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(Episode 17) Written by Larry Brody |
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In the furthermost regions of space, the Surfer is beyond consolation. “Shalla Bal is gone,” he declares.
In a rare moment of passion, he lets his anger overtake him and he fires cosmic bolts in to the abyss.
The harsh words of the Nebula viral snap him back to reality. She says, “Get yourself together, Surfer. You've got a job to do for me.”
“Nebula, you are the one responsible!” he cries firing bolt after bolt. Struck, the viral plummets to the surface of Zenn La. It crashes in front of the academy, damaged but not dead thanks to its energy barrier.
“Stop, Surfer we had a bargain!” she protests.
“A bargain already broken by your treachery! You caused the crisis in the Soul Hunter's Dimension!” he roars. He lifts his glowing arm ready to deliver to the kill-stroke, but is stopped by none other than Thanos.
“You dare commit violence here?” the Titan asks rhetorically.
“Shalla Bal is lost, Thanos, ever-dwindling through the subatomic structure of the universe,” the Surfer retorts.
“Not Shalla Bal,” Thanos cries out.
“The Surfer blames me because he was slow on the draw,” Nebula taunts.
“You go too far!” the Surfer declares. He prepares to strike, but is stopped by Thanos.
“I say no,” Thanos says. “As the Protector of Titan I grew more and more appalled by the violence of which I was a part, and vowed to learn the ways of peace, renouncing the use of my power when I came to Zenn-La But I cannot allow you to attack even Nebula. To do so would violate every tenet of Zenn-La, and all Shalla Bal believed in!” Thanos stretches a purple energy field to protect Nebula.
“You were not there!” the Surfer insists. “You did not see what I saw, feel what I felt…”
“Fail as you failed,” Nebula goads.
The Surfer, taking it no longer, blasts through Thanos' energy field. Sparks cascade, but, oddly, instead of eviscerating Nebula, it transforms her back into her human form.
“At last,” she declares. She laughs with pure joy and explains, “I knew I could count on you boys if I pushed the right buttons. It wasn't your precious Shalla Bal I needed to help the Surfer sever my link to the virals. It was Thanos.”
Nebula flees into the nearby space museum and purloins Radd's antiquated spaceship. She attempts to escape.
“Even in human form, Nebula proves herself a monster,” says the Surfer.
“Her actions—they remind me of much I have tried to forget,” adds Thanos.
Nebula initiates warp and escapes as the two former rivals blast at the debris left behind.
Elsewhere, a Kree Commander Day-Ron notices a space system, seemingly conjured from nothing. “Prepare to annex our discovery in the name of the Kree empire,” he announces gallantly.
Suddenly the remains of the Skrull armada appear. Commander R'andom announces, “This system is under the protection of the Skrull Confederate.”
Act One
From Zenn La, Thanos and Surfer see the Kree and Skrull ships battle one another.
“I can sense their thoughts,” Thanos says. “They vie for control of this system and Zenn La. ”
“Ever does the greed of conquerors rage,” Surfer adds. “Thanos, are you with me?”
Thanos speaks as a man torn. He says, “Already have I broken my vow! I must not allow myself to use my power again!”
The Surfer nods and speeds on without him.
“Fool,” Thanos says to himself. He sees an image of himself glowering and cruel, laughing maniacally. It is there for a moment, then gone.
The Surfer approaches the fleets saying, “I could marvel at the folly of this war were it not for the innocents it endangered. I did not recreate the cosmos to continue its idiocy.”
Silver Surfer fires twice, one destroying a Kree ship and the other a Skrull vessel. Both Day-Ron and R'andom are indignant and threaten the Surfer. They focus their weapons on him, but the Surfer merely blocks them with an energy shield.
“I believe, gentlemen, that it is time you all felt afraid!” the Surfer announces. “Already have I lost everything. Now will you know what that is like!”
The Surfer fires a massive blast, and both fleets flee in fear. Left alone, the Surfer considers his state. “The battle is over, for now… My homeworld, my universe, cannot be safe until the leaders of both sides change their ways. It is time they learned a lesson only the Silver Surfer can teach.”
Meanwhile on Zenn La, Thanos argues with himself.
“Silver Surfer, I hear your thoughts. Be not guided by your rage.”
“Let him roar, as you should do. Always as anger been Thanos' greatest weapon.”
“I reject all weapons.”
“Which is why I must reject you.”
Thanos sees his cruel self attacking him. He fires a purple blast and dissipates.
Elsewhere, at the Kree capitol city, the Supreme Intelligence has grown tired of the stalemate with the Kree.
Zarek, the Prime Minister, protests, “The problem, Supremor, is that our race has grown stagnant. My genetecists…”
An alarm interrupts. Someone is staging a suicidal assault on the capitol of the Kree-Lar Empire. That someone turns out to be the Silver Surfer. He dashes through the defense mechanisms and flies right through the Prime Minister's window.
“I would have a word with you,” the Surfer says, destroying the viewscreen from which the Supreme Intelligence complains.
Security forces gather around the room and prepare for an assault on the trespasser, but they cannot fire with their Prime Minister in peril. The Surfer grabs Zarek, puts him in an energy bubble and kidnaps him as the entire Kree fleet attempts to follow.
“This is not like you,” Zarek says.
“People change, as you must,” the Surfer replies.
Elsewhere, Skrull Prime Minister Kiar is berating Admiral Zedrao for his failure to find the royal egg that will one day become the Skrull mother. Again, alarms sound. Again, the Surfer is the cause. He forces himself into Kiar's royal chambers.
“I would request an audience, Prime Minister Kiar, but I have no patience for the bureaucracy these days,” the Surfer says.
Before Kiar can say a work, the Surfer snatches him, encapsulates him in an energy bubble and absconds. As the Surfer escapes, Kiar asks, “Why are you taking me? This isn't like you.”
“Truly it is amazing how alike politicians are,” Silver Surfer notes wryly.
We cut to a barren and forbidding planet of monoliths. Some statues are alight. Amongst them are Kiar and Zarek, no longer in their bubbles. They are nose to nose threatening one another while the Silver Surfer hovers above them.
“Enough!” the Surfer finally roars. “You are here not to argue, but to put an end to the Kree-Skrull War! After which will I return you to your people!”
United for a fleeting moment, both Prime Ministers laugh at the absurd notion. The ground suddenly shakes violently and both ministers tumble.
The Surfer then reveals that the planet was recently abandoned because it was unstable. In a matter of hours, it will explode. “In your place, I would swiftly reach an accord,” he adds.”
Act Two
Thanos continues the argument with his darker side.
“I will not fight you.”
“You are fighting, fool. Your mind is torn asunder because you fight.”
Thanos falls to the ground like one who has been battered physically.
“You cannot defeat me. Though the real Thanos has been shackled in your subconscious, still I am filled with raging chaos power!”
“The real Thanos? Then what am I?”
“Nothing, now.”
On the abandoned planet, the prime ministers plea for release.
“You have made your point,” Zarek says. “Now return us to our homes.”
“Have you lost all reason? This plan of yours is insane,” Kiar says.
“This is a universe of unreason,” the Surfer retorts. “To prevail I must become the most unreasoning of all.” The Surfer blasts one of the monoliths into space, as the ministers cower.
Unexpectedly, the image of Thanos appears. “Silver Surfer, I need you. Zenn La is in great peril,” it says and disappears.
The Surfer turns to the ministers. “I will return to learn the terms of your agreement,” he says and flashes off before they can beg for mercy.
They turn to each other.
Zarek: Even if we wanted to negotiate, ending the war will not be easy.
Kiar: We've been fighting so long, it's as though war has a life of its own.
The ground rumbles and the men nearly fall in a pool of lava.
Kiar: I suppose it will not hurt to talk.
Zarek: Not as much as it will hurt not to talk.
At Zenn La, Surfer is greeted by fleets of Kree and Skrull ships, but he quickly finds they are illusory after a few energy blasts. He then realizes that energy images this complex could only be made by Thanos. He rushes off to find his former adversary and learn his game.
Back at the monolithic planet, the ministers note that the planet is much smaller than it originally seemed. Without realizing, they step closer to each other.
“Our borders must be inviolate,” Kiar demands.
Zarek reminds Kiar that he violates Kree borders all the time. A tremor nearly knocks Zarek into a magma pool. Kiar shapeshifts and saves his life, but before he pulls him completely out of the pool, he asks, “About our borders?”
“A small price to pay for a war that weighs so heavily,” Zarek says nodding, and Kiar pulls him to safety.
On Zenn La, Thanos ambushes the Surfer and traps him in an impregnable force field. “I will be revenged for you crimes against me,” Thanos says. “After you turned Lady Chaos against me and stole my victory over the universe itself, I was still so much a part of the creation of the new universe that my original personality remained alive, a prisoner deep within the mind of my own alter ego. The only power great enough to release me was my own. And when this universe's Thanos was struck by it while you and he fought, at last I was freed.”
“What happened to the second Thanos?” the Surfer asks.
Suddenly, Thanos's head spins and on the back of his head is another, kinder Thanos face. “I am here, Surfer. Help me.”
“I have worked wonders fit for a god,” says the Surfer, “but the only one who can purge the evil within you is you.”
“How?” Thanos asks.
“What would your foe do to you?” Surfer asks.
Thanos' head whirls again, and his cruel face says, “Do not do it!”
Thanos' cruel self sees his other pummeling him with continuous energy blasts. As the Surfer cheers him on, Thanos explodes. After a beat, he says, “By turning my power on myself, I have forced the evil from my brain.”
The Surfer wishes him the best, but flies off to check on his ministers.
The Surfer finds them clinging to each other on the last hospitable bit of land. “Am I correct in assuming you have completed your negotiations?” the Surfer asks.
“We have drafted a plan,” Zarek says.
“The universe will thank you,” the Surfer says, lifting them to safety.
The Surfer returns Kiar to the Kree to find Admiral Zedrao staging a coup.
“I'd have to repudiate any pact to end the war, Silver Surfer,” Zedrao says. “And, of course, the Kree will do the same.”
Zedrao shows the Supreme Intelligence naming a new Prime Minister on a viewscreen.
At first, the Surfer angers and tries to fight all the Skrull himself, but then his expression softens. He takes the two, erstwhile ministers and flies away to Zenn La
Cut to Silver Surfer transmuting the statue of himself into one of Shalla Bal.
He says to Thanos, who is once again rational: Suddenly I realized that in my grief for Shalla Bal I was being a tyrant! Like the Supreme Intelligence, or Zedrao, or…
Thanos: Or Thanos. True peace cannot be imposed, Silver Surfer. It must come from within. You did the right thing by trying to stop the war. And by realizing you could not.
The Silver Surfer bids Thanos, the new master of Zenn La, and his two newest pupils good-bye.
“I search elsewhere to ease my troubled soul. Such is the price the Silver Surfer must pay,” he says.
This page is a part of DRG4's Marvel Cartoon Pages:
Featuring Spider-Man, X-Men, Fantastic Four, Iron Man, Incredible Hulk, and the Silver Surfer.