The Beyond Corporation Core Cell has created beings with apparent super powers to tackle Nextwave. These groups are the Vestry, the Surgery and the Homosexuality (who haven’t turned up). Also on hand are the Paramounts - super-powered individuals based on characters from the Brand Echh magazine.
The Vestry are the first to try their hand. They surround Aaron Stack in mid-air and order him to pay allegiance to god or get his face kicked in. Aaron doesn’t believe in their god, and reckons their god will throw up when he sees what he has done to them. He creates a variety of weapons from his robotic fingers, including knives, a gun, a saw-blade and… a bottle opener. They fly at him, but Aaron extends his telescopic legs and they crash into each other. He then retracts his legs quickly, slicing into his opponents with the tools at hand. Monica screams at him. She said there’d be no killing. Aaron replies that he’s not killing, as he slices the head off Reverend Guilt. He is sending them to their fleshy heaven… or maybe not.
As Aaron plunges his weapons into the Vestry, he realizes that they are simply Human Resources broccoli clones dressed up as super heroes. Monica isn’t happy about that and she flies towards the core cell that still inhabit the upside-down castle. She is intercepted by the Surgery, who grab her and prepare to operate. Fortunately for her, the Captain grabs Doctor Nosexy and smashes his head against a wall. He then squeezes the good doctor’s headless body, aiming the insides at the core cell. Number None is covered in the green slime that emanates from Doctor Nosexy’s corpse. The CEO of Beyond Corporation’s core cell isn’t impressed. “Death is too good for you!” He then calls for Forbush Man to show them his power.
The Captain tosses Doctor Nosexy at Forbush Man, commenting that he might make a new hat for him. Forbush Man clenches his small fists and warns them that they will die slowly for insulting his hat. Monica faces him and tells him that he obviously has problems, so why doesn’t he go sit down somewhere while the adults take care of their business? Forbush Man grabs his helmet (pan) with both hands and begins to lift it from his head. “Behold the naked omnistellar mind of the ultimate human,” he replies. “Experience life in Forbush-vision. Behold.” A bright white light brings about an entirely new life for Nextwave.
(alternate realities of the mind)
Forbush Man somehow directs the Nextwave crew into thinking that they are living alternate lives. Monica Rambeau finds herself a Qrii (Kree) warrior in San Francisco, 1967. She has the soul of a Qrii warrior inside the body of a rocket scientist, adrift in the Bay Area. The body fights the soul, with the remains of Monica constantly straining to regain its original essence, held in a nega-band inside Hunter’s Point Naval Base, presided over by predatory mineral intelligence, General Zo. At the base, the huge, pyramid-shaped general orders his followers to kneel before him.
The Qrii warrior in question is Plushkommander Geheneris Halason Mahr Vehl. She can see Monica Rambeau’s soul dying on her uni-band. It’s December. What comes after the summer of love? Will she survive the winter of hate? General Zo forces Mahr Vehl to test herself against the war devices he releases in the Bay Area; his private proving range. He told Mahr Vehl that, when the sixties end, he will let her become a ghost of space once more – no longer bound by the nega-band. Mahr Vehl doesn’t believe him. All she has is a liar’s promise and her Marvel Gun against hell on Earth, and the certain knowledge that her entrapment in this body is killing a good woman’s soul.
As Mar Vehl stumbles through the city, disorientated, several people with pink eyes painted on their foreheads start chanting, “Ka Ka Ka Ka Ka Ka,” before bending over backwards. Parasitic hosts then emerge from their stomachs and use the humans’ four limbs as legs. Zo has made the people into bombs for his own amusement. Who would do that? thinks Mahr Vehl. What living thing would make a weapon out of another?
The Qrii believe that Earth is the playground of what Americans would call Satan, and so they only allow their dead to monitor the world from space. All Mahr Vehl has left is the Qrii weapon welded to her soul when she attained the rank of Plushkommander: her Marvel-Gun. It fires joy from a better universe - pure beams of transformative epiphany. But, lately the gun cries at night, and is often cold and wet to the touch. They call her Captain Marvel, here in hell, and she has drained the joy from a better universe to try and save a single world from itself.
Meanwhile, Machine Man finds himself a clerk at Pelmar Insurance Company. He answers the telephone all day and tries to help people with their claims. All he gets for his troubles is abuse from the customers. The claims are ridiculous, with a customer he speaks to wanting medication for their supposed diagnosis of cancer of the soul and mental cirrhosis. Machine Man doesn’t care about the customer. He is there to be a machine, and is becoming a mindless automaton more and more as the days go by. His frustrations are taken out on his computer screen, which he destroys before finally slamming his head into it. Even without a head, he continues to answer the next call for whatever brain-numbing claim the customer can come up with.
The Captain is now Captain Universe. He is feeling down as he thinks the universe has singled him out to ruin his life. The size of the universe frustrates him. This universe that he lives in is a parallel construction, and the uni-power catapulted him to the wrong side of light for him to see. For every action taken on his Earth, the opposite action has occurred here. It turns out that his Earth, for all its flaws, was the one that went right. Here it is a desolate place filled with horror and despair. Against the wash of the oily corpse-thick surf, he listens for the hissing. He has learned to hate the hissing. The hissing is the sound of a thousand super-humans in flight. They hate Captain Universe because he’s the last one on Earth who remembers how to smile. He is the most powerful being in the universe and he can do anything… except go home.
Elsa Bloodstone is the second and last in a dynasty of monster hunters enduring some three hundred thousand years. Her father wore the bloodstone that gave him functional immortality. Now she wears it. Her father was one of the first humans and she is one of the last. They have always hunted monsters and now the monsters hunt them, and it’s all her fault.
Her father hunted the monsters that haunted the Earth with ruthless determination. She rebelled against his ways and only hunted those monsters who offered a direct threat to humanity. She didn’t understand her father. She didn’t realize that what he was doing was breaking up breeding pairs. It wasn’t until the cryptozoologic wars that they emerged in their thousands. The creatures weren’t stupid. They forced the nuclear states into attempting to atomically sterilize their countries. They performed organized, specific strikes on major cities, reducing the numbers of breeding pairs. Elsa has been told that there are but a few hundred human breeding pairs in hiding - many in the Arctic and some in the Micronesian Islands. Then there is herself: doomed to be the last human alone in Britain. Just her and the monsters.
(reality)
The four sleeping members of Nextwave are slowly dying from the sheer horror of the alternate lives Forbush Man has projected them into. However, one sole member of the team remains unfazed by his power. Tabitha Smith stands before him, arms folded across her stomach. Forbush Man finds this impossible. She isn’t supposed to have any special abilities capable of blocking his attack. Tabitha replies that she guesses he’s just not much good with girls. Forbush Man clenches his fists and waves them in the air. “I am mighty with girls,” he exclaims. They make the right noises and ruin his bed linen and everything.
He now wishes to turn the full extent of his coruscant mind on Tabitha. Unfortunately, his power is to transport the mind, but she does not appear to have one. Tabitha points her finger at him and launches him over the highest building with one of her explosions. The rest of the tem begin to come round, and Monica asks what the hell that was. Tabitha smirks and informs her that the little guy did something to their heads, so she exploded him… because she’s clever. The Captain asks if he’s still in space as he rouses from his nightmare.
Monica suddenly remembers everything and becomes extremely annoyed. She switches to her energy form and flies towards the floating upside-down castle. Number None reckons it’s time to move one upon seeing her fury, and orders the engine room to throw lots of wood on the fire. A blast from Monica debilitates the castle as it flies away, leaving it a smoking wreck. Monica gives them the finger and warns them that she’s not done with them yet. She returns to the ground and tells the others that they’re going to follow the floating castle to wherever they came from. They’re finishing this!”
