NOVEL NEXT Loop 257 - Part 4
It took a whole ten minutes of their attempt to blend in before a booming voice called out Cal’s name. “Cal, we are giving you exactly one chance to surrender. We can discuss this matter after you do.” The voice belonged to a large man standing on top of a nearby armored car. Next to the car, several similarly dressed men were spilling out.
“Cal, run. I’ll handle this,” Stan said in a tone Cal had never heard the man use. It was somehow completely calm and full of burning anger at the same time. He knew there was no talking his dad out of this, and honestly, he had no intention of doing so. Several agency ogres were now making their way through the rapidly thinning crowd towards them. Cal had also had enough.
“Paladins hit them hard. We aren’t running. They haven’t earned our fear, just our anger. Tear them apart,” Cal yelled to the dogs as he signaled to Fulginanis in his head that this was the first spot they were dropping the new gateway. Right in the middle of New York City, secrecy be damned.
“Where the hell is my wife?” Stan’s words were paired with Excalibur slashed down into the first agency goon in front of him. The man didn’t even have time to cry out as his body fell to the ground in two parts.
“Safe in our keeping. I can take you to her if you just stop being reckless,” yelled the man with the booming voice. Cal assumed it was magically enhanced.
“No,” that single word was Stans's only reply as any semblance of calm he had shown left his body. He charged into the oncoming men and started slashing out at each one. The dogs raced after him, adding their own anger to the melee. Each of them were shouting something, but Cal couldn’t hear them clearly enough over the other sounds.
The effects were evident as Bug tripled in size and pounced on the largest of the ogres, taking several blasts of fire as she did so. Several strange instruments appeared floating around Alfred, playing a strange otherworldly song. Gretel was now catching magical energy in her mouth as she darted across the sidewalk, chasing each blast like a frisbee.
The gateway sprung to life behind Cal as the battle raged on and he quickly jumped through to the void house. “Twonger, Frank, gateways open. Go kill some Agency foot soldiers,” he yelled to the gathered crowd on the other side. It was time to bring in their own reinforcements. Cal turned and walked back through.
There were five times as many soldiers as there were before he had stepped through the gateway. The beehive had been kicked and all Cal could think about was that he was going to enjoy this. “Hey, loud voice idiot, can you hear me?!” Cal channeled some mana into his voice trying to simulate the booming effect. It worked well enough for now.
“I can. You realize you cannot win this, right? Right now, a literal army is en route to handle you,” the man answered.
“I don’t think you have the slightest idea what we can handle. From what I’ve heard you all got one loop to fight the Gryalth without us and managed to lose it much earlier than we typically do, but that isn’t even why I’m angry. You hurt my family; you still have some of them. We need to make sure you are far too afraid to ever do that again,” Cal fired several blasts of lightning into the soldiers that were moving towards him as he finished this statement.
On one side of Cal a giant tree man ran past him, tossing the soldiers like ragdolls in his path. On the other side came Twonger, who gave Cal a single nod as he passed. Cal nodded back. Strangely, though, Twonger was now followed by a giant mana spirit. Cal wondered where that had come from but didn’t have long to ponder on it as several ogres started launching their own magical attacks his way.
Gretel leaped into the air devouring nearly a third of them, giving Cal plenty of time to blanket the air with his own charged balls of electricity. Each one drawing in the magical energy and annihilating them both on contact. Cal smiled. Not a single attack had managed to strike home. Now it was time to really make his point clear as he fired a more powerful line of lightning straight at the man who he assumed was in charge; at least currently, he doubted the Agency people in the loop were actually here in person.
His lightning strike hit home and exploded as the extra mana he had poured into erupted outward from the strike, zapping any soldier it came in contact with nearby. The level of mana Cal had unleashed sent a ripple of fear through any of the non-ogre soldiers, most of them taking a few steps back from the direct fight as the reality of just what they were fighting set in. It did nothing to save them as several of them were immediately crushed under the car Frank hit them with. More were thrown flying by the new mana spirit guided by Twonger’s barked orders as he cut down two ogres with his own sword.
Within minutes, all of the original soldiers were either dead or running for their lives, but they didn’t have long to catch their breaths as hundreds of soldiers started appearing around them. “Huh, so they have some teleporting abilities? That explains how they got to yer house so fast!” Twonger yelled over renewed chaos.
“Enough, we’ve made our point for now. Everyone back through the gateway!” Cal screamed in response. He didn’t immediately retreat and instead started launching volley after volley of lightning strikes. His goal was to keep the new soldiers as distracted as possible while everyone else ran for home. He slowly backed up towards the gateway as each of his friends and family disappeared through it until only he was left. “This was just a warm-up, remember it!” He yelled this final threat before taking one last step backward through the gateway.
“Dammit!” Stan said as soon as Cal was in the room. “You should have ran; now we have to do that all over again.”
“Nah, I don’t see Scrump with you, so that worked perfectly,” Twonger said.
“Wait, where is she? Oh no, we left her behind. We have to go back Cal!” Bug started to panic.
“It’s okay, Bug, I promise. This was the plan. I’m sorry I didn’t tell any of you besides Twonger, but I thought we should make it as authentic as possible. Right now, she’s on the way to Harold with Sleek in tow. The Agency thinks they pushed us back through without establishing another portal they don’t know about, and we killed a lot of them. Today went perfectly,” Cal explained to the incredulous stare of the others.
“Fine, I can accept that this was all part of a secret plan, but where did you find Twonger a mana spirit that big that he managed to hide?” Stan asked.
“I actually didn’t know about that one. Twonger, where the hell did they come from anyway?” Cal looked at the alien.
“Don’t worry about it,” Twonger replied with a smile.