Spectacular World
Chapter 227: Fly Me To The Moon

Chapter 227: Fly Me To The Moon

Hope was an interesting concept. It could be found in even the darkest of situations, and at times, it could be outright impossible to snuff out. At the same time, during other moments, it would flicker away from the slightest inconvenience.

When the war with the Emperor began, hope was a concept that had seemingly faded away entirely. Full Monarch, the strongest being in the universe, was gone. The Enforcers were unable to participate in the war. Monsters would appear out of thin air. Villains rampaged. Homes were destroyed. People died. Hope had almost faded away entirely. All it took was one action, though. Just a single moment to reignite the bonfire that was hope.

Hope was a fire. A flame. A desire that would grow and grow, and as long as it maintained its fuel, the hope of the heroes wouldn’t fade anytime soon.

"Did it actually work?" Young Dog questioned, folding his arms.

"It did." Legend gave a smile, an actual one, and pointed his thumb back at himself. "The portal tried to yank me away, but it didn’t win out. Whatever Doctor Blue did, it ensured that I was immune to it."

Hands drummed his fingers on the table. All the Enforcers were once again gathered in the meeting room, the table having been rebuilt. Today was a big day, since it was the first time a hero was able to enter a city since the war began. That posed an issue, though. "The villains are going to do something." Hands said simply. "If they know we can get around the portals, they’re not going to sit by and do nothing. Lucifer has kept them busy, but above all else, they’ve been trying to sow the seeds of despair. That’s what’s been halting them from simply coming in and taking Max. They don’t just want to win; they want to outright wipe us out and make sure not an ounce of hope remains."

"Yeah, it’s never that easy, is it?" Golden Weaver sighed.

Feast stuffed an entire turkey down his throat, the poor animal squeaking and trying to crawl its way out the entire time, before he eventually swallowed. When he was done, he patted his belly and burped. "Why does it matter if the villains know we have a counter to the portals? Can they even do anything?"

Tamer shrugged her shoulders. "I’m sure they’ll figure something out. That’s why we’re here, right? We need to find a solution to the issue. This might be the only chance we have."

Gorgeous folded his arms, his form rapidly flickering through appearances as he tried to come up with a solution. "So the issue is, we don’t have a lot of time before the villains either figure out a way around Doctor Blue’s portal fix, or they do something else altogether. We have enough for all of us, but there still isn’t that much of the Doctor’s formula, and it would take way too long to make more. So, how do we capitalize on this moment?"

Ferros cocked her head to the side and hummed. Her liquid metal danced through the air, taking various forms. "Since we have a counter to the portals right now, should we work on trying to replicate it and then wait for one of the Emperor’s big soldiers to show up and take them out? If we wipe Golden God or Fairy Queen out, then that’ll greatly favor our side."

Mermaid shook her head. "No. That won’t work. If the Emperor knows we can counter his portals, he might just take the attack straight to us or focus on getting Max instead of the plan he had been going with. He’s gonna be rushed now, and it could make him act quicker and throw what little morality he had left out the window. We have no idea when Golden God or Fairy Queen will appear either, so we’d have to wait for one of them to appear, and by that point, we might already be out of time."

Omega decided to chime in at that moment. "An ait obvious wat we do? We ’ust gotta ger up there ’n ’uck em up."

"I agree with Omega." Legend grunted.

"Can you translate for the rest of us?" Golden Weaver asked, letting out a sheepish laugh. "I have no clue what he said."

"He said we should go up there and deal with the Emperor ourselves," Young Dog explained.

"Up there?" Golden Weaver let out a gasp and looked up at the roof. "You mean the moon? Like the freaking moon? We fly up there, and just what? Take the big guy out? The guy that went toe-to-toe with Full Monarch? You know that’s going to be his home turf, right? Like we’d be kicking in the door to his home where all his little incest monsters are. I know I’m not the smartest guy ever, but that’s kind of a fucking stupid idea, isn’t it?"

Legend nodded his head. "It’s not the best plan."

"Not the best? It’s a terrible plan!" Golden Weaver threw his arms up into the air. "You can’t actually expect any of us to go along with it?" He looked around at the rest of the Enforcers, but none of them were looking at him. "Oh my God, don’t tell me you guys are actually debating doing Omega’s plan?"

"First of all," Legend began. "It’s my plan; I came up with it. Omega just had a similar idea. Secondly, yes, that is what I’m suggesting. Now that the villains know we have a counter, the most likely solution they’ll do is take out Doctor Blue. He doesn’t have any powers that can keep him safe, and we all know this base isn’t as secret as we’d like to believe. The Emperor could stroll in here any time he wants to, and there isn’t anything we can do. Doctor Blue has enough of the formula to last a bit, especially since it only takes a small dose, but it won’t last long enough to finish this war if he gets taken out. The villains have been constantly pushing us back, not giving us a chance to do anything. I say it is time we turn the tables and do to them what they’ve been doing to us. We attack them on their home turf."

"I don’t think we can beat the Emperor." Young Dog spoke up. "I’m tired of how useless we all feel, but I do partially agree with Golden Weaver. People like the Emperor or Lucifer exist for only someone like Full Monarch to handle."

"I think you’re forgetting that I’m here!" The door to the dark room exploded off the hinges as Ruby stepped into the room and pointed her thumb at herself.

"Were you just sitting out there waiting for a moment to make an epic entrance?" Mermaid asked flatly.

"What... No." Ruby cleared her throat and shook her head. "Either way, you guys don’t need to worry about anything because I’m on your side. For now. If my dad can beat that armored bastard, then so can I." Ruby placed her hands on her hips. "I’ve been working out a whole lot, you know. Fly me to the moon, and I’ll put an end to this war."

Legend looked away from Ruby and held his tongue. He, of course, wanted to be the one who actually saved the world, but he knew that even with how strong he was, he wouldn’t be enough. That was okay, though. He was willing to use the weapons that were around him and forge the path to true victory. "It isn’t the Emperor himself we need to deal with," Legend said after a moment. "He’s a threat, that’s for sure, but it’s mainly the portal creator that we should be focused on. If we can take him out, we’ll be able to turn this losing battle around in our favor. Without the portal maker, the Emperor and his army will be forced to come to Earth the long way. They’ll have to fly down here themselves, and that will give us the chance to intercept them or stop them before they can even land. Not to mention, with Avalon, we might be able to create anti-space weapons that can stop the bastards from even getting to our planet. It all comes down to that portal maker. He’s the one we need to stop."

"I don’t think that will work, though." Gorgeous sighed. "For one, we’d likely get shot down on our way up there, and the second issue is that even if we’re immune to the portals, the creator of the portals can just escape or something. He’ll likely flee and escape the moment he finds out we’re coming for him, or he’ll even teleport the Emperor and his army away."

"Yeah," Golden Weaver agreed with the femboy. "If we go to space, the Emperor will just blast us out of the sky before we even get to the moon."

"I have a way around that." Ruby waved her hand and shook her head. "We can make it work. Getting to the moon isn’t the hard part."

"It’s hard," Young Dog corrected, "just not as hard as dealing with the portal monster."

"I think I have a way to deal with that." Legend spoke up. "It’s actually pretty simple."

Mermaid cracked a smile. "So we have a way to get to the moon and a way to deal with the portal user?"

"Why do we keep talking as if we have a way to the moon?" Hands pinched the bridge of his nose. "We don’t have a spaceship lying around."

"’Eak ’or yer ’elf, ay got a ryde." Omega bragged.

"Translation?" Golden Weaver asked again.

"He has a ride." Legend’s smirk returned. "I actually let Omega in on the plan first and had him whipping something up for me, knowing that we’d need it."

Golden Weaver let out a sigh into his palm. "Guys... Are we really about to go to space?"

"Yes."

***

Heavenfall was, at one time, an old military base. It had been founded during the war with Lucifer, and after the battle, it was reforged into a lab by Sini Corp. This base had been the foundation for Sini’s spacefaring missions and had been the main hideout for the hero Wire before his mysterious disappearance after a botched mission on the moon. The facility was off the coast of an island village called Spider Lily and was now run by Director Sylas, a medium-ranked member in the Hero Branch.

Heavenfall was rarely used and almost never visited since most of the data on it had been kept on pen and paper that only Sini knew about. One person who was aware of the base’s existence was Omega.

Omega claimed the base as his own and moved in, much to Director Sylas’s annoyance. The hero had taken a liking to several of Wire’s old pieces of gear. Wire had been a mental-based hero who also possessed a body for space travel and was able to make gadgets that manipulated space. Omega was a hero who had the ability to fuse mental-based tech into his flesh and power it with his own body’s natural energy source as if he were the creator of it. This allowed him to constantly upgrade himself, becoming better and better, and with Wire’s old tech, Omega was able to become a member of the Enforcers. There was a downside to his powers, though. The more tech he absorbed, the less human he was, and that meant it was harder for other people to understand him.

"Welcome to my base," Omega stated, giving a slight bow. "I hope it is to your liking. I told Sylas to clean up and get everything ready. I also installed everything Legend told me to. All preparations should be complete. I look forward to doing this mission with you all."

That was what he said, but what came out was, "’Elcome ’o ma ’ase, ya ’ucks ’etter not brick anya ma ’uff or aye ’ave ya ’earning da ’esson of a ’ime, da ’hit ’egend ’ave ma is ’one, ’et’s get dis ’hit over ’ith."

"Still not a clue as to what he just said." Golden Weaver walked past Omega and patted the hero on the back.

Heavenfall was quite the sight. It was a large airfield-like base, with a stone roadway that stretched out and various hangars scattered around in all directions. Many Hero Branch officers were all running around the field, and the sound of machinery was present everywhere as dozens of vehicles drove about. Eight of the Enforcers’ members, along with Ruby, looked around at Omega’s home in awe. Mermaid and Young Dog were nowhere to be seen, however, since the two heroes had stayed behind. They were missing out on a truly epic sight, though.

Some of the hangars were open, showing various scrapped tanks or jets that had been cut and torn open. One hangar was filled with dozens of tables that were loaded to the brim with metal junk and Wire’s old tech. Some of them looked like weird space suits, while others were like guns found straight in a sci-fi novel.

It was the thing that stood in the very middle of the field, though, that had all eyes on it. Ready for launch was what could only be described as an eight-year-old child’s fantasy come to life. It looked like a strange mix between a jet, a tank, and a rocket. It was on a pair of large wheels that looked like they belonged on a monster truck, and its frame was massive, able to easily fit at least twenty people. Its upper body was sleek and lean with long wings jutting out of it, and coming out of the tip of it was a massive plasma barrel that could fry even a dense star in only a few shots. Massive rockets poked out of the ship’s backside, some almost touching the ground, and the heat that came off of them was so intense it would even warm up space itself.

This thing should not have worked. It was bulky, clunky, awkwardly narrow, and thrown together with literal junk, but of course, since it was tech built by a Super, something as simple as natural laws wouldn’t be able to slow it down. This ship could fly through space at insane speeds and was durable enough to survive an asteroid that could wipe the planet out. It was a tremendously powerful weapon, and since Omega arrived, he had upgraded it even more, adding on extra layers of armor, more guns, extra wings, more guns, a few additional jet engines, more guns, a coffee machine, and yet even more guns.

This was Wire’s masterpiece, upgraded further by Omega and the Hero Branch. Without a doubt, this machinery was some of the finest mental-based tech that had ever been built and could even rival the Beast’s suit in terms of raw power. Some could even claim it was humanity’s greatest weapon.

There was just one issue.

Wire was gone.

Without the Super, there was no power source for the ship to draw from, and thus it only had a limited wheel of energy. Omega couldn’t use his own either, as his power source only worked on tech fused into his body, and he was unable to combine with such a massive piece of machinery. That meant this fine weapon had a time limit for how long it could be used. One Omega hadn’t wanted to touch since he loved this machine deeply, but it was now do-or-die time.

The SSP, as he had taken to calling it, was about to participate in its first and last journey.

After this, the fine piece of machinery would permanently shut down and never be used again. A sad fact, but one that would give humanity the chance it needed to hopefully save the world. Omega would be sad, but this was a worthy sacrifice and a fine last mission.

"Is everything ready to go?" Legend asked.

"It’s more than ready." Up ahead, one of the Branch officers stopped and turned to face the heroes. He was an older man with hair that had turned mostly grey and a bushy beard. He wore the typical suit all Branch officers had on and pushed up a pair of glasses. "I checked everything myself, and Omega also looked it over."

"I take it you’re Director Sylas?" Legend asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Aye, that I am." Sylas walked over and shook Legend’s hand. "You have nothing to worry about, sir. I assure you that the SSP is ready for action. Though I must warn you, this is a one-way trip; you know that, right? While the machine might be great, not even its defenses can hold up to the onslaught you’ll be facing the moment you get near the moon. We’re unable to do anything to prevent the villain that controls metal from tampering with the spacecraft, so it’s likely he’ll end up crushing the entire ship and blowing it up before you’re even halfway to the moon. Even if you do somehow get past all of that, though, the ship’s power will likely run out once it reaches the moon. You won’t be able to fly it back to Earth."

Legend let go of Sylas’s hand and looked back at the spaceship. "That’s fine. We have another way to get back. Have you included everything I asked for?"

"Yes, sir." Sylas nodded. "There are various spacesuits on board that have been specially made for each of you. The moon has a field around it created by the Emperor that allows you to breathe, but before you reach it, you’ll have to get through the vacuum of space. We used a Super that was able to solidify and alter matter, and thanks to her, these suits were made without any metal, so the villain I mentioned earlier shouldn’t be able to target you. I also placed the ’cargo’ you requested on board. She is in the back and has been sedated since she was hard to work with. You’ll want to wake her before you leave orbit fully, but be careful not to startle her; otherwise, she might destroy the ship."

Legend nodded his head. "Omega, did you install the weapon I asked you to?"

"Aye."

"Good. Now if Doctor Blue did his job, then everything should work out." Legend stated.

"We’re putting all our trust in the sketchy scientist?" Golden Weaver gulped.

"Better him than Avalon," Ferros muttered. "Avalon gives me the creeps."

"There gonna be a suit big enough to fit me?" Feast demanded.

"Maybe you should stay behind, fatass," Gorgeous said flatly. "Seriously, we left Mermaid and Young Dog behind, but we’re taking this guy?"

Hands swatted the femboy in the back of the head. "Feast is powerful. Don’t disrespect him. Young Dog isn’t suited for what we’re doing, and Mermaid decided to stay behind to defend the base. Feast is likely the strongest person here besides Legend and Ruby. We’re going to need him to step up and tank if it comes to it."

Tamer placed her arms casually behind her head and hummed. "We’re really doing this, huh? Normally, it’s Full Monarch that goes to space, but this time it’s our turn to protect our planet."

"That’s right." Ruby grinned and punched her fist into her palm. "Dad isn’t here, so we have to step up and do this."

"The ship won’t have any crew on it besides you guys. No Hero Branch officer can come with you, so it’ll be up to Omega to fly it." Sylas gave a half-bow and gestured to the awaiting ship.

"Omega, do you think you can handle it?" Legend questioned.

"I was born for this, literally built piece by piece, created to be the perfect weapon. I got this." Is what Omega wanted to say, but it came out as, "’ourse aye ’loody ’ot dis, ya ’ucking idiot."

"It’s settled then." Legend looked up to the sky, his eyes landing on the moon that hung above. "Fly me to the moon."