Well, here we are, far, far later than I might have hoped. I feel that deserves an explanation. I seem to be starting most of my chapters with those these days.
Basically, in between the Prologue and now, I started university. And badly misjudged how hard it would be. Long story short, nervous breakdown. In any case, I have since recovered and hopefully we can get back into the swing of things. I can't promise a chapter a week or anything - especially right now, as I'll need to get cracking on some essays over the next few weeks - but I will do what I can. Please bear with me.
Guest review replies;
...we don't actually have any guest reviews so let's get to it!
Chapter One: Heads and Tails
"Heads," called Jimmy.
"Darn it!" exclaimed Timmy.
Jimmy gave his friend a smug smirk as he pocketed the nickel, gesticulating to the rest of the group assembled in the lab.
"Well, here we go," he said, "The roulette of probability has landed in my favour. Science has declared, without margin of error, that I am the winner of this-"
"Jimmy," grunted Dani, "We're deciding where to go for lunch, not which of us is going to save the world or anything."
"Forget it, he's on a roll," sighed Timmy as Jimmy broke into the patented 'In-Your-Face Dance.'
Jimmy had a good reason to be in a cheerful mood. It was now four months since the Warlord Invasion, which meant that the bureaucracy had finally managed to get its head around exactly what had happened. Once they had, they had sent an official from the CIA to ask Jimmy for tips about how to prevent the issue from happening again – on top of handing the team a significant reward for helping to save the world. It wasn't enough to make them rich, far from it, but it was finally a sign that the world at large was taking them seriously.
And as anybody could have expected, it went straight to Jimmy's head.
"Let him have this," shrugged Spongebob, "Neptune knows it'll only be a few weeks before something goes horribly wrong."
"And what makes you think that?" asked Jenny, who was still watching Jimmy dance with bewilderment, "Everything's been quiet lately."
"Apart from the apocalypse happening in Bikini Bottom because that pirate stole the formula, Calamitous' eighteenth attempt at the Toybot thing, the space pirates, that weird thing I had where I had a dog and girl sharing my fairies that I had to sign an agreement with Jorgen never to mention again ever..." mused Timmy.
"Yeah!" exclaimed Cosmo, poofing into being behind his godchild, "I'm still having nightmares about the hairballs. And I can't believe Chloe turned out to be a gynoid bent on-"
"Ahem."
Wanda poofed up next to them, holding a legal document.
"Need I remind you two of the 'Never-Speak-Of-This-Again Agreement?" she asked, pointedly.
"No, Wanda," Cosmo and Timmy sighed.
"Alright!" said Jimmy, having finally stopped dancing, "I get to choose where we're having lunch! So, I think we'll go to...Vox, drum roll."
A drum roll was played over the lab's speakers.
"...that new Italian place at the Dimmsdale mall!" announced Jimmy.
Timmy groaned.
"You know I hate that place," he said, "They taste funny and they've got cameras everywhere! I'm ninety percent sure they're a government front or something."
"Too bad, I won the coin toss, let's go," said Jimmy, "Besides, the Feds like us now. What could go wrong..."
As it turned out, Timmy was right.
Falchetto Italian was publically transparent – a family business that traced its lineage back to some of the best restaurants in Venice (although if you ate there, you could clearly tell that the chefs and recipes had clearly been left in Italy). In actuality, it was a front for the most secretive government agency in the world, the archetypical 'men in black' – Majestic-12.
Why did Majestic-12 need to operate out of an Italian restaurant in Dimmsdale, you might ask? The answer was simple. Like the rest of the government, Majestic was very interested in this small team which had saved the world. They wanted to know more.
This was not necessarily a good thing.
Agent Lima – his real name didn't matter – was one of the highest ranking members of Majestic-12. Like all agents, he was non-descript – pale skin (perhaps too pale), dour face, brown hair, standard black suit and tie. Dark shades covered his eyes. He was a spook, inside and out – the kind of man that kept conspiracy theorists awake at night.
This unsettling agent of 'The Man' was currently leaning over a monitor, watching a man across from the restaurant window shopping at a boutique.
"He's been there for an hour, sir," his underling, the bald and portly Agent Bravo, explained, "He's really having trouble picking out one of those picture frames."
"Do you think he's a threat?" asked Lima, "Perhaps one of Fletch...of Thompson's boys?"
"Doubtful," replied Bravo.
"Well, keep an eye on him anyway," ordered Lima, "If he does anything suspicious, bring him in for questioning."
"Yes sir," nodded Bravo, "Will do."
Lima nodded, leaning over to another monitor in the darkened room. He smirked as he saw the Nicktoons enter the mall and raised his fingers to his earpiece.
"Epsilon, X-Ray," he said, "They're in. Shadow them. I want to hear whatever they talk about. I wanna know their secrets."
"Okay, so Ultralord or the Crimson Chin. Who wins?" asked Timmy.
"That depends," replied Jimmy, "How much prep time does Ultralord get?"
"Uh...none. They just start fighting straight away."
"So they just happen to start fighting?" quizzed Jimmy, "That seems illogical. I mean, you'd expect some kind of mind controlling enchantress or something to be involved..."
"Jimmy, you don't need to know why-"
"I kinda do, Turner, I need to know the context here," said Jimmy, "Are they on equal footing? Is it on Earth or somewhere in the cosmos? Is this pre or post-Predicament Ultralord? Is..."
"Ugh! Forget it!"
Timmy sat back on his seat, arms crossed.
The group were at a table outside the restaurant. Timmy and Jimmy had just concluded an abortive debate on the merits of their respective choice heroes, while the others had chosen to ignore them and were talking about something else.
"Hey, guys," said Dani, "You ever wonder if there are parallel universes?"
"You mean like the parallel universe that I'm sitting in right now?" asked Jimmy, clearly unimpressed.
"Not that," elaborated Dani, "I mean other versions of us. Other Amity Parks and Dimmsdales with other heroes, you know?"
Now intrigued, Jimmy scratched his chin.
"Well," he said, "I have thought about it once or twice. I guess that given the infinite nature of the multiverse there'd have to be at least one variation of ourselves out-"
"Excuse me."
A tall, thin man with cropped blonde hair and a black suit walked up to the table, hands behind his back. Jimmy looked up at him, and saw himself reflected in black shades.
"Can I help you?" he asked.
"I couldn't help but overhear you talking about parallel universes," said the man, "I would personally be very careful about where you talked about such things. You never know what might happen..."
Jimmy narrowed his eyes.
"Are you threatening me?" he asked.
"I'm warning you," replied the man, "Dark times are coming, Mr. Neutron. Dark times..."
Jimmy swallowed involuntarily.
"How do you know my-"
"Freeze!"
All eyes shifted to the mall concourse, a few dozen metres away. Two mall cops were waving their batons at an armoured figure who appeared to have stepped out of a slowly disappearing portal. The black body of the armour was bulky and foreboding, which contrasted greatly with the portly bald head sticking out of the top.
"Oh, I'm sorry, I'm a little hard of hearing in my old age," Professor Calamitous said, "Would you awfully mind repeating what you just said?"
"We said freeze, old man," snarled one of the mall cops.
"Ah, right," nodded Calamitous, "Good idea! You first!"
He extended his fist, a hose extending from his wrist. A jet of blue emerged from the nozzle, hitting the mall cop and freezing him in a block of ice. Calamitous sneered and turned to the other cop, who bolted, shouting into his radio for backup.
"Calamitous!" snapped Jimmy, getting to his feet.
"Neutron!" snarled Calamitous.
"Spongebob," said Spongebob, brightly.
Calamitous strode confidently towards the restaurant. The other patrons ran as he approached, although the blonde man simply melted back inside. Jimmy stood up, drawing his Tornado Blaster from the Hypercube in his pocket – his friends followed his lead, staring down their enemy.
"Looks like I caught you napping," sneered Calamitous, "Looks like the hunter has become the...uh...the uh...well, you know, the..."
"But that doesn't make any sense," said Jenny, "Usually you hunt us, right?"
"Good point, good point," nodded Spongebob.
"Besides, there's always some fatal error with your plans that we can exploit," shrugged Jimmy, "Like you forgot to put in a backup power system or there's a weakness in your robot-of-the-week or you spend too long monologing..."
"Funny you should mention that," said Calamitous, who had raised his other fist and extended a missile launcher while Jimmy had been talking.
Calamitous fired the missile towards the table. The group dodged frantically out of the way, Dani dragging Spongebob along with her. A second later, the entire front of the restaurant exploded, masking the area in a thick fog of smoke.
"Did he just shoot at us without warning?" exclaimed Timmy, peeling himself off the floor, "He's not supposed to do that!"
"He's not getting away with it," snarled Jimmy, "Nicktoons, U-"
"Professor Finbarr Calamitous."
The group looked up as the smoke cleared. The suited man – now joined by two other similarly dressed individuals – was standing in front of the wrecked shop facade, staring down Calamitous. The one at the front – a black-haired woman with bobbed hair – was holding an ID card at the professor.
"We demand you surrender that mech suit immediately and submit yourself into custody," the woman said, her voice stoic.
"And who may I say am I surrendering to?" demanded Calamitous, "The Blues Brothers?"
"Agents Epsilon, Bravo and X-Ray, Majestic-12," replied the woman.
Jimmy gasped.
"They're real!" he whispered.
"Who?" asked Timmy.
"Majestic?" repeated Calamitous, "But...in a mall?!"
The blonde man – Agent X-Ray, they now knew – draw a futuristic silver pistol from his jacket, pointing it at Calamitous.
"You've got five seconds, Professor," he snapped, "Stand down."
"X-Ray," hissed Bravo, warily.
"Well, time for a shock phrase, I think," shrugged Calamitous.
He raised his left arm, his finger over a button on his wrist.
"You'll never take me alive!" he bellowed, pushing the button.
A portal began to open up behind him.
"Oh no you don't!" exclaimed Dani, charging towards the professor.
"You're going down, Calamitous!" shouted Timmy, following his friend as Wanda transformed into the Starflinger for him.
"Wait, guys!" called Jimmy.
"Stay back!" shouted Epsilon, "This is a Majestic operation..."
"So long, Majestic!" jeered Calamitous, turning to step into the portal.
"Oh no you don't," snapped X-Ray, aiming his gun.
"X-Ray, no!" shouted Bravo.
Everything seemed to happen at once.
X-Ray pulled the trigger. A pulse of blue light burst from the barrel.
Dani leapt at Calamitous, Timmy skidding to a halt to fire the Starflinger at him.
Calamitous instinctively raised his arm to shield himself.
The pulse slammed into Calamitous' gauntlet, causing it to burst into sparks. It suddenly pulsed in a brilliant green light.
The light grew in intensity, covering both Dani and Timmy and forcing everybody else to look away.
When the light faded, there was no evidence that Calamitous had ever been there – nor was there any that Timmy or Dani had, either.
There was a long silence.
"What the heck just happened?" exclaimed Jenny, at last.
"The bolt," replied Jimmy, "It...it hit Calamitous' gauntlet, the thing he was using to make the portals. It must've gone critical..."
He stared dramatically into the empty space where his friends had been.
"They must be lost somewhere in the multiverse..."
Bravo turned to X-Ray, clearly unamused.
"Real good job, X-Ray," he said sardonically, "Real good job."
"Ugh...ow."
Timmy shook his head and peeled himself off the floor once again.
He was on top of a pile of ballast next to a sprawling and busy railyard. It was strangely familiar, Timmy thought – there'd been one like this in Dimmsdale when he was about five, but it was knocked down and replaced with the mall long ago. Still, it couldn't have been the same one, right?
"Anyone who isn't dead," muttered Dani, crawling to her feet, "Raise your hand."
"I'm fine, I just need a second," replied Wanda, who was still in Starflinger form by Timmy's side.
The three took in their surroundings. Calamitous' robot lay wrecked at the bottom of the ballast pile, but the Professor seemed to be long gone.
"Well, as far as teleportation goes, some random train yard's about as good as you can expect," mused Dani, "Where do you think we are? Chicago? Detroit?"
Suddenly, they heard a strange souring sound. They looked behind themselves.
A sleek, white-and-red train was thundering by at what seemed like an impossible speed. It looked like a European high-speed train, but it had no wheels and was in fact hovering a few feet above the track, which had no rails. It roared through the yard and into the distance, leaving its audience in shock.
"That...that's not normal," said Timmy, flatly.
"I don't think we're in Kansas anymore," agreed Dani.
"I think," added Wanda, poofing into her normal form, "That sign might agree."
She had pointed to a sign above what looked like the entrance to the yard.
OTHERDALE RAILWAY YARDS.
AN: Getting to Otherdale is easy, by the way. It's just a jump to the left...