Miracleman looked down through the veil of smoke that stretched out across his city.
The buildings arced up like the legs of an upturned spider, hideous great spires in the moonlight.
Looking down into the swirling mists of the once pure River Thames stood a young man, perhaps in his mid-twenties, hair slightly red and face accentuated by several days worth of stubble.
He was dressed in a crumpled white shirt and a long, midnight coloured trenchcoat.
Miracleman had known him for several years now and knew how uncomfortable the man was around - what was the term the papers used? - Science Heroes ? And yet still, the costumed protector of his country felt drawn towards the young man.
It was not a sexual attraction, but it was an imperative of sorts. Something deep inside of the hero told him that this young man's fate was woven very closely between the lines of the country's future.
He dropped from the air, feet gliding above the ground.
The gust of wind caught the young man's attention and caused him to turn and face Miracleman, his face upturned in a cynical smirk.
"Greetings, Mister Chance." Miracleman whispered, his voice the quiet before the storm.
Mister Chance looked him up and down, his eyes twinkling with some secret conspiracy that was, as yet, unknown to the hero.
"Alright, you old wanker?" He replied, his voice course and dangerous.
"I've been trying to reach you." Miracleman announced, getting to the heart of the matter before the younger man had a suitable opportunity to derail the conversation. "It would appear that our mutual friends in the Society are somewhat hard to come by these days."
The young man smiled deviously.
"Yeah, I heard something about that. Still having trouble on the Japan front?"
Miracleman acknowledged this with a nod of the head.
"I'm afraid so." He paused for a moment and looked straight at Chance, trying to decipher his motives. "With things as they are, we can't allow the beast to escape us."
The young man flicked his cigarette at Miracleman's feet where it lay for a moment or two before he reached out with and extinguished it, sniffing the contaminated air distastefully.
"This is hard for me to ask, Mister Chance, but I need your assistance."
The young man grinned smugly.
"And here I was thinking I wasn't a member of your little Society. Didn't think you'd want a working class bastard with my longevity on the team."
"You are still young, Mister Chance." Miracleman warned as a reminder. "None one was aware of quite how predisposed towards longevity you were until a few months ago."
"I knew." Chance said defiantly. "Ever since I was a kid, I knew."
"Arrogance will get you nowhere, young man, and to answer your question, no, I do not want you 'on the team' but needs must as the devil drives."
"Yeah, alright, enough of the cliches, are you going to buy me a pint or what?"
There was a moment's silence and then the Science Hero nodded seriously.
"I shall do so." He stated.
"Good." Chance smiled, his features exuding youth and arrogance. "I haven't had a fucking drink all day and I'm dying of thirst."
"You drink too much, Mister Chance." Miracleman uttered as the two of them headed away from the bridge.
"You're a wanker." Chance reminded him.

Chance created by Jericho Vilar

Saraquel removed his hat, hanging it listlessly on the stand and sitting down in his chair. It creaked loudly, protesting against his weight.
The desk was littered with paper, notes from cases never solved and odd pages from obscure tomes of ancient, mystical wisdom.
He struck a match against the sole of his shoe and lit his cigarette, placing his feet firmly on top of the desk and its contents.
The office door opened, the pale illumination of the sole bulb hanging from the ceiling cast the shadow of his partner across the surface of Saraquel's desk.
"Good evening, Saraquel." The shadow announced.
A young Oriental man entered the room, cigarette smouldering in the corner of his mouth, short dark hair slicked back, accentuating his high cheekbones.
"Good evening, Kuan Yin." Saraquel responded stoically, as was his custom.
"We have trouble." The Oriental man threw a set of papers down on the already cluttered desk.
"We always have trouble. What are these?" Saraquel asked, removing his feet and leaning forwards.
Carefully, he removed his glasses from their case and placed them on the end of his nose.
"Pages I tore from Saranyu's copy of the Necronomicon." Kuan Yin answered.
"I bet she was happy with you." Saraquel smirked.
"She was over the moon." Kuan Yin smiled, sitting down on his side of the desk.
"So what is all this?" The other Angel asked, waving the torn, yellow pages in the air.
"We have trouble." Kuan Yin said grimly.
"We always have trouble, be more specific."
"Cenobites."
"Shit," Saraquel cursed, removing his glasses and placing them down on the desk. "What stupid bastard summoned them?"
"DA's man." Kuan Yin answered. "That case we were looking into for Raguel - the Martian one - looks like there was more to this than we knew."
"Bugger." Saraquel cursed, standing up and pulling his hat from its stand. "Looks like we're going out again."

* * *

The young man turned the pages of the old book, his spare hand located around a comfortably close pint glass.
"So are you going to tell me about your new friends then?" He looked up, barely stifling a yawn.
When he spoke, Miracleman fancied he could almost hear the traces of Irish ancestry in his voice.
"Faustus and Mephostophilis, you already know, or at least you should have heard of them."
Chance nodded, muttering something beneath his breath that the Science Hero didn't quite catch.
He shrugged and let it pass, instead choosing to continue with his previous train of thought:
"Our other recent recruit has been slightly more difficult. He's an American."
"Ah." The young man grinned, lighting a fresh cigarette. "That does make things slightly more complicated. What's he like?"
"He's a private detective; A man who seems to live two lives. I have a lot of faith in him, as I once had in you, Livingston."
Snorting, Chance stuck his fingers up and affected a sneer that would become incredibly popular amongst the young people of London during the late 1970s.
"Up yours, you big poof. I've got better things to do than ponce around and talk politics to a bunch of gits who can't tell their arses from their elbows."
Miracleman sighed dramatically and finally sat down next to his younger friend.
"Much has changed since you left the Society, Livingston. The world is a very different place."
The Science Hero felt the sickness welling up inside of him. In truth the world was the same, dark place full of sickness and disease, just as it ever was. What had changed was Miracleman, himself.
Several weeks ago he had walked out on the Snob, leaving the Mystery Society for good and now, here he was, knowing full well that their 'friend' in Japan was currently under the control of an alien saucer high above the Earth and here he was, the once proudest hero of Britain, offering up this young man as bait for the Gods of fate.
"And I don't think it's going to get better with the help of some elite society of men in tights who think they're one step up the evolutionary ladder from us. I'm sorry, mate, but I just don't fucking buy that." Chance stated, his eyes haunted and weary.
"Faustus has no costume, neither does Mephostophilis or Noir or our new man in America. It's not about heroics, Mister Chance; it's about keeping the world from going to Hell. We could really do with your help, Livingston."
"I'm not getting into this, I told you before." He turned and looked towards the older man. "I don't do superheroics."
"I'm afraid you may not have a choice." Miracleman announced with a heavy heart.
"Eh?" Chance muttered. He half rose from his chair until he felt the cold metal of a gun in his back. "Oi, what's all this about?"
"I warned you that there might not be a choice anymore." Miracleman said, his voice suddenly dark and more dangerous than Chance ever could have imagined.
"You're not a member of the Society anymore, are you, spandex boy?" The younger man scowled.
"No." Miracleman said quietly. "That's why I need your assistance."
"And I don't have a choice in the matter?"
"None." The Science Hero responded.

* * *

He had the same dream, over and over again.
The heart of the world had been torn out, its rib cage broke open revealing dark rivers of congealing shadows. The stench of fire and brimstone hung in the air, forcing his dreamself to cough violently.
Bile rose in his throat, almost choking him.
In the distance he heard the howls of the monster that began it all.
About him, time began to speed up. The beast's howling subsided and he watched its vast, reptilian fa‡ade decay, skin rotting upon yellow bones and falling deep into the ground.
To his left, he saw Japan destroyed and rebuilt, engulfed in a vast spider's web of buildings and to his right he saw Europe, ravaged by war as it came under new dominion.
Angels with burning eyes looked down upon him from the lofty heights of the Elysium Fields.
He turned, startled slightly and found two crucifixes bearing down upon him.
Nailed to the crosses were two Angels, bleeding from open wounds etched upon their mutilated bodies.
"Jesus Christ." He whispered fearfully.
Time slipped once more, though only a few minutes (hours?) ahead this time.
A vast procession marched down the street, lead in front by an Angel with short, brown hair and another - a half-breed of sorts, her face horribly scarred and two, animal like horns protruding from her head.
Following on behind were a group of people in chains.
At the front were a young man and a young woman.
The girl's hair was long and matted, the side of her face caked with blood and bruises, as was her lover's - how did he know they were lovers?
He shrugged mentally and then froze as the young girl turned and looked him in the eye.
"Please." She whispered, her voice drained.
His stomach twisted in knots as he realised there was nothing he could possibly do to help.
Time twisted once more and the sky blackened. He felt the earth beneath his feet subside and shift.
The ground beneath him was sinking!
He opened his mouth to scream once more but there was no air in his lungs - he was dead!
The world collapsed beneath poor Philip Marlowe and there was nothing he could do to avert it.

* * *

Livingston Chance stepped out from within the folds of the Immateria that Miracleman had used to transport them from the heart of London to... where?
Dust and murder were in the air, shadows encroaching upon them from all directions.
"Where are we?" Chance asked, feeling somewhat uncomfortable.
Blood spattered the floorboards of the room, something that hadn't failed to attract his attention.
"New York." Miracleman responded, stepping forth from the Immateria, the gun still held in his hands. "A dive called Roarin' Rick's, I believe."
"And that has to do with what?" The young man demanded.
"It's where it all began." Miracleman said sadly, knowing what would happen next.
Chance opened his mouth to speak but before he had the chance he noticed the presence of another being in the furthest corner of the room.
He turned, somewhat startled and laid eyes upon a hideous creature.
Once it had been a man, that much was evident, now its skin was poked with scars where nails and pins had been driven in its skull. No a single hair remained on its head and its eyes were darker than midnight itself.
The garment it wore was a strange leather uniform, a regalia unknown to Chance.
"Actually, Mister Chance," The daemon smiled. "This is where it ends."
Chance turned to face the Science Hero.
"What the fuck is this?" He demanded.
"Why, this is a sacrifice, of course, Mister Chance." The daemon purred. "And I am the priest of all your sufferings." It took a step closer, dark eyes almost gleaming with relish. "A mortal solved the puzzle, an average man of no interest to us, yet the price must be met - the price for summoning. This man," It indicated the Science Hero. "Came to us. Offering us a bargain. The life of the man who opened the box in exchange for something else - the life of this pathetic world's saviour. You, my dear Mister Chance."
"I'm no bastard's saviour." Chance countered.
"Perhaps, perhaps not. In the end it doesn't matter. All that matters is that people will one day regard you as their saviour - and their nemesis."
Chance opened his mouth to speak but his throat was strangely dry.
He turned once more to Miracleman, who remained expressionless, as cold as marble.
Without warning his body suddenly convulsed with pain.
He looked down and saw a million tiny hooks, attached to a million chains, worming their way inside the warmth moistness of his living flesh.
"Oh, fuck." He whispered.
The last thing he heard was the haunting laughter of the daemon as the hooks burrowed their way further into his flesh.

* * *

Marlowe awoke with a start, his shirt drenched with perspiration and clinging tight to him, like a second skin.
"Hallo, Philip." A soft, quiet voice whispered close to him.
He looked up, confused, wondering for a moment where he was. The soft lighting of his office flickered for a moment as realisation slowly dawned upon him.
Painfully, he straightened his aching back and leant back in his chair, lighting a cigarette as he did so.
"Hello, Didi." He smiled warmly, or as warm as the smiles of someone who had spent every waking moment since his job for General Sternwood in absolute agony could offer, at the pale, young girl. He frowned, the vaguest memory of a dream coming back to him.
"That's my brother's domain." Didi pre-empted him.
Marlowe frowned again and then finally caught up with her.
"Oh." He said. "I guess so."
He looked downcast, the cigarette hanging from the dry skin at the corner of his mouth.
"You look tired." The young girl observed.
"I am tired." Marlowe replied, his tiredness getting the best of him. "Martians, vampires, space invaders and giant reptiles - I never asked for any of this. I'm an honest Joe trying to earn an honest buck, this whole scene is lost on me. I can understand dames, hell, I can even understand why a guy would want to put a slug in another guy's back but I can't understand this. It's all alien to me."
Didi leant in closer.
"Philip," She said earnestly. "This will be the last time we'll meet like this."
"So, it's like that, is it?" Marlowe shrugged. "All's well that ends well?"
"Not quite." Didi replied.
From within her long, overcoat she produced a large and ancient book, bound it what appeared to be leather but was in fact human flesh.
"What is that?" Marlowe asked, his curiosity piqued.
"A Necronomicon." Didi replied. "We're going to use it to put an end to your Japanese situation."
"Oh," Marlowe arched his eyebrows. "And how are we going to do that?"
"We're going to summon an Old God." She said stoically.

* * *

Pain coursed through every nerve in his body as each was delicately severed and then re-stitched, over and over again.
His body was torn open, guts spilt forth, each precious drop spilt down into the gutters below him.
Howls of pain, and some of pleasure, resounded in the background as Livingston Chance desperately tried to remember where he was.
And then slowly the memories would come fading back, if only for an instant.
Miracleman pressing the gun into his back and then... then the horrific face of the daemon, the hideous, scarred once-man.
He tried to scream but his throat has been torn to shreds by the vicious meathooks the daemon and its brethren had strung him out on.
He felt his bowels go and his insides tumble from the slit in his stomach and still he hung there, screaming in silence.

* * *

Miracleman felt the silent breath of darkness upon him, the ever encroaching oppression of shadows.
He had sold out Earth's long term salvation, in the shape of one young man named Livingston Chance, for the sake of his own generation.
Over two hundred years from now, when lines of power had been altered and both the daemonic and the Angelic would vie for power over the planet's final fate, then would the true extent of the Science Hero's bargain be revealed.
He had given away hope for the future in exchange for the status quo of the present and deep within his heart of hearts he knew this to be true.
Silently he turned away from the cold English night and went inside the same London pub where mere hours ago he had given away the future.
The weight of his decision pressed down his shoulders as he sat in the same place where Chance had once sat.
He folded his arms beneath him and cradled his head, sobbing quietly to himself.

* * *
Saraquel bent down, his long trenchcoat flowing out behind him like a cloak of sorts.
"They've taken another." He muttered beneath himself, rubbing a tired hand across the harsh level of blonde stubble that decorated the lower half of his face.
"Do you know who?" Kuan Yin questioned.
"Not yet." The other Angel responded.
From the closet corner to the patch of blood Saraquel had found he retrieved the corpse of a dead rat and silently removed a dagger from inside of his coat.
Quickly he dragged the edge of the blade across the rat's exposed underbelly and opened it up. With a look of distaste, he probed inside it with his forefingers, shifting its guts and then reading the events the dead entrails divined.
"A man named Livingston Chance." Saraquel finally concluded, placing the rat's corpse gently down on the floorboards. "Ever heard of him?"
"Yes." Kuan Yin replied, his voice suddenly taking on a new degree of worry. "He's the one."
"Exactly." The elder Archangel answered, straightening up and looking down at the crimson stains on the floorboards. "Which means we'll have to go after him."
"Into the lair of the Cenobites?" Kuan Yin asked, his voice wavering slightly.
"Into the lair of the Cenobites." The other answered.

* * *

"Ph'nglui mglm'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn." Marlowe chanted, looking down at the ancient book.
He wasn't quite sure if the first letter of the first word was a 'p' or an 'f' but, as he etched the symbols on the tombs of the recently deceased murder victims that populated the morgue and a part of him deep down inside prayed to whatever God he had stopped believing in that he was actually reading the whole thing wrong.
The darkness seemed to grow about him, the black places increasing their strangulation of the city - of the world - about him.
He concluded the final part of the ritual, lit himself a cigarette and turned away from the cold emptiness of the morgue.
His part in all this was over.
All the aching, loneliness of this bitter, lost year now concluded, the book had been closed.

* * *

There were many routes to the places that mankind knew, or misinterpreted, for Hell. Each pathway, each well-trodden route was well known to the entire Host of Heaven, not least Kuan Yin and Saraquel.
They moved through the blackened corridors, trenchcoats trailing in the rivers of blood and feces that covered the floor beneath them.
The shrieking, daemonic Cenobites shrunk back from them as they approached their point of destination.
And there he hung, the man who would one day be so integral to the symbiotic nature of Elysium and the European continent as a whole, for better or worse, trailing from the end of so many hooks.
Over the day that elapsed since the two Angels had made their way here, Livingston Chance had been tortured, killed and resurrected oh, so many times.
The flesh of his chest and stomach were caked with blood and scabs, fresh wounds sliced through the dried openings of older wounds.
A solitary Cenobite stood his ground, driving a burning, white hot metal stake deep into Chance's bowels.
Saraquel's hand instinctively reached for his sword but as the two Angels stepped forwards, the creature shrunk back into the darkness, hissing and cursing them, leaving Chance skewered there, strapped to the cold stone wall.
Saraquel sliced the chains away and wrenched the skewer from his bowels.
He tried to scream out but his bleeding throat was dry.
"You can go free now, Livingston Chance." Saraquel whispered lowering the man down from his place of crucifixion.
He looked at them with pleading eyes but no answer was forthcoming.
Silently, the two Angels lifted him out from the bowels of Hell and returned him to the world above.

* * *

Bernie Ohls looked up at the kindly face of Alita, his sole companion through the dark times that he had found himself all but drowning in these past few weeks.
Far beneath them, the Old One, Godzilla raged against the human populace of the world, decimating cities and crushing life beneath it.
"Now is the time, Mister Ohls." The young, alien woman whispered.
He looked strangely baffled as she pressed a small box of machinery into the palm of his hand.
"Soon, all this," She gestured about her. "Will be gone. The path of the Old God is not one for his children to follow. I know this but the others, they will no longer listen."
A dark rumble filled the empty vacuum around the craft.
"Do you hear that?" Alita asked. "That is the sound of the God's keeper, the keeper of all Gods, rising to return her wayward son to the nest. That is the sound of our final destruction."
"W-What am I supposed to do with this?" Ohls questioned, looking down at the strange, glowing box.
A moment later, he felt himself dragged away from corporeal space and into the Immateria.
The land of fiction filled his blood, recreating him, strengthening him before depositing him back in the heart of his city leaving Alita alone in the bowels of the warcraft.
Silently she flicked the cell's vision screen.
The view was filled with the fuming form of the reptilian God as a dense fog began to surround it.
"The God's keeper, the keeper of all Gods, rising to return her wayward son to the nest." She repeated softly to herself.

* * *

Miracleman had long since departed by the time Chance was returned to the pub where his betrayal had began.
He sat down at the bar, the same seat where his betrayer had sat previously and proceeded to drink his sorrows away, sobbing quietly to himself before falling drunk to the ground.
"Chance." A sudden voice called causing him to jump fearfully, his entire body shaking with terror. "Chance, you drunk bastard, get up off your arse."
He looked up at the young man, his friend, Leonard Dudley, and for a moment all he saw was the cold, terrifying face of the daemon.
"Dudley, you fucker, why don't you piss off?" He whimpered, trying his best to sound determined and not at all afraid.
"Josephine sent me to look for you, she's worried about you." The other man shouted, lashing out and kicking him in the stomach.
Recently closed wounds were torn upon once more at the sign of this new brutality and Chance curled himself up into a fetal position.
"Fuck off, Dudley." He whimpered
The other man leant down and, placing his arms under the scared and broken man, dragged him roughly up to his feet.
"Come on, mate, we've got to get you home."

* * *

The Old God screamed in anger as the mist congealed about it, each fresh strand congealing into a sharp, viscous tentacle.
At the centre of the crawling mist appeared a face, a hideous, incomprehensible face.
Godzilla screamed out in anguish as the pseudopods drew it closer to that dark masque of horror.
For even the youngest of infants knows the face of its mother and in this case, Godzilla even knew her name.
Cthulhu!
The mist enveloped the two of them and then, without word or whisper they were gone.
In the place where they had been, the water turned red as blood and in the sky, the first light of morning broke through.
All was silent.

* * *

"You're drunk again." He heard the soft, comforting voice of his wife whisper from some warm place. "You promised you wouldn't drink anymore."
But Chance did not want to be comforted. He was far too aware of the scars that now ran up and down his pale, almost deathly complexion and this was something he could never expect her to live with, never expect her to understand.
"Alright, alright, enough with the fucking mouth, eh?" He howled, stifling the tears.
"Get a grip on yourself, you arsehole." Leonard cursed. "That's no fucking way to talk to your wife."
"And what would you know about that, Leonard? Last good fuck you had was with your right hand." Chance retorted, trying to drive them away - both of them - keep them at a safe distance, Anything,anything so that they may never see what those bastards did to him.
"Don't listen to him." Josephine wailed. "It's just the drink talking."
"Well I'm getting a bit sick of the drink talking." The other countered.
"He doesn't mean it." She whispered, trying to draw him close to her.
He pushed her away and prayed to God that he could mean it. He so wanted to mean it. He wanted to hate them, make sure they would never be close enough to know.
He looked up at her big, dark eyes and saw the tears running down her cheeks and he wanted to scream, to howl, and let all the pain out and yet he knew he never could.
"What are you running away from?" Those silent eyes asked of him.
He continued looking at them for a moment and then turned away.
"Everything." He replied.

* * *

The ghostly warcraft from Planet X hung in the skies above the Earth.
Each man and woman aboard their craft knew their fate had been sealed as silently the huge, gleaming face of Metatron looked out at them.
A silent prayer was said by living being aboard the craft as YHWH's hand moved against them and wrote them out of existence, consigning them to the dark tunnels of nothingness between life and death, imprisoning them within unspace.
Silently, Alita pulled her knees up close to her chest and shrunk down in the corner of the cell, sobbing softly.
She had the rest of eternity to remember her mistakes, and the mistakes of her people.
The rest of eternity.

* * *

Chance slumbered, tossing and turning as each nightmare replayed the same tortures, the same series of events.
Somewhere, he thought he could sense Josephine sitting alone beside the bed, sobbing quietly and watching the rain fall against the windowsill.
One day he knew he would have to face up to the horrific events of his past and present, one day the world would pay the price for what had happened to him.
But not tonight.
Tonight there was only oblivion and ahead of him, in the cold years awaiting in the near future, there was nothing but pain.
The rain continued to fall.