3Heroes Legion: Year Two: "Knightfall"
By Maskedhero100
Chapter 1: GENESIS
Emerald Forrest, Lunar City: March 14, 2015: 8:00 PM
The Forrest surrounding the northern section of the crescent-shaped bay where Lunar City's Palisades neighborhood was located was silent as the calm and cool autumn wind blew through the nearly naked branches of the trees.
The silence was broken as the wind grew stronger, followed by three flashes of light that were accompanied by the sound of a booming thunderclap.
The frightened animals of this section of the forest turn and ran for it, as the time-traveling version of The Mirage flew out of a 'hole' that had formed and closed abruptly behind it afterward.
It soared through the air, gracefully like an eagle…and then it crash-landed in the trees just a couple of hundred yards away from where it had exited the time portal.
Sparks danced out of the main engine section while smoke, jet engine exhaust fumes, and coolant mist leaked out of several parts of the vehicle, which now had two broken wings, and a damaged nose in its flight mode form.
The cockpit canopy opened, revealing the Heroes Legion, Stephanie Walker, Commander Arcane…and Chameleon.
Alive, but dazed and bewildered by the crash landing.
"Why can't we ever have a normal landing? Why does it always have to be a crash landing?" Velocity groaned.
"Is everyone okay?" M-Leader asked concerned.
"I'm okay, Marcus" Stephanie Walker assured him.
"So am I" Vincent Masters assured his son.
"I think I hit my head on something" Ravager rubbed his head.
"Yeah…" Murdoch groaned, shaking his normal cat's head in response "my head!"
"I haven't had a crash that bad since the first time I flew my old glider," Commander Arcane said, shaking the spinning stars away from his dazed head.
"Could have been worse…" Raven Ducard said, before grimacing in pain as she felt the spot where she had hit her head against the seat of The Mirage, a small bit of blood trickled from the very spot "You could be bleeding from the head."
Shadow Knight had taken notice of Raven's choice of words before anyone else and moved over to try and examine her head.
"Oh my gosh!" Techne exclaimed, "Raven's bleeding!"
Hearing this, the Heroes Legion all turned to look at their friend with great concern and worry on their faces.
"I'm fine Techne…" Raven assured her, "trust me, worse things have been done to my head than this."
Shadow Knight continued to examine her head.
"Looks like you got a bit of a big goose egg forming there, and the skin has been damaged, that's why your bleeding. Are you all right?" he asked her.
Raven smiled, "I'll be fine, Shadow Knight. I'm a witch, remember?"
She then closed her eyes while placing her hand over her goose egg, and chanted a healing spell under her breath.
As if she was a magician performing on stage, she gave a 'Ta-Da!' gesture once the spell had healed her goose egg.
Shadow Knight smirked and shook his head in amusement at Raven's actions.
Up in the front, not paying attention to any of the conversation going on behind him.
Chameleon was frantically fiddling with the controls of the Mirage time machine, "no, no, no, no…oh this is just GREAT!"
His outburst got everyone's attention, and they didn't like the sound of what he had just said.
"What's wrong?" Vincent Masters asked.
"It's dead," Chameleon said, "The dashboard, the machine, the whole thing is dead! We've got no power."
"It's the positronic reactor core" Techne answered, "It was damaged in the crash."
"How do you know that?" Chameleon asked in surprise, and then he smacked his head in realization "of course, you're a technopath."
"So the time machine is dead?" Silicon asked his girlfriend.
"No, it just doesn't have any power source to run from anymore, it's been damaged. It was a positronic energy core like the one that powers the Robo-Warrior suit" Techne explained, "We'd need to find a new one to replace it…plus the wings are broken."
To emphasize her point, she drew their attention to the damaged wings of The Mirage time machine.
"I think I could fix that," Silicon said, "but the positronic energy core is way beyond me, it's future tech, I can't fix that. A regular core from this era might work, but we only have the one that powers the Robo-Warrior suit."
"We could get a regular one from Technogopolis" Robo-Warrior suggested, "it should power the machine just as well as the original reactor."
"If there even IS a Technogopolis" Shadow Knight pointed out, "We don't know where or even WHEN we are, for all we know, we landed sometime in the 1800s in the woods somewhere in north America…possible somewhere in Washinton or Oregon state."
"What makes you think that, Shadow Knight?" Robo-Warrior asked.
"Because these trees around us are Red Maple and Sitka Spruce, and the tallest ones…" Shadow Knight said pointing around at the trees around the crash site, "they are Western Hemlock, a tree found only on the west coast. Since it's too cool out tonight to be the southern regions of the country…we're somewhere in either Washinton or Oregon if I had to take an educated guess based on these deductions."
"Well, now we have an idea of the where…" Commander Arcane said, looking up at the clear night sky "now what about the when? How do we know when we are?"
"I could zip into the nearest town and bring back a newspaper" Velocity suggested.
"Speedtrap, this isn't the time for pop culture jokes" Atlanta scolded.
"Who was joking?" Velocity asked, "worked for Marty McFly, it will work for us."
"Not if we landed somewhen in time where there are no newspapers" Chameleon pointed out.
"Oh…" Velocity said, he then scratched his chin thoughtfully before snapping his fingers in conclusion "We'll I'll go zip around out there and let you know if there are any native Americans in wigwams out there."
"Velocity, wait…" Atlanta began.
But Velocity was already gone, in a flash.
"Arggh!" Atlanta groaned in frustration, looking like she wanted to punch something "he drives me CRAZY! Why can't he ever stay still without jumping into things? He's gonna get himself into trouble one of these days and it will be his damn fault for going off without any backup!"
Shadow Knight chuckled, which caused Atlanta to turn and look at him, "What's so funny?"
"I used to think it was all absurdity, now I'm not so sure, " Shadow Knight said giving her an inquisitive look, "am I imagining it, or did I hear genuine worry and concern in your voice for Velocity just now Atlanta? You DO care for him. A lot. Don't you?"
"It's just your imagination, I look out for my teammates, even idiots like Velocity, you know that!" Atlanta scoffed at Shadow Knight's observation.
"And yet yours and velocity's actions during the tournament indicated otherwise" Shadow Knight pointed out, "How you held his hand to assure him you were okay when you saw how concerned he was for you when you were grievously injured by Meta-Master."
Atlanta shot him an icy death glare, "It's just your imagination!"
"Whatever…" Shadow Knight said, not intimidated by Atlanta's glare in the least, "now we better hope Velocity comes back with something that tells us where we are and it tells us were in the modern world…because if Velocity comes back wearing a chief's feather hat, we're screwed."
"I have an idea…" Cyber-29 declared, "Andrew, look up straight up at the stars for me will ya?"
"Okay buddy" Andrew Griffin acknowledged and did what he was told.
"Hold it!" Cyber-29 declared, "Just keep looking up….uh…let's see here. Yep, here it is. Let's see if this works."
"See if what works?" Stephanie Walker asked.
"I'm using the suit's long-range scanner and telescope lens to take a reading of the night sky, and matching the data I have of the stars and their position in the night sky to determine what time of the year we are in…" Cyber-29 explained, "and if I happen to see a bunch of satellites up there, maybe I'll also be able to determine which year we are in as well."
"How can seeing a satellite verify that?" Chameleon asked in disbelief.
"I'm a creation of Carlos Benson, CEO of Benson Industries" Cyber-29 pointed out, "I know my maker's signature, if there are Benson Industries satellites up there…I'll hack into it and get the information on our current location in time from it."
"Okay…" Chameleon nodded in understanding, "makes sense…I guess. Sorry, I'm still getting over you being one of the good guys again. I spent a decade trying to fight you…twice…in two different timelines."
"From your point of view I can imagine you're warry to be around what your enemy had once been before he was perverted into a monster by foolish human beings trying to wipe out a group of people for the crime of being different and empowered in ways they never could be…a monster that ruined your world," Cyber-29 said reassuringly, "but know and learn this Chameleon, no matter what happened to me in another timeline, I am one of the good guys in this one, and I intend to stay that way. Hmmm…interesting."
"What?" Stephanie Walker asked in response to this.
"There seems to be a…I'm not sure…" Cyber-29 said in intrigued confusion, "A network of satellites up there in the sky…and they appear to be similar in design to the Prometheus Cannon."
"I guess this confirms we aren't anywhere before the age of space and technology," Ravager said in relief.
"And if these satellites look like the Prometheus Cannon" Silicon added, "then we ARE in the present time again, just possibly a different version of it."
"What do you mean?" Raven Ducard asked in concern.
"It's like I said back on the island…" Commander Arcane said, "Your actions in the past shall have consequences. When you traveled back in time to save me during the Battle of New York, you set in motion events that caused you to inhabit/possess your past selves' bodies during that time…while the Dark Elite and several other characters from different points in the timeline you left behind. You were all then pulled into the Battle Island Tournament, which was triggered no doubt by the shattering of the Time Stone from the HUNTER-controlled future that originally powered this time device. While everyone else was sent back to their original points in time with no memory of the tournament…you, me, Vincent, etc…were possibly instead sent forward through time to this point in the new timeline you created when you jumped back to the Battle of New York. A timeline where, if I'm not mistaken, you possibly weren't around to do whatever it was you did before coming back to New York to save me…an alternate timeline to the one you originally came from. Furthermore, your adventures through time didn't happen in this timeline…because you ultimately possessed/overwrote your past selves and their destiny…and then came forward through time to here. Where who knows what originally happened before in the previous timeline now did or did not happen as a result of your absence following the Battle of New York."
"That's…" Chameleon said impressed, "a very well-informed hypothesis for an old soldier, how do you know so much about time travel?"
"I've had a long and very interesting life, young man" Commander Arcane said indifferently to the reptilian time traveler's curiosity.
"But if that's the case…" M-Leader said thoughtfully, and then his gold eyes widened in fearful realization, "Commander Hardcastle!"
"Commander?" Commander Arcane said in surprise, "You mean Lieutenant Hardcastle don't you?"
"No…" Raven Ducard shook her head, "She took command after you…after you died."
"Or at least in this case when everyone thought you had died" Silicon took over, "She was betrayed by a mole working for STRIPE…"
"STRIPE?" Commander Arcane repeated in confusion, "Who the hell are they?"
"Long story" M-Leader interjected, "Look the fact is that it's possible this event still happened, and if it did, then she is currently in an underground lab in quarantined Manhattan being experimented on by a man called Dr. Julius Ryker, working under STRIPE's employ to make bio-weapons to destroy all Metahumans."
"Very effective ones" Silicon added, "We've seen them in action."
"What!?" Commander Arcane said in shock, "Then I can't stay here, I need to rescue her and take back SLEET!"
Commander Arcane reached for his jump Drive teleporter.
"Wait Arcane!" M-Leader warned, "These guys used their mole and Hardcastle's imprisonment to take over, they already might have taken over the organization in this timeline if the events at Crystal Peak never occurred and their corruption was never exposed before it was too late. You might be going on this rescue mission alone, with no backup, let my students and I come with you. You might need the backup."
Commander Arcane smiled, "I appreciate the thought son, but I was doing this job long before you blew up your desk with your first chemistry set. Besides, there are a group of soldiers you and I both know, who I KNOW will be people I can count on to back me up whenever I ask for them…if only as a last Resort."
Before M-Leader could ask anything more, Commander Arcane activated his teleporter…and vanished before his and everyone else's eyes.
Chameleon wasn't impressed, "There goes another one. He galivanted off before I could tell him my hypothesis, might have changed his mind about leaving to go rescue Commander Hardcastle."
"Which is?" M-Leader asked him.
"That it's possible we didn't change anything. That this is the same present we left behind when we accidentally traveled to the future, that despite what we did in the past, nothing branched off and history never overwrote into a new chain of events because this was how it happened in the first place. This proves my theory that not every moment in time is changeable, and in those moments in time temporal events are influenced by the future as much as the past. You all 'knew' he died in the blast. But truth is he didn't. He never did. He didn't die in the nuclear blast during the last hours of the Siege of Manhattan because we pulled him into the future with us when we rescued him, so he would be believed to have died when he really hadn't…preserving the flow of events that happened as it did before our time travel mishap to the THANATOS controlled future. A time loop, predestination paradox. So, therefore… there IS no Commander Hardcastle to rescue in New York because nothing happened to interfere with that event, he's gone off on a snipe hunt!"
"Damn it!" M-Leader declared, "and I've got no way to contact him to tell him this, he could be heading into danger!"
"He'll be fine, that old war horse has been through worse. He can take care of himself. As to the matter of when we landed in time…" Chameleon answered, looking up at the stars, thinking about the new satellites in orbit, "I think we might have landed back where we left off when we first time traveled, if not, then I have a feeling I know just when in time we landed, but I'll need confirmation to be sure. If it's the point we left, then we have some breathing room to work with."
"And if its when in time that you think it is we are?" M-Leader inquired.
"If it is…Then I hope you and the others are ready to fight for better tomorrow today, or else." Chameleon answered with a stern look to convey the seriousness of his words.
Vincent Masters, already overwhelmed by everything that had happened since awakening up in his son's arms and finding his son had been transformed into his current state and also crash landing here in these woods in the middle of nowhere…found himself needing to sit down.
"Will someone PLEASE explain to me what the hell is going on here?" Vincent Masters exclaimed in exasperation, "Floating aliens, time travel mumbo jumbo, and now SLEET is possibly compromised by an enemy faction? Either this is a very strange dream or I'm going insane!"
"Going?" Ravager said incredulously.
M-Leader sighed, and then walked over to his bewildered father and put a reassuring hand on his shoulder.
"I'll tell you what you want to know father…" M-Leader said, "my students and Stephanie will help fill in the blanks as well. But I've got to warn you, it's a long story."
"Then we'd better get a campfire going, I have a feeling we're going to need it," Vincent Masters said, and then he smiled warmly as his mind wandered to a happy memory, "I remember…it always worked for your mom and me, whenever we had something important to tell you and Jessie, we'd roast marshmallows to sweeten the deal."
That was when Vincent Masters realized something important, "Where IS Jessie? Where's your sister?"
"She's fine dad…" M-Leader assured him, "I just…don't know where she is right now."
"What do you mean?" Vincent Masters asked in confusion and worry, "How can you know she's okay, and not know where she is?"
"If you let me tell you what I have to tell you," M-Leader said sternly, "you'll find out. But pull up a seat, the first part of the story will throw you for a loop."
"Okay then…" Vincent Masters said, sitting down against the damaged Mirage Time Machine, "Regale me about what has happened."
"You're also not going to believe what I have to tell you" M-Leader warned him, "but I assure you, everything I tell you, it happened."
"It can't possibly be any crazier than what has happened in the past twenty minutes" Vincent Masters scoffed.
"You'd be surprised" Stephanie Walker chuckled.
It had taken a while, but eventually M-Leader had explained the whole story of what had happened to both him and his father when the MGA exploded, who the Heroes Legion were, and why they were now here in the forest discussing such an outlandish tale around a campfire.
"This story you've told me is really unbelievable" Vincent Masters said, "And yet, with our present company and your current transformed state, I'm inclined to believe it. However, I find it hard to believe that I could possibly have once possessed superpowers."
"Not have…you still do possess them" Shadow Knight corrected, "And now, so do I again."
"Then that means…I'm responsible for such horrible atrocities and the current state of the world." Vincent Masters said in distraught regret, "What have I done?"
"No" M-Leader assured his distraught father, "That wasn't you, that was a nightmare from a different future using your body…as crazy as that sounds. Nothing you did as 'Meta-Master' was your fault. It was Meta-Master and the bastards that created him."
"And now that he's permanently dealt with, we need to take down the ones who created him here in our timeline" Chameleon added.
"You mean those STRIPE fellows you were talking about?" Vincent Masters asked, "I thought you said that you and these kids blew the whistle on their whole operation before you ended up in that killer robot infested future."
"We did, but something about those new satellites in orbit that Cyber-29 detected makes me wonder if we succeeded or not. Until we get confirmation otherwise, I plan to continue to treat STRIPE as a problem." M-Leader explained.
"At least we won't have to worry about any killer robots anymore since we still have Cyber-29 on our side...and he's still the good cybernetic soul we all know and love" Andrew Griffin said in relief, putting a hand on the backpack form of the Robo-Warrior suit where it lay beside him.
The cybernetic red eye of Cyber-29 looked up at his friend, even though it couldn't show its emotions in that state, Andrew Griffin and the Heroes Legion could tell that the sentient artificial intelligence was just as glad to have avoided that awful fate that would have transformed him into the Homicidal monster known as THANATOS.
He NEVER wanted that to become his destiny, and if he had any say in the matter, it never would be his destiny.
That was when suddenly in a flash, Velocity returned.
The Heroes Legion stood up when they noticed that he was out of breath.
This was concerning because Velocity hardly ever ran out of breath.
The only reason he would have been breathless, was if he was really hauling ass…and the only reason he would have been hauling ass would be if he had run into trouble or had found out something troubling.
They also noticed that he had a newspaper in on hand, or at least the front page of a newspaper, he seemed to have left the rest of it behind in transit from wherever it was he had picked it up at.
"Guys…Today…it's today!" Velocity panted, clutching his chest and breathing harshly as if he was having an asthma attack "Oh dear, misjudged how much energy I had left over from that Tournament. I'm way past empty! I need substance… a drink!"
Velocity then reached into his jacket and pulled out a strange looking glass like container containing a glowing yellow liquid that had a red/green lightning bolt symbol on it, as well as the words "RED LIGHT/GREEN LIGHT" emblemized on it.
Before anyone could stop him, Velocity twisted open the cap and downed the liquid as quick as a flash.
Velocity sighed in satisfaction upon drinking the strange liquid substance he had brought back with him, "Hmmm. Not bad. Taste's just like Strawberries! It's got a pleasant 'zing' to it. Anyone want to try a sip?"
Velocity's satisfaction was short lived when the strange liquid he had consumed suddenly took affect.
His eyes widened in shock as his stomach and the blood in his veins began to churn and burn.
He dropped the bottle when he suddenly lost all control of his muscles and nerves.
It landed on the ground he stood on, right beside his Nike' sneakers, the remaining liquid contents spilling out onto and into the forest soil.
He at first looked like he was having a stroke, and then he screamed as suddenly his whole body startled to crackle with Acceleron energy as it usually did when he used his speedster powers, only wilder and more chaotic as the strange liquid began to affect his powers.
The Heroes Legion and company watched in shock and horror at what was happening to Velocity.
"What's happening?!" Stephanie Walker asked, but no one could give her an answer.
The Heroes Legion quickly ducked out of the way as suddenly Velocity's arms stretched out uncontrollably towards them, sending a blast of Acceleron energy towards them.
It stuck a nearby pine tree instead.
That was when something strange began to happen to Velocity, around his hands, a strange new type of energy began to form that was different from the energy that he generated when he accessed his speedster powers by harnessing the power of the Acceleron particles infused in his body.
Velocity then stopped sparking energy and found himself no longer rooted to the spot like a statue. He collapsed onto his knees and fell unconscious.
The Heroes Legion surrounded him, Atlanta was the first to reach him, she quickly checked to see if he was fine, feeling him over to make sure he was okay.
"I've got a pulse, he's breathing!" Atlanta confirmed that Velocity was alive, "It seems he just passed out."
"What the hell happened?" Silicon asked, picking up the strange glass container from where Velocity had dropped it, examining what was left of its contents "What IS this stuff?"
The Heroes Legion and company eyed the strange container whose contents had done something to one of their teammates in question and disbelief, wondering what the hell had happened and what this substance was.
Shadow Knight however eyed the glass container and its contents with narrowed eyes of suspicion…and of recognition.
He couldn't believe it.
It was GENESIS!
He had thought he had seen the last of that stuff when he took down the Brain of Crime and ended his experiments into creating superpowered mercenaries for the terrorism and espionage outfit he was a member of… FEIND.
Apparently not.
That was when Shadow Knight's danger sense began to flare up, warning him of approaching danger.
He turned around to see that the tree Velocity had involuntarily blasted had been severely damaged by the blast and was now collapsing towards the Heroes Legion like a tumbling giant.
"Heads up!" Shadow Knight declared, pointing at the falling tree that was about to crash down on them all.
Before anyone could do anything, Velocity suddenly woke up in a start and upon seeing that a massive tree was about to fall on him and his friends, instinctively put out his hands so he could grab Atlanta and Silicon first before using his speedster ability to save everyone.
But the second he held out his hands to grab his teammates, that strange energy his hands had been producing a moment ago manifested and then shot out at the falling tree, opening, and enveloping it like a rescue blanket.
The Heroes Legion and Velocity watched in surprised shock as the moment the strange energy field he was generating caused the tree to stop falling, and not just stop falling…but stop in midfall and hang there, almost as if it had been frozen in time.
"What…the…hell?" Vincent Masters said in stunned disbelief at the sight of the 'frozen' pine tree.
Velocity balked in disbelief at what he had just done, but not wanting to risk it, he quickly activated his speedster power and moved everyone out of the path of the previously falling tree.
Once he had done so, he joined his dumbstruck teammates in starring in disbelief at the sight of the frozen tree that was now stuck in mid fall.
Velocity suddenly realized he no longer felt 'empty', in fact he now felt more charged up than he had been in a while, even Moreso than whenever he chowed down on those Atlantean power pellets Atlanta sometimes supplied him with last year.
"What was that stuff you just drank?!" Stephanie Walker asked, hoping Velocity had a good answer for drinking that stuff.
"A…new type of sports drink. At least, I thought it was." Velocity answered.
"You Baka!" Shadow Knight snapped, "what kind of sports drink glows in the dark like glow sticks?"
"What's a 'Baka'?" Velocity asked Shadow Knight, perplexed by the Japanese word for 'idiot' he had used, "is that even a real word?"
"…Why do I even bother?" Shadow Knight groaned in annoyance at Velocity's brash ignorance.
"Speed trap, you idiot! You don't drink liquid that glows! What were you thinking?!" Atlanta snapped, smacking Velocity upside the head for his moment of stupidity.
"Ow!" velocity winced, rubbing the back of his head in pain, "Yeah…I guess I deserved that. Sorry, I was just so thirsty and out of juice. I just went on automatic pilot. I seriously thought it was some kind of sports drink. It found it when it fell off a truck I nearly ran into when I was heading to the nearest gas station to get information about where we are and when we arrived in."
"You could have killed yourself! But thankfully, you didn't. Are you sure you're, okay?" Atlanta asked him, no longer angry with him but concerned.
"Okay? I'm better than okay Angel Fish" Velocity said, looking at Atlanta before looking back at his hands in awe, "I think I just picked up a new trick! I think… I am, I'm fully charged! It usually takes six burger specials to make me feel this full in the speed tank. What WAS that I just did?"
"If my visual sensors weren't malfunctioning when I saw it, and if my Bioscan readouts of your body right now are correct. It looked like you somehow generated some kind of 'Anti-Speed energy' that froze the tree in time. I also think I you absorbed the potential kinetic energy of that tree as it fell and converted it into bioenergy" Cyber-29 said in amazement.
"Awesome!" Velocity said in amazement, before turning to M-Leader for answers "what does that mean?"
"That glowing liquid you drank, it seems to have triggered some kind of…I don't know…secondary Metagenesis in you Velocity, it gave you a new power. Instead of just speeding yourself up and others as well…you can now slow things down and absorb their momentum to transform it into energy to replenish and sustain your metabolism fueled speed power" M-Leader said in awe, he had never seen anything like this before.
This was new and unprecedented development in Metahuman physiology…but not entirely unexpected.
He had often theorized that such "Next tier-based level mutations' or 'Secondary Metagenesis' could be possible to occur and trigger in Metahumans where they could 'evolve' into higher levels of power and possibly gain new abilities, but he never thought he'd see his theories proved to be scientific fact right before his eyes…Nor that it would happen because Velocity drank something he shouldn't have.
A scientific leap for Metahuman science…discovered and unlocked by way basic youthful foolishness and lack of foresight.
Who'd have thought it?
"So…" Silicon examined the empty vial, "This stuff caused him to develop a new power, the power to slow things down?"
"Not just him" Shadow Knight took the vial from Silicon and examined it himself, confirming that his suspicions about the mystery liquid were correct, "but you would as well Silicon, and so would anyone else who drinks it. Anyone who drinks this stuff gets either this power…or gets superpowers period depending on what type of variant configuration of this substance is consumed."
"You say that like you know what this stuff is, Spooky" Techne said to him with concern.
"That's because I do. I HAVE seen this stuff before Techne. It's called GENESIS!" Shadow Knight answered with a serious tone of concern in his voice.
"GENESIS?" Vincent Masters asked in confusion, "What pray tell is that?"
"A mutagenic compound developed by a FIEND research group on a remote island somewhere in the pacific as part of their plans to create superpowered soldiers. They tested it out on people they had imprisoned on the island. Trying to perfect it, not everyone survived the testing. I was a 'guest' of theirs once. I got to try a taste of one of their little potions and…well…" Shadow Knight smirked sinisterly, "they ended up wishing I was one of the ones who died due to complications caused by the resulting mutations during the trials."
Shadow Knight demonstrated by transforming his hand into a nightmarishly sharpened version of itself in living shadow form and back to give his teammates an idea of what he was talking about.
"I don't know what they did to finally make it work without killing the resulting metahuman after developing the powers that it granted, but as I escaped, I burned that lab to the ground and made sure each one of those bastards never saw tomorrow for all the innocent lives they had destroyed to create that stuff to help FIEND with their plans for world conquest. I thought that was the last of 'Project: GENESIS', but some of it must have survived and was taken off the island during my rampage. I later encountered more of these concoctions in Lunar City being used and developed by a FIEND agent known as the Brain of Crime who had secretly developed powers of his own from exposure to a variant of GENESIS." Shadow Knight eyed the bottle in his hand with narrowed eyes of deep concern.
"The Brain used GENESIS a lot in his campaign of control as the city's kingpin of the underworld, creating supervillain puppets to use against me and to also study me and my powers. He even used a variant of it to launch a chemical weapon-based terrorist attack on Lunar City where he mentally enslaved people with the nerve gas and turned them rabid on those who were immune to the cloud. It took a while, but eventually I and a few trusted friends put an end to that madman's reign of terror. I had hoped after that the threat of any criminally or even psychotically minded superpowered individuals appearing in the world had died with him along with the secret of the formula that could potentially create more of them…until I was informed about the threat of Meta-Master that is. I had thought GENESIS would no longer be a problem with the project destroyed and the last person who knew about it being dead…but apparently, someone out there is still making this stuff. In variants I have never seen before."
"If someone is making 'superpowers' in a bottle" Andrew Griffin said with great concern, "Then we are all in big trouble."
"Where did you get this?" M-Leader asked Velocity.
"I found it in a crate that fell off a truck, like I said." Velocity explained again.
"Show us where this happened" M-Leader demanded.
"I've got a better idea…" Velocity said, before he zipped away in a flash before coming back just as quickly, this time with a semi-broken crate in his hands, "How about I just show you the crate? How about that, I don't feel out of breath or tired…or even hungry! This stuff really gives you an energy boost!"
Velocity placed the crate on the ground and opened it.
Inside was an assortment of different glass containers containing a mixed rainbow of different colored glowing liquid substances similar to the one Velocity had drunk.
"Arctic Blast? Ironclad? Blood of Zues? King of Beasts?" Silicon said, reading the labels on some of the GENESIS containers found in the crate, each one a different glowing color "Who comes up with these names?"
"More importantly, what can they do?" Vincent Masters added.
"We should all take some swigs and find out!" Velocity suggested eagerly.
"What?!" Robo-Warrior declared in disbelief, "Why would we do that?"
"Why WOULDN'T we want to do that man?" Velocity countered, "It's free upgrades in a bottle."
"We don't even know what this stuff does Speed trap" Murdoch pointed out, "It could be double edged, dangerous…"
"It could be fun!" Velocity countered and tried to reach for one of the GENESIS bottles.
Shadow Knight was quicker and grabbed the GENESIS bottles inside the crate with tendrils of animated darkness before vanishing them within his living shadow form to the Shadow Realm for safe keeping.
"I think YOU have had enough already!" Shadow Knight said emphatically as he stared Velocity down.
"Oh sure, hog all the power ups for yourself, huh Knight?!" Velocity whined.
"These are NOT power ups, Velocity!" Shadow Knight countered, "Until we know what these things can do and if they are stable, I'm not letting ANYONE else test them out. As much as having you turn into a molten pile of goo on the ground might be an improvement, I'm not interested in seeing it happen. Take it from someone who knows, this stuff is dangerous!"
"As interesting as this development and debate is…" Stephanie Walker interrupted, "I want to know what it was that made Velocity run back here so fast that he was breathless in the first place!"
Velocity did a double take, and then he gasped "Oh right! I completely forgot. I found out what date it is today, where and when we landed…today is March 15th, 2015!"
"March 15th?" Chameleon said in response, "That's the date I was originally trying to take you all to before things went wonky! Damn, talk about a lucky roll of the cosmic dice!"
"What's so important about March 15th?" Vincent Masters asked.
"That's the day that the President and half of the Senate gets assassinated by STRIPE's mind-controlled Titans during a vote on, kicking off that HUNTER controlled future we told you about father!" M-Leader explained.
"I also heard that there is a conference going on today about whether or not to repeal the Metahuman Registration Act and cause STRIPE to stand down" Velocity added, "I guess this confirms it. We didn't change anything; we have indeed returned to the same world we left behind when we traveled to the future. We just landed into following year, instead of returning to when we left."
"But if that's true…" Techne said in realization, "Then we have to stop STRIPE today, before their assassination attempt to further paint metahumans as monsters and terrorists they plan to set up in order to put themselves in permanent power…damns us all to hell!"
M-Leader, realizing the seriousness of the situation he turned to look at Chameleon, "When does the attack occur?"
"At 11:00 AM" Chameleon answered, "If you're going to change the future, you'd better hurry and get to Washington DC."
"That's clear on the other side of the country, and we don't have any means of transportation" Stephanie Walker pointed out, "we'll never make it in time!"
"Don't bet on it, Steph! Once again, Magic comes to the rescue!" Raven Ducard said, smirking with confidence as she pulled out a pendant from out of her pocket.
She held it up and began to chant a spell under her breath, before declaring loudly "BY THE SEAL OF DUCARD, MYSTIC MANSION GATE OPEN!"
Upon saying this, the pendant in Ravens hand began to glow brightly.
The Heroes Legion and company watched in awe as a magical gate formed before them out of thin air.
On the other side of this gate was the interior of some kind of mansion…the inside of the Mystic Mansion back in the ruins of Manhattan Island!
Marty Osmond was also there; he had been sipping on a cup of coffee in the main hallway of the Mystic Mansion when the gate opened before his eyes…and he was looking right at the Heroes Legion in shocked surprise.
"Shadow Knight, Guys…where have you all been!?" he declared through the portal.
"Jump through everyone" Raven Ducard said to her teammates, "This will take us to the Mystic Mansion, from there we can travel to Washington DC."
"Hopefully we still have time on our side" Shadow Knight said cautiously, "because so far it seems that time like fate itself is nothing if not fickle and unpredictable. We have already attempted to change the past to change the future and failed, lets hope that the present is more malleable to being influenced by our choices than the past or future has been."
"Chameleon, come on!" M-Leader said to the time traveling freedom fighter, "We'll need your help."
"Just go…stop the attack!" Chameleon said, "I'll catch up with you all later…"
M-Leader, knowing there was no time to argue as STRIPE's threat and the chance to avoid that terrible future was fast approaching, stepped through the portal.
The portal closed once M-Leader stepped through, leaving Chameleon all alone in the Emerald Woods surrounding North Lunar City.
Once he was certain he was alone, Chameleon turned his attention to his time machine.
"…much later." He said to himself.
Reaching under the control console, he flipped a hidden switch.
The Time Machine version of The Mirage suddenly came alive again…it hadn't been damaged beyond repair as Chameleon had said it was.
It had simply been turned off, and in a way that would make it seem like it had been damaged.
Even a technopath like Techne would have been fooled into thinking it was broken, and that had been exactly what Chameleon had been counting on.
He needed the Heroes Legion to think the Time Machine was broken, when in fact it was not.
If he had told the Heroes Legion that they still had access to time travel, they would no doubt try to go back and undo the Siege of Manhattan, or the destruction of the Burrough by STRIPE…and who could blame them.
But there was something he neglected to tell them, not every event or point in history could or should be interfered with…nor would time itself allow it to happen.
Some event points in the track of the timeline could be changed, creating new alternative history, but there were points like the siege of Manhattan that were fixed and unchangeable links in history's chain.
The fact that they were unable to change history by traveling to the Battle of New York and only managed to drag Commander Arcane back to the present time, allowing him to be presumed to have been killed in a heroic sacrifice diverting the nuke away from New York City and were instead sent here to this point in time was the proof of this.
Thankfully, today was not one of those fixed points in time, and anything that happened today would change events onto a new track of history.
If the Heroes Legion were successful today, then the future he came from would never come to pass…he had succeeded in his original mission to save the Heroes Legion from death at Crystal Peak and bring them here to this pivotal day…which meant there was nothing more for him to do here.
Except to push forward into time to see the outcome of this and hope that a better future replaced the THANATOS controlled future he came from.
A dead end in the road of history.
If not, then he would keep coming back to these nexus points in time to change the future again and again until the future was finally a better future for all and not another nightmare of mankind making.
The present time was the Heroes Legion's duty to safeguard and protect, his duty was to the past and the future.
He would see them again later as he had said…just much later than he had implied.
Chameleon stepped into his time machine and spoke to the onboard Auto-Pilot program called Mariko-17.
"Mariko 17…" he said, "set temporal coordinates in for this exact day in the calendar, but in the following year of 2016. Let's see what the seeds of hope we have planted will bear for the future."
Upon saying that, the canopy of the time traveling Mirage closed.
The vehicle roared to life and took to the air.
It soared over the tree line of the Emerald Woods, traveling to Mach 1.
The Mirage glowed with green bolts of energy coming from the Destiny Stone of Time, forming a sphere of time travel energy around it…and then vanished into the time stream once again.
Leaving behind no evidence that it had been there save for the crater it had made when it had crashed landed upon arrival.
But someone had watched him leave.
A man in a black hooded cloak, the same man who had slipped Techne the vial of GENESIS on Battle Island that gave her her new electrical abilities.
"...and so it begins." he said to himself.