RKMBs Forums .::Important::. Writer's Block The Strange Tales of MAN

A slender figure coated in liquid-black popped from super-luminous down into sub-light near the Kiper Belt. Slowing even further down, starlight bled the void of space back into normal view. He paused in the silent ink, only the one-dimensional glint of solar heat seperating his form from that of the eternal background. Numerous mountains tossed slowly above and below, his singular white eye locating a suitable target. Caressing the subspace foundation of invisible stellar forces, his body pushed forth until it reached the proper position. Four-fingered hands reached out, halting a chunk of primal rock in place. Looking it over for a moment as if considering the the worth of the object, a voice spoke unheard in the vaccum. But in his head, it rang clear and true.

'Suitable core. Diamond/copper/iron.' the silent, subconsious voice spoke through him. 'Geometry processing. Coordinates feeding. Three seconds.'

The figure turned in place, pulling the massive asteroid with him.

'Locked. Loaded.'

Another voice, much more real than the other, yelled into hearing...

Zip! We've got five minutes until it reaches full-consciousness! Half-light throw, NOW!, Multi-Tom barked.

The figure called Zip tightened his grip on the rock, the absence of gravity or weight allowing him to rare it back with one hand. The stars started bleeding back again, as he drug the rock into sub-light speed, racing back out into the void. Then, with a hard jerk forward, he finally tossed the rock into the fringe edges of a self-made wormhole.

A few million miles away, on another larger rock most people call 'Earth', eleven other people with names just as strange battled a three-story chrome android. A flat, humanistic face with a rectangle mouth and eye slits, it's overall features resembled that of an old 1950's B-flick invasion come to life.

Which is exactly what it was.

Storming through the Arizona desert, it was on a direct course for California.

"Bass it out, Mary!" Multi-Tom ordered from atop a huge plateau. Behind him, three of his chronal-variants frantically coordinated plans of attack, retreat, and overall odds of success. Streaming overhead, the woman named 'The Mary' rushed towards the gleaming behemoth, taking in a breath so long, and so hard, it should have ruptured her lungs.

A wave of sonics roared from her mouth, rattling Tom's back molars. Fragments of the plateau crumbled to the earth below, her voice shaking the very firmament of the desert.

The giant shrugged through it, still on its zombie-like course west.

A gaunt young man, his dark hair shaved close on his head, ran towards the massive wall of a foot. His leather boots completely improper for this type of terrain, the jog was a bit uneven. Even still, he ran towards it. His brown leather jacket flapping in the gusty wake of the metallic goliath, he was making headway closer and closer. Then, finally getting just close enough to the heel...waiting in time for its pause of step....he flung his body straight at the chrome hide. His form seemed to stick like velcro for a brief second, then, melted completely into the metal.

"Billy is in!" The Mary called out, Tom clenching his fist with a subtle success.

The giant paused again, seeming to struggle with the idea of moving forward.

Zip popped back into the atmosphere above them, yet, none could see him.

"I think it's working!" a blindfolded woman called 'Scopes' reported from an adjeacent plateau.

"No..." Tom-4 shook his head to his other counterparts. "...no, it's taking too long. He's not going to make it."

The prophetic nature of the words was not lost on them. The soul-vagrant called 'Fantastic Billy' immediately popped back out of the back of the giant, falling helplessly towards the ground. The Mary swung in low, catching his full weight.

"Close!" she cheered him on.

"No damn cigar!!" Fantastic Billy replied, his body covered in a thick sweat.

"Zip is super-luminal." Tom-6 replied from behind the leader. "He will be here forteen seconds ago, and should fall back into temporal sequence three seconds from now."

"Three...two...one..." Tom-prime counted out, Zip suddenly appearing overhead in the atmosphere above them. "Report!"

Zip's hands danced with sign language, information spilling out for all to see.

One-minute, thirty until impact. Seven meters northwest.

"Gotcha!" Tom yelled, giving him the 'thumbs-up'. "Nails!! Eso!! Seven meters northwest!! MOVE!!"

On the ground below, trailing the giant, two figures ran towards its heels.

J.J. "Nails" Milligan slammed both hands flat into the back of the left heel, while The Esoteric Man's eight-foot frame flathanded the right. Nails' own ubermensch genetics began grinding powerful forces along his back, and arms. And, the man with sinews of a white-dwarf mass, and the heart of the first human being, joined in.....the two timeless champions grappling to break physical laws.

Overhead, a sonic boom and flare of light lit up the evening sky, as Zip's asteroid was quickly becoming a meteor.

"Join." Tom-prime commanded. His chronal variants complied, vanishing as they immediately re-synched into a joint timeframe with the man. The Mary immediately swooped down and grabbed the singular commander by the shoulders.

"Break, break, break....and I mean book-it, people!" Scopes ordered through her headset, Zip grabbing her from her similiar perch.

The meteor roared overhead...

Eso and Nails grunting in red-faced, veined strains, as they pushed the monolithic creation into the right position.

"There!" Eso choked through a final, grunting breath. They both released their grips, a young girl running to their position...

"Get down!" Weaver yelled, both men immediately curling into a ball on the ground. She jumped next to them, diamond spindles coursing from her fingertips. Less than a second, and a perfect diamond dome covered them.

Just in time, as The Impossible Machine looked up with a vacant stare at the blooming death headed straight for its chest...

****

Ten Minutes Later...

"Nice hole..." Fantastic Billy commented. He and the others were making their way into the scorched crater. Fragments of the former giant lay scattered in a chaotic debris pattern.

"Goddamn!! Yor' a really, really boring twat, you know that?" a grey-haired figure barked with guttural tone next to him. "Who gives a fuck about a hole?!"

"I do." Billy smiled with shrug.

Both men were right. Billy did care about holes. And he was, indeed, a really, really boring twat.

"Cocoon spotted." Scopes said over the headset, she and four of the others making their way to the bottom.

They okay?

She made her way up to the diamond, dome-like ball sitting at the bottom of the burnt earth. A few quick taps with her fingernail, and the diamond began falling away from the inside. She, Billy, and the grey-haired man peered into the forming hole.

"Hello gents..." Eso nodded with a smile, holding what looked to be a royal flush. "...did we win?"

He, Nails, and Weaver were huddled around each other playing what looked to be poker.

"Of course we won!" Billy grinned, helping them out. "We always win!"

"Affirmative." Scopes replied. "Everyone accounted for."

Good. Hurry back. Strider is picking up more of King Chaos' murder-machines littering the next two centuries. We need to move forward.

The Mary picked up a small chunk of the chrome metal, slipping it into one of her zipper pockets.

"For the trophy room?" Billy asked.

"No, scrapbook." The Mary replied. She then pointed up towards the top edge of the crater. "THAT'S for the tropy room."

Billy followed her finger up. At the top of the crater, a twelve-year-old African shaman levitated the half-remains of the giants massive head, bringing it along with the group.

"1275, and the Brick Warriors. 2189, and the Protocol Agents. And now 1954, and The Impossible Machine. And this is only my first week!", Billy exclaimed, grinning from ear-to-ear, "I love this job!!"

"M.A.N. ain't a job, cunt.....it's a lifestyle..." the grey-haired Dagwood Foreman grunted, as they all headed back up the crater...

The Beacon.

A twelve-story, white-washed, granite-mixed marble lighthouse, spinning through the temporal void at six-years-a-second.

Home.

***

Dear Mom,

Billy here again. No idea what the exact date is. But, I'm heading into Week Two of this fantastic new job.

Sorry. 'Lifestyle'.

Joining MAN is the greatest choice I could have made for my life. The things I've seen. The places I've been to already. I can't even begin to explain it. You wouldn't believe me, anyway. And, hey, you shouldn't. No one could ever wrap their head around what we do. Not without doing it themselves. But, I wish you could see it. Traveling in time. TIME, mom! Battling strange creatures and crazy villians. It all sounds so....childish. Yeah, that's it. Childish. I'm a thirty-year-old man getting PAID to live a ridiculously childish life. A life of fantasy and fiction and high-adventure. Nothing compares.

Maybe it would help if I told you about some of the people I'm working with. They're a close group. Not really 'family', I guess. Well, not in the literal sense. More of a tightly-woven team. Professionals....if there is such a thing in this lifestyle....that all follow a singular purpose.

To save. Not just the world. Not just the universe. But, everything. To save everything.

Let's see.....where to start...ah!

Tom.

"No, no, no, no, no!" Tom-Prime sighed, cupping his forehead in exasperation.

Thomas Franta. 'Multi-Tom'. Fifth-generation grandson of the actual inventor of temporal travel tech. He's, like, a genius. No, I mean, really. The kind of thinker that just trying to comprehend some of his ideas makes your nose bleed...

"Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!" Tom-7 (the one with the goatee, Billy had noted) insisted. "Minimal casualties. Estimated odds of succes--"

TOM-14: "One-thousand-seventeen--"

TOM-4: "--to twelve-against."

"Inflitration, and deception!" Tom-Prime countered. "Twelve-to-one!"

Came up with the idea of a cross-continuum think-tank........made up of just himself. Well, himself from various timelines.

"The Hypno-Whore is with him!" Tom-7 banged his hand on the table with insistence. "She will see RIGHT through it! If we want to take PsychoSyndicate, we have to go in full-force, frontal attack--"

TOM-14: "Is Bremalian part of their frontline?"

TOM-4: "Until May 13, 2742, when he's killed by The Mary..."

TOM-14: "Then we hit them on May 14th..."

Thing is, his intelligence is so consistent with the universe, that a few hundred of his alternate reality counterparts came up with the exact same idea, at the exact same time. So, finding it easy to breech the barriers that divide the seconds, they've all joined forces. He basically created a team of himself.

"Listen!" Tom-Prime jutted a finger at number four. "We've talked about that. Don't go blabbing about agent's future events--"

TOM-4: "She's not here. She can't hear me!"

"We don't know that...remember, seraphim-hearing." Prime shook his head. "...voices carry."

Oh yeah.

'The Mary'

"...ungh!...ungh!......ungh!....yeeeaahh....oh! Yeah, that's it! THAT'S IT!" The Mary grunted and moaned, pulling at the sheets with clenched fists. "Ungh!! Fuck YEAH!!"

The Mary is the Anti-Virgin.

They found her in last decade of the calendar we understand. Chained and imprisoned by the Habit of End, in the Last Convent.

Nails gripped her waist a bit tighter, increasing the impact of his sweaty thrusts, ramming into her from behind. She moaned and grunted harder, her long blonde hair flailing back and forth with a impassioned rhythym.

The first and only mortal born with seraphimific gene codes. Seems she's the one all the Christians have been worried about for the last few million years. The beast-bearer. The end-bringer. The Anti-Virgin.

"FUUUUCCKKK MEEEEEE!!!" The Mary screamed as her body convulsed, legs muscles locking tight with a massive orgasm.

Oh yeah....and if she doesn't have sex at least once a week, she'll automatically give birth to the armageddon-child.

I know. I'm embarrassed I had to tell you that, mom. But, I wanted to be honest with you about these people. Even the special, cosmic 'super-heroes' have curses and blessings that is of an adult-nature. That's just reality. No comic books, here.

"YES! YES! YES! GIVE IT TO ME!!" The Mary bellowed, now riding and grinding Nails from on top, gyrating like a piston. "FUCK THAT PUSSY!! FUCK IT!! THAT'S YOUR PUSSY!! THAT'S YOOOOUUURRRR PUSSY!!!!"

Ahem. Yeah. Let's move on...