Prologue: Deacon Briars gets the Call

Deacon Briars Apartment
1:15 A.M.
Deacon was watching the taped news when he got a knock at the door. Not expecting visitors, he drew a gun and cautiously went towards the door and peered through the spyhole.
“Who’s there?”
“Probably the only vamp in town who doesn’t want you killed, let me in Deke.”
“Hang on, Preach” Deacon holstered his piece and let in Preach.
“How you’ve been, Preach?”
“Been better, but then the night’s still young. You?”
“Had to wake up early, needed to scout a potential target this evening.”
“Damn, just when I begin to think of you as normal, you have to do something weird like walk in the sun. Sometimes I wish I could do that.”
“Preach, you’re six and a half feet tall, with pale white skin, long fingers, and jutting fangs.”
“So? Compared to some norms out there, I’d be relatively normal. So how was your little stakeout?”
“Relatively normal, except for this thing.”
“What?
“When I was done, as I was heading back to catch a nap, I found this stone.”
“So? You found a stone. Big whoop.”
“Yeah, but this was weird, man. It was perfectly round, no sharp edges or anything. And it changed colors. It was pure black one minute, and then it would turn blue or yellow in an instant.”
“Sounds interesting. Can I sneak a peek at it?”
“No can do. Here’s the other weird thing. As I was looking at it, this kid came out of nowhere and snatched it out of my palm.”
“Whoa! You telling me a human did that?”
“I don’t know, this kid was acting too weird for a norm. And here’s the real strange part. As I was going for my piece to persuade him, he vanished.”
“So? We do that often. Move so fast our prey don’t see a thing.”
“This guy didn’t move fast, he just vanished, like now you see him, now you don’t. Poof.”
“Weird. Whacko could have been a mage, they’re are some of them round here.”
“Maybe, but the thing is..”
RING
Deke went to his phone. When he came back, Preach asked, “That you’re current employer?”
“Yeah, looks like my night’s going to get ugly.”
“How so?”
“The guy I was ghosting? Looks like he’s forming a small army to raise some hell. Apparently he’s now such a threat that the boss wants him wiped promptly.”
“And you’re going into the fray?”
“Yeah. Say Preach, could you do me a favor?”
“Hey man, keep me out of your battles, I ain’t no...”
“Preach, I don’t want you to fight with me, I just want you to get me some info. You know, do that Nosfer-whatever thing you and your friends do.”
“So it’s information on your soon-to-be-meal you want? No prob, Deke.”
An hour later, Preach called back and gave Deacon the info. Around thirty bangers, most norms, and three vampires. Preach called them “Brujahs”, but Deacon didn’t care about what kind of vamp they were. If they were in that gang, they were dead. Deacon went to his “Coffee Table”, the silver coffin he picked up in New Orleans to use as a storage bin for his books and other personal belongings. He reached into the coffin, opened up the secret compartment, and pulled out his supplies. If a war was going to happen, he was going to prepare himself. He remembered the words of his old captain of his infantry back in the war, “I don’t care if you’ve got the biggest set of stones in the world, grunts, if you are not prepared, you are dead!” Deacon took those words to heart. He strapped on a Teflon vest, put on his heavy black sweater, and started to load his guns. Four revolvers, one pair at his sides, another holstered to his back. A sawed off shotgun for close range scrapes. Two Uzi's, each loaded with incendiary clips for the vamps. Spare ammo for the guns. A pack of six titanium stakes were strapped to his leg for the vamps. A bottle of lighter fluid and a matchbook went in his pocket. And a sharpened machete he sheathed at his side. Deacon preferred the “Lumley Method” when disposing of vamps.
As he walked out of his apartment, he caught a glance of himself in the mirror. With his guns strapped to him, black clothes, and his long black trench coat, he looked like one of the characters in a movie he caught a while back. Something about virtual reality and shooting a lot of things. He grinned, said “Whoa” for a cheap chuckle, and went out. He barely made three steps when the world around him changed. It was like the hallway in front of him started to twist and bend in front of him, like it was a picture painted on some rubber that something was twisting this way and that. When it ripped, he stood facing a deep, blue void. He turned to run, but some force grabbed him and flung him towards the rip in the world.
Deacon Briars found himself falling through Infinity.

Inside the Devastator, the heroes all watched with anticipation as Spidercide and T-1000 continued to try and get the interdemensional portal that they had recently acquired to work. Although they had had it for a long time, they had been hesitant to use it, concerned for the safety of whoever may try to use it, but this was a special situation. Even as the figure began to materialize from within the portal, Captain Planet's heart powers confirmed that they had found the right man. This was the one that they were looking for, and they would need his help for their next task. As Deacon Briars stepped out of the portal, he suddenly fell to the floor in pain. Sadly, Spidercide and T-1000, despite some instructions from Reed Richards that they had received last week, still hadn't managed to perfect the portal. As a result, the process had been more painful than anyone would have cared for, especially Deacon, who felt like he had been ripped apart and then had ever atom in his body reassembled and held together by glue.
As Deacon Briars began to recover, he looked around the room to see a group of costumed individuals. One of them, who was standing near the control panels, seemed to resemble the hero Spider-Man from some no name comic book company in his dimension, but with a more bulky, and slightly more scary appearance to him. Next to him, he saw another individual, which he was sure he had seen before in some movie involving killer robots from the future or something like that. Across the room from them, stood what looked like a man made of silver, dressed in a red outfit with green hair. Standing next to him was a tall man dressed in medieval clothing, wearing an awful lot of amulets and carrying a large sword that looked like something someone would find in a museum. Finally, standing near what appeared to be some kind of doorway, was what appeared to be a 15 year old boy, only it looked like his entire left hand had been replaced or transformed into a long blade that he had been using to carve mark into the wall of the room, probably out of boredom.
Suddenly, the one made out of silver walked up to Deacon and spoke.
"Hello Deacon Briars, welcome to Khazan."
Deacon however, was not interested in pleasant welcome. All he knew was it that it was probably these guys fault that he felt so lousy, and since they had interrupted him in the middle of an important mission, he was really pissed off. Deacon quickly pulled out his pistol and held it to Captain Planet's head, demanding to know what was going on. Then, Deacon twitched as his heightened vamp sense detected something. He could hear another heartbeat coming up from behind him. He pulled out another pistol and then pointed it at the figure standing directly behind him. It appeared to be nothing more than a teenager, probably about 16 and a half years of age. However this teenager had a pistol of his own fixed directly between Deacon's eyebrows.
"Hello there. Name's Jimmy. Now drop the piece and the good captain or you can find out just how long it takes for a bullet to kill a person after it has entered the skull."
Deacon however had other plans. He moved fast, faster almost than anyone Jimmy the Dead had ever seen, and rolled away from Jimmy. Jimmy the Dead did not enjoy being taken lightly and rushed forward, tackling Deacon. The two got up and a fight ensued. The two seemed to be evenly matched in terms of raw strength, with Jimmy possessing a slight advantage but Deacon with a definite advantage in terms of skill. As they fought, Jimmy thought to himself, "damn, this guy must be a soldier of some kind in whatever universe T and Spidercide grabbed him from. This isn't even standard military training. Whoever this guy is, he must be an assassin or high ranking official. Sure wish I knew why Captain Planet wants him so badly. The only other people who even know anything about this guy are King Ggnictee and Metamorph." Suddenly, as Jimmy struck out with a kick to the chest, knocking Deacon to the wall, Deacon pulled out another pistol and pointed it at Jimmy's head.
"First person to move and this guy is history. Now someone tell me what the heck is going on, now!"
The heroes all looked at each other. Great. Now what were they going to do?
Little did he notice the thin, bluish film spreading across the floor. He also did not notice that Metamorph was gone until he heard a sound that sounded like "Squrge" plus a weeks work in the BBC's Radiophonic workshop, looked around and saw 3 things that surprised him. The first was Jimmy, moving back 20 feet without apparently moving a muscle. The second was the 15-year old (who, he now noticed, was blue, translucent, had little bubbles floating up through him and occasionally had a goldfish swim through his head) standing in front of him, grinning. The third was that his hand appeared to be a large clove of garlic.
"Oh please," Deke said as he pulled out his shotgun and took 2 shots, 1 blowing up the garlic and another blowing a huge hole through Metamorph's head which abruptly filled in.
"Hey, that's my gimmick!" said the man who looked exactly like Robert Patrick.
"Oh you want some too!" he yelled as he shot him in the chest which bounced back killing a random guy in a Red Shirt who happened to walk by.
"Now for-" he was abruptly cut off due to surprise and due to the giant black claw fastened around his throat. He looked up at an alien that would have made James Cameron wet himself.
"Now," it growled, tightening its grip "Are you prepared to listen to what we have to say?"
"You're in a meta-reality called Khazan," said Captain Planet calmly. "Think of the multiverse being like the spokes in a bicycle wheel. This place" -- Captain Planet motioned to indicate the world around them -- "is the hub."
Deacon frowned. This was getting more and more like that damn movie. "So this is the 'prime' reality?"
"Either that or some kind of mish-mash of them," Captain Planet theorized. "As for what you're doing here, we need your help with a crisis."
"What kinda crisis?" snarled Briars.
"Oh, just something that will threaten the universe as we know it," Cap said coolly.
The look on Briars’ face was worthy of a camera.

"OK, let me get this straight," Deacon said, "you jokers are some sort of inter-dimensional hero squad trying to save the universe."
"Well, the Multiverse actually", Captain Planet replied. “And we already saved it once.”
“Well then, Captain Comic-Book, why the Hell do you need me if you’re all capable of saving it?”
“Because we need help. And that Fate has chosen you to help us.”
“OK then, I’ll bite. Why me?”
“I’ve been monitoring you for quite a while. You are rather unique.”
“How so?”
“You’re a vampire with a mortal spirit. No matter how depraved you could be, you choose to be human. You’re also...”
“Hang on,” the kid called Jimmy said, “you telling me that our new friend here is a Vampire?”
“Yes he is.”
“So that’s how you were able to keep up with me. Interesting. I’ll have to remember that.”
“Hey Cap”, the one who resembled a grim Peter Parker, remarked, “are we going to have some problems with a vampire? I mean, he has to sleep during the day, feed on blood...”
“Deacon is immune to sunlight and he can also eat food, Spidercide. I already packed the kitchens with plasma so he can eat.”
“So I can walk in noon and eat, so what?”
“Please bear with us, Deacon. You have been through a lot and I’m sure it can get confusing. What I‘m trying to get to here is that you are, in all sorts, a man who could have been one of the most evil, destructive forces out there in your dimension, but instead chose to still act like a good man.”
“That, and he found the missing Omni-Gem.” The giant alien said as he turned back into the translucent blue kid from before.
“The what?”
“Here,” Cap said as he turned over his palm, “is an Omni-Gem.”
As he spoke, a large bump formed on his palm. The flesh peeled back to reveal a round gemstone that, although black in color, had sparks of red, blue, yellow, and other colors to it.
“That’s like the stone I found!”
“Yep, and we want you to use the gem you found to help us.”
“Can’t. I don’t have it.”
Captain Planet looked startled. “What! I had a reading that you found it. What happened?”
“Some weird kid grabbed it and vanished. I thought it weird at the time, but with you guys and all this Multiverse talk; it’s not as confusing as before. So, who is this kid and why does he want this gem?”
“I’ve never heard of this one before. And as for the gem, he can’t possibly use it. When they were formed, a restrictive barrier was placed on them. They can only be used in times of darkest need.”
“Say what?”
The large swordsman spoke, “He means that when there is a everything's going to hell, Rapture-type situations, the gem bearer gains powers needed to stop the universe from going tits up.”
“OK, so what do you need from me?”
“First off, we need to find that kid and get that gem back. If somebody were to steal it from him...”
“Or if he managed to break the restriction barrier.”
“Not possible, Metamorph. You’d have to be a extremely powerful magician to stand a chance of messing with the barrier.”
“OK, we get this gem. Then what?”
“Then, Deacon, we save the universe.”
“Uhh, yeah. Look, I’m getting rather thirsty here. If you said that you were monitoring me.”
“I know, in the mess hall I stockpiled some blood packs. You could use those, if you want.”
“Thanks.”
“Just head straight for 10 doors, turn left, and then...”
“Or you could go to the elevator, say “Mess Hall”, and you’re there."
As Deacon went off to get some chow, the new one, the rather average man, questioned Captain Planet.
“So why didn’t you tell him that he was going to be the new member of the squad?”
“Well, T-1000, he’s new here. You can’t just tell some guy you’ve ripped from his world that he’s going to save the universe. You have to break the news in slowly.”
"Let's try to find out just who has the gem,” Metamorph said as he reached into himself and pulled out a primitive tricorder.
"Oy," King Ggnictee said "Doesn't that hurt?"
"Nope, you just create a pocket inside you. It's the equivalent of smuggling drugs inside your stomach only not as messy."
"I've got to try that,” said T-1000.
"Okay," Morph said, "I'll just set this thingy for gems and.." there was a small squeaky noise and he became slightly more translucent "That gem is in the hands of one of the most powerful evil magic geniuses in the multiverse. This guy makes Dr. Doom look like Rincewind. Apparently his name is Z-Mage and he comes from the Gargoyles universe." He paused for effect. "Well," he said, brightening up "I'll be able to test those battlesuits after all. C'mon, I'll show you." He pressed an unnoticed button on the wall and it opened up to reveal a brightly-lit room. "Gentlebeings, I'd like to introduce you to my crack technology team:" at this he indicated 8 beings in lab coats who were clustered around 7 mannequins but turned around when the door opened "Bevyl Lemyensk, Wesley Crusher, Scotty, MacGyver, Q, Iron Man, Steel and Wheeljack."
"Hey, aren't 3 of them dead?"
"Shh, don't tell them that. Show us what progress you've made, guys."
They stepped back to reveal 7 uniforms. Each one consisted of a leather bodysuit much like the ones in the X-Men movie (cough) rip-off (cough) with shiny octitron armor, gauntlets, boots, helmets and gun/ammo belts.
Ever since Captain Planet came to Khazan, he'd been having what was called a "moral dilemma", something practically unknown in his universe. He missed his own world, and hoped the transporter they'd used to summon beings like Deacon and T-1000 could send him back home.
Not that he was motivated by selfishness, of course. It was just that, through his Heart power, he was constantly aware of the Planeteers. Although their rings somehow conjured their elements without him, they couldn't summon him. And aside from this difficulty in dealing with Eco-emergencies, they just plain missed him.
Captain Planet knew he belonged on his Earth, and that the Planeteers needed him. The thing was, his new allies needed him too.
But this new situation with Z-Mage had temporarily decided this inner conflict for him. Straightening himself and speaking in a business-like tone, he asked, "So, what are these new suits for?"
"They’re for protection and so we look like a team instead of a bunch of punks off the street" Metamorph said, "now get yours on."
"Gee, cap you look depressed?" Ggncitee said as he and the captain put on their new suits.
"Yeah, I’m just a little homesick and my Planeteers need me you know? And where am I? Off saving the universe ...again."
"Oh that’s all. I thought it was something serious, listen Cap you have to save the universe or your Planeteers will all be using their powers to shine Z-Mages boots. Besides that we're all home sick, well except maybe T-1000 'cause he's a robot. And, well, maybe Spidercide. I don't think he liked marvel all that much. And well Jimmy doesn't care, I’m not sure about Metamorph but he looks apathetic about it, and well I don't really have a home so obviously not be...alright so it's just you that’s homesick but get over it get on with it and lets go save the universe!"
They finished putting on their suits just as Deke came back from the mess hall, "the computer said I could find you guys here"
"Noo," said Scotty in a badly written accent "E've each poot our oon modifications inna these soots." Bevel then took over because I realized how pointless trying to write a Scottish accent was.
"The leather is comprised of 3 thin layers, going leather, kevlar, leather to protect against bullets. We used this weird device," he held up a thing that looks like a cross between a blender and a squid, "to enable your skin to breathe and to make the uniform unstable enough so that it will merge with Morph, Spidercide and T-1000 and not hinder them. The armor, gauntlets, boots and helmets are all made of negatively polarized Octitron to absorb magic and silver plating to reflect laser beams. They are also strong enough to shrug off being hit by a car. The helmets have built in scouters, Babel fish and enable you to breathe in space and under water through a forcefield generator. The gauntlets have low-powered blasters built into the fingertips and palms and the boots have jets in the heel. Thanks to the marvels of interdimensionial tech exchange we've included a miniature Somebody Else's Problem field. But this is our crowning achievement. Due to the magical nature of the armor, it can change its form in a very limited way. Not enough to turn into a full set of clothes or anything but just enough to change the design of the armor and give yourself some individuality for the non-shapeshifters," he said and then passed out on the floor.
"Oh that's good. I was afraid that I'd have to wear this. It's just not me." Metamorph concentrated and his armor changed. It now had a very spiky look to it, like if man had evolved from porcupines that enjoyed the color blue. The boots and gauntlets ended in pointy spikes, his fingers each had an additional joint with claws on each knuckle, the armor developed shoulder pads that curved up at the end, he now had bigger armor to protect his "vitals", butt and hips, and his helmet looked like something that a human version of Optimus Prime would wear. Oh yes, they were all the same shade of blue as his skin only not transparent. After the others change we'll start again at king Ggnitcee's "Let's get to it post."
Deke came our of the mess hall and was given a uniform, he was also introduced to the team.
"I’m Captain Planet. The kid in the corner is Jimmy the Dead, fast and strong as you may have already seen. The man with the sword is Ggnictee, arguably one of the best swordsman and linguists ever. Those three are our resident shapeshifters; we seemed to have gotten more then our share, Metamorph, Spidercide, and T-1000, guys you all know Deke.
Now dressed in uniform and looking much more like a team, our heroes (tm) and their new friend Deke were preparing for a portal jump. Using Metamorph's plot device, I mean the tricorder they found the dimension with the gem and went in with guns/swords/morphed arms/superhuman powers drawn. They landed on a sailing ship in the middle of the ocean. There was no sign of any gem or mage; just a lot of unhappy pirates (one of whom was amazingly large). A fight quickly ensued.
Meanwhile on shore not 100 mile away, Z-Mage stood concentrating on the gem. "I can't unlock it!" he scowled.
A figure in the shadows responded, "all in good time my apprentice, all in good time. But we must leave this place now."
"Stop calling me your apprentice all right? And why do we have to leave?"
"Because it has become unsafe, now come we must leave quickly."
"Where are we going?"
"I don’t' know. Anywhere is safer, now go!"
They walked though the portal and landed in a dark alleyway in a big city.
The two cloaked figures walked down the alleyway, a car alarm was going off, they ignored it and walked on. Just as they were passing the car a group of police all dressed in black walked around the corner "FREEZE! Police! Put your hands up and get against the wall!"
"Oh please," Z-Mage laughed they simply turned and walked the other way.
"Stop or we will be forced to shoot!"
"Oh shut up!" Z-Mage turned around and shot a lightening bolt at the cops. Obviously startled, one of them fired. Z-Mage went down, "what the hell? That cop just hit me! Since when do cops aim!?"
"Come, we will hide in an abandoned warehouse" his companion said, but as he looked around there were no abandoned warehouses, in fact there were no alleyways and all the streetlights were working. He looked back at Z-Mage who had finished healing himself. "Something is wrong here."
"Yeah, no kidding, I just got shot!"
"No something else, wait the music?"
"What music?"
"Fire a fireball and destroy those police"
"Gladly," Z-Mage let loose a fire ball that fried the slowly approaching cops.
"There? You just killed the good guys did you hear a dunt dunt duh?"
"Wait? You’re right? What's going on here?"
"My friend we are in reality, now come I have an idea"
As for our heroes (tm) as pirate after pirate fell and Jimmy the Dead held the large man at bay, a figure walked onto the deck, "what is going on here!"
"Inigo Montoia?" Ggnictee looked up.
"Ggnictee!? Boys stand down it's ok."
"Yeah guys, back off. It is alright these are friends"
"My friends never tried to stab me before...oh wait yes they have." Spidercide said from atop a pile of pirates
"Guys this is Inigo Montoia, the second best swords man in Khazan." Ggnictee laughed
"I would have won the tournament if you had not had Excalibur! I think that is cheating" Inigo laughed back
"I’d hate to break up the family reunion but the gem just left and I can barley get a reading on it where ever it is so lets go before we can't follow it anymore" Metamorph hollered from across the deck.
The portal was opened and our heroes stepped though
As the heroes stepped through another portal, this one much more pleasant than the one that they had brought Deacon through, the heroes found themselves in what appeared to be a perfectly normal town. It was dark out and there were no sights that anyone among the group recognized so as to give the group an idea of what universe they were in. The group stood attentive as Metamorph continued to look at his tricorder. He was finally on level ten and was just getting ready to break his high score when Jimmy the Dead noticed what Metamorph was doing and quickly made him turn off those games and reset his tricorder for scan mode. However, before he even could, Spidercide's spider-sense began to ring.
"Everyone, move, fast!" Spidercide shouted as he leapt just out of the way of a flying fireball. The group all looked up and there, standing in front of them in a cloak, appeared to be a 15 year old boy. The boy didn't say a word but instead simply twitched his hands. As he did, the earth began to move. Out of the rocks and gravel in the ground, strange man-shaped creatures made entirely of rock began to spring to life, coming out and attacking the heroes.
"So," asked Jimmy, "I guess we're back in business."
"What the Hell?"
"It's nothing special, Deacon, just big rock monsters. Happens all the time."
"No, the kid! It's the same kid that took the gem from me!"
"That's him! Weeping Creeping, that's Z-Mage!"
The cloaked one grinned maliciously at the now-surrounded group. "So, you recognize me. No matter. I will not allow a group of rag-tag bumpkins like you any chance to interrupt my plans!"
And the large mass of rock monsters charged towards the heroes.
"Oh please!” Captain Planet replied. He then knelt down and touched the soil with his hand.
As the rock monsters charged, then suddenly began to fall apart. Soon the heroes were surrounded by piles of rubble.
The Mage was furious. "How could you destroy my minions!"
To which the Captain replied, "Hey, you were the dumb one who sicced a bunch of rock monsters against someone who can control the elements, pal."
Metamorph responded, "Well, Mister Z-Mage, looks like you have something that belongs to us. Hand over the Gem nicely or we'll have to get rough with you."
"You dare talk that way to me! I who has destroyed countless worlds! Bah! Enough of this! You shall have your precious gem when I use its powers to wipe you all from the face of existence!!"
With that, he vanished in a flash of light.
"Well, that was interesting."
"So that was Z-Mage."
"Hey, Captain, did that kid say something about destroying worlds?"
"Yes, Deacon, that guy's very powerful and real mean. Never a good combination."
"And he's the one we have to stop in order to save the Multiverse?"
"Apparently."
"We're screwed."
"That's what they said about our chances against Palpatine. And we smoked him!"
"Whoa there. Palpatine? The Emperor from the Star Wars movies?"
"Yeah. Like we said before, multiple dimensions and all that."
"So you guys went up against Palpatine and killed him?"
"Come to think of it, we didn't kill him, we just stopped him from getting the Infinity Gems."
"Where is he now?"
"Don't worry about him, Deke. We stopped him once, he'll know better than going up against us. Now then, Metamorph, where did Z-Mage run off to?"
"He's not on this world anymore. I'm going to need to use the scanners on the Devastator."
"Well then, let's head back."
Meanwhile, our villains are having an interesting conversation.
"They are stronger then I anticipated" Z-Mage said to the cloaked figure beside him.
"I told you not to underestimate them. You should not have gone alone. I have fought them before, there is more to them then appears."
"I will not be so easily beaten next time."
"You will if you don't stop being so arrogant, you fool. That has been my mistake far to many times."
"It will not be mine old man."
"Fool! It already is! Now come you have shown yourself to often in this place we must leave again."
"Where to this time?"
With but a thought, Z-Mage and the cloaked figure disappeared, only to reappear outside the Khazan Museum. At the mere sight of the sign outside the building, Z-Mage almost lost his breath. The Khazan Museum held some of the rarest and most dangerous artifacts throughout the multiverse. Not containing mere portraits or simple works of art, the museum held artifacts recovered from the far corners of the universe. But of all the artifacts, only one interested the cloaked figure.
Z-Mage finally spoke up.
"Well old man, why are we here? To take the tour."
"You foolish apprentice. We are here to retrieve the one artifact that will give you the power to break the spell over the Omni-gem that we have already captured. The Necronomicon!
"So, Morph, any luck?" Captain Planet asked.
"Nope, this one cyberdemon keeps OW! Oh, you mean on the Dimens-O-Trace? Well, let's see here." He twiddled with a screen and thumped it a few times, "Cap, I've lost the Bleeps, the Sweeps and the Creeps. OW! Well, It wasn't that bad a movie. Anyway, they appear to be inside the Khazan Museum. Okay I can see them and-wait a minute," he said, so excited that he forgot to use the space bar "this thing can see through walls?!" he did some more fiddling with the thingy "Oh yeah, oh yeah baby! Hey guys, you should come see OW!"
"Move over."
"Well you didn't have to hit me!"
"Hey guys," this was King Ggnitcee "Don't you think that we should find the bad guys?"
"SHUT UP GGNITCEE!"
"Aw, man, I lost the feed," there was a collective sigh from most of the heroes, "Well, might as well trace the bad guys. Okay, they're in the "Things You Could Use To Rule The World" wing. They've passed the One Ring To Rule Them All exhibit and are near the Autobot Matrix of Leadership display. Palpy is looking at some Sith Holocrons but, nope, that's not it and wait, wait, they're stopping at the Dragon Balls exhibit but they're passing by and they’re going into the literary section. Palpy's looking at the Funniest joke in the world (too bad he can't read German). They're picking up a book, I can read the title and oh shit..." he said and want completely transparent.
"What, what?!"
"It's..."
"Oh don't go Python on me now!" he said, slapping him hard across where he thought his face was, "What book is it?"
"It's the Necromnicon!"
There was a long pause that I can't seem to think of anything funny to fill it in.
"You were right," he said to Deacon Briars, "We are screwed."
"Or maybe not," said T-1000, "I hacked my way into the computer and browsed around in its section on earth fiction and I found a reference of a very powerful book." he paused, it that annoying way that robots do.
"Well," Jimmy said, "What was the book?"
"The Octavo." There was a dramatic chord of music which will be interrupted when Metamorph shouts "Computer!"
"Computer!"
Told you.
"Hi there!"
"Morph, why did you program that?"
"It's either Eddie or Windows '98. Besides, Zaphod gave it to us with the Improbability drive along with that robot," he indicated the robot hanging from the ceiling in a failed attempt to hang himself.
"Oh, alright, Eddie, can you take us to Discworld?"
You bet!" and with a flash of special effects they, and the ship, were gone.
"Ahh, yes. The book," Said the Z-mage in hushed, awed tones. "I've been drooling over this for a long time. How was I not able to discern its presence here?"
"Why are you wasting time just looking at the cover?" snapped the old, cloaked figure. "Read it!"
"I'm not ready yet. I need to deal with this ward first!"
"You may waste time trying to expel the ward later."
"I'm not trying to expel the ward. I'm trying to understand the exact nature of it. If I get all of these gems, I can change my fate without destroying universes. I don't need to destroy another one again, if I get all of these 6 gems."
"But that is immaterial. Why do you bother?"
"Because I need to keep my threat level below that to conquer these people. And I shunted the ward off of this and onto your heart."
"WHAT!!!"
"Yes, the moment I fall below the threat level, you will die. Presuming the pacemaker I retroactively fitted you with using this gem, mind you, fails. It will do so when I press this button, like so." Z-mage pressed the button.
Palpatine's heart began to fail. He fell down on the ground, clutching at his heart.
"I don't intend to destroy any more worlds. I merely intend to destroy these heroes. Now, who is the master here?"
Using a Jedi technique Palpatine was able to bypass the pacemaker. He slowly rose recovering quickly from the slight mishap. He griped the gem with the force and pulled it to him. Z-Mage lost grip in surprise and watched as the gem flew to the old mans hand.
"You say you have destroyed worlds! HA! I have controlled an entire universe. Entire species were destroyed at my whim. You are young and in experienced!" The old emperor griped Z-Mage throat with the force and squeezed then sent him flying across the room. Z-mage jumped up and fired a ball of lightning that Palpatine which he knocked aside with the force, "You are young so I will forgive this indiscretion, see that it does not happen again, or I will may not be so forgiving next time."
Meanwhile back at home base.
As they plow though building after building, "we need a smaller ship or a better driver guys." The cap tries to look the other way as they take out a school. "So where are we, what's the book they stole and what the hell is the book we're after. And someone take those holoemiters Ggnictee built away from him, if I have to watch him take out one more platoon of Klingon warriors I’m gonna be sick...oh great now he figured out how to get them to all look like Wesley crusher!"
"Wait up Ggnictee! I want in to!" yelled Jimmy the Dead as he beat a crusher into nothingness.
"Beat up Wesley crusher yes!!!!" Metamorph ran in with T-1000 and Spidercide right behind him.
"Guys? We still have bad guys?" captain yelled over the din of dying Crusher/Klingon warriors
"Oh right, he and T-1000 and I fixed the thrusters we shouldn’t' have so much trouble steering anymore." Ggnictee said as he sheathed Excalibur and turned off the holograms, "and we're working on a smaller transport, not that we need it 'cause we can fly!" He laughed as he leapt into the air turning his holograms back on, but now they were flying and everyone followed him into the air as Metamorph explained what they were doing why where and what all the books were.
Before Metamorph could explain, there was an explosion in the distance. The group all turned to see the explosion coming from downtown Khazan. The group rushed there with all the speed their vessel could muster. As they arrived, they could see two cloaked figures running out from a hole in the side of one of the walls. One figure Captain Planet recognized as being the same villain that had attacked them earlier. As he pointed him out to the other heroes, T-1000, Jimmy the Dead and Deacon Briars rushed towards the telepads on board the Devastator and teleported down to the surface, landing in front of Z-Mage. Once there, Jimmy the Dead instantly recognized the cloaked figure as being none other than Emperor Palpatine.
"As I predicted, I knew that you and your friends would find me. I see you have brought some new friends with you. No matter, for I too have made new alliances since last I had the misfortune of running in to you heroes. This is my newest apprentice, Z-Mage." Palpatine spoke with a dark voice, directed mostly toward Jimmy the Dead, who was the only hero that he recognized among the group.
"You know I am sure that you two have a lot to catch up on but the sooner I finish this mission, the sooner that I can get back to my own world, so if it is all the same to everyone, can we get this over with?" said Deacon in a rather frustrated tone.
As Z-Mage prepared to cast another spell, the rest of the heroes teleported down to the surface.
"Surrender vile villain," said King Ggnictee in a rather melodramatic tone, " and prepare to die now with some honor."
"You know something," said Spidercide, who had been itching for some payback with the Emperor ever since their last meeting, "I say we just kill them both now and let the archeologists sort them out later."
"Now I finally hear something that sounds like a plan," said Metamorph who had already charged a blast of plasma and was ready to use it if necessary, "so what are we waiting for?"
All right everyone," said Captain Planet finally, "let's finish these guys off."
Before they could attack an figure broke down a nearby wall - this is a message from the Khazan contractors' union. Use the door people - and drew a lightsaber.
"Who the smeg are you?" asked Z-Mage.
The cloaked figure just looked at Palpy and ignited the other end of his lightsaber.
"Maul!" said everybody in the room and 500 warsies upon reading this, "Aren't you dead?"
"I killed MacLeod," everyone turned to look at Metamorph a.k.a. Don McLeod, "No, not him. Connor."
"You're a highlander too" said Metamorph and King Ggnitcee together, stared at each other, and at Darth Maul, decided that the Prize was big enough for the two of them and that it was useless trying to kill all the Immortals since as soon as one dies another is born rushed forward screaming "There can only be 2!"
There was a sudden burst of lightning but strangely enough nobody died. Instead, where Darth Maul stood there now stood a humanoid figure with long flowing white hair that caused Palpy to cringe and hide-Lord Raiden!
"How did you do that?" asked the Emperor, who would be needing a new robe after tonight. Or, more accurately, he wouldn't.
"Ray Park played Maul and did my stunt shots. Now, you die!" he said, as he electrocuted Palpy totally vaporizing him.
"Wait a minute, didn't you also play Connor MacLeod?"
"SHUT UP! YOU'LL CAUSE A PARADOX-" he was cut off by some very deep breathing coming from a cloaked figure in an alleyway. As he lit his lightsaber the cloaked figure also said something in the voice of James Earl Jones "Darth Maul, killed Connor, I killed Darth Maul."
"VADER?!"
"Yes, and now you die Darth S**thead!" he charged at him and cut his head off, gaining the Quickening of 200 immortals.
"Not so fast!" this was 4 voices, those of Qui-Gon, both Obi-Wans and Luke.
"Hold it," Vader said, annoyed, "Old Obi-Wan, I liked you in the movie, you killed me on WWWF, I killed you in the super brawl. Bye," he said as he cut off the head of Old Ben and turned to young Ben "Enjoy your life kid, if I kill you now it'll be a paradox," Young Ben gave a squeak and ran like a lemming "Now Qui-Gon, Maul killed you, I killed maul, you die," and he did so, "Now, Luke, before you die, there's something I must tell you, Luke, I am your Mother!" he said the last in a high, squeaky voice while Luke ran away screaming, right into the path of an oncoming steamroller. But, Vader completely failed to notice the fact that Z-Mage had run away and that the heroes were back on the devastator. "Oh bugger."
Meanwhile, back on the devastator,
"You know, you're right, we do need a better driver. We were supposed to be going to Discworld," said Metamorph.
"I have an idea, though," said Captain Planet, "Computer, can you take us to Discworld?"
"You bet! I just want to make your day better and better!"
"Oh, I'm so depressed," said Marvin, who now had his head in the trash compactor.
The devastator turned around and shot straight toward Discworld.
"Okay," said Deacon, "How are we going to defeat this guy on our own?"
"We're not," said Spidercide, "We're going to do what all sensible heroes should do, start a crossover."
"What good'l that do?" asked Morph.
"Well, fans of 2 comic books will buy this."
"Well, it's better than nothing," he went over to his interdimensionial address book which occupied the entire wall and started at the beginning, "Hello, Ant Man? Hi, this is Morph. Metamorph. The blue shapeshifter? No, not Mystique. Anyway, this evil wizard has one of the infinity gems and-hello, hello? Oh well. Hello, Atom Ant..."
12 hours later-
"Buenos Dieas senior Zorro. I am Metamorph. The blue shapeshifter. No, not Mystique. This Evil wizard has one of the infinite gems and-hello, hello? Smeg."
"(yawn)," yawned Jimmy, "We're screwed."
"(Yawn)," Yawned Captain Planet, "And we're here. We've reached Discworld."
With the totalitarianism of time and space in front of him, The Z-mage went off to the side and spent 200 years in suspended life training in the mystical arts. He then spent a further 100 years systematically hunting down gods and heroes and taking their stuff.
By the end, he was no older than 18 and had acquired Mjolnir, the clouded mirror of Tecztipoctli or whatever, you know, the Aztec god, the winged sandals and magically expanding wallet of Bellerophon, and Shiva's sword. Basically, he figured he'd need it to combat a team of 3 shapeshifters, one hero, another guy, and Captain Planet. At least half of whom could be nuclear physicists but they were too smart, one of whom had above average intelligence, and one who had been, under protest, written as not stupid.
He now felt ready to confront the heroes, so he went back to the exact moment he left, after kicking Palpatine's body a few times and eating the Necronomicon, giving him the secrets to summoning the undead of any kind and several weird types of gods. He was able to fend off the madness with the Phoenix Gate.
A long time ago, in a set of dimensions that should never have flown...
Space is big. I mean it; it's really, really big. But space is supposed to be really, really big so it is therefore exactly the right size. But the giant reptile swimming through the great ocean that is the Multiverse is also really, really big and its shape is not supposed to be really, really big so it is huge although it in itself is exactly the right size. The spaceship approaching it is also really, really big but compared to the other really, really big things around this really, really big spaceship is very tiny. Follow me? No? Good.
We are now in the bridge of this World Devastator, although it would take 5000 of them to devastate a World but that's not important right now. We see 8 figures on the bridge who, in a few minutes, will be some of the most powerful beings on the disc. In the command chair is Captain Planet, and to his immediate right and left are King Ggnitcee and Spidercide, 2nd in line and 3rd in line to be commander when Captain Planet's turn is up. In the front are the Pilot, Jimmy the Dead; and the Ops Guy, T-1000. At the back are the tactical officer, Deacon Briars; the Science Guy, Metamorph; and Marvin, the Paranoid Android whom they couldn't seem to get rid of. Right now, he was trying to convince Metamorph to form his hand into a chainsaw and then punch him (Marvin) through the CPU. Much to his disappointment, it wasn't working.
"Alright, Jimmy," said Captain Planet, "Take us in for an orbit right behind the moon. We'll beam down from there.
"Okay, now how do you work this thing."
3 minutes later, the heroes and Marvin were in downtown Ahnk-Morpork. And so was the ship. Well, not all of it, it stuck up at a 45 degree angle but 1/3 of it was in Ahnk, 2/6ths in Morpork and 1/6th in the hands of people who will take anything that isn't nailed down. After "Borrowing" 4 sets of clothes for the non-shapeshifters and Marvin they set off toward UU.
"I don't see why we can't fly," said Ggnitcee, who just happened to be in costume suitable for the Disc even if the design was odd.
"I told you, we'd attract too much attention," said Captain Planet, a man with skin that was a pale blue color who had just crashed a 2000 foot spaceship onto the biggest city on the Disc and was dragging along a robot who tried to kill himself at every opportunity.
Fortunately, he was using his Heart power combined with his suit's Someone Else's Problem function to make himself and Marvin practically invisible.
"Hey, guys," Said Jimmy, "are you sure that this is the way to Unseen University?"
"I don't really know," said Metamorph, "Let’s see if there's a wizard in this bar here," he looked up at the sign, "The Mended Drum"
"Stop struggling or I'll recycle you," Captain Planet threatened. "If I have to enter a bar, I don't want it to look like you've had too much to drink already." Marvin meekly obeyed.
"That's better," said Cap. He shut off his suit's SEP, but kept his Heart power up so that he and Marvin would be perceived as typical Ankh-Morpok residents. Cap and the rest took a gander around. Any wizards in sight?
"Uhmm, do you guys mind if I wait outside? All these mage'o'matics are freaking me out" Ggnictee looked around nervously at all the people in the room, knowing there were to many wizards for his taste.
Metamorph nodded "I'm with the swordsman let’s go work on that shuttle."
(Later that day on the IJL Devastator base)
Everyone returned from "The Mended Drum" to a strangely familiar and yet different devastator.
Ggnictee and Metamorph greeted them at the door, "HI guess what we've been doing." Metamorph laughed at the look on everyone’s faces. Suddenly a guy in a kilt walked up and said something in Celtic to Ggnictee.
"Oh sorry guys I’d like to introduce you to our new crew/tie in group, this is William Wallace" before Ggnictee could finish the man in the kilt began yelling 'I am William Wallace I am William Wallace', "right yes you are now go finish the repairs to the hyperdrive with this hydrospanner alright? Willy and his boys have agreed to help us out by manning our ship so we just have to be heroes (Scotty loves it) besides he owes me a few from back in the day. BUT! Anyway guys, here is the first thing you've got to see." He hit a button on the wrist of his suit suddenly it twisted and a six-inch blaster barrel appeared on his wrist, "oops wrong button sorry guys, oh you should see this anyway Metamorph handed a wrist attachment out to all of them.
"We got this from a new part of our science team," he said as he passed them out. "We added Rhinox and Ironsides to the group and now we'll have this nifty little wrist rockets, they're a little more powerful then the finger lasers and thanks to the transformer size ability they fold nicely into your watch."
"Wait I think I got it!" Ggnictee hit another button. Suddenly a food tray came flying toward them. And everyone (but the captain) demonstrated just how more powerful the wrist cannons were as they all fried three dinner plates and two whine glasses and a singing candlestick. "Oh crap, that was the concierge button," Ggnictee looked back and fiddled with this wrist some more turning off the smoking gun.
"Oh that’s another thing we installed while you were gone, we got the entire kitchen staff from beauty and the beast (the Disney version) and after having cleansed them with holy water to get ride of the Disney filth we put them to work. Of course every once and a while we get a song and dance plate set but the new on board defense system takes care of that"
"GOT IT!!!!!!" Ggnictee hollered from the corner everyone turned to look at him when suddenly music erupted around them (it just happened to be your favorite song (so get to your radio and crank it up!)) "We also got a sound system in here! Next flight we'll have surround sound."
"It's also connected to the viewer! You guys ever heard the Borg threat in Dolby digital THX certified sound?" everyone shook there head at Metamorph, "well you should! Anyway this way guys come on."
At that moment a plate went skipping by singing show tunes, it's song was cut short by 7 ionicly charged packs or particles as everyone but the captain fired at once, again.
The group walked on to the main hanger. They stopped at the door, Ggnictee turned as Metamorph hit the door.
"Gentlemen," the nomad said, "I present you with the Relentless." the door opened behind Ggnictee and everyone walked in as the lights turned on they could see a sleek black ship, it was pretty big, large enough for all of them to fit and then a few hitchhikers even. Metamorph and Ggnictee beamed at their creation, everyone began to ask so Metamorph answered "it's faster then fast, and strong, it's got multiphasic shields, Borg shields and armor thicker then your skull. It cloaks, SEP's, warps, jumps, slips, and IIDs. It’s got lasers, phasers, tazers, PPCs, rockets, missiles, cannons, machineguns and zerg queen spawns. It's got more maneuvers then your mom, and harder to get into then my sister on prom night. We put in replicaters, holoprojecters, transporters and an Omega 13 for luck."
"She's a lady gents," Ggnictee chimed in, "treat her nice and she'll be good to you."
"So you guys are back awful late what'd you do at "The Mended Drum" already?"
“Whoa, that is some awesome stuff there.”
Said Spidercide as he stood looking at their new ship.
"By the way, do you guys think you could speak to my tailor about adding some built in webshooters into my suit? As for the mended bar, not much happened. Some drunken mage got it into his mind that he was going to have some fun, and to make a long story short, T-1000 got in a bar fight. Deacon has now already 'eaten' tonight so we won't have to feed him. Jimmy is still back there kicking what little stuffing is left in a few rowdy mages, and Captain Planet has called up more tornadoes than I ever care to have to go through in one night. I am sorry but I think this is a dead end here, seeing as we are now wanted men on this world for 'causing a public disturbance.' On the plus side, I got this one really good looking mage's phone number. Of course I was morphed so as to look like Tom Cruise but, oh well."
Captain Planet seemed absolutely furious with the way Spidercide was calmly handling this.
"Well this has been a total waste. We came here to get a mage to help us against Z-Mage, who is probably just short of breaking the seal on the Omni-gem, and all you can think about is what a wild night you had at the bar."
Captain Planet then left the room and went up to the comms room. He knew that since they weren't going to find any mages that would help them anymore in this dimension, they would need to turn elsewhere for help. He quickly called up the number of one Stephen Strange on the monitor and within moments, the good doctor answered.
"Look you tanless blue freak, would you stop it with all these stupid prank..." but then Dr. Strange's voice died off as he saw Captain Planet at the monitor instead of Metamorph.
"Oh, it's only you Captain, for a minute there I thought it was, well never mind who I thought it was. What can I do for you?"
Meanwhile…
"Spidercide, you said that you had chatted up a female wizard?" Metamorph asked.
"Oh, yeah. Her name's, um," he looked at the piece of paper that his hand had morphed into, "Eskanina Smith, why?"
Metamorph's eyes glazed over and he slurped backwards into a chair. "Eskanina Smith."
"Yes, that's right."
"Eskanina Smith."
"Yep. Why?"
"Eskanina Smith."
"Stop saying that!"
"Eskanina Smith."
The Reason that Metamorph was so excited was that Eskanina Smith was the Discworld's 1st, foremost, and only wizard. No other women ever became wizards because ever other wizard thought that if women were allowed to be wizards they might be good at it.
"Of course!" Metamorph shouted, "I remember this place now! I must have been hit on the head sometime during the crash! We've got to go and find her!" he said, grabbing his skin and pulling it like the shapeshifter he is.
"Why?"
"Well, King Ggnitcee was griping about there not being enough chicks here and what better woman could there be than the only female wizard? Oh, wait, was she hot?"
"Oh yeah."
"Well, let's go. You'd better not use your Tom Cruise form though."
Later, in downtown Ahnk.
"Sausages inna bun, get'em while they're... Sausages! Inna bun!"
"We'll have 2," said Metamorph, who now appeared to be a not-so-innocent bystander, as did Spidercide.
"Do we have to eat these," Spidercide said, "they taste like Sh*t."
"No, I think that would be an improvement," Rimshot, "anyway, we're trying to blend in and real A-M citizens eat these. Excuse me! Officer!"
"Ho there good citizen!” that's right, it's Captain Carrot.
"Hi, can you tell us how to get to Unseen University?"
"Oh yes, if you'd just follow me," and he led them off.
"Hey, this is the Watch house!"
"I know, you're under arrest for Barfighting on Annual No Barfighting Day. We've got you're friends in the cells below and if there's anyway that we can make your stay more pleasant just let us know."
"Is this guy for real?"
"I don't know, why don't you ask the zombie and the man made out of clay?"
"Look," said Jimmy, "I don't see why we can't just bust out of here."
"Well," said Captain Planet, "We're Superheroes, and superheroes don't go around breaking laws. We need a chance to clear ourselves."
Suddenly there was a noise from outside; it sounded like one of Captain Planet’s big storms. Captain Carrot went to the window and our heroes™ all leaned out to see what was going on outside. A thousand Scots were surrounding the city banging their swords against their shields, yelling and playing drums and pipes. Ggnictee and Metamorph looked at each other and nodded.
“Excalaber!” Ggnictee yelled, “My weapon to me!” His sword leapt from where it sat in the corner with the rest of the heroes’ weapons. He grabbed the sword from the air and brought it down on the lock, as Metamorph slipped though the bars and knocked Captain Carrot unconscious.
“You maybe a good guy Cap,” the shapeshifter yelled over his shoulder as he and Ggnictee headed for the door, “but the rest of us are just heroes, and heroes ain’t always Boy Scouts!”
“He has a point cap.” Jimmy said on his way out the door, “ I’m with the heroes!”
Everyone ran outside, including a reluctant Captain Planet. The streets outside were crowded with people and things headed for home, because of the sudden appearance of Scotsmen outside the city. Our heroes ran though the streets when suddenly Spidercide pointed to a woman ahead of them in the crowd.
“That’s her! The girl from the bar!” He yelled above the din of the Scots.
Captain Planet grabbed her arm and dragged her along, “Hi there, Ms Smith?” She nodded at his question, “So you want to spend the rest of your life saving all reality?” He asked as they ran.
“Well,” she said as she was dragged along, “that’s the best pick up line I’ve heard all day! Way better then this Tom Cruise look alike I talked to today, I gave him a fake number, what a dork.” She laughed, “So where you guys headed anyway?”
“Unseen University, you know how to get there?”
“Yeah but we’ll never make it though this crowd.” She looked at the throng of people ahead of them.
“You wanna bet?” The captain grabbed her and took to the air with the rest of the team right behind him. They landed in front of the University.
“Ok a few things before I join your…team right?” She looked at them, “You all pretty much match and have the same symbol on your shoulder, so I’m assuming.”
“We’re not a team sweetheart,” Jimmy walked toward her, “We’re the team!”
“Does your team have a name?”
“Not yet, we just started.” Ggnictee, “what else did you need to know?”
“What do you need at the university, and who are we fighting and why?” She looked over our heroes, obviously wondering if she really wanted to get involved in this.
“We’ll answer all of that back on the Devastator. Right now we need to get into that University and get out in a hurry. This dimension isn’t’ so safe anymore.” The captain said as he followed Metamorph into the university. The others were close behind.
"We've got to stop the Scotsmen!" Eskania yelled over the bagpipes.
"This doesn’t make any sense, people don't just turn into Scotsmen for no reason at all," said a relatively innocent bystander before he started shaking and turning into a Scotsman for no reason at all.
"Okay, that was weird," Said Jimmy.
"If you live in Ahnk-Morpork, these things happen all the time," said Metamorph, cutting off Esk who then said "Hey, isn't that a blanchmage?"
"Quick, shoot to kill!" shouted Captain Planet.
They did, and the blanchmage exploded, getting most of itself on a robot that was sulking past whom said, in a low, muffled voice "Oh, great. Story of my life."
"Marvin, come with us," T-1000 said, picking up the 7-ton robot like a pillow.
"Sator Square!" screamed Esk, blowing the head off of a Scotsman, "We can hold up there!"
"Lead the way!"
About 10000 people had gathered in Sator Square, the rest had either escaped, been killed, turned into Scotsmen or eaten by the Blanchmages. Captain Carrot was trying to rally the crowds but, surprisingly, wasn't doing a very good job. Even more surprisingly was that there were a large number of wizards in the crowds.
"Sausages inna bunn! Anti Scotsman Charms! Only 50 pence and that’s cutting me own throat!"
FOUR SAUSAGES INNA BUN, PLEASE. ONE WITH EVERYTHING...
SQUEAK.
ONE WITH CHEESE...
"NOTHING ON MINE, GRANDFATHER"
ONE PLAIN...
"Squack!"
ONE RAW WITH NO SKIN.
"There you go, that'll be $4."
HERE YOU ARE.
"Man, some day this has been, eh Squire?"
YOU WOULDN'T BELIEVE HOW BUSY WE'VE BEEN.
The team of unnamed superheroes waded through the crowd toward the pile of debris that Captain Carrot was standing on. Carrot felt a tug on his cape and looked down into 9 faces, 1 metal, 1 bluish, 1 silver, 1 bearded, 1 masked, 1 female, 1 with fangs, 1 youngish, and 1 too calm to be human. He turned back toward the crowd "Ladies, Gentlebeings, and Dwarves, may I present seven-"
"Nine"
"Oh, don't include me," griped Marvin
"-Nine superheroes!" The crowd, not knowing what a superhero was applauded out of sheer boredom.
"Beings," Metamorph said, "There's only one thing that can save us from these evil, inhuman things. And it might destroy the Blanchmages too. We need the Octavo! That's probably what they're after so you will have to hold them off for as long as possible. Here's how it'll work," Spidercide came up on stage and morphed into a screen showing a battle plan with the Scotsmen as 0's and the Ahnk-Morpork citizens as X's, "Rincewind, you are to bolt down this alley, go through the secret wall entrance and open the main gates. Nobby, you distract them. Scotsmen can't resist women who look like men. Dibbler, you run up to them and ram sausages down their throats. Detrius, as soon as they come down the widdershins road, you fire your crossbow at them, Wizards, you take positions on the turnwise road. Luggage, you're our siege weapon. Angua, just do what the inner wolf says. Teppic, you get on the roofs along with any men with bows. Reg, you play dead, no pun intended, and when a Scotsman comes near you, you jump up and stab him in the chest. Librarian, you come with us when the doors open. The rest of you are to do as much damage as you can. We'll help until Rincewind gets the door open then we'll go get the Octavo."
"They're coming!" somebody shouted.
OH BUGGER, BACK TO WORK.
SQUEAK?
NO WE CAN'T JUST STOP. LAST TIME I STOPPED I WOUND UP INSIDE BRAD PITT.
"Everyone get into positions! Hurry!"
It was a sight so horrible that Discworld would never see the likes of it again. The Scotsmen came by the hundreds; their sheer numbers were overwhelming. As the citizens of Discworld stood waiting in their separate positions, in the center of the street, they were there. The heroes all stood waiting for battle. There stood Jimmy the Dead, Captain Planet, King Ggnictee with Excaliber drawn, Metamorph, Spidercide, T-1000 with Marvin the suicidal android clumped over his shoulders, and the teams newest ally, Eskanina Smith. The Scotsmen came forward by the hundreds when suddenly a shot aimed at the leading Scotsman broke the anticipation. Deacon Briars holding up in the Unseen University, specifically in the book depository. As the first Scotsman fell, several more shots flew through the air, taking out several more. Then, without warning, they charged. Hundreds of them with their bagpipes drawn came charging. The heroes stood ready, not a single one of them blinked, except for Marvin who was so happy to see what he perceived to finally be "the end". Then they came, Jimmy and T-1000 used their strength to tear into the Scotsman while Metamorph and Spidercide began changing their forms very rapidly, tearing into their lines in a whole series of different forms. Meanwhile, King Ggnictee with his sword drawn, hacked away at the Scotsmen, resulting in the bloodiest massacre of any one group or race of people since the Holocaust. At the same time, Captain Planet unleashed the full fury of the elements, transforming his entire body into pure fire, looking much like the Human Torch, and fire bombing the Scotsmen by the hundreds. At the same time, Eskanina Smith had begun to impress the heroes who had had the time in the midst of battle to see how she was doing, especially Spidercide who couldn't help but be reminded by Mary Jane one time when she had rushed to the aid of the Scarlet Spider during his battle with Spidercide and the Jackal. Spidercide knew that Eskanina had given him a fake number, but he wanted to try and impress some of the other heroes, yet in truth, he was starting to develop feelings for her. But they would have to wait till a later time. She began unleashing bolts of lightening which didn't incinerate her former townsfolk turned Scotsmen but did completely incapacitate them. Suddenly, a Scotsman came up from behind her, and brought his massive bagpipe down on her head. Knocked unconscious, her body fell to the ground, soon to be surrounded by angry Scotsmen who looked ready to pummel her into pieces. Spidercide didn't hesitate, just as the original Spider-Man wouldn't have if the real Mary Jane were in danger. Reverting to his human sized form, he moved with all the spider speed he was "born" with and leapt to her aid, picking her up in his arms and leaping up in the air, sticking to a wall with his feet and holding her body in his arms.
But enough of that mushy stuff. With Spidercide hovering over Eskanina Smith like a father over his daughter, the other heroes decided to give their new suits a try. Within minutes, missiles and laser beams flew across the air, impacting directly in to the Scotsmen crowds. Massive destruction resulted as enough firepower to destroy the entire National Guard of any state that you can imagine went streaming towards the Scotsmen.
"Whoa," said Metamorph as he stopped to look at the massive pile of bodies lying all over the place, " that was way better than those video games."
"Or those holograms," added King Ggnictee.
Suddenly, the containment field around the University split apart and the rubber sheet of reality, already weakened by the sulfuric acid of Magic was rent apart and an army of 88,888,888 Things from the Dungeon Dimensions burst into this dimension and began to crush it under their mismatched heels without even noticing. These Things will not be described since the pretty ones looked like an anatomy of the offspring of a bicycle and a scorpion.
The heroes attempted to hold them back but it was futile. King Ggnictee went first, his sword was stuck through his brain by what looked like the zombie of an elephant. Jimmy tried to shoot them and got several until one of them evolved spines that shoot out of what might have been his stomach. Deacon Briars tried to fly away but reality opened below him and sucked him in. Captain Planet went next, killed by what looked to be a Visible Man assembled by a 5-year old. T-1000 went next as Captain Planet's still burning body completely vaporized him. They then turned their attentions to the wizards, killing Spidercide as he defended his love. Just then, the Octitron gates of the University opened revealing Rincewind, the Luggage and the Librarian with the Octavo. The luggage attempted to kill the nearest Thing and was totally destroyed. Rincewind attempted to run but was killed by a cross between a zergling and a toilet. The Things swarmed over the Librarian, tearing into his flesh as he threw the Octavo away. A Thing reached up to grab it but the book was caught by a mostly human arm. An arm with a varied blue/red pattern, sometimes checkered, sometimes blended, sometimes swirled, sometimes purple, but the head was really weird. Half of it looked something like Spiderman; the other half was blue and transparent with red hair. You see, when Spidercide "died" most of him landed in Metamorph. The result was a new hero for at least a few hours. They should regain parts of their individuality by then and split apart by tomorrow. But for now, Spidercide and Metamorph where gone, behold, Spidermorph! And no, it's not like they did it. It's like 2-Face.
Carrying the Octavo they, now 12 feet tall, shrugged off things like they were origami dolls. They picked up Eskanina Smith and walked toward the University, the only safe place to read the book. As they were 3 feet away, they were surrounded on all sides by 100-foot uber-things. As Spidermorph tossed the book to safety, he was grabbed by Smith and in the last moments of their lives they kissed, passionately before they were ripped apart and their souls destroyed.
But what of the book? It landed in the university's octangle, near a robot lying facedown in the dirt. Marvin picked up the book. He knew it was all up to him. He knew what he had to do. He knew that he'd regret doing it. He read the Octavo.
The raw magic changed everything. The things gorged on it until they died, fat and happy. The dead and undead came back to life, the Scotsmen turned back into humans, and the destroyed property was magically always whole. The heroes returned and started dancing in celebration to the folk music that was coming from nowhere. Spidercide and Metamorph split apart and were embarrassed to find themselves both making out with the same girl. It is said that he who reads all 8 spells at the right moment shall receive all that he desires. Marvin read them at the right moment and it was the happiest moment of his life. And, since all he wanted was oblivion, the last. The magic tore through him like a Polaris missile through an unfortunate duck. He was never happier.
As Deacon wandered the grounds in a state of shell shock, Captain Planet (dancing with a golem and a pair of rather cute barmaids) noticed the confused assassin. "What's the problem, Deke?"
"What the Hell just happened? I mean, first we were fighting off the Scotsmen, then those monsters showed up, then I thought we all died; now everyone's dancing! What the Hell is going on here?"
"Well, Deke, keep in mind that we're on Discworld, and weird stuff is pretty much commonplace. Relax, we just stopped an army of nightmares and got the book. Have fun!"
"Refresh my memory, Captain. Why did we need the book in the first place?"
"Why, to counter Z-Mages' Necronomicon...Great Gaia!!!! We forgot about Z-Mage!!!!!!"
"Don't feel to bad, I think fighting whatever the hell was here made us forget why we were here in the first place. So, we got the book, now what?"
"Good question. First off, we need to reassemble the team. Deke, find the rest of the guys and meet in the docking bay where the ship is. We got to plan out where we go from here."
"Right."
The party in the Great Hall of UU was in full swing. It was going to be a banquet but with the amount of guests all the crops produced within 10 years would be eaten. A light meal for a Wizard would cause a Sumo Wrestler to explode. The magic takes a lot out of them and spending 18 hours asleep doesn't help much. Everyone was having fun. Spidercide was dancing with Eskanina while Metamorph was chatting up a young woman in black.
"So, you work at a funeral parlor?"
"YES, YOU COULD SAY THAT," no, it's not Death, death doesn't use quote marks. That's his Granddaughter Susan.
"But you're also a nanny?"
"YES, DURING THE DAYS."
"Cool, how do you manage your time?"
"IT SEEMS TO DO THAT ITSELF."
"Hmm. Have you heard the story of how we got these Omni-gems?"
Meanwhile, Captain Planet was still dancing with the 2 barmaids and, strangely, the golem. Jimmy the Dead and a Seamstress (nudge, nudge) appeared from a closet looking flushed and adjusting his clothing. He turned to the girl and handed something to her.
"Keep it," the girl said, "It was payment in itself."
T-1000 just stood emotionless in the corner while several young women danced around him, trying to get a response.
Deacon Briars was trying to talk to some vampire women but every time he got near them, Reg Shoe would jump out and start talking about Dead Rights until Deacon ripped his head off and moved closer to the women. King Ggnictee was getting confused, though. First he tried talking to a person in a dress, "Hey, what's a chick like you doing in a place like this?"
"I'm not a Woman!" said Nobby Nobbs.
He then started talking to a dwarf.
"Man, there sure are some strange people around here, eh pal?"
"I'm not a man!" said Cheri Littlebottom.
"Whatever," and they started dancing.
3 hours later, after everybody was mostly sober, the Patrician made a speech.
"Ladies, Gentlemen and everyone else," he was hit on the head with a beer can.
GET ON WITH IT!
"Um, yes. I would like to present the members of the Infinity League of Khazan Defenders-"
"I thought we were The Infinities."
"No, aren't we K.L.I.D.?"
"Aren't we the Infinite Justice League?"
"SHUT UP! Anyway, whoever you are, I would like to present you all with the Key to the City!" there was a perfect outburst of applause, they had been practicing for days, "If there's anything you need, just ask."
"Well," said Captain Planet, "We do need something, we need every Magic User, Barbarian, Assassin, thief, mobster, rioter, priest, lawyer and politician to join us in the fight for what's right!" the crowd was silent. "And we'll give 5 bucks to anybody who joins us," this brought a great cheer from the crowds and they started breaking into a semi-riot.
Metamorph put his head closer to the megaphone, "We'll also need the library, university and tower of art."
This was his plan: Using the megaporter, the Library would be attached to the front of the Devastator with the Tower Of Art sticking up through the middle, giving the effect of a giant oil can. The University would be beamed around it and they would magically read all the books in the library at once. Since the library was connected to all other libraries and therefore contained every book ever written, books that haven't been written yet, books that were never written, books that would never be written and a good deal more. When they were all read, the magic force would be sent through the Tower of Art forming the Magical equivalent of a Superlaser. Just in case Z-Mage can break the restriction on the Omni-Gem.
Metamorph walked into the mess hall, destroying the first three dishes that came up to serve him. He finally ignored the 4th enough that it considered its self invited. He looked over the rag tag group of heroes sitting around him.
Captain Planet was a particular shade of blue that didn't look like it had recovered all the way from last night. Jimmy the Dead was in the corner making out like a freshman on prom night with a blonde that you wouldn’t' believe, he was good with girls. Ggnictee was at a table surrounded by beautiful girls he told tales of all the places he had been and things he had done. Man, that guy could tell stories. Spidercide was in the corner with Ms. Smith, they were talking then she slapped him, then a little later sat down again and started all over. That was going to be an interesting relationship. The ships sound system was on, it was Bon Jovi. "Man that must have been one HELL of a party' he thought. Finally after sitting down for a while, Kiki walked in. He had met her last night, there was nothing but pretty women on this planet and man did they know how to party. Hopefully they could stay a while. Suddenly he heard T-1000's voice over the intercom, "All Khazan Justice League members." There were then a number of people who began yelling,
NO IT"S INFINITE JUSTICE LEAGE
NO THE INFINITES
NO KAZAHN DEFENSE FUND
"SHUT UP! Anyway, guys get down to the shuttle bay, we're taking the Relentless out, I found Palpy and Z and they're up to some seriously bad shiot!"
The 7 members of the team in the mess hall sobered up immediately and ran out the door, leaving a number of confused and unhappy women and a lot of uneaten food. "Don't' worry," the voice on the intercom said, "we'll be back, we're heroes we know what were doing. I hope, frankly man I think we're all going to die a slow horrible...oh crap this thing still on, well just the..." the intercom shut off.
Moments later in the shuttle bay.
"Everyone get on board!" T-1000 already had everything prepared for launch of the new ship.
"Where we headed?" Ggnictee asked as they walked on board
T-1000 didn't respond as soon as everyone was seated the ship leapt though the bay doors and out into space, flipping and twisting and turning about. "Ok, that’s it, I'm driving!" Metamorph pushed T-1000 from the pilot’s chair. He settled in as the computer read his thoughts, "ahhh, hands free computing. Much better then that dumb devastator and it's keyboards!"
T-1000 punched in a few numbers and the black ship shot though a portal into a dimension no one recognized, well that is to say they didn’t' recognize the three asteroids and deep blackness that was in front of them.
"There," T-1000 pointed to some lights on the largest asteroid, "land there, that’s where they are."
Metamorph brought the ship down next to the giant dome that covered the city on the asteroid. They docked to an old and underused airlock and walked into the city.
The first thing that hit them was the smell. The second thing that hit them was that this asteroid colony wasn’t' a colony at all, it seemed more like a refuge. All around them huddled masses huddled around under stocked shops that had old and withered food, most likely grown in cellar gardens.
Our heroes walked down the street and ended at an ally. In the ally were five men. Large henchmen types with lightning bolts tattooed on their foreheads.
"Those the bad guys?" Eskanina asked
"Well," Jimmy said, "with those bolts on their heads their either Z's boys or Harry Potter fans, either way they need to die."
The men in the ally drew guns, but they didn’t' stand a chance against the arsenal that was thrown against them. All but one was disintegrated. Before the heroes could say anything an imperial class shuttle took off from behind the building next to them and shot though the dome, completely destroying it. As the air rushed out of the city Captain Planet began running for the Relentless, "We've got to follow that ship!" he yelled
"You four go! Spidy, Meta, Smith come on we're after that jerk!" Ggnictee pointed to the last henchman who had run though a portal.
The four of them jumped in right behind him as the rest of the team went off after the shuttle.
Now it should be noted that you gain a unique perspective on life when chasing someone though dimensions. One minute your running along a crowed street, then your falling through the air, the next minute your swimming in an endless ocean trying not to be eaten by whatever just swam by. You pass up entire worlds and civilizations in the blink of an eye. All the while running at top speed trying to catch the next portal before it closes
At the end of this ride Eskanina found herself on a grassy hilltop with the other three already off after their man. Suddenly a hammer came flying out of the sky and knocked him down. Spidercide stopped running and stared at the hammer, "oh shit." he whispered
Metamorph turned into a large tree which Ggnictee ducked behind, waiting for whoever owned that hammer.
Eskanina ran up beside Spidercide as a large blonde man landed in front of them and picked up the hammer. "What’s the matter?" she asked the spider
"This is my U, I’m bad here. That’s Thor, he's not"
"Hello Spidercide," Thor bellowed, "How bout you come with me and we see about this man you were chasing down?"
"How about no!" Ggnictee said as he stepped out from behind the morphing Metamorph.
"Spidercide! Watch out!" Thor yelled as he let lose his hammer. The hammer went though Metamorph and toward Ggnictee who reached out and grabbed it. He stared at it very confused.
Thor looked at Spidercide as he yelled, "NO."
"OH my, are those friends of yours Spidercide?"
"Yeah"
"well I’m terribly sorry! Any friend of Spidercide's is a friend of mine!"
"This is not my u"
"Wait up!" Ggnictee yelled still holding the hammer, "how did I catch that! This is Thor's hammer?? Right? I shouldn’t' be able to just catch it!"
"You must be worthy, anyone who is worthy can carry it."
"WHAT!?! You mean any old goody good can lift the hammer? That's dumb! Then any old idiot who was a Boy Scout can pick up THORS HAMMER and toss it around! How dumb is that? Who comes up with this stuff?! I mean really? You’re not ever the real Thor are you?"
"He's right," the big blonde man hung his head and held up his wrists, "these aren’t even real gauntlets I got them out of a Hercules costume."
Just them a girl with long red hair ran up the hill, "SPIDERCIDE!" she yelled as she ran
"Mary Jane?" Spidercide looked confused, then looked even more confused when the girl grabbed him and kissed him full on the lips for quiet a while. Without looking back to see the look that Eskanina was giving him he stammered out, "this is definitely not my U"
On the other side of the hill Metamorph had the henchman by the throat and Ggnictee had a gun barrel to his head, "Start talking." the shifter hissed.
"Alright, alright I’ll tell you everything I know!" the henchman broke easily
"Alright," said the man with the bolt on his head, "There's a new Dark Arts teacher, Harry and Hermoinine start dating, they think that Snape did something but it's really Voldermolt, Snape takes the rod out of his butt-"
"No, I meant about Z-Mage!"
"Who?"
"AARGH!" said Metamorph, plus a months work in a radiophonics lab, "We've just been chasing a Harry Potter fan with Dimensional Teleport abilities."
"Hey, aren't you those guys who are doing that RPG on CBR? I loved the 1st one, especially the few parts written by Grimlock! Can I have your autographs?"
"Sure, kid," said Metamorph, forming his finger into a pen, "Who should I make it out to?"
"One for Random Harry Potter Fan and 4 for my cousins of the same name."
"I think they're dead."
"Don't worry, that's never stopped them before."
Meanwhile, on the Relentless, Captain Planet was remembering what Metamorph told him earlier: "If you're ever in an overwhelming combat situation just press the big red button marked 'Do Not Press'"
As they turned around a clump of space debris they saw the ship waver and disappear. Soon, they saw the stars disappear and be replaced by a field of total blackness. He also saw a sight that would later prevent him from sleeping for a month. Out of nowhere, a colossal alien fleet had appeared. This was no ordinary fleet, though. This had every kind of ship in the multiverse. Empire, Klingon, Borg, Deception, Drej, Species 8472, Vogon, Shadow, Frogstar, Gelf, Protoss, Zerg, Lensmen and about 50 other kinds. Very certain that this could be nothing other than an overwhelming combat situation, he pressed the button. Immediately, several things started to happen. The Nose cone and front fuselage folded down and the cockpit rotated 90 degrees and shot up into the head that appeared where the nose cone was. The wings rotated 180 degrees and folded back, jutting outward from the body. The front of the engines below the wings swung forward and folded down to form a pair of legs. The back of the engines contained hands and they swung out from the fuselage to form arms and shoulders. You know, that was kinda confusing without pictures, let's just accept that the relentless turned into a giant robot that was armed to the metal teeth which it then used to bite spaceships in half while shooting missiles into their main reactors.
As the Relentless began to change into a robot, the likes of which would make any Power Ranger cringe, other problems were beginning to arise. Eskanina Smith was not happy at all with the way this Mary Jane seemed fixed over Spidercide, and quite frankly, she had good reason. Spidercide himself couldn't understand it either, but the woman was acting as if he was the original Spider-Man, the one she married all those years. But it wasn't him, he was just the clone and Mary Jane knew that. More over, the last time they had met, Spidercide had tried to kill her at the Daily Bugle building along with the Scarlet Spider, the Jackal and everyone else at the Daily Bugle. Meanwhile, frustrated with the way they had chased down some Harry Potter fan all the way across the multiverse and to some new universe, where as far as he could tell Spidercide was the most popular person in existence, King Ggnictee went up to the fake Thor and demanded some answers.
"Now see her feathered up start, what is the meaning of this, first attacking us, then simply leaving us alone because Spidercide says he's our friend?"
"Well, anyone who knows Spidercide must know the Jackal himself. The Jackal is our father, he grew and watched us all as we were born."
"What?!?” asked Spidercide, whose jaw dropped at the very mention of that name. "How do you know the Jackal? How is he alive? He fell off the top of the Daily Bugle building. The man is a raving lunatic. His sole goal in life is the replacement of humanity with clones and the destruction of Spider-Man."
At the mention of the name Spider-Man, the Thor fake seemed taken back.
"Spidercide, you more than anyone knows that our father does not want that name mentioned ever again. Spider-Man was a murderer. He killed the goddess Gwen Stacey and tried to prevent our father from bringing a new era of peace with us clones in control of the world. He would have succeeded in stopping the Jackal if you yourself had not aided our father in his task."
At this Spidercide was silent. He could not speak or even react. He simply walked from the fake Thor in a trance. King Ggnictee thanked the man and he and the other Mary Jane walked away. At this, Eskanina, Metamorph, King Ggnictee and the Harry Potter fan walked up to Spidercide.
"Spidercide," asked Metamorph, "do you have any clue what that guy was talking about?"
"Yes I do. And all I can say is that the sooner we can get out of this world, the better."
"Where are we and what was all that about."
Spidercide explained as best as he could.
"We are not in the U that I was born. At least not the version of the U in which I was born. In the dimension that I was "born" in, the Jackal had hatched a plan to actually replace all of humanity with clones using a virus that he had cooked up in his lab. The virus was instantly lethal to all forms of life except the clones that he had grown. He had to hold off on his plan because every clone that he had ever made other than that of the original Gwen Stacey and Spider-Man, and me of course, all seemed to melt or deteriorate after they were grown. By the time he had perfected his cloning process, the Scarlet Spider and some god-like being known as Traveller confronted him. Traveller wanted me to kill the Jackal and freed me from the Jackal's control only to place me under his. When I confronted the Jackal, the Scarlet Spider tried to stop me and there was a big battle. I fell off the top of the Daily Bugle before the fight ended but I am guessing that since I heard that the Jackal died, the good guys won. My guess is that in this version of my dimension, I never betrayed the Jackal and was able to help him kill Spider-Man and the Scarlet Spider."
"So if that is true," asked Eskanina, " then both of those two were..."
"Clones made by the Jackal, just like me, though probably without any powers. Listen, I don't have any intention of letting the Jackal getting away with this. I am going to make him pay for this. Any of you guys with me?"
Metamorph, Eskanina, and King Ggnictee all looked at each other.
"Cap?" said Deacon Briars, "Cap? Cap. Cap! CAP!"
"Huh, what?"
"You fell asleep."
"Oh sorry, I've been busy these last few nights. I dreamt that this ship could turn into a giant robot."
"Well it could, there's a bunch of buttons here that I'm too scared to try."
"Of course we're in!" Metamorph stepped forward from the group, "The...whatever the hell our name is always stick together right?"
Ggnictee drew out Excalibur, "Lets smite some clone ass." he turned to Thor, "oh and here's for throwing that hammer you big jerk." a quick right hook and Thor fell. Ggnictee, being worthy, picked up the hammer, "I'll just slip this into my interdimensional pocket," he said as he slipped the hammer into the small pocket of hyperspace that was tied to the suits interdimensional beacons. "Well" Eskanina shrugged, "I’m not backing out now." she stopped, "Uhhh guys...what's that?" She pointed down a hill where a young woman and her dog were running up the hill. The woman was screaming at the top of her lungs, there was a group of men running after her.
"THE TRAITOR!!!!" Thor said, who had recovered from his concussion.
THE WHAT?! All the heroes said at once.
"She used to be the fathers first assistant, she was like a daughter to him. She was the most brilliant person on the planet, even more so then the father. Then she met this old woman, who taught her evil and she turned on the father, and tried to destroy his clones and save the wretched humanity."
"Well," said Spidercide, "maybe this is a little more different form my U then I thought, I don't remember an assistant."
"Well we better save..." Metamorph hadn’t' finished his sentence before Ggnictee was already at the bottom of the hill with three men on the ground around him and one assistant w/ dog behind him.
Suddenly the dog, well what was supposed to have been a dog, changed into a woman,
"oh not another shifter." Eskanina whispered.
The woman walked up to Ggnictee, "this is Erin, I was her protector, now you are. I give you this, it is one of the amulets of a fair amount of power; it is the amulet of a strange shape and form. I give this to you and ask you to protect Erin, only she can stop the Jackal." she handed the amulet over to Ggnictee then turned into a robin and disappeared.
"Ggnictee! What is that?" Metamoprh said as he came closer.
"It is another amulet of power!? I thought there were only the three." he slipped the small disk onto the chain around his neck with the other three amulets as he spoke.
"What's that one do?"
"This one will allow me to change form, not with the flexibility enjoyed by you, but pretty much anything I know. I can’t just turn my arm to a sword but I can turn myself into a sword."
"Well that's good...I think." Eskanina laughed, "but two questions who’s the girl, and where did Thor and the redhead go?"
"The girl," Metamorph said, "is apparently our new resident scientist, she'll stay back and make gizmos like Q and probably be a love interests. As for Thor and Mary...crap."
"Well it will be good to have another girl on the team. To much testosterone on that ship."
"Shut up, oh well lets go stop the Jackal, eh guys?"
The city. New York City. Spidercide remembered every inch of it from his cloned memories of Spider-Man. But it wasn't the city that he remembered. All along the street, dead bodies lay in the mounds while their clones walked along the city in broad daylight, oblivious to the bodies of their genetic "parents". Spidercide led the group to the one building that the Jackal would have a sick enough of a sense of humor to make his new headquarters. Empire State University. This was where the Jackal had worked, not as the Jackal but as Professor Miles Warren. Where his work on cloning had first begun and where he had grown his first two clones, the one of Gwen Stacey, and the one of the original Spider-Man, who would later be known as the Scarlet Spider. Sure enough, outside there were crowds of people chanting the name "Jackal" over and over again. And there, standing on the top of E.S.U, holding on the end of a pike a head with the mask of Spider-Man on it was a tall man-shaped being. He was completely green and had a face that looked like the cross between an actual jackal's and a human. As he stood there the crowd cheered him on as if he was Jesus himself.
"JACKAL" Spidercide screamed with a murderous rage. Morphing out of his disguise and into his regular form, Spidercide leapt to the top of the building and attacked the Jackal.
"Oh man," said Metamorph as he looked at the angry crowds of people who were surrounding the group. "Now what do we do?"
Meanwhile, back on the ship...
Morphing into lightning/electricity and taking care not to fry the circuits or blow up anything, Captain Planet went through the Devastator's computer banks. One of the new buttons enabled the Devastator to jump through dimensions. Homing in on the dimension where the others were, Captain Planet made the jump.
The Devastator materialized over the E.S.U. campus, where Spidercide was in the process of kicking the Jackal's behind and the other heroes were being attacked by the murderous clones. Leaping out, the heroes aboard the Devastator leaped into the fray.
"Crap! Your boyfriend is gonna get us killed!" Erin yelled at Eskanina
"He's not my!" she yelled back.
"Calm down, k? Well Mete old pal," said Ggnictee going back to his usual face (having use the new amulet to change his appearance), "what are we supposed to do?"
"Get me to the lab inside, I know how to stop these clones." Erin looked up at the horde that was surrounding Spidercide and the Jackal, "the Jackal was smart enough to make sure they could never revolt."
"Ok Metamorph you and Eskanina go help her boyfriend, we'll get into the Lab." he said as he began clearing a path for Erin to get to the front door. Just as Metamorph and Eskanina began to clear the area around Spidercide two things happened, the first and best was that a giant world devastator appeared over head. The second was that Spidercide showed up to stop himself from killing the Jackal.
As Ggnictee and Erin ran through the doors, the rest of our heroes(tm) came flying into the battle.
"STOP!" said a deep, vaguely Russian voice, "DOOM WILL TOLERATE NONE OF THIS!"
"DOCTOR DOOM?!" said the heroes and all the extras.
"What in Stan Lee's name is going on here?" asked Spidercide, "Isn't he a bad guy?"
"I think I know. The clones of the Villains were way too accurate. They retained their evilness and are still supervillians. In essence, they're on our side." Said Erin. As she spoke, Dr. Doom was joined by Carnage, Magneto, Apocalypse, Thanos, Loki, Super-Skrull, Several Decepticons, Green Goblin, Doctor Octopus, Ultron, the Impossible Man, Bullseye, Elektra, Red Skull, Juggernaut, Sabertooth, The Punisher, Namor, Maestro, a dozen Sentinels and about 50 other guys whom I don't know. True to form, they began destroying everything in sight.
A little before this Erin and Ggnictee had run into the Jackal's secret lab, she had grabbed a backpack full of stuff and gone running back out. On their way though the last room before they could get outside they heard a shout from behind them. It was Thor-clone, "stop traitor!"
"Run traitor, run like hell!" Ggnictee pushed her on as he spun on his heals to meet Thor-clone in battle.
"No, I can’t leave you!" Erin stopped too.
"K’, listen, the Known Multiverse* is counting on you to get out there and stop the clones so Our heroes can get the crap off this dirt ball and stop Z boy and Palpy. I took the real Thor in a wrestling match once, this fake P.O.S will be no problem." He looked back at Thor-clone, "of course seeing as the rest of the Avengers just joined him I could have some problems." Behind Thor stood Captain America-clone with Iron Man-clone and the rest of the avengers-clone team. "But fear not my lady," Ggnictee said arming the cannon in his right hand, pulling out Excalibur with his left, and turning on the red eye sight for his rocket launcher, "I can take these jerks!"
"GGNICTEE NO!" Erin used the full 5 syllable Celtic version of his name, which was generally only used by his mother when he was in trouble, as opposed to the 3 syllable English version. "Just go!" he said as the avenger-clones charged. Erin ran out the door, and nearly ran into Metamorph.
"How did he clone them?" Metamorph asked, "Half aren't even human!"
"There's no time to worry about that," said Erin, "we've got to stop the clones!"
"What about you?" Eskanina asked, "What about the villains? What about Spidercide?"
"Metamorph! Go help Ggnictee I’ll take care of the clones!" Erin nearly pushed the shape shifter through the doors to the building.
"Ggnictee's in trouble? This u does suck! Are you sure you don’t need me here?"
"Yes! Now go I’ll have all the clones cleaned up by the time you get back!"
"What about our Spidercide?"
"Don’t' worry I already checked him, this Jackal didn't use the same genetic fail safes our Spidercide’s did, he'll be fine NOW GO!"
Metamorph ran though he doors and saw a horrible scene. Thor clone lay on the ground with his own hammer imbedded in his head, Hawkeye-clone was hanging from a lamp with his bowstring around his neck, Antman-clone was...all over the place, and Tigra-clone was in the corner of the room bent in... Interesting shapes.
The other Avenger-clones were jumping around the room trying to keep up with the blur that seemed to be Ggnictee. Firing with one hand, slicing with the other and sending rockets all around the room, he seemed to be holding his own.
"Time to tip the scales." Metamorph said as he reached out and grabbed Waspgirl-clone and Iron Man-clone and threw them through the wall, and fired two rockets, one at each to finish the job. A cannon blast hit Captain America-clone square in the chest taking him down. A few more shots from Metamorph and Ggnictee and the rest of the avengers were done for too.
"Well alright then." Ggnictee nodded his head.
He and Metamorph ran outside screaming, 'there can be only two!' as soon as they got out the doors they stopped.
"What the hell happened out here?" Metamorph looked around at the scene.
"Well," Erin explained.
While Erin explained, we take you now to the most evil place in the universe. It is the lair of the Z-mage, which you will never see because Captain Planet fell asleep at the wheel. Currently, the Z-mage himself is engaging in the most evil activities in the modern world.
Line dancing with his lackeys. They are equally evil, though they have less motivation and power. His lackeys are the Backstreet Boys, N’ Sync, Spice Girls, Britteny Spears, and Jessica Simpson. Suddenly Justin Timberlake runs up.
"Sir!"
"Yes, Lackey, I believe you were about to tell me that this little ruse did not work?"
"Yes, master"
"Step turn step And why not?"
"The captain fell asleep"
"Thank You" The Z-mage replied as he blasted a hole straight through Justin's chest. "You are dismissed"
"Dude!!!" Lance yelled out. "Why'd you do that?"
"First rule of minion hiring," Z-mage replied. "Hire only those you don't care about. They WILL disappoint you." At that point he shot Lance as well. Then the Backstreet Boys began cheering, as their album would have5 units of boy power vs. N'Sync's 3 units. Z-mage then shot Howie and Nick Carter. He shot Nick several times, massacring the body.
"Now, lackeys, we become proactive. You will all go and attack the enemies. Jessica, you will handle the anti-shapeshifter arsenal. JC, you will be the human shield. Brittney, you will show them your huge breasts to control them. Failure is not an option, as you are all dead whether they kill you or not. Take the multidimensional shuttle with the tracking device. GO!!!"
Fortunately, Captain Planet was asleep no longer. And Britney's breasts didn't work on the non-organic Captain, the pure-of-heart King Ggnictee, or the all-business Deacon Briars (the last one, in fact, made a crack about her music and blew her brains out).
Now our heroes(TM) and their unlikely allies, the Marvel villain clones, had a dilemma: the Jackal or Z-mage?
Suddenly, jumping down from the top of the Empire State University building, carrying the disembodied head of the Jackal in one hand, and the disembodied head of this world's Spidercide in the other, the original Spidercide appeared, covered in blood. While King Ggnictee and Metamorph had been fighting the Avengers-clones, he had had to fight the X-men-clones with the help of Jimmy the Dead and T-1000. As for the rest of the clones that had been attacking the heroes, at the sight of the Jackal's dead body, they seemed to simply leave in despair and go on as if nothing had happened. As the heroes looked around, they saw the clones of all the villains standing there. How on earth the Jackal had been able to clone some of them was anyone's guess at this point. Never the less, they seemed different. They were cloned villains, but they had had it implanted in their genetic makeup to be villains fighting against the existing world order, which in this case had been the world order of the Jackal. For those confused readers out there, a bunch of Marvel villains have been cloned and now they are good guys, okay? The heroes and the cloned villains all boarded the Relentless and within minutes, were back on board the Devastator. Their next dimensional stop, Khazan. They were going to stop Z-Mage. One way or another.
As the World Devastator moved through dimensions back towards Khazan, King Ggnictee brought up a question that had been on his mind ever since leaving that one universe.
"Hey Erin, you never did tell us how you managed to get rid of most of the clones all by yourself."
Erin quickly explained.
"That was easy. You see, I used to be Professor Warren's assistant some years back before he became the Jackal. I helped for a few months on his cloning research. I noticed during our experiments that whenever a certain chemical compound came into contact with the cloned tissue, the clone tissue would deteriorate and simply evaporate. Once the Jackal began cloning the entire human race, I expanded on that knowledge to create a sort of virus bomb like the ones he used to wipe out humanity, ones that only affected clones. That was the main reason why the Thor-clone was chasing me when I bumped into you."
As Erin finished explaining her story, Captain Planet called everyone to the Devastator’s view screen. They had arrived at Khazan.
Suddenly, upon entering the control room, Spidercide began jumping all over the place, sticking from wall to wall. Then, from out of his suit shot a sticky, polymer substance that stuck to King Ggnictee's face. King Ggnictee managed to rip the stuff off with some effort, noticing that ripping it off felt like pulling of a Band-Aid.
"I got my webs," Spidercide shouted in excitement. He began hugging his fellow teammates, some of whom began wondering if they would really need Spidercide for later missions.
"What the heck is the matter with you," asked Deacon Briars as he continued to rip pieces of webbing off of him.
"I got my webs. I talked to Steel and Iron Man in the weapons room about adding some web shooters to my suit, and sure enough they found a way to do it. Ha, this is great. The web shooters expand just like my costume does whenever I shape shift so I don't have to worry about that. Oh man, this is totally cool."
Spidercide then web swung out of the room, leaving his teammates standing there, tearing off pieces of webbing from the control panels. Suddenly, a sensory array began to blink. They had arrived back home. They were in Khazan.
"Captain planet! We're receiving a transmission,” said Metamorph.
"On screen."
Two people appeared on the screen, dressed as sports commentators. Below their faces display the words "Pat Summers" and "Jay Peoples". They begin to speak.
Pat: Good evening and welcome to tonight’s fight. I'm Pat Summers.
Jay: And I'm Jay Peoples. Today we will see the battle that might end all battles as Z-Mage goes up against the Omni-Force-
Jimmy: I thought we were the Infinities.
Metamorph: No, aren't we K.L.I.D?
T-1000: I'm sure that we're the Infinite Justice League.
Planet: Shut Up! Pat and Jay? I thought you retired?
Pat: We were supposed to come back for the 200th fight but they shut it down too soon.
Jay: And, since this might be the last fight that the Multiverse ever sees, we pulled a few strings with Harley and she got us the Commentating job.
Planet: Okay, so, what do we have to do?
Pat: Well, it'll be 3 rounds: 1: Ship-to-ship combat. 2: Combat between all your minions/troops and 3: direct combat between whoever the hell you are and Z-Mage.
Jay: Also, during the battle, Z-Mage will be attempting to break the restrictions on the Omni-Gem. We've got a few minutes so let's do some interviews. Frank?
In the Locker Room marked “The Good Guys” (being as no one on the team has yet to decide on a name)...
We find our heroes preparing for the fight. Spidercide and King Ggnictee were in deep meditation for the battle ahead. Jimmy the Dead was shadow boxing. Metamorph was on the verge of whooping the Level 29 boss. Captain Planet was taking a shower, letting the water charge up his elemental powers, having used some to “recycle” some soda cans into spare bullets for Deacon, who was checking his guns.
As Deacon loaded his guns, he still couldn’t believe what he was doing here. From going to kill some thirty-odd goons to traveling around the known and unknown cosmos with these guys in an attempt to save all known existence. Damn, he thought to himself, methinks I should have just stayed in bed. Than again, he knew that it was up to all of them, he included, stopping Z-Mage and getting back the missing Omni-Gem.
KNOCK KNOCK
“Who could that be?” Jimmy questioned.
“Hey, Deke, could you see who that is?” Cap asked from the shower.
Deke drew a gun to check on the door.
“Yo Deke, drop your piece. No one’s going to attack us now. We have to fight when it’s time.” Metamorph said from his game.
Deke holstered his gun and opened the door.
“Hi-eeee!!! I’m here for the pre-fight interview!”
Deacon stood fade to face with what appeared to be a young woman dressed like a jester of some sort. She wore a red and black jester's uniform complete with bell cap and her face was painted white with black around her eyes, giving the appearance of a mask.
Deacon was a bit confused seeing this. “What exactly are you talking...”
“Is that Harley Quinn? Hoo-Haa, it is!!” exclaimed Metamorph as he ran over. He then formed two pseudopods at his sides, which then turned into copies of Wayne and Garth, upon which he/they dropped to the floor.
“We’re not worthy! We’re not worthy! We’re not worthy!”
As Metamorph chanted and Harley looked pleased and did the old “kiss-the-royal-hand” trick, Deke asked, “Metamorph, who the Hell is...” only to have a bar of soap shoved in his face. “Hey mister, watch the language, we’re being’ filmed!” Harley said as a floating camera whizzed by, “Don’t make me wash out your mouth, young man!” she giggled.
“Metamorph, who the heck is she?”
“Deke, that’s Harley Quinn! Don’t you know who she is?”
“No I don’t! I’m still new to this multi-realm crap, remember?”
“Oh, well she’s the reporter for the Arena bouts. She also does commentary and is worshiped by all the CBUB fans. She’s awesome!”
“That’s all true, especially for the worshipped and awesome parts!” said Harley. “Now I got’s ta interview you guys before the fight. Who wants to go first?”
“Hey Deke, you can go first.”
“Why me? Aren’t you supposed to be the big Harley fan?”
“True, but I gotta beat that boss...I mean check up on our inventory for the fight.”
“He ran off, leaving Deacon and Harley alone as the camera zoomed by. “We’re ready to film in three, two....”
“Hi-ya, everyone! Welcome to what has to be the biggest, bestest, and most importantest battle we’ve ever had! The forces of good and evil are coming out today to do battle for what could be the existence of all Khazan!! I’m here in the room of...of...”
OFF-CAMERA: “Who the heck are these guys called?” “We don’t know, Har, they haven’t decided. Just ad-lib.”
“...the guys who are laying everything they have on the line to save all reality. Here with me is the team’s newest member, Deacon Briars! So, Deke, ya mind if I call you Deke?”
“Yes I do.”
“OK then, Deke, how did you join up with these guys in the first place?”
“They, uhh, interrupted me when I was busy working.”
“And what, pray tell, did you do?”
“You don’t want to know.”
“Let me guess. You’re a killer, huh? I can tell ‘cuz you‘ve got Puddins' eyes!”
“Who’s Puddin?”
OFF-CAMERA: “You don’t want to know, Mister Briars.”
“So Deke, how are you gonna win this one?”
“Well, I guess by outsmarting the enemy. We have a pretty skilled group here, with shapeshifters, mages, fighters, and myself, I hope we can do it.”
“Alright, Deke, time for the important question: Boxers or Briefs?”
“What kind of question is that?”
“Well, we do have that female demographic to consider...”
“Look, I’m having a bad day here. I’m currently trying to figure out how to save the universe without getting myself killed in the process, and the last thing I want to do is talk to some clown girl!”
As Deacon snarled, Harley looked on attentively. When Deke was done, she put her hand over Deke’s eyes, leaving his mouth and chin.
“What are you doing?”
“Ya know, that chin’s kinda familiar. You ever been to Gotham City?”
“No, Harley, why do you ask?”
“You remind me of a certain lug I once knew. Always grouchy and mean and dark. Kinda like you.”
Deacon looked a bit ashamed. “Look, Miss Quinn, I’m sorry about that outburst. I’m rather stressed right now.”
“That’s OK, Mister Briars, water over the bridge. Good luck in the battle. Send in one of your pals to be interviewed next!”
After a failed attempt from Harley to get any response of any kind out of T-1000, Harley next interviewed Spidercide.
"Hi ya ladies and germs. I am now here with one of the original members of, uhm. Psst, what are these guys names again?"
OFFSTAGE: I told you, they haven't got one yet.
Harley: Oi. Well then Mr. Spidercide, as one of the original members of the team that will be fighting tonight against Z-Mage for the sake of the Multiverse, do you think that your team could win today?
Spidercide: Absolutely. Our Devastator has been fitted with the coolest weapons that I have ever seen and after the work that King Ggnictee and Metamorph did on the Relentless, we are ready for the ship-to-ship battle. As for minions battling, we have got every Magic User, Barbarian, Assassin, thief, mobster, rioter, priest, lawyer and politician from Discworld as well as the clones of a whole bunch of villains from my old Universe. As for Z-Mage, it's him against me, T-1000, Metamorph, King Ggnictee, Captain Planet, Deacon Briars, Jimmy the Dead, and Eskanina Smith.
Harley: Speaking of the lovely lady, what are these rumors we've been hearing about you two.
Spidercide: Nothing. Nothing at all. Rumors. What rumors? I haven't started any rumors. This interview is over. I am getting someone else.
Not one to be discouraged, Harley went up to Captain Planet. "Hiya, blue boy! You, uh, notice that you're taking a shower with your clothes on?"
Cap looked down at himself. "Clothes? What're you talking about?" He pulled off a glove, and the stump was red, as the arm it had been attached to was blue. "This is all me!"
Harley stared at the amazing phenomenon. Then she went back to the interview. "So, whatcha doin' in there?"
"Recharging my powers," Cap explained.
"Preparing' for the big fight?" Harley asked. When Captain Planet nodded, she then asked, "So, howya gonna win?"
"Well," said Cap, "I'd hate for Z-Mage to learn our strategy, especially with what's at stake, so..." He communicated the plan to her using Heart-telepathy.
Harley smiled with delight. "You're gonna smash onions with dildos and balloons full of cheese? Amazing!"
Cap blinked. Harley was obviously psychotic, for the Heart-telepathy to have flubbed that badly.
"By the way," she said, "you know something'? You kinda look like someone me and my Puddin' met once." Harley was of course making a reference to the Batman/Superman series, "World's Finest", where they met Superman.
As Cap stepped out of the shower, Harley Quinn sauntered off.
Harley: Hi everybody! I'm here with another of the founding members of Whoever the Hell These Guys Are. Say hello to Metamorph!
MM: Thanks a lot Ms. Quinn.
Harley: Please, call me Harley.
MM: Okay. It is such an honor to be on this show. I used to watch the matches all the time.
Harley: Oh really?
MM: Yes, I'm so excited that I could just melt into a puddle right now.
Harley: Don't, that's real leather. Speaking of your shapeshifting powers, how did you get them anyway?
MM: Well, I was on a 10th grade field trip to the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant. We were walking across the catwalk above the cooling tank when suddenly, some fat bald guy came running down it screaming about Donuts. The railing was only secured by duct tape and I fell in the tank. Since the lead shields around the plutonium had a crack that was patched up with bubble gum the water was radioactive and merged with me.
Harley: Yawn. So, Morph, can I call ya Morph?
MM: Sure, Everyone does.
Harley: Okay, right now, there's something I really want to know: Do you have a girlfriend?
MM: I thought you were with the Joker.
Harley: He's not coming back until the Batman Beyond Movie. That takes place 50 years from now so he's legally dead.
MM: Oh. Alright. No, Harley I don't have a GF. (Turning toward camera) And if there are any single females out there who are of legal age, my phone number is 555-8842.
Harley (writing something down): Can you repeat that last number? Oh, never mind. So, anyway, are you worried about the fight?
MM: Not at all. I've done a lot of modifications that nobody knows about. The big oil can shape on the front? That's a magical superweapon. It'll destroy whole tracts of reality. I've used Transformer Technology to put in all sorts of big nasty weapons and the factories on this thing have been making droid fighters for the last month or so. We've also got a battle droid army and we can tap in to the Power Cosmic. The Infinite Improbability Drive can turn his whole army into Banana Parfait. I've also got my own ship, the Liquid Hawk that turns into a robot and a tank. Last week, I found out that the World Devastator is sentient but it's been in a coma for a month. I think it also might be a transformer but don't tell the guys.
"Kingy, oh kingy!" Harley ran up to the meditating Ggnictee. "Ms Quinn, it truly is an honor." Ggnictee unfolded his legs stood up and strapped excalaber to his back.
"You can call me Harley," she smiled, " so what do you think your chances are?"
"We will win."
"That’s it?"
"That is it"
"o...k...moving on where'd you get the king in your name?"
"I was married to the princess of Denmark once."
"Really? When?"
"A couple thousand years ago."
"Oh, and what is it you did before you joined...this team?"
"I traveled everywhere."
"Oh that’s nice, op looks like ship to ship is about to start what are you going to do now?"
"We fight." Ggnictee stood up; he and Metamorph walked to the door that led to the Relentless. The rest of the team manned their stations on the bridge of the ship.
Meanwhile in the other locker room z mage boarded his personal fighter as Palpatine prepared his destroyer for battle.
"Well folks," Harley giggled, "this will be a simultaneous fight so while our heroes are up in the sky their lackeys will be down on the ground. To the sidelines and see what's up there, while we wait for the space fight to start."
On the ground in the arena hundreds of Our Heroes(tm) lackeys were preparing for battle. Suddenly out of the enemies entrance there came a cloud of smoke and a booming voice over the radio, "oh baby baby."
One of the Scotsmen on the ground turned to Doctor Doom; "this man is truly evil!"
Doom shook in fright, "I’m scared...hold me." he whispered as the smoke cleared as the BS boys, N'sync, the spice girls stepped out lead by the original Briteny Spears. They also had a few hundred of palpy's boys backing them up.
As the evil music played on and our heroes team coward in fear, one particularly weak but brave member stepped forward to stop this evil. He stepped out in front of his team and yelled, "I AM IRON MAN!!!!!!!!!" as his armor flew on, drums sounded and the opening riff of the Black Sabbath song of the same name drowned out spears and her evil crew. The battle ensued.
"Metamorph," said Captain Planet, "You go down to your ship; Ggnitcee, you take the relentless; Jimmy, you coordinate the Ground forces; Deacon, you're at weapons control; Spidercide, you have flight controls; Eskanina, you have systems monitoring; T-1000, you're in charge of all the technical stuff that I don't understand."
"That covers a lot," Jimmy mumbled under his breath.
"Shut up! Now, move into position!"
The troops formed up into squads of men, the hovertanks formed up behind them, the speeders above them and the droid deployers opened up and released the battle droids.
"Ready all weapons!"
"Various panels on the Devastator opened up revealing lots of freaky looking guns, lasers, missile launchers and scary things.
"Launch all fighters!"
The droid fighters launched from the hangar bays, there were almost 500 of them. They were accompanied by the dark, sleek shape of the Relentless and the Robot Form of the Liquid Hawk.
"Channel the Power Cosmic!"
An octagonal array of antennas unfolded from the front of the world devastator, forming with wires a kind of metal spiderweb.
"Power up the magic beam!"
Computers started reading the magical books in the library and sending the power into the tower of art which was capped with a retractable Octiron Cap.
"Turn on the Neural Net!"
Positrons moved through silicon passageways, which might reveal intelligence at the heart of the Devastator.
"ATTACK!"
"M-e-t-a-m-o-r-p-h, n-e-e-d m-o-r-e s-h-i-e-l-d-s, AAAAGGGG..." gunfire cut off Ggnictee's broken words aboard the Relentless. Metamorph was spread all over the place with arms and tentacles going to almost every part of the ship, and in some places replacing the original wire or parts.
So far they were doing their part in the space combat. Having destroyed most of z mages fleet. Unfortunately they had failed to destroy Z-mages ship it's self. "Metamorph! Those shields!?!" Ggnictee yelled as he went though a few more fighters.
"There...you...go!" Metamorph was spinning around the ship trying to keep it in one piece as a thousand fighters came at them at once.
"YES! Die you drone pricks!"
"Relentless this is base!" It was T-1000 at tactical
"Yeah T we're here, what’s up?" Metamorph hit the com-button with yet another arm
"Found Z on my screen, the drones are doing about as well as his are on you. If you can take him out we win the spacebattle."
"Alright, send his position over."
"Got it lets get the prick!" Ggnictee said as he pulled the Relentless around toward Z mage.
They met up with him a minute later.
Meanwhile one the ground,
"ADMIRAL!" the general ran up to Jimmy, speaking with a thick Scottish accent.
"What’s the report?" the ground battle wasn't going as well as he'd like, last report Britteny spears breast had killed nearly half his force.
"We've destroyed all of his captains except Spears sir. Other then her we're holding our own."
"I guess there are some things you have to do on your own." Jimmy walked out of his field tend toward the battle that was in the center of the Khazan, preparing his suit and weapons for the battle ahead.
"Captain," said Deacon, "We're getting a report from the Unseen University Librarian."
"On screen."
The Librarian appears on the display screen. He looks at his Computer, looks up and says "Ook." Oh, yes. I forgot to mention, the Librarian is an Orangutan.
"Oh good. All the magic has been channeled into the Tower?"
"Ook."
"And the Power Cosmic?"
"Ook."
"Good. Ensign Rincewind?"
The screen changed to a thin wizard in an engineering uniform at the top of the tower. He is running in place while chanting "OhgodsohgodsohgodsI'mgonnadie!"
"Ensign Rincewind, are you set to fire?"
"What, now? Alright, just let me set the tel-a-port-er."
"Lock on to Z-Mage's ship."
"Locking on," Said Deacon.
"Rincewind, Fire!"
Rincewind pressed the button marked: "Pushing this button will cause the end of reality" and stepped onto the teleporter, beaming to the bridge. The Power Cosmic/Magic Beam lashed out at Z-Mage's ship...
"Well," captain planet yelled into the intercom," I don't care we need that weapon online now!" the Power Cosmic Beam had been hit just before it had been able to fire. "I just can't do it captain, we don’t have the power." the blotted Scotsman responded form engineering.
Deke ran up to the intercom, "Find the power you jerk off or I’ll come down there and rip your Scottish testicles out through your nose!"
"Eye sir, will have in it a moment."
"That’s better"
"Alright Deke," Captain Planet said regaining his composer, "as soon as that things online target Palpatine's lead destroyer and ...destroy it."
Meanwhile in the Relentless
"Ggnictee! What the hell are you doing! I can’t get a shot with all your flipping and turning" Metamorph screamed as circuits blew and things flew around as the artificial gravity shut on and off.
"Would you like me to sit and get shot to hell?" Ggnictee didn't even look over at Metamorph as he was concentrating on his flying, "z mage is a hell of a pilot."
"If I can just get a shot, I could finish him off!"
During this, on the ground.
Jimmy the dead moved through the crowed with surgical precision. His forces had been doing fine against all of Z’s minions except one. Briteny spears stood about a hundred and fifty feet away from him. One, two, three Scotsmen went down as her voice cut though their minds like a hot knife through butter.
Jimmy brought up his pistol and took aim.
"We have weapon captain!" the Scottish accent came through the intercom
"Deke fire!" Captain Planet leaned forward in his chair taking a captain like pose.
"Way ahead of you cap!" Deacon responded as the Power Cosmic Beam shot from their ship to Plapatine's star destroyer. The back half of the destroyer disappeared as the beam sliced through it.
"Got you, you bastard." Metamorph whispered to himself a the hit the trigger firing a volley of shots at z mage's fighter, "hit!"
"Good shot!" Ggnictee laughed as the fighter in front of them spun toward oblivion.
"I guess that wraps up the space battle. I wonder how jimmy's doing on the ground."
Jimmy the dead leveled his gun and squeezed the trigger slowly. The bullet seemed to move in slow motion as it cruised toward the teenie-sluts head. She stiffened slightly as the bullet wizzed from ear to ear. The entry wound was barley visible as she fell to the ground. The rest of the battle was mop up for his crew.

Announcer: and now ladies and gentelbeings! We move on to tonight’s big event!!!!!!! LETS GET READY TO RUMBLE!!!!!!!!
This fight will decide the fate of the Omni-gems and possibly the entire multiverse! And don't forget to buy your fifty-fifty raffle tickets and support our very own Khazan girl scouts!
The Khazan arena. The arena where battles between legends have occurred. Now it is house to the battle to save reality. In the arena, on separate sides of the sand stood the two teams. On one side, stood Spidercide, Captain Planet, King Ggnictee, Eskanina Smith, Deacon Briars, Metamorph, Jimmy the Dead and T-1000. On the other side, in opposition to the team, stood Z-Mage, Palpatine, and his two apprentice's Darth Maul and Darth Vader. The crowds cheered and cheered, and then were silenced. For suddenly, the goddess Callisto walked out onto the judge's balcony. She signaled, the bell rang, and the battle began.
Darth Maul and Darth Vader instantly pulled out their lightsabers just as King Ggnictee drew Excaleber and the T-1000 pulled out a lightsaber that he had bought from some sword-shop in downtown Khazan especially for this match. While they attacked each other, the rest of the group, with weapons ready charged Palpatine and Z-Mage. And for the rest of this battle we turn you now to Pat and Jay.
Jay: Well ladies and gentlemen, the team defending Khazan has wasted no time. They have already used the weapons on their suits to try and turn Palpatine and Z-Mage into ashes.
Pat: No good. Z-Mage blocks the oncoming onslaught with a solid force field around him and Palpatine.
Jay: Palpatine let's loose with a blast of electricity aimed directly at the team's sorcerer Eskanina Smith...
Pat: But Spidercide blocks for her, taking the brunt of the blast instead.
Jay: Captain Planet flies up into the air, and then flies directly back down to the ground, crashing into and plowing straight through the solid earth of the arena.
Pat: Looks like things are getting shaky down there. Z-Mage and Palpatine seem to be losing their balance.
Jay: Captain Planet has just caused a small earthquake around the immediate area of Palpatine and Z-Mage. The two of them fall of their feet.
Pat: And Metamorph charges forward, attempting to take them out before they can get up to their feet.
Jay: Metamorph leaps into the air directly over our two bad boys.
Pat: And Palpatine stops him in mid-jump, using the force to keep him hovering up there.
Jay: Palpatine now uses the force to throw Metamorph directly into Deacon Briars who was just leveling his riffle for a good shot.
Pat: Jimmy the Dead runs in fast, tackling Z-Mage just as he was about to get up.
Jay: Holy cow. Pat, look over there.
Pat: Wow. It seems that some of the arena sand is moving. It has formed the shape of a giant hand that is moving towards Jimmy.
Jay: The hand is peeling Jimmy off Z-Mage and is starting to crush Jimmy into pieces.
Pat: Jimmy looks finished.
Jay: Not yet. A web line from Spidercide's shooters blinds and distracts Z-Mage as Eskanina creates a spell of her own to cause the giant hand of sand to crumble into pieces.
Pat: Meanwhile, things are getting pretty intense between Ggnictee, T-1000 and Darth Maul and Vader. T-1000's cybernetic speed seems to be a match for Darth Maul's while King Ggnictee and Darth Vader seem all too evenly matched.
--------Captain Planet lunged at Z-Mage, slamming into him. As the two super-powerful creatures of magic wrestled, Captain Planet noticed the Eye of Odin gleaming atop Z-Mage's forehead. If I can rid him of just one of his toys, thought Planet.
As he reached for the Eye, Z-Mage grabbed his arm, trying to pull it away. With a super-heroic effort even by his own standards (though, admittedly, an easy one for Superman), he reached for the Eye and managed to knock it off.
"Wait! NO!!" screamed Z-Mage as all the magical energy he had previously absorbed began to overload his original, Eye-less body. To Planet's shock and the other heroes' disbelief, Z-Mage was fried by his own magic!
"Wow!" grinned Jimmy. "I can't believe we won!" The other heroes cheered.
"But at what cost?" wondered Planet gloomily. Being vaporized into ash was a horrible way to go, even for Z-Mage. The knowledge that he was a murderer, even with reality at stake, went against everything he had represented.
He never wanted this to happen again.
Jay: Well, Z-Mage is out of it, he may or may not be back in the sequel, we'll see about that.
Pat: Hey, Jay this isn't marvel, people don't always come back from the dead, but with palpy's cloning abilities he may be bringing him back.
Jay: But the battles not over. Ggnictee and T-1000 seem to have switched dancing partners. Now it's T on Vader and the two highlanders together. Pat: Vader and T just stopped, realizing the fight was over but the other two are just going at it?
Jay: That's right Pat. Theirs isn't just a fight for the multiverse; it's an ancient fight of good vs. evil, the fight of the immortals.
Pat: Wait there goes Maul's saber, Ggnictee has Excalaber to his throat. Can we get audio down there it looks like he's talking
Darth Maul: You may have won this round Ggnictee but you will not win the next! I will return!
Ggnictee: There can be only two...bitch.
Jay: Ooooo, that had to hurt! Pat: Well, Darth Mauls head is now a soccer ball and Ggnictee is absorbing his powers. Wait up... looks like Metamorph got in on the action too! Humm, he must have morphed onto Ggnictee's sword, which would have given Ggnictee an edge with a shapeshifter jumping on and off his sword messing with the other guy!
Jay: Well looks like we're gonna have two force users in the next comic.
With the battle over our heroes(tm) walked down the long hallway to their locker room.
"Hey captain, you look down, what’s up?" Ggnictee patted Captain Planet on the back
"well Ggnictee, I just really wanted people to take me seriously as a hero you know?"
"But you kicked a lot of ass cap"
"Yeah some times, but I mean... there were a lot of captain planet jokes in there, and I don’t think people take me seriously as a leader you know?"
"Don't worry about it pall, they will soon...I think"
The extra-crispy body of Z-Mage lies on the field. A tall figure in black robes carrying a long, double-curved stick walks into view.
Z-MAGE? He says, in a voice like lead coffins being hit with hammers, YOUR TIME HAS COME.
"What the... hey skinny, who the hell are you?" said the sprit of Z-Mage.
GUESS, the figure said as he pulled back his hood to reveal a shiny, yellow skull.
"No, no!"
BUT YES, said Death, flipping out the blade of his switchblade scythe.
"No, you can't kill me now, I have to die at Xanatos Labs!"
THAT'S NOT MY CONCERN.
"Oh yeah?" with this he began reaching into his body's stomach pulling out a hammer, a top hat, large amounts of jewelry, a crystal ball, a carpet, several oil lamps and bottles and a pair of handcuffs owned by Houdini.
WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING FOR?
"The Necromnicon. If I can find it, I'll be brought back to liaaargh!" there was an inrush of matter as a new body was formed to fit his Soul. "Hah! Can't touch me!" he said and ran for it.
OH WELL. COME ALONG, LORD MAUL.
Darth Maul's soul stood up and reattached his head. "Oy, thanks nice skeleton person with the bones and the scythe froinlaven!"
HEY, Death said, annoyed, DIDN'T YOU HAVE A DEEPER VOICE?
"Nah, they dubbed me in the movie nice soul taker man!"
Death thought for a minute. WHATEVER.
Meanwhile, in the locker room, something curious was happening. When they had brought all 6 gems into close contact with each other, they merged into one and split into the 6 original gems and 2 extra, Reality, Time, Space, Mind, Power, Soul, Magic and Life (don't ask me how, it was something technobabbley). The gems that had already come in contact with a hero "chose" that hero, Mind chose Spidercide, Power chose Captain Planet, Time chose King Ggnictee, and Space chose Metamorph. The other 4 chose their owners in different ways, Reality chose Jimmy since he's pretty much the weakling, Magic was attracted to the nearest source of magic, Eskanina Smith, Soul went to Deacon Briars since T-1000 had no soul and you can't use the Soul gem without a soul, leaving T-1000 with the Life gem. There, now everyone has a gem. I finally made those idiots happAARGH!
"I thought we weren't gonna do that any more."
YOU THOUGHT WRONG.
With their new infinity gems back in their hands, the heroes looked at each other. They could only conclude that whoever it was who had created the Omni-gems in the first place had now split them apart back into their original forms along with the two new gems. It seemed as if the whole idea of creating the Omni-gems was perhaps so that they would find their newest members, Eskanina and Deacon Briars, both of whom had joined the group to help them find the sixth missing Omni-gem. It seemed as if fate had determined that they should be together as a new team. However, Captain Planet did not feel that way at all. Some of the other teammates didn't always realize this but Spidercide knew that there was more to Captain Planet than a comic book like hero with elemental powers. As the clone of one of the few heroes who has resolved never to kill no matter what the circumstances, Spidercide could only imagine what it must have felt like for him to have nearly killed Z-Mage. Apparently, he would have killed Z-Mage if Z-Mage was not already predestined to die in a certain point in the future.
"Hey Cap," asked Spidercide, "listen man, are you alright?"
The only thing that Captain Planet could even think to respond was no. He had nearly killed a man, he was still not given the proper respect for his intelligence but rather for his raw power, and more than ever, he missed his planeteers.
"No Spidercide, I am not. I haven't been all right for a long time. I miss my own U, I miss my friends, and I miss my old life."
"If it makes you feel any better; at least you have your memories. Most of the memories that I have of my old U aren't even my own. They are cloned from Spider-Man. I have memories of so many experiences that I never actually experienced. For myself, I have never had any real friends, save for you guys and my life has never really even been my own. It has either been Spider-Man's life or the Jackals. Hey, you aren't thinking of leaving, are you?"
"I don't know. I just wish there was a way I could at least see my old friends."
Maybe there it," responded Spidercide.
Back on board the Devastator, Deacon Briars had agreed to remain with the team on one condition. They had to send him back to his original universe long enough for him to complete the mission he had originally set out for himself before the heroes had grabbed him from his Universe. As it turned out, T-1000 and Jimmy the Dead decided to give him a hand, not that he really needed it, just that they were still itching for a fight. In the end, the mission was a glorious success. The rest of the group spent the better part of the next week celebrating having saved reality, as they knew it. They were presented with the key to Khazan city and were promised a place in the Khazan Hall of Heroes as soon as they came up for a name for themselves. The group told them they might have to get back to them. Everyone on the Devastator celebrated everyone but Captain Planet. He had something else to celebrate. Thanks to some help from Spidercide, Captain Planet was able to return to his universe for a short period of time. Only about a week or so before he had to return. However, it has to be stated that no man or woman has ever enjoyed one week so much as Captain Planet did finally getting the chance to see his friends and share his experiences with them.

THE END
of Episode Two