Everything with a Side of Fries: a Layman's Introduction to Existence

[whizzball1]

Chapter 1
Slice of Life​

Ruby Jean stepped out of Forever 21, toting two bags laden with clothes. It had begun snowing while she was inside, and she immediately wished she had covered the clothes in that crumply wrapping paper the cashier had given her.

"Um, Ruby?" came a voice behind her. It was soft but energetic, touched with an accent from some nondescript East Asian country. It belonged to Maxy, a girl who was one class above Ruby in every subject. "Can you please, uh…?"

"Oh!" Ruby cried, and stepped out of the way of the door. Maxy followed her out, and when she noticed the snow falling, she stuck out her tongue to catch a snowflake. Ruby looked discreetly into Maxy's bag to see that she did indeed have wrapping paper—but not enough to share.

"I hope you remember how much I love snow," Maxy said, before she caught another flake. Her thin, black eyes sparkled in wonder beneath shiny, dark brown hair and a thin forehead obscured by bangs. That same hair draped past her shoulders, held close to her skin by a blue scarf wrapped around her neck.

"Yeah, and I also remember that your face gets even paler when you spend too much time in it." Ruby stuck out her tongue, and spots of colour broke the pale visage of Maxy's soft, unwrinkled face. That was about all the skin that showed; from head to toe she was covered in fleece. Silk sleeves peeked out of her jacket, covering half her gloves; there was still some Asian flair underneath that inexplicably fashionable yeti.

Maxy held a finger in the air to catch a snowflake with immediate success. She brought her finger close to her face and examined the flake, eyes crossing. "I wonder if God designs every one of these. I wish I could see it better; snowflakes are so beautiful."

The door opened again and a flurry of hurried men and women rushed out. Ruby and Maxy, who was still catching snow, stepped to the side to accommodate the flow; when it was over, another girl with woollen mittens exited and let go of the warm, long-held handle.

Looking at all of the wrong sides first, she eventually spotted the other two girls and joined their sidewalk-blocking line. Looking over both sets of bags, she noticed a glaring problem. "Ruby, you forgot wrapping paper!" she cried, with mild dismay. Her voice was almost as soft as Maxy's, but it was largely unenergetic, slow and sure. "Don't worry; I got extra."

Ruby clapped her hands and beamed. "Yay! Thank you, Daisy! I was so worried. Please, before they get ruined?" Ruby reached out to take one of her friend's bags, freeing up Daisy's hand to transfer some of the paper. "I'll never forget wrapping paper again. Uh, assuming it helps." She shrugged her shoulders a little bit, taking care not to drop her bags.

"It probably will. Doesn't hurt to be careful," Daisy said, taking back her bags. Her skin, darker than Maxy's, contrasted with her striking blue eyes and bright red lips. Black hair reached down to a denim jacket over a purple blouse, and denim jeans with combat boots completed the ensemble. She was all covered up, but she was not nearly as wrapped up as Maxy.

The door swung open once more, with minimal fanfare. The girl who walked out was a bastion of contrast—the only colour on her person was in the vibrant blue tips of her hair, and she was all in black. Her black nails, abstract henna, black-dyed hair, and black make-up stood stark against the snowy ground and white walls.

She held no bags, and nothing encumbered her as she turned to her friends. She didn't speak, so nobody else did. Daisy peered through a window, shuffling closer to the storefront as if to open the door for somebody. Ruby smoothed the wrapping paper in her bags while Maxy looked up at the falling snow with wide eyes.

The girl regarded the silent trio with a frown. "Are we just going to stand here or are we going to start walking?" Her voice was nowhere near as soft as Maxy's or Daisy's, but it still held a girlish quality to it, even melodic. She held herself with grace matched only by Ruby.

"Which way?" Ruby asked.

"Literally any. We still have hours to waste." When the girls hesitated, she continued, "Round and round and round it goes—" she was spinning her index finger in a circle, pointing out no direction in particular— "where it stops, nobody knows." Then she started walking to the left. The girls shrugged and followed her. The wind blew in their direction, but they were all dressed warmly enough to hold off the shivers. They stayed to the left, avoiding the rushing cars but staying just out of the way of doors.

"So which one of those is for me?" she asked no one in particular. "Knowing you, Ruby, you bought one for all of us and hoped we wouldn't notice how perfectly your choices fit our personalities." Her voice dripped with sarcasm.

"Which one of those is for anyone?" Daisy countered, pointing at her friend's empty hands. "You never buy clothes for Christmas, Cordelia."

Cordelia stopped short and turned around smoothly. With a solemn face, she held up a black-tipped finger and began, "Why should I buy clothes? Such gifts are overrated. Haikus are better." She dipped her head slightly and turned back around, continuing in her smooth gait. "Gifts are supposed to come from the heart. When's the last time I asked any of you for feedback on my poems?

"Don't let your right hand know what your left hand is doing. And before any of you complain that I'm stingy, I'm buying all of your food, so you have no right. Except for the first amendment."

Maxy raised her hand. "Can I use my first amendment rights to tell you that you're stingy?"

"Yes, or you can use common courtesy and not tell me that." She laughed—and it was a genuine laugh, crisp, ringing, and soothing. "Where do you guys want to go? I know a good coffee place nearby."

"All of your coffee shops are emo and all their music is depressing," Ruby complained. She would have continued disdaining Cordelia's taste in music, but she felt a sudden rush of wind blow against her movement, clashing with the squall behind her. A chill beset her, nipping at her spine without regard for her clothing.

She turned her head behind her, shivering, but saw nothing out of the ordinary.

Daisy resumed where Ruby had stopped. "Even your coffee shops are part of this phase? Cordelia, are you sure you aren't going too far?" There was subdued mirth in her voice—she had said much the same thing dozens of times before.

Cordelia scoffed, half-heartedly hiding a laugh. "Just because it's a phase doesn't mean I'm not still going through it. Humour me, will you?"

"Fine," Ruby said, returning to the conversation. "Isn't there one of yours around here that only plays jazz? Let's go to that one." Her voice had changed. Usually, it was by far the most beautiful in the group, soft and tinkling, but projecting and perfectly melodic. That was her voice under complete composure—but when that composure was upset, as it had just been, her voice took on a rough texture and lost some of its melody.

She didn't notice, but her friends did. There wasn't much on this earth that could break Ruby's composure. "Ruby, is there something wrong?" Maxy asked, squinting.

Ruby felt the odd breeze again and spun around, flinging snow off her long hair, her bright red eyes piercing behind her, searching for the source. "I don't think so," she said, hesitantly, and turned back around, shaking her hair a little bit to settle it back on her shoulders. It was rich in volume, retaining its thickness a quarter of the way down her back.

"That's not very convincing," Cordelia replied, deadpan. Ruby wasn't convinced either. She said a quick prayer to reassure herself, but her worry did not disappear.

Luckily for Ruby, Daisy changed the subject. "Oh, I wish I had your hair," she said, with a dreamy sigh. "It's so easy to take care of! I think you're cheating. If everybody had such bright colours, the whole world of fashion would be turned upside down."

Ruby's hair was a pure white, whiter than the snow that fell on her head. The colour was completely natural; this had been confirmed by scientists too many times. Dirt and mud melted off; dye didn't take, not even paint. Most confusing were the random thick streaks of red that peppered her snowy locks. Even the red was unnatural, as bright as her name. Many had concluded that she was part albino, even though her brother stood in perfect contrast to the theory.

It was by no means normal, but she took it for the blessing it was. With it she had inspired girls all across the world to express themselves in the way they liked, and if nothing else she was happy with that. Sometimes, though, she wished she knew more.

Despite her "affliction", she dressed with exceptional coordination. She wore a white, woollen sweater with red ruffles on the sleeves. Her pants were a dark, reddish umber, neat and unwrinkled, their end hidden behind white boots. She was meticulously kept, and her red-gloved hands lost none of their dexterity as she smoothed her shirt.

"They're working on it, actually," Ruby replied, beaming. "I'm already getting royalties of sorts. And, besides, for all it does, it isn't going to style itself, is it?" She laughed a crisp laugh, clear as bells. It, at least, was not affected by her loss of composure, and she was ready to regather her wits.

Then the wind blew again—the wrong wind—and this time, it didn't stop.

"Does anyone feel that?" Ruby cried, her expression wrinkling.

"Feel what?" Cordelia asked. They all stopped. "What are you talking about?"

"The wind! It's blowing in the opposite direction!"

"You're not making sense, Ruby," Maxy said. "It feels fine to me."

Then Ruby noticed that her left hand felt wind in what she thought was the right direction, but the rest of her body did not. She grabbed Maxy's hand and stepped back into the natural wind, pulling Maxy into her place. "See?"

"Woah," Maxy said, poking her hand out of the unnerving anomaly. "That is weird."

"I don't like this," Daisy said, waving her hand inside the bubble. "We should keep going." At her behest, they started moving again. The wind still blew wrong in that strange corridor, but they tried to ignore it.

In New York City, one naturally passed by many alleyways. It stood to reason that one naturally ignored most of them as well. The group of girls tried very hard not to look in any of the alleyways they passed, even as the opposing wind died down. But when a new wind suddenly picked up, blowing in the direction of an alley, they all turned their heads.

Maxy screamed. A wolf stood in the alley, staring at the girls with a piercing yellow gaze. His coat of fur was an unnatural shade of blue, sharp and striking, like the sea under a gloomy sky. But most unnerving was how human he seemed—not because his face was in some horrible way human, but because it displayed that most human of emotions: curiosity.

Only Ruby really thought of this. And she only thought about it for a few moments, the ones before they all took off running. A howl sounded behind them, encouraging their feet. They skidded to a stop at a crosswalk, looking around nervously. "The wind and the wolf—do you think they were related?" Ruby asked. Her composure was completely gone; her voice was so rough it sounded boyish.

"Probably," Daisy replied, between breaths. "What if the wolf caused the wind?" she asked, suddenly, fear touching her voice.

"Probably not," Cordelia said, with surprising calm. Despite her steady voice, her every muscle was tense. "We're not in some weird werewolf novel."

The traffic lights switched and they sprinted down the crosswalk, abandoning the block behind them. Cordelia stayed in front, hopefully guiding them to her chosen destination.

"Yeah, probably just a novella!" Ruby shouted, eventually.

"I tried stopping that conversation already!" Cordelia shouted back, and then she stopped. Everyone else almost knocked her over; Daisy looked behind them with alarm. "And I'm going to stop it right here. We're here." She gestured to the door beside her, solid, sturdy wood under a neon sign with a coffee cup and saxophone. Immediately, the other three girls scrambled for the door. Smiling bemusedly, Cordelia opened it for them—but before she went in herself, she looked back worriedly, visibly tensed. Still ready to run, she followed them in and shut the door.

They all leaned back against the wall, panting, eyes still wide. A faint howl sounded again, and Daisy and Maxy tensed up. Ruby pushed down her fear and reasoned, "It's obviously far away. Whatever or whoever it is," she continued, with a shudder, "I don't think it can reach us in here."

They were safe.

Maxy sighed in relief. "That is by far the most horrible thing that has ever happened to me! Except for that time when that frog bit my finger."

"Maxy, the wolf didn't even touch us," Cordelia said. "Have you ever gotten actually hurt in your life?"

"Yeah," she replied, defensively. They all shuffled nervously onto seats as they listened. "I've scraped my knee a couple times… and then there was the time when I fell on a table and cut my head open a little."

Cordelia deadpanned.

"Ruby's the one who never gets hurt," said Daisy. "I don't think she's ever so much as gotten a paper cut in all the years I've known her." Ruby was exceptionally meticulous; this fact was known to all at the table. Despite her excitability, she never seemed to rush ahead—except when she lost her composure.

"Imagine," Cordelia began, dryly, "a blog post about getting hurt for the first time. It'd be such a novel experience, I imagine, that with her skills she would revolutionise typical techniques for describing pain. Journalists everywhere would love her."

"Last I checked, journalists everywhere already love her," Daisy said. Ruby was world famous—not because of her hair, her eyes, or even her rich parents, but because of her blog, "Everything with a Side of Fries". Her style of writing was so charming, captivating, and consummate that she attracted readers from all over the world. She was also, as has been demonstrated, observant—this trait, in conjunction with all her other successes, made her a stellar journalist. She was watched by some of the most prestigious newspapers in America, and she hoped to be picked up right out of college.

She was 18.

Nobody ever really considered how unusual this was, except for her.

When no more howls sounded, they finally calmed down and got up to order. As they ordered their drinks, soup, and sandwiches, Ruby regained some of her composure and her voice. By the time they returned to their table, they seemed to have some of their tension relieved. They had not entirely forgotten the frightening event, but with shaky voices they found themselves making lively conversation.

Cordelia set her elbows on the table and folded her hands. "So, finals." Three of them shuddered. "How did you girls do?"

"Terrible!" Daisy cried. "I mean, I did great, but the experience was terrible, you see. So much studying…" She glanced at the door.

"It's not that much studying," Maxy remarked, meekly. "Really. And that's not just—"

"That's just because you're smart," Daisy replied. Maxy sighed.

"Actually, I kind of agree with Maxy," Ruby said. "If you studied for all your other tests and did well, you've almost got it down. I'm also lucky that my teachers gave me back my tests to study.

"Well—so did mine," Daisy conceded. "Still, I bet you didn't have to study at all, Maxy."

Maxy blushed.

Cordelia laughed. "If I didn't know that you don't have an ounce of Asian blood in you, I'd call you the perfect stereotype. You play the part too well."

Ruby beamed. "Oh, my Maxy is going to be the best actor in the world!"

"Have you gotten accepted into any of your schools yet?" Daisy asked, leaning forward.

"I don't get to find out for a few months," Maxy replied, "just like the rest of you."

"Speaking of the arts," Cordelia said, suddenly excited. She still looked tense, but the ease in her voice helped calm everyone's nerves. Ruby groaned; she knew what was coming. "Did you hear about Søren's new single?"

Daisy squealed. "Yes! Everything about it was amazing."

"He can make any genre sound good," Maxy added. "And he's so dreamy!"

"Oh my goodness," Ruby cried. "He's not that amazing. He's just so random!"

"Yeah, but he's random in a really orderly way. His songs make sense even when they don't," Cordelia explained.

"And he's very attractive," Maxy chimed in.

Ruby groaned. "He's my brother."

"So you should be proud of him for being such a prodigy," Daisy said, feigning rebuke.

"That doesn't mean I have to like his work. He doesn't like mine," she added, quietly.

Cordelia gasped melodramatically. "So you're bitter!"

"I am not!" Ruby squeaked. All four of them burst into a fit of laughter—until Cordelia's name was called and they all had to compose themselves. They got their food and sat back down to eat quietly. They only occasionally peeked at the door, but they were finding it easier to relax.

Daisy broke the silence. "Has Soren spoken yet?"

Everybody stopped eating, holding their breaths for solemn moments.

"No," Ruby answered, quietly.

Cordelia frowned sadly. "It's been almost three years, hasn't it?"

"In June," Ruby said, trying to regain her composure. "We can sometimes hear him singing, still, though." Her face brightened. "He's good at that, at least."

"We'll convert you to our side one day!" Maxy said, with rousing conviction. "Now eat your food." They all got back to eating and, the sombre mood broken, lively conversation. They spoke long past the time they finished their food, eventually planning to meet at Daisy's house that evening for cards, accountability, and Bible study.

Bundling up, they shuffled out of the shop. "We should call an Uber," Cordelia said, looking to either side for the wolf. "And stay together as long as we can." Nobody disagreed. They rode to their homes together, splitting the combined cost.

Ruby got dropped off second, waving to her friends as they drove away, turning around—but as she did so, she spotted something in the corner of her eye, something that had not been there before. Directly across the street stood the wolf, staring at her with that familiar yellow gaze. Why were its eyes so familiar? The sight chilled her to the bone; she began to sweat, despite the cold. She swore she could hear it whine faintly, but she steeled herself, locking its eyes with hers in a defiant stare.

"God has not given me a spirit of fear," she whispered, even as she backed away slowly, making her way up the steps, careful not to trip. She stared the wolf down, trying desperately not to tremble, as she fumbled for her keys. "But of power, and of love, and of a sound mind." The wolf whined again as she picked out the right key; it pawed at the ground as she reached for the lock on her door.

The lock clicked, the door opened, and the wolf padded away.

She scrambled into her house, slamming the door, heart pounding. When she looked out the window, the wolf was gone.

***

The sound of clacking filled the room as Ruby's hands flew across her old Remington typewriter. Her smooth, ungloved hands hit each key with fluid, practiced grace, brainstorming, outlining, and composing in the instants between words and between sentences.

Every now and then, she spun on her swivel chair, scanning one of the sources she had up on her computer and turning back with new facts under her belt. She wrote in three colours for three different articles, bouncing from one to another from paragraph to paragraph, deftly labelling and switching out pieces of paper without breaking her flow.

When she was finished, she ran the papers through a scanner and the resultant files through a program her friend, Bryson, had written for her. It separated the articles by colour and interpreted her symbol notation to edit out mistakes and rearrange text.

Then she edited each article in turn, reworking text and inserting relevant pictures, dashing each article with her signature style, prevalent no matter the mood. Finally, she sent the articles to her editors, covered her typewriter, and shut off the computer, dressing up for the evening.

She went to her brother's room. The door was closed, but he was singing. She listened for a little bit, remembering her brother's voice, before saying, "Hello?"

He stopped singing.

"I'm going to Daisy's tonight. Just so you know." She waited, and he said nothing. "I love you, Soren." She stood in silence for a minute or so; she was about to turn around and leave when she heard the faint brush of a paper sliding underneath the door.

"I love you too," it said.

Gingerly, she picked up the paper, trembling, remembering how Soren's voice sounded when he said those words. They repeated mercilessly inside her head as she went back to her room, and when she found her bed, she knelt beside it and cried softly into her pillow.

Soren started singing again, with a voice as smooth as silk and as clear as crystal. It rang through the house, boyish but sweet. He sang of love, and Ruby knew he was singing for her.

Ruby dried her eyes and read the note again. In her mind she heard Soren singing those four words, a memory so fresh but so strong that she hoped it would last forever. She went down to the kitchen with a smile, warming up leftovers, planning the rest of her week, Soren's song repeating in her head. Her parents were away on a business trip, but she had no reason to be lonely.

She was happy.

***

Ruby started to bundle up again as she said her goodbyes. "Daisy," she called, turning around aimlessly in the middle of the kitchen, "do you have any sandwich bags?"

"Topmost, leftmost drawer on the counter opposite the fridge!" Daisy called back.

"Thanks!" Pulling a sandwich bag from the drawer, Ruby opened up a bag of chips and poured them into the bag. There were a few chips left over, so she munched on one, threw away the rest, and washed her hands before putting her gloves on.

Maxy had left, and Cordelia was about to. "Bye, Daisy!" she called, not sure where her friend was in the house. She made her way to the door, greeting Cordelia as she went, and stepped out into the cold of the neighbourhood.

The wind swirled, throwing up motes of snow that sailed all around the cul de sac. She didn't understand why it swirled so. Reminded of her encounter hours earlier, she felt a chill spreading through her body, stiffening her muscles. Looking around, she began walking rigidly down the street; it was a very short walk from Daisy's home to hers, and she knew everyone in this neighbourhood. If the wolf returned, she had places to go.

In the darkness that the streetlights failed to illuminate, she saw yellow eyes. She went quickly up a driveway as they came closer, feeling in her pocket for the bag. A voice sounded from the shadows, deep and rich, with the slightest hint of a French accent. When she heard it, the tension suffusing her body bled away quickly. "Excuse me," he said, "but do you have any chips?"

Ruby grinned. "Spirit!" she called, keeping her voice down. A tall man stepped out of the darkness, wearing all dark blue. He was lean, muscles clearly visible underneath the sleek, nearly black cloak he wore, half-buttoned over a navy shirt and pair of pants. His yellow eyes turned teal in the light, but in the moment before that, she thought they looked familiar.

He had blue hair, blue like the sea. He was another reason she didn't believe she was half-albino. "Chips?" he asked again, intense curiosity in his eyes and voice.

"Yeah, actually," Ruby replied, holding out her hand to shake.

"In the clear bag you call 'sandwich'?" He shook her hand, stopping at that distance.

"Exactly that." She smiled and handed him the bag. For all his wisdom he was so new to the modern world. She wondered why—he hadn't ever told her. "I felt like I might see you today, so I prepared." She didn't know why she felt that.

Spirit took the bag, staring at it reverently. "Thank you. This is a great gift." He said it with such solemnity that Ruby had to laugh.

"Merry Christmas," Ruby said.

"Merry Christmas," Spirit replied. At least he knew what Christmas was. "Do children not have school during this time? I have seen many children playing during the day."

"No, we get time off around Christmas and New Year's to celebrate. Three weeks."

Spirit frowned. "Do you not forget everything in such a long time without practice?"

"No!" Ruby cried, defensively. She paused. "Yes."

Spirit nodded sagely. His hood flapped in the wind.

Then he looked thoughtful, staring out into the distance. He looked, next, into Ruby's eyes, his own intense. "I would like to show you something. Let us make our way to your home and converse."

"Sure! I was going to do that anyway." If there was anyone in the world Ruby trusted, it was this man. He was certainly among the strangest she had ever met, but he held nothing but kind, innocent love for everyone he met. She thought he had, at some point, called himself some "spirit of help"—but she doubted the literality of that statement. If anyone were the spirit of help, however, it was this man.

She began walking home.

"Do you long?" Spirit asked. He said no more.

Ruby thought for a minute or two about that question. Spirit's questions were always worth thinking about, and he was a patient man. "Yes."

"For what?"

She thought about her brother. "My family, when they're away."

"Is that all?"

No. "Other places. I want to explore, one day. See it all."

Spirit hummed in appreciation and was silent for a few more moments. "Do you feel connection?"

"Yeah, to my family and friends." She paused. "And pictures of my family and friends. And things that remind me of them."

Spirit shook his head and opened his mouth. He seemed to be searching for the right words. "Connection to something more."

Ruby frowned. "More than my family?"

He shook his head again, quickly. "No, not in that manner. Deeper than what you can see."

Ruby thought about that question the rest of the way home. She stepped carefully through the freshly laid snow, her boots selected to weather the thick layer. As she walked, her eyes drifted from house to house; people were already decorating for Christmas and lights were on everywhere. She cooed at one house with no lights at all, and Spirit frowned, speaking up.

"That house does not appear to be decorated. Are you expressing disgust?"

Ruby shook her head. "Someone worked very, very hard on making the layer of snow as neat as possible instead of just shovelling it all away. It's so perfect!" She knew neatness wasn't the epitome of beauty, but she often found herself drawn to orderly displays, anyway.

She turned left at an intersection, passing a couple more houses before coming to a stop in front of hers. It was fairly grand, she thought, spacious and with two stories—but it wasn't excessive, either.

She took out her key and unlocked the door. "To answer your question, yes," she said, as they entered the house. Spirit followed, and she shut and locked the door. "Sometimes. When things are just right—no, when things are perfect. And… sometimes when things aren't perfect, but they feel that way."

Ruby passed a big living room to her left and cut diagonally through a hallway to her right, turning left through a door opposite a flight of stairs. Spirit followed her, went to the right, and sat at the kitchen table, taking his chips out of his pocket and munching them with what looked like immense satisfaction. "That is good." He tilted his head. "Do you have… coffee?"

"Coffee and chips, huh?" Ruby smiled knowingly. Spirit was simply adorable. She didn't like doing it, but she pulled out a coffee machine—one of those that accepted the strange instant coffee pods—and gave it a cup and water. Spirit seemed like he was almost done with his chips, so she found another bag of chips and poured it into a sandwich bag.

She served both to him at the same time. Spirit's hands reached into the bag first. When he took a bite of the chip, he let out a faint whine—a familiar whine. "This chip, it kicks my throat." Yet, he ate the rest of it. He wisely avoided the steaming coffee.

"I… have not tasted much before," Spirit said, looking far off again. Ruby decided to warm up a cookie, sitting next to Spirit with a spoon. She cut into the soft oatmeal cookie with the spoon, but before she could raise it to her mouth to eat it, Spirit asked her another question.

"Have you ever felt a spark?"

Ruby put the spoon back on the plate. She wasn't sure she understood that question. "I'm sor—"

Spirit touched her forehead. She looked at him sharply and her eyes widened—his were glowing, and they were yellow again. A bright red light shone at the bottom of her vision, and she looked down slowly to see that her hands were glowing a slightly darker colour than her eyes.

A chill ran down her spine and she jumped away from Spirit's touch. One of her hands, still on the plate, yanked it with her so that it fell flat on the floor. She shook herself and bent down, trying not to think about her hands as she picked the plate up gingerly. "Oh, no," she sighed, seeing the cookie on the floor. As she went to pick it up, she thought she saw red again but tried very hard to dismiss it.

She picked it up—it left behind splotches of melted chocolate. She threw it away reluctantly and took the plate to the sink, forcing herself not to think about the implications of what had just happened. Her mind went to Spirit and she shuddered. His eyes had glowed, and she remembered that colour from the morning. "Spirit, are you—"

She felt his hand touch her shoulder and she spun around. "What are you—"

"I would like to show you something," he said. His eyes glowed again and he pushed her against the sink by her shoulders.

She did not hit the counter.

Instead, she fell into a swirling sea of blue.

 

[whizzball1]

Chapter 2a
Slice of Life​

The shortest distance between two points is not a straight line.

Imagine, for a moment, that you were a two-dimensional being living on a piece of paper. You have no up or down—only forward or backward, left and right. In your world, there is no topography to deal with—at least, topography that you can perceive. To get from Point A to Point B, you travel in a straight line.

Now imagine instead that you are a three-dimensional observer, watching the paper-bound being. The paper is shaped like a bowl, and the being crawls laboriously down into the centre and back up to get from Point A to Point B. In your infinite, three-dimensional wisdom, you realise that if the poor creature simply had wings he could fly across the bowl, skipping the topographical trek with a spatial shortcut.

Extend the metaphor forward by one extra dimension and you have the concept of teleportation.

This metaphor implies that teleportation is not, in fact, instantaneous. And isn't—in most cases. There is still a gap to traverse. But a very experienced traveller learns to fold space far enough that it takes a single step to traverse an immense distance.

This was not one of those times.

None of these thoughts ran through Ruby's head. Instead, as she fell, she screamed, her arms flailing ungracefully. Streaks of blue raced past her, travelling incredibly fast to some sides and very slowly to others. Ruby herself was encased in an opaque sphere of blue, shades of light and dark shifting mystically across its surface. She could see nothing past the sphere except the streaks.

All this was hard to note as she flipped over again and again, but she had enough of her wits about her to take stock of her situation anyway. Her most important discovery was that the streaks were originating from a small section of the sphere and radiating outward. She took this to imply that this sphere was travelling in a direction of sorts.

She attempted to reorient herself in the direction of her vehicle, reaching out to touch the side. She found herself unable to reach it—instead, an intangible wall of inward force pushed her finger back. She figured she could use the force as a wall, so she pushed carefully, using the reactionary forces to right herself and arrest her movement. What kind of portal—if it was a portal at all—was this?

A few moments later, the streaks slowed down considerably, and she prepared for an exit and—hopefully—a return to sanity. The streaks stopped completely, and the front—she was satisfied to learn that her impression of "front" had been correct—seemed to melt into an environment filled with light. She let her eyes adjust enough to see the surface in front of her and stepped forward with renewed grace, boots landing on concrete.

A little while ago, she had been in her home in the middle of the night. She was outside, now, in the middle of the day.

She had just teleported.

She brushed aside the staggering implications of that realisation for now; she would deal with the shock later. Right now, she needed to just respond. The portal was still open behind her, so she stepped to the right, assuming that Spirit would shortly come through. Her eyes continued to adjust, and she discovered that she stood on a small stretch of sidewalk separating well-kept grass and—she turned around—a wall with a door off to the side.

The portal to her left made a loud sound like a wave crashing into the shoreline, and Spirit stepped out, looking dismayed. Ruby added this to her mental notes just as her vision fully resolved. She perceived that she stood in broad daylight on one side of a large grass courtyard, surrounded by a sidewalk and a wall with several doors.

Judging by the bright, natural light and the uniform shadows, she thought it was daytime. Past the courtyard was a vast city without a single light in sight—the entire area was illuminated in summer sun.

Then she looked up at the sky.

It was black as night.

Stars—more than she had ever seen in the sky at night—littered an inky expanse, stars of every colour, making hundreds of shapes distinguishable only if she focused on one colour at a time. Swirling, colourful auroras moved visibly through the field of lights; Ruby could only imagine how fast each was travelling.

Massive skyscrapers of surreal shapes stood against this colourful backdrop. Despite the darkness in the distant sky, the whole city was ensconced in daylight as surely as if a sun were shining. But there was none.

Ruby was no longer on Earth.

Shaking, Ruby began to shuffle back to the portal.

"I apologise, in reference to the length of your trip," Spirit said, but she did not quite hear him. "I did not fold space properly in the few moments I had."

Ceaselessly, she plodded past Spirit, blank eyes facing the portal, and with it, home. She reached out to place her hand inside—but it refused her entry.

The portal closed.

She sat down.

When she next spoke—after an indeterminable period of time—her voice was rougher than it had been in a long time. "Where am I?" she asked, to no one in particular. She was staring at where the portal had been.

"Waternaux City," Spirit replied, "a city the size of a galaxy. It is the biggest city in Existence," he added, and he said that last word with such finality that she believed him.

"How did they get the materials to build it?" she asked. There were many other important questions she could have asked in that moment, but she did not feel ready to hear their answers.

"Very quickly and with much consternation," he replied, absent-mindedly.

"Why?"

"For the Inter-Universal Alliance." Spirit paused. "And for a bet."

Ruby laid her head on the grass. The implications of both of those answers were too much for her. After another indeterminate period of time she finished processing this information, accepting the conclusion that she lived in a multiverse full of impossibly powerful people.

'Accept,' she decided, was too strong a word for right now.

"Why did you bring me here?" she asked, eventually.

"You have a spark in you."

"That explains absolutely nothing."

"You have the potential to become Tier Four."

"I have no idea what that means."

A door swung open and a woman stepped out with a confident gait. She wore brown, pointed boots, blue jeans, a black vest over a loose-fitting white t-shirt, and black gloves. Her straight, blonde hair, parted on the left, hung over the sides of her head almost to her chin, but none of her hair hid her large forehead.

Sunglasses covered her eyes; Ruby didn't understand why she had been wearing them in a room. When she noticed Ruby, she lowered her sunglasses to look at the girl with sky blue irises. Ruby fond the look exceptionally condescending.

"Who is this?" asked the woman, abruptly. A sheet of light beamed from the woman's eyes, spreading like a fan until it reached the ground; it was streaked with a grid of white lines that faded and brightened with regularity. The translucent field moved across the sidewalk, reaching Ruby's feet, sweeping three-quarters of the way up her legs, and shutting off.

The woman took off her sunglasses and then crushed them with a dissatisfied grunt. "What is she doing here?" she asked, spinning on Spirit. Her voice was smooth, but forceful, and it carried a blatantly manipulative tone. "This girl is just a Tier Two. She has no place." Ruby frowned.

Spirit sputtered. "She is not—Aero, you only scanned her legs!"

Aero waved her gloved hand dismissively, and then the glove burned off. "Don't need that anymore. Waste of fabric." The burning glove, she threw on the grass, lighting it on fire. "Bother. Legs are enough."

Spirit's yellow eyes snapped to the fire and he waved a hand, which radiated a soft blue light surrounding his skin like a glove. The fire sputtered and died. "That's preposterous! You can't determine someone's tier by looking at their legs."

Aero laughed a barking laugh. "Look at her! Look at what she's wearing!" Ruby took offence. "She's obviously a normal, pointless human." Ruby took exceptional offence to that on behalf of her whole planet. "Why in Existence would you bring her here?"

"To find out," Spirit answered, plainly.

Aero deadpanned. "So you don't know yet." Spirit shook his head. "So you brought a random girl here, to our base, halfway across the multiverse, and then you revealed to her the secrets of Existence, because you wanted to find out? I hate you, Spirit."

"You hate everyone."

"Thank you for reminding me. I hate you, girl whose name I don't know." At this point, Ruby decided to stop taking offence. This Aero was obviously like this to everybody—if, as a joke, then in good nature; if, as true disdain, then in such volume that none of her insults retained any meaning or power. She was either an endearing friend or an impotent bully. Ruby suspected both.

"Ruby."

"Aero. Terrible to meet you." Both it was.

"What's a Tier Two? Or a Tier Four?" Ruby ventured to ask. "Is there a One or Three?"

"Tier Ones are stupid animals," Aero replied, with minimal fanfare. "No quoronic connection or real intelligence. Tier Two are pointless humans and similar beings with intelligence but no quoronic connection." Ruby opened her mouth; she had no idea what half of that meant.

Aero continued anyway. "Tier Three are your superheroes, wizards, and witches, prophets and seers, telepaths and psychics. They experience and utilise quoronic connection. Tier Four are Tier Three who can switch dimensions at will. Any Tier Three can become Tier Four… if they're strong enough. Really strong. That's not you." She said that with a twinkle in her eye.

Ruby scratched her forehead. "I think that would have made more sense if I knew what 'quoronic' meant."

At that moment, another door swung open and a tall, pale man came out, wearing a black lab coat under a blue vest. Leather aviator goggles sat on his forehead over his thin grey eyes, holding black messy black bangs and a mop of hair. He strode toward Spirit and Aero, followed by a blonde man covered up to his neck in a sleek, form-fitting metal suit that moved fluidly with his steps.

"Thank you for coming," said the first man, as he approached. His voice reminded Ruby of her own—rich, melodic, and flowing. It was crisp, too, deep and as confident as his pace. "It is a pleasure to see you both," he said, smiling and waving.

Spirit waved back with a grin while Aero did nothing in particular. "The same to you! I only wish it were under less pressing circumstances." Spirit stretched out his arm when Data arrived, and they shook hands firmly.

The man in the suit followed, clapping Spirit on the back with a metal gauntlet. The metal clanged, but Spirit didn't even flinch. "Spirit!"" he cried, with a deep, gruff voice. "It's good to see you again." His words were slurred a little bit, but Ruby supposed that was his natural voice.

"It has been too long, Sven," Spirit replied. "We should collaborate on these things more often. Are you ready to fight?"

"Ready as I'll ever be. I've been training."

Spirit grinned. "You always are."

"Is that such a bad thing?" Sven grinned back.

Glass shattered. Ruby's eyes snapped to the sound, just over the courtyard, where there was no glass. The air itself had broken, chunks of the scene crashing through the ground as a big, bulky man ran through the newly created hole in reality. He kept running in the direction of the group—and Ruby.

Ruby screamed, scrambling to her feet and running out of the way. She heard Aero laugh as she made for a door, and then she skidded to a halt—at the same time the man did. He was huge, covered in a bulky metal suit without a helmet. He had a laughing face with flowing white hair.

Ruby watched, cautiously, as greetings were exchanged. No matter how good a friend Spirit was to her, she could not consider this a safe place. She was surrounded by superhumans, and she knew very well that what Aero had said was true: she was nowhere near their level.

"Sreig requests that you keep this fight on ground," said the newcomer, with a gruff voice and a lilted, Russian accent. "He can only jump so high. Who is Sreig destroying, anyway?"

"I would like to know as well," Spirit chimed in. "You have assembled quite the group."

"Who could need this many powerhouses?" asked Aero. "And why, Spirit, would you bring this girl along when you knew a fight was coming?" Spirit sputtered.

"I will answer that question momentarily," Data replied. "But first, Sven, will you lead us in prayer?"

Sven nodded and they all bowed their heads, barring Spirit. That made sense—he had always avoided religion. Ruby wondered to whom they would pray. Sven started speaking quietly, only just loud enough for Ruby to make it out. "God, you know it's you we're fighting for. The Shroud is coming to kill, steal, and destroy, but you came to bring abundant life…" Ruby strained to hear the rest of the prayer, but the words were lost on her.

However, the reference was not. She knew the verse: John 10:10. It was comforting to know that God had revealed himself through his Word everywhere. But, she thought, she should have expected that, knowing that God was the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. The fact that the Lord had placed her with fellow believers was even more relieving—if nothing else, she shared with them her relationship with Jesus.

They lifted their heads with low murmurs. "The Forgery version of Tempo," Data began, "has issued a challenge. This is, as you should realise, opportune. We do not have to waste resources locating him, and we can go 'all out,' as it were. And we must. With his challenge, he has also made a threat. The people of this city will be subject to his wrath if we do not deal soundly with him.

"Sven and I believe that the potential benefits outweigh the risks. In order to neutralise this threat, we have assembled a plan, which Sven will outline."

Sven obliged. "Dark Tempo is, first, extremely mobile and fast. He utilises a variety of ranged attacks, but he may be even more dangerous at close quarters. We're going to get him close, anyway: close enough for Sreig to hit him. For all his power, he won't withstand any more than a few blows from the big guy."

"While he's at range, Aero and I can wear him down with energy attacks. Spirit, it'll be your job to shield us all. When you can, work with Data to pull him closer to us. Once we're in close quarters, Data and Aero will have to pull back. Spirit, you and I will keep him occupied, but we have to stay out of Sreig's way."

"Remember," added Data, "how powerful this Forgery is. I did not bring you all here for nothing. Consider him soberly; in a one-on-one battle he would be the doom of any of us."

"Then we will make like David and Goliath!" Sreig exclaimed.

Aero deadpanned. "You'd be Goliath."

"No, I am David. This is obvious."

They all laughed and then Sreig cheered; the others seemed infected by his enthusiasm. Ruby, however, was not. Although the reporter at the back of her mind was busily analysing their tactics, the more rational part of her was screaming internally. What kind of people were these to be so powerful? And how much worse was the person they were fighting—if it was a person at all?

This new universe was not safe. Her point of entrance was even more dangerous. A chill went up her spine; she felt raw. Even her reporter went quiet, silenced by rising alarm.

Spirit turned to her with kind eyes. His furrowed brow and his concerned gaze awoke something inside Ruby. She could trust this man. That feeling sent relief trickling through her body, freeing her stiff muscles somewhat.

Spirit approached her slowly, extending his hand. She took hold of it, squeezing it. "Why did you bring me here?" Ruby asked, her voice hoarse.

Spirit smiled. "You will be safe. The time is, yes, inopportune. But I will ensure you are protected. While we fight, go through that door." He pointed at the door behind the original location of the portal. "Do not show yourself. You will be safe," he reiterated. He paused, cocking his head slightly, looking at a spot behind Ruby.

Then he continued. "If you must leave the complex, re-enter this courtyard. I will not allow you to be hurt here. Do you understand?" Ruby nodded. A pause. "Do you trust me?"

Ruby hesitated. "Yes," she said, finally, and with that admission, her fear faded further. She tried to smile, and Spirit smiled back. Then, a guiding hand on her back, the man led her to the door, opened it, and ushered her in. "Please keep me safe," she pleaded, one last time. He nodded, and then, gingerly, she shut the door.

The room was rectangular, as it should have been. Ruby didn't know why she had expected a circular room; such things were space-inefficient in any universe, she supposed. No, it was blockish, but it was sleek, with slanting, weak-looking pillars holding up a depressed roof that was higher on the sides than the middle. Glowing balls of light lit the room, hovering in strategic places and eliminating almost every shadow.

Couches were scattered haphazardly about the area. A whiteboard sat on one wall, what looked like tablets were built into other walls, and a shelf of books sat in a corner. The whole room was white with shades of gray. For all its futuristic trappings, it looked homey. Comfortable.

Then she realised the situation she was in and she no longer felt comfortable. Skin crawling, she sunk to her knees, her body sagging as her legs hit the soft carpet. "God, please," she said, her voice softer and smoother than before. "I don't know how to deal with this. Please give me wisdom. I know you can help."

An explosion sounded outside. The walls rumbled but seemed to remain intact; Ruby jumped anyway. "Be strong and courageous," she whispered to herself, as she stood up. Another explosion sounded, but nothing affected the room. "Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed," she continued, sitting down on a couch and trying to relax.

Feeling restless, however, she shortly found herself standing back up, walking to a wall and tapping on one of the tablets. It lit up with a friendly interface that asked for a password which she didn't have, but when she swiped to the right, she found that she still had access to a couple of features, like the camera system. She wondered briefly why it wasn't secured, but the true wonder was that everything was written in English.

She would have to ask Spirit. If he didn't die. She felt a chill when she realised the stakes and another when she found that she had no idea what her friend could actually do. Doubting she would quite find out, she scrolled through the cameras until she found one of the fighting. This was evidenced by the sight of a spray of bullets as if from some Gatling gun.

The bullets seemed to be slowing down in mid-air. Ruby wished she could see more; in the absence of overwhelming fear, the reporter inside her was yawning awake, hungry for knowledge. Absently, she started walking in the direction of the sounds, reaching an unlocked door.

Hesitating, she listened carefully to logic. If she just stayed in this room, Spirit had said she would be safe. But the life of a reporter wasn't supposed to be safe—just careful. Feeling another chill ripple through her body, she opened the door to another room like the first, this one painted black. Passing through it with minimal consideration to its features, Ruby came upon another door.

Ruby pressed her ear to the wood, and through it, she could hear the sounds of battle. They seemed faint enough that she wouldn't be in total danger. That was quite the assumption, however. She took a deep breath. "For the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go." A still, small voice in the back of her mind whispered that the verse she was repeating might not be applicable to her actions, but she ignored it. She turned the handle, opened the door slowly, and poked her head through.

Outside was as bright as ever. She blinked a few times as her vision adjusted, and the first things she noticed were the shallow gopher holes littering the cement, which stretched in front of her for a few dozen yards before hitting more bland, concrete buildings. She saw nobody in front or to her right, but to the left, the battle raged in earnest.

It took her some time to understand exactly what was going on. Brief flashes of light accosted her eyes regularly, followed by screaming balls of energy hurtling toward a man floating in the air. Some were blue and green, coming from Sven's hands. Others were tiny and red, coming from twin pistols wielded by Aero, who was still wearing plain clothes and, inexplicably, sunglasses.

Spirit and Data stood next to each other with firm stances and little body movement. They were closer to her than the rest of the battle, their backs turned to her, heads fixed in the direction of their friends. Spirit's cloak was flapping in an unseen wind, dark blue tassels snapping like snakes every which way. Randomly, they glowed with white light or emanated shifting shadow; when they did, they struck through random blue holes in the air that Ruby identified as portals.

"Incorrigible fools, you fight a futile battle," cried the man, with a voice that projected clearly across the complex. It was soft—but loud and authoritative. "The Shroud will subsume all of Existence in darkness; it will snuff out all the light. There are dozens of you, but there are hundreds of us. And you expect to win?"

Sreig reached up with a big metal arm and grabbed his helmet, twisting it slightly and then pulling it off, revealing his messy white locks. "Hah! This man has obviously not heard of David and Goliath," Sreig yelled back, with a laugh. Ruby held back a laugh of her own.

"Numbers are irrelevant," Data replied. "You may come against us with all the darkness in the world, but we come against you in the name of the Light that will never be snuffed out." Ruby recognised that passage, too, from the very battle Sreig was referencing.

Spirit's and Data's arms were to their sides, but Data's fingers were dancing, swirls of blue darting from fingertip to fingertip. She could not perceive what this was for, but she shortly understood the purpose of Spirit's tassels, which were appearing behind the enemy and striking randomly, forcing him in Spirit's direction.

"I defy you, and I defy your God!" Tempo shouted, defiantly, and Data smiled.

Sreig grinned. "He defies you." Then he put back on his helmet. Completely covered in that massive suit of his, he stood solid in a wide stance. He had done nothing else for as long as she had been watching—but he seemed neither restless nor indolent, just ready. Then, suddenly, their enemy was there—right in front of Sreig, who was already pulling his arm back.

Tempo, as Ruby thought he was, looked confused. Behind a translucent, purplish visor over his whole face, his eyes were wide, one dark eyebrow higher than the other. The rest of his head was uncovered, silver hair in dozens of thick, separated strands spilling all over his pate. There was something about the colours of his head—they were somehow darker than she thought they should be. In fact, she realised, it looked like the man was standing in the shade. But there was no shade in Waternaux City.

Sreig's gauntleted fist slammed into Tempo's face—and then he was gone, right back at the spot he'd started in, tassels whipping him forward and energy flying all around him. His visor was covered in a web of cracks, still vibrating. It looked so fragile, now. "Impossible!" he cried.

A ball of energy struck Tempo's visor, and it shattered completely, the purple tint falling from his face and the shards fading away. For a moment, he stood still, disoriented, until he suddenly spun around, avoiding Sven and Aero's incessant firing.

"Load Breaker Slice!" he shouted, and a sword of red, pulsing energy appeared in his hand. With an irritated grunt, he sliced at the tassels behind himself, cleaving through one with clear effort. The edge of the tassel darkened and failed to grow back—in fact, Ruby could have sworn that the broken tassel was tailed by flickering pixels where the cut-off section had been.

He swung over and over again, hacking at each tassel and causing the same effect; all the while he dodged shot after shot with minimal effort. Ruby's eyes darted to Spirit as a field of translucent, shimmering blue settled over his form in the shape of his body. It was slightly larger than he was, surrounding his body neatly.

A sphere of rock broke through the concrete in front of Tempo, much larger than he was, and hurtled into him, throwing him much closer to the fighters on the ground. Aero and Sven immediately seized the opportunity and hounded him from behind, ensuring that he could not fly back away.

Unfortunately, Tempo was not yet in Sreig's range. Ruby perceived that the man needed some time to accelerate, enough for Tempo to easily dodge any planned blow. But Spirit's tassels were no longer in play; they laid still against his cloak pointlessly. The flyers could barely keep Tempo where he was, especially as he began rising up and changing his height randomly, as if to throw them off.

Spirit's aura flared and the same chunk of rock came up to smack Tempo, who shot up in avoidance. A cloud of flame bloomed in the air above him, interlaced with shifting tendrils of darkness, and engulfed him; he blasted back down, wisps of shadow licking across the suit and rising like smoke. Now that Ruby could get a better look at the suit, she took quick notes.

His garb was rigid and metallic, fitting him lightly in dark gray that plated and segmented at his joints, so he could move freely. Glowing red lines ran all over the armour, splitting randomly and coalescing into bright circles on his joints. These, too, seemed shadowed and gloomy—despite their presumed brightness. The suit was accented with apparently non-functional ridges, some so sharp as to appear menacing.

When Ruby looked up at Tempo's face, however, she saw no menace. His proud demeanour was failing, a concerned interior exposed by a furrowed brow and distraught, darting eyes. Could Spirit and his friends win? Ruby found her investment in this supernatural battle absurd—but her hands wouldn't stop taking notes, so watch she did.

It took her a whole paragraph of notes before she registered that he was staring at her. Ruby's body went rigid, a lightning bolt of her own energy crackling through her person. Suddenly, as she stepped inexorably backwards, she could feel adrenaline coursing through her veins, delivering power to her tensing muscles. She needed to run. It was do or die. But for just a few moments, as she stepped closer to the door of her escape, she studied that worried, curious face.

Until it smiled.

Ruby turned and ran, adrenaline-boosted muscles carrying her strides farther. "Load Obliterator!" Tempo shouted, but she ignored it, thanking God briefly for her all-weather boots as she turned around, swinging on the edge of the doorpost to throw herself into safety. She heard shouts as she slammed the door behind her, and then she hurried to the other side of the room.

Spirit's voice sounded from a speaker in the corner. "Ruby, run! Get to the courtyard!" Wasting not a single moment, Ruby threw the door open and ran into the next room. She tripped over the edge of a chair and fell into a couch—just as the room behind her exploded. She screamed as bits of the wall flew over her head, black and smoking debris embedding themselves into the wall to the courtyard, but she felt no shockwave and registered no pain in her legs.

"Who is this girl with such white hair?" shouted Tempo, into the remains and rubble behind her. "Why does she take notes instead of fight? Come out!"

Breathing hard, Ruby pushed herself off the couch, landing on her feet and dashing for the last door. She fumbled frantically with the lock until she could turn the knob at last. It opened inward, wasting precious moments before she threw herself into the courtyard.

A ball of flame obliterated the white room and then hit a wall, licking up a suddenly visible, translucent dome that lit up where the fire touched it. A wave of barely tolerable heat rolled over her and she stumbled back. There was Tempo, floating in front of the protective field, staring at her with wild, desperate eyes.

Ruby looked behind him to see Spirit running. Patches of earth rose up where he stepped, flinging him further forward, his aura flaring. His eyes were yellow; his teeth were gritted—and fanged. He drew a thin sword wreathed in wisps of green and launched himself off a large, rising platform of earth, yelling as he brought his weapon down toward Tempo's back.

The man moved slightly to the side in a disorienting blur. Only pixels remained where he had been—pixels and Spirit's sword, slamming point-first into the force field, which rippled ominously. The man growled, and then a glowing golden lasso appeared in his hand, which he threw around Tempo's neck.

Spirit yanked the enemy down to the ground beneath his feet just as Aero and Sven rocketed into the rubble, unleashing a barrage of shots from the left and right that kept Tempo in one place, pinning him to the wall. The shots sank into the man's armour, seemingly doing nothing, while Tempo stared at Ruby still, manic and frantic.

"Load Siege Armour!" he shouted, and there materialised plating in the same gray-and-red scheme as his armour, surrounding him in a dome that cut off against the force field. She continued to step back, moving to the side a little so she could appraise what was going on behind Tempo. Though Spirit had promised to protect her, she did not feel fully safe, and she felt she needed to know on what her survival hinged.

Data and Sreig were still far away—but she had to blink the surprise out of her eyes when, suddenly, Data's location and Tempo's were closer. The whole scene between the former and the latter looked squeezed and compressed, so much that all Data did was step—and he was there.

He turned around, nodded to Sreig, and the world snapped back to normality. Then the hulking suit of armour began to charge. As Ruby had suspected, he started slow, but it only took seconds before he was running at speed, straight for Tempo's shield.

Tempo did not seem to care, not about the energy or the ball of black fire above his shield or the doom behind him. He just looked at her. Unnerved, Ruby backed up across the grass, nearing the wall on the other side. She made it two steps before Tempo's shield blasted apart. But the enemy was gone, flying up into the barrage of energy and the mass of flame.

Sreig hit the force field with a booming thump. It flickered and died.

Adrenaline flooded Ruby's body in the next instant, her mind racing as she analysed the situation. Her first conclusion: she had nowhere to run.

"Load Striker!"

Her second conclusion: she had nowhere to hide.

A hammer appeared in Tempo's hand, massive, metal, and menacing.

Her final conclusion: she was doomed.

Tempo charged forward in the air, swinging his hammer. It struck Ruby in the chest—and shattered. All the shrapnel ricocheted backward, and so did Tempo, flying backwards at the same impossible speed. At that same moment, the force field reconstituted and Tempo slammed into it with a loud "bonk!" He fell to the ground and slumped to the floor.

Ruby looked down at her intact, painless chest. It was glowing red, light shining through her coat. In fact, her entire body was glowing in the same way. She wobbled, feeling light-headed, and as the others rushed through the force field, she wondered deliriously why it let them through now and not before. Spirit reached her side as she fell forward, and the last thing she saw before falling unconscious was Tempo dissolving into a dark cloud that misted away.

---

This chapter ends what I have for the main story. Up next is Tempo's perspective of this battle, and it's full-on sci-fi/fantasy: new concepts abound with a paragraph or less of introduction each. You don't need to read it to track with ESF, but I think it's pretty fun.

 

[whizzball1]

Chapter 2b
Antagonist​

Tempo had issued a challenge.

He didn't consider it a competition—he was certainly going to win. But a public, high-stakes challenge was just what the Shroud needed to secure another of many recent, marvellous victories. Just like he had expected, a group of powerhouses had assembled in the complex to his right; his sensors could detect their sheer energy from a mile away.

All he had to do was beat them all. For some, that was easier said than done. As a Forgery, he had access to a vast wealth of the Shroud's shared knowledge—he knew every potential enemy and all of their tricks and powers. As a Viabot—a living program—he had a bank of processing power large and fast enough to plan for every situation.

The only information he needed was which enemies he was facing. In a heartbeat, he'd know everything about them and would need only the seconds of conversation to plan. After that, there would be no contest; of that, he was certain. Why else would he be selected? He was perfect for the job. His greatest drive was to advance the Dark cause; he would fulfil his responsibility gladly.

A hopeful cheer rose up from the complex. Tempo did not pity them for their self-deception—they had risen up against an inexorable conquest, and did they now expect to win? Though notable for their numerous victories, the scale they faced was certainly foreign to them. Their success, if they ever had it, would not—could not—last long.

A door on the outside of a rectangular building that surrounded a large courtyard opened for an armoured man that Tempo identified as Sven. Unlike most of this group of heroes, Sven's wealth of power could be identified not from his person but from his suit. The man was a master of technology who utilised unparalleled engineering to boost his mastery of martial arts in every physical aspect and augment it with inexhaustible energy attacks.

He was a genius strategist as well and had almost certainly planned the group's attacks. Tempo would not be able to anticipate his plans at this point—he would deal with those as they came. Data and Spirit came out next, both wearing mere coats as armour. He smiled at their pretention—as if they considered themselves untouchable. Surely, they were not so foolish.

Spirit came from a world where everyone possessed an aura that enabled various elemental magics. The man, of a shapeshifting species, had an aura unparalleled by any on his world and was a master of seven magics—the traditional four, along with light and shadow and a control of various energies. He was versatile, durable, and agile, a formidable opponent for many.

Data Stream had only one important ability, but it alone possessed massive potential: the ability to control Subsystems, miniscule, non-vital pieces of the laws of reality. By combining the use of hundreds or even thousands of them, he could warp, bend, manipulate, and create the reality in his vicinity—changing distance and direction, manipulating amounts and quantities, creating matter out of thin air—but for all that, he acted mainly in a supporting role. There were ways to circumvent his defences—limited ways, but ways nonetheless.

"Proceeding with combat protocol," Tempo said, activating a number of subprocesses that controlled his combat reflexes and prepared his suit to load various battle programs that could construct weaponry and accessories to suit his needs. Now was the time, for they might not even give him occasion to talk.

Next marched out Aero, haughtily as ever. She was an android—an anthropomorphic robot—who had a Soulnet just like Tempo. She had reality manipulation, similar to Data's, that she rarely used—instead, she mostly utilised her power to fully absorb and reuse energy attacks, along with her technological marvel of a body, equipped with strength, defence, and regeneration and a suite of weaponry from the physical to the esoteric.

A few seconds later, a great ripple surged through a translucent blue forcefield, hitherto invisible, around the inner courtyard. A man almost eight feet tall in a bulky metal suit had jumped through the field, slamming down to the ground with Tempo's other enemies. The ground rumbled beneath him—not that much damage could be done to it. Waternaux City was much more stable than Tempo, Aero, or even the man himself—Sreig.

His singular ability was unstoppable strength. There was nothing—not Waternaux City, not a dimension's walls, and certainly not Tempo—that could long withstand him. His great strength, however, granted him little agility. For all the speed he could muster up, it took time, and he was only useful in close quarters or against a restrained opponent.

There was one more wealth of energy still in the compound, different than any the Dark Power knew. It was not quite as strong as any of the men or women in front of him, but it had potential. Still, alone it stood, out of sight.

Tempo opened his mouth to speak. Then Aero raised her hands, and Spirit's aura—a three-dimensional silhouette of himself—flared to blue life around him. Eight different long-barrelled weapons materialised symmetrically around Tempo, light appearing at the ends of several. Calculations raised through Tempo's head in the next instant, resolving to a single feasible solution. He crouched, loading up his legs, and then jumped as high as he could.

The guns fired, eight different attacks intersecting in the space he had just occupied, and their interaction resulted in an explosion of force. The noise echoed for miles around while the force itself caught Tempo's feet, pushing him up higher.

"Load Air Shoes!" Tempo shouted, as he rose over the attack, activating a poorly-named program that assembled thrusters all over his suit. Before he could fire them, his helmeted head slammed into something very hard above him, arresting his upward movement and subjecting him to the tyrant gravity. His body leaned backwards as he fell toward the ground, observing the near-transparent ceiling that had formed above him.

At the last moment, his thrusters finished assembling and he fired those on his back, righting himself just above the web of attack. The guns ceased, Spirit's aura lit up again, and a ball of flame erupted with a loud noise around Tempo, fuelled by nothing. Thinking fast, he fired his back thrusters again, hurling himself out of danger.

Reality shimmered around him as he interfaced with his Relay Router, the device that let him, usually a mere program, interact with dimensional reality. As a Viabot, he usually existed in the parallel cyber world, but with a Relay Router, he could bind his cyber form to the real world. In the same way, he could bind the cyber world to the real world to some extent—enough that a glitch in the net would manifest in Existence proper.

It was a moment's work. In the cyber world, he infused his fist with Dark Energy—energy infused with the Shroud's will—and punched a hole in the code. The resulting entropy bent to his purpose, corrupting any objects that might be created in the area. Then, using his Relay Router, he merged the two realities together—and in a matter of a second, he was surrounded in a glitch that prevented materialisation in his near vicinity. His enemies would not pull their first two tricks again.

Unfortunately, there was nothing he could do about the platform above him, which he identified as one of Spirit's constructs of light. Hard light, it was called—so hard as to be practically impenetrable. Once created, however, the constructs were immovable. Spirit had created a vast ceiling, one that would be pointless to get around and would greatly limit Tempo's three-dimensional movement.

The purpose of this became clear to Tempo as Aero and Sven jumped up and flew after him, donning dual weapons. He turned off his balancing thrusters, fell backwards, and let his foot thrusters carry him backward as fast as they could. Flying was not his forte, but by the time Sven and Aero caught up with him, he was far away from the stationary Sreig, Data, and Spirit.

His assailants flew behind him, splitting up to either side and opening fire with plasma shots—bursts of very hot, energetic matter. Tempo would have to avoid those; they would corrupt and eat through his armour. But that was an easy task. "Load Reflectors!" For now, he took the bait and darted forward to avoid their fire—but so did they, pushing him inexorably toward the original battlefield.

Then the reflectors finished assembling and started to do their job. Concave sheets of metal layered with glass, they darted around his body, catching and redirecting the matter and reflecting the free electrons that the returning plasma left behind.

His own subprocesses did all the calculations for the reflectors, and as Sven and Aero changed their positions and aim, he analysed when his defence was insufficient and dodged forward. Every inch forward was a loss for him; all they had to do was get him in Sreig's range and it would be over.

Planning for that would be a cinch. He put all of his defence calculations on their own processing threads, letting them work in the background. He would have to defeat his enemies one by one, starting with Sven and Aero. The more directly he could engage them, the less they'd be able to push him forward. And if he could get a dent in their armour at close quarters, he would be able to deal with their suits in no time.

He lowered himself to the ground, reflectors still spinning, and prepared the materials for another battle program, feeding them through his Relay Router. "Load Mini Gun!" he shouted, retrieving the bullets from the cyber world as his suit assembled two standing guns and set them up hovering around him.

He opened fire. Just like the reflectors, the miniguns did their own calculations, spinning and aiming with alacrity as Tempo's two targets began to dodge his attacks. At last, Tempo had gone properly on the offensive, and it had taken Aero and Sven by surprise, enough that they were no longer hounding him. The few shots they could get in were easily reflected.

He suspected they would change tactics soon, so he—

All of his bullets started flying in the wrong direction. As soon as they reached the near vicinity of either of his opponents, they went flying off at an acute, thirty-degree angle, completely pointlessly.

Tempo turned sharply toward Data. Without missing a beat, both miniguns turned in that direction, firing inexorably. That man, finally utilising his tremendous power, had completely changed directionality at that particular radius. Aero and Sven fired at him uselessly; their attacks were simply redirected.

Unfortunately, Tempo's attacks did not reach Data. They slowed down in mid-air and fell to the ground before they could get close—not because Data was eliminating their energy, for that would take too much focus, but because, as Tempo assumed, Data had increased the distance they had to travel.

Tempo frowned disapprovingly and turned around to catch Sven's punch. He ducked under the man's other metal fist and kicked out with his foot to hit Aero in the gut, firing his thrusters for extra power. She stumbled back but quickly regained her footing—while Tempo used the recoil from his kick to throw a 1-2 punch into Sven's visor.

Sven caught him in the legs with a kick that threw out his footing. He fell backward, caught himself with his thrusters, and shut them off just in time to fall underneath two bullets from Aero's newly-drawn pistols.

He hit the ground hard but pushed up with his arms, jumping to his feet and darting to the side to avoid two more bullets. Sven recovered admirably quickly from Tempo's hits and came at him from the side. His calculations demanded no dodge from either Aero's shots or Sven's upcoming kick. But they did not anticipate his opponents' true aim.

Two bullets hit two of his reflectors and Sven's kick sailed through both the other two. Much weaker than Tempo's suit, they shattered, ruined metal and glass falling to the ground by Tempo's feet. Ignoring the loss, Tempo caught Sven's leg and, using it as a grip, yanked Sven up altogether and slammed him down to the concrete, producing a crater that was a couple feet deep.

When Tempo lifted Sven up for another blow, his opponent's thrusters suddenly fired at full power. Tempo stood his ground, but with only one hand gripping Sven's legs, it took a mere second and a half for Sven to escape. Tempo whipped around to face Aero again, who was drawing guns with enormous barrels. Once again, his calculations demanded no evasion, but Tempo perceived with consternation that Aero was aiming for his miniguns. The blasts of energy that fired in the next instant obliterated them completely.

Sven was flying up to his original position. That was unacceptable; Tempo refused to be forced back into the fatal advance toward Sreig. To the side, Aero was getting ready to fly up as well. Tempo fired his side and back thrusters, blasted toward Aero, and yanked the two cannons from her hands just as she took off.

The next few milliseconds were a flurry of calculation. On one thread, Tempo analysed his opponents' trajectory while others interfaced with the weapons in his hand to figure out their specifications. His fingers pressed into the triggers with perfect precision, holding just before the point of firing, and he began to spin, putting his arms into position to aim just right.

He pulled the trigger. The cannons charged, his body hit the right position, and the two guns fired.

Sven and Aero dropped like stones. Infuriatingly, they still righted themselves before they hit the ground. But, discarding the weapons, Tempo was already taking the offensive, thrusters sending him flying at them both, parallel to the ground. His outstretched arm took Aero in the neck and hooked around her, pulling her with him as he struck Sven in his visored face with his free fist.

He pulled Aero up with him and hurled her into Sven, sending them both down into the ground. Screeching to a stop, he pulled up his legs, preparing to stomp his feet into the both of them, but Sven reached out, caught him by the foot, and yanked him to the ground next to them. He gasped as the concrete-crushing impact sent shudders through his armour but recovered himself anyway.

He jumped up with the help of his thrusters just in time to see Aero and Sven do the same. "Your plan is an open book to me," he said, risking the first real conversation. He knew they would talk, and while they did, he started analysing their stances. They would go for his shoulders, he thought, or maybe his hips.

"We figured," Sven said, with a jovial lilt.

"That doesn't mean it isn't going to work," Aero added. They both charged forward.

Tempo pivoted on his foot and their energy-wreathed fists sailed harmlessly to his sides. His other foot caught Aero as he switched on his thrusters to stabilise himself. She tripped. He didn't. Sven got away, but that was of no consequence. Aero caught herself, hands on the ground, and rolled to the side to escape Tempo's fist.

Pistols materialised in her hand, mangled and corrupted. Tempo snatched them both and hurled them at the guns Sven had manifested just out of range of Tempo's Relay Router, knocking those dozens of yards away. Aero handled well the shock evident on her face, kicking Tempo's legs without missing a beat.

Tempo had been ready for that, but he still wobbled. He regained is footing—on her gut. Then he jumped up, driving his spiked foot deeper into her before releasing. Landing in front of Sven and catching the man's fist, he perceived Aero behind him and saw that he had made an actual mark. It was fading fast, but it was a victory nonetheless, and now he knew how fast she could regenerate.

The right hook that sent him flying was not a victory. He clutched Sven's fist harder, pulling the man off balance before letting go, thrusters automatically firing to set Tempo down softly. He was too far away from his opponents—that was dangerous. "Load Absorption Shields!" he cried and started stepping forward as his suit assembled the shields—two rectangular, studded plates of metal, wider than his arms by a few inches, just longer than his forearms and hands, hooked by straps to his arms and curving slightly around them.

Sven and Aero brandished newly materialised guns and started spraying Tempo with bullets. He moved inexorably toward them, catching most of the bullets with perfect accuracy, speeding up as he approached. His shields were dented and deformed, but they had done their job, storing every bit of kinetic energy that hit them. His armour was not happy with the damage it had taken, but a small sacrifice was necessary for a shrewd strategy.

The straps disintegrated, and he threw the shields into their chests. The explosions of energy that followed flung them backward. Tempo launched himself off the ground with a mighty jump, his suit pumping materials into another battle program. "Load Hammers!" He lost a little momentum as the massive war hammers formed in his hands, but he had calculated for that.

Sven and Aero hit the ground—and Tempo brought down the hammers. Metal met metal with a mighty clang and the concrete crumbled before the impact—which drove the two fighters so deep that they crashed into the maintenance caverns of Waternaux City.

They were fine, of course. Tempo tracked their energy signatures as they moved underneath him, noting with displeasure the being in the walls of that complex. He noted also that whatever advantage he'd had in the melee was now gone. But that was fine—it was only a stepping stone in something much more effective.

He rose into the air. He would play the part of the hounded rabbit—for now. Sven and Aero burst out of the ground on either side of him with a dent each. That was what Tempo wanted. All he needed was to get close. He interfaced with his Relay Router again and sent out a call through the cyber world for Bugs. He would only need two to win.

Aero was brandishing pistols and, for some reason, sunglasses. A blue portal opened behind Tempo and another behind Spirit, whose tassels were waving in an unseen wind. The onslaught came, then. Sven held up his hands, glowing with green and blue light, and balls of energy of the same colours sailed out from his metal gauntlets. Aero's pistols fired red-glowing bullets in bursts.

All this, he calculated, was avoidable. Then Spirit's portal disappeared and got replaced by several, through which darted dark blue tassels covered in the man's signature light and shadow. The light ones were the only ones that alarmed his armour—so sharp and so rigid that they took substantial amounts of shield energy to resist. Worse still were the dark ones, which did not do damage directly. Instead, wherever the shadow touched, his energy was sucked away—though in irrelevant amounts—and the structural integrity of his armour decayed inexorably.

He dodged forward—then up, then up again, then forward. He could not escape backwards. He would need to end this fast, and he had just under two minutes to get his bugs in Sven and Aero's armour before their vulnerabilities were repaired. Tempo feinted to the left, into Sven's shots, and shut off his thrusters, falling out of the way before dashing toward Aero, pulling a bug halfway through his Relay Router.

She reacted fast, training her pistols toward Tempo's line of travel, suspecting exactly what he was aiming for. Rather than dodge, he sailed through her swiftly-laid trap. Several high-powered bullets burrowed millimetres into his armour, overwhelming his shielding energy. For all their force, however, they did not stop him. He slammed his palm into the dent in Aero's armour, his bug slipped through, and he let himself fall.

His armour screamed warnings at him about his energy routing systems, and he listened even as his opponents recovered and forced him back into his untenable position. He still had over a minute to do the same for Sven, but it would take brute force, after using his feint tactic once already.

"Incorrigible fools, you fight a futile battle," he said, ensuring that his voice carried. "The Shroud will subsume all of Existence in darkness; it will snuff out all the light. There are dozens of you, but there are hundreds of us. And you expect to win?"

Sreig took his helmet in a thick, armoured hand and pulled it off. "Hah! This man has obviously not heard of David and Goliath," the big man said, following with another hearty laugh.

"Numbers are irrelevant," Data said. "You may come against us with all the darkness in the world, but we come against you in the name of the Light that will never be snuffed out."

He shortly noticed two important developments. First, the energy signature that had hidden from him was present now at the outskirts of the battle: a young-looking girl taking notes. He knew absolutely nothing about her, and neither did the Shroud. She was only Tier Three but had the power for Tier Four, and she seemed to possess a vast store of Mood that she wasn't using, according to his preliminary probes.

"I defy you, and I defy your God!" Now was the time to surprise Sven.

Sreig put on his helmet. "He defies you."

The other thing he noticed was that Data was working his magic. A moment later, Tempo was right in front of Sreig. This information took just barely too long to process, and Sreig punched him in the face. An enormous amount of his energy went flooding into his visor as shocks of force exploded through his body, disrupting the electronics in his suit and driving his processes crazy.

The only action he was able to take in those critical moments was to fire all his back thrusters, stabilising the backward motion caused by the blow. Then he was returned to his former position. His primary source of vision was obscured by hundreds of tiny lines that he realised were a web of cracks. "Impossible!" he cried.

One of Sven's shots, a ball of raw energy, struck him in the visor. Raging, it lashed out, applying strong forces in every direction, largely favouring the direction in which it was shot. His visor could not withstand the onslaught—it shattered.

Aero had not yet fallen. That was irritating—he must have found a weaker bug. It would do its job, but it would do it slowly. He watched in dismay as the hole in Sven's armour filled with a field of electricity. That hard-earned vulnerability was gone.

Tempo hated anger. It disrupted his response to his calculations. But anger welled up anyway. "Load Breaker Slice!" he cried, spinning to meet Spirit's tassels with a thin, energy-infused sword. The blade sliced into the first of several tassels—and met an unexpected level of resistance. He poured energy into his arm until he could cut all the way through, and his Relay Router flared when he finished, leaving a glitch on the tassel that prevented its reconstitution.

With an outlet for his anger, his avoidance calculations could operate unhindered. He dodged every shot that followed, darting left and right and up and down without fail so as to disrupt Data's meddling. All the while, he hacked and slashed at each tassel, cutting them down until there was none left.

Spirit flared his aura again, and a huge chunk of earth burst from the ground and slammed into Tempo. It did no damage to his suit because of the distribution of force, but that did not preclude its true purpose: to fling Tempo forward and trap him there. Sure enough, Sven and Aero shot after him as he sped through the air, and his thrusters did not arrest his movement nearly as fast as he would have liked.

He stopped with his feet on the ground and his opponents went right back to their incessant assault. He rose off the ground a little bit, so he could dodge using his thrusters, cursing the repetitiveness of their strategy and cursing his inability to beat it. He'd need another melee to do as much damage as he needed; another melee seemed unlikely. He would need something drastic and unexpected—he would have to risk an utter overthrow of all his plans. Tempo had no idea how to accomplish that.

Another ball of earth rose up behind him. He shot up as it hurtled into the space he had occupied—up into a cloud of flame, materialised just out of range of his glitch, filled with shifting shadow that ate rapidly at his suit. He threw himself back down to escape the deadly flames, trailing smoky shadow as it faded from his suit.

His armour's structural integrity was failing fast. So was he. He looked around furtively, eyes betraying his emotions, even though he didn't need them to see. This situation was becoming impossible. He needed an out—

That girl was still taking notes, staring at him with deep, probing eyes. He stared back, moving only enough to dodge bullets. She must have noticed him when she stopped taking notes. But his new plan was already complete. He felt himself smiling. She ran.

"Load Obliterator!" he said, as he amped his thrusters and shot toward the room she was just now entering. A wide and long-barrelled gun with an open mouth materialised in his right hand, mounted on his shoulder. Spirit shouted for Ruby to get to the next room as Tempo's cannon started charging up. As soon as he could, he fired.

The glowing mortar that hurtled out of his cannon hit the roof, burrowed through the ceiling with its coating of raw energy, and exploded—true to its name, obliterating most of the room in fire and force. The girl's energy signature was coming from the next room over, now.

Why was she just running? He would have to goad her on. "Who is this girl with such white hair?" he shouted at the room. "Why does she take notes instead of fight? Come out!" He charged the Obliterator again with a bigger blast, waited until it was ready, and fired once more.

The girl escaped into the forcefield. His shot exploded and took out the room she had just been in. Its fire licked up a dome that covered the whole square of the courtyard; he wondered briefly why it was designed that way. They surely had the power to sustain any inefficiencies created by a cubic field.

That was irrelevant. With his eyes, he watched the girl through the force field. With his other optical sensors, he saw that his plan was working exactly as intended; the group behind him had disbanded in an effort to get to him. Spirit was running hard; his aura flickered repeatedly around small parts of his body and patches of earth rammed up under his feet, propelling his strides farther.

Surprisingly, the man seemed angered. His eyes were fully yellow, teeth gritted and now fanged. A green sword with a massive energy signature manifested in the wolfman's hands—Vie, it was called, the Sword of Life, possessed of paradoxically destructive power. Its sheer energy would damage his armour greatly.

But that would not happen. Tempo expanded his Relay Router two feet to the left and adjusted the parameters that rendered his cyber form in the real world. Then he moved two feet to the left, facing away from Spirit—but his visible form didn't move at all. The man jumped up behind him, sword raging with swirls of energy; for the sake of it, Tempo reset his Relay Router and his avatar appeared to move in that next instant.

The point of Vie struck the field, the full force of its devastating attack drilling into the integrity of the courtyard's defence, weakening its infrastructure greatly. But Tempo floated next to the weak spot, completely unharmed. The field rippled, betraying its own weakness. None of the fighters seemed concerned. Good.

Spirit hurled a lasso of light around Tempo's neck; it moved faster than he could process. Tempo fired all his upward thrusters, but Spirit was stronger and yanked him straight to the ground. Just then, Aero and Sven arrived, guns blazing, drilling into his armour with a barrage of shots that he didn't bother avoiding. They depleted his shielding fast, but it wouldn't matter. Better to lose some of his armour than to lose his plan.

"Load Siege Armour!" he shouted, while the first shots were hitting him. His suit set to work immediately, pouring cyber-sourced material into a plated dome of a lattice-reinforced structure that formed speedily around him, cutting off at the force field. Specifically designed for the constant, brutal attacks he was facing, it held well, weakening slowly.

It did not matter, however, how long his protection would last, not with Sreig beginning a deadly charge this very moment. The ground shook beneath his feet with every one of the big man's ominous steps, pulses running through the earth faster and faster. Spirit had materialised that black fire above his shield; his calculations were reacting badly to it. No matter—he could suffer.

He jumped with all his might, firing his thrusters and pulling material out of the siege armour to weaken it. He blasted through the shield a half-second before Sreig did, passing straight through the wall of decaying power and rising above it with his suit screaming again. It was covered in small dents where the shadow had eaten through, ignoring his energy shielding completely.

Tempo pretended his situation wasn't dire. He needed this element of surprise if he wanted to survive. Sreig hit the shield—which immediately failed, unable to handle Sreig's incredible power. "Load Striker!" Tempo shouted, even as the opportunity appeared, already firing every thruster he had, hurling himself forward while his suit assembled the hammer he had requested.

He pulled his arms back, loading them with power. The hammer finished materialising in his hands and he swung it into the girl's chest. Her defence was unprecedented.

Every joule of energy imparted at the point of contact was reversed in an effortless instant, turning back on his hammer. The weapon withstood it pathetically, shattering even as the force continued through the handle. He didn't let go in time. All the power he had imparted into that attack, compressed into a miniscule moment, worked together to fling him back into the reforming dome.

His shielding couldn't handle the impact, and neither could his armour. The blow hit his body through his suit; this time, the pain was real, not a series of numbers. He fell to the ground, that blow absorbed by his shielding, and slumped to the floor.

His mind cloudy, he sent out a call to the Shroud. His enemies were coming through the force field and it wouldn't do to be captured. He wondered deliriously why the field let them through now and not before. That was the last thing he thought before the sweet embrace of dark energy took him away.

---

That's all I have for now; I'm working on chapter 3a right now. Chapter 3b? I won't spoil anything right now, but I will say that there's a hint in this chapter of a battle still to be won. Tempo wasn't entirely ineffective. If you have any questions about Viabots, the Shroud, Data, Sven, Sreig, the other heroes, or any of the other concepts introduced in the chapter, now is a good time to ask them—some of these characters won't show up very often, if at all. Also, I'd love any feedback on my writing! Errors? Improvements? Minor quibbles? I'm open to it.

 

[whizzball1]

Chapter 3a
Science Fantasy​

"That was eventful. Is she ready?"

"Obviously not."

"But she's malleable. This is our best opportunity."

"Stop talking as if there were a 'we'. Yes, this is our only chance."

"If she doesn't cooperate?"

"There will be war."

"There already is war."

"It will be worse."

***

Ruby awoke to an inky sky and blinked to adjust her eyes to the starlight. Blearily, she took note of the strangely day-like lighting, shifting in the grass beneath her.

She shot upright as memories flooded her mind's eye and then cursed her own skills: she remembered in detail the whole, frightful event; not one of her terrible decisions was lost on her. In hindsight, she despised her reporter's instincts and she wished she could forget everything. Suddenly cognisant of her own thoughts, she felt a sting of shame—those were gifts God had given her, gifts she should have been grateful for.

Sven and Spirit, seeing her upright, rushed over, concern spilling from their mouths with phrases like, "Are you okay?" and "Why did you leave the courtyard?" and "I can't believe we let him through."

"I—" Ruby looked down at her hands again. They were as fair as always, hardly a hint of red. Spirit and Sven were still clamouring, but for some reason, Spirit's voice didn't sound as comforting as it had before. "How am I alive?" she rasped.

They both stopped. Sven looked down. "I… do not know, Ruby," Spirit answered, looking at the ground next to her.

Could you please look at me, Spirit?" Ruby asked. He did, hesitantly. "You… you promised to protect me." Then, quickly, she added, "I know it was my fault. I was stupid. But, still. You promised."

Spirit didn't hold her gaze for long after that. "Allow me to send you home. I should never have even brought you here. Existence is not a safe place for you."

"No!" Ruby exclaimed, and then she shrunk back, startled at the intensity of her words. "No. I can't go back home yet, not knowing… all this. I'm a reporter. I can't just forget."

"You do not need to worry. I can help you forget," Spirit offered. "It will be as if none of this ever happened."

"No," she said again, more firmly, reaching out and turning Spirit's head toward hers, locking eyes with him again. "I need to know who I am. I'm not leaving for anything." This time, it was she who averted her gaze. She wished his eyes were blue. "I just… can't trust you anymore. I don't want your help."

Spirit's head drooped and a faint whine escaped his lips. "I am sorry, Ruby Jean." He turned around while Sven stepped back a little, brow furrowed.

"I forgive you, Spirit." Ruby prayed with all her heart that she meant those words.

"Thank you, Ruby," said Spirit, as he walked away from her. When he passed by Data, Ruby could hear their words. "Can you help her?" he asked his friend.

"Of course," Data replied, simply. Spirit straightened his back as Data approached Ruby and Sven, and then an obloid hole appeared in the air in front of Spirit, opening to a sphere of blue. Spirit stepped in and the hole snapped shut behind him.

Data came up to her, looking down at her seated form. Then he sat down in front of her, crossing his legs. "Ruby Jean Pevensie Fitz, what you did today was not wise." Ruby twitched when she was named, but she shortly realised that Spirit must have told the man. "Do you understand why?"

Ruby thought about that one for a time. "There are a lot of reasons. In the moment, though, I felt that I just had to choose risk—for the sake of the skills God gave me."
Data frowned. "In doing so, you risked the life God gave you. Your body is not your own. I understand your desire, and in certain situations, I commend it. But not in this one. What assuaged your fear today? That fear was healthy."

"I… quoted Joshua. Joshua 1:9, asking for the Lord's protection." But she was beginning to see what Data meant.

"Again, commendable. We ought to ask for the Lord's protection in every circumstance. He is faithful. But would you throw yourself off a cliff to test it? Remember Jesus in the wilderness."

"'You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.' Right. I understand." Ruby wasn't quite sure if this kind of situation would pop up often, but she saw the wisdom. This world deserved more capable reporters than she. But that stung to think.

Data smiled and stood up, holding out a hand for Ruby to take. "I am glad." Ruby took his hand; he gripped hers firmly and pulled her to her feet. "Welcome to Existence, Ruby Jean. You will do well here—better than you think."

Sven cocked his head. "Actually, you're doing pretty dang well already. You're not freaked out? Frightened? Confused?" Despite the gruffness of his voice, he sounded light-hearted, even a little lilted.

Ruby let out a choked laugh. "I'm all of those. But that doesn't cripple me. Yeah, when I look at the whole situation, it's insane. I'm talking to—wow. I'm talking to superheroes in a city the size of the galaxy in another universe. That doesn't feel safe, or familiar, or even sensible. But, still, what am I really doing right now? Talking. Talking is something I know how to do.

"And it's what's right in front of me, right now. Sure, I'm in another universe talking. But I'm still talking. I can do that." She paused—Aero was walking up to them, sunglasses donned.

"You really are handling this well, for a human," she said, with a smirk and with confidence that edged the line of pretention. Data frowned at her. "Oh, yeah. Data is a human, too."

"Somehow, I feel like that's a huge over-simplification," Ruby said.

Sven butt in, sounding hesitant. "And you don't feel lonely?"

Aero lowered her sunglasses suddenly and looked at Sven sharply. "Oh, my non-existent goodness—why would you even ask that?"

Ruby raised her hand, looking at Sven. "I don't, actually. Honestly. As long as I remember the people I love, I could go somewhere and not know anybody. I'm good at making friends. Memories keep me going until I do. I can't help missing my brother or parents or friends. But that keeps me going." In the corner of Ruby's eye, Aero and Data looked at each other. They
were both hiding smiles.

As quickly as they acknowledged each other they turned back to her. Immediately, Ruby felt a tug in her chest—the same tug she got whenever any sort of upheaval came her way. Data began, "Ruby Jean, you are—"

"Wait!" Ruby cried, interrupting him. "Are you going to tell me a life-changing piece of information right now?"

Data stopped, surprised. He paused for a few seconds, looking at a point in the distance, and replied, "Yes."

A chill ran down Ruby's spine. She suspected that, soon, she would no longer be 'just talking'. "Don't say it yet. I'll have a million questions."

Sven frowned. "You said you were a reporter. Isn't that a good thing?"

"Well, yeah," Ruby answered. "The problem is, I already have a million questions." She paused, thinking. "Well, right now, I'll only ask one." Data nodded; Ruby took that as permission and pulled out her notebook. "Why does everyone speak English?"

"Perceptive question," Data replied. "The answer is twofold—and, for your circumstances, quite convenient. First, Earth is the most common planet. That is," Data continued, quickly, as Ruby was bringing her head up, "In almost every universe, some variation of Earth with recognisably similar history appears, and it obtains interstellar travel quickly. This is inconsequential on its own, except that humans are notoriously strong-willed and take quick initiative—so most interstellar communities end up speaking English."

"So," Ruby cried, "you're telling me I can talk with you on a fluke?" Inside, she was amazed, praising God for his providence.

"Not a fluke," Data replied, "but design, I believe. It is very rare that a universe should encroach into other universes, but such occurrences are often accompanied by a large interstellar community—so the majority of first-time existential travellers are bound to speak the same language as everyone else. It's a safety net."

"Let me add that to the list of things to be thankful for," Ruby said, with a smile. "God knows what he's doing."

"He always does," Sven said.

"Shall we move on?" Data asked. "Are you ready to hear this 'life-changing piece of information'?"

Ruby tried to grin, but her voice, a little hoarser than before, betrayed her. "Nobody's ever ready to hear life-changing information. But they hear it anyway. So tell me, please."

"You are not Tier Two," Data said, abruptly.

Ruby threw up her hands. "I have no idea what that means!"

Aero groaned, took off her sunglasses, and folded them neatly. "One, I lied."

"She does that," Sven interrupted.

"Stop talking," Aero said. voice clipped. Sven pouted. "Two, he means you have some kind of superpower, or magic, or something."

Ruby breathed in sharply, remembering red. She had no delusions now that such things were unreal. She felt raw again, as if the weight of impossible responsibility had fallen on her shoulders. An indescribable feeling of awe rushed upon her—like looking out from the Empire State Building, or taking in the jungle around San Cristobal, or sitting in the presence of God.

She looked down at her fair hands, hands that had twice now glowed red. Before, watching these people fight, she had observed numbly, the clinical mind of a reporter analysing everything. But this was different. It was personal. She thought it was like—a peasant discovering he was a prince, or the vice president learning that his superior was dead. It was scary and awful and, perhaps, wonderful.

"What does this matter to me?" she asked, breathing in shakily, "if I don't know how to use it?"

"It matters for that very reason," Data answered. "Forgive me for my presumption, but I have no doubt you want to learn."

"How can I not?" Ruby replied, softly. "It's every girl's dream when she's little. It's like an entirely new world has opened up to me." Her eyes sparkled. "How do I learn it? Who can teach me? I have so many questions!"

At that moment, Aero doubled over and fell to her knees, electricity sparking from her chest. "I knew it! That rogue, the Forgery, he got a Bug in me. Sreig!" she hollered. "Get your device for me. I never thought I'd have to use it. Data, call Tempo. We're going to have to go into the cyber world."

Sreig shouted in alarm and punched the air. The scene shattered like a pane of glass, revealing a massive carpeted hallway like that of a castle. Sreig stepped through as Data looked on, brow furrowed. He pulled out a phone.

"Ruby," he said, "I apologise, but you will have to hold your questions for a few minutes. I promise I will speak with you at length. But first, I must do what I can."

Sreig ran back into reality, lugging a glass and metal chamber not unlike a tanning booth on his head. He set it down softly on the ground, opened it up with his big, armoured hands, and pulled out a massive keyboard from beneath it, suited for his fingers.

"Can I help at all?" Ruby asked, looking at everyone's set faces.

Sven turned to look at her. "Maybe. Stand by; if we need help, we'll ask you." His voice, jocular just a minute ago, was now as commanding as it was gruff. But his eyes, locked with hers, made him seem more welcoming and, on some level, easier to obey.

Data put his phone to his ear, waiting for an answer. Aero grunted, looking strained, but didn't move. "Sven," she said, "I can't move, and my durability is on max, so I'm really heavy. You're going to have to lift me into the stasis chamber. Data, if you could help too, you could make this a lot easier."

"Hello?" Data said. "Rhythm? Where is Tempo?" He lowered the phone and pressed a button quickly. "I cannot help. Rhythm picked up. This will require my full attention." He put the phone back to his ear and turned around, walking a little way away and speaking calmly.

Sven's suit whirred to life. He crouched down, grasping Aero by the waist and extending his arms, locking them. His legs strained visibly, shaking as he presumably tried to lift the woman. "Sreig, I need your help."

"But Sreig needs the Quolium battery!" the man cried. "Who can retrieve it?"

Sven looked back at Ruby. "Ruby, in the room next to the one you were staying in, there's a cabinet with purple, soft-looking cylinders about the size of your fist. It's the room to the left; the cabinet is in the back. The door should be unlocked from the inside of the courtyard."

"Okay," Ruby replied. "I'll run." Without hesitation, she dashed for the door, thanking God for the boots she had chosen. She flung open the door, taking short note of the bright white room with polished wooden floors and another esoteric, depressed ceiling. She found a multi-level metal cabinet at the back and opened the first, second, and third drawers before finding the battery.

It didn't look like a battery. It was dark purple, littered with colourful dots like stars, and it seemed like a squishy blob. When she picked it up, it was not perfectly firm, and it gave a little when she squeezed it. Figuring that was foolish, she decided not to play with it and ran right back out to the courtyard, arriving at the chamber just as Sreig and Sven finished laying Aero inside it.

She held out the battery. Sreig bowed his head quickly and then took it, opening up another compartment and inserting the round-edged cylinder. Then he shut it and closed the compartment.

Next to the compartment, the air flickered with pixels, a sound of noisy static manifesting from the spot until Tempo appeared, looking flustered. But he sounded calm as he spoke, with a soft voice but confident tone. "Where is the interface? I need to connect my Relay Router."

Ruby stumbled back and quickly righted herself when she saw that villain—returned as flippantly as if he hadn't just been beaten. Then, she realised, something was different. His hair, his face, and his skin were brighter, their colours purer than before. His suit, bright, plated, and rigid, was a whiter metal than his old armour. It looked tough but not ridged—smooth, not pointy. He just looked… kinder.

She flipped through her notebook, looking for the word 'Forgery'. Was this the man who was 'forged'? "Tempo!" she cried. "What are you—huh?"

Tempo turned to look at her with bright red eyes, red like the lines criss-crossing his suit. "Excuse me; have we met?" His eyes roved over her—they were sharp and focused. They seemed to spend a lot of time on her hair.

Ruby paused and then shook her head. "No. I'm Ruby."

Tempo nodded. "Tempo," he replied, simply, still looking at her with that intense gaze.

"Right here," Sreig shouted, and Tempo spun to look at the thin, flat compartment that had slid out of the chamber. The confusing man placed his hand on it—and then dissolved into a flurry of pixels.

Sreig and Sven sighed in relief. "It's out of our hands, now," The latter said. "We'll have to trust our friends to be strong enough to succeed."

Ruby began jotting down short notes, and then she started coughing out of nowhere, blinking nothing out of her eyes. She thought she saw a red mist fading in front of her, but she couldn't catch a solid glimpse of it. The fit stopped abruptly, replaced by a pounding headache that faded just as fast. Unfazed, she went right back to writing until Data finished speaking.
He put the phone away and began walking back to the group. When he arrived, Ruby asked, "What happened? Why was Tempo here? Can you explain?"

"The enemy you encountered today was Forgery—capital F," Data replied, without hesitation. "They are copies of powerful beings, made by a dark power which aims to rule all Existence." Ruby shivered, writing notes as Data spoke. The implication was clear: this group, whoever they were, fought for reality itself. That scale was daunting, Ruby thought, though she couldn't fully grasp it.

Her world, heretofore—even before she was whisked away—was a small one. For most of her life, she stayed put in New York City. The global perspective she desired ward hard to find in truth where she lived—though, she suspected, that was so everywhere. To expand her horizons, she knew she needed to travel. Ruby hoped that was possible, now.

"The friend you encountered just now was the original—Tempo, a kind-hearted, analytical, and unhesitant person. He is helping Aero recover from the injury inflicted by his duplicate, for he is one of very few who can."

"Why? What was the injury?" Ruby knew this question wasn't very necessary, but these were the kinds of questions she loved to ask. She couldn't pass up an opportunity learn, confusing as this new reality was.

"Aero is an android—that is, an anthropomorphic robot. She runs on quite a lot of code. Forged Tempo injected into her a Bug—capital B—which began to disrupt her systems. But our Tempo can investigate and destroy the Bug from the inside. The mechanics of this are complicated—too much for now, I believe."

"That's enough for me, for now," Ruby said. "Though it raises so many more questions. But—there are some I want answered more than others." She looked back down to her hands. "How can I learn… whatever it is that I have?"

"Your situation is very opportune, Ruby Jean," Data answered. "It so happens that you possess the magical ability found on the second most common planet in the multiverse: the power of Voice—capital V."

"Voice?" Ruby said, breathily, testing the word. "Does it have something to do with speaking, then?"

"In a manner of sorts," Data replied. "It is a different type of speaking, with a different sort of voice. Describing it to those without is like describing colour to a blind man or music to the deaf. But, even to those who have it, it is easy to forget and hard to notice, like the feeling of clothes on the body or the smell of a fragrant candle. You have felt it, in fact, all your life, and that is why you are not cognizant of its existence."

Ruby understood. She had no idea what to look for, and she supposed she would never have known if anything were out of the ordinary. "Then, what is… 'it'?"

"Take a deep breath," Data said. "Do you feel the air moving through your body?"

Ruby did as she was asked, but she only felt her chest rise and fall, just like always. "No, just my body moving. With the breath, like always."

Suddenly, everything went silent. All the ambient noise disappeared around them, as if snuffed out. The last sounds floated away like smoke from a candle, and then Data spoke again. "Speak. Say anything, but do not stop talking, and listen to the sound of your voice. Your words will not be the only thing you can hear."

Ruby shivered upon hearing that—but obliged. "The scale of the multiverse into which I've been thrown is daunting, to say the least," she began, synthesising her thoughts from her notebook as if she were writing an article, "but the people who inhabit it are perfectly capable of handling it." So she continued, listening carefully to her own voice—until she heard it.
She lowered her volume until she could distinguish it better: the only other sound in the vicinity was the quiet whisper of inward breath, singing parallel with her voice. Then, at last, she felt it. Data had asked if she could feel her breath moving through her body. This time, she could.

Like the brush of wind on her skin, Ruby could feel air whistling through her windpipe. Just as Data had promised, it was almost unnoticeable—small enough to be forgettable and benign enough to seem perfectly normal. But it was there—and it felt as new as a novel idea, or a new sound, or the fresh scent of flowers after winter.

"Do you feel the air moving through your body?" Data asked, this time with a smile.

Ruby ran out of breath and breathed in deeply, feeling nothing. "I did," she answered, her voice soft and crisp—without a hint of hoarseness. "But what does it mean?"

"Speak, Ruby Jean, again," Data said. "Talk until you are out of breath and must force the words out. When you reach that point, focus on the breath you have been feeling all along—really focus on it—and say, 'Speak.'"

Hesitantly, Ruby obliged. "It's a surreal experience—like something out of poetry—to feel your breath whirling through your body and to know it signifies something more." In this manner she proceeded until she slipped by taking a quick breath. She pressed on, Data nodding in affirmation, and as she continued, she finally ran out of breath.

She could still feel the flow of air. Ruby grabbed hold of that sensation and said, "Speak." The voice that spoke was not her own. As she felt air move up and out, a disembodied whisper with the faintest melody of her own voice said the word. A red mist drifted from her mouth, sprinkled with darker specks that glittered in the light.

The mist shifted and spun in the air in front of Ruby, mesmerising her, until out of it came the same voice, whispering, "Order." Then the mist faded away, unravelling into gossamer wisps that thinned into nothingness. She waved her hand through the space where the wisp had been. It felt cold—but it was the nice sort of cold, that of a soft breeze on a hot day, or fresh air from an open window.

"Order? How unusual," Data mused, a finger on the tip of his chin.

"Unusual?" Ruby cried, sounding scandalised. "Order is one of the most beautiful and least unusual things in the world, I'll have you know."

"Unusual," Data repeated. "Order is not a common primary Mood."

"Primary mood?" Ruby asked, hesitantly, experimenting with the phrase.

"Words have power, Ruby Jean," Data replied, "some more than others. Some Words, you live by; others, you exploit. One is chosen for you long before it becomes important, and you cannot but act according to it—your primary Mood. Two others you choose. Live those Words and you collect Voice."

"I can say for sure that I act orderly as much as I can," Ruby said, "and I happen to like it a lot, too. But what's the use? Is there anything else like 'Speak'?"

Data shook his head. "Not quite. 'Speak' is the most unusual Word of all—it is, all on its own, a Sentence." As Data spoke, Ruby could hear a whisper underneath his voice—perhaps a Sentence of his own. She couldn't make out the words.

"What are Sentences?" Ruby asked, before Data could continue. "Are they like spells?

"They are spells," Data answered, "by their true, more descriptive name. They are not much like sentences you or I know, but when spoken with Voice, they command reality." Data spoke those words with such solemnity—Ruby remembered the weight that had so recently fallen upon her. She possessed something, it seemed, uncommon to all her world, and she could not but see it as an incredible gift.

"How do I use them?"

"Words, Ruby Jean," Data replied—at this point his whisper stopped—"that represent concepts most fully understood by the speaker."

Blue mist began to swirl in the air, much like Ruby's. "These Words may include physical objects like Fire—" a miniature fire, like one from a firepit, shifting and crackling, appeared where the mist was— "or something both physical and abstract like Light—" the fire decreased in intensity, curling into a ball that eventually glowed with only one yellow colour.

"Or," he continued, "something fully abstract, like Colour—" the ball of light turned white, and then the colours of the rainbow flooded the ball, gathering in sectors. "Water, Order, Void," he added; and the colours drained from the light, spreading downward like the roots of a plant, turning and branching at right angles.

They poured together into a disc, mixing into a pure white and coalescing as a perfect circle. Then the circle folded in on itself, collapsing to a point and winking out. "To start any Sentence, you need but one, a subject on which the whole spell is built, from which you cannot far deviate, lest you lose the whole meaning."

Ruby listened closely—but her eyes were fixated on the point where the light had winked out. The display had mesmerised her. Data, for all his clinical sobriety, was an artist.

"Two parties write Sentences—one calls it magic, another calls it science. One speaks little, the other much. For one, the whole spell is enfolded in the mind's eye; for the other, every minor detail must be described in full. For both, it is an art, but an art with rules." Ruby quoted every word precisely in her notebook.

"But which is better?" Ruby asked, already suspecting the answer.

"I am biased in saying that the science party is better, because I am on that side. We are efficient, we take little energy, and only we can embed Sentences in inanimate objects. But the magic party can do unimaginably nuanced things with a metaphorical handwave. And, the more skilled a speaker, the more he can focus his mind on his intended effects and the more efficient the spell, just by nature."

"Wow," Ruby said, breathily. "That sounds so amazing. Both do. How can—" the word came out with trouble— "magic be so scientific and fantastic at the same time?"

"Because, on a fundamental level, magic is science."

"Then why is it so—wondrously different? Esoteric? It doesn't feel like science when I speak with a voice that's not my own using breath that isn't my own, and then to have those disembodied words do something!" She purposefully forced out her breath as she spoke—and then, "Speak," she whispered, with voice and breath not her own. She watched the bright red mist drift from her mouth and glimmer in the sunless light.

"Because the science of magic is inherently wondrous. Magic operates on the connections between fundamental things; it is an expression of thought, love, and emotion, only quantifiable. It is, as far as anyone sees it, the science of imagination. Imagination is just too vast for any science to clinicalise it."

"That's amazing. I could never have imagined any of this, Data." The last wisps of mist finally faded away. Ruby decided not to speak that command ever again, not until absolutely necessary. She didn't want the wonder to dim by repetition.

"I will tell you a full Sentence, now, if you believe you are ready. It is a short one, but it will still take some time to say. You will not, however, have to worry about losing breath while casting."

Ruby nodded her head and prepared to write in her notebook. She suspected she'd need another one to tabulate Sentences she learned, but for now, this would do.

"Take notes beginning now. 'Definitive: Will. Descriptive: Move. Directive: Object. Object: Self dash Sight dash Object; Stop. Location: Continuous-Self-Sight-Object; Stop."

"That's a lot," Ruby said, absent-mindedly, looking over what she had written, trying to remember it. It seemed to make sense.

"Can you tell me what it means?"

"I'm going to move… by my will… the object of my sight wherever I look. What's the punctuation for?"

"Clarity. There are special link words, but you will succeed without them. Your power is sufficient."

"Okay," Ruby whispered, considering the spell, imagining what it could do. The thought excited her—she was about to do what she had only ever dreamed of.

Ruby bent down and placed her pencil on the ground. She straightened up, slipping her notebook into her pocket and looking back at the pen intently. "Definitive: Will," she began, reciting the Sentence without using Voice, but listening for the wind in her words all the same. She ran out of breath while speaking, but she was pretty sure she had spoken correctly—so, forcing out the rest of her breath, she focused on the mystical influx of air and spoke.

"Definitive: Will," said the whisper of her own voice, coming from inside the red mist billowing like fog out of her mouth. "Descriptive: Move," she added, and as she said the words, she felt her lungs gradually refilling with air. Her attention caught by the feeling, she fumbled her next words, and, unsure, about what she was saying, she decided to let go of her Voice lest she mess up the spell. The mist faded, and she found she needed to breathe again to completely refill her lungs.

She looked at Data, and he nodded. "Again," he said, with no fanfare, and without change in his expressionless face.

She started saying the whole spell again, so she could catch her Voice, but this time, she wasn't sure of what she was saying at all. Taking out her notebook again, she flipped to the page of her notebook with the Sentence and recited it to herself.

Not feeling quite ready, she said it one more time from her notebook, this time deliberately running out of her breath, and then she put the notebook away, gripped her flow of Voice, and said the spell again. "Definitive: Will. Descriptive: Move. Directive: Object: Object-Sight-Self. Stop." Saying the Directive, she found herself distracted by something new. Her Voice felt… heavier.

She no longer only felt the air moving through her windpipe. She could feel something deeper churning inside her lungs, from which the air was flowing and from which her Voice was being filled. The air placed pressure on her throat, as though it were aching to escape, and somehow, she knew that she could handle much more of it.

Taking stock of the situation, she spoke her last words absent-mindedly, without a sense of what they meant. And then, suddenly, all that—that power flooding her Voice winked out. Immediately, she picked up her pencil, took out her notebook, and began to write. She had felt something welling up in her, something vast and incomprehensible which she didn't really understand how to control.

"For a girl of your age, Ruby Jean, you have a deep wealth of Voice," Data said, "a prodigious volume. Abnormal. But you will be no prodigy unless you learn how to properly channel it. Do not let the glory of the sensation distract you. Speak the Sentence."

Ruby took down every word. She was a little abashed at what felt like an admonition, because she knew it well. As a child, if she had let her curiosity run rampant, she might never have been able to become the journalist she was today—observant but focused, hawk-eyed but precise. "I'll read it from my notebook, then, and levitate that." 'Levitate.' The word felt unnatural.

Nothing about this situation was natural, however. So, she decided, she could do it anyway. Determined, she began to say the spell from her notebook, forcing out all her breath. Remembering the power she had felt, she seized her Voice and read once more, listening to her whispers and grasping every word, ignoring her filling lungs and waiting for the true filling.

And then, as she said the Directive, there it was—a well, reaching into both of her lungs, roiling tempestuously, pouring into her mouth and trickling into her head. It seemed to fill her, making her feel solid and assured, perhaps even more real. And, in her heart, it was connection—connection that she didn't fully understand, not yet.

"Location: Object-Sight-Self-Continuous. Stop." At the moment she finished speaking, she stopped feeling the weight of the notebook in her hands. At the same time, the mist winked out and the influence of the power inside her seemed to fade, the flow reducing to a trickle through which she could barely feel her inner store of Voice.

But it was there, and it carried with it a new kind of connection from her mind to the notebook that her hands no longer suspended. She was aware of its presence like she was aware of every one of her fingers. But everything else she felt about the connection was incomprehensible. She was also acutely aware of the Sentence she had said—somehow, it was more intelligible after the fact than in the midst.

There were errors in her understanding of the spell. With crystal clarity, she could perceive what she had thought about every word, and it really was a murky slough. But it was enough—enough for her to lift her eyes from her notebook to see a wonder beyond understanding.

The notebook, like an object in a dream, rose from her hands and followed the direction of her eyes—and then she was looking at it again, as quickly as she had looked away. She breathed in sharply, a chill running through her body anew. There was that power, pressing outward on all sides, spilling into her mouth and travelling instantly to the notebook, resisting the force of gravity that had once chained it.

Ruby moved her eyes arbitrarily, even turning around, and the notebook followed her gaze, never changing in distance from her head. That was an interesting limitation. Whenever it moved, it took a little bit of extra power from her Voice.

With her eyes, Ruby placed the notebook back into her hands. She felt no pressure—until she looked just below her hands; then, the notebook began to push them downward. She held her hands firm to test the spell; the force with which the notebook pushed grew larger the longer it was separated from its destination, and so did the output of her power.

Fearing for her notebook's life, Ruby opened a space between her hands and the notebook flew through, metaphorically screeching to a stop where she was looking. Ruby lifted her eyes again, left the notebook rise, and then settled it in her open palms. Desiring to cancel the spell, she grasped the flow of Voice in her mind and found that, just like she could hold onto it and breathe through it, she could let go of it, too.

The notebook fell back into her palms. She released a breath she had long been holding, but she couldn't stop staring at the notebook that had followed her eyes. The feeling of responsibility settled on her shoulders again, but this time, the weight was lightened by a sort of child-like glee. It was the same as she had felt when preparing for her first cat—she was receiving something wonderful, something that would take work to keep.

"How?" she asked, dreamily.

Data furrowed his brow. "That… is a long answer. Perhaps you should ask that later."

"Then, how can I learn more?"

"It is good but unfortunate that you ask that question, Ruby Jean. The answer to your question does not lie with me. I am no teacher, and my free time is regrettably limited. Besides, for one as new to Existence as yourself, time with this group is not safe for your well-being. Still, I assume you have a home and loved ones. You will not publicly be able to exercise your powers there." 'Powers'. Ruby shuddered to hear that word.

"I cannot teach you," Data continued. "Perhaps I can arrange other accommodations—but this is also very sudden, and it is rarely safe or wise to act on a whim. You must be taught. But if not for an opportune situation, nothing I can prepare today will suit you."

"I just started Christmas break at home," Ruby said. "I have a few weeks before anything becomes difficult. I can wait."

"Hey, someone's knocking," Sven said. "I'm going to go get that. You guys keep watch over Aero, okay?" Sreig nodded emphatically while Data held up his hand in acknowledgement.

"Then wait you must, Ruby Jean. In the time that you will linger on your Earth, experiment with Sentences. I will provide you with other samples with which you can practise."

"On Earth?" Ruby asked. "I don't know if I'm ready to go back yet. I want to see more of this place."

"I am sure you will in time, but Spirit tells me he brought you here at night in your world. You will surely be tired, soon. You ought to rest in a familiar place, lest those who know you become worried in your absence."

Ruby nodded slowly. Data was right. She had a brother who would miss her and friends who would notice if she were gone. "I understand. I'll go home—if you promise to bring me back. I don't want to be left to rot just because it's not safe. I'll take the risk. That's what a journalist does."

"You have the right heart in you to traverse beyond what you know. I will not lie—if you were another person or if you were in a different circumstance, I would never bring you back. But I will not deny you the satisfaction of your curiosity."

"Thank you," Ruby said. "I appreciate your honesty."

Sven's voice suddenly chimed in on a speaker, projecting over the courtyard. "Data, there's a lady here named Rubala. Says she has a Mood of Order, knows Ruby somehow, and can teach her how to use Voice."

"That is strange," Data replied. "Ask her relation."

There was a pause, during which time Ruby could not remember meeting anyone with that name. "Predecessor," Sven said.

"In what sense?" Data asked.

Another confused pause. "Paradigm." Data suddenly raised his eyebrows, and then he hummed sceptically.

"Let in this former Paradigm of Order. I would like to speak to her." Data next spoke to Ruby. "This Rubala makes an unusual but credible claim, Ruby Jean. But I would rather investigate fully first before allowing her to speak to you about a potential lie. Please, allow me to send you home for tonight."

Ruby hesitated, still worried about losing Waternaux—but she nodded anyway. "Send me back. I'll give you my address, I guess? I don't know how all this works."

"Yes, your address will help. It is past midnight in your world; it appears. I will summon you at ten in the morning, wherever you may be, promptly."

Ruby nodded again. "Can I trust that you'll bring me back?"

"With all the credibility afforded to me by what length of time I have interacted with you and by our kinship in Christ, I promise that I will."

"Then do it," Ruby replied, deciding to trust him. What else could she do? She gave him her address, and then, once she had said goodbye to her new friends, she turned to the hole in the air that Data had opened for her, one that led directly to the front of her house. Tentatively, slowly, she put one foot through the opening and touched down on familiar concrete.

She stepped all the way through. Then she turned around to wave goodbye. "Thank you, Data," she said, as a dark-skinned woman with bright red hair stepped onto the courtyard. The woman's eyes were black as night, but they gleamed with a smile as soft as silk.

"You are welcome, Ruby Jean." Data waved back, and then the hole closed.

Ruby turned around and stepped gingerly toward her house. "This night, as bright as the day, has been very strange…" she said to herself, quietly, continuing on until she reached the door, letting her breath escape her until she was sure she could feel the Voice flowing down into her lungs. It was all still real.

She entered her house for the second time that night, the house she had never really exited. And, as mundane as it felt, she went through her nightly routine, flossing and brushing her teeth and then changing in her room. All the while, she thought about the one Sentence she knew, trying to refine her understanding of it so she could do more.

It was a slow process, forcing out her breath so she could use Voice and saying the whole Sentence again every time she revised her comprehension. But as she went on, she began to find it easier to feel her Voice despite the breath in her lungs.

A paper shimmered into being above her and floated down onto her bed. She looked at it, suddenly feeling tired. The day had been long, and her body was finally flagging from exhaustion. It was almost one o'clock—time to stop.

Ruby set the paper on her desk and then lay down in bed, intending to turn off the lights using Voice. But as her eyes began to droop, she just sat up, reached over, and switched it off herself. She could try again later.

Ruby looked forward to seeing Waternaux again—but after all her time lying in the grass, her bed was too nice for her not to drift off to a restful sleep.

---

Wow, this chapter took a while. College takes a lot out of you. Feedback is welcome! I am especially interested in how I described Voice. I tried to condense it so that it wouldn't bore while keeping the wonder and providing enough information to go on. Do you have any comments or suggestions on the physical feeling of power?

Next up, for 3b, is an adventure into the cyber world with Tempo and Aero. I'm working hard on the concepts right now; we'll see when I finish.