The pop sizzle of grease charring the fleshy remains of a once great piece of cattle the only thing that greeted him as he walked through the doors. No welcome, how are you today sir, no how might we be able to serve you. No, there was none of that, being the late shift and all they felt they had better things to do then waste their time on such pleasantries. Like continually cook the wedges of meat shipped to them by the home office until they resembled a hockey puck, and tasted about the same.

It all stank of lies to him, this temple of commerce. Thousands of greenbacks flowed through the veins of this establishment, craped back out its rectum into the pockets of the controlling corporations executives. All because the sixteen and seventeen year old kids they employed had successfully poisoned another hundred pieces of brain dead livestock. Hey they decided to eat there, there HAD to be something off with the population's thought process.

Some might say there was something off with his thought process given what he was about to do.

Another sheep of society hobbled up to the firmica counter. The high school junior who wore the garish uniform the eatery forced on her stood behind. That shade of yellow never was meant to co-exist with that orange, no matter where the two base colors sat on the color wheel.

"A quarter pounder, no cheese, no, onions, and none of them damn pickles." The woman, obviously a transient of some variety, asked, causing the girl to punch up her order rapidly without making eye contact with the customer.

"2.14." Was all she said, her hand out stretched and her eyes still cast downward. The youth of today only boiled his blood further. The necessity for his future actions became more clear as each minute wore on. The fat pig in front of him shoved her cash into the child's hand and walked off to wait for her order as his aboriginal frame eased up to the register after her.

Again the girl failed to actually glance in the general direction of her client. True he was an aborigine, native to the deeper areas of Australia. True, there was still a smattering of prejudice and strife between the ebony cast and their paler cousins who'd come to 'share' their land. All this added up to an expected amount of disdain shown when the two met. The 'waitress' awaiting his ordered showed him far more then he'd allow anyone.

True, this story was about those very things, that prejudice, that strife, that hate.

He looked down at the girl, standing over her at a statuesque six feet and three inches. Dread locked tresses curled down his spine like mighty ebony coiled pythons. A flat wide nose bridged his face, full lips grimacing as his throat started to say, "Everyone not employed here please exit the building. All the rest, this is now a hostage situation. Make peace with whatever metaphysical beasts you worship."

In the back of the Pacific City McDonald's, the pop sizzle of the grease meeting meat finally stopped as Michael Manly took notice of their newest 'guest'.

HUMANITY #5
Pacific City 5 (of 6)
'Its not about the color of my skin, it's about my place in life'
Written by Alex Cook
NOTE: Happens before Millennium Man #10

Regina Darling noticed the non descript package sitting on her desk the moment she walked into the upper floor office of PCN central. As a news anchor of some renown, it wasn't the first time such odd packages had found their way into her hands. As a beauty known the country over, Regina's perfect strands of blonde hair cascaded down the right side of her face, casting an odd shadow on her blue crystal like eyes atop her slightly pointed nose. It was this position of notoriety that caused the masses to stream out of the woodwork. All sorts of anonymous sources would drop of files, papers, videos, pictures, anything they thought was news worthy. Most of the time it was nothing but dribble that passed into PCN's bowels, but every now and then some morsel was deemed worthy of attention.

Regina, opening the package and guessing it was nothing more then something for the round file cabinet, changed her mind once a video cassette and a note with the words 'PLAY ME' fell to the wooden surface of her work area.

The work place was dead silent, all eyes cast on the ebony man who just claimed this was a hostage situation. Most had noticed he lacked any noticeable weapon on his person, so the current consensus opinion was another raving lunatic had just stumbled into their lunch-time havens to disrupt their precious hour away from the grind of their jobs.

Finally the Aboriginal man noticed no one had taken his proclamations to heart. He looked around, watching white faces with the oddest grimaces on them peer back at him. It stuck him like a bat that none of them believed him. None of them took him serious.

"I said move it people!" He clambered, arms out stretched as if he were herding the lot of them past the golden arches. Steel tipped boots echoed against the floor of the quiet establishment, still none moving from their reclining positions. Realization set in as he hopped up and perched atop the Hamburglar's shoulder, looking down on the McDonald sheep as a crow would atop a man of straw.

"What, the fact I'm not packing heat means you don't have to listen to me?" His eyes turned to look at each of theirs, fathers, mothers, sons, sisters, lovers, friends; he watched each of them gaze at him with nothing but disbelief.

"I'm offering you all a chance to leave. You are the innocent, caught beneath this juggernaut's treads. It's time to change your habits people, please. Enough of you have died due to the poisons you've shoved in your mouths over the years. Leave now before you literally perish along with the people who force this crap on you."

The blonde behind the counter finally gasped in fear, feeling the slightest tinge of truth to the stranger's words. On instinct one knew when someone believed what they said, and this Aboriginal male was convinced of the facts he'd just uttered. The nest of hair on his head turned to look at her, a small smirk on his face as he blew a kiss in her direction.

"You first."

It started at the base of her neck. She raised her hand up and began scratching the skin above her spine, as if an errant tag was bothering her. She recoiled her hand in horror when she felt a growth of puss appear beneath her digits. Again she experimentally reached to the back of her neck, the puss wad now growing in diameter as the seconds ticked by. The pain, a dull sensation that was turned up a few thousand volts, began then, as the skin around the growth exploded outward. Green ropes sprouted from the wound, coils of plants spinning out of the cavity, some worming their way further into the child's body. She began spasming as leaves touched raw nerve endings, shaking so hard the vines around her back contracted and broke her in two, folding her over as she dropped to the floor in a heap.

"Nothing personal, love. You were just a cog in a wheel."

The stampede of patrons fleeing the scene of the crime began before he even finished giving the corpse a reason for her death. So much death had been wrought in this city since the Imperial Magistrate's ships rolled across the heavens, what was one more, some dark part of one employee's brain said. Some even by the hand's of Pacific City's icons, it continued.

Michael Manly watched as a co worker literally exploded from the inside out, unable to do anything but stand perfectly still. He knew, deep down it was due to his loss of faith in his own abilities, but he initially rationalized his lack of movement as being caught of guard. The spiral of denial just continued as Manly sunk deeper into his depression.

A final blow shattered Finnegan's face...

"Why?"

The now kidnapper and extortionist, as well as murderer turned, looking for the owner of the questioning voice.

"Why? How funny, I hadn't thought any of you would care to ask why. I only expected you all to beg." Still perched, like a panther about to pounce, he began, "Why? Why is simple."

"Why is because of my dead sister. Her body is what the camera is focused on now, Miss Darling."

Regina could only gasp as she saw the flies covering the nine year old girl's body.

"Do you know anything of my people's plight, Miss Darling? Do you ever pay attention to any of those news blurbs you repeat on live TV?"

The camera panned to the right, showing an exposed wall inside the shoddy hovel of a home the video started within. She noticed immediately the bulbous black splotches of mold growing within the space between the flimsy drywall. The Black Mold.

"Do you know what this is? It's called the Black Mold, a poisonous naturally occurring mold associated with unfit health conditions. This is the cleanest dwelling within my government stipend housing complex. I'm one of the only ones who hasn't been infected by some disease associated with this thing."

A match was casually thrown onto the little girl's corpse, catching aflame immediately due to the light covering of gasoline. The flames leap to the equally petrol saturated walls, the camera moving backwards and out of the home, panning as wide as the lens could in the process.

"My family is dead, my only sister gone, Miss Darling. I wanted someone to see my side of the story, before I do what I plan to. This is my suicide note Miss Darling. I won't be walking away form this alive, nor will a lot of others."

Regina hung her head as the camera was thrown to the floor. She could have sworn she saw something green move beneath it, cradling the camera and turning to look at the Aboriginal man with a death wish. "See you in the Dreamtime, Miss Darling." He commented, before the lens of the camera was cracked. Obviously the video was undamaged in the process, but the way the man had suddenly shorted out disturbed Darling to no end.

"Hey! Regina! Get to the McDonald's on 8th and Vilar. There's a hostage situation going down!" Darling's intercom suddenly shouted as the reporter cursed the technological wonder for the twenty thousandth time. With a start she took heed of her editor's words.

The McDonald's Michael worked at. Without any knowing how, she instinctively knew that Manly was involved in the thick of it.

"Now is the much more interesting question. No one noticed how some of your shipments had small rips or tears in them? A few odd shaped patties of meat fly across the grill?"

Manly could only shake is head, the six other employees huddled behind him as if he were there to protect them all.

At one time, he just might have.

"I can germinate things. Take a seed to full blow with the snap of my fingers. You've been feeding the populace of Pacific City, along with yourselves, as the blonde's body there attests too, a special mix of some of the nastier flora I've found around the Outback."

Manly's face started to harden as the facts where shown to him like cards in a poker game. He had them all, in a way more devious then anything he'd thought possible. The very food they'd ingested over the week was now a weapon against them.

"This McDonald's, and the hundreds of companies like it, destroy our society daily. Me and mine are a class beneath you, in your eyes. It is time you see how wrong you are. This is not about racial prejudice, this isn't because you hate my skin."

Manly took a step back, black polyester slacks whispering softly from the movement.

"It's because you think you are better then me. Better then us, the ones here first. Every cause requires a sacrifice, and you are mine."

It was still a shock when control of her movement wasn't her own. Actually, control over the location she happened to be was what she wasn't purvey too. No, instead that was dictated by some ancient pact she only knew family rumors of. Yet again she'd been called to task due to her father's past.

Demeter Caddecus glanced around the obvious fast food establishment. She noticed the golden arches immediately, wondering what would being her to a McDonald's of all places.

The second thing she noticed immediate was a former anchorman form KGPC, Michael Manly, at the front of a very frightened group of McDonald's workers. Manly himself was garbed as one of Ronald's helpers. A black native lounged atop Hamburglar's shoulder as if it were a throne, judging the little people beneath him. It was an odd scene, to say the least. She knew however that this was where she had been pulled too.

But why? Who was mentally unstable here? Obviously the black gentlemen had a few screws loose, but something felt off with this scene.

Manly turned slightly, as if he knew he was being looked at and noticed the lady standing near the fry machine in the back. A woman looking a lot like someone Winters had taken him too to get patched up once.

"Lilith?" He mouthed while his kidnapper looked the other way.

Demeter's eyes widened when she heard her sister's name. He was one of hers? Something still felt off, Manly exuding a presence that made Demeter want to melt, as if she were basking in the very rays of the sun itself.

Suddenly she remembered her father telling me of a similar experience when in the company of the Historic Era's Millennium Man.

"Lilith?" Michael ventured again.

"Millennium Man?" Demeter replied.

It was Manly's turn to pale.

Dark as night and just as foreboding, the Aboriginal hopped to the ground, walking over to Manly and his conclave of petrified co workers. "Do you see now that your lives are meaningless in the greater scheme of things? Only your deaths will be worthwhile, used to prove my point."

"Your point?" Michael asked, so far the ONLY one of any them to say anything, although all he had said were scared questions.

"Yes, my point. My point that the last thousand years of societal evolution is wrong."

A final blow shattered Finnegan's face...

"No," Michael, Millennium Man at one time, silently said to himself. He wasn't going to witness another death, helpless trapped in a shell either out of his control or too paralyzed with fear to respond. He was better then that, and with cold determination he started believing it.

In the corner of his eyes he saw a golden shimmer envelope around the woman who looked like Lilith but much more conservatively dressed. With a blink of an eye she was gone, her task completed. Sometimes all it took was a few words to start someone down the road toward mental rehabilitation. A question of one's identity and the ball began to roll.

"Pardon me?"

Manly turned, looking his attacker dead in the eye with a look of pure determination now etched into his features. "No."

With that, Michael was on top the man.

Outside, the police had cornered off the area 8th and Vilar, clearing an area of a few hundred feet between their line of cruisers and the building itself. Medical staff worked on treating the hostages that were released earlier, unsure if there was anything wrong with them in the first place. Most were screaming about a child having some growth burst from her back and kill her, panicked by the situation as they were.

Amongst the sea of reports and bystanders, Regina Darling watched the doors to the McDonald's finally open and a black man physically thrown past the barrier.

Michael continued his momentum, spinning the Aboriginal around and turning his hip like Pacific City's most renowned martial artist had taught him. Using the laws of physics to his advantage, Millennium Man flung the assailant over his shoulder and bodily against the swinging doors of the entrance. The force pushed the man past them, crashing against the asphalt of the street in a shout of pain.

Roiling to his feet, the black man without a name, the one Regina called Dreamtime as she scribbled down notes, looked back at the blonde hair chisel features of Michael Manly as he walked outside with him. Head held high, Regina had to marvel slightly at how different he looked. He almost looked like he did before.

"Time to die." Dreamtime breathed, feeling the souls of the plants within Manly's bloodstream call out to him from somewhere above the southwest of this reality. Michael, beginning to spasm, guessed quickly what the Aborigine was doing. No one was close enough to see it, but if they were many would have noticed the sun flare that seemed to erupt from Manly's cornea as he bathed his internal organs with solar radiation.

Suddenly the voices Dreamtime was moving too vanished, their connection severed as the emotional feedback slammed into his psyche. It was over faster then any of the media could have recorded it, many still readying their cameras and recorders as Dreamtime dropped to the ground, unconscious.

Michael looked up, catching Regina's eye quickly before realizing what a large crowd had gathered around his work place. Without a comment, he turned, and walked back inside, head held higher then Regina had seen it in months. There would be time for answers later, Manly wanted to cherish this small victory.

Regina Darling walked to her car, heart warmed that Pacific City's hero might not be retired after all.

NEXT ISSUE: Meet the newest champion of the Moment.

MORTAL COIL

Well, if you notice the dates I attach to these issues, this one was written after #6. 6 was meant to be 5, but it now ties directly into some of the events in BUSH 43, like this one ties into MILLENNIUM MAN, so a reshuffle was required. Not sure if I like this one yet (am I ever happy? ;) ) but it does work well with Millennium Man #10, which you must go read now. Go. Now.

-ALEX 11.30.02