Strike 3: The Returning Sunrise (28 page)

As the beasts flapped their wings and grew closer, Tobin could make them out more clearly—they were the trigulsaurs. Full-grown, dark green-skinned, long-limbed dinosaurs over sixty feet tall, with wings under their front arms and three large horns: one on their snout and two growing off the top of their head. They had spikes running down their backs all the way down to their tails, and their red eyes were filled with fury.

Before the screeching trigulsaurs even reached Boston Common, they began to unclench their jaws, unleashing waves of orange, scorching fire to the buildings around the park. Whatever structures the dinosaurs didn’t engulf in flames, they simply tore down with their clawed, razor-tipped limbs and swinging, heavy tails.

The city around the Common was suddenly set ablaze, and the air was filled with the wild, furious screams of flying beasts.

The war had only begun.

“Good god,” Keplar said, watching the six trigulsaurs approaching over the burning rooftops.

“Stand your ground, people,” Orion said, with his eyes cast toward the sky. “This was only a warm-up. Things just got a lot more interesting.”

With her camouflaged fatigues covered in black scorches and her face streaked with dirt, a war-ravaged Ida approached Orion. She held her laser rifle pointed towards the trigulsaurs in the north.

“I’ve been watching you fight bad guys and win since I was in college,” she said to Orion. “Please tell me we are going to survive this.”

“As long as we give it our all, we will be fine,” Orion said. “The only reason we are here is to give Tobin a chance to face the Daybreaker and send him back. We have to remember that. We’re not done here until that happens. We can’t give up. I’m not ready to give up.” He looked to Ida with a smile. “Are you?”

Ida smiled back, reloading her laser rifle. “Of course not. I was just testing you.”

Within seconds, the trigulsaurs were upon them. With all of their wild, animalistic rage unleashed and focused on the heroes, the giant green beasts swooped down and attacked. While three of the dinosaurs breathed fire from above and set the trees of Boston Common ablaze, the other three dinosaurs landed on the ground, digging into the earth and swiping at the heroes with their immense claws. As Tobin winced and turned away, one of the beasts took out two of the Shigeru Knights with one fatal, crunching bite from its jaws.

The superheroes, animal warriors, and rebels began to scatter, their attacks now unfocused and hectic. While some of them continued to blast their weapons and use their superpowers against the trigulsaurs, the lesser-powered heroes and the majority of the rebels retreated into the buildings around the park, ordered there by Orion. Holding a plasma cannon similar to Keplar’s, Wakefield stood next to the dog and fired up at an attacking trigulsaur, but even their double dose of green plasma bursts exploded harmlessly against its scaly hide. As the beast darted forward and swung its fire engine-sized head at them, they were only just able to dive out of the way and take shelter behind a crumbling stonewall.

With his mind racing and trying to think of a strategy, Tobin watched as Captain X-Treme flew in circles around one of the grounded trigulsaurs. With his yellow cape billowing behind him, the hero tried to confuse the fire-breathing creature and wail on it with his fists when it was distracted, but even the powerful, thunderous punches of Captain X-Treme only managed to create a dull
THUD!
against the trigulsaur’s snout. Eventually, Captain X-Treme landed on the back of the dinosaur’s neck, hammering at the beast’s eyes with his punches, but the dinosaur simply whipped its head back and sent the blue-and-yellow-garbed hero sailing across the Common.

“Orion, we can’t take on these things like this,” Tobin said. “In sheer size alone they are overpowering us. We don’t have anyone on our side who’s strong enough to bring one down.”

“What are we gonna do, O?” Keplar said, firing his plasma cannon at a trigulsaur swooping over them. “Time is running out here.”

“Just keep hitting them,” Orion said. “They can’t take on all of us at once.” The old man turned to Wakefield. “Where’s Junior? I thought you said he would be joining us. We could really use his help right now.”

Wakefield’s fists were covered by his bulky, robotic gloves, and his goggles were resting on the top of his balding head. “I don’t know, I tried to look for him this morning, but he was nowhere to be found.”

Wakefield watched as Orion ran toward one of the trigulsaurs, firing his red-tipped, glowing arrows. He knew that he and Orion were simply too old for this—they wouldn’t last much longer against these beasts. And without Orion’s leadership, the rest of the group would shortly follow.

“Damn it, son,” Wakefield muttered to himself. “Where are you?”

In the airplane hangar in Ruffalo Rock Castle, Jennifer and Chad sat in front of the giant red portal in the middle of the room, watching the gateway as if any moment Tobin was going to run back through it and tell them that the day was saved and everything was going to be all right.

But the both of them knew that with every second that passed, that became less and less likely.

Jennifer turned to the control booth on the second floor of the hangar. “Scatterbolt, I know Orion told you not to let us see the monitor, but we have to know what is going on over there.”

In the glass-encased booth, Scatterbolt sat in front of a large, flat monitor embedded in the wall. On it, he could see the rampaging trigulsaurs flying through Boston Common and dismantling the heroes.

“Just—just stay there and wait,” Scatterbolt stammered. “It’s fine. I think...I think they will be back soon.”

Jennifer could tell Scatterbolt was lying. She wracked her brain, desperately trying to figure out what she could do to help.
But she knew she couldn’t. She had to just sit there, and wait—wait and see if Tobin and the others would survive, and wait to see if her and her friends were going to have a home to go back to or not.

“Jen,” Chad said, his voice wavering. “I just thought—through all this, I haven’t even had time to think. But our parents are on the other side of that portal. If Tobin and the others can’t save Earth—if they lose—we’re here. And everyone—everyone we know is over there. What’s going to happen to everyone if Tobin loses?”

Jennifer thought it over. “We have to—we have to just wait. Tobin will do it, Chad. He will. He’ll save us. I know it. He has to.”

Chad looked to the floor, hunched over with his elbows on his knees and his hands against his forehead. Overwhelmed, he began to cry.

Dammit
, Jennifer thought.
Was this Orion’s plan all along?
To bring her and Chad there, to Capricious, where they would be safe, no matter what? That way, even if the rest of the Earth fell to Rigel and the others, they would be safe on Capricious?

Chad was right, Jennifer realized. If Rigel won, her and Chad would be on Capricious, but everyone else? Her family, her mom and dad? They would still be stuck on Earth, with probably no idea what was happening only 40 miles away from them in Boston. Even now, they had no idea what could possibly be in store for them.

And it was all because of Tobin. That was the hardest thing for Jennifer to think about. Of all the super-villains fighting her friends on the other side of the portal, the one leading them was Tobin—the Daybreaker. Not the Tobin she knew, a different Tobin, but still, a boy named Tobin Lloyd. A boy named Tobin Lloyd was leading a team of super-villains who were about to take over the world.

No
, she thought to herself. She wouldn’t accept it. She couldn’t accept it.  The Daybreaker couldn’t do these things to the planet Earth. He was still Tobin Lloyd. Somewhere, underneath the armor and the pain and the confusion, he was still Tobin. And Tobin couldn’t do these things, not unless someone was lying to him and he thought he was doing the right thing. Tobin Lloyd—her best friend—couldn’t be capable of hurting people like this. Whether he was the Daybreaker or not, there had to be a way to reach him.

There had to be a way for
her
to reach him.           

In the control booth, Scatterbolt watched the monitor. The situation in Boston had only gotten worse. The stunning trigulsaurs were destroying Boston Common, setting it and anything inside it ablaze. As the robot watched, eight Rytonian Rebels were almost wiped out in one long swipe of a trigulsaur’s gnarled claws, only to be saved at the last second by Keplar, who dove and pushed them out of the way.

“Orion, why didn’t you let me go?” Scatterbolt said quietly. “I could have helped you. Somehow, I could have helped you.”

Suddenly, a speaker on the control board in front of Scatterbolt beeped, startling him. He turned toward the noise.

Surprisingly, the voice of Wakefield’s son, Junior, came through the speaker. “Scatterbolt, you there?”

Scatterbolt was shocked. “Uh, yeah. Junior, is that you?”

“Yeah, it’s me, SB. Are you in the hangar right now?”

“Yeah. Where are you?”

Scatterbolt suddenly heard a metal clanging in the next room through the cement walls, like someone smashing a sledgehammer against a massive stone.

“I’m in the laboratory next door,” Junior replied. “Clear the area and ready the portal. I’m heading in.”

***

In Boston Common, any kind of advantage the heroes had possessed was gone. The majority of the park was burnt to ashes. They had lost many of their men and woman to the trigulsaurs, who were still rampaging through the sky and on the ground. Even worse, the super-villains of the New Capricious Council had reemerged from the skyscraper, along with a new wave of Eradicators, who were now picking off the decimated heroes as they tried to escape the flames of the dinosaurs.

“Orion,” Ida said, crouching with the old man and Keplar behind a smoking, crumbling brick wall in the middle of the park. “We can’t take much more of this.”

“We gotta move away from here, O,” Keplar said, with both his hands and his plasma cannon singed and smoking. “Get to a different part of the city, draw them out of here, confuse them—I don’t know, but we gotta do something.”

Orion opened his mouth to agree with the dog, but then stopped. He suddenly heard a snapping noise, coming from the eastern end of the Common. It was the unmistakable sound of an inter-planetary portal opening.

“Wait,” Orion said, standing up. He looked toward the east, toward where he and the others had first arrived through their own giant, swirling portal hours before.    

Keplar heard the sound, too. So did Ida. They stood up with Orion and looked toward the east.

First, the heroes saw a red flash in the sky and heard the crack of thunder, the results of a portal opening from Capricious. Then, they heard the footsteps.

Giant, pounding, metal footsteps.

From in between the buildings to the east of Boston Common, Junior emerged in the street, piloting a gigantic, silver-and-yellow, chrome robotic suit. Resting in the chest of the towering robot and now over fifty feet tall—the same height as the buildings around him—he walked down the center of the street toward Boston Common, encased in the shimmering mech armor. When he moved his leg, the robotic suit around him moved its leg. When he moved his right arm, the robotic suit moved its right arm. And when he made a fist, you better believe the suit made a gigantic, titanium, shining fist.

Sprinting into Boston Common, with his footsteps sending earthquakes through the city, Junior pulled his fist back and swung it forward, cold-cocking one of the trigulsaurs across its face, sending a wave of blood spurting from its mouth as its massive body crashed to the earth. Then, turning to his left, Junior grabbed another trigulsaur by its neck, before spinning the beast around in a circle and releasing it, sending it careening across the Common, where it crashed into a patch of leafy trees.

“Here I am, boys!” Junior screamed from inside the yellow-and-silver mech suit, smiling maniacally. “You didn’t think I’d miss this party, did ya? And, thankfully, it looks like you saved some for me!”

Ducking out of the way of a trigulsaur’s darting jaws, Junior weaved to his right, avoiding its swinging tail. From a crouching position, he then popped up and upper-cutted the attacking beast, smashing his fist into the underside of its chin and snapping its head back. Before it could recover, Junior lunged forward with the mech suit’s shoulder, ramming the dino in its exposed stomach and sending it tumbling over backward.

The odds had just been evened. The trigulsaurs were now facing something as massive as them. And, sensing that the giant mech was the only true threat to their existence, the dinosaurs swarmed in on Junior, attacking him with their blazing fire breath and slashing claws. However, in his mech armor, Junior was completely protected. The fire harmlessly engulfed his suit, while the talons of the beasts only managed to produce scraping bursts of sparks against his metallic exterior.

“Hot damn,” Ida said from afar, watching the panicking trigulsaurs swoop down and focus their attacks on the mech suit.

“Is that Junior, that bald psychopath?” Keplar asked. “Have I ever mentioned how much I love that guy?”

Standing next to Keplar, Wakefield jumped into the air, hooting and pumping his fist. “There ya go, boy!” he hollered. “Give ‘em hell! I knew you’d be here on time!”

“All right,” Orion said with a relieved smile. “Here we go. Now let’s take advantage of this and make our way to the skyscraper and force the Daybreaker out ourselves. Tobin, you ready?”

With his jaw dropped, Tobin watched, enthralled, as Junior fought the trigulsaurs. After opening his palm and blasting one of the dinosaurs with a circular, orange laser beam, Junior spun to his left and locked arms with another of the trigulsaurs, grappling with it like a professional wrestler. Then, once he had overpowered the beast, he lifted the enormous creature over his head and bodyslammed it into the ground, before bringing his robotic foot up and stomping on its neck.

“Yeah, just give me a second,” Tobin said to Orion. “Because this is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen.”

***

As Rigel and Nova made their way down the hall on the fourth floor of the Trident, the two villains could hear the screeches of the trigulsaurs outside, along with the metallic clangs of Junior’s giant fists as he swung his arms and broke the massive beasts’ bones. Judging from the increased laser fire and the frantic shouts from the villains of the New Capricious Council, it was clear the heroes were now making their way closer to the skyscraper. All around Rigel and Nova, the occupants of the Trident—the scientists, the war planners, and government workers—were hurriedly and nervously running toward the exit of the building, avoiding the falling ceiling tiles that were dropping each time a tremor from Junior’s swinging fists rocked the building.

Finally, flinging a door open at the end of the hallway, Rigel stepped into the office of Dr. Brooks.

“Doctor?” the red giant said. “It’s time.”

Only minutes later, in the dark, cold science lab tucked away in the Research and Development wing, Rigel was pressed against the wall, seven feet off the floor, with his wrists and ankles strapped to the Daybreaker’s extraction machine. However, this time the machine was not set to extraction—it was set to transfusion.

“The process will be the same as it was for the Daybreaker,” Dr. Brooks said, as he adjusted the settings on the wide control panel of the machine. “Except in this case, the electricity will be going into you, instead of coming out. However, this will not happen immediately. I still need time to ensure—”

“It must begin now,” Rigel said from the machine, turning to his right and eyeing the containment tank next to him. Inside, he could see all of the snapping, blue-and-white energy they had extracted from the Daybreaker. “Begin the process. Transfer 50% of what we have stored.”

“Are you sure about this?” the doctor asked. “I don’t think it’s wise to start so soon when we haven’t—”

“Begin the process,” Rigel growled again.

The doctor knew it was useless to try and reason. “I must warn you that it will be incredibly painful at first. It will be unlike anything you have ever experienced. However, it will only last a moment. After that...” The doctor flipped a switch. “After that, I don’t believe you’ll ever feel any pain ever again.”

To the right of Rigel, the containment tank began to glow bright blue, and soon its cold, metal exterior snapped with streams of flashing, white lightning. Then, without warning, the blue-and-white electricity started to flow out from the tank and into Rigel’s body, traveling through the black rubber tubes that were attached to the giant’s chest, biceps, and neck.

In burning, paralyzing agony, Rigel thrust his head back and bellowed toward the sky.

“Raaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrgggghhhh!”

From the control panel with Dr. Brooks, Nova watched the transfusion process from a safe distance. The blue-and-white electricity traveling into Rigel’s body was lighting up the room in bright, random flashes, and, at the same time, the energy had now consumed the red giant, surrounding him and violently darting in and out of his body like burrowing snakes. As Rigel screamed and roared from the extraction machine, with his muscles contracting, Nova tried to ignore the tortuous pain the red giant was experiencing. After all, the grey-masked man knew, he was next.

But, it would all be worth it. He had been waiting for this moment for five months, ever since he first agreed to join forces with Rigel. To achieve this kind of power, he could certainly handle some pain, no matter how excruciating it was. After putting up with so much nonsense the last several months while he was dealing with the unstable Rigel, the pain would mean nothing. Finally, Nova would take his rightful spot as one of the most powerful beings in the universe.

Then, suddenly, Rigel’s pain and the transfusion stopped. The machines around the room and the containment tanks went quiet as the lightning flashing across the ceiling faded away. Strapped against the wall, Rigel went limp, with his chin falling against this chest. The room was once again cold, dark, and silent.