The identical bass pulses of the Helens' sonic screwdrivers resonated through the rift as Cogs turned back to the tank crews.
"Good! You're here!"
Torrent then joined Cogs in the back of the ship. "So the tanks are here?"
"Yeah. Who's flying?"
"Autopilot."
"A'right."
"Yeah, just make sure the tanks don't touch each other-"
There was a dink as the Joves, unexperienced in flying tanks through rifts as they were, somehow managed to collide with each other, to the response of much minor cursing from the Jameses.
"... like that."
"Ah."
A beat passed, housing uncomfortable silence.
"What now?"
"Well, assuming the best, nothing."
"And assuming the worst?"
"The universe is rent apart by the contact of two cosmically identical objects."
"Riiight..."
"So now we just assume that-"
There was suddenly a huge, indescribable rending noise as the Starclimber shuddered - and apparently the whole rift shook too, if the reactions from the people battling Vortech were anything to go by. Both Jacks grabbed the hatch's bulkhead as they tried not to fall off.
"... nothing happened." Torrent pulled out his sonic screwdriver and diagnosed what happened. "Oh... no..."
Derek sat back in the chair at his desk in Protonix Ghostbusters HQ. He was just finishing a long string of busts, and he was glad that he had a bit of time to spare for some rest, finally. The chief Ghostbuster had hardly closed his eyes when his PKE meter (which, up until now, had been sitting quietly on his desk) suddenly started beeping, the wings folding out and flashing. Derek opened his eyes with a groan, and looked at the screen. He frowned when he saw the bright pink that dared to disturb his sleep. The weren't any portals here at HQ. He'd know if there was. So why was there suddenly a huge spike of-
Derek didn't get to ponder any further as he was bodily thrown, Protonix Pack and all, into a huge rift. He fell past his world, and saw that the 2016 Ghostbusters' flash by, before actually meeting said Ghostbusters, who were also falling through this rift.
"Any idea what's going on?" he shouted over the wind to no specific anyone.
"It's a fifth-dimensional event of high irregularity and high damage-to-the-fabric-of-the-universe!" Yates shouted from the driver's seat of their Ecto-1.
"That's not good, is it?" he followed-up as the grabbed the roof rack.
"No!"
The Ghostbusters then had to take evasive action with their Proton Packs to avoid collision with... well, a lot of things really. Some of them Derek recognized, some of them he didn't, and he was fairly sure that he didn't want to hit any of them.
They did pick up a new teammate and alternate-universe Buster, though, some guy named Simon, so that was OK.
Torrent cursed as the Starclimber stabilized, then he overrode the autopilot and steered around the 2016 Ecto-1, which had apparently decided Vortech was a gigantic ghost and promptly went over towards the 1984 Ecto-1 so that the occupants could swap stories and get to know what the hell was going on.
"That's not good, is it?" Cogs said.
"No," Torrent said as Cogs went out the back hatch, then climbed up onto the roof of the Starclimber, keeping his aerodynamic drag to a minimum. He dodged out of way with a yipe as a black blur flew by, only for it to dig its claws into the Starclimber and come to a stop. Cogs only had enough time to turn back around before he was bowled over (and nearly knocked off of the Starclimber) by someone who was now- OH GOD WHO THE HELL IS THIS SHE'S KISSING ME-
THAT WAS A TONGUE.
When the kisser released a still-squirming Cogs, the Dragonheart blurred to the other side of the ship, directly above the cockpit.
"WHOTHEWHATTHE HELL DID YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING?"
The kisser - a blonde, Cogs realized - frowned, cocking her head. "Jack? Has it really been that long?"
As the black blur (which had since reformed into a person) leaned into the blonde and whispered something with a deadpan look on her face, causing the blonde to deadpan as well, Cogs bent over the lip of the hull, knocking on the windshield.
"Who's the blonde?!" he shouted to Torrent, who simply blinked, turned autopilot on, and blitzed onto the roof.
"Silver?!" Torrent shouted as he clambered onto the roof.
"I-" Silver was simply speechless as she looked between the two Jacks.
"It's a long story," Torrent said as he broke a hug from Marinza.
Silver blinked. "Well," she said, dodging an errant laser blast, "It looks like there's a Big Bad to fight." She took a bit to figure out the rift's laws of aerodynamics, then leapt off the Starclimber and dove towards Vortech, who by now was looking rather silly trying to split his efforts between ten-plus targets. Marinza merely shrugged and climbed down into the ship, intent on seeing exactly what Torrent had been doing without her.
Someone on a Firebolt blurred by, then turned around and came back.
"Alabaster?"
Harry Potter got to say no more as an even louder rending sound perforated everyone's eardrums and generally was distracting and loud.
"What was that?" Cogs said as the sound died.
"WHAT?!" was Torrent's reply, before he shook his head to clear it. "Sorry, what?"
Cogs repeated himself.
"That..." Torrent said, diagnosing with his sonic screwdriver before quickly starting to panic inside, "... was the Fourth Wall."
"Oh..."
"Should we worry?"
"Nah, we've got plot armour. We're bound to make it through alive at the very least."
Cogs could not reply with snark, rhetorical questions or witticisms as he was knocked over by yet another Jack.
Said new Jack got up, dusted himself off, and promptly frowned at Torrent. "I leave you guys at the head of one story and you somehow find a way to not only destabilize a rift but compromise the Fourth Wall..." The new Jack shook his head. "Shame on you."
"So, uh," Cogs said, getting up shakily, "Should we call you Jack? I mean ours is..."
"I know where yours is, I'm the author," the new Jack snapped, sighing. "And you can call me Sky."
"Dude, why are you so uptight?" Torrent asked.
"It's just... This is the first major Fourth Wall break in this story, and Terminus sent me down to fix it. As time progresses, I see no way to fix the Fourth Wall, and I'm in danger of being rent apart by lasers..." Sky said, as a laser seared inches over his head as if to punctuate the statement.
"So... It's been one of those days?"
"Yep."
"Well, I can see no way of fixing this until Vortech over there reaches Foundation Prime, then I can use my Plot Pen to write you out of this," Sky said, showing the Jacks a somewhat longish quill.
"Can you get us there?"
"Well, yes, provided I can fly the Starclimber. I know how protective you are of the ship."
"Go ahead. Autopilot's on, so it's not as if you can crash the thing anyway."
Sky then clambered down into the ship, followed by Cogs and Torrent.
"Jeez," Sky said, blinking. "Why'd I have to make everything so... cyberpunk? I can't even focus on anything but the Time Rotor. Hi, Marin." The Time Rotor, which until now had been spinning the teal propellor thingy as it bobbed up and down, said nothing, which was a good thing. Marinza, who by now was somewhat used to the idea of seeing multiple Jacks, waved and said "hello" from where she sat looking through the Starclimber's archives.
Taking a seat at the console, Sky looked over at the controls.
"Okay, I'm not gonna lie to you guys, but I have no idea how to fly a plane. God, why couldn't I have just made War Thunder controls or something?"
As if in response, the entire console control board flipped over to reveal a keyboard and mouse and the ship's heads-up display switched to something not unlike that of War Thunder.
"Oh."
Sky then proceeded to maneuver the ship masterfully through the chaos that was the post-Riftquake battle against Vortech. Steering past the Big Bad, his opponents, and several blasts of several kinds, Sky left the rift to a grey, wavy, uncertain sea below and a star-studded sky above.
"I take back anything bad I may have said about your piloting skills," Torrent said. "You're better than I am."
Sighting a stone palace below, Sky dealt with his acceleration and speed, touching down with a gentle thud. "Oh, by the way, let's try to get this over with quickly. I'm trying to wrap up loose ends before I embark on another story."
Cogs and Torrent shrugged, trying not to think of goodbye, as they disembarked, leaving Sky on the Starclimber.
The palace was sparse, consisting only of a throne, a storage room, and a brig. The Jacks looked through the empty cells, before finding the one with Jack in it. Cogs knelt down and promptly froze, upon seeing his duplicate's pale face and lack of consciousness.
"Oh, no..."
"What?"
"They've taken the Crystal."
Torrent, indeed seeing that the usually-omnipresent crystal was absent, turned around. "Well, it can't be far."
Cogs got up as well, moving to the centre of the room. "Vortech keeps his MacGuffins in here," he said, pointing to the centre of the floor.
"Well, then how do we get in?"
"Oi! Sky! Bit o' help here?" Cogs shouted to the Starclimber.
A huge hole promptly opened up in the sky, dropping all manner of objects. The 2016 Ecto-1 fell almost on top of the shield, instead blasting it with six peoples' worth of anti-ghost weaponry to soften the landing. Needless to say, the shield didn't hold up past that.
"Thanks!" Cogs shouted, once more to the Starclimber, to the confusion of the Ghostbusters, Protonix Ghostbuster, and DEARS member in the Ecto-1.
Diving into the square divet, Cogs grabbed the Dragonheart Crystal from a small pile in the corner, bringing it up to Jack's cage. Throwing the crystal to the Dragonheart, he smiled as Jack heaved, colour starting to return to his face and panting, getting shakily to his feet.
"... Torrent?" Jack said, smiling as he saw the two other Jacks standing at his rescue. As Torrent worked the lock, Cogs drew his guns as he watched Vortech fall to the ground, starting to battle against the Doctor, the Happy Mask Salesman and Batman, Gandalf and Wyldstyle.
"Dammit..." Torrent said, fiddling with the screwdriver's settings, "... I can't get it open." Giving up entirely, he wailed on the lock with the iron endcap, bashing it until it was open (plus a few more times for good measure).
On the bright side, Jack was free. However, the Screwdriver was destroyed.
"Oh come on," Torrent lamented. "I thought the Screwdriver would last longer."
Upon return to the Starclimber and takeoff, the Jacks noted Marinza's new gadget and Sky's disappearance.
"... So, Sky wrote himself out," Marinza said, "and told me to give this to you, Jack. - Er, Torrent. Still not used to the nickname..."
"No prob," said Torrent, accepting the gadget. Upon examination, he announced what he'd been hoping. "This is a new Screwdriver!"
"So, more sonic weaponry?" Jack asked.
"No... Jeez, you were away for so long... If my guess is correct, and that gem on the top is a laser..." Torrent pushed the button, and a medium-strong blue laser was emitted by the Laser Screwdriver, making a soft whirring sound, which was much less buzzy than your street-standard Sonic Screwdriver noise. "... Nice."
The Jacks then abandoned the battlefield as the Doctor did the same, returning the their home Rifts after dropping Marinza off in Torrent's home world.
"So..." Cogs said, "This madness of an odyssey is over."
"So then this is goodbye," Jack said.
"Well, it's not goodbye-goodbye," Torrent said. "As long as I've got the Starclimber, there's a chance of a chance that we can see each other again."
"True, true."
"The next world is the Steampunk Dragonheart's," Torrent said, nodding to Cogs. Opening the back hatch, Cogs dove out of the Starclimber, gliding into his realm.
Jack and Torrent were silent for a minute as the Starclimber navigated to Jack's world.
"How long has it been since it was just us against whatever the Universe could throw at us?" Torrent said.
"Too long. God, that imprisonment hurt... Maybe we'll try to go against just what our realms put up against us," Jack said.
"Agreed."
A bell sounded, indicating Jack's world below. "Well, this is your stop," Torrent said, opening the back hatch again.
"Well... It's been fun," Jack said.
"'Bye, Jack."
"'Bye, Jack." Jack then walked up to the hatch, looking below. Manifesting his wings and looking back to Torrent one last time, he smiled. "Make sure to come and visit," he said, jumping out into the rift, and smiling when he saw his garage appear beneath him.
He'd been looking forward to being home.
Oio boios! DetectiveSky612 here!
As long as it took to do this monster of an undertaking, Dimension Travellers is finally finished! As much as those Jacks got on my nerves during my stint of repairing the Fourth Wall, I'm going to miss them. Well, be sure to leave a like, subscribe, and read some of my other stories!