43 Chapter 43: A Trashy Planet
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"Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming, swimming, swimming. What do we do? We swim, swim."
- Dory, (Finding Nemo)
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<(Omniscient POV)>
"Goddamn it. My stomach hurts. *BLEUGH* It's like my insides went through a mixer... I can't even feel my balls." Johnny Storm complained while rubbing his stomach and puking his guts out inside a disposable airsickness bag.
Not just him, but every other team member was currently doing the same, except me. It's not that I didn't feel the annoyingly disorienting effects of our abrupt journey but because I could not puke even if I wanted to. My... godly body was simply built that way. I had no waste food in my stomach to puke out and as for the pain, even the softest parts of my organs were as durable as steel. Despite feeling the uncomfortability of flying as fast as light, my insides didn't budge at all.
"Here, this should make you guys feel better." I waved my hands at them, showering them in a wave of reddish-golden light originating from my hands. Immediately, my Divine Healing healed all their discomfort along with returning Johnny the feeling in his balls.
"T-Thanks Atem. You are a lifesaver, unlike someone who got us into this mess in the first place." Susan glared daggers at Reed who avoided looking at us, staring into the corner with a guilty look.
"Our starship wasn't built for warping. It didn't have the stabilizer required to negate the effects of inertia on us. It was just a normal space shuttle that shouldn't even have gone beyond the distance of the moon. Going near the space storm was already pushing it but you had to go and use your experimental warp drive to prove how amazing it is, didn't you? We were fortunate that our ship didn't explode from that jump or worse... fold back into itself creating a singularity. Crashlanding on this unknown planet was purely our good luck." Ben blurted out angrily as he gave Reed an accusing look.
Yeah, we were on an unknown planet right now. Well, unknown to them, but for me, I already knew exactly where we were due to my planetwide scans through my telepathy and cosmic awareness and because of that, I couldn't decide whether I should be happy or annoyed.
"Okay, I understand that you are having anger issues right now but look at the bright side. The warp drive works and humanity can finally travel through space further than the solar system. Plus, while 'jumping', our ship even entered hyperspace for a time. Do you know what that means? It means that with this, we can do a lot more than just travel through space. Imagine portals through the universe or through dimensions or maybe even one day through time itself. The entire reality will be our backyard even better than Atem's 'Boomtubes' as he calls them" He exclaimed as he took a look at Susan's face, probably expecting to see an impressed expression on her face.
But instead, all he found was anger and annoyance as she shook her head at him, making her disappointment clear.
"Yeah, but Atem's portal doesn't kill us or give us the worst stomach aches I have ever experienced. Yours do man, which isn't cool." Johnny too sided with his sister.
"Okay, that's enough. My boom tubes are not the concern here. Our main concern should be that the boom tubes wouldn't be working for some time due to the damage Zoya suffered from the storm. Without her, we have no way of getting home unless we can somehow repair this ship or get another one capable of traveling through deep space." My voice bellowed, instantly stopping their argument.
"Get another spaceship? Like, from aliens or something? Are you serious?" Johnny asked as he looked at me with a confused expression. "Are aliens real? I mean according to you, gods exist. So, aliens shouldn't be real, right?"
"Yeah, I am pretty serious. Gods and aliens can coexist you know. I think you will understand once we go out of the starship. And don't bother with the oxygen masks or those bulky astronaut suits, we won't need them." I said as I went towards the main exit of the shuttle.
I didn't bother to enter the code and just simply pushed the door a little hard, immediately cracking it open. The outside looked mostly... normal, like Earthly normal since there was a blue sky and all with breathable oxygen and a warm temperature. The only two things that were out of place were the fact that heaps and heaps of trash surrounded us. From spaceships to entire portions of buildings, there was almost every possible thing in this sea of waste making this the biggest dump I have ever seen. It was like the entire planet was made of trash.
Oh, and the other thing was a huge walled city standing tall in the sea of trash that looked weirdly futuristic. There was a massive spaceship parked at the center of the city. It looked like the entire city was built around the parked spaceship.
"Wow," Susan exclaimed, either impressed with the unique-looking city or the size of the dumpsite around us.
"Now what? Should we go in that direction to meet the... aliens on this planet and ask them for a ship?... By the way, does anyone else feel their skin getting rougher? I think this dry environment isn't really suiting it." Ben declared looking at his hands, which looked like they were slowly becoming increasingly tanned.
"... We don't have to do anything. They are here on their own." I answered, ignoring his complaint about his skin. In a few more hours, the guy won't even have 'skin' to begin with.
As soon as I spoke, about a dozen humanoid insects in armor with spears in their hands approached us with vigilance. Someone who looked like the leader of the group then tried to communicate with us with his mandibles making clicking sounds as he gave us a questioning look.
"We come in peace of course. We are just travelers who lost our way. Our ship got wrecked because of a gravity-well, you know how those things are right? We would really appreciate it if you could take us to your leader... or give us a ship if you have the required authority." I said with a friendly smile as I understood his question through my All-speak trait.
He too understood what I wanted to say. The All-speak power was magical like that. It could translate any language of the universe as long as it was a normal language spoken by a sentient species.
"Bound them with obedience disks. We will take them to the Grandmaster. He will decide what we do with them." The cockroach lookalike said as he gestured to us.
Immediately, three of them approached us with tiny-looking badges in their hands, the rest of them still had their spears pointed toward us.
"Seriously, it's like no one loves peace anymore. Fine so be it. Cockroaches shouldn't have free will anyway." I said as I swiftly used my telepathy to take control of all the insect soldiers.
'Lead us to the Grandmaster' I commanded telepathically as they just lightly nodded and headed towards the direction of the city, not even caring if we followed them or not.
"Come on, let's go. These bugs will get us to the guy in charge of this planet. We need to hurry, we don't have much time before you four begin your change." I casually remarked before following after them.
"Change? What change? What do you mean?" Susan was the one who got out of her stupor and followed me first.
"The space storm that we passed through might not have destroyed our starship due to the barriers that I set up to protect us but the cosmic energy in it did mess with all of our bodies, and cause certain... mutations in us. I can hold back the changes in my body as long as I want due to me being a god and all, but you guys can't. Your bodies are changing as we speak, mutating your DNA to absurd levels, evolving it even. By the time it is done, you will be vastly different than before. According to my estimates, you should become something like the mutants from our planet with unique powers and abilities. So it would be preferable if you are in a safe environment when the powers manifest." I explained.
"..." Susan was gobsmacked as her mouth opened and closed, not being able to say anything.
"So, you mean we will develop powers, like superpowers. COOL! I hope I get telekinesis or maybe teleportation. It would be super awesome for my entries." Johnny cried out excited by the news. "What would you like Ben? Let me guess, a more handsome face?"
"You think you are funny? It wouldn't be funny if I knocked your teeth out. I am perfectly happy with my ordinary human life... But I guess, if I got a random power, I would probably wish for something like super durability so that I do not get hurt every time Reed messes up." Ben grumbled annoyedly while lightly punching Johnny for his joke, not knowing how right he really was about his soon-to-be-appearing power.
"I doubt getting powers is as easy as passing through a solar storm. This is real life, not some children's comics." Reed snorted not wishing to participate in the conversation.
I didn't react to any of their words as I just continued to advance toward the city while reading the minds of the bug soldiers.
According to what I have understood from their memories, this planet was a combination of Sakaar from the comics and the movies.
It was originally a small planet ruled by the red-skinned Sakaaran Imperials. The grey-skinned Shadow People were migrants who came to the planet in search of a home but after coming here, their population was ravaged by a combination of the Imperials and the Spikes who were a race of sentient spores looking like bugs. These bug-like humanoid soldiers in front of us were actually those Spikes that the Sakaaran Imperials once used as attack dogs.
But then the Grandmaster landed on the planet and changed everything. He singlehandedly subjugated the population and converted all the Spikes into his loyal army by using gene splicing on them. The massive spaceship around which the huge city was built was his. He then went on to convert the entire planet into a trash planet by opening artificial dimensional rifts around it only so that he could have various challengers from different parts of the universe landing here to participate in his games. Of course, these rifts attracted more trash than actual living creatures.
The grandmaster in this universe also seemed to be vastly different from the one in the MCU. He was strong, strong enough to even some degree of power over life and death. The current King of the planet, named the Red King from the race of the Sakaaran Imperials was nothing but a puppet king dancing according to the wishes of the real overlord, the Grandmaster.
'I think should try to contact Karnilla. I have a feeling I will soon get my Zenith City's first group of residents. Maybe my new upgraded powers can help me do that.' I thought with a small delighted smile as I opened the system to look at the rewards from my previous mission.
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