Interlude: Worldpurge (Patreon)

A/N: Apologies for missing Monday's update. I left my computer at a friend's house over the weekend and it messed up my whole writing schedule just as I was trying to get reoriented to the new twice weekly updates. It shouldn't happen again, but since this is a transition period for me as far as my writing goes (as well as life being a bit all over the plays right now), there may be a few more hiccups along the way before everything smooths out.

Doing my best, as always, and hoping you enjoy this chapter all the same.

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Interlude: Worldpurge

It was just gonna be one of those days.

The Zeta tube had dumped Ritz and ‘Taylor’ somewhere in New York. The street, in upper Manhattan, no less, was filled with burning wreckage of vehicles. Convertibles  and taxis smoldered next to ruined tanks and hastily abandoned bunkers, with once proud facades were pitted by lasers standing watch over head.

And the battle still raged beyond the tiny strip of sky she could see from the alley way.

“A dumpster? I’m really feeling the class here.” 

Ritz rolled her eyes, even as she fought back a smirk. This new Taylor was really similar to Ritz’s friend in a lot of ways. Well, her Taylor would just have made a dry remark about budgeting and zoning laws for teleporters or something, but the essence was the same.

In other ways, however, like the suit of armor that formed around this new Taylor mid stride, the two couldn’t be more different.

“Does your terminator suit come with lasers?” Ritz asked. “Cause I’d be mega disappointed if it didn’t”

There was a mechanical whine as half a dozen glowing lenses popped out from the arms and shoulders. “Only the best for my friends,” came Taylor’s voice over the speakers.

If nothing else, their voices sounded almost exactly the same. But this Taylor had a tinge more New York in her accent. Ritz grinned. It would be fun to play a few twin shenanigans with people, once they all got out of this.

The Boy Wonder probably wouldn’t be fooled, but the rest of the team? It took physical effort to hold back a laugh. “I’ll take point,” Ritz said. “Cover me, we need to blast through to the rest of the team quick as we can.”

“You got it, butter cup.”

That time, Ritz did laugh. The line just sounded so weird in Taylor’s voice. Like seriously. “Let’s roll then!”

She took off with a flying leap out of the alley way, Rapier already in hand, blindsiding the first alien patrol just as it was gearing up to ambush them.

Her blade flashed out with pinpoint accuracy.

The return fire, on the other hand, went wide.

Man, but fighting in the dream world was a trip, Ritz thought. Especially now that she had real world experience to compare it to.

There wasn’t any obvious or heavy-handed difference between this dream reality and the real world. The aliens looked real enough, and if she let herself react instead of thinking, it she could even feel the heat off of their blaster shots.

But if she unfocused her eyes for a second and went with her gut, it was like the entire world went to smoke around her. It was a world populated by thin silhouettes of people and buildings. Where lasers and bullets had less weight than a summer breeze.

Ritz held back a shiver as she dashed forward down the street.

There was ample cover, but she ignored in favor of the most direct approach. Initiative was hers.

In a way, it didn’t even feel like she was fighting, so much as batting away swarms of gnats with her sword.

But that didn’t mean it was easy, staying like this. She had to force herself to stay dissociated from her surroundings, something she hadn’t done since Ivalice, something that she’d had to force herself to unlearn in the real world.

And here, all the memories came home to roost.

As she shredded through a hover tank and took a sharp corner, Ritz saw a flash of white and green out of the corner of her eye. A flash of a bow cradled by familiar hands. A calm, unperturbable face and a smile that looked like home.

She gritted her teeth.

“Hang a left here!”

Ritz turned, boots skidding against the asphalt.

Behind her was the sharp form of Destiny in her flying suit of armor. She was the only bright spot in the shadowy not-reality they were fighting through.

Like a bowling ball in a blanket, or something. Ritz shook her head. She was getting her metaphors mixed up.

“How much farther?” she called. Ahead, another group of vaguely menacing silhouettes broke off, turning. A wave of lasers lanced out, giving a flash of something where the realness of Destiny’s own attacks pierced the dream.

“Another three blocks, but they’re moving in the other direction.”

Ritz forced out a laugh. “More for us then!”

In the back of her head, she heard a familiar laughter, soft and sedate.

“Fuck me,” she whispered, sword flashing out in quick succession. “If I knew that this was gonna give me flashbacks I would have asked for some compensation…”

“What was that?” Destiny asked.

“I said, it’s such a pain to hit these guys, I should have asked for payment!” Ritz shouted over her shoulder. “Also, if you have time to be talking you have time to be shooting!”

“I’d love to, but.” They rounded the last corner. “My sensors are picking up something big!” 

A roar shook the air, and Ritz felt something deep in her chest shake as the ground shattered upward and the world went technicolor around her.

She staggered.

Ritz regained her footing just in time to see a massive wormlike creature looming over her in all of her mucus covered, pestilent glory.

Ritz squinted, trying to regain her internal equilibrium.

And then the smell hit.

Her eyes widened, “Fffffuuu—”

A tentacle came down. Ritz threw herself to the side, even as Destiny started peppering the thing with lasers.

All they did was all the smell of burned flesh to the air.

“Hey, Ritz, a little bit of disbelief would be good here!”

“It’s the fucking smell!” she shouted back. “It’s throwing me off.”

“This isn’t a time for a lesson on scent memories!” Destiny shouted.

“Buy me some time, then!”

A barrage of lasers ripped through the air, forcing the wormlike monstrosity back. Ritz figured it was the most confirmation that she was going to get.

Retreating back down the street, she tried to force herself out of the moment once more.

“It’s not real,” she hissed. For a moment, the world blurred.

Then the massive worm screeched again, sound driving into her ear like a spike right into the brain.

“Who thought up these things!”

“Hey, a little help here?”

Ritz sucked in a breath, and immediately regretted it. 

A carpet of slime had flowed from the monster’s skin when they weren’t looking. It had oozed across the now all to real pavement in waves, close enough now that she could see it corroding car wheels as it passed.

With a soft huff, Ritz straightened, closing her eyes.

How had she done this, back on Ivalice.

Oh, right. It was more than just a simple mindset really, wasn’t it.

As the sounds of screams and bullets and monsters filled the air around her, Ritz cast her mind back to the…bad times, at the end. The times when she’d discovered the walls of her prison inside the book, and realized that walls felt no less suffocating for the distance between them.

The time when…

Her eyes snapped open when a soft, furred hand, touched her shoulder.

“Ritz…” Shara murmured, voice thick with pain. Ritz turned towards her first clannie, the stalwart archer that had taken her in back when she’d been nothing more than a child looking for an adventure.

“Ritz, help.” Shara’s fur was matted with blood, her downy hair and tall rabbit ears drooping with sweat and exhaustion.

They were surrounded, Ritz realized, but not by aliens, or any of the strange new things she’d seen since winning free of that god dammed book.

No, instead there were vampires, antlions, ghouls, and all manner of monsters that she’d slain.

Back when she was just a girl.

“We have to run,” Shara said. “Remedi is here, she brought the book…” A wet cough. Ritz watched, unblinking, something strange and heavy forming in her chest. “I only just managed to escape. We—we have to get out of here.”

There was another roar, the sound of metal shattering, as Destiny went flying through the air, slamming into the ground twenty yards away.

Ritz blinked, staring at the ruins around her, the circle of monsters slowly closing in.

A pressure building outside of her thoughts, a pounding truth, this is real, this is real, this is real.

She blinked, bringing up a finger to her cheeks.

They came back wet.

“Shara,” she said. Yes, this was the feeling, this is what drove her to run, to fight, to do anything at all to escape. “I’m sorry.”

This was the feeling, when she’d realized, truly and deeply and fully known that…

“None of this is real.”

The words spread out from Ritz in a ripple, and where they passed, only the smoky blackness of unreality remained. 

Ritz looked up to the sky, where even the sun faded into nothing more than an impression of heat and warmth.

She remembered this feeling. 

And she hated it.

With a groan, the other Taylor pushed herself up to her feet. She still felt real to Ritz. A reminder that there was something real for her waiting beyond the dream, that she could find it, claw her way back to it.

Make it hers.

“What the heck did you do?” this Taylor asked. “Why did everything go all inception on us?”

Ritz moved to sheath her rapier, before pausing and letting it fade into nothingness as well. “I told you didn’t I? This world is a dream,” she said. “As for what I did, well,” she put on her best grin. “Seems that sometimes old wounds are useful after all, huh?”

Destiny gave Ritz a considering look, but Ritz ignored it. Her Taylor would have understood. This one…she didn’t have the same tempering that Ritz’s Taylor did.

“So…”

“We’re ending this,” Ritz said. “Now.”

She’d been tutored in a great deal of magic, since leaving her world. And while she didn’t have the talent and power to put a lot of what she’d learned into practice, in a world like this, that was just waiting to bend, to respond?

Well, they said knowledge was power, after all.

With a twist, they moved. Or the world moved. Or maybe nothing moved at all.

Ritz and Destiny found themselves standing in the middle of the team, her shadowy realm of disbelief flowing out around all of them in a wave.

There was a moment of shock, as the enemies surrounding the group of heroes faded to nothingness along with the world around them. Of people spinning, fists raised, eyes wide, before they recognized who’d landed in their midst.

“Destiny, Ritz,” Kaldur started.

“No time,” was Ritz’s reply. She strode forward, into their midst.

The weight was stronger here, all of their belief pushing against her reality.

“This isn’t real, and we need to get out.”

Kid flash whistled. “I’ll say.”

“No,” Ritz said. “This entire invasion is just a dream. It’s an attack, you’re all lying unconscious in the mountain, while the villains are doing god knows what with your minds.”

A moment of stunned silence passed, people blinked, as Ritz’s own disbelief pushed against the certainty of their minds.

“In the mountain,” Destiny said. “How did you all get to the atrium? If this was real, you would know. Do you?”

At her words that crack grew and grew and grew, Robin and Kid Flash exchanging glances, Raven trembling, eyes fluttering owlishly, M’gann shaking her head.

Around them the world trembled.

“But,” M’gann started, “Uncle J’onn!”

“And the attack,” Robin stated. “I…”

“We don’t have time for this,” Ritz said, walking forward. She put her hand on M’gann’s head. “You need to wake up!”

The world shattered.

For a moment, there was a torrent of color and sound as the dream tried to reassert itself. But Ritz had sewn enough doubt to keep it apart, to make the break permanent, as everyone’s minds spiraled apart, back to their bodies, back to the real world.

And for a moment, she watched, through Miss Martian’s eyes, as the team came back to reality, throwing themselves into action like a well oiled machine even as the villains in the room spun to fight them.

For…a moment, it looked like the disorientation would be the end of them, as mystic chains and arcane fire lanced out across the room, a dozen experienced villains coming down on the heroes like a shit ton of bricks.

And then, as Ritz tried to pull herself back to her own body so she could do anything at all to help, a massive red arm shattered the air, sinking foot long claws into the metal floor.

Six red eyes glaring balefully through the whole in reality it had created.