RKMBs Forums .::Important::. Writer's Block Last days of Vanguard. An imaginary tale.

The rain pours down hardly, tapping loudly over the roof of this old log cabin. I lie over the bed, eyes closed, waiting for the rain to stop, or at the least to become gentler, to be able to exit and go for a hunt. To catch a deer, or maybe a hare. It’s days it rains so hard, that would be fool to try to leave for food, and me and Rose’s only meal has been bread I backed in our oven, dried apples from last fall and hazel nuts. And now the eagle buried deeply within myself longs for meat, so that having to stay here, motionless in this small hut of nothing more than twenty-five metres square makes me mad.

My line of though is broken by a rhythmic knocking over hard wood, that first was lost in the tapping of rain, and then distinctly rose to acquire a proper identity at my hear. It’s Rose, trying to win my attention, who knocks her knuckles over the arm of her armchair.

I stand, and go to her side. I stroke her long curly hairs, once black as the mantle of my raven, now silvery grey, even if she is just forty-one. Or maybe it is normal for a woman to be grey at this age, and it would be the long lost commodities of the civilized world to hide that. Who cares. I love her despite anything, the colour of hairs being the last of them. She can’t see them. And there is no one other human on this planet to know.

I gently tap my fingers over the back of her right hand to pose the question. What do you need?

Her long fingers takes my hand in turn, and taps the answer. Someone is coming to seek you.

I run to the opposite wall, and detach Ulysses’ bow from the hooks where usually hangs from.

My hand pass over the glass of the small window, to wipe away the steam, but outside the rain screens the world around us.

Rose’s power never lie. These days it has weakened a lot, probably due, by some mystical reason, to the distance from Earth, so she has seen just the arrival, and not who is he or what he wants, but nevertheless someone is arriving. And I must be prepared.

I nock one of Oddr’s arrows to the bowstring. My aim is quit good, actually is the last of any metagene induced power I ever had to remain, after many… incidents, in my life, have stripped me of. Yet, I can’t risk; I must use one of ther six magical arrows that always hit their marks. If it’s En.Ki coming to finish what Aurochs started I need much more than my infallible aim. And probably I need much more than my array of mythological weapons, too.

A clap of hands. I turn, Rose has something more to say. My eyes still fixed over the small wiped area on the window glass, she taps on my hand. He’s coming right now. He’s a friend.

I turn to look at her. She’s smiling. Something I didn’t see from quite a long time.

A knock at the door.

I open it. “You!” I exclaim, at the unexpected sight. Yet, it shouldn’t have been so unexpected, as I can’t imagine anyone, outside him, able to find us and travel here.

Myrrdin.

The bulky figure of the Earth last Neanderthal man nearly occupies all the frame of the door. Wrapped in a large, black mantle, the man nod in a grave sign of salute. He seems deeply worried.

“May I come in, Ed?” says gravely Myrrdin, with is peculiar, deeply hollow voice.

“What brings you here, old man?” I mumble, opening my right hands to show the way in, like this is not a small hut but the enormous entrance of a castle. “Showing the way for En.Ki” I add, hissing between my teeth.

The fiery eyes of the old man dart at me. “Rose says to be polite, Ed”.

“Tell her to stay silent like always” I burst, biting my tongue immediately after.

“You really want me to say that to her?” asks Myrrdyn, frowning under those massive brows of him, so that is face becomes really scaring.

I let myself to literally fall over a seat, covering my face with a hand. “No, obviously not.” Then I look at the man. “Look, it’s hard to stay here just the two of us. Talking with just the Morse code is not for long, open talks…”

“Then why you buried alive the two of you in this… nothingness…?” asks Myrrdin.

I shake my head. “You know why… after what Aurochs did her, I can’t risk to put her in danger remaining on Earth… on any Earth…”

“You killed Aurochs, Ed”.

“Aurochs was just the pawn of En.Ki, Myrrdin. He is free, somewhere, and wants to harm me trough my love. I will not let him to do anything to Rose. Anything more than what she has suffered already…”

“Don’t you believe Rose is suffering here as much? She loves you, but you are also the only person in the world with she can’t fully communicate with. Your mental shield makes her blind, deaf and mute like she would be if she has not been a meta. With anyone other human, trough the use of her mind she would be completely normal. SHE COULD TALK, HEAR AND EVEN SEE. Ask yourself if you are not eviler than En.Ki.”

“Bastard” I hiss. “She would be just dead if I return to Earth.”

“No. You know perfectly that at Helgoland she would be perfectly fine. There En.Ki. can’t arrive, and even the fife has no influx over. I offer you hospitality…”

“LIAR! You never offer anything without asking for something in reward. Just like last time… I have paid my debt fifteen years ago. I nearly got killed throwing those aliens out of the planet… and you had them relocating on Mars!”

“Edulcore, if I recall correctly it wasn’t really you to save the day…”

“Screw you! My best friend did die that day! All of my friends! And you had those reptiles setting up home next door!”

“They weren’t the threat. You know it perfectly, and they weren’t even a possible threat after what happened. You did what you had to do, and that was your part in our agreement.”

“Right! After you let me rescue my son just to discover he can’t physically stay close to me! So that I had to let him go! And you knew that perfectly, Myrrdin!”

“You are unfair, Ed. I whish I had known. I whish I would have found a way to stop Aurochs. I whish I would have been able to convince Amara to stay… To convince YOU to stay…”

“Myrrdin, they are lame excuse. You have always tried to drive me like a puppet. At La Perdita, at Camelot, at Versailles, in Rome, Sumer and Atlantis. I am sick of your game. You know the way out. Me and Rose don’t need your help.”

Myrrdin, who is standing in the middle of the only room of our cabin, half smiles like a gambit at the poker table. Like he has an ace in his sleeve.

“Ed, Paragon has been killed”.

Merda! This change everything.

Dear Danny…. Today has been one of the saddest days of all the twenty-one years of my life.

Today there was the funeral of William Paragon. Poor Doc. Dying like that… to save our planet.

I cry. I cry like a child in front of the man I love, and what I would really need is a warm hug. Just a warm hug, but that’s also the thing I can’t have.

Sorry if I cry, Danny. But it has been so… overwhelming… the battle, four days ago… the funeral, today. Everyone was crying, Danny. Everyone on the whole planet, and everyone of the thousands stuffed in the Parthenon for the burial ceremony. Only my brother didn’t let a single tear run down his face. But it was evident that is was very hard for him. Doc has been his true father… like it has been for all of us, really…

Trying to suffocate the sobs, I let my eyes wander over the beautiful face of my love. His motionless expression resembles the face of Ed at the funeral. He was… professional. Perfect in his black suite, the long blonde hairs flagging in the strong wind coming from the Mediterranean Sea. The sky over Athens was coldly blue, the air crisp. There were gulls in thousands rotating above the Parthenon, it was like nature would give her last salute to the man who did so much for her in this last twenty years.

Ed was the perfect master of ceremonies. I am sure if the people of the world are not desperate about the last happenings, is just for him. He lead the mourning procession, and stood above the hole in the ground without giving in. And when the massive oak coffin has been lowered in, he took his fife and began to play it flawlessly, to play a moving piece that perfectly expressed the sadness of everyone and the gratitude for what Doc did in all these years.

Then, he did the speech. And it was then, that all the people learned of what is made my brother of. He told us who was William for himself, how he took him and me under his protection after our father abandoned us; how he grew us in the love for the world, and for the metahumans community, and for nature; how he brought the planet to rise from the ashes of the War, and how he built Vanguard into being the peaceful protectors of Earth. Behind his figure, a ginat screen was showing all the accomplishment of this man. The peace across the whole world, the end of war, of famine and diseases…
Then he stood silent for a good minute. The screen was all black. Finally, it appeared the date of the death, 11/9/2025.

And then, without any transition, began the scene of the battle with the End.

Scenes that I saw not trough the compressed field of a tele lens, but from within the battle ground. Just like more than twenty years before, the giant alien being materialized in Europe. Humanoid, caucausian skin, blueish eyes, dark hair, all that. Wearing a dark skintight uniform with red highlights. And like then, able to fly, so strong that just the impact of his legs over the ground was causing the building to collide. And from his eyes solid beams of power were erupting, sending the city on flames. Twenty years ago, it destroyed half of the city of Prague. This time, it seemed he wanted to complete the job.

Last time it was Vanguard, the original team, to stop… to apparently destroy… it. They used some sort of tech gizmo created by a big scientist of the time. Can’t remember the name…

Sadly, after the War technology took different paths, thanks to Doc. Paths much less destructive than before. In a world of peace, there was no need for destructive means.
So, this time to fight The End there would be just metapowers. And where the pervious time just a dozen of metas fought the incredible being, this time it was a hundred.

But a hundred fell, and it was again the duty of Vanguard to stop the monster. And as the local team fell, too, it was a job for us, the Elite. No one of us though it would have been so hard. And us too, Ed, me, Draxa, Marshall, Natchman, Montag… all the others fell, one after the other.

Beaten, wounded, I saw William coming into our help. He stood in front of the monster, and began to fight it. Punch after punch, the old fashioned way. And every punch was taking a bit of life from the opponent. They both died at the same time, I guess. I didn’t see, I was blinded my tears.

So, Danny, the whole thirty-six minute of the fight went on, playing on the screen in front of the crowd. Ed stood there, in front of the screen, minuscule under those two giants fighting each other. Then, black again. Soon replaced by a close up of the face of my brother, zooming over just the two eyes. And he revealed the truth. –Our exobiologists have just discovered the origin of the End. It’s mutated genetic material from the same source of Basilisks DNA. It has been an attack from Mars- he said.

The crowd fell silent.

He grimaced.

–This is war!- he shouted.

And the crowd roared.

I still feel the excitement, the chills down the spine. I dare to remember what I also felt. It was my brother… I am sure everyone else there… and on the planet, as all of the world was watching that by omnisensing… felt the same. Men and women.

But for me it was special. I had something more to get excited. My brother would finally be able to cancel the ignominious act my father ordered before leaving Vanguard: the settlement of our aggressors on Mars. The hate of the people for the name of my father would finally be washed by the courage of Eduardo.

I again see all those faces… the looks in those eyes… the commitment to glory, the thirst of revenge, the love for my brother.

And I also see that face. Different for sure… with more wrinkles and burned by the sun than last time I saw it, eighteen years ago… but still…

Hey Danny, you know… I am sure there was my father among the crowd…

“You shouldn’t have gone there, Ed” Myrrdin apostrophes me as I exit the UFO.

“I shaved my beard. Wasn’t enough?” I say, bursting into a laugh. The truth is that I hoped someone would recognise me. That Eddie or Amara would have seen me. Myrrdin seeks surprise, I seek confusion. There is no way we can take them unprepared. Our only hope is to have them to fear us so much, to become over-prepared.

I only wonder how much Eddie can fear me.

He didn’t see me. He was too occupied to play the part of saviour of the world. To be the new Caesar

“Follow me” whispers the old man.

He brings me in his studio. Nothing has changed since last time, fourteen years ago. The windows overlooking the Northern Sea, the Dalmatians playing in the rose garden outside.

The man sits on his centuries old armchair. There is only one new piece of furniture. A small wooden round table, with the letter M B L impressed with fire. Our old table, from back when we, my friends and me, were know as the Revolutionaries. I wonder how it has ended here, but I don’t ask. Too many sad memories.

“So, what did you find?” asks Myrrdin.

I shake my head. “Next to nothing. Frankly, I don’t know what I could have. The Parthenon is a hell of a fortress, I bet you can’t enter without being invited. And in any case the fife of Hamelin coupled with a world broadcast is the best lock they could have. They haven’t to fear anything from anyone on the planet. They are all slave of him…”

Myrrdin grunts: “That’s nothing new. I need to know what do you think”.

I raise my shoulder. “I am willing to do it. It’s… my fault, I can’t pass on it. But I can’t do it alone. I am too old…”

Myrrdin nods gravely. “As always, you overrate yourself, Ed. You would have never done it alone, even twenty years ago.”

Old goat. I should have cut your big bony head when I had the change. “I need companions. I need a map of the Parthenon. I need a distraction.”

“Companions… mhh…” seems to wonder the old man.

“What… no more girlie staff, old man?” I asks, with a smirk.

The old man seems to smile. I never really get if he is really smiling or not. I guess I never saw him laughing. Not that there is much to laugh, or even smile, these days. “The girls you knew are old, by my standards, but there are new ones. But they haven’t a mental shield, Ed. One foot outside the door, on your Earth continuum, and at the first hearing of the fife, they are drones of your son… of your evil twin, I should maybe say, in our Earth saviours jargon. I have a Martian here, to supervise your Earth affairs… the fife is not tunes on her mind pattern…”

“Martian? You are still doing business with the Basilisks?” I burst out.

“My business do not regard you, friend. She’s a great gal, and she’s doing the job perfectly.”

“So, my companions will be Martians as well?” I ask, disgusted.

“No. They have not what it needs for this job. This is a work for metapowers. The only thing a Basilisk could do is coming here with a quantic-annihilator to blow up half Peloponnesus. And in any case the mind scanners of your kid would discover them long before they would enter ionosphere. No, what you need are old friends. People you trusts and know how to work with.”

I look at the stormy sea trough the foam sprayed windows. “There is not one left, Myrrdin. They all died or fell under the fife spell.”

“No, not really. Not all the original Vanguardians are lost.”

Dear Danny, I never seen Ed so enraged. Fifteen minutes ago I revealed him I saw dad at the funeral.

He was mad. “What!” he exclaimed. “That’s impossible! You MUST be wrong!” he screamed, but he knew I don’t lie. Never. “What does he want?” he kept repeating, going on and back across the panopticon. “Why it took you a week to tell me?” Then he ran away.

I never saw him like that. Sweating, panting… all red in the face. I wondered if to follow him or not… I feared in his rage he could harm me. It wouldn’t haven been the first time, after all… Then I decided it was my duty, as his sister, to support him… especially now that Doc has gone.

I found him on the roof of the jumper, dangerously near the tether base. As if he didn’t care about the voltage, or the magnetic field. I even dared to imagine he was seeking danger… trying to search a way to join Doc. I must confess I though about that myself, last week, during the funeral… but that would have been betraying you, Danny… And that I will never do, my love…

But it is so hard, Dan, so hard. Coming here everyday, defying the complaint of Ed, to stay here with you… Looking at your still form, at your closed eyes… Knowing our scientist have not yet found a way to revive you…

Danny, Eduardo was playing the fife. It must have calmed him down, as the signs of his rage were all gone. “We must prepare, sis” he said. “If dad is here, surely is not to just pay us a visit. He must being up to something. Working for the Basilisks, sure, he has been always the greatest ally of those beasts… He wants to kill me and taking my mantle… it has always been the greatest fear of uncle… of Aurochs, I mean…” Those words scared me. As always, when he talks of that monster that made our… mine mother… blind, deaf and mute… he seems to miss him, to consider him a relative… uncle, he said.

I know, he had been in Aurochs hands for three years… but still, it’s like he don’t care at all for what he did to mommy… sometimes I hate him for that. Good Lord, pardon me for this sin…

“ We must prepare for the battle… I am sure he is coming to kill me…” he said again. And then asked me to follow him. We went back in the panopticon, where he seated at the command chair, and began shouting orders at the virtual monitors. First he wanted a lists of the original Vanguardian, the ones from before the War, and their current status. As we knew perfectly well, the list was very short in the sector of the surviving. Brianna Fionghula… or how the hell is her surname… Ben Phillips… Lady Lykopis that is my comrades in the Elite… Phil Smith and Mick Harrison, right here in the Parthenon, although I find nearly paradoxically they are listed in that sector. Then there were the missing, the ones that disappeared long before the War: Naecken, Ameristar, Priest, Sam Dawson, Kristogar Velo, Larry Lance, Rama Avatar. Nowhereman, Henry Quantos and Kristopher Schanz, who died long before the War. The rest of the list counts just the martyrs of the liberation of Earth.

So many names. So many faces, from the days of my childhood. Uncles and aunts from me and my brother. How I miss them…

Ed looked at the list for instants that seemed to last an eternity. The he looked at the missions department and order the preparation of a rescue team of water-breather to depart asap for the water of La Perdita. Before I had the time to ask about, Ed turned to me and ordered: go to bed and dream of your mother. I want to know where dad is hiding.”

And you wouldn’t believe, Danny, but exactly in that moment the virtual monitor from the guard at the gate lit up, and the officer said, with a visibly appalled expression: “Sir… ehm… there is a man here asking to speak with you. He says is name is… Edulcore Cicciotto!”

“Dad! Why this unexpected arrival?!” says sarcastically my son, coming to receive me at the main gate of the Parthenon.

I stand motionless. I don’t want to reveal my emotion. As much I know how dangerous is this man, I still love him much more than myself… all our too short shared life pass in front of my eyes… the years spent exploring the parallel Earths to find him, to rescue him from the hands of Aurochs and En.Ki.

I hold out a hand.

He looks at it, perplexed, uncertain if to accept it. Then smiles, the most false smile I ever saw, and take it firmly and shake it.

“Why are you here?” he repeats, gritting his teeth.

“We need to talk” I said calmly. “We need to talk about your declaration of war” I add.

“I knew” he says, a look of triumph in his eyes. “Follow me, dad. we’ll talk in my office. The Command office.”

I move, but he stop me raising a hand. “First, give your weapon to the officer.”

“A weapon? I don’t have any weapon…”

“The X ray guy has just seen a knife in your pocket…”

“A knife?” I wonder, taking my cutter from the trousers pocket. “It’s just my paper cutter. It’s a memento of a past moment of my life. I never separate from it.”

“It will be given you back at your leaving.”

I handle the cutter to the Officer. He put it in a bag, and inside a drawer.

I follow Eddie across the vast, empty square, which looked a lot less wide last week, when it was full of people crying for William Paragon. We enter in an ample foyer, built under the Zeus temple, from which many elevators bring to the multi level complex housed in the underground of the acropolis. Larger, much larger, the departures deck for the jumper, the “elevator for space” the giant cable driven shuttle tethering the space base to Earth.

“Follow me” he said again, making way trough an ample hallway with many windows on both sides. It’s the training sector, evidently. On the other side of the glasses hundreds of metahuman fights inside holographic VR environment. Some of them are the son and daughters of my old comrades. The son of Griss and Bree, the daughter of Drake Marshall; even the off-spring of Drax and that dragoness from the Lost City. And there is a strange being… a man with four legs and four arms… a spiderman… I wonder if he’s the son of Jya and Mason…

“The Elite. Vanguard as you wanted to build, and you were never able to. The masterpiece of William Paragon, dad” says nonchalantly Eddie.

Then, we take a elevator, going up, toward the tower built behind the Parthenon. We walk across an ample, spherical space, over a bridge cutting across the empty volume. Floating around are dozens of people, levitating in a lotus position with closed eyes. “My mind scanners, dad. All the Earth biosphere put under metal hearing. Just for safety of the planet, of course.”

“Of course” I nod. I imagine how you are frustrated that all those beings can’t fell a single tough from my mind, son. “I don’t see Phil Smith…” I say.

“No, he is… elsewhere… with other duties. I hope you don’t feel sorry for not meeting him. I tough you were not really close, after all…” he says, smirking.

“No, we weren’t. Still we have shared many battles. I would have gladly seen he, after all, not many of us oldies are still around.

He shrugs. “Next time, dad. Now come with me.”
I am sure this is not the shortest way.

He wants to show me how powerful is the place.

For minutes, we walk across many lines of metahumans defence. Squads of supersensitives, battalions of supermen, reinforced steel walls. He wants to show me how impossible is to dare inside here.

“We have arrived” finally says. A sliding door opens, and a cylindrical space, walled by virtual monitors is revealed. A panopticon. Eyes over all the world.

He sits on his armchair and lean back, putting the feet over the desk. “Let’s talk, dad!” he says smiling, sending the blond hairs away from the forehead with a sudden movement of the head.

“I have come here to beg you to not start a war with Mars. Even if you want to mobilize six billions of metas, you have not the transportation means to bring there a mere thousands. Shuttles will need years to get there, and will be easily destroyed from the surface of the planet. You just want to waste human lives.”

“Since when you care about humans? You are just begging for your reptilian friends up there. Just like you did fifteen years ago.” Eddie seems to heating up. He stands upo from the chair, putting the hands, closed in fists, over the desk. “No, dad, this time we’ll not listen to you. This time we’ll send those monsters outside the solar system. And if I’ll be able, out of the continuum as well.”

I pass my hand over the face. I forgot how is impossible to talk with Eddie. He is a grown up man, but it is like twenty years ago, when he was a toddler. “Look, son, you don’t know what are you talking about. I simply did what it was best for us… Paragon agreed over, there was no…”

“Shut up!” he screams. “Don’t bring William into your mess!” And then, calming out: “we can’t get there… look this”. A virtual monitor lights up. It’s a sort of giant hangar. There are people everywhere, standing on the ground, so it should be located on the planet, not at the space base. Towering over the people, are enormous ships… cigar shaped ships, like one I saw many years ago. The Nibiru. They are building spaceships. Merda.

“You are doing a mistake, Eddie…”

“DON’T CALL ME THAT!” he bursts out. “I am Eduardo, for you.”

I close my jaws, hard. Swallow the rage and continue: “Eduardo, then. You believe the metagene gives you an edge, but that’s not true. The peace threat has imposed the ban of development of interplanetary travel, but that doesn’t mean they are not prepared to fight an invasion. You are putting the lives of our kinds in peril…hell, you are challenging the whole existence of life on the planet…”

“Bullshit! You are just scared by what you have seen here. But there is something more.” Another vision lights up. Inside a cylinder of glass, tall as a man, there is a headless body. An exoskeleton, really, which I know very well.

“Where have you found it?” I ask.

“Under the rubbles of Chicago. It took years for a bunch of molemen, but I knew it was there. Charles revealed it to Paragon during the war. As you should know, it is tailored over your DNA. Which incidentally is the same of mine.”

The elemental exoskeleton I carried in my EPS days. Made by the Time Trust for my role has his herald. With that, Eddie is basically invincible.

“Why didn’t you use it to fight the End?” I asks, sincerely perplexed.

The wicked soul just smiles. “My time has run out, dad. I’ll show you the door”

When I retrieve my paper-knife at the gate, the only thing I can think is how I am lucky that Grimm destroyed Ladnikia twenty years ago, and today is not in the hand of Eddie.

“What is that?”

“This, Amara, is nothing else than Ladnikia, the fabled sword that once was of our father!”

Dear Danny, can you imagine? The rescue team that Ed sent in the water where once stood Vanguard’s island returned with half of the sword. Ed was toying with that when I entered the panopticon. He was duelling with the air, with this broken sword.

The strange thing is that when I reached out the hand to take it, he has turned red and has shouted me to stay away. Then he suddenly apologizes, but said some lame excuse for that sword being potentially dangerous for myself. Like I am a child that could harm herself with a broken glass. Man, how I hate him when it keep doing that. And how I hate him for being shielded from my mind powers…

Anyway, the sword was scaring. The hilt is like a… well, you know… an erected… mhhh, come on, Danny, you have perfectly understood. It is covered with what seems a network of veins, which from the hilt continue over the leaf blade made of bronze. Very… disgusting… if I can say…

Just, I wonder, what could he do with half a sword?

Another, sad, news, is that Brandon Montag has disappeared from his quarters, this morning. Without leaving any message. He’s a hothead, maybe I should not be worried, but I can’t force myself not to be. I tried to dream out his whereabouts, but I wasn’t able. Every time I was near to find him, a terrible headache woke me up. Strange.

I wonder how his mother feels…

Brianna.

Fourty years old, if I remember correctly.

But still agile and fast like she was a teen. She is flying a mile below me, over the snow capped peaks of the Rockies, in Colorado. Myrrdin gave me the right address. The UFO brought me across the globe in minutes if not seconds.

Now it comes the difficult part.

Talking to her.

I close my Daedalus wings and dive. Passing next to her at nearly 300 Km/h. Without even thinking, I swerve just an instant before her cry hit the spot where I was passing by. I spread out the wings, wide open, to brake and stop the dive, turning 180 degree all of a sudden.

Bree is right here facing me.

“Brianna” I say, tipping an imaginary hat. Last time I saw her it was the final day of the war. She was retired by the time of the Invasion, raising little Brandon. Came out of retirement just for the war.

Her eyes are wide open. “Ed? You are alive?”

She does a sign to me, to follow her in flight. We enter a cloud, and in the wet and cold nothingness she began to talk.

“You bastard! All these years with the world in the hand of your damned son, and you were alive! How could have you let your…”

“Stop, Brianna, stop. Please. I was away… off-world, taking care of Rose. I…”

“Yeah, your usual excuse. Whenever things became hard, you were always away for your family. The war in Antarctic, the rescue of Aisling, the destruction of Melbourne… leaving us without notice, flying across space and time… and then returning like nothing had happened in between…” Her eyes are made of fire.

What should I say her? That I never felt being truly accepted, since the first time I came to island, after months spent prisoner of the EPS? That the bonding we had in those months as fugitive, was destroyed by relatively peaceful environment of La Perdita. Who cares what I feel. Let her believe what she wants. I need other things. Knowledge. Help.

“I don’t think apologies are in order, Bree. Everyone of us has done what had to do. Grissom died as an hero, but his death was not my fault, despite what you can think.”

“If is not for apologies, then why are you here?” she say, fiercely beating the wings to fight the strong wind from north.

“For Eddie. I see you are not with the rest of the world, luckily…”

“That damn fife.,. it always scared me when he was forcing the caterpillars to parade, back when he was six, but I would have never imagined that those stupid melody that he was playing before the speech of William in TV, were a subduing subliminal message…” she says.

“And your hear is enough bird-modified to not tune on it…” I imply.

“I don’t know… I gave me the same answer. Brandon fell for the fife, he is much more human-like than me… so I guess your reasoning is true.”

“Well, what I am asking you is help. Details about the Elite, the Parthenon fortress… what you could have heard from Brandon. And if you want, direct help. You are still the youngest of us old guard… I am…”

“NO!” she shouts, putting an hand over my mouth, and shaking heavily her head. Her still beautiful face is a few inches from mine. She whisper softly, while the storm thunders around us, and her red hairs, streaked of silver, flagging in the wind, wrap our heads. Her warm lips touches my right ear, to say these words: “Don’t tell me anything, because I will not help you. I will not fight my son, even is for freeing him. I've lost Grissom thanks to you, and I will not lose Brandon for your late repentance.” And said that, she pushes me away with an unexpected force, and dives away in the snowstorm.

Now, safe in the warm environment of the UFO, heading toward Helgoland and Myrrdin’s manor, I discover that I loose my backpack during the “close meeting” with Bree. Among other things, there were my knife and above all the talking picture of my mother.

I guess everyone has to lose something in a war.

“My God, Thunderbird, how you got old, man!” says the man in front of me, waving his hand.

Actually, he is younger than me, but it’s not so much in shape. I am fifty-eight, I guess he is around fifty, or something less, but seems much more of age. Wrinkled, scarred on both sides of his face, his body sports the sign of his last mission as Vanguardian. When he, all by himself, stopped the suicide fall of the Basilisks mothership over the White House.

I still think it would have been better otherwise, but that’s just personal. His was an act of heroism. Not any one of us, then, though he could have survived the explosion. We were wrong. Only his hearing was severely damaged. Actually, completely wiped out.

That’s why he speaks using the deaf sign language. With just one hand, because the other is missing, along with the rest of the arm.

After the war, he still had two.

“No one calls me Thunderbird since twenty years” I sign. Luckily I learned the sign language soon after Rose had been abused. At first, she used that to talk with me, although I had to use the Morse code with her. Then, after some time without the sigh, she loose all the coordination needed, and she, too, had to convert to the use of Morse.

He smiles. He has always preferred code-names and costumes. Especially costumes. Today he works as a fashion designer.

I always though him slightly gay, I wonder if this confirms that.

Bah, who cares… what is important is to see if being deaf he is outside Eddie’s influx. In the hope no one of the mind scanners of my son is assigned to control him, else there will be Vanguardians outside this door in minutes.

The room is lit just by the computer monitor with the design of the dress he was working on. Something shiny and very colourful.

As I speak with my hands, my eyes wanders around the room looking for the true reason I came here.

“What do you know about Eddie?” I ask.

“Seems mad, sometimes. And that fife of him makes people crazy. But he is a nice guy, Ed. I would give my other hand for him!”

Merda. Did I come in the lion’s den?

He surely notices my frown, as suddenly began to explain, waving the hand franticly, agitated by revealing what probably has never told anyone before. “He saved me from Paragon, once. I was in the resistance, then. The few metas free from the spell of the fife. Few compared to the meta populace of the planet, but still thousands. No one has ever heard about that, the media have always put the thing under silence. But Vanguard has fought us for years.”

He sits down on his armchair, black and white striped like a zebra. And in front of him, on the desk, above some sheets of paper, I see the thing I am looking for. I know I should just take it and run, but I want to know much more.

Bruteforce doesn’t notice anything, and continues. “They found me. And brought me to Paragon. And he shouted at me, yelling I was a traitor of the metahuman cause. And you know… he tore my arm away with his mouth! I knew he was powerful, but not at that level… nor he was so mad”

Flashes from the past. Distant past. Limbs torn from human bodies… Could it be…

“It was your son to save me. He took me away from Paragon, bringing me to the infirmary. There was Phil Smith there, and I knew every secret would have been unveiled. The order for us was to kill ourselves at the first sight of Smith, to avoid our secrets being mind-read, but there was no time. He was much more powerful than before the war. Just a peer, and he ordered me to say still. The cyanide pill was removed from my tooth, and the wounds cauterized.

The resistance was thoroughly destroyed. Just a few in higher ranks survived, and are waiting for better days. A day I fear will never come. Eddie rewarded me with this place. A firm all of my own. My dream. I though of rejecting it, but why? They had won, and instead of eliminating me, they offered a good place to live in their world. And it was not the worst world to live in.

I guess my old comrades understood, because they never came back to avenge the death of their owns.”

Tears are running down his scarred chicks, and I raise my hands to say something, although I still don’t know what, when the world explodes around us. The roof, the walls break up open, as the power fail and all become black, and clouds of dust engulf us and suffocate my lungs.

I have just a thing in mind. Take the scrap metal ball from the desk and run. In total darkness, I lean my hand to the place where it was standing before. I find and firmly grip it, just as the hand of Bruteforce landed over.

“Sorry”, I say, and jump in air. Perseus’s winged footwears are not for prolonged flight, but gives you a great speed. I spring in air, vertically, reaching for the star. Below me, I hear a roar.

I look down, there is a giant green scaled dragon, eating alive Bruteforce. The offspring of Drax. Hope you break all your teeth, monster.

I call the UFO, and it appears. I am about to enter it, when something ties to my left leg, right where the small wings of the footwear give me propulsion. It’s the spider-man. Mason’s son.

And there are other Elitians, in the lawn around the half destroyed house. A rock man, two identical girls, and others. I am falling toward them, but Durendal is in my hand, and I cut the spider web. I don’t want to fight, not now, not with them.

As soon as I am free, the UFO is below me, and takes me away. I fall over the armchair as it enters hyperspace, and began to shake all across my body. The rush of adrenaline is wearing out. I am not accustomed to the trill of the fight anymore.

I close my eyes as the UFO speeds toward Heligoland. In my hand, a ball of metal slightly hot.

Dear Danny, if I only could curly up in your arms…

I pant madly. What a run.

It all started this morning, when Ed ordered the termination of the Martian inspectors for espionage, after exactly a month after the declaration of war. “What will happen to our inspectors over Mars?” I asked. “I have ten of the best Earth artist to create a monument for them. Their sacrifice will never be forgotten by the human kind” said Ed, to answer mine question. He has really the temperament of a leader. Me, I have cried for hours, thinking of those two thousands men and women about to be killed so far from home. I was so shaken that I decided to go to the Heroes Memorial Field, to bring some flowers over William’s tomb. To talk him about my doubts and fragilities, like when he was alive.

It was cold, and some flocks of snow were occasionally falling form the grey clouds… but I’m talking about cold to you! How I am stupid.

The Heroes’Memorial Field was empty. Across the lawns, many of these Mediterranean flowers have started to bloom… so strange in the coldness of the air. The wind was shaking the cypress and the helm oaks, and I held tightly my cape around, to keep me warm.

The monument of William was smiling, like will be forever, in the direction of the Parthenon, like being proud of his creation, Vanguard. Like he was in life, totally impervious from the force of the elements, a cold gale as much as a destroying hurricane.

I kneeled in front of the tomb. I took out the flowers from under my mantle, and began to arrange them in the crate over the marble, when I heard a voice. I turned around, but there was no one in the desert field.

It was inside my mind. It was a mournful lament.

Behind my mind-shield I lent the ears, like trying to hear behind a door.

It was a voice, strangely similar to William’s own, asking me to enter.

I cried and ran away, all the way here. It was Paragon, Danny. It was Paragon calling me from the land of the dead.

I am scared, Dan, if only you could hold me…

So many questions crowded my mind this past month, since my incursion at Ben’s home.

While Helgoland’s scientists were putting the metal ball back to work, many more questions came from the mouth of Myrrdin, after we talked about my discoveries.

So many questions, which revolves around William Paragon and his death.

Why Eddie didn’t use the elemental exoskeleton to fight the End? To take Paragon’s place, evidently.

Was that meaning he had not fear of succumbing to the End? Probably. Even more, why he and all other Vanguardians fighting it where just wounded, while Paragon found death?

Furthermore, what was the End? The first time he arrived on earth, he left trace of otherdimensional travelling. The Basilisks never had, nor have now, hyperspace technology.

Why Eddie during the battle never used his speed powers? Why he wandered around using conventional weapons?

And, above all, why Paragon fought the End that way, punch after punch, basically without stepping out of a square yard, without trying to retreat, to regroup with the Vanguardians, to organise some teamwork. As much it seemed heroic, that fight was deeply stupid. And I knew Paragon as a man of brain, not braw.

So I am back to Athens, to seek answers. In the moonless night, I wait for the fireworks, perched atop a tall umbrella pine. Instead of my usual stuff, would it be swords, maces or spears, I carry just a robust spade.

Suddenly, it starts. Over the Pantheon appears the fire. Sirens yell across the city. Light beams dances over the sky. The explosion over the Acropolis multiplies.

Wait no more.

I jump down. Over the lawn perfectly cut of the memorial cemetery.

Luckily Eddie left the tomb of Paragon inside the compound of the Acropolis for nothing more than three weeks, before translating it here. Too much cumbersome for his ego, I guess.

While squadrons of flying supermen converge toward the Acropolys, obscuring the stars, I kept digging. What I would like to spend to see the faces of all those Smith clones, unable to sense any mind behind the attack.

The spade butts over something hard. It’s the coffin.

I dig all around, laughing at the though of the face of Eddie when he discover that his headquarters is under the bombing of nuts and acorns.

Done! The coffin is free from the earth. I raise it over my shoulders, grimacing and sweating. Fuck how is heavy Paragon. The UFO lands just as the fires extinguish up there on the Acropolis. The Vanguardians must have succeeded into reverting the invader into a ball of scrap metal.

Rest in peace, Squirrel, you will not be forgotten.

Dear Danny, the body of Paragon has been stolen. No scanners felt it, so it must have been dad!

Maybe is that why William was calling me. He wanted to be protected! And I turned my back to him!

Oh, Dan, how can I be so… so stupid, so useless… scared by the world outside this womb?

Ed was mad, this morning. He was able to get it covered; there is no trace of the burglary at the cemetery now, as the people will be allowed in. Yet, he seems like he has been stolen of his most precious weapon. I wonder why the body of Doc would be so important… could the mere possession of such an icon have importance in this war?

Ed kept mumbling about the unfair advantage dad has with his dish, but then he calmed up, went away and soon returned.

He brought and gave me the medicine, and made me dream. Dream of our victory.

I saw ancient Gods flying over Olympus. I saw fire across sails, I saw a shining Earth fighting a black headed Sky, I saw them dying taking each other at the throat.

I saw the thin man silencing the Son, and the Sword drinking his soul.

I saw the Green Knight and the Black Knight ran trough with their spear the Dragons, and the Dragons bit back.

I saw the man of the future swallowed by time, and the Master of the Sword crying.

I saw the Father fighting the Son, and the son smiling over the Father blood.

And I saw the Vessels heading for the Red Star.

We’ll win, like always, Danny. Like Vanguard always had. No matter what dad would do.

The coffin, huge and dark, lies on the pavement of an obscure cavern, lit by hundreds of candles, many metres under the manor.

“I had this place dug out nearly three thousands years ago, Ed” says Myrrdin, stroking the walls with one of his big hands.

Once, when I was this old man best ally, I always longed for more. The stories of the past. Maybe I was looking for some details of my past lives, maybe it was just for the trill of the tale, or for an unspoken nostalgia for gone times.

Now, I don’t ask anything. I have grown tired of the past, and of the present. I am going to make war over my son. Who is the father who want to do so?

The two heavy servants that brought the coffin down there have gone from some times. Myrrdin takes a folded piece of paper from the inside of his mantle, and give it to me. “This are instructions for you. There is what you asked me. Where to look for companions. An idea for a distraction. While, for the map of the Parthenon, I think you should have to wait just moments.”

I shake my head. I can’t believe you are going to do this. “There is no escape for you, old man, you know this” I whisper.

“I know, Ed, but this is our only chance. There is a moment where people have to make hard choices, that cost them their life. I have been enough lucky to live such a moment two times. That’s not what most heroes could say.”

I nod gravely. There is nothing I could say. I don’t know when this man has given his life, before in his many thousands year life-span, just to return among the living, but I know when I had, some years ago in Mandelovia. I know it’s not a hard decision to make. It’s the destiny that put you at that precise corner of existence where you can make the difference. And you can’t thing of anything else than doing it.

“Farewell, old friend” says Myrrdin, inviting me to leave the cell. I exit, and the massive steel door is closed. Just a small window, made of reinforced glass, let me see inside.

“Close it” order Myrrdin. From outside, I shut the bolt. Inside, Myrrdin, goes close to the coffin, and open the top.

There are no fireworks of zombie acts.

Simply, Myrrdin turns to me, and he is not himself anymore.

And growls, like a lion caught in trap.

“Mr. Rothman, I suppose” I say, grimacing.

Another growl confirm my expectation.

The detached limb was what ringed at first in my mind. During the Chicago days, so many years ago… when Rothman turned my pacific revolt into a riot that was drown in blood…. I saw him eating alive so many norms… the first piece to go was always an arm.

The possibility that Rothman was inside Paragon so clicked, and I began to think, and research…

“Among the Vanguard Elite team that was in Prague there was Cal Natchman… known from both the EPS and later the Strikeforce… many powers, among them the ability to create force fields. I guess with age came a better use of the power.

That is why Paragon… why you… were fighting hand to hand with the End, stuck in a square yard.

The alien mind was impenetrable to you, so you remained trapped inside the dead body of Paragon… unable to leave, because no one could come in proximity to allow your ethereal form to change host.”

Myrrdin face grimaced in a why I never saw before. “You stupid half-meta. Always an inch near to the truth, but always unable to touch it.” Saliva falls from the corner of the mouth.

“It was not alien the mind of the being who fought me. It was like yours… meta but shielded...”

Oh… how I didn’t see it… it was…

“It was your clone, Cicciotto. Eduardo Cicciotto. His exoskeleton takes any form he wants to have, he can turn air, water, any element. Mimicking that alien was not a problem… and the shield defended him by myself… as it did for all this twenty years” explain the monster.

“But… Eddie was there…” I’d say, and I bit my tongue for my words, for my tone. Never allow yourself to sound weak in front of this man. Discipline, Ed!

“Eduardo… the Eduardo on the battle field… was just Mimic.”

Mimic. Another ex-Strikeforce, and previously one of Omicron’s team. Always surviving the death of his teammates, I have confronted him countless of times. Always creating confusions, making me fearing my own companions could be him, ready to hit at the back. Merda.

“You were inside Paragon since the start. Since the taken of Manhattan” I say.

Myrrdin nods, while looking all around, searching for a way to escape. Sorry, this is just a larger coffin, beast.

“I hate weak bodies, Cicciotto…” hisses Rothman.

“Answer my question, man, and I will see what I can do. I need allies to stop Eddie, I think I could put aside our… differences, if you help me”.

Myrrdin leans slowly the head on one side, like a serpent ready to attack. The tongue passes over the dried lips. “Mhhh…. Revenge… tasty as human flesh…”

“Answer my questions, Rothman…”

There are ruins for a radius of hundreds of kilometres. Since the dawn of the metahuman era, Chicago has been always in the eye of the hurricane, for whatever involved superhuman incident. From the revolt at the Zoo, twenty-four years ago, to the last day of the War, in 2008.

When it was completely levelled by the last Basilisks effort to turn the tide of the battle.

Since then, it has been never rebuilt. The high level of radiation first, and then the claim of Paragon that the Earth needed a true monument to what the War has been.

Now I know the truth.

It was the revenge of Rothman over the city that defeated him for the first time.

Anyway.

In the memory banks of the squirrel, when the techs at the manor were restoring it before the assault, it was found the record of a conversation between Bruteforce and somebody from the resistance. And their secret base is mentioned.

An address I know so well.

The old garage of Nowhereman.

It’s all rubble here, I wouldn’t recognize the place. Only the GPS tell me the exact location.

Now what I do?

Dig the concrete to find the garage? Could they be really here?

Could the men of the list that Myrrdin gave me be really here?

“Put down you blade and turn, slowly” says a voice, behind me.

I smile. It’s nearly twenty years I don’t hear that voice, but I haven’t forget it.

I turn.

In front of me, stands Kristogar Velo.

“What bring you here, Cicciotto? Remorse?”

Ouch. I was expecting a warmer come back. Mine mistake.

“I come looking for help. To put Eddie back in line.”

“I fear you come too late, Ed. Eddie has stepped too far, from too much time. He needed a spank some years ago, but his father was nowhere to be found” Velo says coldly.

“Says the one who abandoned Vanguard when it needed it most. When a team of hotheaded rookies could have been turned in a force of good, he left and let them ruin the team. Mercenaries that turned their back on the cause. Allowing the evil MBL to take on Manhattan, allowing them to fortify over the island for months, before doing anything. Don’t tell me you have no responsibility over that.”

“At last I left Vanguard to built another team, with less glam and more brain. You just went world –hopping” he remarks.

“I had to rescue my son…”

“And look where your clone is now. You lost years to your personal cause, forgetting about the greater one… you lost your mind, Ed.”

“I am trying to correct it now, Kristogar. Please, help me. Not for me, but for the planet. I can stop Eddie and his madness, but I can’t do that alone. I need to pass trough the Vanguard’s defensive line, and need men to do that.”

“The resistance has tried that for years. The Elite is powerful, Ed. They are young, perfectly trained and well armed. No one known what there is inside the Parthenon. Plus they have two dozens of clones of Phil Smith to scan the planet, they have the original and they have Mick. Abd there is your clone’s damned fife, ready to put under spell whoever goes near. We always failed, Ed.”

I smile. “I have everything we need to arrive there. While you, Kris, have the one person that could put the fife out of the way. Larry Lance.”

The eyes of Velo catches a spark of light from a falling star.

“You know how to locate Eddie and how to send Larry there, instantly?”

“I have the UFO, Kris. We can send the UFO with Larry aboard to crash over the Parthenon when Eddie will appear to do his speech about the attack over Mars. Larry in ghost form will not suffer from the impact, and in the confusion will take the fife and break it. It’s the only thing I need him to do. Please, Kristogar, you are the head of the resistance, ally with me and Myrrdin. Together we can win.”

Kristogar begins to laugh. “Me… the leader? Oh, you wouldn’t be much far from the truth, Ed. Follow me.”

He guide me trough a network of galleries, while he talks over a small communicator. We sink deep under the ruins of the city. The old garage of Nowhereman is only the entrance, then we walk for a lot of time, until we enter a dim lit corridor, that I recognize. It’s a sector of the old EPS underground base.

Much later, we stop in front of a door.

“It’s here, Ed, they are waiting for you”.

I walk trough the door. Even this room is dim lit, probably the have to run over generators.

At a long table, many men and women are sitting.

“What’s left of the resistance, Ed. The MBL. The true one.”

I look at them. I recognise few faces. There are Larry Lance and Tobias Christopher, who winks at me; there is that Mandelovian, that helped me out of Hell, Captain Nemo. Chewy Walrus, the bouncer at Jake’s, the bar at Puerta Mibela. Two more faces I remember, although much older from when I saw them first, in the MBL otherdimensional team I met in Thunder twenty years ago or more. Zod and the Captain, were called then.

But, when my sight reaches the face at the other end of the table, I shock.

It’s Nowhereman.

“Finally you found the road to your true team, eh, Eurostar?” he says smirking.

I turn to Velo. “He… he was dead!”

“No, not really. He was shot in his… base… but I found him before he died. I brought him at the hospital, and then organised his apparent death. Instead, I brought him under cover, and once he got re-established, I began to build our new team. I explored his peculiar sighting, what you Vanguardians dismissed as plain craziness, but that I, for long, supposed it was a out tuned look to another dimension. You know it well, because you met the people he kept talking about.”

I nod, beginning to understand.

“What he saw, was a world that forgot about an organisation of supermen and superwomen, that once where the protector of the planet. I started to search for those person he remembered where part of that organisation. Some were well known, like Tobias or Larry, and even myself. Some we knew about, like Chewy or Nemo. Other, the best part, had to be hunted across half a globe, but we find them anyway. We never got to have them… to have us… remember the past Nowhereman talks about, but we found that everyone of us has a training at action that the past of some would not account for. We built our secret superteam, and fought secretly, across the ranks of metas, many battles, up until the War. After it, what happened made us somehow… superfluous.
Yet, soon, the truth about Vanguard Elite and Eddie began to become evident. I am an alien, I bet this is not a surprise for you, Ed… I found myself impervious to the fife influx. So I understood what was happening, and regrouped the team here in the no man’s land of Chicago, away from the evil spell of your son instrument.
I began to travel the country recruiting suited metas. Deaf ones, and people with mindshield or other psychic abilities able to keep them free from the fife influx.
The resistance was built… and it operates well for some time… then first your daughter began to dream out all of your appearances, so that the Elite was always waiting for us, and then Bruteforce was caught, and Smith read out our network. Just this base was left out, because Bruteforce didn’t know about it. Luckily, he was not one of the original MBL, and was never allowed into our prime team.”

What a story… a bunch of desperate lead by the craziest guy I ever met. Yet, I need them… at least some…

I cough, and then ask: “So, Nowhereman, will you help me?”

“Tobias? Is he still alive? Incredible!”

“So was for me” I say. The warm body of Nadia, lying on the bed next to me, touches mine in multiple spot. They burn like boiling oil, but it’s not passion. It’s guilt.

I found her lap dancing in a quite low club in the slums of Promethean City. The red demon body tattoo made her the star.

As Myrrdin was hoping, her alternate Earth heritage made her impervious to the fife influx. To say the truth, Myrrdin was sure she would have been free from the spell, yet he didn’t want to tell me how could he be.

She was happy to see me, and after the end of the show, we stopped by the bar to talk. We got drunk… badly drunk… and finally we ended in bed at her small flat.

What a night. I knew from her days in Vanguard she was a vixen, and while she should be nearly fifty, she looks still in her mid twenties. En.Lil’s protection, probably.

Now that the after orgasm dullness is gone, and the pillow talk has stopped, I feel guilty as the kid with the hands in the jam.

Rose is at the Manor, scanning the biosphere to train for her attack on the Smiths, and I make sex with a woman who tried more than once to kill me. What a shame, Euro.

Nadia’s breathing deeps, as she slowly falls asleep.

One more ally.

She will attack En.Ki, who is the man… the alien, to be precise… behind the spaceships construction program of Eddie. I should have known. I would gladly fight him directly, but I have to take on Eddie. Everyone else would kill Eddie without any remorse, I am the only one who can get a chance to take him alive. And him, without the fife, is not a danger for the humankind anymore.

En.Lil, the demon “imprisoned” in Nadia’s tattoo, wants revenge over En.Ki, another alien Annunaki turned god in Sumeria. I was counting on that to have Nadia’s accepting to come to my side.

Now I need someone to put at her side…

“That bitch? How can you ask me this, Euro?”

Jackie Munroe looks dismayed by my request.

We are in the deepest recess of the Amazon jungle. Jackie left he civilised world so many years ago, after the war and the death of her lover, the youngest daughter of Myrrdin.

“I am not asking this to you, Jackie. I am asking it to Gaia.”

Instantly the voice of the mature woman change, her eyes lit up of a green fire, and she subtly change, she seems more beautiful, more impressive, more… dangerous. Like nature is.

“What do you want from Gaia, half human?” The voice is thundering, and mysterious at the same time.

“I beg help, Gaia” I say, in my humblest manner. “The humans are planning all out war toward a sister planet, and the war will bring destruction to life.”

Jackie smiles. “Do you believe Gaia can mobilitate animals and plants to fight to your side, half human?”

Now I smile. “I am not such a fool. I ask you just the collaboration of your host. She was a valiant warrior once, but it seems very old petty rivalries with other comrades are obstacles to her intervention.”

“I have no objection, half human. Just, you have to ask her”.

Back to start. Merda.

“So, Jakie… you owe me this. I gave you the head of Hero, back then, for what he did to Hanna. Did you forget that?”

The woman grimaces. “Always hitting below belt, eh, Ed? Fuck you.”

“Well?”

“I am coming, Ed. Just, I don’t want to get orders from that bitch, ok?”

“I can’t believe it!”

I said “I can’t believe it!” more than a dozen time since I set foot in this reality.

I didn’t think Myrrdin had such a complete database of the ex-Vanguardian who left the old world. And for people like Nadia or Jackie, who had been over his payroll, that would have been relatively easy, I never though that would have been possible for the guy that I have come to look for from so far away.

I was wrong.

Next to me is Sam Dawson.

On the dark world.

But dark, the dark world, is no more. If twenty years ago I come to Mordor, now it’s just Hobbiton.

“I knew you would say it.” Says Sam, and then smiles.

In front of me there is my old restaurant. The old name, beautiful dreamer is gone, replaced by a more fitting “The cave”. In fact, it’s difficult to recognize the white walls and garden roofs of my building. Now there are steep roofs made of straw, and bulky walls of stones.

“Euro!”

On the main door a big, old black man has appeared.

“Priest!”

I run to the man.

We hug. Once we were very close friend, even if it lasted for just months. We worked together in this place, before… before everything. The third and the fourth war.

I wipe a tear.

“I though you… well, like all the island…”

Priest shakes his head. “No, I was saved, too. But I guess Sam has explained all, right?”

Right. Sam remained silent for all of the ride from Sir Justin’s castle to the shore, evading my questions to why he was bringing me there without answering to my request of help.

When we reached the sea shore, I understood. And let out the first “I can’t believe it” of the day.

In front of me, just a hour swim from the coast, emerging for the azure water of the sea, was La Perdita.

The island… our island… we all though La Perdita gone… but gone as in destroyed. Nuked to obvlion. Not gone in another dimension.

“It was a last minute… well, a last second save. When it become evident that nobody would have saved the island… I called upon Ghaleon. I am not telling what I had to exchange with him for his work… but he did it. He opened a rift in the temporal continuum, and replaced the island here, with all of his inhabitants. Sure, life had to change a bit… the climate here is different, and there are no supplies of gas or electricity from the mainland. But people adapted.”

It was the time of my second “I can’t believe it”. The third came when the dragons arrived to bring us to the island. And then, when I saw how Puerta Mibela was turned into a fantasy/medieval town, and how the native metahumans were perfectly matched by the assorted races of dwarves, elves, fairies and such that came to set on the island.

It has a strange, naïve beauty, that on Earth was missing. Like this is its right place, and not the Caribbeans.

“Well, you surprised me, Sam. Now, back to us. Would you help us back at home? We need every Leaguer left… Vanguard is incredibly powerful…”

“No, sorry, Ed, but the old guys turned their back to me when I needed them most. I had to save La Perdita all by myself, no one other moved a finger for it. Sorry, Ed, now this is my land, and it need me most.”

“We came when it was time to fight Godbolt…”

“Yes, I know. But later, when I was needed… I returned, while then no one came to save the island. You know what La Perdita means to me.”

“Yes, Sam, I know. Well. If this is your last word, farewell. I have no time to waste. I hope one day to return to this place of peace…”

“Wait! I will come with you!” Priest, a harm raised to stop me, is speaking.

I stand silent for a moment. “Thanks, Priest. It is much appreciated.”

Perfect. I came for a young warrior, I return with a centenarian with heart disease.

The boat slowly advances in the dense, shallow water. Out of the mist appear bare trees, from whose branches hang, like there is no much difference, festoons of lichens and skeletal bodies of long dead peoples.

I push over the paddles, to move forward across dead reeds, until suddenly, from the fog, I recognize the shape of the castle.

The Castle of Crossed Destinies.

Home of the man I come looking for.

The enormous, impossibly shaped construction towers over me, full of sentry-box and watchtowers Yet the gate is not guarded, as if the lord of the placer has not fear of any invasor.

Inside, hundreds of stairs climbs up the internal walls at unreal angles and erroneous directions, traveled by dog sized newts. Just like the last time I have been here.

I begin to climb, randomly, as there is no way I can find the landlord. All I can hope is that he will find me.

And it takes just a few minutes.

“Edulcore” says a cold voice, from behind me.

I turn, to face a man in his mid thirties, wrapped in a long, purple cape. His face sports a goatee, while the head is bald, with the exception of a short ponytail behind.

“Axel! Thank Gob I found you”

“Leave the Almighty out of this, Euro, and tell me why you are here.”

Could I have expected a warmer acceptance? After what I procured him so many years ago? The man shows me a seat. I nod and sit down. He remains standing, next to a window overlooking the multiverse.

“I need help, Axel Magus” I whisper.

The man smiles, a stiff, sad smile. “Just like the other time” he says.

“Yes, I know. But no one other could…” A fiery look from him kills the words before they leave my mouth.

“Euro, this time, help yourself. I am stuck here, and it’s all your fault”.

“What do you mean?” I ask, surprised by the reaction.

He shakes his head, and turn, like he’s to leave.

“No, wait… really… I don’t know… what does this mean?” I say.

He turns back, to face me.
“At the time of the War… you charged me with the mission to close the gates of Haven, remember?” the man whispers.

“Yes, sure… Naecken advised us that the Basilisks could have summoned ancient Gods, much more evil and powerful and savages than the ones that roam the sky today… if they would have been allowed on the surface of the planet, the war could have had a totally different outcome…” I explain, more to myself than to the young man.

“And to avoid their interference, you ordered me to seal Haven, so that an intervention of “our” gods, would not trigger the Basilisks reaction in the mystical field.”

“Yes, I did. Just for the time needed by Naecken to bring the war in the deepest recess of Hell, where the Basilisk Gods slept, since the dinosaur times… when Basilisks were indigenous on Earth” I say.

A sad smile appears over Axel’s lips. “Right. Just Naecken underwent his last transformation down there, because the T5 robot had followed him with those five weird people since his return from space. Naecken was dissolved, and his energies bathed the five people, giving them strange powers. What a sad circumstance to happen. There, in Hell. T5 tried to lead the people out, but they did what Naecken had tried to avoid… they awakened the mad gods of the Basilisks.
They were much more powerful than those five guys. They were much more powerful than all the billions of metas of the world.
So…”

The man stops. There are tears running down his face, copiously.

“So”, resuming his talk, “I took a decision all by myself… I was a teen, then, and God knows how I would have needed an advice by some friend by then… but I was alone and the destiny of Earth was a stake. So I drove over the magic field of Earth, like I learned in all those endless hours studying the Books of Life… I opened the gates of Hell toward Haven… so that the once land of peace became the fighting ground for demons and angels… with the legion of the Shon caught in the middle.”

In a mirror hanging from the wall, I see my face, and dare to recognize it. The look of horror in my face is taunting. “What… what happened?” I stutter.

“What’s happening, you should say, Ed. They are immortals, and things between immortals takes much more time than across you humans. The war is enraging on the astral planes, Euro. The Shon is valiantly leading the legions of Haven… the Pantheon of the few surviving old gods… but what T5 has opened is a bottomless well. Those saurian demons spawned for 64 millions years… and now wants all. It’s a bloody massacre up there…”

“How will it end?” I asks.

“It will never end, Ed. They are immortals, I repeat. I was expecting this… hell, I did it it for my father… for his eternal dream of let the gods to stop to mettle with human affairs… for his eternal dream
that brought him to stole the fire from the gods and donate it to the humankind… I had the chance… and took it.” Tears are running freely down his face. “Just… now I have to live with that decision of mine… I am the living gate to keep all of them outside of the planet.”

My head spin. His father? Stealing the fire… but that…

“Your father is Myrrdin?”

A sad smile appears over the face of Axel Magus. “What a surprise, eh? But you don’t know that half of the truth.”

“Wait. Myrrdin told me your father was Chance… Kristopher Schanze...”

“Right. And Myrrdin was not lying…” adds Axel, wiping his tears away with his right arm.

Now my head spins even more furiously… “Myrrdin… is Chance?”

Magus nods. “That fateful day in Mandelovia, during the war with the Annunakis… Chance was not killed by the bomb. He was hurled back in time, 30,000 years before our era. In the process, he was mixed up with Pete Glover’s own ethereal existence… and there he resurfaced in the body of a mystic, a Neanderthal who had gone on a self-imposed exile from his tribe. They each resurfaced as part of a mix of the three persons. Myrddin was born as the Three-in-One… three souls in one body. If Pete Glover represented the Id, Chance was the Superego, and the Neanderthal mystic was the Ego who mediated between the two and held it all together. Since Chance and Pete were from two different parallel Universes, Myrddin had an innate ability to travel across dimensions… and Myrddin also had Chance's immortality. The aspect of Chance in Myrddin found himself facing the conquer of Earth by the Annunaki and their Earthly allies, the Hoods… and, still feeling guilty of having, once, been tempted to join the Hoods himself, during the days of the Hurricane over La Perdita… he made an oath to fight them forever, helping humanity to defeat the Annunaki…”

Now I am crying. “Chance was… my best friend…”

“It has always been. That’s why he, across the eras, has always searched for your previous incarnations to aide, help, advise you… Enkidu and Gilgamesh, Merlinus and Arthur, and many, many more names… most lost to history, and to your memory alike. And now you have condemned your best friend to host in his persona your worst enemy, Rothman… entombed underground for eternity… what a pity, poor old Euro…”




Myrrdin being Chance ® and ™ by TTT

“What have you done?!?!?!?”

The man jumps on his feet, sending the massive table we were sitting around on its feet, glasses and dishes breaking on the floor.

I have never met this face, and the name, Jack Tangent, sounds new to me, but I know this temper. Once, this man was known as Mason Templar, and was a man without half measure. Laughing madly, or clamouring loudly, temper was not part of his character. Then I left Vanguard, and when I returned, it was said to me that he died, somewhere in a mission in Nevada or some other part of the continent. Then, in a dire moment of need, he returned, but his face was different, and his manners also. He was just the same exceptional sword-man as before, and we began to refer to him as such, the Sword-man. Later I learned that he is somehow an immortal, a sort of bodyhost for the souls of dead heroes, so that every time he dies, his body is magically regenerated and “occupied” by the soul of a previously dead hero.

That makes him somehow similar to myself, that am the incarnation of the Eternal Champion… the spirit of the dragon-slayer that since the birth of man inhabits a human every hundred year or so.
We spent many years fighting together… first, for a few months, in Vanguard, then for much more time searching for my kidnapped son, fighting Aurochs and Saros along side Axel, and Myrrdin and his all-girl team of warriors.

In these years, we developed a reciprocal respect, and a perfect team-work, but we never became friends. We were probably too much similar… both hating Aurochs for our own different reasons, both working reluctantly for Myrrdin… both exceptional handler or swords and every kind of blades. Especially when he turned into Rama Avatar, our characters became very alike. And both of us felt excluded, set afar from the other Vanguardians… maybe was our age, I don’t know… but when he took his final decision to leave, at my same time… he never forgave my will to return to the team. And when there was the war, he choose to fight behind enemy lines, in desperate missions planned by Myrrdin, so to stay away from myself and the team.

I never saw him again, until today. From the castle I had easy access to this “Never-room”, the Swordman secret lair. Truly a transdimensional being, the never-room originated by the meeting, for lack of a better word, between the Castle of Crossed Destinies and the Metatithenai… two other individuals of the same specie… we protected the “Never-room”’s birth from the interference of a Strikeforce’s Elite specialist, the Hunter… and so Rama became bonded to the being.

What I didn’t expect was that Rama was no more. Died on a different parallel Earth, he returned with the name Jack Tangent, and then was there, standing at the “ddor” of the never Room, waiting for me.

“It’s a lot of time, really, Ed” he said, and invited me to sit around an old oak table. Glasses of beer over the wooden slabs, a roasted ox on a large dish.

“So, what did you bring you here, Cicciotto?”

“Rama…”

“It’s Tangent… Jack Tangent. Rama died on Chance’s Earth, two years ago”.

“Ah… I am sure it was a heroic death… Jack, then… I came to ask you to fight at my side…”
“And who we should fight?”

“Eddie… I’m sure you know the situation on our Earth, Jack.”

“I know it perfectly, Ed… just it’s not so much changed over the last ten years… so I wonder why you want to intervene now, when things has gone so far out of hand…”

“Eddie wants to bring War to Mars. It would be the end of the planet as well, Jack, I am sure you can understand…”

“What planet? Mars or Earth?”

“Earth for sure, Jack.”

“So fucking what? It would be better for the whole Universe if our Earth would just blow up” said Jack, snorting.

Those words made me mad. “Myrrdin has given his life for this cause, and you would just turn your back? I don’t recognize you!”

“Myrrdin is dead? How” asked Tangent.

“Not really dead. He made me to bring Paragon’s body to him, which was really inhabited by Rotman… and let Rothman invade him”.

And that bring us to now.

“What have you done?!?!?!?”

Jumping on his feet, making the table to roll over, Jack unsheathed Caliburn, his sword, and pointed it my throat. “Why, in the name of God, why?” shouts Jack.

I didn’t expect such a reaction. He never seemed too much close to Myrrdin.

“It was his idea… it was the only way to discover the secrets of the Acropolis… of the Vanguard Sanctuary. We discovered Rothman had parasitized Paragon for all these years… fist mentoring, then being subjugated himself by Eddie’s pipe… but he knew everything about Vanguard, everything Myrrdin was never able to discover, thanks to Smith’s planet-wide mental control…”

The frown over Tangent’s face disappears… the blade is lowered. He takes the table and set it back on its feet. “… tell me what you have discovered…” Jack says, sitting back, putting Caliburn over the table and setting a hand firm over its hilt.

“A lot… we have discovered a lot of things…” I whisper, and begin to tell him every thing Rothman has revealed… how it is a crew of Phil Smith clones to monitor the entire planet… how the original Smith keeps in stasis Mick Harrison, 24/7, to avoid him turning into Mxy… how Saros is directing the building of a fleet of spaceship like the old Nibiru to invade Mars… how Danny Hearn’s body is kept in a cryogenic womb in the Vanguard meeting room… as a memento to the glory days… and to assure his body will be delivered at the right moment to the mad professor, so that time will flow smoothly to the future and back to the past, as an assurance that the present will stay intact... I tell him the names and powers of all the Vanguardians, and how, among them, there is his and Jya’s son.

The revelation seems not to astonish him. “It was Templar’s son, not mine. Not really mine, Cicciotto…”

“So, will you help me?” I ask.

The man smirks. “Why I should?” he says, and then burst into a laugh.

This. Is. ENOUGH!

This time I un-sheath Durendal, and before he can raise Caliburn, the tip of my sword touch is Adam’s apple. “You ask me why you should help me? You, just like the others… like no one cares for the sort of our planet? I am tired to travel planets and dimensions, begging for your damn help! I am tired to explain, I am tired to pray! You pompous and snobbish bastard… you gave the pipe to Eddie! You have the duty to help me to stop him!”

The man’s gulp. “Actually…” he begins, but I have enough of explanations and excuse.

I grimace. “Actually… actually I don’t care if you were Mason or Rama or Glucksfall or anyone else when you gave the fife to Eddie. I know you was under the spell of Aurochs, but that don’t excuse you now to stay buried inside the intestine of this cosmic beast…”

Jack’s hand pushes my blade down… “I don’t want to fight my son…” he whispers.

I shake my head. “Nor I would my own, Jack… but sometimes you owe the world much than to your own blood… and this is one of those times. I am not asking you to kill him, Jack… we just need to stop Eddie…”

“You got a plan, Ed?”

I nod. “We must free Mxy…”

Dear Danny,
tonight I received the most shocking visit of all!

I was going to enter dreamstate, when something tapped the glass of my window. I looked, and it was the shape of a winger tall man just outside the window.

I was shocked, as nothing should enter the Parthenon compound, as it should be detected by the Smithians miles before it approaches Athens.

Instead, there was standing a human shape, defying any probability... only one is not detectable by mind probe, beside my brother, and that is dad.

I took all the courage I could found and went to the window, and opened it.

It WAS dad. He jumped inside, and took me by my shoulders.

"Amara, I beg you, leave this place. I can't tell you anything, just this: leave this place.”

I was enraged: how could him dares to come to me, after all this year, asking me to leave my life, to leave my duty as a protector of humankind, to leave my beloved brother and, MOST OF ALL, to leave you, my poor love?

I freed my arms and slapped him in the face. He retreated, amazed by my move. Shaking his head, he said: “Amara, don’t you understand? This place is gonna be leveled! I can’t let Eddie start this senseless war!”

“Again, you want to protect your precious Basilisks, dad? Just like last time? Can’t you for one time be faithful to your kind?”

He shook again his face, as tears began to fall down his cheeks. “Amara, there would be no winner in this war. Can’t you see it? Can’t your powers actually see the outcome of this war?”

The question surprised me, because it was like he was able to see in my mind, to see my deepest fear. You see, my love, I have tried for days to dream the outcome of the Mars invasion, but I can’t. I clearly see a battle, the day in which Eddie will order the attack. Dad with some of his old friends will come, out of nowhere, and there will be a battle. I don’t understand how they will be able to arrive here, as the Smithians should discover them hundreds of kilomenters before they reach Athens, but it’s not important. Eddie will win. He will fight dad, and sadly will kill him. I cried when I first dreamed it, but I am a Vanguardian , I muyst not cry, it’s war and dad as always is on the baddies side, and I love Eddie and I am happy he wins.
Just, after the battle and dad’s death I see nothing. It’s strange. Surely, not always I see the future precisely, when is further up the timestream, but something fuzzy, maybe not easily understandable should be there. This time, I see just black.

I shake my head, something forcing me to say the truth. “No, I don’t see the war.”

It’s like a barely visible smile bents the corner of the upper lip of dad, and then he shouts: “COME NOW, kid”.

I just cry, loudly. The guards will be here in instants.

Dad flies away, I run to the window, but the sky is empty.

No guards, but my brother in person arrives. “What’s happened, sis?”

I look at him, crying. “Just a nightmare, Ed.”

Dear Danny, it’s been Hell. Hell all around us.

It started when Ed was about to give his speech. The ships were ready to sail for the infinite, En.Ki parading with a long horned Sumerian God helmet, us Vanguardians all lined up in front of the cameras, the Metahuman Army Corps in square formations ready to enter the cargoes.

I was concentrating to read anything wrong in the air, but all I had was the beautiful sight of my mother sweating madly like she was performing some hard tasks. I was feeling her love for me, like she didn’t care for anything else. I was sad and happy, and being away from you, Dan, was not bitter like always.

Ed took the fife and played the old song, the one he used to start every Doc’s talks to the planet… it was a tribute to our lost Father… the lost Father of our reborn Earth… in the most shining day of History… when we are about to free our whole Solar System from the invading monsters.

“Dear women and men of Earth… this day the Metahuman race stands for its right to be the sole daughter of the Solar System. Today it stands for her right to be safe for the evil machinations of those damned dirty reptiles which ten years ago dared to invade our Home. Today…”

The words died on Ed’s mouth, Danny, as out of nothing a round shaped vessel appeared high in the sky, gleaming under the hard Mediterranean sun of Athens. It took everyone some time to accept that, a flying object over the city, having not haltered by the thousands of superhumans flying around.

It was the UFO, dad’s UFO, and it was taking a dive toward the crowded plaza of the Acropolys. People were screaming, running for their lives. Ed was enraged, screaming all of his hate for dad.

The UFO crashed, making the complex of temples and buildings to shook. In the middle of the flames, of the flying debris, of black clouds of smoke, Ed raised the fife and brought it toward his lips. But before he was able to blows any air through it – but why, in a moment like that?- a man in red and yellow ran out of the flame, and took the fife from his hands, and broke it in halves over his right knee.

Ed screamed, and punched the man, but his fist went straight trough his face. The man was laughing, but then Ed un-sheathed Ladnikia, and passed it across the intangible body. The demonic sword swallowed the soul of the man –which I suddenly knew was Larry Lance, as the vision of my mother left my mind, and I had full access to my power.

The attack had begun.

Dad’s allies were swarming in.

Faces and names I barely know were destroying my home, were battling and killing my friends.

Brandon Montag was duelling in air with dad, the short gladius of him exchanging hits with Edulcore’s Durendal.

Another fight of swords was going by Lykopis and the Swordsman, Jack Tangent.

From the hangars of the space fleet began coming the echoes of a great battle between EN.KI and his brother EN.LIL, freed from the body chains of Nadia, while Marshall, Draxa, Cal Natchman, Jay the spiderman, Vulcan and Duet were containing the assault of an assembly of rebels that called themselves the MBL.

Ed came by me, which were running to come here to your side, Dan.

“Where are you going, sis?” he shouted, taking be by my arm. “I need you to read their plan. Something is clouding the Smithians’ minds.”

“It’s mom, Ed” I said.

“YOUR mother” he replied. “That bitch. Anyway, find the plan!” He was imperious in his order.

But as much I plumbed everyone’s mind, I could find just little orders, small pieces of a bigger picture that no one had as a whole. Obviously, Danny, only my father knew the whole plane, and it was hidden under his mind-shield.

I shook my head. “Only dad knows, Ed” I whispered…

Ed raised an hand and was about to slap me, when I finally got a glimpse of an alien mind… Kristogar Velo… focused on the idea of putting Phil Smith out of commission without killing him.

The one weakness of Velo.

And I knew. Finally.

“They are going to freed Mxy!” I said.

Ed ran toward the headquarters.

Outside, the MBL and Vanguard were annihilating each other.

Lycopis’s head fled away from the body as Caliburn cut trough the immortal spine as it was butter.

Edulcore tore away the wings with bare hands from Brandon after he had teleported away the whole arsenal of mystical weapons of my father. Brianna’s kid died on the impact with the ground.

Natchman’s force field stopped Tobias Christopher, finally halting the speedster’s harvest of young Vanguardian lives. Jay, the spider, then bit him to death.

On the wall of the headquarters, then, Jay managed to fight and kill the orange-and-green wearing Captain, only to disappear inside at the call of Ed.

At the hangars, EN.KI, grown to gigantic size was locked in battle with EN.LIL, stomping over and across the fleet of sigar shaped spaceship. Thousands of metasoldier were dying as the ships, levitating at ten metres from the ground, collided one in the other, with the armoured Ameristar pushing one into the other.

But finally EN.KI with a last blow killed his brother god. Nadia, not far away, screamed in pain as his parasite died, killing her as well. EN-KI merely slapped Ameristar to death, like a man would do with a fly, and then took the few ships still undamaged and threw them in space with his arms.

He was then ready to go to the side of ed, when the old Priest went near him, and merely touched the god, absorbing his power. And releasing it. No one in a radius of one mile survived, including the man from the future.

Cal Natchman was in flying combat with Zod of the MBL, exchanging fire blast with the blue rays from Zod gauntlet. Both were incinerated by the flame of Draxa, before the giant dragoness was killed by dad, who suffocated her between his arms.

“I found Mick!” shouted Jack Tangent at Edulcore, from the ground below.

Dad looked at him surprised, then smiled. Closing the wings he landed in front of him. And without saying a word, Edulcore kicked him in the balls, and as Jack fell on his knee, dad crushed his skull with his right elbow.

Suddenly the form of Jack muted into the one of Mimic.

Tangent had not to know that the plan was to free Mick.

The real Tangent was looking for Jay, the son of him and a meta-animal spider known as Jya. Jack didn’t know what he was going to do… there was just a whirlwind of emotions spinning into his head.

Edulcore was fleeing toward the womb, the place where Phil keeps Mick under control.

Jya and Ed too, from a different side of the building.

Just outside the womb, Nowhereman and Kristogar Velo, the ally of so many wars, were fighting with Duet, the splitting girl of Vanguard, after the Brit has killed Vulcan and Velo defeated the Knight, son of the late Drake Marshall.

The last blows were exchanged, and the two females fused again into one, senseless and reversed on the ground.

Velo connected a microcomputer to the numerical lock of the door, and after a second it opened.

The room inside is a full spherical room. At the centre Mick is held by four ropes by arms and legs. Phil Smith orbits around him, endlessly, levitating by his own power, keeping Mick sleeping and without dreams, to avoid Mxy manifesting himself.

As the two MBLers stepped inside, from another door entered Jay and Ed. There were no time for surprise and words. The two lasting Elite Vanguardians, not counting me, threw themselves at the two MBLeaguers.

In amovie the battle would have lasted for long, taking a good size of the time. But this was reality, and it lasted mere seconds. The advantage of my friends over the two bare handed fighters was overwhelming. Ladnikia and the venomous bite cut across the lives of the two warriors with an easiness that was just not right.

Ed smiled, but the smile died on his face as Phil muttered a few words. “I… am… loosing… control…”

“HOW?” shouted Ed.

“Rose, Eddie.” It was dad, who had just entered from the door left open by Jay. “Rose, my wife, the woman you hate so much. The woman you ordered Aurochs to made inexistent to me. Yet, our love overcame that, and that drove you even more crazy. Up to the point to never considered her a threat. And now she is defeating Phil without even being present , safely away thousands of miles from here. Say goodbye to world domination, Eddie”.

As he said that, Jay throw a web rope to Edulcore, tying him and bringing him nearer one arm after arm.

When dad was finally in his arms, he was to bite him. The fangs were wide open, and Ed was laughing madly, when the head of Jay rolled away on the floor. Behind was Jack Tangent, holding Caliburn.

The laugh died in the mouth of Ed. Phil was gasping.

Edulcore walked toward Eddie.

“Son, it ends here. Most of your forces have been destroyed. The fife is no more, and you can’t enchant the people anymore. Phil is at the mercy of Rose. In matter of minute, Mick will be free, and Mxy will put things back to right. Maybe with a few flying cows, but your empire will be undone. Surrender, son, you have lost.”

There were tears running down Ed’s cheeks. He raised an arm to wipe them from his face.

Then, his punch crushed the head of dad.

As Edulcore’s body fell to the ground, Jack grimaced.

“The people loves me not for the fife. They love me because I made them proud to be metahuman. Proud to be Earthlings. They are ashamed of you, not of me”. And then spitted over the cadaver of dad.

As that was going on, Phil roared in victory. Just as he was succumbing to Rose powers, he found a little door to the woman’s mind. Through that narrow passage, he channelled all of his rage. The head of Rose exploded at a continent away, on the island of Heligoland

Understanding what was happening, Jack Tangent jumped high on air to fall toward Phil Smith, who, for the struggle of the mental battle, has landed on the ground. Caliburn cut across the chest of the man, as his right arm raised an handgun and exploded a blow.

“You will not win” were the last words of the mentalist. The single bullet tore across the hearts of both Jack Tangent and Mick Harrison.

With a single movement of the head, Ed sent the blond curl away from his right eye. He went to a computer console, tapped something on the keyboard, and smiled. Vanguard was no more. But there were six spaceships heading for Mars.

Don’t call me Eurostar.

I am no more.

But I have still to tell you a story.

You know by a few post before that when my best friend, Kris Schanze, saved the Vanguardians and probably the whole of Mandelovia from a chronal bomb seemingly sacrificing himself, he didn’t die, but was hurled back in time 30 000 year.

There, Kris’ soul mixed with the one of the ghost of Pete Glover, the man whose ethereal existence was bonded from an accident happened years before, and with the soul of a shaman Neanderthal, one of the last of his species, whose body become the host of the triple being. Myrddin thus was born, and became his eternal war with the Annunaki who were ruling that primeval Earth.

But there is one thing still unaccounted for.

The body of Kris Schanze. The body depleted of his own soul.

The newly formed Myrrdin found the body next to him. Alive, but living a sort of lesser existence, like a zombie.

Myrrdin took it along himself, as a sort of dumb servant. Until the day when, during one of his quest to discover means to fight the Annunaki, in the area the scientist today calls Sundaland, they stumble upon a giant marine crocodile, that was about to kill Myrddin. Only the intervention of a nameless hunter saved the Neaderthal, but the saviour found death at the hand of the crocodile, just before it died, too.

The shaman, grateful and guilty for the death of the hunter, used his arcane techniques to stop his soul to travel to the land of the death, and made it to enter and occupy the soulless body that once was Chance’s own. The hunter was trained and taught by Myrrdin, to became his champion in the war with the Annunaki.

And when EN.KI forged Ladnikia, the demon sword, from magic, bronze and Annunaki tech, Myrrdin created Caliburn out of meteoric iron and shamanic knowledge, as the only blade able to stop the other.

The hunter, whose name was forgotten to history, was know just as the Champion, and was the first human to defeat an Annunaki in battle. EN.KI was mortally wounded, but the same was for the Champion, and for many of his human allies, gathered by Myrrdin.

It was then that the legends of the Eternal Champion and of the Swordsman began.

Because shortly after the death of the Champion, his body arose anew, inhabited by the spirit of one of the other heroes who found death battling EN.KI. The body who once was of Cahnce now was a very host for souls of heroes who died in battle without satisfaction.

Shortly thereafter, the spirit of the original Champion manifested itself when another, younger hero had to fight a reptilian monster, like the Chamipon had before.

The spirit of the dragon slayer had returned, like it would have generation after generation, becoming known as the Eternal Champion, reincarnated in the best warriors each century had to offer to humankind. Gilgamesh, Hercules, Perseus, Bellerofons, Sigfrid, Beowulf, Cormac, Uther Pendragon, Lei Gong, Roland and countless other; always an old man of ferine look was accompanying him, as a mentor and a friend, as it was Enkidu for Gilgamesh or Merlin for Pendragon.

Meanwhile, sometimes crossing path but more than always separated by continents, the Swordsman reincarnated with a different soul throughout the centuries, always mastering the use of Caliburn, whose magic was the real trigger of the reincarnation process. As the blade changed names across time, knows sometimes as Ensis Caliburnus, Caliburn, Excaliburn, Caledwlch, always lead his bearer in battle and conquering, uncaring if it was named Alexander, Caesar, Arthur or Kublai.

And so on and on across time, up to today. When once again is the spirit of the Eternal Champion to inhabit the body of the Swordsman.

Around me, the rubbles of Myrddin manor in Heligoland., destroyed by an attack from Eddie’s force after our failed coup.

Failed… as this was not exactly the plan Myrddin suggested me. A suicidal attack that would have destroyed both forces, but left me, the Eternal Champion, finally regenerated in my original body, and with Caliburn at my side.

Myrrdin is dead, his cadaver buried under a mile of rock inhabited by the eternal soul of Rothman. Rose, my love, is dead, under the crashed wall of the manor. Mark, Tanya and all the helpers of Myrrdin, dead too.

I am the last of the resistence.

I am the last of the Revolutionaries.

I am the last of the MBL.

Today I will fight the dragon.

------------------------------------------------

Erasmus, the giant hawk, fly steadily toward the Aegean Sea. On my shoulder is Nip, my black raven. On my back, the scabbard where Caliburn rest, waiting for the battle.

I land in the open square in the Parthenon.

Nobody has tried to stop me.

No one would have succeeded, but I know it’s Eddie that want to reserve it for himself. Killing his father two times it’s something even him would have not dream of.

He comes out. It seems naked, but I know it’s the elemental exoskeleton. In his right hand sits Ladnikia.

I take the scabbard. After any resurrection, the Swordsman forges Caliburn in a new shape. Now, it’s a katana, just like Ladnikia had been reshaped by Eddie when he remade it from the two pieces.

Eddie raises Ladnikia vertical, in front of his face, both hands over his hilt.

With my left thumb I drive the hilt out of the scabbard, just an inch.

Eddie yells, and runs toward me.

I unsheathe Caliburn quickly, and raise it in defence.

When the two blade cross, a deafening scream saturates air. It’s nature herself crying, as the two alien weapons begin their dance.

The sky is suddenly covered by dark violet clouds; lighting strikes and a hard rain pours down on us.

Eddie is good. As good as myself. Each hit is warden off, and then he is in attack.

And the rare times I manage to touch him, his elemental body changes to air. And he soon develops another trick, turning into magnetic iron to deviate the tip of my blade from it’s course, creating opening in my defence where Ladnikia manages to come in.

But the demonic blade is soft on my skin. The scars doesn’t hurt, like they should, as she should devour my soul bite after bite.

She still loves me.

Faithful like a long lost lover who never forgot you for all this time, she still wants me over Eddie.

I am the one who betrayed her, I am the one who let her be destroyed, yet she still wants me over Eddie.

“You are weakening, edulcore. You are OLD!” laughs my son.

He raises Ladnikia, and charge at me with a brutal blow that I barely ward off.

But ladnkia is on again, and he could push it on my shoulder if not for Nip, who attack him with his curved claws.

Ladnikia cuts across him, and the across Erasmus who came to help the other bird.

“Nooo” I shout, but Eddie turn the sword toward me, and I have to jump on the side, falling miserably on the ground.

Eddie is over me. “And, what do you think you can accomplish? I gave the order to fire on mars whenever they are at firing distance. Only I can give the order to stop, the computer needs a read from my iris and fingers to confirm it…”

The words went mute in his mouth. His iris and his fingers… are my same. Now he understands.

Eddie screams. “Who cares? You are dead!”

Ladnikia fall over Caliburn with a force I never experienced, even when I fought Rothman and Knell.

The iron blade breaks in half.

I throw it away.

Eddie charges, I jump on my side, but he takes me by my neck and makes me fly across the square.

I roll over the ground and am on my feet before Ladnikia’s tip hit the place where I was an instant before.

I kick Eddie in the face, before he can turn into gas, but Ladnika is again dancing on his hand.

But I hear the song of the sword, the song she played when we entered the battle, longing for blood and soul.

I raise my hand.

“Ladnikia” I shout.

And the blade, as if alive, flies from Eddie’s hand to mine.

Eddie screams, letting out all of his rage, and charged at me, turning into something ethereal and surely poisonus.

I simply throw Ladnikia, across the cloud of red smoke. The very gas scream, and dissipates, as the blade fall over the ground, the soul of Eddie now inside her.

I am on my knees.

One arm wipes away the sweat from my forehead.

It ends like this?

I enter the building. No one tries to stop me.

I walk across the empty corridors, looking for that room Eddie showed me moths ago, on my trip here.

I found it.

Inside, there is a glass tube with the body of Danny Hearn, and my daughter Amara near it, crying.

I go by the console, and type the order to retire. Then I take my eagle helmet away, and place my fingers and my eyes over the scanners, for the confirmation.

“Rejected”

How’s that possible?

I turn toward Amara, she looks at me with the most surprised look ever.

Then, reflect on the polished metal of the console, I see my face.

Kris Schanze’s one.

The reincarnation of the original soul of the Cahmpion in the first body, has reverted it to its original look. Chance’s own.

I lost.

I fall on my knees. “No! All these deaths… for nothing!” And then I look to Amara. “Amara… please… you must know how to stop the ship! You are freed from Eddie, don’t you understand that if the ships attack mars they will destroy Earth in retaliation? It’s so diffult to understand that there is no possible victory in a interplanetary war?”

The girl just cries.

How stupid.

I should just kill her like her brother.

Stupid…

Oh my God. What I have just though?

Ladnikia laughs.

I am his slave again.

And she wants to prove me worth of it.

Amara’s soul.

Soon the Basilisk ray will fry Earth and all of his inhabitants.

Amara is doomed.

I could survive, with the strength that Ladnikia will give me.

It’s an act of mercy on herself.

Why not?

I raise the blade, high above my head. One step. Two step. Three step. I am near the girl.

She looks at me terrorized. She cries.

I raise Ladnikia even more, as much as my arms can.

And push her with all my force…

…into my belly.

.

.

.

It’s not even painful.

I see the life of all the people killed by the sword. Heroes, villains, animals, innocent people. Blood and souls.

And I see Amara who come to my side.

“What have you done, dad?”

I laugh. “Mistakes, Amara. Mistakes for all of my life. But I spared a last one.”

“Dad…”

With her help , I stand over, Ladnika obscenely sprouting out of my back.

“Don’t touch me…” I warned her when she is about to touch the hilt of the sword.

“It’s my duty to dispose of the sword once and for all.”

She looks at me, tears running down her face.

“Yours” I continue, “yours is to save the planet.”

I kiss her on the forehead, and leave.

Step after step, with the blood running down my legs, I go toward the entrance of the elevator. The space elevator.

The way to the tethered space station.

I entered, the lift cage like a large train car. Up, and the cabin departs at an incredible velocity.

Up there, up here, where the sky has turned black and the stars start to shine, I shove ladnikia out of my belly. The pain now is unbearable, but this is the last thing I have to do in my life.

I push the blade into the controls, stopping the run of the car. And then, with all of my last power, I break the door. The pressure pushes me outside. It’s cold, and I scream and I can hear my scream because there is no air.

My hand opens, dead, and Ladnikia goes away, in the deep of space.

And here ends my life.

Danny, my dad just killed himself, to spare my life from the thirst of blood and soul of the sword that my brother reforged.

The man who I blamed so long saved me from the creation of the man I loved most, after you.

And he asked me to save the planet, again from what Eddie set in motion.

How could I have been so blind? The truth was in front of everyone, but no one wanted to listen. To see with his own eyes.

And now, I am here alone, a little girl with the power to read minds, and dream of the future.

Yet, there is no future to dream of, because in a matter of minutes Mars AND Earth will be destroyed.

What I can do? Oh, Danny, if only you would be awake… if only eddie would have succeeded into awakening you… lies, again. He just wanted to keep you alive to the 2048, so that the past and the present will remain intact… he never had any intention of reviving you.

But if you could return, Danny, oh, if you could…

“No, he can’t” says a deep, hollow voice.

I turn.

It’s a big being, skull faced, dressed with a leg long black leather coat.

“Grimm?” I know him just from the Vanguard files. In fact, I could have met him when I was a small kid, but I have no memories of that.

The man nods. The empty sockets in his face, with no sign of eyes, scares me.

“Are you here to help me?” I ask.

A laugh.

“To help you to accomplish the small task your father gave you before jumping out in the coldness of space?”

I nod.

“Then no.”

I frown.

“I am the Death avatar. I go where people dies. Where life ends. That’s when I win. When life ends, and death gains new territory. Today the last of Vanguard will die, and that counts a lot for me. And today the whole of two different intelligent species, Earthlings and Basilisks, will die, and that is an event very seldom happen in all of creation.
This is, indeed, a very happy day for me”

I would cry. I would run away to my bed and cry over it. I would do everything I always do when someone makes jokes on me and makes me angry, so that Eddie would come to say how intelligent and beautiful and important to his cause I am.

But that was my old life, when Eddie was lying to me.

That life ended today.

Today I have to save the Earth all by myself.

Earth and Mars. Like dad would have.

And you know a thing, Danny? The cavalry role is just all yours, my poor love.

The death avatar looks at the ships in the monitor, taking position around the red planet ready to strike the attack.

I don’t know how it is possible, but I see a smile on his bare mandible.

I stand next to him for half an hour looking at the exceptionally slow moves of the ships.

I guess I have waited for enough time.

“Grimm?”

The white, polished bony head looks at me.

“Today you win?”

The face would be frowning if it had muscles and eyebrows.

“You recognise your victory was brought to you by my brother, whose existence was driven by event created by the formation of Vanguard, right?”

He does a step toward me.

“What if Vanguard never formed?”

He looks at the plug cable in my hand.

“What if… Danny Hearn never made it safe to 2048?”

Grimm runs toward me, but the power cable of the cryogenic chamber has been detached from enough time to start the degeneration of the brain tissues of Danny.

And reality, around me, vanishes.

In the grey dullness, a door opens and a distinct tall me enters.

“Let me present myself, Miss Amara. I am The Time Trust android. I am the… well… caretaker of timestream… and I am here to welcome you in Time City. Your future home.”

I look around. “Have… have I destroyed reality?”

The artificial man smiles. “No. No one is enough powerful to destroy reality. Until there will be a mind to imagine a new one, to create a new hero, to plot a new tale, a reality will ever be.”

Oh. “That means… that I have indeed destroyed the Vanguard reality?”

“You have destroyed your contemporary Vanguard reality, yes. That was what your father was aiming for, to spare the death of the human race, and the Basilisk’s own as well. You did well in that regard.”

“But… but the results is the same… the whole reality is no more…”

“Sure… but a new one is already forming… from the ashes of the past, from the early days of Vanguard, from the even older days of the MBL and TOMB, new tales prepares to be told. Old and younger minds will took the past, or reject it, but no matter how they will build from what went before something new and exciting, and the heritage of MBL, TOMB and Vanguard will never die.”

The artificial man stands up, and lend me an hand. “Care to follow me?”

I take the hand, and leave.



Never the end