“What do you mean again?” I asked, staring at the two superheroes with apprehension.

I could feel my anxiety started to grow now. Clearly something bad was going to happen, and I was already feeling that instinct to hide under the nearest rock until it was safe.

Neither Vulptrix nor Nightbinder had time to answer me, because the world decided that now was a great time to flash a brilliant white. Soon after the white light hit me from all angles, I was struck by crashing pain all throughout my body that drove me to the ground. Dimly I was aware that someone was groaning in pain near me, and the two other girls were swearing a little further away.

I lay there on the ground for long moments after the pain and light had faded, just taking stock of myself with my mind. Gosh that had hurt! Felt like I’d just gone for a run through head height razor grass with my arms wide. I needed to get away from the bad sky and the pain it had inflicted on me. My heartbeat was going mental and my breathing was way too fast. I knew in the back of my mind that I was about to have a panic attack, but I was powerless to stop the rest of my brain from pushing the urgent need to hide.

I could hear people yelling in shrill voices and tensed up even more. Couldn’t they please just stop? Why did they have to keep making this worse? I just wanted to calm down and whoever was around me was talking in a really scary way and I hated it so much. Stop stop stop stop. Please stop. I wanted to move, to run away and find my bed. My bed was safe. I couldn’t move though! I couldn’t get any part of my body to do anything. I just lay there on the cold hard rooftop and shivered.

Dimly a voice resolved nearby, my mind finally parsing what was being said, “I don’t know where she is Nia! This is the third time in as many months that this has happened and every time it does, shit goes mental!”

“She was right there! She’s my kid sister’s girlfriend, not to mention my ticket home! I need to find her!” another voice said, stress vibrating every chord of her speech.

The stress of their voices caused the smallest of whimpers to roll out of my throat unbidden.

“Wait! I heard her! Sylanna where are you? That’s your name right?” the first voice asked, her voice softening, although it still held too much stress for my fear addled mind.

A shuddering breath was all that escaped my lungs this time, but apparently that was all the voice I was coming to realise was Vulptrix needed.

“Shit! She’s right here I can hear it!” she said, her hand fumbling onto my side, “Yeah! She’s here and invisible!”

“How the hell…?” Nia asked in disbelief, “Her spells were all about healing and stuff when I saw her fighting just before.”

Vulptrix’s hands worked their way gently across me as she said, “Damn she’s shaking really hard. Why? Maybe it’s her- No! Oh sweetie!”

She stopped speaking and pulled me into an embrace that was so so warm, and added to it I felt her tail settle on top of me like a blanket. Something about her tail reconnected my terror trapped mind back to my body and I was able to put my arms around the huge fluffy tail and hug. Things started to calm down again in my mind, and I was eventually able to open my eyes and look around.

“Hey there! We lost you for a bit,” Vulptrix smiled down at me.

I smiled back sheepishly and got a better bearing on my surroundings. Nightbinder was talking quietly to Nia a few meters away while I lay in the fox girl’s lap.

“Don’t worry, I used to get those sometimes too. Sucks hey?” she smiled again.

I nodded, still unable to use my words.

“So you got powers now. Genuine superpowers rather, instead of whatever magic you got rolling around too, so that’s pretty cool too hey?” she asked, clearly trying to draw me back out. I was grateful though. She seemed nice.

“Yeah I guess… I hope I don’t have to like, panic every time I want to use them though,” I giggled.

She nodded thoughtfully, “Yeah that could be a problem hey.”

I heard some shuffling feet, and turned my head to see the two more badass members of our group coming back. Nia had a frown creasing her brow and Nightbinder looked somewhat confused.

“So apparently these two aren’t from… around here,” Nightbinder said with a note of disbelief.

“Yeah. As in we’re from a different reality. We somehow ended up here after I killed a sort of… clone or avatar of this crazy fractal geometry teacher’s nightmare of a being we’ve been fighting. No one has ever been thrown off into interdimensional weirdness before though,” Nia nodded.

“Yeah? Well shit that’s… Does it have like super freaky eyes? Like they don’t have any right to exist? Really kinda terrifying? Vulptrix asked, and unlike Nightbinder she seemed to be in full belief of what Nia was saying.

“Yeah it does!” I exclaimed.

“She’s right. Every one of the avatars of that thing are the same. Same shifting creepy skin, same freaky eyes…” Nia shivered, “How do you know about it? Don’t tell me it’s here too?”

“Nah I don’t think so,” Vulptrix said with a shake of her head, “But I saw it in the visions when I touched the edge of a portal. It’s creepy as fuck and I honestly think it might have killed me if I hadn’t been interrupted. It called me a facet.”

“A facet huh? That’s a small piece of a larger gemstone or similar…” Nia frowned.

“A small piece… like a Shard?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.

I looked up at the girl holding me, but she was trading a worried look with her girlfriend the dark angel.

“What are you thinking?” I asked tentatively.

“That I might have a piece of that thing stuck in me,” she said softly, her eyes staying fixed on Nightbinder’s.

That didn’t sound good! I patted her tail in sympathy and got a weak smile from her in return. She was so cool. I liked her… I wish I had a bigger sister like her.

“That should be pretty easy to test. Let me whip up a spell. The energies that thing use are pretty hard to miss. Really wild and chaotic, like it’s unsure how it wants to work at any one time,” Nia said confidently, already weaving patterns with her fingers in the air.

“Damn magic must be nice to know,” Nightbinder said wistfully.

Nia didn’t respond, her expression one of intense concentration. The spell took form over a minute or so, and it was beautiful. The swirling interweaving lines of energy were fascinating to watch as they formed. I tried to trace the path of one strand, but I very quickly got lost in the complexity of the whole. It was mesmerising.

“There!” she said at last, casting the spell with a flourish.

The weave collapsed into an orb of shining metal, like a floating ball bearing the size of my fist. Wait no… the size of someone else’s fist. My fists were tiny so I can’t really use them for size comparisons. I mean, unless the thing is small and round. I don’t know!

“It should extend some points to show any nearby sources of the reality warping energies,” Nia told us as we watched.

We saw the surface of the thing wobble, then three lines of silvery metal snaked out a few inches from it. One pointed to Vulptrix… but the other two pointed to Nia and myself. Oh no… I had some part of that thing in me too? When did that get there? I should have realised if…. Hmm what if that was what happened just now?

“Fuck,” Nia sighed.

“Uuuhhhm?” I squeaked.

“That’s…” Vulptrix gasped.

“Oh well now I just feel left out,” Nightbinder grumbled.

“Wait, left out?” Vulptrix laughed in disbelief.

“Yeah I mean you all have this cursed destiny thing going on and I’m like, just your average garden variety dark angel chick,” she pouted.

“Babe you are anything but garden variety,” her girlfriend replied from above me with a smile and a wink.

Nightbinder coughed, blushed, and looked over at Nia, “So what does this mean?”

Nia was laughed, “It means you two are cute as fuck, but if you’re asking about the spell… well I’d say we have a lot of problems to deal with, and none of them can be figured out or fixed here.”

Nightbinder’s blush deepened and she looked up to the darkened sky for support. Vulptrix chuckled at her predicament.

“So that means we go home?” I asked hopefully.

“We attempt to get home. I need some way to power my portal gauntlet and configure it to take us between realities rather than just from A to B,” Nia explained.

Gosh I wish I had a portal gauntlet. I could sleep in later and then just portal to school! That would be so helpful, and I wouldn’t get wet on the way to school during the three seasons it rained in Wellington.

“Right… how do you power it?” Nightbinder asked, still trying to deal with her embarrassment.

“We normally use powered crystals, but any magical energy source should work with some jerry rigging,” shrugged Nia, absently flicking her mesmerising nebula hair.

“Where would we get one?” I asked hopefully. I wanted to go home now.

“I have no bloody clue,” she sighed.

I sagged against Vulptrix and sighed along with Nia. Damn… it wasn’t going to be as simple as running down to the dairy for some chips or whatever. That was disappointing.

Nearby I heard a cough, and we all looked over at Nightbinder. She was staring expectantly at Vulptrix with a raised eyebrow. Vulptrix was doing her best to look confused, but her tail was twitching in my grasp.

“Ka-Vullllptrix. You can help these people with their little power problem,” the taller angel chided.

“What do you mean?” she asked in a very unconvincing tone of confusion.

“Those little cubes in the hips of your suit,” Nightbinder prompted.

Wait the fox girl might have power for us? I looked up at her with pleading eyes.

“I don’t know what…” she started, then looked down at me and her face began a little war of expressions, finally settling on resignation, “Oh yes… fine. But if I give them one, I get to steal another one okay?”

“Hey now that’s-” Nightbinder blurted, taking a step towards her girlfriend.

“Niiiightbinder,” Vulptrix whined over the top of her.

It seems Nightbinder was a bit of a sucker for the puppy fox eyes too because she winced and threw up her hands, “Oh my god fine, but tomorrow, and we’re finding somewhere you’ll be doing good by taking stuff too alright?”

Vulptrix pumped her fist triumphantly, almost bopping me on the head in the process, “Yus!”

Meanwhile, Nia was shaking her head in wry amusement. She pulled the sleeve of her jacket back to expose a gauntlet made of ribbons of metal that had been woven in a strange but aesthetically pleasing way.

“This is the thing that needs powering. If it’s okay… can I see this cube? It might not even be compatible,” she warned.

“If it isn’t compatible I still get to steal more,” Vulptrix said even as she shifted me off her and stood to extract something from her suit.

The suit flowed open at the hip, revealing a cube made of a dark grey stone. From where I now stood I could see that there was exceedingly fine lines of some translucent grey material inlaid into it like thin veins of marble.

“Here,” she said, reluctantly handing the cube to Nia.

“Thank you very much,” Nia nodded, taking the cube carefully in her hand.

While Vulptrix had handled it roughly, Nia was far more careful and gentle with it as she began to test it. She carefully zapped it with spells and stared at it intently for a few minutes, before humming and considering it thoughtfully.

“I mean, it’s crude as all hell compared to a builder crystal, but it might work for a single charge between realities. I just hope the weird shit in the magic around here doesn’t mess with my device in ways I can’t predict,” she said finally.

“So we can get home?” I asked eagerly, then realised we had a problem, “But which home do we go to? Your world or mine?”

“Mine, we’ll go there and then I can get more fuel for this thing. We can work through that world I met you on to find a way to get you home,” she replied carefully.

I don’t think she was confident this would all work. Hopefully the drive to see her sister again would motivate her more.

“So how much time will you need to make it work?” Nightbinder asked.

“Oh not long I should think. Hell it should only take me bending a few of the ribbons of metal that hold the crystal normally. These things are built pretty modular and able to be easily jury rigged so that teams out in the field can do exactly this type of thing to get home,” she told us, already working inside the gauntlet.

“Well I guess after you leave we won’t be seeing you again?” Vulptrix asked, sounding a little sad over that prospect.

“I wouldn’t count on us being out of your lives forever, or even too long at all. I think we have a lot in common with this strange energy and I will damn well get to the bottom of it,” Nia grunted as she messed around with the internals of her portal thingy.

Vulptrix made a noise like she’d just remembered something painful and took the few quick steps she needed to throw herself into Nightbinder’s arms.

“Watch out for that,” she told us from within her girlfriend’s comforting arms. Her expression was clouded with worry and fear as she continued, “That shit will try to take you over. It turned me into an emotionless death machine on multiple occasions. It’s powerful too. Make sure your friends can hold you back.”

“That sounds comforting,” Nia gulped, pausing in her attempts to mess with the device.

That was scary. Like… if that happened to me in my home… shit no one in my world would be able to stop me. There’s no superheroes on our earth, and Karen was just a fighter so she had no crazy abilities to keep a rampaging death machine from killing people. I hope nothing bad happens with it.

Nia finished her tinkering with a grunt of satisfaction, and held the mangled gauntlet up for us to see like it was a prize.

“Alright got it. You ready kid?” she asked me.

I nodded and bounded across the small space to her side, “What do we do?”

“Well, I hit this button and hope for the best. I’m running on the assumption that the Orchid’s Keep Beacon will pull us in even if we’re all the damn way wherever we are,” she told me, shifting some things in the gauntlet.

“Wait, let’s say goodbye first!” I blurted, then rush over to Vulptrix.

“Thanks for the help, and for calming me down from the panic attack!” I told her, then launched into a quick hug.

She seemed to be a bit surprised at first, but she wrapped her arms around me after that with a giggle, “You too Sylanna. Come visit when your friend here gets her gauntlet sorted eh?”

“Yeah! I wanna see your crazy superhero world!” I nodded.

A real life superhero alternate universe? Screw all the movies I wanted to see the real thing! It was so exciting.

“Hah, it’s not quite as exciting as the avenger’s movies sorry,” she laughed.

“Which ones? Cos the second Avenger’s cycle was really really cool! I loved the battle of washington with the x-men and stuff,” I said with a smirk, not wanting to miss out on the once in a lifetime opportunity to tease. 

“Wait what? Oh that sounds cool. When does that happen?” Nightbinder said from next to us.

I laughed and dashed back to Nia with a wink, “That’s spoilers! See ya Nightbinder!”

“You little shit!” she laughed.

“See you both,” the two real super heroes waved goodbye.

“You too,” Nia nodded then turned to her gauntlet, slipped it on, and pulled me to her with the other, “Alright kid, this is going to fucking suck.”

“What do you mean?” I squeaked.

I didn’t have time to ask. Instead of punching a hole in the air like that guy Farden had back at the battle, Nia threw us through the air with a leap that transitioned from a normal rooftop into somewhere else in the blink of an eye. I felt nausea hit me like a truck and I doubled over and dry heaved a few times. Gosh that felt like… that felt like what I imagine instantly hitting mach 2 feels like. Gosh that was painful.

“Clearly I fucked up somewhere,” Nia coughed from nearby.

I opened my eyes to see… my room? What? My room on our Earth… where Karen lives! Yay!

“This is my room!” I blurted.

“Ah shit,” Nia groaned.