A Former Superhero Chapter 2: Dimension-Hopping

<Written by Jeremiah and Matthew Ellison>

It’s been two weeks since Jeremiah has joined the Soular Protection Agency (SPA) and nothing interesting has happened in those last two weeks. We currently find Jeremiah recounting tales of his hero career to the agents of SPA, all while one is leaving his shift and heading home to just pass out on the floor to sleep for the entire day, leaving two agents left to hear his tales.

“And that is how me and my teammates ended up defeating Darkness and saving the entire multiverse from destruction,” concludes Jeremiah.

“That is… actually pretty cool buddy,” Lyric says.

“Thanks. However, I’m a bit fuzzy on the details for some strange odd reason. I don’t know why. It’s as if there are two different sets of memories and I don’t know which is which,” states Jeremiah.

“Two different sets huh? That's very interesting. Not sure if I can just look into the sets of memories because I’m not sure what the limits are, my abilities aren’t really too specific.” He says.

“Interesting. I got a magic list of powers that appeared in my pocket from day one,” says Jeremiah as he pulls out a mile long list of his powers from his pocket with slightly glowing parchment.

“Ok, wow. We really went to the cartoony reference? I never thought we’d go that low.” He replies to the mile-long list.

“Heck, my shape-shifting makes me act like a Loony Toons character sometimes,” replies Jeremiah.

“Oh god.” He replies.

“I know right? And I’m from a serious storyline,” states Jeremiah.

“At least you know what storyline you’re from and how developed it is! Mine is just a huge mess of ideas that never made it into the release! I wish all the goddamn time it would just be written already” He states.

“I think that’s pretty much every author in existence. Stuff usually doesn’t get organized until said author writes it down, and possibly rewrites it several times over. The process varies from author to author,” answers Jeremiah.

They can hear a voice from beyond the 4th wall, which says “it’s not my fault that i draw more than i write!”

Another voice replies, “It kind of is. Plus you didn’t capitalize ‘it’s’.”

“well excuuuuuuuuuuuse me princess! i prefer to not capitalize anything!” The first voice replies.

Jeremiah yells at the 4th wall, “Hey, we’re trying to tell a story here. Plus capitalization is important for storytelling. You might alienate the readers doing that. This isn’t a text message for crying out loud.”

“so what? it’s just how i type goddamn it! if u want me to cap my stuff, too bad, i refuse to do anything about it!” The first voice replies.

The second voice apologizes, “Sorry about him. This is the problem with collabs. Plus we’re on Google Docs so…”

“ok, can we please just continue the story? assuming i can properly type today jeezus” V1 replies.

There is silence on the other side of the wall.

“Good,” says Jeremiah calmly.

“So uh, what shall we do for now?” Lyric asks.

“An excellent question. It’s been pretty quiet these past couple of weeks. Could this be the calm before the storm?” theorizes Jeremiah.

“Nah, it's usually quiet here, there’s not that much that happens really,” Lyric replies.

“I feel like there’s usually a new villain to fight at least a couple of weeks or months after the last one. As if I was in some TV show that kept getting renewed for another season,” states Jeremiah.

“Not sure what world you live in but uh, it usually takes a while for a new villain to try to kick our asses,” he states.

“Oh well. Maybe I’m just a little too used to action. Fighting off alien invasions and intergalactic threats will do that to a person,” replies Jeremiah sinking into his beanie bag chair some more.

As he does that, Lyric gets up and goes to another room for a few minutes, but comes back in a hoodie, gray sweatpants, and boots and sits down.

“Well this seems like more of the mood I suppose.” He says.

“I suppose,” says Jeremiah as he checks his gray, unusually high-tech watch pushing a big red button on it causing it to open up and reveal the time.

“Well, look at the time. I suppose I better head out. See you guys in a bit,” says Jeremiah as he gets up and waves goodbye.

Lyric waves back as he gets back to grab his bag to head out as well.They both walk out the door at the same time, but as Jeremiah starts to walk off, a flash of wind suddenly comes out, as he looks behind him he sees a pair of red wings forming on Lyric’s back. He mumbles, “Intriguing.” Lyric then flies off somewhere.

Jeremiah begins walking and starts thinking to himself, “Man, it’s been two weeks since I got here and I’m no closer to figuring out how their system and protocols work around here. Sure, I’ve been reading these old manuals in the Library but they’re not very helpful. How did I follow all those protocols in the Superheroes to begin with if I’m having this much trouble simply understanding the inner workings of a small-time organization. Oh well. Come to think of it. Maybe I could use some allies in my quest. I’ll try giving Elements and Linda a call. Luckily, I was able to utilize some of Ichamar’s code for an interdimensional cell phone to develop an app for that in my watch.”

Jeremiah begins fiddling with his watch and opens up the interdimensional phone app. The first screen that appears is a prompt that says, “Insert UVW coordinates here.”

“What the heck are UVW coordinates!? Why do I need coordinates for a simple phone call? Plus, aren’t coordinates usually XYZ, not UVW? What kind of crazy dimension is Ichamar from?” While Jeremiah is over there yelling at his watch internally over the coordinate system, an explosion can be heard from all over the town. Jeremiah looks over towards the direction of the sound. He sees a person, flying in the sky with the use of wings, but they look incredibly black, pure black darkness at that. Jeremiah jumps high into the sky and speed-levitates over to that location. Before he arrives, he presses the button on his watch and a green data sphere envelops him. When it disappears, he’s in a blue bio-suit and speeds up. As he arrives, someone else seems to kick the person down to the ground from the sky, but it was so fast that Jeremiah couldn’t make out who the other person was.

Jeremiah states looking in the direction of the downed person, “Wow, and to think I can go up to Mach 200 and not see who it was.”

He looks towards his opponent further up in the sky. From where he was at, all he could make out was that the person wasn’t human, had horns and a tail with a blue tip. Hovering there, charging up a blast with multiple balls of energy, all surrounded by weird skulls that resemble that of an ancient animal wielding horns. One of the horns is broken however, and it seems to only be the head of one and nothing else, just hovering the air around him. Jeremiah suddenly ends up in front of him and punches him, sending him flying into a nearby building.

“I don’t know who you are, but I’m not letting you hurt anyone!” declares Jeremiah.

The person who was punched into the building teleports behind Jeremiah and fires a blast of light into the downed opponent. “Killing” them into pieces. Jeremiah hears the shatter and he looks down and sees nothing of his ally. He looks at his opponent and yells, “Where is he? What did you do to him?” The other person just flies off in a hurry, repeating to himself, “Don’t stop! Don’t stop!” As he tries to follow the darkness opponent through the city. Jeremiah blasts at him with a beam of light energy. It hits him in the back. But it seemed to have no effect.”I guess we’re doing this the hard way.” Jeremiah sped up and slammed into him causing them both to crash into a nearby building of them shattering some windows. They skid across the office floor as Jeremiah pins him down. He charges a red sphere in his free hand.

“If you don’t want to face the full front of Power Blast at point-blank range, you better start talking!” demands Jeremiah.

“There's no time left! We need to move again, and get ahead of him! He’s going to destroy this world if we don’t do anything about it! So let me go and let me handle this!” He says right before he kicks Jeremiah off of him causing him to accidentally fire his Power Blast up into the ceiling vaporizing it completely and flies off again yelling out, “I won’t die! Not again!”

“Again?” says Jeremiah confused as he gets up.

He jumps and continues pursuit. He ends up right next to the guy and asks hastily, “Who’s threatening you and this entire dimension?”

He just doesn’t respond, but opens up a portal and flies faster into it, going into another dimension in front of a shrine. Jeremiah follows him into the portal before it closes. He notices the orb that is being held in the middle of the shrine as it floats, the other person running towards it and grabbing it close to him.

“Now we have this, but we need to keep it hidden for now.”

Jeremiah walks up to him and says, “Look, I have no clue what’s going on here or why this particular orb is important, and I’m used to ancient artifacts and legends that detail the destruction of one world or another, but can you just tell me what’s going on?” But as they turn around, they see someone else.

“Hello there. Jeremiah. Matt. How are you guys? Or should I say… Guy and Gal?” he greets with a glitched voice.

He looks over at the person he’s been chasing for a good majority of this chapter, then he looks back at the owner of the glitched voice, and goes back and forth for a bit before settling on the source of the glitched voice and replying, “So, you’ve heard of me? I guess my exploits reach out even to here.” He says the second sentence while smiling a big wide smile. Matt then summons two blasters around the two, saying “Come at us, only if you want to die, Galgric” Jeremiah looks done with this and runs so fast nobody can see him and grabs the orb out of Matt’s hands and is already several feet behind him. “Better talk fast, or this thing is getting shattered.”

“IF YOU SHATTER THAT THEN THERE’S NO WORLD!” Matt shouts back.

He looks at the orb stunned in shock and says plainly, “Really? Is that so?” He puts the orb under his armpit and asks, “Wait, which world?” Everyone just stares at him like he just dropped an f-bomb.

“What? We’re in a different dimension, I’m from a different dimension from the dimension we were just in. So, it’s a valid question,” explains Jeremiah.

“If the orb is shattered, then every world, every universe, is destroyed! With the only way of getting them back is through a world reset only I can do!” Matt explains.

He looks at the orb and exclaims while pointing at it, “This don’t look like the Space Core! And I met it. Course, I don’t know it nearly as well as the Time Core.”

The glitched out voice calls out, “Why not give me the orb then? It will be much more suited for me then that idiot.”

“No offense lady, dude? I don’t know. But if it’s as important as you say it is, my first thought is to not hand it over to random strangers I just met and instead get out of here before someone (His left arm glows pink and a pink portal appears behind him.) has the chance to yell ‘Objection’.” He runs into the pink portal which instantly closes.

“Well that happened?” Matt says.

Jeremiah ends up in front of a school. He goes inside the schoolyard and goes to a corner of the building with faded out letters. He inputs a sequence of them revealing an entrance at a different point in the school. He goes over to the entrance and types in a password in the keypad next to it before scanning his finger. The small hatch opens and he goes in it sliding down to a secret base. The hatch closes automatically and hides itself once more. He arrives down in his secret base formerly known as Sector 17. His allies, a young woman with jet black hair and pink eyes wearing green attire and a young man with a blue leather jacket, sunglasses, brown hair and looks like a biker were just doing who knows what. They instantly see Jeremiah and the biker greets, “Yo, I haven’t seen you in a couple of weeks? How's the janitorial job coming along?”

“I hate it so much but I was able to snag a second job with something closer to hero work,” answers Jeremiah.

“Nice,” replies the blue biker giving him a thumbs up.

The young woman gets up and asks pointing to the orb Jeremiah was holding, “What’s with the sphere?”

“Well Linda, that’s the weird thing. Apparently, this is some sort of..other Space Core. I don’t know how there’s two of them, but apparently there’s people trying to snag it claiming its destruction will cause the end of the multiverse so that’s a thing,” explains Jeremiah to the best of his ability yet still confused on the matter.

“Isn’t this Darkness all over again?” asks the biker.

“No, this seems more like Master Dark’s plan, which you weren’t there for either of those events. Either way, we need to protect this sphere at all cost,” says Jeremiah in response to the biker.

“So another ancient legend that predicts the end of the world. How cliche,” states Linda dryly.

“Yeah, I know. Not much I can do about it. By the way, I need your help with something,” states Jeremiah.

“What is it?” asks Linda.

“Probably to protect that sphere,” chimes in the blue biker.

“Well, yes that. And that organization I’m working with apparently thinks it’s ok to kill people so I’m trying to change it from within,” answers Jeremiah.

Elements exclaims, “Hold on a minute! Use your words and explain to us in more detail what the frick you’ve been doing these past couple of weeks.”

Jeremiah explains everything that has been going in the Soular Protection Agency especially around its killing policy while both the biker and Linda listen intently.

“Yeah, it’s a lost cause,” says the biker.

“Lost cause!? What do you mean by lost cause?” shouts Jeremiah.

“It’s a government sanctioned organization and they’re not going to listen to some peon about how ‘wrong’ or ‘immoral’ their killing philosophy is. Take it from a former peon disguised as a general,” argues the biker.

“I honestly have to agree with Elements on this one. You’re really too naive for your own good. Besides, sometimes killing people is necessary. Remember when we faced Darkness, you had to kill him for the sake of the multiverse,” comments the young woman.

“That was different Linda,” states Jeremiah aggressively before Linda counters, “How would you know!? You’ve only been there for a couple of weeks. You don’t know the dangers they face on a day-to-day basis.”

Jeremiah looks down at the floor questioning himself. Linda’s point hit deep. He has no clue what he’s doing and he doesn’t know whether the change would be for the better or not. As he sinks deeper into thought Linda says, “Listen, don’t lose your sense of hope. Besides, just because we don’t agree with you doesn’t mean we won’t help you. Your heart’s in the right place but your head isn’t. We’ll be glad to help you just so long as you don’t get in over your head. Plus, I would rather not have you attacked for that Space Core.”

Elements chimes in, “I’m down. It’s getting boring just staying here and waiting for something. I haven’t fought a good villain since that Ancient Egyptian of Time. In hindsight, that is a terrible name for him.”

As Elements readjusts his sunglasses, Jeremiah’s face lights up and he says, “Thanks, but are you two really cool with that since you just disagreed with me?”

“Yes, we’re just going to be there so you don’t do something stupid,” argues Linda.

Elements yells, “You will if we leave you to your own devices.”

Jeremiah looks at him plainly and says, “You have zero faith in me, what-so-ever.”

“Well duh. You’re great in a fight but you’re too idealistic, and stubborn,” answers Elements.

“So what do we do with Space Core 2.0 over here?” asks Jeremiah.

“I say we gather up all the Gaxi (Gal-a-za) tech we can get our hands on and take it to this new dimension. If he got to that one dimension, he can probably get to this one too. It’s only a matter of time before he shows up.”

“Alright, Elements, Linda. You two will gather up all the Gaxi tech we currently have at Sector 17. I’ll grab the Stormbreaker and fly over to Planet Gaxi and get some more equipment for analyzing the Space Core 2.0. Why do I have this nagging feeling the original Space Core doesn’t like my naming scheme?” orders Jeremiah.

“What about that sphere anyway?” asks Linda pointing at the dubbed “Space Core 2.0”.

“I’ll take it with me as a precaution. Plus, it will be easier for the Gaxi technicians if they know what I need the equipment for. Man, I miss Tech Boy and Tech Girl. They would be a huge help right about now.”

“Yeah, but they’re dead. And last time I checked, you can’t revive the dead,” replies Elements.

“No, I can’t. Now everyone. Get to work!”

Meanwhile

In an alternate dimension

“....WHERE THE FU-”