It’s coming. I can hear it. It sounds like a freight train. The future of Vs. System is just around the corner, and it might flatten us with a new frontier of card-flipping force.

Flash-forward further, and the possibilities are endless. Before we talk about the things that are confirmed, I want to indulge in a bit of conjecture. I am going to give you The Wink—a Marvel character that many of us know from the video game called Marvel Nemesis: Rise of the Imperfects. The Wink would do well to appear in a future Vs. System expansion alongside all the fan favorites that have yet to see cardboard. Whether her status as a red card in the game ever materializes or not, she might tickle your fancy and get you fantasizing about a forgotten favorite or two.

I take The Wink seriously. Her ability to disperse and reassemble the individual molecules of her body sounds like something I would like the next age of technology to allow. It reminds me of the way that you and I reconnect each Monday here on Metagame.com. Instead of winking, you click your mouse on the appropriate spot on the computer screen, and the electrons combine to make my recent ramblings appear right before your very eyes. The Wink can make it physical. She shows up in another location ready to pinch somebody. Wake up to the future.

Sure, it seems impossible. So did cellular telephones. Each wave of technology seems like magic to the era it replaces. The Wink was born of magic, combined with elegant exquisite beauty. Perhaps her parable is a taste of future tech.

Benedetta Gaetani was the daughter of a successful young couple. Her parents were magicians. Her mother’s beauty was the main draw of their act, while her father simply put on the show. Benedetta was shy and withdrawn, suffering in silence with a serious case of ugly duckling syndrome. Her mother scolded her endlessly and drove her deep within herself. There she found a source of immense power. When her mother disappeared mysteriously, the young girl blossomed immediately into a gorgeous young woman.

After traveling the world with her father and establishing their act as the most incredible illusion ever witnessed, Benedetta fell into trouble. Her father was a gambler who owed way too much money to the mob. When the nasty boys got really nasty, they threw battery acid on her face and killed her father in front of her. As they turned to eliminate the final witness to their crime, Benedetta disappeared for real. She became the midnight wind and blew away. The Wink was born.

Will she ever reappear on cardboard? Probably not. However, putting aside all dreams of video-game-based teleporters, the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense is about to actually materialize on the solid structure of gaming tables all over the Earth. When it does, Liz Sherman will be as real as any other character card in the world.

Liz Sherman is hot. Her firestarter powers originally had some tragic consequences as she “slipped” and burned up her whole family early in her life. She shunned her abilities for a long time, but now she has come to grips. With a major motion picture to firmly implant her story into the consciousness of modern man, she is also fairly recognizable. Now we get to see what she can do on the kitchen table, as the Hellboy Essential Collection will encase her heat forever in the template of a Vs. System card or two.

Grigori Rasputin—the mad monk himself—is going to lead the Thule Society team affiliation against Liz and the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense. That means the future will be scary. Both in its historical context and its comic-book mythos, this is one of the most evil collections of occult personalities and phenomena that the world has ever known. I get all tingly just thinking about it.

We know we are getting a Conqueror Worm card. Let’s look at how historically twisted that is. Edgar Allan Poe, a true American hero and the father of modern horror, wrote the original poem. Mike Mignola, creator of Hellboy, named one of his most memorable graphic novels after Poe’s timeless description of terror. Now Upper Deck Entertainment has translated the essence of fear once again. This time it will have ATK and DEF values and a new ability to strike madness into human hearts. Its latest victim will be your opponent.

For now, Hellboy will have to wait. The future is not coming fast enough to include him or the demons he battles in Pro Circuit Los Angeles 2006. We do have another character that looks to perform a frightening illusion on his way to the championship purse, however. His name is Haywire, Suicidal Lover.

The first free character in Vs. System would surprise me very much if he were not included in at least one decklist on Day 3 of our next Pro Circuit. Combined with Fiddler and Mr. Mxyzptlk, Troublesome Trickster, there must be a way to put together a juggling act involving the KO’d pile that can create an engine of unstoppable destruction. How did Haywire, Suicidal Lover get the way he is? Let’s consult the myths.

Shane Wiggans gave us an excellent introduction to the legend in his preview article, but the story gets wicked sticky when we dive deeper. It is a cautionary tale of parents and children, lovers and allegiance. I hope you are sitting down—this gets crazy.

Thanos is always bent on destruction, and this time he had his sights set on Mantis. No, not the DC Comics version, but the Celestial Madonna that both Kang and the Elders of the Universe had unsuccessfully tried to eliminate earlier. Since she is the embodiment of all life force, and since Thanos is addicted to killing anything he can, Mantis was the perfect target for the terrible Titan.

Mantis had a child named Quoi who was rumored to be the Universal Savior. Thanos went on with his bad self and vowed to destroy them both. Mantis engaged the help of the Avengers, and Haywire, Suicidal Lover had wandered his way into their company. In the process of defending Mantis and Quoi from Thanos, a whole lot of Death in the Family happened. Mantis had survived her earlier destruction by dispersing her essence to fill the entire universe. Eventually, this began to form five different phantom Mantises. Thanos thought he had murdered her four different times.

Fortunately, the fifth partial Mantis survived and reabsorbed the mind, soul, and powers of the others. With her full self intact, she thwarted Thanos and lived to tell about it. This just made him angrier, and he recruited some vicious space pirates to help him kill her once and for all. Two of the space pirates accepted the gift of godhood in exchange for their mercenary skills, but Raptra refused. Instead, she kidnapped Quoi from the plant-people that had raised him. The plant-people turned against the Avengers and Haywire, who narrowly escaped in their spaceship. Meanwhile, in another part of the cosmos, Thanos was having family problems. Mentor, his father, had sent his brother Starfox and an army of Eternals to stop his son from ending all existence. When Thanos and his space pirate buddies succeeded in paralyzing the brother, Mentor sacrificed himself as a distraction.

Mentor died by throwing himself into the Rot. It was one of the coolest things ever. The Rot was an expanding field of blackness that consumed everything it touched. It even affected Eternity, who got all depressed and refused to help save anyone. There was some intense twisting and turning that followed, and just when it seemed that Thanos had everyone under his thumb, we learned that the Rot had them all trapped.

The goddess Death is the one thing that Thanos cannot resist. He loves her, he worships her, and he obeys her. He soon found out that she was stuck in the Rot along with everyone else. He also got slapped with a paternity suit. It seems that the Rot was actually the child of Thanos and Death. Somehow she had conceived and given birth to the thing during a continuity lapse when Thanos was knocked out for a while. However that happened, the unhappy couple now joined forces to battle their own offspring. They successfully eliminated the secret spawn of their love and restored all those that had been consumed by it.

At this point, Death went too far. She finally gave in and agreed to take Thanos as a mate since they were so good together when they defeated their own progeny. Thanos was insulted. He thought she was devoted to destruction, and now she wanted to breed? He disavowed himself of his allegiance and left the goddess in the dust. That gave Haywire, Suicidal Lover the opportunity he had been pining for. He petitioned Death to release his long lost lover Inertia from the other side since he could not bear her absence any longer.

Death refused.

So Haywire jumped. He dove into Death rather than remain separated from his love. He threw himself into oblivion, only to be reborn on the cardboard of Vs. System. The future will hear him, loud and clear, as he brings the force of his obsession front and center for Pro Circuit Los Angeles 2006. Unless the rumbling I am getting is just an empty stomach . . .

Rian Fike is also known as stubarnes, and the future is so bright he has to wear shades. Send parables, problems, praise, or prognostications to: rianfike@hattch.com