May 18, 2014

Towards the end of the flight, I wasn’t the only one who moved up to the cockpit to watch the show. I took the co-pilot seat and helped the pilot while Creel stood directly behind me, Fantasma and a few others crowding in as well. Snow flew past the window when we got close enough, the sun shining down on the waters until we reached the icy coast. Baker, the pilot, and I guided the quinjet to slowly come down.

“Activating beam,” one of the scientists said, flipping a button on the console that was newly installed. I activated the Quinjet’s cloak as well. The last thing we needed was for some random village to see the Quinjet and think it was a god.

For a while, there was nothing but ice-cold tundra beneath us. Then, a small beam emitter under the cockpit of the Quinjet lashed out and hit nothing. Nothing split open, allowing us into a window that closed after we had passed.

Just like that, we were flying over a world out of time.

“Lā ilāha,” I said softly in Arabic.

“Holy shit,” Creel added.

“Bozhe moi!” Fantasma mumbled.

The jungle swept around for miles beneath us, disappearing in the distance. We were low enough to see rivers going through the trees, fields of tall grass in the distance, and lots of green.

“This is crazy,” one of the soldiers said softly.

“Welcome to the Savage Land, baby. Crazy central,” I said with more confidence than I felt. Despite my amazement, I was still working the controls, feeling tense as I prepared for the inevitable crash.

“Oh my god,” one of the scientists said in awe, leaning over to take a closer look at a nearby field. We all shut up and stared at the sight.

It was next to a large river, where the grass was lowest, allowing a clearing for water drinking, with clear lines of sight in case of predators. Which meant they could drink in relative peace.

I’d joked, quipped, made all sorts of cavalier comments about the prospect of dinosaurs. I’d seen a few in Rio. But seeing them like this was incredible. Under cloak, the dinosaurs below couldn’t see or hear us, so we were able to peacefully watch without disturbing the animals.

Brontosauruses were standing near the water, stretching their long necks to sip at the clear blue river or reaching up to the tops of massive trees for leafy greens while a few of their babies roamed around them, one trying to climb up their parent the way all babies did. Stegosauruses were chewing at the grass like big dumb cows, calmly strolling as their spiked tails swung back and forth, finned backs waving with every step. Some bipedal dinosaurs I didn’t recognize were walking away in a slow-moving pack with their babies hopping along like kangaroos.

We watched in silence together, the quinjet floating high above the field, as the majestic animals below roamed the plain, sipped at the water, and lived together. Hundreds of tons of prehistory, alive and well, moving much faster than I’d ever imagined as a kid. It was-

“Da-na-na, na-na, da-na-na-, na-na, da-na-na, na-na-naaaaaaah,” Creel hummed.

“Dude!” I said in shock.

“Come on, man!” one of the soldiers said in annoyance.

“You ruined the moment!” a scientist agreed.

“Someone had to do it,” Creel said without a hint of shame. “I enhanced the moment.”

“Yeah, maybe if the real John Willaims did the theme instead of your tone-deaf ass,” I grumbled.

We stopped bickering to look back.

“...They are beautiful,” Fantasma said softly.

I looked up at her. The mage had tears hovering in her eyes. She noticed me looking at her. She quickly went to rub at her eyes while blushing. I smiled at her, then looked out into the distance. “Yeah… they really are,” I said with a sigh. Then I firmly turned the quinjet around and flew towards the meetup location.

------

The part of the Savage Land that we had been told to meet at was on top of a massively tall cliff overlooking most of the land below, with a river at the foot of the cliff. The section on top of the cliff was clear of any jungle for a large area all around, which let us see the metal trailer that had been set-up there, the BRIDGE symbol resting on top of the structure. We came in low and landed in the clearing with a gentle bump. Once we did, the BRIDGE guys came out first, guns up and ready as they panned their eyes across the jungle. The scientists exited next, Creel and Fantasma after. I helped the pilot shut down the quinjet before getting out myself.

Thank god my armor was climate controlled. This place was scorching hot right now. Well, more humid than anything.

“Looks clear, sir,” one of the soldiers said.

“Dope,” I said casually. “Where are our people?”

“I’ll check, sir,” one of the scientists said, rushing over to the metal trailer.

“Great! Meantime, no killing the dinosaurs if we can avoid it. They’re officially endangered rather than extinct,” I told everyone. “Granted, if you run out of non-lethals and the choice is you and Rexy, well… we’ll eat pretty well tonight.”

“Sir!” one of the scientists said, affronted. She looked as though someone had suggested something a hell of a lot more horrific than what I’d said.

“What, we shouldn’t waste it,” I tried to explain. The young woman still looked disgusted.

“Some people,” I mumbled.

“Looks like our people are here,” Creel nodded over to the trailer, where a man and woman were coming out towards us. Fantasma moved to my right as the pair came over.

“Dr. Bernard Kloss and Dr. Dana Bergstrom, right?” I asked as the pair joined us.

Both had dived into the whole ‘jungle’ theme, both wearing khakis and jacket-vests, their faces and limbs covered in bits of dirt. They also had a knife and a pistol each. Natasha had once told me that based on how the holster of a weapon looked you could tell how often someone used them. The holsters on the doctors’ weapons looked a bit worn. Not heavily used, but they’d pulled them out enough that the leather on them had started to crack a bit.

“Yes, that’s us!” Dr. Bergstrom walked up with her hand out and shook Creel’s hand, while Dr. Kloss went for Fantasma. The pair shook hands with my friends while Dana continued to speak. “We’re glad to have you here! This place is just-”

“Amazing!” Dr. Kloss burst out. He went to shake hands with me at the same time as Dr. Bergstrom, and after a confused moment, I offered both hands, the pair grabbing each one enthusiastically. “It’s dangerous, yes, but this entire continent is full of things we could never have conceived of. God, I wish I could keep it all in my head-”

A loud roar cut him off. Everyone who wasn’t an Avenger stilled at that. Fantasma, Creel, and I shared a look. We’d all heard louder, but it was still very impressive.

The three of us turned to look at where the noise had come from. The jungle began to shake, birds rising.

“What kind of animal makes that noise in this jungle?” Fantasma asked the pair of doctors.

“Uh,” Dr. Kloss mumbled quietly. “T-That would be Mapusaurus or at least the modern relative that lives here. They’re pack animals, carnivores. I have never seen them come this high up though!”

“They might be here now because there are a lot more people to eat? And they just smelled us right now?” Creel suggested.

“I’m not so sure of that,” one of the scientists that had come with us said. “Our theories on dinosaurs like the Mapusaurus don’t say anything about them having especially strong senses of smell or hearing. It’s more likely they’re sight-based predators.”

“You realize most of what we know about dinosaurs is based on fossils from hundreds of millions of years ago?” Dr. Kloss pointed out. “Not to mention that we’re dealing with animals that have evolved over millennia in unknown conditions. We don’t know anything concrete about them just yet.”

The scientist’s face turned red from embarrassment.

“Well, whatever the case, they-” I cut myself when the sound of footsteps began to come toward us. “Non-combatants get back, everyone else, at the ready.”

“Don’t need to tell me twice!” Creel shouted as his gauntlet flipped through its menu before he shifted into a solid steel form. He grinned while moving into his usual boxing stance.

“I’ll defend the scientists!” Fantasma declared, floating up into the air on platforms of purple magic to hover behind us.

“On your lead, sir,” one of the soldiers said.

“Set up a Killzone,” I said. One of the scientists yelled in protest. “A knockout zone, whatever! Pilot, get into the air and get the minigun ready. If anyone looks like they’re about to get Jurassic Park’d, I want dinosaur bacon!”

“Yes sir!” the pilot rushed into the quinjet, turning on its cloak and lifting off into the air.

The scientists rushed into the metal ‘home’ that had been set up for us. Fantasma waved a hand at it as the door closed, and a set of runes appeared all across the thing, glowing her trademark purple.

Meanwhile, I was thinking. Creel needed support. I was tempted to go for something with big guns, but maybe I already had the big gun I needed. But it could be bigger.

“Hey, Creel,” I said to my friend. He looked at me confused as I raised the Omnitrix to show him the form I had highlighted. He blinked.

“Oh…” he grinned widely. “Yeah. Yeah, let’s do that!”

“Do what?” Fantasma asked, confused.

I pushed down on the Omnitrix.

In a flash of green, my organs and bones turned to black sludge. My body flowed around for a moment. Then I rose up to press against Creel’s body and his now metal form. Black poured across his body. He chuckled as power rushed through us until we were chuckling in unison. I melded with his body, flowing through his cells until we had become one being. My mind pressed against his. We smiled widely with teeth that were razor blades.

“We are Blight!” We said proudly.

Covered in a symbiote, Creel gained a full two feet in height and a bunch more weight in muscle. His skin became black with green lines crossing it. I couldn’t help but form those lines into a spider similar to that of Venom’s, with the Omnitrix in the center of my friend's chest, the large eyes on Creel’s face making him look like a green-shaded Eddie Brock. That lasted a moment. Then his powers took over.

Our cells joined together meant they were our powers. Black shifted into the color of steel until we looked like a metal statue of Venom while we chuckled.

“Bring it!” we roared as one.

That was when the dinosaurs broke the treeline. Six of them, all theropods just like T-Rex. And they were HUGE, almost forty feet long and tall enough that even our new symbiote enhanced height brought us just about as tall as their legs. They had a sort of orange color to them, with small striations of black throughout, like a tiger. Their heads were shaped differently than I would have imagined, probably because real dinosaurs had flesh and muscle on top of the bones we usually saw. They had some sort of small spikes going down their backs, and they seemed surprised to see us.

The six dinosaurs stared at us for a good long moment. They were very expressive, faces moving into what I read as confusion. They looked towards one of their number, the biggest of their group, who let out a bark.

Like, a golden retriever on steroids kind of bark.

“Was kinda expecting a more impressive noise,” I whispered to Creel.

“Yeah?” Creel said aloud, grinning very creepily. “Then let’s make some.”

He crouched to the ground then leaped forward with an explosive shockwave.

Symbiotes enhance the beings they combine with. They can do more than that of course, but if we want to think of the basics? They turn normal people into super-agile, superstrong, superfast, super durable, and self-healing metahumans.

But that is for normal people.

Creel, when absorbing anything, was far from normal.

We sped forward like a bullet and hit the center dino, lifting it off the ground in a huge impact. The poor thing squawked in a very Astrodactyl way. It clawed at our metal form and got nothing but a ‘gentle’ fist to the cheek for its trouble.

Just like that, all hell broke loose. The mapusaurus (if that was the plural term for them) separated, two running to aid what we guessed was the pack leader while the other three rushed toward our allies.

We climbed on top of the mapusaurus we’d punched and raised a hand. “Gum-Gum…” the fist stretched back, growing as we grinned. With a rubber band sound, the fist came back, it’s steel form glittering in the sun. Moments before the hit, we remembered we weren’t trying to kill the dinosaur, and our hand opened up. “Slap!!!”

“You nerd,” Creel said to me in our mind as I cackled.

The metal palm of our hand hit the Mapusaurus hard, smashing the thing into the ground in the world's most epic bitch slap.

“GRUUUH!” the dinosaur whined before slowly closing its eyes and passing out. Steel-Enhanced symbiote flesh was a bit much for the poor guy. Or girl, I guess.

One of his/her friends rushed us from behind. We spun around with supernatural speed to leer at the massive creature, both the mapusaurus and us bearing long teeth as our tongues lashed out at the air. The mapusaurus hit us like a truck, lifting us into the air in its jaws as its teeth wrapped around our waist, long ivory scratching against steel with a squealing sound. We wrapped our arms around the neck of the dinosaur, long tendrils expanding to begin choking the beast.

While we wrestled with over 4,000 tons of flesh and really bad breath with another 4,000 moving in to help its ally, the other theropods were rushing towards our friends.

“Should we help?” I asked Creel.

He shook his head mentally, his muscles bunching as he fought to knock out a dinosaur. “Nah. They’ve got this.”

Three mapusaurus moved across the clearing like lightning. I’ve heard that in real life, theropods like the T-Rex and these mapusaur's could only run about 12 miles per hour before they risked breaking their own bones. Guess they build them hardier in the Savage Land, because these guys were booking it. Then again, anything that big moving at any speed is too fast in my opinion.

The BRIDGE elites didn’t look too stressed. Instead, they began to fire their rifles. ICER bullets flew out on automatic, slamming into one of the dinosaurs with a loud ‘PUFF PUFF’ sound on every blow. The ICER’s had been modified for this little trip, but even so, it took dozens of hits before the big dino finally collapsed. Even then, that didn’t stop the other two. They moved around their brother as he slammed into the ground in an earthshaking ‘BOOM’ while sending dirt everywhere. The other two dinosaurs didn’t seem to like that, based on the roars they released while rushing with their heads low towards the ground to try and eat our soldiers.

I imagine it was a huge surprise to them when a purple fireball hit the space in front of the dinosaurs. They reeled back, waving long-clawed arms in shock. Fantasma had entered the battle.

She floated above the soldiers as the fireball she’d threw became a wall of flame, the violet light outshining the sun above. She raised her hands and twisted her fingers together, creating a pair of runes in her hands. Each one lit up and unleashed a pair of blasts at both dinosaurs, sending them back a step but not hurting them. She clenched her fists at her hips with a determined look on her face and unleashed hell along with the soldiers, magical violet blasts and ICER bullets hitting the two dinosaurs.

In the meantime, Creel and I had our own issues. The dinosaur we’d been wrestling refused to go down at all despite the little issue of not being able to breathe and the other one had grabbed onto our head, trying to pull at us.

Then, another dinosaur came from the trees, another mapusaurus. This one was a little smaller than the others, but still a big animal. He blinked in surprise at the sight of all of Fantasma and the BRIDGE elite taking out two of them while two other chewed on a visibly annoyed metal symbiote-human hybrid. Then he rushed toward Creel and me.

“Really?” Creel grumbled.

“Wouldn’t most animals run by now?” I asked mentally. Seriously, were they trying to defend the alpha now?

Having had enough, we let go of the mapusaurus whose neck we’d been trying to gently choke out. Instead, we snapped out a tentacle towards his feet. Metal tendrils wrapped around his ankles and pulled hard.

Having something in your mouth pulling at your ankle is probably a weird experience. The mapusaurus who had been chewing at us yelped in shock as he collapsed, our head popping out of the mouth of the other as we fell with it. We rolled out of the mouth of the guy chewing on us the second we hit the floor.

“You got this?” I asked Creel.

He didn’t need to ask what the plan was, only grinning mentally at me. “Yeah, go!”

In a flowing motion, we leaped toward the one we’d pulled to the ground. The one that had been helping him leaned in.

I separated from Creel in mid-flight. My still metal friend punched the dinosaur in the nose in mid-flight. He pulled his punch, but the poor guy still went crossed eyed with the impact.

I, meanwhile, flew as a glob of living black and green goo and hit the nose of the other mapusaurus. He stared at me on his nose as I raised my head to grin at him.

Then I flowed into his body.

I should mention that symbiotes have no trouble ‘taking’ over people. Even Peter Parker, one of the strongest willed people in existence, needed the help of a church bell actively aiding him to rip off the Venom symbiote. It varied from time to time, but even a baby symbiote had some capacity for controlling those they combined with. But it’s hard as hell for me to do since I feel like an asshole when I have to do it. Forcing someone’s mind down like that, making them follow your bidding? Dick move.

Animals, on the other hand, are fair game. Not to mention easier to take over

I wrapped around the mapusaurus in moments, melding into its cells. We became one being.

Together we raised our head towards the sky.

The sound that ripped from our mouth sent a shockwave out from us. The jungle shook and birds took off, while the mapusaurus and humans around us froze in horror. We panned our head around. Our skin had gone inky-black, the Omnitrix symbol resting on the center of our face while a green spider symbol stretched across our face from it.

We were now by far the largest animal in the area, the power of a Symbiote giving us extra mass. The mapusaurus I had taken over had a moment of surprise at that. Then a sense of glee. Only in an animalistic sense of course, the mapusaurus didn’t have ‘feelings’ as we understand them, but my experience with aliens gave me more insight than most on alien minds.

We chuckled, a sound like plastic exploding into shards and entering flesh. The newest dinosaur that had entered the area backed away, surprised. It looked unsure. We spun around in a blur of speed and lashed out with our tail, smashing the smaller dinosaur in the face hard enough to send it stumbling back in surprise. The dinosaur, last one standing, raised its head in rage to roar-

"▄▅▄▅▂▂▃▃▄▄▅!" the sound that came from our jaws couldn’t be considered a roar. It was a blast of noise powerful enough to send the guy stumbling back from the physical force of it. The mapusaurus stared at us. Then it slowly bowed its head. An act of submission. We looked around. Every other dinosaur was beginning to rise except the alpha. What the hell were these guys made of? They’d taken dozens of ICER bullets and still got up minutes later?! Whatever these guys ate to be this tough, I wanted a bite or two. They stared at our form. We glared at them. One, apparently braver than the others, growled in challenge.

We rushed forward with superdino speed and towered over the challenger, making sure he knew who the real alpha was. He cowered back and bowed as well.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” we said with our saurian lips. I barked in a particular pattern that the mapusaurus I had control of told me was the noise for leaving. The group started off. I growled low and walked over to join them. As the mapusaurus walked, I separated from him, flowing to the ground. He didn’t mind. I could feel an emotion from him that was the closest a mapusaurus could have to smug satisfaction. He was the new alpha, and he was damn happy about that.

I landed a little ways from the old alpha and turned back into my human form, watching the mapusaurs begin to walk off into the jungle.

“I didn’t know you could do that!” Creel called from nearby as he walked over to join me.

I grinned, looking over at him. “Yeah, well, I figured that to Blight the size of a host didn’t really-”

It was a dumb mistake. I got cocky after a fight well won. I was about fifteen feet from the cliff, back to it. I wasn’t paying attention to the alpha mapusaurus. He woke up in a panic, snapping his tail out. Hundreds of pounds of scaled flesh flew through the air. Creel’s eyes widened. Fantasma shouted out.

I felt the tail smack me in the chest, the sound of flesh on armor filling my ears. My chest screamed in pain. I left the ground and was thrown back. I twisted upwards and back.

“FUUUUUUU-” My scream was cut off when I bounced off the ground. “Uff!” I reached out for the ground, but only got air. Lots and lots of air.

I can’t describe the horror of suddenly realizing you’ve fallen off a cliff. Of seeing nothing but air, river, and stone reaching up to smack you. I reached for the Omnitrix as a rock came towards me. Then everything went black.

------

Carl Creel/Alloy

“Mahmoud!” Creel rushed for the cliff, horrified. “Fantasma, take the dino!”

Fantasma flew overhead with a vicious scream. The bigass dinosaur behind him woke up long enough for a pissed-off Russian witch to start blasting him in the face with magic.

Creel ignored that to get to the edge of the cliff and stare down toward the ground. He expected to see Mahmoud flying back up in Astrodactyl or Big Chill form, or maybe Diamondhead or Four Arms waving up at him from a crater.

Nothing. Dial was gone. Creel glared down at the ground as Fantasma roared behind him. Then he activated his gauntlet, taking on the black and blue glow of pure vibranium before leaping off the cliff.

He freefell for hundreds of feet, hearing the wind pass his ears in a whirlwind rush, the scent of mud coming toward him as he landed next to the river almost gently. The joys of vibranium’s ability to make kinetic impacts a non-issue. He looked around, trying to understand what the hell had happened. Creel looked at the ground, trying to find any sign of Dial. He raised a hand to his ear. “Dial, can you hear me? Where did you land kid, where are you?”

No sound came back. Fantasma spoke up over the radio, sounding like she was panting. “Do you see any sign of him?”

“Nothing,” Creel walked back and forth, cursing. “Dial’s gone.”

The rapids before him rushed quickly in a rush on noise as Creel glared around, rage filling him to his core.