Drew wasn’t just okay.
Andrew McCormick felt… amazing.
“I can’t believe it…” He was seeing the world not with his two eyes, but through the helmet of his newly wished Blue Stingerborg armor. He looked down at himself through the augmented reality view of his helmet, down at the blue and black armor encasing his body.
“It’s all here… heads up display with horizon, altitude, speed, and even the mini map.” He looked at the bottom corner. “Weapons and energy gauges, wait…”
He looked down at his armor-encased right arm, and gasped. There it was.
“The Stinger Blade!” It was equipped on his arm–the long, double-edged nano thin blade so fine that it was gleaming as it cut through the light.
“This… this is real…” He finally spoke and closed and opened his hand. “This is actually happening!”
“Drew?”
Jo’s barely contained excitement was obvious, he turned to face her and saw the Red Strikerborg standing where his sister had been. She was clutching the sides of her helmeted head, hunched down, and shaking.
She could barely resist the urge to leap for joy–lest she go through the ceiling. “Oh my gosh oh my gosh oh my gosh oh my gosh oh my gosh oh my gosh oh my gosh.”
“I know, right?!” Drew asked her.
She sprang up, barely avoiding going through the ceiling. “I’M A BEETLEBORG!”
Drew high-fived her with both hands after she came down. “Yes!”
“This is awesome!” Jo cried.
“Isn’t it?!”
They turned to face Roland, who seemed… solemn by comparison in his Green Hunterborg armor, the Hunter Claw’s edge just clearing the floor.
“… Roland?” Drew asked.
“Wow, unreal…” He murmured. “… My gosh…”
“What?” Drew asked.
Jo looked at her blue armored brother. “Uhh…”
“I guess he still thinks he’s dreaming so he can do whatever-”
“This is amazing…!” Roland exclaimed and Drew and Jo stepped back. “I FEEL INCREDIBLE!”
He curled in again, more stoked than he ever has. “YES! YES! YES! YES! I CAN WIN! I FEEL GREAT! I! CAN! DO! THIS!”
The siblings looked at each other again and snickered.
Roland threw out his hands. “Yes! I’m a Beetleborg! I’m alive! This is all a miracle! I’m awake! I’m wide awake!”
Behind them, Flabber stroked his chin, and tried to suss out what he was seeing. “I really hate these long sleeps. I know he’s doing a bit, but I don’t know what it is.”
He turned to the Pipettes. “And I don’t like being left out of the joke.”
“It’s been forty years,” Blue suggested.
“You’ve got some reading to do~!” Red and Green sang.
Flabber clapped his hands. “Ooh, I just love homework!”
Roland sighed. “I always wanted to do that.” He looked at his armored hands in wonder. “This is like a dream come true.”
“Just for that, I’m calling you Big Green from now on,” Drew joked.
“Big Green will allow this,” Roland said with a short nod.
“What should we do first?” Drew asked.
Jo punched her palm. “Let’s go mash those monsters, then go teach the Vanderbutts a lesson they won’t forget.”
Drew shook his head. “Yeah on the first thing, but definitely no on the second. We can’t just go out and terrorize people, even if they are jerks.”
Roland agreed. “Come on, being responsible with our powers is the first rule of having powers, Jo. You know, like Spider-Man.”
“Yeah, but Spider-Man is lame.”
“You’re just a hater.”
“Bite me, Big Green.”
Drew turned to face Flabber. “All right, Flabber, how do we get out of here?”
“Now hang on!” Flabber said. “Before I tell ya, you gotta promise…”
“What?” Roland asked.
“Could ya…” Flabber wasn’t sure how this’d go over with them. “… Not kill the guys?”
“What? Why?” Drew asked.
“They tried to eat us!” Jo argued.
Flabber held up his hands and gestured for an ease of tension. “I know, but I’d rather you not kill ‘em. Smack ‘em around, humiliate ‘em, teach them right from wrong, but don’t… you know… kill ‘em.”
He brought up his hands together and rested them against his cheek. “Please? For me?” Flabber batted his eyelashes for good measure.
Jo groaned, she really wanted to try the Red Striker Plasmar at full power on something. “… Fine!”
Roland patted Jo on the shoulder. “Ay, we shouldn’t be in a hurry to clap anyone… even if they are creepy monster freaks.”
Drew agreed. “All right, Flabber, we promise not to kill them. How do we get out of here?”
Flabber gestured behind them. “Why… right through the foyer-?”
He stopped, there was no door where he gestured, just a wall. “Huh, the foyer should be right there.”
The miffed phasm placed his hands on his hips. “Well, I never! They put up a wall to keep me sealed!”
Drew doubted that. “Those monsters we saw don’t seem like the type.”
“They aren’t!” The Blue Pipette said.
“They got Ghoulum to do it~!” All three added in sonn unison.
“Wholum?” Roland asked.
“Ghoulum!” The Pipettes answered.
Flabber nodded. “Oh yeah, rock solid guy. Real handy!”
@@@@@
Reaching the bottom of the stairs and crossing the foyer, Dipper and Mabel were stopped short of the door by a massive figure imposing himself in front of the door. Standing even taller than the twins, the black-bodied statue of an Asura, leveled its fixed fierce expression onto the twins.
Dipper and Mabel looked at each other. “You wanna…?”
Mabel nodded. “Yeah, yeah, the Family Kickboxing thing…”
She wound up and kicked the statue in its stomach.
“OW SON OF A-!”
It did absolutely nothing.
Roland looked towards the wall Flabber indicated. “Wait, did you hear that?”
“Hear it?” Drew asked as the eyes of his helmet lit up and he could see in thermal vision through the walls. “I can see it! I think Dipper and Mabel are on the other side!”
Mabel rubbed her leg, whimpering. “Ah! Come on, I kicked the door like it was nothing…!”
Dipper placed himself between Mabel and the statue. “Come on, I’m not afraid of you.”
The statue let out a growl, and two more arms emerged from its back, fists clenched and ready to fight.
Dipper’s guard dropped. “Okay, I am now afraid of you.”
“Hey! Ghoulum’s got ‘em!” Dipper and Mabel looked back to see the other three monstrous residents of Hillhurst reach the stairs.
Yeah, they were that screwed.
Mums reached the bottom of the steps first and pointed at the two of them. “All right, you two. No more tricks and teleports. Do you wanna die quietly, or screaming?”
“I could go both ways,” Fangula said as he looked back and forth between Dipper and Mabel, drooling in anticipation.
“Hey, want pet!” Frankenbeans protested.
Mums looked back up at the man-monster. “I’ll get you another pet rock, what do you say?”
“So, this is how we die–killed by the Universal Studio prop closet.” Dipper sighed and placed himself in front of Mabel. “If we survive this, I’m not doing anything without being prepared. Lesson learned.”
“Just not the face, I want an open casket funeral!” Mabel pleaded with the monsters.
Fangula hissed. “I will be most happy to oblige, my… little morsel~”
Mabel looked at Dipper and pointed at the vampire. “Dibs on getting killed by that guy.”
The sound of metal carving through wood interrupted the pre-murder banter. The monsters and their would-be victims looked towards the wall and watched as the end of a gleaming blue blade cut a long diagonal line from the ceiling to the floor, disappeared, and then reappeared to carve a second in the opposite direction.
Fangula and Frankenbeans looked at each other then back at the door confused, while Mums scratched the side of his wrapped-too-tight head. Ghoulum turned towards the wall, snarling after the blade disappeared again.
Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
For a moment, all was quiet.
Dipper and Mabel watched the wall as quietly as the monsters.
Mums looked around again. “Uh-”
The wall exploded outward, and the armored form of the Green Hunterborg emerged, barreling straight towards Frankenbeans with the Hunter Claw open to strike.
Roland laughed. “Aight big man, let’s run that fade!”
The man monster didn’t even have time to scream–he was snared in the crushing claw and slammed into the wall behind him with enough force to leave an imprint.
Dipper looked at the green armored warrior in surprise. “Wait, what?!”
A red blast of energy sent Dipper and Mabel diving, as Jo opened fire on Mums. The rays from the four barrels of the Red Striker Plasmar threw the Mummy against the stairs. Arcs of red energy crackling over his body, he collapsed to the floor, convulsing.
Jo pulled the weapon back, smoke wisping from it. “There’s a shock to your system!”
Fangula, the last one standing, looked back at Frankenbeans, then over at Mums, and finally at the Blue Stingerborg, coming at him with the Stinger Blade. With a yelp of fear, he jumped over Drew’s opening attack, and then leaped away from a clumsy follow-up swing.
“Wait! What is going on here?!” The vampire demanded as he faced the armored youth. “Who are you?!”
Drew spun around and swung the Stinger Blade, cutting off Fangula’s belt and causing his pants to fall to the floor, revealing a festively out of season pair of Christmas boxer shorts underneath.
“We’re the Big Bad Beetleborgs!” Drew declared, pointing the weapon at Fangula. “And if you don’t leave these two alone, we’re going to be your worst-”
“And last!” Jo cut in.
“Nightmare!” Drew finished.
Jo chuckled.
He turned to his sister. “Come on, really?”
Fangula yanked up his pants. “M-Message received! Frankie! Come on, take the Mummy and run!”
Mums was still convulsing on the ground, as Frankenbeans grabbed him by the arm and dragged him away. The three Beetleborgs together turned to face Ghoulum, who still stood by the door, ready for combat.
“Rrrrr… nope!”
Or not, as the statue monster’s extra arms receded and it turned to walk off into the house, grumbling.
“We did it!” Drew cheered.
“Yeah!” Jo pumped her fist. “This is awesome!”
“Yo, you see how fast Frankenfreak folded?” Roland said.
“Yeah, you like ‘whoosh!’ and he was like ‘Oh my gosh!’”
“Then Jo was like, ‘boom!’ and that Mummy guy was like ‘ugalugaluga!’”
“Drew you were so cool with that sword!”
“Yeah, I was like ‘vwim! vwim!’ and I cut that vampire’s belt right off-”
“WHAT THE EVER-LOVING HELL IS GOING ON?!”
The newly armored Beetleborgs stopped and looked at Dipper and Mabel. They were on their feet again, staring at the three of them.
“Drew, Jo, Roland is… is that… you?” Dipper asked.
“Oh my gosh, I’m freaking out…” Mabel said out of the corner of her mouth. “They’re so cool…”
Drew stepped up. “Yeah, we’re the Beetleborgs now!”
A moment passed before Dipper asked. “… How?”
Roland answered. “We wished for it from a Phasm.”
The color fled Dipper’s face. “A Phasm?!”
Flabber, standing to Dipper’s right, extended a hand to him. “Nice to meet you, Pine Tree.”
“AHHHH!” Dipper jumped back from him, landing in Mabel’s arms. She screamed with her brother, backing up from the being.
“That is your name right, Pine Tree?” He asked as their screaming stopped. “You look like a Pine Tree. Well, not like a Pine Tree.”
In a puff of smoke, Flabber transformed into a conifer with his face on it, complete with a woodpecker going to town on the upper trunk.
“Otherwise, how ‘wood’ you get in through the door?”
Mabel, still holding Dipper, snickered.
Dipper looked Flabber up and down. “… You’re not Bill?”
“Bill?” Flabber transformed back and stroked his chin. “I don’t know any Bills… except for…”
He pulled out a yellow envelope. “The electric bill.”
A blue envelope. “The water bill.”
And finally, a green envelope. “The gas bill…”
Flabber looked at them carefully and his eyes almost popped from his skull. He quickly tossed them over his shoulder and looked aside at Drew. “Actually, I’d rather not associate with those Bills…”
Dipper’s left eye twitched as he thought. Okay, a wish granting entity with reality bending powers just made these three superheroes. Oh, and he called me Pine Tree. Nothing about this is good.
“Who are you?” He asked the phasm.
Flabber summoned forth a massive comb and ran it through his stylish pompadour. “Flabber’s the name, and magic’s my game. I’m the host with the most, of the rockinest haunted mansion on the west coast!”
“Why did you give them superpowers?” Dipper demanded.
“Because they helped a geist out, it’s only nice.”
Mabel giggled. “Hehehe… geist.”
Flabber looked past Dipper to Mabel. “Thank you very much; it is so hard to get a laugh around here. The usual crowd is either wrapped up in their own ego, bloody hecklers, or frankly just not smart enough to appreciate the humor.”
Mabel giggled harder, as Dipper brought his hand up to bury his face in his palm. “Mabel, stop.”
“He’s funny, though!”
“No, he’s not,” Jo and Roland said in unison.
Drew wasn’t going to admit he thought Flabber was hilarious.
Flabber offered a conciliatory hand. “Now, I know what you’re thinking:”
Dipper, now dressed in an eloquent, sparkling pink ballgown, looked down at Flabber dressed as a homely country girl with a basket and a little dog too.
“‘Am I a good phasm, or a bad phasm?’”
They were back to normal before Dipper could get angry about it.
“Well, you don’t need to worry yourself one little bit, I’m as good a phasm as they come.”
Dipper shook his head. “You don’t give random kids superpowers! That’s the opposite of good!”
“Hey, we can handle it,” Drew insisted.
“No, you can’t,” Dipper shot back.
“What’s the deal?” Jo asked. “We saved your lives, and you still think we shouldn’t have superpowers?”
“Exactly! Do you realize what kind of consequences this has?!”
Roland stepped in. “Yo, it’s all good. We made the wish; we can take responsibility.”
“Yeah!” Jo said with a nod.
Drew likewise nodded, holding aloft his blade. “That’s right.”
Dipper looked at Mabel, at the Beetleborgs, at Flabber, then narrowed his eyes contemptuously at the Phasm. “My sister and I have experience with things that can make your dreams come true. Wishes, favors, deals… and every time? What we want is exactly what we get, but the price is always way too high.”
A chime followed Dipper’s ominous assertion, then a sound like an electrical charge ramping up. Everyone in the foyer looked towards the open doorway, as they heard a voice.
“Mega…”
Dipper realized what was happening. “Oh no.”
“NARWHAL BLAST!”
@@@@@
In a vacant lot clear on the other side of Echo Creek, three humanoid figures lay face down on the ground. A large green-caped creature that was a colorful mishmash of different body parts from humanoid alien creatures with a bony, ogre-like face set into the neck of a whale-shaped head. A scrawny mechanical man with white and gold-plated skin wearing a lab coat, his “hair” a set of tubes ending in blue and green tips. Finally, a woman wearing a red and white mask covering her face, a bill-less peaked cap, and red armored cape over a matching tight leotard.
They were surrounded by enough empty beer bottles to kill a college fraternity with alcohol poisoning.
“Hey, baby,” the green caped monster, still face-down on the ground asked in a deep, funky voice, “Who stopped the party?”
The machine man in the white lab coat didn’t even try to move. Speaking with a noticeable New York accent, he answered. “Don’t bother me Typhus, I’m updatin’.”
The woman with them groaned. Her thick Slavic accent tearing into the heads of her compatriots. “Why did I drink so much…? Why do I always drink so much?”
She was the first one to get up, and she brought her hand up to shield her face. “What is wrong with the sky? Why is it so bright… and not… screaming?”
The world around her registered, and she whipped her head back and forth. “Oh. Oh dear. Typhus! Noxic! Get up, get up!”
“I’m updatin’!” Noxic–the lab coat-wearing android–repeated, before a chime sounded. “Huh, it’s done. Whoa… where’d this bandwidth come from?! This is amazing!”
He sat up, revealing a mechanical face with gold wired black goggles over his eyes. Despite them, he could plainly see they weren’t in what counted as Kansas for them anymore. “Guys, how much did we drink?!”
Typhus got up and looked around. “Too much; this is weird, baby.”
“It is not just weird, it is impossible! Everything is so… so… orderly!” The woman walked around the lot, turning around to take it all in. “The air, the ground, the sky! There is nothing in our world like this! Everything is so… so… consistent!”
Noxic jumped around. “Jara, check it out! This place has the most up to date Java, and I installed it in a microsecond! What is this miracle world of technology, huh?!”
The woman, Jara, placed her hands on her mask’s porcelain cheeks. “I do not know, but I am already liking it much more than that old dump!”
Typhus sat on the ground, his grinding his underbitten teeth as he looked around. “How’d we get here?”
“Hey, you don’t want that gift horse to bite you, now!” Noxic teased while doing a cartwheel. “Whoo-hoo!”
“C’mon, if this ain’t the old place, then how’d we get to this new place?” Typhus threw up his hands. “It don’t make no sense.”
“It. Doesn’t.”
All three stopped everything they were doing, and slowly looked towards the voice that spoke. Eloquent, calm, if a bit exasperated, it belonged to a creature in white, regal chitinous armor with a cape that was neither soft nor rigid. His white, polished face with black slits concealing slightly opened yellow eyes was adorned with a tall golden crown–not unlike a pope’s mitre. He stood by a wall, in his hand holding a comic book, a recent issue of the Big Bad Beetleborgs.
“Aw man, Vexor’s here too,” Noxic groaned.
Vexor took his whining well. “Yes, I am here. Did you think you three would be so easily rid of me?”
“I had hope,” Jara said.
“And now we don’t,” Noxic lamented.
“Regardless of your useless whimpering. I know where we are, and quite possibly how we got here.”
Vexor walked towards him, moving one footstep at a time, but gliding over the ground… like gravity itself wasn’t sure if it had a hold on him. “We have achieved what even the mightiest of us could not.”
He held up the comic. Jara looked at the cover, and saw herself, face to face in combat against a red-armored creature she had no idea about. “That’s me!”
“What? When did you get a comic book?!” Noxic snatched the book from Vexor, and flipped through it. “Hey, Typhus! Look at this, we’re in it too!”
Typhus trundled over. “Hey, let me see!” He looked at the page with him and Noxic on it. “‘Biolord Typhus’, huh? Yeah baby, I can dig it!”
Vexor swiped the book back from them, closing it. “We have left our decaying world completely, and we have an unlikely savior to thank for our emergence.”
He turned the comic over and gestured to the barcode of the comic. There, next to the 2.99 price tag and above the lines of the code, was the comic’s seal of authenticity: a black and white eye of providence with tiny arms and legs, wearing a top hat.
All three stared at it. Jara trembled, Typhus growled, and Noxic crackled with electricity. All at once, they spoke a single word:
“HIM.”
Vexor turned the book over to look at the barcode himself. “Quite.”
Noxic shook his head. “Nooo… nonono… He’s gone. The guys that came back from that big shindig in the rift said that He got disvaporaterized by the humans!”
“Yes, and the walls have only gotten stronger since!” Jara added.
“He was unpredictable and chaotic in His brash wielding of power, but His cunning was second only to my own,” Vexor gestured to himself in all his grand humility. “Even as He plotted one way out of our eternal nightmare, He had another, quite possibly many others, at His disposal.”
He patted the comic. “And this has borne fruit that we all can partake of.”
Light shone from those black slits of his eyes. “Even greater. With Him well and truly dead… nothing stands in our way of conquering this universe for ourselves.”
Jara, Noxic, and Typhus looked between each other, then back at Vexor. The white adorned demon spread his arms.
“At long last, the Magnavore Tribe needn’t scurry in the shadows. Upon this reality, we ourselves will cast the shadows and watch the vermin cower within them!”
Noxic rubbed his metallic hands together, sparks popping from them. “Oh man, think about it! A whole universe of our own to conquer. This’ll be the coolest!”
Typhus clenched a fist and laughed. “Ain’t nobody gonna stand in our way.”
Jara tapped on her mask’s cheek with a finger. “Ah, it will be so nice to invite the girls over to party in a dimension that isn’t slowly burning to the ground.”
“Yet!” Noxic and Typhus said together, and the three laughed.
Vexor raised a single hand, silencing them. “Wait.”
The white monstrosity looked around, like deer aware of a nearby predator. “That… do you feel that…?”
“Feel what?” Typhus asked.
“I am not one of your Dragon Ball Scouters, please elaborate,” Jara said.
Noxic brought a hand to his goggles and pressed a button on them. “Yeah, that’s me.”
“There is something here… powerful and ancient…” His voice shook, like he’d once witnessed power like this before and never wanted to again. “… And familiar…”
Vexor went still and stared off into the distance.
“Uh… boss?” Typhus asked.
Without warning Vexor screamed, in a scratchy, mechanical voice.
“JIWKR TMADW XJDIC YOCTJ RTFXT MOIYO BIUZV AOWDM QGZJL GKPOY RYPOM YKJTU FGCB!”
“Augh!” Jara’s hands shot to her ears.
“Not cool, baby!” Typhus yelled, the top of his whale-shaped head opening like a mouth and spewing a green, viscous fluid.
“SKEXP FZYSX RPCSQ ZEVWE BFSGT YMFTQ IRPVA BFDJS ZCNHB RBHC!”
Even Noxic was affected. “C’mon boss, you crashed my auditory!”
Like an old disk drive repurposed to make music, Vexor’s laugh came out in a long, slow electronic whine. Then, the demon collapsed onto his knees, his fingers clawing at the ground.
As his flunkies slowly edged closer to him, he blurted out in a raspy, elderly voice.
“It’s here!”
“What’s here?!” Jara asked as her hearing returned. “And what was that?!”
“An ancient power, vast and deep, it stands to threaten my radiance…!” Vexor rose to his feed with difficulty, his body shuddering with every movement. “And it is close! I command you three to find it!”
“Wait, you mean now?!” Jara asked.
Typhus groaned. “Ease up, I’m still hungover, baby!”
“NOW!” Vexor roared.
“And how are we supposed to find something that we cannot feel?!” Jara now demanded.
“Uhh… hey, guys? I can’t hear what you’re yakkin’ about, but I’m detecting a huge power level that way!” Noxic pointed, in the direction Vexor sensed the presence.
“Let’s get goin’ then.” Typhus shoved Noxic forward. “Move it, baby’!”
“Yeesh! All right, all right! Let me get my sound system going!”
Jara looked back at Vexor. “What about you?”
Vexor shooed Jara away, while clutching his face with his other hand. “I will find a suitable lair for us! Now go, go! Make haste, find what that thing is!”
“Fine! Warn us next time you decide to have a freak out like that!” Rubbing her right ear, Jara stomped off after her compatriots, leaving Vexor to collapse back down to one knee.
“I was wrong. One thing stands in my way,” he lamented.
He dug his clawed fingers into the dirt and clenched his hand into a fist.
“One thing.”
A sinister glee welled up in him, leaking from his chitinous lips as another electronic laugh.
“The only thing.”