Post by Rogues' Gallery on Mar 30, 2024 7:11:34 GMT -5
Enter the Alternate Reality…
Superunknown stands within the confines of his Crystal Starship.
How I missed this place, he thinks to himself as he looks around at the crystalline structure of the walls.
It's a shame what I have to do now.
Superunknown closes his eyes and in an instant he is transported outside of the structure. He stands on a meteorite floating among many others, high within the orbit of Earth.
Superunknown closes his eyes yet again and in another instant is standing on the floor of a grand desert. He looks up to the sky to see the starship coming apart as it re-enters the atmosphere after being rocked with meteorites colliding into its hull.
He watches silently as the crystal starship breaks into even smaller pieces as it continues to fall before he pulls his mask off and sets it down on the sand. Superunknown looks to his left, at a box that lies in the sand. He opens the box and pulls a long, black coat out that he slips on. He tugs at and adjusts the coat over his shoulders before reaching into the box and pulls out a black, cowboy hat.
Soon the sound of hooves pounding on the hard sand repeats over and over as Superunknown rides a powerful black steed across the desert floor.
Duncan “Superunknown” McKnown steps through the door of his comic book shop. The scene is stark and the shelves are empty. It seems all of the stock has been sold and even the fixtures have been marked down for clearance. Duncan’s old friend and business partner, Johnny Stock stands behind the counter. Their eyes meet as Duncan slowly closes the distance between them. Superunknown removes the hat from his head as he looks around at the empty storefront.
“Sorry, I had to recoup the money you owed me somehow and well, you haven’t been open a single day the last three months. Rogues’ Gallery and Duncan the business man cannot co-exist. It’s time to walk away, Dunc.”
“Business is business.”
“You know that’s all this is. Right?”
“Yep.”
“Are you pissed at me, Duncan?”
Superunknown lowers his head and puts his hat back on before he turns and walks out the door.
“Not in the least, John. As you said, you did what you had to do. It’s just business.”
The door shuts behind Superunknown as he heads out and climbs on top of his black motorcycle. He kick starts and revs the engine before he speeds off.
Jeremy has had enough. He grits his teeth and bites his lip until it bleeds as he pulls at the cell bars as hard as he can and tries with all of his will and might to force himself through them, but he can’t.
Jeremy sits up awake in his bed. He is soaked in a cold sweat. His mind reels as he tries to truly comprehend everything that happened. It splinters and his vision blurs before things come into focus again. His head is swimming. He climbs out of bed and makes his way down the hall to his bathroom.
When he turns the corner, he is now in a fancy restaurant. He is meeting with potential corporate sponsors. He is wearing a suit. How did he get here? He wonders to himself… wait? Did he say that out loud? The sponsors are already at the table. Poop! Jeremy panics and turns and b-lines it to the mens room to try and get his bearings. These kinds of jumps and skips in life were becoming more common, perhaps the effect of all of his time travel.
JTW pushes the door open and busts into the lavatory. He headed straight for the sink, he feels woozy. Maybe drunk even? He doesn’t know for sure, maybe he had been drinking? But it didn’t exactly feel like it. Jeremy almost takes a header, but catches himself in the mirror.
“Get a hold of yourself man. I know, you feel like you were just in bed having a nightmare about being back in that prison, but you’re here now. We’re here.”
“Who are you talking to?!”
Jeremy jumps as he sees the Shadow creep up behind him in the mirror. He shuts his eyes and holds them shut for a moment before opening them again, hoping the Shadow will be gone when he opens them.”
“Don’t ignore me.”
“You’re not real. None of this is real.”
“Oh, it’s real, buddy boy. It’s too Fuding real.”
“No, no, no. I’m over it all. I don’t want it. I don’t want any of it!”
“It doesn’t matter what you want. You know...”
“I won’t have it! You hear me! GO AWAY! LEAVE ME ALONE!!!”
Jeremy shudders as the Shadow’s icy fingers are placed on his shoulder.
“You need me now more than ever.”
“LEAVE ME ALONE!!!! LEAVE ME ALONE!!!!”
Jeremy can feel himself slipping, he can feel the berserker rage of the Shadow coming over him. He leans and pushes the glass so hard it begins to bend a bit without giving way. He slams his forehead into the mirror and it shatters.
“GO AWAY!!!!”
Jeremy howls as he collapses to his knees as he lands on them; he is now somewhere in the middle of wilderness. Trees and the sound of cicadas surround him. His suit is tattered and shredded, he can taste the blood running down his face from his forehead.
So he sees a fire glowing off in the distance and as he approaches he makes out the figures of Superunknown and Frances Farmer sitting beside it.
“Hello there, partner.”
“Hey…”
“Everything OK, Jeremy? You look a little frazzled?”
JTW chuckles.
“A little?”
“Well, I was trying to be polite.”
“Where the hell am I?”
JTW looks his partner up and down.
“Duncan, why do you look so different?”
“I shed what was no longer necessary and I suggest you figure out how to do the same.”
JTW inhales sharply as he raises his head above the water. He is in some sort of pit, his body covered in a white, waxy substance which has hardened into chunks all around him and floating in the water. Frances Farmer stands above him, looking down at him in the pit.
“What the hell was that?”
“It’s your fractured mind trying to adjust to being in one timeline. The present.”
JTW raises up out of the water, the last chunks of wax scatter. He feels refreshed. A deep sense of calm and euphoria coming over him, which contrasts with the anxiety and confusion which gripped him just moments ago.
“I don’t have to do this again, do I? It sucks.”
“The Lazarus pit is a remnant of Atlantean technology I have been able to preserve over the millenia. It is putting your mind back together. Your mind has grown quite fractured these past few months. So it’s not going to feel great. As for your question, I really don’t know yet. You feel better now though, don’t you?”
“Think back to when you were a small boy. When the state first took you away from your Mother. What does that look like in your mind?”
Jeremy The Wicked sits alone in a deep, dark, hole. The walls are made of hard rock, so steep, they are unscalable.
“Like a pit, I cannot escape from.”
“Is this when you first summoned the Shadow? In this pit?”
“I didn’t quite recognize him as the Shadow at the time. My anger, my fear, and my despair was all consuming.”
“How did he appear to you at the time?”
“I don’t know, I would fly into a rage at the slightest provocation. I would black out and when I came to, I would often be surrounded by the destruction that my rage wrought.”
“I want you to close your eyes and picture him. Do not ignore any detail, even the most insignificant one.”
Jeremy closes his eyes. He starts to imagine how the Shadow first appeared to him, how he looked, what sensations came with that presence. He pictures the black tentacles, the way the Shadow seems to pull itself together, no, stitch itself together from the darkness.
“Do you see him in your mind’s eye?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Now, bring him closer to you. Let him in.”
JTW slows his breathing. He chases his thoughts away like butterflies. Soon his mind is a blank canvas, save for the image of the Shadow, which is now a living, breathing entity staring at him, almost leering.
“Hello, Jeremy…”
“Hey.”
“What can I do for you?”
“I want you to leave.”
“You want me gone?”
A tinge sadness is present in Shadow's voice.
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry, I can’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“Because you still need me.”
“And who makes that decision?”
“I do. You called me down from the astral to protect you. To make sure no one ever could hurt you. That includes you.”
“You owe a lot to me. You wouldn’t have leaped off that ladder with Amber Ryan without me and you might have not survived it either.”
Jeremy scoffs, shaking his head in disagreement.
“Yeah, I would’ve.”
Shadow smirks.
“Prove it then.”
“Huh?”
Shadow’s smirk grows into a cheshire cat grin.
“I said… prove it.”
JTW narrows his eyes.
“What are you anyway?”
Shadow shrugs his shoulders.
“You should know, you created me.”
“I was a little kid. I didn’t know what I was doing.”
“Well, all I know is… One day you called me into existence right out of the ether and I’ve had to watch your back ever since. Oh, because you’re a big boy now with a shiny belt, you think you don’t need me? Then prove it.”
“Fine.”
“That’s more like it.”
Shadow snaps his fingers and they are transported to the edge of a 100 foot waterfall. JTW looks down and he can barely see the water because of the darkness that surrounds them, he starts to feel woozy again. He checks his composure and looks back to Shadow.
“What are we doing here?”
“You… are going to jump. And then I’ll leave, gone, back to the astral realm for good. Boom! I’m your personal djinn. You’ll have your wish granted. You’ll never hear from me again.”
JTW turns and looks back over the edge.
“Alright, but should I jump straight down? Any rocks down there I should try and aim out of the way of?”
Shadow shrugs his shoulders again.
“Fine…”
Jeremy readies himself.
“Don’t tell me… that’s fine.”
“You don’t need my help anymore, right?”
JTW growls.
“Right.”
He wrestles against his own mind as he steps into the water and side-steps to where he wants to jump from.
“Hey, Shadow… Fudge you!”
JTW leaps off of the edge of rock and it seems like he falls forever before he hits the water. His mind flashes back to Thunder In Paradise 3. Wait… he wasn’t really there. That was the Technocrat’s evil twin. How could it also be his? He thought back to what Frances Farmer said about his fractured mind needing to come back together. The truth was, the Technocrat’s evil twin wasn’t an evil twin at all. In one quantum moment or another, Jeremy had simply zigged when he should’ve zagged and he was lost to time entirely. Go figure, the perils of time-travel, am I rite? Not only that, but Technocrat fished that version out of time, just like he fished that Duncan out of the same quantum soup. He tortured them, fed them lies and bullshit and sent them loose on themselves. It seemed the Atlantean Lazarus Pit wasn’t just repairing his mind, it was repairing time itself on a quantum level.
Jeremy can feel himself raking Amber’s eyes and then grabbing her and pulling her over his shoulder, hooking her head and leg. He looks down and sees the water fastly approaching. He leaps off the ladder and falls, hitting Amber to the mat below with an Air Raid Crash as he plunges into the ice-cold water.
He sits up in the Lazarus Pit and pushes himself up and out of the water.
It all made sense now.
Frances Farmer lies on satin sheets. Pale, silver, moonlight pierces the windows. As well as Candle light that glows a faint orange. She can’t sleep… she can feel him. She can feel his presence in the corner, hidden within the shadows.
Frances sits up slowly and pats the bed.
“Come, sit down next to him. You don’t have to be afraid.”
The Shadow slowly emerges from the darkness. He sits on the bed next to Frances, staring at the wall.
“Come a little closer, I don’t bite.”
She purrs and the Shadow is motionless.
“Ahhh… you’re afraid of me, aren’t you?”
The Shadow doesn’t respond to her question.
“Not used to anyone seeing you besides Jeremy. I know Duncan’s seen you before, but that was a bit different. That was on your home turf and here, in this world… sitting next to me, you’re outmatched, you’re outgunned.”
“What do you want?”
Frances smiles, although she isn’t wearing her mask, her face is partially obscured in darkness.
“I want you.”
The Shadow shrugs.
“You don’t have Jeremy anymore. Duncan has no use for you, what do you say?”
The Shadow turns to face Frances.
“Are you sure? The first time doesn’t feel so good.”
“I’m sure I can handle it.”
The Shadow reaches out and touches her forehead as she closes her eyes and bites her lip. He is now in her head. She can feel his icy grip. Her heart rate slows to a crawl. Her eyes dilute as the blood stops pumping in her veins. She gasps for air and claws at the sheets but the Shadow pushes forward.
Her eyes rollback and suddenly everything stops. Lightning crashes. Frances starts laughing, cackling actually as she sits straight up, her body almost not able to hold her newfound power.
THE OUTLAW
Superunknown stands within the confines of his Crystal Starship.
How I missed this place, he thinks to himself as he looks around at the crystalline structure of the walls.
It's a shame what I have to do now.
Superunknown closes his eyes and in an instant he is transported outside of the structure. He stands on a meteorite floating among many others, high within the orbit of Earth.
Superunknown closes his eyes yet again and in another instant is standing on the floor of a grand desert. He looks up to the sky to see the starship coming apart as it re-enters the atmosphere after being rocked with meteorites colliding into its hull.
He watches silently as the crystal starship breaks into even smaller pieces as it continues to fall before he pulls his mask off and sets it down on the sand. Superunknown looks to his left, at a box that lies in the sand. He opens the box and pulls a long, black coat out that he slips on. He tugs at and adjusts the coat over his shoulders before reaching into the box and pulls out a black, cowboy hat.
Soon the sound of hooves pounding on the hard sand repeats over and over as Superunknown rides a powerful black steed across the desert floor.
Duncan “Superunknown” McKnown steps through the door of his comic book shop. The scene is stark and the shelves are empty. It seems all of the stock has been sold and even the fixtures have been marked down for clearance. Duncan’s old friend and business partner, Johnny Stock stands behind the counter. Their eyes meet as Duncan slowly closes the distance between them. Superunknown removes the hat from his head as he looks around at the empty storefront.
“Sorry, I had to recoup the money you owed me somehow and well, you haven’t been open a single day the last three months. Rogues’ Gallery and Duncan the business man cannot co-exist. It’s time to walk away, Dunc.”
“Business is business.”
“You know that’s all this is. Right?”
“Yep.”
“Are you pissed at me, Duncan?”
Superunknown lowers his head and puts his hat back on before he turns and walks out the door.
“Not in the least, John. As you said, you did what you had to do. It’s just business.”
The door shuts behind Superunknown as he heads out and climbs on top of his black motorcycle. He kick starts and revs the engine before he speeds off.
THE DAREDEVIL
SESSION I
Jeremy has had enough. He grits his teeth and bites his lip until it bleeds as he pulls at the cell bars as hard as he can and tries with all of his will and might to force himself through them, but he can’t.
Jeremy sits up awake in his bed. He is soaked in a cold sweat. His mind reels as he tries to truly comprehend everything that happened. It splinters and his vision blurs before things come into focus again. His head is swimming. He climbs out of bed and makes his way down the hall to his bathroom.
When he turns the corner, he is now in a fancy restaurant. He is meeting with potential corporate sponsors. He is wearing a suit. How did he get here? He wonders to himself… wait? Did he say that out loud? The sponsors are already at the table. Poop! Jeremy panics and turns and b-lines it to the mens room to try and get his bearings. These kinds of jumps and skips in life were becoming more common, perhaps the effect of all of his time travel.
JTW pushes the door open and busts into the lavatory. He headed straight for the sink, he feels woozy. Maybe drunk even? He doesn’t know for sure, maybe he had been drinking? But it didn’t exactly feel like it. Jeremy almost takes a header, but catches himself in the mirror.
“Get a hold of yourself man. I know, you feel like you were just in bed having a nightmare about being back in that prison, but you’re here now. We’re here.”
“Who are you talking to?!”
Jeremy jumps as he sees the Shadow creep up behind him in the mirror. He shuts his eyes and holds them shut for a moment before opening them again, hoping the Shadow will be gone when he opens them.”
“Don’t ignore me.”
“You’re not real. None of this is real.”
“Oh, it’s real, buddy boy. It’s too Fuding real.”
“No, no, no. I’m over it all. I don’t want it. I don’t want any of it!”
“It doesn’t matter what you want. You know...”
“I won’t have it! You hear me! GO AWAY! LEAVE ME ALONE!!!”
Jeremy shudders as the Shadow’s icy fingers are placed on his shoulder.
“You need me now more than ever.”
“LEAVE ME ALONE!!!! LEAVE ME ALONE!!!!”
Jeremy can feel himself slipping, he can feel the berserker rage of the Shadow coming over him. He leans and pushes the glass so hard it begins to bend a bit without giving way. He slams his forehead into the mirror and it shatters.
“GO AWAY!!!!”
Jeremy howls as he collapses to his knees as he lands on them; he is now somewhere in the middle of wilderness. Trees and the sound of cicadas surround him. His suit is tattered and shredded, he can taste the blood running down his face from his forehead.
So he sees a fire glowing off in the distance and as he approaches he makes out the figures of Superunknown and Frances Farmer sitting beside it.
“Hello there, partner.”
“Hey…”
“Everything OK, Jeremy? You look a little frazzled?”
JTW chuckles.
“A little?”
“Well, I was trying to be polite.”
“Where the hell am I?”
JTW looks his partner up and down.
“Duncan, why do you look so different?”
“I shed what was no longer necessary and I suggest you figure out how to do the same.”
JTW inhales sharply as he raises his head above the water. He is in some sort of pit, his body covered in a white, waxy substance which has hardened into chunks all around him and floating in the water. Frances Farmer stands above him, looking down at him in the pit.
“What the hell was that?”
“It’s your fractured mind trying to adjust to being in one timeline. The present.”
JTW raises up out of the water, the last chunks of wax scatter. He feels refreshed. A deep sense of calm and euphoria coming over him, which contrasts with the anxiety and confusion which gripped him just moments ago.
“I don’t have to do this again, do I? It sucks.”
“The Lazarus pit is a remnant of Atlantean technology I have been able to preserve over the millenia. It is putting your mind back together. Your mind has grown quite fractured these past few months. So it’s not going to feel great. As for your question, I really don’t know yet. You feel better now though, don’t you?”
SESSION II
“Think back to when you were a small boy. When the state first took you away from your Mother. What does that look like in your mind?”
Jeremy The Wicked sits alone in a deep, dark, hole. The walls are made of hard rock, so steep, they are unscalable.
“Like a pit, I cannot escape from.”
“Is this when you first summoned the Shadow? In this pit?”
“I didn’t quite recognize him as the Shadow at the time. My anger, my fear, and my despair was all consuming.”
“How did he appear to you at the time?”
“I don’t know, I would fly into a rage at the slightest provocation. I would black out and when I came to, I would often be surrounded by the destruction that my rage wrought.”
“I want you to close your eyes and picture him. Do not ignore any detail, even the most insignificant one.”
Jeremy closes his eyes. He starts to imagine how the Shadow first appeared to him, how he looked, what sensations came with that presence. He pictures the black tentacles, the way the Shadow seems to pull itself together, no, stitch itself together from the darkness.
“Do you see him in your mind’s eye?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Now, bring him closer to you. Let him in.”
JTW slows his breathing. He chases his thoughts away like butterflies. Soon his mind is a blank canvas, save for the image of the Shadow, which is now a living, breathing entity staring at him, almost leering.
“Hello, Jeremy…”
“Hey.”
“What can I do for you?”
“I want you to leave.”
“You want me gone?”
A tinge sadness is present in Shadow's voice.
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry, I can’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“Because you still need me.”
“And who makes that decision?”
“I do. You called me down from the astral to protect you. To make sure no one ever could hurt you. That includes you.”
“You owe a lot to me. You wouldn’t have leaped off that ladder with Amber Ryan without me and you might have not survived it either.”
Jeremy scoffs, shaking his head in disagreement.
“Yeah, I would’ve.”
Shadow smirks.
“Prove it then.”
“Huh?”
Shadow’s smirk grows into a cheshire cat grin.
“I said… prove it.”
JTW narrows his eyes.
“What are you anyway?”
Shadow shrugs his shoulders.
“You should know, you created me.”
“I was a little kid. I didn’t know what I was doing.”
“Well, all I know is… One day you called me into existence right out of the ether and I’ve had to watch your back ever since. Oh, because you’re a big boy now with a shiny belt, you think you don’t need me? Then prove it.”
“Fine.”
“That’s more like it.”
Shadow snaps his fingers and they are transported to the edge of a 100 foot waterfall. JTW looks down and he can barely see the water because of the darkness that surrounds them, he starts to feel woozy again. He checks his composure and looks back to Shadow.
“What are we doing here?”
“You… are going to jump. And then I’ll leave, gone, back to the astral realm for good. Boom! I’m your personal djinn. You’ll have your wish granted. You’ll never hear from me again.”
JTW turns and looks back over the edge.
“Alright, but should I jump straight down? Any rocks down there I should try and aim out of the way of?”
Shadow shrugs his shoulders again.
“Fine…”
Jeremy readies himself.
“Don’t tell me… that’s fine.”
“You don’t need my help anymore, right?”
JTW growls.
“Right.”
He wrestles against his own mind as he steps into the water and side-steps to where he wants to jump from.
“Hey, Shadow… Fudge you!”
JTW leaps off of the edge of rock and it seems like he falls forever before he hits the water. His mind flashes back to Thunder In Paradise 3. Wait… he wasn’t really there. That was the Technocrat’s evil twin. How could it also be his? He thought back to what Frances Farmer said about his fractured mind needing to come back together. The truth was, the Technocrat’s evil twin wasn’t an evil twin at all. In one quantum moment or another, Jeremy had simply zigged when he should’ve zagged and he was lost to time entirely. Go figure, the perils of time-travel, am I rite? Not only that, but Technocrat fished that version out of time, just like he fished that Duncan out of the same quantum soup. He tortured them, fed them lies and bullshit and sent them loose on themselves. It seemed the Atlantean Lazarus Pit wasn’t just repairing his mind, it was repairing time itself on a quantum level.
Jeremy can feel himself raking Amber’s eyes and then grabbing her and pulling her over his shoulder, hooking her head and leg. He looks down and sees the water fastly approaching. He leaps off the ladder and falls, hitting Amber to the mat below with an Air Raid Crash as he plunges into the ice-cold water.
He sits up in the Lazarus Pit and pushes himself up and out of the water.
It all made sense now.
THE WITCH
Frances Farmer lies on satin sheets. Pale, silver, moonlight pierces the windows. As well as Candle light that glows a faint orange. She can’t sleep… she can feel him. She can feel his presence in the corner, hidden within the shadows.
Frances sits up slowly and pats the bed.
“Come, sit down next to him. You don’t have to be afraid.”
The Shadow slowly emerges from the darkness. He sits on the bed next to Frances, staring at the wall.
“Come a little closer, I don’t bite.”
She purrs and the Shadow is motionless.
“Ahhh… you’re afraid of me, aren’t you?”
The Shadow doesn’t respond to her question.
“Not used to anyone seeing you besides Jeremy. I know Duncan’s seen you before, but that was a bit different. That was on your home turf and here, in this world… sitting next to me, you’re outmatched, you’re outgunned.”
“What do you want?”
Frances smiles, although she isn’t wearing her mask, her face is partially obscured in darkness.
“I want you.”
The Shadow shrugs.
“You don’t have Jeremy anymore. Duncan has no use for you, what do you say?”
The Shadow turns to face Frances.
“Are you sure? The first time doesn’t feel so good.”
“I’m sure I can handle it.”
The Shadow reaches out and touches her forehead as she closes her eyes and bites her lip. He is now in her head. She can feel his icy grip. Her heart rate slows to a crawl. Her eyes dilute as the blood stops pumping in her veins. She gasps for air and claws at the sheets but the Shadow pushes forward.
Her eyes rollback and suddenly everything stops. Lightning crashes. Frances starts laughing, cackling actually as she sits straight up, her body almost not able to hold her newfound power.
