Chapter Fifteen: Welcome Aboard

 

            Igthorn reawakened with a loud snore. Or, at least, he thought it was him snoring. There was a sputtering, thunderous sound all around him. His body juddered, although he was unable to move any of his limbs (they were all tied down), yet he was still somehow moving at a ridiculous speed through the forest road.

            “What is this?!” he grumbled.

            “Let’s try this again, Iggy!” He heard Ash’s voice shout to him, but he couldn’t discern as to where it came from. His eyes darted all about the parameters that his head and neck would allow him under the circumstances. For one thing, he noticed that he was tied to the hood of Ash’s unusual chariot that she was behind the wheel of.

            “I demand you release me at once, wench!” Igthorn roared.

            “Wrong answer!” Ash stomped down on the gas pedal and the Olds picked up speed. Igthorn screamed in response. “This’ll be all over, Iggy, once you tell me what I wanna know!”

            Giving in, the terrified duke asked, “What do you want to know?!”

            “Where are the Sandersons?!”

            “They’re in that strange castle in these woods! That’s the last I saw of them!”

            Ash made a sharp turn, swerving off the dirt road and heading straight for a tree. She purposely crashed her Olds into the tree, the impact so strong that Igthorn was torn from his binds. He painfully smacked face-first into the tree, which not only rendered him unconscious once again but also knocked out more than a few of his teeth.

            Momentarily dazed from the intended car crash, Ash stumbled out of the driver’s seat and made her way back to Gracie Manor. She wasn’t sure how she would deal with the sisters, after Igthorn broke both her shotgun and chainsaw. All that she knew to do was to prevent them from leaving in the manor.

            Unfortunately, that was exactly what happened as soon as she got there.

            The mansion disappeared from the forest in the same way that it did the night Ash first discovered it, with a dark swirling vortex opening above the mansion, generating a vacuum powerful enough to disintegrate it brick-by-brick and suck all the pieces into the portal.

            “NO!” Ash howled, her horror and fury echoing across the heavens.

            It was over. The Sandersons were somewhere over time and space…and, worst yet, Ash was trapped forever in the Middle Ages.

            But just when all hope seemed lost, things began to look up (quite literally).

            A bright light shined over Ash’s specific location – brighter than the moon itself. She tried to see what it was, blocking out the light with her one good hand, which suddenly de-atomized right before her very mortified eyes. “What the h—?” she started to say before her speech was cut off as the rest of her body de-atomized, vanishing from the forest altogether.

            She reemerged within the confides of a well-polished circular chamber with lights emitting from the ceiling and floor that dimmed after Ash’s emergence. “—eck?” she finished the last syllable of her utterance as soon as she regained function of her mouth.

            “Welcome aboard, lass!” Ash turned just as she heard the Scottish-accented voice of a woman. The chamber she stood in was adjacent to an entire room with walls that blinked with an array of labels, indicators, and diagrams. It was as if Ash had been teleported aboard an alien spaceship, operated by human-looking individuals in colorful uniforms.

            The Scottish redhead that greeted her was wearing a red-and-black uniform with an intriguing badge pinned above her left breast. “Who are you?” Ash asked her.

            “Now is that anyway of greetin’ the woman who just pulled you out of that dark, dank forest?” the Scottish redhead remarked. “Name’s Maighdlin Scott. My friends call me ‘Scotty’. But your ungrateful self can just address me as ‘Miss Scott’.”

            The only door in and out of the room automatically slid open with a faint mechanical whoosh. T’Eve stepped inside, noticing Ash. “Good work, Miss Scott,” she addressed Scotty. “I’ll take it from here.”

            “She’s all yours,” Scotty said, side-eyeing Ash as she left the room.

            With only the two of them in the room, Ash asked T’Eve, “Where have you people brought me?”

            “You’re aboard our ship – the USS Enterprise,” T’Eve told her. “If you’ll follow me, I’ll take you to the bridge where everyone else is.”

            “Everyone else?” Ash repeated. “You mean the Ghostbusters, Binx, and all those other weirdoes? I thought they were fighting off the invasion on Dunwyn. Did we win? Oh, please tell me we won.”

            “We were victorious, once Captain Jace and our crew arrived.”

            Ash was relieved to hear this. Stepping out of the transporter chamber, she followed T’Eve out of the room and down one of many interconnected corridors of the Enterprise ship. Along the way, she noticed many characters among the crew that looked just as bizarre as the ones she had encountered in her journey.

            A monkish boy with blue arrow tattoos.

            A yellow sponge in square pants and a pink starfish in shorts.

            A big-headed boy with a fudgy hairstyle.

            And a little, furry orange man with a green hat, accompanied by a pale, light greyish cerulean steed. “How’s it goin’, ma’am?” the orange man greeted Ash, tipping his green hat.

            “Uh…hi?” Ash awkwardly waved to him.

            “Wander, you don’t ask ‘How’s it going?’ to every new face you see,” the steed told him. “Do ya know how many people are on this ship?”

            “Every new face you see is a new friend to be made, Sylvia,” Wander stated.

            Ash’s eyes were so focused on the pair that she failed to see the individual that she bumped right into at the juncture. “Hey! Watch where ya going!” the individual griped to her. Ash saw her to be a duck – just like Donald and the McDuck family – with shoulder-length hair (or a facsimile thereof) and swoop-bangs. She wore a brown flight jacket, a sea-green shirt, tan shorts, a brown flight helmet, black goggles, and a light blue scarf. She also had a bionic left leg.

            When the female duck looked Ash directly in the eyes, her demeanor totally changed. “Oh, it’s you!” she exclaimed, seeming to recognize Ash. “Oh, my bad. I didn’t even realize it was you.”

            “No…problem?” the baffled Ash acknowledged.

            “Please don’t let this little mishap affect our mission,” the female duck beseeched. “Having you with us, we are gonna kick some serious boo-tay!” She whooped energetically as she proceeded down the corridor.

            Ash gawked at the departing duck, feeling more confused than before. Turning to T’Eve, she said, “O.K. What was that all about?!”

            “That was Della Duck, niece of Scrooge McDuck and twin sister of Donald Duck,” T’Eve identified. “We encountered her early in our travels across the multiverse – she was lost on the moon that orbited one of the Earths. The Duck family were thrilled when they saw her aboard the Enterprise. They had not seen her for many years on their Earth.”

            “So…all those other characters I crossed before I bumped into her…?”

            “Other lost refugees we’ve picked up from other Earths. There is an entity out there in the multiverse that has threatened our voyage multiple times – it calls itself the Twilight Phantom. A destroyer of worlds.”

            “Wow,” Ash muttered.

            “That is the correct response to what this entity is capable of,” T’Eve concurred.

            “It’s not a threat to us at the moment, is it?”

            “No. But Mr. McDuck believes another powerful being – Merlock the Magician – could be connected to the Phantom. The only one who can tell us for certain is Dr. Facilier.”

            “Doctor who?”

            “No, not them. According to Kara, they’re dealing with a problem in another universe entirely.”

            “You’re confusing the heck out of me, elf lady.”

            “I am not an elf; I am a Vulcan. And your confusion will subside eventually.”

            T’Eve led them into a turbolift that would take them directly to the bridge of the Enterprise. As they went up, Ash (whilst rubbing her temples) asked T’Eve, “Just tell me one thing: are the Gummis going to be okay? Those bears gave me a home while I was trapped in the Middle Ages. The least you people could’ve done was allow me to say goodbye.”

            “I’m afraid there wasn’t much time for such pleasantries. But do not fret. The Gummis remained behind to rebuild Dunwyn with assistance from King Arthur and Merlin. They did, however, leave you this.”

            T’Eve reached into the pouch that hung at her hip and retrieved a rolled-up scroll that she handed over to Ash. Curiously, Ash took the scroll and unfurled it to read the Gummis’ message. A few tear drops hit the parchment as Ash sniffled her way through finishing the entire message.

            “Judging by your emotional response, it must have been quite the touching farewell,” T’Eve observed.

            “Oh, shut up!” Ash retorted, rolling the scroll back up and pocketing it away into her shirt, just as they arrived on the bridge.

            Stepping out of the turbolift, Ash saw that the Ghostbusters were there with Captain Jace, who stood up from the captain’s chair as soon as she heard Ash and T’Eve arrive. “Welcome aboard,” Captain Jace greeted her. “I’m guessing T’Eve gave you the grand tour of the ship.”

            “Yeah, and it’s weird,” Ash remarked, taking in the atmosphere of the bridge, which was blinding to the eyes with its shininess.

            “You sound happy,” Venkman teased.

            “I’ll be happy once someone tells me how we’re gonna find the Sandersons,” Ash said. “Before Scotty beamed me up, I saw them escape in the mansion.”

            “I’ve broadened the Enterprise’s scopes to beyond space and time to pinpoint the mansion’s energy signature and its current location,” said Kara, who stood near her TARDIS while working at one of the stations on the bridge. “According to the readouts, they’ve jumped a thousand years into the future.”

            “So, they’re in the 20th century now,” J.G. deduced.

            “1993, by rough estimate,” Spengler calculated.

            “Then let’s go there now,” Ash insisted. “C’mon! Let’s jump there or however you guys move this thing!”

            “I spoke with Miss Scott earlier, Captain, and she advises against another slingshot maneuver,” T’Eve notified. “It would conceivably overload the warp core engines, thereby destroying the Enterprise and us right along with it.”

            “Any other alternatives then?” Captain Jace opened the floor.

            “The power core of my TARDIS can give us the boost your warp core engines need,” Kara said. “Just let me take it to your engine room and sync it up.”

            “Permission granted,” Captain Jace approved.

            Kara immediately went into her TARDIS and dematerialized it out of the bridge.

            After half an hour of syncing the engines between the two ships, Kara and Scotty gave Captain Jace the go-ahead. “All ya gotta do, Captain, is take the Enterprise up to Warp 40,” Scotty instructed.

            “Did she say ‘Warp 40’?!” Ensign Chekov (Enterprise’s navigator) exclaimed.

            “Scotty, is it even safe for us to go that high at warp speed?” Captain Jace questioned.

            “No, Captain,” Scotty answered. “But we’re gonna have to, if we wanna jump a thousand years into the future.”

            Marie heavily sighed before giving Chekov the order, “Take us to Warp 40.”

            “Aye, Keptin,” Chekov verified, exchanging an uneasy glance with helm officer Una before carrying out his orders.

            Marie turned to Ash and the Ghostbusters and advised, “Better hang on tight.”

            The intensity on her face clued them in on how bumpy the ride was about to get, and they hung tightly onto the railings as Ensign Chekov initiated warp. At first, the ride seemed rather smooth, but once it reached Warp Factor 20, the Enterprise experienced massive turbulence. At Warp Factor 30, consoles within the bridge exploded in a hail of sparks, knocking crewmembers away.

            Finally, once the Enterprise reached Warp Factor 40, the ship became nothing more than a hazy stream of light that blinked out of space…and time.