Superhero Adventures, UK Style

Synopsis Only

The world changing caught both Akira and Banshee by surprise. One second they were in the process of returning to the BASEment having just foiled a bank robbery and enjoying the sunshine, the next the sky had completely clouded over and the streets and buildings around them had altered, though not for the better. In addition, the pedestrians nearby had all instantaneously changed clothes, huddling now half-naked under transparent, lit umbrellas, hurrying to escape the stinging rain and the dark, the only light coming from neon advertising signs overhead.

Worse, their companion X-Ray seemed to be unaware that things had just changed so dramatically and was asking them how they planned to celebrate the rest of the God Emperor’s Ascension Day!

He in turn was wondering what they were all doing outside without wearing the appropriate Minoan attire, especially Banshee who, despite her great age, should be properly attired in appropriate female Minoan costume on such a special day. No wonder two of the God Emperor’s Chosen were flying down towards them and shouting out a challenge!

That’s when he ‘remembered’ that he and his companions were rebels, wanted fugitives, and despite being blessed with powers, had not been willing to ascend to eternal servitude to the immortal Emperor. As rebels they were automatically sentenced to immediate death by exsanguination for their disloyalty to the eternal God Emperor who this day was celebrating over five and a half millennia as absolute ruler of the planet and beyond.

His two companions felt the acid rain burning their exposed skin. They saw the gloom envelope the sky despite it having been a clear sunny sky only a second before, and the people – not only changing their clothes mid-step into some half-naked ancestral Mediterranean style of dress but also going from smiling and being happy to scared, sullen and depressed in a blink of the eye.

To add to their woes two flying armoured figures were approaching, shouting something in an unknown foreign language, clearly challenging them. Their blood-red armour looked organic in design and covered every inch of their bodies. Going by the way other people tried to flee or get off the streets their presence was not something to be welcomed. Not your usual friendly Bobby’s on the beat then!

Akira wanted it recorded later that it was the armoured figures that fired first but it was the three of them using a combination of Banshee’s Wails, Akira’s mystical blasts and X-Ray’s radiation blasts that caused their attackers to collapse to the ground totally incapacitated, though not before X-Ray informed his bewildered companions that one of them had managed to get a radio message off and more of the ‘Chosen’ were incoming.

Turning to flee, they all saw a large blue-white swirling portal appear in front of them and a familiar (to Akira and Banshee) armoured figure, clearly female in shape, tumble out in front of them even as the portal vanished. Their suspicions that a temporal anomaly had occurred in the past was confirmed as the Timewatch agent, Danni removed her helmet to reveal her neon pink pupils, half-shaved head and a big toothy smile. The others quickly tried to explain to a wary X-Ray that Danni was a time-travelling acquaintance having last been seen ‘rescuing’ them from the year 1888 and in turn they’d helped her ‘party’ against giant mutant cockroaches, 1999 style.

It was their previous experience of travelling through time that inoculated their minds against someone changing the past and everyone else’s recollection of history altering.

Seeing the armoured troops approaching from above, Danni stated that a full explanation would need to wait but she needed them to travel back with her to Crete in 3,500 BCE and stop the Minoan Empire from conquering the ancient world. She gestured and after a few, very long seconds the glowing portal reappeared as she motioned for them to enter the light.

X-Ray was extremely hesitant about stepping into the portal and challenged Danni and the others about her being a time traveller sent to repair the timeline but eventually agreed to accompany his friends. As they jumped into the portal there was the unpleasant sensation of being in an airless environment as time became meaningless, then they felt a sense of terror as something large and hound-like but utterly savage seemed to catch their temporal ‘scent’ and began to chase them through time and space. Glancing round they caught a glimpse of an insubstantial beast, grey skin, ridged back and thin whiplike tail, with way too many eyes for comfort and a mouth with hinged double jaws surrounding large fangs on their trail. Akira and Banshee had seen something similar to it before in 1666 chasing them as they fled the Great Fire of London!

Thankfully they lost it in the temporal labyrinth that were the timelines and found themselves violently thrown out onto a sunny and warm cliffside surrounded on two sides by an azure sea. There were a fleet of trireme-like ships about half a kilometre off-shore, clearly under attack from four superpowered figures flying above them.

Danni collapsed to the ground utterly exhausted at having to make two temporal jumps, one after another. Thankfully, now he was back in time X-Ray’s memory was restored though confusingly he also still remembered his other existence, and he now knew that history had been altered and accepted that if he wanted his life (and wife) back, he needed to put things right again if they could.

Breathing hard, Danni explained that as records weren’t available to accurately trace when the God Emperor had first ascended to rule over the island of Crete and later the world, they had to roughly estimate when the temporal disruption had first occurred. This place and time were as good as she could manage based on the God Emperor’s claim that his complete destruction of the Sea People’s fleet marked his ascension. She couldn’t manage another temporal jump at least for 24 hours but this period in time was centuries before historical records began to be recorded in this region so their presence in the here and now shouldn’t impact too badly on their present assuming they managed to remove any further temporal anomalies. The first city on the Island, Knossos, wasn’t due to be founded for another thousand years and the immortal Daedalus wasn’t due to build his labyrinth for two thousand so with any luck their presence here wouldn’t cause too much disruption but hopefully would reset the timeline.

Suddenly a large bounder was thrown from the other side of the hill towards one of the ships, sinking it. Another followed moments later. Something was flinging huge rocks out to sea with the intention of sinking the attacking fleet.

X-Ray immediately took off to investigate while his two companions elected to challenge the four flying superhumans leaving Danni lying on the cliff trying to recover.

To X-Ray’s surprise he found himself staring at a 30-metre-tall robotic figure use some sort of tractor beam in its massive chest to shatter the cliff edge, pull forth a large stone fragment and then blast it out to sea towards the ships that hadn’t yet sank. This monstrosity was clearly not of this time and he wasn’t even sure, despite its overall humanoid appearance, that it wasn’t alien in origin! Its impressive cylindrical head turned and looked at him, a gnat when compared to its towering magnificence but that didn’t stop it ripping the nearby cliff asunder for more ammunition to try and sink the attacking fleet!

When X-Ray recovered his wits at his ginormous opponent, he tried blasting it, but the attacks were initially absorbed by some form of forcefield that surrounded it. It responded to the attempt by raising its hand in his direction and a powerful energy blast narrowly missed taking him out before it resumed flinging rocks at the fleet.

Out at sea a now insubstantial Banshee and an angry Akira took to wailing and mystically blasting the four flying figures, two males and two females dressed in local Minoan attire. Akira managed to injure a couple of them while Banshee unleashed her Wails to smash into them and eventually caused three of them to go unconscious forcing the remaining injured attacker to flee with his comatose companions. Rather than give chase Akira and Banshee returned to shore even as the few remaining fleets turned and fled the continuing barrage from the giant robot on the clifftop.

They joined X-Ray just as he used his gravi-kinetic power to shatter the cliff beneath the robots’ feet causing it to tumble into the sea beneath the cliff. The sea only came up to its waist, but it was clearly unable to climb back up the crumbling cliff though it tried unsuccessfully to try and do so. Hopefully it would power down before it succeeded!

That’s when X-Ray pointed out the stone-built city some distance away, its stone walls surrounded a gigantic Ziggurat-like structure at its centre with a glittering gold-covered palace on the top. They immediately went back and gathered up a now unconscious Danni before heading towards the city. The main gate was secured by a troop of Minoan guards armed with anachronistic force lances who just stepped aside to allow the four of them entry to the city. X-Ray could sense radio signals, clearly someone or something was expecting them.

Inside the city, the streets were completely empty as the locals cowered inside their adobe-built hovels. Whether this was the result of the fleet attacking or fear of the fully armoured guards that patrolled the streets, armed with force lances or blaster rifles that they clearly were unfamiliar with using. Some still had bronze swords sheathed by their side.

As they approached the steps that led up to the palace, it was clear to X-Ray’s unique senses that not all of the Emperors chosen guards were fully alive. His senses screamed vampires which was why they were fully enclosed in their blood-red armour, protection against the sun! They were about to willingly walk into a vampire nest!

Regardless they marched up the stairs towards a confrontation with this God Emperor, presumably a master vampire of ancient times. As they approached the dark cavernous interior of the palace, lit only by flaming torches despite the massive anti-matter generator that X-Ray could sense deep within the gold leave-covered interior of the Palace, they elected to put Danni down in the sunlight outside the structure.

The three of them then marched inside the cavernous interior towards the raised throne and the dark figure sitting on it. His guards moved back, leaving the man, devoid of golden accoutrements or crown, alone to face them. They stepped forward as one, only to see a man dressed in unadorned black Kevlar smiling down at them, his fangs bared.

This was someone that Akira and Banshee recognised from their past misadventures. This was the vampire Boire, first met in a possible future where vampires and mages had defeated the Terminus only to subsequently take control of the world themselves. He had been part of the Outer Circle of the Court of Shadows and had followed the team back to their own time where he caused a temporal disaster when he tried to kill his earlier self in an attempt to elevate his older self to membership of the Inner Circle, only to vanish with the Emerald key, a powerful chronal anchor, further back in time. First to a fiery London in 1666 where he met Dracula only to again rescue him in 1888 from the collapsing tunnels beneath the Houses of Parliament. The team had lost track of him then, but he’d clearly travelled even further back in time and created an Empire for himself, powered both by his vampiric ‘offspring’ and weapons and equipment from the future which seemed to indicate that he had now managed to control his time travelling.

Before they could do anything the floor beneath their feet slid open revealing a dark chasm. Banshee fell in though the other two managed to take flight but were unable to rescue their companion before the floor closed over trapping Banshee in the dark.

As his companions challenged Boire above with X-Ray blasting at Boire with ultra-violet radiation, some light erupted around the large cavernous chamber, just enough to make out shapes. A deep, cough-like roar echoed from one of the shadowed corners. She looked down and saw a pile of bones, human skeletons, their bones cracked to get at the marrow inside as a giant creature three times the size of a tall man came bounding across the chamber from the dark recess. The long bull-like horns on its head glistened and for a second Banshee thought this was a giant man with the head of a bull charging at her as she turned insubstantial and rose into the air.

Close up she saw that she was looking at an unknown (until now) kind of dinosaur; a sub-species of the horned Carnotaurus she assumed. This had the body and tail of a T-Rex, but its snout was shorter though its mouth looked just as lethal. Where it differed was in the length of its arms, long and muscular at first glance they looked almost human if you ignored the lethal claws on its trembling digits. Not waiting to see how high its powerful legs could allow it to jump, Banshee exited the chamber by phasing through the roof back into the main chamber where the other two were in battle with Boire and his guards. Boire was firing some sort of wrist-mounted blaster at X-Ray who was focused on dispatching the vampiric guards even as the floor again retracted so they could see the dinosaur as it tried unsuccessfully to leap out of the chamber below. X-Ray immediately dubbed it a ‘Minotaurosaurus’ or as Akira called it a, ‘Minotaur-oh!-saw-us’.

Boire’s personal forcefield seemed to be effective against their attacks, absorbing the UV radiation though his guards were not so lucky, until all three joined forces.

Akira began to gesture and summon the Baleful Bindings of Bal’Hemoth into existence. The bindings were mystical, dark metallic chains that appeared and Boire was forced to flee, seemingly to some other era leaving his Chosen to also run away, leaving their advanced weaponry behind. That only left the time anomalies of a pyramid palace and a city that should not exist, a dinosaur stolen from its own time and the giant robot trapped beneath a crumbling cliff-face to resolve.

Danni, now awake, explained that if they could somehow tag the dinosaur and the giant robot, once fully recovered she would arrange for a team of Timewatch agents to travel back and return the creature and warbot to their own times hopefully, though that still left a city and palace that shouldn’t exist yet (or ever)…

It was X-Ray that suggested that they could overload Boire’s antimatter generator and cause it to create a miniature blackhole that would eradicate the city but what to do about the inhabitants? Banshee solved that problem by flying throughout the city, generating a series of terrifying wails to force the human inhabitants to flee the city in abject terror, determined never to return to this horror-filled place.

However, Banshee’s fearful screams, so unlike anything the inhabitants had ever heard before, drove Boire’s vampiric ‘offspring’ deeper underground rather than risk being exposed to sunlight. That just meant they too would be eradicated when the city was extinguished.

Having emptied the city of its living human population Akira barred the gates to prevent anyone returning (or the vampires escaping) even as an insubstantial Banshee tagged the Minotaurosaurus and the giant robot still trying to climb back up the cliff. She had to wonder if tales of the robot would one day become the legend of Talos?

A partially recovered Danni offered to take them back to their own time having assured them that their presence would have created a fixed point in time and due to Boire’s own presence in the past that there was no way that Boire could go further back and resurrect his Empire without the same result occurring in the here and now. As she was able to communicate once more with the Timewatch citadel at the End of Time she was assured that their actions had restored their timeline.

A few uneventful seconds later they reappeared in a side street in their version of Wessex, the only people with any memory of a Minoan Vampiric empire. Danni stepped through after them sealing the portal as she demanded they buy her several gallons of hot, tasty coffee to restore her.

Later that night Banshee, with Frankie’s help, scoured the internet for traces of Boire’s presence and interference in Ancient Crete but other than finding a scientific paper in which the writer theorised that in 3,500 BCE a collosal storm stripped the island bare, removing all signs of a previously unknown civilisation. No evidence was found though certain ceramic artwork found from that era showed what could be guns, flying ‘Gods’ and dark ‘demons’ if you knew what you were looking for. Thankfully other than a few conspiracy theorists and themselves, no one did.