Thread:FleetCaptainT/@comment-27324808-20180206041245

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 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.

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