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#4
DEC 10 |
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“This Savage Champion”
Man and saber-toothed tiger covered the ground separating them from the gleaming green tower in an astoundingly short amount of time. Upon reaching it the white-haired Ka-Zar ran a metal gauntleted hand over the glass smooth emerald surface of the tower. The glove glowed slightly as arcane energies probed the circuitry within it, actually becoming one with it. Zabu growled; his senses told him without a doubt that this was his human brother but the scent of this technology was one Zabu had encountered before and he didn’t like it. Still, Zabu had accepted him and he would continue to until Zabu found his other human brother.
Ka-Zar seemed satisfied and stepped back, raised the Psimitar and directed a crackling, jagged burst of psionic energy at a section of the curving wall. The desired result was achieved as a portal slid open, granting them entrance into the spire itself. The room they stood in was simply a circular chamber which Ka-Zar presumed was only used for maintenance purposes with three staircases leading higher up into the spire itself.
Ka-Zar bent low and spoke softly into Zabu’s ear. “We will free your master, I promise, but first there is something else we must do. Come!”
The white-haired Ka-Zar lifted his head and his nostrils flared, much as if he were attempting to sniff out whatever it was he was hunting for. He stopped, nodded his head and ran up the middle staircase, Zabu at his heels. The staircase spiraled upwards steeply but Ka-Zar ran up it with no effort at all. Despite his obvious advanced age, he moved with the same swiftness and agility of his youth, the flowing crimson cloak billowing behind him.
The staircase bent sharply on itself, seemingly going back downwards but Ka-Zar knew that things worked differently inside the spire and he was right. Man and tiger soon came to a chamber suspended in mid-air, great green conduits holding the chamber solidly even as they siphoned off the tremendous power contained within.
Zabu growled warningly. His fur was standing up of its own accord all over his back and sides. He looked to his aged human brother with an expression that communicated more than mere words could have.
Ka-Zar placed a comforting hand on Zabu’s shoulder. “It’s an artificially created gravitational singularity, my brother…just one way of achieving time travel and one of the more reliable. And this is the key to stopping Zarrko and undoing what he’s done. Before we do anything else there is something I must do here. Come!”
Zarrko occupied a floating command chair in the main monitoring chamber of his Time Tower. It had to float as that was the only possible way he could keep up with the thousands and thousands of holographic screens that were all showing alternate worlds, histories and universes. Using technology he had stolen from future eras, the holographic screens appeared and disappeared as new alternities were created or destroyed. The entirety of Alternity was truly a mind-bending concept and those who pondered it too long experience a mental state akin to what would physically be called a heart attack. There was simply no way for an untrained mind or a mind not sufficient advanced to comprehend the unlimited potentials of what could be done if one had access to not only time travel but time travel between the infinite alternate universes.
Zarrko smiled as he sat back, well satisfied with how his work was going so far. Very soon he would have the 449 alternate universes he needed in perfect alignment with each other. Unspeakable acts had he performed in order to achieve such a monumental task but soon it would be worth it. Shortly (relatively speaking, of course) he would have such mastery of time that Kang himself would be forced to bow to Zarrko. Not such a bad position to be in.
Zarrko noticed one of the holographic screens blinking. “Oh, bother,” he muttered to himself. This was going to be a problem.
With a ‘pop’ of displaced air, eight forms suddenly appeared. Seven of them armored, bristling with weaponry, including massive energy rifles that they would not be able to carry if they hadn’t been enhanced with cybernetics as well as their armor lending them extra strength.
The eighth man wore a plain dull gray business suit. His face bore the look of the perpetually put upon. In one hand was the sign of the true bureaucrat: a clipboard containing an impressive amount of official looking papers.
“Mobius M. Mobius! Always a pleasure to see a Senior Executive from the Time Variance Authority! What can I do for you and your quite formidable looking squad of Minutemen?”
“You’re mucking about with alternate time streams again, Zaarko. You’ve been warned about that. Manipulation of alternate time streams for one’s own person gain is strictly forbidden by Article 63.6 of The Shadow Proclamation.”
Zaarko waved a hand carelessly. “Nobody seems to mind when Kang does it. You have no jurisdiction over me, Mobius. I suggest you return to the Null-Time Zone and do what you do best: push papers and fret like an old woman.”
Mobius stepped forward, thrusting out his clipboard. “Now you see here, Zaarko! I’m up for promotion and I don’t intend to have it thwarted with your shenanigans!”
“Shenanigans?” Zarrko threw back his large bald head and bellowed laughter. “You call what I’m doing shenanigans?” Zarrko laughed as if he’d never stop, holding onto his sides as his laughter echoed and re-echoed throughout the great green spire.
“I’m through playing with you, Zaarko.” Mobius gestured at the squad of Minutemen. “Take him.”
“You’ve been searching this room for nearly two hours and you haven’t found us a way out yet!”
“There’s a way out of every trap; you just have to be patient, that’s all. And just in case you didn’t know, I’ve been escaping out of traps when you were learning how to count on your fingers and toes.”
“Fine lot of good that’s doing us now! I want to go home!”
“So you keep screaming. May I remind you that it’s your fault that we’re in this fix?”
Ka-Zar didn’t know what was more aggravating: having to listen to Rosalind’s never-ending stream of complaints or the frustration of not knowing what was going on outside of this room. Zaarko could well be committing more atrocities and he was imprisoned within this luxurious trap. He was also worried about Zabu. He hadn’t been kidding when he’d told Rosalind that Zabu was perfectly capable of rescuing him on his own, as his brother had done many times in the past. But this was a situation totally unlike any they had faced in the past and he simply did not know if—
--a section of the wall slid back suddenly, causing Ka-Zar to spring backwards with a lithe, pantherish leap. His lips curled back from his teeth in a snarl that quickly turned to a grin of pure delight as Zabu pounced on him playfully. Of course, being five hundred pounds of pure muscle meant that play was considerably rough. Man and tiger fell to the carpeted floor, rolling around, laughing and snarling.
Rosalind was staring at the man in the doorway with horrified wonderment. “Ka-Zar…” she said worriedly, her voice raising higher.
Ka-Zar ignored her. He was busy tickling Zabu’s stomach. Zabu swatted at Ka-Zar’s head, a gurgling purr emanating from his throat.
“Ka-ZAR…” Rosalind continued to stare at the man in the doorway who was grinning at Rosalind, obviously enjoying her discombobulation. She waved a hand frantically. Trying to get his attention. “KA-ZAR!” she finally screamed.
Ka-Zar left off playing with Zabu to look at what Rosalind was screaming about. And what he saw brought him to his feet slowly, his eyes narrowing with suspicious hostility, his hands curling into fists with the strength to rip a man in half. But not this man. This man with his face who was smiling at Ka-Zar with nothing but pure joy and love.
“Who are you?” Ka-Zar growled.
“Lord Kevin Plunder. More commonly known as Ka-Zar, Lord of the Savage Land.”
Ka-Zar’s throat vibrated with a bestial snarl of rage as he leaped at the older version of himself. But this white-haired Ka-Zar moved with the same astounding speed and vitality of his younger self, tempered with the addition of a few more decades of combat experience.
He used his billowing crimson cloak much as a matador used his cape, spinning out of the way of the younger Ka-Zar’s charge. The younger Ka-Zar’s vision was temporarily obscured by the cloak and by then, it was too late. The older Ka-Zar had a massively muscled arm around his neck and was bringing him down to the floor with a heavy crash.
“Simmer down, youngster, and I’ll let you up,” the older Ka-Zar said gently.
“Let me up and I’ll kill you!”
The older Ka-Zar sighed. “This isn’t going to work if you don’t co-operate.”
Rosalind was tugging at the older Ka-Zar’s shoulder with about as much effect as if she were tugging on a sequoia. “Let him up!”
“Since it’s you, Rosalind, okay.” The older Ka-Zar let the younger go and sprang backwards since the younger Ka-Zar was on his feet and ready to fight as soon as he was free.
Zabu leaped between both Ka-Zars and turned his head toward the younger with a roar. The younger Ka-Zar blinked. Zabu’s roar was the one he used when he wanted Ka-Zar to stop whatever it was he was doing.
The older Ka-Zar smiled and pointed. “If you can’t believe our brother, then who can you believe?”
“Who are you?”
“I told you: I’m Lord Kevin Plunder. I’m Ka-Zar. I’m from an alternate future that doesn’t even exist anymore…a future destroyed by the accursed meddling of Zaarko. A future I’m hoping to help you avoid.”
Ka-Zar looked at the studded red metal collar, the gunmetal gray metal gloves and boots. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say that collar and cloak were Magneto’s.”
“They were.”
“Those gloves and boots look like part of Doctor Doom’s armor.”
“They were.”
“What are you doing wearing them?”
“In the last days before my Earth crumbled away and vanished into the swirling chaos that was the very dying of an entire universe, Victor, Magnus and I were the closest of friends. We did everything we could to stop the death of all but, in the end, we were like children raging at a cruel and unloving parent.”
“You actually mean to stand there and tell me you were friends with two men who did nothing but bring disaster to everything they touched? I don’t know what kind of trick Zaarko’s trying to pull or why he wants me to believe I’m going to kill Shanna—”
“But you will. Just like I did. Unless you listen to me and—” Upon hearing a thump, the elder Ka-Zar stopped and looked over to where Rosalind had fainted dead away. Again.
“Oh, great,” the younger Ka-Zar sighed.
“Get used to it. She’ll do it a lot in the next few years.”
“Why should that matter to me?”
The elder Ka-Zar pointed a gray metal finger at the unconscious young woman. “Rosalind’s not here by accident. She is an integral part of your future. Don’t make the mistake I did and leave her here in Zaarko’s tower. You have to take her with you and, not only that, give her a job as Shanna’s personal assistant.”
“You’re serious, aren’t you?”
“You cannot make the same mistakes I did, damn you! The lives of your wife, your son, this entire planet hinges on what will happen in this tower in the next hour. And if you don’t make the right choices—” and here, the elder Ka-zar gestured at his own ravaged, worn face. “—then look well upon your future.”
“And despair.”
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To Be Continued...
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