The Story

Chapter 25

"Mr. Mojo Risin'"

From all sides, the Supercools were beset by a legion of cameras. Joe, Charles, Kyle, Rina, Harry, and Ben were standing in the middle of a terrain-less gray void. With cameras. Fog swept around the heroes, as Spiral gloated triumphantly. Plus, there were lots of cameras.
"Hmm," mused Joe. "The Mojoverse. That sucks." He reached into his coat pocket, retrieved one of his cigarettes, and lit it with his flame-thrower. He began to puff, waiting for Spiral to make her next move.
"The Mojoverse?!?!" Charles howled. "Jeez, you let someone borrow your body for five minutes, you end up in an alternate dimension."
"I thought we just got back from an alternate dimension," Rina said, tugging gently at her hair. Kyle hoisted himself onto her boot, crawled up her navel, and perched on her shoulder.
"I think technically," Kyle said, "That was an alternate universe."
"Right," Harry said, "Like the world I came from."
"No," Joe replied, exhaling smoke into the gray fog, "That was an alternate dimension."
"Was not!" cried Harry, strangely defensive. "I'm from an alternate universe!"
"Dimension," Joe snickered.
"Universe!" shouted Harry.
"Yeah, okay," said Joe. "Dimension!"
"It was a universe!" howled Harry.
"Silence!" roared Spiral. "As long as you remain in my Body Shoppe's dungeon, you will cease your bickering." As she spoke, Spiral wove her six arms through a complex pattern in the air, creating a field of silence over Joe and Harry. As the two tried to speak, both realized that they could not.
"Now then," Spiral continued, "I will need you for my later work. Go to the laboratory." One of her thirty fingers indicated Ben, who vanished in a spark of ethereal light. "I'm off to collect my last specimen," Spiral told the others. "You all stay here and be good." Spiral cackled as she danced the spell which would send her back to Earth.
As Spiral danced, Rina leapt. Her powers flared, and time slowed to a crawl. Rina locked one slender hand around Spiral's wrist as the dance wound down. Kyle held on to Rina for dear life. All three wavered from view, then disappeared entirely.

The moment Spiral was gone, Joe turned to Charles and began tugging with his free hand on Charles' shirt.
"What?" asked Charles. Joe moved his lips and wiggled his fingers in front of them to indicate that he still could not speak. Harry, too, was still bound by silence. Joe dropped his cigarette, then flexed his fingers at Charles, and began to fingerspell. Charles shook his head.
"No, Joe, sorry," he said. "Whatever spell Spiral's got working, it's obscuring your fingers, too."
Joe scowled, and looked at his surroundings, puzzled. Still, not to be daunted, Joe drew a finger across his throat.
"Kill?" asked Charles. "Kill Spiral?" Joe shook his head 'no,' mentally noting that rudimentary forms of communication weren't blocked. He bet he probably couldn't write anything down, though. Joe clasped two hands over his heart, and staggered back several steps. "Shot?" guessed Charles. Joe fell to the floor, raising his head and one hand weakly to the sky as though trying to speak, then fell to the ground.
"Die!" shouted Charles, realizing he had it. Joe leapt back to his feet. He pointed at Charles, then Harry, then himself, then wound one finger in a circle, indicating all three of them. "Us?" asked Charles. "Supercools? Heroes?" Joe curved both hands in front of himself, pantomiming breasts. Then he put one hand behind his head, stuck another in the air, and began to strut around the dungeon. "Uh... hooker?" asked Charles. Joe shook his head, and repeated his 'breasts' motion. "Women?" asked Charles. Joe nodded, then pointed at himself, Charles, and Harry again, this time adding a flexing motion. "Men!" Charles shouted. Joe flashed him a thumbs up. "We're going to die?" asked Charles, panicking creeping in to his voice. "Spiral wants to kill all the men in the world? What?"
Joe acted as though he were chatting with Charles. Then, he quickly stopped, turned around, and crossed his arms. "Are you mad?" asked Charles. "Angry? Upset?" Joe turned back towards Charles, but still didn't make eye contact. Instead, he scanned the ceiling nonchalantly. "Oh, you're ignoring me," Charles guessed. Joe nodded without looking down. "Ignore?" asked Charles. "Avoid? Overlook? Um... Ignore?" Joe lashed out with a kick, striking Charles just above the ankle. "Ow! My shin!" Joe began to shake his head violently up and down. "Shin? That's what you were going for? Sure, because ignoring me sounds like 'shin.' And why'd you have to kick me so hard? That really hurt!" Joe continued ignoring Charles. Instead, he clutched two hands over his heart, then flexed his (puny) muscles, then crossed his arms. "Die... Men... Shin," Charles said, putting it all together. "Dimension?" Joe stuck his tongue out at Harry.

Carlos Martinez was not such a nice guy. At fourteen years old, Carlos became involved in his brother's gang. On his sixteenth birthday, Carlos shot his first man. Now, Carlos was eighteen, and wanted by the police in several states. Carlos had fled to Denver, to seek refuge in the home of a distant cousin. Carlos thought he was safe in Denver. Carlos was wrong.
Carlos was waiting in a dingy alley at 11:30 on a cool Denver evening. Carlos was holding two small bottles of a street drug called Ice. Ice was invented by the Red Skull and was very, very addictive. Since Captain America shut down the Red Skull's drug operation, Ice was very hard to come by. Carlos was waiting for someone who would make him very, very rich. That's when everything got weird.
From the darkness of the alley sprang a six-armed woman with silver hair. She had a red stripe painted down one side of her face, and was wielding two swords. She looked at Carlos with ice-blue eyes and said, "You're coming with me."
"Carlos, look out!" shouted a thin, high-pitched voice. A tiny little man popped in from nowhere and landed on the six-armed woman's face, where he proceeded to kick, scratch, and bite his way into her samurai-style helmet. Carlos felt a hand on his shoulder, and spun around. He stared into the eyes of a pretty young Indian woman wearing maroon spandex. "Where am I?" she asked. "Who are you?" Her eyes were filled with such urgency, Carlos didn't think to argue.
"Carlos," he said. "My name is Carlos, this is Denver."
"You're coming with me," said the young Indian woman. By this time, though, the shock of the her arrival had worn off, and Carlos' adrenaline was pumping, bringing his old reflexes back to bear.
"I don't think so, lady," Carlos spat. He whipped his right hand out of his jacket, where it had curled around the handle of his gun. The barrel caught the Indian in the side of the head, and she dropped to the floor, a small trickle of blood leaking from the point of impact.
Meanwhile, Spiral had worked a single hand into her helmet, and snared Kyle. Clutching him in one up-raised fist, she turned her attention back to Carlos. "I need you, boy," Spiral sneered. "You and your genetic template are coming with me." Spiral's arms flared this way and that, building the energies for a powerful spell. Suddenly, all six of Spiral's arms stopped still where they were. Spiral's spell fizzled, and Kyle was able to slip out of her grasp and to the ground.
"You," cursed Spiral, her voice gone raspy with malice.
"Long time no see," came the reply.

I swear, I can hear someone singing "Build Me Up, Buttercup," Joe said to himself. And she's really good.
One second later, the far wall exploded in a shower of light and rainbow colors. Into the breach stepped the Dazzler, flanked by several rebel guards and three or four miniature replicas of the X-Men. "Care to leave this place?" Dazzler asked.
"Oh my God!" Joe shouted. "The spell's worn off! I can talk again! Man, I didn't ever realize how frustrating it is not to be able to talk! I mean, it was just like 'now you can't talk,' and she was right, 'cause I couldn't talk. I wanted to talk, but I couldn't talk. And now, I can talk again! Thank God! I can talk again! I don't think I'm ever going to stop talking again! It sucks so much not to talk! I mean..."
Charles cut in, looking at Dazzler. "There's at least one other person trapped here. His name is Ben, and Spiral said something about sending him to her laboratory."
"...cream cheese on my bagels, but I can see..."
"There's nothing we can do immediately, I'm afraid. Spiral's Body Shoppe doesn't work like the sort of buildings you and I are used to. The lab might be halfway around the world, and she's probably the only one who knows how to get there. It's lucky enough that we found you."
"...wasn't a very good illusionist..."
"But we can't just leave him! What do you propose we do now?"
"...myself always feels kind of funny, but it's not like..."
"Come back with us. We'll give you guys a little food, a change of clothes, and we'll work on finding your friend. I'm sorry, but it's the best we can do."
"...great Cornholio! I need t.p., t.p. for..."
"It'll have to do. Thanks."

"I see you have grown more powerful than when we last served together," cackled Spiral. "But your puny psi-webs are still no match for my strength." With a flick of her wrist and a shrug of her shoulders, Spiral shattered the gossamer-thin energies wrapped around her body. As Spiral built a new spell, Carlos raised his gun.
"Shit, Spider-Woman!" he cried. "I ain't messin' with no Avengers, man!" He pointed his gun at the female hero.
Spiral continued her dance for several more seconds before she realized that she was still holding on to the seasick form of Kyle Reeser. With a casual indifference, she tossed Kyle aside at bone-jarring speed.
Have to time this just right, thought Spider-Woman.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!, thought Kyle.
Suddenly, a glowing strand of psionic energy once more leapt from Spider-Woman's hands. The web wrapped itself around Kyle's ankles. Unwilling to suddenly stop the boy, however, Spider-Woman opted instead to "crack the whip," increasing Kyle's velocity while directing him away from the brick wall that had been his target. Instead, Kyle raised a fist, and slammed into Carlos' jaw, dropping the punk and sending the gun skittering away. At the instant he made contact, Spiral's energy blast blindsided Spider-Woman. The Arachnid Avenger's psionic webbing disappeared, and Kyle dropped painfully to the ground.
"Looks like I am the last one standing," Spiral chuckled. She knelt over Carlos' unconscious body, and built another spell.

"Actually, I'd be quite flattered," Dazzler said. "By all means, add these to your arsenal." She lifted a pair of silver, buckle-down, platform disco boots with retractable wheels. "What do you think?"
"Um, they're pretty cool," said Joe, too embarrassed to point out that he couldn't roller skate to save his life (and you know sooner or later he was going to have to). "But the thing is, there's no way I could squeeze my big feet into size eight roller skates."
Harry leaned over to Charles and muttered, "He knows the Dazzler's shoe size?"
"He's weird," Charles reminded Harry.
"Ah," said Harry, nodding.
"Size eight! Oh, I haven't worn a size eight since, well since disco was popular. I'm a little ashamed to admit it, but my trip through the Siege Perilous oh-so long ago, um, let's say 'stretched' my wardrobe a little bit. I think these boots'll fit you fine."
"Oh, great then," said Joe, trying to keep a smile on his face. "I'll cherish them." He sat on the floor of Longshot's Rebels' Castle and began to try them on.
"My lady," said one of Longshot's Rebels, stepping into the Dazzler's closet, "We've found them."
"Let's go," Dazzler smiled.

With a mighty crash, the wall of Spiral's laboratory flew open. As the dust settled, Spiral gazed in awe at the figure responsible for the destruction of her sanctum. Her eyes began at the tips of the man's reflective silver-studded boots, worked their way up his long, thin legs, sheathed in skin-tight black fabric. At thigh-height, the fabric of the man's costume turned to a vibrant shade of maroon before her view was blocked by an ornately crafted belt of obviously otherworldly construction. Hanging from the belt was a slender tube, about the shape and size of a powerful flashlight. A gaudy green jacket hung across the figure's shoulders barely concealed the presence of a yellow vest loaded with miniature bombs. On one triumphantly raised hand was a ring of purest gold, while the hand pointed at Spiral's chest was bound in a dark pink (and terribly menacing) glove.
"Release your prisoners, Spiral," boomed the Scavenger's voice.
"You're too late, heroes," sneered the six-armed witch. "I just sent the last one home."
"Huh?" asked Charles.
"You heard me," Spiral replied. "I just needed to photocopy their DNA, for a little project I'm working on. I paid them each about $250 Earth-dollars, and sent them back to their homes. So sue me for being a tad melodramatic."
"So what do we do now?" asked Joe.
"Let's force her to send us home," suggested Harry.
"Yeah!' agreed Charles.
"Fine," snorted Spiral. "It's not like you guys were tons of fun anyway." She spun a quick pirouette, giggled twice, and popped Harry, Joe, and Charles to the alley in Denver where Rina and Kyle were waiting.
"Ugh!" said Joe. "I'm getting tired of all this teleporting! How many times has it been now?"
"For me, or for you?" asked Kyle.
"Never mind, it was a rhetorical question," Joe replied.
"Did you hear that?" Charles asked, pointing at Joe. "I never have to mind him again. I-"
The rest of Charles' Mr. Price bit was cut short by the metal-against-metal twang that marked the sound of Hyperspace Teleportation. The composite scattering of atoms that had once been Joe could almost be heard to sigh in frustration.


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