I never thought I'd say this, but falling through space is fucking terrifying.
My body tumbled through the universe, watching galaxies blur past like I was on the world's worst roller coaster. Colossal aliens floated around out there, things the size of planets just drifting through the void, and I caught glimpses of entire star systems spinning past me as reality assembled itself around me.
Then I saw Earth. Beautiful blue marble, just like in the pictures, getting closer and closer and – 'oh fuck!'
I wasn't slowing down.
At all.
I was going to hit the planet like a meteor and splatter across the atmosphere, and wouldn't that be fucking hilarious? Dying from a Russian roulette, get a second chance from an Omnipotent Gambling God, spin for a bunch of abilities, and die on entry because RNGesus forgot to mention the whole 'you're gonna LITERALLY Drop-in' part.
Panic clawed at my chest. My lungs refused to work right, every breath shallow and quick. Which should go without saying, should be as impossible as the sweat slicking my palms in the void of space. The planet grew larger, filling my vision, and my heart hammered so hard I thought it might break free from my ribcage entirely. This wasn't the controlled fear from the warehouse; this was raw, animal terror of knowing you're about to die and there's nothing you can do to stop it.
My mind raced. I was currently doing Mach fuck-knows-what through space. Call to Arms? What familiar could survive this? I can't really rely on my luck for this! Polymerization? Fuse with what, my own panic?
Wait. My familiar! She has access to it…
I focused, remembering the feeling of my Familiar Space.
"NAKIME!" I screamed into the void, not sure if this would even work. "OPEN A GODDAMN DOOR! NOW!"
[Image Here]
For a second, nothing happened, and I thought I'd just signed my death warrant for the second time in one day.
Then reality tore open in front of me.
A gigantic sliding door, with traditional tatami design, materialized out of nowhere as I heard the single pluck of a four-stringed biwa string somewhere in my mind. The door slid open to reveal the interior of a sprawling feudal castle, and I shot through it like a bullet, leaving Earth's atmosphere behind.
Meanwhile, somewhere above Earth, Martian Man was running training exercises with the new Green Ghost - some kid named Britney Lychan who'd inherited her powers recently and needed to learn how not to accidentally phase through the planet's core and end up floating in space.
"Again," He said patiently, his brown Martian features composed as he watched the kid struggle with her intangibility. "You need to maintain focus on your molecular -"
A streak of golden energy shot past them, falling like a comet toward Earth.
Both of them stopped, whatever they were doing and stared.
"What the hell was that?" Green Ghost II asked, her voice cracking slightly as her ghostly form flickered.
"Unknown." Martial Man's eyes narrowed, shifting to his vision to track the object. They flew toward it, but the comet just …vanished. One second it was there, the next it was gone, as if it had never existed.
"Uh, Martial Man? Did we just see that? Or am I going crazy?"
"We need to contact Cecil. Immediately."
At the GDA headquarters deep beneath the Pentagon, Cecil Stedman was having a perfectly normal day, which meant dealing with three international incidents, two rogue supervillains, and a group of teen supers who were doing more collateral damage than the villains.
His jaw twitched beneath the long scar stretching across his left jaw as he reached for another cigarette. The pack was already half-empty, and it wasn't even noon. Story of his life these days.
Suddenly, his communicator buzzed.
"What now?" he asked, cigarette dangling from his lips as he leaned back in his chair not bothering to hide his irritation. His shoulder-length silver hair, formerly a medium blond before the stress of this job aged him prematurely, fell across his face as he leaned forward.
"Sir, Martian Man reporting. Unknown object, possibly alien, attempted atmospheric entry at extreme velocity. Object disappeared before impact. And when we reached its last known position, there was no trace left."
Cecil's fingers drummed once on his desk; a tell he'd never quite broken when something bothered him. "Run perimeter patrol. Report anything suspicious."
Cecil hummed for a moment, drumming his fingers harder.
"Donald!"
Donald looked up from his terminal, already dreading the question. The high-ranking GDA agent had served under Cecil long enough to know when his boss was about to make his life difficult.
"How the hell did we miss an alien object trying to enter our atmosphere?"
"Sir, it was too fast and too small to pinpoint. Our system was optimized for larger threats. If Martian Man and Green Ghost II hadn't seen it visually, we wouldn't have even known it was there."
Cecil pulled another cigarette from the pack. Fuck his lungs, this job was going to kill him anyway. "Run global scans. Satellite thermal imaging, gravitational disturbance sensors, the works. I want eyes on everything. If something that fast can slip past our defenses, we need to know about it before it becomes a problem. And Donald?"
"Yes, sir?"
"Pull up files on anything that can go invisible or phase through the atmosphere. If this thing vanished, it either cloaked itself or went somewhere we can't track."
I crashed into the Infinity Castle like a wrecking ball.
The scale of the place shook my senses first.
Infinite Japanese feudal architecture stretching in impossible directions, rooms and hallways and courtyards existing in spaces that shouldn't fit, all lit by that eerie otherworldly glow. Massive pillars rose into darkness, tatami mat floors extended endlessly, and sliding doors appeared and disappeared like breath.
The air smelled old, like incense and aged wood, with an underlying scent I couldn't place. Everything glowed with eerie lights. The temperature was cool but not cold, perfectly neutral and that in itself felt way too unnatural.
I caught a glimpse of Nakime sitting in designated court, her pale skin almost gray in the dim light, long dark brown hair falling in waves past her waist with those distinctive chin-length strands framing her face. Her single large eye - the kanji for "Four" carved into it after her promotion to Upper Rank Four - watched me hurtle past at what had to be a few hundred miles per hour, her four-stringed biwa resting in her lap.
Thankfully, my glasses were still on my face. Otherwise, I'd be flying blind into walls at terminal velocity.
Before I could even speak, my momentum carried me past her.
I was going to die. The thought hit with crystal clarity. After the warehouse, after RNGesus, after getting actual powers and a second chance, I was going to splatter against a wall in a pocket dimension. My stomach lurched, my vision tunneled, and every cell in my body screamed that this was it, this was the end, again, and there was nothing I could do but watch it happen.
Nakime plucked her biwa with practiced fingers, and reality shifted. The sharp, blue-stained nails that had once belonged to a talented musician before she became a demon moved with precision across the strings. Tatami doors appeared, redirecting me upward, using gravity to fight against my momentum, 'Smart girl…'. The entire castle bent to her will - rooms rotating, floors becoming walls, the fortress itself acting like one enormus spatial manipulation device.
It helped a little, but I was still going way too fast. Any impact at this speed would turn me into chunky salsa, as my normal human body isn't exactly built for this.
"FUCK!" I screamed, seeing a wall approaching fast. "Call to Arms!"
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