Disclaimer: The views and opinions in this story are not intended to be viewed as those of the author. The following is a fan-written fiction. Gravity Falls, Star vs. The Forces of Evil, Kim Possible, and Big Bad Beetleborgs are property of their respective owners, creators, and publishers. Please support the official releases.
TW: This story will contain references to physical and psychological abuse, murder, and torture.
|The Mind of a Boy That Killed Adolescence|
The Blue Stingerborg landed in a crouch, his Input Magnum clattering to the ground a short distance away from him. Slowly, unhurt from his dimensional travel, he rose to his feet and looked around at his surroundings. He was on a mist-shrouded, rocky field bare of plant life–any life at all. The mists crossed over the field on a slow, steady breeze, revealing glimpses of a nearby shore lit by a sun frozen at rise.
Looking at the sunrise and the glittering sea before that spread from the horizon, he noticed the rays of light dance over metal in the mists. He peered closer and realized it was bouncing off the edges, guards, and pommels of numerous swords. They were everywhere in the field, of every conceivable shape and size, ranging from the mundanely familiar to the completely alien, concealed by the mist except where the weak light from the sea touched them.
"What…?" He remembered the dimension they'd been sent to last time, and Roland's description of the "Rat Bone Pit."
"This guy's really a sword fanatic, huh?" He thought aloud as he turned towards his Input Magnum and walked over to it.
When he reached to retrieve the weapon, dozens of swords rained down from the sky. Short blades, broadswords, long swords, katanas, and even a blade large enough to slay horses and their riders in a single swing. They stabbed into the ground around the Input Magnum, encasing it in almost a solid wall of metal.
Drew stumbled back in surprise.
He can control the swords here, too?! He thought.
He looked around, before his scanners detected a target and he turned to see the shape of Saberizer in the mists–a yellow glow coming from his half-mask. His arms were folded, and from the intensity of the light he could tell the Mercenary was glaring straight at him.
"I misjudged you," Saberizer lamented with a firm voice.
He stepped forward, his silhouette fading into view as he grew closer. Drew raised the Stinger Blade, and Saberizer stopped.
"I am a warrior; for as long as I can remember I have only known the blade. I have fought countless battles, shed blood on fields like these, and even knelt with my head hung in defeat."
He watched Drew prepare to lunge as he waxed poetic. "But not once… has a foe been able to rip this sword from my hand."
His hand moved to the pommel of his falchion and rested there. "When you disarmed me, I thought for a moment… that there was a glimpse of something great in you. A warrior, a swordsman."
The moment he saw Saberizer's hand move to his sword, Drew leapt into action–literally. He jumped, with all his might, and threw himself into a spin, building up tremendous momentum to swing the Stinger Blade vertically onto the middle of Saberizer's head.
Moving his hand from the pommel of his sword to its sheath, he tucked his finger under the cross hilt and flicked the blade up out of it. His right hand shot to the ascending blade and caught the hilt to bring it across and stop Drew's swing.
A clang echoed from the blades meeting, the shockwave from the impact clearing the mists for a short distance. The mist's displacement revealed Jara perched atop the swords surrounding the Input Magnum, her cape fluttering behind her as she watched the fight in silence.
"But I see that I was mistaken!" Saberizer swung the blade with that, throwing Drew back before gravity could pull him down.
Drew flipped through the air and landed. Saberizer pursued, his feet barely touching the ground as he rushed him. Waiting for the last moment, Drew threw out the Stinger blade and swung in, only for Saberizer to catch the blade with his own and stop him.
"You have no power swinging your sword like that."
He parried the Stinger Blade back, then brought his around in a crescent motion to slice his chest once, then bring it back even faster, the harder blow throwing the Blue Stingerborg off his feet.
"And your stance is non-existent."
With a grimace, Drew caught himself and used his backward momentum to turn the other way and lash out with the Stinger Blade in another horizontal cut, but Saberizer stepped back from it.
"Your every move is an open book, spread out for anyone to read."
The yellow eye of his mask flashed, and several swords surrounding Saberizer exploded from the ground and shot up into the misty sky. Drew looked up and caught the gleams of the weapons before they came down aiming for his feet, coming from the front and to his left. He hopped back in the other direction, and barely landed when he hopped to his left to avoid more swords that rained down from his right.
He saw the tips of several swords barely poke out of the ground around his left foot as he landed on it. Without hesitation he jumped back from those blades that rocketed out of the ground aimed for his vitals, some barely grazing his armor as they shot past.
More swords sprouted from the ground, following him as he retreated, and out of the mists even more emerged, raking his armor as they passed him, while others rained down to impale him.
He can control so many at once! Drew thought as he stumbled about, staying only a half-step–a quarter-step away from being hit.
"Your deplorable footwork; even a young child with a year of walking is more trusting of how they stand." Saberizer said with a sneer as several more swords shot past him to attack Drew. "A stiff breeze could knock you down, much less a sword carried by the gale!"
He lowered his head, teeth clenching behind his scarf as the swords converged on Drew from all directions.
"Someone of your pathetic skill… should have never been able to disarm me."
With one foot atop the flat pommel of a zweihänder, and the other on the cross guard of a much lower scimitar, Jara leaned onto her knee and watched the Blue Stingerborg hop, jump, and leap to escape the all-range projectile swords.
"Saberizer," she said to herself, inaudible to anyone else over the strike of blade against armor. "The useless boy really struck your pride."
More swords flew towards Drew, some aiming for his left leg, the other for his right side. Seeing them, he kicked off to his right while swinging the Stinger Blade, scattering the blades away from him. He landed, but without even bothering to look he jumped forward and dodged swords plunging on him from above.
Blades homed in from his left, from directly in front, and above, and Drew tightly turned his body to use the Stinger Blade's width as a shield to stop the swords that would strike his head while others ricocheted off his armor, leaving deep nicks in it.
The impacts were enough to push his feet into the firm, rocky soil, and several more swords cut across his armor to set alarms off in his ears. He jumped to his right to avoid another salvo of projectiles, and kept moving, running a gauntlet of swords but staying just ahead of them.
As he dodged and swatted away swords, his mind raced. I can't do this all day! I'm only delaying the inevitable!
A particularly large sword erupted from the ground, aimed for his throat. He raised the Stinger Blade and deflected it up enough that it glanced off the right side of his helmet near his eye—cracking the helmet's lens. He had no time to focus on how much that hurt, seeing the glimmers of swords coming on him from his left and right. He jumped and flipped through the air to let the projectiles shatter each other on impact when they collided.
Drew watched the blades come apart like it was in slow motion, as he fell from the top of his jump landed hard.
What…? What just happened there?
The shards of metal seemed so slow that he could've just plucked them out of the air if he could reach them.
And there was Saberizer, coming in from low and fast and thrusting the falchion for his chest to snap him out of his momentary daze. Drew sidestepped him, then smartly used the Stinger Blade to defeat a follow-up stroke as the Mercenary Warrior turned to face him.
Jara was taken by surprise. "Huh?"
"There it is, another flash of competence," Saberizer growled as he tried to push Drew back, but the Blue Stingerborg planted his feet then sidestepped to try and shove him past.
Saberizer outpaced him then shoved his arm up to break his block. "But it's merely a fluke!"
With a quick twirl of his falchion he cut into the Stingerborg armor with a vengeance before several swords flew in around him and crashed into Drew, knocking him backward. As he tumbled across the field more swords struck him, destroying themselves and propelling him further with each hit. Swords sprouted from the ground in his path, his body plowing through them with a din of shattering and warping metal.
When he finally came to a stop, flat on his back, more swords finished their ballistic course and made final adjustments to hit him with the force of missiles, creating numerous explosions that cleared more and more of the dreary mist away.
Holding his falchion with its tip pointed to the ground, Saberizer advanced on the clearing dust and smoke as the Blue Stingerborg slowly pushed himself onto his knees. His armor was burned and cut deep–enough in places that the black mesh of interwoven armor and circuitry beneath the solid blue plate was visible.
Drew was out of ideas. He was trapped in the Gaohm Zone, with no one to back him up. Sure he was only fighting Saberizer, but Jara was here too, and he already didn't have any options by himself against her. These were just facts.
He looked at the Stinger Blade, rattling as he trembled, and tried to calm himself.
I need to focus, I can barely do anything, but I'll only do one thing if I start panicking! Focus, and look forward!
He took a deep, strong breath as Saberizer reached him. Think… think of something! Think of anything!
Saberizer's next words then cut through his thoughts like the blade in his name.
"You are an embarrassment to warriors. That someone like you could disarm me, who has never faced such shame before?"
He raised the falchion above his head, taking it in both hands to bring down on Drew's neck.
"My swordsman's soul shall forever bear this disgrace."
In the outside world, a portal was cut open and Star, Marco, Dipper, and Mabel emerged onto the Bonner Avenue Bridge. There, they found the Green Hunterborg and Red Strikerborg looking down at the emergency vehicles dealing with the wrecked blimp. The crew of the blimp were conscious and speaking to the rescuers, as firefighters tackled bringing the burning blimp under control.
"Hunterborg, Strikerborg," Dipper called to them. "The school's safe. Where's Stingerborg?"
Jo turned to face the group. "Stingerborg's gone. Vexor appeared again and sent him off to that weird dimension with Saberizer."
Roland spoke up next. "Jara, too."
Mabel gasped. "He's by himself?!"
Dipper turned to Star. "Can you contact him?!"
Star reached for her compact, then stopped. "No, I can't. He doesn't have his phone!"
Jo stepped towards Star. "What about the Scissors?"
The Princess shook her head as she answered. "If I don't have an idea of where I'm going, I can't go there with the Scissors!"
That had the Red Strikerborg throw her hands up in frustration. "Ugh, you're useless!"
Star's face darkened with anger. "Like yelling at me is going to fix this!"
Marco's response was much more dramatic, his open palm slamming hard into the Red Strikerborg's chest and knocking her back. "You need to stop!"
Catching herself, Jo stared at Marco as he took another step placing himself between her and Star.
"Take your passive-aggressive crap and shove it back up where it came from!" He snarled as he pointed at her face.
She went from surprised to enraged. "Passive-aggres…?! Screw you and your walking disaster girlfriend, you-!"
"KNOCK IT OFF!"
Jo went quiet at Dipper's roar as she looked at him. His expression was hard and angry, as he stared at Jo with the broken frustration of a man who could not keep quiet anymore.
"All of this crap with you antagonizing Star, Misao, and my sister? It stops right now. I don't care whatever has you pissed off, don't take it out on them." He ordered.
Everyone was looking at her. Marco's glare was no less severe, Star's cheek marks were once more skulls even as she took his arm to hold him back, Mabel had a look of more silent disapproval than anger, and once more Jo knew what kind of face Roland had behind his mask. With a seething grunt, she turned away from them and looked back down at the river below.
"Seriously, girl…" Roland muttered.
"Whatever," Jo just grumbled back.
Dipper returned everyone to the matter at hand. "All right, without a phone to connect to the suit, is there a way we can contact Drew?"
Marco turned to Roland. "You can contact each other through a radio, right?"
"Yeah but," Roland checked his systems, "I don't have Stingerborg connected."
Mabel asked Star. "Is there a spell that you can use to scry and find where Stingerborg is?"
"Even if I could think one up?" Star held up her wand, and a cloud of gunk came from it. "My magic's on the fritz."
Their options were short, and whatever time they had was even shorter. If they had any at all.
Dipper really hated this. "Then we have to find Vexor."
"Which we don't even know where to start," Jo pointed out without looking back at them.
"He said he'd be back for us later," Roland reported, "So if he does come back, it'll be too late."
Mabel placed a hand on Dipper's shoulder. "Dipper, what are we going to do?"
Dipper shook his head. "I don't know, I'll need my journal for this."
Marco kicked the stone wall of the bridge, small cracks appearing under his foot. "Damn it!"
Jo looked at the wall, then down at her chest where Marco struck her. He was strong, too strong for someone with no obvious superpowers, but it was the fact that he was doing such damage in his frustration that made something click in her mind.
Bowing her head with a sigh, she turned around to face everyone again.
"… He'll be fine."
The others turned to her.
"What makes you say that?" Dipper asked.
Jo turned her head to glance at Roland, then addressed everyone. "Dr… Stingerborg is worried that the superpowers Roland and I have aren't awakening. He should have them, but he doesn't know how to activate them. Mine kicked in when Lars punched you, Hunterborg got his when he was being entirely outclassed by Snake Head."
And thus everyone else understood. Drew was alone with Jara and one of her Mercenary Warriors. He had no choice, either his power was going to awaken, or it wasn't, and he was going to die. His odds were fifty-fifty and nothing else.
"Will it be enough, though?" Marco asked.
Jo pursed her lips in silence for a moment. "Yesterday, with how our dad treated him, I really thought Drew's power was going to wake up… and I was scared what would happen if it did."
Dipper cocked his head to the side ever slightly. "Hm?"
"Call it me being genre-savvy, but whatever power that Drew has building inside his head…" Jo began.
"… Is going to be as powerful as Roland and I put together."
Jara watched Saberizer bring his sword down for the killing blow, but the expected sound of a blade cutting through armor and the thud of a head on the ground didn't follow. In fact, as she looked closer, she realized that the blade had stopped right at the Blue Stingerborg's neck, just above it in fact. She stood more upright, confusion overcoming her.
"Saberizer…?" She asked, before she heard a rattling.
It was the sound of Saberizer struggling, his armor and blade trembling as he strained to move. Something had seized his arms, a tremendous but invisible force that held them perfectly still no matter how much he pulled to free himself.
"What… what is this…?" The swordsman demanded, before he looked down at the Blue Stingerborg, who remained down on his hands and knees for a moment longer, then rose to his feet.
As Drew stood, the force holding Saberizer's arms moved them up, lifting the falchion away from his neck and above its owner's head.
"… No…" Saberizer spat. "… It… it's you?!"
The Blue Stingerborg stood upright and turned his head to look at him.
"It must be so embarrassing," Drew said at a dead calm.
Underneath his mask, his eyes were wide with an overwhelming fury–the rage burning through him and reaching out to every corner of the battlefield, enveloping Saberizer.
"To lose to someone you think is so much weaker than you."
There was a roar, as Saberizer was thrown backward from Drew. With him a shockwave blasted across the field, clearing away the mist and scattering swords both discarded and buried in every direction away from him. The shockwave struck Jara, throwing her off her perch of swords and through the air.
Tumbling end over end, Jara recovered and landed safely. She looked to her right and watched Saberizer use his falchion to grind to a halt.
"How do you think it feels, to be the weak one?" Drew asked, both Mercenaries looking up at him.
The Blue Stingerborg walked towards Saberizer, sparks popping and wisps of smoke rising from his damaged armor. "Helpless to do anything but flail, because you have all the skill, all the money, all the power."
Saberizer rose to his feet and readied his sword. "If you believe I am helpless, then prove it!"
The swords tumbling through the air around Saberizer stopped at his will. Katanas, short swords, longswords, halberds, all reorienting themselves and targeting Stingerborg before accelerating to sound-barrier shattering speeds.
Drew raised his open right hand out in front of him. "You don't understand at all."
There was another roar, as the numerous swords in the ground behind him were ripped out of it and flung into the path of the oncoming projectile blades. The air exploded in a chorus of clashing steel, as the swords met and shattered into pieces.
Jara recoiled in shock, as she watched Saberizer's own swords be used against him. "Impossible…"
Saberizer sheathed his falchion. "… It is you who does not understand!"
As he launched himself at Drew, more swords shot from the ground and flew with or past him, homing in on Drew from his left, front, and straight ahead.
Drew clenched his outstretched hand into a fist, and the swords aiming for his sides wavered then abruptly changed direction, flying into the swords surrounding Saberizer and the swordsman himself. Swords crashed and annihilated all around him, and through the flashes of exploding steel more blades broke through aimed for the swordsman's throat, chest, and limbs.
Saberizer drew his falchion, scattering the projectiles and broke from their encirclement right in front of Stingerborg. Drew watched the falchion sweep outward after sending the swords aimed for its wielder flipping away, then it suddenly disappeared from his hand, and filled his field of vision from below, aiming for his chin. Saberizer had switched hands, faster than Drew could blink, to stab him through his head.
A pair of swords crossed in front of him and deflected the falchion upward.
Saberizer was astounded, even as both his eyes lit up. "But how?!"
They flashed, and a third sword slid between him and the Blue Stingerborg to block the beams he fired. Drew hurtled backward from the explosion, skimming the ground before he righted and stopped himself. Saberizer appeared in front of him.
Swords under Drew's control plunged to impale the swordsman's back from above, but Saberizer disappeared in a flicker. Turning in place to his right, Drew swept the Stinger Blade around and brought it up to block Saberizer's diagonal slash aimed for his neck. The blades ground against one another for only an instant, before Drew completed the swing and parried Saberizer back in a shower of sparks.
"You have no skill; you can't even follow simple strikes…!" Saberizer recovered and lashed out with flickering slashes that were blocked in just as quickly by more swords Drew called to his defense.
"And now you can read my movements?!"
More of Saberizer's own swords passed narrowly over and under his arms to strike Drew's chest and face, but the Beetleborg leaped–or rather was hurtled into the air above Saberizer like he'd been picked up and tossed.
"I can feel them…" Drew admitted as he reached the top of his flight and saw numerous gleams–in the next instant dozens of swords closed around him like claws.
There was no other way to describe it. As the swords entered his range, just like Saberizer had, he could feel the blades like he was touching each one of them from tip to pommel. Just as he could feel them, he could stop them, hold them, and move them. The swords that were too fast to stop he could guide away from him, to barely miss his armored body. Those that he could stop he did completely, the air they displaced striking him and throwing him down towards the ground.
Into more swords he fell, and the swords he grasped followed, slamming into them, blocking and breaking them with the overwhelming forces he and Saberizer both exerted on them.
"They're slow…" He said as Saberizer entered his range to perform another swift draw of his falchion before he could reach the ground.
The power that flowed from him, he used it to grasp his own body and spin himself around to the right once more, with such speed and momentum that the Stinger Blade crashed into the falchion before it left the sheath.
Beneath his mask, Drew ignored the feeling of blood pouring from his nose. It didn't hurt, on the contrary it felt like pressure had been released from his head, and with the stream flowed his frustration, fear, and self-doubt. All that mattered as his blade scraped against Saberizer's and the swordsman was repulsed from him, were the cracks that he saw along the falchion's edge.
Jara watched Saberizer lose ground, his footing lost as he stumbled backward. "No… this is not right…"
The Blue Stingerborg landed and held his right arm out, the Stinger Blade's edge gleaming in the rising sun's rays as it sliced through the light.
The Magnavore commander reached for her own blade, as her breathing picked up and her hair began to rise on end. "Saberizer… don't lose to this pathetic boy…!"
"When I asked how you think it feels…!" Drew shot forward, swords coming out of the ground and accelerating with him. Two, a pair of long swords, flew straight, but a pair of rapiers and a pair of cutlasses spun to become sawblades that circled around him.
The spinning swords shot ahead and Saberizer parried two of them away. The cutlasses shattered, leaving the spinning rapiers to attack next, but Saberizer weaved around both and took his sword in both hands as he let out a yell. He swung with all his might, shattering the remaining longswords, and then clashing with Drew.
"Have you ever thought about what goes through their minds?!" Drew shouted as their swords connected.
Both warriors repelled one another, then came back in Saberizer's two handed vertical strike slamming into the flat of the Stinger Blade. Drew parried him off, then spun himself to cut into him. When Saberizer brought his sword back and blocked him, he pushed the swordsman backward.
"Their desperation?!" Drew yelled as Saberizer parried him. He stumbled, but when the swordsman tried to capitalize, Drew whipped himself around and used an upward stab to deflect the vertical stroke down and away from him.
Drew used his power to move himself out the path of Saberizer's following rising slash and used his retreat to turn around and cross swords with him again. "Their terror when they realize they cannot touch you?!"
He swung the Stinger Blade and sent Saberizer flying off his feet, his power amplifying the swing so hard he grunted from the pain–he almost ripped his own arm from the socket. "GRAH!"
Saberizer caught himself as he had repeatedly, but he was not fast enough to deflect a rapier that impaled his left arm below the shoulder.
"I've lived my entire life weak…!"
As Drew shouted, the second rapier impaled him through his right thigh, midway between his hip and knee.
"Crushed by people stronger than me!"
Saberizer ripped the rapier from his arm, and took it in his right hand. The Blue Stingerborg reached him, with his right arm held across his left shoulder, and swung with much more confidence as Saberizer lunged anticipating a full spin. The Stinger Blade crashed through and shattered the rapier before Saberizer could pull it back.
"Looking down on me the entire time!"
Instead of taking another swing, he pulled his arm back just enough to lunge in a straight line, and his blade glanced off Saberizer's shoulder armor, taking off a bit of his scarf. As the blade cut and scraped through his armor, Saberizer twirled and resheathed his blade, using the motion to turn himself and face the Stingerborg.
Drew opened his right hand, and closed it into a fist, as he seized himself with his power.
Saberizer began the draw, as Drew turned with all that speed and more. The world moved in slow motion, and he watched the middle of the Stinger Blade meet the emerging falchion, the nanothin edge slipping into one of the edge's fine cracks, and then cutting with no effort through the entire blade.
"And you're just one more!"
The falchion disintegrated, as the tip of the Stinger Blade only narrowly missed Saberizer's body, and he and Drew finished their lunges past one another.
Jara dropped her blade, the weapon clattering to the rocky soil at her feet.
Saberizer stared at his broken blade in silence.
Behind him, Drew kept his arm held outward, as its turbine opened and spun. The Stinger Blade then began to spin as well, the triangle-shaped blade becoming a solid cone of light as its RPMs rose.
"I don't care about your shame or being an embarrassment to warriors!" Drew said as the blade's light became blinding. "I'm too busy taking responsibility for my actions, fighting the monsters I brought to my world with my foolishness! THAT IS WHERE MY HEART IS, NOT IN YOUR STUPID DUEL!"
Not concerned at all if he ripped his arm off completely, Drew planted his feet and turned perfectly, bringing the glowing Stinger Blade around and through Saberizer's torso.
"BEETLE BREAK!"
The energy blade lashed through Saberizer in an instant and surged out like a wave, cutting a deep, crescent shaped gash in the ground in front of the Mercenary Warrior.
Jara had no words, she could only watch.
Saberizer's arms dropped to his sides. "Stingerborg… I was wrong about you."
He lurched forward, his weakening grip losing the hilt of his falchion. It clattered to the ground. "You… were more formidable… than I realized…"
With his last strength, he lifted his head up.
"FORGIVE MY FAILURE, GENERAL JARA!" He bellowed. "IT HAS BEEN AN HONOR!"
Shaking her head as he fell, Jara shrieked in anguish.
"SABERIZER!"
The moment his body hit the ground, the Gaohm Zone collapsed, and both she and the Blue Stingerborg fell into the swirling dimensional tunnel.
The audible clang of metal against the pavement alerted the others, and they all turned to see him land in the middle of the bridge–the Input Magnum and the hilt of Saberizer's falchion clattering at his feet. He was barely standing, smoke was rising from his damaged armor, but Drew had made it out of the Gaohm Zone and back to reality.
He stood upright, and looked at the clear, blue LA sky. "I… I won…"
And the next thing he knew, Roland and Jo's armored bodies crashed into his, hugging him and not caring at all for the metal separating them.
"OH MY GOD!" Jo yelled.
"DUDE, YOU MADE IT!" Roland cheetred.
Drew could feel his adrenaline stop to drop, he was already starting to hurt, but he held himself together. "Yeah, I did it… I beat Saberizer…"
Jo looked up at him. "By your-freaking-self! How?!"
"Yeah, man, what happened?" Roland pressed.
Drew leaned onto the two of them. "… Telekinesis…"
Both stopped, Roland doing a double-take. "What?"
Jo gasped, in both excitement and vindication. "No shit?"
Drew nodded, then laughed. "My superpower is Telekinesis!"
Jo rested her forehead against his shoulder and chuckled. "Well, I hope somebody picks up that phone…"
The wooziness was settling in faster, leaving Drew at a loss to her meaning. "What…?"
She then threw her head back and yelled to the others as they reached the three. "BECAUSE I FREAKING CALLED IT!"
Mabel was the first to get to them, joining on the group hug embracing Drew's back. "Welcome back, Stingerborg!"
Dipper, Marco, and Star brought up the rear, all of them smiling in relief.
"You had a heck of a fight," Dipper said. "You okay under that armor?"
Drew let out a small laugh. "I'm not going to lie… I pushed myself really hard and I'm going to look like a mess when this armor comes off."
His nose had stopped bleeding, so at least he wasn't worried about that. His right arm and everywhere that Saberizer hit him really hard was sore, though.
"I'm probably sixty percent bruises right now, and my clothes are going to need a wash" he added.
Dipper grimaced. "We'll get you treated back over at our house, then."
Mabel leaned over his shoulder. "We'll get your clothes washed too, while you recuperate."
Jo nodded. "Don't worry about Dad, either. I'll go straight home and cover for you."
"He's the furthest thing from my mind, right now," Drew assured her.
Several police cars drove onto the bridge, their lights flashing and their sirens chirping to alert. Out of the first car a tall, gray haired and mustachioed officer who didn't seem that many days off from retirement stepped out and looked with worry at the armored warriors and their teenaged friends. His fellow officers emerged from their cars, not drawing their weapons but keeping behind their doors as they took stock of the eclectic group.
Picking up his radio, he turned it to loudspeaker mode and called to the group. "Excuse me, kids, I'm Officer Ferguson with the ECPD. Unless those are costumes, I'm afraid you're in violation of the town of Echo Creek and city of Los Angeles ordinance for the operation of unauthorized combat power armor."
Marco turned to Star. "We should go."
As Star pulled out her Dimensional Scissors, Jara shot up above the bridge from the river below, and landed behind the parked police cruisers, cracking and pitting the road under her feet. As Jo, Roland, and Mabel pulled back from Drew, the Mercenary General's armor slid from her back and crashed to the ground with a bridge-shaking thud.
The police turned around, the older officer still holding his radio as his fellow policemen and women drew their weapons when Jara whipped hers out into her right hand. She ignored their shouted orders to drop her weapon and get on the ground, focused only on the Blue Stingerborg.
"You…!" She growled, energy wreathing her weapon and extending into a beam sword, then screamed.
"I will not forgive you!"
Officer Ferguson, going pale at the sight of the pavement underneath the tip of Jara's sword melting, panicked and yelled into the microphone. "Open Fire!"
Dipper shouted at Jo and Roland. "GO!"
The police opened fire and Jara ran the gauntlet of fire, leaving afterimages as she sidestepped the hail of gunfire and raised her sword to cut down the obstacles in her way.
Summoning the Hunter Claw over his arm, Roland used his super speed to catch Jara's right arm as she swung. He held her in place, but her overwhelming strength stopped him from moving. The pavement cracked under his feet, and his feet were pushed into it.
"Gah!" He grunted. "Strikerborg!"
He let her push him down, then lunged upward to push her arm straight up. Behind him, Jo vaulted over Officer Ferguson's car and fired her Input Magnum, shooting Jara's sword from her hand.
"AHH!" Jara screamed before she punched Roland down into the ground, laying him flat on his back.
More shots from Jo's Input Magnum struck Jara as she wrenched her injured hand's arm free of the claw, cutting it deeply. Looking at Jo, past her at Drew, she yelled and caught the haymaker Jo tried to swing into her with her left hand.
The shockwave blew Jara's fingerless gloves into shreds, ripped open deep wounds in her arm to her elbow, and cracked the bottom left corner of her mask.
In spite of it, she turned and kicked Jo in her left side. "I'LL KILL ALL OF YOU VILE CHILDREN!"
Jo dug her right foot against the kick and didn't budge. She felt it through the armor, but it didn't stop her from grabbing Jara's shredded arm and swinging her around to throw her off the bridge back the way she came–on the other side from the emergency personnel still down on the river below.
Just before she went off it, Jara threw out her right arm and hooked it around one of the bridge's street lamps to swing around it and fly at the Stingerborg, Dipper, Mabel, Marco, and Star.
Both Marco and Mabel stepped, forth crouched, and jumped right into Jara, Marco's flying kick and Mabel's flying drop kick connecting with her face and chest respectively. The combined blows stopped Jara cold, and as the two kicked off her and jumped away–Star threw her Wand aside and both her cheek marks and eyes lit up.
"You… you…!" Jara snarled as she fell back, enraged and anguished.
"Super…" Star said, and glowing light swirled around her hands before she thrust them both at Jara.
"RAINBOW AVALANCHE!"
There was no green glittery sludge this time, as a barrage of rainbow-colored energy beams crashed into Jara, striking her over and over as they pushed her into the sky away from the bridge. More and more beams struck her until she was completely enveloped, and the rainbow beams exploded–the blast of flames and smoke darkening the sky above the bridge.
Star stumbled forward but was caught by Marco. Panting, she looked up at the billowing smoke from the blast with him and the others. They all saw Jara's limp body fall from the smoke cloud, plummeting towards the middle of the LA River, before it disappeared in a burst of flame like every time the Magnavores teleported.
Jo helped Roland up to his feet and looked up at the explosion, then turned towards the cops to check on them. The police officers were unharmed, looking back and forth between the Beetleborgs and their unarmored companions in disbelief.
On the side-road just before the bridge, where Drew had first been dropped off from the bridge, crowds of onlookers were also watching at the bridge. Like at the school, many had their phones out, filming every second of what had just transpired as they spoke among one another. At the very front of these crowd, Heather stood in silent awe with her hands over her mouth, while Janna nodded her approval.
"… The…" Heather whispered, her voice trembling. "… The Beetleborgs… are real…?"
Marco, still holding Star, handed the Dimensional Scissors to Dipper. "Let's go."
Dipper was more than aware of the crowd as he agreed and cut open a portal to their house. As Marco led Star through it, and Mabel helped Drew, the old mustachioed police officer finally remembered he had a mic in his hand and called out to them.
"H-hey, you kids!"
Roland and Jo appearing next to him, Dipper turned to Officer Ferguson. "What?"
"… What the hell was that?" The cop asked.
Before Drew stepped through the portal, he stopped and turned to the police.
"Our responsibility," he answered.
Dipper nodded. "Basically."
With that, they all passed through the portal–which closed up and vanished.
Officer Ferguson reached up and dislodged his hat as he nervously scratched his balding scalp. He glanced left at the smoldering remains of the blimp, then right at the dissipating cloud from Star's explosion. Then he looked at the damage on the bridge caused by Jara's rampage and the battle before.
"… This is way above our paygrade…" He lamented in a very worried voice.
A/N: Let's see how the toku tropes hold up.
