Part I: The Millenium Encounter
the Twenty-Third Tale
ASGARD - THE HEALING HANDS OF GAEA
2200 / DECEMBER
The body of Dani Moonstar lay on a flat bed near the floor inside what passed for a hospital on Asgard. The modern medicine of humanity hadn't yet penetrated Asgard enough to supplant the tried remedies of the Asgardians. For Steve Rogers, as he watched the woman he loved desperately cling to life, he didn't know which he'd prefer: to see Dani clinging to life by the tubes of Earth, or by the magic of Asgard.
Captain America stood by Dani's side, his eyes locked to the large, ugly rip in her side where Bruunhilde's sword had pierced her body.*
Around the bed stood the members of the Council: King Balder, Beta Ray Bill, Empire, Ash'lin and Kovar. Skrull 4 was missing.
One of them, according to what Ikaris had told Beta Ray Bill, was a traitor.*
* Last issue: POISONED MOONLIGHT
If there was a member of the Council that had betrayed them all to Thanos, Steve Rogers swore he would find out who it was and-
And what, he wondered, looking over at Dani's calm face. Make them pay? Bring justice? Put them in jail?
Steve eyed the members of the Council with caution wondering just what it is he would do when he discovered the identity of the traitor. If, in fact, Ikaris had even been telling the truth.
FROM THE STREAMED CONSCIOUSNESS JOURNAL OF the WITNESS
RECORDED: 06 APRIL 2065
It was time.
The Everything had decided that Earth could no longer remain isolated. It was time for Earth to join the Heavens.
This was decided the way the Everything decided all - someone had finally had enough and was determined to do something about it. For the Earth, it was the Centric Sceptre.
I remember 31 December 2000. We all do. Anyone who was alive at the time remembers the day the Heavens descended onto Earth and left us a changed planet. It was the Third Phase of Earth’s Ascension, coming after the coming of the Celestials, and after the coming of Galactus. In saying this, I urge you not to think that I would ever say that the Centric Sceptre herself had a larger role to play for the Earth than the Celestials or Galactus. It is, in fact, a sign of great importance simply because, in the end, she was remembered as just another villain that the heroes of Earth fought and defeated.
You must believe that I don’t mean to say that the Centric Sceptre was just another villain, however - she was no cosmic Red Skull or Baron Zemo. I know better than to say that. But to the people of Earth, the Centric Sceptre is a momentary blip of memory.
No, what people remember from that day was the spaceships that entered Earth’s atmosphere.
Kree. Shi’ar. Skrull.
They came to Earth looking for help.
Understand, the Centric Sceptre looked like an ordinary supervillain; she was an albino and wore a long flowing, though revealing, green cloak. Her hair and eyes were solid black. She wore no shoes or jewelry.
To the average person of Earth, the sudden confirmation of the existence of alien races was more than enough of an abstraction for them to wrap their minds around. The thought that this woman was collapsing the Multiverse in on itself was just too far over their head. At least they could see the Kree, Shi’ar and Skrull.
The Centric Sceptre wanted to erase what she thought was the grand flaw of the Everything, the Multiverse. Order was her master. She craved the simpleness of one continuity that could only be brought about, she believed, through the eradication of the Multiverse. Her biggest battles were fought in other timelines against legends, in battles that would ring through the ages.
Provided, of course, any of those timelines remained in existence afterwards, and none of them had.
Yes, I remember New Year's Eve, 2000. I remember …
MIDGARD - THE CATHEDRAL
2200 / DECEMBER
Angelica Osborn had to admit that she wasn’t impressed.
The Cathedral, the headquarters of the Saviors, Midgard’s preeminent, United League of Nations-sanctioned superteam, was a pretty ordinary church in what passed as an upscale New York City neighborhood. "This is it?" she asked Spider.
"Yes," he nodded, involuntarily giving Angelica the creeps as the Venom symbiote rippled across his body. "Come on," he started forward up the cement steps, "it looks a lot bigger on the inside."
Spider walked to the front wooden doors and knocked. Angelica heard the booming echoing through the inside of the church. Shortly, a middle-aged priest opened the door. "May I help you?" he asked in a voice that was not quite friendly.
"Reverend Matthews," Spider replied seriously. "I hope all is well."
"Have you any business here, Spider?" the priest answered coldly. "I know you can not be here to bask in the glow of our Lord."
"Didn’t I tell you I met God a few weeks back?" Spider let his contempt shine through. "He said to tell you to stop being such an elitist-"
A shadow fell over the backs of Angelica and Spider and the Earth hero sighed loudly. Spider spoke without turning, "I see you still prefer dramatic entrances, Tricolour."
Angelica turned around, looking upward at a hero that hung in the air between them and the sun. The sunlight poured down onto Angelica around the form of Tricolour until the heroine descended onto the steps beside them. She was a half-head taller than Angelica, with a build that was strong and lean, at once elegant and powerful. Tricolour wore a skin-tight bodysuit that went from neck-to-toe and the pattern was a simple blue-white-red, vertically and uniformly striped representation of the French flag. Her hair was shoulder length and dark auburn. The way she carried herself reminded Angelica of everything that Toomi thought she was or wanted to be - cold, hard, powerful, beautiful, commanding respect just by being present. The kind of woman that every man would want, though few would dare to approach, leaving all the power with the female half.
Tricolour looked down at Angelica, then back to Spider. Angelica had the impression that Tricolour didn't think she was worthy of being looked at.
"What is your business here, Spider?" Tricolour asked.
"Geez, blue, white and red, I figured you'd at least be cracking a smile now that you're running the Saviors and all," Spider joked, but Angelica noticed it wasn't with the same energy he'd used on her.
"If there is nothing else, then …" Tricolour didn't break eye-contact with the descendant of Spider-Man.
"Right, right," Spider put up his hands. Spider started to let loose another quip, but then thought better of it. "There's someone I want you to meet." Tricolour didn't respond, forcing Spider to continue. "The person next to you. Angelica Osborn, daughter of the Green Gobliness, heir to the Goblin Legacy."
Tricolour turned to look down at Angelica, "This one?"
Angelica nodded.
Tricolour looked Angelica up and down as she asked Spider a question, "Why have you brought her here?" And then to Angelica, "Shouldn't you be living royally in Asgard, favored daughter of the once-mighty Avengers."
Angelica didn't know how to respond. There were so many things about Tricolour that she found instantly offensive she was on sensory overload. Spider spoke before Angelica had time to formulate a comeback, "The Abandonment. She needs to know."
Tricolour's face darkened, "Ah, I see." She turned to Spider and nodded, "She's been drowned in Asgardian propaganda, has she? Singing praises to those who left Earth behind?" The French woman turned back to Angelica, "Come, baby Goblin. Come inside and learn the truth about what happened two centuries past."
Angelica wanted to respond, but found no words in her throat. She never realized how hated the Earth heroes who left Midgard behind to journey to the stars were, even to this day, nearly 200 years removed, on their native planet. Numbly, she allowed Tricolour to take her hand and lead her inside.
MIDGARD - CENTRAL PARK
31 DECEMBER 2000
STREAMED CONSCIOUSNESS JOURNAL OF the WITNESS
Okay, this is still hard for me to understand. The time is 3:51 PM EST. I'm standing in Central Park. Which is in New York City. Which is where most of the superheroes are located.
Hey, I'm still new at this. I don't care what my mom says, I'm not ready for this. By my watch I was born twenty-five minutes ago. Of course, mom then took me to some future timeline where everything sucks and I was raised by her for fifteen years and then sent back here, to the day I was born.
31 December 2000. Millenium Eve.
Ten minutes ago, a Kree warship appeared overhead. By now, New York City, and the rest of the world, are in a state of panic. You would think that with all the superheroes and villains running around, with the memory of Galactus and the occasional appearances by aliens like the Silver Surfer, people would have known - even if they wouldn’t admit to it - that aliens did, in fact, exist.
Something about seeing a warship over your head brings it all home, I guess.
I let the madness rush around me. They don't see me, but their bodies know I'm here, and avoid me. Something to do with my powers. No one sees me unless I want them to, and yet their internal systems recognize me and avoid contact with me. Hey, whatever, right?
I scan the skyline and see, inside a building that I think is Avengers Mansion, Tony Stark putting on the Iron Man armor. I find myself wishing a brick would fall on his head and kill him to save everyone the pain that is coming in the future.
I know, I know, I'm not s'posed to know the future, but I can't help it sometimes. Whenever mom was gone and I got a chance I'd try to look back through time and learn things. I dunno how it all works besides to say "I'm a mutant" and leave it at that. Something to do with who my parents are and where they've been and what they've seen being there for me to see whenever I concentrate really hard and stuff.
I look up at the moon and see, with my own eyes, my father for the first time. His name is Uatu and he's a Watcher. That's where my name comes from, Atu. Summers comes from my mom. Sometimes people call her Rachel and sometimes people call her Phoenix, but to me she's just mom.
And mom says I have to watch the moon because my dad's about to die.
MIDGARD - THE CATHEDRAL
Ten steps inside and Angelica still wasn't impressed. The headquarters of Midgard's preeminent superhero team, the Saviors, didn't look like much. She walked with Tricolour, Spider and Father Matthews into an old Catholic church. The ceiling was high and the carpet was green and black. Wooden pews, about thirty rows worth by Angelica's quick count, lined the interior and a wide row split them in two down the center.
"Are you Catholic, girl?" Tricolour asked Angelica without looking at her.
Angelica started to answer, then paused. "I'm not anything, really," she replied, wanting it to sound haughty, but coming off lost.
"A shame," Tricolour replied, turning and smiling so slightly Angelica wondered if it was a trick of the lighting, "but perhaps we can do something about that."
"Save it, Tri," Spider cut in. "Asgardians are only good at worshipping themselves."
Angelica had a reply lined up when Tricolour responded, "Someday you will learn that all of life is not a joke, Spider." They'd reached the front of the church and Tricolour led them up the wide, carpeted steps, approaching the altar. At the altar, they turned left and walked towards a doorway that led to the rectory. The rectory was small, but ornate, containing all the equipment Father Matthews needed to perform mass. Through the back door of the rectory, they walked into a large, open, circular, empty room. Unlike the white concrete that made up the walls of the rest of the church, this back room had walls of thick, silver steel. Angelica could see fuzzy reflections of herself, Spider and Tricolour on the surface - Father Matthews had stayed behind in the rectory. The room was easily forty feet in diameter.
"Come," Tricolour ordered, walking to the center of the room. Angelica and Spider followed and came to stand directly on a painted circle in the center of the room. Angelica looked down at the marble floor, figuring the design of a large 'S' inlaid onto a bright star who's tips were connected by a thin circle to be the symbol of the Saviors.
Picking her head up, Angelica saw that the door they had entered was gone. Turning her head around, she saw they were completely enclosed within the circular steel room. "Close your eyes," Tricolour ordered as she closed her own. Angelica felt naturally resistant to Tricolour and hesitated, but then thought better of it as her mind and stomach lurched as the walls began to spin rapidly. Shutting them tightly, she steadied herself and felt nothing.
"You may open them," Tricolour's voice came, after a handful of seconds, from beside her and Angelica opened her eyes to find herself in the same room.
"Huh?" Angelica asked, figuring the spinning to be a means of teleportation.
"This way," Tricolour answered, offering no explanations. Angelica turned around to follow the older heroine and noticed a doorway had opened on what she was convinced was the opposite side of the room from where they had entered. She followed a step behind Tricolour, not noticing Spider staring at her intently.
She had no way of knowing Spider was feeling a large amount of concern for her at the moment, wondering if bringing her here was a mistake.
They moved through the doorway and Angelica's breath became stuck in her throat when she saw what they had walked into. Or rather, she noted, onto.
They stood on a small, golden platform, surrounded by the open air of a green field that moved, in every direction, out to meet the horizon. Tall grass swayed back and forth and the sky was full of billowing clouds of white and grey. The golden platform they stood on was circular and Angelica saw other golden platforms around her. On each of the platforms rested a doorway. Each of the doorways - and Angelica figured there to be at least one-hundred of them - was different. Turning back to look at the one they had exited from, she saw that it was made of white concrete, matching the church they had come from in New York City. She looked at the doorways around her in the field and saw some made of stone, some made of stick, some of concrete and mortar … there was no pattern to their shape or size, either.
Angelica asked, "What is this place?"
Tricolour, who had watched with pleasure as Angelica had immediately studied her new surrounding instead of being blown away by it's imagery, was already walking away, "We call it 'Cathedral Field'. It is our section of the Travelling Place."
Angelica wanted a further explanation, though she understood quite easily what Cathedral Field was used for, but Tricolour didn't offer and Angelica didn't ask. There would be time for questions in the future, she believed. They walked through the field for several moments, Tricolour apparently in no hurry to reach their destination. Spider walked alongside Angelica, letting Tricolour move a few more feet in front of them, "You okay?"
Angelica turned to look at the black and white mask and nodded, "I am."
"Not freaked out?"
Angelica let loose a small laugh, "You think me an innocent, Spider? A babe of the world? Nay, I have seen many things in my short life and this 'travelling place' is just another" - Angelica's thoughts, at the moment, were of the Orphans recent encounters with Franklin Richards.*
* In FRAGMENTED BALANCE
"Hey, no need to be a jerk about it," Spider threw up his hands.
Angelica involuntarily reached out a hand and placed it on Spider's arm, "I am sorry. I did not mean to belittle your concern."
Spider turned back, but said nothing. After a few more steps, they both began to feel awkward about the simple, innocent placement of her hand on his arm.
Tricolour interrupted the silence, announcing, again, "We are here. Prepare to enter …"
Angelica quickly pulled her hand back as Spider coughed beneath his symbiote and shot a hard look at Tricolour, "Damn, woman, your life is not a Shakespearean play. Stop it with the dramatic announcements." Angelica hurried to catch up to the older heroine, slightly ashamed that they had fallen so far behind. The hand that had been touching Spider felt hot, but then as she reached a large, steel-framed doorway that didn’t look any more special than any of the other doorways around her, something about Spider's comment stuck in her mind. 'Did he say 'dramatic pauses'? Isn't that what I accused him of earlier today?' * She turned back and saw Spider's head looking at Tricolour's back. Not the doorway. Not at herself, but at Tricolour. 'He can't like this woman, can he?' Angelica started to wonder, then stopped.
* Last issue: POISONED MOONLIGHT
'Who cares if he does?' she shook her head. 'I certainly don't.'
As Angelica tried to convince herself that she didn't care what Spider thought, or what his interest was in Tricolour, she couldn't help but wonder what he looked like under that mask.
And if it was anything like Ben-Vell.
MIDGARD - CENTRAL PARK
31 DECEMBER 2000
STREAMED CONSCIOUSNESS JOURNAL OF ATU SUMMERS, the WITNESS
I can see everything that happens on the moon from the middle of Central Park. I have this power of sight from my father, Uatu the Watcher.
I am to take his place.
In the Blue Area of the Moon, he battles with the Centric Sceptre and he will lose. Of this, the history books have written. The Centric Sceptre is human-sized, but with her magic she has grown to the size of Uatu himself. They battle furiously, the Centric Sceptre teasing him with her green-and-white magical bolts. She is vicious and hard and battle-hardened, three traits that do not suit my father at all.
I know in my heart that the history books are right.
I do not know my dad. I've never spoken to him. My mother speaks of him - when she speaks of him at all - as if he were a piece of furniture.
Uatu lashes out at the Centric Sceptre and she only laughs at his pitifullness. I have to admit, coming from the hardened future my mother raised me in, my dad is a wimp. His energy doesn't even effect her in the least, it seems, even though he's throwing enough at her that some people around me on the ground are looking up at the green, white and yellow energy display. But, mom always says to be as simple as I can and simply put, Uatu's getting his ass kicked.
I mean- his butt kicked. His butt kicked. Crap, that's going on the tape.
All I have to do is watch and think and my thoughts are transferred into a journal that my mother keeps somewhere in the timestream. Whatever I see gets recorded, too, onto a separate track. She says it's important that there's a witness to what happens on Earth in the coming years because things are going to get much, much worse. One out of every hundred future timelines, by her counting - and I have no idea how she knows this - is peaceful. The rest suck.
She has forbid me from two things: swearing and interfering with what happens. She says that no matter how much I might want to help, I can't. My father, she tells me, has taken a similar oath and, in her words, "He's been a complete failure at it." My mom doesn't love my dad. I've just recently figured this out. I asked her if she ever did and she said, "No, Atu, I never did."
"Then why?"
"Because you needed to be born. Sacrifices must always be made. Earth needs a Witness."
I don't know what she means, really, but I guess it doesn't matter.
The people are still going crazy around me. Geez, ease up, folks. It's not the end of the world. That doesn't come for awhile.
Uatu can't see what the Centric Sceptre is doing but I can. She's casting spells that she's not using, building a reserve of them behind Uatu where they wait for her signal to attack. My dad is bleeding pretty heavily now and a large green-white ribbon lashes out, cutting deeply into his upper arm, rendering it useless.
"You will not succeed here, Sceptre!" Uatu bravely admonishes from the one knee he has fallen to upon the moon's crust.
The Centric Sceptre merely laughs, then her eyeballs roll back into her head. Her arms outstretch. Magic green-white ribbons pour from nowhere to coil over and around her … ten, twenty, a hundred, I can't tell. She yells something in a language I have never heard and the ribbons strike at Uatu the Watcher repeatedly, endlessly, each taking a chunk of flesh out of him, leaving a deep slice in it's place. He turns to avoid them and the storage of ribbons that the Centric Sceptre had placed behind him are now let free. They tear into his soft, flabby flesh.
Sometime between that attack and when the ribbons of the Centric Sceptre have depleted, Uatu the Watcher, my father, dies.
And I beared witness to the slaying.
MIDGARD - THE CATHEDRAL
"There are seven main stories to the Abandonment," Tricolour explained as they sat at the Saviors large, roundtable inside the Cathedral. She'd told Angelica on the way to this room, through the large, magnificent, stone castle that served as the Saviors command central, that the main Cathedral was housed "not on Earth," and could only be reached via travel through the Travelling Place. They could travel to a plethora of different locations on Earth, enabling them to be a truly world-wide superhero team through the doorways in Cathedral Field. Now, they sat in the Cathedral's meeting room, where their official business was conducted. Angelica saw the same 'S-inside-a-star-inside-a-thin-circle' design that she'd seen on the floor of the church back in New York City. "Seven stories that trace the development of Earth's heroes becoming the Everything's heroes and abandoning their native world."
Angelica had decided not to counter Tricolour's every comment with the Asgardian version of the events. They would be here for an eternity if she did that, so she contented herself to sit back and listen. Spider had decided to leave the two of them alone, saying he needed to see if someone named Sibearia was around. Angelica was just as glad to get rid of him for a bit while she listened to Tricolour's story - whatever thoughts/feelings she had felt for Spider outside, she needed to concentrate on important issues now.
And deep inside her head, Angelica Osborn heard a voice that called quietly to her in the same way it had once spoke about Ben-Vell, He should be yours.
Tricolour, seated directly across the roundtable from Angelica continued, "The first story has been named 'The Millenium Encounter,' and it's main contribution to the Abandonment is three-fold, the revelation to the people of Earth the existence of the Kree, Shi'ar and Skrull Empires, the fall of the Watcher Uatu and the defeat of the Centric Sceptre. Do you know what the Centric Sceptre was trying to do?"
Angelica nodded, "She was trying to collapse the Multiverse into a single universe."
"Do you realize why she's important?"
'Am I back in school?' Angelica wanted to ask, but instead answered, "Because of the role she eventually played in Franklin Richards' failed attempts at creating Paradise? The so-called Realms of Franklin that the Living Tribunal closed off from everyone in our universe? Or his eventual suicide?"*
* As explained in AGC 9: FRAGMENTED BALANCE, PART 4
Tricolour nodded, "I see the Histories of Beta Ray Bill are very thorough." She mumbled, "I would love to add them to our scrolls," before continuing in her normal voice, "but what I am specifically talking about, as it relates to the Abandonment, is that the Centric Sceptre's collapsing of various points in the Everything into one timeline led directly to the Kree, Shi'ar and Skrull Empires seeking Earth's aid."
"And once Midgard," Angelica preferred the Asgardian word, "was 'out-of-the-box,' so to speak, it became open game for every alien would-be conqueror in existence to come take a shot."
Tricolour nodded, "Earth was, at long last, a player on the stage of the Everything. There was no turning back."
MIDGARD - AKATA ISLAND, INDONESIA
31 DECEMBER 2000
STREAMED CONSCIOUSNESS JOURNAL OF ATU SUMMERS, the WITNESS
There were several battles that the Earth heroes had fought against the Centric Sceptre - all along key points in the Earth. Battles were fought on the North and South Poles and then along the Equator. I'm not sure exactly what she was doing, but it involved putting homing beacons into the Earth's crust that would draw all the various Multiverse Earths into this one.
She'd defeated every Earth hero that had come against her, and it came down to a final stand in the last hour of the current Millenium.
Right now, in front of me, she's battling the recreated Invaders: Namor the Sub-Mariner, the original Human Torch, USAgent, Nuklo, Ms. America, Namorita and Citizen V. Fun group. Namor and USAgent have all the warmth of a frozen fish, the Torch doesn't like anyone in the group, Nuklo is one brain short of having a brain and Citizen V doesn't talk to anyone. Silent anti-hero. I bet the girls go crazy for him. At least Ms. America and Namorita have some personality, but with Namor around, Nita must be going out of her mind.
Centric Sceptre is weakening as Namor and Torch continuously kept her magic occupied, allowing Ms. America, Namorita and USAgent time to move in close and hammer away at Sceptre's body. Nuklo holds back, told not to interfere unless he's called upon.
And Citizen V? Citizen V stands there, waiting in his dull beige military outfit with his non-expressive white mask pulled over his face, in between Nuklo and the Centric Sceptre, waiting for the chance to take his shot.
The chance arrives. He raises his handgun - I don't know much about handguns so I don't know what kind it is, but it's solid black - and fires six rounds at ten paces into the Centric Sceptre's chest. The bullets impact hard, but don't penetrate her skin. They have the effect Citizen V desires, however, knocking her back into the human-size, red homing beacon.
"Now Nuklo!" Namor yells and the big oaf complies. He points his hands at the image of the Centric Sceptre being electrocuted by her homing beacon and fires two big blasts of nuclear waste at the woman who killed my father.
ZZZZZZAAAPPP!! SNAP SNAP SNAP! ZZZZZZZZZZZZ!
The Centric Sceptre is electrocuted down into atoms on the spot.
ASCENSION / ABANDONMENT to be continued …
Asgardians are only good at worshipping themselves.
-- MBQ …22 December 2000
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