Our Perfect Worlds - Part 2

Redman: Conquest

TW: 18+ | Descriptions of Violence | Mature Language

PT 381, Dimension S-035, Santa Barraza

I don’t know if I can take this stress! I looked over the wondrous sunset, pacing nervously. To calm my nerves, I traveled down the fire exit of my skyscraper into my office. It was covered head to toe in my own keepsakes and relics that I have acquired throughout the years, locked away and never to be touched in protective glass cases. The marble floor shined decadently. My desk chair sat over a view of the city of Santa Barraza. I opened the closet in the corner of the room, and slid my hands into the sleeves of a red coat, where my name comes from. It is better if glitches in hiding like myself keep our real names a secret.

I’ve been profiled as a glitch because I ran away from my original dimension. By definition, a glitch is a lifeform who lacks a dimension. Even still, they are pretty loose with their rules. They assign you the worst title so you can be chewed up and molded into an obedient servant. They are DRU. An acronym meaning the Dimension Regulation Unit. I worked for them for a while while I was under their custody, I was basically a mule. One day, they approached me with a mission to track down and apprehend a glitch from the Desert of Sinkholes. When I saw her young face and fiery red hair, it lit a spark inside of me. We broke out of our forced servitude and went into hiding. She flew off into space when she got old enough to go on her own adventures. While I raised my empire in this dimension.

Today is the day. I've been waiting for years for her to come back. I was even feeling good enough to give an employee a day off. Mara went alone into the universe when she felt ready. Even still, I wasn’t ready to let her go. I thought I would never see her again. But here I am. I guess I gave that girl from earlier the day off because she reminded me of her.

The observation deck was like a flat ceiling that scraped against the sky. The clouds began to separate, and giant lights shimmered against the glass of my castle, as well as the rest of the city. A spaceship tore through the clouds. It was like one of those spaceships plucked from an old movie. A flying metal goliath with hundreds of blinking lights. It hovered directly above me, as if it was going to touch my nose. A familiar face beamed down.

She didn’t look very different. An orange and salmon-colored (she hates it when I call it that) skin-tight suit called a conduit suit clung to her body. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her with it off. She wore a punky crimson leather jacket with the words “persona non grata” plastered on it. The faded heart that was drawn onto her conduit suit hadn’t faded, either. Her newest and most surprising addon was a large sword that was strapped to her back.

“Redman! You old geezer!” She shouted cheerfully.

“Mara! You look like you haven’t aged a day.”

“That’d better be a compliment.” She joked. “Hey, check it out. These are my friends.”

There were three women behind Mara. Every one of them was adorned with some sort of “stardust” paraphernalia. Mara had a headband that read the former.

The first, a full-figured girl with jet-purple hair and a lazily constructed t-shirt, had a huge tattoo of a star on her upper chest. Another, a skinny woman with pigtails and a curvaceous sword, had a tattoo of a star proudly presented on her head.

The last girl, who was hunched over with her legs crossed on the ground had no signs of this, except for the necklace of a star. She wore red glasses and an orange and blue coat. I was worried that her messy blonde hair would cause her to break the device she was fiddling with. Just looking at her, I felt the power overflowing from her body as she rose to her feet and looked at me with bright, orange eyes.

“That’s Kat, Azuzu, and Sky! They're all my buddies. Just like you! Now we’ve got the whole band together!” Mara boasted, wrapping her arms around Kat and Azuzu, who were similarly bouncy.

“Redman, you trust me, right?” Mara asked suddenly.

I answered almost immediately. “Yeah, of course I do.”

“I’ve been doing lots of thinking, you know? I’m tired of hiding. I’ve got a new idea. We’re going to take DRU out before they take us out. It all starts with this universe.”

“What are you trying to say?” I asked.

“Help me take over this universe. We can stop them, one at a time.”

One universe at a time? Who am I talking to? What did she really mean? I moved away from this life a long time ago. I told myself that there’d be no more violence. No more killing.

Sky held the device she’d been tinkering with up to Mara. “I pinpointed the location of this world’s Mara equivalent."

“Cool. Thank you, Sky.”

In a flash, Mara’s body turned into a kinetic blast of red lightning. I watched her zip into the air and reform into her human form, only to transform again and fly further.

“Where’s she going?”

“First orders of business so we stay off DRU's radar.” Sky took out a computer and plugged the tracker in, accessing Mara’s location. “Gotta kill this universe’s Mara.”

“Why?” I asked.

“According to DRU, the universe goes boom if there’s two of the same people in close proximity for an extended amount of time.” Sky responded. “I think they’re spreading lies to keep us in line, but if their sensors pick up on two beings with the exact same anatomy in close proximity, we’d be spotted before we got started.”

“So…what if there’s another you here?” I asked.

“I make sure everything is accounted for.” Sky smiled.