Welcome to The Story Scrapbook, a fiction newsletter by E.B. Howard. If you’re new in town, check out my Fiction Directory for navigation.
Mirai, Mirai is a bite-sized speculative serial drama, posting weekly. This time, Lady Radiance and her friends must fend off the attacks of multiversal megalomaniac Mheksos the Mighty—with the help of their children from alternate futures far worse than their own.
Previously, our heroes’ watch was interrupted by four strangers—one of whom addressed Lady Radiance as her mother…
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“Makaria!” The new voice had a robotic tone, and Lady Radiance looked over Kari’s shoulder to see the armored giant. Up close, the titanium suit’s design was half spacesuit and half battle plate, and the outline of a head was just visible through the iridescent glass visor. A forest-green cape flowed from the back of the shoulders, the majestic effect somewhat undercut by holes here and there. “It was the first rule! We made a deal, no dropping spoilers on people!”
Kari leaned back, turning to look at him without letting go. “I know, but I haven’t seen her in so long,” she pleaded. “Come on, Beetle. She would have realized anyway—you said yourself how much alike we look.”
The Lady, though still too stunned to say so, wasn’t sure she agreed. There was some resemblance: Kari had the same thick blonde hair as she had, and a similarity in the round cheeks and lips. But against her own rosy skin, the other woman’s looked as pale as death…and, then, there were the narrow violet eyes.
“Not to play devil’s advocate, but does that rule really apply?” the last of them said as he came to stand at The Matrix’ side. He was a stocky but well-built man in an old-fashioned hero suit, dark red from cowl to cavalier boots and seamed with battle scars. Smoky lenses obscured his eyes, leaving only his chin and sardonically tilted mouth visible; he was middle-aged, maybe. His temper seemed to have settled, but there was a carelessness in his tone that Lady didn’t care for. “Strictly speaking, ‘spoilers’ would imply that this Radiant has her own Makaria. And, if I’m remembering right, she doesn’t.”
“Well, I wasn’t speaking strictly,” Beetle grumbled. “I meant ‘don’t give Aunt Christa a heart attack’. I like her.”
“Okay, what exactly is goin’ on here?” Chained Lightning said, hands raised to get their attention back.
The Matrix was pinching the bridge of his nose like a man who’d just seen all his plans dissolve. He looked frustrated with the situation, but not entirely surprised. “My young associates are demonstrating why we made the first rule to begin with,” he said. “All right, let me see how much I can get out of the way up front. Yes, we are from the future. No, none of us are from your future specifically. Yes, there are multiple futures, always have been, we just didn’t know it. You were part of the universe designated Terra-32 up until we arrived and forked the timeline, creating the backup universe which we’re in now and hopefully disconnecting the original from the multiverse altogether.” He had to pause for breath. “And, yes, we do have a very good reason for all of this.”
Chained Lightning nodded slowly. “And that is?”
“Mheksos the Mighty, Master of the Multiverse.”
“Mouthful, isn’t it?” the masked man quipped.
The Matrix leveled a look at him. “I have an entire flowchart scripted out for this, you know, and it doesn’t include you all cutting-in in the middle.”
He shook his head. “I thought this version of you would know better.”
“Apparently not.” The Matrix made a wide gesture across the group. “Fine, introductions again. That’s Makaria, of Terra-668, and these gentlemen are Titan Beetle, Terra-932, and Ignis, Terra-86. My own timeline is Terra-43. I think you three all know Lady Radiance and Chained Lightning, in some form or another.”
Kari had almost relaxed enough to let go, but she suddenly embraced the Lady again with a startled, venomous look in the others’ direction. Ignis frowned deeply, folding his arms. “Lady Radiance, is she now?” he said.
The Matrix pushed his glasses up his nose in annoyance. “There’s only so much my predictions can account for. I was understandably more concerned with ensuring that we met the initial Mhekanite attack than with landing at any particular time.”
“So we’re early,” Ignis said.
“No. We arrived precisely when I meant to,” he said. “It’s Mheksos who’s early. Given his usual strategy, I estimated that he would hit this timeline around 2017, but I couldn’t be exact.”
Lady Radiance took a deep breath, hoping to reorient herself. “It’s only 2013,” she said.
Titan Beetle’s headgear swiveled, clicking like gnashing jaws. “Matrix.”
He shifted cagily on his feet. “We’ll work it out.”
Ignis was counting on his fingers. “Work it out? Unless there’s more differences from my timeline than you mentioned, we’re missing a lot of firepower. ’13 means no Radiant Blaze, no Chaos Kid, no Marvella, basically no Chained Lightning—”
“Run that by me again?” There was an edge in Baz’ voice.
“Spoilers,” The Matrix said curtly, glaring at Ignis. “Anyway, that part’s an easy fix. I have the molecular pattern for the final formula.”
Kari was still scowling. “Or we could do it without him.”
“All right,” Lady said sharply, with a burst of golden light. She wasn’t prepared for silence to fall as immediately or respectfully as it did. “Let’s all just….take a breath…and back away from each other’s throats. Whatever’s wrong, infighting won’t help.”
“Exactly,” The Matrix said. “Thank you. Now—”
“HEY,” Spacewalker yelled, from some distance behind her. “IS IT SAFE OVER THERE, OR WHAT? ’CAUSE MARISSA HAS SOMETHING SHE WANTS TO TELL YOU.”
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Thanks for reading! For more stories set in this universe, see my superverse directory.
Okay, now I’m curious about “Chaos Kid” because how could I not be?There’s so much wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff happening, and I’m so here for it.
One time when I was on Wordpress I wrote a serial where a character bounced around in time and met different versions of herself and I ended up making a chart to keep track of the story that wound up looking like a weird lumpy banana, of a sort; I imagine the Matrix's chart looks more or less like that as well by now. The difficulties of flow-charting the multiverse.
(Also, I loved Titan Beetle: is he the alternate version of Featherweight or is this a new kid? )