By me, with art by Sam Messerly.
Click here to read from the beginning.
While I was very, very uncomfortable with the skin stabbing me in the back of my brain without my permission, I couldn’t exactly object since without the skin I would be skydiving. Still, I filed away the memory as something to complain about loudly once I was back on solid ground.
Plus, I had neat new powers I wanted to play around with. I didn’t have time for kvetching.
I stretched out my hand and thought, “Fire!”
A fireball launched from my body—but not from my hand. I hadn’t even noticed, but a third strand of the dinosaur skin on my head (in addition to the two which wrapped around and became my dinosaur goggle glasses) was protruding from my forehead, and it shot exactly where I was looking—the ropy wall. However, the fire bursting from my face was a big surprise for me. I fell backwards onto the membranous floor, then saw the wall I had fired at effortlessly wriggle out of the way of the fireball as it passed.
“Be careful with that,” Warbell said. “If you hit me or Colander, our cybernetics will shut down, and then we will go plummeting down below and quite possibly become what you so colorfully call street pizza.”
“You would make for a jumbo-sized XXXL pizza, Warb,” said Colander. “Also, I want to try this thing out!”
With that, Colander then jumped into the air with a shout, “I can fly!”
Instantly the air around her hummed to life and she went vertical, flailing her arms and legs before slamming head first into the ceiling.
“Ooph!” she said, as she descended again, rubbing her head. “That was really incredible!”
I tried flying a little bit by picturing myself hovering just a foot off the floor, and immediately my feet lifted off the ground, the vibrating air causing the membranous floor to shiver subtly. Warbell grinned at me. Colander whooshed back up to the ceiling, this time stopping just before beaning her head again.
“You’re doing great, but we don’t have much time,” said Warbell. “Probably they have already sent—”
Before Warbell could finish his thought, we saw a stegosaurus of some kind (it had spikes instead of plates, so maybe a polacanthus, but I can’t be sure) stumble down some stairs several hundred feet away—and it saw us.
The stegosaurus made a burbling sound, which our skins automatically translated as, “shucks!” Cannons started emerging from the stegosaurus’ side. Colander fired off a blast from the ceiling that would have hit right in front of the stego, but the floor instead opened up to let the fireball through—and the dinosaur fell halfway into the hole and got stuck. His spikey tail whipped back and forth as he shouted a series of profanities which were then translated as things like, “Gosh darn,” “Golly gee,” and “You big meanies!”
“Who wrote these translations?” I asked. “I am kind of scared out of my mind, but on the verge of a giggle fit at the same time.”
“The translator studied English from the 1940s and 50s I think,” said Warbell. “We need to get going, though. Others are coming.”
Warbell was right. We could hear footsteps, voices.
“What is going on?”
“I see a stegosaurus butt sticking out of the floor.”
“Quite embarrassing, what?”
We dashed up a nearby staircase, startling a flock of birds passing through, then booked it down a side corridor and up an automatic lift. While I couldn’t see the portal yet, I thought I could feel its power through the walls.
“We’ve got your back, Warbee!” Colander said, giving an exaggerated action pose as we landed on the next level. “We’ll cover you as you go so that you can take out the portal with your magical shoulder cannons or whatever.”
“Yeah,” I said. “We’ll give it our best, so you just do your thing.”
“Well, that’s kind of the rub,” Warbell said uncomfortably. “I can’t turn off the portal. One of you is going to have to do it.”