Charlotte suddenly shook awake from a nightmare.
What little light made it through the curtains from the moonless darkness outlined the familiar shapes in her room, reassuring her that the death and suffering that she had just witnessed had only taken place in her head. In the silence broken only by her seemingly deafening heartbeat, she fumbled on her bedside cabinet until she found the little piece of cloth she had left there. Charlotte wiped her face, unsure whether the moisture was from her tears, a cold sweat from what she had just experienced, or from the strange autumn heatwave they had been having. She climbed out of bed and got dressed. There were things to be done and allies to be alerted, because she knew that the nightmare that had awoken her was no dream. It was a vision.
Edward Kidman was making pancakes as a late breakfast for himself, his brother, Allan, and their girlfriends. Sleeping in on days when the world has not yet cried out in peril was one of the perks of being one of its heroes, along with the superpowers, of course. Nate Beta-Unit, Edward's dear friend and robotic companion, was usually the one to make breakfast, but Edward liked to occasionally remind himself that even machines can lie in once in a while. Everyone was wearing light, loose-fitting clothing as another merciless scorcher of a day beat down onto the beige landscape.
When Allan answered the desperate knock on the door, the look on his niece's face forewent all formalities. "What did you see, Charlotte?"
Charlotte cut straight to the chase, because she knew there was precious little time: "A meteor is headed for earth that will destroy life as we know it. Impact is tomorrow before dawn."
There was silence for a few moments as everyone processed what had just been said. Normally, the threats our heroes needed to deal with came in the form of people, even armies of artificial life forms or robots, but in each case it had been some or other form of sentient being. Never before have they been up against the raw forces of nature or the cosmos.
Vicky was flicking the front of her shirt back and forth to circulate air, which interfered with Allan's thinking process, and Edward spoke first: "Do the authorities know about this yet?"
"Yes," came Charlotte's reply, "but they're not worried because the meteor is not particularly big, as far as larger meteors go, and they assume it will break apart once it builds enough friction with the atmosphere."
"And they're… wrong?" Zoë deduced
"This is not just any meteor. This heat we've been having? It's from smaller pieces that don't make it far enough to do any real damage. But they're just a sample of what's to come. The meteor's makeup is incredibly resilient and makes thermite look like popping candy. Around seven tonight when it gets enough heat and air to catch on fire, there will be no stopping it. It will sail through the earth like a bullet through cookie dough, all the while heating it up from the inside. Eventually the entire planet will look the way its mantle does now."
"And what can we do?" asked Vicky.
"That's the part I haven't seen yet.
Leather Jack walked into Professor Tech's laboratory. "Why did you call me over?"
"It appears as though we have been infiltrated," Tech replied, indicating toward a busted robot. "One of the biotroops found this spy drone bearing Nathan Mechse's symbol wandering our corridors."
"Not a very efficient spy drone if it's been caught," Leather Jack smirked. "Still, The System knows where we are now. But Mechse shouldn't think we can't find him, as well."
"Shall I send a show of force?" Tech's request was a mere formality. He knew his boss well enough.
"Do it. It's far too early to be asking questions. Send a mini-frigate with three hundred troops."
"Yes sir."
"Oh, and send our other friends a small gift basket since they won't be joining the fun."
"Affirmative."
Back at the Kidman residence, everyone was brainstorming and trying to figure out a plan of action. They had been joined by Nate Beta-Unit, who had communicated with a satellite that had spotted the meteor, and calculated its point of impact to be over a small, slightly wooded nature reserve not far from the coast. Travel time was not an issue, as they could quickly and easily travel enormous distances by joining hands with Zoë, who would convert their body masses into electrical current and get them close enough in an instant via the power grid or telephone lines.
"How can we hope to face up to this?" Vicky groaned "We have some pretty decent firepower, but to handle a rock plummeting from space..? Could we even reach it before it's too late?"
Edward suddenly had a crazy idea. "We've been up against something greater than we could handle on our own before…"
"You don't mean…" Allan didn't want to complete the sentence
"When The System first rose and cut our numbers in half we were able to defeat Nathan by teaming up with Hazard Inc."
Unthinkably, The Kidman brothers and Leather Jack had had a common goal for a brief time which forced them to cooperate. The result was just barely a victory, and they parted ways as enemies again afterward. And the idea was viable: If they could make use of Hazard Inc.'s resources they may just have had a chance at destroying the chunk of doom that was rapidly approaching the little speck of mud hanging between the stars that they called home.
The thinking session was suddenly interrupted when a crash was heard and a lone biotroop burst through a newly formed hole in the ceiling.
"Speak of the devil. What does Leather Jack want now?"
Zoë reached out a hand and after some violet sparks formed in it she was the first one armed. She coiled her chain around the black-bodied figure's wrist that held its blaster and sent through it an electric current rendering its muscles limp, while the rest of them made for their weapons. The creature lunged at its firearm now lying on the floor with its free hand but a well-placed acid ball from Charlotte's hand rendered it inoperable. Charlotte's fingerless gloves were connected to a stash of smoke, venom and acid bombs via portal technology developed by The System and made available to the heroes courtesy of Nate Beta-Unit. The concept had been a complete success, but The System soon scrapped the idea when they learned that a wormhole larger than five centimetres in diameter could not be generated. But five centimetres was more than enough for Charlotte's purposes.
The biotroop next grabbed a stun gun from its weapon belt with its free hand and swung it, first at Zoë, who jerked her chain loose from its arm so that she could dodge it, and then at Charlotte, who took a small leap backward as well. By now the rest of the team were armed and assembled, and Allan used his trident to grapple the weapon from the troop. The biotroop reached for its next weapon, but a blast of liquid nitrogen from Edward froze its hand stuck to its weapon belt. Before it could use the other hand, the biotroop again found it restrained by Zoë's chain. Vicky used the rope from her grappling hook to pull its legs from underneath it, and the biotroop's artificial life met its end at the blade of Edward's diamond sword. It disappeared in a puff of black dust (They were engineered this way to make cleaning up easier), leaving behind a small, silver device. "I figured Jack was just sending us a message if he just sent one biotroop," Edward remarked. He gave it a nudge and a hologram of Leather Jacks face appeared while a message played:
"So, you've managed to open my present. This is just a courteous request that you do not try to engage with Hazard Inc. for the next few days. Nathan Mechse and his little robots have decided to make a nuisance of themselves, and we need to deal with them. Stay out of our way."
"So, that rules out destroying the meteor…" Zoë concluded
"Perhaps destroying it is not our only option," Vicky mused.
"What do you mean, Hon'?" Allan asked "You think we should try to divert it?"
"No. Remember what Charlotte said?" she answered. "The meteor will become dangerous once it sets alight, so what if we just prevented that from happening?"
"That could work," Charlotte said weakly. Charlotte's ability to see the future was quite effective at predicting various different outcomes based on her actions, as long as she didn't think about it too much. If she let her visions guide her reflexes and instincts she could quite effortlessly achieve a best case scenario, but it was a whole different story once she had to think about what she saw, and especially if she needed to discuss various courses of action with someone else. This did not hold her back, however, and she used as much energy as she could muster trying to come up with a solution to the impending catastrophe.
"I've got an idea!" Edward suddenly said sounding hopeful "Allan! The beam from your trident can put out fires, right?"
"Yes…" This was true. The strange beam that only Allan could generate from the bronze-looking weapon he found on the day he gained his superpowers not only had destructive potential, but also oddly enough had water-like properties, such as being able to cool fires and conduct electricity. Allan could even use his psychokinetic abilities, which otherwise only worked on water, to bend and guide the beam to an extent, but this required too much effort to be realistically practical for anything useful.
"Perhaps if you fired at the meteor, you could cool it down just enough to keep it from flaring up?"
"That sounds like a plan… Only, how do I get up there?"
"You don't! You charge up your trident and ready a beam, then while it's loaded with water-energy you use your hydrokinesis to fly it up to the meteor, and bam!"
"That's… actually a really good idea!"
Soon enough the team was gathered outside, and Allan was holding his trident firmly, focusing his energy into the weapon. He knew he might lose his trident forever if he did this, but with the entire planet in jeopardy, there was no question he had to go forward with it. A cyan glow began to envelop it and, as Allan let go of it, it rose steadily into the air.
"It's working!" gasped Zoë. She lifted herself up onto Edward's back, and planted a loud kiss on his head as if to give a compliment to his brain. Suddenly the glow on the trident faded, and it fell back into Allan's hands.
"What's wrong?" Asked Vicky
"I haven't the faintest idea where to guide it to. I don't know how far away the meteor is, in which direction to send the trident, or how to know if I'm close enough to fire or even remotely aiming at the meteor." Allan said sheepishly.
It was getting hotter by the hour.
"I think I can help a little with that," Charlotte said. You can send it in a direction and I'll look into the future to guide you guiding it."
"I can help, too," said Nate, relinquishing a small object and a monitor. "Mount this tiny camera on the trident sighting along the centre prong, and once the meteor is in range you'll be able to see it on this screen and manoeuvre it accordingly."
Nathan Mechse's airbase dwarfed the Hazard Inc. craft that was headed speedily toward it. The enormous indigo airship was fitted with amazingly powerful thrusters, but the sheer bulk could not hope to escape the mini-frigate charging at it at full speed. But then again, it didn't need to, since it had weapons and armour strong enough to repel even the most militant country's air force. Nathan decided to nip this pesky onslaught in the bud and launched a powerful warhead at his attacker. To his dismay the projectile did not make it halfway to its target before it was blown to smithereens by a flurry of fire from its many surface-mounted turrets manned by biotroops. The next line of defence was to dispatch an army of omegadroids and omegajets, two very efficient variations of A.I. controlled attack robots. The omegajets were shaped roughly like aeroplanes that lacked cockpits and were speedier, while omegadroids had a somewhat anthropomorphic yet bulky appearance, and were designed with firepower and manoeuvrability in mind. The jets reached the invaders first, swiftly circling the ship and subjecting it to rapid fire, and they were soon joined by the droids, which darted erratically back and forth firing powerful plasma blasts from their arm cannons. Several explosions rocked the skies for a few moments, and when the smoke cleared, the mini-frigate was gone.
… But the biotroops weren't. Some clung to their adversaries, others wore jetpacks, and all relentlessly attacked their foes with their wide range of hand-to-hand weapons. Those that weren't shooting at the robots were focusing fire on the airship's stabilisers. Finally Nathan decided he had had enough and deployed a smart bomb, which eradicated friend and foe alike. The Hazard Inc. mini-frigate had left a subtle smoke trail, along which Nathan Mechse plotted a new flight plan.
At last the heroes had a plan of action. Allan wasted no time powering up his makeshift guided missile, and Charlotte used all but the last of her power getting him in the ballpark by shutting her eyes and gesturing direction and speed. A little while before six the menacing red glow of the meteor rose on Nate's screen, which the team watched in awe. "When I have just the perfect shot I'll jab my trident into the meteor, and fire the energy at the same time. That will hopefully be enough to prevent it from combusting." Allan said while he concentrated, waiting for the right moment. Soon enough the meteor took up nearly half of the screen, at which point a flash of cyan eclipsed the red glow, before the visual cut out.
"Stand by," said Nate. "I've just lost the signal in the impact. Give me a moment while I reconnect with the camera." The group held their breaths as beeps and whirrs were heard from Nate, and in a small eternity the image came back online.
There was nothing on the screen but stars. Stars and blackness. "Look…" Edward traced a line across the screen with a jittery index finger. Sure enough, no stars were visible on the bottom half.
"I think my trident may have gotten lodged…" Allan began
To their horror, the black half of the screen became deep brown, which gradually grew red once again.
"What's going on?" Zoë's voice quivered
Charlotte was white as a sheet and had dark circles under her eyes. "Allan's bought us some more time. We have until… four… tomorrow morning." And with that she sank to the ground.
Chaos erupted as everyone began hysterically and simultaneously suggesting new approaches:
"Maybe I can flash-freeze it! Nate, can you get me up there..?!"
"If I can get above it and stun-beam it enough, it might lose friction..!"
"Do you think it can conduct electricity?! What if I generated a magnetic field..?!"
Everyone except Allan, who wordlessly walked back into the house.
Allan sat on his bed in deep thought. He still considered this mostly his fight, since his specialty was water and the enemy in this instance was essentially fire. Fire that came from a rare and particular stone. Now why did that suddenly ring a bell? He wondered. Then he remembered: He had dealt with a rare and particular stone before. The stones that had endowed him with hydrokinesis and the ability to survive under water. Those glowing stones at the bottom of the sea where he had found his trident. Allan had actually taken one from the area. The Kidmans would occasionally keep souvenirs from some of their adventures. Allan had kept the stone at his bedside at first, but he later put it in a trunk under his bed as the sea-green glow it gave off sometimes hindered his sleep. He pulled the trunk out and rummaged through it, but he couldn't find the stone. Allan sorted through the objects one last time by first pushing them all to the left side, and then shifting them over to the right one last time: An empty photo frame, a piece of macaroni art Charlotte made in kindergarten, a redundant-turned-spare power cable, a strange dull chunk of…
At once Allan recognized the stone he'd been searching for. He hadn't noticed it at first because its brightly coloured sheen had completely faded, but when he picked it up he could immediately feel the weight and texture he had gotten to know. The stone was now a dull bronze-ish colour, much like…
Suddenly Allan had an epiphany! He held the stone firmly and focused… And his face lit up.
Edward, having calmed down, was laying the still unconscious Charlotte down on the living room sofa. Charlotte would on occasion faint if she strained her mind reasoning out her premonitions and the various timelines they could set in motion to others too much. She would wake up in a few hours, assuming the world was still in one piece by then. He picked up her hand, which was hanging on the floor, and placed it over her stomach just before Allan came storming out of the hallway and grabbed the back of his collar dragging him outside. "Nate, give me a lift to the beach where I found my trident! Everyone else, meet me at the point of impact! I've got an idea!"
Nate Beta-Unit was acting as a makeshift jetpack speeding Allan toward his destination. Against the now deep red night sky, Allan saw the System airbase hovering over where he knew Hazard Inc. was located, surrounded by Hazard Inc. airships, with occasional explosions flashing that looked like sparks from a distance, and smoke trails getting traced out to and fro. It sounded like a far-off war zone. He also saw little dots zooming about which he recognised as omegajets and omegadroids by their flight paths. "Looks like their rivalry is heating up," Allan remarked.
Upon his arrival at the beach, Allan made straight for the water and dived in. He could feel the energy of the blue-bronze stones drawing his mind towards it. Allan spread out his arms and legs, and pushed himself forward as fast as his hydrokinesis could carry him. Sure enough, he saw the distant glow, and in a few moments he was among them. He slowly neared one of the larger stones, cautiously put an arm toward it and closed his eyes as his hand gently touched the surface, and at once Allan felt a surge of power in his body unlike any he had ever experienced.
Edward and the girls were standing on a small knoll overlooking a part of the reserve. They could see the red light shining in the distance and growing gradually brighter, as it both intensified and drew closer. The brightness made it seem notably larger than it actually was, and the midnight sky was now getting to be quite bright itself. Edward had just opened his mouth to try and break the tense silence by wondering out loud what Allan was planning, not without noting that time was growing short, when they saw Nate Beta-Unit approach in the distance.
"Where's Allan?" Edward asked when Nate finally arrived.
"He will be here shortly," came the reply. "He was just collecting his ammunition."
"Ammu-…" a puzzled Zoë began just as a mighty crash of water was heard from off the coast.
The three humans raced for the shore, but only until they saw where the noise had come from, at which point they're legs stopped working and they rapidly went from a sprint, to a jog, to a saunter, all the while staring in amazement at a massive pulsating orb that had risen out of the ocean. It gently lowered onto the ground until they could get a good look at it. It looked like a giant snow globe, sans snow, made of seawater with Allan in the middle. He was standing on a glowing boulder. Allan hopped off his perch and walked out of the sphere. His eyes shone with the same bluish light as the stone. The same light his trident would give off whenever Allan used his powers.
Allan spoke, his voice calm but loud as a tidal wave. "The stones that gave me my power… They are made from the same materials as my trident. They shine with exactly the same energy as my trident would gain whenever I charged it, and I can manipulate them just as I did my trident… just as I do water. Coming into contact with them again has also strengthened my powers, and I can take this fight into the sky now.
"That's crazy!" Edward barely managed.
Allan's face softened. "Says the guy who went hurtling into a black hole."
"I'm not letting you get burned to death!" Vicky said, sounding less harsh than she was trying to.
"It's going to be okay," Allan stroked the love of his life's raven hair. "If I don't do this, everyone will die."
"What I meant was…" a stronger reply came from the blonde-haired love of Allan's life "… if you get burned, I'll make sure it isn't to death!"
The couple held hands, Vicky keeping her head out of the water, as the gigantic mass of brine, stone and light rose speedily toward the heavens. When breathing became difficult, Vicky indicated to Allan and he let go. She flapped her wings vigorously to hover in place, waiting for her boyfriend's return.
Edward and Zoë looked around. Even if Allan could save the world, the remains of the meteor would most certainly be enough to set the nature reserve ablaze. "If only there was something we could do… but we're stuck down here on the ground."
Zoë stared intently as the trail of steam Allan was leaving behind formed into a large cumulonimbus cloud. "Maybe there is…" she finally said and disappeared into the nearby power line.
She emerged again and handed Edward a box of powdered donuts. "You're going to need these," she said as she stuck her palm upward into the air "… because we're going to need your liquid nitrogen. And lots of it." And she disappeared again as lightning struck her raised-up hand.
Allan had left Vicky behind when air began to grow short, but he did not need any, since he was surrounded by water which he could breathe just as easily. Allan winced as the water around the edges began to boil. At least the power of the stone kept the innermost area of the water globe safe from the unimaginable heat generated by the meteor, but Allan knew had to work sparingly if he was to succeed. At last he drew closer to the meteor. Allan halted his vessel, and then slowly retreated so as to move toward matching the speed of his target. When the two stones, which were coincidentally of similar size, were close enough, Allan could tell it was nearly four from the sparks that began to sizzle on the meteor's surface. Is was now or never. He first shot multiple tendrils of water at the meteor, which hissed harshly in a violent flurry of steam and bubbles. Allan groaned from within the dwindling supply of relief and moisture as salt began to precipitate everywhere. When he knew he could spare no more, he took a slow, deep breath and placed his hand between his feet, with his fingertips against the stone that had brought him here and vice versa. As he slowly brought his outstretched arm forward, the stone followed as though glued to his hand, and when it was finally pointed at earth's cosmic assailant, Allan wailed and all the psychokinetic energy he had mustered from the deep burst from him in a brilliant expanding ring of sea-green light. The two stones collided in cataclysmic flashes of red and cyan sparks, and billowing black smoke and white steam. Rubble and debris scattered chaotically in all directions, but were quickly turned back down towards the ground.
It had looked almost like fireworks, Vicky thought to herself. Her mission was now to find Allan falling amid the debris, save him from plummeting to his death, and tend to his burns. He would almost certainly be unconscious and in dire need of rescue from being crushed by the meteor remains. Vicky soon recognised Allan's limp, charred body flapping furiously at terminal velocity. The largest remaining part of the meteor, still scorching hot, was falling just a few feet above him and slowly gaining, as though pursuing him in a final attempt at vengeance. She shifted out of their way, and in an instant stopped beating her wings so that she, too, began to fall. Allan and the stone quickly overtook her and, just when her speed had nearly matched his, she shone a velocity nullify beam that halted the stone in mid-air, so that it had to restart its acceleration completely. Vicky tucked in her wings and limbs, and dove after her love fuelled by gravity and will. As she approached him she reached out two healing hands, grabbed his body and spread her wings once more. While slowing their descent to break into a glide to push them out from under the hail of scorching rocks, she was bombarded with fragments from the meteor and the sea-stone. Vicky kept her body straight, knowing that if she faltered it would be the end of them both. As soon as she was in the clear she relaxed, and descended gently toward the sea. Her hands were full and there was nothing more she or Allan could do about the remaining searing hail.
Edward could see the flashes of light through a hole in the cloud. Amid bright flashes of sheet lightning Zoë stirred up an electrostatic vortex. As Edward squinted at the sky he saw the meteor had been mostly fragmented into tiny pieces which he knew could do irreparable harm to the area. And they were nearly all being funnelled toward him. Edward swallowed and dusted his hand clean of the powdered sugar from the last donut, before saying two words: "Bring it." Propelling a continuous stream of nitrogen in liquid form, Edward cooled the last of the dwindling wrath of the fiery meteor with agility and precision one can only gain from shooting at 8-bit ducks with an electronic light gun.
In a matter of minutes what had once been one of the greatest threats mankind had ever known was scattered on the dry grass underneath Edward's feet. Another flash of lighting brought the keeper of his heart back to him, and again all was right with the world. They looked out over the landscape that they had just saved. The night sky was dark again, as it should be. There was a brief column of light a few hills away. "That'd be Vicky," Zoë said. "Go fetch them will you, Nate?"
Vicky was hovering high over Allan from where she had flashed the beacon to notify their allies where they were. Allan had been exposed to intensely fluctuating temperatures over the last few moments, and with the autumn chill back the way it was, he was huddled against the largest part of the meteor for warmth while Vicky was up calling the others. It had been too heavy to get absorbed by Zoë's vortex, and fell a ways away. It was now nice and toasty – exactly what Allan needed, especially considering that most of his clothes had been burnt into nothing.
Allan and Edward had made sure that each other were okay, and while the girls were doing the same, Edward gave their last battlefield one more look as he wrapped things up with Nate. "You can call the authorities in the morn…" Edward noticed the first light of dawn "You can call the authorities later. They can decide whether they want to dispose of this stuff, or study it as a possible fuel source, or even ship it back into space for all I care. Let's go home."
Back home, Charlotte met them outside. "Guess whose planet didn't get fried like a marshmallow!" Vicky gloated
"I saw it all while I was passed out. Not bad." Charlotte said casually
"Well, we're exhausted," Edward spoke for everyone. I'm quite sure this would have been much easier if we'd had help from Jack or Mechse. After all, they need this planet in one piece, too."
"They were too occupied with their own problems," Charlotte replied "And that's a good thing. If they had worked together on this, they would have learned what great feats they're capable of as allies, and they'd have joined forces. That would have been an even worse future than a molten planet. I saw it in one of my visions."
"That could not have been a possible future," Edward sounded confused. "They hate each other more than ever! They've been waging Armageddon on each other since the whole meteor mess started!" Charlotte looked away.
"The only way you could have seen a vision of them cooperating," Edward continued as Nate hurried inside "would be if an action on our part could have caused or prevented it."
Charlotte was still silent. Edward's brain was tired, but the silence spoke volumes. He pointed a puzzled finger at her as the first logical conclusion made itself. "You… you did… Somehow this feud between them… it was your doing…"
Charlotte kept avoiding eye contact "My doing? Leather Jack found a System spy drone in his lair, that can't be my doing…"
"Who said anything about a spy drone?! All Jack said was that The System was being a nuisance."
Finally a chuckle escaped Charlotte's lips "Yeah, it was Nate and me. I called on him when I had my first vision of all this and he built a fake spy drone out of a busted bot you kept after our first time dealing with The System."
"And I didn't even wonder where he was at breakfast, or why he knew to find out the meteor's point of impact before he'd even joined us yesterday! Well played, Charlotte. Well played."
But although Charlotte could see the future, even she had her limits. She could not have seen that some of Allan's dead skin that had rubbed off on the biggest remaining piece of the meteor had somehow come back to life, and was bonding with it.