Where did you go, James? Why did you just disappear? We needed you. We still need you.

Danny wasn’t quite used to flying on an energy construct. He’d tried–very carefully–on his own once, and was surprised by how easy it was compared to some of the other ways of using Legacy’s power. Just make a disc, sit on it, then kinda…push it around. Still, as they flew toward their mystery destination, the world flashing by thousands of feet below, Danny found himself dizzy and slightly air sick.

As the land shifted to water he looked up at his mentor, who was still grinning. “Are we nearly there? I’ve never gone this fast before, it’s…a lot.”

Legacy laughed. “I’m still going slower than usual so you don’t pass out, but yes, we’re almost there. You’ll see a group of islands soon; we’re heading to the big one.”

Danny nodded, then closed his eyes and focused on the heat of the sun, trying to pretend that he wasn’t inside a transparent sphere traveling faster than a plane. After his stomach settled a bit, he opened his eyes again and took in the scene.

They were definitely over the ocean, and the crashing waves below were an entirely new brand of intimidating, but it was undeniably beautiful. The sky had opened up a bit, and the water below reflected its blue as it stretched off into the horizon. Danny spotted two different ships in the distance, one appearing to be a massive transport container the world still relied on, while the other actually had sails, of all things.

Finally he spotted the islands Legacy had mentioned. A few splotches of green which quickly resolved into sandy beaches and dense vegetation as the sphere neared them and slowed down. Danny couldn’t see any people or structures on the smaller islands, most of which would fit in a city block in NTC, but the largest island was clearly different.

It was at least as big as the entirety of NTC, and there appeared to be a village of small, humble gray square buildings near the wide, white beach. Legacy didn’t stop there, however, and Danny watched the village disappear into the distance as they moved farther inland, passing over what looked like dense jungle.

“Do I get to find out where we’re going now?” Danny asked. “I’ll admit the idea of seeing an Invader is pretty awesome, but this much secrecy is kind of freaking me out. You’re not taking me to some kind of secret, jungle society of aliens are you?”

Legacy laughed, “Hardly! But I guess I should apologize, I didn’t think about where your mind might go.”

“No worries, but can you tell me where my body is going?

“Right there,” Legacy said, pointing to a gap in the trees quickly growing closer. Danny squinted, shuffling forward to get a better look. Soon he realized it was a mansion, built in a clearing and surrounded by trees, with no visible roads or paths leading to it.

“What is that?” he whispered.

“Hero’s Sanctum,” Legacy said with a touch of gravitas. Then more lightly he added, “Or James’ house if you want to be less formal. And before you ask: don’t worry, he hasn’t been home in a long, long time.”

Danny’s eyes widened with surprise, and he stared intently at the large home as they approached. It was mostly white stone, but weather appeared to be turning it gray, and it was almost entirely covered by overgrown plantlife. The structure itself wasn’t overly elaborate. Just two stories, with no pillars or fancy statues or anything, but it did have a wide, welcoming staircase.

There were gardens that had spilled over and spread across the clearing, covered in pink and blue flowers, and before they landed Danny spotted an old pool that had become a pond over time. When the construct disappeared and Danny felt the soft ground beneath his feet, he let out a sigh of relief. The air was humid and thick with the smell of soil and trees, but it wasn’t unpleasant.

He turned to speak to Legacy when a howl echoed from the woods. “Was that a wolf?” he asked in disbelief. “Are there jungle wolves?”

Legacy laughed. “Dogs, actually. James loved dogs. He used to tell us that if we saved the world, he’d save every stray dog out there. We didn’t think he was serious until he asked for this island. Turns out it was the only thing he ever asked for. A private home, stray dogs, and some people to look after them. That’s what the village was we flew over–veterinarians and trainers still visit to make sure the dogs are taken care of.”

Danny shook his head as he processed that. It was an oddly human thing to know about a legend, and for some reason it shook his understanding even more than the war stories. Still, when the howls rang out again he felt a taste of some kind of primal fear, and hurriedly caught up to Legacy who was striding toward the wide steps.

As they approached the large manor, Danny was glancing around warily. There were rows upon rows of windows in the old manor, and despite Legacy’s assurance, he kept expecting to spot someone looking out at them. His fears didn’t manifest however, and the general disrepair of the building slowly convinced him that it was truly abandoned.

Legacy stopped at the bottom of the stairs, and held out an arm to block Danny. “One moment,” he said, then reached forward, palm out. A dazzling shield of blue burst to life when his hand came in contact with it, and Danny took an involuntary step back. The shield was actually a dome, and it covered the entire building.

“Did you make that?” Danny asked, looking at the odd color of the energy.

“No sir, this is pure James. He knew I could visit though,” Legacy finished, as a green arch spread outward from his hand, creating a simple door in seconds. “Come on, the fun is inside.”

Danny followed, but couldn’t help the feeling of being trapped as the door disappeared behind him. The blue shield disappeared immediately after, and Danny wondered if their own powers could duplicate that trick–invisible constructs opened up all sorts of possibilities. Still, there were more important things to consider as they approached the brown double doors, which Legacy opened with a rusty creak.

Danny followed him inside, and was surprised by the interior. He was hit by the powerful scent of mildew, and his gaze swept over the dusty, damp home. It was fairly well-lit from the numerous open windows letting in the sun, revealing an open concept layout, filled entirely with mismatching furniture.

There were stairs ahead leading to the second floor, but Legacy moved to the right, passing through a dining room and into a larger living area. Danny’s eyes were caught by almost everything he saw. It wasn’t that everything was equally interesting, there was simply such an unusual mix that the mundane was as strange as the exotic.

The dining room had a simple, if large wooden table. The centerpiece, however, appeared to be a claw as large as Danny’s leg. The walls had everything from faded movie posters to what he suspected were genuine works from art. A baseball jersey from someone named ‘Ruth’ was right next to a faded painting of a dark haired woman smirking.

Even the furniture was odd, as somehow every piece seemed to be from a different decade. Wooden chairs next to swiveling office equivalents, polyester couches like he’d seen at his grandparents next to plush, leather recliners. The strange house felt more like a museum, especially when you included the occasional item that was clearly from the Invasion.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

As they passed through another room, Danny noticed discarded weapons, all of them massive, bladed monstrosities that likely would need someone like Bob to lift. Next to those were seemingly random chunks of black and green metal. The latter reminded him of the remains of the Invader Kingdom in NTC, and he wondered why the Great Hero would keep such an odd collection of items. Trophies?

At last they came to a simple wooden door, one that Danny would have guessed led to a closet. When Legacy opened it, however, he was surprised to see that it led to another mid-sized room, one that appeared to be a laboratory of some kind. Danny only took a few steps in before he leapt backward with an involuntary yelp.

He only managed to steady himself when he realized the towering figure wasn’t moving, regardless of how alive it appeared to be. Legacy walked right up and stood next to the creature, which had to be at least twice the man’s height. Danny took a tentative step forward, feeling his mouth grow dry as he looked upon the form of the monsters that had once conquered and enslaved his world.

“Our cameras didn’t work on them back then because of the radiation,” Legacy said in a soft voice. “I’ve seen artist renditions, but they can never quite capture the truth.” Danny nodded, unable to speak as he took in the sight.

The creature–Danny couldn’t guess if it was male or female, or if that concept even existed for the Invaders–was a disturbing, corpse-like shade of gray. Its limbs were long, and narrow–all six of them–and the skin was strangely shriveled, looking more like tree bark than flesh. It looked a bit like a large and horribly disfigured human, as if a man had been stretched impossibly, leaving a lank and wiry form behind.

Its legs ended in two large claws rather than feet, and it had spiny growths protruding from its knees. The chest was proportioned oddly, likely to accommodate the two sets of arms which were spread wide to its sides, and the shoulders were clustered together, with two arms almost appearing to come out of the same socket. Its fingers were similar to its toes, with three claws on each hand, clearly capable of grasping the massive bladed weapons Danny had seen earlier in the house.

The creature wasn’t nude, but it wore only a series of dangling red squares bound together, draping from its neck to hips, then trailing almost to the ground. Bracelets and other jewelry were present as well, made of the same black and green as other Invader construction.

Finally Danny took another step forward, and forced himself to look at the creature’s face. It was long, and hairless, but didn’t appear stretched like the rest of the body. Instead it almost looked like a mask, nearly rectangular in shape. The eyes were two dark holes, and very widely spaced. It had the same bark-like appearance as the rest of the body, and shifted into asymmetrical spikes at its crown.

It wasn’t until Danny got closer that he finally saw that it did, in fact, have a mouth. The jaw was completely hidden by the front of the face, but from underneath he could see a half-open maw full of too many rows of bladed teeth. He couldn’t be certain, but he had the impression it could open far wider than he’d ever want to see.

“Is it…alive?” he finally managed to ask.

In answer, Legacy reached out and wrapped on the creature’s leg with his knuckles. Another blue shield burst to life then quickly faded away. “Kept in stasis for study, but no, it’s not alive.”

Danny let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. He quickly scanned the creature’s form once again. “I don’t see any injuries…unless something sucked the life out of it.”

Legacy grunted, “They all looked like that. But no, you wouldn’t see any injuries. James killed this one very carefully. He actually reached inside the thing with his power, and crushed whatever the hell it used as a brain. I’ve tried for decades, but it’s one of his many tricks that I can’t replicate.”

Danny glanced at Legacy, whose eyes were locked on his old enemy. I guess it’s no surprise a Power Shaper couldn’t do that…sounds more like what Vincent does. He couldn’t say anything, of course, so Danny went back to considering the abomination in front of him. “It’s hard to imagine that these things took over the world,” he said after a long silence.

“Not entirely accurate,” Legacy said, finally stepping back and pulling his own gaze away from the Invader corpse. “There were different types of the bastards, we think they fell into some kind of caste system. These ones,” he indicated the disturbing creature, “were something like captains. There were a lot more of the smaller kind, they looked more like a hunched over human.”

Legacy walked over to another door that Danny hadn’t noticed, his attention locked on the Invader. The Hero opened this second door, and Danny followed him into a different, smaller lab. Again he was greeted with an unexpected sight, though he was somewhat prepared this time, and he was more confused than shocked.

Legacy stopped next to some kind of frozen display, clearly containing another Invader specimen. This time they were entering from the side of the room, and Danny wasn’t sure what he was looking at. Rather than a figure, it seemed like he was looking at a large slab of gray skin. For a moment he thought it might be the opposite of the last creature he’d seen, like some kind of big round Invader. He even had a pretty tasteless fat joke ready as the rest of the ten foot blob came into better view.

Then he saw the enormous, empty eye socket looking back at him, like a hole in the world, and the quip died on his lips.

Again he took an involuntary step back, trying to take in the sight. It was part of a head, as if someone had diagonally sliced off a quadrant of some impossible giant. The eye alone had to be as tall as Danny was, and if its proportions were even remotely similar to the creature in the other room…

“All that’s left of one of their ‘Kings’,” Legacy said, and Danny could hear true loathing in his Mentor’s voice. “James truly obliterated the rest of them. They didn’t die like humans, you see. They could rebuild themselves with enough mass and energy. He had to tear every drop of Alpha from this asshole before he was willing to risk preserving it, and James still took…other precautions.”

“How big were these things?” Danny whispered, unable to look away from the dark, burnt out hole where he thought an eye should be.

“This one was average, maybe…seven stories tall? Hard to say, the Kings were less homogenous than the other castes.”

“Huh?” Danny replied, and Legacy chuckled softly.

“The Kings were all different,” he clarified. “More or less. Different numbers of legs, eyes, wings. Didn’t bother James any, though. As soon as he knew he could match their power, he would be on them, tearing the bastards apart.”

“Damn,” was all Danny could say. He was looking at history. Looking at the remains of a being that had conquered worlds. There wasn’t anything more he could say. Reality just didn’t seem all that real at that moment. Finally he managed to look away, though he felt like the dead King watched him as he stumbled across the room.

The lab was almost identical to the first. There were notebooks, some K-Tech computers that looked about three decades old, and all sorts of weird testing equipment he didn’t recognize. Plus one other thing. Danny approached the strange metal cylinder, propped against the wall in a forgotten corner of the room.

Despite the dust gathered on it, he could tell that it was newer than anything else in the home. The metal still gleamed, and the design flowed and curved in ways that made it look like it was from the future, instead of the past. It was taller than Danny, probably eight feet at least, and he could see what looked like normal circuitry attached to the same green and black metal that belonged to the Invaders.

Trying to keep his voice steady, he called to Legacy, “Hey, what’s this thing? Just another weird trophy from the war?”

His mentor turned from his own staring contest with the long-dead Invader, and glanced at the unusual object. “Oh, just one of Tecnico’s stupid toys,” he said dismissively. “I found it in a raid a while back. If that prick wants it he can come get it himself. For all I know it’s a goddamned nuclear bomb, so I couldn’t just leave it lying around. You have no idea how much random garbage that guy’s left all over the world.”

Danny nodded, then moved away, trying not to let his interest show. “Should we get back? It would be nice to make it to the Tower without going quite as fast as we did on the way here.”

Legacy laughed, “Sure, Kid. This is a place for ghosts anyway. Let’s go.” He started to leave, but turned and spat on the ground in front of the enormous chunk of Invader, his expression like nothing Danny had ever seen on the man. Then he simply walked out of the lab as if nothing had happened.

Danny followed him hastily, trying not to let his excitement show. He needed to get back to civilization. He needed to get a message to Vincent. He needed to tell him the impossible news. That wasn’t just any toy, it was the barrel of a very unusual and specific gun.

Danny had found his piece of the weapon.