The tower has appeared in one of the main corners of The City of Demons near Chinatown. I and Wizard looked out of the windows and I pointed at the streets and turned to Mr.Umezu, “I want to see the Librarian. There must be something he knows in this collection that I don’t. You can direct me to him can you not?”
“Of course I can. What will Roger and Chisoutsa do?” he asked me.
“How about you two go and find the Xtreme Squad and see what they have been up to? Maybe they have been tracking down Valentine if he is here or not,” I suggested.
Roger and Chisoutsa seemed happy with the idea and headed out of the tower quickly to find whoever they could in the war torn city. Buildings were ripped apart and bodies was lying around the area in every street. No running water and the power cables were ripped from the grounds up to make sure no one was able to get help when needed.
“This is worse than I ever expected. It was worse than what Censilo did to this place. Why the hell couldn’t we stop this?” Mr. Umezu asked.
“When my characters was put of action because of me it gave him the buying time to come in and rip the planets apart. He’s removed every asset that they use to their advantage. This is not a war it’s a victory to him,” I replied.
“All these people lost to the war. It is so heartbreaking to see this. What terrible loses we have had,” Wizard said in sorrow.
Mr. Umezu pointed at a hole in the street and nodded to me and Wizard, “It’s easier to find the Liberian now. Let’s go underground and maybe we might be safe. “ The three of us come down the slide of the broken road into the smelly rotten waters of the sewage where both Wizard and me plugged our noses. To our surprise there seemed to be little damage to to the sewage tunnels as we trekked through the different directions that Mr. Umezu led us through. There was a small light to the left of us where Mr. Umeau pulled a tight steel door open and let us in first. The Librarian stood at his desk and his long collection of books as I remember was still standing. I walked up with both Wizard and Mr. Umezu to him as he he adjusted his fimiair one blue eye with his torch that glowed attached to it.
“Mr. Umezu you bring us some guests here and I expect that they not from our world?” he asked him.
“No, they’re not. How have you been copping with the war?”
“I’m still safe and no one has come down here to deal with me like they have with the ground above us. You must be the author in the war and you must be his first character ever made. Quite a special day for me to meet you could say a person that planted the seeds of my character. You came here for information as you should know who I am and what I do best. You thought of me didn’t you?” the Librarian said to me.
“Yes you are correct if you know anything about Valentine and the Author’s War. Do you know anything?” I asked him.
The Librarian nodded and wandered over to his collection of books on the shelf and picked out two small books and held them up, “This is always seen as a myth but now we all know that this myth is real. One book was written by a man back seventy years by someone in your world. There is some information in it that is incorrect and that is understandable. He didn’t live in the times of when Valentine was young. However there was another book which fell into my hands by a man called Cody Cyber. You should know him right?”
“Of course he is the son of a very good friend Percy Cyber. How did he get his hands on it?”
“He gave me a number of books when he joined the Xtreme Squad a couple years ago and there was a universe he came to between his own home world and this one. He gave this as a present from what I was told from a rouge space commander who he found the book on an alien spaceship that was written one of that crew. The journey of the book itself has an amazing story doesn’t it?”
“Wow that was very amazing. So Cody did travel to somewhere else. Never heard of it myself. What does the book tell you about the Author’s War?” I asked.
“You all know how the Author’s War book and Valentine are one and the same. The book is itself was created at the beginning at Valentine’s downfall into his own mental illness as a writer. He reached a point when he going to take his own life until he wrote all of his anger and fears and sorrows into a book that was writing. That imagine over thousands of years of pain and destruction a world has been through and all of that negative energy created The Authors War book. The sections that was never told in the other research book was that Valentine did take his life but in exchange for something. That one day he would come back and use his anger and his darkness that clouded his mind and become the original soul breaker. A person that will go out and trap people into his darkness. To live in a depression or to take your own life would only feed him and the book’s power. His return means he wants to complete his goal of ruling everything and putting everyone into the state of mind that he lived when he was normal. He choose you because you have your own darkness to deal with and victory over you would also mean control of universes. Two authors in a war is a terrible thing to see.”
“So he’s like you but beyond repair. Why is he so hard to defeat power wise? What the hell is his secret?” Mr. Umezu asked me.
“His secret is me. What he says and he does is what I normally hear inside of me. Depression is a hard thing to describe to people who have not had it. He reflects it in person and makes it a million times worse by what he does and his ability to get inside of you. I have to be strong enough to weaken him and that’s the only way we can defeat him. We can turn the tide of the war and push him back but to defeat him I think it’s always going to come down to me,” I explained to Mr. Umezu.
“I think what we need to do next is try to take back control of your city Mr. Umezu. How do we go along with that ideas?” Wizard asked the group.
“Chisoutsa and the Xtreme Squad should be able to take care of that. We can look for your little author friend and see where he is. He could be anywhere on four planets. This isn’t going to be easy especially without any tech I could use here,” Mr. Umezu said.
“There has been many times when my friends had to use good old detective work to solve something. We should still check your company building in case something survived,” Wizard reminded him.
It was decided that we would go to Scienceworks to see if anything was left behind. The Librarian gave us a copy of some of the notes in the research book before we left.
A few hours into the night had past and the leader of the Xtreme Squad Lucas Walken was outside of The City of Demons in the Deathlands – a known area where once the Vampire lord lived and ruled. He had received a message from a mystery person to come to the bar in the small town near the Soul Mountains. He received a message in his ear piece from his deputy Jasper, “Hey your sister and that Barbarian has turned up at headquarters. They are working on pushing back the soul breakers and to stop Valentine but you know that could take forever,” he told Lucas.
“Tell them I’ll be back soon. I just need to speak to whoever sent this message to me. Update them about the issues we have and go out start pushing them out from Chinatown. If you hear anything from where that young author is, make sure he and anyone else with him is protected at all costs,” Lucas replied hanging up.
He walked into the bar and a figure stood up that remembered very well, “Akuryou I finally found you again. You sent me the message?” Luca said to him.
“Yes I did. I bet you always wondered what happened to me and the fact your case in the Xtreme Squad went unsolved. I went underground after the fact that my two forces disappeared on me without a trace. I wasn’t prepared to deal with your squad or the one we are all dealing with now,” Akuryou said while Lucas sat down at the bar next to him.
It was a cold and dusty bar that sat in the middle of the street of the town. It had changed in the recent years thanks to the works of Allegheri the vampire and Chisoutsa’s work.
“So you know where Sarge and Wararth went then?” Lucas asked
“I planted a tracking pin on the two of them knowing there was a chance of them turning against me if things went pear shaped. It went blank for two years until a few days ago. Wararth has reappeared here and Sarge is well not on this planet,” Akuryou explained showing this tracking tablet.
Lucas noticed Sarge was on the planet where Roger and his band lived and looked up at Akuryou, “Why are you helping me?”
“It’s a war Lucas where everyone is going to lose. I don’t think we can win it. I mean your leader you have isn’t strong enough to defeat him. I’m just helping where I can so I can stay alive. I do have one suggestion to you.”
“And what is that?” Lucas asked.
“Cut a deal with Valentine. You know you can’t win. Let him spare the people for control of this world. A small pint sized author can’t defeat the likes of Blackburn. He has crushed the people all around. He makes Censilo the demon lord look small in terms of his power and might,” Akuryou suggested.
“I can’t do that to Chris or to the others. I still believe in him and I would be shot down by everyone and I’m not that powerful with people like that Wizard and the Barbarian around. There are plenty of big heads in this war.”
“If this author is connected to you in some ways of personality and soul then you too must have doubts too don’t you?” Akuryou asked Lucas.
Lucas lend back in his seat tapping the table and looked outside the window towards the Soul Mountains, “There is some doubt but like my father once told me I have to fight for in what’s right. No matter what the costs are.”
“You doubts will prove to be right. Go find them and take them out. They must be working for Valentine,” Akuryou said.
Lucas stood up and looked down at Akuryou, “You will be spared for now but when the war is over I will come for you.”
“If the war ends well for us you mean,” Akuryou snapped back with a smile.
Lucas tried to ignore it as he walked outside of the bar and looked over to the black jeep in the distance. It had received damage on the ride to the Deathlands from gunshots from the soul breakers. He wandered up the black jeep to feel the damage on the side of it and looked around, “I need to get back now. No use being here now. Valentine seems to have no interest in this area.”
He climbed into the black jeep and drove off out of the sleepy town to return to where everyone was stationed.
The night was quite cold and chilly and the Xtreme Squad headquarters was one of the last remaining ports of safety for everyone. The rest of the team was away helping to fix up the power black outs and searching for Valentine. Lucas had arrived home to Chisoutsa inside and Roger was down in the warehouse underground looking at the different weapons curious about this new world he had been seeing. He walked over to the table where Chisoutsa was sitting and down next to her.
“I see you got sick of your demon form already?” he asked.
“Just to walk around with wings on your back is something I’m not used to. Plus sitting on chairs with wings doesn’t work,” Chisoutsa replied.
“Wararth and Sarge have returned would you believe. Possibly working with Valentine too. It’s not getting easy for us,” Lucas spoke.
The two sat at the table looking at each other for a while thinking about the war. A sense of gloom was felt by them and the amount of work that was required to overcome the odds.
“I wonder what the Professor would have done,” Chisoutsa said.
“Our father was always much closer to you. You would have known more about him than me,” Lucas replied.
“That’s not true. He loved you a lot and who you thought picked you to look after The City of the Demons when I retired?”
“You picked me as I was told by you”
“I went to the Professor to ask him who would be the best and he said you. He said You was the only logical pick out of anyone in this world to look after it when I was gone. The reason why he didn’t look after you so much was because he was very sure you knew what you were doing. With me, no one knew what I was doing half of the time. You always had your head on straight,” Chisoutsa explained to him.
“I still can’t believe the way he went. Fighting for what he believed in. What are going to do with him gone? We are both still young and much to learn. Four planets to save now and what other universes that will come under threat from Valentine.”
“Yeah it’s like he’s disappeared into thin air or something. How the hell are we meant to find him?” Chisoutsa wondered.
“Disappeared into thin air. We’ll looking for nothing but something in the nothing,” Lucas replied thinking of a idea.
“That makes no fucking sense Lucas,” Chisoutsa said turning her head confused.
“No, listen. Valentine is working with Wararth right, a ghost lord. I remembered talking to your friend Hew the small ghost you met in the Soul Mountain. He said to me once that ghosts have the ability to make locations disappears. For him he could disappear rooms but I’m thinking of Wararth’s power he could disappear a building or an area and that’s why Valentine enlisted him.”
Lucas grabbed Chisoutsa and took her down the stairs to the warehouse where Roger turned where was checking out some computers and learning what they did.
“What are you doing?” he asked Lucas concerned.
“Looking for Wararth and Valentine. All I need to do Chisoutsa is compare scans between an old map of The City of Demons and what the security cameras have picked up in recent days,” Lucas explained as he started scanning the map areas.
“There’s three red areas showing on this screen. What does that mean?” Roger asked.
“That means there’s three areas that has disappeared since the War started. We know that many buildings have been wreaked or destroyed but their foundations are mostly there to be used as shelter or a hideout. Now that first one is destroyed, that little spot near Chinatown because Jasper told me about that when he was attacked by the soul breakers with the girls. These two locations I don’t know about,” Lucas replied pondering about it.
“You should go to the one that was built strongest. This image here looks weak. Made of wood, the other looks strong to me, steel and pipes,” Roger commented on the screen.
“The Barbarian’s right. Looks likely that Valentine would use the stronger area to protect himself,” Chisoutsa said.
“I’ll radio Jasper to come to where we’ll go. Remember that this time Valentine doesn’t have a way to get off this planet unless he escapes from us and goes back to the tower which we can’t let him do. Our problem is that he is very powerful and that Author’s War book is with him. We have to make sure that it doesn’t happen. We’ll make our way down now and we will be ready when the soul breakers come after us. We have no choice now,” Lucas told the pair.
The three of them had decided to go by foot due to the damages in the black jeep and that the girls were away fixing up the rest of The City of Demon power supply issues.
The other group of wanders was at the Scienceworks building looking through the rooms of destroyed technology devices that Mr. Umezu and his deputy Alan Richard had made over the years. Mr. Umezu was pulling back some of the broken desks in one of the lab rooms trying to look for anything that might be useful to them.
“Have you found anything?” Wizard asked him.
“Nothing so far. The soul breakers have destroyed everything that I can see and even the universal portal we own. How are we supposed to work in this mess I don’t know.”
Wizard walked up next to him and looked at the dust and dirt around him, “It’s going a long time to rebuild all this. We just have to keep on looking for something handy for our travels. Remember after this we have three planets to go through. Valentine has made sure that our path is long and tiring. We’ll keep on looking.”
I came up to them watching Mr. Umezu going through some paperwork that he had found, “While you two are doing this, I’m going to get some food. We haven’t eaten for a long time and I’m hungry.”
“Yeah you go do that and buy me a good old sandwich for me or anything that looks remotely good to eat. Some of the places here are terrible to eat at or if any oif the shops are still open,” Mr. Umezu replied.
I nodded and headed out down the road . Most of the street had empty shops, damaged and burnt by the soul breakers that would lurk the areas. I turned the street corner and saw one shop open and decided to check it out. I came inside and large overweight man greeted me from behind his grill setup.
“Tyrell? That’s your name isn’t it?” I asked him remembering him from my stories.
“Yes, the one and the only. You can’t miss me in this store,” he laughed tapping his stomach.
“Are you here for a good feed. You look like someone who needs to eat more. You’re a thin guy aren’t ya?” Tyrell asked me.
“Yeah, I get told that a lot. I’m just here to get some food for Mr. Umezu and a friend of mine,” I replied hopping up on one of the bartools next to him working.
“You know Mr. Umezu? He’s an interesting character. I see him as a ntihero you know. He drove a lot of the crime gangs here a number of years ago through selling weapons and technology stuff but nowadays he’s one of the good guys. Making up for what he did to this city. Why are you with him for?” he asked me.
“I’m part of this war you can say, working with Chisoutsa too and her brother Lucas,” I explained to him.
“It was heartbreaking to hear about their father’s passing. He was an amazing man in our world. Helped out our city, trained Chisoutsa up to save the world and to go like that. It’s utterly terrible way to die.”
I nodded my head, “It was worse to even watch it happen. Mr. Umezu and I have been looking in the Scienceworks building to see what’s left there.”
“Here’s a batch of good food I’ve been saving here. It’ll keep you going through your searching. His building was targeted first by those soul breakers I’ve been hearing about. If he was smart Mr. Umezu he should have kept his labs underground like the old Hyper Camp that Chisoutsa was created in if you know the story of how she was created by Censilo the demon lord. That’s the long story short,” Tyrell said with a smile.
“The Hyper Camp? That might have something down there. I never thought about that. Thanks for reminding me, I mean telling me that,” I said to Tyrell.
As I headed towards the door Tyrell called out to me again, “You know what’s strange?”
“No I don’t know what’s strange.”
“I just get this feeling that we know each other very well but I have no idea why. It’s the first time we ever met,” Tyrell said.
It seemed to be the common feeling when author meets characters in the war, “I feel it too,” I smiled back at him. With that I went outside and headed down back to Scienceworks. When I arrived Mer. Umezu and Wizard was outside waiting for me. Mr. Umezu looked dejected after two hours of searching through nothing at his company.
“Mr. Umezu, have you thought about searching the Hyper Camp?” I asked him as I arrived.
Mr. Umezu stood up and at first wondered how I knew about the Hyper Camps, “Right you’re the author in the war. You should know about what areas you may have written in the past. The Hyper Camp might be our best bet. Parts of the area was destroyed a long time back and Valentine hasn’t targeted the underground, only he ground level and above. Give me my food and we can walk there. There’s some secret access areas to it. I help built the place and Censilo used my technology. I should know who to get inside it.”
The three of us walked down a ally way near Scienceworks and Mr. Umezu pointed at a secret drainage section where the Hyper Camp would be.
“You see Wizard and Chris. Censilo built the Hyper Camp about half way between his central building and my own company building as it would help with transporting goods between the three of them. Now with my building in this state none of them are active anymore. The City of Demons is known for its cutting edge technology in the backdrops of crime and supernatural evil,” Mr. Umezu explained.
Together we climbed into the drainage section and Mr. Umezu walked over and kicked open an old rusted door into one of the transporting hallways between the three buildings. It was dark and hard to see into the rooms so Wizard took out his wand and it lit up to lead the way. We made it to the first lab rooms where Mr. Umezu explained this was the area where Jiko was created.
“What happened to Jiko?” I asked Mr. Umezu
“Chisoutsa and Jiko didn’t click so well as a couple and Jiko moved away. There was rumors I think that he died due to tests done upon him in the Hyper Camp. A few others have died too, those who were taken and tried to be the perfect demon that Censilo had wanted.”
We explored the other lab rooms while Mr. Umezu helped to push the broken auto open doors open to see inside. I noticed some of the computer screens were flicking on and off where Mr. Umezu gave a confused look upon his face, “There’s power in here but that makes no sense. The Hyper Camps have been dead for years. I was just expecting some weapons or devices we could use to repair the city and control of again.”
“Is it possible that someone else has the ability to do this in your world?” Wizard asked moving his wand around the lab room.
“The Xtreme Squad girls wouldn’t know the location of this and would require technology different to what they carry. Not advanced but only built just for re-charging a place like this,” Mr. Umezu answered.
A glowing light came out from the door way of the lab room we came in and myself and Wizard moved back away where Mr. Umezu was at the computers. A hand grabbed the side of the door and a figure appeared in full view. He was a tall strong looking male in a uniform unknown to myself or to Wizard or Mr. Umezu.
“Who are you?” Wizard asked aiming his wand towards the stranger.
“I’m a Commander and I’m a friend. To you I know you but one day you will know more about me than myself at times. I’m here to help but I’m running out of time here,” spoke the stranger looking at me.
We noticed that the stranger was glowing a blue layer of some sort of energy around him thou none of us knew what the energy was.
“If you’re not from Valentine, are you a friend of us and what are you doing here?” I asked him.
“I rebooted the power systems here so you can contact the friends that you know. There is a gift from the commission, the people that I used to work from. It is important that you get to it before the other author in the war finds it. Remember to find the gift that the commission gave to you. It has been left in the area called Centrax Building, the place where Censilo was defeated. The author should know the location and Mr. Umezu here,” the commander explained.
“Why are you giving us this gift and how do you know us. Who are you?”
“It’s important in the commission’s interests for this war to be won by your side. We were visited by one of your friends a while ago and we researched into this person and discover about the war and its impacts. I have to leave now and make sure that I return home,” he told us.
“You can’t just leave us and tell us a message like that!” Mr. Umezu snapped at him.
“I have no choice and my time is failing me. Only you can help that. The war must be won. Goodbye,” the commander said turning around quickly and heading out of the lab room. Wizard waved his wand around the room and checked the outside of the room. A sense of confusion and fear had grown over the group. We had no idea what had just taken place.
“Well he’s gone,” he said surprised and confused.
“What the fuck was that about? A glowing male who gives us a gift in a destroyed building?”
“His gift should just be sitting there waiting for us if there’s no building anymore. Did anyone understand what he said,” I said the two of them.
Wizard tossed his head not understanding much of it, “I think he spoke in riddles in which he wanted to say more but he couldn’t.”
“Let’s go and find this place now. The power supplies are fine now and we can take some to re-charge other things. We have to find the gift now,” I told the pair. Together we took off with speed to find the gift and to start to solve the mystery of the commander in the Hyper Camp.
