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, Christa found her attention drawn to the mysterious armored giant, Titan Beetle…
<Previous || Directory || Next>
Titan Beetle’s mech-armor loudly unfolded itself around a slim figure in what looked like a black wetsuit, its surface covered in wires that he was in the process of disconnecting. To Christa’s surprise, just when she thought he was about to pull out his left arm, he popped the shoulder free entirely—he had no left arm, just some kind of interface plate. Finally he stepped down to the pavement from the height of its interior and waved a hand across a sensor. Behind him, the armor folded back into its usual form and then appeared to drop away into shadows, hidden by cloaking tech more effective than anything Christa had ever seen.
The man within Titan Beetle was young and sturdy, about her own age, with a strange pallor to his skin as if he should be tanned but had been away from the sun for too long. His thick dark hair, almost black, was shaved on the sides and just long enough on top to be ruffled from the confines of the helmet. He was already quite tall, even outside of the suit, and he held himself taller as he leaned his head back to take in the sky.
“Just give me a minute. It feels so good to breathe a real atmosphere again,” he said, smiling good-naturedly all the way to his narrow dark eyes. “Aw, man, is that the Moon?”
Christa looked back over her shoulder. “…yes?”
“That’s crazy! It looks so much bigger in old reels.” He stretched his arm above his head and smiled at her in turn. So much about him felt comfortingly familiar, but after everything Kari had said, she was in no state to work out why. “It’s good to see you, too, Aunt Christa. Freedom fighters don’t really get shore leave…and then, y’know, Mheksos.”
She nodded as if she understood, not wanting to ask directly if she were dead on his Earth too. “Do we always lose to Mheksos?”
“Always,” Kari said softly. She was still holding tightly to her mother, head tucked into her shoulder. “Matrix says he’s only been beat once or twice that he saw. Of course the timing is different, based on what else is happening in the world, but the end result is always irreparable damage to your section of the timeline.”
“Oh,” Christa said again. “So—”
She was mercifully interrupted by footsteps inside. Jacob appeared in the doorway, back in his street clothes already, with her bag slung over his shoulder. “Chris, I got your stuff. Aren’t you coming in?” he asked.
“We will.” She glanced uncertainly at Titan Beetle. “He was just looking at the Moon.”
“Yeah, sorry,” the dark-haired man said brightly. “Ours got popped with a pinpoint black hole in World War Four, before I was even born. Everything was pretty much downhill from there.”
Her brother’s gaze was flickering between their faces again, but adding Titan Beetle’s to the list of stops. “Now I am so tired I’m seeing things,” he said.
“Oh, whoops, I thought that’d take you longer,” Beetle said. “I guess Matrix can get over it. So—no, you’re not. Don’t worry too much, because I don’t think you’ve even met my mom yet, but I’m your son. You can call me Jonathan.”
Jacob took a long, measured breath and rubbed a hand across his eyes. “…yes. Of course. Hi, Jonathan,” he said. “Uh, I’m going to go crash upstairs and put off thinking about any of this until I’ve had some sleep. Just make sure your aunt gets in okay.”
“Sure thing.” He turned to Kari, whose attitude was already worsening again as Christa untangled herself in order to go take her bag. “See? Totally fine.”
“Go jump out an airlock, Ziggy Stardust,” she said.
💻🔥🤖🪻
Vaguely, Christa heard somebody say that it was past four o’clock. There were follow-up comments about ‘jump lag’ and adjusting to local time, but she might have fallen asleep on her feet and dreamed those. Though she had redone her hair and scrubbed her face with cold water when she got changed, it hadn’t helped. Going sleepless, using so much power so suddenly, and mentally adjusting to the strange situation had exhausted her. She’d held out longer than Jacob had, but now that she felt safe again, her body wouldn’t stop trying to enforce a recovery.
She’d thought that she was only sitting down resting, but she blinked and found she was in a much dimmer room, wrapped in a thick fluffy blanket that smelled like somebody else’s laundry. Dawn was just starting to filter through the cheap blinds, and though she hadn’t looked around, she felt strongly that she wasn’t alone. Still very tired, Christa closed her eyes again and gratefully fell back to sleep.
<Previous || Directory || Next>
Thanks for reading! For more stories set in this universe, see my superverse directory.
Titan Beetle is my favorite reveal so far. Completely unphased and nonchalant about literally everything. "my parents are normal" SMH. Why do these have to be so short, please finish the entire series and post it all at once tomorrow, thank you.
What? WHAT??? WHAT.