If Normal-Art were to count the ways things were going right, the list would have been limited to one item: the camouflage setting on the B.T.T. uniforms was preventing the Landing Crew from drawing the attention of the many hostile parties that lay before them.
Hephaestus yelled in God-Art’s direction, “Intruders to my land! Be thou members of the Blue Army or the Pink Army, it matters not. Hephaestus has spent too long frozen in time and is filled with rage! Thou shalt join thy comrades as I send all of thee to meet my brother, Hades!”
God-Art cursed. Hephaestus raised the saber high and readied to attack.
As Normal-Art’s brain began to circle down the drain of despair, it was interrupted by a cry of “En garde!” from God-Art, directed toward Hephaestus. God-Art had drawn his dagger, the one with the serrated blade and the hilt made from a green tiger’s paw. As he stood with the dagger in his left hand, ready to parry or strike, his right was elbow-deep in the small leather pouch that hung on the rope-belt that surrounded his waist.
God-Art pulled a slushy ball of snow from his pouch. He grinned a wolfish grin. Hephaestus reached into his bushy beard with the hand of his smaller arm. He retrieved from its depths a burning coal. He returned God-Art’s grin with a smirk.
“Doest thou think I know not every trick that thou might scheme, Artheoskatergariabetrugereiinganno? I am Hephaestus, High Commander of the Bureau of Interdimensional Travel! I see and know everything! I can best thee in my sleep!”
God-Art laughed. “We’ll see about that. A first and final offer, before we come to blows: give me that cosmic saber, and I shall let you limp away from this encounter unscathed.”
Instead of replying with words, Hephaestus charged forward. The way he limped reminded Normal-Art of a child just learning to run—awkward, arms askew, and every moment threatening to teeter and fall. It took everything inside of Normal-Art to stifle his laughter and maintain radio silence.
Hephaestus swung the onyx saber in a mighty downward stroke at God-Art. God-Art shrugged and then raised his dagger to block the blow. A resounding gong rang out across the battlefield as the weapons crashed into one another. The roof shook.
God-Art kicked Hephaestus with his heel, knocking the High Commander backward. God-Art pounced at Hephaestus with his dagger outstretched. He moved with the grace of a jungle cat, and Normal-Art was unsurprised to look down and see that God-Art’s legs had, indeed, transformed into those of a jungle cat.
But God-Art’s blow did not land. Hephaestus spun out of its way, and then used his momentum to follow with a side swipe. God-Art backflipped over the blade and erupted into laughter as he smeared the snowball onto Hephaestus’ face during mid-flip. But then he gagged, because Hephaestus took advantage of God-Art’s open, laughing mouth to flick the burning coal into it. God-Art gasped a surprised gasp as he swallowed it.
The two gods backed away from one another. Hephaestus’ face was covered in snow. Normal-Art remembered the stuff. God-Art was some sort of horrific sandman in his earth’s pantheon, and the god used the snow from his mountain fortress to help children fall asleep. But as Art knew from experience, the snow did not calmly bring you to slumber, it burned you until you passed out from pain.
Steam rose from Hephaestus’ face where the snow burned. “Prepare for slumber,” said God-Art.
As God-Art spoke, steam began emanating from his own ears. “Prepare for flames,” replied Hephaestus.
And with that, the steam poured more quickly from God-Art’s ears. Then it began coming out of the corners of his eyes. And then his eyes melted. He screamed and brought his hands up to his face. The waxy whites of his eyes flowed between his fingers and gathered in a pool at his feet.
Hephaestus reached into his robes and retrieved a small spray can. He sprayed it onto the snow covering his face and it sloughed off. His skin was slightly red and raw, but mostly none the worse for wear.
“Please,” said Hephaestus. “Didst though really think that such an amateur-level attack would work? I would expect such pittance from a new demi-god, but thou shouldst know better, Artheoskatergariabetrugereiinganno.”
God-Art fell to his knees and screamed. Beverly leapt from her perch on his shoulder down onto the ground. She gathered as much of his melted eyeballs as she could carry and scrambled up his shoulders. She attempted to stuff them back into the god’s eye sockets, but the melted eyeballs flowed right back off his face. Beverly dropped to the ground and raised up onto her hind legs. She raised her forelegs toward the sky and looked as though she were beseeching the heavens for help.
And that’s when Normal-Art realized that the melting eyes and the pained screams and Beverly’s prayers were a ruse. God-Art was feigning defeat to let Hephaestus think he had won. If Normal-Art’s time with God-Art had taught him anything, it was that the mischief god would be pouncing in the next second or two.
Normal-Art would have warned Hephaestus, but if he ever wanted to get home to his couch, then he needed to ensure the B.T.T. were the victors in this match. And for that to happen, he needed to remain camouflaged until ordered otherwise, which meant he needed to maintain radio silence and stay still so that his uniform would use whatever weird made-up-sounding science it utilized to blend him into the background.
And besides, he did not really like Hephaestus, so he would not be too sad to see the god go.
God-Art collapsed onto his stomach and pretended to die. Hephaestus limped over to Older-Art. Normal-Art saw the terror in his older-self’s eyes. Using the hand on his smaller arm, the god grabbed Older-Art by the shirt and held him high in the air.
Older-Art whimpered, “P-Please. Let me go. I-I-I just want to go home.”
Hephaestus frowned. He glanced toward the northeast. The blue and pink bears were crashing against one another less than a hundredth of a mile away. They were approaching fast. Hephaestus said, “Thou are a man of few loyalties. If thou help me end the threat of the cosmic bears, then I shall grant thee pardon, and thou mightst return home.”
“H-H-How can I h-h-help?”
Hephaestus nodded toward the approaching bears. He said, “Thou once acted as a beacon for them, correct?”
Older-Art frowned. “Y-Y-Yes, sir. Well, the blue one specifically, s-s-sir.”
“Then do so again.”
Hephaestus slid the onyx sword into a scabbard strapped to his back. Then he used his free hand to reach into his robes.
Hephaestus removed from the robes a mammoth lantern, so large that Older-Art would have needed to stand on somebody’s shoulders to reach the top.
“H-H-Holy crap. That thing was hidden inside your robes? How?” asked Older-Art. “And what else are you hiding in there?”
Hephaestus frowned. “I create magical items,” he replied. “This is a magical robe, with an infinite number of infinity-sized pockets.”
“Sounds heavy.”
And then something seemed to click inside Older-Art. Recognition shone in his eyes as he stared at the gargantuan lantern. He gasped. “Wait, is that what I think it is?”
Hephaestus laughed. “If thou think it is a Reality Lantern, then yes, it is.”
“W-What are we going to do with it?” asked Older-Art.
“Well, since thou freed the foul cosmic creatures from the one in which I trapped them on Earth 1,000,000, we’re going to string thee up as bait so thou canst lure them into this new one.”
Older-Art frowned. He said, “That sounds like a terrible idea.”
Hephaestus ignored Older-Art’s criticism. Normal-Art’s heart sank deep into his bowels. He remembered swimming inside one of those things for an eternity, so long that he forgot who he was. He found himself pitying his older twin. But it was not true empathy, it was mostly pity originating from the recognition that he would physically be in this predicament someday in his future.
Hephaestus unscrewed the lid to the Reality Lantern. He sat Older-Art on its lip so that his feet dangled down inside the lantern. Hephaestus retrieved shackles fr
om another of the infinity-sized pockets in his robe and tied Older-Art in place atop the lantern so that he could not move. Then the High Commander pulled a small, round, gray device from somewhere else in his robes and stuck it to the back of Older-Art’s head.
“Actually,” said Hephaestus, “it sounds like one of my better ideas. We shall ensure its success by using my science-magic to amplify whatever inside thee makes thee a beacon to these creatures. Thou willst draw them to my trap like moths to the flame.”
Normal-Art watched in horror as Hephaestus flipped a switch on the device. Older-Art’s eyes clouded pastel blue. Then Older-Art leaned his head back and opened his mouth. A spotlight made from pastel blue light burst forth from deep within him, shining straight up into the sky.
Normal-Art stifled a gasp when he noticed the blue and pink bears break apart from their warring tryst to stare over at the spotlight. A cartoonish grin spread across each of their faces.
And then God-Art’s laughter echoed across the rooftop. He leapt to his feet, his face and body restored to their normal states. With Hephaestus’ weapon currently sheathed and thus offering no protection, God-Art pounced. He brought his serrated dagger down in a mighty stroke across Hephaestus’ overlarge right shoulder. The blade sliced clean through, and Hephaestus screamed as his arm fell away from his body.
“B-B-But my coal should have kept you incapacitated for at least another five minutes,” muttered Hephaestus from between clenched teeth.
“Oh, please,” replied God-Art. “All that coal did was give me indigestion and make the hell inside my stomach burn slightly hotter. You’ll have to do much better than that to best me.”
And with that, God-Art spun and sliced open Hephaestus’ stomach. Hephaestus doubled over and grabbed at his spilling intestines with his remaining arm—the skinny one. He attempted to stuff his innards back inside his wound. He collapsed to the ground. God-Art laughed and stared with greedy eyes at the incoming bears. He crouched, readying himself to pounce.
In a flash of bright light, the B.T.S. Unicorn Husker appeared in the night sky a few hundred feet above the Olympus building. It rained bolts of energy down upon the battlefield, devolving blue and pink and B.I.T. armies alike into puddles of primordial goop.
A whine filled the air as something dropped from the bottom of the Unicorn Husker. God-Art looked up in time to see a missile about to crash into his head. He dodged, and the missile exploded against the rooftop a mere few inches from where he had been. The impact sent the god tumbling across the roof until he crashed to a halt against the Reality Lantern. A crater that stretched two-dozen levels down into the building was left in the missile’s wake, and everything within the crater had devolved.
“Now,” proclaimed Bagoo’s voice in Normal-Art’s ears.
Three-dozen Purple Shirts leapt into the air toward God-Art, their camouflage disengaging. They fired rifle-class Time-Phasers at the god, but he somehow managed to jump into the air and spin in such a way that he dodged their entire volley of blasts. While in the air, he pulled a gilded mirror from his pouch with one deft move of his hand. Despite the Purple Shirts surrounding him on all sides, he used it to reflect their next volley of Time-Phaser blasts back toward them. Nearly two dozen of them were struck by the caroming energy charges. They promptly devolved into yellowed goop.
God-Art laughed. Beverly rolled away from God-Art and began blasting the remaining decamouflaged Purple Shirts with lightning. A half-dozen of them disappeared into the ether before the six survivors managed to dogpile her and overwhelm her.
Bagoo and 29333 pounced on God-Art. Bagoo zoomed forward and wrapped one of the bandages dangling from his torso around God-Art’s neck, another around each of God-Art’s legs, and another around each of God-Art’s hands. 29333 fired her Time-Phaser rifle at God-Art’s torso at point-blank range.
God-Art’s head sprang free from his body just as his body began devolving into a frothy black goop. While in the air, eight spidery legs appeared from the base of his skull. The god’s head landed atop Older-Art’s shoulder. The god’s head burst into another round of maniacal laughter. It then looked at 29333 and Bagoo and grinned a mirthless grin.
God-Art flicked his tongue against the back of his teeth. They launched from his mouth like a horde of bullets. They smacked into 29333 and Bagoo’s torsos, and as they did so, they exploded. Blood erupted from 29333’s wounds. Yellowed mist erupted from Bagoo’s. Bagoo and 29333 howled in pain and tumbled in a heap onto the rooftop.
Meanwhile, the pink and blue bears reached the rooftop, their mouths slavering as they flew toward the pastel blue spotlight emanating from Older-Art’s mouth. But just when they neared their target, another dozen whines sounded out across the night sky, and then a dozen missiles originating from the B.T.S. Unicorn Husker crashed into the bears. The bears smacked against the roof and caromed over to the edge, where they devolved from bears first into cute puppies, and then from cute puppies into prickly cacti.
Normal-Art shrugged at the stupidity of it all. And then he realized that he had never moved when Bagoo had given the order to attack. “Damn,” he muttered to himself, though he did not feel all that bad, because everyone else seemed to be in a much worse state than him.
The cosmic pink and blue cacti began gyrating, and soon returned to puppy form, and then returned to bear form. They looked up at the B.T.S. Unicorn Husker and growled.
They launched in a rage toward the ship. God-Art leapt into the air after them. He managed to snag one spindly spider-leg onto the pink bear’s foot and pull himself up. He opened his mouth to bite into the bear.
Normal-Art’s stomach filled with despair. The bears would surely best a single B.T.T. carrier-class dirigible, and God-Art would surely consume the pink bear now that he was on top of it. If the B.T.T. and the B.I.T. both failed today, and if God-Art achieved his desires, then there would be no way for Normal-Art to get home, and he would likely perish at God-Art’s hands as God-Art remade the Multiverse in his image, because his new version of the Multiverse surely would not include Art and his couch.
Art stared down at his feet rather than up at the bears and God-Art. If his doom was about to come, he surely did not want to watch it approach.
And then he noticed what everyone else seemed to have forgotten. He sprinted forward and unsheathed the onyx saber from Hephaestus’ back. He glanced back up at the bears. They had already torn a gigantic hole in the side of the B.T.S. Unicorn Husker’s gondola, and what seemed like thousands of Purple Shirts were falling from the hole to their deaths. God-Art was just beginning to chomp down on the pink bear’s back. The pink bear seemed to neither notice nor care.
Normal-Art chewed on his bottom lip. He watched for a moment.
The bears were attacking in a pattern. They moved so fast that it repeated every couple seconds. They slashed across the sides of the ship, flew down near the roof of the Olympus building, bounced against each other about fifteen-feet above Normal-Art, and then fired off again toward the Unicorn Husker to create another swath of damage. Normal-Art let them repeat the pattern twice more to get the timing, and then when they were on their way back down to crash into one another once more, he threw the saber straight into the air to impale them on it.
He bit his tongue for a moment. But then he could not hold back the words, so he yelled in mimic of one of his favorite anime cartoons, “Onyx Saber, I choose you!”
The saber twisted end over end. Time seemed to slow. Every hope he had ever hoped rode on this unlikely throw.
Chapter 42
BLUE
Pastel blue filled Older-Art’s mind. The only thing he could perceive was blue. He had no other thoughts.
And then the blue grew more intense.
Chapter 43
AS EVER, ART MISSES THE MARK
Normal-Art stared in horror as the saber fell just short of the mark. The bears bounced against one another just out of its reach and caromed off on another attack run against the B.T.S. Unicorn Hus
ker.
And then gravity went to work on the saber. It began a slow tumble back toward the rooftop.
It fell point-first. Normal-Art squealed in terror at the prospect of it landing on him. He screamed, already anticipating the pain it would send coursing through him.
And then it landed squarely in Older-Art’s upper torso, just below his right shoulder.
“Uh, oh,” said Normal-Art. “That can’t be good.”
As ever, Normal-Art was ultimately wrong. As soon as the blade stabbed into Older-Art’s flesh, the blue spotlight emanating from his mouth grew brighter and wider. It enveloped the pink and blue bears the next time they crashed together in the air above the rooftop. The bears spun to face Older-Art. Their eyes glazed over, and they stared at the source of the spotlight with zombie-like hunger, the B.T.T. ship high above now smoldering and forgotten.
God-Art continued chomping away at the pink bear, not noticing the shift in the bears’ attention. His eyes were now hued pink.
The bears began floating toward Older-Art. Normal-Art sat down. He crossed his arms. He had no idea what to do next.
Chapter 44
CHRONOS EX MACHINA
Alex remembered the term he had learned in training for what the B.T.T.’s intervention in this reality would feel like to all others involved, especially those who knew not of the B.T.T.’s existence: Chronos ex Machina. It is like a Deus ex Machina, except it specifically involves a time traveler who shows up out of nowhere to provide the tools necessary for the protagonist to achieve his/her/its goal. Ultimately, this was the service that the Bureau of Time Travel provided most often to those in need. He thought for an inane moment how much more enticing the organization would have sounded if it had named itself the Chronoi ex Machinis10 rather than the Bureau of Time Travel. But then he remembered that duty called, so he shook the thought from his head.
And Now, Time Travel Page 35