Act III: Me, Myself & Why
This definitely looks like a cock-up, Arnold thought. Spike was on the floor, surrounded by dead security men, with that annoying (yet cute, in a Neighbours-reject sort of way, he had always thought) blonde American struggling to pull him up.
And Ace Rimmer, the embodiment of his Lord Flashhart dreams, was being held up like a side of beef by this nightmare version of himself. Yup, a major cock-up. But instead of flipping the red switch as Ace had instructed, he turned the Guardian's bike on and swung it around, pointing it back down the hallway.
Lister barely hopped on the back of the seat before the motorcycle accelerated away from the carnage.
As the two clerks sped away, Harmony let go of Spike and lunged at the two upright Rimmers, shedding her human face in mid-air. Judas leveled his weapon at her, but Ace slapped the barrel away at the last second, causing it to fire astray. When the vampire landed on both Rimmers, Judas dropped both the rifle and his injured opposite, needing both hands to keep Harmony's fangs off his neck.
"Feisty one, aren't you?" Judas sneered. "All you Yankee women, so cute. In a Neighbours-reject kind of way." That only made Harmony angrier.
"The show's called Friends!" she said, punctuating the last word with a slash at the stranger's eyes.
A few feet away, Spike dragged the fallen Ace toward a safer spot. Ace held his stomach while watching this new fan of his protect him – or rather, the Ace she had met. Fans are such a nice perk, he thought as the Londoner helped get him upright.
"Co-worker?" Ace asked.
"Ex-girlfriend," Spike replied, turning to see her kick Judas square in the groin – with no effect.
"She always fight that dirty?" Ace asked, wincing as Judas slapped her like an angry parent. Spike took a second to wince before answering.
"Don't they all?"
"Right," Ace conceded, already thinking of how to help her, but disappointed Arnold had reacted just as he imagined he would.
"What are you doing, you git!" Lister demanded as the bike swerved to and fro through the hall, barely missing at least two walls. "They need our help!"
"What do you plan to do, Lister? There's no folding chairs about!" Rimmer shot back. "Besides, Mega-Me isn't after you, is he? Let's just get out of here." That got on Lister's last nerve. He slapped Arnold on the back of the head, getting him to stop in the center of the empty lobby.
"And where do you plaaan to go, Rimmer?" he asked mockingly. "That thing can travel through space like Captain bloody Kirk! You think he won't be able to find us?
"And what about Ace, and Spike, and that blonde? They don't even know us and they're putting their arses on the line. For what? For two idiot mailroom clerks, is what." Arnold hung his head down, looking away from his flatmate. But Lister got off the bike and came around, forcing Arnold to face him.
"You're always carrying on about, 'being a part of something bigger,' and 'seeing some real action,'" Lister continued. "Well, here it is, and here we are, away from it again. Is this how you want Arnold Rimmer to be remembered?"
Rimmer put his head back up, scowling. He hated it when Lister was right, especially knowing Ace had seen him take off quicker than a schoolgirl's skirt. But while readying himself to turn Ace's bike on again, he felt something cold and round press the back of his head.
He looked up and saw Lister in the same situation, flanked by a rather James Bond-looking chap. Then a very soft female voice behind Arnold asked for their identification.
"Very impressive speech, Mister ... Lister," Wesley Wyndam-Pryce said, backing away with Dave's company ID, but not lowering his gun. "Perhaps you can explain why Miss Burkle and I had to leave the opera early."
Ace didn't like the feeling in his gut; not just the chill coming over it at the thought of what he was doing – staggering toward Harmony and Judas and, perhaps, his demise – but the way it seemed to limp right along with him, sloshing to and fro like a drunk. But he knew there was no other way. These were just the kinds of things Ace Rimmer did.
Still, he reckoned he wasn't completely helpless. He had two advantages over Super-Butch: experience as Ace himself, and knowledge of what to say to piss off the Arnold that had to lie underneath. Ace limped over until he was just out of arm's reach of his bigger counterpart, who was stalking a fallen Harmony over a pair of corpses.
"Hey, Elvis!" he called out. "Your fight's with me, not the hired help!" He hated being called Elvis. And by the slow, hunched-over way Judas turned to face him, that was probably true for the guardians of every dimension. As the angry dark Rimmer silently shifted his attention, a roaring motorcycle and yelling Spike pierced the quiet.
"OI! SMOKE THIS KIPPER, MATE!" He said just before ramming his own motorcycle into Judas' side, sending him flying into the railing of the observation deck.
Ace collapsed, feeling a whole other type of cold come over his legs.
Arnold accelerated Ace's craft, which was risky - navigating the narrow Wolfram & Hart hallways with one passenger was hard with just one passenger, but downright dangerous carrying three, as Wesley and Fred had piled on along with Lister. Still, Rimmer felt something had gone wrong, and he had to be there.
They arrived just as Ace fell to the floor, and pulled up alongside him. Spike rejoined the group and apprised the new arrivals of Ace's gambit a few moments earlier. He also noted to Wesley he'd need a new motorcycle. Fred noticed that Harmony, sitting by Ace's side, looked ready to cry.
"Acey, it's gonna be okay!" she said. "Look, Wesley and Fred are here and so's ..." she looked at this smaller version of her crush and came to the only logical conclusion. "So's your little brother!"
Ace smiled, not like a Guardian, but like a man.
"No, dear, it's not like that," he said, then put her hand in Arnold's. "This is-" Lister cut him off.
"Sorry, fellas," he gulped. "But it looks like The Rimmernator's back." Wesley took the point and shifted to command mode, flanked by Harmony and Fred.
"Harmony, you're with me," he barked, leveling two guns at the intruder. "Fred, you get to its' craft, see if you can trigger a portal out of here. Spike, you ..." he looked around. Where the hell had he gone?
"So, more friends for the pretenders," Judas said, studying his new adversaries. Hmm, more tottie, he thought as he eyed Fred. "But where's the prat who played Evel Kinevel?" His answer was the side of a rifle barrel hitting the back of his shoulder, splitting the weapon in two.
"Shoddy, these Martian guns are," Spike said through clenched cigarette. Then he felt a fist crash into his stomach.
Typical Spike, Wesley thought, as his feet braced. He fired six shots into the creature's back, distracting it just enough for Harmony to come in from the left flank and join the fray.
"All these people ... care about me?" an incredulous Arnold asked, watching his superiors risk their lives for him. "I just don't understand." Ace tugged at Lister to help him sit up before answering.
"It's what they do," Ace answered, unzipping his flight jacket, now stained bright red on his right side. "It's what Ace Rimmer does."
"But why?"
"Because, Ace Rimmer is a big part of something even bigger," Ace said. "You get to make a difference." He smiled mischievously, as Lister helped him remove the jacket. "And you get to pick up on pieces of tottie like that one Yank." Both Rimmers shared a chuckle before Ace went on, ignoring Lister's eye-rolling realization that if you met one Rimmer, you really had met them all. "And it's what you'll have to do."
"What? No!" Arnold yelped.
"Not yet, but soon," Ace said as calmly as he could. "Now quit being a git and flip that switch like I'd bloody asked you to!"
Upon remembering about the switch, Arnold's face made a perfect O shape, like Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone. He scrambled to Ace's bike and looked on the dash, finding the switch and flipping it with his right hand, after covering his eyes with his left.
Within seconds, the sky around them seemed to crackle like ripe popcorn. Arnold split his left fingers enough to peek, despite himself, and instantly regretted it. Were those ... doors opening in the air? He wondered.
Sitting with the fallen Ace, Lister had the same thought. He didn't know the fallen Guardian was also surprised: Would you look at that? Ace said to himself, eyes widening. It really does work.
Would you look at that? Fred thought, crouching near the front panel of Judas' bike, watching its instrumentation lights flicker like an overdecorated Christmas tree.
"We've got company!" she yelled at Wesley before squeezing out a pair of rounds at the creature. "Multiple portals, opening all around!" In doing so, however, she allowed Judas to hear what was going on.
"Impossible!" he raged, struggling with Spike and Harmony each locked onto one of his arms. "I've disposed of all the others! ... Unless ... No!" He stopped fighting and looked up, shocked at seeing a pompadeur emerge from one of the red doors.
"You lied!" Arnold shouted at the fallen Ace. "You said we were the last!"
"Had to say that for you to take it seriously," Ace said slowly. "You would've done the same thing. You're me, remember? Now relax. It's all in hand."
In less than one wind-tunnel, portal-filled minute, thirty Ace Rimmers descended upon the ravaged observation deck, leaving their bikes hovering overhead, and surrounded everyone on the floor. Harmony wondered if she was in Heaven. Lister was sure he'd reached Hell.
Spike grabbed Harmony and dragged her back toward Lister and their Rimmers. Fred and Wesley met them there. Easily done, since the pack of Aces had just one thing in their sights. After stopping to compliment one another's hair, of course. They converged on an increasingly irrational Judas, chanting: Traitor ... Traitor ... Traitor!
The group seized the struggling stranger and forcibly attached him to his own craft. One punched some buttons on the display, opening yet another portal, through which Judas Rimmer exited screaming. Wesley pulled the apparent leader aside and asked where that door led.
"Nasty place," the head Ace replied. "We call it Dimension Zero. It used to be known as Quortoth." The name dangled on the edge of Wesley's memory. He reasoned he probably read about it somewhere.