EVERYBODY NEEDS A HERO

Part V: Antepenultimate

By Emily Snyder

It was six in the morning when Pete Wisdom finally hit the correct Black Air station. Meggan and Moira were being held there. He gasped with relief.

“Kurt!”

“Ja, Pete?”

“I’ve found them!”

“That is wonderful. You, however, look terrible. Have you slept in the last day or so?”

Pete squirmed, “Um, not really…”

“Then go and get some sleep. We’re not going off with such a great part of our little temporary team so tired.”

“Great part?” Pete was so surprised at his pleasure that he forgot to grouch about not needing sleep.

“Ja. We’ve got so few members at this point. Only you, myself, Rahne, and Doug.”

“What happened to Brian?”

“Brian is incapacitated.”

“Oh, that’s right. I forgot.”

“I think he’d like to forget that as well.”

Brian indeed wished that he could forget his injuries as he struggled to get up. He’d been trying for at least an hour and a half, and each time he tried to get off the bed, he rose a little less. He finally slumped back on the pillow and fumed.

He grabbed the pillow from under his head and shredded it in half, tossing the two pieces away. Feathers flew out of the pillow halves, covering most of the tiny medlab in white down. Brian, frustrated, sneezed loudly as a feather landed on his nose. He lay there seething, covered with feathers, and grinding his teeth to keep from crying.

Meggan was missing and likely dead or in pain, and he couldn’t do a thing. Not a blasted thing!

He couldn’t sleep now. Couldn’t. Even if he WAS tired.

Pete slept for a day and a night. While he slept, the others puttered around, reading the few books in the Flit, eating, and sleeping. Brian lay fuming the entire time, still angry that he couldn’t do anything for the next week or so.

Pete woke up groggily in the late morning of the next day. He scrubbed at his eyes, peeked in the reflective windshield of the Flit, and decided to forego shaving.

“Kurt! You ready?”

“Ja, where are they?”

Pete enlightened Kurt regarding where Meggan and Moira were and how he was to get there. The trip would take all day, so they’d have to hang around above the complex all night, not an idea Pete liked very much. The Flit wasn’t too well-shielded, so they’d have to go about halfway and stop for the night so they wouldn’t be detected.

Pete was still a little leery about this plan, but he gave in. Black Air didn’t usually scan that far away with anything more that ordinary radar, if he recalled correctly, and the Flit was shielded against that because Kurt had told him the Shi’ar materials that the Flit was made out of deflected most forms of detection all by themselves.

The only thing that bothered him was that the Flit had no weaponry. He guessed they’d be all right and decided he wouldn’t worry too much. Not like the decision would really stop him anyway.

The Flit was getting cramped. It was crammed almost to the gills with medical equipment that made it extremely difficult to get around inside. Besides that, the ‘rooms’ were very tiny and the galley had almost nothing left in it. Hopefully, they’d be back at Muir after they picked up Meggan and Moira.

Kurt tried to draw up a battle plan. He rooted through the mess and found communicators. One never knew if someone would find the ladies and need backup to retrieve them. He decided they’d all split up. He hated to have only one in a group, but if they only divided into two groups, it’d take longer to find the two people they’d come for and they’d be easier to detect.

Rahne sat in the galley again. She thought it would help some if she cleaned up the messily disorganized medical equipment, and so started in. Grabbing some boxes, she started sorting the syringes according to size. She taped a syringe to each box that corresponded with the ones inside the box so a syringe-searcher could easily find the size he needed. She neatly stacked the syringes one by one, feeling she could take her time because there would be nothing to do for about two days yet. When she finished stacking and boxing the syringes, she taped the boxed shut with medical tape and started in on the aspirin, Tums, and Ibuprofen, taping a one tablet of the medicines to the box in which she put the rest of that type of pill.

She went through the whole galley like this, sorting, boxing, labeling, and taping miscellaneous medical supplies. She opened the fridge. Inside, there were a few apples, some juice, and some cheese, along with some medicines she didn’t know the names of. In the freezer, there was a carton of Popsicles and several packages of plasma, all different blood types. She sighed and chose a grape Popsicle for a snack.

Pete slept again. He’d figured there was nothing else to do but sit around and fret and worry.

He woke up about two hours later and decided to take a shower, if there was a shower in the Flit. Finding no shower, he settled for the sink where the doctors were to scrub for emergency surgery. He filled it with warm water and dunked his head under it, scrubbing hand soap into his hair. The soap wasn’t shampoo, but it’d have to do for now. He didn’t need to wash his hair that much anyway.

The Flit was clean, and he wasn’t allowed to smoke in such cramped quarters.

Man, he needed a cigarette.

Brian still seethed. Rahne finished her Popsicle and started cleaning the cockpit. Pete rubbed his hair dry with a towel and went back to sleep. Kurt fussed over the inadequacy of his battle plan and piloted the ship with his tail. Douglock trailed around behind Rahne, asking if there was anything he could help with. Rahne finally snapped at him to go clean the bathrooms, and he smiled broadly and walked off to do so. The atmosphere was distinctly tense.

The moonlight Flit eased off into the bright, sunny day.

Meggan hummed softly along with the whistling air around her, trying to keep her focus on holding up her passengers but also trying not to think about how heavy they were. She didn’t dare move her hand to wipe away the sweat that ran down her brow. Instead, she scooted a little breeze past her forehead. They’d passed London quite some time ago, and by her figuring, they should arrive at Muir…

“Oh… oh, Moira!”

She gasped, looking down at what was left of the research station. Her concentration slipped, and they plummeted toward the ground. She caught them right before they hit, and lowered them gently until their feet were on terra firma.

Moira blinked, “I donnae b’lieve it. I cannae…!”

She continued blinking, frozen by shock. She blinked for five straight minutes, during which everyone else… blinked. Finally, Smith, not as surprised as the others, pointed out that they should check the ruins for bodies. Everyone decided that he was right and walked off to a section of the former building.

Rahne slept fitfully, getting up at regular intervals to clean for a while. She was rolling the last stray gauze into nice, neat rolls when the sun first peeked over the horizon, staining the sky pink and gold. She finished rolling, then walked over to the window to watch the sun come up. She dumped water in the receptacle of the small coffee machine and switched it on. The drip of the dark liquid and the hum of the engines lulled her to sleep again, and her eyes closed on the blush of the morning sky.

Moira woke up with the light. She walked over to her corner of the demolished station and picked up a stick to help lever the big bits of rubble away. She lifted one, a large sheet of metal. Underneath, Kurt’s spare sword glinted in the morning sun. She let go of her lever with one hand and pulled the sword out. She knocked the levered metal out of the way and lifted the next chunk. This area had obviously been Kurt’s room, and she wanted to see if he was in there. She doubted it, of course, since he was a teleporter, but maybe the explosion had happened during the night when he was asleep and couldn’t wake up in time.

She went through a patch of about the size of the average room on Muir, and still no Kurt. Humming, she went on in her search, methodically lifting and searching.

Rahne woke up at mid-day. She was having a nice dream when she felt herself shaken. Opening her eyes, she found that Pete was shaking her rather hard. She couldn’t make out what he was saying at first, as her senses were a bit fuzzy, but the sounds jelled and he was saying “Wake up! Wake up!”

“A’m up, already,” she said, grumpily.

“Good. Then come get your communicator – we’re leaving now!”

“Wha’? We’re already at Black Air?”

“You guessed it. Now please, let’s get going.”

She got up and followed him to the door, which was open. The weather was cool, and a slight breeze was blowing. She found that they’d already landed outside a barbed-wire fence. She could see the compound in the distance, dark and foreboding against the clear blue of the sky. It seemed to be about three miles away.

She took a communicator from Kurt and stared blankly as he explained what they would do once they were inside. She shook her head, telling herself that this was no time to be spacey.

They climbed the fence – Kurt figured they’d attract unwanted attention if they teleported – and ventured toward the complex.

Tangerine woke up with a start at the noise of chunks of stuff being moved. She suddenly remembered what she could do and hurried over to Meggan.

“Meggan, I totally forgot what my powers were and I should’ve remembered! It would’ve saved a lot of work!”

“You’re right… you’re bloody right! Why didn’t we THINK of that?”

“Because we’re silly and forgetful and we were in shock, I’d guess,” she said, scampering off to tell Moira to stop looking. “Moira, Moira, wait!” she cried, “I can use my powers to find anyone!”

Moira looked at Tangerine, “Ye have powers?”

“Yes, yes! I’m a telepath. Please, Moira, stop and let me ‘look’!”

Moira obliged, and Tangerine focused her power on the center of the rubble. She searched outwards, orange glow rippling out like water before a thrown stone. Finally, sweating lightly, she turned to Moira again.

“Nothing. Nobody was caught in the blast. They all left hours before the explosion.”

Moira spouted ecstatic words and Tangerine sort of slumped off to tell Meggan and the others.

Kurt crept along a corridor very softly, searching for Meggan and Moira. Unfortunately, he was forced to teleport into each cell to check for the ladies. He sighed, wishing he didn’t have to ‘port out of each cell into the hall again so he wouldn’t materialize in a wall. He tried to go softly, but each time another agent heard him and went to the door leading to the hall. Each member of the gathering horde gave another a knowing look.

The sound of sixty plasma rifles arming filled the hall as the door opened. Kurt, tired, looked up. He blinked a few times as if he had stepped out into a bright light, not comprehending what was going on. He blinked again, the situation slowly dawning on his exhausted mind. He realized that he needed to teleport. He made his nerve endings communicate, and his distinctive power signature flared.

Kurt blinked again… four feet?!

His teleport had carried him all of four feet!

He gulped…

NEXT ISSUE: Nightcrawler’s out of luck – why does so much of it happen to Kurt? Also: invading cows rampage on Muir! Plus: Brigit Shane torches a cathedral!