The AU Project: The Secret Trio

Chapter 18: Chaos Falls

Issho paced back and forth in Joe's lab. Until the portal generator suddenly started running again. A green swirling portal flickered on and off inside its hexagon ring. Then a figure was spat out of it.

"Joe!!" Issho rushed and helped him up.

"Hey, Issho..." He greeted back. He turned towards his invention and examined the damages. Most of the machine had dark scorch marks on and was smoking. Some wires had little parts of the skin burned away, revealing the copper wires underneath and creating sparks.

Issho cut in his action by starting with, "Ok, so, could you tell me... WHAT THE MOTHER SON OF A F*CK JUST HAPPENED!?"

Joe chuckled, "Basically, we've hit rock bottom." He gave up on the portal generator for now and started walking out of the lab, "Come on, we'll talk over drinks. Heck's actually pretty good at bartending."

Issho blinked, "Ok? But where's Heck and Awesome tho."

Joe stopped in his track. He turned around. "Where are they?" He asked himself, making Issho put on a worried face and started shouting at him again.

In the cartoon of American Dragon: Jake Long, an empty glass tube and a cork clattered to the floor. Beside it stood two Outsiders, Awesome and Heck. The man lowered his vial of almost empty potion, prompting the lady to do so as well.

"Why'd you stop?" She asked.

He let out a frustrated sigh, "I'm sorry, Awesome..." Somehow, his apology caught her off guard. He just didn't strike her as the feelings type. "I could tell you loved being in here. I do too. But now, we're banished, probably forever. Even if we're allowed back in, we probably won't get our powers back... I thought I could get away with it, or they would forgive me because of cartoon logic but... I was wrong... I f*cked it up..."

Awesome stared at Heck, who turned his head away, in shame and in an attempt to hide his emotions. She couldn't help but chuckle. I met this guy yesterday? Damn.

"It's ok. If you didn't mean for it to happen, then it's not your fault," Awesome responded. Making him turn his head back slightly. Then smiled. But the smile faded shortly after.

"But if we leave now, we can't come back until the portal generator is fixed. That's gonna take a few days... Maybe even weeks. By then, god knows if we'll even have a Secret Trio to come back to... It's not like we can pause the game or load a save file. We tried last night..."

Awesome put her fingers on her chin in a thinking pose, "You're right... But each of the villains is as OP as the Dark Dragon! We needed to take out the source and have an army to stand a chance against him."

Heck smirked at her. Making her raise an eyebrow and smirk back.

Outside the palace, the cartoon characters were walking away. The young heroes were discussing the current situation.

"We should all work together and take them out, one by one." Jake suggested.

"Good idea, Jake. Any idea how powerful they are exactly?" Danny asked.

"The Sorceress gave Vlad and Chang some of her stank and they became so powerful, that my Tengu Fireball did shoob-tastically nothing!" Randy answered.

"So, go for the necklace and belt, got it," Danny punched his palm.

"Anything else, Randy?" Jake asked.

"She also has the Tengu Stone. It's yellow, and it looks just like this," Randy took the Ryujin Stone out of his jacket to show them. But Danny's ghost sense suddenly triggered. Before he could warn the others, the Ryujin Stone was snatched away from Randy's grasp. It flew towards a flight of stairs leading to a building's entrance before Awesome, in ghost form, and Heck turned visible.