The three of them collapsed in the centre of a place that didn't look remotely familiar to Sparx, a largish underground cellar, lit by a few torches on the walls, old broken barrels littering the room.
"Hello?" Sparx said, her face underneath the green-skinned man's back, where she couldn't see anything but a boot she thought probably belonged to the woman. Hearing no reply, she began to disentangle herself, realising as she did so that both her companions were unconscious, though they both seemed all right aside from the energy drain. She placed a hand on the Dark Elf's pulse again, just to make sure.
She was still bent over him when she heard a familiar-sounding voice from behind her.
"Well, well. Looks like we got us a little Lightning Knight." The voice broke into laughter.
She turned quickly, and saw a familiar figure, shrivelled and wearing a shabby jester's cap.
"Googler?" she said, standing and materialising her sword.
"Big mistake, little Knight." Googler giggled, and turned himself into a spiked ball.
Sparx aimed a shot at him, ducking out of the way to avoid him.
Behind her, there was another snigger, and out of the corner of her eye she noticed the Rat, although his costume was more tattered than it'd been the last time she'd seen him.
"What's going on?" she said incredulously, backing away. "I thought this wasn't my world…"
The woman on the floor slowly got to her feet, and raised a hand.
"Stop it," she said to the minions, who backed down.
"You're the boss," the Rat said, rather sulkily.
The woman stared at Sparx, the red eye taking in the details of her uniform. Sparx felt a little intimidated by the tall, muscular woman with the glowing eye, but tried not to show it, glaring back at her.
"We don't take kindly to Knights around here," the woman said. "What do you think you're doing?"
"I don't know," Sparx said, frustrated; she'd been attacked twice in a very short time since coming to this world, and she was sick of it. "I just got here. Who are you?"
"Chaos," the woman said. She lifted her right fist, and sparks of electricity gathered around it. "I destroy Lightning Knights."
"I'm Sparx, a Lightning Knight, and I don't know who you are," Sparx said, keeping her sword raised warily.
On the ground, the green-skinned man stirred.
"If you try to run, we will destroy you," Chaos said, and bent down beside the man.
"Feeling all right?" she asked, helping him to sit up.
"Nothing that will not heal, given time," he said. He lifted his hands and tried to massage some life into them. "I think my hands should recover, eventually…"
"They will," Chaos said firmly.
The green-skinned man looked up at Sparx. "You tried to help me," he said. "Why?"
"Because I thought you needed it," she said firmly, "and I'm a Lightning Knight. It's what we do."
Chaos spat on the ground. "Not to us, they don't. Do you know who she is, Kellamy?"
"She's Project Destiny," the green-skinned man—Kellamy—replied. "She's not from our world."
"Project Destiny?" Sparx asked.
Neither replied.
"Well, Knight," Chaos said. "Regardless of which world you come from, I will kill you if you betray us."
"I don't betray anyone. Knight, remember?" Sparx said, frustrated.
They both laughed, not pleasantly.
Chaos lifted her right arm, and a door Sparx hadn't even noticed opened in the cellar, electric current running along the hinges as a small cell opened.
"We'll interrogate you later," Chaos said. "In the meantime, we'll have to lock you up. It's a precaution; I'm sure you'll understand. Especially if you're their chosen one."
Sparx didn't lower her sword. "I tried to help him," she said. "I don't know about the other two Knights, but I don't torture people. And I don't know if I'm a chosen one or not, but I do know that right now I'm starting to wonder if the Knights were right about you."
Chaos laughed.
"You're outnumbered, Knight. To surrender would be the most sensible move."
Behind her, Sparx sensed Googler and the Rat preparing to attack.
Kellamy looked at her apologetically. "We may be terrorists, but we will not harm you unless it becomes necessary. I thank you for standing up for me."
She sighed. "Fine. But you'd better do some explaining." She powered down her sword, and walked into the small room behind the door.
"If I could make a promise that you would trust, then I would swear that we will," Kellamy called as the door closed on her.
-
Louisa travelled down the winding staircase to the deepest basement of the Lightning Knight Headquarters, where the biggest secret of the Knights awaited her: the Lady Oracle, voice of Destiny.
Only the most senior Knights knew of the Lady, and there had been many times Louisa had regretted her own knowledge.
After giving her password and being scanned multiple times, her fingerprints, DNA, and retinas, Louisa finally entered the inner sanctum.
The Lady, Destiny's mouthpiece, appeared inside a large crystal ball, possibly a prison; in all the ten years she'd occupied this spot, she'd never been known to move outside it. She looked like she was sleeping, long hair flowing around her, her old-fashioned dress billowing in the smoke.
Louisa cleared her throat, and after a good five minutes the Lady finally opened her eyes.
"Which mere mortal dares to disturb my slumber?"
"Louisa," she said.
The Lady sniffed disdainfully. "And what does the meddling mortal have to say for herself?"
"We did exactly as you said with the interdimensional portal," Louisa said. "We got Tim's complement. And she ran away with del'Fuerte and his mistress. You told us that she would place the final nail in the coffin of the forces of Chaos!"
"I told you that to summon Destiny's Chosen One would lead to your good fortune. You fail to understand the dimmed and distant works of Destiny, whom I speak for," the Lady said, her voice taking on a lecturing tone. "Go, and do not come to me with your foolish frivolity."
Louisa folded her arms. "Tell me what I have to do."
"You will follow your Destiny," the Lady said. "What else?"
Louisa could have sworn there was a smirk in her voice.
"Then I will do right," she said. "The followers of Chaos will have no mercy from me."
She turned on her heel, and marched out of the room.
She thought she heard the Lady's tinkling laughter following her.
-
Sparx paced around the small room for what she thought was at least the fiftieth time. She kicked the wall moodily.
I was sensible, she thought. I didn't attack them. Guess Ace would be proud of me, huh? She kicked the wall again. She estimated she'd been left alone for at least three hours, and had decided that she'd been stupid to trust Kellamy's words.
He even looks a bit like Lady Illusion. Why do I get myself into these things?
Outside, she heard something sounding like a cry, and listened in interest, forgetting her boredom.
There was a fight going on, she thought, shouts and yells and the walls shaking. Sparx looked around at the room which imprisoned her, hoping it wouldn't collapse on her.
The noises of the fight began to get louder, and Sparx realised they were entering the cellar.
She banged on the door.
"Let me out!" she called.
"Chaos…I was lucky we traced the teleport here…" Sparx heard a female voice say. Louisa, she thought. "Guess Destiny is on our side."
"…make our own destiny…" she heard someone else yell.
There was a loud screech.
Sparx kicked the door again.
She was flung to the back of the cell when the door exploded, and peeled herself from the wall to see a woman with a face covered in jagged scars and tattoos, plucking another explosive from her bandolier.
Sparx drew her sword.
"Which side are you on, Destiny's Knight?" the woman with the explosives called, flinging the explosive at a group of Knights who had tried to enter the cellar.
"My own, I think," Sparx muttered bitterly. Something about the woman appeared vaguely familiar, but she couldn't decide exactly what.
A figure vaulted in front of her in a somersault, his sword drawn, the Knight with the red spiky hair she'd seen before.
He grinned at her. "Louisa thinks you might want to join us again, now you've met Chaos and her gang face-to-face. You're Destiny's Chosen One."
"Think again, loser!" she snapped, raising her sword. "I make my own choices."
She lunged at him, and he blocked her sword with his own in a move that she herself liked to use.
"Who are you people anyway?" she said, pressing her attack. His style of fighting was similar to hers, but she thought that'd make him easier to predict.
"Lightning Knights. Defenders of order and justice. The custodians of this world. What did you expect?" Tim said. He grinned at her. "It's been a while since I had a decent fight. You're not bad…though I'm better."
He lunged at her suddenly, and Sparx found it hard to keep up with his flashing blade.
The woman's explosions had left a large crack in the cellar's floor, and Sparx found herself teetering at the edge of it.
Tim laughed. "You're no fun," he said.
She was running out of options, and quickly lunged to distract her opponent before trying to jump over the gap.
With both elbows scraping across the stone floor on the other side, Sparx brought her sword up to fire as quickly as possible, sending Tim back a few paces.
He smiled at her, teeth bared in a quick devil-may-care grin, and tried a similar leap, landing next to her on his feet after performing a neat somersault.
She stood just in time to parry his lunge, and their duel started again.
It had been a long day, and interdimensional travel never was easy on the constitution, and Sparx found herself quickly backed against a wall, with nowhere to go.
There was a pop of air behind her, and she saw the green-skinned man appear behind her opponent, calmly hitting him over the head with a fragment of a barrel.
"Enemy of my enemy," he said. "I don't think we managed to reach the part of formal introductions—Lord Kellamy del'Fuerte, at your service…"
"Get moving!" another voice called, the tattooed woman who'd thrown the explosives. She ran over to them, jerking a thumb at the group of Knights making their way towards them.
Reaching to the wall, the tattooed woman pressed something, and under their feet a trapdoor opened.
Sparx found herself falling down a long slide, into a deeper level, along a damp, hard surface. After what seemed like ages she fell into a basement, sprawling on the floor, and was harshly jerked up by the tattooed woman.
"I don't know who or what you are," she said, "but we really don't like Lightning Knights."
Across the basement, Chaos turned and stared at them.
"We lost Googler," she called, and on the back wall Sparx noticed the clown hanging suspended on a wall torch, drooping forlornly.
Chaos raised her right hand, and three small flyers sprung from the walls.
"Chosen one. Hmm," Sparx heard from behind her, and turned to see Louisa, preparing to fire.
"I really wish you'd stop carrying on about that," Sparx said, and fired her sword with all the rage she possessed.
Louisa fell back, though Sparx knew she probably wouldn't stay down long. Another Knight, dark-skinned with grey eyes—with a shock, Sparx thought she recognised him as Avraam Livingstone; she'd trained with him—drew a blaster.
The tattooed woman extended a tentacle from her back—like Kilobyte, Sparx thought wildly, that's why she looked a little familiar—and flung the blaster from the Knight's hand, ripping another explosive—the last one, Sparx noticed—from her bandolier.
A cloud of smoke shielded them from their pursuers, and Chaos flew over, the other vehicles in tow.
"We leave now," she said, wiping a black streak from her face. "What kind of terrorists don't have an escape route?" She looked over at Googler, and broke into a wild laugh.
"Get. Moving," the other woman said, and jumped on one of the vehicles, extending a tentacle to grab Sparx. Kellamy leapt onto the other spare vehicle.
"Hideout three, split up, Kila takes route fifty-four, Kellamy takes east-twelve, I'm on thirty-three," Chaos said. She clenched her right fist, and above them the ground opened.
The three of them swooped off in different directions, Sparx gripped in Kila's tentacle, as she saw Louisa beginning to fly from the rubble.
Louisa fired at them, and the tentacled woman attacked her while Chaos and Kellamy flew off.
"You've signed your own death warrant, Lightning," spat Kila. "One of us died today. You'll pay for that."
Yeah, she really does remind me of Kilobyte, Sparx thought.
"There'll be more deaths," Louisa said, swooping through the air and preparing to fire. "But do give us back our project, she's quite important to our Destiny."
Sparx felt the wind whistling through her hair as Kila tried to dodge Louisa's fire. Her arms were pinned to her side by the tentacle, and she could barely move.
And I left the Flash behind, too. This is bad.
"You want her. We'll keep her," Kila said. "She's been fighting you, you know that?"
"Then we'll kill her, for aiding the servants of Chaos," Louisa said calmly. "Perhaps this is how Destiny will work itself out."
Louisa fired, and a shot hit Kila's flyer, sending Sparx and Kila into a spin. Sparx saw the ground rushing up towards her for a few tense seconds, a hideous flashing blur that she knew would easily kill her.
The blur of her descent slowed, and Sparx realised that Kila had somehow got the flyer back under control. The tattooed woman whipped another tentacle around to attack Louisa, catching her waist and starting an energy drain.
The Knight only laughed, and behind her Sparx saw the reason: Tim, flying up behind them on a flyer of similar design to Kila's.
"Let her go!" Tim called, his sword held in front of him.
"No problem," Kila said, and threw Louisa into him. The two Knights collided heavily.
Sparx saw three more Knights begin to take to the air, one of them Avraam.
"Time to make an exit," Kila muttered, and sped off before any of the Knights could start a serious pursuit.
A/N: Reviews appreciated. I accept anonymous reviews, and love honest feedback!