Chapter 20
Chapter 20
Planet Maltus – Ten thousand years ago…
On the planet Maltus, a world of perfect technological achievement, a male scientist Mar Novu observed the lifelong work that would change his existence forever.
Today, he was going to witness the birth of the universe.
He turned to his assistant and wife, Xneen.
"Are we ready?"
"Just about." she replied, manipulating the monitors. "You better suit up."
Mar Novu approached his wife with a smile on his face. He took her in his arms, and kissed her lovingly.
"I love you," he said softly.
"I love you," whispered his wife.
Later, Mar was gone to put on his outfit, while Xneen watched the control monitors.
"Okay. This will be temporal jump trial one. All systems nominal." she said.
In the room below, Mar arrived, dressed in his big gray suit which was imposing on his. He did everything to make himself comfortable, but his outfit was uncomfortable.
"I look ridiculous." he muttered, looking at his arms. "Is this really the height of fashion at the Dawn of Time?"
Xneen reminded him of the need for the combination.
"The suit provides a shield against…"
"The coronal radiation… My body will be… yes, yes, yes. I'm familiar with the jingle," Mar said sarcastically. "But you couldn't have designed something a tad less... bulky?"
"Remind me again, why did I marry you?"Xneen exclaimed with amusement.
"You have a thing for men of towering ambition." Mar joked as he walked over to his machine.
Xneen smiles before resuming his seriousness in the control room.
"Are you seeing this quantum flux cascade?"
But Mar kept his humor.
"I am just a time traveler here, my love. You are the Monitor."
He became serious again, and placed his hand on the device allowing him to access time travel.
"Engaging quantum portal." he warned.
The machine started up and shook the whole installation.
" Field is stabilizing." Xneen announced.
"The portal is engaging." declared her husband, turning around. "Next stop... the Dawn of Time."
An interdimensional breach opened before him. With determination, Mar Novu walked towards the portal, excited to witness the creation of the universe.
After entering the breach, Mar found himself in a green, swirling tunnel of energy.
Stunned, he looked around, before communicating to his wife:
"I am in the temporal zone. (He smiles in wonder.) Oh, I wish you could see this, Xneen… The birthplace of all creation… It's beautiful."
In the monitor room, Xneen smiles at her husband's excitement. But her joy disappeared when she noticed some strange data on the screens. Alarms went off. All the blue readings turned red.
"Mar, I'm getting readings here I don't understand. Your presence has corrupted the zone somehow. It's releasing radiation I've never seen before."
In the Temporal Zone, the greenish tunnel suddenly turned black, much to Mar's horror.
"I think… I think this might be anti-matter." Xneen continued with anguish. "You have to get out of there. Get out of there right now!"
But before Mar could do anything, he was carried away by a powerful bright light, which carried him away. Finally, when he could make out his surroundings, he was amazed to see that he had landed in a rocky and desert area. He tried to communicate with his wife, but the signal was weak.
"Xneen... Xneen, can you hear me? Something went wrong. I do not think this is the Dawn of Time."
"No, it is." answered the voice of his wife whose communication was interfered with. "It just isn't the Dawn of Time of our universe."
"What?"exclaimed Mar stunned.
"You breached the wall between our universe and its opposite." Xneen said.
"An anti-universe?!"
"Your body was suffused with coronal radiation. The suit couldn't contain it." Xneen continued in anguish. "Mar? Mar, can you hear me?"
"I'm sorry, my love," Mar Novu realized sadly. "My towering ambition has doomed us all."
He could only look in horror at his enemy he had unconsciously created: the Anti-Monitor.
The Vanishing Point
In the old quarter of the Time Masters, the Eight Paragons with the God of Thunder and the last Guardian of the Galaxy had made it their new home. Because they had nowhere to go, didn't even know what to do. Somewhere, between some junk rubble, Ryan Choi wrote a letter that no one would read:
Dear Amanda,
So... you're dead along with, well, everyone, everyone who's ever lived in any reality ever, and me, I'm supposed to be a Paragon, one of eight people who are supposed to be the Multiverse's last, best chance. I don't see it. The so-called Keeper of the Paragons, also known as the God of Thunder, does nothing but sulk, blaming himself for having failed, like all of us. The so-called Paragon of Destiny no longer even believes that there will be a tomorrow. The so-called Paragon of Destiny, she doesn't even believe in tomorrow anymore. The Paragon of Courage spends every day working herself to the bone, training for a fight that will never come. The Paragon of Honor just meditates for hours on end. The Paragon of Hope has lost hers… And me, I spend my days trying to repurpose the broken technology of this place to find us a way out. I get help from Rocket who can't stand being called a raccoon. Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you, I met a raccoon who speaks and who travels the galaxy. He's grumpy, but he's also lost his family like us, so he tries to occupy his mind so as not to think about those he has lost. Likewise for Peter Parker, the Paragon of Responsibility… Spider-Man… who too, seeks to find what he can as technology which can help us out of this place… Even if he is convinced that all is lost cause and that what we are doing is useless. Despite their despair, Rocket and Peter are quite sympathetic. And I can't say the same for the Paragon of Truth that has interfered with us. Narcissist, sociopath, evil genius... There are a lot of ways to describe Lex Luthor. But I find douchebag to be the most descriptive. As for Barry Allen, aka the Flash, aka the Paragon of Love, he's just gone. Missing.
Then he continued what he had been doing every day since their arrival at Vanishing Point. Trying to design something that would make them leave this place? But Peter and Rocket had told him over and over again: where to go? The anti-matter had consumed all the Earths. There was nothing left. Everyone was gone. The Anti-Monitor had won. They agreed to help the young scientist only to escape their pain at having lost loved ones.
Ryan was welding on their machine, with Lex, Peter and Rocket assisting him. The raccoon aimed at bits of metal with an open-end wrench. Unfortunately, Ryan let out big sparks of electricity, forcing his three friends to step away from their work.
Which increased Lex Luthor's anger.
"Agh! IDIOT! Why couldn't I be trapped at the Edge of Eternity with someone possessing more than 200 IQ points? Did I end up with a supposedly genius teenager, and a stupid talking mammal?"
In response to this spike, Rocket let out a fierce growl. His hair was on end and he was baring his teeth at Lex.
"Hey, dude," he retorted annoyingly. "Take it easy! You're only a genius on your Earth, Chrome Dome!"
But the bald psychopath just replied with a smirk.
"You know what, the rodent? Because if you're so smart, help the poor neighborhood Spider-Man and the blockhead professor build this damn machine!"
"Just get out away, cue ball!" Rocket said angrily."We won't be bothered by some idiot who doesn't have hair on his head!"
Peter completely ignored Rocket and Lex, just continuing what he was doing with the machine. While Lex finally pulls away from them grumbling.
Rocket couldn't help but grumble back:
"Why did we have to be stuck with this bald douchebagon the Edge of Eternity? I would have preferred the other Superman."
Peter rolled his eyes, mumbling.
"It's all for nothing!"
Among the other Paragons, their moral was at an all-time low. They were all in shock at what they had lost. Supergirl and Sara had no more hope. Thor spent his days in his corner, sulking. Since learning of the Crisis, he had resolved to do everything to prevent another catastrophe that would destroy the universe, but he had failed again, once again. It was even worse than with Thanos. It wasn't half of the universe that was gone. It was the whole universe that was no more. He thought back to his Asgardian people on Earth. To Valkyrie. All must have perished by the wave of anti-matter. Since he was stuck here, only one thing obsessed him: finding the Anti-Monitor and killing him for his actions. Kate spent her entire days training in combat to the point of exhaustion, avoiding her thinking about those she had lost. J'onn J'onzz spent his days meditating, hoping to find an answer. As for Barry… no one knew where he was… he was missing…
Later, Ryan Choi called on the others to join them towards the machine made from scraps of metal showing a platform still under construction.
Thor continued to look sulky. The others weren't as hopeful as he was.
"What, you guys building modern art now?" Sara pointed out when she saw the machine.
"Hey team," Ryan said with an encouraging smile. "We're repurposing leftover Time Masters tech. Mr. Luthor, Peter, Rocket and I think we've retrofitted it into a teleportation device. "
But they had noticed that Peter and Rocket, unlike Ryan, were not at all enthusiastic about the success of their machine. Both shared the same disapproving gaze.
"To teleport us to where exactly?"Kate replied with irony and false joy.
"Kate makes a good point." J'onn agreed resignedly. "There is no... there out there anymore."
"That's exactly what I said," Rocket muttered, speaking more to himself than to the others.
"Yeah, right, there's nothing more to take us to," Thor pointed out. "With Stormbreaker, I attempted to summon the Bifrost. But there was nothing. Without Multiverse, no Bifrost. If the Multiverse doesn't exists anymore, I don't see where we could go that hasn't already been destroyed."
"We're not even sure this device works," Peter replied, rolling his eyes, without the slightest enthusiasm. "Assuming we can even get to London or Saturn, we're not sure how effective this tech thing is."
"And that's what I said too." Rocket said, as unhappy as the young Avenger from Brooklyn.
"Stand down guys," Sara told them trying to calm the teenager and the raccoon. (Then she returned her attention to the machine.) "So… we send somebody to test it."
Thor and the other Paragons looked at each other, then J'onn volunteered to volunteer.
"I'll go."
"No," Supergirl retorted. "We've lost too many good people already. (Then she turned to the bald psychopath.) Thanks for volunteering, Lex."
Immediately he looked at the Girl of Steel with a sullen gaze.
"Well, that's very cold. Is it because I killed your parallel reality cousin?"
Thor was satisfied.
"Supergirl's right. If you are there, it's only because you have interfered with Destiny. You shouldn't be here. If there is anyone who has to volunteer, it would be the one who is most unwanted among us."
"You hurt my feelings, the Lightning God," Lex replied, pretending to be offended. "Since we're in the same shop, I thought we could make friends."
"You're delusional, Luthor," growled the Thunder God with a murderous look. "You and I are not friends. And we'll never be."
Rocket looked satisfied in his turn.
"Thanks, I couldn't have said it better myself. I don't know what's worse between being stuck here forever or having to endure that bald and insufferable dude which only grumble every hour!"
Lex ignored the raccoon and still continued to stare at the Paragons, still brooding.
"Start it up." Supergirl ordered sharply and categorically.
Ryan and Peter managed to turn on their device, while Lex moved to the center of the platform.
The other Paragons hoped their maneuver would bear fruit.
"If this works…" Sara whispered.
"We get out of here," Supergirl said. "We defeat the Anti-Monitor, and we find a way to get all the people we lost back."
"I hope you're right, Kara," Thor replied apprehensively.
As Lex stood in the center of the "teleporter," Ryan controlled the machine's controls. The platform began to shake, then several sparks flew, clearly stopping the machine to the chagrin of all.
Peter rolled his eyes in annoyance, while Rocket pouted in disappointment.
"Too bad, I wish this cue ball was gone. One less problem."
"It's doesn't matter, we knew it wouldn't work!" Peter replied in exasperation, throwing a piece of junk on the ground with a sharp gesture.
"Perhaps it was too much to hope for." J'onn whispered with a disappointed expression.
"Is there some way you can get it to work?" Supergirl snapped.
"It was a longshot to begin with." Lex replied, leaving the machine.
"Hey, even if we could make it work, what difference would that make?"cried Peter in anger and annoyance. "All the Multiverse is gone, replaced by anti-matter… There is nowhere to go… If we're stuck forever, we might as well dig our graves in this place."
"Peter, relax," Supergirl told him softly.
"This is no time to get mad," J'onn added in a heavy voice.
"No, I'm sorry, but I'm a realist," Spider-Man said with a desperate look. "We lost! And there's nothing more to do! Other than staying here forever! We might as well get used to it!"
Rocket shrugged defeatistically.
"I hate to admit it, but I agree with Spidey-Kid. There is no more Waverider. Everyone is gone. There is no more Monitor or Mar Novu. We're stuck here. What do you want us to do? If you Paragons have a solution, I'm all ears."
"Thanks for the pep talk, furball," Sara replied sarcastically.
It was then that the Vanishing Point began to tremble, much to everyone's surprise.
"What now?"cried Peter.
"Did the Anti-Monitor find us?" Rocket exclaimed worriedly, clinging to a metal beam.
Suddenly, a blur of energy appears out of nowhere. Kate grabbed Sara, preventing her from being touched. Then Barry Allen aka Flash appeared above everyone and landed with a crash against a destroyed wall.
The whole team rushed towards him.
"Barry!" Supergirl exclaimed running towards the speedster.
"Barry, are you okay?"Thor said behind her.
Flash had removed his mask, and stayed on the ground, huffing. It looked like he had just swam across an entire ocean. He was confused. Supergirl looked worried, for she had never seen the fastest man alive so exhausted and breathless before. His complexion was very pale and looked confused.
"Where am I? Where am I?" he declared in a weak voice.
"The Vanishing Point," said Supergirl worried about her friend.
"You've been gone for months." Kate added.
"What?" Barry exclaimed stunned and distraught. "What are you talking about? I just left two seconds ago."
"To go where?"Thor questioned in amazement.
"To the Speed Force." Barry stammered, his voice shaking in despair. "I didn't... I couldn't... it was like... It was like running into a mountain at Mach 10. (Then he looked at the others in anguish.) I couldn't... There's no way out of here."
"I think we've all figured this out for a while," Rocket grumbled, rolling his eyes.
Purgatory
Oliver Queen was meditating with Tony Stark. Dressed in a dark toga, his mind was steeped in memories. Memories of his fights since he left Lian Yu to return to his city and defend it. All the arrows he had shot. His fights with his worst enemies. Oliver felt like he was watching the whole film of his life.
Finally, he opened his eyes to see Tony Stark staring at him determinedly.
The two men were seated on the shore of Lian Yu Island in Purgatory, with a campfire near them.
"What did you see?" said the old Avenger.
"Everything," Oliver replied. "I see everything now."
"Then you're ready. "Tony retorted with satisfaction.
"Tony, why would you make me relive all that?"
"Every fight, every punch you've thrown, every kick you've landed, every arrow you've fired, they have all led you here to this moment, to the ultimate fight. It was necessary that you relive all this, if you want to defeat your ultimate enemy."
"Who am I fighting?" Oliver asked.
"Not who. What." Tony replied. "The Anti-Monitor."
The two men got up and walked together.
"The Monitor's adversary. " Oliver asked.
"Not just adversary. A being who stands against all there ever was or will be, the apocalypse itself given life and form and terrible purpose. The Apocalypse as it's presented in the Bible."
"How do I beat him?"
"With help. It's time to get your friends. They were sent to the Vanishing Point. The one and only place the Anti-Monitor can't find them."
The Vanishing Point
"Barry, wait. You look spent." Supergirl remarked to the speedster. "You need to rest."
But Flash ignored Kara and stood up, despite his weak condition.
"No. I'm fine. I have to try again."
He wanted to leave, but Sara joined him in front of him.
"Barry, that's a bad idea, okay? The effort alone could kill you."
"It's better than just staying here." Barry retorted, stepping away from White Canary.
Kate tried to talk him out of it.
"We're not gonna let you kill yourself…"
"Get out of my way!" he cried, pushing Batwoman brutally.
"Barry!" Thor said worried about his friend. "You should rest first! You need it."
"Shut up, Thor! I have to do it!" Barry insisted very pale with determination.
He had just moved away from the others, when Sara returned to the charge.
"We're not letting you go anywhere!"
"So try and stop me!" growled the speedster, forcing on the young Lance.
"In the condition you're in, Barry, it's not gonna be that hard." Sara said firmly.
"Cut it out!" intervened Supergirl. "Whatever's going to happen is not going to include us turning on each other. (Turning her attention back to Barry.) Maybe you're right. Maybe the Speed Force is our last, best hope."
"It is," saida strangely distorted and deep voice.
They all whirled around to see… Oliver Queen in a dark gown, hooded. His gaze was very as pale as a corpse, but the former archer seemed alive and well.
"Oliver Queen?!" Thor whispered, eyes wide in amazement.
"The Speed Force is the key to saving you. It's the key to saving everyone."Oliver said, looking at everyone with determination.
Stunned, Peter looked at the new Oliver in shock.
"Oliver? What the f…"