Storytime - Arc 2 - The Road Goes Ever On
Storytime - Issue #4 - Quentin
(Quick disclaimer, spoilers for Spider-Man: Far From Home are discussed in passing in this issue. If for whatever reason you haven't seen it yet, you might want to avoid reading this. You should have seen it already, but just in case - you've been warned!)
You already know many stories of the Battlerealm. The tales of how one Summoner entered the Contest of Champions. How they overthrew the Maestro of the Contest, and stopped the Mad Titan Thanos. How they defeated both the Collector and the Grandmaster, in due time. And how, every step of the way, the Summoner was aided by their loyal, faithful Champions.
This is not one of those stories.
No, this is a tale of a band of heroes, wandering the edges of the Battlerealm. Who misguidedly sought the refuge of Magneto, Master of Magnetism, and who found themselves in grave peril when Agent Phil Coulson and his fleet of Collector-aligned Helicarriers arrived on the scene. Who escaped with their lives just barely, and now find themselves traveling the fringes of the Realm, in search of a goal unknown to their newest member...
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Warren Worthington's gang sat around a small campfire on the middle of an asteroid, tumbling through the depths of space. The orange flames crackled, filling the silence that had fallen over them. As their leader continued to stare into the fire, as if staring pensively into a mirror, the S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent that had recently joined the crew, Phil Coulson, glanced over at the mutant's lieutenant - Quentin Beck, who he knew from the Collector's files as Mysterio.
Perhaps I should learn more about this crew while I'm here, Coulson thought to himself, walking over to Beck and saying, "Hey."
It took a moment for Beck to look up at Coulson, so lost in thought was he, but he finally replied, "Oh, hi. Coulson, right?"
"That's right."
"Sorry about... knocking you out there on the Helicarrier. You have to understand-"
"I do. It's alright. I'm sure I would have done the same thing in your shoes," Coulson answered, sitting down next to the armored warrior, his voluminous red cape flowing back and blowing gently in the wind, standing in stark contrast to Coulson's own, simple suit. "So... how did you get here?"
Beck smiled, before dropping his head and shaking it. "You're new, so I don't blame you for asking. But it's something we don't discuss around here. We don't like to talk about it."
"Oh. Sorry. But no, I mean... how did you, specifically, get here, in the Battlerealm?" Coulson clarified, feeling a little sheepish for touching on a sensitive subject. "Were you cracked from a crystal, or...?"
"Oh," Beck responded with a chuckle. "My bad. Yeah, it was a crystal. I remember... before I first saw the Collector, I was... in London. Fighting an Elemental, from another dimension. With Peter, Peter Parker. You know him?"
"The Spider-Man? Yeah. I've read all of the Collector's files on all the champions he has currently loose in the Battlerealm. Even some of the ones that he's keeping to himself for now," Coulson replied.
With an interested look, raising an eyebrow, Beck asked, "And he let you get away with it?", before shouting out to the group at large, "Can we get some more wood? This fire's dwindling a little."
"Oh, no, he encouraged it. Said I'd need to know everything about the champions I'd be... "recollecting" for him."
"That's... horrible, but in a good way. That could help us. I'll let Warren know."
"Alright. I'm happy to help," Coulson replied with a nod as the fire in front of them burst alight again, finding a second life in new fuel. As the orange flames grew brighter, illuminating them amidst the abyss of dark space, he stated, "But I'm interrupting you. You were saying something about London...?"
"Right. I was in London, with Peter and Nick Fury, when suddenly this... portal opened in the air next to me. I thought it was the Elemental's doing - it was part Air Elemental, after all, but out came this old, white-haired, cape wearing man, holding a... a golden, shimmering sphere."
"That was the Collector. And his Iso-Sphere."
"Absolutely. Before I knew it, he had pulled me through the portal, to..." Beck gestured to the heavens above them. "Here. The last thing I heard him saying was that I was a truly special one. That I'd make a fine addition to his collection."
"Hmm," Coulson replied, taking this in. He thought of something, tried to figure out if he should say it or not, and then finally went ahead and stated, "But here's something I don't get. In the Collector's files, whenever he mentions Mysterio-"
"Quentin," came the sharp reply, as Beck stared at Coulson, his gaze suddenly serious. A moment went by, before he looked back at the fire and continued, "Or Beck, whichever you like. Not Mysterio. Please."
"Oh. Sorry. Uh, whenever he mentions you, or every variation of you in the Battlerealm, London always comes up as a... charade. A scheme, that you masterminded to make yourself the next Avenger," Coulson stated, holding his breath and waiting for what he was sure would be a fierce rebuke from Beck.
But instead, Beck chuckled, slightly at first, before crescendoing into a deep, hearty laugh. "Oh, that's good. I've heard that one before. Always gets me," Beck replied, a wide grin on his face.
Confused, Coulson asked, "But then... what about EDITH? What about the- the illusions and the staged attacks... all of that?"
"Maybe you won't be as much help to Warren as I thought at first," Beck replied, still chuckling a bit. "That's most of the versions of me running around this Battlerealm, I'll admit. But that wasn't the way it was in the universe where I come from. The gang and I figured it out when I ran into an alternate version of myself here... turns out, for all the lies the other me's spouted in all those other dimensions, those very lies were true where I came from."
"So then you're actually from... a different universe than the one where the Collector took you from? There were actually Elementals, real Elementals coming to that universe?" Coulson asked, fascinated - he'd never heard of such drastic variations between Champions. Minor differences, perhaps, in costume or in personality, but never something so... different!
"That's right. The Collector put me in a crystal, a deep, red, spiked thing that... let me breathe and kept me alive, but kept me from moving. It was a few months, maybe years, before I was let out," Beck continued, recollecting his time in his crystal with a faraway look in his eye, reliving unpleasant memories.
"So why did the Collector let you out?" Coulson asked, as the fire in front of him dimmed, casting his face in shadow once more. "He never put me in a crystal... said I had use to him. Well, me and my Helicarriers. But surely there was a reason that he let you out?"
"No. It wasn't the Collector who let me out," Beck replied, calling over to the rest of the group, "Hey, can we get some more kindling over here? Fire's dying down! Thanks."
"So then who was it that let you out?" queried Coulson, hearing some distant voice in the background, but ignoring it, and leaning in closer.
"Same person that let us all out," Beck replied, looking out across the camp full of champions. "The Summoner."
"But that's just what the Collector calls all the humans who enter the Battlerealm, who are entrusted with the command of the Champions, who fight in this Contest! There are hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of Summoners!" Coulson cried. "Surely, your Summoner must have been different in some way, went by a codename or-"
"Boltsy. That was his name," Beck replied sharply, watching the heroes who could hear him stop and stiffen for a moment, before letting his words fade away in the wind. Coulson did not press the matter further. Beck had said all he needed to say.
"What's Warren like?" Coulson asked, after a few moments of silence.
"He's a great leader, and a good friend," Beck replied with a warm smile, looking over at their leader who still stared into the depths of the fire. "He's gotten us this far. I'm not sure we would have made it without him."
"So why you, of all people, to be his right hand man?" Coulson questioned, looking around - from the files he'd read, he easily identified at least half a dozen more trustworthy individuals. Then again, Beck had just proven the files he'd read weren't always exactly accurate.
"I don't know, really. Maybe it's because I have the most experience, both before I got put in the crystal and after I was freed from it? I'm not sure. I never asked him. Never needed to, really," Beck replied. "But I gotta say, Coulson, I'm glad you chose to stick around with us. This is a great group of people here. I think you'll certainly be very useful to us, and I'm happy that we're able to liberate another person from the Collector's influence."
Coulson only nodded, looking out across the asteroid and analyzing the men and women around him. But he kept his judgements to himself, and looked back at Beck, who was gazing up into the stars and reminiscing on fonder memories. "You won't believe some of the adventures we've had before we ran into you. See, there was this time," Beck stated, trying to keep himself from laughing. "There was this time that seven Iron Patriots ambushed us, and Warren- Warren was about to take them all, before Groot - Groot, of all people! - stepped forward and said something. It was, uh..."
"I am Groot, probably," Coulson replied with a smile, the words coming to him so easily, as if he'd heard them recently.
"That was it. Three words. That was all, and all seven Osborn's went crawling right back to where they'd come from. Apparently Groot has some sort of advantage over them or something," Beck explained, barely controlling himself. "It was- it was just the funniest thing. Three words, and they ran right back to the shadows from which they came."
Then, he got a little irritated, and stood up, the metal plates on his chest clinking slightly as he did. "Where is Groot, anyways? Haven't seen him for a while," Beck called out to the group before him. "And can we get some more kindling on this fire?"
The group of heroes in front of him froze - they were all thinking the same thing, but none of them wanted to say it. Agent Coulson looked up at Beck, and then to the fire, and then to the group, and back again to the fire, cycling through amazement and shock all at the same time. Beck, too, slowly realized what had happened, and slowly, slowly sat down. Not knowing whether to put out the fire - no, surely it was a funeral pyre now - or let it burn for as long and bright as it could.
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Thanks for reading, everyone! I know this is going up pretty late, didn't feel so well in the morning so I couldn't put it up when I usually do, sorry about that. I hope you enjoyed this more character-centric episode, do let me know your thoughts, and I'll see you next Monday, for the next edition of Storytime, here on this thread!
