The skies scream with chaos and the ground shakes with vicious thunder. The oceans begin to emit boiling hot steam. The deserts eject into the sky, causing awful tornadoes of dust and sand. The planet Alternae, pulled to it's knees, has never seen such devastating events before. Since that wormhole opened up, it's been alternate universe hell.
Not everyone suffers, however. Alternae still has some fight left. One of those citizens and Viking warrior, The Mighty Mjaeder walks down the empty sidewalk trying to expose himself too as much of as this strange new world as possible. He comes across an electronics shop with televisions pointing out towards the street. It's a news broadcast reporting about the unknown, unmanned mechanized weapon floating just outside the planet's gravitational pull.
“I here your mighty call, my mighty friend!” The Mighty Mjaeder shouts, pointing his hammered fist at the screen. “Be still! My might will save you!”
The Mighty One begins to crouch down, powering up a great leap, but before he takes flight, the electronics shop behind him explodes in a concussive blast that rocks the Viking's mighty senses momentarily, slamming him into a pair of parked cars across the street. He looks up, slightly stunned, as bricks and debris bounce back down on the surface.
In the rubble of the explosion, stands a a single, ordinary-looking man. Nothing seems too strange about him, except that he stands virtually unscathed in the blast. He wipes a layer of dust from his hair.
“I'll tell him what I want,” the man says out loud, seemingly in mid-conversation.
The Mighty Mjaeder doesn't know what to make of this stranger, but is willing to settle things with a good brawl. He comes to his feet, stretches out his arms, and clenches his trusty hammer.
“You're not getting that,” the strange man barks, walking a few steps through the rubble. “I-- We need it.”
It clicks in the mightiest of minds that this strange fellow is talking about his fallen robotic brethren in the sky. He doesn't know this strange man or his strange world, but nevertheless, stands firm by his convictions.
“What do you make of this whacko?” the man asks. “Seriously? Who cos-plays vikings, nowadays?”
“I don't know what you speak of, stranger,” The Mighty Mjaeder shouts forth. “But if you bring the same intent to that traveler in the sky-boat as you brought to this magic picture box shop, my might will have to intervene.”
“Wow, it talks,” the stranger laughs. “I guess I owe you five-hundred yen then.”
“I fight mightily too!” the viking shouts, charging into melee.
He mightily swings his hammer, connecting it with the jaw of the stranger. It drives him across the rubble, tumbling into the street afar. Traffic screeches to a halt around him.
“Ow, that actually hurt,” the stranger states, rubbing his face. “You didn't say that I was going to feel pain. Fine, Nyarlath, whatever.”
Mjaeder continues the assault, hurdling over the wreckage. “Nyarlath? Is that your name, villain?”
“No, that's...” he replies, popping back up to his feet. “You know what? I don't have to tell you!”
Mjaeder closes in, but quickly has to think on the fly and roll out of the way of a flying car. Nyarlath laughs in the distance, as the vehicle ignites and explodes behind them.
“By Krimnar's coin purse!” the viking warrior shouts, pushing up to a knee. “What unholy powers do you wield?”
Mjaeder's focus tights a bit more and then sees something that runs even his proud blood cold. Over this man, like a puppeteer over his puppet, lurks a demonic shadow. It's eyes glow bright with aggression and ink black fog defiles all that hide under it. The shadow, reaching back down, picks up another parked car, and hurls it at the mightiest warrior. He sticks his arms out, trying to block the impact, but it's too much. The car and Mjaeder both go careening backwards against a building in a fiery blast.
“Well, that was fun, wasn't it?” the demonic puppet asks. “Yeah, let's get out of here.”
Nyarlath's shadow condenses around his host until it looks like a black rubber covers his entire body, then suddenly, it flinches and comes to life. What was once black turns blood red, and what was once smooth human flesh turns to jagged scales. Enormous horns curl from his temples and his back splits open to a pair of wet, veiny, wings.
“This form will get us to the construct,” the demon grumbles in a deeper tone, readying it's wings.
He begins to take off.
“Not so fast!” Mjaeder shouts, shoving off the remains of the car. He too leaps into the air and kicks the demon in the chest, driving his ascension off balance.
“You putrid little!” Nyarlath shouts back, spinning around and clubbing the viking in the head with a vicious fist. It rattles him, but both continue to hover over the building tops.
Mjaeder dives back into combat, looking for a tackle to sway the fight into his favor, but Nyarlath doesn't budge. Instead, he drives some scaly elbows into the viking's spine, for his troubles, and lifts him above his head.
“Hmmmmm,” the demon wonders out loud. “What building should I make your grave?”
Just before he could make up his mind, a low-swinging hammer shot comes from above and hits the monster in the face. Mjaeder gets himself free and takes the opportunity to follow up with a two-handed blow that propels the demon back to the rubble below. A cloud of dust is kicked up in the air, covering the current condition of the red devil.
Mjaeder slowly falls back down to the ground, keeping an eye on the settling fog of war. As the dust settles, Nyarlath is merely standing, waiting for his opponent to make an unfortunate misstep.
“Make you move, demon!” Mjaeder shouts, taunting his foe from the rubble cloud.
“Actually, I'm quite bored with you,” Nyarlath yawns back. “I am nowhere near my maximum strength. I don't have a single scratch or loose scale. I am merely battling away sleep. I know that thing in the sky isn't what I thought. In all likelihood, it's probably just a hunk of frozen space junk. You look like the type to go see what it is. Go make friends with it.”
“You mock my might!” the proud warrior shouts, but before he can finish his sentence, the demon quickly vanishes in thin air, blinking out of existence.
With Nyarlath opting for more exciting adventures, it leaves his opponent alone to stare up at the stars. Drifting along the sky is something foreign, and the otherworldly viking wonders what it could be. His mind, deep in thought, is numb to the oncoming thudding of feet on the pavement.
An enormous clothesline connects, cleaning Mjaeder out and taking him completely off his feet. The perpetrator carries him for a good distance, all the while our viking hero stares up at the wondrous sky, before driving him into the concrete. A single, large, blue, foot pats down on his mighty chest. He looks over, bothered but generally unphased, then it shouts.
“Bob wins!”
If that poor electronics store was still in one piece, the newest update probably wouldn't have caused Mjaeder to take up his hammer. Thankfully for Citius, the giant building golem of sorts, one of the many buildings that construct his body was just that. He peers down to his wrist and carefully watches the report as if it was some sort of built-in social media.
“This just in!” the reporter speaks, shuffling through some papers on his desk. “The foreign object that has been floating outside our planet has no begun to descend. We virtually no nothing about it. All we know is that it traveled here through the wormhole. The world's powers are fighting for the right to meet with it first, but no power has successfully been able to do so in a timely matter.”
Citius looks up to the sky. He can see the object, but at this moment, it doesn't appear to be coming any closer. Even still, this is big news, so he watches and waits.
Many miles over Alternae, the foreign object passes over sentient scanning. Silent and watchful, the lost orbital weapon, codename: SatelLight, stares at this strange hunk of metal floating past it's post. He stays still like a predator in the dark, like it's been programmed to do, but that code is old and deteriorated now. SatelLight has figured out how to repair missing lines of it's own code, or so it thinks. Is it now a being of his own control now or the control of something else? SatelLight spends zero time wondering.
Slowing crawling to the planet below, the hunk of space metal begins to glow and creek. SatelLight becomes increasingly interested, if only knowing how to destroy it, and quietly follows the weakened prey to Alternae, ever-lurking in the darkness behind.
Back on earth, super cos-player, Blue Mantis, is watching the news report on the screen with all of his attention. A piece of pizza hangs from his closed mouth.
“This is quite interesting indeed!” he says, half of his mouth full of food. “I really should do something about it!”
He stands, jolting up from his recliner and into a heroic pose. It lasts for a good, heroic, second, as it is followed by Blue Mantis cringing and bending forward in pain.
“Ow, my stomach!” he yells, clutching his gut. “What's up with this pie?”
He looks over and watches a green-furred sewer rat, one eye red and the other zorple*, scurry off with the remaining half. *see 'June 2012 Special of Tokyo Today at Five
“Oh, that's not good,” Blue Mantis states. “I... uh... was going to eat that.”
Just then, the radioactive slime that covered his pizza gets into Mantis' blood stream.
No, that wasn't some sort of blue cheese, and no, you didn't have to pay extra for it. It was just slime. It wasn't even supposed to be there in the first place.
Once in his blood, Blue Mantis immediate begins to grow in size. So quickly, he panics, and dives out his apartment's window and onto a hotdog vendor. He lands with a deafening thud, all ten feet of him, almost knocking himself out. He lays there, winded and sore, and grows the rest of his monstrous size passed out along the street.
When he finally comes to, he's laying beside Citius, and the pair of them watch the sky. The object now appears to be growing in size, as it's speed appears to be faster with the help of gravity. Moments later, it crashes into the cityscape, annihilating a few blocks of buildings in an enormous blast.
Blue Mantis and Citius quickly follow the crash and try to investigate the foreign object, but a cloud of smoke and a wall of fire blocks their view or entry. As they look on in wonder, waiting of things to settle, a giant laser blast sweeps across them. It connects with both of them slamming them both into surrounding buildings. Recovering, they quickly look to the perpetrator, but finds no one or nothing.
Another laser fires, but this time Citius dodges left and Blue Mantis rolls to his right. They come up to their feet, but still cannot find the mysterious shooter. Mantis strolls out in the open for a bit, looking high and low, but invites danger, as a laser collides with his body from above. Mantis is jolted back fiercely into a building and takes the whole thing down, as he falls through to the ground level.
Citius looks high in the sky and notices a strange orb of sorts hovering high. Long blue appendages dangle below it's gunnery. They spark and sizzle whenever they touch anything. Citius lifts his guard against this dangerous intruder, and the orb fires again. This time, through some magical power, the pavement comes to life, curling off the street and blocking the blast for Citius. Citius takes the time to charge up a laser of his own, inside the Tesla coil built into his arm. The pavement falls back to the ground and Citius fires. SatelLight easily dodges, drifting just a little to the side.
Blue Mantis comes to, pulling himself out of the rubble, but is immediate met with some painful, electric, tentacles, wrapped around his throat. SatelLight lifts him up and uses him for a shield. Mantis grimaces in pain, but the plan works: Citius refuses to fire his next charged-up shot. SatelLight throws his shield towards Citius, crashing his big, blue, bulk into the city-made monster. The Tesla coil loses it's previous charge. SatelLight darts in, tentacles reached out.
Citius tries to block all the strikes he can, but it's no use. The orbital weapon is so much more nimble and Citius is so bulky. Citius knows he is a disadvantage because he wasn't constructed or programmed for violence, and SatelLight has that over him. He is a defender and protector, not a weapon of war. Citius quickly drives his fist into a sporting goods store and lifts his fist out of it covered in guns and weaponry. He frantically fires his new machine gun fist at SatelLight, who cancels his plans on melee confrontation, and takes cover behind some buildings across the block.
Unbeknownst to SatelLight, this cityscape and Citius have an understanding, must like a panther does in the thickest jungles. SatelLight is in a different predator's nest. Citius opens his first and calls out to the buildings that block his view of SatelLight. They instantly deconstruct themselves peacefully, brick by brick. SatelLight begins to notice swiss cheese holes his in hiding spot, so he tries to quickly to move out. The called-upon building material begin to build on Citius' shoulder creating something of a mega-cannon. He begins to charge it up.
SatelLight begins to flee but cannon has too much reach. Luckily, it's not a direct hit. The cannon blast explodes in front of SatelLight sending him back towards Citius. SatelLight rolls around on the street for a bit, hard rebooting, and Citius punts him like a giant metal soccer ball. He clangs against cars and buildings, but then floats back into the air. He's recovered.
Citius readies the cannon again, but SatelLight fires a well-placed laser into the barrel, blowing the building part out of the back of it. Citius turns around to repair it, but SatelLight is upon him with zappy whips and jabs. Mid-melee their trading punches slow down to a pause. They both notice the dust has completely settled. They can meet the metal comet now. They rush over, trying to push each other back, but by some strange sort of luck, Blue Mantis is already there.
“What the hell is this, guys?” he asks, watching this purple-glowing metal contraption unravel. He doesn't get an answer. Maybe no one was paying attention. Maybe no one else can communicate.
Strange metal parts stretch out of the enormous comet. Weird bars of otherworldly metal appear to look like arms and feet. Others look like arms. Then, in a sequence of strange automated motion, it stands on two legs.
Blue Mantis' jaw drops. It's gigantic. Really gigantic. It towers over the other monsters of this planet by a decent amount. A wave of complete terror washes over him, as this enormous metal giant comes to life. He turns to run away, but a purple-glowing arm reaches out and takes him by the head. Citius and SatelLight look on in awe and horrified. Maybe this is the last time their see Blue Mantis with a head. Neon red lights flash on the deathbot's head.
“Worthless scum!” it shrieks through a strange and metallic vocal device. It chucks Blue Mantis high into the air. Where he lands, no one knows. “I have traveled through many galaxies! I have traveled through time and space! I have arrived here at this worthless planet to feed!”
Citius and SatelLight ready their weaponry.
“Not now,” the invader continues to say. “There is much to learn about this place first. For now, spread the word. The destroyer has arrived! The king is here to conquer what is his! Go and tell the powers of the world to bow to my strength and greatness or THIS PLANET TOO MUST DIE!!!”
“For I am MEGAPWN and I am hungry!”
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