Song of the Swans Part 6

Chapter 23

A mobile phone sang its electronic ringtone.   It's screen, pulsing in the dark, did little to light the study room around the table it lay on.   Illumination was the job of the desk lamp.

Tiberius ignored the phone.   It wasn't his, so he paid it no concern.   But then his companion lifted it up and practically shoved it in his face, so he happened to see the Caller ID.   Aiden, it read, and Tiberius smiled.   So his older nephew was back.   Now he had only to bring him here.

"Deliver a message for me," Tiberius instructed his companion, a dark haired girl with a fair, heart shaped face dressed in casuals, which Tiberius was glad to see.   He ulocked the phone, texted a message, and handed it to the girl.   "Take this to...  anywhere but here.   Send it to my nephew.   Then come back."

The girl nodded, pocketed the device in her jeans, and left into the dimly lit hallway.   As she did she passed a black haired boy, headed in the opposite direction to the study.   Their gazes didn't cross, but he regarded her with a perturbed expression, turning around even as she rounded the corner.   Then he continued on his way.

Alex entered the study and assessed the strange, tall man who called himself his uncle.   Tiberius was leaning over a book, his head on a hand propped on an elbow, with many more opened books splayed out on the desk before him.

Alex coughed, and Tiberius looked up, squinting to discern his silhouette in the doorway.   He put on his glasses.  "Hello, Alex." Tiberius greeted him with a smile that made Alex want to frown.   "What can I do for you on this lovely night?"

"For starters," Alex said, for maybe the ninth time, "you can tell me where this lovely night is being spent; where I am, where this is, who she is?  What at all is going on?"

Tiberius sighed.   "You sound so much like your brother, Aiden, and my brother, Abe, your father, when he was in the mood."

Alex looked miffed.   "Are you trying to diss my father?  He was a good man."

"Oh no," Tiberius defended, "everyone has their moments, ups and downs.   I, unfortunately, saw a lot of downs in my childhood."

"No one knows anything about your childhood." Alex reminded him.   "No one knows anything about you, or anything about anything that's going on with you."  He didn't want to sound whiny, but he couldn't help it.   Alex shook his head at himself.   And it wasn't like Tiberius was the mature one in the room.   "If you could just tell me-"

"There will be a time." Tiberius interrupted.   "You may or may not learn my secrets, but, I assure you, you will soon see what this has to do with anything, what this is all about.   Right now, we are waiting on your brother.   His friends could carry through with my instructions, and it would speed things greatly if they were as reliable as others have been, but alas, they're not.   Thanks to a little detour, your brother now holds one key to solving everything now.   I only needed to open the first door for him."

Alex shook his head again, and turned around.   "You make zero sense." he muttered, and slunk back to the living quarters of this...  house?  It was more like a jail that Tiberius lived in.   As he headed for his bedroom, he felt a sudden gust of wind tear down the hallway.   Loose objects clattered, and then the girl rounded the corner.   Again, she paid him no mind.

It was another common occurence in this house, which Alex could only suspect, by its lack of windows, was built underground.   Tiberius and the girl were always coming and going, while he was stuck, forced to utilize Tiberius's 'hospitality.'

Alex knew the real reason he was here.   Tiberius was a negative man, and instead of nice things, he decided to use a hostage as leverage to get what he wanted from Intrepid and whoever his friends were.

Alex was sure Intrepid would try to rescue him from their crazy uncle.   He just wished he could be a little faster.   

Chapter 24

It would feel good to be back home, if Intrepid could call his Nimbus City apartment that.   He was stuck in Nexus Tower for now, waiting on a hearing with some Nexus Force officials.   Apparently breaking and entering Nexus Tower was a more serious offense than it was made out to be.   The problem was that Intrepid and co.  had gotten caught.   The Assembly Grunts had been happy to put them on house arrest, once they were out of Epic Fivestar Empanada's sights when she she gone to find the rest of her crew.

So Intrepid folded his arms and grumbled to himself.   He was seated alongside Strange Odd Shadow and Skilled Honored Ninja on one of those uncomfortable industrial perforated metal benches that was just perforated metal bent into the shape of a bench.   Where his clothes were ripped, the metal was cold on his skin.   He would change, but was too tired to bother.

After a few minutes, some familiar faces appeared across the Assembly Floor's plaza, and Intrepid stood up to stretch.   He immediately recognized the Venture Buccaneer, Cheerful Power Rover.   A brown monkey was perched on his shoulder, with one hand on Rover's scarf and another searching his bandolier for food, maybe?  Then there was Sergeant Ghost Mustache, also named Thaddeus, who frankly looked bored.   Intrepid couldn't blame him.   Avant Gardens was much prettier than Nexus Tower and never got boring.   Jonna was also with them.   Some other unknown minifigures were with them: a boy from Venture, one girl from Paradox, another Assembly girl, and then there was a fourth guy who wore only cargo pants and a gray tank top with no faction identification, but Intrepid figured he was a Sentinel.

Intrepid waved until someone spotted them, and then Rover's group made its way over.   Rover himself broke out into a run, pushing through the throngs of other minifigures occupying the plaza.   without a doubt, the Buccaneer was eager to see his friends again.

"Nice to see you again, Intrepid!" Rover shouted.   "Where's Kate?"

"She's with Cyclone." Intrepid said.   At Rover's confusion, Intrepid waved a hand.   "Long story.   There's two of him now."

"Let me introduce my new companions," Rover said with vigor, and his spread his arms to point out the Faction kids and the guy in the tank top.   "These are Starkey, Hailey, Bob, and Victoria."

"Wassup." Hailey, the Space Marauder, said.

"You look tired, man." Bob, the Adventurer, said.

"Hi." Victoria, a Summoner, said.   She was the only one who smiled.

"Grr." was all the last guy, Starkey, said.   He was the Sentinel who wasn't wearing faction clothing, and not much else.   The four of them were all bunched together like magnets, seemed to be whispering among themselves, and often one or two of them would burst into a short smile, stifle a laugh, or groan.   They made Intrepid want to groan.   He nodded to Jonna and Sergeant.

It took awhile, but then Intrepid saw her.   There was no way he could have left Nexus Tower without missing her, with her dyed green and yellow hair tied up in a high ponytail, and her ghastly outfit, coveralls and a short jacket; the former was mostly denim but with glowing neon highlights along its length that made Intrepid shudder.   At least the jacket was black.   He folded his arms and sighed, and he was sure there was no way anyone could miss his cousin.

"Hello, Shrill." he greeted her.

Shrill Failed Brick responded with a mimic of his previous action.   She folded her arms, strutted her jaw, and said very curtly, "I go by Shira now, Aiden."

Intrepid narrowed his eyes, and if he could he would have folded his arms harder.   He turned to two of his companions currently with him, shrugged, and said, "This is my cousin, you can say hi or face her wrath."  Then he swung back to Shira, walked right up to her ear and whispered, "What are you doing here with these lunatics?"

"I've been flying with Rover the last few months," Shira said.   She tilted her head towards Starkey, Hailey, Bob the Adventurer, and Victoria.   "These guys just showed up last week, on some secret assignment from the NFS."

"NF-what?"

Now his cousin whispered too.   "Nexus Force Services." she hissed.   "I would try to ditch them but Rover's second set of eyes is kind of stalking me, and of course Rover doesn't want to ditch them."  By second set of eyes she meant his monkey.   Then she smiled sweetly.   "And now, mi primo, I'm here to lend a hand in helping you.   What's up?"

"You can start by getting me out of this tower." Intrepid muttered.   He was trying to figure out what else to say, when suddenly his phone buzzed.   He fished it from his pocket and read the text message he received.   "What in the world-?"

He faced Shira again.   "Alright." he presented.   "I need to speak to Luke and Mara as soon as possible.   You, or any of you," he faced Strange Odd Shadow, Skilled Honored Ninja, Rover, Jonna, Sergeant, and even the other four weirdos in a silent imploration for help.   Then he repeated, "Please, get me out of this tower." 

Chapter 25

The metal door to the basement of a decrepit building in Nimbus Station swung open and Intrepid entered.   At last, he was back in his Leek Works.   On reflex he moved his hand to flick the light switch on the wall, but then Intrepid's eyes narrowed, and he surveyed the little entrance room.

The lights were already on.

"I thought we agreed to turn the lights off before leaving." Intrepid muttered over his shoulder to the two people closest behind him, Luke and Mara.   He and Shira had rendezvoused with them and Tornado at their Nimbus City apartment before hightailing it back to Leek Works, as Intrepid's mysterious text instructed.   About that: someone had texted him telling him to get back to Leek Works for "further instructions."

Intrepid bet it was from Tiberius.   Only someone in his family could be so vague.

"I did turn the lights off." Mara retorted.

"Think someone's here?" Shrill Failed Brick asked.

"I hear someone breathing." Calm Thoughtful Tornado panted.

"You hear yourself."  Intrepid lead the way inside, and as a precuation he summoned a shortsword from his backpack.   Then he heard a loud crashing from the next room and a dark haired man appeared.

"There you are!" the man shouted, stumbling over junk on the groung as he hobbled towards them.   Intrepid put away his sword and sighed.   The guy had a red baseball cap, a white shirt, jeans, and a bomber jacket with a badge on it that said, "Relationship status: Pizza."  It was just a pizza guy.

And he wasn't really a man.   He was just a teenage guy in need of a shave, with a mustache and beard, very big eyes, bushy brows, and a lot of acne.

"Did someone order a pizza?" the guy said at last.   He balanced some boxes of said food in his arms.

Intrepid shook his head and turned around to face his teammates, Luke and Mara.   "Did someone order a pizza?" he repeated.

Luke smiled and raised a hand.

Intrepid scowled and raised a hand to facepalm.

"My name's Ray." the pizza guy said.

"We'll take the pizza," Intrepid said, "but I'm afriad we don't have time for more introductions.   Luke, tip him and get over here."

The Bat Lord ran for his office, Luke and Shira in tow, but on the way there they heard Mara say sweetly, "Hello Ray, I'm Mara."

Intrepid shut the door and stared at his table.   Next to a terminal, between a keyboard and a stack of notes, was an enclosed letter, addressed to A Certain Nephew.

"What's this?" Shira asked while Intrepid opened it.   He read the letter aloud.

"'Dear Aiden,

We minifigures, and everything in our universe, is connected through an energy called 'Imagination.'  Imagination has its rules.   They are strong rules.   Imagination is intrinically good, only through corruption can it be used for evil.'

Intrepid paused.   "Debatable." he commented.   Shira shrugged.

He continued.   "'I, Tiberius Talmid, have broken the rules.   It is by no new means, but one pioneered by another man you know as Baron Typhonus.   I have dabbled in harnessing Maelstrom.'"

"Your uncle would be great in Paradox." Luke quipped.

"'Thanks to my efforts, and the recent assistance of some colleagues, I can now announce to you, my dear nephew, that I have forged my own proverbial Key of Revival of the Dead.   In the same manner that the Maelstrom revives smashed Stromlings in the Nimbus System [an amazing ability, if I say so myself] I now have the answer to reviving anyone who is unjustifiably smashed.'"

"But wouldn't they be, you know, a little Maelstrom then?" Shira said.

"'But this comes at a cost of time, my own of which I have volunteered, and resources.   To continue my project, you must get for me a hundred tons of Maelstrom Ore.   You can find it at the attached coordinates at the end of this message.

"'Don't believe me?'" Tiberius's message continued.   "'As proof of concept, I have revived your sister Evelyne.   She is with your friends.   Provide me with my Maelstrom Ore and the rest of our family will be next.'"

The message ended with a set of coordinates, and Intrepid looked up.   "Evelyne is alive?" he questioned.

"We found her on El..  ele...  elepharia?" Luke started.

"Elistra." Intrepid corrected.

"Yeah." Luke nodded.   "She's here with Edgar.   They're around here somewhere."

Intrepid suddenly looked very strained, and he gripped the table edge for support.   To him, his vision began to blur at the edges as he focused on Luke's and Shira's faces.   This was a lot ot take in.   "Take me to her." he instructed.   "And tell me everything that's happened on the way there."   *****     "...So then we met Tiberius, he's a crazy guy, and he really wanted his ore," Mara chattered.   "And he had an equally crazy companion."

"Companion?" Intrepid asked.   He and Shira sat next to each other on the bus into Nimbus City.   Tornado and Luke were behind them, and across the aisle in the next bench was Mara and...  Ray?  Intrepid couldn't answer what he was doing there, but he didn't object.

"Yeah, she could teleport." Mara said.

"She?"

"She was also mean.   She teleported me onto an island in the middle of a lake.   Very rude."

"That sounds horrible," Ray said, "I'm so sorry that had to happen to you Mara."

"Aw," Mara turned to the pizza boy, "you don't have to apologize for anything.   You're sweet, though."

Out of the corner of his eye Intrepid saw Ray's cheeks turn as red as the sauce on the pizza he delivered.   He closed his eyes and waited for Mara to continue the story.   "We kinda, uh, fought Tiberius." she admitted.

"More like tried to fight him." Luke amended.   "We got our backpacks handed to us."

"Tell me about his companion." Intrepid suggested.

"Well, she wore dark clothes." Luke recalled.   "Form fitted, good for fighting, maybe with some gadgets.   Like a ninja.   Cyclone or Edgar got a better look at her than I did, probably.   She had a mask that covered her entire head, except I guess for her eyes?  Gotta see somehow."

"How do you know she's a girl?" Intrepid asked.

Luke glared at him.   "I told you her clothes were form fitted."

Intrepid wondered who she was.  He remembered Red's warning about imposters and saboteurs....

They arrived at the stop closest to Edgar's last published location on the Leek Works bulletin.   Mara and Luke scampered ahead, with Intrepid, Shira, Tornado, and Ray trailing them down the crowded sidewalks.   They soon arrived at a familiar location.

"I was at this hospital." Intrepid recognized its painted white brick facade, although he had last left it through the back door.   "I wonder what Edgar's doing here, and Evelyne..." He could still barely believe Tiberius's message, and his teammate's reports that they'd seen her and brought her back.

Because the last time Intrepid had seen his sister, he'd buried her.

"Whoa Nelly," Shira said suddenly, taking a deep breath.

She had one of Leek Work's modified Nexus Force Plaques in her hands, which she was using to read some confidential Nexus Force files.   Leek Works had downloaded them from an intercepted backup some time before.

"Turns out Uncle Tiberius isn't the only guy who's tried reviving smashed people," Shira said.   "There's some Paradox test logs here, and they tried something close to the same thing Tiberius is doing now."  She looked at Intrepid gravely.

"Well?" her cousin prodded.

"I think I know why Evie's in a hospital." Shira said.

"Explain." Intrepid asked.

"The pictures can speak for themselves."  She shoved the plaque in his face and he drew in his breath sharply, before pushing it back to Shira.

"The Paradox had to re-smash all their subjects." Shira added.   "They all acted like Stromlings, even though they started out looking okay, but after awhile they started looking the part."  She scrolled down in the document a little more.   "And worse."

"We gotta get Evelyne before the Paradox do." Intrepid muttered.

"You think they want her?"

"Luke, Mara!" Intrepid shouted ahead.   "Did she seem like a Stromling to you?!"

Luke turned around, not really pausing as he and Mara pushed through the hospital's revolving front door.   "Who?" he asked.

"EVELYNE!!!!" Intrepid screamed, chasing after them.

"Oh yeah," Luke said.   "She was perfectly normal."

"You bet they'll want her," Intrepid hissed to his cousin.   Once they were inside, they had to be discreet.   "This is a Nexus Force institution.   Any peculiarities are reported directly to Nexus Tower.   There's probably a Paradox envoy already on the way.   They'll want to see where they failed, but we're not gonna let them."

"What are you two whispering about?" Ray asked.

"Hush." Intrepid said.   On the way down the halls, he sighted a team of Paradox faction members crossing the next junction.   "Gee golly.   They're here quickly."

"Are we breaking someone out?" Ray asked again.   "Are we breaking the law?"

"It wouldn't be our first time." Intrepid said.

"I break the laws by walking." Tornado snorted.

"Why are you even here?" Shira asked.

Ray shrugged.   "Delivering pizza is boring.   I can't even eat them."

"You have a point." Intrepid agreed.   "You can come with us, or you can turn back now.   Let me know if I need to focus on keeping you safe too."

Ray nodded.   "We should probably all turn around right now."

"Why?"

"I used to be in Paradox." Ray said with another shrug.   "I was a Rank 3 Space Marauder until some Stromling smashed me.   I know some Paradox strats.   That team we just saw?  They saw us too, and they're right around the corner waiting to ambush you."

"What do you suggest we do?" Shrill hissed.

"Turn around," Ray whispered, "and find another way around."

He had turned halfway before a Paradox Grunt stepped into the hallway.   "Halt," he said.   He was flanked by a Space Marauder and a Shinobi.   "This place is under lockdown.   Who authorized your admittance?"

"I did." Intrepid said, showing a fake business card.   It was a picture of him wearing a borrowed Space Marauder helmet.   It actually wasn't even him, just a random Space Marauder.   "Don't you recognize your superior officer?  I'm second to Vanda.   Don't bother us or I'll get you fired."

The grunt scowled and waved for his guards to raise their weapons.   "That only works in movies and books."

Intrepid rubbed the back of his neck and turned to face his teammates.   "It was a worth a shot."  Then he swung around to punch the grunt.   Instead he got whacked in the face with the butt of the Space Marauder's laser pistol.

A little brawl ensued with his five teammates outnumbering and quickly overpowering the three Paradox, knocking them out.   When Intrepid got back to his feet, it was to see three more Paradox troopers rounding the corner.   Seeing their fallen comerades, they wouldn't hesitate to shoot this time.

"Why are we doing this again?" Tornado cried, but he ran with the others to charge the next guards.   The first guard fired at Shrill who raised a shield to deflect them, and then hit that Space Marauder over the head with it.   Ray tackled a Shinobi while Luke twisted his Cleaver to disarm the last Sorceror, and Mara yelled "Say cheese!" before stunning them with a Flash Bulb.

"Could you have done that first?" Ray asked, getting up.

"I like taking victory pictures." Mara said.

Intrepid peeked around the corner to see an even bigger Paradox squad approaching.   "Sheesh."  He threw a flash bang down that hall and was about to lead the team across before he swung around.   "Where even are we going?" he asked.

Luke pointed to an elevator.   "The roof."

A short elevator ride later and the six of them spilled out onto the roof, where an armored helicopter was hovering over a landing spot.   Waiting for it was another platoon of all Rank 3s, and they stood around a wheelchair.   Someone was slumped in it, sedated.   Intrepid's heart skipped a beat when he recognized Evelyne.

He slunk around to join his teammates behind the cover of some strategically placed crates.   He eyed a small water tower that may be useful.   "We should get someone up there." he planned.

"On it," Shira threw on a hood and ran off.

"Anyone need any weapons?" Intrepid asked.   He handed Tornado a Peashooter and Ray held up a service Blaster.   Luke and Mara were armored up and Intrepid suited up his Bat Lord gear.   "Let's go."

Intrepid activated his speedboost while the others licked quicksickles and they all vaulted over the crates, speeding for the Paradox.   They covered the ground faster than the first Paradox they hit could react, and five Space Marauders were knocked down.   There were twenty in total plus the crew in the helicopter.   Luke threw a plunger at the helicopter's nose and it stuck.   The craft responded by aiming its guns at the F2Per, but then the plunger sent an EMP charge into the aircraft.   It ascended out of control and out of sight.

Wormholer bullets began to streak across the roof and impact against shields and armor.   Intrepid shield slammed two Paradox over the roof's edge.   Luke and Mara were carving their own path with stun blades, making their way to Evelyne.   Ray was sniping out anyone they missed, and Tornado was shooting peas all over the place.

A bolt of energy suddenly struck Intrepid in the leg, piercing his armor, and he stumbled.   Looking up at the water tower, he saw the last Paradox Space Marauder, a sniper, getting ready to fire again.

Intrepid raised his shield so there was something between him and the sniper.   "Sniper!" he shouted, before he began hitting the nearest knocked out Space Marauder, not enough to smash him but to trigger his Bat Lord ability to replenish his health.   It worked and he felt his energy coming back, before the next sniper blast hit Luke.

The next person to fall was the sniper, knocked out of the water tower by Shira.   Ray finished him with a stun blast, while Mara ran to her cousin.   "Stunned," she reported.

"Mhrlghlghfghm," Luke mumbled numbly.

Intrepid stood up and looked around for the helicopter.   He saw it in the horizon, retreating.   Then he saw Evelyne, still unconscious in the wheelchair, and standing behind her was a Paradox Shinobi.

"It's me!" the Shinobi shouted, and he pulled off his helmet, revealing sandy hair and a determined face.

"Edgar." Intrepid fell to the ground in relief.

"I disguised so I could keep her in sight," Edgar said, suddenly looking very tired.   He rubbed his eyes with the back of his hands.   "Intrepid, it's really her."

"I know." Intrepid said.   He approached her tentatively, not fully trusting his eyes yet.   But the sleeping girl's face was the same as he remembered.   His sister, Evelyne, was alive and breathing.

He crouched down, noticing the purple tinge in the veins on the back of her hands.   Studiously, Intrepid reached and swept her hair back.   A purple streak had infected its strands, too.

"What caused this?" Edgar asked.

"You mean who." Intrepid said.   "Tiberius.   He used a Maelstrom method, that's why the Paradox were here."

"How can we restore her?"

"I don't know if we can." Intrepid muttered.   "Her essence is Maelstrom now.   Let's just...  get her someplace else."  He thought back to the letter Tiberius had given him.   Their uncle wanted more Maelstrom ore to revive the others.

Or was he was just making their existence worse?

"We'll go back to Leek Works." Intrepid instructed the team.   "We need to plan." 

Chapter 26

"These are coordinates for another Maelstrom mine." Intrepid reported, holding up the letter in front of the screen.   On the other side of the video call between Leek Works and Nexus Tower, Cheerful Power Rover jotted down the numbers.

"I thought we destroyed the last one." the Buccaneer said.   "The one with the skeletons."

"I'm sure everyone did." Intrepid agreed.   "But now you know there's another.   You need to destroy all of it.   Everything."

"I can send a scouting party now," Rover conceded, "but a full scale assault will take the convincing of higher ups.   I'm not a general."

"Everything needs to be destroyed." Intrepid repeated.   "Make sure you tell them that."

Rover nodded.   "Okay."  The channel closed, and Intrepid turned around to face his teammates.   Luke, Mara, Tornado, Edgar, and Ray were in the room with him.   Shrill was in a guest bedroom, waiting for Evelyne to wake up.

"Wait," Mara said, "didn't you say Tiberius said he needed the ore?"

"To turn more people into Stromlings, yeah." Intrepid said.   "I won't let him do that."

"But they're your family-" Luke protested.

"Who is Tiberius to play with fate?" Intrepid challenged.   "Who are we to change things?  Is what happened not supposed to have happened?"

"They shouldn't have been smashed." Edgar stated.   "We went to save them.   Just because we failed then, we don't need to fail now.   See Evelyne, she's completely herself."

"I've seen her." Intrepid said.

"Talk to her."

"How do we know she won't fall under the Darkitect's control?!" Intrepid shouted.   "Will she, or anyone else, even survive when we finish defeating the Maelstrom?  And we can't disinfect them back without smashing them."  He took a deep breath.   "I hate Tiberius."

Mara stood up.   "Calm down." she asserted.   "Maybe there's another way to bring people back to life.   Can't we rebuild from smashing?"

"We can because there's an Imagination Nexus on the world next door." Intrepid explained.   "Even then, we lose a little of our imagination spark everytime we smash, and that amount increases with the time spent before rebuilding.   Everyone who died on Elistra has been smashed for a couple of years now."

"Can't a Nexus rebuild them?" Mara asked.

A door opened and Shrill entered.   She must have dyed her hair again, since she was a blonde now.   "No," she shook her head.   "it's been tried before.   Have any of you heard about The Tragedy of Sir Dagator the Wise?"

"No?" Luke said.

"I didn't think so.   It's a Crux legend." Shrill related.   "Sir Dagator was the most esteemed of the Bat Lord clan, and he was even respected by the rival factions competiting for that face of Crux.   Sir Dagator made diplomacy his goal, and he negotiated hundreds treaties between the Bat Lords, Mosaic Jesters, Exploriens, and Bone Suitors.   All of his treaties would be broken within a week, but that didn't stop him from trying.   A day of peace was worth more to him than his life, and one day, while traveling to a distant land, he fell in a pit and smashed.

"The leader of the Mosaic Jesters happened to find him a month later.   They brought his body to the Mythrans, hoping they would revive him.   The Mythrans brought him to a Nexus, and were successful in re-animating him, but his mind and character were wiped completely clean.   The new Sir Dagator, reborn among the Mosaic Jesters, immediately took after them.

"And Sir Dagator the Wise was no more, replaced by Sir Dagator the Jester.   There was not a more foolish man on Crux for a thousand years.   The end." Shrill finished her story.

"Long story short," Intrepid concluded, "re-animating smashed people in the Nexus wouldn't bring our family back.   They wouldn't be our family anymore.   I think...  we have to let them go."

Mara had tears in her eyes, Luke looked grim, and Edgar nodded resignedly.

"Please don't." a voice said.   It was Evelyne.

For the first time in two years Intrepid heard Evelyne's voice.   He did what any long-lost brother should do - he went and gave her a hug, and his sister gripped him tight.

"It's so great to see you again." Intrepid said.

"You can't give up on us, if you knew what it means to me to see you again." Evelyne sniffed.   She released her embrace but still held her brother by the shoulders to look at his face.   "I wish I could have seen you sooner.   Our family would love to see you."

Intrepid nodded.   "I can't put them at the mercy of the Darkitect.   There's no way." he said.

"No, there's always a way." Evelyne urged.   "I'm sure of it.   We just have to find it."  She looked around.   "Isn't this some kind of research facility?"

"Not the usual kind." Intrepid said.   "But,"

"I'm already looking into Assembly files," Shrill reported.   "If anyone worked on this sort of thing, it'd be them."

Evelyne turned to her, and a moment passed before her face dawned with recognition.   "Shira?"

"Hi Evie." Shrill waved.   "Now hush, I'm reading."

Intrepid glanced to Luke and Mara and pointed to the computers.   The two grumbled a bit before heading to the desks and the terminals they used to download confidential Nexus Force files, in case Shrill didn't find anything in the older load.

"Download started," Luke said, "and it'll be running for awhile.   We should probably go do something while we wait."

"I'm down for a movie." Mara said.

Intrepid wrapped an arm around Evelyne.   "There'll be time for introductions later.   Remember the last time we went to a theater?"   ***     Their ragtag group of six teenagers and a young adult left Leek Works dressed in casuals.   Evelyne got a long sleeved sweatshirt, gloves, and a hat to hide her new specialties.   They avoided Nexus Force checkpoints wherever they were unnecessary and had Evelyne carry a Fountain of Imagination through the gate into the movie theater in Brick Annex.

"They're showing a movie about ducks." Luke said.

"Space ducks." Mara clarified.   "I've wanted to see it since I saw the trailer last year, even though I know how it ends."

"Don't you hate trailers that tell you the entire plot?" Luke asked rhetorically.   "Not to mention it's a prequel."

"In the end the universe explodes." Mara said.   "Then they bring it back."

"Why are we even watching it then?" Intrepid asked.

"There are lasers and space battles, and a post-credits scene."

"Go get us tickets and seats," Intrepid said, handing a gift card to Mara.   "I need to use a restroom.   Take care of Evelyne."

"I can take of myself." Evelyne reminded.

"I'm sure you can." Intrepid waved.   "Take care."  While the others headed for a matinee, he scoured the lobby for a restroom.   His search finally found some WC signs, pointing him into a dark hallway with three doors in the end.   It was too dark to make out their emblems, so he took the plunge and entered a random door.   He held his hand along the wall until he found a lightswitch, he flipped it, and quickly figured out he was in the wrong room.   There were mops, brooms, and hanging coveralls, and no toilet.   This was the janitor's closet.

Intrepid turned around to leave, but stopped in his place.   Blocking his way out, someone stood between him and the door.   She took her helmet off, revealing a familiar face framed with flowing red hair.

"Hey." Red said.

"This isn't a good time." Intrepid groaned.

"Look what's up and running again." Red said, gesturing at herself.   "Leek Work's Transdimensional Division is back in action."

"Good to hear."

"The Maelstrom Dimension attacked again."

"Sorry to hear that."

"Take this." Red held out a wristwatch, and Intrepid took it.   The logo identified it as an Unverse Manipulator.   "It should work for a while, and if it stops you'll know why.

"I saw your transmission to Rover," Red said, "and I have another reason why you should destroy that mine, ideally immediately."

"We got word from our Luke Mercury." Red disclosed.   "First he thanked us for apprehending his kids, then he told us what they were up to, lugging around Maelstrom Ore."

"For Tiberius?" Intrepid asked.

"The world doesn't revolve around you.   No, my step-cousins-in-law were in the employment of a Maelstrom Dimensional contact.   Luke interrogated them, since he, at least, has a grip on his kids.   They were collecting ore samples from various dimensions, and giving that to the contact."

"Why would they do a thing like that?" Intrepid muttered.

"The contact had a good way of disguising himself, or herself?  We don't actually know, and I didn't care to hear Cailan and Crims' motives either.   They're jerks.   Anyway," Red continued, "the thing is, objects or people from the different dimensions have an identifying feature.   Our sub-atomic elements are tilted slightly differently, or something like that.   Luke had done his own scouting in the Maelstrom Dimension, and he told us that its Maelstrom has some galaxy-wide telepathic communications and teleportation network.   A prior report from Charles Bradfordson corroborated its existence.   What Luke had to tell us, is that the Darkitect plans to use it to send armies into other dimensions too.   By knowing samples of the various dimensions' Maelstrom ore, he can connect the current system to the Maelstrom hotspots they originated from."

"Including the second mine on Crux Prime." Intrepid defined.   "Has it started yet?"

"No, it takes time to manipulate the sub-atomic sector.   I wouldn't give an ETA, since honestly no one on the good side knows." Red sighed resignedly.   "But it's going to happen, and it will be soon."

"Can you make the first move?" Intrepid asked.

"We want to, but it means mobilizing an army and motivating the whole Nimbus System, and beyond, into prepping for war.   We're facing an entire dimension's worth of Maelstrom," Red stated, "an entire reality.   It took us long enough to clean the Nimbus System."

"Do you think our dimension stands a chance?" Intrepid proposed.   "We're already in a state of war.   We have recruits coming in every day."

"Taking into account the 20 year technological difference between the Maelstrom Dimension and your dimension," Red said, "no way in hell.”

"How many dimensions are at risk?" Intrepid pressed.   "There are tens of us."

"Hundreds." Red corrected.   "It's worth a shot, getting a message to them and combining our forces.   It would be the biggest breach of Unverse yet.   Such a thing, as I've explained, would destroy the multiverse."

"Sounds to me like the Maelstrom is on their way to accomplishing that themselves."

"Just wanted to keep you up to date." Red concluded.   "I've loaded a few 'safe' destinations into your Unverse Manipulator, as a precaution, if you need to get away from someplace.   This is an upgraded model that can take more than a small group.   Try attaching it to a vehicle, if you want to."

"Cool." Intrepid said, despite the grave implications.   He tested his jaw.   "Stay safe out there."

"I'll keep you updated." Red said.   Then she was gone.

Intrepid left the janitorial closet and bumped into Mara, sipping on a straw dipped in a can of Cola.

"Do you always talk to yourself when you're alone?" the girl giggled.

"I wasn't alone." Intrepid informed her.

"I didn't hear anyone else." she said in between slurping her straw.   "We have seats and soda."

"Go on, I still need a restroom." Intrepid shooed her away.

He had trouble focusing on the movie later, except for the part where a duck destroyed the universe.   He wondered if that would be their fate as well.

Intrepid hoped Red was okay.   He hoped Rover's team wasn't in trouble, scouting the Maelstrom mine.   He wanted to get back to Leek Works and back into action.   Few times before had so many people mattered to him.   Cyclone.   Kate.   Rover.   His team, Luke and Mara, Tornado and Edgar, this weird guy Ray.   His family, Evelyne, Alex, and Shira.   He could count many more, before the demise of Elistra sent him into stifling, selfish despondency.

He used to be a cheerful person before the Maelstrom took that away.

But his friends had stayed with him.   Intrepid could think of one more loyal then them.   He had to take on the quality his chosen name meant: courage in the face of fearsome oppression.   He owed it to his friends, and their friends, to do everything he could to protect them.   And he was a Nexus Force warrior, tasked with defending his fellow soldiers and the innocent from danger.

Intrepid considered Red's gift to him.   He'd broken his last Unverse Manipulator the last time he'd tinkered with it.   But if he gave it to Luke and Mara, could they turn it into an Unverse Transmitter?  Or could they steal the Nexus Force's Transdimensional Ring from Nexus Tower, and use that?

Or instead of stealing it, they could just ask the Nexus Force for help...

Maybe it was time for their dimension's Leek Works to get a Nexus Force-sponsored Transdimensional Division.   It was time to make the future the present.   It was time to act now. 

Twenty-Seven

A more fitting room to plan a strategic Nexus Force attack on the Second Maelstrom Mine under Crux Prime would be the Sentinel Command Center in Nexus Tower, with its holographic map of Crux Prime.   But before they could get in there, Intrepid and his company first needed to convince Nexus Force leaders that the target, as well as the greater transdimensional threat, was real.   The Observation Lounge atop the tower, the room the heroes were currently seated in, was also comfier than the Command Center, so no one present was particularly motivated to leave.

There were twenty odd chairs and stone-pattern benches arranged in rings in the Observation Lounge, centered around an array of elevators, also centered around the glass windows that formed the Tower's most integral shaft: the passage for the Imagination Nexus to rise into the clouds, visible through the also-clear ceiling of the Observation Lounge for those who wanted to crane their necks to see it.   Everyone was looking at each other, however.

"I thought we were past the brink of winning this war." a brown haired, well-groomed, bearded man in a Hawaiian shirt and shorts complained.   Intrepid had to blink a few times before he recognized Beck Strongheart.   The Sentinel Commander had had to be flown in from a vacation property.   Since the end of the Faction War, the re-united Nexus Force had made undeniably grand progress in purging the Maelstrom from many of the Nimbus worlds, including Avant Gardens, and there was already talk of opening a museum in the former Paradox Lab.   Beck had thus taken a long-deserved break, but wearing his vacation clothes now, he was now 99% unrecognizable to anyone else who had seen him in his armor for so long.

Also present were Epsilon Starcracker, Sky Lane, and of course the four Faction Leaders: Duke, Hael, Vanda, and Albert.

On the other side of the observation lounge, facing the Nexus Force leaders, were Cyclone, Kate, and Rover, Skilled Honored Ninja and Strange Odd Shadow, and of course Intrepid.   Stromling Cyclone was also there, although he was no longer a Stromling.   There was no one else necessary to bring, except for the weird girl Allison Ryder who no one really knew anything about.   Intrepid had hoped Red would be there, too, but she'd made it clear it was up to him to convince his dimension's Faction Leaders to take action.

So Intrepid had brought living proof of the other dimensions.   The only hard part was the proving part.

"You're telling us the reason there's no more Maelstrom out there," Beck continued, waving his hand towards the windows overlooking Crux Prime, "is not because our brave soldiers destroyed them all, which they did at heavy cost.   But because the Maelstrom is hiding?  In a mine of all places?"

"It's entirey plausible." mused Starcracker.   "We've beaten them to the point they must retreat to build their forces back."

"That's not the point." Intrepid reminded them again, for maybe the seventh time.   "The mine is gearing up to be a gateway between dimensions.   They're going to get reinforcements, through that mine, from an entirely Maelstrom Dimension that's twenty years more advanced than we are."

"I've never heard something more preposterous!" Beck shouted.   "Where is the proof?"

Skilled Honored Ninja waved lazily.   "Us.   We're sitting right here."

Beck glared at the Sentinel Janitor.   " I told you, you could be an imposter."

Jonna cleared her throat.   "The Assembly lab is still analyzing the tissue samples we got from our visitors," she nodded at Stromling Cyclone, Skilled, and Shadow, then turned to Beck, "but so far their story adds up.   Intrepid said to look for 'tilted atoms' and we've found that."

"That is what my contact told me." Intrepid confirmed.   "I trust her."

"And who is your contact?" Beck questioned.   "Why should we trust her?"

"The proof is in here," Cheerful Power Rover cut in.

The Buccanneer's monkey handed him a Nexus Force data plaque, which Rover tossed into the room's center.   Everyone in the room paused to watch what happened next.   The room's intelligent lighting dimmed as the plaque lit up, and it proceeded to project a series of holographic imagery around it, slowly rotating to show everyone its contents.

It didn't look like much more than a cave entrance, in a cliff-wall at a basin of a Crux Prime ravine, but there were obvious Stromlings captured in the spyshots from atop the cliff.

"There's something important down there," Rover said, "and undoubtedly it's of interest to the Maelstrom, so it's of interest to us."

"Yeah, because it's a Maelstrom Mine." Intrepid said.

"You tell a very far-fetched story." Epsilon said to him.

"Next time I'll skip the story and go straight to the results-"

"Which we can all agree are real." Kate completed for him.  "Commander Strongheart, you can send more soldiers to clear any doubts."

"Even better, we can send planes." Epsilon said.

"No need." Duke Exeter, quiet until then, announced.   He unfolded his arms when he stood up.   The other leaders followed suit, and Duke nodded to Overbuild.

"We already had a spy satellite aimed at the coordinates you provided us, for a few months." the Assembly leader revealed.   "We have adjusted its lens array to subvert cloaking tech - a cloak we put on the site, which I'm afraid is the reason no one else has heard of it."

"Except for you," Duke said, gesturing to Rover and Intrepid, "and now everyone else in this room, too."  He had a tone and expression that seemed to say, and none of you were supposed to know.

"How could you know about the mine, and not destroy it already?" Rover asked, looking surprised.   Glancing around, just about everyone excluding the faction leaders, Beck, and Epsilon looked either stunned or unimpressed.   Even Jonna, a senior Assembly operative, looked out of the loop.

"Maelstrom Ore is highly infectious," Rover continued, starting to look more aghast.  "And dangerous..."

"In many terrible ways." Intrepid agreed.

"How could you not be actively trying to destroy it-"

"The site is contained." Vanda assured.   "It's been since we found it."

"We'll let you know, now," Duke said, turning to Beck, Epsilon, and Sky Lane, "that contrary to popular opinion, we have formed a plan to destroy the site from the inside out.   Paradox has come through and created a reverse-transmissible payload for us.   Once exposed to Maelstrom Ore, it will reverse-infect infected matter with a destructive antitoxin.   The Ore will link to every trace of Maelstrom in the universe.   It's the ultimate end-game weapon, without us having to synthesize our own Ore."

"I know a guy who can do some of that for you." Intrepid said.

Duke cast a sidelong glance at the Bat Lord.   "They shouldn't be here anymore."

"Or more accurately, we shouldn't be here." Overbuild said tactly.

"See us confidentially." Vanda instructed the Nexus Force subcommanders, then she vanished.

  No one blinked.   They'd eyes hadn't been tricked...  or maybe they had.   The Faction Leaders were there one instant and then they were gone, completely disappeared from the lounge they had never been in to begin with.   In the transparent scaffolding holding up the glass roof, holographic projectors powered down.   The Faction Leaders were 'safe' in some other location, perhaps not even in Nexus Tower.

Beck Strongheart, Epsilon Starcracker, and Sky Lane still remained, though.

Intrepid glanced towards Cyclone, who was closest to the door.   He tried to push its handle discreetly, but Intrepid could see it was like pushing a wall.   Cyclone shook his head.   The doors were locked.

"Try to remain calm," Sky Lane said, before she and the others put on gas masks.   A hissing sound became apparent.   "The AMM, Anti-Memory Mist, will do its work and then you'll be free to go."

Everyone took deep breaths, even Rover's monkey, George.   "I didn't come here to get my mind wiped." Intrepid retorted frustratedly, before tilting his nose into his collar.   He could still smell the sweet aroma of the Anti-Memory Mist.   Contrary to Evelyne's and Alex's complaints when they were younger and still lived together, the smell of his sweat wouldn't make him lightheaded.

Intrepid was getting lightheaded nonetheless, as was everyone else there, under the cruel gaze of Beck, Epsilon, and Sky.

"Trust me, this is better than going to jail." Epsilon said.   

We know that, Intrepid thought of Calm Thoughtful Tornado.

"We might still incarcerate them..." Beck said, his voice muffled behind his gas mask.   Or maybe it was unconsciousness making him hard to hear.

Intrepid blinked heavily, fighting back the crushing urge to lie down and sleep.   And forget.   And get jailed.   He tried to keep his teammates in sight.   Cyclone, the second Cyclone, Skilled Honored Ninja, and Allison Ryder were closest the vents, and were slumping to the floor, practically asleep already, probably already forgetting their encounter.   Strange Odd Shadow didn't look as affected, oddly, or maybe he was used to sleeping standing up.   Rover and Kate were still awake, barely, as was Intrepid.   The vents would stay on until they all dropped.

Suddenly Intrepid's eyes shot open, he felt like he was falling - not unconsciously but physically, gravitatiously falling.   And there was wind buffetting his back.   The air was clear and cold and thin, and the air smelled fresh.   It took him a few more moments of clarity to realize he had been teleported outside the lounge onto it's roof.   The Unverse Manipulator, the new one Red gave him, was in his hand.

He was also slipping off the roof and had to stab a combat blade into the transparent plastic alloy to keep from falling off the edge of Nexus Tower.

Intrepid took a deep breath of the thin air, which at this high atmosphere wasn't much better than the Anti-Memory Mist.   He pressed his head against the windows and heard, to his alarm, Beck shout, "We should have checked them before letting them in!"  They knew he had escaped.

Now he could escape farther away, to anywhere in or out of his universe.   Red had programmed some safe locations, Intrepid remembered her telling him.   But she'd also told him he could bring, in her words, "more than a small group."

Cyclone, Cyclone #2, Kate, Rover, Skilled Honored Ninja and Strange Odd Shadow, and Allison Ryder constituted a small group.   They were also his friends so he had to save them.

"Confound thee, Nexus Force." Intrepid muttered.   The Anti-Memory Mist must have messed with his head for him to suddenly say something in some gibberish he didn't even understand.   He grabbed his Shield of Shielding out of his backpack, taking care not to drop either, and hoped it would be protect him from the AM Mist.   He would teleport out as soon as he felt its effects.

Then he willed the Unverse Manipulator to life and teleported in, behind Beck Strongheart who had darted around to the other side of the elevators, in search of him, obviously.   "Sorry Commander," Intrepid said, then knocked the Commander with the face of his shield.   He fell and did not get up.

He teleported behind Epsilon Starcracker and tried to execute the same maneuver, but the Mara soldier had put on his armor and all Intrepid's shield did was get a solid Clang out of Epsilon's blue helmet.

"I remember when I gave you your Basic Short Sword!" Epsilon said, turning around.   He held a Spear and a Hammer in each of his hands.   "I'll give you a once in a lifetime chance to reconsider....  YOUR PUNISHMENT!"

He proceeded to swing the Hammer, obviously something more powerful than a Basic Hammer, at Intrepid, who raised his shield to counteract it, but the force of the impact sent Intrepid flying across the room.

Intrepid got up quickly to see Epsilon storming over, and Sky Lane was coming from the other side of the elevators.   He knew he had to act quickly to get his teammates, and himself, out of Nexus Tower without any lasting damage.

He lobbed a duo of Flash Bangs and the teleported to Allison Ryder.   He grabbed her, warped, and threw her on top of Skilled Honored Ninja.   He went and grabbed Cyclone, Rover, Jonna, Strange Odd Shadow, Ryder, and the other Cyclone, and lastly Kate.   Fueled by adrenaline he'd managed to go back and forth between all of them before the Flash Bangs cooled off.   Now that they were in a pile, he had to figure out how to transport all of them.   They'd held hands before....

"Try attaching it to a vehicle, if you want to."

Intrepid heard motion to his side and darted to the windows, then teleported next to Epsilon Starcracker and tripped him into the glass.   Sky Lane tried to kick him in the face but at the moment of impact, Intrepid teleported both of them onto the roof.

Then he came back and started moving all of his teammates's bodies into the elevator.

Then his Shield of Shielding died.

Intrepid covered his mouth and pressed the button the close the elevator doors.   There were two layers of them, like an airlock.   After they slid shut, Intrepid slumped back, somehow finding a space to lean on that wasn't occupied by someone's arm or leg or head.   He had to think.   If this didn't work, he'd effectively trapped them all.   

Attach it.  his inner voice reminded him.

Intrepid slid the Unverse Manipulator off his wrist and delicately pressed it against the elevator's wall.   He slid it around but nothing changed until it reached the area of the control panel.   Its dimensions began to expand, soon covering over the original panel with a faux control board of its own, with an LED board of its own, on which it read its source date in two calendars: 2034 / 3048.   There was also a blinking warning in the corner, reading, Low Power.

The elevator doors were suddenly wrenched open, two gloved, power-suit assisted hands steadily pushing them apart.

"Here's Starcracker!" Epsilon whooped.

Intrepid grabbed the nearest weapon he could see, an Assembly Sidearm off Jonna, pointed it at Epsilon and shot him in the face.   Epsilon staggered back.   The force of the laser blast didn't even crack his visor, and Epsilon was unhurt, but his momentary removal was necessary.

Intrepid set the weapon to overload and threw it out of the elevator.   He didn't want its internal Nexus Force certified tracking device where he was going.   Then he grabbed at the Unverse Manipulator's Elevator Control Panel, conjured a picture of his Leek Works basement in his mind, and willed the Unverse Manipulator to get them out of Nexus Tower.

There was a loud grating noise as the elevator car scraped down against the unfinished, concrete floor of present-day Leek Works, and finally Intrepid allowed himself to breathe in relief.   At the same time, the Unverse Manipulator fell to the ground in the form of some palm-sized box, complete with the same minimal controls and screen, which now read, Power Depleted, Emergency Charging Initiated.   It would be useless for awhile.

But it didn't matter since they were safe for now, so Intrepid hoped.

"What the brick?!" Intrepid heard the voice of Luke Mercury shout out.   Pulling himself out of the elevator, Intrepid saw Luke, Mara, and Shira looking into the room, one of the storage rooms, from the doorway to the main section.

"Is that an elevator?" Mara asked.

"Check for trackers." Intrepid ordered, and Luke grabbed a scanning device off the wall.

"No signals detected on Nexus Force wavelengths," the blond boy reported.   His face twisted, reflecting the concern obviously visible in Intrepid's face.   "Are we compromised?" Luke asked.

Intrepid took a deep breath.   "No, I don't think so." he said at last.   "We're still a secret to the Nexus Force." 

Chapter 28

Later that evening...

In the old laundromat that housed Leek Works, the secret base and headquarters for the society of three fostering Intrepid, Luke, and Mara, there were three main rooms.  The entrance was the most finished, with couches and a coffee table over false-wood flooring, and a small “Welcome” mat in front of the door – an existential oxymoron, considering the door was protected by ten deadbolts, large and small, and a padlock.

Next was the server room, from which the Mercuries frequently hacked Nexus Force archives.  Cheap plastic desks lined its walls, and atop them sat laptops and terminals for different servers.  In the concrete floor’s center were more server computers.

Past a door leading out the server room’s back was an unfinished hallway lacking wallpaper and insulation.  Stairs lead down to the basement, used for storage.  It held interesting things the trio felt like keeping, and whatever junk they picked up but couldn’t yet throw away, including their latest acquisition: a Nexus Tower elevator.  A small closet also used as a storage room was behind another doorway.

The last door, made of wood, guarded a medium-sized room which Intrepid was working on converting into an office, or a laboratory.  Half the floor was carpeted, and that side had a desk, shelves, chairs, soft lighting, a laptop, and a server terminal.  The other half was tiled, with boxes full of junk, more shelves with tools, and more tables.

On a chair in the lab side sat Intrepid, wearing a red space sweater over his casuals, leaned over a black box opened at the top.  Two wires snaked over its edge and across the table, ending at a PCB with an LCD and some switchboards.  The boy was prodding each wire’s ends with a multi-meter, which beeped unsteadily.  Then he went back to soldering.  He was too focused on the job that he didn’t look up when someone walked in.

“Excuse me, do you work here?” a girl’s voice asked.

“I am working, yes,” answered Intrepid.  He turned his head enough to identify who was speaking, since she had a voice similar to one other person.  She wore a white and blue Nexus Force tee and cargo jeans, and had shoulder-length red hair.

“I was just wondering if you could point me to a water fountain.  And on that note… a water closet too, while you’re at it.” Kate added.

“That way,” Intrepid pointed out the door and twirled his finger.  “We don’t have one.  You have to go across the street to the restaurant, Kate.”

“Thanks- but hold on a moment partner, how do you know who I am? I don’t remember telling you my name.”

Intrepid looked up, wondering for a moment if Anti-Memory Mist was more permanent than he thought.  “Are you serious-”

“Relax, I’m kidding.” the red haired girl grinned.  “Although I gotta say, I definitely don’t remember our Faction Leaders being so militantly secretive.  Didn’t you say the Faction War ended, while Cyclone and I were gone?”

“Some sentiments extend into maritime...” Intrepid’s voice trailed as he returned to his soldering.

Kate sidled up next to the table.  “Watcha working on?”

“I’m turning this Transdimensional Manipulator into a Transdimensional Tracker.” Intrepid said.  He tested the multi-meter again, and this time it gave a steady beep.

“Trans-di-what?” Kate repeated.

Intrepid picked up a metal helmet, its inner surface containing six dish-shaped receptacles, and plugged it into the PCB.  “So long as you’re here, you can put this on,” he said, handing it to Kate, and she handled it tentatively.

“And this is-?” she asked of the eyebrow-raising headgear.

“I haven’t yet reverse-engineered how the Manipulator interfaces with brainwaves,” Intrepid explained.  “The last time I tried, it broke.  Instead, Luke gave me this, a brainwave reader, and it should work just fine for visualization purposes.”

“It’s for reading brainwaves.” Kate repeated back.

“It’s harmless.  I can wear it if-”

Kate put the helmet on.  “Now what?”

“Think of somebody far away.” Intrepid instructed.  He flipped a switch on the switchboard to power up the LCD, which immediately displayed a string of numbers: relative coordinates.  Intrepid’s eyes narrowed in contemplation, and he pressed another switch to bring up a map.  “There’s a planet there?” he asked aloud.

Kate nodded.  “Yep.  It’s right where I thought my sister would be.”

“You have family?” Intrepid asked.  It was a stupid question, he realized, that he could have phrased better.  “That’s neat.”

“Now for someone closer.” Kate said, smiling, and the numbers switched to a bunch of zeroes, indicating someone close by.  Remembering the other feature Luke said the helmet had, Intrepid flipped another switch, and the screen displayed a bunch of scratchy lines, resembling what could have been a figure.

Intrepid and Kate scrutinized it.  “That’s not how things look in my head,” Kate said at last.

“It doesn’t look like me, no.” Intrepid agreed.

“I was thinking of Cyclone.” Kate deadpanned.

“Oh.”

Kate set the helmet on the table and rubbed her forehead.  “This headache better be psychosomatic.”

“There’s one more test I ought to do,” Intrepid added, “if this can locate people in other dimensions.”

“If it’s got ‘dimension’ in the name, of course it does.” Kate said.  “So what’s the point of this thing? You’ve been down here for hours but none of your crazy teammates wanted to check on you, so I did.  And,” she opened her backpack and spawned some pizza slices, “we got about fifty pies of this, courtesy of Ray’s employee discount.  Are you trying to find someone?”

“Two someones.” Intrepid said gravely.  “Tiberius, and Alex.”

The terminal on the office desk lit up, and then Luke’s voice came through.  “We got trouble.” the blond said.

Intrepid stood up, and he and Kate barged out the door.  They ran through the hallway into the entrance room, where they met with Luke, Mara, Shrill, Ray, Edgar, Evelyne, and the others from Nexus Tower.  Since they were all fugitives for the moment, Luke, Mara, and Shrill had rather forcefully kept Jonna and Rover holed up in the basement, but they were here now.

“I said stay back,” Luke repeated, trying to shoo the crowd into the server room, while keeping his eyes on the door.  “Unless you’re willing to shoot at Nexus Force grunts.”

“The Nexus Force is here?” Intrepid yelped.

Mara swung open a large suitcase and pulled out a bunch of wooden sticks, which after a double take everyone took a moment to identify as bayonets.  Intrepid tsked.  “That’s not what I meant when I said ‘buy discounted weapons’,” he said to the auburn-headed Mercury.

“Can you just let me and Rover speak to them?” Jonna protested.  “We’re high-ranking, respected officers.”

Mara handed Intrepid a smartphone, displaying a camera feed of the Nimbus Station street outside Leek Work’s front entrance.  It was roadblocked off with Faction Race Cars, and an entire contingent of Sentinel, Venture, and Assembly soldiers stood between them, weapons aimed at the ground.  Standing in the middle of them was Duke Exeter.

“Exeter’s here?” Intrepid said incredulously.  He zoomed in on the faction leader, who looked like he was saying something, but no sound came through.  “Turn on the audio feed.”

“-know you’re in there.” Duke’s voice cut in mid-sentence.  Uncharacteristic of him, he spoke like he was trying to sound humbled.  He was somewhat successful.  “Please, send someone out.  We’re willing to talk now.”

“Get rid of these bayonets,” Intrepid muttered, and he approached the door.  He turned around.  “You all,” he ordered, “stay here.” He began unlocking the door, lock by lock, and slowly opened it.  Then he stepped out to meet Duke Exeter.

This warm evening in Industrial Nimbus Station was full of grim, sweating soldiers.   The men and women in Exeter’s contingent knew they were here to guard their leader, sure, but as to why Duke Exeter was here, that they didn’t know.

“I’m not one for apologies.” the Duke said, once Intrepid, fully protected in his Bat Lord armor, exited onto the sidewalk.   The way the Sentinel Leader spoke and stood was staunch, statue-like in the middle of his guard in the middle of the street, in defiance of everyone else’s obvious discomfort and any associated twitching or wavering.   The Sentinel Faction Leader had composure.

Since no one was pointing a gun at him, Intrepid figured it was safe to communicate.   “What are you here for, then?” Intrepid asked slowly.

“I’m here to work things out, ascertain priorities, make sure our organizations are not in conflict.” Duke stated.   “The last thing we need is another civil war.”

“Trying to imprison your own soldiers is totally in line with preventing another war.” Intrepid said sarcastically.

“When authority demands it, I’m sure you can understand leaders must do questionable things, at times.” Duke said.   “Tell me, are you a soldier of the Nexus Force?”

Intrepid considered.   Not really.   He, Luke, and Mara were more like escapees using the Nexus Force as a means of change for themselves.   The three of them openly touted their team-performance and combat-mastery as skills to help others.   For a time.   Intrepid freely admitted, to himself, that his involvement in the war at this point was majorly out of self-interest.

But more recently he’d gained a sense of family loyalty.

Although that wouldn’t be what Duke wanted to hear.

“My loyalty is to the Nexus Force.” Intrepid said with a nod.

“It was presumed you had an organization, a gang perhaps.” Duke admitted.   "Let's assume my intel was wrong."  The Faction Leader gestured to the array of storefronts and short alley entrances.   “These old factory buildings, used by small businesses until the Battle of Nimbus Station, are now common hideaways for pirates, draft-dodgers, mercenaries, fugitives.”  Gazing across at Intrepid, the leader’s blue eyes stared with the intensity of a powerful leader.

“This is rented space.” Intrepid said.   “My friends and I share it for storage.   I’m just a guy with nothing to hide, and some interesting friends.”  He shrugged innocently for good measure.

“Your antics in Nexus Tower suggested a different impression, but I am a man of second chances.   That is why I am here.” Duke wrapped up and took a deep breath for his next statements.   “I and my fellow leaders have decided, this war has gone on enough.   The Nexus Force has elected to immediately eliminate the Second Maelstrom Mine on Crux Prime, and the Nexus Force needs all of its forces for this final push.   And its commanders.”

“Jonna and Rover.” Intrepid figured.

“I said all of its commanders.” Duke repeated.

“I haven't kidnapped anyone else-”

Duke raised a hand to cut him off.   “I mean you.   We are aware of your achievements on Avant Gardens, and on planet EL15 in the Epsilon Constellation.”

“Elistra.” Intrepid corrected.

“We’re mobilizing forces from the entire Nimbus System, even the factionless.   You’re a team leader, Intrepid Fusion Eclipse, and a unique one – you don’t have a faction.” Duke explained.   “One day the Sentinels would love to have you, but right now the entire Nexus Force, and the Nimbus System as a whole, needs you as you are, to help lead our rowdiest group of soldiers: the Failed-To-Perform-ers.   The Avant Gardens Rejects.”

Intrepid shuddered, knowing all to well who Duke Exeter meant.

The “Failed-To-Perform-ers,” or “FTP”ers as they were more commonly known, was the common name for the serving Nexus Force soldiers fighting the Maelstrom on Avant Gardens.   These soldiers, like Intrepid, had no faction.   There were only two reasons why they could be on Avant Gardens.   They either opted to stay and fight on the underappreciated world out of their own accord, like Intrepid – or they utterly failed the Faction Trials, tests of strength, intelligence, and wit required to join one of the Factions, so they were sent back to Avant Gardens where they could relax on the Block Yards or fight ‘easy enemies.’  Many of them went to Block Yards for good reason.

Of those that fought, many were unprepared for the madness of Spider Bosses, or sudden attacks by hordes of Stromlings that turned the world into a type of Survival of the fittest.   Odd occurrences happened every once in a while on poor Avant Gardens, and many low-level minifigures would be smashed.

The most recent oddity was an attack by the Maelstrom Dimension on the Sentinel Base Camp, but Intrepid, Luke, and Mara had been there to defend it.   They had been there to defend Avant Gardens from many threats before then.   In a potential future, they may be there still.

So that’s what Duke was talking about.

It was a warm evening in Industrial Nimbus Station.    In between a squad of sweating soldiers, Duke Exeter and Intrepid Fusion Eclipse stared each other down.

“Okay.” Intrepid said at last.   “No wait.   Let me get this straight.   You’re sending the Nexus Force’s objective worst to attack the strongest Maelstrom stronghold on the most dangerous world, Crux Prime, and you want me to command them?”

“No, no!” Duke shouted.   “You have it two-thirdsly wrong.   While I do want you to command them, it is not to attack the Maelstrom Mine.   I and the fellow leaders will lead an army of Faction Members, the Nexus Force's Marast, to attack the Mine.   But during that time, the rest of the Nimbus System would be at risk of external attack.   But they won’t be,” Duke said with a smile, “since you will be out there, helping the rest of my appointed commanders to lead the forces on Avant Gardens, Nimbus Station, Pet Cove, Gnarled Forest, and Forbidden Valley.   Assembly will provide the transports to get the FTP soldiers to these locations.”

“You expect me to be on five worlds at once?” Intrepid asked incredulously.

“Even if you can teleport, I expect you to select your own subcommanders, and I did mention other commanders - you wouldn’t be working alone.” Duke said.   “You’re not the first person I’ve sent a field promotion letter to.   And in case of trouble, there will be a few Faction squadrons on call and in reserve as well.   But a Sentinel word of advice, there is strength in numbers.    Avant Gardens is full of bodies- I mean promising soldiers.   With leadership to guide them, I know the Nimbus System will be safe.”

“Why even is everyone else going to Crux Prime?!” Intrepid exclaimed.   “Are you planning a siege or something?”

Duke sighed.   “Do you know how large the Maelstrom force in underground Crux Prime is?”

“No.” Intrepid answered.

“Enough to fill the entire Nimbus System.” Duke said gravely.   “Or several, entire Nimbus Systems.   Our scanners suggest millions of Stromlings, and possibly tens of thousands of bosses.   It doesn’t make much sense, does it, how they could amass that many so quickly?”

“No, it doesn’t.” Intrepid said.   It makes perfect sense, he thought to himself, based on the intel Red gave him.   They were reinforcements from the Maelstrom Dimension.

“Paradox has theorized they’re a byproduct of the Maelstrom Ore amassed under Crux Prime,” Duke said.   “Vanda believes the Maelstrom is spawning forces straight from the corrupted earth.” 

Close enough.  Intrepid thought.   “Sounds to me you have a mighty task on your hands, then, to destroy it all.” he said.

“Exactly.   Fortunately, we have the strength, soldiers, tools, vehicles, and weapons to orchestrate a campaign that will destroy them all." Duke concluded.   "Unfortunately, it will take a long time, possibly months, to get a point where we can unleash the Paradox antitoxin on a Maelstrom Ore deposit itself.   Our Venture Scouts believe the Ore is buried quite deeply.

“So," Duke Exeter posed the important question, "you’ll accept promotion to Nexus Force commander and lead the FTPers?”

“You’re a Faction Leader.” Intrepid said, and Duke tilted his head back to stare down at him.   “I can’t say no to this honor.” Intrepid said at last, outwardly respectful, but inwardly resigned.

Just when he thought he was an independent, he was still a Nexus Force soldier.   He was expected to be a co-commander of an army of peasants large enough to fill the entire Nimbus System, save Crux Prime, while the Faction Leaders focused their efforts on finishing off Crux Prime from Nexus Tower.   It was a monumental campaign in a penultimate stage in the war the Nexus Force was ready to progress into.

“I accept the role of Nimbus System Commander.” Intrepid declared.

“You are hereby promoted, Captain Intrepid Fusion Eclipse.” Duke confirmed.

Captain.   It was a nice title.   For a second, Intrepid considered it paired with his family name.   He’d never use it, but Captain Talmid had a nice ring to it.

So Intrepid smiled at Duke, waved, and the Sentinel Leader bid his farewell.   Soon, Duke Exeter had boarded his heli-jet with some of his soldiers, and the rest of them meandered off to their new assignment: Transport to Crux Prime.

But inwardly Intrepid was screaming to himself that he had to leave too.

He swung open the door to Leek Works.   “Hi Luke, Mara, Shira,” he greeted everyone present, “Evelyne, everyone.”  He grabbed the nearest things: a laptop, some crates of bricks, and stuffed them in his backpack.   “Everyone pack.   I bet the Nexus Force will be back in the hour to raid this place."

"We're compromised after all.” Mara groaned.   "I'll miss Leek Works."

“You two,” Intrepid said, pointing at Jonna and Rover, “are wanted on Crux Prime.”

“We heard.” Rover muttered, his mouth a thin line.

“We all did.” Cyclone said.   He gestured to a stack of letters on the coffee table.   “And we’re all wanted on Crux Prime.”

Kate kicked at the stack, turning it into a pile that slid to the floor.   “Fresh out of the mailbox.   It was nice knowing you all,” she said gloomily, “we may as well infect ourselves now.”

“Except you’d magically get a new body to survive in.” Rover noted.   “Cyclone too.”

“This isn’t necessarily a suicide mission,” Cyclone said, though he didn’t sound so sure.

“So who are your co-commanders gonna be, Captain Intrepid?” Luke asked brightly.

“Can I be a co-commander?” Mara asked.

“No one here is being a commander!” Intrepid groaned.   “Unless you want to, I mean, I’m not.”  He rubbed his head and started pacing.   “I need time to think."  He turned on his heel.   "There’s too much going on here."  Pace.   "We’ve got to clear this building and move house," pace,  "before the Nexus Force gets back," pace, "but I’ve got to locate Tiberius and Alex," pace, "and I’ve got to figure out a way to fix Evelyne before the Paradox antitoxin smashes her-"

Intrepid suddenly felt like laying down.   Before he knew it, the floor was rushing up to him.   He spun himself around, blinked, and found himself staring at the ceiling, his ears ringing, all sounds muffled and his vision blurring at the edges.   His teammates were staring down at him, saying his name, and someone picked up his hand as his eyes fluttered and his breathing went from shallow to halting to slowed.   There was nothing they could do to keep him from blacking out.

Twenty-Nine

A white ceiling and dancing light.

Intrepid rolled over to face the flapping drapes.  Past the open window were waving branches with autumn leaves, casting orange, red, and yellow hues into the plain room.

Where was he at? How long was he out?

He slid out of the covers, stood up, and found his backpack leaning against a night table.  A quick check through its draws found only two mothballs and some dust bunnies.  Giving the room a once over, there was nothing else of interest.  Intrepid shouldered his pack and exited through the door into an upstairs hallway with wood panel walls.  Past three more sets of evenly spaced doors, all closed, were the steps he took down.

He entered into a kitchen, its floor and counters empty and clean, with a wood table and four chairs.  In one of the chairs sat a familiar person in this unfamiliar house.  She had brown hair, brown eyes, and a mature face.  She was someone on his team, but Intrepid couldn’t place her name at the moment.  His brain still felt scrambled.

“I know who you are,” Intrepid said, thumping his forehead, and taking a moment to look around.  He could see more trees out the window above the sink, and the front door was on the other side of the room.  “Give me a moment.  Aha, I remember you.” he said, and started edging his way to the door.

Allison Ryder nodded and smiled.  “I also know who you are, Aiden Talmid.”

Intrepid stopped dead.  “What?”

“Sit down,” Allison said, “I want to test my psychiatric analysis skills on you.”

“I take it back, I don’t know who you are.” Intrepid said, not sitting down.

“I’m a lot of things, whatever I want to be.” Allison said, sinisterly? Or just awkwardly? She weirded Intrepid out.

“How do you know me?” Intrepid breathed.

“I don’t know you personally,” Allison clarified, “just who you could be.”

“You’re from the other dimension.” Intrepid recalled.

“Righto.” Allison made a hand blaster and fired it.  “And in there, our families shared an intertwined fate.”

Realization dawned on Intrepid.  “You’re Kate’s sister.”

“Wrong.”

“I don’t have time to play games,” Intrepid equipped his armor.  He looked outside again.  “Where are the others?”

“Outside.” Allison answered.

“That settles it.” He started moving.

“Do you know Eclipse?” Allison asked.

Intrepid stopped in his tracks again, remembering the girl from Elistra.  What did he know about her?  Nothing.   “How do you know an Eclipse?” he asked.

“I told you, our families are intertwined.” Allison repeated.

“That made no sense the first time, and it still doesn’t.” Intrepid muttered.  “I need air.” To think, he thought to himself, and he walked to the door.

“You should ask your uncle Killian about the history of the Talmids and the Ryders.” Allison called to his retreating form.

“I know of no such history!” he called back.

“That’s why you should ask.”

“I don’t even know where- forget it.” Intrepid yanked open the door, crossed the threshold, and slammed it shut.

Glowing rays of sunlight warmed Intrepid’s face from above.  It was morning, wherever he was, facing a grassy yard surrounded by trees.  The air was fresh in his lungs.  He could close his eyes and forget himself here.

But he needed to think.  Intrepid rubbed his head again.  It hurt to think.

His ears picked up the sound of swords clanging in the vicinity.  Intrepid turned his head, trying to locate its source.  It was somewhere else in the yard, maybe behind the house, which all he could see of now was the brick siding of its front patio.  Wherever the others were, they were somewhere else outside.

– – – – –

Outside in the backyard, Cyclone steadied the sword in his hand.  He balanced on his feet, barefoot in the grass, standing opposite his opponent – his training partner – his mentor – his apprentice.

His friend.

“Find your energy,” Cyclone instructed, partly to himself.  He closed his eyes and could feel his imagination spark in his chest, feeling as if it were submerged in a pool of water.  He willed warmth into it and the water began to bubble, like tea on a flame.  “You can feel it, good, that’s good, now focus it through your arm and into the swor-”

He opened his mouth and screamed.  Someone had whacked him.  He shook his head and grimaced, but that someone was laughing.  When she was laughing, it was difficult to be upset.

“Okay, that was funny.” Cyclone admitted to Kate.

She grinned.  “You shouldn’t let your guard down.  You were saying, ‘Imagine we’re in a battlefield,’ ‘Imagine there are dragons.’ If I were a dragon, you’d be toast with your eyes closed.”

“I’m trying to teach you,” Cyclone sighed, “how to harness our powers! Practice starts with patience, and cleared minds.”

“I appreciate it, Psyclone.” Kate said, and laughed again at her own joke.

Cyclone rolled his eyes.  “When I first discovered my powers, it was in a situation of life or death, and I didn’t know the best way to harness them.  I saved myself thanks to them, but it hurt.  It’s safe to channel your power through a weapon, or a tool.”

He pulled a Force Blade of Lightning from his backpack.  “This is a Force Blade of Lightning.” Cyclone said.

Kate squinted her eyes.  "I see.” she said.   “It is a Force Blade of Lightning.”

“What if the lightning came from your hands?”

Kate held up her hands and shook her head.  “Sounds like it’d hurt.  I say no thanks.”

“That’s exactly my point, because then our hands are the medium.” Cyclone punched the air and picked up his previous sword, a Short Sword of Stunning.  “But metal doesn’t have nerves.”

“An alchemist may disagree with you.” Kate said.

“Do you know an alchemist?” Cyclone asked, though he did wonder for a second if he had been advocating hurting a sword.

“No,” Kate snorted, “and I know nothing about alchemy either.”

Cyclone facepalmed when she spent another five seconds snickering.  “This is serious,” the brown haired boy groaned.  “Tell me you weren’t like this in class.”

“I was,” Kate said seriously, “but I took classes from home, so there was no one to hear me complain.”

Cyclone twirled the sword and furrowed his brow, in concentration, and concern.  “No one? Not even your parents?”

“Definitely not my parents.” Kate said, spinning her blade.  She let it stop pointing upwards.  “What were you saying again, about harnessing our power?”

“Find it,” Cyclone started again, “focus on it, and-”

A bolt of lightning suddenly erupted from the tip of Kate’s longsword, and Cyclone barely covered his ears in time before the booming crack of thunder accompanied the arc of electricity into the top of the nearest tree.  Sparks flew and some branches hit the ground in flame.

Cyclone ran to put them out, blinking to fix his eyes which still saw the streak of light every direction he looked.  “A little warning next time!” he shouted over the echoing in his ears, but he felt pretty exuberant.  They were getting somewhere.

“Neat!” Kate whooped and grabbed Cyclone around the shoulders.  “What other tricks do you know?” she asked eagerly.

“That’s it,” Cyclone admitted.  “I didn’t really have a teacher myself.  I guess lightning must come naturally?”

“Oh hey,” Kate said.

Cyclone followed her gaze to see Intrepid rounding the corner of the house.  Its walls were stacked brick fin the front, and white painted wood in the back where they were now.  It had two floors and an attic under its latitudinal-facing roof.  The boy had equipped his Bat Lord gear, and slowed to a walk as he looked around.

“I heard combat.” he said.

“We were training.” Kate explained.  “Things got explodey.”

“I heard.” Intrepid repeated.  “Where is this? Where is everyone?”

“They’re probably awake now, or out of bed, now, thanks to Kate.” Cyclone said, checking his watch.  “Everyone was pretty lagged when we got to this Avant Grove.  It’s around 4AM, Nimbus Station time.”

“That explains it.” Intrepid said.  “How long have I been out? And who’s property is this? Is everyone here?”

“We’re all here: your teammates, your sister, Rover, Skilled Honored Ninja and Strange Odd Shadow, even Jonna,” Kate said, “and some guy named Calm Thoughtful Tornado who Luke and Mara told us to check on.”

“Lucky for him we found him in a pizza place,” Cyclone related grimly.  “The Nexus Force raided your Nimbus City apartment when he was gone.  No doubt they’ve done Leek Works, too.”

“Did we get our stuff out?!” Intrepid exclaimed in alarm.

“We all donated backpack space.  Everything’s here, even the elevator.” Kate said, and Intrepid sighed in relief.  “As for how long you’ve been counting sheep...”

“You don’t sleep a lot, do you Intrepid.” Cyclone stated.

“Thirty-two hours.” Kate said flatly.

“No wonder I suddenly feel very hungry, and other things.” Intrepid said, looking faint.

Cyclone went to the back door and held it open for Intrepid and Kate.  “Let’s go inside.”

“This is one of the properties I owned before Kate and I got stranded.” Cyclone explained as they entered the back hallway.

“How did you get a house?” Intrepid asked, taking in even more additional rooms.  Archways in the hall lead into a lounge on the house’s right side and a study room full of bookshelves on the left.  There was another doorway leading down to a basement.  The kitchen and stairs to the upper floor were ahead.

“There was a team of Assembly guys who built houses on Nexus Tower." Cyclone explained.   "Cool guys.  I bought this house from them and put it here.  It came in modules.  Kate, Rover, and Blade helped set it up.”

“You said that when we left this universe, everyone in the universe forgot about us, or something along those lines.” Kate told Intrepid.  “We’re counting on that to keep us hidden, since except for automated messages, like the latest recruitment notices, we’ve gotten no mail, from any living people, at all.  Including old friends.”

“Rover certainly remembers you.” Intrepid said, as footsteps began thumping down the stairs to the kitchen.

“Yeah, and so did you, somehow.  Crazy how nature does that.” Kate said.  “I wouldn’t think too hard about it, though.  And,” she added with a smile, “neither should you.  You might faint.”

Intrepid nodded, even though he knew what had happened that caused Cheerful Power Rover to remember Cyclone and Kate.  The Buccaneer was the one person Intrepid contacted after Red told him to bring Cyclone and Kate back, and it was Red who had reminded Intrepid about Cyclone and Kate.

It had been easy for Intrepid to find Rover.  The Buccaneer had made himself one of the top generals of the Venture League.  He was on motivational posters and magazine covers.  Every Venture in Nimbus Station spoke his name in awe.  The first time they’d met after Cyclone and Kate’s return, in Nimbus Plaza, Intrepid recalled an injured Venture Adventurer in crutches approaching them.  The Adventurer had saluted Rover and said, “I used to be an adventurer like you, but then I took an arrow to the knee.”

Intrepid didn’t want to admit, however, that it was he who hadn’t remembered the others in Cyclone and Kate’s circle of friends.  He could remember some other prominent names, like Krill Mathias or Lord Brocktree.  But it had been so long ago, and so many things had happened to and concerning him since then….

“I’m sure if you contacted your friends, they would remember you.” Intrepid said sincerely.  It had been instant-realization with him and with Rover, and speaking of the Buccaneer, he was the first person down the stairs.

“There you are,” Rover yawned, stretching the sleep out of his body.  “I thought it was raining? I woke up to thunder.”

“We all did, sleepyhead.” came Luke’s voice.  He and Mara clomped noisily down behind Rover, but unlike Rover they were practically sleepwalking.  They were still in pajamas too.

Mara opened one eye.  “Oh, look, Intrepid’s alive.” Then she fell into a chair and dozed off.  Luke kind of stopped at the end of the stairs and stood there holding the banister.

Rover sighed and pointed his chin at Mara.  “Unlike some people, I sleep like a soldier, so I’m awake and at attention.” He glanced into the kitchen.  “So, my fellow generals, what’s our plan to attack hunger today? Still cereal?”

“There’s not much else for breakfast.” Cyclone said apologetically.  “Someone can make a run to Nimbus Station and get more food.”

“Skilled Honored Ninja is unrecognizable.” Intrepid said.

“He’s tagged, though.” Cyclone said.  “When you were asleep, Luke and Mara figured out how the Sentinels found your base in the first place.  They were able to track us based on the genetic samples Shadow, Ninja, and the other me provided to the Assembly lab at Nexus Tower.”

“Then can’t they track us here?” Intrepid questioned.

“We brought some sort of jammer with us from Leek Works, which Luke adapted to block the genetic tracker too.” Cyclone said.  “Or so we hope.”

One by one the others made their way down to the kitchen to partake in Cyclone’s Everlasting Box of Corn Flakes.  Intrepid was glad to see Allison Ryder wasn’t among them, she must have gone upstairs, although he did wonder about what she’d told him.

While the house had Everlasting Corn Flakes, it unfortunately had only a finite supply of bowls and spoons, so they had to take turns rinsing each bowl and rationing the precious gallon of milk they had, also not everlasting.  There was water from a well outside, some quarts of orange juice, and spaghetti for later, but the general mood was one of urgency in the face of impending shortcomings.

“We can’t stay in this house eating cereal forever.” Edgar reminded everyone once he was finished washing his plastic bowl, which he gave to Skilled Honored Nina, who went to join Shadow, Shira, and Evelyne at the little table.  “Some of us are expected to deploy on Crux Prime within the week.” the Shinobi continued, leaning against the wall and putting his hands in his pockets.  “Even the reserves are being called up.”

“Whach’s the Facshon Leaders plan anyway, shrow sholdiers at the mine until there’s no more Maelshtrom?” Shrill asked in between mouthfuls of dry corn flakes.

“More like throw soldiers at the mine until there’s a clear path to inject the Paradox’s antitoxin into a Maelstrom Ore deposit.” Intrepid recalled.  He imagined a single Paradox scientist running as fast as his legs could carry him through a tunnel full of Stromlings, chased by said Stromlings, holding a syringe and trying to inject it into a glowing rock.  “I’m highly doubtful they can accomplish that anytime soon, though.  Exeter said it would take months.”

“The Paradox antitoxin would be a gas,” Cyclone envisioned.  “Duke’s ‘months’ probably referred to the estimated time it would take for Vanda’s team to refine another of it.  Apparently the Faction War slowed Paradox’s R and D down, a lot.”

“So why are they attacking now?” Luke asked.

“We,” Edgar corrected, “have to do something about the Maelstrom’s growing army.  They’ll attack first if we don’t.”

“Except our Nexus Force can’t win a war of attrition against the Maelstrom Dimension.” Intrepid said grimly.  “There is a universe’s worth of Stromlings being supplied into that mine so long as out dimension is a target, or so long as they have a means to get here.  The Paradox antitoxin may be our best bet to holding them off.”

“You have the Unverse Manipulator,” Kate stated, turning to where Intrepid sat on the stairs, “so we could probably use its teleportation ability to steal some of the antitoxin, then go and stick the Maelstrom with the antitoxin ourselves.”

“We’d just need to reverse-infect any sample of Maelstrom Ore in the mine.” Cyclone said.

“Thanks for reminding me about that thing,” Intrepid said, standing up.  “Luke, where’s our stuff?”

“In the basement.” the boy replied.

“Thanks.” Intrepid headed for the other set of stairs, leading down, and Cyclone and Kate darted after him.

“Think we can actually do it?” Kate asked excitedly.  “Finish this war ourselves?”

“It’s a good plan.  I can try and get Red’s guidance.” Intrepid said.

“That mysterious girl you know.” Kate identified.

“Yeah.” Intrepid fell silent as he felt for a lightswitch.  It was dark in the basement, and he didn’t want to trip on anything.  He pulled a cord hanging from the ceiling, and a lone bulb clicked on above the landing, lighting up just about nothing.  Intrepid, Cyclone, and Kate found flashlights in their backpacks and switched them on.

“It’s all Leek Works stuff down here.” Kate said.  “We put the lab’s stuff in the center.”

Intrepid panned his flashlight to follow where she pointed, and settled on a stack of boxes.  “Can I borrow your helmet?” he asked Cyclone, and the brown haired boy handed him his Space Marauder helmet.

With its infrared vision, Intrepid found the box with the Unverse Manipulator and brain activity monitor easily.  He pulled them out and made sure all his wiring was still attached.  The Unverse Manipulator looked fully recharged, so Intrepid activated it.

“There’s another command I want to try out,” Intrepid said, and he stared at the Unverse Manipulator in his hand.  “Print the location of Tiberius."

“Voice commands?” Cyclone asked, as the Unverse Manipulator began to relay images for only Intrepid’s mind’s eye to see, but the attached LCD displayed a string of coordinates, which Intrepid wrote down in a notepad. 

Intrepid nodded.  “Find Alex.” he said, and the Unverse Manipulator went to work.  He considered the rest of his family, who he already knew where on Elistra they were buried, unless Tiberius did an Evelyne on them too.  Well, he’d find out eventually.  He wrote down Alex’s coordinates alongside Tiberius’s, they were close to the same, meaning they were in the same location.  “Anyone else we want to find?” 

“There was someone else working with Tiberius,” Cyclone remembered.  “Some girl.” 

“Mysterious.” Kate commented. 

Intrepid handed the Manipulator to Cyclone, and the Space Marauder pictured what he knew of her.  Dark combat gear and a feminine figure.  It wasn’t much, but through whatever cosmic means it had, the Unverse Manipulator knew who Cyclone was thinking about.  Intrepid read off the coordinates it printed and began to write them down. 

“They’re different.” Intrepid said.  He took note of the numerous zeroes prevalent in the early digits.  They were relative coordinates, so that meant… 

Intrepid straightened.  He listened closely to the sounds of breathing in the basement.  He breathed in and held his breath.  Cyclone was breathing in.  Kate’s mouth was closed.  Someone was breathing out 

Someone else.

Someone behind him.

Intrepid grabbed the Unverse Manipulator from Cyclone right before he felt arms grabbing him around the chest.  Then his lungs suddenly felt like they were about to explode, his heart stopped breating, and he felt like his essence was being ripped out of his body, leaving parts of him to catch up.  It was the feeling of being involuntarily transdimensionally maneuvered.

When his body felt normal again, Intrepid was no longer in the house’s basement in Avant Grove.  Where he was now it was dark but not from an absence of artificial light, rather an absence of natural light.  It was nighttime on Elistra.  He was lying on his back on a rocky hill facing the overcast sky, and someone was trying to put a mask on his face.

Thirty

The stars went dark.

Air.   Intrepid needed air badly as the mask that his unseen assailant pressed on his face both blocked his breathing in, and was like a vacuum sucking the breath in his lungs out – not to mention his unseen assailant was pinning him down so he couldn’t move.

But he could think.

The Bat Lord activated his Shield Slam and a wave of stunning was sent outwards – the force on him was lifted as his attacker was sent flying.   He yanked the mask off and got to his feet, just when he saw the flash of an Unverse rift, and boots flying at his face.

Intrepid reacted quickly and telepositioned himself a pace back.   His attacker fell short and he was able to shoulder his shield where their face should be.   Instead it swished in the air and he held back a stumble, before he was struck in the back and falling to the ground.

Another transdimensional manipulation later and he transformed his falling momentum into forward motion, teleporting behind his attacker and knocking them down instead.   But in the starlight he saw them twist acrobatically and jump-kick their body into the air.

Intrepid needed to move before that jump-kick came for him.   He mentally gripped his Unverse Manipulator and sent himself to Elistra City’s Main Street.   His attacker reappeared a moment later, and Intrepid dodged the kicks with a shift farther down the street.   But now, bathed in yellow streetlamps, he could see her.

She was dressed in a type of suit that looked carbon-gray in the light, but nearly invisible in the dark.   Her face was behind a similarly-constructed mask that covered her nose and jaw, but ninja-like with openings for eyes he couldn’t see, since they were obscured by a visor.   Behind her mask, dark black hair billowed out, still held in the air from the immediateness of falling from the rift.

They were that fast.

She hadn’t touched the ground before re-entering Unverse.   Intrepid didn’t blink and jumped in too.

They rematerialized at opposite ends of the street.   They switched back without a pause – and back again – and getting closer as Intrepid’s destination was hers, and hers him.   It was a test of endurance and Intrepid wasn’t sure how much his Unverse Manipulator could take, or if he would succumb from dizziness first.

So he sent himself lightyears across the galaxy and nearly knocked Cyclone and Kate back from the rush of air displaced by his intradimensional reposition.   He saw their brown and red hair blown back from the faces in the glow of their flashlights before Intrepid fell into a stack of Leek Works boxes, in the center of Cyclone’s Avant Grove estate’s basement.

“Welcome back.” Kate said.

“You’re still wearing my helmet.” Cyclone noticed.

Intrepid was barely on his feet again before another blast of air signaled another Unverse arrival and he figured he was about to be pushed back into the pile.   Cyclone shouted a warning, but by the time it left his mouth Intrepid had already gone into the space between universes, and come out of it falling from the basement’s ceiling, arms outstretched to grab the new arrival and pin her for a change.

As Intrepid fell, she executed the same maneuver and in an instant was above him.

Not to be a step behind, Intrepid zipped to the room’s corner.   His attacker followed him, but by then he was at the room’s opposite edge.

Cyclone and Kate could only watch in bewilderment, and turn their flashlights aimlessly as flashes of light popped up all over the basement, above them, around them, here and there and back again.   A few seconds and a hundred transdimensional manipulations later, Cyclone hissed, “Let’s set a trap.”

Kate opened her mouth to say, “I can’t predict where they’re going to go at all,” just before the flashes disappeared entirely.

Intrepid was in Unverse, willing himself to materialize as fast as possible anywhere else – someplace unpredictable.   He landed on Monument Bob’s head – his attacker was there.   He zipped to the Venture Explorer, in its infected state – he turned around and his attacker was behind him.

Unfollowable was impossible so long as she was following him.

In between Raven’s Bluff, Sentinel Point Zeta, and Vanda Darkflame’s office in Nexus Tower, Intrepid figured it out.   He had to go someplace he already was.

Red was a firm believer that time travel was impossible.   Intrepid wasn’t so sure he agreed, but for now it wasn’t necessary.   He had an Unverse Manipulator, he had only to go to another universe.

Intrepid landed in Avant Gardens outside the Sentinel Base Camp, in the same place and dimension where he’d met Strange Odd Shadow.   As expected, the person trying to capture him reappeared on top of him – but he hadn’t expected her to be so close.   The heel or her boot caught him in the jaw – Intrepid heard a Crack as Cyclone’s Space Marauder helmet took the impact of it.   He got away quickly, teleporting himself into the middle of the battlefield, surrounded by Stromling Mechs and screaming, shouting, brave Nexus Force recruits – here he reassessed his intentions.

Now that he was in the two-years-slow dimension, Intrepid only had to find himself.   What was he like at 13 years old?  He was best friends with fellow FTPer Sergeant Ghost Mustache.   He hadn’t met Luke and Mara yet.   3026 was just one year after he followed Uncle Killian’s footsteps and joined the Nexus Force.   He was a well-established soldier and do-gooder on Avant Gardens – he was having the time of his life.

Elistra had not been attacked yet.

But this dimension’s Beck Strongheart didn’t recognize him.

An Unverse rift opened and Tiberius’s henchwoman smashed through the metal body of a Stromling Mech – its parts went flying for miles.

No time left to dilly dally.   Intrepid let the girl approach, then he equipped his Flash Bulb and took a stunning picture, leaving her stunned for a moment.   Then he pictured the face he saw in a mirror, and he was yanked several lightyears out of the Nimbus System.

Intrepid reappeared in the air in his bedroom on Elistra, with light blue walls and an open window facing the sun - falling facefirst to the floor.   He let himself hit the ground, it was carpeted, and incapable of hurting him in his armor.   He heard a gasp as he stood up, followed by shocked silence as he pulled Cyclone’s helmet off his head, and turned to face the boy on the bed.   An opened chapter book held in his hands slid from his grasp – it fell to the floor, losing its place.

So I didn’t join the Nexus Force in this dimension? Intrepid figured.   This version of him would not go by Intrepid, his NF moniker, then.   The younger Aiden Talmid looked about the same as Intrepid remembered from team pictures of the time, except maybe his hair was neater, shorter; his face was cleaner, and he was overall less scruffy looking than a boy fighting in a war.

“Who are you?!” the younger Aiden squeaked, in a high-pitched voice that Intrepid had willfully forgotten he had - Intrepid raised a finger to his face and shushed.

“Stay put,” Intrepid ordered, then he dove under the bed.   His younger self’s head appeared over the edge, the opposite of staying put – but then Intrepid heard the rush of an Unverse Rift opening, followed by his younger self being pulled out of view, and his muffled screaming – his muffled screaming, as the gray-clothed girl forced the mask of asphyxiation on the younger Aiden’s face.

Intrepid grimaced and excused himself from this alternate reality – in an instant he was back on his dimension’s Elistra.   He had no doubt the girl chasing him would figure out she had the wrong Intrepid, it would happen soon, he was sure - but in the time it would take for her to recalibrate her Unverse Tracker, Intrepid could turn the tables.

Intrepid took a deep breath and recharged his weapons.   He put his Bat Lord helmet on.   His shield and abilities were ready.   He took another deep breath, gripped his weapons hard, and directed the Unverse Manipulator to take him back to the other Elistra.

He rematerialized in the alternate version of his bedroom.   Intrepid saw his younger self lying wide-eyed on the bed, breathing, thankfully without the terrible mask on his face – it was clasped in the belt of the transdimensional ninja girl.   Held furiously in her hands was her Unverse Manipulator, a device looking much like Red’s that she gave to Intrepid, hanging off his belt now.   His assailant stood unmoving, her eyes were shut tight as she put her concentration into reprogramming the device, mentally ordering it to find him.

When her eyes shot open, Intrepid was already moving.   He did not give her time to react before knocking her on the side of her head with his staff, and in her sudden loss of focus and balance, Intrepid shield slammed her facedown to the floor.   There he hit her armor repeatedly with his shield – anti-kinetic forces of her suit kept repelling his arm back, but his strength, his will persisted.   Slam.   Slam.   Slam.

Eventually his attacker stopped moving, stunned to immobility.

It was over.   Intrepid had won.

Intrepid let himself collapse to the floor.   He rolled to face the ceiling and closed his eyes, just letting himself breathe for a moment.   His jaw would need some healing, and frankly his entire body was sore from the beatings he’d taken lately.   He sat up and downed a Notion Potion to replenish his drained imagination spark.   Each transdimensional jump took a bit of his energy, and his final shield slam just about depleted him.

The moment of rest passed and Intrepid stood and faced the other people in the room.   He looked down at the young lady who chased him this far.   His shield hadn’t knocked her out, just immobilized her so she wasn’t able to move.   Intrepid looked to her face, which was turned away and obscured by a mask anyway.   There was good reason to getting some identification.

There was also an Unverse Manipulator somewhere on her person.   It would be a good idea, Intrepid realized, to take it.

Intrepid reached to spin her over but jumped back at the last moment, and there was a flash of light and an implosion of air as the gray girl disappeared from the universe.   Intrepid flinched and braced himself for her return, but no more rifts opened.

He hadn’t been too late, he’d dodged another trap.

The last person there was the Aiden from this dimension.   Intrepid gave the room a once over, before turning to face the younger boy.   He was staring at Intrepid intently, first at his general form and then shifting his gaze to his face, once he’d turned around.   Intrepid did feel bad about using him as a distraction, but it was necessary.   It had helped him.   He had helped him.   For that reason, Intrepid figured he owed him some explanation.

How was he supposed to do that?

Intrepid tensed an arm.   He held up a hand, awkwardly.   “Hello.   Aiden.”

“Are you, me?” the younger Aiden asked.   “From the future?”

“Something like that.” Intrepid replied.

“What are you doing here?”

Intrepid considered.   The truth of the matter was, it was to save his own skin.   “I’m here to save you.” Intrepid said, which may have been a lie.

But not if I make it true.  Intrepid realized.   I’m the transdimensional traveler now.   He had enough with Red’s beating around the bush, and him being kept outside the loop, waiting to receive important information.   Here he was in a position to do better.

“You know the Nexus Force?” Intrepid asked.   Aiden nodded.   “Heard of the Maelstrom?”

“Uncle Killian went to fight them four years ago.” Aiden said.

“They’re going to attack this planet,” Intrepid warned, “and if they’re not stopped, they will smash everyone.   You need to get help.”

“Who can help, where can I get it, and the Maelstrom is attacking when?” Aiden questioned.

Intrepid racked his brain.   “Next month.   Mid-February.   There’s already Darklings here,” he recalled from when he and Kate were transported to this dimension.   How that had happened still made no sense to Intrepid, but it was beside the point.   “For help… do you know an Edgar?”

Aiden shook his head.

“Sergeant Ghost Mustache?”  Shake.   “Luke Mercury?  Mara?”  Shake.   “Hazel Wentworth?”  Earnest shake.   Intrepid shook his head too.   He forgot this Aiden hadn’t even joined the Nexus Force – he’d never know these people.   “You know nobody.” Intrepid grumbled.

“I know my family.” Aiden retorted.   “My father, uncle, grandfather – they’re all fighters.   I can contact Killian.”

“Good idea.” Intrepid thought, although back in his dimension, his uncle had been MIA during this time according to Alex.   Even now, Intrepid didn’t know where the older Talmid was.   Although I can find him now, Intrepid realized.

“Go to the Nexus Force recruiting station,” Intrepid advised, “and tell them the Maelstrom are here.   They’d better do something about it, but if they don’t,” he put his hand on Aiden’s shoulder, “You have to promise me you’ll get yourself and our family off this planet.”

“Where would we go?” Aiden asked.

“Nimbus Station is safe.” Intrepid said.   “Avant Gardens is a warzone, but mostly under control - and there are good people there you should meet.”

Aiden nodded, and Intrepid stepped back.   He was just about ready to go, when he remembered one more interesting person.

It was a long shot, and two parts of a larger puzzle, but these two pieces Intrepid had were worth trying to put together….

“Do you know an Eclipse Ryder?” Intrepid asked.

“We’re neighbors.” Aiden said surprisingly.   “She lives down the road.”   It was surprising because it was a difference to Intrepid.   He never knew an Eclipse in his past.   And her surname was Ryder?

“She might be able to help...  keep an eye on her.” Intrepid ordered.   Then his ears pricked, at the sound of footsteps approaching outside the door, his door, in his house.

His family lived here.  He could see them.

Or he could not, Intrepid composed himself.   “I’ll see you again.” Intrepid promised.   “You’re not going to be alone when the Maelstrom attacks.   I will make sure you will never be alone.”

Intrepid gripped his Unverse Manipulator and with a flash of light and a blast of air filling the vacuum he left, Intrepid re-entered the emptiness of Unverse.

He pictured his destination.   He needed to get back to Cyclone and Kate, so they could plan stealing the Paradox Antitoxin and reverse-infecting his dimension’s Maelstrom Ore, to put an early end to the Future Maelstrom’s attack.   But they needed to first plan on stopping Tiberius, rescuing Alex, and saving Evelyne.   It was all back in his dimension.

And Intrepid was picturing his dimension, but not moving.   He was in the space between universes longer than he should have been.   Every other Transdimensional Jump was instantaneous, some slightly longer than others depending on the distance in space being traveled.   But here he wasn’t conscious of any motion at all.

A terrifying thought permeated the blackness into Intrepid’s head.

The Unverse Manipulator was out of power.

Or low on it.

It ran on Imagination, Intrepid knew.   He could power it, if his imagination spark was even relevant in Unverse.   He didn’t even have a body in Unverse.   But he imagined the device close to his soul.   Sharing his essence, Intrepid felt ethereal relief when he comprehended motion again.

Reserve Power Mode Activated, the manipulator spoke to him.   Unverse Drawing and Positioning Service disabled.   In transit to Safe Destination hashtag Three, Code Red.

Red had mentioned loading safe destinations into this Unverse Manipulator, Intrepid remembered.   He hadn’t the faintest clue where any of them could be.   But he could see the light of an Unverse Rift opening in his path.   He mentally set his jaw and prepared himself for landing.   He was about to find out.

The rift approached…

The rift passed…

And Intrepid landed hard on a floor of dirt.   His shoulder hit it head on and was immediately achy.   Apparently the Unverse Manipulator didn’t do soft landings when in Reserve Power Mode.

Intrepid blinked several times, before realizing the place he was in was just dark, and musky.   The floor smelled like decay.   He pressed his hands on the ground next to his head, and found that he’d just missed landing headfirst in a puddle of mud when his right hand sank into it.   He got to his feet quickly and wiped his hands on his armor.

He was in some sort of underground network, from the looks of it.   Dim flickering torchlight gave minimal illumination at T-sections.   The floor, walls, and ceiling were hewn out of dirt, with moss and fungus growing on the walls.   Intrepid turned on his heel, trying to figure out which was out.   The Unverse Manipulator was useless, so he would have to walk.   He was in some sort of catacombs?

Someone coughed in the distance.

Or dungeons? Intrepid thought.

It would help to have a map of this place, Intrepid mentally grumbled to himself.   He began walking to the nearest intersection.   There were only nondescript dirt walls between where he landed and there.   Looking down both directions, there were again no doors to be seen, but the paths did curve in opposite directions.

He stopped when he heard footsteps and the dancing of personal torchlights approaching around the right side path.   Instinctively Intrepid ducked back into the hallway and pressed himself against the wall.   Even if this was one of Red’s “safe locations,” and Intrepid was doubtful it even was, the place had not yet proven itself to be friendly for Intrepid to trust it.

The footsteps grew close enough for Intrepid to detect they were many in number, and then they reached the hallway entrance.   Intrepid held his breath as they passed.   They were a group of six.   The three in the front held torches and looked like knights out of a fantasy book, clanking about in black armor, dark metal boots, and shiny chain mail, with swords and daggers at their hips.   And the three in the back were Paradox Space Marauders?

Somehow the Paradox passed without noticing him, and Intrepid nearly stopped breathing when he saw them.   He exhaled sharply and inhaled graciously when they were gone.   There was no reason they hadn’t seen him, unless their tech wasn’t turned on….

Intrepid switched out his Bat Lord helmet for Cyclone’s Space Marauder Rank 3 helmet, which he still had for some reason.   Putting it on, the device immediately complained of low power.   Looking about, Intrepid could see several lifeforms separated fairly evenly behind the left passage.   There were more people physically above him, on an upper floor, and that was all the range the helmet wanted to display.   He was definitely underground.

Intrepid noted the position of the nearest patrol, coming up behind him, and all the others he could see, and darted off on the left path towards the evenly spaced lifeforms.   As expected, he rounded a bend and found himself facing a cavern lined with metal barred cells.   Some were empty, but most were occupied with ragged looking minifigures.   There were few torches in this room, only with the assist of Cyclone’s helmet could Intrepid see them at all.

He stepped forwards, his boots squelching in the mud.   No one perked up.   Intrepid breathed heavily and recoiled, the stench was worse here.   He doubted any of these prisoners –people, had showered in days.   Or weeks.   Or months.

He had almost cleared the last row of cells, when something caught his eye.   Hanging over the top bars of the last cell on the left was a shield.   There was something on it, invisible in the dark, but Intrepid had a flashlight.   It took several noisy jiggles before it finally projected a steady beam of light.   Intrepid gasped when he saw the shield’s crest.

There was nothing else in his universe identified by a yellow delta on a banner, except the crest of the Talmid Family since the days of the Talmid Letter Company.

If this is here, Intrepid wondered, is a member of my family here..?

Slowly Intrepid aimed the flashlight past the Talmidian shield, past the bars of the cell, to shine on the opposing dirt wall, from which a vest and other clothes hung.   The flashlight also lit up the silhouette of a man seated on the cell’s one bench, in the middle of the floor, faced away from Intrepid.

The man wore a ratty sleeveless tunic on his torso, and plain pants covered his legs.   His bare arms were pale in the flashlight glow.   He had dark hair, thin and disheveled.   His face, Intrepid could not see, until after several moments the man shifted in the light.

And he turned around.

“Killian.” Intrepid breathed.

Killian Talmid squinted in the face of the flashlight, and Intrepid quickly angled it downwards out of his uncle’s eyes, aimed so Killian’s face remained lit in the edge of its glow.   Intrepid’s heart stopped at his uncle’s face.   Sweat glistened on his forehead and his dark eyes were watered.   When Killian opened his mouth, it was to cough.   The moisture on his face did nothing to clean the dirt caked on his cheeks, in his hair, in his beard, if anything it made it stickier.

When Killian stopped coughing, it was to ask in an awfully tired sounding voice, “Art thou here to take me up to thou kangaroo court again?  Sentence me to more punishment?  Or hath thou finally considered my dire need for a bath?”

“What the brick did you just say?” Intrepid exclaimed in dismay.

Intrepid saw what could have been recognition flash on his uncle’s face at the sound of his voice.   Killian flexed his jaw, sighed, and started to turn around again.  “It can’t be.” Intrepid heard him mutter.   “Just another Rogue guard confounded by the beauty of olde speech-“

“It’s me Aiden!” Intrepid screamed.   “What are you doing here Uncle Killian?!”

“Thou shalt address me by Sir Talmi- what?” Killian turned back around again, wincing as he twisted his spine too quickly.   When he opened his eyes again, they were still squinting.   “Let me see your face.” he ordered.

Intrepid aimed the flashlight at his face, and then remembered to pull off his helmet.   He held the light in front of his chest and tilted it up.   “It’s me.” he said.   “Aiden.   Your nephew.   I haven’t seen you in-”

“Four years.” Killian finished.   “Thanksgiving day, 3024.   You’re looking older than I remember.   I didn’t think I’d see you again so late… so soon… here, of all places.”  He coughed again, and wiped the moisture out of his eyes, smearing dirt from his arms across his face.   He didn’t seem to notice or care.   “You’re not with the Rogues, are you?”

“Rogues?” Intrepid repeated.

“Paradox Rogues.” Killian clarified.   “They’re working with thedude, and Vladek.”

“Paradox Rogues from the Faction War?” Intrepid asked again.

“Not so loud,” Killian hissed.   “The guards may come back any second.”  He looked about furtively, uselessly in the dark.   Intrepid put Cyclone’s helmet back on and glanced around.   The helmet didn’t detect a patrol, yet.

“I don’t need to know how you got here then,” Killian continued, “but you need to leave.   However you came here, for whatever reason, you must go.    Now.”

“Not without you, buddy,” Intrepid declared.   He studied the bars.   They were a solid type, sturdy.   It would take a sharp sword to cut them, or a shot with his drill to blow out the lock.   “We’re going to leave this place, you and me,” Intrepid said, finding his replacement Drill of Blasting.   He aimed it at the lock.   “You’ve been gone too long from your family.”  He pulled the trigger and nothing happened.

What? Intrepid pulled the trigger again, but the drill refused to fire.   He equipped his Elite Cleaver instead and began sawing its serrated edge against the lock’s edge.   It was cutting, slowly but surely…

“You can get me out of this cell,” Killian said, “but I can’t leave Militiregnum.”

“Why?!” Intrepid shouted angrily.   “I’ve come all this way – by accident – not to just leave you here.   There’s so much you need to know, so much you can do to help - so much you could have done…”

Intrepid finished sawing the lock.   He swung the door open and rushed in to grab Killian’s arms, and with his help his uncle rose, unsteadily at first, to his feet.   Looking down, Intrepid saw they were bandaged, quite poorly.   Intrepid tried accessing his backpack to get some clothes for Killian, but to his dismay his mind drew a blank.

“We’re far from a Nexus.” Killian said.   “We have to make do without imagination benefits here, not to mention the electricity ban.”

“Why did you come here, Uncle Killian?” Intrepid sighed, letting Killian put his arm around his shoulders – he walked him out of the cell.   “Going on a crusade?  Fulfilling a boyhood dream?”

“Have you heard of the Knights of the Olde Speech?” Killian said.   “We were a mercenary organization,”

“Based out of industrial Nimbus Station,” Intrepid guessed.

“55 unemployment road, to be exact.”

“That’s next door to Leek Works.” Intrepid said.

“We got this job from the deposed king here, his majesty King Matthias Moracol-“ Killian stopped suddenly.   “Guards.” he whispered.

Intrepid swung his Bat Lord staff off his back, and gave his cleaver to Killian.

“We’ll smash if we fight them.” Killian said.   “You can’t rebuild here, and I can’t burden you with protecting me.   It’s time for you to go.”  He slung his arm off Intrepid and nudged him weakly away.

“I have an Unverse Manipulator.” Intrepid protested, grabbing Killian’s hand.   “I got here with it.”

“I hath not the faintest idea what an Unwhat Manipulator is, but pray you can leave here with it too.” Killian knocked Intrepid’s hand off him again, and handed him the sword.   Intrepid could hear stomps of another patrol approaching behind him.   “Now run!”

So Intrepid ran.   He grabbed the Unverse Manipulator from his belt and willed it to work.   It felt cold, dead, but a moment later it lit up and Intrepid sighed in relief.   Get me out of this place, he willed it, only for a picture to appear in his head of the universal symbol for “low battery.”

He tried to find his Imagination spark, but reaching inside himself was like digging in quicksand, or reaching inside a full laundry basket of heavy clothes.   Wet clothes.   He couldn’t stand to leave Uncle Killian to be re-imprisoned.   But he and Killian both agreed he couldn’t leave himself to be imprisoned either.

I’ll come back.  Intrepid thought determinedly.

I’ll come back after.   I.   Leave!

An unverse rift opened in front of Intrepid and he fell in.

==
Thirty-one == Like flying down a hallway, the rush of motion was dreamlike, perceived but not heard.   Not felt either, except for a sickening twisting in the gut of Intrepid’s otherwise numb body, weightless in the void between universes.   That, his inside out stomach, he could feel, and a pinching around his hand: the sensation of another hand grabbing his hand, pulling him through Unverse by it; guiding him.

He perceived a light at the end of a hallway, the exit from Unverse, at first only the size of a pinhole.   But it grew larger into a distinct ring shape that soon encompassed his entire vision.   It was then that Intrepid’s physical awareness, his blurred vision, sounds, and feelings returned.   His first sensation was stumbling, and he flailed his arms, but someone yanked him strongly to his feet and spun him around.

Intrepid blinked several times, each mental refresh bringing something new of the person into focus.   Their gray jacketed arm, gripping him firmly so he didn’t fall; broad, leather clad shoulders; a round face, clean-shaven, with blue eyes and blond hair, but older than the last time Intrepid had seen him.

“Luke Mercury.” Intrepid’s widened eyes took in the future dimension’s version of his best friend, who grinned back.   The two of them stood in a brightly lit, white-walled storage room.   Green wall-markings emblazoned it undoubtedly as belonging to the future dimension’s Leek Works.

“Think you can stand on your own?” the older Luke asked.   Intrepid nodded, and instead of letting go Luke pulled Intrepid into a bear hug.   “What the heck were you doing on Militiregnum?  That place’s a death trap in your dimension.”  He stepped back and stared Intrepid down.   “I haven’t seen you looking like this in twenty years!”

“Well, there is a twenty year difference between our dimensions.” Intrepid stated.

“I know,” Luke said, “and the differences also include thousands of little details, and big details, but you’d know that, wouldn’t you, spending enough time with the people here.”

“Hardly.” Intrepid admitted.   “You’ve said more in one sentence than Red in a day.”

“That’s because we’re best buddies!” Luke crowed.   “Or,” he quieted down, “we, I mean I, and the you from here were best buddies.   It’s been awhile since you, I mean he and I have talked.”  He scratched his blond head contritely.   “But you’re different.”

Intrepid was curious too.   “So why did you rescue me?  From Militiregnum?” he asked, since what did this Luke care about him from another dimension?  Was he a self-interested vigilante like Charles Bradfrodson, the future Cyclone?

“Honestly you remind me of the Intrepid I used to know.   Did I say you look a lot like this guy I know named Intrepid Fusion Eclipse?” Luke joked nostalgically.   “I happened to notice all of your zipping about when I was just in Unverse.   I miss my old friend, and would still help him now if I could.   I suppose this is some cosmic way of accomplishing that, if not for him, than for me, and you of course.”

Intrepid nodded wordlessly, not sure what to say to that.   Except thanks?  Instead he gave the thirty-six year old Luke Mercury’s jacket an optical inspection.   Unlike Red’s, Crimson’s, or Cailan’s sweatshirts, Luke’s jacket bore no Leek Works markings.   “What’s the salt between you and Leek Works?” he posed.

“I’m independent.” Luke declared.   “The Leek Works I knew didn’t report to the Nexus Force, or Republic as it’s called nowadays.”  Luke perked up at the sound of a sliding door whishing open in the next storage room.   “I may be leaving now.” he said.

Intrepid shrugged carelessly, but inwardly he could dig this weird future Luke leaving.   He wouldn’t mind leaving himself.   Get back to my Luke, and Mara, Kate, Cyclone, Edgar, et cetera, he thought.   He reached for his Unverse Manipulator, when a familiar person walked into the room that made Intrepid pause.

Red stopped in the doorway, looking between Intrepid and Luke.   “You’re back.” she said amiably, despite her troubled expression.   The sentence could apply to either of them, Intrepid realized, but Red made it clear by turning to him that her next words were for him only.

“I suppose I should let you know,” said the red-haired girl who was extradimensionally related to him, her expression grave with unconcealed solemnity, “My dad wants to talk with you.”

==
Thirty-two ==   "Your dad wants to talk to me?" Intrepid repeated as Red turned on her heel and headed to the offices, and he felt required to follow her. 

He glanced back at Future Luke, who gave a thumbs up.   "See you around the polyverse, buddy." the blond said. 

"I hope not." Intrepid said, "I'm retiring when this is done."  He spun into the hallway and chased Red.   He saw her turn right at the spiral, and used his manipulator to drop in next to her.   She was walking fast.   "What's he want to talk about?" Intrepid breathed. 

"Probably he's looking for someone on the same brain-length to vent to." Red huffed.   She gave him a sidelong glance.   "Don't tell him I said that, of course."  They stopped outside the solitary dark wood door. 

What's the deal between us here? Intrepid wondered, although he knew better than to ask Red.   Maybe he could ask future him?  He stepped up to a retinal scanner, and let it scan his face to unlock the door.   He considered Red as he pushed it open.   She stepped back, not invited, or not wanting to come in, Intrepid figured.   He still had so many questions.   He turned away from her and stepped across the threshold. 

  The Future Intrepid, as he will henceforth be identified, must like sitting in the dark.   Intrepid's shadow, projecting forth from the doorway, stretched to the one other source of light in the unlit office: a terminal screen that lit up Future Intrepid's face.   He stared down at the terminal, but acknowledged Intrepid's entrance with the words, "Light switch to your left."

As the door shut behind him, Intrepid ran a hand over the sensor and the room lights came on, illuminating one of the better furnished abodes in any incarnation of Leek Works.   Alternating wood floor and green carpets separated opposing mahogany wood and black obsidian shelves, filled with trophies or items and boxes of files respectively.   File cabinets and more shelves lined the back wall behind Future Intrepid, who looked up from the terminal on his desk in the small office's center.   He had a blue file in his hand. 

"Take a seat please," Future Intrepid said, and he put the file on the desk between them.   Intrepid pulled up a chair but didn't sit in it.   He stared down at its labelled cover, which read Notes & Observations ~ Dimension NS3-B. 

"You wanted to talk, about what?" Intrepid asked.   "I don't want to be here for long."  Looking around at all the files, he wondered what info he could get from this goldmine that would be helpful to him. 

"I don't want to keep you long either," Future Intrepid agreed, "I'm sure, as leader of your Leek Works, you're very busy as well."  They both raised their eyebrows, and Future Intrepid's eyes panned up and down Intrepid's face, no doubt trying to read his reaction.   "You do have a Leek Works, don't you?"

"Yeah." Intrepid confirmed.   At least, we did... 

"As I suspected.   I've read Agent Red's report on her interactions in your dimension." Future Intrepid informed Intrepid.   "You helped her fight an invasion force from D-NS1-M, and stop an instance of Subject 19-NS-H from destroying the Nimbus Polyverse.   You're friends with Luke and Mara, Gallant Strong Cyclone, and Kate."

Intrepid nodded.   "It was all Red." he said, and stopped from adding, you should be proud of her.   It wasn't his place to say. 

Future Intrepid smiled slightly, but the look in his eyes stayed grim.   "I'm proud of my daughter, she's Leek Work's best agent, she's loyal, smart, and dependable."  He dipped his head and sighed wistfully.   "I only wish I were as good a father to her.   Nevermind that."

He stood up and pivoted on his booted heels, gesturing to the walls and beyond.   "All this: my entire operation, Leek Work's Transdimensional Division, exists for one thing now.   Not exploration.   Not for evacuation."  He turned to Intrepid.   "We're here to fight, to stop the Maelstrom Dimension. 

"I'm letting you in on our battle plans, because we can no longer do it alone." Future Intrepid continued.   "Our Nexus Force isn't interested in fighting another war."

"But the Maelstrom Dimension - D-NS1-M - threatens everyone," Intrepid stated, "and everything in every dimension, including this one."

"The Nexus Force here would rather solve the issue of protecting ourselves, by blocking all interdimensional travel to and from here," Future Intrepid related, "than defeating the extradimensional Maelstrom threat.   The lives we'd give up - it's not worth it to them."

"Not even to defend countless innocents?" Intrepid asked.   "My entire Nimbus System would be speaking Stromling by now if it weren't for yours and Red's help.   Are they that careless?  What changed?"

The Future Intrepid sat down and drummed his fingers on the desk.   "It's more like, they no longer think we can win.   The Maelstrom Dimension is powerful.   The Darkitect is considered unbeatable."  He leaned forwards.   "But now, we have your help.   My Leek Works, and yours.   Believe it or not, you're all the help I need."

Intrepid glanced at him sideways.   "Red and I were thinking the Nexus Forces of various dimensions would join with us." Intrepid said. 

"An intrepid idea.   Unfortunately my Leek Works doesn't have the infrastructure to support the movements of such a large scale operation," Future Intrepid said, "not to mention, none of the relatively-primitive Nexus Forces stand a chance against an army of the Maelstrom Dimension."

"Can you at least send messages to the other dimensions, warning them?"

"Possibly.   It's not part of my plan." Future Intrepid put another file on the desk, and Intrepid picked it up.   "I've planned something more...  covert."

Future Intrepid returned to his feet and began to pace the room.   "Tell me, younger me," he began, "would you like to see the Darkitect die?"

Intrepid blinked.   "I suppose...?"  He would like to see the Maelstrom defeated, although he hadn't thought of it in...  personal terms.   His eyes followed Future Intrepid's alternating strides, which suddenly stopped at a picture frame on the wall.   The older Intrepid stood tall, looking otherwise composed, but by the tone of the conversation, the arch in his shoulders, and the way he wiped imaginary dust from the glass - or was he just touching it? - Intrepid knew without seeing the expression on Future Intrepid's turned-away face was downcast.   Sullen.   Resentful. 

And considering the picture was a photograph of Kate, it easily dawned on Intrepid what Future Intrepid had meant by his words, "see the Darkitect die."

"You want revenge." Intrepid pronounced.   It wasn't an accusation - it was a statement of fact.   It surprised him.   Intrepid understood loss.   He'd gone reclusive after the Battle of Elistra.   It took a month after meeting Luke and Mara to get him out of his self-imposed, self-encapsulating shell of sadness.   It took another two for him to break out a smile.   But fourteen years had passed since the Future Dimension's Kate had died, and Future Intrepid was still haunted by her loss. 

"There is an aspect of that." Future Intrepid said, turning away from Kate to face Intrepid.   His visage almost entirely matched the mental image Intrepid had, with one detail missed: his eyes now burned with fiery determination.   "The Darkitect killed my wife."

Intrepid nodded.   "I understand the feeling.   They killed my family too." he stated. 

Future Intrepid hung his head.   "I know.   That, my extradimensional counterpart, is one of the consistencies between our dimensions, so I know everything you saw.   And we were able to heal after Elistra.   But Kate's death turned my life around, and not in a good way.   It turned everything backwards.   Which is why you need to help me end this."

Intrepid nodded again.   "I will."

"It's not just for me," Future Intrepid clarified, "it's for you, and Kate, and Cyclone, and every instance of us in every dimension, and everyone else."  He paused to chuckle.   "Luke, Mara and I always joked that we served the betterment of minifigurekind.   We cared just as much about ourselves.   But now, I just want to be a father, if it's not too late."

Future Intrepid returned to his terminal, and removed a USB stick which he showed to Intrepid.   "The file folders I've given you," he instructed, "are to be read first.   It's our plan of action to which you've agreed to play your part.   But this," he placed the flash drive in Intrepid's hand, "is a copy of our entire records."

"What's it for?" Intrepid asked. 

"For whatever you need my or Tiberius's help for." Future Intrepid answered.   "There's not enough time to discuss everything I'm sure you want to ask about.   Everything I know, you have access to now."

"Like about reviving my family." Intrepid confirmed.   "I take it..."

Future Intrepid shook his head.   "That's a tragedy I won't speak about, but it's in my past - you never know what your future holds."

"There's no time for one question?" Intrepid asked, as Future Intrepid pushed him to the door. 

"There will be," Future Intrepid said, "after you get back to your dimension, and do what I've instructed."

Intrepid held up the Unverse Manipulator Red gave him.   "I don't need to leave this room to leave this dimension."

"Then who are you waiting for?" Future Intrepid chided. 

Intrepid gave him a confused glance, before opening the door and exiting.   It took his eyes a second to adjust to the bright lights in the spiral hallway, where he found himself facing six people. 

"We're coming with you." Jay said, patiently tugging at the straps of his backpack.   He stood with Katie and an annoyed looking Red, and Ben, and spray-painting graffiti on the self-cleaning walls were Luke Mercury's wayward children, Cailan and Crimson. 

==
Thirty-three ==   The Block Yards presented ample space for underground operations and staging posts.   Intrepid hadn’t yet the time to delve in Future Intrepid’s and Tiberius’s records to discover, say, use of the Block Yards by any knightly vigilante groups, and be inspired by their trailblazing activities.   Rather it was a locale he, Luke, and Mara were familiar with, so it was a place they preferred for hanging out.

Their group had reassembled in Cheerful Power Rover’s Block Yard property, which had a house like Cyclone’s and some storage cellars built into the ground, like bunkers.   Cyclone, Kate, Tornado, Edgar, Evelyne, Strange Odd Shadow, Skilled Honored Ninja, Red, Allison Ryder, and everyone else, including the new arrivals from the Future Dimension known as D-NS0, or Dimension Nimbus System Zero,   were there, and for the most part all was in order.

Although, two of the new arrivals in particular remained objects of concern.

"Are you sure we can trust these delinquents?" Intrepid hissed to Red as he eyed the group milling about Rover’s bunkers.   Ben, Ryder, and Shira were sorting through the extra consumables and gear Rover had in his armories, while Ray, Edgar, Rover, and Jay and Katie were doing the boring work of laying the items out on the ground for Cyclone, Kate, Luke, Mara, and Evelyne to re-organize and later distribute among the team members.   ‘The delinquents,’ as Intrepid called them, known by their given names as Cailan and Crimson Mercury-Crateris, were joy-riding in a rocket.

"No." Red answered, wrinkling her nose at the waft from a cache of firecrackers that blew up a minute earlier.

"Very funny." Intrepid said sarcastically.   It was a particularly still day as far as wind was concerned, even up on the mountain where Red and Intrepid surveyed the property, and surrounding sky.

"I mean it." Red huffed.   She followed Intrepid’s skyward gaze to the rocket that the Mercurys had commandeered, officially for scout and recon purposes, but everyone knew it was to get some wind in their hair.   "I’ve no idea why my dad thought they'll be of any help to us.”  Apparently it was Future Intrepid who had let them out of their containment pods.

Intrepid lowered his gaze as the open-cockpit rocket buzzed the mountain for the tenth time, and shook his head.   He decided to head down the mountain and help with the distribution effort, and organize their workforce better since Jay and Katie had the carrying work covered – although, it was to be considered that, except for randomly exploding firecrackers, things were going smoothly already.   His team members on the ground didn’t need him.

But maybe someone else did?

"Hey," Intrepid quietly asked in Red’s direction, "is there anything you want to tell me about you and your dad?  Is there anything going on?"

There was silence between them for the moment, the only sounds being the droning of the rocket, and the cracks, bangs, and yelps of stuff being thrown about below, so Intrepid almost didn’t hear Red say in a low voice, "That’s the thing, there's nothing going on with us.   Nothing is woefully accurate."

Intrepid kicked a stone off the mountaintop.   “Your dad is proud of you.” he told her.   “He told me he was remorseful that he hasn't been around for you, as a father."

“I know, I heard, the past few times he’s told associates that.” Red said.   "It's alright though, I have other friends.   And I have you."

She was looking away, and he as well, but in the corner of his eye Intrepid thought he saw a rare smile from her.

==
Thirty-four == With care, Cyclone set four gleaming-blue Snapsicles™ in the pile next to a box of Big Ones.  Their passive instability elicited discretion, and one of them had set off a cache of Rover's Firecrackers earlier.  The Snapsicles were a creation of the Future Leek Works shared with them in generous number, but when distributed among the...  eighteen of them? - they suddenly seemed sparse.

Cyclone felt a tap on his shoulder, and turned around.  He corrected his number.  They were nineteen, including Stromling Cyclone.

"I'm just wondering what I should do to help." the other Cyclone said.  'Stromling Cyclone' was just what they called him, since he was infected when they picked him up from Strange Odd Shadow's dimension, but thanks to Future Leek Works's Ben, Red, and Ryder, he was completely Maelstrom free now.

As Maelstrom free as me, Cyclone thought.  Genetically Stromling Cyclone looked like Cyclone, with the same styled brown hair and bright blue eyes, just two years younger.  Cyclone looked around to find something for him to do, when Kate bounced over.

"Here, Cyclone," Kate was saying, and she pointed at Stromling Cyclone for disambiguation.  "You can take over for me here, I'm going to see what else the girls, and Ben, have belowdeck.  We could use more Thirst Quenchers, and other imagination replenishables..."

She gave the two Cyclones a knowing look, flipped her hand up, and casually brewed a miniature lightning storm in her palm.  "The three of us, especially." Then she descended the steps into the closest bunker.

"We have powers." Cyclone explained.  "A byproduct of our overcharged imagination sparks."

"To what extent?" Stromling Cyclone asked.

"I'm not sure yet." Cyclone admitted.  "I suppose since it's based on imagination, anything should be possible."

They stood pondering, and Stromling Cyclone inquired, "What can we do so far?"

"I can conjure lightning, I haven't tried anything else, like..." he recalled what Kate had just done.  "...forming a cyclone."

Stromling Cyclone went to between where Kate had five backpacks with sets of consumables to add to and the Figdroid's pile of unsorted goods, and he spoke while he worked.  "Can I ask you more about you?"

"Sure." Cyclone responded.  "Ask away."

"How did you meet Kate?"

"On Avant Gardens, we were infected as Stromlings, and amazingly we both remained sentient.  So we had a plan to break into Nexus Tower, and ask the Faction Leaders to disinfect us.  Along the way we met Cheerful Power Rover, and Master Blade." Cyclone paused to consider something.

"I wonder where they are now, my versions of them." Stromling Cyclone finished the thought.

"There's also the matter of yours, and Kate's, imagination alter-egos where you're from.  You've got a lot of work to do.  The way things turned out, it's really thanks to my friends that I got through it all." Cyclone voiced his musings.  "If I hadn't met my friends the way I did, I'm not sure if I ever would have."

It bothered Cyclone to imagination his friends how they were two years ago, not as his friends, for each of their sakes.  Rover had been infected as a result of their meeting, and was probably fine; but Kate and Blade, the halves he knew of them, were both Stromlings, and entirely alone.  He cared for them, and he grimaced remembering the pain of infection.  But despite the tug of war, slipping down the slope to preserve his mind and individuality; the constant whispering of the Darkitect in his subconscious, infecting his dreams; and the muddling of his thoughts, the heavy weight on his brain of the telepathic link with his imagination half -- Cyclone knew he would do it all again, even if it meant being infected, if it meant protecting his friends.

It was how things were meant to be, and the traversing of dimensions, the meddling with future-history, their fates, and their lives - Cyclone believed it was wrong.

He set a principle for himself.  When this was over, and they'd completed Future Intrepid's mission to destroy the Maelstrom's interdimensional network, and smash the Darkitect, and the polyverse was safe - he would go with Strange Odd Shadow and Stromling Cyclone to their dimension and set things right for him, and the minifigures supposed to be his friends: Rover, Blade, and...

"Do you like Kate?" Stromling Cyclone asked.

Cyclone looked up and opened his mouth to protest, but didn't- couldn't find the words to voice that train of thought, because it hadn't occured to him.  She had saved Stromling Cyclone's life, but he would do the same for a Stromling Kate.

Cyclone laughed.  "We care about each other." he said.  "We've been through some tough places, and we've always been there for each other.  She's a great person, she has the best jokes, and you should really meet her."

"Well," Stromling Cyclone said, looking like he was remembering something, perhaps a past conversation in another dimension, "We have met, and Kate has talked to me, and I know when she looks at me, she's actually looking at you.  And there's a way she speaks about you."

Stromling Cyclone said at last, "I think Kate likes you."

==
Thirty-five == "I still think the plan is nuts." Shira Talmid was saying as Kate stepped quietly into the bunker.   It was more like a storage cellar with its slanted wood doors, aggregate-infused plastic walls, and dim interior lighting.   She moved with the noiseless grace and of a Samurai, but held the strength and authority of a mighty Sentinel warrior. 

Apparently she had immeasurable access to Imagination as well, to a powerful enough effect to be described as Mythranesque.   After her brief training session with Cyclone on his Avant Grove property was cut short, she'd had to conduct experiments herself.   At first she'd taken inspiration from natural forces, and channeled fire to warm a cup of tea she drank that morning.   When they departed Cyclone's property, she summoned a wall of wind to push their rockets to the Block Yards a little faster.   Once there, she focused on the opposite: enforcing calm in a typically windy place.   To help conceal their operation, she added fog, to the clouds that already hugged the property's underside, to cover its upper hemisphere as well.   It was a task as easy as breathing in and out. 

And to Kate's amusement, her teammates were none the wiser. 

Now she drew inspiration from her Samurai training.   By amplifying the inaudibleness of her boots and the other stealth qualities of her gear, she became practically invisible, even when she pirouetted into the cellar. 

"We're luring, of all people, the Darkitect to fight us." Shira continued.   She was leaning against a stack of crates, looking disheveled and worn out from digging in boxes for the last half hour, and she was still inspired enough to chatter.   Ben and Ryder were around elsewhere.   "I swear this is like a mass suicide."

Kate stopped in front of Shira.   Despite facing her general direction, Shira didn't look up, or respond to Kate's entrance at all, as if she didn't even notice her.   Amusedy Kate snapped her fingers.   As Kate expected, the girl with multicolored hair didn't even blink. 

"I see you've discovered your Nexus powers." a voice said from behind Kate. 

It was Allison Ryder. 

Kate studied the dark-brown haired girl, who stood fifteen feet away with a neutral expression on her face, like she was waiitng.   Kate's eyes narrowed.   She knew Allison Ryder was a Leek Works agent by word of mouth, she knew that much about her, but not much else any other way, until now. 

"What do you know about my powers?" she inquired. 

"Everything.   And more." Allison took a step forwards.   "There are some things you need to know."

==
Thirty-six == The sound of pounding feet up the steps of the nearest storage bunker diverted Cyclone’s attention from his sorting.  Sounds like trouble.  Cyclone thought, turning just as Shrill Failed Brick burst out through the cellar doors.  Her sweaty face was unusual, since she was developed athletically and the exertion of stair climbing should be nothing to her.  Cyclone set his pack of armor shine down and set his jaw.  If her visage could hint to what transpired to inspire her perspiration, she'd seen something scary - she was pale as a sheet.

Cyclone was about to ask her what happened when Shira blurted out, "Your girlfriend and Ryder just appeared out of thin air."

Cyclone coughed through his nose in protest.  "You mean Kate?" Did everyone see them together?

Then Kate stormed out followed by Allison, and Shira danced out of their way.  Ryder had a poise of passive observing-complacency, walking with her head cocked to one side, one brow raised, and her lips set like she’d already said her piece.  On the contrary Kate looked stormy and about to spill her mind.

"Look at you.” Cyclone noted with concern.  When Kate faced him, the look on her face was puzzling; there was upset, with a tinge of...  hurt? What happened? “What happened?" he asked worriedly.

Kate looked about to speak, when she looked up, past him, and Cyclone pivoted stiffly to see Intrepid and Red, approaching from the back of the property.  "What's going on?" Intrepid asked, looking between everyone, and his eyes narrowed on Ryder.  As well, Stromling Cyclone, Luke, Mara, Rover, and others paused from their tasks to glance over, they sensed something was up, and Shira sidled to her cousin.

It took a few seconds before Kate responded.  “The more the merrier.” she said, and then her words spilled out, fast and accusatively to Intrepid, "You knew.  About my death."

Cyclone drew in his breath.  "Your-"

"-Death?" Shira gasped, turning goggle-eyed to Intrepid.  "This is a suicide mission?"

I don’t think that’s what this is about, Shira.  Cyclone thought.

"I already died." Kate announced coldly.  "In the dimension where Intrepid and I were married.” Cyclone stepped back, Shira gasped again, and Intrepid stared at the ground.  “You could have told us about that, too."

Unable to retreat, Intrepid looked up from his feet, although his voice faltered and his neck twitched.  "I’m sorry.  I should have been the one to tell you.” Keeping his eyes on them, Cyclone imagined Intrepid barely keeping himself from glaring at Ryder, while trying to keep a level gaze with Kate.  He held out a hand to Kate, and noticed someone’s shadow, Red’s, shift behind Intrepid, a quick and preferably discreet motion, but he noticed it.  She's involved too.

Kate either also noticed or she already had a piece of her mind for Red, since her next statement was directed at her.  "It was you who told him everything, didn’t you."

Intrepid said quickly, “It’s not her fault."

“I did.” Red confirmed.

Intrepid had already edged a toe’s-length in front of Red, almost protectively.  What it meant, Cyclone wasn’t sure, and the extent of Kate’s sudden unease and subsequent need for confrontation was still a mystery.

Being with Kate all these years, he understood one thing though.  She didn’t like being lied to, and being kept out of the loop was close enough.

"I also know why you rescued Cyclone and me in the first place." Kate said.  "Because Red is our daughter in the other dimension.” More gasps.  “The point is, either of you could have told me.  Everyone here deserves to know.  If we’re going to work together as a team, we need to be open with each other, okay? No more hiding information.”

Intrepid nodded.  “Alright.  So what do we do now?”

“You mean relationship-wise, or in team terms? We have a few more hours before our rendezvous on Crux.  Cyclone and I will train our powers until then.” Kate spun around and grabbed Cyclone’s arm.  “We’re finished for now.  Come on Cyclone.”

==
Thirty-seven == Swing, clang.   Swing, scrape.   Push, clang.   Swing, swish.   Miss. 

"Try to cool down.   You're angry and it's not helping." Cyclone advised.   Their training session had started with swords, basic shortswords, and so far all of Kate's moves were blocked or swiftly dodged.   At the fifth swing she guarded for the planned switch, but Cyclone lowered his sword instead. 

Kate breathed heavily and spun the sword down.   "I'm sorry, Cyclone."

"You wanted to train our powers.   Let's switch to that." he suggested. 

Despite the hurt lingering in the front of her head, Kate smiled and turned to face the bunker's empty wall opened to the edge of the World, the sky and clouds beyond.   This subterranean bunker was built up to the Block Yard's edge, and could be entered by rockets behind disguised hanger doors.   Some tools and machinery were off to the corners, allowing Kate the breadth and room to cool off. 

She pushed her arms forward and sent twin jets of fire into the open air.   Dark orange reflections danced over the gritty concrete walls from the moving flames.   They stretched fifty feet out of the hanger doors before blowing out in bonfire sized puffs; a small distance in the overwhelming space separating the Block Yards, but a overflowing range for close combat, and she wasn't giving it her all. 

Heat built up in the hanger and Kate let the flames end.   She dropped her hands to sides, then flapped them in the air and blew on her fingers.   "Stuff's hot!" she yelled, spinning around to see Cyclone standing slack-jawed. 

"That was an impressive display." he managed. 

"Supposedly we can do anything with our powers." Kate told him, which raised Cyclone's eyebrows.   "I think some testing is in order."

"Where do we start?"

"Use your Imagination."

"Nice one." Cyclone ran a hand through his hair.   "There has to be a catch.   Using our powers takes enough focus already."

Kate considered.   "Think it'll be something cliché like getting consumed be the power?"

Cyclone shared her glance.   "Possibly.   I bet Interpid has a file on it, from the Future Dimension."

Kate masked her glower with a one-eighty degree twirl.   "Where do we get that?"

"We ask nicely."

On the surface they found Intrepid close to where they left him.   The others were still milling about and all the sorting work had been done. 

"It's two hours till we're expecting on Crux Prime, like you said." Intrepid told the two.   He looked more haggard than usual; he was exuberating confidence in comparison fifteen minutes ago.   No doubt about it, Allison Ryder's reveal and their subsequent encounter had a thing to do with it. 

"Plenty of time for a cursory glance.   Or more." Cyclone said brightly.   "Who knows, what we found out might come in handy."

Intrepid handed him an unlinked laptop computer.   "Everything's downloaded to this."

Cyclone got to his knees and Kate crouched behind him as he began browsing.   "Look under 'Nexus'," she suggested.   "That's what Ryder called our powers, 'Nexus Powers'."

There were about 1523 entries beginning with Nexus.   Cyclone glanced backwards and put a hand on the lid.   "Sure we're not better off asking her?"

Kate stood and looked about.   "Where's she anyway?"

Intrepid was still standing nearby, hands in his pockets, and turned the other direction.   "Red gave her a chewing out." he said as if absentminded.   "She's on the scouting roster though.   Probably skipped town."  He then stalked off towards their fleet of rockets, to oversee loading of supplies. 

Inwardly Kate felt a little sorry for flipping out like she did earlier, at him, but she didn't say anything. 

"Speaking of the devil," Cyclone caught himself at the swear, then continued, "there's a file on Miss Ryder."  His eyes scanned left and right, before he returned to the index.   "There's a lot of history in these files...  but it wouldn't be history to us."

Kate returned to behind him, curious.   "What's it have on us?"

"That's not why we're here." Cyclone reminded.   "Nor do I want to read about my future.   Or yours.   Or anyone's for that matter." he added quickly. 

"It's another dimension, silly.   Nothing that happens there affects us."

"I just don't want to know anything that will change how things should happen." Cyclone sighed. 

"And how should things happen?" Kate inquired. 

"I don't know and that's the point, I don't want to know.   Here, this article on Creation Sparks has a subsection on 'Anomalous Variations'-"

Cyclone was cut off by an invisible shockwave that rippled his skin and toppled him sideways, and knocked Kate the other way.   Less firmly planted items took to the air, including the laptop, which flew over their heads and probably smashed into more than a few pieces.   Funnily, Kate imagined how long it had taken for Intrepid to copy the database, since that progress was likely gone now, before the flash of light and thunderclap of an interdimensional rupture hit them.   That sent another shockwave of the auditory type over the Block Yard. 

When Kate could hear again and her brain wasn't being marauded by high pitched ringing, she got up and blinked to bring the dark mass looming behind the Block Yard's mountain into focus.   It was a Venture Class starship darkened by the combined shadow of several smaller Pirate ships and Maelstrom dragons flying above it, headed straight down towards them. 

It was a Maelstrom Dimensions Invasion Force, arriving early, and Kate knew immediately it was coming for them. 

==
Thirty-eight ==   Not again, thought Intrepid as he faced the impending doom of Rover's Block Yard property.  He'd already seen and defended the Fun Party Place, another Block Yard from an invasion force just like this.  Pirate ships, ✓; Dragons, ✓; from the Maelstrom Dimension, ✓.

Terrible pictures flashed in his mind.  He gulped and they caught in his throat.  Not everyone there had survived.

Not this time, if he had anything to do about it.  Intrepid stared the onslaught down.  They were a mile long, a mile off, and closing fast.  The infected Venture was large enough to see inside its bridge.

"We have to slow them down.  On three we'll hijack the lead pirate ship and turn it on the others." Red said from next to him.  The unverse manipulator was in her hands and ready to be used again.

Intrepid slipped his gear on.  He eyed the pirate ship, which was indeed closer.  It looked easy enough to board, with an open top, and only a hundred armored Stromling Pirates on the deck.  "Why not the Venture?" he asked.

"The Venture is too technologically sophisticated.  They could have traps on board.  On my mark."

Intrepid gripped the manipulator in his pocket.  He counted one, two.

"Three."

They relocated to the prow of the pirate ship and immediately began shooting.  Despite their golden armor Stromling Pirates fell all around Intrepid to the piercing bullets of Red's laser pistol.  Intrepid allowed an Admiral to grapple his shield, switched out his gun, and smashed the monster with his staff.

In the middle of the boat was the wheel, controlling more than hydraulic rudders to make the ship fly.  These Stromlings felled pretty easily, Intrepid noted, as he battled his way to the steering mechanism.  Red shot the head off the Stromling manning the device, and after Intrepid spun the wheel left he smashed it.  They returned to the Block Yard to watch the pirate ship careen into the starboard shields of the Venture.  Its wood hull splintered on impact and Stromlings either smashed or fell off but the Venture barely wavered off course.

"I don't think that did anything." Intrepid said.

"No, it didn't." Red agreed.  "Worth a shot."

==
Thirty-nine == After successfully disabling the rest of the Pirate Ships, Intrepid and Red ran to the Avant Gardens launcher where Luke, Mara, and Shira, Jay and Katie, and Rover, Cyclone, and Kate were loading the last segments of their supplies.  “Fast!” Intrepid panted before he dropped to his knees, howling.

Cyclone cocked his head.  “Fast what?”

“He means we need to get off this rock fast.” Shira translated gruffly and with a tremendous heave shoved the last box of Armor Shine into Rover’s Pod Rocket.  “I’ll take this if you don’t mind,” she asked of nobody before swinging into the cockpit and blasting into the sky.

Rover blinked.  “She took my rocket.  Anyway, we need everyone out of here now.”

“And fast.” Intrepid rolled into a sitting position and grimaced.  “I think I sprained myself landing on that last Pirate Ship.”

No one wasted time to ask what he was doing on a Pirate Ship.  A shadow passed over the launch area, a shadow with wings.  The first of the Maelstrom Dragon wing swung around and swooped down to attack.  In its dive it rolled over, revealing the Stromling-manned machine guns, four of them, on its back.  A bomb clutched in the dragon’s claws was aimed right at the launcher.

“Everyone out!” Rover shouted.  The others were already running for the bunker with the underground hanger.  They intended to launch from there.  Meanwhile machine gun fire strafed the ground around them and took off armor points.  The dragon was about to drop its bomb when suddenly its neck was cut off.  Rocket fired laser beams pierced its scales and the neutralized dragon parts, its crew, and its bomb fell over the Block Yard’s edge harmlessly.  Cailan and Crimson’s rocket streaked by.

“They’re useful for once.” Intrepid commented.  Jay and Katie reached the cellar doors first and held them open, then Intrepid and Rover.

“Make yourself useful and check the other bunkers for stragglers.” Rover suggested.

Intrepid reached for his Unverse Manipulator but dropped his hand when Red, running with the othres disappeared from view.  She was already on it.  Cyclone, Kate, Luke, and Mara had taken time to exchange weapons fire with the approaching rest of the dragons.  Gripping each others hands, Cyclone and Kate dashed in and the Figdroids looked anxious to shut the doors.

Then the bombs began to fall.

Intrepid shouted for Luke and Mara to run faster.  He would whisk them in if recent maneuvers hadn’t depleted his manipulator’s already limited energy.  So he could do nothing as target reticles created a minefield between his two companions and safety, and all around them.  The first explosions began to send dirt flying from orange bursts of flame and their flashes grew brighter as they neared.  Intrepid saw Luke throw Mara and then dive after her but a flash from the nearest explosion blinded Intrepid.  Dirt rained down and he heard Jay and Katie slam the doors shut.

He also heard screaming.

When his eyes resumed working, Intrepid’s heart almost stopped.  Mara had made it in, and so had Luke but not in one piece.  The color drained from Intrepid’s face, but not as much as the energy that drained from Luke where he'd been injured from the blast.  He was partially smashed and his legs were gone.   “Oh-”god.  Intrepid wanted to move or do something to help the blond boy but his own legs had gone numb.  Luke coughed in a way that suggested additional injury.

“Stay with us, Luke.” Mara had ran to Luke’s side.  She grabbed his hand and locked eyes.  “Stay with me,” she repeated as his breathing became labored.

So much loss.

Intrepid was dimly aware of people moving around him.  They could try to save Luke.  Intrepid couldn’t even turn away.  When he shut his eyes he saw memories.

So many people smashed…

Luke took a shuddering breath.

Some were killed before they could smash.

“Noooooo…” Mara began to wail.

Smashed or not, there was nothing he could do to help them.

He slumped to the ground while Mara buried her face in Luke’s shoulder, and Intrepid blacked out.

...

Cyclone put his hand on the girl’s shoulder.  “He’s gone.” he said softly.

“He’s not.” Mara shook him loose.

Cyclone glanced at Rover.  “We have to go.” Cyclone repeated, and crouched next to the garnet-haired girl.  “Mara-”

“NO!” she whirled on him with such a ferocity it made Cyclone step back.  Her eyes were glossed and her face burned with flush.  “We’re all we have left!” She choked on a sob.  “Luke is, was all I have left.” she repeated, crestfallen.  “Now-”

“You have us.” Cyclone said firmly.

Unexpectedly Mara flung her arms around Cyclone and nearly knocked him over from the sudden embrace.  She sobbed bitterly, her tears dampened his shoulder.  After a moment, he gripped her back.

There was a gasp from next to them and Cyclone stared saucer-eyed over Mara’s shoulder as Luke’s chest heaved with an intake of breath.  Then he was knocked down when Mara pushed off him and grabbed Luke’s arms.  She hauled him to his feet.

His feet.  Mara pulled Luke into a tight standing hug that the boy took without toppling.  He looked in perfect health.

Cyclone’s eyes shifted to Kate, crouched next to where Luke had laid, and leaning on the wall.  Her eyes were closed and her hair floated as if flowing with electricity.  Stray Imagination energy discolored the wall behind her back and cloudy wisps of it still drifted from her open hands.  When her eyes opened they glowed a shining blue that slowly faded to normal white.  Her hair lost its shine and drooped back down and Kate drew a ragged breath.  She tried to stand, but then she collapsed - into Cyclone’s arms.

“I’m alive.” Luke gasped, looking down at himself and his uninjured body, as much as he could with Mara clinging to him, and then at Kate.  “You saved me.”

“You saved him?” Cyclone echoed, bewildered.  Leaning against him for support, Kate nodded weakly.  “You can save people from dying?”

“We… can.” Kate sighed.  Then her eyes shut from exhaustion.

Now Cyclone felt a hand on his shoulder.  It was Rover, and behind him stood Red with Allison and Ben.  Edgar and Evelyne were fetched as well.  Intrepid, who was still out cold, was draped in Edgar’s arms and Evelyne stroked his face.

“Ray, Jonna, Crimson and Cailan, Skilled Honored Ninja, Strange Odd Shadow, and Shira are already in rockets.” Red reported.

“Then there’s the rest of us.” Rover said.  Dust fell from the ceiling as another bombardment began above that shook the walls.  “We should really be going now.”

“We’ll need to use two-seaters.” Cyclone said.

“We have them.” Mara affirmed.

“Then let’s get out of here.” Rover proclaimed.

==
Forty == That morning the invasion had begun.  Only small steps at first, but Intrepid knew it would get worse.

“Here are reports of ex-space attacks on properties all around the Nimbus System.” Mara reported.  “Around twenty Block Yards, five Avant Groves, a Chantey Shantey, a Raven’s Bluff.”

She sat at the edge of a carpet on a dirt-packed ground with a laptop in front of her, in a small hidey-hole in the hills of Avant Gardens.  The others she’d escaped with from Rover’s Block Yard were outside except for Rover, Luke, and Red, and Intrepid (who had woken up in the flight); they were inside.  The others who’d escaped in rockets even earlier, by themselves, were still unaccounted for, namely Shira, Jonna, Shadow, and Skilled Honored Ninja.  Some, like Cailan and Crimson and Stromling Cyclone, were just missing and they weren’t even sure if they had escaped.  But they could hope.

“Hold on, what are the names of the properties?” Rover asked.  “Better question; who are they owned by?”

“According to these news bulletins, the Chantey and the Bluff are owned by you, Rover.” Mara said.  “The Avant Groves belong to you, Cyclone, Rover, Jonna, Edgar, and our version of Skilled Honored Ninja; the Block Yards are owned by just about all of us, save for Evelyne.”

“So they’re specifically attacking our properties.” Rover stated.  “Wonderful.”

“They’re sending us a message.” Red suggested.

“Yeah, they want to kill us.” Luke said with a grimace.  “I’d know.”

“Both.” Intrepid reconciled.  “They want us dead, and they’ll keep trying to get us for as long as we’re alive, or not infected.  You guys keep working down here, I’ll check with the others outside.”

He went to the ladder in the middle of the room and climbed it.  The hidey-hole, with its few desks and desk chairs and carpeted floor and a map table, had plenty of server equipment in it with antenna links on other mountains.  It used to be manned by Suave Able Cat, lieutenant of the legendary Lord Brocktree, who had first shown them the place.  It was a good hiding place, Intrepid remembered, from that time two years back.  He had just met Kate and her friends.  Even Shira had magically showed up.  It seemed so long ago.

Suave or Brocktree weren’t here now, so they commandeered it.

Intrepid climbed the last rung and stuck his head out the camouflaged entrance.  It was still plenty sunny, even in the late afternoon, since trees were far and few in the grasslands.  He surveyed the rolling landscape until he saw the rest of their team, hidden in a valley between two of the steeper hills in a grass-covered shipping container.  It was designed to be invisible from the air, as was the gulch where they stowed their rockets.  But their rockets with supplies had disappeared with Jonna, Shadow, Skilled, and Shira.

We don’t have a lot of hiding places left.  Intrepid thought depressingly.  As he walked over to the valley, he became aware of someone behind him.  He glanced back, but he only saw Red.

…

Night had fallen when Edgar returned from scouting.  By now distant cracks of gunfire, clangs of swords, and flashes from explosions small and large were apparent elsewhere in the green world.  “We have to get moving soon if we’re to stop this.” the Shinobi reminded.  “We have to assume the others won’t get here in time.”

Intrepid sat in the middle of the container’s walls.  Evelyne, Allison, and Ben shared a couch towards the entrance where Edgar stood.  There were some weapon racks on the walls.  In the back, seated crosslegged, Cyclone kept an eye on the still girl lying on their only field cot.  They’d given Kate a medicine chest’s worth of Imagination supplements, but she remained comatose.

“They’re probably out fighting,” Evelyne said.  Cyclone glanced at her.  The black haired girl was looking out at the hills.  “So should we.”

A laptop beeped next to Intrepid and he turned to its screen.  “Finally.” he muttered.  “Future Intrepid’s database has finished de-encrypting, for the second time.  Cyclone,” he called, “if you want to learn more about Creative Sparks-”

“Ryder told me everything.” Cyclone responded more abruptly than he’d meant.

“Well,” Intrepid removed the flash drive and glanced over to to the couch, “Kate would want us to share what we know.”

“If you’re willing to listen.” Allison spoke up.  “We all have the power of Imagination, some more or less than others, although in Evelyne’s case, not at all.  Cyclone, Kate, and I have abnormally powerful Creative Sparks.”

“You too?” Intrepid said.  “Who else has secrets?”

Cyclone didn’t have any secrets, but he added, “Master Blade 9 has a strong Creative Spark.” Blade was the only one who hadn’t yet responded to the mail he and Kate sent out when they returned.  He hoped he was alright… he gave Kate’s a hand a squeeze.  He hoped she was alright.

“It’s not so rare.” Red said, moving to join Intrepid at the laptop.  “Supposedly Allison, Ben, and my dimension’s Leek Works has a list collected of everyone in the Nexus Force who we know has the trait.  I never saw it, but I listened in on those who did.  Tiberius told me it numbered in the hundreds.”

“Then it should be on this computer.” Intrepid said with realization.

“The key is knowing what you can do with a Nexus’s worth of Imagination.” said Allison.  “And what you can’t do.”

You can save people from death, Cyclone noted, looking at Kate.  But at what cost? “What will we do with such a list?” he called.  “Find them and recruit them to our cause? Will we even be alive that long? We’re running out of time.”

“We can split up.” Red suggested.  “Intrepid and I can find other people with powers.  The rest of us who can, proceed with the plan to neutralize the Maelstrom Mine with the Paradox serum.”

“But that will kill Evelyne.” Intrepid protested.

“You dolt, I’m already dead.” Evelyne retorted.  “I don’t care what you do if it’ll stop the invasion.  Just revive me later.” Evidently Evelyne had been revived before.  It should be possible to do again.

Intrepid breathed deeply and got to his feet.  “Fine, but I’m going to Crux Prime.  Who else?”

Allison got to her feet and Edgar nodded at the entrance.  Eventually they turned to Cyclone.  He shifted his gaze back to Kate’s face.  She was so helpless, and he didn’t know how to bring her back.  Except… he closed his eyes, willed his Imagination to show itself, and he channeled some of his supposedly-Nexus-level reserve into his companion.  He felt it leave his soul, and go into hers.  Then he let go of Kate’s hand.

Cyclone stood up.  His legs needed some stretching after he’d sat for so long.  But he was ready. 

“That makes a full team of four.” Intrepid said.  “Rover, Luke, Mara, and Jay and Katie will stay here to guard, as well as in case anyone else shows up.” he decided.

“I know where the Paradox serum is.” Red said, picking up Intrepid’s laptop.  “I’ll get it to you there.” There was a shift in the atmosphere that made everyone's ears pop as air rushed to fill the space she left.

Intrepid held out his hand, in it was his Unverse Manipulator.  Enough hours had passed to recharge it, however that worked.  Edgar put his hand on top, then Allison, and Cyclone walked over to add his.

To Crux Prime, Cyclone thought, and so did Intrepid.  They were whisked away.

The silent thrill of an Unverse tunnel was unfamiliar to Cyclone.  He felt the presence of Intrepid’s, Edgar’s, and Allison’s Creative Sparks around him.  Intrepid’s was small, but determined and effervescent; Edgar gave off courage and foundation; and Allison was a hidden powerhouse.  But he also felt something sinister, the presence of dark forces, and the sensation of being watched.  By the Maelstrom, or something else?

They arrived on a clifftop on the Crux Prime, far beyond Rivendark Canyon and the ruins of a defunct Nexus Temple.  At the cliff’s edge stood four older people.  Two of them had Leek Works badges.  Cyclone recognized the adult faces of Future Intrepid and Future Luke and Future Mara, but the fourth was facing the other way, over the cliff’s edge.  His suit was vaguely Paradox in design, Space Marauder in essence.  His helmet was on.

“Good, you popped up in our containment zone, or the Maelstrom would have detected your entrance.” Future Luke stated.  “Mind you we’ve been waiting here for hours beyond the original rendezvous time.”

“We ran into complications.” young Intrepid said sourly.

“The invasion.  So we’ve heard.” Future Intrepid said.

“Some of our teammates are still missing.” Edgar related, and Future Intrepid turned to the Shinobi sadly.

“We all lose something in war.” he said.  “Unless you have nothing to lose.”

There was a flash of light and a rush of air, and Red dropped out of a rift.  She dropped a small box in Future Intrepid’s hand and he handed it to the nearest person, Cyclone.  He handed it off to his Intrepid.

“Welcome back.” Intrepid said to Red.  She looked up, seeming a bit harried for some reason, but after a moment she smiled reassuringly.

“There’s a ten-thousand strong advanced Stromling between us and the Ore Deposits.” Future Mara reported.  “We’ll distract them, so you can get in and use the antitoxin.” Intrepid opened the box.  “We should all carry a plunger, so we each have a shot.”

“You can’t just teleport in without being detected.” Future Luke explained.  “We’ll go first and clear a path, then you come in when it’s safe.”

“He means less unsafe.” Future Mara said.  “That being said, let’s go.”

The Space Marauder turned around then, and that’s when Cyclone recognized his Future Dimension counterpart.

The Future Dimensioners all disappeared and a moment later rumbles rang out over the cliffside.  Cyclone, Intrepid, Edgar, Allison, and Red darted to the edge to see orange and red flaming debris and dust shooting out of previously invisible vents in the ground.  More explosions rocked the ground that crumbled rocks on the opposing cliff face.  At the ravine’s bottom between cliffs, guarding the Mine’s entrance, Stromlings and Mechs and Camel Spiders responded to the commotion and assumed attack positions.

Then a blue light shone out of the Mine entrances.  The pure energy grew to such an intensity that the stronger Maelstrom forces were stunned and the Stromlings were vaporized.

“That’s your cue.” Red ordered.  “Go.”

Cyclone felt Intrepid’s hand grab his arm, and then they were off on the most dangerous mission of their lives.

==
Forty-one == There was a change in atmosphere going into the Maelstrom Mine.  The jump was intradimensional so fast enough to disorient Intrepid.  The first thing he felt was the heat.

He, Cyclone, Edgar, and Allison had emerged in a long hewn tunnel.  Steam jets blasted in through holes in the rocky floor and puddles of water collected in low spots, while condensation dripped down from a stalactite studded roof.  The tunnel ended with a large fan built into the wall that lazily tugged the steam elsewhere in the facility.  There was a constant sound of dripping water.

The Future Dimensioners had set up a shield zone, similar to a building zone, not far ahead.  Leading the team, Intrepid ran into it and they were instantly protected from the heat and noise.

"The primary Ore repositories are directly below us,” Mara said, “that’s where all this steam is coming from, since Maelstrom fog is separated from the Ore in steam vats.  The fog is directed to power the Maelstrom’s Unverse Gateways, while the leftover steam is just blown around in these tunnels and re-used.”

So this is just harmless steam.  Intrepid said, considering the steam jets in the tunnel.  Harmless, except scalding to touch.  “Wouldn’t want to touch Maelstrom fog, though.” he said to himself.

"Maelstrom fog has Unverse breaching properties." Future Dimension's Cyclone, Charles Bradfordson, clarified.  “It’s an aspect of their chaotic nature.  Needless to say touching it, or traveling through Unverse infected by it, would infect you too.”

“So it’s conventional transportation going forwards.” Future Intrepid said.  “There’s too much Maelstrom interference in the Unverse here.  Use of a manipulator any further into this Mine will infect you.  So no Unverse breaches, inter or intradimensional.”

Edgar folded his arms.  “I thought this would be an in-and-out operation.  What’s our escape plan?”

“You can leave now.” Future Intrepid said.

“There will be fighting.” Future Luke advised, cracking his knuckles.

“I’m not leaving.” Edgar stated.

The Shinobi shared glances with the rest of the team.  They all nodded.  “We’re not leaving.” Intrepid declared.

“Now that that’s settled,” Charles projected a holographic image from the arm of his suit, “this is what a Maelstrom Unverse Gateway looks like.” Illuminated over his arm were schematics for something like a giant metal box, cube-shaped, with a drawbridge-style ramp that became its sixth face when closed.  Numbers indicated the container was a hundred feet in each dimension, large enough to move a small army and tall enough to fit the Darkitect.  Maelstrom Fog was fed into the cube by tubes.

“There are a few Gateways here.” Charles continued.  “Our primary target is the Ore collectors, if we take them out we take out the entire Maelstrom, but if we can’t hit them we’ll crash the Gates instead.”

“We could split up and hit both.” Cyclone suggested.

“We’re already splitting up.” Future Mara said, twirling a revolver, while Future Intrepid unsheathed a Long Sword.  “I already said, ‘We’ll distract them, so you can get in and use the antitoxin’.  You four are the strike team.”

Intrepid also remembered Future Mara counting the Maelstrom forces at over ten-thousand Stromlings and other assorted Maelstrom monsters.  Cyclone also remembered.  “You’re going to die.” the brown haired boy warned.

Future Intrepid shrugged it off while Future Luke pretended to inspect his weapons.  “I’m not planning on it,” the former said, “and besides, we’ve got each other.” He turned to Charles, Luke, and Mara.  “It’ll be just like old times, right? Right?”

“Let’s just go.” Charles huffed before his visor closed, sealing him behind his helmet.  With that he backed out of the shield, turned to the fan, and raised a laser pistol.  A piercing shot rang out smashed the contraption.

Without a doubt security forces would convene on them soon.  Charles lead the way into the newly opened tunnel, followed by Future Intrepid, Luke, and Mara, while ambient alarms blared from deeper in the tunnels, farther in the mine, with over ten-thousand Stromlings between them and their target….

==
Forty-two == With no way to go but forwards, Cyclone steeled himself and followed Intrepid and the rest of the team into the ventilation tunnels.  The first Stromlings they encountered looked typical enough.  Purple complexion, red eyes, tools for arms.  Mine workers with construction gear, maintaining equipment along the tunnel walls.  The Future Dimensioners smashed them before Cyclone could care.  Not that he cared.

Except the further they proceeded, the more he noticed the Stromlings looking more Nexus Force in their appearance.  They carried swords or guns and wore armor.  Passing the fallen, Cyclone identified emblems, Sentinel, Paradox, Venture, Assembly.  As greater numbers of guards intercepted them in the tunnels, enough to bypass Future Intrepid and Charles that Cyclone raised his wormholer to defend himself, he saw these Stromlings had distinct faces.

They were now fighting Maelstrom Dimension Stromlings.  Minifigures working for the Maelstrom, willingly or not.  The influence of chaos had corrupted them.

When Cyclone aimed his weapon at a Stromling Samurai, he thought of Kate.  He’d left her on Avant Gardens, comatose and injured.  He hoped she was alright.  He needed to succeed in this mission and prevent the Maelstrom Dimension from killing her again.

And him.

And everyone.

The Stromling Samurai moved quicker than he expected and Cyclone squeezed his wormholer’s trigger too late to hit its fast moving form, the energy bolts striking the wall instead.  As the Stromling moved to strike, Cyclone leaned back just enough to dodge the katana slicing for his neck, before another set of katanas cut off the Stromling’s arm, whipped back through the air, and smashed the Stromling.  Armor clattered to the floor.

“Watch yourself.” Edgar said, before he ran ahead to relieve Intrepid from a duel with an infected Daredevil.

You should use your powers, a voice in his head said.  The hair on Cyclone’s neck pricked when he realized it was Allison telepathically talking to him.  She stood well behind him, out of the combat, or guarding the rear.  He hadn’t really kept track of her.

“I don’t know how.” Cyclone hissed.  He thought of Kate again, and how she’d overextended herself saving Luke.  “I don’t-”

Trust in yourself, the voice told him.

Cyclone nodded.  He could use his powers with reservation.  What good were they if he didn’t try?

He breathed deeply, but he felt the connection with his Imagination so suddenly that he realized it was truly a part of him, unlocked, accessible.

And he was aware of his capacity.

Like dipping his toes into water, Cyclone called up the slightest amount of his Imagination to lighten his feet.  He instantly felt stronger and faster.  He steadied his wormholer and aimed it ahead, past Intrepid and Edgar, Future Luke and Mara, and Charles and Future Intrepid currently locked in combat with a Maelstrom squad of Brick Furys, or mechanized Stromlings.

He ran past his teammates and lifted the wormholer like it was a feather.  Then he brought it down like an anvil on the first Mechling’s shoulder plates.  Sparks erupted as the chainsaw cut, the Mech’s legs buckled, and it smashed after Cyclone lifted the blade to slash the next Mechling, and the next one.  He moved fast on his feet like a lightning bolt dancing between targets, slashing and cutting and spinning with the whirring destructiveness of a hurricane.  Or a cyclone.

“Good job.” Future Intrepid patted Cyclone on the shoulder when he came to a stop over the last Mechling's empty shell, the Stromling in it smashed.   His wormholer idled down to a purr, and he wasn’t even breathing heavily.

I’ve discovered my powers.  Cyclone thought.  It was his voice, not Allison’s.

==
Forty-three == After a break in the combat the two teams split up.  Intrepid, Cyclone, Edgar, and Allison traversed the tunnel to its end at a vent grate, which they exited through onto a maintenance balcony that overlooked a network of intersecting tunnels, the last step between them and their target.

Also between them were hundreds of sentry forces in the tunnels around.  The Mine’s guard was well-alerted to their presence by now; a lone Stromling Mech aimed its laser-eye around the antechamber, and plenty other creatures occupied the tunnels.  Infectious fog had already been diverted into the vent shafts in an attempt to infect them there, but they’d protected themselves with Shielding-enchanted gear and smashed whatever Stromlings teleported in.

Now Intrepid switched out his Shield of Shielding for his Bat Lord Shield, in the temporary reprieve of fresh air the balcony gave them.  He downed a Notion Potion since keeping the shield up had drained more than a few Imagination points.  He did it before Cyclone or Allison could have moved to restore him; they had to keep their strength up too.

They were a very disjointed team.  Nexus Force strategists stressed the importance of a Faction-balanced team.  The faction kits were designed to support each others strengths, counter weaknesses.  Plenty knew the “Tale of 4 Heroes.” At least Edgar’s abilities could restore Imagination.

Should they get into a mess, Cyclone and Allison would work overtime to supply Intrepid and Edgar, but protecting themselves was their own job.

Luckily for now, cleaning the way would be the job of their ‘Future’ counterparts.

Red and white flashes and fireworks sounds began to appear in four of the various tunnels, the effects of Flash Bangs and Big Ones, and laser guns and suped-up swords.  The Stromling Mech looked wildly between each tunnel, and that’s when Intrepid snuck up behind it and stabbed it to oblivion.

He spun around and pointed himself at one of the dark tunnels.  It went for a long time dark as any other, up to a dimly lit curve with dancing shadows.  If he squinted, the shadows looked like the jointed legs of a Spider Boss.  His observation was confirmed when six orange eyes appeared in the dark.  And six orange eyes behind that.  And six more.

Edgar twirled his katana.  “We’ve fought worse.”

A clutter of Dark Spiderlings dropped down from the ceiling then.  Intrepid spun to smash one but the spider deflected it with an armored leg.  Cyclone fired his wormholer in a wide arc but the spiders moved undeterred, absorbing an abnormal amount of bullets.  A frying pan slid from Allison Ryder’s sleeves each and sent out a shockwave when she clanged them together.  It made the spiders freeze and Edgar beheaddc one, before the others snapped out of their trance and continued to advance.

“Time to go!” Cyclone urged, focusing his fire to a narrower angle and backing to the tunnel.  Another Spiderling smashed while Intrepid lead the others into the tunnel.  Cyclone’s wormholer took on a charged glow, no doubt as he poured some Imagination power into its bullets.  Spiderlings exploded in one hit.

Cyclone lobbed a Flash Bang that exploded into a wall of fire that alighted the Spiderlings, an effect much like a Samurai’s flaming arrows.  That and the efforts of the Future Dimensioners should keep the rest of the mine’s guard separated and at bay.  Then Cyclone turned to follow Intrepid, who already set his gaze on the approaching Spider Bosses.  The Bat Lord and Shinobi guarded.

They approached rapidly on skittering legs, then came to a halt a wormholer’s range from Intrepid and Edgar.  The first Spider Boss shot a canister of Maelstrom fog out that created an opaque purple wall, out of which a squad of Nexus Force Stromlings materialized.  Spiderlings, possibly from the same squad they just fought, appeared out of the unverse-breaching cloud too, and more yet dropped from cracks in the ceiling behind them.  Intrepid risked a glance back before gripping his shield close.

Oh, this isn’t good.  Intrepid thought.  All their distraction plans were for naught if the Maelstrom could teleport around.  He turned around and swung low to upend the nearest little spiders, since smashing them would take too long, but the rest just climbed over them, all legs and hissing and glowing eyes.  Intrepid blanched and activated a Flash Bang, which Allison amplified to blind every Spiderling behind their group.

“We have to move forward.” Edgar reminded.  He charged up a Shinobu rush and his katanas cut through the Spiderlings front of him while Cyclone sliced off legs and mowed down weaker Stromlings with his wormholer.

“Yeah,” Intrepid agreed, but there’s a hole in the universe between us and ahead.

Each of Edgar’s attacks sent a bit of imagination coming Intrepid’s way, and he considered if that and a few Notion Potions would be enough for him to survive speed boosting through the fog wall.  When he cut down enough Infected Nexus Forcers that he could get close enough to the fog, he recoiled.  Touching it would infect him.

Then he felt something like a chilled spike digging into his back.  He staggered, before realizing the chill was a waterfall of Imagination being forced into his body, surging and looking for places to be used.  It took all his willpower not to activate every ability in his gear.  The Imagination energy wanted to be used.

But could it protect him?

“Go!” Allison shouted.  He looked back and saw her hands were in the air, palms aimed at him, and he took an involuntary step forwards towards the fog wall.  Was she trying to get him killed?

But instead of the tingle of infection, he now felt the cold void of broken unverse, shattered by chaotically induced breaches, tugging for his life near the fogwall.  It wasn’t the infection he had to worry about, it was surviving with his underlying life force intact.  But not even a Nexusfigure’s worth of Imagination could keep his soul from falling into oblivion, which was what would happen if he touched the chaotically induced rift.

But Intrepid was a Bat Lord, this was why she’d chosen him.  His gear focused on preserving his life.  That could save him.

A distant roar filled the tunnel and Intrepid felt a wave of flaming heat from behind them.  He stiffened.  A dragon could end them all, sandwiched against the fog all.  Allison’s connection came to an end but the power she’d poured into him remained.  His creative spark couldn’t contain it all, so it hovered around his body, attracted to him nonetheless.  He could tap it.

She'd given him a lot of energy, no doubt at the cost of herself.   But Intrepid didn't turn around to see what became of her.

We’re all going to die if I don’t try.  And if I do try and we still die, no harm done, right?

The imagination invigorated him and Intrepid nearly blew it all on a Bat Lord speed boost.  He curbed himself just in time as he ran into the Maelstrom fog wall and passed it, then the ability ended, his life force and his creative spark compromised.  Purple sparks shot off his gear, the effect of repulsed Maelstrom that failed to infect him since he was protected by the Imagination, which was now all used up doing that.  But while his body passed through the rift unharmed, a part of him remained caught.  His life force, his soul.  Stromlings could pass through just fine since they didn’t have souls, but he was going to die if he didn’t smash something fast.

He felt his life draining.  His breaths stopped fueling him and the color disappeared from his vision.

Luckily a Stromling stood nearby and Intrepid smashed it.  His Bat Lord gear converted the act into energy.  The rush gave Intrepid strength for a second and he took a step forwards, but still the rift pulled at the life-aspect of his creative spark.

The first Spider Boss stood right in front of him, and Intrepid swung his staff and cut off its front claws.  It staggered and Intrepid heaved his staff upwards, cutting into the monster and it was felled, and that was enough to restore Intrepid completely.

Two more Spider Bosses and some Stromlings remained ahead.  Intrepid drank a Notion Potion and activated a Shield Slam that stunned the Spider Boss, and he smashed the Stromlings, before running to the next Boss.  Every stride he put between himself and the rift weakened its hold on him and he no longer felt like he was dying.  The Spider Boss swung at him and he ducked, raising his shield to catch the blow and use its momentum to fling him out of the way.  Arcing low through the air, he pointed his staff to trip every Stromling he passed, smashing many.  He rolled to his feet.

Then he activated another speed boost and careened down the corridor, arriving at the entrance to a large chamber that held rows of conveyor belts carrying rocks of hewn Maelstrom ore into furnaces, with pipes to collect their exhaust, ore and steam, and divert them to different collection zones of the facility.

Intrepid equipped his shot of the Paradox Antitoxin.  He took a step forward and didn’t notice a hole in the ground in front of him.  He fell in.

==
Forty-four == Rubbing his head, Intrepid got up looked around the new room.  Here the stalactites glowed with Maelstrom and a light fog emanated from the floor.  The entire room was hewn from Maelstrom Ore; now this was a mine.  It was completely accidental, but acceptable, that he’d landed in it.

He checked the vial for damage.  It was unharmed, thankfully, for the mission’s sake.  Intrepid tensed up loading the vial into a multipurpose blaster, a gun which he aimed at, well, the wall.  Maelstrom ore was everywhere and linked to everywhere so anywhere would hit home.  The antitoxin would shred the Maelstrom’s interdimensional transport from the inside, and kill any Stromling within the fog’s influence.  Those connected only telepathically, the smallest degree and ‘normal’ level of Maelstrom interconnection, would still be effected.  Stronger bosses would survive, but every Stromling-sized creature would die.

Intrepid could not squeeze out his anxiety.  This would kill Evelyne.  Somehow their group of twenty plus had been whittled to eight, then four, and now him.  He had to be the one to save his universe.

Intrepid breathed deeply.

He put his finger on the trigger but he couldn’t pull it.  He could not kill Evelyne. 

Something growled elsewhere and Intrepid swung around to see a Stromling in the far corner, its blade-arm raised menacingly.  In response Intrepid reflexively shot the Stromling clean in the chest, and it staggered to the ground, dead but not yet smashed.

Intrepid’s chest heaved.  He’d shot it with the antitoxin.  He checked the clip, half a dose remained.  He shook his head.

“I love you Evelyne.” Intrepid whispered.  He turned and aimed the gun to a hollowed, perforated area in the rock wall where a high concentration Maelstrom ore glowed from within.

He returned his finger to the trigger.  He was about to fire when something growled nearby, closer than the last time.

Intrepid turned around again.  The Stromling he’d shot dead was back on its feet again, but now it had grown in height, stature, and danger.  Spikes protruded from its spine and ribcage, its shoulders had widened and its arms thickened.  Its blade-arm had morphed into a deadly curved cleaver, serrated and sharp.

“What the brick?” Intrepid threw the gun to the side and leaped in the other direction as the Stromling brought its other hand down, catching him and flinging him into the wall.  He hit the rock headfirst with a loud crack, the impact silenced his ears and blacked out his vision for a few seconds.

When he came to Intrepid got a closer look at the menacing Stromling.  It reached down and yanked him to this feet, hoisting him by his neck which had the inadvertent effect of squeezing more blood into his brain, increasing his alertness.  Then the Stromling prepared to smash him with the sharp edge of its blade.

In that instant Intrepid equipped his Elite Longsword and pressed it to his body’s side, so the Stromling’s blade struck the metal and he was punted from its grasp to the other wall, but this time he rolled to his feet with only minor scuffing.

He swung his multipurpose blaster back out and set it to bullet mode, then squeezed a series of piercing spreads that tore through the Menacer’s overgrown Stromling body.  For its size and strength, it was still a Stromling with Stromling weaknesses, a lack of armor or smarts.

Intrepid aimed slightly upwards and blew the Menacer’s head off.  Then it fell and smashed for good.

Then he raised the Paradox Antitoxin and smashed it in his fist.  He threw the glass to the floor.

It was a ruse.  He had been tricked, set up.

He heard the rush of a Transdimensional Rift opening and closing behind him.

And he had been trapped.

Intrepid turned around to face the girl who’d distributed to him and his teammates what was supposed to be the weapon to end the war and save the universe.  The Menacing Stromling was evidence of betrayal; that, and the fact that she’d teleported in without becoming infected.

One does not become what they already are.

“Run into a problem?” Red asked, eyeing the glass shards on the ground between them.  Her eyes darted up when Intrepid leveled the Longsword at her.

“You’re not Red.” Intrepid stated.  “Not my Red.”

Her curt lips parted into a sly smile.  “How do you figure that, Intrepid?” she asked, maintaining eye contact.

“Real Red doesn’t smile as liberally.” Intrepid huffed, while mentally preparing himself for a fight.  She could attack from any direction.  With a shield deployed he might be able to last long enough to counterattack.  “You’re too happy.” he continued.  “You didn’t think I’d know my own blood?”

“But you didn’t.” evil Red laughed haughtily.  “Not in time to save yourself from this elaborate plot of the First Darkitect’s.”

“Bio-weapons field testing.” Intrepid said of the ‘Antitoxin,’ which had the better effect of being a steroid for Stromlings.  This Red was cocky, and quite talkative.  He mustered as much of his limited Imagination as he could into the Shield of Shielding in his backpack.

“Also to capture three more Nexus Figures for the Darkitect to absorb into his power.” The evil Red grinned evilly.  “With each zenith of Creative Imagination corrupted, chaotic energy is distributed to our unverse breachers and hundreds more dimensions enter the reach of our influence.  Soon, we will cross the divide to other universes.”

“If you destroy unverse all of reality will disappear.” Intrepid warned.  “Even the Darkitect will die.”

“Not necessarily,” she batted a hand at the air like it was a problem of minuscule concern..  “I wouldn’t consider it beyond the Darkitect to survive where others cannot, but for the sake of having a world to rule over, the smartest of you may be repurposed to solve our small Unverse-longevity problem.  As for the rest of you,”

She took a step forward and Intrepid pointed the sword at the Leek Works logo on her chest.  She pretended not to notice, because she advanced another step.

“It’s in my discretion whether you live or die.” She cocked her head.  “I’ll let you know I’ve killed you before, so don’t try begging for mercy.  You’re no better as a Stromling than any other infected.  Therefore you will die, an individual unnecessary to the master plan.”

Intrepid didn’t dare blink or shake his head.  Every muscle in his body threatened to quake as he held his ground.  He let her make the first move.  As he expected evil Red disappeared into another Unverse rift, no doubt about to attack.  He activated his Shield.

The blue sphere saved him from a hail fire of bullets above his head, then a flying kick breached his shield.  He feigned being caught off guard and allowed her boots to strike them.  He was sent sprawling to ground.

“The others resisted better.” His face on the ground, Intrepid saw Evil Red approach and heard the preliminary charge-up of a blaster.  Then he dove forwards and speedboosted straight for her.  The blaster fired early and struck him in the shoulder, but he was too fast to be stopped.

He would have body slammed his opponent if she’d not displaced herself to avoid the impact, but he still had his unverse manipulator and with it he entered an unverse rift of his own, right behind her.  Immediately he felt the effects of the Maelstrom’s inundation in this unverse, he had to get out quickly to not be infected.  In the extradimensional void between spaces he found Evil Red’s presence and mentally locked onto her.  With an esoteric tug he yanked her out with him.

They reappeared out the other side of his rift with Intrepid tackling evil Red to the ground.  He hadn’t been exposed to the corrupted unverse long enough to for an infection to take hold, but its effect on evil Red was revealing.  Her Leek Works disguise had degraded to typical ragged Stromling garb.  Her face, hair, and limbs were mottled with infection spots, and she had a blade-arm that sliced into his left wrist.

Intrepid screamed but couldn’t let go, so she could not escape.  With his other hand he couldn’t reach the blaster on his hip, so he fumbled for the hilt of her blaster instead.  He yanked it from its holster and aimed it underneath him, then he squeezed the trigger, hitting its target point-blank.  Evil Red was no more.

==
Forty-five == Intrepid hurried to a tunnel in the wall before he could waste time comprehending what he’d just done.  There was a rocky incline that he pulled himself up with his right arm.  He needed to regroup with his teammates and organize an escape.

He ignored his left wrist as best as he could, adconsciously equipping bandages and mentally relegating Imagination to heal the wound, although it just made him numb.  Evil Red had cut him deep, in more ways than physical.  She wasn’t really his daughter, no less than Red, was, but smashing her was still bothersome to dwell on.  Intrepid swallowed his feelings, trying to keep them as numb as his fingers had become.

Intrepid stopped and looked at his left hand and drew a sharp breath.  His reaction to Maelstrom unverse was worth than he’d thought, or Evil Red had diced his Creative Spark too.  With his right hand he touched the affected fingers.  They were cool to the touch, like the metal of a sword, or a blade.  He was getting infected.

Lovely, Intrepid thought.  I’m getting infected.

He climbed faster.

In a minute he was back in the conveyor belt room.  He was in no shape to fight with his sword so Intrepid spilled a Notion Potion on the Multiblaster to recharge it and let it do the dirty work.  Each hit spilled into pools of flame, which failed to last long on the stone floor or metal conveyance structures, but sparks flew out to hit Stromling workers and light them aflame.

Intrepid pivoted on his feet as he headed back into the tunnel the way he came so he could shoot as he went, hitting normal Stromlings, Maelstrom Dimension Nexus Forcers, Spiderlings, and Mechs.  Once in the tunnel he found it surprisingly clear of the Stromlings and Spiders that were there before.  He speed boosted down its full length to the tunnel intersection.  There was no sign of his teammates either.  Not even the dragon.

This was bad.  Evil Red had said three Nexus Figures were captured, of course counting Cyclone, Charles, and Allison.  Could they have been apprehended right after he left? What about Edgar, and Future Intrepid, Luke, and Mara?

What about Red? Intrepid tried to pin down the last time he’d seen the real Red minifigure, not as a disguised Stromling.  He couldn’t.

Intrepid whirled around to aim himself down the path to the Unverse Gateways.  Delivering the Paradox Antitoxin was out.  With his firepower he could at least try and take down a Gateway before he escaped… more like if he escaped.  In the belly of the beast, it was up the Maelstrom if he would leave.

After a brisk jog Intrepid entered the Unverse Gateway room.  It stretched long and wide like a warehouse with a ceiling around 150 feet, to accommodate the Cube-Gateway structures that already accommodated machines of war, arms and armor, or a Darkitect.

There were other designs too.  A tall heptagonal structure, not unlike The Ring breacher in its spiric design that lacked depth, was 70 feet tall and a ways away, between two Cube-Gateways.  Also between Intrepid and The Heptagon was a delegation of Wormholer Stromlings wearing blue sashes, indicating some elitism.

Like The Ring, the Heptagon had steps to a platform to enter its event horizon.  Also on the platform were its minifigure-sized controls, manned by normal Stromlings.  Also on the steps Intrepid identified two more of the Wormholer Stromlings flanking a Stromling that must have been their leader.

Then a bunch of familiar heads climbed the steps into view.  Intrepid only saw them from behind, but recognized Cyclone, Edgar, and the rest of his team ascending the platform.  They were walking as if voluntarily, without obvious bindings.  Then he noticed the blinking lights from bands on their heads.  Mind control.  Typical.

A Stromling swung a lever on the platform controls and a warm hum filled the air.  The Heptagon Breacher was powering up.

Intrepid ran faster, shoving his way between the first Wormholer Stromlings, not bothering to smash them since there wasn’t enough time.  He vaulted up the armored back of another to dive over the rest, then somersaulted on the ground into a crouch, multiblaster in hand.  He fired a piercing shot that passed through the back of the Stromling at the controls, vaporizing the Stromling and destroying the power switch.

He was too late, there was an infrasonic roar that popped Intrepid’s ears, lights in the Heptagon’s corners flashed, and then a breach burst open, revealing a subterranean cavern not unlike the mine, but no doubt from the side of the Maelstrom Dimension.  Out flew a dragon that he recognized as Torchblight, although this version of her had seen some upgrades like laser guns on her face and Maelstrom infused armor.  She was one of the original Forbidden Valley dragons, Intrepid knew, but there was something else about it he couldn’t recall at the moment, since opened her flamethrower of a mouth and swung straight for him.  At the same time Wormholers warmed up around him as the Hammer Stromlings finally decided to do something about him.

Intrepid dove low and swung with his re-equipped Staff to upend five Hammer Stromlings and throw them behind him, between him and Torchblight, just as she roared to unleash a hellfire.  The flame burnt through the Hammer Stromlings, smashing them, but Intrepid slid out of the way.  He doubled back just as Torchblight passed and grabbed her foot, vaulted himself up, and swung over her red back where a saddle and reins awaited., and he was pulled into the air, away from the Wormholer Stromlings.  He pulled the reins but Torchblight had a mind of her own and swung back towards the Unverse breach.

Torchblight was a mountable dragon, Intrepid remembered for some reason.  Then he remembered that reason and his blood went cold.  Torchblight was Demonstrait’s steed, and if Torchblight was here…

A rifle blast suddenly fired from the breacher platform and Intrepid couldn’t guide Torchblight to avoid it.  Rather she sort of tilted herself so the energy arced straight for him.  It hit him in the chest and knocked him off the dragon’s back to fall onto the platform right in front of his captured teammates and slide to the feet of the Wormholer Stromlings and their leader.

Intrepid looked up into the barrel of a rifle, held by none other than Demonstrait.  “Get up.” the Stromling leader spat, then kicked him backwards.

Intrepid found he could not move.  Some sort of paralysis spell kept him from moving except to breathe, and probably speak, as Demonstrait stepped over to him again.  “Who are you?” the Stromling asked.  “Do you even know who I am? I know many foolish minifigures, but it takes an extra amount of stupid to attack me!”

“This is a bleary place for the Darkitect’s right hand, eh Demonstrait?” Intrepid puffed.  He received a kick to the face.  “Seems you got demoted to field commander-” another kick silenced him.

“Wait, I know you.” Demonstrait leaned close.  “You’re Intrepid Fusion Eclipse.  You’re supposed to be dead.” The Stromling shouldered the rifle, grinned, and held out a hand for one of his Wormholer Stromlings to hand him a gun of that type.  “Don’t worry, I’ll make this painful.”

Intrepid rolled his eyes backwards to see Cyclone, staring straight ahead, effectively as paralyzed as him.  But he didn’t look infected yet.  Then Intrepid shut his eyes and he reached inside himself as Demonstrait activated the Wormholer’s chainsaw.  It spun to life and he felt the rush of air as he brought it down.

It was milliseconds from impact when Intrepid gave his Creative Spark a mental yank to smash himself, and the Wormholer cut harmlessly into the platform floor.  Now as a free-floating Creative Spark he felt the immense level of Imagination emanating from the Creative Sparks of Cyclone and Allison, but not Charles for some reason, like his had been damaged.  No matter.  He rebuilt himself off Cyclone’s Nexus-esque power and shot Demonstrait.

“Ah!” the Stromling fell down, the multiblaster shot still smoking in his chest, but then he bounced back to his feet.  “A multiblaster, eh? Powerful, but a single one won’t kill me.” Demonstrait cackled.

“Good thing I got two.” Intrepid held up Evil Red’s in his infected hand and fired both straight ahead.  Demonstrait dove to the side to avoid them so they hit the edge of the Heptagonal breacher instead, tearing through the structure and setting it aflame.

Intrepid was then struck from behind and he whirled around to see Cyclone attacking him.

“What in he-” a fast uppercut from the mind controlled Space Marauder knocked Iintrepid into the air.

“Fools!” he heard Demonstrait yelling.  “Guide them into the breach, now!”

Cyclone’s headband flashed, then he rejoined the rest of the captured team.  The Wormholer Stromlings ushered them into the breach, then Torchblight flew through, and finally Demonstrait paused in front of Intrepid, who was standing up.

“You have failed.” he mocked, raising his Wormholer again.  “Now you will die when this breach is destabilized and the mine collapses.”

“Did you say the mine will collapse?” Intrepid repeated.

Demonstrait glared and charged the Wormholer, but Intrepid was faster and shot Demonstrait in the chest again, knocking the Stromling backwards and into the breach, sending him on an irrerversible trip to the Maelstrom Dimension, presumably.

A piece of flaming debris fell next to Intrepid and he looked up.

The Heptagon breacher was oddly flammable, or the multiblasters had some chemical-altering properties to their rounds, since flames now fully encompassed its obsidian structure.  Its lights flickered and the Unverse breach warped and distorted, no longer sustained, as the Heptagon breacher looked about to explode.

How damaging the breacher would lead to breach destabilization, Intrepid could understand that, but destroy the mine too?

Not really a failure in his book, unless he died.  He gave his vitals a once-over and doused himself in a Notion Potion again.  This caused his entire left forearm to sting painfully, since Maelstrom infections don’t react well to Imagination, but it replenished him.  He considered smashing himself, since without a physical body to worry about he could probably survive the resulting explosion.

But then he’d still die, his Creative Spark slowly draining until he ceased to exist, since there were no Nexus Figures standing around or Rebuild checkpoints set up for miles.

There was no other way to go.  Intrepid activated his Unverse Manipulator and immediately his infection surged.  He landed far outside the mine on the same cliff where they had planned their ill-fated mission before, just in time to see the flat plain underneath of which the mine was situated explode upward into a geyser of rock, flame, and metal fragments.  Intrepid shielded his eyes until the fire abated and the rocks stopped raining.

Where the mine used to be was a massive blast crater, inside of which was a massive hole, something like an Unverse breach, but completely matte and gray like dust, devoid of light or darkness, luminosity or reflection, without a destination.  It was more than just a tear in the reality of this dimension, it was a hole in Unverse.  Oblivion.

==
Forty-six == Not good.  Intrepid thought.  At least the hole in Unverse didn’t seem to be growing.  Maybe it wasn’t damaged beyond repair, and hopefully it would close up, since a giant hole leading into oblivion wasn’t a safe thing to have, Intrepid didn’t really think.

Passing through the infected Unverse had also accelerated his infection, and now a sickly purple mist emanated from his entire left side.  He felt a coldness in his Creative Spark.  He could apply more bandages to at least hide the misty effects, but he really needed a disinfection.  He could get that back at Avant Gardens, which meant more Unverse travel.

Intrepid shook his head.  Everything had gotten worse.  His team was captured, Red was missing, many friends were unaccounted for, and the Polyverse was falling apart.  This invasion needed to end but he had no idea how to stop it, until his eyes fell on the Unverse Hole again and that gave him an idea….

…

A low boom like distant thunder passed over the plains and Kate’s eyes snapped open.  It was dark where she was, lying blanketed on a hard cot of sorts.  She raised a hand to touch the wall, it was rough like metal.  She heard the soft pattering of rain and focused on that until, in the corner of her eyes, she saw colored light flickering.

Kate threw off the blanket and swung over the edge to bump into her backpack.  She was in what looked like a shipping container, with the lights off and alone, meaning her teammates had to be outside.  She hadn’t been removed of her Samurai gear, she noted, which was a good thing, since the colored lights, coming from behind a heavy fabric divider that swayed slightly from wind, looked like weapons fire.

The last thing she remembered was pulling up a literal Nexus’s worth of Imagination to rebuild Luke.  She’d blacked out just as they were about to escape.  Now, she picked up her katana and bow from the bedside and headed for the exit.  If there was still a fight going on, she ought to help out.  Without knocking myself out, she thought.  She was no use in a battle incapacitated, but if another of her teammates was felled, she wasn’t sure she could hold herself back from overextending herself to save them.

I’d do it again, Kate thought.

Resolved, Kate swung the tent-flap to the side and burst into battle.

A chill air and sloshing rain under a dark gray, overcast evening sky greeted her.  She recognized the rolling hills of Avant Gardens but didn’t see any enemies at first, until she rounded a green mound to come face to face with a squadron of matte black colored Stromling Mechs and obsidian-armor clad Stromlings holding a variety of Nexus Force Faction weapons.  She gasped when she recognized the Stromling that lead them, his rank identified by a blue sash, his face committed to her memory.

It was Stromling Cyclone.

“You’re a Stromling again.” Kate started.

“Again?” Stromling Cyclone echoed.  “Oh, right, you meant my infected half.  They found my Imagination half and infected him too.  Then we got merged and now I suppose you’ll try to smash me?”

Kate held herself back from responding.  Inwardly she wondered if she had the power to disinfect him.  The only limit to her power seemed to be capacity, but there was a difference between normal Imagination and the Imagination used by disinfection kits.  It had to go through some hoops to avoid smashing infected victims in ways she didn’t understand, yet.  Better just use a disinfection kit.  Rover had some that Edgar gave him.

“We can save you.” Kate said.

Stromling Cyclone shrugged.  “It’s too late, I no longer want to be disinfected.  I am fully subservient to the Maelstrom hive mind.  Now you can join me willingly or you can make this difficult.  Set to stun.” He waved a hand and the Obsidian Mechs aimed their cannons at her, stun charges loaded.

“I thought your Darkitect wants us dead.” Kate retorted.  She took a step back and the Stromlings followed.

“There are dissenting forces at play.” Stromling Cyclone said.  “Some, like my commander, believe our powers are too useful to waste, and the Darkitect has allowed him to try his way.”

Another Stromling stepped forward, next to Stromling Cyclone.  He was heavily infected but retained some facial features like a mustache.  While the right half of his head had bony spikes growing from it, the other half had the start of a slick black comb-over, and he wore chain mail over ripped garb that was distinctively Limited Recruit in origin.

“I don’t know you.” Kate said, puzzled.

“I am Spakybob, right hand of the First Darkitect.” the leader identified himself.  “What Cyclone told you is correct, I will accept your tergiversation and see that you are not excessively harmed in the transformation.  It is a multi-stage process, infecting a Nexus Figure-”

“Save it.  I’ll never join you.” Kate cut him off.

Spakybob nodded.  “Then you will die.” The Stromling Mechs fired and Kate blocked the stun charges with a summoned shield.  She nearly fell to one knee as her gut spasmed, a protest from her Creative Spark, evidently still strained from rebuilding Luke.  She grit her teeth to hold in the pain and decided to only use conventional abilities going forward in this fight.

The Obsidian Mechs reloaded with lethal charges this time, but then Stromling Cyclone ran toward her, hands raised.  “This is what you could have become.” he said quickly, and then his forearms took on a metal glint and morphed into rocket launchers.  She had no time to dodge or even see what hit her, they impacted with the center of her mass and it was several seconds before she hit the ground below her, and several more seconds before she stopped skidding.  She sat up and her black Samurai breastplate fell off, cracked.

She donned the alternate color version and guarded as Stromling Cyclone and Spakybob approached from well over a hundred feet away.  Cyclone waved his hands, no longer rocket launchers, and a gust of wind lifted the entire Mech and Stromling division and carried them toward her.

Three things happened at once.  There was a crack of lightning and then an unverse rift opened up in front of Kate, and Intrepid fell out of it to land facedown in the mud.  She noticed his left side was bandaged.  At the same time a flurry of laser and bullet fire plinged off several of the Obsidian Stromlings, taking out some that were hit in the head.

Kate turned to see Rover, Luke, Mara, and Jay and Katie running over from a nearby hill.  Rover’s pistol was ever-firing and hit with almost perfect accuracy, while the Figdroids missed no mark, and Luke and Mara just kind of had their fingers taped on the triggers of their laser pistols and shot everywhere.

“Deal with them!” Spakybob ordered the Mechs who aimed their cannons at Rover’s team.  Jay and Katie grabbed the others and threw them back over the hillcrest before the cannonfire struck them, sending up clouds of dirt.  When it cleared the Figdroids lay dazed and Kate nearly cried out.  The Mechs continued firing, preventing the others from returning to fight.

Then Spakybob and Stromling Cyclone turned their attention back to Kate.  On the ground between them Intrepid groaned.  Kate took a deep breath, knowing what she had to do, and used her powers to pull up a large mound of dirt and bury him with it, for his own protection.  Then she drank a Sentinel Super Soda to keep her Creative Spark from complaining.  She didn’t think the Stromlings noticed the injured Bat Lord.

Kate turned and ran for the nearest hillcrest, and was almost up its slope when a bolt of lightning fell from the sky and froze her limbs like a tazer.  She fell back and rolled into a ditch, barely able to twitch her fingers and her Creative Spark felt inaccessible, like a wall had been built between it and her thoughts, and then Spakybob put a boot on her back.  Her helmet was yanked off and she felt the cold edge of a gun bite into the back of her head.

There was a hesitation on the part of the gun’s wielder, since Kate hadn’t been smashed yet.  She still couldn’t move so she mentally prepared herself for the end.

“What are your orders?” Stromling Cyclone asked.

“She is not worth the trouble.” Spakybob decided.  “Kill her.”

There was a bang and Kate felt like her lungs had been ripped from her body, followed by her heart, her bones, then the rest of her followed into some sort of dark abyss.  Still her insides felt detached.  This was the most painful way she’d ever smashed and her free-floating mind felt no gravitation to any Imagination source to rebuild at.  This was probably permanent.

It took a moment for her to realize she wasn’t smashed, just traveling through Unverse.  The exit came so suddenly that she would have fallen if strong hands didn’t grip her around the shoulders.  She was spun around dizzily to land sideways on something soft and cushioned?

Kate blinked.  The world still spun but she identified the color orange, reflecting off white wallpaper in a dimly lit room.  The world stopped spinning and she turned her head upwards to see an electric chandelier on a wood panel ceiling.  She took in her surroundings, half of a small square room with a coffee table, bulletin boards, and no windows, and she was on a couch in the room’s middle.

She pushed herself off, then vertigo struck and she crumpled to the ground.  While she squeezed her eyes shut, she heard two distinct voices that were familiar but also foreign, a man and another man.  They were arguing.

“What are you doing here?”

“What are you doing here?”

“This is my secret base.”

“What are you doing with her?”

“She’s not your responsibility.  Don’t you have teammates to take care of? Did you leave Luke and Mara to follow me?”

“They can take of themselves.”

“Don’t tell me you left them-”

“They got out.”

It was Intrepid and Cyclone, Kate realized.  No, she corrected, Future Intrepid and Charles.  When she trusted her brain not to turn to mush, she opened her eyes and stood up.  She saw them in the other half of the room behind the couch, a satin beige sofa, standing at opposite walls.  Future Intrepid was in a trench coat and Charles was in his rogue Space Marauder suit, blaster in hand and pointed at Intrepid.

“Stop!” she shouted, and they both turned to her, as if they’d forgotten she was there.  “What are you two doing?”

“We’re saving you.” Intrepid said.

“I saved your life.” Charles corrected.  “He tagged along.”

Kate glared in disbelief.  The two were actually fighting over her.  “Well I have to get back.  My friends are hurt.” She thought of Intrepid – the one from her dimension – with the bandages.  Were they covering an infection? She’d also seen Rover, Luke and Mara, and the Figdroids who got knocked out, but only them.  Were the rest of their group alright?

“It’s not safe.” both Charles and Intrepid said.

“I know the Darkitect wants to kill me!” Kate screamed at them.  “I know your Kate died in your dimension! But keeping me from doing my job, taking me from my friends who need my help, to ‘save me,’ that’s really immature, you know that? Grow up.”

Charles stiffened and Intrepid looked at the floor.  “I’ll take you back.” Future Intrepid said.

…

Avant Gardens was a beautiful world even on a stormy night.  Intrepid had landed there alright, but then someone threw a mound of dirt on him.

By the time he dug himself out of it, he was surprised to still feel dirt flying in his face.  Looking about, Intrepid saw he wasn’t the only thing digging himself out of the ground.  Stromlings emerged from purple colored earth and a figure was crouched in front of him, hands to the ground, purple mist flowing from them.

It was Stromling Cyclone, and he was infecting the ground himself.  Putting his emotions aside, Intrepid summoned the multiblaster to his hand and prepared to fire.  He’d already smashed an evil version of Red with it.  If Stromling Cyclone was serving the Maelstrom he was too far gone.

He must have sensed the threat since Stromling Cyclone spun around and a blast of lightning sent Intrepid soaring backwards for a long distance, and the multi blaster flew from his hand.  He landed stunned and unable to move, and apparently not alone, since Ben’s face popped into view and he heard Evelyne shout, “Aiden!”

“I go by Intrepid now,” Intrepid groaned, and then he heard Stromling Cyclone’s voice.

“It’s time to complete your infection.” Cyclone stated and a Maelstrom fog filled the air.  But instead of feeling his infection spread, Intrepid felt his Creative Spark surge and the infection weaken, since Ben had injected him with the shot of a disinfection kit.  He broke free of the paralysis and held up evil Red’s multi blaster, but someone kicked it from his grasp.  Someone behind him.

Complete your infection.

Intrepid froze, not from lightning, but from the terrible realization of Stromling Cyclone’s words.  He had been talking about Evelyne.

Something whipped past them, cutting through the air and knocking Intrepid and Ben to the ground, but not stunning them.  Looking up, Intrepid saw Stromling Cyclone on the ground, motionless.  He spun around and saw Evelyne knocked down as well, and beyond them stood a Bat Lord.  Future Intrepid.  He swung around, shield and staff in hand, but the weapon fell with a thud to the wet ground when they both stared stricken at Evelyne.

The stun from Future Intrepid’s shield slam wore off and both Evelyne and Stromling Cyclone got up.  Then twin bolts of lightning sent Future Intrepid flying into the sky.

“Evelyne!” Intrepid shouted, but she stared down at him impassively, any semblance of her personality vanished, replaced with the mindlessness of a Stromling.  Her blue eyes shone completely red.  He reached a hand out to Ben.  “The disinfection kit.  Give it to me.”

“It won’t work.” Stromling Cyclone said.  “She has no Creative Spark.  She never did.”

“Neither do you anymore.” another voice said, and Intrepid and Ben turned to see Kate, one side of her face glowing red from flames dancing around the blade of her katana, the other side glowing blue from a conjured orb of Imagination energy hovering in her left palm.

She threw the orb straight at them.  Intrepid felt its power immediately, its nourishment to his Creative Spark, but he shouted, “No!” and spread his arms as if to catch it all from striking Evelyne.  Stromling Cyclone was, unfortunately for him, between Intrepid and Kate, so there was nothing to shield him from the full blast of pure Imagination striking him, and his shout mirrored Intrepid’s as his Stromling body was vaporized.

Then another Stromling teleported next to Kate and kicked her behind the knees.  She crumpled to the ground and he disappeared.

Intrepid spun around.  “Evelyne!” he repeated, facing the Maelstrom minifigure.

She was not alone.  Standing behind her was the Stromling, and Intrepid recognized him.  They had met briefly two and a half years ago, before Cyclone and Kate were lost, before Elistra, before everything.  In Intrepid’s dimension, this Stromling had been killed, but he wasn’t always a Stromling.  He had been turned too far and in the end his friend had to slay him.  Everyone made sacrifices in that battle against the Darkitect, everyone except Intrepid it would seem.  His turn for tragedy came later, and it was his turn again now.

“Spakybob.” Intrepid said, throwing his armor off and holding his hands up in surrender.  Intrepid knew this Spakybob was from the Maelstrom Dimension, and like Demonstrait, he was not completely mindless, not like other Stromlings.  “I’m begging you, don’t do this.  Release her and take me instead.”

“Didn’t our Rowana tell you?” Spakybob asked.

“Rowhowhat?” Intrepid shook his head, not recognizing the name.

“Right, you know her as Red.” Spakybob amended, but he didn’t let go of Evelyne.  He clicked his tongue disapprovingly.  “Kate should not have killed our new Maelstrom Cyclone, he would have been more merciful with you then I will be now.”

Intrepid shook his head.  “Please-” he repeated.

“Didn’t Rowana tell you that you were useless to us as a Stromling?” Spakybob continued.  “Before you killed her in cold blood? Now you realize the idiocy of your proposition.   On the contrary, our Rowana Talmid was of much use to us, she was one of the First Darkitect’s favorite servants, and valuable too.  She will be missed, but you will never be.”

A blaster appeared in Spakybob’s hand and he pointed it at Evelyne’s head.  “And neither will this Stromling.”

Then Spakybob and his weapon disappeared into an Unverse jump that drowned out the sound of the weapon firing, to reappear behind Intrepid, but Intrepid could only stare straight ahead as Evelyne’s Stromling visage faltered and the glow in her eyes dimmed.

“You took someone very important from us.” Spakybob breathed in Intrepid’s ear.  The blaster was on his temple.  “Now, you will pay the price-”

He was cut off by the shriek of a blaster shot into the back of his head by Ben.  Spakybob grunted, but like Demonstrait he was a Stromling dexterous in self-preservation, and he jumped into an unverse rift to escape.  Intrepid no longer felt the gun on his head and he ran towards Evelyne, shouting her name, just as she fell to the ground.

Her blues eyes stared aimlessly at the sky above them.  She hadn’t been smashed but the Maelstrom was removed from her body.  So was her life.

Thunder crashed and Intrepid saw red.  Evelyne’s body shook in his arms as his whole body trembled with anger, hate.  He’d done the best to put his anger away, after what he’d seen on Elistra, back when it threatened to destroy him, but it was happening all over again.  The name Tiberius flashed in his mind, and in a flash Intrepid was no longer on Avant Gardens but careening through unverse, to a location he didn’t know.  But in that destination he would find the man who had the answers, the man who worked with Maelstrom, the man who’s fault it was that Evelyne had died again.

He wanted to kill Tiberius.

==
Forty-seven ==   Intrepid landed, gasping and wheezing, on grass that was green and soft under a dark gray overcast sky, the same as before.   He rolled onto his back and watched the clouds swirl until the pressure on his brain subsided and his eyes reoriented themselves.   Avant Gardens.   He was back where he was supposed to be gone. 

He scrunched his eyelids shut and pictured Tiberius again, a twenty-years younger version of the old man in the Future Dimension, probably black haired like Uncle Killian was and Abe had been.   He replayed the sound of his voice, but to no avail.   He did not feel himself moving any closer to Elistra.   He wasn’t moving at all. 

Just as well, his feelings hadn’t left either.   The rain wasn’t enough to cool the heat in his florid face.   Someone needed to pay for killing Evelyne. 

A coil in his Unverse Manipulator emitted a high-pitched whine until it popped and an acrid stench made Intrepid cough.   He sat up and eyed the imploded black box.   Blue and purple smoke emanated from its edges.   Blue.   Like Imagination.   And purple.   Like Maelstrom.   Like Tiberius’s Maelstrom ore.   Intrepid’s fingers tightened until a vacuum formed in his fists, then he assessed his surroundings.   He was over a hill from Ben and… Evelyne.   Some obsidian-armored Maelstrom forces remained on the battlefield around him, effectively abandoned by Spakybob and Janitor Dimension’s Cyclone, but they were the mindless type who would fight to the death.   Rover, Luke, and Mara were behind a ridge to the north and firing over it but the mechs had them pinned. 

Intrepid’s hands found his Elite Longsword and he charged the Mechs from behind.   Each swing of the blade cut a mech in half, their dysfunctional pieces clattering to the ground.   A laser blast coming from behind Intrepid stunned a Mech farther ahead, as Ben assisted from his position, and the rush of air characteristic of a Bat Lord’s speed boost followed by several Mechs getting knocked on their sides indicated Future Intrepid’s involvement. 

In no time the Stromling Mechs were eradicated and Rover, Luke, and Mara were able to join in smashing the rest of the Stromlings, including the ones necroed by Janitor Cyclone.   Suddenly the hills were filled with minifigures, like an entire small army, and Intrepid did a double take when he saw a flash of blond hair with highlights around a familiar triangular face run past him. 

He chased after Shira and stumbled when she spun around, as she noticed him as well. 

“You’re alive!” she yelped. 

“Barely!” Intrepid shot back.   “What happened with you?”

“I got to the Launch Area in the middle of a ground attack,” Shira reported, “this was five hours ago.   There were Stromlings and infected people popping out of thin air the whole way to the Base Camp!  Then we were joined by Space Maelstrom which dropped Spiderlings on us.”

Intrepid looked about at the throng of Faction grunts and Nexus Forcers chasing down what Stromlings remained in squads, surrounding them and smashing them with ease.   He was relieved to see some of their MIA teammates, Jonna, Skilled Honored Ninja, and Strange Odd Shadow in a in a bunch together, wearing their Faction gear.   They looked battle worn and harried, but they were alive and that’s what mattered.   Unlike Evelyne, Intrepid thought. 

“Something's wrong with your eyes.” Shira noticed. 

Intrepid knew they were glossy.   “Who else is here?”

“We all made it.” Shira said, taking into account those who Intrepid already saw.   “Cailan and Crimson.   Ray and Tornado showed up.   Some old friends joined us too.   How about you?”

“We lost some people.” Intrepid said numbly.   “We screwed up attacking the Maelstrom Mine with the Future people.   At least Future me is here, somewhere.   Cyclone, Edgar, and Allison are MIA.   Stromling Cyclone got turned, so Kate killed him.   Red’s missing too...” or is her name Rowana, he thought.   The accuracy of either name was now questionable, but he'd keep calling her Red.   “And Evelyne.”

“Oh.” Shira dipped her head.   “I’m sorry.”

“She’s dead.” Intrepid blurted out. 

Shira said a word that wouldn’t make her mother proud. 

“We should bury her.” Intrepid said.   Again. 

Shira looked about aimlessly and motioned for him to lead the way.   “Right.” she agreed.   “Let’s do that.   Then we need to get our team back together, see who’s alive and dead, and figure out just how we can fix this.”

“Can we?” Intrepid asked, although the Unverse Hole on Crux Prime and his inability to land on Elistra may be the source of some answers. 

“If I know you, which I do, I bet you’re on it right now.”

“You’re damn right.” Intrepid muttered.   His cousin knew him well.   He already had a plan forming…

==
Forty-eight == With Spakybob gone, his attack force was quickly decimated by the combination of defenders from the Sentinel Base Camp and Nimbus Station.  Calm soon settled over Avant Garden’s hills, and coincidentally the skies cleared. 

Intrepid looked up at a navy blue sky after shoveling back the last of the dug up earth.  Evelyne lay in a deactivated Nexus Force stasis tube.  It was the best they had as it would protect her from Maelstrom. 

No words were said then, as there was nothing productive to do with such things, except to plan on how to stop the Maelstrom Dimension.  Defeating them was fitting.  It was the Maelstrom that killed Evelyne both times. 

“Still no sign of Red?” Jonna asked Intrepid as they headed back to the shipping container. 

He shook his head.  “Guess who’s also gone.” Future Intrepid hadn’t shown up either after the battle, but Intrepid was used to a lack of communication with Red, and by extension the entire Future Dimension.  With his Unverse Manipulator out coordinating with them was impossible, unless they could get to The Ring in Nexus Tower, but every world including Crux Prime had been hit, according to reports.  Only Avant Gardens and Nimbus Station had overcome the first wave of attacks. 

Intrepid held up his dysfunctional Manipulator.  “We need to fix this.”

Jonna wrote it down in a battered notepad.  “That’s on the list, as well as rescuing Cyclone, Edgar, and Allison.  And finding more Nexus Figures, but with Red gone we have no way of following the lead she might have had.”

“We might not need to.” Skilled Honored Ninja, also walking beside them, cut in.  “I just remembered something about that term, Nexus Figures.” He scratched his hair.  “Okay, this might make me seem like a stalker.”

“Well, inferior janitor, tell us what’s on your mind!” Strange Odd Shadow urged him. 

“I need a moment to recall… now I’ve got it!” SHN pointed at Jonna.  “Write this down: Verbina Ingram.”

Jonna inscribed the name carefully. 

“Some type of flower?” asked Shira, perplexed. 

“It’s the name of a scientist who used to work for Leek Works.” Skilled clarified.  “I was cleaning her office once, as any good janitor would, and this is the stalker-ish part.  I saw a document on her desk with the title ‘Nexus Figures’ on it.”

Intrepid stared at him.  “You’re sure?”

“I’m ninety-nine percent positive.” Skilled affirmed.  “Make that ninety-eight.  I could be wrong.  Don’t sue me.”

“I was about to call my attorney.” Shadow joked, but no one smiled. 

“So this Verbina worked, past-tense, for Future Leek Works?” Intrepid repeated.  “What did she do there?”

“She built the original Unverse Manipulators, that’s all I know.” Skilled shrugged.  “The whole organization is very secretive.  I didn’t even know Tiberius lived in the basement until he came up one night for a midnight snack, the same night I was going for a midnight snack.  Scared the bricks out of me.”

“That’s great, Skilled.” Jonna interrupted.  “This is a great lead for us.” She shut the notebook and let a smile cross her weary face, which had been expressionless the past few hours, due in no small part to the conflict.  “We kill three birds with one stone by finding Verbina.  We learn what we can about the Nexus Figures, fix Intrepid’s Unverse Manipulator and maybe build more, so we can then go to the Maelstrom Dimension to save Cyclone and the others.”

The five of them and Rover reached the shipping container and found two Sentinels inside.  Kate was sprawled on the cot again and barely waved a greeting.  The other was a white colored Sentinel wearing gear from all kits.  A zip gun hung off his left side, a sword off his right, and a Samurai’s helmet and arrows were behind his back. 

“Suave Able Cat!” Rover shouted the Super Sentinel’s name.  They both drew wide grins.  “Haven’t seen you in a few years, buddy.”

“You’d think I’d be second in command now with Brocktree still missing,” Suave said, letting his face turn grim at the mention of Lord Brocktree, who had gone missing on a mission three years before, “instead I’m still working behind the scenes.  I thought I’d come back here, to see if I left any notes behind that would give a clue to this sudden Maelstrom resurgence.  Instead I run into old friends.  Come here.” The two shared a brotherly hug. 

“This isn’t a typical resurgence.” Jonna said, getting to business.  “Intrepid?”

“Do you know about the Epsilon Experiment?” Intrepid queried. 

“We sent explorers into another universe using the Ring device.” Suave answered and shook his head.  “Don’t ask me how the thing works, Overbuild built it, not me.”

“There are other dimensions, not like that universe, but based on ours and separated from us by unverse.” Intrepid said.  “Similar and different.  There’s a Maelstrom Dimension where the Darkitect has completely taken over the Crux System, maybe more, and they’ve developed Unverse breaching tech that uses Maelstrom.  Now they’re attacking us.”

Strange Odd Shadow opened his backpack and held up a notepad of his own, opened to a drawing.  “Here’s a cleverly illustrated illustration of the Polyverse as we know it, drawn by myself.”

“Janitor Dimension?” Suave stared at the drawing, a perplexed expression on his face.  “Who came up with these names?”

“I’m a janitor where I come from, one of the best.” Shadow explained.  “For that reason my source dimension is named after me.  And for the sake of familiarity, your dimension is called the ‘Original Dimension’, as about everyone here sees it, exceptions being me and the inferior janitor.”

“Hi.” Skilled Honored Ninja waved.  “I respectfully disagree with his claims that I am an inferior janitor.”

Suave looked up.  “Alright, I believe you about the dimensions.  So do you have any plans to stop this?”

“We’re working on making one.” Jonna said.  “Right now we’re looking for someone else who we think can help us.”

“Can you take us to a Verbina Ingram?” Skilled asked.  “Given time, we could just hack the Nexus Force databases to find her, but we don’t have that, so...”

“I know who you’re talking about,” Suave said, “but you really shouldn’t be hacking our stuff.  That said, she works in Nexus Tower.”

“Good, we were headed there anyway.” Intrepid said.  “Having your authorization also means we don’t need to steal the Ring.”

Suave folded his arms.  “You talk about breaking into Nexus Tower like you’ve done it before.” He cast a sidelong glance towards Kate.  “Oh right, some of you have.  Well, I have no more business here.  Thanks to you, I got what I came for.  I’ll come with you.”

“The more the merrier.  We should all stick together this time.” Shira advised.  “There are some people from Nimbus Station who’d like to join us.”

Kate swung off the cot and followed them as they headed out, and Intrepid noticed her downcast expression.  He walked slowly so she could catch up, then he asked, “How’re you doing?”

“I should be asking about you.” she said huskily.  “I’m sorry about Evelyne.  She was a brave girl.”

Intrepid nodded.  He could tell she was bothered about killing Janitor Cyclone.  “You’re thinking you should have been able to save them.”

“I know it’s not my fault,” Kate said, “but I should have been able to do more.  Being like a living Nexus has to mean something.”

“We’ll figure it out.” Intrepid said.  “Our primary objective is getting Cyclone, Edgar, and Allison back.”

"That means going to the Maelstrom Dimension.” Kate translated.  “Charles was adamant against me going there.”

"He can’t play god.” Intrepid declared, and Kate sighed. 

"Neither can we.”

Intrepid knew what her words meant, and he knew they were true.   We can’t save everyone.

“But we can try.”

==
Forty-nine == The sky was beginning to lighten when they approached their rockets.  The Avant Gardens and Nimbus Stations defenders, lead by Beck Strongheart and Epsilon Starcracker, had set up camp over another hill, and Intrepid watched as teammates and friends, old and new, came down the hillcrest to join them, lead by Shira who had went to rally them and Luke and Mara. 

"Hello, Sergeant.” Intrepid greeted a sterling Assembly officer dressed in Inventor gear who walked behind Luke. 

"How come you never visited me, Intrepid?” Sergeant Ghost Mustache asked with a scowl.  “It’s a rocket’s flight between Avant Gardens and Nimbus Station.  I could have been there for you, these last two years.  Your friends have filled me in.”

"I plead guilty to laziness.” Intrepid admitted.  “So we’re still friends?”

Sergeant clapped him on the back.  “Do you even have to ask? I’m glad to see you again.”

The two surveyed the rest of the new arrivals, five familiar persons in total.  A black haired Sentinel Knight was showing off his latest rare acquisitions to Kate.  Two Rank 3 Space Marauders, one blue-haired and the other brown-haired, stood alongside Shira.  Another Sentinel, a Space Ranger, was cleaning his zipgun.  The last of the entourage was a lean, bearded man with sand colored wavy hair dressed in a matte gray, carbon-mesh armor suit with no faction identification, signifying his independence from the Nexus Force.  He held a modified Paradox Heavy Bolter and a Sniper Rifle was slung on his back.  Other small weapons, pistols, blades, hooks, and tazers, and plenty of supplies were secured to his tool belt. 

"Remember these guys?” Shira pointed at the Space Marauders. 

"I’m Stunt.” said the blue-haired one. 

"And I’m Rare Spiffy Agent.” said the other. 

"Of course I remember them,” Intrepid said, “and Master Blade Nine and Argon Dragon Udon.”

"Don’t forget me.” the faction-less man said, and he looked over Intrepid’s shoulder as Rover walked to Intrepid’s side. 

"I’ll never forget you, Krill Mathias.” the Buccaneer greeted his old nemesis, then he turned to the Sentinel Knight.  “Good to see you, Blade.”

“Shrill told us everything.  Cyclone is captured again.” Blade confirmed.  “Of course we’re here to help.”

"So we’re going to this so-called Maelstrom Dimension?” Krill asked. 

"We need to see Verbina Ingram first,” Skilled said, “so we can get an army of Nexus Figures and build more Unverse Manipulators.”

"I'll pretend to know what you're talking about.  Are you sure we have time for this lady?” Krill questioned.  “If we have a way into the Maelstrom Dimension, which we do with the Ring in Nexus Tower, we should go now.”

"He has a point,” Rover agreed, “and how do we know it’s not too late for Cyclone and the others?”

"We’re still going to try.” Kate reminded.  “We’re going to see Verbina since she can help train my powers so we can save Cyclone.”

"You have powers?!” Blade exclaimed. 

"I owe Kate my life.” Luke said, which made Mara cling to his arm. 

Guess Shira didn’t tell you everything, Blade.  Intrepid thought.  “You’re a Nexus Figure too, Blade.  You, Kate, and Cyclone are the greatest threat to a Darkitect, which is why the Maelstrom Dimension one wanted you all dead… now he wants to infect you again.”

"So what are we waiting for?” Rover asked, summoning his Venture rocket. 

"More like who.” Intrepid added, looking over the people assembled.  Ray and Tornado were present.  Ben was there.  Cailan and Crimson were drinking soda.  He whirled to Luke and Mara.  “Where’s the Figdroids?”

"They’re not here,” Luke said worriedly, “which can only mean one thing.”

Intrepid took a deep breath and let it out raggedly, while he tallied in his head, Cyclone.  Edgar.  Allison.  Jay and Katie.  “Spakybob must have gotten them.  They’ve been captured too.”

The group of twenty-one delayed no further in boarding their rockets and launching to Nexus Tower.

==
Fifty == Cyclone awoke with a throbbing in his head, a side effect of the mind control.  He didn’t conceal his groan as he sat up in the prison cell that the Maelstrom Guard had put him in.  There was no bed, water, or food provisioned for him, just the hard stone floor and obsidian-tiled walls and a narrow view into the hallway through the shimmering force field in place of a door.

His larger surroundings were like a palace of sorts.  Cyclone remembered seeing, at times, even velvet flooring in one hallway, although most coloration came in hues of purple or black.  The Leek Works guys might like it, he thought stupidly.  It fit with their goth theme.

He hadn’t time to react when the electrical bars of the force field suddenly dissipated, and Jay and Katie were thrown inside his cell.  Just as quickly the force field went back up and obsidian-clan Stromlings quickly left his view.  Apparently the force field blocked sound as well, since Cyclone hadn’t heard even a scuff of their feet from outside, and he again heard nothing now, except for the Figdroids, who were sniffling or whimpering or something.

Cyclone went over to Jay, who was lying on his side with his face tilted down and his arms splayed out in opposite directions.  “Are you okay?” he hissed.

Jay turned to him with tears in his eyes and his cheeks uncharacteristically puffy.  Also his mouth was open and he seemed to be gasping for air.  “...Can’t…” he whispered, “...breathe!”

Then Jay burst out laughing and Cyclone stepped back from him, mortified.  He heard Katie laughing too.

“Why are you laughing?!” Cyclone exclaimed.

“We can’t stop!” Katie giggled, she tried to rise but opted to roll into a ball instead.  “We’re ack - hic - shually being tortured.  There’s a evil Sandy Studs here and hahahahaha! Jay!”

“He hacked our brains and tripped our tickle sensors.” Jay managed to say.  “We’re to suffer until we tell them everything we know.”

Cyclone stared at the two compromised minifigures.  “You weren’t with my team.” he said.

“Spakybob captured us!” Katie chortled.

The name sounded familiar to Cyclone, but he couldn’t put a distinct face to it.  He figured he was a Stromling, although there were independent forces in the Nimbus System that sometimes came into play as well.

“Is there anything I can do to help your… state?” Cyclone asked, although he knew as much about programming futuristic sentient robots as talking to ducks.  Since he couldn’t talk to ducks, he obviously couldn’t help the Figdroids ease their suffering.

“Use the kill switch.” Katie said with sudden seriousness.

Apparently he could? Cyclone shook his head at the ominous sounding switch.  “What… no, I can’t put you out of your misery, not that way!”

“It’s a sleep switch,” Jay corrected, “not a kill switch.  They’re behind our heads and we can’t touch them.  Only authorized Nexus Forcers can get near them.”

“What makes you think I’m, as you say, authorized?” Cyclone protested.

“You’re probably not.” Katie said.  “Just try.”

Cyclone sighed and stepped behind the robotic girl.  He keenly separated her brown hair, which felt like real hair, and spotted an obvious red plastic button with some glowing alien text written on it, saying sleep.  He aimed a finger to press it but then Katie punched him in the face.

“Ha, you have to move faster!” Jay guffawed.

“Whoever built you is crazy!” Cyclone decided, and when he tried to deactivate Katie again her arms swung backwards and she grabbed him around the shoulders, lifted him off the ground and threw him against the force field.  He bounced off and face planted on the ground.

“Sorry!” Katie laughed.  “It’s an involuntary response, I swear.”

Getting flung around made Cyclone’s headache worse, and sufficiently annoyed.  He extended his arm towards Katie and willed her to stop moving.  Imagination swirled around her and propped her into a standing position and rooted her feet to the ground.  Just in case, Cyclone stunned Jay too.

“Good idea.” Jay said.

“Hey, we’re not laughing anymore.” Katie pointed out.  “If you keep us like this-”

“I can’t keep you rooted forever.” Cyclone said.  “Sorry.” He stepped behind Katie and pressed the button, immediately starting her sleep cycle.  He did the same for Jay, and then he let go of them with his powers.  They automatically assumed supine positions, and all was quiet at last.

“Good work.” a voice cackled.

Cyclone rolled his eyes and turned to face the force-field, which was now temporarily disabled again.  Standing in it was the Stromling that had captured him, Demonstrait, flanked by two of his royal blue-wearing Stromling guards.  Now that he faced them up close, Cyclone realized there were other blue things about them.  The outfit of one of them still carried a Sentinel logo, and where the armor was intact looked vaguely like that of a Sentinel Knight’s.  The other more resembled a Samurai, and the connection made Cyclone’s heart worry if Kate was alright, since if Jay and Katie were captured…

A sudden ringing in his head interrupted Cyclone’s trance, and he could not raise his hands to cover his ears, because when the ringing stopped he had been put in a different trance.  Demonstrait released the button on the remote control in his hand, and smiled menacingly at Cyclone, who tried to move but failed.  Demonstrait’s forced control of his muscles was effectively paralysis, until he made Cyclone walk to the Stromling guards and join them in the hallway.

He was then walked a short way to a teleportation pad, and the four of them were reconstituted in another part of the palace in a hallway that was much taller, outside a giant set of doors.  Their height, well over 70 feet tall and over ten times the height of a standard minifigure, could only mean one thing, Cyclone knew with dread.

Demonstrait pushed the doors open and stepped through.  Then he was struck by lightning and sent skidding back into the hallway.

“You fool!” the voice of Baron Typhonus bellowed.  “You bring my gravest threat, an Imagination Electi, straight to my doors?!”

“You unlocked the doors!” Demonstrait wheezed.

The Darkitect rose from his seat, a massive structure built of solid-Maelstrom ore and laced with silver, and laughed.  There was nothing Cyclone could do except mentally reach inside himself for his greatest strength, his Creative Spark’s Imagination, and attempt to use it – but his body remained paralyzed.  But his Imagination continued to ‘bubble.’

“Look, he’s trying to resist!” the Darkitect noticed.  “Well, Demonstrait, it would appear you are correct, this time.  They can be controlled, to a point-”

Cyclone’s Imagination exploded out of him in a spherical shockwave that blew the Darkitect’s hat off and sent bolts of lightning towards every Stromling in the room, although they dodged the blasts and were not smashed, and the Darkitect responded by swinging his staff and summoning Maelstrom spikes around Cyclone.  As soon as his lightning struck them the energy was infected and bounced back to hit him instead.  Cyclone’s vision went black from the pain, but he still heard what the Maelstrom leaders said about him.

“Have I gone to the effort of capturing him only for you to kill him?!” Demonstrait protested.

“No,” the Darkitect said, as he aimed his staff downwards and directed for Maelstrom fog to surround Cyclone.  “Your plan has merit.  Your loyal replacement, Spakybob, has already shown me that it is possible to turn an Imagination Electi.  Unfortunately his specimen was smashed, but he demonstraited extraordinary potential, before his emotional shortcomings got the better of him.

“This one, on the other hand, must suffer so much pain that his conscience is completely eradicated.  He will be as brainless as the Stromlings of old, and completely under my control!” Typhonus cackled.

Cyclone felt like he was being split in two.  Then he felt an Imagination double of himself being built alongside him, a new form to escape into as his current form was infected.  His infected body went numb as his mind began moving, entirely out of his control, to the new form.  His mind and his Creative Spark.

But then that duplicate of him was smashed by the Darkitect’s lightning.  Cyclone felt like all his bones had been snapped when his mind rushed back into his original body, but his Creative Spark could not be felt.  In fact he could feel nothing at all, he realized with horror.  He could only stare ahead through unblinking eyes as the Darkitect tilted back his staff and the Maelstrom spikes retracted into the ground, freeing Cyclone from their stunning effect, but his body refused to listen to his thoughts.

Instead, dark instincts that he had not felt in two and a half years took over.  His view shifted as his body, completely taken by Maelstrom, assumed a kneeling position before the Darkitect.  A pool of black sludge, shiny like oil, pooled under Cyclone’s body.  It dripped from him.  In its reflection he saw the glowing red orbs that were his new eyes, in his new face, that of a Stromling whose only purpose was to serve the Maelstrom, and completely separated from Cyclone’s conscious mind.  Rather it was his mind that was isolated.  He was a prisoner in his own body.

“Arise, Cyclone.” the Darkitect commanded, and Cyclone stood.  “Good, good.  Now, why don’t you show us what powers you have for us?”

Arms that were not his own appeared in the sides of Cyclone’s vision, dark palms with blades for fingers aimed upwards.  Orbs of Maelstrom energy appeared in them, and then the entire room shook as the massive stones in the floor were overturned.  Stromlings began to scatter and Demonstrait shouted orders as dust billowed upward and the ceiling began to buckle, raining smaller stones that smashed the Stromlings that stayed put.  Cyclone was blind in the dust storm that his Maelstrom powers created, and the rumbling of stone was loud in his ears, but not as loud as the laughter of the Darkitect.

==
Fifty-one == The Avant Gardens team stopped at Nimbus Station to commandeer a faster transport, a Sentinel Starchief with a warp drive, that would get the twenty-one of them plus thirty more Nexus Forcers, a small army under Sergeant’s command also working as the ship’s crew, to Nexus Tower half an hour faster than on rockets.

Five minutes into their estimated fifteen minute trip they encountered a fleet of spaceborne Maelstrom in the darneu above Forbidden Valley.  The Starchief just soared over them and passed them with minimal damage, thanks to flying expertise of Luke Mercury, with Suave Able Cat and Ray Handerson copiloting the craft.  Then they rounded a large asteroid only to crash into another one.

“Oops.” Luke said, and he activated the ship’s reverse thrusters just as Maelstrom spaceships surrounded the 10-50.  He banked the ship to aim its well armored dorsal side towards the nearest infected Nexus Koi class transport while Suave pressed a button alerting the crew to man the guns.  They would have to fight their way out of this one.

In the rear cargo bay, Intrepid shoved some the gear and consumable boxes that had toppled over into force field alcoves where they should have been, as the boxes were hastily loaded and had been left in the main section.  He activated the force field so they wouldn’t slide out, then turned to face the other people in the room, Cheerful Power Rover, a monkey, and Krill Mathias.  Rover was pushing boxes as well, the monkey was sealing the top on a box that had spilled open, and Krill wasn’t doing anything.

“Hey Krill,” Intrepid waved.

The vigilante looked up.  “If you’re asking me to help you push these stupid boxes, the answer is no, I rather save my energy for hauling posterior when we’re boarded.” Then he lowered his head and dozed.

Rover happened to push a box between them.  “Don’t bother, Intrepid.” he muttered.

“I was going to ask him about my jetpack.” Intrepid told the passing Buccaneer, and turned to Krill again.  “Krill, you took a jetpack from me three years ago that I really liked.  If you still have it, can I have it back?”

Krill looked up again.  “Do I even know you, kid?”

“Three years ago.” Intrepid repeated.

“Oh yeah.” Krill pushed off the wall and headed for the doorway to the secondary cargo bay, and he paused at the open door.  “ I didn’t recognize you for a second.  Teenagers grow fast.  Anyway, the jetpack’s gone and I have no regrets.  If you’ll excuse me, I’ll find a quieter place to hibernate.” He left and the door slid shut behind him.  Before it shut, Intrepid noticed that there were many more boxes in need of sorting in the secondary cargo bay.

“What’s he doing here anyway?” Intrepid asked Rover, who didn’t respond immediately.  The Buccaneer extended an arm for the monkey to jump onto, and from there to his shoulder, before stuffing his hands in his pockets and turning to Intrepid.

“He’s being paid, obviously.” Rover said discreetly.  “We don’t know by who and God knows he won’t tell.”

So we’re not the only ones looking for Cyclone.  Intrepid thought.

“You remember, it was the Darkitect trying to capture Cyclone the last time Krill was here.” Rover continued.  “But now the Darkitect, or another version of him, has Cyclone, so this means there’s a third-party involved.”

There was a crash from someplace else in the ship and suddenly the inertial dampeners were disabled, knocking Intrepid and Rover off their feet.  As the ship shook, they also heard Krill exclaim some curses as he was most likely slammed by lots of boxes.

The ship continued to shake as Intrepid and Rover danced out of the cargo bay into the ship’s cafeteria, where a few other team members were, and from there to the Starchief’s bridge.

“Everything’s under control,” Luke greeted when they entered.

“We’re still here?” Intrepid exclaimed.  His heart sank when he saw through the windows that they were still in the darneu.  Then he caught sight of the gray colored object in the rearview camera that seemed to be growing larger, not because they were backing towards it, rather they were going forwards as fast as possible; but because it was chasing them.  “Oh.”

“That’s no ship.” Rover said.

“What is it?” Intrepid asked, looking into the screen.  It was a space organism of sorts, with two pincers alongside an obvious mouth that was thankfully closed, but guns and engines and other machine parts protruded all over the rest of its body.

A hatch slid open and Sergeant and Kate climbed in from a gunpod.  “None of our weapons are having an effect.” Kate reported.

Then the space monster opened its jaw and Suave shouted, “Sharp left!”

Luke made a quick turn that sent everyone who wasn’t seated tumbling into the wall, as a laser shot past them.

“What is it?!” Intrepid repeated after strapping himself to a seat.

“It’s a Haedelra!” Sergeant Ghost Mustache shouted at him.  “They’re incredibly rare and usually hang around the Venture Explorer, but there’s enough space wrecks in the darneu that it makes sense there’d be some here.  It takes whatever it scavenges to use as armor for its body.”

“We’re almost past the worst of the rocks,” Luke said, “then we can warp outta here.”

“I admit you’re a better pilot than me.” Intrepid said.

“Hey, Suave and I are flying too.” Ray retorted.

“Yeah, but you got smashed by a random Stromling.” Intrepid reminded.  Everyone on Avant Gardens had heard of the Rank 3 Space Marauder that had been smashed by the lowest of the Maelstrom’s minions.

“Oh, the shame.  That’s why I quit the military.” Ray grumbled.  “At least I didn’t crash a rocket into the Paradox Lab like that guy.”

“I heard of that guy too.” Intrepid said.

The rocks became sparser and Luke easily guided the ship to dodge the Haedelra’s next laser attack.  Then he aimed the Starchief towards Crux Prime, visually identifiable by Nexus Tower’s Imagination spire, and activated the warp drive.  Thankfully the intertial dampeners had been re-enabled by then or they all would have smashed.

“Whew.” Luke got up from his seat and stretched.  “Intrepid or Mara can have my seat.  I’ve had enough flying for a week.”

Another harrowing journey complete, but if they thought the Maelstrom was bad here, which it was… Intrepid could only fear the Maelstrom Dimension was worse.

==
Fifty-two ==  

After reaching Crux Prime, Mara docked the Starchief at the tower’s 850th level, which Suave got them clearance to do to avoid the combat below.  They had to move quickly so Nexus Force spaceships could resume their orbital bombardments, having paused when the Starchief entered the scene, so everyone on the bridge looked a little sick until they descended onto the landing pad.  Ray cut the primary engines with gusto.

“A service crew will take care of the ship.” Suave said while he activated the signal to disembark.  “Meet you at the Ring?”

Kate nodded.  “We’ll get Blade and see this Verbina.” she said.

“Keep an eye on Krill.” Rover advised.  “I don’t think his intentions are entirely altruistic.”

“Will do,” Suave said, “if he’s even still here.”

Indeed, Krill was nowhere to be found on the ship.  After they disembarked, Suave lead the thirty Nexus Force troopers and the rest of the team to the main Assembly plaza where the Ring Breacher had been displayed.  Now it was looped off behind energy fences and Sentinel Guards had been called in to protect it.  In preparation of using it, Suave pulled rank so Ben could set it up.  The plan as it stood was to dial-in the Maelstrom Dimension and go from there, without consulting the Future Dimension first.  They were effectively going in blind, but the team agreed to do all they reasonably could to rescue Cyclone, Edgar, Ryder, Jay, and Katie before proceeding with the next stage of the plan.  Intrepid hadn’t shared the details of his plan, it was a fairly terrible plan, but if successful they could never enter the Maelstrom Dimension again.

That step needed a working Unverse Manipulator, and for that they needed Verbina.  Alternatively, Intrepid could pay a visit to the Future Dimension, but the last they’d heard from that dimension was that it was under worse assault.  Considering they hadn’t heard from Future Intrepid, Luke, Mara, Charles, or Red, Intrepid had to consider there might not even be a Future Leek Works to land in and get resources from anymore.  Activating the Ring Breacher in the middle of Nexus Tower presented enough security risks that they didn’t want to overdo it.

Eventually Kate, Rover, Blade, Intrepid, Jonna, Skilled Honored Ninja, and Strange Odd Shadow took the elevators to the research and development level, a minimally lit area.  So long as there was a raging battle being fought outside the lights were dimmed in alert mode, they cast a dark blue hue in the windowless interior hallways.

Jonna went to an information plaque on the wall.  “Most Assembly researchers are working on the field,” she reported, “but Verbina’s in the northern Inter-faction-cooperation lab.”

“Assembly and Paradox work together in there.” Blade explained.  “I’ve been there a bit to get my gear upgraded.  Lots of cool stuff there.”

They rounded a bend and went through a short connector way to enter that lab.  Jonna entered a passcode to open the door, and then they were in a suddenly bright room.  There were few personnel present, the highlight of the room were hundreds of creations placed on tables all around the room.  There were existing items being upgraded with experimental tech, like a Bat Lord helm fused to a vest of armor that Intrepid held himself back from gravitating to, and even entirely new concept items.

Strange Odd Shadow picked up a particular weapon in the style of a double barreled sidearm.  “Should this be here?” he asked, and he held the weapon next to the two multiblasters hanging on Intrepid’s side, one from each Red.  Intrepid looked down.  There was a distinct similarity between the weapons.

“A lot of Leek Works’s standard tech is former Nexus Force experiments in my dimension.” Skilled said.  “It was part of our agreement when working for the Council; they get our subservience, we get their tech.  Looks like you found a prototype multiblaster.”

Shadow tested aiming the prototype multiblaster then set it down.  “I wonder if there are Unverse Manipulators here?”

“Probably not.” Skilled said.  “Those only got introduced eight years ago for me.  They took a few years to build too.”

“Like what you see?” a woman’s voice asked, and they looked up to see a lady wearing an Assembly coat over Inventor clothes.  She was tall, obviously an adult, but her face looked young for an older person, putting her age around thirty years.  Her bright blond hair was styled up in the back professionally but at her face it draped around an expression that was all smiles.

Skilled coughed and flashed a grin.  “Verbina, I presume?” he said.

“That is my given name.” Verbina confirmed, still smiling.  Her eyes danced over each of them curiously.

“Right.” Skilled stuck out a hand.  “I’m Skilled Honored Ninja, and you can call me Shard.  I’m from a Future Dimension.” The introductions went from there before he could elaborate further.

“I’m Kate.”

“Cheerful Power Rover.”

“Master Blade Nine, Sentinel knight and collector of antiquities!”

“Epic Fivestar Empanada, or Jonna.”

“The Original Janitor.”

“Intrepid.”

“I was about to explain,” Shard continued, “I’m from another Dimension.  Set in the Future, a whole twenty years ahead.  Oh, and your counterpart and I are colleagues.  I gotta say though, before the chance evades me, we’re a better match like this-”

Shadow hit him with his broomstick.  “Stop flirting!” he ordered.  “Get to the point! Tell her about the Nexus Figures!”

“I know Multiverse theory, but what’s ‘the Nexus Figures’?” Verbina echoed, interested.

“Nexus Figures?” Blade repeated too.  “Explain.”

“They’re a little like Superians, in the sense they have super abilities.” Shadow said.

“That’s nice, but you’ve still explained nothing, since I have no idea what a Superian is.” Blade complained.

“You mean you don’t understand me.  That’d be your problem, not mine.”

“Super abilities, like Maelstrom Minifigures?” Verbina asked.

“I have no idea what those are either.” Blade groaned, and even Jonna and Rover looked clueless.

“You’re not supposed to.  Tell me more about these Nexus Figures?” Verbina said, switching the subject.

“You should know,” Shard stated, “you research them.”

Verbina laughed.  “I don’t think so.”

“Maybe not yet?” Shard suggested.

“If you read my resume, I research Nexus Shards, Shard.” Verbina clarified.  “It’s an obscure term I’ve coined for remnants of former Imagination Nexuses.  Like Maelstrom Shards, just with Imagination.  In the right conditions, Nexus Shards can be fostered and cultivated into full Nexuses; that’s my theory at least.”

Shard grinned and bowed out.  “Ah, you’re right.  My bad.” He turned around to face his teammates.  “The document did say Nexus Shards, not Figures.  I have failed you all.”

She can still help.  Intrepid thought, and he stepped forwards to show the Unverse Manipulator.  “Can you fix this? It’s for traveling to other dimensions.  It’s called an Unverse Manipulator.”

She took it, which was a good sign.  “Mind if I disassemble this?” she asked.

“It’s good as broken now.” Intrepid said, effectively relinquishing the device.

“Like a paperweight.” Verbina set it on a table and activated its tabletop building zone.  Inside the blue hued shield, the Manipulator split into its individual components.  After giving the parts a once-over, she went to a supply cabinet, talking all the way.  “Do you know how this ‘Unverse Manipulator’ works?”

Intrepid shook his head.

“It has two energy sources.  The primary: an Imaginite Crystal.” Verbina looked up and raised an eyebrow.  “The secondary: Maelstrom Ore.  This is how you get Maelstrom resurgences, in case you were wondering.”

Intrepid sighed.  The more they dove into Future Leek Works’s secret workings, the less he liked it.  “It’s there for a reason.” he figured.

“Whoever built this better have had a damn good reason for using Maelstrom.” Verbina grumbled.  “Anyway, Imaginite is a conventional energy source.  Here it serves the dual purpose of sustaining an Imagination shield bubble around the user and establishing a neural link with the user.  The Maelstrom Ore is kept inert in a passive shield container, but the shield can be ‘pierced’ to stimulate the Ore, like a spark-plug.”

“To breach Unverse.” Intrepid said.  “That’s what Maelstrom Ore does.  That’s how the Manipulator works.”

“If you say so.  The problem here is that the Imaginite Crystal got overloaded and all the circuitry is shot.” Verbina reported.  “I can rewire it in minutes.  Grab me a wiring kit from the supply closet?” She pointed to the opposite wall.

“Sure.”

As Intrepid passed, she said quietly in his direction, “You’re a Talmid, aren’t you?”

Intrepid slowed to a stop.  “How did you know?” he asked.

“I didn’t ask how you people knew me.”

Intrepid scrunched his face and went to get the wiring kit.  After returning, he saw the rest of their team had meandered elsewhere.  He figured Verbina would appreciate info, so after setting down the tools he told her, “I’m Abe and Hafwyn’s son.  Did you know them?”

“I knew of them.  Abe is Killian’s brother.”

Intrepid didn’t correct the tense.  “So you know my uncle.” The man in the prison on Militiregnum had never mentioned a Verbina.  Just one of many surprises about him.  At least she seemed nice.  “Did you know he’s on Militiregnum?” he let her know.

“He went back there?” she echoed.  “I figured he was off world or put away somewhere, since we’ve been out of contact more than two years.  Funny he’d go to Militiregnum of all places.”

Intrepid had no idea the deal with that place and he didn’t ask.  He began prefacing a question instead.  “It’s a fact that chaotically induced unverse breaches are damaging to unverse.”

“Damaging, how?”

“Destroyed unverse impedes transdimensional travel.  There’s an unverse hole on Crux Prime now, ripped open when a room full of industrial chaos breachers exploded.”

“Rip in peace.” Verbina joked.

“Right.” Then Intrepid asked his question.  “Can you build me an unverse ripper? ”

Fifty-three

 

In the hour after meeting Verbina, Intrepid made his way back to the Assembly plaza lugging a bright yellow backpack.  The hazard markings defied his preference for discreetness, but the visibility kept personnel away from him and his volatile cargo, which was nice.  It took reverse engineering the Unverse Manipulator and accessing emergency resources, but Verbina was talented and quick.  In twenty minutes she produced two boxes of Unverse Bombs for Stage 2 of their plan.

After stowing those weapons and his repaired Manipulator on the Starchief, Intrepid went to meet with Suave and the rest of the strike team.  The plaza had been cleared of civilians, nonessential personnel, and uninvolved soldiers so the least amount of people were in harm’s way: only Suave’s team of thirty Sentinel commandos and the rest of their team.  Including Suave they totaled forty-eight.  Krill Mathias was excluded since no one knew where he was, and Luke and Mara were staying behind on the Starchief.

Ten rifle-equipped Sentinels were placed on the room’s balconies with Sergeant Ghost Mustache leading them, their weapons trained on the Ring.  Everyone else was on the ground including the Super Sentinel, who stood before the Ring Breacher with one hand over his zipgun and the other over his stubble.

Suave spoke when Intrepid approached him.  “There’s reason to believe that opening a connection with the Maelstrom Dimension will open us to attack, hence this arrangement.”

He gestured to the balcony-based Sentinels.  “I see,” Intrepid nodded.

“We can’t have any fatalities.” Suave said grimly.  “Rescue missions just aren’t viable if you lose more people than you save.  I value the life of every individual here.”

“Me too.” Intrepid said.  “Here, and there, and wherever.”

“Good,” Suave shifted on his feet.  “Depending on what happens, I might be better purposed staying here, in which case you’re the effective leader of this operation going forward.  Just remember every life matters.  Our friends will understand if we can’t save them.”

“If they’re even still alive,” Intrepid added, since they were leaving no words unspoken, until there was nothing more to say.  Suave turned to join the squad closest to the Ring, with Blade, Argon, Rover, Shadow, and six unfamiliar Sentinels.  Intrepid continued on to the next group with Skilled, Kate, Stunt, Rare, Shira, Jonna, Ray, Tornado, Cailan and Crimson, and Ben who held a remote Ring activation switch.

“Don’t be a pessimist.” Shira said once Intrepid took a combat stance next to her.  “I mean, there’s a healthy amount of pessimism, you know I’d know.” She laughed.  “I don’t want to see you exceed that.”

“Thanks for looking out for me.” Intrepid shrugged.

“I’m all in favor of optimism.” Kate said, and they turned to her.  “I also heard what Sauve said.  Keeping our team safe is noble, I can agree with stopping the mission short to safe lives.  But personally, I won’t leave without Cyclone and the others… or until we know what happened to them, if they… you know.” She gave them a small smile, but her eyes looked pained to even suggest what she didn’t want to say.

“Don’t tell Suave, but I am with you and I agree with everything you said.” Intrepid said.

“I think we all do.” Shira pointed out.  “We’re with you.” she repeated.

“I don’t even know you, or your friends,” Ray said, “but I followed you this far, so I can confirm Shira is right.”

“Of course I’m right.”

Their headsets clicked and Suave’s voice came through.  “The teams are positioned, we’re ready for the breach.”

“That’s you, buddy.” Intrepid said to Ben who still held the remote switch.  He had built it, he may as well be the one to press it.

The red haired boy’s mouth was a thin line as he held up the radio box.  It beeped to confirm its connection with a robotic arm sitting next to the Ring Breacher’s controls, in the potential line of fire, while the minifigures kept a safe distance away.

“T-minus three.” Ben whispered.  “Two.  One.” He pressed the button and the robotic arm extended to pull the activation lever on the Ring.

The Ring lit up and there was a rush of wind as the air pressure in the room lowered, then returned to normal levels.  Purple clouds formed at the Ring’s event horizon as it opened a wormhole through Maelstrom infected Unverse, and Imagination water started to rain from the ceiling mounted anti-infection suppression system.  The clouds were dissipated and a scene appeared in the Ring’s event horizon: several parked crafts, spaceships large and small and lines of personal sized fighters and rockets.  Boarding the spaceships were columns of Stromling soldiers, mechs, and Spiderlings.  Every five seconds, a spaceship would just disappear from thin air.  Then a Stromling in Maelstrom Engineer clothes happened to walk past the other end of the breach, before it stopped to retrace his steps.  For a moment it stared through, marveling in the view from one dimension to another, until a zipgun blast smashed it.

Intrepid took off running, his team behind him, Suave’s team ahead of him.  He glanced sideways at Sergeant and the rifle contingent who were making their way down from the balconies.  The lack of resistance meant they were all going in together, to the Maelstrom Dimension, to save their friends.

Fifty-Four

Invaders in the hanger.

The statement roused Cyclone from hibernation and he turned to the barracks exit.  A barred gate lifted up into a crack between black stone, under which he strode forth.  As he walked his skin hardened with blood and Maelstrom energies into a tough biological armor of sorts, and spikes grew from his arms.  Other combat-armed Stromlings joined him, they all walked in the same direction to form a single unit headed directly to the hangers, where the attackers were.

The Nexus Force.

Something stirred in Cyclone as he comprehended the name of their opponent.  Nexus Forcers must be smashed and Imagination must be corrupted, that was the Maelstrom’s mission.  He had been Nexus Force, he and others with him, and he had no loyalty to them…

Go.

Smash.

The others.

Smash the others.

…not anymore.

The state of his mind could not be described as alert.  As a drone-type of Stromling, his mind was activated, enough to move, fight, answer questions, and follow orders.  But he wasn’t like Demonstrait or Spakybob.  Not yet, at least.  He could also aspire.  Every Stromling could aspire to be more powerful, to get closer to the Darkitect.

To become a Darkitect.

He was also aware of the abilities he held.  As a former Nexus Figure-turned-Stromling, Cyclone had powers no other Stromling did.  He retained his indefatigable creative spark that could manipulate so much Imagination.  Like the Imagination Temple’s Nexus on Crux, the one found by the Four Explorers, it too could be corrupted.  It had been.

Then something clicked in his brain.  Comprehension.  In front of Cyclone was a steel-plated door.  He had reached the end of the line.  The combat zone.  He was no longer a mindless drone.

Dark forces had appointed him mission commander.

The door rose and smoke billowed into the hall.  It cleared enough to reveal the base’s hanger in a state of war.  Fog from flames of the fiery type filled the hanger’s massive airspace.  Fuel containers were ignited and damaged spacecraft were in various states of disrepair all across the hanger.  Laser fire from all angles formed a haphazard no-man’s-land between it all, and Cyclone ran into it.  The Stromlings from the hallway followed suit.

Their orders were to find the Nexus Force and smash them.

The massive reflective face of a spaceship appeared out of the smoke in an arcing descent.  With a metallic screech it struck the ground to Cyclone’s left and crushed ten Stromlings while sliding into a pile of fuel canisters.  The impact ignited the combustible product and the subsequent explosion sent Stromlings flying all around Cyclone, but he maintained his footing.

The shockwave pushed the smoke aside and he spotted a Nexus Forcer.  The Sentinel soldier stood atop the tilted hull of another spaceship.  With a Knight’s sword in his right hand he cut down Stromling after Stromling as they climbed the ship’s curved hull and attacked, one by one, from various directions.  Uncoordinated, Cyclone thought, and he directed a telepathic order to the Stromlings in that arbitrarily defined area to standby.

A rocket, small, single-seat, flew out from the smoke on a descending course like the spaceship.  Cyclone put all his attention on the rocket.  It was spinning end over end, so quickly that he could barely see its details.  He only caught a smidgen of its cockpit section with each tumbling rotation.  A little more, a little more, and he kept getting closer to the ground.  It crashed and skidded into a wall, taking out a row of Mechs, but by that time Cyclone had already turned his attention back to the Sentinel.

As he suspected, the rocket was unmanned.

Someone was throwing rockets.

He thought back to spaceship that had crushed ten Stromlings and sent flying many others.

Someone was throwing rockets to smash the Maelstrom forces.  Obviously it was a Nexus Forcer’s doing, and it was a good idea, apparently.  Cyclone could use it too.

Coils of Maelstrom energy began to expand from his arms when he raised them, reaching out like the chains of the Blades of Chaos for the first spaceship that had crashed down after his entrance to the hanger.  The flaming mass was lifted into the air behind Cyclone, and he pointed it right at the lone Sentinel atop the other ship in front of him.

  Suave Able Cat.

Cyclone remembered the Sentinel’s name just after the thrust the mass of flaming carbon and steel on an arc through the air that would crush the Sentinel to oblivion.

He knew he was a high ranking officer in the Nexus Force, and that smashing him would demoralize the Nexus Force invaders.  Time was running out for Suave in his dangerous position, vulnerable to falling spaceships.  If he did not jump out of the way soon, he would surely be crushed, Cyclone predicted.  Crucial seconds passed before the Sentinel noticed the shadow growing around him, and the flaming spaceship.  Lethal seconds.  Cyclone knew it was too late for him.

The spaceship suddenly stopped in midair and its velocity shifted from a forward arc to a straight-down descent.  It fell with a crash well clear of Suave Able Cat’s perch, to crush one the group of Stromlings Cyclone had ordered to standby.

Apparently Cyclone hadn’t been the only one to notice Suave’s otherwise imminent demise.

Another Sentinel had her hands extended forwards at the aflame spaceship now shattered on the ground.  Her arms dropped and came back up with a glowing katana and a drawn bow held in hand.  The latter was pointed at Cyclone, but only for a second.

He watched as she tilted the weapon downward, no longer at his heart.  Not that it mattered, he could have deflected it in an instant.  Not that that mattered, since Kate would never kill Cyclone.

Or would she?

A stray piece of information entered Cyclone’s consciousness from the Maelstrom hive mind.  Important information directly concerning him, or rather his survival, based on the fate of... another Cyclone.  A version of Cyclone from another dimension had successfully been turned.  He had battled this same group of Nexus Forcers on a third dimension’s Avant Gardens, and they had killed him.

The data was more specific.

Kate had killed him.

She could kill him.

And Cyclone was gripped with fear.  He recalled all his energies, the coils of Maelstrom, around his body.  A shield.  They could be enough to protect him from-

Kate’s voice rang out.  “I won’t kill you, Cyclone!”

Cyclone blinked and looked out from his shield.

Kate’s bow was set on her back.  Her sword was still held protectively before her, but above her left hand, upturned, glowed a surging quasar of volatile Imagination energy.  The same energy that had killed the other Cyclone, he noted through narrowed eyes.

“You can be disinfected.” Kate said.  “Think about who you are!”

Cyclone did think.  His infection had been complete.  During the process, an Imagination clone of his had almost been created, but it had been smashed immediately.  The link that had sustained his connection to Imagination in the time when he had first been infected, three years prior, did not exist now.

So when he thought about himself, he saw himself as a Stromling

A minion of the Maelstrom.

A commissioner of chaos.

A Servant of Darkness.

“Do you think that lowly of me?!” Cyclone heard a Stromling’s voice shout out.  He experienced a moment of disassociation, as the voice was low in pitch but clear unlike other the voice of other Stromlings.  He’d never heard it before and it resonated with power.  He realized it was his voice.  It was the voice of a Darkitect.

He was like a Darkitect.

He was a Darkitect.

“I am a Darkitect.”

“No,” Kate shook her head.  “You’re Gallant Strong Cyclone.  You’re my friend and I owe you everything to save you!”

“You don’t owe me anything!” Cyclone roared in anger.  “Only… your death!”  And he directed all his stored Maelstrom energy toward Kate.  It engulfed the air around her.

Then he felt a searing pain in his back and Cyclone screamed.  The spikes in his shoulders extended two feet and he wanted to whirl around and kill his attacker, but his legs were suddenly disconnected at his knees, first his right then his left, and he fell to the ground.

His arms were dislocated next.  It wasn’t like Cyclone needed them to direct his Maelstrom energies, since he controlled them telepathically.  But then the back of his neck was pricked and all feeling below his jaw was lost, including his connection to his infected creative spark.  Even a bag was thrown over his head for good measure.  He knew it must have had even more stunning properties.

He was completely immobilized, as good as dead as a fish out of water, but he wasn’t dead.  Whoever had done this to him had acted with the specific purpose of keeping Cyclone alive.  They wanted to ‘disinfect’ him, they wanted to ‘save’ him.  It was insulting!  He could not let that happen.

He urged his body to work.  His spinal cord hadn’t been severed… only his nerves were temporarily numbed.  He found his vocal cords and began to scream.  A little farther down his torso, pulsing with the beat of his heart, he felt his corrupted creative spark… he called on his Maelstrom energy-

A boot smashed into his head and Cyclone was knocked unconscious.

Fifty-Five

Krill Mathias lifted his armored boot off Cyclone’s head.  A quick visual inspection confirmed the disjointed Stromling was, indeed, unconscious.  He replaced the pistol gripped in his left hand, previously aimed at the nape of Cyclone’s neck, to the holster at his left hip.  He then swung a modified wormholer over his head into his hands and spun around to send a spray of bolts into a gaggle of growling Stromlings collected behind him.

Once his immediate area was cleared he aimed the wormholer at Cyclone and pressed a button on his wrist.  An energy net shot out and surrounded the fallen Stromling and his parts.  The energy net then began to levitate and Krill broke into a run toward a nondescript door at the hanger’s side.

Until Kate swung in front of him, katana scraping on the ground.  She swung the weapon up at Krill.  Maelstrom traces still sparked off her armor from Cyclone’s attack, but she had survived it and except for a few scratches some armor shine would fix up, didn’t look worse for the wear.  She did, however, look angry.

“What did you do to Cyclone?” she demanded.

“Chillax, Kate.” Krill set his jaw.  “I just saved everyone’s lives here.  Incapacitated, Cyclone is no longer a danger to anyone - himself included.”

Kate didn’t break eye contact with the mercenary, but she did turn her katana to a slightly less threatening position.  “Thanks?” she ventured.  “Is that what you want?”

“It’s not that sort vanity I’m after.” Krill reminded.

“Right.” Kate did some quick calculations.  “Who’s paying you and how much?”

“That’s non disclosable.” Krill shifted his weight, and Cyclone’s net bucked slightly to match his movements.  “Now, as much as I’d love to chat, you can see this ain’t the time or place.”  He feigned a dart to Kate’s right and she followed, then he spun on his heel and Cyclone’s net hit Kate like a flail.  It had the effect of a taser and Kate stiffened a moment before falling to the ground.  Krill completed his rotation and punched his right arm upward.  A zipline shot out from a wrist launcher, snagged the roof, and yanked him into the air.  Once sufficiently above the ground, the battle, and the fire, Krill severed the first line and fired another from his left arm, aimed toward the hanger exit.

As soon as possible Kate popped back up and scanned the area, but Krill and Cyclone and the glowing net had disappeared entirely into the smoke show.  Just like that, they were gone.  Once again, Cyclone was gone.

Fifty-Six

He eyed the silhouette at the top of the hillcrest, a black, morphing shape against the blue night sky.  The time was right, he checked, and he began his ascent.

“Krill Mathias,” the man called down to him.  The shape became a billowing trench coat as he neared.

“Tiberius Talmid,” acknowledged the visitor.

They exchanged goods.  For Krill, a sum of coins.  For Tiberius, the disjointed parts of a very powerful Stromling.

Then Krill turned around and descended to his rocket parked in the strip mall lot.  Client business wasn’t his business, he knew, yet he still gave the exchange some contemplation, as he began unlocking the cabin.  He paused to consider if he should enter the nearby convenience store and stock up on refreshments.  It was dark inside the store, despite the absence of a “Closed” sign, and the only person in sight, half the lot away and leaning against the outside of the storefront, seemed to be checking her phone, so he returned to his thoughts.  The mercenary and Gallant Strong Cyclone had a history that he acknowledged, and maybe he felt a little bad handing his pieces off to certain doom.  But that wasn’t his problem.

Krill felt a rush of air and suddenly the girl with the phone was standing behind him.  He could tell by the direction of her voice.  “How much to get him back?” she asked.

“To the point,” he noted, turning around, and he stifled a gasp.  She didn’t look good.  His excuse for not noticing before was the distance, not a factor now.  Her hands were in the pockets of what could pass as a sweatshirt, although its condition, thoroughly tattered, would get it thrown out of a thrift store.  Her face wore the long dried effuse of some nasty cuts and bruises, and the hair that stuck out from her hood, when not burnt a charcoal gray, was an identifying red.  “No, I won’t backstab your great uncle.  It’s a policy of integrity to not backstab any client.  You’ll have to pay someone else.”

“No,” Red sighed, “I won’t have to.  The job might just be a little harder, for those that take it.”

“Speaking of them,” Krill pointed with his eyes, for a second, at the telltale sign of rockets in reentry, several trails of flame in the sky above.  “Yeah, they’re probably angry with me.”

“You’d best depart.”

“Took the words out of my mouth.  Anything I can do for you?”  Krill sucked in his breath.  “Yes, of course.  Of course that’s why you’re really here.”

Red looked up and met his gaze, and again Krill was taken aback by her appearance.  Wherever she’d been last, it must have been bad.  He’d heard of the transdimensional girl, of course.  Tales of her travels frequented the trading spots, and other locations, he often found himself in.  Well, not always of her specifically.  Transdimensional travelers weren’t a new development.  He’d become one himself not three years prior, when the job required it.

“I need a Manipulator.” Red said.

Krill nodded gravely.  The implications were obvious.  What would a transdimensional operative, who no doubt already had her own Unverse breacher, need in another such device?  He didn’t say what didn’t need to be said, so he got to work.  He fired up his rocket.  Rolls of Imagination energy, fire, and steam blew out to cover the parking lot.  When it cleared he was gone, high in the sky and climbing rapidly.  He knew Red was gone, too.

Once out of Elistra’s gravitational influence Krill pointed his rocket to an obscure vertex of the Nimbus System, reclined his seat, and took a nap.

Fifty-Seven

The tracker on Krill Mathias’s rocket pointed them to Elistra.

So it’s come full circle, Intrepid thought as he settled his pod rocket in an open area in Phoenix Park, blowing a circle free of fallen leaves on the ground.  He disengaged the thrusters and threw open the cabin.  His objective on Elistra and Kate’s dedication for Cyclone had coalesced.  Only Tiberius could have hired Krill Mathias to get Cyclone in his current state: the strongest source of accessible, manifestable Maelstrom, for his Maelstrom reanimation project

Three other rockets landed and their occupants exited while Intrepid surveyed the landscape.  Back on Elistra again and always late, just hopefully not too, for Cyclone’s sake.  And Kate’s.  And whoever else Tiberius wanted back from the dead.  He took a deep breath and started walking to the road.  It lead him, and Kate, Rover, and Blade who followed him, to the blue brick house that was the Talmid residence.  The door, he noted, didn’t have a lock, there was only a hole where one should have been, courtesy of past visitors.  He eased it open and switched on a light.  The dinette was illuminated and as expected its condition was... unruly, with papers and light furniture strewn about.  The staircase and halls were dark.  His eyes flicked to one shut door with a conspicuous keypad next to it.

Too easy, Intrepid thought.  Tiberius was right under their noses the entire time.  So things would end here.

He raised Red’s blaster and smashed the door.

Behind it, cellar steps descended into a dim space lit similarly to the basement floor of the future Leek Works, which was future Tiberius’s workspace.  Just like the basement floor of the present dimension Talmid residence was the workspace for its Tiberius.

It’s too easy.

It’s a trap.

The shift in pressure and suppression of all sound signature of a transdimensional breach alerted Intrepid to the opening of a rift right behind him.  He swung around and caught sight of Rover gripping his cutlass, Blade unsheathing his sword, and Kate already held her samuraizor.  She was on edge, he figured, just before the rift exploded into a spiralling, sideways facing typhoon.  He was ready to fire into it, but it faded as suddenly as it had manifested.  In its place crouched Red, holding a briefcase. 

“Don’t scare us like that,” Rover was the first to find his wits and speak.  Blade just nodded, resheathed his weapon, and looked to Intrepid.  He just stayed, blaster in hand, watching Red, as she stood up.

“Sorry to drop in on such notice,” she said, eying each of them a moment.  She looked different in a few ways: hair cut a decent amount shorter in various places, a plain Nexus Force jacket.  “The war is ending right here, right now.”

“Yeah,” Intrepid said.  “We’re stopping Tiberius.”

“I mean, I’m carrying what we need to end this war.”  Red threw the case down to Intrepid’s feet and it popped open, revealing a device with wires, gears, dials, and a countdown timer.

“That’s a bomb.” Blade said.

“It’s an Unverse cementer,” Red said, “hastily constructed by the brilliant minds of both our dimensions combined, designed to on detonation permeate the entire multiverse and solidify Unverse...”

“...impeding any and all Unverse travel.” Intrepid finished.  “Why bring it here?”

“Because the largest Unverse rift is about to open right here,” another voice said.  It belonged to Tiberius Talmid, a middle aged man standing at the top of the cellar stairs, dressed in a tall black trench coat and boots, and holding a pointed blaster in his left hand.  But it was not that Tiberius who said it.

Standing in the other doorway, between the house and the outside world, was another Tiberius.  He had gray hair, as opposed to black, signifying twenty years of increased age.

“I would know,” old Tiberius continued, “because it’s what I attempted to do, in my timeline, in my dimension.”  He stared across the threshold, past Intrepid, Red, Kate, Rover, and Blade, to maintain eye contact with the present dimension’s Tiberius.  He tilted his head back a slight degree, as if in contempt of his younger counterpart, then he let his face drop, in shame.  “But I didn’t have the Darkitect to help me.”

Young Tiberius shuddered, then responded, “Old man, what do you know of the progress I have made in our mission?  Where the Nexus Force failed, I succeeded!  I revived Evelyne - I can revive her again!”

Intrepid looked up.

“Yes, nephew,” his uncle said, now looking to him.  “The battle in which you could not save her, it wasn’t the end for her, or the rest of our family.  I was there too, doing my research, and I saw the creation of the rift in our planet’s upper atmosphere.  In the edge of our dimension, a tiny pinhole was torn by the chaotic forces brought on by the Maelstrom assault.  And through that hole went the creative sparks of every being that was smashed here that day.  It’s not a full rift, it leads only to a pocket dimension, filled with creative sparks waiting to be rescued.  Using the pull of Maelstrom, I- we can rescue them, the technology is perfected!”

“But it’s not perfect.” Red protested.  “The energy you plan to take from Cyclone is straining that fissure into the largest rift the multiverse has seen yet.  If it doesn’t tear this world apart, it’ll be a gateway for the army of the Maelstrom!” 

“Is Cyclone down there?” Kate demanded. 

Tiberius looked between both girls, then back at Intrepid.  “We can save them,” he repeated, and silence fell.

Intrepid said nothing.

They all stood, rooted as if, in their places.  No one made a sound except to breathe, then the Unverse bomb beeped.

“It’s been remotely activated!” Red exclaimed.  “It’s part of the plan.  We have ten minutes to send it into Unverse and book it.”  She glared at Tiberius.  “And don’t think of shooting it.  Imagination is part of its catalyst.”

Tiberius wrung his hands, and with a huff holstered his blaster.  “Ten minutes, then, to save our family,” he said to Intrepid, again.  “Your choice is with them, with me - or with this group.”

Again, Intrepid said nothing.

“You’re not seriously listening to him?” Kate yelled from behind him.

“No!” Intrepid shouted back.  “I’m thinking.”

“Well don’t think, say!”

“I think we don’t need Maelstrom to save anyone!” Intrepid said.

Tiberius stared at him, blankly.

Everyone did, for a moment.

The countdown timer passed 9 minutes, 45 seconds.

“Maelstrom and Imagination are equal and opposite... we don’t need to use Maelstrom, or Cyclone’s, er, power as a Darkitect.  We can use Imagination.” Intrepid said.  “We have Nexus Figures.”

Fifty-Eight

Red was saying something but Intrepid pretended not to hear her.  “What you’re asking these people to do has already been tried... and it failed.”  Of course he heard her, and he respected her, but something else inside him overpowered his usual deference.

“I have hope,” he said, and he looked Red in the eye.  She stared back.  “You gave it to me.  A month ago, when we stopped that cataclysm on Crux, I knew we had a connection.  How, I didn’t know yet, but I spent the next days hoping to find it.  And you gave it to me.”

“That’s touching.” Red said softly.  “But you can’t bring people back from the dead.”

“It hasn’t been tried like this,” he argued.  “We’re not just... researchers.  We embrace our relationships, it’s our feelings guiding us, not scientific discovery.  We don’t have a hypothesis, we have a goal.  And I’m going to try to get it.  So I’m going to ask something of you, too.  There’s this spot on Avant Gardens...”

“I know.” Red said, and she stepped back, resigned.  “The payload will activate in eight minutes and when that happens, I’d advise some distance between it and you... ideally, a distance of a dimension or two.”

Then she winked out, and Intrepid turned to Kate.  She had watched the exchange, and she held his gaze for a moment, before turning to the Tiberius in the cellar steps.

“Let’s get on with this,” she said.

Tiberius smiled.  “I knew you’d choose right,” he said to Intrepid.

“Just lead the way.” Intrepid retorted.  “This isn’t for you.”

“Of course not, it’s for our family.”

“It’s for my friends, too.”

He turned around and lead the way, and Intrepid followed Kate down into the stony abyss.  On the way he picked up the briefcase that contained the Unverse bomb.  He didn’t pause to consider the repercussions of going through with that mission.  Transdimensional travel would cease.  He’d never see another dimension again.  He’d never see some people again.  Countless loose ends would never be tied.

But to save the universe, so be it.

The steps reached a landing, then continued in the opposite direction, still going down.  At that level they reached the ground floor, where a number of glow heaters kept the subterranean temperature palatable in the open space, which extended larger than Intrepid expected from the size of the house above.  This chamber had to reach across the street, and several houses down each way.  The glow heaters also provided the only source of light for the moment, and in their wake a large, curved silhouette extended from the backdrop.  A flashlight permeated the darkness, held by Rover, that illuminated a metallic shine on the hull of the object.

“It’s a spaceship.” Blade said.

“It’s The One Ring,” Tiberius named it, “used by my family for three generations.  Now, she’s my primary base of operations.”

As he spoke its boarding lights clicked on and a motor began to run.  There was an atmospheric hiss as a ramp began to descend, and dust particles swirled around from the pressure change.

There was little else, some dust covered boxes and other miscellaneous along the floor’s edges, to be interested in.  They boarded the ship single file, entering a white painted hallway with open doorways lining each side, and at its end, in a windowed observation deck, a stairwell was visible to lead to the next floor up.  Tiberius guided them into the second room on the right, where a confined chamber behind Imagination shields had been set up.

Kate immediately ran towards it.  Intrepid noticed it too.

Between machines with flexible hoses, a gurney sat in the middle of the chamber, and on it lay a Stromling of unmistakable identity.  Gallant Strong Cyclone.

The room suddenly took on a blue hue.  Imagination effuse swirled in Kate’s hands and washed up her arms in a form of mist.  “We have to disinfect him.” she stated.

“Careful,” Rover warned, stepping forward with a hand towards Kate.  He rested it on her shoulder, and her manifested Imagination decreased in intensity, slightly.  “Remember, he won’t react well to Imagination, not in his current state.”

“I know,” Kate said, “I already smashed his... other...” she looked away and her release of Imagination came to a stop.

Rover kept his grip on her, until she turned toward and pulled him into a hug.  Rover held her back as she squeezed her eyes shut, to keep the tears from spilling out.

“This chamber has a disinfection function,” the older Tiberius spoke up, already on his way to a control panel.

“That’s really convenient.” Blade said.

No one stopped him as he glanced between the unconscious Cyclone and some dials that he adjusted, then he pushed a button that glowed green when pressed.  A fan began to whirr as Maelstrom mist filled the room’s confines, blocking the view in.  Electricity crackled like lightning strikes, and Kate gripped Rove harder.  But the vents worked and when the fog cleared, Cyclone remained lying on the gurney, but he no longer looked like a servant of darkness.  His skin and brown hair were back, and also restored was his Space Marauder attire, only it took on a silver luminance and no longer glowed with the energy of harnessed Maelstrom.

They watched as his eyes opened, their color a normal blue, and he got up on his feet.  He seemed to wobble a bit.  When he didn’t fall, he took a step forward.

Tiberius all but disabled the Imagination shields in time for Kate to launch herself off of Rover’s person and onto Cyclone’s, and that nearly tipped him.  “You’re back, you’re back, you’re back,” she sang over and over again with increasing falter, and increasing grip, until Cyclone reached up to her touch her arm and she peeled back.

“Yes,” he said softly.  “I’m back... and I have no idea where from.”

Young Tiberius cleared his throat by the door.  “I presume you still have your powers?”

“Rude,” Rover muttered.

“Time is of the essence, and its running out,” the man said curtly.  “Now,” he paused.

Cyclone answered by conjuring a ball of lighting that hovered just over his palm, closed within the sphere of his grasp, but not burning him.

“You and your girlfriend better be as powerful as your previous Maelstrom self,” continued Tiberius.  He looked at Intrepid.  “You owe me that.”  He turned back to the Nexus Figures.  “Now, to our next stop...”

He turned on his heel and was into the hallway, headed to another room.

This one was filled with cryogenic stasis pods, at least 50.  Many were full, with some in between empty and powered down.  Inside the ones that were on, visible behind layers of frost and ice, where the still, shadowed shapes of minifigures long not animated, but preserved...

“You didn’t dare dig them from the ground-” Intrepid started.

“No, nephew,” Tiberius said, “these bodies are reconstructed.  Rebuilt, with Imagination, like you do when you smash.  My work utilized Imagination, as well as Maelstrom.  You wouldn’t want to wake up a pile of disjointed limbs.”

“I think I might have a few times on the way here.“ Cyclone said, rubbing his forehead.  “I’m starting to remember... things.”

“So how will we access the pocket dimension?” Intrepid demanded.

“Not we; they.” Tiberius pointed two fingers at Cyclone and Kate.  “It’s about six miles up, and a conduit of fractured dimension must be maintained between it and this room.  With chaotic forces, implementing such a conduit would be easy.  But to destroy Unverse with Imagination means concentration, and finesse.  You, Nexus Figures, must imagine the world around you like a single strand in a twisted, intertwined mass of fabric... and rotate that strand in the certain spot where it meets with our pocket dimension enough that it loosens so slightly.  Twist too much and you rip a hole in Unverse, like Red so eloquently described.”

Cyclone and Kate had closed their eyes as he spoke.  They stood separately, Cyclone’s face the pinnacle of calm, while Kate’s lines were scrunched up in concentration.

The room twitched ever so slightly, with vibrations barely perceptible, growing in intensity over time.  Rover, Blade, the Tiberiuses, and Intrepid looked for handles to hold onto, while Cyclone and Kate stayed rigid still.  A low ring because to increase in frequency, becoming piercing.  Flames of Imagination erupted around the Nexus Figures’ bodies.  Blade jumped toward them but Rover held him back.  The ship shook.  In the corner of their eyes, they could see but not discern a glowing white light, as the Unverse between their dimension and the pocket was separated.

Then the stasis pods began to swing open.

Fifty-Nine

Ice fog misted out from each of the yawning cryogenic pods.

Intrepid, Rover, Blade, Tiberius, and Tiberius stared at the rows of them, expectantly.  Cyclone and Kate didn’t stop releasing Imagination.

“Think someone should tell them they can stop now?” Blade hissed.

“Wait,” Intrepid said, as the first person stepped out from cryogenic sleep.

They were clothed, surprisingly, in a tattered jacket, pants torn at one leg, and a stained black backpack.  They also had a pointed quartz blade for a left arm.

“Yeah, tell them,” Intrepid jerked his chin at the Nexus Figures while grabbing whoever was closest to him and jumping back, pulling Old Tiberius and Rover towards the door.  More Stromlings had exited the pods now.  Blade shouted Cyclone’s and Kate’s names while running towards them.  Cyclone opened one eye, then grabbed Kate.  The Imagination fire that surrounded them instantly shut off.

Intrepid ushered them through the doorway, once they were out he shut the door.  Then he wheeled on Tiberius.  “You said-”

“Rift!” Tiberius shouted.  “That’s what went wrong.  They,” he pointed at Cyclone and Kate, “couldn’t hold the dimensional connection in the necessary balance so chaotic forces have arrived and infected it all!”

“No,” Old Tiberius shook his head, “it was a failure from the start.”

“Couldn’t we disinfect them all, like you did for Cyclone?” Rover asked.

“What did you say about chaotic forces?” Intrepid repeated.

“The ship is still shaking.” Kate alerted.

The door began to bend outward as the Stromlings hammered it from the other side.

“I think we can divert the disinfecting solution into the ventilation system of that room,” Rover said.

“No we can’t,” Intrepid shook his head forcefully, “because there’s now an Unverse rift open right above our heads, and I can assure you there’s Maelstrom coming out of it this second.”  He lifted up the briefcase.  “And we need to throw this in.  Tiberius, you’ve done nothing but waste my time, our time, the entire multiverse’s time.”

“That’s not set in stone.” Tiberius seethed.

“I’ll make it.” Intrepid swore.

He spun on his heel briefcase in hand, about to dart down the ship’s hall to its exit, to climb up the stairs, to leave the house, to get up in a rocket, to fly the Unverse bomb into the rift, to go with it if it came to that.

He would have if an Unverse Manipulated rift didn’t open in front of him, a foot above the ground,and several things were wrong.  First, the rift’s clouds were not their usual blue hue.  Their color was purple, an indication of Maelstrom infection in the surrounding Unverse.  Then Red jumped out, Evelyne in her arms.  Fast moving fog spilled out around them until the rift closed.  Intrepid leaned forward and spread his arms.  Red’s knees buckled as soon as she touched the ground and she pitched to the side, sending Evelyne tumbling.  Not that it would hurt her... Intrepid grabbed Red and eased her to the ground.  Her shoulders were cold to the touch and where his arms rushed her jacket he recoiled, it was stained purple in many places.  Intrepid flinched, then gingerly pulled up her sleeves. Her left forearm had a crystalline hue.

“You’re infected,” he muttered.  “Breathe.”

“I know,” she panted, “but you were expecting me, and Evelyne... I had thought, for once, maybe this plan would work...”

“We both hoped.” Intrepid stood up, then swung to Old Tiberius.  “Get that disinfection chamber prepped again.”

The old man nodded and turned to go, when Evelyne growled.

Noticing her reanimated, Intrepid recovered from his double take and amended, “No wait, Rover, do what you said.  Rewhatevering the disinectiowhatever.”

“It’ll take a few minutes,” Rover said.  His hand was instinctively reaching for his holstered pistol, but consciously he kept himself from pulling it out and shooting at the imminent Stromling threat.

Intrepid glanced at the timer in the briefcase.  “You have five.”  He reached into his backpack, searching for something.  “Anyone have a stungun-”

“I got this,” Blade slung off his backpack and sent his hands spiraling in.  They came back with a dark, chipped sword that he guided in a pattern around Evelyne’s Stromling form, but not hitting her.  On the third pass an energy shield surrounded the Stromling’s feet.  “Scimitar of Rooting,” Blade said with a nod, then he joined Rover at a computer terminal.

“I’ll divert it through the entire ventilation system,” Rover said, “since that door aint gonna hold and we’d better get off the ship.  But it’ll take who knows how much longer...”

“And,” Blade said, inspecting a radar reading, “there’s Maelstrom landing across the city.”

“We’ll deal with them,” Kate said, cracking her knuckles and sending sparks of Imagination out with each pop.  Cyclone nodded.

“Let’s move.”  Intrepid waved Cyclone and Kate, then the Tiberiuses, down the ramp.  Rover and Blade stepped around Evelyne, who remained rooted.  Blade gave Intrepid a pat on the shoulder as they departed.  Then Intrepid reached for the last remaining person, still seated on the ground and breathing quite heavily, but she shrugged away.

“I stay on the ship,” Red said through grit teeth.  “I need dis...infection as much as Evelyne... as the others.”

“It’ll take time to fill the atmosphere, you heard Rover.” Intrepid said.  “We can find a personal kit outside-”

“Just go.” she ordered, closing her eyes.

Intrepid left.

Sixty

The rift looked like a long scar, jagged, purple, and pulsating in the dark sky.  It was scarred in the sense that a pocket dimension had existed therein for a decent amount of days.  Now torn open, spiderlike Maelstrom creatures with spindly legs and glowing undersides descended out of it, coming through it from their own dimension to infect this one.

So blowing up their mine had slowed the Maelstrom down somewhat, Intrepid thought as he darted to his rocket.  Without their industrial scale breachers, the Maelstrom could not send their entire arsenal of spaceships, tanks, and pirate ships across Unverse.  Instead they sent basically the sent thing, just smaller, and organic.  Each lander was large enough to carry two normal spiderlings, or three mechs, or ten Stromlings on its back.  Their genetic code also seemed to contain rocket science, with the glow in their undersides suggesting some chemical reaction directing thrust downward to slow their descent.

“Think we can make a shield to protect the entire city?” Cyclone asked.

“No,” Kate shook her head, “we definitely don’t have enough mojo for that.  Best save it until we really need it.”

“So plain old basic combat.” Cyclone said, unholstering his weapons.

“Yeah.”  He aimed his rocket launcher upward and Kate her arrows.  The landers with their spinning, articulating legs were still several hundred feet up, but with Imagination anything is possible.  Their weapons hit several of the closest landers, either tearing holes in their armor in the case of the rockets or setting them on fire in the case of the arrows.  Spiderlings and mechs began falling downward in small groups, disappearing behind buildings and trees and out of view as they neared the ground.  Some Stromlings deployed parachutes from their backpacks.

“I wish we had those,” Rover grumbled.  He went to a semi-smashed Stromling that fell close enough and completed the deed.  He raised special binoculars that detected Maelstrom to his face and looked around.  “This is hitting more than we can cover, we need to finish this.”

They turned to Intrepid who already threw the briefcase into his pod rocket and was climbing in, until Kate called, “Wait!”

Distant roars came out of the rift, followed by a dragon, followed by another dragon.  Within ten seconds a line of fifty flying dinosaurs were on a helical flightpath out of one point on the rift toward the ground, then splitting up to cover various points of the sky.  Then another line of dragons spawned from a different point on the scar, corresponding to a different point in Unverse.  From another dimension?  Or traveling between the one they were in?  It didn’t matter, they were all problems.

That’s a problem, Intrepid thought.  In between multilegged landers, spiderlings, mechs, and parastromlings rocketing to the rift was hard enough.  Adding dragons to the equation made a hard job harder.  His neck was still craned upward when someone started banging on his rocket.  He looked over as Kate swung herself over the cabin edge and took a seat at the rear.  “I’ll be gunner,” she said.  This pod rocket didn’t have turrets.  They both knew she meant her powers.

Then another sound came out of the rift that made all else go quiet.  The landers paused their descent, the dragons stopped roaring, and the minifigures watched in silent distress as a trail of fog shot out of the rift, from the same point as the first dragons, and twisted straight to the ground.  The dragons swooped alongside the fog in escort, and Rover aimed his pistol up and fired, spurring the others into action.  Intrepid only had Red’s gun but he fired anyway, just for the sake of resistance, and knowing they tried.  Conjured lightning brought down some of the dragons and an Imagination whirlwind buffeted the others, but the pillar of fog was unperturbed in its path to the ground.  It impacted on the other end of the park and a rippling wave of Maelstrom shot outward, turning the ground black and like a bomb blast trees and statues were knocked down, benches overturned, and water bodies vaporized.

If not for Cyclone and Kate throwing a glistening protective shield in front of them, they would have all been infected when the Maelstrom reached them.  The Maelstrom wave bounced off and went around and over, and a chill surrounded them.  Next to Intrepid, Kate grit her teeth and noticeably trembled from the exertion of keeping the protection active.

Then the wave stopped, the shield dropped, and Kate took a deep breath, then they all nearly had heart attacks.

At the end of the park, megasized and grinning his terrible smile, trunk sized feet planted in the blast epicenter: the Darkitect.

Sixty-One

“I saw your laser fire on the way down!” the corruption of Baron Typhonus’s likeness boomed sinisterly.  “Did you really think you could stop me?”

“No,” Kate whispered so only Intrepid heard her since they were both in the rocket. 

“I heard that!” taunted the Darkitect.  “Now, foolish minifigures - I gave you the choice to accept infection when I first arrived, but you stupidly rejected it!  So now you will all die.”  He tapped his scepter on the ground and a ball of electricity appeared over its crystal, fizzing wildly and bouncing off its invisible containment.  “Only, I have to choose... who wants to die first?”

He pointed the scepter at a nearby complex and let loose, the electricity arced out and as fast as light, covered the entire structure.  Flame burst over it and in seconds the building fell, each speck of debris staying alight with the destructive sparks until they were demolecularized, and nothing tangible remained.

“A very painful end, as you can imagine, haha!” the Darkitect turned his attention back to the Nexus Forcers.  He tapped a wrist and shook his tophatted head.  “If no one steps forward now, I’ll just kill you all and then infect this planet-”

He was interrupted by an energy blast hitting him in the face, but it came at an angle of depression from above his line of sight.  Another transdimensional rift had opened, and like the one Red had emerged from it was tainted purple from the infected Unverse.  But the spaceship that emerged had shields to protect it.  It was a Venture class painted black and green, moving too fast for any logos to be discerned, but Intrepid could guess what they identified.

“Wish I’d thought of that,” he said, of the shields. 

The Darkitect raised his staff to protect himself but the Venture engaged its hyperdrive, and suddenly the Darkitect’s staff began a long, tipping fall to the ground.  His left hand was gone, and there was a large, Venture Explorer sized hole in his face.  Two miles behind him a column of flame erupted over the cityscape, followed by the sound of the explosion.

Despite no longer having a face, a chilling sound still came from the Darkitect, the bending and twisting sound of reconstructing bone, that morphed into a deep roar as dark forces rebuilt his face.  “Arrrghourhghrrrrfffffooools!” he shouted into the air.  “Foolhardy minifigures!”  He spat a toxic goo with bone fragments onto the ground before him, from which spiderlings began to climb out.

But the rift that the first spaceship had exited did not close, and more spaceships, these ones painted in Nexus Force white, came out from it to take various places in the sky.  There were fighting cruisers and transports, the latter from which Sentinel, Venture, Assembly, and Paradox forces began rappelling out.  By the appearance of their uniforms, they were from their own dimension.  Suave Able Cat was one of the first Sentinels on the ground, and Rover ran to meet him.

“Nexus Tower is all clear,” Suave told his colleague, “and then some Future Dimensioners showed up, telling us to come here.  We got here as fast as we could... admittedly, faster than I thought possible.”

The others heard the update on their personal communicators.

As immediately as they showed up the Nexus Force spaceships began firing all means of ordnance, rockets, guided missiles, lasers, artillery at the Darkitect, who defended himself with a shield.  By this time several of the landers had landed and Maelstrom ground forces advanced from their side of the park, and wherever else they landed in the city.  Those ones seemed to ignore passerby, focused only on getting to the park where the Nexus Force had congregated.  This was where they would stand.

Intrepid glanced at the briefcase.  The two minute marker passed as he watched.  “This has to get up there,” he repeated, concerning the scar in the sky, as he watched the battle.  He began launch preparations on the rocket when Kate tugged his arm.  “Look.”

Not only Stromlings were entering through the outskirts of the park.  From the same direction Intrepid, Kate, Rover, Cyclone, and Blade had entered from, the direction from the Talmid’s house, came a group of at least fifty minifigures, armed with a variety of handguns and some basic melee weapons, swords and axes, bats and hammers.  Leading the procession was Red, completely disinfected.

Intrepid’s heart stopped, and he immediately looked for Tiberius.  He was due some credit.  His plan had worked, not at all how it was meant to... but in the end the effect was the same.

“I see we have our first volunteers!” the Darkitect proclaimed, and Intrepid’s heart restarted, radiating a surging pain throughout his chest.  The Baron had turned to face the revived Elistrans as well, and like a magnet his staff flew to his hand, and he pointed it at them.  He was going to kill them all, and kill Red.  Intrepid worked at the rocket faster and engaged the throttle, the main engine roared to life with a cone of flame shooting loudly outward, its crackle drowning out everything but the Darkitect’s terrible laughter as an arc of electricity formed.

He wouldn’t be fast enough to intercept the shot with the rocket, Intrepid thought, he didn’t even know if it would stop it from continuing on, still he tried - but maybe, he realized, with a manipulator he could place himself right in the destructive arc’s path, sacrificing himself to save Red.

And that is how events proceeded to transpire.  A personal unverse breach opened in the air between the Darkitect and the arriving defenders, through which Intrepid emerged.  He began to fall as soon as he jumped out, but his backpack was open and all manners of objects flew out behind him, weapons and models and bricks and clothes, like a pillar of falling objects, some falling faster and others slower, like a lightning rod.  The arc struck the topmost item and worked its way down, vaporizing each one until it struck Intrepid Fusion Eclipse and in a flash of light and a burst of flame, he was gone.

Across the park, Red stopped moving.  Her grip on her weapon tightened, her other first flexed and unflexed.  Her mouth opened into a scream that could not be heard across the distance.  Inside the rocket, Kate shouted, “No!”  Beside her, Intrepid felt like he’d been fatally shot.  In a way he had been.  Future Intrepid was dead.

Sixty-Two

Heart hammering in his chest, Intrepid finalized the launch procedures and pulsed the throttle.  The rocket roared and threatened to take off.  “Get ready to do some shooting,” Intrepid said and disengaged the landing brake, then he and Kate were thrown into the backs of their seats as the rocket nosed up to the sky, the scar directly ahead and closing.  Between them and in, hundreds of Maelstrom landing craft, dragons, and the Darkitect.

“Just focus on flying,” Kate said, and suddenly it all darkened.

Fog filled the environment outside the windows, blocking all view of the Maelstrom, while rain plattered down in long drops.  Thunder rumbled blatantly close as lightning flashed around them, it hadn’t been raining a moment before, but still the rocket pushed itself higher.  Flashes of white and sparks of yellow indicated the moments Maelstrom landers were struck by the lightning and set aflame, their burn casting orange glows around the path of the rocket.  Dragon roars sounded miles away, and the battle was miles below and increasing.

Intrepid turned off his earpiece, it had gone staticy in the deluge anyway.  The Nexus Force was managing, with extreme difficulty, to hold off the Maelstrom forces.  But he could not concern himself with that.  The scar in the sky was close, and he heard it before he saw it.  It was the sound of nothing.

He must have blinked.  When he opened his eyes, he saw nothing either.

He remembered this nothingness.  It was Unverse, the emptiness between Universes.  But he was still in the rocket.  He still felt the seat fabric behind him, and the faux leather briefcase leaning on his shin.  He clenched his fingers around the handle.  Then he heard a sound that he did not remember, something just outside comfortable hearing range, that if he strained to hear sounded like crackling radio static.

Lines of visual noise come out of the blackness, static and gray, jagged and irregular, the effects of broken Unverse.

Then he began to hear sounds that he did remember.  Soft, unintelligible hissings that in all the time he’d heard, he never understood... and a low droning roar like waves, crashing over and over.

He ignored it.  He focused on doing his job.  Light seemed to work differently in Unverse so he felt blindly for the canopy latch and pushed it open.  There was no change in pressure.  The briefcase was still gripped in his left hand.  He heaved it up and out of the rocket, and in his mind’s eye pictured it floating into the abyss.  He had delivered it.  Now he had to get out, except he had not gotten in with an unverse manipulator that he could now tell to take him out.

Then the whispers became louder, and another crack in unverse appeared.  It was strange, how spontaneous things were in this realm.  This crack was a different gray than the others, solid instead of stippled, and it was not jagged.

Another pocket dimension? Intrepid thought.  The whispers seemed to separate as the line seemed to uncoil.  Then a light shone through, a whiteness that illuminated the interior of the rocket, and real sounds began to return.  The burn of the rocket’s engine.  Reality was leaking through... or they were leaking into reality.  He heard the sound of his breathing.  He heard the sound of Kate’s breathing.  He’d forgotten he was not alone in the rocket.

The glow of the pocket dimension nearly entirely encompassed the rocket now.  He saw the colored lights of the instrument panel, the swirl of the canopy glass, droplets of water that had stuck to the rocket from the storm, now sliding off and falling to an unseen ground.

He tuned in on the whispers again, except now they were words.

Then reality came crashing through and the rocket split apart.  They were falling, like the water, through a gradient black and whiteness.  Grabbing his left arm was Kate.  And grabbing his right arm was Red.  In her other hand was an Unverse Manipulator.

He felt whiplash as they were concussively yanked out of the pocket dimension and through unverse back to their original dimension.  After an amount of time he could not discern, he blinked and tried to sit up, but found he could not move.  There was a ringing in his ears that was slowly quieting, so he could hear someone yelling, “Don’t move your head!  Your neck is broken!”  Did thinking count as moving his head, he wondered, before dipping back into unconsciousness.

Sixty-Three

“Name?”

“Intrepid Fusion Eclipse.”

“Date of birth?”

He provided it.

“Sign please.”

He set down his duffel bag and did so.  The front end receptionist smiled.  “Have a good day, Mr. Eclipse,” she said, and he picked up the bag and left through the glass doors.

It was a week after the battle when Intrepid was set free from the residential care ward in Nexus Tower.  Proximity to the Imagination Nexus, according to experts, would accelerate his healing, which it did.  The field medics on Elistra had quick-fixed his spinal cord, which was one of the reasons he was still alive.  There were other reasons, he suspected, that he hadn’t yet been able to confirm from a hospital bed.  But now he was out and about, so ideally he only needed to find some acquaintances to get that answered.

He didn’t need to go far, he ran into seven in the lounge across the hall, watching the transport ships dock and undock at the landing pads.  Most were seated facing the windows, but Shira was leaning boredly on a pillar, earbuds on, but when she saw him enter she perked up.

Instead of saying anything, she began to clap.

The others turned around.  Luke and Mara Mercury tore off their couches and nearly sent Intrepid back into the recovery ward with their suffocatingly tight embrace.  Luke let go quickly enough.  “You’re baaaaaack,” Mara sobbed, clutching him around the ribs tighter.

“I appreciate the reception,” Intrepid said, trying to push her off.  Then he glanced at the others.

Edgar was taking long strides toward him.  “Good to see you back,” the young man said, hand stretched forward.  Intrepid reached around Mara to grip it and they shook.  He saw Cyclone and Kate off to the side, standing together, and at them Intrepid nodded.  They smiled back. Then he saw the other girl standing next to Shira, and time seemed to stop.

Mara let go of him and he took a halting step towards them.  Then another.  When she was within an arm's length he raised a hand, tentatively, and felt the fabric of her coat, held up by the firmness of her shoulders.  She reached up with her own hand and cupped the back of his.

“I didn’t think I’d see you again,” Intrepid said at last.

“No, me neither.” Evelyne said.

He held her gaze for a long while, only looking away to look around.  Shira and Evelyne were the only others of his kin present, which could only suggest... some things had changed, and some things hadn’t.

He continued looking around.  In both directions the Nexus Tower hallways were empty to the next cross junctions, where no one he recognized were visible for the fleetest of moments.  He would have expected one more person to be around.  “Where’s Red?” he said at last.

No one spoke.  Cyclone and Kate glanced at each other.  Edgar opened his mouth, and closed it again, as if he had something to say but wasn’t sure how to phrase it.  “She is,” he started.

“She’s gone,” Shira inserted.  “But... not like, dead, or missing.”

“I saw her,” Cyclone said, “after you and Kate reappeared.  You were both out cold, but one moment she was standing there with you, the next,” he made a flashing gesture with his hands, “poof.”

Typical.  “So the battle was... won?” Intrepid said.  “Is the war over?”

“We have a lot to fill you in on.” Edgar said.

...

After the Unverse cementer went off and the scar was sealed, evident by the blackness between it turning a nondescript gray, all Maelstrom activity from the other dimension began to self destruct, as Cyclone put it.  The Maelstrom landers had smashed, the Spiderlings died, the mechs deactivated, and Stromlings keeled over and died, smashing and leaving their stolen Nexus Force armor.  The Darkitect had deformed into a pool of sludge that evaporated within seconds, before having a chance to fully pool.  Without a link to their source dimension, none of the purely Maelstrom manifestations could be maintained across the divide.  They had killed a Darkitect, but not before many brave fighters were felled.

As expected, all transdimensional devices were rendered inoperable by the change in Unverse state.  Assembly and Paradox researches who had begun to study it, with the help of those from the Future Dimension who had crossed over, theorized that the device had altered the entire composition of matter in the space between spaces.  It could not be separated by Maelstrom anymore.  The technology developed to traverse it so far all incorporated some amount of Maelstrom energy.  Unverse travel as they knew it was now impossible, the ability to travel to other dimensions was gone, but so was the threat of transdimensional Maelstrom.

The Future Dimension’s Grand Masterly Shadow, Elite Distant Tofu, Skilled Honored Ninja, Cailan and Crimson Mercury, and Tiberius were known to be permanent residents now.  Strange Odd Shadow, from the so-called “Janitor Dimension” that was named after him, was accounted for as well.  So unless she’d very quickly skipped out, Red was still around somewhere, too, and Intrepid intended to find her.

The revival of fifty Elistrans whose creative sparks were somehow maintained in a pocket dimension also had ramifications regarding the others in the Talmid family who were smashed.  They were not among the fifty, and neither were Hazel or Quinn.  Another variable to consider was the existence of another pocket dimension, which Intrepid and Kate had nearly fallen into, before Red rescued them.  The agglomeration of Unverse meant reaching these dimensions for the possibility of recovering more creative sparks was simply impossible.  But it brought about a change in status for all those lost on Elistra two years before.  They were no longer KIA, but MIA.  It was a change that allowed for hope.

...

Night had fallen and cool winter air turned Intrepid’s breath to frost as he approached the coastal cliffs of Nimbus Station, overlooking the ocean expanse.  The grass was frosted beneath his boots, crunching with each step.  In the sky, the comet Frostburg was visible on its annual pass through the system.  Its otherworldly glow added to the myriad of other worlds, and the pillar of Imagination, casting their spectral reflections off the water, and illuminating the hillside in this undeveloped part of Nimbus Station.

She was standing at the top of the incline, the edges of her cloak twitching in the slight breeze.  As he got close she turned around and withdrew her hood, so Intrepid could see her face.  She had done good to clean herself up, he was glad to see.  Her layers were cut uniformly shorter and her bangs were swept back.  Gone were the bruises of combat, and only one scar had formed on the right of her face, upon closer inspection.

They were face to face.

“Thirty days.” Intrepid broke the silence.  “People have been looking for you.”

“I’ve counted too.” Red said evenly.  “I’ve come to a decision that required dislocation... it’s the time it took for me to reach it myself.  I couldn’t let anyone sway it.”

He regarded her, and all that she’d been through, that he knew of, which admittedly didn’t amount to much.

“You don’t need to be alone,” Intrepid stated with firmity.  “There’s people who care about you.  I care about you.”  He removed a hand from his sweater pocket, held it out in the frigid air, a beacon of warmth.  “Come with me.  Where else can you go?”

She slid a hand out from her own cloak, started to repeat the gesture, to join hands and never separate them, but she stopped midway.  His hands lingered, waiting for contact.  He stared at her face.  She was looking down.

“I’m sorry.” she said softly.  “Maybe one day, you’ll understand.”

A whirlwind of blue clouds, spinning and expanding larger and faster opened behind her and she jumped backward.  There was light at the end of the tunnel, like sunlight.  Another world.  Another dimension.  Intrepid lunged forward, as if to grab her, but once she passed the threshold the vortex collapsed.  He stumbled through the space where she had been, falling into the frost and cursing in disbelief.

He stayed on the ground, puffs of breath adding condensation to the blades of grass across from his face.  Slowly, he pushed himself to his feet, and unsteadily rose to contemplate what he’d just seen.

A transdimensional maneuver.  Impossible, but she’d done it.  If she could do it, he could too.

She could run, but he would find her.

 

End

Next: Instead of an Epilogue