Chipp and Axl had both taken refuge inside a small shop that cooked entire bowls of ramen noodle soup. They had grown tired from running around all day with very little idea of where they were, who was after them, and where to find the large red man from before.
"I'm just saying…think about it for a second." Axl said in between slurping up a fork full of ramen. The man looked at both men with a weird look but served them anyways. "What if we did travel in time and this is a possible future again? Maybe we've been called here for some purpose. At least I hope so, because this is getting really annoying."
"If this is the future, then I want my fucking money back." Chipp muttered before he sipped the rest of the salty broth from his bowl. "I was kind of hoping the future wouldn't have the same ghettoes, drug pushers and people with bad taste in clothing like when I left. Maybe it's the future that came because I couldn't be there to be the President."
"Well regardless, we're stuck here mate, 'til we figure out what's up and what's down."
"Shouldn't we find a way back to our own time?"
Axl slammed his fist on the counter, causing everyone to look in his direction for a brief moment, including a stern look from the owner of the shop. "You think I haven't been trying to figure that bit out for that past several years? I don't even know how I appeared in your god-forsaken world before, let alone how to get back."
"Woah, sorry about that…"
"Don't you give me that shit. Someone's been playing a cosmic joke on me for the past…however long it's been. I'm starting to get a touch miffed about it all. So if you have nothing else to say, shut your sodding mouth and let's get on with it!"
Chipp shrugged his shoulders. "Okay, geez, sorry I asked."
Axl took a deep breath and then unclenched his hands. "Pardon me, I let myself go for a bit…it's just been years since I last seen my old girlfriend. Even if I did somehow get back to my own time, I wonder if she would even remember who I am."
Chipp and Axl both sat in silence for quite a bit. When it came time to pay the bill, Chipp and Axl both dug through their pockets, only to realize that neither person had any cash money on them.
Dizzy's vision turned white for a moment as she was involuntarily being shuttled through some sort of space. She wasn't exactly sure what to call it, even if she did have a bigger vocabulary with which to describe it, considering she had never experienced this sensation of teleporting before. For the briefest of seconds, she felt a jerking motion, like some cosmic force was tugging her in a different direction than…well, than whatever was considered "forward" in here.
Then suddenly it was over, and she was facing a small blonde girl while standing in a grassy field. It looked like something akin to a park, considering the grass seemed to be the only thing natural in this area while everything else was composed of drab-looking buildings, and frozen in place.
Dizzy blinked a few times and looked again. Yes, everything seemed frozen in place. The people, the clouds, the lights, everything. All Dizzy knew was that it was nighttime, but she didn't recognize this city at all.
"I say," the blonde girl shook her head as she spoke, "That poor cat tries so hard to justify her flight from magic even as she explores every avenue of replicating it through technology. It's quite pathetic."
Dizzy wasn't sure what she meant. The cat? Was it that doctor who had yelled at her just a moment ago?
"She did take the time to wrap a collar around your neck though. Who knows, you might be useful after all."
"What do you want?" Dizzy asked.
"Simple, I'm feeling particularly bored." Rachel suddenly stretched her arms out as her familiars fitted themselves into each hand. "So I wish to fight you."
"Fight? But I…I don't want to fight!"
"I'm sorry, but for you, the time for being a mere spectator has passed. Now show me what you can do."
Dizzy tried to beg Rachel not to fight, but Rachel advanced on her anyways, causing Dizzy to jump back in reaction. She flew up into the air, surprised that there was still air around to fly.
"I see, so those wings aren't just for fashion. But you overlooked one thing, the winds are my domain."
Rachel gestured towards herself, and Dizzy suddenly felt a powerful wind current drawing her closer to the blonde girl until her pink familiar launched itself into Dizzy's stomach, knocking the wind out of her.
"Please stay down. I would prefer it if you simply stayed out of the way. It would make my job easier."
"Stop it." Dizzy muttered as she slowly regained her breath.
"What was that? Are you seriously going to beg me?"
"I SAID STOP!" Dizzy suddenly launched a series of fast attacks at Rachel as she briefly took to the air to dodge. Suddenly, a bluish beam of energy cut across, ripping off some of her hair in the process. Rachel looked to see some sort of large blue mouth floating in the air. And the heterochromatic wings of Dizzy had changed. They were not just wings any more, but they looked vaguely like people: one an angel, the other some sort of demon.
"Oh, this is an interesting development." Rachel mused. "The beastkin has her own familiars?"
"Mistress, who are you talking to?" Gii asked before he found himself sucked up into Nago's body. Everything went dark for a second, until he was fired like a cannonball out of Nago's mouth at Dizzy. Dizzy dodged the shot, but Nago was not amused. "Gah! Let me know when you're going to do that next time!"
"Indeed, manners are underrated these days." Rachel said as she summoned a large rod down from the sky where Gii had hit the ground a moment before. Suddenly, the large blue mouth fired a bluish laser again. Rachel wondered why it would bother to add a visible color to its attacks when an invisible beam would be more effective, but then Dizzy launched herself at Rachel again. Rachel jumped away and planted a second lightning rod in the ground with Gii's mark.
Drawing upon the power of her Sword Armagus, she struck the laser-shooting mouth down with a powerful bolt of electricity. Unfortunately, the moment she turned her attention away from Dizzy, she was struck by a powerful gamma ray attack and sent flying. Nago barely had enough time to form into a shield that would absorb the impact.
When it was over, Nago was growling from the impact as he lay in a puddle on the floor. Meanwhile, Rachel looked up at Dizzy, who seemed to be speaking to the faces that appeared in her wings.
"You are certainly an interesting girl. Perhaps you can be of use soon enough." Rachel stood up and brushed off her clothes, then spoke to her familiars, "Nago, Gii, we're going home for tea now."
"B-but mistress, that thing…" Gii trailed off as he saw Rachel giving him a deadly stare. "…forgive me mistress."
"Y'know, I think you like being punished." Nago said as he hunched over to Rachel's side. His form had difficulty taking another shape after using most of his power trying to defend Rachel from that blast of energy.
"Wait, what do you mean?" Dizzy asked. "Who are you?"
She didn't get an answer as Rachel stepped through a portal and disappeared with her familiars. As she left the scene, the world started up again as the lights and colors of the world came into focus as opposed to the frozen, gray world of before. Dizzy noticed it was nighttime now, and she was standing in some sort of small park in a city. People were walking around and seemed to be enjoying themselves while Dizzy stood there. It felt more surreal than the fight with the strange vampire girl who had talking pets at her side.
Chipp and Axl finally took a moment to catch their breath when they found shelter inside something called a NOL Public Affairs office. Neither of them were quite sure what an NOL was, but they hoped that someone inside could at least tell them where they were and how they could get back, or at the very least provide them shelter from the noodle cart owner who was less than pleased they had decided to "dine and dash."
In a strange contrast to the gritty and run-down streets and buildings they had encountered so far, the office seemed quite open and well lit with various LCD screens and monitors only adding to the ambience. There were plenty of people in the lobby sitting on chairs, standing around, or grumbling to each other about various issues, the air punctuated every so often by someone complaining loudly. The brightly colored NOL propaganda posters on the walls apparently did not help the general mood.
Axl decided to glance at another board that apparently listed the pictures and names of various people wanted by the authorities for one thing or another. Everything from simple bail-jumpers to criminals with a rap sheet longer than a large roll of toilet paper scrolled by. One name suddenly had a red line crossing it out, a criminal named Iron Tager with a face that looked a lot like the fake-Potemkin they had run into earlier.
"Hey Chipp, look!" Axl hissed, "It's that guy we ran into earlier!"
"Looking for someone?" A man in a blue shirt and hat asked Axl. He carried a stack of torn fliers in one hand and tapped his earpiece with the other. "I'm assuming you must be a Vigilante, not many people would dress in such strange clothing."
"Hey, respect the Union Jack, mate!"
The man rolled his eyes. "Sure, fine, you wanna dress in a dead nation's clothes I don't give a damn. Look, I don't know why you want to go against the Iron Tager, but it's a moot point now. The devil's already been captured by NOL forces and being transported elsewhere."
"Where can we find him?"
"Don't know. Jail, I suppose, though there are only a few I can think of capable of holding something that size." The man pointed elsewhere on the big electronic board. "Perhaps you'd like to try catching someone a little less life-threatening? Maybe a B-class criminal?"
"Look, sir, we just want to know where we are."
"NOL Public Affairs office, Kagutsuchi. Now if that's all…"
"What is the NOL?"
The man stared at them slack-jawed for a moment, unsure of how to respond. Then he replied, "Okay, now I know you're just making fun of me. If you have any non-stupid questions, take a number from the general information kiosk and get in line like everyone else."
Having said that, the man turned and walked away. As Chipp and Axl grumbled to each other about their luck, the man stopped as some more information was carried out over his earpiece, then turned around and came back. "By the way, I'm told there are a couple of people who left a nearby store without paying. You wouldn't happen to know anything about them, would you?"
"What? How could you possibly think we had anything to do with that ramen cart owner?" Axl asked.
"Who said anything about a ramen cart?" The man raised his eyebrow. "You see, it seems that one of these was wearing a see-through shirt, and a second was wearing a jacket with a pattern that looked a lot like the one your English friend has on."
Chipp's eyes looked to his left and right. There was a subtle movement of blue-shirted troopers wading through the crowd, trying not to panic any of the civilians in the lobby.
"You're either very brave, or very stupid by taking shelter in a Public Affairs Office. Whatever the case, you're trapped now. Surrender and you'll get a light sentence. Refuse and this will get ugly."
Suddenly the man shouted, "RESISTING ARREST" before either Chipp or Axl could respond and lashed out with a police baton. Chipp's reflexes kicked in as he grabbed his wrist as he thrusted forward and twisted the man's arm around, forcing him to drop the weapon before he threw him into the bounty board.
"Well, guess our choice has been made for us." Axl said, "Couldn't have talked it out, could you mate?"
"Hey, you saw him attack first."
Axl shook his head, "I just wish that one of these time warps sent me to a world where grabbing a weapon isn't everyone's first reaction."
"Quiet, we've got our own problems now." Chipp and Axl both grimaced as they saw the oncoming NOL troopers being a lot less delicate from rushing over to their position and neither of the two had any weapons save for the baton they liberated from an NOL policeman. This was going to get ugly. The only reprieve they had was that all of the potential attackers only had melee weaponry.
Then a brawl began as spectators gathered around, forming a de-facto half circle that covered both the police and the two offenders. Chipp took on two fighters using only the baton, but both of the attackers carried spears and made it tough for him to get inside their block. Whenever he advanced on one, the other would nearly skewer him until he dodged and hopped back.
Axl was reduced to using only his fists and whatever skills he had picked up over the course of his fighting, considering his usual sickle and chain were nowhere on him. However, despite getting a couple of lucky shots in, one man punched him with some kind of metallic glove that delivered a powerful shock to his ribs, knocking the wind out of him for a few seconds. Chipp turned to assist him, but the attackers surrounded him and beat him back as one of them pinned Axl to the ground before he could get back up.
Well, this is not looking good. Axl thought to himself as Chipp got backed up into a corner. The policemen were getting more and more confident. Suddenly, Chipp jumped up, briefly planted his feet on the nearby hard plastic covering the bounty board behind him, and sprung off of it, changing his position. Before he landed, he delivered a flying dropkick to the face of the trooper pinning down Axl with his boot, sending him skidding on the floor.
"Stop them!" One of the troopers shouted, "Bonus to the one who takes them both down!" Every trooper and even some of the civilians in the lobby suddenly looked in their direction and Axl and Chipp both picked themselves up. Someone let out a strangled cry as the troopers surged forward. Most of the civilians parted ways, not wanting to get directly involved with either the attackers or the NOL troopers fighting them. As Axl and Chipp moved to escape from their opponents, they saw themselves facing a mighty bipedal beast who had the face of a striped tiger and the body of a man who spent a little too much time at the gym.
"Hmph, Vigilantes are getting softer these days." The beastkin growled in a very deep voice. "Two of you against several inexperienced NOL police and the best you can do is run away?" Axl noticed that an unconscious man dressed in strange clothes laid down next to the big creature. He also noticed that the creature was wearing metallic bracers that looked vaguely like handcuffs, but didn't seem connected by anything. "So tell me," the beastkin spoke over the two strangers. "If I assist you in capturing these fugitives, what do I get in return?"
The policemen stopped for a moment, but kept their weapons up, "Y-y-you'll get a lighter sentence! I swear, when you're brought before Arbitration…"
The beastkin then looked down at Axl and Chipp without listening to the rest of his sentence. "And you, what will you do for me if I help you escape?"
"You'll have our eternal gratitude and assistance for being the one who won't kill us." Axl said without really thinking. Chipp shot him a look that said "Are you fucking crazy?" and Axl shot him a look back that said "Do we really have a choice here?"
"Hmm, I'm not entirely sure how the two of you would provide assistance…" the beastkin mulled the offer for a bit, "…but I know what my fate will be if I stay here. I will accept your offer for now."
The two troopers with spears lunged forward then as the beastkin blocked them both with his metallic bracers. The troopers attempted to pull their spears back but the metal tips each stuck to a bracer. Without asking for an explanation, Chipp and Axl lunged forward into their guard and each punched a trooper hard in the stomach, forcing them to drop the spears before they followed up with a knee strike to the face. A third trooper with metallic gloves tried to punch Chipp in the face while he was occupied, but the beastkin grabbed his arm and threw him into the crowd before he unleashed his electrical charge.
"We must leave, now." The tiger ripped off the spears accidentally attached to his gauntlets and thrust them into the glass doors at the front of the entrance. Axl wondered in the back of his mind if that was necessary, but he had more important things to worry about as the newly-formed trio escaped from the office and began to run, ignoring the shouting and whistles behind them.
It was going to be a long night.
[Author's Note: Finally, I found some way of making Axl and Chipp semi-relevant again in this story!
So many stories these days are unfinished. I swore to myself that I would at least finish the Calamity Trigger-ish arc before I stopped writing this thing, even if the chapters are slow in coming into my brain.
As always, I welcome your praise and/or criticisms in the reviews.]