Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Chapter I — A Return to Form in Retrospect Renewed

or

It’s a Brand New Bag

Whipping his sopping wet hair out of the barrel of water, the newly-minted President of the Remaining States of America tossed back his drenched locks, throwing aqueous aggression to the cameras held fitly toward his ascendancy to office. With a loud exclamation of breath and soft relief in feeling the coolness of the water on his brow, President Justin “Hoops” McElroy was handed a fine Egyptian cotton towel and dabbed at his face until he wasn’t constantly dripping on to the lectern. Most of the reporters were still standing in the eaves, wafting about like bats amid their own personal belfry as the President let out in a sharp whisper.

“Mic me!” he expressed before he was fitted and he pointed vaguely in the middle section of reporters as his inaugural press conference began.

“What exactly has happened? I woke up late and didn’t drink my coffee this morning and I’m very ill-prepared for this!” the devastated “Domino” McAllister offered, losing the hot scoop of his career to the low implementation of caffeine to the modern American journalist.

“Alright, don’t get your pigs into the stables, I’m gonna get pleasant and slap you with the 411, Z-Boys,” President McElroy stated as an aide handed him a folding chair.

Unfolding it, Pres. McElroy plopped his ass on to it with the back facing his audience, making it clear that he was going to be approachable and serious, but not in an ironic sense. He was down to square with the modern journalism as he hauled off for a haymaker of knowledge into the crowd, even if meant a donnybrook of learning was going to certainly start occurring.

“SO, fourteen hours ago, President Brian Wecht was having his usual bi-monthly Extreme Tennis Match with King Sexbang of the Meme Kingdom. There was a bad serve on his part and the grenade did go off and Vice-President Foley promptly resigned from his role as Acting President just about the same moment that it would’ve mattered that he said something at all. But with communication being what it is today and, frankly at this point, nobody having much of an excuse not to be able to reach a polling place by now: the people chose HOOPS! I’m President now and so far, I’ve got some new ideas that I think are gonna be pretty dope to keep in your back pocket. Now I know what you’re thinking: ‘He’s a write-in candidate! He didn’t actually do any campaigning! He’s panicking in public just as much as I, a foolish and uneducated journalist that I am would if shoved into the spotlight like an ape, dancing for his supper!’” President McElroy announced, shouting into the ether before a semblance of normality returned to the dilation of his eyes. “But I’ve got some things on my mind that I want to get off of my chest! First things first, I’m still working on who Vice-P is gonna’ actually be. My advisory council has said that I could choose one of the opponents, but I didn’t actually read a lot of the papers just yet, so I don’t really know who was in the running. It’s been Calvinball all the way down since about the Nixon Admin, not gonna’ lie to ya!” he admitted, loosening his tie while aides rolled up both of his sleeves, making it look as if he were stressed while actually achieving a sense of work ethic and dependability. It didn’t. “Second thing on the shit list!” Justin added, tapping aggressively on the screen behind him, which moved it to the next slide. It had a jagged shape showing the RSA on a map with a purple question mark over most of the area now known as the “Democratic Republic of Griffin” that was still moderately undecided on if they had rejoined the RSA just yet. Journalistic curiosity thereof was unrewarded in its presence as he prattled on: “We’re renaming the country to Future America. The big point here is that ‘Remaining States’ sounds like we’re losers and we aren’t focusing on the positive aspects of the American experience. What I’m putting down here is that we need to not sound like a nation of sad sacks, and what I hope you’re picking up is that we need to look to the future. At this point, I’m running things into a direction and I’m hoping that you all can help me guide that direction into being up. Or like… you know upwards, a rising action! But to circle back around: Future America! Let me break that down into some Frosted Mini-Wheats for smaller mouths out there; we figured out how to teleport, revolutionizing the entire Earth transportation system, we can replicate food in the home in a way that legally-speaking is just as good as real food, solar batteries are glowing in a good way and those big wacky portals in the sky are also a huge center of energy! We’re almost lousy with energy needs! We’ve actually been offered you should turn your lights off more often because people just naturally leave them on so long! Point is we’re living in the future! It’s the future now, people! Doesn’t it feel good?”

Parking his elbows on to the lectern, he groaned in having to get back up a moment and then tapped the screen once more to move to the next slide, depicting a stock picture of an American passport.

“Passports? We might get rid of them! A lot of people have realized that international travel is now as easy as getting the right settings, the right coordinates and a moderate amount of energy that we can entirely renew… that being said, maybe don’t leave the country? Not in a bad way! I’m not saying you shouldn’t leave, I’m saying I’d really prefer if you didn’t, because we think it’s still pretty cool here. At minimum, even if you don’t like your house, you still have to give them a forwarding address if you start calling the moving vans, I mean? Am I right?”

Journalists and reporters nodded agreeably to indicate that that was the case more often than not.

“Alright? Alright!” Pres. Justin tapped the screen aggressively again and it moved to a larger picture of three squares, showing off three distinct areas of a larger map, “This is Hog Nation, my own private lands which I have been buying up from private entities for certain usage that doesn’t actually need to be divested. Point is, I’m making it the 52^nd State after Neo-Ontario! Hog Nation is State# 52 of Future America, just that simple! Now so far, nobody is living there, but that’s an investment opportunity that I’m looking into in a way that isn’t also illegal!” he announced before another session of screen-tapping. “Former Vice-Vice-President Travis McElroy is currently retired to his estate at Trav Nation Isla Madre off the coast of Neo New York, but the rest of Trav Nation we are working on incorporating as a Future America Territory.”
“What about the DRG?” a reporter chimed in.

“The Democratic Republic of Griffin has chosen to elect, as Ruling Seneschal of the Unerring House of the Perfect Luminary, my baby brother Griffin McElroy yet again, and far as I can tell, they either think he’s tops and can’t be stopped or he hasn’t written it into their Constitution when it is he’s supposed to leave office, if ever. It could be a lifetime appointment for all I know, I didn’t read the book! I’m not just sitting around reading all day, I have a Secretary of Commerce for that now! Long road to come back to the old mill, but what I mean to say is I don’t know if they want to be part of the greatest nation on the planet, but they’re welcome back, I haven’t heard anything from them so far. It’s Day 1, people, these things take time, especially when we still don’t have a Congress.”

“And the Martian situation?”
“The what?”
“The situation on Mars, Mr. President…”

There was angry stage-whispering as Pres. McElroy firmly grasped his microphone and leaned one of his hands against his entirely human forehead.

“I guess that sounds like a problem? I’m haven’t read the treaty documents either. This feels like more of a UN or Interpol thing. Ya know what, I’ll have the Secretary of State brief me on this later. Right NOW? I believe I’m going to see how the Presidential bowling alley rolls!”
“What about the Jovian Embargo? Mister President?” the reporters gawked, only to see Pres. McElroy pull the mic off his shirt and dunk his head back into the barrel of water he had standing just off-stage.

As the voices of the murmuring press pool simmered around him, the dulled sounds of human worry eased as Justin closed his eyes and had a quick daydream. He thought of that sound of hitting a spare and almost did a sudden twist backwards in respect to his own imagination. There were plenty of other, far more appropriate scientific people to figure out what was going on on other planets. He was only President of one nation after all and it was, admittedly to everyone, a much bigger world going on outside the doors of the Presidential Rock Hall. Pulling his head back out and taking a breath of sweet, succulent air in both of his human lungs, Pres. McElroy felt at ease once more.

“So how the hell did they put all the water back on Mars?!” he asked once the reporters had filed out.

Chapter Text

Part 1 — The Cosmic Mystery of Planetary History

Chapter 2 — The Chronicle of X, Admiral of the New Martian Ocean

or

I’m Your New Commander

Across the demanding, dusty landscape of the Upper Martian ridges, the Queen Tyra looked out from her veranda among the Tharsis Montes. She lazily lifted the binoculars to her map-scouring eyes and glared angrily into the severe distance. The waters had come to Mars sometime in the night, unsuspected and now, all too clearly, highly unwanted. There was a large gong struck to indicate the entrance of a Martian Commander as Tyra gracefully twisted ‘round to face the doorway. The licking, erosive forces of the waters were a nettling thing in her intricate and tactical mind. A problem that one couldn’t solve by military ferocity.

“Most Powerful Queen,” the Commander darted out, a chitinous knee pressing to the floor of the dust-swept stone floor.

“Sitrep, soldier,” she replied casually, brushing back her snow-white hair to gaze upon him.

“We have attempted every form of tactical examination. There is no way to kill this water. It is able to divide itself to avoid our assault with bladed weapons or projectiles. It merely reforms. It shows some reticence to fire. When confronted by it, it sputters, but it douses flame with little need. We have attempted to cover it in oils afterward and light the oil aflame, but once it ran out, the water was still unharmed. Soldiers sent directly into conflict become entrenched in the watered ground or are engulfed by attempts to breathe through it. It seems to have no vital areas or organ systems.”
“A vexing creature… And the restraints?”
“We have managed so far to erect palisades into a stockade, though it is expected to crumple. It infects the solid ground and makes it sluggish and yielding. When we stake the ground around it, it merely infects further and then the stakes begin to sag this way and that.”

“And poisoning?”
“It seems to have a large amount of unseen salt mixed throughout it. They would likely fail. Even the dust storms yield at the edges of it. There is too much of it to be easily moved and, even when contained, it proves heavy and breaks through most containers unless trapped inside it entirely.”
“Take up your arms and be the fang of our Union. I speak for the Tharkan Tribal Union when I order you: find me what has caused these waters and bring me the one responsible!”

“Dead or living?”
“I wish to question them. You will continue deployment until your mission is achieved. When you complete your mission, you will receive blessings beyond the ken of your simplistic goals. You will have honor, glory and fourteen ducats to your genetic template.”

“A great mission indeed. I am bound by my duty to my Queen. It is my honor to find those responsible and retain them for destruction. Their execution beyond your questioning is my responsibility now.”
“Do not yield to any authority otherwise. If you are remanded as a prisoner, your worth is lost and your genetic contract esteems you shall be replaceable.”
“As any soldier would, my Queen.”
“As you have already, Commander. The original Merwyn X model proved to be… faulty. He went renegade after the Maiden Wars and attempted a Holdo Maneuver to surprise the stagnant wastelands of Venus. He was declared an outcast of Mars and was destroyed by Terran defenses. You have replaced him, Commander MX2. Do not fail me.”
“I will not fail you.”
“You won’t! I will call you personally for reports. If you are found to be powerful enough, you may have leave to whatever base or emotive ideals your puerile mind contains.”
“I only work to your honor, my Queen.”
“Preferable. Having little needs and wants of your own is what is preferred in a soldier. Stop the production of waters! It is ordered!”

And with his orders, Commander MX2 departed, his mouthless face contorted with a deep internal glee. The mouthless Martian template he was cloned from had many improvements. Among them was a biological armor unlike most creatures of the Sol System, thick like that of a beetle, but shed when needed, regrown like a snake’s skin when damaged. Like a dragon in sheen, but like a human in structure. Adapted for investigating their closest and most common suspect of their common ire (Earth,) he had only four limbs in the general 2:2 structure that most Earth humans tended to refer to as “humanoid,” since most Martians of the more powerful class could have as many as six to eight. Even the great Tars Tarkus had two on each side along with his remarkable leaping legs. Your typical human would more likely associate them with beetles, but their mawless faces disturbed them more than gnashing teeth and rending fangs would. A Martian of Comm. MX2’s class hid his fangs somewhere more convenient than on his face. At the fiercest moment of his imminent death, he would be filled with the purest ecstasy a warrior could and, dying in battle, he would receive a vision of truth unbound by the constraints of individuality, connecting with pure cosmic eternity for one constant moment… or at least before whatever metaphysical remainder that was the Commander would be dredged back out from the genetic slime pits, armored and fused back together and what constituted a Martian soul or spark of life would be remanded to a body more deserving of its use: that is, one that could still fight and kill for Mars. Such was the Martian way of life in the North Tharkan Tribal Unions; when Queen Tyra killed the former Queen Sora in hand-to-hand-to-hand-to-hand-to-hand combat, it was natural selection on Mars that she would seize power by force. It was how most things were handled outside of the United Southern Cities of the Learned Pale Martians, the Lothars of Olympus Ridge or among the former spawning salt wastes, home once to many a Martian prawn. Part of Commander MX2 wondered internally if the waters coming to Mars would perhaps restore the taste of a fine Martian paella long lost to Mars since the Screech of Suppression that destroyed the shellfish of Mars so many years past. But after distancing his thoughts with concerns of the abstract, he annihilated all thought of outside things to concentrate further on his mission of hunting down whoever was responsible for the waters returning to Mars, creating an ocean that only drove the combined might of the Tribal Unions to spuriously helpful violence. In any texture of luck, he had somewhere to stop by on the path to Earth, which usually included a few weeks of traditional space-travel. Teleportation was beginning to be a problem on Mars.

Chapter Text

Chapter 3 — The Terrifying Terrors of Terraformed Terrae

or

The Investigation Begins

“Teleportation is becoming a problem on Mars!” Vanessa Bradlingtonovna Smerdyakov-Yermloay Gonzalez-Sandiego stated as she aggressively filed her nails into fatally sharp points, “I had your… half…brother…? I had Robosaurus 2.3 out there managing a Robosaurus 3.X Line for opening teleportation stations around the Northern Regions. From what Commandant Rock has managed to find, it is likely that Two-Three is getting their head pulled off by aggressive Tharkans who don’t view them as dangerous, but do view them as invasive. The least things will upset them and they like fighting more than they like good sense or open movement…”
“And you want me to… go get them? Like, are you recalling the whole 3.X Line out there?” Beagle asked, crossing his legs to look tough for a moment as Vanessa was already starting to collapse into a free-floating anti-gravity chaise longe, sporting a rather comfortable-looking black velvet cushion atop it.

“That’s the big ticket issue, Beagle; the Teleportation Hubs are all down due to a new issue on Mars. They’ve got some… erosion thing going on.”
“Erosion?”
“’s wet out,” Leticia said, cracking a Macadamia nut in a stainless steel contraption she held in one hand, somewhere between a grip-strengthener and a nut-meat procurer. “Too much water.”

“On Mars?”
“Turns out, just about any amount of standing water is too much. Most of it isn’t even potable, so they don’t have much need for it.”
“What did they used to grow all the shrimp in?”
“I don’t know, I’m not a Martian-ologist or some shit.”
“Me neither,” said Leti, briefly.

“They disappeared. Get out there and bring back Two-Three and we can start establishing more of our teleportation hubs. We’re doing our best to move these out to the middle of nowhere and they don’t even appreciate that we aren’t charging them for it!”
“Where are you building them?”
“I’m not trying to piss off anyone. We have treaties about where we’re not allowed or not supposed to build and this isn’t on top of someone’s burial site or their mother’s favorite shrimpery. At least, we need to get Two-Three back here to Side 2, they don’t need to be planet-side to get things done. If the 3.X Line dies out where it is, it dies out. They’re already paid for, we can discuss how much it’s costing us to do it later. What matters is that Two-Three has been radio-silent for a week and that’s not normal. The new waters could be throwing things off… or something is stirring.”
“Something like what?”
“We don’t know yet. Maybe you should head down and find out, huh?”
“Maybe I need to.”

Vanessa gave an almost sincere thumbs-up as she buried her face on a pillow and Leti dropped the Macadamian shells on the floor before a small rat-like robot swept it up into its center console and then walked back out. Beagle had stopped off on Side 2 Colony to see Aria for a change and to enjoy a change in scenery from the usual bucolic Canadian-American home he frequented most often. Aria, Beagle’s ever-burning, always-ready wife had started out working as a Space Ambassador before she took up position as Lead Scientist for the Future American Commission on Sudden Terraformation, created to investigate the confusing and (as stated) sudden terraforming of planets in the Sol System. It’d been made clear mostly that the general Martian habitat was mostly not breathable to most humans and highly toxic dust storms were still common in many highland areas and lowland plains on the terrae of Mars. But recently, waters of unknown origin and marked salinary content had been sprouting up across the plains, forming a deep vein-like purple sludge along the ruby ridges of the red planet. Across the Sol System, similar actions had been discovered to be happening to some extent: Jupiter and several of its moons were discovered to be inhabited by some form of humanoid life, Saturn had a surface and was peopled with super-intelligent beings, Uranus (though sparsely) carried some form of rudimentary terrafirma and Neptune was condensing into an ice-type planetoid, much like Pluto had been doing for some time since man first started turning wayward eyes to stars and planets about them. Odd readings and stranger functional differences caused by such retrogrades and zeniths of the spheres tended towards a curious disposition of the Universe once more. Beagle could feel as much in his left rear pocket from just a few minutes at Side 2 Colony. The cylindrical space station had been in operation for some time and Robosaurus 1.0 had been out there (as an official Space Ambassador to Side 2) time and again, including then, which was slowly evolving into a very prominent now. The Gonzalez-Sandiego Family had been flourishing on Earth and Mars with Vanessa having a controlling interest in a patch of convenient, healthy and discreet wormholes for pricier patrons to dispense themselves to other, more distant pastures of the galactic globe. Leticia was, as usual, a helpful right hand in most criminal affairs one could shake a stick at, but kept her distance as tight as she did her lips. She started hungrily eating the macadamia nuts as Beagle ate a super-sized Martian grape, only realizing afterwards how juicy they ended up being. Martians were fond of wine, so their grapes were inherently made to be quite potent and quite large in contrast. It was one of the few things that kept them from constantly warring with one another and competitive drinking was, if not a decent precursor to war, a fine alternative if and when the quaff begins to rob one of their strength in battle and the solidarity of their steps.

Vaunted among the high ceilings that allowed the modular walls / floors of Side 2, space was in short supply, which afforded them to necessitate folding gravity a few times to save on it. It was due to a distinct set of locking panels that tended to separate the cubicle-like rooms into keeping them from jostling each other or otherwise disturbing experimentation within each. Near the top, in a larger, more floor-based laboratory, Robosaurus 1.0’s ringtone kicked on and he teleported on to the platform set aside in the corner (for personal transport.) Aria was busy looking over some samples from the Inner Moons of Saturn and tossed back her multi-colored hair to notice he was there.

“Oh hey, you’re back. Is this an official ‘do’ or are you just visiting?” she asked, adding some nitrates to the sample she’d been given. It turned a resilient chrome color, which she regarded as good. “We’re getting close. I can feel it. Whatever is going to explain this shock of terraformation, it’s something we can explain!” she said, confidently.

“That’s good to hear. I am here on official Space Ambassador business, since we’ve apparently elected a new President in Future America, who are one of our bigger donors! However, the more important news is that we believe that this Jovian Embargo is going to be lifted soon. The Jovian Thunder-Gates are impregnable still, but the powers that be on Jupiter are willing to discuss terms. We expect that they will want concessions and are sending them a gift of reliable standards soon enough.”
“Is it freeze-dried peaches and pote sticks?” Aria asked, her hands almost automatically lifting up to start reaching in a yoink-typed manner towards Robosaurus’ mechanical hands to make sure that he wasn’t holding any directly in his hands… just in case.

“I don’t have any on me, but yes, among other things. It’s not exactly very clear what set of values they have or what it is they want in return for movement across the Jovian Sub-System. The Io Halfpipe is considered to be one of the more important shipping lanes for interplanetary travel. Without an ability to land on Jupiter itself, Io is the easiest way-station we can establish without having to send another Side Colony through the Asteroid Belt.”

“I would like it if you brought me tasty treats from Earth every now and then! Us humans like to snack on things just like you do, robo-boy!” Aria noted correctly as Robo ate a piece of solid Normal Titanium.

“That makes sense. I will have to show you the replicator recipe. It does not require much from your typical matter-maker,” Robosaurus noted, correctly as well, sending it to Aria with a swipe of the finger.

“We can only hope that something like that can persuade Jupiter to start opening up! The Titanians did so pretty quick, but the Jovians are just… high-walled, I suppose…” she reasoned, not able to figure hard on the mysterious chessmen running things on the largest planet’s storm-wiped surface. Most of Jupiter lived under some form of metal sheeting or well-carved stone caves to hide from the anti-cyclones that pervaded most of the upper atmosphere.

“There are rumors that they are connecting into a Dysonian plasmoid.”
“In a nutshell?”
“Essentially. It would still require something powerful enough to harness a planet’s energy. Is there such a thing in this galaxy?”
“If there is, it’s not likely going to go well for us.”
“We have reports that there is some form of electric eye on the surface. Morse binary is not being regarded and it does not blink. It tracks movement at a specific distance and shuts when storms open. How organic it is or not is a very good question.”
“Oh! That reminds me! I had a very good question about the west coast!”

“The Meme Kingdom?”
“Yeah! I heard that they were finally moving the wreckage off of Venice Beach…”
“They have. It seems they found a next-of-kin for even him.”
“It’s been years. It’ll be strange seeing it gone. It’s still in Rocket Bay Blue?”
“Correct.”

“I’m surprised they sent it all out here just for someone to pick up. It’s pretty big.”

Looking out via an established window-screen, Aria and Robosaurus watched as the decapitated remains of DJ Mechagodzilla floated, secured with a series of tie-downs straps and a particularly large caterpillar carrier. It was essentially space junk by now and most of it was too advanced to be used. Contact with their native moon of Titan was already a lackluster effort. The machinists of Titan were more than willing to talk about their storied creations, but had little in the way of controlling any part of them. Their robots were more advanced than they could be held responsible, even when DJ Mechagodzilla destroyed the Internet by vaping too many mechanized memes into gaseous form. It nearly annihilated the Earth economy, which put a real damper on things for almost a half a decade since. But with the invention of New Arpanet, interdimensional travel, magic and the occasional strange alien relics that defy the ken of man abound, things were usually only a matter of time before they changed quicker than an overcast Tuesday afternoon underneath a sky of billowing cloud. Looking down at what remained of Beagle’s second best friend, Donaldson Jerboa Mechagodzilla (or “Mechagodzilla” to his friends,) laid in rest and ready for transport.

Chapter Text

Chapter 4 — The Grim Estate of DJ Mechagodzilla of the Villainous Vape

or

Picking Up the Pieces of the Family We Left Behind (After They Exploded)

Looking up at what remained of his older brother, DeneÞor Jamiroquai Kikairyū (or “DJ Kiryū” to his friends) vaped angrily and shook his head, his entirely robotic saurian fingers drawing the vape-stick from both of his robotic jaws and slipped it into the breast pocket of his leather jacket.

“Well damn… it looks like I’m going to need to find a big junkyard…” Kiryū thought aloud, but quietly enough as his brother’s headless form groaned as it nudged against the numerous pieces of space-worn straps holding it in place. “So he just… vaped too hard?” he asked, inquisitively.

“SO, the hot skinny on it is…” the Lord of Dogtown expounded towards him as he sailed back up the half-pipe and ollied over to the rim of the freighter, riding the rail all the way around and completing a circuit, combining the letters S K A T E to earn himself a sudden brick of tax-free gold falling on to the ground, leaving a large dent in the floor. “Essentially, he was experimenting with using a powerful new form of electric vaping that took up a huge ton of network bandwidth to run. He more or less figured out a way to connect them all together near Santa Monica and toked one too many times from a particular wellspring. The whole grid collapsed, creating an absence of power that threw off the world economy at the time being. What’s worse, the ensuing energy flow disruption fucked up space/time in a nasty-ass way and things got goofed way out of grind central. The Meme Kingdom half-invaded on the scene, but it was like the Cell Games all over again pretty soon, you know, that’s just how things are sometimes.”
“That’s true…” Kiryū agreed. His brother hadn’t ever done that before, but it was strange that he would start overcharging his own processors enough to become that unwell. He would have run diagnostics, but unless he could disassemble his brother properly, there was no real way to tell what went particularly wrong. Space Titanium was a tricky metal to work with like that. “So you think there’s any real easy way to get him back to Titan?”

“Did you bring like… a freighter of your own?” Alderman Tony Hawk asked as he did a sick nosegrab and spun few times in an impressive manner, coming to a stop inches from Kiryū’s kneecap.

DJ Kiryū was a lot smaller than his brother, considering he was the size of most humans and not particularly far from humanoid in scale either. He was roughly the same standard shape and, if he were investing in the right mould, could easily pass for a human were it not for his remarkably dragon-shaped head, much like his brother’s. He never thought of it as being particularly troublesome on Titan, but also hadn’t been one to rely too much on others for most of his robotic life. He was a bit of a loner, having gotten the teleportation fees to get to Side 2 paid ahead of him picking up his brother’s body, which seemed like it was the kind of thing you wouldn’t try to charge someone too much money to end up having to do… until he saw how large it was. DJ Mechagodzilla was certainly a larger size than he’d anticipated, especially since he didn’t actually have any particular means of getting back to Titan and had been hoping he’d be able to junk what was left of his brother’s more than apparently ample frame. The amount of raw Space Titanium (they called it this to differentiate it from the normal kind of titanium they mine on Earth) alone could earn him enough money to get a decent freight teleporter and an orbiting station to store shipments on. It was easy money if it wasn’t registered with any particular nation-state, Tribe, country or planetary body yet, but it would take work to get up and running, no less the word-of-mouth one has to get through the vacuum of space. His Venusian newtskin boots came up to about his knees and there was the soft hiss of an airlock that was closing up tight as he stood back up, brushed from space dust off the left arm of his orange leather jacket and looked back out to the body of the once greatest machine made by Titanian hands and then back to Tony Hawk.

“Well damn, they’re going to want the rest of this rig back once I have this back on Titan, huh?” he reckoned.

“Yeah, they probably think you still have a place on Titan too. You don’t know how to bust one of those Jovian Space Eyes to open, do ya?”

“Nope, never been. Titanians aren’t from the Big J, that’s science beyond even us. I’ve only been activated about 20 years or so, not sure I’ve really got a lot of big city ideas under my space-belt just yet.”
“That’s solid, home-dog. You sure know how to grind those rails, so I can’t say you’re a fronting shooby or a basalt-shifting cube-gleam on a twerked red shift,” Mayor Birdman expressed, prefacing his introduction to a sport of rough cricket. “What’s the grok so far on the heap?”
“Hey, come on… he’s still my brother…”

Alderman Hawk held his hands up defensively and nodded, acknowledging he had stepped farther than he should have socially.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to praise on your Pringles. But, honest at you, you’ve come to bury Mechagodzilla, not to praise him. Let what good he has done live on in you, man and whatever shit he pulled on Earth, egregious as it may have been, upon his metallo-chassis and let it remain upon him. If the world freaks on us, we gotta freak flipways until we find the real raw side of the wreck, right?”

“Aptly put, man. I guess you’ve got a point. I guess when you look at someone at the end of their days, they’ve only got so much honor they can fit in their pockets on the way out the door of experience.”

“And you can’t really take much of it with you. You feel good or you feel bad about your life, but you can’t change the journey we made along the way. Such is the path of knowledge.”

“You don’t know anyone who can disassemble this, do you?”
“Oh, sure as fuck don’t! This guy is way more advanced than anything we’ve seen on Earth or the Moon, far as I know. We just sort of put up fences around him until the Meme Kingdom took over and all they did was install more railings and less bird wires. I knew that someone would come for him.”

“How’d you know?”
“It came to me… in a dream…” Alderman Tony Hawk said, looking out the space-window into the cosmic distance. “Hey, do people on Titan lay eggs?”

Chapter Text

Chapter 5 — It’s Hard to Be Reliable in a World of Bad Eggs

or

Waking Up in a Wyoming Way

Sometimes, it can be hard to be someone relied upon in this crazy, mixed-up and well-blended smoothie of a world, especially when the pithy chunks of dismay get stuck in your straw and fly amazingly into your windpipe. But in those times of wanton disregard for what should (or shouldn’t) grip inside the human lungs gets stuck in there anyway, we rely on the good people of our life to wallop something roughly into your solar plexus to make you spit back out offending matter that chokes us of our very living with the fists of life-saving intention that we need in the darkest of times.

Eli Egg woke up in an unfamiliar place, which was about the only place that Eli Egg woke up in. Ever since a seemingly normal day when they had a light lunch of cottage cheese sprinkled with Tajín Clásico over focaccia and took a nap at exactly 4:44pm for fourteen minutes, they found themselves not in the same twin bed that they had slept in most of their young life with their parents, Jack and Tifa Egg, in the bucolic pastoral dales of the German Alps. Gone were the sheets of parental supervision as Eli Egg found themselves in distant and confusing Tyrol. Leaning out of the thatched-roof cottage overlooking a completely different Austrian dale, Eli Egg opened the front door and discovered that it was raining outside. It wasn’t when you looked through the window, but when they opened the door, it was raining outside. Luckily, the window was low enough that crawling out of it (for Eli Egg) was not too difficult and it was essentially a picture window, so they dropped out over some fine Irish irises and into a front yard that they also didn’t recognize. Tumbling out on to the dales of Austrian Tyrol, Eli Egg had a standardized amount of hankering that they usually did for one of their favorite foods and reached into their left hand chest pocket to retrieve one perfectly medium-boiled egg. Scraping the shell off, they enjoyed the soft, fluffy yolk with a solid enough white that was just enough that it didn’t get all over your hands and the shell comes off in one piece if you’re making sure to be careful enough. The shell drifted from their well-manicured fingertips and on to the fine Tyrolian clay of a misty morning. It wasn’t 4:44pm anymore and it likely wasn’t even the same day that it wasn’t when they didn’t land anywhere near home and somewhere nearer to nowhere. Upon the top of a nearby hill, the glaring backlighting of a midday Sun was cascading along the arms of one of the poncho-clad Lothar. The Lothar Martians were nominally different from the Tarkan Tribes of the North (they had only two limbs, usually,) and the Pale Martians of the South. From their tall, tall towers above the Olympus Mons, they seemed to always judge down from their esteemed aeries. Turning back around, the Lothar lowered both of his entirely Martian feet to the ground and blinked his placid features blankly. Eli Egg found that it wasn’t too easy to get traction with the boots they had on to start climbing a hill without a good 40 minutes of stretching first, but it became clear that the Lothar was coming towards them anyway. The Lothar reached out both of his gangling, lengthy Martian arms towards Eli Egg and dropped into both of their human hands a round, silvered, palm-sized mirror, like the kind one nowadays would see on a compact, but clearly with a filigreed detail on the back. On the reverse, Eli Egg saw the pattern wound into the silver surface of the curved little mirror was that of a bird that they didn’t recognize the exact species of. They looked into the mirror and saw that they now had a thin shock of red hair along their thick, luscious chestnut locks and gave a soft grimace of confusion. That certainly wasn’t there when they woke up before.

Lifting their head back up, they found the Lothar was gone and looked back to see that the door of the little bucolic Tyrolic cottage they’d woken in led back into a real house now that it was open with no particular shift in space/time when Eli Egg dashed forward with both of their heels across the threshold, but in all of a second, their boots skidded through to a different room in a different house. Somewhere else, yet again. Lifting up their sunglasses, Eli Egg fished into their left hand chest pocket and drew out another egg. Any particular time that they had needed to or had that seemingly trademark hankering for a tasty, perfectly medium-boiled egg, they could reach into that left hand chest pocket and draw at least one out. If they did it in just the right rate of slowness, while swallowing the last remains of one egg, they could very carefully remove a second egg after four seconds of time. When Jack Egg and Tifa Egg were asked about this strange ability, they merely stated that:
“We keep a lot of salt and pepper around. But never mayonnaise.”

Blinking, Eli Egg felt a strange pulsating energy flowing around them like when you walk out of your air-conditioned apartment and a wave of thick, muggy, shirt-sucking heat collides into you. It wasn’t raining outside anymore, but it was tempestuous like a tea-cup of fury, waiting to boil over and completely deluge a small dock in a suburb of Waitangi. Eli Egg was looking out a window on the second story of a particular houseboat. When they took a look to their left, they saw the same little hand-mirror they had been holding in their hand was sitting on a little endtable next to a cushy little bed that been made for some time. Next to the little silvered mirror with the intricate bird on the back, there was a glass of water that looked just dusty enough to not be appetizing to Eli Egg. It was very full, so it looked like it would need to be diligently sipped at the edge or something pretty ridiculous would end up going on with your lips to work this out. Next to the tall glass of water was a thick, glass ashtray embellished with a kiwi dipping its beak in to the waters of a puddle of silvery blood. While attempting to exculpate their sense of reason from this illogical sequences of media incredulity smacking them about (now with a force that seemed to transcend space/time), they picked up the glass and walked to the window. The cool crisp morning air of the sea whisked against Eli Egg’s nose as they looked down and noticed the manic face of Wink Martindale, teeth grimacing in a snarling sneer as he gripped both of his human hands around the handle of a small handgun. Out of the corner of their reliable eye, they could see that they were clearly brandishing the firearm at someone and not a wild animal from the nearby looks of things, prompting them to look at the glass of water and dump it out on to the unsuspecting host from Gambit as it drenched him suddenly, followed by the more striking and worrying prospect that a glass was going to hit him in the head. It did shortly after, since Eli Egg had thrown it at him and hit him almost in the temple. Wink stumbled to the side, mostly from the momentum of the glass hitting him, he almost had barely felt the weight of it with the erratic sense of mind he was in as he let out a squealing noise like a teakettle. His head connected into a wooden post and his shoulder skidded down the side, scraping him up against the weathered sea-wood of a Waitangi dock post. However, this only made him more furious when he stomped down his left shoe into the dock and tried only that much further to try to aim his wavering gun with his wavering hand and his wavering mind. A trickle of anxiety hanged slowly out from his lips as the sights lined up in his eyes… before Eli Egg whipped the kiwi-shaped ashtray into his head and Wink Martindale was sent flying off the dock entirely, making a loud splash since he was wearing a peach-colored three-piece suit with a matching top hat. His hat fell off when he was hit by the ashtray.

“What in the absolute fuck are you doing?” Martindale shrieked as his thrashing head shoved about the water. Dropping his gun in trying to desperately grasp at the dockside, the figure he’d been aiming at drifted into view.

Eli Egg was stunned in the moment (as these moments seemed to happen quite fast) in processing what was going on before they saw that it was a Lothar that the gun had been pointed at. This one was wearing a deep V-necked striped shirt and a jaunty little hat on his somewhat longer Martian hand. Leaning a lengthy smoking pipe out of his thin lips, the Lothar zapped both of his entirely Martian eyes to Eli Egg.

“You are going to get a headache thinking too hard about things like this. You will need to see a chemist,” the Lothar told him without using those thin lips of his as he locked eyes with Eli Egg and used all of his thin Martian teeth to eat a whole orange. “You should get some rest. It’s been a few weeks since you left. Even if it feels like only a few minutes from your side of things. Your parents have been informed that you are on a journey that you and they will not understand.”

“Why? Where am I going now? What is it you need?” Eli Egg asked as they started to peel an egg and dropped it to the Lothar. It landed atop the orange and the Lothar made a very loud slurping noise to inhale the perfectly medium-boiled egg and looked up to Eli Egg. “What about him?” Eli Egg asked, pointing at Wink Martindale, gasping for air on the dock before the Lothar picked up a lengthy oar, floating over the window where Eli was standing and shoving Wink back into the water with it.

“Don’t worry about him. He got freaked out too hard and attacked me. I think he took something he wasn’t supposed to. Someone is peddling Martian drugs on Earth. Maybe you can look into it while you’re out and about. Your strange and wending path is leading you somewhere, Reliable Eli Egg. We know that you alone can do it. There are so many running in this race, but you are here to outrun them all. You need to go to Wyoming.”

“Are you sending me there? Is this a Lothar thing?”
“No. We Lothar can read your mind. We can see farther than most things in this world. You have some ways to go. Wyoming is where you will be needed and you are going to arrive there, just as you arrived here.”

Eli Egg picked up the little hand-mirror and looked at it. When they looked back, the Lothar was gone and Wink Martindale wasn’t making any more noises. It occurred to Eli Egg that they could probably get some hash browns at a low price that came with molten cheeses. Eli Egg had wondered why they could fish a tasty perfectly medium-boiled egg out of their left hand chest pocket, even when the shirt they wore didn’t have that pocket, or it was a different shirt. They had never tried it while not wearing a shirt, worried that it may work without any shirt at all, which made it sound midkey nasty. Slacking backwards, Eli Egg plopped on to the well-made bed and sighed lightly.

“Where the heck is Wyoming? And what’s there waiting for me?” Eli Egg wondered aloud as they shut their eyes and took a quick nap, feeling a small 2.7 scale headache digging into their left eye.

Fourteen hours later, Eli Egg woke up at midnight in a four-poster bed in a dust-filled mansion as they drew back the cobwebs and the layers of abandonment to look out the ivy-flavored window. In the darkness of the night, the streetlights flickered softly and Eli Egg pressed a hand to the cool night air that stood outside between them. Walking outside, they found the vine-strewn gate that had once been locked for some years, busted open with a pair of bolt-cutters, which were stabbed into the ground. Picking up the chain-clippers, Eli Egg leaned both of their entirely human arms into the handles of the lock-snappers and walked out into a sleepy little town, wondering who was actually open at midnight and what they should do until daybreak...

Chapter Text

Chapter 6 — The Sleepy Sleeper Stops Sleeping and the Sleepier Sleeper Starts Slipping into Sleep

or

Nightmares with Your Eyes Open While You’re Still Awake

Pressing his eyes shut, the Prime Sleeper Hypnos Somnus, Father of the Thousand Oneiroi, gripped tight to his brother’s hand and embraced death, naturally, in his sleep. Dream Keeper Morpheus, Beast Keeper Phobetor and Object Keeper Phantasos knelt in plaintive sighs and rending of the clothes (except for Beast Keeper Phobetor.)

“Be dispatched, Icelos Phobetor, keeper of all beasts. We will require your aid. I shall prepare the dream potions,” whispered Morpheus. “I shall inform Ephialtes. You must conjure up for us the new Prime Sleeper. Find us the one foretold in the ancient tablets.”

Sipping the charmed tea, the soft lightness of the sacrificial herbs simmered into his hands as Icelos Phobetor drank deep and buttoned up the striped garb of a known sleeper, resting back into a chair the shape of finely cracked peanut brittle. Morpheus began climbing off of a large soft marshmallow, carrying Phantasos in his gentle, dream-like arms, and alighted softly against the candy-like clouds. The crisp feel of autumnal leaves beneath his silken shoes delighted with a sound pleasant as Phobetor left this plane to the one us humans tend to describe as “ours” (if only we knew!) and Morpheus’ hands, soft as dreams, pushed open the cold iron gates of the Nyxland and invaded forth to the realms of Ephialtes, where nightmares grew unbound, infecting the world of night with constant beating of leathery wings, laughing and dancing, gibbering and mocking. Claws that dragged and raked and heads that stood too tall. Arms that gripped and legs that ran too fast. Any worry and every terror that ever stood, shambled or urged its way in startling shoving motions (forward or back) were among the many varied creatures of the night, shrieking that a creature of such normality and peace entered Ephialtes’ charging realm.

Back in the human world, Jerma985 had decided to take a leisurely stroll to the grocery store to pick up a pack of Cosmic Brownies, some Half-and-Half to dip them in and another pack of zippable sandwich bags to better secure some tuna salad he’d whipped up in an early morning drudge. It had been almost a few years since the Meme Kingdom had been established on Earth and he was named Ambassador to Future America (as it was now named.) Although tensions had become relatively still to stagnant, since King Sexbang was in a major harshness due to Pres. Ninja Brian exploding in that Extreme Tennis Match. Understandably, there was nothing he could do, since it was Brian’s serve and crossing the net before he finished serving would be unheard of in most tennis matches. By the time that Brian was distacted at just the intimate moment that he was by scoping some choice ass seventeen meters away on a nearby traffic island across the Prof. James W Shocknessy Ohio Turnpike. That choice ass had yet to be identified. Some say that it was Sarge or Rosemary the Telephone Operator, some say it was the Ghost of the Late Pres. Jaleel White haunting him for failing to protect Washington DC or Michigan or the parts of America that had yet to return into their comforting federal aegis, but most people agreed that it was certainly someone wearing a pair of fishnet stockings that likely went all the way up and sporting a large Gandalfian chapeau that obscured most of their presumptive enamoring visage. Jerma had been standing next to King Danny and, although he’s cleaned most of the viscera off of himself physically… it was still pretty there on the inside. It was while he was looking at a possibly appetizing case of prepacked and flash-frozen cilantro and lime rice that he suddenly spied sitting at the far, far end of the aisle, just in the cascade of light from the front door of the grocery store, was a Eurasian forest dormouse. He narrowed his eyes as the cilantro and lime rice package fell from his hand and he peered out into the backlit view of the small rodent of general Middle Eastern to Mediterranean extraction. He could just barely hear the whisper of his own voice radiating softly towards his own words.

“Dormice aren’t native to the Americas, nor are they popular or well-known in the Meme Kingdom… There’s something involved here. That’s quite the thing to see,” he noted, mostly to himself as he strolled back down the aisle and towards the tiny rodent.

He could suddenly hear a loud rattling noise atop the roof storing area of the frozen food section. Something was up there, but it was clearly not something large enough for him to spot. It was an animal too. His head snapped back towards the Eurasian forest dormouse and crouched down slowly enough so as not to spook the unspookened creature. He carefully lifted it in one hand as the beast of modicum scale had climbed on to his arm and taken up residence in his chest pocket.

“What’s happening here?” he thought aloud.

“You’re feeling tired. You need to get some rest. We do not yet understand you and your… particular sense of ease. They have instructed us to guide you,” the Eurasian Forest Dormouse stated softly.

“That makes a little sense,” Jerma replied as he turned up and looked at the freezer. “And that one?”

Before the Dormouse could reply, a creature of small size, not unlike a Tasmanian devil, but with a flatter, more porcine nose. It had sort of soft, pale to beige tiger-like stripes along its rear. A stubby tail and a little mop of white hair on the top of its head, while the rest was moderately brownish. It fell on top of Jerma’s head from atop his local grocer’s freezer and he started shuffling backwards with his arms working into a circular motion not unlike a primitive robot that was best at rocking them and also at socking them.

“You must remain still. This is the incredibly foul-smelling Palawan Stench Badger. It is smaller and more adorable than the stink badger, but it smells twice as worse. These ones with the stripes are the smelliest. You will follow our orders or it will spray the top of your head, making you smell like you’ve been washing your hair with especially dark and buttery urine,” the Dormouse warned, though in a still generally friendly tone. It had a matter-of-fact nature that Jerma disdained immensely.

“You’re unleashing a particular cruelty upon me with such callow threats. You think you can walk into my local grocer’s freezer and threaten to stench me with a stench badger from the western Palawan Province of the Philippines? What have I done to harm you, little Eurasian Forest Dormouse, to earn such treatment?” Jerma asked, shaking his head in disappointment as he tore off his shirt, flinging the Eurasian Forest Dormouse down the aisle as he suddenly spun on one heel, cocked his head to the side (as if he were angry and it would take at least one week ‘till he said he was sorry,) and then thrust his chin and his right heel forward, lifting his right arm outward in a powerful kata that made him feel both empowered and totally whipped the Palawan Stench Badger into the delicatessen area where it landed in the ambrosia salad.

The Eurasian Forest Dormouse, trapped in both a torn shirt and in a world that he had yet to entirely full grasp an understanding of, reeled. It was his first assignment helping people and already his break-neck tactics and his aggressive stance of hunting down people and staring at them in public had failed him entirely. Radiating through his little dormouse arms were feelings of disappointment as he cried large, spherical dormouse tears. Jerma couldn’t see the little Eurasian Forest Dormouse anymore as he had walked out of the store after paying for all of his items, putting them into a canvas bag with the Red Bee on the side of it and shuffled his shoes along the polished floor of the grocery store. When he turned the corner into the irritating little aisle where they mostly sell magazines and cards that express the love of puns that we all hide in our hearts, he was astonished to find a California Golden Bear was staring at him from the other end of the aisle. He wasn’t sure how fast that species of bear could run, so he casually started internally screaming at the top of his lungs as his slowly gelignite legs shifted clumsily to traipse him past that aisle to the one where they sell all the sorts of papers you smear on your body and then throw out somewhere. There was a bear at the end of that aisle too. His curiosity got the better of him as he gripped both of his entirely human hands on to the wingstack full of edible snack cakes in lengthy boxes like packs of cigarettes and confirmed entirely for himself that there was both a bear at the end of the first aisle and one at the end of the second. His fear had started to give way to a more confusing brand of fear when he stepped faster down to find the aisle where you can get things to clean your house, car, small apartment and hopefully most of your clothes were sold and there was a slightly larger Asian black bear. Jerma frowned softly at the break in pattern and almost skipped forward to the aisle where they sell dog food, cat food and baby-themed items (presumably for babies) and found there was another California Golden Bear. This soothed his sorrowed mind a little to see that things were at least a little more sensible. He took a short step back to look at the Asiatic black bear and just shook his head in disapproval. The Asiatic Black Bear hung his head in grief at having not been as impressive as he had hoped, putting both of his entirely ursine paws over his snout and closing both of his adorable black ursine eyes. He’d heard an incredibly loud noise when he saw there were four bears climbing over the seafood distrubutarium against the west wall of the grocery store and had blocked his path with lots of pasty white meats, scaled red crab shells and also four lobster tanks. The lobsters seemed appreciative as Jerma found that a forklift was backing up out of the rear stocking area of the grocery and whirled around to show that it was driven by a Sun bear wearing a hardhat. It roared softly into his left shoulder and then fell on top of Jerma’s left side as its jaw gripped on to his left arm, though more in a gnawing motion than a “crunching through your left hand” grip.

“Is this because of the Dormouse?” Jerma wondered as he dragged his left hand protectively to his chest and then lifted both of his arms high over his head and then out to both sides, opening his mouth and bellowing loudly “HOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOIHOIHOIHOIHOIHOI!” he hooted loudly as he started to jump up and down next to the Sun Bear, which recoiled in apprehension and flopped out of the forklift.

Stepping both of his shoes on to both of the tines of the forklift, he leaned back and pushed his hand on top of the controls, lifting himself four feet off the ground and making himself a little bit taller than almost all of the bears that were now coming down the aisles and more or less flooding in around him. The controls as they were, Jerma was lifted higher and higher and looked down as the bears looked on in terror. He was almost definitely a very very very tall animal and that was something that most bears feared. They began to sullenly knock over large bottles of soda, making a horrible mess and looting the store of its jars of honey, slurping it off the floor as the bears were starting to lose focus of their true goal as their inherently ursine natures started to take over. The bears started to circle and occasionally roar at Jerma as he sat on the right tine of the forklift. Part of him was mildly worried that it would tip over from his unbalanced physical stance, but the bears were below and he was above. The bears started to gnaw on the cabin of the forklift, but were inscrutable as to the nature of the levers after the Sun Bear was defeated by Jerma’s certainly large size. The Sun Bear took off his helmet and looked towards their leader. Their leader was softly glowing as the bears started to roar in noticing her arrival. She roared a soft yawn of a roar and then dropped herself on to the middle of the grocery store floor. She was larger than any understandable or reasonable suspicion of how large a bear should be. Bears, as most people know, only get so large. This one though, was clearly not a regular bear, because it was much larger than larger bears, almost taking up the whole of the interior aisle next to the seafood distrubutarium. She was also slowly radiating a calming, turmeric-colored energy that made Jerma almost not entirely vein-jacked with adrenaline after being assaulted by two rodents and a gigantic sleuth of varied bears of confusing geographical extraction and worryingly cooperative nature. This gigantic bear lowered her massive head and placed a tiny nightcap on her head.

“You have been chosen. I am sorry that my servants were not so easy in their approach. They do not understand the sensitivity of your station and they do not understand the finer aspects of my goals. I am Icelos Phobetor, goddess of animal dreams and keeper of sleepiness. All things somniferous or hypnagogic are of my realm, except for drugs. Those are a different kind of department.” Phobetor spoke, imposingly while not making eye contact and also curling up into a large ursine orb of forbidden cuddles.

Jerma found himself about a foot or two from Phobetor’s right eye as he sighed and shrugged softly.

“I actually really didn’t get an answer. I don’t know what’s going on here now. Why were there Dormice before there were bears?”

“I’ll be honest with you. I tried to rely on delegating this to someone I thought I could rely on and they more or less just let me down. I think they panicked and just got a little too crazy in the moment. We mean you literally no harm at all and you won’t be harmed, despite the amount of bears here.”
“This whole thing is like a dream. I like in the Meme Kingdom where… things ain’t too normal… but this here is… ya know, a little uncommon. This isn’t your dime-store Catholic Cosmonauts night and I’m feeling a bit of a spark here that’s making me feel a little more like listening. What’s the story, morning glory?”
“The hot word is that you need to get some sleep. Alight from the forklift, since you’re not even certified to drive it like Sun Bear. My powers will deliver you into the general range of my fur without falling on the floor like a total ass. You’d look like a real total idiot if you fell off, I’m not trying to fuck with you, I definitely promise,” Phobetor spoke as she yawned again, showing off an entire bear’s mouth that Jerma wasn’t comfortable with the walk-in size of it.

Jerma stepped off into the fur of Phobetor and found it comforting like cotton, but warm like wool. It was like finding it was really cold in your apartment and then you were under the blanket, so it’s really a pain to get out of bed in the morning and your pillow feels nice as if you just flipped it over and exposed the cool side of it so you could just take a nice enjoyable rest on it when your eyes open and you see your alarm clock, centering you in a reality you recognize, but it’s a pretty early hour of the night and it means you should probably go back to sleep in a realistic sense. It was an ideal sleeping territory. It was pressing your head against a tiger and listening to its heartbeat, knowing that the tiger is there and the tiger can protect you from anything the night may offer. The promise of a tiger was ringing in his heart as fast it was dancing in his ears like music of the spheres blathering their whispers of world’s turning and also stars exploding from time to time. His eyes drifted shut and he woke up to falling asleep in a whole new way.

In an instant, he was elsewhere. Elseplace. Elsewhen. Else entirely. Across a magnificent golden foyer, filled with people in suits, their tears full of eyes and their teeth full of smiles, they began clapping in a way that seemed quieter than it should sound and with a dullness to it that only the cushion of the pillow can replicate. A standing ovation from nowhere. From strangers. Not from fans at least. He was confused and embarrassed at this sudden attention as Jerma looked behind himself, throwing open the double doors to see a large ballroom of more people that he didn’t recognize, clapping more for him, moaning in admiration and nodding with agreement, as if Jerma had told them he’d cured all human disease or found a new planet that was made entirely of free healthcare. Running to the only open avenue he could see, he dashed through to a broom closet where seven custodians were clapping effusively for him having showed up. He angrily scarpered further and kicked open another door to find four people in flagrante delecto, clapping for his sudden intrusion to their lurid affair of spurious moral character. They were at minimum very impressed to see him. Jerma was also upset because they were all on the ceiling while doing this and for some reason, that made him particularly cross and so they fell down to the floor, which was now right-side up, which he found preferable. He turned back to see everyone around him clapping intensely.

“All hail the King of Dreams! All hail the Prime Sleeper!” they began to chant, not very loudly and not very clearly. It took a few minutes until Jerma caught every word of it and began to wonder exactly what that really meant he was being asked to do now...

Chapter Text

Chapter 7 — The Dark and Sinister Secret of How Pumpkins Turn into Pie

or
A Hard-Luck Time in the Small City

The Reliable Eli Egg was carefully winning a bar bet by spinning fourteen pistachios, catching them between their fingers, then flicking them expertly enough that they cracked open, split, and shot out the pistachio nutmeat into a shot glass sat up on top of an overturned Collins glass. As the fourteenth one landed and Eli Egg held out the glass of nutmeats and a hand dragged tiny angry claws across the wooden table.

“There has become a great incision between us. You think you can attempt to bilk me of my hard-earned awareness? There must be some catechism you’ve caused here. What schism of truth have you dealt me in your jestering ways, silly creature?” the clawed man asked as he hissed at Eli Egg, clapping his bird-like beak.

“Nope! I’m just good at a bunch of stuff!” Eli Egg responded cheerily as their hand ejected forth to beckon the fingers towards themselves, indicating they’d prefer to be paid already.

“You have done something to disgrace me with your disdainful actions, you petty little miserling! I will not be balked by the likes of mere humanity! You don’t know just how strange a place this is!” the small goblin-like creature with the pallid complexion stated, tugging dismissively at one of his large pointed ears to show that he was not taking Eli Egg seriously. “You will require to do one more pistachio! Then I will regard you as you having achieved the wager!” he declared ostentatiously.

“You want to see juuuuuust one more?” Eli Egg offered, smirking softly as they brushed their hair from their face and popped one last pistachio, landing it behind their back and in to the shot glass. “What’s your name again? I wanted to take it down so I could contact you later!” they said amiably with a bright smile.

“My name is Jaken and that is all you need know, foolish mortal being! You have mired yourself into a place that you cannot understand and you have made a fine mistake in trying to reveal yourself as such a skilled… skills… person…” Jaken stumbled, running out of fancy words in his consternation, “You shall find yourself nothing but misery and torment if you continue your incessant braggart’s ways here! This town is big enough to have most of the people who survived. You don’t even know what state you’re in, do you?” Jaken sneered.

“I’m in a state of feeling like getting paid!” Eli Egg said in a positive, but joking manner, putting an effusive arm around Jaken’s shoulders, giving him a soft shake with a grip against his other shoulder.

“I suppose you may have done well enough to earn my merciful alms…” Jaken said, fiddling around in a tiny little clutch and his thin, green fingers fished out six purplish fuschia rhombuses that he let glance along the bartop.

They danced softly on one end naturally and then settled on to the bartop.

“This is… money?” Eli Egg asked, nudging it with a golf pencil they’d been able to borrow from the barkeep.

“It IS the purest form of currency available here!” Jaken implored severely, smacking a pathetic fist against the bartop. The barkeep, whilst wiping a glass clean, nodded to let Eli Egg know that it was accepted.

“How many drinks will this get me?” Eli Egg asked, their eyes glittering with interest in this new currency.

“Depends on how tall,” the barkeep uttered, twirling a highball glass on one edge in a glittering circle before setting it down, depressing one semi-spherical ice cube in to the bottom of the glass and dumping a smattering of a viscous red draught that dribbled down from a small dropper, then twisted his body around to whip the glass in a full rotational circle along with his body, then set it back down and filled the top with strawberry cola.

“One Gabby Hayes, rockbound. I can break one,” the barkeep offered, his studious, yet well-tailored hands seeming to flip the glass over upon over upon over as if it were being twisted like it dispensed pepper on to cheesed pasta, then eased the glass on to the bartop towards Eli Egg.

They picked it up and knocked back the drink, slurping both of their human lips with their entire human tongue and set it back down.

“Tastes like the countryside. What’s going on here?” they wondered aloud as Jaken made himself scarce, climbing atop a wooden stave and flicking it across the floor of the bar like a flea jumping away as Jaken rode off it into the night. “You don’t happen to have a payphone I can use, do you?” they asked eagerly, smiling at the barkeep.

“As much as the field has eyes and the hills have ears. Payphones aren’t normal round these parts. But if you lift both your legs at once, you could probably find your own ass, if it’s still attached.”

Eli Egg left the Rock Springs Spirits Blind Tiger with five purple rhombuses and a pocket full of four glowing crimson squares that looked raised lightly to a point, like pyramid studs on a belt. They had a lightness to them, but Eli Egg disliked the fact that they were a little bright to look at and also smelled like chocolate-flavored tea, which was both bitter and too sweet to sip at. They had a slightly more agitating headache when they left the Rock Springs Spirits Blind Tiger because they had forgotten to get a bottle of water on the way out, which wasn’t very prudent of them to do. They had a feeling that the world would generally bring potable water their way though, since they were already heading to get some headache medicine that looked small, colorful or like it would kick in faster from a local chemist’s shop. The large building was a headache-aggrieving shade of orange that Eli Egg almost didn’t feel like making eye contact with as the swift and quiet automatic doors to it slid open as a shock of dull air hushed past them and against their jacket as they stepped forward and inside.

Within, it was a moderately small place, more like an older style market, where you’d sit down in a general common area amid advertisements and then tell someone at a counter what sort of pleasantries you wanted from the vast wall of interesting things behind them. On the Moon, they figured out how to automate this process and called them “automats,” but mostly only for food, medicine, and drinks that were already pre-chilled for your convenience. The person in charge didn’t seem to be a robot, but robot technology was pretty advanced and who identified as what was more a philosophical question at heart and at most social gatherings would be the sort of thing that gets you slapped in public for bringing up, as it was pretty to rude to assume humanity of anyone at that point. Sitting on a floating chair, a shimmering green waterfall of crimped hair dragged out from either side of a pair of thick glasses and a chin obscured by biting into a large slice of pumpkin pie. Her studious eye glared down at the newfound interloper to her alimentary enjoyment and expressed this by not chewing any faster and shutting her eyes again, making it all too clear that she wasn’t going to be interrupted just yet. It was 3:44am, so it was pretty gracious of her to even be awake at that hour.

Due to having eaten four thin slices of pumpkin pie that were also very long, Ezra Von Qlarion had managed to eat most of that day’s allotment of pumpkin pie she had left. She was wearing a pair of purple shoes with little black bats on them, orange jeans and a rich emerald green jacket on that matched her coat. It had been pretty cold out because she had to go outside and pick a pumpkin for the Pumpkin Pieman, which also meant she had to wash off the pumpkin to make sure it wasn’t dirty, which usually meant she got a little water on the cuffs of her jeans. She picked up a cup of black coffee she poured some orange juice and an egg into (or at least she had when it was hot, it had cooked by then.) She sipped at it and swallowed her pie and set it back down.

“Ah, you’re the ‘outlander,’” she said, fixing her glasses on and tossing her hair.

“Is that a good thing?” Eli Egg offered softly.

“It means you’re the person who can solve my problem.”
“What’s your problem?”
“My problem is that I’m running out of pie. We all are.”
“Why is that a problem?”
“I like my pie. So does everyone. It’s more important than that though.”

“Not sure I follow…”
“We ran out of geese about 3 months ago, meaning there have not been any goose pies in all town. Starting to sound like every town. There’s only about four to six of them and they fall over sometimes. There used to be wars and intrastate conflicts, but they’ve… more or less calmed down by now. We’ve got a bigger issue… we’re running out of eggs up here.”
“Up here?”
“Yeah, we don’t have any.”
“You were just eating a pumpkin pie.”
“We believe that these preserved pumpkin pies from the… ‘Before-Times’ were made synthetically or with powdered egg. They aren’t very good. I made something to make pies for me out of pumpkins, so I know. These taste different. These aren’t… real pumpkin pies…” she said mysteriously.

“What’s the hot difference? Is there an issue with getting more eggs?” Eli Egg asked, casually, worrying that she was going to tackle them and somehow conspire upon stealing their eggs out of their pocket in a way that they were highly worried they weren’t going to be anywhere near comfortable with and started to sweat softly.

“We don’t have a lot of leafy greens left out here. Those were imported. We still have freeze-dried kiwifruit in droves, but it’s actually made from very little whole kiwi. The soil isn’t correct anymore and we don’t have the proper chemicals to synthesize the kinds of things we’d need to make it work better for leafy greens.”
“Is that bad?”
“It means that we are all in a very real danger of running out of Vitamins K₁ and K₂. You’re the person who can help us.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because you’re holding your head.”
“I have a headache.”
“And because I don’t recognize you.”
“You don’t get strangers in town that often?”
“Often enough out here…”
“And?”
“You have a headache, that means you’re the one who needs my help here. I had a dream about something like this. We need you to help save Wyoming.”
“What’s Wyoming?”
“It’s where we’re at.”

“We’re in Wyoming now?”
“Welcome to Sundance.”
“Like the Festival?”
“No, that’s in Utah. We’re Sundance, like the Kid.”
“And the dance?”
“It’s very sunny. I’m not going to do it for you. I don’t know it, I’m not from Wyoming.”
“So why are you here?”
“I got stuck here.”
“Stuck here?”
“Oh, that’s really how I can tell you’re new in town. We’ll go take a look at that later. It’s a pretty quick drive anyways. That’d take about… oh twenty minutes or so. But that can wait. What’s important is Vitamin K.”
“What’s it for?”
“It keeps your blood clotting normally. If you don’t get enough of it, you bleed very easily, spots on your tongue, it makes calcium stop going to your bones and start clogging up your soft tissues. It may very well be destroying the gut flora of the Wyoming Territory.”
“Territory?”
“Turns out, due to a mistake on some documentation, we were admitted as a State with too low of a population, so they just sort of declared most of the counties defunct and uh… since things went bad out here… most of the issues went off towards Sheridan or Hulett. You’re the first new person in town in… weeks. You’re here because you’re the egg person.”
“People say I can be pretty reliable.”
“How reliable are you going to be in getting us more Vitamin K?”
“I guess I’m going to have to look around and talk to some people.”
“I run a pharmacy, I already where all the Vitamin K is! The issue is that we don’t have any more! It wasn’t important to keep in stock until it was and we didn’t exactly have a Vitamin K supplement factory on hand. If we can’t get more, people are going to get weaker and weaker.”
“What do you need me to do?”
“I need you to do five things: I need you to meet the Pieman. I need you to go see the State Line. I need you to go see beyond the State Line. I need you to help me break into a big warehouse in Sheridan, probably… and I need your help to get out of Wyoming!”

“Oh! You probably know what this is!”

Eli Egg fished through their pockets and produced the silver hand mirror with the bird on it.

“A Stymphalian Mirror?” Ezra asks as she carefully gave them a look that indicated she wanted to try holding it. “What is going on here?” she wondered aloud as she looked up into Eli Egg’s eyes as they blushed and sat back in their chair.

“I guess now you’re on the same page as me, huh?”
“I think I’m starting to get a headache too. I’ll just comp you a pack of headache pills, let me go find one…” she started to climb on to the chair as it levitated to move her towards a farther place where Eli Egg couldn’t look at her in that studious, yet earnest manner that they tended to look at almost anyone with (but also towards the headache pills.)

“So you had… a dream about me?” Eli Egg offered, smirking softly.

“Don’t get it twisted, Egg!”

“You know my name is Egg?”
“No, in the dream, you had a big egg for a head, but with the same haircut and the same hair color. What is your name anyways?”
“I’m Eli Egg. I guess that’s what everyone calls me except my parents.”

“What do your parents call you?”

“Eli. They already know my last name. What’s your name anyways?”
“I’m Ezra Von Qlarion. My mother is from Neo New York and my second mother is from Retro Angeles. I moved out here to start up a franchise chemist stop while working on a graduate school application when… things got more complex.”
“Seems pretty simple to me, why can’t you just teleport to school? Isn’t that what… most city people do?”
“Most of them yeah, but this is Wyoming. Things went bad here before the Wecht Administration. We’ve been getting reports about how things are going, but things are way off from here. I think it’s time we go out and look at the State Line now.”

Ezra slumped out of her floating chair as a small robotic arm extended from next to the door, handing her her keys. She spun them around a finger and nodded as she caught the keys into her hand and there was the telltale beeping of a vehicle that she probably owned. Opening a very large, pumpkin-shaped garage, she lifted a large pumpkin-shaped knob to open it. Within, a 1992 Ford F-150 Nite with a pale orange paint job, interpolated though a striking mess of licking burgundy flames.

“There she is. The Qlarion X-Go! It’s alright, I shouldn’t even need to put gas in it. It’s like barely 20 minutes out of town and it’s pretty easy to figure on once you get there. We set up a little sort of watch-station out there. The main hatch is at the new capital. Let’s go!” she offered, shifting her head to indicate they should follow.

“I… might need your help…” Eli said reticently.

“How’s that?” she asked through the open door to the Qlarion X-Go, wondering what was stopping them.

“I need you to pull me into the car. If I go through a door… I might not show up on the other side of it…”

“What does that… mean?”
“That’s how I got here too. I walked here by accident or I guess… maybe by destiny.”
“Don’t get any bright ideas, it’s going to be night time for a long while out here. That’s a sixth thing you’re going to need to know. Lucky me, I don’t have the information down on that little facet yet,” Ezra figured aloud as she leaned all the way over her seat to drag Eli Egg off their ankles by both of their entirely human wrists and set them into the passenger side seat, but Eli scooted closer, sitting in the middle seat and swiftly securing their lap belt, looking up to Ezra again.

“Alright! Lead the way, dreamgirl!”

She stopped moving for a minute and a half and then started her noticeable truck and drove off.

~~~~~

As they drove their way out, Eli Egg was leaning both of their entirely human arms on the dashboard and looking up into the sky, noticing a beauty panoply of sidereal wonder, glittering about the firmament above them, daring them to dream as people of their moderate youthful age tended towards doing and were likely to keep doing beyond the immediate future. It was about a quarter-hour later that they arrived on the edge of the Former State of Wyoming, what they still referred to as “the State Line” due to its new… strangeness. There was a certain strangeness of the sky where Ezra had stopped. There was something like a large canyon next to a large black block. She pointed at it as her shoes started to crunch quietly into the gravel on the edge of the State Line. Opening an app on her phone, she turned a sharp definitive angle away from Eli Egg as they started to find themselves running towards the black box. The automatic door of the black building opened and, inside, Eli Egg could see a single person wearing a green suit, dancing to music they were listening to on a pair of headphones.

“Agent Greendog!” Ezra said, slightly louder than regular, seemingly so she could be heard.

The person in the green pantsuit removed their large green headphones and the solid sounds of Slade were heard for but only a moment further until they pressed a button, pausing their mirth.

“Oh, what’s fresh, Ezra?” Greendog asked.

“We need to go to the ObsPlat,” Ezra said, a little impatiently, as if this should be obvious.

“ObsPlat? It’s like 4am, why are you even here? Did you lock up first?”
“That doesn’t matter right now, Greendog! I have a new friend that I need to show the outside. You know, the Shock Treatment.”

“Shock treatment?” Eli Egg asked, a little plussed more than none.

“Oh, I guess there must’ve been a new accident. Damn sorry!” Greendog said as they turned towards a booth of controls. They pressed many of them in a very structured manner until a large cylinder of frosted glass eased open and pressed open a pair of doors. Ezra tugged at Eli’s sleeve and dragged them by it towards the chamber within.

“This way. We’re in Wyoming, in Geronimo County, on the east side. This is our station out,” Ezra stated.

“Out…?” Eli Egg repeated aloud, then returned back to, “Shock treatment?” but a little more worried this time.

“No, the other kind. Exposure therapy.”

“You’re not gonna…” Eli Egg pointed at Ezra, up and down, implying something they were not entirely thinking about the nature of exposure and Ezra turned away, crossing both of her entirely human arms.

“I’m not exposing you to me, dipshit! Look!” she ordered, pointing dramatically as the other end of the platform opened up, a large panoramic view of a dried out shelf of a canyon. It was less like the ones you see on Earth.

The canyon was like taking scoops with an ice-cream scoop dug into a pile of flour, but as if much of it were made of a sort of cornstarch mix: things were stratified differently, like piles of sifted dry materials, like soft deserts of flaking salt and mote-like flour together. It took a few minutes of movement until Eli Egg realized that this was a raising platform rising into the air as it stopped. There was a sharper contrast of a ceiling above them where Ezra pulled Eli Egg towards, pressing her hand over theirs and pushing it forward against the border. Against the barrier. It felt like cold glass, nearly ice-like. On the outside, there were two gleaming lines beaming across the sky, a glittering spark of light hiding behind these drifting lines of beautiful drifting ice and stone in the sky.

“This is the edge of Wyoming Territory. Outside this wall here… it’s the Planet Saturn. Ever since 1995, which we renamed 199X and starting counting years differently afterwards. It’s been only almost a year for us. A year on Saturn is about almost 30 of your Earth years, but our days are half as long. Anyways, the Sun is far away enough that we need special reflectors to capture enough light for us to grow what crops we can… get enough Vitamin D to not need to keep producing it in pills and capsules. I’m the only chemist in this county. And we’re running out of basic Vitamins. The Saturnine have been able to help us synthesize things here and there but… not the key ingredients. These are the kinds of things they just don’t have here. Anatomically, they’re almost entirely different from us. We can’t live in their atmosphere and they are too large to realistically help us out. They tried making robots to interact with us, but they… don’t really get us yet. Contact with the Saturnine has been… scarce lately. Something has been up with them. All of Wyoming has been trapped here for a long while. And I’m going to need your help to fix it… Because here’s the real problem news: the Sun is closer than it should be… If my calculations are lining up and this snooker table of a system is right… everything is wrong.”
“It’s right or it’s wrong?”

“That’s the problem. The calculations can’t be wrong because math doesn’t work that way.”
“So how is it wrong?”
“The math says that Saturn is where Saturn is. You can prove it based on how the stars move and how the Sun travels. It’s a little easier with a 10-hour day. We don’t have a ten-hour day anymore. We’ve lost an hour.”
“Like everyone falls asleep at once?”
“No, it’s not a Vanilla Sky thing.”
“Like, everyone is already asleep except for us?”
“No, it’s not a Persona 3 thing either.”
“I don’t think I’m following this yet.”
“Things are wrong because our position in space isn’t what it should be.”
“How should it be?”
“Farther.”
“Meaning?”
“Saturn has moved. I can’t tell what kind of… catastrophic events that could cause moving something this big as fast as it has… Without any of us noticing? Without anyone saying anything? Realizing anything? It boggles even my mind…”

“Where are we?”
“As far as we can figure… Saturn is drifting through the Asteroid Belt. Luckily, the Rings of Saturn and our intricate system of Moons have managed to tame most of the asteroids into more rings… but this is worrying. We don’t know if we could be moving closer.”
“Closer to where?”
“It could mean we crash right into the Earth. Or Mars. Or the Sun. Or hell, anything! Moving at the speed we have been? Would have had to have gone at? It defies physics. We would’ve had to squeeze both elbows and most of your shoulders through fourteen wormholes to get anywhere near this close to this far. Something is moving the planets… and I think moving Wyoming was just the start…” Ezra Von Qlarion said, sitting down, her hand letting go of Eli Egg’s jacket after realizing that she was holding on to it for too long.

Eli didn’t seem too upset by these notions. They were just looking up at a whole new night sky full of a billion new stars (or the same ones seeming a whole new way.) They wondered if Earth was visible from there as they sat back and leaned their head on to the ground of the platform, staring up into the cosmos. Ezra did too.

Chapter Text

Chapter 8 — Back on the Red Planet, Mars, Yet Again for the Very First Time

or

Sometimes More Robots Just Can’t Solve Every Single Problem on Mars

Travel to Mars used to take up to a distant delay of around two weeks, if nothing goes wrong in transit, and there weren’t any of the semi-constant dust storms kicking up, which always tended to delay things. They were more or less unavoidable. This was also one of the new issues created when Mars was inundated with the many new waters. The Queen Tyra tried her best to not hold her hands to the nigh-invisible holes on the sides of most Martians’ heads where they had something towards a lack of ears. She dug her fingers angrily into her veranda as she made her daily call to the Commander.

“MX2, provide sitrep!” she ordered, a small screen implanted on the armor of the inside of one of his more central right arms. He angled his head downwards, rather like wrapping himself in his arms and crouching, like any cringing thing one may find on the street of most metropolitan cities.

“Of course, my Queen. I have arrived in the organization matrix on the terra of visitors. I am soon to encounter their creator and I will rend them to the ground and bring them to you. You will be filled with a glorious joy in knowing that I have succeeded!”
“Keep up the energy, Commander! You do well in serving the might of Mars! Find that robot and bring them to me! Dead or alive! But get as much information as you can from them before you deal with them as you must. My spies have let me know that there’s a cyborg being dispatched. Make sure that his head is rejected from your observations. He is not excluded from your execution orders, but if need be, keep destruction to a tactical modicum.”
“I won’t get carried away, my Queen.”
“Such statements can be held against your word, warlord. Disappoint me and you will lose your command… after you lose your head,” she sneered.

“If I do not, I will certainly die trying. As is expected, my Queen…”
“How far is the Earthling from you?”
“They are arriving to meet speak with more of their suspicious Earthling comrades. The whispers of our spies is that they are planning to destabilize the portals again.”
“An embargo?! I’ll beat down the shutters with a hefty blade and seize control of the portals if they try to shut us out again! Razing will be called for soon!”
“I will do my best to seize them and bring them to you for personal destruction. We have found severe magnetic exposure is best to destroy these metal men of Earth.”
“Do what you can to bring this one with a voicebox attached. Analyze as soon as possible. If you are captured, you know the risk of your missions and the consequences of failure. Dismissed!”

Commander MX2 sat up, opening his eyes and looking up as the latest dropship was arriving from Side 2 Colony. He knew that Beaglesaurus was already on board and coming down to the local Blue Light District to find the robot that ran most of the transportation business on this terra. If he’d had teeth, he’d have been gritting them hearing the distant crash that most Martians were being aggrieved by. The dust storms were noisy enough, but now waves were due to crash violently into the shores in a way that humans from Earth seemed to find relaxing or soothing. Martians found it loud, annoying and dinful to them. They looked out from the rooftop they were standing on and leapt forward to the next one, heading towards the LZ in Noachis Terra, wondering how far underwater they’d soon end up. A large portion of South Mars was starting to dip into a heavy fog, preventing ships from descending and landing too easily. It was costing Mars millions by some measure of human monetary standards, but the Commander wasn’t interested in such pitiless figures as he trod further and further past the sheeting roofs and the sloping adobes. Across the busted puzzle pieces of architecture that they enjoyed more in the South of Mars, where the peaceful Martians lived, doing their meditating and their studying. The Commander, a soldier, was naturally disdainful unless they applied advantages he could use in battle. He watched carefully as the drop ship lowered and started to carefully lean on to his back, opening a cusp-slug carrier and started to screw a scope on to the far end of it. It was generally lethal to humans (since sharp pieces of metal aren’t good for most of the soft or hard parts of the human neck,) but it was less known for being just as deadly to robots. Most robots that optioned to have heads were known to keep most of their electronic brains there, especially the one that he was waiting for.

~~~~~

Descending into the now torrid waters of Southern Mars, Beaglesaurus and Robosaurus 1.0 were landing on the battering wings of a beating Martian Orni-tross, their humongous and wide wings were beating at a rate that made them incredibly loud and painful to hear in the cushioned interior as Beagle was drinking a can of Squirt and realizing that he might not be as much of a fan of Squirt as he’d thought he was. Not wanting to waste it, Beagle knocked back the rest of the zesty grapefruit-flavored beverage and dumped the can into a recycling vent that would have it collected for later. Listening to small hydraulic presses starting to crunch it into a tinier aluminumated disc (for better stacking,) Beagle looked out of the entire window and didn’t think he’d ever see a day when water was plentiful on Mars to the point of disaster. Robosaurus was flying to Orni-tross, landing it on a helipad that was being used as a de facto port of trade due its large size. The area was cleared of several milk crates, Martian chickens, Mars cats, and a 4^th-type tripod wriggling its way to a corner and the craft set down, its large, waving wings settling and then folding carefully in, like spun silver packing itself away as if it were a convertible’s top floating back and away to its little hidden alcove. Robosaurus folded the control stick back into place (to charge while he was out) and opened the hatch below to deplane. Beagle held his hand out just as Robosaurus was about to walk out with the charging cord for the craft, crossing over his chest for a moment.

“Wait… there’s something going on here…” Beaglesaurus thought as the opening door started to make his coat whip about in the almost softened and newly-salted winds of a new Martian crest as a splashing wave ripped over the side of the building, sending a wake that would have easily made Robosaurus definitely really eat shit falling totally on his face if he’d walked out too quickly.

“Oh… thank you, Beagle. It’s… it’s good to see you again. I am sorry that I haven’t been as able to go about visiting due to my space responsibilities… I mean, you have them too still, don’t you?” Robosaurus 1.0 offered.

“I mean, it’s not like hardcore, locked-in, Hoyle-certified government paycheck or anything… I do it to help out Aria… and to help other people. People who don’t know how to get by in a crazy world they don’t understand…”

They both nodded as the water slipped off the roof. Martian roofs had slats carved into the base where a dust storm would flow out of, keeping your house from getting buried too deeply, and regardless of the type of building, tended to have flat, gardened or otherwise occupied rooftops that were just lousy with parapets. War was considerably the least unexpected thing to happen on Mars, so chest-high walls and consistent hard cover from free-wheeling firearm salvo was something regarded as beneficial. Dropping off from the ship’s gangplank, Beaglesaurus dropped both shoes on to the roof and looked out over the flooded blue South of Mars along the Noachis Terra. The Southern Martians, a generally defensive military faction of tacticians and researchers, ran riot along the lower valleys and rivered ridges, but now… they were finding travel difficult. The streets were made for boat travel; there were Martian rivers, there weren’t many tributaries beyond them though, but this meant that some travel was permitted around the city in a silky, almost bright orange Venetian manner. Robosaurus’ left arm extended off to retrieve and pet one of the slightly-taller and beautifully-plumed Martian chickens. As his arm telescoped back to his body, Robosaurus lightly pet the Martian chicken, looking into its small little Martian chicken eyes. They looked like normal Earth chickens, except they were about a meter tall, had stylish little round golden eyes. Their feathers were about the same, all but for a certain buttery feeling to their green feathers. New Future American laws were being discussed by Pres. McElroy on if they were going to import Martian chickens, but there was still contention on if they should have to have little antenna on the chickens (to show that they’re Martian chickens.) As Beaglesaurus started to scan the horizon, it was rooftops and water. The cresting waves crashed into the many parapets would earn small yelps from Martians too young to understand the presence of a river that could topple its borders and invade the land in such a manner. Beaglesaurus was happy that such stabilization could be brought to Mars, but at what a cost had it come? But, more importantly, who had sent it? And where was Robosaurus 2.3? He carefully leaned his tail off the parapet and began to spin it as Robosaurus started to activate a floating disc he bought online. As it oscillated, it started to rise into the air, contravening the gravity of Mars and allowing him to float a good meter off of the ground. The two Space Ambassadors took a small aerial stroll across Mars to take a look at their atmospheric situation, spotting many South Martians watching in confusion. The worst thing to happen on Mars was disaster, because it meant that war had to be put on hold. To battle against a weakened enemy was, at minimum, going to give you a bad reputation. Someone who did such a thing was just asking to get stabbed in the throat by their own former Praetorian Guard.

“Something sure is going on out here… Got any idea where that other Robo might be?” Beaglesaurus asked casually as he made his way towards the large stone tower where near the Robosaurus 3.X Factory.

“If they knew how to get their act together. They wouldn’t be here at all. This is their usual scheme: setting up a factory, create a workforce, displace a workforce, disrupt a workforce. Two-Three runs the entire Factory and can choose who is hired by hand or by manager, which means that whoever isn’t paying into the Factory is not to be regarded. On Earth, this would be the crime known as ‘labor union fraud.’ Fortunate or not for them, such laws do not exist out here on Mars.”
“They don’t… have laws for labor theft? Then who protects the workers?”
“They are… self-reliant. Anyone who feels that they are not receiving enough pay or recognition would likely just kill their superior if it meant gaining their position and influence. What you would call… cut-throat tactics?”
“Lucky, you don’t have that kind of problem.”
“Breaking a voicebox can be a pretty expensive loss. I guess I’m just lucky to be married to a skilled artist and machinist.”
“So what’s the deal with the teleporters?”
“Another scheme goofed up by Two-Three, no doubt. Once Vanessa’s company pays for the teleporters to be constructed, they are held up by required fees to be paid for their permits, construction, usage, powering, access or distance. Many an economic excuse is maintained, but at the base of it all, they are spreading teleportation across Mars so they can capitalize on it.”
“Once it becomes a commodity, they’ll be the ones running it.”
“So what do they need us for?”
“Likely to keep them from dragging Two-Three out into the drenched streets and hacking my foolish sibling into pieces with large bladed weapons.”

“I mean… they have backups, don’t they?”
“I think it would prove less than beneficial if they had to go through that. And they will probably rip off a lot of arms, Martians have more than two, so they will not go easy on them.”
“And they haven’t done it in a pretty long while too. There isn’t any glint in their eye that wasn’t already there before but… it’s a seventh sense of sorts when it comes to knowing what they’re up to. It’s like…”
“You can read their mind a little bit?” Robosaurus 1.0 offered, offering a thumbs-up. He had found lately that this was a lot easier than having to figure out what sort of face to switch to, manually, automatically or otherwise. “Yeah, I also get that feeling, Beagle.”
“Thanks, Robo. It has been a while. Let’s see if we can land on top of here…” he offered as they angled upwards to an outcropping.

The Orni-tross couldn’t land on a platform of this size (they usually didn’t need aerial support for the factory,) so the current plan was to just fly Robosaurus 2.3 to the Orni-tross parked nearby and then back to Side 2 Colony where they’d rendezvous with Vanessa and probably go out for some Vietnamese food. It was somewhere jetpackers could land and remove their gear before entering from a small sub-roof attachment. It didn’t have any fencing, but it did have a very, very large net that ballooned around it like a trapeze, but was wide and flat like a boardwalk. The fine black metal of the landing platform was welcoming under his shoes as Beaglesaurus landed and stopped rotating his tail to fly around. Robosaurus attached his floating disc to a locking point on his back. From where it sat specifically against his back, he reached back his robotic fingers and pressed them to a small, almost imperceptible indent where he knew that his wife Mei had managed to squeeze it carefully with gloved fingers while forging its outer casing. Knowing that he was the only one who could sense that level of minute detail somehow just made it that much more special to him. It meant that any time that he was away, he could think of her more easily. Mr. Wizard had told him at some point when he was younger that “A gift from your spouse? Why, that’s amazing!” and… it really stuck with him over the years. Stepping up to the entrance attachment, Robosaurus tore the door open and it dragged open slowly, like it were hermetically sealed for temperature control. Walking inside, they glanced inward with Robo activating some LEDs on his fingertips for easy exploration.

“I’m surprised that there wasn’t a drone of theirs to receive us. They usually like delegating this sort of thing. You don’t think that the whole system is…”
“Shut down? How shut down would it have to be?”
“For all of it to fall apart? Very! As it turns out, very, very much!” Robosaurus 2.3 announced from down a lengthy hallway.

Down the hallway, they were walking closer and closer toward them. They were clearly having some trouble controlling their emotions.

“It seems like things aren’t going goodly out here. My factory’s dynamo-isolaters reached a fission point and…” they lifted both of their long, capable arms, showing off their fine pinstriped suit.

Since their installation of a new body, Robosaurus 2.3 had remained much the same. Their taller body was more suited to their larger personality, but they had found that moving out to Mars had created an aesthetically pleasant balance with their wider, stone architecture. Since they had started the Robosaurus 3.0 Company, creating the 3.X Line of Robots for labor, pleasure, attention, sport and personal interest (and especially without telling their elder “brother.”) They had taken to wearing a fine blue silk frock coat over a three-piece pinstriped suit in a burgundy that approached rusty. They had donned a matching red Panama hat, but doffed it to approach them.

“The whole thing is frozen in ice until they can pump all the water out. It’s too cold for anything to run frozen down there and we can’t get anything hot enough that can penetrate that much water and pressure. It becomes a bigger issue that this means we cannot get our approved teleporter repairs figured by computation. We cannot evacuate until it is safe to do so, correct?” they offered, a little stoically.

“That sounds like you don’t want to turn them on because you’d have to admit they work just fine, right?” Beaglesaurus challenged, provocatively reaching both of his occasionally techno-organic hands out to grab them in a hug. He did miss them.

“Look, I… I know that it is nice to see you as well, especially with all this going on lately.”

“You’re going to need to probably close up shop and move on to something else at this point, Sibling Two-Three.”

“I am starting to process that that may just be the right course of action. The Martians are not happy about my presence here anyways and the whole factory will likely be hit by missiles or torn apart by ranting mobs if it ever comes back from underwater. This whole thing has gone bunco. Vanessa was paying well to set up a Teleporter System under our charter, but this is getting to be too dangerous. I can send someone less important than me to take care of things planet-side. Let me see if anyone survived the implosions in the lower docking stations.”

They pressed a button on the wall and a half-broken screen extended until it activated. A few broken robots were littered around the room and, with some luck, the half of the screen that seemed blacked out by the shattered liquid crystal display seemed to only cover the part of the room that was already submerged in water, a heavy catwalk extending out over it leading to the small station. There was a soft cranking noise as the video camera the screen was viewing was cracked off from its plastic base and angled down to show a pair of sinister green leather tap shoes.

“The only survivor is the one I didn’t hire. There is a certain strange poetry to this. I can only hope this means that I am not required to save this one.”

“Who is this?” Beaglesaurus asked, a little impatient that someone who certainly seemed like they were standing on a rickety metal catwalk over a possibly sinking and definitely crumbling robotics factory, sales floor and distribution center and were also being obnoxious by doing a little dance to mock Two-Three at this point.

“This one is known as P. I keep telling them that I won’t hire them because they’re a small, young child who is too young and doesn’t know anything about running a robots company!”
“So how the hell did they get in there?”
“They keep finding new and inventive ways almost monthly now. I’ll find they’re on the line assembling robots instead of a pneumatic arm assembler. I’ll find that they snuck into the cafeteria and cooked up a four-alarm chili. It was delicious, but they have no serving license either. We also don’t need to eat really at the factory. Just yesterday, I caught them sneaking into Foreman Storm’s office and found that Foreman Storm was embezzling funds from the union stockade of funds…”
“How old is this kid again?” Beaglesaurus asked, unsure of this.

“Old enough to get into trouble for it and old enough to know that they’ve done this too many times. They are now in a dangerous area and they are tap-dancing their way into trouble.”

“How did they even get down there?”

“They must have holed up in the factory for shelter or out of their own interest when the floods came.”

“What about Foreman Storm?” Robosaurus 1.0 asked, curiously.

“Strictly speaking, Foreman Validus Storm is not a real accountant, but a financial officer who maintains a slush fund for additional spending.”
“So he found you had a secret Martian piggy bank account? How? Why do you even have files for these kinds of things?”
“It is that these forms exist that they can be used as legal proofs. We have to make business somewhere, even if it’s not supposed to be seen. All of the documentation is destroyed by now. You only have my own lofty testimony to even say that Foreman Validus Storm ever existed… which he doesn’t.”

“CHEERS FOR YOUR EARS! You can’t say no to the charmin’ and lovable P!” P exclaimed from off-camera, lifting the lofty camera to show that they looked like a Martian version of Buster Brown.

They were green and wearing a much more stylish straw boater, but they didn’t have horrible, terrifying eyes like the hideous Buster Brown. Instead, they had soft and charming features and a song and a merry step in their darling heart. Why, it was that charming chap’s first and last dream to work at the likely illegal and imminently condemned Robosaurus 3.X Line Robot Factory.

“I’m declaring meself as Supervisor and I’m going to take this company to the top! Once I get this all back on the skew, I swear that I’m goin’ to be the hardest-working chap on Mars what ever did!” he said, getting back into a dance again, almost as if to claim a highly Pyrrhic victory.

“Are you in any danger there? Do you need help or you will die, Supervisor P?” Beaglesaurus asked, talking over Two-Three as much as needed as Robosaurus 1.0 offered they move outside.

“Who me? You’ve got some nerve thinkin’ you can come in here and wrench me job from me, I tell ya! You can’t say no to Supervisor P!”

Beaglesaurus could hear P kicking something over into the water and it made a pretty cool splash sound that they both appreciated.

“I’m just worried that you’re stuck down there without any food. Or that you may or may not be trying to illegally work at a condemned robot factory. I’ve got good news in that this place is probably not going to be run by Two-Three much longer. But the bad news is this whole place probably can’t run on its own. They won’t support something this size running on its own, kid. You don’t know anything about robots, do you?”
“Why, that sounds amazing! I think I’ll be the one that does it then! Just you watch, in five years’ time, this whole place will be tip-top! I’ll be running this shop, that’s a Promise from Supervisor P! And when you get a P as in Promise from P, you’re getting a real one!” they exclaimed, starting to push more debris into the water to clear out a more decent workspace.

“Alright then kid. The whole place is yours. All that’s important is that you know it’s dangerous to stay here while it’s halfway underwater. Whatever was running this place is frozen in a block of ice. Unless you know how to break ice that doesn’t react to salt-water… I think you’ve got a lot on your plate from the buffet.”
“That’s what makes it a real challenge for Supervisor P! I may not have anyone yet to supervise, but once I get another pair of heads in here, I’m gonna be the top man involved! You won’t believe how great a job it’s gonna be! I’m gonna be smarter than Foreman Validus Storm, I tell you that!”

“I’m sure you already are, kid…” Beaglesaurus said quietly with a solemn respect towards Supervisor P that he hadn’t felt towards someone in a couple weeks. He turned off the monitor, “You sure are…”

Outside, Robo 1.0 had managed to remount his floating disc and use the latch on his back to lock Two-Three’s hands against his back.

“This will make it so you don’t fall due to mechanical failure. If you lose power or otherwise fall into sleep or standby modes, you will not disconnect. This means you cannot use your hands until we land again. Are you ready with everything you needed?” Robo asked, gearing up to start taking off again as Beaglesaurus walked out, giving a shrug to indicate that Supervisor P now likely had become Chief Operating Officer (in lieu of the Board of Directors’ formal decisions.)

“How far away is the dropship?”
“Only a few minutes away. I can likely try to fix the factory up again when the flooding recedes. Even if I do not agree with your business practices as of late, I do not want to see you fail and this is a hard thing to lose. This must have taken a lot of work to establish and you seemed very emotionally invested in creating more robots.”
“It is a ruminating programming anomaly. I continue to process feelings about wanting to make more robots. Do you think this is like the human drive to create? Or the human drive to reproduce?”
“It makes it sound weird when you say it like that.”
“Yes, but I only need a big stack of money and resources to get a robot made. There is nothing lurid about binary, about code, about chassis and pouring metal to form our bones.”
“No, it actually does make it sound a bit more weird though. Just not in a sexual way.”

“There are times where I don’t understand it myself. The R3.X Line of Robots are now working across almost a quarter of the Martian landscape. It’ll be a shame to have to leave them all and head back to Earth. Maybe when I come back… things will have changed and I can enjoy more time with those who are… kinda like family?”
“You think of them as family? You manufactured them yourself. I thought you were only considering them as ‘products.’ You have been selling them to all sorts of places…”

“I think perhaps I need to find out how to make another robot like me. You have a life-partner, but I don’t seem to have such lofty goals of processing. Justice fell apart as fast as the conceptual ideals of black-and-white morality. When I realized that there were places without a system of law altogether… well, justice just stopped processing sensibly anymore. I’ve tried working with crime a lot lately, just to see if it’ll make things more sensible, but I am not sure that I’m well-programmed for crime either. I feel that I may just have too much heart in the matter of things.”
“That’s a very adult thing for you to say, Sibling. I am happy to hear that you are growing as a person and that you are learning how to feel beyond your programming. Philosophical ideologies can be worn over until your circuits run down and your power gets low. But it is living life that is important, even when we live longer than the humans. Do not feel small or foolish because things have grown beyond your scope of understanding here, Two-Three. These were pretty much out of our hands. And honestly, I’m not entirely sure what kind of electro-brain Beagle managed to find in Mr. Wizard’s lab, but it’s not exactly clear what your initial programming matrix includes and all. Maybe it’s something you need to decide for yourself, Two-Three.”
“Perhaps so. This is a lot to think about, Sibling.”
“We are approaching the dropship. Our Orni-tross is…”

Looking askance the stunning oceanic site, the Orni-tross had both wings torn out and it had been carved open like a spatchcocked turkey, a large Martian blade sticking out of the pilot’s seat. The landing gear had been bashed into less than supporting supports. Hanging off of the far side of the approached building, Commander MX2 had attached a harness around his lower thoracic region, almost laying backwards, perpendicular to the side. His cusp-slug carrier carefully aimed up through the slat in the edge of the rooftop. Bracing himself against the harness, he pressed both boots against the wall to stabilize and fired, sending four thin razor-like discs flying at whipping speeds, pressurized with a simplistic air-displacement system. One of them caught Robosaurus 1.0 in the right ankle-joint, making him destabilize on his floating disc. The second and third managed to strike into Two-Three’s neck joint and into part of an important tendon-esque cord in their right shoulder, limiting some amount of vertical shoulder movement. But the fourth one… the fourth one did more damage: it scraped against most of Two-Three’s hat, cutting a thick tear into their electro-brain casing. Releasing the elasticized harness holding him in place, Commander MX2 lunged forward like a missile wrapped in rags with a clawed hand reaching forth to grasp Two-Three by their robotic chin and there was a sickening groan of metal, fluid-filled cords and a disconnecting voicebox that would make the ears of a normal man bleed. His biological armor of his helmet kept him from hearing too much of what his sworn enemy was trying to inform him of. Commander MX2 reached out with his other arm, gripping into Robosaurus’ flying disc and shoved it hard to try to topple him off of it, either on to the ground or off the building into the new waters of Mars as the backlit form of Beaglesaurus swept suddenly over him. Both of his vicious fighting Martian hands were busy as the Commander curled the grip on Two-Three’s chin, leaping up off both boots and, bracing both boots on Robosaurus 2.3’s shoulders, rended their head off their shoulders and kicked the disabling form of Two-Three’s new main body into Beaglesaurus. A deep inner rage flared in the Archduke of the Skate Park. The Commander drew both arms back towards him, crossing them in front of his biological cuirass to cushion Two-Three’s quieting head into his chest.

“You think you can stop me?” Commander MX2 offered as one set of his sharpened fingers dug into the large gash in Two-Three’s cranial manifold, “You underestimate your opponent. Even now, I gather the most important information! Just getting this close means that I’m the one who controls things now!”

His other hand, having deflected Robosaurus 1.0 for a moment further, reaching in towards his left shoulder, drawing out a sharpened poison needle, intent on taking down at least one soldier with him if death was on the line, only for Beaglesaurus’ tail to collide into his right side. The hardcore techno-organic might struck him harder than he’d thought even a heavily-armored human had the strength to do. But he also hadn’t done any research on Beaglesaurus, a mistake that he intended to resolve if a future survived for him that he was part of. Rushing forward, Beaglesaurus gripped into a furrow in the right pauldron of the Commander’s biological armor and rent it viciously to the side, almost tearing it loose from his exoskeleton as he reeled in pain. This was his final act of defiance. A grip as strong as his meant defeat or capture, neither of which were acceptable to the Commander’s mission. His right hand of talons gripped painfully into Robosaurus 2.3’s cranial manifold, cracking through the remainder of his brain casing and shoving his fingers directly into what would essentially be Two-Three’s main source of power, thought, emotion and angst. Beaglesaurus cleared his hands off from him as his tail whipped back behind him as the broken seal exposed him to a rush of circuit, electrocuting him in a way that his own death-grip was not going to release from. A sickening smell and a noxious, yet thin navy blue ribbon of smoke started to hiss out of a newly-scraped hole in his armor. Their internal organs and fluids boiled into a fatal froth as his twitching, shoving limbs fell limp forevermore and collapsed like a spider spritzed with poison. Beaglesaurus lifted Robosaurus 1.0 off the ground before a final telepathic shriek emitted from Commander MX2, his body having already fallen to pieces.

“This disaster! I shall return… to stop the Neo-Robot Hearts! This disaster is you!” his final shriek unleashed, Commander MX2 fell into a pile of burnt-out armor, putrid boiled flesh and any biological weapons having reduced to ash.

Beaglesaurus angrily punched at the nearly lobster-red armor cuirass that once held the Commander’s life and soul, caving it in the middle as he picked up Robosaurus 2.3 and held their inactive head to his own. In some ways, they were like a son, but he thought that made it sound weird, and had been considering them (much like Robosaurus 1.0) as more of a younger sibling sort. He had been happy to see that they were getting into business endeavors (not as much at the illegality of them) and carefully sat down, holding on to their body as Robosaurus 1.0 shot a green flare into the sky, a common signal for emergency on Mars. Together, the two managed to slump Two-Three’s chassis over a parapet and sat looking out at the gigantic glacial ruin that was once the Robosaurus 3.X Line Main Factory, wondering just how many robots had been sealed within it all. Even if they broke the ice, it would either freeze back into this shape quickly or, worse, the pure strength needed to break it would likely destroy the whole factory with it.

“You think lightning would break through it?” Beaglesaurus offered after some long time of silence between the two of them.

“The atmosphere is not thick enough on Mars for it to usually create it. However, with this much more water involved, it could create a water cycle that they also aren’t prepared for. Dust storms are one thing, but a hurricane might have more power, especially in a climate like this one.”
“I mean, we can get like a big lightning ray at this point. Make sure nobody is standing in the water, blast the ice, it’ll be concentrated, won’t light anyone on fire and it might crack the ice enough that it destabilizes?”

“If we aim it the right way, even if it misses, it’ll only hit the water. It should disperse easily enough. A lot of the architecture is stone instead of metal, it could work! If only Two-Three were still here to hear the good news. How long do you think it’ll take for them to be reinstalled?” Robo asked, leaning his head on Beagle’s shoulder.

“Automatic circuits should try to ping them every Earth week. If it doesn’t get a ping back, one of their Earth factories will reprint them from scratch. The memories are what’s important and the soul is… I guess still in their Neo-Robot Heart.”
“That is a confusing part of it all: why did this Martian go for the head if they knew it wouldn’t kill them? Does Two-Three not being here factor in to their plans? Their robots weren’t going to be able to halt teleportation or seize labor control from the North Martian Tribes at all. Why did he go for the head if it was the Heart that mattered and they knew so?”
“If I had to guess, he didn’t know until he got in close. Psychometry? Some form of clairvoyance maybe?”
“We robots barely understand normal psychic humans. Martians are a mystery to us entirely. The robot in charge of record numbers of robot production just got blown up again. Vanessa is not going to take this lightly. Are the Northern Tribes endangered by this?”

“When it comes to them, they’d attack first regardless of who was showing up, especially in a confusion like this. Shooting first and asking questions later is almost planetary policy. Vanessa can’t just send jackboot thugs down here to try to lean on trained Martian death squads. At least I hope she doesn’t, she wouldn’t get too far trying to fight them. If they were invested in space travel any, they’d be a concern for Earth.”
“They’re usually too busy fighting other tribes.”
“Aren’t they at peace with the South?”
“If they’re at peace with the South, they’re either planning a bigger attack later, found some advantage to allying with them against a different Northern tribe, or they’re trying to pull a fifth column.”
“Is Queen Tyra foolish enough to attack problems that don’t exist in the name of… victory?”
“I’m surprised they haven’t gone to war for less.”
“What do the Neo-Robot Hearts have to do with all of this?” Robosaurus 1.0 wondered aloud.

“That’s what I’m going to have to take us back to Earth to figure out. Prof. Denton is the smartest guy who could figure this out after your dad, Robo. I think that we’re going to need to find out just what it is that keeps the thr— the… two of us alive. Plus, we need to get Two-Three’s Neo-Robot Heart installed in their new body when it gets finished fabricating. How long do you think it’s been since they last backed up their memory?”
“Too long. They usually only did it about once a month.”
“It’s going to be a shame heading back to Earth so fast. When was the last time you were planetside, Robo?”
“I think Mei wanted to go see a movie, so we took a red eye back to Earth to catch The Binglish Batient playing at the Viva Sunset.”
“How she’s doing with space-smithing?”
“It turns out, with artificial gravity and enough high-yield heat-sinks, it works perfectly fine even in zero-gravity! I think she’s starting to figure out how to incorporate turning off gravity during the forging process. It turns out that using a depressurized airlock can cause a flash-freezing effect that does amazing things to liquid silver!”

As Robosaurus got distracted from his sorrows thinking about the woman he loved most, they spent some time trying to not think too heavily about their sudden loss and failure. Two-Three would come back as a Two-Four who was hopefully similar to the last model. When anything changed about Robosaurus 2, it was always a beguiling and pertinent question as to what sort of awe-inspiring changes would radiate throughout a world unbound by the fealty of the flesh and the advent of robotic self-assembly. What sort of new form would Robosaurus 2 take in the advent of a new being? Were Robosaurus’ made to learn from their defeat? Or be doomed to repeat their mistakes time and again?

Their thoughts were disturbed when a space freighter started to park in the air above them and lowered a larger transport pod down to them, not unlike a large pneumatic tube with a chamber inside it. Robosaurus and Beaglesaurus stepped inside with what remained of Two-Three and were pulled inside along to a more interior bridge.

“Well damn! I was told there’d be three of you to pick up. I’m… I’m so sorry…” their pilot said. He looked like an intelligent and smart lad who resembled an old friend of Beaglesaurus.

As they took off for space once more, Beaglesaurus walked to the freighter’s storage brig and saw that DJ Mechagodzilla was there. Putting both of his sometimes techno-organic hands into both of his entirely leather and cloth pockets, he wondered just what kinds of cosmic coincidences were being orchestrated around them and just how he and his two “siblings” factored into it all. Looking down at Two-Three’s broken head, then back out towards the bridge, he walked back out and shook hands with DJ Kiryū.

“I don’t think we’ve met. My name is Beagle. Your brother… he was just about my second best friend out here. If it wasn’t for him, I would’ve fallen apart after my family disappeared in the ‘90s. Even though near the end, he got too rowdy to figure himself out anymore… I know that you were there trying to support him too. I know it can’t be too much better to know that I was there when we lost him… but I think he’s probably doing better now…”
“Oh, you’re Beagle…” DJ Kiryū looked him up and down and nodded understandably, “That makes sense. I thought humans were like…” he held his hand to about somewhere along his waistline, “Like this tall. Or maybe he didn’t understand the metric system after all! I just got a job driving a load of space freight back to Earth along with uh… passage back to Titan enough that I can drop this off after I drop off on Earth.”
“Where are you going after you take him back? Do Titanians bury their dead?”
“He’s a robot from Titan. He’ll be disassembled into component parts, imprinted with a new serial number over the old one to show that he’s been replicated and then use the parts that are still functional to make something else.”
“They’ll scrap him? Do you want them to?”
“I guess it’s… our way of moving on. On Titan, it’s our way. I guess they make robots different on Earth. Maybe that’s why Mechagodzilla came out there instead of learning strafing maneuvers back home. He was… he was always a wild card. Me, I guess I’m just going to keep drifting when I get back. My creator’s company fell apart a few decades back, so he’s working for a different producer, which means he’s more or less given up on the DJ Mecha Line. We were prototypes for a new form of defense system, but… I guess the two of us just happened to be a bit more clever than the teacher, huh?”

“You could come to Earth. Robots have rights out here,” Robosaurus 1.0 offered, “If you’re not happy on Titan, there isn’t much of anything… keeping you there, is there?”
“Well damn… I guess I never did think about it that way. Instead of thinking how horrible it’ll be to go back… What if I just think about how great it’ll be to leave and never come back? I’m not on contract with anyone on Titan, so I guess that makes me a free agent… you guys know where to find work on Earth?”
“I think we might know a place…” Beaglesaurus said, having a small smile thinking about home… and thinking how much it reminded him of the past.

The freighter returned to Side 2 Colony as Mei leapt into Robosaurus’ arms, just happy to see that he wasn’t hurt after getting news about the flare going off. Mei revealed she was the one who personally hired DJ Kiryū, Space Trucker and now Space Driver extraordinaire, and started to do some rudimentary robotic autopsy for the late Robosaurus Two-Three and sat back after an hour or two of work.

“That’s pretty much scrapped. This was a targeted hit. They went for the head and struck hard when they needed to. If I had to guess… they were trying to take the Neo-Robot Heart without damaging it. We still don’t know what would happen if one successfully exploded. Between you and the Robosaurus Siblings, there are only three of them at this point, none of which we really understand the science behind. Whatever energy these things are putting out… it’s way beyond anything we know about mechanical data. So…” Mei concluded as she stood up and then sat back down on Robo’s lap and held him very closely.

“It means that we’ll have to go consult our scientific allies.”
“Another appointment up north with the Former Mayor Denton…” Beaglesaurus snickered.

“He quit being Mayor after he named himself Acting President… the rumor now is that he’s ‘Governorissimo’ of Vancouver. Any idea what it means yet?”
“Nope! That crazy cat has seventeen times the science we’ve got even out here, plus a tight seven weeks’ span for emergencies. He’s the kind of guy who gets real deep in on his work. We’re lucky he’s doing some kind of conference at the Secondary Radioactive Mansion. It’s off the coast, but he said it’d be hard to miss. I think I’m going to need to borrow Robo to get analyzed too. If all three Neo-Robot Hearts are involved with this, he could at risk just as much as I am and as Two-Three… was.”

Mei made a very long and irritated noise, but it was clear that even if she didn’t like the idea, Robo was going to have to be heading out again and soon, but he’d promised her some time alone between. It was pretty early in the day on Earth at Vancouver, so it’d take some time for them to be in an ideal drop location. She decided she’d make a few calls and make sure that Robosaurus 1.0 Wizard stayed safe while on Earth. With her connections… she knew exactly who was right for the job…

Chapter Text

Intermission I — Taking a Little Time Off on Layover (But in Space)

or

When Will Uranus Mission Begin?! Where’s Cybertron Now? Who Knows Anymore?

Griffin McElroy rubbed his chin aggressively until it started to chafe until Travis moved his hand off of his face, noticing he was deep in thought.

“Do you think it was a good idea to leave Justin in charge of all of America for months?” Travis asked as he tightened the straps of his over-sized backpack, keeping it stuck to his back without tipping him comically supine.

“I mean, everyone voted for him. I left the DRG with Clint in charge, I hope he doesn’t eat all my fucking Almond Joys while I’m gone… I know that he doesn’t like them, but he might think that they’re for everyone and hand them out! I’m just worried!” Griffin worried, almost too loudly, as Steve Buscemi drove Tarkus over towards them and parked his spouse carefully before he transformed.

“So here’s the tight word, hummingbird! Sounds like I found one of the best places for organic food on Neo-Cybertron and they even got us tickets to Mechana Butterfly if you guys want to see it tonight!” Steve offered, lifting both of the arms of his sunglasses impressively as Griffin started internally counting to 10.

“I don’t know, is this version less depressing?”

“I’ve heard it’s twice as sad, but also she launches a tactical missile strike when she dies, so it works out. They really pay into the concept of her being a tool in a system she doesn’t understand. I never knew that Japanese tragedies would inform the Cybertronian experience in such an intriguing manner,” Tarkus Buscemi-Tercel said as he transformed back into his more humanoid form.

“DADS! Why can’t we see Kamen Spider: Light Up the Night instead? I didn’t even know they made a musical based on the life of Kamen Spider!” A cheery blue-green sort of voice piped up from behind Tarkus.

Bouncing on hydraulic heels behind her larger of two fathers, Aquatarkus Daihatsu Cast Activa Buscemi-Tercel was a ball of energy. She was a young, aqueous-colored robot with a moderately thin frame and a wide mind of curiosity. It had been only a year or two since she’d been assembled, but she was already working at a youthful scope of mind like many teenagers of her mental age. They decided together that a preprogrammed childhood was probably going to be easier when it came to raising a daughter and started her at a general 10 that sounded like it would be easier to work with. It wasn’t. She was still just as curious, trouble-making, inventive or vengeful as most children her age tended to be if they were pretty bored and she were in a new city where she felt at home, but knew well that she was soon to be leaving. Tarkus and Steve had come to Neo-Cybertron to get a more complete and constructed daughter algorithm put together and the proper sort of chassis for her to have her Spark in.

“I mean, we can’t go right now anyways. But if you’re really passionate about it, I suppose we could always take in a double musical extravaganza once we’re done with the road trip!” Steve offered softly as he ate some authentic Kyrgyz shashlik, tugging chunks of the delectable Turkic meat chunks before he held out the pointed blade to the McElroys. “Try it! I’ve never had Kyrgyz food before! Leave it to Neo-Cybertron to find a way to make me a little bit more cultural!”

They sheepishly got out some tiny two-pronged meat forks from their voluminous cargo pants pockets and started to swipe off the mutton, enjoying a finely seasoned collection of spices that they were pleasantly surprised by the taste of. They found themselves chewing it for hours on end as they picked up some tiny packs of Energon for their friends back home and took jestful but appropriate pictures at the statue of Presidential Unit Ultra Magnus, who Tarkus had been visiting at the Cyber House, the new seat of the Neo-Cybertronian Alliances. After the Moon was reassembled and fixed back into a semblance of normality (or at least as normal things got those days,) Cybertron began a repair program that only involved pushing their entire planetoid masses and accompanying moons through the Hell-Moon Portal, which was relocated from over the Plurinational State of Callicum in the skies over Canada to a more respectable space in the counter-orbit of Venus in a stable area held in place by a sky-frame supported on to the structure of Neo-Cybertron, over the neo-capital of Vos. Enjoying some more food and picking up some space supplies for their trip, Griffin and Travis got to enjoy the new much speedier people-movers that could help them move at roughly the same speed as their largest pals on Cybertron (while Steve usually just rode in or atop his spouse like a walking mech.)

“It’s usually a billion miles that-away to get to Uranus, but I found a decent wormhole that’ll cut it down to a day or so in space on Groupon and that’s really paying for itself at this point,” Tarkus informed them as he drove towards the platform they’d take off in, via his space cruiser, the Love Beach, loading in their supplies once they arrived.

~~~~~

The McElroy Brothers had been ecstatic to hear that Uranus now had a solid base that they could walk and seemingly breathe on, which both of them guessed was probably going to be enough for a Uranian camping trip if it meant they got to be the first guys on Uranus. The jokes about their trip were numerous, constant and had some high-water mark where eventually they’d stop being funny, but they hadn’t quite reached it yet. As the Love Beach crested into the stable wormhole, they found that there was a small blue dot in the distance. Pointing a finger up at the main bridge view, Aquatarkus exclaimed.

“There it is! It’s a lot smaller than it looks in books!” she noted energetically bouncing on her heels again. She had never been there before personally, so she wasn’t quite aware yet.

“It’ll still take us about two and a half days to get to the surface and that’s if there’s no storms. The new terrain is moderately sparse and rugged. The parkas we packed should be strong enough to withstand any kind of high winds and you won’t be anywhere with any high waters. Most of the rock should be stable, but step careful. Far as I can say, no one lives there. You may as well be marching through Arizona for all you’ll get out of it. You also probably are going to be in like three weeks of space quarantine after this, nobody has really set foot on Uranus, we’ve only sent probes and determined there’s probably breathable air. We’re leaving you several weeks worth of water, so don’t just sit around doing nothing but drinking it. That’s probably bad for you. We’ll be doing a quick orbit back and then it’ll be 2.5 days again until we pick you up. Essentially we’re just on the other side of that wormhole!”

“That’s reassuring, Tarkus! I remember in our younger days, we’d hit our knees throwing stones across the Monongahela River, pitching baseballs at the old diamond… You were one of my closest friends until I figured out my brothers liked hanging out with me too. But you? You were always there for me. When you told me I should ask Rachel out, I believed you, and now we’re happier than ever! When you told me podcasts were the future of radio entertainment, the other two chunchminks were suddenly all ‘Wait, podcasts won’t exist for another four years!’ and, damn if you didn’t push us wrong!” Griffin said, putting a hand on Tarkus’ fender.

“It’s crazy to think where all the years have gone since then… you’re a real luminary now, Griffin. It’s good to see you getting out and being more active again. I was worried you being holed up in Punderdome or running the Democratic Republic of Griffin would end up driving you nuts again like it did when you were running things out of Best Virginia. I think coming out here is going to be really healing… or at least pretty funny! If you feel too miserable out here, just remember to hit the emergency transponder and we’ll know that you need to be picked up slightly earlier than already.”

“I also think you were a great friend to my brother Griffin! I don’t always tend to speak too often with you, Tarkus and sometimes I have a deep, soul-shattering regret about having not done so sooner! Maybe we can take a slightly slower trip on the way back and really get to know each other! I think we can really grow as friends and become closer people to one another! This is going to be mind-blowing!” Travis was bracing himself as he started holding his hands against his backpack’s straps.

They both made sure they had their keys, a pair of sun hats (regardless of how little sunlight they received,) and started to work themselves into their parkas to head out into the Uranian tundra. The Love Beach took off and Griffin and Travis looked at each other. They soon realized there were no landmarks in the current area and started to try using a travel shovel to dig their own reminiscent version of a Nasca Lines, but then realized they didn’t have much ability to see from above. Starting up a drone to help them figure things out, they found they had accidentally drawn what either looked like a grimacing face or a decent version of a lion tamarin. They drank some water and then decided to walk towards the slightly mountainous horizon in hopes that there was anything interesting or engaging they could find there. They were being watched. Closer than ever before.

~~~~~

Shrieking back to a semblance of Martian life, Commander MX3 woke in the protein pool outside of Queen Tyra’s meeting chamber. He began almost immediately fighting a standing servant holding a towel to liberate it from the servant’s grip. As usual and expected, he was merciless in his drowning of the servant, then meticulous in drying himself. Approaching the meeting chamber, he knelt, pressing one fist to the ground after he pushed inside.

“The final vision of Commander MX2 has shown me that the Neo-Robot Hearts owned by the humans and their robots are to blame. I attempted to seize the one that was on Mars most, but the last Commander failed. I will not fail. I am better than him and will continue to be,” Commander MX3 stated to the lounging Queen Tyra.

She was holding tight to the fragility of her nerves. The constant sound of the waters of Mars were distracted and irritating. She had resolved to putting on a large almost pillowing head-dress that made her feel rather important more because she’d killed someone for it. Her telepathic voice was louder and angrier than ever.

“Your mission has not changed then! Continue MX2’s mission on Earth: find the Neo-Robot Hearts and capture those responsible for the waters of Mars! Your mission will end with demolition and execution of our enemies and the removal of all this… fucking water! Our spies have intimated that the annoying Earthlings are trying to revive that union-running piece of scrap! You will be permitted one saucer and one cloning tube. If you fail, MX4 will be activated on your likely failure and execution.” She waved her hand angrily at him and he put back on his jade-colored helm, preparing to head back to Earth to finish his job.

Chapter Text

Chapter 9 — Return to the Miraculous and Amazing Secondary Radioactive Mansion

or

The Terrifying Conference of the Neo-Robot Hearts!

Iama Dandadarliment was standing on the rooftop, watching, as their bandanna flapped around in the wind. It was their job to be lookout for the next hour or four and they enjoyed the expansive view of the Vancouver coastline from atop the Secondary Radioactive Mansion. However, since teleportation was the most common form of transportation, this meant that the unique means of transfer to the large castle over Vancouver was mostly a helipad for landings and a ropeway for general access with some larger weight cars they could send over it for freight and supplies. Otherwise, it was rather impossible to get to the Secondary Radioactive Mansion which was mostly because it was floating some many fatal feet above the coast of Vancouver Island, where it was attached to an anti-gravity frame keeping it suspended in the air where it could be less easily reached by seeking eyes and suspicious ears.

“Mr. Denton! We have two incoming! I think it’s your 3 o’clock,” Iama radioed in as they tossed their beautiful and radiant silver hair out of both of their entirely green human eyes.

“Thank you, Iama. If you could show them down here, that would be highly preferred! After you’re done, I don’t have any appointments for another couple hours, so you can take a longer lunch if you need to.”

“Thanks a bunch, Mr. Denton! That’s awfully swell of you!” they noted as they turned back to the active teleport field, wherein Mr. Denton’s guests were arriving.

As per usual, the ringtone was the Generic Space Ringtone that most teleporters sending from the low-orbit station that our heroes used: chosen riffs from the guitar solo in Highway Star. A moment later, Beagle and Robosaurus 1.0 were there, holding a small metal case between them. Iama was internally worried about how bad they looked emotionally, so he decided to not ask, as was their usual chipper wont.

“You two are here to meet with the Conference that Mr. Denton assembled. I should go about taking you to them. Right this way! If you see a lady with purple hair, please don’t point her out, by name or physically!” Iama expressed. Luckily, having been to one of Denton’s homes before, they knew better than to bother his apparently incurably-shy wife.

“Thank you,” Robosaurus 1.0 expressed quietly to them as they walked on behind Iama for some time.

The castle was a little less… evocative of puzzles and madness like his main home-stay in PS Callicum, but it was definitely much larger and spread around in a more comfortable manner. It looked refined, but with a certain casualness to it all. The high-vaulted ceilings gave a certain mild echo to the mansion that gave it a bit of a spooky vibe that most mansions have when they are mostly empty of people. Drawing along down the red-carpeted tunnel of the Secondary Radioactive Mansion, it became clear to both the innate senses of Beagle and Robosaurus that someone was watching them from a small balcony far above them. Looking up, Beagle could see that this was indeed the case; the balcony happened to be attached to a sort of hydraulic railing system, much like a lift-chair that an elderly person would use to get up the stairs without stressing their knees too much. Leaning over the banister (which had a lower sort of hang to it where she was doing so) was the affable, yet enigmatic Mrs. Bernadetta Von Denton. She had a small pair of opera glasses she used to look down upon them as the mobile balcony moved steadily parallel to them. Her cute little head of lilac hair was held up out of her face with a thin gold banana clip with a small brown smoky quartz teddy bear on one end near her right ear. Though he quickly averted his gaze, knowing her to a socially challenged individual and not wanting her to feel self-conscious more than she may have. The entire way, she was watching them along and only when her balcony lightly jolted to a soft halt like a slow-closing cabinet door that she stopped, pressing a small green button on the wall next to her. The doors that Beagle and Robosaurus found themselves in front of slowly opened at her call and the two found themselves abreast of a conference of many scientific-looking people. Some had lab coats on, others were wearing turtleneck sweaters.

“And if have any more time until they arrive, we may move on to the additional subject…” Gov. Denton began as he turned over a large reversible blackboard, revealing the words on it in chalk: “WHERE IS WYOMING?”

Beagle gave a mild knock on a door jamb and AC Denton quickly flipped it back over.

“Welp, never mind all that! We can come back to that next week! It seems our guests have arrived! If you kind folk could stand up a little, I’ll use one of these to help you!” the eccentric billionaire offered as he pulled out a small remote controller.

Pressing it, a small robot wielding a red arrow pointing downwards began to carefully float above the scientific entourage of his in time with his introductions.

“Although I’m sure you recognize Prof. Zazzerath, Dr. Neko and Prof. Goldthwait from your last journey here,” he noted, Neko nodding her very tall head at Beagle and Robo, “The rest are likely newcomers to your experience!” Motioning to one of his five otherwise unknown colleagues, he began, “The smart gentlemanly chap at the end here is Prof. Ibuki Gorō, President and CEO of the Jet Jaguar Robotics Company, the largest in Japan. He’s a genius roboticist who has been working on them since the Muan Incursion of 1973. Many believe he created the first sentient artificial intelligence on Earth!”

Prof. Ibuki looked like a middle-aged man of Japanese extraction with slightly oily hair and a pipe in his teeth sporting a white dress shirt with a swallow-tailed collar stabbing out of a blue turtleneck. He wasn’t smoking at the moment, but took it out of his mouth to give his guests a soft nod of understanding, acknowledgment and likely respect.

“Doctor Edward Jessup is a psychopathologist from Columbia U and Harvard Med, he’s been a genius when it comes to mind-expansion and the general psychoactive cause since his experiments with Former Gov. Leary. He’s here to determine if this has something to do with the amazing and beautiful landscape of the mind!”

Dr. Jessup had quite the short cut of blond hair and a thick lantern jaw. He was wearing a lab coat and staring off into the middle distance, not making eye contact with anyone in general. He seemed to be staring at something that wasn’t there or focusing on something else he was thinking about at the time as a large red pointing arrow floated over him.

“Dr. Tom J Roberts here is our electrical engineer and one of my oldest friends. Him and his Fabulous Five were something of the top men in the science game since around the First Great War! They made you a Major after you saved that European village, didn’t they?”
“It’s why they call me ‘Long Tom,’” Dr. Roberts clarified, wheezing slowly between his teeth and setting his bowler hat on to his head after lifting it slightly with a mildly shaking hand, “Not for any other reason.”

“Finally, Prof. Nefret Forth Emerson is a known doctor of anatomy and an Egyptologist of renown on the side.”

“I’ll do everything I can to help you lads,” she offered tersely. She was a half-Egyptian woman with a somewhat thick British accent, sporting a lab coat and a pair of moon-shaped glasses.

“Oh and we also got Prof. Dave Mustaine here from La Mesa Polytechnic University, he’s our man when it comes to astronomy,” Gov. Denton motioned haphazardly towards a man with intense eyes, a shrew-like face and a rather gorgeous mop of strawberry blond locks trailing down his shoulders with a short beard to match.

“It’s a wonder to say hello to a hero like you. You two are amazing and I’m just honored to be here,” he said in a voice that sounded like it hurt. “After Pres. Hopper lit himself up in that art installation, La Mesa hasn’t been the same. Your presence does manageable things to my consistent mental place!”

After meeting these colorful and evocative scientists, Beagle climbed atop the conference table and started to unlock the accessible chest compartment of his variably techno-organic body, exposing the necessary part of his Neo-Robot Heart for scrutinizing. Robosaurus did about the same, but on the other end of the table, so his and Beagle’s heads were next to each other in a way that looked poetic to the eyes and fragrant to the touch as the scientists began to look over them.

~~~~~~

During the approximate seventeen hours it took to run all the relevant tests, theories, hunches and answering general questions involved, Iama was eating a fine croque monsieur in the Carnelian Common Room, which was only “common” because “Break Room” didn’t sound as impressive. Among them were a varied journey of guests who were lounging about, eating snacks, doing mild computational work or otherwise enjoying themselves. The first and most important was Aria, Beagle’s wife and Lead Scientist for a Future American Commission on the cosmic confusion. Alongside her was Prof. Ibuki’s effervescent stepdaughter, Mioda Ibuki (she also went by Ibuki,) Mrs. Zazzerath Suisei (former Head Priestess of Seatopia,) and Aria’s personal bodyguard, the Dread Paladin Chelldorado, holding his trusty saw-toothed blade.

“Isn’t it dangerous to put all of these important eggheads in the same room?” Aria asked, a little anxious about Beagle and Robo being gone for so long almost as much as the question at hand.

“Golly! I don’t think that I’ve ever seen anyone who would hate Mr. Denton! Why, he’s just about the nicest guy and the sweetest boss someone could ask for!” Iama noticed softly.

“I mean the rest of us. Robosaurus 2.3 has already been attacked and decommissioned. That was nearly a day and a half ago and they still haven’t reactivated yet. That’s… troubling.”

“Do you believe that they are in danger?” Suisei asked, eating a biscuit.

“That could be. The issue of it all is that if they didn’t reactivate at one of their factories and reassemble themselves… we should get some kind of signal. If they were in hiding, it would make sense… but it’s more like they’re just gone! Even without their Neo-Robot Heart, they should still have a general mental template and memory bank to draw off of. They wouldn’t be as powerful, but they’d be up and around again.”

“So you think that they cut-and-ran? I mean, didn’t you say that they were running some business scam on Mars? Why wouldn’t they just scoot on out to some other asteroid? It’s a real New Space Age nowadays, they could really be anywhere!” Ibuki offered, doing a double point towards the stars with one arm cocked at the elbow.
“They’d tell their business partners, at least. But so far, it’s radio silence from the younger Robosaurus. Where are they at? And why aren’t they here? If their whole business was going under, they’d want to be here just as much as Beagle, just as much as Robosaurus 1.0. I’m starting to get worried that something else is going on here. It wouldn’t be the first time we’ve been embroiled in some crazy conspiracy.”

“This does seem to happen to you all a lot…” Mrs. Suisei noted, wisely striding to the center of the room as she looked up out of the large circular skylight in the ceiling.

“Have no fear! The Jet Jaguar Company is the security of Japan, given form to save the world! Just like during the Muan Incursion, we’ve got plenty of energy and firepower now!” Ibuki declared suddenly and somewhat loudly, stepping up on to a crimson table, her white tennis shoes knocking a plate of fudge over to make room for her standing. She pointed down at her fellow guests and exclaimed further, “The Jet Jaguar Company has the most powerful type of security out there! Follow meeeeeeeee!”

With that, she leapt from the table, landing on Chelldorado’s shoulders.

“Alright, Mister Big Spooky-chan! Clank and clunk yourself outside like a good robot so we can show them what is best in life!” Ibuki said, almost in a demanding way, seeming to presume that the Dread Paladin was a very stylized robot.

“He isn’t automated. I think he’s full of hellfire, honey. Be careful around the spikes too,” Aria noted as she got up and Suisei continued staring upwards out of the skylight.

“Something’s coming. A change in pressure. That seventh sense…” Suisei noted, still smiling enigmatically.

“Are you coming too?” Aria offered.

“I won’t need to…” she replied quietly.

As Chelldorado approached the large eating area known as the Viridine Veranda, both of his large gauntlets shoved open the French-style doors as Ibuki turned her head back, as if giddy with expectation to show off more. Pointing forward as her hips started to bounce childishly like she were riding a horse more than an undead knight, it came into view from the mists of Vancouver Island that there was an immense and powerful robot standing outside the Castle. This was because its face was approximately the size of the shining green veranda itself and they were certainly already floating a significant distance off the ground.

“Introduciiiiiiing…” Ibuki began before she drew out a pair of drumsticks and rattled them on the Dread Paladin’s head, “Jet Jaguar Gigante! This is the largest model available, used for high-powered construction, ship rescues and Kaijū fighting! We were thinking of putting together some other robots for it to fight against, but we have yet to build one quite as big as this one! Flying at Mach 3.5 and able to bench press even the insidious Gigan! Nothing can stop the might of his highly concentrated Liquid Nitrogen Breath!”

Aria had stopped paying attention around the point when Ibuki started singing Jet Jaguar’s old and moderately outdated theme song, though Suisei was certainly humming along from the Carnelian Common Room. Iama continued eating a sandwich on a couch, enjoying being on break a little longer.

“There it is! I saw this last night in a dream! A brilliant gray circle off of a green veranda… There!” Suisei pointed suddenly outside towards Jet Jaguar Gigante.

There was a sharp whining noise, a discordant din that made it clear that something was approaching… and fast. It became more clear when Jet Jaguar Gigante suddenly began to turn around, facing the same way that Suisei was pointing. Ibuki fished through a small backpack with a cute skull on it that she had hanging off of her shoulder, retrieving a camera decorated with skull stickers. It was almost in a blink when she snapped her hot photo chance and the din became a sudden and horrible roar of displaced air. A Martian saucer, mostly used for domestic travel on Mars, rocketed at them. As Suisei’s eyes glowed a green of the sea foam of the ocean, she smiled, knowing that it was just as she suspected. On Ibuki’s camera, it showed like a great gray disc highlighting around Jet Jaguar Gigante’s head like a halo or the corona of a solar eclipse. Hurtling through the sky, it was becoming clear that Commander MX3 was just as poor a pilot as the original had been (having driven his craft almost directly into the Earth, but most disturbingly, killing no one but himself.) Iama leapt off the couch and smacked a large red button on the wall, then picked up their radio to send out the word.

“WE’RE UNDER ATTACK!” they announced seconds before the Martian saucer cracked hard into the Alabaster Attic, destroying priceless knickknacks and knocking Gov. Denton’s skis entirely in half, length-wise, ruining them.

Chapter Text

Chapter 10 — The Amazing Battle off of Vancouver Island

or

The Dastardly Grand Theft Jaguar

Commander MX3 performed a tactical attack drop entry as he sent his saucer into a flying twist, crashing in through the Alabaster Attic, though his cloning tube remained active, primed and ready for his likely inevitable destruction. It was cloaked well enough as a highly expensive Gustave Becker grandfather clock, slowly ticking the seconds until it would unlock. It was only a matter of time and strategy or worse, a lack of both. His armored boots set down on the reverse side of Jet Jaguar Gigante’s back, gripping his claws into the side, holding tight to the thick metal casing of the humongous robot’s sheer outer paneling. Trying to pilot an automaton of this size wouldn’t be impossible, but it would be dangerous and likely to give himself away more than the large scale diversion had already unleashed. The saucer would likely not be easy to recover as it was slowly sinking already into Kendrick Inlet just north of where the Secondary Radioactive Mansion was moored over Mowichat Sound. Leaping from the side, he rolled inward, crashing through a window into the Peridot Parlor, tilting his helm to keep the glare of the almost accusative green jewels as he drew his sizzling exterminator ray, eradicating his way through the heavy-sealing doors as the alarms were raised. Stepping through the molten slag of the blast doors trying to close him off, his keen attack-laden senses told him there was someone else in the voluminous hall and his neck craned upwards, lifting back his helm lightly to find that Bernadetta was still standing atop her balcony. This time, however, she was no longer the shrinking violet she was before; she was a more confident shrinking violet who was well-prepared for any attack on her other new home. Pulling a pin swiftly, she lobbed an incendiary A&W grenade to the alien invader, the balcony starting to shift backward to aid her escape as the Commander braced his arms in front of himself, severely burning the backs of his hands through his biological armor. Thrown back into the door he walked out of, there was a sickening crack of his spine smacking into the jagged, molten metal that he’d climbed out of. Lifting his exterminator, he fired almost blindly at the rail of Bernie’s mobile balcony, but it only meant she wouldn’t be able to travel towards him. As the balcony moved faster out of the room into a neighboring one, she lobbed a smoke grenade into the hallway to blind the incoming forces at bay.

“I’m becoming angry…” he thought aloud as he regained his footing, dashing forward with and melted his way through another blast door before finding that the blinding smoke was seeking his almost larger eyes.

Shutting them tightly, he gave a mouthless roar at his opponent, dropping to the floor to stop the scourging of his eyes. The Martian template he was cloned from had somewhat larger eyes than most normal humans, making the searing pain of thick tears and irritating the nearly unnoticed slits that served as a nose and respiratory intake. The acrid, pearlescent smoke wisped about him as he charged on forward, running into another wall and cracked one of his pauldrons tearing through a beam to get to the juicy innards of this enormously gaudy Gothic Revival mansion. As Bernadetta’s balcony faded into the distant, he crashed through door after metal door in search of his quarry, not knowing that Beagle and Robo were already being evacuated to a more secure part of the castle. Trudging his way down torn red carpets and ruined curtains, he ripped at any cabinet and cracked open any safes he could find to make a warpath to the Neo-Robot Hearts. They were all that mattered. Trying to branch out his mental speech, he tried to see if anyone was in range to be “heard” (as Martians did all their listening generally this way,) but found only a spike of something even the great minds of Mars had yet to understand. What that happened to look like was a laboratory with a single scientist in it as the figure there walked up to him in a way almost too bold to shoot at. Wrapped around their face was an opaque pair of goggles and a dust mask, keeping out the crushed pieces of masonry and twisted metal in the assault on Gov. Denton’s summer home. However, between them as they turned round to face the Commander, the scientist was holding a silvery dural cuboid case by the handle.

“The code to open is 4444. You need to start recognizing who your allies are. You won’t have many,” the being told the Commander.

The Commander tore the case from his grasp and opened it as there was the sound of rushing armed guards coming.

“You don’t have much time. Be wary, every time you clone yourself, you’re going to lose a little more of you. What matters to you is the mission. What if you forget the mission from dying one too many times? Don’t forget this favor. When it all begins anew, you will be called on to answer for it. Take this… and run. This is enough, isn’t it?” they asked.

“I could tell you after I kill you…Earthling,” the Commander sneered mentally at the snide nature of this apparent human.

“Put your hand here,” the scientist demanded, seizing at the Commander’s gauntlet hands and pressing the one not gripping a deadly Martian firearm to his own throat, “Squeeze hard. I need to make it look good for when—” they began, only for the Commander to grip far harder.

He was disturbed to see someone foolish enough to embrace death so easily as his claws dug into their skin. They certainly felt human as he watched small rivulets of blood dribble down the neck and on to the chest.

“You’re all alone, soldier. How far until you run into a pit you can’t clone your way out of? Capture will never happen… but when do you retire? What do those ducets earn you? When the blind lead the blind, they both fall into a pit,” they asked through a constrained windpipe, as if they weren’t being strangled. They sounded spitting mad with anger, but with a tone that made it still sound like they’d have kept talking if they had the chance.

The 14 ducets of merit he would earn would make him a highly-classed Martian warrior. One of the highest honors of his land would be his. His name would be carved into the stone of the great warriors that fought before him and his genetic line would continue into plentiful population. He would be used for time immemorial as one of the most prized types of Martian to be. To hear that his mission was finished and he had completed it was all that mattered to him. Hearing a loud explosion much closer to where he was, he released his deadly grip from the collaborator’s throat. No quarter would be given, even to one who gave him what he wanted in kind. Any witness would be too many. Drawing forth his exterminator ray, he aimed it carefully down to the forehead of the collaborator.

“You have no place in our world. Stay off of Mars, Earthling,” he demanded from his stoic prey as he picked up the silvery cuboid case. A tinge of accomplishment within him would have to be reined in for now.

“Who says I am from Earth?” they began to titter through their bruised trachea until the door was blown off its hinges and separated the sinister faces.

Turning with a trained eye, Commander MX3 found Dread Paladin Chelldorado, wielding his saw-toothed blade, raised it high, shoving forward to obstruct a clear line of fire, gripping a dark metallic hand around the Commander’s gun hand, twisting hard until something snapped internally as he threw the Commander by his cracked wrist out the window. However, his right hand was still gripped tight on to that duralumin case as he fell into the open air outside of the Secondary Radioactive Mansion. Without a saucer, Martians were not known for having particularly aerial prowess. They were accustomed to an entirely lighter form of gravity altogether on Mars, which was likely one of many reasons they had yet to even attempt an invasion of any other planets. Looking out into the brightness of a terrestrial sun shining at him, the Commander dropped forward and reached a clawing left hand after pocketing his ray-gun and dragged it deep into the metal of the flotation ring framework that was currently keeping aloft the edifice. With that one already being broken too, it was almost unbearable jagged bolts of pain searing through his cracked carpals. Dragging up the case, he was able to attach it to his jade belt and let it hang, switching hands as his claws dug into the thick metal. It had no hope of tearing through, it was enormous, nearly the weight and general size of a metropolitan bridge. There was a muted sort of booming noise as Jet Jaguar Gigante began to shift and move towards the Secondary Radioactive Mansion, gripping the saucer with merely its hands and setting it into the waters farther out in the Atlantic Ocean where it collided into Stirni Seamount, slowly sinking away where it wouldn’t be seen again. With its work of disposing of trash, it turned back towards the Secondary Radioactive Mansion and began to reach a large, grasping hand out towards the bottom of the framework.

The Commander, eager more than anything to not be gripped by it, dropped off on to the back of the hand as it came in close, sliding down the forearm of the robotic defender, snapping an ankle as he collided into the crook of its jointed elbow. He resolves to eschew further injury and escape with what he’d come for. Finding that the outer shell had no interior passage within after scraping at it with his claws furiously, the Commander found the other hand coming around to swat him away like a mere insect. Dragging his busted armored boot out of the android’s arm, he leapt to its chest, where the main controls were set within. The access panels he’d spied beforehand when landing on it were in view just along its enormous chest. The one he found was sealed flush, but his mighty claws dug in further, ripping the whole door off and began to crawl inside. The boots of his armor had specialized claws set in them of a sort, activated by a certain shifting of his weight to let them slip out and dig in tight. These were common to use for scaling the Martian landscape, but they were doing just as well keeping him from falling out of an access tunnel to be smashed on the rocks below. Dragging himself upwards through the tunnel with one hand, carrying a heavy case on his belt and with a shattered ankle, he was starting to make his way into the main control room. From there, anyone could (once there, at least) seize control of the robot entirely beyond what it was automatically doing by program. Finding it, naturally, had a large, sealed door that would have to been slagged to open it up, he sunk his claws into the keycard entry and found this did little to disable its ability to stay firmly shut. Digging his claws into the metal of the blast door, he found that it wouldn’t penetrate deep enough and slumped against it. Opening the case with the code he was given, he would almost laugh at seeing that it contained the Neo-Robot Heart of the now Late Robosaurus 2.3. He shut it closed again. Most Northern Martians didn’t have an innate sense of “humor” as Earth humans would understand: they could understand irony or derision or the boon of seeing their enemies’ humiliation, but death was usually more important to them than defeating the enemy. It wasn’t in a “ha-ha” funny way, but a “isn’t that odd” funny way. They wondered just who that scientist was that was more than willing to betray the human cause for him when the door suddenly slid open from the other side. Someone was letting him in. Apprehensive of who it could be, he reached down for his gun as he stepped through the entryway, but when his first boot reached over the sealed room’s door, he could feel a hand grab at his broken wrist, pulling him forward as he found Coda Magnifica Talia Musica Ozma de Aria the IV had rattled a singular end of a handcuff on to his wrists, connecting him to her.

“Stand down and surrender that case. I’ve locked down the control board for Jet Jaguar Gigante’s motor functions,” she ordered, knowing well from her time as a Martian ambassador how to deal with Northerners.

“You know already my mission means I cannot, Earthling.”

“You know that you’re not getting out of this alive without being caught. I know that’s a problem for you, but it’s not something you can avoid now. You can still be sent back to Mars alive, isn’t that good enough?”
“No, no witnesses. This was a secret mission, an order from the Queen. I am Commander MX3, my craft is destroyed and I will not be captured.”

“And what are you going to do then?” she asked as she brought one of her shoes up to press into his left pauldron, pushing him to the ground where she pulled at his arm, “You’re already beat. I gave you an order. Stand down or… die!” She wasn’t too sure she would be emotionally prepared to kill him outright, but she knew this was likely the only threat he may take seriously.

“Coward. A real warrior would not ask for my surrender.”

“I’m not a warrior. I’m not here to kill you,” she admitted, cuffing his hands behind his back and sitting on his shoulders to keep him pinned to the ground, “Get used to Earth. You’re going to be here a while. I’m teleporting us both to the mainland where you can be held pending trial. If the Queen wants you back, she’ll have to ask for once. Nicely even!” she insisted as she started up the teleporter.

Now, the important thing to know about teleportation is that it comes in several necessary stages: the first stage, like most appliances, is turning it on and waiting for it to load up its computational interior. Once it’s nice and warm, humming and active, one would need to input coordinates and then open the channel. If it’s not open on the other side, it won’t teleport you (since there’s nowhere to go yet.) As she was juicing it up, the channel opened and she stood up to drag Commander MX3 off to the teleporter. The Commander carefully eased his arms apart so as to not make clear his actions. Grinding the spikes of his armored boots into the ground, it made a metallic tear that he used to hide the sound of him pulling just hard enough for the taut chain of his cuffs to pop free in the middle. Holding his hands back still, he waited carefully as Aria tried to pull him closer to the teleporter and lashed out sharply. His claws went searching for any of her vital points, only for her to lean back, his hand connecting to the teleporter controls, altering the coordinates just a small, minute, but incredibly important difference. Technically speaking, a teleporter could send you to any given spot you had coordinates for, but this is highly discouraged, since the system is made to keep one going from one platform to another. This was a vital part of the design that the Commander would soon become familiar with for a short, but equally important period of time in his life. Almost anyone you ask on the street, from the most elderly coot to the youngest whelp could tell you that teleporting blindly was a danger that no person who understood it properly would undergo. Commander MX3 leapt for the pad and hit the transfer button and disappeared from the control room of Jet Jaguar Gigante as Aria covered her human mouth with both of her entirely human hands in astonishment. She found the coordinates were skewed by only a few feet from the teleportation platform at the ground house where Iama’s partner in crime, Agent Bluedog, was trying to see if their pen was fine-tipped enough to write their name into the tag on the reverse of their cute little jaunty hat when Commander MX3 arrived.

The first issue was that, with a blind port, he had appeared only partially embedded in a sheer metal wall overhanging a cliffside. The immediacy of his teleportation meant that this would end up severing both of his legs, midway through his calves and was about halfway up the wall. Four clawed fingers in his right gauntlet were severed by being caught in the wall as well. The cleanliness of this break left him leaking a thin, runny, darker green liquid that Agent Bluedog was able to identify pretty readily as Martian blood. They threw up in a small plastic wastepaper bin as the dying Commander MX3 reached for his firearm. He found his swelling wrist now hurt too much to turn the way he’d need to to disengage his ray-gun from his armor and let out a telepathic screech that made Agent Bluedog back up to the other side of the room to maintain distance (apart from the mess it was also making.) Groaning internally, he managed to roll on to his back and found his legs gone, having fallen off to the waters below. He couldn’t feel his left hand (his more trained hand,) one shoulder blade was straining with a deep seam of fracture in it. A warrior wouldn’t beg for mercy from the enemy. Asking for someone to kill him would be just that. He began to reach towards his left elbow, but found that Agent Bluedog was already far out of reach and that he had no strength left to drag himself towards him to further attack them… Thus, he relented and in that relenting, he embraced death’s cold icy grip on his Martian heart and had his final vision once more. Seeing the three Neo-Robot Hearts in a place between life and death, consciousness and failure, he found that there was a glowing gray cord connecting all three. Their power combined was to blame, but not something innate to them. In his final vision as his large eyes slipped shut forever, he saw all three Neo-Robot Hearts crack open as millions screamed and he had a sudden understanding.

Chapter Text

Chapter 11 — A Discussion on the Matters of the Neo-Robot Hearts

or

Shock! The Disaster of the Cosmic Imbalance

At a large conference table, Pres. McElroy sat with Moon Ambassador and Prince Consort Nagito of New Moon, King Danny Sexbang of the Meme Kingdom, and the newly voted Prime Minister Elliot Page of the Remaining Provinces of Canada, the four most important people that could be reached on such short notice. In a small surgical theater below, Gov. Denton had connected a large display that was showing the three Neo-Robot Hearts.

“Gentleman! Welcome! Our conference and Mrs. Aria’s incredible help has led us to the same conclusions that we have found and reported to the users firsthand. From this information, we are passing it on to you!” Gov. Denton explained.

It had been three days since the attack on the Secondary Radioactive Mansion over Vancouver Island. After finding out the same news, Beagle was on the Moon for important investigative business (and telling Vanessa the bad news about her late business partner,) Robosaurus 1.0 was back on Side 2 Colony with Dread Paladin Chelldorado guarding him, and Aria was meeting with Interpol on a matter of supreme importance herself. None of them had any idea who had handed over the Neo-Robot Heart to Commander MX3 was, it was believed that he merely found it apart from anyone else. Commander MX3’s body liquidated, as it was programmed to do after death.

“Let me start at the beginning. When I get to the end, I’ll probably stop!” Denton began as he moved the screen to instead show Mr. Wizard, lovable children’s science program creator and one of the smartest men the world had. “About 20 years back or so, Mr. Wizard was able to harness a form of power we don’t yet entirely understand, containing it in a large machine in his basement. When his son, Robo, and Robo’s best friend, Beagle, were attacked by a rogue agent of Cybertron believing that then Lord Tarkus’ favor lied with a political rival of his, Astrotrain was destroyed in the process, but it fused the two of them into a being that we know best as…” he changed slides to show the well-known and eponymous Archduke of the Skate Park. “Beaglesaurus! Now, in order to regulate the advanced technology into his new son’s body, Mr. Wizard was able to apportion part of that energy into a new, more compact machine. An engine that we now know as…” he switched the slide to the First Neo-Robot Heart.

“The Neo-Robot Heart. In doing so, this harnessed energy was able to give Beaglesaurus a new form of circulation, respiration and bodily autonomy beyond anything the world had seen. He was, in many ways, essentially a cyborg powered by this energy. Some time soon after this, Mr. Wizard began fabricating plans on how to replicate this technology, but after some testing, he found that the energy’s exposure and his natural lifespan had led to… him…” he got a little choked up for a moment, “To him dying from a heart attack. We were able to determine by autopsy that his heart had aged almost seven years more than the rest of his body, despite him living a heart-healthy lifestyle and engaging in moderate regular exercise for a man his age. After his demise, the Earth was invaded by Queen Adeen of Planet Disastrous, who managed to essentially separate the two into a Beagle without technology that still contained the Neo-Robot Heart as a main core part of his anatomy. Secondarily, this created Robosaurus 1.0, who has kept the moniker since. Formerly, he had a more ‘saurian’ body, but he had this mechanically altered to a more fitting humanoid body. When he did so, I was still living at the Wizard Estate and paying to keep the lights on wherein I was able to finally divine that the machine in the basement I’d puzzled with for so long was now able to create a Neo-Robot Heart itself. In testing it, I created one and, anonymously, sent it to one Mei Queso Yāzuānlíng, a machinist and artistic type who was working on creating the body of Robosaurus 1.0 personally to fit her own… romantic idioms. She proved to be intelligent enough to create a robot from these pieces and the Robosaurus that we know now…” he changed the slide to Robosaurus 1.0 Wizard, in the modern day.

“Some years later, Beagle was in a separate incident wherein he decided to see about creating a new Robosaurus 2.0 to assist him as somewhere between a sidekick or a helpful replacement in crime-fighting, one of Beagle’s most well-known pastimes. In doing so, he managed to fucking somehow activate the machine in quite the same way, creating a third Neo-Robot Heart. I must make clear that I was not involved whatsoever in this part of things. The machine had now seeming advanced itself enough to create a rather rudimentary body around the third Neo-Robot Heart, creating the robot known formerly as Robosaurus 2.3 now. Each time they were destroyed or chose to undergo mechanical alteration, the Neo-Robot Heart had to be reimplanted. Next to their electronic brain, which carries all their memories, emotions and thoughts, it would be the second-most important part of their robotic anatomy.

The four leaders seemed pensive and attentive about this information, except for King Danny, who was pretty disinterested and was starting to move around to different lounging poses. He had seemingly enough politeness to not actively yawn at him.

“What we are finding is…” Gov. Denton changed slides again to showing the Three Neo-Robot Hearts, “is that through a process we do not understand, the Neo-Robot Hearts have been releasing a new form of energy that we don’t recognize. It is certainly not of terrestrial origin.”

“Are you saying these things are actually from space?” Pres. McElroy asked, stroking his short, dignified little beard.

“We aren’t sure. We know we’ve never seen this kind of energy before. It isn’t part of the electromagnetic spectrum. The closest thing we can liken it to (and what I’ve been calling it since,) is a term I’ve coined: Cosmic Energy! This Cosmic Energy is being irradiated out of the Neo-Robot Hearts.”
“How long has this been happening for?” PM Page asked studiously as he steepled his fingers.

“That is also a good question! As far as we can tell, these have not been able to do this the entire time. I believe that there is indeed a connection between all three of these machines together and how they’re exuding Cosmic Energy now. It isn’t natural. We’ve had schematics of the Neo-Robot Heart already, the issue is we don’t know how they turn on. What’s running them is what’s most important.”
“Are they running on Cosmic Energy?” King Danny asked, sitting up a little straighter.

“That is the strange part; it isn’t. We have identified that the Neo-Robot Hearts generally run independent of an energy source. They pump blood, heal wounds and circulate things like a normal heart does, but it’s not clear what it is in its construction that makes it work especially.”
“I’m not sure I’m following, are you saying they don’t run on Cosmic Energy then?” Prince Nagito offered.
“Precisely! The Cosmic Energy… that’s something new. And luckily though, that’s something now that we can detect. We have found readings like this already…”
“Where?” Pres. McElroy demanded.

“Mars,” Gov. Denton offered as the slide changed to show the waters from orbit, “Now covered in saltwater out of nowhere!” The slide changed to show a Saturn with two sets of rings, “Saturn has been moved to what we commonly call the Asteroid Belt, where it’s absorbed most of them into a second set of rings,” A slide of Jupiter, “Jupiter used to be a gas giant. Comically, people would point out that it has very little real weight due to this, you could catch it in a teacup and float it… if you were close enough and the teacup was really really big! We’ve found now that it has what we presume to be a terrestrial surface.”
“Presume? How unsure are you?” Nagito jeered lightly.

“That is the bigger issue. From orbit, Jupiter still looks about the same as it always has. This model we’ve created from probes we’ve dispensed out there shows that if you removed the constantly shifting storms and anti-cyclones of Jupiter, today it would look like this.”

He changed slides again, showing a large metallic sphere marked with larger blocky “stations” interspersed all over. On the central one, there was what looked like a large eye.

“Is it… alive?” Pres. McElroy asked, worriedly.

“We aren’t sure yet. Attempts to look into it prove faulty. If we get past the storms, some form of tech we have yet to witness or observe has been toppling the probes as they come in.”
“Toppling them how?”
“Best we can understand…” Gov. Denton checked through his phone and found he didn’t have an accompanying slide for this part, so he moved over to a table in the theater and lifted up a water glass. “Alright, pretend this glass is the probe. It’s supposed to move in, fly around and take pictures…” he threw it against the far wall, shattering it. “Our best guess so far is that it does something to negate the gravitational pull of Jupiter itself from inside the shell. It’s less like the satellites are ‘thrown’ as much as they are dragged against the atmosphere. We can pick up the pieces… but there’s no water left in the glass.”

They all nodded with mild understanding as he continued.

“Further, the only picture we’ve been able to take showed us this eye. That’s the part that worries us most. It’s not that it opens and observes our probes, following them before they’re disrupted… it’s not that it doesn’t respond to hailing frequencies… the part that I find most worrying is here…” he changed slides to show the singular Eye of Jupiter, “That, gentleman, is a human eye. Structurally. Martians have much larger, elliptical sorts of eyes, so we know that it isn’t them either. Currently, my main theory is that…” another slide showed a cross section with little people with lightning bolts on their chests, “An underground Jovian society that is far advanced beyond man’s understanding of science has managed to seal the Jovian terra firma inside a shell of metal in order to feed off the energy of the constant storms of Jupiter. It’s like a Dyson sphere, but around a planet.”
“To what end?” the leaders asked.

“They aren’t telling us. Furthermore! Saturn is now discovered to house life as well! They have a terra firma, but their atmosphere is not at the correct amounts for humans to breathe and from a differing form of pressure than us. They are about 3 meters tall and have somewhat long heads. They are usually dour of personality and most of them seem to have very similar styles and wear. They all dress the same, look the same, and as far as we have found, act the same too. We aren’t yet under the belief they are a hive mind yet, but we have yet to disregard this as a possibility.”
“What’s wrong with their atmosphere?” Prince Nagito asked, curiously.

“The oxygen levels are too high. Breathing this for minutes at a time, your throat would start to have a really odd tickle, it’d be pretty hard to breathe, your lungs grow too large due to the differing pressure and then you’d start having grand mal seizures before you passed out and your eyes explode out of your head.”

“That sounds like it’s not a good idea then.”
“We’re still investigating. It’s now become able to send probes at a speed around 500x Mach, but it still takes weeks for them to get there, longer if they crash or land or have to bring anything back.”

“What about Uranus?” Pres. McElroy asked as he blanched a little, knowing well that his brothers were going there.

“Oh, Uranus seems to have a terra firma and, surprisingly, breathable air, but our few probes that got out that far found its… empty. Wasteland. Weird that it now has a bunch of rocks for a surface that people can get to, but… nothing else…?”

“That’s… good to know,” he noted, a little quieter than before.

“Neptune is currently forming into a similar station, but they have a permafrost sort of surface, much like Pluto. Similarly, it seems to have no known form of life, but we hold tight to see if something comes up.”

“Mercury?” King Danny asked.

“It’s still too hot for us to really send probes to the surface of Mercury yet.”
“Venus?” PM Page offered.

“It’s atmosphere is mostly made of corrosive acid and toxic gas. Their terra firma wouldn’t be too different from most volcanoes, but we’re pretty sure nothing we can define so far can live on that either.”
“That’s what we used to say about Mars too. Only a few decades ago, we thought were alone in the Universe,” PM Page noted, “Two centuries ago, we used to think that we were the center of the universe and anything up there might as well be Heaven…”

“We learn something everyday. Each time we’ve discovered one of these planetary movements, the results come up the same. Imagine this marble…” he held up one of the few props on his table to show them, “Is the amount of Cosmic Energy that the Neo-Robot Hearts release…” he moved the slide to show a scientific reading that looked like a large circle with many spikes raised on it, “This reading from Saturn would show that if this amount of Cosmic Energy were involved… it’d be the size of the New Moon.”

“That’s a lot,” Nagito mentioned.

“Is all this Cosmic Energy… hurting people? Like, is this like standing by a nuclear rod or like standing by a nuclear rod that’s inside a plant?”

“As far as we can tell, whatever way that it’s exuding this energy, it doesn’t seem to have much of any effect on the human body. I wouldn’t suggest trying to crack one open and rub it on your face or see how it tastes… But on the other hand, they also are sealed in radiation-proofed metals of a robotic chassis and inside Beagle’s specifically cybernetic body.”

“So it’s not an active threat?” Pres. McElroy asked, hoping that would make it sound less intense.

“It’s not an active health threat, no. On the other hand, it’s moving planets around and changing them on a level that could endanger the Earth as well… The issue is that an energy of unknown source that we can’t understand is also a danger we can’t regulate.”
“Has this machine of yours created any more Neo-Robot Hearts? Could it create more?” PM Page asked, tracking this to its source.

“There doesn’t seem to be any Cosmic Energy from the Neo-Robot Heart Replicator. So far, I have sealed it down inside a fail-safe concrete cell on Former Shadow Moses Island, where it is under constant watch. Orders so far are to gun down anyone who approaches, myself included. They’ll stay there continuing to do so under lock and key that even I do not have access to for four months. This is, as far as I can tell, the only security capable of keeping it. If the chamber it’s stored in is breached, high-level demolition explosives will destroy the island from the inside out and bury the whole mechanism. I hope that it will destroy it and keep it from use.”
“So no one else can use it?” Prince Nagito larked about.

“Dog in the Manger. Three is already doing this much. Four could… it could tear apart our small, little corner of the Universe…”

“You said the machine created something for Beagle without you… do you think that it is aware?” PM Page inquired.
“If it’s aware, it hasn’t created anything since. I have my guard on direct orders to keep it under constant surveillance and report if anything else appears anywhere.”
“Do you know how much longer it’ll be until this Cosmic Energy does something else?” Pres. McElroy queried.

“We’re consulting with your wife to go about seeing what can be done about that,” Gov. Denton noted, looking to Prince Nagito.

“Queen Beryl is already aware of this then?” Nagito murmured, realizing that she had sent him to Earth to learn this information anyways after seemingly knowing it or having been informed already.

“In conclusion, the Neo-Robot Hearts could destroy the Universe and we aren’t sure how to stop them. We are awaiting Robosaurus 2.3 reactivating to find out further details. In the meanwhile, we need to put up our defenses. We believe Queen Tyra of the Northern Tharkan Tribal Unions is sending a line of cloned agents to investigate this ourselves… and are more than willing to kill to get what they want. With that in mind, all three Neo-Robot Hearts are now off-planet: Beagle is on New Moon, Robo is at Side 2 Colony and the Third Neo-Robot Heart is currently pinging to… nowhere.”
“Nowhere?” PM Page asked as he got up and started stretching so he could leave soon.

“It’s pinging as if they have been reactivated… but we have no idea where they could be, especially without their heart installed already. Although we have what remains of their body. Another mystery; we’re still looking. Thanks for your time, gentlemen.”

As his presentation ended, Governorissimo Denton started sweeping up the shards of broken glass.

Chapter Text

Intermission 2 — When the Prime Sleeper Awakens

or

The Undream to Never Sleep

As things were, the Prime Sleeper Jerma was dozing softly. However, this is a different matter to the Prime Sleeper, who is always asleep, by nature. He could feel the errant touch of the Phobetor’s massive paw against his back.

“You’re my guide in all of this, Phobetor. What’s… all this about? What is this place and who are all these people?” he asked, wondering as he looked closely at one of his multitude of guests.

The guest he was looking at had stopped clapping repeatedly in admiration of him, but looked as if they were moving on a program; first, they’d pick up an appetizer from a small brassy tray on the table, they’d regard it with what looked like a sniff and then set it back down before scrutinizing a water cup. Holding the water cup, they’d tut around and seem to stand near others as if they were having conversation, but said nothing. They also didn’t seem to have much of a face. It was clear enough that they certainly had the features of a face, all in the right place as they would be, but there was something just so off in how different they seemed. No discerned gender, no real look of light behind the eyes, they were like a puppet or a toy.

“They are dreams, you wanted someone to welcome you, and now they do.” Phobetor offered.

“Who are they?”
“Who do you want them to be?”

“How would I know? I didn’t ask them to be… anyone?”
“Exactly. They will be someone when you want them to be.”
“That sounds like a lot of micromanaging I’d have to do, honestly.”
“You have all the time in the world. This Dream Realm is almost divorced entirely from time. Here, you are King. You decide how time passes here for yourself. As long as your eyes are closed, what you would is yours.”
“If I do all one face, it’ll be too Kaufman for my taste… Let’s throw together the 2015 Boston Pride and… let’s go with the 1966 Bruins…”
“Does this mean I have to turn into Blades the Bruin?” Phobetor joked, chuckling in a soft, quiet manner.

“Oh no, need… but can you like… stand up and maybe shorten yourself to like… match my height?”
“Of course, my liege.”

“Not sure I’m a fan of that either… hmm, you said as long as my eyes are closed? So what… happens if I wake up?”

“You won’t wake up anymore, you are the Prime Sleeper. If your eyes open again, no one will fall asleep.”

“I guess that is pretty important,” he said, rubbing his chin in thought, “Now… I do sleep with my eyes open… I taught myself to do it to stay on streams while I’m sleeping. Lotsa people said that I sleepwalk too much… are those… problems?”
“You sleep with your eyes open and can stay motile while sleeping…” Phobetor grew quieter as he spoke and sighed gently. “I must summon my sibling to discuss this.”

“So why… are you a bear anyways?”
“I, Icelos Phobetor, am Keeper of Beasts. All beasts ever dreamed of or imagined are within my care. My brother Morpheús controls all humans that live in the Dream Realm and my brother Phantasos controls everything else that does not live within the dreams. Here he is.”

Phobetor seemed to indicate a small plinth that was holding up a small display showing a 1974 Marvel Series A Stamp featuring the Stranger, a mysterious and unexplained man with a white mustache and an evocative red outfit.

“This is a stamp.”

“This is Phantasos, Keeper of Objects. He accompanies every thing you see in a dream that does not speak, does not look at you. One could say that most of the amazing and most splendid factors of dreams are his to create, to make and to paint upon the tableau that is the Dream Realm.”
“Where’s this Morpheús? I don’t have to take any blue pills, do I?” Prime Sleeper Jerma asked, wryly.

“Brother Morpheús has left to our neighboring realm. Within his own controlled realm lives Ephialtes, Keeper of Nightmares. They are distant, as is their wont. Their kingdom is beyond the veil of my vision. Morpheús has gone to bring them to heel. Their domain must still conform to your wishes. Yet, until they know, they are not due to serve. They must be informed of the passing of your predecessor, Hypnos Somnos. They will… likely not take it well. He was not unlike a father to us all.”

“I’m sorry to hear he’s gone then. I will… do my best to live up to his name?” Prime Sleeper Jerma offered, while still sitting up, though it sounded more questioning as he continued. “What kind of… duties do I even have as King of Dreams?”
“The dispensation of all imagination and a portion of all living health requires sleep. Sleeping is, in and of itself, what you must do. However, you have told us that you are different,” Phantasos suddenly spoke, not from the mouth drawn on himself, but from an ephemeral nowhere near to where he sat.

“How long do you think Morpheús will… take? I mean, you said time is kinda hinky here and all.”
“It will happen when it is sure to. If it helps you, we can shift to the borders of their realm, look out upon their domain and see the breadth of their designed madness.”
“Are they going to respond to us?”
“I cannot say. Only they can…”

~~~~~

Blintzes of a panoply of flavors were danging from branches overhead as the Prime Sleeper Jerma began to exercise his will in ways even he had stopped understanding for now and sometime into later. As hours would pass by, his own general interest in what could or should be was painted on a landscape emergent before him. The colors of the Dream Realm were new and exciting, as all things beyond the ken of man were now within his scope and to dive deep the controlling hand into the very pith of it and shatter through the known laws of what could or couldn’t be imagined and that rare and elusive treasure of which is seen only hidden behind the veil of sleep, hidden deep within a realm beyond. To further divine this plethora of vision, Jerma thought of what would look best and also feel appropriate to his station and, as he was unbuttoning the shirt he was wearing to the market, he could at that same time, feel himself rebuttoning a long loose, blue set of satin pajamas. They were easy to walk in, had a soft azure shimmer to their look and they honestly felt great. They were not too cool or too warm in any way and no matter how you leaned within them, it wouldn’t crease in a way that left marks on your skin when you wake up just because there was a wrinkle in your pillow or a pleat among the tangle of the sheets. When his legs felt almost like they were tired (or more likely, disinterested) from walking too long to grow to weariness, the need to move your legs faded away and Phobetor and Phantasos merely hovered alongside their new liege as he glid above the paths of the Dream Realm. Then he thought it would be funnier to skip everywhere while flouncing his hands about like some sort of bucolic Greek fresco of mirth, so they did something like that for a few hours while a Bruins Artist chiseled it out of a floating mountain, so better to retain it for later, a great marker of the mirth of the Prime Sleeper and a good omen of things to come. As the perspective started to finish to a point of distance, like reaching up and gripping at the horizon to see the look further, they drew towards their destination. Before the triad of the world only understood ephemerally stood a mighty gate, black and shimmering as if obsidian and scaling to a height that defied a likeliness to climbing it. The barely visible distant zenith of the metallic structure looked less like an imposing rounded spool of razor wire and more like a deadly cloud of serrated death that would easily rend the flesh with an almost artistic simplicity. Prime Sleeper Jerma felt less than enthused at the idea of scaling the onyx pillars of terrible height and instead tried his hand at running his fingers along their pinstriped puncture points, trailing his digits against them as he lazily glazed both of his presumably still human eyes to find whereabouts a gate in the fence may go, but after some hours and little parallax movement to the hallowed vale of the castle beyond, it became clear that there likely wasn’t one.

“Is there like… a door somewhere?” Jerma asked with a soft shrug of his satined shoulders.

“It is not our path to decide. The Keeper of Nightmares reigns supreme here in this corner of the Dream Realm. To obstruct their path would be… yield untoward consequence…” Phobetor noted.

“Like it would give everyone bad dreams?”

“It is more likely it could drive everyone on Earth to madness. Exposure to the true depths of fear is usually something most people just aren’t ready to handle. Ephialtes is capable of discerning the true fears of all men and probably most women too. We are still investigating the robotic capacity to dream…” Phantasos remarked as next to it was created a small electrical sheep. “It seems their affinities toward logic and a rejection of what is inherently fantastical gives them… little in the way of imagination at times. Artistry perhaps, but imagination of the abstract is… not always easy to grasp upon for the beings artificial.”

“What about, like, Cybertronians?”
“We haven’t gone there before. It is forbidden. To drive ourselves within these gates would separate us from what is known to that which is unknown. We could easily become corrupted,” Phobetor added, “That which is animal is easily abstracted in the primal fears of mankind. Humans find lots of animals terrifying. To impugn my senses into the nightmares would risk that humans begin fearing animals like they would when they lived in caves and hunted and gathered. It could destroy the balance between humans and animals entirely.”

“And were I to flit my way within, the nature of my own abstraction would become twisted and horrible. That which is artificial and that which mankind fears are usually entwined, though not in any physical sense. For I to enter would risk throwing the balance between people and that which lacks life into disarray. People would begin finding terror in the very motes of dust. The fear of that which we create is just as salient,” Phantasos spake.

“Yeah, I can see that being a trouble. So how did Morpheús get in there?”
“ Morpheús binds together our world. He is as much a piece of the Dream World as he is Creator of the Dreams. To make it more clear,” Phantasos began.

“It’s a bit late for that…” Jerma groaned softly.

“It would be easier to say that Morpheús creates the dreams… we merely populate them…” Phobetor instructed.

“And we merely decorate them…” Phantasos injected, verbally.

“So he can just go there as he pleases?”

“He is stronger than us, but you are higher than him. To enter, you perhaps need just imagine the way you believe there is.”

“Well, I’m already thinking ‘where is the door?’ That hasn’t really made any doors appear…” Jerma slouched against the bars and felt a soft coldness on his back. “So am I like here physically or did I like drop dead in a supermarket and everyone is just really confused about what I’m doing back in the real world?”
“You have translated here perfectly. You, in some ways, no longer have a physical sense or, more, you would have to create one for yourself to enter the ‘real’ world again,” Phobetor noted.

“That sounds complex.”
“It very well might be. Hypnos was not forthcoming with a guidebook for all his abilities, so try your best. Your power may be more than you understand now, but it has little in the ways of limitation.”

“So like… do I need to piss anymore? I always get that feeling when I’m in a dream where you just gotta piss, you know? Because you’re like asleep and that’s when your body is doing the whole water filter thing, you’re full up. But is that a thing I need to do now?”
“Do you… want to?” Phobetor asked, his eyes creasing softly in mild displeasure with the concept.

“You know it is pretty relaxing, but I don’t think it’s high on my priority list right now. Maybe in the future. Is this going to like mess my hair up?”
“Your hair looks however you want it to,” Phantasos explained.

“Why is it when you have a dream, you just don’t remember half of it or you can’t read or you can’t like… you know when you get one of those dreams that has a location, but you can’t revisit that location to try to do something, but when you try to get back to that place where you were, you can’t get there because it’s like everything’s being rewritten around you but not with a consistency so you just end up sort of looking around a similar place but you can’t really interact with it in the same way that you did before? Or like you see a bunch of people and they don’t look familiar to you but they all kind of have distinct faces and you try to ask them a question, but you never want to ask them their name, but even if you do, you don’t remember it when you wake up? Or you wake up and it’s like ‘wait a minute, I do recognize that face, but it was a totally different person!’”

“These are more Morpheús questions than they are us questions, honestly,” Phobetor noted as he sat down for a minute or twelve, holding on to Phantasos with one hand.

“You will have to find your way into the Nightmare Land if you want the answers you seek, Prime Sleeper,” Phantasos remarked.

Turning back to the gates, Jerma looked out across the breadths of a dark place filled with nightmares. A castle was all that was clearly visible, a flag lit only by flashing lightning, amid a tempestuous sky marked by dolor and with clouds that only seemed to widen and crawl out, like a spreading miasma of toxic gas. His fingers wrapped deftly around the pylons of the mighty fence and he wondered just how best to slip his way in through the tendrils of madness that were on the other side...

Chapter Text

Chapter 12 — Interplanetary Interrogations in the Interpol Itinerary

or

The Treachery of the Death’s Head

In the days after the teleportation of Commander MX3, his broken body torn by telefragging forces, the cloning tube (disguised as a grandfather clock) opened up to release not a Funky Phantom nor a pendulum of woe, but instead his next life in that of Commander MX4 into the Alabaster Attic. His memories were quite the same as Commander MX3, save for his final revelation and now had the epiphany that the Neo-Robot Hearts and the Cosmic Energy flowing through them were to blame for the sudden planetary upheavals, though in a way he still had no means of detecting or, as was more likely, combating. Severe, heavy metal shutters had closed off entrance further into the rest of the Secondary Radioactive Mansion, so he was forced to leap like a flea from a drowning bear out of the hole in the roof to attempt access to the rooftop above. A teleportation platform would no doubt be somewhere on the roof as needed, which was all he’d need to make his way elsewhere on Earth to achieve his goals. If Commander MX3 were already dead (which he’d naturally know,) it was all too clear that his valiant sacrifice to the causes of the Tharkan Tribal Union would still have hackles at all-time highs and security likely even higher, especially for such a flagrant means of excess. Jet Jaguar Gigante was already spraying over the outside of the Secondary Radioactive Mansion to try to create a sort of large frozen shell exterior to keep in (or out) any further intrusions. Although the seasons of Mars were almost interchangeable in how dry or balmy they ended up, the Commander’s biological armor was the sort of thing that kept most of the elements (especially the colder ones) out of his Martian bloodstream. He set out the only accompanying machinery in the cloning tube (apart from his biologically-implanted weaponry) and began his first report.

“My Queen, Commander MX3 fought valiantly to install my existence into an enemy stronghold. Although he faced capture, he instead bravely destroyed himself so as to keep all opponents from discovering our purpose, our mission and our goals. A third party assisted the delivery of the Third Neo-Robot Heart, but it was lost along with the destruction of Commander MX3. By his final revelation, I was able to discern yet another secret of the stars.”
“Go on…” Queen Tyra said, hoping her intrigue would outweigh the rambling noise of the waters against her parapets.

“The Neo-Robot Hearts are conduits to the powers that be. A new form of energy is channeled through them and is responsible for the alteration of the Great Martian landscape.”
“Is it yet clear who is doing this, soldier?”
“Unclear as yet, my Queen. I await declaration of orders. What is my mission? The Neo-Robot Hearts are no longer being kept on this planet and are mere conduits of this power.”
“Return to Mars. You will exposit a further report on your predecessor and receive briefing. I have coordinates to a distant teleportation pad. Using it, we will intercept it and fire you back to Mars. You will be welcomed for further report until your inevitable deployment. You have done well so far to serve the causes of the Tharkan Tribal Union! Return here so you may better serve your Queen! Fear of teleporting will not be tolerated. Just because it killed the last Commander is no reason to abandon your loyalty to Mars. Over and out!”

Had he teeth, they’d be gritted in disturbance, but he had none, so Commander MX4 merely received the transmission and quickly memorized the coordinates he’d need (which would, according to a spurious mental map of Earth, land him someone in the middle of the Caribbean Sea. It was the way of a Martian warrior to reject all weak and callow ideas such as “fear” unless they were considered by an ordered retreat from a superior. Shutting both of his entirely Martian eyes, he began to recall a mentally-constructed map of where all Commander MX3 had seen earlier and began creating a rudimentary path to a teleportation pad located nearby as the ice began to sink into the hole in the roof, sealing it shut and starting to reduce his ability to move quickly. He leapt farther off of the roof as the ice began to close in and soon discovered Iama and Agent Bluedog standing guard over the singular teleporting pad within the Titanium Teleportarium (a new term that Governorissimo Denton had invented that meant “a room wherein one prefers to keep their teleportation pad” so they can make a presentable entrance.) Either of the guards were standing with dual scimitars in each hand, having each drank an energy soda to feel peppy and keen of senses. They wouldn’t go down easy and were almost prepared for anything as they idled carefully. Sitting on the roof, he tried to conserve his strength and ability as he started to carefully use a sharper edge of his biological armor to start cutting a slow, sawing triangle he could force his body through to gain ingress to the chamber. Carefully, he spread out his body against the roof and slid in through the hole he’d created as the ice began to encroach behind him. The two mildly-energetic guards were staring at the singular entrance to the Teleportarium as Commander MX4 lowered himself like a spider on a silver string, alighting on to the transporting device. Pressing in the coordinates, it began to activate as the two guards swiftly turned around and saw the Martian warrior disappear, holding out his exterminator ray, ready to fire if they tried to obstruct him. Luckily, the two were far smarter than to try to interrupt a teleportation, especially one that was actually coordinated, since it meant that he’d teleport to another known (and recorded) teleportation pad or a coordinated point and hanged back to let him leave. Naturally, this was all according to plan, even if they weren’t informed of it and were quietly panicking that they’d certainly managed to fuck up protecting a single entrance room from ingress by an enemy force.

“Do we want it to look like we got our asses kicked? Would that be… better?” Agent Bluedog asked, unsuredly.

“I think it’ll work out. I don’t know how, but if there’s one thing I trust, it’s knowing that Mr. Denton won’t be too cross with us!” Iama noted cheerily as he sat down both scimitars and started eating a juicy red apple.

~~~~~

In a blink of both of his entirely Martian ocular receptors, Comm. MX4 found himself luckily not dropped into the middle of the Caribbean Sea (it would be rather hard to swim in his biological armor and likely too far to quickly find land,) but less luckily not on Mars in any capacity. Instead, he found himself standing on a metallic platform that jolted with a sudden start, lowering mechanically downwards, like a freight elevator made to be roughly his size. It continued downwards as he found the area he was lowered into the only (and then only dimly) lit part of his surroundings. He growled internally as it became clear he was in captivity once more. He sat down, a clear sign of derision, and looped a hand around his exterminator ray from its socket in his biological armor, waiting for any sign of a target. When the platform had lowered roughly twenty feet or so, another light sparked on as a screen depicting two men in comfortable chairs, one of which was dressed in a red dress shirt and matching crimson slacks with black suspenders. The other was sporting a blue suit with a bowtie and a pair of round glasses.

“Welcome back to Earth! We’re a little welcoming committee here to give you the 411 about your visit to Earth. According to our time spent watching you, we’ve found that you’re certainly up to something. We here at Interpol keep a close eye on interplanetary actions and especially to unsanctioned or, far worse, uncoordinated teleportation, so we here from the side of Earth that likes things peaceful wanted to extend our hand in alliance towards you. My name is Secretary-General Bronco Columbo, but everyone calls me “Le Rouche” because of my sharp taste in fashion. This is my closest associate, Deputy-General Edogawa Conan, you may have heard of us as being peacekeepers, which might be a four-letter word as far as it goes on Mars. We noticed you were in imminent danger of teleporting yourself into the middle of the Caribbean, so we charitably decided to help you by intercepting you and transporting you to a safe detention area. According to international and interplanetary treaty, we here in Interpol have written guarantees from every Martian analogue that no unsanctioned military action will be accepted here in Interpol-controlled territory! According to these treaties of alliance, we have a right and a duty to make sure you don’t fall into any pitfalls… apart from the one you’re in now. If anything, the only reason you’d be here instead of quite literally dead in the water is due to us! You can thank us later with your cute little mind-lips for saving your hard-shelled ass, but for now, we have every right and duty further to ask what you’re doing here. You wouldn’t knowingly violate treaty and endangering the Tharkan Tribal Union from being bombed off the face of Blue Mars, now would ya? As a soldier, you are obligated to release basic information like name, rank, serial number and date of birth. Spit them out or we can, and will, assume that you’re a rogue element acting outside of orders from the Queen,” Le Rouche noted with a broad smirk on his face.

“And uh… you should put both sets of hands on your head to show us you’re not going for the standard issue exterminator embedded in your left thigh fauld,” Edogawa added, adjusting his glasses intelligently.

Had he a mouth to sneer with, the sneer of Comm. MX4 would be derisive more than his sitting stature. The platform started raising as four heavily-armored soldiers with high-powered rifles aimed at him quickly detained the Commander with one holding each of his wrists and under each arm to keep him from moving too far. After they secured some rather heavy-duty handcuffs on him, they kicked his legs out from under his heels and dragged him to an interrogation room where he was secured to an anchor point in the middle of a table that was securely welded to the floor. On the other side of the room was Secretary-General Le Rouche with a pair of red spurred and filigreed cowboy boots on the table with both of his human feet inside of them.

“You can start,” he offered “charitably.”

“Commander Merwyn, Tharkan Tribal Union Select Corps, Serial Number X4, I’ll need to know what time it is to tell you date of birth.”

“It’s about noon, not that you can tell in here…” he said as the fluorescent lights sputtered and flickered overhead. “That’s Eastern Standard Time.”

“I was born approximately four hours ago from a Martian Cloning Station.”
“Do you have any assigned mission on Earth?”
“Yes.”
“I have security clearance of the highest degree, you can cede to me anything you can say about your mission. Who knows, we might be able to provide you the help you need!”

Commander MX4 sat with his chin in his hands and glared deeply into his eyes.

“I am on a mission to stop the encroaching salt-water on Mars by investigating supposed Earthling interactions that may be causing it.”

“And how far has that gotten you in the four hours since you woke up?”

“Not very far. I’ve made a report and am due to return to Mars for further briefing.”
“You weren’t trying to attack any humans while you were here on Earth, were you?”

“I have not personally attacked any humans since I arrived, nor have I been party to any human attacks by others.”

“Why were you trying to teleport into the center of the Caribbean?”
“The Queen was to patch a teleport channel through the triangulation to return me to Mars.”
“Why should I believe anything you’ve said?”
“I haven’t spoken a single lie.”
“What’s your current objective?”
“Tracking down and retrieving targets no longer on Earth. Leaving is my current destination. No one on Earth is my target.”

“We may have to take time to consult the Queen to confirm what you’re saying altogether.”
“I can wait only so long. The Queen’s patience is wearing thin with the current disaster…” Commander MX4 stated as he started to rest either hand on the opposing shoulders, crossed over his chest.

“Can’t you contact her yourself?”

“The equipment is onboard to my biological armor, but without the correct height, I cannot maintain contact. I have a feeling that you wouldn’t let me receive calls from within this metal deathbox.”
“You might be almost half as smart as you look, hard-shell soldier…”
“Take off these shackles and I’ll show you how hard my shell is…”
“Don’t bother. I won’t need to fight you to beat you. You’re already beaten. Since you can’t contact the Queen from here, I guess we’ll have to do it for you! Guards! You can escort him to a holding cell. Give him one that won’t need for him to stand for too long,” Sec-Gen. LeRouche ordered.

“I will find my way out of here soon. One way or another…” Comm. MX4 noted. He would likely destroy himself in his cell if needs came about. He began counting seconds mentally so he wouldn’t lose track of how long he’d been trapped there.

On the way to his cell, he saw a large mechanical assassin with large restraining gauntlets on his wrists being taken to the interrogation room by Treasurer SDB, who was wearing a cascading golden gown over a well-polished black leather cuirass. The hulking creature of slapdash metal late of the old Cybertron was Death’s Head 7.43, the newest improvement on the classic bounty-hunter of the stars.

“Welllllllll, if it isn’t the Martian! You and I have a few things to discuss later! Wayyyyyyy later!” Death’s Head 7.43 snickered as he lifted his head back and exposed a small blinking light in his neck.

Registering the intent of harm within his darkened robotic soul, Treasurer SDB gripped on to the Commander’s arms and spun him around to use him as a Martian shield, since he knew that it could take a blast from the detonating machine-man. Death’s Head 7.43 exploded in a hellacious blast that sent them both colliding down the prison hallway into a door, denting Treasurer SDB against it, though between the Martian assassin and his well-polished leather armor, he wasn’t hurt apart from some harsh bruising and a cracked rib or two. He held him almost in a reverse full nelson with him nearly face to face with him. The Commander was shaken enough to take meager moments more from thinking to bash one of his captors in the face with his own chitinous shell to try cracking at his softer, human skull, a hand was reaching forward, that of Death’s Head’s body spinning round as it began self-repairing, creating a new skull and changing out parts automatically to begin upgrading itself into a new sentience, replicated from the patterns programmed to his autonomous continual form. His shoulders were evened out, replaced with interior pieces to return to the unifying ideal of existence. Brushing back a packet of wires, they started to return to a new, more slender face and started to screw a jawline into place. A little speaker on the roof of their mouth started to assemble and soon clicked on.

“This is Death’s Head 8.0 online. All information contained on the main hard drive consciousness of Death’s Head 7.43 has been destroyed and can be removed at your convenience. I will shed them like an old skin and continue on my secondary mission. I have other missions to take care of. Since I have no quarrel with you, I would like this expedited. And uh… briiiiibes!” he said, throwing some Moonside Credits and held both hands up. Treasurer SDB was not impressed by this.

Death’s Head 8.0 slowly began repairing his right hand and it started out as a single-barrel finger, allowing to load one last bullet in and fire it the Commander, noticing that his hand had traveled near his left shoulder pauldron. A hard ricochet came from the shot inside his biological armor, but even one between the eyes was little protection in the long run, since he fell over, dead once more. Death’s Head 8.0 held up both hands again as the rest of their hand was replicated into place and slowly screwed in, securely. Treasurer SDB struck him in the solar plexus of his mechanical body, creating a sudden shattering metallic noise. Dropping off of Death’s Head 8.0 was a pieces of RAM confiscated from none other than Robosaurus 1.0, who had been missing for some hours beforehand. A clue that Interpol would be more than capable in researching what had happened before he had been captured, brought there and destroyed himself entirely. Treasurer SDB was moderately certain that this would keep him down for now.

“You do not understand. Reach your hand carefully into his left pauldron. You shall see, yes?” they implored as Dep.-Gen. Edogawa stood forward and lifted it up slowly, exposing that on the tip of his index finger, was a small ring with a single barb on one end.

“A Geti Gom Jabbar. Even from five feet away, he could get this past even two layers of skin and you’d be dead where you stand. Shooting him just saved your life. He was ready to break and ready to kill to make it happen. This is only the beginning.”

“Only the beginning,” were the last words that slipped out of Commander MX4’s mouth before he again faced final revelation. The world became clearer to him in the space of minutes between one life and waking up to war once more.

Within the true enemy’s compound, he saw a gloved velvet hand reach out against the red dust that pervaded the planet and beneath the whipping winds, a figure enshrined in ice, trapped in the permafrost of the core of a distant planet of the edge of the solar system. But his power growing with every revelation, he could see farther than he had before. More of the future would be revealed as he saw the ice melting and a scream that shock the waves of every ocean on Mars and a pair of rampaging red tears rippling into death across the deadliest creature in the known Universe. Something too strong to be controlled any longer and something that was programmed to destroy with ease and unleash destruction beyond the realm of what was human evermore. A creature housed in nightmares, awakening to unleash a red nightmare upon the Earth. It would be another fourteen hours until Commander MX5 would awaken. This was the closest area towards a break in Commander MX4’s brief flame of general uneventful life. This was all connected and he was due to find out, no matter where he had to go and no matter who had to definitely be killed for the Queen to be pleased and Mars returned to normalcy again. When he awoke, he was on Mars again, crawling out of a protein pool and taking breath once more… stormed off to prepare for war.

Chapter Text

Chapter 13 — The Boys Learn the Horrors of Uranus

or

The Tavros Crystal Manages to Not Solve the Problem Inherent Almost Entirely!

“Folderol! The smell wasn’t bothering me before, but now this place smells like it’s got the gas on, but just a little bit? Or like you’re standing next to a fully-primed deep-fryer. I don’t like the way it smells. Should I get out one of those oxygen tanks out or do you think that we can do something about… this? Like, I’d almost kinda love for a breeze to start sometime soon…” Travis thought aloud, because the planet Uranus had a sort of natural quietness that was also already making him uneasy.

Over the course of the last seven hours, it had been an almost aggressive lack of any engaging terrain or interesting landmarks. It was craggy to some extent, but most of the rocks were soft or easy to stand on. Flat. Grayish-brown to ruddy red to a general green that wasn’t very bright. Some three hours earlier, Griffin McElroy had scuttled off to a different semi-hill shaped area and was likely over it by then, or still climbing it. Turning his binoculars westard, he noticed Griffin wasn’t there and presumed that it was probably best to contact him again and started tuning a walkie-talkie to beep or try to contact Griffin.

“What’s tasty, Griffy B? The grill running hot?” Travis opined.

“Hot and smooth. You’re not going to fucking believe it,” Griffin said, almost sounding serious for once.

“How smooth we talking?”
“I think I found one of those monoliths. You know, like in 2001!”

“But you were only like twenty back then!”
“No, I mean there’s a huge monolith here and…”
“This is bullshit, you’re doing one of these again. Like ‘Oh look, it’s Sonic the Hedgehog,’ grow up, baby bro, what’s the sitch?”

“I swear! True blue, double stamped it, no bullshitting, this is a monolith. I’m running…” he started panting over the simple comms, “towards it now.”
“Wait, aren’t those a bad thing?”
“I don’t remember, but it might make a loud sound, so maybe cover your ears or turn down the radio a little.”
“That sounds like a bad idea, Griffin. Maybe you should wait for me to get there. What if it shocks you even moderately hard?”
“I don’t think that’ll happen. I’m going to try touching it. It’s kinda smooth, but it has like a sort of structure to it. Within it. It’s nascent. Not doing much of anything. It honestly doesn’t even feel like metal. It’s not precisely clear what this is or why it’s standing here. If I had to estimate because I don’t carry a yardstick with me, it’s roughly two Griffins tall, which is maybe around 9’ or so. It’s just wider than my full wingspan and… I’m… just wow.”
“What is this thing exactly?”

“I’m actually angry. I’m confused, but mostly angry… Fucking hell, it just… wow…” Griffin didn’t sound enthused.

“What happened over there?”
“This thing is made of fucking cardboard. This is a moderately cheaply made standee, someone is fucking with us.”

“Who is there?” Travis asked after a tense minute. His walk had turned into a jaunty gallop, since Uranus had slightly lower gravity than the Moon on its surface, making him bouncing in a way he felt didn’t look dignified or serious in the situation.

“I don’t even see anybody…! What’s the point of me finding this? Who’s out there?” Griffin queried, almost becoming scared as he turned tail and ran from the monolith. “Travis, I think we need to reconnoiter and discuss plans.”
“I think you mean regroup, but yes.”
“If you didn’t set this up and I didn’t set this up, then we’re being tailed! We didn’t even tell a lot of people outside the family we were heading out here! Could we have been betrayed? Is this an inside job?” Griffin questioned further, only becoming more and more confused.

“I’m almost over the ridge, Griffin. This is going to be a few… more… jumps!” Travis was running now in between jaunty bounces and was stunned stock-still when he saw something between him and the mountain.

Staked into the dusty ground of Uranus was a sign, a mildly-carved sign that Justin would be impressed by for an amateur’s work. It had some fine beveling, the kerning was understandable (although the language it was carved in wasn’t.) Travis looked over it and felt the top of the stake was still warm.

“Someone staked this here… What does it even say…?” Travis asked aloud, though he wasn’t on his walkie at the moment.

He felt a small ice-cream headache invade his sinuses and the roof of his mouth and stumbled back. The sign seemed all to easy to read now, despite him not knowing what the letters were and what kind of script it was carved in. There was a tell-tale feeling like he had blood in his mouth and hoped he hadn’t bit his tongue, because he didn’t want to hear Griffin laughing about it for the remainder of the trip. He had prepared plenty of punchy Uranus-based jokes already and concentrating on them seemed to help chase the worries from his mind until he looked back at the sign. Understanding wasn’t what he was feeling entirely. It was more like… a mental picture. When he looked at the carved words, they didn’t parse like a sentence. It was more pictographic, like remembering an old comic of a cat smoking a pipe or a hieroglyphic language to him. It was a picture of him looking at the sign and getting a sense that he shouldn’t have done so. Not in the sense that there was danger near him necessarily, but an unease about having looked at the sign altogether. He stumbled off his feet and fell ass almost entirely over teakettle when he realized his jeans had a vine base around his ankle and he was being hauled off of his feet entirely until he looked at the Uranian landscape entirely reversed, but in a vertical way. He was caught in a trap, he soon realized as the combinations of the imagery he envisioned from the sign wore on him and he realized what it meant more clearly:

“What do you mean, don’t read the sign? I didn’t even know how to!” he shouted angrily.

Travis was too angry for a moment to register that he was upside-down, but it mildly shocked him that he thought he was falling into the sky, a fate he was told by a fortune-teller was maybe his one true fear. Luckily for him, he didn’t and instead felt Uranian gravity was holding him still upside-down.

“Griffin, I think this is starting to make sense… and somehow that’s worse than it being really confusing. I’m not less scared. I might actually be more scared now,” he said into his radio.

“You know what… I think you’re right. I’m coming over to where you are. Damn, I was really not thinking this would come up. This is so fucking me.”

“What’s cracking?”
“What do you think would be the very last thing that would happen here…? It makes sense, but it’s the one thing you wouldn’t prepare for…”
“Did you get caught in a snare trap?”

“What? No, that would be ridiculous! I’d be ass over teakettle by now! No, this is… possibly worse…”

“How possible?”
“Very.”
“Why, what’s shaking, bacon?”
“I’m just going to have to say it then… I fell into quicksand. I know! I am not happy about it either. It’s normal quicksand, so it’s only going up to about… lower ribs? It doesn’t feel wet, which is weird, it’s mostly just kinda low. I don’t think that it can realistically swallow me into it, it’s more like being in a sludgy pool. I’m not happy about this.”
“Yeah, that sounds like it sucks. Do you have a grappling hook with you?”
“I did, but when I tried throwing it in one direction, it turns out there was just quicksand over that way too. I’m trying to pull it back up to throw it back the way I came to see if I can…” He stopped short.

“Did you drop your walkie?” Travis cursed aloud to himself, realizing Griffin couldn’t actually answer if he dropped it.

“Travis, I still have my walkie. Things are not improving. Remember how I said someone is doing a bit on us?”
“Yeah, bro?”
“Yeah, I found them.”
“You did? Oh…” Travis started to realize what was at stake as he saw them approaching too.

They were small greenish gray people of moderately similar shape, wearing what looked like little metal pants that reached up over the shoulders, like a high-cut singlet with legs. Otherwise, they had long, pointed ears, wide frog-like mouths and somewhat round eyes. They were holding sticks and started to batter Travis with them like a human piñata.

“I’m actually serious when I say this, Travis? I think we’re dealing with mind goblins.”

Travis almost immediately burst into laughter, which was unnerving enough that they stopped hitting him with sticks, but were almost disturbed for how long he was laughing. After he calmed down from a few minutes of cackling raucous laughter, he took a breath and the Uranians started going back to smacking him with their moderately light weaponry. They were not unlike staves, but were at least dense enough to hurt, but didn’t feel like they’d break bones unless they really tried leveraging something against him. After a few more minutes, Travis was cut down and fell on his stomach, knocking most of the air out of him. Over the hill, Griffin saw a knotted rope thrown at his head and dropped a Calorie Mate on the ground that he was struggling to pick the individual packages out of, shoving them into his cargo pants before he grabbed on to the rope.

“I’m going to be upset if you kill me when I get out of this…” Griffin promised. He knew they were starting to understand him, but when he pulled, the knotted rope broke in the middle and he was standing there, holding a long, broken rope. The goblins took a few minutes to laugh in a way that sounded somewhere between a peacock’s shrill cry and the rasping sound of wood being sawed by two lumberjacks with a wide two-man saw between them. Griffin put his hands on his hips in frustration and they started tying their staves together, only so they could poke him in the side several times. He gripped it and they decided to hold still until he could drag himself out of the quicksand. He lost one shoe and he had some sand in his sock. “We come in peace. What do you want?”

They grouped around and started poking him with their staves yet again, not even in a curious manner, since they were generally going for the same parts. He was worried that they were looking for what might be the softest parts of his body naturally… or if they were seeing if he was well-marbled. He hoped for his sake that he wasn’t as he found their hands pointing for him to follow them, ushering him rudely towards a small ramp that led into a large and, surprisingly metallic, doorway in the side of a dune. He tried to turn on his walkie by holding down the button discreetly, but it made a feedback noise when the door opened and he saw Travis was on the other side of it. He was being dragged by his ankles by more of the goblins and seemed pretty dazed, like he’d been attacked by goblins. They angrily smacked his hand, making him drop the walkie and threw it into the quicksand. Griffin was shoved inside by more of their mild jabs and thought how far he could kick one of these guys if he had to… They were barely over knee-high, but the sticks were nearly three times their height and were at least sturdy enough to be irritating to feel hitting him in the hammies repeatedly.

“Hey Griffin…” Travis said, smiling in a way that Griffin knew meant he had a bad pun on his mind.

“I am in no fucking mood. Tomorrow, whenever that is, maybe when I’m on Earth again, this’ll be hilarious… right now? I will karate chop you in the neck from the front like Jason Bourne if you say what I think you’re going to say. You know damn well there’s no food here…”

Travis decided not to make the joke of poor taste and instead handed a crushed single Calorie Mate to Griffin, who tore it open, dropping the plastic wrapper on the ground. He was one of the first humans on Uranus and already he was littering.

~~~~~

On the distant New Moon, Beaglesaurus watched as a theatre of sorcerers were using magical surgery to revive the Dread Paladin Chelldorado, who had cracked half of his helmet off trying to stop Death’s Head 7.43 and seemingly failed. Although he did little in the way of speaking anyway, he certainly couldn’t convey how to go about where Robosaurus 1.0 had gone too after the attack. There were some scattered pieces enough to indicate he’d been severely wounded in battle, even for a robot. Prince Nagito was quiet and respectful, then dropped a small sprinkling of spices into a little squared box for him. The food expanded quickly into a plump kind of bun. Prince Nagito gave it a soft crescent moon cut on the top and handed it to Beagle, who found it was flaky, but had a sort of dry cinnamon flavor. Although it was mostly like a bread to the touch, it almost fell apart like fairy floss against his tongue and he thought it was pretty tasty admittedly.

“If anyone can find out where he is and figure out the Cosmic Energy, it’s Queen Beryl. She’s the smartest person on New Moon and her every affectionate word is like honey dripping into my ears and on to my fingers and across my face and…” he stopped short of twirling with joy with his hands clasped together and swallowed his heart back into his chest again as he lifted a gray-gloved hand to offer Beaglesaurus continue into her Royal Lunar Retinue.

Walking through an irising metallic door, Beaglesaurus saw the stately Queen of New Moon, Beryl the Proud, who had rebuilt the Moon with both her progressive temporary politics and also hiring a bunch of Cybertronian contractors to literally reassemble a shattered half of the planet that had already managed to blow off of them and get cracked into the Martian surface. If there were any waters on Mars then, it would’ve been devastating in the wake of such a tsunami force. Standing to the side, Imperial Herald Subaru Star Sapphire was standing impatiently, bearing a note from Empress Rindiel to her mother. It was clear just from her crystalline-armored body language that she’d been kept waiting for some time further.

“Your Royal Lunar Highness, I was told to speak to no one but you until I could deliver this message from your daughter! The portal there only takes five hours now to our great and distant Nebula, but it is of utmost importance that you read this post-haste!”
“I have a meeting or two, Herald. I’m sure it can wait…” Beryl said, standing up to shake Beaglesaurus’ hands after descending to an area where she was only one raised dais above him. “Welcome back to New Moon, Archduke of the Skate Park. It sounds like you’re festering with Cosmic Energy from your Neo-Robot Heart, so we have deigned to draw forth the Royal Tavros Crystal, which has reunited the cultures of the Lunarian peoples! It seems to have some form of strange, power-weakening rays that churn through it whenever it’s exposed to sunlight, which will be in only another hour or so. According to some of our key scientists, exposure to its rays will help drain off the Cosmic Energy that is causing this radiating planetary disturbance…”

Herald Subaru angrily tried to not grip the letter hard enough to crease it, since she’d had to carry it literally through Hell (and would be expected to return with it) and didn’t want to have to wrestle with liberating it from its envelope any more than she was by social obligations of gentility.

“Your Royal Lunar Highness, if it will take an hour to wait, I can state my message from Nebular Empress Rindiel. It is very important!” Star Sapphire insisted.

“Fine, we shall listen to you. Prince Nagito!” she called as he floated in on a large silvery disc under some comfortable gunmetal-looking boots.

“Yes, my eternal sweet?”
“I cannot speak to the Prince Consort until you hear the news,” Subaru insisted, turning sharply away from him.

“Then speak it already, you are permitted.”

She tore open the envelope and regarded her while reading aloud, “Accordingly it is to be known from the glory of the Nebular Empress that the planet that the humans call ‘Mercury’ or ‘Mercurius’ has disappeared and slipped into an area where it is due to begin orbiting Pluto. She expresses her most distinct worry that this may prove a threat to the Moon and likely to the Portal to Hell that connects our two Kingdoms and our two peoples. She asks you to consider this as an important matter as it is likely that it could be on a collision course.”

“With any luck then, this will assuage the Cosmic Disturbances. Planets are going haywire and the Cosmic Energy is causing it. All we need do is shut them down. Is this acceptable to you, Beaglesaurus?”
“It could possibly kill me, so I’m hoping it doesn’t do that, but so far I think it’s hopefully just going to shut off the radiation from it and not… just shut it off entirely. They sent along the Third Neo-Robot Heart with me to make sure it would get here… and the Second one… is gone. Something’s happened to Robosaurus 1.0 just like with Robosaurus 2.3. I’m willing to try it if it saves the solar system from falling into itself. This needs to end. If I need a new heart, that’s something I’m pretty sure they’ve got covered on my HMO. Let’s get this done with.”

Walking out with her, Beaglesaurus appreciated the mild silence, just the subtle sound of a pearled string around Prince Nagito’s neck and a matching one around Queen Beryl’s hips. Another irising door opened and they saw a gigantic brown crystal beneath a large sun-roof, which let it take in a sudden beam of light shining through. Approaching, Beaglesaurus could already see his chest shining with fractal light splashing off of him as it started to orbit around the Royal Tavros Crystal. It started to draw out every once from the chest of Beaglesaurus to unleash the hidden power in his Neo-Robot Heart and then, circuiting through the dural case with the Third Neo-Robot Heart. The power was soon lifting him off his All-Stars as the brown crystal began to vibrate, the light showing every small imperfection in the Crystal was melding out of it, slipping away, like a bubble under a decal being slid out. These bubbles of energy started to collect around each other, much like orbiting planets around a star, until the Crystal was clear again and the whole Crystal dropped to the ground, condensed and densifying into a large roundish egg. It was radiating with cosmic light from the cascade of Cosmic Energy as more and more of the brilliant spheres collected into it, like oil floating on water as it sucked together. Holding his hand out towards it, Beaglesaurus could see the stars of Cosmic Energy dripping out of him like he were extending it in front of an air-dryer, but in reverse. Watching it drip off from him, the Third Neo-Robot Heart strained forward in its case as he felt it dragged towards the Cosmic Egg now.

“I can hear something. It’s saying something…” Beaglesaurus noted softly and reached his extended hand out. He touched his fingertips to the Cosmic Egg and he was dragged in, along with the case. On the other side of somewhere, he saw that he was somewhere else entirely, standing on sand the color of yellow cake, and with Robosaurus 1.0 standing, his right arm detached and hanging off, standing over a new Robosaurus 2.4, who had his chest compartment opened.

“Good, you have the Third Neo-Robot Heart. I found them here now. I started calling your name and then… you appeared,” Robosaurus 1.0 said as Beaglesaurus approached and installed the Neo-Robot Heart into the newer Robosaurus Sibling.

“They’re coming back online. Where are we at?” Beaglesaurus found that Robosaurus 2.4 looked similar to their former 2.3 body, but they had a 2.4 written on their forehead and they were wearing a shirt with lightning crashing over a moon with a white and gold wolf howling from a Dutch angle.

“Onboard gyroscopes indicate… we are on the planet Saturn…” Robosaurus 2.4 said while sitting up straight and dusting the highly dusty dirt off of themselves.

Beaglesaurus looked into his right hand and saw that the case was now holding the Cosmic Egg and he decided to close it for now.

“Well, then what are those?” Beaglesaurus asked, peering off into the distance. The two Robosaurus Siblings looked closer by zooming their ocular receptors and all three found a flock of large, raptorious birds diving down towards them over a lake of what looked like molten silver...

Chapter Text

Intermission 3 — The Sleeper Goes Back to Sleep Again

or

The Trial of Ephialtes and the Truth of the Red Nightmare

For the past hour or so, Prime Sleeper Jerma had been digging a hole in the ground with a strange, almost-comically large shovel that he knew would make a funny noise if he knocked it on a stone. He found that some way south geologically from the fence to the Nightmare Castle, finding that it only went down so far and started to keep rounding out the tunnel himself by digging out at the walls. Phantasos had invented them a few buttresses and stints to keep the tunnel connected and from collapsing too easily. Phobetor had reduced to a smaller size and started helping to dig slowly as well. Once past the fence of the Nightmare Castle’s grounds, Prime Sleeper Jerma started digging upwards and, using a calculator he couldn’t read, but could entirely understand. He shoved his arm upwards and it crested out through into the Land of Nightmares as the other two Dream Gods were able to help push him upwards. Prime Sleeper Jerma emerged from the ground in a dim darkness, finding that he was crawling out next to a gravestone (which he also couldn’t read) and understood somehow that it was important and attached to someone he knew. Crawling out from an unopened grave, he found himself alone again in the Dream Realm as a slow, impending anxiety crawled out from nearly every pore. He stood up and looked to the castle and began a slow trek through the graveyard-studded landscape. It was almost scarier from the lack of things along the paths there. It was quiet. Too Quiet. The dirt was setting into the soles of his soft shoes and he felt like people would judge him more if they saw this. After seventeen minutes of movement through the sloping area of the graveyards, he decided to take off his shoes and carry them as he walked through the sepulchral fields.

He was aggrieved as he stepped on to the final mound of burial and a tooth poked him in the foot, which he thought was a bit more gross and weird than it was particularly scary. Thornbushes surrounded the castle proper as he started to walk over and found trying to step over them or wade through them would at minimum hurt like hell. Whispered vespers in a high-pitched voice he didn’t recognize started to leak out of the high parapet windows from higher on the towers and Jerma was mildly thrown off, stabbing his hand on to a thorn. He found that the thin trickle of blood from his hand didn’t hurt… but it also wouldn’t stop bleeding either, leaving a trail behind him and splashing on his legs as he made his way across the thornbushes gentle and unperturbed. His silken pajamas torn by thorn and his shoes dirtied by dirt, Prime Sleeper Jerma dropped to the heavy door and found that it was seemingly locked shut, tugging at a large metallic ring, finding it did little to further open itself. He angrily looked up and found no visible means where someone could watch him and hear him as he tried to knock on the door, finding it rough, splintery, but also too thick to make much noise. A cold wind blew past him and he turned back, where it seemed a whole lot like the thornbushes were both twice as thick and moved farther out now, as if they’d grow thrice the area they covered while he wasn’t looking. He tried to blink harder and it looked like there was a new hill in the distance, where it once wasn’t. Standing aloft the threshold, he tried to see if the door could be pushed inward and then was stuck standing outside for twenty minutes more. He angrily crossed his hands and both of his ethereal arms in front of his chest. It was after that time, he could start hearing music playing from inside that sounded like you could really dance to it, but if he danced to it, someone would laugh at him, though he didn’t see this person and doesn’t know who it is.

After five minutes more, he heard someone shout from above at the parapets over the Castle’s gate and when he looked up, he found someone had dropped a bowl of chili that landed on his face. His nose barely missed getting roughly harmed by falling bowls and instead it made a larger, circular pain on the edges of his face. It sounded like someone above him was upset that it had hit someone, but in a way that made it sound more like they were upset they’d get in trouble and they didn’t have a bowl of chili in their hands. The worst part was the combination of chili peppers, which made his eyes both inflamed and hot, but the rest of the mixture became quickly cold and he had ground beef lost in his pockets, mingled with the lint in a way that would never made it edible, but had to be extricated nonetheless. As he was turning out a meat-filled pocket of his pajamas, he’d find the door was opening (to the outside, meaning he’d have to step back) and found that everyone was looking at him. They were all there and it was everyone, but they didn’t even have faces, but they were somehow staring at him. They looked very disappointed as Prime Sleeper Jerma churned on to his feet again and walked inside, discarding his dignity at the door and no longer caring what he was looking like and who was upset with how he looked, acted, or shouted angrily while throwing things around the room. After another seven minutes of Citizen Kane-ing around his house like an elderly George Orson Welles, he shouted to the heavens in defiance and kicked into the door to the throne room, but found that it crashed through the door and he had to pull the whole door out of its hinges to wrench it free from its moorings and started to shove it off of his leg as he saw a laconic figure peering out, a dimly-lit throne room filled with cobwebs that were only punctuated by loud dogs that barked as if they were very close to you, but when you turn around, they are much farther away, but are also running at you at top speed. As he stopped caring about how much cobweb and dust was getting in his mouth, he pulled his way through until he looked like he was dressed like a mummy with way better hair and stepped up to see a thin, pale figure upon a blunted stone throne. An impatient finger was tapping as the Prime Sleeper approached once more and started angrily stepping up the steps to the throne, which were taller than most steps, requiring him to more or less scoot his butt upwards and then swinging his legs ahead to then move to his knees and struggle to get upward and then walked up to the next one, finding it nearly chest high. The figure atop the throne, no doubt Ephialtes, Keeper of Nightmares, was cloaked in a crimson cape and sharp, barbed pauldrons. Their breathing was light in their chest as Jerma stood forward and Ephialtes struggled up to spindling legs that made them far taller than the Prime Sleeper.

“You have arrived too late to learn what you must from the god who was intent on teaching you the ways and the arts. The Dream Realm is in danger and you have been sleeping on the matter. We here understand it was no mean feat to find your way here through this treacherous terrain. Morpheús had come to visit me to show that your arrival would be fortuitous, not knowing that another had gained entrance both before and after Morpheús entered into our realm. The nightmares must remain here, lest they disrupt the balance and lest they become abstracted and deviated from their true purposes of causing fear. Anything exposed to scrutiny can become less terrifying in losing that mystery and impact of having seen it once before. Hence, all things here remain abstract and amorphous, to keep you constantly guessing. Constantly changing. A morphia of dreams, merely of a different flavor. Cast your eyes upon what has been done. Your entrance here is too late.”

Ephialtes revealed their body was withered, bony and sunken against their bones, dropping out of their grasp and falling from the opening cape to show their chest ripped open, their heart no longer there. Blood beat all the same, as if floating through invisible tubing, but there was no core at the center of Ephialtes being.

“Morpheús has been stolen away from us and sentenced to a distant planet in absentia of your rule. It was something you could never control. The Cosmic Power that emanates from the Dream Realm has been coopted by forces willing to sacrifice the stability of the Universe. They would have the solar system broken down and handed wherever they see fit, recomposed in a way to fuel themselves, merely for pursuits of power. It is a trap of their own devices and a prison of their own destiny. By altering their destinies and corrupting their dreams, they have delved too far and seized what is the pith of gods. Using the heart of us, Ephialtes, these corruptors and bespoilers would that the Universe yields to their bending, not knowing if it will break or they will be keel-hauled against the ravages of time’s own flow, dragged by their own folly. You are in control now of here as well, until the time that was and never will, of constant sleep, is restored and my heart is released. Until such time, you are dangerous, as all of this Cosmic Energy radiating into the mortal realms… is from you. Someone has used your entrance here to steal away our heart and to alter the course of worlds. Be wary of your thoughts, lest they doom us all. Anything terrible or unthought hiding in your rear-brain is living here. You have entered into a place of terror and will have to struggle back out. You will have to change everything and you will have to leave the very Dream Realm to do so. For you, it will be as simple as falling asleep again… because for you it will be just the same as awakening. Your psyche is fragile and could shatter like a mirror painted with silver and blood. If you are lost, they will use your power, your Cosmic Energy, to rend the Universe apart…” And with that Ephialtes returned to solace and slumped back into their throne of blunted stone. Their head down and their face gaunt with worry. The gods were not in control here… and Jerma realized that a power of creation on this level… would be a threat the second he thought of anything. Trapped in a nightmare, creating endless torment by even realizing he was thinking about it, Jerma clutched his head and sat to the side of the throne of Ephialtes, doing everything his limitless power to not do whatever even so much as popped into his mind. In a clutching position, he held tight to either arm and, somehow despite everything, found solace in the stillness of the Nightmare Castle having nothing more it could do to terrify him more. And so he fell asleep again. In the world of the humans, every sleeping human did nothing to find they were trapped in slumber, nearly half the world in the night (and many nappers in the day,) as they could find no waking in a world without a dream. The Prime Sleeper opened his closed eyes and found himself… elsewhere.

Chapter Text

Chapter 14 — The Creation of the First Kingdom of Saturn

or

The Great Entertainment, the Most Entrancing Show in the Known Universe

Reliable Eli Egg was drinking some coffee, hoping they wouldn’t end up staying awake too long in the endless night of the Saturnine “skies,” which mostly looked like a caramel-brown and clotted cream yellow flowing around itself in blobs that looked much like the coffee they were drinking before they stirred it up altogether. They had gone to meet the “Pieman,” which was Ezra’s large and seemingly complex machine that created her vaunted pumpkin pies. Next, they were heading out to the Saturnine domes to see just what was going on with the tall, quiet and drifting sort of peoples who lived on Saturn in large floating bubbles that were held in place by mooring structures that held them to the ground, not unlike a basket filled with balloons, ready to drop on a party. As usual, they had a tasty medium-boiled egg for breakfast, one of which Ezra even deigned to try one herself, though only after Eli took it out of their pocket. She wasn’t going to reach into their chest pocket unless it was a real emergency. Inside a blue and yellow striped astrosuit, Ezra attached a hitching hook to make sure that Eli Egg was securely secured to a piece of paracord between them. She gave it a tug and it held tight without breaking off, which was usually good enough. They stepped out into the sands of Saturn and soon find it’s thick, clumping and softish ground beneath their boots together. After a walk of some Saturnine miles, they arrived at the next Entertainment Bubble and traveled inside, finding that they were essentially all sitting in a large amphitheater where almost every seat was filled by one of the reclining Saturnines, hands crossed in front of their chests, fingers shifting as if they were constantly typing, a visor on every brow, which seemed to provide them with something to watch at all times.

On each of the amazing reclining seats, a frame of metal was used to keep alive every member present. Every one of them kept alive the sitter, providing food, exchanging pods to keep them from running out on this or that. A society that required little movement and constant intake was that of every Entertainment Bubble. In the center of the amphitheater was a large floating orb that showed a flash of unintelligible images that were played at a rate that the human eye would not consider it discerned by any stretch of the imagination. It was like watching a movie being fast-forwarded, intercut with a different film, with no seeming narrative relation to one another.

“About three years ago,” Ezra began, “the Saturnines got bored again and started a new planetary fad. They tend to run a course of some kind of facile mockery of enjoyment, but quickly grew bored again over time. They are consumers, but only consumers. How they ever managed to create a nearly symbiotic robot population to support and produce for them, I have no idea how they concentrated long enough to make it so. The new fad was too good, though. Some form of media exposure that is beyond the scope of what humanity has been able to offer. It is either so abstract or so densely packed with meaning that it lacks any known context. A story with no ending that goes on forever. It’s a soap opera from another plane of existence, possibly more advanced than the minds of men can stomach. The Saturnine aren’t just socially connected well. They barely speak to each other most of the time. We believe generally that they maybe centuries old. They don’t seem to reproduce at all. Interaction on any physical nature is usually accidental and they seem almost unwilling to speak directly to one another. In lieu of this, our studies and interactions have found that they may be a form of telekinetic, though… their language is just as inscrutable as their anthropology. We think they may have four lungs and more than a few hearts, but they’re kinda…” she squeezed her hands into a moderately 5” hole, “like about that big? They’re very tall, but eat very little or have somehow created a food that is perfectly sustainable… or popular. Our charitable understanding of their interactions are either some form of mass emotional attachment of the mind that humans are not yet capable of. They almost function in some ways like a hive-mind process, except that there is an ample structure network. They’re almost sort of boring to watch. They don’t do anything. We call this a media file too large to be contained on any one system or transposed from any nearby planets powerful enough to send a signal this size. It’s been nicknamed the ‘Great Entertainment.’ Their food doesn’t taste very good. It might be healthy, but it’s really rich tasting. They may even have an evolved sense of taste that has enabled them to make some kind of meal-based food juice or something akin to a simplistic stew in taste. It is stringy, astringent and doesn’t break down well in a human digestive system. Or so has been reported…” she said, eating a piece of pumpkin pie yet again. “Luckily, their amount of helpful and almost willfully abandoned technology has meant we’ve been able to replicate some powerful stuff to keep Little Wyoming kicking well enough. That also means they’ve had contact with someone. From the latest studies, it’s clear the Great Entertainment is being broadcast from somewhere to Saturn. Someone introduced this to them. Over 93% of them are estimated to live solely in the Great Entertainment. We’ve never heard of a single one dying. We think someone has instituted this upon Saturn, possibly to combine their psychic mass together… or to dominate and control their minds. They replicate themselves to continue function, but autonomously. They don’t regard humans at all, other than obstacles. In the same way they’d be programmed to not run into walls or out of the Bubbles. Any ones we’ve managed to capture just eventually run down and stop working. They will build for us nothing. They don’t regard as anything at all. Lucky for us, they have something that we know they will react to. Well, not the Saturnines, but… the robots.”

She walked forward and Eli Egg saw there was a big red button on a table, the size of a large pizza peel with writing that looked like it was mostly scraped off from people pressing the button. She indicated that they could proceed and Eli gave a soft squeal as they shoved down the button with both hands. Small, almost inoffensive red lights appeared and quiet alarms started to reroute some of the handler robots into beginning a new form of work. They worked deftly and quickly printing out a dot-matrix sheet of industrial-sized paper, rolling it into a thin metal cylinder and firing it into space.

“They do that when we press this button, leading us to believe this is an emergency button. Well, we’re running out of Vitamin K and we don’t have a lot of options, so unless it summons something that will kill us all, which it hasn’t any of the other times we’ve used it before… we’ve tried pressing it. Sometimes a rocket comes back with supplies. From the ones we’ve intercepted, they carry food that isn’t just Saturnine. Someone’s watching us. Someone is sending something to keep us going… but they’re not sending enough. These systems may be entirely automated by now. They seem to be making contact off-planet to send these. We don’t know how to stop it or shut it down. That’s why we’re running low on things we can’t synthesize. The Saturnine have become so absorbed in this that we don’t know when or if they will leave it. Maybe not in my lifetime...”

~~~~~

Eli Egg was repeatedly pressing the button, smiling as they smacked both hands on the finely-pressable button. Back on Earth, DJ Kiryū was standing in the headquarters of the Spiders’ Web and watching as a red light kept lighting up.

“Huh… wonder what that is…?” he thought aloud, rubbing his fingerless gloves against his metallic chin.

“So you’re the new one that Beaglesaurus sent over, huh?” an elderly man in a turtleneck noted, drawing a switchblade comb through his hair and then through his heavy eyebrows. “I guess it’s not every day you meet the original Kamen Spider…” Hokeshi Tanaka smiled, then stood up to shake his hand, supporting himself on a cane made of solidified webbing. “I guess I might have to step in to help a little bit. It sounds like the Saturn Alarm is going off. We sent a little bug to keep on things there and hacked their mainframe. Their crazy signals didn’t lead to much, so this time I decided to just set up something no robot would care about: a big shiny button. If anyone got stranded there, we could dispatch one of our Masked Marauders to investigate. So far, it has only come on a few times every now and then. Now? It’s an SOS. A direct distress signal. Something is up on Saturn. And they’re starting to call for help. DJ Kiryū, do you think you can go out on one last mission with this old man?” he asked, tying a green scarf around his neck, almost shaped like a large ragged leaf.

“Well damn… I’ve never been out that way. Sure, let’s hit it, Spider!” DJ Kiryū followed him to a hangar and soon left Earth with him.

~~~~~

On the edge of the horizon, Eli and Ezra were stunned to see something they wouldn’t expect, a bright blue flare going off in the air. An uncommon color for people who never left home and humans who wouldn’t survive on the outside. They were able to get together a rover and drive out to where it was, finding tracks in the sands of Saturn and discovering two robots carrying a cyborg skater who just couldn’t stop saving the world so far. Beaglesaurus was soon given a spare tank of oxygen and they were able to bring him to a recovery pod (as pressure-related accidents weren’t uncommon, but were something they had a contingency for.) Ezra was starting to pensively look at how two human people had showed up, no less that two robots were knocking sand out of their joints carefully. The two robots set down a large case and relaxed for a few minutes before the case began to rattle in Two-Four’s right hand. They didn’t want to let it go in a room with windows, but when Ezra assured them that they were aluminum, they released it and it thunked quietly against the wall and started to rise. Ezra started taking notes while Robosaurus 1.0 started to help her process them into something they could figure out where it was trying to fly towards. Emerging from behind them, Beaglesaurus had awoken and was feeling better, trying to process the new oxygen levels on Saturn in containment. Ezra began to check some machines at the observing platform and found that four of twenty lights can gone out.

“We just lost four Entertainment Bubbles. Contact has cut out. If they lose mooring, they could float out into space, repelling against the planet’s gravity. They could be utterly destroyed in the rings… if they don’t stop breathing first… But they shut off… suddenly. All at once. Either something has blown up a large section of Saturn or…” She had starting rambling before Eli Egg pointed out the window where the case was rattling against the aluminum window.

Behind them, Eli Egg was enjoying another egg for the day as Ezra saw a castle in the distance. Outside of any Domestic Bubble, there was a whole community uniting again. The Saturnine were seemingly gone. A sleepy little castle town, outside on the surface of an uneven planet with a soft soil. And yet it stood perfectly fine in defiance of physics and aghast to the concept that such things were impossible. Robosaurus 1.0 and Robosaurus 2.4 ran up to cover Eli and Ezra’s ears, seeing the cracks in the domes. There was a sudden pressure change in the skies of Saturn, like an explosive had gone off under the dome and blasting out and upwards entirely, leaving all the top of it, save for their solar reflectors, were sent flying into the terrain. The air was sweet and fragrant. Deep breathes felt no longer stolen from others or hasty in anxiety (which usually didn’t help.) Saturn had created its first Kingdom and had grown an atmosphere. There was rain pouring down over Sundance as people started to flock to cover, hoping it would dry out quick so they could see what this new place was, settled out on the horizon.

The castle was plain, if antiquated. It had towers and parapets and was mostly made of stone with metal parts and wooden machinery. People wore a lot of simplistic tunics with belts and most people seemed to have shoes or boots. Things seemed noisy, but in a busy sort of way. There was apparently a golden currency that was traded for slightly smaller golden coins for change. People seemed to speak mostly English and a glut of the architecture of their little thatched-roof houses seemed to mirror a confusing combination of British styles that were more than just inconsistent, but anachronistic. It wasn’t a castle town, it was a jolly little castle town. A happy little castle town with happy little people in it that seem to have no idea there was anything strange about their lives until now. Even then, they didn’t seem to notice anything outside their city-state. It was as if they were just not interested at all. They wanted to live their bucolic little city lives outside the castle. It was seemingly all they knew. The people seemed humanoid in nature and lacked no discerning qualities that made them different than humans from any exterior visible criteria. The Saturnines that were once there in those four Entertainment Bubbles were seemingly just not there anymore. The robots of Saturn began to realize that something different was on Saturn and shut down for fourteen hours. No Saturnines seemed to be harmed by this deactivation, most of them were asleep already. It took some time until castle staff could be asked to lower the drawbridge to investigate further. As soon as they had, robots began to rush into and start assisting the people of the Saturnine Kingdom. They seemingly lived in an oddly equal manner compared to before, almost in a way that upset Ezra, since the robots had never been reactive or helpful in much of any manner before. It was confounding in its dwindling possibility and its stark existence in the face of it. The teams managed to get inside just some time after the robots climbed their way in and found they had preempted any conversation with the Kingdom’s “ruler,” a sleeping Princess in a large semi-vertical glass coffin, sleeping on a bed of multicolored rose petals. The Prime Sleeper (whom almost everyone in the castle and town referred to merely as “the Princess.”) The robots were tapping and trying to otherwise the large coffin, but found it was rather built into the area and framework. They soon tried to attach a visor and a feeding tube to the side of the coffin, but it proved to be of little excitement, mostly since the Prime Sleeper was as most of the time, already asleep. His very nature had altered the planet Saturn irrevocably upon his arrival. His awakening, when the time had come, would alter things much much further than before.

Chapter Text

Intermission 4 — The Decimation of the Outer Planetoids

or

The Awakening to Red Nightmare

Griffin and Travis were aghast, not only because they’d been captured by an unknown race of mental goblins who existed on Uranus, but also because they were coming to a much more horrifying and mind-bending fate arriving to them: they were in the former State of Iowa. Much worse, they were clearly in an Iowa that was mostly buried underground in a large metal hangar in the wastes of Uranus… but also because the doors looked particularly tall for goblins. There were humans here once… and not anymore. They each had a needling suspicion that they hadn’t probably turned into goblins over time, things looked far too well-kept to not be entirely abandoned. It also didn’t help that they were being tied to what looked like complex receiving antennae that left them suspended in a secure, but highly worrying way. It was also creating minor cramping in the waistline due to their legs hanging without support. It was starting to get cold out as they looked out and saw a large orange shape, not unlike a pencil. They could tell from what they’d semi-forcibly gleaned from the Uranian language that it was likely a big sign that read “IDIOTS” or “FOOLS” to point out the inherent hilarity of their capture. They were beginning to think on if a cold, sparse Iowa would be much better than standing here and that thought was enough to keep them occupied for some hours-time. Griffin’s second shoe fell off, which, unknown to him, had contained a small tracker within it. After it had managed to come unstuck from Griffin along with his other shoe, Tarkus Tercel-Buscemi got a notification and started to turn around his secondary ship, the Big Corsa, to pick up the McElboys while Steve and Aquatarkus were at the theatre.

After another four days, Griffin and Travis were tired, dehydrated, withered, but alive. Tarkus managed to clamp the rear freight entrance on the Big Corsa to snap off the tops of the aerials, which seemed to upset some of the goblins, who projected their anger in bursts of impulsion that almost made Griffin and Travis get into a fistfight before Tarkus was able to land the craft and then separate them. While the three of them were distracted, a crate had appeared in a distant, shadowed corner of the craft as it left Uranus… and one of the lights was slowly unscrewed, leaving it more shadowed as the slowly squeaking of screws moving began to echo quietly through the empty storage loft. Travis and Griffin were very well asleep and eating astronaut freeze-dried food in hours, feeling chipper and talkative again… though not in any way about their experience on Uranus.

“Damn, that was crazy, I didn’t even know there were little green bros living on Uranus. I guess it’s not that out there. I’m sorry to hear that you were in Iowa, that sounds like a total drag, bros.”

“We’re just happy to be here again,” Griffin insisted, though he was staring deeply into a bowl with a small bag of anti-grav milk in it. “We’re absolutely fine… Travis…” he looked up at him and removed his glasses with a dramatic flair.

Travis removed his glasses and they peered very closely at each other, putting their glasses back on again after they had and they both realized they didn’t know what happened on Uranus. Tarkus had mentioned it, but they… weren’t retaining the information. They were just happy to be gone. All memory of Iowa had been removed from their heads again and they wondered just where they were going to when the Cataclysm began.

~~~~~

In the ensuing minutes, a cadre of seven planetoids appeared and began crashing into Pluto, starting to tear apart the planet as its core began to leak out, torn open like a wound of space as Mercury crashed first, followed by Charon, Styx, Kerberos, Ceres, Eris, Nix and Hydra. Alighting from the melting core of Pluto, the mountains of crushed planets began to mold back into place and, born in fire, the seven frozen locks were ripped away. A scream loud enough to be heard on every planet in the Solar System, a rage that conquered all known life. A being filled with more Cosmic Energy, fueled by a constant anger that ripped through air with wild abandon. A creature of such immense psychic power that it’s very telekinetic movements shoved hard within the burgeoning moons of Neptune. Leaping out from the new planet born from the desolation of many, the destroyed planet of Neo-Hades, emerged Red Nightmare. Teeth gritted and bared to a Universe that it could no longer tolerate. Freedom was the only gift received by Red Nightmare in life and the Universe would pay for affording it, either by design and by destruction. The twisting telekinetic might rent three moons of Neptune in proximity to his fury. Finding that the space where Saturn once was was empty, the rage of his following cry began to short out the targeting systems of the Big Corsa.

~~~~~

Aboard DJ Kiryū’s space freighter, the Garuda Hawk-Eagle, he was taking a rest after setting the controls to automatic. Kamen Spider was relaxing in a meditating pose on the ceiling and continued.

“All that we were able to discern from the signals of a distant and powerful Universe were legends spoken of in Saturnian lore, kept in books that were apparently left on the roadside in droves. As if the Saturnine stopped reading all at once. Their own legends were abandoned as either trivial or the words of madmen. The prophecies spoke of a creature known as ‘Red Nightmare,’ fueled by telekinetic anger unlike any world had ever seen. A world-destroyer. A creature spawned from the stolen heart of a defeated deity and twisted into anger by millennia of imprisonment. No less, such a creature cannot be reached or reasoned with. A mind so full of rage that it not only penetrates no understanding or love from any other, but especially more because it is tangible. Its rage will cause it to rend our worlds to pieces and will annihilate the culture and history of every planet that Red Nightmare touches. The scream you heard… belongs to that one… Red Nightmare is upon us…”

Chapter Text

Part 2 — The Controllers of the Sol System

Chapter 15 — The Showdown in Sheridan, Wyoming

or

The First Battle of the Kingdom of Saturn

Shaking with rage, Red Nightmare, continued to auger through the vacuum of space in one direction towards Saturn, knowing by some unknown sense within its being, just where to keep flinging itself into the distant night void of endlessness. The uncontained psychic fury of a living anti-cyclone charged towards Saturn as the Big Corsa began a twilight cascade into the hissing rocks of the Saturnine countryside. Tarkus was wrenching the controls to try to even things out as Griffin and Travis tried their best to not panic before they were involved in a class. The Garuda Hawk-Eagle soon was able to pick up their distress signal and landed to help stabilize things and have a share of parts. Griffin and Travis were soon traveling towards a distant blue flare hanging in the dull light of Saturn’s rings. However, when they arrived there, they found the area empty and unhelpful until they fired off a bright yellow flare into the sky. A figure far off in the distance was peering at them through the transparent aluminum siding as Ezra Von Qlarion started putting back on her space-suit to go see how the others were doing, having just gotten back from the Breathable Kingdom of Saturn and removed the mildly bulky suit from the main Domestic Bubble around Sheridan, Wyoming, the newly-elected capital since their relocation to Saturn. Due to there being only a few sparse cities even existing in Wyoming to begin with, they felt electing a Mayor was too small and electing a President, Grand Duke or Maharani might prove too presumptuous and thus instead elected Triple-Mayor “Gal” O Mimus, a genderfluid individual with a peppercorn of personality and a sizzling lump of character when it came to running almost all three entire major cities in the Wyoming Territory. At her hard-hitting workplace, the Sheridan Inn, 3-May. Gal was busy filling out some papers about the food-exchange situation when it became clear that there were at least two to three new people in town, which was usually pretty big news. They took off the snappy trilby they had on and started snapping their suspenders in a thoughtful fervor, as they tended to do more often when they need to do some ten-dollar puzzling and this was worth at least a fine c-note in the end.

“So it sounds like we’ve got a few questions I need to get from you, new chum…” they intimated suspiciously while rubbing at their chin, inspecting Reliable Eli Egg up and down in a circular pattern to try to be thorough with what little time it sounded like was available to them at this time.

“I can probably tell you what I know so far…” Eli Egg offered, eating another pocketed egg. 3-May. Gal was highly suspicious of this factor involved as well.

“Where did you come from?”
“Earth, it turns out!”

“That’s promising at least… Where did the second group come from?” they asked, indicating a picture of Beaglesaurus & the Robosaurus Siblings, who had already started getting nostalgic about having a wonderful time enjoying the local landmarks, theme parks and cuisine. They were currently outside petting some goats.

“They ended up teleporting here due to another influx of Cosmic Energy, ya know, just like everyone else here…”

“Except for lately…” Gal noted.

“Then we had a crash from the Big Corsa which was trying to even out and crashed through the Breathable Kingdom, which slowed it down enough to settle down when it re-entered Saturn. Aboard was Acting Captain Tarkus and a couple of goofy-looking human guys.”

“And the other craft?”
“It sounds like they were reacting to an emergency signal I set off in one of the Great Entertainment Bubbles and got caught up in trying to stabilize the Big Corsa with a level 4 tractor beam.”
“Are those legal in this galaxy?” Gal asked, intimidatingly.

“I don’t know any regulations. This is my first time off-planet! The air sure smells fresh though!”

“Speaking of regulations, we have a huge-looking crate aboard the Big Corso that literally no one onboard can claim responsibility for. We might have a case of the most terrifying of interplanetary crimes: smuggling! At best, stowaways… at worst… a weapon? Or would it be invaders?”

“I think invaders would need a weapon…”
“You’re not wrong… What about the armored dropship?”
“It landed after I got here. You were looking at me when you heard it drop and then you walked out and looked at it in the other room…” Reliable Eli Egg remembered recallingly.

“Right you are… can you really tell me you just… woke up here?”

“I know! It’s pretty crazy, but it happens a lot more than you’d think!”

“I can think a lot. It gets crazy out here sometimes on Saturn. Especially when the Saturnines haven’t said anything for a long while now… We don’t have a lot to trade… unless you’ve got lots of Vitamin K! That’d be great!”

“Are boiled eggs a source of Vitamin K?”

“Is this a thing with you? Eggs on the brain? Over easy or over soft?” Gal asked, intimating something about eggs.

“If I had all the answers, I’d probably move on to whatever the next town has to hold after I told you to them. I guess I’m just the one who needs to be here right now. Who can really say what’s going on in this other crazy, mixed-up world?”

“We don’t have time for philosophy! Our probes have made it clear already: something is on its way and we need to batten down the hatches and start barring some windows shut. I can smell a storm coming… first unnatural storm we’ve had in a long while…”

Gal punched the table and adjusted their Chess Championship Ring on one finger.

“Alright, the Triple-Mayor is here and the world isn’t going to blow up during Happy Hour! We’re going to pump things into overdrive if we have to, but we’re going to hold the world together. Any idea about this Beaglesaurus?”

“He’s famous from up north, far as I know. Pretty sure he’s Future American? There’s a Future America now.”

“We will have to talk about… whatever that means later. For now, we need help shifting the Domestic Bubbles. We can teleport them short range throughout most parts of this hemihemisphere, but it requires a huge power draw. We can plug into one of the Saturnine Bubbles and gank their pretty-much infinite power supplies, but only for so long.”

“What can I do to help?”
“We need you to get Beaglesaurus and the Robosaurus Siblings out to the Breathable Kingdom. Beagle keeps saying he needs to get there about something and far as we can tell, there aren’t any understandable people, Saturnines, or robots. They’re… something else. But they also have a well-fortified castle that we can evacuate to. Otherwise, the moorings could send everyone up and floating out into the rings. We have a population of roughly seventeen hundred people or so, some rogue-headed Saturnines who don’t live in the Great Entertainment, women, children, farmers, working people… lawyers, doctors, construction workers, plumbers, electricians, masons, bakers, handball players, professional clowns, tanners, jute-weavers, gardeners and a few postal workers. Around 44 lived in Ezra’s Bubble, it was a smaller town… but the other two cities will be teleporting here soon. We need you hero-types to try to steer and / or evacuate people so we don’t get crashed into. With that dropship outside, we’ll be lucky to think that he’s not a vanguard.”

“There’s something outside…” Eli Egg noted, pointing outside the window, to distant Gannett Peak outside the window, the tallest mountain in the Saturnine Territory of Wyoming. A large red ring less like a cloud and more like a piercing crimson wind, crashing into the top of the peak, cutting into it like a flinging buzzsaw, sizzling with wet fury into a tile-cutting crack that shattered through the zenith of Wyoming, cracking it open as it shattered into a cascade of moderate-sized boulders.

Outside, Commander MX5 flung blood off of his blade after defeating a seventh guard at Sheridan Inn, having mostly been kept busy this way. He was becoming dignified enough to offer them one-on-one, personal battles (all to the death) and he was willing enough to oblige those who wants to test his mettle. Looking back over the horizon, he saw Gannett Peak crack open and his eyes widened, not in fear, but in recognition. If there is one thing a Martian can find fastest, after a weapon, it is a challenge. The Commander was no less filled with initiative as he looked up and pointed his bio-blade up to the mountaintop.

“Good,” he thought aloud, “I will travel there and extermination will begin. This creature is the cause of this Cosmic Madness! Through his death will the worlds be set back to their rightful places and this galactic dilemma will be over. Foolish humans of Earth! Mild and uninteresting Saturnines! Know that you will be spared only for a short time until I return to scourge your society and pick our armor clean with the bones of our enemies, washed clean in your flowing blood. Consider yourself lucky that I have more pressing matters beforehand. This one is powerful, that much I can tell… I will have to find out just how powerful this creature is to challenge me! My victory will not be forgotten! My wrath will be terrible and the only thing worse than cringing fools are those who would stop our invasion! I got here first… I claim this land for Mars! But until such a time as your new taskmasters and overseers can be deployed here, I will have to deign to liberating you from this raging demon of the stars… Havoc shall be his sentence and defeat will be his final meal, lest he swallow blood and teeth in his weeping!”

He charged his heels backwards, building up kinetic energy before firing off of the ground, creating a long crater behind him as he leapt to the roof of the Sheridan Inn and kicked down his other leg, blasting off of the roof towards Gannett Peak, just outside the Domestic Bubble barrier. Commander MX5 stalked closer as he brushed blood spatter off of his armor and let out his loudest psychic roar, somewhere between a sharp crack between the eyes with a blunt object and piercing to the ears. A standard human soldier would be at minimum bleeding if he were in a 7’ radius. Arriving on the new Gannett Plateau, the Commander drew his extermination ray and fired almost immediately, though it seemed to reflect off of an unseen barrier before Red Nightmare. The raging anti-cyclone’s eyes lifted and he spotted the Commander. Stepping forward, he reached a hand forward, extended towards him and stepped out of a crunching glass crater in the tall mountainside. Reaching into his left pauldron, Commander MX5 retrieved one of his death-barbs and slipped it on to one of his lengthy fingers, though it looked like little more than a small, sharp thorn at the side of his gauntlet. Like most Martian bio-blades, it could be cracked in the middle to alter it for close combat, so he stepped it on to his blade, snapping it down to only a short foot or so of death to keep close to the heart of his enemy.

“You have altered in that which is not yours and you will meet extermination at the hands of a warrior of Mars! Death will be release for you when the art of pain is rended in to your blood-red skin. You will fall at my hand or you will fall at the end of my barrel! At the point of my blade! Or in the sights of my weapons. This time, I’m coming right for you. Fight me or die!” Commander MX5 commanded.

Red Nightmare’s gleaming eyes, like melting amber and the brightness of the forge, glared down into the Commander as he floated forward. With almost a lack of clarity of himself, he watched as the bio-blade approached his chest and welcomed it into him. His hand seized around the wrist of his attacker, letting the blade sink with seemingly no regard for it jutting into what would be a fatal blow to any creature less fearsome than the raging psychic force of Red Nightmare. It was a worrying prospect to find that a fatal blow did not kill your opponent to a Martian. It usually meant a great and horrible shame due to failure to kill, but this was something different. In all of seconds, he realized that it was too late and began another final vision. He knew he would wake up stronger, smarter and more willing to kill than ever. To his luck, he felt no pain, like jumping into the ocean from a helicopter, sharp, sudden and brutal. A mere shove of significant psychic force to him was like wind, changing constantly on Mars. It blew now severe and striking, buffeting into his solar plexus, cracking his armor and, once far out enough, shoving him downward, downward, downward, scraping him into a smear across the mountain’s side, all too visible from Sheridan Bubble as it was slowly floating towards the Breathable Kingdom, hoping that the mad killer would draw Red Nightmare into a battle that would hold him back. But now, Commander MX5 was dead already and deployment from Mars would take almost days. In preparation for his inevitable destruction of the self, Queen Tyra sent forward a cloning pod to rest on the flagship of the Martian Astro-Fleet, the Tyrrhenus Patera, where she commanded in his stead. To remove him now would necessary, but to create a weaker final vision. He would learn less the longer he remained alive and awoken. Within minutes, Commander MX6 felt his chitinous biological armor starting to fuse back into a conducive whole, not ready for combat, but ready to lead a warship. Personal combat had failed to stop Red Nightmare… so naturally, the Martian way, would be immediate escalation to full-out military assault. War against one creature began with Commander MX6’s birthing words, an echo of his latest final vision.

“Red Nightmare is not unkillable. There is weakness hiding within its greatness. This thing will be annihilated for Mars! Begin attack!”

As vicious Martian masers lashed into the living anti-cyclone that was Red Nightmare, his wrath would have to wait. At the bridge of the flagship, the Commander gave the order and a tractor beam was used to destabilize Red Nightmare from attaining momentum in the local gravitational area he was floating into. This had the effect of keeping him still when he wasn’t pushing off a planet to do so. His flinging madness launched out like spears into the craft, leading to gravity sinks sucking out hallways and exterior shielding. Trying to wrench his arms into a position where he could move things, the tractor beam was able to still Red Nightmare mostly by keeping him in a vacuumed grasp, but further, by it being light enough that he’d started spinning. Without an easy way to orient himself, Red Nightmare found concentrating on a single target in any number of directions as difficult to reach. It he could reach them, he could already rend them apart. Though his psychic might was already like fighting against a raging whirlwind, moving everything of an uncertain weight or an insecure bolting or welding would be rattled, thrown, flung, or twisted whichever way it could, even if it meant doors cringing shut or computers burning out from sudden overheat, he still had a singularly red-hot body, though not in any way accounting for his looks. Though he had a moderately handsome visage, it was immediately off-put by anyone who saw his face (especially if they were to somehow live,) due to his face being a tense and strained grimace. It was like every nerve in his face was peaked with pain, anger, fear and disgust. What would look like almost comical in its extremity would be heavily compounded by his manic and sharp movements; he looked terrifying because he was so much like a madman. If he could be said to look human without even his skin being hotter than most searing hot metals, it would be anyone to be easily dissuaded from his action. He had little in the way of a voice, more like a low, blasting roar. A shout to the heart of any planet willing to stand in his path that spelled destruction with the psychic might of a Great Red Storm. It was this inherent rage built into the throbbing heart of Red Nightmare that gave him such mental strength beyond any other creature of realistic creation. A crackling red cape seared by lightning and soaked with blood, he began to slowly concentrate and, much to the chagrin of the departing Martian fleet, was able to right himself in relative position to the spinning planet he was slowly losing track of the gravitational field of. Glaring angrily at the invaders coming to the planet he was due to destroy and reached out both hands.

“Sentence to Moonfall!” his cracking voice, like roaring thunder, blasted into the night sky of Saturn, firing out into the rings as his shaking arm pointed to the Tyrrhenus Patera. “MIMAS!”

With a shattering shove, sections of the newer, exterior rings of Saturn, which included a good deal of their smaller moons, hard mountains of cosmic shale were cast out, like meteors falling from the sky, dragging Mimas, the former Moon of Saturn, into the Martian flagship. The bridge was almost immediately broken to shards as the Commander glared angrily into Red Nightmare’s eyes. As they blitzed together their broken vision, the Commander’s biological armor was ripped asunder by the strength of the raw vacuum of open space, dragging him through a large crack in the ship’s main controls, breaking his body into it and violently cramming every piece of him through it. Red Nightmare saw little of interest in the eyes of his dying aggressor, flying closer to start physically rip the Martian ship to shreds. As he stormed through the halls, he ripped his hands into the walls, dragging his invulnerable body into the structures of the ship. It was only when he arrived at the engine did he find a door he couldn’t easily rip open. To do so would flood the ship with radiation from the core, killing everyone on board. It would not be Martian of any of them to survive, but the clone pod freshly opening, far earlier than it should be, struggled one leg of Command MX7. His shell had yet to darken to a fine thickness, leaving him without much in the way of biological armor at all. A fleshy body like this was mostly good for firing weapons or setting off explosives. He had kept a weapon by for when this would be needed and, struggling to find purchase on legs not yet developed enough to support his weight, he stared angrily out of a viewing slat to see Red Nightmare. Had he a mouth, he’d be laughing in pure spite at having the wind at his back. With the flagship falling to Saturn’s surface through its weak atmosphere. Placing a plasmoid orb-grimmer in to his other hand carefully, he found he had to use the fingers from the stronger hand to pull the trigger, shouting out his final vision from when last he found a state of death.

“You cannot be captured alive again. Such is the Martian way! You are cast out to the depths of space once more. Die in the name of Mars!” Commander MX7 cried out, blasting the engine himself with an orb of semisolid plasma at the speed of a racing bullet. They were usually used for melting through armor or blowing open holes in doors to provide better ingress, but it would require far less finesse in a coup de grace most powerful. The octagonal railing of the engine’s core did nothing to stop the melting bead of hard-winding plasma as it wended holes left and right in the core and sunk to the bottom where it started to melt out the base, like a slingshot full of lava being lobbed into the center of an expensive surgical machine.

From the surface, Beaglesaurus, Griffin and Travis together were ushering people out of the Sheridan Bubble to the Breathable Kingdom of Saturn when they heard what sounded like a crack tearing into the sky itself. The natural programming of the spheres that kept livable the Saturnine and humans alike started to create a hard black shell around them, so the light would not blind anyone who happened to be staring in the wrong direction at the wrong time. This also had the unfortunate effect of near total darkness, but interior lighting was coming on already pretty quickly with the emergencies going on. Rattling above them, only the Robosaurus Siblings were able to directly see the searing explosion of a Martian flagship engine erupting into a full collapse of the core, sinking into itself like space folding down a mountain, like a waterfall of stars cascading into nowhere. A more guarded eye at the right monitor would see the whole ship tear a busted suture of the heavens beyond the sky, like a great and horrible void of white that absorbed everything around it, before collapsing into a waterfall of sidereal fracture. It was unsure just how much time and space were inherently damaged before, but this was something to create little doubt in those who knew that the nature of the Universe was quickly coming down around the ears of most species that already had those to start with. To this day, it can be seen on a telescope of modern popularity or at least a decently-sized observatory, a wipe across the rings of Saturn, a swipe of a mighty cosmic hand creating a gap that would take years to close up. They would start calling it the Saturnine Stripe and would be able to use it to start quite the shipping empire out of using it as easy travel to the Saturnine terra firma. The blast that sent the Tyrrhenus Patera hurtling into a distant Saturnine canyon and the Queen of Mars dragged her fingers against another clone pod, dragged out of the protein pool and beginning to slowly assemble a new Commander to her whim. She knew waiting longer would get her better reconnaissance. At the site of the explosion, the Stripe of Saturn created a horrible path for Red Nightmare, sending him blasting at the full strength of a Universe-corroding contents of the flagship’s ruptured core erupting in space. Falling out into the nothingness, he would find no moon of Saturn and no Martian surface for millions of miles. Until he could find purchase against anything, he could do little to return. His unconquerable rage fueled the fire at the pith of his very being, a cold-burning fire that rippled through every fiber of his metallic skin and his mechanical sinew, his eyes like burning amber as he started to close each racing eye. He stopped breathing and refused to begin thinking until such a time until he knew it was right to. When his orders would be completed. When the screaming would stop and when the shattering of a million stars would be afflicted upon the Universe. For some time, he would be almost in a state of peace.

~~~~~

“Ya see, this is the problem now! You said there was a huge crate here and now there isn’t a huge crate here!” Griffin noted, having scuffed the hell out of his arm during the mass evacuation to the now inexplicably Breathable Kingdom of Saturn.

On the ground of the Big Corso, there were certainly the remains of what would have been a crate… but less like it was stolen or cracked open. It was more like something cut its way out of the crate. What’s worse, it was not the brutal claws of a lethal predator like the golden bears or the silvery badgers of North Scotland, but a textured breakout. A skillful escape. It had no less than the precision of machine tools and what looked like a large sheep’s skin without any sheep attached to it. It was far larger than any sheep grown on Earth or Mars, which was what mostly confused Tarkus as he looked it over and did some quick headwork as to if this was something valuable or sought after. There were rare talks about Uranian Wooling Cattle, and it felt like it had a decent softness on it. It was not too unlike sleeping on a particularly puffy kind of cloud.

“Where did this even come from?” Tarkus began to wonder as he ran it against his metallic fingers. “This stuff is pretty good, you think we make this into like a blanket? Maybe some kind of poncho?”

Griffin was already asleep on it and Travis was puzzling his square-jawed head off trying to wonder what they could possibly do to solve this mystery in these trying times. He remembered that brisk November evening so many years ago when Griffin and he met Tarkus Tercel at space camp, being part of the North West Virgianian Astro Youth League. It was the same place they learned how to play guitar and watched the first seven episodes of The Wire Wasp Show, how to get into the drift to control a small star-skipper, wake-boarding and, the most common part of space camp, penmanship. Using some handy duct tape, he was able to repair most of the small tears in his spacesuit and had been using the pent-up adrenaline of the moment and the thrill of achievement, started working on repairing Griffin’s as well.

Griffin was having an abstract, yet pleasing dream where he was eating a comically large ice cream sundae, knowing that it wouldn’t affect his digestion or ruin his dinner as the Princess Prime Sleeper Jerma was trying to unlock something more. Sitting atop a small outcropping from his tower, he was leaning all the way over to see what Griffin was up to.

“You’re new here, aren’t you?” the Princess asked, waving a fan mysteriously in front of his face.

“I’m pretty unclear on lots of things right now. I might even have some head trauma from the crash. I have a softness of the eyes that feels like I’m asleep now… I guess that’s why I’m wearing a spiffy tuxedo made of liquid gold!” Griffin admitted, throwing money out of his pockets. “Perhaps I’m being a bit flouncy, but it’s better than being awake right now! There’s some kind of mad alien supervillain out there who breathes fire and thrusts tornados with his ears for all I know! I’d bet my bionic ass but I sold it as an art-piece last year to fund my Uranian vacation, you see!”

“So you’re in my Kingdom? How did you get here? This is out in the middle of nowhere! And on Saturn even! I don’t… I don’t want to wake up right now. The time is not right! I need to find Morpheús and I don’t think that they are in the waking world any longer…”

“Hey, that sounds fine by me! If I stay asleep longer, I’ll probably not snore too much! If I’m running low on cheese, I can just eat the bread instead!” Griffin declared, plainly, then started to eating handfuls of graham cracker crust.

“That does sound like a real problem outside though…” Princess Jerma thought quietly aloud, “These new people. This new world. Was escaping it all just a way of running from my problems? Or breaking new ground to solve my issues somewhere neutral? Why does my heart beat when I hear words of this horrible creature? I’m not understanding things here, Boofy G,” Princess Jerma continued, addressing Griffin by a nickname he somehow inherently understood. “What else is going on out there?” he asked, still becoming worried about their own stability.

“Um, Red Nightmare flew into the sky and blew up the Martian ship and then… disappeared? We found a crate on board the Big Corso, but we’re not sure where it came from or whose it is…” Griffin thought aloud, meandering of the mind.

“That crate is important! You may need to do something to make sure you remember it. Try gluing it to your shirt or something. I can’t think of anything good… right now! I’m freaking out with what they’re already doing! If I’m asleep, they can’t lock in and steal all my dream energy or whatever the hell they’re doing!”

“Well, I think that the easiest thing to say is it seems like a bunch of heroes showed up all together, so that’s a pretty good thing so far. Everything is cleaving together well!” Griffin encouraged as he use a very long backscratcher to pat the Princess on the back. “Beaglesaurus, the Robosaurus Siblings, Eli Egg, DJ Kiryū and Kamen Spider… and that’s only most of them!”

“That sounds… promising… I was able to intercept one of those final visions from Mr. Martian! I imagined hard enough and it turned into this painting,” Princess Jerma noted as he pulled a satin knotted cord, making a soft ding-dong noise before it opened a large curtain, revealing a softly-painted painting of Red Nightmare, standing before the nearby plateau south of them. “Devil’s Tower, Wyoming… Atop there there’s a castle wherein you will find your destiny. Or at least the others will… Whatever you do, don’t use the blue key. It doesn’t matter if someone else does, but you can’t use it. These are what you will need to do. You’ll need to wake up in a minute because you have a really bad itch behind your shoulder, which will be cured when you wake up, so if your nails are too long, I can’t help you if you scratch too hard.”

Griffin had started floating away on a bubble and had a flash of something off in the distance. He saw on his hand there was a red plus sign and, in his chest pocket, there was a collection of small wooden scraps from the crate. Having sidled up snoozily into the Uranian Wool Pelt had the effect of getting plenty of the loose drilled scrap into his pocket. Griffin, though sleepily, scratched quickly at his shoulder and then recalled where the crate had come from.

“TRAVIS!” he cried aloud, as Travis turned around, angry since he was barely a few feet away from him, sitting on the edge of a cot Griffin had been laying on.

“Griffin, I’m right here…” he said softly, as if to underline the point of his brother’s loudness.

“Travis, I had a dream and there was a big painting and it had something to do with everything that’s going on. And… and I saw Devil’s Tower and I saw… I saw this!” Griffin said, energetically, pulling his hand out of the sleeve of his space suit’s front bubble made it clear there was a red plus there as he’d thought. “I think we need to talk to the Triple-Mayor! I’m got a mad hunch and I even know where the crate came from! We need to get to the other ships fast though!”

“Griffin, you need to tell me what’s going on!” Travis asked, mildly shaking him by the shoulders.

“The goblins, Travis! They didn’t let us go, they let us go! They tricked us into leaving Uranus with them on board! We have to stop them before they start the sabotage! They’re going to get into everything! Like sand, Travis! It’ll be like sand everywhere! But worse! With power tools and little scurrying legs. We don’t even know if they’ve done something to the Big Corso or not! The Blue Key! The shoulder! Travis, we have to run!” Griffin started to grip at both of his arms and ran out with his brother on to the front entrance courtyard of the Breathable Kingdom. “A Princess told me I had to, bro! That’s like… right up there! Devil’s Tower! It’s all leading up… there…” Griffin noted before becoming quiet and withdrawn, scratching his shoulder incessantly until it stopped itching.

“You sure this air is breathable right?” Travis offered.

“Look. I know I’m probably sounding crazy, but we need to get out there. It’s a big-ass castle out in the wilderness! It shouldn’t be hard to find… but we’re going to shellacked if we stick around here much longer!” Griffin dashed off and started sprinting towards Devil’s Tower. Upon the plateau a castle stood, imposing.

Chapter Text

Chapter 16 — The Nine Secrets of the Dread Edifice, Castle Stymphalia

or

The First Castle of the Wastes of Wyoming, Saturn

Twelve miles later, Eli Egg and Ezra Von Qlarion were standing at the base of the Castle Stymphalia. The walls were almost unbelievably high, at perilous jutting angles, parapets that seemed to stand in the clouds, yet manned by nobody and guarded from everyone.

“We’ve tried to scale it before with grappling hooks and sending drones over it, but there are windstorms around here like 12% of the time. They don’t seem to have any windows. The way the stone is stacked is rudimentary at best. It shouldn’t even hold together. It’s like if you made a wall out of gravel or sand. This whole thing should fall down around itself, but it stays held up. Every now and then, objects will appear on the ground around it and sometimes it isn’t what seems like normal trash… That mirror you found… it’s connected. The drones could only get so high… At the top of the parapets, there are giant metal birds,” she indicated, pointing to Eli Egg’s Stymphalian Mirror. “I don’t know what it means or why they’d put it on a mirror, but there must be a connection. The creatures attack anything that get in sight with destabilizing sonic bursts. Throws off the rotors. Triple-Mayor tried using a pumpkin trebuchet I made for the Tri-County Fair last year, but they blasted the trebuchets to pieces by singing at them. Exposure for even more than eight minutes starts to make your ears bleed. Any longer and…” she grew quieter, but her fingers made a motion like a tiny explosion around her head. “They never leave and don’t seem to sleep. They may have some kind of solar charge. We’ve tried running tests to scan inside it the Castle, showing massive energy readings… but the walls are too high and too thick to see anything through. You have a way with doors. We have a door that doesn’t go anywhere…” she pointed to the only piece of the wall that looked different on the otherwise inscrutable cylinder of supposed masonry, a thick door. She carefully lugged a large metal ring that looked difficult to easily move, showing that behind the door was merely more wall, the door almost more of a taunt to any prospective pilferers.

Eli Egg pushed one boot against the door and pulled on the large metal ring to stretch their arms a bit, then dropped back off from the door to pull it open. A small, squatting pathway opened, like a tunnel through the stone, but for people far shorter than most humans to get through, requiring the duo to start crouching to get in the tight passage. A klick westward, DJ Kiryū was looking around the soft, powdery landscape of the Saturnine Wastes of Wyoming that had settled over the area. Kamen Spider took a brief gaze into a pair of binoculars and then nodded with a determined smirk.

“We’re getting closer. Whatever is going on is at the top of Devil’s Tower and we’re going to find out what! The energy surging from this place… I can feel it… This means something…” he said, rubbing his chin and concentrating. “Energy signature… it’s like a teleporter, but bigger. Maybe this is some kind of factory?”
“Or some kind of silo?” DJ Kiryū offered with a shrug.

“Considering how the rest of the Saturnine have shut down to let the robots handle everything… it would be strange that someone else suddenly broke off and started running some impossibly-walled warehouse on top of the Sacred Bear Lodge… This isn’t normal…”
“What is these days?”

“Those birds weren’t here last time either when we set down the beacon. Something is going on out here… and we need to turn it off and shut it down… Let’s put some… web in their works…” Kamen Spider decided, slicking his hair back with both hands before he straightened up and pointed out at it, “Let’s go tear something down.”

“Well damn… I guess we better!” DJ Kiryū returned as he did a few intimidating neck rolls.

“This architecture is sub-par, a crime against buildings! This edifice will not stand! Spider Jump!” he announced as Kamen Spider flipped high into the air and landed just on the edge of the parapets. With both of his fingerless gloves around DJ Kiryū’s wrists, he had dragged him along with him in a turbulent flip.

Landing together, DJ Kiryū activated his Absolute Zero Cannon, deconstructing one of the Stymphalian guards, its robotic form incapable of action in an Absolute Zero environment and soon fell to pieces. The other birds began to spread their mighty silver-chrome wings and DJ Kiryū nodded softly.

“I’ll be honest, I thought you said there were only one or two of these things… I can only use the AZ Cannon like… once every seven hours… I’ve got some Type-3 Masers, but these things look like they can’t get too far inside…” DJ Kiryū noticed, pointing out beyond the avian aerodrome to show a large translucent bronzed amber dome over the inner castle walls.

“Aw, don’t worry too much, kid… I think it’s been a while since I’ve stretched my limbs a bit!” Kamen Spider said, spraying a jet of spiderweb out of his wrist-mounted blaster, blinding a second Stymphalian Bird as it quickly whipped backwards, sending the founder of the Spiderweb Foundation into the skies of Saturn. The Bird would come to regret this hasty decision, but not for very long.

~~~~~

Walking along the heavy metal lattice under the translucent bronzed dome of Castle Stymphalia, a bonfire of heavy Jamaican incenses wafted precariously out from the roof. Far from the throng below, Eli Egg managed to find a decent spot where a leather kneeling mat had been left out for maintenance and sat down with Ezra to look below. Despite the fact that the whole place had the shape of an ornate castle hiding inside a large stone sheath too large for any person to knowledgeably scale and lower themselves into, the acoustics were like that of a vaulted church. Eighteen glowing eyes pierced up in a darkness below them, the light of the many Saturnine Moons glinting perniciously against the bronzed dome. Legs dangling down, the voices of the malefactors below them echoed glaringly out as they saw the mighty and terrifying Birds above being wrangled by Kamen Spider and DJ Kiryū.

Below, the fluttering of capes and the grip of cold leather gloves were belied in a dark silence as the meeting malefactors lit up a candle each, speaking their darkest and most sinister secret each…

“My name is Graham Bonnett. By manipulating the world economy via time travel, I have managed to become a close ally and then a key member of the Future American Federal Government, even at the cost of our own lives. I will make amends for this with our newest plan. My only regret is that we are still mortal… still doomed to die...”
“My name is Geddy Lee. By altering the time-stream, I drove DJ Mechagodzilla to madness, forcing him to vape whole memes until he destroyed the Internet for some years to further my video-tape rental service. The world has barely regained social media back… My only failure is that the Narp has all but replaced analog services. My empire of tape and mail services is but a shell of what it once held…” he grunted through gritted teeth.

“My name is Ritchie Blackmore. Using time-travel, I was able to generate growth in a stolen god-heart and illegal cloning data from government files to create the creature Red Nightmare. It was only from his constant and destructive urges that I was also forced to seal him away, creating the Neo-Hades Protocol to keep him under wraps. Now he is free and the solar system will be ours. My only loss is that he could not be better controlled. He is hard-wired with my programming to do what he must. Perhaps too well...”

“My name is Ian Gillan. To stop Beaglesaurus, I inflicted the Curse of Vriska on Coda Aria, his closest love. Driving her to madness in an attempt to kill him… It… did not work…” he admitted softly. “My only falter was underestimating the power of love. Perhaps love may be stronger than even Space Wizards...”

“My name is Roger Glover. With my amazing self-replicating robots, I was able to sequester all of Jupiter within the Titano-Drome, containing the very power of the Great Red Storm to breathe life into Red Nightmare. The energy matrices I have seized from the Jovian people will fuel our continued research into breaking our imminent demise. My mad experiments in teleportation have locked hundreds, maybe even thousands of Future Americans on distant planets… It is my only shame that 90% of Jovians were destroyed in the process… Their golden blood will not be spilled in vain!”

“My name is Ian Paice. To stop Beaglesaurus, I inflicted the Curse of Vriska on Mei, one of his closest friends and more… amorous pursuers and hired the creator of Skype to spirit to her the Flaccid Diamond, which would rend the world into madness had… Beaglesaurus not stopped her…” He similarly looked crestfallen compared to Ian Gillan’s similar and just as unremarkable scheme. “I should have just killed someone instead… I’ve failed to hold power to myself… I am a shell of a man once more...”

“My name is Eddie Vedder. I have created the Great Entertainment to overwhelm the psychic connections of the Saturnine, to conquer their planet of powdery mountains and draw them into a psychic cage that will fuel our continued conquest of the solar system! Their combined psychic might, used as a weapon, will become the destroyer of worlds that we can control. Their shiftless minds will fall beneath our might and we will seize every planet we want! If ever doubt entered my vast and wonderful mind, it would be to think that once, the Saturnine were like us… Artists… creators… geniuses! Their culture and history have all but been wiped out. My Great Entertainment has wicked away every ounce of their creativity. I have watered down their very concept of perception consumption. The Great Entertainment may be even stronger than me… ‘tis a weapon that could destroy any mortal man...”

“My name is Strongbeard Rodriguez, known as ‘Strongbeard the Wise.’ When I was able to slip through time, I was able to convince Lobstersaurus, Beagle’s own foolish father, into buying an accursed mechanism shaped like an industrial-sized fan that trapped them in a pocket dimension for years. You fools have been going about this entirely wrong!” Strongbeard accused, pointing mostly at the Ians. “I did the most than the rest of you and I was the one who seized first on the aspects of the King Fool, Blumpkin! Were he not such a close friend of mine, I’d have sunk my fingers into the flesh of his neck…” he murmured.

“My name is Professor Dave Mustaine. I stole the heart of the god of nightmares and wound my hands through the pith of cosmic strings to wrench the Cosmic Energy we required from the Neo-Robot Hearts. It was by my hand that the Red Nightmare was birthed into a world of pain, anger and psychic rage! It is with every ounce of his hateful, rampaging mind that I inflicted such a crashing destruction on to the universe! All it took was betraying everything and everyone we knew. The scientific community will never accept me now… as I am both a liar, a thief and a magician. I am no one on Earth and my name is muddied forever. Even among you suckers, I name none of you friends… Who am I and what do I hold dear to me even now? The only option left: our rise to godhead! These are our nine secrets, our nine regrets, our nine sins combined will spell a new cosmos with us standing atop the ruins of every planetary society. Before any of them realize what we’ve done, we will tear down the walls of reality and the anti-cyclones will pierce every ear that hears!” He smacked his hand against a blackboard, “By these nine secrets are we bound! Were anyone to know them, we would be persona non grata forever… faces to be forgotten and names to be erased. Already we have wiped ourselves out of the annals of history and destroyed what pasts we may have had. Every bridge is burned and we shall soon find the end of peace and the beginning of our dynasty, warped by magic and twisted to our needs. The very Universe will quake before the Space Wizard Concern!”

Together, each member gripped the other by the forearm until an unholy nonagon was formed, each arm clad in purple spandex and glaring with multi-colored lightning bolts.

“Together, we have violated the sanctity of the flow of time to empower ourselves. The Business Coven is dead now and the Ritual of Our Nine Secrets will free the Universe to our control! We, together, laced within one another by the ravages of history, are the Space Wizard Concern!” they exclaimed together.

“Even Former Governor of Neo-Ontario Blumpkin Tornadus cannot stop us now!” Graham Bonnett insisted as he glared evil dark-visioned eyes. They laughed together at their magical conquests throughout the passage of time. Their consistent and overrunning meddling with the fabric of space/time was more than reason enough to be terrified, but having joined forces with Blumpkin Tornadus, who thought they were a stable business acquisition, they had managed to divert most of his powers to themselves, severing their own causality at a price most gruesome.

Each one among them had some gradient of insanity marked upon them, like a brand upon the brain, due to their meddlesome time-shenanigans. Together, each of them wallowed in the splendor of a world stolen and a system befitting mostly themselves. Though they were more than fine with becoming key members of the former President Jaleel White’s Cabinet, this would spell their intimate destruction. Most of them were destroyed in a hail of gunfire by Speaker of the Entire House, Arin Hanson, who had lost control of a large Vulcan cannon he was using to try to hold off Beaglesaurus. This created an inherent flaw in their own causality: they died along the way of their misdeeds, creating a natural end to the timeline. Any actions that would lead them away from this path of self-destructive tendency would endanger their own plans within; they were wound around a spool of their own plotting and found themselves bound to it now. Every movement of the weft in the fabric of time they had shifted, it was more and more like shoving your hand through a hole in a blanket: soon enough, you can get your whole arm through… but the blanket won’t be the same… and will do little to keep you warm with a hole in it. Taking your arm out won’t fix the hole… so instead they just made more and more holes… any more change, any more structural damage to the very pith of existence, could just as easily wipe it out entirely. Even they were alack to destroy all of time, since they needed time to be a constant of universal action for any of their plans to rather achieve anything. By these nine secrets, they were bound to a fate they could not escape. And thus, they decided to unleash their deadliest card in their deck and send the solar system twisting in the cosmic winds. To reorder the stars and realign the planets to their liking, untold magical power would be even more theirs. With any hope left in their dark and malevolent hearts, they decided together that they would break causality itself if it gave them freedom to travel time and break the world further to their needs. Any timeline they abandoned was as good as dead to them anyways. They cared nothing for those harmed in the way… The Space Wizard Concern stood forth as each, laughing, snuffed out their candle one by one.

“Our first order of fun is tracking down Blumpkin! He’s escaped into the castle grounds to try to wrest away our access to the time-stream. We believe he stole the Azure Key that fits the Doorway of Perception attached to our Space Hallway. The jealous bastard wants to lock us out of Jupiter and leave us stranded here on Saturn! He must think he’s a real big shit!” Ian Paice cursed angrily, throwing a chalice into the stone walls behind him.

“The Birds of Stymphalia will keep us safe. Not a single man of Saturn, nor the foolish bumpkins of Wyoming will realize our plans until it’s too late! When I developed these Space Hallways through dimensions betwixt, Wyoming was nothing of interest at all to lose! All it took was ridding ourselves of a part of Future America that no one cared for! Wyoming has gone the way of Iowa in being ripped forever from the maps!” Roger Glover commended (mostly to himself) as he gripped the top of a bottle of wine, ripping free the glass neck and guzzling down the blood-red merlot as he cackled with glee.

Almost every mad or ridiculous thing to happen in the worlds of this subtle and otherwise placid dimension of people had been part of one of their mad schemes and inspired constant upheavals from a planet that they were fueling with nothing more than their own greed made manifest, their own ambition lurching upon a universe that suspected almost nothing… except for Eli Egg and Ezra, who had heard every word of their secretive rituals. Was this magic or just their own pact in madness to reinforce themselves? Eli Egg, looking up, suddenly grabbed hold of Ezra by both wrists and did a dangerous dance of fleet foot across the lattice of metal that vaulted the ceiling of the Castle Stymphalia. In all but a shocking second, she was confused as to what they were up to, only to realize in the ongoing seconds more the tragedy that was to come. Watching as one of the Birds, wings pinned to its chest with webbing, fell out of the Saturnine sky, it soon crashed to the ground outside the walls and the Space Wizard Concern turned in unison, hearing the thump of what would otherwise sound like a plane crash in scale. This would have stirred them to quick action, but it was what was coming next that threw them all for a loop: Ezra had been spun across the metal lattice to spirit her across and off the roof to a large, structural catwalk on the edge of it they had walked off of to investigate the roof lattice. Her back thumped into the secure railings and cast most of the air out of both of her entirely human lungs. She was gasping for air for almost a minute as she witnessed one of the other Stymphalian Birds crash through the lattice entirely in a tailspin with Kamen Spider standing astride its head (as it had turned out, it’s hard for birds to stab themselves easily in the head, leading to many of the Birds destroying each other) and falling to the meeting grounds below. The last of the Stymphalian Birds choked out a horrible sonic cry in destruction as DJ Kiryū’s Maser collided through its chest like an albatross piercing its breast. The two mechanical bird-beasts almost immediately tore through the lattice as Eli Egg was running their hardest to get to the same catwalk where Ezra was slowly recovering her ability to breathe properly. Ezra managed to slip her glasses back on to her face just in time to see Eli Egg leaping from the broken lattice and holding on tight to one extended girder, clinging to it like a sloth clings to the branch that supports its very life. She tried to ease herself closer to reach a hand out, to help them back to safety, only for the small velcro-strapped gloves Eli Egg had on to slip in her grip.

“Eli! You could’ve just leapt with me instead of throwing me like that! Y-you owe me for that!” she insisted, but more because she didn’t want to admit whatever blossoming feelings she may or may not have for Eli as well as wanting some comeuppance squeezed out of them (in the future) for nearly giving her a severe back problem.

“I hope there’s a door down there… I’m not sure… even I could survive a fall like that… Who knows… maybe it’ll be… a long enough fall… I’ll get to sleep and wake up… somewhere else again…” they said, straining to keep hold, but their gloves tearing under the strain of holding most of their body weight on them. “Ezra… I think the Breathable Kingdom will have all the Vitamin K you’ll need… We just need to believe! I’m not sure entirely what’s going on with these Space Wizards, but it can’t be good! You need to get to the parapets and see if our getaway vehicle is on its way! Those guys seemed like they might not be too reliable… but I could see in his eyes… Griffin McElroy has a purpose now… and he’s on his way to pick us up!”

~~~~~

After some driving in a Jeep, Griffin and Travis McElroy arrived out at Medicine Mountain, and both of them determined that “Medicine Wheel” was probably a better name, since they both thought it was pretty flat and level to be a “mountain.” It was just as Griffin had seen sparsely and ephemerally on another plane of existence coalesced within a dream, he nodded as a large alabaster head was now cresting the horizon.

“That’s the big one! I think we can use it to stop this without killing anyone!” Griffin said, overjoyed that he could pilot a big robot.

“Sounds easier said than done! If this Gremlin Corps is any realistic issue like we think they are, they can probably just read our minds from a large distance away! How do we keep up with an enemy who knows what we’re thinking 20 minutes before we get there? How do we know that thing isn’t already lousy with goblins?” Travis argued, unsure as they approached the slightly shorter, four-story Medical Jet Jaguar.

“From what I understood, someone left this thing here as a means of first aid, but they found it wasn’t very necessary due to Wyoming not having anything larger than a bison around with the Saturnines being taller than most people, but not really any particular threat. The robots seemed to provide for them medically in every way… The Medical Jet Jaguar was mostly too large to do more help than with the rare rescue mission needed if someone was stuck in the mountains,” Griffin explained helpfully.

“As long as it doesn’t smell like a doctor’s office on the inside…” Travis bemoaned.

“I’m sure it won’t be anywhere as clean as either one of us would like to hope it will be…” Griffin said, almost helpfully.

As they crossed the next ridge, the fully-white robot with the large red plus on its chest was in full view. It wouldn’t take more than a little time to get something helpful like this online and they rolled lazily down the hill leading to its feet laterally, making loud giggles of mild mirth before they landed at the larger robot’s legs. Travis rolled a little too hard towards and whipped into one of the large stompers of the medium-sized giant robot and got up, holding his side.

“I hope it has something for bruises in there…” he groaned, impleasant with the proceedings as Griffin rolled his eyes and felt around the back of the robot’s right calf to find an access hatch. He started to carefully lift a roll-up door by two handles and ushered Travis over. They looked around and saw nothing of the deceptive Uranians as they quickly hurried within and shut the door.

Walking up a few spiral staircases within the Medical Jet Jaguar, the two McElboys soon entered the interior console and sat down in the large, somewhat faded plush chairs in the center of the room and started to go over pre-flight procedures, finding it worked fine and was still charged, likely from disuse. Luckily, dust-cleansers began pumping as the centralized air conditioning kicked in and the Medical Jet Jaguar started to stand from its sitting position, lights flaring on and arms flaring out into an accepting hug sort of pose. It was not highly impressive, nor was it very welcoming do its size. Rising high above the powdery dunes of Saturn, Medical Jet Jaguar was now active and the two brothers were working like a well-oiled machine to operate it, shifting in unison to send it flying off into the distance to intercept the others as the parties were converging in their solidified invasion of Castle Stymphalia. Cutting through the dusty clouds of Saturn, Griffin switched out his glasses for some transition lens sunglasses as Travis put his contacts lenses on and they both grabbed some water to stay hydrated for the flight across the golden Wyoming “sky.” Once they defeated a parched feeling in the throat each, the Boys came back to the console room and found that there were three buttons flashing: “ALCOHOL, MAINTAIN” & “RETRIEVAL”, which had a piece of black electrical tape almost blocking its flash. Griffin peeled off the tape and looked down at the Retrieval button and pressed it, thinking it was a display and not a button. The Medical Jet Jaguar sharply turned and landed, analyzing where it was before it started to run a quick mapping program. Travis gave his brother a grousing look at having touched something that seemed to alter the path of the robot, only for a sharp, barking voice to come out of a speaker near his ear.

“MAPPING COMPLETE, Begin Retrieval?” it spake.

“Oh, it’s a talking model…” Griffin noted as he reached up to press the PA-like button below the speaker once the ringing in his ear stopped. “No, backload Retrieval! We have a Rescue Op first! Emergency Evacuation!” he instructed.

“EMERGENCY! RESCUE OP INPUT,” it spake further and a screen came on, showing a map that Travis managed to carefully pinch-zoom to define it needed to go to the top of Devil’s Tower.

Unfortunately, it was missing a few salient details in its mapping protocol due to disuse… meaning it wasn’t very aware of the Castle in its path, crashing through the wall surrounding Castle Stymphalia, a mighty medical hand of aid colliding through the wall and crushing Ian Paice’s left hand. His screams echoed through the near chimney of acoustic torment that riddled his lungs as the Wizards tore his arm free from the medical metal menacing them and carried him off into their own Byzantine hallways. A second hand collided through the wall and lifted itself up and up until it was four feet under Eli Egg… just as they lost their grip on the spare girder they had held and fell only a short matter into the destructive palliative palm of Medical Jet Jaguar. A small ladder on its arm let a slowly-roused Eli Egg start climbing down to an access hatch near the tricep-adjacent area of the massive robot’s arm. Eddie Vedder broke off from the crowd to try to access the Door of Perception and flung open a door he had installed in the floor to reach it, flinging it open with an infuriated abandon. Within the warp room, a radiating rectangle of egress stood, a black door locked to him like a sharp-cornered eclipse. To one distant corner of the dark room, Blumpkin Tornadus stirred from his constraint and stood up, adjusting his tie.

“You’ve come back to try to get past me and run off to Jupiter, eh?” he queried quickly. “You can have the Azure Key if you so need it. Know that using it now will lead only to disaster. The Space Hallway will not open to your hand, even with the Key. You can take it. You will see. You will know…” He said, not moving from the white circle drawn around him. To do so would kill him, or at least until the one who drew it died first…

“Foolish old coot! You will have nothing to stop me! Glover locked you in here, where you belong, old man. You have done too much now to get in our ways and will balk us no further! Give the key to me!” Vedder demanded, shoving out his hand insistently.

“It is yours. Freely given…” Blumpkin offered, dropping the small Azure Key from his hands into Vedder’s. He slowly curled back up into a kneeling ball in the relatively small circle as Vedder drove the bluish key into the Doorway, rending space/time to return him to the oppressive machinery of Jupiter.

He was wrong, as he had been warned of already. The Space Hallway had been altered and instead opened to a vacuum of space that ripped Vedder into the Doorway’s jambs, threatening to drag him into the void and cast him into the freezing maw of nowhere, a counter-orbit to Jupiter where no moons would orbit to spare them. The Azure Key was given freely, only for Blumpkin to draw a thin stiletto from his curled purple boots and flung it into Vedder’s lumbar region of his spine. With a sharp hiss and a shoving of arms to a difficult area of the back, Vedder fell into the yawning abyss and the Doorway of Perception closed behind him. Luckily for Blumpkin, only a few splashes of blood had fallen on the floor. And it was already pretty dark in there. They didn’t invest in putting up lights in a room they only needed to stand in for seconds. He slowly sat down in the circle to begin a short magical process. In four hours, the Azure Key would be found in the vastness of space by magical means and drop back into Blumpkin Tornadus’ waiting hands. The Doorway of Perception would be bolted shut from either side until then…

~~~~~

Beaglesaurus and the two Robosaurus Siblings had departed into the Breathable Kingdom to confer with the presumably “Crown” Princess of Saturn, having been rather clear on not having met “her” or knowing what “she” looked like. Luckily for them, there was indeed a rather large castle that seemed teeming with Saturnine peoples all over. From what rudimentary knowledge there was about the living native inhabitants of Saturn, this was little help to them had they, since it now looked remarkably different. Most of the Saturnine were dressed in gaiety or armor. It was clear to recognize at a mere look without the speechless people needing to express themselves too much; it was a castle town, full of simple people doing simple jobs, almost as if by clockwork. It was less like they were working together as a whole, as a community… this seemed stranger and more in-depth. They were acting as if they had always lived there and acting being the key term, since they all seemed to be living through this sort of lifestyle not as a matter of fact, but a matter of simplicity. What the three didn’t realize was the almost surprising lack of depth in their new façade of a society in that they treated it like play-acting. They weren’t a castle town, they were playing a castle town. The rules were somehow known to them all, but were loose and disparate. It was like visiting a modern city with a medieval castle, but where people still do dress as if no time had passed for tourists. The line between what would be an authentic life working at the castle and an imaginary experience performed by the Saturnine as some strange new form of entertainment had become intangible enough to not be easily seen. Although the caretaking robots of Saturn had formerly been nearly swarming around the castle’s parapets before, now they were distant. Either they stood as quiet sentinels, presumable in their place as watchers to the still-lacking threat to the Breathable Kingdom, soldiers who never fought, guards that had no one to guard from, standing about holding pikes or what seemed like rudimentary martial training in the courtyards askance. Many more of them were lying on the ground, having been speared through or with axes cleft through their midsections. It was clear that many of the caretakers were not as willing to handle this change, though they each felt disturbed slightly how the robots seemed to be both left around on the ground without anyone throwing them away anywhere… but also that, naturally, not a single Saturnine had joined them. The rebellion against the Kingdom had been short, finite and worthless. The needs of the planet had changed once more and the Great Entertainment was merely a large, empty theater, showing nothing of sensible understanding anymore to anyone. The tide of Saturnine attention had shifted entirely once more. The psychic union of the Saturnine was already something that guided almost every one of their kind to doing mostly the same things with little difference in personality (especially due to a lack of apparent socialization that they did not offer humans in any manner.) Amid the quiet urban life of the castle “capital” that Saturn now had, the robot guards knelt together in agreement at who their new master was.

Atop a nearly telescoping dais, a reclining bed of a throne displayed a wavy-haired man who was well-shaved and wearing a new set of silken pajamas that was indigo as the night sky and shimmered with motes of light, a cosmic pattern that shifted and shone along him, providing him every warmth he needed in his constant sleep. Only the most delicate of robots assisted his movement and pointed his arm upwards. Princess Jerma was, as always, still asleep, but with eyes glancing near to open, the robots were able to move him around as if he were a puppet, though he was truly the one controlling them. Once more, they became the lifestyle prosthetics that they were made to be, serving the same one that had enamored or ensorceled the Saturnine into joining this placid life of assumptive service “towards him,” (though little of what they did affected him at all, no longer needing food to subsist and a team of robots that moved him whenever he felt such whim to shift in his slumber.) He was simply just what was most interesting to them and, for them, that was all that was ever needed in that moment.

“You have arrived in time. I have met with one of my fellow Earthlings and tasked them with one of the great missions that will save Saturn! Foolish little toys like these hoped to eject me from their planet by force and met with an end they deserved for resorting to violence to stop a dream. Nothing can kill a dream and I am become Princess of Dreams. A Dream has infected the real world where it has been twisted to do nothing but harm, harry, and destroy everything in its path. I have done everything I can to stop those responsible, but a dream can only affect so much in this plane. This whole castle, this whole area of breath on the dusty terrain of Saturn is created from it. A land borne from a dream of simplicity. The Saturnine now think along with me. They are like children who have seen an adult for the first time and recognize how little they have achieved. They seem inspired by me. But that must hold off for another time, as there is much afoot. The Chemist and the Stranger have made their way into the Castle Stymphalia and the Heroes are toppling their defenses. Go forth and storm the gates yourself. Look to the alabaster giant of health and you will know salvation. Be wary of the Uranians, for they are crafty and wish only to cause trouble and if offered a blue key, do not take it. What little I can do is to help in staving off the Wizards. The battles for Saturn have begun and they will grow into a battle for the very Sol System itself. Their madness shields them from the guilt of what they’ve done. Go, Beaglesaurus, Archduke of the Skate Park, and denounce them for having harmed so many to help only themselves. Robosaurus 1.0, you are the inheritor of the will of your father, and you are the one who can continue to help the world with the powers of science and magic together. Robosaurus 2.4, you are someone who has every right to live a life of wonderful achievement. Show the world just how much you can do yourself. The Wizards will be weak, for I have exiled them from the veil of sleep gifted to all living things… I can only hope they will be stalled into miscrupency with their inability to function. But even then… they can do much in even the little time they plan to destroy and manipulate with. Go forth and do the impossible: save every world, just as you have saved the Earth, saved the Moon, saved Hell and saved so many.”

With his words of inspiration finished, Princess Jerma collapsed back into the waiting arms of his caretakers and returned to the realm of dreams from whence he was roused.

“I mean, we already were going to do a lot of that… is it okay leaving a sleeping god in charge of this?” Beagle wondered as the Robosaurus Siblings shrugged their mechanical shoulders and began plotting a course to the Castle. “I guess we might as well. I guess the Space Wizard Concern were always from the future… it was only a matter of time before they showed up… I thought them all being dead would have stopped them, time-travel does some pretty messed-up things these days…” he noted as the two Robosaurus Siblings helped him on to a large brass shield from off the wall and carried it, lifting him up to spirit him to Devil’s Tower to join the others.

Chapter Text

Chapter 17 — The Undulating Syzygy of a New Solar System Begins

or

A Real Slobberknocker to Decide the Fate of Saturn, Nay, the Universe!

Well and true, Eli Egg had skirted with death and bloused with destiny once more, waking up in the medbay of the Medical Jet Jaguar (which admittedly, was more or less just a table they weren’t using.) Getting up, they ate an egg from their pocket and Travis looked them over.

“They certainly seem to be alive! That’s a plus!” Travis offered, since his medical knowledge was lacking to say the least. “ARE-YOU-ALRIGHT?” he asked slowly as if Eli were hard of hearing.

“Yeah, I’m doing great,” Eli Egg managed out softly, standing and doing a few stretches, “How long was I out for?”

“Like four minutes, you fell over and we brought you over here. We cannot stay here long, I’m pretty sure whoever built a huge Eureka’s Castle on Saturn to fuck with people are pretty certainly going to fire some kind of cannon at us if we don’t leave pretty quick… especially since we just punched two pretty huge holes in their walls…” Griffin admitted.

Above them, Kamen Spider had managed to destroy two of the great Stymphalian Birds by crashing them into each other and was hanging perilously from the neck of the penultimate one, having jumped from the last one and riding a shot of web to the next. DJ Kiryū was able to dig his fingers deep into the neck of the final Bird, reaching in to rip out mechanical sinews and hydraulic esophagus, the very core of the sonic-blasting cannons mounted in their piercing mouths. Covered in oil and scraps of shredded silvery space-steel, he stood up out of the felled beast and gave his new mentor a thumbs-up. Kamen Spider aimed one back, only for the last of the Birds (upon which he was still attached) to suddenly explode from its legs upwards. Someone had managed to rig it with explosives before it had taken off and it had nowhere near the amount of digital dexterity to remove the destructive putty from its tail feathers. Kamen Spider fired another web-strand from his Spider-Bangle and had to endure smacking hard into the internal stone wall of the Castle’s ramparts, though he began climbing up the rope of web a few minutes later. DJ Kiryū started to wipe the blood of a machine off his body and whirled around in an amazing manner that flung it off just before his mentor dragged himself into the former petroleum splash zone. DJ Kiryū extended a robotic hand to him and pulled him up, accidentally leaving only the hand on Kamen Spider’s jacket still covered in black gold. It left a soaked handprint of DJ Kiryū’s artificially-reptilian hand on Kamen Spider’s lapel.

“Hey, don’t get too wrapped up in the adventure, Mr. Spider.”

“The name’s Hokeshi. You can just call me that.”
“Kikairyū.”
“I guess tonight… we ride together. My sensors are locking in on the energy source, it’s farther down, we can make our way in… it’s making our way out again that’ll be the hard part!” he exclaimed, concentrating slowly before he jabbed a stone loose from the side of the interior edifice. “That’s one stone down… I’ll need to remove fourteen more to fit my well-toned cyborg frame through this. How about you? Does that metal bend or transform or something?”
“Haven’t tried it yet,” he concentrated for a few moments and quickly realized that other than opening the hatch on his chest that released one of the weaponry cannons on his chest, he didn’t have much in the way of robotic transforming abilities and so he decided to punch a few holes in the wall himself.

The two heroes began dashing their way through the eerily empty halls of Castle Stymphalia, heading down and down to find the source of energy powering the Space Hallway to Jupiter, sprinting at top speed with two fists of justice colliding through the stone, kicking down doors and throwing down tables to get where they were needed. The Space Wizard Concern, now more than aware of the intervention of at least a few intruders in the Castle Stymphalia by then, had started splitting up to secure strategic points within their Castilian stronghold. About half of their roof had been destroyed in the fall of the Stymphalian Birds, leaving a large hole in the hangar that the two heroes dropped into. Across from the large hangar sat a piercing metal bird of a different sort, this one clearly made for transport more than protection. The colossal Chrome Roc stood with shoulders hunched, head forward, inactive until needed for its singular function: helping these devilish Wizards escape from Saturn if they wanted to not immediately return to Jupiter (which they couldn’t.) It wouldn’t activate until one of the Space Wizards activated it with the appropriate secret spell and so stood staring up into the Saturnine sky still, ready to take off at a moment’s notice. Kiryū gave it an askance look as he walked past it to the large hangar door leading down to the fourth level of their golden palace, sealed in the darkness of their empty domicile.

The silence of the Wizards’ headquarters was crashed apart with a din of four buckets flinging out metal scraps, assorted tools and tons of rusted nails, screws, bolts and thin little metal shavings. With a klaxon swarming out, the lights began to flash red and white as an alarm had been switched on. The magician of metals, Geddy Lee, lifted from a self-propelled elevator that settled on the ground before them. The doors opened and Lee glared down at the two heroes.

“Stand in my way, will you? You fools are sticking your noses where they don’t belong! You’re nothing before us and our plans are already sent into event. There’s no shutting it down now! You may as well give up and stand down. You two are cyborgs and I control the very metals in your bodies and can warp them into a shape that you won’t live from soon after. I can be as precise or as wild as I need to. It doesn’t matter what metal you are, I can still shred it out of you like an apple-corer! What hope could you have before me?” Lee decried, smiling below his dark glasses, his hair flowing down both of his shoulders as he pointed ahead at Kiryū and Kamen Spider.

“You don’t know why we’re here then, huh?” Kamen Spider noted, smirking up at the Wizard as he started to carefully wind his shoulders in a slow rotating motion. “Kikairyū! I want you to stop him. He’ll be your final test. You get into the Web if you beat him. Me? I’m going to dash ahead and see if I can make it to the Power Room. I know you can do this. Defeat this Wizard…” Kamen Spider moved closer and whispered in his robotic ear, “just by being yourself…”

Geddy Lee spun around, noting that the back of the elevator was still there when Kamen Spider sped past it, getting himself clear from Lee’s vision, hoping that would help offset his metal-manipulating methods. Kiryū drew out both of his maser-firing hands to try to hold off or otherwise defeat the Electromagnetic Wizard Lee. Lee angrily turned his back to the back of the elevator he’d arrived in and flung both his arms forward, almost in imitation of Kiryū, only to drag himself towards Kiryū in all the instance of a magnetic grip. A series of sharp implements started to rake into Kiryū’s back, though his Space-Titanium armor was more than enough to keep his internal circuitry from getting shredded by small bladed tools. Geddy Lee’s long, devious fingers trailed out along Kiryū’s arm, pulling shreds of his arm off in a way that was both painful and slow, deliberate in its meaning.

“Since you let him get away… I think you’ve earned double…! I’ll tear every piece of this shell off of you. Titano-Beasts are a failed experiment populated by fools and tyrants! You are just another piece of junk like that foolish former model of a brother of yours! In the ‘90s, the world was beaming, demanding more and more tapes, laserdiscs, cassettes and eight-tracks! Even with the advent of the laser and the Internet, my media was everywhere! It grew too powerful, I was forced to cut it down to keep myself afloat! No processor on Earth was capable of calculating the ability to destroy networks, so I infected the robotic brain of DJ Mechagodzilla! The Internet was growing powerful enough to start achieving union with other dimensions, other planets, other worlds! It was all so necessary to keep the world humble! To keep the world safe! The economy will recover surely with the advents of humanity’s striving. A challenge to mankind that they have surpassed once more! Your foolish brother was merely a puppet of my ambitions. Sending the wrong packet of files to his mainframe, DJ Mechagodzilla grew a twisted need to overcharge his system with electric bliss generated from reducing bandwidth itself and the functional networks into a slurry of dizzying smoke! Every server crashing! Every monitor going black! While I sat at home plate in Rogers Centre, I laughed that the world would pay their way to entertain themselves through me! My dark magic and my technical mastery brought the world to their knees earning their way into modernity. And everyone on Earth knew just who did it… your brother!” Lee announced, cruelly pointing a demonic finger out to DJ Kiryū while his magnetic powers peeled back layer after layer of armor, exposing what Kiryū thought impossible beneath it all… bone.

“I thought I was a robot… a machine made by the Robot-Mongers of Titan! I won’t let you besmirch the name of my late brother, mad wizard! You can tear my armor off… and I’ll find something stronger underneath,” DJ Kiryū announced, tugging his arm inward and then lashing back out, throwing back the Wizard Lee off of him as Lee’s face cringed as a sickening blue-white flash made clear what he was dealing with.

“You’re not… they must have used real pieces… You’re a cyborg! Mechagodzilla was made with Space-Titanium on an Absolute Zero core… I thought you were just the same, but they made you different! This is not some mere toy of the celestial… G-cells! They created artificial G cells and used them to build a bio-matrix within you! A robot I could peel apart… but this was more than armor… it’s… shielding…” Lee wrinkled up his face as the blinding flash began to flicker out of the exposed internal flesh of DJ Kiryū. “The radiation from a skeleton made of pure G-cells… you’re like a walking reactor! You’re a danger to everything! You’re poison in a tin can!” he mocked, feeling a slow destruction washing through his irradiated flesh. Cutting into DJ Kiryū like this was akin to mishandling a Demon Core. He could feel his kidneys surging with corruption that he wouldn’t long survive. “I thought that I’d feel like… I was drifting away… but… I feel awake. Too awake.” Lee stumbled softly and drifted back into the hallway.

DJ Kiryū, almost boiling with rage, stepped forward and opened the jaws of his metal helmet and concentrated, blasting a radioactive beam from his throat that helped Lee on his way into the depths of Hell for his numerous crimes. He sat down and started trying to fuse on some metal over his exposed arm… he wouldn’t want to irradiate his allies if he could help it. He could warn the others when he found them again. Slowly, he made his way back up to his feet and looked down at his brother’s killer, unmoving. Kiryū took a deep breath and felt a feeling of relief in his bones, closed his eyes and opened them again. It felt like there was a weight off of his robotic shoulders as he looked back up to the far door and started to walk towards it. He had never imagined that he had a real dragon inside, the bones of a creature of unspeakable power. He was learning new and new things every hour, it was almost dizzying. But his cyborg head was on a hydraulic swivel as he started running off to find the original Kamen Spider. The night would last for years on Saturn. And breathing in, he glared up to the stars, and figured he should find the power room, where Kamen Spider was going to shatter their power source for the Space Hallway. But as he was dashing through the checkerboard tiles of the Castle Stymphalia, it became clearer that there was a loud noise reverberating. Yet another huge hole had crashed through the exterior walls and three cosmic-charged battering rams collided through the main foyer doors of Castle Stymphalia itself. The Neo-Robot Hearts had been continually charging higher and higher and Beaglesaurus, Robosaurus 1.0 and Robosaurus 2.4 were busting locks and kicking down doors to get to the Space Wizard Concern yet again trifling with them, but also for trying to threaten the very fabric of the solar system with their cruel and unspeakable crimes against time itself and now, against the three Neo-Robot Hearts, pumping pure friendship (and also blood) through their veins.

“The Space Wizards died years ago, who are you? Ghosts? Bad dreams? Cheap imitations? Or are you just too damn foolish to stop this mad campaign? What is all of this for? Do you have any idea what you’ve done to this planet? To Jupiter? To Earth?! To Mars! This is all from you! The planetoid Neo-Hades… The Moons of Neptune… Red Nightmare! All of this was the work of you greedy bastards trying to drag every planet down with your malefic pride?” Beaglesaurus accused, dashing forward towards the remaining Wizards still around together in trying to carry Ian Paice to somewhere he wouldn’t be crushed by a collapsing castle.

Stepping towards him, grey boots striding and ice-blue gloves barely pulling apart as Graham Bonnet grinned and held out both arms as brilliant javelins of thunderbolts listed out from both hands and pointed quite forwards, aiming up as the Space Wizard drew a long saber and slashed out, driving the beaming metallo-lightning at the two pillars near the three heroes. Beaglesaurus managed to brace himself with two Robosaurus Siblings behind him. When the bolts of searing hot metal crashed down, Beaglesaurus whipped his tail against the ground and lunged out, dragging the Robosaurus Siblings with him over both javelins as they threw him at another Wizard.

“Glover! Unleash one of your Titano-Beasts! They will balk us no further!” Bonnet ordered as his saber began to charge up more blasts of metallo-lightning javelins for him to deploy.

DJ Kiryū had managed to edge his way closer and closer to the battlefield where things were conspiralling into chaos when large vents in the metallic structure of the castle’s pits began to shift and unlock, rotating upwards. Ritchie Blackmore dashed on to another pillar as it began to rise and threw a large tarpaulin off of a large, imposing and haunted pipe organ and began to play a song that was both catchy, easy to dance to and also cursed. Utilizing the organ, Blackmore would be able to summon exactly who he needed by shattering out the forbidden notes that no mortal ear can withstand.

“Show them the might of your electric psychosis! Prove to them the greatness of your skill, Ian Gillan!” Blackmore implored as he rose out of view slowly, banging out the tunes that spelled nothing but doom.

DJ Kiryū was able to approach one of the opening shafts in the floor as deploying out of each launched a large mechanical robo-beast created by none other than a skilled hand he recognized well, these were Titano-Beasts not due to their titanic size… but being Titanian in origin… the same weapons-makers who created DJ Kiryū and DJ Mechagodzilla had been selling creatures of immense power to these enemies of life and peace. Crawling out like nine collecting strands in a swirling counter-clockwise motion, the Wolfram Hydra occurred its way outward, each of its bared, poison-tipped jaws launching forth to seize into anything flesh-like to rend it to pieces. Soon following behind it, the Erymanthian Boar which stood as large as a monster truck and had a hide made of a lattice of interwoven blades, providing a natural defense and a brutalizing offense. One of the Beasts had left with Bonnet, trying to cut off one of the intruders upon their unholy edifice, one of them joined with Prof. Mustaine and Strongbeard to secure the hangar and the final one began to wind itself from a long, sinewed metallic serpent into a large, winding spear of shattering, live, and highly poisonous Space Titanium. This spear of might seized itself a few times around the arm of Roger Glover, who began to step back into the shadows.

“I shall secure the Hallway. If that old man gets in my way, I’ll strike him down! There will be no more tolerating his shenanigans!” Glover hissed out, “Chrome Roc! Deploy to Hangar and remain prepped for takeoff under magical lockrune,” Glover continued as he jotted down a little magical rune with a gleaming jade pencil that penetrated into the ether of the air about him. From the final Titano-Beast lair, a large starship bay and bridge had been built within the largest of the Titano-Beasts, their own escape vehicle, the Chrome Roc. As soon as the Beasts were sent among them, he fell back through a trapdoor to annihilate one of his eldest rivals…

DJ Kiryū darted out to try to stop the Boar himself, concentrating hard to see if that was a way to conduct more of this mysterious new radiation-based energy through himself. Ian Gillan stood forward, using his diamond-like hands to crack against his newfound foes, betraying their secretive sharpness, able to cleave through most materials after a matter of mere strikes. They could chop through just about anything short of space/time itself. Ian Gillan’s Collider Hands lashed out to match every strike unleashed by Beaglesaurus, though he was quickly finding himself being pushed back by the intensity of the Archduke of the Skate Park’s cosmically-charged blows.

Chapter Text

Chapter 18 — Upon the Ramparts of the Forsaken Castle, Brothers’ Anguish! Strive!!

or

Medical Meltdown! The Last Stand of Gremlin Squad!?

Griffin and Travis were in all of a tizzy as the Medical Jet Jaguar was proving to be ineffective in easy battle and now wasn’t working any further! The thrusters had stopped as the internal screens registered a “lockdown,” which they had assumed meant it was low on power or entering a sleep mode. Thus, standing abreast one of the now numerous large holes of the roof of Castle Stymphalia, the Medical Jet Jaguar was essentially stuck in place, not taking off from the less than stable noises they’d been hearing already from farther below. Griffin tried flipping through one of numerous holo-screen manuals to figure out how to undo a “lockdown” mode while Travis took a break to restore his potassium with a buttered sweet potato wrapped in the well-known goldish aluminum foil. Eli had almost immediately leapt back out of one of the humeral access doors on the Medical Jet Jaguar, insistent that they still had to find Ezra before they could even think of leaving. The brothers McElroy understood this as an honorable move that they thought made the reliable Eli Egg sound pretty damn cool. However, when the door opened, it proved to not go outside, but to a different room entirely! Walking out into the furnished library of the Castle Stymphalia, the door shut behind them and Eli Egg found on a security panel of screens, Ezra was not easy to notice or was very good at avoiding security cameras. Pounding a fist into the panel, Eli Egg picked up a book and whipped it into the wall, leaving a big, undignified hole in one of the backs of a bookcase. Almost all of the bookcases had fallen over and there were small mountains of books lining the floor everywhere and they started to make their way over the vast library out to find the cutest girl they had seen on Saturn.

Griffin stilled himself as he managed to undo the magnetic lockdown, which had apparently meant that someone was using a magnetic beam to make it seem like the locking feet on the Medical Jet Jaguar were locking down as if it were set into a charging station. Overriding this, the Medical Jet Jaguar had managed to struggle almost to its feet, only for another magnetic beam to strike the craft, making it list over on to its side and opening the main access panel on Medical Jet Jaguar’s chest. Griffin was carefully unbuckling himself from the main controls as Travis had decided to head upstairs to try activating a last ditch effort. Griffin found the source of the magnetic beam was from the all too familiar enemy they’d inadvertently brought to Saturn, the Gremlin Squad, a mercenary team of Uranian Mind-Goblins that had been following and them and, at this point clearly, still were.

“LOOK! I don’t know what your problems are, but we didn’t do anything to you at all! We’re already in enemy territory both of us, me and you! You guys need to learn you can’t just do this to everyone you run into!” Griffin shouted, his hands up to show he was trying to emerge peacefully. “You little fuckers have been doing nothing but blowing things up and causing trouble time and again! Your fucked-up little mind powers mean you can already tell what I’m talking about and you can tell the amount of resolve I have in my heart to try to just stay alive… to help people out in the middle of this crazy battle… and to keep my older brother safe! He’s not as cool as me! He needs all the help he can get!” Griffin announced, trying his best to sound authoritative and confident and project as much mentally while imagining a song he had stuck in his mind.

The Gremlin Squad watched him with stolen laser pistols purloined from the armory of the Castle Stymphalia. They had already infiltrated, unseen and not thought of at all, coring out one of the larger Titano-Beasts to hide out until they could find time to escape. The hangar had already begun opening, irising into a larger area with no particular need for the roof, which had shoved itself off to one side, like a can with the lid removed, but where someone had twisted the lid off with their bare hands. The Goblins and the Medical Jet Jaguar were both displaced easily as the Chrome Roc began to spread its mighty chrome wings and prepare for take-off, adjusting parameters and reticulating its splines to make sure that everything would be in readiness for the Space Wizards to high-tail it in a giant android bird created to be their personal high-tailer when they wanted to jet personally about the galaxy. Griffin shut his eyes in determination, but in his mind, he could see a vision not unlike a child’s, an old memory, but a warm memory. A goblin standing in front of another, guarding him with his body from the blows of a rampaging Uranian Wool-Beast. They understood this solidarity to protect his brother and… either from the strength of his emotion or seeing a little of themselves in him, the Goblins set down their knives and pistols and stood for a moment, pointing at the Medical Jet Jaguar. Griffin could see the Goblins inside (in his head at least) with them using some farcical combination of limbs and holds to work the complex controls of the ship, which they had apparently not managed to glean (or outright snatch) out of Griffin’s mind. Griffin presumed that having to do this in pairs likely meant that Travis would be necessary altogether for them to try to escape. They could tell this as well, naturally being in his head. A single tear drifted down Griffin’s cheek as he heard a soft, sharp hiss from nearby, worrying it was one of them firing their alien weaponry at him… but instead Griffin saw that the Medical Jet Jaguar seemed to be slowly opening a part of its face, which he presumed was the third-eye access port used for emergency scrambling and direct piloting. Above the drift-compatible double-controls, aboard most of the servers needed to keep the brain of Medical Jet Jaguar online, Travis had been standing for the twelve minutes since they’d crashed, having managed to right himself. Using a screwdriver, he managed to crack open a shielded button on the interior control panel and flicked a few more switches to activate the option he knew he needed. Looking up at the button, he pressed a piece of duct tape over his dominant hand, keeping his hand over the button no matter how he moved. The slightest half-press motion would set it off. Travis used his free hand to smooth out the tape (he had to use his face a little to push it in place) and closed his eyes.

The button had a small label that read “Atomizer” and he was pretty sure he knew what it would do… some form of radioactive material used for scans and other medical such-and-so would no doubt explode and destroy most of the Castle, but stopping the Gremlin Squad or the Space Wizard Concern from escaping. He was willing to make this sacrifice and knew that it would take a lot. He could faintly hear outside that Griffin was saying something vehemently to the Goblins, but the Goblins were mostly trying to read his mind. Travis saw a vision of a goblin standing before another, taking blows to protect one another and thought on how these Goblins were not just brothers… but that the Uranian Mind-Goblins were a closer people than humans were: they were all in this together, even when the together was dismantling, appropriating, confiscating or otherwise just stealing more advanced technology for their own mysterious and mischievous whims or, worse, decided and purposeful meddling. Opening his eyes, he saw himself standing in a field with his wife, his brothers, his father and his children. Everyone he could count among the most loved people he knew were there, smiling at him, smiling with a pride that felt so rich that it couldn’t be insincere. They were all happy to see him and he was happy to know they were all thinking of. He thought that if he could do anything to stop them from taking the Medical Jet Jaguar, even if it meant undue destruction to himself, his brother or the rest of the Castle (or the mountain plateau it was on, for that matter.) In a blink of his eyes, the Goblins looked up at him and they looked more and more human. Like a gathering of impoverished street urchins looking at him, round, clear eyes staring up at him, gripping little hats and wearing dingy overalls. They looked like he may have looked if he were born 50 years earlier and ran around playing hoop-and-stick near the malt shop. He couldn’t tell if they were getting maudlin with their manipulation or if this was the closest idea they could equate to sympathy and understanding. As the Goblins reached towards him with their pleading hands and wordless teeth bared though, he shook his head softly, tears stringing down like a whirling dog come out of the rain. Travis pushed his hand on the Atomizer button and waited a soft moment before opening both of his entirely human eyes to see that it was no longer lit. He let it go and there was a sudden sharp and loud noise, a hiss like an air condenser spraying loose as the room suddenly filled with slightly more Saturnine air from outside. It was a little loud enough to make Travis want to cover one of his ears, but it stopped soon after and he could hear nothing further outside the walls. Griffin was quiet. He was quiet. But nothing else happened. He was confused for a moment and presumed that it had failed, but he soon realized that the visions weren’t striking him. He had a sharp burst of what felt like a mental clarity, a cleverness and awake attitude that felt a bit like waking up from a significant rest. The Goblins weren’t trying to mess with him. Removing his helmet, he walked outside to see if he could find Griffin and saw that Griffin was sitting down with an oxygen mask over his head, hyperventilating on a table. Travis ran to him and hugged his brother tightly for a few minutes time. They were together again and no Uranian Mind-Goblins could tear them apart. Griffin stilled from his anxiety and began to even out from huffing some sweet Earth-level oxygen and soon pulled it off. He noticed the duct tape still on the back of Travis’ hand and tore it off, making Travis exclaim as most of his thick knuckle-hair had been removed quickly, leaving his mitts alluring and soft to the touch once more. He saw the roll of duct tape looped over Travis’ left hand and slid it off of his wrist to pull some open.

“What are you going to need that for? They’re… dead, right? Are you… are you okay, Griffin?” Travis asked, worried that he’d irradiated his own brother in the deadly paths of war, only for Griffin to nod his head.

“You don’t know what an atomizer is, do you, Trav?” Griffin noted, speaking truthfully as he walked outside again.

Travis almost busted his ass entirely from not stepping out of the craft properly, but righted his footing so he only stumbled a bit.

“What do you mean, Griffin?”
“It’s not atomic. It’s not nuclear. It’s not radiation…” Griffin noted, starting to roll out an emergency mylar blanket and wrapped two or three of the unconscious Goblins into them, taping them together at the shoulders and the ankles, not unlike small, disturbing burritos.

“So what… happened?”
“Well, I was crying severely because I thought they were probably going to kill us and steal the MJJ to then kill our friends and either continue randomly harming people or dismantling all forms of technology until they ran riot over everything else… My nose was a little clogged and… I’ll be honest, I think I threw up a little on my left shoe. But that’s all to say that when you pressed that button, MJJ opened its mouth and sprayed rubbing alcohol into a thick cloud along the ground… all the mind-goblins have either drank or aspirated it, not knowing what it was or that it was probably bad for them. I don’t think they’re dead, but… they’re probably not healthy after that. The cloud disbursed pretty quickly, so when I managed to take another inhale, it just smelled really bad.”

Travis was touched to know that he’d been the one to actually save the day this time and helped his brother restrain and secure the rest of the Mind-Goblins in one of the observation rooms and locked the door with a keycard. They wouldn’t be able to get out and probably couldn’t easily wrench open the doors without any medical tools being in the room. There were actually around twelve of them altogether, but they had been able to use the fact that they had high similarity to one another (this was part of their recruitment measures) and that they were abjectly trying to keep everyone confused as to their full numbers. They had retreated entirely to the rooftop only because they were expecting a full retreat. After they were done, the two brothers slumped their way back into Medical Jet Jaguar and primed it for takeoff. It shoved away, knocking into the Chrome Roc, leaving a large scrape alongside the starboard oblique of Medical Jet Jaguar. The two brothers climbed to the double-panels and, drifting once more, set the ship to “Retrieval,” an automatically piloted function they weren’t familiar with anyways and retired to two adjacent hospital beds to relax for a few hours while their magnificent medical machine flew them away from Castle Stymphalia. The Goblins were defeated and could do no further damage, but both brothers shuddered at thinking of how much damage had yet to be discovered and started taping the door of the room the Goblins were in shut further, so they couldn’t be tricked into opening it even if the Goblins woke up sometime soon. They fell asleep soon after as the Retrieval began.

Chapter Text

Chapter 19 — There’s a Reason he’s called “The Last of the Business Wizards”

or

Roger Glover’s Horrifying Titano-Beasts and the Double Battle of the Space Hallway!

With a sickening crunch, the whirling Wolfram Hydra crashed through another wall as Robosaurus 1.0 found its self-rebuilding heads difficult to contend with, but found crushing their venom-injecting metallic teeth was more effective anyways. Three floors below, the Azure Key dropped into Blumpkin Tornadus’ hand again and he found the strength to cast a simplistic spell: one that would sharpen up his appearance entirely. He now had a trimmed goatee and a starched hat, his sky blue three-piece business suit and his cosmopolitan necktie, sporting a giraffe that was doing its taxes, were all restored to the finest chipper look, as if he were ready to walk in and nail a meeting with corporate and ace that proposal. His unkempt hair was fixed back into a tight ponytail. The door to the Space Hallway was cracked open as Roger Glover speared it through with his Steel Jaculus, a serpent that took the form of a spear whenever needed. The spinning spiral spear flung itself forth from the grip of Roger Glover and stuck itself into the Door of Perception.

“You have meddled one too many times in our affairs, elder Tornadus. We knew that your art of business wizardry was due to change the world, so we steeled our resolves together and we sought your teachings, learned your ways and we became the new generation of Business Wizards! You yourself said that you felt nothing wrong with teaching more Business Wizards when your last coven was destroyed in that lawsuit. Anti-trust… from a Business Wizard’s coven. You never knew how to trust again… until we found you. It was almost too simple…” Roger Glover sneered as the Steel Jaculus unfurled, becoming a powerful coil of steel-alloy made almost precisely for crushing even its largest foes in its pythonic grip and its rending maw of metal fangs.

“You believe that you are my legacy? Fools, the lot of you. You stole everything you could from my private grimoire portfolio and abused every spell in my spellbook to make yourselves powerful. To strive for little more than superiority over mankind. You wanted no part in fixing the economy, stabilizing the foodstores, helping people! You lied to me time and again that you wanted to learn Business Wizardry to take back your own wasted, ill-begotten lives of hard living and harder partying. You took everything you ever had from me, including this foul plan to pervert the cosmos by rearranging the planets. You cannot merely demand a Cosmic Syzygy! You think you can artificially regard everything there is in the Universe to serve your needs and you’re wrong. Take the key. I am tired of fighting you. It’s yours. You can leave for all I care. You’ve trapped me here. Leave me to my exile… for the crime of having helped created something like you,” Blumpkin bluntly said as he wiped his face gently with a kerchief. “Here. The Azure Key will open the Door of Perception. I don’t care about Jupiter anymore. I don’t care about anything anymore. There’s no business out here in this empty Castle. Leave me to die… but at least leave me alone here… that I not have to be inflicted with the punishment of further stomaching your disgusting crimes against nature…” he insisted.

“You believe yourself so clever, Tornadus! This Key will only lead me to doom! I can tell you’ve altered my Space Hallway to kill me!” Glover spat out at Blumpkin before he cast his deciding hand against Blumpkin’s, knocking the Azure Key from his outstretched palm. “That’s half the reason I betrayed you. One half was because you were a clear fool. Someone who could be manipulated. Someone who could be robbed. The other half? It was because you were so virtuous, so kind! I wanted Beasts that would rend armies and desecrate societies for me and the Titanians were more than willing to bend the knee to my orders time and time again. Your tricks won’t kill me. I doubt you can.”

“Your death is foretold already. It was decided when you died in the past, where you are destined to go once more. Where you cannot escape. Bringing syzygy to the galaxy will do nothing to save you from your fate. There is nothing that will unfold time from its course merely to save you all. Be you mad to think so? You made your bed, now you can’t even sleep in it. You’re growing more and more weary. The more you shout, the more you fools rage, the harder it will be for you. You won’t stay awake… you’ll just fall apart…”

“Codger! Fogey! I won’t listen to your idealism, hoping and dreaming that the world will become better from good vibes and a healthy heart. There is only one thing you are good for then now! You are still powerful as yourself. Your magic will be my magic when I’m done with you. I will drain every last drop of MP out of your shriveled bones and leave you nothing more!” Glover announced, furiously grabbing Blumpkin by both arms and sending a necrotic shock of mana-thieving magical drain through Blumpkin, stealing every ounce and gram of his magical essence. To have such an amount removed all at once was akin to having every breath of air sucked from your lungs until they couldn’t draw in more. Blumpkin’s heart pounded as he tried to reach over for the Azure Key, only to slip and fall, laying on top of it as Glover stood forth and lifted his hand. “In my hand, Jaculus! We shall show the Business Wizard the price of foolishness… and the price for dealing with the Space Wizard Concern! It’s a hostile takeover… and you’re being downsized…” Glover smirked angrily and lunged forth at his former master.

“Your sick bass skills… your reliance on Titano-Beasts… your heartless abuse of the timestream. Your regrets will pile atop you… like an avalanche totally crashing into a ravine,” Blumpkin coughed, expectorating a very small amount of blood that let him know that he was facing some form of legitimate injury. Gasping, clutching out, he put his head down, a man at his end, his apprentices having squandered his gifts of magic. They were driving the very nature of space/time into bankruptcy and demolition of all physical locations. His eyes closed and he imagined that his ledgers had added up to plenty and his estate was highly well-managed. He’d had his tear ducts removed some centuries ago by a hedge barber, which he found indispensable in business.

The Steel Jaculus was driven into his cervical vertebrae and Blumpkin felt little pain. There was a heavy pool of blood that Glover flecked off of his angry weapon. Snapping back to the Door of Perception, Roger Glover looked forth and began to commune with it, attempting to see what Blumpkin had changed and if he could fix it. For some time, this took up his time and the Steel Jaculus began to slither upon Glover’s shoulders and glaring red eyes out to defend the Titano-Beast’s owner. It was by his own hand that Jupiter had fallen under the Space Wizard Concern’s domination and sealed them in a Titano-Drome and activated the Space Hallways to escape to Saturn to continue their horrible conquest of whole planets and rearranging the very cosmos to suit their mad needs. His body crackled with energy after having slain the Last of the Business Wizards as he gripped both hands to the Door of Perception and began to channel a new Space Hallway. One that would take the Space Wizard Concern straight to Earth, to everything he understood, his home planet, the last place he thought he’d ever return. The Wizard King of Jupiter began laughing in a volume that began to hurt his own ears, his amazing robotic designs made by the unscrupulous robo-smiths, connected to his brain, laughed along with him, indicating to each team of the Space Wizard Concern of his victory over their former master.

But in all of a second, the power running through the Door of Perception crashed out and fizzled down into a fading whisper into the night of the vacuum. The lights cracked and blew above Glover’s head, light shards of glass falling to his shoulders. He pulled his cloak’s hood over the top of his face to guard himself from getting further fine powder and glass and turned about on his heel to go investigate what further was happening in his own Castle. A grimace of dismay glances across his grim visage as the soft crunch of busted glass bits under his boots continued until he’d made it out of the room.

~~~~~

This was due to Kamen Spider being in pitched battle with Ian Gillan in the Power Room, intent on shutting down whatever energy transfer the Space Wizards were trying to use. Wielding a mighty thunderbolt of twisted steel in his hands, Ian Gillan whipped crackling energy around the sharpened tip of his deadly spear of lightning.

“When you elderly fools realize that you’re holding back the Future of the Solar System by obstructing our pure and beneficial plans? Are we not kind to those we’ve enslaved? Are we not kings that walk among men? Gods that walk the plane of men? Or perhaps just the only gods with even courage to return to the lands of the created lessers. Were it not for the unseen attacks from the Meme Kingdom, we would had peaceful and wonderful control over the very pith of America! After the terrors of the First American War, we decided it would be best to seize control, to seize potential here in the beautiful land of our ancestors?”

“Aren’t you British?” Kamen Spider offered lightly, a smirk beyond his 8-Eyes Helmet, giving him nearly 360º vision.
“Same difference, you pedant jerk! How are you fools any different, you want to run everything and be the soft, controlling hand that guides society to some new level of worthiness in your eyes. You pretend that you are honorable when you were are still the foolish, motocross punk that has been shoving his way around Japan since the late 1960s! You have some nerve pretending your little probes and helpful machines scattered around Saturn were just you trying to be nice to developing planets? We brought refinement, we brought direction, we brought idealology to a world of shiftless nobodies! The Great Entertainment could be brought to any planet now that we’ve refined it. It will grow stronger than any form of media attachment! This is an interplanetary fad that will drive out all other culture and crush any ideals of resistance under the boots of the Space Wizards! Our Concern will be stronger than any party or ruler.”

“Didn’t you and yours die off when you got taken out by friendly fire after Second Contact?” Kamen Spider remarked back, using his Spider-Strength Grip to absorb the electric might of Gillan’s twisted metal saber, trying to snap it with both boots, doing a sick-nasty flip as his Robot Heart overcharged with electric fury. He could take more than 4,000 gigajolts (and 77 amps) of power before his heart wore out. It was like as if he were ungrounded and charging with a million watts of undivided bolts of thunder blasting through his bloodstream of ruddy cybernetic blood.

“A trick of fate soon to be amended! You have no idea how soon it will be when the foolish rules of linear time and the curse of our immortal nature will be visited back to a stretch of wonder! You don’t even know why we’re all here on Saturn, do you, Hokeshi?”

“Can’t be good. You government shills are nothing but trouble. You’ve been demonizing Beaglesaurus and trying to illegally peddle the freedoms and liberties of America with abuse of time-travel. Even were I to cut loose every bond of yours from the rest of the cretinous creatures of the Space Wizard Concern, you cannot deny the abuses of your fellow Wizards. They have sown disarray, seeded riotous death and flowered naught but a thirst for more and more power! When one planet is conquered, there will always be another in the sights of the Space Wizards! Cruel-hearted conquerors who care not a lick for the natives of this planet! You have all but brainwashed the populace to your own misdeeds. Why you’re here yourself is unimportant. It’s clear that this world needs saving from the likes of you, Gillan! Come on, charge those meathooks of yours and I’ll show you a real fight!” Kamen Spider challenged, kicking off from Gillan’s nape.

Reaching up with both of his magically-invigorated human hands, Ian Gillan raked gunmetal nail polish into Kamen Spider’s outer dermality layer, revealing soft jagged bolts of metal coloration under his “normal” human skin. Doing a typewriter sort of dance at an astonishing speed, Kamen Spider created a sort of “web” of movement, making afterimages that like himself, danced with a gossamer glimmer.

“Web Walking!” Kamen Spider loudly declared, a voice among many, shouting in Dopplering drift from place to place, giving an eerie omnipresence among the cramped power room. “Can you hit what your eyes can’t follow? Can you strike what your hand cannot grasp?” He hissed into the low lighting of the metal-strewn room.

“You think that I’ve got no way to move at the speed of lightning? I’ll shatter through you like a wart, wiped out from the surface of Saturn! My thunderbolts will crash through your form until you overload! You will run out every transistor and processor in that weak body of yours, old man!” Gillan spat angrily as he began to unhook his mind from time’s flow, breathing slower and his eyes, glowing with an unhealthy emerald glare as his hand seized forward, gripping Kamen Spider by the throat as he raised high his thunder saber.

Glancing down into his eyes, Gillan drove home the twisted metal as Kamen Spider’s back pressed hard to the back of the wall. His legs locked and secure, he smiled up into Gillan’s face and dragged the weapon farther in, stabbing it through himself and into the wall, sending a blast of Jovian lightning-wind through Gillan’s gauntlets. The sizzling noise was already starting to worry Kamen Spider as he lifted back one leg and kicked Gillan off of him before he could stab him any further, sending him back into a panel of computers. Gillan, overloading himself with the power source of Castle Stymphalia, stood forward, rippling with an uncontrollable energy.

The radiating Schwarzschild Gap which he had used to fuel the Titano-Drome was large enough that he’d had to keep it at the Castle, not merely as a security measure. It had seemed simplistic that there was nothing strong enough on Saturn to truly break through the shielding around their Schwarzschild Loop… Gillan had not factored in his own energy levels. His hands began to unmake themselves as a bolt of Hawkings Radiation shot through him, stopping his rotten human heart. For a Space Wizard of his power, he could absorb plenty… but the core to keep a planet captive? It would be like trying to fill a party balloon to the size of a blimp and expect a full cab of tourists and the usual level of espionage. To swallow the energy of a dying star would be a hard thing for many creatures short of the Star Swallower Marduk. In a matter of seconds, the lights flickered and popped as Gillan’s hair began to light aflame, his body already a withered husk of what it once had been. Even if he could feel anything or were still “immortal” in an undying nature, it would take far too long for his body to heal back to a useful manner again. Kamen Spider turned his head to throw up in a corner, his super-sense of smell overwhelmed by smelling a velvet-draped Wizard immolate himself from inside out until only a ragged skeleton in a burning cloak remained. Somehow, Ian Paice had managed to outlive him, having been able to shut off his own bloodflow, rather unsure that he’d find his formerly treasured right hand. His inability to rest had made it that much harder.

~~~~~

DJ Kiryū was having a destressing vape sesh in a room two stories down from the Power Room when Kamen Spider stumbled into the small break room the Space Wizards have left around to exist as a cruel and disturbing mockery of a Zen Room. It looked less like a chill hangout and more like an uncomfortable dungeon that had been retrofitted into being a crappy looking rec room. On one couch, Ezra was slowly breathing into a paper bag to stop having a panic attack about probably seeing one of her most reliable new friends die in front of her. Kiryū apologized for crashing a Stymphalian Bird into her boyfriend, which made her feel sour, but mildly flattered. She didn’t correct him, but she would have had to let her shock no longer overpower his general snideness of nature. It was sometimes a coping mechanism, but she also just enjoyed feeling a little witty from time to time. Kamen Spider poured Ezra a glass of water first and then climbed atop the kitchen-shaped sink to try to ease a large hole in his back.

“Is he… going to be okay?” Ezra asked, feeling a bit too overwhelmed to check out the presumable grievous wound in Hokeshi’s midsection.

“My obliques are made of rhodium and I sorta luckily don’t have a kidney there… long story, remind me to tell you when you’re feeling… better…” Kamen Spider offered, rinsing off his wound before he used a small torch from his pocket to fuse it shut for now. He’d have to replace some parts later, but it worth a little remodeling. There were some days he was happy to be a cyborg… and days when he knew meeting Beagle in the distant year of 1971, just after when ELECTRO had been defeated in his final showdown at Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant… and today… it was both for the Man with the Machine Powers of a Spider. “This shouldn’t be too hard. I don’t think I’ll need to call anyone else into this Web of War. I can tell by now we’ve taken about 2.4 of these psycho-freaks who have been pushing the cosmos around like they want to push us down… I think that we could handle most of them ourselves. You got yours, Kikairyū. I got one. One was injured in the crash landing. And that’s the ones we know so far. I’m feeling pretty…” he groaned in a way that didn’t sound healthy, “Yeah, pretty positive…” he said, gritting his teeth and furrowing his thick eyebrows dramatically. I’m pretty sure that Beagle and the Robosaurus Siblings are in the Courtyard facing down the rest of them. I’ve taken bigger hits than this. I’ll be fine. The emergency lights will probably turn on soon, but you all need to get to safety.”

Ezra had had a pretty big rock fall almost directly on her right ankle and when she stopped cursing a blue streak for seven minutes straight, she had to do highly well to resist trying to even performatively slug any of the hard-luck heroes on the chest… she had a salient worry she could break something in her hand trying it from the sheer metallic might of pecs like those. Ezra had set up some LED Fly-lights to keep the room lightly lit and left one under a water bottle she had been gulping down. Looking up at the artificial fireflies, Ezra Von Qlarion was getting frustrated about worrying about Eli. She didn’t like that the state of their health was certainly affecting her in a way she wasn’t entirely familiar. These were new feelings that she wasn’t familiar with when living in Wyoming and she wasn’t sure she understood herself. She knew at minimum she surely was worried about a friend who might be dead. She reached into one of the pockets of her labcoat and pressed something up and into Kamen Spider’s hand.

“Take this. Someone with a Robot Heart would be able to use this. I think Red Nightmare is returning… don’t ask me how I know… I think I… saw it… another vision. Give these rotten magic fuckers what’s coming to them. Show them what happens when they fuck with Wyoming, Saturn!” she implored, pushing a small glass and plastic contraption. “It’s a medical device. You’ll know what to do. Go fast, don’t hold back. I think we can do this if we work together. Saturn is going to breathe easy and live free again… and Wyoming might even go back to Earth!” Ezra declared.

“You sound like you’re feeling better,” Kiryū mentioned as he finished soldering his arm back together. “Isn’t a skeleton usually kind of a… weak thing to build a robot around?” he thought aloud.

“Depends on what’s inside…” Kamen Spider mused, then turned around, pointing at DJ’s chest, “And what’s in here too. No one can take who you are from you. You’ll always have yourself to be. It’s not what in your bones, it’s what’s in your head. We’ve got our work cut out for us.”

“Well, damn, I guess that makes us just like a couple of old tailors…” Kiryū smirked as he stood up. “And Ezra, don’t worry. I’ve got a good feeling about Eli. From what you told me… they sound pretty lucky already. Or are we the lucky ones to know them?” he mused, holding a finger up as if he’d make a joke somehow.

Chapter Text

Chapter 20 — The Hardcore Showdown at Stymphalia Hangar: Man v. Machine

or

The First, Great Flight of the Chrome Roc, Flagship of the Space Wizard Concern

Outside the fence line, the glittering skies of Saturn showed a new cloud billowing into the skies of the Other Ringed Planet. Among it were the remaining Saturnine Entertainment Spheres (although the Great Entertainment had shut down along with the Schwarzschild Gap Core) and the Domestic Spheres that were not already combined into the Breathable Kingdom of Saturn. Standing atop the flattened plateau of Gannett Peak, Medical Jet Jaguar was now securing the mooring anchors to strategically-placed eyebolts in the stone, locking the Bubbles of Saturn into place where they could float in stable antigravity where all could breathe easier. More and more Saturnine drifted out of the great hubs on every Entertainment Sphere, like children emerging from their home to a wild world outside their understanding. A brave new world… with such people in it. Constant, almost literal opiate Entertainment had been driven out and the Saturnine could enjoy things they had never considered for years now: social interaction and a moment of clarity in the silent stillness. Like waking up from a dream and entering a dreamland all the same. So much had become different to them outside the Spheres of Entertainment. A new architecture with a new leader. None of them had much in the way of knowing much about their supposed Monarch, but they had a new sort of respect as they began to realize how little they had been experiencing. Thinking back to the inanity of the Great Entertainment, it felt unwise, shameful and worst of all, pointless. For people motivated mostly by their interests, they had dipped deep their hands into understanding only the very apex of media, a form of indecipherable sickness of the eyeballs and the mind alike. Thus, was a great Cloud of Bubbles stood above the Breathable Kingdom. In the Saturnine months ahead, this would be renamed as “Cloud Day,” the first and greatest of the Saturnine holidays of the new Planetary Kingdom.

It was about at the same time that Ian Gillan tried to stop Kamen Spider in the Power Room and the Schwarzschild Gap Core was ruptured when Strongbeard Rodriguez and his fiercely disturbing ally, Prof. Dave Mustaine, were trying their best to “secure their getaway” (by which this meant they’d try to escape first and without the others,) only to find that some few someones had had a similar idea and were threatening to cut them off. Standing before the arriving Chrome Roc stood Robosaurus 1.0 and Robosaurus 2.4, glaring out over the expansive rooftop of the Inner Castle Stymphalia. With the full power of their now concentrated Neo-Robot Hearts, the two Robosaurus Siblings were stronger than ever. Fourteen minutes ago, Beaglesaurus and the two of them had dipped deep their arms into the Cosmic Egg, sealing shut the abscess of reality that was the Cosmic Egg. To lock it out from its impure place in existence, the Cosmic Egg collapsed into its own non-existence and the Cosmic Energy emitting from whatever unspoken place on the other, inner side of the Cosmic Egg would slowly seep out into the Beaglesaurus Trio.

“You think that you can stand in the way of a few geniuses like us?!” Prof. Mustaine announced angrily, wresting his double Windsored necktie from its comfortable home and smirked widely, a mocking face that would test the patience of saints as he cracked his neck and knuckles and parts of his hips in a series of unsettling snaps in the open hangar, the sound ricocheting off the haunting acoustics of the Castle Stymphalia’s impossibly set outer walls. “Look here! You know well by now that we have already died and therefore are immortal until then! The doom of our fate is now to be ruptured! We will become unstuck from the trap of time… our humanity, our mortality… it will all become ours again. And then it will be as difficult as ruling from the top of a society of united planets to control the very Solar System! We will be the spiraling comet of inspiration rocketing into the cosmos to announce the birth of a new worlds order!”

“He likes to talk, elder sibling” Robosaurus 2.4 noted.

“He is too sure of himself, younger sibling,” Robosaurus 1.0 agreed before he charged before to intercept the rantings of a renegade Space Wizard.

“Fools that you are! I am a deadly 100% organic Wizard! It is by my scientific hands that Red Nightmare was carved out of the heart of a murdered god! I have control over the most crippling of biological functions! Fall to your knees at the pain of… the Freezer Brain! An ice-cream attack that will never end!” Prof. Mustaine called out angrily, his scarlet gloves gripped in fury as his bio-magicks unleashed on the Robosaurus Siblings to unleash a brainfreeze that would stun… most enemies.

The Robosaurus Siblings, lacking the necessary hard palate and brain that a biological humanoid opponent would have and be appropriately crippled by. Stepping forward, their steel-knuckled hands knocked Prof. Mustaine off his curly Wizard boots and shortly on to his ass. In a gritted brace of anger, Prof. Mustaine spat through his teeth in a growl of fury.

“You’ve got some nerves! You two are more metal than I thought! You don’t eat, so I can’t make your stomach twist into vomiting for hours… You don’t breathe, so I can’t twist your bronchial tubes into a lattice of internal choking! Your organs are all wires and circuits! I’ll have to get… close to unleash a lurch of my bio-electricity on you! I’ll just have to get my Platypus Palm on you and you’ll feel the shock! You can thank me that the poison won’t stun your systems or make your oil run cold… I will just have to crack your metal chassis open and pull out those metallic guts of yours!”

While Prof. Mustaine began to charge his body with detectional and offensive bio-electricity, Strongbeard had been sidling his shoes quietly against the floor, shuffling his way past the dramatic histrionics of the outspoken Professor. As he began to slowly scoot himself backwards towards the opening bay doors of the Chrome Roc and began to drop slowly to a prone position to start making his way up the silently-shifting ramp while they were preoccupied. Jerking his torso towards the robotic siblings, Prof. Mustaine began to slowly extend a fatal touch of short-circuiting destruction to the pair of robots. Before he could touch them though, a sharp and tall shadow cast itself over the Robosaurus Siblings from behind them, realizing they’d been distracted for long enough that their attendant Titano-Beast, the Osmium Geryon, a 9’ three-headed robot warrior wielding two large axes on the widely distant arms of the beast. It was clear that the beast had some balance issues already, since its small and stocky legs didn’t seem to well support its large cuboid chest. It was a slow rolling of the three heads atop on gyroscopic shifting that kept it from falling over, making them swing around in wider and wider arcs so as to keep itself balanced further when its extending arms chopped outwards with a cleaving swipe of two axes.

“That fool Glover is trying to show off his investment in Titano-Beasts again, eh?! If it will keep those meddling robots off of our trail for long enough…” thought Prof. Mustaine as his eyes glanced carefully out towards the visual windscreen chest of the Chrome Roc.

Within, his expansive Wizard-vision permitted him to see a hand-signal from Strongbeard. It was clear from his simplistic measure of practiced instructive motions that a single thumb raised was indicative all too easily that he was inside safely. With a swift circular wipe of the hand, it was extrapolated by Prof. Mustaine that he was intending both that he was due to go around getting the Chrome Roc ready for immediate takeoff and likely also that he should wrap it up out there. Sensing with both of his wizardly human eyes, Prof. Mustaine peeked a quick scope and noticed Strongbeard was now wafting his hands on either side of his head like a farcical lawn sprinkler, which he was only a little confused by. He picked up a claw hammer and tried closing his eyes to find a moment’s peace amid the battle against two robots who seemed confident they could beat his ass pretty well. So far, they’d been proven right. It didn’t help a single blink when Mustaine’s eyes opened once more, his eyes still feeling cold and dry. His skin felt papery to the touch and didn’t sound much better either. He was beginning to feel a twist of pain behind his left eye as the Osmium Geryon continued its relentless chopping attacks. He gulped softly when he saw the creature was starting to teeter backwards and its expansive shadow of the Titano-Beast indicated it was falling towards him. Due to its rather concentrated weight being one of its most deadly weapons, the Osmium Geryon had almost shattered the floor entirely, though it was built strong enough to withstand something of such enormity charging into it. Drawing forth the claw hammer, he drove it hard into the falling back of Osmium Geryon to blast it with enough bio-electricity to make it blast forward, back to the Robosaurus Siblings. Naturally, they dove to either side to let it shatter into the ground again, this time making it crash through the floor and land in to a large Olympic-sized swimming pool as the water was blasted outwards by its tenuous connection to the heavy gravity of Saturn. Expending that much bio-electricity, Prof. Mustaine was beginning to feel a bit weak in the flexing lobes of his brain’s amazing magic and that familiar little spiral of pain behind his left eye began to gyre further, twisting at his mental faculties. He gripped both hands into his thick red hair and drew his fingertips and his nails carefully against his entirely human scalp.

“Do away with them, you foolish creature! Prove your worth or you’ll be left behind!” Prof. Mustaine ordered as the Osmium Geryon had dropped both of the axes so it could use its gripping hands like dual winches to drag itself from the waters below and on to the no-running tiled surface of their expansive swimming pool.

Back aboard the Chrome Roc, Strongbeard had carefully activated most of the silent commands that could be initiated for takeoff. In 140 seconds, the Chrome Roc would be fully prepped and the rotors would be fully deployed from its wings. He began to carefully begin locking in the Auto-Pilot program to run automatically, but as the rotors deployed above the stabilizing wings of the Chrome Roc, a thick strand of polymers gumming them together. This threw off the stabilizing sensors that kept both rotors from striking each other while gearing up and, when at last they drove into each other, moving faster still to be in silent mode, a small explosive attached to each tip of the rotors collided into each other and the whole Titano-Beast suddenly exploded, its chest blasted out and both wings crashing down through the floor. The lights suddenly shut off as Strongbeard, supposedly the Wisest of the Space Wizard Concern, had been immolated to the ambitions of the Uranian Gremlin Squad that had been holed up within the Chrome Roc until they’d departed to attempt seizing the Medical Jet Jaguar for their nefarious purposes. The Robosaurus Siblings, easily capable of seeing in the dark, dropped down to the swimming pool level, seeing that Prof. Mustaine had landed on his back, falling 8’ down into flat contact with the Osmium Geryon and presumed that he had enough spinal damage that he would likely not recover from overnight for certain. The Chrome Roc’s glorious wings had been blasted out, sending them flying in either direction, establishing Chrome Roc Stations 1 and 2 in the distant Saturnine Canyons, which would later be developed into affordable resort areas and scientific research laboratories. The large head of the craft, which had stored a full electronic brain straight from the Titanian Weapon Forgeries, crashed down and out the window, landing into the courtyard below.

Grinning maniacally once eyes were off of him once more, the beaten and broken Professor Mustaine drew out a sizzling proton pistol and started charging a blast large enough to sizzle a particularly large hole in either or both of the Robosaurus Siblings. His spine likely would keep being horribly damaged from the gruesome fall into such a dense material, but taking one of them down with him would be victory enough for a Wizard losing out and filled with a pettiness enough to try challenging the very structure of the solar system. With a shaking hand, he glared down the barrel of his proton pistol and tried to carefully line up his sights, bringing in his other chartreuse-colored glove to stabilize better. Before he could squeeze into the trigger, he had a sudden bolt behind his left eye once more and he let out an involuntary peal of pain shocking from his lips. He screamed again and, with no more thought in mind of vengeance, was gripped with searing stabs in the head pulsing from within. A grueling consequence of his lacking sleep and his continued injury that he’d be careless enough to try twisting his way out of. Prof. Mustaine began to shriek louder, clamping both hands to his ears, his gun no longer useful with how close he’d have to keep it to his own head to just shut out the hissing din that only he could hear.

“Your father! He’s the one who started all this! That damned fool, Mr. Wizard! He spat in the face of magic and science with his radical new ideas and we were fools the worse for believing his futuristic wonder tales. Allured by the wonders of a future we could hold in our hands, to revolutionize culture, society, media, everything that brought joy to the faces of the people would have been ours! Him falling in love or creating new children or whatever sentimental crap he was up to for so long is what took so long for us to realize our final plans… It’s too late for you to stop it from happening. It’s all been prepared for centuries! I can’t stop this splitting headache. The anxiety, the fatigue, the dryness… this is the price of my sins… I can’t sleep anymore… I can’t rest anymore… I can’t dream anymore… I can’t… think anymore…” he moaned out, reaching his hands up further and grinding his knuckles into his eyes with both lids shut, trying to massage out the pain that pulsed over and over from within, but there was no stopping it. Nudging his knuckles into the top of his nose, he started to try shoving his face into the ground to alleviate some of the sinus pressure, like having liquid metal injected into your face, hot and steaming through every hole in the head. Over the course of minutes, his ramblings about their plans being all for naught devolved into more and more screams until his throat began to wear out and he instead made quiet, rasping coughs amid his hands shaking and clutching.

The Robosaurus Siblings glared at each other a moment. They were intending to take the Chrome Roc to escape Saturn themselves or help evacuate those needed to safety, so they weren’t precisely thrilled to find the Chrome Roc now in pieces that would be rather time-intensive in welding back together by now, parts of it having flown miles away. So it wasn’t ideal altogether as they started to carefully make their way farther down into the Castle, intent of finding and stopping the other Space Wizards as the Osmium Geryon struggled to get back on to its unsupportive limbs, three heads whirling to try to continue routing itself right and failing time and again. The Robosaurus Siblings began to land next to the Titano-Beast’s enormous heads as their slot-like mouths began to open, urging an unending breathless groan of warning and worry before the left and middle head were torn off and the final head found itself unable to maintain any semblance of recognizable balance, flailing its ineffective limbs, short grunts leaking out from its slotted mouth as the Robosaurus Siblings left a trail of scrap and moved down the stairs to stop the remaining few of the Space Wizard Concern. Graham Bonnet, Ritchie Blackmore and Roger Glover were still alive and in fighting spirit and even they alone seemed dangerous enough, amid their remaining four Titano-Beasts. As the two Robosaurus Siblings landed down in to the Courtyard, it was clear that Ritchie Blackmore was slowly descending from a long pillar with a tremendous pipe organ atop it. He had finished his accursed song and seemingly collapsed on his instrument as darkness flung out from the pipes, rocketing into the sky. A horrible swirling storm driving out into the glittering Saturnine sky drew like raking claws into the sky above. Crimson lightning began to crackle and shatter out through the holes in the walls outside Castle Stymphalia. As the Robosaurus Siblings were stepping forward to where Beaglesaurus was standing and DJ Kiryū had been standing nearby, Red Nightmare’s head snapped back from his crouching form, the dark music of a Space Wizard having pulled him back from spinning endlessly out into space forever. His wrath of constant fire burning within his very eyes, he began to scream again and launched forward. In the advent of another climactic lunge, all went white as the plans of the Space Wizard Concern slipped into place and syzygy was achieved...

Chapter Text

Chapter 21 — Beyond the Door of Perception & Into the Space Hallway

& In to the Jovian Titano-Drome Itself!

or

The Fury of Red Nightmare… Conquered!

As the Syzygy passed, the pulsating energy release created what would be nine points of detachment, one for each Space Wizard, as each of their cursed timelines were now broken. Adrift in the realms of time, they were now all too vulnerable from their former fate of blowing up in an all-out donnybrook in the White House, they were now all too powerful, the energy from it having fueled each of the remaining members of the Space Wizard Concern. Horrifyingly, the pulsing energy of the planets aligning in an impossible manner altogether, in defiance of order, reason and love. Naturally, their first order of business was unlocking their own temporal shackles. No longer would they be destined to a predetermined timeline that led them inevitably through a warped causal time trap marching them slowly forward to the time of death. Unbound from the storms of fate, the Space Wizard Concern stood tall, though apart, within Castle Stymphalia. Their mad plot to reorder the solar system had been achieved, yet to what further end? And to what further depravity?

~~~~~

From the South Palace came forth Roger Glover, the Keeper of the Titano-Beasts, now able to see through the eyes of his predatory robotic destroyers, wielding them like toys in his ability to move, manipulate and throw them around, despite their immense weight and size. The Steel Jaculus unwound from his arm and began circling around his body, rising into the air to target anything around him as it wound in a complex belt of movement. From the East Palace came forth Graham Bonnet, his hands charging with uncanny energies, and in the deference at his heel stood the Diomedal Horse. Standing as tall as a monster truck and built wider than the most Trojan of horses. Skin of Space-Titanium, a hull that is constantly heating itself to red-hot blistering surface. Charging forward, the flashing lighthouse-like eyes of the robotic terror reared up, radically charging up its chainsaw jaw, hungry to consume flesh, the most forbidden of robotic foods.

“You brought this thing back here? He will destroy our wonderful castle… as much as I’m willing to abandon this edifice… I’d prefer it not be razed in our victory! Blackmore! I see that devious glare in your devil’s eye… he’s your pet! Call your hound to somewhere meaningful…!” Bonnet ordered, only for Red Nightmare to blitz past him, a shock of lightning speed crackling like ozone in the still atmosphere of the Space Wizard’s citadel.

His tearing fingers grasped for his throat as Bonnet tried blasting him back with a face full of sizzling concussive energy in his magical hands, hot enough and bright enough to blind and single the corneas of any normal mortal man. And yet, Red Nightmare was not any mere man. The deadly weapon of the Space Wizard had been unleashed and now his rage would make victims of his masters. Ritchie Blackmore gave a self-satisfied look and strolled his mustache together between his fingers, straightening it out and grinning widely. The less Space Wizards there were, the more he had to gain from their untimely slaughters, which he’d never entirely written out of his cruel calculations. Honor was rare among thieves, even less so among despots that have already discounted all society as equals. Red Nightmare’s gripping knuckles ground like a pestle in a mortar dragged into Bonnet’s shoulders, trying to pull out any muscle or bone within his grasp. Bonnet grunted with some chagrin as his shoulders were being torn into with a fierce iron claw not unlike the tearing jaws of a mad dog. Shrieking out into the eyes of Graham Bonnet, Red Nightmare began to start whirling around, preparing to whip himself into a frenzied living anti-tornado that would whip every inch of flesh from Bonnet’s broken skeleton. Running, charging towards them both came the Diomedal Horse, its red-hot searing blades rotating at top speed, the modified radula of a fearsome war steed, ridden by none and feared on any battlefield. Charging at Red Nightmare’s squeezing, spasming back, its fierce charge forward was still nowhere near enough to sever through his mighty skin. Without being able to tear into him, the blades instead sent him flying upwards into the air, hard enough to blast him into the ceiling. Like seventeen swords slashing at once in close repetition, whirling at the speed of a racing speedcar, like a ping-pong ball dropped on to a spinning tire, the Diomedal Horse released a roaring screech like a grinding machine made to rip metal and shred viscera into a thin paste. Its mane of wire tossing, the raging horse stood angrily between Bonnet and Red Nightmare. Glaring softly into the night sky of Saturn, Red Nightmare angrily grabbed his hands into the castle’s broken ceiling. Above him, standing on the floor above, the Wolfram Hydra had begun to lash out, inflicting blood-boiling poisons into Red Nightmare’s arm, though this was only barely enough to pierce his own metalloid skin, like two spears diving out at him, fangs of a Titano-Beast would do little to earn the blood from Red Nightmare, a silver stream of metallic chrome blood dripping from the living anti-tornado that he was.

Tearing loose the head from its serpentine neck, Red Nightmare ripped both fangs out of his arm and began using his arms like beating implements, whipping them forward over and over as one by one, the Wolfram Hydra fell to its own fang being pierced between it. Eight heads torn apart, ripped like shredded paper. A normal Hydra would have brought back such a head, but even the self-repairing systems of the Wolfram Hydra were failing quickly to being pulled apart like delicate pieces of a complex computer being confronted with the cold, unfeeling fist of a disinterested child who only knows entertainment by smashing something to see its interior smashed on the concrete. Wrapping the cracked metal of the Wolfram Hydra around his fists like wrapping, he grins widely, his barred teeth shining as he let the poison drip along his skin, dripping acidic corrosive destruction over his skin. Stepping down through the hole in the ceiling, Red Nightmare looked down to see Beaglesaurus and the Robosaurus Siblings approaching from the broken south wall of the North Palace, which had fallen over somehow.

Fleeing to nearby Sundance, Ian Paice broke into an ancient house on the hill where Eli Egg had woken up before, hiding in a small corner of an empty room, a cauterized stump of a hand facing him, payment for his meddling in time. Shutting his eyes, he waited for his own nightmares to end, the silence only underlining how little sleep he could achieve. He had given up already; the other Space Wizards, the Titano-Beasts, the energy powers, the desolation of gods and the creation of the ungodly, the tyranny of planets. Repeating over and over in his head that he was never one of them. Unable to cry any further, he gripped the rotting boards of the dilapidated floor, wishing for sleep, screaming mentally at the worlds he had scourged and receiving nothing in return for his crimes.

His hands robed in stripes of metal and blood, Red Nightmare found that only Graham Bonnet had remained in the courtyard still, bleeding from the finger-holes in his shoulders, his cape dripping with fresh blood. Standing propped against a brutalist sculpture of a fist that smashed all opposition. The Diomedal Horse, glowing in the empty and quiet courtyard now, stood by his charge, dedicated by programming to defend Bonnet, hissing steam rising off of its burning body. Before his hand could land to strike him down though, a spinning spiral of lightning and steel glade betwixt them, landing near them before they both turned to see Kamen Spider running at them, after the spear he’d taken from the dead Ian Gillan.

“Stop this. You need to look within yourself to find the peace you seek, creature of the Wizards,” Kamen Spider instructed. “The Doorway of Perception will channel you directly to someplace you will prefer. But you must wait… the Door is not yet open… Two will open it… two must enter. You must stay. If you have ever wanted anything in your miserable life… you will take your opportunity and leave now. My mind is a well-sprung metal steel-trap and I have fought psionic masters before. They have fallen before my hand. You have a familiar frame. I recognize the build of your body. You have until the Two return through that Door. I recognize that it is hard for you, but you will have to be patient. I know it is unfamiliar to you. You are frightened. Don’t be. Breathe deep the breath of Saturn and you will find peace. The Space Wizards have created your pain, have manipulated your power, have bent the winds and molded nightmares into a golem of intricate and extensive destruction. Seek your blood from them. They made you this way. They are the source of your misery. Strike them down… and you will be given the greatest gift of all. Go after Bonnet, after Glover, after Paice… leave Blackmore to me…” he told the screaming beast.

Red Nightmare, treated with any modicum of respect, understanding or introspection. Driven to any amount of psychological thought toward himself and not towards destruction, the impulse to force the planets into alignment and kill anything that prevented that goal, he found a disturbing and horrifying sense of inner peace. No longer was his mind a screaming, unblinking terror racing through a heart of nightmares, pounding fear, fury and horrible psychic might. It was like a burned hand run under the faucet. The first of many balms. Stepping up angrily, he had newfound rage, a different source of anguish fueling his unstoppable cyclone of fury. No longer was it a madness that drove him to thrashing everything within strangling range, but a sense of inner following. There was, within his mind, a great quietness unlike he’d ever experienced. It was as if when the Syzygy had passed, the alignment had solved some great inner equation at the core of his mental blocks, a knot of Gordian psychology undone, a sparking of fire within him. Hatred with direction, justice behind his fury, aim to his destruction. Now, the weapon was awakened to the fact of what he was denied and turned against his masters. With a keening glare, his neck twisted to the side, not unlike the head of a bird of prey. His raptorous gaze slipped over to the already injured Graham Bonnet and drove his fist through the left haunch flank of the Diomedal Horse. Like a brutal hand breaking through the skin of a drum, his opposing fist drove into the heart of the creature, rending open the oil-pumping that ran the internal engines. The heat was nothing, he had never entirely regained a sense of hot or cold. With both violent hands, Red Nightmare drove the spinning creature into Graham Bonnet’s chest and solar plexus, riddling him into chunks until what little remained was not worth looking at. It was not easy to tell Red Nightmare was drenched almost entirely in his blood, apart from it dripping off of his upraised arms. The crumbling Titano-Beast’s broken body collided through the remains, burying him under a shattered pillar. Steaming hot oil striking his skin created a pillar of black smoke around him from the ensuing combustion. His own body was too furiously hot to not singe it on contact. Having scoured planets of life, having been awake for every second in decades of imprisonment in the Core of Pluto, having never blinked once, having never had a thought that was not screaming, having a cyclone for a soul and a nightmare for a heart, the weapon of the Space Wizards no longer. Red Nightmare stood there motionless for some minutes in a postmortem portrait of gore, a study in guignol, cascaded into the art of nightmares, a smile that knew no joy discovering the machinery of his misery destroyed under his own invading hand. The quietness within was quelled with a hemorrhagic ablution, but all too soon, the quietness continued to rear back up, driving him to purpose, to structure, to anything. In the sharp distance, there was a soul-wrenching scream from within the Western Palace as one of the Space Wizards collapsed as every vein pulsated like poison.

~~~~~

Standing up from the edge of the rooftop where they’d departed from the Medical Jet Jaguar, the Reliable Eli Egg munched into another finely-boiled egg. They hadn’t entirely figured out how to get down from there, with no particular doors or helpful awning to bounce off of for leverage. It was a pretty castle-based structure otherwise, mostly wood and stone from the looks of it. Metal where it was needed, but mostly as trim to the heavy stone and wood. Upon the horizon, he saw the returning Medical Jet Jaguar like a very tall, humanoid ambulance off in the distance. A distant stomping noise was clear in that the McElboys were dashing as hard as their incredibly large metal legs might take them as the craft appeared over the hills. From what would become clear was a “reading the manual while driving” situation, the Medical Jet Jaguar soon lifted up both legs and started to fly horizontally again.

“How does the autopilot know where to stop? Do you think they did some kind of magic that will mess with our coordinates? Or MJJ’s guidance systems?” Griffin asked as Travis shrugged, admitting he was pretty in the Saturnine weeds as to what was going on by now.

“Let’s show them you can still hit someone with an ambulance! Let’s fucking GO! We already blasted those goblin fuckers, there’s gonna be something that fires eye drops or farts pure oxygen,” Travis insisted, fluttering his ringed fingers through the heavy and inscrutable manual with a newfound gusto.

“It’s going to have to be enough! Now, how do we open the eyes on this thing so we can see where we’re going?” Griffin asked, slightly more urgently this time until his meaning became clear and the Medical Jet Jaguar crashed through the outer wall again, sending a million bricks raining in through windows along the Castle Stymphalia.

As the eyeshields opened up on Medical Jet Jaguar, the Brothers McElroy saw Eli Egg standing on an outcropping and carefully set them from their perch and then punched a large hole in the inner wall, exposing Prof. Mustaine, who had wrapped his head in duct tape to try to decrease the pressure pounding like nails into his skull. It was only through deftness of hand that remained with him still that Prof. Mustaine had yet to rip most of his bright red hair out, wondering how he could fix a headache this bad without smacking his head into something repeatedly and was soon running low on alternative options. The Medical Jet Jaguar dropped Eli Egg on to a safer standing area of the room as Prof. Mustaine tried standing up, only able to keep some level of composure by holding both hands on his temples, like a psionic warrior summoning all his power to fire a deadly beam. However, in a sickening twist of fate, it was quite the opposite; he found moving his hands off his head made the throbbing return also as quickly as a heartbeat away. Gritting his teeth, he tried to step forward to kick at Eli Egg, who had scarcely really noticed he was there at all. Eli Egg pulled a sort of double take and lifted both legs up high into the air, doing a sharp backflip that landed them near the doorway (which was a lot sturdier) to brace themselves in with an exuberant star-jump. Looking back over their shoulder, they nodded and the McElroys hastily tried to get up and tore through the floor, sending Prof. Mustaine falling about three or four stories down to the ankles of Medical Jet Jaguar. A Space Wizard still murky in causality and writhing loudly into the world ultimate of the Omnipotence Syzygy, Prof. Mustaine was still alive… his body would take hours to piece itself back together, his disturbing biomagical powers able to repair his body as best he could without being in a particularly sterile infirmary and also having a lot of formica keeping at least four points of his torso pinned to the ground. This was worse, since it kept his hands away from holding his pain into his head and it began leaking out through his eyes, his mouth, his ears.

Across the courtyard, Kiryū had begun charging forward towards the Erymanthian Boar with Robosaurus 1.0 dashing out to grab the knife-laden Titano-Beast by two of its tree-trunk legs. Stopping it from being able to bolt itself without the proper leverage, DJ Kiryū was able to grip it by its largest two goring bulkhead tusks. Robosaurus 2.4 landed behind the mammoth creature and seized its sickle-like tail, a blazing hand of freedom crackling through at top speed. With a blasting blow, Robosaurus 2.4 was able to sever the thick cable of tail at the base. Kiryū began to twist the beast’s jaw forward and upward, farther and farther back until it began to struggle, shake, smoke and then collapse internally from motor strains. Robosaurus 2.4 decided to hack the beast for parts and began to remove its most important and heavily-trademarked of Space-Titanium robot parts. They would be at that for some time.

Eli Egg continued running forward, throwing open a door in the hallway he had entered, finding it led only to further within. Chasing his way through to an unknown goal, Eli Egg threw open door after door until he managed to run through a hole in the floor, emerging up and out to see Ezra Von Qlarion dumping sand out of her shoes and shaking dust out of her hair, then cleaning off her glasses. She let out a sharp shout when she noticed them (her back was turned away from a hole in the floor.) As her spine thawed back out in a few lengthy sentences, she sat down and shook her head to feel a little bit clearer as to what was going on at this point. She rubbed her own shoulders by crossing her arms over her chest and let out a significantly long sigh.

“Well, there you are… I guess I can’t… be too upset if you were almost crushed by a giant metal predatory bird that shouts open holes in brick… I was getting worried about you, if I’m being honest. If anyone would know the way out of here, it’d be you… this place is getting more & more dangerous. I keep feeling like I’m surrounded by static. There’s something nearby and I don’t know how to get there. You’ve got… like… some kind of directional luck shindig going on with those crazy hips of yours, so you need to get us out of here, Eli Egg! I’m… relying on you!”

“Lucky you, I know exactly the right way to get where we need to…” they said, nodding emphatically and gripped both of Ezra’s entirely human hands in their own. She tried not to think about it, since they also likely didn’t know Ezra was alive either. They began to point sharply to a door nearby. “I think I might have a shortcut…”

Throwing open a large set of French doors, both doors shattered glass when they shoved against the wall, almost blocking their path back in a symbolic kind of way. Eli Egg stepped forward, their fingers laced into Ezra’s as they pulled her through to the Space Hallway’s Door of Perception. A single beam of light glimmered out from a crack in the door, showing a simplistic-looking Azure Key and slipped it in her pocket. She went to show it to Eli Egg, but found that they already had their hand on the gilded filigreed handle in the dim darkness of the Doorway of Perception.

“I’m going through first… I think when I do this… it’s going to send you somewhere else, somewhere far, somewhere… you need to be. I think this same power I’ve got… this strange teleporting… I think if you believe in me and channel that power to yourself, you can do it too,” Eli Egg noticed.

Ezra produced the key, but Eli Egg gripped it between their fingers, charging it with a strange whispering gray energy that started to push out of their heart, leaking between their fingers as it started to float like little shadowy flames to engulf the Door of Perception.

“I’m going first. When I do, the Door will have enough charge to take you where you need to be. Just don’t worry and be kind when you get there. It might be a while until I see you again… so… I just want you to know that I believe in you. My heart wants to reach yours, to reach you, to speak with you. You’ll see me again, once this is all over. It’s not because I don’t want to see you, it’s because you’re an important part of this too. You’re going to save everyone! You’ll be the woman who turns the tide of this battle and destroys Castle Stymphalia! I’ll keep opening doors… until I find you again…” Eli Egg said, blowing her a kiss and then opening the Door of Perception, now burning with a fierce grey bonfire.

Ezra thought this was exaggerated, but Eli was certainly some “kind” of romantic type, so she felt a little flattered at least about their peculiar energy level. As the door opened, a plume of red sand flew out, like a pressure-plate releasing and a puff of it popping out. It settled quickly and the two were gone…

~~~~~

Wind whipped around Eli Egg as they walked forward and started to cast out upon the crimson desert as they could spot waving hands in the distance, great horns blowing as they pervaded forth, pressing on and on to approach what soon was clear to be a cave. They couldn’t see through the roaring, smashing sandstorm that they were only carefully shifting both boots through the sand across a thin isthmus, sand flowing like an hourglass to either side. Unseen to either side, cliffs diving down into great ravines. Upon a sturdy step ever progressing, Eli was soon met by warm hands of many lengthy arms. Swaddled in thick brown clothes and looking out softly into the night, the sandstorm passed as Eli Egg stepped into the Martian Rotunda of the Thrice-Blessed Lothars. The Lothars, tall, long-armed creatures of severe intelligence and somewhat mild emotional acceptance of all things. Many claimed they could see the future or read minds, both of which were more or less true. Their chanting and ascetic ways led them to a further enlightenment, somewhere beyond the vail of time’s boundaries, embracing a deep knowledge of time and of one another. As Eli Egg became more aware of them, they had outstretched their hand and shook one of the Lothar by the hand, the first ceremonial human contact with the head cloister of the Thrice-Blessed Lothars.

“We have been sharing our power with you to let you move across spacetime as you needed. This ability of yours will not go away, but it can be turned off when preferred. You will enjoy the human feeling of opening doors to known places and not a new, adventurous journey ahead of you. We are here to help. We hold the secret to stopping Red Nightmare. It is by our powers combined that we were able to channel you here… and by your powers we will return with you to war-torn Saturn. You are our connection to humanity, to Earth, to the rest of the Solar System. You are a cardinal point between many things now, Eli Egg. From the caves of the Olympus Mons, we are here to help stop the Space Wizard Concern. Ezra will be going where she is needed, just like you are. Lead us to Saturn, that we can plant new inspiration. We believe that arriving there, we will transcend to a higher form of hive mind alongside the Saturnine and the amazing Crown Princess of Saturn.”

Stepping down from a glittering dais that was colored like the spheres of the celestial maps of areas Eli Egg did not recognize came the Lothar Council, three tall-standing Lothar judges who sought the direction of the miracle that was Eli Egg… Turning back around, Eli Egg saw the door they walked from, across a chasm with a thin isthmus of stone holding up across it. Gripping on both of Eli’s entirely human arms, they picked them up and began to slowly spirit them across the chasm and back to the door. Gripping the large bars of the big metal hatch on it, slowly unlocking a door locked shut for years and transporting them across the stars, emissaries of a newfound peace spreading throughout the Solar System…

~~~~~

As the grey flame burned and the Door of Perception opened into an accessible Space Hallway, Ezra Von Qlarion stepped out on to the gold metal floor of an unfamiliar palatial complex. Standing amid tall columns and muscular metal statues were a significant and disturbing amount of guards, each one a rippling Adonis that make would Olympic Champions weep in mere comparison, filled with shame at their inexperience. She soon found almost every guard had golden skin, rippling black locks that trailed down their backs and a highly masculine structure. Upon each head, a red-eyed helm with a respirator each rested down to their shoulders. None of them seemed to notice her in any way, standing at attention with hands gripped around tridents that seemed to arc with radiating electricity. She noticed what seemed to be a distinct lack of women among their numbers, but had just presumed that they would be elsewhere in some strange, gilt seraglio of the stars. After seventeen minutes of walking down a very long and expansive staircase into a palatial foyer, she began starting to get winded at the phenomenal size of the edifice she was in. She soon grew tired and rested on a small raised cylinder that wasn’t particularly comfortable. She groaned mildly and mused aloud.

“Can’t anyone drive around here? I’m getting a bit… worn out just trying to find anyone else!” she insisted, grabbing one guard by the lapel of his large toga… only to find him picking her up to his shoulder and shrug whenever he required direction, carrying her wherever she was needed.

She was a little off-put by his robotic quietness and his obedient nature, but was willing to accept any help she could get, since finding anyone else that was moving, talking or doing much of anything beyond standing at attention. Soon among the massive halls, she found a small creature that resembled a cow that was only about waist-high to her height at the shoulder, but had wide hooves like that of a horse. A procession of fourteen of them were spread out across the threshold of the gigantic golden doors. As they opened, a sky of gunmetal swathed before her, soldiers standing at attention chaining out into the distance as far as she could see. The sentinels of this gaudy palace stood unmoving apart from her escort. She found that her escort was more or less unwilling to step over the tiny cattle milling about and blocking their path.

“Can you take me to where the other women are?” she asked, slowly, like a foolish tourist. Her escort began to shiver and shake, as if he were being told to cut his own throat.

“Is that… a problem?” she asked, bemused by his sudden trembling as he fell to his knees, both hands holding her waist so as to keep her safe, setting her on the ground. He looked untouched by his sudden sharp dip. “Can you not… speak? Do you need permission or something?” she asked, rubbing her temple as she felt a headache coming on.

She was less than impressed when he nodded softly. She was surprised that he seemed to understand her, despite being some ostensibly she’d never been there in her entire life.

“You can speak…” she offered carefully.

“There are no women on this planet. The Jovian race is entirely masculine in nature,” her escort reported, pressing a fist to his chest in a sort of salute that made him only look a little bit like a bowing waiter.

“What is your name… uh… soldier?”
“We are not permitted identity anymore. Our leaders have shown that individuality is a curse that kept us in constant competition in every stretch of life. Our culture we are not permitted to speak of.”

“Is that something you feel… bad about?” she asked, unsure what sort of stance he had held to his supposedly forbidden culture or if that meant that there was something untoward about their ways.

“We are not permitted to have such emotions.”

“Why are you answering my questions?”
“We are not permitted to speak falsely or to disobey.”

“Disobey who?”
“Our leaders, the guiding light of the Jovians.”
“The Jovians? Then… this is Jupiter?”
“Yes, we of the Lightning League numbered once among thousands. Now we stand in deference to the orders of our leaders. The Space Wizards have shown us that obedience is most important towards all beings that approach.”
“How many other beings are there on Jupiter?”

“Some animals that we were once permitted to hunt, but to hunt is forbidden as is the relevance of its place in our society.”

“So who do you take orders from?”
“Our leaders provide all orders. As they are the only individuals upon Jupiter, they decide the destiny of every tournament, sortie and battalion. We do as they order, since only they provide orders.”
“Then why are you taking orders from me?”
“You are an individual, you must also be one of our leaders. You are a Space Wizard, are you not?” her escort asked.

“I guess I’m just going to call you… Ganymede, the only male moon of Jupiter! Far as I know… At least the biggest one…” she reasoned, though Ganymede understood little more than that she would refer to him as such. He was not used to being identified so much as ordered.

“These mooing Ionian Beast-Steers are considered sacred by our leaders. We used to eat them very often, but it is now considered to be uncouth and punishable by disintegration or challenge of the Space Hallway.”

“The Space Hallway? That’s… how I got here!”
“You are surely then a Space Wizard! Only they have such in the ways of traveling the stars. We Jovians would never leave planetside due to the Great Storms that covered our upper atmosphere. Long before in the times away from now, the Space Wizards promised us if we put aside our competitive ways and submitted to their blessed leadership, they seal all of the Jovian sky in metal, sealing out the light of the Sun, replaced with a Supreme Engine of obstructive quarks in binary stable repulsion. Thus, the Titano-Drome was sealed and the Great Storms were quelled into a great container,” Ganymede exposited, as if he were commonly ordered to explain such stories… or worse, that he felt joy at explaining the source of their conquest. “Upon us each were required the Helms of Tyranny, to encourage our obedience and reward our bravery to continue our service in our blessed leaders.”

“So you… won’t move the little cow?” Ezra said through gritted teeth, tapping her heel angrily at an increasing speed. She had tried pushing it herself, but it had seemed that those old Wyoming tall tales about the rural night mischief known as “cow tipping” was likely not possible here.

Finding a silver broom with platinum bristles, Ezra tries to use the broomstick to urge the mooing Ionian Beast-Steer into opening a path between themselves, as they were lined up almost directly head-to-tail, their paintbrush tails carefully grooming one another. One of the Ionians was nudged into moving and began to take place, but it’s large dulled horns were ungainly without trimming. Ezra could notice there were goring marks on the nearby massive pillars, whereupon each of the Steers were grinding their horns against it. With head turning, the Steer pushed into Ezra’s left shoulder with a speed that was sudden, but not particularly rough. This was enough to send her spinning off her feet and almost shoving her face into the almost literally-sculpted look of Ganymede’s ads, both hands pressing forward to stop herself, shoving him in the solar plexus. Much like humans, the Jovians metallic skin was not entirely pervasive enough to stop an attack that would, even accidentally, shove the breath out of the lower lungs of a Jovian League Champion. This happened to the case as Ganymede stumbled backward and clocked his helmed head on one of the large metallic pillars, leaving a large dent in the side of it. His body began to wriggle around like a beetle on its back, limbs of such strength incapable of finding purchase easily to exercise leverage into their escape. Ezra gasped softly that she’d apparently injured her new sworn commander and picked the broom up, trying to rush forward, only for her to stumble over a very muscular-looking Jovian rat. In the flail, the broomstick ended up knocking into the bottom of the top of the Helm of Tyranny, crashing it upwards in a way that just barely avoided smashing him in the nose. Listing forward, Ganymede’s hair fluttered back, a thick coagulation of sweat around his brow, eyes weary with disuse. His cold onyx eyes glared up into Ezra’s and she felt a bit of a twinge inside her heart, skipping a beat. She was astonished at his uniform, yet impressive visage as Ganymede stood again, running his hands through his hair in a slow manner that resembled a shampoo commercial or a sketchy photo shoot.

“Obedience… is no longer required… the Curse of the Helm is freed to me! We are a people once more!” Ganymede raised both hands with purpose, realizing that removing these Helms was likely easier than anyone had anticipated, likely since the Space Wizards commonly were the only ones to open the Space Hallway and would occasionally pitch only the most powerful of warriors to attempt fighting the Space Hallway.

No Jovian had yet to best such a foe, as it certainly had a strange, stale approach to most sports. Breathing once more the fresh air of Jupiter, Ganymede felt all four of his expansive lungs filled for the first time in years. The respirators of the Helms of Tyranny were made to forcibly feed each Jovian Champion a dose of breathable oxygen enough to fuel only the lower lungs, making them sluggish and shifting in movement. Due to their exemplary physical shape (by human / robot standards,) they were able to move quickly, but still in a hazy, drifting manner. Quickly, Ganymede began to liberate more and more Jovians from the Helms of Tyranny until at least 20 had taken up their lightning tridents and began to chant about their freedom and their imminent destruction of the Space Wizards. Ganymede was able to calm the fury of the Jovians freed, reminding them that the Space Wizards weren’t on this planet and that removing each Helm would like take a ridiculous amount of time and effort and could set off alarms that they had been removed from their obedience-demanding helms. It was Ezra Von Qlarion who stood forward, proving to the Jovian race the strength, power and beauty of women (all things common and lauded at the greatest Jovian sports championships) as she spoke forth upon the squadron of enraged Lightning Leaguers.

“Look here! In my hand I hold the Azure Key! This key will unlock the Door of Perception, rendering it weak and easily trodden under your bootheels! It’s the bottom of the ninth and we’ve got one last hail-mary free-throw to the bowler and if we’re gonna get a two-ten split or a clean spare, we need to move in fast, rush in hard and take down the enemy! This place we’re going to is made of weak stone and most of the Space Wizards are already dead, I promise you!” she insisted, standing up on Ganymede’s shoulders to make an important speech that quickly.

A slow, chiming clap, like the ringing of large bells, began to herald her invasion plan. Ezra took a deep breath and looked at one of the Ionian Cows, which one of the Jovians picked up under an arm and began to carry it off as needed for provisions of the upcoming battle. Within a few quick Jovian hours, the Lightning League’s greatest twenty Champions armed with their most lucky and trustworthy Lightning Tridents, hungry for battle and out to break down.

“Um, first things first, do not attack anyone you do not recognize as a Space Wizard or a Titano-Beast! A lot of my friends are in this Castle on distant Saturn and you must protect them!” Ezra instructed.

After they together enjoyed the triumph of destroying the obstructive quark relay of the Supreme Engine, she began taking some few Jovian hours to draw out crude sketches of everyone she had remembered from the initial storming of Castle Stymphalia, especially Kamen Spider, Eli Egg, DJ Kiryū, Beaglesaurus and the Robosaurus Siblings. She assumed that they wouldn’t attack Medical Jet Jaguar, likely not realizing that it isn’t being piloted by two people, but also not realizing it “could” be a “threat” theoretically. After a cursory study of the war plan, the Lightning League stood on tenterhooks as she unlocked the Doorway of Perception… and lightning poured like flood waters on to Castle Stymphalia… The Great Eye of the Titano-Drome of Jupiter shut to onlookers and the Great Storms, powered by the planet’s own unstable weather, weaponized to destroy all onlookers to the Jovian surface. The Controlling Colliders that powered the Helms of Tyranny were disabled and an onslaught of Jovian Champions stormed through, racing in, blasting through walls and storming down doors even thrice their size as if they were made of thin sheet-metal. With already a raining storm of brick and rubble abound, their blasts would start to destroy the Castle Stymphalia all around them, keeping a general eye out for Ezra Von Qlarion’s compatriots so as not to spear them with tridents.

~~~~~

Emerging through the Door of Perception, the Lothars stood forth, floating off their heels, robes swishing as they crossed their arms in a dramatic fashion and stepped forward to find Red Nightmare, bathed in blood and waiting for their presence. Eli Egg, standing aloft the dais, took both of his entirely human hands and placed either one on Red Nightmare’s cheeks, sticky with fresh blood and a layer of dried blood under that. He whispered a simple few words in his ear, the only order that Red Nightmare would never be given, the only gift given a creature like himself these many years, left alive within the heart of Pluto, never blinking, trapped in a white nowhere of immobile mental simmering and silent screams, unheard from the mostly unpopulated snow-brown surface of Pluto’s heavily iced outer crust. Only in realizing the release from this burden, Red Nightmare fell to his knees, embracing his first peace, the first gift offered him in his miserably created life. His eyes, for once, closed and he nodded in agreement, the solution so simple.

“Get some rest. You need to sleep,” Eli Egg told him.

Red Nightmare slept for the first time in a life of decades sealed in eternal wakefulness. Without any ability to sleep before, the charge of the psychic combined strength of the Lothar Martians were enough, along with the singular hand of gentle kindness in his life dolent, to let him slip into his first and most necessary slumber. A lifetime of pounding heart, of nightmare visions, of endless unblinking stillness in the bitter permafrost, soothed as he slept, leaning into his own arms as the Jovian Lightning League spewed forth from the other side of the Doorway of Perception, forcing them to quickly turn around. He noticed that they looked much like him, brilliant and metallic and thought they he had been visited by some unknown kin he had yet to identify. Tumbling into slumber, he was placid and Red Nightmare lay down, dreaming his first dreams.

Chapter Text

Chapter 22 — The Space Wizards, Concerned No Longer (Because They’re Dead)

or

Shock!! The Righteous Fury of the Lightning League?!

A hand extended out from the void to Red Nightmare, the first greeting by a person who could understand his most inner desires and his most salient fantasies. Who else could have such an empathy for a walking weapon, a creature that only knew destruction. The gift of sleep was not just a phenomenal psychic sleep-flogging from twenty powerful Martian mental masters drilling through all resistance with a weakness he could not ever understand, having never slept before. Gripping a violent hand of destruction around the hand within the void, a union of acceptance, of brotherhood, was dignified. Finding it was a hand capable of holding his without being destroyed by his fiery, red hot metallic skin or his innate ultra-strength that could crush moons within his grasp. As such, it was only a being beyond his understanding entirely that could be as powerful as him. And therefore, only something he could not imagine could be stronger than him, within a dream. Princess Jerma, Champion of Saturn’s Strength, was as strong as he could imagine it to be, and that, of itself, was enough to match or even double the might of Red Nightmare. His strength was as much as it was required to be. If it was strong enough to be firm with a hand that was made to reroute planets and reorder satellites of the heavens into an impure cosmic coalition, then all that would be required of him, here in his realm, to stop Red Nightmare. Standing forth, the scale of a god before a man, a tool before a craftsman, Princess Jerma, the Prime Sleeper, stood in nothing, his domain in lockstep with his will. Much like how the Space Wizard Concern had been cursed with an inability to sleep altogether, he could, with the merest thought, bless Red Nightmare into a coma-like unlife from which he would never awaken, alive but unmoving, and all of shouting and wrath contained within, a dream that never ended. A death sentence from the waking world. Princess Jerma, Judge of Saturn’s Wisdom, stood on high and smiled down upon Red Nightmare, seeing not the rampaging destroyer, but a frightened, helpless child, confused, scared and mostly tired. A golem of rage created to reorder the Solar System to the needs of the Space Wizards and a bullet to fire at their enemies, a blight released upon almost any life encountered by him. Now, he was allowed thought, rest, peace, a mind that did not scream, a skin that did not burn, eyes that were closed and breath that was soft, deep and refreshing. Everything denied him biologically in the waking world was his own now and in the absence of knowledge, the very definition of understanding, he had learned shame in what he had done, the scale of his actions, a madness cured. Everything he never understood was set before him, all questions answered, all dreams within his grasp. Looking up, his eyes, which never before had ducts for tears to flow, wept in shame at his blind rage, and cried for guidance from a being that had shown him the level of his wretchedness. A child and a guardian. A student and a teacher. A scholar and a professor. A mage and a wizard. An apprentice and a master.

“My gift to you will be short, as all dreams are and still yet not long enough. You will need to wake up again soon, I know, it’s blows. It’s a tough world out there, and there’s a lot of people in it. You don’t need to punch everything you see and you will awaken without the screaming in your mind that has driven you. My gift, a good night’s rest in fourteen minutes, will give you the benefits of a full restful night in a time unknown. When you awaken, you will have purpose in your heart of nightmares. You are made from pieces of Ephialtes and you will live as long as you desire, his living heart has every right to live as any dream does. If you so choose to reunite with the Lord of Nightmares, you will be welcomed as a true Nightmare, some dream of battle, some glorious defeat, some athletic achievement that only could be dreamed of… You will become more in my world of dreams, but for now, you will need to go. Return to Saturn and find me in the waking world, but second and really a very important part: you’re going to take every ounce of that anger that has fueled you and you are going to need to blow up these guys.”

Behind the Princess, a large tapestry unfurled with large spotlights displaying the almost familiar face of the Space Wizard Roger Glover.

“One of your creators! ‘Twas he that built your body, made of wolfram skin and sinew of storms! Your mind was made of living anti-cyclones, charging at speeds within that no living being could enjoy. The storm within your mind is calm now, the storm within your being, you must learn to control. You will take your time on Jupiter, among people like you. The Great Red Storm is what built your very body, with it contained, Jupiter has flourished as a society in the sunlight again… with you among them, you will learn kinship, for you are as Jovian as they are. You are an avatar of Jupiter.”

“I… Understand…” Red Nightmare gripped his head in anguish, walking forward along the path of learning that Princess Jerma had set before him.

Before him next was the Second Tapestry, showing forth Prof. Dave Mustaine, the Psycho-Biologic Taskmaster, Defeater of Ephialtes, Enemy of the Sleeping, Driven Mad.

“In the judgment of Saturn, Prof. Mustaine will serve sentence for the rest of his life on Neo-Hades, the planet of his own twisted creation. For ever cosmic flaw that Roger Glover forced into being to reassemble the orrery of our system, Mustaine was able to dislocate the dream world itself, disappear the mighty Morpheús in the advent of the death of the Prime Sleeper, to meddle with the pith of gods and to use it to create a weapon that was fueled by raw, destructive and powerful fear. Mustaine has already been met with the Accursed Neversleep and shall never be visited by anyone within my Twin Kingdoms.”

“Do I have a right to exist?” Red Nightmare clutched at his lustrous hair and felt only a slow, steady, roughly 79-86 bpm pulse-rate in his veins of crimson gales, a heart stolen, but still his own. It was not as if he could give it up, but to feel such pain within it… “I already understand that this crime is part of my creation, but there is nothing that can be separated, can it? I am… myself! Unless you can give me another heart, mine must remain.”

“Perhaps you can grow one of your own…” Princess Jerma smiled, a placid mirth upon his face.

Before him next was the Third Tapestry, showing forth Ritchie Blackmore, the Scientist of Death, the Plutonian Destroyer, the Warden of Red Nightmare, the Keeper of the Beast, the Master of Thieves.

“In the judgment of Saturn, Blackmore will face severe punishment from the powers I have enabled. He is your third of fathers, the one who created every part of your external form. Pilfering his hands into the corrupted anti-government of Pres. Jaleel White, he stole plans for a living weapon of great power that had only once before been created. The same process that was used to create the human known as ‘Fleet Admiral Superior of the Gonzales Space Navy’ was used to contain the Great Red Storm, to trap it in your heart, to pump it through your engineered veins. You are, in some ways, a creature like him in face, in form. He is older, but were he younger than now, were his features fairer, with your face not contorted with rage, you resemble him closely.”

From his pocket, Princess Jerma opened a book that Red Nightmare could not read, but it featured a picture of then-Captain Superior shaking hands with Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, who was almost smiling in a respectable manner for the Fleet Admiral and one of Capt. Superior’s closest friends.

“This is Warren Poldark Reginald Samson Harley. On another world that you have never seen, he was a great fighter in a mighty war who fought bravely for his country. After the war was won, he was injured severely trying to remove exploding discs from a foreign land. Science from the Moon Princess was given to build him a new body of metal and ever since, his rank has increased higher and higher. As everyone considered him the best of their race, the humans, they named him further ‘Superior.’ In a time after, his nation asked for him to undergo the greatest sacrifice of all: to have his body altered again so he may travel through space and survive on other nations, an explorer of the stars. After five years’ time living a desolate, hermited life of quiet study in the wastes of distant planets, he was given a greater offer and a heavier duty. In the waking world, he is now a traveler of space. You are like him. You have faced suffering, trauma, destruction, anger, pain… he is of a brother to you. If you ever seek that you need companionship of family, you will live with the gift that I have told you of him. He is now yours to find.”

“Thank you for this gift…” Red Nightmare replied, plaintive in the emptiness of his former rage.

“But anyway, Blackmore is going to get what’s coming to his ass really damn soon, so don’t worry too hard about him. Try hanging out on Jupiter a little. I think they’ll understand someone of your… build more there. They will be able to temper your anger, to control your rage and turn it into drive, a purpose of skill, glory and prowess. You may prove stronger than them, which they will surely insist popularity and fame among them. They will see you as one of their own. They will be your community. This is my final gift to you in your great night’s sleep. A dream that you will not forget. The first dream. The dream of Red Nightmare: a dream of freedom.”

Red Nightmare awoke in the ruins of Castle Stymphalia.

~~~~~

Led to the throne room once more, Command MX8 knelt before Queen Tyra of the North Tharkan Tribal Unions. From her eyes dripped tears that were not of the lust of battle or the thrill of conquest. A deep sorrow had overcome the Queen, unrelated entirely to the Waters of Mars, now almost entirely forgotten. In her beckoning hands, she held as many ducets of honor as she could towards him.

“Commander MX7 is dead. His report has explained the Waters of Mars and his mission was completed. You are now Commander MX8. Step forward and be graceful in your genuflection,” she bade. The highest of honors presented to him, he stood, approached and knelt before her, hands planted on the ground, his head hung in deference to her anointment.

The dripping oil, still replicating ever forward from the Great Tree of Old Mars, stroke seven times upon his head, then six more. Thirteen was already auspicious a number of Mars. He would be no longer a commander, he would be nobility, a higher class entirely. A Hero of Mars. Their Greatest Warrior. And yet still, another. Fourteen ducets of honor were present now. His helm removed, they sunk into the exterior of his face, four under each eye, three above. Each gem of the ducet of honor was, in shape, much like a lapis lazuli formed into a dark tear or Prince Rupert drop, adorning his face, for any Martian to see. Lifting his head adorned and anointed, Queen Tyra’s gaze met his directly. In the old days, this was a death sentence to share such deep and direct eye contact.

“Upon my rest, I was visited with a tactical quandary. This was after I had read the reports of your predecessor’s noble sacrifice. I dreamed upon a world apart from ours, a world where the Commander had fallen in vain. The creature of destruction, Red Nightmare, his hands held wide, would crash the Earth’s Moon into us anew once more, this time to annihilate Mars forever. Commander MX7 was correct to sacrifice himself to stop that thing. Thus, you are anointed fourteen ducets of honor as will every member of your genetic line beyond you, lest till they earn more still! Even I was visited with a fear I could not restrain from holding great emotion over… within of course! There was no escape from this scenario of battle. The destruction vested upon Mars would return in full quarter and destroy us all, yet for you. You are our Greatest Warrior. The luxury of choice may even be bestowed upon your elevation. Your genetic line may indicate a preternature for control. You could join the General’s Council, retire to the most relaxing of palaces, or… should you wish, join my harem of acceptable husbands… which you may rank high…er… within…” she offered, her domineering glare subtle in its lack of motion, genteel in her unblinking gaze.

“I am blessed with your honors, my Queen. I will… require consideration. The luxury of choice is a stranger to me still. I am all a feeling hot, of blood! Rich for combat, wild for the thrill of bloodshed! An invasion force of my own would be welcomed and my own fleet once more would be the height of my venture. You offer before me a world of pleasantry? Of rest? I am a warrior, I will not be stood forward in some tower, hemming and pushing the pieces of my military around to decide the high strokes of war! I am a vanguard who will wrest to Mars what is ours by right of strength and skill! I have found in my newest visions much! The Jovian Titano-Drome has opened! The Space Wizards now hold us back no longer! What’s more, I have vast intelligence about their defenses, my Queen! They are a men of sport! They compete in all stripes of manner, intellectual, physical, intimate, political and even leisurely, all things on Jupiter are considered a form of competition. Their entire culture is based in the strength of the individual and therefore, they hold highest their strongest and most skilled athletes as being their lauded. Thus, they are already more than willing to commit to trial by combat! If I am able to challenge their leader in single combat, I will with one mind-piercing strike, seize Jupiter in the name of a new Martian Empire! I would become your lance, my Queen, I will only need my own craft, I require no backup! I will take a skeleton crew along to accompany me, but I promise you by swear of my life… Jupiter shall be under the chitinous boot of Mars! I will consider myself worthy of your hand in union perhaps when I am an Imperial Governor of Mars, leader of your grandest Martian colony!”

Queen Tyra’s brow softened and she straightened back both of her entirely Martian shoulders together, rubbing her temples softly again.

“You’re going to invade Jupiter and seize the whole planet into an interplanetary empire led by the North Tharkan Tribal Unions?” Queen Tyra expressed at him. Her mental tone was clear in its emotive heaviness. She was confused, somewhere between astonished and impressed. Her offer of union with a soldier of his rank was permissible enough, but had been mostly made in jest. She knew that he was of no puerile mind to suggest otherwise, but to think that he would want to already leap so readily to battle with such mirth and vigor… She was at least a little happy to know that he was willing to take his promotion, ask for something generally unreasonable that only he would profit from, would cost her almost nothing and, knowing well that he was still replaceable, and then leave without needing to bother her much more than everything else had been. She would breath a soft sigh and recline back to her throne to hear his apparent mad new crusade in mind, manic in the mind of a freshly-minted warrior.

“It would be a great honor! I will show them elimination by my sidearm or they will fall to the poison of my shoulder! I am a soldier and I will only need fight one man, to kill one man, I shall become ruler of the Jovians! I find it at least worthy of studying, though I am more a Martian of action. They don’t even wish to hold a tournament over it, something they love almost as much as their consistent scheduling. They offer single combat against one champion! Such an easy target begets that the ring of control be on your hand,” Commander MX8 declared, feeling a horrifying new emotion upon his face.

“Ah yes, you noticed that… We are attempting something… new this time around. We have found a way to further weaponize the head! You recall the White Martian Apes that border the steppes below, round the Valley of Dor?”

“The man-killers that hold dominion over the wilds, the blight of the Pale Martians?”

“The same! We have dedicated a new mandibular apparatus to the Martian form!”

“I don’t understand…” he groaned.

He had never groaned before. Breath would usually flow through subtle slits in the face, near about where the nose might be located on a Pale Martian (or a human, for that matter.) Speech was considered an art on Mars, but language was a mental practice, a form of learning, a way to learn the strategies and tactics of the past to improve wars of the present. But speaking was something different. Commander MX8 was astonished when exposed to a small drone camera flashing near his face, presenting a reflected image for him on a screen below, embraced by a light as the anointing oil dripped from his face. Seventeen shark-like teeth, pointed not like needles, but like that of a being made to bite. A mouth for a weapon. A brick of flesh in his throat that permitted him to speak words like Pale Martians did: through teeth and a chitinous approximation of lips. His Queen had offered given him the gift uncommon among his kind: a smile with which to show his pleasure. A mouth with which to express disdain. A new kind of Martian further than before. He would probably be expected to start eating again. Earlier models were not expect to “last long enough” to require feeding (and usually didn’t,) but biological armor was able to channel nutrients through implanted pods in his forearm or inhalant meals. Now he could feast on the meat of his enemies, gorge himself on the splendors of his victory.

“My Queen… I shall conquer Jupiter! In the name of Mars!” Commander MX8 spoke, his first words and in her praise.

“Then go… in the name of Mars…” Queen Tyra bid, nodding and shutting her eyes. And he did.

~~~~~

Staggering off of the edge of Devil’s Tower, Prof. Dave Mustaine’s beaten form had managed, pushing out of the shattered bricks. His own biological magic meant that he could heal himself. Yet he couldn’t merely give himself sleep. To stop the drilling headaches, he had screwed one of his own Helms of Tyranny, though deactivated (to a normal, tight-fitting helm.) It’s consistent pressure on specific points of his head were able to channel his pain into a full-body pain that he could displace. His staggering boots trudged him to the edges of Sundance. To hide his true identity (and especially his tight leather wizard’s uniform was pretty hard to get out of after breaking as many ribs as he had. Within his silver helmet, he clutched close around his shoulders a mantle of rugged and depersonalizing brown. With each step further, he pushed further to the mansion upon the hill. In the tallest room, looking out of the great eye-shaped window over Sundance, Wyoming, into Saturn beyond, Ian Paice stood. Gripping him by the shoulder of his injured hand, Prof. Mustaine was able to stop any infection from spreading, but there was likely no way to grow his hand back too quickly for now. Instead, he smiled angrily and stepped to his face.

“Ian… you cannot escape the rest of us. We are your burden now. You are one of us, there’s no backing out. We’re leaving Saturn now. Exile is the only mercy left us. And that comes at my cleverness. But not before I make with you, a trade! I will trade you a portion of my pain… which you know I can provide for you… and for it, I will give you back your hand! A silver glove for Ian Paice, the last of the great Space Wizards! Come on, buddy… You want your hand back, don’t you? I’ll give you one! Take my hand!” Prof. Mustaine insisted as Ian Paice glared angrily into his eyes.

“You’re a Space Wizard too… so I can’t be the last. But I have a feeling if I don’t say yes… you won’t take me with you… you’ll just leave me here…”

“It’s going to hurt either way. Do you want all the pain now? Or do you want to get what you deserve instead?” Prof. Mustaine said, removing his own black glove to extend a bushy red-haired hand.

Taking it was like a feeling of medical electricity, jolting through his body all at once. Like the opposite of a defibrillation, made to jolt the heart into a less healthy or damaged state. His dark biological magic had concentrated the rerouted pain out of his shoulders and into his hand. A bone-splitting strike rattled through Paice as if he had been struck by lightning on the inside, or if he’d been standing in Jello or inside a lake (when being struck by lightning.) It was almost a cruel prank, but his body was already weak and struggling. Reaching up, a new, silver hand stood upon his arm, a new hand to suit his body. It hurt just like a real limb already. He couldn’t sleep either.

The distribution of pain was no doubt going to be the newest trade of the dwindling Space Wizard Concern. DJ Kiryū had blasted Wizard Lee down with deadly radiation, Kamen Spider had tricked Wizard Gillan into stabbing their own power source, disabling the Doorway of Perception and killing him, Wizard Paice had his hand crushed off by the Fall of the Stymphalian Birds, Wizard Vedder had frozen and cracked into the void of space where once Jupiter stood, Strongbeard “the Wise” had blown up with the Chrome Roc, fallen victim to the most fatal of Uranian poison care packages, leaving only four. It had become clear soon that Castle Stymphalia had been destroyed in the battle and the Titano-Beasts had mostly been ripped apart. The Helms of Tyranny had been disabled and the Titano-Drome had been shut down. Jupiter and Saturn were soon to fall. Paice looked up to the smiling Prof. Mustaine, who felt a little better… if only because his left arm had started throbbing painfully. With a sudden forceful fist, he drew his hand hard into a ball and smashed it into his arm, shattering ganglia and reconnecting his own nerves to stop the pain. He would have to remember to put some armor over the area, since he wouldn’t be feeling it anymore. For almost a whole second, he ventured to think what would happen when he ran out of places for the pain to go… and looked over to Paice… hungrily. If he didn’t end up killing him, he could dispense the undying pain of neversleep upon him. As long as someone else was there, he could put the hurt in them instead. Paice slapped Prof. Mustaine away with his newly “earned” hand and stood up, peering down at him.

“You’re crazy if you think I’d stick with you! You’re the worst of them! You’re the Lich of Biology, why should I trust you as far as you could throw yourself?” Paice challenged, having almost immediately lashed out with the same gift he’d just been given against his former ally.

“It’s me or it’s them. I can take you out of here. You don’t mind coming with me, do you?” Prof. Mustaine said, his shark’s smile almost chattering with eagerness. He extended his hand again as if it hadn’t directly hurt the first time he’d shaken it seconds earlier. “It’s going to hurt anyways. Let me hurt you and it’ll hurt a lot less. I’m almost a doctor…”

“I can still sense the others. I can understand you cutting and running, depending on what they’re throwing at you…” Prof. Mustaine threatened, stalking around Paice in pacing circles.

His own head had started pounding and no rest could be achieved anymore. Ian Paice, feeling torn and betrayed, followed by someone who would only provide constant pain or the very slight risk of justice not being immediate death. A slighter part of him internally weighed pros and cons of beating Prof. Mustaine to death in the prime of his chemical dominance, his own adrenaline fueling him alone.

“How… much more?”

“We can discuss it later. Wherever we go, we don’t need to be… too close. You’ll just have to know that when I come to see you… the pain will return. Because I’ll give it to you. You’ll have my pain!” Prof. Mustaine said, starting to become earnest almost in his bold madness. “Are you coming with me? Or are you staying? Facing everything you’ve done? The people you’ve tried to destroy? You were the one who destroyed Mercury, don’t you think that I forgot that!” he said in a way that sounded less threatening as much as he were encouraging him. Smiling more and more down at him.

Ian Paice noticed that he’d stopped blinking. And that so had Prof. Mustaine’s daggers of eyes. It was feeling like an atrophying muscle. Eyelids that didn’t droop, they just kept open. Tiredness was fatigue, but without sleepiness, even together, were they any farther from delirium with what they had? Mustaine tore back a tarpaulin in the corner of a dark room in the dusty mansion’s basement, revealing a small wooden door that looked more like a dumbwaiter. Considering there was mostly storage in the basement, it had little use, especially with the clutter covering it beforehand. Prof. Mustaine opened the door and revealed a small hatch under it. Pressing into it with one hand, it activated a small unseen button that opened a long cylinder.

“Our ticket out of here! I created this baby a while back to maroon you stupid idiot suckers if you ever turned your dog backs on me! I was keeping it a secret in case I needed to strand your ass here! Tapping into the deep, geothermal power of Saturn, I got me one last trick up my sleeve! You and me, we’re going to fucking Neptune! I created a base there to farm minerals from their ocean over a very long course of time… several millennia back, I did it! We’ll have all sorts of fishing rights too!” Prof. Mustaine ranted, descending in a small disc-like elevator in the floor next to Ian Paice.

“So you built an escape launcher? How is this going to work?”

“Imagine it like a volcano with a bullet in it! We drop in, it drops in, it goes off, we go off, escape velocity, the rest is star charts and basic navigation skills, you act like you didn’t pack a sextant with you…”

Ian Paice looked into his left rear pocket and found he did indeed have his sextant there and noted that they were generally pointed towards Neptune for the next few weeks.

“Then let’s get it started! Gear it up!” Paice shouted.

Rustling about for some ten minutes with the instrumentation of panels and switches and buttons, a cockpit opened up and a large artillery-style cannon was pointed out into space. Ian Paice, smiling back, reached forward and sprayed an aerosol-can glue in the face of Prof. Mustaine. He began trying to shove at his jawline to make sure his mouth stayed closed long enough for it to seal his airways with sprayable glue in time to catch him off-guard enough to suffocate him. Wresting free his helmet from his head, presuming that he’d used some sort of brain-probe to control his escape craft. Finding it was mostly a therapeutic item used to press points all over his head did relieve his headache (while giving him a sudden grinding pain in his wrist), Ian Paice settled into the cockpit and was blasted into space in a small, semi-cuboid craft hopefully on a correct path to Neptune… or anywhere really. Prof. Mustaine, the pain washing back over him, his madness sprang from his nostrils and dribbled from his lips. His throat soon became raw with screaming, both in being outwitted and in having his helmet stolen from him. Overwhelmed, he started punching holes in the walls of his disrepaired mansion, breaking mirrors and unscrewing anything attached together. In a maddened frenzy, the screams stopped when his throat gave out. He’d have to think of a new way to heal his throat on a hostile Saturn and reached back to the hatch that he had entered. Closing it from the inside, the door behind the tarpaulin sealed shut and quiet back into the wall, unseen in the dark again, seamless from the wall beside it. From the inside, Prof. Mustaine curled up into a ball and began rerouting his nerves again and again. He would have to create something to drain away his pain now… or find someone…

~~~~~

Delivering out his Colliding Hand (as he had before to have a tipple of wine earlier) was a chop sharp enough to slice through most things at a high-extreme speed, causing a sonic shockwave when it strikes, making Roger Glover one of the more deadly of the (few) Space Wizards left alive. At his back, the deadly Steel Jaculus coiled into a launching sting, ready to launch out and inflict poisonous death upon the outstretched hand of the Destroying Wizard, Roger Glover.

“You all have come far! You have slain my Titano-Beasts and I can hear the electric heartbeat of my captives, having come to riddle me with thunderbolts. You cannot step close enough to stop my Colliding Hands and you cannot approach my sensitive behind with the face of metal death on my back! If required, I will be the one that drags the rest down with me. I don’t mind being the last man standing here… It took me a lot of bloodshed to trick those fool Jovians! They only respect strength and rules, they see cheating as shameful and tricks as gimmicks. It was all too easy to convince them to stop their tournaments when I, the Emperor of Jupiter, demanded it of them! If they require the correction of Colliding Hands to learn their place, it shall be provided! Steel Jaculus, watch my 6… I will destroy everything before me… high noon!” Roger Glover declared, pointing ahead in front of him, concentrating his Colliding Hand chops into a powerful blast of his own reconcentrated qi that shot out like a handgun of blinding shards of metal, compressed into a high-speed plasma.

Against him stood Beaglesaurus, the Robosaurus Siblings and DJ Kiryū (as Kamen Spider had gone after Ritchie Blackmore personally) and already they could hear the smash of lightning against stone, cleaving through the Castle’s barricades like a knife through clarified butter. They wouldn’t need to hold him off for long, but with hands that could lop off any limbs that strike against them, he’d likely make for a rough opponent. The Steel Jaculus glanced its omnidirectional head towards Beaglesaurus and hissed, fangs bared, dripping with poison. Before any one of them could leap to each other in violent prelude, Medical Jet Jaguar punched yet another large hole in the wall behind them all, the machine’s deadly grin of promised medical need inherent in its wake splayed wide. However, it only stood there for some moments while the McElroy Brothers were glissendoing their hands across the control boards, hoping it would fire something useful at him. The mouth slowly opened a thin amount and it shot out a lengthy wrap of athletic bandage that didn’t seem particularly helpful or relevant. It didn’t even reach the Wizard Glover.

“Something that large is just going to be irritating to deal with. Steel Jaculus! Unleash yourself from me and coil that idiotic robot into scrap! Crush it to pieces and poison the pilots!” Roger Glover demanded as he pointed angrily at the large robots in question.

Slithering off of his body, the Steel Jaculus corkscrewed towards the skies at a sharp diagonal, stabbing up and through the neck of Medical Jet Jaguar.

“Steel Jaculus! Lock into Place!” Glover ordered, as the Last of the Titano-Beasts launched out into spearing mode, shattering into the Medical Jet Jaguar’s “neck,” which was now roughly empty.

Crashing into the medical craft, Steel Jaculus unlocked itself to start coiling its large body around Medical Jet Jaguar’s upper limbs to tear them loose from the structure and to begin to crush the cockpit bridge within the chest. Below, the lack of rear cover had given Robosaurus 2.4 to start trying to extend one of their arms slowly downward behind their back to start snaking it behind his opponent, their usual golden claws on their right hand ready to grip and tear as much of Glover’s Achilles tendons they could get hold of. Silently scuttling through the wreckage of the disassembling Castle, their arm snaked through the rubble to try to move somewhere unexpected.

“You damn Wizards have been the cause of like… 80% of the dogshit that goes on in my life! I didn’t even know you idiots before you decided to start fucking with me first! Your time-travel has made you so crazy that you built the bridges you were burning with you on top of them! But not just me! You’ve hurt tons of people more the world over, you’ve driven the Remaining States of America to turmoil time and again! Your destructive monsters have been nothing but a scourge of whole planets! You’re not getting out of this one alive, Glover!” Beaglesaurus intimated through means of shouting, charging forward to charge lasers out of both hands.

In all of a sudden strategic clash, Robosaurus 1.0 had leapt forward, but at a low angle, diving between Glover’s legs, landing slightly behind him, having driven both of his hard metal hands into Glover’s thighs, destabilizing his stance, then wrapped both of his metallic hands around Glover’s cape, dragging it hard over his own chest and shoulders to make a painful arch of the Wizard’s spinal column. Beaglesaurus, launching at Glover head-on, leapt over his head, grabbing him by the inside of each wrist. With enough strength he could throw him from a position like this, but instead he landed on top of Robosaurus 1.0, wrenching both of Glover’s entirely wizarding arms at a sharp and painful angle, straining hard in his wizarding triceps. With both thighs cracked hard from a robotic double strike, he almost crumpled to his knees, only for Robosaurus 2.4 to seize his right ankle, dragging him off his feet and on to his chest, smacking into the floor. The Colliding Hand of Roger Glover glanced forward to cut off the clasps of his cape, letting it slide from nearing to strangle him, making Robosaurus 1.0 to crash backwards and on to his feet again. Reeling themselves back in by the arm, Robosaurus 2.4 left forward over the wreckage, dragging his other set of gold claws into Glover’s left shoulder to hold him down while Beaglesaurus was able to grab his right arm in an armbar to keep him from Colliding himself off the ground or worse, into one of them.

“You think you can stop me just by grabbing my limbs, you simple fools?!” Glover raged through clenched teeth, smashing both of his Colliding Hands into the floor, cutting a vast chasm into the stone.

The two robots holding tight to him were sent through the floor, Two-Four’s arm apparatus able to retract with all the rubble cracking through the new hole in the floor. Robosaurus 1.0 whipped the Wizard’s cape into his face and following it up with an ax kick to Glover’s shoulder, trying to work down his metal boots in to Glover’s back. Two-Four was holding Beaglesaurus’ arm with one golden claw, the other still deeply embedded into Glover’s ankle. Grimacing, Glover twisted his body backwards, falling through to the floor below, Colliding Hands now facing up against his attackers. Extending their arm longer, Two-Four was able to bend back their body to avoid the blasts from the Colliding Hands.

“I’ll crack through everything and sizzle my hands through your necks! I won’t let you hold me back like you have been for so long!” Glover raged, as if he’d not brought any of his misfortune upon himself as his body jerked to a stop mid-fall, his gored ankle still in Two-Four’s golden grasp. “I’ll have to just keep breaking you down until those machine hearts of yours stop!”

Retracting his arm, Two-Four was able to zip themselves closer to Glover, bringing Beaglesaurus into a high-speed windup to clock Glover in the head, smashing both of his entirely techno-organic fighting hands into Glover’s temporal bones, a soft and solid drip of blood leaking from his ears as parts of his jaw felt cracked by his metallic fists. As Robosaurus 1.0 jumped down after the three of them, molding both of his hands together into a thin, penetrating weapon that dove like an athletic swimmer into Glover’s soft solar plexus, sending him striking hard to the stone ground, landing atop him, his metal hands piercing inward, blood rushing over the fighting robots. Pulling back, Glover snickered as his hand dipped into his velvety waistcoat for something and angrily sneered, finding it was gone.

“Blackmore… you cheap bastard… you stole my Ariadnean Thread… you cold-hearted shit… It seems that I’m going to bleed out quick…” Glover choked, coughing blood on to most of his chest and shirt.

Stepping forward, DJ Kiryū walked from where he’d landed from the hole in the floor and dropped down. The crack of lightning against stone behind him heralded a storm of death approaching. Behind him stood the Jovian Lightning League, blasting through the walls. However, gamesmen that they were, they could see well the pain and fury in the eyes of Kiryū.

“You created me and my brother to just be deadly weapons to kill others! For whatever reason, you Wizards stole my brother from me for cheap, needless capitalist gain. You destroyed the Internet altogether and enslaved whole planets by using the Titano-Beasts, abusing the lives of millions! But you still wanted to steal even that from me, leaving me nothing! Alone, on Titan, an outdated gun that you didn’t think was worthy enough to aim at others. Well damn, I guess it’s all come back to you. I have already struck down Geddy Lee, you are the one who is going to face the wrath of Titan next! Eat the G and soak in the Rads. Stand back, gentlebots…” DJ Kiryū asked as Beaglesaurus and the Robosaurus Siblings dropped off from Glover’s aching, broken form.

His metal boots clicking on the stone, the Lightning League waited patiently behind him as Glover unleashed another rush of Nuclear Lung Zephyr, blasting Glover’s hands into a red and black stain on the ground, no longer even liquid. Shouting angrily, Glover stood on broken legs sorely as he found his Colliding Hands having been seared off and lifted his head angrily, tossing back his hair. A singular remaining sneer slipped to his ultimate face, mad eyes narrowed to see the Jovians lifting high their Tridents. As the Robosaurus Siblings and Beaglesaurus lifted DJ Kiryū up to the floor above to try to find where Kamen Spider had gone after Blackmore personally. As they did, the sound of thunderous bolts clapping down and the hard smell of burning wizard soon after was what they needed to all but confirm Glover had found the wrath of Jupiter as well come down around, a burning charred skeleton falling back to the ground.

~~~~~

Trying to use his cursed guitar to hold back Kamen Spider at bay, Ritchie Blackmore had retreated to a large, spacious bathroom and hot springs, bolting the doors with a large boulder. He began trying to find another cursed chord to play, to either seal the door harder shut or to crack Kamen Spider by the bones if he approached too close. Emerging from the steamy entranceway, Kamen Spider lifted up the gift he’d received from Ezra Von Qlarion and had a soft, almost internal chuckle to himself. Shaking the somewhat oversized inhaler he had been handed, he figured as much that it was full of epinephrine, a normal version of adrenaline before… but something that Ezra had managed to concentrate and crank up. Something for the Man with the Robo-Heart to handle. Inhaling at a superhuman speed, it went a respiratory mainline to his Robo-Heart and time began to stand stiller for himself. Moving at such a speed, Blackmore was little more than a sitting duck. Although he could likely blast back Kamen Spider with just a mere strum of his cursed guitar, Kamen Spider was now moving at a speed beyond that of understandable acoustic reception. Faster than sound, he drew forward the second knuckle of each hand and used a sort of lateral motion. Striking severely five times, Blackmore could do little but glacially glance his head back to look at the Kamen Spider behind him, having cracked five sizable holes in his pelvic bone, shattering it with a sign that was reminiscent of the Northern Cross, split in half down the middle. The pain was astounding as Ritchie Blackmore, Creator of Red Nightmare, fell to the ground, tripping backwards into a steaming hot bath as Kamen Spider waited patiently for him to try to get back out of the water. Pressing one boot into the water, he pressed down Blackmore into the greenish depths of the large onsen bath, watching for the bubbles to stop rising…

~~~~~

Racing against time, pressure and also a giant mechanical snake that could turn rigid enough to damage the Medical Jet Jaguar repeatedly, the McElroy Brothers began trying to use both of the craft’s entirely large and medical hands to lift the Steel Jaculus off of the shoulders of their robot mech. With both hands held high, they were able to carefully start flying it hard, sharp and upwards, finding that the creature did not respond with particular speed when not ordered into a more rigid structure of a giant spear. Travis and Griffin together smashed a button each to respective sides of their control stations and both of the entirely large medical and robotic hands of Medical Jet Jaguar shot off in a Double Rocket Punch in the Saturnine stratosphere, firing hardcore into the depths of space as Steel Jaculus, realizing with what limited intelligence it had, that it was due to fly into space if it couldn’t right itself. Attempting to shift back into Spear Mode did end up being enough to throw off the two spaceward hands delivering Steel Jaculus into the ether of a deadly vacuum, but its drifting Spear of a body was already too far lifted: it would spiral out into space. After what seemed like an inopportune escape into the possibility of likely never returning or being crushed by the vacuum of space, Steel Jaculus ended up intersecting with the escaping Ian Paice’s two-man probe, sending it flying to unknown climes of the Universe, sliding out of known space, although none of the life support systems had failed. Ian Paice awoke several hours after the collision, none the wiser. The navigational systems were not particularly advanced and he was heavily relying on the hard likelihood that Prof. Mustaine hadn’t just been lying about where the craft would take him. He had no particular idea when he’d arrive at Neptune. He decided to see if he could even be entered into a cryogenic freeze to see if it would take longer than a few hopeful weeks to arrive. It would take the Voyager 2 twelve years to reach Neptune. It would take much longer for Ian Paice to begin arriving much of anywhere, so much as leaving the rest of known intelligence behind, a pioneer of the void, traveling ever onward, unseen and unheard, alone, unsleeping, stuck in a false sleep. A paralysis beyond control, lost in the deep distance, unattached.

~~~~~

Ritchie Blackmore, injured and gasping, using every ounce of remaining willpower not to give away his position, he had even managed to stop breathing to disguise himself for a few minutes. Kamen Spider had left, rightfully thinking he’d drowned to death as Blackmore had left his eyes open. His pulse, unfelt through the water, was rocketing, as he felt himself fall down a large ornamental waterfall that dropped him into a lower, smaller and unfortunately hotter pool that was usually quite soothing. As he heard the doors slam shut behind a leaving Kamen Spider, Blackmore fished the Ariadnean Thread he’d stolen from Roger Glover when last he had shook his hand in a deep and utter betrayal. Using only a mere enchanted needle, the Thread looped itself around the needle and Blackmore carefully breathed through his mouth, dragging his broken pelvis out of the water and on to an obstructed tiled path. Activating his superior Wizard vision, he was able to see through his own skin, his own fascia, his own muscles, revealing the organization of his organs and the pith of his biological being. Jabbing hard, the needle pierced deep into his lower waistline, needing to shove hard to make sure it came out the other side. The raw red needle slowly dripped as he began to push it back in through his back. The Thread, understanding the pattern, worked automatically after some coaxing and started to thread itself painfully and slowly through his body. Though he’d keep the five heavy internal wounds from it, his pelvis was at least in one piece again as Ritchie Blackmore lay on his back, half-drowned, barely breathing and with a pelvis barely held together by magical thread that had to tear through his body just to reach the area affected. Spitting up blood, his mind was a haze. Though he couldn’t fall asleep and rest was therefore never afforded him, his vision had blurred enough that he wasn’t particularly cogent for some hours after.

~~~~~

Geddy Lee’s body glowed with an unhealthy radioactive sheen that would do well to warn anyone away.

~~~~~

Ian Gillan lay in the Power Room, the full force of the generator for Castle Stymphalia still raging its way through his veins. He had more or less still been on his feet for hours, not that he had much control of it. He had been dead a while then.

~~~~~

Strongbeard Rodriguez, once so wise, was still actually inside the Chrome Roc’s head, but it had been crushed when most of it exploded and fell into the ruins of the still crumbling Castle Stymphalia.

~~~~~

Writhing, shouting, a ghost in a haunted old house that no one particularly felt like occupying, Professor Dave Mustaine had started getting an idea in his head that if he fused more metal around his helmet, not only would it not come off, but it would be harder for others to remove as well. Now the horribly stabbing pains behind his eyes only returned once every few hours! He began wrecking most of the machinery in his underground laboratory for some time after.

~~~~~

Graham Bonnet lay in pieces after angering Red Nightmare, the broken twisted metal of the Diomedal Horse leaving little to scrape together left amid the wreckage.

~~~~~

Somewhere South of where Jupiter once was, Eddie Vedder’s chipped corpse spun through the void until it would run into something and dispense into a thin space dust.

~~~~~

The Steel Jaculus was a ruin floating through endless space with no goal. The Osmium Geryon had lost two heads, most motor function and had also fallen down a flight of spiral stairs, destroying the stairs almost entirely. Wolfram Hydra had been reduced to shredded poisonous wraps looped around the unstoppable arms of the now unfighting Red Nightmare. The Erymanthian Boar’s engines had burned around trying to charge forward while being torn apart from either side, its body of blades rent to so much mechanical bacon. Red Nightmare walked through the wreckage and through the Doorway of Perception, arriving on a Jupiter he found familiar and close.

~~~~~

DJ Kiryū and the Lightning League stood, breathing deep as they looked upon the charred remains of Roger Glover, having received the ultimate punishment for his crimes against Jupiter and against the only Titano-Beast to truly have a heart… Medical Jet Jaguar landed, armless, and everyone took a deep breath and felt the soft glow of sleep encompass each. The Battle against the Space Wizard Concern had ended, the Wizard broken, dead, most leaving behind almost no trace, the other half too damaged to heal and too broken to escape. Red Nightmare had abandoned the Space Wizards and killed one of his creators. Saturn, free of the control of the Great Entertainment, stood stiller as more and more crashing thunderbolts cast throughout the halls until there were no more halls to crack apart. Within twelve hours, the exemplars of Jupiter had reduced the Castle Stymphalia to all but molten metal and broken stone. A cairn to the tyrants of planets. The Space Wizard Concern had separated themselves from time itself to escape their untimely demise… only to find themselves locked into a new now of defeat, pain and suffering. What few of the Wizards that remained were hidden long enough that the Jovian Lightning League would mostly return to Jupiter, enjoying the ruby skies of their creamy clouds. Ganymede remained for some time to make sure Ezra was prepared and he was more or less assigned easily at being an ad hoc ambassador to Earth / Wyoming / Saturn. Ganymede was not sure what the proper training for diplomacy was, since Jupiter was known not much for its justice so much as its consistent competitions. Things worked by the rules and if they did not, they were usually upset or confused by it. Wielding large tridents that speared living lightning through their attackers, they had a slight tendency to see many problems that looked like lightning rods, especially when it came to the roughest sport of all was battling. The Battle of Saturn was over Saturn had won, Wyoming had won and the Breathable Kingdom of Saturn was finally united altogether...

Chapter Text

Chapter 23 — The Castigation of the Wicked Wizards

or

Epilogue Nemesis: Justice for Many, Romance for Some, Freedom for Everyone

Tarkus Tercel-Buscemi had gotten a spray-job to “change” into a pattern similar to a tuxedo and wearing a red sash and a small fez. Looking out among the crowd, he saw smiles and cheers for him and he approached a lectern, amazed that among so many, he had won.

“Thank you, my fellow citizens of Cybertron 2.0, it’s great that things were patched up and everything went back to the way it should be, peace and order and love on Cybertron! We have become a great and wonderful culture again and we have embraced a new life of artistic flare and sharp, amazing beauty. I really want to express that you all had my back there. I want to thank all of you for this, because really, it was everyone who worked with me that made us all this far…” Tarkus got a little choked up and looked down at the golden semicircular award and caught the gaze distant from his husband Steve Tercel-Buscemi, and lifted his head proudly to the hot lights cascading down. “It means a lot that I’m winning this because it means I feel that Cybertron had managed to find a heart to say thank you with and that’s something I find very amazing. When I first started construction and planning for Aquatarkus Daihatsu Cast Activa Buscemi-Tercel, I thought she was just going to be a cool new addition to my own personal family, a face to cherish and a heart to press to my own… But now… I’ve really found that being a father means so much more… And I want to thank you all for rewarding me with the JD Power & Associates Award for Bravery and Construction for a Kei Car. Aquatarkus is one of the most amazing models out there on the market and I think she’s doing great work on Earth and here on Cybertron! This is an honor I never thought would come my way and that’s why I think it’s just the best way to say that we all need to be creative and embrace what our minds have to offer. Looking inside and finding beauty within and outside, achieving efficiency, living up to your best ideals. That’s what I wanted when it came to starting out on this path and I couldn’t have done it without you… but especially not without my husband. Steven Vincent Tercel-Buscemi… the father of my child… my co-designer… light on my horizon. My smile in the darkness.” He did a double point to the sky, a sign he reserved to showing off in public for his husband and made a loud noise not unlike a horn honking mixed with the distinct yowl of a howler monkey, hooting as everyone in the crowd joined in.

A few hours later, at the afterparty, Tarkus was eating a large platter of canapes and a large bucket of tender meatballs in a juicy sauce before he was gifted some choice creamed Raw Mānuka honey, dipping a large metal honey wand into it. He soon excused himself, knowing that tonight was going to be a real one, not just because he got a really nice award that said he was basically the coolest father on Cybertron 2.0, but he also knew that he had friends coming in. A few that he hadn’t seen in a decent while. Fourteen months back, the Saturn Revolution had been a real powderkeg event in this sector of space and, even when the Medical Jet Jaguar had returned to a mostly ceremonial and otherwise medical position in the center of the Breathable Kingdom, the McElroy Brothers had yet to return to Earth in a timely manner, nor to the equitably-accessible Cybertron 2.0 (in its stable counter-orbit.) Standing atop his apartment building, Tarkus and Steve watched as a bright red Fire Fighter Jet Jaguar landed from space, legs locking in to place as it crouched into a sort of squat for the doors to open up in the rear entry. Stepping down amid a plume of cryogenic gasses, Griffin and Travis McElroy sauntered down the ramp, their sea legs weary from the voyage back to Cybertron 2.0, their second home, since Tarkus was more or less best friends with Griffin. The two of them had taken some time on the way back, wearing large thick Uranian Wool-Beast Jackets. After establishing dominance over the Gremlin Squad, they found that a human-type air-supply life-support system was highly different from their heavily methanated atmosphere. It, fortunately for the Brothers, had a deleterious effect on their psychic abilities. To some luck, they knew how to speak English… or how to understand it at least. “Speaking” was not a strong suit of these Uranian Goblins and the new crew of a deployed Fire Fighter Jet Jaguar sent by the Galaxy Railroad Company to help them along back to Earth.

“It’s been a hot minute since we’ve seen you and the Big Corso. It’s great to see you and Steve!” Griffin said, a smile creeping into his face as he threw wide his arms, “And you heard this shit Travis, sounds like the coolest fucking spaceman to ever walk the seven realms just won himself a JD Power & Associates Award for being the Hardest Baller on Cybertron 2.0, am I RIGHT?!” Griffin asked, as if he were starting up a sick fifteen-minute DJ session featuring an uncommon amount of Jock Jams and he were about to drop the mic.

“That’s RIGHT, Griff! You and me know the coolest fucker out there and he’s got the one-way ticket to midnight, the brawn of Mei’s Workshop, the winner of the JD Power & Associates Award, yet again, can you BELIEVE it, Griffin?” Travis shouted, leaping repeatedly upwards in the air and flailing his arms with a wild abandon.

“Well, it turns out when your daughter becomes the top idol of Cybertron 2.0, being her producer helps get me involved in her work while giving her the creative freedom she desires most! She’s a responsible kid these days, she’s really grown as a person while you guys were gone. Apparently, everyone else thought about the same! But you guys… aren’t the only guests tonight!” Tarkus announced as the hangar lights kicked on, revealing that DJ Kiryū was also there, standing atop a large space freighter, the aptly-named Titanosaurus Mugal. Kiryū had been amazed to receive such a wonderful gift when he’d heard that Tarkus was paying it off for him to get his own shipping company sorted out, especially with the hot new advent of Galaxy Railroad.

The Uranians, now a somewhat more agreeable crew, if at the risk of not having much of any particular way back to Uranus easily without some impasse of not constantly committing minor sabotage or severe dysfunction in their only known craft. An uneasy respect had passed through them, a skeleton crew that needed each other. The boys had tried their best to teach the Gremlin Squad to speak some kind of English or at least sign in ASL, but they proved a little uninterested in verbal communication. They mostly preferred a simplistic system of mostly pointing, grunting and moderate hand-signals. It had become clear sometime after they left Saturn that the Goblins didn’t actually know how to fly a craft like that and, with their weakening psychic power to merely rob the ability of it from one of the McElroy Brothers, they instead had to contend to one of the worst pains of punishment known by Goblin Culture: boredom and repeated, moderate, required labor. The agreement held between them was clear; they could take them back to Uranus (and leave them there without another craft) in exchange for their continued service. Working their way back among the stars, they had seemed less interested in the humans the more they learned about their apparently boring and generally work-based culture. It had seemed clear on Iowa, Uranus, that Goblins were mostly scavengers that took advantage of what was around at the time, but the Brothers were equally unnerved at a distinct lack of Iowans not there. Along with them, they had the remaining Wool-Beast, which had grown enough fluffy fur to matte easily into a large coat for each of them, which helped the fact that Fire Fighter Jet Jaguar wasn’t very well insulated for interspace travel. The Goblins had shared their homegrown Uranian steel-cloth, an organic form of metal that grew with almost no particular care and could be harvested into thick sheets over time. This kind of inherent waste product was one of many reasons that Goblins were not well-adapted to life in space or on a ship. To help out the Uranians and do some good, they’d promised to return to Uranus to establish a Teleporter Station. They seemed amenable to the concept of being given things in exchange for their natural resources at a sustainable rate to fuel their own interests, which at least for now were not actively devious, bordering on destructive. Tarkus took a long hug at his two close friends, especially since Earth was only a teleporter away now. A finer class of starship than they were working with now would likely have such equipment available and they, now healthy merchants of fine Uranian Wool, which was both plump, breathable and had a mild soporific quality to it. It was even pretty easy to clean too.

“Look, there’s important things we need to report from distant planets in space! We were there and we can answer everyone’s questions. We need to set up a press conference or something. My brother is the President, can we get like… C-SPAN wired in here? Do we have Cybertron 2.0 affiliates?” Griffin began thinking aloud, though to himself, still jazzed up from his miraculous space adventures.

“Oh yeah, we also saved the Earth from an invasion of Uranian mind-goblins… They’ve been here long enough that it stopped being funny,” Travis admitted, having found somewhere between a rightful scorn of the ragtag crew of Fire Fighter Jet Jaguar and a solemn respect that they were at least seemingly trying to be helpful, collaborative or at least not actively harmful. He sure hoped that would last when they inevitably had to return them to Uranus…

“We found out what happened to Wyoming! And possibly even Iowa! It’s unclear if anyone really lives there by now, but… we can either establish teleport pads there enough and just teleport them back to Earth… or we build smaller more powerful teleporters and we’ll have… Space Iowa!” Travis exclaimed, stars in his eyes.

“Wyoming, the Dreamstar State!” Griffin declared.

“You guys always know how to cheer me up… So did Beagle come back with you guys?” Tarkus asked jovially.

“Oh… naw, it was just me, him and the Uranians. Wait, he was with you last, wasn’t he?” Griffin admitted before quickly turning to DJ Kiryū. “You were hanging out with him and the original Kamen Spider! Wait, how did you get here before me?”

“Kamen Spider used some kind of platypus machine to send me back to Cybertron to like…” Kiryū checked his Astrowatch, “fourteen space hours ago.”

“So why did he have us fly back in the Fire Fighter Jet Jaguar?” Travis wondered, almost too puzzled to be angry at what it may imply.

“What if it was for… all of us…?” Griffin said, his eyes becoming misty not from Cybertronian pollen, but from emotions welling up in both of his entirely human eyes, “What if he did this so we would learn how to work together with the Goblins and grow interplanetary diplomacy? We came to agreements… basically! I’m pretty sure they don’t know how to fly a spaceship, they’ve been mostly taking care of these huge fluffy Space-Mice.” Griffin pointed a thumb to a large space capsule in the hands of Fire Fighter Jet Jaguar, which was suddenly set down.

The Wool-Beasts made a soft “Yooting” noise in their mild confusion at the gravity coming back on. As Tarkus and Steve looked into the container, they saw the large creatures and found they also had large, round, dark expressive eyes and short snouts with whiskers that seemed to quietly chew on soft grasses.

“The payoff is that we don’t know how to care for them, the Uranians know way more than us about how to shear and care for these Super-Sheep!” Griffin explained as Travis started to pet one of the Wool-Beasts and almost immediately fell asleep. “Awww, there he goes…” Griffin remarked quietly, as if Travis were a small puppy that managed to jump on to your bed to sit on your chest. “So far, I think we’ve managed to create a stable relationship between us and we very well may have sparked interplanetary peace!”

This was confounded by Fire Fighter Jet Jaguar suddenly taking off into the sky and leaving, no doubt piloted by the Gremlin Squad, who had been biding their time for when they knew both Brothers would have left the craft together and be significantly far away from it. Griffin began cursing loudly as Travis just merely held his head in both hands and tried to slow his breathing. Tarkus made a mildly laughing sort of sigh as he stood up as Steve Tercel-Buscemi walked up to see them.

“Oh, hey boys. You guys wanna go see a play on Cyber-Broadway? Aquatarkus is taking the night off to go visit some friends, so me and Tarkus were going to have a casual date night with mild drinking if you’re game.”

“Ah fuck yeah, we haven’t had a drop for months, let’s get crossfaded, we’ve gotta be lightweights by now…” Griffin murmured.

“Hey… you guys really pulled it off. I guess you deserve some good partying. We can hit up an oxygen bar, get slight-blasted and then port back to Earth by like… midnight, if you wanna?” Tarkus invited, pleasantly.

And the McElroy Brothers relaxed and had a pretty nice time out on Cyber-Broadway.

~~~~~

Upon one of many soft days upon the yellowcake soil of Saturn, Princess Jerma alighted from a balcony, drifting down melodiously to some tall Saturnine subjects milling around the courtyard of the Castle of Breathable Saturn. The screams had become numerous enough in Sundance that the Crown Princess had been called to the mansion on the hill, finding soon that Prof. Mustaine was within. His head sealed in a metal mask that seemed to abate his shouts. Four royal guards had fallen over after encountering Prof. Mustaine due to his ability to pass on pain in physical form. Appending a magical brooch to his waistline, Princess Jerma began to saunter into the Mad Mansion of Sundance and a demolition team in his wake began cracking holes in the already pretty decrepit walls.

“Our Hexagon of Dreams will not tolerate the presence of dark magic! You are a man of evil whose only powers are to make the body unnatural and distorted. I have freed myself from all discomforts and you have fallen into madness because you will never escape yours. Your lengthy life that you have bargained planets against will be spent in exile on the hellish demi-planet that you created. The remainders of the Space Wizard Concern will be the modicum populace of the new Uranian moon of Neo-Hades. Your magic will wane day by day, the less you sleep. You will be devoid of the energy you need to complete your experiments. Your neversleep will continue for the rest of your inhuman life. When we find Ian Paice, he will join you. Blackmore has already been apprehended by Kamen Spider and will be meeting you there. The bodies of the others are due to face water cremation. Their ashes will be reduced into a brick for you to build something out of… instead of destroying whatever you see fit. Prof. David Scott Balthazar Mustaine… you are no longer permitted on my Saturn…” Princess Jerma announced.

Lifting one hand, the helmet flew off of Prof. Mustaine and he began fumbling to cover his head with both hands again, panting angrily. He felt no longer the strength to speak and sat down, knees to his chest, and rattled silently in defeat. Many Saturnine guards began to drag him away to an arriving prison transport ship. After fourteen minutes, the ship began to kick on its freon-emitters, flooding the spacecraft sending them to Neo-Hades into a sub-freezing temperature. Mustaine groaned softly as he was shackled to the wall, seeing Blackmore securely strapped to a sort of hospital bed extending from the wall, half to keep him from altering the controls, but moreso to keep his cracked pelvis in a nearly healing position without needing a heavy cast shaped like a pair of unchangeable shorts.

“So you survived too, Mustaine…” Blackmore whispered as Saturn disappeared in one of the small windows he could see out of, “Where did Paice get off to?”
“He stole my bullet capsule and escaped to Neptune. It is no matter, the Earth is already moving on to trying to establish some kind of base there. He is weak and at half his usual power, which was weakest among us. When he gets there, he’ll be lucky to hide in the depths, the darkness of the sea of Neptune… He’s in a Hell of Water, we in a Hell of Volcanoes. Perhaps the churning heat of the volcanoes will cool at some point, engender more water within it. Perhaps the planet will evolve… and perhaps we will be able to disassociate from the slow trudge of time…” Mustaine gasped, having disappeared mentally into a deep pit of self-effacement.

“We won’t be sleeping anymore… How long can we last without it? Or worse, what will they ask from us to get it back? How soon will it be until we break down… on the inside?” Blackmore droned, his head resting back on a pillow. “You had better be close enough to reach me, damn it… Whether I like it or not, I guess I’m stuck with you…” he grimaced, already knowing that Mustaine would not be a pleasant caretaker during his recovery or however much of it he was awake for.

The cold sting of the freezing room continued as Mustaine began restraining his head with athletic bandage until he resembled the Invisible Man with bushier eyebrows as he found keeping his hair out of the binding helped slightly, letting his head breath from the top. Using some chalk on the stone floor of their prison, Prof. Mustaine was able to outline the limits of the shackle on his ankle to remind himself with ease what could or couldn’t easily be reached (at least by hand. He reasoned to himself that Blackmore still had a set of working hands and would be needing a distraction both from the freezing, the thoughts of exile, their own dwindling magical strength and likely from the increasing pain, he started to think of how best to occupy their time together. It would be necessary for them to stay anywhere near the cold approximation of what could pass for sanity among them. There would inevitably require a necessary transfer of pain, a contract of suffering to achieve any semblance of mercy in his exile (or at least what little he expected.)

~~~~~

After fourteen months of healing, meditating in silence, enjoying the splendor and letting the Cosmic Energy coursing through his body wane once more, Red Nightmare had since been given access to the Door of Perception, releasing him upon Jupiter where he had decided he should try integrating. With a newfound sense of self and control, he felt more and more like he could begin living a life not as merely a weapon. After sleeping in fire and sleeping in water, his metallic skin was clean of blood, though still a moderately dark red. In the cold distance of the desert-like exterior of Jupiter, he was soon able to find a cave leading below. Within a vast cavern, he spotted a large stone pillar standing amid a deep hole, creating a long 12’ of distance between the pillar and the side of the cavern where Red Nightmare had entered. Forgoing using psychic power to solve every encounter, he dashed as hard as he could and leapt over the distance between, landing in a soft roll upon the pillar. Farther atop it, he could see a temple sort of structure, tall sculpted Doric pillars, wide porticoes and draping golden flags that swingled in the wind. After climbing the structure by hand, Red Nightmare spotted a large collection of Jovians at sport, tossing superheavy shotputs, lightning javelins, bone-snapping catch wrestling, intense chess, aggressive badminton, furious hurling and a heavier, more metallic version of caber tossing. Red Nightmare began to feel a rush of competition in his Nightmare heart and shouted, announcing himself with strength and fury. Another Jovian leapt towards him in a sort of lunge, landing next to him and laughing uproariously.

“You are fine in the sport of yelling! I also enjoy yelling! However, I find that I may be a better yeller than you, stranger! I shall challenge thee to a battle of yelling!” the jovial Jovian suggested, grinning widely with arms akimbo.

“You are powerful like me… we will have to see who wins…” Red Nightmare decided.

Over the course of a Jovian day (which is around 10 Earth hours,) Red Nightmare won at the Pentathlon, Boxing, Chariot Race (by running), Footracing (also by running) and Wrestling, mostly by crushing his opponents between his massive arms. Within fourteen months of time, he had risen to being known as the Crimson Champion of Jupiter and already a respected sporstman of powerful physical prowess. A planet where strength and individuality were king next to order and competition ran abound had become his new home. His power was respected as he had proven himself in every ability. Undefeated, he decided that people need not fear him to respect him, renaming himself to “Rubicant Zeús,” High Champion of Jupiter. A streak like a comet through the still of the thick Jovian sky, a single meteor of might crashing out of the heavens. Staring up into the vortex, the Jovians took a common lounging break to shower sweat off their bodies and eat heavily sliced cones of meat from the Jovian Cattle. Rubicant Zeús was soon met with the oddness of a visitor, seeking audience from the leader of Jupiter. Sitting atop the tallest throne, he lifted some large weights to continue training his body as a chitinous figure in a brown cloak stood before him. Refusing to kneel, he was already clearly challenging the De-Facto Monarch of the Planet. Tossing his cloak away, the dramatic zephyrs of Jupiter drew it away, revealing Commander MX8, grinning with a sinister mouth of sharp teeth, prideful, holding a red flag with a jagged green stripe stretched along the top in one hand, a saber in the other, held high. Challenging body language was shouting emphatically, chest to chest, as he ranted in an intricate speech that they didn’t understand, since he was speaking a Martian dialect they didn’t know. They could feel the strength of his speech all the same. There was a certain heart to heart connection between them. Stepping forward, pointed his saber directly at Rubicant Zeús’ face, spitting on the ground and then sneering to look him in the eyes. With a quick order, Rubicant Zeús pointed down at him and his guards blasted Commander MX8 in the back with a lightning javelin and picked him up off his screeching form bleeding on the ground. Leaving the javelin within him, Rubicant Zeús gave him the only gift of a quick death for defying the Crimson Champion, pitching him over the edge of the great stone pillar upon which his stadium had been established upon. Commander MX8 had been quickly cast to the ground in having underestimated the bloodsport of Jupiter being more than willing to kill a direct threat. Not having a scheduled challenge reserved ahead of time had been insult enough, but they had no sense of need to take his battle bravado respectfully. As his battered form crashed to the rocks, Commander MX9 awoke on Mars and grumbled angrily as he emerged from the clone pools, angry at having overstepped himself and having disappointed Mars. He was not looking forward to having to explain to the Queen that in his bravado and bloodlust, he’d walked directly into a trap and was swiftly annihilated for his ambitions. The Queen would not see him this time around and other soldiers revealed his next mission would take him to a rather unfamiliar planet that would not bode well for his further campaigns. Only in duty to his Queen did he take this mission, grumbling almost not just to himself as he was launched back into space to continue the conquests of a new Martian Empire.

Chapter Text

Chapter 24 — The Medical Voyages of the Stars Aboard the Starship of Health

or

The Results & Extraneous Factors of the American Experiment

Waking up in the morning, Eli Egg picked up their backpack and smiled at both of their entirely human parents as Jack and Tifa were doing some artistic dance-based exercises imported from Saturn via the New Arpanet. Whirling large hula hoops, they waved at their child as Eli Egg took a bite of one of their usual eggs and opened the front door, walking out across lightyears and appearing aboard a medical ship glaring through the stars in stable orbit around the American-Saturnian Exclave of United Wyoming. Some nurses approached Eli Egg and handed them a tablet that reported that Ezra von Qlarion was giving them a personal invitation to the Medical Convention on the aftest deck of her new medical starship, the Gregory House (named after one of her favorite video games.) Opening a closet door, Eli Egg generally just appeared in a room with a nice desk and some bookcases, though it was dark and the door seemed to be locked. Turning on the lights, they found that this was likely Ezra’s office, but clearly wasn’t available at work at the moment. Trying to open a window, they were able to climb into a mirror in the wall and emerged into the convention hall on the aftest deck. As Dr. Zazzerath helped to get Eli Egg to their feet, Ezra von Qlarion floated out in a slightly better-looking floating chair and landed next to them.

“Welcome back. I missed you,” she admitted to Eli Egg as they stood up and removed a box from inside their shirt and handed it to her. Picking it up, she found it had a small bouquet of green roses inside it and she took them out, taking a careful sniff, “You came this far to give me flowers?”

“I like coming to see you. It’s not usually too hard to find my way here soon. Maybe it has something to do with… you?”

“What do you mean me?”

“I think it might have something to do with… you having feelings… for me?” Eli Egg offered, blushing as she slipped one green rose into her labcoat’s lapel.

“Who said that I do?” she challenged, yet with a smile.

“Well, if it’s not that… it might be… I have feelings for you then? You’re really an amazing person and you’ve done so much to help the people of Wyoming and the people of Saturn. You’re always working so hard to spread health and safety through the Galaxy. It wasn’t the right time to try to… flirt or anything while the Universe was at risk, so… now I think I’m ready!” they announced, lifting up both of their human hands.

“Have you been preparing for this?” Ezra asked, though she still took both of their entirely human hands in exactly both of hers.

“Would it be… more impressive if I did?” Eli Egg asked, smiling shyly before their grip entangled their fingers together. “I wanted to come see you because I like you, Ezra! A lot! You were just about the coolest person I saw in all of Saturn and you brought freedom to Jupiter with a heart of bravery. Even when I started walking through space, you’re the only person I can’t forget about… And I guess that… makes it feel like I just keep coming back to you…” They took a deep breath to still themselves and looked up into Ezra von Qlarion’s adorable, emotive eyes, every ounce of love in their beating heart radiating towards her.

“I had a strange feeling that you’d say something like this. It’s been hard not having you here after we were together for so long on Saturn… but knowing that you want to start seeing me more… I like that. Maybe I like you too. I didn’t think I was going to see you again or it’d end up being some kind of long-distance thing. It means a lot that you came out here… it means that either you’re drawn to me by the pure undying love that cascades across lengths of the Universe in a destiny that cannot be defied… or it means that you’ve started getting better at moving from door-to-door because you wanted to see be really badly…” she was talking tough, but she was blushing a little herself. It felt like she had “won” because she had suspected it all along and Eli Egg had ended up confessing to her first. She gulped and tried to think about how she actually felt about it all. “Eli… do you want to provide medical aid across the Galaxy and work to help me protect people from injury wherever we can?”

“I’d love to help people. Especially if it means being with you while I do it. Nothing could sound better to me…” Eli Egg said softly, their eyes closing gently as their railroad heart continued rattling at a million miles for Jovian hours. “Ezra, can I be your partner on the Gregory House?”

She took a soft sigh and nodded gently, “I don’t see any reason not to. You’re… charming in a special kind of way. You’re… off-beat in way I like. You’re kooky, you’re out there, you’re something crazy in a world of things that stopped making sense years ago. But… you make me feel stable. And I guess… l-loved…”

“If you’ll have me…” they remarked, pressing their forehead to hers, “Can you show me a life among the stars?”

“Eli Egg… I guess you’re in love with me… Even when things get crazy and whichever world we find is falling apart… you’ll be there for me, right?”

“I’ll do anything it takes if it means protecting you, Ezra…” Eli Egg said, standing up again and doing a smooth spin, though now looking back to Ezra’s eyes again.

Embracing together, the two young people received a standing ovation from the stage of the medical convention and the slow clap soon spread to almost everyone, regarding the Medical Director of the Gregory House and her new partner, a strange and mysterious non-binary chap from a small village in distant Tyrol on a distant Earth.

“I’ve got good news too! The results came in from Future America and Gal has been elected Governor of AS Wyoming. The rest of Future America is really happy to hear that Wyoming didn’t just suddenly disappear nowhere,” they mentioned, smiling and happy for many myriad reasons.

With hands wrapped around her waist, they took a deep breath and felt, for once, like they didn’t need to travel too much farther away now. A wanderlust sated and a new home found, Eli Egg found something akin to love among the stars, a healing girl from a distant planet who had stolen their heart and taught them the necessity of closeness in life. An embrace that held for hours, but a union that would last for decades and a love that would last beyond the length of time or the expanse of space. Lifting up her glasses, Ezra found that if Eli was close enough, she could see them finely in her vision, their nose next to theirs.

“Do you want to get some coffee or lunch?” Eli Egg asked, their fingers playing softly through Ezra’s flowing locks.

“That sounds nice…” she admitted and they went off to go get a nice bracing cup of rather hot space-java.

~~~~~

Another Cabinet meeting was going on at the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame (currently the Presidential Residence as well ever since the White Incident) as Pres. McElroy took a look at his “new” Cabinet. It had become clear that Secretary of “the Environment” (formerly the Departments of Energy, the EPA and, for some reason, Veterans Affairs?) Cactus Jack Manson had not shown up to the Cabinet Meeting. Presidentially-Adjacent Father Clint McElroy was sitting on a small desk to the side. State Secretary Ric Flair was eating a chicken salad sandwich, War Secretary Shane McMahon, Sr. was taking his time arranging small figures on a map, Interior Secretary Diesel Nash was hitting a tire with a large sledgehammer to keep himself physically strong, (as usual) Treasury Secretary Faarooq and Commerce Secretary Bradshaw were cracking open cans of their low-alcohol lite beer to start their morning. Attorney General Gambini was asleep at his seat. Spymaster General (Formerly the “Director of National Intelligence”) Scott Hall was taking a personal phone call and begging someone to forgive him about a cheating scandal. As was common at a Cabinet meeting, the FBI Director Mack Bolan and CIA Director Remo Williams were taking down minutes, which they had found was easier than trying to record transcripts with machines. Finally, standing at one side, Secretary of the People Dwayne Johnson was whipping two long noodles up and down with both hands dutifully. At the other head of the table was an empty chair with a small sign next to it to indicate the Governor of Indiana was supposed to be there. Pres. McElroy was growing impatient and pointed down the Cabinet table to the empty chair. To his right hand, Vice-President Mick Foley was growing slightly more and more sweaty over the course of minutes. The still silence of the imminent meeting was growing more and more uneasy as Press Secretary Christopher Walken was aggressively paddle-balling, the bouncing red ball about the only sound in the room at the time.

“Where’s he at?!” Justin demanded, slamming his fist on to the very Presidential table he was sitting at, “Governor Dude Love has been trifling and consterning me for too long now! Clint, you’ve managed to really pull the rug out from under this lazy prick! I haven’t seen him in months! Vice-President Foley, when he gets here, I’m firing him,” Pres. Justin decided gravely. “And Cactus Jack didn’t show up either! I’m being clowned out here like a damned fool and I’m not going to let that decide the Future of Future America! If he doesn’t show up he’s outta here too! Foley, do you have any idea why they wouldn’t be here? Like, I sent these invitations months ago, they have tons of aides and deputies to remind them of this…”

Vice-President Foley didn’t easily want to admit that he was secretly both these laughable characters in the Future Federal Government, but he could feel the walls falling down around him on this complex and possibly needless ruse he’d been committing. If word got out, he’d probably lose his managerial status at the Punderdome too and become a total outcast in the Democratic Republic of Griffin. Sweating aggressively, he started to remove the first layer of flannel jackets that he tended to wear at all times, even if it was sleeveless. He anxiously tugged open the neck of his shirt, discovering he was wearing his backup Cactus Jack shirt under one of his many layers. He looked over and could see Clint whispering something to Pres. McElroy that made him turn in his office chair, cross his legs and then start glaring at VP Foley.

“I see…” Pres. McElroy stated as the rest of the Presidential Cabinet started whooping, hollering and hooting, knowing well that Foley was slowly sinking into Shit Creek now and honestly thought he deserved it by this point.

Fourteen minutes later, seven members of the Secret Service worked together to dump Mick Foley on to the sidewalk outside of the high fence erected around the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame. Boxes of his personal belongings were being thrown out of windows and dumped in to a large commercial disposal box sitting outside. His bottle cap collection was lost in the chaos as a man in a black suit with thin glasses began walking closer and closer, descending into the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame to take his place among his constituents. After already serving under the administration before Pres. Jaleel White, J. Michael Tatum was now more than capable and willing to throw his fedora-like hat into the ring again, a competent voice among many goofy bumblers and roustabouts. Drawing his hat off his head, he did a small spin of it around one finger before he flicked it forward.

“Sounds like someone needs a Vice-President with some experience. I worked under Pres. McGoohan from 2004 to 2008. I declined taking over for him after his untimely heart attack. In my inactivity, Jaleel A White was able to make a dark alliance with the Space Wizard Concern and certain eldritch beings to fund his own landslide campaign and became President. I’m the one who can help you and I want to. You should want me to and I will be here to make sure you. I also can hook you up with a better interior designer, why have Japanese folding tables when I can get you teak or mahogany?” Aspiring Vice-President Tatum offered with an alluring amount of male-to-male charisma. He may as well have been holding the President by his tie and threatening to kiss him (but without words.)

“Damn it, I’m in! You know how to keep things floating, well sailor, you’re on my crew now! You want the job, then we’ll get you some Congressional approval and try it out, if it doesn’t turn out well, you’ll probably get fired. I’ll take anyone who isn’t actively cursed at this point,” Pres. Justin admitted, throwing a box of Former Vice-President Foley’s Mankind Masks into a wood chipper.

Vice-President Tatum smiled and shared a gentlemanly handshake with the President, more than welcome to the fold once more.

“It will be an honor working with you… Mr. President…” Tatum smiled. It was all going exactly to plan…

~~~~~

Stepping off his ship, Commander MX9 found he was on the surface of an alien planet yet again. Looking up, the sky was golden, but is a dirty looking way and had a heavy chemical smell to it. It was like seeing a cloud made of urine or fog made of bathroom cleaning chemicals. Having lived all of his short life so far on Mars, this horridly dank atmosphere was far worse than expected. The landscape looked dissolved, corroded and devoid of intelligent life. Large insects of a less than contemplative nature seemed to buzz around the mires, but Commander MX9 cracking one in half with his annihilation pistol only revealed they were full of goo that was also a corrosive acid. Moving across the wastes of this empty land of vermin and clouds of foulness upon the horizon. After seventeen minutes, his crunching boots came to the gravelly foot of a large-ish mountain and angled up his fanged head to see the summit in the distance, seeing great clouds among it. Returning to the point where he’d landed and planted a flag for the glory of Mars, both were dissolved and falling apart, having no doubt been struck by either what looked like an unseen sandstorm. Hissing angrily, he reached out to the flagpole and found it snapped in half and fell to the ground. A clattering noise hollowed out from a vent in the ground, a geyser of liquid and gas firing out some ways away as more and more began to go off one after another. Trailing to higher ground to escape the burgeoning cloud, it became clear that it was slowly rising. Atop the summit, it became clear that the cloud would overtake him soon enough. As it began to rise towards his chitinous ankles, it became clearer still that this was not foul-smelling merely due to it being unclean or from somewhere infected. It was far worse; this was a cloud of hot sulfuric acid, slowly eating through his biological armor until his body was little more than a thin, runny combination of internal slime and denatured strings of proteins. Within the armor, anything fleshy underneath was slowly dripping out of the slowly corroded armor. By minutes later, there was little more remaining to conquer the cold, stormy surface of Venus. Commander MX10 woke up with a much more dismal ideal of his service to the Martian military. Dragging his body out of the clone pits, he stopped from stabbing the attendant sent to dredge him to consciousness once more. Something was lost within Commander MX10 that defied each of his former forms. The visions had stopped in lieu of something more revealing, possibly more challenging. A sign of things to come for the Commander. His future would hold little more worth dedicating to… and he was beginning to realize that he was son growing tired of a continued and very likely endless military campaign...

Chapter Text

Chapter 25 — The Supreme Convocation at Neptune, Beacon of a Galactic Future

or

Sabotage at the Advent of the Acme Cadillac of Outer Space Travel, Galaxy Railroad

Sparkling through the heavens at speeds unseeable to the naked eye, the still nature of Neptune’s waters, only stiffened in a permafrost in some concentrated areas that formed most of the “surface” of Neptune. In reality, they were more like an intricate combination of ice caps and glaciers that massed together in a way that was tumultuous and dangerous. But utilizing only a few laser saws and a lifting mechanism, they were able to create new flattened areas that supported well the structures they’d need. The Robosaurus 3.X Line had come in handy, being able to work well in the cold polar frost-barrens of Neptune to establish a relay station that would enable teleportation to the Neptunian-Lunar surfaces and further the teleportation range. Over the course of only a handful of Earth years, a Galactic Union Station could be assembled. Amid the construction, an ancient temple was found and a more ancient sage still living within it. Having slept for some centuries, the “man” only known as “Mr. Neptune,” resembled a large octopus with the head of a lobster. He was already smart enough to speak English, which seemed worrying at first. He was quick to explain that despite having slept in an ice cavern with a Neptunian temple, he wasn’t even from Neptune, claiming to have come from another system entirely. It had come from his studies and travels that a glowing, shimmering tunnel of water deep within the catacombs of ice below the temple. After one of the human coordinators sent to the site had injured an arm due to ice instability with walking, Mr. Neptune was able to show those assorted that the shimmering water, when submerged into it, had awe-inspiring healing properties. It was at about this time that Tarkus Tercel-Buscemi, his husband Steve, their ship Big Corso and a special capsule with a frozen Kamen Spider inside arrived to visit the healing pools of Neptune. As the Neptune Pool coalesced its shimmering waters into it, Kamen Spider soon revived, able to remove the webbing he’d used to try to gum up his own severe wounds and finding his Robo-Heart was functioning normally yet again. With a simple replacement of oil in his joints, he was standing, working back to normal once again. After fourteen days in exposure to the healing waters, Tanaka Hokeshi was able to stand, able to walk and able to spar lightly once again.

Tarkus was under commission from the Web and would be getting a significant artistic grant courtesy of the Japanese Diet. Saving one of the greatest heroes of Japan (and the world over) would be the sort of thing that could get him a pop-up in any city he wanted, so he was more than willing to help out.

“Tarkus, you’ve done it again. When you weren’t helping create our stunning motorbikes that the Web uses for only our sickest stunts and most amazing drop-kicks… well, we’d probably be on a short coast to nowhere. It’ll be amazing to see that you found something to fix an ailing Robo-Heart and a few surplus wounds… You’ve saved my life… and for that, I owe you the world. Anything the Web can do to help, you say it,” Hokeshi commended.

“It’s worth it to see those green eyes of yours all over again, Spider. Plus, I made a promise to Kamen Kamakiri to bring you back. Your husband didn’t think he could hold on so tight without you. Running the whole place himself was rough on him. Atlas Moth and Black Tarantula were doing a lot of the heavy lifting, but… it just wasn’t the same place without you. The heavens don’t get to be so greedy as to take you away from us yet. You’ve got a long life ahead of you, Mr. Tanaka,” Tarkus responded.

“The waters of Neptune had a healing quality… We had never gotten this far out in the system to find someplace like this. And who’s this friend of yours.”
“Oh, that’s Mr. Neptune, apparently he’s just here on some kind of pilgrimage or something. Big ice quake happened, burying him in here for a few hundo years, but turns out Mr. Neptunes live way longer than humans or Cybertronians. Apparently most of his body hasn’t healed quiet yet from being within the Ice Catacombs.”

“He’s the one who really brought this altogether, huh?”

Mr. Neptune let out a long gurgling, screaming kind of noise, but which Tarkus said was a positive sound for him. Kamen Spider was not hoping to hear how he sounded when he was angry.

“Where do we go from here, Tarkus? What’s the easiest way off-planet?” Kamen Spider asked as he slipped on a parka and some boots to become Polar Fighter Kamen Spider.

“Oh, lucky you, that’s easy! The Galaxy Railroad Company is well no its way to mapping its way through all 10 planets in the Solar System, almost 20 moons and even a few demi-planets too. Naturally Hell and the Nebular Empire are pretty accessible too.”

“A whole bunch of worlds, living free and living connected… These planets are going to become great allies of Earth, of justice, of peace! Maybe not so much the Martians… I believe in time, we will be a united system. A united universe out there. Able to hold tight and protect one another. Brotherships beyond the stars… Kinda sounds like you, Tarkus…”

“I try my best to stay pretty friendly.”

“You’re the best friend any human could ask for…”

“Anyway, the Union Station is going to be nearer topside. Later, Mr. Neptune!”

Mr. Neptune frantically whipped his fronds around, making a similar screeching noise, but with a kind softness to his beady round eyes that was both protective and fraternal.

~~~~~

Arriving at the Station, Commander MX10 was clad in a heavy cloak, using straps to keep it pinned close to his chest, looking like he was due to be traveling through the desert for some time, which he wasn’t unsure this large, spacious and gravity-defying space-train was already carrying a few hundred passengers into the void of space on routine travel to a small theme park on nearby orbiting Galatea. He was sent there in disguise to effect espionage upon the Galaxy Railroad Company to see if their transportation blueprints could be better utilized by the Martian Navy. Wormhole technology of theirs had opened newfound holes in the fabric of transportation, allowing further and further travel beyond the stars with either temporary or established wormholes, they were set to be the largest and farthest-traveling company to be visited upon the stars. With any luck, he was given the secondary mission of finding a Lotharian agent aboard the train and carrying out the Queen’s sentence (in absentia) for annihilation. He had been permitted to take a premature clone tank with him, in case he died suddenly, it would open once ready. This was about exactly what he had in mind. For some time, he’d grown tired of noticing he did rather little commanding and mostly ran forward into danger headfirst, thinking only about his own honor. With another few ducets of honor across his knuckles, he felt that he was doing all he could and more for the glory of Mars… but what weight was worth it? How many more ducets would it take for him to be satisfied? Or at least to not be sent out on another mission and another, most leading or ending with a gruesome death. The last one had been far too slow for him not to rue having taken an order that wasn’t direct from his Queen. He was tired of being a slave to his own duty, a dog of a violent government that afforded him nothing in return. Each mission was “the last mission” either in death or disappointment. Stepping down the crimson carpet that traveled down the main hallway leading to the sleeping cars and its many soft and enjoyable capsules for people to sleep in. Drawing silent claws across the walls, he glanced down to the heads barely shown through the soft curtains that hid some of the loose light from the ceiling. Down the lengthy hall, he could almost already spot his target: they had a large, bulbous head like most Lotharians, so it stuck out an inch or so more than just about anyone else.

Walking, almost strolling, he approached and reached a hand towards his shoulder, retrieving the stinging poison Gom Jabbar from under his left pauldron. Holding it to his temple, a clear vein visible, almost taunting him. With a single stroke, another mission would be completed. Looking down to his hand, he looked upon the ducets of honor adorning his knuckles and found them wanting. Putting away his stinger, he let both of his entirely Martian hands rest on either side of the large head of his sleeping target. The Lothar, his eyes shuttered, had thin greyish green eyelids that almost did little to hide the eyes of the Lothar (as they could be seen almost through them.) Staring down into the eyes of a fellow Martian, Commander MX10 began to feel something new, disturbing and exposing: a feeling of resentment. Despite being a warrior, his ducets had not afforded him actual command over anyone but his own foolish attacks. He was treated not like a being of honor, but a loyal dog, ordered to do as told and rebuked for familiarity not afforded to a lesser beast. Every empty offer, even from the Queen, afforded him nothing more than a samsara of despair and death, repeating ad nauseum as he felt the pain of searing unbeing each time, the thrashing first breath again of liquid, the amniotic slime of the clone pits. With a single thought, he decided against the mission. Death had become empty to him and therefore, life had. A warrior without the urge to fight is believed shocked or disturbed, especially among the Queen’s retinue. Picking his hand up, he slipped back a panel of armor near his wrist, revealing around the moderately thin bones in his interior wrist bore a thick, gray, hard plastic bracelet. On it was most of the stolen data he’d already purloined. It almost hurt a very slight amount to think that he’d run a blade through his last execution he’d committed, some three hours before. He growled softly at the Lothar for having exposed him to such vulnerable feelings, but his bared fangs meant little, a threat that he’d not see out. The Lothar was asleep anyways, so he wasn’t exactly going to notice. Dropping the bracelet and securing it around the Lothar’s wrist with a soft click. He would be smart enough to know how to return it where it belonged, Lothar were known for their ability to do what was needed and to know when it’d be needed.

Trudging on uneasy legs, Commander MX10 went back to his personal car, putting his weapons away, he twisted the key in each case, snapping it off to make sure they couldn’t be reopened without mildly complex tools. Opening the clone pod he’d brought with him, he found it was not fully gestated yet. This one would be weaker. Something that needed to be cared for. Reared. At this point, barely fathered. No biological armor had grown yet. Looking down, he gripped into the mire, dragging the head of the new creature from the pod and scrutinizing.

“A female? A mutation such as this... would not be… tolerated…” he noted, mostly to himself. This was less in the idea that he himself disapproved and more to the fact of how such mutations were treated on Mars. “You are not right for Mars… I… I am not right for Mars. You are of me. Different… is better. I will embrace anything that is not Martian. And that will include you.”

He started to wash her clean in a moderately deep sink to remove the slime and allow her to breathe more easily. Children were not common on Mars among warriors. They could be grown at their physical prime and grown to the highest level of fighting strength for the needs of the Martian military. Children were permitted to be raised on lower levels, by drones and workers and caretakers, softer Martians even literally than himself. With such a sea change of philosophy, he began to rapidly embrace that which was “un-Martian” and decided that he would prove himself as honorable by raising a child to not be like himself. To not merely be Martian.

“You are more worthy than the rest of Mars. You are the new Queen. I will care for you. You will learn how to be strong like I am because I will train you to be strong. As best I can… You should have a name… Something I barely have…” He sat down, looking over his adoptive daughter and continued his scrutiny, finding her teeth were not yet fully developed and her eyes were not yet opened. She would need to be cared for almost all the time. This was a new and strange burden. Commander MX10 was already starting to feel a strange sense of doubt in his abilities. This was not the usual work of warriors. But, not being a warrior, he accepted this too.

~~~~~

“So where is Two-Four at now?” Digital Joshie asked, his new gleaming golden-steel alloy body wrapped around his newlywed wife, Digital-Hōshō Marine.

“Maybe they got lost or there was a horrible teleporting accident?” Marine teased as she poked her fingers against Joshie’s face and snickered.

“Well, I just really wanted to let them know! It’s not every day you get married…” he said, his metal fingers lacing with hers.

“It matters not! I know not where he is and there’s not really going to be any good way to find out unless you absolutely need to! But if you say it’s a matter of true love after all…” the Conductor noted, his head quietly hidden behind a thick cap and a thicker jacket. His beady ears peered out to Joshua.

“I mean, I didn’t say it was about true love, but yeah, I guess you could say that…” he admitted, looking longingly into Marine’s eyes.

“The easiest way would be to talk to the Engineer. He is monitoring the Galaxy Train’s progress through the wormholes and splitting through the stars,” the Conductor instructed, pointing a gloved hand to a smallish door (about the Conductor’s height) that led to the cockpit.

The two newlyweds were more pleased when the Conductor shifted a lever and a larger door opened at their own height and they were permitted entry. Although there were several bridge crew, the Engineer was sitting in a large egg-like chair. Swinging around, the spacefaring couple were stunned to find that Formerly United States hero Fleet Admiral Superior was now also a top-skilled engineer for the Galaxy Railroad Company. His body had changed much since their last encounter; his shoulders were nearly twice as broad, he had a sort of compound eyes, he was physically much wider and taller than a normal person by any stretch. His pasted-back white hair was almost at his shoulders, sporting a jaunty tricorne with a large metal badge with a railroad track over stars, indicating that he was a Star Captain as well as a Fleet Admiral by now.

“Well, look who’s been out to sea! Since when did you two get back from Vega System?” Captain Superior asked, standing up and stretching his large, hulking metallic muscles of pure wolfram.

“Just a few space-days ago. We were looking for the Planetary District Manager of Construction to let them know! Me and Two-Four go back a little ways when they made me this cool hat!” he said, doffing his large brown “wizard’s” hat to make a dramatic bow to the Captain (this was customary if they’re a Star Captain.)

“Aha! Then you haven’t heard the good news yet? I suppose the pleasure is all mine!” announced Captain Superior. “In approximately three space-days, we’re going to be landing where they’ve just finished construction on Galaxy Union Station Blue Neptune! The station is above-water level, so we’ll be landing, docking and picking up Two-Five planet-side.”

“They’re already upgraded?!”

“Yeah, new adaptations for underwater and pressure-settings. They’re about as well-structured as a Bosnian Navy battleship!”

“Zounds! That’s a rollicking thing to say, Captain!” said First Mate Greendog.

“Strewth indeed! Captain sure knows how to get things built when it comes to brass tacks!” said Ensign Bluedog (who had come along with their twin sibling, 1st Mate Greendog.)

“That’s amazing! I got a honeymoon suite for me and… well, this is Marine!” Joshie introduced. The Captain shook her hand with a human-level firm squeeze as she started chewing on the back of Joshie’s neck, hanging on to him like a koala hanging on to tasty eucalyptus trees.

“Yeah, pleased to meet you,” Marine said shortly before going back to biting her new husband.

“Isn’t that going to hurt your teeth?” Captain Superior joked, humorously.

“Nothing can harm the teeth of a true space-pirate!” she insisted, waving her hat behind her as if she were riding Joshie much like one would a mechanical bull, though she was doing near to nothing to unbalance his gyroscopic joints.

“Marine… there’s people here… we’re not alone on our ship right now…” Joshie insisted as she instead wrapped her arms around his neck from behind, leaning on to his shoulders and settling into a sort of clutching piggyback sort of position.

“Congratulations, Digital Man! The stars are an amazing place, even when it comes to love…” Capt. Superior mirthed.

~~~~~

After some space-days, the airlocks opened and a small yet functional ramp ended up shoving forward suddenly, tumbling someone’s luggage out into the waters of Neptune, a cache of Martian weaponry in thick musical instrument cases, dumping out into the depths of the waters. Dropping out from a tank of water in a sick three-point landing, Robosaurus 2.5 revealed themselves, a red torso with fins along the arms and webbing between the claws. They’d become sleeker, but with a more heavily crossbeamed structure. Internally, they were held together with tons of stabilizers and plates to keep themselves weighted for diving and with built-in turbines in the legs and feet for better marine movement. Their eyes had gone from being wide and round to being ovular and glaring. They were now a lot thicker in build and had a large pauldron on their right shoulder reading their establishing number 2.5.

“It is good to see you again, Mr. Joshua. The Robosaurus 3.X Line has created this entire structure! This is the first machine-assembled station of many! Using these plans, we’ll be able to set up guide-stations across worlds! Travel will become a thing of the past once more and we’ll be able to get him back to Earth where he belongs! I was lucky to be able to switch bodies but… for a human that wouldn’t be so simple. Robosaurus 1.0 used the last of his Cosmic Energy to establish a relay point, but they haven’t found it yet. I had to find the highest point on Saturn to activate awareness to another planet. I was only able to avoid Uranians for a month or two before the planets were close enough for me to activate on Neptune. But Beagle and Elder Sibling Robo have been trapped there almost a whole year now. I suppose it takes a long long time to get from one pole to the other on a world almost 800 times larger than the Earth… I am going to be heading to Earth soon to see if I can assist Aria and Mei in a project she had in mind concerning returning the two to Earth. My work here on Neptune is done. Forebot Robosaurus 3.1 will be running things for now and they are mostly wired into the consoles. I need to return to Earth, especially now that I’m working more closely with Galaxy Railroad. It will be good to see Vanessa and Leti again. And plus… I still have that RSVP that I sent in.” They lifted a webbed claw to show off an invitation to the wedding of the century to be happening some time later. “Maybe I can squeeze a longer vacation out of it…” they reasoned.

Joshie introduced his new wife (Digital-Hōshō Marine) to Robosaurus 2.5 (Neptune Model) and she received a basketball-sized Neptune Pearl, made from only the most powerful coldwater Neptune Oysters. Her eyes sparkled like disco balls as she almost began to drool over the large pearl.

“Thank you!” she said, righting herself.

“Thank you very much,” Joshie agreed as they both bowed respectfully (as was common for a Space District Manager.)

“Mixter Two-Five! You gotta keep chipper, you’ll find someone to take to the wedding!” Secretary P (who had received a big promotion to an Executive Assistant) offered as the dancing Martian started tuning up a jaunty jig to entertain everyone who could see his fleet feet move so quick.

In fourteen space-days, they’d be back on Earth to start up the final preparations they’d need. It was going to be a big mission for everyone involved to get Beaglesaurus & Robosaurus 1.0 back to Earth and everyone was heading to the South Pole to see if they could figure out just how to put it together. Standing astride, Robosaurus 2.5 looked out the big space-window to the returning Earth… and thought of home again… and about what they were missing...

Chapter Text

Chapter 26 — The South Pole Magnet System, Shifting Love and Wielding Friendship for Mankind’s Future!

or

Fun Times in the Permafrost of the Polar Penguin Paradise

Another portal to Hell opened softly and the two cheeriest Satanists sauntered out, wearing some almost matching one-piece flame-patterned swimsuits.

“It’s been a long time since we got a nice chilly place to hang out, even if it’s on business, Portreeve Ryūgamine!” he noted.

“And it gives me a chance to get some casual reading done when I’m not feeling so busy, Finance Minister SDB!” she noted in kind.

“It was nice of Queen Lydia to get us these business swimsuits. Who’s our contact at the South Pole?” Finance Minister SDB asked of his counterpart.

“Two comestible men-about-town run a watch station for teleporter relays and keep records of strange and odd knowledge, anticipating some form of… destruction. Last I’ve heard, they’ve been here for… years in this bunker! But I hear they have company, so maybe that’ll help!” Portreeve Koneko remarked.

The two Satanist Functionaries began to strike the Bow of Mercy against the steel hatch door several times, making sure they could hearing it echo throughout the complex. It took almost seven minutes until the door slowly started heating itself, the ice crackling off of it as it slowly opened, two gents in hazmat parkas were highly confused to let them in.

“Who the hell are you two? No one briefed us on this! This is some form of federal land, I’m not sure if we have permission to let you in… Who are you with?” Prof. John Roderick shouted, to be heard through the wind.

“We’re from Hell,” the Satanists replied, which Prof. Roderick thought was reasonable enough to hear from the federal government.

“Who is it?” asked Dr. Ken Jennings III, resident genius. It had been some time since his father had been assassinated by King Markiplier during the Second America Wars and he’d felt like he needed an educational vacation to the South Pole to really iron things out. They weren’t exactly accustomed to guests, so they started to push the disused drinks cans aside.

In the interim while they were doing so, they were stunned to find the door was already opening again and that Finance Minister SDB was letting in a bevy of armed guards wearing orange coveralls, filing in and standing at attention. A Japanese flag was brought in, as the most Dangerous Duo had arrived at the South Pole on highly specific business. Holding her hands around a Kalashnikov behind her head, Orange Hiruko and her life-partner, Justinian 82. Orange, holding an ice machete, began to trudge their way in. Behind them, secured to a dogsled, two figures stood up in parkas and began detaching from their transportation. The two started to stretch as a large icebreaker ship had arrived in the background, cracked through the ice to their front step.

“Good evening, gentlemen! My name is Justinian 82. Orange. Me and my attractive wife have been in the area researching Emperor penguin migration patterns, but we are demanding quarter from this storm. There’s a magnetic disturbance going on and we’re going to need to disengage our squadron here until it passes. We apologize for taking up space, but we’re going to anyways. We’re here on the most important mission in the world,” the broad-chested Orange declared, doing a sick snowboard trick before landing at the door, “I suppose we could use your help. We’ll need all the help we can get! Along with my escort detail, my spouse and myself, I have some guests. JimmyHere is a streamer who wanted to stream live from the South Pole, so we’re contracted to bring him here. Don’t ask him about his haircut though, I think he’s… sensitive about it,” Orange instructed.

The flummoxed researchers nodded and decided to retreat to their large cafeteria, setting up some plastic tables to accommodate somewhere people could sit that wasn’t hard stone covered with epoxy. Jimmy was walking around with a floating camera drone rig to keep filming himself as his chat was apparently going absolutely bananas. Jimmy began eating some pretzels he found in a large plastic barrel.

“Chat, we’re gonna be here for something crazy. We’re already in a magnetic storm, but since we have an anti-grav cam, it’s pretty much Faraday-caged by now. We’re going to keep transmitting as much as we can, but now that we’re here, the signal should be improving! Me, Orange, Haruko and the ladies have been traveling here for fourteen weeks aboard the Japanese icebreaker Shirase. If everything works out right, this is going to be the biggest hit story of the year. The GOOOOOOOOAT! Also every time we get a donation, I’m going to eat more of this pemmican!” Jimmy explained to his chat, having started a new stream just after landing.

“The ladies in question are here to explain what’s going on,” Orange explained as Haruko unfurled a futon on top of one of the plastic tables and immediately passed out atop of it.

Orange set a blanket over her as Prof. Roderick and Dr. Jennings III looked over to find the ladies in question were removing the thick outer layer of clothes, wearing normal wintery outfits underneath the heavy coats. Beneath the coats were Aria and Mei, both determined to take advantage of the magnetic storm at the South Pole to do the impossible. Aria began running down the corridors and activating a bunch of equipment to release shielding from magnetic power and to start spraying a concentrated saltwater mixture on to the helipad on the top of the South Pole Complex. For fourteen weeks straight, she’d had the same dreams. A light-handed gift from the Prime Sleeper, she’d been able to see Beagle anytime she and him were sleeping at the same time. In order to travel to the South Pole of Saturn, a powerful rocket had been constructed to help Beagle and Robo 1.0 get to the South Pole in time. With just enough time left, she was going to do everything she could to connect the planets, scourge the stars and break down black holes if it meant getting back the person she dedicated her life to sharing with. For fourteen weeks straight, Mei had been gifted a dream every night prerecorded from missives written and performed by her spouse Robosaurus. Some contact was better than none, but it still left both of them ready and willing to charge ahead if it meant getting them back any faster. Taking a risk like this was going to be worth it. Wrangling a magnetic tornado with a sliding space / time function was going to be a hard ask initially, but getting things to line up this straight without trained astrophysicists or Space Wizards at the helm tended to make things a lot more difficult, even to a millionaire philanthropist model and activist like Aria. Mei was going to be certain with every dream, every message, every vision of her entirely robotic husband, she knew still that she needed to be there the most. Especially with the big event coming up soon after, they’d want to make sure they were able to get them back in time before things really started to escalate. Within the dream, Mei was able to receive a celestial design to enscript on to a key to unlock space / time and open a portal between worlds. These were usually pretty uncommon or took immense power beyond what any singular world power had control over (especially on Earth,) but Aria had been able to apply the right blueprints to charge the key. A key created from a dream that love will return when it is needed.

On Saturn, the South Pole of Saturn was discovered to be mostly the eye of a large storm, requiring slow movement day by day to keep from sinking into the deadly sands of Saturnine quicksand that were prevalent along the polar regolith of Saturn. Trudging and climbing up the sheer cliff faces, Robosaurus and Beaglesaurus were dragging their way up South Pole Mountain to reach the summit above the clouds. Mantling higher and higher, the distant glare of a light, they surmounted the peak and looked into the magnetic storm railing around the mountain. Upon the green rippling stripes across the sky, it cascaded like a nightmare of an aurora whirled by the hand of angry god into a hurricane filled with glaring emerald thunderbolts. Taking hands together, Beagle was able to integrate Robo into his cybernetics and connect himself into a new, old form of Beaglesaurus once again. A union of man and machine, a cyborg of friendship fueled by a Neo-Robot Heart and a sense of justice that just wouldn’t get tired at the first sight of danger on the glittering magnetic horizon. Two friends, hand in hand again, two bodies as one, ready to transport their way through space and time…

Back at the South Pole Complex, Mei and Aria were preparing everything for the incoming teleportation from pole to pole. Racing back and forth to keep the two sides of the rooftop charged with electricity via their large solar panel array thereof, Mei and Aria were able to create a large powerful charge that collapsed a hole into the magnetic storm. Finance Minister SDB stepped forward and help up the Love Magnet and began chanting towards it, followed by Portreeve Koneko, who were channeling the full available force that Hell had to offer, their powers combined starting to carefully concentrate the love of one woman for one cyborg and one woman for one robot would be something that would crack through space / time, to alter the causality of a churning magnetic storm, to unite Hearts from across time and expend the last of the Cosmic Energy that Beagle had coursing through his body. Already wore down from having that much Cosmic Energy coursing through his veins, requiring a lot of assistance from Robosaurus 1.0 to get him to South Pole Mountain. Activating the rooftop chargers, the two ladies watched from the catwalk as the two Satanists continued their unholy prayers.

At 6:06:06pm, South Pole Time, the torrent cracked loose and Beaglesaurus, once more together, closed both of his techno-organic eyes and flew up and into the storm, launching through a rift in time experienced by few and survived by fewer. Throwing futons at the walls, Mei and Aria started to watch as the storm collided down into a cyclone cylinder that shuttered down to the helipad. Crackling and surging, Beaglesaurus United was able to lock in to the source of the magnetic shakedown, shifting from one planet to another, the last of the Neo-Robot Hearts Cosmic Overcharge launching them back to the South Pole. JimmyHere was pointing and pogging, stricken by the very spectacle of magnetic miracle, Mei and Aria standing aloft as they walked up to the dispelling blasts of radiating bolts. Taking the threaded rod out of her hair to let it flow down, Mei dashed forward the second it was less bright enough to see Robosaurus 1.0 floating a few feet off the ground. Aria snapped forward like an Olympic runner, dashing in like a horse at top speed, intent on getting to her goal. Throwing herself forward, Beagle reached forward out of the storm and they grasped hands together like true allies, their love connecting worlds and unlocking the magnetic storm between two planets. As the two couples were slowly standing ungrounded until they weren’t charging with open circuit, the two heroes back on an Earth they’d saved time and again.

Two thumbs uplifted, one from each of them, showed they were still feeling fresh enough and started getting up, happy to be back on Earth, even though it was going to start being really damn cold super fast, almost robbing them of their innate lightning-searing heat. The steam that would be burning hot was equalizing quickly, melting all the ice in a 20’ radius circle around the complex’s perimeters. Beaglesaurus and Robosaurus 1.0 were back on Earth and safe, with their loved ones. The Omni-Chroniclers (Prof. Roderick & Dr. Jennings III) were overjoyed at seeing the Archduke of the Skate Park returned to the local soiree and decided a great party should be held. With the storm having fizzled out almost entirely, the skies were clear, making almost for a direct sunlight heat. They set up a small grill and started having a rollicking good party of fruit juices, moderate dancing and palling around with local penguins. The goofy swimming birds were a great fun to have as Aria and Beagle looked in their small beady eyes and started to have a small, energetic dance-off with the adorable creatures. Everyone enjoyed barbecued beef sticks and juicy chunks of fish as they started forming a polar conga-line. Hiruko started carefully stealing some cans of beef stew and assorted Dipping Dots (the Ice Cream of the Future), finding that they had no particular “valuables” among them in the South Pole, considering their entire lack of an economy there. Orange started to scramble their troops, encouraging that they’d be leaving soon enough to get back to the American continents. JimmyHere shouted in ecstatic joy and began thanking his many subscribers, but in a way that was more like he was accepting an award just by being present. Like a star, sobbing their heart out at the Oscars…

The icebreaker Shirase began taking off as Prof. Roderick and Dr. Jennings III looked behind themselves and found that the party had left entirely. They decided to make some double cheeseburgers to enjoy the only known spring-seasoned day at the South Pole. They enjoyed some sun exposure and then went back inside when another snow-packed cloud on its way to drink some hot chocolate. Even though they were pretty uncouth guests, the Omni-Chroniclers decided to give it a few days before they needed anyone to get the skinny.

Waking up a few days afterwards, Jimmy found Shirase was gone and grabbed his entirely human head in both of his entirely human hands and stared down Camera 1, “Chat?! Am I cooked?! Did I get swindled?! Did someone bamboozle this bro?” JimmyHere’s magnetic reunion stream blew up and the film rights to his supposedly intrepid story were being optioned across the board. Wearing a rattan suit and driving an aerobike, Jimmy landed at home, still having a tear in his eye to know he had seen the impossible. He opened his phone and, tears on his entirely human face, soaking into his mustache, he addressed the world once more.

“I guess in the end… love wins…” he murmured thoughtfully, also down Camera 1. “But you know I gotta shout it out to the people who could make it all happen to me… DeepBlueInk, Onsta, Wabe no Bashii, gotta bring up Plastic Bag, Dr. Charles, Mister Oda, Bruno the Barber, Archie the Leach, Spam X Hamhurst, the Colorado Raisins, Uncle Solid, ZachGG, BryceUp, Dr. MissRespect, Benjima Hideo, Ranger Sal, The Moominkeeper, the Dragon of Slowjima, DeadSphynx, Inc., MikiiB and Anon, Chase Young, Dandy Garcia, Veleck, Clint McElroy, the astonishing Skinner, Princess Jerma (we have got to do a team-up, see what’s up in Space Iowa?) Gotta say seeing that… my heart?! Complete. Three sizes that day. Don’t stop believing. Chat, I think it doesn’t matter… how much money may have been lost… I think we owe it… to love.” Bowing his head, Jimmy ate a pickle popsicle with a fervent gaze ‘pon the horizon and thought about exploring a new corner of the Solar System. It was getting to be a pretty wide-open world out there… A Universe of possibility.

Chapter Text

Chapter 27 — The Monarch of Nightmares Awakens & Romance Seizes the World!

or

The Stunning New Wedding No One Could Possibly Expect is Starting RIGHT NOW!

The bells were ringing in the evening and a large man, a father of several, stood up to lift two hands in solidarity. His son had been missing again for some time, but it was always clear he’d be back. It would take more than the Universe falling apart to stop Beagle from coming back home again. Today was a happy day all the same: a wedding from one of his own children was going on. His eldest son, Sorcerer, was getting married to his paramour and former boss, Dr. Neko Zauberin Yāzuānlíng, and he was well-dressed with the rest of the women of the Lobstersaurson Family: 24 year old Swordsaurus was doing some sick sword tricks next to the large ice-swan to entertain the guests, 20 year old Bagelsaurus was posting the best dresses in the soiree, 14 year old Hope was doing face-painting with Queen Adeen. Beagle had been gone for almost a year or so since he’d gone to the Moon to investigate the Cosmic Chaos, but they had every expectation they’d be back any day, especially since four months back Aria and Mei had left to Antarctica to go find him. Enjoying a fine glass of champagne, he looked out across the green field and thought well that he would have another daughter among many. After the death of his first wife, he’d had a hard life at the Business Factor before becoming Bank President, but now he’d gone harder and more passionately into a world he did not entirely understand, cracking into the breakneck world of politics, winning the latest gubernatorial election in the wake of the public release of the Late Governor Blumpkin Tornadus (Last of the Business Wizards,) defeating Gary Daniels at the polls to become Governor of the State of Neo-Ontario. Baka Matsu had stopped in earlier, but took off to go attend to her own sister’s wedding taking place uptown. Wearing a festive porcelain mask, Baka knocked back another shot of liquor and tumbled into her black Chevy Impala.

~~~~~

She had leased a driver from her rich older sister, Carmen Sandiego, and rapped her knuckles on the barrier between them. It lowered slowly and a Panamanian gentleman with a Puerto-Rican flare wearing a jaunty cap slammed on the gas, colliding down the street to the Auric Paradiso. Arriving on the gold-bricked driveway, the driving Mr. Commodore wrenched the e-brake and started to help Baka out of her car to get to the foyer, where Vanessa was already getting married to Baka’s younger sister, Leticia. Wearing matching dresses in black and white (Vanessa in white,) with Finance Minister SDB officiating their Satanist wedding. They stomped a very evil glass wrapped in a black silk and then embraced romantically as they were declared dual brides. Vanessa leapt forward into Leti’s arms as the house staff, bodyguards and dignitaries from the Galaxy Railroad Company (which Vanessa had started operating with last week) began clapping, cheering and screaming in exaltation. As Mr. Commodore vaped in the back of the room, ignored by the rest of things and nibbled on a piece of mofongo he procured from a small metal matchbox in his pocket.

“It’s a real day of romance around here…” Mr. Commodore noted, nodding sagely into the sunset, only for a sudden shadow to be cast over the party, blotting the direct rays of setting sunlight upon the nuptial reception of Vanessa Bradlingtonovna Smerdyakov-Yermolay Gonzalez-Sandiego and Leticia Rowan Dram Hugosi Nordin Gonzalez-Sandiego, dancing down above trees.

Rushing out to the front of the mansion, a large inflatable crash pad activating on the front lawn helipad, cushioning four falling figures, rolling as the four parachutes with an Antarctic Flag on each, roaring fighter jets zooming overhead that the falling figures had bailed out of. Rolling along the heavy padding, Beaglesaurus, Robosaurus 1.0, Aria and even Mei had arrived, pulling off the parachute equipment to reveal they were dressed in four matching tuxedoes, each one in a differing brilliant color. Bagelsaurus was streaming from a convenient hole in her pocket that she could use to film with her phone still secure within, only to be suddenly stunned. Seeing something like this, she could do naught but stare, her head turning as she glanced back to see something she could not understand…

~~~~~

Sitting alone in a ruined, dark castle, Ephialtes was withdrawn, reduced to a confused, nigh-amnesiac burrowed form. On a throne, ruler of no one, a realm of nightmares stolen and infused, gone for a time untold till the Grand Champion of Jupiter ceded it back to them. Cold, they wrapped tighter their cloak around their form atop the stone chair. A single blade of light began to dive down through the realm of Nightmares until within it, Ephialtes’ head lifted in despair, noticing among the mire of their half-existence was a red shadow splashed against the walls. Rippling down out of the silhouette of red, a long, scaling ribbon of blood dropping on to the floor, like it were being dispensed from a machine out of control. As it began to pile more and more into a shape, it started to compress and wind against itself until it looked like a humanoid form, a mummy with no interior core. Within, two piercing yellow eyes dove out to look upon them.

“You are feeling weak. You are vulnerable after having part of yourself stolen. It will take time for you to recover. Until such a time, I am here to protect you. I am Morpheús Oneiros, Creator of Dreams, and Regent Monarch of Nightmares. It will take training and learning and regrowing to become the being you once were. Or something new. This is going to take some time, is my point. For now, you will need time to learn, time to grow, time to become creative again. Know that this is your place and you may make it as you wish, as long as it does not attempt to harm specifically me or you. I will create an avatar of myself to care for you, as I care for every dream. From my kindness, you will receive friendship and subjects. In time, you will be yourself again. But until then…” A sparkling noise like singing produced by celestial instruments called out from the mess of tangles that was Morpheús and from it, the Dread Paladin Chelldorado was summoned, his dark armor remolded to be blunt and rounded. His saw-like blade was lifted from his hands by Morpheús, bent into a ring and fused into the Great Gate of Nightmares, a lock to hold the worlds out and Ephialtes in until they were safe once more. When the Gate was opened, Chelldorado would be free. “This one shall assist you throughout his time here as your guardian and protector. Because his name is too long, you can merely call him ‘Jerry.’ Jerry seems easy enough.”

Their pale form shrank back into the shadows, but Jerry knelt before them and started to face downward, a sure sign of deference. Pressing out their hand on to Jerry’s helm, they felt soothed by Jerry’s inaction as Morpheús began to loop an arm around, pushing out a small can of paint and dipping one ribboned hand into it, flinging it out like a Pollock painting as dark red and black and gray paint scattered across the dismal castle.

“Upon this, I’ve created you some friends to entertain you, liven your existence and teach you important lessons over the course of time,” Morpheús explained as from the dripping paint on the floor crawled new, simple nightmares.

A small dinosaur that could fit under doors appeared, baring sharp teeth and pounding a large gong to announce more of the Nightmares which were dashing out themselves like the Chicago Bulls at the 1997 NBA Finals, the confidence making Ephialtes feel a lot less like the 1997 Boston Celtics. Standing up, Jerry lifted Ephialtes off their feet and on to his broad, pauldroned shoulder.

“This little one with the gong is Hellsaur Ky Dig-A-Dig, he is a dinosaur who can follow you anywhere.”

The gong sounded loudly as a large robed creature of great size and a small desiccated creature the size of a doll running quickly next to him.

“These are the Big Wraith, Lord of Barrels Aeschylus, and the Small Lich, Muri Delgado-Franz. They are some kind of undead, think about how disturbing that is for some time.”

Ephialtes decided that sounded interesting and began to ponder, which in the Dream Realm, was fuel for creation. Walking from the painted floor drips came a small robot golem and a goblin wearing a wizard’s hat, who was holding hands with a dog wearing a miter.

“These are the Robot Golem Alpha Kinetixx, the Goblin Mage Ben (the Unlucky) and the Hound Sage Mushiro. They are wise about all things mechanical, magical and animal. Be careful around these two, they are here to teach you combat!” Morpheús said, shaking his arms as out fell a charming lad with a slight figure and a smiling face. “This is the Berserk Fighter Gibb Hartin, who is feminine but deadly. And this one,” a slender Witch with a horrifying shadow for a cape, “Is the Nightmare Witch Saphire. She’s going to teach you how to create Nightmares!” Finally, a wizard floating on a small orb, his huge robes floating around him like a rippling wave as he carried over his head with both of his entirely nightmarish hands was a miko with wolf ears, shaking a golden gohei. Soft black cherry petals alighted at her presence as she danced down on the wind to bow before Ephialtes.

“Accursed Lord of Nightmares, Prince of Fitful Sleep, Master of Fear,” the Miko Chibi addressed, setting down her ceremonial staff.

The Nightmares, bowing to their new Lord, Ephialtes found the cloak itself was not much in the way of interesting to wear and another Nightmare, the Stitch Witch Willow, decided to fashion a pointy, silvery and evocative outfit that would better suit being referred to as a Prince.

“‘Tis I, the Wily Wizard Cabal Arcana! I, Cabal Arcana, hereby decree that the best Nightmare is Ephialtes!” The Wily Wizard (Cabal Arcana) stated, as if he were an official of some sort, opening a lengthy scroll and making sweeping declarations.

“I appreciate the friends, but what if I want someone who can work that won’t be distracted from me?” Ephialtes offered.

“Ah, you need peons. Imagining that many people at once might be difficult for you now so…” Morpheús thought aloud, then reached behind himself to produce a small husky puppy, “They will grow up alongside you, so treat them well and they will remain loyal to you. They are likely not smart enough to be too troublesome or too hectic. With these among you, these many helpers and pets and peons, you will become great and powerful once more… and with any training or imagination… your heart will either return… or regrow. We won’t know until we try…” Reaching out his hand, Ephialtes took his hand.

“You will be there for me then, Morpheús?” Ephialtes offered, willing to believe even without a heart. But feeling bravery still pulsing within their form, took Morpheús’ hand, beginning a path of recovery to being the Lord of Nightmares once more. “Teach me the way of dreams. I will take a name that will better fit me now. I am not yet ready to be a Master of the Night, does that make you a disciple of the evening? To look to the west is to find progress… an evening in the west would be… a Hesperus… a Vesper…”

“If you so choose, Lord Vesper,” Morpheús reasoned.

“It shall take time for me to become the Lord of Night once more… But Prince isn’t too hard a job until then… At least you’ve made me… feel less lonely…” Prince Vesper noticed.

“Learn well… and you will grow large in mind and body again…” Morpheús explained. And with that, he was gone.

~~~~~

As a large capsule began tumbling down through the sky, it clipped against the former home of Blumpkin Tornadus, which was luckily due to be demolished since the bank had foreclosed on his magical mansion of whosits and goofnaughts and all sorts of ridiculous things (since he’d been trapped on Saturn while some time had passed on Earth,) it buried itself in the middle of the driveway fourteen hours down from the famed Lobstersaurus Family Domicile. Emerging from the vessel, struggling to his feet, the Commander MX10 trudged forward, climbing out of the crater and on to the streets of Neo-Oakland…

However, everyone was still distracted further, since there had been two uninvited guests to the wedding of Sorcerer & Dr. Neko. Standing atop the high-gabled roofs, the Gonzales Twins had returned from their intense training in the Altay Mountains. Aridactyl, wearing an experimental jetpack and sporting a hand-carved prosthetic leg and holding a bokken. Wearing a simple coat made from yak-skin hanging on her shoulders, billowing in the wind as she glared down to her now-younger brother.

“Brother. Explain to them the reason for your arrival,” she commanded, holding out an authoritative hand.

As she did so, whipping off the heavily-weighted cloak that he was wearing, letting it tumble through a glass coffee table on the patio. Lifting high his head like a hawk glaring down at its prey, he slid his hand down to a hewn katana at his waist, showing off that he had all of his limbs again. Landing on the ground before him, Swordsaurus drew forth her Muramasa blade and held it pointed at Andre Gonzales’ throat.

“You have a lot of gall to return here! What is it you want, Andre?” she asked, demanding.

“For some time, I have continued my training in isolation, with nothing. Only with solitude have I achieved my perfection. I am to you now a changed Andre. I have been challenging dōjō after another until I am certain in saying that I am at least… the second most powerful swordsperson in the State of Neo-Ontario! You are the last stone to cross on my path to becoming a pure swordsman again. Defeating you… I will know that my struggles have had reason. Your respect and your heart are what I’ve been seeking in my humility. In my training. You offer me the only things I respect in a woman and you are the only person I think of with any particular interest,” Andre Gonzales explained, drawing his own blade to cross against hers.

“Fool that you are! Your personal journeys are meaningless. I may very well be the greatest swordswoman in both Americas, but you overestimate yourself… as usual, Gonzales. You deign to call yourself my equal. I will only do battle with you to prove that you are not worthy, both of my strength or my affections. You have changed little in personality. We shall see how little you have changed in terms of power…” Swordsaurus declared, beginning a deft and complex battle of the blades.

~~~~~

Commander MX10 continued his pilgrimage to the Lobstersaurus Family Domicile, Beagle, Aria, Mei and even Robosaurus 1.0 having arrived at home to see a defeated Andre Gonzales bowing respectfully for once.

“I understand. I will not continue until I have grown more. Perhaps I will have to strive to find other targets of my affections,” Andre admitted, his head held low.

“Perhaps stop thinking of women as targets…” Swordsaurus muttered, turning from him in cold deference to not having him before her.

“I shall take that under advisement…” he murmured, then quickly left. Aridactyl, shaking her head, took off after him with her jetpack after promising she’d return to continue testing Andre’s strength.

Watching them leave, Beagle was able to enjoy his brother’s wedding reception and Mei was able to see her new stepfather, finally uniting her and Beagle’s families forever. As soft adult contemporary played and the dances began to slow, the sun was setting as Commander MX10 arrived and the lighting fixtures were being dismantled as he began to beat a fist upon the front door of the Lobstersaurus Family Domicile himself.

“I seek your aid!” he called, looking up to the tall doors and windows. As Alyssa Owlsaurus answered the door, his eyes sparkled and the ducets of honor adorning his face shone in the sunset lights reflecting off of her house. “You are Alyssa, a powerful and honorable warrior. You fight by rules that are respected, but you do not attack others out of necessity, nor are you hunted for your strength. I wish to ask you for the hardest thing for me to do.”

Reaching behind himself, he procured the wide-eyed face of his clone (her eyes had opened by now,) three small canines emerging from her dark gumline.

“I have deserted the Martian military for they were cruel and they awarded me nothing of worth anymore. I want to train my new Queen to not be weak, but not to harm others. I want her to be strong enough to defend herself and to not live in fear or duty. And so I have come to you… Can you help me train her to be a warrior that does not need to fight?” Commander MX10 queried, hiding his ducets, his hands drawn down into plaintive fists, pressed against the ground, his forehead pressed to the patio in supplication. This was the closest he understood to ideas of “civility” and “asking,” which were already pretty rare concepts on Mars.

“She is still a baby, I cannot train her until she starts to walk on her own. Does she speak yet?”

“No, I know not how long it will take to raise her naturally. Martians of my class are grown to live short lives, born in their prime, frontloaded to the climax of battle. I, Commander Merwyn-X10, plead on behalf of the only thing that holds meaning in my life. Help me in how to raise this child. She is a clone of myself, opened too early, so that she will not live a short life. I have given her a name, unlike my mere numbers and serial identifier. I call her ‘Marcia.’”

“I can teach you how to raise her well. I have raised girls before. But you are Martian and so is she. There will be differences of the body that I cannot teach her. You will need to discover what it means for her to challenge your society by first understanding it and, therefore, to understand her. Speak with Mayor Gary Daniels, he will find you temporary housing while you find work. Tomorrow, you can begin training at my gym. I will come find you at dawn. A new life for you… begins tomorrow. Take time to rest. Rest is important for all creatures, sleep and dream of a new home, a place that is not Mars.”

In the darkness, Merwyn-X10 picked up Marcia and walked with her out to City Hall, not realizing that it would be closed at that time of night. Clutching her tighter in the night, Merwyn-X10 decided to start to see if his biological armor could actually be removed. If he could live a life like Marcia. If he could be free of the thoughts of war on Mars. Looking out over the Don River, he drew out the Geti Gom Jabbar from under his left pauldron and threw it in to the Don, enjoying seeing that it was heavy enough to sink with the poison still inside. Tomorrow, he would be a new person with a new identity on Earth, free from the shackles of the constant warring planet. Earth would be a lot more relaxing, surely. Looking in the light of the Earth’s New Moon, he enjoyed seeing the eyes of his new daughter as she opened her mouth and let out a short, quiet shout that he wasn’t sure was supposed to be a challenge or a greeting. He smiled, for once, and thought how much he enjoyed it.

~~~~~

The next day, Merwyn-10X had returned as promised to find that Marcia was at least willing to try standing on her own, though she was still relatively quiet. Her large and shining eyes made Alyssa think of Hope when she was young, so she decided to start with simplistic exercises that worked well enough for most creatures with semi-humanoid limbs. Beagle noticed that Aquatarkus had been visiting, since her shoes were sitting in the hall outside of Bagelsaurus’ room and the door was closed, and wondered just what she was up to with his younger sister. As he opened up the shed in the backyard to find that DJ Kiryū was vaping not memes, but a new strain of Weed 3, reclining on a disused red couch that Sorcerer had once kept in his room, but neglected to return it after his return.

“Oh hey, you must be Beagle. I’m DJ Kiryū, Mechagodzilla’s brother. Kamen Spider told me I could sleep her for the night, I’m about to go off-planet for another hauling run cross-System, but I just wanted to get your advice on some things. Kamen Spider is barely recovering from his encounters with the Space Wizard Concern and he’s still on his way back from Neptune. But the problem really is… I guess I never really knew my brother… or Kamen Spider really. We teamed up, but we didn’t like discuss anything about me or anything. I know my brother did some egregious things, even if they weren’t his fault… but it’s hard to square that up with what I should be doing. Hauling is what I know best, but… Maybe exploring what’s out there in the world will be what I need to do more of… some experience, some context of everywhere… The more I’m connected, the more I’ll understand.” DJ Kiryū mused.

“That’s actually pretty deep and self-effacing in a growth-type manner. I appreciate you saying that, Kiryū. Let’s go somewhere and talk about it.”

Beagle took him to this usual haunt when he wanted a good bite to eat: Billford’s Sarnies, which was in the middle of a “Sarnieganza” whereof he ordered a very tall Roast Beef with Swiss and offered Kiryū some charge tablets and an express-size energon cube. Although Kiryū found the tablets gave a delightful charge and had a tasty lemon flavor and the energon made him feel peppy and excitable. Still feeling aloof at his feelings about what to do in the Universe, he rotated in the small red stool on the bar at Billford’s as he saw the door open and Robosaurus 2.5 trudged in, a little rough-looking and pounded a robotic fist on the bar. Billford quickly handed him a direct line to the oil supply and pour it down their throat and a little over their body, like drinking from a kitchen sink faucet by sticking your head under it. Kiryū was stunned by just how attractive they looked and decided that maybe leaving Earth… and taking a detour after reaching Neptune… might just be a good idea.

“Beagle, I am going to be returning to Neptune soon. You should come sometime, we have discovered they have animals quite like manatees, but smaller and, somehow, much cuter. And… who is this… friend of yours?” Robosaurus 2.5 asked, looking around Kiryū with an interested body language, not unlike the Gill-Man of Black Lagoon fame. “He looks very… interesting…”

“My n-name is DJ Kiryū. I’m uh… new in town… I guess…” he said, his internal motor steaming softly. He drank a glass of water to better regulate his temperature.

“Have you tried this human concept of kissing yet?”

“Well damn, I haven’t… Tell me more…” DJ Kiryū stood up and walked out with Robosaurus 2.5, lacing his fingers into Robosaurus 2.5’s webbed claws.

Suddenly, Gov. Denton kicked open the door and set down a large machine on the counter next to Beagle, lifting both hands up and down, like he were stretching in an aggressive manner that wasn’t particularly intimidating.

“Beaglesaurus! You’re just the man we need! We’ve gotten back in contact with Iowa now… but we can’t find any people there! We need your help to solve this crazy mystery before things go totally to shit!” Gov. Denton implored.

Turning back to him, Beagle nodded, smiled, and put on a pair of sunglasses.

“I just got home! At least let me finish this first…” Beagle said, as he started to finish a large sandwich.