Chapter 1: Fire Dancer

Dimension 1

Primary Earth

Fire Dancer sat back watching the monitors at the top of Hero Central. Uniformed officers did the hard work of co-ordinating the activities of the thirty-six heroes who were spread out all over the country trying to keep control of the various disasters that were currently happening.

There were riots between Transhumanists and Mystics in New York, another one in Detroit, and a three way race riot was ripping Los Angeles apart. They were so spontaneous and brutal they had had to be planned by someone. Twenty airborne drones had been sent on suicide runs, each one had had enough explosives to take down a skyscraper, destroying critical power plants all along the upper East Coast, plunging everything from Montreal to Washingon D.C., into darkness. A supermax prison with three supervillains in the middle of the Rockies had been attacked by the super powered mercenary Grey Wolf, and the prisoners were currently trying to escape, leading to an actual super fight. Half the oil wells in North Dakota were on fire, from carefully planned attacks by yet another mercenary, Burning Light, who had made his name in the Balkans and Middle East as a certified air to surface weapon of mass destruction. The Gulf of Mexico was being covered in oil from burning oil wells, all caused by a wave of water and air drones. There were more, but those were the biggest, and they seemed to all be a distraction to the main event.

Doctor Anarchist was in Kansas City, doing something that had to be bad for everyone, and they almost hadn’t spotted anything until a few minutes ago. For all Dancer knew it could already be too late to stop him.

From her work station, she brought up a satellite image showing Major Star racing through the sky, going faster than anyone had seen him move before, trying to reach the building where the Doctor was hiding. Police were on the way as well, but the building was hard to reach and the entire way seemed to be trapped and guarded by a small army. How they had entered the country, and stayed hidden until just now was a big question, and heads would probably roll as soon as they figured it out.

Fire Dancer silently cursed not being out there helping, wishing she could run her hand through her long hair in frustration. Her padded safety orange suit, which was built to withstand her flame powers as well as being padded with protective gel, was great for protecting her, but wasn’t so good in a situation like this, it felt too tight, too confining. It reminded her that sShe was only fourteen, and couldn’t legally enter the field, but she’d been practicing beside some of the biggest altered humans in the country since she was eleven and set her bed on fire. Sure she’d helped deal with some big fires, controlling flames and setting up fire breaks, but those had been natural fires. As soon as it came to an attack, she had to step back and stay in her room like a good girl. As one of the strongest super humans in her generation, it was galled her, and she could feel her hands heating up even through the fireproof gloves she was wearing.

“Goliath,” she spoke into a special radio, that was more secure than the presidents, to the power armoured hero who was heading to Kansas City as well, “what’s your ETA?”

“Twenty minutes. I’ve already dropped most of my add on armour and exterior weapons for speed. Where is Major Star?”

“From his current speed and location he’ll be on location in less then two minutes. I can’t contact him, we believe his radio has melted off. He’s currently going at over Mach 5. I didn’t even know he could go that quickly,” she said.

There was a pause, “I didn’t think he could either. Do we know what he found out during his fight with Renegade?”

“Nothing new,” she said, with a scowl. “Renegade is still unconscious and Major wasn’t willing to wait long enough to tell anyone anything except the location and to get there soon. Dog Boy has finished scanning for drones along the Gulf Coast and believes that there won’t be anymore attacks. He’s flying in, breaking every safety regulation along the way, and will be there about two minutes after you. Everyone else is still occupied, especially fighting Burning Light. Burning Light has already taken down TK, medics have him stabilized. Lilith, Daiyta, and Awe are still in the fight, along with every available military unit in the area, but it’s not going well, he’s halfway to the West Coast and destroying everything in his path. Everyone in his projected flight path is being evacuated. ”

“What are the casualties?” the hero asked, she could hear him wincing in pain.

“At least twelve hundred wounded, missing and dead. He’s purposefully aiming for towns and cities along the way driving up the collateral damage to keep everyone occupied. The military and police are trying t-” She stopped to look at the monitors. Around her the technicians kept talking trying to make sense of the situation and keep everything working smoothly. Only she really noticed what was happening.

“What’s happening, Dancer?” Goliath asked.

“Major Star has just broken into the warehouse. I don’t know what-, Wait, he was thrown out of the building.” She watched as the biggest hero in America flared with power, his trade mark blue aura flared with power so that even the cutting edge camera of the satellite couldn’t make out the man in the center of his own personal star. A lance of blue plasma stretched out, melting the drones that were attacking him. In the blink of an eye the hero was back in the building and out of sight.

The warehouse began to glow, pulsing red.

“Goliath, I don’t know what’s happening, but… but I don’t think its good. Can you go faster?”

“I’m pushing every limit I have.” The next words sounded like he was pulling teeth. “He’s on his own.”

The red light began to pulse, but another light, blazing blue, matched it in intensity. As Dancer watched, barely breathing, the building began to melt. The metal roof ran like water, and the walls buckled, metallic gas rose into the air. A ball of blue fire rose from the building, a small man made star that set nearby buildings, cars and trees on fire.

She screamed in fear as an explosion ripped through the building, the shock wave sent the burning cars flying and shattered building. There was a second larger one, it looked like a nuclear explosion. Dancer covered her eyes as the fireball engulfed everything around it. The monitor went black, the satellite was off line.

“Goliath, come in Goliath,” she said.

There was only static.

She realized that there was silence in the room. Spinning her chair around, Dancer looked at a room of experienced veterans who had seen nearly every type of disaster imaginable in a state of shock. No one was talking, they were simply staring at their monitors. “What’s going on?” she whispered.

There was no answer. Instead her eyes turned to the metal-glass which provided the control room a beautiful view of the city and all the protection of two feet of solid metal. It gave her a perfect view of reality gone insane.

The sky was torn. Her eyes watered at the gaps in the blue sky, her brain screamed at her that it wasn’t possible, but her eyes showed the truth. Like peeling paint, reality hung open revealing the nothingness that lay just outside the dimension. Beyond the white light, which moved and roiled like a tempest, there were Earths. The same blue and green planet she’d seen from space. Millions and millions of them.

Her radio shrieked with noise, thousands of voices tried to speak at once. Some in languages she knew, others with sounds that couldn’t possibly be human.

Just as quickly the holes slammed shut, with a thunder she couldn’t hear, but felt deep in her bones.

Stunned, still trying to comprehend what had happened, she stepped up to the window looking out over New York City. Someone sobbed, something made her face wet, in the confusion it took her some time to realize it was her sobs, her tears.

Outside the window, half the city was gone, replaced by a thick forest that looked like it had been their for centuries. A skyscraper torn in half as if cut by a giants knife collapsed, she could see the people falling with it.

Even from her spot two hundred floors above the ground, she saw something that looked like an elephant charge out of the forest that shouldn’t exist. Its trunk slapped against a car, sending it flying over a hundred feet down the street.

Behind her people were talking, someone shouting out for details, making people concentrate on their work rather than the insanity that was just outside the door. Fire Dancer ignored them, she was only a radio operator and a minor one at that, she had no job here trying to bring the systems back online, even as someone shouted that the satellites were unreachable. There was something else she could do, that she had dreamed of doing since she was a little girl in grade one and a real superhero had come to talk to her school. She raced for the elevator, her city was in chaos, and it needed all the help it could get, the lawyers and laws saying she was a minor who couldn’t protect it be damned.

She reached the roof in thirty seconds. Running to the edge she jumped off, ignoring the fatal drop beneath her. Shooting out streams of fire like a jet, Fire Dancer turned the terminal plunge into a controlled dive. The elephant creature was below her, stomping on cars as people ran screaming. She flicked her wrists directing her fall, ignoring the fact that one wrong move could send her rocketing into the side of a building instantly killing her if she was lucky. Stretching out her hands, she directed the raging fire at the elephant, turning it to ash before it could run, and slowing herself down in the process.

Hitting the ground hard, Dancer rolled along the pavement risking cuts and bruises to prevent a broken leg. Her shoulder took most of the impact, even the protective suit could only do so much, having suffered worse bruises in training, she came to her feet, surveying the area. A man was moaning on the street, his pant leg bloody, bone jutted out of a hole. Other people came out of the buildings, everyone doing something differently, running away, jumping into cars, talking on phones that didn’t work, screaming hysterically, staring at the sky which was almost normal again if they ignored the flashes of multicoloured lightning, taking pictures of the forest, denying what was in front of their faces, it was chaos.

There was noise coming from the forest. Animals were snarling, hissing, and howling, moving around, as panicked as the people, over what had happened. She wrapped herself in fire ready to stop the creatures from hurting anyone else. Speaking into the fire resistant radio in her mask, her voice was hard, hiding the fear she felt. “This is Fire Dancer, I am guarding Heroes Boulevard on the west side. Send emergency vehicles to the other streets, we only need ambulances here.”

She walked to the edge of the impossible trees, letting the eggheads worry about what had happened. Creating a wall of flame that rose high into the air, scorching but not burning the trees and buildings around it, she watched and waited, prepared to protect the people of her city.