17 – Mantropolis

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THE STORY STARTS HERE!

… continued from Character #16, The Forbiddenaut…

… MANTROPOLIS, the Living City!

The bizarre events surround some of Earth’s super humans like forests uprooting themselves and attacking, magnified microscopic monstrosities and entire lakes disappearing set the bar for surreal circumstances pretty high.  Everyone was still caught off guard, however, when Static City, Washington went on a walkabout.

Civil engineer and city planner William Walker had grand ideas for his hometown of Static City.  Ambitious ideas severely limited by his department’s budgetary allotment and, to be honest, physics.  Walker was called to the site of some routine work on the sewer system below the streets at the heart of the city where workers uncovered a strange metal wall with “funny markings.”  Walker assumed that a portion of the tunnel had been tagged by some gang or another.  Upon seeing the wall and the intricately cut markings, Walker rescinded his initial thoughts and put his hand to the only colored marking.

The workers present would later recall how Walker seemingly merged with the wall without making the slightest sound, like it was meant to happen.  Walker and the wall were one.  The sewage tunnel began to shake and the previously smooth structure of the wall distorted into a caricatured effigy of Walker that bellowed “THE CITY IS MINE!”

Chaos ensued as Walker’s consciousness took control of Static City, from the ground up.  Walker rearranged the buildings and architectural elements to mirror his greatest fantasies.  City law enforcement could do nothing to stop the god-like Walker.  The government dispatched Gold Gladiator and War-Dove to deal with the tumultuous town.  While searching for the source of the urban upheaval, the heroes ran afoul of a mob of Murder Men who were taking advantage of the chaos for their own nefarious activities.

Walker did not want the people of his city injured.  He just wanted the cancerous Murder Men gone from his new body.  Walker refocused and aided the married heroes, ousting the criminals from his system.  The gangsters weren’t going to go quietly and they revealed their secret weapon, a small thermonuclear device.  In his rage to rid the Murder Men, Walker lifted the city onto moveable limbs.

The timely arrival of the Man of the Moon saved the city-man and his population.  After expelling the device and its unfortunate Murder Man bearer, the lunar protector explained that Walker found what was known as a “civilization engine” and was used by trans-universal settlers hundreds of thousands years ago to power their city-ships in their search for new worlds.

In the end, the Walker/city fused being was allowed to exist, under the watchful eye of the government and anyone who wanted to live there was allowed to in the newly dubbed MANTROPOLIS!

This ancient extraterrestrial artifact was only the world’s first, publicly known interaction with the larger universe.  While the civilization engine-powered Mantropolis was, ultimately, a rather benign encounter with alien intelligence, a much more violent introduction to the life beyond our solar system came in the form of…

GO TO Character #18!

Category: 2011, Scifi, Superhero