"Don't tell me you are leavin' me behind even this time?" shouts the Lad, squeezing the can of beer in his right hand.
"Yes, I am. You are still on monitor duty. You are the one appointed to call in the reserves if problems arise. You are in charge, here, while we are away, Lad. The safeness of the world is in your hand... and you would exchange all of this with being the last wheel on our expedition?" Rypta's face is deadly serious.
"Uhmf, no, I didn't mean... but, Rypta, you see... I would like to move sometimes... I am always here..."
"Because you are the best suited for this role, Lad. No one other could do this as perfectly as you are!"
"Well, Rypta... thanks". The tall and goofy meta, on hand scratching his own head, went toward the monitor room.
Rypta sighs. "Ok. Are you all ready? Let's go. Lioness, do your work".
The tall, dark skinned superheroine begins to whispers the arcane words of a complex spell. Slowly, the world around the eight MBLers begins to fade, like a morning mist at the rising of the sun behind the horizon, revealing a disturbing reality.
"I don't like this" whispers Steve.
"Me neither" says Zod.
It was like seeing though just cleaned spectacles. You see the same, but more clearly, more crisp. with all the textures, the wrinkles, the roughness the patina of dust over the glass smoothed away before.
"The colors are wrong... too muted" says Johnny.
"And the contours... like gone" observes Patrick.
"What kind of place is this?"
"It's the future, Dan. If you were expecting a post holocaust world, I guess it's a big surprise" whispers Lioness.
"It's lot worse, Lorena". Rypta wipes the dust away from one of the small windows, looking in the direction of Thunder City. "Looks there. No skyscrapers at all, only small buildings. Seems Thunder City is not the big town it was in our time." Suddenly Rypta turns back, to face Lioness. "By the way, what day is today?"
The woman closes her eyes for an instant, and then reopens them, looking straight at Dan. December the fifteen, 2003." The face of the woman express marvel. "I don't know why we landed so later. wait, I will try to bring us back at the precise spot!"
"Wait" order Dan. "We can use this... deviation... to our advantage. We can study the past of this present... so that we can go back to the 2001 knowing what we have to expect."
"Excellent idea" says Zod. "What do you suggest?"
Rypta snorts. "Let's pout your civvies on. We are going to Washington".
__________________________________________________________
Washington, DC, USA. December 2003
The fingers pass slowly over the name engraved in the stone.
"Patrick Walker. Died 10-24-1972."
A thin, cold veil of water freezes the finger. Smasher retract them, closes the hands in fists and put them at the bottom of the pockets of his jacket.
As he walks away from the Vietnam Memorial, his eyes crosses Dan's own.
"The past... is all fucked up, Rypta. I have died in Saigon!"
"Yes. We have found it. Let's go, Zod and 57 have returned from the Congress Library. We have to heard what they have discovered."
A few minutes later the eight MBLeaguers meet around a bench in the Park. The big obelisk looming in the distance.
"Johnny" Monolith sits on the bench and chews a hot-dog, trying to hide his rock like skin under the turned up collar of a brown . Disco "Steve" sits next to him, drinking a coke. The others, Rypta, Agent 57, Patrick "Smasher" Walker, Zod, the Captain are standing around the bench. A few yards away, beautiful in a long white coat, the Lioness looks at the steel-grey waters of the bay, her long, black hairs ruffled by the wind.
Spare snow flakes begins to fall.
"It's confirmed, guys" says Agent 57. "It's not the future that has changed, it's all the timestream. it's worse than what the words of Prometheus X could have let us to suspect."
"The past... it's completely different. There were no metas in the Second World War. No Mysterymen Brotherood Society, no All Adventurers Squadron, no Young Smart-ass. And no Seven Soldiers of Virtual Reality more recently. There were no superheroes at all before the 90'. The metagene has been discovered only in 1996!" explains Zod.
"And it has caused panic across the world. Metas are feared and hated. There are discriminating laws even here in the USA" adds 57.
"Impossible!" exclaims Steve.
"No, that's true! Even now, that there is a global superheroes force, they claim to not have metagene carrying people among their ranks." The face of Zod, as he tells this, is disgusted.
"And nobody remembers the MBL?" The raucous, inhuman voice of Monolith seems out of place in the nearly desert, peaceful Park. "There is not a MBL?"
"That's not true." Lioness speaks without turning, keeping to watch the snow flakes dying in the waters of the bay. "There is a MBL. The Metahumans Brotherood for Liberation. Brutal murderers that hides behind false claims of freedom their thirst of blood."
"How do you know, Lory?" asks Dan.
The witch turns back. "I went to an internet cafe, and surfed for less than an hours. This MBL is a terrorist group that has done small robbery, killing many peoples, and then did a spectacular terrorism act in Orlando, Florida, earlier this year. Easily enough, I have tracked their origin to a little band of misfit that hide for some time in a traveling circus, whose presence in cities coincided with big robberies at banks and museums. After the circus was destroyed in Mandelovia, those people created a sort of firm specialized in archeaeological expeditions, called, you know, MBL: Metahuman Business League. I discovered an old internet site advertising the company. Then, all of a sudden, at the time of first strike of the terrorist, they changed name to the company. But their faces and powers are the same, at last for some of them."
"And you think they can be behind the damage to the timestream, Lorena?" asks the Captain, while nibbling a fresh carrot.
"I don't know. But they are the MBL, they are the counterpart to us in this new reality, so there must be a connection."
Rypta nods. "It's true. It's always like this, it's like when we had to face the Dark MBL. Ok, people, let's go. Lorena, where are they based?"
"The Caribbeans. The island of La Perdita. They call themselves, now, Vanguard."
