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#8
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“Changers and Changes”
Nevada, the former Engineer's Nano-Garden
The Bleed Mongers made their way forwards. Something was happening across the planet, and the Authority couldn't leave these things on their own to lend a hand. Nature was going wild around them, winds throwing hot air upwards and downwards, plants flowering and then dying almost immediately.
“Damnit, I wish the Doctor were here,” Jack said, covering his face with the sleeve of his jacket to protect him from the sand. He was already starting to feel the effects of the nature around him, let alone the distinctive calls of concern from every major city he'd ever visited – Even San Francisco was concerned, worried for him more than itself.
She was like that, like a concerned mother figure.
“I doubt even he'd know what's going on here,” Shen added. Grounded in weather like this, it made her nervous. She wasn't designed for ground to ground combat. She was a feather-coated warhead to be aimed at someone, not a martial artist the way Midnighter was. At least they had the added bonus of replacing two of their most powerful members, Jenny Quantum and the Doctor*, with two equally, if not differently powered individuals.
*See Authority #2 and #7 respectively – Storming Ed
Stood next to Apollo, nearly the same height as the Golden Man, was John Cumberland, the High. A hero long thought dead thanks to him exploding across the forcefield known as the “Stormdoor” back in the days of Jenny Sparks, and by his side, holding his hand in her strong grip, was the warrior known as Rite.
She was a powerful woman, strong and an expert tracker. She would almost make up for the lack of the Doctor with her own connection to nature – however, as much as she was able to listen to it and read the signs, she couldn't manipulate it the way Jeroen did.
It had started a few hours ago – a normal Authority related matter. Something was making its way through The Bleed, something that appeared to be based on a very common theme. The majority of the Authority's battles these last few months had been against versions of themselves or versions of people and heroes they knew, or did know. Twisted versions of Hawksmoor, parasites from The Bleed that came in the form of former Monarchy members, chronally unhinged memories from the Midnighter and Apollo's past – They all made up the bulk of their adventures.
In many ways, the forms of the Bleed Mongers before them related back to their first days as members of Stormwatch. Jack and Shen knew exactly what they were looking at, while Midnighter, Apollo and the Engineer could only remember the cautionary tales from Jack and Shen.
John and Rite just looked confused, and more than a little scared.
“ARUCK!” Angie screamed, as she dropped onto her knees, clutching the sides of her head, nano-bot filled dribbles of blood leaking from her ears and her eyes.
“Angie?!” Jack yelled, running to her side, and rubbing her shoulders.
“The atmosphere, Jack. The Atmosphere just changed.” She looked up at him, eyes full of fear, as the first member of the Bleed Mongers ran forwards.
He looked like he was made from White Noise, his feet barely touching the ground as he barrelled towards the grouping. Shooting past Angie and Jack, he lashed at them with the air around him, knocking them both onto their backs.
“I know what he is supposed to be,” John said, pushing in front of Rite, preparing himself to take off, until a leather-clad hand pushed itself against his chest.
“So do I. He's mine,” Midnighter said, pushing forwards. He leapt through the air, leg outstretched and exploding through the white-noise man’s head, knocking Midnighter into a spin, as he hit the floor rolling, and causing the body of the man to fly backwards and skid on its back.
“Haall, look what he did to the Blind?” one of the mongers said, who appeared to be little more than a cloud of ash… John gulped. He knew what the Blind was capable of, and he knew this version would stop at nothing to win the fight.
“Why are they here?” Rite asked. John looked at the sky, which was crimson in colour, as the rain that closely resembled blood mixed with acids fell on their heads in torrents. He looked at her, his soaking wet hair coating his forehead. “The world is about to break, Rite. I can feel it, so can Jack and the Engineer. They want to be at the last place where technology will survive.”
Rite looked at him for a moment, before narrowing one of her eyes while she concentrated.
“Something's happening at the Poles,” she said, shaking her head and closing her eyes as though something annoying, a dull throb in the back of her head was becoming more and more painful. “Feels like it's building up to something.”
“I feel it too,” Shen said, watching as the Midnighter and the Blind duelled. Their fists bouncing against each other, each blow so loaded with power and skill that it knocked them both off their feet every time they collided. “It's moving towards us now. I can feel it displacing the air.”
Rite looked to John, who took a step forwards, as Jack began barking orders.
“High, Rite – The machine guy. Shen – The ash cloud man, I've got dibs on the guy in the lab coat. Apollo, you've got the woman. Sorry big guy.” Jack flashed him an apologetic smile. Trying to recapture the old feeling of excitement and wonder that always came with a battle, something that had been lost in the grim and gritty times they were facing currently.
Charging forwards, Jack leapt into the air, throwing his fist downward towards the man wearing the lab coat. Man in the loosest sense of the word, as the only telling sign of its sex was the large organ that dangled between its legs, as the creature was naked underneath the lab coat.
“What are you supposed to be, the Surgeon? The Anaesthetist?” Jack quipped, as his fist was caught in mid air, sending Jack flying over the creature’s shoulder into the sopping sand. Jack looked down at the surface of the desert where he had landed shaking the sand from his hair, as the creature turned to face him, his voice like three or four men and women's talking at once.
“The Doctor, actually,” it said, reaching down and grabbing Jack with one of its three hands, a central hand grabbing at him from the creatures chest, its fingers all very similar to surgical instruments. Jack scowled, and kicked into the creature’s massive sexual organs with his metal plated foot.
“You don't deserve that name,” Jack spat, as the Doctor dropped him, reaching for his genitals, “and you especially don't go into a fight with your biggest weakness exposed so obviously...What the hell are you doing to yourself?”
The Doctor smiled, as he peeled back the flesh to reveal a multi-part surgical drill and exploration device.
“In my reality, pornography became out-dated the moment sex stopped being about dominance and pleasure. The next stage of sexual re-education was to install technology into organs – We call it Chimeric-Sex,” The Doctor began, as the drill whirred into life, and laser-targeting dots fired flechettes from the centre of the organ.
Jack vaulted and cartwheeled out of the way, disgust on his face.
“And I thought my penis was bad,” Jack said. His own genitals had been completely remodelled by the aliens that gave him his powers – Although, it was hard to say if they were for a purpose or not.
“How are you feeling?” The Doctor asked, as lasers bored holes through the Nano-trees behind him. The Doctor was right to ask – His body was ruined inside nature. Every moment he spent outside of an urban environment was slowly killing him. He knew that he couldn't sustain the fight for much longer, but communications with The Carrier, at least from him, appeared to be down.
“Damnit,” Jack said. He was going to have to end this quickly. Though he didn't know how. The Doctor was making it difficult to get in close, as he spread his lasers apart, tearing through the bush. There were at least six or seven of them, as well as the whirling flechettes. Jack was starting to lose his temper.
He hit the surface of the sand, and called a protective womb over himself, to pull him and transport him to a city. However, having complete control over the womb, it moved under the ground and then stopped a few metres below the surface. Preparing himself, Jack took a deep breath before his lungs began to fail, and powered himself up through the surface.
As he shot upwards, he flattened his hand and threw it up, slicing clear through the technology/biology meld that the Doctor was holding between his legs, letting it drop limply to the floor as the Doctor screamed in agony.
“This is how we make pleasure in this reality,” Jack said, thrusting his foot out with all his might at the apex of his leap, kicking the Doctor's head clean off.
“What the hell is that,” Jack asked, in relation to what he was feeling over his body. The womb beneath him reached up and ensnared him, pulling him down beneath the surface.
“What the Hell?” he exclaimed as it sealed over the top of him and began to pull him away from the situation.
“Damnit! Let me go! Angie! Apollo, a little help!” he screamed from inside his concrete prison. Nobody could hear as he was already being pulled half a mile away towards his main protectorate and the city that loved him as a mother. San Francisco.
She was calling him home – She was scared and needed her Champion.
<If you can hear me, I've been pulled away. San Fran is worried, she's taking me home. The Carrier isn't listening to me, so I can't Door away. I'll be back as soon as she lets me,” Jack said through the group’s radio-telepathy. However, it fell on deaf ears. None of the other members of the group could hear him. The EMP had already struck.
The EMP shot through the air and Angie could feel it's oncoming like the precursor symptoms of a headache. She felt it building up, as Wish pulled at the Apollo's mind, with the psionic claws that manifested from behind her head, scratching at his face and body, tearing at his resolve and attempting to influence him sexually. What she didn't realise was that Apollo only had eyes for one man, the Midnighter.
His eyes flared as he blasted her in the midsection, sending the raven haired woman flying backwards, landing in the rain soaked sand heavily, with plumes of burning clothing and hair wafting from her body. She sat up, her pale complexion darkening underneath the onslaught of the rain.
“Why won't you want me?” she asked him, as he took a few steps closer, only to find her up to her full height, which had to be nearly seven feet. She was a beautiful woman, a perfect symmetry between her features, almost as though it had been carefully sculpted, perfect lips and sparkling eyes. Apollo looked at her for a moment, his Halo flaring as he hit her squarely in the stomach, lifting her off the ground with the impact.
“Because I don't go for your sort,” he said with the effort of the punch punctuating his voice. Apollo's concentration was removed for a moment, as he heard the wails of Angie, as the EMP that had tickled the implants in his body and made him feel as though his Halo was made from fire instead of re-directed photons off his hair, tore her armour away, and left her unprotected as her enemy made his way towards her.
“Angie!” He yelled, as the intangible hands of Wish shot inside his skull and rummaged around to find something to manipulate. “GRAAGHH!”
“Do shut up, Darling. If I wanted you to make a noise, it would be you fussing and flustering about how much I make your privates yearn for mine,” she spat, with little or no love in her voice despite the context of the conversation.
Apollo dropped to his knees, the overwhelming sensation of someone inside his head driving him not only to distraction, but also making him feel physically and emotionally sick. He couldn't bare it. His implants were going insane within his skull.
His Halo flared and fell apart around him, photon's dropping onto his shoulders and setting his normally retardant costume alight, all the while paralysed by Wish's claws in his brain, saliva dribbling down his chin onto the floor before him, along with the mess he'd made in the bottom of his costume.
His eyes flicked from side to side as he tried to make sense of what was going on. The Radio-Telepathy between team-members was down, and he noticed in the corner of his eye, Midnighter was receiving a kicking from the Blind.
He felt the anger bubbling within him, as he forced himself to look up at Wish.
“I know what you're thinking, Apollo, but I've broken your implants. You can't do what you think you can do any more. You're mine now, I'm going to make you my little play thing, make you do things to me that you never wanted to do, and never will, because that's exactly how I am.”
“A complete bitch?” he asked, as he forced himself to throw his hands up, gripping her wrists weakly.
“HA! Where are your vaunted powers now, Apollo? Drinking in the sunlight, are we? Or have you noticed you can't do that anymore?” she asked, cupping his chin and pushing him backwards into the sand, which was quickly becoming saturated and flooding. Apollo lay for a moment, trying to focus on what was above him.
No sun, but maybe he could use something else.
He didn't need the sun. All he needed was to save his husband. He grabbed a handful of sand and hurled it upwards, hitting Wish in her beautiful face. She recoiled, stunned by what had happened, scraping the sediment from her features as Apollo picked up the nearest heavy object, a fragment of rock, and smashed her square in the nose with it, breaking it in four places, and spattering the cartilage inside against the front of her face.
She barely screamed as she went down, holding her face, as tears mingled with the rain and the spurting blood that was leaking from three separate ruptured blood vessels.
“My Face. My Fa…” Her words were cut short as Apollo brought the rock down again, smashing the left side of her jaw and breaking it free from it's moorings, finally hitting her a third time, at which point she sputtered some blood and lay still.
He leaned forwards on his knees, dropping the stone by the side of her head, before turning with anger and malice towards the Blind, who was kicking Midnighter in the stomach as he lay on the floor.
He was torn now. Did he rush to save his husband who could be moments away from dying, or did he attempt to save his friend, who was equally as close to death mere metres away with no meta-human abilities. Apollo cursed himself as he grabbed the rock and ran towards Midnighter.
In moments like this, it all came down to who you loved more, and for Apollo, there was no question that when the end of the world came, he was going to be with his husband.
Angie looked up at the man before her. He was tall, and dark skinned. Everything but his face was covered in semi-transparent chunks of armour. She would have loved to have been able to analyse it and understand what it was, but the EMP had knocked all the nano-bots inside her body unconscious, perhaps for a moment or perhaps forever. She wouldn't know until they came back online.
“Let me guess,” Angie began, looking up at the man before her. He smiled, and nodded. “Engineer, right? You've got the look down. Interesting armour. Forgive me if I can't give you an accurate guess, my own technology appears to be having a blue-screen moment,” Angie joked. The man smiled.
“I don't know what that is, but from where I am from, technology is different. It works in a different way.” He glanced over his shoulder as Apollo charged across the sand towards the fighting Blind and Midnighter.
“It appears as though you are unable to be rescued, and I would imagine, you are unable to fight?” he asked. Angie swallowed heavily, and nodded, hoping that this man, who appeared to be at least somewhat coherent in his manners, would take pity.
“Then my fight is not with you,” he said, putting his palm flat against his chest. “We are called the Changers, Angelica Spica. We are here to save this oasis, because we have seen the future of this world.”
Angie nodded, getting to her feet slowly where she had fallen over in fear, using a technological tree as something to pull herself up from.
“Your world is going to die, you are going to be removed, and this Oasis, will die with it. We cannot allow that to happen, Angelica Spica. We cannot allow this world’s single greatest achievement to die without being tasted by our world, by other worlds.”
Angie's jaw dropped as he explained. It was obvious. It didn't matter what you were, or who you were, at the end of the day, if something was about to die and you take it away it's not a valiant effort of proactive conservation, not unless it was an actual animal that was going to become extinct from human efforts.
This was meta-humans poaching weapons from other worlds. Unoriginal meta-humans.
“That's...terrifyingly unoriginal, and makes a huge amount of sense considering,” Angie began.
The Engineer's brows knit together. “What do you mean?” he asked, moving closer to Angie, who backed against a tree.
“You take your names from old Stormwatch revolutionaries, you take your time and come when we're vulnerable, when we don't have Jenny or the Doctor. If you wanted this stuff you could have come at any time, but you waited for us to be at our weakest, and then you tell me that you're doing it to save it as a unique wonder?” Angie shook her head in disbelief.
“If you expect me to believe that then you're a complete fucking moron,” Angie said, straightening her back as the Engineer's expression grew dark. He raised his hand to -
The High shot through the air towards the Engineer and Angie, carrying Rite underneath his arms. He let her go as he made his pass over the top of the pair, and let his payload drop towards them. Rite launched her legs downwards, as she drove into the back of the Engineer, knocking him into the ground, a few inches to the left of Angie, who leapt the opposite way.
“Christ! You took your time!” she screamed, rolling awkwardly on her side. Rite said nothing as she shot a disapproving look towards Angie.
“And you shouldn't have been so inflammatory,” Rite said, throwing her fist into the Engineer's chest, which instinctively grew upwards and curled around her arm.
“Bio-Esoteric Empathic Armour. I control it with my emotions, and I can feed off yours!” the Engineer exclaimed, as his fist exploded upwards, jagged edges tearing from each knuckle, as it drove into Rite's cheek bone, launching her off his body, and cutting her face open.
“Rite!” Angie yelled, as the High made another pass, ignoring Rite and Angie, and heading towards Apollo and Midnighter, who were getting decked by the Blind. He dove downwards through the air, shooting a look back towards Rite, who was again engaging the enemy. He afforded himself a quick smile, as he ploughed into the Blind, driving him into the Earth, and downwards into it, creating a trench that was quickly beginning to fill with water.
“I won't let you do this,” John said, his fist hitting the Blind in the side of the face, knocking lumps of flashing white-noise skin off and into the dirt.
“...Why...are you here...anyway...” the Blind managed, each word preceded by a sucking noise, as he had lost part of his cheek in the High's initial punch. Why were they there? Rite had sensed something. Over the last few months, after a battle in the Amazon with an old foe of the High's, as he searched for the one alien-element that could cut through the High's skin, he and Rite had been re-united. After a week of spending time together, they eventually consummated their attraction and had been almost inseparable since.
Three days ago, Rite had begun to have visions while she slept. Initially, John shrugged them off, but these seemed to hold some weight. They were troubling her. Given her connection to nature, John had offered that they visit the Authority, much to his chagrin, but he knew their Doctor would know more about the situation than anyone else – Especially if it was related to the Earth.
However, tracking them down…
“Would you believe me if I said it was all down to my girlfriend having a bad dream?” John said, a half smile filling the corner of his face.
“Not...really,” the Blind managed, before John pulverised his face, sticky white blood clinging to his knuckles as he looked back at Apollo, who was cradling Midnighter in his arms.
“Are you two alright?” he asked, shooting over to them.
“He's hurt,” Apollo said, looking up at the High, his tears were washed away by the rain that still fell. He'd never seen Midnighter like this. He'd always managed to get out of most situations with his own unique brand of violence. He normally killed the threat before it had a chance to hurt him, “He's never been hurt. I don't know what to do.”
John looked from Midnighter, and his shallow breathing, to his girlfriend who was currently being beaten by the Engineer.
“Just...stay there. We'll try and find something in a minute, I just need to help Rite...” Apollo leapt to his feet, grabbing hold of the High's cape, and pulling him back.
“We need to do something now! There's barely any of us left!” he yelled, gripping the front of the High's costume. John batted his hands away, and looked him dead in the eyes.
“I'll end this, Apollo. I will. You just need to give me a minute. Then we can save Midnighter.”
Apollo released him slowly, and returned to his husband, allowing the High to take care of his business.
Shen screamed as she hit the ground before Apollo and Midnighter. Blood seeped from her nose, as she wiped at it furiously with the back of her hand. Above her, the man made from Ash floated down. He'd already covered Shen in Ash, giving her perfect black hair a gray look to match the rest of her body.
The dirty knives and shards of glass and lord knows whatever else that orbited around him increased their speed as he moved towards Shen and the husbands.
“How exactly do you fight someone made from Ash?” Shen asked, her breathing ragged. A body slumped against the ground in front of her, causing her to inhale sharply and hold her breath, as she looked up at its source.
The High.
“You show him that every one of his team-mates is dead,” he said, slowly, pointing towards to two burned pinholes in the back of the Engineer's head. “You show him that it doesn't matter if he wants to continue to fight. Eventually, he's going to be killed the same way the rest of his team-mates were – Brutally.”
Smoke stopped for a moment, looking from Shen to The High, who was quickly backed up by Rite, and the depowered Engineer.
“What's it going to be?”
Smoke looked at the grouping against him before he dissipated into the winds.
“So, at least he'll live to fight another day,” Shen said, coughing into her fist, and getting up slowly, the rain gently washing the ash that still remained on her body off, and whatever was left congealed into a horrific gray mush.
“I don't think we're out of the woods yet,” High said, looking up at the sky, as it appeared to break into three separate weather patterns. Shen clutched the side of her head and winced.
“The world is going insane, High. What the hell are we doing about it?”
John touched her shoulder gently, and gave it a squeeze.
“We go back to my base this time. I have a medical facility. Maybe that'll treat Midnighter and you and Rite before we try and deal with...whatever the damage is exactly.”
“We're disconnected,” Apollo said, “I can't raise Jack or Shen or even Angie over Radio-Telepathy. Or The Carrier. How are we supposed to get away from here now?”
John pointed towards the horizon.
“We walk.”
The Carrier shuddered, as it tried to move through the atmosphere of the Earth. It could barely move through the viscous air, and greenhouse gases that mingled at the ends of the breathable spectrum. The storms were shooting Electromagnetic Pulses at it, and red lightning that shattered areas of its hull quicker than the sentient shift-ship could recover.
Before it knew what had happened, it was listing violently, a gravity-well had opened up within the atmosphere, and was pulling the damaged vessel towards the ocean. The last thing The Carrier heard before it broke the surface of the Atlantic was a gentle whispering by its core.
“Trust me, It'll be alright.”
“Not going to let this happen...” John exclaimed, as he threw his hands up, dropping his Hip-Flask and his cigarette, attempting to save his beloved England from utter destruction. He knew it wouldn't last. Couldn't last. His powers were basic at best, and his knowledge was barely anything at all, at this point.
Beside him stood the Spirit of the Forest, who was using his power to maintain John's power level output. In fact, the people who had attended his funeral, all of them, stood around him, lending their own abilities to John's attempts to stop England being destroyed. The Shifting Man warped the area around them to stave away the worst of the storm, the Man of Animals called upon his abilities to draw the spirits of the Dream-time into England to allow them to be used in John's abilities. Even the Demon from Hell, and the Professor Patrol stood lending their abilities.
“Don't want to worry anyone, but I get the distinct feeling we're going to be playing Knights and Dragons sometime soon,” John said, his arms dropping to his sides, as his power gave up on him. The storm's encroachment grew, as the Professor put his hand on John's shoulder, his Men of Metals stood around him.
“We did the best we could, John. England couldn't ask for more.” As he spoke, he looked up, through the Shifting Man’s displacement, as Big Ben exploded, and fired screaming sentient pieces of itself into the structure of London, the Thames barrier giving up on itself, and flooding the city with millions of gallons of angry, lucid water.
“Yeah. I just don't think that'll ever be good enough for me, Prof.”
“Come in Anyone! This is Palatine Hill! Come in...We need immediate assistance...We're losing altitude quickly,” the Redeemer yelled into the scrying pool. All around him, members of the Paladins were scrambling to their battle stations.
“All ground level Paladins,” he began, yelling into the pool, as its choppy waves focused on individuals that were on the surface of the planet, “this may well be the last thing you ever hear from us. Petrified Girl is attempting to hold the place together, but it's not looking promising. I just want to say, it's been a pleasure working with each and every one of you, and may God be with you, with his blessings...”
The words of the Redeemer trailed off as the formerly Orbital Palatine Hill crashed into the Pyrenes mountain range...
NEXT: THE WORLDSTORM!
Authority Notes:
Well, that's it from me for now. The Authority was a project that I leapt at when I was originally going to start working on it, and quickly fell to the back of the pile. Mostly through fear of how big it was and how little there was of the original characters now that I think about it – Over the years the characters that Ellis introduced through Stormwatch and then through Authority got a little out of hand didn't they? Jeroen became less of a magician and more of a drug-user than ever, Jack became something of a tyrant, Midnighter more bastardish than ever, and Apollo, Shen and Angie all got pushed to the wayside really.
I suppose we have Millar and the second volume of Authority to blame for that, really. One thing that I hoped I could have done, which in retrospect I probably didn't, was try to bring back that sense of wonder and insanity that the Ellis years had. The characters weren't constantly trying to shag each other and take massive amounts of Drugs, and become instant celebrities, they just were and they did their best to save the world – and hopefully, I got some of that across.
Anyway, the Worldstorm is here now, and nothing will ever be the same again for Wildstorm. We're going to have a bloody good go at making it much better than the mainstream's Worldstorm, and hopefully I'll be back at some point with another title for this beautiful universe, that so often gets crapped on. I know that we've got some excellent writers and some cool series within the Wildstorm branch, so I am excited to see what comes of the Worldstorm – Anyway, thanks for reading and I'll see you again somewhere else around here, hopefully.
Thanks,
Ed – June 2010
A JLU WIDLSTORM PRESENTATION
THIS HAS BEEN THE AUTHORITY, AND TURNING HEROES INTO ASSHOLES SINCE 2000.
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