Swinging In

[Eleanor Lamb]

This was unreal.

“I swear to God, Mr. Stormtrooper sir, I’m just a normal kid,” Peter protested, holding his hands up in the air. “Literally, I left physics for, like, two seconds because I had to pee and then all of a sudden I was standing in front of this fountain. I have no clue what’s going on.”

Peter silently sent up a prayer of thanks that he’d been teleported in his normal, average Joe high schooler clothes, and not with black spandex clinging to his arms and legs and a mysterious red mask and weird goggles on his head. He didn’t know how much he believed in God, but at this point, he figured if the guy was real, he must be looking out for him. What a bro.

Of course, that part about not knowing what the hell was going on was the total truth. Sure, maybe he’d left a few details out—the weird glowing white guy spewing a creepy, foreboding monologue at him didn’t seem like an essential section of the story—but for the most part, ‘stuck in a weird place with nothing except a tacky fountain and a light headache’ was a pretty accurate description of his circumstances. Well… a tacky fountain, a light headache, and a guy dressed like one of the soldiers from Star Wars. Pointing a scarily accurate replica of the blaster rifle props at him.

“Look, buddy, is this some kind of con?” Peter sat down on the edge of the fountain, prompting the Stormtrooper to take a couple of steps forward. Instinctively, the kid’s hands flew into the air. “Whoa, man, maybe we don’t get so close with that thing.”

The Stormtrooper paused. “So… you’re not a prime?”

Peter’s brow wrinkled. “I already told you, I don’t have any clue what a ‘prime’ even is, mister,” he reiterated. “I’ve just gotta pee, promise.”

Gradually, the Stormtrooper began to lower his weapon, and then placed a finger to the side of his helmet. “Got something in the Nexus, at the fountain,” he muttered, shivering a bit, “Says it isn’t a prime but it just appeared here and has now recollection of how it arrived, so…” A low buzzing came from within the Stormtrooper’s helmet—his buddies radio’ing him back, probably—and then the trooper turned his attention back to Peter. “Okay, backup’s coming, kid,” he hesitantly said, “So… um… I’m gonna need you stay here then come with me when they get here, alright?”

Peter groaned, leaning backward so far that his brunette hair almost dipped into the fountain’s waters. The Stormtrooper, taking this as hostility, raised his rifle again, prompting the boy to jump back into ‘hands up, don’t shoot’ position. “Sorrysorrysorry,” he apologized, rolling his eyes, “Just don’t like sittin’ around, s’all.”

The Stormtrooper nodded, and lowered his sights.

And now, the boy superhero supposed, he waited.

Seriously though… where the hell was he? One minute, he’d stepped out of class, bathroom pass stuffed in a pocket of his bookbag. The next second, he’d been dropped into some extremely dark void with this glowing guy—Omni—speechifying at him about some weird stuff that just seemed like the rules to a particularly complicated LARP. And to be honest, he didn’t really have time for that. He’d given up playing ‘Wizards and Goblins’ in Central Park when he’d put on the Spider-Man mask for the first time six months ago.

This place was no Central Park, though. This… ‘Nexus’ was just a big, open field of whiteness that stretched out endlessly. The fountain he currently sat on served as the midpoint, he supposed, but he couldn’t get an accurate read of the diameter or circumference of this place. If it was a circle at all; certainly it seemed that way, but since it also seemed relatively endless, how could he tell?

He also could barely focus over the sounds of this trooper’s heavy breathing. Through its little mask, the muffled, mechanized sounds of this guy’s nervous pants forced all other sounds of out of his ears. He couldn’t hear the gentle trickle of the fountain water right behind him. He couldn’t hear himself think.

“First day on the beat, bro?”

[Freeza]

Sirius gasped at the fresh, free air it felt as though his stomach was swirling, which was a similar feeling when the man of his thirties was turning into a dog. In fact, had someone been watching, they would’ve seen his face flicker into that of a wolfish black canine, at least for a second before the wizard’s form steadied as a man.

The disheveled man looked around, letting his eyes scale the world of light -which was indeed too bright for his eyes, which had grown used to the dark- and he was forced to squeeze them shut. His hands felt around at the edge of the fountain, while he felt his cracking lips and dry tongue longing for a refreshing taste. As though it were his own dog bowl, the wizard plunged his head in, at first it was for drink, which he did not take much of, but after, he splashed his face with the simple cup of his hands, as though expecting to be woken up any time now.

Looking down, Sirius noted his robes were shaggy and worn. The “bath” his face had taken in the Nexus fountain had pulled the dirt from his pores, and now left the man, and his dark beard, glittering clean and sparkling with dew. On the other side of the fountain, Sirius noted a strange boy, who had been apprehended by some muggle authorities, it appeared, though they were unlike any kind he had ever seen before. The wizard heard with his keen ears that they were waiting for back up. Sirius was too weary to feel any source of rebellion in him, much the less act on it in this obscene dream, but his feet took him a few steps, rounding the fountain, and the mage had to double-take the still-abrasive blur on his eyes, for he mistook the teenage boy for someone else, and was now watching he and his reactions very keenly, as well as that of the Storm troopers that had surrounded him.

Sirius acted before he thought of the consequences, for impulse was one thing that came so easy to him, “You there,” he spoke to the lead Storm trooper, or to the boy, it was at first hard to tell, “What do you think you’re doing?”