Heat of the Moment

[Android 17]

Seventeen scowled as he pushed the stone slab that had served as a couch out into the large hallway.  From talks with Von Koopa and some of the others, he knew that most of them used the slabs as their actual beds.  How the Koopas managed to sleep, he didn’t know—they must have been genetically engineered to sleep on rocks.  Once the chunk of rock was gone, he re-entered the room and pulled the curtain shut behind him.
 
On a small desk in the corner was a little piece of tech called a Capsule Corp Book or simply a ‘capsulebook’.  Less than a laptop but more than a tablet, the pseudo-computer had been all the rage in West City prior to the return of the Stallions to Earth.
 
After another conversation with Von Koopa and receiving a small, semi-permanent place to live inside one of the fortresses near the periphery of the kingdom, Seventeen had taken to reflecting upon some of the things he’d missed from his home.  Although the room was clearly carved from stone, he’d summoned enough things to make it feel a little homier.  On the floor was the same sort of carpet from his bedroom, and the walls had a few pictures of friends and family that he’d managed to create simply from memory and some omnilium.
 
Now that the slab was removed, he had enough room to lean his large bed down and set it up properly at the center of the far wall.  The master bed—detailed precisely like the one he’d slept on at the mansion—took up nearly sixty percent of the little cave room, but it was well worth it once Seventeen hopped onto the perfectly shaped mattress and sprawled out his legs.  Although the ceiling was made from roughly carved rocks, the cyborg had added some glow-in-the-dark stars and a ceiling fan that ran off of an internal battery.
 
Glancing to the right side of the room, Seventeen looked ‘outside’ through the fake glass door.  Through the door and the bars of the balcony beyond, one could spot the old barn and the dense forests that surrounded the venerable estate.  If he could summon this room, Seventeen figured he could probably summon the whole house at some point.
 
Just need more juju. Von Koopa had reiterated that anything was possible if one acquired enough omnilium, and at this point, Seventeen was beyond doubting the laws of this new world.  Once the room had been nearly squared away, he’d taken a moment to mediate on his own body.  While he hadn’t achieved much, he’d managed to unlock his ki sense, allowing him to close his eyes and feel all the life forces that skittered and jogged throughout the hallways of the fort.  He had hoped for more, but Von Koopa told him that ‘it is always rough for primes who lost a lot.’
 
Beyond his years of training, Seventeen had also lost all his friends and family, but since he’d spent his afterlife separated from many of them, those wounds weren’t quite as fresh as the frailty of his form.  If death had taught the cyborg anything, it was that things always got better, even if they had to be really shitty for a good long while.
 
Lying on the new version of his old bed, Seventeen thumbed through some articles on the capsulebook.  While it had a different name, the Dataverse seemed like nothing more than the internet, but here in the Omniverse, there was a vast internet culture, beyond anything the cyborg had experienced in his home.  He vaguely recalled the concept of social media from when he was alive, and he knew it had grown after his death.  In the Omniverse, it seemed like everyone had an opinion, and they wanted every single person to be aware of it.
 
OmniTwitter, some website identified by a little white bird and bubble letters, appeared to be the focal point for all of it.  The majority of the posts were whining, snarking, or trolling, but amid all the nonsense, there were a handful of interesting posts.  One of the links took Seventeen to a website where a bunch of intelligent-sounding people were debating the truth of the Omniverse and the white figure who escorted them all into this place.
 
‘The Monotruth’ … that’s got such a cool ring to it. The machine-hybrid didn’t have the time to read through all the articles, but he bookmarked the page for later before tabbing back to some other posts.  One that caught his attention was a string of ‘status updates’ from a group of adventurers in the Frozen Fields, but after a while, he got bored reading about a bunch of scientists trying to find meteorites in a place that sounded an awful lot like Planet Frost.
 
Pass. Seventeen thought as memories of changelings flittered through his head.  If he could keep his streak of not having to deal with those monsters going here in the Omniverse, he’d be content.  The last thing he needed was more reminders of the atrocities those things had gotten away with back in the real world.  How many vicious deaths and brutal wars did a culture get to commit before they deserved to be dealt with?
 
Seventeen didn’t bother to get distracted with that particular can of worms.  He’d spent too much of his mortal life frustrated by it, and he didn’t plan to let it impede his new little experience here.  
 
Thus, the cyborg returned to the Dataverse.  He managed to last about three more minutes before he stumbled across a piece of ‘fanfiction’ that involved some princess and a severed hand.  Thirty seconds into the piece, the cyborg closed the tab and proceeded to shut the lid of the capsulebook.  Anything involving an erotic relationship between a severed limb and an underage-looking princess creature was something he’d prefer to avoid by any and all means possible.

[Android 17]

“Hey, Seventeen, you awake?”

The rough voice came from the other side of the curtain, and while the cyborg had been dozing in and out of consciousness for the better part of three hours, he was alert enough to sit up and look at the shape outside his ‘room.’

“Yea,” the machine-hybrid replied as the curtain was pulled open to reveal the perpetually neutral expression of Von Koopa. “What can I help ya with, Von?”

The mustachioed koopa stepped into the room and slid the curtain shut. Tucked up under his armpit, the reptile had a tablet device. “I know you’ve been here for the last few hours leafing through the Dataverse.” Seventeen nodded his head as the officer retrieved the tablet and started to click the screen. “Have you seen this particular story yet?” Once he fought the correct page, Von Koopa turned the tablet around and extended it toward the pallid man.

With his brow furrowed, Seventeen accepted the tablet and placed his thumb on the bottom corner of the screen to keep it from idling off before he could see the contents. Screen in place, he skimmed through what seemed to be an otherwise nondescript editorial that mentioned shooting stars a few months ago. The author of the piece mentioned that similar meteor showers had been reported in almost every verse, and apparently, some astronomer’s group from a place called Camelot was investigating each of the sites.

Seventeen opted to ask the real question at hand as he handed over the tablet. “Is there really a place called Camelot? Is it run by King Arthur?”

Without a single inclination that he sensed the sarcasm, Von Koopa answered the question. “No, Aragorn.”

“Is there at least a round table?”

Von Koopa stared blankly at the cyborg for a few moments before opting to ignore the question. “You read the story that quickly?”

Seventeen nodded his head. “Shooting stars. Space nerds. What’s the hook?”

“Some of our intelligence indicates that the Kingdom already has one such ‘star piece’ in their possession. Rumors have circulated that it’s some sort of powerful relic with magical properties.”

“Everything in this place has magical properties, though,” Seventeen quipped, causing his associate to scowl. “You’re a talking turtle, and you made me engage in a death race up an active volcano in a go-cart… what’s so special about a shooting star?”

The reptile shook his head. “Stuff like this rarely happens. All these different verses with different climates and different everything... how likely do you think it would be for the same phenomenon to occur in every verse?”

Seventeen once again found himself unmoved. “Again… you’re a turtle with a Prussian mustache and you’re using a tablet computer as you walk the halls of your underground fortress-city.” The cyborg put up his arms in a show of helplessness. “You might have to walk me through this one.”

Von Koopa flashed the machine-hybrid a withering stare that did little more than elicit a grin from the human, who couldn’t help grinning at the prospect of a human turtle’s angry eyes. “Every now and again, extremely powerful relics will surface in the Omniverse. If this is something like that, it warrants investigation.”

Seventeen nodded his head as the situation started to make sense in his head. “And you’re here to…?”

“Stop playing the role of the idiot,” Von Koopa snapped, losing some of his composure for a fleeting moment. “If I want an idiot, I’ll go track down a few of those moles or crocodiles.”

Seventeen snickered and shook his head. “Sorry, sorry… I’m just playing around.” Sliding off the side of his bed, the cyborg jiggled the wrinkles from his blue jeans and ran a few palms down his shirt to straight it out before looking back at the turtle. “You want me to go along, right?”

“Somewhat,” Von Koopa replied as he reached into his shell to retrieve a small rolled paper with only a single little piece of chord holding it taut.

“Where did th—”

“You’ll find directions to where this Camelot astronomer has been sighted in the Ashen Steppes. It’s not too far from here, but once you get there, you are to get to the bottom of this situation.” Von Koopa extended the scroll and waited for a still confused-looking Seventeen to accept it from him. Before the machine-hybrid could unfurl the missive, the koopa continued his instructions. “Afterwards, you’ll need to report back to the main fortress. I’ll be waiting there, and regardless of the information you bring, you’ll be meeting with King Bowser. Does that make sense? Do you want pictures and subtitles?”

It took the cyborg a short moment to realize that the hard-assed military officer was playing around with him. “Nah, I’m good. These are a bunch of nerds, you said? Like the type with the telescopes?”

The koopa shrugged his shoulders at the question. “I didn’t follow the guy on Twitter, I just read the report given to me.” He replied gruffly before backing up out of his associate’s chambers. “You can leave whenever you are ready, but once you’re out of here, I expect you to start this assignment.”

“Aww, shucks. I was hoping to go pay that gentlekoopa’s club a visit before I had to skip on out of here.”

Von Koopa shook his head. “Humans…”

With that, Seventeen was left to his own devices in the small little cave-turned-bedroom.

[Android 17]

The cyborg took a few more minutes to filter back through his capsulebook. He wanted to set up an email address and one of those wireless storage accounts, in case he wanted to access his information from a public terminal. Where he’d actually find a functioning machine in a volcano-riddled world, he didn’t know, but if the Omniverse was a large and varied as people told him, there had to be some modern place out there.

With that matter squared away after a couple dozen keystrokes and clicks, Seventeen relaxed back onto his pillow. He closed his eyes and held up his right hand as thoughts and images formed in his head. A couple of minutes later, he opened his eyes and grinned at the touch screen phone in his elevated hand. By the time he’d been ‘done’ with the mortal world, the popular mobile devices were the ones that flipped or had keyboards or the weird, plastic nubs. Inexpensive touch screen devices becoming the norm in the world had followed his dirt nap by a few months.

Once booted to its main screen, the device asked for some personal information. It took the cyborg a couple minutes to figure out how to work everything, but once he had it synced up to the account he used for his capsulebook, he pocketed the phone. “Modern age amenities in a prehistoric world… How quaint.”

Grinning, Seventeen hopped down from his bed and scooped the Power Sword from its wall hook. He slipped the strap over his shoulder and pulled it taut so the scabbard rested gently against his back. Stooping down, he pulled open the nightstand drawer and grabbed the green shell he’d been given following the race. With the application of some omnilium, he’d managed to make it into a little keychain, and at some point, he’d tinker with it a little more.

For now, he just clipped it onto one of his belt loops and glanced over his quarters one last time. There was nothing else in there he’d need to take with him, which made sense since he hadn’t been living in the space more than a few hours. Walking back over to the nightstand, he picked up one of the framed photos and smirked at it. He wasn’t sure how much time had passed due to the nature of being dead, but the image was an old one. It had been taken during a barbeque following the defeat of the Red Stallions—a group of asshole alien invaders from the neighboring galaxy. Strangers and acquaintances became family that day.

Great people. Seventeen smiled as he set the photo down on the table. Even if he never returned to the fortress, he could always recreate the image and the others on the tablet from memory alone. With a final glimpse to the picture of his two children, the cyborg backed up and slipped out through the curtain into the hallway.

Once the curtain fell shut, it immediately felt as if the machine-hybrid had stepped into a completely different world. The hallway was partially bricked, and the koopas were a very minimalistic people, even if their leader had a taste for statues and grandiose structures. The reptile’s preferred white or light gray bricks to serve as their floors, ceilings, and walls. When you added in the wall sconces, what you had was some very drab interior design, especially given the fact that the section of this fort was still under construction.

The koopa shell jingled faintly as the raven-haired fighter made his way through the subterranean corridors of the fortress. On more than one occasion, he paused to marvel at some elaborate death trap. For one reason or another, the koopas filled their forts with inactive traps—things like giant spiked weights or secret trapdoors over pits of lava. The whole thing seemed ridiculous, but Seventeen wasn’t one to mock the people giving him a warm cave to sleep inside.

Navigating across what was apparently a corridor filled with a few Bowser statues that launched fireballs in timed intervals, Seventeen eventually made his way to the pleasant little foyer. The fact that he had to depress a hidden panel and slid through the wall once it opened was probably something that should have perturbed him. At this point, he just chalked it up to the koopas and their strange paranoia that someone would invade their fortress at any given moment.

The wall slid back into place with a mute click behind the cyborg, and he was immediately greeted with a few raised hands and head nods. Unlike the drab and monochromatic hallway, this room was full of bright lights and color. From what Von Koopa had told him, Seventeen guessed that this was a lounge of some sorts for the crew that maintained the fortress. The fact that it had a vending machine, water cooler, and a few couches only reinforced that notion.

“Already leaving so soon, Seventeen?” One of the Koopas remarked as the machine-hybrid started to make his way toward the metal door on the other side of the room.

Pausing for a moment, the raven-haired fighter nodded his head and lifted the rolled up paper from the pocket of his jeans. “Yea, they’re sending me out to go hang out with some nerds or something.”

The koopa—a plain-looking fellow whose job was to sweep the hallways afterhours—nodded his head after thinking over the statement. “I guess that sounds like fun?”

Seventeen shrugged his shoulders. “I’ll take pictures.”

The reptilian janitor nodded his head and went back to reading a magazine on mops, leaving his acquaintance to exit the employee lounge. Once on the other side of the metal door, the machine-hybrid continued through a few more short hallways and a large, spiral staircase before reaching the foyer. With no need for any additional formalities, Seventeen kept his pace as he cut across to the other side of the room and entered another small network of corridors. He passed a few more koopas and exchanged casual head bobs along the way.

After walking nearly the width of the fort, the cyborg reached the little garage that housed the barrel train go-cart. While the original had been mangled and blown up during the race, the koopas had built another one for his use. The fact that they’d done so in the span of an afternoon spoke volumes about the technical savvy of the reptilian mechanics.

“She’s all yours,” a gruff voice said as Seventeen entered the room.

The machine-hybrid smiled and nodded to the grease-strained koopa as he made his way over to the kart. After finding the ignition, he shifted into drive and waited for the garage entrance to be winched open for him. Once his path was clear, he shifted into drive and hit the gas.

[Android 17]

The new and improved Barrel Train was definitely something that the cyborg could appreciate. Unlike the little go-cart, the enhanced version was nearly twice the size of the original, which meant it felt more like an actual vehicle than an oversized toy. Like an actual car, it had a satellite radio, built-in navigation, and the little rear-facing camera. For someone who hadn’t bothered to drive a real car in the last few years, the silly wooden train was close enough to satisfy.

As he shifted gears, Seventeen noticed that a little prompt popped up onto the screen. As there was no visible danger nearby, the machine-hybrid stole a glance at the message. The Barrel Train was requesting a destination for their little road trip, so with an eye on the path ahead of him, Seventeen fished out the little paper that Von Koopa had given to him. Once he unfurled it, he saw the reptile had provided him with a series of coordinates.

“All right, listen up,” the cyborg said aloud. A beat later, the screen let out a pleasant beep and a little microphone logo popped up with some text informing him to speak. After spitting out the string of numbers, Seventeen waited as the machine quickly processed them and provided him with a navigational map to his destination. Once he reached the little pip on the map, he’d probably have to comb the surroundings for the astronomer, but it was nice to be pointed in the general vicinity.

“Better than nothing,” he muttered to himself as he shifted into the next gear and cruised onward to the destination. Within a matter of three hours, he made it to the location marked on the navigation app. During that time, he’d managed to get caught up on some reading, since the former go-cart also had the car version of autopilot. The book now resting on his lap had been something about a group of villains-turned-fantasy genre protagonists. In some cruel (yet entertaining) twist of fate, a bunch of quasi-lovable assholes had been bound together by a string of tragedies and a vendetta from a sentient sword.

The Koopa equivalent of a social media reading website had given the book a ‘five shell’ grade. While Seventeen wasn’t entirely sold on the idea as he neared the end of the book, he couldn’t deny that it was definitely trending up the final page drew closer. A quick glimpse online showed that there was at least one sequel that built upon a few interesting twists established in the last few chapters.

“Till next time,” Seventeen spoke to the book as he slid it off his lap and into a compartment at the base of the door. Once it was secure, the cyborg slipped the Power Sword once more onto his back and hopped out of the vehicle. At first glance, it seemed like he’d gone nowhere fast—the area around him was uneven, dotted with heat vents, and extremely close horizon was dominated by semi-active volcanoes.

This place must pull in all the tourists…

Reaching back into the Barrel Train, Seventeen retrieved his capsulebook and popped it back open. By some means of technological wizardry, the vehicle and the little mini-computer were hooked up to one another, so he was able to stream the GPS maps from the Train’s onboard navigation system.

“Let’s go find me an astronomer…”

[Android 17]

When he located the little camp, Seventeen was somewhat amused by just how militant it appeared. The collection of five purple tents (with the central tent sporting some additional golden trim) would have been relatively unimposing by themselves. Unfortunately for the very flashy fabric, the camp was surrounded by a wall of spiked palisades complete with several outward-facing stakes. Inside the boundaries of the encampment, there were two little wooden outpost towers that would provide a pair of eagle-eyed sentries with a few of anything approaching them.

It was one such sentry who spotted Seventeen strolling in from the relatively flat and lava-free terrain that surrounded the astronomer camp. Without even bothering to shout a jolly remark, the man up on the tower simply fired off a warning shot at the ground in front of the cyborg.

“Oi!” Seventeen shouted as he hopped backwards and glanced up at the twenty foot watch tower. A burly man wearing a sleeveless shirt was learning over the railing and pointing a very large, gun-shaped object at him. “You might want to warn someone about that.”

“You’re not a native,” the watchman shouted without moving his hand away from his weapon’s firing mechanism. At that, the machine-hybrid held up one hand and slowly grabbed at the koopa shell dangling like a keychain from his belt. He proceeded to hold it up so the man could see it. “Is that some kind of trophy?”

“Gross!” The cyborg shouted as he shook his head. “It’s like, supposed to show you that I’m an affiliate of those turtle guys. The ones with the castles.”

The guardsman blinked heavily for a few moments before addressing his visitor. “Yes, I know who the Koopas are… I’ve been here for a while.” The man paused, and it was then that Seventeen’s ki senses picked up on a handful of life forms bunched up on the other side of the wall in front of him.

“Listen,” Seventeen shouted as he clipped the trinket back onto his belt loop. “I was just sent here to see if I could help out your operation. You’re looking for one of those star things, right?” The guardsman glanced down into his camp for a brief moment but offered no response. “Man, don’t play me. Your guild’s exploits are all over the internet.” The comment made the man with the gun flash a furrowed brow at the cyborg. “Okay, Dataverse… whatever you people call it here. Now are yinz going to let me in, or you going to leave me out here in the heat?”

There was a silence that followed as the man up on the watchtower carried a silent conversation with someone on the other side of the palisade. After nearly half a minute of discussion conveyed mostly through facial expressions and hand gestures, the guard glanced back at the cyborg and nodded his head. A beat later, he turned and went back to his job of watching the approaches.

As the guard left to handle his duties, a section of the palisade wall in front of the cyborg. The sharpened tree trunks, moving on what seemed to be tiny wooden wheels, swung inward to reveal a group of men and women dressed in purple tabards and sporting a bunch of almost-guns. At their center, a dark-skinned giant of a man strode forward and extended a ham-sized fist toward the cyborg. When Seventeen accepted the handshake, he instantly regretted that choice a beat later.

“Nice to meet you,” the leader said as he casually mashed every bone in the pale man’s hand into paste. “I’m Julius Peppers, Associate Astronomer of the Dalaran Astronomer’s Guild.” The astronomer released his grip and suppressed a sly smirk as the cyborg immediately cradled the throbbing appendage. “I’d offer you some ice, but we’re in the middle of a molten hellscape.”

“N-No problem,” Seventeen muttered as he slid the hand into his pocket and ran his non-molested set of fingers through his long black hair. “I’m sure the bones will reset themselves in due time.”

“Heh,” the astronomer chuckled as he walked over and smacked the cyborg on the back. Seventeen clenched his teeth together even as he felt his scapula shift out of its normal place.

“Okay, I think we’re good,” the raven-haired fighter quipped a beat later as he stepped away from Mr. Peppers and cleared his throat. “I, uh, I come on behalf of the Koopa Kingdom. Apparently the people in charge have been following your exploits, and they want me to see if I can’t lend a hand.”

Julius furrowed his brow and crossed his oversized arms across his wide chest. “You think we trust every yahoo who just strolls over here and cites some internet articles?”

“True.” Seventeen glanced into the camp and noticed that a few of the tents were rather disheveled. On top of that, there were several areas of the walls and towers that seemed to be scorched and splintered. They must not be having a very good go of things. The pristine appearance of the outside of the walls and the top of the towers had to either be deliberate or some type of clever camouflage.

Magic? Aren’t these people from magic central?

Julius, realizing that his new acquaintance was seemingly lost in his thoughts, cleared his throat and pointed off in a direction east of their camp. “If you really want to help us, I need you to go get us something.”

Seventeen twisted his torso around and tried to see what the astronomer was pointing him toward. From this vantage point, it just looked like more jagged hills and ashen clouds of particulate matter. “What’s that?” He asked as he turned his focus back to the man and his followers.

“Caverns.” Julius replied nonchalantly. “We’ve taken to using ore deposits up there as fuel.”

At that, the machine-hybrid let out a soft laugh. “You’re sending me out to get you some coal? That’s what you need?”

The astronomer scowled before airing a flummoxed response. “It’s not coal! It’s a magical ore deposit called Anthracite.”

Fucking coal! Seventeen bit his tongue so hard he thought he was going to feel blood in the back of his mouth.

“Can you acquire us some? It’s a very dense black stone that you’ll find in veins in the cavern walls.”

The cyborg nodded his head. “Yea, of course… is that it?”

“Just watch out for the cave dwellers…” Julius muttered as he gestured for his peers to return to their duties inside the camp walls. “They… nibble.”

Of fucking course.

[Android 17]

From the fortified camp of the astronomers, Seventeen took a short ride on the Barrel Train up into the hillsides of the nearby hinterland. After traveling about a mile from the camp, the cyborg had to evacuate his modified kart and make the remaining five minute journey on foot. Fortunately for someone with still very limited knowledge about the Ashen Steppes, Seventeen was able to locate the cave entrances without having to comb over the gray-black landscape for them.

Almost hidden amongst all the outcroppings of dark stone, the raven-haired warrior spotted an entrance into the underground and quickly headed in that direction. Within a few moments, he was hunched down and glaring into a downward sloping cavern barely four feet tall.

“Crawl or awkward, shuffling squat?” Seventeen asked himself out loud as he tried to get a better look at what might be waiting inside the nearly dark tunnel. About forty yards into the network, there seemed to be some light. “Well let’s get this over with,” the cyborg muttered as he crouched down and started to shimmy his way down into the network of caves. With a steady shuffling, he eventually passed through the increasingly darkening tunnel before arriving at a larger chamber with some light from a deep fissure in the roof.

Even without much light, the machine-hybrid found his augmented eyeballs naturally adjusting to the new conditions. It wasn’t quite the beautiful assortment of intricate thermal readings that he recalled from the days of his mortal life, but it was more than enough to know what was around him. Unfortunately, he didn’t have a little reticule that told him his destination, so he quickly found himself glaring angrily at the walls of the cavern.

“What the hell does magic coal look like?” He asked himself as he brushed his fingers against one of the walls and glanced down to see if it left any sort of residue. Without any idea what he’d even be looking for, Seventeen wiped his hand on the side of his jeans and finished his loop. From his current location, there were three tunnels that went deeper into the caves. Would he find what he needed further in?

This is real dumb… With a frown on his face, Seventeen opted to go down the closet tunnel. In short order, he found himself stooping once more to make his way through a rough, slightly tilted corridor that seemed to shrink with each step. Before he could make it much more than twenty feet, he felt the earth shift beneath his boots. “Fuck m—”

The floor collapsed, swallowing up the lithe cyborg, who could only grasp for anything solid as he dropped down into darkness.

[Android 17]

With a thump, Seventeen landed hard on the small of his back and slid down on a diagonal slope for a few more feet before settling into a moist, stony ditch.

“…fuck me.” He groaned as he tried to calm his breathing and heart rate. After a few moments, he was able to peel himself up off the ground of the cavern. Reaching back with a shaking hand, Seventeen slid it up under his shirts and winced as he felt the thick slick of blood alongside the small of his back. Blunt force trauma? Something scraping against him on the way down?

“Or a sharp rock?” The cyborg asked aloud as he tried to will his eyes to adjust to the nearly absolute darkness. After a few moments, he started to get some rudimentary assistance from his extra-human senses. Crude thermal overlays told him little more than he already knew—he’d fallen about forty feet and slid down into a ditch filled with lukewarm water.

Planting his palms into the slick stones around him, Seventeen winced as he pushed up off the ground and shifted his legs up under his body. Although they wobbled, his battered muscles didn’t give out on him, and he was able to look up at the path he’d taken down into the cavern. While the collapsed tunnel appeared easily out of reach, the cyborg spotted what seemed to be an opening about eight feet above his head.

Better than nothing. With a grunt, Seventeen crouched and leapt up for the roughly manhole-sized opening in the cavern wall. Once his hands found purchase on the ledge, he was able to pull himself up and into the passageway. Planting his eyes on the path ahead, the machine-hybrid started to drag himself forward into wherever the path would take him.

After about a half minute of crawling, Seventeen started to see some light up ahead accompanied by a strange sound he couldn’t quite place. It was almost as if someone was churning mud. The raven-haired fighter kept guessing until he realized that he was starting to sweat and that he was starting to get tendrils of high-temperature thermals radiating out from down the passage. Twenty seconds later, Seventeen poked his now sweat-stained head out from the end of the tunnel and looked out into the massive magma chamber. From where he was, there was a gradually slope down to a churn, bubbling pool of molten rock that entered and exited the chamber through various holes in the chamber walls.

Overhead, the chamber extended up for northwards of sixty feet before terminating in a variety of jagged stalactites. Throughout the non-lava laden parts of the chamber, there were several other passages like the one that Seventeen had crawled his way through.

So what is this? Some kind of… Do volcanoes have cores?

With a scowl, Seventeen tried to figure out what his next step would be. Despite the fact that he was lost inside an active volcano, he still needed to find the minerals for the astronomers, lest they once again turn him back at the gate.

“So if I was coal, where would I be?”

Before he was able to answer the question for himself, Seventeen caught a subtle motion from the corner of his eye. Craning his neck, he watched as the little handful of pebbles skittered down the wall of the chamber and sank into the magma, leaving behind little puffs of black smog.

“I mean… Rocks settle all the time. All this pressure is bound to do that sor—”

SKREEEEEEEEE

Whatever it was, it dropped hard onto the cyborg’s head, back, and shoulders. Chitinous appendages dug into Seventeen’s sides and tried to rake at his face before he managed to shrug off the initial surprise.

With a grunt, the cyborg shoved off the ground and toward the roof of the tunnel. There was a dull crunch as his assailant’s exoskeleton crumpled between the rock above it and the bony superhuman beneath it. Despite the ichor dribbling down over his back, Seventeen still had to contend with the half-dead creature tearing into his skin. His shirts failed him and became moist with blood before he managed to repeat the upward lurch and break enough of his attacker’s body to neutralize it.

Seventeen rolled out from under his assailant and turned to figure out what it was. While the Omniverse had proven itself to be a strange and bizarre place, the monster that lie dead next to him wasn’t any more complex than a spider blended with a praying mantis. Although it was certifiably dead, Seventeen couldn’t catch his breath because he could hear the skittering of talons on rocks along the walls of the chamber.

Bloody hell. Black appendages scraped into the roof of the machine-hybrid’s tunnel as one of the creatures came skittering at him. He was ready for this one, and it managed a shriek before he fired a condensed energy blast through its skull, bathing himself in a thing layer of mucous-thick bile as the headless corpse toppled down into the magma.

With one of the insects falling out of view, two more came screeching into the tunnel. Seventeen clenched his jaws to hold back an obscenity as he shifted backwards. His fingers tingled as more ki started to built up, but since he hadn’t been the same since arriving in his new home, the cyborg couldn’t mount enough of a charge in time. A chitinous leg smacked him in the side of the head with the force of a steel baseball bat. Seventeen’s skull smacked into the wall, and his vision went dark for a brief moment before it returned in dulled colors.

Discharging the half-hearted ki blast, the cyborg grabbed for the Power Sword and wrenched it free just in time to bash the pommel against the nearest subterranean creature. Although it recoiled and seemed to emit something that sounded like the noise of a pained insect, its partner came crawling over it and lunged at Seventeen. Black claws hooked into his shoulder, and if not for the cyborg managing to flip and thrust with his sword, his assailant could have easily torn off his shoulder.

Seventeen twisted the sword and tore it up through his attacker’s thorax. As that bug collapsed into a heap of twitching limbs and ichor, the pale-faced fighter shimmied forward and bashed the skull of his second adversary into a meaty pulp with the flat end of his sword.

“Fuck off,” the machine-hybrid rasped as he turned the Power Sword into a makeshift broom and swept the slimy corpses out from the passage and into the belching magma below.

While he could feel the adrenaline screaming through his veins, Seventeen also heard the skittering of feet behind him. Scrambling forward, the cyborg planted his hands on the walls of the chamber, pinned his feet to the ledge, and shoved off with everything he could muster. Although his legs burned and fresh wounds opened up on his palms, his lithe form had enough momentum to traverse the magma chamber. His right side crashed into the wall just below another passageway, and despite the breath being knocked from his lungs, he managed to find purchase on the wall. A beat later, he was out of the chamber and back into the moderate security of another side passage.

[Android 17]

The machine-hybrid dragged himself forward on bloody, skinned knees and palms dotted with scrapes and tiny pieces of loose rock. He kept going long after he started to lose feeling in his feet, and after about a minute of hustling like an overactive toddler, he reached an area where the tunnel opened up into a larger room.

Flopping out from the passageway, Seventeen skidded a few feet before coming to rest against a large rock jutting up from the center of a room the size of small studio apartment. Although he still had some light from the magma chamber projecting into this space, the cyborg had enough common sense to see that he was staring at an ore deposit. Reaching out a hand, he knocked his knuckles against the stalagmite-esque chunk and wondered if he’d found what the astronomers required.

Looks like coal to me, I guess?

After deciding that he didn’t give a shit at this moment in time, Seventeen glanced around the area and spotted another passage leading to parts unknown. While he wasn’t sure where that would go, it gave him the freedom he needed to charge up an energy blast and collapse the tunnel he’d used as his entrance. As the passage collapsed, he was certain he heard the frustrated screeching of the giant volcano insects. Without the light of the magma chamber, the cyborg had to sit and wait for his vision to readjust, but once it had, he allowed a faint smirk to reappear on his dirt-smeared features.

All right… business. With some peace and quiet, the machine-hybrid turned his thoughts inward and focused on some images in his head. Within a couple of minutes, he had a backpack, a crude pickax, and some gloves to slip over his scraped and bruised hands. Once he had his equipment, he went to work breaking off a chunk of the black ore and sliding it into the backpack.

“Now where’s the exit?” Seventeen asked aloud as he set his focus on the only remaining exit to the little room. After securing the pickax to his belt, he made his way to the passage and made leave of the peaceful chamber. Since he smelled like a barbeque grill, the cyborg felt some confidence that he’d found what he needed. Even though the tunnel was starting to constrict around him, Seventeen kept his sights set on the near-blackness that lay before him.

A few minutes grew into over a dozen before the raven-haired spelunker started to realize there was a non-metaphorical light at the end of his tunnel. With an objective in sight, he dragged himself through the cramped stone corridor with a little extra gusto, until the faint glimmer of light grew into a shining beacon of freedom. After about a hundred additional feet worth of bloodied knees, Seventeen reached out from the tunnel, clasped his blood-soaked palms around the outsides of the mountain, and dragged himself into the half-sunlight of the Ashen Steppes.

Once free, he just let gravity take its course as he half-slid/half-tumbled about thirty feet to a stretch of earth that wasn’t sloped. When a glance revealed that there were no slobbering, magma-spurting monsters lurking nearby, the cyborg dropped his head back onto the ash-coated ‘ground’ and let out a groan. “Fuck this.” The fresh air was a nice change from the staleness of the underground, but there weren’t any daisies in the Ashen Steppes. Even if there were, the machine-hybrid doubted he’d be able to smell them over the stench of coal and blood that hung heavily in the air around him.

[Android 17]

A long time ago, the cyborg had been just a boy made of flesh and bones.  Born with a fraternal twin, he and his sister had been taken from their parents at a young age, although later reports likened the exchange to more of a business transaction rather than abduction.  Regardless of the circumstance, Seventeen and his twin had been separated permanently before any of their memories became solid.

Years down the road, he had discovered that his sister and he had been the subject of some form of experimentation by guerillas.  Some ‘surprise’ violence had shut down whatever the clandestine operation was working toward, and after that, it was a few orphanages and a suburban foster family in a white-collar neighborhood.

“Obviously the beginnings of every great story…” Shaking his head, Seventeen sat up off the baked earth and brushed away the dust and silicate that had lightly coated him during his rest.  Even the simple motion of planting his palms into the ground and pushing up caused him to grimace in agony.  Although his wounds had started to scab over, his wiry form was still wracked with a great deal of pain—much more than he could recall experiencing in a good while.

The Void was more pleasant than this… He thought as he brushed a gore-smeared hand across his neck.  A few years ago, he’d had his throat slit by a friend under the pretense of sending him into some hellish, pocket dimension in the afterlife. King Kai and his damn training…

Even after he graduated to training with King Kai’s boss, Seventeen had always met his old sensei for lattes and a round of golf with Minoshia.  Would the two of them be concerned with the cyborg no-showed?

They’ll probably relish in it, because I won’t be there to make them look like little scrubs.

With a grin, Seventeen turned his thoughts to the present situation.  After checking to ensure that the bag of coal was still on his person, the cyborg sat up off the ground and tried to determine where he was in the verse.  One of the Koopas had let him know that time and distance in the Omniverse were ‘goofy,’ but the turtle hadn’t been able to more intelligently convey his point.

Once he was upright again and free of ash, the machine-hybrid closed his eyes and tried to let his ki sense provide him with a sense of direction.  When that failed, he let out a groan, secured the bag around his shoulders, and started to make his way up to the top of the nearest hill.  The ascent was simple for the first fifty feet, but after that, the cyborg was forced to lean forward like an ape and scramble his way up the steeper incline.

At the head of the miniature mountain, Seventeen had a better vantage point than in the valley behind him.  Although the shadow of the adjacent volcanic mountain made it more difficult to spot landmarks, his extra-human vision managed to pluck out a little wooden structure in the distance.  While he couldn’t be certain that was the fortified camp of the astronomers, there was probably an intelligible being there who could provide him with directions.

After securing all of his belongings a second time, Seventeen started down the other side of the large hill.  Unlike his trip up, the downward trek was far simpler and comprised mostly of ‘try not to trip and get eaten by a rockslide.’  Fortunately, the lithe cyborg was light on his feet and made it back to somewhat solid ground without doing something stupid.

Twenty minutes later, the machine-hybrid found himself approaching the gates of the complex where the astronomers were camped.  As he drew closer, he was pleased when the gates swung open for him and no one rushed forward to threaten him with pointy sticks and metal cudgels.

“You’ve returned!”  A man—a guard that Seventeen didn’t remember meeting on his first visit—shouted as the cyborg passed over the camp’s threshold.  As the gate closed behind him, the raven-haired warrior waved to the approaching guard and glanced in the direction of the approaching Mr. Peppers.  The oversized astronomer had a mixture of happiness and concern on his face as he approached the lurching, bloodstained man.

“Got your coal,” Seventeen mumbled as he slung the backpack off his shoulders and tossed it toward the astronomer.  The back, which hadn’t been properly sealed, landed on the ground between the two figures and spilled its contents out onto the ground.  “We good?”

[Android 17]

Julius crouched down and grabbed a handful of the coal from the ground.  He held it up to his face and eyed a few of the chunks for a few moments before dropping them back into the pile.  After nodding to no one in particular, he stood up and extended a soot-stained hand to the cyborg.  “That’s the genuine stuff.”

Seventeen reached out and suppressed the cringe when the oversized astronomer crushed his palm in another ‘handshake’.  With that formality out of the way, the cybernetic warrior glanced around at the fortified campsite.  On his last visit, he had been standing outside, but he was now inside the realm of the astronomers.  The mostly purple and gold tents were filled with surprisingly expensive-looking furniture.  Lots of rich wood, polished stone, and more than a few things that were studded or otherwise adorned with fancy-looking jewels.  The only mystery was the largest of the tents, which was roped off and made of fabric that was too opaque to easily see through.

“So what now?”  Seventeen inquired after the quick scan of the enclosed camp.

Mr. Peppers thought for a brief moment before waving off the others who had gathered at the center of the camp.  Once they were off to resume whatever duties they were responsible for, the oversized researcher collected the backpack of coal and started off toward the main tent.  “Follow me.”

The machine-hybrid waited for a few moments before moving to catch up to the leader of the camp.  Julius’ deftly undid the heavy-looking rope that held the flap closed before slipping inside the tent.  Seventeen followed a moment later.

Air conditioning?!

As the entrance flap resealed itself, the cyborg turned his attention to the fact that the large room felt like an icebox.  Even though he was cybernetic, Seventeen was still a scrawny-limbed young adult, and he quickly found himself clutching his arms close to his chest as he stared at the impossibly broad back of the man a few steps in front of him.

“It’s jarring, ain’t it?”  Julius remarked as he turned around and smiled broadly at the cyborg.  “I found that after a while, people get used to the high temperatures of the verse, and even though there’s barely a visible sun up there, it’s like we’re in a desert.  I don’t care if you’re a person, a dog-monster, or what, but if you’re organic, the heat’s going to do the same thing to you that it does to everyone else.”  Julius reached up and tapped a finger to the side of his head.  “Makes you sluggish.  Even here in the Omniverse, warm-blooded critters like ourselves… our bodies gotta work double-time in the heat to maintain safe temperatures.”

“So you live in an igloo?”

Julius threw his head back for a hearty fit of laughs.  When he finished, he turned his overly white smile back toward his cybernetic companion.  “The cold weather inside here keeps the body from adjusting to the climate outside, which prevents it from getting soft.  The cold keeps us all sharp, because you and I both know that you don’t want to go into a knife fight with a dull blade.”

“In knife fights, I prefer to have a gun.”  Seventeen replied with a faint smirk, eliciting another round of hearty laughter from his new acquaintance.  

“You are a riot!”  The astronomer stated as he gestured the cyborg over to a large table near the far wall of the main tent.  As the machine-hybrid neared the table, he quickly realized that he was looking at a rather expensive looking piece of tech.  Responding to some unspoken commands from Mr. Peppers, the three-dimensional map of the Ashen Steppes shifted to showcase their location amid the surrounding landscape.  Originally the size of a large dinner plate, the mockup of the astronomer’s camp slowly shrunk as the digital projection shifted to a larger scale.  

“Nice equipment,” Seventeen remarked as he reached a hand and poked at the three-dimensional image.  To his amusement, his touch disrupted the projection and caused it to crumple onto his finger, revealing that it wasn’t an image.  “It’s sand…”  Reaching down, he picked up some of the material and ran it between his thumb and a finger before dumping it back onto the half-collapsed mountain.

“Technically,” Julius remarked as he motioned for the cyborg to step back for the apparatus.  “It’s more like magic sand.”  He clarified as a small grin spread across his face.

“Ah, yea… Magic floating city and whatnot.”  Seventeen shouldn’t have been so amused by that fact, since he’d dealt with Baba—Earth’s most famous witch—on countless occasions.  The wrinkled little witch had been there to casually slice a portal into some afterlife for him, and on more than a few occasions, she’d pulled him or one of his comrades back into the realm of the living.  In a sense, Baba’s existence made mortality for the strong seem more like a joke.  If a witch could be bribed to bring you back to life, why should anyone fear death?

That must be how the other primes feel.

Seventeen wondered how many of them purposefully got themselves into terrible situations just to test their immortality.  Why not?  A bullet in the head was probably preferable to having to march back across a few hundred miles of volcanic rock.

“You should visit Dalaran after this, my friend,” Julius spoke as a particular mountain started to shimmer.  “You would enjoy the sights.”

“I’m not big into heights,” Seventeen joked as he looked at the little volcano made of glowing sand.  “I take it that’s our destination?”

The astronomer glanced over at his associate and nodded his head.  “We’ve been studying particulate in the atmosphere the last few days.  Along with some eyewitness accounts about the shooting star, we believe we have properly mapped the trajectory it took.”  When Julius finished talking, a mass of sand floated up and made the shape of a little star.  The star twinkled across the landscape before crashing into the glowing mountain, leaving behind a trial of dust to mark its path.

“Is the mountain special?”  Seventeen asked.

Julius shrugged his shoulders as he waved a hand over the modeled landscape, causing it to collapse back into a flat pile of sand.  “It’s called Mount Escorial.  It was an active volcano until about five years ago.  Reports say it’s been dead ever since, but you can never be certain.”

“What’s the game plan, then?”

“Suit up.  Head out.”  Julius remarked.  “We’re going to pack the camp up and head out in a matter of hours.”

“Can you give me some extra time?”  Seventeen inquired.  “I need to report back to the Koopa.”

The wide-shouldered astronomer was silent for a moment too long, but when he finally spoke, it was what the machine-hybrid wanted to hear.  “I suppose we can delay our exodus for a few hours.  Six?  Will that give you enough time?”

Seventeen nodded his head.  “I had a vehicle parked nea—”

Julius silenced his friend with a hand gesture.  “We brought it in after you left.  Had you died, we were going to use it for scrap,” he spoke, his expression a wide smile despite the fact that the cyborg knew the man wasn’t lying to him.  “It’s just to the left of the main gate.”

“I’ll be back as soon as I can,” Seventeen said as he turned and made his way for the entrance.  As he pushed through the flaps, he immediately remembered that he had been standing around in a fucking igloo.  After the initial shock wore off, he made his way out of the encampment.

[Android 17]

For the cyborg, the return drive from the astronomer’s encampment was twice as pleasant as the trip out into the unknown. The Barrel Train provided him with a beautiful little display of the best route to take, and he didn’t have to worry about any silly obstacles or barricades or secret volcanoes that might explode underneath him. All he had to do was know when to shift gears to adjust to changes in the gradient of the terrain beneath his wheels.

When he pulled up to the main fortress, Seventeen flashed his ‘credentials’ to the guards, who let him in after double-checking with someone through what seemed to be a paper cup attached to a string. Once he got the verbal authorization he wanted to hear, the koopa threw the lever and waved to the cyborg as he strode across the threshold of the fortress.

“The human returns!”

Seventeen glanced over and grinned as Von Koopa strode over to him and reached out for a handshake. “Hello, Von,” the cyborg replied after the shake. Leaning a shoulder, the lithe fighter slipped a bag off his shoulder and fished around inside until he found his capsulebook. “I got that information you wanted,” he explained as he pulled up a few pictures and documents where he’d typed out some notes.

“Save that stuff for Kamek and Bowser.”

“Aight,” Seventeen said as he slipped the tablet back into the bag. “Do I get to go meet the big guy now?” He questioned with a wide grin on his face. “Should I put on my Sunday best?”

The quip drew a furrowed brow from the koopa officer, who thought it over for a moment before shaking his head. “Just follow me and try not to embarrass us too much.”

“Jawohl!” The cyborg even snapped off a quick salute before following Von Koopa up the center of the main hallway. At the end of the grand foyer, they traversed a pair of massive steel doors painted a dull red. On the other side of that door, they had to make their way through a few more waiting areas and hallways before they came to the entrance to the Koopa King’s main quarters.

“You ready?” Von Koopa asked as he pulled open the iron door that led to most important room of the fortress palace.

“I guess?” Seventeen shrugged as he stepped into a room so over-the-top that it had its own pond of lava and a handful of crystal chandeliers glittering in the molten light of the sanctum. In the center of the room, a massive koopa sat atop a stone throne. When he saw the two visitors enter the room, Bowser stood up out of his chair and grinned down at them with a maw filled with sharp teeth.

“Welcome,” the large, muscular turtle remarked as he strode down from his elevator throne and traversed the room. Seventeen was certain he felt the ground shudder as the towering koopa moved, but he kept that remark to himself. “ You’re the fleshy Koopa Trooper that Von and the janitorial staff have told me all about?”

While his limbs seemed a little shorter than they should have been, there was no point in trying to undersell the monstrous koopa’s physique. He towered over Seventeen, which made him three or four times larger than any other Koopa Trooper the cyborg had met since arriving in the Ashen Steppes. He wore the type of studded bracelets you’d expect to find around the wrists of a goth girl in high school back in the late 90s, and his shell was adorned with stout spikes. More shockingly, he had red hair and eyebrows, which set him aside from his legion of (mostly) bald followers.

Leaning down to the mustachioed Von Koopa, Seventeen couldn’t help but whisper the obvious question. “Do you need a commission to grow facial hair?” The Prussian-looking solider took that moment to stomp his jackboot down onto Seventeen’s foot, causing him to swallow down the pain and turn his focus back to the reptilian behemoth. “I’m Seventeen, King Bowser, and it’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“Of course,” Bowser muttered lackadaisically as he continued to size up the thin-framed human. “What bargain bin did they pull you out of? You’re half the size of those Institute people. I mean, you make a Dry Bones look obese.” The koopa leaned over and took note of the Power Sword strapped to his guests’ back. “Their swords were bigger too.”

Not sure if the comment was literally or some type of macho metaphor, Seventeen glanced down at Von Koopa, hoping to find some sort of unspoken response in the officer’s eyes. “Seventeen has met with the astronomers investigating the star piece.”

“The what?” Bowser inquired.

At that, Von Koopa stood silent for a moment, his eyes betraying a small hint of exasperation. “The star that crashed out in the Steppes a few months back, King.”

The monarch thought it over for a few moments before he started to nod his head. “Yes, that thing.” He chuckled as he started back to his throne. Climbing back up the flight of stairs, he dropped down into the large stone chair and rested his hands on the armrests. “You’ll have to accept my apologies. The whole ‘Death Mountain collapsed, Volvagia is gone, and the Gorons are shattered’ situation has been front and center these days.” The fact that Bowser used air quotes to summarize the verse’s recent developments forced Seventeen’s right eye to twitch a few times in consternation.

“Death Mountain?” The cyborg asked as he turned to Von Koopa. “That place is gone? The astronomers didn’t mention it.”

“Time isn’t fluid in the Omniverse. It’s possible that, for you, the events may have happened while you were on your way back to us.”

Seventeen scowled at the notion that a few hours for him had been a couple days or weeks for the rest of this place. Did that mean he was younger than everyone else? There were too many questions and zero answers that weren’t mired in some metaphysical nonsense. “All right then,” the cyborg finally replied, surrendering to the reality that it was better not to question his present pseudo-reality.

“I hate to interrupt your sidebar, but what did you find out?” Bowser replied, pulling the two other sets of eyes back to the king, who was leaning forward on his throne with his hands on his knees and his face somewhere between bored and annoyed.

“The astronomers tracked the star’s path to a site called Mount Escorial. They’re going to pack up and head out there in a few hours…” Unless, you know, six months have already passed for them and they’re already back home in their floating snow globe city or some bullshit. “They were planning to wait for me, so I could accompany them.”

Bowser leaned back and picked at his teeth for a few moments before nodding his head at no one in particular. After flicking off whatever he had found, he turned back to Seventeen and Von Koopa. “The deal is this… you’ll head out with a group of bodyguards. I want you to help the other humans find whatever fell into Mount Escorial, but I want you to bring it back here. It fell into my territory, so I want to be able to see the shiny bauble with my own two eyes.”

“What if they don’t agree to that?” Seventeen asked, eliciting a toothy sneer from the King of the Koopas.

“Convince them.” Bowser stated matter-of-factly. “You’re dismissed, Skin and Bones. Von Koopa, you can pick the crew to accompany our scrawny Koopa Trooper on his mission.”

The officer snapped a quick salute. “Yes, King!”

With that, Von Koopa motioned for Seventeen to follow him out of the king’s chambers.

[Android 17]

Forty minutes later, the Barrel Train was on its way back to where the astronomer’s were camped. Behind the heavily armored kart, Seventeen was followed by several go-carts shaped like green and red koopa shells. Behind the controls of each little turtle-themed buggie was a trooper who had been sent to accompany Seventeen on his mission. Because he had been in such a rush to make it back before Julius and the rest of the astronomers moved camp, the machine-hybrid hadn’t been able to ‘meet and greet’ with the five troopers that Von had picked to go with him.

I’m sure they’re competent… That big dude wouldn’t send a bunch of scrubs with me if he wanted to make sure he gets the shiny thing, right? Seventeen scowled, unable to wholly convince himself that he hadn’t been saddled with a bunch of castaways. No point worrying about it right now, I guess.

Up ahead, Seventeen spied what remained of the Astronomer’s encampment. The walls that ringed the area had been dismantled along with all of the structures and tents, but there was no indication of where they had stashed the materials. With the camp gone, the astronomers all looked busy either packing up their belongings or getting ready for the trip to Mount Escorial. As he drew closer, Seventeen spotted Mr. Peppers reviewing what appeared to be a normal person’s map. When he heard the belching of the Barrel Train, the behemoth of a nerd glanced up and flashed his associate a ‘thumbs up.’

Shifting off the engine, Seventeen put his vehicle into park and hopped over the door onto the barren soil. “How long was I gone?”

Julius lifted his sleeve to reveal a simple-looking watch around his right wrist. “About six hours or so,” he remarked as he tapped on the glass. “Can’t tell if the heat got to this or not.”

“I’m sure going from inferno to igloo and back again a few dozen times a day works wonders on small machinery,” Seventeen remarked as the man fixed his sleeve and glanced at the five vehicles idling behind the machine-hybrid.

“Are they yours?”

The cyborg nodded his head. “Yea, the Koopa’s king personally sent ‘em with me. I’m operating under the assumption that they’re like, the Green Berets of the Koopa Kingdom.” When Julius furrowed his brow, Seventeen recalled that the man was from some fantasy city floating in the sky. “Doesn’t Dalaran have some sort of special ops wizard battalion or something?”

Julius nodded his head. “I’m not one hundred percent sure, but I imagine they have something like that. King Aragorn has a collection of highly trained knights that he sends out on the most life-threatening ordeals.” The astronomer glanced passed his associate and toward the parked koopas. “That’s what you got?”

“I hope so,” Seventeen grinned as he glanced around the empty stretch of steppe that had once been a palisaded encampment. “So where’d you pack everything?”

With a chuckle, Julius waved his hand in the air between them, leaving a faint trail of sparkling dust wherever he moved. “Magic,” he casually remarked as the sparkles faded back into oblivion.

By the kais, this is getting stupid. The cyborg put on a smile before asking the important question. “You guys always ready to move out and find that little dead volcano? Do you have scooters powered by fairy dust hidden somewhere?”

Oblivious to the tone of the machine-hybrid’s quandary, Julius nodded his head. “No one uses fairy dust anymore, but yes, we’re ready to continue on to the destination. The journey to Mount Escorial will not be an easy one. We’ll have to contend with some very rough terrain, and the destruction of Volvagia has made the area we are headed to a little more violent than normal. Feral drakes infest the mountain passes. Are your soldiers prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice in the name of this cause?”

Seventeen glanced back at the idled koopa karts and shrugged his shoulders. “Yea, I guess.”

Julius smiled and smacked a hand down upon the cyborg’s back in a show of camaraderie that instantly made the smaller man’s skin turn a vibrant shade of red beneath his clothes. “Then let us ‘roll out,’ my friend!”

[Android 17]

The drive through the Ashen Steppes quickly went from casual to ‘try not to turn too sharply and skid off the side of the cliff.’ Fortunately for the cyborg, he’d been battle-hardened during the kart race he’d won to become a Koopa Trooper, and much to his surprise, his squad of troopers proved their mettle by deftly maneuvering the mountain’s various curves and edges.

Unfortunately for the astronomers, they lost two of their members on the way up the mountain pass. Seventeen wasn’t sure if the men from Dalaran were poor drivers or if their scooter-like vehicles were just unfit for the terrain. Either way, they had to drive on without stop, even as they all heard the panicked wailing of a lost soul en route to his doom.

At this point, the cyborg had become numb to the reality that nothing would ever been a walk in the park. His attempt to be ‘normal’ and take education courses had ended up with him being punched in the face by old men and rolling around in the subway engaged in fisticuffs with thugs in studded leather jackets. Come learn the art of shapechanging! Enroll today! Seventeen rolled his eyes at the bizarre memories. He hadn’t tried to utilize the technique, but he was certain he’d probably be unable to do so. Would that capability return to him after enough time in the Omniverse?

How have people managed to live in this place? There are more questions than answers, and it all just feels like one massive cluster fuck…

“Damn black holes… can’t just kill people like normal disasters,” Seventeen groaned as he checked all the Barrel Train’s gauges to make sure nothing was going to surprise him. The last thing he needed was for his brakes to fail or his muffle to explode. When everything read in the green, he relaxed a little bit as their convoy of astronomers and koopas crested over an incline and began their descent down the winding paths on the other side of the mountain. For the brief moment where he could see out across the Steppes, Seventeen rolled his eyes.

Does this go on forever?

His glimpse had been of another infinity’s worth of ash clouds, volcanos, mountains, and various dabs and streaks of red-orange. If the Omniverse had an Underworld, he wondered how it competed with the Ashen Steppes. Perhaps instead of fire and brimstone, Omniverse Hell was just a lot of darkness and gloom? The cyborg had to keep his focus on the road, but the idea of some all-black mirror image of Omni traipsing around made him chuckle.

After another thirty minutes of navigating back down into a valley, Seventeen saw that their little mobile group was drawing to a stop. A glimpse at the time informed him that they’d been traveling for the majority of the morning and afternoon hours. Had it really been that long?

Stop thinking too much about it.

Slowing down as he neared the parked vehicles ahead, Seventeen glanced around to see that they’d come to a stop on a wide rock shelf that overlooked a variety of shorter mountains. Since they were no longer at the top of the mountain range, they were in the shadow of the slope they’d just descended. While that meant they’d have some shade, the cyborg was a little concerned about how long they planned to idle on the side of the mountain. Wouldn’t they attract unwanted attention if they remained exposed? Julius had mentioned dragons, and the last memory Seventeen had that was ‘draconian themed’ had ended with him walking up in this awful, hilarious place.

After slipping the keys from the ignition, the machine-hybrid weaved his way through the parked scooters until he reached the head of the group. Mr. Peppers was already reviewing what seemed to be a road map from the early nineties. When he heard the crunch of the smaller man’s boots on the arid earth, the astronomer glanced up and smiled at his ally. “Don’t worry, Seventeen, we’re not staying here for long. I just wanted to give the boys a chance to stretch their legs while I try and map out the best route to Mount Escorial. You probably wouldn’t believe it, but these mountain passes and traverses eventually start to all bleed together in the head. An unsafe traveler could get lost out here in no man’s land.”

You don’t say? Seventeen, who had just been bitching about the landscape, stifled a sarcastic comment. He simply bit his tongue and nodded his head as he turned from the huge man and shuffled back toward his kart.

[Android 17]

When he returned to the Barrel Train, the cyborg found that his troupe of koopas had exited their karts and circled congregated around Seventeen’s vehicle.  One of the koopas—a younger-looking one with a red shell and a single studded bracelet as décor—stepped forward and smiled warmly at the cyborg.  “Are we stopped for a short while?”

“Seems that way,” Seventeen answered as he walked forward and reached over his kart’s door toward a container he’d concealed in the storage area.  When he leaned away, he was holding a cardboard carton with six glass bottles inside individual slots.  “Soda?”  He asked as he set down the bottles and reached back inside for a seventh for himself.  Once the top was loose, he flipped it into the floor of his vehicle and took a swig from the bottle.  Nothing was more satisfying than a glass bottle of Diet Mountain Dew in a sweltering, perpetually arid hell-scape.

After a few moments where the cyborg was certain that none of the koopas were going to say or move or do anything, five of them shuffled forward to grab bottles.  The sixth—a massive, winged koopa with bulging biceps, an a-shirt, and wrist and head bands straight from the gym—declined the offer.  Seventeen figured it probably had something to do with dietary restrictions, so he didn’t press the issue. Leaves me one for the rest of the drive, at least.

“So we haven’t had a whole lot of time to chitchat,” the machine-hybrid remarked after savory gulp of the bubbly soda.  “My name’s Seventeen, and I’m a prime from a place where people blow a lot of things up.  Also a surprising amount of drama to go with it.”

“Name’s Dutch.”  The bulky koopa stepped forward and held out a hand.  Seventeen knew what he was getting into, but he couldn’t say no without looking like an asshole.  The cyborg held out his hand and accepted the painful, nearly bone-bursting handshake from the buff turtle, who stared him straight in the eyes for the entire five seconds that their hands shared.  

As Dutch stepped away, Seventeen’s focus moved to the other, normal-sized members of the troupe.

One of the two girls stepped forward and smiled warmly at the raven-haired fighter.  “I’m Sissy Koopa!”  Aside from her exuberance, the female turtle with the green shell had a full head of blonde hair that she had pulled back into a side ponytail through use of a large, pink velvet scrunchie.

“He’s standing right there, Girl, damn!”  The female voice came from the koopa in the red shell.  She had a full head of brown hair that fell down over her shoulders, and her red lipstick, hoop earrings, and gold bracelets only added to her air of glamor.  With a sigh and a shake of her hair, the girl turned to Seventeen and nodded her head.  “I’m Marie Koopa.  Try not to get us all killed, ‘kay?”  With that, she took a small sip from her soda and walked from the group.

As Marie wandered away, the other koopa with the red shell chuckled and held up a hand.  “I’m Jiggy Koopa.”

On the other side of the group, an ‘undecorated’ green-shelled koopa waved a hand.  “I’m Jed Koopa, and this guy here is Seth Koopa,” he added as he put an arm around the blue-shelled turtle next to him.  Aside from a small pair of wings that seemed to go along with having a blue shell, the last member of Seventeen’s troupe was a sharp contrast to the others.  Like the females, Seth had hair, but his was slick, black, and concealed one of his raccoon-looking eyes.  The Koopa Trooper had a studded choker around his neck and wore black gloves with the fingers removed.  Like Dutch, he had a shirt, but his was a black tee with a little skeleton dressed up like a band leader.

“Hey,” Seth mumbled as he held up a hand, showcasing a bunch of claws that had been painted black.

Had he been anyone else, the koopa’s emo ensemble probably would have been a little too much for Seventeen.  Fortunately, the machine-hybrid had dressed in similar ways during his stint in high school, so he just shrugged his shoulders and returned the gesture.  “Nice to meet you all.  You’re all elite troopers, right?”

At that, a few of the turtles started to chuckle, save Dutch, who seemed a little bit disgruntled by the actions of his peers.  “That wasn’t a joke, you twits!”  The bodybuilding koopa barked as he smacked the back of Jed’s head.

Seventeen, who looked confused yet mildly amused by the situation, turned to look at Jiggy, who just smiled.

“Is that what you thought?”  Jiggy asked.  When he received a slow nod from the skinny human, the koopa stifled a laugh.  “Yea, we all failed.  We were offered this assignment to make up for low scores were received on the various entrance exams.”

“Oh.”  Seventeen muttered as he tried to maintain his poker face. Just so you know, Von, I’mma smack you upside the head if this little trek doesn’t kill me.

[Android 17]

While he had hoped in his cybernetically-augmented heart that the time they spent on the little cliff would be peaceful, Seventeen wasn’t surprised when everything went to hell after a grand total of twenty-five minutes. After concluding his ‘debriefing’ with the ‘ace’ squadron of Koopa Troopers placed under his ‘command,’ the machine-hybrid had wandered back toward the path they’d taken to arrive on the wide cliff.

Along the way, he’d been trying to create a rough layout of the Ashen Steppes, but despite his efforts, there wasn’t much point. So far, everything had been some mixture of steppe, caldera, mountain, and active volcano. Seventeen could only imagine that there final destination would be yet another ‘large, angry mountain spewing lava and random intervals.’

I wonder if they have a cake world? A cake world would be nice…

Something went whooshing over the cyborg’s head, and before he had a chance to spin, there was an earth-shattering explosion that threw him face-first against the ground. By the time he managed to shake away the haze and roll onto his back, the cliff had already been assaulted by a bunch of winged creatures squealing and caw-cawing at the top of their lungs.

Six foot pig-birds?

The cyborg’s hand found the hilt of the Power Sword as he shoved off the ground and rushed to the aide of the astronomers. A quick slash separated the head of one of the monsters but not before it managed to tear apart the neck of a man with a clip of its snout-shaped beak.

As the man and his murderer dropped to the ground, Seventeen glanced around and saw that he was alone. Looking over his neck, he saw that his troupe was watching him with mute expressions on their face. “What are you waiting for? C’mon!” At that, the koopas raced forward to join him, with the oversized Dutch Koopa leading the way—his eyes narrowed as he clenched and unclenched his stout fingers. The reptilian bodybuilder jumped and speared the closest monster out of the air. When the two foes crashed into the ground, Dutch locked the squealing bird-pig into a headlock and broke its neck with a roid-fueled twist of his biceps.

That’s more like it!

Seventeen smiled as he ducked under a frantic swipe of talons and thrust the Power Sword up into the bird-pig’s gut. One lateral motion later, the blade exited above the creature’s right hipbone. The cyborg spun away as the flailing, dying monster tried to fall onto him and tear his throat out with the last of its strength.

Stepping forward, the machine-hybrid threw out a palm and fired a bolt of energy that knocked one of the monster’s from the shoulders of a screaming astronomer. Somewhere near the back of the line, Seventeen caught a glimpse of a scowling Julius. The leader of the group took a step away from his peers as a trio of the birds dropped down, separating the largest of the star-gazers from the herd. The slobbering, clucking monsters started to stalk the bulk astronomer, who merely reacted to the odds with a faint grin in the corner of his chiseled visage.

Julius put his palms together and continued to back up as tiny sparks and flickers of fire started to swarm around fingers. Before his triumvirate of attackers could leap at him, the head astronomer threw out his hands and released a wave of fire-engulfed lightning that swallowed the creatures and reduced them to smoldering heaps of bacon within a matter of moments.

Although the pig-birds had the element of surprise, their attack was quickly routed by the combination of cyborg, reptiles, and magicians. After a tense four minutes of combat, the handful of surviving aerial creatures dove from the cliff in a haphazard attempt to escape the grim-faced wall of warriors. Once the last of the fliers had departed, Julius didn’t skip a beat as he started to bark instructions at his pale-faced followers.

“Take accounts of the fallen. Store what is useful and what can be given to their families. We need to roll. NOW!”

Seventeen didn’t need to relay the instruction down to the Koopa Troopers, who were already moving back to their karts in preparation for departure. While he was a bit miffed they hadn’t waited for his instructions, the cyborg let it go. He was just happy they could actually fight and defend themselves in a combat situation, which meant they weren’t completely useless to him.

[Android 17]

The number of astronomers had been reduced to eight, not including Julius Peppers. Prior to their departure, the magic-wielding researchers had disassembled their fallen comrade’s equipment and stored a lot of it into ‘bags of holding.’ Although he was curious, Seventeen bit his tongue as he watched two men ease a motorcycle into a bag the size of a basketball without so much as a single stretch in the fabric. Once the astronomers had finished packaging up the belongings of their dead associates, the group continued their trek into the Ashen Steppes.

Once they got down the other side of the mountain and started to traverse a long stretch of flat land, Seventeen found the Barrel Train’s equivalent of an autopilot. After keying in the information, he let out a yawn and tried to clear his head a little as the astronomers and their motorcycles led his little troupe of turtles onward.

As always, he found himself wondering how the old world was keeping together. Had they defeated the invaders? The cyborg certainly hoped they had managed such a feat, because he sure as hell hadn’t sacrificed himself for nothing! If Kirano, Mikey, Piper, and the others had failed, they’d all be getting an ass whoopin’ when Seventeen made it back home.

The cyborg wondered if the Omniverse had a telescope or something that would let him see back into his home universe. One of these days, he would have to set about trying to find the white guy—Omni. He hadn’t been very informative in his jumbled, hazy introduction to Seventeen. Why wouldn’t you wait a good eight or twelve hours to dump a bunch of information at someone who had just been bludgeoned and battered within an inch of his life? How many people went to go listen to a lecture with a concussion and a few broken limbs?

That’s Instruction 101, dude. C’mon.

Over the course of an hour, the terrain grew increasingly uneven, with the rolling hills giving way to nearly jagged moguls of shale and obsidian. At one point, Seventeen realized that the ground was black rather than brown, and that the fissured soil he’d grown accustomed to had given way for terrain made from hardened lava flows. In that time, the machine-hybrid had managed to properly reflect upon a few older memories. If he had the basics of omnilium correct, all the glowing and rainbows meant that he’d at least attained a few more pieces of his skillset.

Lifting a hand, Seventeen willed a little sphere of ki into existence and let it hover a few inches over his palm. The warm little ball jiggled in the air for a few moments before the cyborg drew his last three fingers over his palms. As he did the motion, the ball of energy flattened out and started to hiss and crackle as it was forced into a disc shape. With a grin, Seventeen flung the Frisbee-shaped projectile and watched it vanish into the haze around them.

He knew he didn’t have much, but he had enough at his disposal to kill things a little more effectively. Who wanted to take a whirring buzz saw of energy to their face?

Then again, those astronomers got murdered by flying pig-bird monsters…

Just as he was about to drift back into the realm of daydreams, Seventeen was jostled back to complete awareness by a screech from his dashboard communications. “Mount Escorial is just up through this patch of foothills.”

‘Foothills’? Seventeen glanced out at the landscape around their convoy and noted that they were close to four thousand feet above sea level (if such a concept existed in a world with no oceans or bodies of non-fatal liquid). I can’t imagine what he considers to be a mountain.

For a few more miles, the convoy of astronomers and koopas wove their way up until they reached what seemed to be a massive fissure at the base of an inert volcano. Seventeen stayed parked inside the Barrel Train until the astronomers were finished packing up their vehicles. As the cyborg disembarked, he signaled to the koopas to get ready for the next leg of their adventure.

“We need to be on our toes,” Dutch Koopa grunted as he took the key out of his kart and eased it beneath a cover of rocks. The muscled reptile waved over his comrades before moving to join his commanding officer. “You hear me?”

Seventeen, who had been distracted by a stumbling astronomer inside the tunnel ahead, turned and nodded to the koopa. “Toes?”

“We were being following,” Dutch muttered.

At that, the cyborg furrowed his brow and stepped back toward the path they’d taken. A longer glance confirmed what he already knew—they’d ascended a path of perfectly black stone intermittently broken apart by slow-moving lines of lava. From up here, the landscape looked almost beautiful. The moguls blended into the ground, making the scene in front of the raven-haired adventurer look like splintered black glass.

“There’s nothing out there.”

Dutch shook his head. “Just keep your head on a swivel. Once we’re in that mountain, we’re going to be trapped like mousers in cages.”

[Android 17]

The group wove their way through a network of tunnels.

After a few weeks (or was it a month at this point?) in the Ashen Steppes, Seventeen felt a great deal of indifference to the cramped tunnels that the convoy of astronomers and koopas wove their way through. The only difference between this and the other volcano was the distinct lack of heat. It was there, mind you, but the sweat on the cyborg’s brow came more from forcing himself through cramped spaces rather than any nearby pods of brewing magma.

“Mount Escorial used to be a massive pain in the butt for travelers in this part of the Ashen Steppes,” Seth Koopa remarked from in front of the machine-hybrid. “Used to generate so much magma that it would often been in a constant state of eruption for months.”

Seventeen snickered at the thought that they were casually shimmying their way inside a retired deathtrap. “What happened?”

The small-statured koopa shrugged his shoulders, causing his combed over hair to fall down in front of his eyes, necessitating a quick flick to put it back in place. “No one’s for sure,” he muttered. “If you ask a few people, they say that there used to be a dragon that lurked in these regions.”

“Volvagia?” Seventeen asked.

“Not quite as big or as famous. I think his name was, uh…”

A female voice interjected from further up the line. “Her name was Roseus. They say that treasure hunters infiltrated the mountain, stole her treasures, and destroyed her clutch of eggs. They say her rage was so powerful that it fueled an eruption that lasted for half a year and destroyed a few dozen miles of the Ashen Steppes.”

Seventeen, fondly remembering his girlfriend’s pregnancy, knew what an angry woman was capable of, regardless of her species. “That doesn’t explain how she died.”

Marie, who stopped to glance back at her troupe leader, wore a scowl on her face. “Some band of warriors, they say. Bunch of fruitcakes from Coruscant or the Vasty or something…”

“You make them sound so capable,” Seventeen remarked, eliciting a snicker from Seth and a few of the other nearby koopas who could overhear the conversation. “Are you fruitcakes still around?”

The scowling lady koopa shrugged her shoulders. “Nothing else on ‘em. Probably got what they deserved.”

“So what do we deserve for traipsing around this crypt?” Seth remarked glumly as the group had to drop to their knees to get underneath a sagging tunnel ceiling.

Marie, once everyone was on the other side of the obstruction, took a moment to fix her lipstick before responding to the question. “We deserve what we get, S. We gonna find out what that is pretty soon.”

From his position at the back of the group, Seventeen scowled but didn’t make a comment. He still felt unnerved about Dutch’s remarks that they had been stalked across the Ashen Steppes, so Marie’s tale about dead dragonesses and ‘fruitcake’ warriors did little to settle his mood.

Squelch.

Seventeen stopped dead in his tracks and turned sharply back toward the sagging tunnel. The noise—like that of a wet boot on linoleum—had come from the other side of the obstruction, but he knew he had heard it. As the group advanced further, the cyborg remained focused on the three-foot gap that they had crawled out of a few moments earlier. He knew that his low-light vision wasn’t perfect, but he swore he could see faint traces of heat down through that crawlspace.

“Mr. Seventeen?” Seth’s voice pulled the cyborg away from the space and back toward the gradually vanishing line of astronomers and koopa. “Everything okay?”

Before he answered, Seventeen turned back to the crawlspace. The faint traces of heat were gone…

Of-fucking-course.

[Android 17]

After a thirty-minute trek from the almost-collapsed tunnel, the group paused in a small cavern that was just a little larger than a walk-in closet. The intent was to provide an opportunity to eat a small snack and gauge where they were inside Mount Escorial.

Unlike a normal group of spelunkers that might rely upon maps or GPS or something manmade, the astronomers pulled out legit crystal ball. Holding the sphere in his broad palms, Julius whispered a few words as his peers watched in silence. With a crackle and a hiss, the formerly inert piece of polished mineral hummed to life like an old television set.

Despite finding the whole thing a bit ludicrous, Seventeen edged himself forward so he could watch the little spectacle as Mr. Peppers waved his fingers overtop the crystal ball. The image generated by the sphere made zero sense to the cyborg, but from the way the astronomers were glued to it, it must have been designed that way.

“Kamek has the same kind of thing,” one of the koopas whispered behind the cyborg. The voice sounded like Seth’s, but Seventeen wasn’t listening intently enough to confirm. His eyes and ears remained entranced by the astronomers reading the gibberish images on their crystal ball.

“We’re drawing closer, it seems…” Julius muttered as he lifted his wiggling fingers. As he did, the image pulled up from the surface of the ball as if it was a marionette bending to his will. Seventeen noted some strange sparkles in the periphery, but just as he was going to turn his head, he saw the glittery mass flicker passed him and calmly come to a stop amidst the holographic projection. “Yes,” Julius said, nodding his head along with the rest of his peers. “Getting closer, for sure. It looks as if the star probably fell somewhere in the vicinity of the magma chamber.”

“I thought this was inert?” Seventeen asked what was probably a stupid question.

Julius turned and nodded his head. “It is, so the magma chamber will just be a bunch of cooled magma.”

“So it’s a rock chamber?” The cyborg retorted, eliciting a grin from the head astronomer and a few of the more jovial members of his cohort.

“We’ll move out in a few minutes,” Julius spoke aloud as he lowered his hand down to the surface of the crystal ball. The moment his palm touched the glowing mineral, the sphere’s light faded back into blackness. “I highly doubt that we’re just going to stroll into the chamber, get the star, and leave this place without some kind of reprisal. To have gotten this far mostly intact is a blessing.”

Although Julius continued his pep talk, Seventeen was distracted by a stout arm poking him in the side of his ribcage. Glancing around, the cyborg saw that Dutch was standing next to him with an uneasy look on his face. The bodybuilding Koopa Trooper took a moment to collect his thoughts before whispering to his troupe leader.

“Have you smelled that?” He inquired. After a pause, he added a clarifying remark. “That sulfurous stench? I’ve been getting whiffs of it for the last ten minutes or so.”

Seventeen twisted his thin lips up as he tried to recall the recent stretch of the expedition. As much as he derided the astronomers for using fancy magic equipment to get along, there was no denying that he also tended to rely more on his sixth sense—his ki sense—than his traditional senses a lot of the time.

Guess that doesn’t make a lot of sense…

The cyborg stifled the self-induced snicker as he shook his head. “I think you have a better sniffer than I do,” he said softly to the stout koopa. “Is it something we should be concerned about?”

Dutch nodded his head. “You remember back when we entered the volcano?”

“Stalkers, you mentioned.”

The koopa furrowed his brow at the word choice but didn’t bother to call out his commanding officer. “Yes, we’ve been tracked inside the volcano. I can only imagine that they’re waiting to make their move.”

“Do you know what followed us?” Seventeen’s question received an answer in the form of a shrug. “You don’t have a single guess?”

The muscular koopa scowled. “Something bad. Something that can survive in lava and pass through rock without much difficulty. I apologize that I’m not an Ashen Steppes zoologist, Boss.”

Seventeen couldn’t tell if there was sarcasm in that last comment, but before he could push the issue, another of the koopas stepped forward. It was Jed Koopa, who had overheard the conversation in its whispered entirety.

“They could be flans.”

“We’re being stalked by dessert?” The cyborg snickered.

Before any of the koopas could enlighten their commanding officer, one of the astronomers made a remark that no one would reflect fondly upon years later.

“Hey… what’s that?”

Seventeen and the koopas turned and saw the male astronomer take a few steps closer to the wall of the cramped room. The man’s focus was on a slowly expanding red-orange mass on the side of the wall.

“Get back!” Jed Koopa screamed as the fist-sized blob of glowing goo suddenly surged forward from the side of the wall like a burst of water from a firehose. The moment the thick substance smacked against the man’s face, everyone heard the distinct sound of sizzling flesh as the screams started from underneath the growing heap of glowing orange goo.

“Fucking run!” One of the astronomers shrieked as they started to flee from the closet-size chamber, leaving their screaming colleague to be devoured by the ever increasing mass of burning sludge streaming out from the wall.

“Can we help him?” Seventeen shouted as he glanced to the koopas.

“We have to move,” Dutch barked as he pointed to a few other cracks in the wall. It took the cyborg all of five seconds to see the orange sludge starting to bubble to the surface. More of the creatures were coming, and in a few moments, they’d be trapped with nowhere to go but back into the cramped tunnels.

“You heard the man!” With that, the cyborg waved for the Koopa Troopers to move out ahead of him. Once the last one was gone, the machine-hybrid stole one last glance at the ill-fated astronomer. The man had stopped screaming a while ago, and whatever was left of him had been devoured by the writhing mass of magma-like sludge that was gradually started to take a vaguely human shape. “Fuck this,” Seventeen growled as he threw a palm forward and fired a burst of ki through the center of the humanoid mass of glowing goo. While the attack opened up a wide hole through the monstrous thing, it made no discernable impact, and after a short pause, the hole started to slowly close. Around the room, streamers of red and orange sludge were pouring through every small fissure in the stone.

“Nope.” Seventeen whispered as he turned and fled.

[Android 17]

The cautious advance through Mount Escorial had collapsed into a mad dash to escape from fiery death. The stench of barbequed human flesh was still in everyone’s noses as they scrambled through corridors that they had once gently maneuvered through with all the care in the world(s).

At the rear of the column, Seventeen pulled no punches. Every fifteen feet they traveled, he paused to collapse the tunnel behind them. Each ki blast from his palms was full-power, and although he came close to overdoing it a few times, he nevertheless made sure the task was done, even if a few chunks of falling stone caught his face or arms.

Their exodus continued for the longest fifteen minutes in the history of forever. It wasn’t until they spilled out into roughly circular room that the group allowed their knees to buckle beneath their panting, sweaty bodies.

“What the fuck was that?” One of the astronomers wailed as he clutched at a wound on his leg. From a quick glimpse, it looked as if he’d clipped it against a stone outcropping or something, because his pant leg was stained a deep red with his blood.

“Flan.” Jed Koopa muttered as he quickly started to wrap a bandage around a few scrapes he’d sustained during their rout. “They’re sentient monsters made out of lava that feast upon lesser creatures.”

“Oh I’ll show you a lesser creature!” One of the astronomers barked from the back of the room.

“Quiet!” Julius interjected harshly as he turned to look at Jed. “Those creatures… how do we fight back?”

The plain-looking Koopa shrugged his shoulders. “Flan are versatile creatures. They can’t be dispatched through traditional means.”

Seventeen raised a hand to get the attention for a moment. “Explosions don’t work either.” He remarked as he generated a mass of ki in his palm long enough to illustrate what he was talking about.

The Head Astronomer smiled warmly at the small reptile. “I am not a traditional individual, koopa.”

Jed snickered at the hulking wizard looming over him. “My best guess? You got spells to generate cold?” Julius and a few of the astronomers nodded their heads. “I don’t know if that will kill them, but it might be your best bet to render them useless for a while.”

I should have learned cyromancy while I was dead… Seventeen scowled at his afterlife choices. He reached behind his shoulder and checked that the Power Sword was still there. The blade was immune to fire—something he’d made sure to test prior to his volcano expedition—but there was no telling if he’d be able to do much in a fight except try and stall for time.

“Where do we go from here?” One of the astronomers asked to Julius.

“Onward,” the lead astronomer replied matter-of-factly as he gestured toward one of a few exits from their current location. “That tunnel there will take us on a winding slope up toward the magma chamber.”

“What about the creatures?”

Seventeen took that moment to add to the conversation: “I collapsed the tunnel a couple of times. I figured that will buy us some time to plan for when they eventually come at us again.”

“But how will we get out of here?” A pale-faced astronomer asked with eyes wide. “What if there’s no other exit out of the mountain?”

“Hush, Sebastian,” Julius spoke softly. “We’re still magicians. If there isn’t an exit, we will make one. Don’t forget that we are some of Dalaran’s finest.” The remark elicited a nod from the astronomer, who turned his focus back to wrapping a wound on his foot. With his followers calm for the moment, Julius glanced around until his eyes fell upon Seventeen. “Seventeen?” The cyborg turned his attention and lifted an eyebrow. “Over here,” Julius muttered before gesturing toward the far corner of the room with his head.

Pushing off his haunches, Seventeen stepped around a few of the crouched astronomers and made his way to the other side of the room. Once they were there, Julius pulled the cyborg into one of the side passages, and after they were out of sight from the rest of the group, the head astronomer half-collapsed against the stone. After a few moments of silence, he glanced down at the smaller man and shook his head. “Plan?”

“Grab and dash?” Seventeen muttered, although his tone indicated that he didn’t have much faith in his own invention. “Drop enough obstacles to slow down the flan until we find the prize. After that, we can just blast our way until we get to the surface, right?”

Julius chewed on his bottom lip for a few moments. “We may be different, but on a fundamentally level, we’re very similar.” When he realized that his remark had gone over the cyborg’s head, the astronomer offered a faint smile. “Omnilium. Our magic is tethered to our physical bodies just as much as your ability to utilized your ki.”

“You’re afraid that your boys in the other room might be out of juice by the time we’ll need all their juju?”

“Essentially,” Julius remarked. “Outside this place, magic has no such limitations, but the Omniverse has its own rules. I fear that we can’t afford to play cat-and-mouse with those creatures.”

“So we lay a mousetrap.” Seventeen replied, and before the astronomer could interject, he kept talking. “Right before the magma chamber. We stall them like we did… I can handle that, while your boys press on. Right before the chamber, we’ll park our asses and wait for the flans. Then you and your boys drop a blizzard on them. Worst-case scenario, we buy ourselves enough time to find the star piece while those things sort their shit out… am I right?”

Julius stood silent long enough that Seventeen started to feel uncomfortable, but when the astronomer spoke, he had a little more pep in his tone. “It could work. We’ll need to make sure we find a spot where we can get the flan bundled together. The last thing we need is for them to come at his from a wide arc. If we can mass them and hit them with a combined burst of freezing magic… we might just be able to take them out of the equation long enough to complete the operation!”

Sensing the shift in his ally’s attitude, Seventeen smirked and smacked the man on his impossible broad shoulder. “That’s the spirit! Now let’s get the fuck out of this place before those things catch us off-guard.”

“Aye.” Julius muttered. We’ll talk with the others on the trek to the chamber.”

[Android 17]

Just fifteen minutes later, the wearied group massed in a tight corridor that led into a small antechamber.  Beyond that space, the heart of the inactive volcano awaited their visit.  If there was any better spot to try and take care of the flan, it would be the tunnel that spilled into the antechamber.
 
So they played the waiting game.  About fifteen yards back into the tunnel, the ceiling had been collapsed by the cyborg, and since he lacked any sort of magic ice powers, he kept himself busy by ensuring no threats came at them from behind.  Not even Jed was aware how intelligent the lava creatures could be, so none of them wanted to take any chances.  They all knew that this would be their one and only shot to pin down the threat.  If they failed here, they’d be forced to try and deal with the flan inside the magma chamber.  Given the proximity to the star, none of them wanted to have their backs up against the wall.
 
“They’re nearby,” one of the koopas whispered.  While none of the koopas were practiced magicians, they apparently knew enough to cast basic spells.  Apparently, most of the reptile received some degree of magical training, and those that proved to be the most adept went on to become the koopa equivalent of a wizard—a Magikoopa, like Joe Koopa.
 
Man, if only that fella was here… he’d know how to deal with this situation.
 
“Yea, I can smell them,” one of the astronomers muttered beneath his breath as he held up his scepter.  The gemstone at the top of the bronze weapon glowed a faint shade of blue.  With Julius standing tall at the center of the group, the astronomers looked like a formidable wall.  The broad shouldered leader used no trinket to amplify his power.  Much like the cyborg, he directed his power through his hands, which were enveloped in shimmering cyan light. 
 
“Remember,” Julius spoke as the faint flecks of orange light began to be seen amid the pile of debris down the corridor.  “We need to hold off long enough for them all to form.  If we play our hand too soon, we might not catch them all in our frigid wrath.”
 
“Aye!”  A few of the astronomers mumbled as he tightened their grip on their scepters.  Those who had remained silent bobbed their heads and remained focused on the living lava now starting to sizzle and bubble out from between the rubble.  Seventeen saw the Koopas starting to tense up, but they kept their composure as the first two flans started to take shape.  The seething mass of living lava bubbled upward until it was nearly the size of a grown man, and then it bulged outward in both directions as fingerless arms formed.
 
With an unsettling, frog-like croak, a mouth opened up near the top of the flan.  Instead of eyes, it merely had two empty recesses above its maw that narrowed as its maw curved into a sinister grin.
 
Two more of the creatures started to form as the first pair advanced slowly toward the wall of koopas and astronomers.  Another croak escaped the lead flan as it lifted a fingerless arm toward the clearly nerved group of spelunkers.  A beat later, a stream of lava leapt from the flan and splashed into the ground just a few feet from one of the astronomers, causing him to cry out and stumble backwards.
 
“Help him!”  Julius barked as the third flan formed and started sliding forward.  An astronomer dropped down to help his fallen friend.  He aided his startled ally up to a vertical position just as another burst of lava crashed into the stunned man’s face and chest.  In an instant, the smell of burning flesh overwhelmed the astronomer, who fell away from his screaming friend.  Realizing that their unity was crumbling, Julius took the gambit.  “Blast them!”  He bellowed as he threw his hands forward and released the first shimmering wave of frost and ice.
 
Although one of the astronomers was lying dead at their feet, the remaining researchers gathered their resolve and threw forth their magic.  They were joined a moment later by the members of the koopa troupe.  As the sentinel of the group, Seventeen stood silent and watched in a blend of shock and horror as the magical onslaught smashed into the quartet of flans.  The first few blasts were shrugged off by the creatures, who continued their slow approach.  A stream of lava clipped one of the astronomers, who dropped his scepter and fell backward.
 
Seventeen stepped forward and caught the man in his arms.  With his eyes still glued to the flans, the cyborg tore off the astronomer’s coat and used it to smother the flames that were eating through the smaller man’s right arm.  “You’ll be all right,” he whispered as he watched one of the lava creatures recoil sharply as a concentrated burst of blue light crashed against its chest and face.  In that instant, the bright shades of orange and red that comprised the flan’s flesh faded just a little.
 
“It’s working,” the machine-hybrid whispered as the lead flan took three sharp blasts of icy magic and came to an abrupt pause about five yards from the group.  It kept trying to move forward, but there was a clear sluggishness to its motion.  The bright colors had faded, and after another onslaught of magic, the flan was reduced to a wide-mouthed statue the color of dull stone.  A final burst crashed against it, and the lava-born monster broke apart into a pile of rocks as the other three kept trying to advance against the constant barrage.
 
Streamers of lava lashed out as retaliation.  A second astronomer went down with a scream and started to claw at the lava bubbling down into his mouth, nose, and eyeballs.  Seventeen knew the man was gone, but when a koopa took a spray of lava to the chest, the cyborg sprung over to help the soldier.
 
“You’ll be fine, Jiggy,” Seventeen remarked as he grabbed a nearby piece of stone and started to scrap away the lava from the koopa’s chest.  Although the red-shelled reptile’s carapace was reinforced, it was already starting to scald from just a little exposure to the flan.  The koopa nodded his head but was too busy grinding his teeth to offer any verbal acknowledgment. 
 
“Fall back!”  Julius bellowed as the remaining magicians dropped back into the antechamber.  The head astronomer glanced down at Seventeen and nodded his head.  “Tag.” 
 
Gingerly moving away from the wounded Jiggy, the cyborg smacked his palms together and focused his thoughts.  He felt the hum of ki and the tingly warmth between his fingers that heralded the destructive force from within his wiry, cybernetic form.  Thrusting his hands forward, he fired a pair of concentrated energy blasts into the ceiling of the antechamber as his allies fled into the magma chamber, dragging the wounded and dead with them.  Against the will of the cyborg, the ceiling had nothing to offer, and after the initial impact, the whole thing started to crumble downward.
 
“Time to go,” Seventeen whispered as he spun and dashed forward the entrance to the magma chamber.  With a jumping leap, he managed to crash down into the other room just a few tons of rubble consumed the antechamber.