Chapter Forty-Seven: From Here to Infinity

Mr. Negativity & The X-Men
The End of the World As We Know It: Part III-7

“You have got to be kidding me,” Rina said as she stared in disbelief at Mr. Negativity.
“I wouldn’t kid about something like this,” Charles replied. “You’ve discovered the Time Gem on this world, and that’s phenomenal news. But it also means we need to work quickly, because there are five more Infinity gems, and if one of them is here on this world, the rest of them must be, as well. If we have all six, we might be able to reset things to how they‘re supposed to be.”
“Five more?” Cain asked.
“Yes,” Spiral replied. “Representing Space, Power, Mind, Soul, and Reality.” She brushed away her companions’ odd looks with one of her six hands. “I’ve known of the Infinity gems for some time now. Don’t forget- I remember reality before the switch, too.”
“That’s just great,” Howard said while lighting a cigar, “But how are we supposed to figure out where these other things are?”
“Actually,” said Spiral, “With Rina’s assistance, we should be able to at least get started. The gems, while unique, still have similar energy signatures. With one on hand, I should be able to dance a teleportation spell to the nearest one.”
“Great!” Charles exclaimed. “With the way they work, after we get the second one, it should get easier and easier to find the others. Are you up for it?”
With a nod, Spiral began to work her arms in her mystical patterns. “It’s still rather taxing, but I should be rested up for one more.” She had just finished her sentence when a flash of light overtook the new X-Men. As eyes cleared up, the group looked around, finding themselves in a dense forest. Spiral slumped against one of the trees, exhausted.
“Beautiful,” Cain muttered. “It can’t be on display or anything, can it? Any idea on how close we are?”
Spiral took a deep breath. “I only know this is the near vicinity. It could be anywhere within a quarter mile or so.”
“Quarter mile?!” Howard squawked. “Obviously, that narrows it down.”
“Well, considering we had an entire planet’s worth of area to cover, that’s not too bad,” Harry tried to remain optimistic. “Rina, are you getting anything?”
“Let me try something.” Rina focused on the gem’s power, slowing down time to a crawl like it was second nature. To everyone else’s view, she blurred out of vision for a few seconds then was there again. “No good, if it’s here, it’s definitely not out in the open.”
“So what? We’re just going to search randomly for it? The chances of us finding it are astronomical,” Cain pointed out.
Charles couldn’t help but remember the movie Cube. “Two. Astronomical.” He chuckled to himself despite the situation. Suddenly, an idea came to mind. “Two.....” he said to himself. “I’d almost forgot about them.” Without another word, he took off into the air, flying above the treetops.
“What does he think he’s doing?” Howard voiced the thoughts of everyone else.
The luck dice from the Whizzer of Odds, Charles thought to himself. They’re indestructible. Which should mean... He focused his thoughts internally, calling upon the probability altering dice that were within his body. Suddenly, he spun around and fired a concentrated blast downward followed a few seconds later by another. Natural luck amplified by mystical dice combined in a way that would make Longshot jealous.
The first blast tore through the leaves and branches of a few trees until it hit the dead center of an old maple tree. Wood and foliage exploded in a blast that sent a small gem flying into the air. The gem arced upward uncertainly until the second Negative Zone blast changed its trajectory, bouncing it off two trees and directly into the lap of Spiral.
Looking down, Spiral lifted up the Space Gem and found all her energies refueled and charged more than ever before. She stood up as Charles was landing. The five members just stared at him as he shrugged. “It’s good to be the king,” he quipped.

The six X-Men appeared in front of a large lake in Georgia. With the Space Gem, Spiral could now both easily teleport as well as know their location with precise ease. “It’s in the lake?” Harry asked.
“Definitely. I can sense it laying on the bed,” Spiral said.
“Well, who’s going to go get it?” Cain didn’t so much as ask but direct the statement at Howard.
“Wah? Hey, now listen, just because I’m a duck doesn’t mean anything. I can’t swim. Why doesn’t the ‘no need to breathe’ guy go after it?”
Charles point over the group’s shoulders to the small group of Doomsmen who appeared on the horizon. “Because I’m probably more suited to fighting these guys than just taking a swim.”
“By Doom’s decree, what lies in that lake will belong to him!” Eight sets of battle armor boots flared launching them into the midst of the sextet.
With a snap of her fingers, Spiral teleported Howard over the spot in the lake where he needed to be. As he squawked and began to sink into the water, Spiral had already begun to turn her attention to those approaching.
Before the eight Doomsmen had landed, two of them had crashed into each other violently as each had one boot jet clogged by a massive tangle of wires. Two more had large holes punctured in their suits from twin blasts of ebony energy. The remaining four began opening fire. Unfortunately, one of them found himself teleported in front of his own blast. As he struggled to his feet, he faced the smiling face of a six-armed white haired women wielding swords.
Cain swung a powerful hand at the nearest trooper who just grinned as the body armor easily withstood the even Cain’s excellent punch. Cain gritted his teeth as the trooper began to fire a direct shot. Suddenly, the shot appeared to be halted in mid air. Quickly understanding the situation, Cain casually went to the opposite side of the Doomsman, undid the helmet, walked around, and threw a punch that knocked out his adversary.
However, while Rina and Spiral were preoccupied, the remaining two goons took their shots from behind, knocking them both down. Mr. Negativity and Haywire, with their attentions turned toward the lake which was beginning to glow a bright orange, didn’t notice two guns being turned upon Cain.
Suddenly, a bright flame shot out of the lake which seemed to take on the shape of... a duck? Howard’s newfound mental abilities quickly knocked out the Doomsmen as his voice resounded over the lake, “I am Psy-Duck!” Quickly drained from his first use, Howard began to fall back toward the lake, caught in mid-air by Mr. Negativity.
As everyone began to recover, Charles pointed out the scary obvious fact. “Doom obviously knows the Infinity Gems are around as well. That means we’re now on a big timetable. It should be easier for us, since we have the Space Gem, but Doom has the advantage of numbers. They can be several places at once.”
Spiral nodded. “Then let’s be off.”

“Oh damn,” Cain muttered as they appeared in a murky swampland, facing another dozen of Doom’s troops.
“I knew someone was bound to say it before this jaunt was over,” Charles shook his head. “Well, let’s do it.”
In a blur of motion, Rina sped forward into combat. However, faster than her time dilated speed was the speed of thought as Howard began launching mental attacks upon the troops. Unfortunately, these Doomsmen seemed to have slightly better blocks in their suits for just such protection. In actuality, the armor itself seemed to be adapting more and more from attacks somehow. Hyperpunches were being ignored, wires were being torn asunder quicker, and Negablasted holes were even repairing themselves.
Everyone was focused on pushing their powers more that once more, Cain was forgotten. Well, he wasn’t forgotten by everyone. A single Doomsman managed to sneak around and tackle Cain from behind. With a lurch forward, Cain felt hundreds of pounds of battle armor and human pushing his upper body into a sickeningly putrid area of swamp water.
His breath knocked out of him, Cain managed to keep his wits enough to not inhale the liquid into his lungs. He struggled futilely attempting to get air as his tormentor simply laughed a laugh that echoed through the waters in which Cain was drowning. Suddenly, Cain noticed something shimmer just slightly as the light above hit it just right.. Cain reached down into the swamp, grasping desperately, his fingertips just out of reach. Finally, with his last surge of adrenaline, Cain threw his body into the dive and got grasp of the Body Gem.
With ease, Cain threw a massive arm back and knocked the Doomsman away and unconscious. Pulling himself out of the water, Cain grinned as he approached the main fray and lasers began hitting and bouncing off of him. A few punches this way and that and the remaining villains lay prone on the ground.
“Cain!” Rina cried. “You’ve become some sort of unstoppable juggernaut!”
“That’s right,” Cain said. “That’s why I’m going to call myself the Unstoppable Mitch.”
“Oh Jesus,” Charles almost wept.
“What? You want I should reveal my real name?” Cain explained.
“Never mind, let’s just get the hell out of here.”

The X-Men appeared on a level playing field. Okay, it was a corn field, and honestly, it wasn’t very level either. In fact, the twelve foot tall robot making its way surely towards them carried itself with a manner that showed it was not playing.
“This is going to suck, isn’t it?” asked Harry.
“Yeah, probably,” Charles agreed.
“Come on, you sissies,” Cain bellowed, “You wait here, I’ll take care of it.” Massive leg muscles pumped as Cain charged straight toward the robot, an arm drawn back for a punch, until the ground in front of him suddenly shifted into a thick tar. Cain immediately began clawing around, finding himself sinking deeper the more he struggled.
Everyone suspected something was up, but instinct took the reigns as Rina and Spiral launched into combat. Howard was using the Mind Gem to both calm Cain down and give him the concentration to free himself. Charles turned toward Harry. “Go get the gem.”
“Are you nuts? What about the robot? I need to stay and help.”
“Listen, you don’t have a gem. You need one. Go find this one.”
“You don’t have one, either,” Haywire pointed out.
“Yes, but I have unlimited access to powerful destructive forces from an entire dimension. No offense, but which of us stands a better shot at this robot.”
“Hey, cheap shot!” Harry protested.
Howard gave enough attention to call out, “He’s right you know.”
Harry dug his toe into the ground, dejected. “Yeah, but still, cheap shot.”
“Listen, the robot was headed this direction before we appeared, so it’s probably behind us. Good luck.” With that, Charles turned back toward the robot and Harry took off the other direction.
Cain was just making his way out of the tar, but the others were fairing poorly. Rina was trapped inside a giant earth maze that shifted around every time she took a step. Meanwhile, Spiral was fighting her bout of vertigo. Every direction seemed to be up. Normally, the Space Gem would easily throw off any such feelings, but as it was soon very apparent to her, every direction really was up.
The Reality Gem, Charles began to realize. Doom must have found the Reality Gem and used it to power one of his toys. That’s the only thing that could do what this thing is doing. But how do we fight something with the power to alter reality? Damn, I wish I’d read up on Moira’s son more.
Any other thoughts he might have had were shut down as his perceptions fractured, and he experienced a hundred different realities which his life could have been. He saw himself in his home world working twenty different jobs, being in thirteen different colleges, losing friends and family, being killed three different ways, aligning himself with Sinister, and more. Even as fast as his normal thoughts were, it proved to be far beyond what the human mind was meant to experience, and Charles collapsed to the ground in his human form, unconscious.
Cain busted a hole open in the maze long enough for Rina to make an escape out. Meanwhile, Howard blocked off all of Spiral’s perceptions except for one view long enough for her to teleport away. They gathered around Charles, doing what they could to distract the robot until someone could come up with a plan. And where the hell was Haywire?

Harry’s sprint had slowed to a jog and led quickly to a walk. He began kicking clods of dirt as he went, hearing the battle far behind him. “You know,” he said to nobody particular, “If it weren’t for my powers, Chuck wouldn’t have learned how to fly....wait...no, I saved Rina, and Joe got him to fly. Well, we would have crashed in the...hold on, Kyle saved us during the crash. I kept him from getting shrunk by China Doll! You know, assuming her powers would have worked on his energy form...” Unbeknownst to him, he was in a great position. Charles wishing someone good luck was like the Pope blessing someone after they sneezed, or Mephisto cursing someone to hell. You know, it’s just that much more powerful. All Harry knew was that he stubbed his toe on a really hard clump of rock he was kicking. He looked down, picked it up, brushed off the dirt, an pocketed the Soul Gem.

Rina and Spiral did their best to keep the robot at bay, but it kept moving along shifting through worlds where time and space had no meaning. A quick psi-jolt from Howard brought Charles barely back to the world of the thinking. “Quick, Chuck,” Cain pressed, “How do we beat this guy?”
“It’s pretty simple,” Charles worked up a weak smile. “We can’t.”
“What?!?” the other four voiced.
“Yeah, we’re pretty much screwed over,” Charles just shrugged as the robot sprouted an array of weapons and artillery that the Punisher would envy.
“Geez, I know how you got the codename, now,” Howard lit what he figured would be his last cigar.
“I am programmed to destroy.” The robot ‘spoke’ its first words since entering into the battle.
“Great,” a voice chimed from behind. “All you need now is one programmed to make a mess and one to fart, and you’ve got a whole team.” Everyone turned around to see Harry standing there, beaming in a beautiful light.
The next sound to emanate from the robot was a small chuckle which slowly grew into a loud guffaw as the robot began to double over in laughter. Imbued with a soul, it was subject to its first bout of humor since its creation, and it drank it in. In fact, it was so enraptured with Harry’s quip that it didn’t even notice Chuck sneaking around behind it and quickly yanking the Reality Gem out from the mess of wires and circuitry.
As the robot powered down, Mr. Negativity shifted back to his human form and affixed the Reality Gem to his forehead. He turned back toward his teammates, a new power and authority in his voice. “Okay, team, let’s fix this world.”