The Dreamjumper and The Dreamcatcher

Chapter 16: Steal my girl and I will make you pay

Reve

"Reve, this is ravenhawk. I've got the dreamcatcher," says a woman's voice through my earpiece.

That sweet, sweet sentence is all I needed to hear. It is the strawberry topping to my cake. It is just the sugar high I need to finish the job I came here for. "Mr. Red-Head" is going to wish he never stole Alora.

"Where is she?" I ask ravenhawck.

"I found her hiding in the cafeteria kitchen. She's safe now. I'll make sure no one tries to teleport her away."

"Understood, ravenhawk. I'm going to finish this battle now. As soon as I give you the go ahead, jump her out of here."

"I'll stand by for your command," she replies before cutting off.

"Mr. Red-Head" stands before me with his stupid cocky grin. Both of us are in the middle of the campgrounds. The center building is behind him. Around us other people engage in combat. Today he has decided to go to war with the OSA. He has no idea what a big mistake that has been. Even if we don't win the whole war today, I'm going to make sure we win this battle.

A barrage of fire columns is sent from his palms my way. The orange color of the flames is as intense as his red hair. I stop his fire with my own jets of water that blast from my hands. Where fire and water meet, steam rises. A meteorite is then sent my way from the sky, but I dodge it at the last second. Pieces of rock split off from it as it hits the ground, some of them flying towards me and piercing my skin. The stinging is intense in the places they penetrate me, but the wounds hardly deter me. I make the grassy ground underneath "Mr. Red-Head's" feet turn into quicksand and he begins to sink rapidly down to his torso. With his hands he stops himself from being consumed by the ground, which frees up his face for me to deliver a rock covered fist to the side of his temple. I imagine myself moving at superspeed which gives me the right timing for me to plant the blow before he pops out of the ground. He flies out from my trap, flips in the air and rolls on the ground to land on his knees. It wasn't a hard enough hit to wake him up, but the side of his face is bleeding as he rights himself from his crouched position on the floor.

"You're just a boy compared to me," he says. "It's going to take more than that to defeat me."

"You asked for it," I reply. He might be making fun of my youth (I'm not even that young), but he underestimates me. I don't care about his years of experience or whether he is a master dreamjumper. He can be as powerful as he claims to be, but I'm powerful as well. And I have more reasons than him to win this fight.

I close my eyes and suddenly multiple versions of myself split from my body. I don't know how many I've created. All I know is that we're all ready to deliver our revenge on this man. In synchrony we cause the air around us to become ionized as we shift the balance of charges. This results in creating a wave of electricity that permeates through our bodies and discharges as multiple lightning bolts on our target. "Mr. Red-Head" seems to anticipate our next move and by a hair he evades every single lightning bolt we send at him. But we don't stop and continue sending more after his wake. He can't run from electricity forever. "Mr. Red-Head" seems to realize that too, so he dives into the ground as if it were water.

The other versions of me begin sinking into the ground as hands grab their ankles and pull them into the depths beneath. I don't want to meet their same fate, so I jump up high in the air as if there were springs under my feet. As I do so, giant claws like those of a raptor shoot from the dirt and try to entrap me. Before I fall back to the ground, I imagine for myself a hoverboard that allows me to levitate in the air. Suddenly I'm standing on one that is sleek black in the shape of a skateboard, hovering several feet above the ground. A giant brown hawk then somehow manages to dig itself out of the ground with its feet. Like the undead, it rises and looks at me with crystal black eyes. Its beak is much longer and pointed than that of an average hawk's. Without warning it lunges for me as if I were its next meal. I immediately zoom out of its way. It continues to snap at me as I swivel in the air trying to dodge its attacks. I lift myself higher up into the sky and try to flee but it spreads its immense wings and launches after me. Outrunning it will be impossible, and I don't want to lose sight of "Mr. Red-Head" by fleeing, so I turn back and just start plummeting to the ground. The hawk opens its mouth as if ready to consume me but in front of me I conjure a giant dead chick larger than its mouth for it to try to swallow. The chick is so big that the hawk doesn't seem to know what to do with it. But that's the least of its problems because it also begins to plummet to the ground by the weight of the chick.

I notice "Mr. Red-Head" has emerged from the ground and I direct my flight path towards him. But he just dives underground again to hide. I decide to create another earthquake and for good measure turn the earth underneath into lava. The ground below me, while simultaneously shaking, becomes blood-red orange as it melts and smelters. The heat permeating from it prickles my skin from how intense it is. I stop in midair to not get burned by the lava and shoot a wave of it to the hawk as it contacts the ground. The impact itself sends another ripple through the earth. As the wave of lava spills over the hawk, it consumes it entirely and pained screeching fills the air. I then mute the sound to my own ears with my powers because I don't want to listen to a bird being cooked alive.

Immediately afterwards "Mr. Red-Head" shoots from the ground within what seems like a water geyser. I snicker because I know what exactly to do next and waste no time in sending another lightning bolt, not at him but at the water. "Mr. Red-Head" jumps out of the water vortex to avoid the attack but what he doesn't know is that there are still clones of mine behind him who survived his previous attack that are directing their own lightning bolts to the space their anticipating him to jump to in the air. The spinning column of water suddenly vanishes as their unified electric attack strikes "Mr. Red-Head". His body flails in the air as the electricity courses through him and then he begins to fall to the ground. In real life, he would have been charred into a crisp by the energy and heat of the lightning. But his body remains nearly pristine as he impacts the earth. He should have broken a few bones too yet there he lies with his parts fully intact, but at least unmoving. I'm unsure as to whether the strike was enough to truly awaken him in reality since he still hasn't disappeared from the dream. He might be trying to grasp on to the dreamworld and fighting with his mind from turning on its 'survival mechanism'. (The survival mechanism is what we call when you wake up immediately from something horrible happening to you, like when you know you're about to die in a dream but don't want to witness that.) But hopefully as he's doing that, his hold on Alora is weak enough that ravenhawk can jump her out of here.

I press my finger to the side of my ear. "Jump now, ravenhawk."

"Roger that," she replies.

I look beyond me at the stone building before me. To the right, by some miracle, I actually see Alora with the superior who has her. She seems to notice me staring at her and waves before she disappears along with ravenhawk. I turn my gaze back to where "Mr. Red-Head" had fallen and notice that his body is gone. The smile that creeps up on my face is wider than any other smile I've ever worn. It is juicy and gratifying, and at the same time painful. My insides are burning with more than just the light of joy, they are drunkenly ecstatic. Victory is actually mine today.

"White crew," I say to my earpiece. "Time to move out. Mission accomplished."

As soon as the words are transmitted, the members of the OSA begin to disappear from the dream. I consider taking one of the dreamjumpers in black hostage, but that would mean I would also have to stay in dreamland for who knows how long. And I don't want to do that. I need to see Alora and make sure she is okay. But one day I will find these people in person and destroy their operations. They are not going to kidnap anyone else or unfold whatever grand scheme they are plotting.

I sense the dream around me crumbling as I notice the people in black also jumping out of it. With each new jump, I can feel the reality around me splintering. It's hard to explain, but it's the feeling I get when I know the dream is about to be obliterated because the person is about to wake up. My suspicion is that I am connecting to a different subconscious that is contributing to the creation of the dream if I am still here. So before everything turns black, I jump out myself.