Crossing Worlds 07: Heroes

    “Okay,” says Gold Wolf coming out from behind the teleporter’s control panel with Haki, “it’s done,”

    “You guys get that?” asks Haki to the screen showing the rather tense scientists in Calif.

   Its not surprising they are so tense as earlier they were chewed out by Gold Wolf not only for their being sent to another dimension; but also for the fact that Scrags had vanished from the facility, Gold Wolf naturally believing he had stolen something and fled. It’s not helping matters that Rhulan only shrugged the incident off pointing out that he is just a thief.

    “Yes, Mr. Haki,” says the lead scientist pushing a few buttons, “ah, yes we are picking up the trace signal perfectly.”

    “Good,” says Gold Wolf, “my private transporter should correct automatically for any errors in your systems. However after we arrive Haki, I want the device removed and given to m…Queen Thistle. Understood?”

     “Yes, sir,” says Haki as everyone gets back on the platform again.

     Haki says, “Best wishes to you Hollia, and your friends,” his words are a bit awkward after hearing from her earlier what happened on the alien world with Betty.

    The machine fires up and they are off again; however no one noticed a little shadow pass over the transporter hooked up to the wiring of the control panel and sparks shoot out from it.

    ******

    “Well,” says Rhulan, “this sure doesn’t look like that lab on the screen; hmmm, I’d say it looks more like a bus terminal.”

    “Are we…” asks Hollia, “is this that same world as last time?”

   “I don’t think so,” says Rhulan looking about, “the atmosphere feels different and…”

   She looks about, “there are no sounds anywhere other than animals.”

   The streets are silent despite being the middle of the day, there are no cars driving down the streets, no sounds of traffic, or airplanes, and no body walking the streets.

    Hollia closes her eyes, “I sense people…they’re like those kids though.”

    Cata shifts her form to that of her human guise, “Guess we’ll be here a moment or two, best not to set off the locals in such a public place I imagine right…Gold Wolf…where…”

    “Damn,” says Gold Wolf behind them at a cash machine, “this is my Earth.”

    “Really?” asks Hollia, “I thought….well….I thought it was more populated.”

    Rhulan laughs, holding her hand to her mouth.

    “Yeah,” says Gold Wolf walking past her in a gruff tone, “I was able to verify one of my alter ego accounts.”

    “Huh?” says Hollia.

    “No time to explain,” says Gold Wolf, “there is something not right about this place. There are clearly people in this town, but they’re all inside, and its too damned hot.”

    “Really?” says Rhulan, “feels about right for the desert.”

   “What?” says Gold Wolf realizing that she is looking past the houses into an open expanse that is clearly that of a desert.

    “Oh shit,” says Gold Wolf as he takes out a smaller, yet similar looking device to his transporter.

   He shakes his head, “We’re in Texas.”

   “What’s that?” asks Hollia, “is that some hostile country?”

   “Uh,” says Gold Wolf looking around the group, “well…no…not really. It just means we are in almost the same spot I landed in when I returned here. So…”

    “In other words,” says Rhulan, “your transporter, rather than correcting for the cross dimensional error of the platform version, instead used its last location as the destination point; thus sending us to roughly the same place we were in the Magnus region when you left to come here, only on this world instead of that one.”

    “Wow,” says Hollia, “they built a town in that kind of place?”

    “Artificial reservoirs,” says Gold Wolf, “these people don’t like being told some place is too dry to live in.”

   “Well enough chit chat,” says Gold Wolf, “come on sorceress, send us back to Aesperia.”

    “Why should I?” asks Rhulan.

   “Miss Rhulan?” asks Hollia.

   Rhulan smiles, “this is your Earth isn’t it? So doesn’t that mean rather than using my simple return spell to take us to our last teleportation point; we could instead take a bus or a train or a plane….maybe a car…and cross the desert to the equivalent spot in Calif we want to go. There I could just use a dimension slide and return us to the equivalent spot in our world.”

    She waves a dismissive hand, “who knows what weird place that transporter of Haki’s might send us if we fiddle with it again; clearly its not ready to send a group of adventurers across the continent.”

   Gold Wolf’s eye twitches as he thinks, “if you could do that…why didn’t you do it before and just skip over the Magnus empire by coming to a safer world you scheming witch.”

   Gold Wolf can’t help but flinch when Rhulan smiles at him, the look in her eye making him forget for a moment that his mind is shielded from telepathic intrusion.

  Before anymore can be said a massive metal bipedal form smashes into the pavement beside them. This thing looks like an upright bathtub with a blue dome over it hiding what ever is inside. It has oddly long arms holding a giant gun and some what short legs. At the top above the dome and on either side of the rim like a pair of antenna are two more guns that are locked on the group.

    “Halt,” comes a woman’s voice, distorted by the machine, “dimensional rift detected in this vicinity; you are to remain for scanning procedure, by order of the Ju-el empire.

   ******

       *Flash*

    Corinth appears in a grassy field looking at a house. She peers up to the sky.

    “They came here,” she says, “this is where Rhulan’s portal opened up from.”

    She narrows her eyes at the sky, “what is that?” she says perplexed, “A strange energy, it’s like that of The Light, but different, as different as one would expect from a sibling of an individual. How odd, is it possible for The Light that casts a shadow and the Shadow that creates light to have a sibling? No more similar than that, like a sister.”

    She rubs the ground with her foot and kneels down, “Another one, another yet different, another sister dragging off something else…*

     *click, click, click, click, click,*

     The strange clicking sound with little flashes of light draws Corinth to look behind her. The area she is standing in is fenced off from the road, where there are many cars, police cruisers, and a news van, all watching her confused. Others nearby are taking pictures of her; as they are already calling her into their tape recorders, the woman who appeared from a flash of light on the very spot an angel was seen lifted up to heaven by the hand of God.

     “Miss,” says a cop stepping through the make shift barricade.

     *Flash*

     She is gone.

     ******

     “Uncle,” says Hollia, “what is that thing?”

    “Some kind of robot,” says Gold Wolf, “but I’ve never seen it before. But hell, there are tons of heroes and villains who use robots on this world it could belong to anyone.”

    “I do believe,” says Rhulan, “that is a mech-suit.”

    “A what?” asks Hollia.

    “I can see that,” says Gold Wolf.

    “Yes,” says Rhulan, “A piloted vehicle with a roughly humanoid shape, this one a bit comical about it. However it does vaguely
resemble something I saw over a thousand years ago when I would periodically leave for weeks or months to resume my search across world; that I based the mech-suits of the Empire on.”

     “Hmmm,” says Hollia recalling pictures from the stories of walking metal monsters piloted by people, as a child she knick-named cluck clucks because she thought they looked like chickens.

     As Hollia starts to laugh despite herself, Rhulan raises an eyebrow and starts to chuckle as well remembering the little girl Hollia used to be sitting in the library calling the pictures of her street enforcers cluck clucks.

     “Hold on,” thinks Gold Wolf shaking his head, “I thought she was the empress? So she would just pick up and leave for months at a time?”

     “Excuse me,” says Cata, “but in case you all forgot about the three guns being pointed at us, perhaps I should tell you what…”

     “Scan complete,” comes the female voice from the mech-suit, “you are indeed none native life forms who arrived on this world via a trans-dimensional breach. As our scientists have found this to be a regular occurrence on this world your status as hostile, explorer, or accidental visitor needs to be ascertained; as you have not yet initiated battle can we assume you are a none-hostile?”

     “It’s a street level enforcer,” says Cata, “of the Ju-el Empire.”

     Rhulan raises an eyebrow while whispering, “this piece of junk? Hold on, that means this world has been invaded by the Ju-el.”

     The utter ferocity in her eyes as she looks at Gold Wolf startles him.

     “Respond,” says the Ju-el enforcer.

    Gold Wolf shrugs

    Rhulan steps forward, “We are travelers who come to this world accidentally.”

    The Ju-el enforcer responds, “You are to come peacefully to the nearest containment center, where you will then be transported to the inter-dimensional containment facility pending possibly deportation to your native universe or dimension.”

    “Hmm,” says Rhulan, “so tell me where is this facility?”

    “That is…an odd question,” says the enforcer.

    In side the enforcer a woman wearing a skin tight blue and white uniform; so tight in fact if not for the gloves, armor pads, and helmet one could easily mistake it for having been painted on the body. In this floating interior of a cockpit she reaches out an manipulates an interactive hologram display to her right side. Ahead of her she can see out the front of the mech-suit and see the party standing before her. The display on her left side however shows not three life signs but five.

   The enforcer says, “the question is authorized, the facility is located outside of the city of Phoenix in the state of Arizona.”

    “Well,” says Rhulan turning to Gold Wolf, “seeing as Betty had the map. Well then, so tell us Gold Wolf, where is this Arizona.”

     “To the west,” says Gold Wolf, “right on the doorstep of the Calif kingdom…if we returned to our world there.”

     “Very well then,” says Rhulan turning back to the enforcer, “we’ll go peacefully.”

     “All five of you?” asks the enforcer.

    Rhulan smiles and nods at her shadow, from which Amora rises. Rhulan nods at Hollia who taps her tiara; which rises, spins, glows, and turns back into Lin Lin.

   “Very well,” says the enforcer, “follow me.”

    ******

    -some time later-

    Rhulan, Hollia with Lin Lin in her lap, Amora, Cata returned to her Kuhrai form, and Gold Wolf sit on the sits; unbound in the back of a Ju-el transport cruiser. A single female guard in the same jumpsuit biker gear; as it looks to Gold Wolf, watches them from behind a force field.

    Gold Wolf eyes Cata’s swords by her side in total disbelief they let her keep her weapons, or any of them keep their gear. As he looks around Hollia is playing with Lin Lin, Cata looks bored, Amora is…just looking straight ahead; and he can’t tell if Rhulan is scoping out the guard or checking her out.

    He looks away as Rhulan turns her head back towards Hollia, “this is even better than a train or cars,” she says, “no hassles with local traffic, shops, inns, just taking us hundreds if not thousands of miles ahead before we can go back home.”

    Gold Wolf bites his tongue thinking, “how can they all be so…so…calm about this? These are obviously not the American forces, heroes, or SABER organization; so what the hell is going on here?”

    ******

    [Mean while, the howls of justice have summoned force the avengers of the innocent, the doers of good, the heroic team of heroes, The Heroes! The Defenders of goodness, justice, the American Way, Niceness, and Capitalism.

     They are:

     Pizza-Man! Wild mannered billionaire playboy Warren Wayneland dawns his suit made from that incredible material Heroinium. With his pasta sauce cape gifting him with the power of flight, his Pizza shield made from Heroinium and controlled by his mind when thrown thanks to his two slices pizza-samurai helmet *the two slices upon his brow acting as antenna as well as a bold fashion sense. His amazing pizza utility belt allowing him to use such astonishing gadgets such as his trade mark pepperoni trackers, jalapeño bombs, pinapple acid discs, and as a nod to our friends in the East squid torpedoes. He is the leader of the Heroes, Pizza-Man!

     Rodent-Man!  Mark Stasin after watching his parents be mugged; thankfully saved by the previous Rodent Man, vowed to join the amazing Heroes; joining as Rodent Man’s side kick Mouse Boy. After years of diligent in battle training and familiarity with Rodent Man’s gadgets, rodent hole of wanders, and his own addition the Rat Arrows, he is now the new Rodent-Man!

   Barbarosa! Nicholas Burger, while studying over seas at his ancestral nation of Germany learned he is the reincarnation of the legendary hero Barbarosa. Taking up the mantle of the hero and his incredible strength he returns to the wonderful nation of the United States of America to join the Heroes in their battles against evil and tyranny!

   The Pink Witch! Diana Waxon, she was just a normal female college student until the day a strange mystical ring with a pink gem appeared from a magical portal and calls out to her. Putting it on she found with a simple magic word her clothes magically change to that of a pink witch, and grant her amazing, fantastical, mystical powers. She is now the Pink Witch, and newest member of The Heroes!

    Together they are The Heroes!]

    “There it is,” says Pizza-Man in his forced stern voice, “the aliens’ prison camp.”

    Rodent-Man watches through binoculars, as do Barbarosa and Pink-Witch as a new shuttle lands in the prison yard.

    “What do we know Rodent-Man,” says Pizza-Man.

   “Well,” says Rodent-Man, “according to my inside sources, they have been deporting as they call it, heroes, villains, and mutants from our world to other dimensions; claiming they are from these other dimensions so are sending them home like illegal aliens.”

    “Commendable idea,” says Pizza-Man, “if they weren’t so evil, and clearly using it as a front.”

    “That’s right boss man,” says Barbarosa, “today they captured and deported Gun-Slinger.”

     “Hmmm, she’s that mutant girl right?” says Pizza-Man, “So we do have evidence they are lying then.”

     “Not that it matters,” says Pizza-Man pointing at the facility, “these fiends have invaded our country, the beautiful land of America, and claimed sovereignty over her majesty. Now they are capturing and deporting her defenders, we can not allow this to continue any further! Come my comrades we fight! And We free our breathren from the evil clutches of these space babes…no offense Miss Pink Witch.”

     “None taken sir,” says Pink Witch.

    “The battle will be harsh,” continues Pizza-Man, “and deadly, the glory and justice however will be great. So if you want to turn back I wont stop you, but if you wish to stay and be remembered forever as the saviors of America, stay and stand tall like true patriots. So are you with me!”

    “Yes sir!” they all shout.

    “Heroes Go!” they all shout as they run and fly over the hill straight at the prison facility.

    ******

    As the party steps out of the shuttle they see around them a large prison yard with high walls.

    “Not too many guards,” says Gold Wolf.

    “It’s the Ju-el,” says Cata practically hissing as she speaks, “one guard is equal to over a hundred humans.”

    “Really?” asks Hollia.

   “Indeed,” says Rhulan, “physically this all female race is equal to us Aesperians, however where we have our powers they have their technology. Those skin tight battle suits augment their strength a hundred fold for example.”

   Rhulan looks at her hand, bit of violet energy like small flames dance as she opens and closes her hand, “damn,” she thinks to herself, “still not fully recovered, heh, guess a thousand year nap for my body is a bit too long a rest to go flying around trying to pull off things like the Chaos Destroyer.” Her mind goes back to those strange aliens and burning her hand on their force field.

   “This way,” says the guard.

   Rhulan pauses, her eyes glowing, she wipes her mouth as though she started to salivate, her gaze fixated on a large container at the far end of the yard. Amora stops and looks at it as well.

    “Hey,” says the Guard, “we don’t have all…”

    “For Justice!” screams a man in a silly pizza themed costume who comes flying over the wall carrying a man in a rat costume with a  cape and tights, and a man dressed like a barbarian with a double headed short handled axe strapped to his waist. Behind them a woman in a pink witch costume flies over the wall on a broom she rides side straddled.

   “Get back inside the shuttle!” yells the guard to the party as she fires a chain saw beam from her wrist guards at the intruders who dodge and land.

   They battle left and right, throwing explosives (which have little to no effect on the Ju-el), attack automated aerial drones which come swarming out of the guard towers.

    “Who the hell are they?” asks Cata.

    “The Heroes,” says Gold Wolf nonchalantly.

   “They’re heroes?” asks Hollia.

   “It’s what they call their team,” says Gold Wolf, “a bunch of clowns if you ask me.”

   Pizza-Man throws his shield, guiding it between knocking around aerial drones as his comrades distract them. Rodent Man going inside the main building.

   “Wander where that was is going,” says Cata, “do they think this tiny facility is anything other than a transporter?”

    “So a rescue operation you figure,” says Gold Wolf.

   “sh…should we help them?” asks Hollia noticing that the Heroes are barely holding their own and mostly running away from the Ju-el forces.”

    As Pizza-Man throws his shield again, Rhulan raises her hand and with a twist of the wrist, the shield goes out of control, speeds up, actually rips through several drones before slamming into and breaking a control panel on the giant container at the far end of the yard.

   “Ha, Haa, Haa, Haa!” laughs a deep menacing tone as the container opens; flames escaping it.

    Rodent-Man just then comes out, “hey, this isn’t a pri…oh shit!”

    A thirty foot man wearing a long trench coat, spike shoulder blades, spike knuckle gloves, and a metal skull on fire for a head steps out.

   “I am the Fearsome Fordanda,” says the man, his voice starting deep, but crackling like fire at the end, “Overlord of the Dimension of Evil. Did you alien wenches really think to hold me forever!”

    “Yeah,” says Rhulan to Hollia, “you should help the Heroes fight the Ju-el robots.”

    “Wha…” starts Gold Wolf, but before he can speak Hollia and Lin Lin blind side a swarm of the flying robots, decimating several of them with a combo Goddess Wind and Devastation Beam.

    That attack sets the fighting off again.

    “I’ll take the big guy,” says Rhulan, “Amora, you deal with those robots, and get those civilians out of here too.”

    “Yes, mistress,” says Amora as she blips over to Rodent Man, throws him over her shoulder and leaps over the walls of the facility, before coming over and doing the same to Barbarosa, knocking his axe aside as he tries to fight her, and sending it right into a nearby weird biped horned demon thing that has just appeared.

    “My army rises,” hisses Fordanda.

   “Damn!” yells Cata as she raises her blade to block a flaming skeleton’s sword that has just appeared from the ground.

   Gold Wolf too finds himself fighting both robots and demons. Ju-el air ships are starting to appear and fire down on the rapidly appearing demons, which are appearing both inside and around the facility.

   Pizza-Man’s shield finnaly returns to him just as he noticed Gold Wolf, “Oh ho, you’re that Japanese super-hero we heard was in our backyard. So come to help rid us of this alien menace before it spreads to your control?”

   Gold Wolf blasts a flying demon away and just cracks a smile. On the ground Hollia and Lin Lin; now turned giant, are knocking the demons about like toys with their elemental attacks.

   “She’s better than I thought,” thinks Gold Wolf.

   A blue light draws his attention for a moment back at the giant demon man, however its not him creating it.

   Rhulan hovers before Fordanda, “Gravitas—Irratus—Darasha—Sharnoon!” with these words and a gesture multitudes of blue star sigils appear around them, overlapping each other blocking them in, no one on the outside seeing in, and no one inside seeing out.

   “I hope that sorceress you brought with you knows what she’s doing,” says Pizza-Man, “our own Sorcerer Supreme Professor Oddman barely manages to banish that villain each time he appears.”

    Inside the archaic blue dome, Fordana laughs, “So, little sorceress, you have blocked us in? What are you sacrificing yourself? Did you think this little spell would cut off my minions from appearing. Ha Haaa haaaa haaaaa! Silly fool, I am the Fearsome Fordanda, my power is unequaled. I will kill you and free myself from this…”

    Rhulan shakes her head as though trying to force off sleep.

    “I see,” says Fordanda, “this was your best shot, weakened yourself havn’t….say…do I know you from some place?”

    Rhulan straightens herself and chants.

    “Necra,
     Necronas,
     Irratus
    Khaonus
    In the name of Ro-Ko-Naka
   Goddess of Chaos I call the path to open,
   The dark power of the Sister of madness to open!”

   “hhnnng,” says Rhulan grasping at her chest before forcing her arms away to her sides. Her eyes glow blue, beams shooting from them and her mouth as her body rises into the air, her hair flows up, as does her cape. Her hands and forearms turn blacker than night and her fingers become as claws, and triple in size.

    She stops in mid-air, a twisted smile upon her face as she looks at Fordanda through eyes of blue fire. A red sigil appears beneath her feet and one before either hand like holographic controls.

    “Foolish creature,” she says with a voice echoing into the ether, “Yes, I defeated you ages ago.”

    “Rhulan,” says Fordanda, his jaw twisting un-naturally into a smile, “to think I would have my chance at reve…hey…back off!”

    She floats over to him, surprising him, as her claw like hands caress his face and she moves in as though to kiss his none-existent lips.

    “My…My fire will…burn…uaahauahh”

   He staggers as she opens her glowing mouth and the fire around his head, and from his mouth flows into hers. He struggles to raise his arm, making hand signs, just as a sigil appears around his fingers however gossamer chains erupt from the blue sigils around them and grabs his arms, legs, around his waist, and even around his neck.

   Rhulan’s voice echoes from all around them, “Your mana demon, give me all your mana!”

   The Fearsome Fordanda falls to the ground, smoke escaping his body as the chains vanish. Rhulan’s body returns to its normal state. Rhulan places her hand over her chest, “In my true name I close the seal once more.” She winces as though pinched. With a wave of her hand the sigils vanish.

    A large blue sigil appears beneath her feet as she and it float into the air.

    “Your comrade did a good job,” says Pizza-Man looking down at Fordanda lying on the ground, his expression however is one of worry.

    Rhulan puts her hand in the air, index and ring finger pointed up, “All those who came with me to this place, enter now my magic space.”

    Gold Wolf is teleported from Pizza-Man’s side to the sigil, Cata flying in the air growling at a Ju-el guard in a stand off vanishes to the sigil, Hollia and Lin Lin standing around trying to figure out why the demons they were fighting suddenly vanished vanish themselves and appear in the sigil, and Amora who had started to fight along side Rodent-Man and Barbarosa much to their surprise vanishes and appears in the sigil.

    “Miss Rhulan,” begins Hollia.

    “We’re leaving,” says Rhulan, “we have no more need for this place and we probably shouldn’t wait around till these two sides start fighting again or asking questions.”

    A sphere forms around them, something familiar to them, as bolts shoot from Rhulan’s hands to the sides of the sphere. They rise a little higher into the air and vanish from this world.

    As they re-appear to an empty desert before them, just mountains and sand in the night air, Rhulan turns to Gold Wolf, “do you want to go back?”

    “Excuse me?” asks Gold Wolf.

    “It’s a simple enough question,” says Rhulan, “that Earth you so love is being invaded by the Ju-el, a multi-universal empire that controls three galaxies in their home universe. They won’t settle for just one continent on that planet. So do you want to go back and help your…fellow heroes defend it?”

     “No,” says Gold Wolf bluntly remembering and flinching at the thought of Queen Thistle, “my first…duty…is to her…to Aesperia. Besides I have enough to worry about with out throwing aliens into the mix.”

    “I feel bad for them,” says Hollia.

    “Hollia?” says Rhulan a bit worried.

    “I mean,” she says, “they were so out matched, but…I don’t know anything about that place, and those women didn’t seem evil or anything, not like those Magnus guys…I just,”

    She sticks her tongue out and smiles like a kid, “Sorry, just being silly. An adventurer must never get involved in the politics of a foreign land.”

    Gold Wolf raises an eyebrow at how easily her own words have eased her mind.

   Cata shrugs, “So yet another Earth is being taken over by the Ju-el, not like you have to worry about them here. Besides best not to give them a reason to invade here or anything.”

    “I suppose,” says Rhulan, “it still holds true that the Ju-el and the Kuhrai have a none interference pact?”

    “How would you…” starts Cata, “Uh…yeah…”

    Cata’s ear twitches at the sound of a plane flying overhead, “Uhm,”

    “Damn it.” says Rhulan as she looks behind them to see the lights of a city not far off, “where the hell are we?”

    ******

    Back in the reality of the super-heroes a Ju-el vessel is in route to the planet Earth. A screen comes up before a woman in blue armor, thicker in design than those of the enforcers, with long blue hair. Her pale blue eyes focus on the screen before her showing the battle at the facility and zooms in on a picture of Rhulan with an energy bar flashing beside the picture.

    She studies the zoomed in image, zooming in to Rhulan’s face. She smiles coyly at the image on the screen.