Brawl: 12 Days of Defenders, 8

The rest of this version's over on http://integr8dfix.blogspot.com/2010/12/its-really-namor-saving-whales-3-of-12.html http://integr8dfix.blogspot.com/2010/12/day-7-hulk-in-tranz-defenders-12-days.html


Day 8 With the souls of Prince Nicola Dragonvayne and the Marc Kane aligned within Dragonfang, Valkyrie surprises the sorcerer with a strike of that sword, flowing with the Flames of Faltine. Cleaving his form, now from it springs Remus Sharptooth, grappling viciously with Valkyrie. A cavern appears; the spirits of Nicola and Marc Kane enter. Inside is the other half of Sharptooth’s form, the essence of the sorcerer is revealed: her lost brother, Ray, taken by the enchantress’ spell between his vanishing at the Break through and Valhalla.

Meanwhile, the Hulk leaps into the Fire Dragon, over eighty stories tall; apparently he has some substantial impact, but the damage is hard to discern.

Machine Man: (telescoping his limbs to evade the four armed men) I tapped into their program. From what I understand, that is an archetype of one of the elements of Earth itself!
Nighthawk: You understand this apocalypse?

VALKYRIE wrestles nearby with the blade-riven sorcerer hand to hand; they go to the ground with him on top.
MACHINE MAN: Can only tell you what I know: they’re activating a force inherent in the Earth itself to speed along a trajectory of thousands of years of changing conditions. That apparently includes the conditions of Earth-based conscious minds.
NIGHTHAWK: I know you’re a machine, but...your mind and feelings...
MACHINE MAN: Boy, it’s never been this easy; thank you!


Cut by his talons and teeth, Valkyrie kicks the jacketed, tattooed werewolf away, and delivers a sweet fist in the jaw. His left hook catches her guard.
NIGHTHAWK: This wolf’s keeping me away from the one fighting Valkyrie! How’s he still going, with Dragonfang chopping him like prime rib?
MACHINE MAN: The mastermind cobbled his engineer together, using a powerful old consciousness bound to a relic called *klong!!* (Machine Man’s battered by two four-armed man.)


NIGHTHAWK: So Val’s fighting the key enemy?
MACHINE MAN: Half of the key. (He pulls one four armed man by the legs and slams him into the others; they jerk their comrade loose.) I’m almost surprised to find myself manifested on this mental plane. Without understanding the tech, it’s virtually spiritual.

NIGHTHAWK: Try to shape events with your intention. We may only be out of control because we perceive they have the upper hand.
Valkyrie and Remus Sharptooth sling each other around by the arms, and as they are whipped apart, Valkyrie gains her balance first, but wolflike he recovers by springing at her off all fours.

MACHINE MAN: Or twelve.

NIGHTHAWK: Welcome to the non-team, metal guy.
MACHINE MAN: Call me Machine Man, Batman.

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Free of the Fallen World pt. 1: Mama I Don't Wanna Be a Soldier

"Mama I Don't Wanna Be a Soldier"

This picks up after two Defenders stories, the last of which began here:http://integr8dfix.blogspot.com/2009/12/remus-sharptooth-regrets-pt1-of-2-weird.html and the first of which appeared here: http://ceaseill.blogspot.com/2009/11/calinferno.html
They make a great substitute for DEFENDERS #76-78. This final part would've been a great 1979 late summer Annual, essentially a September release, most places.


PVT. HOLT: Any other time, I’d love to be in Southern California. Even coming to this mountain on National Guard fire-training maneuvers with the Canadian Mounties isn’t the worst day I’ve had.
But now I’m sitting in the midst of a blazing ruin, beside a tank I drove over a ...troll or something, cradling a woman who saved my life, wondering if I am in love with her and why won’t she wake up.

I can’t say I’m losing my mind because of all those things. The strangest part, no, no, was all that, in the midst of the sensation I’m feeling the feelings and observing the thoughts of every person I see. I was glad to be apart, as that seem to make it quiet again in my head.

Feels like that’s about to end; someone’s reading my thoughts at this very minute. I don’t think it can be helped.

I know I can’t help how I feel about this chick. Wow: she threw me to safety, right before the hideout for these creatures blew sky high and set off this mess. I feel like she’s fighting the hidden conflict underneath it all, with her spirit, and I don’t know how I know that, but I can almost see her flying into the darkness, towards this sinister plateau of red light.

I don’t even know you, lady. You’re the most beautiful I’ve ever seen. For all I know, you’re married. Maybe I feel this way because you saved my life. Maybe it’s the adrenalin. And you’re hot. Maybe I’ve never known just what I’m doing on this planet, but maybe I’ve always wanted to feel this way.

“All you know is that you want to help her...” His mountie friend Dave Blancley has walked out of the brush, into the bright afternoon sun.
“Damn! Blancley, you read---“
“---That right out of your mind, I know, ‘Sarge’, it’s happening to everyone...is that thing under your tank alive?”
“I haven’t checked...but you know that. I’m just standing guard over this warrior lady’s body.”

BLANCLEY: On that subject, you’ll have to excuse my thoughts, buddy. Maybe she’s just in a trance!
PVT. HOLT: But you know that’s what I think.

BLANCLEY: It’s bizarre: seeing other’s inner thoughts, their loved ones, their frustrations, and every feeling that comes out fighting this wildfire. One minute, Steve, we’re laughing over the Happy Show and by the end of the day it’s like...the end of the world. Not exactly, but...you can sense it...this is happening elsewhere, too. It’s rather distracting, really; I had to get my head in the game and deal with the fire.

HOLT: I don’t know how else to thank the lady, bro, I just hope there’s more help than me. But I won't abandon her.

http://ceaseill.blogspot.com/2010/12/free-of-fallen-world-even-ghost-can.html

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Free of the Fallen World! (Defenders/ TRANZ finale)

A fully-scripted version of this plot can be read on http://integr8dfix.blogspot.com/2010/12/twelve-days-of-defenders-begin.html



From the shadowy reaches of the violet arena of space surrounding Sharptooth, three mysterious forms of indigo observe a towering man-form, crackling with power, robed with sharp, probing angles that reach like a castle of doom from his shoulders and head. Before him appears a blond, beautiful enchantress dressed in emerald and black, leering. She speaks.

“Even should these meddlesome Defenders discover the double nature of your pawn---pawn, or prince of the world to come---as an immortal of Asgard, I shall live on, either way! “

Behold (he replies), they advance now from the abyss. You, who bound the warrior to the wolf sorcerer--- what payment do you extract?


Fires of Rome "Set in Stone" (EP mix)

http://www.jiwa.fm/#track/1573664

“Come what may,” the enchantress replies, “I will take my rewards where I find them. I cast this spell upon her, who is also two people in one; the warrior maiden, the woman beneath. Even as the valkyior come in time to become goddesses of the Norn, so shall I place within her astral aura my spell, to call her to join, bound within the Norn stones...and when they again become mine...but hark now, ‘tis done! Amora takes her leave, Sulinar Vix of Kolpar!”
With a lift of his chin, he regards her. “May you scheme in interesting times!”
With a humorless laugh, at the nimbus of a spell, she vanishes.
The three indigo forms consult with one another telepathically, grateful to have thus escaped notice. They see Sulinar Vix cast a light over the Machine Man, probing him as the heroes advance from the nothingness. Then he turns to an approaching form, a tall, ebony young man, who seems to espy them, by his eyes; to Sulinar Vix, his face reveals nothing. “So now,” he speaks, “upon my birthday visit to this world, I await the completion of the spell of the wolf...”
“Hail to Sennil, Dark Poet,” says Sulinar Vix. “ No doubt, you await also the return of what is taken from Semeicardia.”
“Your fellow Sinister has engineered cells swiped there, to become henchmen to your pawn of pawns. His fate also belongs to Semeicardia.”
“These are the last moments of the Spell of the Wolf,” says Sulinar Vix. “I bid you observe the resolution of this gambit, Dark Poet, and we shall see if the nature of the world yet shall be formed by the Tranz-Rupture.”

The triplet forms observe the dark Poet dissolve into the indigo light as he walks on, while the wolf sorcerer conjures fierce lights, bolts of power escaping his claws. Vix, with a pass, restores his four-armed henchmen and she-wolf by his side, as the Defenders attack before the towering form of the Fire Dragon.
With Madame Blavatsky beside her looking on in awe, Clea's spell to send the Flames of Faltine to the torch of the Marc Kane stretches between two people separated by 150 years...yet once the flame is hers, Marc Kane physically merges within the form of Prince Dragonvayne, who now burns AS the flame.

With the souls of Prince Nicola Dragonvayne and the Marc Kane aligned within Dragonfang, Valkyrie surprises the sorcerer with a strike of that sword, flowing with the Flames of Faltine.


Cleaving his form, now from it springs Remus Sharptooth, grappling viciously with Valkyrie, who calls upon the power of Freya to guide her blows.

To the other side of the immobile form run through with Dragonfang, a cavern appears; the spirits of Nicola and Marc Kane enter. Doctor Strange's projection of the Eye of Agamotto's light into the Flames of Faltine illuminates the cave, revealing its occupant. Inside is the other half of Sharptooth’s form, the essence of the sorcerer is revealed: her lost brother, Ray, taken by the enchantress’ spell between his vanishing at the Break through and Valhalla. The Box they had guarded together is conjured from outside time and space to reappear here and focus the energies of the Tranz-Rupture. They, its final guardians, the last defenders of humanity, have come to this place and time to prevent it once more from being misused: then, as a weapon of war, and now, as an agent to shape all of human consciousness and the earth itself. Their misunderstanding is shelved for another time; they three conclude some manipulation at work, the night before they carried Slay Box to its volcanic ensconcement. As they join in a circle of hand to bond their energies, two words seem to emerge from the hooded girl, the center figure between two males, the lit face of one of those triplet indigo forms as they disappear beyond the shadows from space time:





"Uncle Ray...Father...Mother?"

As those three take leave of the plane of ultra-mentality, so, too, do their ancestors. Swirling, they vanish into destiny, a dimension for a future story.

Remus Sharptooth wrestles and hurls his hex bolts, but he cannot defeat the Valkyrie in time to re-unify his self and complete the spell; already, the summoned “cosmic-blink” M’Krann energies destabilize. He attempts to flee again to the material world; his appearance there precedes a massive explosion of his devices. The Defenders quickly follow him, as the spell-place fades and they return to the world, Valkyrie arriving upon Aragorn. She catches Patsy just before the conflagration. Determined not to be blown into indiscriminate parts and left for scrap, Machine Man accesses his anti-grav units just in time to vacate the shattering mountain top.

With her psychic sensitivities, Patsy (Hellcat) realizes the key to stopping the Tranz-Rupture effects within the minds of humanity lies with Nighthawk, who has once had the awareness of his brain being separated from his form. Doctor Strange and Clea work together to amplify the link; his disembodied state, from his memories, is transferred through the Tranz-Rupture connection between all minds. With that moment of silence, free of the illusion of existence, the peace everyone feels allows the stillness to take hold. The forces throwing together the psyches of humanity cease their torrential, invading nature, and individuality is restored.









Remus Sharptooth attempts his escape in a Gnomlin-built craft---a decision influenced by the Viking Captain, Ray Awen, who still makes up his subconscious mind. As all the heroes pursue Remus Sharptooth, they discover what he has forgotten about all crafts built by Gnomlins: in the end, they stop and they explode.

Just before this explosion, the Wolf Oversoul appears to Remus Sharptooth. He promises the sorcerer another existence to come, an incarnation in the world of Semeicardia. Thus he achieves a strange peace as he experiences his end on Earth.

The essence of the Semeicardia-fated creatures all finds its nexus through the eyes of Hillie, still filming below as the sorcerer’s saucer rockets away. Moments later, he finds himself possessed of an idea for a new film...about the exploits of a wolf sorcerer, reborn on a world called Semeicardia. He decides to begin scribbling notes, post haste.

Many present, in the end, are rallied by Mountie Dave’s call to have a round of Dreadnaughts , which Oakie suggest they have back at the Castles Made of Sand Bar and Grill. Teddy finds himself at peace, feeling understood, prepared to move on after helping save lives here today. And Bali finds himself a new dog...he begins to rub her and check her over for pests, glad to have salvaged the animal from this disaster zone. She looks to be of wolf descent...but placid in his hands.


Having transformed from the Hulk, Doctor Banner finds himself at a distance from all this revelry, as people try to continue on with normal life, after an experience they will try to understand, all their lives.
Needing a way to get on, himself, he takes some clothes found at the fire rescue encampment, and begins to hitchhike beside the Southern California highway.


"End credits music"

Cocteau Twins, "Pandora"



END.








story and art by Lue Lyron, with Eric Joy :)


THE DEFENDERS and all related characters are copyright Marvel Entertainment.

REMUS SHARPTOOTH created by C Lue disharoon with Danny Johannsen, with special thanks to Cody Guinon

MARC KANE, PRINCE NICOLA DRAGONVAYNE,RAY AWEN created by Angela Dawn Disharoon

All Dragon's Line characters and all characters not identified as Marvel trademarks
copyright 2010 Integr8d Soul Productions

original story copyright 2010 Integr8d Soul Productions

GNOMLINS, SEMEICARDIA and DARK POET created by Danny Johanssen

(There’s the synopsis! I’ll present it all rewritten in script form over the next couple of days. It will be a treat. Take care!)

Spell of the Wolf (The Defenders/ TRANZ crossover)

The scene: a tarot drawing, begun after a trance session. It s participants include Clea, Doctor Strange, and Madame Blavatsky herself, who exclaims, “I could feel your presence with me, Strange! We reached the universal holographic shift into the Invisible College!”

Clea stretches, her body relaxed from the trance; she then becomes aware of her enchanted Blackberry. “I knew it would be wise to bring some form of contact with our home timeline when Stephen and I came back to continue our tour of occult American history!”

Hellcat speaks: Clea, where are you and Doc?
Clea: Back from ghost-detecting with Ben Franklin and his illuminator this morning...I believe we’re in New York, somewhere in the mid-19th century with the founder of the Theosophist movement...

Beginning to adapt to the oddness of her mystical company, Madame Blavatsky lays a tarot card, the Universe, on the table as Clea steps away to listen.

Hellcat: You must have the best long distance plan EVER! Can you offer me any energy or guidance? The mental reality around us is flipping out, and I think the physical world’s next!

Clea reaches within the perceptions of Hellcat, and directs her mind into the thoughts of the psychic Emma, who appears nearby, reading the telepathic manifestation of the sorceress. The she-wolf flees Valkyrie’s sword strikes with Dragon Fang. “Your cause is lost, anyway, Norse woman,” she spits, “because even though you’ve deposed our genetically-engineered allies, nothing can stop my champion Remus Sharptooth from completing the spell! You cannot hold the tide of the changing world BACK!!!”

“The heat, the smoke, the manual labor---it’s at the edge of what any man can bear!” thinks Corporal Dayly. “Darned if I’ m giving in though! If only all these weird impressions would cease! Childhood memories, hidden fears, thoughts of the afterlife, yearnings for home---it’s a flood! But I’m an individual! I won’t have my reality played with! The reality is that huge fire, and I’ve got to keep digging for all I’m worth, till this thing’s out and I’m back home sooty hair and all, playing drums again...!”

Strangely, his individual assertion echoes in waves throughout the Tranz-Ruptured collection of thoughts present; all around him, the embattled reservists snap back to their senses, straining to focus on the massive destruction bearing down on them all.

But at this moment, incredible headwinds shake the forest---scattering the runaway menace of the fire all over the surrounding, desert climate-dry brush, unchecked!

Even without the Tranz-Rupture, despair might echo through the hearts of the brave soldiers... American and Canadian alike, they brace against the stout winds, sweltering vapors of heat singeing their sweat-covered faces!
Mountie Blanc gains a moment’s lucidity, and calls out to his fellows: “Pull together! We’ve all got to keep on this thing! Don’t give up, you hear?”

Above him, Nighthawk observes the impressions flowing from the minds below, attempting to orient himself in flight. “Look at them---no powers to speak of, fighting this raging wildfire on nothing but guts and determination! How could I presume to inspire them, flying above the fray in my bizarre spiritual detachment?!?

And yet...I mustn’t doubt myself! Whatever’s causing this razor-sharp cut across our minds leaves us vulnerable to one another’s unfocused thoughts! Even a guy with nothing but a jet-pack and a funny suit’s got to pull his weight---even when he’s being tossed from the sky with Force Ten fury! It’s ---good Lord! It’s like some massive dragon of flame appearing above us! Am I hallucinating? But it’s no illusion! How do we fight THAT? It’s a sort of manifestation of the elements---part of this wave of transforming power! I see that’s not stopping my jade-jaw friend from leaping into the fray, though! Here’s hoping there’s something left of you besides a gamma-ray inspired crisp, big guy!”

Smoky Dean loses his radio contact, but charges in behind the brigade of reservists, barking instructions. “They fight fires differently out here than they do where I’m from down South,” he thinks. “They even SWEAR differently! Got to ask’em to clear up a few words for me...when we shut down this wildfire!”

His mouth drops open: Gnome the Troll has mobilized his battle armor, rolling on dilapidated treads, dented and damaged, passing through the burning woods to rendezvous with the lupine sorcerers...

Hellcat breaks into a full speed sprint, pursuing Corpse Flower to where her humanoid partner stands before a vast machine, chanting. “Hate to disconnect your prayer line, Fuzzy Guy,” she declares, firing a grappling hook and swinging into the back of Remus, “but you’re going to have to drop that signal pronto!”
“Little she-cat wench!” snarls Corpse Flower. “What can a powerless creature like you accomplish but death?”

“You never know till you put your shoulder into it!” Hellcat jibes, as she wrecks the front panels of the machine with her costume’s claws. “Just call me the little engine of destruction that could!”

Suddenly, lasers from the machine begin to pin her down, as she holds herself in a plank pose just beneath their searing reach. Remus turns again and resumes, “Sulinar Vix, your servant calls upon you to now unleash the power from beyond the stars! Salvage this primitive, backwards world with transforming might! Let all the elements be called into form, to rip this reality free from its lowly moorings!”
Machine Man, using his anti-gravity units built inside his robotic frame, arrives with his hand transfigured into a high-caliber pistol; he opens fire on the laser portals, which begin to spew sparks!

“Daddy always said, ‘Aaron, you’re a real pistol!’ And thanks to him, I never leave home without my ‘hand gun’!”

“Blast you, mechanoid!” snarls Remus Sharptooth, who fires a bolt from his hand that shatters the generator next to Machine Man. The explosion rips apart the chassis of the android’s skull. Hellcat rises and charges Sharptooth, as the singed she-wolf bolts away in pain.

Meanwhile, the Valkyrie stands beside Emma Jorgenson, their hands clasped, eyes closed. “I feel your friend Clea guiding me,” says Emma, “and through my thoughts, we hear the imprisoned Vikings, Marc Kane and Prince Nicola.”

“I am without my carved rune staff,” says Marc Kane from the darkness, “but I’ve conjured a mental image of the hand molded runes created for me by our black companion, Nido. Each of us must draw forth one, to complete the spell of five runes. With their signs we may find my lost brother, who is the key to stopping this Sharptoothed One! His mixed essence makes his mind impenetrable to my probes. ”

Clea watches on, borrowing the amulet, the Eye of Agamotto, from her mentor, to pierce the astral plane of these events that lay a century and a half up the time stream from their location. Her image appears in their midst, transported to the present by the projection of the Eye.

In turn, Nicola, the Marc, Valkyrie, and Clea reach into the bag, to pull forth, on the darkened astral plane, a glowing Viking rune each. “Stephen!” Clea asks, through her mind rapport with the Master of the Mystic Arts, “how is it I that must participate in this spell? Are you not...?”

“I sense that two male presences---one, still unrevealed beyond the barrier you must cross, and three females, are necessary to complete it,” relays Doctor Strange. “I am trying to discern the manner of energy which is being conjured, so that we might combat its nature together! For the Valkyrie, however, I might lend, on this spiritual plane, a means of travel, for that great leap into the creative power of the unknown...”

With that, Valkyrie’s winged pegasus Aragorn appears beside her; she and the Marc Kane mount the flying horse, and begin to traverse the cosmic barrier towards the mental defenses of their mysterious foe.

Over the crystal ball provided after a scrambling search by Madame Blavatsky, Clea attunes this two-sided journey: her travel with Strange, crossing America’s Great Awakening period, and the perilous dive into the psychic defenses of this stranger bearing star- borne energy to accelerate the evolution of Earth---a feral sorcerer, in whom she uncovers two sides, himself...

Despite the might of the Master of Mystic Arts close at hand, her part in this spell must be undergone alone. She peers into the future, our present, augmented by the illumination of the Eye of Agamotto, yet her will alone can resolve these images, her might in its place in this spell. Meanwhile, her mentor notes the power fluctuations in chronal energy that make travelling from the mid 19th c. back to the present “imprecise” and begins to probe for the source of the Tranz-Rupture energy.

“I am rather surprised so great a change could begin to happen,” he notes, “without us having some sense of it. I wonder if it’s some outgrowth of a naturally-occurring energy?”

Valkyrie’s body falls into a trance, as her mind soars aboard Aragorn into the darkness, seeking the mind of the lost Viking. “My brother’s link to us,” says the Marc Kane, “is also threaded with the Slay Box...it’s the key to this transformation of reality.”

“There is no light, nor clue to where we go,” says Valkyrie.

“Each of us ---you, Nicola my prince, your friend, myself and, at some hidden fifth point, my brother---hold one of the five runes that complete this spell.”

“I cannot understand or evaluate what it is here we do,” says the Valkyrie.

“That is part of the flow you must undertake; let go, observe not with eyes, but intuition, as unseen forces are here at work,” says Marc Kane. Valkyrie nods, and says, “I sense truth in you.”

“I am merging with the essence of Nicola Dragonvayne,” replies the Marc Kane. “His mind is receptive to the properties of the spell created by your friend. He embodies the light that must come, and I live on through that light. But as I reach for my rune in this spell, I see a darkening of the light---a reverse of the torch---and therein lies my part. I do not know if my relationship with my brother must die; I will live for this time, empty. But within the sign of the Darkening Light, I sense a solitary hope to deciphering the nature of this struggle. And if we fall, then the Earth will continue its rapid change, spurred by the energies summoned by this star-born sorceror. “

“ If that is humankind’s fate, then who shall live on?” asks Valkyrie.
“Some...some shall live on,” says the Marc Kane, as her image begins to merge with flame that yet does not burn Valkyrie or her steed. “And all will find their peace, their completed selves, somewhere in the stars, amidst dimensions as yet undreamt..., however much we might put our shoulders to move heaven, we can only serve what is timely to their process.”

The apparition of Nicola appears as a body in flame, as Valkyrie hears Clea’s voice: “This being provides a host for the Flames of Faltine, which shall illumine your way...prepare yourself; may this spell harness our strengths, and know though we fight alone, ultimately we journey towards Union.” Within her, the joy of light is reversed; yet because she is courageous, she holds her will firm, knowing she cannot fail.

As the tsunami of each man’s essence floods the mind of those around him, the fire fighting effort falls crippled once more in the light of day men call reality. Striding forth as the earth begins to shake beneath his dusty treads, the armored form of Gnoll the Trome obeys a summons from his liege lord Sharptooth.
“There lies the warrior woman,” he says, “participating in the last gasp of this world to stand back from its rightful place in the cosmos. Wake up, woman! Gnoll the Trome has fallen upon you! I will fight for the glory of Corpse Flower, and serve my purpose well!”

With his cannonball arm, Gnoll takes aim at the head of the entranced Valkyrie, when a lumbering mechanical sound not his own overtakes his Trome ears. He turns his helmeted head from its poise above the smoking furnace of his wheezing chest, and his steam valve releases vapors as though in alarm. Pvt. Holt has commandeered his tank for an unauthorized rescue. “Took me forever to drive over here,” he thinks, “but the least I can do is make like the cavalry and drive right over this ugly sucker! Time to bring a shipment of some pain with Uncle Sam’s overweight delivery truck here!” With a rebel yell, he relentlessly drives up onto the armored form, which begins to erupt in a variety of systems failures. “Hope this is some help, dollface,” Holt says, knowing the Valkyrie is beyond his hearing. “I can’t even begin to grasp what kind of fight you’re in, but you saved my life and I’m totally hung up on you...and in lieu of understanding anything, that will have to be my guide! Rough day for you, buddy...”

Emma Jorgenson watches all of this in disbelief. “At least there was no personal harm threatening me,” she thinks, “as I am here only as an astral projection. Yet...the telepathic noise of these minds pouring in without resolution wearies me; my physical body is nearly exhausted. I must reach into my connection with the ghosts and the Valkyrie...Prince Nicola, now that I’ve met you, and your noble love, I wish only I could do more for you...in fact, so I dream...”
With the last wisps of her conscious presence, she merges, through Dream, with her unconscious intent. Prince Nicola senses her before the mind’s eye, projecting forth into the unseen barriers before them which guard the spell of the wolf. Again and again she repeats: “you have the secret words to unlock your true self...you have the secret words to unlock your true self....secret...words...”

Within the void of inner space, beside the embodied Flames of Faltine Valkyrie sees the Dragon of the Elemental Fire, suspended before her; without certainty of direction, nevertheless she evades him on Aragorn, soaring beyond the creature, on into the unknown. Then there is a brilliant light of blinding intensity...and now, the Valkyrie, lit in ethereal glow, the composite flame of the integrated soul, and Aragorn of white feathers and flowing mane, fly without hesitation towards what appears to be a gigantic wolf’s head. There is a guttural, rumbling sound that stretches out into a senses piercing roar, and the flame vanishes into the all consuming maw before it.

The Marc’s darkened “torch” rune reveals a tall figure, standing in silhouette only before the bright burning behemoth.
He levitates over to a figure standing in an indigo aura; beneath them---though here, “up” and “down” are only a perceptive relationship---and she senses they are both out of time and space, as much as she has become...
Holt emerges from his tank, driven without orders into the steaming Trome’s armor. The effects of the Tranz Rupture make standing---much less driving a tank---difficult. His vision of the smoking wilderness around him intersperses with the inner selves of his fellow man. He fights for the freedom to think clearly for himself.

“We can’t handle each other’s thoughts being shoved into each other---like cleaning up a room by shoving everythin into a pile and stuffing it into the dumpster! Inner lives are being shoved into each other’s inner lives! I don’t think it was meant to be like this---it’s like a disorganized way of putting everyone together, way ahead of the evolutionary curve or something! There’s too much fear still bonded to people...their minds don’t have space! We need some kind of cosmic release valve; there’s pressure from all of the things people hang onto!"

SMASH CONCLUSION of "The Defenders" is next: Free of the Fallen World!

Additional dialog written for this part:

Fire trucks blare into the camp, where Hillie films the rushing fire fighters and soldiers. Torn by the need to do something, flooded with the emotions and inner thoughts of those around him, he desperately tries to document the strange situation. Yet no camera can record---and first hand accounts can only hint at---the sensation of minds, swept and mingled with one another.
Oakie plants an I.V. into Corporal Dayly’s arm with grim determination. “This lesion that causes my head pains nearly cripples me,” he thinks, “but in the past hour it’s subsided just enough...I’m glad I have skills to help, though I’m more of an animal doc than a physician...”
Hillie: I hardly know what to do to help...I can only observe...
Oakie: I don’t know how to document what we’re going through, man...Maybe we’re all meant to be cosmically aware---but they don’t know how to do it on earth; as a society, we try between friends to share our thoughts and feelings...for all the anger and anxiety, and all the joys and daydreams and hopes we contain, that seem so strange in their purest forms...you recognize how much people want off the planet! Or at least, to come and go freely!
Hillie: If it wasn’t for our imaginations, we could never bear to be trapped in life together!
Because maybe love is all you need...but we’re stuck with so much more...
Oakie: Yeah: that makes us so much less. And you know harmony on Earth isn’t even the ultimate expression of what we really are...though we might have it...if we’re free to touch the endless dimensions...and not trapped by one another...used to make limits and imprison ourselves. Just keep your camera rolling...the end of the world’s just one possibility...I’m going to take another pulse, and wipe another brow...
Hillie: Why aren’t we ready...are we just not developed to have that level of consciousness? If we tell ourselves we’re ready...how do we handle the touch of minds of those who are not?
Oakie: Hand me those hemostats, would you?
Dayly: Maybe what holds us back is being unable, or deciding not to embrace the paths of Imagination...
Oakie:...hmmm...and being unprepared to see the open imaginings of others, good or ill... afraid to match visions, feel genius and bliss without comparing ourselves as better, or less, or clinging to rules that say what reality is...besides the golden rule!
Dayly: if we could really accept that...we’d have true liberty...instead of madness...if that’s not too optimistic to say!
Oakie: Until humankind can harness the energy to follow our imaginations to any place or time we can feel...our opened minds could tear the world apart!
Hillie: At least that’s some kind of vision...if only we’d had that perspective...before the rupture came...between our minds...to our souls, maybe...


http://ceaseill.blogspot.com/2010/04/storytelling-free-of-fallen-world.html

"With this strike, a better world!" Vikings, super beings, and the ordinary folks caught in the way

from an alternative world of our own...








Confronted with the emerald behemoth, still towering over the Mountie, the soldiers quickly alleviate the tension when asked: "Soldiers want to shoot Hulk? Soldiers always hound Hulk! The Mountie suggests: Far from it, big guy! My green friend, if you would be so kind as to direct your might towards helping us combat this conflagration!" Private Holt turns to him and says, "Dave, you're nervous." "I know, Steve," he replies. Corporal Dayly steps up and says, "Fire bad? Hulk help with fire?" "Why?" he snarls. Mountie Dave speaks: "the animals in the forest can't survive this wildfire without your help!" The Hulk nods and says, "Yes! Hulk help Bambi!"

Private Holt picks up the conversation, with a sweeping gesture of his arm: "Hulk knocks down trees before they burn! Keep fire from jumping onto trees!" Without another word, the gamma-spawned goliath busies himself with the closest trees directly behind the soldiers, relieved, who rush back to the company of their units.



Prince Nicola Dragonavayne:
(I continue integrating impressions, concepts come to aid the basis of my analytical facilities) Through Song’s power---song, keeping together the material of myself---an aperture appears, creating a heavenly border of transfiguration upon the mountain, emanating like a gate made of stars (superimposed?) with runes, within Ray as he stands vigilant. I am reminded for a second how our brother dear did deride us in the scornful morning after his sister and I were subsumed in magic love making with the priestess Wanda. Wanda had travelled with us as we escorted the exiled Christians from the village where we last set eyes upon the Temple of Inguz, slaying its intruders.

The feelings were too deep to quickly evaporate, and before we could talk, we were committed first to completing our doomed mission, the disposal of the Box before it fell into marauding hands. I wondered that dawn: by what chink in Ray’s armor, by what incivility in intimacy, did Slay Box inculcate its influence? We already understand the deranged manner of those who possessed the Box of Fafnir (as we also called it) We rejected superstitious folly, the skeptics who had seen objects of faith fall with their culture. We accelerated our efforts---there was danger from foes glimpsed, those unseen, and the ominous melting of the ice itself. Whatever fervent beliefs surrounded the object, we knew Nature would have its due course.
Before the break through…the shattered crystalline floor beneath our feet, the plummet into the dark.


Then, within the starry doorframe, I see a scene in the deeper past: Ray, much younger, frightened, worried by the immense occult forces threatening his …adolescent sister, Abril, upon the time of her initiation as the Marc Kane…

I touch the fury and confusion, as I peer into the deep recesses of his heart---for here, emotions and dreams reform the appearance of things, empathy becomes a tactile sense, much as we see through the eyes to a person, as they are fashioned from their source. He is that person inside, and he is like Death personified outside. He raises his weapon high, then brings forward a wicked arc; my face bashes the dirt beside its fall. A new instinct tells me to take the soil of the mountain and thrust it into his eyes, even as I deliver a kick inside his stride.
The earth…

I make myself one with the earth, the energetic communication inside the planet; a future self pours knowledge, nearly to overwhelm my understanding like a vessel’s mouth, with knowledge of chemicals, names from the Greeks, forms of bonds on a level too fine for the naked eye.

I reach into the cycling rage, I channel it downward along with my sinking consciousness, through the bonding point at which we two shadow men are the same. And now I understand that primal combative streak, a response from nature to defend, to attain his needs and those of his offspring. Children, it seems, he could never have now with Wanda. I share with him, too, the awful moment when he believed his sister’s salvation would depend on her sexual initiation, a moment buried until he was led to discover the Marc, Wanda and I.

Never had we been driven apart by such things before, yet under the subtle curse of the box, Ray decided to speak no more…

Or are there no curses, no blessings, from beyond our understanding? It is one thing to touch the minds of brightened modern man; but the shadows of the heart also must open, unfold, received before the torch of the Marc Kane, whose power inside me illuminates my perceptions in this lucid dream made real.

I see the quest for knowledge, to ferret out facts of the mechanisms of the natural world, by which I best knew Ray; his most hard-bitten battle savagery was behind him when he came to the court of my father, the Dragonvayne chieftain, and became my royal scout to explore the kingdom, rather than lord over the territory someday in ignorance; for leaders ever squander what is not personally their own.

“Before it ends,” says the ebon golem of Awen of Argos, Ray’s eyes seeming mostly human, with granite pupils of blindness. “Before it ends, will…I know…what we’ve managed…to do?”



The Hulk has begun smashing a fire break, crushing trees on the edges of the enormous wall of flame threatening to cause another Southern California wildfire catastrophe.

Suddenly two of the Four Armed Men are upon him, punching and grappling with him, while another opens fire with a type of bazooka. While they attempt to subdue him, the conflagration builds, as the regrouping soldiers prepare to fight the blaze until reinforcements arrive; fortunately they have been equipped for fire-fighting exercises, as they have been training to augment the efforts of the fire fighters.

However, the soldiers start to suffer phantasms: Trans Rupture is coming.

Remus Sharptooth’s form is translucently merged with the form of Captain Ray Awen on the ghostly plane, which is like a darkened stage transfixed with one spotlight. He stands poised with his huge battle-axe above the seated, meditating form of Prince Nicola.

“With this strike,” he thinks, “I herald a better world; a more magical world; a world where the feelings of these creatures shall shine without obscurity, revealed to one another!” By the power of Sulinar Vix, he gathers the power to create an essence of time upon that plane, so that he might achieve a medium for action: the act of execution.


To the side, transfixed in a cage of green luminescence, the Marc Kane sits imprisoned, reaching out magically for aid. She summons a rune, shaped like this: < to her hand, and projects that rune, for opening, a symbol for torch light, which drifts up from the subconscious of the nearby Hellcat. She beckons Valkyrie to follow her towards a cave opening, Now the Valkyrie sees it, too: she declares the symbol’s meaning, and hastens forward, causing it to burn brighter in her mind’s eye. With her sword Dragon Fang, she cleaves out the side of the wall, pulverizing it with her might, and drops below into the throne room, where the wolf sorcerer awakens from his trance, startled. On the astral plane, Nicola’s awareness shifts; he begins to sense the mingled nature of the being who strikes, and rolls out of the way of the blow in the nick of time. Corpse Flower and Remus Sharptooth begin to physically combat Hellcat and Valkyrie.



Outside, the Hulk continues his fierce battle against the Four Armed Men. Meanwhile, Gnoll the Trome emerges at last from the smoldering hutch, forgotten; he decides to salvage his rickety yet formidable armor of scraps, bolts and bailing wire, complete with its furnace-driven engine, belching smoke from its chest. He sallies forth, prepared to win honor and glory as a knight of the new coming kingdom.



From the skies, the red-winged Defender known as Nighthawk arrives at last, punching one of the Four Armed Men that attacks the Hulk from the back.

He hails the Hulk and jests and cheers him on; Machine Man also comes onto the scene, extending a fist on a telescoping arm while blasting another foe with his flame-throwing other fist, and the route of the Four Armed Men is on. However, one of them leaps onto the hillside, scales quickly, and from his vantage point tackles Nighthawk, sending them both careening wildly.





Utilizing the essence of the viking captain to augment his skills, Remus skillfully parries the attacking Valkyrie. Remus tells her she is mad for trying to stop the change of the world; she replies that she does not understand his ends, but the manner in which they are accomplished---endangering innocent lives, imprisonment without proven cause---call her in the present moment to challenge him. Her skill with Dragonfang is nearly insurmountable; to escape, Remus chooses to summon a bolt of power to pulverize the ledge behind Valkyrie. Yet, at this moment when he can press his advantage, Remus Sharptooth is seized with the urge to reach down to help her back up; then he levitates himself out of reach and away.
Using the imminent danger of the wildfire, the soldiers and mounties succeed in uniting for their original purpose: training as an auxillary firefighting unit in a moment of great peril. Meanwhile, the Hulk and Machine Man have knocked the Four Armed Men unconscious in spectacular fashion; Nighthawk’s foe takes the worst of their crash, and though dazed, he becomes aware of the recovering attacker. The being, whose head resembles an anthropomorphized snapping turtle’s, points out that because he is not of their world, he is not affected by the Trans Rupture, “which seems to bring upon a transformation accelerated beyond your ability to cope!” as he puts it. Kyle/ Nighthawk does find the emotional confluence a terrible distraction, yet he cites the control of emotions that the soldiers and Mounties display, and times a jetpack-powered thrust to lift the Four Armed Man off his feet, and into the “loving graces” of the Hulk.

Knocking the Four Armed Man unconscious, Hulk feels a twinge of remorse beneath his battle fury. “Hulk is glad fighting is over!” he says, shaking his head. With the Tranz Rupture swirling the thoughts of individuals into the conscious mind of each person present, Hulk feels the urgency of stopping the fire, the physical threat to everyone. He sees a fire fighter, who calls himself Smoky Dean, beckon him back to stopping the inferno. The Hulk slams together his hands to create a massive wind, blowing down the flaming trees directly in front of him.
Smoky Dean runs the other direction, shouting the Hulk’s praises. As he plunges into another side of the inferno, however, he finds firefighters fallen, and feels their misery. He walks up to one to make sure he is not suffocating or falling prey to heat exhaustion; he immediately feels the grasp of the Voidons upon the emotions of his fellows. “All they need is to revive enough to fight back!” he thinks, but he does not know what to do for them, individually. “Then I’m just going to have to stay strong, myself!” he decides. In setting his intention, Smoky Dean calls upon inner reserves: the love for his wife and child he wants to see again, and his own self-taught determination.
He remembers training for his pack test last month: a walk of three miles in forty-five minutes,

wearing a vest weighing 45 pounds. Running would disqualify him. Only endurance and a steady

certainty could see him through. This emotion begins to spread among his desperately rallying

fellows.

Aching, Nighthawk takes flight again, overhead. “Interesting how you can lose track of what county you're in in the middle of a huge fire, “ he thinks; “the soot must be unbelievable, gets down into your clothes...my hair’s going to smell like fire a long time!” He begins diving in, taking up fire fighters for air above the smoke. “They can’t even wear a mask---too dangerous!” he reasons.

He also becomes aware of the emotional confluence, you might say, as he whisks fire fighters upwards from the psychically feeding Voidons. “The time I spent conscious without my body, thanks to the Headmen, has given me sort of vantage point of detachment,” he intuits. “I perceive whatever energy field is opening us to one another, and I see it reaching my mind, but also, my choice beneath the miasma of emotions. If the field will take my projection, of my thoughts, into the mix, perhaps it help make the firefighters deal with the physical element of these feeling-void attacks! As it is---I only hope Val and Patsy have got some angle on how to bring this down at its source, or a massive wildfire might be the SMALL problem!”


Hellcat reaches for her cell phone once again, as she swings out of reach of the she-wolf, Corpse Flower. “I don’t know where in the universe Doctor Strange is, but we need him---or Clea---to find the key to whatever’s going on here. Okay, Clea, it’s ringing...pick up before this kitty becomes wolf chow on the hoof!”
NEXT:
http://ceaseill.blogspot.com/2010/02/with-this-strike-better-world-vikings_20.html

Execution at the edge of existence! Defenders/TRANZ (2 of 3) Remus Sharptooth story pt. 1

Within all things lies the information---other forms, willing generously into Intention, every necessity for realization! I feel like standing, trembling with control, extremities poised to the generation of powers, welling up inside my nature. What I knew as blood is called magma, roiling in patterns deeply, surging to declare the changes to the surface world.

To think is to shudder. Stability now in waves, while tremors in our darkness declare:
we do indeed, grow.
Prince Nicola, Dragonvayne, flows as a consciousness on the fifth dimension, coalescing into a form, an embodiment of the metaphor of his present existence, which seems ghost-like from our remove.

Emergence’s sea, drift in antipathy, the low end vibes, surrendering my good vessel to the urgencies at the shadowed heart of intentions, those seeming to fail misguided, interrupted---frustrated! Where in this lost land wait the creations of foreboding, haunting our tribes with fallen states?

Mark! Where stands the heaven that here will give me strength? We raid this dominating fortress, sack its gloom, we seek its prisoners, chained awaiting after life liberty!

Steady, my Kane---inspired by a moment, in the passion of long sacrifice, to provide a forgiving glimpse into the reaches of frightfulness.

Before the black hole fixed beyond Valhalla into Ragnarok, shines a sickening pale of the many fears of many deaths before the unreasoning slayers, in a shade that shuns life, rolling across the lightless heavens to contain the gait of my destroyer, the death angel graced with the visage of my beloved friend…

So, at last.

I tell myself, surrender to death: the gateway to an integrated understanding must lie here at the culmination---the termination---the harvest of my being. And because I choose not to fear the end of all I knew in this form, for this reason, I believe, is the grace: my executioner wears my friend’s face.

Rayford Awen Mycearyn---perhaps, you are not he, but some hooded shade of his essence---or perhaps, you are Ray, but only his urge to slay, or his merciful spirit’s duty-bound form, here to deliver me to the next plane.

I sit then upon the foot of the ebony bridge in the unlit heavens, facing away, blessing all, observing all, releasing all.



Remus: Snargh...woof! By the Zavox, what a dream! A wolf chases a cat...in my trance, I prepared to dispatch the male, alternate identity of the Viking witch...



Corpse Flower: Sharptooth! Rawr-rawrr! We are besieged! Snarrrll...!
We must dispatch these spirits attached to the Box...the time of the Five Dragons is upon this world, praise Sulinar Vix's name!

Explosion in a mountainous valley in Southern California exposes a great flaming beast. Bali, Hillie, Oakie and Teddy have rushed up in a 2004 Dodge Ram truck in time to see from about a quarter mile away. Concerned for their friends, they decide to get as close as possible to the conflagration, with a sinking feeling in general, but some optimism that Patsy and Val are capable of survival. Teddy turns to Oakie and tells him he has his feelings in check as though a cloud has lifted; the danger, and the bizarre happenings at the Castles Made of Sand Bar have sharpened his awareness, provided an opening to dispelling his remorse, his survivor’s guilt. Oakie is befuddled that his headache was somehow used to render everyone unconscious in the middle of psychological freak-out shared by the entirety of the bar’s patrons. Hillie cannot believe he’s looking at texts from his girlfriend at a time like this and hopes that Patsy and her friend are all right. Bali comments on attending a soap opera in the middle of an action movie; he is pleased his night has not been dull, and after such unsettling events, looks forward to curling up with a good read with no further complaint of boredom.

The soldiers have survived the explosion of the Gnoblin hutch; Holt looks on bruised but alive and rather excited from his perch in the tree, wondering if the beautiful woman who thrust him clear of the explosion is okay, and stumbles as quickly as possible closer to the site to see if he can help anyone.

First he sees Hellcat (Patsy) and Valkyrie emerge from the smoke alive. However, shadowy beings, called Voidons, also emerge; at their touch, their emotional attacks weaken and slow the heroines. Fortunately, Machine Man, though somewhat charred, also emerges and begins to battle the barely substantial beings, who seem to have no effect on his mechanical, rather than biological, body.

Pvt. Holt then sees the Hulk thrust aside debris from the hutch, with his friend Mountie Dave Blanc alive and laughing nervously beneath him. The man the mountie had been checking for injury had been Doctor Banner, whose change into the Hulk began as soon as the sargeant on patrol had pistol whipped him for disobeying his order to clear the area. The flaming dragon flies over head, seeming to dissipate into thin air, but its flames have begun spreading through the woods. Holt, Blanc, and Corporal Dayly together convince the Hulk to act to arresting the spread of the flames.

From his stronghold nearby in a cave, Remus Sharptooth upon his makeshift throne watches the mystically conjured tableau of Prince Nicola Dragonvayne, believing his conscious, sentient existence in his present ghost form to be drawn to an end, preparing to surrender to his symbolic execution at the hands of his old friend, Captain Awen.

The semblance of this viking wizard, from the perspective of Remus, is merely a facade for himself, the same disguise he used previously to capture the prince’s mystic consort and partner, the Marc Kane, who is apparently held in stasis in an adjoining extra-dimensional plane. This execution is not administered with much intentional benevolence, but rather, is the magical method for doing away with the two magical beings whose intentions and knowledge might lead to his plans thwarted.

Narr, the known surviving Gnomlin from the hutch, plays foolishly, for his own amusement as much as that of the “court.” As he dances and sings about the impending change of the world, the she-wolf that speaks telepathically and calls herself Corpse Flower ignores him. She concentrates instead upon messages in an alien tongue from a futuristic science sorcerer she calls Sulinar Vix. She calls upon the power of the Zavox, a mighty entity that drains the energies of a futuristic utopian planet Earth called Kolpar.

The emergence of the Zavox Force transformed the life of Sulinar Vix of Kolpar. He was the first soul denied the Ascendancy, the transformation which marks the point in Kolparian evolution where a person can change their body into an energy form capable of interstellar travel, as well access to other dimensions. Vix now provides power to his agents on present Earth, who use the Slave Box to conjure the transformation of the world, its conversion driven by the Five Dragons, great elemental forces.

Massive terraformation and the dissolution of psychic barriers that shape individuals are the mark of this Trans-Rupture. The walls between individuals’ conscious minds are already permeating with the thoughts of one another, as well as their subconscious fears and desires.

The shadowy beings conveyed here by the Zavox, the Voidons, already work to siphon vibrational energies from the people of Earth. The other agents, the gnomlins and the Trome, were provided through the agency of Sulinar Vix; their machinations served as a distraction to prevent the discovery of the actual emanation point of this extra-dimensional invasion.

Meanwhile Remus praises the better world soon to be wrought by his magics; he relishes, he says, the challenge of conquering this strange new plane, and unleashing inherent forces. He then calls for the Four Armed Men, whose silhouettes dreadfully fill the glare flooding from the next room, and sends them to patrol the area and crush unwanted visitors near the site of the exploded hutch. Then the wolf man resumes his merged control with his bizarre astral projection’s execution of Prince Nicola, kneeling in meditation, awaiting his transformation to the next plane of existence, trusting his friend.

NEXT:
http://ceaseill.blogspot.com/2010/02/with-this-strike-better-world-vikings_20.html