In Every News Outlet In The World
Frederik Fufenmeier: "For those of you just joining us, I'm here with Slimjim, the super-villain that *clears throat* that tried to take over the world with an army of undead beings in the previous year, and he has a rather… momentous announcement to make."
Slimjim: "Thank you, Mr Fufenmeier. People of the world, I 'ave, 'tis true, made some bad choices. I 'ave made many mistakes. And some you've not even 'eard of. I come here to apologise for those mistakes, and for the grief, the harm, the… I apologise. But I know, that a simple apology is, perhaps, a little shallow. So, 'ere I offer somethin' much, much more. I offer a gift, I offer to make it right. People of the world, like the Avatars, and many others, I received my powers completely by chance. And I used 'em badly. And so 'ave they. My powers, in particular, are over life. And death. It is in this capacity that I will make amends. People of the world, I can bring back to life, anythin' that has ever died. Anythin'. Anyone. And I will. That future that we all dread, we can all escape. All you have to do, is come and aks. Come and aks me for you sons. You lost daughters. Your husbands and wives. Your parents long gone. Come and aks me. I will not run out of this power. This is not a limited offer. This is permanent, and repeatable. There is no rush, and there is nothing you can't aks me for. Take your time, and aks for anything. People of the world, I 'ave jus' one question for y'all…"
When the site Ultimate Central began giving people incredible abilities, its creator, Ultimate E created a team of heroes to bring justice to the world and deal with the astounding effects of the site. That team rebelled against Ultimate E and dedicated themselves to protecting Earth from all superhuman threats. They are the Avatars.
~ NURHACHI PRESENTS ~
ULTIMATE CENTRAL
THE FANFIC
"WHAT IF YOU NEVER HAD TO SAY GOODBYE?"
Volume 6, Issue 47, By Bass
The Avatars roll call
DIrishB - recreational marijuana user and historical mastermind, he has the power to control plantlife and vegetation
Icemastertron - the team's secretary and accountant, who needs to use his ice control powers in order to finance the Avatar's binging
Nurhachi - arguably the possessor of the strangest superpower of all - prehensile blood - he is the team's moral and artistic compass
ProjectX2 - the rock-skinned old-timer who's random thought patterns make him a terrific lateral thinker and strategist
The Man Without Fear - the team's maverick leader, with heighetened senses, capable of powerful energy blasts from his eyes
Ultimate Gambit - decisive, repentant, and hedonistic hero who has the disconcerting power to make anything he touches explode
Ultimate Central
It's probably harder to get into Ultimate Central than it is to escape it. Key-codes, key-cards, key-words, yet ironically, no actual keys. The government observers have been in Ultimate Central eight days, and they've already managed to create a level of bureaucratic controls and regulations that makes Icemastertron chafe. He walks into the main Ultimate Central database and sees the government researchers and observers. Biston, one of these such people, is always pleasant with a smile, hiding the power play going on between him and Icemastertron. At this moment, he's currently hard at work with a su doku book.
Biston: "Hallo Ice. How're you doing?"
Icemastertron: "Trying to get used to having to remember passwords to get into my room."
Biston: "Not everyone wants a repeat of that whole 'Bigby' incident."
Icemastertron: "Yes, he only managed to wrest control of the couple of safeguards we had in place. Imagine if he'd been able to wrest so many more."
Biston: "Is there something you wanted?"
Icemastertron: "Not particularly. I assume you're on a break."
Biston: "No."
Icemastertron: "Then that so doku book is for all the keycodes for this place that need remembering."
Biston: "I like puzzles. Smaller ones get my brain going for the bigger ones. Like this place."
Icemastertron: "And the puzzle here?"
Biston: "This place is a contradiction. It's light-years ahead of us in technology and yet it feels – impossibly ancient."
Icemastertron: "Feels?"
Biston: "All hypotheses start with just a hunch. And it's not just me. A whole bunch of us are feeling it. Especially when you step into cyberspace. Haven't you felt it?"
Icemastertron: "If I went into cyberspace, I probably didn't notice, what with being too busy saving the world."
Biston: "Shame. You might have learned something."
Icemastertron: "This whole place comes from the alien civilization Ultimate E comes from, er… you know? I don't think he ever told us. Regardless, perhaps in an 'impossibly ancient' time, they were already far more advanced than us."
Biston: "All our tests show this technology has been recently built."
Icemastertron: "E couldn't have assembled it when he got here?"
Biston: "That doesn't explain the feeling of age. If it was just me, fair enough, but it's pretty much everyone. It just… I don't know."
Icemastertron: "Well that's great then. Have you thought about actually going back into cyberspace to solve this conundrum?"
Biston: "It's not a good idea. These lurkers – they're getting more aggressive and more frequent than before – when we can tell they're even there. They move in large clumps, hold certain areas, come at go at nearly regular intervals."
Icemastertron: "They're organized."
Biston: "But they weren't."
Ultimate Gambit: "Ice! Goddamn locks…"
Icemastertron: "Hmm?"
Ultimate Gambit tries to get into the room, but keeps hammering the wrong code into the keypad.
Ultimate Gambit: "Ah, hell with this. ICE!"
Icemastertron: "What?"
Ultimate Gambit: "IT'S SLIMJIM!"
Mount Sinai
Slimjim: "Avatars."
Slimjim sits amongst his many followers on a makeshift throne of cushions within a new temple-tent built for him. He rests inside it, in the shade. It lacks four walls, but it does its job. The Avatars stand in front of him, surrounded by news reporters who want the story, soldiers and police keeping the peace, and civilians all desperate to ask Slimjim.
Slimjim: "What can I do for you?"
The Man Without Fear winces.
Nurhachi: "Give yourself up."
Slimjim looks to his associates, including his Death Knights who smirk.
Slimjim: "For what?"
Nurhachi: "Your tricking these people."
Slimjim: "Am I?"
ProjectX2: "What do you want? Is this how you're going to take over the world?"
Slimjim: "I c'n grant independence to any I bring back. You' seen this with Thee Great One and my Death Knights. I'm doing this to all the time now. It's easier on me. And it's good for everyone else."
Icemastertron: "What you're doing isn't right."
Slimjim: "Why? I'll talk to anyone. I'm not discriminatin'. An' I ain't charging. It's all free. It's all fair."
Nurhachi: "And who got you all this stuff? This little shack? All this food?"
Slimjim: "Don't you donate to church?"
ProjectX2: "So this is it?"
Slimjim: "Please foo'. If I wanted money and riches, I wouldn't take the scraps from the tables of the poor. I'm doin' this because it's right. An' until you got something sayin' it ain't how 'bout you let some other folks through? They be needin' an audience wit' me, mo' than you."
The Man Without Fear: "We'll be back."
Slimjim: "Make sure y'all get approval from the Man next time."
As they teleport, Slimjim grins. And another family go to him, with offerings, asking for the return of a lost beloved.
It will be granted.
The World
The lost family member, too long gone, or so recently departed, returns to its family, its friends, and its lovers. Happy memories are reborn and relived, and for one brief moment there is no more dread, no more pain, no more sorrow. Everything is as it was. As it should be. This scene of reunion, is so many times replayed each day by those fortunate enough to reach Slimjim and ask for his blessing.
Though not all such reunions are happy ones. Mothers missing their sons have them return, but the lovers their sons once had are now betrothed to another. Lives have moved on, and not everyone is content to return to the lives they left so long ago.
And to the other end of lives, there are those who have returned, dead from their own luxuries, who fail to learn the lessons of their past and replay their old mistakes. The old wounds open, and everything is as it was.
Victims resurface with testimonies that perhaps, no one thought they would hear. But are their testimonies legal? Debates echo through litigation halls, and crimes unsolved are soon solved by those who would take the law into their own hands. Circles of blood, recurring and eternal, run round the walls of 'civilised' society.
But these are not the only returning conflicts. Gangland turfs and demilitarized zones, hostile areas and lost territory, flare up and fighting begins again. With each side calling on Slimjim to resurrect their allies, and their enemies do the same. A eternal, and perpetual conflict beckons, a stagnant present set so heavily in the past.
There are those who return who preach of the future – of afterlives both hellish and divine. Some want to return, and others refuse to ever go back. And there are some, who claim there is nothing beyond. But for many of those returned, this missing period of time will haunt them today and tomorrow as their memory haunted those they left behind.
Religion settles back into tired old arguments of who is right and who is wrong, all the time losing sight of the future, the one thing it is meant to help us achieve. Though, it is not religion's fault. Everytime it tries to fly, and move forward, someone will hold it back, mired in mud and dirt. Sometimes this is from without, and sometimes from within. Sometimes on large scales, and sometimes solely within the balance of one's own soul – of the heart and the feather.
Many condemn Slimjim for acting like God, for using his powers so recklessly, so whimsically, and with such haughtiness. Such arrogance. And others praise him for the same reason.
Historians and archaeologists look to the past with more vigour then they had before. Which notable figures from history would grant us the greatest knowledge? The greatest boon? What would great inventors say of the internet? What would they do with it? What unfinished works could be completed? What truths have been lost in the past? What lessons have we forgotten? So many questions, and the desire, not to discover and understand the forthcoming answers, but to be told them simply and plainly. It may be easy, but it lacks process, it lacks discovery. When past and present collide, there can be no future.
No tomorrows.
A world on such momentous change from the transitory to the eternal, the end of time, the loss of the future and the merging of past and present is enough to drive many mad. And mad they go. Rumours and terrors of Armageddon, of the rise of the dead on the lands of the living, night terrors not seen since Slimjim's last global appearance, resurface along with all the happiness and wonder of recurrence. Perhaps it is the end of the world, some say. Perhaps it is apocalypse. And those who point this out are quick to fall in camps of definition – for apocalypse has two meanings; destruction, and revelation. And with that, two new religions are borne, by those who see this new world as pain, and those who see it as pleasure.
Escalation of fear, escalation of happiness, brings with them only more desire. The world first turns back only a few years, then a decade. Soon, the clock turns back more and more. The impact of one life returned impacts many more, perhaps unfavourably so, and whose wish should be satisfied? Those who desire return? Or those who desire absence? The further back the person comes from, the more relevant the answer. And how long will it take until someone calls Slimjim and on the mountain, demands for their saviour, their leader, their paragon to return? And if this paragon is a devil to others? How long until Joseph Stalin is asked to be brought back to us? How long until Adolf Hitler? And with each of them, will they not bring back another? Can the Roman Empire return in its glory? Can Jesus?
And where will they stay? How many people can Earth, now so small, truly hold? 7 billion? 8 billion? A dozen billion? Two dozen? How long until our past catches up with our present? Perhaps years. Perhaps decades. The time is sure to come. And one thing we all now know – we will be around to see it.
Death is no longer an escape from the future. The future is here. And it is unnervingly familiar.
Not that any of this matters. Not that anything matters. Not so long as you have someone willing to climb a mountain and say your name.
Mount Sinai
The Man Without Fear: "Everyone step back. Slimjim. You're coming with us."
Slimjim: "I never would've thought Ultimate E and Doctor Strangefate would have more manners than y'all."
Icemastertron: "'Please'".
Slimjim and Icemastertron glare at one another.
Slimjim: "Where exactly will you take me?"
Icemastertron: "Harder to reach than a mountain."
Slimjim: "And if I say 'no'? If I ask for a reason?"
Nurhachi: "We'll give you one."
Slimjim eyes the Avatars. The people adorning the mountain, seeking an audience with Slimjim, look on. Some are quiet, anxious as they verge on a historical precipice. Others yell support of the Avatars. And others still cry out and tell the Avatars to go.
Slimjim: "This is unanimous?"
No answer.
At least, not in words. Nurhachi glares. Ultimate Gambit looks to the others. ProjectX2 looks down and into his chest. The Man Without Fear's eyes are glassy. Icemastertron checks the others to see they're all together in mind. And DIrishB takes deep breaths.
Slimjim: "You don't even know what y'all doin'. What hypocrites."
Icemastertron: "Hypocrites?"
Slimjim: "No one can drink from the immortal well, save Rene?"
DIrishB: "We didn't ask for Rene to come back. You brought him back. As a slave."
Slimjim: "Fair's fair. The dead should stay dead."
DIrishB: "Indeed."
Slimjim: "Save the odd exception."
Icemastertron: "Rules are made to be broken."
Slimjim: "Like human rights? Fair trial? I wonder exactly what crime I committed. I wonder, just what is your authority?"
Nurhachi: "We're the ones who can do the job."
Slimjim: "An' what exactly made you decide to do this job now? Two weeks after I started? Was it the Xxx-treme blood sports? The killing for fun, for thrills? The entertainment of death and pain? Because let me tell you, I'm happy to keep bringing those guys back to life, no matter how many times they kill themselves by jumping out of a plane without a parachute. They make me laugh. Or maybe it's all those near-nuclear wars in an attempt to stop the 'zombie-plague', the ragnarok the loud minority fears. Maybe its defending Neo-Nazis who are attacked for wanting Hitler back that got your back up."
ProjectX2: "Keep it up. The more you talk, the more bruises you'll have when we take you back to Central."
Slimjim: "I didn' think you'd be here. What was it you were calling my idea the other day? 'The greatest boon mankind has ever been offered.' I gotsta aks – is boon a real word?"
ProjectX2: "It's a gift."
Slimjim: "So it is."
Ultimate Gambit: "With too high a cost."
Slimjim: "Still haven't forgiven me for that little escapade?"
Ultimate Gambit: "The world's a better place without you, Slimjim."
Slimjim: "But is it so bad wit' me?"
Icemastertron: "You're trying to create a world completely dependent on you."
Slimjim: "And the bad part is?"
There is a pause. No one wants to make the first move.
Slimjim: "And the Man Without Fear? Nothin' to say?"
The Man Without Fear has much to say. Very much indeed. But the things he would say are of two conflicting ideas, one that lies with the Avatars, and one that betrays them this very moment. And if he were to speak, he is unsure which would be said.
So he says nothing.
The Avatars and Slimjim, backed by his Death Knights stare across at each other, eyes unflinching. A refusal to back down, a strong conviction rises like hot air, and some is just smoke.
Slimjim: "If you want me… take me. I won't fight. It is no longer my way. If not, then let these people through. There's something they've all lost – that I can give."
Playing into the hands of someone you abhor is a mistake one lives with for a long time. But it is preferable to the regret of not doing the very thing you know needs to be done. The Avatars would save the world. This would be a fair price.
DIrishB, Ultimate Gambit, and Nurhachi walk up to Slimjim and his Death Knights, with a transporter set to the holding cells of Ultimate Central. The shouts of the crowd grow louder and louder in protest. Much louder.
And a glass bottle shatters on DIrishB's face. Cut and bleeding, he drops the floor, and the people riot.
Yet the Death Knights do not move. Nor does Slimjim.
But they smile like the Cheshire cat.
Icemastertron calls for people to stop and freezes the air, but the blood is too boiled in the people. DIrishB is disorientated, and ProjectX2 runs up to him and covers him with his rock-skinned body. Ultimate Gambit weaves and dodges as best as he can, for in such close quarters his explosions would be too dangerous. Nurhachi tries to use his blood as a barrier, but there is not nearly enough to stop the tide. The Man Without Fear uses his eye beams so lightly as only to push, but he, like his friends, are pulling back, and their adversaries are not.
The people even fight amongst themselves, and the riot grows. Further up, and further down the mountain the frenzy spreads, and at the heart of it all, the Avatars.
Pounced on and beaten, the Man Without Fear grows insistent. Assertive. He sees so many options closing before him, and so he does what he must.
Pushing people to one side, and vaulting others, he runs across the rioting mob, and moves to Slimjim, the transporter ready in his hand. Running across a mob, however agile he may be, is never easy, and he slips and falls – at Slimjim's feet. He reaches for the transporter – but he's dropped it. Somewhere. Now, most likely trodden on. The other Avatars are being pushed back farther and farther. And Slimjim waves.
POP
A small explosion appears in the mob, a startling bark, but little bite. Ultimate Gambit has created a thin but vacant line between him and The Man Without Fear. And in the second it lasts, he throws his transporter to The Man Without Fear.
He catches it.
He steps up to Slimjim, who simply looks at The Man Without Fear with a knowing smirk. The Death Knights stand and watch.
The Man Without Fear hesitates.
Nurhachi: "DO IT!"
His mind running through ideas and counter-ideas, the Man Without Fear knows it's not the time, and almost as if on auto-pilot, he slaps the transporter on Slimjim.
He disappears.
And the Avatars with him.
Ultimate Central
Slimjim is in a holding cell. The Avatars lick their wounds. And Biston storms to them.
Biston: "How could you?! Look!"
On every news channel the world over, is a horrific scene.
Those who died – have died again. All of them. All those Slimjim returned – are gone. Save his Death Knights.
Ultimate Gambit: "The bastard did that on purpose."
DIrishB: "You sure?"
ProjectX2: "Doesn't matter. It's going to be our fault."
Biston: "The UN has told me that you are in violation of human rights, you're holding Slimjim without trial and for no crime! You will turn Slimjim and Ultimate Central over to the UN, and you'll face a hearing."
Icemastertron: "Get out of here. Take all your numbers, keys, and locks with you."
Biston: "That's a mistake."
The Man Without Fear: "So is staying."
The Avatars, through sheer force of will, expunge the government scientists and observers, and they take the security and bureaucratic measures with them.
Across the world, there is a call for the Avatars' blood.
ProjectX2: "What did we just do?"
They are heroes. Friends. Icons. Avatars.
They are hated.
THE END
NEXT ISSUE – TOG'S MIGHTY PLAN OF DOOM
Epilogue 1 – A Break
Icemastertron: "MWOF. You come back soon right?"
The Man Without Fear: "I just need the walk."
DIrishB: "You're taking all your things."
The Man Without Fear: "Only the things I need."
ProjectX2: "You got the transporter?"
The Man Without Fear: "And the pager."
Nurhachi: "We did the right thing."
The Man Without Fear: "Guys. I'll be back when you need me. I'm gonna check in with Houde, see the Sub-nics. I know I'm leaving you in the lurch…"
Ultimate Gambit: "We can look after ourselves. It's just hard to say good bye."
The Man Without Fear: "Yes it is. … So, I'll see you soon."
The Man Without Fear leaves Ultimate Central and the Avatars behind him, taking along all those possessions he needs.
And in his room, hidden away in a now locked draw, hidden in a cabinet is a photo. Of The Man Without Fear.
And his best friend, Long Shot Jim Lee.
Epilogue 2 – Coming and Going
In a secret location, DIrishB meets with Ultimate Scarlet Witch.
Ultimate Scarlet Witch: "The world's not been kind to you."
DIrishB: "We're finished."
Ultimate Scarlet Witch: "This game again."
DIrishB: "I meant the Avatars."
Ultimate Scarlet Witch: "Really."
DIrishB: "I can feel it. It's been happening for a while now."
Ultimate Scarlet Witch: "So maybe you should leave them."
DIrishB: "I've been thinking about that."
Ultimate Scarlet Witch: "You'll be happier. And I have some friends you can meet. A whole new bunch. We can make the world a happier place. We've got what we need to do it."
DIrishB: "I know. And I've always thought of myself as someone who gives to those who need the most."
The two look at each other.
DIrishB: "I'll miss you."
And he leaves. Back to Ultimate Central.
Epilogue 3 – Hello
The Red Star, or the Red Moon, is moving closer to Earth each day. The tides have begun to shift every so slightly. But more disturbing than its presence is that something has been sent from it. Not a person, nor a thing, but a frequency. Information. A message.
And those who have it, know not what it says.
