"Don't just stand there like a daft idiot. I need your help." The Wizard was wiping sand out of his face and eyes with his right hand. His left one hung uselessly at his side.
"Is that how you talk to someone that just saved your life?"
"You're the same idiot who shot missiles at me, managed to get buried alive, and opened the cannister that allowed Cole to get out?"
"Technically."
"Then you are an idiot. Now get over here before they get finished and remember who they both hate, alot. I don't have both of my hands at the moment, so you will have to do. Did you make that suit?"
"No, but I adapted all of the technology that it's using."
"Okay, you're a talented idiot. You know most of that stuff is out of date, right?"
"Yes, I know that. It's what they give me to work with."
"You know, if you worked for me, you would never have to deal with substandard, twenty year old technology. I mean those repulsors look as old as time. Could you even stun a kitten with those?"
"Look old man, what do you need me to do? This is all the equipment from SK773, why are you stealing it? You said it yourself, don't use old equipment."
"Unless it has properties you have not invented or considered yourself. And this does and I haven't. I needed the metagenic transporter equipment that was used to transport the Super-Skrull. The condition I inflicted on my daughter combined with her mother's metamorphic nature, has made her organically unstable and unable to control her powers."
He dropped his head and a bit of shame entered his voice as he rubbed his broken arm. "I could not stop what happened to her in New York so I kept her sedated once I found her in the sewers. Her powers had continued to operate and she was absorbing mass there."
"So you want to use this to separate her organic from the inorganic matter."
"He can be taught."
"What about her powers, what's to stop her from doing, well that?" He and I both turn to look at the battle between Titania and Cole and the shockwaves from their fight was creating a dust cloud out in front of the base. The upside will be that no one will have trouble finding this place.
"I created an inhibitor collar, but it has to go onto her organic flesh. That is where you come in." I am going to lock on to her signal and teleport her to me. You put the collar on her and then we are out of your life."
"I can't do that." I couldn't believe I said it either. "I promised her my help."
"Look at me, you dolt. Do I look healthy to you?"
When I looked at him, I realized what I was seeing earlier, he did look frail, sickly even. He has lost weight and his eyes were sunken and glassy. "You're dying."
"Cancer. And me, here without a Cupie doll. Yes, I am dying and feeling a bit of remorse for what I did to my daughter in the womb. You can't help me. And you can't help her. No offense, you have a bit of mechanical talent and with some training, will one day hold your head up as a world class engineer. But you know nothing about genetic engineering. And SHIELD knows just a bit more than you do, but only Reed Richards and maybe that would-be, two bit, world-conquerer Doom, know as much as I do. I made this problem and I have to fix it."
The fighting had grown quieter and the cloud was beginning to blow away. Cole had grown to over twenty feet tall and had an unconscious Titania in her hand as she strode back toward the base. And us.
"Give it to me." He handed me the inhibitor collar. My number of choices had been reduced to just one. Unpalatable as it may be, I could not stop Cole and I could not help her if this did not work. Please let him be as smart as he thinks he is.
"Stall her. I have to calibrate this thing. I just need a minute."
Refitting high explosive rounds, shock rounds and plasma rounds took ten seconds. I hopped onto my board and shot off into the desert. Cole saw me coming and hurled Titania contemptuously away like a broken rag doll.
"You were working with them. You were not trying to help me." She raised her hand and the sand in the area began to move around and soon caused spires of sand to begin whipping around me striking and smashing as I weaved through their lines. I did not want this, but I had only cold comfort that these weapons would not have stopped Titania so I might not hurt her to badly. But I did not let that stop me from trying to.
I emptied both clips and the desert lit up with explosions, lightning and two balls of burning plasma which fused parts of the creature into pools of molten glass. I blasted off one of her arms and she still kept coming. Despite its low power, my board was a thing of beauty, leaning into and out of the spires of sand I moved around and reloaded my last set of rockets.
"I'm ready." The Wizard's voiced crackled over my comm bead. "You will have to be right upon her. I will only be able to pull her from the mass but the device does not have enough power to pull her to me. I will free her but she will likely be able to begin using her power seconds after being free."
"Then wait for my signal. I won't even ask how you got this channel."
I set up the last of my high explosives and made my last run on the giant. This time I worked to shoot the legs from the central body. I surmised she was in the center mass of the body and using her powers to control this giant form. I took the left leg with two hits and the right with three. She toppled forward and used her arms to try and stand as I got closer. The board sputtered and died as she swung at me. I leapt clear of the board and using the last of my suit's power to leap inside the reach of that arm. "Now."
Cole's arm had begun to reach back as I ran underneath her body. I reached into my belt to grab the inhibitor collar. Then I could see the body of sand glowing with a green light and suddenly the desert was glowing green. The colossal sand body stopped moving and then the body of a young lithe woman fell from the sky in front of the form. I caught her and she was light and small in my arms. I snapped the collar around her neck and the sandform above us, buried us alive.
I covered her with my body and waited. It took him less than a minute. He was using his Wonder Gloves to move the sand and Titania was standing at his side, only a little worse for the wear. She looked as if she had a nasty sunburn and was covered with mild abrasions. She was one tough woman. I admired her amazing body and then hoped to never see her again. I began to hand the unconscious form of Cole to the Wizard, but he gestured and Titania came to me instead.
"Hey, I was doing my job," McPherran said. "She's tough, she can take it." So I gave her over.
"If you're going, you better be on your way." I still felt conflicted but I was trusting my intuition. It seemed like the right thing to do. Peter told me to trust myself, so I would.
"You were not bad out there. In my younger days, I would have torn you a new one."
"You wish, old man."
"You know this means the next time I see you, the kid gloves will be off." As he is saying this, he and Titania have stepped onto a glowing disk and begin to float away.
"You mean, if you can get up out of your sickbed."
"I'm a villain, kid, we're like cats. We've got nine lives. But the next time I see you, I don't want to see you in that busted old suit. Catch." He flips something down to me. "Make yourself something nice. What will I put on your tombstone?"
"Racer."
"Racer, it is. Try not to get killed until I get back to you. Come, Titania, all of this heroism is getting cloying."
Looking off in the distance I could see the tactical squad approaching from the east. I put the Wizard's anti-gravity disk into my belt. Looking at the tattered remains of Racer One, I could not wait until I could get back to reverse engineering this thing.
"Racer One, this is Command, support is on its way."
"This is Racer One. I see them. The bad guys got away, but they didn't get anything. Put some coffee on Donna, we are going to be up all night."
FIN
The Rocket Racer, Cole, The Wizard, Titania, and SHIELD are all © Marvel Comics. All Rights Reserved.
'Gravity Rainbows' © Thaddeus Howze 2010. All Rights Reserved
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