A bored redhaired elf by the name of Mara sat in her apartment and tapped the newspaper that lay on her desk. She peered about the room and let her thoughts wander, thinking about cookies and what the room would look like if she moved everything over to the left.
"Nah, that's silly..." the emerald eyed Mara thought to herself, barely even paying attention to the black and white grayish rag in front of her. She finally let out a sigh, after spending a whole 5 minutes of perusing the want ads.
"Welp, I think someone's earned themselves a break!" Mara said proudly to nobody in particular, sliding the paper out of the way.
Of course, poor Mara was in the same boat as Lexi and Chrissy, displaced from her job due to ... explosive circumstances. She had furiously been looking for a new job... or maybe just was bored and drawing penises on the phone numbers. She was about to approach her refridgerator to grab a snack when she heard a rapping on the window. It started kind of quiet and then grew unnaturally loud.
"Holy shit, the hell is in the water around here?" Mara scoffed, seeing what appeared to be a fireball outside of her window.
Upon closer inspection she saw it was actually ... a bird? Or a firebird rather? A phoenix?
Most would run at the sight of such a creature, but Mara wasn't like most. Plus she liked shiny things. She'd open the window cautiously as the inferno covered avarian hovered just outside her window, seemingly taken aback by Mara's welcoming gesture.
"Come on, little guy..." Mara cooed, as if trying to summon a pigeon, "well... I guess you're not so little but ... nonetheless... mi casa... si casa... su casa? I don't know, I failed Spanish ... just get in here, would you? You'll catch a cold! Hah! A cold... like you ever could... cause... cause you're on fire... so like ... yeah, I thought it was funny..."
The phoenix looking creature simply held its pattern as it eyed Mara, its wings flapping lightly in the night breeze, small sparks coming off them. Finally the bird like creature approached, and Mara backed away to let it in.
Mara shrugged and let the creature into her apartment, closing the window slightly after.
"So uh ... you from around here?" Mara asked curiously as the bird landed on her desk, its talons grazing the newspaper which then caught ablaze and dissolved into so much ash. The bird let out a low whimper as if to express regret, Mara shrugged, "you're good ... I wasn't using that anyway"
------
Elsehwere, a very confounded but slightly impressed Leah Henderson found herself in the Josh-cave ... otherwise known as his parent's basement. She looked around at a corkboard with a series of sticky notes and a complicated network of rubber bands and pushpins pointing to certain areas of interest on a map of Minitropolis with pictures of Lexi, a blurry picture of Roxie from a newspaper article and a few random Polaroids.
"When did you have time to do this again?" Leah stammered, looking around as Josh went over the facts they had gathered to this point.
"Not important..." Josh sighed, tapping on the board with an extendable pointer. "Now let's go over the drone footage again ... we see Lexi go over Roxie right about these coordinates before her signal goes cold ... her cell phone vanishes off the grid about 20 minutes later but not before she's teleported to ... THIS location..."
Josh then points to another circled area that's somewhere off the map of the city, approximately placed in the outskirts of the city bordering Fenster Forest.
"Seriously, how did you even...?" Leah started
"Leah..." Josh sighed
"Righto, sorry..." Leah sighed, feeling like she just got scolded for talking in class, "...also how did you get the drone fixed so fast? I thought you were having problems getting it to stay airborne but thing looked pretty kickass when you were helping Lexi chase Roxie down"
"Heh, thanks" Josh commented, "but it was a joint effort..."
"What do you mean? You have a Robin in this bat-cave or something?" Leah smirked
"Not quite ... more like an Alfred..." Josh replied
"That's ... the butler, right?" Leah asked
"Sort of ... look that's not important ..." Josh sighed, "This guy from Aztek parts and more helped me out ... thing is, I think he might have been onto me and knowing ShrinkGirl..."
Leah paused for a moment remembering something Lexi had told her in their day to day conversations since Trevor had started the small start up computer shop.
"Wait ... was it like a tallish gray haired gentleman?" Leah asked
"Yeah..." Josh nodded, "but I'm pretty sure he's a spy ... he looked like one of the scientists we toured the Enormo Enterprise lab with ... he's probably trying to track Lexi or something but thankfully I didn't give him any info or ..."
"Ha... Josh..." Leah scoffed, realizing who her paranoid but sometimes misguided friend had talked to, "that's Trevor..."
"Ohhhhh..." Josh nodded, before setting down his pointer for a moment, "...I'm sorry, who?"
"Hope' Leah explained, "remember when Lexi told you she had help from the inside that was supplying her with unused Enormo tech? Well that was him ... he started a computer shop shortly after leaving the company"
"So I was right, he WAS Enormo!" Josh exclaimed
"Was being the key word ... he's a nice guy ... helped Lexi and I escape the night we fought Max" Leah added
"Didn't ... Lexi do most of the fighting?" Josh remarked
Leah just crossed her arms and shrugged, "I'd like to think I helped..."
----
In the far off realm of Quartzaria meanwhile, the battle preparations were more or less complete. Vektor was outfitting his own vehicle, a large bulky onyx and gold metallic ATV with chrome rims, outfitted with assault rifles and homing missiles. Meanwhile, a skeptical Emerald and Ruby watched from a distance as Lexi paced around, awaiting to see her vehicle of choice after the modifications were made.
"So ..." Ruby asked in a subtly quiet tone, peering over at her ally, Emerald, "what do you think about Vektor and this ... new girl?"
"Whattaya mean?" Emerald asked
"Oh please, we haven't seen the Lord so invested in a female since ... well ... y'know..." Ruby said, trying to keep her voice down. Vektor was busy at work but had a keen sense of awareness and was ultra paranoid of late as it was.
Emerald nodded slowly, again trying not to arouse attention.
"He does seem rather ... smitten with her..." Emerald acknowledged, "you think it's some kind of ... other dimension thing? Is that his type or something??"
"Not sure he has a type..." Ruby shrugged, brandishing her blade to give off the appearance that she was also preparing for battle, "I would just ... keep an eye on him and that Lexi girl ... we have enough issues as it is ..."
"Hey...." Emerald paused, looking concerned about something else for the moment, "...you think Sapphire's okay?"
"I hope so..." Ruby sighed, "she's pretty tough ... even if she doesn't know it yet..."
"I'm sure Vektor blames himself for what happened but ... we'll make it right..." Emerald said, with a hint of confidence, "we'll get our kingdom back in the process ..."
"Yeah..." Ruby sighed, seeming not too pleased with her colleagues recent statement. "...our kingdom..."
Lexi meanwhile felt a feeling of pensiveness as well ... so much had hit her so fast. Here she found herself in this illuminated purple and gold chamber with sterling marble tiled floors and technology unlike anything she'd ever seen outside of a Star Wars movie. She'd normally be thrilled and even excited at such an opportunity but her mind was plagued with thoughts about her friends, especially Leah, and her family, her already very concerned parents. Sure, a lot of kids take impromptu summer vacations but never to other dimensions entirely ... Would she ever see them again?
Sensing her unease, Vektor slid his way over to the perturbed Lexi, remarkably stealthy for somebody wearing so much armor and walking on tiled floors. He noticed Lexi staring blankly at a cell phone, something he was somewhat familiar with having spent some time in the "regular human realm" as he was calling it.
"That's a ... communication device, yes?" Vektor nodded, putting an arm around Lexi to console her. The arm, while meant to be an emotionally and symbolically warm gesture of comfort felt a bit chilling instead to the armor clad young Lexi who squirmed a bit to the side, not meaning to offend him but just not expecting it entirely. He simply let out a short ahem and continued to speak, "A cell phone, right?"
"Y-Yes..." Lexi nodded. She didn't mean to seem afraid or trepidatious towards the nobleman but there was something about his approach, and for that matter the general demeanor of everybody in this new dimension that didn't have her feeling her warm and fuzzy self. She usually loved to make new friends, especially in a situation where she was the "unknown" -- she wanted to somehow "disarm" the others who seemed less accepting of her but at the same time, she wasn't sure how much she could trust any of them either, especially with knowledge of appearance altering crystals that could have her facing alien duplicates of who already appeared alien to her.
"It's ... decent..." Vektor surmised, referring to the cell phone, while he raised his wrist to demonstrate something, "not as advanced as this of course..."
A moment would go by with very little sound save for a low hum. A moment later, Emerald's annoyed face would appear projected on Vektor's shiny gauntlet covered wrist as a hologram of her face, a bit flickery but more than capable of getting the job done.
"Yes Vektor?" Emerald asked, "also, aren't you like 20 feet from me?"
Vektor would peer over to see his jade dressed cohort was correct. Emerald sat not even across the large scale room, adjusting her right anklet while simultaneous fighting with her holographic wrist comm. She looked up at him annoyed, both in physical form and in her hologram representation.
"Apologies Emerald..." Vektor sighed, a slight chuckle in his voice "I was simply demonstrating to Alexis the communications technology we possess..."
"Excellent..." Emerald groaned, not really focused on such things as she bent out of the frame to finish suiting up for battle, "maybe after the fight you can take her to an electronics emporium..."
Lexi simply tried to hold back a chuckle. It was one of the few that she had felt since coming to Quartzaria ... a rare moment of playful prodding between the two interdimensional beings that reminded her of something similar that would take place with Leah, Josh, Chris or just about anyone really. It was a strangely relatable moment, even as it was fleeting.
Lexi nodded, keeping her eyes fixated on the cell phone which still held some power, in fact its battery had barely taken a hit despite how long she had spent away from a charger.
"I just ... I hope I can talk to my friends again..." Lexi sighed, particularly worried about Leah. She had no knowledge of her best friends whereabouts after the Roxie situation. She assumed she got out of traffic safely but what if the police had found her and tried to detain her or worse? What if Roxie found her way back and tried something rash?
"I'm sure you will..." Vektor said reassuringly, while patting Lexi on the shoulder, still not quite learning his lesson from his last attempt at physical comforting methodology. "In the meantime, perhaps we can improve your cellular device ... fix it's parameters so you can contact them in the future?"
"You ... you can do that?" Lexi asked, half astounded but then based on what she had seen to this point, it actually wasn't the most implausible scenario.
"We can certainly try ..." Vektor nodded, "...after the fight. I apologize but I need you to be as focused as possible on what's going to happen ... my guards, Ruby, Emerald and I will all be there to guide you but this is an unfamiliar land for you ... we may have safe passage up to the mountains but we may not ... we need to be prepared for all possibilities and..."
"Hey, I got it" Lexi said with a confident nod, showing her focus by sliding the cell phone onto a glass table nearby. "I am going phoneless... which ... isn't really all that significant I realize when the phone is already rendered useless ... although say ... do you have any idea why my phone is like ... not losing charge?"
"Hmmm..." Vektor asked aloud to himself while staring at the cell phone on the table. It seemed to be attracting very small particle like sparks to it. "It could be the atmosphere here ..."
"Really?" Lexi asked
"Yes." Vektor answered with confidence, "our atmosphere here, especially in contrast to your native dimension ... no offense, seems to be empowered with a certain extra spark, an energy ... it courses through the land, it allows us to power technology and constantly invent new things ..."
"So ... your air is made of electricity or something?" Lexi asked, not completely understanding the concept, although her and electrical energy didn't have the best history of late.
"I'm not sure it's quite as simple as that ... but your phone isn't used to being in such an environment, it's almost like being surrounded by a power generator at all time... that could be a possible explanation for why it's not losing juice"
Lexi nodded, looking over at the phone and noticing it tick up from 67 to 68% power despite its idle state. She simply turned away, deciding instead to heed the advice of the others and focus on what's to come.
"So ... Vector..." Lexi sighed, noticing already she messed up, "Sorry ... Vektor... what are we looking at here? You said your guards are coming with us? How many guards do you have?"
"Sadly a little less than a dozen..." Vektor lamented, "our numbers have been hit very hard... while we do have additional troops in reserve, they've been badly injured or worse, quantum corrupted..."
"Quantum what what?" Lexi stuttered
"It's a ... oh dear..." Vektor sighed, "I shouldn't have said anything but ... it's a state of temporary mental paralysis ... a sort of ... doubting of ones self ... when you're exposed to paradox power, such as that from the crystal, you may over time believe that you ARE the person you shapeshift into ... it can become so strong that even after being seperated from the crystal you still have such delusions and it can take weeks or even longer to recover from it ..."
Lexi looked concerned, and understandably so. These were soldiers and people who were expecting to deal with this strange brand of magic. Lexi had no experience with anything of the sort, only some mild size changing and what she had seen from her chance encounter with fairies a while back. Granted, Lexi had seen more paranormal things in the past year than 99% of humankind sees in their entire lifetime, but for this dimension, she was pretty inexperienced and maybe even a liability, at least in her mind.
"If ... you didn't think I was ready for this..." Lexi stuttered, "you would say so, right?"
"Of course..." Vektor said staunchly. She strangely believed him on that. He seemed a bit daring in some regards but not the type that would risk a persons life, be it one he knew or a "dimensional newcomer" "Had you opted to stay in the birdcage and remain smol, simply kicking about, then I would have respected that and left you be but you showed an interest, you engaged and you didn't back down even from a new unusual situation..."
"Yeah..." Lexi shrugged, "I... tend to do that"
"It's no normal feat" Vektor added, "most people would shrink in fear ... um... sorry, no wordplay was intended... but yeah ... I would've understood if you wanted to hide away or retreat until we could safely return you home..."
"And you can ... return me home?" Lexi asked hopefully
"With certainty..." Vektor said, "Having been on both sides of the portal walls now, I am more than familiar with how it was formed initially both here and there, and having been in the head of the Doctor for some time, his knowledge combined with my own makes me more confident than ever that I could have a working dimensional machine of a similar caliber ready in no time at all ... once we've returned our dear Sapphire home safely of course..."
"And ... the doctor... Giovanni I think his name was?" Lexi asked, "how much DO you know about him? I'm just curious..."
"Well..." Vektor begun, before being distracted by Ruby who impatiently tapped her metal covered foot against the floor, waiting to board her own vehicle, a sort of elaborate red and white wheel shaped hovercraft with a sharp end on the front, armed with similar weaponry as the others vehicles.
"We going today or what?" Ruby sneered, "or shall we give Paradox and all them more time to mobilize their troops?"
"Right. Right. Sorry" Vektor sighed, putting his hand on Lexi again and sort of forcefully ushering her towards a waiting garage port. "I apologize Lady Lexington but we'll have to continue this conversation at a later time, when it's safer to do so ... in the meantime, I must finish preparing for the trip and my two mechanics will take over from here showing you the features of your vehicular cruiser ... er ... car, I believe you call it"
With that, the garage door would slowly open and Lexi was momentarily stunned in a good way to see her beautiful purple vehicle on display for her, it was almost like it was spinning in front of her like some kind of crazy fantasy. Oh wait, it actually WAS spinning as it was on a steel rotating platform with bright purple neon underlights on it.
"I told you to cut that out!" a brutish looking man in silver and gold armor decreed to his colleague who reluctantly hit a button, causing the hydraulics to let out a long sustained hiss as the car ceased its rotation.
"Sorry, this is like my favorite part, sir..." the younger man who only had about half his armor on sighed. Lexi could see his face and he looked like a well meaning young man with scruffy blonde hair who shrugged, trying to appease the newcomer with a quick quip, "I mean, you gotta have a little fun, right?"
Lexi simply smiled and nodded
The older man shook his head and let out an exhale.
"Okay ... so ... Lord Vektor wanted us to perform the following modifications on the Q-Z-RTek287 -- Stratacruze Pontathalon..." the older gentlemen said showing her a long list of notes that she probably wouldn't have followed if it were written in plain English -- cars were never her thing. This list seemed to go on for miles though, including parts and modifications she had never even heard of. "Pretty standard stuff, although he had us install a variable molecular-auto transmission"
"Oh.... oh yeah!" Lexi nodded, trying to appear more mature and understanding in this moment as she faked some confidence in reading over the confusing paperwork.
"You have no idea what that is, do you?" the frank and curt older man said. Lexi perused the paperwork further to see the heading read "Thunder Cloud -- Master Mechanic"
"Your name is ... Thunder ... Cloud?" Lexi asked with a confused look
"Yeah and that's my son, Bolt..." Thunder shrugged, "Bolt Lightning... what's your point?"
"You guys all have funny names, huh?" Lexi murmured before keeping her head down and resuming her reading.
"Anyways ... the variable molecular-auto-transmission is what allows the vehicle to drastically alter its molecular structure during times of durress or when enough pressure is applied to the catalytic..."
"It shrinks and grows with you, Ms. Newcomer dimension girl..." Bolt said with an awkward chuckle, spinning in his hand what appeared to be a wrench but with 4 ends instead of two. Thunder just rolled his eyes and exhaled, looking back at his hapless son with a sneer.
"...and this is who I leave the family business to... great..." Thunder sighed, "anyways ... here's your key"
"Oh, it has a key..." Lexi said, drawing yet another raised eyebrow from the elder mechanic who looked perplexed and more concerned than ever to be relinquishing the shiny chrome with purple accent key. "Oh no! I mean, yes of course it has a key! I just ... yknow, everything else in this world is so ... topsy turvy I thought maybe you had .. gotten further than ... keys ... never mind, I'll uh ... I'll have the key, please"
The key was dropped into Lexi's hand and as her heart raced with joy, she also tried to keep her mission and focus in mind as she clicked a button that opened the door, but not before the car itself emitted a stylish and high pitched beep of the horn. Lexi squealed at this and the sound was undeniably cute and charming.
"Heh, I like her..." Bolt said to his dad as he simply watched Lexi settle into the comfortable leather seat of the ride. It was certainly more pleasant than the junk cars her parents and her had test drove over the past couple weeks prior. "It's nice when you see somebody really APPRECIATE what we do, yknow?"
"Yeah whatever..." Thunder sighed, just throwing the metal clipboard with paperwork over on a desk, "be sure to file that later, okay? And clean up all this crap you got on the floor! I'm tired of stepping on lugnuts!"
"Yes, sir ... s-sorry sir..." Bolt sighed, his jovial moment lasting very briefly before he resumed sweeping the floor of the auto garage, presumably preparing for the next cruiser or vehicle to be worked on. Lexi shot him a smile as she revved the car and slowly drove it out of the next garage door that would open in front of her letting in the sunlight, or at least some version of it.
Vektor wasn't kidding about the Quartzaria Kingdom having its own atmosphere ... it was even more than that. It had its own sky... dazzled with a deep purple and gold, the air seemingly made of falling stars with glints of white almost constantly in the air like an array of the most beautiful fireflies you've ever seen.
At least visibility wasn't going to be a problem. Heck, Lexi couldn't even tell if it was day or night time with a bright white orb floating in the sky above them, unclear if that was their sun or moon. She could swear the sky was more orange-ish when she arrived, signifying maybe THAT was the day time ... or maybe THIS was?
The crackling sounds of other engines revving alongside her as she cautiously drove the car into the lavender sky snapped her out of the euphoria as she peered over to see Ruby on her right, in a "Tron-like" wheel shaped hovercraft and Emerald on her left, driving a fairly flat (seriously, how did she fit in there) sort of futuristic looking jade colored cruiser with very trim features, that still featured weapons on the undercarriage.
"H-Hey Vektor... do I have uh ... guns too?" Lexi asked worriedly. She was a decent driver despite not having driven a lot in the last couple years but she wasn't exactly Spyhunter when it came to operating gun turrets. Heck, she hadn't even fired a regular old gun before.
Vektor was too far ahead in his own black and gold chariot/motorbike looking contraption to hear her. She sighed, before looking down and seeing icons on a GPS sized screen on the dashboard. Each icon showed the face of someone else in her guild, including the two extra guards who joined them by vehicle, named Cloak and Dagger.
The others were airborn, fairly high above, serpentining the skies and leaving behind gold streaks of lightning to literally blaze a trail.
Lexi peered up a bit concerned at that and almost reading her mind, Vektor's image appeared on her car's dashboard screen.
"Lexi!" Vektor announced, only audible to Lexi herself at this moment, "Follow the trail my aerial fleet is leaving, should you get seperated from the pack, it will give you a guideline of where to go ... it's a fairly straight shot through the city to get to the mountainside but it won't be easy, especially for someone who isn't familiar with the roads here ... no offense..."
"I sense a ... girls can't drive comment coming..." Lexi rolled her eyes, leaning back in her seat unamused. To this effect, Ruby and Emerald both patched themselves into the video call, appearing as icons alongside their master, Lord Vektor.
"Newbie's about to school you, Vektor..." Emerald smirked
"I don't know ... no offense to new girl but ... these roads have a habit of eating rookies alive ... sometimes literally..." Ruby warned
"Enough banter from the batallion!" Vektor interuppted, squeezing Ruby and Emerald's images off the grid in favor of his own which he then replaced with a large GPS map of the city they were about to be traveling through.
"we're going to be taking a couple different routes to hopefully divert any enemy traffic or resistence that may see us coming..." Vektor instructed. "You'll stay with me on the west route ... Emerald and Ruby will run interference on the east route ... Cloak and Dagger have the straight central route through town ... they all lead to the mountainside but hopefully we're all able to make it there successfully ... as a team..."
"Hopefully?" Lexi raised an eyebrow, not loving the sound of that. Yet the moment of the engines revving, her teammates on either side of her and the seemingly infinite highway of purple that stretched out in front of her definitely had her juices going.
"You can do this, Lady Lexington..." Vektor reassured, before finally blipping off the screen.
"Yeah..." Lexi muttered to herself, "I can do this ... I can kick some ass!!"
After a long pause, Ruby's voice came through her car speakers, even as her image didn't.
"You uh ... realize you left us all on speakerphone?" Ruby sneered
"Embarassing..." Emerald sang teasingly. Lexi just grunted and hit the big red X to take them all off comm for now.
With a grip of the steering wheel and a look of steely determination, Lexi set her eyes on the vast unknown in front of her.
Now it was time to battle. Now ... it was time to drive.
Giantess World
