Six months. Gather an army.
The words tumbled around in Wednesday's head, trying to take in the magnitude of what Enid had faced. For Wednesday it had been if anything only a few hours since their forced separation after the first confrontation with The Bright One. The thought of months apart from her paramour filled her with an uncharacteristic anguish that made her furious. Yes, furious. She was furious that her Enid had to face it all alone.
The wrath dissipated when she noticed soft lips kissing her forehead.
Wednesday looked up, meeting Enid's gaze again. The two were still hugging, with the she-wolf's arms tightening around the Addams' waist and pulling her closer to herself.
"Weds. I can smell what you're thinking. I'm fine, save that anger for battle."
"Six months, mia lupa. I can hardly imagine..."
"At least I was or busy enough to keep my head from becoming a birdcage of worries," said the werewolf.
"Gathering an army," Wednesday pointed out, raising an eyebrow in a questioning fashion.
Enid blushed slightly, glancing to the side, "Well, that maybe sounds more impressive than it was... You see, what happened is..."
§§§
Months ago, several universes away.
"We're going to do what?"
Dora Addams' voice echoed around Needler's lab, where along with the others she was helping to set up a series of machinery needed for some of the tests and experiments the mad scientist was preparing.
"I've talked to Grandmama. And we're going to use my blood," Enid replied, addressing everyone present, "We know that my claws and those of other versions of myself can hurt those monsters so..."
"Oooh, we're going to round up more of us!", Saint-Clair exclaimed, nudging Eneit Synklar complicitly.
"So, about your blood...?", Theo started to ask before answering himself with a glint of understanding in his eyes, "Ah, rings!"
Enid nodded, "Yes, we're going to create another set of inter-dimensional rings. In this case prepared to track dimensions with counterparts of mine. While Needler finishes her part the rest of us will be hopping from universe to universe, recruiting as many variants as we can."
"What if they don't want to join?" asked Taylor, raising her hand, "I mean, if a bunch of people from another dimension show up to tell me to join them in a possibly deadly battle, at the very least I'd have second thoughts..."
"If they don't want to join, we'll let them be. We're not like The Bright One," Enid replied, shaking her head, "We seek out my counterparts, explain the situation as best and as quickly as possible, and let them choose. We're not going to force anyone."
"We also can't rule out that a variant you find is not suitable for our purpose and is best left alone," Needler added.
"How's that?" asked Shark.
"Pre-school Enid."
Woe let out a sharp laugh, "My baby brother could make an argument about how something like that wouldn't necessarily be grounds for disqualifying recruitment, but I see what you mean."
"Yeah, let's just say each case will have to be evaluated individually," Enid agreed, "Okay, here's what we're going to do..."
§§§
Back in our present, Wednesday could only marvel at the work undertaken by the lycanthrope.
"You certainly have been busy, mia cara lupa."
"Well, we had to even things out before we came here. That monster has an army of Shadow Hydes after all."
Hearing Enid refer to The Bright One as 'that monster', a terrible thought assaulted Wednesday, piercing her like a sting. The true identity of her enemy and what that could mean for Enid... For a fraction of a second her old bad habits resurfaced and she considered leaving it alone, keeping it a secret and hoping they could neutralize the threat without it coming to light but she soon realized how stupid that was. The truth had a habit of revealing itself at the most inopportune times, and it was only a matter of time before Enid learned who The Bright One was. No, trying to shield Enid from the truth would do more harm than good. It was best to inform her she-wolf as soon as possible, to minimize the damage.
"Enid, there's something I need to tell you."
"Hmm?"
"About our enemy. The Bright One... she's..."
"She is me," Enid said.
As cliché as it might sound, at that moment and after hearing those three words every single thought came to a standstill in Wednesday's mind with the noise of a needle scratch.
Surprising Wednesday Addams was not impossible. She was not immune to surprise, she had faced enemies who managed to successfully work subterfuge against her on more than one occasion. But she had rarely let surprise leave her disarmed or unable to process the events she was going through. But at that precise instant, that little revelation on Enid's part had left her genuinely flabbergasted.
"Wha…?" she mused.
Not to mention that it had affected her eloquence.
Enid merely smiled somewhat sadly and tapped her nose, "This one doesn't lie," she explained, "I first noticed it in our previous confrontation with her, when she held me down with her telekinesis and before sending me to another universe... She was very close to me and I could smell her scent. And being back in front of her right here and now confirmed it. It's something I've been privately thinking about ever since."
Wednesday could see that the idea made the werewolf uncomfortable, but at the same time Enid seemed to bear it with better fortitude than she expected. She felt guilty for underestimating her beloved, but still dared not venture the psychological impact of accepting that a version of yourself was capable of such atrocities.
Once again, almost as if reading her thoughts, Enid looked at her with a reassuring smile, "Easy Weds. It's...it's not a pleasant thing to think about, but whatever it was that made her what she is now does not excuse her actions nor should I take the blame for them. And the last few months have helped me put a lot of stuff in perspective. In our 'recruiting' rounds we've encountered many versions of you and me that I wouldn't touch with a stick," Enid explained, suppressing a shudder.
The multiverse was full of infinite impossibilities. And in more than one dimensional leap they had encountered realities that were extreme or deplorable even by Addams standards. Enid was still trying to erase from her memory the reality in which a version of her was some sort of dominatrix torturer in an SS camp.
And the less talk about the colored pony dimension the better.
And at that moment the reality of their situation once again dawned on them as a dry, metallic sound attracted their attention from where the window had been. There, standing in front of the shattered wall, The Bright One stood again having levitated to the spot after her fall. Her armor was still pristine white and nothing seemed to indicate that she had suffered any damage, but the posture of her body betrayed a noticeable tension and barely restrained fury. Surely she had not received such a humiliating attack in centuries.
"I see that letting you live to study you later was a mistake, brat," she said, her voice sounding curt, with none of the usual manic affability.
"Well," replied Enid, with a smile that brought out her fangs and immediately attracted Wednesday's attention, "It's just that if you leave me stranded in another universe I have a bad habit of trying to find my way back."
"How?" asked The Bright One, with a hint of hysterical disbelief in her voice, "How did you get here?"
"You have this whole thing very well set up, very well protected," said the she-wolf, glancing around, "This whole dimension is magically juiced up, shielded from any attempt at incursion using mystical means or witchcraft. Unfortunately for you, magic is not the only fundamental force in the universe."
As she spoke, Enid raised her left hand. There, on her wrist could be seen a watch-like device flashing with a red light. Wednesday immediately realized who Enid had contacted to make all that possible. She almost allowed herself an impressed smile.
"I happen to know a mad scientist. And we still had some of our rings with Wednesday's blood on them to track her down. I didn't understand most of the scientific jargon, but there was a lot of talk about blood having atoms and something about tachyons, the scalar field and the space-time void..."
"What the...?" muttered The Bright One, trying to comprehend what she was hearing.
"But long story short, my friend found a way to track Weds and throw me to her with the equivalent of a cosmic slingshot. I'm just the guinea pig. An anchor..."
The light on Enid's bracelet stopped flashing red, turning green with a faint finger snapping-like sound.
"And that means the calibration is over," the young werewolf said, smiling in an almost predatory manner, "Now they have the path to come here."
Behind Wednesday and Enid's back a green glow began to shine as a rectangular shaped portal took form in the air in an upright position, like an emerald gate shaping itself distinctly different from the circular portals they had witnessed from magic users.
Suddenly, alarms that had not been activated in centuries began to sound stridently. The screams and howls of the Shadow Hyde accompanied them, attracting The Bright One's attention. The armored fiend turned, ignoring her opponents for a moment and focused her attention outside. Down below, around the area of cells, the outer courtyards and the ring around the pyramid, there were dozens... no, hundreds of similar portals opening and multiple figures emerging from them. She noticed, to her dismay, that while a number of the new arrivals were variants of Wednesday Addams, the vast majority of the invading force was made up of multiple versions of Enid Sinclair. Enids of every shape, size, color and species that could be found in the multiverse.
Multiple versions of her one confirmed weakness, capable of decimating her troops of shadow vermin.
The anger that flared in her chest far surpassed any she had felt in the past. Being so close to finishing her work, to finishing her task and bringing back to life the perfection of her Wednesday, infinitely superior to all those scurrying around down there... How dare they interfere? How dare they!?
The Bright One turned again towards Wednesday and Enid. Under the visor of her armor her eyes glowed with a manic glow, and when her mouth opened the sound emitted was a strangled, animalistic scream, as if there was still something in her of the lycanthrope she once was. Her hands began to glow with an intense white light and the heat in the room increased noticeably.
Enid tensed, reaching out with her claws and shielding Wednesday. The Addams was no less, noticing a familiar tingling in her limbs.
I'm still here, Wednesday. That witch may see your blows coming but she won't see mine!
The Bright One took a step, and in the blink of an eye found herself standing in front of Enid, her arm raised. The light in her fist taking the shape of a huge sword of crystalline luminosity with which she was preparing to cleave the she-wolf in two.
Enid did not flinch, she merely tilted her head to the right.
Because at that moment, from the portal behind her, a shot of energy emerged that passed by the werewolf's head, almost grazing her, to impact fully against The Bright One. The scream of homicidal rage turned into a shriek of surprise and pain as the armored figure was hit by what appeared to be a plasma discharge and fell backwards again. The impact was not as great as the sonic boom of Enid's howl so this time she did not fall back out the window, but found herself on the ground, on the edge of the fall, sitting up dazed.
And this time the torso of her white armor was blackened and charred, smoldering...
"What the...?" she managed to mumble, stifling a fit of coughing.
The answer came from the figure that crossed the portal at that moment. Pale to extreme levels, with skin of a marbled white that would arouse the envy of many a vampire. Pitch black hair in braided pigtails. A white coat stained by traces of unknown substances and black gloves, holding a still smoking retro-futuristic looking gun that looked like it had stepped off the cover of an old pulp sci-fi magazine.
Wednesday Addams-Needler smiled, with the satisfaction of a job well done as she glanced not without some condescension at the figure in armor still on the floor.
"Science, witch."
NOTES
First, my apologies once again.
I've had a busy week and between that and the increasing complexity of the climax of this story my writing has been a mess. There has been an abundance of last minute rewrites and tweaks, including today. This chapter is shorter than usual because I have again opted to fragment a chapter that was getting monstrously long. Fortunately, that means that the next update will take less time than this one, I hope.
That's why you may be missing Woe, Pup, Shark, Friday and the rest of the gang right now. We'll see more of them and how the rest of the battle is unfolding in the next chapter. I have to juggle all of this narratively and find a way to give everyone a moment to shine. Wish me luck 😂
The illustration used in the collage was made by setyset, available on Tumblr.
PD: Oh, yes, and the ending in this chapter is a call-back to chapter 26 of Altogether Ooky. I couldn't resist.
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