-1Jack summoned the Violet Rose seconds before a hundred fireballs would have incinerated him. The Rose in his hand, he leapt in the air, parrying fireballs from the second volley. He landed with a thud in the center of them, immediately swinging and destroying the nearest one. Too close to throw fireballs, the Imps were forced to claw and bite at him. Now he could take them.
Swinging the Violet Rose left and right, Jack had killed upwards of ten Imps in just a couple minutes. It dawned upon him that he was fighting a losing battle; the Imps still vastly outnumbered him, and he was already beginning to tire. He needed a new strategy. He knew the next step.
"C'mon, fuckers!" he shouted, the Red Rose appearing in his left hand.
He loved using two Roses at once. Yeah, it took a lot out of him, but he thought he'd figured out how to solve that problem. He realized the last time that if he coordinated his arms, it actually strengthened him instead of weakening him. So he had to do that.
He tried. First he upslashed both Roses against an Imp, sending its bleeding body high into the air. It worked! He felt empowered, so much that he swung both Roses again sideways, the opposite way of each other, slicing another Imp in three pieces. Damn, these were a lot sharper than he'd thought!
Coordinating his attacks was harder than he first thought. Sometimes he missed, which set his energy back a little. Other times he went way off, almost killing him when a fireball hit the Imp standing right in front of him, killing it.
'Thank God it's so crowded in here!' he thought to himself, stabbing the Roses through two separate Imps. He swung them around, throwing the bodies off and into other Imps, creating confusion.
New new strategy. This still wasn't working; he'd barely left a dent in their numbers. He needed help.
"Lampo!" he shouted, bringing the Roses up. A large lightning bolt struck from somewhere high in the air (the ceiling in this room was unusually large) and hit dead in the center of most of the Imps. He estimated anywhere from three to five of them were killed.
Three more minutes of fighting that seemed like an hour. Jack was beginning to figure out how to coordinate his attacks now, he was slipping up less and less. Finally, the number of Imps was reduced to about half of what it had been. Unfortunately, now that there was more room in the room, he had to worry about blocking fireballs. There was no way he'd survive this fight. At least he wasn't exhausted.
Then he felt something. He needed to get out of here! There were too many Imps, and his eye caught a pair of glowing yellow eyes in the shadows of a corner.
"Duh!!" he shouted, slapping himself on the head. He tore his eyes from the yellow eyes, vanished the Roses, and covered his ears. This muffled the Panic's scream greatly, but the poor Imps (they had no ears, so Jack wondered how they heard it) had no defense. They all immediately panicked, forgetting completely about him and running in all directions. Then, the Panics emerged from the shadows. Jack immediately summoned the Red Rose and prepared to fight.
He had no clue which Roses were best for which situations. As far as he was concerned, they all were the same. Sure, he felt a little different with each one, but so far that hadn't greatly affected him. He just summoned the one that felt right at the time.
The Panics (there were about seven of them) attacked. The Panics of this world looked almost the same as the ones in Nomu's world, except they were wearing similar armor to what Flynn was wearing when they first met him. No helmet.
One went for Jack, the rest went around hunting the Imps. The Imps, the effects of the Panics' scream and stare wearing off, fought back. They were no match, however, for the fast, flying Panics. The Panics sailed among them, cutting down Imps right and left. What few fireballs hit them actually had an effect; Jack saw a Panic on fire writhing on the ground in pain. He assumed that the fireballs were a sort of magic the Imps had control of.
The Panic that attacked Jack flew straight at him, holding its sword sideways in front of his face, hoping to cut him in half. Jack wasn't that stupid. He jumped right before the sword would have hit, downslashing the Rose, knocking the Panic on the ground. He landed next to it, and swung the Rose down at it with two hands in a massive crushing blow. The Panic threw its sword up to block, but the sword shattered on contact. Then it surprised Jack. It lunged at him, arms outstretched. He barely sidestepped it, swinging the Rose to the side, slashing the Panic across the torso. Black fumes rose from the Rose, signaling that the Panic was "bleeding."
Jack was getting sick of these things, he let loose a wide slash that caught the Panic in its side, then pushed it along the arc the Rose was traveling in; all the while the sharp edge of the Rose was cutting into the Panic. Finally, Jack stopped swinging the Rose, and the Panic was thrown off. It disappeared in a cloud of black smoke before hitting anything.
The Imps were desecrated by the Panics. They were all killed, only taking one Panic with them. The other five Panics then turned their attention on Jack, flying in formation at him.
Jack threw the Red Rose at them; it went completely through one of them, killing it. Then, as it returned, it killed another. Jack was getting better at that. The training his father gave him was really paying off.
……………..
The CAD compound, suburbs of Chicago, Illinois…
"Another new member!?" Marcellus Wallace shouted in fury. "When the fuck'll it be enough!?"
"Settle down, Marcellus. Never enough. Besides, this new member has untold riches to offer our group. He is a great king of his world-"
"Half of us our!" interjected Imhotep, who was actually a priest who wished he was king.
"-and has control over untold armies and riches. Gentlemen, I would like to introduce you all to Agamemnon."
The group members looked up at the warrior who had just sat down. He didn't look to be a very good fighter himself; he was a little on the large side and was probably in his late thirties at least. He was wearing bronze armor, complete with an ancient shield and a large bronze sword. He also had a large graying beard. Many members recognized him as the king of ancient Sparta; he was the man who supposedly led the invasion of Troy. Accardo wasn't kidding. If he truly was that king, he DID have a lot to offer the group.
I:XXV
Back on Deimos…
The Panics reached Jack, who parried two of them away, the third he sidestepped, bringing the Rose in a wide arc, slashing all three. They flew backwards; one died in the familiar cloud of black smoke. He lunged, the Rose pointed straight outward, going right through it. The third swooped at him, his sword outstretched in a mimic of the attack Jack had just used.
"That's my attack!" Jack shouted, feigning anger, and hit the sword away with ease. He swung it in a full three-sixty, bringing it behind his back and up into the Panic's stomach, killing it. He had won! And he wasn't that exhausted; at least not as much as before.
"Jack!" Nomu shouted, bursting through another door at the end of the room.
"Just in time," Jack said sarcastically.
"Sorry…I heard you fighting and came as fast as I could. Good job!"
"Yeah…thanks. What's that way?"
"Nothing."
"Hmmm…the door I came from shut on me, but I think I can get through it now. There was a fork a little while back, I guess I'll go the other way."
"I'm coming with you," he said. "I got hurt pretty bad a little while back; I don't think if I can manage by myself if I have to fight a hundred Imps."
"Alright. Panics, too! There are Emos in this world!"
"They must be just arriving. They're slowly spreading throughout all the worlds, eventually they'll be at all of them. I hope this won't be for at least a century, but if the rate keeps increasing then we may only have a few years."
"Nomu, I have a question. Is there one Rose for every world?"
"There used to be, remember? But after the Great Splitting, the worlds continued to split. There used to be, what, nine? Ten? I don't know, but now there are maybe thirty. Maybe less, I'm not sure. But no, there are not."
"How're we supposed to leave a world without a new Rose? I thought-"
"The worlds that don't have Roses are called World Fragments, I believe. They do not require new Roses, but they do require at least one Rose. Which we have."
Jack nodded. There were so many questions running through his mind. He was terribly homesick. He missed his father, and his sister, and his friends, Raz, Galley and Hayden. He especially missed Carol.
"I'm starving," he muttered. Nomu laughed. Jack smiled to himself.
The two went to the shut door, and Jack swung at it with the Rose. It dented, so he swung again, and again. After three swings, it flew completely out of the doorway. They walked down the hallway, and noticed the busted door panel. Jack ignored it, thinking maybe a stray Imp had thrown a fireball at it, or something along those lines. Nomu noticed something else; he noticed that a weapon, probably a spear, had pierced it. Still, he kept his suspicions to himself. There was no way. No way in hell.
The two walked back to the fork, and continued down it. They passed many demon bodies on their way, bodies with large stab wounds and gashes across their torsos.
"Iz must've come this way," Jack suggested.
"That he did," Nomu replied.
About fifteen minutes later…
Flynn was getting sick of this game. He'd shoot the beast once, dodge a rocket or two, then hit the beast again while it was reloading. Then he'd run around, reload, rinse and repeat. Neither of them seemed to be tiring or succumbing to injuries. Flynn was too crafty to be hit, and the beast was too tough to get hurt.
Flynn had noticed that there was a semi-large room on each side of the building. He'd been in three of them; they contained: stacks and stacks of rocket launcher ammo, another launcher, two of those blue orbs (which he was careful to avoid in case of an emergency) and more combat armor. He was about to enter the fourth when a rocket hit about two meters away from him, sending him flying, but not really hurting him. Flynn got up, aimed the launcher, and shot it twice at the beast. The rockets sailed into its head, sending it sprawling on its ass. Flynn laughed and went in the room.
Inside was the one thing that he really wanted, but wouldn't help him right now. At all. Another chainsaw. This one was different from his previous one, however; the metal the saw blades were made out of was something he'd never seen before. It was silver in color, but slightly shinier and a lot thicker. The saw must have weighed forty pounds, not much for him, but still heavier then the other, which weighed about twenty-five. He looked at the insignia on the side, it read "Tetcorp." In smaller print underneath that, it read "Tetcorp self-sustaining Metallica chainsaw, model G-101X Combat Edition. Find some meat!"
Flynn laughed at that. But what could "self-sustaining" mean? Surely the saw needed some kind of outside energy source. Right?
One thing was for sure: a chainsaw wouldn't help him fight a twenty foot tall, rocket launcher-spewing behemoth. He took it anyways, slinging it over his shoulder by the shoulder-strap. It'd limit his mobility a little, but he decided to drop the rocket launcher. So things just about evened out.
Flynn needed a new plan. He got to the doorway, but immediately had to leap forward to dodge a rocket that would have blown him up.
Then he felt something. Something was amiss. He looked at the ground, and was scared shitless when he noticed small black shadows on the ground, seemingly from nowhere. Then, the shadows materialized into small, horned black beasts with glowing red eyes.
Actually, there were a few larger ones with two horns and red eyes. Flynn took one look at them and got pissed, they were wearing the Space Marine's standard armor!
Then he looked at the sky. There were more beasts; these were winged creatures toting swords. They also were wearing the armor.
"Sons of bitches!" he muttered. Then he remembered something from Jack, Iz and Nomu's stories: these were the Emos! That was why he'd gotten so angry at them. They said he needed a material called Metallica to kill them, and he had just the thing.
Unslinging the chainsaw, Flynn took a knee and read the caption again: "Tetcorp self-sustaining Metallica chainsaw, model G-101X Combat Edition. Find some meat!"
This chainsaw was made out of the legendary material. There was no way this was a coincidence.
Flynn also remembered that "to look into their eyes is to invite death," as Nomu put it, and when the Panics screamed then a person, well, panicked. Thank the Lord for those earplugs.
Flynn dropped the saw, put his foot on the handle, and pulled the cord. It stuttered but did not start. He pulled it again. The stutter got louder, he could barely hear it now, but it didn't start. Some Emos were attacking him, some were attacking Stampy (that's what Flynn had decided to call the huge beast.)
He frantically pulled the cord again. This time, the chainsaw roared to life. He heard it; it provided an enormous boost to his adrenaline. Holding the top and side-handles, Flynn swung the saw through the nearest Emo. It was small, so he assumed it was a Despair. The saw cut through it like butter, making it disappear in a cloud of black smoke. He then stabbed with the saw at one of the bigger, two-horned ones, (he thought it was an Anger) and it died too. All the time he was careful not to stare directly into their eyes.
The saw literally was a death-machine to these things, but it was bulky and hard to use. He was lucky the Panics were concerned with Stampy more than him, and the Despairs were worthless, but the Angers were killers. He'd dodge one, only to be immediately attacked by another.
Finally, when he thought he couldn't take it anymore, a spear came from his left and soared straight through the body of an Anger he was grappling with. Flynn looked to his right and saw Iz running towards him.
Iz jumped, doing a front-flip over most of the Emos, and retrieved his spear.
"Miss me?" he asked. "What the hell is going on here?" Iz asked, spearing two Despairs with one stab.
"Look over there," Flynn panted, pointing at Stampy.
"Over wh- OH MY GOD!" he shouted, doing a double-take.
"Yeah."
Stampy was furiously howling at the Panics. He was shooting rockets off into the air in all directions, rarely hitting them. With his other arm, he was swiping at them. Flynn and Iz realized at the same time that his claws must have been made out of Metallica, because whenever his organic arm made contact with a Panic the Emo was killed in that familiar cloud of black smoke.
The Panics were soaring around Stampy, slashing him. From the looks of it, they were no more to him than annoying bugs, bugs which he was desperately trying to swat.
They fought together for maybe three minutes when they were joined by the other two members of their group. Jack and Nomu (who was still hurt; he would have bad burns across his chest for the rest of his life) came through the door on the opposite side, got terrified at the sight of Stampy, and ran the other way, where they found Flynn and Iz fighting off the few remaining Angers and Despairs. Jack killed two Despairs that were circling around the two warriors, and Nomu managed to slash through an Anger. Now it was only the four of them, not including the Panics or Stampy.
"Hey guys," Jack said hurriedly. "Do you mind if I ask what the fuck that huge thing is?"
"Big, demon," Flynn said, pausing in between each word. He made a gesture with his hands to indicate big. His chainsaw was on the ground. "I call him Stampy.
"Nice saw," Jack replied.
"It's made of Metallica. It kills the Emos."
"Nice," Jack replied. "What do we do?"
"I couldn't kill Stampy, even when I had a rocket launcher. Thing's invincible."
"Well then, we're screwed, aren't we?"
"Nomu," Iz interjected. "What happened to you?"
Nomu told them the story of how he was blasted by a Cacodemon. Jack had already heard it on the way there, he absent mindedly cast his lampo spell on the flying Panics. He was trying to figure out how to aim better, he actually hit and killed two of them, despite their rapid flight patterns. Now there were only two fighting Stampy. He slashed through both of them at once, then turned to look at the four heroes.
"Uh, guys? RUN!" Jack shouted, taking off. Nomu, Iz and Flynn looked at Stampy coming towards them and also ran.
On the other side, Flynn noticed the body of another Marine. There was something on it, something HUGE and made of chrome. They ran towards it, and Flynn realized what the huge chrome object was.
"What is it?" Iz asked.
"Big…fucking…gun…" Flynn muttered in awe.
"What?" Iz asked.
"It's a BFG9000!" When he realized nobody knew what that was, he explained. "It's the most powerful personal firearm ever created. It technically stands for Bio-Force Gun, but everyone calls it the Big Fucking Gun. There's only three in existence, which means that this dead guy is General Vox!"
Nobody reacted to the General Vox statement, but they were all very interested in the gun. Flynn picked it up and realized it was loaded. He also noticed that General Vox's armor was perfectly intact. What had killed him was a bullet through the head.
Flynn stripped down to his boxers and pulled the armor off of his dead general. Then he got back in his green attire, and picked up his BFG and chainsaw again.
"If this doesn't kill that fucker, nothing will."
Flynn walked back the way they'd come. The earplugs were gone, but he had gotten used to Stampy's noise.
Stampy was drawing closer. Flynn knelt down and heaved the gigantic cannon over his left shoulder. With his right hand on the trigger and his left supporting the weapon, he took careful aim at the behemoth coming around the corner. When it was in full view, he squeezed the trigger and held it. The small glass panels along the gun lit up green, and a low hum emitted from the BFG. The hum got louder, the lights got brighter, until finally a huge discharge of green plasma was let loose from the barrel of the gun. The plasma ball flew straight into Stampy's chest, frying a hole straight through him. Stampy was once again knocked on his ass, but this time he flew backwards into the wall, toppling over a large section of it.
"YES!" Jack shouted. He high-fived Iz and held his hand up for Nomu, but Nomu didn't understand and just stood there. Jack lowered his hand as Iz laughed.
All four heroes were stunned when Stampy slowly heaved himself up and let out the loudest roar yet. Then he raised his rocket-launcher arm and aimed it straight at Flynn, who was frozen in fear.
There was a click, but nothing happened.
"You destroyed the machine part of it!" Iz shouted. "It's almost harmless!"
At that second, using its organic arm, Stampy picked up a chunk of wall and whipped it with all his might at Jack, Nomu and Iz. Iz and Jack scattered, but Nomu drew his sword, lighting-quick, and cut the huge boulder in half. The pieces harmlessly flew around him and hit nothing.
"Harmless, huh?" Jack asked rhetorically.
The three heroes immediately mobilized: Iz poised his spear to throw, Jack summoned the Green Rose, and Nomu got into a battle stance. Flynn, meanwhile, was taking cover, presumably to reload his BFG, or something.
Jack leapt through the air, landing right on Stampy's head. He immediately began swinging at Stampy's horns. This pissed him off beyond belief, and Stampy tried to swipe Jack off of him. Jack braced for impact, then laughed out loud when he realized the beast couldn't touch his head. Its biceps were too big.
Jack was about to attack again, when the beast started shaking its head. Jack almost fell, so he jumped down, slashing at the thing's back as he went down.
Nomu, holding his sword over his head, ran towards Stampy. He felt his energy returning to him now, he could fight again. There was pain on his burned body, but he could deal with it. When he was in arm's length of the beast, Stampy balled his arm into a fist and tried to crush Nomu with a hammerfist strike. Nomu slashed his sword downwards, connecting with Stampy's fist right as it would have hit him. Jack saw this, and truly appreciated Nomu's raw strength; his sword blow actually redirected Stampy's fist into the ground. Then Nomu ran up its arm, slashing all the way. When he reached its shoulder, he jumped up and landed on its head. There he cut one of the horns all the way off, Stampy howled and ran his head straight into the wall. Stampy was relatively unfazed by this, but Nomu, who tried to jump off, was thrown into the wall and possibly broken his back. Jack rushed to him.
Iz was holding off for a shot. Finally, the beast stopped moving for a few seconds, and Iz threw the spear with all his might. It his dead in Stampy's left eye, Stampy howled again and threw his head around violently. Now there was another problem: Nomu was close to dead, Iz was weaponless, and Jack was trying desperately to help Nomu.
Then Iz heard a low hum from the tower. He looked and saw Flynn with the BFG, aiming it at Stampy's head. The green plasma ball flew straight upwards, this time completely incinerating the bottom half of both of Stampy's legs. The beast was crippled, half-blind, and bleeding beyond belief. That it was still alive was a miracle.
Flynn took care of that when he used his chainsaw to cut a straight hole in Stampy's skull. Stampy was now effectively dead.
Iz had to look. Withdrawing his spear from the beast's eye, he peeked into the crevice on its skull. He was amazed; the beast's brain was only half normal brain. The other half was some kind of advanced computer.
"Iz. Nomu's pretty bad."
Iz realized what was going on and ran to Nomu.
"His back's broken," muttered Flynn in awe.
Nomu was looking sadly at them, a lone tear running down his face. He tried to say something to Jack, but nothing came out.
"Wait! I saw one of those blue things in the tower!" exclaimed Jack.
"Oh, yeah!" Iz remembered happily. He wiped a tear off of his face and picked Nomu up, careful not to hurt him. Then he ran back towards the tower, through the doorway. Flynn and Jack were following.
Iz literally threw Nomu onto the blue orb. Nomu landed on it with a thud. At first, Jack thought the fall would kill him before the magic orb had time to work, but he was thankfully wrong. The blue orb exploded into the thick liquid, then expanded to cover all of Nomu's body. The orb then dissolved into his skin and disappeared. They all watched in fascination as the burns disappeared, scars vanished, and his body seemed to straighten itself out. Then Nomu got up and dusted himself off.
"Wow. Those things are fucking amazing."
"T-thank you all. I cannot express my gratitude for this."
"Don't mention it," Iz replied. "Just don't ever scare us like that again, okay?"
Nomu smiled. "I'll try not to."
"Well, guys, it looks like we're stuck in this world," Iz said.
"Fuck…I just realized that. If there was a Rose in this world, it would have showed up with the Emos," Jack sighed.
"Unless somebody wields it. What's our plan?" Nomu asked.
"You guys know something? There's no giant heart in this world."
"Giant heart!" Flynn interjected. "Where'd you see it?"
"Uhhh…not here, if that's what your wondering. Why?"
"We saw that on the way to Phobos. It was orbiting Mars. We were gonna report it, but there were other problems we needed to deal with."
"Well, there's one loose end tied up. So, we're stuck here. What else could go wrong?"
The four heroes looked up at the red sky as their minds grasped their desperate situation. Iz thought about his recent attempt on Jack's life, and silently thanked God he had failed and not been discovered. But, he knew in the pit of his stomach eventually he'd have to finish the job. He quickly wiped a lone tear off of his face before anyone could notice. Was the tear for Sandra or for Jack?
Flynn, shouldering the chainsaw and holding the BFG with two hands at his waist, was also thinking. His family was dead. His friends had been slaughtered. There was nobody for him anywhere on Earth, or Earth's moon, or Mars. But…if his new friends' story was true, maybe he could move somewhere completely new. Start over. A clean slate. Something he prayed for every night.
Nomu was thinking hard. He'd never stopped in his world to see his brother or mother. That was assuming they were alive. He dearly hoped nothing had happened to them. He'd changed over the past couple weeks; not just physically but mentally. He felt now stronger than ever; his theory was that the worse your injury was, the stronger you became when the strange blue orbs healed you. True, he was tougher. His muscles had all increased in size, and he felt he'd learned much in the art of combat. But Jack had taught him as well: even after he was separated from his love, even after leaving his family behind on a quest, even after all that he'd gone through, Jack still managed to be upbeat and cheerful. Jack felt O.K. after all that had happened, and Nomu knew he could continue too. Even after his pregnant wife was slaughtered, even after his sister was raped and murdered before his eyes, even after his village was plundered and he was taken and forced to fight for Hidetora. Even after his brother and mother had abandoned him, leaving him and his father to fight against Hidetora's men. He was beginning to understand the politics of feeling O.K.
Jack himself truly was O.K. He had a good feeling about the future, and knew that eventually, everything would work out. He would see Carol again,he would see his father and sister again, he would sometime soon return home. And he would save the worlds from The 17th. He looked up at the sky and thought of the poem he'd made off the top of his head for Carol when they'd first met, shared their first kiss in the river, when they first made love. He'd had a history with her, but for some reason they'd always kept it a secret, always pretended to be just friends in public. The poem went:
I'll always love you, as God himself knows,
My baby, my angel, my secret rose.
He closed his eyes and made a wish, as the Red Rose appeared in his right hand.
The four heroes made themselves spots on the soft ground and slept.
Chicago, Illinois…
It was dark outside, but still warm. 'It must be summer here,' Carol thought to herself, walking down the beach alone. She walked further down and sat with her feet in the water, the waves slowly caressing her feet. She looked to the sky, there was a full moon. A tear slowly rolled down her face and onto her leg. Tomorrow, she'd have to get to work. Tomorrow, she wouldn't be able to just sit and think about Jack, and her family, and how messed up her life had become. Tomorrow she couldn't cry. But tonight, just tonight, she could.
Carol Beckette closed her eyes and lay in the sand, and was soon asleep. She dreamt of when she was 13, and first met Jack. A smile slowly crept to her face, and for the first night in two weeks, she slept soundly.
And our heroes rested…
Epilogue
A lone warrior, holding in both hands large twin scimitars, marched himself up to the gigantic, wrought-iron gate and thrust both swords into the lock.
He was tall, at least six feet four. He wore elaborate, bright-red armor all over his body. Gleaming scarlet spikes jutted from his helmet and shoulders.
When nothing happened, he knew he had no choice but to climb over the gate. Sheathing his swords in an X shape across his back, he jumped onto the first horizontal bar of the gate, about a foot off the ground. There were more bars every three feet or so. The warrior looked up at the endless gate and sighed. It would be a long climb, and an even longer fight afterwards. But he had to do it. He would find his son.