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No Man is an Island

The octect of heroes lie on their backs defeated once more, even with the power of silver they were no match for the determined Duo of Ra, Selket, and Reeva’s technology. Looming over them the trio savored the victory.

“And now, animals, it ends.” Reeva sneered as she held her staff high over her head.

There was a sudden flash of light at the end of the gnarls of wood and the 8 heroes were gone. Jason’s eyes fluttered open weakly as he came back to consiousness. The soft wet dew of fresh rain had turned his grassy bed slick and moist as he got back to his feet. His body ached as he rose and as his faculties returned he noticed something. He was alone. When last he was awake there were 7 others beside him, not none. The jungle was hauntingly quiet. Not a sound reached him save for the sound of own shoes crunching the foliange under him.

“Bro?” he shouted, only to hear his own voice echo back.

“Claire? Tara?”

Again only his own voice returned to him.

“Anybody!” he screamed with rising panic.

Finnally a voice responded, “You are alone.”

Jason’s heart jumped for a moment, but the voice was familiar, too familiar, his own.

“Who are you!” he demanded “Where are my friends.”

“You have no friends.” His own voice echoed back.

Fingers trembled as he reached up and felt his lips “Where am I!”

His lips moved in response “Alone.”

“Am I loosing my mind?”

“Perhaps, you are talking to yourself.”

Jason’s hand moved to his black box, he shouted out the activation key but nothing happened.

“My…my powers.” His voice trembled.

“Even they have abandoned you.” His lips said.

“The others…” his thoughts trailed, “They have to be somewhere.”

“They don’t want you.” His lips mocked him.

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Michael awoke with a start on the grassy plains of some forign soil. As he rose the sounds of a battle not to far off caught his ears. Without thought he grabed his blackbox and was transformed. Dashing toward the source of the sound Michael soon came to a pitched battle between 2 beings locked in mortal combat. One was human and wielded a long pole capped by a curved blade the other looked like some twisted onstrosity of the pits of hell. Immediately Michael charged the more demonic of the duo who wielded a length of chain weighed at both ends with a trio of blades. His sword was in his hand as he put himself between the combatants and the chains wraped around his blades. With a quick swipe the clains flew out of the monster’s hands, hurled aside with Michael’s blade. Michael heard the man behind him move and he ducked and rolled aside as the spear man impaled the monster on the end of his staff. Micheal rose to greet the man, extendeding his hand in friendship.The man laughed, a cold dark laugh. Slapping away Micheal’s hand he rummaged through the monsters pockets, drawing a gem. He held the gem overhead and laughed again. Inside Micheal’s mind he heard a forign voice.

“What is your world stranger?”

“Me? Oh…Earth.” Micheal thought.

“Earth….” The man thought back at him. “I will enjoy raping its spoils now that the last Guardian is dead.”

And then the stranger was gone. Micheal stood there in mute shock, his gaze drifting down to the demon that lie slain at his feet.

“He, he was the hero.”

The power failed him and Michael was once again human. A fire ignigted in his eyes as he rose “Maybe, maybe I still make amends, get the gem back. Tyranasaurus Rex!”

But nothing happened. He envoked the keyword again, and again. Nothing. Michael looked to the sky as something streeked away, no not something, someone, and ther release was all his doing. Micheal collapsed to the grass under him, and began to cry.

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The grass was warm as Tara awoke, her muscles ached in pain, her fingles curling around something long and hard. As she got to a crouch she brought the item into view. A long curved kuris caked in dry blood greeted her. Her gaze drifted down to see her clothes choaked red in the stuff, her hands bathed in it and as she felt her face the dried blood was there two. She dropped the blade and got to her feet, her heart pounding as she saw the scene under her feet, her friends, her family, everyone she ever loved lie dead, gutted like fish by marks she knew was the blade in her hands. Tara screemed, a scream so primal it rose the birds and shook the very island to its core.

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Kenny awoke with a start, the cold feeling of steel under him chilled him even through his clothes. As he rose to his feet in the dim light of the command center his gaze drifted to Rotoscope slumped as if asleep on the grond.

“Do machine men dream of electric sheep.” He mused.

The command center was cold, few of the systems were online, even Zardoz was absent. Kenny made his way to the controls, turning his gaze to the display.

“Let’s see what’s going on here.” He thought to no one in particular.

The display came to life showing a lifeless city, hundreds, thousands of machine men like Rotoscope lie sleeping.

“Computer, what happened.”

After a moment he got his response.

“Inagural testing of the Soul Transfer device proved promising. Moving on to wide scale application however resulted in a inverted reaction chain. Withing 16 hours all of the people of the test world ended the ‘dead sleep’ state. All attempets at revivication have failed. Procedure spread like a virus and soon Zardoz as well as all “Soul Machines” in the universe went off line.”

Kenny trembled, “No…This can’t be true.”

His eyes drifted to his hands, now shaking visibly. “How could I make such a miscalculation? I’ve doomed billions of lives!”

Kenny dropped to his knees and broke down into tears.

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“You failed us.”

The words of Michael brought Claire to a rude awakening, as sh rose from he grass she found herself surrounded by hundreds, thousands of people. They are all translucent and stretched for miles around her. Micheal was near, quickly she tried to leap into his arms but passed right through him.

“You failed us, Claire.”

Realization dawned a moment later. “Your all ghosts.”

They mocked her again. “Failed us.”

“You failed.”

“Fauilure.”

Claire “Your all dead…because…I…”

“Failed us…”

Claire broke down into tears a moment later.

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Malcom awoke in a cold sweat, as he rose to his feet he was drawn to the sound of a commotion not to far off. Quickly he picked up pace to find the source. Thunder cracked the placid sky as Malcom arrived. Tara, Micheal, Jason, and Trinity were already on the ground, their heads blown open like satter cantaloupes. Fatts and Styx in their gang colors held smoking guns.

“The Crypts don’t like traitors, or the friends of traitors.” Styx intones gravly

“You murderers!” Malcom growls.

In a instant his hand is at his anckle, drawing his own .45. A second later 2 shots ring out and Fatts and Styx drop to the ground a moment later, their heads a mass of bone and flesh pooling in the grass. Malcom freezes, his body tense as a knot as he drops the gun from his hands. His body trembles.

“What have I done.”

His own voice mocks him in the silence, “It was all so easy, one second, 2 shots. And 2 more bodies go to the graveyard.”

Malcom dropped to his knees as the tears flowed.

“It was so easy, so natural. You are a destroyer not a protector.”

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“Don’t get up.”

A heavy boot held Trinity’s face to the ground, the voice belonged to Micheal.

“You made me love you only to turn around and stab me in the back. Litterally.”

This was Malcom.

“But I was being controlled.” She pleaded, trying to get up, but she was being hend down.

“Why should we trust you?” this time Kenny

“How do we know you won’t betray us again.” Claire said.

“I’m sorry, please, let me up, let me see your faces, I’m not a animal!”

Tears streaked Trinity’s face as she began to struggle to get out of the hold.

“Then behave.” Jason said, “Behave and we won’t have to punish you like a disobedient dog.”

Trinity quieted, her tears soaking the grass under her. “Please, let me up.”

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Tara’s scream made Jason’s bones shake. Unsteadily he rose as the sound penetrated into his thoughts.

“Tara! She’s in trouble!”

Jason turned toward the sound, and bolted off, his own voice continuing to mock him.

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Slowly Tara rose her head as she heard someone approaching. Within seconds of each other Trinity, Jason, Micheal, Malcom, Claire, and Kenny appeared in the clearing. They are stared down at the dead bodies in mute shock before them disappeared, as did the blood on Tara. The 7 rose as realization dawned.

“It was all a trick.” Kenny spoke aloud. “A illusion.”

“Hey…where’s Hydro?”

The seven looked around franticly as the very air seemed to shimmer and a wizard like creature appeared, Hydro Hag bound up to a pole behind him.

“I am the Wizard of Illusion, and this is my island. It’s a pity the frog had no soul to construct a nightmare from. Even worse that one of your own was able to reach the others. But this ends now.”

“We couldn’t agree more.” Tara growled.

The 7 were shaky as their drew their transformation devices and they trembeled as they invoked the power. As a group though they took a strong gasp of air and prepared for the battle. Suddenly Reeva’s staff appearned and the wizard gre to mammoth proportions before it vanished.

The 6 marines took a deep breath and summoned their war mechs while Trinity made her way to Hydro Hag to release her. Away from the city the marines had a rare chance to cut loose. The devastating power of the tank formation’s cannons and the dragons missles sent the wizard sprawling to land on the other side of a mountain rainge. The Tank switched to warrior formation and the last thing the wizard saw was one very large swond coming straight for him before his explosion shook the island. The island shook violently and the warrion lowerd its hand long enough to gather Trinity and Hydro Hag to take them inside the cock pit of the warrior with the others. As the island began to hemorage and fall apart the duel mech waded intothe ocean and toward home.

Moon Shy

Claire cleared her thought as she pushed up from the couch she was sharing with Trinity, Tara, and the Hydro Hag in her human guise, The boys stopped what they were doing and looked up to her surprised.

“Something wrong? You were just getting your flow down.” Michael asked.

“Cha, like no way. I just need to powder my nose.”

Micheal nodded as Claire made her way out of the cosy living room. Using the moments distraction he took the opertunity to look at Tara and Kenny who were tinkering with some new device that looked like a striped down VCR player.

“So what Team Egghead gonna do for the talent show.” Micheal joked.

“It’s a portable audio synthizer, we’re utilizing the solid disc technology of the power chamber to encode audio and eventually video onto a thin plastic disc.” Kenny explained.

“Think boom box but instead of a CD it’s a sort of mini disc.” Tara broke it down.

Malcom shrugged “Look I hear yeah, the whole march of technology is your thing, but do we really need something more compact then a CD?”

“Oh definitely, Reeva uses magnetic bubble memory in her technology, no mechanical parts to wear down, no disc to break, far superior to searth standard.” Hydro began. “And she and Zardoz have been out of the universal loop for over a millinium, can you imagine how far their native worlds have progressed since the days of the last team of powered space marines? And Earth is even further behind the curve on technology. You think Mistress Reeva is the only homicidal monster out there.”

Micheal was silent a moment as his gaze locked on the device. “Kenny, if you two finish this what kind of impact will it have on world technology?”

Surpprised by the comment Kenny looked to Micheal, “Well if I can get my head around the technology at the command center were looking at a total media storage revolution. Imagine having your compters hard drive stored on a small box the size of a open wallet. Or even on a smaller scale a portable drive the size of a quarter that can hold 8 hours of your favorite movie. Any service that relied on computers would have terabytes of data in their pockets.”

“Terabytes?” Trinity wondered aloud.

“Ok, so you know how that picture Kenny emailed us last year was 1.5 MB?” Tara begins. “Ok now a Terabyte or TB is 1024 Gigabytes or GB, and a GB is 1024 megabytes, MB.”

The others nodded slowly.

“What could anyone need that much data for?” Malcom wondered.

“Let me give you a more contemporary example. If we were to to translate our powered form to data it would be equal to several GB. Imagine having all of our abilities maped and recorded on a mini drive?”

“You’re not seriously implying…” Trinity started.

“One day, there may be a marine team of our own, created with the technology of Earth. One day we may have our own army of them. All that power in the hands of the police so they could safly and effectively combat the mired super powered threats of Earth.” Kenny explained.

“But first we gotta get memory storage up to par.” Tara said bringing Kenny down to Earth.

After a moment Claire returned as Micheal made his way next to Tara and Kenny.

“Mind if I lend a hand then?” Micheal inquired.

Claire giggled “And the geek squad assimilate another of our fold.”

“Want me to blast them to de program them?” the Hydro Hag said jokingly, reaching for her hydro pack.

The 8 all had a good laugh at that as Claire began singing again.

Elsewhere, Imp and Sloth appear on Earth, a beastly lupine like creature with them. As the three appear Imp laighs manicly as he points to the populace, even as they begin to run.

“Go! Go Fido, destroy!” Imp giggled devilishly.

The wolfman growled as he looked down at Imp “Don’t call me Fido, monkey boy.”

“Oh touchy,” Sloth commented and he took the hyperactive Imp by the ear and disappeared.

A moment later a squadron of 8 of the clay men appeared with the wolf man.

The water cascaded down Jason’s worn body, penetrating and washing away his stresses. Stresses magnified by the sudden beeping of his communicator watch. With a sigh he shut off the water and steped out of the shower, wraping himself in a towel before he activated the watch.

“What the prob?”

“We have sightings of clays and a wolf creature down town. The others are already en route.” Rotoscopes voice responded.

“I’m on my way.”

In a few moments the gathered team was in down town, the clays stiring up chaos while the wolf creature was nowhere to be seen. The team all looked to Micheal for a moment before they dove into the fight with the clays.

“Split up, find that wolfman. Green, Yellow, Knight? Can you 3 clean up the clay?”

“I should be able to pound my way through them on my own.” Jason commented.

“Alright, the rest of us will split up then.” Michael amended “But be careful.”

The 7 nodded, breaking off into different directions while Jason drew his blaster and charged at the creatures of clay.

The Docks
Tara moved about cautiously among the werehouses of the docks, that monster was laying low somewhere in the city and she suspected the docs. Trinity and Hydro were investigating downtown near the clays in case he was there, while the rest of them were searching much further areas of the city. Tara wasn’t sure why but she felt positive the wolf man was here. Blaster draw she moved with caution through the run down string of docks, only the scrambling of a few vagrants kept her from feeling like a lone rat in a maze. The sound both quiet and full of noise, the random suffelings of the vagrants echoing foot steps or of some scrap of jump rummaged from a garbage pile. She was gade she couln’t smell the urine that caked the walls she walked among.

There! Movement, a items dropped as it was hurriedly knocked from it’s place by a runner. Not wanting to hit an innocent she leveled her gun but held her fire.

“Halt, who the hell’s over there!” she demanded.

A speck of light from a window caught the gold of her armor casting refracted light about her as she approached slowly. A rat skitted past her feet. She turned in time to catch a metal pipe across her jaw, her blaster flying from her fingers ans she was sent spiraling to the ground, catching herself on her hands and knees. She too a moment to shake the stars out of her eyes as she got ready to push back to her feet.

“Stay right where you are.” A strong and domineering male voice demanded.

She tried to turn and face her attacker only to have the pipe hammer her sides. She coughed as the pipe smashed into the back of her head, and the world went black. When Tara came two she found herself naked on the dingy floor, a heavy lengy of chain was affixed to her neck. As she tried to stand the chain drew taunt and dragged he crashing to the ground. Slowly she got her knees and palms under her. The chain drew close to its limit as she stood there on her palms and knees but remained somewhat slack.

“Just the way I like my bitchs,” the voice sneered.

In panic she felt around for something, anything, but found nothing. Something long and stiff pressed up between her legs, and then between them, into her. She screamed even as she felt the first thrust and the explosion of some demonic seed into her canel. The object trusted again, burying itself deeper, and she felt solf fur and smooth padding cup her breasts while the weight of a hairy, or rather furry, body pressed down atop her. Her hips moved of their own accord, gyrating to the thrust as she felt something large, lke a buldge or knot force its way tightly into her on the third thrust. Her body seemed to be fighting against her as she began to moan, gyrating her hips against the monster, taking him deeper int herself.

A shiver of disgust ran through Tara’s body. “Why am I doing this, why am I letting this thing do this to me!”

But as much as he mind rejected the idea her body embraced it. The wolfman began to pant as his thrusts got harder, faster, and probed ever deeper. Tara was saved then by the abrupt arrive of two forces within seconds of each other. The first was her team, arriveing just in time to see her deep in the thrall of her body’s betrayal, and the 7 of them were stunned speechless. What must she look like to them, down on all fours, her tounge lolling out of her mouth, panting, her eyes glazed in passion. Then Reeva appeared in person. Tara could not see her directly but the reflections on the helmets of her team were good enough.

Reeva gave the wolfman a glare that could melt rock, her voice pitched high in murderous rage, “You were created to destroy them, not breed with them. When these brats are dust I don’t want to deal with the unholy spawn of your seed and one of their wombs!”

Her friends moved to act against the alien witch that loomed behind Tara. After a moment a bolt of energy surged through her causing her body to sieze up. And then the weight of her mate, her lover, disappeared in a instant. Still chained Tara could do nothing until she felt the chain snap and she was hurled against a wall with tremendous force. Lightning cascaded over her body as she was held pinned to the wall.

Reeva, now in view of Tara, smirked. “There now his trainted seed wont find what it seeks and cause me a headache in 20 years.”

And like that she was gone, Tara hit the ground hard, her body heavy and sore as her friends rushed over. Kenny powered down, bending in to help Tara up while Jason offered a coat to her. Tara’s eyes drifted up to Kenny and she looked away as memories flooded back.

“Oh god Kenny, I’m sorry, it was like my, your body had a mind of it’s own. I’ve dishonored us both.”

Kenny, the ever obsessed techno geek held Tara in his arms strongly, reassuringly. “No, it was not your fault, don’t ever think that. My body, your body, it doesn’t matter. You can’t be held accountable for actions beyond your control.”

“But I…” Tara shivered, then snorted, “The power to resist all domination, ha! I think my powers are defective.”

Hydro Hag coughed “Not to interrupt but…well…it doesn’t count as domination if you let them in. Think of your power as a massive iron gate. It resists all attacks to breach it but if you open the gate and the invaders attack from within…Your not immune to cooersion, only overt domination. Jason’s power of determination is more along the lines of a constant, he is focused toward the task and can no to swayed, of course Reeva can use that against him by playing on the resultant stouborness. Each of your qualities has a flaw. But at the same time those qualities give you great strength when in their natural elements.”

“Another time Hydro, another time.” Malcom said.

Kenny held Tara close. “Let’s go home.”

Soon, the moon hange high and full in the sky, and in light of recent events all 8 champions feel the oppressive shadow of Reeva, her view of earth unobstructed with the face of the full moon shining down on Angel’s Basin. Asleep in their beds the champions are rudely awoken in the dead of night. But only the Hydro Hag, Michael, Malcom, Claire, and Kenny appear at the command center.

The giant floating head of Zardoz, as well as a few other alien faces is a unpleasant midnight vision for our heroes causingthem all to jump in shock as Zardoz and his allies speak in their booming voices.

“Three creatures have been sighted in town, similar to the one from this afternoon, on a wolf, one a cat, one a rodent. Each leads a unit of the clay minions. You must act fast before your people are badly hurt in numbers.”

Micheal looks around cautiously “Where are Trinity, Tara and my bro?”

“We can not locate them.” Rotoscope starts “We fear the creatures may have abducted them.”

Malcom’s fist balls tight as he reaches for his black box. “Then we’ll have to make those monsters tell us where they are,”

The other all nod “Agreed.”

Even against the 5 ofthem united the 3 beasts and their clay minions prove more then a match for our heroes. The battle is swift and brutal and Zardoz is forced to extract them to the command center to tend their wounds. Wounds that run deeper then just the physical as the reality sinks in, 3 of their own are missing, and they were helpless to stop the attackers.