42 - Boom

In the lower Atmosphere, Teckstyle struggles to slow his ascent. At the rate he’s going, it will only be a few seconds before he enters low orbit, and he’s not sure his suit is space rated. He’d rather not find out.

With the benefit of hindsight, he can confidently say that taking on those five Zeus-class titans was a mistake. He’d have to remember that for next time.

If there was a next time.

The suit’s propulsion systems won’t shut down and their fuel cells won’t run out any time soon. Teck curses the decision to fill up this morning. He curses a lot of things at this moment. Most of them are unprintable. Even more of them involve Flatfoot.

With time running out, he positions his arms straight ahead and prepares to try and redirect his flight path, takes a deep breath and starts counting down.

As he does, he sees the stars stretching out into beautiful infinity. In that instant, somewhere between "Three" and "Two," life, the universe, and everything make sense to him.

Of course, then he reaches number one, and fires off a massive blast of energy from his fists that sends the tranquility of the moment into complete chaos.

Before blacking out, Teck realizes four things. One, the gambit paid off because it drained enough of his power supply to short out his engines. Two, he was now spinning helplessly back down to Earth. Three, he was probably going to die, and four, this was all Flatfoot’s fault.


Down in the Kitchen of the Reverse Flatfoot’s Secret Lair, Deadfoot opens the fridge and looks inside.

"Hey! There’s no lemonade in here!" he says.

The fridge is empty save for a carton of milk. Deadfoot takes the carton out and shakes it around. It rattles. He opens it up and peers inside, then shrugs and tilts the contents into his mouth.

"Mmm, crunchy," he says. Then he remembers that he’s a technologically reanimated corpse powered by a kinetic energy generator and no longer has any reason to eat, drink or sleep. Then he shrugs again and swallows. He closes the carton and puts it back on the fridge shelf. Just as he does, the rear of the fridge slides down and a bearded, eye-patched face stares out at him. Deadfoot stares back.

"I knew it! Pirates DO live in refrigerators!" the brute says after a while.

The pirate scowls. "Arr, this ain’t the exit we’re lookin’ for." Then he points behind Deadfoot and shouts "Look! A three-headed monkey!"

"Where?!" Deadfoot turns around but sees nothing. "Aww man, he’s fast." He looks back to the fridge and sees everything back to normal. "Huh. I don’t remember what I was thinking about before, yet I feel strangely placated. Hmm."


Back in the stratosphere, something strange is happening. No, its not the costumed blaster plummeting back to Earth. That happens more often than you’d think. Rather, it is what is now surrounding said blaster that is of interest. Sparks jump from circuit to circuit as a failsafe system tries to boot the system back online. Nanobots swarm across the surface of the armor patching up damage. If he were awake, Teck would probably wonder when the nanobots were installed.


Down on the streets of Peregrine Island, Flatfoot is squinting up into the sky.

"Huh," he says. "That doesn’t happen normally. He’s usually back by now."


Several hundred feet above solid ground, two glowing clouds are speaking urgently.

"The time grows near," the blue one says. "We will only have one chance to complete the melding."

"I understand your crazy plan. You’ve only explained it every day that we’ve been on this rock," the purple one says. "I take the red one, and you join the blue one and the universe gets saved. It is not complicated."

Suddenly the swiftly descending form of Teckstyle whooshes through the clouds. The purple shape spins around briefly before stabilizing and looks around.

Down below, Teckstyle has a bright blue glow surrounding him as he plummets to the ground.

"Now…now its complicated," the purple cloud says.


Flatfoot continues looking into the sky. He sees a red battle suit surrounded by a blue aura hurtling down.

"Ah, there he is," Flat says. "Things’ll be back to normal any minute now."

The blue aura around Teck flashes, expands and obscures the blaster, causing the scrapper to look away. Seconds later, the shockwave reaches Flat’s ears, nearly deafening him.

When he looks back to the sky, Flat sees nothing except for a wisp of smoke. A small object shoots into the ground, leaving a small crater in the concrete near Flat’s feet. It’s Teckstyle’s helmet.

"Teck!!"