Crossover Earth '98
I'm in Texas--Dallas to be exact. Last night I had another adventure that almost scared the life out of me.
I couldn't sleep. I left my downtown hotel and went for a walk, a sort of aimless walk that took me out of the high-rise section and down by the railroad tracks. Even late at night there were a lot of people out on the streets, and I didn't feel at all lonely or threatened, until I heard the explosions.
When you hear explosions, the smart thing to do is to run away from them, and I might have, but my leg began to tingle right where my ever-present tarot deck was in the right front pocket. I knew that I was being called into another situation that needed me.
I ran toward the noise along with some other curiosity seekers, and a couple of blocks over, I came to a scene right out of a disaster movie. The explosions and now the cries of men in agony and fear were coming from a small warehouse near an old rusty water-tower. As I came into sight, a man came running out the front door with his suit on fire, and then a whole section of wall blew out, giving me an excellent view of the interior. I stopped and took cover near a dumpster to see what was going on.
The interior of the warehouse was brightly lit by flames and occasional flashes of light. It looked like there were pallets of televisions and VCRS stacked inside, and several of them were on fire. As I watched a man in a suit ran across the open area. He had a gun in his hand and was firing wildly. Then a beam of light struck him, and he exploded.
My leg was tingling something fierce. I pulled out my tarot deck, pulled the cards out of the box, and quickly shuffled them. I must have been flustered, because I missed on the shuffle, and cards went flying everywhere. As I bent to pick them up, I noticed that three had come out face up. They were the Six of Swords, the Queen of Swords, and the Ten of Swords.
Then I saw the woman. She walked into view, glowing with energy, and blasting away with both hands. She had gray skin, and a monkey's tail that twitched around her in excitement. I swear her eyes were glowing as she slaughtered the people inside the warehouse. It only took me a few seconds of looking at her to realize that she wasn't human.
I didn't know what was going on, but when there's a fight between humans and an alien being, who are you going to help? I chose the humans--they were obviously getting the worst of the battle.
I looked at the cards Fate had dealt me. The first one was the Six of Swords--a journey by water. The card shows a man poling a flat boat across a lake carrying a woman, a child, and 6 swords. The meaning came to that I had to carry that alien woman and the danger she represented with the 6 swords away from the scene. How could I do that?
As if my thoughts caused things to happen, one of her energy bolts went wild and struck the old water tower, rupturing the bottom of it, and smashing two of the legs. It toppled into the parking lot, smashing two old cars. A flood of water gushed out. Quick as possible, I hopped into the dumpster, and then vividly pictured the water flowing through the broken wall into the flaming warehouse, striking the alien, and carrying her away.
The water should have simply dispersed upon hitting the ground, but it didn't. It formed a stream about ten feet wide, six feet high, thirty feet long, and surged into the warehouse, bursting into steam when it hit the flaming cartons, and took the alien completely by surprise. She went down and under. I also heard shouts of alarm from people inside the warehouse.
The water didn't keep her down for long. A few seconds later, she came flying up out of the deluge, and hovered above it. Now I knew she was either a super-being or an alien.
I switched to the second card: the Queen of Swords. It occurred to me that she was the Queen of Swords--a powerful, dark-haired, armed woman. But the Queen of Swords means more than that. It also denotes sorrow and shame. I concentrated upon the flying woman--trying to impress those emotions on her so strongly that she would either collapse or at least desist from what she was doing. I was getting a terrible headache again.
I didn't want to think about the third card. The Ten of Swords means Death. Someone was going to die here. I hoped it wasn't me where I cowered in the dumpster and tried to telepathically reach my foe. I didn't think it would be Monkey-Girl. She was just too powerful. Was there someone else who still had to die?
I saw the flying woman carefully aim another energy bolt deep into the warehouse. A few seconds later her shoulders began to sag, and her tail to droop. Perhaps my emotional attack was getting through. I concentrated harder on the shame and sorrow of being Queen of Swords.
Abruptly, she flew off. I heard sirens. Cops were coming. My tarot deck was lost to me, scattered all over the ground when I first pulled it out, and then the flood hit and washed most of the cards away. I had to leave it. I wondered what would happen if I had to use another deck. But now it was time to get away from here. I climbed out of the dumpster, and faded into the shadows just before the first police car drove up.