The Matthias Chronicles

Vol. 2 Story 2: Altered States

By Wraith

Penance couldn't remember exactly how she ended up where she was, but knew it wasn't good. The last thing she remembered was lying in the grass outside of the mansion, enjoying the fresh air. As the warm sunrays flooded her rapidly softening skin, Penance closed her eyes to take a nap. When she opened her eyes, the sky was no longer blue, but rather a shade of pale red. There was no grass, only dry, rocky terrain that stretched as far as Penance could see. She had no idea where she was. All she knew was, she never felt so alone in her life.

********************

As Sean parked the school's van in the basement of the Baxter Building in New York City, Paul steeled himself for whatever news awaited him in the lab of Dr. Reed Richards.

Paul's exhaustive search of all the computer systems which were linked up to the same network as the school's revealed that the database of Dr. Reed Richards not only recognized the chemical compound that shared Paul's body, but also knew of its origin. Unfortunately Dr. Richards' computers were protected by a password and Paul would need to meet with Richards personally. So, Sean offered to drive him to New York.

Sean didn't know exactly why Paul needed to see Dr. Richards, but after the usually timid young man insisted that he be allowed to go; Sean decided to allow the trip. Sean was wondering if he made the right decision by taking Paul to New York. When Emma came back from Westchester she was white as a sheet. Apparently, Xavier told Emma that Penance had disappeared from existence. Sean knew Emma would be a wreck over it, yet he still offered to take Paul to see Richards.

The two, student and teacher, knocked on the door of Dr. Reed Richards and awaited a response.

"May I help you," an automated female voice spoke from a small speaker on the side of the huge metal slab that was the door to Richards' lab.

"Aye. Sean Cassidy here to see Dr. Richards."

As Sean finished his sentence the huge, heavy hunk of metal raised upward and offered entrance into the lab. Richards was seated at a desk wearing a contraption on his head that held both a high-powered light and an intensely strong magnifier. On the desk were several chemicals in tubes and Bunsen burners.

Richards shut off the light on his headgear and rose to greet his guests. As he reached them, he realized that he left the burner on and risked ruining his experiment. So he stretched his arm across the ten feet between himself and the desk to shut off the flame.

"Mr. Cassidy, pleased to meet you."

"Likewise Doctor. We appreciate yure meeting with us on such short notice."

"Nonsense Cassidy, I'm always more than happy to help out Charles Xavier." Richards turned to Paul and spoke to the young man. "And you must be young Mr. Jordan."

Paul's cheeks slightly reddened as he smiled and shook Richards' hand, "Please, my father is Mr. Jordan. I'm Paul."   

      Richards gave a warm smile back, "Well, 'Paul' it is then. Paul, do you have that substance you wanted me to analyze?"

      Paul reached into his jacket pocket and retrieved a small glass jar that held a minute amount of the liquid that shared his body with him. He handed the red-orange viscous liquid to Richards.

      Richards took the jar to his electron microscope/spectrum analyzer and examined it. He didn’t want to believe what he was seeing, but the computers confirmed it. All he could do was drop his jaw and stare at the screen displaying the results of the spectrum analysis. "My God...

      Cassidy was disturbed by Richards' abrupt change in demeanor. "What is it Dr.?"

      Richards ignored Sean's inquiry and spoke to Paul. "Are you sure that this is all there was? This is the only amount you found at the scene?"

Paul was worried, but refused to let anyone know that his own body housed a substantial amount of the substance. "Uh-- Yes sir. The meteor was rather small and this amount was all that there was. What is it?"

      Reed Richards sat down, feeling weakened by what he saw on his computer screen. "Paul, the substance you brought me was once brought to me by Spider-Man. He found it on an alien planet and brought it to Earth as a costume. It is a symbiote, a sentient alien life form that feeds off of a host. The creature combines with the host and offers it great power in exchange for a life long bond. These things feed off of human emotions and only have two known weaknesses," Richards stood up, walked towards the Bunsen burner and turned the flame on.

      "The only two weapons we know of that can harm, and eventually kill, these are pure sonic energies, and fire."

With this, Richards placed the sample onto the open flame and watched and waited for the liquid to dissolve. To his surprise (and chagrin) the liquid did not die. Rather it simply absorbed the flame and grew bigger.

Richards stared intently at the substance. "Inconceivable! This version of the symbiote has mutated to adapt to fire!"

Cassidy stepped towards Richards and the symbiote. "Mind if'n I see if the bugger is still weak against sonics?"

"Be my guest Mr. Cassidy."

Sean opened his mouth and projected a small blast of pure sonic force that was his God-given gift. Sean intended for the sonic blast to only test the symbiote. It was barely enough to register in a canine’s ears, yet the substance violently exploded.

Reed spoke, “Apparently, the same mutation that caused the symbiote to resist fire made it extremely week against sonics. Mr. Cassidy, Paul, I hope this has alleviated your curiosity.”

Paul nervously nodded affirmative and made his way towards the door with Cassidy. At that same time in a brownstone in Brooklyn, Eddie Brock sat up from his mattress. Venom thought they had eliminated all of the symbiotes on Earth long ago. Since they just heard a small piece of a symbiote scream in pain, they were wrong, and had work to do.

********************

Ororo Munroe stood in front of a classroom at Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters lecturing on the complexities of Mutant-African-European relations in Africa. Xavier asked Ororo to lecture at the school because Sean had taken a student to New York to see Dr. Reed Richards, and Emma was busy helping Xavier search for Penance using Cerebro.

Most of the students were too busy worrying about their missing classmate to pay attention to the lecture. Zoë, however, was intrigued by Storm’s first-hand account of the anti-Apartheid movements throughout Africa. 

“Ms. Munroe, what is your opinion on the MAH’s contributions to the anti-apartheid movement in Africa.”

Ororo smiled. “Please child, call me ‘Ororo’. The Mutants Against Hate have never been favorites of mine. I applaud their goals, but I question their methods. As I’m sure you know Zoë, the MAH are well known for using violence to achieve their dream of unity between mutants, other minorities and the rest of humanity.”

Zoë spoke up again, “But Ororo, that’s all just pro-establishment propaganda. The MAH may use violent techniques, but only in response to violence against them.”

Ororo was both impressed and worried. “Zoë, you certainly know quite a lot about the MAH. How did you learn so much?”

Zoë smiled, “Well my parents are charter members of the Family of Life and they keep tabs on all organizations involved with the struggle for mutant rights.”

At that moment, the bell that signaled the end of classes for the day sounded.

********************

After finding herself in this unusual land, Penance walked towards the horizon, drawn by some unknown force. Though she didn’t know it yet, what, or rather who, she found when she got there held the key for getting back home.

Neither the young woman with long blonde hair encased inside of the floating, crystal-like tomb, nor the unusual looking young woman with dark purple skin and lavender hair were familiar to Penance, but she sensed that they were friendly.

“Please, help me! I’ve been trapped here for a while and think that this girl holds the key to getting out of here,” the Purple Girl explained, pointing to the Blonde Girl in the crystal.

“You see, I read this plaque and it says that the inhabitants of some place called ‘Limbo’ made this tomb for their goddess,” the Purple Girl continued.

“It also says that she can create portals between worlds and dimensions. If I was sure I could teleport her out without killing her then I would. Unfortunately the last time I tried I killed someone and ended up here myself,” the Purple Girl looked directly into Penance’s eyes plaintively.

Penance knew what the Purple Girl wanted her to do; she wanted Penance to help her get the Blonde Girl out of her tomb. Hopefully Blonde Girl would be able to get them out of...wherever they were. Penance looked at the tips of her third and fourth fingers on each hand, the hardest and sharpest parts of her body left since her skin began rapidly softening, and was reminded of how she ended up looking the way she did. Being locked up in a small dark existence until Emplate wanted to feed again. Her world consisting only of the sense of thought, the dimension Emplate stored her in numbed all others. She never wanted anyone to be trapped like that again!

Penance raised her hands over her head and sliced the floating crystal with her remaining diamond hard digits. The crystal slowly cracked along the fissures that Penance created. Then, suddenly, it shattered! The Purple Girl jumped amid the raining shards, ignoring the pain as the small pieces of crystal embedded in her exposed skin.

Purple Girl violently shook Blonde Girl to wake her up. “Please wake up! We need you!”

Blonde Girl’s eyes opened slowly, blinking to take in the red light in the atmosphere. Blonde Girl sat up and looked around. “What am I doing back here? Why can’t the gods decide what to do with me?!?”

Purple Girl stood and helped Blonde Girl to her feet. “Please, we don’t know where we are but could you please help us?”

Blonde Girl looked surprised to hear Purple Girl speak. “An Earthling! Not too many pass through hereabouts. In fact I thought I was the only one to ever have access to Limbo.”

Purple Girl spoke, “Precisely why we need your help. Someone placed this plaque on your resting-place saying that you could create portals between dimensions. We freed you to ask if you could help us get home.”

Blonde Girl reached behind her back and unsheathed an unusual sword and cut a large circular shape in the air in front of the three. The circle glowed a bright yellow and exploded with a bright light. “Well I’m still a little rusty but, let’s see how well my powers work.”

At that, the three walked into the portal that (hopefully) led back to Earth.  

 ********************

Jamal stepped off of his transpacific flight and into the terminal in Tokyo carrying his two duffel bags. His was the only black face in the terminal however; he walked with confidence and was far beyond self-consciousness. He felt fully relaxed as he walked through Tokyo International Airport. Jamal concentrated on remembering enough Japanese to ask for directions to Kanazawa without insulting anyone or embarrassing himself. A voice that he thought he had long forgotten called out to him. The sweetest, lightest voice his ears ever heard flooded his mind for the first time in almost three years.

“JAMAL!”

Jamal turned and saw his old friend, “Mika-chan!”

Jamal dropped his bags and ran to the young woman and they embraced. As they hugged, Jamal lifted Mika into the air.

“Jamal!” Mika laughed, “Put me down!”

Jamal smiled and complied. “Sorry Vicky, sometimes I get carried away and forget my strength.”

“Arrg! You know I hate that nickname!” Mika tried to act angry, but she couldn’t stop smiling at seeing Jamal again.

“Sorry Mika-chan,” Jamal looked her up and down. “God it seems like it’s been forever since I saw you last. You certainly grew up well!”

Mika blushed and playfully punched Jamal in the arm. “Shut up! Get your stuff and follow me. The car is double parked in the loading zone and my mom said if I get anymore tickets she’ll take away my car.”

Jamal picked up his bags and followed Mika towards the parking area in front of the airport.

“Hey Mika-chan, how did you know where I was gonna be and when? I was just plannin on takin a cab to your house till you showed up.”

As the got to the car Mika opened up the trunk, “Tetsuo told us you were going to come and that you would be arriving from Boston ASAP. Your flight today was the first arriving from Boston for a month so I figured you were on it.”

Jamal placed his bags in the trunk and closed it. Both Mika and Jamal got into the car and Mika began to drive towards the expressway that led to Kanazawa.

“But, you mean that you came all the way out to Tokyo without knowing if I would be there or not? Wow.”

Mika’s permanent smile brightened even more. “Well, I just had a feeling.”

Jamal changed the subject towards more serious matters, “How is your father doing?”

Mika’s look became somber and sobered; “H-he’s not doing too good. I don’t know if Tetsuo mentioned or not in the letter but it’s cancer. The doctors are surprised he’s been able to hold on as long as he has. He decided to live out his final days at home instead of the hospital.”

Jamal’s eyes began to slightly tear at the thought of losing his former teacher and father figure. Mika saw him try to hide his tears and decided to change the subject.

“So...what have you been up to Stateside?”

********************

Alicia walked into the dorm room she shared with her sister Melissa wearing only a bathtowel, drying her dripping wet hair.

"Melissa darling, I love you but what is so important that you have to yell for me while I'm washing my hair?"

Melissa was frozen with fear sitting in the middle of the floor. She looked at her twin sister and spoke; "he's here."

Alicia put her ear to the floor and heard muffled voices emanating from Emma's office exactly one floor down. Alicia searched at the bare hardwood floor until she found what she was looking for. Once she found a tiny knothole in the floor Alicia closed her eyes and concentrated on the knothole. Using her mutant ability to manipulate structural integrity of her surroundings, Alicia used her mind to widen the hole; thus allowing the sisters to hear the conversation in Emma's office better.

"...lease Shinobi. You must be kidding me. You honestly mean to tell me that you're going to pull your girls out of the school because of a piece of tabloid journalism?"

Shinobi Shaw, father to Alicia and Melissa, leaned back in the soft leather chair and sipped his English Breakfast tea. "Emma, the New York Post is hardly a 'tabloid'. Ordinarily I don't pay attention to anything but the financial section, however certain words like 'Mutants', 'Mass Hallucination', and 'Mysterious Jet' cry for my attention," with that said, Shinobi tossed a copy of last week's Times to Emma. The lead story was about how the citizens of Philadelphia reported having mass hallucinations and video cameras recorded several young mutants and a mysterious jet taking off.

Emma rubbed her temples; this was not what she needed! She just came back from the Xavier Institute where she spent the better part of the day helping Xavier look for Penance, but with no luck. Only to come back to the school and find her old friend's son in her office attempting to pull his daughters out of the school.

"Shinobi, this was... an isolated incident. One of our students was kidnapped and--"

"Kidnapped!? Well Emma that speaks volumes about your security here doesn't it? I was under the impression that this was simply a boarding school for mutants. When I saw Xavier's name on the letterhead I should've known better!"

Emma sighed. She was growing more and more annoyed, and less and less diplomatic. "Shinobi, what is it that you want? Do you want to withdraw the girls? Just say so, file the paper work, and have a good life!"

Shinobi stood up from the chair and smiled. "That's the Emma Frost I know and love! I had heard that working for the cueball had made you soft. Glad to be proven wrong," Shinobi replaced Emma's Victorian teacup and saucer on her table with the rest of the tea service.

"So will you want the papers faxed to your home or office?"

"Neither, I actually welcome the challenges my daughters will face as a result of enrollment in this school. I only wish to make one thing clear: They are not going to grow up to be 'X-Men'. After all, they have a family legacy to uphold, isn't that right my queen."

Emma slightly winced at the use of her Hellfire Club alias. Shinobi was a current member and his father; Sebastian Shaw was a member with Emma (before Shinobi killed him).

Shinobi took his trenchcoat from the mahogany coat rack next to the door. "Be seeing you Emma."

"You know Shinobi, if you girls follow the 'family legacy', then they'll kill you to earn points in some sick, twisted competition too won't they?" Emma enjoyed seeing Shinobi slightly stumble on his way out of the room."

********************

Chris steadied himself on the hardware store's anti-theft alarms at the entrance.

"Holy--! Chris! You OK man?!" Angelo helped his friend to his feet after Chris nearly collapsed in the entrance of a hardware superstore. Angelo dropped his full backpack to the ground and helped Chris remove his similarly full backpack.

Chris stood up under his own power as store workers came to his aid. He insisted that he was alright and simply asked to be pointed to the paint supplies. The attendants pointed they two in the right direction and picked up their full backpacks for them.

One suspicious attendant asked if what was in the backpacks might've led to Chris' collapse. Angelo knew what the attendant was getting at, and opened them up to show the packs were filled with 12-ounce soda cans.

Angelo explained, "We got a party later, but my folks said we had to paint the deck before our friends could come over."

As they reached the area near the back of the store that held the spraypaint cans, Angelo and Chris looked around for signs of security cameras. Only one.

"Guess they don’t get too many bombers around these parts huh?"

Chris looked at Angelo from the corner of his eye, "Shut up and do it man. Remember, move the camera slow. Move it too fast and they'll know something's up."

"Si, si. Yo se, yo se."

Angelo extended the skin on his index fingers towards the ceiling and slowly pushed the security camera away from the locked case that held the spraypaint cans, allowing Chris unmonitored access to them. Meanwhile Chris emptied his and Angelo's bag of the soda cans, stashing the decoys behind a display.

Once Angelo and Chris were sure that they were completely out of the camera's view, Chris tapped into the electricity he drained from the security devices when he held onto them, pretending to be faint. With the electrons fully armed, Chris shot a bolt out of his hands and at the lock on the spraypaint case. With the lock vaporized, Chris quickly filled up the backpacks with their bounty.

"Hurry up man!" Angelo shifted nervously. "What's the holdup?"

"Zip it Ange! I'm almost done," Chris closed the two backpacks, filled with fifteen spraypaint cans each.

The two young men casually strolled past the powerless security devices at the front of the store, and out the door.

********************

Sean didn't know what was stranger: the hole in space that opened up in front of the van he was driving; or the fact that when the van nearly hit the three figures who stepped though, the front end of the van simply went somewhere else, leaving the vehicle with half a motor, two wheels and a front dragging on the ground.

Once the light emanating from the hole subsided, Sean had to rub his eyes to make sure he wasn't hallucinating. He wasn't.

"Penny! Lass yure back! Clarice, w-we thought that you were..."

Sean knew words couldn't express what was in his heart, so he hugged Penance's soft upper arms and Clarice's purple body tightly. Tears slightly rolling off of his face and into the hair of the mutant once known as Blink.

Paul stepped out of the van and asked his headmaster what had happened, Sean explained.

"Nothing short of a miracle lad! Penny's back and Clarice is alive!" Sean looked at the blonde girl wielding a mean-looking length of blade.

"I dinnae believe I've had the pleasure Ms...?"

"My name is Illyana Rasputan, better known as Magik."

Sean held his head is disbelief, "On me sainted mother's grave! Has Death gone and taken holiday?"

While Sean gathered up Paul, Penny, Clarice, and Illyana; Eddie Brock stood outside the school's gates, searching for a subtle way in.

Venom followed the van all the way back to Salem Center to kill the symbiote-and-host entity: Paul Jordan.

Eventually Venom decided, subtlety was for the weak, like that wuss Parker! Their style was straightforward and uncompromising. They'd burst through the cast-iron gates and get the boy. The symbiotes all had to be destroyed!