Skrull Contested Territory | The Andromeda Galaxy
The girl was little more than a teenager.
Clutching at a rifle that was too large for her slight frame, the rainbow haired waif ducked as bombs were bursting in the air above.
A drop pod crashed down just a few feet from where she’d been taking shelter. The shockwave knocked her down to her knees. The rifle tumbled out of her hands, sending her scrambling on all fours as she tried to maintain her balance and also recover the weapon. Just as her hand brushed against the butt of the rifle, she saw the armored clad foot of the first soldier.
Turning her head up, the girl was presented with the face of a Skrull soldier, staring down the barrel...
...a burst of energy caught the Skrull in the chest, hurling the green-skinned alien back into the drop pod.
Swooping over the girl’s head, the blue-and-red clad figure of a small boy paused to offer her a jovial two-finger salute. Then, the glowing figure was gone again -- blazing a trail of brilliant energy bursts.
Another Skrull landed near her. This one obviously knocked into unconsciousness, even before the second stunned Skrull had landed atop the first.
“ISN’T THIS ENLIGHTENING, CHILD!”
The booming voice suggested a presence that was larger than life. And, indeed, the Okaraan’s squat frame soon blotted out the sun, as the warlord heaved a wicked looking maul up onto his shoulder.
A strange light flickered into being, as a young Kymellian boy appeared from out of the air. Reaching out to touch the teen with his large, three-fingered hands, the Kymellian and the teen both blinked out of existence, even as Okaraan lifted his maul up and began charging forward.
The Kymellian and the girl re-appeared a short distance away, sheltered atop a vantage point from which the pair could look out over the battlefield. A massive Skrull carrier was descending from above. A dark cloud spreading as starfighters and drop pods seeded the air.
Reaching a hand up to the link affixed to the side of his head, the Kymellian boy asked, “Are we winning?” No, he didn’t sound optimistic. “I don’t feel like we’re winning.”
Zig-zagging through the air, the human child was a whirling dervish of kinetic energy. Starfighters were beginning to try and zero in on him, even as he was trying to blow the drop pods from out of the sky. “I’m sure it looks worse than it is!” the boy shouted in reply, straining his voice to be heard over the sound of plasma that was sailing by his head.
He should probably stop to take a look for himself. Firing off another volley, the child snapped upward in the air to climb up over the chaos.
From up here, he could definitely see that they were getting overrun. “Ooooo... kay. Yeah, that... that does look pretty bad...” the child uttered, even as he started free falling back down. In a flash of lightning, the boy was zipping back over the battlefield again. “G’Kar, how do we win this?” the human youth asked, scanning the ground below for signs of the Okaraan.
He need only look for the pile of Skrull bodies. Heaving his maul over his head, G’Kar threw his head back and answered, “TODAY SHALL BE A GLORIOUS DAY TO DIE, COMRADES!”
The Kymellian, Majesdanian teen, and the human all just blinked in unison. Touching his hand against his forehead, the human boy muttered, “Not helping, G’Kar...” Then, speaking up, said, “Friday, what do you got on that carrier?”
A calm, disembodied voice crackled over the link. “It is a J’Gnrt-class dreadnought, BillyBatson. Twenty-seven thermonuclear missile tubes, multiple delivery warheads, forty-nine disruptor banks, primary and secondary shields. Even you will be hard pressed to breach its defenses.”
“Yeah?” Challenge accepted.
No, he had no idea about any of what the smartship had just told him. Basically, it was bad. That’s what he understood. Thing in the sky was bad thing. “What kind of battery does it got?”
“Does it have, Billy. And it is powered by a level five solar-ion cascade reactor.”
“Solar-ion,” Billy repeated. “Got it.” He had no idea. But it sounded like something that might make for a big boom. Zipping back through the air, the human imp soared up by the ledge where the Kymellian and the teen were situated. “Kofi, can you get me in there?”
The Kymellian did a double take. “Wait, WHAT?”
The horse boy’s voice totally cracked just now.
Smacking a fist inside the glove of his open hand, Billy reared back as he shouted, “Bodyslide by one!”
Kofi was trying to wave Billy off in a panic. “No no no no no! Are you nuts!? We’re not doing this. We’re not...”
“Punch it.” Billy exploded forward in an eruption of energy, rocketing right at the Kymellian child.
Kofi gave a yelp that might have been mistaken for a twelve year old girl squealing, if not for the din of bombs, blasters, and All Bad Things™ going off around them. As the Kymellian’s powers kicked in, the two boy’s slapped their palms together as though high-five’ing each other. When they did, Billy blinked out of existence.
“I guess we’re doing this...” Kofi lamented.Holding his breath, the Kymellian turned and thrust his arms out as he willed the human to reappear inside the behemoth bearing down on them.
Then he realized just what he’d done. “Oh, x’lth...” the boy uttered, swearing in his native tongue even as he slowly turned his eyes up toward the behemoth with a sense of foreboding that was increasing exponentially. “Uh, guys..?”
Alora was laid out on the ground, using her rifle as a sniper and picking off Skrulls as they started to rush G’Kar.
G’Kar was, of course, loving all of this.
Neither way paying any attention to him. “GUYS!” Kofi shouted. Ducking behind the Majesdanian teen, the boy put his three-fingered hand on the small of her back. “We...” The Kymellian and the teen blinked out. Re-appearing next to G’Kar, as a second sun was starting to shine in the sky.
No, this planet wasn’t in a binary star system.
“...gotta...” Touching the Okaraan on the arm, the trio blinked out.
“...go!” This time they appeared in a starship. As the trio spilled out on the floor, the breathless Kymellian looked out at the planetary horizon. Through the canopy, the Skrull carrier disappeared in a brilliant flash of light. The explosion radiated outward in a violent air burst that cleared the air as the Skrull starfighters were swept aside.
“WA-HOOOOO!”
Flashing with golden arcs of lightning, the human child was rocketing up into the space above.
“That’s how we do it in America! Yeah!”
As the clouds fell away, the boy was presented with a view of the cosmos. Starships and parts of starships scattered around where the fight between the Resistance and the Skrull Empire had spilled out among the stars, in addition to the ground.
The Skrulls were reeling, but they’d also be re-grouping. And a lot quicker than the Resistance could, too. “All right, the Skrull fleet is in disarray,” Billy announced, talking into the link. “If we’re gonna bug out, we need to go now.”
Friday’s measured voice came back on the line. “Allied command has already signaled our retreat. We’ll meet back at the rendezvous.”
Just one of these days, Billy would like a real victory. Like, the kind where you save the planet, not just live to fight another day.
Granted, living to fight another day was an important of the whole Resistance schtick, though.
As the first Resistance ships were lifting off from the surface, the boy planed his body out. Arcs of lightning were sparking from off his gauntlets. “First round of root beers on me,” the child said, as he suddenly sparked off far beyond the stars...
All right, people, let’s do this one more time.
My name is Billy Batson and, for the last eighty years, I’ve been the one and only, often imitated, never duplicated, Billy Batson! I’m not originally from here, I’m from Ohio. Fawcett City. I was born there in 1929. Not much to talk about really. My parents disappeared when I was little. I was raised by my Uncle Dudley. We didn’t have much and I worked in a glass factory for about a dollar a day until 1938, when Congress passed a law that made child labor illegal. At that point, I had to start going to school.
Then, in 1940, the greater galactic conflict came crashing down on Earth. The rest you probably know. I saved the city. Fought in the Second World War (vivé la Resistance!). Buried Uncle Dudley, fought an industrial tycoon, and then I spoke up for a friend and got black-listed by this biscuit boxer, braggart named McCarthy. Holy Moley did that ever go sour quick! I took the hint and left the world stage. Went back to cleaning up the streets where ever I went. I think I was looking for answers, but I don’t think I ever figured out what the question was.
The Great Horse-Lord from beyond the stars (his name is actually Aelfyre) came back in 1975, as he promised. Come to find out, there’s this thing called relativity that makes the passage of time all kinds of wonky when you’re traveling faster than light.
Now, I don’t just fight for one world. I fight for all of them. The Daily Planet called me Captain Marvel. The Kree call me Mar-Vell. The Z’ynx call me... something unpronounceable. And the Shi’ar call me Ja’loja.
DON’T ask me what that means (I’m not supposed to say those words).
Through it all, no matter how many times I get hit -- no matter how hard I go down or how many times I fail—I always get back up.
Not because I’m Captain Marvel, but because I’m Billy Batson.
PapaOso,
Eviledd1984,
DocTachyon,
anothered,
GubGar,
Alby47,
Simple Unicycle,
pollo,
Knight 7,
Hound55
