The Arrival

The refining process moved at a brisk pace. His servitors were weak, but they performed the task as well as could be expected at this level of gravity. Never before had the massive chalk-skinned alien seen this much of his life-rock so near the surface. Manchurian was quite pleased with his return to the world.

Several of his thralls were equally as intriguing. They were a far sturdier sort than the average Earther. Each possessed abnormal physical traits, some kind of mutation that made them far more powerful than their brethren. And far more useful if that armored fool tried to stop him yet again.

Manchurian turned back to the harvest. Already the first of the life-rock was being refined in the bowels of the ship. He could feel his power slowly returning to him. Soon he would return to his former glory, and then…

Then the galaxy would tremble at his presence once more.

*****

The jet flashed down out of supersonic speeds as it approached the Seaside Islands.

“You must be ready to hit Manchurian with everything in your power. If he’s had time to harvest, he could be dangerously powerful.”

“The Seaside Islands are already dangerously volatile,” Doctor Challenger said. “They were first settled by scientists and miners interested in the concentrated levels of alphium—” His eyes shot wide. “Dear God, he’s harvesting alphium!”

Coal raised one ebon eyebrow. “So?”

“Alphium has been linked to the increase in metagene activations over the past fifty years. Even in its raw, unrefined state it has the highest energy potential of any mineral know to mankind. If he could somehow channel massive amounts of that energy, Manchurian could be potentially unstoppable.

“Ain’t that just great news,” Coal said. “Anyway, we’re here and Seaside’s definitely seen better days.”

Coal brought the jet down over Port Sekowsky, the western-most of the islands. From here they could see the thick black smoke rising from the north island of Foxton and the massive obelisk from which it rose. As the flight continued towards Foxton, they could see the eerily empty streets. Manchurian’s power was already in full effect.

Doctor Challenger donned a jetpack and his gear as Coal brought the jump-jet down on an empty street. Harmony and Matt prepared their own communicators, while Westar Kid only watched impatiently, arms crossed.

“Watch yourselves out there,” he said. “I don’t much like the idea of young’uns, ‘specially the lady, fightin’. But I need all the help I can get. Just remember that nobody’s your friend anymore, and that Manchurian will do anything for this alphium as you call it.

“Yeah, we got it,” Harmony said. In her mind she knew this job needed to be done, but that did nothing to inspire her to do so. “Let’s go kick his tail so we can get out of here.”

They exited from the ship and sped towards the massive obelisk, Westar Kid in the lead.

A disembodied, unearthly voice rose around them. “You finally came, Earther. Let this be our final battle.” Harmony recognized the sound of the voice from the distortion on the jump-jet earlier. Manchurian emerged from the ship moments later. A glowing halo of white light surrounded him and though faint, the glow felt hot even from a distance.

“He’s absorbed the rock’s powers,” Westar Kid warned. “Beware.”

“Yeah,” Harmony said. She shot skyward. It was time to end this mess. This was really big, but she had dealt with big before in her young life. This freak would go down like every other giant monster and alien invasion the Challenge Squad has faced. And no white-skinned star-slaver was going to screw with her life.

She unleashed a blast of pure sonic energy straight at Manchurian’s head. It struck and broke against the creature’s energy aura. He slowly turned his head towards her.

The blast of force pummeled Harmony’s entire body. She tumbled back in a daze and plummeted back to the ground. She crashed in to a half-blasted row of bushes before she slumped to the ground.

Westar Kid, Coal, and Animale charged in to the fray as Harmony struggled to shake off the effects of the blast.

Several figures appeared from the smoke and approached her as Harmony recovered from the daze. She recognized Sea Sorceress, Doc Tesla, and Wave, and she thought the other degens might have been Wave’s new team.

“Thank God you’re here,” she said. “We need all the help we can get.”

They said nothing. Instead they just continued towards her.

A degen, whose skin looked normal except for the dozens of rusted metal blotches on his face and chest, raised a hand towards her. Harmony realized it wasn’t a friendly gesture just before the first blast of energy struck the ground beside her.

She quickly realized the metahumans were under Manchurian’s control as well. This day just kept getting worse.

She rose to her feet and unleashed a pair of sonic blasts. The rusty man fell to one, while the other caught the twelve foot tall woman in Wave’s band. The other metahumans moved to attack, but she was already blasting Doc Tesla’s feet out from under him. Another blast caught the last member of Wave’s team in his chest. The shadow-like degen tumbled to the ground unconscious.

Harmony’s streak of luck vanished as Wave struck her with a concentrated burst of water.

The blow felt like a freight train barreling in to her. Harmony tumbled to the ground. She looked up to see the points of Sea Sorceress’s trident held over her head.

This was it; it was all over now. She wondered for a moment if she had lived long enough for her life to flash before her eyes.

The energy coils struck Sea Sorceress from the side. They entangled the undersea warrior in a matter of seconds. Harmony turned to see her father throw the energy coil project to the ground. Wave flashed forward, ready to crush Doctor Challenger.

Doctor Challenger raised his hands up between himself and Wave. Electricity coursed from the shock gauntlets he wore and in to Wave’s body. The degen screamed out in pain as his body lost all cohesion and splashed to the ground.

Theodore Ledger rushed over to his daughter and helped her to her feet. “Don’t run off like that again!”

“I’m twenty-one years old, dad! You’re not my boss anymore!”

Challenger sulked in front of his daughter. Rarely did she see him look so weak. “It’s not like that at all, Harmony. It’s not like that at all. I’ve lost every member of this family except you and Matt. These missions are important to keeping the world safe, but if anything happened to you...”

“Daddy, why didn’t you tell me?”

“You know I’m no good at this touchy feely stuff. My generation just wasn’t raised that way. And Coal still holds the accident against me. I was afraid that you—well, that you might hate me too.”

Harmony hugged her father. “I could never hate you, Daddy.”

Doctor Challenger pulled himself back up to his full height. He looked down in to his daughter’s eyes. “Let’s end this. And afterwards, I promise things will change for us. You with me?”

“Ready whenever you are.”

“Good, I have a plan, and you’re my key player.”

“Lay it on me, daddio.”

Harmony listened intently to her father’s plan. Just like always, she knew her father was on to something.

Harmony and her father flew back in the fray. It wasn’t going well for the rest of the team. Coal was prone on the ground. His chest still smoldered from where a blast of Manchurian’s energy had struck it. Animale bounced around the battlefield morphing from lion to monkey to opossum as he struggled to close the gap so he could strike. The Westar Kid and Manchurian blasted away at one another, but neither seemed to have any affect on the other.

Doctor Challenger rushed in to battle. He buzzed past Manchurian’s head with his jetpack. The alien’s vision followed him as he buzzed away and back around towards the alien.

“Now,” he said under his breath knowing that his communicator would relay the message to his daughter.

Harmony stood behind the massive alien and unleashed a series of low level sonic blasts in to the ground beneath the giant. They resonated through the ground. She let the wavelengths fluctuate as she honed in on the exact range she needed.

“Coal, Animale, Westar,” Doctor Challenger yelled. “Hit him with everything you got right now!”

Harmony hit the right frequency just as the other Squad members and Westar Kid attacked.

Manchurian moved to defend himself but he found his power betrayed him. “What? What is this?”

Challenger and Westar Kid pounded the alien with energy blast as Coal and a triceratops-shaped Animale struck at Manchurian’s legs. The alien crumpled under the attack and fell to the ground.

Harmony continued to unleash the sonic waves under Manchurian’s prone form. Westar Kid turned to Doctor Challenger. “How could you bring the hombre down so easy like?”

“As I told you before, alphium is highly volatile,” Challenger said. “It reacts to different vibrations in different ways. My colleague Doc Tesla, who my daughter and I had the misfortune of just knocking unconscious, discovered that alphium could be rendered temporarily inert if bombarded with a certain frequency of sonic waves. By deactivating the alphium around Manchurian, we cut him off from his power source.

“Now if you don’t mind, I think we need to get a containment field around this yahoo and get him out of here. Do you know of a prison that can hold him?”

Westar Kid nodded. “Manchurian’s a wanted criminal galaxy-wide. I think there’s a few hundred civilizations that would like to throw him in the darkest, dankest prison planet they's can find.”

“All right then. Let’s get the both of you on the way then, and that damned obelisk with you. And let’s get it done before our handlers ask why we let two E.T.’s in and out of the city.” He looked at his daughter and nephew. “Then I think we need to do one or two other things before we head back to base.”

*****

The office of General Lester Wallace, deputy director of the Chamber, was far from lavish. It was stark, totalitarian, and cold. But not as cold as the deputy director himself.

“Care to explain that, Agent Ledger?”

He referred to the news footage on the television between himself and Doctor Theodore Ledger. Footage of the Challenge Squad and Westar Kid as they battled Manchurian in Everett Park.

The situation was highly volatile, General. We weren’t really looking for any newsmen around us. The Squad was a bit busy stopping an intergalactic criminal from strip-mining the planet.”

“The Challenge Squad is a covert task force. Covert, do you know what that means?”

“I am aware of the definition of the word, yes, sir.”

“Well apparently not enough to remain so. The point of employing yourself and your family was to discreetly have metahuman agents at the beck and call of the United States government. But we can’t be seen to publicly espouse any metahuman agents for fears that the Soviets will set up their own groups.”

He threw a pile of forms in front of Ledger. “So as of now you can consider the Challenge Squad officially disbanded. You will all be debriefed, vetted, and removed from duty with the Chamber with the most haste available. Looks like you daughter gets her wish. You’re out, Doctor Ledger.”

Ledger kept his face impassive. “Yes, sir. I understand, sir.”

“Dismissed.”

Ledger left the office and immediately headed for the elevator. Six floors later he was back at ground level and out the door to meet the rest of the Squad outside the non-descript building that served as the Chamber’s headquarters.

He smiled as he looked in to his daughter’s eyes. “They fell for it hook, line, and sinker, gang. The camera footage we recorded in the jump-jet and leaked to the media worked perfectly. I am proud to say that within a few hours we will all be free agents.

Harmony rushed to her father with a squeal. She hugged him tightly. “Thank you, Daddy. This means a lot to me.”

“You’re welcome, honey, but I did it for all of us. The government held me back from research, Coal from his expeditions, and Animale from… well, whatever Matt wants to do. From now on, I have one goal and one goal only. We’re going to find a way to reverse your condition, Coal.”

Coal said nothing, just stood impassively. But he didn’t look at Ledger with the glint of malice he usually showed. An improvement, if only slight.

Animale looked at the others. “But we’re still meta-heroes right?”

“If need be,” Ledger said. “But from now on we’re true adventurers. We will answer the mysteries of the unknown. The challenge is just beginning.”