Portals (part 3 of 3)

"Acknowledged," was all I said before entering my own command codes. A flashing light in the top corner of my visor blinked, waiting for the final command to activate. A waypoint also popped up, pointing me to the same spot I'd originally emerged to face down The Destroyer. Spinning, I dodged the wreckage of a car launched at me before flying back down to the street, my armor landing with a rattle.

The Destroyer met me there, his fist already pulled back and ready to hammer into me. "So, you've finally decided to die," he said with an obvious strain in his voice.

Despite the fist ready to drive me into the ground and my suit barely holding together, my focus was still on the waypoint blinking six-inches behind him. Perhaps The Destroyer really was tired from fighting a battle against superhumans then jumping into a gauntlet of lethal forces pulled from across multiple realities? Or, maybe, he just didn't expect me in my battered armor to charge head-first toward certain death? Either way, my shoulder connected with enough force to push him back three, four, now five inches. "Boosters to max!" I ordered, feeling a surge as my jet pack and thrusters expelled everything they could give against the strength of the monster's frame. Anxious, I watched the suits power levels drop to 9%, 8%, 7%. Finally, at 3% remaining, The Destroyer finally budged and the waypoint in my visor changed from a blinking red to a solid green. "Activate Plan Omega!"

A distant hum filled my ears as something in the air shifted. My suit wrapped its arms around The Destroyer and pinned itself to the street, ejecting me in the process. I took a moment to lay there, breathing heavily, my body covered in sweat and racked with pain. I tried to replay the fight in my head as best I could, not just this one but all the ones before, hoping there might've been another way for this battle to end. It was the nearby rumbling that brought me back to reality as The Destroyer wrenched his way out of my temporary anchor, wrecking my suit in the process.

"I don't know what your plan is, but I do know getting out of the armor that's keeping you safe is a bad idea," he said stomping over to me with a sadistic smile on his face.

I decided to lay back down. "Go ahead and kill me. Do a jig on my corpse. I don't care anymore because whatever you decide, you won't escape what comes next." The Destroyer loomed over me, his bulk casting a shadow over my face as he blocked out the sun. The darkness didn't last long, however, as a green glow soon radiated from the north, south, east, west, and even directly above us.

"What is this?" he said, turning to watch as the light spread from each point. It took a second before he realized the green light spreading from one point would soon reach the light spreading from another - and that was all the time Plan Omega required. He zipped away toward a gap between the converging lights, but he wouldn't make it. Plan Omega already factored his fastest speed to position us in the very center of the bubble, and he was moving noticeably slower thanks to the battle we fought. Soon enough, the bubble was complete. A ripple at its wall and a low, dull tone confirmed it had trapped The Destroyer. Screams and cries confirmed I'd also doomed everyone in the city along with him - not just those still hiding in the partially demolished buildings and those still trying to get out to the evacuation zone, but even those sitting safe in the shelters at its edge. I'd doomed us all.

Sitting up, I cradled my head between my knees as the world around me trembled and shook. The wind blew with a fury, swirling, trapped with nowhere to go, until suddenly it simply ceased. A high-pitched buzz drove a spike into my ears, a precursor to the thunderous boom of the reality anchors breaking. A scent I'd never realized was there grew overwhelmingly strong until it just disappeared, and I knew, whatever it was, I'd never smell it again. The glow of the bubble amplified brighter and brighter until it emitted a blinding flash, and the world we knew vanished.

Once I was sure the city had settled into its new place, I slowly rose to my feet. Peeking from windows, a few civilians poked their heads out while a couple braver ones even ventured out to the street or up to the rooftops. Around us, the city was more or less in the same state as when the portal cut the city off from its place in our reality. No, I corrected, no, from "their" reality. Though I couldn't see it, I knew what lay beyond the city limits was a wasteland few would survive crossing.

A fist grabbed me by the shirt and lifted me off my feet, into the air, high above the city below. "Where did you take us?" demanded The Destroyer, his face inches from my own.

I smiled. "A different reality. A reality where you can't hurt those people anymore." Twisting as much as I could without breaking his grip and becoming a stain on the ground, I took in the apocalypse around us. "Welcome to my home, to a reality where you won."

Seeing the confusion on his face, I continued. "All of our nation's might, every nations' might, the might of every single superhero on the planet. Nothing could stop you. You were The Destroyer. You became a conqueror, a butcher. The living embodiment of a massacre. My team and I built a machine to escape to another reality but in the end, I was the only one that got away. I swore I'd never come back, sealing off these coordinates forever. Then you appeared on my adopted home. I thought we might have a chance this time with my experience. But after our first fight, I knew it would end the same way. So, I built a device to trap you and unlocked the coordinates back here." Defeated and my confession given, I hung my head hoping he would just drop me.

Instead, we floated to the nearest rooftop where the monster set me down. "So, what happens now?"

I felt a disturbance in the air, a quake in the ground, the dread of an impending doom. "Now, we wait."

Wow, that was fucking long. You made it to the end, huh? Why put yourself through that? Unless you skipped the other parts and just jumped right into the last bit, in which case, wow, you're dumb. I mean, who fast-forwards through a movie to watch the credit. Oh well, you're here now, unfortunately (for both us). So, based off of the Reddit Writing Prompt "Forbidden realities exist, places too hostile to support life. But your enemy is too strong so you destroy the restrictions on your teleporter," or something like that. Honestly, it appeared months ago and I started writing months ago, but you know all of my excuses by now. The biggest challenge was the ending. I like the story ending with the line, "Now, we wait," but it's the lead-up to it that I feel is lackluster, especially compared to the fight scenes and the portal's activation which happened just before. What I was also uncertain about was the length of the fight scene, as providing details to four different portals and their effects felt very long in the writing process (not sure how it reads as I don't read this trash). All in all, I really liked writing this one as it gave me the chance to think about other dangerous realities and what can come from them. It was always my intent for the story to end the way it does, although I really did think about stopping when The Traveler opens the portal to the zombie reality (I didn't think about the zombies infecting the living superheroes until I started writing the scene). As I always say, hopefully I can keep up with regular posts (if not once a week, hopefully every other week ... or at least once a month). Luckily, I do have a couple stories I've been sitting on, so hopefully I can simply jump into them to keep this going.

Portals (part 2 of 3)

 Already prepared, I opened another hole in his path, this one just big enough for three people to walk through. And they did, or rather fell through. At first it was just one or two bodies at a time which The Destroyer simply batted aside. But then fell three, four, six at a time. A wave of bodies falling like a crashing wave, and pummeling him back to the street below.

Lifting himself from the sea of human flesh, he shouted, "What is this? You're dropping corpses on me now. Did you open a portal to a graveyard?"

Shaking my head as I closed the portal, I said, "Maybe you've forgotten or simply didn't know, but there's more than just this universe to test yourself against. Do you remember the zombie outbreak from a few years ago? I opened a portal to a reality where it spread, uncontrolled and unstopped throughout the planet."

The Destroyer twitched as one of the living corpses broke its teeth on his skin. Grabbing it by the hair, he threw it against a building with strength I'd only seen displayed by The Shield. Before its body could shatter against the wall, however, three more had latched themselves to my foe, uselessly trying to sink their teeth into his skin. "This was a mistake. Another tactic to delay the inevitable," he said, annoyed, as me smashed skulls with ease.

I shook my head again, doing my best to repress the horror I'd just unleashed. "You also made the mistake of leaving some of my friends alive." At that perfect moment, the hand of Extendo wrapped around The Destroyer's throat while his body lifted itself off the ground a block away. Without any bones to break, it took The Destroyer a few minutes to loosen the hero's grip, enough time for an army of regular zombies to bury him up to his shoulders in their rotting flesh. It also gave The Zappp's corpse time to cut a path to the villain, lightning sparking erratically from his body as he sent nearly a billion volts of electricity into The Destroyer.

Over the zombies' endless groans, I heard The Destroyer scream in pain and couldn't help but smile. Electricity doesn't care if you can take ten or twenty or a hundred punches to the face, you're still going to feel it when it enters your body. More and more superpowered zombies rose up to hunt down the lone living body within two city blocks. Guilt found me then, and I rose higher into the air, high enough I could no longer see the faces of the monsters I once called friends.

Even with the zombie horde against him, The Destroyer still managed to push back the tide. A bestial roar cut through the noise, and broken corpses scattered into the air. A sedan crushed Lady Dice. A light pole pierced through a dozen zombies, including the Brothers Wolf and Fox.

Then he was hit by a bus into a storefront, if a bus could travel at mach one. "I knew he wasn't invulnerable everywhere," I said to myself as I watched a zombified Shield smash The Destroyer out the otherside of the building. I also didn't think the superhero could move that fast, but perhaps it was because of the zombie virus coursing through him and nullifying the body's natural limiters. The Destroyer rained down blow after blow onto the zombie, but The Shield no longer felt pain. Only the hunger. That's when The Shield's teeth bit down. Despite his amplified abilities, it still wasn't enough to break The Destroyer's skin. It was enough, however, to crack the bone beneath, a sound I could hear through my suit's honed senses.

Though I would've enjoyed seeing The Destroyer beaten by the man he'd himself beaten just a few minutes earlier, The Shield's speed was taking them both out of the battlefield and into the evacuation zone where more available bodies packed into shelters waiting for the battle to end. Dropping back twenty-feet above the street and the zombie horde below, I activated a sonic beacon and waited. A few seconds later, I heard the sounds of destruction as The Shield made his way back to me, the sonic noise emitted by my suit calling to him. Shutting down the emitter, I launched myself high above the city just as The Shield crashed through another building with The Destroyer still in his hands and mouth.

Above the city once more, I opened another rift large enough to cover the entire area I'd dropped the zombie horde. From it spewed a fire the likes of which this universe had never seen before. The concrete, asphalt, and steel beneath simply liquefied, then evaporated. The tangled mass of undead turned to ash under the immense heat. Even The Shield, my friend transformed into a monster by my own hand, only survived for a second or two before vanishing forever. The Destroyer, no longer restrained, fought his way out of the tower of flames to emerge like a devil from The Pit.

Burnt. Smoldering. Hurt. Exhausted. My enemy looked upon me, his confidence and bravado replaced with a hatred and fury I'd never seen in any opponent I'd faced over the years. "Fires from Hell?"

I shrugged, pausing for a moment to savor the image before me. I thought I might actually win, that perhaps I could do it without Plan Omega. "If Hell is real, I haven't found it yet. That was just the flames of a universe where every single sun exploded at the same time."

Seeing The Destroyer straighten his back and launch himself at me, I knew, once again, I couldn't win. Our fight raged on. Though my best hope was I could fight him to a stalemate and perhaps he'll simply retreat as before, I knew, slowly, I was losing ground. Blow after blow he struck against my armor. I continued opening portal after portal to other realms and realities hoping against all odds that from one might appear something more dangerous than the man seeking to conquer the universe. Openings to planets wrapped with crushing gravity. Tears to a still-forming universe, a swirling chaos storm of battering winds and super-heated lightning. He survived them all and kept on swinging.

Through the pandemonium of battle, I heard the alert blaring in my helmet, and the flashing light in my heads-up display. "Is it finished?" I asked, dodging another punch.

"Sir, all of the machines' limiters have been deactivated, the nexus points are set-up across the city, and the coordinates have been entered. Plan Omega is ready to activate," came the voice of my assistant from my underground laboratory.

Portals (part 1 of 3)

 I stepped through the portal from my laboratory just in time to watch Earth's strongest hero plummet thirty-feet to the pavement in front of me. At least, I assumed the height as The Destroyer floated thirty-feet above me. Standing at the epicenter of a massive battle, the city looked like a war-zone with no building within two blocks still standing, and the ones just outside a ruin of their former selves. Vehicles of all sorts crushed and strewn about as if by a titan's tantrum. What remained of Earth's superheroes, and even some of its villains, lay as broken shells clinging to life through ragged breaths, if they breathed at all. Worst of all were the bodies, so many bodies, and the silence which death brings.

"Come to join your friends lying at my feet?" came The Destroyer's voice from above. Besides his usual all-black bodysuit emblazoned with a white skull within a red-and-yellow explosion on his chest, he'd added a few more accessories. No, not accessories - trophies. Around his wrist, he'd clasped one of Midas' golden armbands. On his head sat the No Throne King's crown. Tied to his belt was the robotic head of Mechanika Man, it's usually bright eyes now dark. Finally, tied around his neck and draped over his shoulders flapped the tattered cape of The Shield. Motioning to the scattered heroes around us as he drifted lower, he added, "I merely meant to break, maybe maim, though I can get carried away."

Ignoring my enemy for a moment, I knelt by my friend's side. Automatically, the scanners inside my helmet began analyzing the extent of his injuries. The Destroyer had broken over half the bones in The Shield's body, and even driven a chunk of metal into his chest. Through the pain, The Shield's eyes finally focused on me just as my visor lifted off my face. "Professor," he struggled, "Adam, we did ... our best to ... for you. Please. Whatever it takes."

"That's what I'm afraid of," I replied as his eyes closed. Lowering my visor, I stood to face The Destroyer. A quick scan showed, once again, him to be human, mostly, except for traces of elements and even DNA not found on this planet, not to mention the nearly invisible and completely unidentifiable aura radiating off of him. Even after all these years, I haven't been able to figure out where The Destroyer came from, how he got his powers, or, unfortunately, how to defeat him.

"So, it appears those mighty heroes decided to put all of their hopes into The Professor and his gadgets." He paused for a moment, looking over my unfamiliar white-and-gray suit. "Is that what you've been doing while I beat your friends to a pulp - trying on a new suit - because I have to say, I'm not a fan. Perhaps it'll look better after I add some of your blood to it."

I shook my head. "It's experimental, actually, the suit I wore when I first arrived to this planet, of course with a few upgrades. You might not know, but before I developed all of my gadgets, they called me 'The Traveler'."

Charging forward, The Destroyer shouted, "I don't care where you came from, you'll still fall like the rest before my feet."

"That's part of the reason," I said, pointing a finger above his head as my suit's thrusters shot me backwards. "The other reason is because I arrived through a portal like this one." Above The Destroyer's head, a green light ripped a hole in reality, and gallons upon gallons of water fell through, crushing him beneath its weight. Ten seconds of the weight of the ocean was enough to drop him to his knees. I shut down the portal and zoomed in to deliver a kick to his face. Even with the weight of the metallic suit and the thrusters' speed behind it, my foot barely moved his head. 

Growling, The Destroyer turned to face me. "Did you think that would do anything? You merely caught me off-guard with that water trick."

Hiding the pain of equivalently kicking a boulder with my barefoot, I jumped back and hovered a foot off the ground. "Well, if dropping a ton of water from the ocean's depths wasn't enough, how about a lava bath in one of Jupiter's moons," I said, pointing at the ground under him. Another hole opened and dropped the villain into a sea of magma waiting below along with a ton of water which sent a curtain of steam, obscuring his fall.

A few seconds later, with the haze as cover, The Destroyer flew back across the portal, and launched me into the sky with a fist. Despite my armor, he still managed to knock the wind from my lungs. I think I may have even blacked-out for a second. Luckily, my thrusters kicked in, slowing me before I could smash into any buildings. "Armor partially compromised," came an alert as I noticed the small crack in my chest.

With a smirk, the enemy tossed aside a few of his ruined trophies, including the now deformed robotic head and partially-melted crown. Besides that and a few holes in his suit, he appeared unharmed, spinning slowly just to make sure I noticed. "So, The Traveler is what they called you? Because you can open portals to anywhere in this galaxy." He put his finger to his chin, feigning some mental calculations. "Seven seconds, though. That's your weapon's weakness. It must take your portals that long to close or else you'd have trapped me on Io. And with my speed, seven seconds is just too long."