Blossom looked up into the sky as the alarm klaxon went off. The entire park had been put on alert of an aircraft’s uncontrolled descent into the state park she and her family were picnicking at. She watched as a single person dropped out from one side of the plane as it headed down. A parachute glider opened and carried the person away safely, but the plane had no chance for the same. It crashed into the waters of Goldeneye Lake.
“I’ve got to go!” She shouted at her parents as they huddled together near their car. “I might be able to save someone.”
With that, the young heroine transformed into a Peregrine Falcon and shot into the air.
( *U* )
Starmaster staggered as he made contact with the alien mind, knocking several technical manuals on the floor as he fought to remain standing.
“Boss,” Catalyst rushed to Starmaster’s side and caught him before he fell. “What wrong?”
“It’s… it’s… QUACK!” Starmaster bleated.
The block of ice on the table lifted up into the air, surrounded by a nimbus of blue psychokinetic energy.
Krystal Fae raised her hand and used her telekinetic power to counter Starmaster’s. “It’s overtaking him, using him to break it free of the ice. Fight it, Starmaster!”
Inside the Mindscape, Starmaster found himself buffeted by a primal hunger. A desire for nothing but a need to consume. To grow. To destroy and devour. The mind he was in contact with didn’t understand existence as he knew it. It didn’t want things. It was compelled to do as its very nature intended.
He perceived the duck-like creature’s memory of being in space. Its need to find worlds to… to… there wasn’t a word in his vocabulary to describe the urge. Transform seemed closest. The creature needed to find new worlds to become what it was meant to be.
No. No! You cannot do that to this world. We won’t let you!
( *U* )
Madam Marvelous, or Blossom, flew over where she believed the plane crashed, but was surprised that there hadn’t been an explosion or plume of fire. Instead, she found herself flying above and enormous flock of ducks. Big ducks. Little ducks. Ducks of every variety. All swimming in the nearby lake or walking on the ground pecking at bits of food. There was no sign at all of any plane that had crashed, not even broken branches or a big hole in the earth.
As she surveyed the site, she noted something odd. The hundreds of ducks were all devouring whatever it was they were near. The ducks on the shore were eating the ground itself, creating growing holes. The waterborne ducks were lapping at water, taking in as much as they could ingest.
And the ducks made no noise at all. No quacking at all. Maybe it was because their mouths were all full, but it wasn’t normal. Ducks could never be that quiet for long. She wished that while she was in bird form, she could talk. She’d use her communicator to check in with BADGE to find out what they knew, but as things were, she just circled and watched, baffled by the duck’s strange behavior.
( *U* )
Krystal Fae continued to struggle against Starmaster’s grip on the frozen duck. Sweat beaded on her forehead as she focused her mind on keeping him from smashing the ice and releasing it. She gritted her teeth as she taxed her own psychic ability past her maximum. “He’s gotten much stronger than when I first met him a year ago.”
The chunk of ice hovered in the air, caught between their two telekinetic grips. Fracture patterns started to spiderweb within the crystalline matrix from the immense pressures.
Catalyst used his own Morphon-granted gift and gently dampened the neural interface between Starmaster and his suit of mental enhancing gear. Krystal’s control grew stronger, and the frozen duck slowly moved away from Starmaster back to the containment cooler used to bring it to the lab.
“QUACK!” Starmaster stopped fighting Krystal’s efforts altogether and instead he grabbed a chair and used it as a bat to smash the alien duck free from its frigid cage. A blast of energy knocked everything in the room backwards into the nearest wall, destroying most of the scientific equipment in the room.
Everything but the jet black duck left hovering in the air. It spread out its dark wings and its eyes flared red once more. “QUACK.”
Starmaster lifted a metal table from atop his body, free of the duck’s mental grip. “We have to stop it. It’s going to try to turn everything into ducks.”
“Everything?” Catalyst asked as he helped a dazed Krystal Fae to her feet. “All creatures on Earth.”
“Everything including the planet. I saw it in its mind. The spread from world to world and make each planet into a massive space duck, including everything on the planet. Their race has wiped out entire civilizations.” Starmaster tried to grab the floating dark-winged duck from the air, but it repelled his psychokinetic grip. “It’s mate already has begun transforming things. You have to warn the plane not to land. If they get out into the world, we might not be able to stop it.”
“What do you mean? I was told they didn’t find anything alive at the base,” Dr. Henderson said.
“It’s mate was eaten by one of the sled dogs. It’s cells infected any living organism and caused it to become a duck,” Starmaster shouted as he used his telekinetic power to throw debris at the duck while it shook off the last of the ice from its feathers. The objects bounced off it without the duck seeming to notice them at all. “It converted the other living things into ducks as well. Those that were transformed snuck on the plane. If this one and its mate are able to merge, there won’t be any stopping them.”
The space duck opened its yellow bill and hissed at those in the room. It launched itself at Starmaster, beating at him with its wings around the head.
Get ahold of whatever heroes you can. Have them keep the other one’s away from here until we defeat it. Starmaster telepathically shouted to the room.
“QUACK!!” The duck’s cry rocked the room, a sonic wave that stunned everyone in the building into unconsciousness.
( *U* )
Madam Marvelous watched in horror as the mass of ducks huddled together and melded into a one massive monstrous duck that stood nearly two stories tall.
“Hello, Kitt’n,” Gem, Krystal Fae’s unborn child appeared in her astral form beside Madam Marvelous while she was still transformed into a falcon. “You need to keep this creature here until Mother wakes back up.”
How am I supposed to do that? Madam Marvelous thought to her young friend. She wondered if other people could see Gem hovering next to her, that is if anyone wasn’t paying attention to the gigantic duck eating trees like they were French Fries.
Gem shrugged. “It’s made up of people turned into ducks. They want to turn the world into one big duck.”
Eyes growing wide, Madam Marvelous had no idea what to do next. If she attacked the duck, would she be hurting the people that had been taken over? She wished she knew what to do.
Below her, the duck started to move off, tromping through the lake toward the opposite shore.
“You can’t let it get to BADGE headquarters. Things would get really bad if it did.” Gem said before
fading away into the astral plane.
People on the ground screamed in terror as they saw the massive duck approach. Every few steps, it lowered its head and took a bite of whatever was closest to it, growing larger with each bite. It wouldn’t take long for a creature that large to reach the headquarters if it put its mind to it.
I guess it’s now or never. I have to distract it before it makes its way into New Amsterdam. Madam Marvelous landed and began to transform into the largest form she had ever attempted. Her powers worked best when she became something that she had seen before, so she locked an image into her mind and began to grow.
Feathers became sugar-coated yellow skin. Her body expanded, growing both wider and taller until she became a massive yellow marshmallow Peep. Hold on. This isn’t what I wanted. I was thinking about the Stay-Puff Marshmallow Man…
The duck turned to face her and hissed with enough force to rip large branches from nearby trees. It charged at Madam Marvelous, its large brown wings raised and ready to bitch-slap her to Thanksgiving.
“I’ve got to go!” She shouted at her parents as they huddled together near their car. “I might be able to save someone.”
With that, the young heroine transformed into a Peregrine Falcon and shot into the air.
( *U* )
Starmaster staggered as he made contact with the alien mind, knocking several technical manuals on the floor as he fought to remain standing.
“Boss,” Catalyst rushed to Starmaster’s side and caught him before he fell. “What wrong?”
“It’s… it’s… QUACK!” Starmaster bleated.
The block of ice on the table lifted up into the air, surrounded by a nimbus of blue psychokinetic energy.
Krystal Fae raised her hand and used her telekinetic power to counter Starmaster’s. “It’s overtaking him, using him to break it free of the ice. Fight it, Starmaster!”
Inside the Mindscape, Starmaster found himself buffeted by a primal hunger. A desire for nothing but a need to consume. To grow. To destroy and devour. The mind he was in contact with didn’t understand existence as he knew it. It didn’t want things. It was compelled to do as its very nature intended.
He perceived the duck-like creature’s memory of being in space. Its need to find worlds to… to… there wasn’t a word in his vocabulary to describe the urge. Transform seemed closest. The creature needed to find new worlds to become what it was meant to be.
No. No! You cannot do that to this world. We won’t let you!
( *U* )
Madam Marvelous, or Blossom, flew over where she believed the plane crashed, but was surprised that there hadn’t been an explosion or plume of fire. Instead, she found herself flying above and enormous flock of ducks. Big ducks. Little ducks. Ducks of every variety. All swimming in the nearby lake or walking on the ground pecking at bits of food. There was no sign at all of any plane that had crashed, not even broken branches or a big hole in the earth.
As she surveyed the site, she noted something odd. The hundreds of ducks were all devouring whatever it was they were near. The ducks on the shore were eating the ground itself, creating growing holes. The waterborne ducks were lapping at water, taking in as much as they could ingest.
And the ducks made no noise at all. No quacking at all. Maybe it was because their mouths were all full, but it wasn’t normal. Ducks could never be that quiet for long. She wished that while she was in bird form, she could talk. She’d use her communicator to check in with BADGE to find out what they knew, but as things were, she just circled and watched, baffled by the duck’s strange behavior.
( *U* )
Krystal Fae continued to struggle against Starmaster’s grip on the frozen duck. Sweat beaded on her forehead as she focused her mind on keeping him from smashing the ice and releasing it. She gritted her teeth as she taxed her own psychic ability past her maximum. “He’s gotten much stronger than when I first met him a year ago.”
The chunk of ice hovered in the air, caught between their two telekinetic grips. Fracture patterns started to spiderweb within the crystalline matrix from the immense pressures.
Catalyst used his own Morphon-granted gift and gently dampened the neural interface between Starmaster and his suit of mental enhancing gear. Krystal’s control grew stronger, and the frozen duck slowly moved away from Starmaster back to the containment cooler used to bring it to the lab.
“QUACK!” Starmaster stopped fighting Krystal’s efforts altogether and instead he grabbed a chair and used it as a bat to smash the alien duck free from its frigid cage. A blast of energy knocked everything in the room backwards into the nearest wall, destroying most of the scientific equipment in the room.
Everything but the jet black duck left hovering in the air. It spread out its dark wings and its eyes flared red once more. “QUACK.”
Starmaster lifted a metal table from atop his body, free of the duck’s mental grip. “We have to stop it. It’s going to try to turn everything into ducks.”
“Everything?” Catalyst asked as he helped a dazed Krystal Fae to her feet. “All creatures on Earth.”
“Everything including the planet. I saw it in its mind. The spread from world to world and make each planet into a massive space duck, including everything on the planet. Their race has wiped out entire civilizations.” Starmaster tried to grab the floating dark-winged duck from the air, but it repelled his psychokinetic grip. “It’s mate already has begun transforming things. You have to warn the plane not to land. If they get out into the world, we might not be able to stop it.”
“What do you mean? I was told they didn’t find anything alive at the base,” Dr. Henderson said.
“It’s mate was eaten by one of the sled dogs. It’s cells infected any living organism and caused it to become a duck,” Starmaster shouted as he used his telekinetic power to throw debris at the duck while it shook off the last of the ice from its feathers. The objects bounced off it without the duck seeming to notice them at all. “It converted the other living things into ducks as well. Those that were transformed snuck on the plane. If this one and its mate are able to merge, there won’t be any stopping them.”
The space duck opened its yellow bill and hissed at those in the room. It launched itself at Starmaster, beating at him with its wings around the head.
Get ahold of whatever heroes you can. Have them keep the other one’s away from here until we defeat it. Starmaster telepathically shouted to the room.
“QUACK!!” The duck’s cry rocked the room, a sonic wave that stunned everyone in the building into unconsciousness.
( *U* )
Madam Marvelous watched in horror as the mass of ducks huddled together and melded into a one massive monstrous duck that stood nearly two stories tall.
“Hello, Kitt’n,” Gem, Krystal Fae’s unborn child appeared in her astral form beside Madam Marvelous while she was still transformed into a falcon. “You need to keep this creature here until Mother wakes back up.”
How am I supposed to do that? Madam Marvelous thought to her young friend. She wondered if other people could see Gem hovering next to her, that is if anyone wasn’t paying attention to the gigantic duck eating trees like they were French Fries.
Gem shrugged. “It’s made up of people turned into ducks. They want to turn the world into one big duck.”
Eyes growing wide, Madam Marvelous had no idea what to do next. If she attacked the duck, would she be hurting the people that had been taken over? She wished she knew what to do.
Below her, the duck started to move off, tromping through the lake toward the opposite shore.
“You can’t let it get to BADGE headquarters. Things would get really bad if it did.” Gem said before
fading away into the astral plane.
People on the ground screamed in terror as they saw the massive duck approach. Every few steps, it lowered its head and took a bite of whatever was closest to it, growing larger with each bite. It wouldn’t take long for a creature that large to reach the headquarters if it put its mind to it.
I guess it’s now or never. I have to distract it before it makes its way into New Amsterdam. Madam Marvelous landed and began to transform into the largest form she had ever attempted. Her powers worked best when she became something that she had seen before, so she locked an image into her mind and began to grow.
Feathers became sugar-coated yellow skin. Her body expanded, growing both wider and taller until she became a massive yellow marshmallow Peep. Hold on. This isn’t what I wanted. I was thinking about the Stay-Puff Marshmallow Man…
The duck turned to face her and hissed with enough force to rip large branches from nearby trees. It charged at Madam Marvelous, its large brown wings raised and ready to bitch-slap her to Thanksgiving.
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