When he was a young man, Chonkin knew how he was meant to die. He was on a holiday in Elouera. At the time, he knew he'd made a bad decision when he wandered out onto the beach with a thermos of mushroom tea. As his mind raced, the warm white sand gave way to bitterly cold snow, while the ocean before him turned into a nightmare crater. A black blemish on the face of the Earth. His body was old then, and his heart felt like it was trying to bust through the bars of his ribcage. In his belly, he saw the silver, plasticine handle of some kind of sword or knife. At that moment, he could see himself looping around from that moment. He moved his head back and he could see every single version of himself that had led to him at that moment. It lead back further than he needed it to. It warped and sent his entire physical matter past the sperm and egg stage and into the atomic stage. The various carbon atoms that had been woven together to form everything made Chonkin himself.
He was standing in the center of a supernova, and he could feel the heat of the explosion slowly turning him into ash. He knew that this was his time to go, and he opened his arms wide to accept it. He could feel the void of death coming for him, and he thought of all the people he'd known and loved in his life. He thought of how each moment had gone by too quickly, and how he would never get to experience them again. With a snap, he was awake. The earth shook and through shit in his isolated cabin around.
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Atom touched down on Earth. Its body slammed into Siberian soil. Atom's arrival was witnessed only by the anti-social, Chonkin. Chonkin noticed it when the blast shook his house and for a moment, he believed that a catastrophic earthquake had been set upon him and that he and the rest of the continent were well and truly fucked. He fled from the house and into the woods, where he was met by the mouth of a crater as well as the machine man that stood at its center. Chonkin did not know what to make of this creature.
Atom looked at the mystic. His hands were glowing with unnatural fire as he sized him up. What was there in the world more lonely than a derelict living in the cold? Kept warm only by their abilities. Atom's arm twisted at that moment. The sheets of stainless steel gave way to something that was almost like flesh. Copper and ceramic wire nerves and liquid fuel veins wrapped around bones made of plastic and neutral alloys. But it shifted further, the physical structure of their arm reshaped the mess of plastic and metal into a blade and Atom rushed the mystic. The Parson Jets that had helped Atom maneuver throughout space now sent them hurtling at Chonkin. They were ringed with black and lit by a horrible pink fire that only the wizard could perceive.
Chonkin acted quickly, catching the blade in his hands and using the momentum of Atom's attack to throw them off balance. Chonkin felt a surge of energy as he threw Atom off. Atom rushed at him again. The mystic panicked and ran but Atom was too fast. Chonkin's entire body folded in half, lengthwise to avoid the machine man's blade. It narrowly missed his head but it still caught his shoulder, tearing the muscle and bone. Chonkin cried out in pain as he hit the ground. He had to get to his feet, he needed to. His eyes crackled with lightning as Atom redirected back at him. Chonkin's arm shot out and a bolt of electricity collided with the machine man. It was enough to stun him and give Chonkin the chance he needed to run. The air was getting colder and he could feel it starting to sting his lungs as he fled from this machine-thing.
Chonkin ran for hours until he reached the edge of the crater. Chonkin was not an athletic man. Throughout his life, his mindset was that his mind and his magic could help him in places that running could not. Now, as an older man, he cursed his younger self for not making their body strong enough to outrun a murderous machine from god knows where. For all he knew, it was one of the Yanks. The Brits, the Japanese, it could have been anyone at the helm of Atom, and none of it mattered. Because the machine closed the distance between them.
Chonkin turned to face his attacker, electricity arcing all around his body. Atom was not deterred. The metal man reached out and grabbed the mystic by his throat. Chonkin tried to fight back but it was no use. Atom lifted him off the ground and squeezed. Chonkin's body convulsed as the electricity coursing through him was redirected into Atom. The machine man's grip only tightened. Chonkin, as the energy danced across his nerves, could not help but think of how impossibly large the machine's eyes were. They reflected the brilliant blue of the lightning perfectly. Chonkin convulsed and bled out. He hadn't felt the blade enter his stomach. He always imagined it would hurt more. He was standing on a beach, looking at his face, rendered youthful and drug-crazed. The atomic stage of his being didn't matter, because he had never thought of that as the beginning for him.
The light left the old man's eyes and Atom dumped his body onto the frozen ground. Light sturred around Atom and then went off to the nearest town. The force of their impossible might be too great for anyone to handle, not even Russia's perfect wizard.
As he floated in the dark, Chonkin's mind returned to the beginning. He remembered the first time he ever saw the black fire. It was on a beach, in Elouera. He was on holiday with his family. His father had brought him there, to try and get him away from the city. Chonkin had never been one for the beach. He preferred the cold, the snow. But his father had been insistent. So, Chonkin had found himself on the beach. He remembered that it was a warm day. The sun was high in the sky and the waves were crashing onto the shore. He was sitting on the sand, with a thermos of mushroom tea. He took a sip from it and then looked out at the ocean.
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In the distance, he saw something. It was a black spot, on the horizon. He squinted his eyes, trying to get a better look at it. It looked like a black fire. He had never seen anything like it before. He got to his feet and started walking toward it. The closer he got, the more he realized that it was a planet. It was a planet that was on fire. He could see the flames, licking at the steel form of a man-shaped thing. It would be there before he knew it.
Adam flew directly to London. Its body appeared like a black racing serpent before it came to as top. Queen Gwen was seated on her throne amid a ceremony. Her dull eyes peered at the machine man.
"Well," said The Queen. "What are you gonna do, boy thing?"
"Subjugate. End life. End" said Atom.
"You know nothing of subjugation. You're someone's toy soldier. Who's put you up to this? It is Joseph? Arnolt? Kline? Pierce? Kuroki? What master do you serve?"
"I serve the thing at the end. The ultimate judge that presides over the end."
The old queen seemed to grow younger as she held her aloft, taking it from its ancient scabbard. Since the day she had taken it up, she was damned sure to keep its blade sharp enough to sheer the electrons off an atom. The planet was screaming. The ground shook and the air was filled with the smell of ozone. Electricity danced and curled her hair as she stood and faced her aggressor.
Her sword, her family's sword had been the symbol of the office of royalty since the dawn of her lineage, but outside of her fight with The Lady, it hadn’t seen combat since her grandfather’s days. Queen Gwen rushed Atom with the sword, diving low and attempting a swipe at the thing’s knees. She watched as Atom’s physical body folded in half, avoiding her attack.
“Tell me who sent you, we will need an address to send your broken remains to, toy.”
Atom was silent. It did not move or speak. The great machine rushed her and the blade of his arm collided with Excalibur, giving everything away to the sudden ringing of steel. It was so rhythmic you could almost dance to it. Together the pair hacked and slashed at one another with their weapons, growing weaker and weaker by the second. Thought eventually, the machine grew tired. It seized Gwen by her head and tossed her across the room, sending her fragile body into a wall with a harsh crack. The old woman breathed out of her mouth a kind, of course, animal gurgle.
Atom stood before her, its arm still held aloft in a gesture of triumph. Gwen wasn’t sure if it was going to finish her off. She knew that this was the moment that she had to act. With a sudden burst of energy, Gwen lunged at the machine’s head, but it was quicker. The machine man took Excalibur from her and used her ancestral blade to release her head from the tyranny of its torso. It then proceeded to whirl it around wildly by its hair before tossing it, sending it through the body of would-be Prime Minister, Brian.
The crowd in the room gasped as their queen's headless body fell to the ground. They looked to Atom, who stared back at them with his cold, unblinking eyes. They cared less about the man who might have been Prime Minister. After all, he didn’t have a magic sword. A magic sword that The Atom bent over its knee like it was a cheap children’s toy.
The crowd watched in mute horror as Atom looked to the sky and flew off into the night.
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