TENSEN 2099UG	Writer/Artist/Editor: Gary M. Miller  |  Creator: Peter David  Editor-in-Chief: Michael Shirley  |  AEIC: Chris Lough
Dec. 10, 1997 #1

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John Tensen	Xina Kwan	Halloween Jack	Doom

Las Vegas, 2099 (or what's left of it):

Vegas had seen its share of bad luck over the last year, but nonesuch so horrifying as this. The town had thrived with its partner, Halo City, and casinos were still the best the city could offer. However, corruption kept up as well, and finally consumed the city. Or at least, one of its many crazed residents did. His name was Jordan Boone, but he'd want you to call him Halloween Jack.

When Boone was a lowly scientist at Alchemax Research & Development, he was on the verge of perfecting a technology he referred to as VU, or Virtual Unreality. Using some advanced technology in some ways similar to Reed Richards' research discoveries, he opened a portal which turned anything and everything around it into instant chaos. It was a pity that Spider-Man and that Thanatos character had to interfere in Jordan's plans. And then to have another escape from the VU portal, that was something totally unexpected.

The portal, rather thankfully, was closed shortly after the incident, apparently never to be opened again. It appeared that would remain the case when Boone subjected himself to a battery of nanotechnology and biotechnology in order to become one of Alchemax's faux Aesir, the creations modeled after Thor and the other gods who had been missing since approximately the end of the Heroic Age. Boone happened to have transformed into Loki, the God of Mischief. He, unlike the other gods, possessed his own mind and not an altered, warped version such as the others, like Father Cecil McAdam, had. It made him an especially dangerous and crafty adversary. But, alas, such things were not meant to last.

After the fall of the Aesir, Boone went into hiding and took up residence in Las Vegas as a hood who would steal and cheat the many denizens of the city out of money and other precious commodities. When eventually he was captured by Desdemona Synge and her pack of gangsters, the shapeshifting Loki underwent a grisly metamorphosis. Upon escape, he came upon the realization that Loki was a fraud, a mask created by corporate America, and that he needed a new mask that would symbolize himself. It was then he became Halloween Jack, and at this time he began his quest for the parts for his Virtual Unreality projector.

Over a few weeks' time, Jack formed an alliance with Henri Huang, Meanstreak of X-Men fame. Jack tricked Henri into helping him conquer Vegas and pave the way for his new way of life. They removed the Synges from power, and Jack set up his VU projector for all of Vegas to see shortly thereafter. What he hadn't counted on was Doom.

Victor Von Doom had just become President of the United States, seizing power in a moment of weakness. One of his first acts as the new leader of the free world was taking a trip out to Vegas and personally shutting down the Virtual Unreality generator. The problem with it was simply this: the VU wave would not diminish when emitted further from Vegas; instead it would soon transform the whole world into virtual chaos like the result in Vegas itself. Doom rectified the situation by setting up electromagnetic pulses around the city to reverberate the waves back in on the city, keeping it isolated. This act had an even more destructive consequence; as the waves reflected back to the generator, it caused an overload, a buildup if you will, and finally the machine could stand no more. The whole device exploded, taking with it the majority of Las Vegas. Many people escaped before critical mass; many also did not. As a result, Vegas had come to be known in the days following as both a shrine to the salvation of man and the damnation of him.

And now, while the town was in the early stages of reconstruction, one lone automobile decided to cruise into the area, carrying inside it two people, a man and a woman. They had driven across the whole country in search of this place, each for different reasons. As the woman stepped out of the car from the driver's side, she stared in utter disbelief.

"Shock, I don't believe it! It really is gone!" Xina Kwan was never one for dependability of late. She was no pillar of strength, but she survived. She survived ever since being a student in the Alchemax Academy with Miguel O'Hara. Oh, Miguel. She wished she could see him, talk to him right now, but at the same time she never wanted to see him at all for what she blamed herself for doing.

She had killed Dana D'Angelo.

Well, maybe not killed, but she sure as Hel felt responsible. She had been there when Venom had kidnapped them both and held them above Miguel's head. He was being forced into deciding which one of them would die. Of course he couldn't possibly choose, but that was beside the point right now. Miguel had gotten them out of that situation only to have Venom catch up to them later, when Miguel wasn't around. But Spider-Man was. However SHIELD was also on the scene, and Spider-Man, who everyone had thought of as a hero, could do nothing when SHIELD agents took aim at Venom; neither of them could stand to see the bullets the agents fired rip through Venom without causing him harm. None of them wanted to see the bullets go through Venom and shatter their way into Dana, beautiful Dana. Miguel's Dana.

Xina wanted to see Miguel again, for she had so many things to discuss with him regarding Dana's death. She wanted to explain her response to being let go by Venom, she wanted to explain running away moments prior to the incident; but she couldn't find the words when she was in his presence. It was as though some force prohibited them from playing the situation out. Even at the funeral for Dana, Xina could only say a brief few words. She wished they had been friends, for how they had originally met was prone to anger. Seeing your boyfriend suddenly in the arms of another woman did seem to make one such as Xina angry. Xina admitted to herself that it should have been she who died and not Dana. Dana deserved the chance. Did she still believe that? Obviously she did, for she was now far, far away from New York and Miguel. Far away from everything that made her life what it was.

She had left to put her new life in order. Her last moments in New York were filled with regret, but that could not be helped. She had had her first contact with an alien, which she had desired for so long, but that alien was the dangerous Venom. Miguel probably didn't care for her anymore. The only absolute in her life was the man who was behind her, slowly jumping to the ground from the passenger's seat of the automobile.

The brown-haired man stepped from the vehicle, letting his long green coat flap in what little wind there was. He wore black pants, boots, and a navy blue shirt with a straight blue band across his chest. The man removed his gloves and put his fingers through his hair, which he had allowed to grow a bit during the weeks they had been on the road. This was a man who had been through the wringer of life and come back changed, though in some ways he still didn't know. He alone had been displaced in the universe, taken away from his home and his life, but unlike Xina, he did so involuntarily, against his will. He fought for a cause he is only faintly beginning to remember, and has the inkling that he is paying the price for trying to fight as hard as he had. That must have been it. It is the only reason he can dictate as to his current disposition. He and he alone had been taken from where he belonged, and if there was one person who he could blame it all on, it would be Jordan Boone. The Virtual Unreality Gate had worked too well, in effect taking this man and forcing him into this world. When he arrived on this plane of existence, this man was gray-haired and did not even know his own name. He had been dressed in a tattered and worn version of what he now wore, as he considered his attire customary for one such as himself.

Over the last few months thoughts have returned to him, memories of his former life. He remembered familiar things about the strange powers he uses to combat evils of the world. He remembered a daughter whom he left behind, and a life of being hunted as a vigilante. The words "sword" and "shield" brought him pleasure, and eventually knowledge. His studies of this world of 2099 have brought him a new realm of feelings and a new way of thinking, but they have also helped him remember who he was.

"Tensen?"

John Tensen, now better known in this reality as the Net Prophet, stepped to a position beside Xina and held her in his strong arms. "I know, Xina. It's hard to believe it's all gone."

"Shock it, I needed this! I needed some way of finding out what my life's all about. I needed it, Tensen, and you said that you'd find something to do here as well. I--"

"Shhh," Tensen hushed her. "Don't worry, Xin'. If anybody has a right to worry," he surveyed the barren landscape and the craters of metal, "it should be me." With an arm around her, Tensen took Xina nearer to the city proper, and they could still see some flames jumping to and fro in the sun. He bent down on his knees to examine the metallic constructs that were prominent on the outer edge of town. It was amazing that the device that had done this had decimated every building so completely. Not much was left.

"What are you looking for here, Tensen? This place is a mess, and there's rubble everywhere. Our best option is to get going so we don't hurt ourselves. Whatever happened here, anyway?"

"Explosion. Decimation. I was hoping that my salvation could still be found here. I was hoping that I might find something--"

"What? You might find another key to who you are? From what you've told me, Tensen, you know quite enough about your past. You're just at a loss with what to do now that you know."

Tensen shrugged his shoulders and continued alone further into the desolate city. Xina watched as he formed a greenish square out of thin air using his left hand, and, stepping on it, he elevated himself and flew over the wreckage. She sighed as she watched this particular display of his powers. For having had his powers altered recently and telling Xina that he was not in total control of them, it didn't seem all that difficult now. He had mastery, or so it appeared. What else could he do? Xina wondered. She had already seen him warp them in and out of space to survive a near-collision with an automobile on the third day they met. He said he could protect her from every harm.

She trusted him, even though there was the very real possibility that he was alien himself. That was a small part of what made her want to know him better. But after all the things he told her about life on the world of his birth, with his daughter, and people who manufactured illusions to trap him, she honestly doubted her original instinct. She was more or less convinced that he was as human as she was ... just maybe from out of the past. The far past. And for that reason now, she was hooked and couldn't let go. He seemed in every way a relic from the twentieth century. Hallelujah, amen.

Tensen finally made his way back over through use of the shieldlike projections. At Xina's side once more, he frowned. "It is demolished. What once stood here is gone. And not merely the city."

Xina leaned in closer, but soon found Tensen pushing her aside like dead weight. "What? What was here besides the city? The people? What do you mean?"

"The gateway," Tensen simply said. Xina heard a lilt in his voice, as though he were choking up. "The gateway that the scientist Boone built, the gateway I sensed, is gone. And now I can truly never go home again."

Tensen bent down to the ground, feeling the desert heat, combined with that of the hot metal, through his boots. He kneeled, feeling the heat singe his pants, and touched the metal below him. Suddenly Xina saw a greenish-clear square appear below them both, and they both hovered over several feet until they came to a particularly demolished section of the area which had once been Vegas.

"It was here," Tensen said. "It was right HERE!" The shield below them dissipated, and with his left hand Tensen projected a bolt of pure force at the ashen area beneath them, turning the sand and metal fused together into hot glass with twisted bits of shrapnel intermixed.

Xina picked with her fingers, rummaging through the hot debris, careful not to hold onto any one piece for very long. "This guy was a ... technical genius?"

"Yes."

"Then I might be able to help. Let's see if there was anything left of the central operating systems. Come on, I may have use for those shields of yours."

Tensen nodded. A glimmer of hope.

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