It isnt often that the heroes of the world need to come together because there is a threat that is too much for them to handle. With the alien god, his extra-terrestrial bride, and the woman from the other side, anything bigger than a local disturbance is easily dealt with.
There are notable exceptions, of course, but they are few and far between. The most recent was an organised terrorist attack on several population centres across the world. Our heroes joined forces to help investigators bring the larger group down.
The worst of these incidents was, of course, the demonic creature that took the alien gods first, and truest, love. The reporter famed for her hard hitting exposes on the worlds heroes, Caitlin Clark. Her life was stolen by an entity forged in a place no one can comprehend and forced into our world through as yet unknown means. It took the full power of the alien god, something we had never seen before and hope to never see again, to take the entity down. Unfortunately, during that week from hell, more than 7,000 people, innocents, were taken from us as well.
There are several other moments when more than one or two of our heroes joined forces, became something of a team. But they get forgotten easily. While we try to come to terms with the ideas that have come to light since that entity emerged, the smaller events seem to just fade away.
The man sits in his office. He isnt anyone special, a journalist. His name is Richard, or Rick if you knew him well. He never used the term reporter to label himself, always journalist. He was a freelancer, a true investigator. He travelled the world and dove deep into his chosen subjects. He was stubborn and always, so his tagline went, got what he came for. Except this one.
His face was a map of regret and despair as he typed a few words into his fifteen year old laptop before deleting them again. In the last week, since he had been back in town, he had written a grand total of sixteen words for this story. All of which were sourced from places any blogger with a cellphone could access. He knew he had a story, but the only way to get it was to talk to someone far higher up than he had ever gone before. This wasnt just another revolutionary soldiers piece. This was something bigger.
He pushed the laptop across his desk in frustration and leaned back in his chair, staring at the mostly empty word document that stared impassively back. He closed his eyes, slowly took his glasses off, threw them on the desk with the laptop too and pinched the bridge of his nose.
“Am I really going to do this again?” he asked the room. “Of course I am,” he muttered and sighed, letting his hand fall back down, his head flopping back. “How else am I ever going to get the quotes I need?”
To the people of the world, the ones who looked up and welcomed him, he was called Metanite. It was not a name he understood, but it served its purpose, so he kept it. In fact, he had many names. He called himself something unpronounceable in any human language. His bride, the silent woman, referred to him with a simple hand gesture.
He had several human names for when he needed to blend in, and a nickname that his colleagues called him.
But he also had a real name, a name he had inherited from his people before he had come to Earth. A true name, he called it. Only five people, outside of his own species, had ever heard it used. Of those five, three knew it was a name, but only one knew it was his name. Which meant that only one person, in the entire cosmos, had any sort of real power over him.
Right now, he stood atop a lonely lighthouse. For years, it had been tended to by a single family, an old family. Now, though, it was fully automated and this tiny island, a mile off the coast of an Alaskan city, was uninhabited.
He entered the light room and took the ladder down into the living quarters of the building. A thick layer of dust covered everything that had been left when the last lighthouse keeper had left, called to somewhere else to inherit something he never knew existed. A kingdom of death and pain at the bottom of the ocean. A curse more than anything else. He and Metanite were not friends, neither could ever be true friends with anyone, but they were as close as you could get.
However, the alien god was not here for reminiscing. This was one of his missions and it was a necessity for him.
At the very base of the lighthouse, a lockbox sits just inside the door. In the past, it was used for supplies brought for the keeper. Now it was empty, closed and locked with a large, yet simple, padlock. Such a padlock would not keep someone like Metanite out of this box, but he didnt break it. From a hidden pocket in his suit, he extracted a key and unlocked the box. Stepping inside, looking a little ridiculous as he did, the floor of the box made a clicking noise and slowly started to lower down into the bowels of the island. As his head dropped below the top of the box, he pulled the lid closed after him.
He emerged into a large, well lit cavern. Immediately beneath the lowering platform was the building that controlled everything. The elevator came to a stop in the middle of the floor of this building and Metanite took a few moments to ensure that everything was still in working order before heading to the far side of the cavern where a cave had been hollowed out and covered over in glass, or something similar. It looked a lot like an aquarium, or other such enclosure.
Lights from the larger cavern didnt reach this far, so whatever was behind the glass was shrouded in darkness until he hit a green button next to the enclosure and illuminated the whole thing in a dim red light. Inside, chained to the floor and walls and roof, was a naked, save a shredded loin cloth, man. He sat, almost relaxed, staring out of the glass wall, an expression of utter hatred on his face.
“Come to see if Im dead yet?” he hissed, his voiced muffled by the glass. “Bad news, Im afraid.”
“I knew you would not be dead,” Metanite said in his usual monotone. “In fact, I wish to ensure you are still alive. I do not know what happens when you die.”
“Find out,” the chained man hissed.
Rick knew the heroes didnt want him poking around in their affairs. Especially this one. No one else seemed to remember the lighthouse and the tectonic shift that happened in, on or around it about a decade ago. But he remembered.
He remembered being stationed in a desolate Alaskan town writing a less than riveting piece on illicit arctic animal hunters and the various means they used to get their spoils into mainland USA. While there, trying to make the most of a pitch black winters day, he witnessed a battle, high in the sky, between who he thought was Metanite and an unknown adversary. He couldnt write anything in the darkness, but he couldnt also head back inside. He chose to stay out and watch as the aurora burned overhead as the worlds strongest being fought someone who seemed to be just as strong.
Metanites adversary landed a hard punch and the alien god plummeted to earth hard, splitting the rock and burying himself under a ton of ice and snow. His adversary landed nearby and, similarly to Metanite himself, engulfed his hand in a deep red flame and blasted it at the hole where Metanite had disappeared. There was no emotion on this other beings face aside from the effort it took to use this power.
Before he could get much closer, something moved incredibly fast in the darkness and the adversary was sent flying off into the wilderness. A tall figure landed quietly in the snow and although Rick could not see anything with any detail, he knew, instinctively, that it was the silent woman. Which meant that more heroes had arrived to help Metanite. As Rick watched, the silent woman and three other figures went after the distracted enemy and flashes of light and noise told Rick the fight had started again. After a moment or two, Metanite appeared from the ground and joined in.
Rick watched as the group fought and subdued the other. At the end of the fight, as the heroes stood over the defeated, a massive source of light appeared from nowhere and lit the scene up like it was the middle of the day. Down from the light descended a hero that most didnt know, but someone who was an ally to the others already there. They all spoke briefly before the newcomer reluctantly agreed to something and froze their shared enemy in a large block of opaque ice. Having done his bit for the team, he returned to the water, taking his light source with him. The night was black again and in the darkness, Rick only heard one thing.
“I have somewhere for him.” Metanites voice. “We can keep him there and no one will know of what happened.”
Had he not heard those words, Rick would have wandered off back to the facility he was staying at. He would have, likely, forgotten this entire episode as he worked on his investigation into meat smuggling. But this was Metanite sounding almost conspiratorial. Here was a villain they had subdued, with no escape imminent. There were protocols for this, and here was the being who helped write them overtly flaunting them. With help from the other heroes.
This was the story, Rick knew. He ran back inside and scribbled some things into his notebook before getting back to the work he was already in the middle of. It didnt have to be written now, but it was next on his list.
Metanite paced before the glass wall and sighed in frustration. The other watched him with his eyes, otherwise staying immobile. Not that he could move much if he wanted to, the chains used to keep him there were attached very tightly.
“You know its the only option,” the man inside said. “And you are the only one who can. That quiet woman could never. I know her, I know her kind. They are nothing compared to us. Yet, I would wager she has told you to kill me many times.”
“Your opinion is not needed,” Metanite said, hitting the green button again, sending everything behind the glass into darkness again.
“Yet you keep coming back. You keep talking to me when you vowed never to again. Even before this place, this planet, even back home you hated me. Always in my shadow, you were. Never able to break free. Now look at you, brother. Keeping me in yours.”