The Heroes, the Pirate and the Head, Chapter Five

The Dimension Borg robot’s head, a glowering hemisphere of blue metal that could have passed for the one belonging to its creator, sat disembodied on a pillar made up of the myriad intertwined cables, pipes and tubes that were keeping its functions online and its free will in check. Its narrow eyes glared unblinkingly ahead, but unlike the grey optical sensors of this robot’s thousand dead brothers at the Military Control Centre, these eyes burned with a tiny crimson ember at the very heart of each.

From the pillar, which stood in the middle of the vast warehouse interior, power-lines and cables stretched to all points of the floor, walls and ceiling. The entire chamber hummed and crackled with the voltage of high-tech machines, as six desperate men set about their work of plundering from the head all the rich treasures it knew. The youngest of the gang, who had white hair, translucent pale flesh and white bristles on his chin, kept turning from his duties to cast anxious looks at the unmoving robot dome.

“It did something back then,” said he. “Telling you dudes, just a while ago, I saw it do something! What if it managed to break through the signal-jamming field? We better ditch the thing right now and split this scene, before the going gets too hot!”

“Funny how much more of that ridiculous slang you use when you’re whining,” snarled the muscular dark-haired man named Solenoid, as he pored into his own monitor screen. “Now shut it, Icer, it did nothing! It’s in our power, and it’s only a matter of time before it yields up all its secrets to me!”

Icer turned back to his station, then seconds later cast another sidelong glance at the head. “I saw it do something,” he muttered again.

“Will someone silence that coward?” roared Solenoid, and slammed his fist against the metal frame of his computer unit. “Blast it, what’s wrong with this piece of junk? Nothing I try gets through! Next time we’re stealing our equipment from a more reputable company!”

“Your worthy science has so far performed as well as I expected!” mocked one of the other men, this one the oldest of the six, a dishevelled figure with lank grey hair and the robes of an ancient sage upon his skinny frame. “Stand aside, Solenoid, and let Iblis Tolomaq’s one true disciple try his mystical might instead! Perhaps you have forgotten that it was only through my power we acquired our prize in the first place?”

“You found it lying in a gutter, Maelstrom, and even with half its body gone it almost killed you before the rest of us managed to get its head off!” Solenoid pointed out. “Now quiet, the lot of you! I used science to give myself my magnetic abilities, and I can use it to get inside that robot’s mind too. Once I succeed we’ll have all Dimension Borg’s powers and technology working for us, and then nobody will dare stand in our way!”

“Some things never change,” a new voice declared. “I guess it was too much to ask that a nice convenient building couldn’t have just fallen on you six during the invasion, and put you out of our misery at last?”

The villains turned as one and their gaze shot to the roof, from which direction the words had come. There, poised upon the warehouse rafters, were all eight members of The Four Heroes and the Next Four. Joe, Bret, Dylan and Neetra crouched together in one group, while beside them Gala, Steam, The Chancellor and D’Carthage were ready for action.

“We’re taking that head,” Dylan continued. “And that means your latest little plan to conquer the world is over!”

In a flash, Solenoid, Icer and Maelstrom were joined by their three fellows: Hydrus, who had long blue hair and wild staring eyes, Sword-Slicer, who carried an enchanted blade and wore gleaming sliver armour, and Flesh-Ripper, who was a fanged shaggy beast. Solenoid raised his fist to his foes and ignited it with a burst of green electromagnetic light.

“Well, well, well! The Four Heroes!” he sneered. “Still too afraid to face us without bringing your friends, I see. Where are the little girls who saved your hides last time?”

“Home universe, most of them,” said Bret. “One’s on Mars.”

“That was just her, on the comm-link!” Neetra put in brightly.

Hydrus thrust out his arm and a torrent of swirling white water and foam roared heavenward. The Four Heroes and the Next Four scattered, swooping towards land as the gusher pulverized the rafters behind them. Whipping twin pistols from his bandolier The Chancellor strafed the battlefield mid-leap, staccato gunshots ricocheting from the metal decking and the frozen shields Icer hastily threw up, and seconds later eight pairs of feet touched down and battle was joined. Fire, lightning and green EM blasts pierced the warehouse gloom, as the dance of destruction whirled and wheeled around the solitary Dimension Borg head that glared motionless from its column.

“You!” Maelstrom hissed at Steam, accosting the metallic man’s body with hailstones while Hydrus’s frothing barrages drove him back. “It was through your meddling that our last plan was thwarted! I shall see that you suffer horribly for your interference!”

“Yeah, mate, heard that a lot lately,” Steam returned, dodging the waterspouts long enough to fell Hydrus with his fist, then igniting his lower body into flames and delivering a flying punch to Maelstrom that knocked him senseless. “You’ll just have to get in the queue!”

Joe ducked under Flesh-Ripper’s slavering, clawing bound and turned his attention to Solenoid, as Neetra teleported to his side to help him out. “All our confrontations have ended in your defeat, and this one will be no different!” our hero shouted, pitting the flames from his hands against the villain’s magnetic force. “Surrender, and we will be merciful!”

“But continue to resist us,” Gala went on, as she locked the shining white light of her cutlass against the warping ethereal glow of Sword-Slicer’s blade in clash after deadly clash, “and you fools will lose a great deal more than just that robot’s head!”

Suddenly, an unexpected rumbling began to shake the room. The combatants had just enough time to pause in their struggles against their various opponents and wonder what was going on, before the far wall exploded into a fireball. The heat of it was like a physical blow, flinging all fourteen friends and foes from their feet, as channels of orange-red flame ripped from the slagged and melting breach and swallowed up the scene. Then, in a deafening clangour of heavy feet pounding steel, massive figures made of rock began to surge through the fire like a well-trained army. Unharmed by the flames licking across their rotund legs and swelling chests, the stony soldiers thundered onto the stage in rank on rank and took up battle postures.

“Another one of your tricks, Solenoid?” Bret demanded above the howling inferno.

“Yeah, because we can do that!” Solenoid spat back, as he scrambled for his life to find a part of the room that wasn’t yet ablaze. “We’ve been enemies how long?”

“Guys, they look familiar!” Dylan cried, gazing at the hordes of rock-men. “Where have we seen them before?”

But there was no time to debate this question, for one last presence had still to make itself felt in the warehouse interior that night. Above the heads of heroes, villains and stone soldiers alike, a flickering orange-red flame appeared from out of nowhere and grew, reshaping itself, taking on form and enlarging many times over, until in a final incandescent burst it resolved itself into the figure of a slim female. She was clad in garments of red and black, her hair was short and brown, and great wings made of fire stretched from her shoulder-blades and bore her aloft. But it was neither her unexpected appearance, nor her outlandish physical aspect, that made all those looking on catch their breath in shock and utter bewilderment the moment they saw her. It was her face, and that alone, for it was identical to the face of Neetra.

“I’m new to this,” Gala began. “Which one is she…?”

Neetra had the answer, even though it made no sense, even though she knew that the girl in question was even now at the Military Control Centre, and even though the warlike and terrible expression on the newcomer’s face was unlike any she had ever seen there before. Even despite all these things, Neetra could not have failed to recognize her own twin.

“Phoenix?” she breathed.

“You are correct, sister…more correct than you know,” the girl said in reply. “I am Phoenix Prime, and I am come to vanquish the imposter who uses my name!”

Neetra threw both hands above her head.

“What?” she burst out.

NEXT: 'ORIGIN'