DC 2099 #0
"A New Beginning"
Plot: Ryan May
Script: Lierson Morais & Ryan May
AEIC: Ryan May
EIC: Lierson Morais
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Axel Asher, the timestream adventurer known as Access, falls into a nowhere point in time. He is not exactly the same Access from the present. According to a theory, when you’re traveling through time and alternate dimensions, you create alternate versions of yourself, scattered throughout the multiverse. Axel even met his “old-man” alternate when he first became Access. This Access (aged ten years since the events in Unlimited Access), has been travelling between dimensions and time for a decade now, and however, shows up in the nowhere point, so called because of the brother universes’s home. This Access is much more aware of his powers, but he still makes mistakes.
“I gotta get out of here.” Still dizzy from a crisis he had previously encountered, Axel concentrates and in less than 2 seconds he teleports to a strange city wasteland.
"Where am I?" he asks. The buildings looks old and worn, and the sky is blocked by a large, concreate ceiling, covering the whole town. There is an alley beside.
Axel then listens some voices. Around the alley are two guys laughing and bragging. He approaches them: "Uh, excuse me, but could you help me?".
The guys turn to him and mumble to each other: "This spud must be a shockin’ high-class tourist. Let's beat the scrap out of him and steal his black cards."
"Yeah,” the other replied, then both attack Access. Since he has no offensive powers, he goes to the floor in a second. But then the sound of heavy steps gets closer. A big shadow marks a frightening presence over them. One of the guys see the shadow and turns to it.
"Huh...Jack?" the guy pinches his partner as he looks to the large, humanly shadow.
"Shut up, Stan! Let's beat this shockin’..."
KA-POW!
The next thing Jack sees is Stan flying by his side. Jack then turns to face a large, burly man with a skull armor costume on.
"See how you two like being victimized!" he says, then pulls a gun and shoots Jack. Then he crushes Stan's skull with his mace. He helps Axel get up.
"You okay there, buddy?" Access’s savior asks him.
"Yeah, I guess. Lucky for me you came, whoever you are. Where the heck am I?"
"Downtown NYC, where else?"
“Downtown New York?? I don’t get it. What happened to the sky? And who are you?”
“The Punisher, in case you haven’t heard.”
"The Punisher?! You don’t look anything like the Punisher! Where am I, really? Wait…what year is it?”
"Uh, 2099 last I checked, pal. What’s your shockin’ problem?! Look, I gotta get going. Get back uptown as soon as you can, and don’t let anymore gangs catch you down here, especially with those black card designer duds on." The Punisher 2099 turns to leave.
"No, wait! I need to understand what this place is about and…" But the Punisher 2099 walks off before he can finish his sentence, muttering profanities about “black card brats wandering downtown on their stupid VR trips”.
A Punisher of the future? Access thinks to himself, What else does this future world offer? Having nearly mastered his teleporting abilities over the last ten years, Access teleports to the city above, in an alleyway, then walks out onto the street.
With my outfit, I should fit in nicely with these people walking by, Access thinks. He then looks up at the buildings nearby, and sees a man wearing a black and red, skin-tight costume with web cape off the back fly by, with men wearing police-like uniforms on flying motorcycles chasing after him.
“Surrender, Spider-Man!” calls out the lead officer shouts, “Or we’ll use deadly force!”
SPIDER-MAN?! Access thinks as they all pass out of sight, They have a Spider-Man here too? This must be some kind of…second heroic age for the Marvels universe or something. Access then goes to a nearby net terminal, and starts using it to look up info on the era he’s in.
Hmm…seems like the multinational corporations of this time, like this Alchemax and Stark/Fujikawa, got a huge control factor over the populace over the last century, he thinks, and these new “heroes” seem to be the rising thorn in their side. Occording to this, there’s also a new Dr. Doom, X-Men, Ghost Rider, and some new characters called Ravage, Metalscream…all considered “outlaws” and “threats to the status quo,” yet heroes to the subjegated populace. But what happened the the originals? Access does some quick hacking into the historical records in cyberspace.
Huh. Records seem to be lost and scetchy from around the end of that era. The heroes of the twentieth century disappear mysteriously after the turn of the century somehow, and the “megacorps” take control over time. Reminds me of that “1984” book I read in high school. Too bad it actually came true here. Good thing nothing this bad happened in the OTHER universe… Axel suddenly realizes he’s spending too much time in this universe, and quickly runs back to the alley, and transports himself to the other universe, staying within the same timezone.
He finds himself in another alley, but a darker, gloomier one, and at night. He steps out of it and immediately recognizes the city he’s in, despite looking more advanced.
“Gotham City,” he says to himself. He starts to walk down the not-so-busy streets for a while, and starts noticing tons of banners and images on buildings, saying “WayneCorp” on them. They seem to be everywhere.
“What’s happening now? I’ve been to this universe’s 2099 before. It was nothing like this. What--?!” Access’s self-talking is interupted by a laser blast passing right over his head and hitting the building behind him, making a huge hole in it. Access ducks, then looks ahead to see an army of what looks like wheeled police-tanks, with the lead one’s gun barrel smoking.
“HALT!” a voice over a loudspeaker from the lead tank says, “YOU ARE SCANNED AS HAVING SUPER-POWERS TO CLASS AAA STATUS. BY ORDER OF WAYNECORP C.E.O. LOUIS McGOVERN, ALL SUPER-BEINGS ARE TO SURRENDER IMMEDIATELY TO OUR AUTHORITY, OR BE ELIMINATED WITH EXTREME PREDJUDICE!”
“Oh crap!” Access shouts, and immediately starts running in the opposite direction. The police-tanks follow in pursuit, firing shots all around him. As he quickly runs around each new corner, trying to lose the pursuing tanks, he’s so scared he’s unable to activate his teleporation abilities. After 10 minutes of running, he quickly ducks around an alley corner, and watches as the tanks continue on down the barren street, and past him, and starts to wonder how this all could have happened.
This world, he thinks, Could it be just like the Marvels 2099 universe, but developed in it’s own unique way?? Did I spend so long in the other universe that I enforced it’s own set-up on this one? Axel continues to wonder this as he turns towards the other end of the alleyway and starts walking down it, trying to make sense of everything, feeling almost nothing but fear and guilt. He soon walks into a dead-end, then spins around quickly as he sees a spotlight hit him from behind. It’s the police tanks from before.
“YOU HAVE BEEN CORNERED,” the voice says again, “ALL PARTIES PREPARE FOR IMMEDIATE FIRING AND EXTERMINATION! ON MY COUNT… ONE… TWO… THR—“ Out of nowhere, a missle comes out of the sky and hits the base of the lead tank, making it partially explode and fall over. The tank lights all point away from Access, and up to a decending, winged, bat-shaped man, who then swoops down right over the tanks, then back into the air. This causes the tanks to between each other, hitting the brick buildings behind them, and making an avalance of bricks fall on them. The flying figure then swoops back down, picks up Access by the back shirt collar. Just as he does this, the police car/tanks zoom forward out of their brick pile.
“BATMAN! THE GOTHAM WATCH FORCE ORDERS YOU AND YOUR COMPANION TO SURRENDER IMMEDIATELY!” an officier in one of the tanks on the loudspeaker shouts. They all start firing on the bat figure and Access, but figure manages to use his bat-wings attached to his armored arms to manuver out of their laser shots. The rocket on his back blasts more, and they take off fast into the sky and other parts of the city. Access finally looks up asks, “Batman 2099, I presume?”
“Just Batman,” he says, his voice obviously technologically masked to sound like a demonic bat, probably to prevent from voice recognition from under his metal bat-head-shaped helmet that covers his whole head, “And you were shockin’ lucky I came when I did. Those WayneCorp Watchforce can be pretty brutal to super-powered beings. Can’t have possible heroes popping up and causing trouble for the megacorps. That’s one of the many situations I intend to change.” Just then, Batman 2099’s jet engine on his back burns out, and starts to decend rapidly.
“Shock!” he shouts, “Engines out! Gonna have to glide onto that nearby building!” And even though he holds onto Access’s collar in his right hand, Batman 2099 uses his arms to manuver his bat-wings to glide onto the nearest building’s roof. As he lands, both he and Access roll on the roof until they stop right near the edge. Both then get up, dust themselves off, and face each other.
“Well, that was fun,” Batman says.
“Mind explaining to me what the hell is going on??” Access asks.
“Come again?”
“This UNIVERSE! How did it…?!” Access suddenly remembers an old rule of dimension travel: Newly-made-dimension inhabitants are entirely apart of that dimension, and wouldn’t recall how it was formed.
“Forget it,” Access finishes, “You wouldn’t understand…”
“You sure about that?” Batman asks, “Try me.” Access quickly thinks back to when he was with the Punisher of 2099, and what he said.
“Extended VR trip,” Access replies, “I, uh, can’t seem to remember what happened…my whole life. Mind explaining everything to me? How did Gotham City, how did THIS WORLD, become this way?”
“Uh, ok. You mean megacorp-ruled? Holy shock, have you got problems,” Batman says, “First off, occording to the historical records, there was a greater era around the turn of the last century called the ‘Age of Heroes’. Heroes like Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern and more guarded our world from evil. But some time after the turn of the century, some event happened that led to the disappearance of all those heroes. Records were lost, so whether they were killed or what is unknown. Over time, major industrial corporations like Lex and Wayne, the major two, got control of the governments, and now rule us all almost like kings, watching us, controlling us, enslaving us. I took on the mantle of the bat to free Gotham from WayneCorp’s hold, and there seem to be more heroes popping up now, doing the same for other areas of the nation, maybe the world. There’s even a new cyborg ‘Superman’ patrolling the LexCorp-ruled Metropolis and…”
My God, Access thinks, This is just like Marvels 2099 universe’s story. What have I done?! Did I even cause this? What the heck do I do?!
“Look, I have to get going,” Batman says, “There’s a camp not to far out of town for people like you. I could fly you there…”
“Uh, no thanks. I have teleportation powers. I can make it on my own from here.”
“If you say so,” Batman says, “See you around…” Batman 2099 then does a backflip off the side of the building, arms extended. Access runs to that edge of the building top, and looks down to see him flapping his arms (which are attached to his bat-wings) and fly off to another section of the city.
“Alright,” Access says to himself, “I may or may not have caused this universe faux-pas to happen, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to let it stay this way.” Access then tries to summon a portal to another time era, hoping to get some present-day heroes to help him out, but can’t seem to.
“Oh no,” he says, “If what I’m feeling is right, I’m stranded here in this year! I can now only seem to move between this world’s 2099 and the Marvels’ 2099 universes! Something fishy is going on…and I’m going to find out what it is… ”
TO BE CONTINUED…?
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enter since 2:10 pm PST, on Thursday, Dec. 2, 1999.