Plutonium fluoride
The Eternals are a race of superhumans in Marvel Comics, created by Jack Kirby.
Issue 1
- Ike Harris: What would you say if I told you you were an immortal superhuman, granted powers by aliens to safeguard the earth from harm?
- Mark Curry: Then I'd say I don't want to join your religion, I'd tell you to leave me alone. Since I'm currently not getting enough sleep to be polite, I'd tell you you sounded nuts. And I'd tell you that I'm calling hospital security if you don't go away. That's what I'd say.
- Ike Harris: That's what I was afraid of.
- Sersi: Can you lend me like nine hundred dollars?
- Abi: Why should I lend you nine hundred dollars?
- Sersi: If you don't lend me nine hundred dollars, I won't be able to pay my rent. I'll be thrown out of my apartment. So I'll have to move i with you and be in your living room all the time, eating your food and stealing your boyfriend again, and I'll be so depressed that I won't eat right, leading me to die of a heart attack, and you'll be all like "Ohmygodshejustdied" and you'll join a convent or start a charity or something which would in no way be as disruptive as you lending me the nine hundred dollars.
- Abi:Fine, fine I'll lend you the money, provided you promise to pay me back eventually and when did you steal my boyfriend?
- Thena: The blast renders human eye unable to see, leaving enemy forces helpless against our soldiers, who'll have these goggles. Of course, the effect is only temporary - we could't have an entire nation of enemy combatants sueing the Army, or anything...
- Sersi: Yes, Mr. Ambassador, of course I've heard of your country. Vorozheiko is the ninth-largest of the former Soviet Republics. Your main exports are, um, grains and minerals
- Mark Curry: Well, Mr. Harris, that's a fascinating story. But - and leaving aside the bits that sound rubbish - there are two things I don't like about. One, why has none of this shown up? Roswell nuts get excited about blurry photos, so how has no-one noticed this Third Horde or whatever they were called?
- Ike Harris: The Third Horde of Celestials arrived only thirty years ago, you must remember -
- Mark Curry: 1970s? I wasn't even alive at the time, but someone would have noticed. It would have been on the Disscovery Channel at least. And the second problem. You claim that you can shrug of any disease, live indefinitely, fly... in any genetic lottery, you are the guys with the million-dollar tickets. So, why aren't there more of you? Why haven't you bred? Wouldn't we all be Eternals?
- Ike Harris: I... I don't know... You do believe me, don't you?
- Mark Curry: Well, put it like this - if Spider-Man told me he'd got his spider-powers from reading Chariots of the Gods, I'd probably say he was nuts, too.
Issue 2
- Hitman: Yes, Harris survived the explosion, the fall, and the attack, so I thought we'd start this morning by drowning him.
- Phone: It won't work. He has extremely efficient lungs. He can get oxygen from water if he has to.
- Hitman: We know that now.
- Mark Curry: Sersi, I have to thank you for letting me come to this party.
- Sersi: Oh, it's nothing. I was editing the guest list anyway... Oh, but if anyone asks, you're the New York editor for 'Foreign Policy Monthly'. I checked, and "Cute Friend of the Organizer" just wasn't enough for them to let you in.
- Mark Curry: OK. (begins to walk away, but then stops and turns around) "Cute Friend of the Organizer"?
- Sersi: Not now, Cute Boy, I have people to talk to.
- Mark Curry: Well, I believe that 'Foreign Policy Monthly' has had the most even account of the war in Chechnya.
- Vorozheikan Embassy Official: Even? Last month you were in favor of the rebels, this you're in favor of the government.
- Mark Curry: Yes, but our editing policy is the most even. We always encourage our staffers to follow their own voice, so to speak.
- Embassy Official: (to subordinate, in Vorozheikan) This man's an idiot, just like all American journalists.
- Hitman:(after several attempts to kill Ike Harris) He's just not built for dying, is he?
Issue 3
- Sersi: (suspects that she may have superpowers)I mean, what am I supposed to do? What if I'm some kind of freak?
- Mel: Well, to look on the bright side, I can tell Banana Splitz Todd, and he'll break out the champagne.
- Sersi: Heh.
- Hitman: Faith, my friend, is what separates us from the animals. Belief in a higher power, am I right?
Issue 4
- Ike Harris:(after touching the Eternal city of Olympia) I am Ikaris. I am Ikaris of the Eternals. I am older than humanity. I was created to protect this Earth and everything that moves upon it. Someone has done this to my people. Whoever you are... wherever you are - I will find you.
- Sprite: I don't know why you were so worried about Sersi, Makkari. You and her were together since the dawn times. But you broke up half a million years ago because she was cheating on you. Then you broke up ten thousand years ago because you were cheating on her. You broke up sixteen hundred years ago because you were tired of it. Then you rescued her from sme dumb fire in Rome. Of course, I offered to go save her -
- Zuras:(in flashback) A noble thought, Sprite, but you're just a child!
- Sprite: By then, of course, she'd had sex with all the straight male Eternals, all sixty of them, except me -
- Sersi:in flashback) Sprite, that's so sweet. But you're just a child!
- Sprite: Yeah, I had to spend a million years watching the rest of you swan around as adults... a million years of being treated like a kid... And then I found the Dreaming Celestial... the power of its mind... so I made an illusion around the rest of you, so you wouldn't interfere, and when it was done, I took Zuras, the most powerful of us, and Ajak, the only one who could talk to Celestials, and I brought them here and we did it. A Uni-Mind, powered by the Dreaming Celestial. And suddenly, it wasn't illusion I was creating anymore, it was reality. I could have done anything. Could've made snow taste like chocolate. But I settled for this. Fame and humanity. The world loves me as a child superstar, and someday I'm going to be a man. I gave you all humanity, Makkari. You should be freaking grateful.
Issue 5
- Narrator: Druig smiles as his terrified minions kill his prisoners with knives. And in the morning, he will announce that these atrocities have been committed by... Who? Gypsies, possibly. Homosexuals. Slavs. And he will have them rounded up. And it will be necessary to reinstate the secret police. And without quite knowing why, he feels as if he is returning to the good old days. The very old days.
Issue 6
- Iron Man: Where the hell did that giant robot come from?
- Yellowjacket: I think it's Japanese.
- Iron Man: Why?
- Yellowjacket: Because they love giant robots in Japan.
- Iron Man: And you regard this as the basis for a sound hypothesis?
- Yellowjacket: Never doubt Yellowjacket's junk-culture intuition.
- Yellowjacket:(after seeing the Dreaming Celestial's effect on the sleeping populace of San Francisco) Tony, it's Yellowjacket. I don't think the robot's from Japan anymore...
- Yellowjacket: You gonna back down here?
- Ikaris: Tell you what, big guy. Why don't you just stand over there and we can sort this out as soon as I work something out. OK?
- Yellowjacket: Well, that sounds... logical. (as he's walking away) Hey. You're mind-controlling me, aren't you?
- Ikaris: Yes. Just stand over there. Maybe if your shadow is big enough we can delay the Celestial from powering up.
- Yellowjacket: The robot is solar-powered?
- Ikaris: Exactly. Except it's not a robot and it's not solar-powered.
- Hitman: No-one move, or I eat the child. And believe me, that's not a figure of speech.
- Ikaris: Sersi, quickly! Use your powers to save us!
- Sersi: I have no idea how to... oh, dammit!
- (Sersi waves her hands. Hitman begins to morph into a tree, child runs away)
- Hitman: What the - oh, damn.
- Sersi: There. Now he's a tree. Can we get back to taking Mark to a hospital?
- ...
- Hitman: You have no hope of success against the Celestial. You know this. No hope.
- Ikaris: Shut up, tree. There's always hope.
- (in the aftermath, the Celestial has agreed to go back to sleep)
- Iron Man: We can be back in under an hour with every superhero in America. We can beat this thing.
- Makkari: No, you can't.
- Iron Man: So it's a giant alien robot. It's not God.
- Makkari: Keep telling yourself that, Stark. Oh, by the way... it says it likes you.
- Yellowjacket: But... who are you people?
- Zuras: We are the Eternals. We are humanity's last court of appeal.
- Iron Man: You need to register. To operate as superhumans in America, you need to register.
- Zuras: We do not. We are ageless. We will still be here tomorrow, and a hundred centuries from now.
- Yellowjacket: Whose side are you on?
- Zuras: If you saw a group of children fighting over which of them could play on a patch of waste ground, would you pay any special interest?
Issue 7
- (An army of Deviants has arrived outside the Eternals' stronghold in Antarctica)
- Kra: Hear me, Eternals! From the farthest corners of the world, we have come! Now face - Kra and his Deviant Army!
- Minion: Yeah.
- Zuras: Oh, the fools. The one city. The one city in the entire world where the climate around it is just as dangerous as the inhabitants, and they decide to attack it.