Deirdre Chen: Saviour of the Multiverse

Chapter 13

Deirdre

Mengo became as stiff as a corpse, totally at the mercy of the insanity consuming his mind. Deirdre was transfixed, someone so strong was suddenly so weak. It wasn’t until the chronotile came floating in front of her face that she switched back on.
  It had come floating out of her pocket. Deirdre noticed flakes were coming off it, like dead skin. The thing was falling apart and she knew it wouldn’t last long. Deirdre looked at the dotted line, forming a 9 with the loop continuing downwards. Deirdre was standing on the banks of the river, seeing its ebbs and flows. Her reel began again. Deirdre had to sharpen her mind, not allowing the emotions to dull it, watching for the right moment. When she saw herself stood in the hangar, she dove.
  Normal physics didn’t apply in this dimension, allowing her to drag big, mumbling Mengo like he was a float in a swimming pool. To actually make physical contact with that moment in time brought Deirdre a kind of pain she never thought possible for a human to experience.
  The surface of the cell was so hard that it turned their bodies into mush. Deirdre made such an impact that cracks shot across her future, shattering it. Like that, the sorrow was lifted out of her and the joy torn out along with it. Her future had returned to being unknown, her mother’s dying words came back to her, “You can still have those good moments, Di, if you really want them.”
    Deirdre and Mengo’s minds continued moving as tendrils of light. Deirdre was heading towards herself, the tendrils sharpened, stabbing the back of her head.
  Her mind syphoned into her brain.
  Deirdre was looking with her own eyes again, seeing Manea’s charade. She looked at the container, and then looked at Nyci. It was time to kill two birds with one stone, or more accurately, one robo bird with one giant shipping container.
  Manea cut her performance to look up, and she saw said container falling down upon her. She rolled out of the way. Nyci wasn’t so lucky. Manea whipped out that nasty ol’ shooter of hers and fired a beam at Deirdre’s head. This time, Deirdre really was a cliff against the sea. The laser beam got so close that it singed the hairs on her fringe; didn’t matter, because the beam ended its journey at Manea’s kneecap.
Manea didn’t cry out. She actually laughed, looking at Deirdre like a proud mother.
  “Well done Girl! I imagine the empire would’ve been ten times larger had The Gauntlet been yours from the beginning.”
  “That’s not what I do!” Deirdre bellowed.
  “Oh Deirdre, don’t play the hero. Heroes let everyone down.”
Ehutu calmly walked over to Manea, squatting down in front of her.
  “Even when you’re trying, you still missed. This is how you hit your target.” Ehutu’s fist smacked into Manea’s face, knocking her out cold.
  Chattering came from within the container, the sound muffled as it travelled through the door. Ehutu proceeded with caution towards it. She opened the door and a jabbering Mengo fell through the door.
  “Ram. Bridge. Apple. Cove.”

Energy Level: 40

  Deirdre teleported her crew to the bridge. The blue energy of the rift washed over the window. It cleared and Deirdre saw something that told her she had returned home.
  Earth.
  It was morning time in the Western hemisphere, and the moon still hung in the sky...

Energy Level: 0

Deirdre’s body came to collect once again. She was mid collapse when a pair of strong hands caught her.
  “I got you, Di,” said Ehutu. Deirdre could feel her shaking.
  “You did beltin’.” Cassie gave her a big slap on the back.
  “Thanks, I couldn’t have done it without you.”
  “Well actually, you could,” Cassie replied, “that was the whole point.” It might have been because they’d nearly died, but they all started laughing like it was the end of an '80s cartoon.
  It was then that Deirdre remembered something, “Oh crap, we forgot about Bengo!”