There you go. Now we know Ziggy's superpower.
Addendum: While I'm here, I might as well point out the inaccuracy of my short, blond hair.
Your fault for not posting a reference picture for us. Also, my fault for using people's avatars or screennames to create their characters, resulting in the need to make you up mostly from scratch.
Anydoodles here's the fourth chapter.
Among the highlights here are two deaths and Tanker stopping something that has been shown in the past to be unstoppable.
Also, a striking lack of funny.
Don't worry, the next chapter will be funny.
Chapter the Fourth, In Which a Hero Dies Twice
The Giant continued its assault, with Poltaap slashing away, and Riff ripping it to pieces with music. Suddenly, it lashed out at the tank, covering over it and tossing Riff aside.
Inside what seemed suddenly to be a metal coffin, Tanker yelled in frustration as the Giant’s voice boomed around him, clearly addressing the others. “Stop your assault, or your friend is crushed.”
A pause. Booming laughter. Either Drake or Thread had said something. Tanker started tapping controls. Nothing would respond. It was as though the Giant had stopped all the systems from working with some kind of special field. Or maybe stuff was just broken. It wasn’t impossible. “Your humor will be a terrible loss for the universe. I shall have to learn it when I take apart your brain.”
Drake stared at the Giant’s altered form, basically an oily black blob around Tanker’s vehicle. There was a way to defeat its deathgrip. But to do that… unthinkably dangerous. “See, now threatening to take apart my brain will get you nowhere. Try being nice.”
“Why be nice? I could shout and break your friend’s mind.”
“But that would be rude and then we’d have no reason to not rip you to pieces.”
The Giant seemed to be puzzling the ramifications of this out. It was either brilliant or stupid, and Drake couldn’t tell which. “I say we just kill it,” Riff said. “Tanker is replaceable.”
Everyone stared at him for a long moment. “Riff,” Thread scolded. “We’ve been over this a dozen times. Tanker is not replaceable.”
“I was joking!”
“Drake?” Orangey seemed irritable. “Why aren’t you doing it?”
Drake sighed. “It’s time. Everybody back off.”
They all retreated. Drake stepped forwards. “All right, Giant. We’ll back off and think this over, but if you crush him, I promise we won’t just evict you from the planet. We’ll find out how to kill you, and then we’ll do it one chunk at a time.”
He took to the air and flew as high as he could, then tossed over into a lazy dive. “God, forgive me if the innocent should die.”
Drake closed his eyes and switched off a mental barrier… and he died. The corpse tumbled earthward and lost all guidance, a freefall born of lifelessness… and then he twitched. Out of his fingertips there came a fine thread of energy. His life-force leaked from him and extruded out into a crude outline, that solidified and took on shape. An angelic form, stylized and wireframe only, like an artist’s rendering of Drake, came out of his body and descended like an eagle, altering its shape. Streaking unnaturally fast through the sky.
Drake’s soul-avatar flew at the Giant, a web of descending vengeance—and cut into it. Unthinking, powerful, deadly. He had no control of it, only his last living thought could direct it until it chose to return to him. His body crashed to the ground uselessly behind him as the Giant tried futilely to retaliate against the one thing as immortal as it.
Drake’s avatar cut the Giant to pieces and ruthlessly threw them skywards, where One rolled under them and fired his weapon. It seemed as though Drake’s last thought had been chosen right.
Until the Giant was completely disposed of, peeled away from its prisoner before it could crush the life away from it, and instead of retreating to its owner, the avatar turned its attention on Tanker’s tank.
Tanker swallowed hard as the web of soul-energy turned towards him. Now that was scary. He tapped at buttons furiously, and stabbed at controls, and finally his tank came back up. He tried to remember what he could of the avatar. It could be slowed, perhaps stopped. If he could only bring the Weapon online… There. Power to the main weapons. He started his volley, and the laser cannons flared to life, pounding into Drake’s last ditch effort to save his friend. The effort which was, as per usual, trying to kill someone. It staggered and stumbled, then started pushing through the fire.
“Come on, come on, come on,” Tanker urged the charging Weapon. It couldn’t kill the soul-avatar, but perhaps it would do what it was intended to do.
There. He fired.
The avatar closed in on the tank, and then… a blast, a perfect sphere, slammed out of the big central gun and hit the avatar square in the chest, pushed it back, enveloped it. Tanker popped up out of the top of his vehicle and yelled as the sphere rolled to a stop six feet short of Drake’s body.
“Put it into his chest!” he screamed, “Before the avatar breaks out of it!”
Thread ran forwards, her legs stretching out to impossible lengths, grabbed the sphere, and whipped it at Drake. It hit him, stopped instantly, and slowly disgorged its payload. This would either work, or kill him. Tanker had vague hopes that it would work.
Drake gasped and screamed in pain, energy roaring from his fingertips. He collapsed back on the ground and stopped breathing. Silence.
Thread knelt next to him. “Come on, Drake,” she whispered as the sphere evaporated into nothingness. “Come on. You die, and I won’t have anybody to have coffee with on Sundays, and that wouldn’t make anybody happy.”
Riff ran over. He knelt next to Thread and felt for a pulse on Drake’s throat. “You killed him, Tanker!”
