“Don’t just stand there!” Harm yelled. “Light ‘em up!”
The room rocked as everyone unleashed their most powerful attacks upon the advancing horde. Clockwork burned, melted, and shattered, yet more arrived to take their place. Oscillators and Cogs made easy pickings, but the Knights required concentrated fire to blow apart, and the Dukes and Princes were tougher still. In no time, they forced their way through the opening and filled the room. The fight degenerated into a chaotic, swirling brawl. Only Penelope Yin remained uninvolved in the fray; the Clockwork scrupulously avoided engaging her in combat.
“We’ve got to get out of here!” urged Harm between blasts.
“No [censored], Captain Obvious!” Bellona shot back. “What do you think I’m trying to do?”
Jenny shouted, “What about Crystal? She’s still down in the entrance!”
“An unfortunate occurrence,” Tetsu Sensei responded between commands to his minions. “Were she still upright, she could cover our escape.”
Jenny snarled, “You black hearted-!”
“Wouldn’t help much,” Harm interrupted. “She’s got almost nothing to stop psychic attacks.”
“I do,” Thunder Dragon announced smugly. If proof was required, he provided it by rampaging through the Clockwork with few ill effects.
“We have to save Penny as well!” Jenny added.
Tetsu Sensei sneered, “If the Clockwork King wants so badly to rescue her, he’s welcome to the girl!”
Supa Fly replied, “[censored] you, [censored], I finish what I start! If any of you cats want to get your groove on, gather ‘round!” The heroes immediately moved into close formation with Supa Fly. Bellona and Thunder Dragon joined only moments later, and shared in the power as Supa Fly hit everyone in proximity with a mild dose of radiation that accelerated their metabolism. Fatigue melted away.
“We need not flee now,” intoned Thunder Dragon. “I have enough energy to destroy all these.” He swiped at an attacking Knight, ripping its head off in a shower of sparks.
“No, you don’t!” Jenny countered. “The Clockwork King creates his minions from scrap using the power of his mind! He can use everything in this room as materials, even defeated Clocks, and if we stay, he’ll just grind us down!”
Tetsu Sensei began to issue orders. “Bellona! Give us some of their strength!” Bellona did as she was told, and, in a swirl of colored lights, she collected the collective strength of the Clockwork and transferred it to the team. The heroes’ and villains’ blasts and blows struck with greatly magnified force. “Harm! Use your explosive punch to clear a path! Once the way is clear, you will all fall back! Thunder Dragon will hold them off as my ninjas and I set up a barrier to pursuit! Once the barrier is complete, we will join you. If any of you softhearted heroes wish to save the girl, do so on your own! I will not aid you!”
Jenny effortlessly scooped up Penny Yin and tossed her over one shoulder. “Your arrogance will cost you more than you can imagine!” she spat at the ninja lord. She turned to Harm and said, “I’m ready. Plow the road!”
Harm launched forward as Thunder Dragon charged deeper into the room. Simultaneous thunderclaps were soon followed by the sounds of Clockwork and Clockwork parts caroming off the walls of the room and pattering to the ground. Jenny charged for the exit through the opening in the mobs of Clockwork. Supa Fly infused an area with doses of radiation high enough to disintegrate the Clocks’ metal parts, thereby slowing them down. Bellona contributed to the escape by siphoning energy from the Clocks to heal Thunder Dragon and the remaining ninjas. Harm and StarDust took positions by the exit and unloaded into the room, providing a withering cover fire for the team’s retreat.
Jenny slid to a stop by Crystal. A lone Oscillator hovering over her body was contemptuously punted into the wall. It bounced off and slid to the floor. With her free hand, Jenny blasted the Oscillator until it lay in a smoking pool of molten brass. As she wrestled Crystal onto her other shoulder, Supa Fly and Bellona ran between the other Blasters and took up positions to support them.
“Yo, how bad they [censored] her up?” Supa Fly inquired.
“I think she’s still breathing,” Jenny answered, “but I’m not checking further until I’ve gotten her away from here!” She secured Crystal as best she could and ran off in a low crouch. While Jenny was more than strong enough to carry both Penny and Crystal at the same time, she was too light to ignore the effect of the altered center of mass, and so kept her speed low to deal with the balance issues.
No sooner had Jenny reached the bend on the other side of the command center than a foreign thought popped into her head. Stop. I’m gonna hurl.
“Not while you’re back there, you won’t!” Jenny halted and let Penny down against the wall. The teenaged girl looked green. Jenny pointed to the wall and commanded her charge, “Focus your attention on a point on the wall and take slow, deep breaths.” As Penny complied, Jenny redirected her attention to Crystal. She laid Crystal on the floor, then brought her own head low and turned it to the side, listening closely with her right ear. The ear twitched this way and that. Jenny heard an elevated heartbeat and shallow breathing. She returned to a normal crouch and gently patted Crystal on the side of her face. “Come on,” she urged, “wake up! We have to get out of here!” No response. “Please don’t make me perform CPR on you!” Still no response. Jenny bent over and whispered into Crystal’s ear, “Or maybe you’d prefer I call Fallenz to give you mouth-to-mouth?”
Crystal blushed and quietly groaned. “You’re so mean!”
Despite her profound sense of relief, Jenny smiled a devilish grin as she sat up again. “There’s nothing wrong with pushing buttons, so long as one of them is labeled “ON”. Are you all right?”
“Everything hurts,” she whimpered.
“You’ll have to work through it on the way out. We’re in a fighting withdrawal, and you need to be on your feet. Come on.” She pulled Crystal to her feet. Still too weak to stand, Crystal nearly flopped back down onto the floor, but Jenny caught her and propped her up against the wall. Crystal mustered enough strength in her hands to clutch onto the support arches and hang. Jenny released her, but hovered nearby just in case she collapsed again.
Crystal squinted as she looked around. She finally noticed Penny standing next to her, who had lost most of her green tint by now. In a weak voice she said, “Oh, hello Penelope. You made it out, that’s great. How are you feeling?”
Puzzled, Penny replied, “Better.” She turned to Jenny. “After getting mind-blasted and monkey-stomped, she’s worried about me?”
“She does that,” Jenny responded. “Crystal, you hang out here and take five. I’m going to clean some Clocks!” Jenny turned and sprinted back to the portal room.
The bend in the hallway that led to the portal room had been converted into a deathtrap. Caltrops littered the floor, jamming the foot mechanisms of any Clockwork that tried to walk through them. Harm and StarDust had fallen back to new firing positions, and were savaging any Clockwork foolhardy enough to exit the portal room with thoughts of pursuit. Jenny joined them and added her own firepower to theirs. Wings flapping, Thunder Dragon hovered over the fields of caltrops and loosed lightning on the metal menaces. Bellona, Tetsu Sensei and his ninjas, and Supa Fly stood around the corner, out of line of sight. Tetsu Sensei readied another arrow. The ninjas formed into a human shield wall and stepped out into the corridor. Tetsu Sensei stepped behind them and fired his arrow through the gap in their formation. It exploded on impact with one of the larger Clockwork, a Prince, and showered the mechanical host with glue, further gumming up their works.
Tetsu Sensei barked orders rapid-fire as he retreated. “Blasters, fall back to the corners of the command center! Bellona, join them and provide cover fire! Supa Fly, Thunder Dragon, move to the bottom of the ramp and stay out of sight!”
Thunder Dragon’s voice filled the team’s communication channel. “I will withdraw when I tire of this sport, human, and not before!” He alternated between blasting the Clockwork with evil red lightning and swatting Oscillators from the air.
“So be it!” spat Tetsu Sensei. He backed down the ramp while facing the oncoming Clockwork. A net arrow brought down an Oscillator that snuck past Thunder Dragon. Bellona and the Blasters caught it in a crossfire and blew it apart before it could free itself from the net. Another Oscillator flew past the glue and caltrops and fired a purple bolt of psychic energy at Tetsu Sensei. One of his ninjas jumped in between the Clockwork and Tetsu Sensei and took the attack for him. The ninja convulsed and dropped to the floor. In reprisal, the Oscillator was blasted out of the air, falling as a rain of incandescent metal. Tetsu Sensei didn’t so much as spare a glance at his fallen minion as he readied another arrow and waited. When enough of the attacking Clockwork had advanced to the near side of the puddle of glue, he loosed the arrow at the floor. On impact it opened and sprayed oil in a wide radius, covering the entire floor between the command center and the portal room. Tetsu Sensei commanded, “Fire Blasters! Ignite the oil!” A trio of fireballs answered his call, and the short hallway immediately filled with fire and smoke. Thunder Dragon flew out of the billowing smoke clouds, giving Tetsu Sensei an irritated look as he passed overhead.
“Retreat!” Tetsu Sensei called. The entire team fell back through the command center. Through gaps in the smoke and flame, some of the Clockwork could be seen struggling to pursue the humans, but, for the moment, they could not force their way through the glue, caltrops, and flaming oil slick.
The team collected again as each member reached Crystal and Penelope Yin’s position. Harm was the first to speak. “Hey, Shining, you OK?”
“Yeah, I’m fine now. I just needed a rest and some space. Thanks, Firefox, for dragging me clear!”
“Aww, what are friends for?” Jenny replied with a huge smile.
“Apparently, for making the rest of us go into diabetic shock from all their sugary drivel,” Bellona snapped.
Crystal and Jenny both frowned at her. “That’s not diabetic shock,” Crystal corrected, “that’s hyperglycemia. Diabetic shock is when-”
“We have no time for this!” Tetsu Sensei howled. He thrust one end of his bow towards the exit. “Cease your insipid female prattling and move!”
“What a jerk!” exclaimed Penny.
Jenny gently escorted Penny towards the exit and away from the ninja lord. “You don’t have to be psychic to see that, but I guess now it’s official.”
Supa Fly said, “Still, the little [censored] is right. We gotsta skitty!” He took off for the exit. The rest of the team moved with him. Jenny and Crystal ran on either side of Penny to keep her from getting lost in the twisting passageways and series of rooms.
The retreat proceeded without incident. If any Rikti had teleported in behind the team to ambush them, the swarm of psychic Clockwork had already defeated the aliens and forced them to withdraw. The Clockwork King had not bothered to post guards; his attention was focused solely on rescuing Penelope Yin, not on seizing the facility for his own use or defending it from invaders. Even the elevators remained free from vandalism from the metal hordes. Though the team was prepared to have to fight their way out as they had to fight their way in, nothing moved to bar their way.
It was just after the team cleared the large room on the first floor that Jenny stopped suddenly and hissed, “Stop! Hold up! They’re right up ahead!” Everyone slowed, advanced along the wall of the narrow hallway, and peered around the corner through the open doorway. Jenny’s information was accurate; standing there, surrounded by his mechanical entourage, was the Clockwork King. He held court on the same spot the first squad of Rikti occupied when they were defeated by Crystal’s team. Most of the debris from that fight had already been converted into Clockwork, but there remained an almost inexhaustible supply of wreckage from the neglected building to fabricate new minions. The Clockwork King and his Assemblers did just that. A horde of Clockwork nearly equal in number to the group that assaulted the portal room surrounded the towering form of their monarch, and more were created with each passing minute.
Harm retreated back into the hallway, out of line of sight of the Clockwork, and slumped against the wall. “Perfect. The exit’s less than fifty yards away, but we have to go THROUGH him to get there! Some days it doesn’t pay to get out of bed.”
“We did rescue Penelope from the Rikti,” Crystal reminded him.
He shrugged. “There is that. So, how do we do this?”
“We can’t use the distract-nuke-cleanup plan,” said Jenny. “Crystal won’t survive the distract part.”
Tetsu Sensei produced one of his flash arrows and dramatically held it for all to see. “This will be our distraction,” he intoned. “Only the most sensitive of detection systems or the most perceptive of foes can ignore its effects.” He pointed the arrow at Jenny and StarDust. “Once the arrow has done its job, you and you will take up positions near the Clockwork and “nuke”. See that your explosions overlap! All the Clockwork must be incinerated!”
“And then the survivors get to smack us around? Great plan.” Jenny carped.
“It makes little difference to me at that point-”
Jenny gave him a dirty look.
“-but to ensure our victory, Thunder Dragon and Shining Crystal will engage the Clockwork King and his retinue to interrupt their reprisal. You will both stand in proximity to the Clockwork King for Bellona to transfer his energy to you. Harm, Supa Fly, and I will join the fight against the Clockwork King while you two destroy any of his remaining creations. He and his followers will rue the day they challenged me!”
During the monologue, Crystal examined the plan, as well as the willingness of her team to carry it out. The scheme was tactically sound, and she didn’t notice any objections save for the usual dislike for the ninja lord, but when she looked over to Penny, she sensed the young girl’s growing discomfort as the attack plan was formed. Penny met Crystal’s gaze. Her eyes silently pleaded for an alternative.
“Except for the part about “ruing the day”, it sounds good to me,” said Harm.
Supa Fly agreed. “Ain’t no lie, that plan is fly! The punk-[censored] mofo is goin’ down!”
Still locked with Penny’s gaze, Crystal quietly said, “Well…why don’t we call it Plan B?”
Enraged, Tetsu Sensei clenched his hands into fists, nearly snapping the arrow in the process. “Insolent whelp! You’ve impugned my tactical expertise for the last time!” he thundered.
Impugned?
Anticipating their master’s order, the four remaining ninjas readied themselves to attack. Jenny moved to Crystal’s side and glowered at them. They slunk back behind Tetsu Sensei and cowered.
“Come on,” Harm wearily said. “We ground our way in. We had to flee out. Now, all that’s between us and home is two nukes and a short fight. There’s nothing wrong with blasting our way clear. It’s a solid plan.”
“Yes,” Crystal agreed, her gaze still locked with Penny’s, “it’s a solid attack plan, but that’s what I don’t like about it; it’s an attack plan. We’re all here for the same reason: to rescue Penelope Yin. Now we’re fighting over, what, who’s going to rescue her? We can do better than that.”
“Listen, Crystal,” Jenny gently argued, “We didn’t start the fight. He did. And we’re not fighting over who’s going to rescue Penny, we’re fighting to get out of here alive.”
Crystal turned and faced Jenny. “Haven’t you ever wondered what it would be like to have one of the threats in Paragon to go away? I don’t mean like that Fifth Column takeover, I mean go away for good, and nothing pops up to replace it.” She waved a hand at Penny. “For the first time, we have a common purpose with the Clockwork King! A rescue mission! He didn’t come here to kidnap, or steal, or kill! He came to save his friend from the Rikti! Maybe he is crazy and obsessive, but he put himself at risk for her. He wouldn’t have bothered leaving his lair if he was completely devoid of compassion! We can’t let this opportunity pass by! Just…let me go talk to him.”
Supa Fly objected. “Get real, girl! That’s crazy talk!”
“To a crazy man, no less,” finished Harm.
“If it works, we can all walk out of here together peacefully, and maybe we’ll remember this as the beginning of the end of the Clockwork King’s reign as an arch-villain. If I can’t convince him to step aside…there’s always Plan B.”
“Your version of Plan B starts with you lying dead on the floor!” Jenny howled. “You can’t handle psychic attacks! Be reasonable!”
“They surprised me earlier. I wasn’t expecting psychic Clocks! Now I know what I’m facing. When I know it’s coming, I can handle…some…psychic damage.”
Jenny’s ears drooped, and her face fell.
Crystal turned to Penny. “Penelope, are you sure he won’t hurt you?”
Penny shook her head. “No way. He wouldn’t ever do anything to hurt me. Neither would any of his Clockwork,” she finished, answering the next question Crystal was going to ask.
Crystal nodded. “I can’t do this without your help.”
“You’ve got it.”
“This is a bad, bad, bad idea,” said Harm.
“Don’t do it,” StarDust quietly urged. “It’s not safe.”
Jenny sagged in resignation. “She’s going anyways. And we don’t have time to argue; those other Clocks are going to show up soon and sandwich us.”
In a voice filled with malice, Tetsu Sensei said, “I wholeheartedly endorse your efforts! Go forth, young peacemaker! I have no doubts that a stern lecture from you will succeed in persuading him to turn from his wicked ways!”
Bellona pulled out her cell phone. “When you die, I’m gonna get it on camera and put it on the Internet. Think I’ll call it “Stupid Hero Tricks”. Ooo, I have a better one: “Wait Here, I’ll Go Talk To Him”.”
“[censored] all you [censored]!” Supa Fly turned to Crystal. “Baby, I ain’t digging this plan!”
“But we’ve got your back. Some of us do, at least,” Jenny finished, glaring at Bellona and Tetsu Sensei.
Crystal took Jenny’s hand and gave it a squeeze. “I never doubt it.”
Bellona rolled her eyes. Jenny resumed glaring at her.
Crystal took a deep breath, let it out, and then stepped over to Penny. “Let’s go.” Penny nodded, and the two women started for the hallway.
Supa Fly stepped in front of them and said, “Hold up for a sec, girl.”
“Supa Fly, I’ve already made my decision!”
“Chill out, sweet mama, it ain’t what you think!” He waved his arms and enveloped Crystal, Penny, and the other nearby members of the team in an aura of benevolent radiation. As before, Crystal felt more energized. “Probably won’t do [censored],” he said as he stepped aside, “but I can’t let you go without doing somethin’.”
Crystal nodded. “I understand. Thank you, Supa Fly.”
“Good luck!” Harm called out as the pair once again made for the hallway.
“I try not to believe in it, but thanks, Harm.” Crystal and Penny stepped into the hallway, and into full view of the Clockwork King.