Star Rebellion (28 page)

Icestar looked at her for a moment before raising an eyebrow, “Can I help you?”

Water looked back at Fire and I with a fake look of panic, “He’s lost his memory!”

Fire cracked up and I let a smile come over my face. Icestar covered his mouth with a hand, but we could see his body shaking with laughter. Leave it to Water to make the situation less intense.

“So, seems like we can’t chuck you to the demons yet. Damn shame, I was hoping to take over Cerberus,” Fire joked while he punched Ice’s arm, the one that wasn’t bandaged.

“Ha, right. Not even over my dead body will you get that car, though I heard you guys went for a joy ride earlier without me.” He glared over at all of us before smiling again.

“I got to drive on the way back! We went over a mountain of demon bodies.” Water looked pleased with herself, even though she had only killed two demons this entire day.

“If there’s any blood on my baby…” Icestar started his threat, but didn’t have anything to finish it with.

Water giggled and patted him on the head. “Don’t worry your pretty little head; I’ll make sure it gets washed.”

“Pretty little head, eh? Water, you’re starting to sound like those damn demons,” Fire made a fake gun out of his hands and pretended to shoot Water. That got another round of laughs from all of us.

“So Dark, you’ve been pretty silent?” Ice looked over at me questioningly.

“Welcome to Team Purge,” I stuck out my hand and we shook.

“One question, who the hell thought of the name Team Purge?” Ice looked over us then stopped at Water. “Oh wait, that’s obvious.”

“And here I thought you guys were ignoring me in the hall!” Water did a little dance of success that we had finally chosen a name. Though technically Vatican had started it, but all the same.

Before she could go on another rambling spree about it, I spoke up again. “You’ll be going with Waterstar up to Beijing while Fire and I go to a place called Saint Petersburg.” We all launched into the discussion about what had happened with the nuclear weapons, with Waterstar mentioning more than once she wanted to see one in real life explode.

“So basically, Earth is once again about to try and destroy itself, so we need to do two things: be peace keepers and keep Water away from explosives.” Icestar smiled up at the blue-haired girl.

Water stuck her tongue out at him. “I’m surprised you aren’t questioning all about the Vatican-being-a-Greek-god-slash-angel thing.”

“Compared to demons invading humanity, it doesn’t seem that strange.” Icestar shrugged as well as he could while staying propped up on the pillows.

“So, when can we bust you out of here?” Fire asked, punching his hand.

“Go talk to the nurse; I think she said that the doctor was going to come and check on me soon, but that was like, half an hour ago.”

“Alright,” Waterstar half skipped over to the nurse at the other end of the room and tapped her on the shoulder. They talked for a little, and then we heard Water’s laugh come from them.

“What the hell could they be talking about?” Fire asked, perking up an eyebrow. He looked comical like that, especially because he had let his red hair hang loose from its normal ponytail, at least for the time being. I shrugged and went over to join Waterstar. She was probably asking the nurse if any cute guys had come into the infirmary recently.

“-might know him. He has dark hair and pale skin, kinda in a gross way, like he’s never seen the sun, and his eyes are a stark blue color, like it’s intense to look at,” the nurse was saying when I walked up. She saw me and abruptly stopped.

“Water, have you asked her-” Water’s shoulders had become rigid.

“Waterstar?” I started again.

“Yea, he’ll be here any minute. Let’s go.” She spun on her heel and walked back to Ice’s bed.

“Water, hold up.” I put my hand on her shoulder so she was facing me again. “What’s up?”

“Nothing.”

“Right. Nothing. What’s up?” My eyes slanted a little.

“It’s stupid. She was talking about Vladimir, and it wasn’t nice.” Waterstar avoided looking at me and I relaxed a fraction.

“You know that some girls can be... you know. Ignore it. Vlad was probably walking past and she made moon eyes at him, he ignored it and walked on, which leaves a prissy nurse upset.” Water’s mouth tilted up a little.

“I know. Still, she didn’t have to be so rude about it.”

“Come on,” I chuckled a little and walked back with her to Ice’s bed and leaned against the window again. I shook my head to Fire’s curious look and I saw that he now relaxed also.

“Doctor’ll be here any minute,” Water was saying to Ice when the door opened.

“Ah, so you must be the team Arctic has sent,” he said as soon as he saw us. “I’m sure you guys are hoping for a swift release, are you not?”

“Yes sir, Arctic has assigned a mission for us and-”

The doctor held up a hand. “Not even the Commander can force the release of a patient who has been through intensive care without my permission. This is my field, and if I don’t think your friend is ready to be released, then he more than likely is not ready to be released.”

“But sir-” Fire started. He had taken a few steps around the bed so he was face to face with the doctor.

“That’s my final word.”

I pushed off the wall and nudge Firestar slightly with my shoulder. He backed away. “Hi, my name is Darkstar.” I held out my hand to shake.

The doctor took it and eyed me warily after speaking to Fire. “Please, just call me Doctor.”

I nodded my head. “I know that you are an expert in medical care, and we should really value your word and opinion on Icestar’s condition.” It took a few seconds, but the doctor finally looked into my eyes. “So, will you please say that Icestar is ready to be discharged? Go over the scans and everything first, of course. No need to be hasty. But, he is ready to be discharged, correct?”

The doctor’s blue eyes glazed over for a second and he nodded his head. He went about the various monitors and consulted his clipboard for a moment before looking down at Ice. I could tell that even with my influence, he was still doing everything as professionally as he would normally, though the end verdict might have been different. This guy, at least, knew what he was doing, something to be respected in times like this. “Son, you’re ready to be discharge. Just be sure to take this antibiotic once every hour.” He handed Ice a canister; we heard pills rattling around inside.

“Have a nice day,” I said and shook his hand again, letting go of my power.

“Dark, that might not have been necessary,” Icestar started.

“Can’t take any chances, we’re on a timed schedule,” Water said before I could. She rifled around in the backpack she had brought and dropped a pair of clothes on Ice’s bed. “Arctic gave them to me,” she explained.

She left our little area and drew the curtains closed behind her. As Icestar changed into his usual cool gray clothing, I thought I heard someone crying before the door of the infirmary opened and closed quickly.

Waterstar was standing by herself next to the door and ignored our curious looks.

“You're such a nice person,” Firestar said with a smirk at Water.

              Water turned her back to us and started towards the door. “Come on, back to our room. Icestar, your backpack from the NOPCW is there. I took the courtesy of fighting off some demons in the garage to get your tool kit and stuff like that.”

“There are demons in the garage?!” Icestar looked like we had told him that he only had a few hours to live.

“Uh yea…not anymore, but none of the vehicles are useable.” Water looked like she had done something wrong and was fidgeting to get moving. I wondered if it had anything to do with the crying form the nurse we had heard. Arctic had mentioned soon after the agitation Maegan had towards Water that if she kept offending people, there would be consequences. However, Waterstar always offended people, so I'd leave Arctic to figure out how to manage that.

“Think of it this way, you can outfit us with the newest models now,” Firestar put his arm around Ice’s shoulder and started moving him down the hall. Even from in front of them, I could hear Fire trying to convince Ice that losing all the cars besides Cerberus wasn’t the worst thing to happen, and that it was going to be better.

Chapter 16: Chinatown

FIRESTAR

The portals. The portals are one of the main things that makes Calsh what Calsh is, you know, the best planet in the entire universe. You Earthlings with all of your science, sophisticated words would know what we call portals as wormholes. They're a fold in space, a quick pop through one and you could be on the completely opposite side of the universe. No, we cannot actually break down the science of these yet, that's how incredible they are.

The portals on Calsh are all housed in one building, near Star Rebellion. Until recently, and I mean really recently for a reason you will see soon, the thirteen portals had been spread chaotically throughout the world with no order to them. The fact that there are even thirteen portals that connect in Calsh is astounding, and that most of them go to Earth too. Science can theorize that this is abnormal. Anyways, the portals are now in one building instead of all across the world thanks to our good friend Icestar. See, without him, we wouldn't know how to redirect the portals, which is how we got them to where they are. Icestar used a string of explosions, along with a decent amount of calculus and physics equations, to shift the portals to where they are now. The equations he used are impressive, like, not even Icestar could calculate them in his head, he has literally walls of the mathematics written around his garage. I guess that's one way to get the ladies.

We have had master environmentalists in to help develop a way to filter the pollutants that come through the portal too. By master environmentalists, I mean Star Rebellion members who are in their late forties and take our patrol jeeps and use them for the useless purpose of trying to find vegetation on Calsh. There isn't any. We would know by now if there was. They did develop a system that takes any gases that can be collected for good instead of ozone destruction and stores them, while the rest we just try to send out to the Barrens in hopes that nothing dastardly comes from it. I mean, succubae are hot and all, but if some of them die due to pollution, I don't think anyone will be crying.

The portals are locked to everyone besides Arctic and the head of ambassadors, who really isn't Foreststar, as you may assume. But you know what is said about assuming. Foreststar is just a prodigy, really good with his words. Better than Darkstar, since he doesn't need a spiffy power to convince people, just his mind. The head of ambassadors is in his thirties, I think. I've never met him. Ambassadors tend to be really uppity, and he most of all. One of those two men are the ones who have to unlock the doors whenever any of us normal guys need to go anywhere, which is where we are now. Waiting patiently, mind the sarcasm, for Arctic to show up and let us in so we could finally get this show on the road. I hear they have great booze in Russia, though really I don't drink. Honestly. I like keeping my badass reflexes, thank-you very much.

WATERSTAR

My team and I stood outside of the portal central doors. From what I had heard, there were a total of thirteen portals inside, each leading to a different place on Earth. I really wanted to just start going through random ones and seeing where I ended up, especially since I had never been to the surface.

Sadly, though, we had to wait for Arctic to show up. He was being extremely slow today apparently.

“Sorry that I’m late; I got held up with some advisers.” Arctic finally stepped up to the building. The sky was still pretty cloudy, and it was getting close to five am, Vatican time.

He pulled out a keychain and unlocked the door with one of the many keys. “After you,” he said while holding the door open for everyone. I could see the bags starting to form under his eyes, and couple that with his newly forming pale complexion, gave him a gaunt look. The demon invasion was adding a lot of stress to an already crazy position.

The portals were… not as amazing as I had thought. They were pretty much shiny glass in narrow, pentagonal door frames, lined up against the walls of the building. Each one the destinations painted in messy handwriting on the floor in front of its respective portal.

“Ice, Water, the Beijing portal is the third one, Fire, Dark, the St. Petersburg portal is the eleventh. Please wait until I shut the door to step through; the portals have been known to accidentally pull others through. Try and enter at the same time also, for that specific reason.”

We nodded our heads simultaneously and waited for him to back out. Once we heard the key turn in the lock, we all approached our assigned portal.

              “On three?” Fire asked.

I nervously nodded my head in agreement. Ice held out his hand and I took it; his was slightly shaking.

“One,” Dark started.

“Two,” I echoed.

“Three!” We all said at once as we stepped into the glass. It felt like we were walking through water. I felt my breath get squeezed out of my lungs; the only thing I could feel was Ice’s tight grip on my hand. I could see colors rushing past us, like the landscape of Calsh; all dark greys and dead browns. Then the color changed and it was a rush of sudden black, lighting up to a light blue before I saw silvers flow pass me quickly.