Ultimate WildC.A.T.S. #0.2

[tjkernan]

Ultimate WildC.A.T.S. #0.2
"Looking To The Stars So Bright"
TJK

"Are we really in Scottsdale, Arizona? Home of the largest population of the old and feeble this side of Florida? Who are you recruiting, a centenarian from World War II?"

Manchester Black turned to The Key, and pulled his sunglasses slightly down his nose to give his traveling companion a look of annoyance. Then he paused for a moment and chuckled a little to himself. The Key just stood there, not understanding whatever personal joke Manchester was thinking to himself.

"Nah," said Manchester, lifting his cigarette to his lips, and taking a long, hard drag, "at least to the feeble part. Rumor holds true though, the 'old' part is a bloody understatement, and yeah, this guy was did take part in World War II, as well as World War I, The Korean War, and quite a few more..."

The Key's curiosity was piqued, "An immortal hanging out in Arizona at a retirement community? That seems peculiar..."

Manchester blew out a large puff of smoke before speaking, "I don't know if he is immortal or not, but he sure doesn't seem to age very quickly. And despite the outward appearance, this isn't a retirement home. It is a sanitarium of sorts, a place to house people who are both wealthy and a little, nuts..."

"A sanitarium?" asked The Key, "I thought you were serious about this plan of yours. Recruiting mentally unstable individuals increases the chance of failure in this endeavor."

Manchester shrugged, took one last large puff, and tossed the remnants of his smoke into the gutter, "Just follow me and you'll see..."

The two men walked through the front door. The Key waited while Manchester Black walked up and talked to the lady at the front desk. Moments later they were buzzed through to the hallway.

"I must imagine," said The Key, as the two walked down the long, white-walled walkway, "You are using those powers of yours to make this entrance less disturbing..."

Manchester nodded, "Yeah. She thinks we are a couple of relatives from Seattle in town for a little visit. I think that pasty-white visage of yourself might have hindered our abilities to walk into this place without arousing many questions."

"Indeed, I don't have the proper tan for this locale."

Manchester looked over at The Key, unsure if he was trying to make a joy or just a wry remark.

The two men walked past bedrooms, past a dining room, a library, and various other rooms until they reached a door that led back outside, to a small courtyard. It was a rather pretty little place, with cactus, well-groomed rock paths, and a view over a short wall of scenic red-rock hills in the distance. Near the door a male orderly sat, reading a magazine.

Manchester put his hand upon the orderly's shoulder, "You look tired, why don't you take a little nap..."

The orderly started to protest, then took a very large yawn. Moments later the magazine slipped from his hands to fall upon the ground below him.

The two men walked out into the courtyard, where a man in a wheelchair sat. The two came to stand beside him. The man in the chair did not move, not a muscle. He simply sat staring, still, out towards the red rocks in the horizon.

"Well, well," said The Key, looking the man over, "What do you have hear Manchester? You are full of surprises, aren't you. A quadriplegic? A comatose patient? But he is no ordinary man, is he? I have never seen an invalid like this who still has such muscle tone. What game are you playing here Manchester?"

Manchester puts his hands upon the wheelchair handles, "This man isn't a quadriplegic, and as far as being comatose, I believe his mental wounds are of the self-inflicted kind. I have tried to "talk" to him myself, but was unable to 'coax him out of his shell', so to speak."

"And you think that the addition of me in this walk-about in his cerebral delirium will some how change the outcome?"

"Well," said Manchester, smiling, "Your are The Key aren't you?"

"Charming," said The Key, "and this man is that important?"

Manchester nodded, "He has power. He has money and connections. He has combat experience out the bloody wazoo. To have him working on the objective would be a major boon."

The Key shrugged< "Alright then, let us crawl inside this man's brain and see what we've got to work with..."

[tjkernan]

Explosions litter the horizon, filling the air with noise and lighting the darkness in the sky.

Manchester Black and The Key look at each other then out around themselves. They are standing in the middle of a battlefield. The screams of the wounded can be heard all around. In the near distance someone is shouting orders. The language of the man is something that neither of them can understand.

"Look at the sky" declares The Key, lifting his hand and pointing above.

Manchester looked to where The Key pointed. There was the moon in the sky, and nearby, another moon with red rings around it.

"Dorothy," chimed Manchester, "I don't think we are in Kansas anymore."

"Indeed," replied The Key, dryly, "it appears your mystery man's conscious is not focused on Earth. Does your guy have a very vivid imagination or is this some sort of memory he is living in? Is he even from Earth?"

A large amount of clicking and chattering could be heard from a nearby hill. The two turned their attention to the noise, which kept growing louder. Suddenly humanoid-sized insectoids started swarming over the hill, sweeping like a carpet. They looked angry, mandibles clacking, arms raised.

"can we be hurt here?" asked The Key, curious, "Because these creatures look very unpleasant, and I have no desire to die in such an odd fashion."

Manchester shook his head, "This isn't no bloody Freddie Krueger movie, Key, just hold your ground..."

Suddenly , the air crackled and a bolt of electricity shot over the heads of The Key and Manchester and struck the front lines of the oncoming insectoids. The blast moved across the line, frying dozens of the creatures where they stood.

A man flew in front of The Key and Manchester. He blasted away at the insectoids, slaughtering the creatures with viscous zeal. He rained blast after blast down on the oncoming hoard, frying them dozens at a time.

The Key recognized the man as the one in the wheelchair. The one whose head they currently resided in. He wore a suit of some unknown military.

The piles of dead creatures stacked up like cords of wood, yet the hordes of insectoids kept on coming, and the man kept on killing them. He shouted at them in a language not from Earth, and occasionally said something into the head-set he wore.

"Uh, excuse me." said Manchester Black, rather loudly.

The man didn't stop firing the blasts of electricity at the creatures, he paid no attention to the two at all.

"EXCUSE ME!" shouted Manchester again.

This time the man stopped in mid-flight and turned to look at the two. He hovered in the air, watching them, curious. Oddly, the invading insectoids stopped their moving forward as well, as though they were held in stasis. The man in the sky flew down to stand before the two.

The man spoke a stream of words in a language neither The Key or Manchester Black understood.

"How about English?" asked Manchester.

The man stood there for a second before responding, "English? You are humans? What are you doing on Varva? there is an invasion going on here, these Progeny are threatening the whole planet..."

"And who exactly are you?" asked The Key.

The man turned his attention to The Key, "Do you often answer questions with a question. I am M'ak'tyre of The Brotherhood of the Arms. We have been contracted to remove the threat of the Progeny from this planet.."

"Well, M'ak'tyre," said The Key, "This is Manchester Black and I am known as The Key, and we are here to take you back..."

M'ak'tyre looked at The Key with bewilderment, "Take me back where? Back tot he rest of my Brothers? Our base is seven bycrons south, where Commander Slay'ton is. Has something happened?"

Manchester was about to say something when The Key held up his hand to stop him, speaking instead.

"Why are you here M'ak'tyre?"

"I already told you The Key, The Brothers and I are here to stop the Progeny invasion..."

The Key nodded, "Oh, I have no doubt you were on this planet Varva. But that was a long time ago. You are not there anymore. This is your past. You are in here, living in a memory. The question is why?"

Manchester looked behind M'ak'tyre. None of the charred remains of the Progeny lay upon the ground anymore. They all disappeared. The sounds of the fighting were gone too. No more explosions in the sky. Everything was silent and still.

Triumph stared at the man, "You speak of madness human. Of course, I am here. You are here. We are all here. We are on Varva. I am Kheran. I am Brotherhood of the Arms. This is what we do. We fight and we fight..."

The scenery around the three shifted. No longer did they stand on a battlefield. Instead now they stood in a cemetary. Manchester looked around. There were large gravestones as far as the eye could see, with life-sized stone statues on top of them. Some wore military outfits similar to the M'ak'tyre currently wore. Others garb from wars on Earth-Civil, World War I, World War II, and others. The statues stretched for as far as the eyes could see.

"Frack," said M'ac'tyre angrily, "look what you have done. I don't want to be here. Don't wanna be here..."

The Key spoke, "Is this why you are here? Why you have retreated into the recesses of your mind? There are a lot of dead here. A lot of friends, I would presume. A long lifetime, especially one spent in war, means a lot of loss."

M'ac'tyre bowed his head low and whisper to himself, "not just in war..."

Manchester noticed them then. Four different statues. These ones weren't made of stone, but of gold instead. Three were the size of other-one member of The Brotherhood, one a young man dressed in the Parisian style of the twenties, and the third had the features of an African. It was the fourth though, that really caught the eye. It was larger than any of the other statues. His features looked Caucasian, and his clothes looked modern, a nice suit.

"Good friends who have died?" asked The Key, curious.

"No," said Manchester quietly, realization sinking in, "they were his loves."

Manchester walked up to largest gold statue, and bent low to read the inscription, "This one is the answer. You loved him, and he died, and that is why you have retreated. All the money, all the years you have, and it doesn't matter when you lose the love. Does it?"

M'ac'tyre walked to the statue. The Key looked around. Everything was gone now. All the other tombstones and the features of the land. Just grey rock below their feet, grey sky above, the three men, and the largest gold statue.

M'ac'tyre ran his hand along the top of the tombstone, and along the feet of the gold statue, then began to speak quietly, "I loved him, and he died. Car accident. I was home waiting. Now, I have nothing on that planet. Nothing to go to..."

Manchester stood, and put his hands on M'ak'tyre's shoulders, "Then let me give you something to live for. A goal, a purpose. You may be lost, but we have found you. You need a Brotherhood, well, I have one for you M'ak'tyre."

"William," said the man, "my name is Will MacIntyre..."

[tjkernan]

Kherubim are various groups/races of people originating on the planet Khera. Kherubim resemble humans in appearance, but are physically far stronger and more durable and extremely long-lived, nearly immortal, and most exhibit powers considered on Earth to be 'super-human'.

The Brotherhood of the Arms was a sub-division which split from the larger The Brotherhood of the Sword, male members of the Kheran warrior caste. TBotA broke from the larger faction and formed their own code of ethics and laws, and left the Kheran System to find their destiny amongst the stars.

In space TBotA became an army of renowned mercenaries and soldiers-for-hire. They were hired to help protect the planet of Varva from the ever moving insectoid-like swarms of the invading race known as Progeny. With the help of the warriors the denizens of Varva were able to defend themselves against the Progeny's attack.

As the remaining members of the invading Progeny retreated and attempted to escape the star system Varva is located in, several TBotA ships followed , hoping to eliminate the threat of their invading forces once and for all. As the Progeny split into smaller groups, attempting to find a place to hide amongst the stars, one of them was pursued by the TBofA ship Star Chamber, containing thirty of the fiercest warriors of the faction.

The Star Chamber chased the Progeny through an interstellar wormhole where the two ships had a final battle near what is known in this system as the planet Venus. The Star Chamber managed to destroy the Progeny ship, but sustained catastrophic damage, and was forced to crash land on the nearby inhabitable planet. Earth.

The year was 1712, and the ship crash landed six miles off the coast of Java. Of the thirty Kheran males aboard the ship, only six survived the crash. Stranded on Earth, the six attempted to integrate themselves into various human societies, intermingling their destinies with those of mankind.

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