Chapter Thirteen: Return to Dakadania

"How far until we reach your place?" Tony asked.

"We're about five minutes away right now!" said Bobby. Phillip looked out the rear window and saw another police car join the pursuit.

"We've got another one after us!" said Phillip. "That's two cop cars chasing us now!"

"What about the giant girls?" Bobby asked. "How close are they?"

"They're maintaining the same distance it seems like," said Phillip, "but I would go faster if I were you, just in case!"

"We're already doing 90!" said Bobby. "How fast can they run, Tony?"

"They're close to two hundred feet tall, so they have a leg span of close to a hundred feet. I would say they can run a hundred yards every few seconds."

"What does that calculate to in miles per hour?" Bobby asked.

"I've never tried to calculate the gait of a Dakadanian before, it never came up in the graphic novel!" said Tony. "But I know one thing, even if they can keep up with us for a short period of time, they're going to have to stop to catch their breath eventually!"

"The next off-ramp takes us close to my property!" said Bobby. "I hope the police don't use spike strips!"

"If we get popped before we get to the saucer, I'm gonna be pissed!" said Tony.

Meanwhile, Caitlin and Lacey were struggling to keep up with Bobby's car. They thundered along the freeway, occasionally accidentally stomping on slower vehicles that were stuck in traffic. When they came close to Bobby's car, they tried to jump to catch up, but they fell short.

"I'm getting tired!" said Caitlin. "I can't keep up with them!"

"We have to stay as close to them as possible!" said Lacey, looking behind her at Caitlin. "We have to put in a good effort!"

Caitlin doubled over and held onto her knees with her hands, and caught her breath. "You go ahead without me!"

"I know a shortcut if we take the streets!" said Lacey. "I know we won't be able to get there before them, but we might be able to get there at the same time as them!"

"Okay!" said Caitlin, standing up. "Lead the way!"

Bobby drove the car around corners at a high rate of speed, grazing parked cars along the way. "Does that saucer need to be re-fueled?" Bobby asked.

"It's solar powered," said Tony. "In the story where the characters used it, they took off twenty or thirty years in the future, so the technology is a lot more advanced than ours. It can't fly indefinitely, but it can go pretty far before it needs to land and re-charge."

'We're almost there!" said Bobby. "Another five hundred yards!"

"Pull up right next to the saucer," said Tony, "we're barely going to have enough time to disembark, jump in, and take off!"

"I won't be able to say goodbye to my wife!" said Bobby. "It's just as well, her real husband was a twin of mine from a parallel universe who got killed on Dakadania anyways!"

Meanwhile, Caitlin and Lacey jumped over the wall separating the freeway from the nearby homes in the area, and leapt onto the street on the other side. Lacey made her way to the main street, and followed it toward Bobby's property, while Caitlin followed close behind. They had no choice but to stomp parked cars along the way as they made a mad dash to their destination. Caitlin tripped over a traffic light and destroyed it as she tried to pass, they were in too much of a hurry to try to avoid running into things, or destroying things.

"There's two more cop cars tailing us!" said Phillip, looking out the rear window. Bobby shifted into a higher gear and sped up, until he saw the saucer in his back yard. He went through the back gate, tearing through a chain and padlock, which thoroughly damaged the front of his car and cracked his windshield. The car screeched to a stop right next to the saucer as the four police cars came to a stop nearby. Caitlin and Lacey arrived at the same time as the last police cruiser arrived on the property.

Tony, Phillip, and Bobby leapt from Bobby's Camaro, and Tony opened the gullwing doors and they piled in. Tony activated the control console and piloted it, and the saucer flew vertically into the air while the gullwing doors were still open. Lacey jumped into the air and tried to grab the saucer as it rose in the air, but it was rising too swiftly, and all she grabbed was air. Phillip could see the officers shooting at them from several hundred yards below as the saucer ascended, as well as Caitlin and Lacey towering over the police before Tony activated the controls that closed the doors.

"They got away!" said Caitlin, disappointed.

"Never mind that," Lacey replied, "Tony and Phillip will be in our hands soon enough! We have to get back to suicide ridge, and go through the dimensional nexus point back to Dakadania!!" Caitlin followed Lacey, and they made their way back toward the coast.

Meanwhile, back on the saucer, Phillip and Bobby had strapped themselves into their seats. "Where to now?" Phillip asked.

"I know of a dimensional nexus point where there are no tractor beams that can capture our saucer once we reach Dakadania!" said Tony.

"Is there any guarantee that the nexus points of this world correspond with the ones in your graphic novel?" said Bobby, still clutching the 'magic' lamp.

"No, but we don't really have much choice," said Tony. "So far, everything I've had in the graphic novel has panned out in the real version of Dakadania!"

"How far is the nexus point?" Phillip asked.

"About two hundred miles away, so we should be there within a few minutes," said Tony.

"How fast can this thing go?" Bobby asked.

"It can travel at hypersonic speed, that's five times the speed of sound, but I'm not sure of the top speed, I never addressed that in the comic," said Tony. "But I know it can haul ass."

"Do you have the cloaking device activated?" Phillip asked.

"Oh, thanks for reminding me!" said Tony, as he flipped a switch. "There's a new sequence of buttons here on the control console that weren't there before Bobby made his wish!"

Tony piloted the flying saucer over the Ocean, with land still in sight. There were no windows in the saucer, but there were three different monitors with views of the outside placed in the middle of their view, and to the left and right.

"Where the hell are you taking us?" Phillip asked.

"The dimensional nexus we are going to travel through changes position to capture downed airplanes," said Tony, "it's somewhere off the coast. We need to locate it so we can shoot through it and return to Dakadania."

"How are you going to locate it?" Phillip asked. "I thought those dimensional nexus thingies were invisible to the naked eye."

"Any dimensional nexus gives off a magnetic signature that can be picked up by certain types of equipment." said Tony. "This saucer comes equipped with a magnetometer that can pinpoint precisely where any dimensional nexus is located! We're almost there right now!"

Phillip unstrapped himself and looked at the gauges on the control console. "Why are we picking up speed?"

"We need to travel at hypersonic speed to evade the tractor beams after we pass through the portal," said Tony. "This isn't going to be easy!"

"What's that image on the monitor on the control console?" Phillip asked.

"That's the magnetic anomaly the magnetometer is detecting. The dimensional portal is somewhere in the center of it!"

"Will it be hard to access?" Phillip asked. "Can we find the portal?"

"The portals between Dakadania and Earth were designed to capture planes, boats and automobiles without any difficulty. Finding the portal isn't the problem, it's navigating through the tractor beams without crashing into something once we reach Dakadania!"

Tony pushed forward on the speed lever, and the saucer picked up speed. "Strap yourself in! We're in for a bumpy ride!"

The saucer tore through the dimensional vortex and emerged in the sky above Dakadania. On Earth they were over water, but over the skies of Dakadania they were over land.

"Why are we over land?" Phillip asked. "We were over water when we were on Earth!"

"The planet Dakadania is 36 times bigger than Earth, so the geography isn't the same," said Tony.

"Shouldn't we be crushed by the square-cube law because of this planet's increased mass?" Phillip asked. "As an engineer, that has me curious!"

"Each atom in the Dakadanian universe has a dimensional matrix involving anti-graviton particles that decrease the weight of any atom, despite the increased mass. Someone intentionally forged this universe, it wasn't created by accident."

"Did we evade the tractor beams?" Phillip asked.

"It looks like it, but I'm not sure if their scanners picked us up or not!" said Tony.

"If we have a cloaking device, they shouldn't have detected us, right?" Phillip asked.

"That's not necessarily true," Tony answered, "they can't see us visually or track us on conventional radar, but they might have a scanner that detects when an object passes through the portal, whether it's cloaked or not!"

"Hopefully, it won't matter," said Phillip. "We just need to find a secluded spot to make a hidden base where we can hide out!"

"We've got bigger problems!" said Tony. "Traveling at hypersonic speed drained our power supply, if we don't find a place to land soon to re-charge, our cloaking device will power down, and we'll be sitting ducks!"

"Then find a secluded spot!" Phillip replied.

"The only places we can choose from are in populated areas!" said Tony.

Meanwhile, back on Earth, Lacey and Caitlin were drawing a lot of attention.

"Come on, they're gone!" said Lacey. "We have to get back home! Our only choice is to get back to suicide ridge as fast as possible!"

Lacey turned and ran toward the coast, and Caitlin followed her. They had a distance of about twenty miles to cover, but at their colossal size, it wouldn't take too long to get there. Before long, police and news helicopters were flying over their heads.

"Can they hurt us?" Caitlin asked as the two giantesses ran.

"If they send jets after us they can," said Lacey. "I studied Earth technology in one of my classes back home. They have missiles and ammunition powered by gunpowder that can hurt us."

A group of people watched the scene unfold on a big screen television in a sports bar, and they could simultaneously see Lacey and Caitlin walk by in real life from the huge window of the bar.

"Look!" said a woman. "There they are!" The other patrons turned and watched as the colossal kids thundered through the cityscape.

Lacey turned her head back and spoke to Caitlin. "The streets are too crowded, we can make better time by taking the freeway."

Lacey stepped over some houses to a street that ran next to a large freeway, then stepped onto the actual freeway, crushing the guardrails in the center divider. Caitlin followed close behind, and the two of them began running toward their destination.

"I can see the coast!" said Caitlin.

Just then, three fighter jets scrambled over them, and shot straight toward the coast, then arced vertically before returning and heading straight toward the giant girls. Lacey still had her equipment bag on her, so she reached for her shrink ray-gun and took aim at the fighter jet in the front of the squadron. She took aim when they got close, and pulled the trigger. The lead fighter jet was reduced in size, and slowed down. The other two rallied back into position and came back toward them from behind. Lacey took aim again, and missed. The two jets shot in front of the girls, then shot vertically upwards and turned around to engage the girls again. This time, Lacey took aim and fired on the jet on the right, and connected. It also shrunk down to a dramatically smaller size, identical to the size of the other miniaturized jet. The girls reached the coast, and found their way to suicide ridge.

"Jump!" said Lacey, and the two of them leaped down, and disappeared through the portal and landed in a force field in Dakadania.