Fiction Challenge #6:
My Turn
by SpiderJedi

Cosmic-1 had to get to earth, regardless of what would happen to him. The message he bore was of vital importance. But for now, he had to outrun the domain battle fleet that was stalking him.

On earth, MinuteMan was sitting down to a friendly game of chinese checkers with Direwolf. Across the way, Eve was playing Monopoly with Mithril and Bullet was getting his butt kicked to the four corners of time in a game of Poker against Cold Iron.

These heroes were down in the town center for a strange charity event, a game marathon. Every hero was sponsored by a different city official. For every game that the supported hero won, the supporting official would put $1000 toward college education for homeless children.

Across the Park, The Alpha-Pride was working with the biggest Scrabble board in the world. Their half of the charity was, for every word worth more than 5 points, $1000 would be donated toward the fund.

The final tally for the day had Direwolf and Cold Iron with a clean sweep. This gave $50,000 toward the Street Smarts Fund. The Alpha-Pride tied the Elementals in the scrabble game and $250,000 was donated. As for Mithril, his overall riches added $165K to the fund, even though Eve beat him.

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Out of the galaxy, Cosmic-1 piloted his Nova Racer into a corolyium asteroid field. He knew that corolyium reflected and refracted radar and sensor signals in such a way that it would appear that he had summoned backup. Indeed it seemed that his ploy had worked, and yet a lucky shot parted the asteroid field and struck his ship right in the telemetry circuits. He spiraled out of control and it seemed his message would never be transmitted, but he was intercepted. The force of being caught in a tractor beam knocked Cosmic-1 out.

He awoke to find some strange, blurry faces staring at him. At first, his reaction was to fight back, but he realised that he was being held in a force field, more for his own safety than anything else.

"The messenger is awake. Tell the commander." a female voice sounded from one of the unrecognizable blobs.
"Yes, Mistress, I will do as you command." another blob answered

"Where am I? and Who are you?" Cosmic-1 asked as the haze cleared and he found himself staring at alien creatures with eight arms. The topmost arms were grafted with laser scythes.

"We are the Jundurians. We are precognizant of major cataclysms and their causes and effects. We knew that you would be unable to bring your message to Earth so we rushed to intercept you. From the safety of this ship, you can transmit your message to whoever you think it is meant for." The leader said as he pointed his laser scythes at two underlings and told them to "assemble the SpiritCaster"

The SpiritCaster turned out to be a platform for sending a message in astral form. There was only enough power for one message of less than 25 words.
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Minuteman, Eve and Bullet were talking about the game tournament as they approached the remains of Mr Mechanical's underground lair. There were plans to turn this den of evil into a youth center and these three members of Freedom Force were going that way to report on the feasibility of such a project.

"Minuteman, Ah can see some playgrounds in this big area here, right where Mr. Mech had his storage area. And over there where his generator was, we can put in an art gallery and studio" The Silver Speedster said as he zipped around, sizing up the possibilities.

"Good thinking, Bullet. What do you say Eve?" MM asked as he hefted some remaining barrels of flammable materials.

"I can imagine a hydroponic garden in his comms room. Down here sunlight is hard to come by." Eve answered as she took some measurements with a plumb attached to a pair of arrows.

All three heroes reconvened in the central area of the base. As Bullet was getting close to his friends, he was knocked back ward by a coruscating bolt of black energy.

The face slowly phased into visibility. Cosmic-1 had to make every word count.

"Freedom Force. This is a warning that only Mentor might understand. The domain have tapped into the power of the Phobion. Farewell."

With that, the face disappeared and all three heroes, who were sufficiently spooked, decided to retreat to the Freedom Fortress to find out what Mentor knew about this.
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Cosmic-1 fainted on the Jundurian ship. His mission was complete and he was forbidden to help the Freedom Force beyond what he had already done.