The Endless War That Never Ends

by Christopher Brimmage

  And with that, the army scattered to their blue tents. Drillbot remained at the blue bear’s feet to receive the instructions he was to disseminate to the many squadron leaders. Instead of beginning the instructions, the blue bear pointed at the Arachnid Pre-Teen and called to him before the boy could scatter to his tent. “Arturo, please come gather to Me.”

  Arturo glanced about warily, and then approached and stood near the blue bear’s floating feet. Drillbot had grown much stronger at reading human emotions over the years, and the boy’s slumped shoulders and hanging head signaled to him a sense of dread and fear, which were common emotions he noticed in many of the child versions of Art and Ginny recruited to this war over the years. “Yes?” asked the boy.

  “Me know you have felt lost and alone and filled with fright these past weeks. Me know this war a shock to you, and you just want to go home and be you again.”

  Arturo looked down at his feet and nodded.

  The blue bear cupped the boy’s chin with a paw and raised the boy’s head to make eye contact. “Arturo is most important piece in Me army. Me no tell you that before, but Me have scanned Arturo’s brain and Me have scanned the webbing and bindings of the Multiverse, and from the moment you jumped from the bushes to confront Me and Me army back on Earth 975,571, Me felt a great wave from the Multiverse that marked Me encounter with you as a momentous occasion.”

  “O-Okay,” muttered the boy.

  “Me thinks you be the key to stopping B.I.T.’s zappy weapons. Arturo will win the day for Army of Life. Me need Arturo to go on special mission for Me.”

  The boy looked into the blue bear’s eyes. Then he broke eye contact and looked back down at his feet. “Why me? Why not Drillbot? He’s been doing this with you the longest. He’s the guy who you can count on to get the job done.”

  The blue bear giggled. “Because this destiny is no for Drillbot. This destiny is for Arturo. Me know of Arturo’s strength and reflexes and selflessness. Me know he is capable of great things, and that the Multiverse will not allow him to fail, for Arturo is Chosen One. This be true or Me not be feeling what Me feeling when you jumped out of bushes first time. So, Me need you to stay at back of battle and stay safe.”

  “That’s it?” asked the boy. “Seems lame for a special mission.”

  “Teeheehee!” exclaimed the blue bear. “No, no, no. That only first part. Arturo need to survive beginning of battle. Me know that B.I.T. has great and powerful defenses that Arturo cannot surpass. But there will be a point in battle to come where these defenses will fall, and that is when Arturo will be needed for his mission.

  “Take this,” continued the blue bear, stabbing a paw inside his own belly, grabbing onto something inside as pink blood poured out around his arm. As it fell to the ground, the blood transformed into mystical forest creatures that scattered toward the horizon. The bear removed a small conical device with a blinking red light upon its top, at which point the wound healed. The bear handed the device to Arturo. “This is device Me had genius Art from Earth 6,907 design whilst recruiting this army. This device creates small thermonuclear explosion, and when exploded in the right place inside the Communications Vault within B.I.T. headquarters building, will destroy B.I.T. High Commander and will recode B.I.T. zappy rays so they no longer kill us permanent. Me then will heal B.I.T., all of them except for B.I.T. High Commander, for only he knows how to create the zappies and him no longer living means we be winning.”

  Arturo looked a little queasy. “O-Okay,” he replied. “If it means saving lives, I’ll do it.”

  The blue bear grinned. “Good, good! All Arturo need do is stick bomb to a terminal in B.I.T. Communications Vault, press red flashy light for ten seconds, and then run. Arturo must run fast to escape. Ten minutes all he will have.”

  Arturo nodded. Drillbot patted his back with the side of a drill. “[whir] Arturo – CLACK – Arturo – CLACK – Arturo has received a great honor with this mission and has been shown great – CLACK – great trust.”

  Arturo smiled. The blue bear dismissed the boy and then gave orders to Drillbot, which he then disseminated to the squadron commanders. And then, with nothing left to do but wait for the blue bear to signal the attack, Drillbot returned to Ginny Rex’s side. She licked him across the grill, whispered sweet poems into his audio receptors, and held him. In the coming hours, Drillbot would wish he could be stuck in this moment forever.

  But alas, because nothing good lasts forever in this harsh Multiverse, the blue bear called the army to gather around him once more. He signaled the attack.

  Chapter 14

  BATTLING ON THE SHIPS

  The aircraft-carrier sized airship had lost power thanks to Regular-Ginny’s rampage across its hull, and it was beginning its plummet toward the ground far below. She wedged her tentacles deep into the gunmetal gray hull at her feet and rolled her blob backward, stretching the pink appendages taut until they were so tense that they were like a rubber band ready to snap. Regular-Ginny’s mind flashed back to a similar situation a decade ago when she had used her pink gift to launch from the eye socket of a giant squirrel monster and had been snatched by a personification of death. As she remembered nearly dying from the encounter, her heart raced in terror. However, before she could find herself lost in the memory, the Pink One appeared in her mind’s eye and pummeled the part of her brain in charge of flashbacks and fearful memories into a bloody pulp.

  Regular-Ginny then gestured to release the tension in the pink tentacles all at once. She launched forward like the payload from a slingshot toward her next target—which would be her seventh gigantic B.I.T. airship of the evening to bring down, outpacing by at least six ships every member of the Pink Marauders other than the Pink One, who had ten carrier kills of her own.

  Regular-Ginny frowned when the warship she was careening toward dove sharply downward. Regular-Ginny flew over it. As she twisted herself in mid-air to face the evasive metal beast, the ship began firing disintegration beams at her from its many turrets. She allowed her instincts to go to work. She twisted, and her blob mimicked her movements to curl into a long, spindly line. Beams of lightning flashed harmlessly past her. She twisted further, lengthening the blob and mentally sending the order to create small holes across its membrane. She laughed inanely, as she knew she likely resembled a gigantic block of pink swiss cheese to any onlookers. But it was enough for the next wave of turret fire to pass harmlessly through the holes in her pink blob and fly out the other side.

  She fell through the air, dancing between and around disintegration bolts in a mesmerizing, graceful ballet. Before falling out of range of the floating aircraft carrier, she snaked a single thin tentacle out from her twisting blob, smashing it into the underside of the gigantic ship. She used this thin pink tether to yank herself onto the underside of the carrier. She crashed against the metal and felt the heat of explosions beneath her. Then she raced up the side of the hull—smashing a wide swath of destruction with her tentacles as her blob rolled across the ship—until she reached the long, flat expanse of metal that lay directly outside the carrier’s bridge. She whipped her tentacles about in a cyclone of pink fury, demolishing all the turrets within view before they had the chance to calibrate their aim and fire upon her. The orange and red and blue hues that accompanied the explosions danced across her pink blob, creating an oddly beautiful palette within the murderous carnage.

  She took a moment to grin at the captain, who pointed at her in disbelief from his chair on the bridge. She then raised a wide, flat tentacle above her in preparation to crash it down atop him and the crew who controlled the vessel.

  Before she had the chance to do so, three white bubbles appeared in the air above her. A pair of rockets flew from one of the bubbles and exploded against her blob’s pink membrane. A combination of surprise and high-powered detonations knocked her sideways. She rolled to the edge of the ship, digging a couple tentacles into the hull to stop herself just before falling off. As she looked over the sid
e, she remembered the weak person she used to be back before leaving her home with Tiny-Ginny so long ago, the one that would have been terrified of such a height.

  But instead of cowering in fear like her past-self would have done, she reared up and turned toward the white bubbles. “You’ll have to do better than tha-” she screamed, or rather began screaming before the cursed robot with drills in place of arms crashed into the side of her blob. She had to dodge within the blob to prevent herself from being sliced in two. As the robot exited the other side of the blob and twisted in midair to make another pass at her, a pair of ferocious dinosaurs—one riding on the other’s back—crashed into her flank.

  Regular-Ginny cursed as their momentum carried all four over the edge. She began reaching a tentacle toward the edge of the ship, intending to grab hold and shake off her three attackers so they would fall to their deaths. The robot instead severed this tentacle, and the four hurtled into the black sky together. She cursed once more and began swatting at her attackers. As she glanced down at the ground far, far below, she thought, They’ve no need to worry about terminal velocity when they need instead worry about Terminal Gin-ocity. And then she immediately rolled her single remaining eye at how lame she was.

  As she swiped tentacles at her attackers, she found each of her moves parried either by a ferocious drill or a well-placed explosion from a rocket or a slashing fang. After dozens of blocked strikes, she roared in delight when she finally scored a direct hit on the robot’s head and gears exploded out behind it. Its head popped up like the losing member of one of her old games, Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots. But then the robot shook its head like a boxer regaining its bearings and immediately went back to its task of slashing.

  Ginny glanced over her shoulder and realized the four of them were about a half-dozen seconds from hitting the ground, so she snaked tiny tentacles around the tyrannosaur’s ankles and the robot’s wheels and then rolled, intending to put this trio of enemies between herself and the ground so that she might crush them.

  The smaller dinosaur that rode on the tyrannosaur’s back, however, laughed maniacally. Once more, it fired the rocket launchers mounted to the tyrannosaur, and the momentum pushed Ginny’s pink blob so that her roll went too far. Instead of crushing the trio of attackers, they landed atop her blob as it crashed to the ground.

  Much like the giant rubber balls with which Ginny had played as a child, her pink membrane smacked into the ground and then bounced back up into the air. She watched as the robot and the dinosaurs caromed from her pink blob and launched into the air away from her, their weight and momentum overcoming their thin pink bindings. Meanwhile, the bounce sent her arcing westward to smash through a dozen skyscrapers before crashing to a halt. She lost sight of her foes as she hurtled through the mortar of the buildings. She smiled, for the bounce had thrown her enemies back up into the air at such a height that they would surely die, anyway, upon falling back down to earth.

  She rolled upright, slightly dazed from her fight, and noticed the black sky above was being eclipsed by a fiery swath of gunmetal gray. It was the ship that she had attacked before being waylaid by the cursed robot and its dinosaur companions, and it was about to crash directly on top of her. Instead of questioning why it was about to crash atop her, she hardened her pink membrane and cursed. A bright explosion filled her vision, and she smelled burnt cotton candy.

  *

  Regular-Ginny opened her eye. She had not realized that she was still capable of being knocked unconscious, as this was her first experience with the concept since becoming the Pink One’s Right Hand of Destruction. Her head hurt, and she wondered how long she had been out.

  She glanced around her. She was in a cocoon of pink surrounded by molten debris and wreckage. The pink wrapped her heart in tendrils of hatred. She allowed the feeling to overcome her without putting up a fight. As she became overwhelmed with the emotion, her pink blob grew.

  She pushed as hard as she could against the wreckage above her. At first, it would not budge, so she instead formed thousands of tiny tentacles that stretched up into every single available nook in the debris above her. She began vibrating the tiny tentacles as fast and as hard as she could. She began hearing cracks and groans as metal twisted. She gave one last push and emerged like a Titan birthed from the dusty nether-regions of a busted Gaia.

  If she still needed to breathe, she likely would have gasped for breath as she reached freedom. Instead, because she now only breathed out of desire and habit, she inhaled deeply and allowed the pink to flow through her veins, filling her with a hatred even stronger than before and concurrently healing the splitting headache that had taken up residence in her skull. She noticed a squadron of fighter jets zooming by overhead, likely on another disintegration run at either her army or the blue army, so she stretched a half-dozen tentacles high overhead as fast as she could and took out the ones she could reach in time, which happened to be the four at the back of the formation.

  She smiled and raised herself up on stilts of pink goo to get a current understanding of the battlefield. At her best estimate, the B.I.T. was down to about a dozen—maybe fewer—of the carrier-sized airships. The blue army had meanwhile brought the pink army’s advances across the city to a stalemate.

  She sighed. All she need do now was wait for Arthur the Putrid to finish sapping beneath the stupid energy shield and take out the generators, and she could then rid herself of the B.I.T. threat once and for all. And then she and the blue army could continue their damned war unmolested for the rest of eternity.

  Much to her delight, she found that she need not wait for Arthur the Putrid much longer, for in a matter of seconds, an explosion erupted from within the shield wall and the bubble of lightning that encapsulated the B.I.T. headquarters faded to nothingness. She smiled and hurried in the direction of the building from which the shield had originated, the one marked Olympus.

  Chapter 15

  GO! GO! POWER DRILLBOT!

  DRILLBOT STOOD ATOP a floating blue cloud, hovering in the expanse between realities. He held his right drill above his head and thrilled at the pressure of Ginny Rex’s tiny hand encircling it. He had been standing in this same position since the battle had begun. The vanguard of the Army of Life had already made earthfall and their attack was well underway. Drillbot, however, waited for the signal from the Blue One to enter the fray, the sign that would mean Regular-Ginny was at her most vulnerable and that he might thwart her once and for all.

  Drillbot’s audio receptors detected a multitude of sounds mingling with his own grinding gears and the infinite white noise of the barrier between realities. Artkylosaur chewed on his cigar, Artclops groaned and cracked his knuckles, the samurai Ginny and Art argued with the ninja Ginny and Art, who in turn argued with the hoplite Ginny and Art about whose fighting style was superior. The warrior monk version of Ginny simply sat in silence, though she breathed surprisingly heavily from her mouth, while the vampire-Friar version of Art muttered about how he longed to drink someone’s blood. A version of Art covered in pustules that leaked fire lay on his back and emitted small crackling noises while a Ginny in a floating raincoat sharpened her curved daggers. An elvish Art carrying a bow whispered poetry to a fairy version of Ginny, whose swoons sounded like the squealing of a pig, only higher-pitched and faster-paced.

  Drillbot blocked these noises from his receptors and listened for his signal. Reports of fallen ships and dying squadrons and victorious squadrons passed through his processors, and finally, just when he was nearing the limits of his patience, three white bubbles appeared below the floating blue cloud in the vast colorful-and-colorless barrier between realities. Though the Blue One had long ago left the barrier between realities to enter the fray, the cosmic bear’s voice somehow appeared within Drillbot’s processors and danced a message into Drillbot’s head: “Attack.”

  “[whir] Attack!” yelled Drillbot, diving from the blue cloud toward the closest bubble. Ginny Rex jumped with him. As planned, Ar
tkylosaur squeezed the triggers on the pair of rocket launchers mounted on Ginny Rex’s torso as they fell, sending gifts of destruction to precede the trio through the bubble. As Drillbot fell headfirst into the all-encompassing white, he heard Artclops and the rest of the squadron follow with their own leaps toward the other two white bubbles.

  Drillbot landed in the white bubble just after the rockets. An infinite whiteness surrounded Drillbot. He watched as the rockets grew infinitely long and stretched away in front of him, disappearing in the distance. He rotated his head to glance over his shoulder. Ginny Rex hit the white just behind him. He called to her, “[whir] Drillbot loves – CLACK – loves Ginny Rex!” He heard her begin to call back her love in response, but he was launched ahead into infinity and she and her words disappeared behind him. He turned his head back around to face forward, his drills outstretched and whirring before him. The tips of them stretched far into infinity in front of him, disappearing from view. And then, as suddenly as the white had become infinite, it ended. He caught up to the rockets and watched them fly from the exit of the white bubble.