Chapter 7

I finished using my sick rad dragon shapeshifting powers to pull bullets and stitch up the holes on the last of the civilian gnomes who hadn’t gotten to cover in time, then flipped my cute butt over an overturned table, landing between two United Nations Marines. The UNMC was pretty swoll and rad and all sorts of cool words – and one of the reasons why was that the human race had, for years, wanted to put their people into bigger and bigger suits of armor to make them more swoll and rad with every iteration. First, there had been hoplites. Then knights. Then guys with really tall hats and fancy jackets. Then, sadly, humanity had forgotten its obsession with swoll in the bloody quagmires of World War 1 and for years and years, swollness had been as forgotten as how to have a really big mustache.

But then!

Then came the Five Talon Empire’s attack on Earth and the catapulting of humanity from backwater mageblind nonsense to being the protectors of a significant chunk of the Orion arm of the galaxy. With this had come an attainment of swoll that could hardly be topped.

Each marine was dressed in thick armor with segmented plating and lines of synthetic muscle made out of steel and living ironwood – a fusion of technology and magic that was very human. It gave them enhanced strength, loads of soak (both standard and mega-damage capacity style) and they even had visors that were upgraded with augmented vision. Not bad for a species that, a few years ago, had been ... well, okay, they’d been making iPhones.

Do you know how much of the galaxy didn’t have cellphones?

It was a surprising amounts!

I knew I was surprised!

“Sup!” I said, cheerfully as the Kult of the Gears bozos fired off another rrrrip from their humvee mounted machine gun. Bullets hammered into the table, pinged off a storefront’s armored sheetings, and sparked against the ceiling. The two marines ducked reflexively, then looked at me.

“Who the fucking fuck are fucking you!?” One said.

“Oh, hey Brash!” the other said.

“Hi Spokain!” I said, waving at her happily.

“You know this guy!?” The other guy, whose name was Tyrone, said.

Spokain slowly lifted her gauntlet-clad hand, then gently tapped the stenciled M. Spokain that had been spray painted onto her armor. She tapped it again.

“ ... shut up,” Tyrone muttered.

So, I’ve previously mentioned that I had a fancy pantsy head computer. That gave me my combat HUD, let me make phone calls, and was how I took fifty to sixty percent of my selfies. Okay, that was a lie, it was how I took all of my selfies. But it had once been used by my Dad (and me, technically) during the Battle of Earth. Which is why I still had UNN and UNMC radio frequencies programmed into my noggin. Crackling in my head and in the helmets of my new best friends came the gruff voice of someone who had to be their CO: “Weapons free, squad.”

“Fucking finally,” Tyrone snarled, lifting up his assault rifle. He flicked off the safety and I hissed.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa! Hold up!” I said.

“Who is this?” The gruff voice asked over the comlink.

“Brash the Dragon!” I said, cheerfully. “And I think I can help with you.”

“Mr. Miles!?” The gruff voice exclaimed. “I, uh, of course!”

“Holy shit,” Tyrone whispered, his hand going to his helmet to turn off his mic. “Did the Old Man just kowtow to a fucking teenager?”

“Brash. The. Dragon. Holy shit, Tyrone, get your head out of your ass,” Spokain said. “Did you sleep for the past two years?”

I cracked my knuckles, cheerfully, already doing some brain math. Meanwhile, the Kult of Gears had stopped with the machine guns and started with the deranged monologue. “We are here to castigate the heretics!” the leader shouted from the back of his hummer. I peeked up around the cover I had, narrowing my eyes. He was a scrawny looking gnome who had painted himself bright white and was holding a red painted gear over his head. His eyes flamed with a religious devotionalism that made me just a touch uncomfortable. Also, like, he had a machine gun and a hummer and looked ready to use it. And had been using it.

The white gnome thrust his finger at a store. “There! Touch-screens! There!” He pointed at another store. “Personal data crystals! There! Robotics.” He growled that word like it was a cruse word ... like ... aluminum. Or tin. Ugh. Tin. Of course, he was pointing at Mr. Wrench’s store. “All of you are an affront to the mighty Omnisiah and the Lord of the Gears!” He thrust his gear into the air again. “Hail coal! Hail STEAM! PAX STEAM! PAX MACHINA!” He started to cackle and the driver in the car revved the wheels. Then the gnome grabbed onto the machine gun and flicked a switch. The barrel started to expand and I peeked down the big barrel hole that a bright red rocket tip had been slotted up. He swung the gun around to angle right at Mr. Wrench’s shop.

“Whoa!” I sprang up, making a T by using my left hand and my right hand. “Time out! Tizzle mizzle! Lets talk about this before anyone starts exploding anyone.” I nodded.

“Are you insane?” Tyrone hissed at me.

“Nah, it’s cool, I’m immune to bullets!” I said, cheerfully, looking over my shoulder to wave at Tyrone.

“That’s true, Brash the Dragon...”

The cult’s leader had changed pitch. Tone. And when I swung my head around, I saw that the cult leader’s eyes had gone pitch black. His jaw hung slightly open and he stood in a weird, jaggy style way. Like his muscles didn’t quite know what they were doing – jerked into the correct position, but with the wrong posture and the wrong intentions. I gulped, slowly. Something was very hinky. Very very hinky. I opened my mouth to speak – but the gnome cult leader swung the mounted machine gun back to face me.

“But this is not a bullet,” he said.

And then shot me right in the chest with a rocket. It smashed into my chest, bowled me over the table, and punched me through the metal sheeting covering the handheld computer shop. I groaned – and distantly, heard a very very pissed off sounding roar coming from Mr. Wrench’s shop. I forced myself to my feet, blinking as I looked down at my chest. The rocket was gone. Pff. More like substandard damage rocket, am I right? I grinned, then gaped in horror as I saw Alex emerging from Mr. Wrench’s shop. Her hands glowed with eldrich light and red energies swirled around her fingertips. She looked in a definite killy mood, and I had a promise to myself. It was in my theme song!

My theme song said I stood for every one of us. I’d save every one of us. That included bad guys, if I could manage it!

I sprang out. “Alex, wait, I’m fine!” I said.

But then Alex made a jerking motion and literally every single bit of blood the cult leader had flew out of his body in a single big gloopy black puddle. It floated before Alex and her face twisted in revulsion. “Ew, ew, ew, gross!” She stepped backwards and the blood splattered onto the ground as the cult leader slumped over the top of his hummer. I ran forward and Alex looked at me, looking chagrined.

“Alex!” I exclaimed. “You killed him!”

“He shot you with a rocket!” Alex said, gesturing to me.

“Pffff!” I waved my hand.

Alex swept me into a tight hug, squeezing me. She whispered. “Don’t scare me like that, husbando...” She whispered.

“Uh, guys...” P90 said, from behind us. Alex squeezed me tight enough to snap a human’s spine, then let me go. I and she turned to P90. P90 was kneeling beside the blood mist puddle and rubbing her finger through it. She frowned. “This sucker’s dead...” she said. Alex snickered, but before she could speak, P90 shook her head. “No, I mean, this is the blood from someone whose been dead for weeks.”

“Wiggity what?” I asked. All of us – my girls, me and the marines – jogged over to the hummer. There, we found the driver was literally just a cardboard cut out with levers and switches attached to the controls, remote operated via some simple radio signals. That was weird. But what was even weirder was that they hadn’t even used a gnome cardboard cut out! Up close, it was really obvious that someone had just taken a Robert Downy Junior promotional cardboard cut out for Iron Man 3 and sawed it in half. I mean ... why Iron Man 3? Why not Infinity War? Who still had Iron Man 3 cardboard cutouts these days? Who!?

“Someone sucked his brains out...” P90 muttered.

I blinked and looked over at the less interesting gnome corpse. P90 had tugged his matted scalp backwards on a hinge, revealing that the cultist had, as I had long suspected, no brains.

“Ewwwwwww!” Cindi and I said at the same time. Alex threw up the metal horns, reverently whispering: “Metal.”

“Was it the bugs?” Spokaine asked, tugging her helmet off, revealing that she was a strawberry blond with a bunch of freckles.

“Get your helmet back on, Private,” a big tuff gruff sergeant type growled. His namescrawl said he was Y. Smith. “Sergeant Yancy Smith.” He nodded. “Your dad saved my life, Mr. Miles.”

“Sweet!” I said, excitedly. “You were at the battle of Earth?”

“Uh ... Brash...” Cindi said, her voice soft. “You, uh, got a bit of red on you.”

She was pointing at my chest. I blinked and looked down. There was, indeed, a fuzzy red growth on my chest, nestled around where the rocket had hit me. I scoffed and brushed it off me. It didn’t go away. I frowned, then shapeshifted it away. There! Now it was gone. I nodded. “Better?” I asked, putting my hands on my hips. Cindi smiled and gave me a thumbs up.

“So, uh,” I said, turning to the gnome. “Think it was like, some kind of big fat brain AHHHHHHHH!” I asked, reaching up to poke at the gnome’s skull – and that was how I saw that now my fingers and knuckles were floofed up with red fuzz. “Ahh!” I started to spring backwards and everyone stepped after me, concern flaring on their faces. Alex reached out for me, but Yancy shoved her back with a quick growl. Alex skidded backwards, then looked like she was tempted to turn Yancy into some bloodmist.

“That looks like mold, girl,” Yancy snarled. “Who knows what it’ll do to you?”

“Yeahhhh, he’s right,” I said, biting my lip as I tried to shift the mold away. But if I made it go away on my hand, it appeared again on my shoulder. Poofed it on my shoulder and boom, it was on my chin like the world’s worst beard. I whimpered. “Uh. Halp?”

Everyone exchanged looks with everyone else.

The UNN Rickenbacker and the UNN Van Braun were two really cool spaceships, but I could not appreciate either of them because I was currently in a containment unit that had been prepped at their airlock. My girls and the marines and the entire area of the gnomish shopping district were being quarantined and poked all over to make sure they didn’t have what I’ve termed Jerkfuzz. The containment unit was basically an iron lung style thing but big enough to cover my whole of me, with a window at the front for me to peep out of. But sadly, I was just a bit focused at shifting away red fuzz.

The doctors pushing me along were two girls. One of them, a salt and pepper haired girl, looked down her long nose at me. “Mr. Miles, can you hear me?”

“Sure can!” I said, cheerfully. “Ee!”

“Are you okay?”

“Do you know how weird fuzz feels when it’s inside of your stomach?” I asked, focusing and shifting it away. “Go away fuzz, god.”

“Hmm,” the woman pursed her lips. “My name is Dr. Polito. This is Dr. Diego.” The other woman – who was all pepper without any salt at all – nodded to me.

“Hola,” I said.

“I don’t speak Spanish,” Dr. Diego said, cheerfully. Then we were in the medical ward. I knew this because we went through a door and the two doctors stopped wheeling my containment unit. But from all I could see, it just meant we had gone from a ceiling with occasional lights to a ceiling with a bunch of lights. As I was settled into position, Dr. Polito started to speak doctorese to Dr. Diego. Dr. Diego started to respond in equally complex doctorese and soon, the two of them were tapping away at buttons.

A few minutes later, Dr. Polito said: “Don’t stop shifting the moss away. You’re slowing its spread considerably.”

“Yay!” I said. “Wait, uh, when you say slowing, you mean stopping right?”

Dr. Polito pursed her lips. “Mr. Miles, when I say slowing, I mean slowing.”

“ ... poot...” I muttered.

After what felt like exactly five forevers and six minutes, Alex, P90, Cindi, G282 and Kira came into the room. They all crowded around my containment unit, with Alex and Kira squishing up close to the screen. Alex waved at me. “Don’t worry, Brashie, if you’re dying, I’ll have you raised as a dracolich!”

“Isn’t that super illegal?” I asked, my brow furrowing.

“Pff, what are dragons gonna do, stop me?” Alex waved her hand flippantly.

“Cool!” I gave her a thumbs up. “Lichdom always sounded fun!”

G282 coughed. “Brash is not going to die at this rate. Though I’ve never seen anything like this.”

WE ARE UNIQUE

“Yeah, I know you are. A unique jerk,” I said, nodding.

All the girls looked at one another. P90 frowned. “Brash ... is the moss talking to you?”

I blinked. Now that I thought about it, it did sound like a big booming James Earls Jones voice had started to go off in my head, emerging from nowhere and yet being everywhere at the same time. Now that I thought about that, it was kinda weird that that would happen at the exact same time I got infected with jerk moss! I rubbed my chin slightly.

YOU WILL BE ASSIMILATED

“Pfft!” I said, then grinned. “This weaksauce wanna be Borg just said I’d be assimilated. Let me guess, Jerk Moss, resistance is futile?” I stuck my tongue out. Alex threw up the metal horns and bobbed her head reverently.

... NOT NECESSARILY.

I swear, it was sounding sulky! As sulky as an omnipotent god voice could sound.

“Wait...” G282 said, rubbing her chin. Was she on a stool or something? She wasn’t very tall, but she was still able to lean over my containment unit. She looked down into my eyes, but I got the feeling she wasn’t speaking to me. “What’s your name?”

WE HAVE NO NAME. WE ARE ETERNAL. WE EXIST IN THE SPACE BETWEEN THE SPACES. WE ARE THE BEAST THAT HAUNTS YOUR-

“The Beast!” I said.

“Oh fuck,” G282 hissed.

“Is that bad?” I asked, curiously.

“Well, it once almost destroyed the Five Talon Empire,” G282 said, quietly. “It was found on an ancient alien starship. It infected machinery, dragons, and other races, fusing them into an unholy amalgamation that only existed to spread to other machines. It was only stopped by the mightiest heroes and warriors of the Five Talon Empire. It was burned down to the last cell – or, at least, that’s what the history books say.”

YOUR TOMES OF LIES ARE JUST THAT. WE SURVIVED AND WE-

I closed my eyes and shifted away more of the Beast. It’s voice grew muffled and distant, like I had smooshed a pillow over its face. I let it grow for a bit, then grinned as it started whining at me again. Like most supposedly godlike beings, the Beast was all power trip, no actual spine. Which made sense, it was a moss and all that.

STOP THAT!

“No, it’s funny!” I said.

“Brash!” G282 said, pitching her voice loudly. “Do not taunt the primordial evil.”

I closed my eyes. “Right. No more taunting.” I smirked. “Lets see just who can assimilate whome here.” I grinned, then started to go. To. Town. You remember how I had once made an entire suit of clothes by turning my cells into little sewing machines? Well, now, it was time to focus my entire brain-force into the single act of turning my cells into teeny tiny Beast chomping bits. My vision and my perception of myself swept inwards and downwards. Remember that movie Osmosis Jones? I sure didn’t, I’d never actually seen it, but I’ve heard of it. And I bet that it was almost exactly like that. In my gut, I sent armadas of wriggling, flagellum equipped cells with lobster claws to dive down on the Beast’s spore-cytes. Chop chop!

Clacking claws crushed crafty ... fuck. I couldn’t think of a C word that meant jerkass space mold.

But in my lungs, the Beast was doing tricky things. It was threaded together networks of red moss, using lung bits and oxygen from my lips to build chemical weapons that it set off inside my blood stream. Tiny white flashes of combusting oxygen – fortunately, they didn’t do any damage to my organ bits because I was immune to most fire damage. But they did huge amounts of damage to my makeshift claw-chompers. So, I brought out even more deadly cell configurations. Rolly balls of spikes. Tiny men with blood-chain whips. White blood cells with knives taped to their foreheads and the ferocious headbutting talents of expert mosh pit enthusiasts!

The battle went on and on for what felt like at least ten forevers before I realized something.

I ... couldn’t win.

But I couldn’t lose.

The Beast had run out of tricks. Like most collective intelligence, it totally claimed to have a bunch of creative ideas. But that all came by stealing ideas from other people. Once it was out of those ideas, it just had to try to do things more efficiently than me. And I was way more efficient than the Beast, since it had been defeated by the FTE like thousands of years ago, so I was, like, thousands of years more modern. Like. Hello? Of freaking course I was winning. Well. Kinda winning.

Drawing.

I opened my eyes.

Alex was sitting beside my tube and the others girls were kinda visible at the edge of my vision. Dr. Polito was craned over my tube, her beaky face twisted into an expression of pure amazement. “Mr. Miles, are you aware there is a high speed evolutionary biological arms race going on in your gut right now?”

“Yeah...” I said, sighing.

“The good news is the Beast, damned melodramatic name, has been beaten away from your nervous system and bone marrow. The bad news is that it seems to be still lodged in your lungs.” She frowned. “And does not seem to be willing to leave.”

I grumbled. “Freaking jerk moss...” I muttered. “I guess I’ll just have to keep on shapeshifting battling it.” I rubbed my chin. “Well, no more shapeshifting for Brash until this is done.” I frowned. “First my guns, then flight, now this!? What power am I going to lose next? Being adorable?”

“Impossible, my husbando,” Alex said, nodding sagely.

“Aww...” I twisted my fingers to make a heart.

So, if life was nice and fun, I’d be on the bridge, chatting with Captain Ryan right after I had beaten the Beast to a draw. But in actuality, it took a day before I finally got there. A day of testing, poking, prodding, casting, testing. Samples were taken from by every bit and bob to make sure that the Beast couldn’t sneak out of my butt. And apparently, it wasn’t even trying to get out. But despite that, I still wasn’t taken onto the bridge until I had been wrapped up in a space-suit that could contain any spores that tried to crawl out of me.

But it did mean that I did get to the bridge of the UNN Von Braun and that meant I got to see the ship and the Rickenbacker and holy crap, the United Nations had been getting good at building spelljammers. Two years ago, the forces of the would be Chromatic Dominion had been broken over the steel-clad knee of every single ship that the various human countries had ever put to sea. Air craft carriers, battleships (including a few that had been dragged out of museums), cruisers, and submarines. All of them, upgraded with spelljammer helms so they could fly in space.

But the Von Braun and the Rickenbacker had been built with an eye towards space, and they had been built good.

The Rickenbacker was basically a brick with guns. But like, one of those cool bricks that people threw at stormtroopers during a riot against dictators. It had four huge engines on the back for sublight travel and the back and belly were studded with huge railgun emplacement. The front was studded with laser focusers that looked like they’d be able to turn basically everything infront of the Rickenbacker into smoldering wreckage. The Von Braun was a lot bigger, but had fewer guns. And from the bridge – which was circular and based around a big old table in the middle that had projections of triangles and squares and lines – it was clear the Von Braun was a carrier.

Her captain was a tall, beautiful, busty redhead with a huge scar along her cheek which furrowed up to a gleaming red cybernetic eye. She eyed me as I walked onto the bridge with my friends. Her lips pursed. “Welcome aboard, Mr. Miles,” she said.

“Hi!” I said, cheerfully. “Your ship is cool!”

“Thank you,” she said, primly.

“Did you guys come all the way out here to find me?” I asked.

“Yes and no,” she said. “UIS has detected a build up of various evil-aligned races and their forces out here – drow, duergar, orcs, ousters, mind flayers. And the UNN wants to get you home, young man.” She put her hands on her hips. “Your parents would be mortified if they found out you’d run away from home!”

“I didn’t run away from home!” I exclaimed. Then I kicked at the ground. “I was helping a space princess.”

“It’s true,” Kira said, clasping her hands behind her back.

“Subspace portal opening, Captain!” A very Harry Kim-ish looking guy shouted from one of the consoles – at the same time, a bweep bweep bweep sound rang out. Captain Ryan swung around, frowning.

“I want the CSP on high alert – weapons free and missiles ready to lock.”

“Aye aye!”

“Put the Rickenbacker on yellow alert,” Ryan said, thrusting her finger at another few officers. “Tell Commander Fontaine that his forward lasers should be primed for missile attacks. The drow love to over-nuke.”

“Aye aye!”

I leaned against the wall, beaming.

Ryan strode over to the table. “Bring up the portal.”

The table’s touchscreen flickered, then showed a visual representation of Junkstar and the surrounding space. The subspace portal was rippling about at the same place that the Rusty Dragon had emerged. I stepped over to the table when I saw that. “Oh, I bet it’s that jerk Drow who came after us!” I said, nodding. “What had her name been?”

“Tizit,” Alex said, grinning.

“More like Dumb ... zit...” I paused. “No, it feels bad to make fun of her. She had a speech impediment. It’s not nice to make fun of people with those.”