Deirdre Chen: Saviour of the Multiverse

Chapter 7

Deirdre

A flower bud lying on its side, which just started to blossom, with the petals peeled back enough to show a square window with Lenga in the cockpit. This rift ship had two hoops instead of one. They stopped in an X formation as she parked it. The petal on the right swung open, allowing the ramp to roll down like a bike chain, cracking the ice of the planet. Lenga crept down it. There was a lot of ice too; the place was absolutely Baltic. Pythonia told Deirdre that its name was ‘Dayruntha’; she wouldn’t have even bothered giving this heap a name. The skies reminded her of doing art in primary school, where she’d mix every single colour together until it created this ugly splodge of sad yellow/brown. There wasn’t even any wind. Deirdre would have loved a howling gale. At least that would mean the planet was alive.
  “That’s Mengo’s mam, Lenga,” Pythonia whispered to her.
  “You pulled it off, Pythonia,” Lenga said, complimenting the scaley scumbag.
  “Thas a tricker thee,” Pythonia grinned with admiration; it was sickening. “Yad us battle each other fot cash. I like it.” Lenga let out a little snort.
  “Well you’ve passed with flying colours. Same time?” Lenga remarked, raising her eyebrow.
  “Same time,” Pythonia nodded.
  Pythonia took out a small disk that hovered off her palm. She placed The Gauntlet on top and blew it like a feather. She wasn’t so gentle with Deirdre, giving her a boot up the jacksie. Deirdre saw the briefcase glide over her.
  Deirdre looked back at Pythonia who would have had pound signs flashing in her eyes, if they hadn’t nearly melted out of their sockets. The case went off like a pocket nuke. The blast wave put Deirdre on her stomach. She scraped across the floor, tearing her suit open. Pythonia wanted to make a bomb out of her kidnapping and that’s exactly what she had done.
  When the dust settled, Pythonia sprang back up; the blast wave had shredded her suit but it hadn’t touched a scale on her head.
  “Thal aft wake up quicker than that catch me! Snake-like reflexes I tell thee!”
  They drew their pistols and began firing, causing the area around to start throbbing with blue and orange light. A blast from Lenga’s gun hit the plasma disk, dropping The Gauntlet to the floor. They were both terrible, terrible shots. When they ran dry, they stood looking at each other like two kids about to have their first kiss, not knowing what to do next.
  Instead of puckering up to lock lips, they unsheathed to lock blades. Lenga was packing some serious tools; the little segments of her zimmer frame extended out, forming an exoskeleton that ran up the side of her legs, waist and arms. Two dock off swords sprang out from the tubes under her forearms. The frame hummed with her movements as they circled one another. Pythonia only had a knife, and I’ve got meaner ones in my kitchen. They both went for it, not noticing that The Gauntlet container was rolling towards Deirdre.
  Lenga charged forward, hollering with her right blade raised above her head. Lenga took a swing but only got empty air. Now Pythonia was at her back, with a clear shot of her spine. Lenga elegantly spun out of the way.       Deirdre smashed the glass container open with her helmet, allowing The Gauntlet to slither through the tear in her suit. Lenga delivered a knee to Pythonia’s gut, but Pythonia countered with a mean hook to Lenga’s jaw, followed by an uppercut that didn’t land as well as it should have, because Lenga was a chinless wonder - a chinless wonder who managed to sweep Pythonia’s legs from under her. 
  Deirdre didn’t even bother reciting Manea’s word; she’d have been better off singing the alphabet forwards and backwards. All she could do was crawl away.  Lenga tried to slam her elbow down on Pythonia’s head, but she rolled away at the very last second, causing Lenga to bang her uterus against the cold, hard ground. Pythonia got to her feet, kicking Lenga in the gut as she rolled around on the floor. Then, she noticed Deirdre getting away.
  “Owd on a minnit!” Pythonia pointed her gun. “Now don’t budge na moor lass-.” Pythonia was cut short by Lenga cutting her forearm. Pythonia laughed and turned the gun on her.
  “Just a scratch that!” Pythonia laughed, before her eyes went all cloudy.
  “Poison blades darling,” Lenga purred.
  “Ya got me theer.” Pythonia stumbled back and crashed down hard on the ice. Deirdre accepted that she was going to die, and hoped that Lenga would afford her the pomp and ceremony of a cheesy one liner, before a swift and merciful death. Instead she plunged the blade right into her suit. 
  It was an out of body experience. Deirdre was in the sky watching her own death. Lenga had skewered her like a kebab. It was only when she started falling that Deirdre realised she wasn’t having an out of body experience; she’d teleported herself out of her suit!

Energy Level: 4

During her fall, Deirdre saw a cave in the distance. If the fall didn’t break her legs, she’d peg it in there.
  She’d landed a few feet ahead of Lenga, giving her a good head start, but it wasn’t going to last. Deirdre glanced over her shoulder and saw Lenga running at her with pneumatic speed. She could hear the exoskeleton going ‘Vwut! Vwut! Vwut!’ and she was getting closer and closer, laughing her head off at how easy this was for her. An angry thought burst across Deirdre’s mind: “I’d like to see you laughing without that thing.”
  Deirdre heard clanging and tumbling. She looked back again and saw Lenga was slipping and sliding, her exoskeleton on a hill in the background.  “Did I do that?” Deirdre asked herself as she ran into the sanctuary of the deep, dark cave.

Energy Level: 3
                                           
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Standing in the cave was like stepping into the mouth of a blue whale that had gulped a whole rainbow. Shimmering crystals were embedded on its walls, with red spiralling over orange, spiralling over yellow and green, until it stopped dead at the blackness that lay at the end.
  Deirdre wondered if she’d either starve to death, or save whatever creature lurked in here from the same fate, when it ate her.
  Something in the deep, dark cave growled at Deirdre.
  So it was to be the second one, at least I got to look at the pretty crystals, she thought.
  And what should waddle into the light of the crystals, but a giant penguin!
  This big thing probably thought that little Deirdre was cute, but I personally believe that everything is cute until it comes into your house. With a roar and a flash of rows of serrated teeth, the giant penguin showed that it followed this mantra.
  Deirdre was shrieking, trying to remove herself from the horror. The giant penguin was sliding on its belly after her, nature giving it an unfair advantage. In a few seconds, this thing was going to blend Deirdre into an ice slushy. In that moment she wanted to be somewhere warm and safe. The next thing she knew, she was in a big sack of liquid. Deirdre started to punch and kick in blind panic. There was a tight squeeze as she went through the hole at the bottom. When she was out, a smell hit Deirdre’s nose that made her gag. She looked up and saw that the penguin that was about to eat her a few seconds ago, was limping away, clutching its bum.
Deirdre asked herself, “Have I just been pooed out? Was this things’ colon what the gauntlet thought I meant by ‘somewhere warm and safe’?”
  I think we all know the answer to that one.

Energy Level: 2

  The giant penguin sat down on a big pile of snow to soothe itself. Its cries of anguish echoed through the cave; it could have done with Basroid’s Bum-soothing Bog Roll, toilet paper made from the icy surface of Europa.
  Deirdre looked down at her right hand; she was clutching a tile, the kind pretentious pubs serve overpriced ‘gourmet’ burgers on, with diddy buckets of undercooked chips. 

Energy Level: 1

  Deirdre didn’t have much time to look at it, because the pain started to kick in. The teleporting, running in this cold, the thin air - Deirdre owed her body a debt and it was coming to collect. Her legs buckled as she got the mother of all stitches. A cold wind blew through the cave and hit her like a thousand arrows, chilling the poo she was soaked in. Freezing in faeces, cryoed in crap, shivering in sh-

Energy Level: 0

  Deirdre pondered how long would it be until she died. Would her school hold a concert in tribute of her? They better had, and no old music, she wanted banging house booming in the assembly hall, whilst people cried.
  The cold turned to warmth.  As Deirdre passed out, she swore she heard a Geordie voice say.
  “So it is you then, I dunnae envy the burden ya must carry, like.”