Fic: Lost Coastlines
Title: Lost Coastlines
Author: lizynob
Summary: A small collection of events experienced by Oscar Schlumper at various points in the multiverse before being formally hired by Linkara.
Pairings: One-sided Linksano/Spoonette (and one universe where it might not have been so one-sided)
Warnings: General Linksano angst and one mildly graphic near-death scene.
Word Count: 5,598
Author’s note: Fic title comes from one of the songs on the amazing mix made by
aunt_zelda which can be found here.
Earth-982
“We might not ever come back,” Wayne finally allowed himself to admit one night while they were working. “In fact, we probably won’t.”
It was a topic they’d been purposefully ignoring for a while, and Oscar hummed in thought for a few moments. “You know, right now that doesn’t sound like the worst thing in the world,” he finally said.
“What we’re doing is utterly insane,” Wayne continued.
“Of course it is. Everything about this whole situation is insane,” the younger Schlumper remarked calmly. He looked at his brother curiously. “Is there any particular reason why you’re pointing it out now? Are you…having second thoughts about this?”
Wayne shook his head and went back to his task, talking as he did so. “No, it’s not that. I trust our science, and I know we’re right about this threat. It’s just that this really is a crazy sort of plan. What if the next world we land in is worse off? Or Vyce goes there next anyway?”
“Then we go someplace else,” Oscar said simply. “We go wherever we have to. We go everywhere. We go… we go far away, as far as we have to.”
Wayne’s voice softened. “When you’re talking about infinity, that’s very far,” he pointed out.
“I don’t care,” Oscar murmured. “Far away sounds nice. We’ve never fit in anyway. Too smart for our good, too curious for our own good, too obstinate for reason, and too awkward for love. What would we even do if we stayed at this point? We’ve already burned so many bridges getting to this point. I…” Oscar kept his head down, realizing just how much he’d bought into their own fumbling rhetoric that this was the only way. They were words that had only started in order to try to convince themselves to keep on the precarious path they’d started on, but now seemed real. “I want to go. I want to run away. I know it’s ridiculous and we’re just as likely to wind up dead out there as we are staying here when Vyce reaches our world, but… I don’t know. I just… I want to go so far away from here…”
His gaze unexpectedly rose back up when a hand settled on his shoulder, and Oscar realized that Wayne was standing next to him.
“A simple road trip would have been a lot easier,” he said with a small smile.
Oscar let out a soft laugh. “And miss out on breaking apart the space-time continuum?”
“Well when you put it like that…” Wayne joked. There was a comfortable pause between them as they smiled before Wayne pulled his hands back. “Alright, alright, these blueprints aren’t going to build themselves.”
They shared one last reassuring glance at each other, and then went back to working into the night. Everything would be okay. They would at least have each other and as long as they stuck together, they could get through anything.
It would be only two weeks later that Oscar Schlumper would find himself alone, hugging his knees to his chest and trying desperately to process exactly how everything had ended up going so wrong.
***
Earth-776663883
“You know, staring is rude,” the young woman said pointedly, giving her hair a flip.
Oscar caught himself, and his cheeks heated up to an embarrassing hue, but he couldn’t help but stare. She was exactly as he remembered her. There was not a single physical variation he could see, from the shade of her hair to the shape of her nose to the pitch of her voice. She was a beautiful and perfect in this universe as she had been in his.
He cringed and braced himself for the backlash. “I’m… I’m sorry,” he finally forced out. “I… I just…. y-you….” Talking to her again was doing things to his mind. How long had it been since he had really seen her? She had gone to such lengths to avoid him and Wayne before finally moving out of town without so much as looking back. More than once Oscar had wondered what had become of her.
He waited for her familiar scowl. Instead she merely gave him a smirk. “What, you got a thing for blondes?” She asked, eyes gleaming in something like amusement.
He couldn’t very well say the truth. He had a thing for her. Ever since he was a teenager, he had given his heart over to her despite the fact that she had never wanted it, and being face to face with her again made too many emotions surface all at once.
Apparently his distress was evident because the next thing she said was “don’t hurt yourself, you dork.” But the words lacked any real condescension.
“I’m sorry,” he mumbled again, face woefully red.
Every part of him was poised to flee and he was already in the process of deciding the best path for escape when his heart seemed to freeze up in his chest at a touch on his arm.
“Hey, it’s okay,” she pulled her hand back when he met her gaze again, and he continued to feel the exact spot her fingers had touched even through the sleeve of his shirt. “Staring is totally rude and all, but you don’t need to freak on me or anything.” She gave him a glance-over and then pulled something out of one of her pockets, handing it out to him, which he took automatically.
It was a business card. Black and gold with the words “Amber Shore” scrawled across it along with an address.
“It’s my favorite bar,” she said. “I’m there like, every weekend. You look like you could use a little something to loosen up. Maybe I’ll see you there tomorrow, and maybe you can buy me a drink. But for now, I gotta run. By the way, the name’s Spoonette.” And with that, she flashed him a smile and walked off, leaving Oscar stranded in intense confusion and deep exhilaration.
It was nearly incomprehensible on every level, and he struggled to fully wrap his mind around what had just happened. He had met the Spoonette of this world, he had been caught ogling at her, and then she….did not call the police on him. Or glare daggers in his direction before storming off. Or make a scene out of publically humiliating him and calling him a creep.
“…She has no reason to hate me,” he contemplated to himself, trying to grasp hold of the thought. This Spoonette had never known Oscar Schlumper, had no knowledge of him, no memories, and no disdain. She hadn’t seen her former neighbor and science-obsessed high school stalker. She had seen some random stranger, awkward but harmless, who committed nothing more than the social slight of staring too long at someone more than attractive enough to merit it.
She offered him the chance to buy her a drink.
The thought plagued Oscar for the rest of the day, not giving him a moment of rest. He eventually found himself in a thrift shop staring blankly at a rack of second-hand clothes.
What did one wear to a bar? What exactly did one do in a bar for that matter? Consume alcoholic beverages, obviously, but surely there was more to it than just that. Oscar had no real idea what though; he had never set foot in a bar in his life. For that matter, he had never really drunk alcohol. He and Wayne had once covertly acquired a pack of beer as teenagers to try it, a venture that had resulted in them both spitting in the sink and grabbing a couple of sodas to chase away the taste, but he’d never touched real liquor.
Endless possibilities both encouraging and terrifying piled up on his already burdened mind. Eventually, he purchased a black button up shirt and left, biting his bottom lip and fidgeting with his hands the whole way back to the dilapidated tool shed on an overgrown piece of property he currently called home.
Oscar didn’t do much more than curl up against a paint-peeled wall and flip the business card in his sweaty hands over and over again while trying to breathe. Was this a second chance? Was it worth it to try? What if he arrived and she was not there? What if she was there but thought he was a fool? What if he spilled his heart and soul out the way he was prone to doing in her presence? And what if…what if she actually enjoyed his company?
“Just this once, Spoonette…” he whispered in a voice so soft he could barely even hear himself as he leaned his head back, his heart filling with a longing that he’d long tried to push back with science. “Just this one dimension… Do you think you could bring yourself to love me?”
He never did find out the answer. After working through his muddled emotions by tinkering with his new dimensional analyzer until his eyes refused to stay open any longer, he’d woken up to a sharp blaring that in his initial sleepy haze he’d almost mistaken for his old alarm clock going off. It wasn’t an alarm clock, but the beeping device was cause for alarm.
Vyce.
Oscar scrambled upright, his pulse beginning to race. This universe? Why? What possible anomaly had dragged the armored conqueror in this direction? It didn’t matter. He couldn’t stay. He couldn’t let Vyce catch him. He had to get out. He had to leave now. He had to- he stopped in his tracks.
Spoonette was a possibility here in this world; a real possibility, one that had previously been untouchable to him. She had been the one to reach out to him. She had offered her hand out. Possibilities, possibilities…
But Vyce was a certainty.
He felt like ripping out his hair in agony as his heart tried desperately to wretch control away from his brain. But in the end, he let out a strangled moan and hastily threw on his trench coat. “I can’t believe I’m doing this. I can’t believe I’m doing this. I can’t believe I’m doing this.” The words flowed out like a mantra as he began to shove his tools and inventions in his pockets.
There was still time. He could still meet up with her in the evening. He could still try to save her. Love her. Explain everything to her and promise that he could take her to safety. That this time would all be different.
No… No he couldn’t do that. What would she think of him then? She’d think every thought she had back in his world. That he was crazy, insane, obsessed. And she’d be right of course.
Tears burned at his eyes, but he just gripped his teleporter tightly. She didn’t know him. He was nothing but a random stranger. It wouldn’t take long for her to forget she’d ever met him.
No, not even here would she ever love him. But for once, in the barest degree of consolation, he could leave knowing she didn’t hate him either.
***
A868Z3532
Oscar had known from the start that jumping universes had more than its fair share of risks, and had known to some degree the threat of assimilation and acclimation; hence the creation of an anchor to keep himself biologically synced to his own Earth before he ever left it. He’d also understood logically that compositional differences in universes had the potential for adverse effects. He’d gone to one world where some foreign pathogen had him incapacitated for five miserable days with fever and a few downright wretched symptoms, and he had thought at the time that he’d been put through the wringer.
He hadn’t known what pain really was.
No, his first true experience in the dangers of bodily limitations in the multiverse had been a harrowing and grim lesson.
It happened so very quickly too. He’d made his way through an available wormhole into some new dimension, some new planet. And in a matter of seconds, he was staggering, struggling to breathe in a strange atmosphere entirely too dense.
A mangled cry tore from Oscar’s lips. He fell to the ground almost instantly as a swiftly-mounting agony overwhelmed him, curling into the fetal position involuntarily as pain exploded within him. He didn’t know what was happening, but it hurt to think, to move, to breathe. It felt like his chest was being squeezed in a vise and his bones had been replaced with lead. A terrible pressure bore down on him and he felt like his head would implode. His inner ears were under absurd amounts of duress and the pressure kept building and building until they popped and he nearly screamed again.
He had to think. He knew he had to think or else he was going to die. But it was so hard to think when his heart was hammering frantically in terror. The sort of blinding fear that threatened to drown out everything but thought of how imminent death was.
Teleporter. Where was his teleporter?
Every gulp of air felt like a lungful of water, like he was drowning on dry land under the intense atmospheric pressure. His arm didn’t want to move. That was it, he was going to die. He was going to die- he couldn’t think- no- pocket- had to reach his pocket…
Another strangled sound escaped his throat, too chocked to be a scream, but his hand uncurled and his elbow moved with all the fluidity of a rusted hinge to the fold of his coat. Couldn’t die yet. Not yet. Just a little more. Oh science it hurt to breathe, hurt to move, hurt to live.
Oscar had had no idea if he’d did it or not; his fingertips had no feeling in them, but he must have hit the correct button because a different sort of pain swept over him and his eyes rolled up in his skull as every microbe of his body was ripped away from the physical and temporal location and into some different one.
His body thudded lightly against a new ground, and Oscar laid there without making the slightest attempt at all to move.
It was over. He was still alive. He was in horrific amounts of pain and whimpering softly and uncontrollably, and he could taste some amount of blood in his mouth, but he was alive and breathing and his body would eventually re-adjust.
With absolutely no ability to move for the foreseeable future, Oscar resigned to passing out wherever he was. He looked for brief moment to see if he could piece together anything, but his vision was far too blurred to make out the landscape beyond a few vague shapes in very dim light and the only thing he knew for certain was that he was lying on grass. Wearily, he shut his eyes and continued to pant weakly for breath. At least he wasn’t in the middle of a highway somewhere. Maybe he was in some forest or field. It was too dark and quiet to be near civilization. Maybe there was no civilization here. Maybe that’s all there was.
Maybe that’s all there was anywhere; just pain and wilderness and darkness.
***
Earth-262785463
A handful of universes later, Oscar sat at a window, looking out at the endless stars and solar systems dotting the crushing darkness of space. He didn’t usually get the luxury of being able to look at the universe, strangely enough. He had his teleporter as his main method of transportation and that made for a very short trip. Sometimes he could see glimpses of things as his body was pulled through space and time, but nothing leisurely like this.
The people of this universe were lucky enough to live in a world with the technology to convert buildings into space-traveling structures. “House-ships”, as they were called, were apparently an increasingly popular purchase among well-off homeowners.
He looked around at the group of people laughing and talking in their little party in the kitchen. They seemed like nice people. They hadn’t even been off-put at the prospect of giving some nobody a ride over the nearest public shuttle station on one of the moons by Jupiter. This seemed like a nice universe, peaceful and inquisitive. Perhaps if he had found this place sooner, his journey would have taken a different path.
But as things were, every second only made him feel even more lost.
Oscar let out a deep sigh and rested his head on the edge of the window frame. He didn’t belong here. He didn’t belong anywhere. The truth was he wished he had never left. He disliked thinking about it at all, hated turning his thoughts inward that way, but it was the truth. Thinking back to long ago days when he had once thought of the multiverse as some grand adventure was enough to make his heart nearly tear in half with how naive he had been.
On a different day, a better day, he might have cried. But he didn’t seem to even have that ability any longer. Instead of tears, there was only a terrible ache in his chest, tight and unbearable, a pressure far worse than the atmospheric compression that had nearly killed him a few worlds back. No, this wasn’t something that was debilitating his lungs. It wasn’t a tangible weight the way even the gasses of the air could be measured.
It was loneliness. And it was crushing his very soul.
He watched the far-off glow of a star glide past the window and wondered if they were the same stars that hung over his home universe. Did Wayne still see the stars? Oscar had no way to know, and no way to reach his brother any longer. He was truly alone, and was now understanding the full extent of what that really meant. It was the worst thing he’d ever felt in his life. It was a raw, desperate yearning that was tearing him up inside. It was a gaping hole that had no hope to be filled.
Did Spoonette ever glance up at the stars? Did she ever take the time to look up and notice the twinkling lights above her? Even if it was only fleeting? Did she still think of him at all, even if the thoughts were inundated with bitterness and disgust? And what of her counterpart that he had met? The one that had given him a flirtatious smile and the offer to buy her a drink at her favorite bar, whom he had run away from at the first hint of danger on the horizon. Had she waited for him? Had she peered curiously at the door every so often, wondering if he would show up? Had she felt some pang of disappointment when his company never came?
It didn’t matter. No one was waiting on him anymore, not anywhere.
He was still alive, whatever that counted for any longer. Mild-mannered Oscar Schlumper had managed to pull himself together and survive dozens of different dimensions, always staying one step ahead of Lord Vyce, and would continue to do so. Running as far as he could to save his own neck and damn what he had to lose in the process. He’d long since lost any notions of romanticizing it as anything other than what it was: pathetic cowardice.
Wayne would probably despise him if Oscar ever did see him again. It wouldn’t be undeserved either, and he would take Wayne’s scorn without refute. Honestly, it was the best scenario Oscar could think of. Wayne would hate him and that would be okay because it meant that Wayne was there to hate him.
That was all he cared about any longer.
***
L499662
One of Oscar’s greatest successes was a filter modification to his teleporter that would sift out dimensions that did not fit within the parameters of his physical limits, which would hopefully prevent him from dropping dead in an incompatible universe in some needlessly gruesome fashion. So far it seemed to have worked.
But something was still very wrong in this dimension.
Hissing and giggling echoed all around him, inhuman sounds that chilled him to his very core. It was as though the world was breaking down around him, shifting in places it shouldn’t, splitting open and revealing the innards and underside of existence itself. He couldn’t get away, not when the space he was on was too unstable to even classify as a space. There was no point from which his teleporter could lock onto, the universe itself might as well been liquid water sloshing around for all the stability it had.
“Tiny little huuuuuuman.”
The words made Oscar’s blood immediately run freezing cold and his breathing turned into nothing more than shaky wisps.
The giggling droned on in a higher pitch and from depths of… somewhere that was at once both nowhere and yet everywhere, some formless thing was writhing and reality rippled around it.
“You can see, you can see, swirly-eyed huuuman. Little bug eyes that see what others can’t. Smart little huuuuman. Should be careful what you see. What lurks in the cracks. Here is barely a sliver. Others out there, yes, in the infinity. Too large for you. They consume all. Not I, not I. Not hungry. Restless. Stretching. Perhaps you die little huuuuman. Perhaps not. Perhaps here becomes no more. Perhaps not.”
Oscar’s mouth gaped uselessly. No words and no thoughts in his mind, only numb, all-consuming horror.
“Scared little huuuuuman. Of I, of I, of trivial I. How amuuuuuusing. Should be scared of another. Of that one.”
“Who?”
The question was nothing more than a croak, and Oscar Schlumper would never know how it managed to escape him, but the hissing and giggling heightened. The shapeless thing that was everywhere and nowhere wriggled and reality bended with it. As though doubling over from laughter.
“It speaks. Yes, what smart little huuuuuman. Others wither in the presence of our kind. But you speak. I will answer you, little bug eyes, as reward.”
All at once, the hissing voice was right against his ear, low and terrible. “Vycccccccccce. ‘Lord’, he calls himself. Even us fear him, slither back into the void where he cannot reach. You are not so lucky little huuuuman. So be careful what you see, swirly eyes. Vyce sees too. And all that he sees, he conquers.”
The frenzied pitch swelled and the world, which was already like water, rolled into a crashing wave, and Oscar helplessly fell back into oblivion, blacking out entirely.
When he opened his eye again, he was lying flat on his back and everything was as it was before. He wasn’t dead, the universe hadn’t unraveled, and there was no sign that the monstrous being had ever been there. No outward sign at least. Internally, the bone-chilling words were still rattling around in his head; and it was doubtful if they would ever leave.
Shakily, Oscar willed himself to sit upright; and despite his trench coat, he found himself shuddering and wrapping his arms around himself. But other than the involuntary reflexes, he didn’t move further.
He didn’t think he could do this any longer. He couldn’t keep existing like this any longer. He would become hollowed out. He would lose himself. He was just a speck in the multiverse, a grain of salt in a sea, one sea out of countless oceans.
And yet even right then, when he felt like he was barely there, his blasted mind, against all rationality, still wanted more answers. That had always been his response to everything his whole life; to know more. It didn’t matter that he’d just seen too much, that self-preservation begged him to quit while he was ahead and tread safely. There was still so much more out there. And more was something Oscar had always craved. He hadn’t been content to just push the boundaries of conventional science; he had wanted to shatter them. He hadn’t been content to merely observe the shifts and fluxes of hypertime; he had sought to manipulate them himself. He hadn’t been content to only see what his eyes could glean; he had needed his goggles to look beyond his limits.
That allure, that need for answers and experimentation and science, that thirst for more, that was what was going to be the death of him. Not Vyce. Well, probably not Vyce. So long as his detector continued to work and give him a head start.
Sitting there silently for an unknown amount of time, detached from the physical hunger pangs and stiff muscles that began to settle over him at some point, Oscar continued staring straight ahead.
***
Earth-7266
Exploring the multiverse had a way of putting things into perspective.
Simultaneously, it also had a way of driving one mad. Often the line between the two was blurred.
“Not that I care,” Oscar said offhandedly. “There are only so many things I can overthink at once.”
Talking to himself seemed to help. Initially, there didn’t seem to be any real reason to talk aloud very much, especially without Wayne there to listen or answer, but Oscar was sick of the silence. Chattering improved his mood, what did he care if only the empty air was there to listen? It was a waste of time to be concerned about how it might look to a hypothetical someone who wasn’t even there. Actually, it would still be a waste of thought even if someone was there.
“In fact, other people are a waste of thought in general.”
It was a callous judgment, but Oscar shrugged off any semblance of an ill conscience in lieu of turning the dial on his latest creation. A soft hum started and a red glow rapidly built up until a beam burst into the air, shooting a short distance ahead striking the side an empty office building. The impact resulted in a loud burst and a web of cracks in the structure.
He had something now. Something that could destroy, something that could provide a measure of defense. Since the beams were relatively small and fairly short-ranged, he was thinking of perhaps crafting them into some sort of tool he could wear on his hands. Finger beams of some kind.
Oscar grinned and aimed for the window next. The glass pane exploded into pieces upon impact and he laughed with glee. He laughed a lot more now, and laughed longer, louder, and sharper. It seemed more natural these days. Being a pathetic coward didn’t have to mean being a miserable pathetic coward, after all.
He was rationalizing.
“Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve had fun?” Oscar snapped to no one. “I’m not going to apologize for a little bit of entertaining excessive force. Besides, I had to test it on something.”
He knew that someone would eventually have to deal with the damage, but that wasn’t his problem. He had much bigger problems, and the obvious result of that was letting go of hang-ups on more minor issues that didn’t seem to matter much anymore. Things like property damage, breaking and entering, lifting a few chemicals and science supplies here and there, stealing flyers out of people’s mailboxes to score some fast food coupons. Nondescript things, really.
And speaking of fun, he needed to go do more of that. See movies he’d missed and find out what meaningless but catchy pop songs were playing. Was Wayne Brady black in this universe? That was always an amusing litmus test.
Yes, there was really no need for things to be so doom and gloom all the time. No need to continuously fret about a past he couldn’t fix. How long had it been anyway?
“Well how should I know? It’s hyptertime,” he complained. “It doesn’t matter in any case.”
Lots of things didn’t matter anymore. Probably a result of that fact that he was doubtlessly going insane. His own name didn’t seem to matter anymore, didn’t fit who he was becoming. He was thinking of replacing that too.
Oscar leaned back and toyed with the dial on his invention with one finger. He almost turned it off but on a whim, started going the other way, turning the dial as high as it would go.
***
Earth-4W
Contrary to his previously-dramatic exit, Doctor Linksano found himself back in the Linkara’s storage room. It hadn’t been any choice of his of course. He’d been on his way out of the universe when Vyce’s blasted magic-energy power source suddenly interfered, scrambling his attempts at getting away in the process of grabbing the comic book reviewer.
Getting disrupted mid-teleportation was dangerous in any circumstances, but this instance was particularly woeful. The interfering pull in Vyce’s direction wasn’t rectified until there was a subsequent pull back in the opposite direction to null everything and smooth the jumbled field back out. So when Linkara’s little friends had teleported their hero back from wherever Vyce had been keeping him, Linksano had also been deposited right back in the living room. A little more delayed than Linkara was, but Linksano was more concerned about making sure he was still in one piece after being jammed in the space-time continuum. Then, to his subsequent panic, he’d found out the few blacked-out seconds he’d experienced had been an entire month for the rest of the planet.
Linkara had cornered him, asking for information and answers after what he’d experienced. Intriguingly enough, he’d had the remains of a Shade and wanted to look over it.
Linksano had given it some thought. No part of him really wanted to stick around, not when he’d been delayed enough already and Vyce was steadily drawing closer to the planet. But he’d never inspected a Shade before. There was the possibility it could reveal something important. The more he knew about Vyce, the better he could be about avoiding Vyce.
He’d stayed.
In the day he’d tell Linkara what he knew about Vyce, which admittedly was limited as his intent had always been to go in the other direction from the armored menace, but he knew well enough what happened to worlds under Vyce’s control and had heard plenty of additional rumors in his time spent traveling the multiverse. At night, he’d work on his teleporter, adjusting it so that when he did leave there would be no trace that Vyce could detect. If Vyce was so interested in the reviewer, he was likely watching very closely. A teleportation beam from Linkara’s location would put Linksano on Vyce’s radar if he didn’t do so carefully, and the absolute last thing he needed was drawing Vyce’s attention.
So when Linkara told him of his supposedly brilliant plan, Linksano responded accordingly…
“YOU WANT ME TO WHAT?!”
Linkara winced slightly at the volume and shrillness but kept his composure. “The only way we’re going have a real shot at Vyce is by having someone on the inside. You’re the only who can pull this off. I mean, you just have to pretend you don’t like me. Which doesn’t require you to actually pretend anything.”
“Exactly, so why in the world would I risk my neck on your behalf so you can play hero?” Linksano shot back.
“Because Vyce is a common threat between us,” Linkara stated simply. “Besides, aren’t you tired of just running away every time Vyce gets remotely close?”
“I don’t need a lecture on life choices from someone who spends his time whining about comic books on the internet,” Linksano said defensively.
“Fair enough, but I still need your help,” Linkara said. “At least think about it.”
To Linksano’s surprise, the reviewer did actually get up to leave him alone with his thoughts. To Linksano’s unsurprise, his thoughts were confused and complicated.
The truth, as reluctant as Linksano was to face the truth, was that messing around with Linkara and his pathetic little show had been the most fun he’d had in ages, even if he had gotten his ass kicked after his failed plan to use the Warrior comics to generate his own army. If not for Vyce’s appearance, well, he probably would have stayed for much longer. As loath as would be to admit it, he really would miss this universe.
Vyce was still the greater danger though.
And yet… There was that part of him that was tired of running. All he ever did was run away. So far it had worked as a means for survival, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t also be frustrated at times about the cost. There was something to be said for the idea of all the fleeing to be over with.
There was also the fact that running away would put a major dent in the whole “take over the world” plan, and he really did like that plan.
For the rest of the day, Linksano was uncharacteristically quiet, mulling over a great many things, some things which he hadn’t thought about in a very long time. And that night, instead of holing up in Linkara’s storage room tinkering with his teleporter, he had been the one to corner Linkara.
This Earth… He wanted to stay on it. There had been so many parallel words, so many chances to stay and try to make something his own, and he had run from each and every one of them.
But not this one. He was tired of running.
“I’ll do it.”
Author: lizynob
Summary: A small collection of events experienced by Oscar Schlumper at various points in the multiverse before being formally hired by Linkara.
Pairings: One-sided Linksano/Spoonette (and one universe where it might not have been so one-sided)
Warnings: General Linksano angst and one mildly graphic near-death scene.
Word Count: 5,598
Author’s note: Fic title comes from one of the songs on the amazing mix made by
aunt_zelda which can be found here.
Earth-982
“We might not ever come back,” Wayne finally allowed himself to admit one night while they were working. “In fact, we probably won’t.”
It was a topic they’d been purposefully ignoring for a while, and Oscar hummed in thought for a few moments. “You know, right now that doesn’t sound like the worst thing in the world,” he finally said.
“What we’re doing is utterly insane,” Wayne continued.
“Of course it is. Everything about this whole situation is insane,” the younger Schlumper remarked calmly. He looked at his brother curiously. “Is there any particular reason why you’re pointing it out now? Are you…having second thoughts about this?”
Wayne shook his head and went back to his task, talking as he did so. “No, it’s not that. I trust our science, and I know we’re right about this threat. It’s just that this really is a crazy sort of plan. What if the next world we land in is worse off? Or Vyce goes there next anyway?”
“Then we go someplace else,” Oscar said simply. “We go wherever we have to. We go everywhere. We go… we go far away, as far as we have to.”
Wayne’s voice softened. “When you’re talking about infinity, that’s very far,” he pointed out.
“I don’t care,” Oscar murmured. “Far away sounds nice. We’ve never fit in anyway. Too smart for our good, too curious for our own good, too obstinate for reason, and too awkward for love. What would we even do if we stayed at this point? We’ve already burned so many bridges getting to this point. I…” Oscar kept his head down, realizing just how much he’d bought into their own fumbling rhetoric that this was the only way. They were words that had only started in order to try to convince themselves to keep on the precarious path they’d started on, but now seemed real. “I want to go. I want to run away. I know it’s ridiculous and we’re just as likely to wind up dead out there as we are staying here when Vyce reaches our world, but… I don’t know. I just… I want to go so far away from here…”
His gaze unexpectedly rose back up when a hand settled on his shoulder, and Oscar realized that Wayne was standing next to him.
“A simple road trip would have been a lot easier,” he said with a small smile.
Oscar let out a soft laugh. “And miss out on breaking apart the space-time continuum?”
“Well when you put it like that…” Wayne joked. There was a comfortable pause between them as they smiled before Wayne pulled his hands back. “Alright, alright, these blueprints aren’t going to build themselves.”
They shared one last reassuring glance at each other, and then went back to working into the night. Everything would be okay. They would at least have each other and as long as they stuck together, they could get through anything.
It would be only two weeks later that Oscar Schlumper would find himself alone, hugging his knees to his chest and trying desperately to process exactly how everything had ended up going so wrong.
***
Earth-776663883
“You know, staring is rude,” the young woman said pointedly, giving her hair a flip.
Oscar caught himself, and his cheeks heated up to an embarrassing hue, but he couldn’t help but stare. She was exactly as he remembered her. There was not a single physical variation he could see, from the shade of her hair to the shape of her nose to the pitch of her voice. She was a beautiful and perfect in this universe as she had been in his.
He cringed and braced himself for the backlash. “I’m… I’m sorry,” he finally forced out. “I… I just…. y-you….” Talking to her again was doing things to his mind. How long had it been since he had really seen her? She had gone to such lengths to avoid him and Wayne before finally moving out of town without so much as looking back. More than once Oscar had wondered what had become of her.
He waited for her familiar scowl. Instead she merely gave him a smirk. “What, you got a thing for blondes?” She asked, eyes gleaming in something like amusement.
He couldn’t very well say the truth. He had a thing for her. Ever since he was a teenager, he had given his heart over to her despite the fact that she had never wanted it, and being face to face with her again made too many emotions surface all at once.
Apparently his distress was evident because the next thing she said was “don’t hurt yourself, you dork.” But the words lacked any real condescension.
“I’m sorry,” he mumbled again, face woefully red.
Every part of him was poised to flee and he was already in the process of deciding the best path for escape when his heart seemed to freeze up in his chest at a touch on his arm.
“Hey, it’s okay,” she pulled her hand back when he met her gaze again, and he continued to feel the exact spot her fingers had touched even through the sleeve of his shirt. “Staring is totally rude and all, but you don’t need to freak on me or anything.” She gave him a glance-over and then pulled something out of one of her pockets, handing it out to him, which he took automatically.
It was a business card. Black and gold with the words “Amber Shore” scrawled across it along with an address.
“It’s my favorite bar,” she said. “I’m there like, every weekend. You look like you could use a little something to loosen up. Maybe I’ll see you there tomorrow, and maybe you can buy me a drink. But for now, I gotta run. By the way, the name’s Spoonette.” And with that, she flashed him a smile and walked off, leaving Oscar stranded in intense confusion and deep exhilaration.
It was nearly incomprehensible on every level, and he struggled to fully wrap his mind around what had just happened. He had met the Spoonette of this world, he had been caught ogling at her, and then she….did not call the police on him. Or glare daggers in his direction before storming off. Or make a scene out of publically humiliating him and calling him a creep.
“…She has no reason to hate me,” he contemplated to himself, trying to grasp hold of the thought. This Spoonette had never known Oscar Schlumper, had no knowledge of him, no memories, and no disdain. She hadn’t seen her former neighbor and science-obsessed high school stalker. She had seen some random stranger, awkward but harmless, who committed nothing more than the social slight of staring too long at someone more than attractive enough to merit it.
She offered him the chance to buy her a drink.
The thought plagued Oscar for the rest of the day, not giving him a moment of rest. He eventually found himself in a thrift shop staring blankly at a rack of second-hand clothes.
What did one wear to a bar? What exactly did one do in a bar for that matter? Consume alcoholic beverages, obviously, but surely there was more to it than just that. Oscar had no real idea what though; he had never set foot in a bar in his life. For that matter, he had never really drunk alcohol. He and Wayne had once covertly acquired a pack of beer as teenagers to try it, a venture that had resulted in them both spitting in the sink and grabbing a couple of sodas to chase away the taste, but he’d never touched real liquor.
Endless possibilities both encouraging and terrifying piled up on his already burdened mind. Eventually, he purchased a black button up shirt and left, biting his bottom lip and fidgeting with his hands the whole way back to the dilapidated tool shed on an overgrown piece of property he currently called home.
Oscar didn’t do much more than curl up against a paint-peeled wall and flip the business card in his sweaty hands over and over again while trying to breathe. Was this a second chance? Was it worth it to try? What if he arrived and she was not there? What if she was there but thought he was a fool? What if he spilled his heart and soul out the way he was prone to doing in her presence? And what if…what if she actually enjoyed his company?
“Just this once, Spoonette…” he whispered in a voice so soft he could barely even hear himself as he leaned his head back, his heart filling with a longing that he’d long tried to push back with science. “Just this one dimension… Do you think you could bring yourself to love me?”
He never did find out the answer. After working through his muddled emotions by tinkering with his new dimensional analyzer until his eyes refused to stay open any longer, he’d woken up to a sharp blaring that in his initial sleepy haze he’d almost mistaken for his old alarm clock going off. It wasn’t an alarm clock, but the beeping device was cause for alarm.
Vyce.
Oscar scrambled upright, his pulse beginning to race. This universe? Why? What possible anomaly had dragged the armored conqueror in this direction? It didn’t matter. He couldn’t stay. He couldn’t let Vyce catch him. He had to get out. He had to leave now. He had to- he stopped in his tracks.
Spoonette was a possibility here in this world; a real possibility, one that had previously been untouchable to him. She had been the one to reach out to him. She had offered her hand out. Possibilities, possibilities…
But Vyce was a certainty.
He felt like ripping out his hair in agony as his heart tried desperately to wretch control away from his brain. But in the end, he let out a strangled moan and hastily threw on his trench coat. “I can’t believe I’m doing this. I can’t believe I’m doing this. I can’t believe I’m doing this.” The words flowed out like a mantra as he began to shove his tools and inventions in his pockets.
There was still time. He could still meet up with her in the evening. He could still try to save her. Love her. Explain everything to her and promise that he could take her to safety. That this time would all be different.
No… No he couldn’t do that. What would she think of him then? She’d think every thought she had back in his world. That he was crazy, insane, obsessed. And she’d be right of course.
Tears burned at his eyes, but he just gripped his teleporter tightly. She didn’t know him. He was nothing but a random stranger. It wouldn’t take long for her to forget she’d ever met him.
No, not even here would she ever love him. But for once, in the barest degree of consolation, he could leave knowing she didn’t hate him either.
***
A868Z3532
Oscar had known from the start that jumping universes had more than its fair share of risks, and had known to some degree the threat of assimilation and acclimation; hence the creation of an anchor to keep himself biologically synced to his own Earth before he ever left it. He’d also understood logically that compositional differences in universes had the potential for adverse effects. He’d gone to one world where some foreign pathogen had him incapacitated for five miserable days with fever and a few downright wretched symptoms, and he had thought at the time that he’d been put through the wringer.
He hadn’t known what pain really was.
No, his first true experience in the dangers of bodily limitations in the multiverse had been a harrowing and grim lesson.
It happened so very quickly too. He’d made his way through an available wormhole into some new dimension, some new planet. And in a matter of seconds, he was staggering, struggling to breathe in a strange atmosphere entirely too dense.
A mangled cry tore from Oscar’s lips. He fell to the ground almost instantly as a swiftly-mounting agony overwhelmed him, curling into the fetal position involuntarily as pain exploded within him. He didn’t know what was happening, but it hurt to think, to move, to breathe. It felt like his chest was being squeezed in a vise and his bones had been replaced with lead. A terrible pressure bore down on him and he felt like his head would implode. His inner ears were under absurd amounts of duress and the pressure kept building and building until they popped and he nearly screamed again.
He had to think. He knew he had to think or else he was going to die. But it was so hard to think when his heart was hammering frantically in terror. The sort of blinding fear that threatened to drown out everything but thought of how imminent death was.
Teleporter. Where was his teleporter?
Every gulp of air felt like a lungful of water, like he was drowning on dry land under the intense atmospheric pressure. His arm didn’t want to move. That was it, he was going to die. He was going to die- he couldn’t think- no- pocket- had to reach his pocket…
Another strangled sound escaped his throat, too chocked to be a scream, but his hand uncurled and his elbow moved with all the fluidity of a rusted hinge to the fold of his coat. Couldn’t die yet. Not yet. Just a little more. Oh science it hurt to breathe, hurt to move, hurt to live.
Oscar had had no idea if he’d did it or not; his fingertips had no feeling in them, but he must have hit the correct button because a different sort of pain swept over him and his eyes rolled up in his skull as every microbe of his body was ripped away from the physical and temporal location and into some different one.
His body thudded lightly against a new ground, and Oscar laid there without making the slightest attempt at all to move.
It was over. He was still alive. He was in horrific amounts of pain and whimpering softly and uncontrollably, and he could taste some amount of blood in his mouth, but he was alive and breathing and his body would eventually re-adjust.
With absolutely no ability to move for the foreseeable future, Oscar resigned to passing out wherever he was. He looked for brief moment to see if he could piece together anything, but his vision was far too blurred to make out the landscape beyond a few vague shapes in very dim light and the only thing he knew for certain was that he was lying on grass. Wearily, he shut his eyes and continued to pant weakly for breath. At least he wasn’t in the middle of a highway somewhere. Maybe he was in some forest or field. It was too dark and quiet to be near civilization. Maybe there was no civilization here. Maybe that’s all there was.
Maybe that’s all there was anywhere; just pain and wilderness and darkness.
***
Earth-262785463
A handful of universes later, Oscar sat at a window, looking out at the endless stars and solar systems dotting the crushing darkness of space. He didn’t usually get the luxury of being able to look at the universe, strangely enough. He had his teleporter as his main method of transportation and that made for a very short trip. Sometimes he could see glimpses of things as his body was pulled through space and time, but nothing leisurely like this.
The people of this universe were lucky enough to live in a world with the technology to convert buildings into space-traveling structures. “House-ships”, as they were called, were apparently an increasingly popular purchase among well-off homeowners.
He looked around at the group of people laughing and talking in their little party in the kitchen. They seemed like nice people. They hadn’t even been off-put at the prospect of giving some nobody a ride over the nearest public shuttle station on one of the moons by Jupiter. This seemed like a nice universe, peaceful and inquisitive. Perhaps if he had found this place sooner, his journey would have taken a different path.
But as things were, every second only made him feel even more lost.
Oscar let out a deep sigh and rested his head on the edge of the window frame. He didn’t belong here. He didn’t belong anywhere. The truth was he wished he had never left. He disliked thinking about it at all, hated turning his thoughts inward that way, but it was the truth. Thinking back to long ago days when he had once thought of the multiverse as some grand adventure was enough to make his heart nearly tear in half with how naive he had been.
On a different day, a better day, he might have cried. But he didn’t seem to even have that ability any longer. Instead of tears, there was only a terrible ache in his chest, tight and unbearable, a pressure far worse than the atmospheric compression that had nearly killed him a few worlds back. No, this wasn’t something that was debilitating his lungs. It wasn’t a tangible weight the way even the gasses of the air could be measured.
It was loneliness. And it was crushing his very soul.
He watched the far-off glow of a star glide past the window and wondered if they were the same stars that hung over his home universe. Did Wayne still see the stars? Oscar had no way to know, and no way to reach his brother any longer. He was truly alone, and was now understanding the full extent of what that really meant. It was the worst thing he’d ever felt in his life. It was a raw, desperate yearning that was tearing him up inside. It was a gaping hole that had no hope to be filled.
Did Spoonette ever glance up at the stars? Did she ever take the time to look up and notice the twinkling lights above her? Even if it was only fleeting? Did she still think of him at all, even if the thoughts were inundated with bitterness and disgust? And what of her counterpart that he had met? The one that had given him a flirtatious smile and the offer to buy her a drink at her favorite bar, whom he had run away from at the first hint of danger on the horizon. Had she waited for him? Had she peered curiously at the door every so often, wondering if he would show up? Had she felt some pang of disappointment when his company never came?
It didn’t matter. No one was waiting on him anymore, not anywhere.
He was still alive, whatever that counted for any longer. Mild-mannered Oscar Schlumper had managed to pull himself together and survive dozens of different dimensions, always staying one step ahead of Lord Vyce, and would continue to do so. Running as far as he could to save his own neck and damn what he had to lose in the process. He’d long since lost any notions of romanticizing it as anything other than what it was: pathetic cowardice.
Wayne would probably despise him if Oscar ever did see him again. It wouldn’t be undeserved either, and he would take Wayne’s scorn without refute. Honestly, it was the best scenario Oscar could think of. Wayne would hate him and that would be okay because it meant that Wayne was there to hate him.
That was all he cared about any longer.
***
L499662
One of Oscar’s greatest successes was a filter modification to his teleporter that would sift out dimensions that did not fit within the parameters of his physical limits, which would hopefully prevent him from dropping dead in an incompatible universe in some needlessly gruesome fashion. So far it seemed to have worked.
But something was still very wrong in this dimension.
Hissing and giggling echoed all around him, inhuman sounds that chilled him to his very core. It was as though the world was breaking down around him, shifting in places it shouldn’t, splitting open and revealing the innards and underside of existence itself. He couldn’t get away, not when the space he was on was too unstable to even classify as a space. There was no point from which his teleporter could lock onto, the universe itself might as well been liquid water sloshing around for all the stability it had.
“Tiny little huuuuuuman.”
The words made Oscar’s blood immediately run freezing cold and his breathing turned into nothing more than shaky wisps.
The giggling droned on in a higher pitch and from depths of… somewhere that was at once both nowhere and yet everywhere, some formless thing was writhing and reality rippled around it.
“You can see, you can see, swirly-eyed huuuman. Little bug eyes that see what others can’t. Smart little huuuuman. Should be careful what you see. What lurks in the cracks. Here is barely a sliver. Others out there, yes, in the infinity. Too large for you. They consume all. Not I, not I. Not hungry. Restless. Stretching. Perhaps you die little huuuuman. Perhaps not. Perhaps here becomes no more. Perhaps not.”
Oscar’s mouth gaped uselessly. No words and no thoughts in his mind, only numb, all-consuming horror.
“Scared little huuuuuman. Of I, of I, of trivial I. How amuuuuuusing. Should be scared of another. Of that one.”
“Who?”
The question was nothing more than a croak, and Oscar Schlumper would never know how it managed to escape him, but the hissing and giggling heightened. The shapeless thing that was everywhere and nowhere wriggled and reality bended with it. As though doubling over from laughter.
“It speaks. Yes, what smart little huuuuuman. Others wither in the presence of our kind. But you speak. I will answer you, little bug eyes, as reward.”
All at once, the hissing voice was right against his ear, low and terrible. “Vycccccccccce. ‘Lord’, he calls himself. Even us fear him, slither back into the void where he cannot reach. You are not so lucky little huuuuman. So be careful what you see, swirly eyes. Vyce sees too. And all that he sees, he conquers.”
The frenzied pitch swelled and the world, which was already like water, rolled into a crashing wave, and Oscar helplessly fell back into oblivion, blacking out entirely.
When he opened his eye again, he was lying flat on his back and everything was as it was before. He wasn’t dead, the universe hadn’t unraveled, and there was no sign that the monstrous being had ever been there. No outward sign at least. Internally, the bone-chilling words were still rattling around in his head; and it was doubtful if they would ever leave.
Shakily, Oscar willed himself to sit upright; and despite his trench coat, he found himself shuddering and wrapping his arms around himself. But other than the involuntary reflexes, he didn’t move further.
He didn’t think he could do this any longer. He couldn’t keep existing like this any longer. He would become hollowed out. He would lose himself. He was just a speck in the multiverse, a grain of salt in a sea, one sea out of countless oceans.
And yet even right then, when he felt like he was barely there, his blasted mind, against all rationality, still wanted more answers. That had always been his response to everything his whole life; to know more. It didn’t matter that he’d just seen too much, that self-preservation begged him to quit while he was ahead and tread safely. There was still so much more out there. And more was something Oscar had always craved. He hadn’t been content to just push the boundaries of conventional science; he had wanted to shatter them. He hadn’t been content to merely observe the shifts and fluxes of hypertime; he had sought to manipulate them himself. He hadn’t been content to only see what his eyes could glean; he had needed his goggles to look beyond his limits.
That allure, that need for answers and experimentation and science, that thirst for more, that was what was going to be the death of him. Not Vyce. Well, probably not Vyce. So long as his detector continued to work and give him a head start.
Sitting there silently for an unknown amount of time, detached from the physical hunger pangs and stiff muscles that began to settle over him at some point, Oscar continued staring straight ahead.
***
Earth-7266
Exploring the multiverse had a way of putting things into perspective.
Simultaneously, it also had a way of driving one mad. Often the line between the two was blurred.
“Not that I care,” Oscar said offhandedly. “There are only so many things I can overthink at once.”
Talking to himself seemed to help. Initially, there didn’t seem to be any real reason to talk aloud very much, especially without Wayne there to listen or answer, but Oscar was sick of the silence. Chattering improved his mood, what did he care if only the empty air was there to listen? It was a waste of time to be concerned about how it might look to a hypothetical someone who wasn’t even there. Actually, it would still be a waste of thought even if someone was there.
“In fact, other people are a waste of thought in general.”
It was a callous judgment, but Oscar shrugged off any semblance of an ill conscience in lieu of turning the dial on his latest creation. A soft hum started and a red glow rapidly built up until a beam burst into the air, shooting a short distance ahead striking the side an empty office building. The impact resulted in a loud burst and a web of cracks in the structure.
He had something now. Something that could destroy, something that could provide a measure of defense. Since the beams were relatively small and fairly short-ranged, he was thinking of perhaps crafting them into some sort of tool he could wear on his hands. Finger beams of some kind.
Oscar grinned and aimed for the window next. The glass pane exploded into pieces upon impact and he laughed with glee. He laughed a lot more now, and laughed longer, louder, and sharper. It seemed more natural these days. Being a pathetic coward didn’t have to mean being a miserable pathetic coward, after all.
He was rationalizing.
“Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve had fun?” Oscar snapped to no one. “I’m not going to apologize for a little bit of entertaining excessive force. Besides, I had to test it on something.”
He knew that someone would eventually have to deal with the damage, but that wasn’t his problem. He had much bigger problems, and the obvious result of that was letting go of hang-ups on more minor issues that didn’t seem to matter much anymore. Things like property damage, breaking and entering, lifting a few chemicals and science supplies here and there, stealing flyers out of people’s mailboxes to score some fast food coupons. Nondescript things, really.
And speaking of fun, he needed to go do more of that. See movies he’d missed and find out what meaningless but catchy pop songs were playing. Was Wayne Brady black in this universe? That was always an amusing litmus test.
Yes, there was really no need for things to be so doom and gloom all the time. No need to continuously fret about a past he couldn’t fix. How long had it been anyway?
“Well how should I know? It’s hyptertime,” he complained. “It doesn’t matter in any case.”
Lots of things didn’t matter anymore. Probably a result of that fact that he was doubtlessly going insane. His own name didn’t seem to matter anymore, didn’t fit who he was becoming. He was thinking of replacing that too.
Oscar leaned back and toyed with the dial on his invention with one finger. He almost turned it off but on a whim, started going the other way, turning the dial as high as it would go.
***
Earth-4W
Contrary to his previously-dramatic exit, Doctor Linksano found himself back in the Linkara’s storage room. It hadn’t been any choice of his of course. He’d been on his way out of the universe when Vyce’s blasted magic-energy power source suddenly interfered, scrambling his attempts at getting away in the process of grabbing the comic book reviewer.
Getting disrupted mid-teleportation was dangerous in any circumstances, but this instance was particularly woeful. The interfering pull in Vyce’s direction wasn’t rectified until there was a subsequent pull back in the opposite direction to null everything and smooth the jumbled field back out. So when Linkara’s little friends had teleported their hero back from wherever Vyce had been keeping him, Linksano had also been deposited right back in the living room. A little more delayed than Linkara was, but Linksano was more concerned about making sure he was still in one piece after being jammed in the space-time continuum. Then, to his subsequent panic, he’d found out the few blacked-out seconds he’d experienced had been an entire month for the rest of the planet.
Linkara had cornered him, asking for information and answers after what he’d experienced. Intriguingly enough, he’d had the remains of a Shade and wanted to look over it.
Linksano had given it some thought. No part of him really wanted to stick around, not when he’d been delayed enough already and Vyce was steadily drawing closer to the planet. But he’d never inspected a Shade before. There was the possibility it could reveal something important. The more he knew about Vyce, the better he could be about avoiding Vyce.
He’d stayed.
In the day he’d tell Linkara what he knew about Vyce, which admittedly was limited as his intent had always been to go in the other direction from the armored menace, but he knew well enough what happened to worlds under Vyce’s control and had heard plenty of additional rumors in his time spent traveling the multiverse. At night, he’d work on his teleporter, adjusting it so that when he did leave there would be no trace that Vyce could detect. If Vyce was so interested in the reviewer, he was likely watching very closely. A teleportation beam from Linkara’s location would put Linksano on Vyce’s radar if he didn’t do so carefully, and the absolute last thing he needed was drawing Vyce’s attention.
So when Linkara told him of his supposedly brilliant plan, Linksano responded accordingly…
“YOU WANT ME TO WHAT?!”
Linkara winced slightly at the volume and shrillness but kept his composure. “The only way we’re going have a real shot at Vyce is by having someone on the inside. You’re the only who can pull this off. I mean, you just have to pretend you don’t like me. Which doesn’t require you to actually pretend anything.”
“Exactly, so why in the world would I risk my neck on your behalf so you can play hero?” Linksano shot back.
“Because Vyce is a common threat between us,” Linkara stated simply. “Besides, aren’t you tired of just running away every time Vyce gets remotely close?”
“I don’t need a lecture on life choices from someone who spends his time whining about comic books on the internet,” Linksano said defensively.
“Fair enough, but I still need your help,” Linkara said. “At least think about it.”
To Linksano’s surprise, the reviewer did actually get up to leave him alone with his thoughts. To Linksano’s unsurprise, his thoughts were confused and complicated.
The truth, as reluctant as Linksano was to face the truth, was that messing around with Linkara and his pathetic little show had been the most fun he’d had in ages, even if he had gotten his ass kicked after his failed plan to use the Warrior comics to generate his own army. If not for Vyce’s appearance, well, he probably would have stayed for much longer. As loath as would be to admit it, he really would miss this universe.
Vyce was still the greater danger though.
And yet… There was that part of him that was tired of running. All he ever did was run away. So far it had worked as a means for survival, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t also be frustrated at times about the cost. There was something to be said for the idea of all the fleeing to be over with.
There was also the fact that running away would put a major dent in the whole “take over the world” plan, and he really did like that plan.
For the rest of the day, Linksano was uncharacteristically quiet, mulling over a great many things, some things which he hadn’t thought about in a very long time. And that night, instead of holing up in Linkara’s storage room tinkering with his teleporter, he had been the one to corner Linkara.
This Earth… He wanted to stay on it. There had been so many parallel words, so many chances to stay and try to make something his own, and he had run from each and every one of them.
But not this one. He was tired of running.
“I’ll do it.”