Fate, Rondarr reflected, was like a game of chance in a gambling den. Its patterns were odd and impossible to map out, and even those who tried to cheat the system met with cruel surprises. Still, a comforting certainty existed: in the long run, the house always won.
Staring at the unconscious cupidaemon in his cryo capsule, Rondarr thought of himself as the grandest of casino owners, finally collecting his long overdue winnings. Readouts showed the suspension process at 75% completion and rising. Just a little longer and he could cash in an astronomical fortune. Only one thing could make this victory all the sweeter…
Oh? An alert from the ship cognition – intruder on the perimeter scanners. Subject was a Tendricite.
Rondarr glanced at the readout – 81% complete. Plenty of time for some amusements.
Time to end to this drawn-out charade. Time play a final hand with the Night Wraith.
Winner takes all.
Winds lashed, storm clouds loomed and night fell cold and savage by the time Nikki pedaled herself into Glenberry's unsavory downtown. Sleazy motels, dive bars and strip clubs lined the streets, and not the glamorous big city joints, but the sketchy ones with faded marquees and peeling paint. She kept her head down.
The pain biting into her arm stopped when she approached a fenced lot scheduled for demolition. Isn't this where that worker jumped off the building? Anton had told her something about a suicide case. She looked up at the rusted bones of an old high-rise apartment. All the windows had been punched out and the inside hallways would be gutted of drywall and wiring. Just a shell of concrete and support beams waiting for controlled explosives to collapse it like an accordion. Coming Soon – Tea Leaf Spa, the placards declared under the warning labels about demolition in progress. Maybe it was just her imagination but when the wind picked up the whole building seemed to sway and creak.
Celeste was definitely here, there was no imagining that. The entrance gates had been forced open and an ugly pink vespa was parked next to the opening. Nikki dropped her bike and jogged to greet the silver hummingbird perched on the motorbike handles.
"Cogni, where's Celeste?"
"Greetings, Nikkeeee-da. Ki-Celeste has entered the premises."
Flashes of light snapped across the third floor. Onlookers would have shrugged them off as the sparks from a welding iron, a late-working contractor pulling overtime. Nikki recognized the blue flames of Celeste's laser rifle. She's fighting up there!
For the first time since she'd clamped on the slave bracer Nikki found a moment of cold clarity. What am I doing? Running into an alien firefight, no training, no weapons and all for a woman who hated her? You can't do this, kiddo.
"Do what, Nikkeeee-da?"
Nikki turned to the nosey AI. Had she spoken aloud again? Maybe she couldn't help but at the very least she intended to wring an overdue explanation from Cogni's neck.
"Why do you keep adding 'da' to my name? I know Celeste is your 'Ki', your captain, but what's 'da' mean?"
"The suffix designates you as a friend. Ki-Celeste told me to refer to you as such."
Friend. Even during those first hours wracked with suspicions, Celeste had been willing to call her a friend. Well that clinches it. "Cogni, follow me. We've gotta do whatever we can to help Celeste."
She jogged a few steps before realizing the camera bot remained at its perch. "You stupid idiot," Nikki growled, not quite sure if she was referring to Cogni or herself. Alone, she raced for the building, growing more uncertain the taller it grew. C'mon, Nikki, you've stormed hundreds of evil hideouts! Except raiding Shinra Headquarters or Kefka's Tower always came with reset options.
A service elevator had been bolted to the building and she stepped into the wire cage, mashing the button for floor three. While the noisy box rolled up its chute she double-checked her pockets to make sure she still had her weapon. Laser pointer? Check.
With the rooms stripped down to metal girders she could see all the way through the floor, and she eased her nerves with fantasies of deploying X-ray vision. I see her! Celeste, her hood drawn and her rifle ready, was crouched behind a stack of drywall panels, radiating a badassness that made her want to dive head-first into third-person cover-based shooters. The Norai would exhale, listen, and then whip her barrel around the corner to lay down suppressing fire.
Red laser bolts pumped into her drywall defense, tossing smoke and cinders into the air. Nikki flinched at the figure stomping through the haze, a hunchbacked dinosaur with a portable cannon in his claws.
The aliens had maneuvered themselves into a stalemate: Celeste was pinned with nowhere to move beyond her dwindling cover. Rondarr was incapable of advancing. Whenever his claws clacked against the metal floor, her rifle blasts forced him to retreat. Their game was locked in check but the poacher still sneered confidently, and Nikki watched his black claws dance across a wrist-top console as he added a new pawn to the board.
A trickle of dust was all the advance warning before the roof above Celeste collapsed. The adolescent garduk – tiger-sized and plated with spiky black armor – dived at its prey. Nikki hissed foul - No fair double-teaming her! - but Celeste was too swift to be caught again, rolling away and leaving the monstrous claws to sink into metal instead of blue flesh. Her fingers plucked a grenade from her belt and pitched it at the garduk.
Darkness burst from the container, a smokescreen so thick that Nikki swore Celeste had been storing a black hole in a can. The blinded garduk snorted and reared its head, and when the smoke cleared it stood alone and befuddled.
Rondarr's gravely cackle echoed through the empty floor. "More diversions, plant eater?" His tongue snapped at the air like a whip. "We don't need eyes to hunt you, not when you reek like a Tendricite slave." His claws tapped further commands to his collared beast – Nikki's arm prickled again – and the garduk pressed its face to the ground, snuffing the floor like a bloodhound.
Still haven't noticed me, Nikki thought. From her vantage point she could see Celeste crouching behind a corner girder and struggling to catch her breath. She needed a chance to recover but the garduk was on her trail already. "Hey, over here! Over here, come get me!" She didn't think, the words simply leapt from her throat, and her fists rattled the elevator cage for extra attention.
The garduk whipped its head, target-locking the elevator, and it raced at her.
Oh crap. Nikki mashed the button for the roof just as the tiger-sized jaws smacked into the elevator cage, front paws raking at the mesh and nostrils sniffing furiously. Nikki accelerated upwards – the garduk smacked its head on the ceiling and fell off, but it was undaunted, racing up the stairwell in pursuit.
Lavender flowers and sweat. As she zoomed upwards Nikki realized that she still had Celeste's musk all over her. It thinks I'm her, and she gave a final, morbid laugh, wondering how any half-intelligent creature could equate her with a goddess.
A polite ding announced the rooftop arrival. In a race between stairs versus elevator there was no contest when the opponent was an adrenaline-infused space beast. The salivating jaws awaited her across the roof, and as soon as the elevator cage whirred open the garduk sprinted for its meal.
Nikki wasn't expecting death to be humorous, but when the garduk smacked flat against the empty air – front paws spread and tongue lolling like a hideous plush doll suction cupped to a window – she waited to see if there would be a drumroll punchline. The unconscious garduk merely slid to the ground, its nails dragging crackles of static through a ship-sized cloaking field.
A ship! Without the threat of being eaten to distract her, Nikki could see the detached front section of the heavy cruiser Celeste had shot down two nights ago. Dust from the demolition site had collected against its light-reflecting hull, allowing Nikki to follow its boxy outline like a connect-the-dots puzzle.
The boarding ramp had also been left open, leaving a floating door to nowhere in the air, so there was that too. Observation skills: you suck at them, Nic-hoe!
There was more: a human body sprawled at the foot of the ramp like a discarded garbage bag. A young man, dark-skinned with dreadlocks. "Anton?"
Nikki rushed to her friend's side and shook him for a reaction. His body was cold to touch and his hair was white with ice crystals like he'd collapsed in a blizzard. What was he doing here? "Anton, c'mon dude, wake up! Say 'fuzzy pickles'! Say something!"
"Unn… Gen Three Pokémon all had shit-tier concepts. Over-designed as fuck."
Nikki slapped him across the face. "Fuck you! Hoenn was Gardevoir's gen!" Nobody trash-talked her waifu! "Are you seriously forgetting Gen Five where they made Pokémon out of garbage bags and ice cream cones? I mean, what the fuck, where's my dolphin pokemon, Game Freak?"
"Ow! Okay, Ralts line excluded and Unova was shit. Geez, I'm awake." Then Anton's face sobered with memory. "Nikki? Shit, you've gotta run, there's a –"
"A giant lizard man with a spaceship? Yeah, I got the update. Oh, and I told you so!"
Anton grimaced as she raised him to a sitting position. "Yeah, yeah. I just wish your conspiracies didn't hurt like a ton of bricks. This freak jumped me when I came here for a job. Put me in this –" Another memory. "Nikki, he brought a girl with him. That's why he thawed me out and dumped me. So he could swap her in! I heard him talking to himself, bragging about how he'd bagged a perfect trophy; that he was gonna sell her or skin her for parts."
He was fighting to stand up but Nikki hushed him. "Hey, chill." Oh. "Or maybe don't. Sorry. Look, I'll get the other girl. Can you walk?" Anton's muscles were stiff as ice – probably still full of it too – but when she tried to help he shrugged her off.
"I can do this. Just save the princess."
She smiled. A nerd to the bitter end. "I'm on it. Just hope she's still in this castle."
Jogging up the ramp took her into a cramped metal container, the polar opposite of Celeste's spacious and sleek vessel. Rondarr must have been desperate to eject with just this cockpit. Everything was stuffed tight with bulky control panels lit by angry red overhead lights. There was room enough for a pilot's chair, and behind that a human-sized cylinder rose from the floor, radiating cold air like a refrigerator. Nikki wiped the frost from the glass and recoiled.
"Kyu?" The cop from the beach? She was the kidnapped girl? The little thing looked unconscious, a pale blue sheen overtaking her sleeping skin, and what did he do to her hair? Wild locks of pink and white flared out from the police officer's scalp.
"Ta cho chu-nan?" Her rescue was interrupted by an angry black security camera dropping into her face, a dark and humorless version of Cogni that glared at her with a menacing red lens. "Cho don asaroizu nan mugara!" White emergency lights started blinking across the roof. Shit, it hit the alarm.
Nikki jammed her hand into her pocket and pulled out a pencil-sized tube with a key-ring attachment. She blasted the laser pointer into the AI's camera lens, and the robot shrieked and recoiled, rocking wildly on its segmented arm and bashing its body against the ship walls.
"Booyah, Black Mage casts Blind!" Nikki taunted. Okay, gotta rescue the babe. A reptilian roar had just ripped through the building; she had a good feeling Rondarr had gotten his computer's memo.
The freeze capsule was idiot-proof, thank goodness, with big and obvious red levers on its side for unlocking. The glass panel hissed open with a spray of icy mist and the police girl slumped into her arms. "Kyu, you awake?" She was breathing in fitful spasms and Nikki wondered if it was safe to yank her out of sub-zero temperatures so quickly. The girl's hands clung reflexively to her sweater and Nikki shivered as the heat drained from her body.
She was wondering how best to carry Kyu when the rhythmic bang of clawed feet rattled the ship. Oh crap…
Fate, Rondarr decided, was cruel and merciless as the burning stars. Just when he had the impudent Tendricite pinned in his crosshairs an alert chimed in from his cognition: an intruder aboard the ship. Cursing all the higher powers – the stars, the void, the cupidaemons and their damnable planet – Rondarr threw himself out a window, catching his fall with razor claws that gouged handholds as he sprinted up the side of the building with the speed of a golga lizard on stimulants.
He flipped onto the rooftop and dashed up the boarding ramp in time to see they cryo tube opened and the cupidaemon on the floor with … the blue-haired female!
They stared at each other, the desperate hunter and the unwitting prey, united at last, and Rondarr barred his teeth in delighted grin as he switched the ramp to close. Two priceless rarities, all his! Now, if that winged beast would stay unconscious just a moment more …
A moment more. It was all he asked for but fickle fate, at that moment, chose to deal him a wild card. The cupidaemon opened her eyes. By the void, NO!
The pink-haired monster bolted upright, latched onto the human like a parasite and the pair phase-shifted through the floor. Rondarr dived to seize them but only caught a face-full of metal panels. He roared and mashed the flooring into scrap. Gone… and now she'd go intangible and invisible, impossible to retrieve. His perfect capture, stolen away in the blink of an eye, all because of –
Rondarr flung himself into his command chair, scrambling to activate sensors. Four lifeforms on the topmost level, and external cameras confirmed one of them as the Koru-Shikai. The wretched herbivore, the condescending mammal; the slave who didn't know her place.
Rondarr's rage-fueled claws twitched erratically as they traced over the weapons console, hovering over the many options for capturing live prey: gas canisters, electrified netting, tractor beams.
He passed over them all and powered up the laser canons.
"What the-?" A moment ago Nikki had been huddled with Kyu inside the ship, fumbling for her laser pointer and desperate to escape. Now she was flat on her back and looking at the underside of the ship while the tiny officer shivered against her chest.
"Urgh, Pluto's popsicle … phasing hurts when you're … half-dead…" She watched Kyu vomit up a sparkly pink sludge – playdoh and glitter glue? – before wiping her unladylike mouth and scanning her rescuer.
"My little champ…" Her green eyes smiled weakly. "Shit, I knew you'd… come in handy just… never saw something like this happening. When we're safe, you're getting the mother of all sexy lap dances, kiddo."
Nikki ignored the fevered ranting. "What just happened?" she asked. Kyu's eyes glanced guiltily up at the spaceship hull.
"Oh. That. Must've been an … emergency escape hatch! Yeah, nice find, champ." Groaning, she rolled off Nikki's chest, hissing whenever she moved her mangled and bloody left hand. "Ugh, I'm spent. Champ, think you can … be my knight in shining armor … a bit longer?"
"O-okay." How did someone keep up that fast-talking charm after being beaten to a pulp and flash-frozen? Nikki grabbed Kyu under the shoulders and started sliding them out from under the ship.
On his own, Anton had crawled into the elevator and Nikki shoved the injured girl into his hands with an order to "get her out" before punching the ground button and letting them escape. She wasn't leaving, not until she found Celeste.
A snarl from behind was all the warning she got that the garduk was back on its feet. It charged, and blue laser fire blasted its flank, throwing the monster over the safety railing and down fifteen floors. Nikki peeked over the edge to inspect the spread-eagled body. It was still twitching. Death spasms, right? Then she turned to the hooded sniper kneeling across the rooftop. Celeste stood and ripped off her hood.
"Nicole? Pa na isho, what are you doing here?" Her bellow was equal parts fury and concern.
"I … I came to help. There was, he had a -"
"Your arm!" Celeste seized the wrist holding the slave bracer like a blood-sucking tick. In a flash she ripped it clean off. "These fuse with your skin with prolonged contact! What were you thinking?"
"I had to find you! I had to tell you I'm -"
"Enough!" Celeste snatched her wrist again, forcing her to the elevator. "You have no place here." She mashed at the buttons for service, stopping only when her ear caught the crescendo whine of a charging generator. Nikki was thrown to the ground just as a bolt of crimson plasma ripped the elevator to shrapnel.
"Anton!" Nikki imagined the elevator car hurtling downward; had they made it to the ground? No, I can see them! She could make out a pinprick figure limping away with a human-sized bundle in tow. Thank goodness! So what about us? She and Celeste turned to the cruiser, engines screaming as it rose above them like a shadow of death. Spotlights blinded them from the targeting reticles sweeping the roof and the canons unloading from its underside; charging for a second bombardment.
"My god…" It was all Anton could manage. Craning his neck up at the airborne ship and the explosion that had blossomed from the rooftop. Nikki's still up there! His heart jackhammered against his ribs but his human cargo didn't seem to appreciate the dire straits.
"Oh please, I've seen bigger," she snorted, and then she chuckled to herself until her laughter turned to a hacking cough. "Course these big, metal toys are oh-so-breakable. It'd be a shame if someone phased through its circuitry and ripped out some important shit."
Anton looked at the flippant police girl, ready to chew her out. He stopped and looked again. Her good hand – "Are you carrying … electrical cables?"
The hunter and the human. Rondarr had them both locked down, and he savored the horror on their faces as his claws leaned into the firing trigger.
Blue warning message flashed over the viewscreens. Rondarr glanced quickly.
He glanced again, and he roared.
"System failure?"
The fiery roar of the ship's thrusters sputtered and flickered like a dry lighter. The lights along its hull winked out and the engine pitch dimmed downward in a tired sigh. The metal behemoth hovered in the air for a defiant second and then gravity gave the wayward child a good yank.
Nikki locked eyes with Celeste. "Run," the hunter ordered, and they were both sprinting in opposite directions as the metal meteorite plunged towards the roof.
The impact threw Nikki off her feet. A shockwave of concrete that rippled outward and flung her into the safety railing, skinned, battered and overwhelmed by a persistent ringing in her ear. That was the exhale, the explosive thrust outward. Then the roof caved in like a sinkhole, inhaling concrete – and her – into the crumbling center maw.
Nikki screamed as she slid downward. Her fingers instinctively scrambled for a handhold. At the very edge her arms and legs wrapped around the bent frame of an I-beam overlooking the pit and all the unlucky debris that she had almost followed. Five floors below, Rondarr's ship had scraped to a halt. The building teetered and groaned, now only a sneeze away from tumbling like a deformed Jenga castle.
Nikki yelped as her beam bent another five degrees.
"Nicole?" She risked a glance up. Celeste stood on the opposite end of the rooftop gap, surveying the wreckage for safe passage.
"Celeste!"
"Te nai, Nicole! Stay where you are!" Celeste had removed her shoes and now the alien was leaping between ledges and outcroppings like she was a kid hopping between furniture. At every landing her cloven feet spread and gripped the narrow beams like suction cups. "I'm coming for you," the Norai assured her, but all around them the building continued to shudder and splinter.
I'm gonna die, Nikki realized. She'd made it past the garduk, past Rondarr and his ship but even if Celeste got close enough how would they get out of this wobbling wreckage? This was it, this was game over!
And if this was the last moment of her life, she was determined to go without regrets.
"I'm sorry," Nikki hollered across the chasm. "Celeste, I'm sorry I said I never wanted to see you again! I'm sorry I said all those awful things and that I looked through your photos. I'm sorry I wrecked your projector!" The girder bent again and she had to actively squeeze to keep herself attached.
"Don't look," Celeste commanded. Her voice was closer but still too far away to reach. "Keep speaking, it will help to calm yourself."
Calm herself? How could she stay calm when she was about to slide off this beam like skewered meat and go splat?
"I'm such a shitty person," Nikki sobbed. "I act like I'm so smart and too good for everyone else but I'm just scared! I'm scared people are gonna hurt me!"
Five floors below, an emergency hatch blasted free of the ship.
"I keep saying how crappy this world is but I'm the one who's messed up! I keep thinking everyone's out to get me so I push them away and treat them like crap. And I treated you worst of all." Her eyes were shut tight but tears still managed to escape.
"You were sweet to me," she sniffled. "You listened to what I had to say, you forgave me when I lied about being from the government. When you … you kissed me you made me feel like the most important person in the world; like I was actually worth something!"
The beam sagged again, prompting her to squeal. "So I'm sorry! I'm sorry I was so shitty to you, I'm sorry I was an awful friend! Because I don't hate you, Celeste. You're the coolest, most awesome, most wonderful person I've ever met and I don't ever want you to leave! Celeste, I -"
The beam bent a full ninety degrees and as she slid, footfalls thudded behind her. Nikki felt a harsh yank catch her collar. Strong arms pulled her into the air, gripping her in a possessive embrace.
"I'm here for you," Celeste panted. "I'm here for you, Nicole."
A roar from below. "Tendricite!" Nikki looked down and found the black barrel of a laser cannon staring back. Rondarr was hanging directly below them, bloody and enraged from climbing five floors of wreckage. One arm clung to a metal pipe, the other aimed a gun at their heads. Nikki shrieked, but Celeste just rolled her eyes and extended an arm, letting the crystal bangle around her wrist shimmer as it called for her weapon.
The poacher took a wobbly shot. The plasma burst flew wild. Celeste's rifle shrieked into her grip and she returned the favor. Rondarr's shoulder detonated in a spray of blood and the reptile plummeted to his ship with a heavy crunch.
Nikki waited for the one-liner, the witty farewell, but Celeste just holstered the weapon and wrapped both arms around her rescued human. The poacher wasn't worth the wasted breath.
Five stories below, Rondarr's eyes followed the blue-haired treasure vanish from sight. So… close…
Gingerly, Celeste walked them backwards to more solid footing – though 'solid' at this point was a nebulous term. Nikki's feet brushed the ground and she was turned about. The strong hands never let her go but she could finally look up into Celeste's eyes, pooling equal parts with fear and relief.
"You're such a fool," the alien scolded through her tears. "You're such a fool to come running after someone like me."
"I had to see you again. I didn't want you leaving and thinking this was just another awful planet with awful people." Nikki swallowed a hard lump. "I'm sorry I wrecked your projector."
Celeste's finger brushed a tear from her cheek. "You only dented the casing. I shouldn't have yelled at you. You're not Celara," she added. "You're so much more than Celara."
Nikki buried her face in Celeste's chest. "So," she began, "how do we get down?" All around them the moan of twisting metal filled the air, the cries of a weakened structure struggling to hold itself together. An acrobatic escape, an advanced alien gadget; Celeste would have some way out, wouldn't she?
The Norai only gave a sad smile.
"Just come close to me."
They held each other. It wasn't a proper sedative; it wouldn't numb the pain to come, but feeling the flutter of Celeste's heart against her cheek made Nikki forget everything else around them. We're dancing…
A final, thundering crack and everything collapsed. Screams flew from their throats and Nikki's stomach flew into her heart as the free-fall overwhelmed her senses.
And then, stillness. Stillness and a warm light wrapping around her like a comforting blanket. Nikki opened her eyes and saw Celeste do the same, her body and hair frozen awkwardly in a mid-fall pose. Was this the light at the end of the tunnel? Was this what grandma and grandad had seen? Together, they squinted at the origin of the ethereal glow.
"Kosoko kangai," boomed a voice from the heavens. Huh, so God spoke galactic standard, and she drawled her vowels like a valley girl.
Wait a sec. "Cogni?"
Heaven didn't dominate the sky above, but a blue and white saucer with sickle-wings did blot out the night sky. The afterlife, Nikki realized, looked a whole lot like the underside of Celeste's spaceship, and from heaven's vessel, a tiny hummingbird robot descended from the light to speak with them directly.
"Kosoko kangai, Ki-Celeste. The Shikai-to Subasa awaits your commands."
Wait another sec. "You flew the ship here?"
"Affirmative," chirped the clueless camera bird. "Nikkeeee-da instructed me to follow her towards the vacated build-" The AI stopped and released a long "Ohhh. You were referring to my remote unit. Oops."
Celeste's tears of joy fell off her cheeks and hovered in the tractor beam. "Cogni you blessed, blessed fool! I'll never reformat you so long as I live. Now, get us on board."
Cogni spouted off an 'affirmative' and their bodies rose into the light of a gravity-defying alien ray. Below, only dust was visible from the demolition site, dust and the wail of emergency response vehicles. Nikki whispered a quick prayer for Anton and Kyu but her thoughts wandered elsewhere.
Celeste. At the moment of free-fall they'd grabbed each other tightly, and Nikki had yet to pry her arms from the Norai.
"Nicole, you can release me," Celeste assured her. "You are in no danger of falling."
Nikki only squeezed tighter. "I don't wanna let go," she whispered.
And Celeste sighed softly, stroking her hair in return. "I know."
"So … I guess that's everything." The Wraith's Wings had returned to its hiding place in the nature preserve. Safely aboard the ship, Nikki finally had a moment to take stock of events. "No more garduk, no more Rondarr, no more threat to planet Earth."
"Yes," Celeste confirmed, "my objectives have been met." She stood before a suitcase-sized container, stowing an important chunk of debris dragged up with the tractor beam: the severed arm of an adult Slovarian. The rest of Rondarr was probably pancaked flat.
Nikki felt her throat tighten. "So that means you have to leave, right?"
Celeste dismissed the storage case into a wall panel. "To log my bounties and receive payment I will need to report to the nearest Confederacy penal station. Even in hyperspace the journey will last at least two cycles. Your system is far from any civilized worlds."
Right. Celeste had her own life, her own routine to return to and it was far from Earth. Nikki stood and marched for the exit ramp. "I should go then." She would make this swift and clean like ripping off a bandage. It would only hurt for a second.
Oh, who was she kidding? The tears were already threatening to pour; she had to leave before Celeste's last look of her was a blubbering, blue-haired doofus.
"Of course," a voice called after her, "there is no time restriction on Rondarr's bounty, and so long as I store the garduk remains in cryo-freeze they will remain well-preserved."
Nikki stopped and faced the hunter, now flipping a slender hand shyly through her hair.
"So there's no urgency to leave immediate-OH!"
Nikki's running tackle nearly knocked her off her hooves, but Celeste caught and spun her around in the air, laughing and lifting her in her arms so their tongues could meet in a happy flurry.
"There's so much in this world I'd delight in seeing," Celeste purred. Her lips curled in a tease. "Do you happen to know of any lodgings that would accommodate an extraterrestrial bounty hunter?"
Nikki blushed and returned the knowing grin.
"I think I know a place."
Morphine, Anton reflected, was the ambrosia of the gods. Oh Lord did he feel fine!
He'd dragged the kidnapped girl to the outer fence when the building collapsed, washing them in clouds of dirt and debris. From there, it hadn't been long before the first-responders arrived and ambulances carted them both to the hospital for emergency treatment and wonderful, wonderful anesthetics.
Is morphine a hallucinogenic? he wondered. I don't think it's a hallucinogenic, but then how to explain the two gorgeous and otherworldly ladies attending to his injured roommate? The dresses in sparkling pastels, the neon highlights in their hair, and – how could he neglect – the crystalline wings sprouting from their backs?
They were helping the police girl sit up in her bunk, unclipping her IVs and lifting her under their shoulders. "Heyyyy," Anton slurred. "You sh'stay in bed. Bed," he repeated. Wasn't that a pleasant sound? He should say it again. "Behhhhd." Tee-hee-hee!
The angel ladies just rolled their eyes but … Cue? Kyu? The injured girl, what's-her-name – spared him a smile and a wink that gave him an instant stiffy.
"You rest up, okay, Ant-man? You did your part; just leave the rest to us cuties, mm-kay?"
To drive the point home, one of the angel ladies reached over and hit the button for his morphine drip. Oooh! Anton knew which lovely lady he wanted as his private nurse! Now the room was all sparkly, and there was a big, spinning portal in the air, swirling around like – he giggled – like a toilet bowl! The angel ladies're going down the toilet bowl!
The portal shifted hues to a neon blue, and a sudden, sober thought broke Anton's giggle-fest. "S'not over yet, ish it?"
Kyu smile dimmed as the fairies marched her towards the warp-rift. "Not by a long shot, Ant-man," she sighed.
"This is where the shit really hits the fan…"