“Right.” He scanned the area. It was difficult to see past the wandering brain dead conformists or the darkness beyond them, but his eyes caught something. “Ah-ha! I think I’ve got it.”
“Took you long enough.”
He grabbed her free wrist. “Follow
my
lead.”
“Okay!” she said. She was dragged, half-running and half-falling, behind Atomik Lad while still keeping the video game aloft.
The zombie sea parted before them. The zombies cringed from the pair as they flew down the poorly lit hallway of trendy shops until, “Here!” Atomik Lad slammed his feet down to stop. Rachel bumped into him. “Keep them back a little longer,” he ordered.
She held the video game like a cross directed at vampires. She shoved it in the face of a zombie that dared to come too close. “Hey! I despise going to clubs and being ogled by vapid, drunk morons like yourself.”
“Grraaaaah!” Collapse.
Atomik Lad flipped a bench onto its side and climbed up to the ceiling.
Rachel looked up at him. “How’d you know there was a vent here?”
“I didn’t. I just figured there would be one eventually. There always is, y’know.”
“So I’ve been taught from movies. Open it already.”
Atomik Lad pulled back one fist and eyed the vent with stern determination. “One, two, who’m I kiddin’? Rachel, let me see your car keys.”
She lobbed them up and he snatched them from the air. He selected one and used its teeth to release the Screws of Locking.
__________
Safriel cackled maniacally as she rained blows down on Nuklear Man’s battered skull. Her arms began to blur as every strike was delivered with more force and velocity than the last. Nuklear Man gave up trying to defend himself against the onslaught of attacks a while ago and was instead giving the ol’ Take It Like A Man school of self-defense a shot. It wasn’t working particularly well.
Safriel was aglow with an internal light, an eerie spectrum of oranges and yellows was split by the prisms of her body. It refracted and flashed through every facet of her form with her every movement. And it was steadily growing in intensity.
She spun into a cartwheel kick kind of thing that slammed Nuklear Man to the ground. Again. Her foot was pressed painfully against his neck. The razor sharp edges of her crystalline facets scraped against his skin.
“C’mon now,” Nuklear Man croaked. “That hurts.”
“It’s
supposed
to!” she yelled and applied more pressure to his neck.
“Y’know, I could’ve sworn I was winning a little while ago.”
“Ha!” She leaned down until she was nearly nose to nose with him. Of course, doing so put even more pressure on his neck. “That was when I was merely
deflecting
your Plazma Energies. I altered my composition so that I could store your powers instead of simply diverting them. Now I can use your own strength
against
you.”
“That’s a pretty good idea,” Nuklear Man admitted.
“Yes, it’s working wonders, don’t you think? I watched you defeat my comrades by using their powers against them. Well I’m not going to let you do that to me. Oh no, I’m beating you to the punch. I’m going to defeat you with your vast energy reserves!”
She removed her foot.
“Thanks.” And replaced it with her hands. “Grk!”
“But I need more energy to do it. I don’t care if I have to strangle it from you. I don’t care if you die. I don’t need you alive, I just need your powers. Besides, if you’re dead, it’ll be even easier for Lord Nihel to give them to me for my reward!”
“But Nukie don’t wanna die,” he croaked.
“That’s a damn shame.” She squeezed tighter and her internal light brightened and spread out into her limbs. She quivered with pleasure. “Yes! I’ve won! I’ll never have to kow-tow to that uptight Variel again! Lord Nihel won’t look down at me! I’ll be the one!
I’ll
be the Harbinger of Flame, not just some peon lackey!” Her eyes were wide, hungry. And burning. “My gods, so much power! And this is nothing,
nothing
compared to the rest of it!” The features of Safriel’s body were lost in the blinding light emanating from her. She looked like Variel in reverse.
Nuklear Man twitched in her grasp like a house pet having a bad dream. She released him and his heavy body hit the ground. A sack of meat would’ve had more life to it.
“I can feel it, Var,” Safriel said, her voice beginning to turn inside out. “Arel’s power. It’s perfection.”
“It’s consuming you,” Variel unsaid plainly.
“No! I need more! Yes, more. I don’t need Nihel for this.
I’ll
take Arel’s powers straight from their source!” She fell to her knees and straddled the fallen Hero. She placed her hands upon his stilled chest. There was an audible rush of energies. Safriel screamed in delight.
Variel simply turned his back to her.
Her scream twisted sharply into terror as the sound of shattering glass screeched through the dusty air. Shafts of light erupted from Safriel’s quaking body. She imploded. It was completely silent save for her final moments of inverted screaming.
“You cannot expect a body of matter to contain the flames of stars,” Variel said to the memory of Safriel.
Nuklear Man sat up groggily as though he was awakened from a deep sleep. “Man, I just know I’m going to get a headache by the time this is all over.”
Variel turned to him. “Trust me, ‘Lord’ Arel. A headache is the least of your worries now.”
__________
“Man, I can’t believe we got out of there alive,” Norman said.
“Aye” Angus responded.
They had managed to escape the marauding horde of little beasts that were supposed to be goblin-like children, though Norman had a hard time seeing them as anything but child-like goblins. They walked through the path between racks of women’s clothing in what must’ve been a department store of some kind. The available paths branched out like capillaries from the main artery they maintained. Angus was in the lead, one hand on his toy axe, its hilt on his shoulder. Directly behind him was Shiro with his nose buried in the Mr. Mysterium Book of Magic Instruction. Norman took up the rear as the party’s heavy artillery. He idly flipped the toy sword in his hands. He had to stay a few steps behind to keep from tripping over Shiro’s tuxedo-robe since it dragged the floor.
__________
“Drat these wily adventurers,” Mort hissed. “Not only did they escape my trap, they have made off with a collection of my precious treasures.” His breath wheezed in and out of his fragile frame. “It is time to summon my dread guardians into action.”
__________
“Bah!” Angus barked. “Lookit this!” he said as he came to a halt at a pair of mannequins ahead of them where one plastic sentry stood on either side of their path. Their manufactured faces somehow communicated a vague sort of happiness, a bovine content with the world, a Zen-like calm that could only come from such nice looking and affordable fashions.
Shiro bumped into the Surly Scot from behind. “Pardoning the infraction of both time and space.”
“What’s up, Angus?” Norman asked.
Angus spun around to look Norman face to knee. “These here mannequins,” he said, motioning to the statues behind him. “‘Oooh, lookit us. We be so happy ‘cause o’ our clothes. Don’t ye wish ye was tall enough to wear clothes like ours? Well too bad, we only sell clothes for freakishly tall mutants!’
Bah!”
The mannequins’ sightless eyes were shifted into infrared cameras.
“Uh, Angus.”
“Don’t ye be interruptin’ me when Ah’m rantin’! It makes me so angry about gettin’ interrupted that it makes me forget what Ah’m so angry about in the first place!”
Mechanically gray innards were exposed just underneath the fleshy plastic as the lifeless limbs extended slightly at their joints to allow for movement.
“Angus. Just walk forward.”
“Weren’t ye just listenin’?! Now ye be interruptin’ me rant about interruptin’ me rant!”
Their placid mannequin faces were etched with lines as the plastic skin rearranged itself to expose tiny horn-like sensor nodes. A few beeps and whirs later, the pair of statues hunched on their perches and were ready to strike. Thin and finely articulated rods at least as long as their arms sprout from their shoulder blades. Tightly woven netting dropped from the rods giving each a pair of bat-like wings.
“Angus-san, arounding the turn on roads of life when opportunity knocked up the sisters of fate!”
“Well why didn’t ye just
say
so?” Angus griped. He turned around and got an eyeful of winged mannequin death. “Great Highlander’s kilt!” He rolled to the side and tumbled straight into a rack of paisley dresses just in time to avoid talons slashing down at him. “Ah’m stuck!” he cried while struggling against his paisley snares.
The other gargoyle mannequin leapt at Norman like a mountain lion. They toppled out of sight back down the way the heroes had come.
The first gargoyle stomped onto the ground from its perch. It approached Shiro with slow, heavy steps. It snarled at the Tiny Typhoon as it loomed over him like a bird of prey. Its net wings twitched in anticipation. Shiro threw up his arms to protect himself and a flock of doves or pigeons rushed from his oversized sleeves. The gargoyle’s targeting system was momentarily scrambled from the influx of new targets stunning it just long enough for Angus to rocket from the clothes rack – wearing a white dress covered in a light pink floral pattern over what would have been an otherwise impressive Iron: Battlesuit. He hurled himself at the beast’s skull screaming, “STITCH
THIS
, DEMON!”
Sadly, his attack, being comprised of a blow to the gargoyle’s steel reinforced head with nothing more than a toy axe made completely of foam, was even less impressive than the Floral: Battlesuit. The foam axe bounced against the creature’s horned skull with a dull
fwop
sound.
The mannequin gargoyle’s torso spun ninety degrees with electric speed and caught the Surly Scot in one of its net wings before he ever hit the ground. The net snapped off at whatever mechanism attached it to the rod appendage and Angus dropped to the floor as a captive. He struggled against his bonds, but they grew tighter until he could no longer budge.
“Well,” Angus muttered. “That’s that then.”
Norman rolled up to Shiro from behind. He was wrapped up in two layers of net. “Shiro, run. Our weapons are useless against them!”
“Hai!” the Tiny Typhoon answered. He ran between the legs of the first gargoyle only to be snatched up in its other net wing. He was dropped right next to Angus.
“Aye, laddie. Good work.”
“Angus-san of done, the better here the being then?”
“Bah.”
__________
“Excellent. Bring them back to my keep,” Mort ordered. The mannequins beeped acknowledgement. He turned his attention to another Security: Camera display. “As for my tunnel rats.”
__________
“So do you have any idea where we’re going?” Rachel asked as they wriggled through ventilation shafts on all fours. She could hear him shuffling along and breathing behind her, but a reply was not forthcoming. “Hey. Sparky?”
“Er, uh. Wha-yeah?”
They kept moving. “I’m starting to get the idea that you let me go first for reasons that were not altogether gentlemanly.”
“I’m insulted that you’d think those jean shorts would sway my judgment in any way whatsoever.”
“Who said anything about jean shorts?”
“Ah. Yes. Um. I think we’ve gone far enough. Let’s try to get out at the next vent.”
They did. The vent clanged to the floor much too loudly for Atomik Lad’s taste.
“Real smooth, Mr. Cat Burglar,” Rachel teased, her voice rang metallic as it echoed through the ventilation tunnels.
“Yeah, yeah,” Atomik Lad grumbled with most of his body dangling from the roof. He hopped down and landed right on the vent thus producing almost as much noise as its initial fall. “Don’t say it.”
“You got it,” Rachel said, holding back a giggle. Her legs poked out from the roof. They were followed, rather predictably, by the rest of her. “Okay, so now what?”
“I hadn’t exactly thought that far ahead,” he said.
“We’re
really
going to be late, you know.”
“Yeah. They’re probably already at the Food Court Junction by now.”
“Maybe we should try getting there, hm?” Rachel suggested.
“Good idea, but how? We’re lost and our map isn’t even to this floor.”
She scratched the back of her head. “If we walk in one direction long enough, we’re bound to get somewhere.”
“You’re not the Ranger in this group, are you?” he said.
“Not even close,” she said with a wide smile.
“I can tell.”
“Can you think of anything else?” she asked.
“Er. Ahem. Well, let’s go!”
“That’s what I thought.”
They walked for several minutes. Stores like Burger Junction, All Natural Junction and Victoria’s Junction were aligned along their flanks. The corridor of capitalism turned to the right. They turned with it and immediately ran into a wall of suits.
Atomik Lad and Rachel stumbled back and uttered apologies.
Looming over them were four Mall Guards standing shoulder to shoulder. To shoulder to shoulder. Because there were four of them, so therefore there’d be four shoulders involved. Never mind. The rest of the hallway was inaccessible due to their barrier of a presence. The guards’ eyes were hidden by mirrored sunglasses they wore even though they were indoors. They probably wore them at night too.
“Are you lost?” they asked simultaneously.
“Um,” Atomik Lad answered. “Yeah?”
“We’re looking for the Food Court Junction. Can you help us?” Rachel asked while trying her best to look helpless.
The guards exchanged glances. “How did you get here?” they asked as one.
“Through the vents?” Atomik Lad said.
“Maybe that wasn’t the best answer, dear,” Rachel whispered.
“That’s a restricted area,” the Guards said. “Come with us.”
“No, that’s okay,” Atomik Lad said.
“We’ll be going now,” Rachel explained with a false smile. They walked backwards and bumped into another suit wall.