by TheTimeTrust and The Eurostar
The Tower of Cuccubao, Brazil:
"Dammit, Euro!" Chance said aloud, though the Raptor was already gone. "I'm a chemist, not a brain surgeon! How the hell do you expect me to save her life when all I have is First Aid training?"
"Can you do it?" asked Drax, the fluffy white dragon, as he stood guard.
"How the hell should I know?"
"Geez. Just asking, is all... get a grip," the dragon mumbled, his feelings hurt.
The strain was getting to Kristofer Schanz. Ever since he'd arrived in this world, he'd been changing, growing more melancholy, more... gloomy. If this situation had happened on his world, he'd have stepped up to the task with determination and relied on his minimal army medic training and especially his tremendous luck to guide his hands. But things seemed so much simpler in his world -- so much more black and white, though also, paradoxically enough, so much more colorful. This world he found himself currently in was so much darker, so much dimmer. Most of the so-called heroes of this world were scarcely any different from the so-called villains.
Chance had never been depressed in his life until he reached this world. And since then he'd found himself almost constantly worrying about his troubles with finding a way to restore Pete Glover to life again, and about his lost relationship with the Shirley Francis of his world. What was going on with him? This world was somehow remaking him in its image.
No longer was he the shining example of a hero he had been on his world, the born leader of the MBL. No. There were too many shades of gray in this world for his liking. One couldn't tell the difference between good and evil much of the time. And it really threw Chance's best instincts off. Even his luck hadn't been working as well for him in this world, or he wouldn't have found himself in the position he was in just a short while ago.
And now, as he did his best to patch up Ameristar's head wound, he couldn't help but think how ironic it was that her life was completely in his hands -- she who had believed him to be in league with the Hoods and thus a traitor to the entire human race just a few months ago. But he would be able to do nothing for her but patch up the wound and bandage her head. There was no bleeding any longer, and he hoped there would be no permanent brain damage.
"There," Chance said, wiping the sweat from his brow. "I'm done. As long as she doesn't start bleeding again, she should be fine until we can get her to a doctor."
"Good. Uh, so, I thought you were in charge of this mission, for some reason," Drax said.
"Yes, that's right."
"Well... then, how come the Raptor is giving all the orders, here?"
"Good question," Chance said, a trace of anger in his voice. It was that damned sword. It was changing Euro somehow -- making him more like a Viking warrior of old than the thoughtful Italian hero he knew him to be. Something had to be done about it, not today, perhaps not tomorrow, but soon. Very soon.
"Drax, I'm sorry about this, pal, but I'm going to have to ask you to keep watch over Ameristar by yourself. If we're ever going to find that map in this huge place, we're going to need more than a little bit of luck."
"Aw, man..."
"Cheer up, buddy. Things could be worse -- at least we haven't had to contend with any rival teams after the same thing we are," he said with a wink at the dragon just as he left.
Drax couldn't help but think of one of Murphy's Laws just then: "Anything that can go wrong will go wrong."
Edulcore Cicciotto:
"You KNOW that Chance is the only one who can find the map in this labyrinth, right, Ed?" the girl in the red boots asks me.
"What should I have done? Leave Jackie dying?"
"So you aren't completely lost yet?"
"What do you mean, Crash?"
"Nothing, Ed. Uh-oh."
There are dozen of guards running toward us up the stairs, armed to the teeth.
Rutuli! Sicani! Labici! All the warriors of this western land are coming down the mountains to salute the son of Venus! Like a giant porcupine, the mass of men, bristling with bronze swords, and axes, and long spears, are charging at me and at my ally, the maiden warrior Camilla.
"Aeneas," she says, looking at me, "for Jupiter!" And she throws herself toward the armed people, like the lighting that dares to strike a mighty mountain. She, golden haired and swift, brands her sword, hitting the first line of warriors, which fall like ears under the scythe in the hottest day of the summer.
I take out my bronze blade from the scabbard, and like a lion among vultures, I jump in the fray. Oh, divine Janus, why are the doors of your temple always open? Why had I to flee from my beloved Troy, just to endure war all over my boats' land?
Camilla fights as the brave and skilful warrior the poets writes poems about; but she would be easily overcome by the army of Italic peoples, like the mighty elephant could be killed by the legendary red ants of the desert. But that will not happen, because I join her in the fray.
The sword my mother Venus asked her husband Vulcan to create for me from celestial iron will make the difference. And as I rotate her in front of me, one after the other, the bronze-armed warriors die, mortally wounded. It takes the time a nightingale sings his joyful song under the moon, for me to end the life of these aggressors.
Crasher stares at me, while I wipe the blood away from my blade.
"Thanks for spoiling all the fun," she says, but I know it's only a joke from her strange sense of humor, and the bitterness is because she disapproves of my methods. Or, at least, from my feral thirst for blood.
The deaths have brought power to my body. I feel myself full of energy, and I wonder... if...
A blow. A single punch, and the wall comes down. Outside, below us, trees without an end.
"Ed, if you keep opening holes like this, I think the whole tower will crash down," the girl says, half-smiling. "We must find the map. Save the Incredible Hulk show for later."
But in the far corner of my field of vision, an Apache helicopter appears, flying straight toward the tower.
"Other Hoods?" I ask.
"Other? These are not Hoods, Ed," explains Crasher, pointing at the dead guards.
"I thought..." I begin, but Crasher pushes me up the stairs, while a missile from the 'copter hits precisely the place where we were standing.
"Fuck them!" I shouts.
Branding Ladnikia, I break the wall right in front of me and jump outside.
The helicopter is hovering right in front of the hit spot, below me. I land on the back of the aircraft, and with my bare hands, I rip open the steel cover. Inside, three heads lift up. One is one-eyed in the front, but before I can even recognize what he is, the one at the pilot seat raises his right hand, and from his gauntlet something explodes, and I am thrown away from the 'copter.
Falling, I see two figures leaving the aircraft, one jumping in an elaborate move toward the opening in the wall, the other just flying away, steam threads from his boots.
The helicopter, then, just falls right over me.
I manage to squeeze away just seconds before it crashes atop me. I roll on the floor, get up, run a few hundred meters from the spot. I turn, and from the wreck comes out the third man, the one-eyed one. He is taller, much taller than any normal man.
And then I recognize him. He is a cyclops, just like his brother, Polyphemus, the one that took me and my men captive, and which I, Odysseus, made blind with a burning pole.
The son of Chronus, branding his axe, comes toward me. "I will avenge my brother, son of Laertes!" he shouts.