Nineteen year old Trent Fernandez reached down to tie his shoelaces, yawning as he did. He didn't get much sleep the night before, being given an internship at Mr. Fortune's studio had been a stroke of luck and he'd worked all night to finish off the assignments that Mr. Fortunes had given him. It was an honour to be involved in his most recent project, other interns and people who worked at the Urbana City office constantly told him so and expressed their jealousy at his assignment though he really didn't see how it was so special.
Standing up after completing his task and pushing open the door to the cartoonist's office, he was slightly surprised to see the white haired man sketching… upside down.
Indeed it was a strange sight to see one of leaders in the comic book industry, flipped upside down by a long blue board that he was attached soon. Of course, Art Fortunes was a strange sight himself with messy white hair, red goggles, paint spattered overalls and a neon green shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. He supposed he shouldn't be surprised by this stuff anymore, but it always seemed to amuse him. He raised his eyebrows, as he greeted the older man.
"Good morning Mr. Fortunes."
Sitting up, causing the long board to flip him right side up, the man looked at him, eyes narrowing. "Don't you people know how to knock?" He asked in his high, yet oddly raspy voice as he threw his hands up. Trent winced.
"Uh, sorry sir" He replied as Mr. Fortunes shook his head.
"Oh, never mind Trent." He sighed. "I should learn to lock that door… bad things happen otherwise." He undid the straps holding his legs to the board and hopped off of it, handing his sketchpad to Trent who was still confused by the last statement as Art went over and briefly stroked his computer. "What do you think?" He asked, gesturing to the sketchpad.
Never ceasing to be amazed by the cartoonist's ability to create intricate pieces of work and superheroes even while sketching on his head, Trent nodded in approval. The sketch was of a young man with lightly shaded hair, indicating a possible blond, ducking underneath an energy blast from off the page. The young man was almost down into the splits and Trent could help but think of how much that drawing could resemble a demorphed range, a young man with surprisingly quick abilities.
"It's amazing…" Trent remarked.
"Why thank you." Mr. Fortunes replied with his usual bravo. "It's my tenth anniversary you know."
Trent frowned. He knew enough about the man to recognize there was no way he could be married. "Um…" he began, but Mr. Fortunes simply carried on.
"My first big comic book hit was released exactly ten years ago next Tuesday." He continued proudly. "The Big Bad Beetleborgs was all the rage there for a few years, and then there was Beetleborgs Metallix. Died off a bit in the later nineties, but still has a bit of a cult following even now. Went out of print ages ago, but I'm going to re-launch it next week. It's getting quite a bit of hype you know… well of course you know you work here…"
Trent nodded along patronizingly, just waiting for his next assignment of some sorts. "But I thought you finished all of the artwork for the re-launch already…"
"Sure, this is for a friend of mine." Mr. Fortunes replied as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. "He's a big fan, works down in a comic store in Charterville, based one of the re-launched characters off of him, nice young man, a bit hot headed at times, but a natural leader. Anyways, if you could go tell Tracy that I am not doing anymore interviews and to tell no one to interrupt me today, I have to finish off a few more sketches and promotional materials for the Power Rangers: In Space comic that we were finally given the rights to create… Okay? And take the day off, we're almost done anyways and you look like you've seen a giant praying mantis. " Fortunes paused before his eyes went wide with fear. "You haven't, have you?"
"No… sir"
"Ah, good, well, off you go then."
Trent nodded, placing the sketchpad down on the table and slowly backing out of the room. Yes, he could do something as simple as delivering a message and then leaving him alone; in fact, he might even be able to catch up on his sleep if… He paused, shaking his head slightly, okay, Tracy, and then coffee and then possibly check his email that could work…
He headed down the hall, delivering Art Fortune's message to Tracy, a short woman with shocking red hair and oddly shaped glasses before heading out to grab a cup of coffee. After refueling at a nearby Starbucks he headed back to the office, bumping into a brown haired man about his age with a gold hoop through one ear. It took his lightning fast reflexes to save his coffee from certain doom.
"Hey, watch it!" The guy snapped, but the girl beside him rolled her eyes.
"Forget it Josh, it was an accident."
"Sorry, you're right."
Trent smiled weakly. "Sorry," He replied before heading the opposite way. The couple appeared to be attending Urbana University, as indicated by the girl's sweatpants, and seemed slightly out of place for the city. They were probably from Charterville.
He didn't know much about Charterville, he'd never been there. It was only a about an hour from Urbana City and Art Fortunes had decided to base the new Beetleborgs storylines out of there as opposed to the original comics that focused on a small town in New York. He also had a few teens that he talked to frequently from there to get ideas for his comics.
He glanced down at his watch, well, he'd always been curious about the place, and Art had given him the day off…
It wasn't too much later that Trent found himself walking through the streets of Charterville, having parked his white car outside a local business with free parking. It was smaller than Reefside, but charming, he supposed. There was a nice park that had children playing in it, but there were ugly, black scorch marks in the grass that parents paid no attention to. He found that part odd, and a few of the buildings had chunks taken out of the sides of them.
There was a small comic book store called Zoom that Trent recalled Mr. Fortunes talking about, but he didn't really feel like looking in it. He watched an older, darker skinned woman exit it though, and wave to a few people down the street before joining up with them and three teens bolt passed, hollering excuses as to why they had to go over their shoulders. They were an interesting trio, obviously trying to come up with excuses on the spot and having a hard time getting a coherent story out of it. Ah… now that he could relate with…
The group consisted of two boys and a girl. The shorter of the two boys, with light blond hair looked extremely close to the sketch Art Fortunes had shown him earlier. He wondered if that was the guy, but decided there was no way of approaching him and asking, without sounding like a very creepy guy…
As he concluded this, he heard a woman shriek, and much to his surprise, saw exactly what Art Fortunes had asked him about before… a giant praying mantis… except it really wasn't. On closer inspection, it was a woman in mantis-like armour, with heavy makeup, looking exactly like one of Mesagog's/Rita's/Divatox's/Insert Villian Name Here's minions. She spoke with a slight lisp and was followed by a group of blue fish-like foot soldiers.
Trent found himself staring at the whole thing, unable to blink. This was a little too weird, hadn't he seen those characters before? Somewhere?
The mantis let out an attack, scorching the ground, and causing the previously screaming woman to flee. His first instinct was to rush over and start attacking the obvious threat, but the fact she looked so familiar and the Mr. Fortunes had mentioned something like that really confused him…
"Hey! Pick on someone your own size!"
"They have Power Rangers?" Trent wondered out loud, turning to try and see the source of the bravo. He nearly fell over when he did.
There was a purple, silver, and black armored warrior, with two others, one black and gold, and one silver and black. That wasn't odd, but the fact that he'd been working on the re-launch of their comic book caused Trent to sit down in the middle of the street before he fell down. It was them!
Beetleborgs Metallix…
"I've lost it…" Trent concluded. "Or I've been sucked into another evil comic book dimension… but me losing it seems much more likely at this point."
The battle was quick, with the villains fleeing. There were no mecha battles, only the mantis complaining about losing something called "Boron". The people of the town appeared to be quite used to this, and after the comic book monsters had fled, along with the Beetleborgs, life in Charterville went right back to normal as if the fight had never happened, as of this formula had been going on and on for years.
At this point Trent decided on three things.
First of all, he was going to go into Zoom and figure out who that blond was. There was a chance for a very powerful friend if he was in fact, possibly, one of the Beetleborgs that he'd just seen. After that, he would delicately ask him if he was a Beetleborg (how, he wasn't sure yet) and if he gave him a weird look, he was going back to work and forgetting the whole thing.
Second, he was going to apologize profusely to Ethan who he'd often made fun of for believing in non-Power Ranger superheroes and, when break came around, he was going to go with Ethan on that trip to Cross World City even though he'd laughed at the idea of looking for other armored superheroes before.
And thirdly, he wasn't going back to Starbucks for a while... just in case…
If you know who's in Cross World City, I'll give you a cookie. :D
AN: Okay, yes, I whipped out the Beetleborgs Xover, apparently I'm like the only one who watched that show as a kid, but I really wanted to use it in a fan fiction, so there it is. Please Review.
Updated AN: Okay, Mathias has jogged my memory here, I had no idea where my idea for the title came from (it was just in the back of my head), but it actually came from Ellen Brand's Personality Conflicts series where she refers to all those areas as the Freak Zone. So, credit to her for that :D