by Jamie Hawke
“It’s me,” I said, hands up, but had to throw myself sideways to avoid a flaming punch from my brother. “Drew, stop, it’s me! Chad!”
Drew hesitated, confused, and then Twitch called out, “we’re still under the illusion code thing!” as she landed next to me. A glance over showed she was right, but at least the attacks had stopped. Drew and Charm were staring at us in confusion, glancing around, preparing for a trap.
I pulled up the screen that had melded with my illusion ability, then turned us back. Damn, was I glad that worked!
Charm’s eyes lit up with recognition, and she ran at us, throwing her arms around me so hard that we slammed into the wall behind. Her lips met mine, and she was groping my face, running her hands through my hair and kissing me like she thought we’d never see each other again.
“What took you so long, ass?” she said, shoving me back, then grabbing me again and shoving her tongue into my mouth before I had a chance to answer.
When she stopped, it was only because Drew had cleared his throat. I looked to see my brother in dark blue and black armor, head still shaved like the Marine he was.
“Mind if I get in there?” he said, and Charm laughed, stepping aside. For the first time that I could remember, my brother hugged me. He pulled back and shook my hand, then added, “It’s really good to see you, though I’d say the circumstances could be better.”
“Thanks for saving her,” I said, eyes flicking over to Charm.
“Saving me?” She laughed.
“Yeah, you got that backwards, bro.” Drew shrugged. “Me and my… er, team… wouldn’t be around if not for her. She’s been telling us all about you. In some ways too much,” he added with a wink. “I never knew my little bro had it in him.”
I blushed, shooting Charm a look that said we’d be talking about that later, then said, “Team?”
As if on cue, the woman with gold wings floated down beside my brother. She looked like she might be a real angel, except for her body armor which was black and red, kind of taking away from the angel angle.
Next, I noticed a woman stepping out from the shadows behind him. She had flowing silvery-purple hair and wore a skintight superhero outfit that didn’t leave much to the imagination. Her eyes glowed a disturbing color of blue.
“Your brother?” this woman said.
“Navani, meet Chad,” Drew said.
Twitch grinned, and I tried to ignore her as I said, “Most people call me Breaker here.”
“Is that so?” Drew asked, impressed. “Breaker of…?”
“Just Breaker.”
He frowned and turned to Navani. “Tell me, why haven’t I gotten a cool superhero name yet?”
“We’ll ask Lamb about it when we find her,” she said.
“Lamb?” My eyes went wide, but Twitch cleared her throat.
“We probably have all sorts of questions, but… we really have to get out of here.” She turned to the rest of the darkness and the giant keep, scanning it with her pink screens. “If we don’t go soon, well, let’s just say the forces they have arrayed against us are formidable.”
“Formidable?” Drew asked, and chuckled. “Sounds like something Navani would say.
Charm took my arm, rubbing her head on my shoulder, and said, “My hero, come to rescue the princess from the dark, scary place.”
“Although, it doesn’t look like you needed my help,” I replied with a grin. Turning to my brother, I motioned them along. “Come on, we’re going to work on finding a way out of here.”
He hesitated, glanced over his shoulder, and said, “Only problem, one of ours ran ahead, thinking she could take on the whole damn Nihilist army by herself. I can’t exactly leave her behind.”
“And we have to move,” Twitch reminded me. “Ranger found us once, he can do it again. If he gets to the ship and Gale before us… Well, we want to get that planet back before that happens.”
“Are you… going to be okay?” I asked my brother.
He nodded. “We have an escape portal, which will take us back to our entry point.”
“If we can get here,” I said, turning around, considering it, “why can’t we all just send armies of supers to take them down?”
“This isn’t their world,” the one named Navani said, and I had a hard time taking my eyes off of hers. Not in a sexual way, but more in a magical sense. “It’s dark, yes, but theirs… from what I’ve seen in visions, is so much worse.”
“Fuck,” I said, then covered my mouth. “Oh, damn, sorry for my language.”
Drew laughed. “These ladies have as foul mouths as they come. Yes, even the angel one.”
The angel one gave him a glare, and then another woman, looking more like a demon in a mini-skirt came running up. I took a defensive stance in case she was with the enemy, but my brother introduced her as Sakurai, the sister of the angel one, who he called Sacrada.
“What’d I miss?” Sakurai asked. “Where’s Threed?”
“We’re going after her,” Drew said. “My brother is here, apparently, and is about to save a planet, and it sounds like he’s going up against Ranger?”
“No shit?” Sakurai said, eyeing me up and down, seemingly liking what she saw.
“You’re staying with us,” Sacrada told her sister, shooting me a reproachful glance as if it were my fault she’d checked me out.
“Actually, we’re not trying to fight him quite yet,” I explained. “Escape him, that’s the goal.”
“It looks like you already fought him and he kicked your ass,” Sacrada said.
I’d nearly forgotten how beat up I looked. “Yeah well, long story. An arena fight, kind of like in Ancient Rome.”
“What… the… fuck.” Drew shook his head in awe. “Bro, when this is over, I can’t wait to catch up with you. The stories we will tell!”
“I look forward to it,” I said, and we went back in for the bro hug.
“Ready, Charm?” Twitch asked as we separated and Drew and his team ran back toward the keep.
“You think they’ll really be okay?” I asked.
“Yes and yes,” Charm said. “More than ready, and from what I’ve seen of your brother and his lovers, they can handle themselves.”
“Lovers?” I asked. “All of them?”
“Looks like he’s got you beat on numbers,” Charm said with a laugh. “Jealous?”
“I’ve got quality,” I replied. “And all the women I can handle.”
“Damn right,” she said, moving her hand along my armor at the waist, making her fingers walk down, and winked. “Quality, a fact I plan on reminding you about as soon as we get out of here. Now… how do we do that?”
Twitch and I turned to create the portal and get us out of there. Black energy formed, growing larger, and then… it vanished.
“Oh, shit,” I said, glancing at Charm’s letdown face.
“I don’t understand,” Twitch said, looking at her screens, flicking between them. “We don’t… wait, there!” She enlarged a screen and glanced around, saw a Nihilist guard running at us and said, “Hey, asshole!”
“What the hell?” I asked.
“Trust me,” she replied. He turned our way and shot, only she flicked her finger across her screen and turned to me, shouting, “NOW!”
We tried again, this time opening the portal at the exact moment the purple blast hit, and this time it worked. She must’ve altered it so that his powers combined with ours, in a way that broke whatever blocks they had on supers being able to create portals out of there like at least one of them could apparently do.
The three of us jumped through. Darkness surrounded us, a blast like the wind from the top of a mountain buffeted us, and then we landed. It was the same spot, but we fell, landing in one of the swampy areas next to our ship. We were safe. Charm looked around and started laughing, standing and shaking the water from her tail, then Twitch joined in.
I had just started to smile when Gale came running down the ramp from the ship, her ey
es looking worried and said, “It’s about damn time!”
“No, ‘Hey Charm, so happy to see you?’” Charm asked.
“Hey Charm, so fuckin’ happy to see you. Now, turn around and look up.”
We all did, and right away saw what was making her so frantic.
The ships that had attacked the Coliseum were there, but now a new one flew above. It was massive, horrifying. Wings spread out from it like scythes, the feel of it like darkness pushed back by a blast of wind. Turrets covered the wings, and we could clearly see massive bomb hangers and other weapons, and in my gut, I knew this was Ranger’s ship. It was twice as large as any of our Earth destroyers, and fifty times more terrifying to behold.
“Yeah, we’re fucked,” I said, staring up at that sight. “Royally… fucked.”
19
“Get in!” Gale said waving us over to the ship. “What in the puddle-fucking-hell are you waiting for?”
Distracted by the combination of being soaked from the swamp but also trying to figure out what she’d just said, it took me a second to process that both Twitch and Charm were already up and running. I went after them, feeling a sharp pain in my side and, well, everywhere really.
The ships were already swooping down toward us, all but the big one, and a few shots exploded in the ground nearby. Some hit swamp and sent water into the sky, so that I was charging through mist and dirt clouds, barely able to see except for Twitch’s bouncing green hair and Charm’s furry tail.
A shot hit the ground next to me and I leaped out of the way, hit the ground and rolled—clenching my mouth to stop from shouting out in pain. Dammit, who did I have to sleep with to get healing powers?
“Move your sexy ass!” Charm said, and she was at my side, helping me up and pulling me along. “This isn’t nap time, babycakes.”
“Baby-what?” I asked, doing my best to keep up but also trying to even see and hear, because at the moment everything was a struggle.
She slapped my ass and practically threw me up the ramp, and a moment later she was following me up, pausing only to shout, “Shields! Get shields up!”
“I can’t until the ramp’s closed,” Gale said over the comms, apparently already at the bridge.
“Shit.” Charm shifted sideways and hit her comms to say, “Now!”
The ramp started to rise, but then two shots hit, one on the side of the ship and the other on the ramp, and it stalled.
“Manual lever, just outside,” Twitch said, analyzing it with her screen.
“I’m on it,” I said, trying to stand, but then a large man pushed me out of the way and I fell into Charm’s arms.
“No, it’s my turn,” Renowt said, pulling at the lapels of his military jacket. As he ran out he glanced back, held tight to the side of the doorway, and shouted back, “By the way, Wendlor is looking bad, but he’s alive!”
With that he let out a whoop, and vanished.
“Get us airborne,” Twitch said, scanning the sky through the ship. “Now.”
“We can’t, not with him—” I started to protest, but she gave me a stern glance.
“Trust me,” she said, and at once the ramp started closing and the ship lifted off the ground, shooting forward as an explosion hit right where we’d been. Renowt would’ve been dead if not for Twitch. We all might have been.
More shots sounded around us. I grabbed onto one of the holds on the wall as we turned, Charm digging her clawed boots into the floor, and Twitch kind of levitated there, with the help of her screens. More were surrounding her now, and an explosion sounded that made her flinch and one of the screens disappear. She was apparently creating shields or some sort of way of diverting and blocking incoming shots, and then the ramp was finally all the way up and she pulled up a new screen. In two swipes, a hole opened in the roof and Renowt came flailing in, screaming, and landed with a thud as the hole closed back up.
“Get him to the bridge,” Twitch said. “I’ll hold them off as long as I can.”
“On it,” Charm said, able to move to him with her claws so that they could get to the door. I used the handholds on the wall, moving from one to the next, then thrust myself forward toward the door.
“How…?” I overheard Renowt say, but he glanced back and just stared wide-eyed at Twitch.
His awe was justified. She looked like a goddess there, levitating with a pink glow from her screens surrounding her, pulses now radiating out from her and merging with the ship. We charged forward, and when we got to the bridge we saw through the display that she was creating a series of multi-layered shields, extra layers of defenses for the ship, and even some counterattacks in the form of pink blasts that resembled lasers that completely obliterated two ships as I watched.
“Holy hell,” I said, noticing Wendlor strapped in one of the reclined chairs. From what Renowt had said, I didn’t expect it to be as bad as this, but the man was so gray and sickly I thought he could die at any minute.
“Alive,” Renowt said, with a nod. “But we don’t have much time.”
“Speaking of which,” Gale said, and she made a selection on her holo-display so that half of the screen ahead of us showed where we were going, the other half showed the sky behind us. Ranger’s huge ship was still there behind all the others, but it wasn’t the same—a massive orange light was shining, its center spinning, and a horrible, empty feeling took us all.
“I’m guessing we’re all about to die,” Wendlor mumbled, lifting his head slightly to see the sight.
“It’s a very real possibility,” Gale said. “Us and everyone on this planet, if that’s what I think it is.”
A scream sounded from the direction we’d left Twitch, so Charm and I stood to go to her, but then the ship rattled and, two seconds later, an explosion hit that sent us out of control.
We were spinning, Gale doing her best to figure out how we were going to make it out of this, and there was more shouting, male and female, from the back room. No matter what happened next, I had to help Twitch.
Charm was there too, already moving ahead of me and running on all fours as the ship angled. I remembered that I had some of Twitch’s powers too, and although I had no idea what I was doing, trusted that instinct would work it out. A screen flashed and certain lines started glowing for me, which I hit and then kept hitting as I went.
“Keep doing whatever it is you’re doing!” Gale shouted, and I looked up to see the ship, while still falling, was stabilizing.
“That should hold it,” I said, more of a guess than anything else, and then charged after Charm.
In the hallway I found her going head to head with a super who looked like a muscle builder who’d eaten a bull. He was charging and throwing punches so hard that they left holes in the metal of the ship. Beside him was Tarupis, apparently able to teleport again, and he was using this ability to strike at Twitch from multiple angles at once, even as she still floated there.
“Stop him,” Charm said. “I got protein shake here.”
There wasn’t time to think, only act, so I charged Tarupis and remembered the hole in the floor trick. Hoping I could do that too, I pulled up the code and threw my hands out randomly at anything that lit up. My mind was focused on the hole, and when he next teleported to strike her, it worked! Only, it opened just large enough for his foot, and closed instantly, trapping him there. He tried to pull free and snarled, teleported, and landed on the other side of her with his foot missing! That wasn’t what I had intended, but damn, that worked. He collapsed, shouting in agony, and Twitch had him by the throat. He managed to thrash about and push her off, then teleported out of there—though his foot still remained.
I spun to see how Charm was doing, and she smiled at me with a mouthful of blood. I thought it was hers until I saw the throat on the ground, the man clutching his neck as blood cascaded down him.
“Watch the floor,” Charm said with a shrug. “It’s slippery.”
And then we crashed, slamming into a mountain most likely, and all of
us went flying. A wall hit me, then the floor, then another wall. Whatever parts of me hadn’t hurt before were hurting now, but as we started to tumble, Twitch shouted and moved her hands fast. The next second, we were still moving but it was like we were all wrapped in a blanket of air, so that we were jostled, but not further injured.
Scraping and a thud, and then it was over.
We fell with three thuds plus a loud one from the muscle-head, and blood was everywhere.
“Gale, the others,” I said, scrambling up and doing my best to not slip in the blood. But when I ran to the bridge they were all there, alive and strapped in, but very discombobulated.
“It’s… coming,” Gale said, pointing to the bright, flickering screen. No, not a flickering screen I realized. We’d gotten turned around, and the screen and that part of the ship were gone. We looked up the sky to see a massive beam of light was coming right for us!
“Breaker, your powers,” Twitch said, eyes moving from the image in the sky to me. “And hurry. See if you have something that lets you create a black hole, maybe a string of code like…” She pulled up a screen and I memorized the code instantly, then scanned my skill tree and found it. I pulled up a screen that had a more turquoise feel, and typed in the code. When it was done, we swiped our screens together.
The world shook as all around us the sky turned black. I looked to Twitch in horror, but she took my hand, squeezed, and gave me a comforting smile. “It’s working.”
I turned to Charm, took her hand, and she took Gale’s, and we stood there watching the beam come at us as, at the same time, the blackness we’d created spread. In an instant, the blackness engulfed us, and then there was a burst of light and dark mixing, and I wasn’t sure if we’d been hit and were dead, or had returned to the proper dimension.
20
A glance up at the sky revealed that the entire enemy fleet hadn’t made it back with us. Whatever we’d done it had worked, and since the enemy fleet and the attack hadn’t been on the planet, they were left behind. The planet was back in the supers’ normal dimension, though maybe what Twitch had mentioned was right, that it was less of a dimension and more of their corner of space.