"Not yet," Ed said, his eyes narrowing. "Where's Merlin?"
Grissom looked at the sky crossed by lighting-bolts , and then at the face of Merlin looking at them from the monitor. "Rhetorical question, right, Ed? I was wondering why you wanted to keep us so wet during the fight, but now I see your reasoning."
Euro smiled with gritted teeth, and with a theatrical gesture threw the mace, who fled straight to the airship with the big monitor, breaking its outer shell.
The image on the monitor disappeared.
The Vanguardians moved at unison toward the ship, first running, then, as they were approaching, slowing down. They stopped just a few metres from the damaged ship.
Through the hole, just occasional sparkles of electricity from broken cables were visible, breaking the total darkness.
Then, a mad laugh was heard, coming from the deep inside of the ship.
All the Vanguardians raised their weapons. The moment each of them has waited for so long finally had arrived.
The storm had ceased. The clouds dissipated, a rainbow saluting the return of the tropical sand.
A bird began to sing, and then suddenly shut off, like being aware of the dramatic force of the moment.
Brianna, from under the wet, sticky long red hairs, glanced a Grissom, who glanced back and smiled at her.
The squirrel landed over the shoulder of Brute Force, whose muscles shuddered instinctively for just a moment.
Ed took Durendal from the sheath in the backpack, and balanced it with the two hands.
Rama specularly unsheathed his own Caliburn, branding it with just one hand, being it a short Roman gladius.
Phil frowned, raising the MP5s and aiming them toward the hole in the ship side. For a second he though how much reliable his gun were, opposed to his own powers, but put the though back, and looked straight at the hole.
The bearded stranger cocked his head, feeling the pathos of the moment, although he had no idea why that bunch of powered men were so thrilled by what, or who, they were expecting to see appearing from that broken ship.
There was a burst of wind coming from the sea, bringing the salty aroma of the Ocean, mixed with the heavy smell of algae drying under the sun.
A fly buzzed.
Then it was silence.
The breathing of the ones nearer become evident to each Vanguardian for an instant, and then it was forgotten, lost in the painful waiting.
Silence.
Then, the click of heels over the metallic floor of the ship broke the silence.
Every weapon in the hand of the Vanguardians, swords, crossbow, MP5s, handgun... was raised again and aimed straight at the hole.
Another step.
From the darkness inside the ship the Thundermace was thrown outside, in an ample arch, and landed precisely a few centimetres on the sand in front of the Vanguardians feet.
"I guess this is yours, Thunderchicken!" spoke loudly Merlin, still hiding in the darkness.
Another step, and the figure of Jack Merlin, son of Myrrdin and leader of the Strikeforce, appeared. Framed by the curled rim of the broken side of the airship, the Vanguardians saw the tall, imposing figure, the long white hairs moving in the wind coming from the sea, the wicked smile, the red ruby piercing eyes.
The deadly villain, the man who, alone, was able to cage the Vanguardians inside the narrow borders of La Perdita, was finally right in front of them.
"Finally we face again, Vangurdians. Too bad your skull faced friend, who dared to boot me outside your door, is not among you." Merlin shrugged. "Next time, its turn. Now yours!"
And saying that, he unsheathed a long, bronze gleaming sword from a big scabbard on his back.
The sword was very long, leaf shaped, with a network of pulsating red veins embracing the blade. And the hilt, with its phallic features, was unmistakable.
"Ladnikia!" yelled Euro, while Merlin waved her, in a complex sword-dance.
"Ladnikia is singing, kids. Soon she will drink your blood!" said Merlin, smiling sadly. And pointed the sword toward the heroes, menacingly.
"How lame, mate" said Grissom. A revolver appeared in his right hand, and fired.
Merlin, hit fully in the chest, fell to the ground. After an instant, a pool of blood enlarged from below his body.
All Vanguardians stood silently. Just Brianna wondered: "It ends like this? Really?"
Grissom coughed. "Not quite, my dear... if my guessing is right..."
Suddenly, reality around them faded away, like a bad dream, leaving the eight persons in the middle of nothing... or, better, of a limitless wooden floor, without any wall or ceiling to contain it. Around them, a vast grey nothingness.
On the floor, a seemingly dead body, of one that surely was not Merlin.
Grissom kneeled near the man, two of his three fingers pressing the throat, looking for a pulse.
"It's alive" beat him Phil. "But totally senseless. He needs medical care asap".
"But... who is him?" asked Brianna, looking at each of his teammates in turn. It was a young man,
No one seemed to hold an answer, until Phil exclaimed: "I know him! And you should too, Bree."
The girl frowned. "It seems familiar... now that you said so..."
"He was one of those youngsters that fought us one year ago, when we teamed up with that otherworldly MBL. The one with the rifle..." explained Phil.
Grissom's hands ran through the man's uniform with an ability that left some of the Vanguardians surprised. Easily, he found some documents. "Dominique LaSalle, Agent Hunter. Strikeforce UN clearance for most of the countries of the world" said the Brit, closing the documents, and beginning to seal the wound with the standard medical equipment found in the backpack of the man.
Phil looked around, in the vast emptiness. "I guess the standard questions would be: what happened? What is this place? And why we were fighting this man? It's obvious the explanation of Merlin were fakes, as everything before. And after."
"I think it's pretty obvious where we are. Not many of us have been there, but there is just a place where things are not what they seems, when crossing a door you find yourself in a completely different world, where something architectonically complex as a tesseract is lined with wooden floors and Victorian furniture. The cave is an entrance to the Castle of Crossed Destinies" said Grissom, lighting up a cigarette.
"The Castle of... what?" asked Brianna. The others were looking around, the squirrel strangely silent, the stranger visibly intertested, Euro with a strange expression, while eyeing the place closely.
"The Castle of Crossed Destinies, luv. A sort of realities hub... basically a place with many door, from which you leave a reality to enter a completely different one. Poor Chance joined Vanguard right in that Castle... coming from an alternate dimension. Maybe the hologram of Vanguard we saw in that future... maybe it was the Vanguard that Kris lead in his universe... And who have we fought here? Most of them where villain we had found right in the Castle... and some of them we killed in there. The Scorpions, Aurochs, Knell... and the others were villains we killed or destroyed before, so that in our reality couldn't have been in the Strikeforce: the T5 robot, X Acute... Jia that is in the EPS prison." Grissom looked at the wounded Strikeforcer. "And him... maybe he was charged to control us, he followed us across the door... exactly like the squirrel has done... and what you too must have done..." said Grissom looking at the stranger "and then when he attacked us, he was altered by the Castle to represent his organisation... with even his boss."
Euro nodded. "Interesting theory. But now that you have opened my eyes, I have a different explanation. When I came to La Perdita the first time, that very first evening Grimm brought me and the other Vanguardians to Jake's Place... yes, where you works these days, BF".
The Italian took a pause, his eyes lost to a past that seemed remote to him.
"That night, me, Chance and Quantos... especially Quantos... experienced a strange thing. We saw things that were supposed not be there. Me and Kris saw a big tesseract like space. Quantos went to the bathroom, and ended up first in Paris, then in Tokio. Jake's explained it giving the blame to hypnotic byproduct of some metas there... but then, a strange little man, with a impossible name, gave us another version... we would have stumbled upon a thing... a fourth dimensional living being... called Metatithenai... a living dimensional hub" said Ed.
"And you believed him?" asked Phil, perplexed. The others were simply staring at him.
"Frankly, at the time, not. Not me, at least. But now, everything seems to fit. The Vanguardians in the hologram were exactly the ones that went to the bar that night... there was Turner, who had fled from the EPS along me... there were Baaghrupta and Uncle Otto... plus, if you think about it, what we experienced pointed always to a dame in distress... first the future Queen, then Brianna in the hand of Jia... I wonder if the Metatithenai was asking us to protect her... from this Strikeforcer."
Grissom frowned. "And you believe a thing like the one you just described would have been sitting here, when moving across space and time would have been so simple for it?"
Ed shook his head. "You' re right... but what if for a mysterious reason she was not able to move? She called upon us... the Vanguardians she met that night... that would explain the door so easily to open... and then, once we revealed to be not the same person she met, the robot attacked us... just to leave place to Jake's bar, and our friend BF, once the Metatithenai recognised us as the current Vanguardians. There was even a sort of welcoming sign at Jake!"
"But that sign it was really at Jake's!" protested BruteForce.
"Yes, sure" said Rama, taking from where Euro had left. "And that's why the Metatithenai send us there, just to take us out all of a sudden, transferring us to a different reality, where a Hunter character was hunting a Queen. But then, since we were taking so much time, he transferred us to another reality, much more similar our own, where she put us to confront the Strikeforce. Here everything was a lot less subtle, and the message evident: nothing is how it appears. First we were said that we have been victim of hallucinations, then we have old allies revealed as to be enemies, just to revert to robot. And again, we had a Hunter... a spider, a deadly critter... capturing our only female member... same situation of the previous reality. After we defeated the Hunter... the one that in our reality is our hunter supreme, Merlin... the truth was revealed, and we are here... inside the so called Metatithenai"
Grissom grimaced, shaking his head. "This doesn't explain why this metathing able to transport people from one dimension to another would be so helpless confronting a mere man".
Euro shrugged, and after having glanced at Rama, who shook his head, said: "I don't know. I haven't an answer for that..."
"But I do!" said a voice from behind.
They all turned, to see Doc Quantos appearing from a open door that surely was not there before.
"I know why you have been called here..."
