It was supposed to be a luxurious trip on the most advanced Touched-Tech train in the world. If it could even still be called a train. It was shaped like one, certainly, with dozens of train-like cars all connected together and being pulled along by a powerful locomotive. But there was no track for the train to run on. It didn't even stay on the ground. The so-called Skyrail flew through the air several hundred feet in the air. Tickets to ride on this particular flying train were quite expensive, given the luxuries on board. It was more like a cruise in that way.
If things went as planned, it wouldn't always be that way. The company behind the flying train had plans to create several more and make them more affordable. They wanted to completely revolutionize travel by combining the benefits of traveling by train and by jet. They wanted to take the sheer number of passengers a train could carry and add the speed and convenience of flight. That would take much more investment, so this first flying train catered to the people who could invest in their business so they might eventually be able to create dozens of them.
But for now, there was only the single Skyrail. Which meant that the people on board were completely loaded. That made the train a prime target for criminals. The investment company behind this first train’s creators knew that and had hired a powerful, respected security team to keep their passengers safe. After all, it wouldn't do to have their potential source of fresh new income end up getting robbed, or worse. The security they hired was supposed to be the best.
Unfortunately, the competence of that security seemed to have been greatly exaggerated, considering the current situation. The flying train had been taken over, its communications blocked, and every member of that vaunted security team knocked unconscious or otherwise disposed of. The train was now in the hands of a gang of mixed Fells and Prevs, all of them dangerous. And the rich passengers were being taken on a ride they definitely didn't want.
As the train flew over the empty landscape of northern Michigan, near Lake Huron that marked the border into Canada, two of the invaders stood together on top of the rear-most car. They were all members of the pirate group (Fell gangs that went around raiding the freeways between cities) known as the SlamMans (female members were called SlamMa’ams), or just Slammers. Armed with rifles, they were both watching for anyone who might come to investigate the hovertrain. They’d already redirected the thing to fly out in the middle of nowhere, and turned off the transponder that was supposed to allow it to be tracked and monitored. No one should have known where they were, but they weren't going to take any chances. The rest of their people were going to take everything out of the train that wasn't bolted down, while their leader did… well, whatever he wanted. Malignut was a weird one sometimes, always going off on his own to find what he deemed to be the ‘right victims.’ Either way, by the time the Shields or Stars knew anything was wrong, the Slammers would be long gone, and all they would find was a bunch of spoiled rich motherfuckers and their families tied up in their underwear. They were going to take everything these stupid fucks brought with them on this little exotic flying train vacation of theirs.
But a key part of that was making sure they didn't get interrupted by any party poopers. Which was why those two standing on the roof of that rear car were watching the area around them so intently. The train was flying just a little bit above the top of the forest, doing circles over the most remote area they’d been able to find at the moment to stay away from busybodies who might interfere.
From this height, at the speed the train was going, it might have been dangerous to stand on top of the thing like this. Fortunately, the train projected an invisible protective shield of sorts around itself. It wasn't enough to stop anything from physically passing through it, but wind was pushed aside. The men were able to stand up as unhindered as they would have been inside the thing, and could gaze in every direction without having to squint whenever they turned to look up toward the front. They had a perfect view all the way around the train from their positions, and would absolutely be able to see if anything--
“Ahem, pardon me, gentlemen.” A voice spoke up from directly--in front of the men? In front of them and down a bit. Both of them jumped and focused their gazes (and rifles) that way, just in time to see what was ostensibly a bird. A raven, in fact. Except this raven almost looked like a robot. His body was covered in gleaming red-gold armor. Even his head was clad in a little helmet with a slot for his beak to stick out of, and his eyes were covered by tiny goggles.
“What--the fuck?” One of the men managed, voice catching a bit in confusion. “Dude, are you seeing this shit? It’s a little robot bird. You think it’s some sort of fancy toy that got out of one of those rich bastards’ suitcases?” He raised a foot to nudge toward the diminutive figure curiously.
The raven hopped backward to avoid the foot, speaking again while pacing back and forth in front of them. “I assure you, my good sirs, I am no toy. And I am no robot. I am known as Birdbrain. It is my solemn duty to inform you that now is the time to surrender. You may do so by laying down your arms, then kneeling and linking your hands behind your heads. Should you fail to follow these instructions in a timely fashion, my comrades and I shall have no choice but to resort to fisticuffs.”
The two men blinked at each other as they absorbed his words over the course of about three full seconds, then turned back to the bird once more and laughed so hard they almost defeated themselves for him by falling off the side of the train. The first man had to grab the second, guffawing heavily. “Oh, damn, I’m sorry, who’re your comrades, a woodpecker and a parakeet?”
For the second time, they were met with an unexpected voice, this one from behind them. “No, us.” When the men spun back that way with their guards raised once more, they found themselves facing another surprising sight. Two little human girls, each wearing armor similar to the bird’s. One had green body armor with a matching helmet, a white skirt and boots, and dragonfly wings that fluttered a bit as she stood there. Meanwhile, the girl next to her had silver armor, a blue skirt and boots, and a hooded cloak instead of wings. The first looked like she was maybe ten, while the second couldn’t have been older than twelve. Both were standing with their arms tightly folded while giving what were clearly very disapproving looks at the two confused men.
“Okay, look, kids,” one of the men started with an obviously condescending tone while pointedly lifting his rifle, “both you and your little TONI friend or robot or whatever the hell he is need to go sit down and wait for this whole thing to be over. You can play superhero with some other group back home. We ain’t the people you wanna fucking mess with right now. I don’t know if you’re a couple rejects from some local Minority group or what, but this ain’t the place for your games.”
“We’ll give you one more chance.” That was the younger of the two girls, who straightened up to her full yet still very unimpressive height. “It’s only fair. Surrender right now and you won’t get--”
One of the men got tired of listening to that and reached out to grab her. But before he could even close his hands around the girl’s arm, her partner was already reacting by snapping her own hand out. A firehose-like blast of water erupted from her palm and shot that way, while the girl snapped, “Gem Torpedo Rush!” The spray caught the man completely unaware, knocking him backwards into his friend. Both of them stumbled and nearly fell off the train, before Birdbrain went flying up past them with a blurted, “Feathered Foil Force!” In that moment, four small statues, all of which looked identical to the armored raven, appeared with two on either side of the train roof. They all looked toward the stumbling men as beams of concussive force shot from their left eyes. The two men were hit from both sides, but the beams from the side they were stumbling toward were stronger, pushing them right into the middle once more. While the pair were still recovering from that, a couple much stronger concussive blasts from the suddenly-manifested bird statues tore the rifles from their hands and sent them flying out into open air. At least for a moment, before the smaller girl, the one in green armor, snapped her hand out to throw a couple little metal balls that way. Only belatedly did she remember to call out, “Grabbing Globes, take them home!” The balls seemed to home in on the falling rifles, attaching themselves to the barrels before disappearing with them. Just like that, the weapons were gone.
The two men, suddenly finding themselves disarmed and facing what were obviously three powerful Touched, didn’t think things were so funny anymore. One grabbed for the radio on his belt, while the other went to dive toward the nearby ladder. Neither made it, soon finding themselves trussed up with silver rope that would keep them safely secured to the roof of the train car but unable to move. Their radios had also been taken away as they were left to stay there under the watchful gaze of a single remaining bird statue that would keep an eye on them.
“Two down!” the cheerful voice of Swiftkick, or Wren when she wasn’t dressed up like this, chirped. She bounced up and down a couple times. “We can stop the rest of them, right?”
Cloudburst, or Izzy, gave a quick nod. “Birdbrain’s statue spies said there’s fifteen of them left, spread through the train. If we take it one car at a time, and keep going quickly and carefully before they can warn each other or set up any sort of defenses, I’m pretty sure we can--”
She was interrupted by the sound of shouting coming from several cars ahead. All three (five counting the trussed-up pirates) turned that way just in time to see a blast of what looked like actual lightning shoot out one of the windows there, sending a spray of glass in every direction to rain down over the forest far below. The angry shouting was suddenly much louder then.
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“Hey--what--what’s going on down there!?” Cloudburst gasped out, staring that way as what sounded like actual fighting carried up through that hole. Someone was attacking the pirates.
“I dunno,” Swiftkick admitted, already starting to move, “but we’ve gotta find out before someone else up there gets hurt!” She pivoted immediately, holding her hand out toward the car where the lightning had emerged. A small pellet shot out of her glove, rocketing forward and down on its way, whistling through the air as it passed the other train cars. The pellet went right through the broken window, before Swiftkick hit a button on her glove. “Traipsing Traversal, let’s Piggyback!”
“Um, girls,” Birdbrain, or Lucent started to say, “perhaps this would be a good time to call for--”
But Swiftkick had already hit that button, and the three of them were enveloped in a wave of bright energy, which immediately transported them all the way up to where the pellet had gone. They appeared inside the train car, in the midst of what turned out to be substantial chaos. This was one of the fancy dining cars, with a dozen or so tables spread through the space for people to eat while looking out over the landscape the train was flying over. It should have been a nice, peaceful space to enjoy their food and marvel at the concept of riding a train hundreds of feet above the planet. But now most of those tables were broken or overturned, with the contents, dishware and food alike, scattered across the floor. The back third of the train car was blocked off by some sort of heavy, thick tree logs and branches that seemed to have grown out of nowhere. The passengers who had been enjoying their meals when the pirates arrived were huddled back there, staying out of the way behind those logs that were keeping them safe.
Meanwhile, four of the pirates themselves were laying on the floor, groaning in pain and more than a little annoyance as they clutched their arms around themselves. Two were clearly trying not to vomit, one kept scratching himself all over while complaining about how much he itched, and the fourth looked like he was desperately fighting the urge to fall asleep. He kept struggling to sit up, only to slump back down and yawn. It was obviously all he could do just to try to keep his eyes open. A lingering odor of some sort of sleeping gas was barely detectable around him.
And there, right in the middle of the dining car, were two other figures, dressed just as colorfully as the trio who had just transported here. One was a girl with a gold shirt that was shaped like scalemail armor, under a red long tail jacket. She also had a red skirt over black shorts, with a gold belt, black stockings to match those shorts, knee-high red boots with gold trim, and a metallic red mask with gold eyes that conformed to her face. Her exposed dark hair was short.
The figure next to her looked rather similar, though with purple where the first girl’s costume was red, and silver where the other’s was gold, and her equally dark hair was long and shaggy.
The girl in red and gold had a small shield attached to her left arm, and some sort of mace that was extended out to the side as she had been in the midst of pointing to the door at the far end of the train car. Her companion had a trident, which was pointed toward the man who was frantically scratching himself all over. “I guess you could say that trying to rob this train was a rash decision!”
No sooner had she gotten that much out than the girl was already pivoting toward the trio who had just arrived, raising that trident as she started to snap, “And if you think we’re dumb enough t--huh?”
“Stop, stop!” The called warning came from… not the girl herself, but something… behind her? No, on her shoulder. A tiny figure seemed to crawl up into view, perching there while waving little arms. The figure was… a lizard? A lizard wearing a miniature spacesuit, with its face visible through the glass visor of the helmet. No, wait, not a lizard, an amphibian. An axolotl. A TONI axolotl in a spacesuit, standing on the costumed girl’s shoulder waving both tiny arms. “Wait! No one fight, this isn’t the time for a heroes having a misunderstanding and fighting each other trope, nobody likes those anymore! And frankly they were annoying and played out after like the second time!”
“Agreed!” That was Birdbrain, who flapped up from an overturned table to land on Cloudburst’s shoulder, directly opposite from the axolotl just across the room.
There they were, one pair of clearly magical girls with a raven sidekick-mentor facing another pair of magical girls with an axolotl sidekick-mentor. All six figures gaped at one another for a silent moment, before Birdbrain cleared his throat. “Ahem, I believe we can safely assume that none of us are working at the behest of these scoundrels. Perhaps further explanations, and greetings, can wait until our true opponents are no longer an active threat.”
The axolotl bobbed his tiny head. “Quite, quite, details aside, we are clearly all attempting to solve this pirate issue. I suggest we work together to that end. Six are better than three, for that.” His voice was clearly being projected and magnified by an audio system in the helmet.
“Ahem,” another voice, one that needed no artificial magnification, spoke up from the distant doorway, as a truly large Samoan woman wearing a colorful tropical shirt and equally bright parachute pants came into view. Before Cloudburst and Swiftkick could take her for a threat, the axolotl flew that way. He hovered through the air in his little spacesuit, which was making bubbly noises similar to the flying cars from the ancient Jetsons cartoon. He landed on her outstretched hand, even as the large woman herself corrected, “Seven are also better than three, I would say.
“Now, how about we kick some pirate booty?”
********
“And then I said, ‘hey, what makes you think I only brought one jelly bean with me?’”
The words of the tall, Samoan woman were met with an assortment of giggles and snickers, while she spread her arms wide with a bright, anticipatory smile. She, and the rest of both groups, were seated on top of what had once been an old yellow school bus. But the bus had been painted bright blue with multicolored sparkle patterns all over it, and had an array of… extra equipment attached. This included what looked like rocket boosters on the back, reinforced armor plating, some sort of radar dish attached to the front just above the windshield, and a bulldozer-like shovel on the front bumper.
All seven figures were seated there, around a collection of snacks and drinks. The bus was parked on top of a hill, with the train, now landed in an empty field and surrounded by various police and other emergency vehicles, barely visible off in the distance. Birdbrain and Oodles, the axolotl, were sitting together in the middle of the assorted snacks, with the humans surrounding them. Their masks had long-since been removed and introductions made.
As they all finished giggling at the woman’s, whose name was Heilani, conclusion to her brief little story, it was Cloudburst who spoke up next. “So you guys were already on the train when all that started?”
The girl in silver and purple armor, who had introduced herself as Kelsey, bobbed her head. “Uh huh, sort of, but we were… under cover.”
“One of our uncle’s bad guy friends was on that train,” the other girl, Landry, put in. “We’ve been trying to put all of Uncle Asher’s partners in prison, but this one was hard to find. He wanders around the country a lot. All we knew was that he was on that train, so we had to sneak on as staff.” She ducked her head under the dubious looks and blushed. “Okay, okay, Heilani was staff. We were more like stowaways.”
“Yeah,” Kelsey confirmed, “turns out as long as you don’t attract a lot of attention to yourself, adults tend to assume any kid must be someone else’s. Especially if you’re as fashionable as we were. I mean even outside of these awesome costumes, you should see my tuxedo. I added a cape to it with this pink silk interior, I swear it’s the cutest thing you’ve ever seen.”
Izzy blinked a couple times at that. “You were in a tuxedo with a cape, walking around the train? And you’re my age? But you think you blended in?”
“Same age, not the same fashion sense,” Kelsey noted with a bright grin. “And maybe blending in was more about no one wanting to be responsible for a couple kids when they were just trying to enjoy their vacation. Anyway, it wasn’t hard to just wander around and try to find the guy who looked like our uncle’s friend. At least, it wasn’t hard until the pirates showed up.”
Oodles raised a tiny hand. “We did locate our quarry, as it happens. He has also been secured for the police to detain, with a detailed record of his crimes in an envelope that has been stapled to his shirt.”
“We didn’t even have to transform for that,” Landry noted. “Heilani tied him up. But before we could leave, those pirates showed up. How did you guys get there though?”
Birdbrain pecked at a dish of peanuts, then explained, “That was a bit of convenient happenstance on our part as well, actually. Swiftkick here has great interest in both Touched-Tech methods of travel and trains in particular. She wished to watch this one fly past on its maiden journey. When it did not arrive in the area it should have, just east of Detroit, we sought to find it. With some luck and a bit of help from Swiftkick’s own technology, we drove here in our bus to investigate, only to find the train circling above this forest, in obvious distress.”
“And we couldn’t let anything bad happen to the Skyrail!” That was Wren herself, sounding terribly distraught by the very idea. “If people get hurt or die, that’d be bad all by itself, but they’d also stop making more of them. Like how the Hindenburg made them stop making more blimps.”
“We would have simply called for assistance from one of the government-associated Star groups,” Birdbrain explained, “but a closer inspection of the clothing worn by the pirates revealed that they belong to the Slammers organization, an aggressive group led by Malignut, a rather dangerous individual who makes a habit of carefully stalking his victims for days or weeks ahead of time, before grabbing them and taking them back to his lair for… bad things. Whoever he was targeting on that train didn’t have time to wait for the proper authorities. He likely would have left with his target before they arrived, even if the rest of his gang remained.”
“But thanks to you guys, we found him, stopped him, tied him up, and now here we are!” Wren finished for them, after scarfing down a handful of popcorn. “Two totally awesome butt-kicking magical girl teams!” She gave an exaggerated gasp. “Oh no, this is a crossover! Something bad has to happen now to justify all of us meeting!”
“Didn’t we just deal with the problem already?” Landry pointed out, while gesturing toward the bus. “I think this is the winding down part.”
“Nuh uh,” Wren insisted, sounding distressed. “This was just the part about how we meet up, and you guys know those dumb pirates weren’t a match for either of our groups alone. There was no reason for us to have to team up to fight them. The only way this makes sense is if there’s gonna be something even worse that comes--”
“Girls,” Heilani interrupted, raising a hand to point toward the train. “You said your uncle’s friend wanders a lot? And that pirate leader is known for stalking his victims?”
The entire group stared in the direction of the landed train in that field, even as two rapidly growing shapes came into view. The screams had already started, while one of those now-giant figures stretched a long tentacle out to grab a police car and slammed it into the face of the other.
Malignut’s long search for another of his kind had paid off, and now the Collision Point had begun.
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