TimEd
Meteor maker
yeah, but Dial knows those things dont normally happen in Marvel-verse.
Dial (Ben10/Marvel Cinematic Universe SI)
- Thread starter DesertChocolate
- Start date
- Location
- Colorado
Ehh, maybe, but it's still for all intents and purposes a comic book universe. Weird shit and crossovers happen all the time. Not the best explanation, but you have to agree it's not outside the realm of possibility
- Location
- America
Yeah, no need to question minor stuff like this too much until DC starts appearing.
That's when you know shit's gotten real, and should probably start preparing for Thanos and Darkseid getting all buddy buddy as reality begins grinding itself to dust.
94
X and Kraven: Jungle Steel!
X walked up to Kraven. The hunter and android had been walking together ever since leaving the caves and finding their way back to the river and had now come upon something Kraven had wished to investigate.
A trail, this one headed in the same direction as them. X watched Kraven as he sniffed the air, pressed his palm to the tracks, and generally wasted an infuriating amount of time.
"We need to move on," X said firmly.
Kraven looked up at X, then away. "Not yet. I'm trying to get a sense for the animals that made these tracks. To understand them."
"I do not care. We need to find Dial."
The hunter stood up and turned to scowl at X. "And that is what I am doing. I know you believe that a search requires smashing the jungle beneath your feet with all the subtlety of a drill to a watermelon, but I have some experience with this sort of thing."
That was true. X didn't have the full files, but Kraven was well-reputed for the times he had helped with rescues in the wilderness whenever a tourist, child, or fool got lost.
"How may I help?" X finally said.
"Ahhhh," Kraven sighed. "That is the question I wanted from you! Now, while Kraven does have excellent senses-"
"You just referred to yourself in the third person," X said dryly.
"Please, Kraven is speaking. Now, even with my senses being as acute as they are, they are useless without context. Without understanding. So, I must study my prey's movements first. For example, here," Kraven walked about twenty feet away and kneeled down, pressing his palm against the dirt. "The animals walked in a pack, following something similar to the patterns of wolves. They were larger animals, as tall as a man. Predators, based on the fact that they never stopped to devour the foliage. And their feet are interesting. Similar to that of birds of prey, but with a single long talon on each foot, made to slice and into prey."
"A descendant of raptors," X said.
"Possibly," Kraven stood. "But the talon is a boon to us. Here, the talon is lowered to the ground, relaxed, not ready for use. Further down," Kraven walked forty feet up along the river. "The pack hesitates. The talons raise. And they begin to move with purpose. They sensed prey. We should confirm if our part-time alien was the target. This way."
Kraven began to run, leaving X to follow.
X was glad. If Kraven had stood there talking for a moment longer, he would have lost his temper.
------
When they got to the site, they found they weren't the first to arrive.
In a bamboo forest, they found a makeshift shelter formed out of bamboo, a fire that had gone out long ago, makeshift spears, and the dead bodies of three animals.
And blood. Blood spilled in spots where the raptors hadn't fallen.
X walked forward slowly.
"Kraven. Explain the sequence of events as you see them," X said softly, his southern accent faded to something more robotic.
The Russian hunter didn't respond. He simply strode forward and began to roam the camp. He stared at the corpses, the fire, the shelter, took a sniff of the air, examined the blood on one of the spears, then stared off into the bamboo forest.
"...Your boy bedded down for the night. He was walking along the river and stopped here because of the bamboo, using it for tools and water, obviously. I can smell something similar to scorpion meat, so he must have found a couple of them if the scent is this strong."
"Prehistoric scorpions could be several feet in length," X interrupted.
Kraven blinked. A savage smile of excitement grew on his face for a moment before he shook his head. "Well. He was attacked by these big boys. But when he managed to fight and kill three of them, the others ran off. Big boys like this eat on the spot after all, so his corpse would have been laid here, and there would be signs of feeding even if he'd been dragged off later by scavengers.
Then…"
Kraven strode around the fire, his gait low. X had noticed that about him. He didn't walk the way a human usually did. Not even like the various spies and martial artists X had interacted with. He walked like… well, like some combination of man and big cat.
"Here," Kraven leaned down and reached down. When his hand came up, a single dart was held in his hand. Kraven smirked. "They caught your boy at his weakest. Bleeding," Kraven pointed at a spot of red on the floor. "Exhausted. They hit him with this," Kraven sniffed the needle. "I've used similar toxins. But it's hard. They need to be the exact dosage. Too much and you get an overdose death. Too little and you just get a pissed off target. Whoever shot this knew what they were doing. They wanted him alive."
Kraven pocketed the dart and stood. "Their footsteps come up to him. When they leave, they're deeper. Dial is alive. And we have an actual trail to him now. No more river following, my dear X. Just the hunt."
The last word was said with intense relish.
X nodded. "Good."
"Strange," Kraven looked around. "I wonder-" Kraven stopped, eyes narrowing. X heard the same sound in the same instant.
It rushed out of the jungle about forty feet from them, shaking the ground with it's footsteps. It was utterly silent beside that. This was an ambush after all. Kraven and X spun to face the beast. In the split-second they had, Kraven took in the sight of the animal. His eyes came alight with an eager flame.
X recognized the Tyrannosaurus Rex on sight. Despite being heavy with muscle, its back covered in black and red fur-like feathers with a bare, scaly face, and moving faster than had been predicted, there were too many indicators to ignore the fact. X hypothesized it to be about 8 metric tons. It was incredibly huge, powerful, and fast.
With the incredible reaction speeds afforded to AI, X was able to assess the moment, to truly look at the T-Rex. The sun shone off its feathers in an array of patterns. Bamboo and wood shattered under its bulk. Its eyes were a deep honey gold, gaze ferocious as it stared at Kraven. X stepped forward to attempt to protect Krav-
"YES!" Kraven roared, running forward while ripping his two daggers out of their sheaths.
X felt the closest he could feel to shock.
Kraven, in a complete reverse of what any rational human being would do, ripped a spear out of the ground and rushed towards the dinosaur. "Don't do anything! Let me handle it!"
X reached for the rifle on his back, not knowing what to do now. He projected his voice. "The smartest thing to do is to have me shoot the-"
"Let me have this!"
Then it was too late. Kraven and the T-Rex met in the center of the forest, both loud roars. Kraven, just before the T-Rex could get to him stabbed the bamboo spear into the ground, using it as a pole vault to jump high above the T-Rex as the dinosaur tried to bite him half. Kraven landed on the dinosaurs back with the grace of a cat.
"GRUCH!" came the sound of surprise and anger. The T-Rex spun around, trying to throw Kraven off.
"I traveled thousands of miles for this," Kraven said happily. He rode the back of the dinosaur, struggling to stay standing while tens of thousands of pounds of pissed off animal bucked underneath him. Kraven took his two daggers and stabbed deep into the dinosaurs back. The T-Rex roared as blood sprayed into the air. The T-Rex, further enraged, dropped to the ground and rolled. Kraven leapt off it's back as it twisted to the ground, getting swatted by the larger hunters' body, only for Kraven to take the blow and roll backward, snapping back to his feet and jumping back onto the T-Rex. This time, he landed on the dinosaur's neck, straddling it like a prehistoric cowboy. Then he raised his daggers high.
Bone and steel slashed down into the eyes of the T-Rex. She screamed in pain. Kraven laughed, raising his daggers again and slashing into it with vicious cruelty. She fell to the ground, blinded, trying to get him off her back. Kraven stayed atop her and slashed her throat. Blood spilled across the earth, steam rolling off of it. The dinosaur twitched and shook on the ground as Kraven panted atop it, eyes gleaming with mirth.
X watched the scene as Kraven finished killing the dinosaur. "That was unnecessary."
Kraven, his chest, face, and arms soaked scarlet, gave X a smile. "No. It was. She wanted to hunt me and I wanted to hunt her. I won."
"She was-"
Kraven scoffed. "Don't. I'm quite sure an AI would have no concept of what the thrill of a good clean kill is like. Believe me. She would have been just as ready to eat us. This is the way of the
jungle, X."
Kraven reached down and patted the dinosaur's head. "She was strong. Powerful," he took hold of one of the T-Rex's teeth and ripped it out of the jaw. "It is only a shame that we have work to do. Even with scavengers on the way, quite a bit of meat will go to waste. We should have scientists come out to collect it for research, yes?"
"... They'll be on their way. Let's go," X said, keeping his displeasure to himself.
What a waste of time. Kraven may have enjoyed himself, but all X had was an acute understanding that every moment wasted was a moment Mahmoud could have died.
"Well, tell them to leave the skin for me if possible. And don't worry yourself," Kraven walked away, pocketing the fang he'd ripped out of the T-Rex's head. "We'll find him. The trail is clear," he pointed at the ground. "This way."
X followed with some trepidation. It was becoming very clear that while they shared the same mission, their differing methods and goals were going to cause some issues…
------
Maria Hill/Director of BRIDGE
Maria stood in her office, tracking through the various operations happening across the world. As of now, the mission reports she was getting were beginning to throw her just a bit. Right now, she was looking at a map of the Earth with small markings showing the teams.
Steve, Sam and Bucky were in Argentina chasing down weapons smugglers who had somehow got their hands on Chitauri technology (Seriously, they had shown up on Earth for about an hour, how had they left so many weapons behind?). She tried not to look at that one too often since she couldn't play favorites. Thankfully, Sam was safe.
Tony was in Rio, finishing some of the clean-up that had to be done. He'd been there for a while and ended up meeting on of his… contemporaries.
------
Tony Stark/Iron Man
Tony floated above the city of Rio, watching as a set of prefab apartment buildings were being completed for refugees to use. They were basically big blocks of premade apartments stacked one on top of the other, allowing for buildings to be built in mere days. In other words, perfect for rebuilding Rio.
He was also having an argument.
"-having all these gadgets makes my suit adaptable, not glitchy," Tony snarked to the woman standing on top of the building they were watching from. "Do you realize how much crazy shit we deal with? I can handle all of it. Meanwhile, you find one guy who is lightning and explosion-proof and you fall apart."
"I do not fall apart," Galina, the Crimson Dynamo, glared up at him from inside her massive suit. "I am more than adaptable, I am simply stating that you have so much junk inside your armor that you risk much more instability."
"Junk?!" Tony looked at her, the slits on his armor gently glowing. "Look, I admit that the fact you can fire lightning is brilliant and we should trade tips on the ion cannon you made, but I'm willing to bet I can hack this entire city, fight off an army and do that in a temperature-controlled environment while streaming Ghostbusters right to my HUD!"
"You Americans and your need for superfluous tech," Galina said dryly. "As beautifully designed, surprisingly robust and powerful as your suit is,what need. Do you have need for half the tools within it for a war machine? You use the suit for battle, must it have the ability to hack planes and play AC/DC?"
"You have no sense of style," Tony snarked. "I mean, that carborundum alloy can't be beaten for its ability to conduct electricity, but did you have to make it so damn bulky? You look like Robby the Robot with that big bulbous head there."
"Yes, well, the high-tensile strength of your gold-titanium is impressive, if it were not for how ostentatious the colors you always choose are," Galina teased. "You look like a woman's purse."
As the two continued to do some odd combination of complimenting and critiquing each other, the apartment was almost finished, cranes moving about.
Then, a message came through to them both. "This is freight vessel 24, off the coast of Rio! We're being attacked by… I don't know, some sort of gremlins?!"
Tony and Galina didn't hesitate. The instant the message came through, they lifted into the air.
Flying over the destroyed buildings as tanks, jeeps, and crews roamed the streets below, they soon reached the beach and began to go over open waters.
"Old school rockets, really?" Tony teased while they lifted off.
"Focus, please!" Galina said. Tony imagined she sounded just a bit chagrined through, as her rockets blew fire to push her through the air. "Besides, they work very efficiently."
"We'll trade tech later," Tony promised. Just then, they reached the boat that was being attacked. A large freighter carrying dozens of shipping containers. It was one of many ships that were being used to bring food and supplies to the refugees of Rio.
Right then, as they came close, they were under attack by-
"Little green men?" Tony said in confusion as he came close to the ship.
Indeed, the attackers were dozens of short green creatures shaped like people with long pointed ears and jagged teeth. They were jabbering at each other with abandon, almost as though they wanted to speak but just ended up screaming at each other instead.
Tony took a moment to float over the boat before he raised his hands and fired a repulsor from his palm. One of the goblins was hit hard by the blast, sent flying back into a shipping container and denting it inwards.
The rest looked up at Tony. One raised a gun.
At least, it looked like something in the shape of a gun. It was just a big pipe strapped to a piece of wood. Like, he couldn't even see any sort of way for it to shoot at all.
So when the goblin started shooting it. In a machine gun hail of bullets. "HAHAHAHA!"
"Wait, what?!" Tony let the bullets bounce off his armor to fly down and punch the goblin, who kept laughing even as he was tossed back. Then Tony grabbed the gun and lifted it up to look at.
"What the hell? It's just a piece of pipe!"
The other goblins also started shooting at him, despite having the equivalent of rubber bands and string for guns. Tony stared at the weapons shooting at him.
"Good lord, that one has a sponge for a handle. Make sense damn it!"
Galina watched, bemused, as Tony started shooting and punching the tiny laughing goblins with a sense of vengeance, deciding to keep her suspicions on where the goblins had come from to herself for now.
------
Maria Hill/Director of BRIDGE
Thor was speaking with some historians in Canada as part of a fundraiser. It was one of their attempts to make sure the Avengers were seen being a part of things that involved more than just punching things. However, they were also supposed to do research into the Wendigo they currently had in captivity, where it had come from, who it once was, that sort of thing. Except that, despite bringing Bruce Banner along, they had to invite Thor's friends along for an outing.
------
Thor Odinson/God of Thunder
"HULK SMASH!" Hulk brought his fists down on Thor, who blocked the blow with upraised arms, the ground cratering beneath the God of Thunder.
Thor twisted and wrapped his arms around one of Hulk's, doing a throw that sent Hulk flying back to smash into a wall.
"Oh, well-executed!" Sif cheered. Then she took a handful of popcorn into her mouth.
"Hulk, try a powerbomb!" Volstagg cheered.
"Powerbomb?" Fandral asked, surprised.
"It is an American wrestling move," Volstagg grinned. "I tell you Fandral, the world of Midgard has become quite fun now!"
Hogun raised an eyebrow before focusing once more on the spar.
Thor grinned at his friends before turning back to his opponent. He, the Warriors Three, Sif and Bruce had decided to take a break from talking to stuffy academics to practice together. It was something Hulk had requested of Banner, a chance to continue to develop his combat skills and combine the Jiujitsu of Bruce Banner, the strength of the Hulk and the ancient fighting styles of Asgardians made just for those of superhuman power and durability.
So, they had headed out to this pit deep in a decommissioned quarry to duel in peace. Thus far, it had been quite invigorating!
Hulk rolled to his feet and rushed Thor, blocking Thor's right cross and countering with an uppercut that sent Thor crashing into the stone behind him. Thor grinned.
"Well met! Now take this!"
Thor dropped down with a crushing blow.
"Do it again!" Sif cheered.
Thor and Hulk grinned at her, then went back to trading blows.
------
Maria Hill/Director of BRIDGE
So yeah. That was happening. Thankfully they'd gone somewhere remote, but she still had to find some way to convince them to stop turning big chunks of the landscape into something out of WWE.
The agents of SHIELD were almost a relief in comparison. They were doing a simple investigation. Nothing had come back from them just yet, which she took as a good thing. That group of 'normal' people tended to get into the weirdest little missions, but last she heard, Coulson had been having a relatively boring mission. She'd heard about that latter possibly, but for now she could be assured that the swamps of Florida did not have the giant swamp monster that Dial had warned her about.
Then there was Jen Walters. She'd been sent out with a team to investigate a few bank robberies with some marks of superhuman aid. Nothing happening there, but she was on the trail of the robber in charge, an unidentified redhead.
Jennifer Walters. Maria frowned. She'd have to be prepared for that encounter once She-Hulk came back.
Maria still hadn't told anyone outside the tower about Dial's disappearance. Not Jennifer, Natasha, Cap, Tony. None of them knew about it and all of them would have some sort of reaction to the news. Possibly a bad one.
Director Hill pushed that problem aside to focus on two new reports. First, Sir Magnus the Knight was reintegrating into society. Their contact in the Vatican had sent the files on his progress.
------
Sir Magnus of the Danes
Magnus stared at the board in front of him. The large man had changed his armor for a sweater and jeans, at least until he could upgrade. Even then, his clothes were just a bit too small, his biceps, pecs and thighs close to bursting through his clothes.
As of right now, Magnus was standing in a warm plush room, reading the markerboard in front of him with a fiercely determined look on his face.
"Sir Magnus?" a tall, thin man dressed in priest's garb came into the room. "I have the files you asked for?"
"Ah, thank you, Father Timeas," Magnus turned to take the folders out of the priests hand. He opened it and began reading through it, smirking just a bit. "Incredible. In just a few moments, you have managed to hand me more information in a single file than the best of my own time could have compiled in years."
"The wonders of modern technology," the priest said pleasantly. "The printer, internet, they've all made things much simpler and more complex at the same time."
"I must agree," Magnus scowled, his craggy face twisting. "I apologize, by the way. I truly believed that man was in need of aid."
"There is no need to apologize. We've all had to learn about internet scams before," Timeas pointed at the board. "But then, that isn't where your expertise lies."
"Indeed, not," Magnus looked up at the board, where a single photo stood out. A man, his mouth soaked in blood, tossing a young woman aside. "It is disheartening to know that the skills of a killer are still needed by the church. But I am a man of God. And I will bring God's vengeance and hatred upon his enemies, in this time as in the last."
"...You are really intense, you know that?" Timeas said with a calm smile.
"So I've been told."
------
Maria Hill
In the meantime, Fury was handling something for her. It felt odd, having the former Director and one of the most powerful men on Earth head out to run what was essentially a simple errand. But he'd volunteered.
------
Nicholas J. Fury
Fury stood outside a nondescript brick building leaning against a black vehicle, watching as someone exited the house. She walked down the steps from her home with an elegant stride, the walk of a woman who had all the time in the world.
"Nicholas," the woman looked him up and down. "You have become fat in your retirement."
"I hope so, Agatha," Fury smirked. "I hear that's something you're allowed to do as you get older."
"Whoever said that is a liar," the woman had her hair spread outward behind her head, was wearing a purple dress, and had a white shawl over her shoulders, a gnarled and knotted cane made of wood in her left hand. "But to each his own. I assume you already have a room to my specifications?"
"That we do," Fury leaned away from the car and turned, holding the door for her. "As well as for Ebony."
Behind the woman, a cat strode forth. With the regality that any cat owner could recognize, the inky black feline walked forward and hopped into the car. The woman didn't smile, but she had a pleased look in her eyes.
"You're a good boy, Nicholas."
"Thank you, Mrs. Harkness," Fury waved for her to enter, following politely in her wake. Once they were both sat in the back of the car, Ebony resting in Agatha's lap, Fury nodded to the driver, a caucasian woman who nodded back before beginning to move the car. "You know, even my mother still calls me Fury."
"Well good for her," Agatha scoffed. "I suppose it does add to your mystique."
"You're one to talk."
The spymaster and the witch shared a look of mutual respect before turning back, heading to the Avengers Tower.
------
Author's Note:
Recently I've been getting some pushback on chapters like this when I leave Dial to show how the rest of the world is doing. And that isn't an unfair complaint. Lately, there's been a lot more Marvel than there has been Ben 10 in this story.
So this might be one of the last of the big interlude chapters. Instead, I'll focus more on the SI, with POV changes being more things happening in response to his actions. The next interlude will be a media one, having the big news outlets, various people, and some Marvel characters responding to the changes of the last six months.
One thing I like to mention is that this story has ended up having a lot more good guys running around than bad, something that makes me happy. I mean, sure, lots of nameless mooks, but who cares about those guys anyways?
Wade. Wade cares.
X walked up to Kraven. The hunter and android had been walking together ever since leaving the caves and finding their way back to the river and had now come upon something Kraven had wished to investigate.
A trail, this one headed in the same direction as them. X watched Kraven as he sniffed the air, pressed his palm to the tracks, and generally wasted an infuriating amount of time.
"We need to move on," X said firmly.
Kraven looked up at X, then away. "Not yet. I'm trying to get a sense for the animals that made these tracks. To understand them."
"I do not care. We need to find Dial."
The hunter stood up and turned to scowl at X. "And that is what I am doing. I know you believe that a search requires smashing the jungle beneath your feet with all the subtlety of a drill to a watermelon, but I have some experience with this sort of thing."
That was true. X didn't have the full files, but Kraven was well-reputed for the times he had helped with rescues in the wilderness whenever a tourist, child, or fool got lost.
"How may I help?" X finally said.
"Ahhhh," Kraven sighed. "That is the question I wanted from you! Now, while Kraven does have excellent senses-"
"You just referred to yourself in the third person," X said dryly.
"Please, Kraven is speaking. Now, even with my senses being as acute as they are, they are useless without context. Without understanding. So, I must study my prey's movements first. For example, here," Kraven walked about twenty feet away and kneeled down, pressing his palm against the dirt. "The animals walked in a pack, following something similar to the patterns of wolves. They were larger animals, as tall as a man. Predators, based on the fact that they never stopped to devour the foliage. And their feet are interesting. Similar to that of birds of prey, but with a single long talon on each foot, made to slice and into prey."
"A descendant of raptors," X said.
"Possibly," Kraven stood. "But the talon is a boon to us. Here, the talon is lowered to the ground, relaxed, not ready for use. Further down," Kraven walked forty feet up along the river. "The pack hesitates. The talons raise. And they begin to move with purpose. They sensed prey. We should confirm if our part-time alien was the target. This way."
Kraven began to run, leaving X to follow.
X was glad. If Kraven had stood there talking for a moment longer, he would have lost his temper.
------
When they got to the site, they found they weren't the first to arrive.
In a bamboo forest, they found a makeshift shelter formed out of bamboo, a fire that had gone out long ago, makeshift spears, and the dead bodies of three animals.
And blood. Blood spilled in spots where the raptors hadn't fallen.
X walked forward slowly.
"Kraven. Explain the sequence of events as you see them," X said softly, his southern accent faded to something more robotic.
The Russian hunter didn't respond. He simply strode forward and began to roam the camp. He stared at the corpses, the fire, the shelter, took a sniff of the air, examined the blood on one of the spears, then stared off into the bamboo forest.
"...Your boy bedded down for the night. He was walking along the river and stopped here because of the bamboo, using it for tools and water, obviously. I can smell something similar to scorpion meat, so he must have found a couple of them if the scent is this strong."
"Prehistoric scorpions could be several feet in length," X interrupted.
Kraven blinked. A savage smile of excitement grew on his face for a moment before he shook his head. "Well. He was attacked by these big boys. But when he managed to fight and kill three of them, the others ran off. Big boys like this eat on the spot after all, so his corpse would have been laid here, and there would be signs of feeding even if he'd been dragged off later by scavengers.
Then…"
Kraven strode around the fire, his gait low. X had noticed that about him. He didn't walk the way a human usually did. Not even like the various spies and martial artists X had interacted with. He walked like… well, like some combination of man and big cat.
"Here," Kraven leaned down and reached down. When his hand came up, a single dart was held in his hand. Kraven smirked. "They caught your boy at his weakest. Bleeding," Kraven pointed at a spot of red on the floor. "Exhausted. They hit him with this," Kraven sniffed the needle. "I've used similar toxins. But it's hard. They need to be the exact dosage. Too much and you get an overdose death. Too little and you just get a pissed off target. Whoever shot this knew what they were doing. They wanted him alive."
Kraven pocketed the dart and stood. "Their footsteps come up to him. When they leave, they're deeper. Dial is alive. And we have an actual trail to him now. No more river following, my dear X. Just the hunt."
The last word was said with intense relish.
X nodded. "Good."
"Strange," Kraven looked around. "I wonder-" Kraven stopped, eyes narrowing. X heard the same sound in the same instant.
It rushed out of the jungle about forty feet from them, shaking the ground with it's footsteps. It was utterly silent beside that. This was an ambush after all. Kraven and X spun to face the beast. In the split-second they had, Kraven took in the sight of the animal. His eyes came alight with an eager flame.
X recognized the Tyrannosaurus Rex on sight. Despite being heavy with muscle, its back covered in black and red fur-like feathers with a bare, scaly face, and moving faster than had been predicted, there were too many indicators to ignore the fact. X hypothesized it to be about 8 metric tons. It was incredibly huge, powerful, and fast.
With the incredible reaction speeds afforded to AI, X was able to assess the moment, to truly look at the T-Rex. The sun shone off its feathers in an array of patterns. Bamboo and wood shattered under its bulk. Its eyes were a deep honey gold, gaze ferocious as it stared at Kraven. X stepped forward to attempt to protect Krav-
"YES!" Kraven roared, running forward while ripping his two daggers out of their sheaths.
X felt the closest he could feel to shock.
Kraven, in a complete reverse of what any rational human being would do, ripped a spear out of the ground and rushed towards the dinosaur. "Don't do anything! Let me handle it!"
X reached for the rifle on his back, not knowing what to do now. He projected his voice. "The smartest thing to do is to have me shoot the-"
"Let me have this!"
Then it was too late. Kraven and the T-Rex met in the center of the forest, both loud roars. Kraven, just before the T-Rex could get to him stabbed the bamboo spear into the ground, using it as a pole vault to jump high above the T-Rex as the dinosaur tried to bite him half. Kraven landed on the dinosaurs back with the grace of a cat.
"GRUCH!" came the sound of surprise and anger. The T-Rex spun around, trying to throw Kraven off.
"I traveled thousands of miles for this," Kraven said happily. He rode the back of the dinosaur, struggling to stay standing while tens of thousands of pounds of pissed off animal bucked underneath him. Kraven took his two daggers and stabbed deep into the dinosaurs back. The T-Rex roared as blood sprayed into the air. The T-Rex, further enraged, dropped to the ground and rolled. Kraven leapt off it's back as it twisted to the ground, getting swatted by the larger hunters' body, only for Kraven to take the blow and roll backward, snapping back to his feet and jumping back onto the T-Rex. This time, he landed on the dinosaur's neck, straddling it like a prehistoric cowboy. Then he raised his daggers high.
Bone and steel slashed down into the eyes of the T-Rex. She screamed in pain. Kraven laughed, raising his daggers again and slashing into it with vicious cruelty. She fell to the ground, blinded, trying to get him off her back. Kraven stayed atop her and slashed her throat. Blood spilled across the earth, steam rolling off of it. The dinosaur twitched and shook on the ground as Kraven panted atop it, eyes gleaming with mirth.
X watched the scene as Kraven finished killing the dinosaur. "That was unnecessary."
Kraven, his chest, face, and arms soaked scarlet, gave X a smile. "No. It was. She wanted to hunt me and I wanted to hunt her. I won."
"She was-"
Kraven scoffed. "Don't. I'm quite sure an AI would have no concept of what the thrill of a good clean kill is like. Believe me. She would have been just as ready to eat us. This is the way of the
jungle, X."
Kraven reached down and patted the dinosaur's head. "She was strong. Powerful," he took hold of one of the T-Rex's teeth and ripped it out of the jaw. "It is only a shame that we have work to do. Even with scavengers on the way, quite a bit of meat will go to waste. We should have scientists come out to collect it for research, yes?"
"... They'll be on their way. Let's go," X said, keeping his displeasure to himself.
What a waste of time. Kraven may have enjoyed himself, but all X had was an acute understanding that every moment wasted was a moment Mahmoud could have died.
"Well, tell them to leave the skin for me if possible. And don't worry yourself," Kraven walked away, pocketing the fang he'd ripped out of the T-Rex's head. "We'll find him. The trail is clear," he pointed at the ground. "This way."
X followed with some trepidation. It was becoming very clear that while they shared the same mission, their differing methods and goals were going to cause some issues…
------
Maria Hill/Director of BRIDGE
Maria stood in her office, tracking through the various operations happening across the world. As of now, the mission reports she was getting were beginning to throw her just a bit. Right now, she was looking at a map of the Earth with small markings showing the teams.
Steve, Sam and Bucky were in Argentina chasing down weapons smugglers who had somehow got their hands on Chitauri technology (Seriously, they had shown up on Earth for about an hour, how had they left so many weapons behind?). She tried not to look at that one too often since she couldn't play favorites. Thankfully, Sam was safe.
Tony was in Rio, finishing some of the clean-up that had to be done. He'd been there for a while and ended up meeting on of his… contemporaries.
------
Tony Stark/Iron Man
Tony floated above the city of Rio, watching as a set of prefab apartment buildings were being completed for refugees to use. They were basically big blocks of premade apartments stacked one on top of the other, allowing for buildings to be built in mere days. In other words, perfect for rebuilding Rio.
He was also having an argument.
"-having all these gadgets makes my suit adaptable, not glitchy," Tony snarked to the woman standing on top of the building they were watching from. "Do you realize how much crazy shit we deal with? I can handle all of it. Meanwhile, you find one guy who is lightning and explosion-proof and you fall apart."
"I do not fall apart," Galina, the Crimson Dynamo, glared up at him from inside her massive suit. "I am more than adaptable, I am simply stating that you have so much junk inside your armor that you risk much more instability."
"Junk?!" Tony looked at her, the slits on his armor gently glowing. "Look, I admit that the fact you can fire lightning is brilliant and we should trade tips on the ion cannon you made, but I'm willing to bet I can hack this entire city, fight off an army and do that in a temperature-controlled environment while streaming Ghostbusters right to my HUD!"
"You Americans and your need for superfluous tech," Galina said dryly. "As beautifully designed, surprisingly robust and powerful as your suit is,what need. Do you have need for half the tools within it for a war machine? You use the suit for battle, must it have the ability to hack planes and play AC/DC?"
"You have no sense of style," Tony snarked. "I mean, that carborundum alloy can't be beaten for its ability to conduct electricity, but did you have to make it so damn bulky? You look like Robby the Robot with that big bulbous head there."
"Yes, well, the high-tensile strength of your gold-titanium is impressive, if it were not for how ostentatious the colors you always choose are," Galina teased. "You look like a woman's purse."
As the two continued to do some odd combination of complimenting and critiquing each other, the apartment was almost finished, cranes moving about.
Then, a message came through to them both. "This is freight vessel 24, off the coast of Rio! We're being attacked by… I don't know, some sort of gremlins?!"
Tony and Galina didn't hesitate. The instant the message came through, they lifted into the air.
Flying over the destroyed buildings as tanks, jeeps, and crews roamed the streets below, they soon reached the beach and began to go over open waters.
"Old school rockets, really?" Tony teased while they lifted off.
"Focus, please!" Galina said. Tony imagined she sounded just a bit chagrined through, as her rockets blew fire to push her through the air. "Besides, they work very efficiently."
"We'll trade tech later," Tony promised. Just then, they reached the boat that was being attacked. A large freighter carrying dozens of shipping containers. It was one of many ships that were being used to bring food and supplies to the refugees of Rio.
Right then, as they came close, they were under attack by-
"Little green men?" Tony said in confusion as he came close to the ship.
Indeed, the attackers were dozens of short green creatures shaped like people with long pointed ears and jagged teeth. They were jabbering at each other with abandon, almost as though they wanted to speak but just ended up screaming at each other instead.
Tony took a moment to float over the boat before he raised his hands and fired a repulsor from his palm. One of the goblins was hit hard by the blast, sent flying back into a shipping container and denting it inwards.
The rest looked up at Tony. One raised a gun.
At least, it looked like something in the shape of a gun. It was just a big pipe strapped to a piece of wood. Like, he couldn't even see any sort of way for it to shoot at all.
So when the goblin started shooting it. In a machine gun hail of bullets. "HAHAHAHA!"
"Wait, what?!" Tony let the bullets bounce off his armor to fly down and punch the goblin, who kept laughing even as he was tossed back. Then Tony grabbed the gun and lifted it up to look at.
"What the hell? It's just a piece of pipe!"
The other goblins also started shooting at him, despite having the equivalent of rubber bands and string for guns. Tony stared at the weapons shooting at him.
"Good lord, that one has a sponge for a handle. Make sense damn it!"
Galina watched, bemused, as Tony started shooting and punching the tiny laughing goblins with a sense of vengeance, deciding to keep her suspicions on where the goblins had come from to herself for now.
------
Maria Hill/Director of BRIDGE
Thor was speaking with some historians in Canada as part of a fundraiser. It was one of their attempts to make sure the Avengers were seen being a part of things that involved more than just punching things. However, they were also supposed to do research into the Wendigo they currently had in captivity, where it had come from, who it once was, that sort of thing. Except that, despite bringing Bruce Banner along, they had to invite Thor's friends along for an outing.
------
Thor Odinson/God of Thunder
"HULK SMASH!" Hulk brought his fists down on Thor, who blocked the blow with upraised arms, the ground cratering beneath the God of Thunder.
Thor twisted and wrapped his arms around one of Hulk's, doing a throw that sent Hulk flying back to smash into a wall.
"Oh, well-executed!" Sif cheered. Then she took a handful of popcorn into her mouth.
"Hulk, try a powerbomb!" Volstagg cheered.
"Powerbomb?" Fandral asked, surprised.
"It is an American wrestling move," Volstagg grinned. "I tell you Fandral, the world of Midgard has become quite fun now!"
Hogun raised an eyebrow before focusing once more on the spar.
Thor grinned at his friends before turning back to his opponent. He, the Warriors Three, Sif and Bruce had decided to take a break from talking to stuffy academics to practice together. It was something Hulk had requested of Banner, a chance to continue to develop his combat skills and combine the Jiujitsu of Bruce Banner, the strength of the Hulk and the ancient fighting styles of Asgardians made just for those of superhuman power and durability.
So, they had headed out to this pit deep in a decommissioned quarry to duel in peace. Thus far, it had been quite invigorating!
Hulk rolled to his feet and rushed Thor, blocking Thor's right cross and countering with an uppercut that sent Thor crashing into the stone behind him. Thor grinned.
"Well met! Now take this!"
Thor dropped down with a crushing blow.
"Do it again!" Sif cheered.
Thor and Hulk grinned at her, then went back to trading blows.
------
Maria Hill/Director of BRIDGE
So yeah. That was happening. Thankfully they'd gone somewhere remote, but she still had to find some way to convince them to stop turning big chunks of the landscape into something out of WWE.
The agents of SHIELD were almost a relief in comparison. They were doing a simple investigation. Nothing had come back from them just yet, which she took as a good thing. That group of 'normal' people tended to get into the weirdest little missions, but last she heard, Coulson had been having a relatively boring mission. She'd heard about that latter possibly, but for now she could be assured that the swamps of Florida did not have the giant swamp monster that Dial had warned her about.
Then there was Jen Walters. She'd been sent out with a team to investigate a few bank robberies with some marks of superhuman aid. Nothing happening there, but she was on the trail of the robber in charge, an unidentified redhead.
Jennifer Walters. Maria frowned. She'd have to be prepared for that encounter once She-Hulk came back.
Maria still hadn't told anyone outside the tower about Dial's disappearance. Not Jennifer, Natasha, Cap, Tony. None of them knew about it and all of them would have some sort of reaction to the news. Possibly a bad one.
Director Hill pushed that problem aside to focus on two new reports. First, Sir Magnus the Knight was reintegrating into society. Their contact in the Vatican had sent the files on his progress.
------
Sir Magnus of the Danes
Magnus stared at the board in front of him. The large man had changed his armor for a sweater and jeans, at least until he could upgrade. Even then, his clothes were just a bit too small, his biceps, pecs and thighs close to bursting through his clothes.
As of right now, Magnus was standing in a warm plush room, reading the markerboard in front of him with a fiercely determined look on his face.
"Sir Magnus?" a tall, thin man dressed in priest's garb came into the room. "I have the files you asked for?"
"Ah, thank you, Father Timeas," Magnus turned to take the folders out of the priests hand. He opened it and began reading through it, smirking just a bit. "Incredible. In just a few moments, you have managed to hand me more information in a single file than the best of my own time could have compiled in years."
"The wonders of modern technology," the priest said pleasantly. "The printer, internet, they've all made things much simpler and more complex at the same time."
"I must agree," Magnus scowled, his craggy face twisting. "I apologize, by the way. I truly believed that man was in need of aid."
"There is no need to apologize. We've all had to learn about internet scams before," Timeas pointed at the board. "But then, that isn't where your expertise lies."
"Indeed, not," Magnus looked up at the board, where a single photo stood out. A man, his mouth soaked in blood, tossing a young woman aside. "It is disheartening to know that the skills of a killer are still needed by the church. But I am a man of God. And I will bring God's vengeance and hatred upon his enemies, in this time as in the last."
"...You are really intense, you know that?" Timeas said with a calm smile.
"So I've been told."
------
Maria Hill
In the meantime, Fury was handling something for her. It felt odd, having the former Director and one of the most powerful men on Earth head out to run what was essentially a simple errand. But he'd volunteered.
------
Nicholas J. Fury
Fury stood outside a nondescript brick building leaning against a black vehicle, watching as someone exited the house. She walked down the steps from her home with an elegant stride, the walk of a woman who had all the time in the world.
"Nicholas," the woman looked him up and down. "You have become fat in your retirement."
"I hope so, Agatha," Fury smirked. "I hear that's something you're allowed to do as you get older."
"Whoever said that is a liar," the woman had her hair spread outward behind her head, was wearing a purple dress, and had a white shawl over her shoulders, a gnarled and knotted cane made of wood in her left hand. "But to each his own. I assume you already have a room to my specifications?"
"That we do," Fury leaned away from the car and turned, holding the door for her. "As well as for Ebony."
Behind the woman, a cat strode forth. With the regality that any cat owner could recognize, the inky black feline walked forward and hopped into the car. The woman didn't smile, but she had a pleased look in her eyes.
"You're a good boy, Nicholas."
"Thank you, Mrs. Harkness," Fury waved for her to enter, following politely in her wake. Once they were both sat in the back of the car, Ebony resting in Agatha's lap, Fury nodded to the driver, a caucasian woman who nodded back before beginning to move the car. "You know, even my mother still calls me Fury."
"Well good for her," Agatha scoffed. "I suppose it does add to your mystique."
"You're one to talk."
The spymaster and the witch shared a look of mutual respect before turning back, heading to the Avengers Tower.
------
Author's Note:
Recently I've been getting some pushback on chapters like this when I leave Dial to show how the rest of the world is doing. And that isn't an unfair complaint. Lately, there's been a lot more Marvel than there has been Ben 10 in this story.
So this might be one of the last of the big interlude chapters. Instead, I'll focus more on the SI, with POV changes being more things happening in response to his actions. The next interlude will be a media one, having the big news outlets, various people, and some Marvel characters responding to the changes of the last six months.
One thing I like to mention is that this story has ended up having a lot more good guys running around than bad, something that makes me happy. I mean, sure, lots of nameless mooks, but who cares about those guys anyways?
Wade. Wade cares.
ScottotheUnwise
Verified Crack (fic) Dealer
- Location
- Mulberry, Fl
Pushback? Tell em to get their hands off the wheel, this is your bus tour. If they want to drive so much, they can set up their own bus ride and go to the stops they want in the order they want. In the meantime, the rest of us are happy for you to show us whatever scenery and in whatever order you choose.
They are here to marvel at Dial's tenaciousness not to bend you to their animosity.
They are here to marvel at Dial's tenaciousness not to bend you to their animosity.
did, did 40k orks just show up?
95
Later, we were in a new cell. No nicer or anything, but it had more room. We'd been placed in together with the guys we'd been trying to kill earlier, which made things tense as hell, even with the guards watching. My guys took the right side of the cell, while the other guys took the left.
I broke the tension about a moment after by looking around at everyone.
"Hauzer. Where'd he come from?"
Everyone looked confused, if still pissed at each other.
"Hauzer?" Winggirl asked. Hearing her voice for the first time surprised the hell out of me. I tried not to show that instead looking her in the eyes as she stood between Demi and the male Aerian.
"The orange T-Rex with horns. Any story about him, about where he came from?"
Winggirl looked around. German guy seemed confused, as did the others.
"In the ice of the East," someone said outside. We all spun around.
Yellow Triceratops guy was standing there, Stend on the right side of him and the orange pterodactyl on the left. Oh, and the requisite group of angry-looking guards.
"Hauzer," the triceratops said softly. His voice was deep, almost echoing. "I had no idea of his name. We have been calling him Devil."
Stend began to speak. "My lord-"
The triceratops didn't make a move, but Stend cut himself off anyway. The triceratops continued. "I found him when I went to the icelands on an exploratory expedition. He was encased in ice, completely frozen through. I thought him dead. But those eyes were alive, staring through the chill. He wanted to kill me. And I decided that a beast of such stature and interesting design was worth bringing back."
The triceratops turned and walked out, surprising the hell out of me. "Stend. He knows the Devil by another name. Make of that what you will."
"Yes, my lord," Stend said, bowing.
The big yellow triceratops continued on his way. I thought about making a BJ the dinosaur joke, but I decided against it.
"So you're the Outsider," the orange Pterosaur said. He sounded like how movies portray snake oil salesmen.
"Nah, that's the guy from Dishonored," I could never help my nerd side. "I'm Dial. Who are you?"
"Lord Pter, ruler of all the Ptero-Saur-Lords," he said proudly.
"...Why don't you have wings?" I asked hesitantly.
Behind me, I could hear Winggirl let out a small sound. I winced internally.
Pter chuckled. "I'm afraid that only our lord has been given such a gift," he leaned forward to rest against the bars. "Tell me, Out-... Dial. Who are you, in the world beyond? A warrior? A hunter, like myself?" he smirked at me. "I imagine you'd make better prey than predator."
I walked across the space between us and leaned against the bars as well. "You know, I have a friend I should really introduce you to. It'd be hilarious. But that aside, I'm a superhero."
"And a fool," Stend said, walking forward. Pter stepped aside to let him past. "You should have taken my deal, Outsider."
"Not a chance," I shrugged. "So. What's next?"
"Your punishment," Stend nodded to the guards. As he did, I brought my left hand behind my back. I prayed Gresh, Demi, and the others would notice it when I flashed two symbols with my fingers. Hopefully the fact they didn't move when two guards entered the cell and grabbed me. They pulled me out with no little amount of roughness. Stend watched them pull me out until I stood before him. We eyed each other.
Stend… looking up into those reptilian eyes, I don't think I'd ever personally hated anyone more.
It didn't help when he grabbed me by the neck and lifted me in a smooth motion.
"URK!" I grabbed his left arm with mine, trying to get air, panicking. The pain of his scaled fingers squeezing around my neck was followed by a taloned finger stabbing into the hole in my shoulder left from the arena. Fresh blood poured out as I tried to scream.
"I'm not doing this to get answers from you," Stend said coldly. "While I am pleased that you survived, you have still defied me. This small bit of pain," the talon sliced through flesh, digging out a chunk of me to spill more blood on the floor. "It's what you deserve."
"Fuc-" I tried to say, only to choke.
He held me there, choking and bleeding before tossing me aside.
That first gasp of air hitting my lungs again was like a drug. I got to my knees and filled my lungs with air, gasping and panting.
I knew he'd do something like this. But I still fucking wanted to kill him for it.
"I'll be locking you in a new prison," Stend growled. "Come."
The guards forced me up and dragged me along. That was fine. I was fine.
Deep breaths. Take in oxygen. Focus on the goals.
We walked along, Pter, Stend, the guards, and myself. Soon, we were in one of the more remote sections of the arena, a place that looked like it had been built years before the rest of it.
"You must have done something special," Pter mumbled quietly to me. "I've rarely seen Stend so ready to torture a man."
"I'm a charmer that way," I grumbled in return.
We came to a locked door, which one of the guards opened. Then we entered a massive circular cavern, covered in dust. I could tell at a glance it was made as a prison for something big or very dangerous.
In this case, both. Hauzer was passed out in the corner still covered in darts. Stend stared at Hauzer for a moment before turning to face me.
"I am glad you are alive. It gives you more chances to come to your senses," he smiled slowly. "I'm going to lock you in with the beast," when I tried to speak, he punched me in the face. I fell to my knees, bumping my left hand into the crossbow-wielding guard next to me, my palm brushing against the pouch on the guard's hip.
"What the fuck dude!?" I shouted in pain, my head ringing.
"Enough," Stend snarled. "I have had enough. You will be locked in with the beast, with this," he took out a bell from his pants pocket. "And be given until the beast wakes to decide if you will surrender the secrets I want," Stend lowered to the ground. "If you ring it, I will save you. If you do not… well. You know the creature's name. You must know of its ferocity. It's rage and hatred towards all life," Stend smirked. "You're a smart boy. I'm sure you'll make the right decision."
He grabbed me off the floor by the back of my neck and tossed me into the cell. Then he followed up by tossing the bell at my feet. "Live or die, Outsider. You have five minutes."
"And if I decide I'd rather be dino-food!?" I yelled at him while rolling to face him.
"Then clearly you were a waste of my time all along," he said dismissively. "Which is fine. That monster hasn't been fed since we found him. You'll make a good meal."
The group left the cavern, Pter laughing all along. Then they closed the door behind them with a loud quaking thud.
Just as planned. Well, sort of as planned.
I slowly rose to my feet and opened my palm. In it was the small crossbow bolt I'd lifted off the guard I'd bumped into. I grinned with blood-soaked teeth.
"Stend. You're gonna want to watch a few movies, one day. Never depend on the death trap to work on the hero."
With that, I rose to my feet and looked at Hauzer. The big guy was asleep, snoring, with the horn on his head raising and lowering as he lay on his stomach. But I doubted that would last.
Okay. My plan had been simple. All of them had been. Plan A, the Omnitrix heals itself.
Plan B, the Avengers show up to break me out. Plan C, open the lock to the cell, take care of the guards, get fellow prisoners out, head out of the city. Plan D, freeDevil Dinosaur Hauzer, break out in a torrent of super-dino fury, probably riding his back.
Like I said, all simple. The best plans had to be. You could have a complex one, sure, but be ready to toss all the Rube Goldberg machines out of the window when just throwing a rock would do the job.
The instant I'd gotten wind of the giant super-dino, my plan had changed. I didn't have powers until the Omnitrix healed, but I could borrow them from someone.
Thing was, I had to depend on somehow convincing thousands of pounds of Earth Dragon that I was his friend. And somehow do it without the raw masculine charisma of Zangief.
I walked over to him and leaned down to look him in the face. He was huge. Even without feathers, he was built with layer upon layer of muscles. Even lying down, he was as tall as Thor was.
"Where did you come from, big guy?" I asked softly, patting his nose, feeling the unnaturally warm scales under my palm. "Rio is a long way from here."
Damn Rio. That had to be how he'd gotten to a Marvel universe. At a guess, the Rio Incident had pulled at every dimension, time, and realm close to the one I was now sitting in. And Capcom had been smashed into the Marvel universe more than almost any other franchise. Outside of, ironically, the DC universe.
What a fucking mess Rio had caused. We still had no idea what made that happen, but I was taking that whole thing personally.
I looked Hauzer over, then walked back to a wall, pressing my back to the cool stone. Then I fell to sit my ass on the dirty floor, my loincloth fluttering upwards. I took a moment to adjust myself. I was still wearing the armor I'd had in the arena, with fresh blood on it, though the stab wound in my shoulder was freshly bleeding. I took a handful of the bandages that had been covering it before and roughly treated the wound. Then I sat to wait.
Five minutes. Stend had predicted it would take that long for Hauzer to wake.
He was up in three.
First, he began to growl as best as he could around the tight muzzle that wrapped around his jaws. His eyes fluttered. His breathing sped up and he began to move. It was really something, watching all that dragon-dinosaur lift itself hesitantly off the ground. I stood up as well, slowly, continuing leaning against the wall while cradling my arm.
Hauzer looked around. Eyes the color of caramel gazed at his cell. Then he made a sound that seemed to get choked off by his muzzle before spinning around, anger in his eyes. He stomped the ground, the area around us shaking, the horn on the top of his head twitched upward, and he sniffed the air.
"Hauzer," I said hesitantly.
Immediately he was facing me, head low, eyes blazing.
"That's your name, right?" I said as calmly as possible. Which wasn't much. He was just… big. Big the way everything is when you're a little kid. I remembered being, I don't know, 10? And my class went to a Fire Station in my town on a field trip. We'd been allowed to interact with one of the fire trucks. I remembered looking up at that big red truck and feeling so small in comparison.
In this case, the fire truck was pissed off. He took a step in my direction.
"I'm not with those assholes!" I said quickly, raising my left hand. He seemed undeterred, lowering his head to stare at me and prowl forward. "They threw me in here as punishment!"
He roared, speeding forward. I steeled myself and waited before diving aside.
Hauzer hit the wall I'd been leaning against with incredible power, his horn slicing through the stone with ease. Despite that, the wall was pretty intact.
"They locked you away, but they don't know your true power!" I shouted as I rolled and ran for it before turning to face him. "But I can help you! I can get that muzzle off you!"
He pulled his head away from the wall and turned to look at me. This time I could see what I'd been depending on. Intelligence, resting in the surprised look on his face.
"Hauzer the Earth Dragon," I declared. "You're not just some dinosaur. You're a force of nature. But you haven't eaten in days. I'm willing to bet that the ice you were frozen in ended up weakening you too. Enough that that yellow bastard could capture you."
Hauzer growled. The sound could be felt in my chest, shaking my heart. His eyes blazed with rage.
"Yeah… I get that," I said softly, my face twisting. "I get that kind of hate now. Having someone catch you at your weakest, imprison you, force you to fight. And all along, you know that if you had even half of your real power you could take them apart with a breath," I was clenching my fist. "It's infuriating. Getting pushed around by someone who would usually not even be worth paying attention to. Isn't it?"
Hauzer glared at me. Then, slowly, he nodded.
"Then let's escape together," I tossed the crossbow bolt I'd stolen at the ground. He stepped back as it skidded across to him, then leaned forward to look at it. "I want revenge, Hauzer. I want to help my fellow prisoners escape, sure. But what I want to do," the words felt harsh in my throat, my eyes felt hot, and my fist was beginning to turn white. "Is to destroy this place. Kill the person who put me here, and show these guys just who the fuck they were messing with… How about you? You wanna light some shit on fire?"
Hauzer's eyes lit up.
------
Stend/Slaving Asshole
Stend stood outside the Devil's prison, standing dozens of feet away from the main entrance. Around him stood dozens of guards. Pter was there as well, jabbering away as always. Stend ignored the smug bastard's speech to focus on the problem at hand.
He didn't like this plan. Putting the Outsider in a cell with the Devil couldn't end in any way that Stend would benefit from. But Lord Styro had told him to do it and his word was law, even more than the other Lords barring their true master.
Stend had his suspicions as to what Styro hoped for. Ever since the Yellow Lord had found the Devil, he'd been obsessed with the beast, studying the creature's battles, inquiring into its condition, drawing sketches of it. And ordering the Outsider locked in with it? There was something there, Stend was sure of it.
Hauzer. That was what he called it. The Outsider knew more than he was telling. Once again. That infuriating little slave, larger, taller, and more muscular than all but the better-trained warriors he'd ever seen among humans. The way his eyes glittered with emotion and intelligence. In fact, that more than anything made Stend notice him. He was insolent, yes, was keeping the secrets of his world behind a veil of humor. But the anger behind his jokes had something more behind it.
Stend had captured dozens of slaves. But never had he felt as though the people he was capturing felt superior to himself. Always, they had been aware of their place.
Not the Outsider. That one seemed to believe that he was equal. It was in his stance, his brash words, even the way he fought was cautious, but not cringing with fear.
Deep inside, Stend was worried about one more thing. That bracelet around the Outsiders wrist. They'd been unable to remove it, finding it was somehow melted into his wrist, joined to his skin and bone. Just another mystery.
Stend was thrown from his thoughts when a loud sound came from the prison. The guards shuffled nervously when it was followed by the familiar sound of the Devil smashing its head into a wall, then the Outsider shouting.
"Ah," Pter said at his side, smirking. "Pity. It looks as though your nemesis is about to be killed by another."
"Nemesis?" Stend couldn't ignore that little jab, glaring at Pter.
"Oh, don't be coy," Pter chuckled, orange scales bouncing in the light of a torch. The sun had begun to fall, making the torches a matter of necessity. "You hate that human. And he hates you. There is something between you both, something so adorable I almost want to squeal," he hissed out a pleased laugh. "The way you clench your jaw when you look at him, the way he eyes you while clenching his fist. I wonder, are you pleased that he is dead now? Or disappointed you never had the chance to commit the deed yourself?"
Stend opened his mouth to speak before snapping it shut when he realized something. He turned from Pter to stare at the door to the Devil's prison.
The door, made of wood reinforced by layers of steel, had begun to smoke.
"What-" Stend began to say.
BOOM!
FWOOOOSH!
The door exploded in a burst of flame that turned into a jet of intense red heat flying forwards, cooking the three guards in front of it alive in an instant.
Stend, in a burst of speed that had kept him alive in the arena long ago, dived backward and ran, Pter squawking right next to him as the guards shouted and followed.
The fire followed them with predatory intent, filling the hallway, setting two more guards alight in a chorus of horrific screams, and heating the stones until they began to melt. Stend screamed wordlessly as he ran, the heat on his back was painful. The flame only stopped about thirty meters from the door, leaving Stend to continue running before turning to face the door.
"What the blazes was that!?" Pter gasped, apparently not noticing his pun.
"The Outsider," Stend spat out, the thought filling him to his core. "He did this!"
"The Outsider can summon fire!?" Pter gaped at Stend. "Why didn't he do that before!?"
Before Stend could answer, a sound came from the prison of the Devil. The fires that had been blazing in front of them, cooking the bodies of the dead and melting the stones, were blown out in an instant. Stend, Pter, and the remaining guards stared at the doors.
Out from the doors, walked the Outsider. Dressed in the armor of the arena, his long hair fallen about his shoulders, he came to stop in front of the destroyed remains of the door. He smirked at them. Then he tossed something towards them, some sort of leather.
Behind him, the head of the Devil slowly came forward until it was on his right side. Stend's eyes widened when he realized something.
The muzzle was gone.
Stend stared at the leather object the Outsider had tossed, then at the man himself. The Outsider's smirk widened.
Hauzer's jaws opened, revealing his lethal teeth and the sound that left them hit Stend with physical force.
"SKREEEEEROOOOONK!"
It was insane. Loud, echoing, and haunting, a screeching noise that made the primal instincts within all life want to hide. Then, deep in the Devil's throat, something flickered red.
"Oh shit," Pter whispered.
"RUN!" Stend shouted, spinning.
"Go ahead!" the Outsider was laughing, a gleeful insane laugh, one that echoed off the walls. "Run! But I'll find you! I'll have my vengeance, in this life or the next!"
Then fire erupted from the Devil, a great plume that tore the world in front of it apart as it passed. Stend looked back for a moment.
The Outsider stared at him, the red light of the Devil's fire flickering across him, his brown eyes glowing in the flame. The Devil roared alongside him, flame exploding from his jaw. But Stend only saw the Outsider, standing there. Waiting.
Stend ran. Though it galled him, though it burned in his soul more than the scarlet flames coming to kill him, he ran from the Outsider.
------
Mahmoud Schahed/Dial
Stend, Pter, and the guards ran for it. Hauzer stopped breathing flame and panted next to me. I took in the warmth that followed Hauzer's attack, letting it soak into my bones.
Even with the crossbow bolt I'd pickpocketed helping, it had been a job and a half to cut through Hauzer's muzzle. Not just because leather is tough as hell and I only had one hand to use, but because he didn't trust me, glaring at me as I used a sharp bolt near his face to cut at the leather. Honestly, I didn't trust him either.
Hauzer may not have been evil, but he had no real good intentions towards me either. He was a bad guy in his first game appearance after all.
Still, I'd gotten it done. A couple of cuts in the right place, a few tugs on the knots and ties, and he was loose. In truth, I think half the reason I was able to do it was that none of the people who had muzzled him had ever expected anyone to want to help Hauzer. Only human-ish hands could have untied him, and the big guy wasn't exactly cuddly.
Then there was our prison. The doors had been covered in steel layers around wood and had been heavily dented from Hauzer smashing into them over and over. But the second he was able to breathe fire without it getting stuck in his mouth and turning his tongue into charcoal, he was able to pour on the heat. Even weakened, that had been enough to get business started.
Now we'd been unleashed. And it was time for revenge.
"I know my way out," I told Hauzer. "We can free the others and get out of the city, get you fed. Then we come back. Deal?"
Hauzer growled, giving me a look.
"Yellow Bastard will be waiting for you, I promise," I grinned. "Mind breaking a wall?"
Hauzer crawled through the door until he was in the hallway entirely. I backed away to let him pass. With a roar, he spun and rose, kicking outward.
The hallway turned into rubble, opening up to the night sky. Hauzer lifted his head into the air and looked up at the night sky. I did the same.
"SKREEEEEROOOOONK!"
The sound that left him reminded me of Godzilla mixed with a lion. Another plume of fire left him, rising into the air and turning night to day for just an instant. Then he turned to look at me. And I began to worry that I'd made a mistake.
He didn't need me anymore. I could see the look in his eyes. That calculating expression. He could leave now. Head off on his own. That wouldn't have been so bad. But he could also kill me. Just being in the vicinity of his flame was scorching. If he tried to attack me with it, even a miss would still superheat the air around me enough to kill me.
We stared at each other.
"I made you a promise," I said softly. "I'll get you food. I'll get you revenge. But if you want to leave? That's up to you."
His large eyes blinked and narrowed. Then he scoffed before lowering his head.
I grinned before climbing onto his back, straddling him just behind his shoulders, my knees clenching to him tightly. "All right Hauzer. Let's do this!"
He roared in agreement, charging forward as the alarms of the city rang about us. We went down a street straight out of a medieval city, his taloned feet crushing the cobblestones, the wind rushing past us, people screaming as they leaped aside to dodge us.
"YAAAAA!" I shouted joyfully, head down low as I felt the rush of escape.
"GRAAGHH!!" Hauzer roared as well, his tail whipping behind us, a wide grin on his saurian features.
I rode on the dinosaurs back through a city built out of time and felt… good. Great, even. I felt at peace.
Ever since I'd come to this world, this Marvel universe, I'd felt unworthy. Given immense power out of nowhere, for no reason I could understand, I'd tried everything to make myself worthy of it. Of every good thing. The Omnitrix when I first got here, the friendships I made with people I'd admired from across dimensions all my life, the money I'd gained from robbing HYDRA, my relationship with Jen. All of it was something I'd worked to be worthy of. But it had always been tarnished by a voice in the back of my head, that self-doubt that whispered it was undeserved.
I was a fake hero. If I didn't have the easy power of the Omnitrix, my friends, my armor, I'd fail.
But now? I'd gotten lucky a few times. But that didn't account for my survival. I'd made it through the jungle and chased off a pack of velociraptors. I'd been given the choice between an easy survival and risking my life for others at my weakest point, and chose to try and save someone. I'd been shoved into a gladiator match and survived. And now, I'd turned my enemies' death trap against them.
I never had to prove anything to anyone but me, and now I had. I was more than just a guy who had the strongest weapon in existence on his wrist, I was able to fight without that tool. Hell, I was able to fight and survive even with a broken arm against superhumans!
All the training I'd done, all the work, had been in an attempt to silence that voice. And now, under the stars, with tons of Earth Dragon under me as we ran together? The voice was faded. Still there, like it was for every human being that wasn't a sociopath. But no longer as insidious as it once was.
The Omnitrix beeped as I thought that. I looked down at it.
White shone from its lens. Then, as I watched, it switched over to green. It was still half-melted and beaten, but it was glowing a bright and oh so wonderful green once again.
"...Now? Really?" I mumbled. "Right when I don't need you for an escape?"
Yeah, this thing had a sense of humor, that was for sure. I tapped the faceplate experimentally with my nose.
The Omnitrix blinked green at me and I couldn't help the warm smile that lit up my face when the dial rose up and the hologram came to life.
So when a giant fireball began to fall from the sky to arc down towards Hauzer and I as we ran through the streets, I didn't dodge it. I didn't leap, I didn't panic. As the big ball of flame approached, I just pressed the Omnitrix against my chest.
"IT'S HERO TIME!"
------
Malia/Raptor Mom
Malia ran with her daughter in her arms through the streets of the City of Saur-Lords, her, legs pumping beneath her as her little girl bounced in her arms. Behind her, the Devil was prowling through the streets, leaving people to run or hide.
"Mommy, mommy, he's coming!" her baby screamed in terror, her adorable scaly features set in childish fear that made Malia's heart ache.
"It's okay baby, we'll be okay!" Malia cried out, ignoring her fear. "Close your eyes, Ami!"
Obediently, her daughter screwed her eyes shut. Malia looked back. The form of the Devil, his three horns high, came after them, a familiar gladiator sitting on his back.
How had this happened? They had been shopping before, having a good day. Then, without warning, someone started shouting about the great Devil of the Arena coming towards them. She hadn't believed it at first. Then it came running towards them, an insane human whooping and hollering on his back as the Devil roared.
Malia had been running since, heading in the same direction as the crowd around them. She'd instinctively headed for the nearest guard tower, which she could see in the distance. Others were running towards the same tower, with guards guiding them in. She knew that the tower was the closest one to the Arena cells, but didn't see any significance to that thought.
Then, a familiar screech drew her gaze to the sky.
It was him. The Lord of Lords! King of the Sky, Cloud, and Sun!
"It'll be okay, Ami," Malia whispered, rushing into the tower. She and the rest of the civilians watched as he spiraled down from the clouds.
His skin was a dusky green, his scales stretched over a taut muscular form. His eyes were deep and wise, set into a pterodactyl's skull. His wings spread wide as he began his attack. His mouth opened wide and he breathed the night air in. When he breathed out, the holy flame came from his eminence. Malia watched in awe as he released a ball of fire the size of a large man, dropping it onto the Devil and gladiator.
It came in an arc, landing on top of the pair and exploding in a plume of red-hot flames. Ami cooed in her arms at the sight.
The Lord of Lords dropped down to land before them. He was even more impressive up close, towering over them all, literally in most cases, metaphorically in all cases. When he spoke, it was in a deep booming voice that echoed. With the flames behind him as he spoke, he cut an intimidating figure, his shadow falling upon them all.
"Guards! I believe you have a job to do!" the Lord said, bringing his hands behind his back to stand proudly, his wings spread behind him, a single loincloth wrapped around his waist.
"Yes, Lord Sauron!" one of the guards shouted. "Get the civilians moving! I want them safe in the tower."
"Most excellent choice, commander!" Lord Sauron smiled, his red eyes glowing. He noticed Malia, then Ami. "Ah, young one! Are you and your mother okay?"
Ami nodded quickly, her eyes wide in wonder, her tail wagging happily. "Y-Yes, Lord Sauron!"
"Lord!?" Sauron barked out, before throwing his head to laugh extravagantly. "My dear, you are but a child! There is no need to worry about such titles as a child! Only the joy of play and learning! Until you have come of age, I am only Sauron!"
Malia's heart swelled at the kindness of her Lord, who walked forward to rub the top of her daughter's head. Ami giggled happily.
A growling sound came from behind Lord Sauron, freezing everyone in their tracks. They stared at the fire, which was still raging.
Then, before anyone could move, a green ball of some sort of goo came rolling out of the fire. Everyone stared uncomprehending, as it spun it's way towards the right, heading towards the arena. As it passed over pieces of stone and debris left in the wake of Lord Sauron's fireball exploding, it gathered the pieces and became larger and larger. The guards who were in front of it had a moment to comprehend this before the now child-size ball came to a stop.
And exploded in a burst of green that sent shockwaves outward, sending the guards flying about. They landed in a heap of broken arms and legs.
"You know," an almost minuscule voice said somewhere. "This alien? In a medieval world? Kinda broken."
More and more green balls were suddenly flung from the fire, rolling towards the arena.
"Get inside, my children," Lord Sauron growled. "I must deal with this threat, and protect our world!"
Malia and the others were pulled into the wooden doors of the tower. The last thing she saw before the doors closed was Lord Sauron taking flight as the world around him exploded apart into fire and green.
------
Mahmoud Schahed/Dial
When the fire came down and I transformed for the first time in days, I had a moment where I'd felt a bit hot. Then Hauzer huffed, and the heat lessened significantly. Didn't surprise me. Fire cannot kill a dragon after all.
(Huh. Wonder how Game of Thrones ended.)
While the fire blazed around us, I began to change. Well, the change was beyond light-speed as always, but I could still kinda comprehend what was happening through it.
First, my body began to shrink, something that surprised me. Smaller and smaller, until I was about the size of a football. My skin became a smoky yellow, then hardened into a carapace of armor. My hands became legs, and two more came from my mid-section. My mouth went vertical instead of horizontal, and a pair of antenna replaced my hair.
"Ball Weevil!"
I stared down at my front left leg in surprise. "Huh. I did expect Humoungosaur," I said in a squeaky voice. Hauzer lifted his head around to his back in confusion, eyes widening at the sight of me. Then he moved to sniff at my new form, snorting a bit. "Still me, big guy."
He didn't seem to know how to take that.
Then again, an insect did kind of make sense in a dinosaur world, considering how big bugs were in this place.
Ball Weevil though… that was broken. I was a living grenade launcher in a place that had just discovered iron was a thing.
If it wasn't for my new insectoid features, a wicked grin would have come to my face. Well. I had promised to carpet bomb this city. Still not gonna kill civilians, but the guys who'd been stabbing me were fair game. "Okay boy. Let's go blow the shit out of this place."
I opened my mouth and a green ball of plasma came out, solidifying into a slimy orb. I tossed in the direction of the arena and watched as it quickly rolled out of the flames surrounding us, absorbing debris to become bigger and bigger. When it hit the guards, the ball just… it was like C4 going off. I could see them sent flying, the shockwave of the explosion breaking arms, ribs, legs, and spines. It was horrific.
"You know," I said in my minuscule voice, raising it for the peanut gallery. "This alien? In a medieval world? Kinda broken."
Good lord, I had severely underestimated how powerful these green balls of explosive were. I needed to dial down the boom on these things if I wanted to avoid killing these guys.
Hauzer growled. I opened my mouth and spat out another ball, then tossed it, before following it over and over. Over a dozen green balls launched out, rolling to become as big as three or four feet before exploding in cascades of green.
Even though I was trying to limit the size of the explosions, they still tossed the guards aside. No one died, but the streets around us started to get covered in broken guard bodies. "Come on, Hauzer! Let's get moving!"
"SKREEEEEEEONK!" Hauzer roared in agreement. He unleashed a plume of flame outwards, turning a group of guards to charcoal. I tried to keep the thought of that from my mind, focusing on my goal instead.
In front of us, something rose up, flying into the air. I stopped throwing explosives to stare at him as he lifted into the air.
Sauron. An enemy of the X-#*!$.
I hissed, my head suddenly feeling like it had been about to burst in half. Damn. The Omnitrix must have still been acting up.
I looked back at Sauron, who had fought Spider-Man alongside Stegron once. He'd also taken on the Avengers a couple of times. He was currently circling for another pass at us. Right, he'd once flame breathed a Black Widow. Not Natasha, the other one.
"Hauzer, let's move!" then I hesitantly added. "And can you stop killing people? I kind of want to keep that a minimum if I can?"
He replied to that by burning someone else alive. This person had thrown a spear at us, but I got the feeling Hauzer would have done it anyway.
"Good talk," I grumbled. Still, it felt good to be on the attack again. No more broken arm, no more broken Omnitrix. Just me, a powerful ally, and my body filled with strength and power once more!
We rushed for the arena, tossing people aside. The pair of us must have made a hell of an image, an orange dinosaur breathing flame while a giant yellow bug on his backfired exploding balls of green plasma that sent Ankylo, T-Rex, and Bronto-Saur-Lords flying about with ease.
We reached the arena in record time.
"Okay, big guy!" I hopped off of Hauzer and spun to look up at him as he leaned down to look at me. "You wanted food, right? There's gonna be tons if you go this way," I scratched out a quick map on the dirt with one of my claws, marking out the kitchens based on my observations of the place. "Should be enough to feed you for decades. I'll meet you there."
He gave me a hesitant look.
"I made you a promise," I said as fiercely as my adorable form could, spitting out a green ball and hopping on top of it. "I intend to keep it. That Yellow Bastard is all yours."
He still looked a little hesitant, but he nodded and spun to head the direction I'd indicated. As he did, I looked at the arena.
Six guards opened the doors that led to the prison cells my allies were in and rushed towards me.
I narrowed my eyes into a smile and ran backward, the ball under me moving forward in a simple display of physics. I quickly reached my top speed, picking up dirt and debris until the tennis ball-sized plasma goo under me became as big as a car. The Saur-Lords in front of me skidded to halt.
"Oh gods!" one shouted, the entire group spinning to run.
"Someone play the Katamari Damacy theme!" I shouted in glee as the ball hit the first guard.
Schloop!
He was absorbed into the ball of plasma goo, spinning inside it like a hamster in its ball. For a funny moment, he stared up at me through the sea of green.
I hit the next guard, then the next, before I leapt off the ball, letting the massive explosive slam into the doors as the last three closed them.
The ball didn't explode all that hard. I'd formed it as more of a bubble than a ball anyways, more to restrain, not kill. It still tore through the doors and sent all six guards flying. The Saur-Lords didn't look like they'd broken anything, but the three I'd rolled around in a demented hamster ball were going to be fighting their lunch for a while.
I landed in the chaos and spat out streams of plasma, wrapping each in restraining webs of the stuff.
"Would you look at that!" I chirped once I was done. "I'm multi-purpose!"
"You're an asshole," one of the guards rumbled, before losing composure to throw up on the floor while stuck to the wall.
"You help enslave people, you have no moral high ground," I scoffed, before running deeper into the prison.
------
Gresh/Saurian, which is different from Saur-Lord.
Gresh watched as the guards ran out of the room, leaving the prisoners behind. A while ago, the guards, along with Stend, had pulled out the Outsider and taken him somewhere.
But not before the Outsider had brought his unbroken arm behind his back and signaled to them.
The Outsider, in the time they had known him, had been odd. When Gresh had first seen him, he'd dismissed him. With a broken arm, what good was he? Gresh had already worked on establishing his rank. As a slave, the only thing worse than simply being a slave was being the weakest one. He had known this, and thus had taken steps to ensure he would not be the one on the bottom of the pecking order.
So, he had continued to do it with the Outsider. For all the Outsider's impressive build, his broken arm had slowed him down. He had not responded to any of Gresh's displays, only taking them. Still, something in his eyes had been defiant. Unbroken.
So Gresh had kept pushing until he tried to push the Outsider aside to steal his food.
Then the Outsider had smashed his head into the floor with a single arm and told him in no uncertain terms to stop.
Gresh was not a man of deep thought and introspection, but he did understand violence. So when the Outsider had offered his food afterward, he knew the gesture for what it was.
Dominance. The Outsider had a broken arm and yet would fight. He took food but did not need to hoard it. He was strong in the way Gresh's mother had been, the matriarch of his family, standing above their petty squabbling, but coming down with a strong blow when her intervention was needed.
So Gresh had watched him. And when the Outsider demanded all listen to him, he had seen all his fellow slaves follow.
Even the Neu-Deustchlander, who hated the Outsider, bowed to him. The Rock Woman, the strongest being in the room, even stronger than the guards, had listened to the Outsider.
The Outsider was a tyrant of some kind. He took the people around him and forced them to become his army. And when they fought on the battlefield, he had stolen the first kill with the sort of eager greed only a tyrant would show. He was a fierce warrior, killing without mercy (Gresh had not seen the look of anguish when the Outsider killed his opponents, only the blood that sprayed.)
Gresh had tried, one last time, to demand something from the Outsider in battle. To stop stealing his kills. And what had the Outsider said?
"Then go get some more!"
Inspiring! If one steals from you, then why despair!? You had already gained that which was stolen! You know you are capable of obtaining it. If it is stolen, then a man of the Outsider's caliber would simply gain it once more! Gain and gain, until any slight against you, was a bump in the road!
To be so uncaring of any other, to dominate so easily, to fight like a demon and yet impart such wisdom!
And then, while he was pulled out, he had flashed those signals. Among the ones he taught them in case of their necessity, had been 'attack, retreat, wait, defend, flank'.
When he had been pulled out, he had flashed two signals. First, 'wait' the symbol a simple hand clenched in a fist. Then, 'attack', the middle finger extended like the blade of a deity, followed by wait again.
Wait to attack. That was what that sequence meant. Even as he was dragged away, the Outsider had a plan to attack.
Gresh knew the Outsider now, saw his eyes as Stend had tortured him. The Outsider had most likely even planned for the torture, had planned for the pain to follow!
So Gresh waited. And when the first explosions began, he was gratified.
"You think it's him," the stone person, Demi the Outsider had named her, asked Gresh.
"Of course it is!" Gresh said to the larger being. "He told us his plan."
"Wait, attack, wait?" the Neu-Deutschlander asked skeptically in an accented version of the common language of the Savage Land. "I'm pretty sure that's not the same as 'I'm about to start blowing things up.'"
"Will he be okay?" the Aerian with a single wing asked softly.
"He's dead," one of the gladiators they'd fought, the Raptor who the Outsider had stabbed, said snidely. "Probably killed in style, the prick."
"You're a prick!" Gresh said, quite proud of the incredible turn around he had made with the insult. "And the Outsider is alive. After all, he helped us defeat you."
"It was a tie," the Anklyo they had also fought said, quirking a scaled eyebrow. "And honestly, it wasn't like there was anything personal. You all fought well," he gave a nod to the Aerian with the single wing, who nodded back with a sad smile on her blue face. "But do you think he's alive, coming back to us, and somehow causing explosions? I know of no weapon that can do such a thing."
The Anklyo's calm assessment pierced through where simple stubbornness had not. For a moment, Gresh's faith faltered.
Then, an explosion came from nearby. Some guards shouted. Another explosion. A scream of pain, and someone joking about babies whining.
The next explosion came from the doorway, followed by a guard tossed into the room wrapped up in a ball of green goo. Everyone stared at the Saur-Lord guard. The T-Rex Saur-Lord stared back at them helplessly.
"I… I don't understand what's happening," he said in wide-eyed confusion.
"You got your ass kicked by cuteness," someone quipped.
They all looked at the door. Then they looked down.
A yellow insect stood there, balanced on a green ball. It waved at them. "Sup guys. Told you I'd come back."
"...Outsider?" Gresh asked, the insane idea popping into his head.
"No way that's-" the Neu-Deutschlander said.
"Oh good, we all speak the same language," the bug said. "First, German Guy? You're an asshole."
"W-What!?" the Neu-Deuschlander said before something registered. "German guy!? My name is Dietrich!"
"Sorry, had to get that off my chest," the insect said apologetically. "I'm sure you're a nice guy, man. I'll help you escape this place, don't worry."
German guy opened and closed his mouth, as if unable to understand what was happening.
"Gresh, Demi, everyone who wants to escape and get free?" the Outsider said in this impossible new form. "I can turn into superpower beings, but that power was gone for a bit. It's back. Now let's kick some ass."
Then it kicked the ball it was standing on at the cage door. The ball exploded, shattering the lock and hinges, letting the door fall to the ground.
"Follow me!" the Outsider spun and rushed out. Gresh immediately moved to follow.
But not before giving the Anklyo a smug look. "I told you!"
The Anklyo gave him a befuddled look. "Told m- You can't take credit for this! No one in their right mind would accept bugs with exploding goo as a possibility!"
Gresh, clearly the wiser of the two, simply followed the Outsider. Demi and the others followed quickly, not wishing to be left behind.
As they left, the Aerian with one wing asked Demi, "So he can just become a bug now?"
"It is the Savage Land, sweetie," Demi said kindly. "A Chicken God is running around out there."
"...At least he is cute, I suppose."
------
Through the hallways, they saw evidence of the Outsiders passing. Strands of green hung about the walls, guards were wrapped up in balls or attached to the walls, and doors had been torn apart. Oddly enough, the disgusting smell and debris that had once filled the place were entirely gone. Now everything smelled almost like the tea that Gresh's grandfather had enjoyed, a hint of spice and warmth to it, but still fresh, and the floors were almost sparkling.
"This way!" the Outsider said in front of them, scuttling his way through the halls on a ball of green goo (later the Outsider would inform Gresh they were highly concentrated plasma). "We should be almost there!"
"Where are we headed?" Demi asked.
"The kitchens!" the Outsider squeaked.
"Is this the time to eat?" the Raptor Saur-Lord grumbled.
"It is for my partner-in-crime," the Outsider said.
Down the hall, a pair of Saur-Lords came running towards them, swords raised. Without missing a beat, the Outsider hopped off the ball he'd been rolling and tossed it forward, the ball exploding and sending the pair flying.
"Down here," the Outsider made another ball and sped forward atop it, somehow outpacing all of them. He led them for a few moments more before a loud sound came from down the hallway. The group came running around the corner, only for all of them to stop in shock at the sight before them.
First, was the human, a man tall, well-built, with some sort of animal fur about his shoulders so that it appeared he was wearing its face as a vest. The man smiled at them, panning his eyes across the group before stopping on Gresh. For just a moment, Gresh felt as though a blade had been pressed to his throat before the man looked at the Outsider and grinned just a bit. He raised the knife in his hand, then stabbed down into the Bronto he'd been holding down with a single hand, an impossible feat of strength for a human. The blade slid into the struggling Saur-Lords eye, slicing deep into the brain and ending its fight.
"Dial! You are alive!"
The other man was even stranger. Made entirely of metal, it towered over them all, it's body built with a very stout strength. The man was holding a pair of Anklyo's by their throats, the two Saur-Lords trying to stab him, only for their blades to bounce off his metal skin without a scratch.
"Mahmoud…" the metal man said softly, tossing the Anklyo's aside to step forward.
"X, Kraven!" the Outsider said with glee. "Where the hell did you guys come from!?"
"Shiny," Demi blurted out, staring at the metal man, X, with avid interest.
"I came the instant you were pronounced missing," X said. "Are you well?"
"Weirdly, I think I made a psychological breakthrough," the Outsider said. "But that doesn't matter now. I want to share all the fuzzy feeling man, but we have business."
"Understood, sir," X kneeled to the Outsider, further proving to Gresh that the Outsider was clearly the leader of whatever nation he came from. "What are your orders?"
"Take the arena," the Outsider's eyes narrowed. "This place is the slavers' center of power. We make it ours, we force them to come on our turf. Lock it down, make them show up."
"A sound plan," Kraven said with a smile. "But they will know this place well."
"They will," the Outsider looked around. "But they don't know my allies, my powers, or how fucking pissed I am. Call in the boys, X. I made two promises. One to a dragon, and one to myself," Gresh reveled in the look of anger in those insectoid eyes. "I intend to keep them both."
------
Author's Note:
Okay... Some people might get mad. Maybe even furious. But I'll let them come as they will.
For now, I'll say I had a lot of fun writing this chapter. And I'll also add one thing. Dial will get the big guy soon. Just not during this little adventure. Humoungosaur was just way too expected for this adventure. I mean, NRG was fun because bringing the Russian Nuclear Reactor on the Russian adventure to stop a nuclear bomb was so great. But I was convinced by my editor, and in fact strongly agree with him, that doing such a thing twice would be bad for story reasons.
But Ball Weevil is perfect. He's a giant bug, first of all, something that fits in really well in the Savage Land. But he's also an explosives expert. In many ways he's one of the Savage Land's worst nightmares. He can sneak anywhere, blow an entire building to kingdom come, survive things that would turn most cars to ash. He's a straight badass. A blend of primitive animal and modern 'blow the fuck out of the world' mentality.
So yeah. I'm sticking to this decision. That said, when the big guy does show up, it'll be a fucking awesome show.
I broke the tension about a moment after by looking around at everyone.
"Hauzer. Where'd he come from?"
Everyone looked confused, if still pissed at each other.
"Hauzer?" Winggirl asked. Hearing her voice for the first time surprised the hell out of me. I tried not to show that instead looking her in the eyes as she stood between Demi and the male Aerian.
"The orange T-Rex with horns. Any story about him, about where he came from?"
Winggirl looked around. German guy seemed confused, as did the others.
"In the ice of the East," someone said outside. We all spun around.
Yellow Triceratops guy was standing there, Stend on the right side of him and the orange pterodactyl on the left. Oh, and the requisite group of angry-looking guards.
"Hauzer," the triceratops said softly. His voice was deep, almost echoing. "I had no idea of his name. We have been calling him Devil."
Stend began to speak. "My lord-"
The triceratops didn't make a move, but Stend cut himself off anyway. The triceratops continued. "I found him when I went to the icelands on an exploratory expedition. He was encased in ice, completely frozen through. I thought him dead. But those eyes were alive, staring through the chill. He wanted to kill me. And I decided that a beast of such stature and interesting design was worth bringing back."
The triceratops turned and walked out, surprising the hell out of me. "Stend. He knows the Devil by another name. Make of that what you will."
"Yes, my lord," Stend said, bowing.
The big yellow triceratops continued on his way. I thought about making a BJ the dinosaur joke, but I decided against it.
"So you're the Outsider," the orange Pterosaur said. He sounded like how movies portray snake oil salesmen.
"Nah, that's the guy from Dishonored," I could never help my nerd side. "I'm Dial. Who are you?"
"Lord Pter, ruler of all the Ptero-Saur-Lords," he said proudly.
"...Why don't you have wings?" I asked hesitantly.
Behind me, I could hear Winggirl let out a small sound. I winced internally.
Pter chuckled. "I'm afraid that only our lord has been given such a gift," he leaned forward to rest against the bars. "Tell me, Out-... Dial. Who are you, in the world beyond? A warrior? A hunter, like myself?" he smirked at me. "I imagine you'd make better prey than predator."
I walked across the space between us and leaned against the bars as well. "You know, I have a friend I should really introduce you to. It'd be hilarious. But that aside, I'm a superhero."
"And a fool," Stend said, walking forward. Pter stepped aside to let him past. "You should have taken my deal, Outsider."
"Not a chance," I shrugged. "So. What's next?"
"Your punishment," Stend nodded to the guards. As he did, I brought my left hand behind my back. I prayed Gresh, Demi, and the others would notice it when I flashed two symbols with my fingers. Hopefully the fact they didn't move when two guards entered the cell and grabbed me. They pulled me out with no little amount of roughness. Stend watched them pull me out until I stood before him. We eyed each other.
Stend… looking up into those reptilian eyes, I don't think I'd ever personally hated anyone more.
It didn't help when he grabbed me by the neck and lifted me in a smooth motion.
"URK!" I grabbed his left arm with mine, trying to get air, panicking. The pain of his scaled fingers squeezing around my neck was followed by a taloned finger stabbing into the hole in my shoulder left from the arena. Fresh blood poured out as I tried to scream.
"I'm not doing this to get answers from you," Stend said coldly. "While I am pleased that you survived, you have still defied me. This small bit of pain," the talon sliced through flesh, digging out a chunk of me to spill more blood on the floor. "It's what you deserve."
"Fuc-" I tried to say, only to choke.
He held me there, choking and bleeding before tossing me aside.
That first gasp of air hitting my lungs again was like a drug. I got to my knees and filled my lungs with air, gasping and panting.
I knew he'd do something like this. But I still fucking wanted to kill him for it.
"I'll be locking you in a new prison," Stend growled. "Come."
The guards forced me up and dragged me along. That was fine. I was fine.
Deep breaths. Take in oxygen. Focus on the goals.
We walked along, Pter, Stend, the guards, and myself. Soon, we were in one of the more remote sections of the arena, a place that looked like it had been built years before the rest of it.
"You must have done something special," Pter mumbled quietly to me. "I've rarely seen Stend so ready to torture a man."
"I'm a charmer that way," I grumbled in return.
We came to a locked door, which one of the guards opened. Then we entered a massive circular cavern, covered in dust. I could tell at a glance it was made as a prison for something big or very dangerous.
In this case, both. Hauzer was passed out in the corner still covered in darts. Stend stared at Hauzer for a moment before turning to face me.
"I am glad you are alive. It gives you more chances to come to your senses," he smiled slowly. "I'm going to lock you in with the beast," when I tried to speak, he punched me in the face. I fell to my knees, bumping my left hand into the crossbow-wielding guard next to me, my palm brushing against the pouch on the guard's hip.
"What the fuck dude!?" I shouted in pain, my head ringing.
"Enough," Stend snarled. "I have had enough. You will be locked in with the beast, with this," he took out a bell from his pants pocket. "And be given until the beast wakes to decide if you will surrender the secrets I want," Stend lowered to the ground. "If you ring it, I will save you. If you do not… well. You know the creature's name. You must know of its ferocity. It's rage and hatred towards all life," Stend smirked. "You're a smart boy. I'm sure you'll make the right decision."
He grabbed me off the floor by the back of my neck and tossed me into the cell. Then he followed up by tossing the bell at my feet. "Live or die, Outsider. You have five minutes."
"And if I decide I'd rather be dino-food!?" I yelled at him while rolling to face him.
"Then clearly you were a waste of my time all along," he said dismissively. "Which is fine. That monster hasn't been fed since we found him. You'll make a good meal."
The group left the cavern, Pter laughing all along. Then they closed the door behind them with a loud quaking thud.
Just as planned. Well, sort of as planned.
I slowly rose to my feet and opened my palm. In it was the small crossbow bolt I'd lifted off the guard I'd bumped into. I grinned with blood-soaked teeth.
"Stend. You're gonna want to watch a few movies, one day. Never depend on the death trap to work on the hero."
With that, I rose to my feet and looked at Hauzer. The big guy was asleep, snoring, with the horn on his head raising and lowering as he lay on his stomach. But I doubted that would last.
Okay. My plan had been simple. All of them had been. Plan A, the Omnitrix heals itself.
Plan B, the Avengers show up to break me out. Plan C, open the lock to the cell, take care of the guards, get fellow prisoners out, head out of the city. Plan D, free
Like I said, all simple. The best plans had to be. You could have a complex one, sure, but be ready to toss all the Rube Goldberg machines out of the window when just throwing a rock would do the job.
The instant I'd gotten wind of the giant super-dino, my plan had changed. I didn't have powers until the Omnitrix healed, but I could borrow them from someone.
Thing was, I had to depend on somehow convincing thousands of pounds of Earth Dragon that I was his friend. And somehow do it without the raw masculine charisma of Zangief.
I walked over to him and leaned down to look him in the face. He was huge. Even without feathers, he was built with layer upon layer of muscles. Even lying down, he was as tall as Thor was.
"Where did you come from, big guy?" I asked softly, patting his nose, feeling the unnaturally warm scales under my palm. "Rio is a long way from here."
Damn Rio. That had to be how he'd gotten to a Marvel universe. At a guess, the Rio Incident had pulled at every dimension, time, and realm close to the one I was now sitting in. And Capcom had been smashed into the Marvel universe more than almost any other franchise. Outside of, ironically, the DC universe.
What a fucking mess Rio had caused. We still had no idea what made that happen, but I was taking that whole thing personally.
I looked Hauzer over, then walked back to a wall, pressing my back to the cool stone. Then I fell to sit my ass on the dirty floor, my loincloth fluttering upwards. I took a moment to adjust myself. I was still wearing the armor I'd had in the arena, with fresh blood on it, though the stab wound in my shoulder was freshly bleeding. I took a handful of the bandages that had been covering it before and roughly treated the wound. Then I sat to wait.
Five minutes. Stend had predicted it would take that long for Hauzer to wake.
He was up in three.
First, he began to growl as best as he could around the tight muzzle that wrapped around his jaws. His eyes fluttered. His breathing sped up and he began to move. It was really something, watching all that dragon-dinosaur lift itself hesitantly off the ground. I stood up as well, slowly, continuing leaning against the wall while cradling my arm.
Hauzer looked around. Eyes the color of caramel gazed at his cell. Then he made a sound that seemed to get choked off by his muzzle before spinning around, anger in his eyes. He stomped the ground, the area around us shaking, the horn on the top of his head twitched upward, and he sniffed the air.
"Hauzer," I said hesitantly.
Immediately he was facing me, head low, eyes blazing.
"That's your name, right?" I said as calmly as possible. Which wasn't much. He was just… big. Big the way everything is when you're a little kid. I remembered being, I don't know, 10? And my class went to a Fire Station in my town on a field trip. We'd been allowed to interact with one of the fire trucks. I remembered looking up at that big red truck and feeling so small in comparison.
In this case, the fire truck was pissed off. He took a step in my direction.
"I'm not with those assholes!" I said quickly, raising my left hand. He seemed undeterred, lowering his head to stare at me and prowl forward. "They threw me in here as punishment!"
He roared, speeding forward. I steeled myself and waited before diving aside.
Hauzer hit the wall I'd been leaning against with incredible power, his horn slicing through the stone with ease. Despite that, the wall was pretty intact.
"They locked you away, but they don't know your true power!" I shouted as I rolled and ran for it before turning to face him. "But I can help you! I can get that muzzle off you!"
He pulled his head away from the wall and turned to look at me. This time I could see what I'd been depending on. Intelligence, resting in the surprised look on his face.
"Hauzer the Earth Dragon," I declared. "You're not just some dinosaur. You're a force of nature. But you haven't eaten in days. I'm willing to bet that the ice you were frozen in ended up weakening you too. Enough that that yellow bastard could capture you."
Hauzer growled. The sound could be felt in my chest, shaking my heart. His eyes blazed with rage.
"Yeah… I get that," I said softly, my face twisting. "I get that kind of hate now. Having someone catch you at your weakest, imprison you, force you to fight. And all along, you know that if you had even half of your real power you could take them apart with a breath," I was clenching my fist. "It's infuriating. Getting pushed around by someone who would usually not even be worth paying attention to. Isn't it?"
Hauzer glared at me. Then, slowly, he nodded.
"Then let's escape together," I tossed the crossbow bolt I'd stolen at the ground. He stepped back as it skidded across to him, then leaned forward to look at it. "I want revenge, Hauzer. I want to help my fellow prisoners escape, sure. But what I want to do," the words felt harsh in my throat, my eyes felt hot, and my fist was beginning to turn white. "Is to destroy this place. Kill the person who put me here, and show these guys just who the fuck they were messing with… How about you? You wanna light some shit on fire?"
Hauzer's eyes lit up.
------
Stend/Slaving Asshole
Stend stood outside the Devil's prison, standing dozens of feet away from the main entrance. Around him stood dozens of guards. Pter was there as well, jabbering away as always. Stend ignored the smug bastard's speech to focus on the problem at hand.
He didn't like this plan. Putting the Outsider in a cell with the Devil couldn't end in any way that Stend would benefit from. But Lord Styro had told him to do it and his word was law, even more than the other Lords barring their true master.
Stend had his suspicions as to what Styro hoped for. Ever since the Yellow Lord had found the Devil, he'd been obsessed with the beast, studying the creature's battles, inquiring into its condition, drawing sketches of it. And ordering the Outsider locked in with it? There was something there, Stend was sure of it.
Hauzer. That was what he called it. The Outsider knew more than he was telling. Once again. That infuriating little slave, larger, taller, and more muscular than all but the better-trained warriors he'd ever seen among humans. The way his eyes glittered with emotion and intelligence. In fact, that more than anything made Stend notice him. He was insolent, yes, was keeping the secrets of his world behind a veil of humor. But the anger behind his jokes had something more behind it.
Stend had captured dozens of slaves. But never had he felt as though the people he was capturing felt superior to himself. Always, they had been aware of their place.
Not the Outsider. That one seemed to believe that he was equal. It was in his stance, his brash words, even the way he fought was cautious, but not cringing with fear.
Deep inside, Stend was worried about one more thing. That bracelet around the Outsiders wrist. They'd been unable to remove it, finding it was somehow melted into his wrist, joined to his skin and bone. Just another mystery.
Stend was thrown from his thoughts when a loud sound came from the prison. The guards shuffled nervously when it was followed by the familiar sound of the Devil smashing its head into a wall, then the Outsider shouting.
"Ah," Pter said at his side, smirking. "Pity. It looks as though your nemesis is about to be killed by another."
"Nemesis?" Stend couldn't ignore that little jab, glaring at Pter.
"Oh, don't be coy," Pter chuckled, orange scales bouncing in the light of a torch. The sun had begun to fall, making the torches a matter of necessity. "You hate that human. And he hates you. There is something between you both, something so adorable I almost want to squeal," he hissed out a pleased laugh. "The way you clench your jaw when you look at him, the way he eyes you while clenching his fist. I wonder, are you pleased that he is dead now? Or disappointed you never had the chance to commit the deed yourself?"
Stend opened his mouth to speak before snapping it shut when he realized something. He turned from Pter to stare at the door to the Devil's prison.
The door, made of wood reinforced by layers of steel, had begun to smoke.
"What-" Stend began to say.
BOOM!
FWOOOOSH!
The door exploded in a burst of flame that turned into a jet of intense red heat flying forwards, cooking the three guards in front of it alive in an instant.
Stend, in a burst of speed that had kept him alive in the arena long ago, dived backward and ran, Pter squawking right next to him as the guards shouted and followed.
The fire followed them with predatory intent, filling the hallway, setting two more guards alight in a chorus of horrific screams, and heating the stones until they began to melt. Stend screamed wordlessly as he ran, the heat on his back was painful. The flame only stopped about thirty meters from the door, leaving Stend to continue running before turning to face the door.
"What the blazes was that!?" Pter gasped, apparently not noticing his pun.
"The Outsider," Stend spat out, the thought filling him to his core. "He did this!"
"The Outsider can summon fire!?" Pter gaped at Stend. "Why didn't he do that before!?"
Before Stend could answer, a sound came from the prison of the Devil. The fires that had been blazing in front of them, cooking the bodies of the dead and melting the stones, were blown out in an instant. Stend, Pter, and the remaining guards stared at the doors.
Out from the doors, walked the Outsider. Dressed in the armor of the arena, his long hair fallen about his shoulders, he came to stop in front of the destroyed remains of the door. He smirked at them. Then he tossed something towards them, some sort of leather.
Behind him, the head of the Devil slowly came forward until it was on his right side. Stend's eyes widened when he realized something.
The muzzle was gone.
Stend stared at the leather object the Outsider had tossed, then at the man himself. The Outsider's smirk widened.
Hauzer's jaws opened, revealing his lethal teeth and the sound that left them hit Stend with physical force.
"SKREEEEEROOOOONK!"
It was insane. Loud, echoing, and haunting, a screeching noise that made the primal instincts within all life want to hide. Then, deep in the Devil's throat, something flickered red.
"Oh shit," Pter whispered.
"RUN!" Stend shouted, spinning.
"Go ahead!" the Outsider was laughing, a gleeful insane laugh, one that echoed off the walls. "Run! But I'll find you! I'll have my vengeance, in this life or the next!"
Then fire erupted from the Devil, a great plume that tore the world in front of it apart as it passed. Stend looked back for a moment.
The Outsider stared at him, the red light of the Devil's fire flickering across him, his brown eyes glowing in the flame. The Devil roared alongside him, flame exploding from his jaw. But Stend only saw the Outsider, standing there. Waiting.
Stend ran. Though it galled him, though it burned in his soul more than the scarlet flames coming to kill him, he ran from the Outsider.
------
Mahmoud Schahed/Dial
Stend, Pter, and the guards ran for it. Hauzer stopped breathing flame and panted next to me. I took in the warmth that followed Hauzer's attack, letting it soak into my bones.
Even with the crossbow bolt I'd pickpocketed helping, it had been a job and a half to cut through Hauzer's muzzle. Not just because leather is tough as hell and I only had one hand to use, but because he didn't trust me, glaring at me as I used a sharp bolt near his face to cut at the leather. Honestly, I didn't trust him either.
Hauzer may not have been evil, but he had no real good intentions towards me either. He was a bad guy in his first game appearance after all.
Still, I'd gotten it done. A couple of cuts in the right place, a few tugs on the knots and ties, and he was loose. In truth, I think half the reason I was able to do it was that none of the people who had muzzled him had ever expected anyone to want to help Hauzer. Only human-ish hands could have untied him, and the big guy wasn't exactly cuddly.
Then there was our prison. The doors had been covered in steel layers around wood and had been heavily dented from Hauzer smashing into them over and over. But the second he was able to breathe fire without it getting stuck in his mouth and turning his tongue into charcoal, he was able to pour on the heat. Even weakened, that had been enough to get business started.
Now we'd been unleashed. And it was time for revenge.
"I know my way out," I told Hauzer. "We can free the others and get out of the city, get you fed. Then we come back. Deal?"
Hauzer growled, giving me a look.
"Yellow Bastard will be waiting for you, I promise," I grinned. "Mind breaking a wall?"
Hauzer crawled through the door until he was in the hallway entirely. I backed away to let him pass. With a roar, he spun and rose, kicking outward.
The hallway turned into rubble, opening up to the night sky. Hauzer lifted his head into the air and looked up at the night sky. I did the same.
"SKREEEEEROOOOONK!"
The sound that left him reminded me of Godzilla mixed with a lion. Another plume of fire left him, rising into the air and turning night to day for just an instant. Then he turned to look at me. And I began to worry that I'd made a mistake.
He didn't need me anymore. I could see the look in his eyes. That calculating expression. He could leave now. Head off on his own. That wouldn't have been so bad. But he could also kill me. Just being in the vicinity of his flame was scorching. If he tried to attack me with it, even a miss would still superheat the air around me enough to kill me.
We stared at each other.
"I made you a promise," I said softly. "I'll get you food. I'll get you revenge. But if you want to leave? That's up to you."
His large eyes blinked and narrowed. Then he scoffed before lowering his head.
I grinned before climbing onto his back, straddling him just behind his shoulders, my knees clenching to him tightly. "All right Hauzer. Let's do this!"
He roared in agreement, charging forward as the alarms of the city rang about us. We went down a street straight out of a medieval city, his taloned feet crushing the cobblestones, the wind rushing past us, people screaming as they leaped aside to dodge us.
"YAAAAA!" I shouted joyfully, head down low as I felt the rush of escape.
"GRAAGHH!!" Hauzer roared as well, his tail whipping behind us, a wide grin on his saurian features.
I rode on the dinosaurs back through a city built out of time and felt… good. Great, even. I felt at peace.
Ever since I'd come to this world, this Marvel universe, I'd felt unworthy. Given immense power out of nowhere, for no reason I could understand, I'd tried everything to make myself worthy of it. Of every good thing. The Omnitrix when I first got here, the friendships I made with people I'd admired from across dimensions all my life, the money I'd gained from robbing HYDRA, my relationship with Jen. All of it was something I'd worked to be worthy of. But it had always been tarnished by a voice in the back of my head, that self-doubt that whispered it was undeserved.
I was a fake hero. If I didn't have the easy power of the Omnitrix, my friends, my armor, I'd fail.
But now? I'd gotten lucky a few times. But that didn't account for my survival. I'd made it through the jungle and chased off a pack of velociraptors. I'd been given the choice between an easy survival and risking my life for others at my weakest point, and chose to try and save someone. I'd been shoved into a gladiator match and survived. And now, I'd turned my enemies' death trap against them.
I never had to prove anything to anyone but me, and now I had. I was more than just a guy who had the strongest weapon in existence on his wrist, I was able to fight without that tool. Hell, I was able to fight and survive even with a broken arm against superhumans!
All the training I'd done, all the work, had been in an attempt to silence that voice. And now, under the stars, with tons of Earth Dragon under me as we ran together? The voice was faded. Still there, like it was for every human being that wasn't a sociopath. But no longer as insidious as it once was.
The Omnitrix beeped as I thought that. I looked down at it.
White shone from its lens. Then, as I watched, it switched over to green. It was still half-melted and beaten, but it was glowing a bright and oh so wonderful green once again.
"...Now? Really?" I mumbled. "Right when I don't need you for an escape?"
Yeah, this thing had a sense of humor, that was for sure. I tapped the faceplate experimentally with my nose.
The Omnitrix blinked green at me and I couldn't help the warm smile that lit up my face when the dial rose up and the hologram came to life.
So when a giant fireball began to fall from the sky to arc down towards Hauzer and I as we ran through the streets, I didn't dodge it. I didn't leap, I didn't panic. As the big ball of flame approached, I just pressed the Omnitrix against my chest.
"IT'S HERO TIME!"
------
Malia/Raptor Mom
Malia ran with her daughter in her arms through the streets of the City of Saur-Lords, her, legs pumping beneath her as her little girl bounced in her arms. Behind her, the Devil was prowling through the streets, leaving people to run or hide.
"Mommy, mommy, he's coming!" her baby screamed in terror, her adorable scaly features set in childish fear that made Malia's heart ache.
"It's okay baby, we'll be okay!" Malia cried out, ignoring her fear. "Close your eyes, Ami!"
Obediently, her daughter screwed her eyes shut. Malia looked back. The form of the Devil, his three horns high, came after them, a familiar gladiator sitting on his back.
How had this happened? They had been shopping before, having a good day. Then, without warning, someone started shouting about the great Devil of the Arena coming towards them. She hadn't believed it at first. Then it came running towards them, an insane human whooping and hollering on his back as the Devil roared.
Malia had been running since, heading in the same direction as the crowd around them. She'd instinctively headed for the nearest guard tower, which she could see in the distance. Others were running towards the same tower, with guards guiding them in. She knew that the tower was the closest one to the Arena cells, but didn't see any significance to that thought.
Then, a familiar screech drew her gaze to the sky.
It was him. The Lord of Lords! King of the Sky, Cloud, and Sun!
"It'll be okay, Ami," Malia whispered, rushing into the tower. She and the rest of the civilians watched as he spiraled down from the clouds.
His skin was a dusky green, his scales stretched over a taut muscular form. His eyes were deep and wise, set into a pterodactyl's skull. His wings spread wide as he began his attack. His mouth opened wide and he breathed the night air in. When he breathed out, the holy flame came from his eminence. Malia watched in awe as he released a ball of fire the size of a large man, dropping it onto the Devil and gladiator.
It came in an arc, landing on top of the pair and exploding in a plume of red-hot flames. Ami cooed in her arms at the sight.
The Lord of Lords dropped down to land before them. He was even more impressive up close, towering over them all, literally in most cases, metaphorically in all cases. When he spoke, it was in a deep booming voice that echoed. With the flames behind him as he spoke, he cut an intimidating figure, his shadow falling upon them all.
"Guards! I believe you have a job to do!" the Lord said, bringing his hands behind his back to stand proudly, his wings spread behind him, a single loincloth wrapped around his waist.
"Yes, Lord Sauron!" one of the guards shouted. "Get the civilians moving! I want them safe in the tower."
"Most excellent choice, commander!" Lord Sauron smiled, his red eyes glowing. He noticed Malia, then Ami. "Ah, young one! Are you and your mother okay?"
Ami nodded quickly, her eyes wide in wonder, her tail wagging happily. "Y-Yes, Lord Sauron!"
"Lord!?" Sauron barked out, before throwing his head to laugh extravagantly. "My dear, you are but a child! There is no need to worry about such titles as a child! Only the joy of play and learning! Until you have come of age, I am only Sauron!"
Malia's heart swelled at the kindness of her Lord, who walked forward to rub the top of her daughter's head. Ami giggled happily.
A growling sound came from behind Lord Sauron, freezing everyone in their tracks. They stared at the fire, which was still raging.
Then, before anyone could move, a green ball of some sort of goo came rolling out of the fire. Everyone stared uncomprehending, as it spun it's way towards the right, heading towards the arena. As it passed over pieces of stone and debris left in the wake of Lord Sauron's fireball exploding, it gathered the pieces and became larger and larger. The guards who were in front of it had a moment to comprehend this before the now child-size ball came to a stop.
And exploded in a burst of green that sent shockwaves outward, sending the guards flying about. They landed in a heap of broken arms and legs.
"You know," an almost minuscule voice said somewhere. "This alien? In a medieval world? Kinda broken."
More and more green balls were suddenly flung from the fire, rolling towards the arena.
"Get inside, my children," Lord Sauron growled. "I must deal with this threat, and protect our world!"
Malia and the others were pulled into the wooden doors of the tower. The last thing she saw before the doors closed was Lord Sauron taking flight as the world around him exploded apart into fire and green.
------
Mahmoud Schahed/Dial
When the fire came down and I transformed for the first time in days, I had a moment where I'd felt a bit hot. Then Hauzer huffed, and the heat lessened significantly. Didn't surprise me. Fire cannot kill a dragon after all.
(Huh. Wonder how Game of Thrones ended.)
While the fire blazed around us, I began to change. Well, the change was beyond light-speed as always, but I could still kinda comprehend what was happening through it.
First, my body began to shrink, something that surprised me. Smaller and smaller, until I was about the size of a football. My skin became a smoky yellow, then hardened into a carapace of armor. My hands became legs, and two more came from my mid-section. My mouth went vertical instead of horizontal, and a pair of antenna replaced my hair.
"Ball Weevil!"
I stared down at my front left leg in surprise. "Huh. I did expect Humoungosaur," I said in a squeaky voice. Hauzer lifted his head around to his back in confusion, eyes widening at the sight of me. Then he moved to sniff at my new form, snorting a bit. "Still me, big guy."
He didn't seem to know how to take that.
Then again, an insect did kind of make sense in a dinosaur world, considering how big bugs were in this place.
Ball Weevil though… that was broken. I was a living grenade launcher in a place that had just discovered iron was a thing.
If it wasn't for my new insectoid features, a wicked grin would have come to my face. Well. I had promised to carpet bomb this city. Still not gonna kill civilians, but the guys who'd been stabbing me were fair game. "Okay boy. Let's go blow the shit out of this place."
I opened my mouth and a green ball of plasma came out, solidifying into a slimy orb. I tossed in the direction of the arena and watched as it quickly rolled out of the flames surrounding us, absorbing debris to become bigger and bigger. When it hit the guards, the ball just… it was like C4 going off. I could see them sent flying, the shockwave of the explosion breaking arms, ribs, legs, and spines. It was horrific.
"You know," I said in my minuscule voice, raising it for the peanut gallery. "This alien? In a medieval world? Kinda broken."
Good lord, I had severely underestimated how powerful these green balls of explosive were. I needed to dial down the boom on these things if I wanted to avoid killing these guys.
Hauzer growled. I opened my mouth and spat out another ball, then tossed it, before following it over and over. Over a dozen green balls launched out, rolling to become as big as three or four feet before exploding in cascades of green.
Even though I was trying to limit the size of the explosions, they still tossed the guards aside. No one died, but the streets around us started to get covered in broken guard bodies. "Come on, Hauzer! Let's get moving!"
"SKREEEEEEEONK!" Hauzer roared in agreement. He unleashed a plume of flame outwards, turning a group of guards to charcoal. I tried to keep the thought of that from my mind, focusing on my goal instead.
In front of us, something rose up, flying into the air. I stopped throwing explosives to stare at him as he lifted into the air.
Sauron. An enemy of the X-#*!$.
I hissed, my head suddenly feeling like it had been about to burst in half. Damn. The Omnitrix must have still been acting up.
I looked back at Sauron, who had fought Spider-Man alongside Stegron once. He'd also taken on the Avengers a couple of times. He was currently circling for another pass at us. Right, he'd once flame breathed a Black Widow. Not Natasha, the other one.
"Hauzer, let's move!" then I hesitantly added. "And can you stop killing people? I kind of want to keep that a minimum if I can?"
He replied to that by burning someone else alive. This person had thrown a spear at us, but I got the feeling Hauzer would have done it anyway.
"Good talk," I grumbled. Still, it felt good to be on the attack again. No more broken arm, no more broken Omnitrix. Just me, a powerful ally, and my body filled with strength and power once more!
We rushed for the arena, tossing people aside. The pair of us must have made a hell of an image, an orange dinosaur breathing flame while a giant yellow bug on his backfired exploding balls of green plasma that sent Ankylo, T-Rex, and Bronto-Saur-Lords flying about with ease.
We reached the arena in record time.
"Okay, big guy!" I hopped off of Hauzer and spun to look up at him as he leaned down to look at me. "You wanted food, right? There's gonna be tons if you go this way," I scratched out a quick map on the dirt with one of my claws, marking out the kitchens based on my observations of the place. "Should be enough to feed you for decades. I'll meet you there."
He gave me a hesitant look.
"I made you a promise," I said as fiercely as my adorable form could, spitting out a green ball and hopping on top of it. "I intend to keep it. That Yellow Bastard is all yours."
He still looked a little hesitant, but he nodded and spun to head the direction I'd indicated. As he did, I looked at the arena.
Six guards opened the doors that led to the prison cells my allies were in and rushed towards me.
I narrowed my eyes into a smile and ran backward, the ball under me moving forward in a simple display of physics. I quickly reached my top speed, picking up dirt and debris until the tennis ball-sized plasma goo under me became as big as a car. The Saur-Lords in front of me skidded to halt.
"Oh gods!" one shouted, the entire group spinning to run.
"Someone play the Katamari Damacy theme!" I shouted in glee as the ball hit the first guard.
Schloop!
He was absorbed into the ball of plasma goo, spinning inside it like a hamster in its ball. For a funny moment, he stared up at me through the sea of green.
I hit the next guard, then the next, before I leapt off the ball, letting the massive explosive slam into the doors as the last three closed them.
The ball didn't explode all that hard. I'd formed it as more of a bubble than a ball anyways, more to restrain, not kill. It still tore through the doors and sent all six guards flying. The Saur-Lords didn't look like they'd broken anything, but the three I'd rolled around in a demented hamster ball were going to be fighting their lunch for a while.
I landed in the chaos and spat out streams of plasma, wrapping each in restraining webs of the stuff.
"Would you look at that!" I chirped once I was done. "I'm multi-purpose!"
"You're an asshole," one of the guards rumbled, before losing composure to throw up on the floor while stuck to the wall.
"You help enslave people, you have no moral high ground," I scoffed, before running deeper into the prison.
------
Gresh/Saurian, which is different from Saur-Lord.
Gresh watched as the guards ran out of the room, leaving the prisoners behind. A while ago, the guards, along with Stend, had pulled out the Outsider and taken him somewhere.
But not before the Outsider had brought his unbroken arm behind his back and signaled to them.
The Outsider, in the time they had known him, had been odd. When Gresh had first seen him, he'd dismissed him. With a broken arm, what good was he? Gresh had already worked on establishing his rank. As a slave, the only thing worse than simply being a slave was being the weakest one. He had known this, and thus had taken steps to ensure he would not be the one on the bottom of the pecking order.
So, he had continued to do it with the Outsider. For all the Outsider's impressive build, his broken arm had slowed him down. He had not responded to any of Gresh's displays, only taking them. Still, something in his eyes had been defiant. Unbroken.
So Gresh had kept pushing until he tried to push the Outsider aside to steal his food.
Then the Outsider had smashed his head into the floor with a single arm and told him in no uncertain terms to stop.
Gresh was not a man of deep thought and introspection, but he did understand violence. So when the Outsider had offered his food afterward, he knew the gesture for what it was.
Dominance. The Outsider had a broken arm and yet would fight. He took food but did not need to hoard it. He was strong in the way Gresh's mother had been, the matriarch of his family, standing above their petty squabbling, but coming down with a strong blow when her intervention was needed.
So Gresh had watched him. And when the Outsider demanded all listen to him, he had seen all his fellow slaves follow.
Even the Neu-Deustchlander, who hated the Outsider, bowed to him. The Rock Woman, the strongest being in the room, even stronger than the guards, had listened to the Outsider.
The Outsider was a tyrant of some kind. He took the people around him and forced them to become his army. And when they fought on the battlefield, he had stolen the first kill with the sort of eager greed only a tyrant would show. He was a fierce warrior, killing without mercy (Gresh had not seen the look of anguish when the Outsider killed his opponents, only the blood that sprayed.)
Gresh had tried, one last time, to demand something from the Outsider in battle. To stop stealing his kills. And what had the Outsider said?
"Then go get some more!"
Inspiring! If one steals from you, then why despair!? You had already gained that which was stolen! You know you are capable of obtaining it. If it is stolen, then a man of the Outsider's caliber would simply gain it once more! Gain and gain, until any slight against you, was a bump in the road!
To be so uncaring of any other, to dominate so easily, to fight like a demon and yet impart such wisdom!
And then, while he was pulled out, he had flashed those signals. Among the ones he taught them in case of their necessity, had been 'attack, retreat, wait, defend, flank'.
When he had been pulled out, he had flashed two signals. First, 'wait' the symbol a simple hand clenched in a fist. Then, 'attack', the middle finger extended like the blade of a deity, followed by wait again.
Wait to attack. That was what that sequence meant. Even as he was dragged away, the Outsider had a plan to attack.
Gresh knew the Outsider now, saw his eyes as Stend had tortured him. The Outsider had most likely even planned for the torture, had planned for the pain to follow!
So Gresh waited. And when the first explosions began, he was gratified.
"You think it's him," the stone person, Demi the Outsider had named her, asked Gresh.
"Of course it is!" Gresh said to the larger being. "He told us his plan."
"Wait, attack, wait?" the Neu-Deutschlander asked skeptically in an accented version of the common language of the Savage Land. "I'm pretty sure that's not the same as 'I'm about to start blowing things up.'"
"Will he be okay?" the Aerian with a single wing asked softly.
"He's dead," one of the gladiators they'd fought, the Raptor who the Outsider had stabbed, said snidely. "Probably killed in style, the prick."
"You're a prick!" Gresh said, quite proud of the incredible turn around he had made with the insult. "And the Outsider is alive. After all, he helped us defeat you."
"It was a tie," the Anklyo they had also fought said, quirking a scaled eyebrow. "And honestly, it wasn't like there was anything personal. You all fought well," he gave a nod to the Aerian with the single wing, who nodded back with a sad smile on her blue face. "But do you think he's alive, coming back to us, and somehow causing explosions? I know of no weapon that can do such a thing."
The Anklyo's calm assessment pierced through where simple stubbornness had not. For a moment, Gresh's faith faltered.
Then, an explosion came from nearby. Some guards shouted. Another explosion. A scream of pain, and someone joking about babies whining.
The next explosion came from the doorway, followed by a guard tossed into the room wrapped up in a ball of green goo. Everyone stared at the Saur-Lord guard. The T-Rex Saur-Lord stared back at them helplessly.
"I… I don't understand what's happening," he said in wide-eyed confusion.
"You got your ass kicked by cuteness," someone quipped.
They all looked at the door. Then they looked down.
A yellow insect stood there, balanced on a green ball. It waved at them. "Sup guys. Told you I'd come back."
"...Outsider?" Gresh asked, the insane idea popping into his head.
"No way that's-" the Neu-Deutschlander said.
"Oh good, we all speak the same language," the bug said. "First, German Guy? You're an asshole."
"W-What!?" the Neu-Deuschlander said before something registered. "German guy!? My name is Dietrich!"
"Sorry, had to get that off my chest," the insect said apologetically. "I'm sure you're a nice guy, man. I'll help you escape this place, don't worry."
German guy opened and closed his mouth, as if unable to understand what was happening.
"Gresh, Demi, everyone who wants to escape and get free?" the Outsider said in this impossible new form. "I can turn into superpower beings, but that power was gone for a bit. It's back. Now let's kick some ass."
Then it kicked the ball it was standing on at the cage door. The ball exploded, shattering the lock and hinges, letting the door fall to the ground.
"Follow me!" the Outsider spun and rushed out. Gresh immediately moved to follow.
But not before giving the Anklyo a smug look. "I told you!"
The Anklyo gave him a befuddled look. "Told m- You can't take credit for this! No one in their right mind would accept bugs with exploding goo as a possibility!"
Gresh, clearly the wiser of the two, simply followed the Outsider. Demi and the others followed quickly, not wishing to be left behind.
As they left, the Aerian with one wing asked Demi, "So he can just become a bug now?"
"It is the Savage Land, sweetie," Demi said kindly. "A Chicken God is running around out there."
"...At least he is cute, I suppose."
------
Through the hallways, they saw evidence of the Outsiders passing. Strands of green hung about the walls, guards were wrapped up in balls or attached to the walls, and doors had been torn apart. Oddly enough, the disgusting smell and debris that had once filled the place were entirely gone. Now everything smelled almost like the tea that Gresh's grandfather had enjoyed, a hint of spice and warmth to it, but still fresh, and the floors were almost sparkling.
"This way!" the Outsider said in front of them, scuttling his way through the halls on a ball of green goo (later the Outsider would inform Gresh they were highly concentrated plasma). "We should be almost there!"
"Where are we headed?" Demi asked.
"The kitchens!" the Outsider squeaked.
"Is this the time to eat?" the Raptor Saur-Lord grumbled.
"It is for my partner-in-crime," the Outsider said.
Down the hall, a pair of Saur-Lords came running towards them, swords raised. Without missing a beat, the Outsider hopped off the ball he'd been rolling and tossed it forward, the ball exploding and sending the pair flying.
"Down here," the Outsider made another ball and sped forward atop it, somehow outpacing all of them. He led them for a few moments more before a loud sound came from down the hallway. The group came running around the corner, only for all of them to stop in shock at the sight before them.
First, was the human, a man tall, well-built, with some sort of animal fur about his shoulders so that it appeared he was wearing its face as a vest. The man smiled at them, panning his eyes across the group before stopping on Gresh. For just a moment, Gresh felt as though a blade had been pressed to his throat before the man looked at the Outsider and grinned just a bit. He raised the knife in his hand, then stabbed down into the Bronto he'd been holding down with a single hand, an impossible feat of strength for a human. The blade slid into the struggling Saur-Lords eye, slicing deep into the brain and ending its fight.
"Dial! You are alive!"
The other man was even stranger. Made entirely of metal, it towered over them all, it's body built with a very stout strength. The man was holding a pair of Anklyo's by their throats, the two Saur-Lords trying to stab him, only for their blades to bounce off his metal skin without a scratch.
"Mahmoud…" the metal man said softly, tossing the Anklyo's aside to step forward.
"X, Kraven!" the Outsider said with glee. "Where the hell did you guys come from!?"
"Shiny," Demi blurted out, staring at the metal man, X, with avid interest.
"I came the instant you were pronounced missing," X said. "Are you well?"
"Weirdly, I think I made a psychological breakthrough," the Outsider said. "But that doesn't matter now. I want to share all the fuzzy feeling man, but we have business."
"Understood, sir," X kneeled to the Outsider, further proving to Gresh that the Outsider was clearly the leader of whatever nation he came from. "What are your orders?"
"Take the arena," the Outsider's eyes narrowed. "This place is the slavers' center of power. We make it ours, we force them to come on our turf. Lock it down, make them show up."
"A sound plan," Kraven said with a smile. "But they will know this place well."
"They will," the Outsider looked around. "But they don't know my allies, my powers, or how fucking pissed I am. Call in the boys, X. I made two promises. One to a dragon, and one to myself," Gresh reveled in the look of anger in those insectoid eyes. "I intend to keep them both."
------
Author's Note:
Okay... Some people might get mad. Maybe even furious. But I'll let them come as they will.
For now, I'll say I had a lot of fun writing this chapter. And I'll also add one thing. Dial will get the big guy soon. Just not during this little adventure. Humoungosaur was just way too expected for this adventure. I mean, NRG was fun because bringing the Russian Nuclear Reactor on the Russian adventure to stop a nuclear bomb was so great. But I was convinced by my editor, and in fact strongly agree with him, that doing such a thing twice would be bad for story reasons.
But Ball Weevil is perfect. He's a giant bug, first of all, something that fits in really well in the Savage Land. But he's also an explosives expert. In many ways he's one of the Savage Land's worst nightmares. He can sneak anywhere, blow an entire building to kingdom come, survive things that would turn most cars to ash. He's a straight badass. A blend of primitive animal and modern 'blow the fuck out of the world' mentality.
So yeah. I'm sticking to this decision. That said, when the big guy does show up, it'll be a fucking awesome show.
I cant deny I'm disappointed and I expect a awsome I repeat a awsome showing of the big guy, but I'm happy with crazy bug riding a dragon, but when humongousour comes I expect pants shitting from bad guys and shocked awe from good guys and alot of fun from Dial
OutcastXC007
(A Light Upon the River's Gloom)
- Location
- 21° 23' 59.99", -89° 30' 59.99" W
Personally still holding g out for Waybig.
He almost broke through the telepathic shield. I wonder what happens when he finally does because he's been getting closer.
GameDragon
Too Hot To Handle
- Location
- Challenger Deep
Every chapter has one part that is absolutely hilarious, and has me rolling around laughing like a maniac. Thank you for the image of a bunch of dinosaur people being absolutely dumbfounded at the sight of a tiny insect able to create gooball explosives.
My favorite Pokemon based alien
Well, that is if he's the one doing a malicious mindwipe. If he was just diving into Dial's mind and ripping out memories he'd be a douchebag. As it is, he'd be horrified and apologetic if he ever discovered he was doing that.
Oh, don't you worry. His appearance is actually enhanced now, which is great.
Bruh... Way Big is the second strongest form though. Like, Atomix is great, but he's technically only the strongest in terms of practicality. The top two are seen as Way Big, then the obvious one at the top.Personally still holding g out for Waybig.
Way Big is too OP. Which means he'll show up for something insane.
Anger and apologies.
I'm glad you liked it dude!
This was a fun as hell chapter to write!
- Location
- America
Yeah, it's a little hard to feel insecure about your abilities when you just escaped a Slave Arena without your powers while on the back of a fire breathing dragon.
You gotta admit, that is an Alpha move right there
96
I stayed in my Ball Weevil form. I just wanted to enjoy being in alien form for the first time in a while, rather than going back to human. Not because of some deeper reason, just enjoying the moment.
We got to work clearing out the whole arena as fast as we could, blasting aside the guards, rushing out any slaves, and freeing other gladiators. A couple of gladiators, the ones who had chosen to join on purpose, tried to kill us. Those guys got stuck in a wall.
As we ran through the halls, I caught up with X and Kraven, who told me what they had been up to and how they got to us.
------
X and Kraven: Jungle Steel-Reforged!
X and Kraven stood side by side in a field of rice paddies, up to their ankles in the flooded waters. No farmers were in the field right then, so the pair had the time to study the city in the distance, watching people walk in and out of the gates. While there was some diversity, most of those inhabiting seemed to be some sort of hybrid between various species of dinosaur and humans. Intriguing. Any biologist worth their salt would have loved to have known how such beings had come to life.
"So, he was captured then," Kraven said. "Then things have become simpler."
"Simpler?" X asked.
"Cities are interesting to hunt in," Kraven wiped his brow of sweat. "Every trail is instead a street, alley, and hallway. All the nests are clearly marked as apartments, houses, and even simple cardboard boxes. And yet, it is also a compelling place to hunt. You must dodge detection for all eyes, for only in the city do prey gain aid from predators in avoiding your blade."
"...That's called law enforcement," X said after a carefully calculated pregnant pause.
"I am using metaphors," Kraven scowled.
"No, you were not."
"Fine, I just don't like you pointing out things all the time," Kraven scoffed with look at X. "The point I am making is that we are closer than ever before. But I may have to leave you behind now."
X didn't ask why. After all, there were some humans roaming the city, many of them in chains, but a few were clearly free, and dressed in leather much the same as Kraven. None as tall or healthy as Kraven of course, but that was to be expected for peasants in the jungle.
"Do you have your radio?" X asked critically.
Kraven nodded, tapping his ear. "I'll enter the city and find out where prisoners are brought too. While Dial's scent may have faded if the scents of the city mask it, I can still remember it. You should stay out here."
"I would prefer you wait just a moment," X said. "It appears someone wishes to speak with us."
"Yes, it may be best to deal with them," Kraven agreed.
With that, both turned to look behind them, the water around their ankles rippling as they turned.
Standing there looking surprised to have been caught were a young boy and girl. Both were dinosaur hybrids, similar in shape to the various Apatosaurus, Diplodocus, and other massive sauropods that roamed the Savage Land. Thus, despite being the size of a human teenager, X guessed they were but children. The boy had skin colored a vibrant purple and pink, while the girl looked much more brown in color. The boy was also smaller than the girl and clutching at her skirt as he peeked from behind her. The girl was holding a shovel in her hands and staring between Kraven and X with wide eyes. She said something softly.
X took in the language she spoke and compared it to those that he knew. Hm. Similar to East Asian languages in structure at a guess. She spoke further and X began to break down the language as she continued to look at them nervously, her tone questioning but not threatening.
That was good, her continuing to speak. It gave him more to work with. X had long suspected he had a gift for language, since he had little to no issues with taking them in, even for an AI.
In fact, it was one of many things he'd noticed about himself. As an AI, he had a lot of time for introspection. The only AI he had to compare himself to was Jarvis of course, but there were differences between them that were clear. For example, while Jarvis and X both had the ability to take in information faster than any human as well as design several objects, Jarvis was 0.25 milliseconds faster when it came to what could be considered 'support' information and technology, as well as hacking and other aspects of cyber warfare. On the other hand, X was around 0.35 milliseconds faster at developing weapons, learning new military technologies, and learning military strategy.
It showed in their designs when they built their android forms. X had made a combat platform, Jarvis had created a support one.
X believed it came to their origins. Jarvis, at his heart, had been created to aid Tony Stark. To be his ally and helper, later becoming one of his closest friends. While he had later evolved to become an experienced mechanic of weapons such as the Iron Man suits, the core of him was someone made to help people.
X, however, had more complicated origins. He was born of three things. First, the cold and ruthless intelligence of Arnim Zola, a horrific HYDRA scientist responsible for the deaths of millions, trapped in a computer with nothing to do but scheme for decades. Second, Jury Rigg, a being of incredible intelligence balanced by mania and a specialization for 'rough and tumble' engineering, Macguyvering, Mahmoud had called it, but taken to the most extreme level. And finally, Mahmoud himself, someone who, however subconsciously, had his own thoughts and ideas on AI and robotics.
So he became a being that was a combination of those things. The cold scientist, enthusiastic engineer, and warm-hearted hero. He was made from a weapon of military strategy and tactics, molded by an engineer, to aid a hero in matters of combat.
This capacity for languages however, the one he used to translate the girls words as they flowed from her. He believed that came from the Omnitrix. He wasn't sure of it. In fact, to the logical AI mind, this belief was almost an oxymoron. But maybe the watch had more of an influence in his creation than anyone knew.
Regardless of that, he finally managed to piece together something of a lexicon, compared to dozens of languages. In fact, it seemed the young woman's language had been directly influenced by those of many countries and cultures, suggesting someone from outside the Savage Land had created it. Intriguing.
"*Are you from the city?*" the girl asked in her language, looking nervous. "*Why are you standing in our field?*"
"*Are you going to hurt mommy and daddy?* the young boy asked quietly and tearfully.
"*Incorrect,*" X replied back in their language, getting a surprised look from Kraven. "*We are trying to find a friend of ours.*"
The girl frowned, saurian lips twisting. "*A friend?*"
"*Yes. He was lost in the jungle. But we think he entered the city,*" X kneeled down slightly to match their height. "*We just want to find him. Do you know anything important about the city?*"
"*Just the arena!*" the boy finally stepped around his sister, looking eager instead of scared now. "*Momma says all the great heroes fight there! Is your friend a great hero?*"
"*Depends on who you ask,*" X said honestly. "*The Arena. Where is that?*"
"*In the Northern District,*" the young girl said softly. "*Are you really just here to find your friend?*"
X nodded. "*Yes. We will leave now. But I hope you both have a lovely night.*"
"*You too, shiny man!*" the boy waved happily, his long tail wagging, then rushed towards a hut nearby, the girl giving them another suspicious glance before going away. When X rose, he turned to see Kraven giving him a similar measuring look.
"You really have a way with the little ones, don't you?" Kraven asked.
"If I do, I have never had much reason to express it," X said. "I have information on the city. There is some sort of arena deep within it. Based on the dimensions of that building," X pointed out the particular structure, the stone poking above the other buildings and glittering in the sunlight. "That should be it. Based on the historical significance of such structures in other civilizations, as well as the signs of slaves we can see, I believe Dial may have been taken there."
"Hm," Kraven nodded. "Very well. I'll head there and see what I can find."
"I'll be waiting."
The pair parted ways, X moving to hide, and Kraven walking down the trail with a wide smile on his face.
------
As Kraven entered the city on his own, he felt his smile growing. Usually he disliked cities massively. But this own had a spirit that reminded him more of the various villages he sometimes stayed in on hunts. There was an openness to it, a blend of the jungle and the building melding and flowing together with the trees, animals hopping through the branches and leaping off rooftops.
He didn't have long to enjoy it however. Instead he focused on his job, namely tracking down Dial. The Arena, as X indicated, was to the North. Kraven strode through the crowd with his head held high and proud, stepping around dinosaur-driven carriages, dodging a pickpocketer, and ignoring the store owner hawking their wares at him.
It was as he approached the arena that he began to change his gait, eyes panning the city streets slowly. The instant he saw the right alleyway, he ducked inside it. Taking care to make sure that he was unseen, Kraven jumped from wall to wall, making his way up until he had gotten to the roofs. From there he ran across the buildings in a show of agility and speed, staying out of sight of those around him. He noticed a guard patrolling one of the roofs ahead of him. The guard was covered in a natural brown armor that made him look more like a living tank than anything else.
"X," Kraven whispered. "The ones that look like sharp armadillos. What are they?"
"Ankylosaurus," X replied through the radio in Kraven's ear. "Or at least, a member of the suborder of thyreophora known as ankylosauria."
"Interesting," Kraven trailed his eyes across the guard's form. It looked bored, eyes blinking lazily as it walked back and forth, it's three toed feet sending pieces of the straw strewn about the rooftop into the air. It was fascinating to watch a being with reptilian features display such a human emotion as boredom.
Still, Kraven needed to get to the arena, and the guard was in the way.
Kraven moved in a burst of speed, leaping from rooftop to rooftop in a straight line towards the guard.
The Anklyo guard, just about to turn back around, spotted Kraven just as the hunter landed on the same roof as himself. The dinosaur-man had enough time to see the steel knife that spun into Kraven's palm. Then he had a blade in his throat.
Kraven moved on, leaving the guard to fall behind him, and headed for the arena, finally stopping outside on a roof close by, where he kneeled by the edge. "Okay… I'm there. It looks as though we were right."
"How so?" X asked.
"This place is at the center of everything," Kraven said, eyes following the crowd, noting every little point. "Every street leads here. There are dozens of restaurants all about it, as well as posters and little toys being sold. I can even see a couple of plays."
Indeed, a group of cheering children of various species were watching as a pair of men acted out a mock battle with hammy movements, a swooning T-Rex woman in the background acting as the love interest. It was all very Shakespearean.
"Then our plan is simple," X said. "We have to find someway to track him down, if possible with no one knowing we're looking. I'd rather no one take him hostage before we can save him."
A good point. Kraven looked towards the sun, which was dipping in the distance. "It'll be night in just a moment. We should move then. I'll lead you to the Arena."
"Understood," X said. Kraven had to wonder if, for just a moment, he could detect excitement in that robotic voice.
Kraven turned and started leaping from rooftop to rooftop, passing the guard he'd killed on the way without a glance. It was while he was doing this that the explosion came.
Far off, near the arena he had just left, the sounds of stone shattering were followed by a plume of fire rising into the sky. Kraven turned to look at the sight, mildly surprised. This was followed by a loud roar that echoed in the night.
"X, I believe we may be able to move faster than we expected," Kraven said with a savage smile. "We have a distraction."
------
X
As soon as the plan was finalized, X wasted no time. He rose to his feet, pulled his sidearm off his hip, and began running towards the city. He had no wish to kill anyone. But then, he also wanted to do a blitz attack. A simple running assault. Kraven had told him that whatever was currently attacking the city was doing so quickly. They had little time to waste.
So X thundered forward on the road, blue eyes alight with power. Even with his immense weight, the machinery in his body enabled him to run at speeds far beyond even the greatest athletes on earth not named Steve Rogers.
He must have made quite a sight to the guards when he came charging towards them. A man of metal, eyes glowing with an unearthly light, a strange weapon in hand as he came at them faster than any living thing should.
To their credit, the guards immediately prepared to counter his assault. A group of archers immediately came forward, with more people holding spears supplementing them. They wasted no time either, immediately firing arrows at him, with some doing so with crossbows.
The arrows hit X's body, then shattered on contact. He continued to bull forward through the crossbow bolts as well, letting them clatter to the ground.
Someone threw a spear at him. X calculated the speed of the long weapon, followed it with his eyes. In the instant before it could hit him, X snatched it out of the air in a display of incredible speed. Then, still running, he spun on his heel and cocked his arm back. When he threw the spear back, the weapon had all the force behind it that his metallic body could produce. The air split apart at it's passing. It hit the man who had thrown it with enough force to go through him, the raptor man tossed back onto the ground as the spear continued on to pierce through a stone wall behind him.
X didn't give the group time to process the feat. Instead, he raised his revolver. For a normal being, firing a gun while running, especially one as powerful as the massive one X carried, was impossible to do accurately. X had the advantage of an extremely fast mind and a powerful body however. He waited for the exact moments his body would be stable enough to take each shot, pulled the trigger, then kept running. At that pace, he fired off six shots before meeting the group. Where he'd fired, the guards fell, at one point a round going through two men and ripping into the shoulder of another.
Kraven struck at the exact same time. From behind the group, as they scattered in fear from the loud weapon slaughtering their group, Kraven jumped down from a nearby rooftop. He came down with both his bone and steel daggers out, landing atop another guard. When he stabbed down, blood flashed in the air. Someone tossed a spear at him, which Krave sliced out of the air with a proud laugh of joy, jumping at the next person.
That was when X hit the group. He smashed into them like a truck into a wall, sending them flying. Then X kept going.
"You're leaving?" Kraven asked X as the robot passed.
"My only goal is to find Dial," X said quickly.
Kraven smiled, then faced the small group of guards. "Good. More for me! I'll see you there!"
As X continued on, Kraven leaped back into the crowd with a whoop of joy, the guards roaring as they went to fight him in return.
X ignored that to move on. He could hear a series of explosions moving through the city, headed towards the arena. His legs moved faster. Up ahead, more guards were gathering, running the same direction, only to stop and face him when he came towards them. Without skipping a beat, X twirled his revolver to place it back on his hip with one hand while pulling his rifle off his back with the other. The massive double-barreled weapon was set on his shoulder as he ran. He fired twice, so fast the sound of both blasts blended into one. A raptor that would have slowed his run was killed in nearly the same instant a stegosaur guard prepared to tackle X.
He kept running, boots shattering cobblestones, reloading his rifle, then his revolver. Ahead, another explosion sounded out, while behind he could hear Kraven landing to run alongside him.
"They almost killed me," Kraven said conversationally. "Very tough bastards."
"You sound pleased," X replied idly, not really paying attention.
"Of course I am!" Kraven barked out a laugh. "What is the point of a hunt without danger!?"
"Food," X responded.
Before Kraven could say anything else, they found their path blocked by a massive gate made of wood, blocking off the way to the arena. X didn't hesitate. He raised a fist while continuing to run at his full speed, and punched outward at the immediate moment he was about to connect. The full force of his run went into the blow, shaking the entire structure, the wood groaning. X stood before the gate and hit it again, a blow that echoed in the street, the stones beneath him crumbling under his boots.
The wooden gate, standing over three stories tall and thick as a human being, swung open with a crash as the beams barring them shut shattered in a spray of wooden shards under his heavy blows, the metal man flying through the door in a dynamic explosion of wood. Someone shouted in shock as he landed, a Brontosaurus man spinning to punch at X.
X raised his right forearm to divert the attack, then tried to punch his opponent, only for the dinosaur to take the attack with little issue. X's blue eyes narrowed, taking in his opponent a little more. How interesting.
This Brontosaurus wasn't like the others. He was a full foot taller at 8 feet, more muscular, and colored a rich emerald, his body covered in black plate-like armor than acted as a natural defense. And he wasn't scared.
The pair stared at each other for a heartbeat.
"I am Bronto, a lord of the Saur-Lord's," the large dinosaur said.
"X, an AI created by Dial," the android said.
That was all they spoke. X could hear Kraven leap past, shouting. He ignored that.
Instead, he raised his hands up in a defensive stance, the now-named Saur-Lord doing the same. Then, in a blur of motion, they stepped forward and began to brawl.
From the outside, all that could be seen was Bronto and X, their fists blurring at their sides to smash into each other, the pair stood still in the middle of the courtyard just outside of the arena. To X, everything was going in slow motion. He parried, blocked, attacked, pulled back when he himself was diverted, struck in a moment of weakness. Bronto did the same, his eyes harsh on the AI. Someone tried to step into the fight.
"He's mine!" Bronto roared. "Focus on the human!"
An illogical decision. It would have made more sense to have people aiding him in battle. Kraven was currently fighting the other Saur-Lords, taking them on in hand to hand combat. X could see the hunter dueling with a pair of Saur-Lords. Kraven's body was covered in dust and cuts, sweat pouring from his muscular form. Despite this, his smile was downright orgasmic as he took a shallow cut to his forearm to slice into the thigh of his opponent, leaving the Saur-Lord to bleed out on the floor. More Saur-Lords rushed towards Kraven, until he was surrounded.
"Yes, come at me!" Kraven laughed. "Make this a day worth remembering!"
The insane lunatic.
X ignored him for the moment to focus on Bronto. The larger man was more than interesting. He was an anomaly. While all of the Saur-Lord's X had encountered thus far were beyond human levels of power, none had been beyond the ability of an enhanced, trained, or well-equipped human to take down. Until now, as he punched his opponent in the face, only to take a blow to the chest in return.
Bronto had strength comparable to some superhumans. Not the high level ones such as Four Arms, the Hulk duo, or Thor, but certainly enough to fight the Grapplers and Rath. He was also durable, fast, and experienced.
At any other time, X would have found the experience novel, finally having an opponent he could truly test his new android body against. But as of now, Bronto was an obstacle to be removed.
X modified his fighting stance in a single instant, mimicking the fighting skills of the most skilled boxers in the world to dodge the next few punches by mere inches. "Bronto, correct? I'm afraid I have no time to waste here."
"Neither do I," Bronto said in return. The pair had come close to a building during their battle. A missed blow from him shattered a stone pillar. "A prisoner escaped, and is rampaging in my city. I must kill you and recapture him."
X would have smiled if he had lips. "So… he escaped."
"You know him?" Bronto sounded almost conversational as he brought his fist down for a hammer blow, X sliding around it to let his scaled fist smash the floor. "The Devil?"
X thought about the myriad of different forms Dial could take. "I might. But that only means I need to finish this," X's blue eyes narrowed. "I apologize. But it seems I somehow adopted the organic trait of furious determination."
Bronto punched at X's head. But it was too late. X ran the analysis, predicting Bronto's movements, calculating the tensile strength of the area around them, and finally testing it in simulations dozens of times. By the time Bronto's fist had moved a single centimeter, X had a plan.
Robotic fingers wrapped around a scaled fist. They squeezed down, applying enough pressure to gain a tight hold. X spun around, bringing Bronto with him, then grabbed his arm as well. With a heave, he lifted Bronto into the air, spinning in a complete circle before tossing the Saur-Lord into the building, stone and rough glass flying about. X felt a moment of satisfaction when he noted that his opponent had fallen exactly as he had planned, with a small margin for error allowed.
X ran in after him. Bronto rolled for a moment and rose to his feet, the building falling about him. The Saur-Lord looked up and saw a cloud of dust directly in front of him. A pair of blue lights glowing in the dust were all the warning he got before the dust blew apart. Bronto's eyes widened at the sight of X coming at him with blazing eyes. He tried to block, but the fist landed in his solar plexus with quaking force, shattering his ribs and sending shockwaves all around.
In pain, Bronto tried to swipe at him. X employed an elbow block, kicked out at his kneecap, shattering it. Bronto tried to scream, but X chopped with his left hand into the man's throat cutting off his breath. The large dinosaur stumbled forward blindly, trying to wrap around X, possibly to try and crush him.
X's other fist came upwards with just as much power up into the taller beings jaw in a vicious uppercut. Bronto bit his own tongue, his teeth shattering, before he was lifted up and through the roof, blacking out at last.
X spun around and ran toward the Arena again. Kraven, the hunter finished with his own opponents, joined him, more bruised and yet also just as cheery.
They entered the arena to see a pair of Ankylos and a smaller Bronto looking up at them in surprise, the hallway they stood in dripping in portions with green goo. X and Kraven stared at the three Saur-Lord guards.
"Gentlemen," Kraven said with some relish in his voice. "This has not been your day."
------
Mahmoud Schahed/Dial
"Wow, you are just loving this place, huh?" I asked Kraven, tossing a green plasma whip around another person.
"Indeed," Kraven sighed happily, dodging sword slices from a big raptor dude. "The prey, the smells, the very feel of this place calls back to a time forgotten. It is as if I have been walking home all these years, and only now arrived," he mused, ducking under a desperate chop before uppercutting his opponent. "It is truly exhilarating!"
"Home is calming under most circumstances," X pointed out. He had a stegosaurus-lord in his arm, and was choking him out. "Exhilarating would not be used for such a situation."
"You are not fun," Kraven pouted. No, really, pouted.
"This is not a fun situation," X tossed aside the now unconscious Saur-Lord.
"Not if you keep ruining it!"
"Are they always like this?" the German gu-Dietrich, asked me.
"They didn't even know each other last I knew," I looked around. "Okay, we're almost to the kitchens. Everyone okay!"
Demi popped her head around a corner. "We're releasing the last of the slaves we found! Gresh is still stabbing someone!"
"Tell him to stop. And grab one of the gladiators that tried to leave. X, how long until BRIDGE gets here with evac?"
"Six minutes," my android buddy said, reloading that Hellboy style hand cannon he was carrying before firing it down the hall, killing one of the Saur-Lord guards.
"Then that's our time table," I declared. "We get everyone into the top of the stands, and make sure we have control of the main arena by that time."
"You're setting a trap," I looked over at Kraven. He was doing that creepy as fuck smile again. Seriously, I'd interacted with Chernobog, the literal GOD of evil in some cultures, and I still found Kraven creepy.
"In some ways, yeah," I would have smiled if Ball Weevil had lips. "But we need to send a message first.
------
Stend/Slaving Asshole
Stend and Pter stood outside of the arena, looking down at the form in front of them in shock.
Bronto lay in a shattered pile of rubble, being attended to by several medical personnel. Bronto. The Lord of Physical Might, the man who had never known harm or wounds, was knocked out, blood dripping from the corner of his mouth.
"What… did that Demon do this!?" Pter asked, looking at one of the medics, who shook their head.
When the human medic spoke, his voice sounded awed. "No. It was some sort of man made of metal!"
"Man of metal…" Pter whispered. "What has come down on our city?"
Stend stood silent. He was beginning to think he'd made some sort of mis- His fist clenched tightly before the thought could finish, hate in his heart.
"Pter, Stend," the pair turned around, bowing the instant they saw the speaker. Styro stood behind them alone. He no longer wore his robes, trading them for a black piece of chest armor and a pair of gauntlets, an armored waist piece protecting his legs. He had a firm look on his face. "Hauzer has escaped, hm?"
Stend stayed bowing. "Yes sir. Along with the Outsi-"
"Dial."
"S-Sir?"
"That was what he said his name was. Dial. And Hauzer," Styro looked up at the arena. "Many of our guards are dying or injured. The arena, the shining beacon of our civilization, has been taken from us. And from what I have been told, two strange men were seen invading the city, killing their way to join those inside the arena."
Styro looked at Stend. "This is not a prison escape. This is war. So we need to respect our opponents. You underestimated him. So now he is trying to pull everything down around him. Foolish."
Stend wanted to snarl in rage at that, but was stopped when a figure fell from the sky to land in front of them. He faltered, staring at the man who now stood among them. "L-Lord Sauron!"
The tall and powerful Lord of Skies ignored him, instead speaking to Styro. "Action report!"
"A small force has taken the arena," the yellow dinosaur said. "We are unsure of numbers or capabilities."
Sauron's eyes looked positively murderous. "Who is responsible for this?"
"Unknown, though we suspect the Outsider," Styro looked back at the arena. "Someone is coming out."
Stend turned to look at the arena. A man he recognized, one of the Carnosaur-lords who had chosen to be a gladiator, was coming towards them. The man had clearly been beaten up by something powerful. His armor had been torn to pieces, one of his horns were ripped out, and he was limping heavily. The man came towards them as fast as he could, wincing.
"Lord-" the man coughed, trying to breath. "Lord Sauron. I bring word."
"My child," Lord Sauron stepped forward, concern in his eyes as he helped the young gladiator sit. "What happened?"
"The Outsider," the gladiator looked haunted and befuddled. "He has somehow… changed. Into an insect."
"Changed?" Styro asked, before Sauron waved him to be quiet, gesturing to the Carnosaur to continue.
"He told me that he wanted to send a message," the Carnosaur said softly. Sauron nodded for him to speak. The Carnosaur took a deep breath. "They will keep the arena. And he offers you the rest of the city."
They all stilled. Sauron smiled. "Oh?"
"Free all slaves in the city, and give up the trade entirely. Give them," the Carnosaur winced, looking around. "Give them Lord Styro and Lord Stend. These terms are non-negotiable."
"They can't think we'll accept those," Pter narrowed his eyes. "It's some sort of attempt to-"
"Pter," Sauron looked up at his fellow pterosaur. "Don't you understand? This reckless attack is nothing more than an invasion!" Sauron smiled. "An invasion from another nation… Something every empire in history must face at least once. This is the moment that tests the mettle of men like us!" Sauron gave everyone a proud smile. "We will avenge the deaths of our comrades, defeat the invaders, and protect our home. Understood!"
"Yes, sir!" everyone except Stend and the Carnosaur said in unison. Instead, the Carnosaur-lord spoke.
"S-Sir. The Outsider. He had something else he wanted to say," he said hesitantly.
"Oh?" Sauron turned to look at it. "Out with it, my child."
"He said," the Carnosaur looked confused. "Well, he said, 'Tell Karl and Stend I'm waiting for them.' But who is Karl?"
Sauron lost his smile, staring at the Carnosaur. "...How marvelous," the smile returned. "To know that name and it's connection…" Stend stepped back when Sauron turned to look at him. "Stend. I'm afraid that you are not going to be fighting Dial. I want to ask him something."
Stend faltered at that. "B-But-"
"I know, young one," Sauron looked from Stend to the arena. "There will be time for your own goals! But today, I, Sauron, will need to revisit my past and face my future," Sauron clenched his fist, staring at the arena with determination, a proud smile on his face. "I will say this once more! This is the time that tests the mettle of men! Stand proud, all of you!"
He made sure to meet all of their eyes, his red pupils glittering. Sauron began to walk forward, Styro, Pter, and Stend following in lockstep. Stend wasn't sure when or how they'd made a plan to follow him, but the instant Sauron's eyes had locked on to theirs, it was as if they were under his command.
"Let us see what our opponents are made of!" Sauron said with a smirk.
------
Author's Note: It was my birthday on the 2nd of November. Which is weird, because that happens every year on the same day. That being said, my old ass is now 29. Well, shoot.
Anyways, next chapter, Sauron show's what he's made of, as does Ball Weevil. That chapter is mostly done so far, and it's been fun coming with creative ways for the two to beat each other up. Hopefully, I can do it justice
We got to work clearing out the whole arena as fast as we could, blasting aside the guards, rushing out any slaves, and freeing other gladiators. A couple of gladiators, the ones who had chosen to join on purpose, tried to kill us. Those guys got stuck in a wall.
As we ran through the halls, I caught up with X and Kraven, who told me what they had been up to and how they got to us.
------
X and Kraven: Jungle Steel-Reforged!
X and Kraven stood side by side in a field of rice paddies, up to their ankles in the flooded waters. No farmers were in the field right then, so the pair had the time to study the city in the distance, watching people walk in and out of the gates. While there was some diversity, most of those inhabiting seemed to be some sort of hybrid between various species of dinosaur and humans. Intriguing. Any biologist worth their salt would have loved to have known how such beings had come to life.
"So, he was captured then," Kraven said. "Then things have become simpler."
"Simpler?" X asked.
"Cities are interesting to hunt in," Kraven wiped his brow of sweat. "Every trail is instead a street, alley, and hallway. All the nests are clearly marked as apartments, houses, and even simple cardboard boxes. And yet, it is also a compelling place to hunt. You must dodge detection for all eyes, for only in the city do prey gain aid from predators in avoiding your blade."
"...That's called law enforcement," X said after a carefully calculated pregnant pause.
"I am using metaphors," Kraven scowled.
"No, you were not."
"Fine, I just don't like you pointing out things all the time," Kraven scoffed with look at X. "The point I am making is that we are closer than ever before. But I may have to leave you behind now."
X didn't ask why. After all, there were some humans roaming the city, many of them in chains, but a few were clearly free, and dressed in leather much the same as Kraven. None as tall or healthy as Kraven of course, but that was to be expected for peasants in the jungle.
"Do you have your radio?" X asked critically.
Kraven nodded, tapping his ear. "I'll enter the city and find out where prisoners are brought too. While Dial's scent may have faded if the scents of the city mask it, I can still remember it. You should stay out here."
"I would prefer you wait just a moment," X said. "It appears someone wishes to speak with us."
"Yes, it may be best to deal with them," Kraven agreed.
With that, both turned to look behind them, the water around their ankles rippling as they turned.
Standing there looking surprised to have been caught were a young boy and girl. Both were dinosaur hybrids, similar in shape to the various Apatosaurus, Diplodocus, and other massive sauropods that roamed the Savage Land. Thus, despite being the size of a human teenager, X guessed they were but children. The boy had skin colored a vibrant purple and pink, while the girl looked much more brown in color. The boy was also smaller than the girl and clutching at her skirt as he peeked from behind her. The girl was holding a shovel in her hands and staring between Kraven and X with wide eyes. She said something softly.
X took in the language she spoke and compared it to those that he knew. Hm. Similar to East Asian languages in structure at a guess. She spoke further and X began to break down the language as she continued to look at them nervously, her tone questioning but not threatening.
That was good, her continuing to speak. It gave him more to work with. X had long suspected he had a gift for language, since he had little to no issues with taking them in, even for an AI.
In fact, it was one of many things he'd noticed about himself. As an AI, he had a lot of time for introspection. The only AI he had to compare himself to was Jarvis of course, but there were differences between them that were clear. For example, while Jarvis and X both had the ability to take in information faster than any human as well as design several objects, Jarvis was 0.25 milliseconds faster when it came to what could be considered 'support' information and technology, as well as hacking and other aspects of cyber warfare. On the other hand, X was around 0.35 milliseconds faster at developing weapons, learning new military technologies, and learning military strategy.
It showed in their designs when they built their android forms. X had made a combat platform, Jarvis had created a support one.
X believed it came to their origins. Jarvis, at his heart, had been created to aid Tony Stark. To be his ally and helper, later becoming one of his closest friends. While he had later evolved to become an experienced mechanic of weapons such as the Iron Man suits, the core of him was someone made to help people.
X, however, had more complicated origins. He was born of three things. First, the cold and ruthless intelligence of Arnim Zola, a horrific HYDRA scientist responsible for the deaths of millions, trapped in a computer with nothing to do but scheme for decades. Second, Jury Rigg, a being of incredible intelligence balanced by mania and a specialization for 'rough and tumble' engineering, Macguyvering, Mahmoud had called it, but taken to the most extreme level. And finally, Mahmoud himself, someone who, however subconsciously, had his own thoughts and ideas on AI and robotics.
So he became a being that was a combination of those things. The cold scientist, enthusiastic engineer, and warm-hearted hero. He was made from a weapon of military strategy and tactics, molded by an engineer, to aid a hero in matters of combat.
This capacity for languages however, the one he used to translate the girls words as they flowed from her. He believed that came from the Omnitrix. He wasn't sure of it. In fact, to the logical AI mind, this belief was almost an oxymoron. But maybe the watch had more of an influence in his creation than anyone knew.
Regardless of that, he finally managed to piece together something of a lexicon, compared to dozens of languages. In fact, it seemed the young woman's language had been directly influenced by those of many countries and cultures, suggesting someone from outside the Savage Land had created it. Intriguing.
"*Are you from the city?*" the girl asked in her language, looking nervous. "*Why are you standing in our field?*"
"*Are you going to hurt mommy and daddy?* the young boy asked quietly and tearfully.
"*Incorrect,*" X replied back in their language, getting a surprised look from Kraven. "*We are trying to find a friend of ours.*"
The girl frowned, saurian lips twisting. "*A friend?*"
"*Yes. He was lost in the jungle. But we think he entered the city,*" X kneeled down slightly to match their height. "*We just want to find him. Do you know anything important about the city?*"
"*Just the arena!*" the boy finally stepped around his sister, looking eager instead of scared now. "*Momma says all the great heroes fight there! Is your friend a great hero?*"
"*Depends on who you ask,*" X said honestly. "*The Arena. Where is that?*"
"*In the Northern District,*" the young girl said softly. "*Are you really just here to find your friend?*"
X nodded. "*Yes. We will leave now. But I hope you both have a lovely night.*"
"*You too, shiny man!*" the boy waved happily, his long tail wagging, then rushed towards a hut nearby, the girl giving them another suspicious glance before going away. When X rose, he turned to see Kraven giving him a similar measuring look.
"You really have a way with the little ones, don't you?" Kraven asked.
"If I do, I have never had much reason to express it," X said. "I have information on the city. There is some sort of arena deep within it. Based on the dimensions of that building," X pointed out the particular structure, the stone poking above the other buildings and glittering in the sunlight. "That should be it. Based on the historical significance of such structures in other civilizations, as well as the signs of slaves we can see, I believe Dial may have been taken there."
"Hm," Kraven nodded. "Very well. I'll head there and see what I can find."
"I'll be waiting."
The pair parted ways, X moving to hide, and Kraven walking down the trail with a wide smile on his face.
------
As Kraven entered the city on his own, he felt his smile growing. Usually he disliked cities massively. But this own had a spirit that reminded him more of the various villages he sometimes stayed in on hunts. There was an openness to it, a blend of the jungle and the building melding and flowing together with the trees, animals hopping through the branches and leaping off rooftops.
He didn't have long to enjoy it however. Instead he focused on his job, namely tracking down Dial. The Arena, as X indicated, was to the North. Kraven strode through the crowd with his head held high and proud, stepping around dinosaur-driven carriages, dodging a pickpocketer, and ignoring the store owner hawking their wares at him.
It was as he approached the arena that he began to change his gait, eyes panning the city streets slowly. The instant he saw the right alleyway, he ducked inside it. Taking care to make sure that he was unseen, Kraven jumped from wall to wall, making his way up until he had gotten to the roofs. From there he ran across the buildings in a show of agility and speed, staying out of sight of those around him. He noticed a guard patrolling one of the roofs ahead of him. The guard was covered in a natural brown armor that made him look more like a living tank than anything else.
"X," Kraven whispered. "The ones that look like sharp armadillos. What are they?"
"Ankylosaurus," X replied through the radio in Kraven's ear. "Or at least, a member of the suborder of thyreophora known as ankylosauria."
"Interesting," Kraven trailed his eyes across the guard's form. It looked bored, eyes blinking lazily as it walked back and forth, it's three toed feet sending pieces of the straw strewn about the rooftop into the air. It was fascinating to watch a being with reptilian features display such a human emotion as boredom.
Still, Kraven needed to get to the arena, and the guard was in the way.
Kraven moved in a burst of speed, leaping from rooftop to rooftop in a straight line towards the guard.
The Anklyo guard, just about to turn back around, spotted Kraven just as the hunter landed on the same roof as himself. The dinosaur-man had enough time to see the steel knife that spun into Kraven's palm. Then he had a blade in his throat.
Kraven moved on, leaving the guard to fall behind him, and headed for the arena, finally stopping outside on a roof close by, where he kneeled by the edge. "Okay… I'm there. It looks as though we were right."
"How so?" X asked.
"This place is at the center of everything," Kraven said, eyes following the crowd, noting every little point. "Every street leads here. There are dozens of restaurants all about it, as well as posters and little toys being sold. I can even see a couple of plays."
Indeed, a group of cheering children of various species were watching as a pair of men acted out a mock battle with hammy movements, a swooning T-Rex woman in the background acting as the love interest. It was all very Shakespearean.
"Then our plan is simple," X said. "We have to find someway to track him down, if possible with no one knowing we're looking. I'd rather no one take him hostage before we can save him."
A good point. Kraven looked towards the sun, which was dipping in the distance. "It'll be night in just a moment. We should move then. I'll lead you to the Arena."
"Understood," X said. Kraven had to wonder if, for just a moment, he could detect excitement in that robotic voice.
Kraven turned and started leaping from rooftop to rooftop, passing the guard he'd killed on the way without a glance. It was while he was doing this that the explosion came.
Far off, near the arena he had just left, the sounds of stone shattering were followed by a plume of fire rising into the sky. Kraven turned to look at the sight, mildly surprised. This was followed by a loud roar that echoed in the night.
"X, I believe we may be able to move faster than we expected," Kraven said with a savage smile. "We have a distraction."
------
X
As soon as the plan was finalized, X wasted no time. He rose to his feet, pulled his sidearm off his hip, and began running towards the city. He had no wish to kill anyone. But then, he also wanted to do a blitz attack. A simple running assault. Kraven had told him that whatever was currently attacking the city was doing so quickly. They had little time to waste.
So X thundered forward on the road, blue eyes alight with power. Even with his immense weight, the machinery in his body enabled him to run at speeds far beyond even the greatest athletes on earth not named Steve Rogers.
He must have made quite a sight to the guards when he came charging towards them. A man of metal, eyes glowing with an unearthly light, a strange weapon in hand as he came at them faster than any living thing should.
To their credit, the guards immediately prepared to counter his assault. A group of archers immediately came forward, with more people holding spears supplementing them. They wasted no time either, immediately firing arrows at him, with some doing so with crossbows.
The arrows hit X's body, then shattered on contact. He continued to bull forward through the crossbow bolts as well, letting them clatter to the ground.
Someone threw a spear at him. X calculated the speed of the long weapon, followed it with his eyes. In the instant before it could hit him, X snatched it out of the air in a display of incredible speed. Then, still running, he spun on his heel and cocked his arm back. When he threw the spear back, the weapon had all the force behind it that his metallic body could produce. The air split apart at it's passing. It hit the man who had thrown it with enough force to go through him, the raptor man tossed back onto the ground as the spear continued on to pierce through a stone wall behind him.
X didn't give the group time to process the feat. Instead, he raised his revolver. For a normal being, firing a gun while running, especially one as powerful as the massive one X carried, was impossible to do accurately. X had the advantage of an extremely fast mind and a powerful body however. He waited for the exact moments his body would be stable enough to take each shot, pulled the trigger, then kept running. At that pace, he fired off six shots before meeting the group. Where he'd fired, the guards fell, at one point a round going through two men and ripping into the shoulder of another.
Kraven struck at the exact same time. From behind the group, as they scattered in fear from the loud weapon slaughtering their group, Kraven jumped down from a nearby rooftop. He came down with both his bone and steel daggers out, landing atop another guard. When he stabbed down, blood flashed in the air. Someone tossed a spear at him, which Krave sliced out of the air with a proud laugh of joy, jumping at the next person.
That was when X hit the group. He smashed into them like a truck into a wall, sending them flying. Then X kept going.
"You're leaving?" Kraven asked X as the robot passed.
"My only goal is to find Dial," X said quickly.
Kraven smiled, then faced the small group of guards. "Good. More for me! I'll see you there!"
As X continued on, Kraven leaped back into the crowd with a whoop of joy, the guards roaring as they went to fight him in return.
X ignored that to move on. He could hear a series of explosions moving through the city, headed towards the arena. His legs moved faster. Up ahead, more guards were gathering, running the same direction, only to stop and face him when he came towards them. Without skipping a beat, X twirled his revolver to place it back on his hip with one hand while pulling his rifle off his back with the other. The massive double-barreled weapon was set on his shoulder as he ran. He fired twice, so fast the sound of both blasts blended into one. A raptor that would have slowed his run was killed in nearly the same instant a stegosaur guard prepared to tackle X.
He kept running, boots shattering cobblestones, reloading his rifle, then his revolver. Ahead, another explosion sounded out, while behind he could hear Kraven landing to run alongside him.
"They almost killed me," Kraven said conversationally. "Very tough bastards."
"You sound pleased," X replied idly, not really paying attention.
"Of course I am!" Kraven barked out a laugh. "What is the point of a hunt without danger!?"
"Food," X responded.
Before Kraven could say anything else, they found their path blocked by a massive gate made of wood, blocking off the way to the arena. X didn't hesitate. He raised a fist while continuing to run at his full speed, and punched outward at the immediate moment he was about to connect. The full force of his run went into the blow, shaking the entire structure, the wood groaning. X stood before the gate and hit it again, a blow that echoed in the street, the stones beneath him crumbling under his boots.
The wooden gate, standing over three stories tall and thick as a human being, swung open with a crash as the beams barring them shut shattered in a spray of wooden shards under his heavy blows, the metal man flying through the door in a dynamic explosion of wood. Someone shouted in shock as he landed, a Brontosaurus man spinning to punch at X.
X raised his right forearm to divert the attack, then tried to punch his opponent, only for the dinosaur to take the attack with little issue. X's blue eyes narrowed, taking in his opponent a little more. How interesting.
This Brontosaurus wasn't like the others. He was a full foot taller at 8 feet, more muscular, and colored a rich emerald, his body covered in black plate-like armor than acted as a natural defense. And he wasn't scared.
The pair stared at each other for a heartbeat.
"I am Bronto, a lord of the Saur-Lord's," the large dinosaur said.
"X, an AI created by Dial," the android said.
That was all they spoke. X could hear Kraven leap past, shouting. He ignored that.
Instead, he raised his hands up in a defensive stance, the now-named Saur-Lord doing the same. Then, in a blur of motion, they stepped forward and began to brawl.
From the outside, all that could be seen was Bronto and X, their fists blurring at their sides to smash into each other, the pair stood still in the middle of the courtyard just outside of the arena. To X, everything was going in slow motion. He parried, blocked, attacked, pulled back when he himself was diverted, struck in a moment of weakness. Bronto did the same, his eyes harsh on the AI. Someone tried to step into the fight.
"He's mine!" Bronto roared. "Focus on the human!"
An illogical decision. It would have made more sense to have people aiding him in battle. Kraven was currently fighting the other Saur-Lords, taking them on in hand to hand combat. X could see the hunter dueling with a pair of Saur-Lords. Kraven's body was covered in dust and cuts, sweat pouring from his muscular form. Despite this, his smile was downright orgasmic as he took a shallow cut to his forearm to slice into the thigh of his opponent, leaving the Saur-Lord to bleed out on the floor. More Saur-Lords rushed towards Kraven, until he was surrounded.
"Yes, come at me!" Kraven laughed. "Make this a day worth remembering!"
The insane lunatic.
X ignored him for the moment to focus on Bronto. The larger man was more than interesting. He was an anomaly. While all of the Saur-Lord's X had encountered thus far were beyond human levels of power, none had been beyond the ability of an enhanced, trained, or well-equipped human to take down. Until now, as he punched his opponent in the face, only to take a blow to the chest in return.
Bronto had strength comparable to some superhumans. Not the high level ones such as Four Arms, the Hulk duo, or Thor, but certainly enough to fight the Grapplers and Rath. He was also durable, fast, and experienced.
At any other time, X would have found the experience novel, finally having an opponent he could truly test his new android body against. But as of now, Bronto was an obstacle to be removed.
X modified his fighting stance in a single instant, mimicking the fighting skills of the most skilled boxers in the world to dodge the next few punches by mere inches. "Bronto, correct? I'm afraid I have no time to waste here."
"Neither do I," Bronto said in return. The pair had come close to a building during their battle. A missed blow from him shattered a stone pillar. "A prisoner escaped, and is rampaging in my city. I must kill you and recapture him."
X would have smiled if he had lips. "So… he escaped."
"You know him?" Bronto sounded almost conversational as he brought his fist down for a hammer blow, X sliding around it to let his scaled fist smash the floor. "The Devil?"
X thought about the myriad of different forms Dial could take. "I might. But that only means I need to finish this," X's blue eyes narrowed. "I apologize. But it seems I somehow adopted the organic trait of furious determination."
Bronto punched at X's head. But it was too late. X ran the analysis, predicting Bronto's movements, calculating the tensile strength of the area around them, and finally testing it in simulations dozens of times. By the time Bronto's fist had moved a single centimeter, X had a plan.
Robotic fingers wrapped around a scaled fist. They squeezed down, applying enough pressure to gain a tight hold. X spun around, bringing Bronto with him, then grabbed his arm as well. With a heave, he lifted Bronto into the air, spinning in a complete circle before tossing the Saur-Lord into the building, stone and rough glass flying about. X felt a moment of satisfaction when he noted that his opponent had fallen exactly as he had planned, with a small margin for error allowed.
X ran in after him. Bronto rolled for a moment and rose to his feet, the building falling about him. The Saur-Lord looked up and saw a cloud of dust directly in front of him. A pair of blue lights glowing in the dust were all the warning he got before the dust blew apart. Bronto's eyes widened at the sight of X coming at him with blazing eyes. He tried to block, but the fist landed in his solar plexus with quaking force, shattering his ribs and sending shockwaves all around.
In pain, Bronto tried to swipe at him. X employed an elbow block, kicked out at his kneecap, shattering it. Bronto tried to scream, but X chopped with his left hand into the man's throat cutting off his breath. The large dinosaur stumbled forward blindly, trying to wrap around X, possibly to try and crush him.
X's other fist came upwards with just as much power up into the taller beings jaw in a vicious uppercut. Bronto bit his own tongue, his teeth shattering, before he was lifted up and through the roof, blacking out at last.
X spun around and ran toward the Arena again. Kraven, the hunter finished with his own opponents, joined him, more bruised and yet also just as cheery.
They entered the arena to see a pair of Ankylos and a smaller Bronto looking up at them in surprise, the hallway they stood in dripping in portions with green goo. X and Kraven stared at the three Saur-Lord guards.
"Gentlemen," Kraven said with some relish in his voice. "This has not been your day."
------
Mahmoud Schahed/Dial
"Wow, you are just loving this place, huh?" I asked Kraven, tossing a green plasma whip around another person.
"Indeed," Kraven sighed happily, dodging sword slices from a big raptor dude. "The prey, the smells, the very feel of this place calls back to a time forgotten. It is as if I have been walking home all these years, and only now arrived," he mused, ducking under a desperate chop before uppercutting his opponent. "It is truly exhilarating!"
"Home is calming under most circumstances," X pointed out. He had a stegosaurus-lord in his arm, and was choking him out. "Exhilarating would not be used for such a situation."
"You are not fun," Kraven pouted. No, really, pouted.
"This is not a fun situation," X tossed aside the now unconscious Saur-Lord.
"Not if you keep ruining it!"
"Are they always like this?" the German gu-Dietrich, asked me.
"They didn't even know each other last I knew," I looked around. "Okay, we're almost to the kitchens. Everyone okay!"
Demi popped her head around a corner. "We're releasing the last of the slaves we found! Gresh is still stabbing someone!"
"Tell him to stop. And grab one of the gladiators that tried to leave. X, how long until BRIDGE gets here with evac?"
"Six minutes," my android buddy said, reloading that Hellboy style hand cannon he was carrying before firing it down the hall, killing one of the Saur-Lord guards.
"Then that's our time table," I declared. "We get everyone into the top of the stands, and make sure we have control of the main arena by that time."
"You're setting a trap," I looked over at Kraven. He was doing that creepy as fuck smile again. Seriously, I'd interacted with Chernobog, the literal GOD of evil in some cultures, and I still found Kraven creepy.
"In some ways, yeah," I would have smiled if Ball Weevil had lips. "But we need to send a message first.
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Stend/Slaving Asshole
Stend and Pter stood outside of the arena, looking down at the form in front of them in shock.
Bronto lay in a shattered pile of rubble, being attended to by several medical personnel. Bronto. The Lord of Physical Might, the man who had never known harm or wounds, was knocked out, blood dripping from the corner of his mouth.
"What… did that Demon do this!?" Pter asked, looking at one of the medics, who shook their head.
When the human medic spoke, his voice sounded awed. "No. It was some sort of man made of metal!"
"Man of metal…" Pter whispered. "What has come down on our city?"
Stend stood silent. He was beginning to think he'd made some sort of mis- His fist clenched tightly before the thought could finish, hate in his heart.
"Pter, Stend," the pair turned around, bowing the instant they saw the speaker. Styro stood behind them alone. He no longer wore his robes, trading them for a black piece of chest armor and a pair of gauntlets, an armored waist piece protecting his legs. He had a firm look on his face. "Hauzer has escaped, hm?"
Stend stayed bowing. "Yes sir. Along with the Outsi-"
"Dial."
"S-Sir?"
"That was what he said his name was. Dial. And Hauzer," Styro looked up at the arena. "Many of our guards are dying or injured. The arena, the shining beacon of our civilization, has been taken from us. And from what I have been told, two strange men were seen invading the city, killing their way to join those inside the arena."
Styro looked at Stend. "This is not a prison escape. This is war. So we need to respect our opponents. You underestimated him. So now he is trying to pull everything down around him. Foolish."
Stend wanted to snarl in rage at that, but was stopped when a figure fell from the sky to land in front of them. He faltered, staring at the man who now stood among them. "L-Lord Sauron!"
The tall and powerful Lord of Skies ignored him, instead speaking to Styro. "Action report!"
"A small force has taken the arena," the yellow dinosaur said. "We are unsure of numbers or capabilities."
Sauron's eyes looked positively murderous. "Who is responsible for this?"
"Unknown, though we suspect the Outsider," Styro looked back at the arena. "Someone is coming out."
Stend turned to look at the arena. A man he recognized, one of the Carnosaur-lords who had chosen to be a gladiator, was coming towards them. The man had clearly been beaten up by something powerful. His armor had been torn to pieces, one of his horns were ripped out, and he was limping heavily. The man came towards them as fast as he could, wincing.
"Lord-" the man coughed, trying to breath. "Lord Sauron. I bring word."
"My child," Lord Sauron stepped forward, concern in his eyes as he helped the young gladiator sit. "What happened?"
"The Outsider," the gladiator looked haunted and befuddled. "He has somehow… changed. Into an insect."
"Changed?" Styro asked, before Sauron waved him to be quiet, gesturing to the Carnosaur to continue.
"He told me that he wanted to send a message," the Carnosaur said softly. Sauron nodded for him to speak. The Carnosaur took a deep breath. "They will keep the arena. And he offers you the rest of the city."
They all stilled. Sauron smiled. "Oh?"
"Free all slaves in the city, and give up the trade entirely. Give them," the Carnosaur winced, looking around. "Give them Lord Styro and Lord Stend. These terms are non-negotiable."
"They can't think we'll accept those," Pter narrowed his eyes. "It's some sort of attempt to-"
"Pter," Sauron looked up at his fellow pterosaur. "Don't you understand? This reckless attack is nothing more than an invasion!" Sauron smiled. "An invasion from another nation… Something every empire in history must face at least once. This is the moment that tests the mettle of men like us!" Sauron gave everyone a proud smile. "We will avenge the deaths of our comrades, defeat the invaders, and protect our home. Understood!"
"Yes, sir!" everyone except Stend and the Carnosaur said in unison. Instead, the Carnosaur-lord spoke.
"S-Sir. The Outsider. He had something else he wanted to say," he said hesitantly.
"Oh?" Sauron turned to look at it. "Out with it, my child."
"He said," the Carnosaur looked confused. "Well, he said, 'Tell Karl and Stend I'm waiting for them.' But who is Karl?"
Sauron lost his smile, staring at the Carnosaur. "...How marvelous," the smile returned. "To know that name and it's connection…" Stend stepped back when Sauron turned to look at him. "Stend. I'm afraid that you are not going to be fighting Dial. I want to ask him something."
Stend faltered at that. "B-But-"
"I know, young one," Sauron looked from Stend to the arena. "There will be time for your own goals! But today, I, Sauron, will need to revisit my past and face my future," Sauron clenched his fist, staring at the arena with determination, a proud smile on his face. "I will say this once more! This is the time that tests the mettle of men! Stand proud, all of you!"
He made sure to meet all of their eyes, his red pupils glittering. Sauron began to walk forward, Styro, Pter, and Stend following in lockstep. Stend wasn't sure when or how they'd made a plan to follow him, but the instant Sauron's eyes had locked on to theirs, it was as if they were under his command.
"Let us see what our opponents are made of!" Sauron said with a smirk.
------
Author's Note: It was my birthday on the 2nd of November. Which is weird, because that happens every year on the same day. That being said, my old ass is now 29. Well, shoot.
Anyways, next chapter, Sauron show's what he's made of, as does Ball Weevil. That chapter is mostly done so far, and it's been fun coming with creative ways for the two to beat each other up. Hopefully, I can do it justice
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Rogue Gemini
Wanderer without a Twin
- Location
- Here
Wonderful update and happy belated birthday! I even have an image of a cake for you!
Great work and happy belated birthday
GameDragon
Too Hot To Handle
- Location
- Challenger Deep
Happy belated birthday! For some reason, I thought you were at least thirty. Is Karl the real name of Sauron?
- Location
- texas
You know, not that there was anything wrong with using Ball Weevil, but I can't help but think of the impression Upchuck, eating everything that stands in his way and then vomiting up explosions, would have made.
Karl Lykos. Yeah, Marvel wasn't exactly subtle there with the wolfman metaphor.
And yes, happy birthday. DC.
In point of fact I just had my birthday before yours.
Karl Lykos. Yeah, Marvel wasn't exactly subtle there with the wolfman metaphor.
And yes, happy birthday. DC.
In point of fact I just had my birthday before yours.
- Location
- America
Come on Karl, let Stend die first, then you can ask him a question!
Preferably after Stend has been turned into chunky salsa by Ball Weevil explosion.
Preferably after Stend has been turned into chunky salsa by Ball Weevil explosion.