Mojoworld, 100 years in the future
The woman, in another time and place might have been worlds away. Once she was known simply as
Rita, or Aunt Rita, to the red-haired boy unaware of his true origins. She sat in the swivel
studio chair, her arms, all six of them, crossed one over the other. Her silver eyes staring at
the computer monitor in the control room. She watched the three young mutants pledge to be
friends forever. "Was I ever that young?"
"You got a live-feed from that Terran dimension?" a disembodied voice echoed through a
loudspeaker. So much entertainment value.
"Is that all you ever think about, Mojo? And to answer your question, I think they call it
Boston."
"I'm not really up on Earth Civics. Isn't that where they dumped a ton of beverage into the
sea?"
"That was tea, two hundred years ago from our the current time-relapse scene we're viewing
here."
"And I do always think about ratings, time-dancer. Be a dear, and bring my delightful plaything
and his new friends here, I want to give them a casting-call."
"What if I don't want to?" Spiral sighed, "You have no idea of how utterly fed up, how furious I
am with those petty network games you call entertainment."
"Who cares what you want! It s what I want!" Mojo screamed, his gruesome yet manically cunning
appearance on another monitor. His obscene joy made his numerous chins jounce up and down in
irate glee.
"All right, all right, I'm going. Stop screaming, you're liable to bust a gut."
"Everybody's a comedian." the corpulent alien programmer sighed.
"At least this way I'll have no more syndicated re-runs. Mojoworld is a land where entertainment
is the be-all and end-all of existence, and I call the shots! Sit-coms are highly over-rated. I
want action, action, action! I want blood, I want guts!"
"Blow it out the nearest airlock." Spiral voice echoed in the cavernous control room. She began
twirling in a dizzying circular dance, three arms raised as if reaching for the ceiling, the
other three wrapped tightly around herself. The air fizzled around her, opening a gateway in the
space-time continuum, a curtain of fire and light. This was her access to the Wildways enroute
to 20th century Earth. Her focal point in this time-period, Benjamin Russell, a boy she'd raised
when he knew her as Aunt Rita, sent to claim for the tyrant of an alien world.
Spiral retrieves Shatterstar, Rictor, and Boomer
The newly-forged club had decided to rendezvous at the Starbright Video Arcade for no other
reason than it was a local teen-hangout and that if anyone overheard them talking about powers,
they'd assume it was just some sort of code for beating the latest shoot-up video game.
When Ben arrived he found that the other members of the club were already there. Tab, or Boomer
as she preferred to be called, had ordered for everyone. She'd got enchiladas for Rictor,
thinking he be missing home-cooked food, and three sodas. He overheard Rictor telling her that
tacos weren't authentic Mexican food. The two spotted him hovering near the entrance and waved
him over.
"I ve never had this before." Ben said.
"Go ahead and eat, before it gets cold, Star." Rictor said.
"You have to learn to expand your horizons." Boomer added.
"So, ..." the word hung in the air as the interior of the video arcade fazed out and a woman
with six-arms and silver hair emerged from a curtain of fire and light.
"Open-casting call, auditions are open." the exotically familiar woman announced in a sibilant
voice, whipping out three arms and snagging Ben, Julio and Tabitha and thrusting them bodily
into the warping energy field that had been torn in space-time continuum. "Talk about a captive
audience. Turning to the stunned crowd in the arcade, "Shatterstar has left the building."
Without further ado, Spiral pivoted on her heel and stepped through the portal enroute to
Mojoworld.
"Virtual reality was never this real." someone nearby muttered.
"Yeah, man. I gotta stop playing video games, way too addictive, sensory overload. and all
that."
"Yeah, that woman had six arms."
Mojoworld, Reprise
Spiral time-dances the three mutants to Mojoworld
A gigantic bowl-shaped valley in the midst of a vast-plain opened up before the three young
mutants. It hailed back to the Coliseum of the Ancient Romans; the only thing that detracted
from the symmetry between then and now were the harsh fluorescent lights, the endless row of
viewing stand, the high-tech monitoring and security systems.
Shatterstar, Rictor, and Boom-Boom emerged from Spiral dimensional gateway, staggering from the
inevitable cobwebs caused by trans-spatial traveling from the shifting time currents. Their guts
were roiling and their heads reeling.
"Ugh, me without my Drammine." Boom-Boom, as usual the first to find her voice and words to
utter.
"Not funny, B."
"Who asked you, Rictor?" Getting off his hands and knees, giving their surroundings an 180's
inspection. "Star, any idea where we are?"
"I think it's some sort of arena. We're on display."
"I feel like some sort of mannequin in a glass-enclosed display window."
Staring down at her feet, Boom-Boom discovered that she was indeed actually on display
approximately seventy five above the heads of packed-in spectators in playing field that
resembled the park where the Pirates played and someone had added on Shea Stadium rolled into
one. "I am psychic or what?"
The two boys simply gave her blank stares at her last comment. A "Huh?" hanging like a
thundercloud about to unleash its gallon of rain on their heads. "Cue wardrobe!" a disembodied
voice yelled. "I mean, sheesh, they look like they dressed out the discards of the Salvation
Army." Suddenly as if someone had heard her comment about mannequins, the clothes they'd had
disappeared as if being removed by invisible fingers.
"What is this, come as you aren't party?"
Shatterstar's jeans and T-shirt replaced by a flow caftan-like white outfit and flowing blue
cape majestically draped from his shoulders, two double-bladed swords strapped to his back.
Along with the change an entire a strange feeling swept over, as if his personality and memories
of being Benjamin Russell was being erased and another personality was taking its place.
Boomer's halter and jeans were replaced by a pink skin-tight bodysuit, Rictor's T-shirt and
jeans by blue skin-tight Spandex criss-cross with black lines, a black shirt, whose most
prominent feature was a larger than life red X smack dab in the middle.
"Talk about being dressed to kill." Boomer joked.
"That's the spirit. But you weren't hired to ad-lib your own dialogue. This is a cold-reading.
All right, kiddies, you're properly attired. Now get my star and his friends out on the arena
floor. It's show-time!" Mojo announced.
"You mean. we gotta play the games of some inter-dimensional network programmer from hell?"
Rictor demanded.
"Not hell, Mojoworld." Star replied laconically. He'd only spent several minutes, and unlike his
friends, he found himself acclimatizing much more rapidly than either of them. It was like that
odd sense of dejavu he'd experienced earlier during the field hockey game, and now when he heard
the high-pitched laughter of voice on the loudspeaker. In a way he couldn't describe, he'd been
here before: that some this place was connected with the missing pieces of his own past. As more
and more pieces fell into place, he'd been able to retrieve bits and pieces of knowledge about
this Mojoworld fight scene.
The three found themselves on a rotating platform in the midst of the arena, with a mixed bag of
spectators packing into the viewing stands. On the platform directly opposite them stood about
two dozen armed goons, some with high-power, futuristic rifles, others with an assortment of a
weapon collector's dream.
"So, you got any bright ideas?" Rictor asked, not really expecting an response. To his surprise
Shatterstar had one.
"Yes. We take the fight to them." Shatterstar replied, drawing the twin-bladed swords from his
back, then leapt into the fray, defining gravity with ever perfectly executed move, shearing
heads, and arms off his opponents. In a corner of his mind, he knew that several hours or
whatever the time lapse between 20th century Boston and this alien landscape, he never would
have been able to do this. He let instinct take over, and he lost himself in the fury of
battle.
"Great plan."
"Hey, Boomer, you said you've been practicing making timebombs, right?" She nodded. "Here's a
perfect opportunity to do it for real." Rictor said.
"Okay, I rock their world, you disorient them by spinning your time-bombs in random patterns
across the arena. Try not to get hit by any of that armament." Rictor said. Suting action to
words, he brought up the green energy from his hands and sent it lancing through the air,
knocking a quartet of armored goons off their feet in a coruscating circle. They dropped their
weapons and were sent spinning through the air, arms and legs wind-milling. It was a vain
attempt to regain equilibrium where none existed.
"Do you have a better plan?"
"No. Okay, but if we survive this, we'll discuss who gets to give orders."
"We should live that long."
Boomer refused to show how scared she was, it was very well for her to boast that she knew how
to control, let alone use her powers, but it was another thing entirely to be called upon to
prove it. Her two best friends, being typical guys, obviously weren't to go to let on that they
were scared, so she d wouldn't either.
She brought up the energy and sent the spheres of energy arcing into the milling conflict. It
was hard for her to throw and dodge energy blasts at the same time. She needed to be standing
still in order to get good leverage for tossing her time-bombs. Counting how long it took before
each one exploded helped her forget how nervous. In the back of her mind, she thought, "I hope
those creeps watching this, get a good show."
"Let us make this one for two worlds to remember!" Shatterstar yelled, launching himself into
the air.
A synthezied voice began a play-by-play summarization of the action. "The battle has increased
to encompass the Spineless rebellion troops! Where did they come from? What's going on
here?"
"Something they have long forgotten. A fight for freedom."
The annoucer continued: "The Fang Troops are on the defensive! Ladies and Gentlemen, with the
once-and future Shatterstar, and two members of the Terran strike force, fighting side by side,
the Freeman armed Network is soon to fall!"
"Rictor, Boomer, we must regroup. The key to ending this fiight lies up there in the control
room!"
"Read you loud and clear, Star."
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©Copyright by Alan Quan. Shatterstar and all other characters
mentioned here are ©copyright of their respective owners. The
fan-fiction written here is ©copyright by Karen Galarneault, 1999.
