Blue Nexus #48 - Swordvail Guild

            Aplin, with the construct still around him and the console, worked furiously. Wires wove themselves back together for him sometimes, helping him along with the process. Brenda constantly looked over her shoulder to see if any enemies were on their way. The vortex was closed, no thanks to Aplin, but now she couldn’t sense Kyle or Sandy. They needed to open it, and keep it stable.

            Still, she could sense that Hood Nexus was still battling. Wave upon wave of enemy troops made it through the portal, and he had to have taken it upon himself to stop them from coming through at all costs. Now she worried about Yusero being left all alone. There wasn’t really anywhere for him to go, considering how the base was riddled with destruction and the portal was closed, but they could still remove him or, worse, kill him.

            Aplin held up, wiping sweat off his brow. Brenda felt the magic draining from her faster now that she had to keep it up as well as hold the wall at the door to ensure that nobody broke through. Both of her hands were occupied and her concentration was split right down the middle. Brenda looked back over to Aplin, who punched the control console and some lights appeared on it. A low hum filled the room.

            “There, back in normal running condition,” Aplin said. “It’s capable of sustaining power for just a few minutes on command.”

            “Good,” Brenda said. She pulled Aplin’s container closer to her, away from the console. She moved the blockade at the door and laid it over the control console, ensuring that nobody could break it. “Now let’s go find Yusero.”

            “He’s fine,” Aplin said.

            “I’m sure,” Brenda said. “But it never hurt anyone to check, did it?”

            Brenda placed Aplin in front of her and pushed, ramming through some fallen metal debris. Aplin was slouched against the wall closest to Brenda, trying to stay as far away from the action as she would allow.

            Two enemies rounded the corner. They wore slick black armor with silver padding, holstering two swords. They shouted and leapt at the cage. Brenda flung Aplin’s cube at them, knocking them into the wall. She leapt over the cube, holding another cube at the ready. Another soldier rounded the corner. Brenda caught him in the cube in her hand and tossed him across the room and through the wall, out onto the metal passage she took in.

            Brenda used her back muscles to fling Aplin forward. He bounced off the wall and turned into the main hallway. Brenda sprinted and followed, hoping to regain some of her magic. Her concentration was still strained on the cube, and she felt her enemies battering against it. Brenda ran up along the wall and then propelled off. Five soldiers, in similar armor, were attacking the cube.

            With a swift flick of her wrist she slammed all five to the ground in a single large barrier, then glided atop Aplin’s cube over it. They approached Yusero swiftly. He was still in the pod and nobody seemed to notice. The hallway was torn asunder, though. Walls had gaping holes, metal beams and support pillars were strewn about. Unconscious, or dead, soldiers lay everywhere and there were charred blue markings lining the wall.

            The boy from beyond was still asleep, or unconscious, when they reached him. He was untouched, too, as if nobody even noticed him. Brenda swung Aplin into the room and put up another barrier. Her chest was heaving fast and she knew she was running low on energy for now. Brenda clenched a fist and approached Yusero.

            “If you break that you might kill him,” Aplin said.

            “How do I know this isn’t killing him instead?” Brenda asked.

            With her remaining strength she punched through the glass. The airlock from inside released and air spewed out. Yusero sucked in a large breath of air and his eyes shot wide open. Brenda opened the pod up to let him get straight. He continued his heavy breathing, getting a feel for his body as well, before he slowly sat up. Brenda, exhausted, placed a hand on his shoulder to expedite the healing.

            Yusero looked over, astounded, at Brenda, who just nodded to him. Yusero patted her hand and Brenda dropped it, slouching against the wall with a smile.

            “Oh, I’m done,” Brenda said. Yusero clenched his fists as he slid out of the pod and onto the ground. He took hold of his two black scimitars that sat along the pod’s side and glared over to Aplin.

            Brenda felt a great relief wash over her when she dropped the cube around Aplin. The man pushed himself back against the big barrier protecting them, which was easy for Brenda to keep up. She moved to the back wall as Yusero moved forward, with each step Aplin’s quiver becoming easier to spot.

            Yusero raised one black sword so fast that a black trail cut through the air. He stopped it just short of Aplin’s nose. Yusero, Brenda noticed, looked more poised than ever despite having been in a containment pod for a while. He stood straight and did not waver at all. His movement was fluid but concise. A single misstep would have resulted in either Aplin dying or him looking like a fool.

            “We’re going to speak now,” Yusero said. “Understand?”

            “Speak about what?” Aplina asked.

            Yusero touched the ball of Aplin’s nose with his sword. A prick of blood popped from it, even though Yusero was applying no pressure.

            “Your attitude,” Yusero said. “I’m sure Ygon told you a lot about my timeline. He might’ve even built his suit with the same steel this sword is made from. It’s called quilot steel, the hardest metal in the universe. Nothing can cut through it but itself, and nothing can break it but itself. And even the tiniest touch on the weakest skin will draw blood. What happens when pressure is applied, I wonder? If I don’t get answers, I think I may just get a reminder.”

            “I won’t talk about anything,” Aplin said.

            Yusero nodded, and Brenda barely saw what he did next. He swung with the next sword and cut precisely along Aplin’s chest just enough to cleave through his shirt and make the slightest cut horizontally along his chest. Aplin cried out in pain as if he’d been murdered, but all that was there was a small, thin red line.

            “Oh, no blood,” Yusero said. “Maybe if I try a little harder…”

            “We were experimenting with the time stream,” Aplin said, and said it fast. “We were assigned to delve further into the multiverse, and we saw an anomaly. Something was in between it all, looking for a beacon. We were that beacon, and Ygon was that lost sailor. He alone appeared to us and knew that he could take advantage. I needed his help and his tech to advance my team of super beings to combat the Zanderia. When he returned he pulled you through the timeline as well, though I don’t understand why.”

            “Why would Ygon be travelling through time?” asked Yusero.

            “To escape the jurisdiction of the Swordvail Guild, that’s what he told me!” exclaimed Aplin. “You and your friends were in pursuit of him and he had no choice but try a new escape route. When you came here he wanted you captured to try and draw from the time energy created around you when you left your time to draw out his guild’s soldiers.”

            “His guild is here?” asked Yusero. “All of them?”

            “I’m not sure, I’ve been stuck here,” Aplin said. He leaned forward with his teeth gritted together but Yusero pushed him back gently with his sword.

            “But his soldiers are here fighting? And you willingly let this happen?”

            “I had to. You don’t understand what things are like now. Super-powered beings are arriving by the masses every month and we normal people have no means of stopping them if they go rogue. We needed help, and I took the first avenue I could toward that road of restoring balance and justice to the world. A little collateral damage is to be expected.”

            Yusero shook his head, then slapped Aplin across the face with the side of his sword, knocking him out instantly. Brenda sat up. The sound of the slap bounced off of the walls like a reminder of Yusero’s feelings. The future boy turned around and faced Brenda, then pointed to the wall.

            “Let me go out there and deal with this,” Yusero said. “It’s more my fight than yours.”

            Brenda nodded and sighed. She closed her eyes and relaxed her body. Magic poured from her reserves and flowed through her red veins, healing her exhaustion. She wasn’t as tired as she’d thought, but knew that, with Yusero, she didn’t need to go as far as she had before with her power.

            As Brenda stood up the red barrier came down. She walked up to him and the two moved out of the room. They followed the destruction down another hallway, and at the first sound of battle, Yusero bolted forward. Brenda followed as fast she wanted, keeping a thin barrier around him to bring him fully back to one hundred percent.

            Yusero turned another corner and she heard metal-on-metal and several thuds, but had no doubt that Yusero was one the dealing all the damage. She sped up and was in a full sprint, running along the wall to turn and casting spells as she entered the expanded hallway. Two soldiers were dropped by one of her barriers and Brenda flipped through the air and onto the ground, standing next to Yusero.

            “Not too many here, they must be making some pretty quick advancements,” Yusero said. “Come on, let’s catch up with them!”

           

            Halen slid away from Kyle and Sandy as Ygon’s mechanical armor slammed into the ground, creating a small crater that quickly filled with dust and falling soil. Kyle held his hand out and cast his newly formed lance at the mech but it bounced off without a scratch. Two laser bullets from Halen’s pistols did make marks but did little actual damage to the machine.

            Kyle and Sandy leapt away from another attack and slid next to Halen. A ship flew by overhead and knocked Ygon’s suit back, but another member of his guild jumped toward the fray, going straight for the three of them. Kyle jumped up to meet it, hitting it full force with his shoulder. The mech gave and Kyle used most of his strength to kick it away.

            He landed and faltered, trying to stay up and not look so weak in front of Halen. The woman looked like a complete badass with her dark green hair parted mostly to one side, a cloth shirt that, at the bottom, was tied at her hip, and leather pants to go with combat boots. Her pistols were slender and shone of silver, with green veins where the energy shot out. There was a sword slung on her back but she wasn’t touching it, nor did she look the type to use a sword.

            “I bet those things caused a bit of trouble in the past,” Halen said.

            “Yeah, I couldn’t really hurt it that much,” Kyle said. He tried to summon more energy from the Nexus but felt the pool was too minimal to get any real power from. Sandy looked like she was doing just fine, though. She had her bow out and a purple arrow notched.

            “Is there any way we can open the portal to the past on our end?” asked Sandy.

            “If Ygon did it for us, but I don’t think he’s planning on getting captured,” Halen said. “We have to rely on our pals on the other side for that. For now it’s all about survival. My guys can handle most of the mech suits but Ygon and his friend over there are going to be a bit of trouble without this.”

            Halen leaned toward Kyle, nudging him with her shoulder. The sword pommel tapped him on the head. Halen winked at him. Kyle drew the sword from the scabbard. It was just like Yusero’s, only this was a broadsword.

            “That steel will slice right through the mech’s, and with your power it might just be like chopping through wood,” Halen said.

            Kyle nodded, but held his arm out and concentrated on the sword. Some more of his energy dropped out of him and into the sword. Small blue markings appeared on the blade. Kyle smoothed his hand along its side and waves of blue energy washed over the blue-black sword as he did so. His Nexus energy that was in the sword returned to him.

            “Some sort of infusion?” asked Halen.

            “Yeah,” Kyle said. “It lets me put my energy into the sword. Makes it stronger when I’m in the Nexus. Plus it lets me do things like this.”

            He held out his hand again and the lance appeared. He tossed it to Halen, who caught it. She nodded in appreciation of the ability.

            “I like it,” Halen said. “Still doesn’t solve our problem of getting you home.”

            “I’ll find a way to get Ygon to talk,” Kyle said. “You two can stand back, I’ve got this.”

            Halen laughed. “No you don’t.” She twirled her guns together, then placed one in front of the other and reached into her belt. She placed a connected rod into the end of one gun and through the barrel of another, then slid the front end around and removed the trigger. More green veins appeared and extended to the front end of the gun. Halen twirled the gun in hand and aimed it at the mech that was sprinting, slow, toward them.

            She fired and the blast managed to pierce right through the right shoulder, knocking the mech suit back. Sandy was on the situation instantly, firing two arrows back-to-back and then clenching a fist when one entered the suit. Purple fire appeared out of the suit and the arm dropped off.

            “Fine you can help,” Kyle said. “But I’ve got Ygon.”

            “Have fun,” Sandy said.

            Kyle didn’t bother with a reply, instead bursting toward Ygon’s giant mech. The mech fired its own jets and attacked Kyle as well. It had no weapon but looked perfectly capable of punching Kyle into this planet’s core. The suit approached him like a skyscraper, towering over him and imposing on him with ease. Kyle drove the sword up but was blasted back by a fist he couldn’t even see.

            He managed to catch himself while still in the air. Kyle zig-zagged this time back toward Ygon, who stopped moving and waited for Kyle to approach. Kyle cast a blue ball of energy in the ground and filled the area with smoke. Quickly, he sliced a hole through the ground—like cutting through paper, he noticed—and burrowed deep underground.

            By the time he popped up, Ygon had already fallen for his trick. Kyle kicked through the sky and cut off Ygon’s arm. He landed and sliced through another one of his legs. The mech approached and Kyle elbowed the mech into the sky. Steam billowed from the suit and Kyle saw someone jump out of it.

            The main suit crashed to the ground as Ygon, in another metal suit of armor, landed about ten yards from Kyle. He had two daggers in hand already and slowly turned to face Kyle.

            “A quilot saber?” asked Ygon. “I suppose Halen is the one who helped you, then?”

            “And you’ll help me get back home,” Kyle said.

            “One of us is going to die, and there is no in-between,” Ygon said. “Even if I die, I can at least be happy knowing you will be trapped here. Aplin may not be as smart as I am, but he’s no coward.”

            “Persuasion is a powerful thing,” Kyle said. “I’m sure my friends in the past will persuade him just like I’m about to persuade you.”

            “Through combat?”

            Kyle sneered, and appeared behind Ygon before his suit was able to notice. His legs ached from the jump. He hadn’t moved so fast since he fought Alucard but had to in order to keep up his intimidation. He elbowed Ygon in the back of the head and Ygon dropped to the ground.

            Ygon pushed himself away but was in a clear daze. Kyle landed and leapt at Ygon again. Ygon swung his daggers but Kyle cut through them with the Nexus-infused quilot saber, then elbowed Ygon into the ground.

            “You’re just a suit of armor looking to step on everyone else,” Kyle said. He stabbed the sword into the ground next to Ygon. “No matter what timeline we’re in, what universe we’re in, I’m always going to beat guys like you.”

            “I told you I won’t go alive!” Ygon shouted, jumping toward Kyle.

            Kyle separated the two with a blue ball of energy, shattering the armor and frying whatever wiring was connecting the suicide bomb to the suit. Ygon dropped back into the ground with his hair all frazzled and his wide open in fear. Kyle picked the sword back up and placed it on the tip of Ygon’s sharp nose.

            “Did you honestly think you were going to get things your way?” asked Kyle. “Don’t think so.”

            He slapped Ygon in the head with the side of the saber. His head cocked to the side and his eyes shut immediately. His body locked up momentarily but relaxed.

            An explosion, and a cheer from Sandy, informed him of the fate of the other mech. Kyle smiled and looked at the other ships overhead. They were all either already in the ground or on their way down. Halen raised her pistol to the ground and fired off a few rounds, roaring with celebration. Kyle smiled and swiped his finger on the underside of the Nexus bracelet.

            He dropped to one knee. Sweat dropped from his face like a waterfall and exhaustion hit him like a tidal wave. He almost fell to the ground but Sandy was there to catch him and prop him back up. Halen approached, undoing the combination of her pistols and placing them back into their respective holsters at her hip.

            “Do things usually go this way for you guys?” asked Kyle.

            “We don’t have, um, people with your abilities most of the time,” Halen said. “Thanks for your help, though.”

            She picked the quilot sword up from off the ground and replaced it in the scabbard on her back. She placed her hands on her hips and sighed, looking around the plain and to the city in the distance.

            “I suppose we could hunker down there for a while to wait,” she said. “We might be able to scout around some places for you but I don’t think we’ll find anyone to bring you home for a while.”

            “I don’t mind taking a rest,” Kyle said as a spark of lightning cracked near his head.

            A blast pushed the three of them away followed by a tugging sensation that quickly faded away. Kyle turned to face the small vortex that had appeared over Ygon’s body.

            Yusero leapt through, rolling onto the grass with several cuts and bruises but he was otherwise fine. He had both of his sabers, Kyle now recognized them as quilot sabers, drawn and looked instantly at Ygon. He was panting furiously.

            Halen clapped him on the back and Yusero pitched forward, almost falling onto Sandy. Sandy helped keep him straight. Kyle got back to his feet, standing at the same height as Yusero.

            “What was that for?” Yusero asked.

            Halen punched him in the face next and Yusero dropped immediately to the floor. Sandy covered her mouth and Kyle stepped away from Halen. She leaned over and picked a dazed Yusero up from off the ground.

            “You went to the past and didn’t even bring me anything back?” asked Halen. “We live in a multiverse, you weren’t going to change anything you idiot.”

            Yusero shrugged, with blood dripping down the side of his mouth. He had a stupid smile on his face, too. Kyle could hardly keep a laugh from escaping his lips. Sandy appeared to have the same struggle.

            “You idiot,” Halen said. She pushed him to the side and approached the portal. “I guess they had someone on the other end to help you out. Or it just reopened naturally. I don’t know.”

            Kyle approached the portal as well. The hairs along his arms and legs were standing and he could feel the gravitational pull the portal had begging him to go closer. Halen looked over at him and placed a hand on his shoulder.

            “We’ll clean up the mess on our end if you want to do the same on yours,” she said. “It won’t be pretty, I can guarantee that much.”

            “For you or for me?” Kyle asked.

            “Both of us,” Halen said. “If there’s one consistent thing throughout time it’s that someone is always cleaning up after someone else.”

            “Not even death is that consistent?”

            Halen smiled warmly for the first time at Kyle. She had a very pretty face when she wasn’t blasting pistols and punching faces.

            “Not even death is that consistent.”

            Sandy helped get Yusero to his feet again and then approached Kyle by the portal. He nodded to her and Sandy said her goodbye to Halen before jumping through the portal. Kyle swiped his finger over the Nexus bracelet and felt a refreshing, but light, amount of energy wash over him.

            Yusero held out his hand and Kyle took it and shook it. Halen nodded at the two of them and approached the landing ship with all the other Swordvail Guild members.

            “Thanks for getting me out of this mess,” Yusero said.

            “I didn’t really do much,” Kyle said. “It was actually better that they captured you.”

            “Still, I wouldn’t be back here if you guys hadn’t come to help me,” Yusero said. “I owe you one now.”

            He reached behind his back and handed Kyle a gold coin. Yusero pressed down on the center and it flipped open into a thin communicator. Kyle pressed another center button and the communicator flipped back into a coin.

            “I can’t imagine all that technology will go to waste,” Yusero said. “If you find yourself outnumbered let me know. We’ll be right there.”

            “I might stop by for a visit every now and then,” Kyle said. “Just to keep you guys on your toes.”

            “We could certainly use your help,” Yusero said. “We’ll call you an honorary member of the Swordvail Guild. As long as you have that coin, you’re good.”

            Kyle flipped the coin and caught it between two fingers. “Glad to hear it. Stay out of trouble, Yusero.”

            “Stay safe, Kyle,” Yusero said.

            The two broke off and Kyle re-entered the portal, dropping through the space-time continuum.

            It was hard for Kyle to resist the urge to see Boomer after he’d just had a day filled with time-travel and science-stuff. He still had a hard time wrapping his head around the fact that everything took place in just one day. Part of him was happy to have had such an exciting day, while most of his muscles wished he could just stay in school more often.

            Brenda joined him to go see Boomer. She had some questions she wanted to ask him, apparently, though Kyle was unsure why. He just wanted to give Boomer some updates, specifically regarding D.E.L.T.A. and how Boomer was right in his assumptions about them. Aplin wasn’t behind bars just yet but was being held in custody under citizen’s arrest. He would go before a government tribunal, perhaps even in a military court, for his crimes.

            When he was conscious for a few minutes before Brenda shut him up he babbled that they couldn’t legally get him for anything, that D.E.L.T.A. was just experimenting and that it went haywire. He was discovered, however, to have used illegal persuasion methods to get the members of the Delta Squad to join with him. Torture, it was being rumored, but there was no hard evidence of that yet. Phoenix promised to keep an eye on him more.

            Kyle and Brenda approached Boomer around nine that evening, once the two slept a sufficient amount and had most of their energy restored. Prism promised to take over Kyle’s jurisdiction and Brian said he would be on Earth an extra evening to rest and handle small stuff around the East Coast before leaving. Sandy was back in Magus Forest, going straight there once they were done with their business in Utah.

            Boomer was actually facing the door when they approached, though he was in a meditative sitting position. He noticed them when the door closed behind Kyle and Brenda. He stood up using just one leg and moved toward them, meeting the two halfway. They exchanged hand-shakes and hellos before Kyle informed him of what’d happened since their conversation earlier.

            The former mad-scientist found all of it a little too hard to believe, particularly the part about the quilot sabers. Kyle was surprised he wasn’t flipping about him hearing that they lived in a multiverse…in fact Kyle was surprised by most of the underwhelming responses Boomer was giving them.

            “So like do you have psychic powers now?” asked Kyle. “Or are you turning more into a robot?”

            “I already know most of the scientific specifics you’re giving me,” Boomer said. “The War God Cata imbued me with her knowledge. I’ve known about the multiverse long before this theory went public. It disturbs me that the people from the future can so easily rip into our universe. We might be fighting a war not just from other planets but from other dimensions entirely.”

            “Suggesting that we’ll have to fight evil versions of ourselves one day?” asked Kyle.

            “No, not that,” Boomer said. “I’m just saying that it’s like poking a hole in something. Once there’s an opening it just takes a few more to make a big hole. I’m sure that Ygon was just an exception, but once exceptions start adding up it becomes a problem. It’s how the whole super-heroing business opened up in the first place.”

            “I suppose so,” Kyle said. “Why didn’t you ever try something like this?”

            “My main field is bio-chemistry,” Boomer said. “Not physics. Just because I know these things doesn’t mean I’m going to take advantage of it.”

            “How much did Cata tell you?” asked Brenda.

            “Everything she wanted,” Boomer said. “And it’s quite a bit.”

            “My War God master—former master, thankfully—Ytu knew swaths of knowledge as well,” Brenda said. “But she never entrusted that information with anyone else.”

            “Cata knows the importance of Earth in the universe, and seeing the production of so many super beings only stressed that importance for her,” Boomer said. “She wanted someone there to rely on. When there were suddenly two Nexuses on Earth, where one of the Sentient Nexus was born, she gave me her knowledge. Magic, science, history, I know most of it. It gives me headache to sort through, though.”

            “Magic?” asked Brenda. “Do you, then, know something about a mage called the Broken? The deception mage from a few years hence told me about them and said I would meet them soon enough.”

            “It’s part of a trinity,” Boomer said. “The Broken, the Fallen, and the Unworthy are going to meet another trinity one day. It’s actually an intergalactic prophecy, I believe, that is meant to come to fruition only during a crisis, or cataclysm. The last time the Broken, Fallen, and Unworthy met was when a band of Nexus crusaders at the turn of the first Pagan millennia met the seventh War God, Raiyu, in battle on Europa.”

            “How powerful are they, what side do they fight for?”

            “I only know what the prophecy tells me,” Boomer said.

            “What about magical awakenings?” asked Kyle.

            “It’s when a mage finally gains access to all of their power,” Boomer said. Brenda nodded as well.

            “Sandstorm was a deception mage,” Kyle said. “And after I captured him he told me there’d been an awakening, not necessarily his. I think the world is about to get a whole new wave of mages.”

            “I would’ve sensed them,” Brenda said.

            “It just seems a bit too coincidental that a deception mage comes around the same time as this supposed awakening,” Kyle said.

            “Alucard was a powerful Demon mage, I’m sure there will many who want to test the ones who defeated him,” Boomer said.

            Kyle shrugged. Maybe, he thought. But in the back of his mind he worried. This ‘Broken’ mage was supposed to appear during a cataclysm, and there was an awakening that was also supposed to happen? Things were lining up for Kyle, and he worried that this time it wouldn’t be as easy as swinging a sword to stop.

           

Next time: New Year's has come and gone and the cold weather has finally brought peace to the Blue Nexus...until someone he knows suddenly has gained the powers of a mage! Kyle begins to worry that doomsday is upon them all in "Blue Nexus #49 -Mark of the Mage"!