1964-10-23 - Goo Aliens
Summary: Johnny and Mike fight some weird aliens from space!
Related: If there are no related logs, put 'None', — please don't leave blank!
Theme Song: None
mike-matthews johnny-storm 


The Fantastic Four have a private satellite or two, of course; they watch for things with them. Primitive in comparison to what will come, but still: they are powerful enough to detect that the meteor that was streaking towards New York was *slowing down* before it even hit the atmosphere. Nothing at all natural does that.

Johnny can work the machines enough to determine this, and since the rest of the team were off doing a thing, it was up for Mike and him to save the day. Johnny, in his F4 suit, and Mike are thus in the Fantasticar, and flying off towards where the tracking guessed the … object of unknown origins … would be. "Isn't this great?" Johnny asks of Mike with a grin, gesturing to the car itself.


There was a certain amount of excitement involved in the possibility of some unknown object having come to earth. That he is curious is an understatement, and it didn't take any amount of arm twisting at all to get him to go along. He doesn't have any particular suit, but he's dressed for being out in the middle of the woods in the fall. The view alone is stunning as they zip along in the Fantasticar. He grins over at Johnny and says, "It's not unlike one of the pods that I had at home. It's very familiar feeling." Different technology, but similar enough for the alien far from home. But it's the view that captivates him more. "This planet does have some beautiful places."


"It does, indeed." agrees Johnny, and up ahead he points, and there's smoking, and some strange… geometrical shaped… thing. Its hard to look at because it is in a constant shape of *flux*, defying all known physics by parts of it continually folding, bending, and twisting, into itself and out of itself. Johnny sets the car some ways away, because the car's valuable, and glances over to Mike, "You run, I'll fly, and we'll… check it out. But so far, I have absolutely no idea what it is." As he emerges from the car, flame engulfs him, and he waits for Mike agreeing or suggestions before he's zipping up into the air and vooshing forward.


"Sounds like a plan," Mike agrees with a grin, hopping out of the car and taking off through the trees, leaving a trail of pine needles and a spray of foliage in his wake as he heads closer toward the object to get a look at it from the ground. He stops short of actually approaching too close, though, leaving some space between he and it as he circles it on the ground and takes in the constantly shifting shape, trying to determine if it seems to be changing size or if just the exterior seems to be folding and changing. He tries to sense if there is energy coming off it of an electrical nature, which he attempts to absorb a little at a distance if so, to try to get a feel/sense for it.


The size and _overall_ shape seem consistent: its just… its like its made out of an unstable material that doesn't follow physics as we (or Daxamites) know it. Sometimes a geometric shape will extrude out before folding back in, but it is shaped roughly like a shard… or a spaceship.

Johnny joins soon enough, and he flashes a grin to Mike, "It's almost kind of pretty, for a big black shifting spacerock."

He keeps in the air, burning, if only so to not set the whole damn forest on fire.

And then, something… opens in the ship, and what emerges is a creature clearly not of this world, though that's probably obvious. Unlike MIke, though, this thing doesn't even vaguely look human. It has four legs that extend from central body, and its four arms are more like tentacles. Its head has four eyes— spaced around it so it can see in every direction— and no obvious mouth. Its skin is smooth and grey. It has a sort of black, shimmering armor that seems to be of a similar shifting substance as the ship.

Into Mike's mind, its presence is felt. Thoughts that are not words but coalesce into words in Daxamite by his own mind appear. ~"Question: Hive. Location. Order: Serve. Obey."~ It shifts towards Mike, so it looks to be looking AT him with one of its eyes. "Uhh, I think it likes you?" says Johnny, oblivious to any communication it might be having.


Mike Matthews studies the shifting shardship with a kind of curiosity. "It's not like anything that I've ever seen before," he admits to Johnny, and he's seen a number of worlds, creatures, and ships. "It's.. strangely unstable. But it seems to be retaining its cohesiveness, not totally coming apart or collapsing." And then it opens and there's a creature coming out of it. Oh, brain tickles. That's new. Mike stares at the thing an thinks: ~"Answer: No Hive Here. Suggestion: Possibly Off Course"~ On the topic of serving and obeying, he makes little comment, at least for the time being. "It's communicating in my head," he tells Johnny. "I think it's lost. It's looking for its Hive."


Johnny settles, since this might be peaceful? And allows the flames to extinguish. He stumles briefly when he, then, hears the next thought-images: for him, his mind maps the concepts into english. ~"Rage. Unclean Creature. Silence. Obey."~ A tentacle leaps out— and grows seemingly— to slap at Mike, if he does not dodge. It is hard but not so hard as to really cause harm. Lost, yes. Looking for hive, yes. But also, hostile.

Johnny frowns, and immediately *becomes* fire, "Ookay, that wasn't fun, it kinda kicked me in my frontal lobe. You think peace and kindness at it to try to talk it out of me having to burn the hell out of it."


~"Calm, Lost One. Will Help. Will not Obey."~ Mike thinks firmly, even after the thing takes a whack at him. He takes the hit, and it does cause him to stumble back a step. Rather than retreating; however, he shows no fear and advances with one hand up. ~"Discuss. Truce. Crashed. Planet Designate: Earth. Inquiry: Intended Destination."~ His entire demanor remains calm, yet firm, showing no signs of backing down, but also no signs of hostility. To Johnny he says, "Don't burn it.. Even if it hits me. Give me a little bit of time."


The creature pauses, a stillness coming over it that is not natural for most things of earth. ~"Queen. Hive. Homeworld. Dead. Hive. Flee. Explosion. Evacuate. Destination: NewHome."~ Its crude telepathy has no way of conveying anything so specific as names, it seems.

Johnny hovers there, and though he is sorely tempted to act when it strikes at his friend, he resists the urge to burn the creature to cinders.

The alien thinks through to Mike again, ~"Hive. Obey. Hive. NotHive. Obey. Hive."~


~"Prince. Homeworld. Dead. Evacuate. Lost. NewHome. NoHive. Not Obey. Ship. Repair. Help. NewHome."~ Mon-El explains, adopting naturally the kind of rhythm and style of thought of the creature that he is attempting to communicate with. It's almost like a brain game of charades as he tries to communicate assistance to repair the ship, so that the creature might find a new home for the hive. He tries to share his own experience, through the words and the visual images of his own experience. He glances over at Johnny and grins a little lopsidedly. Well, it didn't smack him that time. So that was.. progress.. maybe.


The creature wavers, shifting on its four legs, twisting about slightly, so there's an eye on both of them. The man of fire, the man who did not go flying back when hit. Neither make sense to it. ~"NotHive. /OBEYS/"~ This is command so loud that it causes pain, even in the kryptonian. Though the compulsion that the creature expects… is not there. Just psychic trauma. Still, it doesn't hit the Human Torch when his body is in that odd state that doesn't include an actual brain: whatever the creatures telepathy is based on needs a brain to work on, clearly.

But, with the order, the ship discourges… things. Basketball-sized approximately, there's three, no six, no a dozen of them, all made up of that same shifting material, only more so. They are chaos to look at: it might be a cube a moment, or something with dozens of spikes, or just something between one moment to the next. Black, geometric with no soft or round sides, but whose order defies logic.


"Okay," Mike winces putting two fingers to the bridge of his nose, "This negotiation might not be going as well as usual. I'm going to attribute it to this creature possessing limited understanding of the concept of hospitality." He thinks very clearly back at the thing. "This may require more percussive negotiation." When things start coming out of the ship he says, "Yeah, I don't think it's interested in chatting anymore, and I'm not interested in obeying. So."


"Yeah." Johnny nods his head slightly, all flame and such, "Obeying I'm not so good at." And so he lifts a hand out, and a stream of fire arcs from him to burn into one of the drones. It shivers in the air, shifting, twisting, but it grows hotter and hotter: black becomes red, becomes yellow, becomes white, and falls as a smoldering hunk of metal, no longer seeming capable of shifting in shape or form.

The creature, though? Its tendril-arms pull back into it, and the shifting-armor it wears expands out along its arms … to end in very sharp points. Four very sharp points. It steps along towards Mike, and sweeps a strike at him. Its not superhuman in speed, though the sharpness of that alien technology is comparable to adamantium. What is not dodged may damage even beings of amazing durability. NOt fatally, not with a few at least, but still.


Mike Matthews watches as Johnny melts one of the drones. When the creature itself begins to pull out those sharp-tipped blades, he adopts a defensive stance, waiting for it to make the first move. And when it oes, he brings up his arm to catch that first blow. The sharp razor-pointed end cuts through his clothing like butter, but he is nigh invulnerable, so the adamantium-like material which would have severed a limb on a less durable opponent only slices into him, causing a hissed in-drawn breath. That stung. He isn't used to actually having anything hurt him since he came to Earth, and so it throws him off just a little, enough for the thing to get another strike on his leg with one of its other sharp tendrils. He reaches out, however, before the third can connect and grabs a hold of it. It can cut him, but he can also hold onto it while Johnny deals with those drones. He jerks that tendril toward him, trying to pull the thing off balance.


Mike is indeed stronger then the creature, and with one tendril held, that's enough to at least partially control the alien. He jerks, and it stumbles forward, but it stabalizes enough to strike back in return to what holds it. It has the advantage of having more hands, too. But, against Mon-El's speed and the fact that it can only injure— even if that is remarkable— it is not well matched in this fight.

Johnny flies up, and zoomes down to wrap an arm around first one and another drone, and he pulls them in towards his plasma body, and what is red becomes yellow and then incandescent white to the point where just looking at him is difficult, and though its not immediate, two more are reduced to glowing slag.

Two others, though, react. They reconfigure. A beam of pure cold shoots out and strikes Johnny, and he shouts, "Auuuugh!" as some part of him is almost-extinguished, a thing he's not used to, and not prepared for.


On the ground, Mike struggles with the three arms that he doesn't have a hold of. Between the four legs and four arms, the thing is a jumble of limbs that are all struggling against him and lashing out at him. He takes several more strikes from the thing as it attempts to blenderize him. He keeps a hold of it however and mutters, "You know, if you'd just let us help with your ship, you could be halfway to a nice new hive somewhere. But no, had to get all imperious about it." Is he straight up talking to the thing now? Yes, hes he is. But it's the cry from Johnny that distracts him. His eyes widen a bit as part of him is almost extinguished. That pause and distraction is enough for one of those tendrils to wrap along his leg and pull him off balance.

Falling over, it's a strange wrestling match between multi-limbed alien and humanoid alien. The mental noise that the thing makes when Mike manages to break that sharp end off of one of its tentacle limbs is just shy of migraine-inducing, but it leaves him with one less sharp pointy bit sticking into him.


Rays of cold, bad. Its not as bad as water would be, but the drones don't seem to be too keen on getting melted, and so they are reacting as best they can. Keeping his flame on high, Johnny zips around, flying at speed, dodging beams of cold that shoot out from multiple drones at once to try to pin him down and extinguish him. But Johnny gets clever: spinning in the air he comes up behind a drone, and two separate beams that were meant for him hit the drone. In moments it collapses to the ground and shatters. At the same time, a stream of fire is shot out from his hand to another, and it is reduced to slag.

When Mike breaks off one of the armored … arm-things … sticky black blood-like substance shoots out and splatters all around.


Mike Matthews keeps an eye on Johnny, especially when those things try to extinguish him. But it's distracting him a bit from the wriggling mass that suddenly leaks sticky black goop all over him. Yeah, that's nasty. What it also does is make geting tangled up with the thing all that more difficult to deal with. There are three more tentacles to contend with, though, and each one of them keeps slicing him. Piercing his skin is difficult, but those slices hurt with the sharp burn of a hundred papercuts. Finally he manages to get the thing pinned to the ground and fairly sits on it. That doesn't stop the tentacles from failing and grasping but it at least gives him some leverage with which to pull off another one of the tentacled appendages and fling it away. Two down, two to go. He's covered in cuts and goop but there's a kind of steady determination that this little bugger is going to wish it had just let him fix its engine.


"I'd offer to trade places, but— eww." Johnny calls out, shaking his head as he zips around, drones chasing him. He swirves and flies up to draw them away in case they decide to go help their master, but they seem preoccupied with the Human Torch. He flies right through one, and as it passes through the superheated plasma of his body it falls to the ground as slag. But, another ray of cold hits him, and he falls, falls… only at the last minute to reignite that portion of his body that was extinguished, at the last moment. "I hate these things!" A stream of white-hot fire strikes out against one again.


"At least you could burn it off," Mike mutters between grunts as he tries to wrestle a third limb off of the thing. He finally just steps on it, pinning it down by that arm while he holds onto the other, rendering it unable to effectively do anything to him for the time being. That lets him keep an eye on Johnny. When he falls, there's a moment where Mike stops breathing, remembers he's resilient, and then goes back to playing sticky black goo twister with the alien queen. "You know, I've ended up in compromising positions with royalty before, but never quite like this." Because that thing is attempting to hold onto him now so that he can't get a good grip on its limbs. The stickiness both helps and hinders that. Then *crack* he just headbutts the thing right in that eye that is looking at him. It makes a horrifying mental noise that only he can hear and writhes. In that moment he manages to pull an obsidian like blade from where it's digging into his chest and snap it off. More goo. Why did it have to be goo?


There's a mental screech, but with three of its limbs… There's simply too much goo loss. The creature trembles, and then stills. As it does, the remaining drones fall out of the sky and land inert— their shifting, strange nature seeming to stbalize into solid metal. So, too, does the skin of the shard-ship go silent and still. Johnny hesitates, looking a little startled that the fight's actually over, and comes down to land near to where Mike and his… goopy battle was fought. He comes over and eyes Mike for a long moment, "… you're so not allowed in the Fantasticar with all of that all over you." He laughs softly, "I'll head back and get some plastic we can put down that you can sit on or something."


When the thing finally collapses, Mike gets up and gives it a good kick. It makes an unsavory splorching sound. "Obey that," he sighs and then looks over at Johnny. His clothes are ruined and slashed. His shoes might be salvageable. But aside from that he is a bloody goopy mess. He looks Johnny over for a moment, and when it seems that he is fine, he looks around and says, "Is there a pond or something around here?" Because really the idea of riding around letting the goop dry on him doesn't seem to appeal. He winces a little, that alien material having cut through even his near-invulnerable skin.


There's a pause, and then Johnny points, "Right over that hill, there's a lake." He can't help but grin a little bit, though the grin fades when he sees *blood*, and he blinks, "Whoa, it actually managed to *hurt* you." Pause, "I don't know if you need…disinfectant or something, or what. You might be infected with some alien bug." Pause again, "But I can't think if its an alien bug any of our disinfectants would do any good." He winces.


"I'm going to start with washing it off, and then I can actually see what is up with the wounds," Mike says as he surveys the cuts and the blood. With all the goo it's hard to tell what's going on underneath it. He grins over at Johnny and shrugs his shoulders. "I'm going to run over there and I guess we'll find out." With that, he heads off through the trees over the hill, clearly not injured enough that he can't still run, at any rate.


"Good idea." Johnny inclines his head, chuckling softly, "I'll… make it so there's no chance anything here will be a problem. Can't have civilians finding an alien body and alien tech and figuring stuff out. You might want to not be looking this way." He remarks before Mike heads off. Once he's away, Johnny takes a deep breath, spreads his hands, and VOOSH. A column of fire hotter then the sun appears before him as he pours everything he has out and into the area right before him. He's sitting down against the Fantasticar later, panting, looking a bit sweaty and exhausted. There's a circle of scorched earth before him: its not big, but there's no body, its completely incinerated. The drones and ship? Gone. Completely gone.


Mike Matthews doesn't look. By the time Johnny is telling him not to look, he's off toward the lake where he takes some time to peel off his clothes and wash away all the black gunk. By the time that he has finished washing the goo free, most of the wounds have already sealed in the sun with his regeneration. That he could be cut at all was surprising, but that his regeneration was working was reassuring. If he had some sort of ailen flu, he wasn't feeling anything, at least not yet anyway. The clothes, the clothes are a mess, but they're as de-gooped as they're going to get. By the time he returns, he is damp and tattered but it seems that the wounds are fading away.


Johnny nods over to Mike, tilting his head, but with the shirt back on he isn't sure if the healing is happening or not. "How's the wounds?" he asks, gesturing to the scorched earth he left, "I went nova. Don't have any flame in me yet, won't until about tomorrow. Fortunately, can still drive." He pushes off of the car, stumbling a little bit and shaking his head, "I haven't nova'd in awhile. But I didn't want to leave anything to chance."


Mike Matthews looks around at the scorched earth and studies it, crouching down for a moment and looking aroun at where the slag and the ship and the creature had been. Nothing left at all. No trace that there had been any of those things present. He gets up again and walks over to Johnny, reaching out a hand when he stumbles and catching his arm. "Healing," he says in answer to the wounds. "Whatever those tentacle spikes were, they were of a material that managed to cut through my skin. But my regeneration is still fast. They'll be gone by the time we get back, probably." The shirt is pretty full of holes, which do afford a view of the deep gash in his chest that is slowly healing itself over even as they stand there.


Johnny nods his head, and gestures for the car, "Okay, you're allowed to get in now." he teases with a light grin, "The … armor … that surrounded the tentacles to make them weapons? It was shifting like the ship did. It could be why it was able to cut, it might have been operating beyond normal physics as it applies to us." he suggests, "But, what's important is we survived, and there's no contamination." Because nothing but dirt survived Johnny.


Mike Matthews smirks just a little bit and says, "I promise not to bleed on your car." His tone is dry, but still a little bit teasing. Wandering aroun the other side, he slides into the seat and then slumps, letting his head rest back. "That.. was definitely more of a challenge than I thought it was going to be at first," he chuckles. Now that the fight is over he says, "That was fun." Sure, Mike, fun. He grins. Then he nods a bit about the physics, "It was definitely not like anything that I had ever seen.


"It's _Reed's_ car, and he can withhold nice things." Johnny flashes a grin, nodding, and once they're in, it rises up into the sky and flies back towards the Baxter Building, "Yeah, the cold beams were… intense. Usually, cold by itself isn't a threat, bu it was so focused it actually sapped energy out of me. I almost bounced a few times on the ground." he laughs softly, "But hey, we won."


"I noticed," Mike says, regarding the cold. "It seemed as though part of you went out a couple of times there. But you didn't, and we did win. Could have been so much easier if it had just listened. I actually thought it was able to get through to it at one point there, but then no." He runs his fingers through his hair, brushing it back a little bit and says, "All in a day's work," giving a kind of lopsided grin.


Laughing softly, Johnny zooms them through the air, rolling down the window to let it woosh through, "All in a day's work." he agrees, adding after a moment, "Though I tell you it feels weird to be completely depowered. If anymore aliens come visit and getting all imperious on us, there's nothing I can do to help besides maybe run them over with the car."


"Oh sure, you won't let me sit in it all goopy but you'll run the alien over with it and get goop all over it. I see how it is," Mon-El says with a broad grin that causes his eyes to sparkle with amusement. Then he considers Johnny for a moment and says, "Maybe it's a good time to hole up in that bunker for a couple of days, let me de-power and try those tests we were going to.. while you're recovering anyway?"


"The difference is the goop would be outside and could be cleaned off with a hose!" But Johnny is laughing as he says it, but then he sobers up more seriously and nods, "Could do that. It doesn't take me days to recharge— it takes about a day. But it might be a useful control to be in the bunker while you start depowering and I start charging up." He pauses, and nods, "Yeah, that sounds good. I have a room in our labs setup with the basic things needed; when it comes to experimenting on powers, the Foundation is always interested."


Mike Matthews grins over at Johnny and he says, "Mhmn," though it's completely good-natured. He was only teasing, after all. He then says, "I'm off for a few days anyway, and I have another job tending bar for some autumn dinner cruises as the season winds down. So I have nothing else to do for the time being."


"Sounds like a plan!" Johnny nods quickly, even as he maneuvers the car into the skyhatch that leads down to the top floor garage. "Let's do this."


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