Bear's Beauties: Existential Crisis 51 (Patreon)

[center]<<Bear Sandosen>>[/center]

I immediately hit the ‘Call All’ button on my phone, instantly connecting with all of the girls’ chokers and snapped, “Intruder by the Drive Core, they’re in the Anti-Monitor’s colors!”

I ran through the ship as fast as I could, keeping one eye on the security footage showing what looked like an Anti-Monitor version of Iron Man with multiple augments. The shoulder mounted cannon looked straight out of a Predator movie, the Eye of Horus on the helmet meant there was something Egyptian but I didn’t know enough to say more than that, to say nothing of the fact that he almost assuredly had a yellow lantern ring!

On the screen, the figure turned, facing the far side of the hall, before they held up their right hand and a glowing circle of turquoise symbols and glyphs appeared. Almost instantly, an arc of lightning slammed into it, lighting up the hallway. The circle held, and after a moment, the arc of power faded. The intruder lowered his arm, before lifting his left across his chest. A crackling, snapping orange beam shot out of a device mounted on the back of his left wrist, parrying and halting Lana’s lightsaber as she leapt into view.

“It has been some time since I fought a Sith. Let’s see if the two of you put up a better fight than Baras did before he was braised in his own lard,” the attacker said cheerfully before the plasma caster on his shoulder turned to aim directly at Lana’s face. She jerked back, the bolt of energy passing by her and burning a hole through her hair as it passed. “Wonderful! You’ve exceeded the low bar set by Darth Chunky.”

“Wonderful, a talker, those are always so much fun,” Nikhol drawled before sending a quick pulse of lightning at him.

“Be glad it’s me and not Wade,” he shot back, seemingly unaffected by the short burst of electricity. “Now I know what you’re thinking, ‘How did this charming, sexy, and dashing fellow get on board our ship?’ Well the answer is quite simple…”

I’d made it to the main elevator by this point, and was waiting as the frustratingly slow thing moved between the decks. I let out a breath of frustration as I watched Cameron appear, the Scream knife that Nikhol had given her flying through the air, only for a yellow glow to surround it, freezing it in place.

“If we make it out of this, we are finding a universe with personal or intraship teleporting tech to incorporate into this tub,” I grumbled.

Everyone except Lisa had arrived by the time the elevator opened, and despite the massive array of power and different abilities being thrown at them, they still weren’t going down. Growling in frustration, I started running again, part of my brain wondering why I wasn’t out of breath. Another look at the footage showed that despite my initial assessment, he was being pushed back, the overwhelming power being leveled at him turning the tide, if slower than I would have expected. I tucked my phone back into my pocket as I finally reached the corner of the corridor, and at that moment, he spoke up again.

“Well, this has been almost as much fun as the time Thor and Hulk went on a three state bar crawl, but I do have other things to do. So I’m going to wrap this up and let a friend be the tiebreaker of this little game,” he paused, juking back to avoid Rhonda’s sword from cutting his head off. “I thought I was forgetting something! Oh well, if you survive him, we’ll have a Shadow Game next time. Errtu, I’m calling in that favor!”

There was a sudden surge of reddish flame from in front of him, making Cameron, Lana, Rhonda, and Kara move back. The flame coalesced into a humanoid figure, tall, broad, imposing and shrouded in smoke and darkness. A pair of leathery, demonic wings spread out, revealing a long, muzzled face framed by swooping horns. There was a crackle of electricity as a sword that seemed to be a contained bolt of lightning materialized, soon followed by a whip made of fire. As the demon gave a bellowing roar, I found myself wishing that we had Gandalf to pull a sacrificial play here.

“Take care of this rustbucket and we’re good Errtu,” the demon summoner stated blithely, before giving a cheeky, two fingered salute. With a sarcastic, “Ta-ta,” he vanished.

The demon snarled, its entire body tense and radiating malice, rage, and hatred, “I may be unable to tear that scum out of his tin can, but I will make do with you.”

Hyacinth didn’t give the demon any further chance to talk, as she sent a blast of magic at it. The demon roared again, and charged forwards.

[center]<<Knight of the Anti-Monitor>>[/center]

The meeting was going to suck donkey balls, but I’d had worse. Not many, and they’d all been after I made this deal, but all the same, I’d been through worse. I walked along the walkway to where the big man’s main throne was. As I reached the throne, I let the front of my helmet pop open and rubbed at my left eye. Two weeks since implantation and the damn thing was still itchy, there had better not have been any sand on this thing when they put it in.

“You return,” Big and Blue stated the obvious.

“Some of the sensors noticed something funky passing through the Bleed, about fifty five decavortyks from this one,” I said. “I used some of the transporter tech to check it out, found a ship that someone had put together filled with a crew from several different multiversal clusters, and learned from their databases they’d been picked out by a Q specifically to oppose you.”

It was a shame, if they’d bothered using the stealth functions of their ship, they’d probably have avoided being noticed so soon. Part of me, a part that sounded a lot like a mix of Steve and Pepper, screamed at me for siccing Errtu on them. Unfortunately, until I could figure out a way to take the bastard down, I needed to keep playing the part.

Anti-Monitor made a dismissive noise, and I took the opportunity to bug out. Next stop was the testing fields, I needed to get the hang of this magic eye. As I expected, there was already a certain someone there. Someone with black spiky hair, an orange gi, and sending a blast of energy downrange as some of the Qwardians held up scanners and sensors to get energy readings.

He spotted me as the beam cut out, turning and holding a hand up in greeting, before calling out, “Hey Tony, haven’t seen you in a while.”

I gave a nod, but didn’t return his greeting beyond that. The guy was an idiot, and not the loveable kind, the kind that made me want to rip my carefully maintained goatee out as I ranted and raged at how fuck stupid he was being. Treating a job for a genocidal maniac who wanted to destroy everything that ever existed ever like a game!

Still, he made for an alright sparring partner. Better than the last three individuals with some sort of inner energy that the Qwardians would study to try to duplicate. The edgy kid with hair that looked like a duck sat on his head, the hispanic kid who turned his arms into hungry ghosts or something like that, and the guy with horns, a white mask, and a techie looking katana.

“Need to get the hang of this eye,” I said, waving towards the magic stone eye. “Care for a spar?”

“I thought you’d never ask! Hell yeah, man!”

[center]<<Kara Zor-El>>[/center]

The demon snarled, lashing out with his sword and cutting through the side wall, Cameron having ducked under the swing. I flew up, lashing out with a hook that caught the demon on the jaw. One of its wings moved faster than I was expecting, slamming into my stomach and sending me flying back. I collided with someone, bear from the sound of it, and we both crashed into the wall on the far side of the corridor.

I pulled myself off of Bear, turning around to check on him with my X-Ray vision. Thankfully he didn’t have any broken bones, but he’d almost certainly be feeling it in the morning. Reaching out with a hand, I helped him up. Blinking, I couldn’t help but look at his hand. I could feel the pressure of his grip.

Pushing that thought aside, I turned back to the demon. It was magic, so I had to be a lot more careful with its attacks than I normally would. Turning back to Bear, I asked, “Anything you can tell us about this thing?”

“Despite appearances, it’s probably not a balrog,” were the first words out of Bear’s mouth. “Most likely it’s a balor from some slice of the omniverse that correlates to Dungeons & Dragons. I sincerely hope that’s the case, because if so, then we just need to hit it hard and often enough and it’ll disappear, if it’s a balrog then we’re stuck with it here on the ship.”

I thought for a moment, trying to recall anything about a series called Dungeons and Dragons, but came up blank. It had felt my punch, so it wasn’t completely invulnerable, but from the looks of it Lana, Nikhol, Rhonda, and Cameron were all struggling to deal much damage. Nodding, I flew towards the demon, grabbing onto its wrist as it pulled back to swing its whip.

A hiss of pain left my mouth as the heat from the magical flames caused my hair to sizzle and crumple up, my skin screaming as those same fires ignored my kryptonian protection. But I remained focused, locking down the arm and giving the others a chance to get some cleaner hits.

The other arm was wrenched out, a pair of glowing, magical bands holding it out and away, as Rhonda let out a wordless cry as, with a running leap, raised her sword to drive it into the demon, only for its foot to catch her in the chest, sending her flying like a bullet into Hermione. Luna lifted up a hand, and a silver hare appeared, jumping forwards and into the demon’s chest.

It roared, the flames intensifying and I was forced to close my eyes as its struggles against my grip redoubled. One of the bands on its other arm snapped, and I called out, “Somebody kill it, quick!”

I heard it more than I saw it. The subtle motion of air as something passed through it, the way the sounds of battle echoed and reverberated against and along the corridor, it painted a picture in my mind. Bear had run up to check on Rhonda and Hermione. I hadn’t practiced my hearing enough to diagnose issues just from listening to the echoes, but I was able to ‘see’ Bear pick up Rhonda’s sword before holding it like a javelin. With a roar, he threw it, the goblin-forged blade flying through the air like a bullet, embedding itself, tip first, into the demon’s skull.

The heat, the agonizing heat, that had burned or melted pretty much the entire front of my clothes began to fade, the sword and whip dissipated, and the monstrous strength I’d been struggling against ceased. It didn’t collapse, not yet. It stood, perfectly still, for what felt like an eternity, before it finally slumped to its knees. I opened my eyes, the demon’s body looked like a charred log from a campfire, but to be honest I wasn’t really looking much better myself.

Bear let out a sigh of relief, walking up and pulling Rhonda’s sword from the demon’s skull. I couldn’t relax yet though, that’d been too easy. Things never went this well, there was always…

There was a massive explosion, my head slammed against something, and my vision went black.