Chapter 4

Awkward conversations were not normally interrupted by the end of the world. But Aiden supposed that this was just what life was like for him now. The sky split, black light swept over the world – casting everything in bizarre inverted hues – and the ground shook and trembled. Luz and Kala both dove for cover. Kyute, still being completely insensate, just laid on the ground. But Aiden kept his eyes locked on the heavens above him as the sky split in a black bolt of jacked lightning, then wrenched wide. Then, spitting from the blackness overhead like a loogie loosed by the world’s most disgusting outer-god, came the object.

It shot through the skies, whipped through a skyscraper’s upper levels with careless disregard for human lives, and then came down somewhere in Dimension City’s sprawling downtown.

“Shit!” Aiden exclaimed as the light went normal again and the black lightning-shaped crack in the sky swept shut with a rumble. The clouds stirred around in the heavens, sucked towards that closing motion and blooming together in a curious interference pattern. He turned to Luz, Kyute and Kala. “What was that!?”

“I have no idea,” Luz said, lowering her hands. “I think it was bad though. Definitely bad.”

“Cock yummy dang, wow...” Kyute muttered.

“Kyute is still on the prior chapter,” Aiden whispered to himself. He looked back at the sky. His first instinct was ... well. He had recently realized he could fly. He had superpowers. But was it actually wise to go running off? He was the central key to this whole pocket dimension. If he died or got hurt, the entire thing fell apart, and if it fell apart, then the whole multiverse was fucked. But if he just stood around, people would get hurt. People who were real, and had been put here to make him happier. He bit his lip – then the decision seemed to snap through him with a flash. He looked back at Kala and Luz, then grinned.

“Well. Seems like each of us have powers!” he said. “Luz, you mentioned you know magic, right?”

She nodded, then gave him a thumbs up.

“Kala, you can still fly, right?”

Kala grinned. She floated off the ground, her hands brushing along her slightly rumpled skirt. “Easier than walking right now,” she said, then giggled, her cheeks flushing as she put her hand over her mouth. “Like, dang, Aiden.”

“Right!” Aiden blushed and tried to not think about how hard someone had to fuck to make a Supergirl expy have a hard time walking afterwards. “Lets go!” He held out his arms and felt a strange lightness in his chest as Luz hopped into his arms, her lithe body pressing up against him as she tucked her legs against her chest, giggling softly.

“Mmm, warm,” she said, pressing her cheek against his chest.

Aiden focused and drifted up and off the ground, calling to Kala. “Put Kyute somewhere comfy!” he said – and Kala blurred off as he carefully accelerated, not wanting to test his powers of flight by slamming headfirst into some concrete, especially when he was carrying his girlfriend in his arms. By now, the sounds of distant crashing and screaming made it clear that whatever the space loogie had been, it hadn’t been good. Still, Aiden guessed he had a chance for a quick exchange of dialog before his newfound flight powers got him there – so he whispered to Luz. “I am sorry about not thinking about you, you know ... there ... today’s been super weird.”

“Yeah, it has!” Luz laughed, then shook her head. “For one thing, I learned that I kinda have a thing for being cheated on.”

Aiden blanched.

“ ... did I say that out loud?” Luz asked, her cheeks burning. “I meant to say I have a thing for watching, uh, boyfriends. That is. Cuckolder? What even is that? I don’t know! I- no manches!”

Aiden wasn’t sure what that meant in English, but he was pretty sure he could guess: They had just come over the downtown region of Dimension City and saw the impact site of the big space loogie. It had looked like a large seed pod, but in the time it had taken Aiden to gather up Luz, take to the skies, and fly over there, the pod had spread apart and birthed into being a figure made up primarily of hands, arms, and glaring eyes. Palms over what could be a mouth, attached to wrists emerging from where a jaw or mandible would be. Waving arms that served as legs, palms rasping along the floor. Eyes peering past fingers that clutched to flesh of writhing blackness. It was long and snakelike and seemed to have multiple segmented joints on where its spine should have been allowing it to corkscrew and contort with hideous, twitching motions that seemed to have two settings: Eerie, perfect stillness, then blinding, blurry speed.

“EUGH!” Aiden exclaimed as Luz froze in his arms.

“Never seen one quite as nasty as that,” a voice spoke at Aiden’s side. Aiden looked over and saw Hyperman, in his red, blue and yellow costume. The mixtures of the colors were all inverted – yellow dominated, with red covering the chest and blue serving only as the highlights, but other than the color changes and swapping a large stylized S for an equally bold and stylized H, Hyperman’s costume was painfully derivative.

“Are you sure the Caretakers aren’t going to get sued for that?” Aiden asked, figuring quipping had always made dorky Peter Parker less frightened. Maybe it’d work for him! To his shock, no, it didn’t, he just felt even more terrified.

“Haven’t yet,” Hyperman said. “Hypergirl has told me that you, ah, have similar powers. But since you’re new, stick to rescuing civilians. I’ll handle the beast. Okay?”

“G-Got it,” Aiden said, nodding. That did make sense.

Hyperman frowned, regarded the beast, then glared at it. Two red beams of light exploded from his eyes, hit the creature...

And did absolutely nothing.

“Huh,” Hyperman said.

A horrifying thought crossed through Aiden’s head. The horrifying handbeast unfolded a limb of crackling joints, grabbed onto what appeared to be an off brand Toyota SUV, and then threw the preposterously huge and dangerous vehicle directly at Hyperman’s face – making the SUV, for the moment, only slightly more dangerous than it already was while just driving around on the road. Aiden had just processed the thought when the car took to the air – and so, he reacted just a little bit too slow. His leg lashed out, caught the side of the SUV, and redirected it at the very last second.

Thus, rather than hitting Hyperman’s body, the SUV whipped off, spun, clipped Hyperman’s right arm, then struck the side of an office building, sending a spray of shattered glass flying in every direction. Hyperman rebounded into Aiden’s side and he cried out in shocked pain and alarm. Aiden, who was currently holding one (1) sexy girlfriend had to shift his arms in a hurry, slinging Luz over his shoulder and grabbing Hyperman around the belly.

“Ah!” Hyperman gasped out, his face gone gray and pasty. “My arm’s broken. That’s a first.”

It wasn’t just broken, his bone was jutting out of his skin.

“Fuck!” Aiden whispered. “I was afraid of this.”

The dimension he was in had been crafted to be a stopgap to keep the Cathurian from invading the multiverse. The only thing that mattered here was him – an Earth-Prime entity to keep the universe from falling apart. Everyone else had been sculpted by the Caretakers to keep him from going crazy. That was it. Kala Banvers was here because he thought the character she was based on was hot and the idea of nailing a hot superhero was sexy and would make him happy. Hyperman was here because of the same reason (albeit with extra steps involving gender swap beams.)

They weren’t here to actually be superheroes.

Aiden didn’t know how multiversal engineering and planescaping worked, but he was pretty sure making a dude who was actually as strong as Hyperman was supposed to be was really fucking hard. So, just cheat it!

All fine and good until something from another universe showed up and started chucking SUVs around.

“Get out of here!” Aiden said, then flew to the as a fire hydrant whistled through where he had been a second before. He released Hyperman, who flew away at a relatively sedate pace – for Hyperman, meaning it was still crazy fast – and then flew down and landed behind some rubble. He set Luz down, kissed her forehead, said: “Wish me luck, and also, hide, also, in case I don’t come back...” He leaned in then kissed her, fiercely. Luz looked faintly shocked – but then the screams of people running for cover drew him away.

Aiden blurred around the side of the cover and saw the horrifying handbeast advancing towards several DCPD police officers who were, in a bizarre lapse in the otherwise realistic facsimile of a world that this pocket dimension presented, actually standing between civilians and danger. Aiden shot forward before he knew it and hoped against hope he hadn’t just doomed an entire multiverse by trying to be brave for a bit.

He got between the handbeast and the officers as it brought raking claws down in a sweeping arc. The impact smashed into him, picked him up, sent him flying. He whistled through the air, his stomach lurching out from under him, struck something fragile that shattered into a million pieces, skidded, rolled, then landed on his back. He coughed, wheezed, and then drew in a slow breath – wondering if he had just gotten his entire body killed.

Instead of, say, agony and dislocated limbs and powdered bones, he instead felt the kind of mild ow he normally felt from banging his shin. Just. You know. Over his entire body. He stood and saw that he had been knocked into the lower levels of one of those fancy skyscraper store things that sold, like, jewels? He wasn’t entirely sure, honestly, since his passage through the room had shattered display cases and sent chairs tumbling. But he had bought the cops time to run away from the handbeast and learned a very important lesson.

Whatever it was that had given him superpowers, it was real. Not just for show.

“Well, time to use it,” Aiden said. He had never even been in a fight before. He stepped to the hole he had busted through the wall, then shouted. “HEY! You big ugly hand thing!”

Great quip, Aiden, fantastic work, he thought.

The horrible handbeast turned to face him. The palms that covered what should have been its mouth flared open, revealing a hissing maw. It didn’t screech at him, though. Instead, it laughed – and spoke in a shockingly melodious voice. Like if James Earl Jones and Charles Dance had been through a teleporter accident.

“Ahhh, the Penultimate One,” the HH said, cocking its head as its many eyes blinked in a rippling pattern. “I wondered what it would take to drag you away from the harem the Caretakers have so meticulously crafted for your enjoyment. I wondered, but it seems I was not mistaken – screaming puppetry.”

“Firstly, Penultimate One?” Aiden asked. “Cool name.”

“Apt, as well,” the HH said, crawling along the ground, arching and curving its spine like a snake with a serious case of scoliosis. The head cocked almost perpendicular to the ground, the maw dripping as that bizarrely perfect voice continued to croon at him. Fortunately, this did buy time for the civilians in the area to keep running away. “For once you have been unmade and this paltry construct has been scattered to the empyrean winds, the true and proper work of my master can begin.”

“The Chathurian?” Aiden said, buying time desperately. Shit shit shit he’s big and scary and smart too, that’s not good! That’s all bad!

“That is the name for him, yes. His true name would shatter your mind and flense your soul like a butcher’s knife before the suckling pig...” the HH said, leaning low to the ground, belly rasping knuckles along the asphalt. “But this does not need to be the way of such things, Penultimate One. Did you ever choose this life? Did you volunteer yourself for the lonely duty of being the only real soul in a land of facades – playing a macabre dance with shadows and fancies until the Caretakers have weaned my master into a form that they could more easily erase from their solitary view of creation?”

Aiden gulped. “Nope.”

“Exactly! They sent a truck to do the asking,” the HH said, stepping over again, rasping one long side against glass windows – the dragging impact filling the air with rattling clunking noises. “They crushed you, dragged your soul through the ether, and then shoved you into this pocket world.”

Aiden stepped left. His eyes flicked down, up again. “You know, uh, I do want to thank you, real quick.” He said, stepping left again – holding up his finger as the HH continued to circle with him.

“Ah?” the HH asked, cocking its head, blinking its many eyes.

“Yeah, uh, not for the trying to seduce me to evil. Like, honestly! Not gonna work,” Aiden said, shaking his head. “No, it’s for, uh, standing right there.” He looked down at the pavement again, then grinned. “This X-ray vision is amazing, by the way.”

And then he used his laser eyes to set off the gas main the HH was standing on.

The scary thing about having Hyperman’s laser eye vision wasn’t that it was hard to use them. No. The scary thing was how easy it was to just let your eyes go a bit unfocused and then suddenly unleash a killing blast of energy so power that it cut through several feet of compacted asphalt in a second and through relatively thin metal even faster. The gas main went off with a whomp and a roar of flames that swept around then HH, causing it to scream in inarticulate ... anger. Not pain. Anger. Great. Aiden tensed – and then saw a chunk of concrete, ripped from the ground, flying right at him, still wreathed in flames.

Aiden punched it.

It was a reflexive, impulsive movement. The effect was remarkable: The chunk of concrete exploded apart in a spray of clattering fragments. But then the hideous beast was leaping at him, hands splaying, claws wreathed with flames.

Aiden tensed, readying for this to either hurt a lot or hurt a tiny bit – but then something bright and blue exploded up around the creature with a cracking crunch. Aiden blinked and saw that the HH had been captured in a fist made of glittering ice, emerging from the ground and closing around it midair. He saw the source of the ice was...

Luz!

She was kneeling on the ground behind the handbeast, one hand holding a pen, the other having just slapped down a piece of paper – which had flared to life and exploded the magical ice hand out. Aiden saw the ice cracking almost at once as the Chathurian’s attack creature writhed – it was just regular ice, not super duper magical ice. That meant it was pretty strong, but nothing compared to a creature that ripped apart concrete like it was nothing.

So, Aiden stepped forward and punched the creature in the jaw. Hard. The monster’s head snapped left. He punched it the other way. The monster’s head snapped right. The ice shattered around it and it slumped to the ground on its belly, crumpling ice crystals under its massive bulk. Aiden saw its eyes were half closed and it was looking pretty battered. He clenched his hands over his head – unconsciously imitating an episode of Star Trek he had seen once ten years ago and had never quite forgotten – and then hesitated as the eyes of the beast looked up at him with a look that he couldn’t quite place.

Fear?

Terror?

Remorse?

Then the horrible handbeast gurgled: “The next one ... will skin your little bitch apart!”

“Oh, okay, thanks,” Aiden said, then brought his hands smashing down onto the monster’s head. It made an extremely satisfying, if exsquisitely grotesque, crunching noise and the entire thing’s head exploded at his feet like an overripe melon. Its blood was bright orange and splashed against his thighs and shins and calves, soaking into his shoes and turning his socks into a gory mess. Brains spluttered around his feet and dozens of eyeballs went tumbling in every direction – including one that had been flung up by the force of his blow to impact his forehead and rebound away.

Aiden stumbled backwards, shaking himself. “Eugh!”

“Ohmygoshohmygoshohmygosh!” Luz came sprinting around the melting ice and the extremely dead bulk of the handbeast. She skidded to a stop, torn between throwing her arms around Aiden and gaping at the orange gore that splattered him. Aiden opened his mouth, about to tell her ... what? He wasn’t sure. Because a million different things all compacted in his throat and couldn’t get out past his big fat tongue – and before he had cleared the obstruction, Luz had made the extremely Luz decision.

Screw the gore.

She threw her arms around him, hugging him tightly and kissing him ferociously on the lips as distant sounds of ambulance sirens and fire alarms filled the air – as police officers and rescue workers alike thronged into the scene now that the horrible beast was dead.

Luz stepped back, laughed softly, then looked down at herself. She was now covered in orange gore too. Then she yelped. “Ew! Brains! Ew!” She lifted her foot – she had lost her shoe at some point – and desperately waggled her foot to try and get handbeast brain out from between her toes. “Augh! Ick! Gross! Ack!”

The mayor was one of the vanishingly few people in this weird pocket universe that Aiden recognized from fiction he had watched. Which, like, he was beginning to realize was just a little strange. He was pretty sure that the fact he still had no idea where Sarah Kerrigant was from was deeply infuriating to a lot of his old friends – assuming any of them had known he was here and not crushed by a freak truck related accident. Especially since he recognized characters from the toy commercial for the little pastel ponies.

And he recognized the mayor.

Mayor Kallie Criggs was a gorgeous fusion of human being and Calico cat with blond hair, an outstanding rack that was neatly contained within a salmon pink business suit straight from the mid 90s, complete with shoulder pads. She was also looking quite serious as Aiden said: “So, basically, any creature from beyond the pocket dimension can’t be stopped by Hyperman or Darkman?”