From the journal of Dusk.
Dated Mars time Oan 38th, 1999th cycle.
My day to day duties have kept me busy as of late, hence the absence in my recording these on-net journals.
Having “acquired” the specimen from off world cargo dealers, Dr. Tewantin and I have assessed the metal to be termed as adamantium. As such, it was no problem for our machines to splice the metal open. What we found inside however, was something different altogether.
The being we extracted from the mile-wide metal was unlike anything our sensors could accurately read, let alone decipher.
Having looked through the vintage records we have deduced that the being is similar to man, which records indicate derived from the third planet closest to our Sun. If this metal had crash landed on Mars, I’d hate to think of the devastation it would have caused.
Further inspection of the being indicated that it is male, with beast-like qualities. Unlike our records indicate though, this man is uncommon from most of his time, having had horns and fangs.
My assistant Agon, Dr. Tewantin, and I have run the being through numerous tests, so I specify “had”. Soon learning he possessed a healing factor, we used this to all our mutual advantage. Learning that the being survived on oxygen, we augmented his bio-structure completely. Not only to be able to breathe our air, but also to survive the Mars climate.
It should be noted that Dr. Tewantin expressed a desire to harvest the being’s genes for the purpose of duplication. This idea has been put on the back-burner for now.
We then ran mind scans, learning the being’s name to be Paul-Phillip Ravage. We have also indicated a great hatred from this Paul-Phillip Ravage, especially when probed with the word “Doom.” Cautiously, I want to run another battery of tests when Ravage is revived, to see if he is usable against Hath-Seth.
Whilst this agenda may be some way away, I am more conscious of Ravage’s reaction to the vast alterations we have made to his body.
End journal
***
My mind screams! Unbearable, unimaginable pain! Like having someone play with the switch to a life-support system, turning it off and then back on again, that’s what I feel. It’s what I sense. It’s all I can sense. Tiny little electrodes coursing through my brain.
Suddenly my mind is coursing with thoughts and senses. All at once and all too fast to comprehend.
I’m in darkness, for I haven’t opened my eyes. I don’t want to. I can remember a terrifying battle, and nothing but pain around me. I don’t want to know what’s waiting for me out there. Not yet. I keep my eyes shut.
Through the cloud of darkness my mind remains inert. It’s all I can do for now and it’s all I think I can handle for now.
If only I could think straight. It feels like there are a few people in here with me. Like they are the ones who are rebooting my brain and giving it the kick start it needs.
I can hear voices. A few at least. There is definitely a woman, and… two men. There are two men with her.
Damn my body feels tight. Tight and stiff.
First things first. What are they saying?
Don’t worry about me, I think to myself. Concentrating on my surroundings, it’s like listening to the outside world whilst jacked in to cyberspace. Being able to hear things, but not being able to respond, dammit.
“Brain activity just spiked!” I hear the woman say.
“Oh. This is good. This is very good,” I hear a man’s voice in response. “This is much earlier than expected. I’ll have to crunch some numbers, but I postulate we could have this gorgon up and running against Hath-Seth in days. If not, hours!”
What the hell’s a Gorgon, I wonder. And who, or what, is Hath-Seth? Nothing these people say is making much sense.
Damn my back is stiff.
“That sounds good, Doctor,” I hear another man say. He sounds smaller than the other two, or that could just be because he’s further away from me than the others. It’s hard to tell.
“For years Hath-Seth has tormented us. Cut into our livelihood, killed our people and destroyed preserves. Well no more!” This Doctor sounds like a nut, I think to myself.
“We all know what Hath-Seth has done to this community, Doctor. No one more than me.” The woman has such passion in her voice. Like someone else I used to know. If only I could remember her name. “I’ve fought on the frontlines. I’ve been face to snake-like face with Hath-Seth. But going off half-cocked, sending this monster off against him. It’s too soon. We’ve done testing, but we need to do more.”
In my confusion as to whatever the shock they are discussing, I hear a generator kick in. It’s loud, and it’s forceful.
“Hold it, Dr. Tewantin,” I hear the woman say. “For all we know our tests could prove inconclusive. Remember what happened with the others we found. Remember? What happened to them?”
“How could I forget, Dusk? What a waste of time those mutates were.” Huh? “But this being is different. I can sense it. Better yet, I can prove it.”
Oh oh.
“Agon. Full power!”
My body tenses when I hear these words. I don’t know what the shock is going on here, or who these people are…
“Ye… Yes Doctor.”
I hear a click, and my world turns inside out!
“DDDOOOOOMMMMM!” I throttle from my mouth. It’s loud, and guttural, and feels like I’m chewing up concrete as I scream his name.
It hurts, but it feels so good!
My eyes flutter, quickly at first and I expect great light. There is hardly any. It feels like I’m still encased in metal. This is all too much, too quickly.
My body is still stiff, even as I try to move, but now I feel like I’m trapped in a shell.
“DOOM!” I scream again, in an unholy fashion, lashing my body out manically without thinking. Still with my eyes shut I feel my arm knock into something. It feels like a man, and I hear it descend away crashing into something nearby.
I swing my body around, although it is hard to step side-ways, opting to take many small steps to turn my body around from left to right. In all my anger however, I neither notice nor care. I want revenge and by Hellrock, I’m going to get it.
“Doom!” I continue. “Face me! Where are you?! DOOM!”
Knocking into what feels like a rocky wall, I open my eyes slowly. I try to bring my hands up to my head, but they scratch across my chest. I notice that my chest feels heavier. My whole body feels heavier.
Breathing like a mad-man I open my eyes fully to see two encrusted hands in front of me. “What?!”
“Calm down, Ravage.” I hear the voice of a woman somewhere in the distance, both forcefully and calming all in the same instance. “It will be alright. Relax.”
“What’s happened to me?”
“Calm down,” she repeats as she approaches. Slowly.
I try to bring my hands up to my head, but soon realize that my arms are on back to front. As I try to process this thought I also sees my feet for the first time. It looks as if they have now become like hooves.
Looking back at my hands, I realize that they, along with the rest of my body, are now encased in a hard rock-like shell.
This is all too much, I think as I bend forward. It feels good to stretch out, even if it is forward. I find my head is able to coil around further forward towards my body then even before.
“This isn’t right,” I think, and say out loud.
As if that wasn’t enough, I have to look twice but soon see a hard-shelled tail coming up from between my legs.
“What?!… What the hell have you done to me?!”
“Wait,” the woman replies, seemingly like a question. “I can explain.” I stop for a second and think. Her name is Dusk.
In an instant I coil up into a ball, spinning forward. I hear a crash but hardly feel it. And away I go.
***
It feels like it’s been hours since I woke, but really it’s been a matter of minutes. I lose track of time, where I’m going, how I’m getting there, and just where the shock I am.
Okay, breathe. Breathe. Think to yourself, what is the most logical explanation for this…
There is none!
Just what the shock is happening here?! The last thing I remember is fighting it out with that scumbag Doom, on Hellrock. Now though, well, just where the shock am I?!
Okay, okay, calm down Paul-Phillip. Breathe, relax. Just, try to relax.
Breathe.
That is, if breathing was how I remembered it to be. It isn’t.
Something feels different, I feel different. I feel stronger, stronger than I’ve ever been. I feel… harder.
I challenge myself to open my eyes, ever so slowly at first. Everything is black. Pitch black. Suddenly though, I can see my surroundings in all their glory. Where am I, though? A cave?
No, scratch that. These look like caverns.
I look down at my hands, and what I felt and thought before was not a dream, it was very much real.
Fighting, screaming with rage. Not understanding a thing and feeling angry for it. Not even knowing how to move my body, it had all changed.
There were those people I fought. Who were they? Had they done this to my body?
My God, my body! Look at it!
Whew. Okay, again, breathe. Try to breathe, even though it feels like sandpaper scraping the insides of your guts. Argh! It hurts, for now. Keep breathing though and pray it gets easier in time. Please.
Over the years I’ve endured many changes to my body, from my days as a homo-sapien, to then being the beast-man Ravage, and then, when I faced Doom I was something different altogether. Still though, I still resembled a human. Heart and soul, I was always a man.
This though, this is too much. Too bad I’m in a cavern, with no reflection for me to get a real good look at myself. For the moment I have to survey what I can and go from there.
My hands, they’re now three-pronged armored claws.
“Hmmmmm,” I utter. Is that my first words since my awakening? Shock, if they are, my voice now sounds different. More guttural. I... I screamed before, and it hurt like Hell, but I didn’t realize that was my voice. Shock! My voice, this will take some getting used to.
I move my hands up to touch my face. I still have the horned bumps on my chin, and my nose is once again the armored shell it was when I was the beast-man. That’s a relief. My clawed hands move up further, however.
Okay, that’s a first. My ears now seem to be tiny holes in the side of my head. Maybe they’re embedded in my head? Who knows? I can still hear, better than I ever could actually. Just accept that, for now.
I touch where my eyebrows used to be. I feel a hard shell. It runs across the length of my head. I move up further and there’s another armored shell. Up further, there’s another. They all run the length of my head.
I take a bet with myself that it’s a similar situation over the back of my head, and down the back of my body. I’ll have to wait for a more opportune time to inspect my body, though.
I think back to my army days, and how one of the things we were trained was to adapt to our surroundings, and to face every situation and turn it to our advantage.
Is this what you trained us for though, I question? I don’t think so.
“Arr!”
There it is again, just as I seem to recall it being. A tail! An armored, rounded tail between my legs. I lean over to get a good look and it just keeps coming closer and closer to me. This armored tail is curling up across my stomach. It feels like I can wrap myself up in a ball.
Shock, the sound of my body touching other parts of my body, it’s like a construction site! I hear a sickening scraping, like two concrete blocks bashing together. I uncoil a little and notice no markings on my body whatsoever.
This armor is shocking tough!
I tap the end of my tail with one of my claws, and I can feel the tip as well as the inside of my tail. The outer-shell I cannot feel, though. This could be a very good thing, as it seems my only mode of transport is to wrap myself up in a ball and get rolling. It wouldn’t do well to feel every little bump and rocky point along my way.
I give more consideration to the configuration of my arms. Bent outwards as they are, it actually allows them to coil up tighten towards my body, the more I lean over and in to myself.
From a combat perspective this armor can come in very handy.
Now then, I wonder just where I am. If I could see the stars I’d be able to, eventually, govern my location on Earth. However I’m clearly underground.
“Hmmmmmmmm.”
Judging from the coldness given off by the rocks around me I’m a fair way underground.
It’s difficult to judge the color of my surroundings, but things look red.
There are only a few places on Earth where there are red-colored caverns. Am I in Australia?
I could be. But then again, Doom did shoot us all in to space. I clearly, very clearly, remember that happening.
What a second, what’s that noise? It sounds like thunder… What is that? It’s coming closer. I’m miles under ground, it can’t be thunder.
“Arrggghhhh!”
What are these things? There’s hundreds of them, tiny expressionless men. Before I realize it they’ve picked me up and carried me off like a wave in the ocean.
“What are you doing?”
I take a swipe at them with my outstretched claws, knocking a few on their backsides.
“Stop that,” one of them shouts. It doesn’t sound like a human voice, but somehow I can understand it completely.
“Where are you taking me? Put me down and tell me!”
My protests are for naught it seems. I feel a twinge of fear and dread at what I hear next.
“Hath-Seth will want to see this.”
***
END OF BOOK ONE
Dated Mars time Oan 38th, 1999th cycle.
My day to day duties have kept me busy as of late, hence the absence in my recording these on-net journals.
Having “acquired” the specimen from off world cargo dealers, Dr. Tewantin and I have assessed the metal to be termed as adamantium. As such, it was no problem for our machines to splice the metal open. What we found inside however, was something different altogether.
The being we extracted from the mile-wide metal was unlike anything our sensors could accurately read, let alone decipher.
Having looked through the vintage records we have deduced that the being is similar to man, which records indicate derived from the third planet closest to our Sun. If this metal had crash landed on Mars, I’d hate to think of the devastation it would have caused.
Further inspection of the being indicated that it is male, with beast-like qualities. Unlike our records indicate though, this man is uncommon from most of his time, having had horns and fangs.
My assistant Agon, Dr. Tewantin, and I have run the being through numerous tests, so I specify “had”. Soon learning he possessed a healing factor, we used this to all our mutual advantage. Learning that the being survived on oxygen, we augmented his bio-structure completely. Not only to be able to breathe our air, but also to survive the Mars climate.
It should be noted that Dr. Tewantin expressed a desire to harvest the being’s genes for the purpose of duplication. This idea has been put on the back-burner for now.
We then ran mind scans, learning the being’s name to be Paul-Phillip Ravage. We have also indicated a great hatred from this Paul-Phillip Ravage, especially when probed with the word “Doom.” Cautiously, I want to run another battery of tests when Ravage is revived, to see if he is usable against Hath-Seth.
Whilst this agenda may be some way away, I am more conscious of Ravage’s reaction to the vast alterations we have made to his body.
End journal
***
My mind screams! Unbearable, unimaginable pain! Like having someone play with the switch to a life-support system, turning it off and then back on again, that’s what I feel. It’s what I sense. It’s all I can sense. Tiny little electrodes coursing through my brain.
Suddenly my mind is coursing with thoughts and senses. All at once and all too fast to comprehend.
I’m in darkness, for I haven’t opened my eyes. I don’t want to. I can remember a terrifying battle, and nothing but pain around me. I don’t want to know what’s waiting for me out there. Not yet. I keep my eyes shut.
Through the cloud of darkness my mind remains inert. It’s all I can do for now and it’s all I think I can handle for now.
If only I could think straight. It feels like there are a few people in here with me. Like they are the ones who are rebooting my brain and giving it the kick start it needs.
I can hear voices. A few at least. There is definitely a woman, and… two men. There are two men with her.
Damn my body feels tight. Tight and stiff.
First things first. What are they saying?
Don’t worry about me, I think to myself. Concentrating on my surroundings, it’s like listening to the outside world whilst jacked in to cyberspace. Being able to hear things, but not being able to respond, dammit.
“Brain activity just spiked!” I hear the woman say.
“Oh. This is good. This is very good,” I hear a man’s voice in response. “This is much earlier than expected. I’ll have to crunch some numbers, but I postulate we could have this gorgon up and running against Hath-Seth in days. If not, hours!”
What the hell’s a Gorgon, I wonder. And who, or what, is Hath-Seth? Nothing these people say is making much sense.
Damn my back is stiff.
“That sounds good, Doctor,” I hear another man say. He sounds smaller than the other two, or that could just be because he’s further away from me than the others. It’s hard to tell.
“For years Hath-Seth has tormented us. Cut into our livelihood, killed our people and destroyed preserves. Well no more!” This Doctor sounds like a nut, I think to myself.
“We all know what Hath-Seth has done to this community, Doctor. No one more than me.” The woman has such passion in her voice. Like someone else I used to know. If only I could remember her name. “I’ve fought on the frontlines. I’ve been face to snake-like face with Hath-Seth. But going off half-cocked, sending this monster off against him. It’s too soon. We’ve done testing, but we need to do more.”
In my confusion as to whatever the shock they are discussing, I hear a generator kick in. It’s loud, and it’s forceful.
“Hold it, Dr. Tewantin,” I hear the woman say. “For all we know our tests could prove inconclusive. Remember what happened with the others we found. Remember? What happened to them?”
“How could I forget, Dusk? What a waste of time those mutates were.” Huh? “But this being is different. I can sense it. Better yet, I can prove it.”
Oh oh.
“Agon. Full power!”
My body tenses when I hear these words. I don’t know what the shock is going on here, or who these people are…
“Ye… Yes Doctor.”
I hear a click, and my world turns inside out!
“DDDOOOOOMMMMM!” I throttle from my mouth. It’s loud, and guttural, and feels like I’m chewing up concrete as I scream his name.
It hurts, but it feels so good!
My eyes flutter, quickly at first and I expect great light. There is hardly any. It feels like I’m still encased in metal. This is all too much, too quickly.
My body is still stiff, even as I try to move, but now I feel like I’m trapped in a shell.
“DOOM!” I scream again, in an unholy fashion, lashing my body out manically without thinking. Still with my eyes shut I feel my arm knock into something. It feels like a man, and I hear it descend away crashing into something nearby.
I swing my body around, although it is hard to step side-ways, opting to take many small steps to turn my body around from left to right. In all my anger however, I neither notice nor care. I want revenge and by Hellrock, I’m going to get it.
“Doom!” I continue. “Face me! Where are you?! DOOM!”
Knocking into what feels like a rocky wall, I open my eyes slowly. I try to bring my hands up to my head, but they scratch across my chest. I notice that my chest feels heavier. My whole body feels heavier.
Breathing like a mad-man I open my eyes fully to see two encrusted hands in front of me. “What?!”
“Calm down, Ravage.” I hear the voice of a woman somewhere in the distance, both forcefully and calming all in the same instance. “It will be alright. Relax.”
“What’s happened to me?”
“Calm down,” she repeats as she approaches. Slowly.
I try to bring my hands up to my head, but soon realize that my arms are on back to front. As I try to process this thought I also sees my feet for the first time. It looks as if they have now become like hooves.
Looking back at my hands, I realize that they, along with the rest of my body, are now encased in a hard rock-like shell.
This is all too much, I think as I bend forward. It feels good to stretch out, even if it is forward. I find my head is able to coil around further forward towards my body then even before.
“This isn’t right,” I think, and say out loud.
As if that wasn’t enough, I have to look twice but soon see a hard-shelled tail coming up from between my legs.
“What?!… What the hell have you done to me?!”
“Wait,” the woman replies, seemingly like a question. “I can explain.” I stop for a second and think. Her name is Dusk.
In an instant I coil up into a ball, spinning forward. I hear a crash but hardly feel it. And away I go.
***
It feels like it’s been hours since I woke, but really it’s been a matter of minutes. I lose track of time, where I’m going, how I’m getting there, and just where the shock I am.
Okay, breathe. Breathe. Think to yourself, what is the most logical explanation for this…
There is none!
Just what the shock is happening here?! The last thing I remember is fighting it out with that scumbag Doom, on Hellrock. Now though, well, just where the shock am I?!
Okay, okay, calm down Paul-Phillip. Breathe, relax. Just, try to relax.
Breathe.
That is, if breathing was how I remembered it to be. It isn’t.
Something feels different, I feel different. I feel stronger, stronger than I’ve ever been. I feel… harder.
I challenge myself to open my eyes, ever so slowly at first. Everything is black. Pitch black. Suddenly though, I can see my surroundings in all their glory. Where am I, though? A cave?
No, scratch that. These look like caverns.
I look down at my hands, and what I felt and thought before was not a dream, it was very much real.
Fighting, screaming with rage. Not understanding a thing and feeling angry for it. Not even knowing how to move my body, it had all changed.
There were those people I fought. Who were they? Had they done this to my body?
My God, my body! Look at it!
Whew. Okay, again, breathe. Try to breathe, even though it feels like sandpaper scraping the insides of your guts. Argh! It hurts, for now. Keep breathing though and pray it gets easier in time. Please.
Over the years I’ve endured many changes to my body, from my days as a homo-sapien, to then being the beast-man Ravage, and then, when I faced Doom I was something different altogether. Still though, I still resembled a human. Heart and soul, I was always a man.
This though, this is too much. Too bad I’m in a cavern, with no reflection for me to get a real good look at myself. For the moment I have to survey what I can and go from there.
My hands, they’re now three-pronged armored claws.
“Hmmmmm,” I utter. Is that my first words since my awakening? Shock, if they are, my voice now sounds different. More guttural. I... I screamed before, and it hurt like Hell, but I didn’t realize that was my voice. Shock! My voice, this will take some getting used to.
I move my hands up to touch my face. I still have the horned bumps on my chin, and my nose is once again the armored shell it was when I was the beast-man. That’s a relief. My clawed hands move up further, however.
Okay, that’s a first. My ears now seem to be tiny holes in the side of my head. Maybe they’re embedded in my head? Who knows? I can still hear, better than I ever could actually. Just accept that, for now.
I touch where my eyebrows used to be. I feel a hard shell. It runs across the length of my head. I move up further and there’s another armored shell. Up further, there’s another. They all run the length of my head.
I take a bet with myself that it’s a similar situation over the back of my head, and down the back of my body. I’ll have to wait for a more opportune time to inspect my body, though.
I think back to my army days, and how one of the things we were trained was to adapt to our surroundings, and to face every situation and turn it to our advantage.
Is this what you trained us for though, I question? I don’t think so.
“Arr!”
There it is again, just as I seem to recall it being. A tail! An armored, rounded tail between my legs. I lean over to get a good look and it just keeps coming closer and closer to me. This armored tail is curling up across my stomach. It feels like I can wrap myself up in a ball.
Shock, the sound of my body touching other parts of my body, it’s like a construction site! I hear a sickening scraping, like two concrete blocks bashing together. I uncoil a little and notice no markings on my body whatsoever.
This armor is shocking tough!
I tap the end of my tail with one of my claws, and I can feel the tip as well as the inside of my tail. The outer-shell I cannot feel, though. This could be a very good thing, as it seems my only mode of transport is to wrap myself up in a ball and get rolling. It wouldn’t do well to feel every little bump and rocky point along my way.
I give more consideration to the configuration of my arms. Bent outwards as they are, it actually allows them to coil up tighten towards my body, the more I lean over and in to myself.
From a combat perspective this armor can come in very handy.
Now then, I wonder just where I am. If I could see the stars I’d be able to, eventually, govern my location on Earth. However I’m clearly underground.
“Hmmmmmmmm.”
Judging from the coldness given off by the rocks around me I’m a fair way underground.
It’s difficult to judge the color of my surroundings, but things look red.
There are only a few places on Earth where there are red-colored caverns. Am I in Australia?
I could be. But then again, Doom did shoot us all in to space. I clearly, very clearly, remember that happening.
What a second, what’s that noise? It sounds like thunder… What is that? It’s coming closer. I’m miles under ground, it can’t be thunder.
“Arrggghhhh!”
What are these things? There’s hundreds of them, tiny expressionless men. Before I realize it they’ve picked me up and carried me off like a wave in the ocean.
“What are you doing?”
I take a swipe at them with my outstretched claws, knocking a few on their backsides.
“Stop that,” one of them shouts. It doesn’t sound like a human voice, but somehow I can understand it completely.
“Where are you taking me? Put me down and tell me!”
My protests are for naught it seems. I feel a twinge of fear and dread at what I hear next.
“Hath-Seth will want to see this.”
***
END OF BOOK ONE