8:00 P.M.; Plumber Base, Armory
The device in Psyphon's hands let out a screech as a white pulsating ball of energy sprung out of its barrel. The orb flew into the center of the armory before flattening itself in midair, as if it had collided with some kind of invisible wall. The flattened energy ball continued to expand in the middle of space, getting taller and wider until it had reached about ten feet in diameter. A faint image of some sort of landscape began to fade into view somewhere inside the white, quite like thick fog being blown away to reveal a hidden mountain. In a few seconds, the portal would become a gateway to the Null Void.
The wait time aside, Psyphon was quite pleased to call this test run of his own custom portable Null Void Projector a success. It brought a smile made of sharp yellowed teeth stretch across his pale white face. Behind him, Bubblehead- an alien that resembled a cross between a lizard and a centipede inside of a exosuit topped with a large glass dome-, Liam - A tall chicken-like alien-, and Fistina - A red, robust, and robotic woman, stopped raiding the Plumber's armory to watch the tear in time and space as it slowly developed into a fully functional interdimensional gateway.
"Well whaddya know?" Bubblehead's voice echoed from underneath his helmet. "It worked."
"Of course it worked, you dullard." Psyphon snapped, turning around to properly insult the thug. "I used to build Null Void generators for Vilgax the conquer. I know that dimension like the back of my hand."
"If you're such an expert, you'd know that using the Null Void as an escape is…"
Insane, and stupid were two words that came to Bubblehead's mind. The Null Void was a nightmare dimension that the galaxy used as a prison for its most dangerous criminals. It was infested not only with the meanest, bloodthirstiest criminals in the universe, but also a multitude of terrifying monsters that happened to stumble, thrive, and breed inside the Void. Having been a prisoner in the Void a couple times before, Bubblehead wasn't very enthusiastic about returning. Besides, there had been an incident involving a chain of Vulpimancer pit fights, hundreds of unlucky bets, and a very irate Splixon gangster he wasn't very keen on revisiting in there.
"Dangerous" was the word he ended up using to finish his sentence. He decided it was the word least likely to harm his cut of the loot if the heist actually succeeded.
"If you bothered to listen to the plan Bubblebrain, you'd know that we aren't going to be in the Null Void long enough for anything to happen. Just until we open another gateway to the hideout. Then we sell every piece of Plumber tech here on the black market, and retire on a resort planet in the Andromeda Galaxy."
"But what if...you know, something bad does happen?" Liam asked. "Like if there's some giant monster waiting for us on the other end or something."
"Gee, hadn't thought about that one." Psyphon responded in a tone dripping with sarcasm. "Maybe if we had an entire arsenal of weapons we could use to defend ourselves, we could manage."
"Oh...yeah," Liam looked at the hovercarts that he had filled with Plumber munitions not so long ago. "I wasn't thinking-"
"You never do." Psyphon interrupted. "Now if that's all of the questions from the peanut gallery today, I would like to get this heist overwith before the Plumbers come snooping around."
"Is the portal supposed to look like that?" Fistina asked
Psyphon was a little bit surprised at the question. He had always thought, of all of his cronies, Fistina was the smartest. Not as smart as him obviously, but smart enough to not ask such a dumb question.
"Of course it looks like that! What else is a portal to another dimension supposed to-"
As he spoke, Psyphon turned his head to look at his Null Void portal, and saw what Fistina was talking about. Since the last time he took a look at it, the dimensional gateway had gone from controlled to unstable. It was no longer shaped like a perfect circle, but fluctuating between a multitude of obscure oblong shapes, random bursts of energy would appear along its borders in the form of furious electric bolts, and it was emitting a very unnerving warbling buzz, that sounded like a swarm of insects.
But the most troubling new development with the portal was that the destination it showed through its morphing surface didn't look anything like the Null Void. Instead of the familiar vision of giant rocks floating through space, the portal displayed a dimension unlike anything Psyphon or his underlings had ever seen before. A world where the land and sky were colored blood red, the seas were aflame in the east, and frozen solid in the south.
It wasn't supposed to look like that…
"It's...It's fine," Psyphon lied. "Just a very minor glitch with the portal's stability. We'll have to get in with the loot before it collapses. Come on."
Psyphon placed the Null Void Projector ontop of one of the hovercarts, grabbed its handle, and started to pull it into the portal. He only got a few feet towards it before he realized that he was the only one doing so.
"What's the matter with you dolts?" Psyphon growled. "I said we're leaving! The plumbers could be here to arrest us any second now!"
"Sounds better than going through that thing." Said Bubblehead. "We'd probably get disintegrated before we reached the other side...not that the other side looks any more inviting."
"I told you, it's safe!" Psyphon repeated, his tone getting more and more aggressive as his patience with his counterparts began to waiver. "I've spent far too long preparing for this heist for you cowards to back out right when we're so close to success. Get in there, NOW!"
Raising his voice didn't work. The trio of thugs stood their ground, all of them looking anxiously at the portal, slowly edging away from it.
Psyphon shook his head in disgust of his crew's spinelessness. Vilgax never had to deal with this kind of insubordination. Whenever he issued a command to his subjects, they would gladly sacrifice their own lies if it meant finishing the task sooner. How would Vilgax handle this, Psyphon pondered. Or rather, how would he handle this if he were a couple feet shorter, looked far less threatening, and didn't possess the strength to shatter mountains? Fear was what was holding them back, so what could he do to circumvent that?
Bravery? That could work.
"I'll prove it then!" Psyphon declared. "I'll show you it's safe."
With that, Psyphon spun around on his heel, and started towards the fluctuating portal, all while praying desperately that he could get the others to move before the Plumbers - or worse, Ben Tennyson - barged in to ruin everything.
The portal began to act more erratically and more threatening at Psyphon's approach. It began to shift forms faster so that it resembled a quivering pail of water seen from above, the portal's surface was furiously bubbling with small explosions, and the electronic buzzing noise began to sound even more frenzied, like a nest of angry wasps ready to sting.
Getting even closer to the rift, the buzzing noise began to fade into another noise, like a radio slowly getting a signal through static. He could make out a voice chanting in a harsh guttural alien language he wasn't at all familiar with.
Now only arm's length from the portal, Psyphon found himself feeling less confident about sticking his hand inside it. He tried hard to ignore its chaotic behavior - especially the chanting, which was slowly becoming clearer, and louder than the buzzing - and strained to keep his mind on the fat stacks of credits he'd be rolling in after this was all over. He told himself that the sweat pouring from his brow was from the heat coming from the sea of fire inside of the rift, and the chills he felt creeping through his veins were from its icy counterpart. He didn't know how to explain away the fact that his heart was trying to smash through his ribcage, so he tried to ignore its frenetic beating.
With great effort, Psyphon managed to unfreeze his left arm, and slowly move it towards the portal. The chanting got louder and louder the closer his hand got to it, to the point that it sounded like it was coming from inside his own ears. Then suddenly, the chanting was interrupted by a scream that managed to briefly drown out its droning. Psyphon quickly recognized the scream as his own as he drew his hand away from the portal just as a surge of energy lashed out at it like a caged beast.
Psyphon turned back to his hovercart, shaken, but still determined to go through with his plot. As he turned away from the portal, he noticed that the chanting came to abrupt halt as soon as it left the corner of his eye. Strange, but not strange enough to stop him from trying to breach the portal again.
When he reached the cart, he dug his hand through its collection of assorted firearms until he pulled out a Plumber's sniper rifle.
"Just a slight precaution." He told the others. They responded by rolling their eyes. Psyphon ignored them, and walked back to the portal. As he did, the chanting restarted just as suddenly as it had ceased.
Psyphon stopped in front of the portal, this time, far enough so that the barrel of the sniper rifle could enter the portal. If he could stick the barrel into the portal without any ill effects, it would be safe to enter. If it came away from it melted down to the chamber...well, for now, it was better to think positively.
Psyphon kept a somewhat firm, but awkward grip on the rifle's rubber grip as he moved the gun into the portal, so as to avoid any accidental electrocutions. The chanting got louder as the barrel got closer to the portal, just as before. The explosions littering the portal's surface became more frequent in the spot where the barrel was only inches away. Summoning the limited courage he had to spare, Psyphon took a deep breath, and plunged the barrel deep into the portal.
And then, everything stopped. The portal stopped quivering, sparking, exploding, and chanting, and returned to behaving like a good fissure in the fabric of time and space. It still had the image of the strange dimension showing inside of it, but otherwise, it looked much safer to cross through. As Psyphon slowly started to pull the barrel out of the portal, he was elated to see that it came out unharmed, and in the exact color of silver it had when it had entered.
"See?" Psyphon gloated to the others as he continued to pull out the barrel. "I told you it was saAAAAUGGH-"
The fear that Psyphon struggled to keep under control was now flowing throughout his body as something from inside of the portal grabbed the barrel of the sniper rifle, and yanked with horrifying power. As he was pulled closer and closer into the rift, panic took control of his body, and squeezed the trigger of the sniper rifle. Totally unprepared for the gun's tremendous recoil, Psyphon was sent flying backwards until he collided with his hovercart, spilling guns and ammunitions onto the floor.
Psyphon didn't have much time to assess the situation before something that looked like a long, thin, black tendril shot out from behind the veil of the portal, and into the armory. The tendril wiped around the room until it wrapped itself around the arm of Bubblehead's exosuit. The alien cried out in horror as he tried to tear the extradimensional digit off of himself, but despite his artificially enhanced strength, he was utterly helpless as the tendril coiled around his suit's midsection, and quickly pulled him back into the portal, screaming and flailing.
"Oh, no you don't." Liam said. Showing an impressive display of pediatric dexterity, the chicken-man kicked a plasma bazooka lying in the pile of scattered weapons into the air, and into his feathery arms.
Psyphon's crimson eyes practically bulged out of their sockets in alarm when he saw Liam aim the cannon at the portal. "What do you think you're doing, you moron?!" He bellowed as he leaped off the floor to stop him. "The plasma charge will overload the-"
It was over before Psyphon could even finish his warning. Liam's cannon shot a bright green ball of plasma energy into the portal. The reaction was instantaneous as the portal absorbed the plasma, and its surface resumed riddling itself with explosions. As the explosions grew in size and intensity, Psyphon desperately raced back to his overturned hovercart, and scrambled to hide himself underneath it. Fistina and Liam were just about to dive behind an overturned weapons bench for cover, when the portal went critical, and a powerful fiery blast ripped through the armory. While Psyphon's fairly large makeshift bunker protected him from the explosion, and dampened its thundering roar down to a barely tolerable level, it did very little to prevent him from being thrown back and forth against its superheated walls.
When the shaking stopped, the noise quieted down, the hovercart's walls cooled off, and his world stopped spinning around, Psyphon decided to take a peek out from under his hiding place. He couldn't tell if the explosion had blew out all of the lights, or if it had chared everything pitch black. Either way, Psyphon could only see darkness, to the point that he almost couldn't tell if his own eyes were open or not.
But Psyphon didn't need to see to know that his grand heist was well beyond salvaging. The portal was gone, all of the weapons were most likely either heavily damaged, or otherwise rendered unfit to sell, his men were gone, and if the Plumbers hadn't already known that something was going on in the armory, the explosive would've tipped them off.
As he began to withdraw back under the hovercart to hide from the Plumbers, Psyphon felt something cold poke into his side. He pulled a small flashlight from out of his pockets, and turned it on to reveal his mini Null Void projector, along with a small cache of weapons spared by the explosion. He figured that they must've ended up under the hovercart when he flipped it over. The weapons wouldn't fetch enough to afford the resort planet, but they would give him enough to buy almost anything else he wanted. And best of all, he didn't have to split it with anyone anymore.
Feeling much happier than he did a moment ago, and quite possibly his entire life, Psyphon stepped out from under the hovercart with the generator in hand. He was about to conjure another portal...when he heard the sound of footsteps coming from behind him.
The footfalls were too light to belong to either Fistina or Bubblehead, and they lacked the clicking noise Liam made when his talons tapped the floor. In fact, it sounded like whomever was behind him was wearing high heels. Last time Psyphon checked, neither Ben Tennyson nor his fellow Plumbers were very keen on women's footwear, so who could be…
A frightening thought crossed though Psyphon's mind. A horrifying possibility that Psyphon almost completely refused to accept because he was too afraid to believe it. Pulling out the tiny flashlight in his pocket, Psyphon reluctantly turned around, and turned on the light.
Psyphon only caught a brief glimpse of the creature's huge bat-like wings, before he screamed, and dropped the flashlight. For the first time in his life, he was sorry that he was right. Right about being trapped in the armory with the thing from the portal.
"St-stay back!" Psyphon tried to aim his Null Void projector towards the sound of the creature's footsteps, but his body was shaking too much to keep his shot steady. "I swear, I'll blast you to-"
Psyphon yelped in pain as he felt the creature's tendril whip the projector out of his hands, and clattering on the floor somewhere in the darkness. Blind, and completely helpless against the horror slowly striding towards him, Psyphon frantically searched his mind for a way to survive the next five minutes as he backed away from the sound of footsteps. A task made quite difficult with his mind muddled up with fear, and his legs nearly tripping over things hidden in the dark.
"L-listen, how about a deal?" Psyphon bargained. "I've got a score worth billions of credits. You help me get out of here, and I'll split it with you, fifty-fifty."
There was no response, only footsteps coming closer.
"Okay… how about forty-sixty?"
Still no response.
"Seventy-thirty?"
Psyphon's heart sank even further than before as he felt his back hit a corner. The footsteps kept coming, and as far as Psyphon could "see", there was nowhere else to run.
"Eighty-t-twenty?"
The footsteps were only a few inches away from him before they stopped. He couldn't see it, but he could somehow sense the creature leaning forward to bring its face to his.
"Okay, you can have everything! Everything here! You don't even need to help me escape! J-just leave me alone!"
Psyphon could feel the creature's hot breath on his face now.
"Please! Take it all! Just leave me alone! LEAVE ME-"