The bit of armor anchoring the jets came off, propelling me in one direction while Vivian fell in the other. My arm jerked as the rocket sputtered along at inconsistent speeds. Around and around I went, spiraling in circles until that terrible cold oatmeal from breakfast threatened to crawl up and exit the wrong way. I caught a glimpse of a playdough-fog nightmare billowing out of Vivian’s armor.

The rocket carried me into a wall then we backed up and thumped into it repeatedly, growing lower in altitude each time. My ass hit the floor and the jets sputtered, flinging us backwards across the battlefield.

Exploding aliens dove at me, missing by inches. Others slashed, the metal fingers clawing through the air like enraged cats. I bunched into a ball and kept a death grip on the lifesaving rocket.

Okay, not lifesaving, but you get the idea.

It continued propelling me through the fighting using inconstant jerks. We zig zagged in a new direction. My fingers cried and knuckles felt disjointed. I hoped to make it through the mess around me.

The numbers of enemies got denser. We, my rocket friend and I, bumped into everything that moved like a pinball gone wild. I couldn’t feel my toes anymore, or my legs in general. The lingering gas from mad doctor’s office numbed the pain.

One of the half-sized minions finally caught me. He scrambled to keep hold, with a hand slipping down my pants. Spikes dug through already abused fabric into my leg. The jet pack did a barrel role and off tumbled the minion. It squeaked loudly then exploded. Explosive force enhanced the barrel role.

My fingers gave up the fight, and away went my escape plan. I needed a second one. Or an entire suit of armor. I abruptly thought of using Flux to copy Vivian’s armor and get somewhere safe.

“Flux!” I yelled then doubled over coughing as numb pain washed over me. Bits of destroyed supplies were flung around as I kicked violently. A foot jerked and slammed into thick mush of sorts. My bare pinky toe jammed and that hurt more than the rest of my flight adventure.

And if you think a real hero would have shrugged all that off, you go stub your toe against a fucking dresser or something piddly, then get back to me about how you walked it off.

My eyes water and body curled into the fetal position. I rocked briefly then heard a snarl above me. It took a second to sink in. A hand wiped away extremely manly tears and I totally didn’t sniffle.

While my brain processed two snarls and effective levels of pain, a new sound entered. A squish of body being ripped limb from limb. I blinked away tears to find Vivian standing above me. Her armor glowed with a ghostly green fog. Pieces of it were broken revealing half a snarl that matched the beast that had been above me seconds ago.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Her suit must have been severely damaged by the constant fighting. Not just because of the visuals I’d briefly described, but the voice coming from all over the ship in a stutter.

Piles of boxes were shattered to my left. To the right, Vivian’s minion army closed in. I flubbed a response while trying to find enough brainpower to back away from the crazy lady. “Kidnapped Anonymous. I’m their best guest speaker.”

It didn’t come out like that because everything hurt and talking is hard while pain rules the day.

Vivian slowly stomped close. It should have inspired fear but only made me wonder if the rest of her clothes would fall apart too. My head tilted to the side, letting me peer between her legs. I watched the rocket pack flying toward us. Two jets were held together by a brave piece of tubing. I’d seen barking dogs at the end of their leashes that were much the same.

“Pathetic desperate little man,” Vivian stated, completely misunderstanding my gaze.

They were headed our way. I just needed to buy a few seconds. “You blasted your orgasms over the radio for days and call me pathetic?”

That also didn’t come out clearly. You know, aforementioned pain. Aforementioned is a Ted word. Fuck Ted.

Vivian bent over and jabbed a finger at my face. “Listen you pig fucker,” and my seconds were achieved.

The leashed rocket-dogs slammed right into Vivian’s bent over form. Her armored ass went flying, over me, into the pile of crates I’d left untouched. Ever fucked up and had that gut sinking feeling? Ever done it and still been kind of proud? That was me. I scrambled to get distance before Vivian could register what happened.

Debris blasted across the hanger. Vivian screamed. Not a girlish scream of delight in which a pony showed up. No. This sounded like it came from Satan’s asshole after a deep, long, hard enema. A deep booming snarl that echoed around the god damn hanger or whatever we were in.

Everything stopped. I mean everything. The alien’s experimental monsters. The armored pint-sized minions. My heart. I like to think that whatever Lady Alexandria was, she also stopped for just a moment and a look of fear crossed her features. Or revulsion. Or maybe appreciation.

My legs, however, were well trained instruments. They I kept right on going despite my heart stopping. Every step ached. My bones hurt and head swam. The walls kept getting closer and there were no obvious escape routes.

I couldn’t figure out which way to escape and Flux had stopped providing me guidance. It might have been sore about me trying to leapfrog across the catwalk with its body. I put my hands on the wall and shuffled along, trying to be invisible. It didn’t work. An alien hbrid thing with slobber for a face stared at me.

My eyesight drifted past the monster toward Vivian and her minions. The pint-sized creatures were still. Vivian herself threw up both hands and declared the end of all life by saying, “That’s it. I’m melting everyone,” with surprising calmness.

“Okay,” I said while returning my gaze to slobber face. “You do you, I’m going to go home now. I left a cake in the oven.”

She didn’t hear me.

Vivian’s voice returned to full on rant through the speakers mode. “You’re all fucked now. That doctor. I’m going to melt his innards once I find him and make him watch. You think his eyes come with high definition? Who am I kidding, everyone’s eyes are in high definition. This is reality!”

I stepped away from the wall, winced in pain, the slipped by the monster. Its head turned slightly and life slowly returned to the creature’s eyes.

Vivian kept on ranting with increasing emotion. “If I can’t have a nice pirate life, with a dash of being royalty, and sex when I want it, without some assholes trying to ruin my day.”

I needed to limp away faster.

“It wasn’t too much to ask for, right? Just a little bit of happiness for all the shit my life’s been. I was going to fucking Yale! I was going to be a lawyer. I was going to get paid to take people’s money! Which is kind of like a legal pirate. Life would have been good.”

She hadn’t been. Vivian had been rejected from Yale. I’d read the letter. Now seemed like a shitty time to point that out though. Though lawyers were probably literally legal pirates.

The thought kept me going as I attempted to flee under my own power. I’d found an exit right as the vents started venting. Which is obvious because vents don’t anti-vent.

I shook my head because not much made clear sense at the minute. I’d even managed to forget my original goal during this nonsense. To escape under my own power and find some drugs, then a teleporter, then Wonderland.

Vivian threw objects around behind me. She seemed past trying to kill me herself or knew better.

“What did I make you little fuckers for?” she shouted. “Get him before he escapes for another six months. I want his feet turned into hooves. His eyeballs replaced with squid testicles. Let him know what it’s like to be turned into a freak!”

The army of squeaking minions let loose a series of shrill cries, then ran toward me. I dodged down the escape route.

“What is all this shit?” I muttered to myself.

Luck chose to work in my favor by making this some sort of cleaning supply area. Mops became an obstacle course for the minions behind me. Overwhelmed by sticks twice their height, someone crashed. Handles clattered along metals walls. One exploded, then a series of booms rattled the hall.

I didn’t turn around to look and hobbled into a room. My toe still hurt and surveying the carnage might blind me.

This time I found myself in a room full of spare electronics. Wall to ceiling shelves were crammed full of electronic boards that were extremely tiny. I looked for anything that might resemble a teleportation pad.

After a few minutes of panicked searching, I realized no one had come to get me. The minions hadn’t arrived, which seemed impossible but my clear freedom proved otherwise.

I poked my head out of the rows of shelves to look out the door I’d come in.

Twisted metal blocked one end of the hallway. Shards from the broom handles were everywhere. Broken power suits and mop toppers decorated the walls instead of blood and guts.

Gas seeped through the cracks of the blocked hallway.

“Ah-hem,” Vivian’s voice came from a nearby, still working speaker.

I stared at it.

“It seems you’ve escaped, again. That’s what I get for making minions using white mice and mole people. You’d think I’d know better? They breed fast but have zero brains. I swear their armor costs more than a hundred of these rats but I do so love shock troopers.”

She’d wandered off of her original topic. I slunk back into the room and resumed searching for anything that might let me portal out of here. Based on the cleaning supplies and electronical devices, this place looked to be some sort of cleaning and part replacement area. Probably so that those minions working on the Purple Prose copies would have easy access for basic maintenance.

I mean, not everyone had a Flux that would copy the ship in its entirety.

No luck. “How much is in here?” I asked, in hopes that Flux would appear and beep out some helpful answer. Flux decided not to appear. Which meant he might be distracted with his centerfold part’s bench from the craftsmen magazine.

Shelves of computer bits crashed. I jumped and twisted about, scraping my knee on electronics that stuck out. My breath sucked in with a hiss. More parts were pushed over.

After the dust cleared, I could make out a tall angry woman. Vivian stood on the other side, devoid of armor and in her big girl jumpsuit.

“How much,” she asked with a hint of derangement to her head tilt. “You have the nerve to help ruin my spaceport, and ask for a fucking inventory? You’re worse than your parents!”

I looked both ways before responded. “Sure. I mean this seems like”- Vivian threw a pile of scraps at my head and I shut up.

“Enough to melt your balls and make your dick into a vagina!” she roared and charged.

A dozen minion mice squeaked and charged at the same time. They were faster than Vivian and got under her giant legs. She tripped over them, slammed her head into a low ceiling beam, and started cursing her brains out.

The mice kept coming. I backed up and ran down the stacks, sending more objects spiraling to the ground. Gas hissed out of all the god damn vents ahead of me. I couldn’t tell if there was an endless supply down here or Vivivan had sent off minions to press a button somewhere.

Either way, she had a fetish of untamable proportions. Like her ass. Get it? Because gas, and, well it’s a bad setup for a fart joke. Let’s stop there and pretend I have class again.

“Stop doing this!” I yelled at her. “It’s only going to end badly.”

Reason had no impact upon Vivian’s chase. “No more sedentary gases. This stuff is quick acting!” she shouted while pushing messes out of her way.

Clouds of icky dough mixtures billowed into the room at high speeds. I held my breath for a few seconds. Vivian assumed a gloating pose. Her minion started laughing. The rest stopped chasing me and also started laughing.

I let the air I’d been holding and risked sucking in her latest deadly mixture. A series of wild chuckles escaped from me and the room started to spin.

“Who, in the fuck, has been altering my canisters!” Vivian shouted. She smacked a nearby minions. It squeaked, hit a wall, and exploded. Parts went everywhere.

My mind swam but remained stable enough for fleeing. I bumbled down the hallways peering into every room that went by in search of functional items that I could use to get out of here. There were stacks of chocolate bars that might have been iron or some other mineral. I couldn’t tell but they looked nasty.

“Come back here you tiny cocksucker!”

Behind me I heard giggling squeaking followed by more explosions. Vivian screamed in rage. Something squished. More parts clattered to the ground followed by further explosions. Air grew thin and the clouds I waded through were being sucked past my face. Walking became a pain in the ass. This claustrophobic hallway tilted a few degrees to the left. The air thinned.

My eyelids fluttered as a series of thoughts registered. I’d been through this nonsense before. It had that airlock seals have failed feeling. Which meant wherever we’d ended up, it still sat in space. Or a nameless void. Or outside a black hole. Which I’d only seen once and it scared the shit out of me because an eyeball sat in the middle of the black hole. A winking bloodshot eye that was kind of like Flux’s camera lens merged with a nightmare creature.

The brief thought of that nonsense made me wonder where Flux had gone.

Suction pulled at my ragged clothes. Sheets of paper went spiraling by me in lazy circles.

I turned around and leaned back. The rooms behind me were quickly caving in as apparently cheap metal twisted. Their belongings clogged the hall. I reached back and tried to pull myself further along the hall.

My eyes tightened. I couldn’t see this ending well. Soon something huge would come flying through the hall and knock me out. I’d be thrust into the void of space, giggling all the while, and black out. Then I’d wake up strapped to the front bumper of a spaceship with some breather over my face and we’d be going through an asteroid field.

None of that happened. The suction died abruptly. Gas swirled back and forth as it settled. The papers fluttered to the ground. I found myself staring down a long wreckage filled hallway waiting for one of the walls to crumple and Vivian to start chasing me again.

After a dozen half panicked breathes, nothing happened. I turned and stumbled down the hall, pretending I didn’t see spots floating in my vision and that all the objects around me were perfectly normal.

Further down I found mattresses that might have been growing hair. Or large square aliens standing back to back in line for a food counter. I shook my head. They were not teleporters.

The next room had a ton of small grey space marbles that would be used to fire at enemy spaceships. Or had cat litter. Or mice litter. I shook my head and pretended the idea of mice shitting in their explosive armor suits hadn’t crossed my mind.

I tensed and searched the walls for spiders, or Vivivan. My brain couldn’t separate the two. Her hair had these curls that were everywhere and always in my face like spider webs. No wait, that had been years ago, before all this nonsense.

Needless to say, my brain couldn’t keep thoughts straight. I did eventually find a room with something that resembled teleporters. They were floor to ceiling and were basically egg timers attacked to glass tubes. I smiled at my future choices of being cooked or suffocated.

The first consol with buttons left me flabbergasted. Which is a Ted word. Flabbergasted. It means kind of stunned and a bit drool faced.

I pressed buttons. They did nothing. My ass went into an abused office chair that tilted to the side and studied the panel. You’d think after all my adventures, I’d know how to work one of these things. There were dials everywhere. On the wall, under the seat. I could probably rule the levers on the wheel out. Hopefully those were to lock the chair in place and not to ensure my head stayed attached to my feet.

Flux beeped at me.

“Any clue?”

And man, oh man. The walls were melting. The dials might not have existed. It could have been strands of air that looked like teleportation controls. They could have been hair eyestalks of some beholder monster out to eat my soul.

My heart seized as exhaustion and whatever Vivian put in that last gas dose combined their powers to form a nightmare monster in my head. “Oh god. Tell me this isn’t a monster’s lair.”

Flux beeped twice. I spun in the chair and tried to shut out the nonsense floating through my head. As you’d guess, it proved difficult. Probably because a ceiling fan above me spun in the opposite direction as me.

Flux beeped. I slowly to a halt, felt sick, and nodded slowly.

“None of this would work anyway. They’re all,” my brain wandered sideways and one eye blinked faster than the other. “Decorded. De, gutted. Dis”- my eyes fluttered again and I laid back in the busted chair until the nausea passed.

Here’s the explanation of that half thought. None of them were plugged in so obviously they wouldn’t work. I stared at them for a few three breathes before panic sent me into the next room. I needed to find some portable then make it to a fresh dose of hallucinogenic gas. If I could combine the two then Wonderland would be right around the corner.

The spare part emporium went on for ages. I ventured onward looking for anything that resembled teleporters. There were glorified toasters. Flux beeped at some point and stopped following me. I think it got distracted by the hardware but I didn’t have time to sort out the eyeball.

There were ovens. Stacks of grinders that probably were used to make mutant mouse food. A few more rooms had floor to ceiling devices that might be teleporters. None of them were small enough to be useful.

I found a porthole and confirmed my earlier suspicions. We were indeed in space. The edges of a asteroid ring were at one extreme. A large purple gas giant floated to the far left. Two small moons were out there, along with six Crystalline ships pewing lasers out. I suspected Vivian had been sucked into space or something similarly useful because she hadn’t chased me for at least ten minutes.

For a moment, I almost felt bad that she’d bene sucked into space. We had dated. That meant I should care at least a little. The other part of me realized she’d gone off the deep end and being sucked into the vacuum of space where her, and her gases, would freeze or explode or something held a lot of appeal.

If you’ve ever had a bad breakup, it’s like that, but with aliens, superpowers, and death threats to your parents. So, onward.

Ships flew by the window at high speeds. There were tin can mole people out there fighting a few sleek looking jet fighters, along with the earlier mentioned Crystalline vessels. It remined me of the earlier battle that Lady Alexandria had leap into but none of the planets looked like Earth. I mean, I shouldn’t expect the Earth or the Moon to be sitting out there with purple Jupiter, but drugs and my life implied it might happen.

And if that series of thoughts rambles, it’s because the realize was I’d pressed my face against the glass and sat there enjoying the cold. My tongue was out and licking slowly. The condensation tasted bland and needed salt.

Flux beeped. My head slid down until my shoulders were higher than my ears. Or something. I snorted and jerked to awareness.

“Bad trip,” I mumbled.

Flux beeped twice.

“Too many drugs.”

Flux beeped.

I stumbled after him, mumbling to myself about everything and anything tha came to mind. Flux kept on beeping usefully. Its tone changed and some notes were longer than others. I remember mentioned something about saucy toaster ovens a few rooms back and Flux beeped out a chortle. A damn chortle.

A few blinks later and I’d found my destination inside yet another storage room. There they were. Rows of little bracelets that were close to what the exploding minions wore. They must be some sort of armament, but I didn’t recall them doing anything but clawing, chittering, and blowing up. Maybe these controlled jetpacks or were the teleportation devices I’d been looking for.

“These teleporters?” I asked.

Flux beeped.

“Wrist teleporters.”

Flux beeped.

“Wristporters. Portal wristers.”

Flux kept beeping and hovered around the devices. They might be small personal teleporters or they could be something else entirely. Glorified pocket watches or oxygen masks for those who’d teleport into space.

And let me be clear, just because I’ve been around the block a few hundred times, it didn’t make me a master of anything. Technological doodads never looks the same. Take those ships earlier. Tin cans that flew through space. Sleek black jetfighters that almost perfectly blended in with the depths of space. Giant floating crystals places that would make any self-respecting Wiccan wet.

Or maybe not.

Either way, I would never be able to look at this shit and magically know it’s primary function. It’s not my power set. Strip away Flux and Alice, all that would remain is a man who knew the flow of events. Bad shit. Worse shit. A nap.

So, I knew these bracelets would do something I’d care about later. They had two buttons and I didn’t press either, in case one caused a self-destruct and my powers threw my in an unexpected direction. I mean, I’d press it later.

The other button had a dial of some sorts and numbers that weren’t English changed as I rolled it around. It should depress once I found numbers that mattered. Truthfully, I did actually know a few sets of coordinates. I’d been through enough teleporters to know where an active volcano was since it’d been a dump site of more than one villain. I knew the one that would get me to the demolished remains of a supermarket near my house. Since I’d ported to it too many times the place had been destroyed by people fighting moments later.

I knew a set of coordinates to get to this alien nexus of some sort but no one there spoke English or liked humans in general. They all came with four sets of numbers and required different amounts of power to reach.

But my dials weren’t in English either so I’d been screwed on that front.

After a moment, I remembered that I didn’t care about getting home. My goal had been to find a portal device, get high as a kite from a hot air balloon, then hope my ass landed in Wonderland.

Which I now had. Both parts of stage one in my mission to reach Alice.

I picked random symbols. My gzze drifted to Flux. It stared at me, bobbing slowly, waiting for something interesting to record. A billion half formed throughs ran through my head and I gave up coming out with any witty lines.

It did occur to me that I was meant to be a teacher of some sort.

“Alright. This is for my students, or whatever you all are since I haven’t actually been in our classroom.” My head tilted. “We do have a classroom somewhere, right? I mean, if we don’t, then Wilhelm is a jerk.”

The people at Hero Watch might edit this out. They might not.

“Anyway, he said I was meant to teach you defense against being stupid or something. This,” I lifted the device up, “Is me, about to teleport to a random destination while who knows what is in my system. Because whew,” I waved at the walls. “There’s spiders crawling on these things and being ported somewhere random while unable to focus on your surroundings is beyond stupid.”

“But remember kids, I can’t die. You guys, well if you try this shit you’ll probably end up out there in the vacuum of space and die seconds later. So the best defense against stupid actions is to simply not do what I do.”

My eyes rolled as I tried to understand my own sentence. It barely made sense. “Don’t be me. I’m an idiot. Which means you average super hero is a mouth breathing diapers on head moron.”

That went off the rails too. My head shook and I tried a third time.

“Keep in touch with your family because if you don’t, you’ll be nothing more than strangers who share a name. Enjoy the time you have with your loved ones because apparently time is short, even for people who can’t die like me. Don’t be driven to desperation or you’ll find yourself about to venture into the unknown, again.”

I shrugged and said, “I guess what I’m really trying to say is, don’t be me” then pressed the button.

The device lit up until green and blue energy lines encircled my wrist. Those spread and crawled up my arm in a blink. My head swam and eyes closed tightly. I relaxed my stomach and felt everything tilt. Not the kind tilts from before. The guts inside me went to the outside. Skin became insides and went all mushy. They switched places and fought each other until everything crawled all my muscles twitched.

Both eyes water and I immediately started throwing up.

The room around me had gotten louder. Someone shouted at me. A hand grabbed my shoulders and pulled me away. I saw claws swipe by me then heard a grunt of rage. My blurry attacker went flying into a wall then squeaked, a second later it exploded and the room rocked.

Between the taste of salt and my stomach muscles clenching, I realized I’d somehow ended up in the middle of another battle. The escape hadn’t gone as planned

“Wretched pirate,” a gruff female shouted. “Take your defeat with pride!”

Air around me shattered. Sound crawled into my eardrum and made it pop. My vision went from blurry to three of everything. Both legs decided to quit and over I went.

Knuckles pressed into my chest. Boths hands came up to grab at whomever had me but their body hadn’t come into focus. My head tilted to one side and eventually I saw Vivian’s large face snarling inches away from mine.

“Adam,” someone yelled.

“Polo?” I responded.

Vivian shook me hard enough send my head rolling around. It bounced forward, then back, then forward far enough to headbutt her in the nose.

She screamed. Down I went. A foot came up at my midsection and I captured the large limp and rolled into a ball.

Down Vivian went. I held on to her, but she didn’t seem to have much fight left. Vivan’s legs were weak despite their size. The minions around me were being held off by Lady Alexandria. I heard my dad calmly explaining math homework to someone. My sister I presumed.

All their words were an utter jumble. I opened my eyes. It was high school all over again. Vivian and I were wrestling and her leg had been bent around in some sort of movement where her body couldn’t bend right. My face sat pressed into leg flesh, inches away from her enormously well shaped ass.

“Get her to the compression chamber,” Hans shouted. “Over there!”

“What?” Vivian bellowed. Her legs bucked and my body lifted off the ground then came slamming back down. In high school I would have been sent flying, which proved my ex had been utterly exhausted.

“What?” I asked, with far more confusion.

“The plan!” Hans clarified nothing. He waved giant meaty hands at me. I kept my death grip around the crazy woman’s leg to avoid attempted murder. Not from Vivian. Alice would kill me over this. She’d murder me in my sleep then wonder why I didn’t get back up for sex.

“You deaf piss-ant! Right there,” Hans said while waving.

I followed his gesture. On that side of the room, Lady Alexandria fought a pack of small foes. It looked like an adult being swarmed by violent kindergarteners.

One eye blinked, then the other, and then both rolled with annoyance. Hans bellowed at me, but as usual my mind turned out what he said and replaced it with something more relevant.

In this case Hans shouted, “I’m a spectacularly fucktarded idiot an didn’t explain anything to you!”

***

Oddity Study Highlights

Name: Aliens & Figment Connection Theory

There are studies on expected technology levels without superpowers or alien influences. All of them imply that interplanetary travel should be impossible and well outside the scope of every single human on the planet.

Our reality has proven much different. Alien ships with improbable drives have been partially reverse engineered. In most cases these results are in the hands of a select few hero teams, villains with the right connections, uber rich individuals building collections, and alien race “emissaries”.

Travel to other planets, other star systems, and so on, is still considered hypothetical by some. There’s been speculation that all interplanetary travel is really venturing into ether “bubbles” where a species exists temporarily. It’s been speculated that these alien home worlds are created and maintained by the same field that empowers ordinary people and lets some shoot fireballs out of their hands.

This is, of course, ridicules because the amount of energy needed to support so many worlds would be beyond measure, where studies have proven a direct it’s possible to overuse powers in a specific area and have it impact everyone. This is of course countered but showing that alien races tend to show up on a cycle, possibly implying a “recharge” time on that race’s return. Further implications along these lines would mean nearly all aliens should be classified as figments, rather than extraterrestrials.