The Strike Trilogy

by Charlie Wood

  The old man turned to Tobin.

  “What do you say, Tobin? You wanna come back with us to the museum, or do you want to go back home first and rest?”

  Tobin looked back at Orion. The old man, Keplar, and Scatterbolt stood in front of him. Tobin knew something they didn’t.

  “There’s something I have to tell you guys,” the boy said.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  A little over four hours later, the cleanup of Boston Common was complete—to the best of the heroes’ ability, that is. With help from King Ontombe’s animal warriors and the freed Rytonian Rebels, they had safely evacuated any lingering Rytonian citizens, they had returned the majority of the lifeless Eradicator robots back through the portal to Capricious, and they had even dismantled most of the Rytonian Rebel medical stations that had been set up all around Boston Common during the war. Most importantly, the super-villains of the New Capricious Council had been captured, arrested, and detained, and they were now under strict surveillance in the most secure prison in Capricious, where they would await their sentencing for their involvement in the invasion of Earth.

  The heroes weren’t fooling themselves, though; it was undeniable that Boston Common had certainly seen better days—it was still littered with burnt- down trees, giant explosion marks, and, unfortunately, six gargantuan trigulsaur carcasses. However, the heroes had removed all signs from the Battle for Earth that they realistically could, and had also brought almost everything—and everyone—that wasn’t from Earth back to Capricious through the giant, red portal located in the middle of the Common.

  Now it was time to say goodbye.

  “Well, that’s about it,” Keplar said, standing in the park with his hands on his hips and looking up at the damaged skyline. “Anything that belonged to Capricious is back on Capricious. Most of it, anyway.”

  “Yes,” Orion said, “I’m sure there’s some stragglers and other things left behind, but we’d never find everything. I’m surprised we did as well as we did.”

  “When the Nebula opens up,” Tobin said, “it will give the Boston Police and the government some interesting things to comb through, at least. I can’t wait to see how many laser rifles end up on eBay.”

  Tobin forced a smile, while Orion and Keplar chuckled half-heartedly. But, peering over Orion’ shoulder, Tobin eyed the giant red portal a few dozen feet behind his friends. He knew they were all avoiding the obvious.

  Because of this, Scatterbolt wasn’t smiling. He was looking down at the ground, with his lip quivering. His foot was angrily kicking at the dirt, and his nose was sniffling.

  Tobin looked down and noticed Scatterbolt.

  “I just wish…” the boy said. “I just wish there was some way you guys could stay.”

  “I know, Tobin,” Orion said. “But we all talked about this and agreed: there’s no feasible way for us to stay here. It just wouldn’t be safe, especially for Keplar and Scatterbolt, to live on Earth. Our home is on Capricious.”

  “I know,” Tobin said, “but I wish...I wish things didn’t have to be this way. If I could go with you guys, I could—”

  “Tobin, your place is here,” Orion said. “With your mom and your family. You know that. You can’t leave them.”

  Tobin nodded, upset. “I know, but I...this shouldn’t—this isn’t right.”

  Tobin looked down at Scatterbolt. The little robot was crying now but trying to hide it, covering his face with his arm. Tobin knelt down to talk to him.

  “It’s okay, Scatterbolt. It’s okay, buddy.”

  Scatterbolt collapsed against Tobin and hugged him, wrapping his arms around Tobin’s waist. The little robot was sobbing. Tobin knelt down lower and hugged him back, trying to stop himself from crying.

  “This won’t be forever, buddy,” Tobin said. “I promise. I’ll see you again. I promise. Okay?”

  “I’m gonna miss you so much, Tobin,” Scatterbolt said, his eyes closed. “I don’t want to go back. I want you to stay with us.”

  Tobin took a deep breath and rubbed Scatterbolt’s back. “I know, buddy, but this isn’t goodbye, okay? We’ll figure something out. We’ll figure something out. This isn’t the end. I’ll see you guys again.”

  Scatterbolt broke off from Tobin and looked him in the eye.

  “You promise?”

  “Yup, I promise, buddy. And have I ever broken a promise to you?”

  “Never,” Scatterbolt replied. “Plus, you still need to teach me how to talk to girls.”

  Tobin laughed. “I will, you can count on it. But, in the meantime, just stay who you are, always be yourself, and don’t let any of them break your heart, okay?”

  Scatterbolt looked to the ground. “I think my heart’s breaking right now.”

  Tobin laughed but wiped away a tear. “You’ll be fine, buddy. It will get better. You’ve got the biggest heart of anyone I know.”

  Tobin stood up and moved on to Keplar. He and the dog looked at each other, smiling.

  Thinking back, Keplar remembered the first time he had met Tobin, in the grassy field in Capricious, the first time Tobin had ever traveled between worlds. The kid was so scared, so small, the dog thought to himself. But look at him now. Krandor, look at him now.

  “So,” Tobin said. “I guess this is it for a while, Dog Breath.”

  “I guess so,” Keplar replied. He thought it over, then grinned. “How boring is your life going to be without me? Seriously, how boring?”

  Tobin laughed. “Pretty boring. I gotta say, pretty boring. And, the worst thing is, I think there’s still a few records of yours in the training room that I haven’t broken yet.”

  Keplar waved his hand. “Ah, hell, I’m still better-looking than you, at least I can take that away with me.”

  Tobin laughed and they hugged. Keplar squeezed him tight with his giant, blue arms.

  “You’re my best friend, you know that, right?” the dog asked, choking back a tear.

  “You better believe it, bro,” Tobin said. “And I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  Keplar laughed, wiping at his eyes. “Now don’t go and do anything stupid in college while I’m not around, you hear me?”

  “Now that you’re not gonna be around,” Tobin said, “I think the stupid things I’m gonna be doing are gonna go down by about 100%.”

  Finally, they laughed and separated, and Tobin moved on to Orion. Teacher and student stood in front of each other. But they were so much more than that. They always were. They were friends—and, in a way, Tobin knew, they were father and son.

  Orion smiled at the boy, but Tobin was now in tears. The boy couldn’t hold it in any longer. He had been dreading this moment from the second the Daybreaker had told him what was going to happen with the portals between worlds.

  As Tobin cried and shook his head, angry and upset, Orion looked back at him, trying not to cry himself. The old man simply smiled, attempting to replace his sadness with pride for what Tobin had accomplished.

  It took Tobin a long time before he could find the strength to speak.

  “You have given me so much,” the boy said through his sobs.

  Orion smiled, tears now running down his cheeks. “Not nearly as much as you have given me.”

  They embraced, hugging in Boston Common. Tobin’s body was heaving now and he was unable to catch his breath. Orion held him close, placing a hand on the back of Tobin’s head.

  “It’s okay, Tobin. Everything is gonna be okay.”

  “I can’t…I can’t...I’m not gonna be able to go on without you.”

  “You’re going to be fine,” Orion said.

  The old man separated from the boy and looked at him face-to-face. Orion held the eye contact the entire time he spoke, though Tobin was looking down at the dirt. The old man pl
aced a hand on either side of Tobin’s face.

  “Look at me, Tobin. You’re going to be fine. Okay? Look at me. You’re going to be fine. You haven’t needed us—or especially me—for a long time now. You have grown into what I always knew you would be—the greatest hero I have ever seen. From the first day I met you, you’ve dedicated yourself, you’ve learned who you are, and you’ve grown into a man—a man your father would be so proud of. I am so proud of you. You’ve grown into the person I always knew you would be.”

  “I never could have done it without you,” Tobin said. “Any of it.”

  Orion placed a hand on each of the boy’s shoulders. He waited until Tobin looked up before he spoke.

  “It has been the greatest joy of my life to know you, Tobin. I mean that. You have reminded me so much of what is important—why I do this, why we all do it. But you’ve reminded me of something else that is the most important thing of all: to enjoy this life. To take joy in it. For too long, I forgot that, and lived my life in fear, always worrying about what was going to happen next and how I was going to deal with it. Now, I realize, truly, more than ever, how much this life means, how lucky I am. And that’s because of you. Because of the joy you have for life.

  “Promise me something, Tobin. Promise me you’ll stay this way. Promise me, no matter what people tell you, no matter what happens to you later in life, no matter if some things in your life don’t turn out the way you want them to. Promise me you will always take joy in life. Promise me you’ll stay this way.”

  Tobin nodded, wiping his nose. “I will.”

  Finally, Keplar walked up behind Orion and tapped the old man on the back. “O, we gotta go. It’s almost five.”

  Orion and Tobin separated, and the old man looked toward the portal. But then, he looked back to Tobin, and smiled.

  “This isn’t the end, Tobin. I promise you. We will see you again.”

  Tobin nodded, rubbing his eyes, looking at the ground.

  “Keep your head up, kid,” Keplar said. “Whatever Orion taught you during all this, yeah, that’s great, but remember the stuff I taught you. That’s the real important krandor.”

  Tobin laughed in spite of himself, shaking his head, before looking up. In front of the boy, in the middle of Boston Common, the giant, red, swirling portal began to shrink. It was closing, for the last time.

  After Orion, Keplar, and Scatterbolt turned around, the three heroes from Capricious walked toward the portal. The three of them stood there, watching it slowly get smaller in front of them.

  But then, suddenly, just as Orion and Keplar were stepping into the portal, Scatterbolt turned around and ran across the Common, pumping his arms and sprinting toward Tobin. The robot was still crying.

  “Scatterbolt!” Orion shouted, as he and Keplar turned around.

  Tobin met Scatterbolt halfway to the portal, and the robot latched onto the boy’s pant leg, burying his face against the cloth and holding on as tight as he could.

  Tobin knelt down on the ground.

  “It’s okay, Scatterbolt. It’s okay.”

  “No, no,” Scatterbolt cried. “It’s not.”

  Tobin rubbed the robot’s back. “You gotta go now, buddy,” he said, his voice cracking. He was trying to be strong for Scatterbolt. “I’m sorry. You’re gonna be okay, though, everything is gonna be okay. I’ll see you again, I promise. I promise, Scatterbolt. You have to go. The portal is closing.”

  Eventually, Scatterbolt’s grip loosened on Tobin’s pant leg and the robot stepped away. Tobin hugged him and whispered to him.

  “I’ll find a way back, Bolt. I promise.”

  Scatterbolt nodded. Though it was the last thing he wanted to do, the robot turned around and walked back to Keplar and Orion.

  Once again, the three heroes from Capricious stood in front of the portal as it slowly closed. Orion turned around and looked to Tobin. They locked eyes. Orion nodded and smiled. Tobin nodded back, trying to stop his crying. He was more exhausted than ever. As much as he wished it wasn’t so, he knew this was how it had to be.

  After a moment, the three heroes from Capricious looked at each other, stepped forward, and disappeared into the mirrored portal’s surface. Only seconds later, the portal closed, and they were gone.

  Tobin stood in the middle of Boston Common. He stared ahead at where the portal once was. Now, there was nothing there.

  Tobin turned around and walked across the destroyed Boston Common. All was quiet. The only thing he could hear were his footsteps crunching against the burnt grass.

  Tobin looked up as he walked. The roof of the Dark Nebula was coming apart, dissipating and falling to the ground in pieces, like clumps of wet dirt. Soon, the Nebula would be gone, and the people of the city would be free to once again enter Boston.

  With his singed, torn Strike uniform on his body, Tobin continued walking through the silent park, alone. After a while, the roof of the Dark Nebula was completely broken away, and he could look up and see the glowing, yellow sky behind it.

  The sun was rising.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  At six o’clock in the morning, Tobin reached over and shut off his beeping alarm clock. Turning to his right with a groan, he looked out the window next to his bed. The other houses in his neighborhood were still dark, and the sun was just starting to peek over the trees across the street.

  Exhausted and trying to force himself to wake up, Tobin reached over to his nightstand again and turned on his radio. As usual, it was tuned to Tobin’s favorite sports talk radio station. But, at the moment, the morning show hosts were not talking about sports.

  “I know, for me, anyway,” one of the hosts said, “it finally feels like, at least a little, we’re starting to go back to normal. I know it’s only been a little over two weeks since the dome finally disappeared, but after everything we’ve been through for the past few months, I feel like for the first time the city can breathe again.”

  “I know, it’s true,” the radio co-host replied. “The whole country can breathe again. I didn’t know if we’d ever go back to normal, but now I can see it, you know? I can feel it, anyway, especially when I was walking to work this morning, for some reason. I feel like normal life is finally here again, back again, at least in some small way. Finally, I can think about something other than the dome.”

  “I know. And really, that’s been the greatest gift of all, surprisingly. The freedom to think about something else.”

  As Tobin lay in bed, listening to the radio, he heard his mother call for him from downstairs.

  “Tobin, are you up?” she asked. Tobin could smell bacon and French toast. She was cooking his favorite breakfast. “It’s almost time, you know. Bill will be here with the truck soon.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Tobin replied.

  “Big day today,” his mother said from the kitchen at the bottom of the stairs. “It’s the start of a new beginning.”

  Tobin watched the sun poking its head above the trees across the street.

  “It’s the start of a new life,” his mother finished.

  Four hours later, Tobin, his mother, and his mother’s boyfriend Bill were standing in the middle of the kitchen, near the front door of the house. Only a few minutes ago, the room had been filled with plastic bins of school supplies, suitcases full of clothes, and cardboard boxes stuffed with toothpaste, shampoo, and towels, but now the room looked strangely empty. Even the kitchen table was pressed up against the wall, pushed there earlier to make room for all of Tobin’s belongings.

  “I think that’s it,” Bill said, looking around at the bare floor. “Is that everything?”

  “Yeah, I think so,” Tobin’s mother said. She smiled, then pointed at the window on the house’s front door. “But I think there’s some people outside who’d like to wish us good luck.”
>
  Tobin turned to the door. Outside, he could see Jennifer and Chad waiting there, standing on the side of the street. They were smiling.

  “Dude,” Chad said, as Tobin walked outside. “I can’t believe this is it.”

  “I know,” Tobin said, shaking his head. “Crazy.”

  “I cannot wrap my mind around the fact that we are all going to college,” Jennifer said, laughing at the thought.

  Chad looked at her. “You I can believe is going to college. It’s me and Tobin I’m surprised about.”

  The three friends laughed. Jennifer turned to Tobin.

  “When do you have to be there and everything?” she asked.

  “Well, just by today, I think,” Tobin said. “Like, by the end of the day I think I’m supposed to be all moved in, before the big orientation thing tonight. How about you guys? Next week, right?”

  “Yeah,” Jennifer said. “I’m driving out with my parents on Tuesday.”

  “And I’m not going until Saturday,” Chad replied.

  Tobin nodded. The friends stood in silence a moment outside of Tobin’s house. No one knew what to say.

  When the front door opened, Tobin looked there and saw Bill, who was holding his keys and walking toward his SUV.

  “Well, I guess I should get going,” Tobin said. “Looks like my mom and Bill are ready. But you guys are gonna come up and visit soon, right?”

  Tobin and Chad shared the handshake they had created back in the third grade, then quickly hugged.

  “Yup, in two weeks, bro,” Chad said. “I can’t wait. We are gonna rip that school to shreds. Show those kids in New Hampshire how we do things in Bridgton.”