Avery Trent - Chapter 5 (Terra Down)

The armored figure drew closer to the road with large strides. His polished exoskeleton glimmered in the light of the pink supernova above. Installed above his left forearm was a mobile cannon of some sort. His light blue visor flashed as as a silver amphibian hit it, momentarily revealing a pair of deep red eyes.

Meanwhile, Avery and Jason were stumbling over each other to open the door facing away from the approaching threat.

“Dammit, Avery, stop pushing me!” Jason exclaimed as he struggled with the handle.

“Just kick it!” Avery shouted. Jason looked at him incredulously, raising an eyebrow. Glancing back Avery saw the armored figure walk up behind less-good Avery.

The umbrella-ed man noticed Avery’s feared expression and turned around.

“I really hope that arm thingy shoots--” before he could finish, the armored figure brought his left arm to eye-level with less-good Avery and fired.

“Oh, God! Lasers, it shoots lasers!” Avery exclaimed as his less-good version was obliterated by the attack. “Jason-- Jason he’s dead. He’s gone. He killed less-good me!”

Jason had returned to fighting with the door handle, but to no avail.

“Just--” Avery shoved him out of the way and kicked the door as hard as he could. It flew open and the scrambled out.

The two men tripped and rolled, landing in the tall grass beside the road. They laid low in the field, watching for the armored figure to come around the car. Suddenly, the vehicle was ripped apart with a flash of light and sent flying in all directions, a storm of flame and smoke and bits of car.

From the swirling mass of smoke stepped less-good Avery’s murderer. He looked around, surveying the area. As he did so a small silver frog plopped on his head and croaked loudly. The armored figure grabbed the frog tightly, tossed it into the field behind Avery and Jason, and shot it in midair. The frog, unlike the car, simply disappeared in a flash of light.

Then, craning his head upward and aiming his arm cannon at the sky, he fired a massive blue laser into the clouds. The rain continued to fall for a second more before stopping completely. No more frogs fell, and those on the ground began popping, leaving behind small piles of silver dust scattered across the land.

“Jason,” Avery whispered as quietly as he could. “What do we do?” Jason stared at the armored figure, ignoring Avery.

“Jason!” Avery hissed.

“What?” Jason replied loudly. He quickly clapped a hand over his mouth as the armored figure stared down in their direction. Everything froze as Avery and Jason stared back, not daring to move a muscle. Eventually the figure looked away and began walking around the ruined vehicle.

“What?” Jason said again, hushed voice this time.

“What do we do? He just killed a storm! There’s no way we could get back to the can--”

“We get to his can.” Jason rose to his feet, remaining hunched over so that he wouldn’t poke out of the grass. “Come on,” he said as he walked away looking like a hunchback.

Avery sighed, glanced at the armored figure worriedly, and followed.

Somehow, after making their way down alongside the road a ways, they were able to run across without the armored figure noticing. Once on the opposite side of the road, the two booked it to the chrome can that had brought the murderer behind them. Reaching it, Jason slammed his opened palm into the side and the top slide open, just like the silver can did.

Placing his hands on the can’s smooth surface, Jason pulled himself up it. His foot followed and he soon reached the top. Avery just watched, agape and amazed at Jason’s apparent gecko powers.

“Well? Are you coming?” Jason hissed from the top.

“How did you do that?” Avery asked, inspecting the can’s side.

“Just do what I did,” Jason replied. “And hurry, before Dorothy sees.”

“Dorothy?” Avery questioned, glancing behind him.

“Well, I never really liked Dorothy and the Tin Man was cool. I don’t really like this guy, and he’s not cool. Dorothy,” Jason explained.

Avery shrugged and jumped at the can, finding that he stuck to it quite easily. With this new-found ability he climbed up the side and joined Jason at the top.

The two promptly hopped inside the can and Jason took the pilot seat. Avery hastily buckled himself in as the can closed shut and shot upward.

On one of the screens Avery could see “Dorothy” staring up at them, aiming their arm cannon.

“He can’t hit us up here, can he?”

“Avery, he killed a storm. I’m pretty sure his shots could reach us up here,” Jason said as he spun the can toward the place they had originally landed and zoomed off.

Keeping an eye on the screens, Avery saw the world flash by beneath them. The road, a blurry black line, sliced through the greenish-yellow of the surrounding valley as they darted across the sky.

Soon, they reached their destination. The silver can sat in the middle of the road, just waiting for them to return.

Jason led the chrome can downward and crashed it into the asphalt beside his own can. Avery shouted as they made contact with the ground.

“Maybe a warning next time?” he complained, rubbing his head.

“No point. You would’ve complained anyway.” Jason unbuckled and ran to the leappad, jumping out of the chrome can and landing gingerly beside it. Avery followed right after him and the two crawled up the silver can, hopping inside it and flying upward.

“Dorothy’ll be here any second, now,” Jason said, surveying the screens.

“What? There’s no way he could get here that fa--” Avery shut up when he noticed a blip of white speeding down the street at the chrome can.

“Is he-- running?” Avery stared at the screen in disbelief as the armored figure leaped into the air, several feet from the chrome can, and flew to the top. Ripping the hatch open and getting inside, he soon brought his chrome can up to the sky with the silver can.

“Jason, we’ve got to get out of here!”

“You don’t think I know that, Avery?” Jason growled as he fumbled with some controls. The screens suddenly went dark and Avery started panicking, demanding to know what was wrong.

“Avery!”

“What?”

“Shut up!”

“Sorry,” Avery mumbled. He leaned back in his seat and watched the screens nervously, biting at his nails.

The chrome can suddenly rushed the silver can, slamming into its side and denting it a good amount.

“Dammit!” Jason exclaimed, punching a button and jerking the can to one side. The screens suddenly flashed back to life and Avery could see that a robotic arm hung beside their can.

“What’s that?” he asked. “That arm-looking thing.”

“That, Avery,” Jason said. “Is an arm-looking thing that’s normally used for picking up things in space,” he punched another button and the arm widened, looking very much like “Dorothy’s” arm cannon. “But as it is, I could really care less about the rules of arm-looking things.”

With that, the arm fired three green orbs at the chrome can. Two missed and set fire to separate parts of the field below, but the third hit its mark.

The chrome can suffered its own dent and shuddered as it spun away through the air.

“Yeah, take that, Dorothy!” Jason moved his hand back towards Avery for a high-five, causing the silver can to tilt slightly. Avery ignored Jason’s hand and watched the chrome can on one of the screens.

“Jason, are these cans any strong?”

“Yeah, of course they are. Why do you think we won?” Jason sounded disappointed at Avery leaving him hanging, but returned to flying the ship around.

“Then how come Dorothy went down so easily?” The chrome can was spinning out of control, heading for the ground, smoke trailing down with it.

“Eh, probably a crappy older model.” Jason brushed off Avery’s concerns and aimed them for the atmosphere. “Now, let’s get out of this circus act,” Jason soon began muttering about silver frogs and creepy men under umbrellas. Avery leaned back in his chair and tried to ignore his pilot.

As they neared the atmosphere and the sky grew darker, a low whistling sound caught Avery’s ear.

“What’s that?” He sat up and checked the screens. Far below them, a dark object was speeding upward. Avery squinted at it, opened his eyes wide, squinted again, and finally realized-- “Er, Jason, I think Dorothy’s back.”

“What? There’s no way--” Jason saw the screen and the rapidly approaching chrome can. “Oh, come on!” He boosted the can’s speed up even more in an attempt to break through the atmosphere before the chrome can caught up to them.

Then, with a loud pop, they burst out of the atmosphere and into the vacuum of space. Avery stared out the small porthole-like window in awe.

Jason leaned back in his seat again. “Well, Sneezes, welcome to spa--”

“It’s a lot darker than I expected,” Avery stated, cutting Jason off and earning himself a glare.

Suddenly, the silver can rattled and blasted forward at an incredible speed. A blinding flash filled the ship, the screens, and all surrounding space.

Avery and Jason, caught by surprise, found their vision blurred for a while. During this time, Jason spun off a very long string of curse words which partially deafened Avery, just adding to his deterred senses.

“What the hell was that!?” Avery yelled, tossing in his own curse words, though none nearly as bad as Jason’s.

Outside, debris floated past the can. Flaming, rocky debris. Confused, Avery tried peering back through the window, but couldn’t see anything aside from darkness, debris, and distant stars. When the screens finally cleared up and the two huddled around the one showing the galaxy behind them. What had once been a vast, lush, blue and green planet, was now a tiny, flaming ball of rock. Silence visited the duo again, for the first time in a while that day.

“Jason…?”

“Avery…”

“Did Terra just…?

“Yeah, I think it did.”

The ship’s cabin fell quiet as the two reflected on what had just happened. Eventually, growing anxious, Avery spoke.

“How?”

“What?” Jason looked up from the ground, surprised by the sudden reappearance of sound.

“How did that happen?” Avery nodded at the screen, at the tiny flaming meteor.

Jason didn’t speak and just stared at the screen, spacing out.

“Jason?”

Seeming to come out of his trance by Avery’s prompt, Jason began to speak, but was quickly stopped by the sight of something nearly impossible.

The thing with nearly impossible things is that they’re exactly that. Nearly impossible. They aren’t completely impossible or not too impossible. They’re nearly impossible, meaning they can happen, but when they do they’re quite a surprise.

Looking out the tiny window of the silver can, Jason experienced one such nearly impossible thing. Because there, staring back at him, was a white and orange helmet with a light blue visor, behind which sat a piercing red glare.

“Avery,” Jason said, not breaking his gaze from the window. Avery turned to see what Jason was looking at and jumped in surprise. “It looks like we’ve got a stowaway. A filthy, murdering stowaway.”

The red eyes glared more intensely through the visor as Jason returned to piloting the ship.