Star Rebellion

by Alicia Howell

  “Uh yea…not anymore, but none of the vehicles are useable.” Water looked like she had done something wrong and was fidgeting to get moving. I wondered if it had anything to do with the crying form the nurse we had heard. Arctic had mentioned soon after the agitation Maegan had towards Water that if she kept offending people, there would be consequences. However, Waterstar always offended people, so I'd leave Arctic to figure out how to manage that.

  “Think of it this way, you can outfit us with the newest models now,” Firestar put his arm around Ice’s shoulder and started moving him down the hall. Even from in front of them, I could hear Fire trying to convince Ice that losing all the cars besides Cerberus wasn’t the worst thing to happen, and that it was going to be better.

  Chapter 16: Chinatown

  FIRESTAR

  The portals. The portals are one of the main things that makes Calsh what Calsh is, you know, the best planet in the entire universe. You Earthlings with all of your science, sophisticated words would know what we call portals as wormholes. They're a fold in space, a quick pop through one and you could be on the completely opposite side of the universe. No, we cannot actually break down the science of these yet, that's how incredible they are.

  The portals on Calsh are all housed in one building, near Star Rebellion. Until recently, and I mean really recently for a reason you will see soon, the thirteen portals had been spread chaotically throughout the world with no order to them. The fact that there are even thirteen portals that connect in Calsh is astounding, and that most of them go to Earth too. Science can theorize that this is abnormal. Anyways, the portals are now in one building instead of all across the world thanks to our good friend Icestar. See, without him, we wouldn't know how to redirect the portals, which is how we got them to where they are. Icestar used a string of explosions, along with a decent amount of calculus and physics equations, to shift the portals to where they are now. The equations he used are impressive, like, not even Icestar could calculate them in his head, he has literally walls of the mathematics written around his garage. I guess that's one way to get the ladies.

  We have had master environmentalists in to help develop a way to filter the pollutants that come through the portal too. By master environmentalists, I mean Star Rebellion members who are in their late forties and take our patrol jeeps and use them for the useless purpose of trying to find vegetation on Calsh. There isn't any. We would know by now if there was. They did develop a system that takes any gases that can be collected for good instead of ozone destruction and stores them, while the rest we just try to send out to the Barrens in hopes that nothing dastardly comes from it. I mean, succubae are hot and all, but if some of them die due to pollution, I don't think anyone will be crying.

  The portals are locked to everyone besides Arctic and the head of ambassadors, who really isn't Foreststar, as you may assume. But you know what is said about assuming. Foreststar is just a prodigy, really good with his words. Better than Darkstar, since he doesn't need a spiffy power to convince people, just his mind. The head of ambassadors is in his thirties, I think. I've never met him. Ambassadors tend to be really uppity, and he most of all. One of those two men are the ones who have to unlock the doors whenever any of us normal guys need to go anywhere, which is where we are now. Waiting patiently, mind the sarcasm, for Arctic to show up and let us in so we could finally get this show on the road. I hear they have great booze in Russia, though really I don't drink. Honestly. I like keeping my badass reflexes, thank-you very much.

  WATERSTAR

  My team and I stood outside of the portal central doors. From what I had heard, there were a total of thirteen portals inside, each leading to a different place on Earth. I really wanted to just start going through random ones and seeing where I ended up, especially since I had never been to the surface.

  Sadly, though, we had to wait for Arctic to show up. He was being extremely slow today apparently.

  “Sorry that I’m late; I got held up with some advisers.” Arctic finally stepped up to the building. The sky was still pretty cloudy, and it was getting close to five am, Vatican time.

  He pulled out a keychain and unlocked the door with one of the many keys. “After you,” he said while holding the door open for everyone. I could see the bags starting to form under his eyes, and couple that with his newly forming pale complexion, gave him a gaunt look. The demon invasion was adding a lot of stress to an already crazy position.

  The portals were… not as amazing as I had thought. They were pretty much shiny glass in narrow, pentagonal door frames, lined up against the walls of the building. Each one the destinations painted in messy handwriting on the floor in front of its respective portal.

  “Ice, Water, the Beijing portal is the third one, Fire, Dark, the St. Petersburg portal is the eleventh. Please wait until I shut the door to step through; the portals have been known to accidentally pull others through. Try and enter at the same time also, for that specific reason.”

  We nodded our heads simultaneously and waited for him to back out. Once we heard the key turn in the lock, we all approached our assigned portal.

  “On three?” Fire asked.

  I nervously nodded my head in agreement. Ice held out his hand and I took it; his was slightly shaking.

  “One,” Dark started.

  “Two,” I echoed.

  “Three!” We all said at once as we stepped into the glass. It felt like we were walking through water. I felt my breath get squeezed out of my lungs; the only thing I could feel was Ice’s tight grip on my hand. I could see colors rushing past us, like the landscape of Calsh; all dark greys and dead browns. Then the color changed and it was a rush of sudden black, lighting up to a light blue before I saw silvers flow pass me quickly.

  And then I was thrown out into actual water.

  But I wasn’t under water. It was raining.

  For a second I panicked and looked around for something to hide under, but then I realized that it didn’t burn. This wasn’t acid rain.

  Oh right, Earth didn’t have acid rain.

  “Icestar?” I said weakly.

  “Gimme a sec.” He was leaning over a railing, looking down. I joined him at the railing and peered down. It seemed like we were in a nicer section of the city, but there was a single demon lurking around the garbage bins in the alley.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked, ignoring the demon. Forest had once told me that the portals could leave parts of you behind, though I hadn’t believed him then.

  “Shush! I feel like imma hurl,” he muttered, looking fairly green.

  “Oh,” I backed away from him and looked around. We were pretty high up, probably on a skyscraper or something. The sky was only lightly grey, and the rain wasn’t even falling that hard.

  The balcony we were standing on looked really nice; it had potted plants in a corner with silver railings that had intricate vines carved into it. I could see the light dying down from the area we had gotten thrown out of; there was a giant sheet of glass with an ornate frame around it. The top of the frame had Calsh spelled out in fancy handwriting.

  “So, should we just walk in?” Icestar asked, looking over at the double doors that led into the building. He was starting to look better.

  “Well, we can do that, or just stay out here and get soaked.”

  “Or we could knock?”

  I looked at him like he was mental. “But that would require us to act like normal people, and who wants to be normal?”

  Ice was shrugging as the balcony door opened.

  “The president has asked for you to come inside,” a tall man said with a strange accent. His eyes were narrow, like almonds.

  Ice and I looked at each other, and I shrugged. Couldn’t hurt, could it?

  We followed the man inside. The room we were now in looked like an office. Well, if offices were actually this large, and only contained one desk. It was probably a waiting room or something.

  The guy led us to the door behind the d
esk, but didn’t go in. Instead, he held it open for us, and nodded for us to proceed. After we had entered the room, he closed the door, which echoed in the large space.

  Another man was standing in front of a wall that was fully made of windows, looking out across the skyline of towering buildings.

  He glanced over us after a few moments of silence. “You’re different from the last person Arctic sent, Snowstar, I think that’s what her name was.”

  His accent was less pronounced than his secretary’s.

  “And you,” he said while walking over to me. “You are from that Mystic Team, the team that let the demons loose.”

  “Yes, sir.” This was not a time to be a smartass.

  “Well? Why has Arctic sent you now? I’m a little too busy to make a trip to Calsh. I don’t know if you’ve heard, but Russia is planning on attacking us, and I currently don’t have the weapons to defend my country from them. Nor do I have the time to talk to rebels.” The man sneered on the word rebels, and then walked back over to his desk and started rustling around papers. “Because of you rebels, specifically you, we have an onslaught of demons. Therefore, I cannot spend the time to entertain you while trying to keep my country alive.”

  “That’s why Arctic sent us, Mister Beijing,” I said while stepping up to the front of his desk.

  “Really? He thinks two teenagers will fix my problems?” The man looked like he was starting to get annoyed. Okay, so I only had a few moments then.

  “Technically, Icestar here is twenty.” Icestar then gave me a look like this was not the time to be a smart ass. I'm glad he agrees with my earlier internal monologue. “Sorry, sir. He does not believe we will fix all of your problems. He has requested that you travel to Rome as soon as you can manage, but preferably by ten o’clock tonight, their time. And,” I continued as he was about to interrupt, “the other two people on my team are currently in St. Petersburg, reasoning with Mister Moscow and having him meet in the same place, same time.”

  “Good luck with that,” Beijing scoffed. “I won’t go until two things have happened. One, you must get confirmation that Russia isn’t going to be launching any nukes. Secondly, you need to give me a way to get rid of these blasted demons. I can’t very well leave my country in the midst of a national crisis.”

  I looked the man over for a moment. “Can you give us a second to confer?”

  “By all means,” he motioned us to one of the couches in his office, then picked up the clunky phone on his desk and dialed someone’s number. I tuned him out and turned to Ice.

  “You have a plan?” he asked expectantly.

  “I have a plan.” I let a smile creep across my face. “What we’re going to do, if we have his permission, is get the demons to follow us. They’re highly attracted to Cerberus, right? What’s different about that car than others?”

  “The type of gas it uses. I use a specific concentration of acid rain and pure oil to run it, the reaction gives it even more power and a higher acceleration.” I blinked at him for a second trying to process that.

  “What makes acid rain acidic?”

  “Pollutants mostly.”

  “Do you think we could get some here?”

  “I don’t know, we’d have to ask him.”

  “Alright, here’s the rest of my plan,” I explained to him what I had been theorizing since I first saw the layout of the city I was in.

  Ice smiled. “I love it.”

  “Let’s go ask him then!”

  An hour later, Icestar and I were on a military base with a group of officers helping us move barrels of polluted water and pure oil. There was a massive tank with a fire burning beneath it, heating up some of the acidic water that we had already poured in.

  “How hot do you need this?” One of the men asked in bad English.

  “Boiling,” Icestar said as he peered into the tank. “I think that’s enough.” He motioned away an officer who had another barrel of water. “Bring the oil over now, and only put three in. There’s six barrels of water in there, right?”

  One of the taller officers nodded his head; from what I could tell, he knew English better than the rest.

  “Then yea, three barrels.” Ice moved out of the way as the men started pouring the oil in.

  “How are you going to mix this up?” I asked.

  “I won’t. You can’t really mix water and oil; they will always separate.” I nodded my head.

  The tall man, I think his name was Li, came up to us. “Should we send for the helicopter?”

  “Yea, go ahead and do that.” Icestar nodded, not taking his eyes off of the team with the oil. He leaned closer to me and said, “Isn't this going against the environmental movement Star Rebellion has going on?”

  I looked at him without knowing how to respond. “Well, yes. But...”

  When I didn't have more to say, Icestar continued, “I could probably build a biobomb in decent time too.”

  This I did have a counter for though! Let destruction prevail, my friends. “Yes, probably, but we don't know it demons are alive and killable via biobombs. Therefore, plan massive destruction.”

  Icestar briefly took his eyes off of what the military men were doing with the oil combination and rolled his eyes at me. I smiled and knocked my shoulder into his. He was really starting to feel like part of the team, which was great. He had proved to be a viable ally recently, and I don't doubt he would save some lives in the future. Maybe even mine, though I am too badass to even come close to dying.

  A few minutes later, my hair was being whipped around by the air spinning off a helicopter’s blades. It landed near us, and we waited for the pilot to come out toward us.

  “My name is Huang,” he said, bowing slightly. We bowed in return and introduced ourselves. He gave us each a set of headphones, and I saw that Ice was disappointed that they were pretty normal, unlike the stuff he was accustomed to making and using.

  We were directed into the back of the copter. If you ever get the chance to ride in a helicopter, take it. It’s freaking amazing. We had to wait in there for a few moments before we were cleared for takeoff, but after that it was pure awesome.

  My eyes were glued to looking out of the window as we flew above Beijing. The city was massive, larger than anything I had ever seen. Now I could understand how Earth housed over nine billion people. When they ran out of space on the ground, they just kept building higher and higher up. Huang told us that the average building height was near seventy floors these days.

  The building we were going to, however, was not that large. Only about fifty floors, according to Huang, though we had to run up and down all fifty of them. Oh joy.

  Huang landed the helicopter on top of the roof only long enough for us to get off, then he took high to the air and angled back the way we had come. He was going to pick up the acidic oil combo while we did the first stage of the plan

  “I think the roof access is in there,” Ice said, pointing to a small, walled in area in the direct center of the roof after setting down a medium sized container that we had brought with us.

  I tried the doorknob, but it was locked. Who the hell locks up abandoned buildings? I sighed in annoyance and swung my pack around, reaching for the zipper at the top. I pulled out a small black box in pristine condition; I cherished this thing like nothing else… except maybe my favorite dagger.

  “Hold this,” I said, shoving my backpack into Ice’s arms. He muttered something under his breath, but I ignored him. I lifted the lid of the box and was met by the familiar sight of my lock picking collection.

  Without Firestar, I wouldn’t be able to fashion a key for this door, which was a bummer; I liked having keys to all of the places I had been. Instead, I pulled out two insanely slim picks and closed my box up, placing it back in my backpack. No way was it going to sit on the grime coated roof.

  It only took a few seconds for me to move the picks around correctly until we heard the faint click as the lock came undone. I placed the picks i
n a pocket that ran the length of my thigh and took my bag from Icestar. “What the hell do you have in there?” he asked in relief of being able to drop the bag.

  “Explosives, knives, guns, and a flashlight, along with my lock picking kit. Oh, and a book incase I got bored.”

  “You sure that’s it?” he asked sarcastically. I flipped him off and smiled.

  I opened the door slowly and peered in, letting my eyes adjust to the light before opening it all of the way; it’d suck to get jumped by a demon right now. From what I could tell, there wasn’t anything in there except spiders and dust.

  “On the floor?” I suggested.

  Ice nodded and took off his hoodie. “Cover your nose… or face in general.”

  “Wait,” I said right before he was about to starting using his hoodie to get the dust up. I passed my hand in front of his face and made the energy stay there, creating a type of helmet, then repeated the same thing to myself. “Now go,” I said, the energy barrier making my voice sound warped as it echoed. I had manipulated the energy in a way to let oxygen pass through it, but apparently my plan didn't include soundwaves.

  Ice nodded and flapped his hoodie around the room, stirring up all of the dust. Instead of us being able to see where the door for going downstairs was, our sight was completely taken away for a few moments as the dust settled again.

  “Nice going, genius,” I muttered.

  “Do you have a better plan?” he said while glaring at me.

  “Yes, actually.” I created a broom out of energy, or well, I hoped I did since I couldn’t really see it. I proceeded to moving it across the floor in small swipes, and using another energy block to keep the dust from flying around everywhere.

  The door ended up being in the dead center of the room, and by the time I had uncovered it, I was sweating and a little tired from how much of my power I was using, which was strange because it really wasn’t that much. “I’ll get the oil,” Ice said, going out the door that led back to the roof. I took a few seconds break from moving before trying to open the door, which came free pretty easily. I guess it was only the exterior doors that had gotten locked up.