Planar Chaos: All that Glitters (Patreon)

“This would have been so much easier if you didn’t wreck the motherboard,” I muttered. 

There had still been enough material left in my prosthetic limb to pry off a wall panel, after I’d summoned a copy for myself.

Would have loved to make a couple more just for the parts, but unfortunately my magic didn’t work like that. If I started taking them apart they’d just dissipate.

The white-haired girl, Ritz or whatever, tossed her hair. “Why don’t you just blast a hole in it?” she asked. “That’s what the real Taylor would have done.”

I rolled my eyes. “In case you missed the memo, I am the real Taylor. And we don’t have time for this argument.” Wasn’t sure I bought the whole part where I was stuck in a dream either, but weirder shit had happened to me. Woulda been nice if the entire Serkovia mess had been nothing more than a bad dream.

But that was just wishful thinking.

Ritz only folded her arms, raising an elegant eyebrow at me. Where did alternate me find these women? I had a sudden feeling that I was letting Tony down, before I brushed it off. I doubted this version of me had shared manicure tips with the Black Widow. So there.

“This base has some pretty crazy security measures,” I said instead. “I bust a hole in the wall and we’ll fighting through a forest of auto turrets at least. I shook my head, remembering some of the emplacements I’d seen on the way down. “This way, I can convince the computer to let us out all on its own.”

She leaned in closer, brushing a stray lock of ivory hair behind her ear. “Won’t that just set off another set of alarms?”

I gave her my best grin. “It would,” I said. “if these people had an AI of their own.”

Maybe it was a bit irresponsible, forking Snark like this, but it wasn’t like I could bring the original with me. Really, most of my jerry rigging went into making something my AI chip could connect to for the copied version to unpack itself.

With a flick of my fingers, I pressed the slim solid-state processor against my cobbled together receiver. “Get us out of here buddy.”

The cell’s speakers crackled to life. “Acknowledged,” Snark said. “You really need to find better vacation homes.”

“Beats being dead,” I said as the door popped open. “Come on, let’s roll.”

At least Ritz wasn’t slow on the uptake. She took point the moment we were out in the hall, rapier in hand. Now, I wouldn’t really recommend a sword of all things vs an alien invasion, but if Hawks made his pointy stick thrower work vs the Chitauri…

“Kid,” Snark said over the intercom. “I’ve cleared you both with the security system, but there’s a pro-fmsovovovsvssvsvsvsvsvsvsvssvssshhsshhahahhs”

We both froze. “Snark?” I called. No reply. “Snark this is a really bad time for one of your practical jokes!”

The intercoms crackled again. But this time…something different started to play.

“I got no—to hold me down.”

“No,” I whispered.

“—me fret, to make—frown.”

“What?” Ritz asked, but I barely heard her.

“You’re dead.”

“I had strings, but now I’m free. I got no strings on me.”

I growled. With a snap of my fingers, I dissolved the artifact I’d created to summon Snark, pulling whatever fragments of my partner that remained from our new foe’s clutches.

“Show yourself,” I called. “Ultron!”

The grainy rendition of ‘I got no strings’ continued to crackle over the intercom, even as the sound of metallic footsteps filled the hall.

“Um, you still haven’t explained what the hell is going on.”

“It’s a rouge AI that my…teacher built,” I muttered. A repulsor cannon formed on my arm. I had a few offensive spells, but when it came to Ultron’s little puppets nothing beat good old fashioned blunt damage. “Somehow, he must have escaped to this reality.”

“It’s a simulation,” Ritz said as the footsteps grew closer. “Is there any way at all he could be here? No? It’s because he’s not.”

I grimaced. “You don’t know what Ultron is capable of.”

A squad of familiar suites came around the corner, upgraded from the last time I’d faced off against Ultron. My cannon took out the first one before a wave of lasers forced me to dive to the side.

“Taylor!” A jovial, almost grandfatherly voice called. “It’s been a while, how’s my favorite gullible little human?”

I bit back a retort. “Take cover!” I cried instead. “I’ll keep them off—”

Ritz wasn’t moving.

“Idiot—do you want to—”

“I learned something interesting about magic the other day,” she called over her shoulder. The lasers seemed to curve around here as she stood, unbothered in the middle of the hallway.

I blinked in surprise, a beam of light almost giving me a new set of eyebrows before I flinched back.

Ritz charged forward. “It’s about belief!” Her sword, you know, the one made of entirely ordinary metal, cleaved right through the trio of Ultrons. They parted more like mist than metal.

And I was left crouching behind a laser scoured nook in the wall.

Glancing over, I pressed my finger to a pockmark, before yanking it back with a hiss. Still hot.

“What the fuck?” I asked. “Did he screw up his targeting algorithms?”

“I told you.” Ritz spun to face me, a serious expression marring her perfect face. “This is a dream. Nothing here is real. And no matter who’s running the simulation, it’s taking place quite literally in our minds. Do you get what that means yet?”

“You’re gonna have to spell it out for those of us not fluent in dream magic, lady,” I said. 

Ritz waved her hand to the side. “This. All of this? It can only affect you if you let it. If you believe in it.” She gave a wry smile. “And if there’s on thing I’m good at, it’s at telling truth from fantasy.”

I clicked my tongue. “That doesn’t change the fact that the laser marks burnt my finger.”

“It’s easy to believe what’s right in front of your eyes,” she said. “But this time we can’t afford to fall into some fantasy.”

“That’s easy for you to say,” I shot back. “I’m down for saving the world any day, but just trusting that the power of belief is gonna keep us safe.”

“We don’t have time for ‘what ifs,’” Ritz said, slamming her rapier back into its sheath. “Out there in the real world there’s an actual attack going on, and it’s up to me to wake these idiots up before they get themselves killed. It’s going to be a hella pain even if I don’t have to deal with your nightmares as well.”

I grimaced, glancing to the side. “How do you know?” I asked. “How can you convince yourself it’s not real so easily. I felt the heat from those shots give me first degree burns.”

Ritz sighed, turning and starting back down the hall. “You’re the mage,” she said. “It was my version of you that taught me what little I know about how real magic works, you know.”

I huffed, falling in behind her. “Yeah, well that doesn’t really help me.”

“It should, if you have the same type of magic,” she told me. “It’s belief.”

I said nothing.

She giggled. “How about this, do these ones look real?”

I blinked. “What?”

She dashed forward in a blur, coming upon another group of robots that I’d completely missed.

I forced myself to watch, to not duck, as she went through them like a knife and they melted into fog, disrupted by…her belief?

I closed my eyes, letting out a breath. She was right about one thing. Magic was all willpower and belief. I can’t say I’d ever been stuck in a dream before, but if I forced myself to ignore the visceral reaction to Ultron coming back, to coming back from the brink of death and looked at the cold hard facts.

“They aren’t real,” I told myself. “They aren’t real.”

I felt something ripple around me, what was the biblical line? Scales falling from my eyes? It felt something like that.

I opened my eyes again, and the hallway was different. The signs of battle that had just been there were wiped away.

“That’s a trip,” I muttered.

“Looks like you’ve got the hang of it,” Ritz said. “Now lets see if we can’t get the rest of the team to wake up before something else goes horribly wrong.”

“Where are they?”

“No idea,” Ritz said with a sharp grin. “Luckily, I heard you had this little thing called an AI that can get us into their systems?”

I nodded. “Let’s get to the computer hub. Is there any transportation here?”

“M’gann has a spaceship that the team uses.”

“Well nuts.”

Ritz snorted.  “My Taylor told me that the mountain has a network of Teleporters that should be able to get us close.” She gave me a look. “You’re gonna to have to spoof us some credentials.”

Spoof some credentials, I almost rolled my eyes, but something else struck me as more important. “So she’s your Taylor?”

Ritz flashed me a sly smile. “If she wants to be,” she said. “But I wouldn’t mind having a pair.” I stumbled. Tony had taught me all about what to do when guys put the moves on me but…

“Do we really have time for this?”

“You’re the hacker,” she said. “I was just waiting.”

I spun, cheeks heating up as I resummoned Snark’s storage device and practically tearing out the undermounted processor in the central consol. I usually cared more than a few universal adaptors in my kit just to jerry rig something together but I wasn’t exactly in my body…then…

I blinked.

“Hey,” I said.

“I thought you were in a hurry,” Ritz said, fluttering her eyelashes.

“How sure are you this is a lucid dream?”

She raised an eyebrow. “Have I been perforated with lasers yet?”

“Cause,” I said. “I was thinking, if this is a lucid dream then there is the perfect adaptor in this drawer.”

I pulled open a cabinet at random, both of us craning our heads over to see.

Empty. “So…about that dream shit…”

Ritz shrugged. “Maybe it was the wrong one?” She pulled open another one, rooting around inside without looking. I opened my mouth to say something, just in time for her face to light up in a smug smirk. “Is this what you’re looking for?

She tossed a sleek metal cable at me. I snatched the thing out of the air, denial already on my lips, only to stare at it.

“Why did it work for you?”

She frowned at that, tapping her chin while I got to work. Of course, busy hands didn’t mean my mouth had to be idle. “I mean, c’mon, seriously? I was doing the whole belief thing, and you pull one open as a joke?”

“Well, I guess there are some perks to spending years trapped inside a magic book,” she said quietly. I blinked. “Looks like I’m more used to fake realities than I thought. Or maybe they’re used to me.”

I bit back a wry smile. “You’d be a real hit in Inception.”

“In the what now?”

“We’re gonna need to catch up on movies after we get out of this. I’m in.”

The screen flickered once, before rebooting with a holographic Iron Man mask on the screen.

“Find me Miss Martian and Aqualad,” Ritz said. “If they’re in the same place, the rest should be too.”

“Tracking now,” Snark said. “Alien Invasion? You take me to the nicest places.”

I huffed. “You said that already. Don’t worry, I won’t forget to do a memory update when I make it back, things have just gotten a little…hectic in the interim.”

“What,” Snark said. His voice was modeled off of Tony’s. I swallowed. “Did you drop it down an active volcano?”

“Not…” I flashed back to one of Hela’s swords taking me through the clavicle. “Exactly.”

The Asgardian would have killed me a dozen times over, if not for my power.

Ritz crossed her arms.

A moment later, the screen blinked.

“I have positive IDs on your little super hero friends,” Snark said. A map came up, focusing on the Eastern Seaboard. “They’re in the thick of it.”

“And the Justice League?” Ritz asked.

A row of portraits came up, red X’s through each one. “Defunct.”

Ritz snorted. “Well, if you need any more proof that this was a simulation.”

“How you figure.”

“I’ve seen the baddies these guys go toe to toe with on a regular basis,” Ritz said. “The only way they’d get taken about before the kids club is if it was by design.”

“Good for them,” Snark said. “I’ve located several teleporters close enough to get you on the ground, kid. Pick your poison.”

“Can you get us a channel?”

“No reception. Jamming frequencies.”

I rolled my eyes. “Can you do your magic trick again?”

Canted her hips, eyes slipping shut. “Is it really a magic trick?” 

“Whatever it is, this isn’t the time to be doubting it!”

Her pale blue eyes snapped open, color so bright it almost looked like they were glowing.

“Huh.” A burst of static came over the speaker. Then, Snark said. “Whatever you did, it cleared up my end, like the antenna was only pretending to be jammed. Subcontractors.”

“And the call?”

“Still jammed,” he said. “On their end.”

I sighed, rubbing my hand down my face. “Of course it is.”

“Buck up,” Ritz said with a sharp grin. “That just means we get to do this the fun way.”

“Shouldn’t you be taking this a little more seriously?”

“What are you talking about? Send us to the closest teleporter and let’s go!”

Before I could blink, she grabbed my wrist, damn near yanking me off my feet as she sprinted for the Teleporter pads.

The last glimpse I had of the secret base was a flash of light and a computerized voice saying “Recognized—filing error B-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b”

And then we were gone.