RKMBs Forums .::Important::. Writer's Block THE END OF THE MESSAGE BOARD LEAGUE

Mandelovia was in chaos. To put it lightly.

Prometheus gripped his smoke tightly between his teeth. Surveying the lower steel district of the town from the roof of an abandoned apartment building, the thirty-floor height gave him a perfect view of the morbid dance that his team currently engaged.

To his far right, where the ocean bled into the Cassady Waterway at the foot of Mandelovia's mountain range, Bibbo and LLance continued strafing runs against LL's arch-nemesis, Larry Lance.

Pro wasn't worried about them. They were the senior officers. Old hands at the games of death. They could hold their own for the moment.

Battalions of the undead Third Riech continued to swarm the southern shoreline. His favorite vampire was ambitiously finding new ways to keep a percentage of the corpses at bay. And, with a few of the battleships smoking in the harbor, logically Pro knew that 'Hell's Navy' must be having encounters with the ocean's true master.

But, even with all of their efforts, they were going to need back-up. Soon.

Near the Palace, in the center of 'Old Mandelovia', Shock and the newcomer, Ghaelon, seemed to be doing okay with a few Triceratops and some very nasty looking T-Rex's, but what suprised, and, some would say, horrified, Pro the most was what seemed to be something in the range of ten thousand Joker1's.

The combined laughter was deafening.

Thick, black smoke melted into the already black sky, billowing from sporadic fires. Ruptured water mains flooded entire blocks. Power lines flailed with searing sparks along disaster areas that used to be homes.

And the bodies.

Most of the population had already fled, or was in hiding. But, not all had made it.

And yet, as Pro began to scan towards the Palace, he noticed the amount of corpses began to shift from human, to sprawling, mutilated members of the invading legion.

And in their pulsating midst, near the front gate of the Palace, one ex-mage stood his ground with fury and grace.

"...we're not ready for this..." Pro sighed, standing straight up, as another loud explosion rocked the city, three blocks away. "We need back-up."

"The MBL?" Malvana asked, watching Danny Hearn plummeting into the bay, a dark creature from the bowels of the pit, clinging to his back.

"Incommunicado." Pro shook his head.

Malvana frowned.

"How do you know that? You've been in Egypt for the past four da--"

"JUST trust me..." Prometheus waved impatiently, racking his mind for a solution.

He turned quickly towards Malvana.

"Listen, I need you to go wait in the plane--"

Malvana opened her mouth to protest, Pro quickly cutting her off.

"--JUST IN CASE we need to get out of here in a hurry. Okay? Please? Just trust me."

She paused, studying him, then nodded, slapping him sharply on the ass for no good reason, and headed for the stairwell.

Pro slid his wrist communicator on, and quickly adjusted the settings.

"Bibbo!" he yelled over the growing chaos. "Listen, I've got a plan to--"

"Pro! Good to hear your voice man!" Bibbo yelled through the static. "But, I'm a little busy at the--UNGH!--moment! If you've got a plan, then do it!"

"Just following protocol..." Pro smiled.

"Fuck protocol! We need help!"

"Back-up's already on the way....just hold out for a little longer..." he said, placing the tele-link into his ear.

|||||Klarion||||Update|||||

|||||The 4th MAN is headed for Port-Pad C with a contigent of agents as we speak||||the 9th and 15th are already deploying their squads across the Canadian and African borders, respectively|||||Three more assualt teams are entering Chinese air space and Titan's group is holding Germany|||||

|||||Good||||Get ready to patch-link me|||||

|||||To whom?|||||

|||||TOMB||||All of them|||||

|||||Ask a silly question||||Get ready||||3||||2||||1|||||

|||||TOMB, this is Prometheus, pardon the mental intrusion, but there is no time for formalities||||We are not going to stop this horde with brute force||||I've got a plan||||The strategy is as follows|||||

|||||Danny, pull yourself away from the harbor, and give LL some back-up|||||

|||||Nemo, I see from your thoughts that you have a plan of your own for the commander of these forces||||Continue with your original plan||||I've got your back just in case it fails|||||

|||||Joker1, head for the harbor and assist Mordecai|||||

|||||Shock, find a fortified position, and begin an internal power build-up||||Force all of your will power into crunching your electrical forces into a coherent electro-magnetic pulse||||Don't release it until I give you the word||||Don't doubt yourself||||I know that you can do it|||||

|||||Bibbo, extract yourself from the situation, and ring-up a flying whatever to swing by and pick me up|||||

|||||Ghaelon, converge on Avatar, near the front of the Palace||||Bibbo and I will meet you there|||||

|||||We can do this, guys|||||

|||||We're TOMB|||||

Immediately, everyone sprang into action. They all had their doubts. About themselves. About each other. But, any plan was a good one. And, it gave them something they desperately needed at the moment.

Hope.

Pro had barely replaced the tele-link back into his pockets, when the whine of belt-thrusters roared across the rooftop. Instantly, Bibbo's strong, rough hands scooped him up by his collar, flying both men down towards the center of town.

"Nice thrusters..." Pro smiled.

"Yeah...a 'Simon Williams' special..." Bibbo nodded with a grin.

Ghaelon was running to meet them as they landed only a few feet from the front gate.

"Bald one! I have come. What is to be our victory?" Ghaelon asked, his unearthly accent curling every vowel with an odd hum.

"'Bald one?!'" Pro winced.

"HOW DARE YOU enter my mind without permission!!" Avatar yelled with indignation, as he made his way, wearily, through the flames.

"Now is not the time, Kreagan..." Pro commented.

Avatar raised a short sword.

"Perhaps it IS, Prometheus....perhaps it is the perfect time..."

Pro stopped, studying the man's eyes.

They were glazed with a feverish torment. One so enthralling, it could only be self-induced.

"Or..." Pro began, staring at the man, "...perhaps your current battle-lust is opening painful wounds that cut deeper than a sword...."

Avatar narrowed his eyes at him.

"...perhaps, you wish to lose yourself to it. Fall into a suicidal malaise, maybe. Perhaps, you hope that death here...now...will quench the torment you flail your soul with constantly..."

Avatar lowered his sword, sighing deeply.

And, for the first time in a long time, Kreagan's eyes...softened.

"Death....death would be no different than my life..." he muttered.

"Did you learn nothing from your experience during the 'Know' conflict?" Pro asked. "Everyone makes mistakes, Avatar. Everyone. Stop tormenting yourself. Because, quite frankly, I haven't the time, or patience right now to convince you of this. You need to beleive it yourself. Here. Now."

Avatar studied Pro a bit, shuffling the hilt of the sword in his palm.

"We need you." Bibbo stated flatly, staring at the ex-mage.

Avatar finally sighed, quickly swinging the sword behind him, decapitating a lumbering zombie.

"What's the plan?" he said in a flat voice.

And Pro knew that was all he was going to get from the man right now. It was enough.

"First, Bibbo..." he turned to TOMB's leader. "I need you to shunt all of the Joker1's back into their realities..."

Bibbo's mouth hung open.

"Excuse me?" the sailor asked wide-eyed.

Pro folded his hands together, becoming exasperated.

"The ring, Bibbo. Use the ring. Conjure portals. Gateways. Honda Civics. WHATEVER. We need to re-balance the dimensional quotient here."

"But, Pro, even if I can do this, I don't know HOW to send each one back to their original timeline." he explained, briefly cutting his eyes skyward as a fleet of demons flew over.

Prometheus turned towards Avatar.

"But, Kreagan here, does. Don't you?"

Avatar stared at him.

"I renounced my abilities--"

"DID YOU RENOUNCE YOUR KNOWLEDGE? YOUR EXPERIENCE?" Pro shouted becoming irritated. "You DO still have memories and knowledge of the multiverse, through the ethereal planes, do you not?!"

"Well, yes, I--"

"Bibbo will provide the power! YOU just guide him with the details!" Pro stated, quickly turning to Ghaelon.

"You."

"Me?"

"Yes. You. You're a sorcerer, are you not?"

"You are correct, in that I am master of neo-mystical arts tha--"

"Right, right, right! You're a sorcerer." Pro nodded, quickly lighting a cigarette. "How are you on physiological dampening fields, attuned to electromagnetic frequencies?"

Ghaelon cocked an eyebrow, completely baffled at the words.

Pro just gritted his teeth, rolling his eyes.

Avatar turned from his conference with Bibbo, speaking a few words to Ghaelon, spelled with letters that don't exist.

Explaining what Pro needed. In mystical terms.

"Ah. Yes. I can do that." Ghaelon nodded.

"Then, get ready to wrap every living being within a fifty-mile radius...EXCEPT the dinosaurs..." Pro stated, flipping his wrist-comm on. "Shock! How are you holding up?"

The frequency rolled with static, as Shock's energies were becoming apparent.

"ZZZZHZZHZHHZ***ust hurry upZZZZZHHHHH" his voice seeped through, obviously under alot of strain.

"Bibbo?" Pro turned.

Bibbo held his hand up, looking at Avatar for a brief moment. Kreagan just shook his head.

"Okay...as long as Av' has his sums right....here goes..." he mumbled, before closing his eyes.

Instantly the ring flared white light, spraying out across the city.

Hundreds of dimensional 'Boom-Tubes' began opening within the vicinity of all the cackling Joker1's. Pulling them through with gusts of dimensional turbulence.

Bibbo gritted his teeth, straining as he held all the portals open.

"...that's it..." Avatar guided him. "...three levels below life....four above idea....like baseball, Bibbo...like baseball..."

The tubes began collapsing as the last remaining Joker1's disappeared.

Bibbo fell to the ground, heaving for air.

"Son of a BITCH! You ARE the best, o' fearless leader!" Pro smiled, quickly turning towards Ghaelon. "Ready?"

The Mage nodded, flinging his fingers into the air. Unlike Avatar's normal blue-mix-green mystical signature, Ghaelon's energy appeared a reddish muddle of exploding micro-stars and whistling snowflakes.

All across Mandelovia, anything with a heartbeat suddenly found themselves surrounded by a pink aura.

Except the prehistoric nuisance of the dino-hordes.

Pro flipped his comm-link on.

"NOW SHOCK!" he yelled.

There was a funny, dizzying white strobe-flash of light from some six blocks away. It lasted half-a-second.

But, that's all it took.

Every dinosaur within fifty miles suddenly convulsed, their heart's natural rythym interrupted by the EMP pulse.

Danny the T-Rex choked out some nasty curse words, before collapsing from a massive heart attack.

"YES!!" Shock yelled with glee, jumping up and down.

"I KICK ASS!!" he yelled over the comm-link.

"Yes you do..." Pro laughed.

"I'M THE BOMB!!"

"Yes you are..."

"I'M GOING TO LOOK LIKE A TOOL IF I KEEP YELLING INTO MY WRIST LIKE THIS!!"

"Yes you will..."

"Well, that takes care of the dinosaurs, and the Joker1's..." Bibbo began. "But, what about the Nazi battalion, and Larry Lance's horde?"

Prometheus took a drag from his smoke, calmly slipping his gold pocket watch out, flipping the piece open.

"Well...." he mumbled, studying the time. "...that's going to take a bit more of a direct approach..."

Instantly, teleportation discs began to appear all over the city. First, as sizzling white lines of energy, then, slowly rising up, revealing their occupants.

And Mandelovia was invaded for a second time today.

By the meta-human forces of M.A.N.

"Right on time...." Prometheus smiled.

[ 08-26-2001: Message edited by: Prometheus of The X ]