OVER 1000 VIEWS!!! Wow! Highest number of view for my two stories! And so this is the seventeenth chapter. Hope you enjoy it.
Don't own any characters except Garth, and Jeff Wagner (except the name).
The helicopter then landed, and some soldiers opened the right hand side doors. Ben went out first, followed by Reed, and then Garth. He looked ahead/upwards to see that the iconic London Eye Ferris wheel was breaking loose from its beam, and was falling sideways towards the River Thames. Deciding to go in, Garth followed Ben and Sue towards the grey riverside, where the pods, and the people within them, were in danger. Sue went out ahead, turned around and used her shield power to stop the Ferris wheel from moving any further sideways. A few seconds later, Ben moved in and grabbed a damaged section, and used his super strength to push it up a bit. Garth ran over and in between the nearest two pods (on Ben's left) and went up to (the pod on his left) the right hand side of the entrance, held out his left arm. "Move!" He heard Ben say. "Come on! Everybody out! Now!" He cried as the passengers started to get out. Suddenly, he heard a strange sound coming from the river, turned his head leftwards slightly to see a crater had formed in the middle of The Thames, which was flowing into it.
Garth then turned his head to face the two pods one by one (the right one, then the left one), and the remaining passengers in them. "Come on! Move! Get out now!" He yelled out of concern for the passengers, moving his head from Left to right. As the last three passengers in the left pod, a family came up, the mother and the daughter got out, but just as the father was getting out, the Ferris wheel started to move towards the river again. The father was thrown back into the rear of the pod, the others screaming, Garth's eyes widening. He then suddenly heard a loud clanking and whooping sound, looked rightwards/behind to see a big cable had broken off of the wheel, and the tip of it was heading incredibly fast towards the escaping passengers in the right pod! Not even processing the moment in his brain, his reflexes kicking in, his leapt towards the running passengers, the broken tip of the cable now being blocked from the passengers by Garth. He then stopped, arms and legs out as a barrier, and the tip then made contact, struck him in the abdodeman, the impact was so great, that it literally ripped through everything of him, suit, skin, bones, everything, literally ripping him in half!
His legs, now completely separated from his body, went limp and fell on the ground, the rest of his body, still alive, fell on the ground about two to three feet away, a puddle of splattered blood (from the separation) in between! His blood veins had sealed themselves up instantly, as did the bottom end of the rest of his body, though it was now pointy and jagged. Garth, no longer feeling his legs, (his face pointing at and angle towards the floor) shook his head a few times to recover from the moment, thought it had only felt a sudden but massive sting to him, and exhaled, then looked forwards, seeing the rest of the passengers get out and ran. "Guys! What are you doing?!" He heard Sue yell out. "Ben! Lift it higher!" He heard Reed out a few seconds later, then (hearing Ben say "I'll try.") used his hands and arms to turn his body 90 degrees to the right, looked upwards to see Reed flaming and flying (obviously Johnny had touched him), and moved towards the beam and as the wheel was lifted into place by Ben, Reed the shoot beams of fire at the link, effectively welding the two back together. A few seconds later, and things seemed normal, so Garth let out a sign. He lay where he was for a second, before turning his body round 180 degrees with his hands and arms, facing the river, then started to pull/move himself forwards. "Oh, my God." He heard Ben mutter out in shock, staring out at the river. When he'd pulled himself forwards enough to see what Ben (and the others as the joined them) see, his eyes widened in shock: what was usually blue water, was now brown dirty riverbed mud and objects, some boats that were no longer floating, and in the middle, a deep black crater! The crater was so deep, the entire River Thames had drained into it! Not a drop of water was left, and if you looked down into the crater, you wouldn't see the water it was that deep!
Later , the group was taken to the U.S Embassy, where they all gathered in a large conference hall. Hager and his aides (and Wagner, who stood to the right of Hager's female aide) standing at certain points on a set of stairs between two seat rows, while Garth and the others were a few steps further down, Reed the uppermost. Garth (slightly occupied by the tingling he felt in his lower body) laid on a backwards turned chair facing the military people on Reed's left, his lower body, and legs (and the suit over them) growing back, currently baby sized legs (they had been for 27 minutes).
"What the hell was that?" Hager demanded loudly/angrily. "It didn't go to plan, sir." Garth (who stared at Hager) spoke from where he was. "You acted like you were totally unprepared for this, not to mention one of your almost ruined it all." Wagner spoke, gesturing at Johnny. "We'll make adjustments. Next time, we'll be ready." Reed explained (Garth had turned his head leftwards to face Reed then back at Hager). "Next time? There's no next time." Hager scoffed. "You can't handle this alone. That's why I'm bringing in some help." Hager said, who obviously have had enough of them. "General, you bring in more soldiers and weapons, you're gonna put innocent people in danger." Reed said back, and Garth ,who nodded his head, agreed with him. "No more than you already have." Spoke a voice that Garth had hoped never to hear again, his eyes widening and his mouth gaping open slightly in shock as he looked upwards slightly and saw where the voice had come from, as at the top of the stairs was his old boss and nemesis, Victor Von Doom, and he was human again!
"Victor?" He heard Reed say softly in shock. "What's the matter? Afraid of ghosts? Cute baby legs, Garth." Victor smiled. Ben then growled angrily and charged up the stairs in just a few seconds, causing Hager to jump to the right, ran up to Victor, grabbed him by his threat with his right hand and rammed him into the wall. Garth watched as Hager put his right hand on his aide's (who had taken his gun out) left arm. "Since your a ghost, you won't mind if I break your little neck." Ben growled. "Let him go." Hager ordered, but to no avail. "Do you know who that is?" Johnny asked incredulously. "That's Victor Von Doom, and he terrorised and endangered the citizens of New York!" Garth added. "I know who he is. He's here under my orders." Hager replied. Garth then moved his head to look at the General in bwillderment. "Under your orders?! Have you lost your mind?!" Garth cried out in shock, as Hager turned his head rightwards at Reed. "Ben, let him go." Reed ordered a second or two later. Ben then let Victor go, who fell onto his knees and coughed a bit. "How is this possible? How are you still alive?" Reed asked him, asking the big questions. "No thanks to you five, that's for certain." Victor said back as he got up on his feet and brushed his left sleeve of his black leather overcoat with his left hand. "Von Doom's made contact with the alien. He's got valuable information." Hager explained. "Information that just might help save the planet." Victor added as he came down the steps, before stopping in front of Reed, Ben staying a few steps above them. "Now let's be clear about this, shall we? I hate you. All of you. But the world's at stake,... and we need to work together to survive." Victor said to the group. "General, we know firsthand, you trust Victor, and your gonna regret it." Reed said to him. "So far, the only one I've regretted trusting here, is you,... Richards." Hager replied sharply. "Reed, agree to this." Ben pleaded from where he stood. Garth could see that Reed didn't really have much choice. "Let's see what he's got." Reed said.
A few minutes later, they were all sitting in chairs in a dark room in front of a screen, kind of like a cinema. Garth was placed in a seat again. Sue had carried him between the two rooms, using his arms, which were over her shoulders (and she then with both hands) like backpack straps. However, Garth felt extremely humiliated/embarrassed. He had The footage on the screen was a recording of Victor, still metal at the time, at a crater in Greenland, standing in front of the Silver Surfur. "I made a detailed recording of our little encounter." He heard Victor explain. "All that you know is at an end." The Silver Surfur spoke in a deep voice, in perfect English, before the footage showing the Surfur blasting a blast of white energy at Victor, sending him flying back. "Well?" He heard Victor ask to no one in particular. "I like the part where he knocks you on your ass." He heard Ben reply. "Look at where the energy levels surge when he attacks me." He heard Victor say a few seconds later, replaying the part again, but in slow motion. Garth, and probadly everyone else, saw the white energy the Surgur had fired at Victor, came up from his board, flowed up his body, and then to his hands to fire. Garth's eyes widened in realisation. The board was the source of the Surfur's power! "There. See what happened?" He heard Victor ask everyone. "The energy was channeled through him, but it originated from his board." He heard Reed explain. "If we can separate him from the board, we can cut off his power completely." He heard Victor advise. "Then he'll be vulnerable." He heard Wagner add. "And that's what we have to do." He heard Hager say. "How?" Johnny asked, and Garth agreed with him, cause from what he and others had been through, it was impossible to get a grip on the Surfur's, especially without getting distracted by the damage it causes where it goes. "If I knew that, I wouldn't need you people, would I?" Victor asked rhetorically, Garth felt he did have a point. "You three should get started right away." Hager ordered, referring to Reed, Victor, and Wagner. Garth looked down at the chair rows below, deep in thought. "I'm glad we have opportunity to collaborate again. I'll try to talk slowly, so you can keep up." He heard Victor say, obviously to Reed.
Deep in his mind, Garth felt unsure about this. They now knew the Silver Surfur's weakness, but thier old nemesis, the man he had once worked for, was now working with them. And, as he had learned himself, Victor was a man you could not trust, a man who'd backstab you at the right moment. Part of his mind then thought maybe Victor had changed, but he put that thought away, thinking he gone too far, and, besides, his mood hadn't exactly shown any forgiveness.
And that's the seventeenth chapter done. I hope you enjoyed it. I did my best, and I hope it was okay. Hope the picture was okay. It's not my best drawing, but I hope it was enough. I got inspired for Garth's moments in this chapter by the 'baby legs' and the 'rip you in half now' and the 'arms as backpack straps' scenes in "DeadPool 2" (2018). Please leave a comment.
Btw, I have no idea where they were for the part when Victor returned, so, since the words "United States Of America" were written on the back wall, I assumed/decided (especially for this story) that it was the American Embassy.