"Again?" shouted Grimm, hitting his steel gauntlet on the desk. The desk did not break, but deep cracks enlarged from the impact point. Kit Piper, that was present, looked up, thinking about the check for another new meeting table.
Agent 57 gave grimm an hard look: "What does it mean, again? Whoever was in charge of that dome, he simply took use of the changing of the timestream... we could have defeated his schemes, but that doesn't change a pound for us. Our future has been cancelled. We are all destined to die... no, not to die... to vanish, to be erased from existence, in mere three years... and with us a world and six billions of humans... and a whole universe, too... replaced by this reality... that is far worse than ours"
"Far worse? A fascistic global state of superheroes would be better than this? Are you really sure?" said Drake, who had been silent all along.
Rypta stood up. "Don't you dare to call us fascist, kid! I fought Hitler and Mussolini when your parents were not yet born!" he shouts.
Ozzie slammed his open hand over the desk, finally cracking it. "You don't know who you are talking to, aussie! That man is a living legend!"
Lorena laughed. "You don't know who YOU are talking to. Rypta is the embodiment of heroism, not your small town vigilante!"
Baxter stood up. Lorena raised her hand toward the ex-pugilist. "Freeze, luv!" said Grissom, pointing a just materialised revolver at the latino woman.
"Put down your gun!" ordered Zod, pointing his gauntlets to Griss. Suddenly, he felt a cold and sharp arrow tip stinging his neck. "Hands raised, man!" commanded Brianna, pointing her armed crossbow at him, from behind.
Guns, axes, and bare hands able to shoot laser bolts where pointed at each one, across the two sides of the splintered table. And the determination of each hero overcome the pacifying though s of Tayden, who was feeling totally helpless.
The air was filled with anxiety and rage. It would have taken just the buzz of a fly, to let the first shot to depart. Rypta spoke: "There is no reason to be worried. Gooz has accepted the X, it will just take hours before the timestream will realign itself. With Gooz not renouncing to the X, in 2001 all had happened as Continuity planned. The heroes won, the Courts of Light and Circles of Darkness will be defeated, and a age of prosperity for Earth had begun."
In that exact moment the lights flickered and dimmed, and out of the darkness coalesced the familiar yet chilling presence of Promethus X.
He looked at the heroes with his piercing neo-purple eyes. And much to the surprise of all the presents, a gleaming tear, a single drop shining like silver, run down his cheek. He gritted, and then whispered: "I... renounce... it".
The Earth was shaken, the sky become instantly clouded and rain began to pour down. Nature was crying.
Where Prometheus was standing, now was Ritchie Stevens. Outside, clouds dissipated and the sun returned to glows over the island.
The MBLeaguer were looking at their former member in shock. The Vanguardians breathed relieved.
Ritchie looked at his former allies with a sad look. "I... can't... change my mind, guys. What I choose three years ago was for the best. I... know how you can feel, but the War was something too... big... evil... unbearable for the world. Hell got loose on the surface... many land were totally destroyed... and people experienced the eternal damnation during their normal lives. You understand? There was no possible redemption! People went mad! All!"
Smasher frowned. "we saw the future... the right future. It was an utopian world, not what you are telling us!"
Gooz smiled, and shook his head. "What you saw was the year 2003, yes... but after the War! It took two thousands year to rebuild a civilisation... and it was a civilisation of only methumans. The descendants of those few metas that would have survived the war colonized the planet. The humans... the normal humans... all die within one generation.
Is that the future you want for the planet, Patrick?"
"You choose out of an egoist point of view, Ritchie. You choose personal peace at the cost of humankind. We could have fought back the damnation. Rypta could have healed the mind and body of all humankind if necessary..." said Smasher, sweating.
"And who say Rypta was still with us?"observed with a sad expression Ritchie. "I choose this pact. I have chosen a normal life, with a woman and soon a son, renouncing to godhood. I had the power to reshape galaxies, now I edit videoclip in my spare bedroom. do you really thing it's an egoistic choice, Patrick? This new history is experiencing a bad moment for the methumans, that's true, but humans, with and without the metagene, have the resources to overcome this. But here Hell has never walked over the surface, and the only time it tried to do so, it has been stopped. It cost valiant lives, but it was just like a bad dream for the people. The soul of the human kind had not to suffer, Leaguers. He went to the windows, one of the few looking to the outside of the Complex. He looked at the sky. "You really think a world where the Warlord, the Anti-Monarch, Rai or the Hypertime Entity are on the loose, is better than this?"
"It's our world, Gooz!" said Lioness, desperately.
He opened his arms. "So is this! Each of you lives or have lived here. Things were just different... but what was important... friendship and love... were the same" he said, looking at Lioness and at Agent 57. "You must understand that how much the timestream can bend and twist, it will never took away your life. And be aware... " he said, looking first at the MBLeaguer, and then at the Vanguardians..." be aware, that if time change your life into the one of normal peoples... you have not to despair.... because there will always be new heroes."
All of them stayed silent. Ritchie Stevens looked around, whispered a farewell, and crossed the door, leaving their lives, heading for his "normal" life.
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The MBL returned to 1999, with the knowledge that always the time travels makes the memories fuzzy, and soon the bitterness for knowing their destiny would left their minds. The only good was that strange future was in the hand of deign successors of themselves.
Vanguard happily began the arrangements for both the metahumans parade and the parties for Christmas and New Year. The adventure with the MBL was one of those things out of the ordinary, that seemed so frequent those days, like the mission with Paragon and the Clockmen, or the merging of the Earths with TOMB. But remained the good sensation of having accomplished something really big, next to the regret for not having discovered who was behind the experiment to bring the HE into our continuum.
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The man was looking at the wreckage. What was standing in front of him, at an unaware onlooker, would have been rocks and ravines in the middle of the sand, like every other part of the Sahara. But he knew that it concealed the larger, advanced scientific laboratory of Earth, and now that it was destroyed.
The man shrugged. Another defeat at the hand of Vanguard. Luckily the cadets were saved -by himself- just before the explosion. And although they were senseless all was taped, so them would remain faithful to him for the rest of their life...
But Vanguard... ah, Vanguard... what power, what resources hidden into those men and woman... if only they would agree to be directed by him... trained by him... becoming the bone of his Strikeforce.
Jack Merlin looked at the desert one more time... and then walked away, leaving the mess behind himself.
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The sun was setting over the Gulf. Two men of middle age sat at the table of a little bar, on-looking the beach and the sea behind.
"A carrot juice!" ordered one of the two. The other looked at him smiling, finding in that request so many memeories of the past.
"And for you, sir?" asked the young waitress.
The man though for a moment, and then shook his head. "The same, thanks".
The other one exploded into a fat laugh. "I though I would have never seen you drinking carrot juice!"
"Things change" he said. Then, looking around, with a bitter tone in his voice: "Things change, really".
The other man nodded. "But not for the worst, Zod. Not for the worst. I really can't say my life today is less entertaining... or worthy... than the previous one."
Zod nodded at the waitress that returned with the juices. He sipped his own, and then asked:"What do you do, now, Cap?"
"What I do? I am a researcher at MIT. Working over virtual reality systems for recreating a vision for blind peoples. And you?"
Zod leaned back on the chair. "I am a fireman."
THE END
