam of energy was streaking towards him before he could react and he was blasted. He felt it wave through his body and his knees give way as he collapsed, shivering on the floor.
The figure who fired the blasts walked towards the four downed heroes slowly and calmly. He snorted with derision at the fallen heroes. “Take them to the arena, let us show the people all they have to be fearful of amounts to nothing. Show them that I, the Psycho-Man, will lead them to their destinies!”
It was actually a star; he had been referring to it as a sun so far but it was a star to be precise. If he was observing it right then he’d say it was a Population II star to be sure. It was much less metal rich than our own Sol, which meant it was burning hotter and brighter…this was not a good thing in the current situation.
He was about a foot and a half from the surface of the star (real size not relative) and the heat it was giving off was unbearable. He was thankful for his unstable molecule costume that was protecting him from any serious damage from the heat at the minute.
The star had grown rapidly since it first appeared to the naked human eye. It was about the size of a golf ball now. This was worrying, less than an hour ago it had been invisible to the naked eye and only visible to him when shrunk down using some technology. It had expanded and grown to many thousand times it’s original size.
Hank believed it was expanding out of the micro-verse into our own reality.
“The Population II star…which for now I’ll call Mah-Ria in honour of the woman who found it however unfortunate an accident this was for her…is expanding from the micro-verse if the energy emanations I’m recording are to be believed”.
Hank was recording his observations for his own thought processes and files, but they were also simultaneously being recorded onto several computer files within the networks of Reed Richards, Bill Foster, T’Challa, Tony Stark, Dane Whitman and Hank McCoy. Should he fail it would be up to them to do something about this and he would at least give them a head start.
“The heat the star is giving off is exponential, the grass in the park is already starting to scorch and the ground crack. The UV rays are giving tans to people who are over 150 feet away and the light is drawing many confused insects and birds in towards it before they eventually change course because of the heat or soar directly through it…death is obviously inevitable.”
He was silent for a second as he let his thoughts play out. He had been soaring around the surface at a safe distance for about fifteen minutes watching the arcs of plasma reach across the surface of the nuclear reaction which made up the tiny star.
“It’s absolutely terrifying but completely…well terrifying, completely and utterly terrifying in every way possible but…wow is it wonderful, amazing, beautiful. I wish you guys could be here to see it…of course if I don’t do something you most certainly will in the next day or so. God I hope I don’t screw this up.”
Hank felt a sudden twist in his stomach, the wonder of whether he could do it or not rocked through his mind.
“The equally interesting thing which may escape you for a time…though by the time you get involved it should be fairly obvious. There is a planet revolving around the star.” he fixed his eyes on the orb which was slowly orbiting through the air.
It looked fairly like Earth with a similar land, sea and cloud cover. The continents it had however were completely different obviously. “It too is growing at the same rate as the star and there appears to be some sort of field around the two, connecting them together. Something is either affecting them both externally or something on the planet is causing this…unfortunately I’m too large to investigate at the moment and by the time it grows large enough for me to do anything at my current smallest height the star will have destroyed half of the Eastern seaboard”.
He pushed it away and began to fly away from the star as he grew in size. He had work to do and he had to do it quickly.
# # # # #
Central Park
Cassie Lang stood nervously glancing over at the shining point of light that was about 200 feet away. She only looked at it for a couple of moments before she had to blink away and turn her head. It was like looking directly at the Sun.
She had heard somewhere that a ball of whatever makes up a star at human size puts out less heat than an actual person would. She was beginning to think that whoever came up with that wasn’t just misinformed but absolutely crazy…or a liar.
Her Uncle Hank had left her in control of the situation as he shrunk down to go and investigate what was going on. She was sure it was just some stupid throw away comment to make her feel that she was actually helping out and any minute he would resize up and come and tell her to move back or go home because it had gotten too dangerous for her.
The agents of SHIELD and the cops however didn’t seem to know this. They thought she was some superhero like her Dad and Hank and so were looking to her for orders. She was twiddling her long blonde hair between her fingers as she looked on nervously, awaiting something to happen.
There was a sudden WOOF! and a crackling made her turn her head. A row of trees, the closest to the star - which she was calling Pym Star 1 mentally - erupted into flames.
“Move! Get an extinguisher! Or a hose!” barked one of the agents of SHIELD and began to wave to people as he leapt over the blockade and moved towards the flaming trees.
“You…should he be doing that? Yellowjacket said for everyone to keep back!” She looked around helplessly at the agents who were either rushing to help or standing there watching as they continued their duties. “HEY YOU! STOP!” she screamed. She was rather surprised when he actually did. “Uh…” her voice returned to hesitant and unsure “…Yellowjacket said stay back here and I think we should until he gets back.”
“What if the fire spreads?” called the agent, turning his head to look at the flaming tree.
“Get some perspective. 1) There is a star burning between you and the tree and, 2) one flaming tree is going to be the least of the problems in a little while.”
Hank Pym was human sized in a matter of moments and with one or two strides reached the safety perimeter. He was right in front of Cassie and then turned to see what she was looking at.
“Get back! What did I tell you?” He sighed and started routing in his pockets. Cassie shot the agent the classic ‘told you so’ look as he weaved passed them.
Hank grinned as he held something in his hand. It began to grow and was soon the size of a baseball and then a bike helmet and then a small car. Surprisingly it didn’t seem to be getting any heavier in his palm, it took a few seconds until Cassie felt a push by the vents at the back. It was hovering using a similar vibrational energy matrix as Yellowjacket had in his costume.
The giant eye like windows looked in to the cockpit of the small aircraft. “Rover 2.0 will handle it safely. Put out the fire!” he commanded it.
“Will do, Master Pym!” squawked the electronic voice in response and rose some more before turning in the air and puttering across the distance towards the flaming shrubs.
“I’ll give it an hour or two before no amount of water or foam will put any of the fires out. The heat will just be too high.”
“Is there anything you can do?” Cassie asked, pre-empting the same question from Agent Delta. She had stopped twiddling with her hair now and was busy biting gently on the top of her bottom lip between speaking.
“I’d also like to ask what the hell is going on?” Delta offered; he wasn’t ashamed to ask a question about something he didn’t understand. Hank smiled as he admired that; so many others protect their ‘intelligence’ by just pretending to know more than they did. It took someone truly intelligent to ask such a question.
“You know about the Micro-Verse?” Delta nodded but Cassie shook her head. “It’s a series of universes accessible only by miniaturisation until you are smaller than the insides of the nucleus of an atom.”
They nodded in unison. “This star seems to be from one of those universes. It’s expanding out well passed it’s normal size…scarily far passed it actually. It’s fascinating, as I’m actually postulating that this is actually the source of our own solar system if not the whole universe and explains some of the questions still unanswered by the big bang. We expanded up from the Micro-Verse…” he nodded and stroked his chin gently, drifting off in thought for a moment.
“Eh sir?” Delta coughed. “Anything else? Something to maybe stop the star destroying all life on Earth?”
“The solar system at least actually,” Pym nodded. “That’s the intriguing part, we can’t see it yet but there is a planet revolving around that star which I think is the source of the problem. Things in the Micro-Verse you see…and things travelling between them are phased slightly out of our reality, vibrationally obviously, this is allowing the planet to pass through all matter. This is why were not getting explosions as Oxygen, Hydrogen, Carbon and whatever else collide with it…it’s passing through everything. The Star however is giving off so much energy that anything which passes through its space is being destroyed.”
“So?” Cassie offered up in a hope Hank would finish off the sentence with something which would stop the horrible crushing and churning feeling of fear in her stomach.
“So I’m going to have to figure out a way to stop it in the next…5 or so hours, which is when all of New York will be destroyed…Then the world maybe an hour or so after that...though it’s expanding at a non-constant rate so it could be sooner.”
It was not the answer Cassie was looking for.
“I’m sure there’s something I can do, I wouldn’t worry…too much.” Hank tried to smile to comfort Cassie.
“I don’t mean to be disrespectful, sir, but shouldn’t we call someone else in to help you with this? Correct me if I’m wrong but this is kind of a big important thing right? Don’t you have Schizophrenia?” Delta looked nervous as he spoke.
Pym fixed him with a stare. His confidence was very important and this was not something he needed. “Manic depressive, bi-polar, two breakdowns and I suffer from a Dissociative Identity Disorder, yes...Schizophrenic? No. I wish it was that simple, that I could solve. Now excuse me, I’ve got a world to save and you’re just wasting valuable time.”
Hank indicated to Cassie to follow him and summoned Rover. He had work to do and he needed the quickest way back to his lab.
# # # # #
Pym’s Lab, an hour and a half later...
Hank sat leaning on the edge of his lab bench with his elbows. His face was in his hands. “The Solar System is completely doomed,” he let out a scream of anger and banged his fist on the table, “all because I can’t figure out what the hell to do.”
The past 90 minutes had not been kind to Hank Pym’s confidence. He knew what he had to do, the end product, but he just couldn’t get his head around the science at the moment. It was more than a small problem really.
He had one of two options. The first was to shrink the Star and the planet down back to subatomic proportions or to shrink himself down enough so that he would be able to interact with the planet and try to solve whatever was causing the growth. The second seemed the most sensible as the first would just let the same process happen again. The science behind either one was just escaping him at the moment.
Every set of calculations he set away came back negative. Everything he was thinking of just wasn’t going to work. He was in a foul mood. He dropped his face into his hands and began to curse a blue streak.
Cassie had never seen her Uncle Hank like this. She had seen him in one of his black moods but they were generally just an air of sadness. “Is everything okay, Uncle Henry?” she chimed up gently, she of course knew the world’s survival was hanging in the balance but if Hank was only going to work effectively if his mood went away then the mood needed to go away.
“I’m fine!” he snapped. “I just need to think, need to get my head together…the star has grown to roughly the size of a tennis ball, things are getting bad…the Earth is going to be destroyed and I have to do something!”
His hand thrust into his pocket and pulled out a small plastic bottle and emptied some of its contents into his hand before hammering them down his throat.
“I’m sure my dad once said something about Mr Fantastic and Dr Doom having shrinking machines…that’s how they get to the Micro-Verse and stuff. Can’t you just use that to go smaller?”
Cassie was worried for a second that the reference to Reed Richards would make Hank feel even worse about himself.
“Pffft,” hissed Pym and shook his head. “What does Reed know about size changing…or Doom. Those damn rays they insist on using play havoc with the human body, it leads to all kinds of crazy biological malfunctions…I know my Pym Particles don’t have a perfect track record but that’s always due to outside interference. The ray is only a short term system anyway, you can’t sustain that size for very long at all”
“Don’t we just need something short term?” Cassie was beginning to get very worried about the expanding star. “Something to stop the star before it expands.”
“That’s the problem though, the star and the planet are expanding at quite a rate. Should we use the shrinking ray then the planet expands I’d be stuck at several thousand times smaller than I need to be, I need to be able to control any size shifts I need.”
“Maybe if you talk it through out loud, it usually helps me when I’m trying to figure something out” Yellowjacket was about to snap at Cassie again when he saw her smiling. She was only trying to help he realized.
He nodded and with a sigh began. “I need to shrink down to a size almost 2,000 times smaller than my current lowest limit. I can no doubt supercharge some Pym Particles to do such…but doing so would cause all of my biological systems to break down instantly. The membranes of my cells would be too weak, the ion exchanges wouldn’t work…I’d likely just dissolve into nothingness, going completely insane as I did so as my brain collapsed in on itself…and in screaming agony.”
“Shrinking suddenly sounds scary,” Cassie inhaled sharply.
“Oh it’s not to the size I, Jan and your Dad go to. That is relatively safe…much harder to achieve safely than growing, however.” He nodded and rubbed his chin thinking back to the breakthroughs he had had when he first started to explore the fields of size changing. “The part people don’t understand you see is that it’s not simply getting bigger or smaller. All of the biological functions, everything, has to be altered for you to continue functioning. Every chemical reaction which occurs in the body has to be altered in some manner or another.”
“I haven’t really had a chance to test it but I think when shrunken none of us would actually classify as being human. The Pym Particle causes all of these changes instantaneously and simultaneously. Growing in size is fairly simple in comparison, you just have to increase the volume of the needed chemicals to create variable membranes and neurotransmitters etc. Shaping the senses so they don’t get overwhelmed I’ll admit did hold me up for a day or two…the biggest problem was really finding away around the fact that when I double in size my mass should increase by many more times. If the particles didn’t do something about it then I’d break all my bones trying to move.”
Hank stopped silent for a minute, a big grin spread across his face. “You genius!” he cried and launched forward and began to scribble.
“What did I say?” Cassie queried, she tried to look over Hank’s shoulder to get some idea of what was going on but there was just a long equation being scrawled out by him by hand.
“No…sorry, not you, I was talking to myself.” He would have normally been embarrassed by the outburst and the general situation but he was too locked in a brainwave at the minute to really care. “You did let me free up my brain though, got me out of the damn block I was in.”
He rocked back in his chair and looked at the formula. “This should work! Sub-atomic inducing Pym Particles…the secret is to expand the subatomic structures in your own body in a phased out manner and then integrate them with your biological systems before allowing them to return to their usual size whilst expelling your own mass!”
Cassie’s eyes opened wide, her mouth opened slowly. “Huh?”
Hank had already burst away from her and was tapping away at some kind of machine. Lights were flashing inside. Hank took a step back and turned flashing a smile to Cassie.
This was the Hank Pym that she loved. The energetic and excited man who always made everything seem fascinating.
He waited a second before surging forward and flipping open a small hatch. He thrust his hand into the small compartment and then pulled it out. A shimmering waving effect hovered around his hand.
“These are the newest batch of Pym Particles.” He then smiled more warmly at her. “Or the first batch of Pym-Lang Particles, if you’d like.”
“Really?” Cassie smiled.
“I wouldn’t have been able to create them, and wouldn’t be able to save the world, without you.” He angled his hand and prepared to press it to himself, where the Pym Particles would merge with the ones already saturating his body.
“Shouldn’t we test it on something first? Like a Beta test?” Cassie ventured. Hank paused, they didn’t really have the time for a properly monitored scientific test sequence. He nodded however and stretched out his hand to grab a test tube.
He focused on it for a second and sent the mental command from the Pym Particles in his brain down to the hovering cloud over his hand and watched the test tube intently.
It hissed and fizzled for a second before melting into a cold mass across his hand.
There was silence in the lab. Cassie’s heart skipped a beat. “Oh dear,” gasped Hank. A look of dismay crossed his face but it was mixed with a little fascination as he tilted his head from side to side looking at the liquidised glass. It passed quickly.
Cassie could see the figure of Hank suddenly drop, his shoulders hunched forward and his head drooped slightly, he was crestfallen. His hand was beginning to lower taking the shimmering field with it. The Pym Particles already in his body acting like a magnet to the new version. It dropped to his side.
She watched as it shimmered and then shifted before arcing away from him toward the small dark brown mass that was skulking across the floor. She was Tabby, Hank Pym’s faithful feline friend since before he’d ever been a superhero. She was now getting on in years and didn’t move so fast.
The cat let out a meow as it began to shrink. “LOOK!” barked Cassie as she pointed to the rapidly vanishing cat.
Hank watched Tabby vanish from sight and then held out his hand. Willing the Pym Particles to reverse their course. Tabby quickly appeared in view again and meowed in shock.
Hank swept the cat up into his hands and held her far above his head. “Tabby I love you! They work!”
“What happened to the test tube then?” asked Cassie.
“My calculations, I didn’t even realized but I accounted for Pym Particles…anything which has already been dosed with them can use Pym-Lang Particles, anything which has not…goes like the test tube!”
“I’ll whip up another batch, you summon Rover back to the window and then call your Dad. We have work to do!”
# # # # #
Central Park, 25 minutes later…
The media were out in force now. Helicopters were buzzing as close to the park as they could before being scared off by the flying SHIELD hover cars.
The ground forces of the ‘Jornos’ were swamping the exclusion area though. Hanky Pym approached the group and was instantly pounded by a series of questions about the phenomenon and whether anyone else was going to be involved (much to his chagrin as it smacked of lacking in confidence) such as the Fantastic Four.
Hank couldn’t help but notice the crowd of protestors holding up all manners of variations of ‘The End is Nigh!, John 3:16’ and everything else. He had seen some of the faces before, every big super fight or crisis you’d get some of them thinking the rapture had arrived.
The light and heat being given off by the star was considerable now. The star was about the size of a soccer ball and the grass and trees were beginning to openly burn.
Hank steered Cassie with hands on her shoulders through the crowd and then broke free as they moved through the makeshift barrier. His team was standing waiting for him. Cassie ran to one of them and gave him a hug.
He was her father Scott Lang AKA Ant-Man (II). He smiled down at his daughter and returned a deep and long hug. If anything was to hammer home to him how important their mission was it would be the embracing of his daughter, a child who could cease to exist in a couple of hours if he doesn’t do his job right. He was the newest to the job out of all those present but it could be argued he had just as much experience having been a member of The Avengers, Fantastic Four and one of the more illustrious Heroes for Hire with the Black Knight, Hercules and the Original Human Torch.
Janet Van Dyne AKA the fellow founding Avenger the Wasp was standing next to him. Hank greeted her with a hug. He had almost lost her recently during the attack at Avengers mansion. It had reignited something in him, the feelings he had for her were stirring again and the hopes that some resolution for their relationship could be reached had reared its head. “How are you?” she asked, some happiness but a hint of worry in her voice.
“I’m great….several scientific breakthroughs and groundbreaking theories I’ve made today. I just need to stop the world from ending in order to get them published.” He smiled slightly and gently, a look of mischief on his face.
“Amen to that, those audio files you sent me are fascinating,” Bill Foster AKA Goliath, the fellow scientist of the group. Smiled and shook hands with his good friend. “I do hope since I’m accompanying you I’d get a joint article in with you about the theoretical possibilities that we two were in the Micro-Verse originally.”
Hank smiled and nodded. “Even more fascinating is that this could be a normal and naturally occurring event which is occurring in places across the galaxy right now.”
“This is all very fascinating I’m sure but shouldn’t we get moving and do something?” Jan flashed a smile. She wasn’t a ‘big brain’ but she was just as much a pragmatist and realist as Hank, it was what made her such a good leader when she was in charge of The Avengers. It was also why he intended for her to take the leadership role in this mission.
“Indeed,” Hank nodded and began to fish in his pockets pulling out some pill form Pym Particles which he handed to his companions. “I tested it briefly on the way over in Rover, there might be some uncomfortable sensation in your stomach and extremities as you reach a cellular level but it passes quickly and then actually feels rather nice,” he smiled.
“Daaaaaad?” Cassie began, stretching out the vowel sounds.
“No,” Scott responded. He fixed her with a solid stare. His face was intended to tell her he was serious, though it hardly ever worked.
“You don’t even know what I was going to ask,” she falsely pouted. Cassie was definitely her father’s daughter. They had the same light skin, blonde hair and deep eyes. Their personalities were also closely matched, both were generally happy and always with a smile or a joke but were both very empathetic and caring to everyone around them. They gelled together perfectly.
“You were going to ask to come with us, weren’t you?”
“No…” she continued to pout. “…but now that you mention it, surely another person along for the ride would really help…and it’s not like it could hurt, if we fail then I’m dead anyway.”
Scott was silent for a second. He hated to hear his daughter talk like this, thoughts that he would actively force from his mind lingered in hers and seemed to have no problems. “I’ve told you you’re not allowed powers until you’re 18, then I can’t stop you…but I will try. What kind of father would I be to take my 14 year old daughter into a dangerous situation to fight god knows what?”
“THE BEST DAD EVER!” She yelled, grinning up at him.
“No, I’m letting you stay here rather than make you go home to your mother…seeing as you pointed out it doesn’t matter how far away you are…but actually give you’re Mom a call; she and Blake would really appreciate it.”
Cassie nodded. Her father leaned forward and kissed her on the forehead “Love you….Love you, too,” they said to one another and he donned his Ant-Man helmet and made his way to the others and a rapidly growing Rover.
They climbed in and fastened themselves in. Hank stood in the doorway of his creation for a moment. He could feel his heart pounding wildly in his chest. “You can do this,” he repeated to himself. He looked out at the crowds, behind them the city grew out of the tree line, then up to the cloudy overcast sky. “You have to do this, there’s too much to lose.”
He moved inside allowing Rover to seal itself and took his seat at the controls. “Ready when you are, Yellowjacket,” informed Wasp.
“Lets go then,” nodded Hank and pressed the button to lift off.
“No initiate? Or ‘Make it so?’” Ant-Man asked as he turned to face his fellow Avengers. He was the most easy going and likely to throw in a quip of some kind, even with everything at stake.
Rover rose into the air silently and began to shrink rapidly as it moved towards the growing star. The heat on the hull was nearly unbearable but began to lower as the vehicle shrunk along with it’s four passengers and phased out of it’s original reality.
It took a minute or so before the world stopped looking like it’s normal self. The three new passengers looked through the windows astounded as the atoms and molecules in the air became visible, their reactions whizzing around passed them like tiny insects.
“Thankfully we don’t need to go fully Subatomic this time, the planet is already big enough for us to interact with at about a hundredth of the size of a bacteria.”
“That’s somehow not comforting,” Goliath grinned. “I usually just like to grow.”
“Compensating,” coughed Scott through his hand. The entire group couldn’t help but laugh at that one.
“The planet is straight ahead Wasp, we can be entering the atmosphere in just under a minute,” Hank offered, his eyes moved to Jan. His heart skipped a beat again, she was just as beautiful as the first time he had laid eyes on her.
Jan’s stomach was churning, it always did when she was on a mission but she didn’t show it one bit. She was the image of a calm professional who had done stuff like this a thousand times before.
She looked over at Hank and nodded. His face shifted to one of concentration with just the hint of a smile in the corner of his mouth. Her heart skipped a beat now. Hank Pym was the first man who she had ever loved, and the only if she was honest. Things went wrong and things were bad between them for a long time but then they became friends again. She had been recently feeling something, something which confused her but she couldn’t deny it. Seeing him in the moment she just had made some things clearer, the serious look of the strong man he could be across his face twinned with the boy like joyous smile at adventure and discovery.
“So, what’s the plan, boss lady?” Goliath asked as he leaned forward.
“Rover will zero in on the source of the disturbance and we’ll head straight there. I know this is a whole new planet full of wonders to explore but this is a crisis not a holiday. We’ll then find the quickest and most direct method into the base…or whatever is there and try and track down the source. We’ll try and talk it out if possible, whoever is doing this may not even realise they’re causing a problem.”
“If they don’t take to the talking well?” Scott asked.
“We grow to a relative size of a couple of hundred feet each and smash the machines up,” Jan nodded. Like I said, she was just as pragmatic as her ex-husband.
“Hey, yeah, that’s an idea, isn’t it?” Scott grinned. “We can relatively grow much bigger than we can normally…relatively of course.” He wondered if the second relatively was really needed.
Rover suddenly shook violently as it tore through the environment. “I’m changing size to make it a little more comfortable, growing in relative size!”
“Were going to look like Independence Day to these guy’s aren’t we…probably not the best way to appear friendly,” Scott grunted as he was buffeted sideways.
“It’s either this or burn up on entry!” Hank let out a grunt of strain as he tried to steer Rover.
“Independence Day it is then,” Scott nodded. He lurched forward and then back and seemed to sail smoothly. Rover had cleared the O-Zone and was safely flying under it’s own power in the atmosphere.
“If you look out of the right window…Rover is picking up a large settlement, a veritable city and the source of the energy beam,” Hank smiled and tilted Rover slightly. “The beam is…BAIL OUT!” He tried to shift the controls and then slammed his hand onto a button on the control panel causing the top of Rover to blow open and the seats to unfasten.
Hank and Jan immediately swept into action and began to fly, spinning around to catch their falling comrades. The two men began to shrink down further to make it an easier task.
BOOM!
The noise was defining and they could feel the heat of the flames close behind them as they fell through the air.
“What happened?” Jan barked to Hank.
“The beam, changed direction…struck the ship and then shifted back. It overloaded Rover’s circuits.” Hank swore aloud.
“Head towards the source of the beam,” Jan commanded.
The two pairs began in a controlled manner to descend towards the source of the beam.
The city looked just like all those Sci-Fi cities that you see in the old movies, comics and book covers. Massively tall smoothly ascending towers with large bulbs on the top much like the taj mahal dotted the cityscape in a number of different colours. Walkways and roadways stretched between them high above the surface of the planet and hovering vehicles could be seen zooming around.
Hank, Bill and Scott didn’t know where to look first. This was like all of their dreams come true, they were making mental notes of things they’d love to investigate or making mental notes on how they thought something must be done. Jan was focused solely on the tower that stood above all others.
The shimmering energy was clearly being emitted from it. There was only one small opening on the entire tower. It was a large marble archway over a balcony that looked out over the entire city, and that was what the makeshift team made for. They landed silently on the balcony.
“You think we should shrink down and try to gain access quietly?” Goliath asked.
“They shot us down, chances are they know were here already,” Jan replied. She made a signal for them to follow her and took a step forward. She suddenly let out a groan of pain and crumbled forward to the deck.
Hank’s head flew in the direction of the blast just in time to see Goliath get blasted from the same energy source, then Scott.
The pink beam of energy was streaking towards him before he could react and he was blasted. He felt it wave through his body and his knees give way as he collapsed, shivering on the floor.
The figure who fired the blasts walked towards the four downed heroes slowly and calmly. He snorted with derision at the fallen heroes. “Take them to the arena, let us show the people all they have to be fearful of amounts to nothing. Show them that I, the Psycho-Man, will lead them to their destinies!”