Forbidden Fusion

by killalao

explicit multiversal adventure with lots of cute girls.

30. The Bubblemen

-chapter 30-

When I awoke the next morning arrived, Phoebe was already awake, but still laying beside me.

"Why did you knock me out?" I asked as soon as I realized I could speak, not forgetting what happened the night before.

"Oh arceus you remember that?" Phoebe quietly replied, making it obvious she didn't intend for me to remember.

"You weren't going to stop thinking about the skeletons, so I helped so you could sleep without nightmares." She explained. "Don't get mad."

"I'm not, but ask next time, ok?"

"I was tired." She defended.

"Well still." I insisted. "Nevermind, let's just lay here for a bit."

"Eheh, that's what I've been doing." She replied.

"Why does my head hurt?, and my leg?" I asked as soon as I realized they were both sore.

"Um...I had nightmares about the skeletons. Sorry eheheh..you slept through the whole thing. " She replied in a very hesitant and understandably nervous manner. It was obvious she was hoping I didn't notice.

"Yeah ok, fine, just don't forget you might have to stay hidden in this world, it wasn't as big a deal in the last one, but in this one."

"Yeaaah, I know." She replied before I could finish, it was obvious she was getting tired of having to stay hidden, it was one of the reasons we originally went on the run, after all.

We layed in bed for about ten or fifteen minutes, until somebody started banging on the door, forcing us to react, more specifically me, as Phoebe didn't want to get out of bed yet, despite being awake for longer. It turned out to be our ex-military friend who we had freed the day before. Most of the group of former slaves we had freed had split up now, and were no doubt exploring this new world, apparently only 8 of about thirty cars in total had followed us, the rest chose to go their own way, we could do nothing but wish them the best, even though they were basically starting from nothing. The cars, being common and well-worn 60-80s models, in a fairly modern world, would not be worth much.

Anyway, I clambered out of bed and quickly got dressed before heading to the front door of the bus.

"Goodmorning, " Our somehow still unknown friend called out as I cracked the door open.

"Goodmorning." I replied in return. "What's going on?"

"I was wondering what you two are going to do now." He said, seeming intensly curious.

"Well, we're going to look for another portal of course." I confidently replied. "We're on a mission to get to the other side of the multiverse."

"Why?" He asked.

"Because once we get there we have a friend who can bring us back to our own world, where our children are." I explained.

"How many worlds have you been through so far?"

"I think this is the fifth or sixth, and not all of them were friendly, I don't know how many more we have to go through." I replied.

"Why? You wanna tag along?" I asked,

"I think it's more interesting than the alternative." He replied.

"You know not all these worlds are peaceful. Hell, there's an entire faction called the space police, that control several worlds, they are extremely strict and they do not like "tresspassers", which they tend to think we are."

"Are they here?" He asked.

"More than likely no, they have a way to detect when portals open up, if they were here they would've found us by now." I replied."And that's just one faction, there's an endless possiblity of evil junk that could be in any of these worlds, some are dead, like yours, some are fairly normal like this one, and others, humans might not even be the dominant species. One place could be quiet and serene, and peaceful, and the next could be overun with zombies. Some of these worlds are in different time periods too, we could end up in a version of Nazi Germany, or somewhere in europe during the black plague, sure it's the adventure of a lifetime, but, keep in mind, anyway that you could imagine dying, whether it be possible in your world, or constricted to the silver screen, is a possibility if you come with us. Zombies, vampires, werewolfs, magic, pokemon, they might not be real in your world, but in others they're as real as you and me."

"Mhm." Phoebe said in the background, still laying lazilly in bed.

"So you can come if you want, just thought it'd be fair to warn you."

"I mean this place seems pretty nice, wouldn't be the worst place to stay, I mean you'd be starting out with nothing, but, it's a lot better than the world you're from."

"Cj, there's nothing you can say that will convince him not to come along." Phoebe called out from the comfort of the bed.

"Heheh, allright then." I replied. "First thing we need to do, is figure out where another portal machine might be, although that's usually easier said than done, sometimes it's in a military base, other times . . . . . well it's usually in a military base, but not always. One time we found one in the ruins of an ancient city."

"So how do we start?" He asked.

"Well, we need to learn more about this world first." I replied. "So far we've spent more time here asleep than exploring, also don't expect to find anything on day one, that almost never happens."

"So what are we going to do then?" He asked, still unsure.

"Well, we should get breakfast." I replied.

"Mhmmm." Phoebe agreed. "Then we can figure out what else to do after that."

"Right." I said while taking a brief look back at her.

"Allright, so you still got a car?" I asked.

"Yeah." He replied.

"Allright then, just follow us for now, I guess." I replied. "Phoebe you ready to go?"

"Yeah, sure, anytime." She replied, not really paying attention.

"You don't plan on getting out of bed anytime soon do you?" I asked.

"It's comfortable here." She cutely replied.

Meanwhile, back in the dead world, a squadron of five blackhawk helicopters arrived at the military base. Inside were yet another faction of survivors we had no way of knowing about, they were strange to say the least, they are wear special suits to protect them from the toxic gas, even though in that world the gas had been so diluted over the years as to not be toxic anymore. They didn't want to risk it. These suits look like a cross between a space suit, and a vintage diving suit, and they come with a built in air-filtration system, that, while bulky, would allow people not immune to the gas to survive. They also contain a nutrient injection system, which means they don't have remove the suit to eat or drink.

They were all scientist, and without the knowledge of anybody, as in this world there were only a few isolated pockets of civilization left, they frequently worked within the confines of the abandoned military base, which is also where they originated, as the suits they wore were developed here. We just lucked out and happened to go there on a day where they were off experimenting somewhere else. It did not take them long to realize we were there, it wasn't that hard, the portal machine was left out in the open along with 30-40 cars and trucks that were left behind. While not being as barbaric as the slave masters, isolation and prolonged periods of simply wearing the suits had not been kind on them, and their sanity suffered as a result, it had been years since any of them had eaten food, drank liquids, directly contacted anything outside of their suit, or really anything that a normal human would regularly partake in, in a way they had become something else entirely, they were bubblemen, as they had forgotten what life was like before they had donned their suits. They were cold, mysterious, and machine-like, and also quite cowardly, and while most of them were originally just scientists, not used to combat, over the years they learned what they had to to keep themselves secret, and while they did their very best to avoid conflict, they were quite ruthless and unforgiving, more than willing to kill to further their cause which was no longer clear. They were led by Dr. Benjamin Volkheim, one of the ones responsible for designing the suits in the first place, over the years this leadership gradually turned into something not unlike idol worship, making Volkheim something of a messiah to his fellow bubblemen.

"It appears somebody has found our project." One of them spoke in a voice that was heavilly muffled by his suit.

They thoroughly investigated the scene.

"We hadn't finished testing it yet." Another spoke up with a voice just as muffled. "Do you think they survived?"

"It's possible, but improbable, they could have ended up inside a volcano for all I know."

"Should we go after them?"

"Don't be stupid, remember the plan, keep reprogramming the portal until it finds it's way to a world without humanity, a pure world where we can finally get rid of these suits.

"Do you think they were from the city? The one with all the cars?"

"Maybe."

"Do you wanna see if there's anybody left over there? I know we've kept hidden from them since they became hostile, but we need some test subjects, and judging by the amount of cars parked here there can't be too many of them left."

"Yes, that sounds like an excellent idea, send teams D and E immediately, and capture anyone you find, if there's too many, then abort, and pull outta there."

Minutes later, 2 of the 5 helicopters left the base, bound for the city.

Anyway, back in the new world, we got breakfast from a rest stop vending machine somewhere outside the city, as it wasn't designed to prevent Phoebe's powers from working inside it, we could get food out of it without breaking the machine. We decided it would be easier to get away with this than trying to take food from a restaurant, which would require Phoebe to reveal her powers to a large amount of people. After we had aquired enough candybars to last awhile, we headed into the city to do some exploring. The candybars here were completely different to the ones we were used too, though some were very similiar, for instance, there was a candybar here that was like a Caramelo, but instead of several little sections, it was just one big section and was about the size of a normal candybar, even the chocolate was different, as it was much harder than a caramello to keep it from easilly breaking, it was apparently made by a company named Cottingham, and aside from caramel there was also a version filled with nugat, and one with a kind of peanut-butter paste, similiar to reese's. The hard chocolate it was made of was unlike anything I had seen on a candybar before. Another bar was aptly named Toffee Crunch, and it was basically a bar filled with stiff caramel and toffee bits, with even more toffee bits embedded in the outer chocolate shell, all the other bars had exact counterparts in our world, aside from differences in packaging and company names, this led to some confusion when color schemes from familiar bars were used on bars here that were completely different, for example, there was a cookie's and cream type bar in blue and white packaging with red letters that looked extremely similiar to that used on a CRUNCH bar. Of course these wouldn't be the only exotic candybars we would come across, but this is just to give an example of candybars that existed in other worlds.

Finding a portal here could be even more difficult, as there were now a lot of people around, which meant that Phoebe's powers weren't nearly as effective, so we ended up taking a different approach altogether, Phoebe donned her heavy disguise coat, and we headed into a large library we found so we could do some research, of course our new friend came along as well. We spent a few minutes gathering certain kinds of books, books about technology, and even books about mythology, as we were basically searching for anything that could lead us to a portal, and then once we had gathered several books we sat down at a table on the second floor, it was a huge library, and began to look through them. For the most part the history was very similiar, cars became popular in the 20s, computers in the 80s, a few different characters played different roles. There were several differences in developement, for instance, mass production wasn't popularized until ww2, as Henry Ford apparently didn't exist in this world's timeline, the titanic didn't sink on it's maiden voyage, it broke down just hours after leaving port due to a faulty cylinder, it was later repaired, but much later, and after about a decade and a half of civilian service, it had been eclipsed by the Gigantic as the largest passenger ship, a ship that was never built in our world, because, well, the titanic. Anyway, in order to protect shipping convoys, like many other civilian ships, it was modified to be able to launch a single fighter aircraft (a sea-fire, more specifically) shortly after the outbreak of ww2, during the war, it's life ended as it was sunk by a german submarine. No movies were made about it, it was just an anecdote, like all of the other cruise ships of it's time. In fact, I didn't even find this out in a book about the titanic, I originally discovered this in a book about ww2 in which the titanic happened to be pictured, along with it's aircraft modification, prior to its sinking. There were no books that were just about the titanic in this world.

Another thing that was different, WW2 itself lasted into 1950, instead of 1945. The reasons were because the planes carrying the nukes were intercepted, Germany held off on attacking russia, therefore they were able to put more effort into france. This in turn gave them more time to develop jet aircraft, which eventually bought them a bit of an arial advantage, for a little while. Until Britain came to it's senses and started to make more Gloster Meteors. Right around the time this happened, Germany then attacked russia with a fleet of ar234s with me-262 escorts in 1946. They made it to moscow, but not much further, as Stalin had been anticipating their attack, and was much more prepared to retaliate than in our world. Their soldiers were better armed, there tactics just as brutal. Germany managed to gain alot of ground in 1946, but 1948 the russians had made it to their border. Meanwhile, britain and the allies began to gain ground. While russia held it's ground quite well, being much more prepared than they were in our world. While Germany ruled the air, russia started pushing back on the ground, with ferocity even greater than that displayed in our world. Meanwhile, america kept sending waves of bombers towards japan, b29s, combined with b32 dominators, a type that, in our world, is barely even known, it was created as a backup to the b29, in our world, the b29 worked, the b32 wasn't even needed, as we already had atleast 3 heavy bombers, and was cancelled appropriately, after barely any of them were made. These bombing raids allowed them to gain a foothold on the mainland in 1948, without the use of nukes, as the failure of the first attempt to nuke Japan had given them second thoughts. Shortly after american forces landed on mainland Japan, the country formally surrendered, as it was completely overwhelmed at that point. Meanwhile, Germany was finally running out of steam, as the allies managed to completely encircle it. Italy collapsed at about the time the allies started using jets, relying heavilly on German aid to defend it. Oddly enough, the african campaign went better for germany, so much so that Hitler fled to egypt, this led to everybody going to egypt to arrest him. It only bought him about a month more of fighting before he committed suicide, just like in our world, supposedly atleast.

Anyway, the result of all these changes was a war, that, while more lives were lost all around, actually ended on better terms, nukes were forgotten, the korean war never happened, because nobody wanted to enter it. The cold war didn't even happen. Vietnam never happened. Instead there was a strange war between Egypt, Spain, and India of all places, in the 1960s. I didn't have time to figure out why that happened though, because Phoebe decided I had spent too much time reading this book that contained all this interesting information.

"Is their anything in here about a portal ?" She asked. At this point I had been reading the same book for nearly an hour. She had skimmed through atleast half a dozen books by now.

"I don't know, I just got passed ww2."

"Is there a portal in any of these wars?" She asked.

"I don't know, but now there's apparently a war between Egypt and Spain I want to read about."

"Well unless it's about portals then skip through it, you can't just spend all day reading one book cover to cover. We're in a hurry Cj." She insisted with some frustration.

"I take it you can't find anything about a portal either?" I could tell just by her attitude alone.

"Nope." She replied, a bit dissapointed.

"So why aren't you reading?" I asked.

"Because...you need to hurry up." She replied

"Why are you in such a rush?" I asked. "I'm still reading, our new friend is still reading, you're the only one that's not making any progress right now, maybe you missed something in all those books you spent like ten minutes going through, there's no way you skimmed every page."

"Well then I'll go through this one next." She said as she quickly pried the book away from me before returning to her seat.

"Really Pheebles?"

"Mhm." She replied without any of the anger she had moments before.

"You couldn't start with any other book?"

"Nope."

"You had to take the one I was trying to read?"

"Yep."

"Why?"

"Because I wuv you." She replied as cutely as she could.

"So you keep taking my stuff?" I asked, not having any idea where she was going with this or even why she was doing this, maybe she was just bored, I had no idea.

"Mhm." She replied.

"Fine."

"You don't want it back?" She asked.

"I don't want to cause a scene." I replied.

"Ohhh ok." She asked.

"If they look at you too long they'll see through your disguise." I said, somewhat quietly.

"Are you two done screwing around? I thought we were here to find information about a portal?" Our new friend suddenly spoke up, he had been quietly looking through a book this whole time.

"Uh, yeah, but, I guess Pheebles got bored or something."

"No." She quickly replied.

"Then why are you acting like a child?"

"because I know it drives you crazy."

"Why would you want to do that? " I asked out loud in response to a statement she made telepathically.

"Because." Was all she said in return, followed by a telepathic "I wuv you"

"You're crazy you know that?'

"I know."

Without any other ideas I decided to change the focus to something else.

"Well, you know we're going to need to find somewhere for Bubba to take in more water. Which, means we might have to go to a beach."

"Ooooh." She replied. "But if it's nice and sandy there will be other people around."

"Yeah, and we didn't bring any swimwear did we?"

"Nope."

"Well, we have to go somewhere, and you saw the forrest, there has to be water around."

"Maybe we can find a map of this place?" She suggested.

"Maybe." I replied.

"Why don't you get started on that? I'll keep going through these books." Said our friend.

"Ok." I replied, as Phoebe and I began to leave to look for a map. I had a brief conversation with the librarian, and through that I learned we were in a fairly large city called Palm Bay, capital of Northern California, in this world atleast, where California was apparently split North and South, bringing the total number of states to 51. I never found out why or when this had occured, although it could possibly the result of an alternate ending to the civil war, especially if it had been extended in this universe like ww2 had been or it could've been they just decided to divide up the states differently when California was created, anyway, after that I found an atlas, and in it, a road map of Northern California, which also showed bodies of water. There was the Pacific Ocean, obviously, but finding a beach that was isolated enough to let Bubba out without anybody noticing would be difficult, another option was a river about 100 miles south, it led to a lake close to the Nevada border.

"You think, maybe we can sneak onto the beach at night?" I asked my beloved as I came to the realization that our next closest option was nearly 100 or so miles away. I thought that at night, the beaches would be much more empty.

"Maybe if we're careful." Phoebe replied.

"Allright then, we'll wait till tonight, because the ocean's our only option unless you want to go on a roadtrip."

"No it's fine, I like beaches."

"I know you do baby girl."

"Allright then, back to the books."

"Awwweee" She complained as we headed back toward our friend.

"That didn't take long." He said as soon as he saw us.

"Yeah, well it turns out the coastline isn't very far from here." I replied. "It's the closest water source, but it will be best to wait till dark to go there so there won't be as many people around."

"After it's closed for the day." Phoebe interjected.

"Right." I agreed. "So Pheebles, if I could just have that book back."

"No, it makes you very unproductive." She replied. "No more books about war for you, maybe mythology won't distract you as much." She said as she handed me a book of the respective subject, a book about the men in black, printed in 1978.

"You know I'm going to take just as much time now to drive you crazy." I said as blatantly as I could. " It will be easy because mythology is pretty interesting too."

"Please don't." Was all she could say.

"Oh calm down. I don't care if there's a portal right next door, we aren't leaving until we get Bubba some more water anyway." I replied, wanting more than anything for her to just relax.

Meanwhile, in the forrest, the bubblemen realized that this world was safe to enter and began to emerge from the portal, at this point some regular policemen of the non-space variety were inspecting the path we had created.

The policemen were not expecting company, none the less that of the oddly dressed bubblemen, but today the two groups were destined to meet.

"Police, on the ground now! What the hell are you wearing?" Exclaimed one of the police officers upon comming into contact with one of the bubblemen.

The bubbleman did as instructed, having been completely caught off guard.

"It protects us from the gas." The bubbleman exclaimed while lying flat on the ground.

"What gas?" The officer asked, completely unsure what he was talking about.

"What's going on here? Did you do this? Did you cut down all these trees?" The officer proceeded to ask, as he put handcuffs around the bubbleman.

"No, but we're looking for the ones that did." The bubbleman replied.

"I've committed no crime officer, release me." He demanded.

"Are there others out here like you?" The Officer asked just as another suited figure emerged from the trees.

"I need backup over here now, I got two individual, in weid suits, there maybe be more, send backup ASAP." The officer spoke into his radio briefly before a shot rang out and he fell to the ground, dead. His killer was none other the Dr. Volkheim himself.

"Are you allright? I didn't think we'd come across the police so soon."

"Lord Doctor Volkheim!" The unknown bubbleman exclaimed as the doctor set about freeing him from the handcuffs.

"We have to leave, now, you heard him call for backup, we can't afford to recieve so much attention after just arriving here. " The doctor exlaimed. "Let's go find the others, quickly.

"What about?"

"Leave him."

"With any luck this may cause the police to go after the same people we're looking for."

"Why are we looking for them again?"

"Because they know about the portal technology, in a matter of days they raided our laboratory and got our prototype working, there's no way any of the slavemasters or their slaves would have been searching for such a thing, I don't think we're here to deal with slaves, but rather something else entirely, universal travellers, beings from another dimension, who knows what secrets they could be hiding? We could be dealing with gods."

"Gods?"

"Yes, gods, the likes of jupiter or neptune, powerful beings that have harnessed knowledge of interuniversal travel, now come on, the path goes this way down the hill, we'll go the other way. "

So the Bubblemen ended up taking a slightly different route to avoid the police, however, once their detour eventually led to a highway, they stole a parked suv from a rest area and headed into the city. Coincidently they had a similiar plan to ours, find a library and learn some things about the world they were in. This eventually led them to the same library we were at, where everybody stared at them as they were still wearing their suits. They kept wearing them for three reasons, one, they could take them off if they wanted, but doing so was a long, tedious and even painful process as the sophisticated built-in life support system was attached to their bodies through a series of tubes and what not. The second was they were deeply terrified that the air was still toxic, and that if the suits were to be removed or even breached in anyway they could die. They had no way to test whether it was safe for them or not, because as far as they knew, they were the only ones from their world that weren't immune to the toxic gas that brought about their apocalypse, all the others had perished, hence the apocalypse. The third is, they had been in the suits for so long, it was remotely possible that their bodies were no longer able to function normally, for example it had been a long time since they had "eaten" anything that wasn't a specialized chemical automatically injected into their veins.

So anyway, while we were busy skimming through books, actually I was now just reading a book on mythology, exactly like I said I was going to do, and Phoebe was pretending not to notice while also pretending to skim through other books, but really she was going so fast she couldn't have possibly skimmed every page, and she also was actually looking over at me more than the books, sometimes flipping pages while doing so. Bottom line was, to his credit, our new friend was the only one that was really doing anything productive, and yet he still hadn't discovered any useful information. Anyway, while this exercise in, whatever you call it, was going on, the bubblemen were over in the magazine section of the same library, deciding that current events was the way to go to find out some quick information about this world. While innocent bystanders looked at them like they were fresh out of the looney bin. The funny part is we were litterally in the same building for several hours and during that time, we never noticed them.

Before that though, I arrived at a chapter in the book I was reading about Morphos the god of travel, an god of the ancient greece of this world whose only supernatural ability was to be able to travel anywhere instantly, like Phoebe's teleportation, but with much, much more range, and power. It was said that he was able to do this with a magic mirror, given to him by none other than Zues, for saving one of his many halfblood daughters from falling off a cliff, of all things. Thus he was given the status of demi-god, and presided over travellers, often helping them when they were lost by taking them to their intended destination instantly. The book also said it was believed the mirror gave him the ability to take people to magical lands, to the top of the Mount Olympus, or even to the land of the dead.

"You mad at me Pheebles?" I asked while she was looking at me while flipping through yet another book.

"No, just annoyed." She replied.

"Really? Oh stop taking it so seriously baby girl, you're staring at me more than you're looking at the books anyway, I mean that's the fifth book you've opened in thirty minutes, you're mad at me for not working fast enough, but this whole time, if you've done more than me, it's only by just barely anything."

"I'm not mad at you, I just, I miss Charley." She defended, thankfully she was able to avoid bursting into tears this time.

"I know, you keep saying that, but there's nothing I can do about it baby girl. Just cause you keep adding to that pile of books you've gone through, doesn't mean we'll get out of here faster."

"Well, same for you." She replied, which in hindsight, didn't make any sense.

"I'm just trying to relax, we're in a nice, air conditioned building, nobody is trying to kill us, there's nobody that needs our help right now, and anyway if you want to take a look at this, I might have found something, but it's a long shot."

"What is it?" She asked as she got up and came over to see.

"It's on this page, starts at this paragraph" I said, as I pointed to where she needed to start reading.

She read through the story just as I had done.

"Do you think we can find the mirror?" She asked.

"Well, like I said, it's a long shot."

"Where do you think it could be?" She asked.

"Well, if it was real, more than likely burried in the ground somewhere, or on the ocean floor, less likely in a museum."

"Let's say it's not a mirror, but some kind of man made device, the chances it has survived for well over a millenia are very slim, but it's still a lead."

"I guess so." She replied.

"What did you find?" Our friend asked from across the table.

"It's just a legend, but, it's all we got so far." Phoebe said as she brought the book to him and showed him where to start reading.

"You're gonna put that much faith in an ancient myth?" He asked, unsure if we were serious. At this point the finding this mirror was just about as credible as finding the holy grail, or excalibur, or any other object of legend. There was very little evidence that it ever existed, and even less that it still exists. Therefore, we needed to do some more research, and try to find some other options, as this one was very unlikely to be viable.

" We need to do some more research, and find some other options, but at this point it's an option, a thing to look for." I replied. "And that's a little bit better than nothing."

Get some books about ghost stories, and legends and what not, they might have some information that could be useful.

"They're just stories." Our friend replied. "They're made up."

"Yeah, some of them are, but, they all had to start somewhere."

"You used to work at that base, you can't tell me that people in your world never made up stories about ufos, aliens, and what not, you can't tell me they never wondered about what your scientist were working on. There are stories based in fantasy, but there are just as many stories written by people attempting to describe things they don't understand, and with this story in particular, whatever kind of story it was has long been lost to the sands of time. " I defended. "Now, that said, we can't just bank everything on it, so we need to keep reading and look for more options."

" Police! On the ground!" A policeman said in the distance.

"What the?" I said in surprise.

"They're not here for us are they?" Phoebe asked.

"I don't think so, because I don't see them anywhere, they're in the front, on the lower floor." I replied.

"What should we do?" Our friend asked.

"Keep reading, they're probably here for somebody else."

"space police?" Our friend asked once again.

"No if it was the space police, they would have found us by now. It's just the ordinary local police force." I replied.
A gunshot wrang out.

"What the hell?"

More gunshots followed by the screams of innocent civilians . . . . . the sound of people frantically running, and more gunshots.

"Oookay." Was all I could say as it appeared that there was some sort of gunfight going down in the front part of the lobby.

"We going to do anything about this? " Our friend asked.

"Shouldn't blow our cover so early, if we send out our pokemon now, it's only going to make things worse." I replied. "I guess it would make sense to get some protection though, let's flip this table over."

We cleared off the table we were sitting at and then flipped it over onto its side, so we could have cover from the gunfire incase things escalated a bit more.

" Allright Pheebles can you hear anything?" I asked.

"Just the police, the gunfire is making it hard to concentrate." She replied. " One dead, two wounded, one is calling for friends."

"Who are they here for? " I asked.

"They don't know, um . . . . . . . . . , some guys in space suits. Apparently they're still alive, but I can't get a reading on them. "

" Well they killed a police officer, if they don't have any serious firepower, they're screwed, the police won't stop comming until they're either arrested or dead. We need to get out of here before the cops force them to retreat." I said, thinking that if they retreated they could end up comming to our part of the building, not that they were that much of a threat, but fighting them would require that we blow our cover, in front of the local police no less.

"Unless you want to try saving them." I said, jokingly.

"No, they killed two officers, they're evil." She replied.

"Allright then, let's get out of here." I said.

"Ok let me get to a window, I need to see outside." She replied.

"What?" Our friend asked, confused.

"She's going to teleport us outside." I replied as Phoebe headed for the nearest window. "But to do that she needs to see outside otherwise she could teleport us into the ground, or a wall, or any number of objects you don't want to be permanently merged with."

"Ok."

Moments later we heard the sound of several people comming up the stairs to the second floor.

"They're comming up the stairs." Our friend whispered.

"Alright Pheebles . . . " I called out.

"Ready." She replied.

I took her hand, and then the hand of our new friend to save time. We didn't notice this, as we were all looking towards the window, but at this point one of the bubblemen had made it up the stairs, though he had no time to react, he did catch a glimpse of us before we teleported away. Phoebe teleported us to a large, grassy, park area across the street. In his confusion our friend lost his balance and fell down shortly afterwards, nearly taking me with him. Nobody noticed, because all eyes were turned to the procession of police cars arriving at the library. Who ever started shooting, it was very doubtful they would escape. Even news vans were arriving on the scene.

"What the?" He exclaimed as he got back up.

"You get used to it after awhile." I replied. "Except when she does it by surprise then it's annoying as hell."

Phoebe giggled at this for a moment before asking " Now what Cj?" in a more serious manner.

We didn't notice the bubbleman quietly watching us from the window we were looking out just moments earlier, in fact, we didn't even know who or what they were at this point.

"I don't know, all we got so far is that mirror from the folklore, maybe we could just hang around until the situation at the library clears up." I replied.

"That could take awhile, if what you said was the truth and an officer was killed, they could do a full-scale investigation. The library might be closed for weeks." Our friend spoke up.

"Dam, you're right." I replied. "Might as well try to find another library. Good thing we parked out back."

"There's a map over here." Phoebe said as she wondered off.

"Uh, I think that's a map of the park, not the city. Pheebles, if there's another library in this town, it's probably going to be pretty far away from this one." I said as she examined the map, which was sealed in plastic on a large decorative display cast from bronze, bolted to the concrete sidewalk, and set at about a 45 degree angle.

"It also says what the stores are around the park." She replied, which admittedly made it seem a bit more useful.

"Any book stores?" I asked as I began to approach the map as well.

"Umm...no, none that I know of." She replied.

"Barnes and Noble?" I asked, on the off chance she wasn't aware that it was a book store, she had never seen one, after all.

"Nope." She replied.

I let out a sigh and said " come on, let's go back to the bus before the police block it off.".

"Oookay." She replied.

"What are we doing?" Our friend asked.

"We're getting out of here, we're going to look for another library or somewhere else were we can look up information, just get to your car and follow us, if plans change we'll pull over and let you know." I replied.

A few minutes later we were on the road looking for another library. While the bubblemen were engaged in a heated battle with the police, this escalated to the point where the police surrounded the library, then fell back to avoid loss of life, and were attempting to establish negotiations with the bubblemen. It looked like the bubblemen were screwed, but Volkheim was not an idiot. After all, he was tactically proficient enough to keep the police at bay, for the moment, and before long the man had crafted explosives out of chemicals from the library's janitorial closet. They used these explosives to blow a hole in the sidewall of the library, where no police were expecting them to escape. This allowed them to make it to some cars, and escape from the library, though they were still being chased by a myriad of police.

To make matters even worse for them, at this point the police even had a helicopter on the way. It goes without saying that the bubblemen made the news. They weren't military trained, they wouldn't even be killers if it weren't for Volkheim, but their tactics would suggest otherwise. They headed down narrow roads where the police had to follow them single file, they went through construction sites, alleyways, anything they could find to help them gain some distance. The cops caught up to them several times, but they had the situational awareness to avoid any attempts at pit maneuvers or box outs, working together with their two stolen cars and often pitting out the police.

This worked well until the chopper arrived, then they started avoiding narrow roads and dead ends, or anywhere the police could possibly trap them in, sticking to large 4 and 6 lane boulevards. Eventually, it was getting close to rush hour, where people would be leaving work en-masse, so traffic was picking up. The roads were becoming more constricted The chase slowed down a bit before finally commign to a dramatic end at the docks, where they drove the now fairly battered cars off the edge, into the ocean. It seemed stupid, but the cops of course thought their suits were only costumes, they didn't think they would allow them to breathe underwater for a few hours. So they waited by the docks for them to come up, as a normal person would have to at some point, and they waited, and then they thought about calling in a diver to pull the cars out along with the bodies. All while the bubble men were trudging along the ocean bottom, away from the police, to a place where they could safely emerge from the water without being seen.

While the bubblemen were causing untold levels of mischief, we had found another library, and after once again going around and gathering several books, many of which we had at the other library and just didn't have the time to look through before the shootout, we resumed our research into portals that could possibly exist on this world.

"This day is so boring." Phoebe exclaimed, not happy at all about having to return to reading books again.

"Really? What about that day we spent walking through the desert?"

"Oh yeah, you're right, that was more boring." She agreed.

"How many portals are we looking for?"

"I'd say three or four options would be a good start. So let's go with three more, we got the mirror. What do you think ?" I asked our friend.

"Sounds good to me, but I don't see where we're going with all of this."

"You'll see soon enough, don't worry about that." I reassured him.

"Mhm, usually our first days in a new world are pretty boring, just trying to get established, exploring the world and, trying to find out where the next portal is." Phoebe said.

"Mhm."I agreed. "Especially since the portals have a high tendency to end up in the middle of nowhere, this one actually put us pretty close to civilization for once."

"Yeah, it's a nice change." Phoebe said.

"I guess so, I've never really been a fan of crowded places." I replied.

"I know, but still." She persisted.

"Yeah maybe..." I replied.

"Oh come on you know you like it too." She said in a playful manner. "It's so much better than having to walk several miles through a desert."

"Yeah."

"You're finally starting to calm down now aren't you?" I asked.

"It's about time you noticed." She replied.

"Or are you just bored with reading books?" I asked. "I thought you liked history?"

"I do, but, it's not as interesting here because we're never going to be here again."

"Well think of all the stories you'll be able to tell Charley and Nina when we get back."

"Who?" Our friend suddenly asked.

"Our babies..." Phoebe replied.

"Um, Nina's like what 14 now?" I said, thinking it strange to call her a baby.

"What? How old are you two? That can't be right." Our friend asked, confused.

"She's adopted." Phoebe replied, trying to clear things up.

"Um...ok." He said, a little less confused now.

"It's a long story." Phoebe followed up.

We were there for several hours, snacking on our supply of candybars when we got hungry, until the librarian there approached us and asked us to leave because it was closing time, by then it was already dark outside, so we got back in our bus and began our search for somewhere we could park and stay the night.

By then the bubblemen had succesfully evaded the police and had come ashore on a rocky, isolated beach that was right next to the city's dockyard industrial district so nobody really went there, the beach was rocky and the water wasn't the purest. Huge container ships and tug boats would frequently pass by this area, both comming in to the docks and heading out for ports across the globe.

They laid low for awhile, as police were nearby, as they had stuck around to fish out the cars they had driven into the ocean and were now planning to take them to their impound for further investigation, once they had the cars hauled up onto land, they found no bodies in them, which annoyed them to no end, as that meant the bubblemen may have escaped. This led them to search the surrounding area, both on foot and by helicopter, but because they were unaware the bubblemen could breath underwater, the search area was much too narrow, and they found nothing, they never thought they could make it to the beach they were on now, they had a hard time believing they escaped from the cars, and after the bubblemen had murdered their fellow officers, most of them wanted to believe they had drowned. Most of them stayed out there all night, searching every inch of the docks, scouring the seabed, trying to find something that would confirm that the bubblemen were dead, eventually the helicopter ran out of fuel and had to return to base, the officers became extremely tired from lack of sleep, and there were new, unrelated crimes and reports to tend to as well. They searched for the bubblemen as long as they could, but eventualy, reality forced them to move on, and by the next morning's sun rise, you couldn't tell anything had ever happened at the docks.

Anyway, back to us, eventually we found a parking garage, and without a better option we pulled in and stayed there, with our friend pulling in behind us, which of course, completely thwarted Phoebe's plan to make the bus rock, for tonight atleast, but it was nice just to lay in bed and snuggle with our clothes on, while talking about the incident that occured earlier. It was still only early in the evening so it would be awhile before we would sleep.

"You remember what happened at the first library? It didn't seem like a coincidence." Phoebe said as she layed next to me. "They were there for us and I know it."

"You're thinking irrationally baby girl, it has way more of a chance of having nothing to do with us than doing so. Nobody was at that base, nobody even knows who we are here, there's no space police here, you know that, they would've found us by now if there were and I know for a fact they wouldn't start killing the locals, that's why they have bubbleguns." I replied, attempting in vain to keep her from finding another thing to worry about.

"I don't know Cj." She replied, still worried.

"Well we could try to find something out about it in the news, just to put you at ease, something like that I doubt they wouldn't be interested in."

"How?" She asked.

"We can wait till tomorrow and pick up a paper, we can find a computer and look it up online, we could find somewhere to watch it on tv."

She thought about what I said for a moment.

"Do bars usually have tvs?" She said when she had an idea.

"Yeah." I replied. "Why?"

"Well, I saw one near here, and they should still be open right?" She said.

"Probably." I replied.

Our friend began to knock on the door of the bus once again, just like this morning.

"Do I really have to wait here until tomorrow ? " He called from outside, of course we couldn't expect him to just hang around the parking garage for the remainder of the evening, something we both had overlooked at this point.

"No, we were just about to go to the bar." Phoebe answered. "We'll leave the bus here, you can drive."

"Also, maybe you could also use your powers to win us some spending money." I said, quietly.

"How we gonna do that?" She asked, as we got up and headed for the door. "Sounds a bit naughty."

"Maybe, a little bit, but we gotta get money some how." I said.

"What are you thinking?" She asked.

"I'm thinking I play a little poker, and you play a little mind reader across the room, tell me what cards they got." I replied.

"Ooooh, that is naughty." She replied.

"Yeah, but we need cash, and there's no easy way to get it, we can't even get a job cause we don't have a social security number, valid citizenship status, or anything a normal person would have, but what you do have is a beautiful mind that give me an advantage in poker that normal people wouldn't even think to suspect." I replied.

"Awwwwe, Cj." She replied. "I don't want to, but you're right."

"And we don't need to win that much money anyway, couple hundred should be enough, then we'll quit." I replied, attempting to win her over.

"You promise?" She asked.

"Yeah, I promise." I replied.

"Ok then, I'll help you, just be careful." She agreed as we left the bus.

"Help with what?" Our friend asked as we squeezed into his car, a bright red 1970's 4 door caprice roadboat that showed it's age, which was actually a mystery because we weren't sure what year the other world was in exactly, but it was atleast a decade old, judging by the presence of newer cars in that world, despite some heavilly faded paint and some rusty spots, it was otherwise mechanically sound and still serviceable. It had big pillowy benches in the back that were quite comfortable.

"Nothing much, just found a way to get a bit of money." Phoebe replied.

"So are we just going to the nearest bar then?" Our friend asked.

"Yeah, I think we passed one on the way over here. " Phoebe replied.

"Yeah, I saw it too, I just hope I can get back there." Our friend said.

"It's not that far away." Phoebe replied.

"I found some cash in the glove box." Our friend said. "Not much just a few dollars or so. Maybe enough to buy a drink."

"Well, why don't I use it first, because I need something to get into the game?" I asked.

"So that's how you're going to get money?" He asked.

"Um yeah, it'll be easy just watch." I said.

"Mhm." Phoebe replied.

So after a quiet ten minute snuggle session in the backseat while our friend drove we finally arrived at the bar, where we all got out and went inside, Phoebe was wearing her disguise coat of course, she kind of kept behind me, trying to keep her face hidden, after we entered the place, our friend went up to the bar and took a seat, but couldn't order anything because he didn't have money at the time, while Phoebe and I sought out a poker game. It just so happened that one was going on in the corner. Phoebe took a seat across the room, while I attempted to worm my way into the game.

"I only have five bucks but I'm feeling lucky tonight, can I still join in?" I asked the dealer, thinking he was the closest thing to the leader of the group.

"Sure, if you want to walk home with nothing." He replied."That will cover the ante."

I quickly stole a chair from a nearby table so I could sit at the end of the booth. It was then that I realized just cause I knew what cards they had didn't guarantee a win, I still had to get a decent draw, but I already had my money on the table, and the dealer had already handed me a pair of cards. It was obvious that nobody in the group expected me to last longer than one round.

"Are you ready?" Phoebe asked.

"Yeah, just concentrate baby girl."

I briefly examined my cards, a nine of clubs, and a five of diamonds, completely useless so far.

Everyone else made their bets, some folded.

"Pheebles I need some information." I thought.

"One had a red two and a black seven, he just folded." She said telepathically.

"You need to be more specific than just red and black." I said.

"Red diamond, black clover?"

"Club or spade?"

"Club, I think." I "heard" as the dealer layed down the river, an 8 of clubs, ace of diamonds, and 4 of hearts. First man stayed in, another raised the stakes. Of course I was already all in, so that meant nothing to me. It was either walk away without my money, or keep playing till the end and hope to win against all odds. Technically this first round, Phoebe wasn't helping me at all, but it was still an oppourtunity for her to learn how to help, an oppourtunity that was needed as she apparently didn't know what a spade was. Finally, my luck turned around as the fourth card was the nine of diamonds, giving me a pair, the final card was the 3 of spades, once again the same guy raised, another called it, I sat in my chair and tried not to react when Phoebe announced that the man who had raised possesed a pair of fives, meaning that with a pair of nines I had managed to win, a grand total of thirty dollars. By the next hour I had managed to double this to sixty, backing out of a few games where I had very little chance to win. One where one of my opponents had 3 eights and I still had nothing, and another when one had a pair of queens compared to my pair of fours. Slowly but surely, by winning nearly every other game, where I would lose about 5-10 dollars then gain about 20-30 dollars the next game, I eventually had a small fortune of 150 dollars and decided to quit then and there cause people were starting to get suspicious. Also since the pots barely reached 30 dollars a game it wasn't as fast of a way to get money as I had initially thought. After I left the game I handed a few dollars to our friend who had been patiently waiting for a drink all night, and then we waited around for him to finish it.

"We're never doing that again, it's wrong, you know it is." Phoebe said as I sat across from her, stuffing the remainder of the cash into my wallet, and my wallet into my pocket. Feeling greatly ashamed to have cheated people out of their money, despite the circumstances.

"Baby girl, we needed the money, you know that, anyway, I just remembered we have to go to the beach after this for Bubba." I replied. "That shooting earlier made me forget."

"Yeah you're right, I forgot about that." She agreed.

"So does the news have anything interesting?" I asked, as she had also been watching tv while I was playing poker.

"Um, yeah, about that. They escaped the library, and It said that earlier today, before the library, a policeman was killed investigating that path we made in the forrest." She replied."So it was a little bit more than just a coincidence Cj." She continued, trying to defend her worrying from earlier.

"Yeah, I see that now." I agreed. "So what are we dealing with here, spacemen? You said it yourself there was nobody at that base when we went through."

"I don't know, I guess they are spacemen because that's all anybody thinks about them." She replied. " or that they're some sort of terrorist group."

"Spacemen terrorists?" I asked, jokingly.

"Yep."She replied.

"I have to tell you something." Our friend said as he approached the table.

"You know anything about these alleged spacemen?" I asked.

"Minutes before the disaster broke out, at that point we all knew what was going to happen, but there was no time to warn anybody, many of the scientists and only a handful of soldiers put on these crazy suits and then locked themselves in the armory, as there were only a limited number of suits and the other people that knew about them were desperate to save themselves, by the next day, when the gas hit, it was just me and three others that were immune on the base, so we got in a car and left to look for others. That's when I found the town, and I lived there for awhile, until they began to enslave people, I tried to lead a revolt with my buddies like you did, but it only resulted in two of them getting killed and me being enslaved as well, during that time before I was enslaved we returned to the base to get supplies and vehicles, but I didn't tell them about the lab, so aside from the perimeter and the motor pool, I hadn't returned to the base since, until yesterday, where, and I apologize because I didn't think much about it at the time, but the armory doors were open. So I think it might be those same scientists, but all those years I was a slave I hadn't seen any sign of them." He gave as an answer.

"There were no bodies in the armory?" I asked.

"I didn't think to check, but the doors were open, so somebody aside from us had to unlock them." He replied. "They're the only ones that would've known about the portal too, and since they found that dead cop in the same forrest we came out of, I'm afraid it might be them."

"And your former masters, if any of them survived, they wouldn't even know where to begin to look for you." I replied, in agreement.

"So we're dealing with killer scientists?" Phoebe asked.

"No, we're not dealing with them, we're going to go get Bubba some water, and then we're gonna go to bed, and then, in the morning, we're going to continue to look for a portal. They don't have pokemon and they already angered the police, and unless they remove those suits there's nowhere they can go without being spotted." I replied.

"Yes, but if they're not after us then what are they doing here?" She asked.

"I have no idea. I doubt they came here just to kill a couple of policemen though. Pheebles, they're not after us, that library thing was a coincidence, there's no way they could have known we were there, it's more likely they just had the same idea." I replied before turning to our friend.

"Ok now are you still good to drive?" I asked.

"Yeah, probably." He replied.

"Are you sure? I rather not die from a stupid mistake." I asked again.

"I only had one drink." He replied.

"Ok, why don't we start heading to the beach, we'll talk about this more on the way over there. I'm afraid somebody could over hear something they shouldn't." I said.

"Ok." Phoebe replied.

So we left the bar and headed to the beach, which was empty and closed for the night, but that wouldn't stop us, we walked out onto the sand, and let Bubba out into the ocean, and then we just waited around a bit so he could absorb some water, at some point Phoebe decided to let out all of her pokemon as well, a huge risk, but I followed suit as well because she wouldn't stop asking me to in a way that was so diabolically cute I couldn't say no. It was night so even our golbats got a chance to fly around. Since we had all our pokemon out, it was now a challenge to keep them quiet and keep them from wandering off, or even keep track of them in the dark.

"We should come back here tomorrow, in the daytime." Phoebe said.

"That would be nice, but you know it's going to be full of people tomorrow, and they'll all see you." I replied.

"Yeah, I know, it sucks." She replied, knowing there was just no way we could do such a thing.

"Um guys?" Our friend spoke up, he had been silent for awhile, as he was a bit overwhelmed by the appearence of all of our pokemon. " There's a flash light in the distance, somebody is comming."

"What? Oh, yeah, I hear him now, Security guard." She said, slightly annoyed.

"Told you they would hear us." I replied.

"Oh relax Cj, it's just one guard, I got this." She replied before teleporting away.

"Pheebles?" I let out a sigh. "see what I mean?" I said as looked into the eyes of our friend. "She just blinks away before anybody can say anything or telling anybody what she's going to do exactly."

"Little troublemaker." He replied.

"Yeah, but damn she's beautiful." I said.

"Eh, if you say so, personally I prefer girls with bigger boobs."

"Ehehehe." Of course I couldn't expect him to know what happens when she gets aroused, but there was a time I didn't either. Anyway, by the time I managed to stifle my laughter Phoebe teleported back, at which point I went quiet and tried to think of something inconspicuous.

"Ok, the guard is taken care of." She announced.

"What did you do? Knock him out?" I asked.

"And I edited his memory, he'll wake up thinking nothing happened." She replied.

"Ok, sounds good princess." I replied as she gave me a rather annoyed look.

Anyway, we stayed there for about twenty minutes before rounding up our pokemon and heading back to the parking garage for the night, by then Bubba had more than enough time to take in all the water he could possibly need. Once there I handed our friend some more money so he could go back to the bar and hang out, so Phoebe and I could be alone in our bus for a little while.

"That was such a nice beach, too bad we can't go." Phoebe said as she took off her disguise coat.

"Yep." I said in somewhat insincere agreement.

" We should take Charley to the beach sometime when we get back." Phoebe said, once we were alone.

"Are there any beaches in Sinnoh?" I asked as I honestly couldn't even remember much of the games at this point."I already promised you we're going there."

"I don't know if there is, and I know you promised, and I know you'll keep your promise." She said.

"Mhmm, and if there's a beach we'll go there too, I promise." I said, lovingly.

"Oooh Cj. That sounds wonderful". She said in a sad, but loving tone as she wrapped her arms around me. I was confused for a moment, until I realized why.

"Don't tell me, you miss him again." I asked moments later.

"And Nina too." She replied.

"That's allright." I said. "As long as you don't let it control you, because without you, there's no way we'd be able to make it back, remember that."

"I know." She replied, squeezing me just a little tighter, it was clear she had been bottling up a lot of her worries. At this point we had been away from them for more than a week, we hadn't been away from Charley that long since our first trip to crazy town, of course if the TTG kept his promise it wouldn't seem that long to them, but to add to that we know the facility got attacked or something right after we left, so even if we got back just seconds later, we'd have to remember to respond quickly.

"If you need to cry you can cry, ok, we're safe here for the moment." I said, not wanting her to bottle up her pain anymore. We had plenty of time for her to cry it out now, and it would be better for her to do it now than in the middle of a combat situation or other extremely inconvienient time where it could get both of us killed.

"No, I'm not crying anymore. I just want you to hold me, it makes me feel better."She softly spoke into my ear about as sad as she possibly could without crying.

"Allright then." I said as I wrapped my arms around her.

We stood there for several minutes in an embrace, until we eventually ended up snuggling on the bed since it was more comfortable. Despite what she said the night before about making the bus rock, it was clear she wasn't in the mood and just wanted to be held. Or atleast I thought that was the case at first. But while we were laying there, her breasts started to grow, a clear sign she was aroused.

"Baby girl?" I said as soon as I noticed.

"Yeah, I know, they're growing." She said with a hint of embarrassment.

"You want to fool around a little bit?" I asked as I stroked her hair and gave her a little kiss on the forehead.

"I don't know." She replied.

"It will help get your mind off of things." I said. "And if those reach their full size they're gonna stretch out that dress aren't they?" I joked.

"Cj.." She said, trying not to blush. "You naughty, naughty, naughty little."

"Little?" I asked.

She went quiet for a moment and just gazed into my eyes, before cracking a smile.

"Can we still snuggle afterwards?" She cutely asked, not nearly as sad as she was 20 minutes ago.

"Have we ever not?" I asked in return. Her balloons nearly half their full size now, her psyhorn just now barely poking out from her dress.

"Ok, then." She said as she gave in and quickly got on top of me before giving me a kiss on the lips. "Let's rock this silly bus." She said in a playful manner.

I replied with a kiss, and then many more kisses as I slowly began to lift up her dress so I could liberate those precious melons. Inevitably this escalated to us having sex all around the bus, indeed making it rock as I banged her against the side, among other positions, before we were once again snuggling in bed, albeit without our clothes.

"Oh Cj, I feel so much better now." She said, softly.

"I guess I got you to stop worrying for a moment huh?" I asked.

"Mhmmm." She cutely replied.

"I keep telling you baby girl you just gotta relax, stay focused, and take things as they come. Enjoy the little things, like tonight, we'll get back to the kids soon enough." I said. "It's ok for you to miss them, but don't let it distract you from what we need to do."

"I wish it was that easy." She replied.

"Well I'm here to help you stay on track, so, it shouldn't be too difficult." I replied.

"Yeah, I guess you do make it easier for me." She agreed.

"I love you Cj." She said, with all the affection in her heart.

"Love you too baby girl, always." I replied before giving her one final kiss goodnight and trying to fall asleep soon afterwards.

Meanwhile, the bubblemen had stolen a cargo truck, two were riding up front in the cab, while most of them were riding in the back. They made it to the outskirts of the city, where just like we had the night before, they found an isolated dirt road where they could lay low for the night. Far from where the police would be looking for them. As for the city, well it was not a good day to dress up as a diver or an astronaught. As a matter of fact some people that had done so were brought in on suspicion, even though they really had nothing to do with anything, in the span of a day the bubblemen had become the city's most wanted, and by now the news media had civilians completely afraid of people dressed up as divers or astronauts.

"Lord Doctor Volkheim, what is our strategy now?" Dr. Rimmers asked, a physics specialist with a few years of experience who only just started working at the base when the gas fell.

"Well, first tell me what it was exactly that you saw." Volkheim commanded.

"They were there lord, the extradimensionals, I saw them, they teleported out of the building before my very eyes. Then they reappeared in the park across the street. One of them was wearing a big puffy coat lord, it's not even cold outside, it must be some sort of disguise I think." Dr. Rimmers replied, indeed he was the one that saw us at the library.

"And you're sure that's what you saw?" Volkheim asked.

"I'm sure of it." Rimmers replied. "Do you think they were following us?"

"No." Volkheim replied. " Odds are they were there for the same reasons we were. "

"Allright, now to bed with you all." Volkheim declared to his fellow bubblemen. "For tomorrow we search for the extradimensionals."

"What do we do once we have them?" Lt. Jeffries asked, one of the few bubblemen with military experience, he had worked at the base just a year longer than Rimmers, and his main job as a military officer was to deliver supplies to the lab, not the most glamorous of positions, but it managed to save his life as it allowed him to befriend the base's scientist. He barely made the cut for the expedition team, only comming along cause Volkheim thought it wise to leave a few of the more capable scientists back on the other world, just in case.

"Simple, we take them in for questioning." Volkheim replied. "Now, I know we didn't get much time at the library, but has anyone found out any information on the where-abouts of another portal?"

"The extradimensionals had picked a book out about a mirror in ancient greece, I looked through it in the car on the way, but it didn't survive the crash." Dr. Rimmers spoke up.

If you're wondering how he was able to find it so easilly, we left the book open on the table next to the one we flipped over for cover. We were in a hurry to leave and we didn't have time to think about things like that.

"A mirror?" Volkheim asked, confused as to how such an ordinary object could possibly be relevant.

"Not just a mirror, a mirror that was a gift from the gods themselves, it allowed him to travel to other worlds." Dr. Rimmers replied.

"And this is in ancient greece right? a few thousands of years ago." Volkheim asked.

"Yes." Rimmers replied.

"So there's next to no chance that mirror ever existed?" Volkheim said, still doubting the usefulness of the information.

"Perhaps." Rimmers said as he subtly nodded in agreement.

"But Lord Doctor, that's what they said about Perceus' sword, and you found it didn't you?" Dr. Janson pointed out. Another one of Volkheim's lackey's, and effectively second in command, having the most experience aside from Volkheim, as well as working at the base the longest next to him, and has been present during most of Volkheim's operations pre-apocalypse.

"Yes I suppose we did." Volkheim replied. "But we had more people back then. I suppose you remember the scale of that entire operation? They had to fake an entire revolution for it and everything, the only chance we have at finding it is if somebody already has, that said, if it's that hard to find portal technology that we have to resort to myths from ancient history, we're probably better off working with our own portal machine."

"So we can go home?" Ingolson asked, one of Volkheim's lackeys that had always been a bit more cowardly than the others, after all he was the youngest of the group, at 24 when the gas hit, and was merely an intern when the gas fell, the only reason he survived in the first place was because he was already in the armory taking inventory when the others entered. Every other member of the bubble men were in their 40s and 50s. That said, he was a lot smarter than he let on, as the base doesn't just hire anybody as an intern.

"No, not quite, we still have to locate and capture the extra-dimensionals, and since it is very likely they'll be looking for the mirror, we must start looking for it as well." He replied. " We find the mirror, we'll find them." Volkheim said, authoritatively.

"Now, try to get some sleep, odds are we'll be on the run again tomorrow. " Volkheim requested.

"Lord Doctor, in all respect, you shouldn't have killed those officers." Col. Bergman spoke up, another one of the military officers of the bubblemen, higher rank and also more experience than Jeffries, the only one of the group that tended to be critical of Volkheim's decisions. A vietnam veteran with arguably the most combat experience of the group. Prior to their world's apocalypse he worked as a military supervisor and official to Volkheim, as well as several other areas of the base, naturally he was fully aware of the lab's activities, therefore, when the gas fell, he knew where to go. It irritated him to no end that Volkheim frequently acted as his superior, but with there being more scientists than soldiers in the group, he was outnumbered.

"They were a threat to our operation, we can't let the extra dimensionals escape, we might never come across them again." Volkheim replied. "Now get to sleep colonel, we must be ready for tomorrow."

Obviously the back of a cargo truck was not the most pleasant of places to sleep, but they were used to sleeping in their big, bulky suits, so it was of little consequence, after being in those suits for so long, they could sleep nearly anywhere.