“Okay, the Hot Wheels Maneuver still needs more workshopping, but we’ll get it perfect next time.” Green stepped into the hideout through a warp in space, Red in tow. She brushed at a soot stain on the smoldering remains of her uniform, frowning as it refused to wipe off. “I think if you wait another half-second for my ring to stabilize before you launch the fireball into it, we oughta be able to – oh, hey Yellow. How’s it going?”
“Hi Green, hi Red!” Yellow put her book down on the coffee table. “It’s been good, just taking a break from practicing in the training room. I think my aim’s getting better!”
Red grinned. “Nice! Sounds like we should do another target shooting contest soon. Can’t wait to – hang on, where’s Blue?” Red scanned the room nervously.
“Oh – right! We heard about some trouble downtown, probably the Demon Emperor again. Blue went out to handle it, she said she had it covered and I should stay here to hold the fort.”
“And you let her go?!” Green shouted, horrified. “No, sorry, sorry, you’re new, our bad for not explaining. Magical Guardians rule number 7: Never let Blue go out without backup.”
“We should really actually write those all down one of these days, instead of Green just making up numbers.” Red walked over to the fridge, quickly looking over the notes stuck to the door. “Shit. Yup, Black left us hints on how we’ll have fixed this. She’s gonna have-been pissed, causality paradoxes always give her massive headaches.”
“Wait, is Blue in that much danger?” Yellow asked nervously. “I thought she was strong enough to handle a fight on her own…”
“She’s not who we’re worried about. Okay, first up is a set of coordinates. Green?” Red passed over the note, written in Black’s spidery scrawl.
“I’ll do my best.” Green began incanting formulae in an unintelligibly-fast patter, symbols coalescing in the air around her. She scrunched up her eyes in frustration. “Ugh, space around there is already fucked. I oughta be able to get it, just need a minute.”
“So,” Red said as Green continued her incants. “Blue’s Equation is a bit weirder than everyone else’s. Heat, electromagnetism, space, time, all pretty straightforward. Blue’s is … I think she called it the Metalogical Equation? She can make impossible deductions, catch lies and bluffs, dissect strategies, it’s pretty handy. Only, if she follows it too far, it kinda… breaks math? Or finds where math was already broken? I don’t totally get it, but the point is, anytime she’s fighting, one of us needs to be there to thwack her in case she starts making 2+2 equal 5.”
“But if she’s that good at logic, wouldn’t she understand when it’s getting dangerous and know where to stop?”
“Oh, Blue’s super logical, most logical person I know. She’s also an absolute idiot. Do not leave her alone with numbers.”
“Okay, got a path!” Green called over, visibly sweating. A rift stood in the air in front of her, opening onto a landscape that hurt to look at. “It’s still gonna take a minute or two walking, but we wouldn’t be able to get there at all the normal way anymore.”
“Great job, Green. Let’s go. You too, Yellow, looks like we’ll need you for this, and you should get a look anyway so you’ll know what to watch out for next time.”
The three of them stepped through the rift, and immediately found themselves standing on the ceiling-wall of an inside-out building. Yellow stumbled, already looking queasy.
“Yeah, it gets like this,” said Green. “Your Equation should keep you safe more or less, but if you gotta hurl, no judgment.”
They made their way carefully along a twisting, looping, inverting path, the air around them crackling with esoteric mathematics. An infinite[simal] distance away, Blue came into view, surrounded by an un-sphere of eye-stinging glyphs.
Red looked over Black’s note again. “Ok, after the coordinates it just says ‘Thunder Wheels’. Gotta be something to do with Yellow’s powers, any ideas?”
Green perked up. “Ooh! Like Hot Wheels, but with a thunderbolt! Shit, that’d be awesome!”
Red nodded. “Ok, let’s go with that. Green, make one of those accelerator rings around Blue, just like for Hot Wheels. It’ll probably go screwy, but that’s fine. Yellow, start charging up the ground, and hit it with a lightning strike before it breaks. Got it?”
“Got it.” They nodded in unison and began powering up. A ring of warped space shimmered around Blue, immediately deforming into a regular tridecahedron. It continued stretching and reshaping, sending a harsh whistle through the air, until finally –
“NOW!”
A bolt of lightning shot down from the clouds far overhead. As it connected with the twisting ring, it became several dozen parallel lines, all intersecting on Blue. The lightning froze in place, pulses of current rapidly oscillating back and forth. Then, between one moment and the next, it disappeared entirely. Black, clutching her forehead angrily, now stood in the clearing where Blue had been. Blue flew through the air to land in a nearby dumpster as normal arithmetic reasserted itself.
“Was that Black’s rapidfire timestop punch thingy?” Green asked.
“Mmm, not sure.” Red pondered. “Judging by the trajectory, my guess would be a roundhouse kick.”
“Blue! Are you okay?!” Yellow ran over to the dumpster.
“Hmm? Oh. Hi Yellow. I’m fine.” Blue sat half-buried in trash bags, looking around unperturbed, making no particular effort to extricate herself.
“What the hell, Blue!” Green stepped across the several dozen meters to the dumpster. “We agreed, no more solo shit!”
Blue blinked a couple of times. “Oh. Right. You and Red were busy, though. And Yellow still needs more training. And Black said never to wake her up when she’s napping.”
Black slammed the lid of the dumpster shut, and then winced at the noise. “Thirty of those chocolate fruit mini-cakes from Marcin’s. Then we’re even.”
“They only sell two of those each week.”
“That’s your problem. I’m going back to my nap.” Black pulled a notebook and pen out of her pocket, scrawled out a note while swearing under her breath, and blinked away.
“Oh, right,” Green turned to Yellow. “Rule number 3, never disturb Black’s naptime.”
“We really need to write these down.”