Chapter 22
Sarra
fell into the rubble again and immediately jumped back into the air. She was
dizzy and she had trouble staying aloft; she figured that it was a
psychological effect of being in toy land. Her only current comfort was that
the bizarre vertigo was fading to manageable levels. She splashed into a puddle
and her swearing was cut short by a voice. She took on her human shape and kept
herself low.
“Clive, we had a deal. Get up.”
Sarra’s
head floated up to look over a former wall and she saw Clive half reform. His
lower body was a puddle. A woman stood over him. Sarra had some lewd thoughts because
of the tight catsuit and dark bobbed hair; although being sexy did not seem to
be the woman’s intention.
“Morgan.” Clive said. “I experienced my
transformation again in that eye; my one stupid, stupid mistake in life.” His
anger grew.
Morgan lorded over Clive with crossed arms and
a scowl. Morgan’s frustration gained an edge of vague interest.
“Up there, in that vortex?”
“We were in play land first, and then the four
of us reopened my wound.”
“How could that be?”
Clive formed a leg from his globular mass and
‘stepped up’ from the vanishing puddle to a normal height. Morgan bit her
fingernail and Clive stood there, looking slightly dizzy. His face elongated
downward slightly with one eye falling faster than the other one.
“Clive is the dragon, then…” Sarra said.
Morgan took a minute to think and then looked
at Clive.
“Never us mind that now, I shall repair the
damage and make you normal when we are through, Clive. We shall focus on Anne
now. Ascend, Clive, and bring her to me.”
Clive straightened up and sighed. He looked up
at Anne and Levan and flew off.
“Fly my gooey, fly.” Sarra said. She stood up
to shorten her neck and then flew after Clive.
Morgan
sighted Sarra and pulled out her wand.
“Even the noblest of heroes meet their end at
the hands of someone in love and out for revenge… in damnatio memoraie, EnWol.”
Morgan spread her feet, grateful that she had
decided to leave the high heels at home, and took aim. Two swaths of blue
flames twirled around Morgan and picked up speed as they neared the wand. They
blurred at the tip, paused, and then exploded into the air, straight for Sarra.
Chapter 23
With
as much precision as he could muster, Garner heaved himself upward against his
globular protection from the pit of the shallow valley of concrete and steel. He
had found that Morgan’s meta shield was like no other in the sense that nothing
could get in or out, with the exception of air. He was, in a sense, numb to the
world as a scientist preserved in another’s experiment. Like a rat.
Garner put all of his weight on the side of
the shield. He was so frustrated that he did not pay attention to what was on
the other side of the gentle incline propped up by fallen structure on a fence.
Florence, Tench, and Lora’s attention jerked
to Morgan’s fiery attack and they took action. The trio flew off, Florence telling
Tench to go after Anne, and Lora to find out where those shots were coming
from. Clark took notice of a green bubble coming up over a wall. He wished his
partners luck and stepped up to the bubble. He cocked his eyebrow when he
noticed who was inside the green light.
“Dr. Garner, I presume?”
Their eyes met and Garner yelped. He fell
backward and rolled all the way down to the small valley where he had gotten
himself stuck in the first place. Clark flew up and stretched out to grab the
bubble. He wrapped his fingers around it, noting its odd solidity, and picked
it up to meet Garner at eye level. He was quivering, like a rat.
“Bill Garner, what’s someone like you doing
here with a force-field when Anne Redford, your responsibility I might add, is
up there terrorizing the city with amplified power? Looks mighty suspicious to
me.”
Garner‘s stomach dropped and he nearly threw
up. He figured that if he looked like a rat, felt like a rat and acted like a
rat, he might as well be one. Garner pointed at where the shots were coming
from and started to hyperventilate.
“M-Morgan! Morgan le Fay talked me into this!
I wanted her opinion on Anne, but she went crazy and she took the Psychic
Anne’s powers and… and…” Garner’s eyes rolled up in his head again and he
passed out. The shield popped and Garner fell into the original Crimson
Cherries fingers.
Clark racked his brain to find out whether he
had ever met a villain named Morgan le Fay. He looked toward the oblique flashes
and rubbed his chin.
Chapter 24
Sarra
charged her ice, leaving a vacuum of low humidity behind her. She was gaining headway
on Clive. She ignored the bursts of blue that shot both past and through her,
and focused only on Clive and his death wish. His knuckle cracking, face
smashing death wish.
Tench darted up to Anne from another angle,
stopped for a moment and flew off with her in tow. No matter. Sarra drew in any
available moisture, stretched her arms to her ankles, and listened to the ice
crystals form with a smile. She got within a few feet of Clive, pulled her arms
taut, and then she was tackled by another EnWol. Sarra released her icy build
up in a random direction and howled with rage as the other EnWol, Florence,
worked to separate herself from the single, newly fused mass.
“Are you out of your liquid mind?” Sarra
yelled. She didn’t pay attention to Florence drawing her own body from Sarra’s
and instead watched Clive chase after Tench.
Sarra pointed at Clive and looked at Florence;
the fused mass separated.
“I almost had the jerk, why in Gaia’s name did
you intercept my—”
“What
in the world were you planning on doing by chasing after Clive when there were fireballs
hurtling not just at the two of you, but at two more innocent people? Saving
the day does not mean hurting
oncoming innocents.” Florence said. Her gaze pierced Sarra.
Sarra slapped her chest.
“Anne was out of the way, and I could have
stopped Clive!”
“And we protect the people before everything.
Winning the war sometimes means losing small victories. Administer common sense
next time instead of listening to your own pride.”
Sarra glared at Florence.
“You don’t know what he did to me.”
Florence jabbed at her own chest.
“I have a body count of over five hundred
because of my own mistakes, and only an eighth of that was a part of the Third
Riche. I’m still paying off the insurance for those deaths and I don’t want to
see a reckless EnWol, Crimzon with a Z,
have a track record that’s as bad as mine, or worse.”
Sarra curled her lip and crossed her arms.
“Isn’t this conversation pointless when there
are villains flying around with us in the middle?”
Florence jabbed Sarra’s chest; she didn’t
respond beyond letting her body jiggle.
“Don’t
be cocky. Remember that a small battle has to be lost to win the war. We have
back up to help. Now come on, you go after Clive and use some good
old-fashioned common sense. I’ll try and calm Levan down.”
Florence flew upward and left Sarra feeling
like she should be pleased that she was able to keep pursuing Clive, but she
instead felt bitter about being ordered around. She saw Clive come up behind
Tench.
Sarra sighed.
“Okay…” She flew off to do what she was told.
Chapter 25
“Okay,
Anne, how’s that for an idea?” Tench shouted. Anne giggled.
“That’s cool! I wish I had thought of that!
Here!”
Anne projected a cupcake for Tench, which he
knew that he could not interact with, and playfully bit at it. He saw the
imagined treat vanish and heard Anne gasp. Tench turned around to see Clive smack
him upside the head. Tench lulled for a moment, trying to clear the stars from
his eyes, the sick from his stomach and the pain from his head as Clive made
off with Anne.
Down below, Lora hovered over the ruined
buildings at the water’s edge. Her bloodied and crusted shoulder was starting
to come out of shock and realize that it had a wound. It felt less like a
blackened welt and more like uncooked filet mignon. A dagger of pain struck her
arm, and she almost buckled over. Lora looked up with a pained gasp and saw Clive
disappear behind a tanker ship with Sarra closing in from behind. Lora held her
arm and sniffed hard. She figured that she was alone, and bobbed over to meet
with Sarra. She landed in the debris, rubbing her arm and hissing. The area was
disserted; the only sounds that she could hear were coming from the sea, and
the cloud that Levan had overtaken.
“I hope this isn’t infected… or broken, eww…”
She looked at her pink hand darkened by the blood. Lora figured that it was
better to swallow the pain and try to win rather than waste time by wishing for
the second time that Bronson had applied the coding properly. She wasn’t sure
how well she would be able to fight with an arm that she couldn’t raise higher
than her belly button.
Lora
hovered across the plot, checking behind pieces of wall, chunks of rubble, and
other assorted mismatches that had fallen from the vortex. As she started to
call for Sarra, she heard a scream. She flew over to peek behind a mound of
rubble and saw Clive carrying Anne into a cave. Lora studied the cave. She was puzzled
by its building materials; bits of rubble, rebar, cars, oil drums, and the like
were held together by what looked like spider webs of melted solder. Lora
didn’t worry about the construction and headed for the aperture, her mind
focused on the little girl.
Lora flew in and yellow, blue, and red sprites
materialized and danced before her. They made her instantly lightheaded.
“Oh…”
Lora
fell to the ground.
If you would like the whole book, a souvenir of the experience, check it out at Smashwords here: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/87111
If you would like the whole book, a souvenir of the experience, check it out at Smashwords here: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/87111
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