foray #2: Not the vacation she wanted.

* Orbit *

It had happened again.

The Simurgh finished screaming. And then realized she wasn't where she was supposed to be.

And she was missing a few wings. Like all of them.

And she was in a cart with a bunch of humans.

One of whom looked directly at her. "Hey, you. You're finally awake. You were trying to cross the border, right?"

* Elsewhere *

Taylor was currently regretting at least a few of her life choices.

Yes, the elder god had explained that he thought a two-year trial period was fair and in keeping with human concepts.

Yes, when she'd begun getting loud in her complaints, she'd heard the caution from the old priesty guy.

Yes, perhaps yelling at an elder god had been less than her best idea but honestly she had been under a lot of stress for a lot of years and things had been going so well as Allspark...

Of course that left her yelling about her need for a vacation.

This had not been, perhaps, her most thoughtful moment.

Especially considering the whole emphasis said elder god had regarding mischief and pranks.

"Where is this?" asked Taylor finally. "And why are you a dragon again? You are the dragon, right?"

Of the three others there, the dragon nodded. "This is my default form since my base equation was altered."

"Well, I can see you're too big for a lot of situations," said Taylor, just focusing in on one aspect of this. "You're what - three tractor-trailers long?"

"More or less," rumbled the dragon. "As to where we are - this is dimensional nexus point. Some look like stairways, some look like corridors lined with doors, this one is an island with an inn on it."

"Ah," said Taylor. "And the colors that hurt to look at that I'm very carefully NOT looking at because we're floating in a sea that extends in directions that don't exist?"

"That's the Blind Eternities," said one of the others here. "It's filtered a bit by this nexus point but still a bit much for most people. Xander Harris, by the way."

"Ranma Saotome," said the remaining individual.

"We were just discussing your situation," said Xander. "Honestly, avoiding any deal with fae-like reality warpers is the best course but you're kind of past that now."

"You actually yelled at a god of chaos and pranks," said Ranma. "Heck, even Ryoga wouldn't do that."

"So, anyway, I'm guessing your vacation is supposed to involve the inn here," said the dragon. "I'm just along for the ride."

"You're a mentor type, right?" asked Xander. "So you'll die as part of her hero's journey?"

"That's the way it usually goes," said the dragon, nodding his head.

"Not always," said Ranma. "My Pop is still around somewhere. It's just that once I learned to worldwalk, I started learning martial arts techniques from various other branches of the ol' multiverse."

"Why not?" asked Xander. "So why here?"

"She wanted a vacation, so there's various timelines available," said the dragon, a wing unfurling to point at the inn. "It's not Callahan's Crosstime Saloon, but I'm pretty sure there will be access points that could prove interesting."

* Inside *

"Oh. Wow."

The transformed dragon shrugged and went to the bar and none of the other patrons spared him a second glance. Elf of some type wearing a gray fedora and equally gray trenchcoat over ballistic armor, carrying a dragon-headed walking stick whose eyes glowed ever so slightly? No one immediately recognized but so fitting into the room's clientele that nobody questioned his presence.

The girl who'd come in behind that elf though - looking around with wonder at the inn and its denizens? If she'd worn a sign around her neck stating that she was a newbie hero - it would only have been slightly more obvious.

One got up, obviously intending to have some fun with the newbie.

Another got up, obviously intending to punch the first one through the nearest wall.

"Wait, I'm here already?" asked the fedora-wearing elf. "Well, that's awkward."

"Time travel is complicated enough," said the bald guy with the weird eyes. "Adding multiple universes? Bound to happen eventually."

"You're from a superhero world?" asked Rime, the dragon-turned-elf.

"Yeah, CHM-5073-Gamma, The Camelot 2120 world," answered the other.

"Eh?" asked Taylor.

"Taylor, this is the me from another set of universes that hasn't merged with the me that is me," said Rime.

"That sounds confusing," answered Taylor.

"You have no idea," said both versions.

"Anyway, I ran across some coordinates, maybe you could use this?" asked other-Rime.

"Yeah, we could use a place for Taylor here to go relax and maybe learn some new skills," said Rime as he looked over the display. "Huh. Seriously?"

"Would I lie to me?" asked other-Rime.

"Yes, but I don't think this is one of those times," answered Rime. "Taylor, how'd you like to meet some iconic heroes from another universe?"

"Yes?" answered Taylor.

"Need to move on this fast if you do," said other-Rime. "There's only this one spot where the time/space is sufficiently stretched for easy entry into that 'verse."

"Not a problem," answered Rime. "In fact, I've met a few people who just might be interested. Why aren't you going?"

"Because I've been to that world once before, and one of those in charge of maintaining space/time boundaries forcibly ejected me," confessed the other-Rime with his glowy eyes wincing.

* Deep Space, HAS-1952-Gamma *

"Where is this?" asked Taylor.

The dragon had changed again, taking a near-human appearance, though in this case he was a blonde pretty boy who was thin enough it looked as if a strong wind would break him in half. "This is a spaceship that was mothballed as a museum piece publicly, though it wasn't decommissioned in case it was ever needed again. Just in case, it had everything covered in plastic and then stasis-fielded when that tech was available."

"What changed?" asked Xander Harris.

Taylor half-listened as she felt the old cold metal of the corridor they were in.

"I did. Or one of my incarnations did at least," said Rime. "Unfortunately, I came in as the ship's AI."

"Why was that unfortunate?" asked Xander.

"After the last battle against yet another invading galactic empire, the politicians decided that an AI was not something they wanted in a battleship - too many fears of rogue AI. So they ripped out all the advanced computers and relays." Rime looked sad as he touched the corridor. "Not one of my better deaths - lobotimized by inches."

"Are three people enough to run this ship?" asked Taylor. She didn't know anything about running a ship, even with her Nora memories, but if she relied on those and had some direction she might be able to do something simple.

"No, even a skeleton crew would be a good twenty," admitted the human-shaped dragon. "Taylor, I'm going to show you the armory. There's a rifle or two for you to check out."

"Okay," said Taylor, brightening at that. Due to her Nora-memories she knew rifles at least.

"Maybe some other time," said the former dragon, touching the helm and sounding wistful. "Maybe sometime we can fly again, Yamato."

* Earth MCU-2008-Beta *

Captain America hurt in places he hadn't hurt in years. Shouldering aside the pain in order to function was an old habit but it was still difficult at this level. He wouldn't be who he was if he gave up that easily.

Iron Man's armor was self-repairing, so even though there was damage visible at even this distance, all he needed was a breather long enough for systems to be functioning again.

Thor had gotten beaten pretty badly, at least partly because the thunder god had gotten so badly out of shape. Given time to build himself up, he might have done better, but they hadn't even known this fight was coming.

For that matter, all of them would have done better if the first indication of trouble hadn't been a large set of explosions turning the building they'd been in into scrap.

"Captain, do you read?"

Captain America wondered briefly if it was wishful thinking. If he'd just imagined it. Because if there was ever a time for the cavalry to come rushing in, this was definitely it.

"Captain, do you read?" repeated the voice, a good 50% clearer this time.

Maybe he hadn't imagined it? He tapped the commlink in his ear, a brief wonder at how tough Stark made his little equipment doo-dads, and hoping this wasn't just all the blows to his head.

"On your left," came a clear signal and a recognition code that only he and one other would recognize.

A circle of sparks formed in the air, and through it he could see a different landscape. Bright daylight instead of the pre-dawn he was currently in. Stepping through that were three people, two of whom had mostly avoided him and he didn't know that well. Then there was T'Challa, the Black Panther.

A moment later the Falcon flew through that same circle-of-sparks.

More circles of sparks appeared. Some were Wakandan ships and troops. Some looked to be of Thor's people. Many he recognized through the "missing persons" lists after the Snap.

He overheard one guy asking "Is that everyone?"

He also overheard the guy being asked reply "You wanted more?"

As if in reply, a giant-sized Ant Man erupted out of the ruins of the Avengers' building. The giant released the Hulk and Rocket and War Machine so that was that.

Then things changed again as other circles began appearing, these less golden sparks and less uniform in appearance. Some just shimmered into being like a mirage turning solid. Some appeared in green hexagonal shapes.

Then there was the dragon flying around on silver wings, with people visible riding on its back?

And the three lizard-people. They were on his side, but he was pretty sure he hadn't met any lizard people. Or the dragon.

A giant robot of some kind strode out of one of the hex-shaped gates. There was the distinctive sounds of weapons loading from various points in it.

Well, there really was only one thing to say wasn't there? Mjolnir slapped into his open hand as Captain America gave the words he'd wanted to for quite some time. "Avengers! Assemble."

* Taylor *

The gun I'd grabbed from the pile was the most that resembled something I could use from my memories as Nora back in that world where I'd been a mom-sicle. It was something the dragon had picked up in his travels that was apparently called a Blast Rifle. I had no idea what the science behind it was, just that it used little energy packs that looked like ammo clips and the little bolts of energy were blue.

There was a little bit of recoil, but not much, and easily compensated for. As the battle had gone quickly from "two sides charging each other" to "completely scrambled" - that the device could be used for selective fire was turning out to be the most handy.

That the bolts of whatever-it-was could burn holes the size of my fist in a number of substances was also quite noticeable and I was hoping I could keep the gun after the fight.

The two behind me, strapped into the webbing that wrapped around the dragon's chest, were doing their own thing. Okay, one person behind me as that martial artist guy had jumped off and was going through bad guy troops like some threshing machine going through a field.

Dragon-guy-of-many-names roared out a column of what looked like ice crystals that covered a good section of that effing big spaceship that was hanging over the field of battle.

Again, some of my life as an Army squad leader came out. "Land on the upper hull, you can try gashing it open with your claws and then shoot that into the interior."

"Good plan," said that Xander guy. "Once you do that I can put some Terminators to work."

The dragon chuffed and dove.

Using a dragon as a weapons platform as we charged a UFO of space-baddies. I'm really not sure why anyone thought of this s a vacation.

Well, there was a certain amount of stress relief in shooting space-baddies - so there was that.

* Iron Man *

"Who brought a dragon?" asked Tony Stark.

"It does appear to be on our side," said his AI Friday.

"Huh. Kinda makes sense," admitted Tony as he took out a troop carrier's engines. "Thanos being such a charming person who makes friends easily."

"Sarcasm detected." Friday beeped and made an odd noise. "Relayed message from Saurial. She says hello and we'll be taking this."

Tony Stark blinked. "Who is 'Saurial'? Taking what?"

All of a sudden, Sanctuary II - Thanos' ship that had been flying above the battlefield, vanished.

"Oh, that," said Tony. "Too bad, I was going to go over the tech later."

* Rime *

As a silver dragon, I had two "breath weapons" I could use. Repulsion gas, which was basically a crowd control ability to cause people to flee. The second breath weapon was the one that got used more often - a blast of ice and frost that could freeze blood solid in less than a second.

The outer hull of a spacecraft was going to ignore either of those, and my claws and jaws were strong but a spaceship's hull was going to be a bit beyond that. So I used my frost breath on an area that looked like it had a bunch of sensors, and what looked like biological parts, and then tore into it with claws and jaws. It wasn't a particularly big opening but it was an opening.

Probably the armor would have shrugged off anything like normal energy weapons, but the designers had apparently not thought about dragons getting their claws under metal plates and heaving them off. Bit of an oversight that.

At which point, Xander jumped off onto the ship, touched the hull near the breech for a moment and seemed to concentrate.

Neither I nor Xander expected to see three lizard-people land and go through that rent in the outer armor. Xander just stared for a moment. I stared for a little longer, idly using my tail to smack some guy who had popped out of a hatch to see what was going on. Xander recovered first though and followed the lizard-people.

I naturally flew up and away, using a few spells to boost the allies and spells like Command to interrupt enemies.

Day was getting weird. Even for a day that included heroes from multiple dimensions having a Big Damn Heroes moment to go smacking around intergalactic villains in the ruins of a superhero base.

I wondered if someone had made a fighting game out of this yet, because it really seemed a ripe opportunity.

A few seconds later the ship vanished. No sign of Xander or the lizards.

I wasn't worried about Xander, as a worldwalker he could go wherever he wanted anyway. I did wonder what the three lizard-people were going to do with a honking big space warship. Well, it was off the playing field here in any case. That was good.

I wheeled about in the air, hearing Taylor shoot a couple more villain-guys, and noting one of those villain guys was protected by a telekinetic shield of some kind.

Ever see a hawk go after a ground squirrel or mouse? I tried doing that to telekinetic no-nose guy. He tried to deflect me, I didn't deflect. At the last moment he threw himself to the side and started throwing pieces of building at me.

Then that giant guy stepped on him.

I saw a fountain of red energy with that Thanos guy being held up in it, but it just isn't polite to steal someone else's kill. Not that there were a lack of targets.

I threw a quick Insect Plague on one of the obvious lieutenants that was trying to go to his aid. After all, I'm a helper! I'm helping.

And keeping Taylor safe on my back as she shot bad guys. See, I do know how to show a girl a good time. People say that dragons don't know how to party.

"Cure Wounds at fifth power," I cast as I passed Captain America, who waved back a little uncertainly. Guy had been looking a bit worse-for-wear.

"What's that?" asked Taylor.

"What's what?" I asked, turning to look. A missile? Meteor? Oh hell. "Hold on!"

Despite going full-evasive I was hit hard enough to feel bones breaking.

* Tony *

"Look, it's not that I don't appreciate you arriving like the cavalry to rescue us. My two points are that you could have been here at the start with everyone else, or that you could have tried to figure out who was on our side before you went and splatted the dragon. Who, as I mentioned, was on our side."

"How was I to know we had a dragon. Last time I checked we didn't have a dragon. I would have appreciated some heads-up on that," said Captain Marvel.

"I didn't know who all these new people were," I pointed out, my armor still sparking a bit where some space invader's blade had apparently damaged the nanobots making up that section. "I still don't know who they all were. Like those lizard-people who stole Thanos' spaceship. Honestly, I want to give them a call to join up. The idea of looting your enemy's weapons before he can use them against you is a good one."

"We had lizard-people too?" asked Captain Marvel. "Damn it, Fury really needs to relay some of this to me."

"Don't blame me," said Nick Fury, revealing he was close by.

I blinked. "Is that SHIELD issue ordnance?"

"This? An enemy had it. I liked it. I pried it from his cold dead fingers," said Nick Fury. "After the lab boys go over it, I might just keep it."

"Fair enough," I said. Spy upgrades his equipment on the fly? Probably Standard Operating Procedure.

* Deep Space DCE-1931-Kappa *

"Uhm, are you okay?" asked Taylor. "I mean one minute you're nearly torn in half, the next we're here."

"Give me a couple of minutes to get my bearings again, dying takes a lot out of me," confessed the former dragon.

Taylor Hebert thought for a couple of moments before deciding that was fair enough. She spent time looking around while the guy (currently back in an old-man shape) sat in a chair with his head between his knees.

Spaceship. Proper spaceship too - lots of blinky lights and displays. No windshield or portholes though.

"This is one of my ships," said old guy finally. "I had a few of them on worlds I'd visited before. This looks like the Lookfar. Which means..."

"Which means?" asked Taylor.

"Got nothing," said the old man. "Too many lives and memories. I'll check the log, that should jar something."

"Oh, there's a menu system," realized Taylor as she inspected a display. "We're in the Rao system?"

Old guy's head whipped up and then he winced as apparently he hadn't recovered that much yet. "That could be very very bad. I need to check for instabilities."

* Earth-Bet universe, Orbit *

The Simurgh reached up and felt her neck, quickly discovering that she hadn't been decapitated. Again. Four times decapitated by some officer. Once burned to death by a wyvern, or dragon, she wasn't quite sure which was which. Once killed by arrows fired off by bandits. Once killed by a plant. Once fell into a river and drowned. Once bitten in half by a dragon. Once killed by a crab-like thing. Once got sick from a mosquito bite. Once ate some food that had her cramping up horribly and spewing from both ends. Twice froze to death.

She was back. She was safe. It was all fine now.

Turning her attention back to the planet beneath her, the Simurgh immediately felt her relief turn to ice water. She was in orbit around the wrong planet.

* Rao *

"Scan complete," I said finally. "You see that asteroid belt over there? That used to be a planet with a large human-like population."

"So what is this we're landed at?" asked Taylor.

"At one point the Kryptonians weren't native to the world they eventually settled, they altered themselves a bit and their environment some to settle in effectively." I checked the telemetries. Fortunately commercially designed spacecraft had multiple systems that were set up to be as simple as possible. Very few companies wanted bad publicity from having a large death rate associated with using their product, and also restricting your clientele to only people who could memorize 3000page manuals to just operate the air conditioning wasn't going to fly to most either. In Old Earth terms, this was essentially a Ford or Chevy "workhorse" sort of vehicle. Tough, low maintenance for the most part (necessary when your nearest repair bay might be literal light-years away), and relatively cheap. Other vehicles were faster, boasted better fuel efficiency, had extras like a dance hall or jacuzzi, and/or were sleek and stylish.

"And?" prompted Taylor as we settled into a docking position with a thump.

"Ah, yes. Anyway, they pulled in materials from across their system to do the job then abandoned those when the time came to settle on the planet. Planet's gone but this one base on a moon on an outer planet survived." I checked the signals. "It'll take awhile to get their environmentals back on after twenty-five thousand years."

"Should we even bother?" asked Taylor.

"I didn't bring us here," I answered.

"Oh," said Taylor, apparently immediately getting the idea. "The cat." Yup. Nice to work with someone who can get a clue - it immediately puts Taylor Hebert ahead of 90% of Doctor Who companions.

"Yeah," I said. "There's a language teaching device over there. I can't always count on my innate magical abilities, so there's that. Just select Kryptonian."

Taylor found the device and started flipping through it. "Kangan? Klikkari? Klingon? That sounds familiar. Kryptonian. Kryptonian is split into Common, High, and Ancient."

"You want Common, maybe High," I told her. "Though the base is likely to use Ancient, I can translate that."

"More 'dope dragon shit'?" asked Taylor.

"That's certainly one way to put it," I told her.

* Kryptonian Mining Base *

My ship was a battered old one named the Lookfar, after something in a fantasy novel. I'd never been to Earthsea, at least that I could remember, but it was a good ship name. It was a mining/transport vessel that looked about three times more 'floating scrapheap' than it actually was. I even had pieces I could leave behind me in a pattern to indicate they had just fallen off due to wear and tear.

There were some pirates who would take a look at that and decide to wait for a better target. There were those who would see it and decide to blow it up for target practice. The former I was counting on, the latter would find out what a disguised Vulcan Laser Gatling could do.

We'd spent a good week in the Base while Taylor learned a few things about Krypton. She'd made the appropriate comments about how decadent a society that had solved all their problems had become and how they'd gotten steadily more into "lotus eater" territory with a few resisting groups.

The base had also been refurbished and updated a bit. So the settlers had built it about 25,000 years previously. Then at least two other groups had found and used it. The last one had been a couple on the Kryptonian Science Council who had come out here for astronomical studies. Which had been also where a young Kal-el had apparently been conceived. The things they don't tell you in the comic books.

Taylor looked over the "Tinker Tech" sitting around, despite it not being that she insisted on calling it that. Possibly because it irritated me.

Every day I renewed my spells as a cleric. Every day I cast divination magic. I finally got an answer.

"Taylor. Six hour warning. It happens today."

"What?" called out Taylor. "I'm learning Klingon! Did you know there's a tense which makes literally anything you say swearing? Just changing the verb stress."

"Yes, but why are you learning Klingon?" I asked, as the language wasn't all that widespread.

"I ran across a voice file and it sounds made for insulting people," answered Taylor.

"Honestly, I think it was," I shot back. "Still, we're going to get picked up and thrown into a new simulation in about six hours."

* Earth Bet *

Taylor appeared in her home, checking herself briefly to see what was going on. Height, normal. Stringbean... no. "I have boobs?! And muscle tone! All right!"

"Taylor? Is something wrong?" came an impossible voice.

Then the door to her room opened and the impossible was standing there.

Taylor gaped for a moment. "M-Mom?"

thanks to Dogbertcarroll for Xander Harris worldwalker (With Sprinkles), and to mp3.1415player for Taylor Varga's inclusion. Thanks for letting me borrow your characters. i'd planned on writing more of that scene, but ended up cutting a lot as it might be restrictive on planned timelines within their own works.