The world, so far as I’d experienced it, could be a
really fun place, a really sad place, an exciting place, and a truly horrifying
place. Today was doing its best to create another version. Today, the world was
a really, REALLY, F@%#ed up place.
Why do
I say that?
What
other way is there to describe it when you are doing your best to prevent a
massacre between swarming Neanderthals and NASA astronauts? A freakish tear
ripped in the open air and dozens of the primitive beings poured out and charged
the fence around the towering rocket.
Fortunately,
with my newfound ability to shapeshift into elemental matter, keeping the two
factions apart wouldn’t be as big a challenge as it once would have been. I’d managed
to sneak away from the group of Sagan Academy students I’d gone on a class trip
to watch the rocket’s launch, secretly taken on my Madam Marvelous persona, and
flew to the fenced off area between the viewing station where my classmates
were and the launchpad. Once there, I ignited myself into a body of pure
flames.
The
Neanderthals skidded to a stop. Their cries of fear were horrible. Fierce screams
of terror and rage but seeing me didn’t drop them to their knees to cower at my
presence. The began to pick up rocks, sticks, and possibly some newly dropped
fecal matter at me, trying to drive me off. I raised an arm and the debris flared
red-hot for an instant before disintegrating into ash.
They
didn’t have the ability to harm me in this shape, but I could hurt them badly
if I weren’t careful. However they came to be here, I doubted it was on
purpose.
Sirens blared behind me, signaling
the launch wouldn’t continue, seeing as the technical staff seemed to be
running to their vehicles as quickly as possible. I sighed in relief. Despite
being technically superior to the Neanderthals, there are some modern people
who match their hostility. I was worried guns might come out of some guard’s
holster and make this far more deadly than it needed to be.
I needed a form that I could use to
drive the visitors to my world back to where they came from. Being made of
fire, maybe I still looked too much like a person. Maybe I needed to look more
like something they would fear. Contrary to the movies, I knew they wouldn’t
know a dinosaur if they saw one, so I needed something just as savage but with
fur. Lots of fur.
I shifted into a very, very wooly
mammoth with the longest tusks I could manage, the best creature I could
picture to herd the primitive people. After several minutes of running and
chasing down darters, I managed to drive them back through the crack in the
air. I trumpeted loudly, trying to signal to them a simple message. “Get out
of here, and don’t come back without a better attitude. And a bath.”
The area was abandoned by pretty
much everyone. Some remained in the nearest parking lot, likely belonging to
the most hardened members of NASA’s staff who refused to leave their post. My
bus had departed from the observation lot, but a familiar blue Volkswagen Beetle
sat next to where it had been. A doting, grandmotherly figure waved at me through
an open window to her car.
Shifting into my favorite avian
form, a snowy white owl, I launched into the air and headed to Eggie, my
electric grandmother, to find out what BADGE needed from me this time.
“Oh, hello poppet,” she said from
within the car as I landed beside the passenger door.
Reverting into my Madam Marvelous
body, I opened the door. As I swung my leg in to slide in beside her, I froze
in shock. Her face, wrinkled and soft as always, was in her gloved hands. Where
her face should have been was a metallic framework with two large eyes inside hollow
sockets and all the tiny machinery that connected neatly to multiple metal rods
where her lips should have been. “What happened to you?”
“Nothing, dearie,” she said as the
rods shifted at angles trying to form a smile. “Just putting on my face. When I
was explaining to your chaperones how your aunt and uncle asked me to pick you
up for a visit while you were in state, a foul bird decided to try to steal
some of my hair for a nest. After the bus departed, I thought I would have time
to fix the muss.”
“I don’t have an aunt or uncle in Florida,
so why are you really here,” I asked as I finished getting in the car.
Eggie put her mask back on, and the
Mrs. Doubtfire visage returned. “Trouble at the BADGE Stellar Arena. Director
Nova has called in all agents, even probationary ones like yourself.”
“How did you get here so fast?” I
asked as Eggie started the engine.
Turning the key in the ignition,
her car sprang to life. “I’m always close to you, dearie, just in case of
emergencies like this. Buckle up, it’s going to be a bumpy ride.”
As she said that, a roaring sound came
up from behind us. I turned to see the BADGE shuttle we usually drove into appear
in the sky and dive toward us. The Beetle rocked as it passed inches overtop of
us and dropped to the ground as its back loading ramp lowered. In perfect
synch, Eggie put the car into drive as the shuttle hovered millimeters above
the ground and brought us aboard. The instant the rear tires hit the ramp, it
began to rise, sliding the car forward until it locked into place and the
shuttle began to lift into the sky.
She wasn’t kidding. Director Nova
wanted heroes at the Stellar Arena A.S.A.P.!
We departed the Beetle and headed
to the cabin of the shuttle. After buckling in, I glance outside and realized
the arc of the shuttle wasn’t taking us straight up into space. “I keep
thinking the space station is over my head, but I guess it could be anywhere
over the planet, couldn’t it.”
“Yes, but somehow this new opponent
has made getting there even harder.” Eggie flipped a few switches and pressed
some buttons, comfortably navigating a course for us.
“How?” I asked, following her
motions closely. I felt I could easily be responsible enough to pilot a shuttle,
or even a car, but both BADGE and my parents firmly pronounced I wasn’t to
learn how to do either for a few more years. “Has the station been moved out of
its orbit?”
“Yes,” Eggie said, “and no. The chronal
location isn’t constant.”
“Chronal location?” What in the
world is chronal location? Then it struck me like a hammer to my temporal lobe (pun
intended). “It’s moving in time?”
“More like time is moving around it,”
Eggie replied. “Several of the first heroes on scene noticed a strange haze
around the station. When they tried to make their way to the hanger bays, they
found themselves either moving too fast or too slow to navigate their way in. Some
came very close to crashing against the station’s hull.”
Wow. I don’t think that anyone is
offering spaceside assistance for accidents in high orbit. Crashing would be
deadlier than ever. “How are we supposed to get in then?”
“Gar and others have found a way
around that hiccup, for now. They’ve installed tethers that attach to the
incoming shuttles to guide them in or heroes who can portal like Crossroads are
bridging the gap for others.”
It was amazing to see what could be
accomplished when heroes worked together. I welled with pride, thinking about
myself as one of them, then a single pang of shame weighed down in the pit of
my stomach. What good was I, a probationary field agent who could turn into
animals do against something that could control time.
Avoiding a steampunk dirigible on
its way to one of the entry hangers, Eggie engaged a new device I’d never seen
used aboard the shuttle before. A robot arm extended out from beneath the
shuttle and readied. We drew in closer and Eggie maneuvered the arm to grab
ahold of one of many thin bits of cable dangling in space.
“There we go, poppet. Now the
station can pull us in as easily as a fish on a hook,” Eggie said as she clapped
her hands together. “Now, as we have a few moments to ourselves, what shall we
do with the time.”
I stared at her, unsure of her
meaning. “I’m not really in the mood for a snack or a nap, Eggie. I want to get
in there and help the others.”
“Oh dear me, I forgot the macaroons.”
Eggie reached into her oversized purse, decorated with pastel yellow flowers,
and retrieved a small plastic bin. She tossed it onto my lap when I didn’t
reach out to take it. “Don’t be surly, girl. You don’t want to go into battle
with your tummy rumbling.”
I opened the top and found beautifully
baked pink and purple cookies inside. Grudgingly, I picked one up and popped it
in my mouth. “Thanks.”
“I’m glad you haven’t completely
forgotten your manners, dearie,” Eggie said. She turned her attention to a
monitor on the shuttle’s dashboard. “What I was trying to hint at is when one
has an opportunity to do so before a fight, one should surveil their opponent
and seek out their weaknesses and strengths. Remember, as Bruce Lee said, ‘Use
only that which works, and take it from any place you can find it.’”
I nodded, appreciating her advice
now that I knew what she meant, but feeling foolish as well. I’d been training
as a hero for months now, so I should have thought about doing what she
suggested when we were traveling to the station. Putting another delicious
cookie in my mouth, I watched the monitor as the screen displayed the battle within
the arena.
Father Time stood almost as if he barely
noticed the heroes. Their attacks either traveled through him as he went incorporeal,
or he blipped out of their path with as much effort as it took the wind to toss
around a falling leaf. Heroes such as Hanzo, The Gentleman, Midgardsormr, and
Magnificent Punlork each stood toe to toe with Father Time, using their powers
in astonishing ways. Hanzo moved so fast, there almost seemed to be four different
versions of him on the field of battle, attacking the bearded old geezer from
different directions. Krystal Fae and Slayer B.A.S. were both there, hurling
spells and crossbow bolts at Father Time, with Astra alongside of them as she
used her telekinetically enhanced martial arts.
Father Time’s attacks were far more
subtle. He would wave a hand and alter the flow of time, causing heroes to move
into the paths of their peer’s attacks. Hot Wings was struck by a glittering
stream of red energy and one of his wings rusted and came close to
disintegrating as it aged a millennium in mere seconds, forcing him to crash to
the arena’s floor and into the sublevels. IboShin gu became caught in a temporal
loop, locked into a pattern of charging at Father Time only to disappear and
reappear several yards back still charging at a target that was no longer
there.
“How am I supposed to fight against
that?” I asked Eggie as the shuttle was pulled into the hanger.
“As best you can,” she said with a
shrug. “Unless you want to go home, if this is too much for you.”
My chin hardened, as did my
resolve. “No. I have a job to do. I just don’t know how I’m going to do it yet.”
The side door popped and raised
into the ceiling as Eggie and I unbuckled. She grabbed her rocket launcher from
its storage cabinet before we departed the shuttle. I don’t think that I will
ever get used to seeing her carrying it, but at this point, every hand needed
to be on deck to take down this fearsome villain.
The station loudspeakers blared to
life, Gar’s voice shouting over static. “We need heroes to a second front. A
second Father Time entity has appeared. All new arrivals, follow the flashing
lights.”
I searched the walls, finding a
series of lights indicating a corridor leading deeper into the station. Candygirl
charged ahead of me, following the indicators. Eggie and I exchanged fast nods
and moved after her. If the second front was where we were needed, that’s where
we were heading. Furious Squirrel, Silver Paladin, Infinite Tempest, and many
other heroes flooded the corridor until we arrived at a second arena combat
chamber. A second Father Time stood inside, embroiled in battle with a new group
of heroes.
Silver Paladin extended a pair of
blue swords from mountings in his wrists. He pointed at Father Time and rushed
in, pointing a blade toward our target. “Let’s go and show him what time it really
is!”
Gar was the strongest form I knew,
so I changed into the body of the BADGE operative. Spreading my wings out overtop
of me like a shield, I made my way to the front line and joined the fight.
Globes of bright energy flew over my head as Eggie fired blasts from her bazooka.
The air all around was full of the sound of roaring flames, clicks of guns
firing, and sonic blasts from a variety of other weapons.
My
first attack at Father Time passed through him as if he were a ghost. Beside
me, Silver Paladin slashed and met the same result. I continued to attack,
driving my stone hand ineffectively through Father Time’s body. Suddenly, I
shifted back into the form of the wooly mammoth, my new body shoving several
other fighters aside as I expanded.
“Hey,”
Kairo the Great shouted. “Watch it, furball.”
I didn’t
intend to change shape. I didn’t understand how it happened until I noticed
that Silver Paladin’s gear changed as well. He now wore a t-shirt and board
shorts. We must have been struck by a temporal wave that returned us to how we
were earlier in the day.
Silver
Paladin didn’t allow the loss of his weapons to stop him. He reached forward and
grabbed ahold of Father Time’s staff and started to wrestle it from him.
That
seemed like as good a plan as any. Take a gun away from a hoodlum, they are
less dangerous. Maybe the same thing would happen if we took a staff with a big
old clock on top of it from a crotchety old man? I used my trunk to grab at the
lower part of the wooden shaft.
“Away,
both of you,” Father Time shouted and in the blink of an eye, Silver Paladin
and I were both back in the hanger. He was armored once again while I was
returned to my super-heroic form of Madam Marvelous.
I
wished his temporal powers didn’t work on me. As long as Father Time could keep
making my attacks insignificant, I was next to useless. “What do we do against him?”
Silver
Paladin turned to me as he extended his blades out from the crystals that
housed them. “He’s tough, but that’s because people are afraid of time. Time is
simply change, and to many people, change is scary.”
“I don’t
know much about fighting concepts. I fight villains, and as far as this goes,
his powers make him pretty unbeatable right now,” I replied. I needed more than
waxing poetry to help me fight Father Time. “Attacking him at range doesn’t
work, attacking him up close does no better. How do I get past his powers?”
“He is
being attacked by hundreds of heroes in there. One on one, no, we can’t defeat
him,” Silver Paladin said. “But all together, if one only one out of those
hundred hits him every second, that’s going to add up. Tap into the chaos in
that room. The more unexpected we can make what is going to happen next, the
more likely he will make a mistake.”
I
nodded. In my mind, I kept thinking about me and what I could do. I needed to
concentrate on supporting and working with all the heroes, being a team. “You’re
right. Let’s go!”
Silver
Paladin and I raced back in, joined by other heroes entering the fray. Out of a
temporal rift, I spotted a smaller, younger version of Midgardsormr slithering
alongside of us. I put aside my amusement as he surged past me, faster with
scales that I was with two feet.
The room
was full of even more heroes this time. I looked for familiar faces, both from
friends from my league and opponents from the differing training challenges. Recent
events put me up against members of the PAIN and SUFFERING leagues, but I didn’t
see many, if any, of them fighting against Father Time. I wondered where they weren’t
here in a time of such crisis. Where was El Rey, or members of the two Bomb Squad
leagues? They were heavy hitters in matches during training for these types of
events. Why was it that when bad stuff was actually going down, they were
nowhere to be seen?
Instead
of going in as Gar, I took form as the most distracting creature I could. I
became an enormous peacock and flew up into Father Time’s face. I cooed like a
peacock, cried out like one with the wail that resounded like a baby crying. My
talon’s scrapped at his face. Father Time tried to brush me away, but I wouldn’t
be moved. Seeing that I had his attention, I changed into a character from one
of my father’s favorite shows. Cardinal Ximénez from Monty Python.
“NO-body
expects the Spanish Inquisition!”
If
anything would be possible to bring chaos and distraction to the room, Monty
Python would. I ran through as much of the dialog as I could remember, shifting
into the different clerics as I recited the scene. Then, once I returned to the
form of Cardinal Ximénez, I swatted Father Time across the face.
And I
connected.
Forcing
back my glee at actually landing a blow, I continued to shapeshift into as many
distracting forms as I could. I shouted campaign promises at Father Time as
Donald Trump while wearing a bikini. I reenacted my friend Doug as he shot milk
out of his nose. I bounced around as Beebo and sang Baby Shark. Father Time
fought against the heroes, doing his worst, but every so often, I could see
that his attention was pulled to me and my crazy shenanigans, allowing other
heroes to land blow after blow.
Silver
Paladin continued to vary his attacks as well, each time aiming for different places
on Father Times body or staff. Other heroes I knew from the Star Force and Star
Force: Junior League followed suit, using random tactics and powers to try to
catch their opponent unaware.
Occasionally,
I managed to land a blow as well. Father Time wasn’t going to go down easily,
but the battle was joined as we were finally making headway against him. I took
on form after form, becoming the worst possible version of a person flipping
channels. I was very proud of my Betty White impression as I tried to tell Father
Time a St. Olaf story. My attempt to become the Spleen wasn’t as successful. I
looked like the Pee Wee Herman character from Mystery Men, but I hadn’t eaten
what I needed to have caustic flatulence like he did in the movie.
The
battle continued, blow after blow, attack after attack. Whether it was due to
Father Time or simply the effort of changing shape so often, it seemed to last
for an eternity. And it kept going, and going, and going…
