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 meanhe
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 whotold 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.

==

F**orty** ==
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 *pling*ed 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