Storytime: The Finale
Part 1 of 5
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Agent Coulson comes to, in a dark place, rubbing his head and blinking. “Where… am I?” he mutters to himself, before peering into the Abyss around him. There are horrifying, hulking foes around — Things, Dormammus, Modoks, Champions, and even the occasional Howard the Duck. But they don’t seem to notice him, nor do they notice the other, knocked out heroes around them. Off in the distance, Coulson can see Warren, Quentin, Thaddeus, Gwen… even Cyclops, Crossbones, and a few X-Men that he recognized from Warren’s team.
“Coulson? Are you there?” comes the voice of Quake from just behind him, and Coulson looks over, careful not to draw attention.
“Yes. Do you know where we are? I don’t recognize this place…” Coulson whispered, subtly pulling out his gun as a Punisher 2099 approached.
“I’ve heard… stories of this place. You know the Labyrinth of Legends?” Quake asked, to which Coulson nodded. “This place is worse.”
“Great. This’ll be fun,” Coulson replied sarcastically, trying to figure out a way to contact the other heroes. “Galactus must’ve been… an illusion or something. Maybe an alternate Quentin, or the work of Nightmare. The Collector must have somehow located us and brought us here.”
“Yeah,” agreed Quake, before reconsidering. “Wait, how can we be sure we’re not still dreaming?”
As soon as she said these words, all the foes in their vicinity swiveled around and stared at the two SHIELD Agents, dead on. With rage in their eyes and malice in their firsts, the juiced-up foes dashed towards Coulson and Quake, who promptly got up and dropped any pretense of still being unconscious.
While Quake charged up an earthquake, hands up in a ready position, Coulson fired upwards, trying to wake the team, before spraying the approaching Green Goblin and Joe Fixit with gunfire. His bullets were little deterrent, though, as the monsters shrugged off the blows with a roar and kept coming. But just before they landed a hefty blow on the Agent, the two stopped, held back by some unseen force.
A grin crossed Coulson’s face, as he saw the crimson skin of the Red Hulk, holding back the two foes with his bare hands. With a crunch, Thaddeus Ross slammed the enemies’ heads together, leaving them knocked out on the gravelly ground. Nearby, a Yellowjacket was being cut down by Gwenpool and Stan the Symbioid, and an Aegon was getting Neurotoxined to death by Warren, who was assisted by dexterous strikes from Hank McCoy.
Somehow, everyone’s awake again, Coulson thought, and he certainly wasn’t complaining as he kept firing. Quake continued to send shockwaves rippling through the earth, scaring away their foes, and leaving the team to regroup.
“Where are we?” asked Warren, looking around the desolate surroundings — all he can see for miles is Champions, with no apparent means of escape.
“Daisy told me this place is dangerous. Very dangerous,” Coulson replied, holstering his gun for a moment, walking around. “We need to figure our way out, fast.”
“Here’s another question, AC,” Gwenpool asked. “Was it just me, or were we singing a musical just now?”
“Take me home,” Thaddeus muttered absentmindedly, scanning for more enemies on the horizon. “Battle-roads… To the place… I belong…”
“Yeah, we went through that, too,” Coulson answered, pointing over at Quake, who still held out her hands, generating a subtly rumbling earthquake. “I figure, the only reason that we’re not all still in the dream is… well, Daisy over there.”
“Thanks,” Quentin stated, walking over to the Inhuman and giving her a thumbs up.
“Yeah. No pr- look out!” cries Quake, sending a pulse of energy at an approaching Darkhawk. And though that foe fell, four or five more emerged from the rocks, advancing towards the group.
“We have got to get out of here,” resolved Warren, already taking flight towards the swarm of enemies. But as he and the rest of the gang readied themselves for another battle, Coulson spotted something up in the air, just above them — a fairly small asteroid, tumbling towards the ground.
“Guys! Up there!” Coulson pointed, and the gang looked up.
“I see it,” Warren answered, turning around and using his wings as a shield to block the advancing enemies. “Everyone, help me fend off these guys. Quentin, fly us up there, then figure out some way to launch the asteroid away from this place.”
“You got it, boss,” Quentin agreed, taking Hank first and flying up with green blasts towards the quickly descending asteroid. As he placed Hank safely onto the tumbling rock, Warren swiveled around, launching a storm of razors at the Abyssal foes. Thaddeus, Gwen, and Stan got up close and personal with their enemies, slashing and punching at them. Coulson fired his gun rapidly and Quake, making sure to keep her disrupting earthquake active, nevertheless was able to get a few pulses off.
Summoning a shield of green in front of him as he swooped down and dragged Gwen up to the asteroid, Quentin watched as the champions kept fighting valiantly. We may actually get out of here, he thought, jetting down to pick up Stan. But as he took the Symbioid by the arms, disaster!
Another Darkhawk fired a beam at the asteroid, sending it hurtling away from the Abyss. Which, in some respects, was a good thing — now they no longer had to figure out how to achieve liftoff. But, at the same time, the rock, their only means of escape, was now flying away faster than Quentin could evacuate the team from the ground.
With a grunt of frustration, Quentin blasted past Coulson and grabbed the Agent by his collar, hurling the two up towards the now-fleeing asteroid. He could not even spare a moment to ensure that the two had landed safely before turning around and heading back for Quake and Thaddeus.
“Warren! We have to go!” Quentin called, and the winged leader nodded, taking flight. But with his departure, the other two were left exposed to a full-on assault. Though Quake still tried to keep her earthquake charged, she was only able to evade one hit before getting struck by another. Falling back, she was forced to bring up both hands to create a shield, protecting herself and Thaddeus. This, of course, had its own problems — even as they fled from the Abyss, Warren and Quentin could see their two comrades grow tired and waver slightly.
From a shadow of the Abyss, a thin, pale figure stepped out into the light — Nightmare. With a green costume and cape, he grinned, waving his hands as slowly, surely, Thaddeus and Quake began to collapse.
“We have to do something!” Coulson shouted from the escaping asteroid, trying to fire at Nightmare. But, thanks to the long range and the tumbling rock, he was unable to land a hit, and shouted frustratedly.
“No time. If we go back,” Warren stated, touching down on the asteroid softly, “We’ll be overpowered too. I’m sorry, Coulson.”
The Agent watched, helplessly, as the swarm of Abyssal enemies began to tear into his two friends, who collapsed, asleep. He wanted so desperately to do something, to jump off and go in guns blazing to protect his friends, but he knew… it was impossible. The asteroid drifted off into space, away from the Abyss. Quake and Thaddeus’ fates were sealed.
Until they weren’t.
“Who… who is that?” Quentin asked, spotting a lone figure in the distance, quickly approaching — no, swinging off of tiny rocks floating around the Battlerealm.
“Looks like some kind of... Spider-Man,” Coulson observed, noticing the figure’s distinctly webbed, glistening suit. “He must’ve heard the gunshots, the commotion, something like that.”
“He’s crazy!” Warren cried, as the Spider-Man swooped in, thwip-ing at Quake and Thaddeus, yanking them up into space. Spinning protective web-cocoons around them and kicking them towards the asteroid, this Spider-Man then swung back around towards the Abyss, kicking Nightmare in the face.
As Quentin and Warren flew up to retrieve their beaten but saved comrades, pushing the cocoons towards their asteroid, they could hear the smacks and punches of that lone Spider-Man beating up the other champions. “I’ll be right with you!” Spidey called to Warren’s gang with a wave, before ducking under a swing from Masacre. “Just one second, folks!”
“That’s got to be the best Spider-Man I’ve ever seen,” Coulson remarked, shaking his head at the bravery - or stupidity - of this savior.
“That’s debatable, AC,” Gwen commented, but even she couldn’t look away as the Spidey flipped away from his foes, before webbing Darkhawk up and slamming him into Nightmare. And even from the departing asteroid, the entire group could hear Spider-Man taunt his enemies:
“I’m gonna put some dirt in your eye.”
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Hey, everyone! Merry Christmas and happy holidays to all. Good to be back, hope you enjoyed this installment of Storytime, and I hope you stick around for the finale... I feel like I should upload when these are going to be coming out. Obviously I got a ton of my own projects that I'm working on, the cadence of those is pretty irregular. Sometimes I'm super inspired and blazing through pages, other times I'm in a lull... what I'm trying to say is, Storytime is pretty secondary to my regular writing, so there's not going to be any set schedule as to when precisely I'm going to have the time to get these out. I will promise though, there will be no more than two weeks between installments, I'm going to try and not leave you guys hanging too much. Alright, that's all I got, until next time!
