20. from "Victory", chapter Thirtysomething

[This will be the last excerpt from my upcoming novel "Victory" that I will share here. And now a word about the title: I KNOW this text will be appearing in the book, and I know it will be toward the end ... I just don't know when. You see how I've numbered my entries here for the last few weeks? I'm counting down toward not only when I want to get this novel done -- and I still have quite a bit of work to do -- but also toward the seventh birthday of my son Jeffrey (who beat me again in chess last night). I will be ready. -- David]



Gadgetmaster recognized the man in his field of vision standing in reflective silver with a shining forehead before he could announce himself. “Perihelion.”

“We have to talk.”

“We’ll have to do it after Cindy’s not dying and the world’s not likely to blow up!”

“As you wish.” Without any perceptible change, Daniel Gallatin noticed the world around them had stopped. Beacon’s rapid breathing was caught by the mid-rise of her Adam’s apple, Belladonna was frozen on a downward arc that would have eviscerated him, and Zenia and Domino seemed to fumble for position on the one-person pip flying platform. Smoke from the battlefield Quezon City had almost unfurled despite the supposed stoppage of time around him and the mysterious Perihelion. That was just what he could see.

“Your timing stinks,” Gadgetmaster grunted. “You want to do something? Do something now!” Gadgetmaster summoned all his will to not pound Perihelion by his star-shaped (or was it a star as his) head into the ground. Then he chanced to look into Perihelion’s silver chest plate, the one Haxe had looked into last year and learned more than she cared to about herself and her effect on the world, just by seeing herself as she was.

Gadgetmaster saw nothing.

He forgot what that might portend and dressed the luminescent figure down. “If someone’s going to die here today, it’s not going to be Cindy, understand?”

Perihelion raised his hand sheathed in black with the rest of his body and Gadgetmaster was suspended in a fluid of gaseous air. “No, Daniel, it’s not.”

That caught him even more by surprise. “So she’ll be alive … so who gets it?” He raged but couldn’t move or make his extensions respond. “Zenia? Michel? John?”

Perihelion kicked off, “Kenneth? Genevieve? Sergey?” He referred to those who’d died already – Dormouse on this battlefield and Generis and Image at the Summer Olympics – before he related, “Zenia was your first contact, so she will be preserved. Michel,”

“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” Gadgetmaster broke in, “ ‘first contact’?”

“Because meeting her broke your past of non-involvement. You’ve noted yourself that her mother and father were Uniforce slaves and she believes her family died in a concentration camp. How can both stories be true?”

The fusion of Gadgetmaster’s brain hemispheres had also increased his powers of deductive reasoning, a trait that made him bored quickly with literature because he figured out the motive, means, and opportunity before he got to chapter two. (Though he’d concede The Rooster Crowed at Midnight did stump him for a while.) It hit him between the eyes.

“She’s got some people than even she doesn’t know about.”

“Nor you, and it’s better that way.” Daniel Gallatin thought to say something but stopped himself.

“As much as I love this conversation,” Perihelion hinted, “I have my orders. And they’re to let you save the world.” Perihelion’s dark and glossy hand reached out to Gadgetmaster and time started once more, with Domino and Transwarp fighting and Belladonna prepared to deliver a killing blow …

Only to brush her sharpened fingers against his extension’s improvised shield behind him. “Temper, temper,” he said as he faced her and got a wounding rake across his face for the trouble faster than he could block it. He shouted over his wife’s wound, “Mel,”

“I’m on it,” Miss Twirl shouted for her sounded awkward as she shot out a net that enveloped Donna Berkeley’s altered slicing arm and stuck it to the rock. She screeched as she carved through the filaments with her other arm. The brainwashed servant of Domino looked up with rage and growled, “You are so,”

And she froze.

“Sis, I’m sorry. We’re trying to help,” Touchstone crawled up and made it to help Gadgetmaster get Beacon to safety while Miss Twirl stood lookout. The heroes having found themselves on their own was not unusual, despite their arrival with the Pacific Fleet.

“Hold … still!” It was tricky for Transwarp to dodge Domino’s blows and weapons on her single board, but she managed it – one who teleports learns to balance oneself so quickly when reappearing it looks instantaneous, like any acrobat – and got it some counterpunches of her own.

“So you can hit me?” Disappear. Reappear just behind her at the very edge. “I don’t think so.” Disappear.

“Where’d she go?” Domino looked through her black-and-white tinted lenses and turned completely around herself before facing front again. “Got a little too confident, huh?” She looked over the edge and found herself closer to the ground than she thought she’d come … close enough for Transwarp to reach up and pull her off her feet, but not off her board.

The assassin pointed her right hand at Transwarp as she rose to face her and shot forth a burst of light and heat that stunned her. As she already stood on the ground, Zenia Sinclair did not fall far. But it was enough for Domino to raise herself on her board and back away before pointing once more to finish the job.

Just as she would have, a blinding flash came from the direction of the Empress. At least, the one who had been recognizable as the Empress once dressed and now all purest white appeared and was felt by everyone there. “What a pity, Gadget.”

“I’ve overloaded your precious scrambler … now let’s see what else you’ve got.”

He looked up at her with the disdain one gave a mosquito and with Beacon now stable and Belladonna working her way free, gave her a wink.

Explosions took out the immediate area around them and left the heroes and their principal villain facing each other. “So now it’s just us.”

Miss Twirl slapped her baton into her hand. “Yeah, justice. So let’s dance.”

Melody Thomason leaped into the air with the thrust of her baton and just stopped in midair at the Empress’ eye level. “Really, this is,”

She was knocked off her feet by a blow from an invisible battering ram. Odd enough, when the Empress “looked” around with far more than she could see with her Mark One eyeballs, she couldn’t find a source. Then came the blow from her side, and a glint in the corner of her eye.

“Oh no,” the Empress punctuated by reaching forth and dragging Beacon out of what seemed thin air and hurling her to the ground. “And as for Iris reappearing anywhere on this island,” the flash of lightning, the sound of thunder, and the feel of rain came … fast as lightning, “I don’t think so.”

“Where is she?” Cadmus grunted as though it was not a question. And he felt the bulk of his armored form crumple in the next instant.

“Where you’ll soon join her … touching, isn’t it?”

Behind her there was no sympathy as several Uniforce soldiers brandished their firearms and beheld whoever the Empress had become.

“So many worlds, but in every one where there are super humans – excuse me, ‘super heroes’, they’re the wild card.”

“And how would you know?”

“I’ve been there, my mechanized --,” and the human part of the Empress got cut off by a body blow delivered by a leaping, manic Cadmus. Uniforce troops shot at his metallic shell, but Gadgetmaster’s modifications on the Poplar Grove paid off as the Europan’s chivalry expired.

“He’s gonna kill her!” Melody Thomason shouted to Gadgetmaster and Beacon as they advanced after working themselves out of the killing ground the valley of twenty villains had become. As usual, there were no discernible remains of Julia. But that was a minor issue now.

“Okay,” Gadgetmaster sounded half-surprised as he helped Miss Twirl with the business end of her baton facing him … and going off brightly in his face. Reflexively Cindy reached out for her falling husband and sent a field to batter their now-antagonist.

“if there’s anybody who doesn’t have a prayer,” Miss Twirl sounded waxy and well beyond her nineteen years, “it’s YOU!”

“Melody?”

“No,” she drew out as sarcasm. “The Matriarch needs a new body, a young body, and this one’s perfect!” She seethed, turned, and raised her darkened arm and sent Cadmus hurling away very hard and very fast from his attack on the Empress. Miss Twirl pointed to the Empress in her beaten yet still beautiful body. “The Matriarch needs you … no more!”

The Empress spun and looked up at the ones she called her slaves. They remained transfixed and stone-faced as though awaiting orders. “Don’t just stand,” she coughed and could get no more words out, but she could point and did to the usurper.

Miss Twirl shook her head, “Oh you poor soul. Used the Matriarch’s power so much that when She chose a new body your power went with Her!”

“I knew it,” Gadgetmaster muttered under his breath. “She wasn’t using the power, it was using her!”

“Oh shut up,” Miss Twirl or whatever inhabited her body blew at Gadgetmaster as Beacon caught him and a portal like the one near a world-engine opened before her. “You used yourselves up stopping ‘the Empress,’” Miss Twirl offered. “Now be prepared,”

The skitter-skitter sound could be heard even through the carnage surrounding them. And it wasn’t past the portal but through it.

“They’re coming,” Zenia was the first to say as the assembled heroes and Uniforce commandos looked to the portal the possessed Miss Twirl had opened with her gesture.

“Coming fast,” responded Beacon as she clenched her fists – her tired, blood-caked fists – battle ready. Gadgetmaster readied his extensions beside her and then stopped.

“Wait a minute, it’s a diversion. Stand down.”

“WHAT?” All his allies turned on him, even Miss Twirl – that is, the being that looked through her eyes – saw him like he’d sprouted an extra head.

“If you were this powerful in there, you’d have done it already.”

“Are you joking?”

“Iris, nail her!”

The light of a rainbow burst from the possessed Miss Twirl’s chest, prompting her to collapse to the ground and restoring the natural color of her flesh and fabric. The rainbow burst bounded past her off a mountainside and reformed into its creator, Malika Rashid who collapsed. But before she could fall to the ground, Gadgetmaster cradled her in an extension-formed armchair.

“Always wondered what would happen when light met darkness,” Daniel Gallatin opined as he reeled Iris in.

Then the Empress rose and shook herself to awareness. “I should have stuck with you, and speaking of stick …” Everyone found themselves unable to move. Gadgetmaster looked around for Perihelion, but this wasn’t his doing; he couldn’t move either. Then the Empress raised her hand and closed the portal.

Now it was the heroes’ and hangers-on’s turn to look startled. “I need something big,” the Empress or whoever spoke through her called to them. “After all, the end of the world doesn’t come every day.” In the next instant everyone who’d witnessed her appeared at the battle-scarred site of Quezon City, where the first world-engine appeared in all its glory.

“And now,” the Empress proclaimed but was punctuated by an invisible blow across her face.

“Now, let’s finish this!” Beacon.

The communication link Gadgetmaster kept active in his armband fizzed and crackled. “Do you copy?” An urgent voice came through: “we’re registering a class-five energy expenditure approaching your position!”

Freed from their enforced paralysis, Daniel Gallatin lumbered forward and Cadmus rushed to his aid. “The First is headed your way and we’re securing the world-engine,”

“And will get fried doing it!” Gadgetmaster cut them off. “That ‘energy expenditure’ is dimensional displacement, no telling what contact with you will do!” He flattened out his armband and shielded his friends as much as he could.