Crossover Earth '98

by Christopher Shea and Paul Cocker

Great spans of land slipped by beneath the shadowy murmur of the Quartz jet. From the pilot's seat, the farmland sprawled across the European landscape like a giant quilt, with the occasional string of river or roadway interweaving its surface. The continent held an extraordinary majesty from the air, where one could almost ignore the poisons of city industry that had long since begun to seep into rural life.

A yellow light came to life on the control module, accompanied by a high-pitched beep eep, alerting the pilot to an incoming call on the vid-comm unit. The Quartz pilot immediately flipped a switch just to the right of the vid-comm screen, and the chiseled features of Golden Gate immediately lit up the small monitor.

Lightstar, who sat in the co-pilot's seat, turned to the screen. "Golden Gate," he said, concern creasing his brow. "Has our stategy been modified?"

"No, you know the strategy...you locate Beguile telepathically, and neutralize her while the others take care of the Apocalypse Now agents.  I just wanted to emphasize how delicately this must be played," the Guardians' leader said.

He watched the image of Golden Gate onscreen. They had known each other for a few years now, and he had learned to read the man fairly well.

"What is it?" he finally asked. "I'm aware that there are unknowns here, but that isn't what's bothering you, is it?"

"Unfortunately, the knowns are my concern at the time, Lightstar," Golden Gate answered. "What I'm really getting at is that you can almost expect federal troops at the scene when you arrive. The Vatican authorities still have jurisdiction for the time being, and therefore are allowing you to land within the city's perimeter. But you must act fast because Italian soldiers are preparing to take control of the situation as we speak."

"I don't understand," Lightstar replied. "Isn't the Vatican an independant state? I thought the governor and council already sanctioned our arrival."

"Yes, they did. And normally political freedom is guaranteed and protected by Italy. But the threat of Apocalypse Now is of national concern. The federal laws supersede the papal court in this matter."

"Great, nothing like being in a pressure cooker."

Golden Gate nodded grimly. "So goes bureaucratic red tape. Anyway, keep me posted, Lightstar."

"Roger that," he replied, and signed off, leaning back in his seat and letting out a heavy sigh with a breath he hadn't been aware of holding.

There was a momentary silence, which was quickly interrupted by the cockpit door clanking open behind Lightstar. The teenaged speedster, Blur, poked her head in and, like any impatient child, started jabbering immediately. "Uhm, are we there yet?" she asked. "Me and Dr. Toolittle, well, we're getting..."

"We'll be arriving soon, Blur," Lightstar said.

"Approximately two minutes," informed the pilot as he ran a finger over the instruments, checking that everything functioned correctly.

"Gotcha," the youngster said and returned to her seat in the back of the jet.

Lightstar sat in uncomfortable silence. A low wispy streak of clouds hung above him, but the sun shone brightly in the cockpit and the sky was a pure, watery blue where it lay free of that streak. Several thousand feet below, a commercial plane flew a similar path, but the Quartz jet passed it as if it moved in reverse. A tension built up inside Lightstar, and he knew his compatriots, Anamoly, Blur, and the Gnome, all felt this same sensation.

There was no way they were going to let Apocalypse Now kill the Pope. Only over their dead bodies would the world turn into a political playground for these terror-mongers. And if that was what it took, that's what it took.

Retro-thrusters on the VTOL unit kicked in, and the jet seemed to lift a moment a if cresting a pocket of air. Then it dropped. There was no hesitation, nothing gentle about it. The craft was obviously built for action and not comfort. This being something the heroes could all appreciate. They heard the whine of the landing gear descending. The exit ramp opened out of the belly, even before the jet touched down on a patch on land in the Vatican Gardens.

Anamoly stood, reached a hand up and held on the jet's frame, nearly shaking with the stress in his muscles. With the Gnome at her side, Blur hopped from the hatch and landed in a crouch on the grass, which buffeted with the force of the thrusters.

Blur perked up. "I'm going to check out the apartments and see if any officials are in any danger. Then I'm going to scour as much of the entire place as I can. Be careful, all of you. These Apocalypse Now freaks play for keeps."

For one fleeting instant, wind noises wailed about the Gnome and the Guardian members as Blur disappeared.

The young speedster raced down the streets and walkways of Vatican City, zigzagging her course through the triangular tract of land. She streaked past the pontifical palaces, scaled the walls of the administrative buildings, and whizzed through Belvedere Park, all in less than a minute. Stones churned up and bushes swayed as her bleary body sprinted to the piazza of Saint Peter's Church. It's splendid colonnade grew as she pressed onward towards the southeastern corner of the city.

What're you doing, Jessica? Blur asked herself inwardly. Telling them that Apocalypse Now plays for keeps. Like, c'mon, as if they didn't know that already. Jeez, you sounded like a complete idiot back there!

Blur ran through the sculptural entrance of Scala Regia and wafted up its monumental stairway. Paired columns flickered in her peripheral vision as the dark passageway grew brighter with each ascending step. She pumped her legs in graceful strides, the flagstone floor melting into an obscure, gray stretch that lead her directly to the papal apartments.

"Ah, there we are..."

The exterior of apartments were of marble and granite, relieved by well-groomed gardens from which rose an ivory atrium, while domed cylinders stood sufficiently free from the arcades to leave space for the manicured hedges and colorful flowers. Within the garden, slate walks and paths of red brick wound through the landscaping, passing open rotundas, and ultimately converging before a large and luxurious basilican structure. Moving carefully, eyes alert for sentries or scouts, Blur hurried into the papal apartments. She raced under a crowned archway and sped down an aisle.

Blur had never been to the Vatican before, and so the barrel-vaulted corridors seemed like a labyrinth, never straight, crossing and recrossing themselves and other thoroughfares. Regardless, she investigated the various rooms that lined the carpet-strewn halls. The rooms seemed very much the same. Oblong rays of color passed through the windows and lofty stained-glass clerestory of each room. Their high vaulted ceilings were held aloft by walls worked in intricate arabesques. Bookshelves, well-crafted credenzas, or refinished bureaus filled each room, leaving scant space for a utilitarian bed and clerical desk. High Renaissance and Baroque artwork decorated the walls and shelving units. But to no avail did the teenager find a Vatican official. Her search seemed in vain.

Coming to a fork, Blur turned instinctively left -- she had taken the right at the last -- and stopped. Far ahead of her was a dim glow, but it was no opening to the outside. A masculine figure stood before her and he held a weapon of sorts.

Blur's plan was simple enough. She found a pencil from one of the rooms and was ready to toss it past the sentry. When the guard turned to see what made the noise, she would leap up and clout his head with a hyper-accelerated punch.

The pen bounced from a flat patch of stone and skittered into the darkness. The guard didn't move, nor did he appear to take notice of the sound. Well, perhaps the A.N. agents carried radio transmitters. Blur didn't even consider that the guard may have been listening to someone on an earpiece.

She found a pocket book from the same room and tossed it. The result was identical. Perhaps this guard was hard of hearing?

Blur now picked up a waste paper basket, this object heavy enough to surely make enough noise. Certainly this would get his attention. She heaved the basket, and it clattered past the guard's feet. Still the sentry didn't react.

Emitting a frustrated sigh, Blur moved. If he didn't hear that, he surely won't hear her footsteps. Half a span away from the sentry, Blur cocked back her fist. She stepped closer, then stopped.

The guard, erect in a ramrod stance, was motionless. Blur's face became flush as she waved her hand in front of the guard's face.

"Oh my God," she said. "I’ve been suckered by a statue."

Embarrassed, Blur exited the apartments. Her fleet feet outraced gravity, carrying her up the building's wall until she stood atop its roof, her foot resting on a cornice.

Suddenly, a voice came from behind her. "Hold it right there!"

The sprinter whirled around, making fists as she turned, ready for anything. There, standing straight and tall before her, were two Apocalypse Now agents.

"Welly well, it's about time."

The two terrorists pointed uzis at her. "I promise you, Blur, if you move you won't be able to find your belly button."

Blur pursed her lips. And I promise you, she thought, you’re messing with the wrong girl.

She emitted a rapid-fire string of obscenities too fast for either A.N. agent to determine as individual words. She covered the distance between herself and her opponents with no discernible transition. And by the time they realized she actually moved, blurring fists met slack jaws, and their now limp bodies collapsed unconscious.

"Uh oh, I moved..."

Dr. Milo Tagelohn entered the palace in an aspect more martial than was his wont. Just before coming to the Vatican, he had swallowed a pair of small red capsules that held a herbal mixture of his own devising, and now his muscles trembled with excess energy and his nerves sang like high-tension lines. He would be exhausted later, but it was better than seeing someone die because he was too slow to react. On a chain around his neck hung a small obsidian mirror in a frame of bronze, decorated with multicolored feathers. As they breasted the cordon of police and Swiss Guards around the chamber, he had wiped a couple of drops of blood from his finger on the smooth black stone, and now it blazed with an eerie light and sent up drifting streamers of smoke, casting Milo's normally kindly features into a harsh, fearsome mask. In one hand he carried a hammer with a short handle of oak; the head he had cast himself from a lump of cold-forged iron, inlaid with chips of amber. Anomaly had joked about him running around bashing Apocalypse Now agents in the kneecaps, and Milo had smiled then. He was no longer smiling.

The first thing he noticed as he, Anomaly, and Lightstar burst into the high, marble-floored hall was that Blur was nowhere to be seen. The second thing was that the room was emptier than he'd expected. For a moment, it almost did seem empty, but then Lightstar shouted something, and Milo's vision seemed to swim back into focus. He had been mentally preparing himself for a swarm of bomb-wielding fanatics, so it was almost disorienting to see only two people in the room. One, a tall and slender woman in draperies that left little to the imagination, had to be Beguile. At Milo's side, Lightstar froze, his pupils dilating until they almost swallowed his irises, and the air between the two telepaths was immediately thick with massive, invisible but almost palpable currents of thought.

Milo mentally wished his ally luck as he hurled himself at the other occupant of the room, a man. Of course, he reminded himself, they would have luck as long as Anomaly was with them ...

The man didn't seem to be a typical Apocalypse Now agent -- no explosive vest, for one, and no weapons in his outstretched hands. He was dark of skin, perhaps of Asian descent.

"Your cause is hopeless," Milo called out, the smoking mirror lending his voice an eerie, compelling resonance. "You cannot fight for --"

The man twisted his hands in the air, and Milo stopped and doubled over, nearly dropping the hammer as pain exploded through his body. It felt as if his internal organs were all trying to flee in different directions, and his spine had become a dull knife edge, sawing its way out of his body.

"Let me tell you about hopelessness," the man said, his hands slowly curling into fists. It seemed impossible for Milo to feel more pain, but he did. A gasp was forced out of him as pain pushed the breath from his lungs. The man stepped closer slowly, talking all the while. "Hopelessness is looking back over six thousand years of so-called civilization and not seeing a single-damn-thing that could possibly justify another six thousand, or even six. Hopelessness is knowing you're a parasite killing something larger and more beautiful than you could ever imagine. Hopelessness is knowing that there's no one else to help. And the only way to find hope, the only way to salvage any dignity, is to end it fast and --"

Then his foot came down on a small puddle on the marble that had not been there a second before, and skidded sideways. The man gave a brief yip as he stumbled, and the agony that had been pressing into Milo from the inside abruptly ceased, leaving a dull grinding ache and shooting pains in the small of his back. Anomaly had come through. The dwarf straightened, grunting and pushing aside thoughts of crushed vertebrae and herniated discs.

"Shall we 'end it fast,' then?" he asked harshly, and charged, the hammer swinging in a vicious arc.

That was a mistake, it turned out. The man drifted back just far enough for the swing to miss him and dropped into an unmistakably practiced crouch. Before Milo was even aware he'd moved, the toe of the man's Bruno Magli shoe slammed hard into the middle of his chest, hard enough to be felt even through Milo's steel-hard pilema shirt. He would have to be a martial artist, too. Ach, so geht es mir immer! Milo thought in dazed disgust, narrowly ducking a second blazing kick on pure instinct. Milo's own experience in hand-to-hand combat was blessedly limited -- Grosstante Ursula's "basic training course" back when he was in his early teens, and a few superheroic combats that had, like this one, degenerated into brawls. And if that weren't bad enough, the man had a formidable reach advantage.

If Milo hadn't still been under the effects of his herbal accelerant, and had Anomaly interfering for him, his opponent would have taken him apart with ease. As it was, Milo found himself being beaten around the perimeter of the room by a seemingly endless stream of kicks and punches, not all of which his armored shirt stopped, and most of which made his still-aching innards jostle painfully. It would have been nice to have Grosstante Ursula here. Milo tried to keep up his defenses, swinging his hammer whenever he saw an opportunity, but the man dodged each strike or blocked Milo's arm before the hammer got anywhere near its target. He couldn't stop to focus his transmutation abilities to conjure up an iron barrier or a cloud of choking nitrogen. There were limits to how much more of this pounding he could take, Anomaly was already doing what he could, and Lightstar was otherwise occupied, so what could --

Then Beguile's head snapped around, her eyes focusing on Milo's antagonist. "Paco, you bastard!" she shouted.

The man froze with one foot half-raised for another kick, astonishment and confusion filling his eyes -- and Milo lunged, swinging the iron hammer over his head with all his strength. It connected with the man's forehead, crackling lines of force snaking out from it as the powers it was dedicated to lent a tiny fraction of their strength to Milo. There was a dull thunk, and Paco toppled backward, his eyes rolling back in his head.

Milo began to shiver as the accelerant's effects faded, leaving him feeling cold and leaden. He bent over Paco long enough to determine that the man was truly unconscious and that his final blow had not fractured the skull. He didn't think anything in himself was broken, either, though the pain in him sullenly refused to go away. Glancing over at his companions, he saw Beguile standing by herself with her arms wrapped around her body, her face dark and unreadable. Lightstar and Anomaly watched her closely, but she did not seem disposed to continue the battle.

A rush of air announced Blur's arrival, speeding down a broad staircase at the back of the hall. "I've been through the building, and there isn't anyone here. I think it could be a false -- Hey! What'd I miss?"

Milo rubbed a hand over his eyes and wearily took the smoking mirror from around his neck, setting it aside. The ferocious light in it died. "Ach -- not much, I think," he said in his own soft, slow voice.

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