Two of the Eighty-Sevens tried to fight back, but they never stood a chance. They wouldn’t have no matter what, to be fair, but now Rachel was angry. Not just angry, furious. She lived up to her promise of making it hurt, putting both of them on the ground groaning in pain in just a few seconds. Granted, the one whose arm she had cut off had a headstart on that pain part, but still. None of them could get anywhere close to even touching her. She was too fast, too good, too pissed off for those guys to do more than whiff a few punches through the air, then fall down.

  But then there was the third one, the ‘human’ who had threatened me. The second Rachel showed herself, he… well, he showed more survival instinct than the other two, by bolting. If it was just Rachel there, she totally would’ve been right on him. Except she wasn’t going to leave me here with those two. She had to take the time to put them down, which was really quick. But it wasn’t quick enough to stop that guy from rushing on through the tunnel.

  When those two were down, I sputter-shouted for her to get him and that I would be fine. She barely hesitated, glancing at the fallen pair, before bolting onward.

  It didn’t matter. Less than a minute later, she came back through the tunnel, shaking her head. “Tunnel splits into four paths, he could’ve gone down any of them.” With a sigh, she looked at me, clearly not even winded in the least. “You okay, Rhythm?”

  Yeah, we probably should’ve stuck to the fake names we had for this world, but she was obviously worried right then. Plus, the only ones here were us and these Intruders. I gave a little nod, sheepishly brushing myself off as I stood up. She’d extended a hand, but I made it on my own. After all that, I was at least gonna stand up without help. So, I rose and casually told her I was fine, before thanking her for making it as quickly as she did. Or, at least, that was what I was trying to do and say. The words were in my brain, sent express delivery right to my mouth. But somehow in the midst of all that, I felt a wave of nausea. A shudder raced through me, and instead of actually saying that cool, dismissive line, I made a weird noise that was somewhere between a burp and a hiccup, before collapsing right back down to my knees. Then I threw up.

  Kneeling next to me, while keeping an eye on the two guys we actually caught (not that she needed to worry, given how absolutely uninterested they were in doing anything other than laying there and groaning), Rachel patted my back reassuringly, letting me get all that out. Only when I was done did she rise again. And that time, I let her help me to my feet. Mostly because I was too embarrassed to object.

  Taking a breath to steady myself, I glanced that way before folding my arms over my stomach with a sigh. “You should’ve been able to catch him. Now he got away, because you had to babysit me.”

  “Two out of three isn’t bad,” she reminded me pointedly. “The bigwigs can still get answers out of these guys. And that’s because you tracked them down.”

  Biting my lip, I fought back the urge to protest, instead asking, “So what now? I mean, um, isn’t there usually something to fix? But these guys just came through on their own and we followed them, so what’re we suppos-”

  That was as far as I got, before the world started to turn fuzzy. At first I thought I was about to throw up again, but belatedly I realized it wasn’t that. The world really was turning fuzzy and swirling. Not just for me, but for all of us. We were just shifting back to the regular world. I’d experienced that twice before. Technically I’d been on three trips, but during the first one I’d ever been on, I was knocked out (long story involving a hippo-man with a blowgun) right at the end, so I didn’t actually experience the return trip. I just woke up in the medical bay with a real craving for spicy buffalo chicken fingers. Weird for someone who really didn’t like spicy food at all, but Rinweld insisted it wasn’t a real side effect. Or at least not one to actually worry about.

  Anyway, the world spun and blurred before my eyes, which didn’t help that nauseous feeling very much. But when it stopped, we were back in that cave from before, right next to the door that shouldn’t have been there. The Jaunt was over. Which meant… it must’ve counted stopping those guys as fixing the problem? But we weren’t actually shown any missing people to bring back, like happened in normal Jaunts.

  Okay, whatever. I had no idea how any of that worked, it was way above my pay grade. At least we were back, and in our own real bodies again. I had to triple-check on that point. Rinweld and some science people had insisted I would never show up in my old, wrong body, that it couldn’t happen, but still. I just had to make sure, every time I went on one of those.

  Sure enough, I was still me. A quick pat down proved that. Right body, and still in my Squire suit with the helmet. And then I turned my attention to my next thought: the two Intruders. My heart leapt into my throat with the sudden worry that we’d left without them. But nope, there they were, right on the ground. Well, until the soldiers grabbed them, since it turned out we weren’t alone here. Rinweld had shown up, and already had a whole swarm of scientists going over every inch of the cave with weird, flashing and beeping instruments. Especially the old computer and the Jaunt door itself. There were also like a hundred soldiers just in this cave, about half of whom worked to grab and secure the pair of Eighty-Sevens.

  Speaking of which, that was when I had my first look at these particular Intruders outside of the Jaunt form disguises. Or any other disguise. The way Eighty-Sevens worked, at least in our world, was that they had two very different bodies. The first was a crystal form, like a big walking glowing crystal. That was what we called their Hard Form. The other was their Soft Form. The Soft Form looked more biological, but it could be anything. Some were more humanoid than others, some were very animalistic to the point of even walking around on all fours (or however many legs or tentacles they had). Some even looked like big demons, like that one called Whistling that Rachel had killed early on. The point was, the Soft Forms all seemed to be… created and customized somehow by the Intruders themselves. Their Hard Forms were their real bodies, and the Soft Forms were what they created for themselves to walk around as.

  Right now, both of these Eighty-Sevens were in their Hard Forms. They were each crystalline bodies, just like any other Eighty-Seven, but still very different from each other. The first had very jagged, sharp edges all over itself, like a somewhat skinny humanoid pile of broken icicles and glass shards. If those icicles and glass were bright red. Yeah, that’s what it looked like, a bunch of broken red glass and icicles all lumped together into a humanoid body about five and a half feet tall, with four arms (the extra pair were attached about halfway down the torso). Its head was just as jagged and spiky, with almost no actual discernable facial features aside from a pair of very black eyes dead center.

  The other one, meanwhile, was bright green. It was short and round, with a dozen small legs surrounding the central body, a smooth, shiny glass ball for a head right in the middle, and six crab-like pincers ready to grab and crush anything they could.

  I was pretty sure there was more to their ability to create and customize those ‘Soft Forms’ like that. Hell, just the fact that they could somehow conjure up actual flesh and blood bodies, or transform their crystal structures into it, or… whatever they did raised so many questions. But that was about as much as we understood. The Eighty-Sevens didn’t exactly sit down for interviews or write autobiographies. Most of what we knew came from Salvador Self, as the only survivor of his own world being invaded. After losing his entire species and world, he’d put a lot of work into finding out as much as possible about the aliens who kept destroying everything in their path as they spread like locusts through every reality they could reach. Even then, he had no idea who their leaders were, what their actual goals beyond destruction might have been, or where they came from.

  Anyway, whatever they looked like currently, those two were all being pushed into what were basically oversized dog kennels. Obviously, the boxes were a lot stronger than those, but still. They were big metal cages that were capable of holding those crystal guys no matter what they did. This was about as contained as they could be until they were taken up to the Arbalest.

  But none of that mattered for us anymore. My sister had done her job, at least as well as she could, and I helped. Well, a little bit anyway. Those two Eighty-Sevens could be taken in to be interrogated by people who knew what they were doing. People who could maybe find out just exactly how they had access to one of those doors in the first place, and what else they were doing with it. The implications were bad.

  But none of that affected me right now, or my sister. Our job was done. So, after going through a sorta quick debriefing in the tunnel just outside that lower cavern, with Rinweld making us give him a rundown about everything that happened from the moment we stepped through the door until we came out again (including admitting that one of them had escaped), we were sent back to the station for scans before we’d be able to leave for the night.

  As we walked out of that cave, and away from all the soldiers and scientists going over every centimeter of the place, Rachel caught my hand and squeezed it. Her voice was electronically distorted by the helmet. But I could still hear the concern in it as my sister asked, “Are you okay, Cadence?”

  The question made me flinch. Yeah, she knew I almost died back there. She knew I screwed up and didn’t even manage to slow those guys down at all. Other than the like two seconds it would’ve taken them to finish killing me before she showed up and took care of them like it was nothing. I could’ve accomplished as much just by standing at the mine entrance and pointing.

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  A soft sigh escaped me before I answered, “Uh huh. I’m sorry I didn’t actually help that much.”

  “Are you kidding?” Her hand squeezed mine firmly, making me look over at her. “Cady, you were the one who figured out where they were going. You figured out the boats were a distraction. I would’ve still been searching them right now if it wasn’t for you. That was really quick thinking. You figured out where they went and sent someone to tell me. You’re the one who found them.”

  “And then I got caught and almost died,” I pointed out, though a tiny smile still came despite myself. “If you hadn’t been right there, it… I couldn’t even land a single hit on those guys.”

  Rachel tugged me closer and used her free hand to shake my head back and forth teasingly. “See, that’s why I’m the muscle of this operation, and you’re the brains. We make a good team.”

  “The best team,” I corrected, giggling slightly as I managed to pry my head free of her hand before she could shake it any more. Not that she was actually trying that hard to hold onto it.

  Her voice softened as she reached over to pull me into a walking hug, “The absolute very best team.”

  Derecho, walking just ahead of us in the form of a lynx, gave a cheerful purr-growl sound that made Rachel laugh. “Of course you’re included in that, buddy. You don’t even have to ask.”

  By that point, we were almost back to that top cave where the Ostrich mech had been parked. The one that led us in here to begin with. I wondered which of those three Intruders had been the pilot. Not that it mattered, but I was still curious. The thought that it was the guy who escaped bugged me. It made this whole thing feel unfinished. And what was this whole thing anyway? If they’d hidden the mech a little better, disguised that cave entrance more, or anything like that, we never would’ve found it. And then who knew how long it would’ve taken to find out the Eighty-Sevens had access to Jaunt tech?

  “Hey, did someone say something about the best team?” The voice came from just ahead of us, in that main cave. As we stepped out, the source of the voice stood with his arms raised, palms out. “That better include the rest of us too, or I’m gonna have to request emotional hazard pay.”

  The guy standing there wore a burnt-orange and gray suit. It was made up of a gray bodysuit with that burnt-orange armor padding along the lower and upper arms and legs, and over the chest and back. There was a gray skull-shape emblem in the center of the chest, while the boots and gloves were gray with slight orange outlines. The helmet literally looked like a gray skull with slightly glowing orange eyes and a wide, creepily-smiling mouth. To top it all off, he had a long black hooded cloak with orange on the inside. And yes, the inside of the cloak could glow too.

  This was Buzzkill. Or Kenny Martin when he wasn’t all dressed up and ready to fight aliens. The guy was another Freestyler, like Casper/Rachel or Shepard/Alicia. His costume (and the name) might’ve come off as a bit edgy, but Kenny was a really funny and cheerful guy. He was always doing everything he could to make me and the other Squires know we were part of things, and he was the first one to help with chores, or just stop during a public appearance to make kids laugh. He’d breakdance for them, do funny mime routines, any sort of exaggerated, goofy motions that would help them see past the edgy outside appearance. Yeah, Buzzkill was probably the second most popular member of the Dust Squadron Freestylers, after Casper.

  Typhoon, Buzz’s own Kite, was currently in the form of an orange and gray gorilla. She was sitting calmly behind those two, leaning back on one big hand while using the other to scratch her stomach. For a Kite named after something that destructive, Typhoon was probably the most gentle and slow-to-violence one I’d seen. Granted, I was working from a pool of six (seven counting the old squad leader, Limerick, who still visited sometimes), but hey.

  Still in that black and pink lynx form, Derecho wandered right over to Typhoon, hopping up to her chest before helping scratch her tummy. The gorilla-Kite made noises of approval and stretched.

  “Come on, babe, you can’t open up that can of worms.” That voice came from Buzzkill’s Squire, Comet (Valerie Ashlake). She was also his girlfriend. Comet had the same sort of simple jumpsuit, boots, gloves, and helmet as Bellboy and me. Hers, of course, was gray with orange lining, and a visor that matched. Valerie was in some sort of amateur rock band back in Cincinnati where the two of them lived. She’d let me listen to one of their live recordings they’d done at some under twenty-one nightclub, and they were seriously good. Like, professional sort of good. If the whole being a Squire to her Freestyler boyfriend thing didn’t work out, she had a career set.

  “Can of worms?” Buzzkill turned that way, looking at his Squire-girlfriend with an exaggerated head tilt of curiosity. His cloak had fallen open. “Exactly what flavor worms would that be?”

  “What an incredibly ew choice of words,” Comet complained with a glance my way. “Right?"

  I shrugged. “Maybe he meant gummy worms? Those come in lots of different flavors. Sour too.”

  She huffed a little. “Yeah, the gummy ones are what I meant when I said ew. I’d prefer he just ate the regular old earthworm variety than more gummies.” The shudder of revulsion was probably at least a little bit put on, but she definitely wasn’t a fan. “I hate squishy-tasting things. Anyway, I meant you can’t open the emotional damage hazard pay can of worms, because these people have been forced to listen to more than twenty minutes of your knock-knock jokes. The entire system would go bankrupt trying to pay that off, and then the Eighty-Sevens would win.”

  “Okay, first, more gummies for me,” Buzzkill noted easily. “And second, my knock-knocks kept everyone sane at a very crucial period right after we had to wait sixteen freaking hours for that cruiser to come pick us up.” With that said, he looked at us again. “You guys okay? We finished up with our Jaunt and Shepard back there let us know what was going on, so we shot over here with Sticks and Stone to play backup just in case. Jackal and Ope stayed with Brigand and Plunder to finish the debriefing.”

  Sure enough, glancing past these two revealed Shepard and Bellboy standing on the far side of the cavern with Sticks and Stone. The former was the Freestyler of that pair. Her real name was Phoebe Cantrell, and her suit was pirate-themed. Silver leggings, teal boots, a teal pirate-style long coat, silver ruffled shirt and gloves, a teal mask with white eyes, and a silver pirate cap that always managed to stay right on her head, no matter what she was doing, or how she moved.

  Her Squire, Stone/Quentin Cantrell, was her older brother. He was a very big guy, almost seven feet tall, and while he had the same sort of suit as the rest of us Squires (silver base with teal lining), he’d added a red bandana tied over his head to help match his sister’s pirate theme. Of the pair, Sticks was very talkative and downright cocky, while Stone was the strong, silent type.

  And the amount of people who were confused by the fact that we had a Freestyler and Squire named Brigand and Plunder, and they weren’t the ones dressed as pirates was endlessly amusing to all four of them.

  While Casper talked with Comet and Buzzkill about what we’d seen in there, I wandered over to the others. Sticks immediately greeted me with a quick, “Yo, it’s a Rhythm! What’s up, babe?”

  Her words were echoed by a squawk from the silver and teal parrot perched on her shoulder. That, of course, was her Kite. His name was Bones. Yeah, Sticks, Stone, and Bones. Haha.

  As soon as Sticks addressed me, I knew leaving my spot by my sister had been a mistake. When I was by her, or Madison, I was fine. I could chat all day-- well, with people I knew well enough. Strangers were still hard. But alone? Even with people like these guys, I still kept second-guessing everything I wanted to say. That anxiety crept up, thoughts of how stupid one thing or another would sound, how dumb my voice was, how bad it’d be if I said the wrong thing, or made a joke that nobody laughed at. Logically, deep down, I knew none of that actually mattered. But that didn’t make the anxious feeling go away.

  “Uh, hey, you guys went on a Jaunt too?” I was so smooth, sticking that ‘too’ in there. My voice squeaked out the words while I shifted from foot to foot, trying to find a position that felt comfortable. As it turned out, standing on the left one and sort of leaning over to the right with my other leg tucked up so my right foot was behind the left knee was what I considered ‘comfortable’ right then. “What was it? Where’d you go? What’d you have to do? Was it fun?”

  “Yeah,” Shepard put in from her spot next to Bellboy, with Ranahan all shrunk down into a snake form and draped over her shoulders, “they were just about to tell us, the only two who didn’t go on a Jaunt today, about their trip to a Noir Detective But With Dinosaurs world. Goodness knows I’m glad I missed that.” She looked my way then. “Please tell me you and Casper ended up in the Land Of Perpetual Itching And Jockstrap Smells, or my jealousy may reach apocalyptic levels.”

  Giggling despite myself, I gave as solemn a nod as I could manage. “So much itching. So--” I was trying to say something about how bad the smell was, but leaned over a bit too far while standing on that one leg and nearly fell.

  Fortunately, as always, Rachel was right there to catch me. She practically materialized right behind me, hand casually grabbing my side while she assured Alicia, “The smells were the worst. Now c’mon, you guys, I wanna hear about the Dinosaur Detective Dimension, but somebody insists we have to wait until we meet up with the others on the Arbalest.”

  Buzz held up his hands. “Hey, I have no choice, Brigand cornered me and made me swear. You know how he likes telling these stories.”

  Soon, we left the cave behind and let all four Kites get some extra room to transform into their starfighter modes. Ranahan became her fork at one end, spoon at the other shape, while Derecho looked like that Cessna Dragonfly again.

  As for the other two, the ship that Buzzkill’s Typhoon became looked like if you took an F-22 fighter jet and snapped the wings off, then melded the rest of the body part of the way into a big metal frisbee. So, a semi-flat disc shape, with the fighter jet part about halfway down in it, set just forward enough for the cockpit and nose of the fighter to stick out ahead of the disc shape.

  Then there was Bones. His starship form looked like an owl from above, with those wide-spread, forward-swept and slightly rounded wings. Even the cockpit was sorta like that, rounded like an owl’s head, with two separate cockpit ‘eyes,’ one for Buzz and the other for Comet.

  Both of those, as always, kept their pilot’s color scheme. Orange and gray for Typhoon, and teal and silver for Bones.

  And just like that, all four ships were flying skyward, heading for the station. I did my navigator thing, and it was just the way I liked it: no pressure at all. If I messed up navigation (not that it was likely, given how many times I’d set coordinates for the Arbalest), there were literally three other people doing the same navigation. It was fine, I was fine, I could breathe. I could relax. I didn’t screw up. Everything was good.

  “Okay, guys,” Casper announced, both to me behind her and over the comm for the others, “let’s go meet up with the others, get these scans over with, and get some food. I’m freaking famished. Since you’ve all been forbidden to talk about your cool noir mission just yet, we’ll fill you in on ours on the way there.

  “And I’ll tell you all about how my brilliant little sister just saved the world.”

  JOKE TAGS

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